Just before 9/11/2001, I was engaged in a fresh round of being appalled at the absurd excesses of the corporate world. Remember corporateers? They’re the only people with even less respect for your privacy than Bush. Don’t believe me? Just try (and I have) calling a company and saying you’d like to speak to them, but that you don’t consent to being recorded. They usually won’t speak to you at all.
Or better yet: try telling them that YOU are recording them. For quality assurance purposes, of course. Then they really won’t talk to you. These days, they’d probably call in a SWAT team. Could be useful for keeping debt collectors away though.
It’s become normal to have your calls recorded. Hasn’t anyone noticed that’s not really normal? At least by the standards of Western democracy, that quaint old system we had before the Global War on Terror ™.
But now we have a company who’s one-upping even the NSA. These dillholes have a great new plan. You get free calls via the internet. They listen in via voice recognition software, and certain keywords trigger extra content, like movie reviews and ads for related content they’ve determined you’ll be interested in. Haven’t ad people, who, I firmly believe, must be the dumbest, most annoying class in America (yeah, yeah, of course there are exceptions), figured out that people basically just don’t like ads??
What I can’t wait to see is the first SUV driver who’s yakking away while driving, then having ads pop up on a video screen. The pile-up will probably span several cities. And the only thing more annoying would be receiving a call from someone wired for ads–what a scintillating conversation you’ll have while the other person tries to talk to you, read fantastic dish soap offers and watch movie previews. Can’t wait for that!
The next move should be installing such a system in your bedroom.
