Is Big Brother taking over your refrigerator and other appliances?

By David McElroy · May 8, 2013

Many of us have thought that Big Brother might arrive in our homes through TV sets, but what if we had the wrong appliance? What if Big Brother is really coming to control your refrigerator and oven and other very mundane appliances?

In Great Britain, the National Grid — the group that runs the power grid — has proposed that all appliances be required to have special sensors that give the power operators control to shut appliances down temporarily if they need to manage shortages of electricity. (I don’t like to link to RT.com, because it’s a propaganda organ of the Russian government, but this story appears legitimate.) The plan is also backed by power operators across the European Union, who want it adopted all over the continent.

Here in the United States, some power companies are adopting what they call “smart meters.” Who could oppose a “smart” meter? It sounds great, doesn’t it? For a power company, smart meters provide obvious benefits. They can monitor your power usage remotely, so the company no longer has to send someone to your house to read the meter. Just as important to the company, though, these meters give a power utility the ability to shut off your power remotely and “manage” your usage in other ways.

If the utility is having trouble supplying enough power, it can choose to cut back on your usage during peak periods. In other words, you’re giving a company (or a municipal utility) the right to shut your power off when it’s convenient for them.

In theory, it sounds good. In practice, it might even work as advertised for the time being. In some places, companies are offering financial incentives for them to have the right to cut your power off at certain peak times. It’s the implications for the future that scare me.

(Let me also mention that some people have worries about health problems because smart meters send their data back using radio waves. Some are even being arrested trying to block the installation of the meters, for both safety and privacy reasons. I think the safety issue is nonsense and I don’t take it seriously. The atmosphere is full of radio waves and they don’t hurt us. This is no different. It’s just like the people who were scared of WiFi signals and claimed they harmed health, too.)

A connected world — an “Internet of things” — is the wave of the future. Devices are going to have sensors and IP addresses and they’re going to talk to each other. I see that as almost inevitable. What I don’t like is that we aren’t going to be in control of our own devices. Companies and governments are going to have the technical capability to remotely control major aspects of our daily lives.

Even if the current uses of the technology are fairly benign, are you comfortable giving government the power to control what you’re using and the information about what devices you’re powering? What if you’re using power to grow plants indoors? Is that going to be enough to trigger a drug raid? (Buying indoor growing equipment is already enough to justify such a raid.)

I like technology and I like being connected, but I like to have control over my own devices. Maybe it’s already too late to stop this. I honestly don’t know. But I do know that a wave of major change is coming — and most people aren’t even going to know it’s coming until it’s too late to stop it.

I’m not happy about it, but I have no idea how to deal with this one.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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