No Trespassing, Mind You!

Times were when people respected the right to private property. Education provided a safeguard to your property being trespassed upon or exploited. The only insurance you needed was the assurance that you are the king, or at least manager, of your castle.

I remember when you could keep unwanted intruders out of your house. I even remember the debate over having a television or computer enter the household. Everyday, you were expected to make up your mind as well as your face and hair. Your intellect was your property that needed no patent protection.

Journalism began as journal keeping - a personal matter of intellectual reflection on something intriguing. Everyone, or almost everyone who could write, kept a journal or diary that was both private and intellectual property. By and large, unless you became famous or, more likely today, infamous, your mind stayed a mystery to all but your closest consorts.

Frankly, "Lost In Space" was a TV show, not a way of life for Internet junkies. Perhaps it will take our robots to warn us of the danger of artificially-programmed intelligence. I'm seeing more and more commercials showing someone being kicked repeatedly in the front and backside. It's only funny if you're not aware that it's you being kicked repeatedly in the head by what is being called "over-stimulation". But it's darn-right criminal when it results in imitation (read:bullying) by the younger (read:immature) generation.

Let's face it: If it were house invasions, we would be trying to prevent these intrusions upon our property. Somehow, when it's our intellectual domain that is threatened, it's what goes right out the window (or is it Windows?) rather than what comes in that's the problem. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the classic horror story; 'Invasion of the Mind Snatchers' is the real story that is making, though ignorant of, history.

So will someone please "Alarm Me", not my house, to the insidious ploys parading as technological advancement. Am I just being robbed blind or am I blindly allowing myself to be compromised, if not violated, when it comes to what is most dear to me?

Ironically, in this Information Age of ours, the mind itself, like so many houses these days, has been repossessed - only to be left vacant or, better, vacuous.