There was a time when a person living in one village had no idea about the people living in the next village over.  There was a time when you could hide in the shadows and walk through life without appearing on anyone’s radar. I wonder if it is possible anymore to “slip through the cracks” and live in complete anonymity from the government, from advertisers, from those who want to know who you are.

As you take that first gulp of unassisted air, as you blink into the bright light, details about you are recorded for posterity. You might not even know the importance of your name but already the world knows more about you than you fathom about it. More importantly this is all done without your consent and without your knowledge.

So let’s look at how our big brothers operate these days.

When you walk down the streets and enter shops, your face is recorded on every camera as it scans you. We’re so used to it we hardly notice these one-eyed silent beholders.  In the United Kingdom during the height of IRA fear, CCTV cameras were installed in public areas. Estimates say there is now one camera for every fourteen people. Earlier this year Google got into some trouble when the wanted to bring street views to their maps. In Canada they had to blur the people as the photos were taken on the streets.

If you deal with any government agency anywhere in the world you are known and you are recorded. This week the details of 25 million British people were lost in the nightmare scenario where two discs went missing when they were sent over unregistered post. I have a strange vision of the person who put that in the mail having a nervous breakdown. Gordon Brown, UK’s Prime Minister had to publicly apologize.

If you own or drive a car, then your details are on a computer somewhere. In India they introduced a service where you could text a license plate number and you would receive the name, address and phone number of the registered owner. I’m surprised that no one cottoned on that this might be abused. Today they restricted the service to receive only the name so that young women were not getting harassed.

If you browse the web, then another piece of privacy news surfaced this week. Facebook has turned on an advertising platform called “Beacon”. When you are browsing sites and logged into Facebook, Facebook records and sends the information to 44 other companies and the information appears on the Facebook Newsfeed making it seems as if you endorse that company. There is supposed to be an “opt-out” but apparently it’s not always showing up.

So we know we’re being watched. We know we’re being recorded. My question to you: do you care? A part of me is worried, another part of me says, “Who care’s, it’s not like I do anything wrong”, and then another part says “Of course we need to watch and record, how else can we fight crime?” I wonder if we haven’t started to believe that everyone around the world is coming after us, that the person sitting next to you on the bus is devising evil machinations while staring out the window.

I think it all stems from a very human need to have control, and they who control information is truly in control. When something goes wrong people want to have the ability to examine everything rather than saying “we didn’t know”. But with everything good, as with the Indian case of the license plates, or the UK case of the missing discs, when that information goes missing or ends in the wrong hands, your anonymity is most assuredly washed away in a landslide of fear.

Anyone who’s had their credit card number compromised will understand exactly what I mean.

Today marks a day almost 5 years in the making. Today, BioWare’s Mass Effect hits the stores. I rarely talk about work on this blog, let alone my former employers, but I have to say, I haven’t been this excited about a game launch since Baldur’s Gate. True, this is the first BioWare game launch since Baldur’s Gate that I have not been within the hallowed walls of BioWare Corp. and I think that has something to do with it.

Mass Effect is also the first game from BioWare that I managed to not completely ruin all the parts of the story. Believe me that’s not an easy task when your friends are all working on it and the documentation is available to you! By all indications the game will take the world by storm which is good as being on the inside can sometimes colour your judgement of what is good and what is not. Sadly I probably won’t get a chance to fully enjoy the game till the new year after I complete some travelling.

Congratulations to all my friends at BioWare and hope that you all get a well-deserved rest. Everyone else, go buy the game (and a XBOX 360)

Today, I mark Remembrance Day with a poem by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) that I had not read until last night at a friend’s in Ottawa. We were visiting to participate in our capital’s Remembrance Day ceremonies. Dulce Et Decorum Est is about the First World War, but in truth war never changes. N’oublions pas.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

I rarely go into my spam folder. My overzealous filtering attacks a literal metric ton of email as being any number of male-member-enlargement, Brittany-Spears-virus-embodied, Viagra-Valium-Vanadium advertisements that spontaneously materialize out of the salacious mind of the great Intertron. Most days there is nothing of worth intended for me, but I was in for a surprise today!

Today I glanced at my spam folder and immediately saw an email from Kofi Annan the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. I was floored. I had never before received an email from Kofi (I’d like to think we can go by first names now that we have corresponded at least once). I did, after all, admire the man when he first became our Secretary-General and before all the Oil-For-Food and other scandals worked to darken his name and tenure. I’d like to think Kofi and I go way back.

From the first line he had my attention:

“How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?,You may not understand why this mail came to you.”

No I certainly could not understand why my old friend Kofi was writing to me. It was rather considerate that he was asking about our well-being though. I always thought he was a classy gentleman.

But then, as he always did whilst in office, he got down to the meat of the situation:

“We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS.

This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of US$ 300,000. This includes every foriegn contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government probelms etc.”

I could immediately see that my old friend Kofi was having some issues with his spellchecker and I immediately resolved to send him a link to Open Office or something to help him along. But what an amazing offer! Kofi wants to give me money. Bless his soul; after 30+ years on the planet and watching the United Nations do such great work and sometimes have a hard time I could not believe that they were classy enough to offer me such a large sum. All I had to do was send my information to his contact in Nigeria.

Shocked as I was, I immediately composed my reply.

“Dear Kofi,

It is with great pleasure that I hear from my old friend after all this time. How have you been keeping? I haven’t heard much of you in the news since the new Secretary-General took over. Have you had a good retirement? I hope that you will stop by Montreal on your next book tour or visit. I’d love to have you over for some dinner.

I was however quite surprised by your email today offering me $300,000 through the Zenith Bank of Nigeria. I have always espoused that you were a gentleman of class and this just proves it.

I would like you to know where I will put the money to use. After much thought and an afternoon spent driving through the crumbling streets of Montreal, I have decided to give the money to Quebec’s Transportation Ministry. Sir, just today I witnessed that they didn’t even have the money to build one detour but had to split the detour into two routes both clearly advertised from the same light pole in two different directions.

Obviously the poor Quebec Transportation Ministry is suffering. Perhaps with the aid of the money through Nigeria, when you next come to visit, you will not worry about the netting that has been placed on various overpasses to prevent debris from falling onto your car. It is after all the least they could do for having bailed them out of their obvious financial hole.

Perhaps you have made the same offer to them? I suggest you send them an email to remind them to check in their spam folders and respond to it. It can be no worse than any other attempt they have gone about funding the many colossal infrastructure issues plaguing Montreal.

Again a thank you to you and your Nigerian counterparts, I will never doubt emails from Nigeria again now that you are sending them!

As you say in your letter, let’s make the world a better place!”