This is fun! ... I guess

This train of thought started when someone showed me recently that I could type in an address and actually see the house where I grew up---not a sketch of it but an actual photograph. That was fun. I did a few more houses after that.

Then it occurred to me to Google the house I'm living in now. Lo and behold, there's a picture of it taken from above (must be a helicopter), and one view from on the street (must be a car). I wonder where I was when the car drove by. I know where my two of my neighbors were, because the camera caught them right there, walking in front of the house across the street (which I saw with the help of the little icon that lets you move in a 360-degree circle). I could see the curtains in my windows and almost read the license plate on my old Volvo, two cars ago. Hmm. Who is going around the country taking all those photos?

Then I got just a little uncomfortable when I read about plans for the "smart grid" that President Obama announced: "We'll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy. That means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation. It means expanding broadband lines across America.

That sounds like fun, too. At first. But you just wonder where these things could lead to. After all, the reason the grid is called "smart" is that it can find out a lot about you. You don't have to be a Luddite to wonder about the privacy dangers of linking every part of the national power supply in a way that data can be collected on you like a lab rat, by . . . well, who? What will these "smart meters" pick up? Will there be information sharing? Amazon already knows what kind of books I like, and Pathmark knows my shopping habits. What will the government find out about me and how will they use it? Whoever "they" are.

I'm sure I'm not smart enough to look down the road at all the permutations and potentials for all this. But somebody is. The whole thing wouldn't give me the creeps if I weren't already nervous about a government-run healthcare system with a man like Ezekiel Emanuel in a position to decide who gets served.

Revelation 13:17, here we come.

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