The following essay was submitted by Carrie Gold from Neumont University as part of the Future of Technology Scholarship competition.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been years since I\u2019ve had diabetes\u2014the doctors say it is diet and exercise, but I\u2019ve never been very good at diet and exercise. Medication, though\u2014I\u2019ve been good at that. Since last week, at least. I guess I can\u2019t really take too much credit for it. But like my husband says, I did finally let them do it, and I get the credit for that. They\u2019ve been installing the little devices that monitor blood sugar and squirt in the right amount of insulin for several years now. I was always just hesitant.<\/p>\n

I like it enough, though. I might just let them do it for my migraines. Jason did that, too. He got the whole package: his migraines all managed along with his high blood pressure all with the little sensors and pumps that are so easy to get now for your DNA-adapted medications. He\u2019s so willing to try all these new things. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if one day he came home with one of those self-driving cars. I\u2019d make him take that back, though. No way I\u2019m getting in one of those ever since 2,000 of them ran right into each other at the same time last year because of that virus the West African terrorists introduced into their software.<\/p>\n

And some people say we should be soft on immigration. Let me tell you, everything I see on the internet on my scroll talks about getting rid of those people. I really do keep up on the news\u2014I don\u2019t just use a phone to play games and keep track of my grandkids. But let me tell you, every video clip and article that ever comes up for me on immigration just talks about how bad they are for the economy and jobs and all sorts of things.<\/p>\n

It can\u2019t help that they pay for everything in Bitcoins. Where\u2019s all the tax money that they could be spending on the country that\u2019s hosting them without even knowing it? Bitcoins are about the only thing you can\u2019t track these days. Even at school, my poor granddaughter Aya tells me how every answer and every mark she makes is tracked. They hardly even have teachers in the building any more. She\u2019s always surprised when I tell her stories about moving from room to room in high school, with different teachers and kids, about how they all had their own rules and quirks….The poor thing can hardly imagine it, the way she sits in front of a screen most of the day answering questions and pressing play on a video when she doesn\u2019t understand something. I suppose it is better in a lot of ways, like the way she describes how she and Johnson Marquez (the boy from down the street who has always sat next to her\u2014alphabetical order and all) can be sitting there in math class working on totally different things. And I gather they have group projects\u2014\u201cproblem-solving clinics,\u201d her school calls them. But still. I doubt she hardly ever talks to adults. Not, anyway, besides the videos on her computer screen.<\/p>\n

She does have a real teacher for art class, but even that is computer-based for the most part. They use the 3D printer for so much\u2014her sculptures are so beautiful. She says Johnson got caught for plagiarism, though, using other peoples\u2019 patterns and trying to pass them off as his own with a couple of modifications. I swear that kid is headed towards no-good. I hear from the neighbors he spends all his time on video games, and that his poor stepmom is tired of walking into his room with him with goggles covering his face, him wiggling around fake fighting. I hear she says that it\u2019s the only social contact he has, though. As if that hardly counts. She probably just feels guilty because she and his dad are always traveling. I have it on good authority they\u2019ve done the three-hour flight to Hawaii at least five times without him.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Aya, at least she has the normal parents. My son Aiden was always the normal one. He works for the government these days. Most of his projects have been in counter-terrorism. There\u2019s funding for that, after all, ever since the Electromagnetic Pulse ten years ago. Jason and I didn\u2019t get too hard with the data loss that happened\u2014our data was triangulated well enough, and we still had enough information left to re-construct evidence of our bank accounts and Jason\u2019s retirement. Our neighbor lost all her stock options, though. Too bad all her \u201cdata eggs\u201d were in one basket. We all know better now.<\/p>\n

Anyway, our younger daughter, June, is just a whole other story. I could tell pretty quick that she was a little off. She had a phase in high school where she refused to ever scan her fingerprint on any hardware the school owned. She said it was an invasion of privacy. After three meetings with the principal, I had to ground her until she gave in so she didn\u2019t fail all her classes.<\/p>\n

I just didn\u2019t realize at the time that all that was only the beginning. Next she was refusing to use a phone at all after she read the privacy policy and terms of use agreement. I tried to explain to her how everyone\u2019s usage patterns and data and such tracked on every phone, and that it just wasn\u2019t worth throwing a fit over. But she just wouldn\u2019t hear it. I guess I shouldn\u2019t be surprised that she ended up with someone like VJ, living off in some desert. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if they were the ones who started the latest lawsuit against Google that\u2019s waiting in the Supreme Court. Goodness, though, since the Koch Brothers Trust bought up half Wyoming and Nebraska, they\u2019ve finally gotten what they wanted. No one can pinpoint them, at least, though it isn\u2019t like no one knows where they are\u2014where else would you not be traceable? Heavens knows what they do all day that they want to protect so badly.<\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t talked in a long time\u2014I got tired of her tirades about how companies can find out everything about you. She explains, as if I didn\u2019t already know, how it\u2019s the reason the drones ship things so fast, how stores know who you are when you enter, how they bring you your size and suggest things you know you\u2019ll like\u2014either in a physical location or online. She was just too little to remember what it was like to walk into a store before, how you\u2019d ask someone something and they\u2019d have no idea how to answer anything you asked them. Who cares if they store some information about you to do that.<\/p>\n

They even work a garden\u2014I don\u2019t know why you would. The big professional farms hardly even touch the dirt or food or fields these days, just one thing that robots do so much better than people ever have. I can understand wanting your own fresh food, I guess, but even that is something household AI speeds up like crazy.<\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t think June and VJ understand how things have changed for the better in the last twenty or so years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following essay was submitted by Carrie Gold from Neumont University as part of the Future of Technology Scholarship competition. It\u2019s been years since I\u2019ve had diabetes\u2014the doctors say it is diet and exercise, but I\u2019ve never been very good at diet and exercise. Medication, though\u2014I\u2019ve been good at that. Since last week, at least. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-scholarship-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2494,"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/2494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vandelayweb.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}