decisions, and decisions, and decisions, creeps in this petty pace ...

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

If sticking with blogger translates to censorship, a further dumbing-down of the greater dumbdown which incidentally is a major whiplash into absolute slavedom, then the idea of packing up and moving one's blog somewhere else is unnerving to say the least.  Who is to say which is worse, staying or leaving?  Of course, moving elsewhere can be done, supposedly easily if you buy the hype, but the downside is finding yourself spending infinitely MORE time online than you already do, without the interaction, the discoveries, the visuals and the building on each others spiritual foundations.  Moving the blog technically is demanding enough for non-geeks, but the rearrangement of visuals is an unnecessary chore because we've already done it and can't imagine anything more potentially irritating than revising a finished work without the tools we trained ourselves to use developed over many years and through many "supposedly" more efficient ways of doing what we do here.   There is a  lot more to it than we are being led to believe, deleting the photos Picasa has accumulated in disregard to the fact we have already have offline photo storage and of course, the very big issue of starting all over again with a different email service.  I've tried a number of them over the years and found g-mail a lot faster to use, although you don't have any of the graphics choices other email systems provide.  And then there is the search feature, too, etc.

I've had a hunch from the beginning of this blog D day was coming because once you sign on to the blogger experience, you are encouraged to open a lot of strange doors, all of them leading back inside the grand spider web.  If you don't want to be eaten alive, you'll need to find the exit.  If you are uncomfortable with google's widely posted changes to come, don't let it turn into the procrastinator's indecisive wait and see. 

If we leave things as they are, after March 1st or 12th, I'm not exactly sure of the date, it appears we automatically turn into a Facebooky social networking situation, an all-inclusive, systematically tracked and profiled, total void of privacy; whatever is said in blogs, comments and emails will be scrutinized for the stated purpose of personalized advertisements popping up apparently whenever we connect to the web.  And where we go, we are advised, will be linked with where we've been, where we go next and how they classify the individual user, all wrapped in one tidy package to improve our overall individual internet experience.  Really!  Then count on whomever else comes into the mix up the road apiece, someone with the innovative moxie of the moment, as pretty much a guarantee to take it even further and deeper into previously unknown dimensions of connectivity and hog snorting glee as the anticipated profits rain down.  You will have to decide for yourself what those dimensions of the future could mean and how they could affect you.  It may suddenly take on new weight in your thoughts concerning your participation in the program. 

I am of two minds on this.  One mind, not my better, higher mind, says "So what, I'm okay with things as they are." The other mind sees this situation as dangerous, dangerous because anything anyone says is open to interpretation by technology, how reliable is that?  There certainly is no logical reason to be lackadaisical since whatever is going on today is already racing to change itself towards superseding unlimited growth, imagine that, infinite mutations of pituitary gigantism also known as Launois syndrome; downgrades and bankruptcy likely being the feared classic consequences they probably envision lie ahead without immediately monetizing every cluster of binary numbers.  Do note this change comes directly on the heels of Facebook's IPO filing.  If this gives you the chills, try to remember we're talking about personhoods here, not flesh and blood. 

Try telling them it isn't necessary, stop fiddling with what isn't broken.  Ah, but you know you cannot argue with machines armed with computer generated stats promising profit for economic innovation.  Have you ever tried to contact blogger for tech support?  Where are the people, the human beings wearing ear pieces and mouth mics, to fix your foibles?  We shouldn't wonder what happened to the human personality that used to be so gracious.  Once autobots replaced the human being your query into tech support in ANY situation no longer encouraged or required courtesy.  Once you figured out you could pay your bills by cellphone, online or just by authorizing creditors to trawl your bank account, you didn't have to write legibly either.  Mostly we learned to check boxes and copy/paste the rest.  How encouraging are conversations with other voices where you respond with only "yes" or "no" and hang up on them?  Every one of us is at least guilty of that.  That is what they want.  These antisocial actions only create more of the same antisocial behaviors.  If we are willing to cooperate this much, how much more will we cooperate with before signing out for the last time?  Are we even close?  Remotely close?  Some will be more than happy to go away and do something else, something real, something that does not lead to ennui.  Believe it or not, there is still a beautiful world out there, we will never find it the longer we stay glued to this unnatural relationship.

By the time it takes to deliver munitions over Iran, internet use will stampede, that is if it has not already reached everyone its going to reach.  We all have our own personalized arguments against this medium of communications, small or large, and it is strange to see ourselves continuing to take the beating all the while knowing we pay a heavy price to play.  I feel like the last person on the planet sometimes, hanging on to dial-up.  Every time I investigate the range of high speed options, I walk away disgusted, they think we use our laptops to watch TV!  Yes, that is always the first thing asked by DSL sales reps, "How much television viewing do you do online?"  When I say "None", there is a blank pause as if some alien broke into the connection.  And fer cryin' out loud, who in their right mind would want to pay more for something we already have and really, really don't want or need more?  If you read this blog's previous posts you might have come across a brilliant comment from someone who has been through it all and was at a complete loss to say what he's gained personally over the past decade from his internet experience.  I agree.  How about ah, less than nothing?  Nothing we didn't already know or would have discerned anyway or found at the local library if we were so moved.  Somehow, out of all these years of living we share, we have arrived here today intact, did we really need keyboards and autobots to ease us inside the corral?  Isn't this easing simply another avenue of humiliation and diminishment on the way to the ultimate goal? That the citizen animal is of no more worth to this planet than a useless eater taking up space that could be mangled into profitability with a little shift in perception accomplished though the multitaskers' attention deficit hyperactivity disorder information storm pulsating with blazing personalized come-ons?  See cryptogon's take.

My decision is made, seriously, is there any decision?  I'm merely looking for some unlikely argument for the other side in case I missed something.  I've been through this before with an earlier blog hosted on our former ISP and it turned out badly making blogger seem such a good find.  I was shut out of my original blog because the visitor limit was exceeded, which was, ahem, a shock.  Just a few minutes ago I tried to access that blog and the message reads forbidden access on their server which says only their ISP customers are allowed to visit, provided those visitors remain under whatever viewing limit is being imposed.  Its no great loss, but typical of the surprises you come across in these strange days.  If we go by recent history, it can only become more of what it already is.

In closing, I have to say, it does appear another long term relationship is in the throes of crashing.  It did not have to be this way fellas.