KIWI RIDER 01 2020 VOL2 | Page 82

THE YEAR OF GOOD VISION... WORDS: ROGER MORONEY A nd so, here we go… again. The year of 2020 (did I hear someone say the Year of Good Vision?) is upon us and things will happen as the 365 days of this slice of time are wheeled out. Like more issues with my bloody computer and the communication network. I don’t get it. We (the human things) come up with wonderful inventions which we all rejoice over because they will “revolutionise” the way we live, work and relax. And yeah, they are pretty amazing… when they aren’t enveloped in some glitch or hacking enterprise. I get the feeling we’ve edged into that great George Orwell novel where “big brother is watching”. We all just took that as a written and later filmed piece of colourful science fiction. But now I’m not so sure. A mate told me about how he went online a while back to look at some musical website which happened to feature a piece about U2, who are not a band he follows at all. 82 KIWI RIDER ROSSI AT THE START OF THE LAST DECADE. NOW STARTING ANOTHER, HE’S THE MOST ENDURING MOTORCYCLE RACER. WILL HE LAST ANOTHER TWO YEARS? But next day, while scrolling about looking for football results up comes an advertisement… for tickets to an upcoming U2 concert. Someone/some computer, somewhere, somehow uncovered the fact he had taken a glimpse at a website which featured U2. I find it all rather unsettling, but, hey, this is the age of technology and IT or whatever else it’s called, so that is that. I was buoyed though to read about how several Russian agencies managed to overcome the threat of their emails and postings and other online fodder being hacked and read by outsiders. If there is one-on-one communication to be carried out they write it down and send it in a letter. Only the poster and the receiver read it. Genius. That’s like how the Russians also smirked at hearing news that NASA had spent several million bucks developing a pen that would work in gravity-free space. It used some sort of miniature gas pressure system to push the ink to the ballpoint nib. The Russkies? They used pencils. Genius.