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.