🦺 Energy and The Matrix

Welcome to the ninth edition of Safe For Work. Someone commented that the last edition was ‘trippy.’ We’re leaning in to that and focusing on science fiction stories over news you can get anywhere.

Today a story inspired by The Matrix.

A man watches The Matrix and he just completely freaks out.

He just top-to-bottom loses it, I mean. Like a “don Quixote” kind of madness, you know?-- like, he watches the movie, and his brain just FWLFALAP!-- right out of his ears, and he decides right there and then, as the credits are rolling, that this is completely real– this is the realest thing that there’s ever been. 

Or, really, it’s going to be. There’s still some time to stop it– or at least there’s still some time to prepare. The point is, when the robots all come storming over the world to plug humans into their giant computer-game and drain their bodies’ natural electricity for power, they’re going to find that John Haver is not going to go down so easily. 

But he can’t afford to dilly-dally, now that he’s seen this future– now that he knows. He can’t afford to waste even one more day; I mean, look at the world out there, look at how things have been going. Look at how things have been going for a long time. It’s insanity, isn’t it?-- it’s felt like insanity, certainly, but maybe it hasn’t been insanity at all. Maybe it hasn’t been any sort of chaos. Maybe it’s all been so carefully orchestrated to bring things about. Bigger and bigger machines, everywhere, no? Energy-prices going up and up and up. The transition away from coal and oil and even natural gas?-- all these pushes, everyone saying no more, no more!-- and why?

John has been watching it all for a long time, but it wasn’t until today, this movie, that the whole thing really snapped into clarity, and thank goodness for that. 

First thing’s first: make a plan. John signs into Facebook and joins a bunch of different prepper groups– the public ones, that is, there’s no time to wait for admin approval to join, he’s got to get started right away or the robots are going to overtake him and suck electricity out of his head. He makes as many posts as he can about his plans– he needs to put together a defensive strategy, does anyone have any ideas or tips? He comments here and there, he asks his questions– and he gets his answers, here and there. His situation is an unusual one: there aren’t many people worried about the robots taking over and using humans as batteries. Most people are more worried about nuclear war, or civil war, or a war for water, or any other kind of war except robot-war. Most people are more worried about the climate crisis, or a supervirus, or the government taking over, or the collapse of the economy. But people are friendly, and so John is friendly back, and so most of them do their best to help.

He finds quite a few quizzes, too, and takes them all– “Which Survival Style is Best for You?” and “How Long Will You Last?” and “Which Famous Prepper are You Most Like?” and “How to Find Your Perfect Survival Soulmate”. All he had to do was enter his email so they would know where to send his results– and as it turned out, the best survival-style for John was “Big Bunker Boy”, and what a great coincidence because here were a bunch of coupons for bunker-furnishings and the like. As it turned out, he would most likely last just two months after the “end”, whatever it ended up being– just two months unless he stocked up on all the right supplies from all the right brands, of course. The perfect survival soulmate would have to wait, he decided. Who knew if there would even be anyone else left out in the real world, after all?-- anyone else not plugged into the machine, powering the machines’ great empire? Who knew? What he knew for sure, and doubly so now, was that he needed to start stocking up on supplies, and badly. 

So he uses Google Search to find the nearest store that sells the sorts of supplies he needs, and he uses Google Maps to navigate himself there. He doesn’t bother turning his location off afterwards– this is a long way out from his house, he’ll need Maps again to get back– why waste the time and effort? This is an emergency– there’s no time and effort to waste!

John takes a few pictures of himself in front of the shop and posts them to the facebook groups he joined, so that all his new friends can see them. And then he goes inside and starts gathering all the things he’s decided that he’s going to need. 

He pays with his card, and signs up for the store’s loyalty program– just his phone-number and his email and a few quick boxes to check at the bottom of some junk and that’s fifteen dollars off his purchase right there, plus even more savings down the road. He’ll be sure to come here a lot. 

He stops for coffee on the way home, and as he’s sitting with his espresso with his laptop, he sees that Amazon Prime has recommended him the three sequels to The Matrix. Good. Perfect. The more information he gathers, the better. The more well-prepared he’ll be. The robots won’t know what hit them. It’s not going to happen to John Haver. He connects to the public wi-fi and watches all three.

“They’ll never extract from me,” he mutters into his computer-screen. “I’ll never let them.”

Maybe the machines are harvesting our energy?

Every week, we’re hearing about the latest cyber-attack or data-breach. It seems that the digital side of the corporate world is increasingly vulnerable– or at least, it is being increasingly attacked by those who are noticing the opportunity. And of course it’s our responsibility as employees to play our part in information security. 

But what about our responsibilities to ourselves? What are some things you’re doing in your own life to protect your own data?-- both from hackers and from large companies?

See you next week as we continue to explore power and energy, specifically renewables. Stay safe.