Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - January 10, 2010
Brian Dean has taken to watching "Lost" on DVD, finding it much easier to understand there than it originally was on TV. I can sympathize with the general concept, though the appeal of "Lost" still escapes me. But it definitely doesn't baffle me as much as "Conveyor Belt of Love", which appeared on ABC this past week. That show clearly took a chip out of the foundation of Western civilization.
The government appears to be falling once again for the "somebody do something" fallacy, which assumes that any time something goes wrong, the government must do something to react. In the case of the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas, the government's urgent drive to "do something" is probably just what the terrorists want. The more air travel becomes an exercise in unpleasantness and privacy intrusion, the worse off we all are.
Meantime, the 25-year-old founder of Facebook may have just signed his site's own death warrant. At the Consumer Electronics Show, he declared that privacy isn't a "social norm" anymore. First of all, he's wrong about his premise: Just because some people over-share online doesn't mean the rest of us reject the notion of privacy. But more importantly, he's way off-base to assume that it's OK to change fundamental premises about privacy on his site in mid-stream. Our economy is still very much built upon mutual trust, and eroding that by changing the rules of fundamental values like privacy is a great way to ensure that your product or service won't survive in the long term.
As always, thanks for listening! Cityview is still looking for votes in its Best of Des Moines contest, and there are a couple of spots there where you could say some nice things about us and our fine station.
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