That's a picture from today of Apple/Sprint ads that are part of a new set of ads that Apple has put around the Boston area. I took the picture at Downtown Crossing station, where I have to change trains from the Red Line to the Orange Line to get to school.
Every student at my college has an individual student account at the school's website. I have to upload assignments online for two of my classes.
One of my classes started by reading the play "Death of a Salesman," a famous, American play which was written and published by Arthur Miller in 1949 and has nothing to do with the conglomerate. That play has been read in schools in every language and around the world for decades, from years before the conglomerate formed in 2010.
Dustin Hoffman is one of the many actors who did a production of that play.
Everyone with whom I interact at school is vulnerable to the conglomerate's privacy invasions and smear campaigns; teachers, students, everyone.
I have known for the past few years that I will probably never have another private conversation over the phone, through email or through any other electronic means for the rest of my life; everything that I do online or over the phone will be observed and maybe even recorded by a lot of people, from governments to corporations to anyone who can get the technology to invade my privacy. That was a painful thing to realize, and is not something that I could ever think of as being anything except deplorable.
Whatever the conglomerate likes to think are its reasons for turning me into a bug under glass for the rest of my life, I don't think that it can think of a convincing argument for why other people should have to live like that. Nobody at my school asked me to apply to that school.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, February 7, 2016 @ 10:03 a.m.
