Cyberpunk is dead, so is Cybersecurity. Welcome to DIGITAL HYGINE Best Practices 101, feat. SNEAK PEAK INTO THE BOOK I WROTE WHILE I WAS NOT SMOKING DOWNSTAIRS ANYMORE

This is really embarrassing, but I haven't showered in like a month. I also just finished a novel, and I quit smoking and became an uncle. I fell into a deep depression and then into another one and now I got covid.

So sorry for not being around. The good news is that I got the best variant of the virus, which is cool, and I think I won't die this time around. The bad news is that due to my concerns which are not completely unfolded about cybersecurity and the ability to, well, basically read your mind, your future might look like this:

You are walking down a convenience store, listening to your favorite podcast. You've got a free subscription to the thing because you accepted the terms of service which said something about reading your mind when you used your headphones, but you're no murdered, you are no terrorist, you've got nothing to hide. When you are passing the breakfast isle, the podcast turns into a voice that is your own thoughts. Wait, what is happening, you think to yourself and then listen to yourself in the voice of the most annoying person you've ever met. You try to listen but you think "ok, I will try to listen" and the voice replies in the most annoying voice you can ever imagine "ok I will try to listen". Soon after, another voice, from the speakers of your free subscription to the podcast/music/video/media/game service, tells you "look behind you" you do it and as you do it, you think and the voice tells you "fuck, a black dog" and then you think "this voice is fucking annoying" and the voice replies the same, in the most annoying way. You've always been afraid of black dogs, since one of them almost mangled your face when your were a kid. The other voice says: "that guy works for us" "who are you" you think and the annoying voice repeats to you "if you buy that box of Cheerios, he won't let loose his dog and he will leave the grocery story" this is illegal, you think, and the annoying voice tells you back. Fuck, I am going insane, you take of the headphones and you look back and the guy with the black dog is looking at you. So you buy the fucking box of Cheerios, sweating profusely, and the guy just leaves the store. You put your headphones back on and you can listen to your podcast again. You are so fucking anxious that you forget everything else and all that you buy is a box of Cheerios, which is already expired, but hey, did you read the user agreement license to use your thoughts for marketing purposes?

So yea, the first use of those fancy thought-reading projects will most probably not be to save lives. Maybe they will, so they get a good reputation of doing good for the world and helping lots of people with paralysis or lock-in-syndrome to talk. What a magical wonder! The second thing will be to sell it to you as a fucking google assistant. The third will be to black mail you into wasting your money and doing what you are told as marketing is notoriously used to do. Do you really think that you choose the path you take in a grocery/convinience store? Do you really think that someone didn't just know you enough to know that they need just that one thing in order for your to buy that other thing and so on.

Ask your local food delivery app.

So hey, sorry for the bleak news, but if thought reading is possible, then that's the end of diplomacy and the end of cybersecurity. At least password-based. Anything stored in your brain will be used against you, if you recall it. On the bright side, you will have to practice good digital hygiene, which is a term that people probably already use, but I like to use terms like that.

DIGITAL HYIGINE: well, just, you know, use the websites that you know and stay in line. It's like behavioral health, the more normal your digital behavior is the less likely you are of being targeted because you are part of a mass of people logging into the three websites left on the Internet.

The other good news is that I quit smoking, and I am an uncle.

I became symptomatic two days ago. I don't know how that happened. I never see anyone without a mask, and the only person I know who does visit me doesn't has it.  The first night was hellish. I haven't been able to sleep. I think I catched the best variant, which is really cool.

So if you don't see the edgiest kid in Berkeley, don't worry, he is just self-isolated and writing things that make no sense. (The broken English is always intentional. Also the typos. I want to make sure that everyone who knows how to write words in English can get published. I mean, fuck the nazis.) Like a whole book titled:

FRANK KARTOFLEN'S BOOK OF REVELATIONS CHAPTER ONE

Here's a sneak peak. It is finished. If you know an editor, please do contact me in anyway you know you can. Or send it yourself with your appraisal for making the most painstakingly chronicle of a... well, you will see for yourself when you read the thing. It's not too long, nor too short. It's just fine-sized.

ON THE NATURE OF TIME

Frank used to think that the present didn’t exist and everything had already happened.

Now:

Frank thinks that time is emergent. Like something that just hits you in the face like the last thing you will ever see every time. The future is the only thing that exist and it emerges into your consciousness with a delay, called past, and that’s what is happening right now as you read this words. Your mind is creating the reality you are reading, and I am writer’s writer, so whatever mind-movies you watch in the future, please give royalties to my family because we want to be on the spaceship that goes to the next planet that collectivily we fucked up.

So, since that might not happen, it has already happened. But in the future.

It is simple as a car crash. Right now there’s one. There. One. There. Another one. Ok, so what did the driver saw coming? No response. However, we already predicted those two crashes and they already happened. They emerged as if by magic, from the future. That’s how time works. There was a delay between the response of the driver and the crash, because information takes time to process, like what you are just reading, and that gets emergent. like an emergency, in your brain.

The future is an emergency.

Time is emergency.

Time is of the esense. We are note getting any younger, but we have no way to predict (unless you area a very complex algorithm or a hitman) to know when it will all end. Don;t be a hitman. The game sucks anyways. It’s slow as fuck and… it’s like playing counter strike in third person with dumb machines that don’t even know what is going on. They don’t even know that you exist. Out there, in the world, exist an emergent world. The emergency will never end, sorry about that, I did my best, we all did, except some people who actually have power over the thing.

I hope Leonardo DiCraprio plays the role of Frank. He is a fine actor.

He wouldn’t even get it right, but he looks nice on a movie. He will be old when you read it. Fuck it, he is old. Well, it depends.

Back in the 70s, people were scared about the 2020s. They were right, but somehow there still exist a class, yes, I said it, a class of people, who have the means, which means wealth, which means money, which means power, to stay writing bullshit like this even in 2022, when this line was written at exactly and I don’t know the command to print the time, so let’s just leave it a t 4/27/2022 1:27PM California’s time.

California will be a world power in the future. That’s for sure.

I mean, it is now, right? This whole entire mind reading thing is happening right now but…

Maybe Frank is just psychotic. He really hopes so, because he doesn’t wants to take antipsychotics and he wants to live in Oakland without bothering anyone ever again. He has many emergencies.

The good doctor, which he founds out has many faces, like death or love, was in a seven eleven and helps him keep his cool through the thousand battles he has been through. Watch Almodovar’s Codigo 7, which is pretty much what I am writing. The guy has another name, but he is a Spaniard, and Frank doesn’t really has a lot of sympathy for Spaniards, what with conducting one of the greatest erasing of history programs in the history of mankind and all.

Did you know that Egyptian pharaohs used to just record their victories in battle and not their defeats? That’s how your brain works when you are not depressed. It is the only way it can work. Otherwise you need to believe that you are doing for a god-king, like, I don’t know, the god-president of the Ancient Egyptian empire AKA pharaohs, one of the hardest wods to pronounce in the English language after Cartoflen.

Let’s remember that this is the first chapter. It gets better in the end. As any book you have to justify yourself for reading to others and you kind of related with the main character. Who will ever relate with Frank Cartoflen? Anyone with… mental illnesses? Like, everyone? that’s that Frank really hopes.

As usual, if this has found you in troubled times, may your troubles soon be over. And thanks to the friend who also encouraged me to keep writing. You also rock.

-- edgeMuted