Your honor, I plead no contest to the charge. I admit to carrying an open container in a brown bag. It was seven in the evening. I’d taken one sip when six officers in a van stopped me two blocks from my home, asked for an ID and issued the summons that’s brought me before your court. I didn’t at all mind the chuckle from the three sitting in back when I stated my disbelief that a date before a judge was in my future. I deserved it. No doubt. It’s a quality of life matter, one said. Of course I am aware of Mayor Guiliani’s policy. I should have known better, not opened the bottle of Brooklyn Lager in the bodega and instead waited until I was in my kitchen. Sure the $75 fine would be better spent on something else: books, dinner. But you do the crime, you get caught, you deserve to pay the fine. Please put my check to a cause that will improve this great city a little more.

Your honor, before I go I’d like to say a few words if you’ll allow. Thanks so much for giving me this moment. I see there are many more here that need to come before you, so I’ll be brief. Your honor, it’s evident I’m middle aged, five foot eight, a hundred forty pounds, graying hair. I try to beat back the inexorable impact time has on flesh by staying in shape. When the incident I’m guilty of happened I was walking home from the Y after running six miles on the treadmill. I made a stop at The Garden and bought the two bags of food I was carrying when the officer in the passenger’s seat asked me to come to the van. He was respectful. He called me mister. Though by then I wished I’d stopped at five miles. But I stayed on the machine to sweat off a few more fat cells. When it was over I was thirsty. I went for water. At the fountain someone was in line behind me and I didn’t want to take a lot of time quenching my own need. She also wanted to drink. I should have gone back when she finished. But I went straight to my sweats, put them on and left, my body still desiring fluid.

Your honor, the rest you know about. I bought a beer at a bodega, the cap on the bottle met the opener by the door, I sipped as I was walking home…

Your honor, I’m glad to be able to come clean and say my action on that fateful day disrupted the quality of life in Brooklyn. Now, thanks to the Mayor and his subordinates, it’s all going swell in New York. There are no more unregistered guns or dangerous drugs. No more illegal dumping, needy homeless people, or unsafe buildings. Subways are clean. Classrooms without disruption. Senior citizens no longer the vulnerable targets of corrupt scams. It’s safe to go out at any hour. To cross avenues when the walk light changes without fear of being run down. To feel we’re a society of laws administered to everyone no matter who they are and what areas of the city they live in. Tax paying citizens should feel secure knowing these six officers were doing their job when their eyes fell on me and my bagged bottle of beer.

Your honor, my appearance in your court proves the life around us is better. Much better. I vow not to break the law again. Ever.

Thank you.

– complaint copied from an old notebook

(2001)

– more recently I was fined $180 for proceeding through a red light on my bike at 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning when there was no traffic approaching in either direction, except for the police car coming up behind me

 

First appeared in July, 1999 in Beta Online, betaonline.com (defunct), an e-magazine about computers and technology published by David Tomere.

——–

Invested members of the cyber faith are forever suggesting I am information deficient, not digitized enough, web page short. They know there’s no URL or hyperlink on the Internet that’s my own, that family, friends and strangers can click on to find some wonderful text and images by or about me. In fact, I feel guilty knowing there are spaces in my day, entire blocks of minutes, twenty, thirty at a time, when I’m not accessing data that may be vital to my financial, social, sexual, physical, and spiritual health. I’ve never made a stock trade or bought a book online, or inquired into the home and/or email addresses of ex girlfriends. My vacations remain undocumented and unscanned. Instead of residing on the Web, they’re impressions in my memory, which is to say in a murky, muddled, non-chip environment. To recall details about them requires a great effort of concentration instead of a simple click of a mouse button. I’ve accomplished things I’ve not announced to the world in a mass emailing, never subscribed to a newsgroup, nor read through a single piece of the junk mail that fills my In Box. If I’m to believe the cyber lords all of this means my life’s incomplete and future uncertain. I’m being left behind as others zoom past me on the Information Highway. But this needn’t be. The latest digital technologies will set me on the right track and solve this problem. And if not solve it, I’ll at least be able to get more information about how I might. More access to information is (apparently) what I need and want. That’s the key point here. And to most all of life from now on: information access.

Bill Gates was on television a while ago demonstrating how the Internet will be available in cars of the future. A panel on the dashboard will display stock symbols and their real-time prices, the latest political news, Hollywood gossip, email. All of his vehicle’s are equipped with it, of course, and this is why we’ll all need it. To keep up with Bill, as well as our next door and global neighbors. As if it’s inevitable. Our need and choice. A requirement for better living. But why would we want such a thing? I asked him. But he didn’t hear me through the screen. He implied to the interviewer that more information will set us free. The more we have access to, the freer we’ll be. Freer from what, I wasn’t sure. But when the shackles are off, why bother digging for an answer? And when you’re worth 50 billion (this figure may be low) no one is going to call you on anything. Bill Gates said this is the way it is from here on. Smart devices and applications everywhere in our lives, including our cars, assisting and controlling everything we do (he neglected to mention anything about monitoring, a minor oversight). The reporter’s silence implied, yes it will be without question, Mr. Gates.

I will say Bill seemed earnest during this chat about having information at your fingertips even while you’re driving. Information. More of it. Easier access to it. I admit being impressed for a while. Until I stepped back into my own life. When I did, what was most evident to me is that Bill doesn’t, as I do, drive on the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway. No way. If he did, he wouldn’t want streaming banners of information distracting him from what’s really important. Living. Continued existence in one whole and healthy piece. The BQE’s congested, filled with dangerous potholes and asphalt undulations, bumper-to-bumper with unsafe speeding cars and trucks driven by irritated people who’d like nothing more than for you to go away so they can move faster. There’s not enough information on this planet, and every other planet beyond the cloud cover, that can save your life on it should you make a steering error and veer into the path of a thundering cement truck while reading the latest act of sexual misconduct by a high government official. If my non-server-based data banks are insistent about anything, it’s to never, ever attempt a stock trade while driving on this elevated, crumbling chunk of concrete. One mistake I could be dead, and no amount of information will bring me back. No, I don’t suggest a stock buy on the BQE at rush hour. Not even an Internet IPO at issue price. I’d hate to be killed or maimed squinting at an email. I don’t know about yours, but the majority of mine aren’t worth risking my life for.

As Marx wrote about the Industrial Age, those who control the means of production (the Capitalists) control the masses around the world (the Proletariat). Which suggests those in the Information Age who shape and control access to it (the Informationists) control those of us who need and want it (the Informationariat).

But that’s a joke.

I think?