Benefits Of Digital Age Come With A Price

The neighbor got into her SUV today looking to do some grocery shopping, but it wouldn’t start.

Her crime was having gone two weeks or so without driving said vehicle due to her back problems. This no-drive period is what the service guy who showed up to jump-start the vehicle blamed for the problem, ironically just after I’d gotten done telling the woman the very same thing.

I have read of late that all those electronic nannies on modern vehicles need power even when the car isn’t running to keep them happy. Let the car sit long enough without running it to recharge the battery, and all those parasitic current drains add up to not enough juice remaining in the battery to start the vehicle.

The example of the neighbor’s ride failing is but a metaphor for how the digital age, despite all its promise and helpfulness, also exacts a price.

Just today investing markets were roiled by a supposed early leak of the Consumer Price Index for June, which is scheduled to be released tomorrow (Wednesday). This alleged leak showed a 1.7 percent rise for June, which if you multiply by 12, gives us a projected annual rate of more than 20 percent.

Bonds, stocks, precious metals all sold off because of the presumption that such inflation news would lead to an even faster pace of hiking of interest rates by the Federal Reserve.

It turns out the release was bogus, not that tomorrow’s actual release cannot be as bad, or nearly so. What mattered was that in this digital age of instant information, fake news spreads with lightning speed.

It’s the realization of Winston Churchill’s hyperbolic line: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

When the falsehood genie is out the bottle, good luck stuffing it back into the receptacle.

The internet and social media in particular make it much easier for leftist criminal element protesters to organize their mischief. Not so for right-wing troublemakers, because they are banned from such outlets.

The internet and social media also make it much easier to track and potentially do harm – physical or financial – to the morons who so freely post personal information in the form of digital bragging.

Even poor Hunter Biden is a victim of the digital age, first leaving his incriminating laptop with a repair guy, and just in the past few days having his data that he’d uploaded to the “cloud” hacked.

Yes, the “cloud,” the harmless sounding name for digital ether, is neither white and fluffy, nor harmless.

Think the cryptocurrency types who have had their coins looted from digital banks or wallets wouldn’t like to return to a time when a criminal either had to meet up with you personally or break into your home or bank physically to steal your money – money that at least was not lost to you in the last example?

Our digital banking wonders also have made it easier for fraudsters to operate on individuals, banks or other businesses, extracting traditional money from accounts without personal interaction.

Rather than being cautious about privacy and security being sacrificed to the promise of digital comfort and convenience, individuals willingly are ceding more and more control of their lives to ones and zeroes.

While today’s CPI “leak” most likely was fake, just as disingenuous were attempts by the Biden regime to get ahead of tomorrow’s anticipated high actual number.

These regime mouthpieces (there wasn’t time to provide Clueless Joe with a detailed cheat sheet on what to say) were citing rising food and energy costs as the main culprits and speculating such price rises have peaked.

Two things: First, if the inflation numbers were rising based on people booking trips to Mars or buying $1 million homes, it would be fair to dismiss those increases as unimportant. But last time I checked, all people, rich or poor, eat food and consume energy, so if those prices are both up big, it really puts the hurt on those in the lower economic strata.

Second, even if the rate of increase has peaked, that only helps if you are comfortable paying current prices. A peak in rise is not the same as a decline in prices, either sharp or gradual.

Brace yourself for bad CPI news Wednesday, along with efforts on digital sources such as social media and the internet, to convince you that despite it all things are great.

Oh, and make sure to start and drive your car at least once a week.