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Technology July 2016

Double-sided Drama Mask

By Lois Greene Stone

I did a search for my name, and a string of pictures also appeared. An attractive woman with a full head of curly white hair, wearing glasses, showing a pleasant smile was there. However, that’s not a photo of me under my name!

Find someone on the internet? Seems easy enough. How does so much get there, and so easily? However, if info and such can be put on rapidly, how come something wrong can’t be highlighted and deleted as quickly?

I did a search for my name, and a string of pictures also appeared. An attractive woman with a full head of curly white hair, wearing glasses, showing a pleasant smile was there. However, that’s not a photo of me under my name! My dark blonde totally straight hair that I’ve worn tucked behind my ears for years has odd genes that doesn’t make it go grey. My blue-green eyes, with cataracts, have no glasses enabling me to see more than what the current state of the cataracts allow and vision can’t be corrected by prescription lenses. And my slender face on the left has a wholesome look and pretty smile, but the right side has had more than a dozen years of now-permanent paralysis. I don’t have photos with my byline because I can only smile and blink from one half. The “good side” looks really good, but the “bad side”’ looks, well, unmovable.

So, how did someone else’s photo get placed with my name? Isn’t anyone ever careful about such? Who finds other people’s faces and decides to just plop them down without regard to either the actual person being pictured and whether it belongs with the written line of identification?

I went to Google’s specific search site, scrolled down to some kind of complaint spot, wrote a brief note that a picture under my written identity isn’t me, highlighted the picture, and hit Send. I then clicked on the More Images For – a group of men in basketball uniforms, couples, several of individual males, women of various ages, to mention a few, appeared. Certainly all don’t have my legal name! The volume made me edgy. Why, if information can instantly be put on, correct or incorrect, can’t information be instantly removed when it’s pointed out that there’s an identity or some other error? If I can use my word processor to rapidly alter a sentence and not have to re-type the complete paper, can’t some human at a desk at a major site take a highlighted picture of a woman that does not belong there and remove? Why it got there in the first place is another enigma.

What’s also scary is that other information might be as large a mistake as another’s face affixed to the wrong name. This isn’t the spying Big Brother from the novel 1984 that is all too easy with smartphones, and devices that appear to be headbands or glasses but are cameras. This is such careless identification that reputations and even employment can be affected with erroneous data.

Alerts come via regular mail, mentioning credit checks and the potential risks if one does not occasionally perform that task. More warnings speak of identity theft and the frightening happenings after such an occurrence. What exists with mistaken identity, and potential consequences? And why signal danger to arouse a person when a solution may be lacking, or indifference to assist with fixing? The internet is the 2016 theatre mask depicting both misery and delight.

 

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard and softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/photos/memorabilia are in major museums including 12 different divisions of The Smithsonian.