We're All Lab Rats Now
It's not a matrix. It's a maze.
[A scene from “Wormwood”]
As I mentioned previously, I’m writing a book. It’s called Data Baby: How a Psychological Experiment Turned Me into a Human Lab Rat. It will be published by Hachette Books. It’s about psychology, privacy, and whether or not science can predict who a child will grow up to be. Here’s some of my research, as of late.
“Wormwood.” It’s a Netflix docudrama by Errol Morris starring the CIA, a dead father, and a son’s attempts to understand how his father died and who killed him. Watch it. It’s terrific.
Have you ever done the rod and frame test? I have. Wikipedia: “It relies on the use of a rod and frame apparatus which uses a rotating rod set inside an individually rotatable drum, allowing an experimenter to vary the participant's frame of reference and thus test for their perception of vertical.”
There are some interesting visuals on the Stanford Prison Experiment website.
I’m obsessed with this bird’s-eye view graphic of the Milgram experiment.
Did you know the Unabomber was a human lab rat?
So was Eleven from “Stranger Things.”
I mean, you didn’t think me living in Burbank was just some sort of coincidence, did you? (See: Truman Burbank from “The Truman Show.”)
Buy this for me, please. I need a Male Rat/Mouse Dissection Anatomical Model in my life.
Currently, I’m reading “Taking Back Our Privacy,” by Anna Wiener in The New Yorker. It’s about cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike and his encrypted messaging service Signal. (If you don’t have Signal, download it. It’s recommended by Edward Snowden: “I use Signal every single day.”) Here’s an excerpt:
“Marlinspike is punctual, affable, and unassuming; even his gait is mild. Sometimes while he speaks he gently snaps his fingers, like a metronome. He talked about the ‘diabolical’ ways that the Internet has eroded the barrier between our personal and professional identities. ‘People who aren’t even professional writers have to consider that their communication is being consumed,’ he told me. ‘Anything that I’ve ever written or created, one way or another, about anything is sort of embarrassing to me a month later. Even more so five years later.’”
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