Lets talk about Polls, baby

I answer a lot of online polls. A lot. In Dallas it was phone polls and for a while I controlled the music on the radio. The pollsters would call me, play a few bars of whatever and I would either say I liked it or I didn’t or it was over played or underplayed and then another pollster would call me and ask the same questions about the same songs and then a few days later a third one would call me and so for a few months in the late mid nineties I controlled the Dallas radio market . It was heady stuff.

In today's world,  in between election cycles. hardly anyone does polls me over the phone  about my music preferences because I am too old.  My Ipod knows this and plays Umbrella Man four times an hour just to spite me.

Right now though, we are right in the middle of a very hot election cycle every other time my phone rings, someone, usually a very young someone who wants to know who I’m voting for and to what degree I am in the bag for them. I’m being polled like a son-of-a bitch and that’s just phone polls, I can’t check my email with out Harris Interactive or Polling Point or Zogby breathing down my neck as to my party affiliation and who I voted for in 2004. Today's Zogby poll was different. I was shocked, I’ve never answered a Zogby poll that wasn’t single minded in its pursuit of my political leanings. I know the questions by heart:, everything from whether or not I voted last time around to what flavor of church I attend and how often I'm there.

The questions are always the same. So when I started my little poll I got ready to just zip through it. This time it was different. The first question was about the word “Authentic” and how I defined it. It then asked about how I felt about the relative authenticity of the candidates. This is fine. I like a little polling shake up every once in a while. After we got through discussing authenticity and how it pertains to the candidates we moved on.

For each of the following possible technologies, please tell me how likely you would be to use or do each. Then, whether or not you would use the technology, indicate how you think the technology would affect someones authenticity :

1. Download your brain onto a computer disk so that you could become pure energy and virtually live forever?

2. Do you believe downloading their brain onto a computer disk would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

3. Install knowledge or learning chips into your brain that would allow you to learn anything immediately?

3a. Do you believe installing learning chips into their brain would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

4. Do you believe using virtual sex partners would make someone more authentic, less authentic, or not affect their authenticity?

5. Do you believe that using Microscopic computers floating through your body that would detect disease or injury immediately would make someone more authentic or less authentic or not affect their authenticity?

I shit you not. Lets talk about sex Zogby, lets talk about You and Me, lets talk about all the good things and the bad things virtual sex/learning chips/downloading our brains onto computer disk/macroscopic computers in our blood streams can be... Lets talk about you poll writing guys at Zogby? Do you need a vacation? Would you like to speak with Employee Assistance? Do we need to talk about the Mental Health coverage in our insurance? They also wanted to know how I felt about virtual vacations and if I felt that taking a virtual vacation would effect a persons “authenticity”, not whether or not I saw the experiences one would have in a virtual environment were authentic or not, but if I felt taking part in a virtual environment would cause the participant to become less authentic. Less human. Man, some people are just four square against stay-cations.

I see in the future that we could have all of the things the poll covered but I’m almost absolutely sure that these are not issues I am going to have to wrestle with in my lifetime - I some how do not see the capacity to down load my brain as being a plug-in available as free ware in the next few years - I mean, at present we don’t come with USB ports - But then, I am old, I may have to check out Tiny E though, she’s a much new model and she may have that upgrade. I do like the tiny, floating computers or in the language of grown-ups: Nanotechnology, though, I like that idea, you know, zap that cancer, fix that broken bone! But why didn’t they just say “nanotechnology” instead of the scary sounding “macroscopic floating computers in your blood stream?

I think a pollster at Zogby may have gone off the deep end on got a hold of their address lists. The last time someone wanted to hysterically rant to me about tiny computers and brain downloads was on Edenton Street and I set my dog on them.