i-phone irony

If the sight the other day of global throngs of greedy humanity lining up to grab the latest i-Phone have you feeling disheartened, take a little subversive comfort. The very first consumer in the Big Apple to score the latest Apple gadget also happens to be the inventor of an app that lets people who still cherish their privacy anonymously send messages to their fellow human beings. Big Brother will still be watching you, but he won't be able to track you down to serve you a subpoena.

Capitalism, meet Occupy.

Hazem Sayed invented the Vibe app in March 2011 after observing one of those pre-Occupy marches on Wall Street that got zero corporate media attention even though thousands of protesters attended. So it's nice to know that while he is helping make an obscenely wealthy outsourcing corporation even richer, he is also doing his bit to fight obscene wealth and social injustice. Twitter does not work well for demonstrators, since prosecutors have successfully been able to wrest the IDs of users from the company. Even though the Vibe app is not encrypted and police can easily monitor communications, anonymity is preserved. At the height of the Occupy protests last year, more than 1000 messages a day were broadcast using Vibe. Sayed was there with his iPad and a projector to magnify all the messages on walls for everybody to see.

Sayed had waited in line for days to purchase the i-Phone 5 at a cost of about $800. As the first person to possess the latest piece of electronic gadgetry, he was immediately declared celebrity du jour and thronged by reporters. The crowd roared every time a new person emerged clutching the piece of plastic made for relative pennies at various Asian sweatshops.

You'll be happy to know that no arrests were made during the relentless march of commerce. Free speech was protected, happiness was pursued, as millions of dollars flowed.

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iNSANITY