tymshft

The data was ALWAYS there

DISCLOSURE: I AM EMPLOYED IN THE BIOMETRIC INDUSTRY.

It was the height of the disco era, and the goings-on at Studio 54 had penetrated the great middle of the United States. That’s how Joe the Bouncer got his job. His town had opened up its very own disco, and Joe stood by the door on Friday and Saturday nights, deciding who was in and who was out.

Joe had the absolute perfect background for this job. Not because of his education, but because of his talents. Joe could always remember a face. If someone caused trouble at the club one week and tried to get into the club three weeks later, Joe would remember him and would bar him from the club. The club owner joked that Joe had the brains of an IBM mainframe computer.

Things in Joe’s town got quiet after midnight, even on a weekend, and that’s when the less pleasant part of Joe’s job began. Some kid would be in the back corner of the club, drunk or otherwise unable to function. Since the town was relatively small, it wouldn’t do to just throw the guy out on the street in front of the club. The city council wouldn’t like that. So someone – usually Joe – got stuck taking the kid home. And because the kid was likely to get sick on the way home, Joe had an interest in getting him home as quickly as possible.

That’s where the other part of Joe’s mainframe computer brain kicked in. The town wasn’t that big a town, but there were some things about the town that your average person wouldn’t know. When the Second Street traffic light would stay red for a couple of minutes at one in the morning, Joe knew to take the back alley to get home quicker. And if some road was under construction, Joe usually knew at least three ways to get around the problem.

Joe’s retired now, but he still reads the papers now and then to keep up with what’s going on. (And yes, he actually has printed newspapers delivered to his home.) And Joe just has to laugh to himself when he reads an article about how terrible it is to use facial recognition in retail establishments. Heck, Joe did that all the time in his disco days, and no one batted an eye.

And he really gets laughing when he hears residents complaining about how navigation apps are revealing previously secret shortcuts. Joe wasn’t the only one who figured these shortcuts out long before Waze came into existence.