It may not have been apparent to you from my writing thus far, but I use to be an employed computer programmer. So, I have decided to do just what you would expect a person in my position would do, I have decided to write a computer program to reduce anxiety! What do you think of that?! So here goes!
First off, people are anxious because they are reading news that makes them anxious. That is easily remedied. People's computers can easily be programmed to filter out anxiety laden news reports. (In the old days many newspapers performed this necessary function, but with the advent of internet based computing people have been unwittingly subjected to a barrage of stories containing discombobulating and anxiety producing ideas inconsistent with their publicly funded educations. This is definitely NOT your tax dollars at work , if you know what I mean.)
Now the program I am proposing does require a level of artificial intelligence not common in the content filtering of which we are all presently familiar. This program must not merely delete selected untoward news stories and opinion pieces, it must instead, leave the news report visible on the website so that the computer user does not feel left out of the social milieu: Conversations at work, around the water cooler , cannot be compromised by interfering content filtering software! The software must simply remove the anxiety laden provocative ideas embedded in the text, but at the same time (and this is where the artificial intelligence of the thing enters in) it should NOT filter out, for example, sexually titillating tidbits, or potty humor! But I believe this is within our present technological skill set.
A properly constructed anxiety reduction algorithmic text insertion/extraction routine can very easily, using readily available computer finger printing techniques, single out every commenter on every web site and seemingly insert appropriately soothing and complementing comments after the user's insertion, and further, seemingly extract contradictory and inflaming rejoinders, which problematic rendering would only be visible on the user's computer and his or her friend's computers (programatically identified friends, which may be real or sexually rendered, must participate in the local view partition in order to not negate the healthful social aspect of computer enjoyment).
In the future people will be able to go online, write odious ranting, inflammatory, irreligious, even revolutionary, radicalizing claptrap for a faretheewell, and further, sufficiently full of obscenities so as to clear their pent up emotions, thereby therapeutically reducing tension and anxiety! and (necessarily, unbeknownst to them) only they and their imagined friends will be able to see it on their favorite websites!
So there it is. Everyone gets a 'personalized' computer in the future. Wow, is technology great or what!
*Note to the squeamish: following the rat's trials they were found not guilty and harmlessly released.
