The game of Data Pinball is the hottest game in the world.  Hundreds of millions internet users are playing at any given moment.  It is a high-risk game. Millions of dollars are made and lost at the touch of a key.  Information flipped into cyberspace being batted back and forth sometimes coming right back to the person who initially started the game.  Sometimes looking nothing like what was sent.  Sometimes with unwanted consequences.

A piece of data put into play will at first flow on its own inertia to its closest intended point.  After that watch out!   It enters the “data pinball zone”.  When it is “pinball flippered” the sender intends it to reach a certain target but just like in real pinball, it often does not get there or hits several bumbers before it does. Each bumper sending it off in an unexpected direction.  When data is “bumpered”  the sender has no idea where it is going or where it will end up.  Each time data hits a “bumper” it is sent off in a new direction with new force and inertia.  Theoretically this will go on as long as a data recipient bumpers or flips it again in a whole different direction. The data pinball is sent off to hit other bumpers, setting off all new bells and whistles, racking up new data pinball points for its new owner.

You see it every day on just about every mainstream and tabloid news site.  Nothing stays a secret.  Whether it is emails, photos, text messages etc.  People receive unwanted attention as a direct result of not thinking before they hit send on their email, text message or voicemail rant.   Just ask  Alec Baldwin.  His data was transmitted through the good old old telephone and ended up pinballing all over the world. His voicemail visitation rant to his daughter will be on YouTube until YouTube is no more or hell freezes over.  Embarrassment is the least of the damage.  Careers and marriages are ended.   What is ironic is that the data itself never changes form but what finally makes it into the mainstream depending on where it ‘bounces” rarely conveys the original message.

The latest version of the game has ensnared Dallas Mavericks star forward Josh Howard as well the racists, bigots and hate mongers who decided to chime in on the controversy.   Josh joined Alec in the data pinball ranks with his impromptu cell phone video commentary on the National Anthem appeared on YouTube.  Like Alec’s voicemail rant,  Josh’s video will unfortunately be preserved there and other social sites for time  immemorial.  After Mark  Cuban made a public statement about how he had handled the situation every racist and hate filled idiot with a computer pulled back the data pinball plunger and let the data fly in the form opinionated hate and racist email tirades sent to Mark.  Little did they know that Mark would jump in on the game. He hit those pinball flippers for all they were worth and posted many of the emails on his blog, email addresses included.  He fired those same emails right back out into the bumper filled blogosphere to be batted around all over the world by anyone else who wanted to jump into the game.  Who knows where those emails containing admissions of closet racism and other forms of hatred will end up.  Maybe with the sender’s neighbors.  Maybe at his or her place of employment.  Maybe with his or her African-American next door neighbor whose children play with theirs.  Mark later removed the post and explained why he removed it and had decided to expose the people behind them.  He stated:

“I also knew that because of the email addresses being included, they would be receiving the same level of hate, ignorance and judgment that Josh and I had. They would get the same type of ignorant email threats of “I wont do business with your company again”, from people who have never done business with their company. The “I’m going to email your boss and all your sponsors” threats, because that’s the way people try to shout down other people these days.”

No explanation was  necessary.  Mark did the right thing in posting them. I would have left them up  What I found  amazing in exploring various blogs commenting on the subject is that many people actually think that when they send an unsolicited email to someone with whom they have no legal relationship or even know at all, they have some legal or other god given right to privacy in what they sent.  No wonder people make email idiots of themselves.

Good for Mark in exposing hate, racist idiocy and hypocrisy when given the opportunity.  It is my hope that everyone of those emails is “pinballed” to an ultimate destination where it will end up having a  profound effect on the original sender.

Ah yes.  The game of data pinball.  Where’s my quarter?