Just call me Cassandra

In ancient Greek mythology, Cassandra was a Trojan priestess who offered to get it on with the god Apollo, in exchange for the gift of prophecy. When she later spurned his advances, he cursed her, so that her perfectly accurate prophecies wouldn't be believed. Cassandra made many dire predictions, including the fall of Troy, but nobody took her seriously. People laughed, and thought her mad.

It must, I imagine, have been very frustrating for the poor girl because, no matter how often she was right -- and she was always right because, you know... Apollo -- nobody was any more inclined to believe her.

In my railings against the tech giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al., I feel I have become a bit of a Cassandra. Not because I ever offered to fuck Apollo -- I doubt I would be his type -- but because I keep being proven right, and still nobody believes me.

Back in the mid-90s, I warned everybody I met that the world-wide web -- a new, shiny toy at the time -- would increasingly be dominated by advertising, unless we took steps to prevent it. People laughed at me. Nobody would pay to advertise on the web, they mocked.

Twenty years ago, I warned everybody I met that social media was going to trash children's mental health, and ruin their ability to make real-life friends. People laughed at me, then went back to scrolling their feeds.

Ten years ago, I warned everybody I met that the tech giants were building a massive tracking infrastructure, which we will all increasingly be forced to submit to, to have any kind of normal life. People no longer laughed at me, but only because they'd all long ago stopped listening.

Of course, I'm by no means the only person making these predictions, but that doesn't make them any more easily believed. People just don't want to take uncomfortable truths seriously.

The story of Cassandra works because many of us feel we can see danger coming, but can't convince anybody else. Perhaps we all feel that way, from time to time. It's a theme that crops up repeatedly in literature and folklore, all around the world.

In Jewish tradition, for example, the prophet Jeremiah told everybody that, if they didn't start living right, their country would be sacked, and they'd be dragged off into slavery. Well, they didn't, it was, and they were. Jeremiah's reward was to be stoned to death outside the walls of Jerusalem. Not only do people not believe the dire predictions of prophets, they blame the prophets for the disaster when it arrives.

It's frustrating, seeing a terrible catastrophe hurtling towards us like a tsunami of shit, and being powerless to make people understand. Many of us see, or think we see, the catastrophic effects of pollution and climate change, but our efforts to alert people come to nothing. There are plenty of environmental activists, of course, but Internet privacy is the particular hill I have chosen to die on.

But if I can't convince even my own wife to dump Google and social media, what chance do I have, trying to convince strangers? Do I have a grow a beard to my knees, wear sack-cloth, and rave in the desert? Sometimes people respond to me as if that's exactly what I'm doing. At least, I'm frequently described as a 'tinfoil-hatter'.

The one thing that gives me any cause for optimism is that it isn't just old farts like me who can see what's bearing down on us. Nobody takes us old folks seriously, because we're all technophobes and Luddites, if we're not actually demented. But I'm seeing encouraging signs of realization among the 20-somethings as well. These days, I think it's the 30-60 age group which is the most complacent but, unfortunately, these are the people who make most of the significant political and economic decisions.

My biggest fear is that, when Google is delivering advertising directly to our cerebral cortices via electrodes implanted at birth, I'll be stoned to death like Jeremiah, because it will have been my fault all along.

Published 2026-03-11, updated 2026-03-11

Just call me Cassandra

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