Once upon a time oval bumper stickers on the back of cars were just European country identifiers, distinguishing anonymous numeric plates for cross-border traffic. In America people adopted their ancestral nation's stickers as a badge and their message was pretty straight forward. Once you'd learned that "E" stands for Spain and "H" for Switzerland, you were sufficiently versed in the language of oval bumper stickers.

This is not the case today. Now the simple oval with initials has devolved into a swamp or personalization. "OC", "BB", "RB", "OBX", "ES", and "MRE" adorn many of the cars around here. There is a locality about these abbreviations that helps identify what they stand for; the tiny text beneath the bold abbreviation comes as no surprise. To anyone living here Ocean City, Bethany Beach, Rehobeth Beach, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the Eastern Shore and the Maritime Republic of Eastport are all familiar places. But occasionally there are some that don't readily surrender their message. A station wagon passed me on my way to work with an "EI" on the back window. "EI"? Easter Island? My first thought was a place, but maybe it's a school, or a league or anything at all. In New York last weekend I saw a couple unfamiliar stickers and had no chance of placing them, or knowing what they are saying.

The original purpose of these stickers was to clarify the origin of cars traveling in Europe. This was modified in America, becoming instead a proclamation of heritage or identity. But it was still a universal language with an unambiguous meaning. Now the messages are personalized and every place creates their own symbols. "RB" might mean Rehobeth Beach, but nothing prevents it from meaning Rhythm & Blues or Ronny Bogart, either. People buy these stickers to identify themselves to others, but not to everyone. These are public messages of a private nature, since the meanings are not universal.

Everything is going this way. Eventually television will be demand driven, not centrally scheduled. Every aspect of our lives will be chosen and broken into discreet bits, we are free to mix-and-match our way through life. But it worries me all the same. In programming, the most powerful controls are often difficult to use simply. It takes an enormous amount of learning to figure out how to do relatively straight forward things. Once you have learned the system, it's usually clear why they broke it down into such tiny bits, but occasionally you wonder why it had to be so difficult.

I don't want a difficult life. I am not looking for powerful results. These bits might let people live custom lives, but they are also insular. Each personal bit is another bite out of the broader community. So what? Eventually these granular services will need to be reformed into finished products. The internet would be useless with Google. Netflix weeds through my choices and suggests other movies that I might like. With each new movie rating they are getting better. Better by plugging me back into a broader context and comparing me to my fellow netflix customers. Ah, community.