Waiting on The World To Change

This month’s article steals the title from a snappy John Mayer ditty and is somewhat of a departure from my usual articles. I have a particular rant with regards to technology not progressing fast enough for my liking.

Usually, I’m a little bit cautious with regards to technological advances, but in a case like this, I’m a big proponent and am anxiously waiting for the advances that I believe are (or at least technically could be) around the corner.

My biggest gripe is about this authentication process of who we are. I touched on a subset of this issue with my article titled Multiple Locks - One Key but it goes beyond this.

Not only are we expected to remember passwords for the gajillion websites that we visit but where this also impacts us in our wallets. I’m referring to this literally – at how many credit cards, debit cards, customer loyalty cards and identification cards that we’re forced to carry.

It might seem like a minor issue but I know for myself personally, I am convinced that how thick my wallet is, has affected me physically. I started noticing that when I was driving longer distances that I’d be getting a pain in my right hip. I didn’t really think much of it at the time, but as the symptoms progressed I tried to figure out what was causing the pain. I came to the realization that I carry my wallet in my right rear pocket and I noticed when I was sitting that the thickness of the wallet forced my right hip to be slightly out of alignment.

As an experiment, I started carrying my wallet in a jacket pocket when driving and the symptoms seemed to be much alleviated.

This caused me to question why on earth do I need so many separate cards. Certainly technology has advanced to the degree where at least for our loyalty cards, there could be one master card and my copy of this card would link to whatever programs I belonged to.

Same thing for credit cards and government identification cards. Why do I need to have so many pieces of identification? I guess that there must be logistical or privacy reasons in some cases, but cheese and crackers – I really should be able to have less than a half dozen cards in my wallet.

One of the arguments might be that if you someone gets access to this one “master” then they have access to everything (same issue as I noted in the Multiple Locks - One Key), but where we need a physical presence to use these cards, there must be a possibility of using biometric identification such as fingerprints or retina scans to prove that the card belongs to me – it’s really not all that complicated.

I would guess that the biggest problem is that this would be an absolutely huge infrastructure change on how our data is stored and our identity is authenticated, but I’m also quite certain that in the long run it would save companies significant amounts of money with reduced manufacturing/maintenance of these cards, let alone a (theoretical) reduced fraud risk.

At present I now have TWO wallets, one that I keep with me with just the cards that I might need on a semi-regular basis and a second wallet at home with the rest of my more infrequent cards.

As a society we managed to figure out how to replace trade and barter with a cash and credit system. Surely over this period, we’re ready for that next monumental step.

Hitting the High Notes

From a personal perspective, one of the things that I love about our technology is how it has provided me the tools to sample and listen to music.

The most obvious of these is the iTunes revolution.  I don't know how many albums that I've bought on iTunes, but it's been a ton of them.  Many relaxing weekend mornings are spent in the iTunes store either looking for new releases from old favourites, or sometimes just trying something totally off the wall.  It's with the latter that I have discovered some new favourites such as Swell Season and Angus and Julia Stone.

I'm also getting very hyped about satellite radio and am at present listening to my 7 day free trial of Sirius - something that will likely be turned into a paid subscription soon enough!

This ability to listen to music on demand, to explore, to listen to one specific genre on satellite radio - this has been a big part of my life and this isn't going to change anytime soon.

My only regret is how this has affected the brick-and-mortar music stores.  There was as much of an enjoyment physically flipping through albums in a store as it is pleasurable to walk into a library and walk up and down the aisles.

Still - onwards and upwards I suppose.

Now - you'll have to excuse me - I have to check on iTunes to see if there any new Christmas albums.  I'm currently sitting at approximately 125 albums of holiday music and I've only added 1 to my collection this year - any recommendations are always welcome!

The Good of Technology

I've alluded to this in the past...but as much as I slag technology sometimes, I have to admit that from a very personal perspective, technology has aided me immensely over the past few years as I've researched medical and legal issues.

The biggest problem that I can see in this research area is that there is a total plethora of resources out there and even within one specific site that I've used frequently, there's easily 50 years of history to sift through.  What this means is that it's important to develop techniques between sites and within sites as you're looking for information.

Having said all this, my primary piece of advice is that it's fine to look towards the Internet for information and resources - but to question everything that you read and to realize that (as I mentioned in previous blog entries), a slick and professional website doesn't necessarily mean that the information is correct, valid an impartial.

Of course, this caveat applies to more conventional sources like newspapers and radio news articles.  There is always some form of bias - conscious or unconscious.

Due diligence is the key - yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Blog Traffic

Just had a hit from what I gather is probably a spider...out of curiosity, I went to the site and it apparently had tips for using embedded tags and optimization and such to increase traffic.  I think that I will bookmark this page and come back to it, it would be a very interesting exercise in how to increase traffic.  Maybe then I'd make more than the massive $0.29 that I've made so far.

Serious people, click on some ads - papa needs some revenue!!

The Stepping Stone Generation

This is something that a very good friend of mine and I were discussing over lunch a couple of weeks ago.  He and I and all others of our generation - and those a little younger and a little older (but not much either way!) are in a very unique position, one that I think is safe to say will never be experience again.

This will probably come across as a couple of older guys reminiscing about the past and it may be the case to an extent.

However, the thing is that we are one of the very few who have experienced significant portions of a our lives before the computer revolution and the latter parts fully immersed in technology.


Certainly any generation can probably make similar claims.  For example, those who were alive in the early 1900's can probably make the same statement about the automobile and the irreversible impact it had on the society then.  Just the same as later generations will be able to compare their youth in the early 21st century and contrast it with the inevitable leaps and bounds of technology.

All of that having been said, I think that there is no generation that can point to a "simpler" (although not necessarily better) life before the digital revolution.

When my daughter was younger, she loved to hear "stories" of the past.  The equivalent "when I was a child, I walked ten miles to school" was replaced by my recalling how there were no cellphones, that most houses had one phone and there was no privacy as it was attached to the wall.  Or I would convey my stories of our first TV and she would giggle when I said that we had to get off the sofa to change stations or adjust the volume.

As always (and as I often say in this blog) technology has it's good and it's bad.  My only advice to people is to try to treasure those moments that aren't necessarily totally driven by technology.

Virtual(ly) Reality

 vir·tu·al·ly

adv
\ˈvər-chə-wə-lē, -chə-lē; ˈvərch-wə-lē\

Definition of VIRTUALLY

1 : almost entirely : nearly

2: for all practical purposes <virtually unknown>

The term “virtual reality” seems to be becoming more common in our lexicon. When I look at these two words together, it becomes apparent to me that virtual reality is an oxymoron, as much as “open secret” or “larger half” is. Most of us are aware of how an oxymoron is two terms that contradict each other and logically can’t be used in conjunction with one another.

I contend that Virtual Reality is another oxymoron – you cannot say that something “almost entirely” exists. If something fully exists – it’s reality, if it almost entirely exists, then it cannot be.

So many times this term is tossed around as if the two terms were complementary, but they’re not. I think that this is a symptom of our society. There almost seems to be this underlying thought that the lives we live online are just about comparable to the world we live off-line.

I look at social networking and see how people are proud of the fact that they have 452 friends on Facebook. Most of these people aren’t “friends”; they are people that you know in varying degrees of detail. For anyone with 452 friends, I challenge you to take 10 names of friends at random and step away from the computer and write down what they’re doing in their lives. I’m betting with the bevy of status updates and tweets that most people don’t follow more than 10% of their “friend base”.

Using social networking CAN be an effective communications tool once the relationship has been nurtured and established. It can be a wonderful medium where a loved one or a classmate lives across the country but not to the exclusion of the personal touch.

For me though, there’s no substitute for being the same room with a person. Being in person allows me to hear her voice, to see her smile or a flit of anger in her eyes. It’s impossible to communicate the same way online and words can be misconstrued.

One of the tenets of science faction (my term for technologies that aren’t here yet, but are probably inevitable, or at least they are feasible) is the development of technologies that allow lovers to experience touch via specially designed suits that are programmed to apply pressure according to signals received from their mate. The thing is that I don’t think that this would even be a pale comparison of the real thing. In this instance, it’s really still just a machine that’s applying pressure even though it’s controlled by the person on the other end. I doubt if any technology would be developed that would allow someone to be truly caressed from afar.

Social networking does have its benefits - in a limited and a reasonable context. Where we fail as a society though is where people think that the technology replaces instead of enhances the physicality of being with a person. If and when that ever changes and if technology develops to the point where this type of interaction is the norm …well…that is the point where I’ll just get off of this technological merry-go-round.

The Future of Software & Apps

There was a very interesting article that I read - sorry, don't have the link.  The basic premise is that "industry experts" are all saying that apps and software installed on devices (especially tablets, iPods, etc...) are for all intents and purposes "dead" and that the real "future" of application delivery is via websites.

As a guy who has been around software development since it's virtual inception in the 80's (as a mainstream technology) I am - to say the least - skeptical.

There's a lot of this I understand in that methods of distribution, ease of updates, developing for a common web based environment...this all sounds great in concept - and it way be. The problem will be though is that if this is going to be the new method of software, then there's going to need to be a mechanism somehow for offline delivery of content.  Maybe they've figure it out and have a plan.  What I can say is that when I see individuals on the subway where there's no cell or WiFi service - I really don't think that people will be too fond at having the functionality of their favourite devices tied so closely to online accessibility.

I will need to find this article and read some more - I can't imagine that this hasn't been raised as an issue.