The Invisible Tether

In some of my past articles and blog entries, I’ve talked about how one of my dislikes of technology is that there is a certain obsession to “keep in touch”; to remain tethered to technology. To a very large extent, I think that this is a big problem. This problem isn’t really so much an issue of technology, but rather it’s more about how we choose to use it.

For my readers that don’t know me, my friends and loved ones will tell you that I am just as guilty as everyone else when it comes to this obsession to stay connected. I’ll be the first to admit that there have been times in the past, where I’m lying in bed trying to go to sleep and then I think to myself that I should give my email a quick check – for no particular reason. It’s not like I was expecting an email, but it almost becomes a habit

What triggered this article was something that happened at work a little while back. I was in the men’s room and a gentleman walks in – talking away on his cell phone. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he proceeded to the stall and assumedly attended to his business. I was just totally flabbergasted as to what was so important that he couldn’t wait for until the phone call was over, or if the call to nature was particularly urgent, to say that he’d call back in a bit.

As I mentioned, I’ve written similar articles in the past. One of my biggest concerns with technology is that it’s a given that most of us are expected to be accessible. I read an article recently that from a business and legal perspective, that there’s an entire grey zone as it relates to “Blackberry Overtime”. As evidenced when you ride the subway, or attend a baseball game or even while at a theatre, people are instantly accessible via their Blackberry – connected to work – and always available. There are legal cases pending where employees are putting in for overtime where the premise of this overtime was that they were expected to be on call. The concept of 9-5 is something that is eroding.

However, this whole issue of staying connected with the workplace is more than just an issue of having our pager or cell phones turned on – just in case there is an emergency. This scenario is a passive one – one where the user of the communications device simply has it on, just in case there’s an important call or a support issue. For certain job functions, that’s a very reasonable requirement.

The real problem is that this concept of being accessible to the workplace after hours has mutated to also being an active problem. People aren’t just leaving their communications device turned on, they’re actively checking their emails – and you can bet that not only are they checking their email, but that will remind them of an (unrelated) email that they didn’t respond to. Oh yes, and then there’s that meeting that needed to be rescheduled. Oh – while I’m connected, I better write that email to Marketing about the new promotional materials. And so on, ad infinitum.

My dislike of the social implications or this 24/7 interaction is probably well documented for anyone that has read my articles. I guess that it’s different strokes for different folks, but I don’t understand the compulsion and need to tweet about the minutia of one’s life – about what kind of bagel I ate or to update my Facebook status to say how I’m feeling blah today.

On to the good.

There is no question that this invisible tether can be tremendously useful. It allows me to stay connected to my kids when I’m not there and it gives me a sense of comfort and security that I am accessible to them, should the need arise.

Although I have listed the disadvantages to this constantly wired world, it is a necessary evil (for lack of a better word). Without this accessibility, the information superhighway would be far less accessible and there have been numerous occasions where being able to browse the web from my smartphone or my iPod have benefitted me. From staying in touch with others when I was hospitalized, to being able to look up medical or legal information whenever I needed it, even for things as mundane as checking the address of a restaurant, or perhaps to see the next show time of a movie that I want to see.

To paraphrase Charlton Heston, you can only pry this technology from my cold, dead hands. But please, let’s start having some sanity and put some context back into when it is and when it isn’t appropriate to be accessing this tether.

Welcome to the WWW and P-mail

Interesting article today on a study in the UK that demonstrated how 'slow' rural broadband can be there. They attached a USB drive with a 300mb video file to a carrier pigeon and timed how long it took the pigeon to transport it 75 miles. It took the pigeon 1.25 hours. At the same time, the broadband transfer was ony 25% done, 'proof' that rural broadband was just too slow.

Yeah, perhaps 100-200kbps is a wee bit on the slow side, but this is probably a perfect example of how a study can be manipulated to prove a point. I'm quite sure before they setup the study, they did some estimates as to how big the file needed to be and how close the two points would be to achieve the desired results.

Afterwards, I had this vision of the 'new technology' where carrier pigeons (or owls ala Harry Potter) are used to transfer p-mail (pigeon-mail) through the WWW (World Wide Wing).

All that I will say that if this ever comes to fuition, then I will be making some serious investments in umbrella companies!

The Death of Privacy

There's been a couple of recent stories. Both of these I meant to blog about independantly but just never really seemed to get around to it, but in retrospect, there's probably a lot of context that I share.

The more that I get immersed in this technology, the more that I'm concerned that we're on a runaway freight train. I'm very worried that things will not get any better and as a matter of fact, things will just get exponentially worse.

The first article was that I read from the CEO from Google who recently half joked that as a matter of practice, people should change their names once they reach adulthood based on the premise that all of this online history would otherwise follow them around.

That in itself (in jest or in not) is just exceptionally chilling. As I've written in the past, these digital footprints that we leave cannot be erased.

Let's say that it just become practice that once one enters the working world, you create a new persona. What does that REALLY fix? Isn't that just fixing the symptom rather than the disease? If I have a new identify as I become 21, am I not going to have the same problem with privacy in another 10 years when I'm 31? There's something very fundamental here that needs to be looked at, and I know that I'm not the first person to have this concern.

The other article that really made me question privacy was where I read that there are government agencies that are openly using satellite photos (aka Google Earth and the likes) to "spy" on individuals. This is matter of fact. I don't recall where (but I will find the original article) but it goes on to state that in one instance individuals in the muncipal govenment scan photos to see if houses have undeclared pools or structures that have been built without building permits. There was one country - Greece I think - that openly admitted doing this, and the only reason why they were was because it was a cash grab - it was a way to increase the city coffers.

Can someone please stop this ride, I think that I want to get off now.

Literati eReader

As some of you who may have been following my blog for awhile, originally, I pooh-poohed the concept of eReaders.  Upon further consideration and signficant drooling and seeing users, I'm beginning to think that I might have been premature in my dismissal of them.

Latelly, I've been doing a little reading, just checking out the differences between them and what seems to distinguish between a good and a bad eReader. 

In an article today, I was reading about a new one coming to market by "The Sharper Image" called The Literati.  Okay - I'm getting intrigued.  I love the fact that it has WiFi access to it's bookstore (not all of them do).  Also liking the fact that the bookstore that can be accessed is powered by Kobo, so there's a bajillion books available there.  Nice little bells and whistles - little things like being to change the type from black on white to white on black depending on reading conditions.

Beginning to think that this is a possibility - just in time for the buy-a-Christmas-present-for-myself season.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/204170/sharper_image_brings_ereader_to_the_masses.html?tk=rss_news

http://www.literatireader.com/

Microsoft Bing Maps - Hot Dog!

I will just go ahead and file this one under "A Use for Technology that I Would Have Never Conceived Of".

In Portland, they are incorporating the latest and greatest technology in conjunction with Microsoft Bing Maps. Apparently, there are a number of vendor foodcarts that are outfitted with auto-Twitter feeds (that in itself - wow - as they would say in 'The Princess Bride' "Inconceivable")! What is pretty interesting is that they're linking in these feeds with Bing Maps so that you Portlanders (Anna - is that the right term? lol) can see in real time not only where each cart is, but what their speciality is as well. Now THAT is a great use of technology. Get it incorporated it here in Toronto and I can do a real-time scan of food carts close to me and what they're serving. Oh - some of the carts are also intelligent enough to transit what they're out of, so if you've got a hankering for a Polish Sausage, you can see if your local vendor has any.

Apparently, they're also integrating FourSquare into this information so that in addition, you can see which of your buddies might be busting their diet and noshing on a 'dog or two.

2b or not 2b that iz the ?

This in itself is bound to raise the ire or some. It quite simply is known as txtspk (text speak). It is either the bane of all society for those that disapprove of it, or a wonderful way to separate themselves from the “older generation” for those that use it as part of their lives.

As part of the “older generation”, my first thought is that txtspk is not an appropriate way to communicate. Certainly, in today’s business environment, it is not acceptable (at least, not yet). To a certain extent, I feel that it portrays a certain amount of – ignorance might be a bit harsh – but at the very least, a laziness to communicate properly.

Txtspk began through both instant messaging and text messaging. The earlier versions of cell phones had no easy methods of writing text messages. The earliest cell phones allowed text messaging but it was extremely cumbersome as one had to use the numeric keys to type messages. Each number on the keypad had one of three letters, so the user had to “cycle through” each key to get the right letter. For example, to “type” the word later, they would have to press 5-5-5 (L) 2 (A) 8 (T) 3-3 (E) and 7-7-7 (R). Subsequent devices developed a mechanism called t9 which used predictive logic to guess what the likely word would be. Again, using the same example, the user would just have to press 5-2-8-3-7 and the system would be intelligent enough to predict that the most likely word formed with this sequence was “later”.

However, I think that the reason for the adaption for txtspk goes much deeper than this. Certainly the vast majority of cell phones today have full alphanumeric keyboards, so why would people still partake in txtspk? I think the answer is in how each younger generation attempts to distance it from the older generation.

Thinking back to when I was younger, we didn’t have txtspk, but we did have our own jargon – our own lingo. We would never dream of expressing ourselves in the same way as our parents, and I think that to an extent that is what is happening with txtspk.

As I mentioned, from a very fundamental (and probably archaic!) point of view, I don’t approve of txtspk. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do the occasional LOL or BRB, but for the most part, I try to express myself appropriately.

The reason why this whole topic came to mind is that I was on my way home one day and I saw an electronic billboard in front of a restaurant, where the message scrolled across “UR going to love us”. I thought to myself “Wow, this is a pretty sad statement of our society when businesses are using txtspk”.

There are a few things that come to mind though. One of the basic tenets of advertising is that it is mission critical to be able to communicate to your target audience. It made me realize that if this restaurant was targeting teens, then this is probably a very appropriate method of “delivering the message”.

The other thing that I considered was that our vocabulary constantly evolves. New words are added to our lexicon, and I’m certain that archaic words are periodically purged from our dictionaries. How many times do we read an article where an established dictionary has added new words? In essence, they are accepting these words as part of our every day vocabulary.

Think back again to the evolution of our literature. Now – for the most part, our literature is relatively young, but probably the most common (and older) piece that I can think of is the bible. Every so often, the bible (or portions of it) is rewritten to make the message more relevant. I wonder if one was to read some of the original documents from 2,000 years ago, how much of the vernacular used would make the message confusing to us.

Will the “modern classics” like Shakespeare or Charles Dickens need to be spruced up in the future as part of the vocabulary becomes extinct? It’s hard to say, but I will say this, technology stands still for no person. As much as we don’t to adapt, sometimes, we’re forced to, albeit with a kick and a scream.

I’m not convinced that txtspk is “good”, but I think that the reality of it (unfortunate or otherwise) is that it is here to stay.

I’m sure that there are many of them, but I did find this one website that gives a good translation of txtspk for whoever is interested (be warned that there is so profane language in it!).  http://www.internetslang.com/

In closing, all that I can say is TTFN – CYL8R (ta-ta for now – see you later!)

The Long Arm of the Law

Two unrelated stories in the news this week on how the coppers tracked down those of nefarious and questionable ethics and conduct.

In the first case, the thief accidently dropped his cellphone and they were able to track him down by calling the entry marked "Mom" in his phonebook to establish his identity.

The second guy - guys like this, it's probably good that his lack of intelligence is off of the streets. A bank robber who had escaped, sent an email to the local newspaper, mocking the police as there were all sort of inaccuracies that they had noted. Apparently, the only inaccuracy that didn't escape their attention was the general ease that someone can track you down based on your email address/IP address.

At least he won't be spreading his questionable gene pool (with it's inherent lack of intelligence) while in the slammer!