My inbox is overflowing with warning messages from my anti-virus service. I am receiving almost 100 messages per hour warning me that someone is attempting to send me a potential virus. The information in the message is:
The virus or unauthorised code identified in the email is >>> Possible MalWare ‘Exploit/Phishing-westernunion-6576’ found in ‘13812907_1X_PM1_EM7_MH_FW__message.htm’. Heuristics score: 200
This is so annoying!
So I am still trying to figure out what the best use of Google+ is, and how to integrate it into my information chaos. But today I when engaging in light procrastination instead of editing an article I looked at my circles and was a bit shocked to see this:
A dozen of the people in my circles seemed to have changed the pictures in their profiles. And they had all chosen to use my image! What was this? Intense hero worship? Finally the recognition I desire? An advanced form of anonymity or pseudonymity? A sure sign of my descent into madness due to article editing? Or just a bug?
The most likely theory is that social media really is just a game where high scores are obtained by collecting “friends”. I have obviously progressed to an advanced level of cheating and instead of collecting friends I have begun to make them up and to populate my social media universe with clones of myself.
While questioning my own reality in this way – I ask myself whether Mats, Jenny, Niklas, Alexander, Rickard, Jonas, Chris, Fredrik, Krister, Stefan, David & Natasja know that they are actual people or just figments of my overactive imagination?
Spent the morning doing hamster work. This is the work that takes a long time but at the end of the day you realize that you have not really produced anything. Its all important work but its not creative or productive.
Not really sure what this kind of work can be compared to in the analog realm – its a bit like preparing a garden after winter, pruning for growth. Well that’s a positive spin on it. Otherwise I sometimes get the impression that I am a slave to my tools. My devices and software seem to need a constant stream of update and electricity to be content enough to work.
In 1996 the Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ Co. Ltd., and Aki Maita of Bandai Co. Ltd released the Tamagotchi on the world. It was (for those who chose not to remember) a very simple digital toy that needed constant attention in order to “live”. Parents had to take their children’s devices to work with them so that the precious pieces of plastic did not die while the children where at school.
Those who were not in the craze laughed.
But today my whole digital life seems to consist of me being trapped in a tamagotchi. My devices demand attention and can be quite adamant about getting it: I once had to throw away a digital thermometer that would not stop beeping out an ice warning every 5 minutes when the temperature dropped below 3 degrees. On my phone a blue or red occasionally blinks. Its communicating with me – but nowhere in the manual does it say what the lights mean. I usually restart the phone just to stop the blinking lights. The same phone, when fully charged flashes brightly, and can wake me up in the middle of the night.
And don’t get me started on updates!! Here is the wisdom of Izzard on the topic – all to cheer us up in the midst of digital work.
W.C. Fields is supposed to have said: “The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep” which is of little help right now. The reality is correctly portrayed by Jorge Cham of PhD Comics
Many of the civil rights that we today claim to be “natural” or “fundamental” have their roots in an ideology of the individual which dates back to the 18th century. The importance of a free press, free speech, democracy and the fundamentals of integrity can be traced back to the enlightenment period which believed that all were created equal and that people – not systems – were valuable and important enough to be in control.
Since then these ideologies have been slowly been implemented into law. Not uniformly nor quickly but still the ongoing process of bringing implemented, real civil rights has been measurable. But lets not get carried away. One thing lacking in our (for example) right to expression has been our ability to express ourselves to a wider audience. Sure we have the right to do so – but do we have the ability to do so?
The fact that not everyone could speak was seen as unfortunate but inevitable and this scarcity created a marketplace of ideas. Well, in reality, it created a marketplace of platforms from which to speak from. If you fit the profile of the platform you may (still if you are lucky) exercise your right to speak to a larger audience.
In this way many of our rights are strongly linked to the platforms which give us the ability to carry out these rights. And what are the Internet, the Web & Web2.0? They are a form of easily accessible platforms. The barriers to entry to these platforms are widely reduced (compared with old or traditional media). With the lowering of barriers to entry millions (?) of people have been exercising rights which have previously only been theoretical.
Unfortunately this does not suit everyone. What we have seen is that with the removal or reduction of technical or economic barriers to entry the law is often being used to create an artificial barrier to reduce or minimize the impact of our rights.
Now the interesting thing is that no politician today would dare to challenge the enlightenment ideal. No politician today can openly say that they want to reduce our fundamental freedoms even if they are tempted to. What happens instead is the interesting removal of rights by creating levels of control in our communications intermediaries. What this means is that instead of telling people that they will reduce their rights governments are applying burdens of surveillance and control on the companies that provide our infrastructure.
And what can we do? Well not much really. Most of our infrastructure use is voluntary. If we want to use the net we are forced to play along with the conditions of the companies that provide the net to us.
A recent example of this process (one of many) reported by Wired is that the Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way.
The process is an excellent example of the cynical application of power. On the face of it government still maintains its support for rights, while in reality slashing the practical application of rights at the point of the technology upon which the rights stand.
Warning: Pointless rant.
Much of my work is multi or cross-disciplinary which means that I get to meet lots of fascinating people in different departments and from different disciplines. It all began when I moved from law to technology. I needed to learn new theoretical frameworks, new canons of literature, new methods and approaches etc.
I had moved to provide valuable insights from a different perspective to the department but in reality I needed to learn their language and culture to be able to talk. In doing so I lost some of the language and culture that made me unique and valuable to the department.
One of the problems with multidisciplinary work is that it can easily fail unless both disciplines are open to accept new ideas.
Once I had left my comfort zone I realized that I might as well continue to roam about and have been lucky enough to join in several fascinating discussions from the perspectives of many different disciplines. The people and arguments I have met have enriched my own thinking in ways that single disciplines could not.
But every now and then the nasty face of dogmatism appears. Someone at some department challenges me: you do not belong here, you do not belong in our discipline, and your ideas are less valid since your undergrad degree comes from the wrong field.
In a recent episode of Big Bang Theory, Sheldon asks Penny for acting lessons to improve his teaching:
Penny: Let´s take you out of your comfort zone
Sheldon: Why would we want to do that? It´s call the comfort zone for a reason
But I digress.
Strangely enough the most common form of attack is to find an obscure theoretician within the field, often some great thinker to whom everyone refers (but few bother to read) and attempt to hit the invader over the head with.
A typical situation is to engage the invader in a discussion on an obscure (and often irrelevant for the main discussion) point in the works of the great. The goal is to either get the invader to accept the speaker’s mastery of the subject – or even better an admission of ignorance! Ah the joy when the speaker can smile knowingly in shock and horror to signify that your discipline lacks all value.
This is an academic pissing contest. And from experience there are four strategies: attack, counter, deceive, evade.
To attack is to meet the speaker head on. This is an “all in” strategy. It looks brilliant if you win by flattening the opponent. You are king of the little pile – the alpha male in the seminar room – but it is not a long-term strategy. You can never be best at everything and it does not support cooperation.
Counter is to attack but not on equal terms. Instead of meeting the opponent with his or her own weapons you bring out your own armies. Dust of a dead theory from your own field and force the speaker into a battle on your own terms. Less impressive and still crap for long-term cooperation.
Deception is another strategy. This is basically faking it (partly or completely) you have no idea what they are on about but you might get away with it. This approach is massively horrible if it fails later. It is also damaging for the ego if you succeed in pulling it off. Not good for long-term cooperation. It is the grown up version of lying to the teacher about doing your homework. It is pissing in your own pants when it is cold outside (warm at first but cold in the long run). It is strangely also the most commonly used strategy. In my more pessimistic periods I believe all of academia is filled with people faking it.
Evasion is basically letting the running bull pass the flag. Admit to not knowing of this academic giant. Ask the speaker to explain briefly and question on why that particular theorist is relevant to the discussion in hand. Don’t be put of with comments like “I will send you an article” – if the speaker wanted a fight, give him/her one. But make sure he/she does the work. Demand to know the relevance of the theory, be polite, inquisitive, learning and hoist the s.o.b. on his own petard. Its not good for long term collaboration, but why on earth would you want to work with the little shit anyway?
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I leave you with the Omid Djalili demonstrating effects of different cultures in an argument:
The Assange case is strange in the sense that many people really want Assange to be treated differently – as if he were not subject to the same laws as everyone else – this is odd since the whole point of Wikileaks is that there are groups that believe themselves to be above the law. But the idea that many people may stem from the problem that many people do not know the way in which the rules work.
It is also helpful to remember to think of the rules objectively. No matter what you think about Assange: what kind of rules would you like to be applied when a person is accused of sexual assault or rape.
The two arguments of the defense are (1) the Swedish prosecutor has not got the authority to issue the arrest warrant, and (2) that Assange is only wanted for questioning and not wanted for trial – you have to be wanted for trial to be able to be extradited.
The answers are:
There have also been questions to whether the charges (rape and assault) are extradition offences? The details show that the women present cases where a degree of force has been used. Using force in these contexts would constitute rape or sexual assault in most countries (including the United Kingdom, Australia & USA).
Finally there is the question of the danger of a violation of Assange’s human rights if he is sent to Sweden.
This is a useless argument. It’s more of a smoke screen or a public relations scam by the Assange legal team.
The argument that the trial would not be fair usually means that the trial would be a complete farce and this would not be the case even if elements of the evidence may be heard without a public to protect the victims.
What if the USA brings charges against Assange?
If this is done while Assange is in the UK the Home Secretary would have to decide which charges were to take precedence based on different criteria (who made the request first, which is the most serious, what are the penalties faced). Therefore the Home Secretary could decide to put the Swedish process on hold and go ahead with the US request.
If this is done while Assange is in Sweden then the Swedes would not be able to extradite him without the consent of the United Kingdom. Therefore the Home Secretary would again be able to decide to give or to withhold consent to extradite.
At present Assange has lost the first round and is appealing. But it is interesting to note that if he wins the appeal he is still under a European arrest warrant. In other words if he wins the appeal he will not be extradited to Sweden but it also means that he could not travel anywhere else in Europe as the arrest warrant still stands. If he were to go to another European country he would be arrested – and have to appeal the decision to extradite him from that country.
Realistically his only chance is to come to Sweden and stand trial. No matter what happens his arguments that the USA is behind all his legal problems is false as they could bring charges against him wherever he happens to be.
All things come to an end. Those who do not believe this probably just have very short memories or lack history skills. There have been big social network sites prior to and parallel to Facebook.
The problem of the Internet is contained in its greatest strength engineers rather than ordinary people. The problem with the Internet law is that we believe contracts trump rights. Put these two things together and we have the area where social networking sites work and play.
And Facebook has crushed opposition. Facebook has grown despite its lack of care of users interests (If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.). Oddly enough Facebook has managed to grown without much legal obstruction from states attempting to enforce privacy regulation (or other areas). Facebook has survived earlier attempts from users to quit. While the law is slowly (criminal neglect slow) beginning to look at what’s happening on social network sites I dont think it will be the law that has any real effect here.
But allow me to be a prophet of doom: The biggest threats to Facebook are size and apathy. Facebook is big and it is its size that will be its downfall. Even if users seem to be content with services offered I do think people are more bored with the standardized approach to social networking that Facebook offers.
But I do not expect an exodus. Nobody should expect this. What we see is not quitting out of indignation but rather out of apathy. We will keep our accounts but update them less often – or even worse connect our accounts to other services (like blog updates 🙂 and the updates will be irrelevant.
What to expect? Not much really. The same as with any other market where the customers are bored and under stimulated. The moment an alternative pops up the customers will flock to it in droves. Media will rave about this new cool cool thing. The giant will be weakened and then the law, the competitors, the investors and the general crazies will attack from all quarters.
Facebook will try to become the new MySpace: wounded but surviving as a niche product. And here it will struggle to survive since it will be a niche product without a niche. A generalist in a world of specialists.
This blog was behaving erratically and reacting slowly. It needed to be fixed. So without enough knowledge I went into the back end of the database and experimented. I shouldnt have done that. Also I really should not have done it without first creating a proper backup. And boy did I make a mess.
I managed to delete not only the bad stuff but I also permanently deleted my whole history. Six years of blogging all gone. I swore and tore my hair but still it was all gone. I was almost coming around to the fact that I was blog bankrupt.
Thankfully the good people at my web hotel were smarter than me and managed to rescue me from my own incompetence. They sent me a backup of my database and I have now been able to recreate this blog to where I was only four days ago.
Its good to be back.
Loved this from Memex 1.1: From today’s Financial Times…
The rain beats down on a small Irish town. The streets are deserted. Times are tough. Everyone is in debt and living on credit. A rich German arrives at the local hotel, asks to view its rooms, and puts on the desk a €100 note. The owner gives him a bunch of keys and he goes off for an inspection.
As soon as he has gone upstairs, the hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher hurries down the street to pay what he owes to his feed merchant. The merchant heads for the pub and uses the note to pay his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local hooker who’s been offering her services on credit. She rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire. As she puts the €100 note on the counter, the German appears, says the rooms are unsuitable, picks up his €100 note and leaves town.
No one did any work. No one earned anything. Everyone is out of debt. Everyone is feeling better. And that is how a bail-out works.