Annoyances

Please don't update my stuff

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it are words everyone should live by. But I would also like to add the condition if it works then don’t update it! There are many obvious reasons for updating technology and unfortunately many of them have absolutely nothing to do with the introduction of a better technology.

Over 40 years ago my father surprised my mother with a new sowing machine. My mother still uses the machine regularly. Naturally as a sowing machine manufacturer this is probably not a good deal. It would have been much better if my family had been forced to purchase a replacement twenty or thirty years ago. The Swedish consumer board stated ten years ago that the natural life expectancy of a mobile phone is two years. But phone manufacturers need to create desire for new versions to make sure that we are constantly giving them more money.

But what really bugs me is when manufacturers add technology to stuff that doesn’t need it. Touch screens on cookers and sensors in public bathrooms are among my main annoyances here.

Right now one of my most successful gadgets is my kindle. Now I would like them to update the ability to share books even beyond what Amazon has started to do. But my greatest fear is that some tecchie will feel the need to improve on the device to reach a greater market. The kindle is perfect because it mimics the book:

Why the paper book is a great technology:It doesn’t come with its own method of distracting you from itself via Benteka

Adding color screens, better keyboards and most dangerously touchscreens is going to happen – for all the wrong reasons. For a reader the lack of connectivity, the sucky keyboard & the fact that the reader is basically good at only one thing are all major strengths with the device.

Posted on by mklang

Dawkins replies

The pope lands in Scotland and makes some strange claims

The Pope also praised Britain’s fight against Hitler’s “atheist extremism”, saying that “Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live”.

Richard Dawkins promptly replies (via Humanistbloggen):

This statement by the pope, on his arrival in Edinburgh, is a despicable outrage. Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to their anti-Semitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about ‘Christ-killers’ and by Martin Luther’s own seething hatred of the Jews. To mention Ratzinger’s membership of the Hitler Youth might be thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope.

I am incandescent with rage at the sycophantic BBC coverage, and the sight of British toadies bowing and scraping to this odious man. I thought he was bad before. This puts the lid on it.

Richard

Posted on by mklang

Now the monks are doin' it!

SPAM just reached a new level. This just in from a Capuchin monk

I’m a Capuchin monk of the Holy House of Loreto in Marche in the centre of Italy.

Through the site www.santafamigliatv.it we are committed via Internet for the new evangelization.

To this  aim,  we ask you for one of your film footage. (any format DVD, VHS, minicassette) you have already realized, so as to include in our Schedules and our Archives.

The topic could be the presentation of your institute, your busisness vocation, your missions, ….
The movie will be offered for a year (once a week) and permanently in our archive always freely available.
In support of this activity religion we ask you for your contribution of 100€.

We invite you to know the meantime visitors to our site.

Blessing,
in SS Hearts of Jesus and Mary
P. Giovanni Maria Leonardi

Posted on by mklang

Censorship in EU (Malta)

The tiny island of Malta rarely pops up in my rss reader but when it does I usually pay the news more attention than it deserves. Malta is a tiny island with about 400 000 inhabitants and like most islands is fairly big on introspection. What makes Malta special (for me) is the fact that I spent the first 15 years of my life there so I have experienced the narrow mindedness first hand. Don’t get me wrong the Maltese are friendly and welcoming its just when it comes to politics they are positively rooted in the dark ages. Today an article in the Guardian did come up via my rss and it began

What if there were an EU country where abortion, divorce, and blasphemy in public were all still illegal? Where freedom of expression was limited to saying nothing critical of the Catholic church, nothing that the government could call “obscene”, and nothing against the few noble families who all but controlled it? Surely, given Turkey’s problems, Croatia’s lack of membership, and Iceland’s still pending application, such a place would be expelled? Welcome to Malta.

Of course size matters but it is strange that the island is able to maintain these politics within the framework for the European Union – we should not really be surprised as the EU is still fundamentally an economic alliance and not a organisation founded in human rights. But still Malta is pushing the envelope

In the last year, the Maltese government has banned the play Stitching from being performed, has arrested and put students on trial for writing and publishing an “obscene” story, and has prevented the artist Alexander Stankovski from exhibiting paintings which contained nudity. The updated criminal code will make public obscenity or blasphemy in public punishable by up to a year in jail, even if the words or sentiments are part of a work of fiction, theatre, or art.

What if this had been a Muslim country behaving like this? Wouldn’t the criticism be louder? Is the lack of energy spent in combating blasphemy laws  a form of lazy racism? All over Europe countries are going crazy about the Muslim dress. Clothes! At the same time we accept that we have laws against blasphemy! We are concerned about women’s freedoms and the oppression of religion and yet we support certain religions by silencing criticism.

How is it that Malta is the way it is? The historic and geographic isolation of the island has enabled it to maintain its bizarre positions. In the Guardian article on the censorship of a short story O’Mahony writes a paragraph that neatly sums up the situation:

The Maltese press covered the issue, but in a factual tone. A recent interview with another Maltese writer, Frans Sammut, in the Malta Independent, allowed him the space to say he agreed with the ban of the work. However, with editorials that celebrate the Pope’s stance on paedophiles operating within the Catholic church, one cannot expect the media to help artists that write about blasphemy and their perceptions of the church’s misogyny. Self-censorship is rife on an island where everyone knows everyone else, but general opinion seems to suggest that writers were simply not taken seriously enough before the events of last year to ever fear reproach for what they produced.

Posted on by mklang

No further comment needed

Eloquently argued by Xeni Jardinat Boing Boing Birds drenched in oil from BP spill: photo gallery

bpspill.jpg bp2.jpg

In the Boston Globe‘s “Big Picture” this week: A series of heartbreaking images by AP Photographer Charlie Riedel of seabirds caught in the oil slick on a beach on Louisiana’s East Grand Terre Island. This is just the beginning of the destruction, and of the suffering and death for all manner of living things in the region. F*ck you, BP.

Posted on by mklang

Please don't anger the natives

This week began with two very interesting local events on Social Media in Borås. First there was Mötesplats Social Media which was an attempt to introduce local politicians to social media questions, possibilities and probabilities. The lecturers were all excellent social medier users and observers (even yours truly) and it was lots of fun. Then on Tuesday SociaMediaPedia organized a series of short talks (adapted mini Pecha Kucha) around Social Media. My role was more to organize attempt to establish order and listen. Interesting stuff!

During the discussions one of the topics that came up was the digital divide which is claimed to exist between young and old (whatever do these epitaphs mean?) and then it was only natural to bring up the horrible term digital natives, digital immigrants and digital turists. All these terms were popularized by Marc Prensky and are completely horrific. And of course very popular. There were voices of reason among the crowd but at the same time the catchy phrase seemed to win over intelligent discussion.

There are several problems with the metaphor, not to mention the built in racism. In most languages, calling someone a native smacks of arrogance, a touch of racism and good old fashioned colonialism.

Who is the native? So who is the native and how does one become one? Obviously the idea here is that the youth of today are all tech-savvy and understand technology while the older generation is good at saying stuff like “I remember when…” and handling analog technology. Seriously what a load of dog doodoo. The fact that we lack common areas of interest is not a digital divide. Young people tend to have different tastes in music, love, hobbies, work, films, books than older people. Even Beethoven’s father probably complained at his sons taste in music.

Are they a group? The young are not a homogeneous group, but then again the question could be put forward if homogeneous groups actually exist at all? Does the Englishman really exist? What is it the natives are supposed to understand? This is the biggest problem with the metaphor. Yes, there are hoards of young folk who can easily send hundreds of text messages per day but does that identify them as digital? Does this mean that they are fundamentally different from those who can hardly use the mobile telephones?

The problem is that the idea of the digital native seems to be that they are (1) comfortable using all digital technology and, (2) understand all digital technology. This is most obviously wrong. The ability to be on Facebook does not prepare you for editing wikipedia, blogging or twitter. The ability to use wikipedia has nothing to do with being popular on twitter. And none of these abilities have anything to do with the ability to use the most of the functions in the simplest word processors.

The understanding of technology, how it works, what it means – in addition to its social, economic and cultural impact is quite often totally lost on these so-called natives. I mean no disrespect (even though saying this usually makes things worse) but being an enthusiastic user has no relation to understanding technology.

Metaphors are supposed to exist to help us understand complex ideas. When they do not fulfill this basic purpose they are useless or worse harmful to our understanding. A misguided metaphor is worse than no metaphor at all. And the concept of digital natives does not aid understanding –  it only creates barriers.

/RANT

Posted on by mklang

The end of Hitler parodies…

Picking the strongest internet meme is impossible – but if there was such a list the Hitler bunker scene remix must be one of the most recurring. Check out this short list of examples from YouTube.

Unfortunately TechCrunch reports that Constantin Film, the German film company, who made the movie has begun removing the parodies. Attempting to see them on YouTube often results in the text:

“This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.“

The amount of files will rapidly disappear once YouTube’s smart content system begins to locate and remove the clips. The question is not whether Constantin has the legal right to act the way they do but the effect of the action. TechCrunch again:

Downfall is a great movie, but it’s also in German which sadly means that many people outside that country will never watch it. But I’d bet these clips have sparked an interest in the film beyond what any type of traditional marketing could have done.

One could also ask what damage the making of the clips has. The clips don’t make less people see the movie or affect sales in any way. Are the clips creating a negative image of the serious movie? This is a doubtful argument as anyone watching the movie will realize the enormous difference between the comedy and the tragedy.

Constantin Film has acted with questionable legality (parodies are within the law) and have definitely not helped in promoting creativity.

Naturally I fully expect someone to create a Hitler parody to express the outrage we all feel at the loss of this important social commentary!

Update: Read the commentary from EFF Everyone Who’s Made a Hitler Parody Video, Leave the Room

Posted on by mklang

Vulnerable IT Society

The whole neighborhood is suddenly pitched into blackness. A major power failure has killed even the street lamps. Thanks to my liking for candles and mobile broadband I still have some connection to the outside world beyond the blackness but it is interesting to see how vulnerable the IT society has become. I have candles to last the night but my laptop will only manage two hours. People are outside on balconies talking on their mobile phones and even walking outside with torches – or probably with the light on their phones.

An interesting experience not common in the safety first Scandinavia.

Posted on by mklang

Is snitching a social good?

In 1984 one of the basic premises of state control was to be found in the dictum “He who controls the past, controls the future”. This can be seen as a version of the popular quote from the Spanish philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“.

One of the themes in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the way in which the repressive society encourages friends, neighbors and family to spy on one another. The informer was seen as a hero by the state. In particular Orwell writes that parents lived in fear of their children.

The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately.

This is based on the story of Pavlik Morozov, a child who denounced his father to the soviet state and became part of soviet mythology and naturally part of the the fear of the soviet state.

Now we could dismiss the whole thing as a fiction set in a far away place, in a far away time but this is not what Orwell wants. The same year Nineteen Eighty-Four was published he wrote in a letter*

My recent novel [Nineteen Eighty-Four] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter), but as a show-up of the perversions . . . which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. . . . The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.

Today we are again and again being actively encouraged to destroy not family but society. We are supposed to discover and report “suspicious behavior” for the good of us all – in the name of terrorism. The most reason slick version of the state asking us to denounce anything different comes (via BoingBoing: What to do if you smell a terrorist). It’s about a video released by the LA police department in a campaign called IwatchLA.

The video is slick, sleek and personal. It encourages people to denounce anything unusual – even an unusual smell – and let the authorities decide if its terrorism. This is what Orwell feared. The goal of terrorism prevention is a praiseworthy goal but the destruction of social trust by creating universal suspicion is not the way to go.

—

* The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4 – In Front of Your Nose 1945–1950 p.546 (Penguin)

Posted on by mklang