The Apple online store is closed… this usually means that they are busy bringing new objects of desire to our attention. Mmm… shiny new laptop….
technology
Army 2.0
You might be excused for getting the impression that the US military is struggling to understand how they should be using Internet technology. On the one hand they recently began an effort to control what their soldiers are posting online (War blogs silenced) and now they have blocked access to sites such as YouTube and Myspace.
The reason for this? Bandwidth.
The US says the use is taking up too much bandwidth and slows down the military’s computer system.
But a US Strategic Command spokesman said a “secondary benefit” was to help operational security.
At the same time the military have realised the potential impact of sites such as YouTube and have started putting material online.
The Pentagon only recently started posting its own videos on YouTube, showing soldiers in action in Iraq in a move designed to reach out to a younger audience and to show the successes of the US military. (More on this over here).
But the best quote in this BBC article is the honest: “The cyberspace battle space was not one that we were particularly operating well in” Lt Col Christopher Garver, US Army.
Yes… we have noticed…
Lex Ferenda has more including the order (AP report | full text of order) and a increased list of blocked sites:
â??To maximize the availability of DoD network resources for official government usage, the Commander, JTF-GNO, with the approval of the Department of Defense, will block worldwide access to the following internet sites beginning on or about 14 May 2007.â??
www.youtube.com
www.1.fm
www.pandora.com
www.photobucket.com
www.myspace.com
www.live365.com
www.hi5.com
www.metacafe.com
www.mtv.com
www.ifilm.com
www.blackplanet.com
www.stupidvideos.com
www.filecabi.com
The obvious step
It is the next obvious step. But still it does not make it a good move. Tony Blair has moved politics a step further into cyberspace by being the first politician to open a channel on YouTube.
What is the momentous occasion? It’s just Blair congratulating Sarkozy for his election success. There is an English and French version.
Personally I think its all kind of boring… and just a bit sad…
Time alone with my mind
Sherry Turkle has written an article in Forbes “Can you hear me now?” on how we are losing ourselves to our devices. She brings together images of a world first seduced by technological gadgets and then being enslaved by them.
Much of the imagery is what we have come to expect: audiences at conferences preferring email to listening, consultants networking virtually while ignoring real life, and students doing anything but listening in class.
One brilliant quote from a stressed BlackBerry abusing consultant: “I don’t have enough time alone with my mind”. Wow! What an amazing insight. I have already complained about my teaching workload this term but when I read this quote I realised what was wrong with my worklife. No wonder I am not able to do any good writing (even this blog has been erratic at best) it’s because I don’t have enough time alone with my mind. And even less time to read.
What to do? According to Turkle: To make more time means turning off our devices, disengaging from the always-on culture.
Hmm. While I am always up for a little tech-bashing I really don’t think that turning off devices is the answer. I think my problem is that I need to stop accepting teaching engagements and other jobs for other people. It is eating all my time and leaving me empty and dissatisfied.
Multiple Mails – Multiple Lives
Jorge Cham, of Phd comics (my favorite), has drawn an excellent strip hinting at the complexity of modern communication. Recently a colleague sent me an email (and cc it to three other of my addresses) asking me which was my “real” address. It got me thinking of how many aliases I have and how many mail accounts I run – most appear in the same inbox but not all.
All the accounts are there for a reason (or several reasons) but it does sometimes feel a bit like a case of multiple personality…
Secret Numbers
Have you been following the recent blog craze on the topic of Digg and the HD DVD key? Basically the Digg team deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended.
Naturally this just made things more exciting and the number now appears on over 50 000 websites, as a set of colors, a poem and at least one t-shirt!
Many of the blogs reporting this news have been in anguish over the fact that numbers should not be copyrightable but this is acutally missing the point. Fred von Lohmann (EFF) clarifies the situation in a neatly written post:
Is the key copyrightable? It doesn’t matter. The AACS-LA takedown letter is not claiming that the key is copyrightable, but rather that it is (or is a component of) a circumvention technology. The DMCA does not require that a circumvention technology be, itself, copyrightable to enjoy protection.
Questioning Technology
Kevin at Question Technology was at the CHI 2007 conference and found a really interesting paper and presentation called “Questioning the Technological Panacea: Three Reflective Questions for Designers” (Eric Baumer and Bill Tomlinson).
They discussed three questions that product designers should ask:
- “Given a technological solution, are there other, possibly non-technological solutions that could address the same problem equally well, if not better?”
- “Is the problem being addressed perceived as a problem by the proposed users, or is the situation being unnecessarily problematized by designers?”
- “By focusing on a specific problem, is the solution treating a symptom and hiding the cause?”
This paper was part of the “alt.chi” program at CHI, which is a forum for unusual work that wouldn’t ordinarily get published by the conference. Alt.chi submissions are posted and reviewed in an open public forum.
Read the paper!
Greener Apples
No need to be cynical or pessimistic about the effect of lobby campaigns or the power of collecting people online. Greenpeace launched an environmental campaign against Appleâ??s lack of environmental policy. On 2nd May Steve Jobs published a second public letter (the first was against DRM) listing environmental hazards connected with Apple computers and the steps Apple was taking to remedy the situation.
It is generally not Appleâ??s policy to trumpet our plans for the future; we tend to talk about the things we have just accomplished. Unfortunately this policy has left our customers, shareholders, employees and the industry in the dark about Appleâ??s desires and plans to become greener. Our stakeholders deserve and expect more from us, and theyâ??re right to do so. They want us to be a leader in this area, just as we are in the other areas of our business. So today weâ??re changing our policy.
This is a good first step towards taking Apple to the forefront of environmental concerns as well as its firm position as a design leader. This approach also shows that design and environmentalism are not incompatible.
Greenpeace has responded on their campaign site with the words “We are cheering!”…
It’s not everything we asked for. Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures’ pledge to phase them out by 2009. Way to go Steve!
It’s nice to know that the machine of my choice has just made a little less guilty.
Economist Against DRM
Not bad. The Economist is against DRM making bold statements in a recent article:
Belatedly, music executives have come to realise that DRM simply doesnâ??t work. It is supposed to stop unauthorised copying, but no copy-protection system has yet been devised that cannot be easily defeated. All it does is make life difficult for paying customers, while having little or no effect on clandestine copying plants that churn out pirate copies.
and
While most of todayâ??s DRM schemes that come embedded on CDs and DVDs are likely to disappear over the next year or two, the need to protect copyrighted music and video will remain. Fortunately, there are better ways of doing this than treating customers as if they were criminals.
Nice to see that serious media has begun to realise that rhetoric alone is not enough to legitimize DRM. Articles such as this show that media is beginning to practice journalism and report not only what is written in corporate press releases but are looking at what is happening all around them.
(via Boing Boing)
Daily Gun Deaths
The New York Times has a chilling graphical representation of daily gun deaths. Homicide, Suicide and Accidents/Legal police action.
In 2004 an average of 84 people died from guns every day in the USA (29 569 gun deaths in 2004). The New York Times graphic shows a breakdown of these 84. Statistics by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.