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Tag Archives: phone

Technology foiled by a gum wrapper of life

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Bob in myLifestyle, myTech, Technojungle

≈ Comments Off on Technology foiled by a gum wrapper of life

Tags

adobe, apple, battery, cleaning, computer, crumpled, daughter, feed rollers, feeding, frustration, gum, indesign, internet, macbook, macintosh, paper, phone, printer, printing, problem, publish, publishing, reboot, tech support, techie, techno, technology, transient, troubleshooting, typesetting, university, wrapper, write

My daughter called me one day to complain that her printer would not work. She lives in another city and I could not just pop over to assist her, so I attempted phone tech support. The problem was that paper was not feeding properly into the printer. It was getting crumpled on one edge on the way into the printer. Of course, I asked her to reach in and feel around to see if anything was in there. I also wondered if the feed rollers might need cleaning. The frustration level was rising. I was sure it was something simple, but she had little time for technology failures.

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The next step, was to search on the Internet for similar problems and to find the solution. I found information on how to clean the rollers. I forwarded information on to her. Now, she tends to always be busy and is certainly not a techie type. We all know people in the techno-aversion range who have various levels of interest and ability when it comes to technology. Some love to roll up their sleeves and dive in. Others can’t even imagine doing anything to fix problems involving technology. They just want to plug it in and have it work. Apple Inc. understood this and created computers that could be taken out of the box, plugged in and they were ready to go. There are a range of people that fall between those extremes.

We have all had to deal with a variety of techno-failures. Perhaps you had a broom break. A broom is a type of technology. Call it low-tech. I’m sure we have all had a more complicated technology fail, such as a light bulb. Most of us have also had very complex technology fail like a computer. High-tech devices are so complex that I often think it amazing that they even work some of the time. There are so many things that could fail.

Lately, I have been talking to my daughter about more technology issues. She is learning Adobe InDesign for one of her jobs. I have a background in printing and publishing and ran several Macintosh computer labs for training students to go into the printing industry. We were discussing some of the things that can go wrong and difficulties she has had in getting her typesetting and layout to work properly. Nothing is as simple as it seems. Everybody these days thinks they can write and publish, make documents and do some of the things they see published. My daughter is learning that, at the professional level, it is complex.

I explained to her that, if you can’t replicate the problem, you probably can’t solve it. Some failures or errors are transient. That is, they just simply occur, often at the most inopportune times. I often say, “Technology is great, when it works.” Or, “Technology will fail just when you need it most.”

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Another call from my daughter informed me that her computer would not work. We tried everything. She even had a guy friend listen to the strange sounds emitting from the MacBook Pro and then remark, something like, “It is fried.” The local authorized Apple computer store said that it might need a couple of things done and quoted her prices for just looking at it. She was in her final weeks of university and also needed the computer for work, so I said that she should not spend any money on the machine until I could look at it. I told her to go get a new one and that we would help her. When I got the computer, it was indeed completely dead. That, of course, due to sitting for weeks and the battery being fully depleted. So, I charged it overnight. I am writing this article on that very same computer. It is fine. Go figure!

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Probably the most used troubleshooting method that everybody knows is, “When in doubt (or, when all else fails), reboot.” While you’re waiting for your computer to come back up, grab a stick of gum and relax. But, don’t crumple and toss the wrapper somewhere on your desk because it might land in your printer and that is exactly what had happened with my daughter. I got her printer and it now works too. Anybody need a printer?

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Copyright Bots

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Bob in myTech, Technojungle

≈ Comments Off on Copyright Bots

Tags

apple iTunes, blocked, bot, bots, content, copyright, digital age, download, first lady, flagging, government, hackers, hoopla, hugo awards, information, infringement, internet, law, legitimate, malicious, michelle obama, movie, music, napster, password, permission, personal, phone, recognize, ringtone, robot, share, snippets, source, stream, streamed, technical, upload, ustream, video, written, youtube

Recently, I received a notice from my Internet provider that someone in my household had downloaded a movie that was copyrighted. It was a pretty long and detailed message full of technical information that immediately indicated to me that it was automatically created. Then, I realized that, of course, this could easily be done.

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Just as hackers create malicious small software programs that can sit somewhere and watch for particular information, such as passwords, bots, as they are called, could do the same to watch for copyright infringement. This is exactly what happens.

A bot, is like a robot, however it is really software; a small program that does a very small task like watch for certain information. When it finds something, it forwards it to whoever is waiting for the information. In the case of a hacker, it might be some of your personal information. Thus, it seems simple that bots could be programmed to watch for copyright infringement. Simple, right? Not really.

A quick search on the Internet reveals that these bots are getting it wrong quite often. It appears that verifying the use of copyrighted material is not as easy as it might seem. Bots have been known to shut down video feeds on YouTube and Ustream—even a speech by First Lady Michelle Obama.

Here is one of the problems. Content is uploaded to the Internet. That content might contain something that was taken from some other content. If this is written, providing the source is usually good enough, unless a large portion is being used, then it is best to get permission.

What is happening now is that bots are recognizing snippets of music, for example, in a video and flagging it as copyright infringement—even though the snippet is not really part of the video, or intentionally added. It might just be a ringtone on a phone in the background. Usually, the result is a message that goes out to make sure the material is taken down.

The bot can cause huge problems when the material it finds is being streamed live, as in the case with Michelle Obama and with the Hugo Awards. In these cases, the stream was immediately blocked creating quite a hoopla of complaints.

Copyright issues in this digital age have been a huge problem. Laws have lagged behind technology leaving copyright owners unable to control their material. Digital files are easily copied and shared. For years, services have come and gone that facilitated the sharing of digital copyrighted content. Napster was one that created a stir over music sharing. Apple iTunes helped to bring the legitimate sale and distribution of music and later, other content.

Copyright owners have had to endure years of loss and it seems that efforts are being made to introduce other forms of control. Laws and governments may side more with the content owners, so we might have to expect more interruptions until the bots or other technologies improve.

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Archaic—where are we going?

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Bob in myTech, myWhys, Technojungle

≈ Comments Off on Archaic—where are we going?

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addition, apple, archaic, aunt, awkward, banking, bible, blog, body, brain, calculator, camera, cell phone, chip, cloud, cold war, communicating, communicator, computer, connection, convenience, credit card, cumbersome, data, destroy, digital, digital device, disconnected, earth, education, electric, equipment, experience, extrapolating, film, graphics, hacker, high school, history, human, implant, infiltrate, information, information age, institution, internet, interrupted, keyboard, manage, math, mechanical, mind boggling, money, multifunction, observation, online, organize, paper, parent, party line, passport, phone, photograph, physical, prediction, prophecies, prophecy, remember, research, revolt, rfid, scientific, screen, smartphone, steve jobs, steve wozniak, synchronize, technology, technopath, telephone, terminal, typesetting, typewriter, video, wallet, website, wrist watch

Today, I watched as somebody was attempting to access a website over the data connection on their smartphone. It was slow. Even though what he was trying to do would have been nearly unthinkable ten or twenty years ago, it was now looking archaic, particularly since someone else was getting ready to write down the website address on a piece of paper—now, that really is archaic.

Yesterday, I was sorting out some difficulties with my smartphone and computer being able to synchronize through my cloud account. This is a very useful possibility, however, my personal stuff is being stored on a server that is out there somewhere and that makes me wonder how safe it is from hackers. Probably something similar struck folks the first time they put their money in a bank.

If you have read some of my other writings or have been following my blog, you will know well that I tackle technology issues often. I think we all need to consider carefully about where the technopath is leading us. One very important question I feel we should be asking is, does it make us more human and truly improve our lives? Just about everybody I meet and talk to about technology is excited about what it can do. It is undoubtably amazing.

My purpose here is to look at what has happened in recent history, where we are, and to urge you to consider and to think. Then, I want to take a stab at extrapolating to determine where we might be going. Let me start with a few observations.

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I’ll just quickly mention that my first experience with the telephone was with the one phone we had in our house and the line we shared with neighbours. It was known as a party line. I remember when the digital calculator came along. Mechanical calculators had been used for years. Many were huge and all were too big to carry around. Digital, hand-held calculators allowed people to carry them around and use them in all situations. People seemed to lose the ability to do simple addition in their heads. My parents and aunts could add rows of figures fast on paper, usually faster than I could punch the numbers into a calculator. I was among the last of high school students who were not allowed to use calculators in math classes.

I also remember life before the personal computer. The manual typewriter reigned and typesetting and graphics were produced by industry experts with special equipment. Eventually, the typewriter became electric and one day, it got a very small screen that could show a few words that had just been typed and, most importantly, allowed one to back up and make a change to what had just been typed. I’m sure you can see where that led. The personal computer debuted from Apple, invented by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, changed the world by a huge leap.

It didn’t take long before these individual computers started to be connected together. We’ll take a jump here to mention the next major change. Many groups of connected computers existed, however, the Internet prevailed as the largest. The Internet was born during the cold war and was designed to provide a way of communicating that could not be interrupted. In other words, the Internet can’t be disconnected or destroyed. This is a characteristic we should all keep in mind. Another original segment of the Internet was used by educational, scientific and research institutions to store and share information.

There are a few other pieces to the puzzle that I should like to mention. Cameras have become digital, no longer requiring film that had to be processed before a photograph could be seen. Photography has not only become instant, but cameras have been shrinking and gaining quality. This also applies to video cameras. Most people wear a wrist watch. While the phone has morphed into a multifunctional digital computer device, I find it amazing that it is only now the wrist watch is about to be replaced. Perhaps replaced is not the correct word. Absorbed might be better. The cell phone has been absorbing many devices we use.

Here is one more and probably the most important piece of the puzzle. Our information. We are living in what has been described as ‘the information age.’ All this, the devices that have been getting absorbed, is about storing and sharing our information. As this becomes faster and easier, we find we have more of it. It is mind boggling. We need more technology to help us remember, manage, organize and use all the information we have.

Thus, here we are, most people carrying around a small device that is a computer and communicator. It is cumbersome in that, we have a very small screen to look at, a small keyboard to enter information and it often fails. Sometimes, some of us revert back to using paper in conjunction with the digital device. It is difficult for us to read large amounts of information on screen so we print it. We wear a separate device to tell time. Our pockets and our purses are filled with everything from money in the form of cash to sophisticated credit cards with computer chips in them.

I have watched as computers that used to take up entire rooms became terminals connected to a central computer, to computers that sat on or under a desk, to computers that could be held in one’s lap, to a computer/telephone/camera/multifunctional digital device that fits in one’s hand. And that, as it turns out, is beginning to look awkward, cumbersome and slow, in other words archaic.

So, where are we going?

We all love our digital devices. I like to think that we feel we can turn them off whenever we want, although this seldom happens. While they seem handy in many ways, technology always seems to find new ways to get closer to us, to infiltrate our lives even more.

My prediction, actually it is already beginning to happen, is that we may soon be looking at the ability to have our digital devices implanted in our bodies binging all the capabilities we now enjoy with our current technologies and much more, much faster and without the awkwardness and cumbersomeness we experience today. Why would somebody want to do this?

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Why would somebody want to carry a telephone around with them 242/7? Why would somebody want to be able to have complex math, complicated problems and simply be able to store and access vast amounts of information without much thought? Why not have images and video display instantly in your mind? Who would not want to get rid of their wallet full of valuable information and money that can be stolen or lost? You would not need a passport. Nobody else could use your device and you could not lose it.

The world, through the Internet, is becoming a giant brain. Sometimes I see an image of a human head that looks like the Earth and has web-like lines covering the brain. As we feed it more information about us, it grows and grows smarter about us. Why would we not want to tap into this huge vastness of human experience? Why would we even need our awkward, cumbersome physical bodies?

Why would anyone really want to do this? As with most technologies, there might be some resistance at first, however, it usually does enter our lives. Online banking is one. I remember thinking I would never trust my banking to be done online. Somehow, perhaps by charges or by convenience, I have adopted online banking. The RFID chip credit card was thrust upon us without choice. There are instances where one can’t make a purchase without a credit card. Will the day arrive when the only card accepted is a chip card? Can you see where I am going with this?

In considering these issues and situations, I have wondered if a revolt by a large group might change the path we are on? Might some people withdraw from allowing deeper infiltration of technology in their lives? Could there end up being two or more groups, such as those with implants and those without? Can technology completely replace the human brain, or is the human spirt what truly make us human and what can’t be absorbed or infiltrated by technology?

There are prophecies in the Bible about the sorts of predictions I have written about here and Bible prophecies have always come true.

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Tethered to technology—leave home without your phone

12 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Bob in myTech, myWhys, Technojungle

≈ Comments Off on Tethered to technology—leave home without your phone

Tags

access, admit, bible, brain, caught, chip, computer, concern, confusion, connect, connected, constantly, control, describe, develop, device, devices, dock, dream, e-mail, e-mail email, embed, fascinating, grab, home, house, human, inconvenience, information, internet, internet connection, leading, leash, leashed, leashing, life, lost, love/hate, metaphor, miss, naked, notion, phenomenon, phone, problem, process, prompt, prophecies, prophecy, proximity, rant, relationship, saturday, share, sharing, situation, smartphone, social characteristic, solve, suffer, tablet, technology, term, tether, tethered, tethering, text, think, TV, wallet, warn, watch, wondering, worried, worry

This morning, I left home without my phone and I didn’t care. OK, it was Saturday and, OK it was only for a couple of hours, not the whole day, but still, I was a little surprised that it did not bother me.

You can find on my blog that I have written about my love/hate relationship with technology. I have been ranting warnings and concerns to think about for years, yet I even I, get caught up. I shall admit it right here and now. I grab my phone every time I go from one room to another. I even have the phone docked next to my bed. I have been wondering about that one lately.

One day, I did leave the phone home alone for the whole day. I felt naked and lost. I worried I would miss something. What? For most of my life, I did not have any sort of technology like this. It was barely a dream. Now, I seem to feel as if I can’t get along without it.

So, I have decided to begin to call this phenomenon tethering. How far and how long can one go before they have to be near their technology? Might I miss a call, perhaps need to check my texts or E-mail. Maybe, I will need my technology to do something with it. I have a computer and a phone. I can be away from my computer for a while, but the phone seems to have a different hold on me. I wonder if I had a tablet, would I have to take it from room to room, thus carrying two devices? If my TV were gone, what would I do? I seem to recall suffering from the tethered effect with my watch. If I forget my watch now, I can always check the time with my phone.

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Here is a key. As a technology device holds access to more information that we need most often, the greater the tethered effect feeling will grasp a person.

This tether I am describing might also be described as a leash. Perhaps this would be a better term to use, as the term tethering is also used to describe a process whereby two or more devices are connected together for the purposes of sharing an Internet connection. In some ways, the term actually could apply in context of a human connection to the information contained on the device and for the purposes of connecting to the Internet. To avoid confusion, perhaps switching to the term leashing, or something else, might be a good idea. With this leash metaphor, one might ask, ‘who, or what, is leashed and who, or what, holds the end?’ This is interesting. Are you leading around your phone, or is it leading you around? It may be a complex relationship that combines both possibilities.

I think the main notion I am prompting you to think about, is wether (whether) to tether and do you have control? Do we have a need to be tethered or leashed?

We may well be developing a new human and social characteristic—the need to be constantly connected to information. With this characteristic comes the need to have an access device in very close proximity, as if on a leash, or we are on a leash to our technology device, depending on how your look at the situation. The smartphone does seem to be the handiest device. I can leave my wallet in a usual location in my house when I come home, yet, my smartphone I must carry with me where ever I go in the house. It is rather facinating, don’t you think?

Where do you think this inconvenience might lead? What about a watch? I wear my watch almost everywhere, yet, I do take it off at home. A watch may or, may not solve the problem. If we are permanently connected to the Internet, perhaps we will only need our brains for bodily functions. I have heard that some people are looking toward embedded chips. Now that harkens to the prophecies in the Bible.

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Technology—cornered again and again and again…

09 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Bob in myTech, myWhys

≈ Comments Off on Technology—cornered again and again and again…

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accuracy, adopt, aesthetic, affordable, amplifiers, amps, analog, artistic, audio, audiophile, automobile, axiom, bank, banking, beat, books, camera, car, cassette, change, cheap, color, colour, computer, computer typesetting, convenience, convenient, corporation, destroy, digital, digital photography, disappear, documentary, downgrade, drummer, e-mail, electric, email, emulate, enthusiasm, environmental, erode, ev-1, expectation, feature, features, film, general motors, government, guitar, home charge, hum, human, imaged, impeded, imperfect, imperfection, influence, instrument, life, magazines, message, music, musician, obsolete, oil, online, paper, perfect, phone, photo, piano, pixels, plate, postal, pre-recorded, predicted, printing press operator, purchase, quality, record, sing, skill, solution, sound, speculate, sporty, system, tape, technological, technology, texting, traditional, transaction, tube, tune, ubiquitous, vehicle, vinyl, who killed the electric car, writing

It was only a few short years ago I heard the news that banking could be done online. I knew I would never do it; that is, to do banking transactions using my computer at home. I think it was a combination of extra charges for paper and some other activities and the fact that, with all the technology in my life, life simply speeds up and was having trouble finding time to get to the bank. That will be the focus of another article post tentatively to be called Technology at the speed of light.

Well, the above is a great example of getting cornered. When the path of a technological change and the interest or need for that technology by a particular person meet is the point of a corner that convinces that person they need the technology and to keep using the technology from that point on, until that technology is no longer current. What I am saying is that at some point, we all get cornered by a particular technology and will adopt it into our life.

Another axiom I notice is that as a particular technology becomes ubiquitous, it intersects a point on a path of decline for an older system or technology and creates a corner whereby a person must change to the new technology. We can look at the postal system. As more companies begin to offer services online or through other technologies, the postal system is no longer used. I’m sure you can think of several examples. How often do you use the phone to get help with something?

Here is another one. Any new technology that attempts to replace an older technology or system will offer more features and greater convenience with less cost that will entice users. This does not necessary mean the new technology is a better solution.

And still another way we get cornered. As a technology usage appears and begins to improve, one will downgrade their expectations for quality to adopt it, if the new technology is cheaper, more convenient and provides more features. The point when one adopts the technology is another corner. I can remember when computers became capable of doing typesetting. We, who were working in the trade, could not imagine cheap computers improving at this ability to the point that expensive dedicated typesetting equipment would become obsolete. The same thing happened with digital photography. We could not envision a photo made up of pixels could ever be of a quality that could replace traditional photography.

There is something else about digital technology. It will often be too perfect. In the case of audio music, it no longer sounds real or human. Audiophiles, are going back to vinyl records, and tube amplifiers. Vinyl records have imperfections and tube amps hum. If you tune a piano or guitar perfectly, it won’t sound right. In the hands of a musician, who tunes by ear, the instrument sings. A computer can easily emulate a drummer, however, a human drummer never plays every beat perfectly. It varies ever so slightly. When printing press operators were given plates imaged digitally with computers, they had trouble controlling colour.

The point here is that we are used to what is often called colour—imperfections that we tune out. I did state that often a new technology isn’t as good as the technology it replaces, however, digital information is perfect, while analog information is imperfect. Humans are analog and imperfect, so we naturally prefer analog information. Sometimes, imperfections are built into a digital technology. So, we can say that there is a point where we become cornered into accepting the perfection of a digital technology, even though it may be uncomfortable.

And then there is this one. Any new technology that offers new features and conveniences will erode the aesthetic artistic skills involved in the person using it. For example, E-mail and texting has eroded the skills and abilities of people using this medium, to compose good and proper writing. This decreases the impact, clarity, value and accuracy of the message. Yet, everyone accepts it, why, you guessed it.

In a few rare instances, at technology may be impeded by corporations. An excellent example of this is the electric car, or for that matter, any replacement for an oil reliant vehicle. Many years ago, General Motors produced an electric car called the EV-1. It was sporty, performed close to a regular automobile and was affordable. In the end, all these cars were picked up and destroyed. The story is told in a documentary called ‘Who killed the electric car?” Here the cornering is interrupted and the reverse of the usual situation happens until other influences change the direction. In the case of the electric car, one might speculate that corporations and perhaps government, with a stake in the oil industry might slow the introduction of the electric car until pressure from environmental groups and other groups cause a change.

In some cases, the new will become the only way and the old is out. Try to find a pre-recorded cassette tape to purchase. When was the last time you used or even saw a camera that uses film. However, we still have books and magazines that were predicted to disappear.

It is at the point where one adopts a particular technology, either willingly with enthusiasm or out of necessity, a corner occurs whereby a person has little choice but to continue to use the technology. Technologies are always chasing us and attempting to corner us into changing the ways we live do things.

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In light of Facebook

03 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by Bob in myWhys

≈ Comments Off on In light of Facebook

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abandon, acceptance, account, acquire, acquiring, adapt, apply, asynchronous, attack, bank, banking, bbs, blender, book, brand, brochure, bulletin board service, button, canada, catalog catalogue, characteristic, chat, chatting, cheap, chronological, classroom, cold war, comfortable, comment, comments, commercial, computer, concern, confirm, control, copyright, customer, data, defacto, delete, deleting, designers, digitally, direction, disappear, disaster, discuss, discussion, disease, disseminate, dna, e-mail, education, email, employee, engage, engaging, engine, enrich, environment, equipment, erase, evade, exchange, existence, experience, extreme, face, face-to-face, facebook, fad, fail, faith, fake, familiar, footprint, force, forever, forge, forum, fund, genetic, genre, goal, google, graphic, graphical user interface, graphics, gui, hacker, hacking, history, human, humankind, image, imagine, impact, importance, inconvenience, information, initial public offering, innovation, insurance, insure, interest, interface, internet, invent, ipo, irritating, jazz, knob, knowledge, learn, learning, legitimate, life, link, linked, linkedin, listen, listening, live, locate, log, login, logo, malicious, marketing, masquerading, masters degree, medium, message, mid-west, migrating, mind, misconception, misinterpret, misrepresent, misuse, money, music, myspace, news, nomenclature, non-verbal, online, operate, organisation, organization, participate, perceive, perceived, perpetrator, person, persona, personal, phone, physical, plunging, predispose, private, program, public, publish, purchasing, purveyor, pushing, radio, real-life, reality, recording, reliable, reset, robber, scam, scammer, search, secure, security, sell, server, service, setting, situation, skin, society, source, stage, steal, store, studied, substance, suffer, surface, surgeon, survive, swing, swinging, target, technological, term, text, texture, think, thread, tighten, tinker, topic, track, traditional, transmit, trend, truth, type, u.s. migrating, uncontrollable, united states, unplug, unsubstantiated, user, value, verbal, vested, video, vintage, virtual, wasting, website, witness protection, world, world wide web, worry, www

This week, Facebook has been in the news as it is going to move from being a private company to public with an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Over the past week, I have heard many comments about Facebook and they have raised a concern that has irked me for years. It seems that people, society, accept the Internet, not for what it is, but, for what it is not. What do I mean by this? Why is Facebook so popular and worth so much money? Why aren’t people more concerned about their personal information being used for purposes they are not aware of?

Take this comment I heard on the radio this week. Someone stated something that I have heard many times before leaving me to believe that it is a generally accepted truth. People seem to think that the Internet contains information and information is knowledge. To me, as someone who has been using computers for nearly 25 years, the Internet for over 15 years and who has studied the field of education to the level of a Masters Degree, I feel I can make a comment or two on this matter in an attempt to clear up some misconceptions.

Information is not knowledge. Information is information and knowledge is what you know. Well, now that is clear. No? Then let me give you an example. I have an interest in vintage jazz music and with nearly 40 years of interest in this genre of music, I know quite a bit about it. If I were to tell you everything I know, you would have information and perhaps some of the information might become, to some degree, knowledge. However, if I were to spend time engaging you in listening to jazz music and discussing it, you would begin to have an experience with it and make it familiar to you. That is learning and learning results in you acquiring knowledge, that is, you are able to use and apply the information. There, you can see, is a huge difference.

To truly turn information into knowledge, one must engage and have experiences with it. This is the purpose of education. The richer the engagement and experiences, the better the education and the resulting ability of the learner to be able to use and apply what they know. This is a concern I and many educators have about online learning. It does not, and can not, provide the same rich learning experiences that a classroom or other real life situations can. One would never want a surgeon with an online degree to operate. Well, that is a sort of extreme example, yet, you should get the point.

It seems to be an ongoing quest of purveyors of the Internet to relate it to real-life applying common nomenclature to new purposes. Even before the World Wide Web (WWW), with only text interfaces to the Internet, people searched for ways to make users feel comfortable with the service. In the early days, we operated bulletin board services (BBSs), initially with a text interface and later with a graphical user interface (GUI). As you can see, the idea of naming the service a bulletin board makes it somewhat easier for people to become familiar with it. Most people have seen and even used a real bulletin board. Some services offered methods to type back a forth in real time. This was and still is known as chatting. Chats on particular topics were called chat rooms. Not a room at all. Not really a chat either.

When graphics began to be used to enrich the online environment, designers made images that looked like real surfaces and controls with textures and buttons and knobs. These were and are fake. Why not invent something completely different. Perhaps because, the goal is to help users be and feel familiar with the environment, an environment that does not really exist.

Consider other terms used to sell users into the online world. Adapting already familiar words to digitally represented images, allows people, or users, as they are referred to, to be able to perform tasks in the digital environment. Is a window a window? Is a page a page? Do you actually go somewhere when to enter an address. Not really, These things and places do not really exist. It is all an illusion. As users, we really need to be careful that we understand what the digital environment is, what the services are and who we are in this new world. Traditional terms and understandings take on new meanings. Often, people take on a completely different persona online.

Let me return to the example of Facebook. Facebook has literally rocketed into ubiquity in our lives and I don’t think most people understand what it really is. On the surface, it looks like a way of allowing people to connect with each other and share information. That seems like a simple service and a great contribution to society. In fact, it is referred to as a social network. Yet, a comment I heard this week reveals the true nature of Facebook. Someone pointed out that, while Facebook makes people think they are customers of a service, in reality the users are the product of Facebook. So many people freely upload vast amounts of information about themselves and all that information is stored online and the privacy of that information is supposed, by the users, to be under their control and private. The true customers of Facebook are the people who can use that information and pay for it. That means advertisers. That’s correct, Facebook is providing a service where you give them information about yourself, tell them who your friends are and what you and they like. They even ask you to ‘like’ things to make sure they know what you like and to make more connections. They then sell you to corporations for money, and a lot of money.

Facebook does state that they do not sell your information. Perhaps not directly, however, what do you call it when they have a system that can use your information to show you ‘relevant’ ads. By placing an ad through Facebook, an advertiser is paying for Facebook to make sure the ad is shown to users who would be most likely to be interested in the product or service. The ad may then be shown to your friends. So, while your information is not sold for use outside of Facebook, it is part of the structure of selling advertising. The question is, how safe is your information? Can an advertiser find out who viewed and showed interest in a particular ad and then use that information to advertise outside of Facebook?

Could it be possible that our society is quite out of control. The idea of Facebook may have been hatched in innocents as a social network, however, it is much more now. Even the term friend seems to have lost it’s true meaning. How many people actually have a hundred or even hundreds of friends. Another idea that is not grounded in reality. How many people have told you they ‘talked’ to somebody on Facebook. How did they actually talk?

Communications seems to have taken on a new sort of connotation. Communications should mean a two way exchange of information disseminated through a rich environment. By rich, I mean one that allows as much information exchanged as possible and reliably, resulting in an understanding of the message. In face-to-face exchanges, over 80 percent of the message is non-verbal. This fact should be kept in mind when we consider the Internet as a communications medium.

Facebook neither has a face, is a face, allows for face-to-face, nor is it a book. It simply does not really exist and neither does the Internet, that is in a physical sense, other than the equipment used to transmit and store the data. This is an important point as the online digital world does exist, since it does affect our physical lives.

Throughout human history we value things with physical substance. Information has traditionally taken it’s value in the physical form it exists in, such as a book. Even with the development of recording techniques, it has been the physical form of the information that has carried the value. This is changing with the world of digital due to the information residing in a non-physical form and in more than one place. This is upsetting how we deal with value, copyright and what is and what is not.

Google arose much like Facebook. As the amount of information grew, so did the importance of being able to search to find exactly what you wanted. Google was not the first search engine service, however, it soon became the most used. Supposedly, it was the best. Search services have several forms. Some catalog information for users to browse through. Others, like Google simply gather information from everywhere and present it to users for them to wade through. Even the term searching is often replaced with Googling. People often say they Google something.

Google, like Facebook, also soon discovered that advertisers would pay for the ability to advertise to a particular user who was searching for something related to their product or service. So, Google could match advertising with users who might be interested or hot customers. This is target marketing.

But, how reliable is the information you Google, or any information found through the Internet? In traditional publishing methods, information is published through reliable sources. With the Internet, anyone can publish information, even those with incorrect, misrepresented, misinterpreted, unsubstantiated information. Some even maliciously attempt to do this.

Sometimes I want to learn about a product or service and use Google to locate information about it. This usually includes some of the many forum areas where other people share information and hold discussions through threaded messages. A thread is a series of messages on a topic where people comment on an initial message and the messages that are comments on another person’s comment stays with that comment in the thread of other messages, despite it’s chronological order. Forums are similar to BBSs.

One would think that a discussion by users of a product would be a reliable place to ask what is the best one to buy. Here is an example. Suppose you want to buy a blender. You can locate a forum of other people who are either users of blenders or are interested in purchasing one. Here you will find almost endless comments and useful information about which blenders are best. However, there may be employees or other people with a vested interest in pushing one particular brand. They might be masquerading as someone they are not.

Then, there are scammers. This is not new, however, avoiding scams is a bit trickier online. Anyone can look like almost anything or anyone. One may get an E-mail from a bank stating that they need to confirm their banking information. Graphics may even include the bank’s logo and that logo could be linked to from the actual bank computer server. I have even had E-mails with links to entire websites that look like a legitimate commercial website, however, many links would not actually work on the website. More of something that is not what it really is.

The point to remember is that the Internet, Google and Facebook are here to stay. They cannot be turned off or deleted. The Internet was devised as a Cold War communications system that could survive an attack on the United States. As I have written before, the Internet is learning about us as we add more information about ourselves. In a sense, we are migrating into the virtual digital world of the Internet. Is this a good thing? This is a question we really do not seem to have time to sort out. There are always people who want to forge forward into the new with complete abandon, wether they truly understand what is happening. Change is happening so fast that, for most people, they simply follow the fads and trends.

I have always been bothered by the notion that information about me personally exists as a sort of growing footprint of my life in the uncontrollable world of the Internet. It is there forever. Is it safe? Is it secure?

Let us consider banking. Many people, including myself, use online banking services. Yet, we occasionally hear of hackers stealing information and even digital money funds. I am convinced that we only hear of a very few instances. If we truly knew how often systems storing valuable information are hacked into, we would lose faith in the systems we have built our lives around. Our society suffer some severe impacts. Of course, one might say, bank robbers have existed as long as banks. Yes, however, the point here is that the amount and value of money or information is huge and the procedure of tracking the perpetrators down so complex.

You may be asking, if I have such concerns, why do I participate in and use such services. Well, it is difficult not to. There are many reasons. The services and systems are interesting and fun to tinker with, I suppose. For most people, one reason might be, that everyone is doing it and, in some cases, it is necessary. In some ways we are forced to use computer and online services either by companies and organizations requiring one to access information this way or through traditional methods becoming more expensive.

A company might find it easier and cheaper to put their brochure online. There are many perceived benefits to this. They can include more information, more types of information, such as video, and they can make changes at any time. So, now it is up to the customer to access the information and search for what they want or need to know. This can take time. What if you need to actually talk to a real person? While most companies do include a phone number, this is becoming increasingly rare, just as physical stores, in some cases, are less abundant. Some companies can do more business online. So, you may not be able to go to a physical place to have a full communication session with a real person, but, may have to communicate through less reliable means that might take extra time, due to the asynchronous nature of these methods. A reply to an E-mail may take a day or more.

For years now, I have heard many explanations for what is happening and what the digital online world means to humankind. Perhaps, the virtual reality is becoming a reality, that our online footprint is becoming who we really are, and that may well be different than who we are in the real physical world. Many people have different characteristics online than they do as a real person. Some people would even say that we are in the process of migrating into a digital existence. That we should shed our physical skins to live forever in a virtual world. Could we still be human? This is certainly extreme and I doubt it will ever happen.

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday, and he mentioned that, throughout history, mankind swings from one direction to another. It is hard to imagine the technological trend changing or even swinging the other direction. We always seem to add more technological innovations into how we live. It is also difficult to imagine unplugging from the Internet. We are there in some way and can never be erased. I guess we could change who we are in real life, become a different person to evade our online persona. Sort of like a witness protection program. One would have to disappear.

For some people, worrying about these matters is simply of less importance than actually plunging in and letting what may happen go ahead and happen. At this stage, they seem to be leading the way for everyone else. Is it possible to participate to some degree and still maintain control? Or, is it too late? Have we lost control? What could possibly happen that could be so bad?

What about genetics and DNA? It is now becoming possible to discover what diseases one is predisposed to. This raises some huge concerns. What if insurance companies knew you were going to get a disease or die. How would they insure you? Would they refuse you altogether?

There is a growing concern about the possible misuses of personal information. Many people have had a bad experience resulting from too much of their personal information getting into the wrong hands. We really do not know who knows what about us now. We often do not know who is hacking into our information. Problems can range from irritating inconveniences to personal disasters. I won’t go too far into this right now, however, I’m sure many, even most readers have experienced an inconvenience or two.

One day I decided to check my Facebook account. My attempt to log in failed. I received a message stating that someone tried to log in and the system had determined that it was not me. I had to reset my account. The reset process did not work the first time, or the second. After wasting a couple of hours, I managed to get back into my account, determine that someone not even in Canada, but, somewhere in the mid-west of the U.S. had tried to hack into my account. I then decided to minimize what I show on Facebook, tighten up my security settings and to not use Facebook very often. I even considered deleting my account, but, remembered hearing about how much trouble other people have had trying to get their account deleted.

Facebook is not the first social network, as these services are referred to, however, for some reason, it has become the largest. I remember many people using MySpace before Facebook. I’m sure there will be more, such as LinkedIn. Even Google is in the game now. I wonder why Facebook has become the defacto? Perhaps, it is because, at this stage anyway, Facebook is about advertising masquerading as a social network. Could there be a larger, more important reason? I would not doubt it. As I have pointed out, they seem to be perceived as something that is not what they really are. We should be concerned about the acceptance of things, not for what they are, but, for what they are not.

Refs for further reading & exploration:
Facebook
Facebook — Wikipedia
Information — Dictionary
Information — Wikipedia
Knowledge— Dictionary
Knowledge — Wikipedia
LinkedIn
Google+
Facebook advertising
Personal information — Consumer Reports
How safe is PI on FB — Avoid Facebook

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Chip cards, digital signatures — more secure?

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by Bob in myWhys

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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A few years ago, I began to hear about the new secure chip technologies. They were coming soon. Just like with online banking and other online monetary exchanges, I could not for the life of me see how they could be secure. I vowed, with online banking, that I would never submit to the activities. I did the same with the idea of using chip cards.

It is turning out to be an interesting exercise to watch how these new technologies are adopted and become ubiquitous in our lives and society. It is like we are being controlled—that we can be convinced to do almost anything. Was it the extra charges for using personal, face-to-face banking or simply the convenience in our ever growing hectic lifestyle that has swayed us into acceptance? Online financial activities are so common now that hardly anybody questions the security aspects. Why don’t we hear more about the problems with electronic financial exchanges?

So, what about chip cards? I wanted to hold off as long as possible, but, credit cards are a different ball game than something like changing the way you do something. Credit cards expire and then you have no choice. But wait, some were too eager to get me using the new chip technology.

One day, I received a phone call from MasterCard stating that my card number, a number I had for about 35 years, was within a range of numbers that they said “might have been compromised.” They had simply gone ahead and terminated my card. I had to cut up the card and I would receive a new one within two weeks. What was I to do in the meantime, I asked? No card! And, you guessed it, the new card was a chip card. I used it for a few weeks and then it expired and I got a new one. Go figure!

So, I had a PIN number to look after now. The first time I used the card, I must have seemed like a dummy. “What, I don’t have to sign? What is safer about that?”, I asked. Soon, I learned that usage at stores can vary. I hand my card over and the cashier (?) hands me back a machine with my card sticking out of it. Careful, misreading the tiny screen and it’s instructions can result in failure and a waist of more time.

Some stores don’t even utilize the technology and opt for a digital signature pad. Now, I am a south paw (lefty) and it is really difficult for me to sign one of these pads, especially when the placement of the pad never accounted for the angle at which most left-handed people write. Absolutely anyone could sign my name better than I do. Slowly, I am starting to develop a new version of my signature, one for use on a digital signature pad. Of course, there are some stores still doing it the old fashioned way, with a slip of paper. I still worry that my digital signature, now scribbled and digitized many times into many systems, might get stolen one day. Does my digital signature get saved somewhere?

Today, my wallet is bursting with chip cards, credit cards, bank cards, and I have a new problem that I think about nearly every time I use one of the cards. What is the PIN number for this one? Unlike some people, I have opted to use a different PIN for each card. My logic tells me that if someone gets my wallet and my PIN, they will have it all, that is, if I have changed all the PIN numbers to be the same code. Thus, I have the numbers kept in a secret place that I have to check before I use the card. But, what if somebody finds my list? Then they will have it all anyway. Stealing a PIN does not seem that difficult, since the keypads are used out in the open with no plastic guards, or anything to stop somebody from seeing what buttons you press. Am I to cup my hand over the keypad like we used to do when we wanted to hide something we were writing in school, like a test?

Isn’t a hand written signature on paper more secure? More authentic? I am always wondering if there is another way. What about fingerprint? Then someone would need to steal both my card and my finger. What about iris recognition? They would have to get my eye too.

I think chip cards are better for the stores than a slip of paper. They certainly do not seem better for me.

There is much more to this business of converting to using chips. See — http://www.spychips.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrITx7_tTT0 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spychips

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Preamble

I have many interesting activities in my life—so many that I have sometimes neglected my blogs. Since myBobLog is my original and first blog, it is here that I endeavour to continue my blogging journey once again. I started w while back with a new theme.

Then I wrote about a project of growing my hair to donate to cancer patients. I had a fundraising page that I linked to. I was going to write quite a bit about my return to playing music with my cornet and how had a dream come true by acquiring a particular cornet; and was also going to write about the two jazz bands I was running. In fact, I begun websites for them too.

Then my Essential Tremor condition worsened and I have had to resign for the bands.

Next came the great Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. This curtailed my music activities even more—to the point I can barely play me cornet.

Thus I am currently focusing on my books and my  Technojungle Safari website. I suppose I have been blaming my blogging neglect on the writing and editing of my upcoming book. I have even postponed work on my photography.

Don’t worry about the details of all these projects and activities. I will make sure the mud settles as soon as I get a better handle on how I want to set up things here on this blog to start with.

It will take some time, so stay tuned and be patient.

This Preamble hints at only somme of what I hope to write about in the future.

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