Have a look at Neill’s new blog. Soapbox free with every read.
Check out Finola, I like her blog.
What good reviews? Bribe bloggers.
So apparently Phil is the next Ze. Hmmm, I dunno. Ze used to sprinkle his videos with amazing stuff that would really make you think. Phil has the sarcastic commentary down for sure but I’m still waiting to be wowed by new insights and where are the songs?
Get your Justice D.A.N.C.E. T-Shirt here.
And here’s the vid:
Outsiders speech from The Field:
Mobile, Email, IM, Bebo, LinkedIn, Facebook, even Twitter. Technology allowed us to connect with more people outside our traditional social groupings and allowed us to stay connected with all these new people. The bonds might not be as strong as those bonds with close friends and associates but each connection still taxes our time. Now we connect with people via email and IM and we’re adding more and more to those lists. MSN for years had an upper-limit of 150 people you could add. If you wanted to add anymore than that you had to cull your list. They got rid of that a few years ago and I think I have about 250 on my MSN list now with another 250 on Yahoo! IM and AIM. If I sign into Meebo now (which manages all my Instant Messaging accounts) I get a few messages from people straight away, sometimes I could have 20+ conversation windows open.
The trouble with many of these services, especially email and IM are they have to be answered, right? It’s rude not to respond to a text or an email or an IM and then there’s the guilt. Blackberrys have made this worse. They are evil. They create more email and just continue on the ping pong game instead of solving it. Programmes like Getting Things Done create new artificial rules on how to deal with the email onslaught but all they are really are new ways of filing the emails. You still need to deal with them and when you answer one email, you’ll get another. That’s why lots of people declare email bankruptcy. Same goes for blogs. As the numbers of visitors to blogs grow and the numbers of comments grow, the more you see people turn comments completely off as they just cannot manage and moderate all the comments. This happens especially once the trolls move in or what you discuss is in some way controversial.
There’s a number called the Dunbar Number which is derived from a theory that we as humans can form about 150 proper friendships or relationships with people and our brains can’t handle more than that. From the Wiki entry:
Dunbar’s number, which is 150, represents a theoretical maximum number of individuals with whom a set of people can maintain a social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person. Group sizes larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced policies and regulations to maintain a stable cohesion
Accidental or otherwise, features in the same technologies that are overloading us might help us out with this overload too. Status messages in GMail chat and MSN IM mean we can put quotes, song titles or statuses in that space. MSN is the one that really promoted this and you could actually get a summary of what people were up to without having to message them. It really was just a social hack but it worked well.
Broadcast is back. In the age of “conversation” and “markets are conversations” and “social objects”, where blogging is about a personal communication with people, it seems that because technology increased our native Dunbar number, we are failing to keep the relationships going and so services like Jaiku and Twitter are working on the status broadcast idea: In 140 characters or less, tell your collective contacts what you are doing or up to. It’s a broadcast and there is zero expectation for a reply.
Facebook too has a status, which Bebo also adopted. The status is probably one of the most useful things about Facebook and allows you a very very quick summary of what your friends are up to or are thinking. Facebook too gives the voyeur like “News Feed” which allows you to see what those connected to you are doing on Facebook. New photos, statuses, comments they leave n other profiles, new blog posts etc. etc.
This is the News Feed from my profile, just for statuses:
I think these type of newsfeeds will become standard on most social networking sites and we might see them also become features on other communication services. There doesn’t seem to be another way of managing connections so well, without directly messaging people and starting the overload once again. I’ve gotten messages over my status and I’ve read the status of some people and digested the information. I know about what they are up to or their thoughts on the match last night without having to start an email or an IM. I do it at my pace and they announce at their pace. Of course another easier method to handle all of this is to just cull all your contacts. As a communications addict, I’m not sure can I do that.
Una will crawl over glass for us, this time she read Hot Press so we don’t have to. Depressing.
Dickie Rock reviews this week’s singles. On Craig David’s ‘Hot Stuff’, he says, “I love the rhythm, he’s a great singer.”
Uhm. Jesus.
Michele points out GMail doesn’t help you if you want to track abusive emailers.
Open Coffee Galway is on today. Go!
Yeah, what is Arcade Fire up to? Maybe they’ll give away the Radiohead album for less than free?
The new Sony Bravia ad with stop-motion clay rabbits. Now it makes more sense.
Did anyone know the guy who co-founded (Larry Sanger) but now loathes Wikipedia gave a talk in Dublin recently? MP3 of his talk here.
Is the nanny state mentality stopping progress and innovation? Peter Cochrane is asking.
Lethal Bizzle Police on My Back:
You might like it unless you heard where it was cloned from.
The Clash – Police On My Back
No Country For Old Men is on the list though. Woo. The one I’m looking forward too is:
This year’s Film Concert is the unique performance of the Beth Custer Ensemble from San Francisco, as they accompany the 1929 Russian silent film, “My Grandmother”. It offers a special opportunity to view cinema at its best, with a Live soundtrack matching the amped up energy of the film.
A few years back for something, not the filmfest, Lambchop did the live score for an old silent movie in the Opera House. It was fantastic. When I was in Paris, the er, 4th last time, I saw a live orchestra do the score for a Harold Lloyd film. It was fantastique.
(They supported sigur Ros before)
Go see them if you like their music.
Privacy as we know it is dead and we can’t get it back. This delights corporations and Governments but at the same time they only enjoy you having lack of privacy. Will google say where your GMail is stored, will they say what exactly they are telling advertisers about you? No. Will the Government disclose what they are planning to do with your taxmoney or to do with your freedoms? No. In fact they are trying to destroy the whole idea of Freedom of Information, even the Information Commissioner says so. So all this privacy does not mean global transparency.
Some thoughts on aspects of privacy:
Google of course does not disclose ALL your data to advertisers or others and what they mean is, they won’t disclose your name and address or IP address but with their fantastic processing power and sharp minds, the following scenario is a nice sleight of hand from them:
Well, we can’t tell you who he is or what his exact address is but we can say that he seems to spend a lot of time looking at this map location on Google maps. He has done searches for “playgrounds near East Douglas” so there is a strong possibility he is there, which corrolates with the map. He has a satellite dish on the house since he has searched a few times on how to tune in extra channels on the sky box. He’s married and his wife’s birthday is probably around June 5th since he googled for “wife birthday present” on June 1st this year and last year and then Googled for a florist too as well as “lines of poetry that a wife will like”. He has a 1985 Golf GTi, judging by his searches for parts information and tips on fine tuning engines. Oh look, that looks like a GTi on the map doesn’t it, just there?
I’m sure my example will probably have more people from Google Dublin harass me once again, lovely company to deal with.
“Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.†– Cardinal Richelieu. The more you know about a person and their every goings on, the more you can work with moulding the public conscious about them. Look at how the Phoenix Magazine works or the other tabloids. Imagine handing over all your once-private details and telling them to write a few headlines. Imagine a bent cop or someone in the social welfare office doing this. Donegal shows it happened as does Dolores O’Mahony. we don’t need tabloids anymore, a few bitter bloggers scouring everywhere for information on people and plenty of innuendo on a person can go out. We all accept identity fraud happens, can we accept it is easier than ever for some headcase to get all nutso and make you the subject of a gossip blog?
Ah yes, the general arrogant and ignorant attitude of a monopoloy and a diversion from the actual issue. The fact that people are slow to move from using one service to another means that monopolies often use lack of action of a customer as justification for doing whatever the hell they want. “Our prices are more expensive yet most people are still with us, this shows we offer a great service and our customers want us to do whatever we want.” Being the monopoly should make you realise that the amount of data you have all in one place is quite an honour and a burden and you should proactively work on making sure it is safe as well as being transparent on how you are handling it and what you do with it. I haven’t seen any corporation or company or Government acknowledge such a thing. Telling a customer to piss off when they complain about the service, free or not is sad and will bite you in the ass one day.
But maybe it doesn’t matter afterall? The Bebo generation has done more to mess with privacy than anything before them, even corporations and Governments. Photos, antics, comments, tonnes of personal information stuck up on Bebo, on Facebook, on mySpace on blogs scattered around the earth. Not caring where it is and not caring about trying to reel it all back in. The adults are going ape over this but the kids just shrug and go “what are you going to do like?”. Perhaps if all this information is out there from everyone, nobody will give a damn about the personal life of anyone. It’d be nice for politicians not to be closeted for a start and it would be nice if businesses didn’t have to fire staff for being stupid because god knows it’s not some rare quality. And then there’s the whole breakups being done publicly on blogs.
Sex tapes? Pammy and Tommy started it all. Then there was the Paris one, the Colin one, the Britney one and the who cares anymore? one. Nudey pics, everyone really. It also seemed to become a sport for Paris, Britney, Lindsey Lohan and so many more of the female celebs to exit a limo legs first and apart, showing off what should not be shown off. Now we’ve all seen too much and so when Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical had nude pics of her taken and then got online, Disney, the most prudish of companies, didn’t fire her. A star of a kiddies movie franchise (High School Musical) did NOT get fired over this. She would have been blacklisted a few years ago but not now. Disney came out and gave her their support.
A friend of mine told me he saw some docu on privacy, on Google Video as it happens and a detective in the docu pointed out that the information you can grab off Bebo today, he would have had to pay a few grand for in the 80s. Same goes for Facebook and loads of other places. But if that information, lots of it which can be used to blackmail people is in the public domain, will blackmail exist in the future? How about if it was known someone had an STD? Bad for them right, but good for any future sexual partners? Judges in the Norris case way back when said public health issues (filthy homosexuality) overruled privacy issues so that’s why they could jail men for having sex with men. This is an interesting twist. If we’re all going to be contestants in 24 hour reality shows, perhaps the information overload and scandal overload will mean people can’t be embarassed and made fun of? “So what, you failed your driving test twice.” “Wow, nudey pics of me, how rare when nude is the new black.”
And that’s good right? I got a D in Honours Irish, not a C like I said. No, I worked as a general office clerk, not a team leader. Yes I was convicted of driving down the wrong way of a motorway after builders flirted with me at the Galway Races. Is this good? Surely lack of privacy is making us a more honest society? There are no secrets, only information we do not yet have. Except for those databases in the hands of the private companies and the Governments of course. Is privacy allowing them to be not so honest with things? Behind their big safe walls while we, the people, disclose everything?
A black kid gets her wrist broken by a white security guard in her school because she dropped a cake. The school has her charged. The video a student takes on his cameraphone hits the net. Case closed? Student being tasered. Cops being bad cops, Governments clamping down on their people in Asia. For the greater good? But what about when the video a guy takes of a fellow male student crying for some unknown reason hits the net and a million people laugh at him and make parodies. Like that Star Wars kid. How do you allow one and stop the other? Or do we need to wait until humans are a little less cruel?
Great for missing kids. Not so great if you’d rather be left alone. How do we opt out of an always connected, always recording world? We can’t, unless we want to move to the country, deep deep inside rural Ireland. Will we have “digital recording free zones”?
There’s always a backlash with these things, will there be one for privacy? Will people do their best to protect their kids and prevent them going online and using Bebo and whatever else is there? Will they have specialist services running to monitor mentions of their kids and auto-legal-letter anyone that mentions their kids? Will there be something like the DMCA but for concerned parents worried about the privacy of their kids? I bet there’s money to be made in that. A lot of it. Encourage the liberalisation of prrivacy. Create a service, ready to roll out when the backlash happens that is built for cloaking all information and preventing it getting out. Sell to an anti-virus company, privacy will be their next business and DRM will be back with an almighty vengeance. Make sure that your kids can’t pass photos from their phones to others without going through your pre-approved monitoring system. Same goes for moving stuff from their home computers and laptops to the net. Have software running that scans for what could be potential nude photos. Install all this, spend a fortune and have your kid route around it all within minutes because they are more savvy about this stuff than you and always will be.
Probably one where we have a lot less of it and where Governments and corporations will have it in abundance. To protect it you will probably have to take out privacy insurance the same way you have to take out private health insurance now. The Governments don’t seem to bothered about your privacy do they and the corporations are helping to make the public believe in the perverted mantra that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about. Oh right, was I meant to end this on a happy note?
Dart safety notice gone wrong.
So it seems eircom knew since March about that wifi issue.
Some excellent covers of Radiohead songs.
Germany says no to Google and DoubleClick.
Update: Via Matt:
go to amazon.co.uk
type the words tedious wanker into the search box
no quotes
See what happens
Oh and Matt wants to start lolhorses.
The latest Dove ad:
In a convo with Seán:
Watching you guys is not good for me! Every time i see a legal notice or threat its a huge party!
Pretty true alright after today.
It seems the mess after Monster.com employee John Burns, Monster’s Business Development Manager in Ireland, spammed IT@Cork members is getting better. Now Monster has apparently threatened legal action against Michele Neylon for blogging about it. Also, someone from a Monster IP address is going around the place defending spamming and personally attacking anyone that talks about Monster. Heya Monster. Guess what? Also those bloggers who are talking about this all have good Google rankings. If more people link to Michele or Tom’s posts with “Monster Ireland”, oh, I dunno, that would be even worse PR for Monster, would it not? Spamming Tom or Michele is bad, but both of them? Oh dear. That’ll be bothersome.
Also, I submitted Michele’s post to Digg, if you want to bring it to the attention of that hoarde of nerds. 🙂 Climbing up the DIGG ranks too.
Update: Now with audio and more twists!
Welcome to the Internet and people that don’t take shit.
Update: They’ll be writing songs about it next. Oh yeah, they have.
Update: And now there’s a music version of the Voicemail.
Come the next election, the new kids on the block in terms of those who will vote for the first time, will be a generation who have not known what a world without the web is. It was there before they were born, like the sky. Imagine a generation where radio and TV were new and imagine trying to get your head around it while the younger ones figured it out in seconds. This is who we are. The web is here and is already strongly influencing the next generation of voters where they spend more time on Bebo than reading newspapers and listening to the radio. Friending, IMing, knowing exactly the moods and thoughts and intimate photos of their friends is the de rigeur. It is time for our generation to adapt to them, they won’t adapt to us and they seem to be making that obvious more and more.
This new generation doesn’t care about privacy, doesn’t care about the way things were done, they are used to doing less and getting more for it and they don’t carry the fears we still have from mass emmigration and unemployment to what people think of them. This is the generation that doesn’t care if they lose their Bebo password, they’ll just create a new profile and start again, they don’t really care about losing their mobile or changing number, they’ll simply use the knowledge of the group to get back most numbers. Their own lives seem to be structured like the net, if one node with information goes down (i.e. lose a mobile) the rest of the Net will keep going and they can restore from that. Fascinating to see and I doubt many people can figure out how this works, nevermind those in the political environment.
We saw what a total bag o’crap Rock The Vote was and we saw that voter turnout is still appalling despite old wrinkly people trying to lecture people using YouTube. We need people like Danah Boyd over here, we need anthropologists and sociologists to come onto the web and mix with the digital kids and figure out how to energise them and get them interested in the political and democratic system over here. Nuke all the childish “Yoof” wings of the parties to start with. They’re a new generation trying to be the old generation and already serverely disconnected from what their own generation want and are interested in and they grow more disconnected each day they live the youth wing life. They are mini-me versions of the existing people we all despise.
Perhaps people should figure out how to turn the influence experienced in small tech communities on Twitter and other areas into every day life, where people will trust the judgement of others and listen to their breakdowns of party policies. If 20 people buy nokia tablets because of one or two people, can that be transferred into having party neutral “analysts” that others can tune into too? Can a local politician use their blog to engage more and more and build up a following there that they couldn’t using traditional media? And then turn that readership into leaders of small cells of people that can assert strong influence on voters? Pyramid scheme politics?
I’m not sure what exactly will be the way to do it, but the way politics is done will have to change because even if the existing parties fight for the status quo, someone will come along and tap into the new generation and the disaffected and suddenly they’re a powerhouse.
See, even babies can use the iPhone:
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