Tea with Tammy

South Korea IP World Leader...for Now

2004-09-16T22:02:00.000-04:00

Did you know that South Korea is the most connected, high-speed Internet country in the world? The Globe and Mail recently reported that in The World's Most Connected Place:

Almost three of every four South Korean households had a high-speed Internet connection at the end of 2003, according to a June report by Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. That's double the No. 2 country, Canada, with 37 per cent of households, and more than three times the United States, with 23 per cent....

But there's a dark side, as well -- Internet addiction is a problem, particularly among young people. In one strange case, a 24-year-old man died playing computer games for 3½ days in a row in a PC baang, as Internet cafés are known. A survey this year cited by the Korea Herald indicated that almost half of the 582 students that responded considered themselves addicted to the Internet.

The government created the Centre for Internet Addiction and Counselling in 2002 to deal with the problem and, in June, it co-ordinated a countrywide campaign to encourage healthier Internet use.

It's likely only a matter of time before Canada follows suit. The Internet has certainly become more and more ubiquitous since its birth in 1969 as ARPANET.

This story also reminds me of an earlier blog posting some months back, Canada's Wired, in which I predicted that we may well be breeding a new generation of "info-addicts". One reader clearly thought the idea was ludricous and made a most salacious comment. Perhaps the prediction wasn't so outlandish after all...

Discuss

Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere

2004-09-15T20:07:00.000-04:00

According to the official release note, Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs is an online, edited collection that "explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs."

The essay, Culture Clash: Journalism and the Communal Ethos of the Blogosphere is a particularly insightful commentary on how blogging is gradually emerging as the "new journalism", challenging "old-timers" in the business to rethink traditional reporting practice as newspaper readers age and pass on and "their children and grandchildren, Generation Y’s 16- to 24-year-olds who spend $200 billion annually, want to interact with the news, not merely to passively receive it."

I must admit I fall into the aging category and cannot start my day without the daily newspaper which arrives at my doorstep at 6:00 a.m. every morning. Then again, even more so lately, I've noticed that the cover headlines no longer surprise since I've already "read them" on Google News the night before. Incentive to abandon print and switch completely to digital news? Not right now. And I suspect, as age brings on deteriorated eyesight, the urge to squint at a flickering screen will diminish even more. Yet the blogging itch remains as I type these words and anticipate more digi-reading. Perhaps there is a place for both print and digital media.

Discuss

Imagine Life without the World (Wide Web)

2004-09-14T16:08:00.000-04:00

"Beware of the End of the World (Wide Web)," says Intel according to a recent Forbes.com news brief.

Come again?

You mean no more Internet? The information superhighway that has quickly driven most of us into data junkies?

Alas, the end is near according to industry heavyweights Intel, HP, Cisco and AT&T Corp who believe that the original infrastructure could collapse as traffic builds on the WWW and "millions of new computer users from developing nations begin to sign on."

Intel is working with industry consortium partners to help avoid this by introducing a layer of network services that will "overlay" the existing infrastructure and help cope with additional traffic better.

But are bumpy "tar pits" the answer to cracks in a highway? Or does a crumbling foundation need to be rebuilt from scratch in order to avoid future pitfalls? If you think about it, it wasn't too long ago that we lived without the Internet. Let me clarify that: If you're over 20, you know what I mean. Everyone else these days likely obtained their WWW driving license long before they learned how to speak.

Discuss

Offshoring IT

2004-09-09T13:54:00.000-04:00

According to today's Silicon.com special report on offshoring, based on a poll of 145 executives by Indian-based outsourcer Wipro, "over 30 per cent of companies are planning to offshore their IT infrastructure within the next 12 months and the same number are looking into the idea." Is this just a mad fad or the face of the future?

Discuss

Top Resources for Tea Drinkers

2004-09-08T18:14:00.000-04:00

Finally! "News about tea for tea drinkers worldwide"! Just for Tea Lovers is a neat blog and website that offers the latest, interesting news tidbits regarding tea and its applications. Check it out!

Discuss

Finnair Checks-in on your Cell

2004-09-07T15:35:00.000-04:00

The cellphone is increasingly becoming the "must-have accessory" for everyone from the trend-setting teenager to the jet-setting business traveller.

Starting in October, Finnair is launching a new program, open to the airline's Finnair Plus cardholders, that will allow passengers with only carry-on luggage to go directly to the departure gate after arriving at the airport.

How is this possible? What about navigating zigzag roped-off lines, standing, stopping, and standing again in interminably long queues for check-in?

All can be bypassed with Finnair's novel use of SMS, or Short Message Service, for check-in, which is being billed as "a first in international air travel" and "the first worldwide to work on all mobile phone models and all networks without charges."

As reported by Associated Press and Informationweek.com:

Once passengers have activated the service, they will automatically receive a check-in text message from Finnair before a flight with details, including the seat number. A passenger need only send a reply to confirm the seat assignment.

The text message service will apply to all international flights leaving from Helsinki and Stockholm.

Yet another reason to keep that cellphone charged all the time...

Discuss

Offshoring a Sure Thing?

2004-09-02T13:33:00.001-04:00

"Don't shoot the messenger" advises Fran Foo, features editor of ZDNet Australia, regarding the recent debacle in offshoring hitting the medical community in the UK:

Facing an acute shortage of medical transcribers, eight hospitals in London decided to outsource transcription services. Instructions and letters were dictated into digital voice recorders and the files forwarded to a company called Omnimedical, which would then send the recordings to a team of transcribers in India.

....The mistakes in the transcriptions were so serious, it prompted the Association of Medical Secretaries to go public with spokesman Michael Fiennes citing several horrific examples in the Daily Mail: below knee amputation became "baloney amputation" and phlebitis (vein inflammation) left leg was changed to "flea bite his left leg".

Ouch! Cases like this certainly make you wonder if offshoring is really worth it. Notwithstanding, technology is cutting across cultural, linguistic and geographic boundaries, accelerating us towards a more global business marketplace. Are you ready?

For an excellent overview on the subject based on recent press clippings, check out the South Asian Journalists Association's regularly updated roundup on offshoring and decide for yourself.

Discuss

Sushi Specs Take Over Prime Pencil Real Estate

2004-09-01T14:17:00.000-04:00

Now here's a novel "comcultech" (just made that up for "communication/culture/technology") story reported by Ananova:

Imagine surprising your dinner party with a handy pair of chopsticks, tucked surreptitiously behind your ears. Only trouble is, if you're farsighted, you'll likely be chopping thin air than sushi. Still confused? Well the dinner conversation piece de resistance I'm referring to are the new pair of glasses, designed by a German company, that "come apart to double as chopsticks". If you have to see it to believe it, the Ananova story offers a compelling photo.

Fusion, function, and conversation fodder all rolled into cutting-edge frames! No more looking for lost pencils tucked abstractly behind the ear. Chopsticks anyone?

Discuss

Go Ahead...Ping my PAN!

2004-08-31T12:28:00.000-04:00

According to the July 1st edition of the Economist, the latest "skinny on IT" is Microsoft's patent of the human body as a computer network:

US Patent 6,754,472, issued to the company on June 22nd, is for a “method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body”.... As the patent puts it, “The physical resistance offered by the human body can be used in implementing a keypad or other input device as well as estimating distances between devices and device locations. In accordance with the present invention, by varying the distance on the skin between the contacts corresponding to different keys, different signal values can be generated representing different inputs.” In other words you can, in theory, type on your skin.

"Near field intrabody communication" is not a new concept, but with Microsoft's recent patent, a Personal Area Network (PAN) could evolve into reality in the near future.

It appears Western science is only beginning to tap into the Eastern wisdom of the sages, who have known for centuries that the human body is powered by divine energy (generated by the soul), as well as by physical energy (generated by the consumption and digestion of food, water and supplements) and even absorbed electricity.

Each one of us is a walking, solar panel unit, if we but knew it.

Discuss

Emerging Diversity in the Blogosphere

2003-12-29T16:42:00.000-05:00

Will blogging bring us closer together, facilitating constructive dialogue, or will it tear humanity further apart, accentuating our cultural differences?

Is this global village emerging in the blogosphere expanding our collective consciousness, or merely shrinking us further into our individual, pre-existing biases?

Those of you who have been following my blog will know by now that I am researching the answers to these questions.

Preliminary findings (as presented recently to an astute gathering of McLuhanites at the University of Toronto) indicate there is more than meets the eye in a superficial Google search on the blogosphere:

Emerging Diversity in the Blogosphere: Some examples

Allison Kaplan Sommer – An Unsealed Room [leads to links to Jewish blogs]

Al-Muhajaba’s Islamic Blogs

Blogs x Iranians

Sinosplice – The Web’s Definitive China Blog List

Sulekha – Indian Blogs [recent addition to list]

Weblog Services for Diverse Users in the Blogosphere

diaryhub.com – Blogging for Thai users

Persianblog.com – The first Weblog service for Persian users

Blogalization – Translation tool

Blog Directories

By location:

Blogmatrix – 84,169 sites listed as of December 10, 2003

Blogwise – 11,331 sites listed as of December 10, 2003

Globe of Blogs – 9,217 sites listed as of December 10, 2003

By location and language:

Eatonweb Portal – 15,192 sites listed as of December 10, 2003

Blog Popularity Ranking Websites

By language: (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish)

Bloogz – World Wide Blog

Spanish only:
Bitacoras.net
Bitacoras.com

Italian only: (also developing international blog aggregator)
Blog Notes

More leads are more than welcome. Let's discuss.

Discuss

Indian Blogosphere

2003-12-12T15:03:00.000-05:00

You know those Google ads at the top of this page? They're pretty smart. Don't discount them.

Thanks to one ad, discovered Sulekha, which claims to be the most popular Indian blogging site in the world, among other achievements.

Now what would be really nice is if they listed a running ticker on how many bloggers are hosted by Sulekha daily, which at a cursory glance at the site, doesn't appear to exist. Would be good to know for my research on the diverse microspheres living within the global blogosphere. More on some preliminary findings to be posted shortly....

Discuss

Web Searching: Set Your Sights on SiteLines

2003-12-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I attended a seminar conducted by Rita Vine at a conference in Montreal...or was it Vancouver? Anyways, she had some intriguing insights to share about effective web searching using search engine tools. Somehow got subscribed to her e-newsletter, and just the other day, clicked on one of the "More" links to discover that lo and behold, she's now blogging her tips at SiteLines! Smart lady. Thanks Rita.

Discuss

The Next Media-Savvy Generation

2003-11-21T13:05:00.000-05:00

CBC.ca reports that 75% of Canadian kids watch TV everyday according to a recent study conducted by ERIN Research for the Canadian Teachers' Federation, with money from the National Crime Prevention Centre at Justice Canada. No surprise there.

756 students in Grades 3 to 10 from 37 school boards across the country participated in the survey, representing 122 public schools in all provinces and territories. Students from urban and rural areas, French and English backgrounds, and public and Catholic school districts were surveyed.

The survey was conducted last spring. The margin of error is 1.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

What does shock me however, from their findings, is that a whopping 48% of Canadian children have their own television set and 26% have their own computer and Internet connection! We're talking about kids between the ages of 8-15 here! Talk about being media-savvy!

Discuss

Sick of Spam!?

2003-11-20T16:58:00.000-05:00

Brad Stone's recent Newsweek magazine article on Soaking in Spam profiles a 32-year-old "spamperneur" who is proud of contributing towards more than 50% of email today attributed to spam. (Many thanks to Derrick for this tip). From a marketing and cost-analysis perspective, I understand the motivation. After that, I am tempted to start cursing...

Matthew Fordahl's recent Associated Press story on Spammers Now Clogging Blogs, Cell Phones unfortunately rings too close to home.

For the past few weeks, my cell has been terrorized by repeated calls from the same phone number. A quick Google search revealed that I am not the only one. Back in August this year, Lightly Toasted blogs about 888-682-4288, receives several comments, and discusses his reaction.

Aside from complaining to my cell phone provider, demanding a refund for money wasted on this number (?), and having it blocked, am wondering what my other options are. Suggestions? Have since learned it is illegal in Canada to spam cell phones... wonder if this is true as it would be good to know what our rights are.

In the meantime, by blogging about it, hopefully, any other unsuspecting recipients will be more aware and can take solace in knowing they are not alone. Agree with Howard Rheingold's concern about such new forms of spam freezing the revolution of public discourse through always-on communciation in its tracks. Perhaps, however, we can use the same technology (cell, IM, blog comments) to expose intrusive spam and halt it in its tracks. Or maybe I'm dreaming...

Discuss

Want to Hear Something New? Pick up the Phone

2003-11-07T23:19:00.000-05:00

According to a recent University of California at Berkeley study, 18 million terabytes of new information flowed through electronic channels in 2002. A terabyte is a unit of computer data storage equal to a million megabytes, or roughly the text content of a million books. Newly created information is distributed in four storage media – print, film, magnetic, and optical – and seen or heard in four information flows – telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet. Guess which medium is the most preferred for transmitting new information 98% of the time?

If you guessed the telephone, you're right. Here's the breakdown:

* 17.3 million terabytes ----> Telephone calls
* 400,000 terabytes ---------> Email
* 73,500 terabytes -----------> original Radio and TV broadcasts
* 170 terabytes ---------------> the Web

There's lots of other goodies uncovered in this extensive study which I will refer to from time to time here. For now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear the phone ringing...

Discuss

Just a Little "Tea-ed" Off

2003-11-06T15:24:00.000-05:00

Ananova reports today:

A man who tried to hijack a car in Massachusetts had hot tea poured over him by the female driver.

Mark Corkery was also hit with a mug after jumping into Jean Ridino's Mercedes-Benz in Mashpee.

The 32-year-old was trying to get away from the scene of an accident involving his own vehicle and a Jeep.

The Jeep lost its fuel tank in the impact.

Ridino, 57, said: "I said, 'Get out of my damn car now'. He never even bled. I thought he was a robot.''

Corkery was quickly arrested but tried to escape by smashing a window in a police car. Mashpee police Chief Maurice Cooper said: "He had a bad day. It was a comedy of errors on his part.''

Corkery's being held on $10,000 (about £6,000) bail after appearing in Falmouth District Court, reports the Boston Herald.

Pity. The spilled tea of course...

Discuss

Blogosphere: McLuhan's Global Village?

2003-11-05T15:57:00.000-05:00

As a communications specialist, my research interest lies in the interplay between communication, culture and technology. The emergence of the blogosphere as a social, political, and cultural phenomenon, in particular, intrigues me. Even the term "blogosphere" is still a very new addition to our lexicon, thanks to William Quick who coined the term on January 1, 2002 at 12:54 a.m in his Daily Pundit blog.

I intend to research, document and examine diverse voices emerging in the blogosphere from all parts of the world, based on a survey of blogs listed at Brigitte Eaton's eatonweb portal and other sources. Many thanks to Mindy and to Nui for helping me to embark on this journey with their innocent leads on diverse blogging. Additional leads are most welcome.

Will blogging bring us closer together, facilitating constructive dialogue, or will it tear humanity further apart, accentuating our cultural differences? Is this global village emerging in the blogosphere expanding our collective consciousness, or merely shrinking us further into our individual, pre-existing biases?

Discuss

ElectAura-Net: Future Human Network?

2003-11-04T15:52:00.000-05:00

According to Technology Research News:

Researchers from NTT Docomo Multimedia Labs and NTT Microsystem Integration Labs in Japan have demonstrated a 10-megabits-per-second indoor network that uses human bodies as portable ethernet cables.

The network, dubbed ElectAura-Net, is wireless, but instead of using radio waves, infrared light, or microwaves to transmit information it uses a combination of the electric field that emanates from humans and a similar field emanating from special floor tiles....

The system could eventually provide high-speed wireless communications among portable electronic devices whose positions constantly change. "The main aim of the system is to provide [a] new indoor communication infrastructure for [the] coming wearable and ubiquitous [computing] era," said Masaaki Fukumoto, a researcher at NTT Docomo Multimedia Labs.

With intrabody communication on the horizon, it may just be a matter of time before we can symbiotically communicate with others in a personal area network.

Who ever said there's no such thing as an aura? Mental note to self: Pay more attention now in yoga class to all that talk about chakras and energy. Human beings do transmit "electricity"....

Discuss

Microsoft and Google: Let the Dance Begin

2003-11-03T16:18:00.000-05:00

According to the New York Times:

Google, the highflying Silicon Valley Web search company, recently began holding meetings with bankers in preparation for its highly anticipated initial public offering as it was still engaged in meetings of another kind: exploring a partnership or even a merger with Microsoft.

Egad! Not another Netscape fiasco. Makes me think of big fish and little fish...first Google "eats" Blogger and now Microsoft may "eat" Google....let's hope Google fares better in the IPO world.

Discuss

Evolution of the Internet: Happy Birthday ARPANET (precursor Internet)!

2003-10-29T12:45:00.000-05:00

"Lo" and behold... 34 years ago, two Honeywell computers made first contact, paving the way for the "Information Age".

On October 29, 1969, at 10:30 p.m., UCLA engineering professor Leonard Kleinrock and student Charley Kline attempted to send a message from one Honeywell computer to a similar unit 600 kilometres away at Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto. The connection speed was 50 kb/s.

The first message was supposed to be the word "login," but the system crashed as they typed in the letter "g." The first message, then, was "lo." Although it was a bumpy – if not prophetic – beginning, the researchers were able to complete the message one hour later.

And so the ARPANET (the term internet was not coined until 1982) was born.

CBC.ca offers a neat timeline on the evolution of the Internet along with related links.

Discuss

Is There Such a Thing as a Typical Blogger?

2003-10-27T16:10:00.000-05:00

Hong Kong's "Big White Guy" is not your typical blogger out of 4+ million bloggers in the blogosphere. In a story about Randall van der Woning and his bigwhiteguy blog, CNN.com reports today:

There are over 4 million blogs on the net, more than half run by teenagers. Research group Perseus says the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who updates it about twice a month.

Sites such as Diaryland and Blogspot make it easy for anyone to launch one. Even AOL is hosting web logs, a sign that this trend has hit the big time.

There are predictions the net will be littered with 5 million blogs by the end of the year.

But unlike www.bigwhiteguy.com most of them will be little seen, if not abandoned. At least two thirds of the blogs out there today have not been updated in months.

"the big time"? "littered"? "seen"? "out there"? Folks, you "saw" it here first...making it on AOL means you've hit the big time. If you're "reading" this, it means you've somehow managed to "cut through the litter" and find me. Congratulations! "Out here", we call this land the "blogosphere"....wonder who coined that term actually...

Now if the journalist who wrote this piece had any sense of the powerful mechanics of blogging, they would have "littered" the article with pertinent links to Perseus, Diaryland, Blogspot, and AOL's blogging site for the benefit of the bloggers who will read this article and have the urge to find out more. But wait a minute, wouldn't that appear as shameless, free advertising? Don't want that in an objective journalistic piece. Funny though, how in j-blogging, linking is expected as part of Blogging 101, and not viewed as free advertising, even though, technically, the j-blog's audience is as worldwide on the web as an online article.

Interesting also, how Perseus' findings suggest that the typical blogger communicator is young and female, which appear to corroborate Bernie Hogan's finding that most people who communicate online are young, and women appear to comprise more of the group that talks online (from an examination of differential communication usage based on the National Geographic World Internet Survey 2001).

Discuss

Blogging is Changing the Way We Report and Report Back

2003-10-24T14:21:00.000-04:00

In the past two weeks, New York University professor Jay Rosen has published three very insightful posts in his PressThink blog on how weblogging is changing the way we communicate and think:

What's Radical about the Weblog Form in Journalism?

What's Conservative about the Weblog Form in Journalism?

"Blogging is about Making and Changing Minds"

Some of the most comprehensive and thought-provoking commentaries on the subject in the blogosphere...check it out!

Discuss

Cyberpsychology

2003-10-17T14:32:00.000-04:00

Am still ploughing through John Suler's fascinating online hypertext book The Psychology of Cyberspace, which sets out to "explore the psychological dimensions of environments created by computers and online networks" and "is intended as an evolving conceptual framework for understanding the various psychological components of cyberspace and how people react to and behave within it."

Aside from addressing issues like managing deviant behavior in online groups, which speaks to A Rape in Cyberspace-type scenarios, Suler also talks about identity management in cyberspace, which covers some ground raised by Mindy's question about how true to our real selves do we remain in cyberspace. To Bernard's question regarding the danger of losing the art of realSelf communication to digiSelf communication, I suspect Suler would suggest that by integrating online and offline living, we can avoid this potential pitfall.

Discuss

Telekinetic Monkeys Lead Mind-Machine-Direct-Connect Revolution

2003-10-15T13:22:00.000-04:00

How far-fetched is Derrick's theory about "mind-machine-direct-connect" (slide 25)?

Was pretty skeptical myself must admit until learned about research published this week in the journal PLofS Biology that describes how "Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object."

In the new experiments, monkeys with wires running from their brains to a robotic arm were able to use their thoughts to make the arm perform tasks. But before long, the scientists said, they will upgrade the implants so the monkeys can transmit their mental commands to machines wirelessly.

In this case, the screen played a key role in providing feedback to the monkeys as they attempted to use the robotic arm to perform various tasks. Talk about shaping tools and tools shaping us...

Are we connected yet? Just a matter of time....

Discuss

Don't Break My (Virtual) Heart!

2003-10-10T14:26:00.000-04:00

~ Please make comments in my blog...don't be shy. Worse, don't exclude me.... ~

Associated Press and MSNBC report:

California researchers have found a physiological basis for social pain by monitoring the brains of people who thought they had been maliciously excluded from a computer game by other players.

According to the principal author, Naomi I. Eisenberger, the study published today in Science suggests that "social exclusion of any sort — divorce, not being invited to a party, being turned down for a date — would cause distress in the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) which also responds to physical pain."

Go figure...it took a computer simulation and brain imaging technology to figure this out.

Wonder if we experience distress the same way if people don't make comments in our blogs and we end up feeling excluded... thoughts anyone? Or should I say, feelings anyone?

Discuss

Who's in Control?

2003-09-29T13:49:00.000-04:00

The multi-purpose card is the latest version of our High Tech identity card. With an embedded smart chip, it can also store our medical history, driver's license, act as an ATM card, serve as an electronic purse and even be used at the National Library. However, a recent experience by a cardholder gave rise to the questionable control on access, potential information abuse and privacy infringement.

Here is a likely scenario when ordering pizzas in the near future...

Operator : "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your..."
Customer: "Haloo, can I order.."
Operator : "Can I have your multi purpose card number first, Sir?"
Customer: "It's eh..., hold on...... 6102049998-45-54610"
Operator : "OK... you're... Mr Singh and you're calling from 17 Jalan Kayu. Your home number is 40942366, your office 7645 2302 and your mobile is 014 266 2566. Which number are you calling from now Sir?"
Customer: "Home! How did you get alll my phone numbers?"
Operator : "We are connected to the system Sir"
Customer: "May I order your Seafood Pizza..."
Operator : "That's not a good idea Sir"
Customer: "How come?"
Operator : "According to your medical records, you have high blood pressure and even higher cholesterol level Sir"
Customer: "What?... What do you recommend then?"
Operator : "Try our Low Fat Hokkien Mee Pizza. You'll like it"
Customer: "How do you know for sure?"
Operator : "You borrowed a book entitled "Popular Hokkien Dishes" from the National Library last week Sir"
Customer: "OK I give up... Give me three family sized ones then, how much will that cost?"
Operator : "That should be enough for your family of 10, Sir. The total is $49.99
Customer: "Can I pay by credit card?"
Operator : "I'm afraid you have to pay us cash, Sir. Your credit card is over the limit and you're owing your bank $3720.55 since October last year"
Operator : "That's not including the late payment charges on your housing loan Sir.
Customer: "I guess I have to run to the neighbourhood ATM and withdraw some cash before your guy arrives"
Operator : "You can't Sir. Based on the records, you've reached your daily limit on machine withdrawal today"
Customer: "Never mind just send the pizzas, I'll have the cash ready. How long is it gonna take anyway?"
Operator : "About 45 minutes Sir, but if you can't wait you can always come and collect it on your motorcycle..."
Customer: " How did you know I have a motocycle ?"
Operator : "According to the details in system, you own a Scooter...registration number E1123..."
Customer: " *'!^ *%^**%^I7*"
Operator : "Better watch your language Sir. Remember on 15th July 1987 you were convicted of using abusive language on a policeman... ?"
Customer: [Speechless]
Operator : "Is there anything else Sir?"
Customer: "Nothing... by the way... aren't you giving me that 3 free bottles of cola as advertised?"
Operator : "We normally would Sir, but based on your records you're also diabetic....... "

Now rewind back to the present.

Have been mulling over my intentionally random thoughts shared in my first week of blogging and digesting related points raised in other blogs and have recognized a pattern, brilliantly summarized in this passage excerpted from a speech delivered by Neil Postman over a decade ago (many thanks to Bernard for sharing this):

As things stand now, the geniuses of computer technology will give us Star Wars, and tell us that is the answer to nuclear war. They will give us artificial intelligence, and tell us that this is the way to self-knowledge. They will give us instantaneous global communication, and tell us this is the way to mutual understanding. They will give us Virtual Reality and tell us this is the answer to spiritual poverty. But that is only the way of the technician, the fact-mongerer, the information junkie, and the technological idiot.

Undoubtedly, Postman got the idea of the technological idiot from McLuhan: "Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot." (Understanding Media, p.18).

As much as Postman's words resonate my fears about technology, however, I am inspired by Saurabh's contribution to the discussion, which reiterates a more hopeful McLuhanesque dimension to the question, "Who's in control?":

I think what technology does is give us choices and as we become better at understanding how technology effects us or works us over hopefully we will be making the right choices.

In a related discussion, JustAThought muses:

...isnt it up to the people how they use a certain opportunity

Agreed. Will people always remain in control though? Or will we become so desensitized to ubiquitous technology that one day will not even realize we are no longer in control? Will it take that pizza order to realize we've given up too much control to technology that shapes our society, our culture, our environment, and ourselves?

Discuss

Technopsychology of Business Intelligence

2003-09-26T15:13:00.000-04:00

Quite inspiring to know that another forward-thinking Canadian Derrick de Kerckhove invented the term "technopsychology" and even more intriguing to learn about how this study of the psychological and social effects of technology applies to intelligence. Made me wonder more about what Pandora Google has let out of the box with its thinking, unleashing direct, individual access to 3+ billion web pages to date. Sheer information is not as useful as a means to harness and manage information that can then synthesize and analyze infinite bits and bytes into meaningful knowledge, which when applied strategically, offers competitive intelligence. In business, IBM is hoping to capture a good chunk of the data mining market with WebFountain, as outlined and discussed intelligently in Mikael Thorson's and Magnus Stensmo's unstruct.org blog. How intelligent is this endeavour? Not too smart perhaps when a lot of information that you may be mining on the Internet is simply "rubbish". Or perhaps it is a sign of maturity of the still very nascent yet highly complex central nervous system we call the World Wide Web. Interesting to see that IBM has included Weblogs in their search criteria....

Discuss

Canada: Birthplace of the Telephone, Cellphone, Personal Computer and McLuhan

2003-09-25T15:20:00.000-04:00

"Did you know Canada is the birthplace of the telephone and cellphone?"

So begins Caroline Alphonso's cover page article in today's Globe and Mail, "Canadian hailed as father of the PC" and so ends a thirty-year wait for Mers Kutt and his 1973 microprocessor to be recognized as the mind and medium behind the invention of the personal computer. This story reminded me of Derrick de Kerckhove's article in the 1989 special issue of the Canadian Journal of Communication and Twyla Gibson's more recent seminal work in raising awareness about The Toronto School of Communications . Kutt is not the only one. It's taken (and is still taking) over forty years for the work of other Canadian visionaries like Marshall McLuhan to be fully recognized.

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Blogalization...The New Globalization?

2003-09-24T16:06:00.000-04:00

Just stumbled upon this site and think may have answered my own question about English seeming to be the dominant language in "publicy" (term invented by Mark Federman) when it comes to blogging. Thanks to Blogalization, defined as "to make worldwide in scope or application by means of cross-language blogging," cross-lingual and cultural knowledge management is possible.

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'Till Death Do Us Part...Virtually

2003-09-23T15:13:00.000-04:00

"Hey, Grandpa was a pretty well-liked (or not so well-liked) guy after all. He got 5,000 hits!"

Chapelview, an American company, specializes in online weddings and funerals. Come again? That's right.

Interesting how the funerals side of the business has garnered far more media attention than the weddings aspect. Getting wed online doesn't seem far-fetched in today's times given webcasting and broadband technology. According to UK-based news source Ananova.com, couples in Russia will be able to literally wed via the Internet starting early next year. So why not observe death online as well?

For those marriages that fall apart before death, technology may not come in as handy for an online divorce. According to an Associated Press story, in Malaysia, you can expect to land in jail if you try parting electronically in the future and divorce your spouse by sending mobile phone text messages or email without going to court. A fine example of human sensibility and sensitivity prevailing in increasingly digitally detached times...

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Virtual Reality or is it Illusion?

2003-09-22T10:51:00.000-04:00

British Web designer Richard Latham wants to "meditain" the masses. For a few dollars a month, you can visit his website and virtually meditate for 15 minutes by choosing your own meditation journey. If all goes to plan, Meditainment will come to theatres in North America next year. As much as I find the extension of haptic touch into the virtual realm fascinating as Saurabh mentions in his blog, I can't help but wonder how far will we go as a society before we become completely disconnected with reality as we know it through direct sensory experience. Unlike Globe and Mail reporter Gayle MacDonald's relaxing "meditainment" experience, I have no idea if this really works. Personally, when I tried the free demo, I fell asleep :-)

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Global Surveillance

2003-09-19T13:26:00.000-04:00

From a Sept. 18 review in the Christian Science Monitor: "Consider this," Christian Parenti writes in his new book The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America - From Slave Passes to the War on Terror. "More than 111 million Americans carry mobile phones, each of which creates a rough electronic account of the user's location in time and space." Marshall McLuhan would not be surprised by this. Simply having information or a medium at your disposal is not power though. It's what you do with that information, knowledge, and tool that creates an effect which can lead to change. Parenti goes on to say that during the first year of the second intifada, the government of Israel assassinated six Palestinian militants "by first locating the target's cell phone and then directing fire at the coordinates of the phone."

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Canada's Wired

2003-09-18T14:45:00.000-04:00

According to just released data from Statistics Canada's Household Internet Use Survey (HIUS), 62% of Canada's 12.2 million households in 2002 had at least one person who used the Internet regularly either at work, school, a public library or another location. Wow! More than half (51%) of the total Internet use by Canadians is accounted for by households, not businesses. What does this mean? Well, aside from eye strain from staring at a monitor all day long at work and when we come home as well, it means we are slowly evolving into a very sedentary society, communicating with machines for work and for play. The addictive lure of instant access to infinite information that the Internet and broadband technology provide can be too hard to resist sometimes, and we may well be breeding a new generation of "info-addicts".

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The Internet of Things

2003-09-18T14:16:00.000-04:00

Computer systems of the past 50 years processed information entered by humans. Kevin Ashton, executive director of the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, predicts that through the wide deployment of EPC (Electronic Product Code) and RFID (Radio Frequency ID) technology, the next 50 years will all be about computer sensing. That's great. Where did all the humans go though in this forecasted global network of intelligent objects? Are we accelerating towards an era where the mind will control machines that will control the mind?

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Welcome to the blogosphere

2003-09-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

Michael Snider's recent Maclean's magazine article on The Intimacy of Blogs talks about the new "blogosphere" as being "the world's most accessible magazine rack". Clearly, many individuals enter the blogosphere to read about and make connections with other people and their ideas. But "Are the relationships we create by our blogging of any value?" as one blogger challenged Snider during his research for the article. I think so. By having a direct conversation on the Web with people and ideas from around the world, we are instantaneously increasing and broadening our awareness of "what's out there" ultimately, developing as individuals into more global citizens.

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Cn u rd ths?

2003-09-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

"Aoccdrnig to rsearech at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

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