Delicious is a sobering reminder of why dumping all your data into someone elses hands can be a very bad thing indeed.
Somewhere in my list of posts I've written and never published is one titled exactly like this one, written in February this year. This is a rehash of that, in some ways, but things have moved on a long way, both in where I work and what I do for a living, but also in the digital landscape, so I can't simply hit publish.
'The cloud' for those unfamiliar with the sometimes ridiculous names geeks give to technologies, is a bit hard to define, but essentially, when you save your information, documents, maps or data of any kind to somewhere which is not either in your house, or on your companies network, it's saved to the cloud. For example, gmail is email in the cloud. All the emails you send and receive are stored far away somewhere in America. If gmail broke, you wouldn't be able to access your email. Google documents is cloud computing, so is Flickr, so are Bing or Google maps. And so is Delicious, the place where a large amount of people saved their favourite web pages to, in the form of bookmarks.
Yahoo! bought Delicious. Now, it transpires, it is in on their hit list, or rather their 'sunset' list. Details are emerging that this might mean it's on it's asset sell list, but there's no guarantees anyone will buy it. So, at the flick of a switch in a remote server farm somewhere over in America, someone will cut my connection to my bookmark list.
I have no comeback. No legal grounds to demand the switch is flicked back. I can export my bookmarks to somewhere else, another service, but those services don't seem to be quite the same. I put them with delicious for a reason, it was a good service. But I assume a loss making service, and so it's on the switch off list.
That post I wrote back in Feb? It asked why we were all so quick to trust our data to the cloud, and this was one of the reasons. There were many others. Do a search on Bing and on Google for the same road you live on and zoom out a little and you will see the discrepancies in road curves and levels of detail. Try and write a complicated document in Google docs in Word, with annotations and footnotes and see what happens when you pull it back down off the cloud again. Check the terms of use for Google maps and understand that anything you map with them, anything at all, they claim intellectual property rights to. Fine if you don't care about such things but for those of us who are trying to explain internally in our organisations that Google might be free but it's free for a reason, it's a really big deal.
So what's the solution? I'm not sure there is one. Ultimately, if you use a service, and it's free, and you don't pay for it, you've no rights. If you use a service which nabs IPR off you, you've no rights either. If a hurricane hits the server farm your data is stored on, what can you do? It's all about risk analysis. What's the liklihood of the server farm your cloud data is sitting on getting hit by a terorrist attack, a natural disaster or a company takeover? If your data is that important to you, I would humbly suggest that these are the questions which you should be asking yourself. To be social and to share is a wonderful thing, but perhaps there is a limit to what can and should be put in the cloud? Maybe we should all be keeping regular back ups?
I don't have the answers, but I think it's important someone asks the questions. We all assume that Yahoo and Google will be around forever. Some of us assume that they're 'geek' companies, trying to provide tools for the geeks to use and use well and that if those tools are used, the companies will somehow feel some responsibility to maintain them. This is not the case. They are companies, floated companies, with shareholders and the bottom line will always be, profit to return to those shareholders.
The cloud is not fluffy. The cloud is for making money. Social networking, also, is there to ultimately make money. Companies do not make money from goodwill. People don't sit around and chat all day to be friendly. People do it to make money. One eye always on profit.
Don't be deceived by the fluffy name. It's not fluffy at all, and clouds can disappear in seconds.
Showing posts with label geeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geeks. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Thursday, 9 December 2010
My other half and me
A little off message, this. Nothing to do with social media or local government, but it is about geek. Specifically, it's about a pair of geeks, my other half and me.
The house is currently full of a ringing Blackberry. Al, my other half, who is a senior something engineer - network, systems, servers, I lose track - is on call. He works for a national IT company, a company who look after the servers, systems and telecommunications of a large amount of companies you'll have heard of. The first email pinged and he leapt up like all the hounds of hell had landed. Nabbed a piece of paper, muttering to himself, checked IP's, apparently it's not so bad that that one dropped. Remote logged in to servers somewhere else, hundreds of miles away, more than likely, phoned tucked under one ear, co-ordinating a response to a system failure, and a screen scrolling, black background, white terminal font scrolling frantically up the screen. Line breaks appear - 'that's really not good at all'. He was supposed to come off call at 10pm. It's 2 minutes past but he's still there, co-ordinating, talking, frantically tapping. He wont remember to claim the time. He's private sector, but his attitude isn't.
I'm public sector. My evening? I went to the hairdressers, I spent the money I don't spend in pubs drinking (I do drink, just not at the moment) chilling out, chatting to the girls there, explaining grit (I don't quite ever manage to get away from it), explaining BWD Winter, explaining whart social media is and why it's important, but also chatting about films watched, presents bought, plans for next year. I came home, ate, flipped to News 24 and stayed there, serenaded earlier by the sounds of Simons Cat leaking out of the speakers of Al's super shiny laptop.
My laptop is not super shiny but it is tiny and practical. My little 10 inch window on the world. I'm a bit ill, some days a bit more than others. It doesn't get in the way though, because while I'm at work my brain still spins even when other things don't, people are kind and ignore, painkillers fix the worst and I'm practised at this by now. Evenings are not so easy, and so this 10 inch little screen is my....link? It's my social life while the other real one is by necessity temporarily on hold, it's my link to intelligent, smart and inspirational people who tolerate my incessant ridiculous questions, my occasionally dummy throwing, but hopefully also, occasionally, just very occasionally something interesting which wings its way from my brain through my fingers and out into the big wide world.
This evening is not normal. Usually, the work life balance in this house is entirely the other way around - I'm the one working.
We are geeks. The lines blur. Often, geeks work doing the things they love very much. So when the things we love roll over into time we weren't supposed to be doing work things in, we either don't notice, or we don't mind. But, because of this, there is also the risk that we don't notice when we've had enough, because we still think of work as fun. And so we carry on, working and working, through hours which should be spent doing something else in order to retain some sanity, because we forget that those lines are there for a reason - so we can rest one bit of our brain and use another bit instead.
If you manage geeks, and you don't already know this, this might be quite an important bit of information. In order for your friendly neighbourhood geek to flourish, don't water them, tell them to stop. Have evenings. Have weekends. A little work in the evening, fine. A lot of work in the evening. Not fine. Reading things which hapen to be work related but out of genuine interest and out of choice? Fine. Discussing things on Twitter in passing which are work related? Okay. Doing nothing but talking about work or doing work all evening, absolutely not fine.
We might not be the best people to limit our own workloads. We need you to keep an eye and occasionally intervene.
Brought to you by some kind conversations with people who noticed and had words. Thank you.You're not geeks and you still noticed.
The house is currently full of a ringing Blackberry. Al, my other half, who is a senior something engineer - network, systems, servers, I lose track - is on call. He works for a national IT company, a company who look after the servers, systems and telecommunications of a large amount of companies you'll have heard of. The first email pinged and he leapt up like all the hounds of hell had landed. Nabbed a piece of paper, muttering to himself, checked IP's, apparently it's not so bad that that one dropped. Remote logged in to servers somewhere else, hundreds of miles away, more than likely, phoned tucked under one ear, co-ordinating a response to a system failure, and a screen scrolling, black background, white terminal font scrolling frantically up the screen. Line breaks appear - 'that's really not good at all'. He was supposed to come off call at 10pm. It's 2 minutes past but he's still there, co-ordinating, talking, frantically tapping. He wont remember to claim the time. He's private sector, but his attitude isn't.
I'm public sector. My evening? I went to the hairdressers, I spent the money I don't spend in pubs drinking (I do drink, just not at the moment) chilling out, chatting to the girls there, explaining grit (I don't quite ever manage to get away from it), explaining BWD Winter, explaining whart social media is and why it's important, but also chatting about films watched, presents bought, plans for next year. I came home, ate, flipped to News 24 and stayed there, serenaded earlier by the sounds of Simons Cat leaking out of the speakers of Al's super shiny laptop.
My laptop is not super shiny but it is tiny and practical. My little 10 inch window on the world. I'm a bit ill, some days a bit more than others. It doesn't get in the way though, because while I'm at work my brain still spins even when other things don't, people are kind and ignore, painkillers fix the worst and I'm practised at this by now. Evenings are not so easy, and so this 10 inch little screen is my....link? It's my social life while the other real one is by necessity temporarily on hold, it's my link to intelligent, smart and inspirational people who tolerate my incessant ridiculous questions, my occasionally dummy throwing, but hopefully also, occasionally, just very occasionally something interesting which wings its way from my brain through my fingers and out into the big wide world.
This evening is not normal. Usually, the work life balance in this house is entirely the other way around - I'm the one working.
We are geeks. The lines blur. Often, geeks work doing the things they love very much. So when the things we love roll over into time we weren't supposed to be doing work things in, we either don't notice, or we don't mind. But, because of this, there is also the risk that we don't notice when we've had enough, because we still think of work as fun. And so we carry on, working and working, through hours which should be spent doing something else in order to retain some sanity, because we forget that those lines are there for a reason - so we can rest one bit of our brain and use another bit instead.
If you manage geeks, and you don't already know this, this might be quite an important bit of information. In order for your friendly neighbourhood geek to flourish, don't water them, tell them to stop. Have evenings. Have weekends. A little work in the evening, fine. A lot of work in the evening. Not fine. Reading things which hapen to be work related but out of genuine interest and out of choice? Fine. Discussing things on Twitter in passing which are work related? Okay. Doing nothing but talking about work or doing work all evening, absolutely not fine.
We might not be the best people to limit our own workloads. We need you to keep an eye and occasionally intervene.
Brought to you by some kind conversations with people who noticed and had words. Thank you.You're not geeks and you still noticed.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Multiple flavours of geeks
The point I am inelegantly trying to make?
I sit in the middle of absolutely everyone I know. I don't belong in any circle. I just sit in the middle and watch everyone doing amazing things.
It occured to me this evening, reading about the upcoming Leeds Hack, that if I could get everyone I know into one room, all at the same time, without an agenda, that we could fix the digital world. All of it. Completely.
When we build the big society brokerage systems, can we make sure there's a space for programming for free, web designing for free, web coding for free?
Thanks. :O)
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
>Hack it
Verb// to cut a path through something.
Noun// no appropriate definition exists.
Source// Chambers online dictionary
Failure// to comprehend the nature/ethos/etymology or life approach of a really rather large amount of people.
//Once upon a time there was a film called Hackers. It showed a bunch of teenagers cracking passwords (obtaining them illegally without the owners knowledge by running dictionary look up programmes against a password entry field), logging into systems and changing them. Most notably, at the end of the film, they 'hack', by which I mean to say they gain access illegally, to the traffic light system of New York City. For reference, a situation not without the realms of possibility, as proved in Los Angeles, where losing control of only 4 traffic light hubs caused gridlock. "Hack the planet" becomes the rather ridiculous tagline of the film, inducing millions of script kiddies the world over to think they actually can.
//Even before that, there was Kevin Mitnick. A 'real' hacker, who infiltrated the security systems of real companies, at the time of his eventual arrest, he was considered to be the most wanted computer criminal in the United States. He used something called social engineering, which we'll come to later, to obtain passwords, hack systems, hack networks and copy protected data. In the traditional sense of the word, Kevin Mitnick was a hacker. In a rather more common turn of events than most will ever realise, Mitnick now runs his own computer security consultancy, Mitnick Security Consulting LLC.
//In the middle of all this, Loyd Blankenship aka The Mentor wrote The Hacker Manifesto. It was fuelled by an arrest and possibly quite a justified one. Who knows. Who can ever know. But the fundamental truths which eminated and resonated from his words echo down the years, and even now speak to the hearts of the kids who are now adults who never stopped asking the question. All of the questions, the big and the small, the easy and the hard.
//Hack. A word. It can mean many things to many different people. A lot of people think of the Mitnicks of this world when I say the word and I'm left floundering a little, trying to backtrack out of the corner I've verbally painted myself into, rather than explain the following, the subtle nuances, the blacks and the whites and the shades of grey, the morals, ethics and social engineering pitfalls, where manipulation becomes brain hacking others and where brain hacking yourself simply means 'temet nosce'.
//Hacking, to me and many others, is nothing to do with a computer network. It's to do with efficiency. Finding the shortest path to the quickest solution. It's about learning keyboard shortcuts so that windows can fly open and shut as if by magic so hands don't need to leave the keyboard, thus wasting precious time. It's about knowing you can hit enter on most text boxes to submit. It's about knowing that hitting U a few times in a country dropdown box will always get you to United Kingdom without using the mouse, but it's about so much more.
It's about learning the shortcuts. It's about the fact that most people turn left when entering a theme park, so always turning right and not having to queue except at the crossover rides, which can be circumnavigated by Q Jump tickets provided at the entrance. It's about standing at the right end of the platform on the tube, so that you are at the exit when you get off at the other end. It's about finding the side of the stage at a festival that no one ever bothers to walk to cos they're drunk and not thinking straight and having half a field to dance in to The Prodigy.
It's a thousand different things, from making your own cables to connect technology, to hacking your own brain so that you behave in a different way and become a better person. But social engineering is where I draw the line.
\\Social engineering. You may as well call it manipulation. The cold calculated process of looking at the human race as nothing more than data packets being directed by routers around a network, and picking those packets out of the network, draining them for all their knowledge, and then placing them back into the network none the wiser, while you run off and take the credit for all their ideas. Looking at people as sheep, and using it to your advantage by predicting peoples behaviour and then maliciously manipulating that information for your own gain. Catching someone at their most vulnerable and distracted and asking them a difficult question that you know is likely to ellicit an honest answer when it wouldn't normally. Seeing peoples motivations clearly, and dangling carrots in front of them, only to whip them away when you've got what you want from them. Pretending to play nice and not being honest about your motivations.
With geeks, real geeks, there is no guarantee of nice play. Social engineering was a term coined by hackers who are geeks who use what they know of the human race to get passwords and other 'helpful' data out of them. It is, essentially, the cold hard manipulation of a person.
That's the line. Processes can be hacked. Workflows. Websites to be more efficient and engage with people better. Big society, as a concept, is just a hack. A hack of the way society behaves, a massive behaviour change.
Ultimately, hack, to me, just means change something for the better, be that more efficient, more cost effective, more streamlined, more friendly, more engaging, even prettier.
It does not mean take advantage of the stupid people.
Noun// no appropriate definition exists.
Source// Chambers online dictionary
Failure// to comprehend the nature/ethos/etymology or life approach of a really rather large amount of people.
//Once upon a time there was a film called Hackers. It showed a bunch of teenagers cracking passwords (obtaining them illegally without the owners knowledge by running dictionary look up programmes against a password entry field), logging into systems and changing them. Most notably, at the end of the film, they 'hack', by which I mean to say they gain access illegally, to the traffic light system of New York City. For reference, a situation not without the realms of possibility, as proved in Los Angeles, where losing control of only 4 traffic light hubs caused gridlock. "Hack the planet" becomes the rather ridiculous tagline of the film, inducing millions of script kiddies the world over to think they actually can.
//Even before that, there was Kevin Mitnick. A 'real' hacker, who infiltrated the security systems of real companies, at the time of his eventual arrest, he was considered to be the most wanted computer criminal in the United States. He used something called social engineering, which we'll come to later, to obtain passwords, hack systems, hack networks and copy protected data. In the traditional sense of the word, Kevin Mitnick was a hacker. In a rather more common turn of events than most will ever realise, Mitnick now runs his own computer security consultancy, Mitnick Security Consulting LLC.
//In the middle of all this, Loyd Blankenship aka The Mentor wrote The Hacker Manifesto. It was fuelled by an arrest and possibly quite a justified one. Who knows. Who can ever know. But the fundamental truths which eminated and resonated from his words echo down the years, and even now speak to the hearts of the kids who are now adults who never stopped asking the question. All of the questions, the big and the small, the easy and the hard.
My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.Curiosity is not a crime. The direction it gets directed towards can make it become the motivator to commit a crime. The world changed.
//Hack. A word. It can mean many things to many different people. A lot of people think of the Mitnicks of this world when I say the word and I'm left floundering a little, trying to backtrack out of the corner I've verbally painted myself into, rather than explain the following, the subtle nuances, the blacks and the whites and the shades of grey, the morals, ethics and social engineering pitfalls, where manipulation becomes brain hacking others and where brain hacking yourself simply means 'temet nosce'.
//Hacking, to me and many others, is nothing to do with a computer network. It's to do with efficiency. Finding the shortest path to the quickest solution. It's about learning keyboard shortcuts so that windows can fly open and shut as if by magic so hands don't need to leave the keyboard, thus wasting precious time. It's about knowing you can hit enter on most text boxes to submit. It's about knowing that hitting U a few times in a country dropdown box will always get you to United Kingdom without using the mouse, but it's about so much more.
It's about learning the shortcuts. It's about the fact that most people turn left when entering a theme park, so always turning right and not having to queue except at the crossover rides, which can be circumnavigated by Q Jump tickets provided at the entrance. It's about standing at the right end of the platform on the tube, so that you are at the exit when you get off at the other end. It's about finding the side of the stage at a festival that no one ever bothers to walk to cos they're drunk and not thinking straight and having half a field to dance in to The Prodigy.
It's a thousand different things, from making your own cables to connect technology, to hacking your own brain so that you behave in a different way and become a better person. But social engineering is where I draw the line.
\\Social engineering. You may as well call it manipulation. The cold calculated process of looking at the human race as nothing more than data packets being directed by routers around a network, and picking those packets out of the network, draining them for all their knowledge, and then placing them back into the network none the wiser, while you run off and take the credit for all their ideas. Looking at people as sheep, and using it to your advantage by predicting peoples behaviour and then maliciously manipulating that information for your own gain. Catching someone at their most vulnerable and distracted and asking them a difficult question that you know is likely to ellicit an honest answer when it wouldn't normally. Seeing peoples motivations clearly, and dangling carrots in front of them, only to whip them away when you've got what you want from them. Pretending to play nice and not being honest about your motivations.
With geeks, real geeks, there is no guarantee of nice play. Social engineering was a term coined by hackers who are geeks who use what they know of the human race to get passwords and other 'helpful' data out of them. It is, essentially, the cold hard manipulation of a person.
That's the line. Processes can be hacked. Workflows. Websites to be more efficient and engage with people better. Big society, as a concept, is just a hack. A hack of the way society behaves, a massive behaviour change.
Ultimately, hack, to me, just means change something for the better, be that more efficient, more cost effective, more streamlined, more friendly, more engaging, even prettier.
It does not mean take advantage of the stupid people.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
A friendly definition
There is always a sigh of relief when something I've been grappling with is picked up by someone else and the notion of the problem expressed far better than I can. Tim Lloyd is todays provoker of the sigh, with a link he posted to the issues GP's are having with friends versus patients versus patients who become friends versus....well you get the drift.
I'm struggling too but for different reasons. Back when the web was small, when peoples 'handles' would pop up in various places on usenet, web chat systems, BBS chat systems and game zones, you could be relatively sure it was the same person behind all of them. Some of them were hackers in the traditional sense and some in the modern sense. Some had police scanners taken off them in HMV in Plymouth. Some of them just loved taunting me by hacking my node on the network and making it play music - a fate worse than death on behemoth old Suns we used to play on. But there was a playfulness there too, and a big feeling of community. People crossed the country to meet other 'geeks'. People crossed the country to meet people they'd never met before, just for the luxury of speaking the same language as the people they were going to see. Geek.
The community grew, and people joined and left. Time passed. When we weren't looking, the web happened, forums and all that new fangled jazz. We all eventually caught up with Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Communities drifted apart as the geeks suddenly discovered that a) they were suddenly cool b) there were geeks more local to them than a 100 mile round trip and c) as connections were made in different places based on different hobbies and interests.
The problem is, I'm still struggling with the same thing everyone else is struggling with. At what point does online collaboration become a friendship? At what point is it okay to offer a virtual *hug* (yes I'm old skool, and?) and at what point is someone not of the old skool where that was expected and a *hug* will result in a raised eyebrow and a 'get away from me freak girl'.
I don't know how to tell the different from the geeks who's hearts were absolutely always in the right place and the new school of geeks. The former are still there and I still adore and respect and admire. The latter are bandwagon jumpers, seeing tech as an an economic, financial and career opportunity, not a tool for social change, for engagement, for inclusion, for balancing playing fields, allowing people to do their jobs better and more efficiently, for empowering people and giving them a voice. It's possible to be both I understand this absolutely. But peoples motivations matter to me, and I am catching up with catching up with who is on the right side of the line and who is on the wrong side.
Which brings me to the point. Which is that I am slowly understanding that ideas are a commodity in this brave new world. That the girl who lamented to a friend 6 years ago that no one would ever pay her for her ideas and why didn't the world work that way and what was I supposed to do with all these ideas I had no idea how to implement, that I knew tech could make possible but that I didn't have the tech knowledge to actually implement - in this world right now, those ideas are valuable. Not in monetary terms, perhaps, but in ways that I am only slowly beginning to understand.
So, when the geeks inherited the earth, turns out things got more complicated, and not less. Inheritance means responsibility, means slowing down and taking stock, means that those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves (not all geeks, I know this) are getting caught in the crossfire of other peoples agendas. I do not like this at all.
It's like swimming with sharks. I knew it would be. I didn't expect it to be so difficult to discern the sharks from the good people. And I am old fashioned, but I only want to collaborate with good people.
I'm struggling too but for different reasons. Back when the web was small, when peoples 'handles' would pop up in various places on usenet, web chat systems, BBS chat systems and game zones, you could be relatively sure it was the same person behind all of them. Some of them were hackers in the traditional sense and some in the modern sense. Some had police scanners taken off them in HMV in Plymouth. Some of them just loved taunting me by hacking my node on the network and making it play music - a fate worse than death on behemoth old Suns we used to play on. But there was a playfulness there too, and a big feeling of community. People crossed the country to meet other 'geeks'. People crossed the country to meet people they'd never met before, just for the luxury of speaking the same language as the people they were going to see. Geek.
The community grew, and people joined and left. Time passed. When we weren't looking, the web happened, forums and all that new fangled jazz. We all eventually caught up with Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Communities drifted apart as the geeks suddenly discovered that a) they were suddenly cool b) there were geeks more local to them than a 100 mile round trip and c) as connections were made in different places based on different hobbies and interests.
The problem is, I'm still struggling with the same thing everyone else is struggling with. At what point does online collaboration become a friendship? At what point is it okay to offer a virtual *hug* (yes I'm old skool, and?) and at what point is someone not of the old skool where that was expected and a *hug* will result in a raised eyebrow and a 'get away from me freak girl'.
I don't know how to tell the different from the geeks who's hearts were absolutely always in the right place and the new school of geeks. The former are still there and I still adore and respect and admire. The latter are bandwagon jumpers, seeing tech as an an economic, financial and career opportunity, not a tool for social change, for engagement, for inclusion, for balancing playing fields, allowing people to do their jobs better and more efficiently, for empowering people and giving them a voice. It's possible to be both I understand this absolutely. But peoples motivations matter to me, and I am catching up with catching up with who is on the right side of the line and who is on the wrong side.
Which brings me to the point. Which is that I am slowly understanding that ideas are a commodity in this brave new world. That the girl who lamented to a friend 6 years ago that no one would ever pay her for her ideas and why didn't the world work that way and what was I supposed to do with all these ideas I had no idea how to implement, that I knew tech could make possible but that I didn't have the tech knowledge to actually implement - in this world right now, those ideas are valuable. Not in monetary terms, perhaps, but in ways that I am only slowly beginning to understand.
So, when the geeks inherited the earth, turns out things got more complicated, and not less. Inheritance means responsibility, means slowing down and taking stock, means that those of us who wear our hearts on our sleeves (not all geeks, I know this) are getting caught in the crossfire of other peoples agendas. I do not like this at all.
It's like swimming with sharks. I knew it would be. I didn't expect it to be so difficult to discern the sharks from the good people. And I am old fashioned, but I only want to collaborate with good people.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Geek <=> cool?
Somewhere along the line, something has gone wrong. Or, rather, I'm not sure something actually has gone wrong but I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with it. Or, perhaps it is that it is what it is and I am reluctant to step up to the plate but I know that I must, in the same way that we all must if the big society is to work, and those of us who are dreamers, idealists and wishers, we all want the big society to work.
I know some things. I know these things through being inside something. It's as natural to me as breathing, a framework where I instinctively operate. It's not got a name and it doesn't need a special name. It's not cute and fluffy and it's not going to change the world. Except, that was 3 years ago. Now I know some things for the same reasons but I feel somehow responsible for making those things cute and fluffy and accessible. I feel responsible for passing it in, for teaching people, for explaining in plain English to those far smarter than me. Sometimes I find myself in such ridiculous situations, explaining something which to me seems so damn simple, to someone who could intellectually eat me for breakfast.
I am confused. Bewildered. There is a new world order, why yes there is, but instead of being at the bottom of the pile, suddenly I seem to be in the middle somewhere. Have the geeks inherited the earth?
Well yes. Yes they have. But with inheriting something, as in reality with heirlooms, there comes a certain responsibility if you are a certain kind of a person. I suppose I am a certain kind of a person. I don't believe it's someone elses job. I don't believe someone else should pick up the baton. I wont leave well alone. Some of my friends, who are geeks, think I am ridiculous for getting involved. They think I am talking pipedreams. Others don't understand the need for translation, others sneer at those who need translation, instead wanting to keep the knowledge and thus the power to themselves.
Lets get this straight, right now. I am not cool. I am a geek. Being a geek is not cool. If it is going to become cool to be a geek, and increasingly it seems that this might be the case, then I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with that. I love digital. I love technology. I love burying my head in a book. I want to know everything, all of it, all of the time and right now. I do not want to be cool. Cool is frivolous, cool is unquantifiable, cool does not come in black and white and cool is out of my control. Someone else decides whether I am cool or not and I am simply not interested in that. I'm too old, too grumpy, dress too differently, and frankly, am just too uncool.
But I am a geek. A big geek with a big heart. It used to be that that bemused people. Confused them. I would speak, the words would come out of my mouth, and there would be confusion in the listeners eyes. What is this you speak of? Why are you telling me these things? Why are you so enthusiastic about something as stupid as talking in text? We talk to each other, there is no space or time for your weird ideas here.
Now the world has flipped and I am catching up. And I am the one who is confused and bewildered. I perpetually feel like I am supposed to be doing something where I am not entirely sure what something is. I have ideas, hundreds of them. I sit and listen to other people talking and 90% of the time ideas spark and pinwheel off in my brain and I reach for a pad and I scribble and scribble and scribble some more. Ideas, imaginings, what if's, why can't we's, how about we do it that way, or try it that way.....a constant processing of input and generation of output. That's not cool. That's being a geek. An acknowledgement of a brain which works like a computer, which needs rebooting each night, defragging occasionally, but when running at optimum can crunch masses of data and come to conclusions easily and smoothly at the end of the crunching.
I have spent a long time hiding this. I have spent a long time only letting similar people see.
Slowly but surely, the decision to just see what happens is creeping up on me. To jump, take a risk, do something, do something. But that's not cool and the last thing on earth I want to be is cool. The technology is cool. The digital capability is cool. Faster broadband, smaller chips, more efficient processing, crowdsourcing, village pumps , virtual noticeboards, unconferences and bar camps - they are all cool.
I am not.
I know some things. I know these things through being inside something. It's as natural to me as breathing, a framework where I instinctively operate. It's not got a name and it doesn't need a special name. It's not cute and fluffy and it's not going to change the world. Except, that was 3 years ago. Now I know some things for the same reasons but I feel somehow responsible for making those things cute and fluffy and accessible. I feel responsible for passing it in, for teaching people, for explaining in plain English to those far smarter than me. Sometimes I find myself in such ridiculous situations, explaining something which to me seems so damn simple, to someone who could intellectually eat me for breakfast.
I am confused. Bewildered. There is a new world order, why yes there is, but instead of being at the bottom of the pile, suddenly I seem to be in the middle somewhere. Have the geeks inherited the earth?
Well yes. Yes they have. But with inheriting something, as in reality with heirlooms, there comes a certain responsibility if you are a certain kind of a person. I suppose I am a certain kind of a person. I don't believe it's someone elses job. I don't believe someone else should pick up the baton. I wont leave well alone. Some of my friends, who are geeks, think I am ridiculous for getting involved. They think I am talking pipedreams. Others don't understand the need for translation, others sneer at those who need translation, instead wanting to keep the knowledge and thus the power to themselves.
Lets get this straight, right now. I am not cool. I am a geek. Being a geek is not cool. If it is going to become cool to be a geek, and increasingly it seems that this might be the case, then I am not entirely sure I am comfortable with that. I love digital. I love technology. I love burying my head in a book. I want to know everything, all of it, all of the time and right now. I do not want to be cool. Cool is frivolous, cool is unquantifiable, cool does not come in black and white and cool is out of my control. Someone else decides whether I am cool or not and I am simply not interested in that. I'm too old, too grumpy, dress too differently, and frankly, am just too uncool.
But I am a geek. A big geek with a big heart. It used to be that that bemused people. Confused them. I would speak, the words would come out of my mouth, and there would be confusion in the listeners eyes. What is this you speak of? Why are you telling me these things? Why are you so enthusiastic about something as stupid as talking in text? We talk to each other, there is no space or time for your weird ideas here.
Now the world has flipped and I am catching up. And I am the one who is confused and bewildered. I perpetually feel like I am supposed to be doing something where I am not entirely sure what something is. I have ideas, hundreds of them. I sit and listen to other people talking and 90% of the time ideas spark and pinwheel off in my brain and I reach for a pad and I scribble and scribble and scribble some more. Ideas, imaginings, what if's, why can't we's, how about we do it that way, or try it that way.....a constant processing of input and generation of output. That's not cool. That's being a geek. An acknowledgement of a brain which works like a computer, which needs rebooting each night, defragging occasionally, but when running at optimum can crunch masses of data and come to conclusions easily and smoothly at the end of the crunching.
I have spent a long time hiding this. I have spent a long time only letting similar people see.
Slowly but surely, the decision to just see what happens is creeping up on me. To jump, take a risk, do something, do something. But that's not cool and the last thing on earth I want to be is cool. The technology is cool. The digital capability is cool. Faster broadband, smaller chips, more efficient processing, crowdsourcing, village pumps , virtual noticeboards, unconferences and bar camps - they are all cool.
I am not.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Judging books by their covers
A few days ago, I commented on a blog. I don't normally do this. for a variety of reasons, some of which will perhaps become clear. But the post made me think, and I wanted to discuss the subjects the author had raised and so I commented.
Annoyingly, of all the subjects to get stuck on repeat loop in my head, the one of judging books by their covers is the one which wont go away. So in an effort to get out of the loop, I'm sharing, because it's a source of enormous frustration to me and one of the reasons I've been ever so quiet on a variety of subjects to this point.
Someone who shall remain nameless, in a place which shall remain unidentified commented that they used to judge whether someone was worth doing business with on the basis of whether they had a mobile phone, because they were the right type of person.
I boggled.
That was the way business was done in the late 80's/early 90's. I accept that. In the absence, perhaps, of anything else to go on, a mobile phone was an obvious indicator of someones worth in monetary terms. But is the world the same now? Is my value as a contributor to the current discussions on digital inclusion and infrastructure dependant entirely on my access to that infrastructure and the fact I am included? Is my monetary value directly correlated to my intellect? Does my experience of living 50% of my life in a connected web world become invalidated when it becomes obvious that I do not dress in Gucci and my iPhone is last gen and battered to death?
I think outside of the box, because I don't see the box. I question because I am curious, intensely so, about how the world is being shaped, who is contributing, what the rules are, who's speaking sense and who isn't. I am not alone in this by any means, I am not unusual. There are 100's of thousands of people just like me stating the obvious, pulling people up when they make silly assumptions, correcting peoples misunderstandings of the technology and what it will do. To the last, to the absolute very last, the thing which makes those people so valuable to our economy and our future is the very thing which is not visible in any kind of monetary way. If you looked at me, or any of my friends you would see nothing remarkable. We are not remarkable. And yet we are the people with the experience, understanding, commitment, passion, enthusiasm and drive to want to make a difference, to want to make things happen, who build the things people think there are no use for only to find that actually, they're fundamental. They build toys because they can, code music because they can, create digital replicas of reality, because they can.
That person, who made that comment, would look at me and dismiss. He is a businessman. He will be playing in the digital sandpit in the future and he will be playing by old rules which are no longer always true. The digital world works differently, connects differently. The terms of engagement are changing and those who play by the old rules, will perhaps not be as successful as they could be if they do not learn the new ones.
And while we're here and I'm having a bit of a rant about the new world order, yes, I come to you Mr Head of Age Concern. I listened with interest to someone referring to your comment that 'in two years the geeks will have taken over' or something along those lines.
My response to you is this. Shall we take our tech back now? Those machines which whiz and whir in your local hospital, those scanners and life support machines churning out vital data about peoples hearts and kidneys and livers and brains.....shall we take the software which drives them, the code which makes them whir and whiz, shall we take it back? How about the flight control software which I have no doubt takes you on your shiny holidays each year and means your likelihood of crashing has been reduced quite considerably considering the amount of tin cans flying around up there? How's your commute to work? Is the traffic control maintained and controlled by dynamic speed limits and traffic lights who have been given parameters to know and understand feedback from sensors and react to that input to give you a smoother faster drive to work?
If you were to surmise that this comment irritated me somewhat, you would be correct. Geeks have inherited the earth whether you like it or not. That comes with it's own responsibilities (yes, I am looking at some of my friends very sternly), but most of the geeks I know are stepping up to the plate finally and sharing and training and communicating what they know. That's a seperate post. It's not published, but it's written, and yes I know.
Anyhow, here's the rub. It's too late to decide you don't want to play in the new world. The new shiny world allows such amazing possibilities for connection and not letting people disappear off the social map, that I am struggling to comprehend why the Head of a charity aimed at assisting older people with the quality of their life seems to somehow fear this. We don't want to exclude anyone. Anyone. Everyone is welcome on the bus. Including you. But please, seriously, would you go and find your nearest friendly geek, sit them down, feed them coffee and cake and ask them to explain whatever it is you don't understand about tech and the web. You might not understand all of it, but they'll try their very best to explain the opportunities and doorways which all these magic little tools the geeks have designed for you to play with open up, and you know, it's okay to ask questions.
It is not okay to dismiss in one sentence the hard work, passion, enthusiasm and blue sky thinking which has been going on for at least the last 20 years and which allows you to live longer and more comfortably. Get on the bus. The people you are representing will thank you for it.
And finally. If someone comes along and tells me I misheard, didn't understand the quote, it was a misquote from the chap who quoted him initially, then I will concede and apologise profusely. But I fear he is not alone in his misunderstanding and I fear there is much work to be done in making the toys we take for granted more user friendly and intuitive than they are at the moment. But that's for the other post
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