I'm not an official distributor and don't get paid by them, but I do use Dropbox and really like it. It behaves like a folder on your desktop, but is available on any computer you use on the internet. It's much easier to use for file transfer than emailing things to yourself.
Here's a link to see what I'm talking about: Dropbox.com
If you sign up, we both get 500MB free space. You get the same deal for anyone you refer to Dropbox.
Along with Evernote, another software package I use in the cloud, this is a pretty nifty bit of cloudware.
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
16 April 2012
10 January 2011
Things the Internet has Killed (Part 5)
This is (I think) the final part of the things-the-internet-has-killed saga. This part will deal with some other things that didn't make the first (Newsweek) list.
If you missed the first four, they can be found here-
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Local Shopping- This one is a no-brainer. More than half of the Christmas presents I bought were purchased online this year. Statistically, I'm not much different than the rest of the populace, except I might be a bit behind the times...they bought more than half online.
I hate what this does to the local (mythological any more) mom-and-pop shops, but I certainly like what it does for my wallet. (What's in your wallet? Well, more money than if I'd bought the same things locally.) Or at least, I think I do. I wonder if all the stuff I have access to online wasn't so accessible, if the cost of things I can access locally wouldn't be a bit lower? We'd need a PhD-economist to figure that one out. I don't happen to have one handy.
The Gospel-Whoa, there. That's a pretty big accusation! I really don't think the internet can kill the gospel (in fact, I know it can't). But it can make it harder to come by. With all the talking heads and bloggers (like me!) out there, it is getting harder to find orthodox Christianity amid all the health-and-wealth nonsense put out by the Joel Osteen wannabees. (I'm not saying I'm an Osteen wannabee, I'm saying I'm another blogger who has an opinion.) All media is a tool, and just as the internet can be used to make pornography more accessible, it can be used to make the gospel more accessible. And in the process, those who think they are spreading the gospel but are instead spreading something other than the gospel can obfuscate the real gospel without even being aware of the problem they are causing.
Asking Questions- In the good ole' days, if you needed to know something, you asked a person smarter than you. Now, you ask Jeeves. Or Google. Or whoever your search engine has happened to make your default search provider. I guess people are still asking questions, maybe even more than they used to (after all, when's the last time you saw a search engine reply to a stupid question, "Now that's a Stupid Question!"?). But they aren't asking each other. They are typing their questions into a search box on their computer or their smart phone.
Maps- This one might fall under Reference (#12), but not quite totally. I recently took a trip over into Oklahoma. I didn't bother putting a map in the car with me, other than the mapquest.com map I printed of the military base where I was going (which showed me how to get to the building to which I needed to get). I also took my smart phone, which has a 'Maps' app, and whenever I needed to look for a road number or a turn, just flipped my phone on and looked. If the 3G wireless had been down in some of those rural areas, I'd have been lost. Maybe keeping a printed map in the glove box isn't a bad idea after all.
Newspapers- This one's not news to anybody. It's been going on for some time. And with the amount of bias that seems to be inherent in national news sources any more, I can't say that I'm terribly disappointed with this trend. But then, the biased used-to-be-professionals-but-that-doesn't-matter-anymore reporters and editors will just take their trade somewhere else...they won't go away.
Spontaneity- How so? Well, we used to be driving around and on the spur of the moment, would pick a restaurant or other attraction and simply walk in. Now, we have to plan everything. Menus are viewed, prices are investigated, specials are researched, coupons downloaded, and so on. Nothing much seems to happen on a lark anymore. (Even in the car, the smart phone comes out when we need to find a place to eat.) This has HUGE ramifications for where and how a business should spend their marketing money. I just don't know if all those ramifications are sorted out yet.
Exclusivity-Used to, if you had some information, a story, news, or even gossip, you had a small-time monopoly for a while. Now (unfortunately), we can know what the Kardashians ate for dinner before the maid has cleared the table. Everybody can know (if they want). In a way, the volume of information available now is mind-boggling. And almost all of it is useless.
Originality- Well, maybe the internet has not really killed it, but made it plain its not a real as we thought. In the past, two people who had a very similar thought, and managed by chance to put that thought into words and write it down somewhere, were very unlikely to ever know about the other, and very few (if any) people in the world ever knew the two thinkers had the same thought. Now that we put almost every musing on paper (ok, not paper, on screen), and all of this musing is then searched and cataloged by some mystical web crawlers, and can be retrieved in an instant with a search engine, we see whenever anyone has something similar to say. In fact, we see examples of real and accidental plagiarism all the time. (The trick is to determine which was accidental and which was not...my English teachers always told me that plagiarism was wrong even if it was accidental...we'll see how that goes over in the internet age.) There's no better example of the importance of motive (a big deal in criminal law) in making attribution to someone's actions than with all the similar thought going on.
How much of what we think and say is really original, and how much is recycled, sometimes verbatim, of what we read and hear? More than we realize, I'd guess.
Well, that about wraps this topic. The fun will be coming back to this list in a year or in five years and seeing how right some of these predictions/explanations were, and how wrong others were. We'll see.
If you missed the first four, they can be found here-
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Local Shopping- This one is a no-brainer. More than half of the Christmas presents I bought were purchased online this year. Statistically, I'm not much different than the rest of the populace, except I might be a bit behind the times...they bought more than half online.
I hate what this does to the local (mythological any more) mom-and-pop shops, but I certainly like what it does for my wallet. (What's in your wallet? Well, more money than if I'd bought the same things locally.) Or at least, I think I do. I wonder if all the stuff I have access to online wasn't so accessible, if the cost of things I can access locally wouldn't be a bit lower? We'd need a PhD-economist to figure that one out. I don't happen to have one handy.
The Gospel-Whoa, there. That's a pretty big accusation! I really don't think the internet can kill the gospel (in fact, I know it can't). But it can make it harder to come by. With all the talking heads and bloggers (like me!) out there, it is getting harder to find orthodox Christianity amid all the health-and-wealth nonsense put out by the Joel Osteen wannabees. (I'm not saying I'm an Osteen wannabee, I'm saying I'm another blogger who has an opinion.) All media is a tool, and just as the internet can be used to make pornography more accessible, it can be used to make the gospel more accessible. And in the process, those who think they are spreading the gospel but are instead spreading something other than the gospel can obfuscate the real gospel without even being aware of the problem they are causing.
Asking Questions- In the good ole' days, if you needed to know something, you asked a person smarter than you. Now, you ask Jeeves. Or Google. Or whoever your search engine has happened to make your default search provider. I guess people are still asking questions, maybe even more than they used to (after all, when's the last time you saw a search engine reply to a stupid question, "Now that's a Stupid Question!"?). But they aren't asking each other. They are typing their questions into a search box on their computer or their smart phone.
Maps- This one might fall under Reference (#12), but not quite totally. I recently took a trip over into Oklahoma. I didn't bother putting a map in the car with me, other than the mapquest.com map I printed of the military base where I was going (which showed me how to get to the building to which I needed to get). I also took my smart phone, which has a 'Maps' app, and whenever I needed to look for a road number or a turn, just flipped my phone on and looked. If the 3G wireless had been down in some of those rural areas, I'd have been lost. Maybe keeping a printed map in the glove box isn't a bad idea after all.
Newspapers- This one's not news to anybody. It's been going on for some time. And with the amount of bias that seems to be inherent in national news sources any more, I can't say that I'm terribly disappointed with this trend. But then, the biased used-to-be-professionals-but-that-doesn't-matter-anymore reporters and editors will just take their trade somewhere else...they won't go away.
Spontaneity- How so? Well, we used to be driving around and on the spur of the moment, would pick a restaurant or other attraction and simply walk in. Now, we have to plan everything. Menus are viewed, prices are investigated, specials are researched, coupons downloaded, and so on. Nothing much seems to happen on a lark anymore. (Even in the car, the smart phone comes out when we need to find a place to eat.) This has HUGE ramifications for where and how a business should spend their marketing money. I just don't know if all those ramifications are sorted out yet.
Exclusivity-Used to, if you had some information, a story, news, or even gossip, you had a small-time monopoly for a while. Now (unfortunately), we can know what the Kardashians ate for dinner before the maid has cleared the table. Everybody can know (if they want). In a way, the volume of information available now is mind-boggling. And almost all of it is useless.
Originality- Well, maybe the internet has not really killed it, but made it plain its not a real as we thought. In the past, two people who had a very similar thought, and managed by chance to put that thought into words and write it down somewhere, were very unlikely to ever know about the other, and very few (if any) people in the world ever knew the two thinkers had the same thought. Now that we put almost every musing on paper (ok, not paper, on screen), and all of this musing is then searched and cataloged by some mystical web crawlers, and can be retrieved in an instant with a search engine, we see whenever anyone has something similar to say. In fact, we see examples of real and accidental plagiarism all the time. (The trick is to determine which was accidental and which was not...my English teachers always told me that plagiarism was wrong even if it was accidental...we'll see how that goes over in the internet age.) There's no better example of the importance of motive (a big deal in criminal law) in making attribution to someone's actions than with all the similar thought going on.
How much of what we think and say is really original, and how much is recycled, sometimes verbatim, of what we read and hear? More than we realize, I'd guess.
Well, that about wraps this topic. The fun will be coming back to this list in a year or in five years and seeing how right some of these predictions/explanations were, and how wrong others were. We'll see.
04 January 2011
Things the Internet Has Killed (Part 4)
Well, I suppose it is time to get back to the series I started in December. Seems like it was last year.
If you didn't see the first three installments, they are here-
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
For Part 4 of the series, we'll look at
11. Polaroids and other Film
12. Reference Books
13. Yearbooks
14. Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores
Polaroids and other Film- First, I have to say I always thought 'Polaroid' was a terrible name for a product/company. Didn't they do focus groups back then? When was back then? (I just googled it...Polaroid was founded in 1937...I doubt they did many focus groups back then.) The name has always sounded like a disease instead of a film product. It reminds me of this dialogue from Vacation:
Polaroids, asteroids, they both sound like a pretty bad condition to have.
Anyway, I'm not so sure that the internet is primarily responsible for their downfall; I think it is secondarily responsible, however. The primary cause is the digital camera. Anyone who was even a little bit into photography in the past hundred years or so knows the frustration and expense of taking bad photos. Film wasn't cheap, developing wasn't cheap, and you had no feedback on what you or your camera were doing until you got the pictures back. That took a couple of weeks back before the one-hour developing shops opened up. With a digital camera, you shoot, you look, and if it isn't a keeper, you hit the delete button. At worst, you shoot about a dozen more shots than you need, then later at the computer you pick the best one or two and delete the others. (Side note: I've learned that some in the older generation don't delete bad photos...they can't stand to do it. They just haven't made the connection that it didn't cost them (effectively) anything so they aren't wasting anything...they just won't delete bad pictures. I assume they buy larger hard drives to store all those bad photos, and that does cost them something. Go figure.)
What the internet has done in a secondary way is it has made sharing the photos easier and no paper-developing is required. You don't even need instant film if you can email a photo to grandma a thousand miles away. In fact, the concept of photos on the internet probably deserves its own blog post. Think about it...how many casual acquaintances in the past showed you every photo they'd ever taken? Well, if you look on facebook now, there they all are. You can see photos of other people you may just barely know in situations and places you know nothing about, acting silly or sad or whatever, totally meaningless to anyone but those who were there. It's kinda weird, if you think about it.
The downside is, there won't be any boxes of old photos discovered in the attic by the next generation. (Of course, in my family, the last couple generations didn't write anything on the back of those old photos, so even when we found them, we had no idea who they were or when or where they were taken.)
Reference Books- My kids have very possibly never looked at a Worldbook or Britannica, and I'm pretty sure they've never opened a Miriam-Webster. I got a new set of Worldbook encyclopedias when I was in the 4th grade. By the end of 5th grade, I'd read every volume, cover-to-cover (I suppose that's why some of my classmates thought I was strange). I still have that set, along with yearbooks through the 70s and 80s, in my home office. We also have a set of Britannicas that belonged to my wife. But why would my kids pick up those heavy books? Everything is done online now in the reference world. I used to spend hours at card catalogs looking for library books. Now, everything is 'googled'. (We call it that when we do any search, not just a search on Google.)
I have to admit, in many ways, we have it better now than ever before. Access to information is much quicker, so we don't tend to put off or forget about finding things we want to know. But this has its downside as well, as others have written so much about. You can google (ha!) lots of interesting articles about how the internet, Twitter, and Facebook are making us all dumber, less able to concentrate, or whatever. It may be true. Where was I? Oh, yeah, lost my train of thought... (humor)
Yearbooks- I hadn't really noticed this one where I live. Our kids still take money to school each year for their yearbooks (in these parts, they are called, 'Annuals'). Its a lot more money than I used to take to school, and the books are paperback now. My yearbooks were hardbound, with sometimes fantastic, sometimes geeky cover art done by the yearbook crew. The ones the kids get new are all photos...very little or no art. But they do what they do. I think the online yearbook fad is something that's a lot bigger in other parts of the country, and will get here soon enough.
I think it's a bad idea. I have all my old yearbooks in the bookshelf in my office at home. It's fun to pull them out, see the old pictures, and get laughed at by the kids. I suppose you could do the same thing by pulling up a web page, but one thing you can't do is write all over your friends' copies. I still enjoy reading some of the notes written in the front and back covers of my yearbooks by friends (some of whom are now dead). I hate to see that go by the wayside. It'll be just like not finding those boxes of old photos in the attic.
Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores- At first glance, when you look at the statistics about the dramatic decrease in the number of brick-and-mortar adult bookstores in the US, it looks like good news. But if you think about it, there isn't any less use of pornography in our society, there is just a shift in how it is obtained. When I was very young, porn was nearly impossible to get ahold of...you had to go to a seedy place in a seedy part of town to get it. Where I grew up, we didn't have these seedy places, nor did we have that seedy part of town (at least, I was never aware of it). But in the Texas panhandle, in a town of less than 2000 people, that's not surprising. You still can't find adult bookstores in towns like this today.
When I got to college, porn was more prevalent...there were always guys in the dorm who had magazines, and living in an apartment next to some Air Force pilots made it real easy to find...they had a movie going pretty much 24-7 there. Fortunately, I wasn't a big hit with those guys, them being top-gun wannabees and me being a junior in college working at the Frito Lay plant every day from 330 to midnight; I didn't get invited to many of their parties.
Now, I rarely ever see an adult bookstore, and the few that are here in Amarillo are still on the seedy side of town, and only stay open because of the truckers who don't have much internet access on the road. (But that's changing...many of the rigs now use 3G and 4G setups and have full internet access.) Nobody I know goes there. They don't need to. Get on google and try searching for anything that might remotely sound like it is adult-related (try finding an Adult XL tee-shirt with google) and you'll find porn. And supposedly, where all the porn sights used to require a credit card, now many are free to browse. No age check (other than the silly front screen asking if you are 17), no ID check, nothing. It's nuts.
I suppose I'm glad the local losers who peddled porn through adult bookstores for years have suffered due to the internet. But really, the money has just skipped these middlemen and gone straight to the producers. It's not a pretty picture (pun intended) when you see what's really happened.
----------
This isn't finished yet, even though I've gone through the entire list. Next post, I'll add some things that I've thought of that the internet has killed, or is killing, that didn't make the Newsweek list originally. Feel free to add things in the comments section that you've seen as well.
If you didn't see the first three installments, they are here-
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
For Part 4 of the series, we'll look at
11. Polaroids and other Film
12. Reference Books
13. Yearbooks
14. Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores
Polaroids and other Film- First, I have to say I always thought 'Polaroid' was a terrible name for a product/company. Didn't they do focus groups back then? When was back then? (I just googled it...Polaroid was founded in 1937...I doubt they did many focus groups back then.) The name has always sounded like a disease instead of a film product. It reminds me of this dialogue from Vacation:
Rusty Griswold: Hey, ya' got Pac Man?
Cousin Dale: No.
Rusty Griswold: Ya' got Space Invaders?
Cousin Dale: Nope.
Rusty Griswold: Ya' got Asteroids?
Cousin Dale: Naw, but my dad does. Can't even sit on the toilet some days.
Cousin Dale: No.
Rusty Griswold: Ya' got Space Invaders?
Cousin Dale: Nope.
Rusty Griswold: Ya' got Asteroids?
Cousin Dale: Naw, but my dad does. Can't even sit on the toilet some days.
Polaroids, asteroids, they both sound like a pretty bad condition to have.
Anyway, I'm not so sure that the internet is primarily responsible for their downfall; I think it is secondarily responsible, however. The primary cause is the digital camera. Anyone who was even a little bit into photography in the past hundred years or so knows the frustration and expense of taking bad photos. Film wasn't cheap, developing wasn't cheap, and you had no feedback on what you or your camera were doing until you got the pictures back. That took a couple of weeks back before the one-hour developing shops opened up. With a digital camera, you shoot, you look, and if it isn't a keeper, you hit the delete button. At worst, you shoot about a dozen more shots than you need, then later at the computer you pick the best one or two and delete the others. (Side note: I've learned that some in the older generation don't delete bad photos...they can't stand to do it. They just haven't made the connection that it didn't cost them (effectively) anything so they aren't wasting anything...they just won't delete bad pictures. I assume they buy larger hard drives to store all those bad photos, and that does cost them something. Go figure.)
What the internet has done in a secondary way is it has made sharing the photos easier and no paper-developing is required. You don't even need instant film if you can email a photo to grandma a thousand miles away. In fact, the concept of photos on the internet probably deserves its own blog post. Think about it...how many casual acquaintances in the past showed you every photo they'd ever taken? Well, if you look on facebook now, there they all are. You can see photos of other people you may just barely know in situations and places you know nothing about, acting silly or sad or whatever, totally meaningless to anyone but those who were there. It's kinda weird, if you think about it.
The downside is, there won't be any boxes of old photos discovered in the attic by the next generation. (Of course, in my family, the last couple generations didn't write anything on the back of those old photos, so even when we found them, we had no idea who they were or when or where they were taken.)
Reference Books- My kids have very possibly never looked at a Worldbook or Britannica, and I'm pretty sure they've never opened a Miriam-Webster. I got a new set of Worldbook encyclopedias when I was in the 4th grade. By the end of 5th grade, I'd read every volume, cover-to-cover (I suppose that's why some of my classmates thought I was strange). I still have that set, along with yearbooks through the 70s and 80s, in my home office. We also have a set of Britannicas that belonged to my wife. But why would my kids pick up those heavy books? Everything is done online now in the reference world. I used to spend hours at card catalogs looking for library books. Now, everything is 'googled'. (We call it that when we do any search, not just a search on Google.)
I have to admit, in many ways, we have it better now than ever before. Access to information is much quicker, so we don't tend to put off or forget about finding things we want to know. But this has its downside as well, as others have written so much about. You can google (ha!) lots of interesting articles about how the internet, Twitter, and Facebook are making us all dumber, less able to concentrate, or whatever. It may be true. Where was I? Oh, yeah, lost my train of thought... (humor)
Yearbooks- I hadn't really noticed this one where I live. Our kids still take money to school each year for their yearbooks (in these parts, they are called, 'Annuals'). Its a lot more money than I used to take to school, and the books are paperback now. My yearbooks were hardbound, with sometimes fantastic, sometimes geeky cover art done by the yearbook crew. The ones the kids get new are all photos...very little or no art. But they do what they do. I think the online yearbook fad is something that's a lot bigger in other parts of the country, and will get here soon enough.
I think it's a bad idea. I have all my old yearbooks in the bookshelf in my office at home. It's fun to pull them out, see the old pictures, and get laughed at by the kids. I suppose you could do the same thing by pulling up a web page, but one thing you can't do is write all over your friends' copies. I still enjoy reading some of the notes written in the front and back covers of my yearbooks by friends (some of whom are now dead). I hate to see that go by the wayside. It'll be just like not finding those boxes of old photos in the attic.
Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores- At first glance, when you look at the statistics about the dramatic decrease in the number of brick-and-mortar adult bookstores in the US, it looks like good news. But if you think about it, there isn't any less use of pornography in our society, there is just a shift in how it is obtained. When I was very young, porn was nearly impossible to get ahold of...you had to go to a seedy place in a seedy part of town to get it. Where I grew up, we didn't have these seedy places, nor did we have that seedy part of town (at least, I was never aware of it). But in the Texas panhandle, in a town of less than 2000 people, that's not surprising. You still can't find adult bookstores in towns like this today.
When I got to college, porn was more prevalent...there were always guys in the dorm who had magazines, and living in an apartment next to some Air Force pilots made it real easy to find...they had a movie going pretty much 24-7 there. Fortunately, I wasn't a big hit with those guys, them being top-gun wannabees and me being a junior in college working at the Frito Lay plant every day from 330 to midnight; I didn't get invited to many of their parties.
Now, I rarely ever see an adult bookstore, and the few that are here in Amarillo are still on the seedy side of town, and only stay open because of the truckers who don't have much internet access on the road. (But that's changing...many of the rigs now use 3G and 4G setups and have full internet access.) Nobody I know goes there. They don't need to. Get on google and try searching for anything that might remotely sound like it is adult-related (try finding an Adult XL tee-shirt with google) and you'll find porn. And supposedly, where all the porn sights used to require a credit card, now many are free to browse. No age check (other than the silly front screen asking if you are 17), no ID check, nothing. It's nuts.
I suppose I'm glad the local losers who peddled porn through adult bookstores for years have suffered due to the internet. But really, the money has just skipped these middlemen and gone straight to the producers. It's not a pretty picture (pun intended) when you see what's really happened.
----------
This isn't finished yet, even though I've gone through the entire list. Next post, I'll add some things that I've thought of that the internet has killed, or is killing, that didn't make the Newsweek list originally. Feel free to add things in the comments section that you've seen as well.
16 December 2010
Things the Internet Has Killed (Part 3)
If you didn't see the first two posts in this series, they are here-
Part 1
Part 2
We are now to the next set, which includes vacations, privacy, and facts.
Vacations- How in the world has the internet killed vacations? Well, primarily by our own addiction to it. It kills vacation by our staying in constant contact with it, whether that be email or just casual surfing, FB, or whatever.
I remember taking my laptop on vacation with me many times in the past. I would spend quite a bit of time on it to the detriment of time spent with my family. Then I started leaving it at home. I got much more family time, but ended up with free time and nothing to do when the others were doing their own things (wife shopping, kids napping, etc.). So I finally decided to go ahead and take the thing along, but to turn off the wi-fi connection. It works. Now, I can work on stuff (like my Sunday school lessons), read (I have Logos 4 installed, which includes a couple thousand books), or just organize my disorganized photos and files, if I have down time. But since the wi-fi is not hooked up, I don't get bogged down in FB or with email.
Bottom line here is, it's really up to you, not the existence of the web, as to whether your vacation is ruined or not.
Privacy- This is the 'scary' one of the bunch, and one that we seem to have less control over than we'd like, or think. The only real control we have is to not participate in the internet at all. Even then, there will still be information about us on the web. Have you ever typed your name into a Google (or other) search box and hit the enter key? Try it...you'll be surprised at how much information is out there about you, and at how many people share your name (even if you have one of those 'unique' names, chances are its not unique).
The people that share your name are actually more of a problem than you might think. How much of that information do you think gets associated with you by mistake? And how hard is it to fix these false associations when you find them? What if one of these people is a criminal? In this culture, when everybody wants to be interconnected with all the information obtained by others (see the 9-11 Report if you need evidence), chances are pretty good that you have false information about you or connected to you floating around on the internet.
Now this, just in- a group of popular web sites has been harvesting your browser history to see if they can target you with ads. This 'history snooping' isn't new, but is just recently made the headlines. Its just another example of how you have to not participate to save your privacy.
Facts- This one cuts two directions. First the good part: facts are a lot easier to find with the ubiquity of the internet. Even 20 years ago when I was a grad student, finding much information about much of anything required a trip to the library. A couple hours in a card catalog, or searching on the terminals (after about 1990), yielded quite a few connections...all of which had to be physically found in the stacks, as they were called. (I suppose they are still there, and still called, the stacks, but I bet its a lonely place these days.) Now, if you need to know something, you type it into a Google box. As one person (name forgotten) recently quipped, "In the past, if you needed to know something, you asked a smart person. Now, the person you ask starts with G-O, and its not God."
But there's the rub...now, to find the information you need, and know it is legitimate information, you need to know more about the subject, or at least something about the sources, that you find. And one problem I never had with a card catalog was getting two hundred thousand hits for a two-word title or phrase. How are we to ever know if we are finding the right resources when we only skim through a few pages of the three thousand pages listed?
There's always the pages like Snopes.com, where we can check facts. But who's checking the fact-checkers? I remember one of those internet myth emails going around a couple years ago about Snopes being a liberal watch-dog site that was biased against conservatives. I have no idea if it is or not, but you can bet that you won't find an entry at Snopes.com about it! (Oh, come on...think about it...if it is true they are a liberal plant, they won't have an article confirming that they are a liberal plant...if they are not a liberal plant, they won't have an article confirming that they are a liberal plant). I hear there are at least a dozen fact-checker sites now...but I'm not familiar with any of them. And word is there are more starting up all the time. But again, how do you know if the one or three fact-checker sites you consult are bias-free?
On with the show in a few days.
Part 1
Part 2
We are now to the next set, which includes vacations, privacy, and facts.
Vacations- How in the world has the internet killed vacations? Well, primarily by our own addiction to it. It kills vacation by our staying in constant contact with it, whether that be email or just casual surfing, FB, or whatever.
I remember taking my laptop on vacation with me many times in the past. I would spend quite a bit of time on it to the detriment of time spent with my family. Then I started leaving it at home. I got much more family time, but ended up with free time and nothing to do when the others were doing their own things (wife shopping, kids napping, etc.). So I finally decided to go ahead and take the thing along, but to turn off the wi-fi connection. It works. Now, I can work on stuff (like my Sunday school lessons), read (I have Logos 4 installed, which includes a couple thousand books), or just organize my disorganized photos and files, if I have down time. But since the wi-fi is not hooked up, I don't get bogged down in FB or with email.
Bottom line here is, it's really up to you, not the existence of the web, as to whether your vacation is ruined or not.
Privacy- This is the 'scary' one of the bunch, and one that we seem to have less control over than we'd like, or think. The only real control we have is to not participate in the internet at all. Even then, there will still be information about us on the web. Have you ever typed your name into a Google (or other) search box and hit the enter key? Try it...you'll be surprised at how much information is out there about you, and at how many people share your name (even if you have one of those 'unique' names, chances are its not unique).
The people that share your name are actually more of a problem than you might think. How much of that information do you think gets associated with you by mistake? And how hard is it to fix these false associations when you find them? What if one of these people is a criminal? In this culture, when everybody wants to be interconnected with all the information obtained by others (see the 9-11 Report if you need evidence), chances are pretty good that you have false information about you or connected to you floating around on the internet.
Now this, just in- a group of popular web sites has been harvesting your browser history to see if they can target you with ads. This 'history snooping' isn't new, but is just recently made the headlines. Its just another example of how you have to not participate to save your privacy.
Facts- This one cuts two directions. First the good part: facts are a lot easier to find with the ubiquity of the internet. Even 20 years ago when I was a grad student, finding much information about much of anything required a trip to the library. A couple hours in a card catalog, or searching on the terminals (after about 1990), yielded quite a few connections...all of which had to be physically found in the stacks, as they were called. (I suppose they are still there, and still called, the stacks, but I bet its a lonely place these days.) Now, if you need to know something, you type it into a Google box. As one person (name forgotten) recently quipped, "In the past, if you needed to know something, you asked a smart person. Now, the person you ask starts with G-O, and its not God."
But there's the rub...now, to find the information you need, and know it is legitimate information, you need to know more about the subject, or at least something about the sources, that you find. And one problem I never had with a card catalog was getting two hundred thousand hits for a two-word title or phrase. How are we to ever know if we are finding the right resources when we only skim through a few pages of the three thousand pages listed?
There's always the pages like Snopes.com, where we can check facts. But who's checking the fact-checkers? I remember one of those internet myth emails going around a couple years ago about Snopes being a liberal watch-dog site that was biased against conservatives. I have no idea if it is or not, but you can bet that you won't find an entry at Snopes.com about it! (Oh, come on...think about it...if it is true they are a liberal plant, they won't have an article confirming that they are a liberal plant...if they are not a liberal plant, they won't have an article confirming that they are a liberal plant). I hear there are at least a dozen fact-checker sites now...but I'm not familiar with any of them. And word is there are more starting up all the time. But again, how do you know if the one or three fact-checker sites you consult are bias-free?
On with the show in a few days.
14 December 2010
Things the Internet Has Killed (Part 1)
There was an interesting essay in Newsweek a couple weeks back. It can be found in its entirety here. (It is a photo-essay.)
The essay, in photo format, listed the following things as casualties of the internet.
1. The 9 to 5 Workday
2. The Video Store
3. Concentration
4. Civility
5. The CD
6. The Telephone Book
7. Letter Writing
8. Vacations
9. Privacy
10. Facts
11. Polaroids and other Film
12. Reference Books
13. Yearbooks
14. Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores
There's way too much here to tackle all at once, so I'll break this up into a couple (or three or four) posts.
9 to 5 Workday- This cuts both ways. Newsweek's take is that we end up working all hours of the day, weekends, and holidays since 'the boss' can send us something via email or smartphone to which we need to respond regardless of the hour or day. That can certainly be true, but it doesn't have to be. Smartphones have an 'off' button, and email doesn't have to stay open on your desktop, nor do you have to carry your computer with you out to the driveway to play catch with your kids. (If you've tried to call me on my cellphone on a Saturday or Sunday, you got to leave a message...empirical proof that smartphones don't have to stay on 24/7, in spite of what my wife thinks.
I certainly appreciate the availability of quick contact when needed. As someone who is responsible for a facility (my college campus), a family (wife and kids), and a job (the VP and Provost who are my bosses), sometimes it is important that I be available. On the other hand, as the boss(I'm a campus dean), I don't recall ever phoning my employees after hours unless we were going to close the campus due to weather; and I don't recall emailing anything to them after hours unless it was something for them to deal with the next day at work. This can certainly be abused, but I try not to abuse it, and I can't say my bosses have ever abused it either.
There are also a good number of reasons why a 9 to 5 workday has become, in some ways, obsolete. But try to convince the federal government of that fact. (Recall George Bush's inauguration speech in January of 2005...one of the things he committed himself to do was to 'fix overtime for the private sector'. It didn't happen. The feds are just too big and too entrenched to fix, sometimes even if you are the president. It's easy to make things worse (just ask Mr. Obama about that), but very hard to make them better.
The Video Store- I'm sure you've all seen this happening. In fact, I recall reading the prognosticators talking about how the internet would kill Blockbuster twelve or thirteen years ago, before there was much of any live streaming of movies. Now the only thing new about this concept is trying to figure out what other related parts of our entertainment lives will be changed by the web.
I'll say more about this one when I discuss number 14 in another post.
Concentration- This one is sure to spark some debate among those who've thought about it much. On the one hand, we have folks telling us how the internet, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all working together to damage our brains and make us unable to relate to other people, focus on a single task for more than a few seconds, or even to think about abstract things at any depth. On the other hand, a different set of folks is telling us that all the interaction with multimedia is keeping our brains healthier (the use-it-or-lose-it phenomenon), especially among the 70+ crowd who have finally started adopting computers and the internet, even if they still can't program their VCR (see above for why this never-learned task suddenly became a moot point).
I don't know where this one is going, but I do have some idea that it didn't start with the internet or social media. I've had a theory for years that much of what is now called ADD/ADHD in children is simply the results of conditioning by too much television consumption. It isn't the programs that are the problem, its the commercials.
The average time an image stays on screen during a TV commercial is about 0.8 seconds. Pay attention next time you have the TV on, and try to do the 'thousand and one' or the 'one mississippi' count during commercials, and you'll see what I mean. Now, throw in thousands of those commercials, and think of the affects that this exposure has on the brains of two- and three-year-olds. They learn to not concentrate by rote. Parents who regularly read (yes, from a book) to their children don't seem to have nearly the trouble with attention that their counterparts who don't read to their young children. Think about that- reading involves a child engaging her mind on a single topic for a period of time...five, ten, or even thirty minutes or more. The imagination is used instead of sensory input, and the focus mechanism is honed and conditioned for use.
This one will be worth watching for the near future...it should be within the next five years or so that we see any marked changes in concentration ability in teens who've been sending twelve thousand text messages a month instead of focusing on what they are doing. That is, we should have some good evidence whether these changes are developmental (can't be easily reversed) or simply sociological (can be easily reversed).
Enough for this post...I'll pick this up in a day or two.
The essay, in photo format, listed the following things as casualties of the internet.
1. The 9 to 5 Workday
2. The Video Store
3. Concentration
4. Civility
5. The CD
6. The Telephone Book
7. Letter Writing
8. Vacations
9. Privacy
10. Facts
11. Polaroids and other Film
12. Reference Books
13. Yearbooks
14. Peep Shows and Adult Bookstores
There's way too much here to tackle all at once, so I'll break this up into a couple (or three or four) posts.
9 to 5 Workday- This cuts both ways. Newsweek's take is that we end up working all hours of the day, weekends, and holidays since 'the boss' can send us something via email or smartphone to which we need to respond regardless of the hour or day. That can certainly be true, but it doesn't have to be. Smartphones have an 'off' button, and email doesn't have to stay open on your desktop, nor do you have to carry your computer with you out to the driveway to play catch with your kids. (If you've tried to call me on my cellphone on a Saturday or Sunday, you got to leave a message...empirical proof that smartphones don't have to stay on 24/7, in spite of what my wife thinks.
I certainly appreciate the availability of quick contact when needed. As someone who is responsible for a facility (my college campus), a family (wife and kids), and a job (the VP and Provost who are my bosses), sometimes it is important that I be available. On the other hand, as the boss(I'm a campus dean), I don't recall ever phoning my employees after hours unless we were going to close the campus due to weather; and I don't recall emailing anything to them after hours unless it was something for them to deal with the next day at work. This can certainly be abused, but I try not to abuse it, and I can't say my bosses have ever abused it either.
There are also a good number of reasons why a 9 to 5 workday has become, in some ways, obsolete. But try to convince the federal government of that fact. (Recall George Bush's inauguration speech in January of 2005...one of the things he committed himself to do was to 'fix overtime for the private sector'. It didn't happen. The feds are just too big and too entrenched to fix, sometimes even if you are the president. It's easy to make things worse (just ask Mr. Obama about that), but very hard to make them better.
The Video Store- I'm sure you've all seen this happening. In fact, I recall reading the prognosticators talking about how the internet would kill Blockbuster twelve or thirteen years ago, before there was much of any live streaming of movies. Now the only thing new about this concept is trying to figure out what other related parts of our entertainment lives will be changed by the web.
I'll say more about this one when I discuss number 14 in another post.
Concentration- This one is sure to spark some debate among those who've thought about it much. On the one hand, we have folks telling us how the internet, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are all working together to damage our brains and make us unable to relate to other people, focus on a single task for more than a few seconds, or even to think about abstract things at any depth. On the other hand, a different set of folks is telling us that all the interaction with multimedia is keeping our brains healthier (the use-it-or-lose-it phenomenon), especially among the 70+ crowd who have finally started adopting computers and the internet, even if they still can't program their VCR (see above for why this never-learned task suddenly became a moot point).
I don't know where this one is going, but I do have some idea that it didn't start with the internet or social media. I've had a theory for years that much of what is now called ADD/ADHD in children is simply the results of conditioning by too much television consumption. It isn't the programs that are the problem, its the commercials.
The average time an image stays on screen during a TV commercial is about 0.8 seconds. Pay attention next time you have the TV on, and try to do the 'thousand and one' or the 'one mississippi' count during commercials, and you'll see what I mean. Now, throw in thousands of those commercials, and think of the affects that this exposure has on the brains of two- and three-year-olds. They learn to not concentrate by rote. Parents who regularly read (yes, from a book) to their children don't seem to have nearly the trouble with attention that their counterparts who don't read to their young children. Think about that- reading involves a child engaging her mind on a single topic for a period of time...five, ten, or even thirty minutes or more. The imagination is used instead of sensory input, and the focus mechanism is honed and conditioned for use.
This one will be worth watching for the near future...it should be within the next five years or so that we see any marked changes in concentration ability in teens who've been sending twelve thousand text messages a month instead of focusing on what they are doing. That is, we should have some good evidence whether these changes are developmental (can't be easily reversed) or simply sociological (can be easily reversed).
Enough for this post...I'll pick this up in a day or two.
21 September 2010
How Porn Really Isn't a Victimless Crime
This summer, the First Things First blog published a fantastic article on the effects of pornography on society and on individuals. The article, here, is rather long for a blog-type post, but is well worth the read because of the multifaceted approach it takes to the dangers of this media, especially on the young.
Having teenagers at home makes this issue a lot bigger than it was a few years ago, personally. With the recent brain research showing how adult images can re-wire the brain in ways that make normal relationships with people difficult to impossible, it gets even more scary. (See this article, for example, citing how the exposure can make teens more rebellious.) Add to that, porn now seems to be a growing problem among teenage girls and young women (see this article from Christianity Today).
This raises the whole question of the new media again...not just adult-related material but the whole concept of rapid access to shallow bits of information. How is that process affecting our kids' ability to reason?
I don't have the answers, but some smart folks are working on it. Hopefully, they'll have more answers sooner rather than later.
Having teenagers at home makes this issue a lot bigger than it was a few years ago, personally. With the recent brain research showing how adult images can re-wire the brain in ways that make normal relationships with people difficult to impossible, it gets even more scary. (See this article, for example, citing how the exposure can make teens more rebellious.) Add to that, porn now seems to be a growing problem among teenage girls and young women (see this article from Christianity Today).
This raises the whole question of the new media again...not just adult-related material but the whole concept of rapid access to shallow bits of information. How is that process affecting our kids' ability to reason?
I don't have the answers, but some smart folks are working on it. Hopefully, they'll have more answers sooner rather than later.
20 September 2010
Bookmarks Are Killing Me
Over time, I have managed to collect thousands of bookmarks in my various web browsers. They've all come together in the latest version of Firefox, which I now use almost exclusively.
Here's the question...how do I efficiently go about browsing through all those bookmarks and then determine which ones I want to keep? If anyone out there has a good way to do this, please let me know. I dread the thought of actually clicking on each one to see if it still works, and then trying to decide if I need it anymore.
OK, I'm just being lazy, but if you know of any good organization methods for internet bookmarks, I'd love to have the reference.
Here's the question...how do I efficiently go about browsing through all those bookmarks and then determine which ones I want to keep? If anyone out there has a good way to do this, please let me know. I dread the thought of actually clicking on each one to see if it still works, and then trying to decide if I need it anymore.
OK, I'm just being lazy, but if you know of any good organization methods for internet bookmarks, I'd love to have the reference.
22 July 2010
Taking Care of the Screeners
Here's a job I bet most of us didn't know existed- internet content screener. Maybe you did know, but like me, assumed it was a one- or two-person job in the offices of the bigger content hosting companies, like Facebook, MySpace, etc. Try four-and-a-half MILLION images per day. Not a two-person job. And this is mostly just user-flagged content.
This article in the NY Times (no, I don't read the Times...I found a link to it) describes one company that takes on outsourcing for screening of internet content posted by users.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/technology/19screen.html?_r=4&src=me&ref=technology
What a job. These folks look at photos, articles, stories, and any other content posted to sites like MySpace to detect illegal material or material contrary to the rules of the site (which are usually focused around what is legal). I can't imagine all the skubalon they must look at each day. The article goes into detail about how it affects these workers psychologically.
I don't see this problem getting any better. How can we control such a beast as the internet? It is basically a platform for viewing the imaginations of (almost) everybody in the world, and there are some sick dudes (and dude-ettes) out there. Just how much control do you think we'll ever have over something as large as the internet, considering the radical corruption of man, the critter who created it (sorry Al Gore) and keeps it stocked with images and words that feed the beast?
As G. K. Chesterton said, total depravity is the one thing from scripture that can be empirically proven. Here's the database- the internet.
This article in the NY Times (no, I don't read the Times...I found a link to it) describes one company that takes on outsourcing for screening of internet content posted by users.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/technology/19screen.html?_r=4&src=me&ref=technology
What a job. These folks look at photos, articles, stories, and any other content posted to sites like MySpace to detect illegal material or material contrary to the rules of the site (which are usually focused around what is legal). I can't imagine all the skubalon they must look at each day. The article goes into detail about how it affects these workers psychologically.
I don't see this problem getting any better. How can we control such a beast as the internet? It is basically a platform for viewing the imaginations of (almost) everybody in the world, and there are some sick dudes (and dude-ettes) out there. Just how much control do you think we'll ever have over something as large as the internet, considering the radical corruption of man, the critter who created it (sorry Al Gore) and keeps it stocked with images and words that feed the beast?
As G. K. Chesterton said, total depravity is the one thing from scripture that can be empirically proven. Here's the database- the internet.
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