Taran's blog

I just got done watching Clay Shirky talk about how cellphones, twitter and Facebook can make history - the video is on the left if you have about a little over 17 minutes to kill. And everything that Clay Shirky said was true. But he left out a few things that I believe are important to balance the 'social media is the best thing since swiss cheese' hypothesis.

Certainly, social media as it is implemented now allows greater potential for spreading thoughts, ideas and kittens on treadmills (watch the video). It can help cover news events and many other things - but there is also a down side to the use of such technology. For example, it has the power to misinform and misinform at a rate that is virtually unstoppable. This point was made by the article, Swine flu: Twitter's power to misinform, but it should be apparent. That it is largely unspoken does not imply that it is apparent. I'm sure that if you asked anyone who advocates social media in a manner that makes it look like the second coming of a religious figure they will admit that things can go wrong. { Read more }

Steve Nelson wrote a nice and succinct piece on those that have their Facebook status updated by Twitter. I call them squawks, as in they are annoying tweets.

The way I deal with squawking is rather simple. I hide the squawker from my feeds - in that way I don't have to deal with their Twitterese nonsense (and most of it is nonsense for those of us not in the conversation). Sure, they may have a few gems hidden in there.

But who wants to spend the time finding them?

So the right way to deal with squawking is... squelching. Squawk at your own risk; that gem in the rough or true diamond you write will not be seen if you squawk.

The New York Times article from last week, The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default (Hat tip to Simon Fraser) is a must-read by anyone who uses Facebook - or any other social media. Facebook has already updated it's blog post, adding this to it:

UPDATE on June 24: We've received some questions in the comments about default privacy settings for this beta. Nothing has changed with your default privacy settings. The beta is only open to people who already chose to set their profile and status privacy to "Everyone." For those people, the default for sharing from the Publisher will be the same. If you have your default privacy set to anything else—such as "Friends and Networks" or "Friends Only"—you are not part of this beta.

But the cat is out of the bag. Meow. Hiss.

As the New York Times article points out, information collected from Facebook applications and Facebook itself can be sold because, in your need to complete that whacky quiz, you gave people the rights to access that information. The sound of your privacy, and the privacy of those around you, goes away with the muted sound of your mouse-click. Click.

From the NY Times article:

Best Case { Read more }

I accidentally summarized my thoughts on the digital divide in a response I sent to a few people, so I figured I'd post it publicly because it's the best way I've been able to explain it. Adapted for this post so it makes sense outside the context.

In the trenches, [advancing technology on the bleeding edge] only serves as distraction. The main problems revolve around infrastructure, infrastructural policy, international trade agreements and 'intellectual property' (copyright and patents).

The down side of advancing technology is that by the time it's implemented for the developed nations, the developing nations will be wearing the one-size-fits-none hand-me-downs as they always have because no one has really focused on the problems I mentioned above. So the cycle continues.

That's the digital divide. If you replace 'developing nation' with any disadvantaged group and replace 'developed nation' with any group at advantage, you'll get the spirit of it right.

It's all well and good to try to work on the digital divide. But it's an odd position to be in when the political entity you are associated with has policies and trade agreements that work against you. One would think that working on those policies would make sense.

When I worked in the ER, we corpsman would love when someone with a laceration came in because we loved suturing. We'd focus intently on the laceration because that's what we wanted to fix. But if the person was having a heart attack, what they needed most was CPR. So we did CPR. Unfortunately, in the real world, people tend to just want to fix the lacerations. And that makes them a part of the digital divide, whether intentionally or not.

Well, I imagine I'll be dropped from a few circles after writing that. Oh well. It's true.

Through Farcebook, I found a nice image that I wished I could share with you. You can see it here - it is especially poignant about the media hype surrounding the death of celebrities. About how the media overdoes it. About how people like myself just tune it out because it is so transparent... but we know that there's really glass there.

And then, to go to page where the image is and see it handicapped by an odd combination of LiveJournal, inability to embed and a lack of open content license... let's just say that there's a question as to the copyright of the image I saw on Farcebook. And it works against the creator of the image.

If you're not on LiveJournal, you can comment anonymously, but what's the point?

Sometimes people really limit their own work that they could be getting more credit for. And it's funny in a very sad way when they make the point of the media doing the exact opposite with content that is processed for the mainstream.

Ahh well.

I spent too much time on the road today because I caught bits and pieces of the news not once but twice. The second segment had me laughing because apparently there's a new drug in Trinidad and Tobago called... methamphetamines (methamphetamine hydrochloride). You see, not only is Trinidad and Tobago behind in fighting crime, etc... now it's behind the world in drug abuse.

And to hear some police representative talk about these things as if he had first heard of them makes me really wonder if there is actually international support. Or if he even knew how to use the Internet. How fortunate for him that I didn't catch his name and rank. But the point is not to belittle the man for his lack of information but instead point out that he should have been better informed. Especially when it comes to public speaking. Honestly, I could have given a better explanation. I think I could count everyone I know as being able to give a better explanation.

Any self respecting American drug user was hopped on crank/speed/meth at one point, with the 8-balls, etc, from the 1980s. Ice is kind of new, but it's processed methamphetamine hydrochloride that, if my drug history is correct, was actually made so that dogs couldn't sniff it out. That it's more potent was an interesting side effect. Now, I'm not saying that I have intimate knowledge of the product. When I was a Navy Corpsman in an Emergency Room, we were supposed to know these things in case someone came in hopped up.

But I have other news for the Police. There's Ecstasy out there (X, Ex, or properly MDMA) and LSD as well. How do I know? Go to a club and you can hear people talking about them as if they're new. MDMA used to be legal up until the late 1980s - you could get it without a prescription. And LSD's been around for almost 50 years. { Read more }

In going back and forth today in the Pickup-Named-Mud, I was struck by a few things. First, the 95.1 FM station sounded like the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto Vice City because of the recent death of Michael Jackson. The next, while listening to the news, was that the media is grasping at a way to describe the crime situation in Trinidad and Tobago: When someone says, on the news, that there is 'a deteriorating crime situation', literate people everywhere cringe.

A deteriorating crime situation, you see, would be a good thing. A deteriorating pipe might be rusting. A deteriorating door may be coming off the hinges. A deteriorating state of Law would imply crime.

A deteriorating crime situation implies law and order is gaining the upper hand. Clearly, this is not the case - and all the government's politically appointed jackasses horses and all the government's politically appointed women and men can't seem to saddle that horse again. And because of that, because of this crime situation, the media is now reaching as creatively as it can to describe the crime situation. { Read more }

When I read Ramphal Calls For 'Inspired' CARICOM leadership, I immediately recalled what I wrote in an annual review of a junior software developer that was part of my development team.

I wrote, "XYZ would be a better team player if XYZ were more capable of working on his own."

Looking back, I stand by those words. He was a nice enough person, but he spent most of his time getting direction from other people and thus slowing the team down. He'd worn off his 'new team member' smell, so it wasn't that he was catching up. It was that he wasn't pulling his weight, and everyone on the team knew it. As the technical lead, I got my ears filled with it even by the project manager.

And that's how I view CARICOM. Maybe it's that I'm in Trinidad and Tobago and I see the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, and the other side of the khaki pants, Basdeo Panday, being as ineffective as fishnet being used for diapers and then reading what Manning is speaking of at CARICOM. The Jamaican angles that I have read seem to reveal a similar issue, but I'm not sure.

But I think that is CARICOM's problem: As individual nations, the problems that plague CARICOM and it's many initiatives is mired by the lack of ability of the individual nations. This falls down to the people who elect the governments and the systems by which the governments are elected and implemented.

So that's what I think, right now. I'd love to be wrong.

Show me.