Why Privacy Matters
I’ve never really understood privacy concerns, as my Dad always used to say “if you’ve dont nothing wrong then there is no reason to worry”. Over the year’s I’ve modified this and formulated my own reasoning: “If people want to judge me on my choices and behaviours then that’s their problem”.
While this is all fine and good in a court or law, or a job interview, in a reasonably free and democratic society this art installation really rams home some of the more pernicious uses of social media technologies.
It’s taken me 10 years or so to wise up and be a bit less naive and utopian about technology.
Yes technology can set us free, but it can also be used by unfriendly regimes to snoop people with opposing views in some dark and scary ways. This interactive art-exhbit-machine is a lovely way to show how commonly shared Facebook material can be easily be turned into ‘infringement tickets’.
This is where a ‘Demolition Man’ authoritarian state meets Social Media, and it’s really thought-provoking,
(via Brighton Graphic Design & Illustration – Josh Harrison)
“Unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we’ll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us. Unless we want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations—we’ll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how. It will actually become a reasonable strategy (or a more reasonable strategy) to suspect everything new.”
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Over the past 20 years of computer use I’ve gone through many cycles of addiction, from hours at a Prestel terminal in the library (the internet before the web), too spending weeks completing Gauntlet II on the Amiga, to Google, Wordpress, Tumblr and Twitter.
I’ve always been a bit of a care-free techno-utopian. Until very recently I’ve seen people like Dr Susan Greenfield as part of the old-guard, the old generation who’ll never ‘get it’.
Slowly, over just the last couple of years, I’ve been starting to look more carefully at Carr, Lanier and Greenfield, looking at their concerns a bit more seriously.
Paul Graham’s essay The Acceleration of Addictiveness is a great exploration of this theme and this quote especially captures the real issue…
Why would you buy (or even use) technology from a company you wouldn’t buy stock in?
Randy Murray of Whowritesofryou.com suggests, before buying the next ‘must-have’ gadget, ask yourself one simple question:
Q: Do I believe enough in this thing to invest in the company that makes or sells it?
It’s a great point, giving your cash to any company is a micro-investment. Well I’m not an economist… it might not be an investment technically, but it’s certainly a micro-gesture-of-good-will in return for the delivery on a promise of good goods. Of course we need to look at the hidden costs of what we’re buying, is it a sustainable company? Is it a moral company? Will it blend?
But what clinches this piece of advice for me is Randy walking-the-talk and telling us he’s made far more money off of Apple stock than he has ever spent on their hardware.
I wish I’d bought Google stock on that joyful inspiring spring day back in 1999, the day I started typing my first words into their ‘free’ search engine. The darn thing has become an addiction for me and my peers and my shares would now be worth 7 times what I would have paid back then. If ONLY I put my money where my mouth was when I was a young Vodafone employee (and customer) way back in 1998. And so it goes.
Seriously, before you install that next bit of ‘free’ software consider what beast you are feeding. Do you complain about Google’s corporate monopoly yet still rely on their ‘free’ email system? Do you think Apple’s proprietary systems suck yet use their hardware every day?
We’re started to live in a hyper-connected world. Don’t buy x if you suspect it may harm the environment. Don’t buy y if you wouldn’t buy shares in the company. Don’t by z unless you love it with all your heart.
They’re different rules to live by but they’re all intimately connected.
Apple Hopes to Re-enter the Living Room - NYTimes.com
I’m convinced Apple will relaunch AppleTV. They already have a decent chunk of the lap, desktop and pocket markets and the iPad is clearly a way into bedrooms and sitting rooms.
Combine iOS with a TV and you’ve got a large touchscreen device ready to stream any content you wish. Combine that with an iPad and you can control your media-centre right from your lap.
Ever since the iPad was announced I’ve seen it as a ‘remote’ device — it’s not a computer replacement it’s just a way for Apple users to interface with their other Apple devices and datastores.
What does AppleTV need to be?
At minimum the device needs:
- HDMI (to screen or projector) for high definition output
- Graphics card to run 1080p
- Wifi to connect to everything else in your house
- Basic ‘Bonjour’ or VNC interface
What the iPad needs:
- An iPad/iPhone app that allows you to navigate either on the main screen or on the device itself.
- A killer app for me would be to ‘push’ (or maybe ‘fling’) content from iPad/iPhone/iPod to the AppleTV
- I’m watching something on the train home, I pause at my stop, when I get home I almost literally ‘throw’ it from the iPad to the AppleTV. This new gesture tells AppleTV to play the content from the place I left off.
- The same in reverse: Watching a big game, have to go out, the game follows me on my iPhone if I want to check in with the live stream. It knows I want to watch it, because I left in the middle of the game.
- Or I’m feeling too tired to watch in the lounge and I go to bed and pick up where I left off.
PREDICTIONS:
- Apple TV to come back
- As an iOS device
- New gestures/modes of interaction, including concept of one ‘entertainment event’ being watched (and synced) on multiple devices
- iPad display for additional content, no longer will we have to ‘press the red button’ to get a different camera view or page of statistics, we can get that on our device while the main screen keeps focused on the action
- iMovie integration… get home from a holiday and the whole family can decide, passing the iPad around, choosing which clips make it to the ‘final’ edit — with the concept of ‘final’ edit becoming less and less relevant to the family themselves.
