Category: Technology

Was out and about today and noticed some things about the society.

I couldn’t help feeling like the Zombie Apocalypse has happened.

Oh nobody was walking around moaning “Brains”… But virtually all of the people were walking around engaged in their cell conversations, texts, or on the internet, They were completely oblivious to the people physically around them.

It was weird…

As readers may recall, I found myself in this mindless state a couple of months ago. I walked around South Coast Plaza chatting like a moron with one of my best friends, completely oblivious to how rude I was being to other shoppers.  So I’m not throwing stones here, Just observing the phenomena.

Our technology is an interesting thing. We create the technology in an effort  to improve our connectedness and while we’re connected to our friends, FaceBook, and the internet… We’re alone in a crowd, shopping, or at a restaurant. I’ve watched people on dates interrupt their conversations to read the latest text message or friends posting on FaceBook.

I don’t know what the world would look like today if the cell net went down and stayed down.

I remember sitting in a bar after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 watching business people killing the batteries in their “BRICK” cellphones trying to figure out why they couldn’t make calls. What confused them was that the cell net was up but only 911 calls were being routed through the network.

Today, I suspect that if the cell net were to go down people would loose their minds, I know that I’d be a little cranky!

We also create technology to make our lives easier. (There’s a whole other train of thought regarding this… I’ll save it for another time) Yet in fact it’s easier now to hand a clerk cash.

 Debit and credit cards used to be easier to use. Here’s an example. Think about using a credit card at a gas station.

In the old days, you’d swipe the card, fill your tank, get the receipt and you were on your way. Pretty much all of the machines worked the same way, it was simple, fast, and convenient.

Now you swipe your card and get the third degree. The pump wants to know “Do you want a car wash?”, “Do you want a receipt?”, “Debit or Credit?”, “Enter your PIN or Enter your billing zip code” Sheeesh And of course all this while “PUMP-TOP TV” is blaring at you something inane about the latest celebrity faux-pas.

We’re surrounded by walls of technology or technological distractions. It’s as though we’re trying to insulate ourselves from interacting with each other in person. Yet we’ll spend hours following the posts of our “friends”, playing Angry Birds, or FarmVille. It’s psychotic!

If we spent half the time actually interacting with each other locally rather than fooling ourselves into thinking that we actually have 779 “Friends” we’d probably be a lot happier and a lot less fearful.

So I suggest you turn off the phone, oh sure keep it with you, power it up if you need it, but turn it off.

Then spend a day in THIS reality. Notice the people around you, listen the the banter at a Starbucks.  Interact with each other,  you might find this reality preferable…

I answered an invitation from a friend to Join Google+ today.

It looks like a pretty neat service and I figured what the heck?

<Sigh>

As it turns out the privacy settings on some elements of the service are MORE than touchy.

To Googles credit, they warned that changes here could ripple across all my Google accounts. After all was said and done… about 1/2 the photos linked in the blog were gone. Oooops!

I just finished relinking everything (I think) and the exercise was a good one for me.

On the one hand I can’t beat the simple convenience of this blog. It’s free, it’s easy to work with and has a decent enough tool set that I can actually create a blog entry from my phone.

On the other side of the coin, is the issue of privacy. While I intend for photos to be linked to the blog, I don’t necessarily want those photos to be sitting in an “Album” that’s accessible out of context to my friends, associates, business contacts, Mother, etc.

Just looking at the photos in an album like that… well it looks like you’re one SICK puppy! (The fact that I am notwithstanding!)

This has made me wonder if I can create a Web / Blog Site on my local system that I can publish to the web without actually having to upload text & images to servers out on the web.

If I maintained the files on my local storage platform I’d have a slightly better chance of making sure that my stuff, remained my stuff.

It’s an interesting line of thought.  Perhaps another project for me to work on in the future.

In the mean time I’m going to be using a much more logical method to make entries and post photographs. Just in the event that I choose to move the blog to another location in the future.

I would like to make the blog far more “picture rich” using my own photos.  However, since some of those photos I’d like to be able to sell or publish down the road I’ve been reluctant to just place them here in the public domain with no control at all.