Posts in category "Technology"
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Six degrees of Friendship

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 1123 days ago

Friendship.

It is such a personal thing really isn’t it. My perception of what friendship is could, and most like is, totally different than yours. At the root of it though there are some common things I think can be agreed upon.

Friendship is a special relationship between two people. It isn’t quite lover/partner in life type of thing and yet it is far more than being acquainted with a person. It is the term we use to signify a special bond that has been created over a period of time. A bond that comes from life experiences both good and bad that are either shared or commiserated over.

As such we tend to be more open about ourselves, our lives, with people who we call our friend. We are more willing to let down our hair when we are with friends. We are more willing to cry when we are comforted by our friends.

Interestingly though there is also a tendency to have varying levels of friendship even among those closest to us. With one friend we might be willing to bare all but with another we still find ourselves holding back some things. This is because friendship isn’t just a one way street, rather friendship also means creating a common ground of understanding where we know almost instinctively that some tings are truly best left unsaid.

This doesn’t mean you value their friendship any less. Exactly the opposite is the case because by understanding that common ground and lines not to cross you are showing how much you value that friendship.

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evil_eyes

The misappropriation of Evil

We seem to have lost all concept of what evil is. In the tech blogosphere we throw the word around as if it is some sort of weapon. Google is evil, Facebook is evil, advertising is evil, marketers are evil.

Open isn’t evil. As long as it is the freetard version of Open – anything else is evil. Free isn’t evil but anything else is evil. Free access to the news isn’t evil but paywalls are evil.

The psychology of words is fascinating especially when it comes to propaganda. Evil, good, have very definite connotations which are being manipulated on a daily basis. If what is going on doesn’t match up with what we think is the right; or good way to do things then out comes  the word – evil.

You want to talk about what evil is?

Hitler was evil. Bundy was evil. Pedophiles are evil. Evil is something that rocks you to your very soul. Evil is something you can taste in the back of your mouth as you find yourself unable to move. Those are the faces of evil.

We like to paint corporations that are willing to forfeit our future in exchange for obscene amounts of money as being evil but they are not. They are a business and at its roots business is all about making money regardless of the cost. Businesses can be bad – but again that is a subjective term – and businesses can be good but no matter how much you try and twist ideologies business is not evil.

Facebook is doing what any company would do in its position - solidifying its reach by whatever means it can. Google would do the same regardless of their tired old motto. Microsoft got hammered for years for doing what businesses do.

Sure we would all hope that businesses would do good things but the reality is that any business will do whatever it has to do to survive. That doesn’t even come close to meeting the the sniff test for evil.

I know in the past I have made the same error and tossed in the word evil without a thought; besides it is always good for pageviews right. Well no more – at least here because this is the only place that I have control on what gets posted. No more branding companies as being evil because one of these days someone could come along who truly deserves that title. The problem is that the word – the emotion – the fear – will have been so watered down that it won’t have the same needed impact.

So call Facebook bad, call Google bad but save evil for something that truly is.

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Twitter Quote of the Day: edbott

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 1123 days ago

I’m betting a lot of folks would like a button like that on Twitter

via @edbott

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40million

Getting depressed with this whole Social Media thing

This whole Social Media game is becoming increasingly very depressing. I’ve really tried to get past this but instead the feeling only becomes more ingrained. I have tried to slough it off as just a passing phase as a result of too many big old hot air balloons to poke holes in; but it is more than that I think.

After all when you hear a bunch of developers cheering because Facebook has removed a key user data protection element in their insatiable quest to control as much of the Social Web as possible you have to wonder just who is the Web for anymore.

When you hear terms like we’re doing this to improve the social experience; which if anyone decides to look past the warm and fuzzy buzzwords, it is easy to see that this is more about improving the company’s social experience and ability to monetize our activity on the Web. What it isn’t about is us saying what will make our experience better and when we raise questions we are either lumped in with the open web freetards (like it’s a bad thing) or we’re some sort of troglodytes.

Sometimes it feels like Social Media is nothing more than one great big social experiment to see just how far we can be made to shift our perception of what privacy is. It isn’t a shift that is truly benefiting us in anyway. Is it really that important to know immediately what some person who has followed you is listening to? Is it really necessary that we know what some person who has friended you has spent or bought.

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granny

This is what can happen when a company controls your web presence

  • Category: Technology
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  • Posted 1125 days ago

First off I want to apologize to Chris Brogan for his trip to Canada being ruined because of Google. Hopefully Chris the bistros more than made up for your troubles.

For those of you may not know the esteemed Mr. Brogan was visiting my fair country (even if it was Montreal) and Google decided that there had been a perceived violation of Google’s Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.” As a result Chris was stranded in a foreign country without his lifeline to his community or his communication platform.

You see when Google disabled his access they left him literally stranded without

  • being able to use his Android phone fully
  • Access to his primary calendar
  • Access to Google Wave which is where he collaborates on projects
  • Google Reader
  • Google docs and all his documents

In other words just because a single company perceived something was wrong they made a person not exist, because that is what happens when you suddenly find yourself alone – not existing in your once familiar digital world.

Now we have Facebook looking to insinuate itself to a degree only seen before with Google. It was one thing when Robert Scoble found his Facebook account suspended – it was early days of Facebook – and really it was only the fact that Robert was who he was that he got his account back.

However as Facebook increasingly becomes our online identity handler, our way to communicate, our way to be social <gag> what happens when they decide that some perceived wrong and suspends your account.

The idea that a single company has that much control over your digital existence should be enough to scare anyone. Throw in the fact that Facebook is well known for its arbitrary suspending or deleting of accounts  and if their march for dominance on the Web doesn’t worry you … well .. here’s some more kool-aid for you.

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Thanks Facebook for putting my nuts in a vise

When Martin Bryant at The Next Web says that the importance of what Facebook announced today shouldn’t be ignored and that we do ignore the announcements at our own peril he is absolutely correct.

In one simple keynote speech Mark Zuckerberg has served notice to the Web in general and bloggers specifically that Facebook wants to own the Web and you will help them do that because if you don’t … well, don’t expect to be successful or to experience any real growth because Facebook now has the keys to your future.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb is wondering if this next generation Borg machine is really a deal with the devil and Liz Gannes at GigaOM wonders if there is enough trust to go around for people to be willing to live in a Facebook powered Web.

To Marshall I would say that the average web user won’t see as it as any deal with the devil but bloggers on the other hand may have no choice but to sign on the dotted line. As to Liz’s question – my only answer would be that anyone who trusts Facebook is a fool. They have already proved more than once that the biggest obstacle they face is our warped concern over our privacy and that they will do whatever they have to in order to shift the bar on this. Today was just another example of them shifting the bar while couching everything that they are doing in terms that they are doing it for the betterment of the web and the users.

Don’t be fooled.Seriously.

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