The positive geek

Not everything in the techie world is doom and gloom. Of course there is lots of it:

• With information being so available, attention is fragmented and being are getting less productive.
• There is no privacy left and companies will be able to buy all the information you have been accumulating on-line for the last 5 years
• Google is becoming the new Microsoft, enough said.
• The internet is not really helping in education and students are copying their work on-line. Are we actually becoming less educated?
• There is so much information out there that you just cannot find anything
• Newspapers are dying and we will forever talk about the non-relevant last big mistake from the most famous because that is all we gossip about on-line and that all the information we have time/money for anyway
• The power of social networks may actually bring about the tyranny of crowds to the entire world.

But there are still a few of us who think there is a lot of good being achieved using technology and the best might still be coming. After all, it could be argued the Internet is still in its infancy.

• There is now greater transparency of information. Even though sometimes it might look bad, it is a good thing. Democracy can only move forward with open access to all the information about how the system is run.
• We have creative ways of using the information using mash-ups. Maps of crime, Google earth/sky/stars.
• There is still so much that can be done and yes, there have been really good use of Twitter in natural disaster cases. Sometimes that was the only mode of communication. Same with Facebook during the Iranian elections.
• Information is accessible from so many different places and smartphones are supposed to be replacing PCs sometime in the near future.
• In poor countries, people use cell phones to transfer money, sell and buy new products.
• I am not the only one saying it. This might be the most convincing argument of course.
• My biggest hope is that there is still so much we have not seen and that is yet to come.

Facebook being active

There is a lot of activity around Facebook those days.

• They are trying to position themselves of value for businesses. Probably positioning themselves for making more money.
• They are still bringing new features using the FriendFeed acquisition and bringing voice to your contacts.

I am a bit curious about the voice thing. EBay tried it with Skype but it seems people were happy staying anonymous (kind of). Of course if you are chatting to your friends, it might be a different story.

I suppose it seems to be more and more about all the social sites merging into one set of functionality and when the dust settles, who know will be left standing. I am siding with Facebook still being there but I am not an expert. I tried to explain why in this blog entry but who knows.

At the moment it seems to be all about bringing real time information. or at least as quickly as possible. I am not sure I agree entirely with the trend for individuals, but of course I already talked about the marketing benefits for this. As an individual, the site is great for me to catch up on the things I have been missing while being busy somewhere else. It is not really about trying to talk to them right here and there. I have IM for that.

I am not sure I am part of the average person using the site. A few of my colleagues have an iPhone and you have to fight for their un-interrupted attention. I hate the feeling that the day might have passed by and I was not paying attention to it. The more I know, the more I try to get my attention back and try to look at the present moment. Seems to be more and more difficult. Anyway, one way to achieve that is by having asynchronous communications with my social members. And yes, I still have lots of improvements to make to make sure I have quality communications with them…

First time I read it it just sounded silly

I thought social media was a way to escape your real life and connect on a different level to all your friends. Or also the gloomy version of pretending to be something you are not and being someone else.

Well, you are not as safe there as you ever thought. Well you were never that safe before, but at least you could pretend. A court order was going to be served over Twitter. Is nothing safe?

I suppose it was the kind of guy pretending to be some one else. But how do you know he actually got it? How do you know the username is not shared across multiple people? How do you know when he got the message?

The article said you can server court orders over email and the like. I suppose the technology is not that different. Just the idea of an electronic transaction being used as an official way to contact you feels a little wrong. Either they don’t know you and so, what kind of weight does an injunction have? Either they know you, I am sure they have plenty of ways of finding out, why would they use anything like Twitter to send an injunction?

Anyway, it did not not seem silly anymore, just a little disturbing…