The death of languages

I was reading this BBC article about the Death of Language. The heading reads: “An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades. What is lost when a language dies?”

The most interesting part for me was:
"What we lose is essentially an enormous cultural heritage, the way of expressing the relationship with nature, with the world, between themselves in the framework of their families, their kin people," says Mr Hagege.
"It's also the way they express their humour, their love, their life. It is a testimony of human communities which is extremely precious, because it expresses what other communities than ours in the modern industrialized world are able to express."

I could not help wondering if it is the same thing with programming languages. They are definitely a product of their time and a specific culture/idea for which they were developed. They have been evolving over time like any other language. I wonder what we would loose if for instance COBOL was to disappear or maybe something like Prolog.

To some extend, a programming language is there to help solving a specific problem. If there is another programming language which helps you do the same thing better and faster, surely you do not loose much. In a sense, a human language is not that different, it tries to address the communication problem.

Which ever way I turn the ideas around, I think it is both a shame and no big deal if we loose such thing. It is something more tangible than a nostalgia for a world/historical passage of our world. Languages try to address the way we see the world at a point in time. When we loose that language, we loose maybe a dimension of the world we look at. Every language is a compromise to express something. It reflects the choices we make and our priorities. When we have a new language, we may or may not carry this dimension with us and maybe we now are looking at the world only in a certain way and completely missing this other dimension which could have made a big difference in our perception of it.

Of course it is highly impractical to keep all of them and to some extend if everyone was speaking the same language it would be a lot easier. Being a foreigner and all, I cannot help thinking wouldn’t it be a lot easier if everyone would speak English? Or technically I don’t really care which one it is. But then I am fearful of a world limited to only English words. Maybe there is something equivalent to poetry for programming languages, that is an interesting idea. I wonder what that would look like. We know programming can produce visual and audio art. I wonder what poetry could look like. Maybe a requirement for any application should also include artistic element to it.

Yahoo not in search anymore?

I was reading this article.

The most sticking comment were from a Yahoo search expert who came from Microsoft:

“Maarek came to Yahoo from Google, where she was instrumental in the development of front-end presentation enhancements such as Google Suggest. In her view, the last decade brought a revolution in the way Web pages are crawled, indexed, and presented to the user: a revolution that saw Google come out a clear winner.”

If Bing is now replacing the Yahoo search engine, Microsoft now owns the data displayed by Yahoo. O’Reilly has been saying for a while I believe that it is all about the data. Does not really matter how much Yahoo claims it is about presentation, I can’t believe this can be correct. Presentation is just so easily copied, that can’t possibly be the only hedge.

With my limited wisdom I believe that what they are really after is another kind of data, the user habits data. If they can collect and harness that data, they can provide the kind of results I have been blogging about targeted to you. If they can achieve that I suppose that might give them the edge.

I can’t help being suspicious, if they do not own the data, they now become dependent on it. Microsoft is not known for his competitors’ friendly tactics. They might require Yahoo to give them a way to gather the same type of data. Or, knowing that Bing powers the search, why would any new user go through Yahoo instead of Bing directly? That can only mean one thing, a slowly decreasing number of users. They are going to have to find the kind of applications that will make users want to stay, some kind of integrated portal to access most of services people would want to access on-line.

If that is the case, Yahoo is becoming the provide of Software as a Service. There is a fierce competition out there with so many areas to be addressed. Who would be able to know which ones to start with and which ones they will focus on first. If I am right, which would be a small miracle, we should see more applications coming at of Yahoo starting with a better email/IM (oh wait, I think they have already done that).

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…

More marketing use of Twitter

Here is another way for us to parse the data in twitter. The more data we enter, the more it will be analyzed, processed, etc.

In a sense it is great. I can’t help wondering about what other data we would need for us to decide whether the data is actually relevant.

There was a study saying at least 40% of information in Twitter is not really useful like I am having a coffee, at the bar, etc. The next question is whether the remaining population is actually a representative sample. Or I suppose what type of population would it be representative of. If possible, it would be nice to dice the data using that information.

I can’t help but be reminded of the time where we had wars and lots of major things happening in the world and all the news were talking about was Britney Spears. It was cheaper and potentially more popular to provide celebrity news rather than world wide news.

I am a little curious though to see how much the top tweets would be influenced by the media. Let’s pick something that is potentially old news, or off the radar. Start using the regular media to talk about that and see how quickly or if this bottles up in Twitter (or any other social media).

Facebook vs Twitter

It is always fascinating to see the difference between the two. I have a preference for Facebook myself, at least you have the option to enter as much content as you see fit, or as little.

Facebook is a programming platform, although I do have some concerns about privacy and about how much each application has access to but let’s put that aside for a moment.

Facebook is making some steps to become more than it already is. This article details as Facebook is buying FriendFeed and will now (hopefully) be able to improve its real time search capability. This is one of Twitter’s strength, being able to view trends based on current activity.

The article seems to indicate that Facebook might be competing with Google but I am not sure that is the point. I suspect the gap is being reduced between the 2. You can upload pictures, videos for both of them.

The open architecture/api provided by Facebook does make me bet on them. You can also provide an open account (company and others) where it is not necessary for you to be confirmed to become a friend. I believe Facebook has a toned down interface which apparently looks more like Twitter for those who think the regular one is a bit daunting (I am one of them I suppose).

In the end, I believe those services will converge into a social platform (as opposed to a social product) where you can pick and choose the functionality you like. There will probably be specific platform for specific environments, business (Linked In), private (Facebook) and others I cannot really think of.

Twitter, the good

I have been posting so much about what I did not understand about Twitter, I suppose it was time to post about the good. As much as I find hard to get most of it, I think there are really good things coming out of it. It is just I think we could improve the current blogging/social solutions so that similar good things could emerge from those solutions. In the end, if people favor twitter more than the other solutions, it will not matter so much. In the end I believe all those solutions will meet in the middle, as it should be, driven by the user’s needs.

I suppose the biggest difference for most people between something like Facebook is the way you can follow someone without their approval. People who are already famous (and companies I suppose) can’t really validate all their followers on by one. Witness Ashton Kutcher’s challenge to CNN for a million followers.
The other cool feature is the open API which has been embraced by so many applications and devices. It makes it so easy to update Twitter any place, any time.

Even though I am still not sure why people would Twitter, not enough space for information and all, this any place, any time has some really cool applications in case of disaster (either political or ecological). I have not played with it but I believe you can directly upload pictures and movies now. That definitely will help with the lack of information that can be attached to it.

The best part is that while twitter represents the pulse of its members, you can get so much out of the chatter. Here is SalesForce.com trying to use the information from multiple social web sites including twitter.

I cannot help wondering if the social sites or blogs allow public/private profiles, with maybe a more granular level of privacy, and a cool public API, I am not sure if twitter will have much to stand one. On the other hand Twitter is looking more and more like a blog or the other web sites. Somehow I suppose they will all meet in the middle.

After I wrote this, a lot of things happened. Facebook acquired FriendFeed. Facebook has a Lite feature which apparently looks like Twitter. I suspect in the end, the one which will stay will be the one who manages to make money without offending its users. MySpace does not seem to be much in the news those days. Could it be that it was based on giving a music/performer’s platform. The music industry has been a bit in shambles with iTunes and the music industry not really knowing what to do. I have not heard of a platform dominating the market which is centered around music distribution aside of MySpace. Then again I am not really looking that much into it.

Web application or Client application

Just wanted to put what I thought down on paper (so to speak). I figure it would help trying to sort it out. The typical answer 5 years ago would have been a web application allows for quick deployment, avoids the dll hell but would have limited interface capability. Not sure any of this still applies.

On the client side, you can use java web start or the .NET equivalent. They can be downloaded and kept updated every time you launch it.

I suppose Applets, Silverlight and Adobe Flash take it to another level but you sill need to have a runtime engine installed. At least it would not change as often, the code gets updated on the fly and cached I believe if you do not need to change it. The size of the runtime is important, but I suppose not essential for me to figure out some more.

The web applications those days are fantastic, to the point where desktop applications try to look more like them. The boundaries are constantly being pushed. I am still amazed we can have a work processor and a spreadsheet with just html code (and JavaScript of course). Not always up to par but getting closer and closer. Not sure where Flash and Silverlight fit in, they can of course interact with the web pages. But they are not necessarilly part of the page. I am on the fence here as to where they belong. If they serve the page as opposed to be the page, I would be tempted to make part of the web technology.

However I have come across a few screens that I don’t believe would be possible in a web page. I am not one of those who think web applications are not user friendly, although I have found quite a few of those. The choice, as always, is it depends. What the requirements are should be the main driver. For complex screens, use Flash, and applet or Silverlight (no preference really). I think it should be the preferred solution and should only be rejected if notthing else can be done about it.

One of the greatest benefit I can see all applications benefited from the merge of those options is a greater freedom for designing the interface. We are not longer bound by what Microsoft thinks it should look like (the visual basic look I like to call it) or the not so good java look and feel. Every product should have a graphic designer, no matter how small the product.

A Culture of Communication

I had to present to my list of peers a list of initiatives  we had been taking in our group to facilitate communication and sharing of information. I felt some of the things we were doing would have been easily applicable to us. For a while I have been frustrated of the lack of communication within our group. We have so much in common:
- same job title
- same process to follow
- very similar challenges
- same base technology
In short we are all development managers within the same company, the only true difference was that we were working on different products.
We had no real communication or shared experiences. It was hard to feel we were working for the same company or worse, individual developers could not imagine being assigned to a different team.

So, I did the presentation, asked for feedback and nothing. I was a bit disappointed but then I thought about it. All the things we were doing within our group had been implemented over time and that it required quite a lot of work on my part to get people on board. It was not something we worked hard at until people saw the benefits and then we moved on to the next one. It was first thought as extra work that needed to be done in addition to anything else. It was a way to loose what made them special, the information they were holding onto.

Then I realized I was facing 2 things:
- resistance to change
- failure to understand that you grow by sharing information a lot more than by hanging on to it.
I remember trying to explain my manager 10 years ago we should have an intranet and him asking ‘why should we bother?’. Not everyone sees the benefit of creating a repository of the company’s IP.

What I probably need is getting support for their management so I can get them started on communicating and then hope that by doing they will understand the benefit of sharing. As we do it more and it then becomes a habit, the less of a chore it is and the more we benefit from it. I think it is one of those skills that you can develop by making it a habit. The more we communicate, the better we are at it and the easier it is. It dawns on me that we might not all be born communicators but it is something we can learn by doing. That is something worth thinking about.

About Creativity

I have just been to a project management class on creativity. The class was mostly about convincing people that they are creative machines. It was a series of quotes from motivational speakers and of exercising designed to convince us we can be creative and think out of the box. The presenter was very likeable and had some nice stories and jokes. The course created a few reactions for me.

• The presenter used some of his life experiences to make a point, I was then again reminded how we learn better through storytelling. It makes the material more enjoyable and easier to remember.
• It is really a shame that people need convincing they are still created. The presenter was agreeing with Sir Ken Robinson, one of my favorite presentation from TED talks, people are educated out of creativity.
• The course tried to convince us we are creative, but it did nothing to tell us how to cultivate it and and to create an environment of creativity in our own environment. That is a bit of a shame.
• He said he loved project managers and that we would be the ones to get the economy back on its track. That was a bit of a cheap shot, I suppose that might be part of the plan to make people feel good about themselves. Still the thing about project managers is that when something is wrong, it is all your fault but when all is good, it is thanks to the team. A project manager is nothing without his/her team, in the end, they are really doing the ones doing the work.

I think, with my limited experience, that the best way for us to encourage creativity is to create a safe environment where it is acceptable to make mistakes and fail sometimes. Especially if you are trying something new and out of your comfort zone. Of course you want to make sure the consequences of the failures are not too dramatic and affect the project. But then again, there is always something going wrong. During the course, someone mentioned that when something bad happens, they do not blame and address the issue. In a way it sounds nice but I also believe in accountability, I am not sure how to reconcile the 2 at this point. I think it is ok to tell someone they made a mistake and move on. The issue should be looked at to make sure it can be avoided in the future and does not become systematic. Sometimes it is just a mistake and there is really nothing to do beyond acknowledging it happened.

A follow up on Twitter

Just a quickly follow up on my previous post. I am not sure I made my point so well. I don’t mean to say we do not have a lot of applications possible from mining twitter information. I read this article (How NPR Tweets Topical Archive Material) and I really liked the idea. How a program identifies trends in Twitter and publishes content from existing material which will support the trend.

I actually Twittered about this article where we learn about some of the usage a company can use the information in Twitter to understand how ‘the mob’ perceives the company.

My issue I suppose is not so much about what can be done about the data but the incentive there is for people to Twitter. It is definitely a fad at the moment, people join just to be in. Technically I am joining to find out what the fuss is all about. I suppose its strength is the asymmetric associations which allows you to follow someone without first requiring their approval.

The conflict for me is that the benefits depend on the information entered and you can only enter 100 characters. You can only really enter keywords and then link to other page with the full information. That is quite restrictive.

Maybe the quick fix for me would be to just allow entering as many as you want and then it is a nice and easy way to have a blog. Maybe I just don’t get it and it will become a real source of information and not just a marketing tool.

Will twitter survive?

I know a lot of people have been writing about this already, I probably don’t have that much more to add that has not yet already seen but I do not get it. I can’t see how it can survive.

Here is what I know:
- You can only enter about 100 characters, this means you can reference information or not say too much. I suppose that is why it is called micro blogging. Of course referencing other pieces of information is very useful but as to publishing some, you can only really give a quick status update. I have been following a few people and unless I have some background on their status, it does not really say much.
- You can follow anyone you want and they don’t even have to approve you. Cool for me, it is a bit embarrassing to have to refuse someone because you don’t really know them well enough. On the other hand, you might end up by having so many followers that you don’t really know anymore who you are saying things to. That must be quite a restriction, of course I don’t really know, but it is not about sharing your status with your friends anymore.
- You can send messages directly to someone, whether you are following them or not. If you are a fairly popular person, again which I am not, that can make it very difficult for you to keep up with the ones you actually care about.
- There is certainly a good reach, lots of tools for you to be able to post from lots of different devices. The benefit of an open API I suppose.
- There are ways for now to search/tag/monitor the data going through twitter. This is great stuff, I remember looking at a map of the world and a popup would come up every time someone would twitter.
- They do not seem to have any business model yet. In this day in age, that is a small miracle. It does say a lot about how popular this is.
- Every now and then some suspicious user is trying to get me to follow them, I suppose we should invent a new word for this, it could be micro-spam.

I can see the benefit for a company to look for keywords about the company, the product and keep a pulse on what is being said. It seems to be a very good PR tool. It seems to have been used a lot during key and significant events.
Maybe I just don’t get it, but I still don’t really see the point. I can’t say anything of consequence, I could be referencing something I wrote from somewhere else but then I could just write it in Facebook and all the people I do care about will read it from there.
At this point twitter seems to be used so you can update your status in other applications at the same time, again the benefit of open APIs, but I can’t see why it can’t be done in the other ones.
You can apparently follow publishers you care about and read the news that way, but I already have a news reader, is twitter giving me anything different?
The bands, famous people and companies seem to be using it to be cool and publish ‘good’ information about them. They have other people populating the information for them.

If it stops being a fad, what else is there? Is it more a reflection on the fact that we focus less and for shorter period of time and all we can come up with is about 100 characters? Maybe I am just missing the point, the fad is the point and it will always be there. Some part of me can only hope that it is not the case. Maybe all we need is easier tools for blogging and we can still make quick and easy posts to the web for all to know.

Where is the internet going?

I am sure it is not an easy answer, we can try to look at where we have been, where we are and predict where it will go. But that is not really going to work.

I use the Internet all the time without even knowing I am, kind of. I work from home using VPN, I use an RSS reader, a webcam, social networks, etc. I just joined a French social web site and I have finally started to reconnect with some of my old pals. Although it seems most of them are not really there. I have to say we do not really watch TV as much, most of the shows are available on-line, when it is convenient for me to watch and not when the network think I should.

I am probably a bit behind my times, I refuse to put my list of contacts on the internet, I don’t really trust any location would be that secure for sensitive information. I have been resisting using something like Mint, putting all my $ information for all to hack or steal, seems way to sensitive. For those, I use a local (desktop) application and make sure I backup all the files. I am not sure whether I would actually publish my location with Google latitude yet, but I know someone who did and I often check to see where they are.

Now there seem to be 2 currents to look into. The whole web 2.0 towards web 3.0 (semantic web) and also now about Software as a service and all. We have so much information, I can only hope we will find a way to organize it better and personalize it a little bit more. I have not really used Amazon’s storage services yet but I can see how it is where we will eventually all go. Having my own drives to maintain and backup, with all the pictures and movies I have, it becoming a bit of a burden. You have to like the idea of someone else handling that for you and not to have to worry about noise in your office and how to scale without denting your savings.

Some of the reason for why I am a bit behind has to do with lack of internet access at home. For a while (a long while) we only had a one way cable connection (that means ok download and really bad upload speed) and no real other alternative. I have no reception with my cell phone at home and so the mobile phone is not really always on. I also try to make sure people from work find me easily accessible through my personal mobile phone. Uploading my Flickr pictures has been a pain for a very long time. But now we have a dual cable connection, I feel I can finally see the light. Most services are finally viable. I am afraid the US will not really be at the forefront of the internet revolution until we all have a decent access to the internet.

Once Internet access is granted and we have figured out the privacy issues, look at all the issues Facebook had, and when data packages for mobile phones are a little cheaper, I believe the Internet will be in everything we do. I am still not sold on watching shows on such a small screen though. Once that happens, Google will be able to give us tailored searches based on where we are and what we like. Ideally also based on time of day, am I asking about tech job related things or am I just trying to find a place to eat? People’s life will be mostly on the internet for all of us to see. We will have some video standard and we can watch each other without worrying about which program I should be running to be able to see a specific individual (Skype, MSN, GTalk, …). Geographical disparity will no longer means we cannot stay involved in each other’s life anymore. The world will indeed be a lot flatter then.

Corrections:
I am now a fan of Hulu, I do not need to be in front of the TV at the right time in order to be able to watch my favorite shows. I have been using streaming videos from Netflix for a while but I find the selection a little disappointing. I plug the computer into the TV, so no more small screen. On the bad side, I must be watching too much now. I need to catch up with current offerings so I can go back to my old life.

A friend of mine has an apple TV, he linked to my flickr account so I could show off my pictures. Unfortunately the resolution was a bit weird so overall a bit disappointing. But I see now that soon we will have media boxes, blur the line between TV, internet and what not. Apparently Microsoft Media Player is pretty good, I am just afraid if I get started I will never have time for physical activities or family time anymore. As we watch the shows, we will have links to youtube videos about the movie, Wikipedia articles for the location and historical references. We will not need DVD and their special features anymore. Is Blu-ray still viable with so many internet services providing HD downloads? Add the social dimension to this and you can recommend movies, compare notes. Just imagine, there would be no need to have screening anymore, you can target the whole web and develop your film while it is being reviewed. Not sure networks and distributors will ever agree to a standard that would be necessary for this to happen.

What interesting times we live in

I think about what is going on in the world and wonder how I will ever be able to explain this to my son. We have a recession, our parents went through one or more already; the US is involved in 2 wars, my dad fought in one. The next American president is more tanned than his predecessors, we nearly had a woman president… My parents never had anything like that. We are going through tough times, and the worse is yet to come. Yet I find myself somehow sheltered from all this. I have a job, which I am hoping to keep for at least a year or so, but then who can really be sure. I am very lucky, I do not fight in Irak, I did not know anyone in the twin tours. And yet I find myself somewhat involved, I suppose at this point it is more of an intellectual exercise and my parents would probably laugh on how sheltered my life still is.

Somehow though, I still feel the pain I see in the world. It is hard to ignore, bad news get spread because they sell and no-one really care about good news. Everyday, something bad happens somewhere, it is hard to ignore it and not be affected. I am in no way feeling directly as my parents did, I am so much more sheltered than they were. I am hoping that my son will be as well sheltered as I have been of course. Life throws enough at all of us to gain some perspective. But how will I be able to explain the significance of the events we are currently going through. A black president will be something common, maybe it will have the same significance as ‘one man, one vote’ for me. How can see how good it is, but I can only imagine the impact the right to vote was for those who did not have it.

The next question I will hope he will have would be ‘What can I do about it?’. It is a hard question for each of us to answer I suppose, I don’t really have one formulated fir myself yet. Best I can tell, we have to start with ourselves, and I still have some work there.

The whole point of the reflection I suppose is that what is information without the appropriate background, historical context, can it still be used as efficiently? Is it still relevant? Is need driving relevancy of information? I suppose that is just another way to say for information to be useful, you need to want it, you need to be able to understand it. So the only way for a search engine to deliver what we are looking for, it needs to understand what we know and what we are looking for. Are we the sum of our knowledge? Even that one is a bit too deep for me. But for the sake of argument, that would mean the search engine would have to know me to be able to give me an efficient result. Ouch.

Was supposed to be a reflection on the times, I got distracted :). Without going into politics, I am not sure there ever was a US president who had so many issues to resolve, I wish him well.

Philosophy and Education

In the French curriculum I followed, when I was 17 I had to take a year of a philosophy course. One hour a week or something and it was in the final exams (A levels, bachelor's degree, ... Anyway the one you take when you are 18 and kind of decides what you will be doing next).

I was never very literary, I was Mr logical; loved math, kind of saw the point of physics, liked biology but the rest was pretty much background noise. I could barely write essays, I was either pretty good or really bad (mostly bad of course) and never quite understood the difference between the good ones and the bad ones. I have been known, not by many, to write poetry when in love. I could actually spontaneously rhyme when in love, of course this went all away once I moved to a non French speaking country. I did not understand the  point of philosophy. It very seemed to be idle debating about something, anything really, that most people already had an opinion about. What should I write 3 pages of something when I can explain my opinions in a few sentences.

For the exam I had something like, who is the best person to really know who I am. I did badly. But the question stayed with me for a very long time, I hate to loose I suppose. This question, and this alone, taught me more about philosophy than all the courses (not that many really) that we took.
At the time, my view of the world was very simple. I did not understand that it called for a definition of who or what I am. I was the sum of my experiences therefore I am the best person to know who I am. Pretty silly question when you make this assumption. Who else knows about all the experiences I have been through. I can see now why I did not do so well.
Maybe now I am more capable of fooling myself I know more than I used to. I start asking myself the kind of questions like:

• Am I the sum of my experiences or am I what I made of them?
• Can 2 people with the same experiences have the same personality or even be the same person?
• Which brings us to can 2 different people really have the same experiences?

I am starting to understand the question when a tree falls but no-one sees/hears it, is it still falling? Although my favorite one is if a man says something and no women hears him, is he still wrong? I can see how it is hard to prove/disprove whether the external world is what we perceived it to be through imperfect interpretation of language and senses that are consistently filtering out information, otherwise there would be too much to process. I am still not sure about what is the sound of a one hand clap? Maybe I will have a better idea about that one within the next 10 years or so.

I am not sure I am a converted yet, I still have a very pragmatic approach to the whole thing. I am not sure trying to prove the existence of God or that the external world might not be what my experience of it tells me it is. In the end of the day, we can only do what seems to make sense at the time we do it.
I have some sympathy for the Buddhist approach, quite your mind and you will be able to know yourself. I believe that when we are quiet and separated from the outside influence, we are mostly good (without having the need to define what it means). I am hoping we are all good, but I am nowhere near that special place, so I am not sure.

Finally I am hoping that in the future, religion, philosophy, biology and philosophy will merge into one know it all discipline. I'd rather not be there when it happens though. I enjoy having a little mystery in my life and not knowing everything there is to know. Hopefully it is not possible and it is just something to strive for and that you can never reach. On the other hand, one can hope that a better understanding of the human nature would lead to a better world. So I suppose I am all in favor of philosophy after all. I just wished it had been presented a little bit better when was was younger.

Information Overload, a problem or an opportunity

I wrote this one a while back and realized I had posted its sequel already, so maybe it is time to post this one already. If anyone is ready of it, sorry about that.

I look at information overload in two ways. On the one hand there seem to be so much information out there, how can you find the stuff you care about? The other one is how easily you can publish information about yourself on-line, whether you want to or not.

For the first part, does the Internet have too much information? The Internet is has much about democratization of publishing capability as anything else (well maybe not, but it is one of the best side effects). I still read books, but most of the information I use on a daily basis in on-line. As soon as it costs less than $5 for me to print an entire book at home, I am not sure I will ever need to go to a bookstore. Although browsing on-line does not really the same experience, I can make my own hot chocolate while browsing the books, I down need the cafe experience as well. I have been subscribing to o'reily radar for a while where the subject of the future of publishing comes up on a regular basis. They should know, I find their discussions about the Internet fascinating.
I came across this Ted presentation where the speaker discuss the fact that we do not have too much information, we always had that, we only have inappropriate filters.

I suppose I already have my own ideas about what those filters could be. So, it would then seem that it is not so much there is too much out there, it is just that we need better ways to get to it.

As for the second part, information about yourself being published. I goggled myself once, and I found a reference that seemed to match. I went to that web site where I could find my phone number and address. I can Google my phone number and find my name and address. I got more involved and tried a few web sites. I am now in Flickr,  Facebook, LinkedIn, I share articles I like in Google Reader and even started twittering (is this a verb in the dictionary yet?). It took me a while to get to twitter because I could not see myself telling others small things on a regular basis ('I am eating', 'I am thinking about going to bed', etc.). Still it seems like a nice way to learn about people I know. I got to learn a few things here are there, it was nice. I might get to publish some of my own at some point. After watching the Ted video, I went and paid attention to the security settings. Apparently it is one of the best for a social site. I was hoping to at least have a differentiation between friends and family, like Flickr does. I was surprise to discover it was not there. So what do you when your parents subscribe to your page. I don't have that problem, but I will definitely register to my son's when the time comes :). I don't really like people knowing about my birthday, I am still trying to find a way to hide that. Maybe I should change it to a false one and stop worrying about it. The other concern is that I need 3 profiles at least, a work one, a family one and last one for friends. Until this is possible, the lowest common denominator will probably win. Is it just me or it should be work for all working individual?
So, my issue now is how to keep all those sites up to date? Updating my status in Facebook does not update Twitter. That's a nice application to write for Facebook, I should look into that. I am spending so much time thinking about blog, pictures, keeping in touch... Finding a way to communicate efficiently is becoming difficult. Can't my Flickr pictures be automatically referenced in Facebook and notify twitter about it?
The next worry is of course privacy. Because of all the information I post to all the sites, there is so much more about myself on-line than there had been before two years ago, I have looked at Mint and PageOnce as well, they look great. Unfortunately I have not found the courage to give that much information about myself in one site. You are never sure where the company will go in the future and they could be. I suppose that's if you are lucky, the company is still there and your information still exists. I am a bit scared of having one place which would have the list of all my web sites and a way to aggregate all that information about me. Just too scary to think about it at this point. All I need is for them to expose my information using the Google social API and everyone knows.

So what is the conclusion of all that? I need to subscribe very carefully to a few feeds and keep an eye for new ways to filter information so I do not spend 3 hours everyday catching up with the world while still learning about things I did not know I wanted to know more about. For now I need to find a way to keep my private information locally and synchronized will all my computers and all. I have started writing my own contact management application because nothing I find satisfy me and I am curious about what could be done. Nothing like doing it yourself to find out. I will wait for this magic web application which will let me control my information and not give it to anyone else. How long will the wait be?

I suppose I already have my own ideas about what those filters could be. So, it would then seem that it is not so much there is too much out there, it is just that we need better ways to get to it.

As for the second part, information about yourself being published. I goggled myself once, and I found a reference that seemed to match. I went to that web site where I could find my phone number and address. I can Google my phone number and find my name and address. I got more involved and tried a few web sites. I am now in Flickr,  Facebook, LinkedIn, I share articles I like in Google Reader and even started twittering (is this a verb in the dictionary yet?). It took me a while to get to twitter because I could not see myself telling others small things on a regular basis ('I am eating', 'I am thinking about going to bed', etc.). Still it seems like a nice way to learn about people I know. I got to learn a few things here are there, it was nice. I might get to publish some of my own at some point. After watching the Ted video, I went and paid attention to the security settings. Apparently it is one of the best for a social site. I was hoping to at least have a differentiation between friends and family, like Flickr does. I was surprise to discover it was not there. So what do you when your parents subscribe to your page. I don't have that problem, but I will definitely register to my son's when the time comes :). I don't really like people knowing about my birthday, I am still trying to find a way to hide that. Maybe I should change it to a false one and stop worrying about it. The other concern is that I need 3 profiles at least, a work one, a family one and last one for friends. Until this is possible, the lowest common denominator will probably win. Is it just me or it should be work for all working individual?
So, my issue now is how to keep all those sites up to date? Updating my status in Facebook does not update Twitter. That's a nice application to write for Facebook, I should look into that. I am spending so much time thinking about blog, pictures, keeping in touch... Finding a way to communicate efficiently is becoming difficult. Can't my Flickr pictures be automatically referenced in Facebook and notify twitter about it?
The next worry is of course privacy. Because of all the information I post to all the sites, there is so much more about myself on-line than there had been before two years ago, I have looked at Mint and PageOnce as well, they look great. Unfortunately I have not found the courage to give that much information about myself in one site. You are never sure where the company will go in the future and they could be. I suppose that's if you are lucky, the company is still there and your information still exists. I am a bit scared of having one place which would have the list of all my web sites and a way to aggregate all that information about me. Just too scary to think about it at this point. All I need is for them to expose my information using the Google social API and everyone knows.

So what is the conclusion of all that? I need to subscribe very carefully to a few feeds and keep an eye for new ways to filter information so I do not spend 3 hours everyday catching up with the world while still learning about things I did not know I wanted to know more about. For now I need to find a way to keep my private information locally and synchronized will all my computers and all. I have started writing my own contact management application because nothing I find satisfy me and I am curious about what could be done. Nothing like doing it yourself to find out. I will wait for this magic web application which will let me control my information and not give it to anyone else. How long will the wait be?

Can too much information be bad?

I was watching this great video about from Kevin Kelly who gave a great interview at the Web 2.0 Summit. I liked most of the interview, I could not help react to his final vision of the future. Us being connected to all of the data in the Internet cloud, our perceptions being expanded beyond our current "shell". I find the concept scary. I find it scary for 2 reasons. First with all this data available, even I who is a bit wary of doing it too much, I spend most of my time trying to catch up with information. The information overload, I do not need to start again. Second, the notion of always being connected seems a bit disturbing.

On the one hand, I understand the need to have better information. Better connected information with access to the multi-dimensional aspect of information available. A bit like what is available is mashups . A map of my travel pictures combined with pictures taken by other people and articles from wikipedia. But somehow this gets blended in an easy way, not sure I have a vision of what that is at this point. The Internet has so much to be positive about, there is no corner of the planet, or soon anyway, that does not have access to free information, unfiltered. Most people can express opinions and expose anyone (ok, this one could be bad, but it is also pretty cool).

I believe we can run away from ourselves. By trying to learn all the time, we do not really try to understand ourselves. There is a lot that can be done here, but it can only be done while the mind is quiet. Are we going to measure ourselves by the amount of information we have? Or are we going to take the time to understand our nature by taking the time to listen to it.

This kind of thoughts always brings me to how ideas are created. We often refer to the stupidity of crowds and how it is difficult to come up with something brilliant while debating with the rest of the team, the best ideas are created in the shower. I think group meetings are important, this is where you level the plain field, this is where you learn about things that are relevant to what you are trying to achieve, providing you are not too set one way already. But then individuals will take the matter at hand and do something with it. If the group tries to dictate the final answer, you will end up with a common denominator and nothing brilliant (well in most cases anyway). But you can use the group as a way to gather the necessary information to make the idea possible.

So, on the other hand, if the information is available so easily, maybe we do not have to pursue knowledge to that extend, maybe we can relax a bit knowing that once information is needed, it will be easily found. Maybe we will find new grounds to compete in, because we will always compete. Maybe we will excel in synthesizing knowledge and create new intelligence that we will freely give for everyone else to make more knowledge with. That is a bit of an optimistic vision, but I kind of like it. I think it will take a while before people feel comfortable giving away information like this. We might have to change the way we make money or even live, so we do not need money. One can always dream...