We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed by looking down at our feet or at the endless twitter fighting.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
You are seeing aspects of this happening with Matt Mullenweg’s comments about a open and diverse web after buying tumblr.
Don’t forget if you find this useful, you will find “Public Spaces, Private Data: can we build a better internet?” at the RSA London on 21st October 2019, right up your street.
Watching the labrats scurrying away
Ian thinks: Recently read Labrats book after seeing Dan Lyons at Thinking Digital. Its quite a raw insider view on silicon valley culture, the laughable and the horrific sides in equal lashings.
The Great Hack Workshop from Mydata 2019
Ian thinks: This was one of the highlights of Mydata 2019. Carole Cadwalladr & Paul-Olivier Dehaye’s deep dive into the build up to the great hack was fascinating. Lots of useful resources were revealed.
Are Boris Johnson’s PR People Manipulating Google Search?
Ian thinks: True or not, our dependence on a single search engine/service makes any potential manipulating even more impactful.
Ted Nelson on Hypertext, Douglas Englebart and Xanadu
Ian thinks: Its always amazing to see pioneers who narrowly missed out pushing concepts which were too early, but could come back.
Look out here comes the hyperledgers
Ian thinks: More ledger/blockchain projects to power your projects than you can shake a stick at. Very happy at least some are open-source.
ReasonTV’s look at the Decentralised web
Ian thinks: I was expecting something light touch but having Cory Doctorow mainly interviewed means its got some depth.
Etiquette and privacy in the age of IoT
Ian thinks: Etiquette tends to be forgotten in the advancement of technology. I don’t consider it rude to shut off a Alexa, I’m sure others will disagree.
Tipping etiquette set by user interface
Ian thinks: Talking about etiquette, very interesting to see norms set by user interface design decisions. Obviously set to benefit the company but its stuck now.
Exploiting technology or exploited by technology?
Ian thinks: Curious tale, but it does raise a question about digital access and backups. Least we forget about power and when things go technically wrong.
In my Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Oct 2019) I wrote brief bit about the curious tale.
The FT puts things behind the paywall, so here’s a copy I made on wallabag.
Its a number of mistakes which leads to £476.50 fine and a wrongful conviction. This made me reflect on my own usage..
I personally don’t use my phone to pay for things and like the idea of the Curve card because although the mobile app is useful, it can be used without my phone. I do have a card attached to my phone but never use it.
When using mobile tickets for flights and planes, I put them into google drive meaning if my phone is dead, broken or stolen I can still get the tickets with my other devices or another persons device. For this reason I avoid all apps which only display the ticket in side of it. For example the trainline app’s eticket isn’t ideal, hence why I tend to get paper tickets still. When travelling via a plane, I find most of the airlines have a copy you can get via PDF with the 3D barcode included. This goes straight into Gdrive and synced with dropbox on all my systems.
This is also why I prefer services which work offline because mobile/wifi access can be patchy and I don’t want to be reliant on network access to get into my password store or for the 2nd factor. Google maps offline has been a massive help in the past and I haven’t had a bill like I got in America in over 10 years. Shame it doesn’t sync the offline maps to my other devices
I always tend to carry around a battery pack and have a stash of cables in my laptop bag and try and keep the phone charged enough. Especially when going somewhere for a while. Everyone use to follow the ABCs (always be charging) but we all know that’d not great for lithium ion batteries.
Seems a lot to think about but so far its served me well…