Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Author: Ianforrester
Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser.
Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io
Starting with Meow & Meow or Mephedrone in 2010 – 2011, moving to the rise and fall of The Silk Road in 2013 – 2015. Who could forget the outrage of silk road! In 2017 like a duplicate of the war on drugs, the Silk road was closed down and the drug dealers hit the underground with 100’s of new online shops on the darknet using reputation systems like ebay. Then in 2018, how do you advertise to new customers? Well you copy what others do, taking advantage of the influence of social media to showcase your wears.
“This is the new public space and the ideal platform for dealers,” says Liz McCulloch, director of policy at Volteface, who curated the study. “They can advertise in really creative ways – pictures, prizes, reaching out to people’s friends, building organic relationships. Among young people, there is a perception that they can ’vet’ them, get a sense of whether they are trustworthy.”
Seeing New year 2020 in from my windows in central Manchester
The 2010’s are over and its now the 2020’s… Happy New Year all…
As we enter the next decade, I’ve been thinking about what things I certainly want to bring forward. At the same time while writing Other things to know about me in my user manual, I used a cluetrain rule number 7.
“Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”
― Cluetrain Manifesto
I think quotes are a useful to convey some meaning in to the future. Something which may be useful when looking into the 2020’s.
“Sometimes I forget that my world is not the mainstream (yet)” ― Eric Nehrlich
“We expect more from technology and less from each other.”
“Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.”
― Sherry Turkle
“ Sometimes the most modest changes can bring about enormous effects.”
“People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.”
― Malcolm Gladwell
“Do the unexpected. Find the others”
― Timothy Leary
“In the future that the surveillance capitalism prepares for us, my will and yours threaten the flow of surveillance revenues. Its aim is not to destroy us but simply to author us and to profit from that authorship.”
― Shoshana Zuboff
“When you don’t have to ask for permission innovation thrives.”
― Steven Johnson
“Freedom is about stopping the past.”
“If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they’re free for people to build upon as they see fit.”
― Lawrence Lessig
You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
– Steve Jobs
Despite their good intentions, today’s businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives – to do good and make money simultaneously.
– Cindy Gallop
“If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you.”
– Jonathan Zittrain
“By viewing evolution though a strictly competitive lens, we miss the bigger story of our own social development and have trouble understanding humanity as one big, interconnected team.”
― Douglas Rushkoff
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.
– Marshall MuLuhan
All food for thought, and there are so many more I could add…
I can’t believe I forgot my favorite of them all
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete
I just started watching the Boys and I got to say its right on point. This review sums it up.
For me the whole series is a total and effective satire that lets us see what would become of the world if fiction becomes reality: heroes lose interest in saving the world (or take advantage of its status), are forced to do things that are not right, to follow the company’s own interests and do not go out to end the crime if they are not followed by a camera that captures each of their movements, even though they are always transmitting that image of exemplary citizen when in fact they are greedy and treat their fans badly.
It’s also chilling to know that people in power act as judges and executioners to decide what crimes are profitable and what millions of dollars they rent their superheroes to other cities so they can be safe. The precision in the denunciation of The Boys is one of its strongest points since satire towards these characters is not new, but combining it with the theme of corporate America and wild capitalism gives it a clear differential touch.
The series is a total hit and is perfectly developed, to the point of making it impossible to miss because chapter by chapter the anguish increases. So if you have free time, I strongly recommend you to watch this satirical series.
I’d echo the last paragraph, I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it before. Its a very different show from the Watchmen but full of interesting points on society and couture.
Reason’s video post is spot on and charts how the 2010’s started with such promise but ended on such a low. However there are options on the horizon if we can get our heads around decentralised and distributed technologies.
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s work best explains how the world changed in the 2010s—and what we can expect in the decade ahead.
I’m doing what I can to fore-fill that mental shift in the 2020’s by focusing on trust, transparency, accountability, data ethics, etc.
After all that time trying to get new headphones, after the problems with my 4 year old Bose on-ear headphones… I contacted Bose Support on Twitter and after a long direct message conversation they agreed there might be a problem with the battery.
I sent it to them earlier this year and just before xmas, they sent me the Bose triple black on ear headphones, as they didn’t do my original on the ear ones anymore.
Not a bad result for 4 years of headphone use. Very glad I registered my headphones with Bose after coming back from Tokyo, just wish I contacted them earlier and saved myself all that hassle. Thanks Bose support for everything.
I’ll keep my other ones but really happy to not have noise cancelling as default now. Not ideal for walking the streets of the UK.
Then over the last few months I got my hands on a secondhand HP Z800 workstation with 4x quad core 2.8 ghz processors (yes 16 cores in total). It came with 12 gig of memory which I was planning to upgrade if things work out. It came with a PCI-Express Nvida Geforce graphics card, so I was thinking everything is set. just install Ubuntu with Plex media server, install the proprietary Nvidia display drivers and sit back and enjoy?
I wish…
Here is Plex transcoding inception from 1080p with DTS (Blu-ray sourced) to something suitable for my Pixel 4 (I had to turn off play original, to force it to do the transcoding)
You can see it much clearer in the htop terminal. Look at those cores running transcoding tasks.
Here is Plex not transcoding inception from 1080p with DTS (Blu-ray sourced) to my Pixel 4
Quite different from the above, the machines is hardly doing anything over its 16 cores. But the bandwidth is a problem outside a local network environment
If anyone has successfully got hardware-Accelerated Streaming working on a Ubuntu server, let me know!
Head further a field with the scooter
Missed this last year, so its high time for a ride into Europe. I have plans to stay with a friend in Rotterdam then drive around and maybe into Belgium & Germany for some coasting. However, more importantly if the secondment was to go ahead. I’d highly likely drive my scooter in the Netherlands.
Visit another new country Fitting with the previous one. Luckily last year, I finally got to Italy for the first time, but that was pure chance I think. There’s a lot of places I need to go including Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, etc in Europe. One thing I’m doing for sure is South Korea & Japan (again) in April with my partner this time.
Make some changes to the flat As mentioned previously, I have bought a few bits for the bedroom including a new desk. I bought a lot of my furniture when I first moved in and its time for a few changes now I’m much more settled in.
Host film nights at mine I have my new projector, the surround sound system and even the popcorn machine to go with it, so its time to actively do some film nights. For real this time!
Spend less time in the UK / Live in a new country As mentioned previously I’m putting together a strong case to move to Amsterdam for a year. Unlike previously its not just because of Brexit. There is a unique opportunity under the BBC to bring together other public focused organisations for a wider “public service centric network.“
This also fits with my previous resolutions around being a stronger advocate for New forms of Value/Public Service Internet/Team Human; and even more with find the others. Making this a reality is going to be difficult but if it works out its going to be amazing for many reasons I can only imagine right now.
Find the others and connect them Directly related to the previous one. I mentioned in my 2019 new year resolutions about #teamhuman. Its not so much team human per-say but a more non-perfect human outlook on the world. There was something which Eric Nehrlich wrote a long while ago. Find the others, its been echoed by Douglas Rushkoff here and here.
Play a new sport somewhat regularly I love Volleyball and could play it over and over again, but I know people around me don’t dig it as much. So I’ll try a new sport as long as its not Football, Rugby or Cricket. Mainly to bridge between people around me who may like to play something different. Currently Badminton, Basketball or Netballl are looking most likely. However with moving to the Netherlands,Korfball and Handball (which I played in the past) could be new options?
Drink more fizzy water I have fallen love with carbonated water. Maybe its the amount of time I spent in Berlin but regardless its great stuff and much more healthy than most of the stuff I use to drink. I decided to invest in a SodaStream after seeing the amount of plastic water bottles I was recycling. This year I’m going drink a lot more carbonated at work, home, out and about. Its 25% health related and 75% because cold fizzy water is just the best!
Look after myself better I’m going to start walking more, I noticed how many more steps I do when going for coffee with colleagues at work. Parking in the multistory and walking to work actually adds another 1500 steps daily. Manchester is pretty walk-able and public transport is pretty good to be honest. I’m still waiting for the UK transport laws to change to allow things like electric scooters. This also fits with my drink more water one.
Be even more aware of the environment and what I can do to help Following the fizzy water one too, I’m far more concerned by our lack of ability to recycle and reuse what we have around us. We recently had compost bins in our flats which were emptied into one large compost for the recycling. However if one person misused the compost, the compost would not be emptied and was left rotting. As you can imagine over 200 apartments, that compost wasn’t emptied for weeks.
So I’m going to see what else can be done from my end. Maybe theres somewhere else I can drop my compost? Maybe there is something else which could be done? Who knows but its worth explore.
Put my money/resources where my values are, with platforms like Patreon Theres a lot of things I like reading and listening to and its about time I started supporting their use and development through systems like Patreon. A few years ago I finally kickstarted the Pebble 2 smartwatch, till that point I never joined Kickstarter. In an ideal world, they would gain support through the public service network but we are a long way from that in certain countries. One example I keep thinking about is the Guardian which have lots of options for payment and will take anything to support journalistic freedom.
Change my email signature with important information
I’ve been thinking about adding pronouns to my different things for a while. I have already added them to my mastodon profile and will slowly add them to other profile information where I can.
Theres been a lot of talk about work life balance and self care recently and I agree with lots of it whats been said. But I also would add a level of self awareness can really be useful if possible; to this end I’m going start he-himby publishing a user manual for myself, which will be linked to in my email signature and elsewhere. Outlining all the meta things which can’t fit into a signature.
My sleep deficit over the whole year has massively decreased to 36 mins, My average sleep this year has been 7 hours 20mins (down from 2018). Average deep sleep has been 4.03 hrs now only 48% of my sleep.
According to Gmail I have had 54,325 conversations, have 33345 emails in my inbox and sent 7241 emails this year
Have 111,540 photos and 3,971 photos albums in Google photos.
Tasks wise I have 267 open tasks and completed 2,876 over the year
Been on 52 trips including Manchester, Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Guernsey, Madrid, Amsterdam, Venice (first time in Italy), Berlin, Helsinki, Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp, Nottingham, The Hague, Bath, Newcastle this year.
Head further a field with the scooter
Again I missed this one and its very unlikely this will happen before the UK leaves Europe. Theres still an idea of visiting my friend in Rotterdam then drive around and maybe into Belgium & Germany. But this may change massively if I move to Amsterdam?
Ride a roller coaster in yet another country This also didn’t happen this year, although I did go to Madrid again and ride lots of coasters in the scorching 41c sun. Also I decided to give the rollercoaster park in Helsinki a miss this year. Next year I’ll be in looking out for coasters in other countries including South Korea.
Look after myself better Didn’t do so badly but theres a lot of room for improvement. I do a lot of walking when away from home but Volleyball isn’t as intense as it use to be due to not being in the team now.
Spend more time in the UK This happened I think and my partner agrees.
Enter the bake off at work This is a yes, I baked some banana bread with chilli chocolate inside and it was very nice except when I took it to work things didn’t quite turn out as expected. But I did get six peoples vote and there’s photos of the caroline reaper chocolate volcano cake here.
Explore more about the brain using neuroscience This needs some work, as I didn’t go to any events this year at all from memory.
Do more with my Estonian e-residency I did extended my e-residency another 2 years and I do use it as ID when entering some physical businesses. Its not quite what I was thinking about but it slightly counts. I did also look into using it as another form authentication for some services and finally setup a email address for it.
Explore the future of decentralised and distributed systems
I spent a weekend at IndieWebCampBerlin and the following days at Republica19. It was quite an amazing and my follow up to R&D with a lunch time lecture with this presentation.
Make some changes to the flat I finally started by finally removing the filing cabinet to the local dump, getting a large Billy bookcase in my partners new car (with the roof down in the Manchester rain). I bought a sitting and standing desk which is smaller but yet to put it up due to having the existing one still in place. I didn’t realise my Jerker desk is over 20 years old! I’ll be offering it on ebay in the new year if anyone is keen to have it?
Host film nights and more dinner parties at mine This needs to happen in 2020, I had a couple of evening with my new projector, but nowhere what I was hoping for. My partner and friend had not seen Inception so we had fun with that one evening. Another friend suggested she had never seen Kill Bill, so that could be a back to back session with the projector and surround sound system.
When it comes to the dinner parties front, theres been a bit. Likely the best was the chocolate tasting party which was great.
Work on the dating book Since Hannah offered her copy editing skills to help make it a real book, I have done what I can. She suggested ghost writing the book and we have agreed thats a way forward. When I last spoke about the book, I saw 11+ chapters of my previously badly written nonsense, rewritten and re-imagined. Its going to be amazing!
Be a stronger advocate for Team Human This is summing up so much of 2019 for me. Not only in daily life but in work. Its appeared in presentations, in talks I’ve given and the way I go about things. Ok its not really about team human but new forms of value or rather. Its one of the reasons why I’m considering a secondment.
