Sighs for the technological wonders

Someone said that if cars worked like computers, nobody would ever buy a car that randomly crashes, do not always start, have weird unexplained problems, can get viruses and other bad things that live inside it (and I am not talking about mice chewing on things under the hood of the car), or have parts that refuses to work with each other.  But that is what we get with computers.  These days, we are all also supposed to be able to figure it out ourselves, know HTML, command line code, a billion settings and options, and be able to find buttons that are hidden or staring us straight in the face but not associated with any description or text.

I have just spent more than one hour trying to fix why our little icons for 'mail this', 'recommend this', etc., wasn't showing up on our blog. This blog.  It was added by me a few years ago to the template through the 'click this button and you get it on your blog' in the Blogger settings.  But they never showed up.  So now, a few years later, I decided to see if I could fix it.  Some googling, lots of testing with suggested html code in new places, and now finally it works. 

The Blogger Help Forum didn't solve it, I found the solution in a post on another blog that had had the same issue. Such a simple thing, and just imagine how many of us that are trying to solve similar issues in our daily lives, including our daily work. 
"Why can't I import this file?" 
"Where is that command again to fix the white balance on my photo?" 
"Why did Word do THAT?" 
"How do I get rid of that?" 
"Help, I can't sign into gmail!"
"Why do I have to sign in everyday even if I click 'remember me'?"
"Why is Firefox so slow?"
"Why isn't Netflix working (again)?"
 And on and on...   Ever heard anybody complain about their cars like this?  No, me neither.

How in H*LL is anybody that knows nothing about html supposed to be able to fix something like this by themselves?  Why aren't these things foolproof?  If computers could be insured, and cause bodily harm, like cars are and can, then I bet we would have a lot better working computers.  It is pretty amazing how sensitive and breakable this system is, and I am not talking about silly buttons at the bottom of blog posts, but in general. We are pouring our work and private lives into these machines, and they are totally non-dependable.  Sure, they work most of the time.

But if you have a broken car you take it to a mechanic and he/she fixes it.   For computers, having them fixed by an expert would mean 1) at least weekly visits to a computer mechanic, 2) immense costs, and 3) sometimes things can't be fixed because of bad hardware or software.  For a car, you can usually choose not to fix something because it would not be worth the cost, but many times for computer you simply can't fix it, you are simply not given any options. 
"Sorry, you laptop monitor is broken, can't be fixed, better get a new laptop." 
"Sorry, I can't recover your harddrive data". 
And still, we have so much invested in these undependable units - photos, memories, letters, work data (a lot in my case), finances, and so on.

So, gals and guys, here is my advice:

• Back up your data. 
• Keep a data backup in a different house or building (or the computing cloud)
• Realize that everything on your computer can be gone. Anytime. 
• See the computer as a tool, not as your life.  Your life is what is going on when you eat, breath, walk, see, think... not what is stored on the computer. 

Do I follow this advice?  Yes, partly, but not well enough.  So I need to follow my advice better too. And now, you can all e-mail, Facebook, like, or tweet this post because I fixed the buttons at the bottom. (she says smiling... ).

Modern life, with a smartphone in hand...?

 " Everywhere I looked people were detached from everything around them.  From the beautiful produce, the delightful pastries, the never-before-in-the-history-of-man selections of great wines and cheeses.  The guys were not "checking out" the plethora of beautiful girls flowing like spring water thru the aisles.  The women weren't even noticing the displays of chocolate.  Instead, they did the "thorazine shuffle" with their carts aimlessly navigated with one hand and the rest of their being concentrated either on staring like zombies at the screens of their iPhones or Blackberries, or wandering without a compass while listening to something at the other end of their cell connection, eyes staring off into the middle distance.  "  [by Kirk Tuck]

From this fantastic blogpost, read the rest of it, it is worth at least 5 minutes of your time. The blog is called Visual Science Lab and is written by Kirk Tuck. Lots of great thoughts there! (and thanks PP for sending the link to me)

This is so true.  And as an owner of an iPhone, which can be incredibly useful at times, I am happy to admit that and I use it more often than necessary, I also see the horrible addiction possibilities.  I often think that it is the software opportunities, apps, and 'things' on the technologies that pull people in, more than the technology per se - things like texting (instant), Facebook (instant), twitter (instant), and the need to be connected, to whatever that might be - the instant feed of stuff you haven't asked for.  I am sure there are situations where these instant feeds can be a good thing, but if 95% of it isn't, then it is a problem. And it just pushes more people just to think about me-me-me or superficial snapshot moments, instead of less self-focused things with deeper reflections.

One of my students said 'I have to check Facebook all the time, I might miss out on something otherwise'.  What that something might be, was less important.  I think this me-me-me generation that is growing up now (and that includes people of my age too), are actually horribly afraid of being alone, being unimportant, or being self-sufficient without input from other people.  To lay in a sofa and read a book during a Saturday is considered weird.  Go for a walk?  Weird.  Try to produce something thoughtful or beautiful over a longer time, not an instant opinion or just reaction to something, is unusual. 

Life in the internet and wi-fi age has turned into fast, fragmented, and furious.  My best thinking time and planning time is the early morning walks, just me, a friend, and a quiet morning with hammering woodpeckers, sunrise in dewy grass, and right now, shining white flowering dogwoods in the forests.  No interruption, just one hour of walking and talking and thinking and figuring it all out.  Without any digital technology, but the iPhone is in the pocket if a photo is needed, but usually the photos turn out so bad on it, that it isn't worth taking one.  My old digital camera is a lot better, but heavier, so it stays home. 

Happy Birthday, EH!

old telegraph pole with glass insulators, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Massor med grattis pa fodelsedagen!!!

If I could, I would give you all these glass insulators. /LS

"I Don't Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore"

I just read a great thing about the way many people talk today = they talk in a way where it is impossible to understand exactly what they mean.  Or even remotely understand what they are trying to say.  The article is by Dan Pallotta, was published in Harvard Business Review, and you can read it here.  It is really worth to spend a few minutes on this article (it is not long).

Dan Pallotta talks about the five expressions of this epidemic of stupid talking:
Abstractionitis
Acronymitis
Valley Girl 2.0
Meaningless Expressions
Abstract Valley Girl 2.0 Acronymitis Using Meaningless Expressions   

I have seen all of these in presentations and discussions, and it often drives me crazy, even if I am guilty of it too.  But no longer.  But I will still wear my T-shirt (which is on today!) that says "think outside the box"  with a drawing of a TV.  But I do think we need to get the language we use back to reality.

It is very interesting to ask someone that just has fed you a long sentence of abstractionitis, "So, what does that really mean?"  Often, they have no good answer.  Which means, they had nothing real to say to begin with. In Swedish, we call this 'ordbajseri'. (That means sort of like 'bullshitting' in Swedish, but more mean.)

Dan's example about 'exceeding expectations' is hilarious.  I think most consumers no longer have any (and certainly not high) expectations regarding services and products.  The products or services just break or don't work out well.  Just ask anybody that is flying with Continental recently, for example. So, exceeding expectations is not really what you want to focus on as a company.  How about focus on making products that are not made to break, try to make customers happy and satisfied and not just poor and angry, and have a personal, local touch?  Without speaking abstractionitis or acronymitis... :)

What if the people that suffers from these epidemic speech patterns not only speak but also think this way?  That would be scary.  How can they then reason logically, think straight, and make good decisions? So, back to simple reality, in speech too.

Quote from the news: Are we there or not?

"You hear so much about how instantly reachable we all are, how hyperconnected, with our smartphones, laptops, tablets and such. But the maddening truth is that we’ve become so accessible we’re often inaccessible, the process of getting to any of us more tortured and tortuous than ever."

Great article, or maybe more opinion piece, by Frank Bruni in New York Times, about how difficult it has become to reach each other.  It is really true.  I monitor 3 e-mail addresses several times a day, have 2 more I check sometimes, and one cell phone, and one home phone.  I do not text, twitter or do facebook... so people know that they should e-mail me.  I have a work phone with an answering machine I rarely check (few messages on it). I am on Skype, sometimes, used to be on all the time, but it got too interrupty. I write comments on blogs and Flickr... there is many many snippets of communication going on, all the time.

It used to be that phone answering machines were checked often, now they can stay unchecked for days.  I strongly believe that we are so connected that we feel the need to hide, to disconnect, or we won't have time to do anything.  But, if anybody in my family calls my cell, I will call back as soon as I can, always.  But do we really need all of this?  My most precious communication events are the dining room conversations here at home, handwritten letters and notes sent to me, and long, thoughtful e-mails from friends and family.  None of those can be done on Skype, twitter, texting (SMS), Facebook, phone answering machines... it would just become to short and fragmented. 

Maybe it has become so easy to communicate that we no longer think about what we write.  In the old days, when you had to dip the pen into the ink every few seconds, you had more time to think, to formulate, and decide what to say and not to say.  These days you just throw things out there. And there are so many things thrown out there, that your message might be drowning, severely, unless someone really, really cares about what you have to say at that particular moment. But, maybe we often don't even have the time to care even if we wanted to, because we are stressed animals with too many distractions and too much to do... running around in circles trying to make ends and time meet.

Reading outside the box

Which books are you reading now?  I am reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, Tom Standage An Edible History of Humanity,  and several other books, all at the same time, as usual.

I love The Lacuna, even if it is a slow read.  It is about a boy that grows up to be a man working for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and helps protect Trotsky when he lives in Mexico. The book is in the form as long letters and a diary, so it is an unusual format, but it is a great read.

Tom Standage's book shows too clearly that he is a conservative historian (he loves to write about communist famines, but doesn't mention the Depression in the US in the 1930s), but it has some great information about the beginning of canned food (to feed troops in the Napoleonic wars) and the old spice trade.  Generally a good read, but watch for what is not included.

So, what are you blogger-readers enjoying, reading-wise?

Share and Like - maybe a profound thought or maybe just a rant....

We live in times where we can share more personal things with each other than ever before because of all online tools. We can tell the world what we like and dislike, favor and unfavor, and give thumbs up and thumbs down.  We can rate movies, books, give mojo (= good) on comments on Daily Kos, and have thousands of favorites of photos on Flickr.
 
Some of us (not me) have many, many friends on Facebook, and maybe even more followers on Twitter.  We send out messages via e-mail with links and attachments to great articles we find, funny cat pictures, and YouTube videos.  We skype each other while doing other things, chopping up time and conversations into small, disjointed pieces. We get the same from others, click on links, laugh and send things on.  We blog, put up pictures online, and hope to be found by whoever in the internet noise.  I am all involved in this, and I think it is a great example of the me, me, me-culture that UTNE Reader highlighted a while back. It is all about us, or is it really?


Media, social and traditional, online and in print, and on FM radio are all part of this.  It is not only chopped up time and factoids, and not only distraction and lack of attention, but really, the problem is bigger.  People don't think and do not really communicate much anymore in a way that is really true to who they are.  At least I believe so, because I do not think we all only care about Youtube videos, a LOLcat or something that just went viral.  I think we care about more things, and have our own thoughts.  The problem is that those own thoughtful thoughts are never really developed in this deluge of other stuff.

And isn't the problem here that for so many of these things, most of us don't really say what we think and feel about things anymore?  It has become too easy to send and share your Likes, that nobody really know what it means to really LIKE and LOVE something, because that is never written down.  When do people have time or take the effort to send long heartfelt e-mails or letters?  When do people talk on the phone about deep things?  When do we really share the real profound thoughts we might have, and if we do, how?

I think today's communication is rather shallow, except the ones we have with close friends. Most interaction and chatter online is rather meaningless, especially when all you do is to click Like/Dislike and Rating buttons.  If you write a short review, then you tell people what you really think.... not when you give a book a 4 out of a 5. But who has time with things like that?  So much easier just to click.

For all of you who have sent me videos, links, and photos, please keep sending them.  I love it, and I don't mean to criticize you.  I am just the same, I do all of these things.  I just got thinking about this and wanted to share it with you, readers of this blog.  And yes, there are some of you readers that send me wonderful, long letters, but I think you are a rarity. I like to write letters too, both by hand and on the computer.  The problem is lack of time. At dinnertime we have the most wonderful in-depth and convoluted conversations here at home.  But I see in society (American and Swedish) a tendency to become less and less personal, less focused on "who I am", and more about being one tiny fish going in the same direction as everybody else in the big general Gulf stream traffic on the internet.
(link to a great letter here)

The me-me-me-society is really not about ourselves, it is about trying to share something and be liked by many many people (who know very little about you) at once, so who dares to express something in a complete sentence with complete words that might be personal or honest? It could be used against you, in many different ways. Better to play it safe by just clicking on a Like button, right? But it that really fun?  Is that really that important?  Is that really liking something, for real?  I think we should all be more real. For real.

PS.  Of course this all applies to texting (SMS) too.

in disguise?

I got a very funny autoreply e-mail today:

"I will be out of the office until Tuesday October 26.  During this time I will be partially incommunicado and totally incognito."  

Do you think Superman is out there fixing things?

They have knitting guerillas in England too!

Knit the City - Phonebox side, originally uploaded by Deadly Knitshade.

Just look at this craft graffiti!

From times past - no more telegrams are swishing by (photo for EH)

old telegraph pole with glass insulators, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

This photo of an old telegraph pole with glass insulators was taken two days ago in downtown Endicott, New York State, where there were many of these along the railroad line. Nobody had cared to harvest these glass insulators for selling them at $10/each in New York City's antique shops. Telegrams are no longer sent, and these lines and poles sit here like a fragment of a past that is long gone, like many other things in this area of southern New York State. Old road signs, store fronts, milk jugs, abandoned industries and rusty railroad bridges, it is all there. Sad to see, but I rather see them even if in a bad state, than have them being eaten up by McMansions, WalMarts, and enormous anonymous parking lots outside megamalls. During our little roadtrip we stopped at two historical diners to eat some classic American food, but more about that later.