Wandering Around the Cyber Cemetery

I enjoyed the cartoon below. It's by John Atkinson at Wrong Hands. - I left a contribution in his tip jar, so that I could feel comfortable using his work here.

In the 16 or so years I've been wandering around cyberland myself, there have been many casualties, and many more are still to come, of this we may be certain. Blogger will, one day, be a casualty too - along with personal blogs in general - we're on virtual 'life support' as it is! I shall plod on my rather lonely pathway for a little longer, until forced into using Windows 10 in place of my trusty Windows 7. That is likely to be until late 2019/early 2020, if Microsoft keeps its promise to support Win.7 until January 2020.

Surveying the grave-stones below brings back a few personal internet memories! AOL was my own initial portal to the internet. What I now remember best about AOL is contributing to a communal continuing story concocted by AOL-ers, in a forum situation. I elected to became a character in their ongoing saga. It was sometimes a silly story, sometimes very silly indeed - or sometimes reflected current events, sometimes it became a wee bit naughty too, as I recall. I was "Dimsie Wilcox", married to an upper-class curmudgeon known as "Old Wilcox". Anyway... survey the illustration below, it might bring back memories for you, too.

Saturday and Sundry Thoughts on Communicating Massively

There are still a few of us around who are able to recall life before computers, and therefore before the internet. Heck - I can even remember life before television! Mass communication, in those days, came via newspapers and radio, and to a lesser extent via film and newsreels at the cinema. First time I saw a TV working was for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. A few neighbours, my parents, grandparents and I piled into the home of a local business woman who had the only set in the village where my grandparents lived.

I do remember when the very first mention of computers reached my delicate ears, in 1966/7. I'd been working for a few months for a local Devonshire (south-west England) 'bus company in the accounts office. One of the senior employees had been sent on a training course, on his return he regaled us with tales of the binary system leaving our brains limp and imaginations reeling. All we had to work with in those days were very basic mechanical adding machines, one step up from the abacus. Having, out of necessity, trained my non-mathematical brain to add long columns of figures in hotel ledgers during the few years previous, I often opted to "do it in my head" rather than tackle the awkward adding machine.

None of us could have possibly envisaged the amazing developments we've seen during ensuing decades. Online banking, shopping, social networking, the dreaded Facebook, smartphones, ipads..... spam, porn sites, viruses, malware, Twitter - the good, the bad and the ugly of it all. I am well aware that my own life turned in a very unexpected direction, all due to the internet, for it was through the net that husband and I met.

There's a downside to these developments and changes though, there's always a downside.

Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning.
Alan Kay

Over roughly the same time span: from TV sets becoming commonplace, followed rapidly by computer development, up to the present, corporate power has risen in tandem. Now multinational corporations own media, at least they do in the USA and have tentacles worldwide. TV has become a major arm of the corporations' mass brain-washing system. Oh, they'd been doing it before TV, but the opening up of mass communication made it so much easier! As more time has passed evidence has continued to emerge that we are under constant surveillance. Recent developments relating to Facebook's gathering of personal information is disquieting to say the least. Perhaps nobody senses danger if all the stolen information is used simply to target a few adverts for shoes, bandages, bras, toasters - whatever it was we were searching for online last. But the feeling that there could be other, darker, uses for the information gathered is not a happy one. Facebook is currently at the centre of discussions on this front, but Google and others are also quietly gathering our personal data, and have been doing so for years.

The solution? For ordinary souls such as I, and passing readers who do not wish to divest ourselves completely of access to television, computer and internet, all we can do is be aware of the potential "weaponry" in our living rooms, remain vigilant, never forgetting possible sub-text, and remember to keep in mind, always, this question: who is "paying the piper"?

When discussing this topic, several years ago, and before Facebook became the monster it now is, a friend observed that as we become increasingly under cyber influences, man-made (or manipulated), the structure of the human psyche will probably transform - over time. Sensibilities will increase and entirely new avenues might open up. Aquarian Age stuff to come?

My view: humans will, almost certainly, evolve psychologically due to the highly technological world they've been born into. We are at the slimmest end of the science fiction wedge of that eventuality right now. It must be happening, week by week, year by year, decade by decade.

My husband's opinion:

"Follow the money!" You can tell which industry is making the most money by the number of TV spots they are running. These ads can cost as much as a million dollars a minute. Cars, pharmaceuticals, insurance, smartphones, political candidates; who’s on top tonight?

I read a piece about the rise and fall of a country once. The one thing that I remember most is that the aggressor took over mass media first. Radio, newspapers, television...town criers to internet... mass communication is first to go. So, money has taken over our mass media. Have we been conquered?

Here We Go Again - Net Neutrality

News from the New York Times last week:

The Federal Communications Commission released a plan on Tuesday to dismantle landmark regulations that ensure equal access to the internet, clearing the way for internet service companies to charge users more to see certain content and to curb access to some websites.

The proposal, made by the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, is a sweeping repeal of rules put in place by the Obama administration. The rules prohibit high-speed internet service providers, or I.S.P.s, from stopping or slowing down the delivery of websites. They also prevent the companies from charging customers extra fees for high-quality streaming and other services.

Almost four years ago net neutrality was in danger - my post on the topic, from January 2014, is here, at Netting the Net.

Unsurprisingly, in this Age of Trump, the issue has bubbled up from the depths once again. We are contemplating a "netted" internet which will work to the benefit of nobody, apart from the corporations in charge.

A vote on the repeal of current rules is scheduled for December 14th, when the result is expected to be in favour of repeal, resulting in loss of net neutrality.

For any passing reader still not quite clear about what kind of things loss of net neutrality would mean to most of us, here's a handy graphic reminder from thenib.com

A World Without Net Neutrality

Internet -"it gradually turns out to be alright really." ( Did it?)

Douglas Adams:
1) Everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.”

There are still a few of us around who are able to recall life before computers, and therefore before the internet. Heck, I can even remember life before television! Mass communication, in those days, came via newspapers and radio, and to a lesser extent via film and newsreels at the cinema.

This 1969 video, with prediction of the internet's arrival on our scenes and screens has proved to be near enough spot-on. Apart from one chuckle-worthy quote from the clip:

"What the wife selects on her console, will be paid for by the husband at his counterpart console."

It seems that back in 1969, in the USA, little wifeys were still, erm... beholden to their lords & masters.

What wasn't foreseen, at least in this video: spam, porn sites, viruses, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other varieties of social networking springing up even as I type.
From http://kottke.org/10/03/the-internet-in-1969

I remember the very first mention of computers reaching my ears - in 1966/7. I'd been working for a few months for a local Devonshire (England) 'bus company in their accounts office. One of the senior employees had been sent on a training course, on his return he regaled us with tales of the binary system leaving our brains limp and imaginations reeling. All we had to work with in those days were very basic mechanical adding machines, one step up from the abacus. Having, out of necessity, trained my non-mathematical brain to add long columns of figures in hotel ledgers, I often opted to "do it in my head" rather than tackle the awkward adder. None of us, back then, could have envisaged the amazing developments we've seen during ensuing decades - the good, the bad and the ugly of it all.

There's always a downside. Over roughly the same time span: from TV sets becoming commonplace, followed by computer development, to the present, corporate power has risen in tandem. Now multinational corporations own media, at least they do in the USA and have tentacles worldwide. TV has become a major arm of the corporations' mass brain-washing system. Oh, they'd been doing it before TV, but the opening up of mass communication made it so much easier!

It has been said that mass communication has been the most powerful invention of man, however, nuclear bombs and weaponry really hold that title. What would be more powerful, though, 20 million dead people or 20 million people doing whatever you tell them?

For ordinary souls such as I, and any who do not wish to divest ourselves completely of access to television, computer and internet, all we can do is remain aware of the potential weaponry in our living rooms. We can try to limit corporations' access to our own grey matter by choosing carefully what to read, watch and listen to. We must never forget possible sub-text and remember to keep in mind always this question: who is "paying the piper"?

Saturday & Sundry

I'm even further out of the loop than I'd imagined - I'm no longer even part of "the older generation" - said to be inhabitants of Facebook (I'm not!) I must be way out there, well past where the buses don't run! From: Why the Modern World Is Bad for Your Brain - How our addiction to technology is making us less efficient, by Daniel J. Levitin (The Guardian)

"Now of course email is approaching obsolescence as a communicative medium. Most people under the age of 30 think of email as an outdated mode of communication used only by “old people”. In its place they text, and some still post to Facebook. They attach documents, photos, videos, and links to their text messages and Facebook posts the way people over 30 do with email. Many people under 20 now see Facebook as a medium for the older generation."

My predicament reminds me of something Douglas Adams once wrote:

1) Everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.”

26 Pictures Will Make You Re-Evaluate Your Entire Existence

The universe, man… THE UNIVERSE.


Hmmm - and that reminds me of something else Douglas Adams once wrote:

If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

Some "portmanteau" words we might have assumed came fully-fledged from some technical textbook or other are really just a combination of two other words:

In 1969, pixel, a blend of pictures — or rather, the abbreviation pix—and element, only referred to televised images.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, meld likely came from a combination of melt and weld in the 1930s. Vulcan mind-melding came along some 30 years later.

The concept of the bit, or binary digit, has been around since the late 1940s.

In 1975, the term endorphin was created from the French word endogène and morphine to describe those opiate-like peptides that kick in just when you're about to give up jogging altogether.

More at Mental floss HERE


And...what did Douglas Adams have to say on wordy or alphabetical matters?

The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the letter Q into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable. -"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,"

Did you know that Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster M45, or "The Seven Sisters" (one of which tradition says is invisible - hence only six stars in the car company's Subaru logo), which in turn inspires the logo and alludes to the companies that merged to create Fuji Heavy Industries?

More interesting origins of car company and car model names in this video:




Mr Adams must have had a few words to say about cars?

On Earth - when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass - the problem had been cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had safely been hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another - particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.
"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

Best one of all!

Concluding words of wisdom from Douglas Adams:

The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.

Netting the Net

Next big concern coming up for Mr or Ms Average internet user in the USA (most of us these days) will be the earnest hope that net neutrality doesn't disappear in accordance with the ruling this week of a federal appeals court. The court threw out the FCC's Net Neutrality Rules. There's already lots of information and explanation available on the importance of this to the average consumer, a good article by Maggie Reardon at CNET on the topic is HERE.

The appeals court ruling isn't about internet access as such, but about the ability of internet service providers to take control of access to content, and it's all about the money, as usual, of course. Until now government (FCC - Federal Communications Commission) regulation ensured that anyone who paid a service provider for internet connection could access every website on the net, and every service run via the internet, such as Skype. This week's court ruling has cancelled this regulation.

Internet service providers are now free to limit, or charge extra for, access to certain websites and services. This will work in much the same way that Cable TV access works. Internet service providers will, eventually no doubt, begin to offer "bundles" of various levels of access, demanding more and more payment for wider access to sites outside a consumer's "bundle". Access to Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Skype for instance could become akin to accessing HBO, Showtime etc. on TV.

Internet service providers are now in control. Business owners and content providers as well as viewers of net content could also find themselves having to pay internet service providers. Comcast, Verizon etc. can now demand payment by businesses or other content providers to obtain access to their customers. Until now there has been 100% access by all to all - but no more. It's beginning to sound like some kind of mob protection racket! Anyway, it's certain we shall all be paying more for less before long.

Is there any hope of getting the recent court decision overturned? The issue could end up in the Supreme Court, unless the FCC is able to construct a new case based on different existing laws or arguments.

From what I've read, if the FCC were able to declare internet service providers to be common carriers, that might provide a solution. Common carriage applies to the means of supply of utilities such as electricity, water, gas, telephone lines. In those cases the pipes, cables, lines or whatever are a common means of supply, and while owned by private companies or corporations, those companies or corporations cannot limit or slow down supply once the consumer has paid the required fee for access. However, it appears that the Supreme Court has, in 2005, put up a likely barrier to that possibility in its Brand X decision that broadband services should not be classified as telecommunications services, which means that broadband providers' infrastructure is not considered a public right of way like phone lines or water pipes, and should not be regulated as such. Perhaps shrewd lawyers will be able to find a loophole. Let us hope so!

Apart from the commercial aspect of these eventualities, there's a political aspect too. It could become harder, more expensive, or even impossible to access certain political blogs and websites. I'll leave the rest of that pre-dystopic vision to a reader's imagination.

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Future Tense

A couple of off the wall thoughts upon which to ponder - if one dares.

"The internet is a new lifeform that shows the first signs of intelligence". So says brain scientist and serial entrepreneur Jeff Stibel. He argues that the physical wiring of the internet is much like a rudimentary brain and some of the actions and interactions that take place on it are similar to the processes that we see in the brain.

I've thought before that we are actually computers originally constructed by some highly evolved beings aeons ago. This idea kind of feeds into that...kind of...

See the brief video at this link. I find the presenter's rather obsessive passion for his subject a tad scary though.

How long before we have our own version of "Hal" dictating to us?

AND

A comment beneath an article at Huffington Post at the weekend proved more interesting to me than the rather old news contained in the article about time travel. Part of comment from commenter "cp35":

...........General Relativity is as old as 1919 I think. You want something that is also old but that will probably be bigger news to those who don't know or understand Physics? Because light is indeed going at the speed of light (time stops completely at the speed of light), and light from the beginning of the Universe is still traveling, the past still exists in some time frame. Indeed, the future also already exists. And that is profoundly more mind blowing, because we experience the past as no longer there and the future as still having to come, but that is not really the case.

I suppose that seers and clairvoyants, through the ages, have always known this.

Postscript: I don't know, anymore, what there is to say about mass shootings, as yet another one blots the scene in the USA.

Once Upon a Time on the Internet....

Feeling generally disgruntled with Google, Microsoft et al and the ways the computer experience has changed since first I owned a home computer, I began reminiscing.

October 2001 it was when I first dipped my toes into the internet pool. I'd used a computer at work for several years, but we were not linked to the internet, that was to be new and exciting territory. Because I was short of space at home I bought a rather avant garde all-in-one computer, made in London by a small independent outfit. It has taken more than 10 years for the big boys to start selling something similar. My computer worked fine most of the time, but as it was experimental it needed some fine tuning, had to be shipped back to the manufacturer for repair twice over a period of 3 years. Windows ME (millennium edition) was the operating system I used then, it was not well-thought of by most would-be experts who swore by Win98. ME worked for me.

Initially I got myself caught in the AOL net - AOL was a big deal back then, and was probably introduced to me as part of the Windows package. For a while it seemed to me that AOL was the internet. There were newsrooms, chat rooms, message boards, and other seminal social networking bits and pieces. I became an accepted member of a small discussion and writing group who produced some amusing narratives, parodies, games and pieces of prose. That was fun! Gradually I found my way around the net, discovered Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon, along with a few astrology websites and message boards.

I did eventually break loose from the AOL enclave and found my way around what in those days seemed more like a village or small town. It now seems like a teaming, screaming over-populated metropolis, so I choose to remain inside fairly narrow confines - in real life too. It's a jungle out there in both the real and virtual world, the natives can be restless and ruthless, also often idiotic, and not in a good way.... off their trolleys, out there circling Jupiter!

Too much of a good thing?

I suppose the net's huge international metropolis is the same as any real life metropolis: people tend to stay within their own neighbourhoods and communities much of the time, venturing out only on special occasions for a particular purpose. So, in fact, the net is only as wide and as deep as one's desired reach. Even though I was not around at the very beginning, seeing it grow so rapidly has been a wee bit disconcerting. Main big-name players back then were friendly, seemed akin to good next door neighbour types, always helpful, always ready for fun, always there when needed. Those same big names have now become overbearing, dictatorial, loud and demanding.

Such is life!

If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.
― Dorothy Gambrell, Cat and Girl Volume I

The internet is just a world passing notes around a classroom.
― Jon Stewart
(I'd relate that description, more precisely, to Facebook.)


Distracted from distraction by distraction
― T.S. Eliot
Yep!

Attention is the limited resource on the internet - not disk capacity, processor speed or bandwidth.
― Mills Davis
Definitely!

Weapons of Mass Communication

Communication is Geminian. Jupiter (representing expansion) in Gemini would best represent mass communication astrologically. Jupiter takes around 12 years from one transit of zodiac sign Gemini to the next. As it happens, there's a Jupiter in Gemini transit coming up this year, starting mid-June.

Mass communications ramble coming up:

There are still a few of us around who are able to recall life before computers, and therefore before the internet. Heck - I can even remember life before television! Mass communication, in those days, came via newspapers and radio, and to a lesser extent via film and newsreels at the cinema.

First time I saw a TV working was for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Jupiter, appropriately enough, was in Gemini at that time! A few neighbours, my parents, grandparents and I piled into the home of a local business woman who had the only set in the village where my grandparents lived.

I remember when the very first mention of computers reached my delicate ears. It was around 1966/7, a little later than the 1965 Jupiter in Gemini transit. I'd been working for a few months for a local Devonshire (England) 'bus company in the accounts office. One of the senior employees had been sent on a training course, on his return he regaled us with tales of the binary system leaving our brains limp and imaginations reeling. All we had to work with in those days were very basic mechanical adding machines - one step up from the abacus; similar to but less sophisticated than that illustrated. Having, out of necessity, trained my non-mathematical brain to add long columns of figures in hotel ledgers, I often opted to "do it in my head" rather than tackle the awkward adder.

None of us could have possibly envisaged the amazing developments we've seen during ensuing decades and Jupiter in Gemini transits. Online banking, shopping, social networking, smartphones, ipads..... spam, porn sites, viruses, malware, trojans, Facebook, Twitter - the good, the bad and the ugly of it all. I am well aware that my own life turned in a very unexpected direction, all due to the internet, for it was through the net that husband and I met.

There's a downside to these developments and changes though - there's always a downside. Over roughly the same time span: from TV sets becoming commonplace, followed rapidly by computer development - up to the present, corporate power has risen in tandem. Now multinational corporations own media, at least they do in the USA and have tentacles worldwide. TV has become a major arm of the coprorations' mass brain-washing system. Oh, they'd been doing it before TV, but the opening up of mass communication made it so much easier!

I recently saw a remark in a thread of comments pointing out that mass communication has been the most powerful invention of man. The commenter was contradicted by another who proposed that nuclear bombs and weapons really take the "most powerful invention" title. The first commenter responded with: "What is more powerful...20 million dead people or 20 million people doing whatever you tell them?"

The solution? For ordinary souls such as I, and passing readers who do not wish to divest ourselves completely of access to television, computer and internet, all we can do is remain aware of the potential weaponry in our living rooms. We can try to limit corporations' access to our own grey matter by choosing carefully what to read, watch and listen to. We must never forget possible sub-text and remember to keep in mind always this question: who is "paying the piper"?

Predicting the Internet

As far as I can tell, no astrologers were harmed, or indeed involved, in the making of this 1969 video. The predictions, as far as they go, have proved to be near enough spot-on though. Apart from one quote from the clip which made me chuckle:

"What the wife selects on her console, will be paid for by the husband at his counterpart console."

It seems that back in 1969, in the USA, little wifeys were still, erm.... beholden to their lords & masters.

What wasn't foreseen, at least in this video: spam, porn sites, viruses, social networking.....etc. etc. etc.

From http://kottke.org/10/03/the-internet-in-1969