Category: Uncategorized

Alternative Reality

When I think of all the promises that information technology has made but not followed through on, this is the sort of futurificationing that most alarms me:

The divide that separates people from their online lives will utterly disappear. Instead of leaving behind all those net-based friends and activities when you walk out of your front door, you will be able to take them with you. The buddies you have on instant message networks, friends and family on e-mail, your eBay auctions, your avatars in online games, the TV shows you have stored on disk, your digital pictures, your blog – everything will be just a click away.

It could also kick off entirely new ways of living, working and playing. For instance, restaurant reviews could be geographically tagged so as soon as you approach a cafe or coffee shop, the views of recent diners could scroll up on your handheld gadget. Alternative reality games could also become popular. These use actors in real world locations to play out the ultimate interactive experience.

The promise of the review-laden world has been with us for well over a decade, before the internet when personal computing as being updated by CD-rom mailouts. Yet it is still a shock to find more than three reviews of anything on a site like expedia when you are looking for, say, hotel information. How does the human, disinterested in helping strangers by writing opinions provided for free, populate the world of content in this new world. That human won’t. There would need to be a model of exchange of idea to trigger an increase of participation beyond folks like me with foolish dreams of $2,000 a month from Google ads. But no one will pay me a nickle for my thoughts now – will anyone pay everyone for any of theirs?

But beyond that – why the brave new world of staring at a wrist watch screen wherever you go? What is so wrong with the people physically near you that you would want to exchange them for digial strangers? Again, for geeks of which I am of “C” grade, the transition is already in place. Is it that real is not play? It should be. Is it that real is not play that you rarely have the option of clearly winning? The digital world allows each Rob and Victor to know victories and even robberies that would never be possible in reality. It is any different than striving to be the guy who got the most points in the arcade? What kind of backbone would a society have if that actually became the pervasive goal?

Japan Freaks Out

I couldn’t think of anything else to say about this news from that bastion of democracy somewhere below your toes:

Most foreigners visiting Japan would be photographed and fingerprinted under controversial legislation approved Tuesday by the country’s cabinet. Children under 16, diplomats and permanent residents — such as ethnic Koreans born in Japan — would be exempt from the requirements. The government wants the bill voted into law during the current session of parliament, which ends on June 18. If the law is adopted, advance lists of passengers and crew members would also be required for all airplanes and ships arriving in Japan.

Yumpin’ Yimminy! Strike another country off my list of places to visit. I say we make each Japanese traveller do tongue twisters upon landing in Canada. Or jumping jacks. It will be of about as much use and will be more entertaining.

Google To Control Everything

When does this stuff get to be a concern?

Web giant Google is planning a massive online storage facility to encompass all users’ files, it is reported. The plans were allegedly revealed accidentally after a blogger spotted notes in a slideshow presentation wrongly published on Google’s site…

“We deleted the slide notes because they were not intended for publication,” Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox said. “We are constantly working on new ways to enhance our products and services for users, but have nothing to announce at this time.”

Would we not be concerned if it was China or the CIA or General Motors or even Coors Beer? Why is Google less a threat? It’s the funny name in the friendly primary colours, isn’t it.

Contemplating A House

With the best of intentions to get fiscally responsible and also become maybe more useful by having sufficient space for projects, we are thinking of a house. A house means, of course, paying mortgage interest, maintenance costs, mowing, shovelling, maybe a second car again and not being in a tax locked rental so even thinking about it give my brain an ache and my knees a wobble. All fun money gone. Spent on the septic system – truly #1 on the best feelings you can have writing a cheque unexpectly. Trips to Canadian Tire to buy tools I do not really understand to try fixing it (whatever it is) myself again badly. Yes, I have owned a house and known the nausea imagining the roof blowing off. Fortunately, I sold it before the eye of Hurricane Juan went by the back door.

But new to this homeownership nausea is the idea of not having broadband. The very idea of going to dial-up makes me feel like a move back to the mid-90s. Using this Bell Sympatico internet coverage widget with the telephone book makes me think that rural life is out of the question. So has that become the canary in a coalmine of my life? Am I such a part of the urban Borg that where formerly I could not live without a rototiller and a post hole digger (my Phd) I now cannot imagine living without the building’s pool, the maintenance guy as well as broadband?

Sullying

Graceless politicization appears to be the flavour of the day in the new PMO:

“The Prime Minister is loath to co-operate with an individual whose decision-making ability has been questioned and who has been found in contempt of the House,” said Sandra Buckler, a spokeswoman for Mr. Harper. “All this really is, is a partisan complaint and a political dispute.”

Get ready for it. Any bureaucrat now may be a “liberal” therefore a lesser species in the eyes of the rural overlords. Morality over process. Despite the question of the propriety of offering benefits and plums – plums– like cabinet posts to party defectors undermining the House of Commons, unlike the similar review during the Gruwal matter when the Liberals were the potential bad guys. Sure the new PM intents to line in a different world one day but in the meantime you shouldn’t get to pick your rules. The most charming bit of hair splittery was mentioned on the CBC last night when apparently the PMO suggested that there is no Parliament at the moment so there was not jurisdiction for an ethical inquiry…therefore no ethical standards at all. Sweet.

My Leonard Cohen

It was quite sad to hear about Leonard Cohen finding himself in something approaching a view of the poor house due to a legal dispute in this era when he should be being dipped in gold as a national treasure. And I don’t even like his songs that much. I do like, however, what he stands for as a symbol of individual autonomy to make the world the poem that you see it to be. So it was good to read this in the Globe this morning:

A judge with Los Angeles County Superior Court has granted Leonard Cohen a default judgment of $9-million (U.S.) against the Canadian singer-songwriter’s former manager. Judge Kenneth Freeman made the ruling earlier this week in response to a civil suit Cohen filed last August alleging fraud, negligence and breaches of contract and fiduciary duty on the part of Kelley Lynch, who served as his business manager from early 1988 through October, 2004…The Montreal-born Cohen, 71, has alleged that Lynch over eight years had siphoned off more than $5-million of his savings, so that by late 2004 his retirement nest egg had been reduced to about $150,000. Westin, now teaching law at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, was named in the claim because Cohen alleged that Westin helped Lynch with the $12-million sale of both Cohen’s music-publishing company and artist royalties. Most of these proceeds went into a Lynch-created company, Traditional Holdings, of which Lynch had 99.5 per cent ownership.

Apparently he has settled out of court with other money grubbers. Good. But why do I like him so much but not really his music? I do recall a documentary on his likely 20 years ago when he was having new fame with the Famous Blue Raincoat CD and it was done in his apartment in Montreal that looked like a normal sort of apartment except that everything was white. He said something to the effect it made the outside more a part of the inside. Then I got to like him more when he won a Juno for singer of the year and he said only in Canada could his voice win singer of the year. But best of all was his stumping of Gzowsky the ultimate but early beacon of political correctness and all that is wrong with that when Cohen said he was stopping his European tour early. Why, says, Gzowsky. Can’t afford the wine. Gzowsky stammered. When you drink 3 or 4 bottles a day, Cohen goes on, you need to buy the increasingly really good stuff and as this tour was so much longer than he had done before he was buying bottles now each worth thousands and that was costing more than the tour was bringing in. Gzowsky stammered some more.

When I was a kid in the poorer and plainer Maritimes you assumed everyone in Montreal was like Cohen – cooler, smarter and looking better in black while knowing where the best window to look out of while drinking coffee could be found. You felt that your friends from Nova Scotia who got jobs or went to university in Toronto sold their soul; people from Nova Scotia who got to Montreal would wind up like or even be pals with Leonard Cohen. His expression of that sort of style of the international man was something that added to Canadian-ness in a way that equalled all the canoes. Good to see that he will now have his wine and black turtleneck expenses covered off in his reclining years.