Social media rant

 I used to post quite a lot on Facebook. 

I generally took the time to try to create something that might make people chuckle. I got some nice feedback, and it became my 'something light' moment during some heavy times.

I was an early adopter. My use of social platforms from the early to mid-2000s sits at the core of how I got where I am in my career. I can't even remember the names of the funky social sites I used to frequent - and we're not talking Bebo or MySpace. Things were fun. Social media had yet to be actively monetised, and a lot of the activity was about being part of a user generated community. 

The bile and vitriol around Brexit stopped me from using that platform and, for me, highlighted how poisonous social media could be to society and individuals alike. It made me question the value of what I was doing with it and sent me down a road which led me to where I am now - seeing social media platforms, and Facebook in particular, as very much anti-social media. 

It's easy to look at this all in hindsight, and think "don't take it so seriously," but when I'm sitting next to my wife trying to enjoy a TV show with her, and she's paying more attention to Facebook than the TV or the kids in the background or anything I say to her, I can't help but regret being a part of the growth of this particular time-sink.

I think that this is what sits at the heart of my own depression. I worry, deeply, that society is genuinely becoming so ironically myopic through the global networks that allow individual similarities to become the foundation of a community. I worry that the differences that used to make communities such a strength of the human condition are being financed out of us through the insidious pervasiveness of social networking that is no longer about difference, or care, or fun. 

It's about monetisation. It’s about being seen to do the right thing. It’s about marketing. Perception. Visibility. Purpose. Identity. It’s about vulnerable people being marginalised. It’s about pan-global hatred and ease-of-access fundamentalism. It’s about not being able to have a conversation for fear of being identified as someone who doesn’t fit the right mould, and there are so many moulds out there. Everyone has an equal voice, and everyone can be heard - regardless of the value or truth of what they say. It’s judgement of the masses and a popularity contest that has one winner - the platform. It’s a poisonous summation of all that is bad in society and it echos it straight back at us, telling us it’s good. It’s invisible opinions driving hatred and bullying, and it’s all in your pocket.

I’m sure there’s good going on within the environs of these platforms, I’ve even seen it, but the platforms themselves are there for what they can get out of their relationship with their users. And they can scale that ‘extraction’ of value through automation and machine-learned algorithms.

OK. I’ll put the soap box away now. I’m not sure why today has driven the above out of me, but anyone that knows me will recognise the themes.

Self aware or self centred?

I'm not sure if posting, continuously, about one's own achievements through social media is driving a shift in our desire to talk about ourselves in a more positive light, or if it is driving the unpleasant change I've been watching in societal approach.

My ire was raised this morning by a contact sharing, again, another piece of news about their winning an award. I've seen similar pieces for four consecutive days now, and I just thought, "Not again."

Is this an indictment of me, and my own frustration with the focus on self that social media has helped to bloom? Is this another symptom of a society that is becoming more and more self-focused, and thereby more self centred? Maybe by providing platforms for people who have always had a high opinion of self, I'm more aware of the number of people who have this view, or am I being unfairly critical of people who have every right to celebrate their success? Bah Humbug.

The current bell curve rise of populism as a political trend is surely linked to people's self interest. If we're accepting of the fact that social media is now a part of our societal DNA, then surely we have to accept that with that comes the eventual splintering, the inevitable fragmentation of communities that have been, up until now, learning to care for each other.

Maybe I'm having a bad day.

Open up education? Money underneath.

There's a very interesting article recently posted on the BBC site about top US Universities throwing some money (and I mean a lot) behind some new education delivery platforms; Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have launched a $60M platform edX, and Stanford and others are behind Coursera.


This makes me happy. But some parts of the article give me pause for thought. Forgive the following brain dump style - I just wanted to get this stuff down.

Open education.

There is a fair bit about open education; freely available courses for all, providing education for the masses at little to no cost. This is laudable, and I fully support it, but surely we have to pay the money to the educators for their expertise, at least up front? At some point has there to be financial reward for those who deliver the teaching material? Certainly in this capitalistic society there simply has to be... without it I can't see us progressing our level of societal achievement much further. And how to we improve the value of the educational material if there is no reward for doing so? Are we to simply plateaux into a stable educational level with no desire to progress research? Maybe there is a fundamental requirement here to split research away from teaching; to advance our knowledge through a scientific / research community, and to disperse the resultant knowledge via a separate teaching community. But they must learn first, right? Who teaches the teachers?


The above thinking leads me to think that we could be heading for a world in which there are two distinct classes: educated and e-educated. The former would be the leaders in thinking, those that set the agendas, whilst the latter become self-driven entrepreneurs of learning. Those that can't be bothered won't, and maybe that gives us the third class - the great un-educated. Whilst I grant that making courses available for all for free is great - it will raise the educated level of those that want to be in the middle educational class - does it actually change anything? Probably the answer is yes - with greater knowledge an individual can make more informed decisions, and can innovate and drive things forward for themselves, and this is a good thing. But this can never be a one size fits all situation.

Proof of ID? Maybe not...

So the afore mentioned article also notes that the courses available online are not supported by any recognised qualification. Ostensibly this could be down to an inability to prove 'who is taking the test', but I think there is more behind this. Freely available educational material is not being made open for the benefit of mankind - it is there to market the individuals and establishments who are offering it. I believe this is a marketing strategy. By making quality material available to all, an institution (or individual lecturer) is increasing awareness of their brand. They are putting their name into the classrooms of the world, and are bringing their philanthropic good will to all who will listen. 


Call me cynical, but I don't see good will behind this. I see opportunities for growth. With money firmly in the mix. And more so I can't see how it will work otherwise, unless our society suddenly realises the inherent problems of capitalism and becomes a loving happy tree hugging place.

Postscript to

What I actually wanted to write about was the possibilities presented by facebook's emerging single-sign-on model for the world to digital ID within an elearning context, but I appear to have sidetracked myself. Ah well.

How long is your digital shadow?

Not a day goes by when I don't find myself increasingly concerned that my digital shadow is becoming longer than I would like.

My activities online are tracked by Google, Apple, facebook, linkedin, yahoo, Microsoft, twitter, foursquare, flickr, youtube (I know, Google) ... the list goes ever on and on.

The most frustrating aspect of this is that I am pretty much entirely responsible for this. I constantly register for new and innovative sites that pique my interest like ifttt or pinterest. Each time I do this, my shadow lengthens. My secondlife account is dead (really, was that ever going to actually gain proper traction outside of the geekmind?), but it's still there somewhere. So many sites have my online identity, arcticflea, registered on them as a place holder just in case I ever want to use their services... yeesh I have quite litterally no idea how many sites, wether social networking startups from the early years of this century or one time shopping websites, my personal details are held on. And yet I continue to register on more.

With the number of facebook based "What colour was the traffic light outside Maceys when you had your first bagel" type pages increasing at what seems to be an exponential rate, friends and aquaintances are adding further to the glittering baubles that make me want to 'click to see this', and I am proud that I at least manage to ignore these morsels.

Ultimately I don't think there's much I can do about it, so whilst my concern is growing, my sense of apathy is keeping just ahead of it. I suppose that is what worries me the most.

QR Code Blindness

I'm frustrated. I'm often frustrated, but I am not often driven to post a blog about it. This is one of those very rare occasions where I simply have to vent my frustration, and where better than online?

My current cause for frustration is the apparent blindness (IMHO) of marketers getting all hot and sticky over the exciting world of QR codes. QR codes have been around for well over 10 years. They are currently, and have been for a while, flavour of the moment because of the massive growth in smartphone sales and ownership. These devices, which are carried everywhere by their device-reliant owners, have cameras and apps installed on them designed by any number of developers. Which means they can have apps on them which will enable the owner to read codes which, until more recently, were only really used by shipping companies and shops to store detailed information about packages or products. But let me back-pedal just a touch.

What is a QR Code? A QR code is a 2 dimensional barcode. I won't bore you with the details, but if you've seen a white square with a messy maze like arrangement of small black squares on a brochure, the web, a business card or even a menu, the chances are you've already engaged with a QR code. You just might not have been aware of it. I would suggest you would not be alone in that. Far from it. A QR code can contain a bunch of text, which means that it can link you to an online point of interest; a video, a website, an online business card, a pdf, facebook page, linked in profile... the list goes on. Essentially you, as the owner of a smartphone, are expected to get your phone out, launch a reader app (You do have one right? If not, you should immediately go and download one...) and scan the code with the phone's camera. Voila! You have been taken off to a magical engaging online experience which will make you, as a customer, delight in the cleverness and simplicity of your newly acquired relationship status with the marketing genius that put a QR code on the brochure.

So why am I frustrated? Because I keep hearing and reading marketers banging on about how exciting this is. And I simply don't get it. I understand the logic. I understand that it gives the users of smartphones the ability to engage with us, as suppliers of goods or services. I understand that it has a technological excitement - a bunch of dots turning into a video? Wow! What I really don't understand is why we are expecting people to do this.

There are many, many chunks of content on the web extolling the virtues of QR codes from a marketing point of view. Some go into some length advising you on how important it is to get the execution of QR code marketing right, and to some extent they are correct. My suggestion, however, is that they are slightly missing the point at a very basic level. Only a very few people will ever use this technology in the way it has to be used now. Launching a specially installed QR app on my phone to engage with an online experience is something that only the true technocrats, or the technically curious, amongst us will ever do. I do it, sure. But then I'm into the technology of the thing.  I scan barcodes in shops to find cheaper deals online or locally. I scan QR codes on marketing gumph because I want to see how people are using the technology. To be honest if the QR links me to a webpage that is nothing to do with the specific context of the document it linked from, and it often is simply a website, I'm a little underwhelmed.

I've also seen reports dotted here or there which proclaim that QR codes have come of age, based entirely on presented percentages and a large amount of supposition. If QR codes are so popular, then show me the numbers. I'm happy to accept that my instincts about the general populaces' lack of willingness to get their phone out to scan a code on a piece of marketing gumph is untrue, but I need the proof I'm afraid.

This technology will be able to come of age when the user has full access to an augmented reality. When we have, say, glasses which throw up a HUD overlaying the street we are walking down. A technology that recognises the face of the person we're talking to and shows us a summary of their LinkedIn profile. But all of this, I suggest, will only become used by the masses when it is click-free, automatic, by which point it won't need to be a messy pile of black squares in a bigger white square. The camera will need to be constantly looking for those cues; be they buildings or logos. It will be permanently on, and there's a whole world of privacy issues down that street.

Having said all this, I do believe that the technology will ultimately read the world for us, and show us what we want to know about it. QR codes are an evolutionary step towards this, but there is far more exciting technology being used out there which already does what we'd love QRs to be able do, but they can't.

 

Mmmmm

Beer. Grand national. BBQ.

Time I caught up.

I've blogged for years. Just never consistently, and mainly on sites that I built that have died away with the passing of time and urls. So I thought I'd try and get back in to it, but using a site that might have a little more permanence. I've been meaning to set up a posterous account for quite some time, but have been too insecure about posting my inner witterings on the web for all to read. But to hell with it, eh? So, what's my pedigree?

I used to write a diary. I started writing it when I was 16, and kept it up until I was 21. Reading it makes me shudder, but I'm determined never to destroy it as it gives me a physical connection to some of my personal history. There are definitely some pages that will never see the light of day until after I am dead and gone, but some other parts of it might make entertaining reading.

In 1988 I wrote a book (of sorts) using a range of word processing devices, a paper copy of which I still have shoved away at the back of a shelf somewhere. It never saw more than two people's hands, and these were friends who 'loved it'. I also used to write editorial pieces for a student magazine when I was in Newcastle. They were entitled 'Bitchabout' and were pretty much me ranting about local issues pertaining to our lot as students and the 'quality' of the Cruddas Park tower blocks where they housed many of us.

I suppose my first blogs were in the late 90s, but they were pretty sporadic, so I'm not sure they'd be considered blogs in the truest sense. More like articles, or reports. I tended to write them about things that I'd done, rather than thoughts on what was happening, so they were pretty self involved. A memorable example was a report on a particularly good night out in New York.

Coventry Road dot com was the first site I built to host these musings. On it I used to put up photos of parties, events and such that we used to take part in with a group of friends, most of whom lived in the same street in east Reading. I don't think any of it actually remains anywhere, but the lasting legacy for me is that a card company used a wallpaper of me with bug-eyes found on that site as a novelty birthday card. Without my permission, of course. The joys of digital IP.

A bit later came my honeymoon blog posts in 2003, and shortly after that the blogs about our new baby, which I kept up until just after boy number 2 arrived in 2006. Then a scattered array of postings across the web on different platforms as I played with emerging blog apps, and more recently a minor slew of postings on audioboo.fm.
Facebook has rapidly become a source of easy micro blogging for me, as is, to some extent, twitter. But facebook doesn't remember everything a user does; there is a limit to the amount of data stored. I've recently being using a little app on the iPhone which captures social feeds into it's tiny database, if only so I can keep a track of what I thought and did. A kind of auto-diarist app. It's rather nice.

I'll stop now and send this, before I change my mind about posting such ramblings.