Star Trek: talking to “Com-pew-ter”. Amazon: talking to Alexa. Star Trek: Holodeck. Facebook: Metaverse. (Linden: Second Life) One of my old bosses said you can’t improve on certain design patterns, like “the bowl” or “stairs”. Example 1. “the bowl”. It is curved enough to hold water. You can put handles on it, or curve the lip to make it nicer when it touches your mouth,…
Really Boring
Math stuff coming soon I really only did this to see “Really Boring” on the menu.
Breaking News
Tech Industry is out of Ideas. It is objectively obvious that tech companies continuously need to invent new things to sell you. Do you need those new things? Probably not. Regular people I’ve been talking to have had some serious negative surprises when they turned on their phone or computer and are confused and annoyed to find that the interface has changed, or worse, their…
Questions
Is privacy a right? Surveillance as a business model has only been in use since Google figured out how to monetize data, less than 15 years ago. Prior to that time, broadly speaking, privacy was a defacto default. If you went to the bank and discussed financial matters, then took a few papers home in your briefcase, that interaction would have remained between you and…
Medical, Health, Biometrics
Millions of people are using “smart” watches, which collect biometric information including blood pressure, physical activity levels, body temperature, menstrual cycles and much more, unaware of the possible misuses of that data. If you have been thru and airport, casino, or have a drivers license, your face has been scanned for facial geometry. Combined with purchasing patterns, geo location, and search history, this gives the…
References
All of the following authors have had most of the ideas discussed on this site yeas ago. Zuboff. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. 2019. Practically a history book of Eric Schmidt helping the young lads of Google search turn it into a gold mine. They invented the widespread data gathering approach and monetization techniques used throughout all layers of technology today. Ronald Deibert. Reset. circa…
TOS Edge Cases
An “edge case” is an example of something that while unlikely, can definitely happen. We use the internet under all the terms of service of our providers, but rarely consider how this could become a liability. Here are some unlikely, yet possible cases to consider. Provider stores your data in another country and therefore your data is now subject to their laws. You may become…
What are Service Providers?
We use electronic devices and the internet all the time, but do not understand where the lines between all the different services are drawn. Here are several categories of service providers. Your Phone Company This is the communications network/service that your phone or computer connects to and allows you to make telephone calls and use the internet. Examples in Canada are Rogers, Bell Canada, Shaw,…
Raw Meat
Raw Meat is largely uncategorized stories that, while shocking, are increasingly unsurprising. Large scale automation of decision making systems integrated with operational systems, now commonly called “AI”, has been in use for several years now on the servers of Big Tech, and the effects are now being felt everywhere. Disruptions of Industries and Governments are ocurring by the encroachement of integrated decision making systems. (Amazon…
Is it possible to be shocked anymore?
We have breached extremes in every category of news. Geo politics, social media, medical issues, even the weather have become nearly too controversial to be thrown around in casual conversation, but… have you ever read your Bell, Rogers, Apple or Google terms of service? Did you even know you there is an exact duplicate copy of everything on your phone back at Apple or Google?…