Smart phones - smart users?

My friend hands me his sleek iPhone. “Ask it something.”

“What should I ask?”

“I don’t know, anything.”

I decide to start with an easy one. 'Who is the President of the United States?' Icons flash and a computerised voice asks me to wait a moment. In a second the display shows a bio of Barack Obama, including the date he was elected and what number President he is. Impressive, but then again an intelligent fifth grader knows who the current President is. I ask a more difficult question: 'What is the distance from the Earth to the Sun?' and am correctly answered straight away. Apparently Siri, Apple’s latest voice-recognition ‘personal assistant’ app, can answer a lot of things. It also seems to cope with questions that contain syntax that isn’t quite so straightforward for a computer. For example, instead of asking ‘Will it rain tomorrow?’ you can ask ‘Will I need an umbrella tomorrow?’ and Siri is sufficiently knowledgeable to understand that ‘umbrella’ in this instance is synonymous with ‘rain’. Siri struggles with some commands, particularly names and references to popular culture (e.g. it can tell you the radius of the Earth but struggles to name the best-selling album of all time) but the app is a testament to both human ingenuity and a nice reminder of how powerful our own brains are.

Siri is one of a number of clever applications designed for the increasingly ubiquitous smart phone. These devices have now outgrown the simple label of ‘mobile phone’, indeed in most cases they have become powerful pocket computers. The term ‘phone’ has effectively become a place-holder word for any device which can make and receive calls and text messages as well as play games and music, browse the internet, hold calendar information and a variety of other apps which ostensibly make life easier. The ability to access the internet, particularly maps, in a variety of settings and situations is a handy feature. In fact it’s hard to remember that as little as six or seven years ago such technology seemed Bond-like. Ah yes, that dark period before iPhones, BlackBerrys and Galaxies, in which cutting edge ‘phone’ technology included Snake II and the ability to compose your own monophonic ringtone. But it’s interesting to wonder: do smart phones really help us?

Consider the culture in which smart phones arose, and indeed, thrive. It’s a society of instant answers, quick gratification and constant connection. Email can easily be synced to a mobile device so that you are effectively contactable 24/7. It’s common practice now for employees to equip staff with company smart phones which can become virtual tethers to the office. Such technology is indeed impressive, but its actual benefit to society is questionable, especially considering some studies suggests that many employees find it harder to separate their work and personal lives thanks to technology making it easier to bring the office home. Smart phone technology isn't limited to office life either, and Facebook and Twitter have evolved their services to become even more mobile friendly, including the incredibly cool and/or incredibly annoying Facebook 'Check-In' feature which ensures everybody knows where you are and who you're with, even if it's "at home with the hubby lol!" Somebody has even shot an entire feature film using a (slightly modified) Nokia N8.

There is also a particularly interesting phenomenon that has surfaced which is worth examining, in which any unknown fact or tidbit that arises in conversation is unceremoniously given the Google (and now Siri) treatment:

“Did you see what happened in New Zealand…wait, who’s their Prime Minister again?”

“Hang on, I’ll check………………(awkward non-conversation point - feel free to check your own messages while the other person does their thing)………………….John Key.”

“Right, so yes, that rugby match I watched last night was in New Zealand, and the All Blacks had made two tries, and…”

Surely this is a good thing. Who wouldn’t want us to arm ourselves with correct information quickly?* It’s worth wondering, however, to what extent this phenomenon is indicative of Generation Y’s (and perhaps indeed humankind’s) penchant for always being right as opposed to our penchant for actually ‘learning’. Many conversations now will be interrupted at least once with such an occurrence, but the necessity of such is often questionable. It merely breeds the culture in which everybody always needs to be right. Smart phones are indeed handy for situations in which the correct information is vital (medical emergencies, heated pub arguments) but often we are left with an increasing number of situations in which smart phones replace human interaction as a means of conveying information. 

A particularly pertinent example happened to me at a restaurant recently: one of the menu items appeared foreign to us and, as most diners do, we endeavoured to find out exactly what it was. However, instead of asking the waiter as would have been the norm in years gone by, a dining companion promptly whipped out his iPhone to find an answer ‘instantly.’ Naturally the waiter returned at that moment, and due to his sense of humour he allowed us to wait for the iPhone to bring back the answer in 45 seconds which he could have provided in ten. Had the waiter not appeared at that moment the iPhone would indeed have won the ‘race’, but I wonder if the answer was so vital that it wasn’t worth waiting a few extra moments. The beauty of asking a waiter is that they might have a personal recommendation, or provide quirky or interesting information which only ten minutes worth of internet searching might provide. It also robs the meal of its customer-waiter interaction, which is an integral part of the dining-out experience. Of course, depending on your waiter, this might be a good thing.

The other phenomenon that smart phones have brought about is the ‘busy hands’ syndrome, in which even the smallest amount of incidental downtime (waiting for a train or a friend) is filled with tinkering around on the device. There are Facebook notifications and emails to check, text messages to write (my personal favourite is writing “I’m here” to the friend you’re meeting which is received by them exactly five seconds after you spot each other), games to play and apps to buy. Apparently we’ve concluded that just because our hands and eyes are busy with an iPhone nobody notices the fact that we’re sitting alone.  I pride myself on my pretentiousness and as such have challenged myself to not using my phone unnecessarily in incidental downtime. This means that sometimes I have to sit at a restaurant table by myself for several minutes, which is indeed a harrowing experience without the safety of the phone. I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to achieve though, because it must be remembered that before smart phones people busied themselves with books, crosswords and newspapers which suggests that even if everybody left their phone at home we wouldn’t find ourselves in some sort of human social utopia in which everybody hugs and talks to each other on the train instead of updating their status.

I’m not a Luddite (I bet every Luddite says that), but sometimes I do pine for the days before smart phones were everywhere. Of course technology marches on and I can soon see myself wishing for the days of 2011 when the smartest thing your phone could do was talk back to you. In the future when humankind is collectively enslaved under a giant hovering iPhone that has crushed human ingenuity and creativity, please don’t say I didn’t warn you.

*Dictators and encyclopaedia shareholders are two groups that spring to mind. 

Do Not Adjust Your Set

New technology inevitably leaves casualties. The DVD usurped the video tape, just as the CD laid waste to the LP record and the wheel surpassed dragging things. One of the 20th century’s greatest technologies, television, is threatened by the internet – the other great technological innovation of the 20th century. Will people put up with ever-lengthening commercial breaks and strict programming times when they know that they can get what they want usually ad-free and able to be watched at their convenience? The advent of the DVR has already changed behaviour in regards to allowing people to watch shows when they want to. The internet can take this idea a step further, allowing the download of whole seasons of television shows, usually illegally. It is possible that in the future we will see the current programming model overhauled and commercial television as we know it might plausibly cease to exist.

But does commercial television have to be at odds with the internet? TV networks have already wised up to a lot of the digital age trends. News and current affairs programs in particular work well with input from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and it is common for TV shows to advertise their Facebook or Twitter accounts and encourage users to give instantaneous feedback on the show they are watching. This direct feedback can then be used to further determine target audiences and content, thereby creating better programming—which benefits the viewer— and more directed advertising, which benefits the network. For example, if a particular news program gets an influx of ‘follows’ or ‘likes’ from predominantly single urban women, then they can tailor their advertising accordingly and reap the benefits. Such information has been available to TV networks in the past, but never at such a rapid rate and arguably with less information than a Facebook or Twitter profile can provide.

As of this writing, commercial television is still going strong. It is a worldwide industry that has a firm grip on billions of dollars of advertising revenue and still has enough cultural currency to infiltrate pop culture.  But behaviour is changing. With a lot of television shows now available online – both legally and illegally – waiting a whole week to catch an episode of your favourite show can become taxing. The problem is exacerbated if you live outside the region where the program is produced; American television can take at least six months to reach Australian shores, if not longer. By the time you are watching the ‘latest episode’ of your favourite American drama in Australia the next season is already being shown in the States. It’s unsurprising then that people turn to downloading shows in order to get their fix rather than depend on the often unreliable network programming.

I’m basing a lot of my observations of TV watching behaviour on myself and my friends, which is a small sample size to say the least. But I think the assumption can be made that as members of Generation Y we are much more susceptible to downloading our favourite shows illegally rather than watch them on commercial television. The legality and implications of such behaviour is a tricky issue, and this post doesn’t intend to delve into the morality of pirated internet content. It can’t be ignored, however, that such behaviour exists, and especially that for many people of Generation Y it is generally seen as acceptable.

However, there is still a sizeable market of the older generations who might not do the same and therefore keeps the current model of network television—with its pre-determined programming times and set commercial breaks—viable. The most watched shows in Australia are those which present family situations and domestic life (think Masterchef, The Block, Home and Away, etc.) and therefore are relatable to a large percentage of the population, and not just 20-something students with laptops and University bandwidth at their disposal.

Furthermore, the current model of legal internet programming offered by the networks can be confusing, and at times just as limited as conventional programming. A myriad of ‘online television’ options provided by commercial networks exist, but these range from ‘catch-up’ services of already aired content (usually available only for a certain time), or ‘live streaming’ content which means that viewers still adhere to conventional programming schedules. If you want the liberty of being able to legally watch whole episodes of previous seasons whenever you want, expect to pay for it. And this money generally goes right back into the pockets of the networks. The Hulu service in the United States, which streams shows from ABC, NBC and FOX, pays 50 to 70 percent of revenue generated (primarily from advertising) back to the networks. Don’t expect this sort of arrangement to change any time in the near future. Naturally, television networks want to create a profit, that’s why they have to safeguard their productions and ensure to the best of their ability that they don’t lose money due to piracy.

The relative success of services such as Hulu demonstrates that a market does exist for people who want to watch TV online and pay for it. But how long will that market last? For while there still exists generations who have not been exposed to illegally downloading television shows the reality is that in the future all generations will have lived in a time when such an option has always been available. The technology exists for people to create pirated television shows – and unlike television networks, pirates do not charge for their services because they don’t stand to lose money from doing so. It is reasonable to assume that some pirates believe that they are doing a public good – a modern day Robin Hood, if you will, by taking content from the rich and providing it to the poor.

As mentioned previously, I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of online piracy. What I am interested in, however, is the direction that television will take in the future. A pertinent comparison to make would be the music industry, which has been threatened by the rise of the internet and peer to peer sites, and has accordingly had to change its mode of operation, with large stores like iTunes perhaps providing the musical equivalent of a service like Hulu.

So what happens when our society is made up solely of those people who know how (or know somebody who knows a guy who knows how) to obtain content for free? Will illegally downloading television content in its entirety become so common that TV networks are forced to concede defeat? Or will there always be a section of society who shuns online piracy and instead relies on the services that the commercial networks provide? Perhaps we could see an end to conventional television programming as networks no longer have the finances to fund new productions. We might forever be stuck watching re-runs of Two and a Half-Men, while wistfully remembering the good old days where we had access to new television shows, even if they did arrive six months late.

Google+

It's that time of year when a multi-billion dollar information technology company makes its annual foray into the mysterious world of social networking. Last year we watched Apple's musically-oriented Ping never quite get off the ground, and at various times over the years we've had MySpace try to reinvent itself and Microsoft promise that they've got a social networking revolution in the pipeline. Google has tried once before to enter the social networking arena with their ill-fated Buzz platform, but this time has vowed not to make the same mistakes and is attempting to really shake things up with Google+.

‘Thank God,’ I hear you say, ‘that somebody has finally realised that what the world needs is a huge integrated online network which allows me to share things with my friends.’ Although their idea isn’t exactly revolutionary, Google needs to break into the social networking scene because, as Facebook has demonstrated, there is a huge market for advertising when people voluntarily give up information such as where they live, where they like to travel and what they like to eat, watch, read and listen to. Advertising revenue is the oil which greases the Google cogs, and if they could tap in to even half of Facebook’s vast membership then it's mission accomplished and caviar baths for all.

First things first: the name. I can't decide if I love it or hate it. I think the main problem I have with 'Google+' is its dullness coupled with its ambiguity. Facebook is a great name because it escapes ambiguity by being essentially what it promotes itself to be: an extension of a physical college facebook (never mind the fact that most of the world outside North America probably had no idea what a 'facebook' was pre-2005; FB’s popularity in the US was so well established that it didn't matter anymore).  MySpace is another example of a solid name which pretty quickly tells you what you have in store. Twitter also escapes name criticism because although the name is ambiguous it is interesting enough to contemplate. 

Conversely, 'Google+' looks like the name of 1970s Soviet software that was specifically programmed to sort and rank south-Ukranian wheat stocks. The name doesn't really offer you anything exciting. ‘Google’ may well have been an intriguing word that garnered interest in 1998 but the company has been so successful that it is blasé now.  The 'Plus' tells you precisely nothing about what the product is or does, except for a vague notion that it may enhance your life (or your wheat inventory). The thing it has going for it is the fact that it clearly tells you that it’s a Google initiative, and Google is a good, strong brand. And, granted, it is marginally better than ‘Buzz’, which perhaps started the 2010 trend of giving social networking start-ups moronic monosyllabic monikers.

Let's skip past the rigours of getting an invite* (which is becoming easier by the day) and take a look around. Looks eerily familiar, doesn’t it? The page layout is, rather unimaginatively, essentially a Facebook clone:

Click for larger image

Can you blame them? Why not try and emulate a service that has a quarter of a billion regular users? Using a Facebook style layout means that people are already familiar with the system and can dive right into using Plus. For example, the ‘Like’ button has become the ‘+1’ button, so whenever you see something that appeals to you, you can hit the +1 and declare your approval publicly. 

But why design a social network clone of Facebook if you want people to move from FB onto your service? It gives people no incentive to make the switch, because all you get is Facebook with Google’s logo plastered all over it. The argument that you have to stick with something that people are familiar to doesn’t necessarily hold up either, as when FB started getting big it looked markedly different from MySpace profiles, which was its biggest competitor at the time. Budgetary issues surely wouldn’t have been a big concern for Google; perhaps they could have paid their programmers to come up with something a bit more revolutionary. However, Plus can’t be faulted in terms of usability, every action is fairly intuitive and there are quite a few keyboard shortcuts which can be mastered to save time.

 

One of the first things I noticed about Plus when filling out your profile information was that Google lets you update the privacy settings for each piece of information that you edit. This makes it really easy to quickly set up a level of profile privacy that you’re happy with, without having to venture to a ‘Privacy’ tab and try and work out which setting will affect which piece of info. This is not to say that Google’s privacy ‘settings’ are actually any better or more secure than Facebook (which are quite comprehensive, once you find them) but they are much more user friendly.

  

Circles

Plus’s big selling point is its ‘Circles’ feature, in which you can separate your friends into groups which reflect real life networks. No longer do you have to fear your boss or your mother getting hold of that photo of you riding a tricycle through the zoo in the nude after a night on the turps, because with Circles you can be choosy about who you share certain things with. Furthermore, it provides you with an opportunity to ‘Follow’ certain people without them needing to add you to a Circle, which makes Plus a hybrid between Twitter and Facebook. Circles brings us closer to needing only one networking account that you can use for both business and social contacts. 

The concept is not quite as revolutionary as Google would like to have you believe, for similar features exist on Twitter and Facebook (‘Lists’) and the smaller social networking experiment Diaspora, whose ‘Aspects’ feature seems to work in the same way as Circles does.  Although Plus isn’t the first social network to provide a contact sorting feature, Circles appears to be the best attempt at it so far. I tried to organise my Twitter followers into lists the other day and died of boredom after adding four contacts. On Twitter it takes at least three clicks just to add someone to a list. Plus lets you add somebody to a Circle in one.

Hangouts

One feature I haven’t had much time to test is the Hangout feature, which lets you connect via webcam with a group of up to 10 people. I’m unsure if this will be a big drawing card to the service. One of the advantages of social networking meant that you could interact with your friends without having to get out of your pyjamas or shave or wear pants. As soon as you bring a webcam into the mix, normal social rules apply. While I’m sure some people will make the most of Hangouts (travelling family members, business meetings) I can’t imagine it becoming used as regularly as simple online chat. Now watch as I’m proven wrong and a social networking revolution occurs in which everybody starts interacting via vidphone as promised in every sci-fi book and film created from 1948 to 1994.

  

Sparks

The other feature worth noting on Plus is the ‘Sparks’ feed, which lets you subscribe to a news feed (provided by Google search) of things you’re interested in. For example, I made a Sparks page on the Space Shuttle, and so whenever I visit that page I get up to date news, pictures and videos about the final Space Shuttle flight. It’s kind of handy, but anything more obscure than ‘Space Shuttle’ or ‘White House’ tends to return a pretty eclectic collection of ‘news’. I tried Sparks with the Melbourne Football Club and got a variety of out of date news and a bunch of articles that mention the MFC in passing. No doubt Sparks is something that will improve once the field trials are completed but if Google really wanted to impress people it should have made this feature a bit more intuitive.

So, aside from worldwide social domination and filling their coffers to the brim, what are Google trying to achieve with Plus? Here’s what they claim:

‘The Google+ Project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world.’

Google have taken an interesting focus with Plus. Whereas Facebook has historically been based on connecting with people, Google have identified sharing information as being the most critical feature of social networking. Plus is geared towards the dissemination of information: the status box asks you to ‘Share what’s new’, as opposed to FB’s ‘What’s on your mind?’ The focus on sharing equates to Google trying to design a product which incorporates the features of other sites like Twitter and Digg with social sites like Facebook and MySpace. Google’s ultimate aim is for Plus to become your networking hub, whether it is professional or social. As in the real world, you’re probably not going to ‘share’ photos of your weekend away with your boss, just like you wouldn’t share last month’s data entry reports with your loved ones. The Circles feature means that this is now possible, and in this regard Google certainly have made it easier to share information between different parties as it would occur in the ‘real world.’ 

Whether or not people will find the service useful enough to abandon Facebook and Twitter is another matter, and the only way I can see Plus being truly successful is if they become the only social networking site that people use. Facebook and Twitter are different enough that people will quite happily use both, but I find it hard to imagine someone using Facebook, Twitter and Plus regularly. One of them would have to give, and history suggests it will be the new kid on the block.

The problem with Plus is that it is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. There is nothing different or useful enough on Plus to entice people away from their established presence on Facebook and Twitter. Google’s attempt to create a networking hybrid seems to have come up with an acceptable half-breed that lets you do some nifty – but ultimately pointless – things.

Of course, if we’re honest, that's essentially the whole concept behind social networking anyway.

*Thanks to Kim, who sent me my Plus invite.

the Goody Bag™ Vol. II

Welcome to the Goody Bag, where collective thoughts of online absurdity come to meet each other, have a drink, go home together and then never speak again.

Buy a piece of the moon!

I’ve seen some internet scams in my time, but this is one of the more ingenious ones I’ve come across. Ever feel that terrestrial land prices are too high? Why not consider the Moon? After all, it’s practically inevitable that we’re going to run out of room down here on Earth, so why not be prepared and start developing your Sea of Tranquility-side property now? You’ve probably only got about thirty years until the inevitable gentrification begins and you’ll have to start looking further afield towards Mars or Asteroid 3455 to escape the space-yuppies.

Lunar real-estate agents like Dennis Hope have made a living out of selling randomly allocated lunar acreage. Before you part with your hard earned, please keep in mind the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies which is a really long way of saying you can’t place dibs on the moon or any other planet. Sadly, I get the feeling that the people who sell extraterrestrial lunar estate are probably the same people who ignore internationally recognised treaties. You’re effectively paying $20 for a piece of paper, which probably costs about 0.01c to manufacture, and about a buck to mail. Ahh, the internet: where capitalism and human stupidity are finally brought together to make sweet, passionate love (and large profits).

Google+

There is a lot of hype surrounding the launch of Google’s social networking website. Reports of the site crashing because of popularity seem impressive, but really, surely the creators knew that they were going to go over capacity? I find it hard to believe that Google could run out of server space. It was marketing genius, however, by making the product look so popular that it can’t handle the overhyped demand. People were so keen to get onto the service that inevitably somebody noted that there was a market for it and started selling invites on eBay. For the record, I managed to score an invite, and will be doing a more comprehensive write up in the coming weeks.

Tabbed browsing

Every now and then something is invented which revolutionises behaviour. Fire, the wheel, telephones, aeroplanes, even the internet itself are all examples. But sometimes it's the little inventions that can have profound impacts, like tabbed internet browsing. I'm not really sure where it came from. I'm not quite sure when I started using it. But I'm pretty sure that now I couldn't live without it. Can you imagine having to open a new window every time you see something that catches your eye, or trying to remember all the links that you wanted to click on? As far as I can tell, there is no limit in Chrome as to how many tabs you can have open. You are only limited by the size of the internet itself, and your CPU. With Google Chrome and a powerful enough processor I theoretically would be able to have every single internet page open in a single browser window. I have no idea what sort of useful function this would serve. But its nice to know its possible.

The Father, Son and the Holy Tweet

I was very excited when I heard that the Pope had launched his Twitter account. I was expecting digital salvation to finally become a reality and was somewhat disappointed when I found that the ‘Pope’s account’ was merely a ‘news portal’ for the Vatican, with someone pretending to  be the Holy Father giving an obligatory tweet every month or so. The rest of the posts are just Vatican PR spam.

In a similar vein, following the US Secret Service on Twitter is not as fun as it sounds either. They give no cool insights into how to jump in front of a bullet in slow motion, but rather report on the danger of fraud and identity theft schemes. To top it off, the USSS aren’t even ‘following’ anybody. Way to be a selfish Twitter user. Of course that’s probably a good thing; because when the day comes that I’m ‘followed’ by an international anti-crime organisation I’ll probably transform into a paranoid maniac and try and burn down the Twitter servers. Or the Pentagon.*


And finally...

I could attempt to write thousands of words on how the internet has changed our lives but I think this picture sums it up nicely. A pile of brand new phonebooks sit untouched in the foyer of my apartment building, not even worth the paper they're printed on. 

*If the USSS weren’t following me before, they definitely are now. 

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda: An open letter to the second place getters of the Digital Age

Do you ever stop and wonder about those websites that seem perpetually on the cusp of greatness, but haven’t quite cracked the big time, and instead constantly play second fiddle to the big corporations? As in Chinese philosophy, to every Yin there must be a Yang, and for every Simon, there is a Garfunkel.* For every wildly successful multi-billion dollar internet start up that contributes new verbs to the common vernacular [‘Did you friend her? Nah, I googled her and she’s wanted for armed robbery in three states’ etc] there is another site which offers remarkably similar services yet hasn’t quite reached the critical mass of users to become the popular standard.

Google > Yahoo!

Did you know that Yahoo! is the second largest search engine on the web? Seems like a pretty good deal for them, huh? The problem is, the first place holder, Google, holds 85 per cent of the search query market. Yahoo! comes in at second place with 6 per cent. That’s the equivalent of Usain Bolt winning the 100m as his competitors cross the 20m mark. Hardly a satisfying second place, is it?

Beyond the search engine itself, Yahoo! offers similar services to Google, in terms of webmail, videos, maps, and advertising. So why is there such a large discrepancy between the two? Google made a name for itself due to its search algorithm being notoriously accurate, at least more accurate than its competitors. Whether or not Yahoo!’s search system is now on par with Google is irrelevant: during the critical period of people flocking to the internet (new millennium onwards) Google proved time and again the best search tool. Searching with Google is so seamless (especially if you’re using Chrome) that I hardly think of myself as ‘using Google’ anymore. I just think of something I need to know, type it in, and it appears before me. Google has effectively become an invisible hand in the information gathering process, and this is surely the goal of any serious search engine company.

Similar examples of complete market saturation exist outside the internet. Band-aids, Bubble-Wrap, Eskys, Stanley Knives, are all examples of ‘Generiscized Trademarks’, in which the product name has actually transcended its own company or service and become the standardised term for any similar product. Google is approaching this now, with most people using ‘Google’ as a term which incorporates virtually any sort of internet search. Of course, with an 85 per cent market share, chances are most people actually are ‘Googling’ everything.

YouTube > Dailymotion

Daily-whawha? At least, that was my reaction when I discovered French video hosting site Dailymotion was the second largest video sharing website in the world. Much like the Google/Yahoo comparison, Dailymotion is a fair way behind YouTube, with 60,000,000 video views per day compared to YouTubes astronomical 1,200,000,000. Of course, YouTube’s success is helped by the fact that it is owned by Google, so that many video searches undertaken by Google will inevitably direct you to YouTube.

However, YouTube was a successful site in its own right before the takeover, and Google have been smart enough not to try and merge YouTube with Google Video, but instead keep the recognisable branding that YouTube built. What’s even more interesting is that before the takeover, Google Video never really came close to the sort of traffic YouTube was generating, despite the fact that Google was the largest search engine at the time.

YouTube, like Google, found success with its easily useable interface. Videos were easy to find and upload, utilisation of attractive site design and memorable branding (the red loading bar is particularly iconic) and clever innovations has meant that YouTube has secured a place as the third most popular site in the world, behind Google and Facebook.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Dailymotion website, and it was founded only one month after YouTube in 2005. However, like Google, YouTube has become the pop culture standard for a generation of users. Additionally (and I have no idea how much influence this has) it takes approximately 0.45 seconds less time to type youtube.com than it does to type dailymotion.com. Add in the fact that Chrome users can now press ‘Tab’ and search YouTube content instantly, and it becomes hard to see how Dailymotion (or anyone else) will come close to knocking YouTube off its perch as the No. 1 video site.

Facebook > Myspace

I feel particularly privileged that I can actually remember the day I signed up to Facebook. I’m trying really hard to hold onto that memory because it’s probably something that one day I’ll be able to tell a room full of really young people and they’ll laugh at me. I have a feeling that in the future no-one will ‘remember’ when they signed up to Facebook but instead it will just happen, like being able to tie your shoelaces or riding a bike or completing puberty. Kids will probably be signed up for an account when they’re born and then that’ll be the end of it.

One of my most distinct memories of joining Facebook was the fact that it was a social networking site that wasn’t MySpace. I mentioned above how hard difficult it appears for Yahoo to overtake Google or for Dailymotion to overtake YouTube, but don’t take for granted that it can’t happen. Facebook proved that you can take on the biggest rival in your industry and win convincingly.

How did they do it? Whole books could and will be written on why Facebook has succeeded. Briefly, Facebook started in American colleges, and in terms of pop culture, everybody on the planet wants to be doing what American university students are doing. If they’re on Facebook, then everybody will want to be on Facebook. It didn’t take long before other universities and high-schools were DEMANDING that Zuckerberg cut them into his network. When you have a controlled release like Facebook did, it creates hype, and people want what they don’t have. It was marketing genius.

But it wasn’t all to do with marketing. Facebook is actually a remarkable product. It would pretty much sell itself. It has been theorised that Facebook taps into basic human instincts and social practices, and this partly accounts for its widespread success. Zuckerberg has a knack for programming highly addictive software. The timing of FB’s release was ideal too. People had slowly learned the social network game on MySpace, but Facebook gave them something to really sink their teeth into. Innovations such as simple photo uploading and tagging, the newsfeed (which people hated at first), poking, liking and the prominence of the status update revolutionised the social networking world.

Will anybody be able to pull off the social networking coup de grace? People talk quietly of ‘the Facebook killer’, the service that is going to do to Facebook what Facebook did to MySpace. Google are launching a new service, Google+, which they hope will replace Facebook as the social networking standard. It’s hard to see how they will achieve it. People already have much more invested in their Facebook profile than they ever did in MySpace, and Facebook is much bigger than MySpace ever was. Google+ will  have to be something incredibly remarkable in order to overthrow Facebook, but if anybody was going to pull it off, then you’d think the largest internet company in the world with millions of dollars behind it probably has the best chance.

Wikipedia > Scholarpedia

Sick and tired of people telling you that Wikipedia isn’t a viable source? Why not try out Scholarpedia, the free encyclopedia that not quite anybody can edit. As opposed to Wikipedia’s delightful free-for-all, Scholarpedia’s articles are written by scholars from around the world, and are peer-reviewed. If everybody’s quest for knowledge is so great that a site like Wikipedia can become the seventh most popular website in the world, why isn’t Scholarpedia visited just as much, as it provides reputedly better knowledge? (FYI, Scholarpedia is ranked at about the 300,000^th most visited site in the world).

Of course, most web users don’t necessarily want totally correct information; they just want a lot of it. Wikipedia’s lack of exclusiveness means that an incredibly wide range of topics are covered, including things that generally scholars wouldn’t write about. The longest article on the English Wikipedia is a list describing ‘Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd Edition Monsters’. I’d like to see someone with a degree in that. Of course, this is really the stuff that people want to know about, as opposed to say, politics in Iran.

Furthermore, I have argued before that it is debateable how ‘unreliable’ Wikipedia really is. Many Wikipedia pages are guarded so carefully by those with a vested interest in them that vandalism becomes incredibly difficult. It seems that people have embraced Wikipedia, and are willing to defend its stance as the sum of most of humankind’s knowledge. It would appear that popular opinion is worth more on the internet than a doctorate. Whether or not this is a positive development is debateable, but most people are smart enough to recognise Wikipedia as an open source site, and treat its information accordingly.

So there you have it; a not particularly comprehensive guide to the world’s biggest websites and their poorer, uglier stepsisters. It must be kept in mind that the secondary websites are still, for the most part, multi-million dollar corporations, with the sort of web traffic that many can only dream about. I’m sure the founders of MySpace, Yahoo!, Dailymotion and Scholarpedia probably sleep quite happily at night. But it’s interesting that there only ever seems to be room for one at the top. And being at the top in the digital age is about more than raking in huge profits. It’s about having your company, your brand and your image representing your industry. Your company doesn’t just provide a service anymore; it provides a representation of the zeitgeist, which is something that immortalises corporations. Google is internet search, just as Facebook is social networking, and YouTube is online video. That sort of success and brand recognition can’t be bought by advertising no matter how hard you try: it can only be endorsed by the masses.

*Please don’t take this statement to mean that I have any sort of grasp of Chinese philosophy. P.S. sorry Art.

Global Health in the Digital Age

I am constantly interested in the way in which the use of the internet has changed the way in which society behaves. The easiest way to examine this change is by taking an industry and then exploring the extent of the impact that the internet has had on the way in which that industry operates. The music industry is a good example of this; the proliferation of online sharing and readily available digital downloads has drastically changed the way in which record companies operate. Perhaps a little harder to examine, however, is what impact the internet has had or is having on the health sector.
 

A certain proportion of the vast amount of information on the net is devoted to health websites and medical advice. Google has become ubiquitous and thorough enough that you can easily punch a few symptoms into the search bar and be reasonably assured that you will find some sort of explanation or discussion of your ‘condition’. Or if you already know your condition, you can use the web to search for treatment or recovery tips, sometimes provided by other people who have suffered the same injury. The speed and ease at which this information is available is one of the advantages of the internet, however as is usually the case one must be wary before diving headfirst into the online world of medical advice. Using my old friend Google, I only had to venture to the second page of search results of ‘common cold treatment’ before I found someone dispensing this timely advice for a case of the sniffles:

“VERY SIMPLE CURE IF YOU TRUST ME. TAKE WATER IN YOUR PALM AND SUCK IT WITH EACH NOSTRIL 2 TIMES. THEN BLOW THE NOSE AND APPLY MUSTARD OIL WITH FINGER IN EACH NOSTRIL. IT WORKS FOR ME ALL THE TIME.”

(The excessive use of capital letters and poor grammar have been preserved from the original in order to give that ‘authentic’ internet crackpot experience)

I have not tried this cold ‘remedy’, perhaps it really does work, but oddly enough I couldn’t find it on any of the respectable sites I visited. This is merely an example to illustrate my point: nobody really stands any long term harm from taking this advice, and most people have a fair idea of what works for solving common problems like colds. But the danger of something horrible happening would increase if somebody had a potentially life threatening condition and instead of seeking proper medical treatment they followed a non-professional’s advice on the internet. It seems ridiculous that anybody would be so stupid but then again you have to remember that people are idiots (including, sadly, you and me). To quote Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert):

"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs."

So you can’t really blame Vanessa from Parkdale for trying to peel a lemon with a spoon and then squeeze the juice into her left eye with her right hand the next time she feels her chest constricting because someone on Yahoo! Answers said it worked for them. Rather than trying to limit or restrict people’s access to health information online, it has become the responsibility of health professionals to ensure that patients are using websites which are respectable in terms of their content and sources, such as Government run health websites or the Mayo Clinic. The aspect of a doctor becoming an ‘online health guru’ will only become more prevalent as time goes on and we become a society of born-internet users, as opposed to the current generations who still remember a time pre-net, and may be reluctant to use it for such matters. 

I talked to a doctor friend of mine, and she outlined that generally, patients do use the internet to look up their symptoms and the like, but rarely will a patient rely solely on the internet as their source of information. It seems that the local doctor is still a respected profession, and although people supplement their doctor’s information with net based resources they are still willing to rely on the doctor to make the final diagnosis. My doctor friend also pointed out that even in the bad old days before the WWW people still obtained information from other, non-professional sources, for example their family health ‘bible’ or from neighbours, books, television and radio. What seems to have changed with the rise of the online world is not necessarily people’s behaviour in seeking another opinion but rather simply the ease with which they can now obtain this opinion.

One of the reasons for the dramatic success of the internet is its unique ability to connect large numbers of people with a common interest. As such, the internet becomes a perfect breeding ground for support groups, forums etc for people, particularly those with long term diseases such as Cancer or AIDS. The internet provides people with an environment to interact with a wide range of other sufferers, carers and health professionals outside of their own circle of immediate friends or family. Knowing that such a large support network exists is invaluable for disease sufferers, and the internet can also allow them to become as involved or anonymous as they like. It has provided patients with a freedom previously unavailable to them and is particularly useful for people with rare diseases who might never have been able to contact another sufferer without the net.

Furthermore, the internet has the potential to streamline the professional side of the health sector. Having worked in a hospital, I have seen firsthand that the amount of paperwork (admission forms, patient charts etc) could be significantly reduced if technologies such as online admissions forms and even a central network of patient information was implemented. In the future, nurses and doctors will not walk around with an armful of files but instead an iPad-type device in which all their patients past history will be stored, possibly on some sort of centralised, government run health-database. Although the 'paperless office' concept has not yet reached fruition, it appears that the advent of portable smart devices means that we are a lot closer to it now than in the 90s era of clunky desktop technology. It's even possible to envisage a future in which some doctor-patient consultations are done over the net via some sort of webcam service.

The potential of the internet as a health tool is not just confined to first world countries. Potentially, the internet has the ability to revolutionise global health. Communities which are traditionally cut off from health services could be linked via internet connection to medical professionals, with some locally trained staff able to administer medicines or simple procedures as outlined by a regional doctor via a webcam or other service. This would significantly ease the strain on understaffed regional health clinics, and would ensure that doctors are always connected to communities and are therefore able to make better decisions about how to prioritise patients, especially where large travel distances are involved. Public access computers in local health centres could be loaded with bookmarks to informative sites which deal with the prevalent diseases of the region: how to stop the spread of infectious diseases, the importance of hygiene, AIDS support groups and so on. The costs could be relatively inexpensive too: one computer in a local health clinic or community centre could provide information for whole communities for relatively low expenditure. Several examples of integrating technology into disadvantaged communities are already going ahead, for example the 'laptop for every child' program.
 

The internet has already infiltrated the health sector. This should not necessarily be viewed as a negative development. One study has declared "that the internet’s capacity for harm was likely to be equal to, or exceeded by, its capacity for providing good and useful health information to users in a relatively inexpensive and timely manner."[1] While the risk of patients obtaining improper or incorrect medical advice via the internet exists, it is apparent that the unique connectivity of the internet, coupled with its seemingly limitless potential for innovation, means that the world wide web has become a valuable tool in not only patient-doctor relations but throughout the wider global health sector, and perhaps one day will help lead to a state of global well-being which exceeds all current estimates.

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[1] http://www.racgp.org.au/afp/200305/20030501huang.pdf

nostradamus.com

Humans love to try and predict the future. There seems to be something carnal about knowing what will happen before it actually occurs, probably linked in to some sort of human God-complex that innately infects our super-intelligent/narcissistic species. It’s often embarrassing, and sometimes amusing, when someone gets it wrong. 

But what about the few times we get it right? It’s fascinating how accurate some predictions have become, particularly in regards to the World Wide Web. For a technology that really only came into being around 1990, the fact that over a century ago somebody predicted something similar to our current setup of a worldwide network of billions of computers is astounding, a little scary, and very, very cool.

In 1909 E.M Forster wrote a short story entitled ‘The Machine Stops’, a dystopian (or perhaps utopian, if you’re Zuckerberg or Jobs) tale about humans who have become isolated and dependant on their personal machines which provide for them all they need to survive. Forster’s depiction of this ‘machine’ is eerily familiar:

"There were buttons and switches everywhere--buttons to call for food, for music, for clothing... There was the button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends..."

Forster wasn’t alone in predicting the way in which the world would become inextricably connected through machines. In 1946 Murray Leinster addressed a similar concept in his tale ‘A Logic Named Joe’ which, instead of ‘machines’, calls his personal computer-type invention a ‘logic’, a machine which utilises a ‘trick circuit’ that’s so similar to the WWW that Berners-Lee might be up for copyright infringement:

"I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will select any of 'steenteen [sic] million other circuits—in theory there ain't no limit—and before the Logics Company hooked it into the tank-and-integrator set-up they were usin' 'em as business-machine service. They added a vision screen for speed—an' they found out they'd made logics. They were surprised an' pleased. They're still findin' out what logics will do, but everybody's got 'em."

I realise that it’s not very creative on my part to quote large chunks of other people’s text, but in this case Leinster’s description of the then imminent digital age is so wonderful I can’t help myself:

"You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get...you punch "Sally Hancock's Phone" an' the screen blinks an' sputters an' you're hooked up with the logic in her house an' if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today's race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin' Garfield's administration... that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big buildin' full of all the facts in creation an' all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an' it's hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country—an' everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an' you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an' keeps books, an' acts as consultin' chemist, physicist, astronomer...with a "Advice to the Lovelorn" thrown in."

Are we so predictable?

I think there is a tendency to weed out the correct predictions from the millions of incorrect ones and champion them as if the author really did have a window to the future. Statistics would suggest that over the course of a century, at least a couple of people would get pretty close. Keep in mind those like Harold Camping and thousands before him, who have incorrectly predicted the end of the world (of course, one of them will be right, one day). Or how about those that assured us that ‘guitar groups’ were ‘on the way out’ in the sixties? We get it wrong a hell of a lot more often than we get it right. And so I guess that’s part of the fun when the Forsters and Leinsters of the world make such bold predictions and those predictions are proved correct.

Here are some more thoughts from our esteemed Nostradami, who both ponder about the merits of their respective technology. E.M Forster could be billed as the first anti-Facebook campaigner:

“The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.”

“The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

The second statement is a particularly scary quote. Take away our Facebook, take away our Google, our eBay and our Twitter, and it becomes that much harder to engage in the activities that we enjoy. We’d have to go outside or something. And ultimately, Forster is right. These things that we care for, these Facebook profiles and Google searches and Tweets and blogs and Wikipedia articles are, in physical essence, nothing. Our rooms are empty, filled only with the electrical synapses of our digital life-supports. Switch off the power and what are you left with?

Leinster takes a slightly different tack:

“Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us.”

Food for thought indeed. How often is it jammed down our throats that the internet and super-connectivity are good things? I’m usually very pro-internet and pro-technology. But Forster and Leinster got me thinking. Do we ever stop and think just who is telling us that today’s super-connectivity is beneficial? Upon closer examination it’s often the people who stand to make a profit from our ultra digital dependency: Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple. Most of us would reject an ad from a cigarette company as we now know that they are making a profit out of people’s misfortunes. Will we come to a similar realisation in the future about the internet and its paradoxical ability to connect us with the world at the same time that it isolates us from it? Will humanity descend into a Forster-like existence in which everyone is physically shut off from one another, connected only by our glowing screens and optical fibre? The alarmists will tell you that we’re already there. The profiteers will claim that we need to go further. Where will it end?

I often wonder about future generations, who will never know a time before the existence of the internet. We’re living in quite a special period of history now: there are still those alive who remember (and in some cases prefer) a time before the World Wide Web. Does their pre-net perspective keep our technology grounded? Do they stop us from making catastrophically stupid technological mistakes all in the name of profit by reminding us that the world used to work before Facebook and Google, and that not everything can be reduced to a 140 character message? When their perspective dies, and their opinions are relegated to the history books, will we - the vanguard of the digital age - somehow concede a part of our humanity to the machines which already consume so much of our lives?

How come I'm not rich and famous yet?

We live in an age where creative types have unprecedented potential for self-promotion. Blogs, online galleries, Myspace profiles – we have at our fingertips the resources that creative souls of past generations could only dream about. Musicians such as the Arctic Monkeys and Sandi Thom personify the potential of the internet: overnight sensations that made their big breakthrough online. But are these artists the exception to the rule? Can anybody ‘make it big’ with the help of the internet? Does the internet foster and cultivate creative success, or hamper it?

You could argue that the internet presents the 21^st century version of the ‘American Dream’, summed up below by American author James Truslow Adams (who, I’m sure, would have had a blog if such a thing existed in 1931):

         “A dream...in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

Do Adams’ words also describe the wealth of opportunity created by the internet?  The biggest limitation is that internet success is not actually available to ‘each man and each woman,’ but rather is limited to those who have access to the web, which eliminates a large chunk of the world’s population. However, one could argue that the American Dream applies only to those who make it to America in the first place, so perhaps our comparison is still valid if we limit it to those who have internet access.

If we proceed with that caveat, it seems then that yes, the internet is the sort of place where prosperity and success can be found; provided you want to find it. What sort of people could use the internet to become successful? It seems the net provides a great opportunity for a select group of what I tentatively call the creators: visual artists (including graphic designers and photographers), musicians and writers. These are the big three. Visual artists can set up their own websites and online galleries or join sites such as Flickr. Musicians have the wealth of sites like Myspace, SoundCloud and even iTunes. And writers, who perhaps have it easiest of all, have writing opportunities surrounding them: blogs; forums; comment boxes; Twitter – the list is, for all intents and purposes, endless. The internet is the world’s biggest soapbox.

Before I proceed, I should provide a working definition of ‘success’ in this context, which is difficult it is a concept which differs for all, but I would imagine that for the aforementioned creators ‘success’ would mean exposure, positive critical reception of your work and perhaps financial prosperity as well. 

With the myriad of options available for creators then it would seem that success would follow, right? It’s not quite that easy. The great thing about the internet as promoting tool – and, alas, its downfall – is the fact that it is so easy to use. Anybody with basic understanding of the internet (i.e. a lot of people) can become a self-promoter. Here are some frightening stats: there are a total of 161,754,549 blogs in existence, with 62,814 of those coming online in the last 24 hours.[1] If you’re a blogger (a mugs game, if you ask me) there is very little chance that your blog will differentiate itself from the millions of others out there. If you’re a musician, there are over 8 million other artists you have to compete with on Myspace.[2] And Flickr has over 500 billion images, with 3000 being uploaded every minute in September 2010.[3] If you’re a creator, you’ve got a lot of competition. You cannot hope that a record producer or publisher will blindly stumble upon your profile or blog. You still have to get out in the real world and work hard. Artists still have to pester small galleries for exhibitions, musicians still have to record demos and play shows, and writers constantly have to prove to Centrelink that they’re diligently looking for a real job.

The other problem with the ease of self promotion other than saturation is perhaps an even tougher one to overcome: the way society currently values internet material versus ‘real world’ material. While it is true that the internet can generate huge followings of your work, how often does internet success translate into real world success? Although it does happen it is quite rare. I would argue that a photographer getting an image published in a well respected photography magazine or a writer publishing an article or book would be greater than having 100+ followers on Flickr or Blogger, respectively. Of course, as mentioned above, it does depend on what the creator defines as success. But if the creator is looking to create legitimately critically acclaimed pieces of work (which, I believe, is the goal of most artists, writers, musicians) then the internet is a difficult place to achieve that, simply because our society still values ‘real world’ success and prosperity over its ‘virtual’ counterpart. I don’t know fully why this is: it probably has its roots in the ‘anybody can publish anything on the internet’ argument. It is possible that future societies will become more accepting of the internet as a legitimate publishing domain (especially, perhaps, for musicians and artists) but equally likely that they won’t, as people ultimately need others to tell them what’s good; and the internet subverts this by allowing anybody to become a (self)promoter.

What’s more, sometimes the success of internet sensations is a little over exaggerated: Laura Barton noted in her 2005 article on the rise of the Arctic Monkeys that the band also had mainstream radio support and airtime.[4] What this shows, perhaps, is the capacity of the internet to be a springboard to success; however it is very difficult to become successful based solely on website hits and downloads. The old maxims of hard work and talent (and a bit of luck) still ring true in any creator’s field. Which is what makes the original comparison of the internet dream with the American dream so apt: success and prosperity for all, but only if you’re prepared to work really, really hard at it. As they say in the real world: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.   

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[1] Data taken Saturday, 14 May 2011, from blogpulse.com

[2] http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/09/social-network-stats-facebook-myspace-reunion-jan-2008/

[3] http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/09/19/5000000000/

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/oct/25/popandrock.arcticmonkeys