Archive for January, 2011
the whole day felt a bit blurry and mindless.
I’ve been trying to find ways to reduce the amount of information about me that’s tracked every time I do anything online. I don’t like that every piece of activity is tracked, analyzed, and sold. I’ve said over and over, that if any government or agency had proposed tracking this much data on every citizen, there would be an uproar. But we just shrug it off when it’s done by the big online properties.
So I have just sworn off using the Google search engine. Well, as much as physically possible – it’s still built into to so much that it’s absolutely impossible to completely withdraw from Google.
But, I’m going to try switching to DuckDuckGo. Some early tests show that the search engine is decent. The results may be ranked differently than Google’s, but that may be a good thing. What interests me isn’t the search engine, as much as they give a crap about privacy.
They have a pretty detailed description of what they do to prevent personal info leakage, which makes me want to use DuckDuckGo far more than any of the others. And, the search engine has some pretty cool features, including !Bang.
My biggest concern with DuckDuckGo is how they pay their bills. I’m not seeing any ads on the site, nor in the search results. That’s great, but then how are they paying for bandwidth and infrastructure, and who’s paying the people running it? So far, it looks to be self-funding, but how will that be sustainable?
Regardless, it’s an interesting new search engine that puts privacy to the forefront, rather than quietly tracking everything you do while simultaneously shouting “DO NO EVIL.”
I found out about DuckDuckGo through a thread on Reddit, where the developer was responding to additional privacy concerns by modifying the search engine on the fly. That’s pretty cool stuff.
a series of composite images, produced from my 2010/365photos daily photo project. Each month was composited separately, and then a composite for the entire year was produced from the monthlies.
There’s a lower quality version on Vimeo but it’s been recompressed, so sucks a bit more.
Update: Now with an attempt at full html5 compatibility – MP4, OGV and WEBM formats. Yay!
The new Taylor Family Digital Library building partially opened today. This is one of the sitting areas in the Learning Commons – not to be confused with the old Learning Commons that was renamed the Teaching & Learning Centre, in order to free up the name…
From Truthdig – Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion:
wherein I likely get added to a few more watch lists… the article is specifically about corruption of the political process in the US, but since we are tied so closely to them, much applies here as well.
on the shift in power from democracy to corporations:
The complete surrendering of power, however, to corporate interests means that those of us who seek nonviolent yet profound change have no one within the power elite we can trust for support. The corporate coup has ossified the structures of power. It has obliterated all checks on corporate malfeasance. It has left us stripped of the tools of mass organization that once nudged the system forward toward justice.
on shifted morality:
We have reached a point where stunted and deformed individuals, whose rapacious greed fuels the plunge of tens of millions of Americans into abject poverty and misery, determine the moral fiber of the nation. It is no more morally justifiable to kill someone for profit than it is to kill that person for religious fanaticism. And yet, from health companies to the oil and natural gas industry to private weapons contractors, individual death and the wholesale death of the ecosystem have become acceptable corporate business.
on lack of viable responses:
The one method left open by which we can respond—massive street protests, the destruction of corporate property and violence—will become the excuse to impose total tyranny. The intrusive pat-downs at airports may soon become a fond memory of what it was like when we still had a little freedom left.
Democracy. Fuck, yeah.
an exciting last day of 2 weeks’ worth of christmas holidays at home with the boy. catching up on some ignored laundry, with both machines running flat out for the day.
More notes on Langdon Winner’s The Whale and the Reactor, published in 1986. A decade before the internet really began to take off.
Chapter 6 deals with “mythinformation” or the myth that increased access to information via computers and networks leads to increased individual democratic power.
On the great equalizer:
The computer romantics are also correct in noting that computerization alters relationships of social power and control, although they misrepresent the direction this development is likely to take. Those who stand to benefit most obviously are large transnational corporations. While their “global reach” does not arise solely from the application of information technologies, such organizations are uniquely situated to exploit the efficiency, productivity, command, and control the new electronics make available. Other notable beneficiaries of the systematic use of vast amounts of digitized information are public bureaucracies, intelligence agencies, and an ever-expanding military, organizations that would operate less effectively at their present scale were it not for the use of computer power.
on conservatism rather than revolution in the computer age:
Current developments in the information age suggest an increase in power by those who already had a great deal of power, an enhanced centralization of control by those already prepared for control, an augmentation of wealth by the already wealthy. Far from demonstrating a revolution in patterns of social and political influence, empirical studies of computers and social change usually show powerful groups adapting computerized methods to retain control.
on political arguments for digitization:
The political arguments of computer romantics draw upon a number of key assumptions: (1) people are bereft of information; (2) information is knowledge; (3) knowledge is power; and (4) increasing access to information enhances democracy and equalizes social power. Taken as separate assertions and in combination, these beliefs provide a woefully distorted picture of the role of electronic systems in social life.
on public participation in politics:
Public participation in voting has steadily declined as television replaced face-to-face politics of precincts and neighborhoods. Passive monitoring of electronic news and information allows citizens to feel involved while dampening the desire to take an active part. If people begin to rely on computerized data bases and telecommunications as a primary means of exercising power, it is conceivable that genuine political knowledge based in first-hand experience would vanish altogether.
on social paralysis by ubiquitous monitoring:
Confronted with omnipresent, all-seeing data banks, the populace may find passivity and compliance the safest route, avoiding activities that once represented political liberty.
on removing social buffers:
One consequence of these developments is to pare away the kinds of face-to-face contact that once provided important buffers between individuals and organized power. To an increasing extent, people will become even more susceptible to the influence of employers, news media, advertisers, and national political leaders.
I’m guessing the book read like a breathless fringe manifesto. It’s surprising how accurately Winner’s predictions describe modern society. Passivity and complacency, the illusion of connectedness in the face of isolation, real democracy collapsing under the weight of increased media exposure and ubiquitous monitoring of citizens.
I took each photograph in my 2010/365photos set, and combined them using ImageMagick’s convert *.jpg -average output.png command to produce an image representing the average of all photographs. This is how a typical moment in 2010 looked:
stupid russian spambots are hammering this blog from multiple IP addresses, and getting through Akismet like a sieve. So, instead of trying to combat the mouthbreathing cretins using l337 script kiddie tools to pump their crap into the comments section of my blog, I’m disabling comments (again) until Akismet stops sucking.
thanks, komrades.
he saw some people using proper speed skating form, and decided to try it out. he does like the speed…