Plurk and mobility, why I like it.

Google is asking people to take action for a free and open web

The iPad is a glorious device and I am in love already. What makes this device particularly attractive is that it has a large keyboard and a large screen. This is important for two reasons. The first of these is typing speed. I am very closes to touch typing speed already.

The second thing I like about it is that I could easily see myself putting it in the stand and using the calendar feature and e-mail client. The display feels like a sheet of paper. They tend to go for that look. The advantage with such a device is evident. I can see the whole email without scrolling. This means I am less likely to skip over something that I should otherwise have notice.

The sound when you type is quite interesting. You hear low taps most of the time but for some keys you do hear the sound of the nail hitting the glass. If you hold it vertical then with my hands you can type although the fingers stretch a little too much.

For tree years I’ve been using twitter and for at least a year I believed that this was the great social connector, the website that would turn our passive, faceless web habit into something more personal. Of course I was wrong about this. Anonymity is still as great as ever but in a new sense of the word.

That motivation to connect, to establish meaningful relationships with people is weak. You see this through every twitter tweet, through every interaction. You see this through the contemporary attitude towards online and electronic conversation.

Have you ever listened to two non users speak about computer communications? “I don’t want to use it because I don’t want to lose my privacy”, and the second person “I won’t use it because I don’t want to be stalked, I don’t want someone calling me without me consenting to it. It’s the same line over and over. It’s the line we were given as children about accepting sweets from people we don’t know.

The only difference is that these people are grown ups, and the bad stranger is a globalised system of conversation commonly referred to as twitter and another called facebook. Both have been around for a while now and it’s interesting to see how much greater the usage of facebook has grown compared to that of twitter.

Facebook, however foreign, however bizarre, however shy in nature is a relatively well respected and appreciated addition to the student life, and to some lesser extent the professional life. That is because it was built around a very private and closed community. So private it was exclusive to one university, then one nation of universities, then the global university before finally becoming a public hangout where you say who your real life friends are, and where their names are visible, their picture is available, their affiliations too.

In a sense Facebook is the greatest breach of privacy you could think of. Stalking, as some people worry about is so much easier. At the same time it’s relatively untouched because of the personal security settings that are a common part of every day life.

Now take a look at twitter. It’s a hundred and fourty characters of text at a time. That’s not much information. It’s less than an SMS. It’s basically a chat on a global scale. There is no threading, or at least there wasn’t. There was no @ sign. There was no concept of reply.

Everything that twitter has become is through a great enough number of users agreeing on a communication convention for it to become part of the site’s fabric. This has been demonstrated a number of times. What makes twitter so “versatile” is also what makes it so unappealing as a communication tool for the most interesting people you know.

Anyone with a normal life does not feel the need to communicate virtually to strangers. They prefer person to person interactions in the real world. Twitter is a waste of time. Spend an hour looking at a timeline and you’ll see what strangers are doing all around the world. Now ask just one person to meet and you’ll have no one to meet in great swathes of landscape. That’s because it’s for wealthy people according to some research, 67 percent of college graduates, so educated too.

I read in a read write web post that whilst eighty seven percent of people asked knew about twitter or facebook fourty seven percent use facebook and only seven percent use twitter. The article, in it’s analysis went on to say that twitter is far more complicated to start than facebook. I can’t help but think creating a username on twitter would be faster than on facebook. All you need on twitter is the username after all.

I think it has a lot to do with today’s social values, the fabric of the society within which we live. People have no problem with e-mail communication. They have no problem with phone conversations. They have a serious problem with electronic social interaction. There are a number of factors for this being the case. One of these is our superficiality, why commit to a person whom we have never met, never smiled at? Why commit your thoughts and opinions on paper, in a place where google can index them so easily, and eventually to be called on them. Does that make twitter appealing? No, it doesn’t.

What about the barrier to entry. How many people have a computer that boots up within ten seconds, a permanent internet connection and a machine performant enough to deal with twitter and other sites. You may scoff at this last suggestion but have you tried using social websites on older less powerful machines? I have and it’s a laggy unpleasant experience. Hardly appealing to your average user. Then there’s the matter of time. How many hundreds to thousands of tweets do you need to read before you come to an interesting person? How committed are they to the site? If they post five times a month no personal connection will be established. If they spend all of their time on twitter is this as a result of unemployment or are they on the move with any of a number of smartphones? Do your normal friends have the funds for a smartphone and data contracts so that they are online? Is there a need?

The conclusion is a simple one. In a society where people see the computer as a geeky waste of time for nothing more than work, where face to face interaction is prized above all else then facebook is the clear winner. You add friends from every chapter of the life you have already written for yourself. On twitter you’re building on the future, behind a computer, only to find that the early adopter lifestyle means you have to travel to meet these individuals. In other words unless you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer then twitter is a complete and utter waste of time.

When you work or live by the lake you see it change as the wind, temperature and light change. Sometimes it’s beautiful and pleasant as it was before, as you walk and keep warm. Now that I sat down to write this post the clouds have gone in and you can feel the cold.

I like the complexity of the image above. You see the diving boards, you see the winter trees, you see the flag and the people walking. You also see how the strong wind is blowing water over three or four times its own height. If it was blowing the other way it would drench the boats. That’s why they would turn it off.

When the wind is like this you can see two to three windsurfers taking advantage of the wind. I didn’t notice whether anyone was swimming today. The usual running groups and individuals were out.

We’ll see what route I follow tomorrow.

At the beginning of the
year I said that I would prioritise book reading over Social Media because I feel that the disconnect between reader and audience has grown to such an extent that you benefit more from reading books than Facebook and Twitter Timelines. 

Reading So far this year:

Abandon : A book about a mining town whose inhabitants disappeared from one day to the next.

Snowbound: About a father and daughter who end up travelling a big distance

Dark Matter: A book about all the alternative infinite number of realities we could experience as a result of every decision we make

Gray Mountain: A book about the American coal mining industry and its disregard for human rights

Books I am currently reading

The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization: This is an interesting booking tracing the history of the written
world from the earliest Cuneiforms to modern technology. I have just finished reading about the Printing press and “The Republic of letters” chapter. 

Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat: The audible version of this book is entertaining. It is read in such a manner that I had to remind myself that this book is meant to be factual. It’s a fun read. 

La bataille de Normandie, 6 juin-25 août 1944: 80 jours en enfer It is easy to think of D-Day as a
one day event but through the reading of this book we see how Northern France suffered and yet rejoiced at the liberation by French, Canadian, American, British, Polish and other armies. It looks at the personalities, locations and tactics used over a period of months. 

Long periods of focused attention

By replacing Social media with book reading I feel that I am going back to a habit that many of us lost with the emergence of social media. We went from reading chapters a day to reading tweets and Facebook entries. We went from the long form to the short form. 

The short form of Tweets and Facebook posts was rewarding when it was about conversations and keeping up with friends. As the focus on friends has dwindled and as the quality of content has decreased so the pull factor of long-form content such as books came back. 

Reading devices

I have a kindle Paperwhite and a Kobo Aura H20. I prefer reading on e-readers, especially when I spend several hours a day on rainy weekends reading. The batteries last for a long time and there are no distractions. Mobile phone screens slow down my reading speed and tablets don’t feel as comfortable for reading. 

I use my mobile phone and an ipod classic when I read audiobooks.