Needle, Meet Haystack

A little over a year ago, I took some time to extol the virtues of low-tech communications.  With a more simple device, I argued, it’s easier to have it do a few things well instead of many things poorly.  I suggested that the health risks to advanced technology giving off more radiation weren’t worth the ability to look at Amazon.com during a traffic jam.  No, it was better for me to have a phone that simply made calls and texted and took grainy photos.  And yet, here I am now, with a smartphone of my own.  What happened?

Basically, I bought into the hype.

It started innocently enough with the purchase of an iPod Touch, or “Smartphone Training Wheels.”  I liked the multi-functional aspects of the device, and found myself using it more and more, despite the limitations of a wifi-only connection.  I was using it to map routes, find new places in the city, organize my notes, and do dozens of other things that I had previously restricted to a computer.  The freedom of a portable device made life a lot easier.

As the months went on, more and more of my friends picked up iPhones, Blackberries and Android devices.  Gradually, I became cut off from the conversations about new apps and social connections that peppered group discussions.  While I still have no interest in Foursquare or Instagram or that weird brostache thing, it became harder and harder to stay out of the loop.  By staying several years behind new technological developments, I was taking a step back from social involvement, too.

But what really clenched it for me was moving to my new place.  Being only vaguely familiar with the area, I made a lot of wrong turns and found myself lost on a regular basis.  I somehow managed to turn a 5-minute drive to meet up with friends for dinner into a 30-minute survival-horror epic that ended with me being the last to arrive.  Having a device with a built-in geo-locational search and GPS began to seem like a necessity.

So one fateful Saturday, I went to a storefront for my wireless service provider and got an upgrade.  While it’s taken some getting used to having a larger mobile device in my pocket, it’s nice to know that I can communicate with friends on several levels, find my way around, or just play a silly game at a moment’s notice.  And it turns out that the whole health concern thing might not be such a big deal.

A few readers sent me messages recently telling me that they weren’t able to share a link to Tuesday’s post about climbing a mountain to their Facebook pages, as it had been flagged as inappropriate or abusive by the site.  And while the climb itself was a bit abusive, there wasn’t really anything in that post from which could draw claims of impropriety.

A negative review that I posted to Yelp about a local pizza joint was flagged as possibly spammy because it seemed to contradict the overwhelmingly positive (and quite undeserved) general consensus.

I’m just too hot for the Internet these days.

Then again, it’s not just me.  Censorship seems to be ramping up everywhere.  It’s even affected one of my childhood friends in a most unfortunate way:

Okay, so maybe that’s not exactly the same thing.  After all, both Yelp and Facebook use programs to determine what gets censored, as having employees sift through millions of accounts and daily posts would be both costly and inefficient (though real live people do step in from time to time).  But maybe that’s the problem.

On a basic level, anything that a person creates is on the same level as everything else.  A story, a sandwich, a theory, a chemical additive and even a phrase all exist in the realm of things available to the public (even if used privately) – anyone can access, or at least talk about them.  The work itself can exist within a vacuum, but only when not put in the scope of other things that belong to a similar category.

As people began to judge and compare things, it was decided that some were more socially acceptable than others (or at least some things should be reserved for individuals of a certain age range, like at the movies) – an invisible council was formed to patrol and censor items that could be seen as socially detrimental or low in utility to the masses.  And while this was a flawed system, it worked, as it operated under the assumption that there were humans behind the decision-making process.

George Carlin’s famous “Seven Dirty Words” bit (video or transcription) makes a strong case for just how arbitrary the system is:

“There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993…to 7. They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large.”

Carlin goes on to explain how silly it seems that the seven words (originally Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits) are removed from our dialect, even though they each have more value than some commonly-used bits of language.  Ain’t people funny in the stupid stuff they do? He seemed to ask.  Society’s a strange thing, folks.  But at least it was done by people.

The problem with censorship by electronic program is that the system is too restrictive; it’s following a basic program designed to approximate what may or may not be offensive, but does so without full context or any understanding of content.  A computer program attempting to determine whether or not something should be censored is literally as effective as shooting a loaded gun off in a dark room.  Sure, you might hit the target, but how will you even know if you were facing the right direction?

In the case of the extended metaphor, you turn the lights on.  Which, in this case, means bringing in human involvement.  And that circumvents the purpose of the programs in the first place.  Any effectiveness or efficiency is lost the moment that a non-silicon brain must look at what’s going on.

Using any sort of program to censor things is just about as ludicrous as censoring them in the first place.  The defense that it’s to “protect” people is a nice way of saying that censoring limits the ability to have a truly open discourse about anything.  After all, how can you have a full conversation when half the room cannot speak?  Maybe instead of using computers to protect us from the evils of mountain climbing and poor restaurant reviews, we should try a decidedly more human trait: common sense.

I’m pretty sure no one has invented a program to take care of that one yet.

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow. -Agent K, Men In Black

When I was six years old, I had my first taste of the future.  It came in a beige, boxy, loud hulking machine that sat in a room with its siblings.  As I pressed a button on its back, it hummed to life, a bright flash appearing before my eyes.  Moments later, it righted itself and together, we entered a new world.  I left my corporeal self behind and traveled to the past as someone else.

Of course, I’m referring to the Apple II and the original Oregon Trail.

Up until that point, I had no idea what a computer could really do.  I had mucked around on the Tandy 286 in my dad’s store, futzing with prehistoric spreadsheet programs and playing the most advanced games I could find for it, like Pac-Man and Space Invaders.  To me, the computer was a simple tool that had a long way to go.

I was seeing a new world of possibility – characters and scenes came to life as I found myself engrossed with the possibilities of the new digital world.  Word Munchers and Mario Teaches Typing soon followed, discreetly educating me as I played happily.  Of course, I had no idea that less than five years later, I would be able to play music or watch movies on a computer.

Once that came to pass, I didn’t think I would be able to join communities, find old friends or carve my own niche in the world with nothing more than a laptop and an Internet connection.  Then again, this kind of thought is nothing new.

Charles H. Duell, the U.S. Patent Office Commissioner famously said, “Everything that can be invented has been invented” – in 1899.  Keep in mind that Twinkies weren’t invented till 1930!  1930, people!

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we ran out of innovation in 1899?  We’d have lousy cars, wood roller coasters, coal stoves, really lousy light bulbs, and silent movies.  Can you possibly comprehend the horrible ridiculousness of Avatar as a black and white silent film?

“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives.” -Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

People are innovating and creating more and more every day, allowing us to do things that we might have never believed possible even a few weeks ago.  Our culture is becoming more advanced and creative at an alarming rate.  With ideas and concepts as the new currency, the wildest dreams of the turn of the century have already been surpassed.

For a six-year-old playing Oregon Trail on a top-of-the-line desktop box, I never imagined that less than two decades later, I would be playing the game on a small, portable computer that could fit in my pocket that comes with an exponentially larger memory, better music and nicer graphics.  The old game seemed like the end-all, be-all.

But we know that there’s plenty more where that came from, with unknown worlds and developments just waiting to be explored.  Imagine what we’ll know tomorrow.

I got my LG flip-type phone for free last year when I signed up for a new number and returned to AT&T after a brief 18-month fling with T-Mobile.  It has a 2.0 megapixel camera without flash, a 0-9 (plus * and #) keypad, a lousy speaker phone speaker and a tiny screen.  It can make calls, text, calculate numbers up to 12 digits long, takes basic notes, and has demo versions of Tetris and Pac-Man.

My friends, meanwhile, keep upgrading their Blackberries and iPhones and Palms and HTCs every few months.  Sometimes, it’s because there’s a new model.  Other times, it’s because they break or lose their old ones.  They show me the new features, the piles of apps, the snazzy screens and cutting-edge hardware.

Then, they call me.

We get cut off, diverted or dropped.  Echoes and tinny sounds and beeps go off in the background.  Their Smartphones don’t seem to do perform the task of the suffix of their compound name very well.

Then, research came out showing that smartphones give off a lot more radiation than dumbphones like mine.  Some of them give off over 300% of the radiation that mine does.  But who cares about that?

So having a dumbphone makes me feel less dumb.  It might not have the cool extra features or decent web browsing capabilities, but it makes good calls, sends texts just fine, and will give me brain cancer at a much slower rate.

But darnit, that new iPhone looks awesome.

The iPad has been in the news a lot lately.  Even if you’re not going to buy one (there are some good excuses here), you’ve probably still heard and seen a lot about it.  And one of the phrases that a lot of bloggers and news media bonafides are throwing around a lot with regards to the device is that it’s an example of “the future of mobile computing.”

Really?

Now, granted, I enjoy getting wireless Internet as much as the next person.  And it would be nice to not have to squint at the screen of my iTouch whenever I play Bejeweled, but the mobile Internet experience has the potential to be horrifying.

Where we are now

I’m pretty outspoken when it comes to the problems and misuse of technology (see examples one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, etc.), but the real terror comes from the cultural shift that will occur once it becomes socially acceptable to have Internet everywhere.

It’s great to be able to pull up Google Maps when one is lost, or to use Yelp when you’re in a new city looking for an awesome place to eat.  It’s cool that you can get Internet on a smartphone to do business from almost anywhere, and the communication and information options are endless.  Unfortunately, this is probably the opposite of what will really happen.

The next time you’re out in a public place, notice how many people are on their cell phones or texting.  Whether it’s at a restaurant, movie theater, bookstore, antiques shop or even a funeral, the addiction to technology is so powerful that we can’t bear to be away from all communication for more than an instant.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks are supposed to help us expand our communities and improve relationships.  But what if they’re doing the opposite?

The social hermit

Have you heard of Dunbar’s Number?  It’s a theoretical proposition that states that one cannot maintain close, stable relationships with more than 150 people.  Now look at your Facebook friends list.  How many of them are you communicating with, and how many of them are you just collecting?

By giving more accessibility to existing social networks, a fully accessible Internet will limit our options for future interactions with people.  Instead of branching out to discover new friends, we will instead become so engrossed and distracted by our existing connections that we will only add to our social circles (and rarely subtract from them) when we are forced to interact with others, like at work.

The technology will allow us to be in a sea of people we don’t know, focused on a select few that we do.  We’ll become social hermits.  After all, it’s safe and comforting to have the same people to interact with – there’s less surprises, less drama and fewer chances to be disappointed or get emotional.

The cure

As popular as the Internet is, there should be limits.  While I’m a strong proponent of net neutrality, the idea that there should somehow be restrictions to the Internet is a good one.  Not in terms of content, but in terms of time and connectivity.

We spend enough time online as is.  At last check, the estimate is that the average American spends 13 hours a week online (this was not an observational study, so I don’t quite believe it).  Factor in the use of computers in non-Internet activities, cell phone use and so on, and that number jumps significantly.  And if we can get Internet everywhere, there’s every reason for that number to go higher.

In France, movie theaters have used cell phone signal jammers for years.  Why not apply the same principle to mobile Internet?  Schools (k-12), restaurants and other public locations could have mobile Internet signal jammers.  In this way, the prevalence of online use is somewhat diminished, and personal interactions are encouraged.

Even if the Internet becomes available everywhere, it doesn’t mean that it should be used at all times.  So the next time you find yourself texting during dinner, put your phone away and enjoy the company of the people you’re with.  And remember that things could be much worse.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been looking into getting a second job.  I’ve found that by using some of the strategies I’ve mentioned (yes, I drink my own Kool Aid), I’ve had more time to devote to other pursuits.  But unfortunately, my applications weren’t getting me where I wanted to be.

I noticed that several positions I was interested in were only posted on one website (let’s-call-it-JobAgents) that offered a Premium Membership plan.  For the Low, Low Price of $10 Per Month (introductory price – $8 for the first month), I would get a personalized page with a Myers-Briggs-type personality metric, a program that matches competencies from my old positions to help me find the ones best suited for me and an extensive diagram that showed what I could do in snazzy graph form.  Additionally, any submissions I made would include a recommendation from JobAgents to employers that they should really look into hiring me.  And there would be updates on new jobs I was compatible with, status updates on applications I’d sent in, and a tracker that shows me who’s been looking at my page.

I cancelled my membership after about three weeks.

JobAgents sounded great, but there were too many holes in the site’s code to accurately do all that it said it would – most of my matches were not in the field I had specified, the personality test had no bearing on my search results, status updates on applications consisted of being told that the application had been sent (I couldn’t send a personalized cover letter or resume or anything either, by the way), and the page was visited only twice, through searches on Yandex, the Russian Google (according to the site’s literature, anyway).

One of the chief problems with JobAgents, besides the fact that I couldn’t search for a job beyond the positions they suggested I applied for (unless I found the posting through a secondary site and copied the link over) was that the matching software wasn’t very good.  I was very limited in responses (“click a maximum of three choices” was the instruction, when I could have clicked all twelve listed), and certain logic chains in the program would not let me down the path to select skills that would have matched me with other jobs that I’m actually qualified for.

Of course, the blame could be shifted to the user – maybe I should have chosen my options more carefully and made sure that my answers all reflected the work I was looking for.  But since this was done through an explanation of what I’d already done, it seemed silly to go about doing it that way.  For example:

One of the jobs that I’ve been looking into is as an advertising copywriter.  I have copywriting experience, and have written other things (press releases, promotional materials, speeches, articles, newsletters, etc.), all of which I had told the JobAgents program.  I specified my field of interest as Marketing/Advertising/PR.  I also mentioned that I have experience with training and seminars.  So obviously, the program decided to not show me any copywriting positions (I had to find them through external links) and instead recommended I try out for real estate and financial training.

One of the other problems I had was a lack of follow-through when I did send in an application.  JobAgents never told me if the application was read, who received it, if the position was filled, or anything.  All it said was that I had submitted it and a secondary notice came out when the position was no longer available.  So what was the message that JobAgents sent to the employers?  How do I know that there was any accountability?

In fact, the only proof that I had upgraded my membership (besides the user page and the charge on my credit card) was that emails regarding their $400 resume review service mentioned that I had upgraded my account.

I’m not saying that recruiters, placement services and job site memberships are all bad – many of them can lead to work, or at least professional connections that one might not have made otherwise.  But if I’m paying for your service, regardless of if it’s $8 per month or $800 per week, make sure that you deliver on your promises and prove that you’re doing your work.

After all, isn’t that your job?

I don’t know about you, but I hate those people who say stuff like, “Oh, I don’t own a TV.  It’s a waste of time.”  Or, “I don’t see any reason to have a cell phone.”  Or, most damning of all, “I don’t really need a computer.” It’s okay to use them less – we’ve discussed that.  And I’m not saying this because I might be biased.  But to discount an entire form of widely used technology will only doom you to failure and obsolescence.

With shared cultural experiences going on the decline, it becomes harder and harder to relate to others, much less communicate with them.  By keeping yourself voluntarily blind from books, newspapers, radio, TV and other forms of media, you’re removing yourself from the world.  And you also lose proficiency.

The more time you spend with something, the more adept you become, and the more receptive you are to new advancements and trends.  The seemingly wider gap between recent generations can be attributed to the development and prevalence of technology among young people, many of whom first learned to use a computer in elementary school (whereas previous generations were not familiar with the skill set involved, save for maybe typing).  This technological symbiosis between computers and Generations X and Y has led to a communications barrier with many of their older co-workers, save for those who took it upon themselves to keep up.

If you ignore the TV, you miss out on water cooler chats with co-workers that can strengthen your professional reputation and relationships.  If you skip out on the movies, you lose common reference points with clients.  If you abhor a cell phone, people might stop trying to contact you.  And if you keep away from the Internet, you’ll lose the race before it has even started. So go out into the world, experience everything through a variety of media, and don’t count out any of it.  You’ll only be shooting yourself in the foot.

This past weekend, I had the chance to leave all of my stresses behind.  I went up to Northern Arizona to a friend’s cabin, where cell phone signals dare not roam, and the Internet is scarce like a Sasquatch.  The only plans that we made were “make breakfast when everyone is awake, and at some point later, make dinner.”  And even though I had a bit of work to catch up on when I got back, it was a great way to clear my head.

Most people forget this, but there was a time before the Internet was widely used, and cell phones haven’t always had a place in our pockets and purses (or our hearts).  It seems like so long ago, back in the days of Mad Men or a young Forrest Gump, but the truth is that this bygone era still existed less than 20 years ago.

What did you do before cell phones and Internet?  Did you leave answering machine messages instead of assuming that caller ID would be enough to spur someone on to returning your call?  Did you talk about projects and what needed to be done instead of leaving a string of poorly written emails in several inboxes?  Did you actually make plans?

In order to become more efficient, sometimes we have to remove the very things in our lives that give us efficiency.  Since I’ve plugged back into the world, I’ve done more work in less time, started and finished more projects, and somehow found more free time for myself as well.

So if you feel like work or the job hunt is getting too hectic, take a weekend off from your computer and your cell phone.  You might realize that you don’t need to be connected at the hip to technology to get great results.

The job: CGI Animator

You might like this job if: You enjoy computer-generated images, be it from movies, video games, TV, or stills used in print ads.  A healthy dose of love for animation helps too.

The good: You get to develop cutting-edge entertainment for the masses, making people and items that only existed in imagination come to life.  Plus, you can make cool ‘splosions and ninja-versus-dinosaur fights!

The bad: It takes forever to get a lot of work done.  There was a scene in the recent Transformers 2 where a human character was revealed to be a robot.  In a 3-second bit of CGI, the flesh on her face stripped away to reveal her true mechanical form.  Do you know how long it took a dedicated team of a half-dozen CGI animators to make that effect?  THREE MONTHS.  So to recap: that’s 2880 total hours of work for a 3-second special effect that most people won’t even remember.

Summary: If you have the patience, attention to detail, love of technology and obsessive-compulsion to make movie/video game/TV magic, go for it.  Otherwise, just watch the latest Pixar movie again.

Rating: Two Gollums that should have won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor out of five

Social media can be used for a lot more than playing Farmville or watching Keyboard Cat.  Here are 5 things that you can do on 5 sites to help you get a job:

So the next time you happen to be MouseHunting or tweeting, take a minute to help your job search out too!