Results tagged “internet” from Birmingham Post - Lifestyle Blog

I once met some whose job title was "futurologist", which was nice although not my favourite ever title. That was "imagination engineer", a position that didn't exist with Disney's Magic Kingdom but in the BBCs Education department. That one reeked of a title being given in lieu of pay, but looking into the future has become a little industry in itself.

Before every game of the European Championships this year some uncomfortable looking ex-pro was asked what they thought would happen in the next two hours. Given that they only had to focus on events within around 10,000 square feet of grass, with 23 people on it at any one time, they did -- as ever -- spectacularly poorly.

Weather forecasts have got more reliable over the years, as computing power and simulation models have improved, we can now pretty much trust predictions that don't involve humans. Maybe that's why weathermen (and women) don't become personalities any more -- we only remember them for getting it wrong.

But to try and predict anything that depends on human behaviour, and you're all but stuffed. No simulations can help, you can't foresee trends, and if you're trying to make even educated guesses on the future of the internet, that mass of interconnected humanity, then all I can say is "good luck".

I love getting stuff through the post, I stockpile books so I always have poorly-wrapped second hand novels dropping through the letterbox. So much so that the cleverer of the two cats has decided it definitely won't sit on the mat, despite what cliché might say. I haven't been looking forward to a letter from Virgin Media though, because despite my best efforts I'm sure I've downloaded something I shouldn't over the past few years.

It's normal for people who write about illegal downloading to give all sorts of reasons why the record companies are out of touch, out of time, monolithic and wrong, to say that piracy actually results in more sales not less ­ and then say that, of course, they buy all their music legally from iTunes. I won't, I'll admit that sometimes I've download albums, the odd TV or radio show and once ­ because I was absolutely desperate to watch a film involving penguins yet to reach the UK - a whole film. The film took ages and wasn't worth it, it was obviously recorded on a camcorder, the colours were washed out and someone went out for a wee right during a crucial squawk.

So this week I was expecting to be notified of the first of my "three strikes", with a kindly letter reminding me of the illegality of downloading, advice to keep my wifi connection secure and informing me that Feargal Sharkey was on to us.

Buses aren't the most romantic form of transport, or at least aren't romanticised. Car driving gets the Route 66 treatment, the concept of "the road movie" and any number of soft rock classics, trains get Brief Encounter, Night Mail and er, Jimmy Saville. Ask anyone to name a piece of culture about a bus -- Summer Holiday and funny looks are all you'll get.

I think it's something to do with the bus being the middle ground, not the romantic freedom of the car, nor the regimented closeness of the long distance train. Buses are always just that one step up from Shank's pony, and bus stops don't get names so there's isn't even a Mornington Crescent type game to play.

We didn't have a car when I was a kid, and for one reason or another I'm just not bothered by them, trains were always expensive (they were competing with the fabled 2p fares on the bus, remember) and still to me seem a middle class way of travelling I'm not totally comfortable with. So buses are where it's at for me culturally, not that I get aroused by a shapely MCW Metrobus or even a Gardner engined Daimler Fleetline (I am however quietly obsessed with the 11 route, the local network in general and harbour fine memories of the tracline 65).

The interweb, of course, is nothing if not home to the nichest of niche content so, along with the bus-spotting and the tiny sites I've made that track people using twitter on the bus, there is something genuinely interesting and bus-related happening.

It's always annoying when somebody steals your ideas.
One ruse I've been bandying around the office is the idea of meat-based drinks. Taking the lead from gravy, it would be a nutritious beverage aimed at blokes and people who find Red Bull a bit too poncy.
Today I discover that a company in America has launched with the same idea and they seem to have the market covered.

I'm about to reveal my prejudices, worse still those that manifest themselves on the web the supposedly most democratic of mediums.

I don't hate you if you demonstrate these, they won't even make me like you less, I'll just get mildy irritated. That said I will probably refrain from attempting to explain Twitter to you, then again that may be just what you want.

So, without attempting to upset anyone, here's my top twelve interweb no-nos :

I protested about Moseley Golf Club's planning application to use some of the allotment space next-door, it was easy, I did it online. Well it wasn't easy, I had to do it on Birmingham City Council's website, but you get my point. Now it's gone to appeal, and you have to send letters in triplicate, I may not bother - so did I really care in the first place?

I'm invited to complain, protest and join pressure groups every day via email and Facebook invitations. Clicking yes or no or whatever is very easy, too easy in most cases. When Facebook was the media's darling last year it was easy to get coverage for anything (and I did with Talk Like A Brummie Day) by setting up a Facebook group and mentioning the number of members. That most of them had no interest whatsoever didn't matter - are we going to hold that guy to naming his first child Spiderpig?

When do new technologies become mainstream? From my position the answer is a simple one - when my mum uses them.

She never did really work out how to set the video, but since she mainly watches repeats of Bargain Hunt on UK Style (and it's always, but always on) that doesn't matter so much. She can send a text, although quite often leaves her 'phone at home, and happily surfs the web. As she hasn't quite got the idea of windows based computing every program is launched full screen. This is fine when you're emailing or reading a site, but not so much when I've tried to teach her instant messaging.

The first question people like my mum ask when told about a new gadget or service is "what does it do?", but they really mean "what will it do to help me?". The main barrier to mainstream acceptance isn't always ease of use, it's the obvious benefit.

VOIP was an easy one (free calls to her brother in Holland), and despite that being a little tricky it's now ingrained in her routine. I've been thinking a lot recently about how to sell ideas where the benefits are a little more abstract, in the short term at least.

RSS (people have given up and decided that it stands for Really Simple Syndication, it probably doesn't) is something that has allowed me to consume vast amounts of information incredibly quickly. It changed my reading habits, and as such my attitudes to all sorts of ideas - but that's a not the immediate gain for most, who may well think that reading more just means reading more rubbish.

About five years ago I mistakenly took a job at a company where I didn't have the Internet, I was desperate, and I only lasted about a month. It didn't help that the job itself was deathly-dull (writing the manuals for insurance software), but not being able to check my emails all day was the real killer. This Easter I was away in Torquay, could get my emails and surf on my iPhone, but by Saturday morning the lack of full-screen internet was bugging me that much that I went and bought a 3G modem for my laptop.

In five years the level of online communication has increased and diversified for me to the extent that only the whole interweb will do, no portals, no walled gardens, not even the global instant-messaging of twitter via my mobile is enough constant information.

So, am I addicted to the internet?

I can't imagine what it was like before the internet - well I can. I used to gorge on magazines, fanzines, the music press especially. I'd do things like cut myself shaving because I'd have the NME propped up on the sink and my eyes on the latest thoughts from Ride (site is loud, beware) or These Animal Men.

It's one of the dread phrases in human conversation. No, not "please welcome our special guest Robbie Williams", but "why don't you come and see our holiday snaps?". The crushing boredom of other people's pictures was a sitcom staple for many a year, so why is one of the biggest activities on the internet photo sharing?

The boom in digital cameras, and the increasing quality of mobile phone cameras, has created a glut of photos that sit on hard drives across the world. It's now easy to take 20 photos where years ago you'd have taken one carefully-posed snap, counting down from 24 and wishing you'd have paid the extra for the 36 exposure film for your holiday. All these photos have got to go somewhere, but online sharing is so much more that the digital equivalent of a battered shoebox in the loft.

Flickr, the most famous photo-sharing website, is four years old this week and hosts over two billion photos. Facebook holds even more, over four billion they say, but most are visible only to friends. So, given that they're mostly the kinds of photos that we'd have faked a prior engagement to avoid, is the whole thing so popular?

Sting has clearly read Lolita, as he shoehorned a mention into 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' with one of the worst lyrics of all time. Gordon is a clever man, ex-teacher, lute player, sexual athlete, but is he intelligent enough for Yale or Harvard?

"That book by Nabokov" has been shown to be the favourite book of America's cleverest students, by a study that also ranked Harry Potter books ahead of the Bible, and revealed the work of erotic publishers Zane to be "books that make you dumb".

Books that make you dumb is an exhausting sounding project to compare the favourite books of US colleges with the average SAT scores (around A-Level, er, level) of their students, as such it's not at all scientific but a lot of fun.