Toluu

WinExtra

aka Steve Hodson - a cranky old fart wandering the internet causing mayhem as he goes

The Social Media Connector SetNovember 29

Let me start this off by saying that Chris Brogan is one smart person and I have a lot of respect for the man. He is one of the brightest; and best in my opinion, writers on this idea of social media. However I noticed something over the past week or so - his tone; or maybe his set of concepts around social media has been shifting.

Previously I had the impression that much of what he wrote was about social media on a large scale; or bigness as I phrased it in an email to him. What I have read in the past week or so seem to point to a shift in his thinking more along the lines of small social media; or as he phrased in a post very early this morning - cafe-shaped conversations.

Changing the shape of the conversation

If this shift in his thinking is indeed the case then for me this is a well signaled change in how social media could move forward. After all someone as well respected as Chris is doesn’t shift without some very serious and deep seated reasons. He is someone that is listened to and conversations he starts do make a difference. I’m not alone in this either as evidenced

This is wrong - so very wrongNovember 29

If there was one thing that movie Minority Report gained any recognition for; other than being generally panned, was its Orwellian depiction of our future under constant surveillance. Surveillance that included what we were thinking of doing at some point in the future. More often as not these days the movie title is used in the same way that we have been using George Orwell’s 1984 book about a society without any rights. A society where the government has total control over your movements and you can be questioned at any time.

As much as we might like to believe that this isn’t the road we are traveling down the fact is that it is indeed the road of our scary future. Clear evidence of this trend can be seen in England and it just became increasingly terrifying. Even though England has had CCTV coverage like no other society in the world they are now taking it up a level to using those camera to predict crime.

The idea is that new software being

The Internet hive and a new kind of privacyNovember 28

I am a strong believer in a person’s right to privacy. I don’t believe it is right for anyone to have to give up any part of that privacy. It doesn’t matter whether it is through trickery, subterfuge, social pressure or any other method you can think up. Our private lives are sometimes the only thing that is our very own. That idea though seems to be under attack in our modern technological world.

This idea of personal privacy and interaction with an increasingly Internet based world is something that I think about - a lot. I also read many of my fellow bloggers who think and write about it. Daniel Tunkelang is one of those bloggers and recent post of his has had me thinking about our concept of privacy. In When in Doubt, Make it Public he finished it off with the following

Rather than wasting effort in a losing battle to protect the remants of our privacy, let’s embrace the efficiency of public conversation.

Since the

Saskatchewan coughs up big bucks for 100% high speed accessNovember 27

I’ve often maintained that without ubiquitous access to the internet for everyone regardless of where they live a lot of the technology people talk about for the future won’t happen; or we will deepen the existing technological divide. To do this requires some serious commitment and dollars. While I would prefer a more universal approach to dealing with making access it is great to see the Canadian province of Saskatchewan stepping up to the plate on this.

As part of a larger plan the government is committing to making high-speed internet available to everyone in the province. Now given that much of the province is rural part of the $129 million is also being committed to increasing cell phone coverage from its current 96 per cent up to 98 per cent. In an e-mail to CBC News Ian Grant, president of telecommunications consultancy SeaBoard Group said

“This initiative will bring Saskatchewan to [the] forefront of North America (where we’d argue it already almost was). One hundred per ce

Letting the hot air out of social mediaNovember 26

For almost the past week Hugh MacLeod has been posting some of his best cartoons drawn on the back of business cards that I think he has drawn for some time. They are all about poking fun at the idea of there being some sort of profession called social media specialists; and I have been looking forward to every new post of his hoping for some fresh cartoon harpooning this fake profession.

Now before you start lining up to take shots at me like some clip from the movie Airplane stop and think for a minute - what does being a specialist imply. Well for one it would seem to imply that some person has become a renowned expert in some field and because of that expertise they are consider to be a specialist. Much like we have heart surgeons, appeal lawyers or scientists studying quantum mechanics who could be considered to be specialists in their fields because of the number of years required to even claim to have any expertise in those areas.

Then we have this intangible concept called social media that has been around for less time than Britney has spent in rehab for crying out loud and yet we have people proclaiming to be ex