Explaining technology to the commoner

Theories or hypothesis are never of real value until you test them in the Real World(Tm). And sometimes they fail miserably.

Well, this is exactly what happened to me this week. I had this very well thought-out theory on how to teach technology to the common men. The basic idea is that while you can get by only how things work, you can never really master technology until you learn why things are the way they are. You can only go so far only learning everything by heart. I have already touch that part of the subject and I won't reproduce the entire argument here...

And so with this idea in mind I sought out to find the perfect way to teach someone how to use technology better, and how to teach those around me enough knowledge about computers and security to make them efficient and safe. With a solid base on how computer works, it's much easier to understand why you should or should not do something. It's also easier to see anything that might be problematic, like a phishing scam or a scrupulous website. I Truly believe that with a solid foundation, one can be good enough to be self-sufficient. I also think that everyone should follow some sort of computer training in order to insure the overall safety of the entire network. But then, I compared notes with a friend and found out that I forgot something important:

People are lazy. People are stupid. They don't want to learn.

When was the last time you opened a manual of any device you used? If you actually read the manual (like I tend to do), ask around. You might find that you representing a small minority. We, North-Americans, tend to think about ourselves and give as little attention as possible to things that don't seems useful. Can't learn to use it in 5 second? it's useless. Can't be explained a new notion in less than 5 min.? don't want to hear it. We just don't care.

Teaching a notion to someone who isn't intended on mastering it can be a real pain.

But there is still hope for those you want to learn. Because computers and technology will be in every aspect of ours lives soon enough. Learning it will no longer be a simple requirement, it will be impossible to do live a normal live without it. And thoses who will lack the basic computer knowledge will become second class citizens (or un-netizens): unable to communicate or participate on the community, to socialize with friends, or to meet anyone. It is similiar to the phone system from years ago, you don't hear this anymore: "You don't have a phone number? But how am I going to reach you?". But very soon, people without Cell phone, e-mail adresse, Blog or any new communication technology deemed necessary for communication will be left out.

So why not start today? Learn something new today. Take a simple step forward. Before you know it, you will have walked a mile, or 10000, and will have joined up with the information revolution.

Value your time

In most of my post, I tried to be insightful... To show something usefull to someone. But i'll try something different this time. Since I have a little trouble with organizing my time, i'll share a simple test I did.

Take a sheet of paper. Divide it in four. On the top write 'Urgent' and 'Not Urgent' at the top of each of the collums. Write 'Important' and 'Not Important' in each of the row.

Done? ok

Now, try to place things you do in a day, projects you have, things that should be done, daily chores, etc. in an appropriate place. Think carefully before you place anything.Take your time.

Done?

Now look back at the sheet, but don't change anything. Is everything placed right? Is it really urgent? It is really important? is it both?

This exercise is supposed to show you want you fill you time with. We tend to fill our time with things that are urgent, but not neccessarily important, and neglect the important thing, until they become urgent. Yet, when you stop and think about it, it should be the opposite, we should be doing important things first...

It is mostly a problem of priority, but also one of perception. We don't think before we do things. We don't stop, and think: 'it is urgent? Should I be really doing this?'. I know I already talked about this butI want to really explain the idea behind it.

I give the example of the telephone. It rings. It is urgent? Of course! If you don't answer you will miss the call. But is really important? What will happen if you miss the call? It is really worth stoping what you are curently doing? Can't you just call back and say: 'Sorry I could not come to the phone'? It's even worst when you think that cellular phones are everywhere. I made a conscious decision and told my friends, that unless i'm not occupied, I might not answer the phone. If it is really urgent, they can send me an SMS. It takes me 5 sec to read it and I think it's more important that what I'm doing, I will call back. I do the same for them.

Another example is the all news channel. It is presented as if every bit of news was important, and we tend to sit there watching the news slowly develop minute by minute, hour by hour. But what do we learn that we would'n have learn simply watching the evening news? There is a certain limit to witch we can absord information. beyong that point, we suffer from something called 'information overload' where you see so much information, that you have trouble remember most of it. The north american sosciety is so obsessed with time and information that this sort of reflection is never done. We react to the what the world throws at us, but we don't priotize what we do.

I had one friend who could not cope with the idea of not seeing a movie in a cinema. He was so used the movie theater experience that he could not accept less. Now the theater experience is quite nice, I'll say that much, but it really that important? What is going to happen if you don't see that movie? I, on the other hand, don't watch much tv these days, much less go to a theater. I moved to a dorm on the campus 6 years ago, in a room with not access to cable or satelitte tv. At first, it felt like I was missing something, but I got used to watch nothing much than the evening news. I don't feel like I missed something important. No I didn't watch 'Lost' or '24'. I'm sure it's pretty good, but It's not called 'the entertainement industry' for nothing. I just didn't felt like I needed to be entertained. I can occupy my time with something else.

We have to learn to say 'NO'. Why? Because it's not important. Nobody will die. Nothing will explode. The world will still turn. The sun will still burn.

Value your time. Value your energy. You have a limited supply of both.

A closed mind?

I'm pretty sure you all have seen, at one point, things like this post. While I think it's a nice example of free speech, I don't think the writter understand the issues at all. Comments like this one gives a clue as to why: "And I would never go to Europe. What is there to see?"...

If you check the terms and conditions at the bottoms, you can read:

The web site is designed to be funny. We hope it made some of you laugh.

I won't give my opinion on the topics, but the fact that the (fictional) writter doesn't want to face the rest of the world, reminds me of some coworkers I had who didn't want to discuss the reasons why they beleived in some political party: because it was, to them, the only truth.

Well, if it was the absolute truth, why didn't everybody embrase it yet?

A closed mind is the worse thing anyone can have. The strength of one ideals of faith is not mesure by your devotion, or the number of things you do: it is mesured by going deep into hell and coming back unscared, by facing the demons themselves and comming back victorious. And I'm not speaking about a test of might, but more of a test of ideas. If your faith is perfect, and you know that you have the absolute truth, why are you afraid to test it? If you never tryied anything else, if you never been anywhere, if you never did anything, how can you be sure that your choises are the best ones? If truth was as crystal clear, why is there someone else to oppose you?

I talked about the fact that history repeats itself, and this is a classic example of the Allegory of the Cave, a concept describe by Plato in 'The republic', some 2000 years ago. In his exemple, a group of people was living inside a cave, and had never seen the outside. A single individual was taken from this group, and shown the outside: the sun, the plants, the trees, etc... But if he could never go back to the cave, not after seeing the outside world, and if he did, the individuals inside would simply never believe him. They would probably exile him because he is now an excentric in their eyes. But we all know he is not... Since people don't like to change and don't like to be wrong, they can sometime do very unlogical things, and not see that they are wrong...

Admiting that you might be wrong is, for some, the single most hardest thing they could ever do. That is why we have so many religion, so many political party, etc. because we hate to admit that we might be wrong, and prefer to stick to our ideas even if they are wrong.

Your house stays up because the ideas behind it, the works of the engineers that approved it, was tested over and over again, until they knew why this part or this part was wrong. Houses, bridges and the likes don't fall anymore because we have been perfecting the engineering expertise behind them from before ancient Roman times.

Brigdes occassional fall (Tacoma narrow bridge come to mind), and ideas are sometimes wrong, but if we don't want to change and to learn, we will never know what was wrong...

Everything important has already been said

We always think, as a new generation, that we invented something new... But when you think about it, we really didn't.
Take Remixes for example: Young ones think they are seeing or hearing something new, when actually, they are simply served an old lukewarm song.

it's not always a bad thing: it gives old ideas new life. Look at the idea behind The Matrix: It's basically Descartes' writings adapted to appeal to the masses... But, while the movie doesn't make that claim, it still gives the illusion of a new idea or a new concept for the uninitiated.

Knowledge is power, and history is full of knowledge. What we learn in school is built upon generations. It's information distilled from sources around the world, from millions of people working on problems, from the works of greater men that have spent their entire lives on a single subject.

For this very reason, I do not pretend to know the absolute truth or have the solution. The biggest repository of human knowledge (The Library of Congress), something around 17 to 20TB of text. I do not know that much, and I don't think nobody will... This blog simply represent my thoughts at the time. But if I can be the eye opener for the uninitiated, the post will have serve its purpose...

That and tell my friends what are my thoughts for the day.

I will end this post with a juicy quote:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L.
Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277
(1953)."

Or this one:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

Present and Future of Windows Vista

I just read an interesting article that I linked from OSNews. It's a very interesting read about Vista from someone who own a Microsoft Review site. Quote:

"The company itself [Microsoft] has turned into that thing it most hated (read: IBM), an endlessly complex hierarchy of semi-autonomous middle managers and vice presidents of various levels and titles, many of whom can't seem to make even the smallest of decisions. The company is too big and too slow to ship updates to its biggest products. It's collapsing under its own weight. "

And I think he hits the nail on the head about why I dislike (not actualy hate) Microsoft for the same reason that I dislike the old IBM: It's an 800 pound gorilla that can't move because of its own weight. The right hand doesn't talk to the left hand because that can't see each other.

I certainly hope that the past 5 years eXPerience with security and the long delays around Vista will change the company for the better.

Where is the problem?

I take the bus and/or the subway to work everyday, and I see a lot of people. Most of the time, other passengers just wait silently for the correct stop. And since most of them now have some sort of music player, so it's a smooth and quiet ride. But the behavior of some really bothers me. And it's not just on the bus, but also at work, and everywhere I go: People act really stupid and blame others for it.

I witnessed a perfect example this morning. Usually, you get on the bus by entering the front door, and getting out the back door (so you don't bother those comming in). For a couple of years now, the new bus have motions detectors to open these door, and it's written on the door "Motion detector". I see all sort of behavior on 'how to open the door'. Some of the individuals who can't open the door simply try to push it, and by pushing hard enough eventually the motion detector see motions and opens the door. Others try to put their hand on the door, as if it had a 'hand is on the door' detector. Others think that the bus driver is supposed to open theses door and just wait in front of them. Of course, if they can't manage to open the door in time, they then proceed to shout when the bus tries to live without them getting out, and finally blame the bus driver for their own inability to open a door.

I see this everyday at least once and I am always reminded of a study that proved that being ignorant usually meant that you lacked not only the skilled themsleves, but also the habilities to see that you lacked these skills, and thus never improved. People assume they have the right idea, that they are right. A sort of misplaced confidence. (original paper here )

We see that a lot on the internet, where everyone can simply claim that their are an expert on any subject. I could aloborate, but i'll keep this for a future post.

But on the idea of the bus door, where exactly is the problem? Is it really because the individuals can't be bothered to read what's in front of them and come up with a logical reasoning on how to open an advance door? Or is it because the door is well designed? So who is to blame?

Both.

Think about it. You shouldn't have to think about it. After all, isnt it just a door? But since people can't see that their are doing wrong they are also partialy to blame...

The solution: There is none. There is a saying that goes:

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning"

And it applied on the bus example. You just have to design so that most people can use your product/application/door/whatever and to have to think about it. There will always be one idiot who can't use it. Let the rest enjoy it.

And i'm sure I am to blame on some subject... I just can't see which one... A sort of misplaced confidence...

MMORPGs

I have always looked away from MMORPG. While I do find them interesting on a sociological and/or academics aspect, they are almost always presented on the same level as addictive drugs.

But then, if they are so bad, why are they so popular? What drives people to play these games?

From a developer stand point, it makes a lot of sense:

• It's a constant revenue stream. You don't provide a 'product' anymore but a 'service': access to the virtual world.
• You don't have to spend much time on A.I. : you can simply make players competes against each others.
• The world is dynamic by itself: you don't have to 'pretend' a lot of traffic, exchange, price fluctuation ,etc.
• Etc.

And so, I decided to try one for myself... I decided to go with EVE Online: There is a free 14 days trial, It's space-based (more of my type) and it's one of the biggest universe of all the MMO I can think of. But what surprised me the most is that It's a 4 year old game and people are still playing it after 4 years!

At first, the game felt odd. The controls aren't direct. This is not Elite, Wing Commander Privateer or Freelancer. It is not even close to Allegiance. It resembles more Homeworld, but with one ship: yours.

This game is different from WOW or EverQuest in that, skill aren't gained with XP but with time and training. You must buy books, and your character learns or perfects the skill even when offline. In theory, this systems sounds nice, but it only replace length of play with frequency of play. While you can just choose a 10h-to-train skill, you have to log on to switch skill since you can't queue the next skill. I found myself checking the game every 2 or 3h to make sure I wasn't losing training time. Annoying. Especially when you have to go to work or sleep. Or if you want to have a life.

Since I have never played any MMO before, one things struck me: The social aspect is the most important part of the game. I know It may sound like common sense, but really, it is the most interesting aspect. You can't do much alone. To really enjoy the game, you have to work with others, organize in groups and split the work. Even if the game didn't provide the basic methods to form groups, people would.... With just chat, people can organize clans, raiding parties or even start a pirate group. Just like in real life: Cooperation and Competition drives the game...

It made sense in Ultima Online in 1997, and it makes a lot more sense with any modern MMO. It gives those games a depth that can hardly be achieved with a single player experience. For example, in EvE, I found the market quite developed. Since almost any object can be user-built, there is a whole virtual economy around ore, refined materials, and manufactured products. And since skills determines the amount of Ore used or obtained, you could, like I did, buy raw ores, refine them better then the original seller could and then sell back the refined ores for a profit.

But, as I found out, this depth of experience comes with a price. As one user wrote in a in-game chat "Patience! Loyalty! Dedication! Three things required to really play this game"... You have to invest time (and monthly fee) to really enjoy the game. And at the end of the day, it's just a game.

And it should stay that way.

Fear and Emotions

People sometimes act stricly on emotions. I do, and when I was deep in depression, I used to left my emotions guide me entirely. It can be a way to live, but there is something fundamentaly wrong in this...

Emotions are not absolutes. Emotions are not a perfect guide. Emotions are a VERY personnal thing.

People often confuse an emotion, with the object, or the reason, of that emotion. Take fearfor exemple. A spider (or whatever object you fear the most), is not the fear itself. Fear comes from within you. Think about it. Why do you fear? What drive you to have that emotion? The spider is not actually dangerous, so why do you fear it? Of course, in the case of spiders, it's easy to answer... It's a because spiders (or insect in general) might be dangerous... But it might not be the case with everything...

Some emotions might even send you the wrong signal. Being shy, for one, sends a signal... a message.... But the object of the shyness, an attractive person perhaps, is not the emotion itself... That person might be the reason for the emotion, but it is not the source...

Since theses emotions comes from inside, analyzing them can be a big insight on oneself. They are a reflexion of your view on the world... A sort of shadow of the subconcious...

And it's for the same reason that these emotions can be controlled. Fear can be almost eliminated. Anxiety can be reduced. Self-confidence can be grown...

Be these emotions can only be chnaged if you have the will... if you really want to...

What are you waiting? Are you afraid?

Some problems with my generation

As a generation, we oppose certains trends of the generation before, and oppose others. It is a natural thing to do and the consequences, on a large scale, tend to shape to way for the next generation. A natural process, repeated for generation, over and over again.

Some of these changes are fascinating. Like how the cell phones has changed the way we do things. Or how the Internet changed how we interact globaly.

Some changes are more subtle, but have more deep consequences:

The youth of this generation wait a couple of years more, on average the the last one before leaving the family nest. They also wait longer before marrying. While my great-grandfather was married around the age of 18, and my grand-parents in the early 20s, my parents married much older, and it seems that this trends is not about to be reversed.

Just as the generation before me was raised by television, my generation was raised by a screen. It may well be the television, it may be a computer, but it could also be video games. A growing part of the population is now is what is generaly known as a 'gamer': Someone who plays video games a lot. They are part of a large growing group of 'Geeks' of all trades: people who are generaly very enthusiastic about a certains subjet like computer, role-playing games, anime, fantasy, security, social engineering, etc...

We also have, in north america and in east asia, people obsesed with work. In japan, they even invented a term for 'death by too much work': Karoshi.

With women's emancipation, womens too, became obsessed with their career. And with a career they have little or no time for childrens. Or even for a husband. Or a boyfriend.

Most of the friends I have are single. It's kind of ironic: we have more way of communication, yet we are more isolated. Communication is so easy now that we don't learn to spend time together: we all communicate on 1-on-1 channels all around without never really seeing each other face to face. We stay 'in touch', and have more friends, but we don't really so things together, except maybe virtually.

We, as a generation, are a like time-bomb... We are fueling a society of individualism, where we all complain that we feel alone and consume products or virtual envirronnements to forget ours real problems... I hate to see us all waking up at 40-something and realizing that life is really not a product, that life is not a virtual world, that life is not just working....

Of course, this is all from personnal experience, and I hope that I am completely wrong here. I really hope that these trends are not, and that all I see are isolated cases. I still have faith in my own generation, as we will find ways around problems and move on...

Only time will tell. We'll just have to wait and see...

Divisions on the net

With traditionals groups, interest, as well as location is important in forming a group. A sport group with players from city that are afar is hard to organise.

With the advent of the internet, and even before that with buletin board systems, the distance becomes non existant. The exchange of information is independant of the actual location of each individual, but only dependant on the tools used.

So a british-based group could have americans members, an american news website could be used by australians to get international news, and a canadian support group could help british citizens with little effort. That is the global village that media talks about.

But there isn't only one 'global village'.

The only real barrier to communication online is the written language. Each language get a very different view of 'what is the internet'. A french-speaking person does not use the same ressources as someone from an English speaking country.

The Internet is a really different place for someone who can't speak english. Think about it for a second. Think about each ressources you use online. Which one exist in more than just english?

It is as if anyone not english-speaking is simply forgotten in cyberspace, as if the rest of the world didn't matter.

It's like the tourist scenario in Quebec: Tourist from the rest of north america come in Quebec, and (rightfully) expect to be served in english. Yet french speaking people can't go anywhere else in north america (with some noted exceptions) and not have to learn english simply to get around. The same is true of tourism in Mexico.

If you had to learn spanish, japanese, mandarin, german, italian or french to use the internet, would you?