Social Media or Social Faux Pah?

Although I tend to blog stuff that just occurs to me, thus the sporadic nature of my posts, this time it's slightly different.

Last night I watched an episode of The Secrets of SIlicon Valley on the BBC and found the subject interesting. For those not having seen it, and I would recommend you do if it is available in your jurisdiction, it was effectively suggesting that recent political phenomena like the election of Donald Trump, were heavily influenced by Social Media platforms.

Now that's not necessarily 'news' to IT people, but what was particularly interesting was how the programme makers took a gently critical, almost mocking, view of the altruistic, slightly hippy style world view of the people behind the technologies in Silicon Valley.

Taking my own opinions on global connectivity into focus, where I used to believe that global connectivity would lift millions out of overarching state control and into the fold of being free to make your own choices, I'm now not so sure.

Giving unaccountable corporations massive amounts of data that they are allowed to use to profile us to an ever improving degree, doesn't just show us more highly targeted adverts it can be used to influence us in ways that perhaps we are no longer conscious of or actually are concerned about.

Sometimes, tools can be used in more than one way. This is a case where the outcome is not as the designers expected. Is it a case now that the genie is out of the bottle and we have to live with the consequences or is there anything that can be done about it.

I'll let you make your own decision about that!

Modern cars & The Modern Driver

Being a bit of a petrolhead, I've been keeping up to date with all the developments in 'driver assistance' aids and self driving cars as you would expect but the weather yesterday got me thinking.

The current state of the art for mass market cars have things like ABS brakes, cruise control, traction control, auto wipers and auto lights all fitted but yesterday was foggy. My own car has all of the above but it does not have enough intelligence to identify fog and react accordingly so I manually turned on my fog lights. Driving along on my way to work, I was taken by how many cars had nothing more than running lights illuminated.

Clearly, I can't vouch for all the vehicles that I drove past but. I'd wager a fair number of them had auto light systems like mine and the owners hadn't thought to check their dashboard to see if their headlights or fog lights had come on.

My worry is that could this be a symptom where drivers are no longer questioning automated systems and as such what will the next systems be that might need our attention. I'd hate to think of the progress towards running vehicles packed closely together for efficiency being littered with hard won lessons.

I for one will keep the automated systems in my vehicles monitored closely,

Fateful or what?

Obviously my last blog post was before the now infamous Sepang incident and I, like a lot of MotoGP supporters are in limbo. 

No matter if you support Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi or even Jorge Lorenzo, your support is now tainted with the realisation that they have a thinly concealed dark side. Ruthlessness is too polite a word for it.

Valentino Rossi battling with Marc Marquez

I suppose that I will still watch the season finale in Valencia but probably more to hopefully see Danny Kent become the first World Champion from Britain since Barry Sheene all those years ago and to see the final standings in the main MotoGP category.

Next season I won't change my allegiance to Yamaha but I will see the riders in a different light.

If you want to see a well written and thoughtful analysis of the Sepang incident I'd suggest reading David Emmett's article here

Divided loyalty

As my profile description mentions, I am an avid sofa based follower of the sport that is MotoGP. What is perhaps not clear is that I am fairly partisan in terms of who I support. Due to my history of owning motorcycles made by Yamaha, I have gravitated to following the exploits of the various teams within the championship supplied or run by the company.

Now you might be thinking what's all this got to do with divided loyalty so I'd better give you some background.

In most of the recent years, it has been easy to follow the manufacturer and end up supporting one rider but this year, and more specifically in the latter part of the season, it has become mathematically impossible for anyone other than a Yamaha rider to win the Riders Championship - the one most of the headlines are based on.

So who do I choose to support? Is it Valentino Rossi, currently the oldest and most successful rider on the grid or Jorge Lorenzo his younger team mate? A dilemma indeed.

Valentino Rossi (46) chases Jorge Lorenzo (99) at Philip Island, Australia

Of course, Vale (Rossi) is perhaps rightfully known not only as 'The Doctor' but as the G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) because his exploits in terms of the sheer number of races and titles won are second to very few and nobody in the current era. Add in the fact that his character, passion and showmanship have endeared him to vast crowds around the world and it's easy to get on board and make him your favourite. You can't help but admire his determination to win a 10th title at the ripe old, in racing terms, age of 36 nor his infectious passion for the sport and the battle with the younger riders.

On the other side of the Yamaha garage is a man more difficult to like. Someone who shows his passion in other ways, who perhaps rubs some people up the wrong way, had a reputation for being a bit susceptible to failing under pressure but on a race track in wet or dry conditions has an almost unbelievable level of concentration and focus allowing him to lap time after time at a faster pace than almost any of the other previous championship contenders.

As a true Brit I'm tempted to go with the underdog in this, which at the time of writing is Jorge due to his points deficit, but I almost feel disloyal to Vale by doing so.

I can't make my mind up but I know I will enjoy the battle especially if it goes down to the wire in the last race of the season.

Who would you choose?

Am I politically engaged or not?

With the upcoming election being looked at from every angle in the news media and starting to crop up in conversations, I am hearing more and more about the feeling that the electorate are in the majority disengaged from politics. This supposition got me thinking about my own position and I'm not sure if the question is actually relevant.

How about asking the question 'what do you believe a change in government would change in your life financially?' What might the reaction be to that?

I bet you'd hear all sorts of off the cuff remarks about the cost of whichever party they wanted to talk about but if you followed that up with 'what increase in cost to you would there need to be before you felt compelled to vote to object?' you'd get them thinking harder.

Similar questions focussed on quality of life issues like the Health Service, employment, care & support and immigration could be raised too.

Perhaps the reason people aren't considered to be engaged is because the value of any prospective change isn't sufficiently extreme to warrant them doing something about it. You could argue that the various political parties are pretty much offering various shades of grey policies.

Consider the Scottish independence vote where everyone says the electorate were engaged and remain so. The choices there are so far away from the middle ground that there is more motivation on both sides of the debate.

Have we got to the situation where because everyone now occupies the middle ground the choices are less stark and motivating?

If you accept that theory, then are people actually engaged but see little benefit in making a choice?

Je suis Charlie and the threat to free speech

Now that some of the furore surrounding the appalling events in Paris has died down, I've become concerned that Free Speech is not under threat from just those purporting to represent the Islamic Religion. Perhaps the biggest threat is the potential increase in power being recommended by sections of our elected representatives.

It seems that the Conservative Party are becoming more and more the party of the knee jerk reaction desperate by any means to garner votes without considering some of the implications of their latest policy shift.

Almost inevitably, Cameron and co are calling for increased surveillance of our actions online and allegedly wish to mandate that encryption on communication be banned. The tired old mantra of if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear is trotted out once again as some kind of justification for this violation of privacy.

To some no doubt the call rings true but if you think about the latter new policy on encryption it reminds me of King Canute. You can't uninvent encryption. You probably use it every day in your online dealings with your bank or doing your shopping. Attempting to ban it would have almost zero effect other than to allow snooping on people who should never be targets for it. The bad guys would continue to use it, GCHQ, MI5 and any other security service you care to mention would still struggle to break it and as such we would be no further forward with pre empting the disgusting actions of the few looking to destabilise the world for their own ends.

Cameron's assertion that we have the best record in the world on safe guarding privacy is laughable. It's obvious from the sheer volume of RIPA requests processed by some of the 'delegated authorities' that the original purpose of RIPA has been extended to include snooping on householders for dustbin transgressions and car parking issues. You can bet that once they start collecting more data, the sheer volume held would be too tempting for them to not use it.

Now I'm not suggesting that the problems faced by our security services aren't huge when they are dealing with terror threats and the evolving nature of these. There's no denying that they face an impossible task. Nor am I able to provide a solution. I merely think that policy makers are not concerned with the facts of the matter, all they're interested in is the votes and that's dangerous.

Merry Christmas

I know, I know! I have been somewhat remiss in keeping a steady stream of updates being published on here. I do have a life in the real world you know!

Anyway, as I sit here listening to the snoring of my parents as they sleep off Christmas lunch, my mind naturally wanders to anyone else out their suffering the same fate.

Has the festive period changed or have we? I remember the time when on the actual Christmas Day the thought of doing some shopping was way off anybody's radar yet I've already been online and placed an order for some toner for one of my printers.

I also seem to think that the roads on Christmas Day contained less traffic. I'm not sure you could go out on a fine, dry but cold, Christmas Day on your motorcycle and head for a decent stretch of highway to see just how fast it will go. Not that I ever did 163mph on such an occasion, I;m merely speculating for a friend!

Irrespective of what's changed, it's still over so Merry Christmas to you all. Get those livers ready for New Year's Eve because it'll be 2015 before you know it.