Berlin is reputed for its eccentric fine dining; there’s a restaurant where you can pay what you wish (Weinerei), and another that caters for anorexics (Sehnsucht) and employs bulimic waitresses. There’s also a toilet-themed restaurant (Klo, German for toilet), and the more popular, but still unconventional, Hard Rock Café; a casual dining venue built around a theme of rock and roll, from live music to interior décor. Later on, it became apparent to me that these restaurants were not only limited to Berlin. In fact, it has been a growing global phenomenon over the past three decades called “concept restaurants,” sometimes also called “theme restaurants.” I wondered about what underlies that trend and whether there’s a common thread among concept restaurants. Based on a lot of research and travelling, I drew the conclusion that they all reflect a relatively recent worldview prevalent in contemporary culture known as postmodernism.

Image via Romania-Insider.com

From the mid-18th century forward, the Modern era brought along the Enlightenment Age (sometimes labelled “Age of Reason”), introducing ideals that were upheld and venerated for two centuries. Scientific progress during that period spawned the Industrial Revolution, and mass production. Modernism was regularly under attack, during its heyday from different sectors in society, but most still believed its basic promise to make the world a better place, through science and reason. However, in the horrors of World War II, all grand expectations were lost. Reason, science and technology were masterfully employed by governments to end the lives of millions. Undeniably, science played a central role in the efficiency of Nazi gas chambers and the nuclear bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So-called modern ideologies adopted by totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, such as Stalinist socialism and Nazi fascism led to mass killings and genocides, viciously annihilating more humans, than ever before in history.

Postmodernism emerged in the 1960s as a disillusioned post-WWII reaction against the failings of Modernism and everything it espoused. The uncreative name that stuck with it literally means “after modernism,” audaciously declaring the Modern era is over, as the name implies. Encyclopaedia Britannica defines it as a “Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; [and] a general suspicion of reason.” Looking back at the atrocities of war, some philosophers went beyond simply blaming those responsible for war destruction, and aimed their criticism directly at the flaws of science and reason, and the Enlightenment project. It rejected “meta-narratives” (or “grand narratives”), a reference to any universal truth that transcends all peoples regardless of their culture or geography, which could be a religion or ideology (e.g. communism) or even science. There’s no objective truth, they believed, but alternative subjective truths, choose your own, and “what’s true for you, may not be true for me.” Postmodernism ushered in cultural relativism and stressed that there’s no absolute right or wrong, therefore you could choose your own values. In the process of questioning and “deconstructing” many long-held ideas, reality itself was considered a conceptual construction. It developed into a comprehensive intellectual and cultural movement, noticeable in literature, film, music, architecture and eventually, even in restaurants.

Known for embracing irrationality and contradictions, the movement’s perceived anything-goes attitude inspired a joke in the academic circles in the 1990s which went as follows: “What’s a postmodern restaurant? The waiters demand a tip before they take your order.” Little did they know that, over the following two decades, restaurants that intentionally or unknowingly embraced the postmodern way of thinking displayed even more bizarre and irrational behavior. At a restaurant in Japan, Ogori Café, waiters serve you what the person in front of you had just ordered. The anti-reason mentality is clearly manifested in the hospital-themed Heart Attack Grill (Las Vegas) which promotes overeating and offers a fatty, high-calorie menu, and whose 261-kg spokesperson died from a heart attack at the age of 29. There’s no deep or greater meaning in having a “Dinner in the Sky,” strapped to a seat and hoisted at 150 feet in the air, or why customers would wine and dine in utter darkness, unless you prefer to believe the flimsy and common explanation by the owners that it enhances the experience in absence of sight. What’s behind such restaurants is nothing but sheer meaninglessness. Alternatively, it’s open for interpretation where you could fill in the blanks with your own rationale.

Well, you ask, if these odd restaurants are Postmodern, what’s a typical restaurant from the modernist era? Fortunately for my research, I stumbled upon a fast food restaurant that did not just emerge with modernism, but became the epitome of that era, so much so that its name and methodology is now a social theory studied in universities around the world; McDonald’s. Inspired by the automobile manufacturing industry, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, integrated in his restaurant the Fordist strategy of the assembly line creating standardized and mass-produced fast food meals. Sociologist George Ritzer coined the term “McDonaldization” and used it in his best-selling book “The McDonaldization of Society” (1993) to explain how its four principles (efficiency, calculability, predictability and control) have been transforming many industries beyond the fast food one, such as banking, healthcare and education. Reflecting the fundamentals of modernism, and embodying industrialization and mass production, McDonaldization became an extremely successful model that was globally emulated. Extreme rationalization and scientific management are its heart. Rationalization is the breaking of a traditional process that involves spontaneity, creativity and informality into smaller tasks based on efficiency and practicality.

As a complementary to Ritzer’s theory, British sociologist Alan Bryman proposed in 1999 that “whereas McDonaldization is a modern phenomenon, Disneyization is a post-modern one.” Based on the Disney theme park formula, he identified both theming and dedifferentiation of consumption as among the main dimensions of Disneyization (sometimes used interchangeably with Disneyfication).

Theming is the most visible trend of Disneyization, seen in hotels, casinos, malls, restaurants and of course, theme parks. Las Vegas hotels are excellent illustrations of the trend, for example the Roman-themed Caesar’s or Egyptian-themed Luxor. The exaggerated reality in such places is beyond real; they’re considered hypperreal, a term coined by French postmodernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard to describe a condition where distinguishing between reality and fantasy is increasingly difficult. In today’s society, people willingly shun reality and spend most of their time absorbed in a simulation of reality, be it the Internet, video games or the so-called “reality” TV shows. Hence, businesses exploit that predisposition by constructing realities, as in theme restaurants to draw customers, where eating would be secondary to the experience of being immersed in sights and sounds that blend reality, history and fantasy. Moreover, theming itself attests to the characteristic postmodern breakdown between matchless, timeless high art and low art, which is kitschy, exploitative and mass-produced. Themes include music (Motown Café), movies (Planet Hollywood), sport (All Sports Café), geography (Rainforest Café), history (Soviet-themed restaurants), nostalgia (British pubs and Irish bars) or one-off themed restaurants (Harley-Davidson Café). Additionally, in a world where reality is manufactured to satisfy all kinds of customers’ fantasies, no matter how bizarre they are, you’ll find restaurants whose themes revolve around death, masochism, Holocaust, or, as above-mentioned, toilets.

Postmodernism, which is rooted in its pessimistic view of science and technology, is skeptical at best and downright neo-Luddite at worst. However, in a great irony, contemporary postmodern society embraces the latest technologies to temporarily alter its very perception of reality in places like theme restaurants.

Hybridization or dedifferentiation of consumption is the removal of distinction between different consumer activities within a particular space. That aspect is exemplified in combining playing, eating, and buying in Disney theme parks, or in the architecturally integrated hotels and casinos of Las Vegas. Canada’s West Edmonton Mall and Minnesota’s Mall of America are known for their indoor Disneyland-style amusement parks, turning the shopping mall into a tourist attraction. Similarly, concept restaurants give customers other reasons to stay beyond eating, customers, while dining, could get a massage (Sur un Arbre Perché, France), soak their feet in a hot spring (Naraya Café), or do their laundry (Harvey Washbangers). This hybridization does not end with the activity of eating but also extends to the food itself. Italian university professor, Remo Ceserani, recounts a dining experience in Auckland, in what he considered to be a perfect example of a postmodern restaurant: “We could, combining the various menus [Italian, American, Chinese-Thai, and Japanese], make fanciful creations; we could, I might say, intertextualize our dinners: have, for instance, some sushi with a ratatouillie à la provençal, coconut soup with a pizza al pesto, and so on.” Since the 1970s, fusion cuisine has become a gastronomical portrayal of postmodern zeitgeist of a globalized world that celebrates diversity and multiculturalism. Even though the hybridization of different cuisines might often seem irrational, in a typical postmodern fashion, it still sends out a familiar relativist message that no cuisine is superior.

Disneyization (or Disneyfication) is adequate to describe only a subset of concept restaurants, here are other defining features of postmodernism you could find in such restaurants:

- Irony and Parody: An example is Conflict Kitchen which serves cuisine from countries that are in conflict with the United States. Another American restaurant, Dick’s Last Resort, mocks restaurants that go far and beyond to please their customers by being entertainingly obnoxious and rude to their own.

- Pornography infiltration into mainstream culture: Customers of Quebec’s Les Princesses are served by topless waitresses (ordered in 2010 to cover up) while porn films play on TV screens. In Rome, patrons of Yoshi eat sushi off a naked woman’s body in an obscure tradition appropriated from Japan called Nyotaimori, and often referred to as “naked sushi or “body sushi.”

- Liberation from traditional values and standards: By rebelling against the McDonaldized way of mass culture and mass consumption, postmodern restaurants caters to special interests and niche markets. Case in point are the restaurants with menus entirely based on potatoes (Kartoffelkeller, Berlin), apples (Pomze, Paris), garlic (Garlic & Shots, Stockholm), or cheese (L’art du Fromage, London). On the other hand, some restaurants replaced the conventional waiter with children (Kinderkookkafé, Amsterdam), robots (Hajime, Bangkok) or even monkeys (Kayabukiya, Japan).

- Rejection of authority: A restaurateur’s anti-establishment attitude is best demonstrated in the “underground restaurant” movement. No license, no advertising and no full-time staff. It’s usually run from somebody’s home and operates on either an invitation-only basis, or word of mouth and social networking. It has more in common with a dinner party, than the typical restaurant. That explains why some enthusiasts call it the “anti-restaurant.”

Postmodernism is a revolutionary cultural shift in Western society and fundamentally a philosophical product of the fight against oppression and oppressive ideologies. It accepts diversity, welcomes cultural dialogue and seeks to banish stereotypes. It has been a period during which women’s rights and gay rights achieved unprecedented progress. Nonetheless, in a metaphor for a worldview struggling to survive, theme restaurants over the past decade, such as Planet Hollywood and Wilderness Café, had to shut down many of their locations. Most concept restaurants suffer from lack of repeat customers or lack of emphasis on the quality of food. The previously-mentioned Ogori Café, where you never receive what you ordered, or Sehnsucht, which embraces anorexia, have both shut down as well. Despite many positive contributions to our society, postmodernism does abound in paradox and self-contradictions. An ideology of “no ideology” inevitably self-destructs. When I reflect on my first experience in a postmodern restaurant, I regard my dinner in darkness as an ironic symbolism of our arrival at a dark cul-de-sac in the human intellectual journey.

The post What My Dinner Taught Me About Contemporary Philosophy appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

Simply click (or tap if you’re using a touch-screen) to zoom in:

Rotate View: [Upside down] [90° Clockwise] [90° Counterclockwise]

Above is the first HTML5-enabled panoramic view of the Sistine Chapel ceiling with high-resolution zoom-and-pan interactivity. Combining the very old and the newest together is always interesting, as in this view inside the 500-year old chapel using the latest Internet technologies. Usage of HTML5 means accessability in almost all browsers and operating systems (Windows, Macintosh or others) as well as mobile devices, i.e. iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets.

One of the unique features shown above is how natural light streams through the chapel’s windows. For comparison’s sake, here is the Vatican’s 360-degree virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel which uses Adobe Flash Player, launched in early 2010. You may compare the chapel’s ceiling in both my HTML5-enabled version and the Vatican’s Adobe Flash-enabled one, in terms of usability and accessibility. I personally believe it’s time for their incredible virtual tour to be upgraded to HTML5.

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Kite-surfing is one of the latest and fastest-growing extreme sports, which are sports that involve risky thrills and usually spectacular speed or height. Among the countless manifestations are sky diving, sky surfing, hang gliding, bungee jumping, mountain biking, freestyle skiing, jet skiing, skateboarding, snowboarding, snowmobiling, and surfing. The few studies undertaken to explain their popularity concluded that it’s a reaction against the increasingly safe life. As Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker succinctly put it, “we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.” The other explanation is a new age desire to express individuality and search for identity from a smorgasbord of lifestyles and subcultures. In 1970, American futurist Alvin Toffler presciently explained that “the growth of a distinct subcult built around surfing, for example, demonstrates that…a leisure-time commitment can also serve as the basis for an entire life style. The surfing subcult is a signpost pointing to the future.”

Image via My Modern Metropolis

While the above reasons are not erroneous, the main reason behind the rise of those adrenaline-pumping activities can be summed up in one word, which is, incidentally, among the best-known movie quotes. It’s interesting to note that the movie was released around the same time surfing was emerging as one of the earliest forms of extreme sports. In The Graduate (1967), you’ll hear the uninvited one-word advice delivered to the young graduate, Benjamin:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly, how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it.

The advent of plastics in particular or twentieth-century technology in general, forms a more adequate explanation for the appeal of extreme sports than the above-mentioned sociological and psychological factors. Such factors could not fully explain the phenomenon because risk-taking athletes and thrill-seekers, who have always been mostly men, were present throughout our human history. The ancient Greeks had chariot racing and pankration (an almost anything-goes brutal fist fight). The Roman gladiators fought one another as well as vicious animals like lions, tigers and bears, for the pleasure of cheering spectators who often filled the Coliseum. Jousting of the Middle Ages was another dangerous game where opponents on horseback and armed with lances, at a full speed, attacked and attempted to knock each other off their horses. A final example of an extreme sport from the past is bullfighting, developed in Spain more than 300 years ago. Unlike many of extreme sports from the previous centuries, today’s athletes don’t engage in man vs. beast battles, but their games still contain the same rudimentary elements of speed, intensity, physical challenge and danger. The fundamental difference between ancient and modern extreme sports lies in technology. Today’s extreme sports, like photography, wouldn’t exist without modern technology but there was always a desire to record particular moments and events in the form of writing or paintings. Thanks to technological advancement, photography emerged and presented unprecedented methods for capturing those moments in time. Similarly, our species did not develop new dispositions or urges five decades ago; as demonstrated it has always been a natural human instinct to take risks for mere thrills or to conquer new frontiers. Recent technological progress provided those “dare-devils” with new sports, our rebellious ancestors would never dream of.

Technology provided kite-surfer Carlos with proper and safe gear for his favourite activity. Without it, he wouldn’t have a rip-stop nylon kite with inflatable vinyl tubes. Also, he wouldn’t have the lightweight, yet durable board under his feet or a control bar for steering the kite through ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMW) flying lines. His wetsuit is made from neoprene, a synthetic rubber material that minimizes the loss of body heat, protects against cuts or abrasions and acts as a life vest. His kite-mounted water-proof camera records high definition videos that could be used for a variety of purposes, such as studying daring jumps and other stunts. Moreover, the videos could be uploaded on social media websites, to be shared with the public, which in turn fuels the interest in kite-surfing. Technology helps Carlos and other adrenaline junkies plan their outdoor activities based on accurate weather forecasts in addition to facilitating their travel to an extent never seen before. A case in point is the flight from his home country Brazil to New Zealand, one of the world’s top destinations for such adventure sports.

Technological innovation plays a critical role beyond the water-based sport of kite-surfing. Ubiquitous gadgets help athletes record time, speed/pace, distance, location, elevation and much more. Among land-based sports, runners in ultra-marathons use GPS-enabled tools (Global Positioning System) and RFID (radio-frequency identification) timing, also known as transponder chip timing. The former is to pinpoint their location and calculate distance plus other metrics and the latter is for the chip, usually attached to the runner’s shoe, to emit signals, received by radio receivers located at certain points along the running course. Zorbing is another land-based game, where the participant is rolled down a hill in a giant inflatable ball, made from plastic. Technological development is easy to spot in air-based adrenaline-pumping pursuits. Safety and survival of bungee jumpers relies on the long elastic rubber cords and skydivers wouldn’t free-fall through the sky, if it weren’t for airplanes, or dodge death, without their nylon-constructed parachutes.

We could benefit from a new outlook on extreme sports, rather than dismissing them as fads for those on the fringe of society. By acknowledging and carefully studying the symbiotic relationship between extreme sports and technology, especially everyday technology, both could benefit, because it’s a two-way channel. Protective helmets or bungee cords are commonplace tools, whose value extend beyond sports. Motorcycles and jet skis share the same innovation and sometimes belong to the same manufacturer. How the future of extreme sports is reliant on technology was evident in Carlos Lima’s answer to a question by the same reporter regarding his dream thrill.  ”I’ve always enjoyed sky diving but my dream is space diving, as Felix did [a reference to Felix Baumgarnter who jumped in October 2012 from an altitude of 127,851 ft, or 38,969 m].” Carlos continued, “One day, I’d like to experience the adrenaline rush of a supersonic free-fall after jumping from a space capsule.”

The post Behind the Rise of Extreme Sports appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

Amid the fallout over posting a trailer for the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims” on YouTube, the White House requested that Google, the parent company of YouTube, remove it. Such a censorship request is troubling, certainly, and also absurd. Politics, religion and even free speech aside, it’s nearly impossible to permanently remove the film from YouTube or the internet.

The White House request to remove the trailer off YouTube seemed to spring from a genuine desire to take it off the Internet and put an end to the crisis. It’s yet another embarrassing demonstration of the lack of understanding of how the Internet works. Apparently, politicians sometimes have to be reminded of the clichéd adage: What happens online, stays online, forever.

Art  by Sarolta Bán

Here are the main reasons that keep data we share online from ever being consigned to oblivion:

1. Screen capturing: This one is a classic, available since the early days of computers. It’s a snapshot of what appears on your screen, whether it’s a webpage or a Twitter message. This practical tool is available on all PC and mobile operating systems and goes by many names; screen capture, screen shot, screen grab, screen dump and print screen. You’ll frequently encounter its use in action as you read the news. Here’s an example: The official Facebook page of the Israeli embassy in Ireland shared a “Christmas thought“ with its fans saying that if Jesus was alive today, being a Jewish man, he’d be lynched by Palestinians. After an outcry, the anti-Palestinian Christmas message was deleted and they published an apology, but not before an embarrassing screenshot was taken by someone somewhere and was distributed between media outlets.

2. Copying/pasting and “Save image as…” are among the oldest tricks for Internet users who could preserve anything you publish online in the form of text or images, by saving them onto their hard drives, to be shared and re-uploaded later, beyond your control, or even knowledge.

3. Republishing: On social networks, control over your content is minimal since tweets are retweeted, Facebook comments and photos reposted, and blog entries reblogged. In other words, whatever is republished by others, even after you delete it, still resides on someone else’s Twitter account, Facebook page or Tumblr blog, beyond your reach.

4. Caching and archiving: Older versions of webpages are preserved and could be accessed through search engines and web archiving services. For example, as Google indexes websites, it stores “cached” versions of most webpages, which are publicly accessible on their search results page. Furthermore, a web archive (such as Wayback Machine) retrieves archived webpages from several years prior.

5. Downloading videos: Some think that videos are the hardest to keep but that’s far from the truth, thanks to a plethora of software applications and online services that download videos off video-sharing websites such as YouTube. Just because a video has been deleted off YouTube doesn’t mean that it’s permanently gone. It could have been downloaded on PCs before it was deleted and also it could still be lurking online on social networks that you’re not able to access. A few months ago, I tried to find a video full of racist and hateful speech from a politician in the Middle East who claims to be a righteous man. To my disappointment, it was removed off YouTube and I was no longer able to expose him and share it with others. A few days later, I spotted it on the timeline of a Facebook friend. It was not a YouTube link to the deleted video, but it was the same video hosted on Facebook servers. Whoever had that video removed off YouTube won’t have known that the video is still generating a buzz out there on personal Facebook pages by those who downloaded it earlier off YouTube and uploaded it on their Facebook profiles. Upon that discovery, I used a popular video downloader (Internet Download Manager) to download that video clip to my PC and within minutes I had it uploaded back on YouTube. Mission accomplished.

Behind the scenes, some news agencies and reporters rush to save videos of controversial nature, well aware that they could be for a variety of reasons taken off YouTube. Recently, the CEO of a company that trains civilians in weapon and tactical skills claimed in a video that he rejects the tighter gun controls proposed by Obama and if enforced, he furiously vowed to “start killing people.” His video did not last long on YouTube, but if you read the story on the Huffington Post, you’d know that “[t]he original video was preserved by Raw Story,” (an online news publication).

In a nutshell, online content is endlessly replicated, archived, cached, downloaded, distributed, syndicated, retweeted, reposted, reblogged, forwarded, backed up, screen captured and printed. Regardless of the file type of the uploaded content, it will keep floating around in cyberspace and potentially resurface any time. The above-mentioned film can not be simply removed off the Web by the creator. Nor could it be censored by the White House or even Google. That’s the nature of the beast (read: the Internet).

It’s hardly surprising that the White House would make such a censorship request, which Google rejected. It might take a long time for those in power to fully comprehend that they lost their control over the flow of information.

Governments can no longer censor speech, so the only alternative left is a civilized dialogue. As disgusting as this film is, it still falls under free speech, a basic right shielded by anonymity on the Internet. As American historian Alfred Whitney Griswold said, “In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”

This article was initially published in Doublethink magazine. 

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Cable TV Providers and Movie Studios
In the traditionally tremendous market of the US, pay TV providers are shedding hundreds of thousands of subscribers on an annual basis. For how long will they argue that it’s the economic crisis to be solely blamed?! Subscribers forced to pay for dozens of extra channels that they never watch. In fact, many would be content with only a handful of channels. These customers are not coming back and they’ve gone pursuing cheaper, online alternatives. Pay TV providers still don’t take the threat of video over broadband seriously enough while they downplay the effect of Netflix, Hulu and other online video content (YouTube). Soon the competition against cable television will be more ferocious with upcoming TV services by tech giants, Apple and Google.

Movie theater ticket sales have long been declining and so have sales of DVDs. The tactics of entertainment executives will not entice customers to buy the overpriced and outdated DVDs again. In panic, Hollywood studios dedicate too much of their resources waging a futile campaign attempting to police content on the web which will ultimately fail. With the aid of the US government and other governments, they fight piracy by shutting down websites (megaupload.com is a recent example) and peer-to-peer networks (Napster, Audiogalaxy and Limewire) in addition to planting fake and corrupt files on existing P2P networks. They frequently sue individual downloaders and file-sharers, and demand Internet Service Providers to take action against their own customers. With the take-down of every file-sharing website or network, another one springs up in a far-flung place, away from the US jurisdiction.

Image via Sandia National Laboratories

Examining the ingenious Netflix solution of online movie rentals, it seems that film makers have a future when they partner with online video companies. It’s possible that the widely available, pirated online content could be curbed but not unless Netflix, and its alternatives, provide the latest movies and TV shows as part of a better and larger catalogue of video content, at cheaper pricing. Not to mention that such on-demand video streaming still needs to be available in most countries. For solutions like Netflix, the online experience is an advantage as it means mobility. You’re no longer restricted to your TV screen. You can finish that movie on your device, on the train or in bed. Rather than streaming video content, if customers opt to purchase and download movies, they should be given the option to download them in a variety of formats (or a widely supported format like mp3, very popular in the music industry), thus making such files portable between different platforms and devices. Customers should be able to gift their movie downloads and transfer them if they switch to a new computer or device. Music and software prove that there’s a market for selling video content online.

Record Companies
Music is among the entertainment industries that lead the way – video games and even pornography are well ahead – in creating novel methods as an online business. Record companies are still far from turning the tide on the slumping industry but their survival lies with products like Apple iTunes and Google Music (like iTunes, an online music store) and Spotify (music streaming service). Unfortunately, they’re still part of the very intense and absolutely fruitless campaign against downloaders and file sharing websites, under the delusion that it’ll eventually revive music sales.

Newspapers
You’d think an industry that observes emerging trends would have noticed and investigated how the Internet is turning their own industry upside down. Print newspaper circulation has been in a free fall over the past decade and many are scrambling to cut costs in a variety of ways, from layoffs to scaling back on print editions. Should we shed tears over newspapers or let them meet their demise in dignity like rotary phones, cassette tapes and typewriters? The truth is that this painful process does not spell the end of journalism, we’re only farewelling its physical format – that leaves ink on your fingertips. The thirst for news will not disappear and the newspaper as a medium will evolve. Those newspapers that cross into the future will still require reporters, columnists and publishers, a new kind of publisher whose occupation will revolve around the digital format. Should the transition to the digital world be so painful?! They should realize that their traditional readers mostly belong to a generation that is passing and that today’s readers find news on paper to be outdated, wasteful and costly.

Book Publishers
Book publishing is one of the most recent industries to be affected by the Internet-inspired sweeping changes. After many years of deliberation, publishers succumbed to joining the online revolution. Not only are publishers arriving late on the digital scene, they also seem determined to repeat history and make the same mistakes as the other industries. Adrian Hon, of The Telegraph, in October 2010 comments on the complacency of publishers: “They’ve spent three years bickering about eBook prices and Amazon and Apple and Andrew Wylie, and they’ve ignored that massive growling wolf at the door, the wolf that has transformed the music and TV so much that they’re forced to give their content away for practically nothing. Time’s up. The wolf [i.e. ebook piracy] is here.” Two years after that comment, ebook piracy has developed into a major headache for publishers. In shadows of the legal battle against e-book publishers and Apple for allegedly conspiring to keep ebook prices high, customers are wondering why the prices did not significantly drop after publishers eliminated the cost of paper, printing, warehousing, distribution and shipping. To pull through the transition, publishers have to deal with more than piracy and pricing issues, they also have to ensure their ebooks are available, transferable and readable on different platforms and for a variety of devices.

Other Industries
Unlike the previously mentioned industries, some do fully embrace technology, like advertising, telecommunications and photography. However, it’s interesting to note that some of those industries’ iconic companies from the 20th century failed. Kodak, the leader of photographic equipment and an icon of American innovation, filed for bankruptcy in January 2012. It seemed to have maintained its pace with the fast-moving industry but at its core, it still relied on an outdated business model, unlike its thriving rivals. As an article on Businessweek.com noted: “Kodak was late to recognize the problem, slow to react, and then went down the wrong innovation path.” One of the final nails in the Kodak coffin was the fading business of point-and-shoot cameras, at the introduction of much-improved camera phones. In the current disruptive trend of integration of devices in which the smartphone has swallowed the mp3 player and digital cameras, will manufacturers of standalone GPS devices see the warning signs?!

Not only large corporations are resisting change, but also medium-sized and small companies are clinging to old business models. Many small businesses still do not have websites of their own or, if they do, they don’t have full understanding of how a website can help their business maintain a competitive edge. In Britain, as an example, only 14% of small businesses sold their products online in 2011, despite the fact that 71% of British people shop online. How many businesses are aware of online reviews of their products or services, negative or positive and respond when the need arises? Many managers still don’t grasp how Google search engine results can affect a company and increase its sales or bring it to a halt. Most companies religiously adhere to the 9-5 cubicle-bound work schedule and the idea of employees working remotely, and more productively, is still out of the question.

Meeting profit expectations breeds complacent companies. Rather than dedicate budget and time to research the latest technologies on which they could capitalize and thrive, they ignore or even fight change, so much so that companies collapse and whole industries wither away, such as photo finishing services and video rental stores. Only the fittest survive in this business world of “Digital Darwinism.” Therefore, openness to transformation and research are critical for these organizations to ride the digital wave.

The post Businesses Still Reluctant to Embrace Technology appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

Other digital tools like email or blogging could never have provided the same experience of historical reenactment seen on Twitter, where major events and wars are brought to life in messages of 140-characters or less, aka tweets. You could read tweets by a Titanic eyewitness or a war reporter from WWII. Some Twitter accounts commemorating historical events schedule their tweets to be posted “in real time.” For example, one account (@RealTimeWWII ) explains that they’re “livetweeting the 2nd World War, as it happens on this date & time in 1940, & for 5 years to come.” Those verbal snapshots of important events from the past might motivate readers to learn more about the full version of the story and to conduct deeper research in history. To a degree, it’s educational and somewhat entertaining.

Such virtual mix-up of today’s modern tools with historical events, attempts to satisfy our curiosity about some what-if scenarios. What if news back then travelled as fast it does today? How or could an American Civil War reporter with a smartphone and a Twitter account change the course of the war? For better or worse, it could also be a sign that there’s a new generation that finds learning history to be more interesting through Twitter than thick history books, in doses of 140 characters. Additionally I personally believe that people enjoy the illusion that important figures like legendary Anarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868 – 1912) is just a click away and ready to reply to your tweets any time and ready to answer your questions about his heroic polar expeditions.

Art by 0:Lives

Below is a Twitter exchange between Vladimir the Great (958-1015) and a boyar (Russian nobleman) that narrates a true story. A thousand years ago, the Russian prince sent an envoy of representatives to examine faiths of neighboring peoples in search of a monotheistic religion for himself. The account did not take place in that particular chronological order but all the reasons behind his approval or rejection of different religions are accurate. That story explains why Russia’s largest religion affiliation today is Orthodox Christianity.

Note: This is a factual account and its presentation here is not meant to disrespect or mock any faith or nationality.

@olegtheboyar you’ve been travelling with the other boyars for way too long. Have you found a new #religion for me yet to embrace?

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 24, 2012

Prince @vladimirthegr8 we understand the urgency of the matter & that worshiping multiple pagan gods like Perun & Mokosh isn’t cool anymore.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 24, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Our travels confirm ur conviction that in our #modern times, most peoples & clans seem 2 prefer 1 god, an all-powerful god.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 24, 2012

@olegtheboyar It makes perfect sense, one people, one ruler, one god.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 24, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Yesterday, We met the #Jewish Khazars. Judaism is a great ancient religion with a very long #history.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 24, 2012

@olegtheboyar Very good. I prefer a religion with a great history.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 24, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 On the other hand, they ban eating the meat of pigs.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 24, 2012

@olegtheboyar Why the pigs? That’s strange. But I can live with that.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 24, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Also, their homeland is not really where they live, it’s #Jerusalem.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 24, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 They said b/c of their sins God didn’t allow ‘em to keep their land, they lost it 1000 yrs ago & been hoping to get it back.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 24, 2012

@olegtheboyar Are you insane? Is that what u wish on our #Russian land that I fought to protect for many yrs? Find another #religion!

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 24, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Today we met Germans who practice Roman #Catholicism. It’s a large & strong community that participates in a lot of charity.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 They’re v. excited like everyone else at the possibility that u might convert to their #religion & listed all their reasons.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 We were not impressed by their churches. Too simple & modest. Our understanding is that ur not interested in modest worship.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@olegtheboyar Certainly not! Even if, with a new #religion, I have 2 stop human sacrifice, it should still display some extravaganza.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 25, 2012

@olegtheboyar I’m gonna miss human sacrifice. Remember my coronation when I sacrificed a thousand people in celebration? Ah sweet memories!

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 We met Muslim Bulgars who showed us how Islam is easy 2 practice. It doesn’t have the long history of the Catholics or Jews.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Their religion is rooted in #military conquests, which isn’t different from our #culture. They’ve captured a lot of lands.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@olegtheboyar Fantastic. #Islam sounds nice.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 But you’ll have to stop eating #pork.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@olegtheboyar Not again?! What is it about pigs that our neighbours hate so much?! Alright, I can give up that kind of meat.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 One more thing. Not sure you’ll be happy about this one. Um, alcohol is, well, prohibited.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 25, 2012

@olegtheboyar WHAT?! DRINKING IS THE JOY OF RUSSIANS! WE CAN NOT EXIST WITHOUT IT! Find me another religion!

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 25, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Touring Byzantium. #Constantinople is a great place to be! when the Emperor knew who we represented, he received us himself!

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 They know we’re pagans, but they let us inside Hagia Sophia cathedral for their liturgy. It’s amazing! twitter.com/OlegTheBoyar/s…

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth. The cathedrals and the rituals are impressive. twitter.com/OlegTheBoyar/s…

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@olegtheboyar Glad to hear that. Seems like Orthodox Christianity of Byzantine #Greeks could be the one.

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 27, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 BTW if the Greek religion weren’t the best, your grandmother would never have thought of embracing it.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@olegtheboyar Yeah, I trust my babushka. Do I still get to enjoy my wine and swine?

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 27, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Yes. There’s also a chance that eventually they might make you a saint, a holy man, after you die.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@olegtheboyar Are you sure men of politics can be made saints?

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 27, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 Yes, all the time. Also if you convert to their religion, the emperor promised an alliance between Byzantines & Russians.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@vladimirthegr8 To sweeten the deal even further, the emperor has vowed that, if you convert, he’ll give you his sister Anna to marry.

— Oleg (@OlegTheBoyar) November 27, 2012

@olegtheboyar Wonderful! In that case, tell them it’s a done deal!

— Vladimir the Great (@VladimirtheGr8) November 27, 2012

Source: https://twitter.com/VladimirtheGr8/favorites

The post Vladimir the Great Found Religion on Twitter appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

Lawmakers are desperately trying to catch up with the newest technologies, because existing laws are no longer adequate to cover how we interact and transact in our online communities. Privacy and copyright laws are lagging behind and courts have to settle disputes with no legal precedents. Keep in mind that in the virtual world, just like in the real one, what could be legal is not necessarily ethical. The Law’s struggle to evolve with technology is manifested regularly on the news with stories ranging from the absurd to the questionable. In March 2012, as a cure for the dangerous distractions of mobile phones, texting while walking was banned in a New Jersey town and police announced that they’ll issue $85 jaywalking tickets to those who’re caught.

Should teachers and students be Facebook friends? Could there be any academic benefits in them doing so? Not according to Missouri legislators who in 2011 passed a law (currently contested) that barred teachers from using websites where they can have “exclusive access” to students of 18 years old or younger, in order to rule out any opportunities for “sexual misconduct.”

Film Still from the Movie L’eclisse, 1962. (via IWDRM.)

If you face online defamation or cyber bullying, and your name is sullied on social networks, who do you turn to and what are your legal rights? When you die, should your Facebook profile be part of your digital property, to which your family and friends could have full access? How about your email account? A legislation has already been passed in Oklahoma to allow handing over social media accounts to the loved ones of the deceased, in light of similar situations to that of Karen Williams. She’s a heartbroken mother who, after her young son’s death, sued Facebook to grant her full access to his account so she’d learn more about her son from his posts, comments and “likes.” Facebook’s policy (once notified that someone has passed away) is to memorialize their account, so their loved ones can leave messages in remembrance, i.e. deny login access unless there’s a prior consent. One of the legislators who approved the legislation that requires Facebook to allow access, defended it as passing on “shoeboxes with photos.” So far other legislators have been slow to contemplate this issue.

Governments pulling archaic laws into the information age create embarrassing fiascos. In France, the so-called elections gag or elections silence law, in effect since 1977, orders a nationwide media blackout which theoretically includes social media websites. In other words, it’s illegal to transmit or broadcast any elections results ahead of the close of the polls. Those who break the law are threatened with a fine of 75,000 euros. Of course, in a world of social networking, an online world where there’re no national borders, it’s practically impossible to attempt to enforce such a law. Facebook members, tweeters and bloggers, who could be in France or elsewhere, on their smartphones and computers leaked Sarkozy vs. Hollande election results of 2012 before the official results were announced. Tweets and Facebook updates made a mockery of the elections gag law and playfully revealed the results with amusing nicknames for the French presidential hopefuls. Their jibes portrayed a competition between Gouda and Goulash. Hollande was referred to as Gouda, the famous Dutch cheese versus Goulash, a Hungarian meat stew dish from the country of origin of Sarkozy’s father.

The same law is also on the books in Canada and anyone accused of transgressing that law faces a fine of up to CA$25,000. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the 1938 law as late as 2007. Elections Canada unsuccessfully tried to enforce the media blackout for many years. In defiance, during the 2011 Canadian Federal Elections, a concerted campaign, a “tweet-in,” to break the law was staged by Canadians. The country’s electoral agency found monitoring social media sites to be an impossible task. Finally in January 2012, it was announced that the outdated section of the Canada Elections Act was to be scrapped. Canadian minister Tim Uppal tweeted:

“Our government is committed to bringing Canadian elections into the 21st century by getting rid of this dated and unenforceable law.”

Most of us realize that in every era, technology prompts us to raise new questions. But as technology moves faster, it’s apparent that there’s a significantly growing time lag between society’s acquisition of the latest innovations and lawmakers inquiring about their legal ramifications. The current legal system is handling an avalanche of issues for which legal solutions of the twentieth century cannot be applied. On the technology adoption curve, rather than crossing the legal questions phase ahead or along with the introduction of new technologies or during engagement from early adopters, lawmakers’ questions are raised long after wide-scale adoption, often with a gap of several years.

The post Dragging Lawmakers into the Digital Age appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

Art by Slorker

The problem was not with location tracking or advertising networks but the shockingly long time it took me to fully understand such personal information is being transmitted from my phone to app providers, developers and advertising networks. Why my lack of understanding lasted such a long time before I learnt how this geolocation technology works, even though it deeply affects my privacy? I am not alone in having had barely any knowledge of how location data, or other recent technologies for that matter, could be used to compromise my privacy and safety. I had in my pocket a tech tool that can alter my life in many ways that I wasn’t even aware of. GPS-enabled phones can be used in truly wondrous ways, for example, to guide you through an unfamiliar city, and it can also be exploited by someone to stalk you. Thus, my criticism is not of technology or tech devices per se, but of how we’re usually behind in our grasp of how they can significantly affect us. Millions of users today suffer from the same problem: an opaque and incomplete understanding of technology. Many stories from the daily news attest to the reality of, what I prefer to describe as, a “cyberculture shock” in our society.

In March 2010, the house where Keri McMullen and her fiancé lived was burgled after she posted an innocuous Facebook status update telling her friends that they would be away for the day to watch a local band play music in Indiana. The robber was one of her 595 Facebook friends, a junior high school classmate whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years. That type of incident is bound to rise as more naïve people tell the world on location-based social networks about their activities, posting something like they’ll be away on a wonderful vacation for a week or two (read: no one will be home for a week or two).

The next incident might be a familiar one as you’re likely to have seen it on the news. It usually goes like this: two lovers, typically young, agree to film their sexual acts or photograph one another nude. More often than not, it’s the man who charmingly proposes such an idea with words like “I betcha it’s fun to record ourselves doing it,” or “you look so gorgeous naked, let me take a snapshot of that.” Some take this behavior further by videotaping the sexual intercourse in secret. They might do so for the joy of later watching their bedroom conquests on video or using it as hard evidence around friends for their guess-who-I slept-with claims. Also, there’s always someone who uses such scandalous material, threatening to share it with others, unless the victim carries out his or her requests. Even in the absence of malicious purposes and when it’s all consensual, as soon as the relationship turns sour and comes to an end, the jilted ex-lover takes revenge by uploading on public websites the naked photo or sex video. Sometimes the story ends in shame and helplessness and other times it ends in a jail sentence. However in several cases it actually led to the murder of the revengeful lover. Such incidents were recently reported on the news in many countries including USA, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt and China. Expect to read more on the news about this behavior considering the pervasiveness of smartphones equipped with high resolution cameras.

In the seventies and eighties, we believed the promise that technology of the future will make life simpler and easier but now we know that this objective remains as elusive as ever. We’re overwhelmed by the fast pace of technological progress and the mind-boggling amount of innovation. It’s a daunting task to take notice and monitor all new technical products and services available every year, let alone raise enough questions to truly understand how they could affect the way we work, play and communicate.

Art by Exhibitor Online

Here are a few questions that may (and should) trouble us:

- How should I deal with the reality that some of the world’s most powerful web companies record and store data on every purchase I make, every site I visit, every video I watch and every Facebook page I “like”? How long is such data stored for, and for what purposes is it used?

- If you’re a Facebook member, do you really understand how Facebook privacy settings work?

- If it’s Google services that you use, do you know what data they store and how it’s shared across their various services and under what terms Google shares your data with third parties?

- Did you ever look up your full name in Google or other search engines (in “double quotes” for exact match results) to find out what information is publicly available on you, if any? Are you comfortable with the content you find?

- Can anyone easily find through search engine results links to your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles? How much of your profile is publicly visible? How about your Twitter feed or comments you left on news sites and blogs under your real name? How easy is it to find your date of birth or your home address?

There are many more staggering questions that are entirely new for our generation: How to protect yourself against identity theft or hacking? How to deal with information overload? And numerous questions about upcoming technologies like cloud data storage, location-based advertising and facial recognition software.

We progressed from easy-to-understand simple tools, to mechanical tools, to electro-mechanical tools, to today’s highly complex, electronic and computerized equipment. Ironically while we’re delightedly wrapped in a technological cocoon, we’re completely alienated from those objects, left with experiences and interactions devoid of basic knowledge about their inner workings.

I’m not a Luddite or a prophet of doom. I’m not suggesting we abandon new technologies or keep them on the shelves until we conduct enough research on their potential impact. But we must acknowledge that our tech-obsessed society is in a pattern of complacency. To enhance our online experience and make our connectivity to the global data networks more secure, a better understanding and more transparency are required regarding what takes place in the background.

The post Society’s Struggle in a High-Tech World appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

The spread of literacy in the 16th century, amid a burgeoning production of paper, ushered in letter writing as a new form of communication. Over the following few centuries, countless letters of personal correspondence were written and left behind for future generations.

The letters collectively construct a very important part of our history because they reveal stories in ways a historian can never fully grasp and recite. Through the correspondence of Christopher Columbus with the royal treasurer of Spain, we knew about his first impressions in America – which he called “islands of India.” From Michelangelo’s letters, we knew how he viewed his own artwork, confidently negotiating and promising the architect of the Vatican that “if it is carried out, there will be nothing to equal it the world over.” We inherited personal letters written by historical figures who belonged to all backgrounds and walks of life, among them are scientists (e.g. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Galileo), psychologists (e.g. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud), poets (e.g. Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Barrett), philosophers (e.g. Voltaire and Marx), novelists (e.g. Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelly and Oscar Wilde) and political leaders (e.g. Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan). Needless to say that millions of ordinary people around the globe passed down their familial and amorous letters through multiple generations. In an era where written communication is mainly electronic and the personal letter has been replaced by email and social network messages, our generation will be the first in more than half a millennium to leave virtually no hand-written letters behind for future generations to read, study and analyze. “But so what?” – you might ask, “let the digital replace the physical.”

Recent experience has proven that digital storage is less reliable than you might expect. Founded in 2002, Friendster was a pioneer of social networking, and a model for MySpace and later Facebook. Its popularity waned over the years as users migrated to rival online hangouts turning it into a ghost town. In April 2011, they announced that they would cease to exist as a social network, soon-relaunching as a social gaming platform and they warned that all messages, photos and other digital content of their 115 million users would be deleted by the end of June 2011 (originally, to the chagrin of many members, the date was May 31). They encouraged their members to use their tool, Friendster Exporter, to download a copy of their old data before the deadline.

Today, there is no way to retrieve your data, if you were a Friendster member who missed the story on the news (as many did) and didn’t receive the email notification which they claimed was sent to all members (many reportedly never received it as was evident from blog comments and tweets). Also, you’re in the same situation if you were among the helpless users who encountered technical issues with their exporter tool. Strangely, Friendster support for its users seems superior compared to AltaVista’s who announced in February 2002 the shut-down of their email service by the end of the following month. No options or tools to export emails were provided for the subscribers and later all emails in the 400,000 accounts were erased forever.

The ephemeral nature of text-based digital communication should be regarded as an important cultural issue. We have always been fascinated by how people used to live in the past. We dig up artifacts, decipher dead languages, study ancient texts and even exhume dead bodies in order to piece together pictures of our ancestors’ lives. But we treat our old electronic letters (i.e. emails) like a pesky nuisance, so much so that it’s not considered a tragedy if one loses access to them, or if they were permanently deleted by the email provider. After all they’re seen as disposable waste, like many other products in our throw-away society. But over time, emails could become a historical source that can be used in the far future to help reconstruct a particular moment in our human story. They’re as valuable as papyrus manuscripts and historical letters on display in libraries and museums today. Emails, like the letters of the past, record our hopes, dreams and fears, our struggles, successes and failures. They reflect important personal events, as well as global events and their impact on our daily lives. Our electronic letters might contain acronyms like OMG – “oh my God!” – rather than those found in old Latin letters such as D.V. (Deo Volente, “as God willing”) but they’re still equal in historical and literary value. At first glance, such emails peppered with net slang like LOL and WTF might not seem worthy of preservation but to the contrary, they should be saved for various reasons, among which is that within 100 years or so, as some linguists speculate, humans might look back at our present era as one where the English language started to drastically evolve due to the influence of the Internet.

In order to preserve emails, the non-tech savvy should be able to easily export their emails in a free, open format, that’s readable regardless of the hardware or the operating system. Also, they shouldn’t need to resort to third-party applications (many of which are not free) in order to export and download their emails.

Technically speaking, this is not a complicated feature to develop as part of the email service but for many years it hasn’t been a priority for corporations. However, recently there have been signs of a strategic change. Google, for example, is taking this issue so seriously that they formed a team of engineers in June 2011 with the revolutionary name Data Liberation Front whose main job is to give you the functionality to get your data out of their plethora of services “in an open, interoperable, portable format.”

In spite of their efforts, it seems that the so-called Web 2.0 companies, Facebook and Twitter, are moving faster towards a solution than the old Tech behemoths including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Since 2010, Facebook allowed its members to download a full archive that contains all messages, photos and posts, and you can view your old messages in a free and open format: HTML. Similarly, based on Twitter’s CEO announcements to New York Times reporters, within a few months, users will have a built-in tool to download all their past tweets.

The basic challenge for email preservation today, as in the case with Gmail and Yahoo, is that you’re required to use third-party software (e.g. Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora) to download your emails. Additionally, you need some understanding of network protocols (such as IMAP and POP) in order to set up an email client to access the mail server. Regardless, downloading your emails into another program will not solve the issue as you still have to convert them to an open and free format.

The best third-party applications with file conversion options are not free. Hotmail lets you export your emails using the default Print function of your browser into XPS format (which has been positioned by Microsoft as a PDF competitor) but it’s a Windows format, therefore it will be problematic viewing your emails within another operating system.

Ideally, email service providers would allow their users to:

- Download the whole email account or individual emails (you might want to exclude unsolicited or spam emails).
- Maintain the same folder structure of the email account (Inbox, Sent, etc.) and also download attachments.
- Export emails in one of several open file formats (e.g. PDF or HTML).
- Provide an option to delete emails off the mail servers once the download is complete.

A historian’s glimpse into the past is not the only reason why emails should be preserved. Another reason is the nostalgic one explaining why we don’t erase our old digital photos. There’s a sentimental value associated with your emails. Decades from now, you might want to share them with your children or grandchildren, or simply leave your family and friends some emails after you pass away showing your journey through life.

That’s the actual reason why many Friendster members felt angry and heartbroken. In the words of NYT’s Jenna Wortham, they lost “a time capsule with snapshots of who they once were…a version of their history that is not in a scrapbook or dusty shoebox but is live on the Web.”

Some lament the fact that people don’t keep diaries anymore; however from my perspective your inbox is your diary. Every email is akin to an entry in that diary. The only difference is that your diary is a dialogue with yourself rather than others; nevertheless both record the same intimate views on your daily experiences. The epistolary art is not dead. It just resides in an impermanent electronic medium, waiting to be saved for the future.

The post Preserving the Art of Digital Letter Writing appeared first on Cyberculture Gallery.

The rate of adoption of consumer technologies since the beginning of the previous century has been rapidly increasing, so much so that today’s technology spreads at a rate never seen before. The following are U.S. stats but they also describe similar trends in other Western countries and, to a large extent, a clear global trend. Electricity reached 90% penetration of U.S. households within 50 years, the refrigerator accomplished the same in 30 years, cell phones, in about 20 years. [Source: New York Times] Additionally, even though it would have been desirable in the past by most, as it is today, to own such new innovative machines or devices (e.g. cars or phones), they were still only affordable to businesses and the wealthiest of society, which played a role in constraining their proliferation, granting society time to question, study and adapt to the tools which were about to become a part of their lives.

Chart via The New York Times

Today, in a new paradigm where the Internet is ubiquitous, adoption time can be measured in days or even hours. In the case of products deployed online, a new technology can be used by millions of people, with minimal or absolutely no understanding of its effect on the users. Our modern societies have occasionally praised the speed at which technology is moving and how, thankfully, we don’t have to wait long before reaping the marvellous benefits of latest breakthroughs. However technology is now advancing so quickly that society’s foundations in fields like ethics, legislation and privacy are struggling to evolve to reflect the changes, and in many ways failing to keep up.

Art by Kosmur (via Deviantart.)

Cyberculture Shock

The American futurist Alvin Toffler predicted in 1970 in his aptly titled book Future Shock that we will struggle “to cope at a progressively faster rate with situations that are, for us, decidedly unfamiliar, ‘first-time’ situations, strange, irregular, [and] unpredictable [1].” He warned that we are “doomed to a massive adaptational breakdown [2],” describing the phenomenon as a “future shock” similar to a “culture shock” experienced by travellers but he explains that “most travellers have the comforting knowledge that the culture they left behind will be there to return to. The victim of future shock does not [3].” If I were to meet Mr. Toffler, I’d tell him that his “future shock” prediction was absolutely correct. It’s evident that our experience through cyberspace is marked by, what I personally prefer to call, cyberculture shock.

Our inability to foresee problems where technology could, unjustly, be viewed as the culprit is, as they say, nothing new under the sun. In mid-September, 1830, on a day of celebration of progress and industrialization, William Huskisson, a name you probably never heard, became the first railway fatality. It was the opening day of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world’s first inter-city passenger railway. Huskisson, a British statesman and Member of Parliament, was there among others to witness the dawn of a new era, but the celebration ended in a horrific accident when he was run down by the train, his leg mangled on the tracks, and despite all efforts he died. That story is worth a mention because the railway is a great symbol of the industrial revolution and the rapid train is an appropriate representation of technological progress that doesn’t stop or avoid collision, crushing anything or anybody on its way forward. Over the past few decades, with improved safety procedures and at a cost too high (as was often the case, human life), railway accidents have been dwindling. But around two centuries after the time of that first accident, also at the dawn of the Information Technology era, the human approach to technology is not radically different. We still develop as fast as we can and deploy everywhere possible, deferring consideration of issues to sometime in the future. We live in an age where casualties of new technologies do not lie on railway tracks with mangled limbs but find themselves victims of ruined careers, stolen identities, sullied reputations and financial losses. Today, we’re increasingly encountering more casualties of technology than ever before, where the negative impact doesn’t usually result in physical pain but an emotional one. The cost cannot be easily quantified as many respond to the damage with confusion, anger or depression.

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen per year costing the victims more than 50 billion dollars [4][5]. The downfalls of congressmen Anthony Weiner and Mark Foley, highlighted examples of ruined careers who flirtatiously shared with others explicit photos of themselves [6]. NFL player Kareem Jackson and basketball player Larry Johnson struggled with social media scandals, and deservedly so. The first tweeted a picture of himself at a “to-the-death” cockfight, and the latter used gay slurs in a heated Twitter argument [7]. Foolish mistakes that could have gone unnoticed in the past are today’s notorious blunders. Many online users are unaware of the ramifications of what’s left behind in their digital trails. The impact of that problem goes beyond adventurous politicians and half-witted athletes, but the everyday users of the Internet.

What’s needed here is an acknowledgement that there’s a fundamental problem with our approach to technology. Unless a different attitude is taken, the epidemic of insufficient understanding of technology will spread further and will exacerbate as new technologies invade your office, car, living room, kitchen and even your bathroom.  The kind of knowledge we lack doesn’t require us to pursue a PhD in Computer Engineering. Not everyone will be tech-savvy but the public should be better educated, armed with some common sense tips, such as how to protect themselves on the web. Companies could be more transparent; interfaces could be simpler, minimalist and more user-friendly. When manuals and instructions are written, they should be addressing the everyday user, not only the engineers and nerds.

So Much Technology, So Fast and We’re Too Slow

Writer and creator of the legendary Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand pondered the problem in an article for Time magazine in 2000 under the title: Is Technology Moving Too Fast? “The newest technologies–computers, genetic engineering and the emerging field of nanotech–differ from the technologies that preceded them in a fundamental way. The telephone, the automobile, television and jet air travel accelerated for a while, transforming society along the way, but then settled into a manageable rate of change [8].” On the other hand, “[c]omputers, biotechnology and nanotech don’t work that way. They are self-accelerating; that is, the products of their own processes enable them to develop ever more rapidly.” He states that “it isn’t so easy for a free society to put the brakes on technology” and to suppress the “constant technological revolution [9].” His brilliant article disappointed me when he argued that “[p]erhaps what civilization needs is a NOT-SO-FAST button [10].”

We shouldn’t consider slowing down human progress as a solution. It’s irresponsible, impractical and delusional to think that we could or should hinder our global civilization from marching forward. We cannot turn back the clock to an idealized past simply because we’re failing. Technology is accelerating and will continue to do so, and our future will be shaped by how we cope. Could these be the ingredients that created our inconspicuous but perplexing problem: more innovation, faster adoption and less understanding? You might have heard before that it’s a matter of “too much technology, too fast.” From my perspective, it’s so much technology, so fast and we’re too slow.

A New Approach for a Fundamental Problem

I don’t claim to have a solution for this problem and I don’t believe it has to be a government initiative or more regulations. It has to be rooted in the community. Part of the solution could be new initiatives undertaken by educators, journalists, writers, scientists and sociologists. Those professionals would have to only raise the questions and possible issues in a timely fashion. Universities, places of worship, non-governmental organizations and the media can all contribute to bringing forth questions and possible answers. The media is now preoccupied with the task of bringing us the news on the latest tech fads in order to make it easier for us to chase them, and only a fraction of their time explains the impact. The media can play a better role by combining tech news with analyses of potential effects on society. Amidst the digital revolution, hundreds of careers that never existed before have emerged. Perhaps a new career could be established to help society deal with the influx of new technologies.

Art by Exhibitor Online

REFERENCES:

[1] Alvin Toffler, “Future Shock” (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 217.
[2] Ibid., p. 11
[3] Ibid., p. 2

[4] Association of American Medical Colleges. “Protect Against Identity Theft.” (Sep. 9, 2012.)https://www.aamc.org/services/first/first_factsheets/112138/protect_against_identity_theft.html

[5] Crime Stoppers of Gilpin/Clear Creek Counties. “Crime Stoppers of Gilpin & Clear Creek Counties to hold the second annual Shred-a-Thon.” Aug. 10, 2012 (Sep. 9, 2012.) http://www.gccc-crimestoppers.com/shred2012.htm

[6] Junkins, Laurie. “5 Public Figures Caught in Online & Social Media Scandals.” Naked Law by Avvo. Aug. 24, 2012. (Sep. 9, 2012.) http://nakedlaw.avvo.com/politics/5-public-figures-who-ruined-their-careers-via-social-media-scandal/

[7] Carlson, Dusten. “Worst Social Media Blunders Of All Time.” Social News Daily. (Sep. 9, 2012.) http://socialnewsdaily.com/2574/worst-social-media-blunders-of-all-time-infographic/

[8] Brand, Stewart. “Is Technology Moving Too Fast?” Time. Jun. 19, 2000. (Sep. 9, 2012.) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,997268,00.html
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.

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