Who are you really texting?

Have you ever wondered about that unusual chat you had with a long-time friend, only to discover that s/he was away some place distant at the time? Or, about the sudden change in content, context and tone while engaged in a long bout of texting? Or, even the occasional emails from family members that make you wonder if they have stopped taking their meds?

Online voyeurism is a growing issue which few of us think about on a day to day basis, but which we should think about because it points to disordered personalities with potential access to intimate details capable of facilitating predatory behaviors against children and compromising adults.

In a recent experiment to test home camera systems, the New Zealand Herald hacked a collection of IP addresses with security cameras installed. The staff discovered that they could access homes and businesses with ease. Had they been true voyeurs they would have inserted themselves into the lives of their targets and learned more than any stranger has the right to know about the private moments of others.

It is probably wise to remember that everything has a camera attached these days, from  a simple dial-in dial-out to a smartphone, a tablet, laptop and desktop.

When dealing with the compulsive communicator in chats, texts or emails, it is easy enough, as an adult, to pick up change in tone based, often, upon basic levels of maturity, experience and intimacy. Most compulsive communicators lack the ability to adapt to the target's life experience and fail to incorporate those little personal details which build up over the years among and between people.

Sadly, it is easier for adults to think down to a child's level based, this time, on the lack of life experience, developing ego and trust issues. In other words, children as shown time and time again, cannot pick up on the nuance and subtleties of interpersonal communication.

The question now becomes, what do we do about the tablet camera as we prop up in bed, or that seemingly secure security system at home, or the smartphone which follows us into intimate places?

The Internet has moved beyond its cyber crime potential into a world of unrestrained voyeurism where we are visible in the street, at our windows, on the beach. Our voicemails are fair game to any sick mind with our password, and our correspondence is conquest and rite of passage in the real-time game of virtual reality.

And, we are the conduits, because we carry the tools voyeurs use against us with us 24/7.

The new eternal conundrum is, "What is privacy?"

With universal access to our lives, the issue of protecting online copyright becomes redundant.

The Internet is our perceptual signifier - the vehicle and expression of reality which makes life in the flesh a gossamer reflection on a screen.

Nothing is sacred, and everything is fair game.


Heather Vallance has worked extensively on defining information literacy as it applies to taken-for-granted knowledge and life skills. 

Research on Fukushima worth sharing

As I write, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children who have been robbed of their innocence and right to a full, healthy life. Neither they nor their parents have committed a crime, yet they are punished for simply being alive in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is the raw truth, the stripped down reality of Fukushima.

We owe it to these children to inform ourselves to the best of our ability so that if our paths ever cross with theirs we are, at least, able to offer the compassion they, and those who love them, will need to face their futures.

Global Research is a Montreal based independent research and media organization which provides simple, scientific and informative material on many important issues affecting us today. GR has released an ebook, a compilation of data on Fukushima and its impact, not just on the Japanese, but on the world as a whole, wherever the trade winds blow and the oceans flow.

The ebook is called Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation.

I strongly suggest that this be read and kept as reference.

The authors invite sharing.

Censorship trivia

Or, these things too shall pass.

The recent furor about Internet censorship and copyright have left many roaringly indignant, including me.

Then I began to think about the good old censorship times in Nationalist South Africa.

• The time when the censorship board banned Black Beauty because they thought the book was about an African prostitute - only to learn later that the story was about a horse.
• The time when pornography and dirty literature were forbidden in the country but freely available in neighboring states, creating a flood of South African tourists who boosted teetering African economies.
• The time when communist history was not taught in schools, but available for perusal in books on world history available in local bookshops.
• The time when banned materials could be accessed by anyone who signed a single-page access form at the national repository.
• The time when overseas holidays meant filling in the blanks left by the shortfall in education and censorship, not mindless drinking sprees on South American beaches.

There have been other times in history when books were dragged off shelves in libraries and private homes, and burned on the street. When cultural centers were ransacked. When life seemed hopeless and intellectualism dead.

After each Dark Age there is rebirth.

I have a picture of a Chinese proverb hanging over my desk in the office which reads, "Pen and sword in accord."

The intended meaning is to keep life in balance, but a global, more historical interpretation can also refer to the cycle of mind vs body. That which we could become vs that which we prefer to be.

We are a species in constant circular motion, destined always to defeat itself by beating the higher self into a bloody pulp - just to see what it looks like.

2012 Hiatus

I am on hiatus for 2012, exploring the world through means other than words.

I will, though, continue my occasional posts on something close to my heart - the Japanese tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Besides the ongoing release at the Fukushima 1 plant, there is now potential release from Fukushima 2 in 2012 but, as always, we simply do not have the facts. This is not the worst of it.

2012 will be punctuated by an increase in imported food and products as the Japanese government and business community dump their contaminated items on foreign markets, and it will also be the year in which the reality of the tsunami begins to wash ashore in North America, creating what will become one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history.

While I spend this next year finding joy in the little and very real things in life, I leave you with two warnings:

• Do not make trophies out of potentially toxic Japanese debris.
• Buy local. Although the planet is contaminated to lesser or greater degrees by Fukushima fallout, you do have the power to control you own exposure over time.

And, I leave you with an iota of hope.

Someone told me that we are here, now, because we chose to be the midwives of a new era.

Let's at least suspend disbelief and hope her analysis is correct.

The statistical myth that is Fukushima

After a little more look-see I discovered a video in which Arnie Gundersen refers to a model used to project the one million deaths from Fukushima.

Although I have a great respect for Mr. Gundersen, I do have a problem with the source he quotes.

Models are projections, nothing more, nothing less. They are the what if factor often present in the absence of raw primary data. They anticipate possible statistical outcomes only and should never be viewed as substitutes for actual research data. 

My personal feeling is that if we really wanted to understand the human toll from Fukushima, qualitative scientists like anthropologists should be hired to perform a long term observational study in the areas mapped by European tracking systems which followed the spread of radiation during March/April onwards.

I can guarantee that their outcomes would be horrendously higher than a million because of the cumulative nature of observational research, and there is nothing more cumulative than radiation - especially when it is still seeping, and will continue to seep into our seas, our air, and onto our land and food sources for an unknown period, perhaps decades.

*

The feeling among quantitive scientists is that we will never know if diseases are caused by Fukushima radiation or some other factor. Observationally, I would argue that we can by studying the society itself. 

Let us help you become addicted

It was one of those radio ads which you wish you could rewind just to make sure you heard correctly, to make sure it wasn't some spoof put on for your amusement.

The gist of the advertisement was, "If you are not on medication, and have never been on medication, contact us to test a range of free medications."

If nothing else, barring the spoof potential, this proves an old suspicion of mine. Pharmaceutical companies promote addiction.

I say this, because my ancestors lived into their 90s without ever taking a pill or managing their diets. Their children smoked profusely but managed to survive into their 80s despite the hacking coughs and patently bad lifestyles encouraged by the early 20th century. Even for them, pills were a rarity. Subsequent generations became enslaved to a bucket load of pills and did not do so well. Mortality rates, in some instances, dropped by twenty years.

On a more pertinent note, this was poor advertising copy. I understand exactly what the intent was, but the manner in which it was expressed reflected badly on the client because highly cynical listeners like me make toast of the content.

Cute or catchy doesn't make good copy. All writers fall victim to their inner stupidity, but this should not happen when someone else is paying the bill.

Teach your daughters to sing in silence

In her vision the old woman saw armies ranked against her Mistress, marching in lines one beside, one behind the other. Her heart faltered, stopped and beat again.

Her Mistress bent over her saying:
Daughter, my star is setting.  I too have dreamed your dream and felt the sun upon my limbs at midday.  But even in my decline I am powerful.

Teach your daughters to sing in silence.  Teach them to look for me beneath the waves at sunset so that when my star rises they shall be ready.

I will join you on the sands and offer prayers of praise for your souls, the keepers of my name, the faithful who have returned to the great waters.

From The Sybil
This allegory comes from A Woman's Book Of Allegory and uses goddess mythology to alert women to the fact that the destructive present can be overcome by inner song. 
When I speak of goddess mythology I mean that literally, not the so-called goddess mythology invented by the cosmetic industry. The allegory is written for all women who feel silenced by the destructive energies of our time, and tells the story of the last oracle of a dying priestess.
I use the concept of singing in silence not as being mute, but as singing regardless of being heard or not, because all song is universal resonance. Nor do I differentiate between songs. That is the choice of the individual woman.
Sing of trees, if you must. Sing of seas. Sing of injustice or in naive ignorance. Just find a song and sing. This is the message of the allegory.

The rescue cat

I stretch because I can,

because I have no fear of falling.

When I over-reach the chair
you’ll be there,
to catch and to cuddle,
you’ll be there.

In different lives,
my first and second,
stretching was an angst
punctuated by terror
and more meaningless error.

My third life was a cage,
an endless line of faces
which passed me by
for others, as yet more
took their places.

My fourth life began with a scratch,
with a click of the latch,
with fresh air.

A caring embrace and a collar,
a food bowl, all mine
with a friend to the end,
to the very end.

Now, I stretch because I can,
because I have no fear of falling.

District 9 as memory

I watched a rerun of District 9 last night. I knew it was a story about aliens produced in South Africa, and that it had won acclaim in science fiction circles, but nothing more. So, expecting a good dose of escape, I settled in with my happy mood popcorn.

The happy mood evaporated within seconds, and the popcorn remained untouched because I had a sudden and continued urge to throw up.

What the world perceived as science fiction, I saw as memory.

Only, in my version of the story, the aliens were humans severed from their birthright and dignity. In my memory, I can put faces and names to the prawns.

What I saw was a script writer subliminally haunted, unable to reach beyond memory into fantasy but, because his audience was ignorant of the past, his angst was perceived as genius.

The new paradigm of growth vs progress

The new word is growth.

Those resistant to growth are the enemies of growth or those who stand in the way of growth.

Growth has replaced progress.

But growth and progress are not the same thing so the question becomes, "Do the spin doctors responsible for the change of phrase understand that they have also created a change of paradigm?"

Progress is a word associate with the development of societies, with the creation of jobs and the elevation of civilization.

Growth is a word associated with profit as in growth of a hedge fund. Profit is exclusively associated with the bottom line, shareholder not stakeholder and, in our contemporary times, corporations.

The enemy of progress was seen as someone who stood in the way of the evolution of mankind.

The enemy of growth suggests someone who stands in the way of that which profits groups of individuals - those who have a vested interest in specific industries with the potential to grow their bottom line.

If the divergence of connotation is intentional, then good and well.

If not, then those spin doctors responsible for the new phrase had better act quickly to plug the hole because they have just initiated a seriously dangerous shift in paradigm.

From virtual business to texted confusion

I have a vague, brief memory of a world in which business was handled face to face only.

Most of anything I've done has been performed virtually, but the medium of exchange has always been email where clarity is laid out in point form and short sentences. Please do a,b,c. Please note a,b,c. Please explain a,b,c. And it has worked well, for me at any rate.

But we have transitioned.

We now text business which amounts to punching in phrases and single words while distracted by all the other incoming and outgoing texts, by posting to Twitter or by checking share prices like a gambling addict. 

I feel like an ape in the first stage of Darwin's climb to civilized communication - except that this may be the last stage before we fall off the cliff and back into great by the millionth degree grandpa's backyard.

The screens are so small and the construction of the visual message so linear and disjointed that anything longer than a grunt does not get read, not even scanned for meaning. 

Participants create parallel realities in a flurry of thumbs and this process passes for doing business.

The result is confusion, inaccuracy, misplaced irritation or anger or some other negative emotion which simmers into explosion or facilitates a mute and hurt-filled split or disintegration of a contract. 

Simply put, the job never gets done effectively, if at all.

The smartphone effect also works backwards. Subverted by the art of texting, people fail to grasp the meaning of connected sentences in emails, in reports and documentation, in books, on websites, in blogs and on group networking sites. 

Responses are more a comedy of errors than a consolidation of project. Communication becomes personal, transformed from that which can be accomplished into a medley of personal demons, fantasies or agendas, and the breakdown leads to inertia and lost contracts.

Those who still care attempt to correct the confusion by hitting the dial pad and making that essential last desperate call, the final plea to re-float the sinking ship, only to reach voicemail.

When the contract goes sour the saddest consequence of the smartphone effect is that participants fail to understand why.