Today billions of things will happen to billions of people, birth, life, death, which just about says it all. On this day, Tuesday 1st August 2017, I have officially launched my blog. For me, going from Private to Public is a momentous occasion but one which will hardly make a teeny tiny blip in the history of the universe. It is a pleasure to be part of the WordPress world, to write in such a creative environment. As my home page says, my thoughts and words can fly!
Between jobs, I once had the misfortune of attending two group interviews. Both for a permanent part-time position. Let me tell you about the first one. I was pleased to be called in and keen to get the ball rolling until after an hour I realised the whole process was degenerating into tedious insincerity.
Fellow jobseekers and I played mind games with shapes and symbols, wrote clues on butcher’s paper and on each other’s backs (with our finger) and sat down to interview the ‘buddy’ seated next to us. We then introduced each other to the selection panel which was a trick because what was told to us privately was then asked to be broadcast across the room. And, most outlandish of all, we formed groups to invent a new company motto and present it. Then we were gathered into teams to construct a workable bridge from scrap pieces. During discussion time, one person endeavoured to take control of our group, effectively making it a one-woman show. Another broke away from his group to talk to me separately so I’m sure that would have been a black mark against him.
Most applicants ‘talked the talk’ although whether they actually meant it or not remains to be seen. The extroverts did their best to outshine the other applicants with their superior customer service line but when pressed, many hadn’t even checked the company website. Basically everyone was mouthing the same tired old phrases about equality, fairness, safety, courtesy, teamwork and how good they would perform in the job. Lines which they had obviously rehearsed at home. Which in itself is good but it wears everyone down, especially when juniors kept referring to their notes.
By the time my five minute one-on-one interview took place, over three hours later, I was lacklustre. The questions asked were the same as those I had already addressed in my selection criteria which tended to make me more repetitive than I should have been for such an important occasion. My past experience and references were scrutinised without a word.
I tried to pull my thoughts together and keep a glazed look out of my eyes but regrettably enthusiasm had started to wane. It appeared to me that the HR department was trying to justify its own position within the company by orchestrating an overly long interview process and my respect for its staffers dwindled during that period. It was held at an awkward time of day too, so I left the interview feeling hungry which did not help my mood. For those nervous yet bored candidates waiting to be called, surely a beverage wouldn’t have been too much to ask? At the end of this interview process, we were instructed to leave by the side door. I hoped the other applicants were more upbeat than me, or at least better actors.
Another point which I found interesting was the amount of young first-job attendees who wore jeans and casual tops. In a job where presentation is important, I failed to understand their choice of clothing. Especially considering there were 75 applicants, hand-picked from hundreds, for only 25 job vacancies. Apart from a good resumé, I think your eagerness to get a job should include upping your appearance.
A considerable length of time, and another job, has passed since then and I still have not been informed of the outcome. I seriously question the usefulness of such a long drawn-out exercise. ‘You either got it or you aint’ and I think a good personnel department should see that a mile off without all the frills.
Do you still doodle on a notepad or scrap of paper? When telephones were fixed items, every office had a blotter with notepad and pen handy. Home phones had a dedicated area littered with paper and old envelopes for note-taking or scribbling a quick message with a stubby pencil. Doodling came into its own while listening to your boss rant or your mother dispense advice. It is quite possible that fifty percent of paper used in the world prior to computers and internet access was used for doodling while on the telephone.
It seems we only used half our brain when talking on the phone and, as evidenced today, we had to be occupied with something else at the same time. Lo, mobile phones were born! Or in other countries, lo, cell phones were born! With access to a myriad of mind-occupying pastimes. And you can personalise any device; doodling without pen or paper. I don’t think it’s necessary to launch into the historic progress of communications over the centuries but I can guarantee it will get more and more streamline, more and more accessible and more and more invasive. Computer art is not really doodling…
I love curlicues and my featured doodle was penned while I was listening to a podcast so perhaps there is still a time and place for doodling. I don’t know where that snail came from but I can use any number of tech devices, themes and programs to jazz him up. Do I want to? Nah, think I’ll just leave him on an old piece of recycled A4 paper.
The Personal System/2 was IBM’s third generation personal computer released over 30 years ago on April 1987. Recognise the actors advertising the product?
The cast of the long-running TV series M*A*S*H set during the Korean war and, if you are old enough, you can surely name their characters.
Alan Alda (Hawkeye), Gary Burghoff (Radar), William Christopher (Father Mulcahy), Jamie Farr (Klinger), Mike Farrell (B.J.), Loretta Swit (Major Margaret Houlihan), Larry Linville (Frank), Harry Morgan (Colonel Potter), Wayne Rogers (Trapper),McLean Stevenson (Colonel Blake), David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester III) and many more.
Larry Gelbart was the man responsible for developing M*A*S*H for television from the 1970 feature film M*A*S*H which was adapted from Richard Hooker’s 1968 novel “MASH: About Three Army Doctors”.
“Facebook and other platforms should be classed as publishers”
Stephen Fry
British actor and author Stephen Fry, speaking at Hay Literary Festival, accuses “aggregating news agencies” of not taking responsibility for their content. Fry has called for Facebook and other “aggregating news agencies” to be reclassified as publishers in order to stop fake news and online abuse spreading by making social media subject to the same legal responsibilities as traditional news websites.
Outlining his “reformation” for the internet, as part of the Hay literary festival’s programme to mark the quincentenary of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, Fry accused social media platforms of refusing to “take responsibility for those dangerous, defamatory, inflammatory and fake items whose effects will have legal consequences for traditional printed or broadcast media, but which they can escape”. Facebook is flooded with “sextortion” and revenge porn, files reveal leaked documents which show the site struggles with the mammoth task of policing content.
“One thesis I could immediately nail up to the tent flag is to call for aggregating news agencies like Facebook to be immediately classified as publishers. At the moment, they are evading responsibility for their content as they can claim to be platforms, rather than publishers. Given that they are now a major source of news for 80% of the population, that is clearly an absurd anomaly,” Fry said.
“If they, and Twitter and like platforms recognised their responsibilities as publishers, it would certainly help them better police their content for unacceptable libels, defamations, threats and other horrors, that a free belief in the value of the press would, as a matter of course, be expected to control.”
Last week, it was announced that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were facing tough new pan-European laws, forcing them to remove hate speech and sexually explicit videos or face steep fines. Fry said he also believed they would soon be forced into new legal responsibilities, and deemed the issue “frankly small potatoes” compared with “some huge potatoes [that] are looming.”
Citing the failure at British Airways IT system on Saturday that led to BA flights being grounded at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, Fry cautioned that the world’s reliance on digital systems would also inevitably prompt a cataclysmic cyber-attack and bring on a “digital winter for humankind”. He went on to say “An extinction-level event … will obliterate our title deeds, eliminate our personal records, annul our bank accounts and life savings, delete all the archives and accumulated data of our existences and create a kind of digital winter for humankind,” Fry warned.
During the talk, Fry also addressed the rise of big data, which has seen private companies competing for and using the personal data of millions for corporate gain, the gig economy of Uber and Deliveroo; the inability of governments worldwide to keep up with technological progress; and live-streaming services like Facebook Live allowing people to broadcast acts of violence and self-harm. Using the myth of Pandora’s Box – where opening a container unleashed evils on the world but left hope trapped inside – as an analogy for the development of online abuse and trolling, Fry said the speed of technological development meant that problems associated with technology were now irreversible.
“The dark side of the rise of machines and the sudden obsolescence of so many careers and jobs; the potential for crime, exploitation, extortion; suppression and surveillance; and even newer forms of cyber-terrorism, give us the collywobbles and are challenges for certain. But we must understand that it is going to happen, collywobbles or not, because the lid is already off the jar. So the best we can do is keep the lid of the jar and let hope fly out.”
Acknowledgement: The Guardian Monday 29 May 2017 04.38 AEST Last modified on Thursday 1 June 2017 01.50 AEST Reporter: Sian Cain@siancain, Photograph: Anna Goldberg.
Note: Having bought his first computer in 1982, Stephen Fry is considered an enthusiast of computer technology, being an early adopter of the internet and social media.
When a mature person says to me “I don’t understand new technology” my reply is “If a human invented it, a human can use it”. I believe every senior can master modern technology, and benefit from it.
I wasn’t always pro-IT, I thought it was invasive and time-wasting, not to mention eroding our good manners. You know, that person who keeps one eye on their mobile phone, flicking their thumb over the screen while you’re trying to have a conversation. I avoided e-readers, I kept my landline phone and used a small pre-paid mobile for texting only. Then I realised I was missing out on a lot of good things!
Things like blogging, exploring a holiday destination with Google Maps, or my cousin walking around her kitchen with a laptop while I viewed the design via Skype. And the ability to download an e-book or watch a video on my iPad any time of the day or night. The joy of being connected to the internet for instant information on my mobile, staying in touch simply and easily, this liberation never ceases to amaze me. Everything from family to fashion, bookings to e-newsletter subscriptions, all via technology.
In the State Library of Queensland Digital Futures Lab, one of my delights is showing seniors the Augmented Reality Sandpit and Virtual Reality. They are just as gob-smacked as me. It is our early viewing diet of sci-fi shows coming to life! Perhaps phone etiquette needs improving, and I may never give myself over to 24/7 connectivity, but I enjoy the benefits of IT and have fun exploring the endless world wide web on a device as small as my hand.
Thoughts Become Words 