Responsible Use of Data? A Luddite’s Review

Got half an hour? Don’t mind small print? No pretty pictures? Want to read my jaded Thoughts Become Words? This opinion piece has been brewing for several months and what better than my zodiac Year Of The Dragon* to launch a strongly worded blog post.

Recently I was about to enter a website to check on some stuff when the following information popped up. Most of us vaguely realise that our activity on the WWW is monitored. But here (below) is a rather more comprehensive look at what “they” glean from my device. Of course “You can change or withdraw your consent any time from the Cookie Declaration” but by that time it is too late. I have well and truly been identified.

Oddly enough, I always felt safe when I knew my paper documents and personal details were archived in a filing cabinet or locked safe. But we all know both can be stolen, copied, photographed, or open to various forms of physical damage.

I AM NOT WRITING THIS TO INSTIL FEAR OR ANGER, I SIMPLY WONDER IF OUR DETAILS WILL EVER TRULY BE SAFE, NOT FROM THE GATHERER BUT THE ILLEGAL HARVESTER?

The modern cyber criminal, whose grubby hands only touch a keyboard, can easily steal a person’s savings and ruin lives within seconds. Do not trust unsolicited links, odd emails, text messages, requests for your details, funds transfer or anything that immediately makes you query where it came from. Go with your prehistoric gut instinct and throw that metaphorical spear, i.e. click Delete and empty your rubbish bin. It may stop the rampaging beast.

So, how many people comprehensively read the Terms and Conditions?

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT PROMPTED MY THOUGHTS:

QUOTE “We and our 800 partners process your personal data, e.g. your IP-number, using technology such as Cookies to store and access information on your device in order to serve personalised ads and content, ads and content measurement, audience insights and product development. You have a choice in who uses your data and for what purposes.” (As if…)

“If you allow, we would also like to:

1. Collect information about your geographical location which can be accurate to within several metres.” (Good grief!)

2. “Identify your device by actively scanning it for specific characteristics.” (Fingerprinting)

3. “Find out more about how your personal data is processed and set your preferences in the details section.” (More personal input)

4. “You can change or withdraw your consent at any time from the Cookie Declaration.” (Yep, withdraw your consent, no mention of stored details)

“We use Cookies and similar technology like Cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes essential functionality, performance and for (mainly unwanted) advertising purposes.” Question: Why, in their arrogance, are they so confident they can improve my experience?

In reality, I guess it is already too late to stop my details circumnavigating the world “for advertising purposes”. Similar to the flawed decision to allow Vaping into Australia, “Oh dear we are in a dilemma now, what can be done to fix it? Let’s throw more money at it and see what happens.” Probably nothing, just more young lives ruined by lung-corroding chemicals before the Government approves the next pleasurable yet ultimately destructive addiction.

If computer technicians, programmers, web designers, A.I. (colloquially known as Artificial Interference) and geeks-who-tinker are reading this blog post, I can sense your derision from here. And I don’t care because I am older than you and have experienced a lot more bad decisions in the world.

Ultimately human nature rules as in “Yeah, I like that,” or “Nah, I don’t like that” and the market is fickle thus you are trying to make it very appealing, very engrossing, so that you get paid for all your keyboard work. Are your fingers insured?

Therefore, my question is “Do I splather* myself around the globe?” Or do I clamp down on my details, put a tightly fitting lid on search engines, phishing, and those ubiquitous Cookies? Probably wouldn’t get much access, nor much done, because I wouldn’t be compatible or recognised, etc, which neatly supersedes the use of one’s own initiative.

Internet technology takes time to develop and test new stuff and (don’t tell them) it can be pretty hit and miss. Entertainment seems to be safe to use, after you have signed up, signed in, ticked the boxes, unticked the Not-applicable ones, fast scrolled down countless Clauses and Regulations, ticked the Declaration which state your details are safely stored, etc, etc, finally arriving at Preferences knowing they will ignore your settings anyway—every time you log in! Even WordPress has been known to drop a few blog functions.

SIDE-TRACK
Don’t get me started on Goodreads, and have you read the juicy gossip about Amazon?
Wired – “Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon” Kate Knibbs reports: “Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There’s little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.”
Real books on a real shelf in a real library – I am such a Luddite*
https://www.wired.com/story/scammy-ai-generated-books-flooding-amazon/

And what is it with this Unsubscribe Button? Apparently it is consumer law that an Unsubscribe Button should appear on emails/notices/newsletters/businesses to stop regularly unwanted stuff (spam) in your inbox. However, it sometimes takes weeks for the Unsubscribe notice to take effect. Oh, don’t tell me someone has to physically click to delete your data…

ALWAYS MORE CAN BE QUESTIONED AND QUERIED. IF AND WHEN I DECIDE, NOT WHEN I GET AN EMAIL, NOT WHEN I GET AN ALERT, NOT WHEN THE INTERNET TELLS ME IT’S FANTASTIC EVERYONE IS SAVING MONEY DOING IT, AND NEVER ME ON SOCIALS WHEN SUPPOSEDLY EVERYONE IS DOING IT, ESPECIALLY NOT THEN. GBW 2024.

Life cannot be lived backwards, but it will never revert now anyway. The downturn in skilled tradespeople is proof of that. Not enough keen young apprentices for physical job training. Sure medical research and sciences have taken a huge leap forward, but can humans live as truly independent thinkers when an artificial intelligence shares the same room?

FOR ME, DECLARING LUDDISM IS NOT A NAIVE EMOTION BUT A GENUINE STANCE ON TECHNOLOGY AND OUR ALL-ENCOMPASSING RELIANCE ON IT INSTEAD OF SEEKING THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF REAL HUMAN ADVICE FIRST.

Maybe keep looking back over your shoulder at old skills because a thinking life is fading fast. Perhaps internet safety controllers have vacated the building and a rag-tag crew is left patching the patches. (Nothing personal, guys, your brainpower got you this far). As for the rest of us, keep safe, keep deleting, query everything. Most of all, don’t let internet searches give you the wrong information, go to genuine websites in your own country. Of course, it is fun reading and writing blog (weblog abbreviation) posts and every device has a settings/close/shutdown button.

Finished scrolling? “But I like scrolling” says Person. “Of course you do. It’s designed that way.” Put down the electronic device, push away that keyboard. Grab a real book or pencil and paper to sit quietly for awhile. Challenge: Can you manage being an independent human being for half an hour?

Thought so…Gretchen pensive face emoji 😔

❤ Gretchen Bernet-Ward 2024

*YEAR OF THE DRAGON Lunar New Year begins on 10 February 2024. This marks the start of the Year of the Wood Dragon.
*SPLATHER (noun): 1. : ungainly 2. : rambling. Sends a long splathering telegram. UK author J. B. Priestley (1894–1984)
*LUDDITE (noun) Definition: 1. A person who is opposed to the introduction of new working methods, especially new machines. 2. Jathan Sadowski The Conversation Review “I’m a Luddite. You should be one too.” 9 August 2021.

Pixel Girl says…

Interpreted Programming Languages Functional Programming Languages

Compiled Programming Languages Procedural Programming Languages

Scripting Programming Languages Mark-up Programming Languages

Logic-Based Programming Languages Concurrent Programming Languages

Object-Oriented Programming Languages

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Screensaver

Sherwood Toilet Block Hives Park 01 — Illusion

Walking in a park, I saw this wall of trompe l’oeil on the side of a public convenience block and just had to photograph it. The illusion, the trick of the eye was something special which I appreciated more after I saw my photograph. It was painted by local Sherwood (Brisbane) artists with the name Half Dozen Group of Artists Inc.

One of my favourite pastimes is to change my screensaver image. I do it on my PC and iPad regularly. Silly obsession, I know, but it gives me a smile when I log on each day. I take my own photographs wherever I might be, and have a supply of snapshots and artwork amassed from family and friends over the years. Some work well, some don’t. “Framing and focus” was the old adage.

There is a children’s picture book entitled “The Stripey Street Cat” by Peter Warrington and Rachel Williams which is a photographic series of stencilled street art images of a stray cat. They tell the story of Stripey who is looking for a lost friend, meeting various other Newtown (Sydney) cats along the way.

An illustration I use regularly which attracts attention for all the wrong reasons is this one of Snoopy typing away in the middle of the night with a cigarette in his mouth. I’m anti-smoking but there’s something naughty about making an icon like Snoopy do such a thing. The artist is unknown but I think he’d have a good sense of humour.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

TV Nostalgia MAS*H

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”.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Stephen Fry Lets Fly

“Facebook and other platforms should be classed as publishers”

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.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

Sci-Fi Comes to Life

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!

“Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media” – George Lucas
Read more https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/digital_technology

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.

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

N.B. This post also appeared on State Library of Queensland blog for Seniors Week.
http://blogs.slq.qld.gov.au/slq-today/2017/08/10/sci-fi-comes-to-life/