Where Has the Time Gone?

Well, well, well. Seven months of 2009 have elapsed since I've updated here. I admit I experience the very slightest pang (rhymes with twang) of regret when I saw recently that 94% of blogs are inactive. Far be it from me to be so ordinary.

It's not surprising that most blogs are inactive. They are a lot of work to keep up. These days, people are paid, sometimes a lot, to keep blogs. And just since the beginning of the year, Twitter has attained a new level of acceptance. Between it and Facebook keeping one's fans apprised of every motion and plan, blogs have lost their purpose for many people.

I haven't actually planned to start blogging again. I just stumbled on it while I was doing some other things this afternoon. As always, who knows what's to come?

I Know, I Know, I Know

I've taken an early-summer spontaneous hiatus from "The Daiy Observation," as I'm sure you've noticed. Part of my excuse is that I was away at the Cal-Pac Annual Conference session. It's nice to have an excuse, even if only partly.

I'll be back on board shortly. Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime, repeat after me, "spontaneous hiatus, spontaneous hiatus, spontaneous hiatus."

The Kindle

Quote of the day:
“People do more of what’s convenient and friction-free.”
--Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon.com

Six months ago Amazon introduced an electronic book reader called Kindle. It has been very popular. For a while they were having trouble keeping up with demand.

As much as I am interested in the applications of technology, I’ve always been very skeptical of devices on which you can read books. Most are hard on the eyes and emphasize technology over the actual reading experience.

I do love getting news and information from the internet, especially since page layouts have become more intuitive and attractive. There’s a hitch to this, though.

Even with a bright and sharp monitor, it can be quite tedious to read anything long. I think the internet is built for browsing. Hence the “browser.” And it’s built for referencing.

Images, sound and video are important tools on the web. These three things are irrelevant in the average book. Novels, poetry and non-fiction may contain black-and-white illustrations, but that’s about it.

I’ve always considered reading a book a unique experience. I wouldn’t consider reading a book on the web. It’s never entered my mind to even try it.

For the same reasons I would also not consider reading a book on my iPhone, or any PDA. It’s a little-bitty screen, and I would be fumbling with it so much it would distract from the experience.

Book lovers say things like “there’s nothing like the feel of a book.” They talk about its portability, and a vague connection felt with the author through the physical pages. All of this is true.

From everything I’ve read about Kindle, it succeeds admirably in replicating key parts of the “book experience.” The screen is practically identical to a printed page--black on white with a high resistance to glare. Very easy on the eyes--and you can enlarge the text.

Owners seem to love the chance to carry around a few dozen books with them. And they rave how easy it is to preview, buy and load books directly onto the Kindle from anywhere. The size and weight of it are just about ideal--roughly the same as a paperback. You can highlight and make notes in the margins.

Evidently, there are a couple of major drawbacks. While more than 100,000 books are available, when Merrie went searching for many of the books she wanted to read, most were not available. I suppose this will be remedied over time as Amazon secures more rights.

More unfortunate is that the design of the keys on the device is clunky and not intuitive. Many owners complain about accidently turning pages, or having to fish around for the “home” key which takes you back to your list of books. They also complain about the time lag when turning pages, and the menu functions in the software design.

Amazon is the biggest book seller in the world. They know about books. They are not hardware or software designers.

I think a device like this is in our future, and is a very good idea for many reasons, personally and ecologically. I give Jeff Bezos a huge amount of credit for the work done on this product. It’s also admirable that one of Amazon’s (huge) goals is to increase the attention span of Americans. Kudos for that. (I don’t use the word “props” yet.)

Wouldn’t it be interesting if Amazon worked in partnership with Apple to get the design right?

Oh No, I'm Part of a Trend

Quote of the day:
“It's like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks.”
--Nicholson Baker, talking about Wikipedia

A funny thing has been happening to me the last few weeks. I have barely read the newspaper.

The daily paper has been an integral part of my life since college, where we were assigned The Washington Post as part of the journalism program. For many years Merrie and I subscribed to four newpapers--The Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Now we’re down to just two--the Southern California ones. Very few days have ever gone by when I haven’t read through at least one paper.

But a while back I began spending my morning newspaper time online, mostly reading from a variety of news sources. The best news sources online tend to be the newspaper sites--many of them are very good indeed.

Like you I’ve been reading for years about the decline of newspapers. The fall in daily circulation accelerated just over the last 12 months. Fewer than 30% of those under 30 read a daily paper.

I never, never imagined myself to be part of this decline. I guess I have always held on to the tradition and romance of print journalism.

I’m not sure I’m jettisoning this tradition just yet. We’ll see. But it sure is fun to travel among newspapers and other sources every morning--and maybe catch up on some other things too.

Inflatable Banana

Quote of the day:
“ The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”
--C. S. Lewis

Whatever you’re doing, I suggest you stop immediately and read Nicholson Baker’s story on Wikipedia in the March 20 New York Review. Here’s an excerpt:

“Say you're working away on the Wikipedia article on aging. You've got some nice scientific language in there and it's really starting to shape up:

“‘After a period of near perfect renewal (in Humans, between 20 and 50 years of age), organismal senescence is characterized by the declining ability to respond to stress, increasing homeostatic imbalance and increased risk of disease. This irreversible series of changes inevitably ends in Death.’

“Not bad!

“And then somebody—a user with an address of 206.82.17.190, a ‘vandal’—replaces the entire article with a single sentence: ‘Aging is what you get when you get freakin old old old.’ That happened on December 20, 2007. A minute later, you ‘revert’ that anonymous editor's edit, with a few clicks; you go back in history to the article as it stood before. You've just kept the aging article safe, for the moment. But you have to stay vigilant, because somebody might swoop in again at any time, and you'll have to undo their harm with your power reverter ray. Now you're addicted. You've become a force for good just by standing guard and looking out for juvenile delinquents.

“Some articles are so out of the way that they get very little vandalism. (Although I once fixed a tiny page about a plant fungus, Colletotrichum trichellum, that infects English ivy; somebody before me had claimed that 40 percent of the humans who got it died.) Some articles are vandalized a lot. On January 11, 2008, the entire fascinating entry on the aardvark was replaced with ‘one ugly animal’; in February the aardvark was briefly described as a ‘medium-sized inflatable banana.’”

It Changed Everything

Quote of the day:
“In Mainz, Germany, on this day in 1455 began the mass printing of the Gutenberg Bible, the first manuscript in Europe to be printed by movable type. About 180 copies were produced, the Bible contained more than 1,280 pages, and on each page the text was laid out in two 42-line columns. Up until that time, manuscripts were usually copied by scribes, and a handwritten Bible could take one scribe more than a year to prepare. Sometimes woodblock printing was used, but it was also an expensive and time-consuming process. The movable type printing press featured individual blocks with a single character that could be rearranged endlessly. Passages of text would be covered in ink and used to make repeated impressions on paper. The printing press that Johann Gutenberg built was based on the design of presses for wine and paper. It's estimated that more books were produced in the 50 years after the movable type printing press was built than in the 1,000 years before it. Gutenberg's invention is credited with making the Renaissance possible: it allowed classical Greek and Latin texts to be distributed widely. It also made books affordable to lower classes.”
--The Writer’s Almanac

A strong candidate for biggest understatement of all time is that the printing press changed everything.

Until then, writing and reading was mostly for ceremonial recording, recollecting and passing along tradition. These tasks were done by learned clerics. Essentially, almost no one on earth could read beyond a few symbols.

Before Gutenberg, we lived in stratified oral cultures in which information, knowledge and tradition were passed along in groups through speeches, recitations and storytelling.

With the printing press came the gradual shift to an individualistic culture, as ordinary people learned to read and began to learn about the world through internal one-on-one communication with authors and writers.

Simultaneously with the settlement of Jamestown came the King James bible in 1611. As the immigrant population in America grew over the next 200+ years, this book was a fixture in almost every American home.

Its ubiquity made it a sort of early American equivalent to TV.

Speaking of which, the next tectonic communications/culture shift occurred in the 20th century with the advent of broadcast radio and TV. Broadcast radio initially resembled pre-Gutenberg oral culture, except that listening was done primarily individually and within families. Also, there was no interaction.

TV added passivity to individualism as we began to fixate on flickering images transmitted to our homes. Our eyes and ears became fully engaged, if not always our minds.

Then, of course, in the 1990s there’s the spread of the internet....

The Rise of Anonymous Abuse

Quote of the day:
“Do you know what condescending means?”
--Unknown

This is the political season of passion. I admit that I’ve gotten out of hand.

I don’t know exactly why I feel so strongly about my candidate in this presidential election year. But I do.

I was brought down to earth about a week ago when reading comments on the New York Times Caucus blog. Many of them were downright nasty. And that’s putting it nicely.

People were saying all kinds of insulting, rude and angry things about whichever candidate was opposing theirs. Over the years I’ve come across all kinds of flaming on the internet, of course. In this case I guess I was surprised at both the intensity of feeling and that so many participants think it’s perfectly fine to slur and malign the accomplished and ambitious people who have chosen to run for president.

This is one of the downsides of the internet. Because people can remain anonymous, and the person they’re talking about is distant from them, they give themselves permission and license to blast whoever they feel like blasting.

This is going to sound fogey-like, but my mother taught me years ago to never say something in a letter that I wouldn’t say to someone in person. And, if I was going to express my opinion in writing, to have the courage to sign it--that is, to own it. That’s why I sign this blog.

Question: why should anyone pay attention to someone who does not even own their opinions and ideas?

Usually, when folks get worked up in online forums, chat rooms or blog comments, the subject matter is pedestrian or arcane. In the audio world, for example, folks get heated about whether or not using different kinds of connection cables affects the sound of a stereo or home theatre.

But this is on a different level. To me, it goes way too far to unfairly label or grossly insult anyone who might be our president. After all, these are all essentially good and decent people. Call me old-fashioned. And proud of it.

All of this was an in-my-face reminder that, in the presidential campaign, those like me who have gotten deeply involved or invested can use some perspective. More about that tomorrow.

Best Informed, Worst Informed

Quote of the day:
“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
--Steven Wright

Here are a couple of thought-provoking excerpts from a recent column by the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland.

“Access to the internet gives the generations living today the choice to be the best informed, or the worst informed, human beings in the history of the world--but we will never be able to claim that we were the least informed. Celebrity, slime and crude polemics pour from the electronic faucets as easily as high-minded exegeses.”

Referring to HBO’s “The Wire”:

“This magnificent dramatization of life in Baltimore’s violent ghettoes has systematically shown the failure of the city’s police, schools, unions and politicians to deal with a modern urban crisis.

“This final season focuses on a newsroom in turmoil and the broad failure of the city’s media to reflect the corruption of the institutions they are supposed to cover. The grim results of that inattention show how power unused by the media is just as destructive as its misuse.”

Why People Behave Funny

Quote of the day:
“Life is difficult.”
--Scott Peck

Quote of the day no. 2:
"This just might be the biggest auction of anything anyone has ever held, with the potential to change the course of history for every player inn the communications-services business."
--Eric J. Savitz in today's "Barron's," referring to the FCC's upcoming auction of broadband spectrum.

If you're like me, during the holidays you are especially concerned about unusual patterns of behavior among co-workers, friends and family.

If you'd like to to find a way to label such behavior, there's an interesting Wikipedia entry called "List of Cognitive Biases." It sounds scientific, but it's actually rather entertaining to see people you know (and maybe yourself) described with such clinical precision. And, as I say, this entertainment might come as a needed relief during the holidays.

Imagine how "irrational escalation," "hyperbolic discounting" and "post-purchase rationalization" come into play during shopping.

Wikipedia itself is a fascinating phenomenon. Earlier I was doing research for an upcoming class and I read the entry on Raymond Brown, who was a Catholic priest and renowned biblical scholar. He wrote a definitive and exhaustive book on the birth stories in Matthew and Luke.

His Wikipedia entry (in which he did not participate, because he died in 1998) does not talk about his work as much as it describes the Catholic doctrine he may or may not have violated by publishing this and other books.

Like many Wikipedia entries, people writing and contributing to it have their own strong agenda. See "Confirmation Bias" in the "List of Cognitive Biases."

Thinking and Clicking

Quote of the day:
"I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them."
--Harvey Pekar

I have a package of games on my Mac that are variations of solitaire. I like solitaire because it’s fairly simple but does require some attention and thought, and it’s challenging to win. It a good brief diversion when work on something else gets frustrating.

I’ve learned that all card games played alone are called solitaire. My first thought was that the version I play would be called “classic,” but it’s not. It’s called “Klondike.” Maybe it comes from the northern latitudes.

The descriptions of the 20 or so card games in this package seems to faintly disparage Klondike, saying that “it’s difficult to win.” There are easier-to-win versions included in the package.

Maybe I’m self-flagellating, but one of the reasons I like Klondike is that it’s tough to win.

It seems to me that most of the shoot-em-up computer and video games are quite difficult to “win.” But that’s not a problem for avid gamers. In fact, it’s an advantage, because it keeps away the uncommitted masses. It’s easy to distinguish an elite group of top scorers that way.

Those of you who are hip and happening know that there is serious action going on right now with Halo 3. All across the nation, people are competing online to be in the Halo pantheon.

If I were to compete against anyone in Halo 3, they would make it to level three while I was still taking the cellophane off the box. I haven’t developed the naturally rapid see-move-click responses that a lot of folks have these days.

If you’ve watched 50-year-olds and 20-year-olds navigate the internet, I’m sure you’ve noticed the difference. Those who grew up with video games and the internet come from the land of rapid-fire point-and-click. Those in the older generation are accustomed to mulling over their choices--at least a bit.

So the sequence is more like think-point-think-click.

Google Ga-Ga

Quote of the day:
“Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people--in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly.”
--George Orwell

People are ga-ga over Google.

It is with breathless amazement that they utter “it’s $700 a share!” as if the 700 dollar share price was either unbelievable or sacred.

While the stock has performed exceptionally well since opening at $85 in August 2004, let’s not get too excited over $700. The reason the share price is that big is that the company has never split its stock.

If you want to get excited over a stock price, try Berkshire Hathaway. It’s trading at $134,875 a share. Warren Buffet takes pride in never having split the stock.

The reason for Google’s 8-fold increase in three years is that the company continues to make more money faster than most analysts expect. Simple, huh? Well, all kinds of people in the investment industry make huge salaries being wrong about Google.

Many big investors of all stripes--pension funds, institutions, ultra-wealthy Saudis and such--now consider Google a core growth holding and are thus accumulating the stock in significant amounts, especially when it shows weakness.

Some people are skittish about the value of the stock, remembering the dot-com bust seven years ago. While many public companies went out of business before earning a dime, the difference here is that Google is a real company with real earnings--really big earnings.

The journey from $85 to $700 was choppy, with long periods of stagnation and downward drifting. The only certainty is that, over the next several years, the price will go up and it will go down. I have no idea when it will do either.

I do strongly suspect the stock is heading higher over the next ten to twenty years.

How’s that for a bold and brave prediction?

Is the Internet Democratizing Journalism?

Quote of the day:
“’It was 20 years ago today,’ the Beatles sang 40 years ago today.”
--Mark Steyn

Andrew Keen is causing quite a ruckus. He’s the guy who wrote “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture.”

Even though his book immediately annoys me because its title contains a colon, he has some interesting ideas.

The common wisdom these days is that the internet is transformative and salvational. The only discussion appears to be about how salvational it is, and how the transformation might play out.

One point that is chanted by those who parrot each other rather than actually asking questions and thinking for themselves is that the internet is democratizing the flow of opinions and culture.

Keen is quick to say that he is not a Luddite, but that he is concerned that the inferior work of legions of internet amateurs is displacing professional journalists and creative people.

He echoes the founders of our government when he talks about democracy on the internet:

“Pure democracy doesn’t work. It results in chaos and the development of new elites. And the problem with the internet is that the new elites are anonymous. So you have this rise of what I would call an anonymous oligarchy on the internet.”

He also points out research done at the Yahoo Research Center that shows that when a site is “reliably authored by people where everybody knows who they are... the quality of the content is significantly higher.”

It reminds me of the exasperating moment years ago when someone on a clergy e-mail list was criticizing something I had written, and he wouldn’t say who he was.

As Keen says, “why would we go online to be insulted? Why would we go online and listen to crazy people scream at each other and not even know who they are?”

Linear and Circular Reading

Quote of the day:
“Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home.”
--Arcade Fire, from the song “Intervention.”

Yesterday’s post about the changing role of newspapers got me to thinking about the impact of seeking news online.

It’s been fashionable for a very long time to decry the decline of newspaper readership. The often-expressed concern is that this contributes to lower reading levels.

The more-often-expressed concern is that it exacerbates an already-low understanding of what is going on in our communities and the world.

But many folks are keeping up with the news, they’re just doing it in a different way. I’m not sure that overall news readership (or “consumption,” if you will) is lower than it was 20 years ago.

Having the internet available is a huge gift when I want news about something specific. A search will bring up several reliable sources. (How we know they’re reliable or not is another story--that’s why I depend on newspapers with excellent reputations to maintain.)

When I go to a newspaper site to browse, I scan the first page and click on something that interests me. From there I click on something else that interests me, and again and again. After four or five stops, I usually leave the site and go somewhere else.

I call it “directed” or “linear” reading. I find a subject or an idea that interests me and then move from that into something related and so forth. The journey is more or less in straight lines, to destinations.

Newspaper browsing is very different. I look over the headlines on each page, sometimes stopping to read more. When I get to the end of the paper--or my time is up, I stop.

It might be called “exploratory” or “circular” reading. This journey is more of a wandering, with the direction constantly shifting.

There is a certain serendipity to newspaper reading. I am constantly discovering things I didn’t know I’d be interested in. This is a good thing.

This does happen online. But it isn’t how the online experience is defined. The internet is used for searching and finding things, and then pursuing related things.

My suggestion to not lose the sense of serendipity is to sometimes deliberately wander when we’re online.

And then sing “Serendipity Do-Dah.”

Real News on the Internet

Quote of the day:
“By concentrating on what is good in people, by appealing to their idealism and their sense of justice, and by asking them to put their faith in the future, socialists put themselves at a severe disadvantage.”
--Ian McEwan

Statistic of the day:
51 percent.
--the amount more stale popcorn participants ate when it was served in a large bucket rather than a medium one. The participants had just had lunch. From a study by Dr. Brian Wansink of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab

Our local newspaper, “The San Diego Union-Tribune,” has been irritating various readers recently by cutting some features. Gone are things like tables of stock market statistics and a detailed chart of results in many less-popular local sports.

The routine of reading a newspaper is considered sacred ground by many readers. It is thus quite an affront when anything is summarily changed or, worse, discontinued.

The ongoing business reality of newspapers is pretty clear. The number of people who say they read a daily paper continues to decline, and is at its lowest level ever.

As a result, circulation is down and advertising revenue is down. Budgets must therefore be cut, and that involves shrinking the newspaper. Newspapers are thinner and smaller than ever.

Online, the story is different. Many newspapers are finding success on the internet, though the business model is quite different from the printed paper.

Three observations about online newspapers, in no particular order:

First, newspaper sites have become much, much more user-friendly and attractive over the last several years.

Second, the online news business is extremely competitive, and it is very difficult to make the kind of revenue that newspapers have come to expect.

Third, newspaper sites are the most reliable and trustworthy news sources on the internet.

This reliability and trustworthiness is a godsend in the online world. The number of pseudo-news sources on the internet is huge and grows hourly.

At the same time, our need and desire for substantial, authoritative, exhaustively-reported and well-written content also grows.

This is good news for the best newspapers, and for those of us who depend on them.

Blogger Play

Quote of the day:
“The world is proof that God is a committee.”
--Bob Stokes

I was going to write about all kinds of extremely important world-changing stuff today, but I’ve been sidetracked.

Have you seen Blogger Play yet? The folks at Blogger have enabled a live slideshow of pictures being uploaded to their site in real time. At first, it sounds like it would be profoundly uninteresting.

You just go to play.blogger.com, and the pictures and graphics just start rolling by. I have it playing in the corner of my screen as I write this.

There are pictures of a wedding, a trip to Rome, another to Greece, another to Mexico, there’s someone’s puppy, a food shot, a stock chart, an artistic shot, another dog, a comic book, an album cover, a baby, a family, a street in an unknown city, someone’s great-grandmother, Barack Obama standing next to a Superman statue, more wedding shots, a bowl of fruit, a soccer game, a backyard, three kids, several 20-somethings drunk in a bar and on and on.

It never stops. And it’s mesmerizing.

It would be easy to call this a “portrait of humanity.” But I’m afraid it’s not that, exactly. It’s a portrait of people who want to share parts of their lives and they have this means to do so.

There is an international, global flavor to the site. How about that? All these folks from all these different places want to share a piece or two of themselves.

There are lots of interesting and unusual people among us. And we seem to have a lot in common.

Where is God?

Quote of the day:
"I have had just about all I can take of myself."
--S.N. Behrman

A faithful reader passed along to me a story from the August 31, 2007 “Los Angeles Times” about Christian confession. As it has declined in the Catholic church, it has grown online via sites sponsored by Protestant mega-churches.

For a long time, confession has had a terrible reputation. Why would anyone want to admit something bad they had done? And who in their right mind would do it among other people?

While it has always been a central part of liturgy in mainline churches, many congregations had drifted away from it. The thought was that it made people feel bad, and people wouldn’t come to church if it made them feel bad.

At first look, it seems good that confession has come back in the mostly non-denominational mega-churches. But there is a rub. Actually, there are two rubs.

Nothing is wrong with inviting people to confess anonymously online. It can help them unburden themselves. For some, it may even begin the process of getting needed help. But it is an individual act, done outside of any community the confessor may be part of.

The second rub is that worship in mega-churches is almost always about feeling good and does not include a time for community confession. It’s too much of a downer and it scares people away.

The result of all this is that confession, online or otherwise, becomes just a marketing gimmick that church leaders hope will draw certain people into the community.

One doesn’t confess in a vacuum, just as one doesn’t worship in a vacuum. All of us live our lives not just in a relationship with ourselves, and the same is true for our spiritual lives. We are in this world with other people, and our lives are connected to them.

Nothing is wrong with private, personal prayer, meditation and reflection. In fact, it is a good thing. But it is not the beginning and end of our spiritual lives.

Sometimes I hear people talk as if their relationship with a vague, supernatural god means more than their relationship with the people around them. But I don’t think we can have any kind of real relationship with God outside of our relationship to our loved ones and our community.

That’s why, for confession to be meaningful, it must be done in the context of a community. And it really should always be part of weekly worship. Not as in telling the person next to you a bad thing you have done, but as in saying together that, individually and as a community, we have messed up.

And that we need each other’s help to do better.

One Whole Year!

Today is the first anniversary of “Daily Observations”! I’m proud that it’s continued uninterrupted except for a “medical leave” in February.

Thanks for sharing this year with me! In celebration of the first year, here’s a thought about the future:

“Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. This is the secret discipline. It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved away in immediate sense experience, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.”
--Ruben Alves

Googling and Gargling

Quote of the day:
“When we honestly ask ourselves which people in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
--Henri Nouwen

Google has become so significant that it is now a phenomenon. The internet has always held the promise of wide and relevant access to any information, anywhere. Over the last several years, Google has gradually been bringing that promise to reality. It is used and depended on daily by millions of people.

Google can track what each user searches for, and it can catalog and save search data, thereby creating user profiles. These profiles allow it to tailor advertisements that appear for specific users.

This ability has generated concerns about online privacy, and about the potential for theft or misuse of the data. The concerns are natural and understandable. They are the same concerns we have about misuse of any data that is kept about us--how we use our credit cards, who we talk to on the phone, what magazines we subscribe to, what organizations we belong to, and so forth.

The scale here is exponentially bigger, and that is what concerns (or scares) us. While Google will not have all data about everything, it can capture at least some of my business activities and personal interests. And do the same for billions of other people.

Although our fear of doing transactions on the internet has abated, there remains an undefined suspicion of technology. Over hundreds of years we have come to trust implicitly the process of sending slips of paper through the mail, or giving them to strangers at our local store, bank or organization. Yet many are still wildly suspicious of doing similar things on the internet.

I’m not all that worried. I admire Google’s incredibly audacious goal to be the worldwide database for all information. And I think the closer they get to that goal the easier and better all of our lives will be.

I like that it’s free, and if that means a couple of paid ads show up when I do a search, I prefer that they be ads for things that are interesting to me. Just imagine living in a time when I can answer any question by simply opening a small device on my coffee table.

MySpace As Constructive Force

Quote of the day:
“In case you’re worried about what’s going to become of the younger generation, it’s going to grow up and start worrying about the younger generation.”
--Roger Allen

Quote of the day no. 2:
“Teens are not just willy-nilly using social networking sites and making themselves vulnerable to predators.”
--Steve Jones, communications professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

MySpace is a sinister threat. That has become a mantra for many, especially parents who are terrified of predators lurking in cyberspace, and who imagine that their teen is spending hours every day online with strangers. It turns out that “sinister threat” may be a bit of an exaggeration.

First, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 45% of teens do not use social-networking sites, and 10% use them once every few weeks or less. Only 25% of teens are using the internet for social-networking every day. This is a significant
and huge number, but it is very far from “all” or “most.”

Indeed, there are reasons for teens to be careful when using MySpace. But it and other social-networking sites serve a valuable purpose, perhaps especially for those who use it a lot. Amanda Sanchez, a San Dimas 17-year-old, says, “Over the summer, MySpace was my best friend. I didn’t know anybody after I moved, so I was on there all the time.”

And teens seem to understand the need to be wary. Two-thirds of those who created MySpace profiles chose to keep them private--available only to friends.

Quiet Convergence

Quote of the day:
“Once you’ve been attacked by these animals and have them hanging out on your deck, your respect for their lives is lower than your respect for your animal’s life and your own security.”
--Larna Hartnack, a resident of Venice, California, talking about raccoons that have been frequenting her neighborhood.

Investment advice of the day:
“We can’t all beat the market, because collectively we are the market. If somebody beats the market, somebody else must lag behind. In fact, once investment costs are figured in, there are very few winners and most of us trail the market averages.”
--Jonathan Clements, "The Wall Street Journal"

Follow-up to "Tastelessness on Fox":
"We are sorry for any pain that this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson."
--Rupert Murdoch, after announcing cancelation of O.J. Simpson’s book and TV interview.

Follow-up to "Look Out! Plunging and Plummeting!":
“The feeble U.S. housing market showed more frailty when third-quarter home sales plummeted in 38 states, hitting Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California particularly hard, government data showed on Monday.”
--Lauren Villagran, AP, today.

This week it seems a significant step has been taken toward convergence of our video games, computers and home-entertainment systems.

The new Sony Playstation 3, which is being marketed as primarily a game device, also contains a top-of-the-line Blu-Ray (High-Definition) DVD player and a very powerful computer. It seems to be an all-purpose household entertainment and information system.

Whose room is it in?