Tasty!

There’s this wonderful little snippet of information saying that if you eat seven bananas in succession, that’s it: you’re likely going to drop dead. This is because bananas include potassium, which can poison you, if consumed in large quantities. But as weird as that may sound, it makes you think about trying it out, doesn’t it? As you are reading this, you are already thinking back in your head if you have eaten that many bananas in succession?

I recently saw an episode of Derren Brown which discussed the phenomena of negative suggestion that is behind those thoughts, about how a person, if told that they are not allowed to push a button, will still end up pushing it given enough time. This is especially prominent among children. If you take a box, even an empty box and take it to a room that includes a child and specifically tell them not to open the box, sooner or later they will open it.

Negative suggestion is driven by ‘curiosity kills the cat‘ phenomena, because as we are experiencing life, we interact with the environment at all times, solving problems and looking for clues to solve even more problems. However, there’s a reason why negative suggestion works far more with children, than it does with adults. You are thinking about perhaps trying to eat those seven bananas, but an average child, right now, would be on their second banana already. This is likely because we are all world conquerors by birthright, wanting to experience life and try out everything that we find interesting, especially if special attention is given to something like that. That’s why I put a fork into a socket when I was a kid, despite people telling me not to. I did not know what will happen, because I did not experience it myself. Now I know.

And most people have not thought about it this way, but as the child grows older, they face a critical point of negative suggestion during their period of becoming an adult, their teen years, which are full of negative suggestions by their parents and teachers. Do not stay out late! Don’t drink alcohol! Do not listen to that kind of music! It’s all about negative suggestion and as a result, the young teen is simply more likely to do the opposite, because at that point they are still free, living in a world where they experience life with very few duties and constraints.

As those world conquerors, we don’t want to experience life through people telling us what to do and what not to do. A life experienced is always more than a life read about and we don’t want to become aliens to our own human experience. We want to experience it ourselves: deep inside we want to both succeed and fail at the same time, because that builds character and makes us different. But as we break through that early teen period and face the life of independence, we become constrained by our work, our higher education and our duties, because failure is almost never considered beneficial in real life, it fails to pay the bills and fails to keep the food on the table.

Suddenly the negative suggestion that the everyone in the world was placing on our heads becomes something we do ourselves. And constraints happen even by our close friends or that sparkling girl or a guy you’re trying to impress, as we fear that making a mistake will make them disappointed in us. In a way, we become broken down by the world that is full of negative suggestion and begin channeling the same message – to our own children, friends and family. And to ourselves.

And then we end up sharing life, what’s left of it, with our friends and family to validate who we are, talking about smaller and insignificant details of our lives in great detail to make us feel better, while at the same time continuously finding reasons and excuses to not do the things that would otherwise be an experience. We are left with having a faint memory of our childhood freedom in moments we happen upon a simple quote, considering Ralph Waldo Emerson so wise a man, when he said that ‘always do what you are afraid to do’. But all he does is simply state the obvious.

It’s not just about our life, what it comes down to is that we are at risk of losing our heart and what drives us, while trying to protect it from life’s experiences in fear of getting hurt. But life is measured by the total sum of our emotions driven by these uncertain experiences – both good and bad. If you want to become an actor, stop talking about it and go and try. If you think it is great to try and jump out of an airplane someday, don’t postpone it, just go for it, I could even give you contacts if you’re in Estonia. If you want to find love, take the damn shields down and open your eyes. Only thing that will happen is an experience.

So I wish you a great day doing something that people tell you not to do  : )

PS! And just in case you are wondering, you can eat seven bananas and still live, according to these white-coated smart guys the number is a bit higher than seven bananas. But now that I said this, removing negative suggestion, it suddenly became less exciting, did it not?

Keyboard smileys!

I must admit that I have read far too many articles on interactivity in recent weeks. But this has given me a couple of thoughts I would like to share. I dealt with interactivity in one of my recent posts in relation to a course I am taking in university, but I am now going to tackle the other side of the coin: the less ‘academically correct’ personal side. If we consider interactivity a property of technology that attempts to mimic and support – in the long run – as closely as possible interpersonal relationships, then this can have a serious impact on how we communicate and keep in touch in general. We have only recently been introduced to such a world, but it will be our children who will grow up in this new ‘network of emotions’, where we share private details of our lives with not only friends, but also strangers and have that impact on their perceptions of us.

Throughout history mankind has sought out better and better ways to communicate with one another. Mail and couriers were the quickest means of carrying a message across large distances. With the invention of telegraphs, messages were possible to be sent across these distances much quicker. With telephones, communication became possible between households. With cellphones, communication became mobile. But the next step in this pattern, the emergence of internet and new media, has shuffled the cards a bit.

Before internet, phones and mails were just means for us to stay in touch across distances. We were still the same person behind that phone number or house address. Internet is the first ‘step’, where we take bits and pieces of ourselves and put it up there, online, almost like ‘avatars’ of who we are. Our profile pictures, the way we type in instant messengers, our online profiles, likes and dislikes, links we share and status updates are representations of who we are, without really being ‘us’. This is not new, in itself. We have accessorized our lives ever since the beginning of mankind: what we wear, what cars we drive, where we live are all representations of who we are and what we like. But the difference between this and the concept of ‘online profile’ is that online, there is no person next to it. When you view someones online profile, they are not in the room with you at the same time, while in the other example they would be driving their car or making pasta in the kitchen, while you are browsing through their bookshelf.

This creates an important distinction between the two and it creates something similar to young people falling in love with movie stars, when in fact they merely like what they are represented as, in movies or through media. With internet, we have suddenly become our own public relations representatives. And that in itself is a powerful, if scary thought. We love having this option as much as we love the freedom of buying our own clothes or designing our bedroom. By putting bits of ourselves online, by sharing what we are about, what we like and dislike, we become part of this very same network of emotions.

That in itself can become a problem. Everyone, who has never actually met you, will rely on your online-self to have their first impression of you. In psychology, it is said that first impressions are formed within 90 seconds of meeting a new person and that to change something that was established during the first impression, can take a very long time. This makes online profiles very dangerous and most known examples of this include people who have not gotten a job thanks to the potential employer scrutinizing their online profile before meeting them. But more importantly, this can impact personal relationships just as well. Even if we’d like to believe that we are this single, original being, we are actually different people to everyone we know in our lives.

I will bring a personal example here. Handful of years ago I met this great person online first, before actually meeting them in real life. Attractiveness of their online profile, paired with hours long intimate instant messaging way into the late night, painted this very specific picture in my head about who they are, what they like and don’t like, what they fear and hope for. This is the stuff soulmates are made of. I knew that the longer this was kept online, the more damage it can cause once the two people actually meet, despite being entirely honest, so we decided to meet only a few days later. No harm done, right?

Quite incorrect, but not in the way you think. We got along very, very well when we met. The awkwardness of actually meeting the other person for the first time, who you already know intimately, passed quickly. None of the things established online had vanished, we still got along just as well and discussed intimate details of our lives in a shared comfort, without having an online wall between us. But as few days passed, it became evident that we were still trying to be our online-selves and in real life, there is so much more to about who we are. Things broke apart just as quickly after that.

This would never have happened had we actually met in real life conditions first, becoming connected between who we are as people, not as avatars. The only way is to place ourselves before our avatars, similarly to how we come before our cars, homes and clothes. None of the accessories of our lives can play a huge role in who we are, otherwise we become merely shallow, materialistic lost souls who are only able to define ourselves by the things we have in our lives, not by people we have in our lives. Our Facebook friend count never says how many actual friends we have, who we trust and call in the middle of a night when we get in trouble or to whom we call on their birthday. Or who calls us, on ours.

The concept of ‘tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who are’ is invalid online.

Sad part is that this shallow world that exists online is only growing in importance and we do not consider these risks until something negative happens. More and more people get to know us through our online profiles first. My websites Google Analytics shows that in the last year, more than a hundred people have arrived on my website by searching for my name first, in Google. This is a number a lot higher than the year before. Likely just as many, if not more, have arrived on my other online profiles the same way. In fact, I am going to get a few more hits now, as you are likely going to google my name yourself, to save you the trouble, let me do it for you here.

As a result, I still find it strangely uncomforting if a person, I have recently met, quotes something I have said online or comments on something I have posted on the web. While I am completely aware that I myself have made something public for strangers to see, it does not really hit me until it plays part in my relationship with another person in some – even if insignificant – way. This means that in real life, I would still like to have control over what information I share and what information I do not share, but I never think about it when posting something online. What happens is that when we are online, we build this little network of ours based on our expected audience. In Facebook that is our friends, in online discussion forums that is the specific community that participates in these forums, in our online art galleries the audience is our peers and fans. But we often do not consider that our shared information within these domains can cross borders to unexpected effects.

Let me bring an example. Couple of years ago I helped a girl get rid of an ‘online stalker’. She had shared numerous private details about her life, often emotionally, in an online community and after a while another member of the community became interested in her. Problem was that she had shared her username across number of websites and forums and the stalker got access to a large amount of information about the girl that she would not have otherwise shared with the community. This ranged from photos to the city she lived in as well as the address to the place in Toronto where she washed her clothes at, based on feedback comments on their website. So one day the stalker had left flowers for her in the place, with a poem, when she had blocked him from chat and did not reply to his private messages. The police were not interested in helping her as ‘no law was broken’, so the only thing I helped her to end up doing was to change as much as possible about her online identity and behavior. But despite privacy settings of Facebook allowing for much better control today, she does not even have a Facebook account anymore.

Of all things internet and technology have done for us, at times it helps to think about implications of putting pieces of ourselves online, before sharing happily with others in this network of emotions of ours, which we think we have control over. In many cases, our online footprints, pictures, emotions, forum posts and comments will stay there for very many years. And these very same pieces will represent who we are to very many people who might be interested in us in the future, creating first impressions that we have no control over. Even if you are not the same person anymore.

I hope that our experiences, our growing-pains, within this network of emotions are enough for us to help the next generations grow up in a safer world, because it just might be a little bit too late for us.

Shh!

This is a post written while keeping in mind the students at Tallinn University, but the same applies to any and every user of public WiFi. The original article that is being referred to is available here. It deals with a Firefox extension that can be used to listen in on public WiFi network communication.

The following is a must read, especially since the students use public WiFi in Tallinn University quite a bit. Programs have existed for the following for many years, but the fact that it is now available as a simple extension, is very problematic. In short, if you ever use a public unsecured WiFi, then you are in danger of your privacy being compromised just by another user in the same network, using a web browser with a small extension.

The information they can access is basically everything that you send across the internet that does not use a secure channel. By ‘sending’, I mean every URL you enter in your browser URL bar and every field you fill and submit on a website, such as private message content or login details. If a website, that you are using, does not have ‘https://’ in the address bar, this means that the communication is wide open. In terms of log-in details, one of the exceptions is Facebook, which uses secure authentication. But this only protects you from your login details from being stolen, as Facebook can still be used without ‘https://’. Your URL bar of Facebook displays ‘http://’ instead of ‘https://’ right?

Not only that, but they can also hijack your sessions and basically get access to everything you have access to while logged in. This means that they can hijack your session that is being used to keep you logged in to Twitter or Facebook or any other online web service and use all the features there, from private messages to friends lists and private notes. Yes, this means that it acts as if you gave your computer to someone else, especially a stranger, without logging out first.

This problem includes more or less every social network out there.

So what you can do to protect your privacy?

• Any website, that can be used using a secure ‘https://’ channel, should be used with that channel. Most banks, for example, require the use of this channel and thus are not compromised. Only drawback is that it is somewhat slower than regular ‘http://’.
• Log-out before turning off the computer or when you fear your account has been compromised. By logging out you make sure that even if your session has been hijacked, that it will not be able to continue using your account.
• If you use public WiFi, do not visit websites without ‘https://’ that deal with your sensitive information. Please note that this also includes homes or condominiums with shared internet.
• A good idea is to not use that same favorite password of yours everywhere. Even if one password is snatched, make sure this does not compromise your entire online social experience.

Think of it this way, since your information has to be transmitted from your computer to the internet, then you yourself only really have control over your own computer. But your secure information has to be transmitted from that ‘secure’ location, to the web.

Why isn’t ‘https://’ far more common? This is because it’s a hassle to implement in the scope of most websites. While any website can run in ‘https://’ on a hosting service that supports it, it actually requires a licensed certification without ‘warning’ the user when visiting the website with a browser. This is kind-of ironic, considering that ‘http://’ is far more unsecure than unlicensed ‘https://’.

Now, I know that some of you think this is something ‘new’, it has to be or you would already know about it, right? It actually is not. It is very likely that your company network administrators already have access to this information in a moments notice. What has changed is that it has been made so easy, that even you could simply download an extension to your web browser and cause havoc to other users sharing the same WiFi.

This was a bit long, but if it made you think twice about your privacy, the task is accomplished.

A world within a world

This post is inspired by a video shared with me by a friend and an ex-colleague which brings attention to the fact that as we get surrounded more and more by technology, we often miss the magic of life, things that are there, with us, at arms length, yet what we may never notice by being ‘connected’ to online world with our handheld devices or computers in general.

Will our children not know the smell of new books?

Will our children never develop a crush with someone whose online profile they have not glanced at before?

I am addicted to technology. I am online 24/7 with my smartphone, I do not watch television at all – preferring movies and series suitable to my own pace with online viewing or DVDs – and I use an e-reader for books. I am connected to anyone I consider important in my life at all times with no regards to distances and I get all my news through RSS feeds I know I am interested in, never getting irrelevant content to waste my time. I never have to learn the street addresses, for my GPS will always show me the right way. I study in a world where the amount of knowledge is less important than the ability to seek knowledge out. In ten to twenty years time, I am sure I will be more and more connected, living a life surrounded by this ‘ubicomp’ I wrote about couple of blog posts ago. A beautiful world that science fiction writers have been writing about for years, it really is a dream realized.

But this video touched me and made me think. I have not been able to shake this topic off my mind and my fingers have been itching since the moment I viewed it, to write up some thoughts about it. We can consider ourselves early adopters in this New Media driven world. Having no one to learn from, we are often blinded by our fascination of technology without realizing how it might make us think different, how it might change what is still deeply rooted in our nature. I cannot help but think that if it were natural – this advancement towards technology driven and surrounded world – then this video should not raise the questions that it does? Then why the goosebumps in the moment a father notices his child drawing?

Online world moves at a different pace compared to our day to day, offline world. I think that this causes a conflict, making us live in an illusion that we are more socially active. Commenting on a number of Facebook status updates within five minutes is cheaper and less time consuming than calling a friend or asking them out for a dinner, discussing the same topic. Or is it like the people who take cameras to parties, recording the fun instead of experiencing it themselves? Feeling involved, while distant.

Our time-consuming lives become secondary against such a competition, for we prioritize in activities of quick and impulsive emotions with just as quick and impulsive rewards. Just like how we like to procrastinate all of our more time-consuming tasks, we also postpone relationships and experiences that are more time consuming. You can visit a friend later in the week, but you have to comment on that hilarious cat video someone just uploaded to YouTube right away. But one day your friend might not be there, waiting for you, anymore.

Might this mean that we will start relationships, more and more, online instead? By believing those avatars that are online social network profiles? By looking at statistics, it seems that as technology becomes a larger part of our lives, we let it bleed over to all other aspects of our lives as well, one by one, including relationships.

There are websites which already aim to do exactly that. One of the more ingenious ones is okcupid, which matches people simply based on questions they answer. Created by a group of smart developers, the website is driven by fascinating formulas to find out if and how much you share in common with another person, based on series of questions. This makes the whole social life look like it can be succeeded at by studying basic math. But such an interactive social experience makes one assumption that is false in the very core: it assumes that a profile represents who a person actually is. But this is incorrect, even if the person attempts to be entirely honest.

This is because who we think we are is never whom others will see us as, no matter how hard we try. To go further than that, other people also see you partly how they would like to see you, instead of who you actually are. To find a true, honest common ground, you need time and you need shared experiences. And these two things are becoming less and less common each day thanks to technology. We think that a shared experience is both commenting on the same movie or clicking a ‘Like’ button in Facebook.

But I do not think that there is no hope. I think that at times, you simply have to stop and look around for a moment and make sure the love of your life is not randomly passing you by. Or pick up and make a call to your friend, instead of posting something cryptic on their wall or inbox in the social network you share. I still strongly believe that magic of technology is good for our lives. We just have to be in control of technology and not have it control us by the time we close our eyes and go to sleep.

This is because a smile is so much warmer than a smiley.

The Social Network

Please note that this is not review of the movie, but an opinion piece about its topics. For a review, I recommend a review from one of my most trusted reviewers, Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times.

David Fincher’s ‘The Social Network’ really is more of a movie about making enemies, than making those 500 million friends. But what the trailer depicts is not what the movie is really about. After seeing the trailer, I expected something entirely different. I expected what I guess Mark Zuckerberg  – one of the creators of The Facebook – expected, a movie that paints him as a monster. Instead it was a movie about our dreams, hopes and aspirations and how, at times, we exploit, manipulate and so completely cause self-conflict because of those things we like and want to achieve. The older generation will never understand and we can only hope that our experiences will be able to serve our children better. No one was holding our hand when the internet took over the world.

The movie focuses primarily on relationships and on the business side of things, it is intertwined with internet and development of applications for the internet. I loved the subtle nuances about the role that software developers play in this world and how it so strongly conflicts with the way your traditional business used to work. By creating these castles in the air, from air, a developer is in a unique position that no other job has shared in the history of the world. There are no rules to follow, you simply need a good idea and an even better execution. A symbiosis of art and science. What the movie displays very well is that web business does not even require huge investments and resources to become a success: merely couple of thousand of dollars and a passionate codewriter were needed to push things off to a running start. Even some of the smarter business strategies were covered, which explain why Facebook did not run into problems that Friendster did (which was the first very popular Facebook-style social network).

These years media still wonders if Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook or not. David Fincher, being a smart director that he is, never lets that take over the role of characters in the movie. In fact, it does not even answer the question for the viewer. But in all honesty, this was not what the movie was about, it simply tied everything and everyone neatly together.

It helps that the movie takes the perspective of the most known flawed hero of this generation to carry what otherwise might end up being a cluttered movie. Zuckerberg found his creative stride during the years this so-called Web 2.0 (or simply Social Web) was catching on. Smart – but not popular. Ambitious – but not charming. He was not driven by clichèd motivations of common biographical movies, such as father issues or chase for perfection or becoming better than your competition. He wanted to become accepted and he wanted to prove to people that hurt him – and tragically himself – that making something great and popular can become something he can excuse his shortcomings with. Instead of fixing his problems, he was looking for ways to mask and excuse them.

‘I wish I was special,’ say the lyrics of the song in the trailer. So did Mark Zuckerberg and so do all of us.

New York City

It has been quite a while since I posted here last time, so I fear I have lost many of my readers. In relation to change of focus, I have also removed a large number of my older posts here in order to clear things up for what will be happening next.

So what has happened since I posted here last? I was in New York couple of weeks ago, I have put my open source content management system OriginNode on indefinite hold and I have re-entered Tallinn University and started with my Master’s degree studies, majoring in Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments. As a result, my readership is bound to get a small bump thanks to my fellow peers in the university and the fact that I am supposed to publish a number of essays and articles, related to my studies, right here.

I am also developing an innovative social collaboration and project management solution called NixyNet, which I intend to get somewhere together with the help of my studies. It is still unclear what my Master’s Thesis will involve in relation to the project, but when taking into account the fact that that the system involves complicated communication and data synchronization technologies, then there are more options than I can count on my fingers.

So to sum things up, I wish to all of my fellow readers and peers a wonderful year!

-K