We humans are limited only by our imaginations. Or are we? Lord Rees reckons limitations of human brain mean we may never understand the secrets of universe — human evolution may make fools of all of us…

There are those amongst us who are gifted with prodigious mental faculties that far exceed those of normal human beings. No, I’m not talking about childhood prodigies’ who waltz through university before the age of ten. No, I’m talking about an even smaller minority of people, those who often struggle or even find impossible the task of holding down a conversation, who are challenged and left vexed by simple numeracy and are often in long-term care — here, I’m talking about prodigious savants.

These are people, truly rare individuals, who have quite exceptional talents in mathematics, art and music. Such are their talents, they are often the subject of intense scrutiny by cognitive scientists and neurologists the world over. However, their condition is poorly understood.

Imagine, if either you will or even can, a person who can multiply huge prime numbers and recite Pi to tens of thousands of places, or a person who can listen to a single composition of music once and then play it back note perfectly, or a person who after but a single glimpse of a face, landscape or a building can sketch or paint a perfect likeness. However, often their gifts are enshrouded in a troubled in mind, not clear or free to express cogent thoughts or articulate questions of their own.

Quite aside from the oft-associated crippling mental (and subsequent behavioral) shortcomings, they hint at something truly phenomenal and beg the obvious question: what if a “normal” person had their abilities? This is not an unreasonable question, nor is it a question that will rest long without an answer. This I am sure of.

Lord Rees is not wrong, in so far as the present generation of the human race. As a species, we are on the cusp of something remarkable. Right now, we have about us the rules and laws of nature, but what we lack is not a further understanding of mathematics, but a deeper sense of intuition. We stare into the ink black of the universe and recoil at the sight of the monumental cosmological conundrums that we wrestle with and lament their complexity.

We have seen patterns of breathtaking simplicity emerge from numbers, such as the Mandelbrot set, the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio. We have marveled at our achievements yet still we do not fully understand. But someone will. The human brain is evolving.

They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. This may be more true than the oft-said phrase might hint at. Consider the greatest minds in the arts and sciences, many of them have been troubled, withdrawn and eccentric. Perhaps we’re seeing the faltering hand of mother nature as she attempts to extend our mental mechanisms, trying to balance social skills and towering intellect, with prodigious savants being the most extreme example.

Right now, our minds are subject to a sensorial torrent of information and our minds are being conditioned to manage that ebb and flow of information with greater proficiency and efficiency. Are our children not the answer to our problems? We should expect the human brain to adapt further. We should also expect soon that young person to ask questions of the impossibly complex firmament and then set about answering them.

Of the the more than six billion people alive right now, out there somewhere is that person waiting to happen. And when they do, they and those like them will usher in a new era in human evolution — their answers to our questions will change everything for everyone…

Recommended reading

• Humans are a greater threat to life on earth than any alien race
• The myth of human consciousness and accidental AI
• DNA hardwired into the universe
• Humans are not unique

Look around you — people with gadgets. Many of them sporting an Apple logo. If you owned a Microsoft gadget, would you even know, or even care? And therein lines the digital divide between Apple and Microsoft — the former is all about people and latter is all about numbers…

Technology pundits come in two flavours; those who have some clue and those that don’t. It’s 2010 and we still have comments like:

“Apple’s iPad is sure to face stiff competition from the soon-to-hit onslaught of Android-based tablets…”

Yes, in exactly the same way the entire PC industry is hot on the on the slow heals of that expensive boutique PC company Apple. That wasn’t even true when Apple really only did PCs, but now they’re a consumer electronics company.

In essence, Apple are about people and Microsoft are all about numbers. And as a testimony to Microsoft, that’s always been the case. In the past, it didn’t matter that their software was crap because no one could get at the air supply to breathe life into their own businesses — Microsoft just stood there with a baleful grin on their faces, with a foot on the hose.

Steve Ballmer is a perfect example of how truly out of touch the Microsoft animal is. Sure, they have the successful Xbox and the up-coming Natal, but these are triumphs in spite of Microsoft and not because of them. Stories of their interdepartmental in fighting are folk lore.

Ballmer is so badly out of touch, he, like the tech’ pundits just can’t see what’s in front of them, not even when the arrogant and dictatorial Steve Jobs paints a very clear picture of a bleak future for the PC as a device: “PCs are going to be like trucks.” To be only used by “one out of ‘x’ people”.

Ballmer fired back. OK, first off, he shouldn’t have even bitten, but he’s an idiot, so you can expect that. Instead of talking up Microsoft, he instead gets drawn into a defensive posture and then dissin’ the iPad. To what end? Who the hell knows. Jobs presses the button and Ballmer dances. Stupid.

“I think there will exist a general purpose device that does everything you want, because I don’t think the whole world’s going to be able to afford five devices per person,” Ballmer said.

Ballmer makes two claims and ends up being wrong on all three. No, I’ve not lost my ability to count, but Ballmer’s doesn’t have the ability of foresight, which Jobs does. Why? Apple are about people and Microsoft are about numbers.

Firstly, I don’t have PC anymore. It’s too much hassle having one around the house when for a little more, you get mobility thrown in. That’s not just my thinking, it’s the thinking of a ton more people who want something that fits in a pocket that’ll let them do the web / email thing while out and about.

Secondly, while Jobs would surely love for lots of people to keep buying their products, I find myself yet again pulling people back years in time to remind them of a comparison Jobs made of Apple to BMW. Not everyone owns a BMW, nor do you hear people making endless criticisms of BMW because they don’t sell as many cars as Ford. There’s a really good reason for this, people.

And thirdly, Apple won’t (and currently aren’t) the only gadget manufacturer in town. So not every one of your five gadgets per person will have an Apple logo on it. You can’t exactly drag your PC into a nightclub to use the webcam just to film some of your friends, now can you? That’s why we have video cameras on our mobile phones. A poor example, perhaps. But I’m sure you can fill in the rest.

Ballmer is probably partially sighted in so far as the depth of his perception; he has to believe that Microsoft’s business model will persist. The problem for Microsoft is, they’re just not at the centre of things any more. Yes, they have a mobile OS, but as a percentage of the mobile operating system market, Microsoft is losing ground to Apple and Google’s Android, even shrinking back as of last year.

And since the future is all about the mobile OS and consumer electronics, this does not bode well for Microsoft at all. Remember the Zune? Do you even remember the Kin? They launched that thing only a few months ago! Microsoft totally undermine their own people, crushing the life out of the innovative men and women who could — if nurtured and left to their own devices (literally), instead of having their ideas and idealism sucked out into spreadsheets and customer clinics —easily move Microsoft forward.

Devices? Some of you may recall Courier, a truly innovative stab at a tablet device that actually didn’t look, feel and work like laminated dog shit. Where’s that now? Gone. It really is anyone’s guess why they killed it, but I’m willing to bet my pound / dollar / yen / euro to your penny that some heavy-weight department went whining to some executive to execute the device for some insubstantial and fabulously stupid reason, as has been the case many a time in the past.

Apple recently breezed passed Microsoft in market capitalization. OK, market cap’ is a little like fantasy numbers, but there’s enough seriously-minded financial people taking this indicator seriously.

Innovation, true innovation, begins and ends with people. Microsoft have innovative people, but they’re trodden under foot by the sales men and women eyeing ever more market share. Apple on the other hand are squeezing every last ounce of creativity out of their army of innovators. Both want market share, but only understands the power of people…

Aliens, intent on conquering planet Earth! Or are they? The stuff of science fiction recently got a sheen of dignity from Professor Stephen Hawking as he discusses the perils of peering into space, with an out-stretched hand. But if those aliens have walked any path similar to our own, history and humility will halt human hostility dead in its tracks…

We live. We learn. Now as a civilization, we do so collectively and on a colossal scale. Despite short-sighted nationalism, political intransigence and the insanity of religion, we are gradually working towards erasing the errors of our past and halting the ones we are making right now.

Although we have yet to fully come to terms with the greater problems our species has created for itself (those being our over abundance as well as our take-for-granted attitude towards the environment, and the most practical way of dealing with these issues), we are making progress. We now recognize our mistakes.

And before we can consider the practical problems of venturing forth into space, we must finally set aside our racial and political differences, and work together as never before. Such progress is many decades away. And the world we will see at that time will be vastly different to the one we know now.

We will have reconciled our indifferent attitudes towards our planet and aligned our wants with the needs of the Earth and her many other children, those other species we are inextricably related to.

Be in no doubt, this will happen. Our greatest story has yet to be told.

And as sure as the Earth would be a different, cleaner and richer place for fewer of man’s offspring, our mindset and our goals will have changed, too. We will not be marching forth into the black abyss of the greater universe with a mind to set place flags in dust amidst colourless skies, laying claim to worlds that are no more ours than the Moon or the Earth, but to learn and ensure the survival of our kind and others by finding new worlds to live on.

We will have evolved in ways that we only see in science fiction, those lofty ideas of idealists will be a reality for our grandchildren and their children. Those first footfalls onto alien worlds will come from people with eyes wide open, as wide as their minds and their hearts history and humility being their teachers.

The angry alien assumption

Speaking of sci-fi, why do we imagine alien races to be undesirable, angry and all-conquering? We do so because it is always easier to assume the same of others as we expect of ourselves.

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the American Indians.”

Which is the view of eminent Professor Stephen Hawking, discussing the possibility of sentient alien life. However, I don’t agree with his sweeping assumptions here. As smart as he is, Stephen Hawking’s thoughts are written in painfully straight lines, when in reality, the future is a very curly thing indeed.

He’s assumed that they, like us, will have gone through a period where one or more of their civilizations experienced rapid growth, perhaps at the expense of all others. That I do not contest. But then he’s skipped the part where they, like us, absolutely would have to make that transition to something greater than what they were, if they are to make the greatest voyages of their entire history, out into space.

After all, it was Stephen Hawking himself who speculated that we may be at a crucial point in our evolution where our next decisions could precipitate a sequence of events that leads to our own extinction. That I do not contest and in fact agree with. My belief is, this transitional period is either the making or the breaking of a species. What emerges at the other side is one that has learned from and paid the price of their relatively rapid growth.

Those of you who are regulars here will recall my two part exploration of the possibility of alien life. You may also recall my thoughts in the second installment on the number of life-bearing planets compared to the number of planets playing host to intelligent life.

To assume that a species would venture forth with the same hostility and indifference to life they had centuries previously simply doesn’t make any sense. They, like us would have gotten to a point where they realized that their own existence was imperiled as their natural resources dwindled. A change of heart and mind would be thrust upon them for them to embrace or else expire, simultaneously choking on their own filth and starving to death.

A wealth of resources beyond Earth

With that in mind, why on Earth would any such alien race come here? Knowing of their own veracious appetite for natural resources, they would know only too well that a civilization of our size would have used a substantial portion of our own resources, leaving them with very little to fight us for.

Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 billion tons. Titan, one of the moons of Jupiter has on its surface many dozens of lakes filled not with water or even water in the form of ice, but of liquid methane and ethane, each of which individually having at least as much energy as our own proven reserves.

Rich in iron, nickel and water ice, the Oort Cloud, a truly immense loosely spherical mass of pre-planetary material surrounding the solar system is estimated to contain as much material as all the planets and the Sun itself combined. And that doesn’t take into account the vast Kuiper Belt, or the asteroid belt beyond Mars.

Any sufficiently advanced species would have no problem scavenging from similar moons and the structures of other planetary systems, with little or no need to venture further in, impeding the growth and stymying the development of any lesser species like the human race.

If you’re an ardent reader, then more recently, you will have read my thoughts on life and how it may well be the reason the universe itself exists. Why should our notions on the nature of the universe differ so greatly from those of other intelligent species?

As we acquire greater and more detailed knowledge of the universe, we remove more and more of the indistinct mysteries and interpretive ideas, such as the manifold devicive vagaries of religion and replace them with a more finite and absolute understanding (quantum theory not withstanding), and it is this refined understanding that we will share with those other species.

Of course, this being such an unimaginably vast universe, it is entirely possible that all possibilities exist in unison. However, if we assume the worst of those that have worked so hard to make that leap into space, what do we say about ourselves and our own ambitions and agendas?

If we are at least as predatory as those aliens Stephen Hawking’s forewarns us of, an untimely end to our tenure on Earth might be the saviour of those with of less hostile intent lying deep within the limitless reaches of space…

They say we are judged by the quality of our enemies. Maybe so. But given the gauntlet thrown down by Facebook at their F8 conference yesterday, if Google pick up where they left off, we’ll be judged by the quality of everyone else in our social graph…

Google are a data company. We all know that. But they’re also a company with discrete algorithms by which they divide up, sort, collate, filter and organize just about any kind of thing you can describe and place on a web page. Facebook on the other hand are like the wiring in an office block that just became the standard for every other office block, house, downtown apartment and every other building in the world. Or that’s what they’re hoping to be, anyway.

Google will have been watching yesterday’s proceedings very closely, especially so given Microsoft’s 5% share in Facebook bubbling to the surface in the form of Docs, their own do-all on-line productivity suite, not to be confused with their namesake Google Docs.

So what can we expect from Google? Well, after many years of trying and failing to crack social nut, they’ve managed to find the first clue (and their own arse with both hands, presumably) with their Buzz service, so they now think they’re a social company.

I’ve said this before, but I really don’t think Google even need to chase down the social web. It’s not their strength, it’s certainly not core to what they do and they have other opportunities open to them.

The web is changing rapidly and between social media and social networking, Google’s own PageRank — that fabled algorithm of theirs that quantifies the value of each and every web page on the web — is now under enormous pressure, given that people are, in increasing numbers, finding things via other means.

But if what Facebook is proposing offers a glimpse into the future, then we could expect Google to create a very different kind of algorithm, one that quantifies, you, me everyone else besides.

We are surrounded by digital islands, adrift in oceans of data. For the first time in history, populations of people, dwarfing entire countries, exist on the web. Facebook has a population of 500 million, which is larger than the United States of America.

These citadels, tethered to silos of data have broader needs, often not served by Facebook. And then there are the growing number of businesses arriving, whose needs are even more exacting. We all know about the various scams at work on Facebook and perhaps they aren’t the most responsive to such things. But what if there was a way to measure the authenticity of person, to know if they were real, fake or just another scam artist?

PeopleRank — personal brand management by another name

Facebook want to connect people, which is fine. Google will want to rank them, which has some unusual possibilities. Take for example an enormously successful recent article over on Octane about the investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority into Chris Cardell and his dubious newspaper cutting “scam”.

In a future where PeopleRank exists, given the huge surge in search traffic I experienced for “Chris Cardell scam” and similar, Google would be sifting through articles like mine to determine factors such as the:

• trust in me, Wayne Smallman;
• quality of my article;
• authenticity of Octane;
• validity of the claim;
• number, quality, authenticity, and validity of any counterclaims.

And then there’s the small matter of all those social networks and social media websites that have the undesirable effect of undermining Google’s search products. Facebook would love to have everyone using their profiles to sign in with. And since Facebook is moving over to OAuth for their user authentication, that opens up and even wider swath of the web. So while Facebook standardize the wiring and the plumbing for the big houses, Google busy themselves monitoring the ebb and flow of data pertaining to each and everyone of us, ranking us as we go along.

If you consider the huge amount of interest in things like personal branding and brand management, where people attempt to curate and consolidate their activities on the web, those who started early would take a huge lead.

Stuart MacLennan, Labour candidate for Moray would have been a more high profile recipient of some very unwanted calibration of Google’s PeopleRank, had it been around recently, given one of his many crass, stupid and insulting comments on Twitter:

“God this fairtrade, organic banana is shit. Can I have a slave-grown, chemically enhanced, genetically modified one please?”

That kind of public act of abject social networking stupidity would have had him sorted and filtered in short order, of that there is no doubt. But it does also raise the question of what kind of indiscretions we’d be allowed to get away with. The odd few expletives? A mild racially indifferent joke? A sexually crass comment? And then there’s the cultural enormity of one seemingly glib comment causing outrage in the Middle East, or Asia.

I can see you, sat there, shaking your heads. Well think again — Google are already collating people like you with their Google Profiles product, while Gmail aggregates the things you’re most interested in and sorts the people you’re connected to. So somewhere inside Google, PeopleRank already exists…

All of the buzz about Google Wave has turned to a ripple since Google Buzz made a big splash in the same social pool. What gives? An internal strategy of innovation that looks for all the world like endemic mismanagement…

As much admiration as I had for Google Wave, by the current glacial rate of innovation and feature additions, we ought to have an export as PDF option by the time man walks on the Martian surface in a couple of decades or so.

Don’t get me wrong, Wave is a solid collaborative word processor for business, and still has merits. However, if you take the aforementioned current slow developmental cycle and couple that with an apparent lack of focus within Google, the future of Wave could be in doubt. Sort of.

Google’s desire to out innovate everyone could well be their undoing. At the heart of this culture of innovation is the 80-20 rule, where staff are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time pursuing pet projects, some of which have made their way into Google Labs.

Now, you might think this is great! And to some extent it is. But then you start to use Google’s many applications and become frustrated and begin to ask yourself why related applications don’t work more closely together. And the reasons for this are manifold. As an example, as far back as 2007, I was asking why Google FeedBurner, Analytics and Webmaster Tools aren’t combined into one product.

First of all, there’s no underlying, unified way in which the applications can communicate with each other. And even if they could, because they’re often not written in a common programming language (a mixture of C++, PHP, Java etc), there’s no unified data format, or even a common API.

Meanwhile, we all sit frustrated, wondering why Google’s stuff doesn’t just work like Apple’s stuff does.

So what of Wave? Well, even if the be-suited gentlemen and women in the upper echelons do actually come to a decision within the astrological age of Aquarius, it’s unlikely we’ll be biding a farewell to Wave. After all, they’d just silly, wouldn’t they? Look at the amount buzz and fanfare we saw when Wave went into the wild. No, it’s more likely that Wave would wind up weaving it’s way into the inner workings, somewhere else, way lower down.

Ah, that word again. Buzz. I must confess, I know nothing about Buzz because I don’t use Gmail. Why don’t I use Gmail? Because I have a perfectly reliable email service thank you very much! What little I do know is that Buzz has eclipsed Wave in the popularity stakes.

But let’s put this in some kind of perspective; they’re not even remotely competitive with one another. Some have made the daft statement that Buzz will replace Wave. Quite what they were drinking / smoking / injecting at the time is anyone’s guess.

What we see of Wave is, in many ways, superficial. Underneath the slick interface lies a formidable architecture that allows for some exceptionally sophisticated software sleight of hand. Take for example the way in which two or more people can write into the same document. Looks simple, but the mechanics are very impressive indeed. And if Wave was all washed up, we’d expect to see the Buzz beachcombers picking over the pieces…

The time of arrogant patriotism, harking back to a time of cold wars in low earth orbit, and an ego-centric (and a US-centric) view of the universe is long gone. Jupiter and the moons of Europa and Ganymede beckon. There’s serious science to be done, staring an international cast…

Oceans inside Europa and Ganymede

Out there, in the Jovian system, Europa and Ganymede beckon with a wanton glow in the cold ink black of space Two moons that hold deep below their treacherous cold surfaces great promise. A promise of life, or at the very least, a hint of a life less ordinary. That said, life is far from ordinary here on Earth.

Europa is of special interest because deep under the crushing, irradiated mass of shifting ices an unfathomable, vast ocean lays waiting. Water has unusual properties, one of which is to shield against the deadening, clasping fingers of radiation reaching out from Jupiter’s colossal magnetosphere.

Life, by Jove

Under all of that ice, in those imagined pitch black waters, down in the impenetrable ocean depths, there’s a surface, perhaps much like that of our Earth. And at that ocean floor, we can imagine “deep sea smokers”, those mineralized columns, belching forth a superheated soup of carbon-rich chemicals. The same conditions that allow for life to exist in the absence of light and the presence of chemicals alone — not photosynthetic life, but chemosynthetic.

The prospect of there being alien life out there, within the close confines our own solar system is just too tempting an offer to pass up. Titan hints at an early Earth, one shrouded in as much mystery as it is clouds of combustible gases.

And that prospect became massively more credible recently when NASA discovered life 189 metres below Antarctic ice, at depth, under such conditions and at a place on Earth few would have imagined life to persist, let alone thrive.

There is much science to be done, to help answer the greatest question of them all: “Are we alone in the universe?” We might not have a conclusive answer to that question in our lifetimes, but we have the means to mount a creditable and credible case. However, politics and pride hanker for pride of place. But they are not welcome.

A new Moon shot is lunacy

“I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership … to seek knowledge. Curiosity’s the essence of human existence.”

So says Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13. America has a responsibility to get its house in order, and revisiting the Moon for the sake of pride is as naive as it is foolish.

At a time of planet-sized debts, trade deficit black holes and a decentralization of knowledge, shifting away from those familiar orbits of the US and Britain, the go-it-alone unilateralism of the past is no longer viable, with the International Space Station being the physical embodiment of that change in policy.

And to claim that a manned mission to the Moon will “never happen again” is just as naive as it is scare-mongering. As much respect as I have for these guys and what they achieved, I have to question the motives of Lovell and Cernan here. These comments are imprecise and, to me at least, their timing hints at political motivations.

The US doesn’t have a technological leadership anymore. And as for a moral leadership, well, stand up the nation that claims to be the bastion of morality and towering edifice of ethics and I’ll show you a land of liars.

As a destination, our Moon may well as be a distant star because it’s not on the scientific radar…

Recommended reading

• Q&A: Europa and Jupiter mission
• Obama Nasa plans ‘catastrophic’ say Moon astronauts
• NASA discovers life hidden 600 feet below Antarctic ice
• Serious Science: is there alien life in the universe?
• Water worlds are oceans apart

Town authorities in the Ontario city of Windsor, Canada recently successfully petitioned Google to re-shoot parts of their city because they didn’t like what people were seeing. Do the Windsor authorities have a point, or are they in for a virtual reality check? Either way, if you’re in PR, the whole remit of your profession just widened by the width, depth and breadth of the world wide web…

So what’s so bad that the townsfolk of Windsor want Google to re-shoot their city streets?

“Within days of adding the 3-D photographic perspective to local streets for internet users around the globe wanting to browse what 130 Canadian cities and towns have to offer, Google Canada agreed to remove a scene of crime tape and bloodied bandages outside west-end strip club Leopard’s Lounge and Broil.”

“That’s not Windsor.” Said councilor Ron Jones. It most certainly was for 24-year-old Nicholas Ingram, who was fatally stabbed outside Leopard’s Lounge and Broil strip club. But that’s not all:

“In addition to that murder scene, Google’s camera cars roamed Windsor’s streets in the midst of last summer’s bitter CUPE labour dispute, capturing countless crystal-clear images of trash in parks, gardens filled with dead flowers and sports fields drowning under overgrown weeds and litter.”

Why being “streets ahead” isn’t always a good thing

Google’s gesture to re-shoot these parts of the city is certainly laudable — if you happen to live in and rely on commercial trade and whatever tourism industry the city of Windsor has to offer. However, are they — or anyone else for that matter — in a position to petition a commercial entity to curate their image for them? After all, what Google Street View offers is, essentially, a public service. Google aren’t beholden to anyone, surely? Well actually, they are.

Back in June last year, Google’s Street View and their roving band of camera-equiped vans kicked up a ripe old privacy stink:

“European privacy watchdogs have demanded that Google delete the original images behind its Street View service. The company has said it will comply with the demand in the “long term”.”

Personal privacy is one thing (and a very serious one at that), but municipal public image is a different issue entirely. So what’s the way forward?

New York. Here’s a city that is so synonymous with big-budget movies and TV shows their city authorities have an office just for handling filming requests for movies and TV. This is about city management, public safety, tourism, public relations and a damn good source of revenue. Now, I can’t see Windsor competing with the city that never sleeps, however, this does offer something of a useful starting point.

A different angle on Google Street View

In this case, neither Google nor the city of Windsor got anything wrong. Google are at the forefront of a new technology that is proving just how disruptive it can be, in a very real way. However, for the city authorities of Windsor, this is an unmanaged provision of service — what if Google arrived to find a major through road was blocked due to scheduled road works? Here we see how Google ought to liaise with the relevant city authorities, to help ensure what they’re photographing is both accurate and useful.

Additionally, I think Google should provide city authorities with the photographs for review before going live with them, to at least give them the opportunity to review them and weed out anything they feel is unwelcome, incorrect, illegal et cetera.

I can already hear you thinking: “But the authorities could, potentially, give a false impression of their city by preparing in advance.” Of course they could. But this is a very different world we now live in, one that’s hooked on communication and news — we’d see the “before and after” videos on YouTube within hours!

Personally, this isn’t a major issue. Sure, for the time being, this does give city authorities something else to think about and most likely more work for the press and public relations people. However, what we’re seeing is the fleeting ripples of an emerging technology as it falls into the sea of society, to be absorbed and assimilated. And that’s something Google are very familiar with and extremely good at.

Don’t believe me? Tell me this: when someone asks you something you can’t answer, how many times do you just say: “Why don’t you just Google it?”

Recommended reading

• Windsor seaks Google reshoot
• Google to delete Street View source images

“Comment and be known”. Sparking a conversation with your readers is the most important thing a writer / blogger can do. But for some, moderating those comments and managing the personalities that use comments for their own personal digital deification can be a major challenge — as both Engadget and myself have learned…

Engadget editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky announced his thoughts on blog comments, asking for people to:

“… keep comments clean and comfortable for everyone who wants to join in the discussion — not just the loudest of the bunch.”

I do feel for these guys, because both the writers and the developers are having to waste valuable time conjuring up tools to help normal folks and hinder the the ego spammers.

“Furthermore, we recognize that our comment system isn’t perfect, and we’re working with our developers right now to dramatically change things.”

A very diplomatic, euphemistic way of saying:

“We have some serious ego stroking idiots commenting here and we’re all trying to figure out a way of shutting them up.”

But this is the price we all pay for preserving a certain level of anonymity on the web — a shroud many use to hide behind, a shield from which they fire barbed and malicious comments, safe in the knowledge they will probably never have to answer to anyone for, least of the target of their attacks.

Rather wisely, Joshua uses the article to provide a platform for their FAQs, just to remind everyone what the Engadget house rules are.

Big media, blogging and “walled gardens”

But let’s take a step back for a moment, to a time when blogging was on the threshold of emerging as the means of engaging your readership, which would have been about two years ago. It’s at that point that I stopped writing advice and how-to articles, because the whole thing had come to a point where everything that could have been said about blogging had been said and no more could be added.

What remained was the inertia of pre-blog big media who had subscription models behind which they hid their content. Many understood the value of making the transition to a blog but didn’t quite understand that having a sign-up blockade in front of their articles would stymie the ad hoc commenters like myself.

These “walled gardens” of curated comments ensured harmony, but at the expense of a full discourse, open to everyone. Sure, many of these websites were / are free to join, but you still had to join them none the less — usernames and passwords in tow.

On reflection, I can see how some would prefer it that way, but for the smaller websites, this made little sense and only served to harm them, by limiting their readership. At this time, the Blah, Blah! Technology blog was just coming into its own and comments were still quite prized and sought after.

Today, things are mostly the same, but with a slight difference. I get lots of comments, but seldom are they constructive. So the good comments are still prized, simply because they are so rare.

The rise of the ego blogger — spam, of a different kind

Now, let’s fast forward to the present day. Engadget, confining their comments and community behind a sign-in system, have come to a conclusion that I find regrettable but ultimately inevitable. Egotism is rife in the blogosphere and for many like Engadge and Blah, Blah! Technology are just fare game — for the ego commenter, much like the ego blogger, it is perfectly acceptable to rise above the very crowd of people you’re denigrating. In fact, for most of them, it’s the only way they can rise above this crowd because they lack the talent to do so from their own abilities.

It’s a bizarre irony really, because the very people they’re insulting are also the only people who’re likely to pay attention to them. So in a very real sense, the scope of their credibility is self-limited. Thankfully.

However, there are exceptions to this rule. How so? Often, the only real difference between the technology writer and the tech’ enthusiast is time — the former are often paid to write while the latter are too busy making technology work. Other than that, they are mostly on an intellectual level footing. So who are the exceptions to this rule?

… and what rises often floats

Here I’m thinking about Perez Hilton, a man who feeds off the misfortunes of others, someone who cuts celebrities and then he, along with his crowd-sourced critics, mock them as they bleed. There is no such intellectual barrier to entry for the readership when it comes to celeb’ gossip. All are welcome.

Sadly, there are many like him, rising up and floating on top of the brown froth into which certain amongst us often must walk through, on our way to better venues on the web.

Back in late 2007, I predicted how Google’s search algorithm would come under immense pressure from social media:

“Instead of ‘Googling’ for something, we find stuff being sent to us as emails from friends, in our profiles, in a friends’ lists of favourites, or any number of user-generated websites, ‘blogs, RSS feeds, Social Networks and Social Media portals.

While we’re busying ourselves voting and commenting on this stuff, we’re not using Google’s search algorithm, and we’re not clicking on Sponsored Links, either.”

While not entirely surprising, the article attracted the unwanted attentions of the ego bloggers, who certainly weren’t going to let any sound theory they’d not thought of themselves survive long enough for others to read.

The electronic ego strokers

Despite the clarity of my article, and the fact that my prediction has, to some extent, come to pass (look at Google’s unimpressive and very late attempt at incorporating realtime search into their search results, as a perfectly illustrative example) the barrage of mostly idiotic and self-promotional ego spam continued. In the end, I pulled the plug in the comments for the article and issued a statement explaining why.

The wastrels of the world wide web

And then there are the spammers, who really don’t get it, still. Having read some of their comments to my articles, they are replying to the topic (which indicates they’re not automated messages), some of which are sound and cogent arguments, let down only by the author using links to porno websites and on-line casinos, attached to blatantly on-theme names like Lesbian Lovers or Big Mack’s Black Jack. What a total waste.

A choice

All of which brings us to the present day, at a point where I’m left with a stark decision to make. I now know I can’t continue with the current commenting system I have in place here. And if what Engadget has is no deterrent, then I may well just shut comments down all together. Either way, it’s going to be a challenging decision to make…

I for one won’t be buying an Apple iPad once it’s released in a months’ time. I don’t see enough compelling reasons to buy such a “lame” product. I watched with keen interest the Apple iPad video and identified a long, long list of essential features that are simply not there…

For example, the screen is far too small to use in a conference environment, presenting to 200 delegates — which, let’s face it, is the least we could ask for. There isn’t even a version of Microsoft Office, so all hope of a thrilling Powerpoint presentation is gone.

In one fell swoop, Apple eschew the entire business presentation market, abandoning sales executives and marketing managers alike.

Then there’s the lack of military-grade GPS technology, as well as a toughened transparent aluminum case, which makes using the iPad in the upper echelons of elite, secretive government foreign intelligence agencies impossible.

Clearly this will hit the counter terrorism efforts the hardest, leaving them with little alternative but to look to competing tablet device manufacturers, those that offer retinal and finger print scanning.

Frankly, I’m appalled by the complete absence of “hard light” holographic visualization technology, I’m personally devastated at not being able to watch a slide show of the photos I took of my kids playing with Susie, our pet poodle, in tactile holography mode, allowing the kids to pet a holographic Susie, as she was really there — which she is most of the time anyway, but that’s not the point.

Designers will find little cheer when they discover that the iPhone doesn’t support Adobe Creative Suite 4. Instead, they will have to make do with Photoshop Mobile and it’s crude collection of photo editing options.

It’s still not possible to use Apple’s iPhone as a remote control for the Hughes M230 Chain Gun 30mm, single-barrel automatic cannon. And now all hope of the iPad supporting this of most basic of military field operational needs is gone, also. The confidence of our armed services will sink to a new low. They will have to make do with playing Need For Speed Shift instead.

If you’re a digital archivist, forget about iPad. With a maximum storage size of just 64 gigabytes, no upgrade path and no mass storage support, any thoughts you had of support for multi-patabyte document management systems is just a dream.

What the experts say

“We were really hoping the iPad offered support for stereo-lithographic 3d modeling, but I guess that’s something [Apple] will be work on? It’s a shame, though.” Forensic facial reconstruction expert, working for the Miami-Dade police department in Florida, USA.

“When I realized Apple had forgot to include full PVR support, as well as options for satellite, cable and terrestrial TV, I just laughed. Honestly, these are just basics, surely?” Home entertainment columnist writing for a popular consumer technology magazine in France.

“As far as I’m aware, there’s no waterproofing, certainly not sufficient for underwater use. As an oil rig engineer and experienced diver, support for deep sea diving is a minimum.” Senior dive team member, working for British Petroleum.

It’s hard to put into words how badly Apple have managed the development of the iPad, or how the market will react to such a clearly weak, insufficiently equipped and already out-of-date product that fails to meet the simple needs of so many different industries and groups of people.

Only time will tell whether Apple have made the right choice…

BTW: just in case you read this and thought I was being serious, well I’m not — this is a follow-on from my iPhone article, way back when. So no angry misspelled verbiage in the comments, please!

Facebook is broken, from the very first moment you go to their home page — from dead-end conversations, irrelevant updates, to application overload, here’s three ways to fix Facebook.

For many, Facebook is their window on the world. This I know — I have friends, family and clients who’re on Facebook many times during the day. OK, we accept Facebook is free, so we need to temper our ill tempers with that fact. That aside, there’s some major flaws in Facebook that need to be sorted out sooner rather than later.

Post share items to lists

The news feed is a mess that gets worse with every update; and it’s not like the guys behind Facebook aren’t aware their news feed is broken. The recent privacy updates just don’t mean a damn thing and are arguably more confusing than offering any remedial service.

I know I’ve covered the issue before, but we really do need a way to post shares to distinct groups of people. What’s the point of being able to create lists of people if I can’t post to those lists specifically?

There are things I want to share, but I know my nieces and nephews won’t care about. Similarly, I might be posting photos from a night out with friends that clients might not be interested in seeing either. So all we do is clutter each other’s news feeds, when a fix is a simple as being able to share to lists. It’s really that simple.

Filter applications by friend

So you’ve seen yet another shared item from someone on your news feed that you really don’t want to see. Perhaps it’s a game, or something else, like a geo-tagging service. Facebook gives us the option to either hide the application, or hide the person. But what if I want to hide the application only when posted by a particular person? That’s all I want to do.

Link shares together

So you share what you like, right? Of course you do. However, for people like me that have their Page on Facebook, we try to retain some kind of control over the conversations we start. Problem is, the moment someone shares something they’ve found on Facebook, a totally new conversation starts, with absolutely no relation to the source of the originating conversation — each new share is totally new, and all comments on the previous item are abandoned, or branched away from.

It’s all very Twitter-esque, in that the conversations are flat, with no way to see where it all began. What better way to connect with like-minded people than to have each share extend upon the original share, so we all see each other’s comments? And there’s me thinking Facebook was supposed to be a social network.

To me, these are the things I expect to see. They’re not unusual or weird, but the very basics of managing my social network in a meaningful way. What do you think? Perhaps you have your own missing Facebook feature…