“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…

According to a recent legal ethics ruling in Florida, lawyers and judges are barred from “friending” on Facebook, Twitter et al. Since when did ethics take on the role of censoring personal relationships?

Judges must not only be beyond reproach, but they must also be seen to be so. We expect few allowances, and in this case, ethics is a rigid rule that they are measured by. And just like everyone else, judges have friends. But how do they maintain this irreproachable air in the context of a social network like Facebook or Twitter?

From the point of view of the public (our stand point), if we were to see that a judge had a friend that was a lawyer, does that alter our view of them? For me personally, it doesn’t change a thing. However, according to a ruling by Florida’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee: “judges and lawyers can no longer ‘friend’ each other on Facebook” .. Twitter et al.

But this presents a problem. Judges must not only be beyond reproach, right? We all agree on that. But they must also be seen to be so, right? Well that’s clearly where things have become problematic, within the context of social networking — if a judge has a lawyer as a friend, from the point of view of Florida’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee, that impartiality has been impacted.

My take on this is actually the opposite — in having access to these relationships, we get to see the visible threads of the various relationships of tthose judges and lawyers.

What we don’t get to see are the telephone numbers or home addresses of those same lawyers on the mobile phones and laptops of the judges they are friends with. Why are they not within the scope of this ethical ruling? It’d be interesting to hear what the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee have to say on such data retention that is clearly indicative of an on-going relationship.

“The committee did conclude that a judge can post comments on another judge’s site and that during judicial elections, a judge’s campaign can have ‘fans’ that include lawyers.”

What we’re seeing is the long-standing light of legal ethics being cast on the very amorphous outline of social networking, creating unusual shadows, into which all kinds of dilemmas can hide. In making this ruling, Florida’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee aren’t dealing with the core issue, they’re simply forcing their judges and lawyers to be less visible in their relationships with one another.

Would it not make more sense to ask those lawyers and judges to expand upon the nature of their relationships? After all, this being legal ethics, we would expect more scrutiny and not less, which is effectively what the JEAC is enforcing.

Essentially, the JEAC is sending out the message that they don’t believe Florida judges are fit to preside the impartiality of their own relationships with lawyers and other judges. And not wanting to be too judgmental, I think the JEAC have need to make a better case for their…

Big industry is wising up to “Smart Grid” energy technologies, to help cut costs and energy waste. But can those same technologies be useful to home owners around the world?

Money to burn

Some businesses can waste more energy in a year than some countries use in a month. That’s a sobering thought. And our homes are by no means guilt-free from this energy gluttony. Houses make streets and enough streets make towns and even cities. Take the energy wasted by each home and multiply by a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or perhaps even a million, and you have a much greater problem than any industry. So why is the emphasis of so-called “Smart Grid” technologies currently focused on the needs of business?

Well, it’s a question of cost. A useful example would be Formula 1 racing; automotive technologies pioneered for and tested on the race track often find their way into the domestic cars that you & I own. In the same way, businesses (or at least, the very big businesses that are able to spread the costs) are able to take fuller advantage of the economies of scale — roll an expensive technology out across a large enough business infrastructure and you save more than you spend. That’s the theory, anyway.

The new energy economy

So for companies like Google — who’re nascent players in the energy management industry — and Cisco, their knowledge, expertise and vast infrastructures and resources make them ideal first choices to install and manage Smart Grid technologies.

Initially, these technologies will no doubt be exorbitantly expensive, but as time marches on and production methods and materials are improved and made more efficient, costs will fall. Another useful recent example would be the LCD and plasma display industry; just compare the cost of a 20 inch screen of five years ago to today. In this instance, we’re taking into account another principle of sound business enteprise — volume sales. As you push into a bigger market, you can afford to cut prices because there’s an increased chance you’ll be selling more units, which will more than cover the cost of the reduction you made on a per-unit basis. That’s the theory, anyway.

The domestic market is vast. Certainly much bigger than the businesses Google and Cisco will be serving initially. But for them, the profit margins will be much higher, which also covers the relative complexity of their services. And since actual expertise in the field will be a premium, those experts won’t be working all hours. In time, their technologies will become simpler and the energy infrastructures we have supplying our homes will be more able to accommodate them.

The ideal home for Smart Grid technologies

I would also add that the demand from the domestic market for Smart Grid technologies will increase in the next two to three years. Why? Partly out of a “do good by the environment” desire of people like thee & me, but mostly because energy costs are on the rise and we all want to cut costs where possible. Greater energy efficiency is as good a place to start as any.

Looking at the causes of increased energy prices, they’re easy to identify — the security of our respective nations’ energy portfolio’s are being challenged by dwindling / restricted oil supplies in the Middle East and rising gas prices from the Russians.

Britain is already considering opening its coal mines once more, now that carbon sequestering technologies appear to be a more viable option, mitigating the emissions of coal fired power stations. What remains of our energy portfolios will mostly be biofuels for automotive applications and renewable energy sources (such as wave, wind, solar et cetera) for business and domestic purposes. That’s the theory, anyway.

Incidentally, I came up with my own theory for a cheap coal fire carbon capture contraption for people in developing nations, which appears to have potential.

Google, Cisco to help avoid an IT electrical storm?

The IT industry specifically is a major problem, in so far as energy consumption. Early estimates regarding the energy requirements of “Cloud Computing” are worrying, to say the least. And this is where Google is leading the way. Of all the IT-based businesses on Earth, Google have a huge computing platform, consisting of many hundreds of thousands of computers all across the world. And it would appear Google have a series of renewable energy initiatives primed specifically to deal with their energy needs, and those of the world at large. That’s the theory, anyway. Right now, Cisco’s EnergyWise technology can manage a variety of energy technologies and scenarios across a large corporation.

Smart Grids and even smarter homes

So what’s the big deal with so-called Smart Grid technologies anyway, and how can they help the home owner? Imagine your home “knowing” you’re not at home, and cycling certain devices down (brown, white and black consumer electrics, for example) so they’re either in low power mode, or off all together.

Now imagine your renewable energy devices, such as your roof-mounted solar panels, being fully maximized, based on weather conditions.

Imagine your home reporting where and when in the house excess energy is being used, such as a kettle in the kitchen being used for too many cups of tea, or a big plasma TV being left on at night by the kids.

Imagine you live on a housing estate made up of smart homes, all making their own energy and then sharing any excess with their neighbours. As the Sun passes over the sky, those that move into the path of the Sun make the most of the light and share any excess across the local smart grid, at a small fee.

This is no longer theory — we have the technologies to make these things happen. What we need is the political will to force these technologies through as key initiatives, backed by businesses, major housing developers and consumer groups and help democratize the future of energy production…

Recommended reading

• A solution to the clean coal conundrum?
• Cloud Computing: an electrical storm waiting to happen?
• Democratizing the future of energy

“Sorry, you’re not on the list.” Oh, the burn. And if you’re on Twitter, the indignation is now monumentally public. But then I’m reminded of what my mother told me: it’s not quantity but quality that counts. And sometimes, the who is better than the what…

So what’s all the fuss about with these newfangled lists on Twitter anyhow? Well it’s really very simple: assuming most users are exceptionally lazy, for them to go to the effort of actually making a list and then adding you to it, I’d take that as a big fat endorsement.

Lists as a measure of trust?

But what about all the his-list-count-is-bigger-than-mine moaning and griping crowd? There’s where my dearly departed mother and her oft cited truisms comes into play. Would you rather be in / on five lists for some of the most influential people in your social network, or would you rather be in / on two hundred lists for people you don’t really know or even consider influential? If you had to think about that, leave now.

All of which brings us rathe neatly to the who and the what of social networking — it’s what you say and do that gets you noticed and then onto the lists, and then it’s the who that will propel you out into the Twittersphere.

When people add you to a list, it’s a very visual and public endorsement of their appreciation of you in some way, and the name of the list can be considered the context of that appreciation: “engaging people”, “friends”, “real people”, “social media” and “tech” et cetera.

People can also follow lists. Being on notable and popular list means you just jumped right to the head of the popularity queue. You could also interpret being included on a list as an indication of trust. I’ll leave you to think about that for a moment or two and how monumental a change to the Twitter landscape that is.

Life. Love. Lists

Within hours of the erratic roll-out of the long-discussed lists feature for Twitter, if there was a hash tag for the mood, it would have been #inequity.

“Pft! you can stick your lists!”

“So how come [insert name of user here] is on 52 lists and I’m only on 5?! She’s a freakin’ MLMer, goddamit!”

Look familiar? Just for the record, I’m on 26 lists. Come to think of it, as I look around, I see more and more people using lists, so people can’t all be lazy. At least some of those following me aren’t.

For those not in the know, Twitter first rolled lists out back in 2008 over in Japan, then called groups. So it’s not like they’re a new thing. Lists have been a long time coming. What I can’t quite figure out is why such a feature lite service as Twitter should have such a preponderance for pondering over features for such a long time. Anyway, that doesn’t matter because they’re here now.

Sorry, you’re not on the list!

So, we have lists. You’re not on as many as you’d like, eh? It’s still very early days. If after a month or so there’s no change, then Twitter — by way of your followers — is telling you something very simple: you’re not compelling enough for people to make the effort to add you to a list.

Shock! Horror! Also true.

What I find most amusing is the sheer level of unadulterated hypocrisy amongst a great swathe of Twitter users. Cast your minds back to those periods when the fail whale rules and Twitter is down for the count, and who suddenly appears on the collective social network radar? Why, it’s FriendFeed of course! But we don’t want to use FriendFeed — it’s complex and there’s too many features:

“We routinely use exceptionally complex software each and every day of our business lives. Do we balk at using Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop? No, we don’t. There are alternatives to both, but the fact of the matter is, if you want features, then there’s a commensurate level of complexity associated with those additional features.”

But using Twitter was never an exercise in Zen social networking, or minimalist communication. No, it’s herd mentality and group thinking writ as large on the web as anywhere else in society. So for the most part, my protestations largely fell on deaf hears.

Well now there’s another feature on the way soon, too — the re-Tweet button, which Twitter appears to be working on behind the scenes. I wouldn’t expect too many people to acknowledge their idiotic ambivalence towards FriendFeed from earlier in the year, even less so now since FriendFeed is presently being absorbed by the ever-expanding Facebook empire.

And then there’s an even darker side to Twitter lists. Or at least, there will be. People being people, I predict money changing hands; one person paying another to be included in a very popular list of theirs. It’s unethical. It’s also inevitable.

With that as a backdrop, who the hell needs a Follow Friday, anyhow? After all, she / he who pays most wins!

Twitter is now in some respects an established communication tool. Despite its limitations, there are those that have risen to the challenge of an economy of words and shone brightly. With the introduction of lists, Twitter is now offering us a unique and constant alternative to #followfriday that’s specific, visible and always on…

Recommended reading

• Of celebrities, non-business models and the Twitter tax
• 1 reason why FriendFeed struggles while Twitter succeeds
• The rise of the re-Tweet puts pressure on PageRank
• 1 million reasons why Twitter is no better than a street corner call box
• Twitter embraces SEO, bolsters brands

Intuition is a wonderful thing. But being self-aware is really over rated. Most animals apparently manage very well without a consciousness. So does it matter so much that we can blush? As for choice, such things might be nothing more than an intricate illusion…

I suspect intuition is a mental attribute not unique to humans. In fact, many of what we perceive as uniquely human attributes are shared with other animals. Intuition always feels like an involuntary response to me, like a reflex, and not an artifact of my consciousness. And to my mind at least, consciousness always seemed to be something we make too much of.

There’s not much chance of me making a case against being self-aware, or our apparent consciousness. But to me, there are more important things to consider. Such as how best to control the mental faculties we have at our disposal, instead of squandering them, as we often do, on trivial personal agendas.

So imagine how keen I was to watch an episode of Horizon on BBC2 earlier this week, entitled The Secret You:

“Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science’s greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.”

Marcus works his way through some very heavy material in an engaging fashion, helping to shed light on the processes deep within the soft folds of our brains. My suspicion was that I might not learn a great deal, but I was hoping I would be wrong. I wasn’t wrong and most of what was discussed I’d either read about before, or simply confirmed my own theories.

Marcus spoke of his own feelings of a duality; that his soul and his body were separate entities. A symbiosis? I for one have never felt that way. My intuition tells me that my consciousness is simply a byproduct of neurological complexity and not a deliberate evolutionary adaptation.

To some, this might seem counter-intuitive. But ask yourself this: why is it that no scientist has an explanation as to why we blush? It’s a pointless physiological response to being arguably too self-aware. Moreover, it reveals our emotional state, which isn’t particularly advantageous.

Delving deeper, Marcus was the subject of an experiment that he found deeply unsettling. He was given two click devices (two small buttons), one for each hand, and asked to click at random while being scanned with a fMRI (function magnetic resonance imaging) machine, a device capable of scanning the brain very quickly and in great detail.

The results of the experiment left him shocked and clearly shaken. The scientists were able to predict his apparently random decisions a whole six seconds before he was aware of making those decisions. To him, he saw this as being “held hostage” by his subconscious mind. To me, this demonstrated that our intuition was hard-wired. And when you think about it, that makes perfect sense.

In a more natural environment, away from the world we live in now, the criticality of rapid decision making is the difference between life and death. Why delegate such things to the conscious mind, when the entire process is so long? This to me is yet more evidence that our consciousness is a relatively recent mental attribute, one still being fine tuned and honed. An attribute that one could argue just gets in the way of things.

For me, this experiment didn’t go far enough. Sure, a left and a right click might tell you something, but what about making more complex decisions, based on more variables? Of course, the apparatus used would need to be more sophisticated, and more would need to be known about the brain and how certain decisions are represented within the brain. But my intuition tells me that although we would see the self same deep responses emerge from our subconscious, the complexity of the tests would require a conscious interpretation, therefore possibly over-riding, adjusting or even enhancing those subconscious decisions with more abstract details.

Marcus’s interpretation of this was curious; he appeared to see the subconscious as being separate to the rest of his mind. That I found odd. While I can see why he might feel that his sense of self control is being undermined, I have to wonder how he thinks his subconscious arrives at those decisions in the first place. Our subconscious is making decisions based on our knowledge, in the same way we believe our conscious mind does. I have to admit, at the point when this revelation unfolded, I was wearing a rye smile.

So what is consciousness?

No one knows for sure what consciousness is (if indeed there’s any way of providing a clear definition), but neurologists at least have an understanding of where our consciousness resides — consciousness exists in the upper surfaces and layers of the brain. There is no one lobe or region. It would appear that consciousness bestrides many regions of the brain, and in line with my own intuition, our consciousness would appear to be almost like the glow or the hum and buzz of our brains.

This would also go some way towards explaining why so few other animals exhibit self-awareness; the brains of most other animals lack sufficient complexity to give rise to something as complex as a consciousness.

Humans are very social creatures and we have enjoyed a surplus of time during our lives, time enough to ponder and reflect. Being able to draw upon past experiences and consider them afresh is also an artifact of our conscious mind.

So if complexity is part of the reason for consciousness, what are the implications for so-called Artificial Intelligence, or AI? It’s clear that intelligence and consciousness are two entirely different things; many animals have demonstrated problem-solving abilities in the absence of what we might view as being self-aware.

Let’s then consider a robot of humanoid proportions with the wherewithal to perform similar activities to a human. Right now, there are scientists all over the world working on different aspects of robotics, such as cognitive abilities and the associated skills required to deduce and analyze the real world, visual systems such as object acquisition and face recognition, problem solving, as well as physical dexterity such as walking, catching moving objects and carrying.

Of course, we humans are capable of much more, but if these abilities were to be combined into a system that is built around the same physical structures as a neural network (the essential fabric of the brain), might we not see some kind of consciousness arise out of this apparent complexity? If this sounds all overly simplistic, then we must consider that life itself is complexity derived from simplicity.

Since we don’t fully understand what consciousness is, would we recognize such a thing if it did emerge within a robot? Moreover, even if we did identify some unexpected mental state within these machines, might we interpret them as being somehow aberrant, or defective? Many a science fiction novel and film has a robot with a consciousness on the run as their principle protagonist.

The prospect of accepting these self-aware robots as emergent forms of life presents even greater challenges — those robots would be entitled to rights of their own.

I have another theory, one that segues neatly with an observation shared with science writer David Bradley: our failure to grasp such things as quantum physics, as well as human consciousness, may well be because we’re incapable of comprehending such things. For all the imagined power of the human brain, I believe we have hit a fundamental barrier.

So what’s next? A leap. An adaptation of the human brain that gifts that person with a capacity to reason and the faculties of logic beyond that of anyone who has come before them. If I’m right, even the greatest minds throughout history would be cast into deep shadow by the mental prowess of this person. And if we have learned anything about the patterns of the universe, if there’s one of anything, then many more will follow.

While we ponder the almost imponderable complexities of consciousness, life moves on — people still murder, save endangered species, pay their taxes, conscientiously object to conflict, eat processed foods, fight wars, help the poor, wonder why their kids are so unruly and recycle some of their household waste.

What decisions we make are ours to make. Their outcome often reflects only upon the lives of the people making those decisions. But there are those amongst us whose decisions affect us all. And it is to these people we entrust our lives and hope that their decisions are made in good conscience, above all other things…

Recommended reading

• Humans are not unique
• Artificial Intelligence: a pattern of things to come
• Serious Science: is there alien life in the universe? Part 1
• Robot rights for the wrong reasons?
• DNA hardwired into the universe

Humans are changing the planet. Those that deny this are fools. But there are certain things that we’re simply accelerating, rather than worsening, or destroying. Several different species, including Pandas, are fading fast. But in our attempt to save them from extinction, we neglect the rest…

Chris Packham is a rare variety of the lesser spotted English naturalist, rare in the sense that he dares to have an opinion that doesn’t revolve around the emotive, overly sentimental drivel people bizarrely seem to expect, despite the best efforts of Sir David Attenborough, and he instead focuses of the economics of nature, and in turn, the ruthless rules of natural selection.

To this end, he had the temerity to voice an entirely sensible opinion regarding the even lesser spotted Panda, and explain to the egregious masses, clutching their cuddly Panda soft toys, that the aforementioned is essentially a lost cause and a money pit, and that conservationists should spend what little money they do have on those animals that can actually be saved from political pressures, war, poaching, human encroachment, as well as environmental, ecological and biological Armageddon.

As you can imagine, his views were about as welcome as a fart in a lift traveling non stop to the toy section of a department store, where people are hoping to buy a cuddly toy Panda, presumably.

So here’s my attempt to give some more meat to the bones of Packham’s Panda argument, in equally simple and blunt terms.

The extinction of common sense

Organisms are allowed to go extinct. It happens. And, it’s been happening routinely for over three and half billion years, which just happens to be the approximate amount of time life has been present on Earth.

If organisms didn’t go extinct, things would be quite different and very unpleasant. If we choose to ignore the more recent fauna and flora or the past one hundred and twenty millions years or so, and ignoring just about everything prior to that, right back to the primordial broth of bacteria of say, two billion years ago, if all bacterial life had survived, the entire planet would be a seething gelatinous mass of snot-like goo, many tens of miles deep.

We humans didn’t invent environment pressure, that’s something that has almost always existed — there is nearly always some other organism competing for the same space as another. Who survives is a combination of factors, including blind chance (as was the case with the mammals just after the Chicxulub impact of some sixty five million years ago, which dispensed with most of the large reptiles of the period). As a broad rule though, it’s the strongest that survive.

The meek won’t inherit the Earth, despite what effete and fanciful nonsense you may have be told at Sunday School, unless luck is on their side. And even then, their meekness will be the basis of their demise at some later date.

We humans survive and thrive because we are incredibly adaptable, versatile, agile, omnivorous, dexterous and intelligent. Any one of those attributes is enough for any one organism to eek out an existence. Well we have them all. And here we are, at the top of the tree of life, shittin’ on everything else, or at least what we haven’t eaten, or hunted for sport, or turned into furniture.

The most remarkable thing is, what we’re doing isn’t unnatural. And I’m sure many of you will recoil in horror when I say we are simply doing what all other animals do, and are predisposed to do.

When was the last you saw a dog, or a Panda for the matter, pick up it’s own shit, pop it in a bag and dispose of it in a more environmentally responsible way? Aside from some odd kids animated movie perhaps, you didn’t, nor will you. If we had seven billion dogs shitting, we’d have a problem, wouldn’t we? Of course we would.

Humans make a mess, as do all other forms of life. The problem is in 1. our sheer number, and 2. that we have broken from the more natural order of things, that might have mitigated some of this mess, while finally 3. we don’t just shit to make a mess anymore.

The bear truth about Pandas

So what about the Panda? Well, it’s likely that the Panda is an evolutionary dead end. Doomed to extinction by its eating habits, or even its habitat, or perhaps both. As I said, extinction happens and is an inexorable force of nature.

It is also likely that we have hastened the extinction of the Panda, but you could also argue that pressures placed upon the Panda could very well have forced our usurped ursine to evolve and adapt. Clearly this is not the case. In this case, the agents of change are too powerful and rapid. In the words of Packham himself: “That’s evolution, adapt to changes or die out.”

An evolution of human stupidity

Sadly, people are mostly stupid and they make emotional decisions. This is the reason why successive governments of various countries (with the obvious exception of China, ironically enough) daren’t even consider imposing a limit on the number of children each couple can have. It is, after all, the logical decision, which would have an almost immediate impact on the growing human population.

There are a ton of aid agencies working to remediate the infant mortality rate in places like India, but we’re doing relatively very little to educate people enough to have less kids. Hindering those efforts, Catholic missionaries are teaching those same people that contraception is wrong. It is no coincidence the most populous regions on Earth, such as Africa and Asia, are those that are most deeply influenced by Catholicism.

So the natural forces that would keep the population down are being disrupted by well-meaning but largely stupid people and the human population of the Earth is then left to grow out of control, and unchecked.

Economics usually has the final word, but no one is listening, because people are mostly stupid and they make emotional decisions.

We are at a point in time where we are beyond incremental changes. To make the changes that are required to save the planet from the human race, we must undertake extreme and exceptional measures. But no one is listening.

So ignore me and ignore Packham. Do what the good book tells you and go forth and multiply. And at same time, say “Fuck you, too!” to every other living thing, including the Pandas of this world, because if we’re too stupid to save ourselves, what the hell kind of chance is there for anything else…

Recommended reading

• Why we shouldn’t save the planet
• The myth of Global Warming
• What global energy crisis?

The most fundamental question we as a species could possibly collectively ask is: why? Gifted as we are with the power to reason, we now stand on the threshold of a new understanding of not just life, but of the fundamental purpose of the universe itself — life might be the very reason the universe exists at all…

While I imagine some of you may interpret this leap in thinking as an admission of a creator being, steering all life in another worldly direction, I would hasten some caution. It’s much more likely that the originators of those organized faiths of the world saw the outline of something very profound in the ancient past, but lacked the mental faculties to articulate what that force might actually be. In short, the idea and very origins of gods and goddesses are most probably borne out of a primitive attempt to anthropomorphize (to give a human face to) a force that was as beyond comprehension then as it is now.

Or is it?

Life, naturally

To the best of our considerable collective knowledge, life appeared on Earth at the earliest point when our planet could sustain such complex and ordered things. Life is a powerful force, one that is eager and hungry to exist. So what if life was an inevitable force of the universe? As inevitable as the formation of galaxies, stars, their attendant planets and their moons.

“A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids — the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are … destined to occur wherever they can.”

DNA, the building blocks of life on Earth might be the very fabric of all life everywhere in the known universe. Out of simplicity arises all kinds of biological complexity, in one fell swoop, sweeping aside the naive vagaries of Irreducible Complexity; an argument that proposes biological complexity is impossible via natural means and requires a creator being. Such bland and ignorant non-thinking isn’t tolerated here.

Comparisons abound in our own, man-made non-biological systems. Take a house, for example. Built as they are from basic constituent parts, such as bricks, mortar, glass, wood and metal. Once arrange, and in the correct proportions, shapes and lengths, these relatively simplistic elements give rise to a rather complex house, whose principle purpose is surprisingly complex, and in turn is plays host to even more incredible complexity — people, and other animals.

In a sense, a house is then analogous to an environ, into which a host of organisms survive and perhaps flourish. However, the key difference between a house and, say for instance, brain tissue, is that the former relies on the labours of men whereas in the case of the latter, neurological complexity can arise spontaneously:

“Apparently, the simulated neurons have begun spontaneously coordinating, and organizing themselves into a more complex pattern that resembles a wave. According to the scientists, this is the beginning of the self-organizing neurological patterns that eventually, in more complex mammal brains, become personality.”

My fascination with patterns continues. It would appear that the universe favours certain patterns over others. After all, what is the formation of a moon, a planet, a star or a galaxy if it is not a repeating, self-sustaining pattern? If it wasn’t, why do we see billions of other galaxies, populated as they are by stars, planets and moons?

And such is life, also. Albeit life is more complex, in that biological patterns have a purpose, that been refined and honed by the forces of evolution itself.

But if the universe is itself comprised of patterns, where do they reside? Is there an elemental equivalent of DNA, hidden in the deep recesses of the universe?

Patterns of life

Tim Palmer. A mathematical climatologist for the past twenty years, but a man within which beats the heart of a physicist. Not content with predicting complex weather systems, he also has aspirations of solving the greatest riddle in physics — unifying all physical theories of the universe into just the one.

And the basis of Palmer’s solution to the enigma of the universe? Fractals, such as the entrancing Mandelbrot set.

“’My hypothesis is motivated by two concepts that wouldn’t have been known to the founding fathers of quantum theory,’ he continues, talking about black holes and fractals. Palmer is referring to the arguments between Einstein and Niels Bohr, who had different views on physics, but who were actually looking at the same problem from two different points of view, the expert believes.”

Despite their visual complicity, fractals are relatively simplistic mathematical systems that generate repetitious successions of complex patterns. Such patterns are already present in nature, such as the fern leaf and the shell of a snail, which are, like the Madelbrot set, entirely predictable and endlessly repetitious shapes.

However, fractals can be of the non-repeating variety, in that as you look closer at the initial pattern, successively smaller and irregular patterns emerge, such as when you look at clouds, storms systems or coast lines.

Once you begin to appreciate the abundance of fractals, it doesn’t seem so unlikely that such patterns could exist at a much lower, fundamental level within the universe itself.

If we now accept that the universe itself and everything within is the out-pouring of fractals, then the hierarchy of the universe begins to make more sense, as we step down from galaxies, stars, planets, moons, asteroids, all the way down to life itself. After all, if life exists at all, like all those objects, a pattern must exist, which determines that life has to exist as a function of and not apart from the universe.

There are unerring symmetries across scales, rising from the infinitesimal to the largest of them all:

“Take for example the humble, kitchen or bathroom variety plug hole. Watch as water spirals inexorably down into the drain.

Then fix your gaze upon the spiral arms of a galaxy and how each point of light, a star in formation, all rotate around a common point, which is thought to be in every instance a super massive black hole.

Indeed, the proposed shape of the universe just happens to be the same shape as the Buckminsterfullerene, or the ‘Bucky Ball’ which is arguably one of the tiniest known objects in the universe.”

Imagine, if you will, my surprise today, as I discover the writings of a Carl Woese, professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois, whose thoughts on evolution have had a profound impact on our understanding of life.

Further to his theories, a student of his, Freeman Dyson, a man eminent in his own right, discusses his thoughts on the cyclical nature of evolution, and how what once was, will be again — a repeating, cyclical pattern, governing the emergence of life itself, right through to our strident attempts to control life.

To quote from the article, in a way that segues perfectly with my earlier thoughts, this one passage illustrates a new kind of understanding:

“The nonliving universe is as diverse and as dynamic as the living universe, and is also dominated by patterns of organization that are not yet understood. This picture of living creatures, as patterns of organization rather than collections of molecules, applies also to sand dunes and snowflakes, thunderstorms and hurricanes.”

As I’m sure Tim Palmer would agree, storm systems are exceptionally complex. And if you were to commit to paper, in academic fashion, the many aspects and processes that comprise such systems, one might be forgiven for thinking you were reading the detailed anatomical structure of a living organism.

If there’s life here on Earth, there is life elsewhere in universe, in abundance. Why? Because if life is but a pattern of the universe itself, then it is a repeatable pattern, and cannot exist in isolation.

Like a flower head, tilting towards the warm glow of the Sun, the Earth waits patiently for those spores of life which she has fostered within for so long, now have the means, the need and the ambition to rise from her surface, like seeds, and drift out into space, to spread across the cosmos, to form new patterns of life elsewhere in the unknown universe…

Recommended reading

• The reducible complexity of life
• A universal illusion
• The shape of the universe
• Serious Science: is there alien life in the universe?

Google have stiff competition in Facebook. But not for the reasons you might think — neither quite understand the power of social media in the way you’d think they would…

It seems almost inconceivable that two of the biggest names in internet technology could both be blind to the potential of their own products / services. I was certain Google’s almost complete lack of social media smarts was a one off.

How wrong I was.

There I was, working towards writing a follow-up to my Facebook’s 5 missing features article when news emerged that Facebook had launched a Twitter application for Page owners:

“Now, with a new Twitter application created by Facebook, Facebook Page owners can automatically syndicate their posts to Twitter just by installing the app on their Facebook Page.”

My dream had finally come true! Now, I could post a Note on my Page on Facebook and have that article appear as a link on Twitter. Then, when someone clicks on the link, they see that article with the Facebook toolbar, allowing them to comment and / or like the article. All of which forming a strong outreach channel for my Page, helping build my fan number ever further, and building my brand.

For reasons that evade me, Facebook somehow managed to deftly avoid doing any of these things and instead released an almost totally useless Page application that simply burps stuff from your Page onto Twitter. Worse still, if you add a comment to a Note item, that comment is the title that people see on Twitter and not the title of the article itself.

It strikes me that Facebook are singularly clueless as to the power and potential of the very service they tend to. I am, quite frankly, astonished. I just simply cannot fathom how so many people with so many letters after their names managed to conspire between them to snatch mediocrity from the yawning jaws of social media success.

“No! Go back! Look…” I stab with an outstretched finger at the desk in front of me, littered with an assortment of sketches and notes. “Look, it’s there!”

But he doesn’t see me. Instead, he ambles over to the water cooler.

“Fuck the water cooler! Look mate, you have it right there!” I turn and stand in front of him as he sips quietly, jabbing my finger again and again. “There’s just NO WAY can you have NOT seen what I’ve seen!” I yell into his face, with back arched, neck taught and clenched fists to my chest.

Nothing. He does not hear me. He simply stares passively out across the grounds of the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

I march away towards the office door, with my hands clutched over my head in sheer frustration.

“This isn’t happening. It can’t be.” I mumble to myself, turning to face the desk once more as the guy walks back and agrees with his colleagues that their new Facebook application is fine and there’s no more to be done.

“This is some kind of hell, surely?”

OK, you could argue that I might just be over reacting a little. It is a Friday and after making Emily (who’s a client of mine) laugh with the above scenario which I acted out over the telephone, she suggested it might be worth writing the whole thing up.

However, there is a serious side; how can all those smart guys at Facebook miss something like this? These are the very basics of social media. Get the basics wrong and what hope is their for the bigger picture?

Another example of a missed opportunity is Facebook Connect not, well, connecting! Also, an astonishing oversight which simply wouldn’t happen on my watch.

Right now, Pages on Facebook are little more than island communities. The cynic in me thinks that Facebook are attempting to furthering their own financial agenda and would prefer we didn’t have the tools to easily share our Pages, forcing us to use their paid-for advertising instead.

If that is the case, then Facebook aren’t on the same page as their users and are selling us all short…