alt.tech

“Catastrophes can wake up governments snarled in bureaucracy. A month after the Pearl Harbor attack, president Roosevelt gave the most extraordinary address to the nation. He announced huge targets for armament production. “Our task is hard. Our task is unprecedented. And the time is short. We must strain every armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes all the way from the greatest plats to the smallest – from the huge automobile industry to the village machine shop.” He stopped car production almost immediately. For nearly three years there were almost no cars produced in the USA” – James Martin, 2006

Humanity’s ability to ignore threats is breathtaking. Scientists can keep throwing warnings at us for years without actions being taken. Usually, things don’t start to change until the catastrophe’s already happened, and then, sometimes, it’s too late.

During the cold war, we built 75,000 nuclear warheads, enough to destroy every city on the planet a hundred times over. The threat of a nuclear all-out war is still very real, and it could happen by accident. We know that such a war would annihilate humanity, but still we fail to dismantle those atomic bombs.

In Newfoundland, the cod population collapsed due to an over sized fishing fleet. The same thing is happening in Europe, but still we do little to stop it.

Global warming will change life as we know it, within a generation. Still, the only result from UN’s global climate conference in Bali this year, was a declaration that we all gotta do something. All objectives for national initiatives we’re postponed. We know we have to make a radical change now, but the rich countries haven’t seen enough of the catastrophe to make a change.

Here’s what the Roosevelt of the 21st century should be saying (and doing):

“Our task is hard. Our task is unprecedented. And the time is short. We must strain every nuclear-dismantling facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to environmentally sustainable production. That goes all the way from the greatest plats to the smallest – from the automobile industry to the fishing industry.”

Todays leaders are cowards! They won’t sacrifice a gram of comfortability to save humanities future. Catastrophes happens for a reason – usually because people choose not listen or not to act upon knowledge. With humankind being stronger that ever, carrying the tools to destroy ourselves, we risk everything if we don’t change the catastrophe-first pattern.

Would you trade your privacy for privileges?

Technology offers incredible new ways of tracking the activities of everyone, but that doesn’t mean we should. And you might hear the words of Ben Parker, “Remember, with great power comes great responsibility” as you picture big brother leaning back in his arm-chair, watching our lives flicker by on the screens. So, what if the real threat doesn’t come from big brother at all, but from a social dilemma we’re all taking part of. What if voluntary surveillance is the real threat. Imagine this future scenario, described by James Martin:

“Category A people are security-cleared and have automatic identification. A wireless beam can interrogate their identity card (which may be in the form of a ring, bracelet or necklace). They can walk through immigration checkpoints or go into the Four Seasons restaurant in New York unaware of the computers that are tracking and validating them. Category B people are essentially good people who choose not to have the automatic identification; they will often be stopped unless they avoid secured places. Category C people will lack full security clearance and will often be subjected to close examination. Category D people will be automatically blocked.”

Well, it’s happening already. Only, it’s not governments that are making it happen. People are exposing themselves to surveillance to receive privileges – every hour of every day. Frequent flyer’s are giving up biometrical data to cut check-in time. Facebook-users are allowing tracking of their surfing habits to access social networks. Some are allowing people to track their online status on Instant Messengers. Some, including me, are automatically uploading what music they’ve been listening to on last.fm. I think that most people would react strongly to a society where we are categorized into A-D citizens, but in accordance with the psychology of social dilemmas they won’t act to stop us from going there.

“Social Dilemma; A conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual will, if chosen by most people, have harmful effects on everyone” – Aronson, Wilson and Akert, 2004

The bad thing about Catogory A-D society is that people who choose not to give up their privacy are treated as class B citizens for no other reason than their support of privacy. Most people (let’s say 95%, shall we?) gladly give up their privacy for some privileges, and why shouldn’t they? They apparently don’t feel the need for privacy, and one more person giving up his or her privacy doesn’t make much of a difference. After all – who wants to be category B?

So, would you trade your privacy for privileges? You’d better think twice about it…

During my life as a web developer, I’ve been wasting many hours trying comply with web standards while designing websites. Right now, the process looks like this:

1. Designing in html/css2.1 using Bluefish and the Gimp.
2. Continuously testing the site using Firefox.
3. When pleased with the design, checking it using W3C’s html/css-validators.
4. Testing in using Internet Explorer (whenever I get access to it).
5. Being utterly pissed at IE’s lousy support for web standards.
6. Redesigning the site, avoiding IE’s flaws and removing some of the features that didn’t work out. (This is the part that seems to take the longest time)

I can’t help to wonder what the web would be like if web designers didn’t have to be cramped by a certain software companys complete disrespect for standards. It seems to me like a wonderful thing. Maybe IE7 will help out, but the problem is that I have yet to see IE7 in action. That’s quite surprising, considering that I use quite a lot of different computers when I move around in the world. Microsoft seems to have some adoption problems going on…

Anyway, I’m changing my process. I will be designing for web standards and the ones using IE will be served a different design, not that pretty, but working. (And they will get a link to download a decent browser.)

One more thing – please don’t complain about the lack of standards compliance on this blog’s html, I didn’t design it and won’t put the time it takes to redesign it. I have more important projects.