New Years Resolution list

I’ve been very conservative with my new years resolution lists in the past.  I always say I will give up smoking and drinking (hint, I have never done either!) and in some years I’ve actually put down a couple of sensible ones like correcting my posture and getting organised.

But this year, maybe because of the long, crawling struggle I’ve had with studying whilst working and losing all free time to do anything else, I was thinking it’d be nice to go a little crazy on the new years resolutions and have maybe less a resolution list and more a wish list. There are a few things I’d like to do that would take up a lot of time, and I recognise that it will take a long time to complete all of these things – probably more than a year. But it’d be cool if it didn’t, and if I did complete everything I want to do by 2013 (but then where would be the fun in that?)

So without further ado, here is my wish list for 2012:

1) Write a novel

2) Complete both computer game ideas I have in my head

3) Learn a new language. Possibly mandarin.

4) Move forward in my work and make significant headway towards my long-term goals (okay this one I absolutely have to do in 2012 – resolution!)

5) Party more! Or at least meet new people or hang out with people I don’t spend much time with, experience new things, be more aware and more exposed to the fun that is waiting for me! (Yes I am having a late 20s crisis – I have just realised I will run out of 20s soon!)

So I’m going to be working on 4 and 5 absolutely, with 1, 2, and 3 as options. I would like to do all 5 at the same time, but something tells me this is probably not possible!

Protecting the internet’s freedom of information

A while back I was sitting on the tube, and a woman sat down next to me who was perusing a Daily Mail app on her phone. It was only then that it occured to me that none of my friends or colleagues actually read the Daily Mail (apart from to make fun of it). It was then that I realised just how much I live in my own little bubble, where my friends agree with me on most of my political views. I mean sure I have an ex-classmate on facebook who is a member of the Tea Party and a friend who has recently come out on the Austrian side of economics, but he still believes in many of the same things I do and she and I agree on…

Okay. There is not much politically that the Tea Party member and I agree on, including abortion, immigration and climate change. We do, however, agree on at least one thing – the freedom of the internet.

And that is what I am writing about here because, unfortunately, her views and posts on all these things are slowly getting erased from my facebook News feed. I say ‘unfortunately’ unsarcastically (if that is a word) because I believe in looking at all sides of the debate for informed opinions and her posts have kept me informed on the Tea Party arguments. I may not click on 99% of them, but I like having them amongst pictures of babies and cousins’ vanity pictures and vague status updates about the night before to peruse.

Of course if you’re on Facebook you know that they have a very select filtering process. I have 476 ‘friends’ (it’s a TCK thing) and there is no way I am seeing facebook updates from, say, 90% of them. So when I’m not clicking on the posts on guns and why Obama is an asshole, Facebook decides her posts are not worth my time and starts filtering them out of my news feed.

This, however, is not merely a Facebook phenomenon. My main search engine, Google, has been busily filtering things specifically for me too. Pushing things it thinks would be more interesting to me up the search results.

This, to me, is a huge threat to the internet that promised so much in the past decade with the ability to give the average layperson (in a relatively developed country) free information and opposing viewpoints in order to make informed decisions – on purchses and politics (and probably other things but I can’t think of them right now!). The provision of comparison sites have made markets in music, flights and insurance (to name a few) much more competitive, the provision of information from global sources has been a lifeline to many in propaganda-pushing countries.  No wonder one of the first things Egypt’s beseiged government did during the Egyptian demonstrations was cut off the internet. It’s also why I think internet astroturfing is such a huge threat.

But this ‘filter bubble’ is a threat too – because unless we are actively looking for information or views outside of what we are normally exposed to, or are happy with, we won’t get it. How many people will say they actively look for it? This is a danger because many opinions on subjects we are not very informed about are formed through what we, probably unconsciously, pick up from the people and information that surrounds us.

I listened to a great talk on this subject by Eli Pariser, who recently released the book ‘The Filter Bubble: What the internet is hiding from you‘. One thing I found particularly interesting is the danger of the Facebook ‘like’ button – and the use of the word ‘like’!

You can download the podcast from the LSE website.

If you are interested, Pariser has also given 10 tips on how to get as unfiltered an internet experience as possible.

Could’ve, should’ve…

Yesterday I got pick-pocketed. The worse thing was I wasn’t completely oblivious, and after, when I had confirmed that something had actually happened, I didn’t do anything while the perpetrator stood perhaps 5 metres away from me, on the bus I just got off, for about 30 seconds.  Eventually the doors closed and the bus drove off, taking the thief and my mp3 player with it.  I felt, and still feel, distinctly unempowered.

I’m not sure I could tell you what I was thinking while I stood there gawping, feeling up my pockets, checking to see I hadn’t just misplaced it, and knowing I hadn’t.  I know, while it was within 5 metres of me, that I had already started rationalising to myself.  At least it wasn’t my wallet, my phone.  My music is backed up on my computer, I can just put it on my phone. I made a couple of movements towards the bus, but never got back on, never said anything, just continued to stand there, gawping.  I guess I was partly in denial, partly in shock.

Later I got home and tweeted about it and got a couple of responses back from friends who had had something similar happened to them.  It was somehow comforting to know that I wasn’t the only person whose mind short-circuited during a time when it should have started kicking into gear.  It was also disturbing that it’s happened to my friends, but in another way almost nice to know that it’s happened so few times that we don’t have any experiences to refer to to tell us how to act.

Since the incident happened about 18 hours ago my mind has belatedly started going back to the incident and thinking about what I should’ve done.  I should’ve gone up to him and just asked him for my mp3 player back.  I should’ve told the bus driver.  I should’ve moved my bag out of the way when I thought something was happening.

Edit (11/03/11) : After filing my police report I asked the policewoman what I could’ve done.  She said that I could’ve called 999, if there were police around and available they could’ve sent a car after the bus and arrested the perpetrator then and there.  This wasn’t something I seriously considered because I thought perhaps the crime was “too trivial” for 999.  It wasn’t, and it could’ve helped the police as they are trying to crack down on pickpockets. If a crime is happening or has just happened and you know the police can catch the criminal(s), call 999.

The thoughts are tormenting, yes.  These are all things I could’ve, should’ve done, and I didn’t.  People say it’s useless to think of what you should’ve done during an incident after it’s over, but actually,  I think my mind is taking this incident that has so obviously upset me and its going over it and picking out all the possible spots where I could’ve acted to change the situation, so that I will be prepared and know what to do for next time.  Or to prevent a next time.  In other words, lacking real circumstances, my mind is rehearsing.

Back at university I trained in karate and one of the main things you learn in karate is kata – that’s the series of movements you see karate students do.  It may look like we’re just showing off, but the fundamental thing about practising kata was that you were practising these series of movements over and over again so that they were ingrained in your muscle memory.  That block punch-turn combination may look useless if you’re fighting one person, but in a real life situation when you’ve got that drilled in you it could save your life. Without thinking you’ll block your attacker’s initial advance, punch to momentarily stun them, and throw them while you’re turning.

Of course, you should always take the opportunity to run the hell out of there when you can, but sometimes when you’re trapped that isn’t possible.

So I guess, in a way, my mind is performing its mental kata right now – taking in the situation and practising over and over what I should do in another situation.

But we don’t have to wait for these things to happen and to affect us so profoundly before our mind starts practising actions for these situations.  I once tried to set up a women’s self-defence class at my university – unfortunately it never happened because the university didn’t have the budget for it – but speaking to Ger O’Dea, who I hoped would lead the class, I learnt a few things that I think would be really useful.  Unfortunately I never practised it for being pickpocketed – I was focused on more violent attacks – but hopefully having done this exercise for violent attacks, during a violent attack (which of course I hope will never happen) my mind won’t desert me like it did last night.

If you have half an hour and a pen and paper right now, do this right now. If not, think about it and do it when you have time. It may save your life.

To start with, think about your most frequent route.  For me, it’d be travelling to and from work.  Now think about all the places where you are vulnerable on this route.  Walking through quiet neighbourhoods.   Waiting at quiet bus stops.  Walking past dark parks.  I hope, by the way, that you NEVER take short cuts through quiet ways by yourself when there is a lovely main road you can use.

Now think of the things that could happen to you when you are in these places.  Perhaps while waiting at your quiet bus stop a bunch of rowdy drunk men could spot you and think you’re an easy target to harrass.  Perhaps while you’re walking past a dark alleyway someone could jump out, grab you, and drag you in, and try to rape you at knifepoint.  Perhaps, while you’re walking through a quiet neighbourhood, some guy in a van will pull over, get out, and ask you how much for a night.  No, these are not pleasant things to think about.

Now the first thing to do, for all these incidents, is to think whether there is some way you can avoid them, or the places where they could happen.  You could walk to the next bus stop which is on a main road. You could cross the road to avoid walking past the dark alleyway.

Some of these things can’t be avoided though.  What do you do when that guy in a van pulls over and gets out and asks you for a good time tonight?  Can you scream “FIRE!” and run to the door of the nearest house? (Always scream “Fire” – it gets people’s attention)  Could you carry a rape alarm around with you and have it in your hand while you’re walking through this neighbourhood?  Could you catch this guy off guard, kick him in the stomach, punch him in the nose, then run like hell to a main road?  Write down several things you could do in each of the situations you have listed, and be realistic about your capabilities.  Make sure you factor in other possible situations – what if that guy has a friend?  Maybe you can say “Sure, come to my place, I like it this way and I have these toys…” and lead them to the house of the biggest strongest man you know.  Always make sure you have an escape plan.

Now, while you’re on a roll, or later when you have time, work on your other frequent routes.

Is it too much?  Maybe.  But wouldn’t you prefer to rehearse before incidents happen rather than after?

One of the things you should hopefully find after you do this exercise is that in a funny way it frees you from anxiety.  My best friend lives in LA and is always on red alert.  When I visited her a few years back we got lost late at night and I asked a stranger for directions and she freaked out.  He turned out to be a very nice guy, but she is always living with the “What if”.  I don’t know how it is to live your life questioning the motives of every stranger – to fear everybody who looks at you the wrong way or passes too close to you.  I’m not saying that after you do this exercise you should no longer be cautious – far from it – but that having these plans available you should hopefully be released from that anxiety of “anything can happen” and actually start listening to your instinctual feelings – so that your real fear signals – the ones you should really listen to – are not buried and confused with your anxiety.

If you’re interested in reading more about instinct and fear and how they could help you out in situations rather than that constant buzz of anxiety, a good book to read is the very aptly named “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker.  I just bought two copies – one to replace the last one which I lent out and never got back, and one for my best friend.  I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who is always feeling that anxiety that my friend has and it’s pretty cheap – about a fiver including delivery on Amazon.

I will readily admit that I wrote this post partly to help clear my mind of last night’s incident, to write down my thoughts on the “mental kata” I’ve been doing, but  I also thought it important that the people – particularly the women – I know do the exercise I have just mentioned.  I do think and have always thought that self-defence is unfortunately very important in the times we live in, and I think it is 99% mental and should only be physical when everything else has failed.

Special thanks to Ger O’Dea who originally spoke to me about this exercise and who responded with great enthusiasm when I asked him to proofread the first draft of this post, despite us having been out of touch for years! Ger now runs the Dynamis gym in Edinburgh where he teaches self-defence.

Thoughts on fighting internet astroturfing

A bit on the late side as usual, I read this article by George Monbiot tonight on the bus (coincidentally while going around Parliament Square) and was immediately outraged.  For those of you who can’t be bothered to read the article, the summary is thus:

For a while now, PR companies (and the Chinese government) have been paying people to go on the internet and promote products (or ideologies) subtly – i.e. not as an obvious advertisement, but more like Jane Doe goes on a message board and tells everyone how much she loves using hair product K or a Chinese citizen getting upset and abusing a criticism of the Chinese government. What’s even more worrying though, is that lately organisations (companies and other types of organisations including the US Airforce) are now paying dedicated companies who are creating multiple fake people to do the same thing.  Two quotes from the article:

“I was contacted by a whistleblower… part of a commercial team employed to infest internet forums and comment threads on behalf of corporate clients, promoting their causes and arguing with anyone who opposed them… He posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments.”

“This software creates all the online furniture a real person would possess: a name, email accounts, web pages and social media. In other words, it automatically generates what look like authentic profiles, making it hard to tell the difference between a virtual robot and a real commentator… Human astroturfers can then be assigned these “pre-aged” accounts to create a back story, suggesting that they’ve been busy linking and retweeting for months.”

As somebody who feels like she grew up with the internet, believes in democracy and free speech and participated in online forums, this absolutely outraged me.  I’m always one for thinking I can help make a change.  So I started writing an e-mail to the George Monbiot discussion group.  The rest of this post is an edited version (for clarity) of this e-mail which turned out into a mini manifesto of what we as individuals can do to fight back against internet astroturfing.

The first thing is to raise awareness.  Being an ex-computer scientist and now working in the environmental sector, I feel like I should have heard about this by now, but it came as a huge shock (although, “oh, that makes sense” did make itself heard at the back of my mind).  So perhaps what we can do is post this on any popular message boards we frequent, make people aware and solicit opinions.  Tweet it, post it on facebook and reddit.

Which brings me to the second thing.  The article mentions ‘social media’ a lot.  It may mean other services, but to me the largest social media networks are Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.  I’ve never actually read the terms and conditions of any of these services (and I can’t afford the time to right now), but the first question should be if what these companies are doing are contravening these services’ terms and conditions. Same goes for the targets of these companies: the newspaper websites, popular forums, etc.  If they are, great.  If not, we need to write to these websites to make them aware of what is happening – maybe they are already, maybe they’re not.  But I’m guessing that none of them want their websites used in the manner by which astroturfers are attempting to. They’ll need to rewrite their terms and conditions, and they’ll need to put people onto the case to figure out how they can detect and stop it.

This will be the difficult part for these companies.  The Daily Kos reports that HB Gary are recruiting from “many different agencies and top universities like MIT”. The social media companies will have to stay ahead of these guys, but I’m sure they can do it. I know they, too, are recruiting from top universities and stealing staff from each other.

I’d love to have a discussion on this and hear anybody’s thoughts.  In the meantime, I’ve posted George’s article to my facebook wall and tweeted it as per my suggestions. :)

—Links

The article that kicked this post off

George Monbiot’s first article on astroturfing

The Daily Kos report on an e-mail from one of the astroturf companies

I’m from earth

Today I got asked an interesting question. It is a question I get asked enough times and hate answering, but it is interesting this time because it is from my mother.

In the middle of trying to convince me I should speak Cantonese (I should, but it’s difficult!) she said “Where are you from?” Well actually she asked something more along the lines of “Which place person are you?” which is usually translated to “Where are you from?” but is an interesting phrase for the purposes of this post.

It is difficult for me to place myself to be from anywhere, and generally when someone I have just met asks me that question I try to answer in the best way possible from the context of their question (although it usually ends up with me, somehow or other, listing the places I’ve lived in and pointing out that my accent is from an international school).

But since it was my mother asking, and she has in a way created my history, I merely answered, “The world”. Well, my mother was a bit taken back by my answer, despite the fact that when I tell people I’m Malaysian she says “But you’re not” and goes on to say that I’m more British as I’ve spent more of my time here. Following my answer, she said that it was not good for people to feel like they don’t belong anywhere, and went on to recount how a woman she knows was given away whe she was a baby by her mother and has spent the rest of her life trying to make up for it and to belong somewhere.

But I do feel like I belong. It may sound a bit cheesy but I’m a citizen of the earth and a proud member of the human race. I call multiple countries home and I have happily embraced the term ‘Third Culture Kid’ when attempting to put a name to my culture. This is something I worked out when I was a teenager (who stuck out like a sore thumb at school) and have been comfortable with since.

Most of the people I feel an immediate affinity with turn out to be third culture kids and I sometimes think we represent a placeless ‘race’ of TCKs – by which I mean a collection of people who have the same culture which enables us to connect and understand each other on a very basic level in a way that people from the same culture do.

And while I sometimes think and feel this way of claiming other TCKs as part of my culture and to whom I ‘belong’ with, at the very most basic level I do feel I am a citizen of this earth, the same way that a scottish man will claim that he is Scottish and a chinese girl will claim she is Chinese.

So at the end of this short conversation with my mother and slightly longer deliberation on my part I had a revelation – perhaps my chosen career in the environmental sector stems in part from my feeling of belonging to the world. I have never been a patriot of any nation, but my concern (and pride) is for all.

Thankful Thursday

3 things I’m thankful for:
1) my friends – all over the world and diverse in age, race, career, thinking, but all kind  wonderful people
2) my health – I have all my limbs and everything functions.
3) my job -  I’m lucky  not just to be working but to be in a job where I do something I feel is worthwhile, where I get opportunity to learn all the time and am surrounded by awesome inspiring people

Let’s stop pretending the world is black and white

I was just watching the BBC Election Special and was shocked by how all the political commentators distilled issues down so much that it seemed like they had decided the world was black and white:

• David Dimbleby kept on referring to Labour and the Liberal Democrats as the ‘losing parties’. He fretted that a coalition government would be formed out of the ‘losing parties’. - It is clear that none of the parties has ‘won’ as none have an absolute majority, and none of the parties that have as many seats as the Liberal Democrats and Labour do have ‘lost’. BNP, UKIP, Christian Democrats are all ‘losing parties’ because they don’t have a single seat.  If Labour and Lib Dem did form a coalition with other parties, it wouldn’t be a coalition of losers, because they would have managed to come to an agreement to become a coalition with an absolute majority, the ‘goal’ they have to reach for a stable government, therefore they would have ‘won’ through working together.
• John Reid said that 74% of people had voted against proportional representation, his thinking being that since the Liberal Democrats were the only party that made PR one of their main issues and only 26% of the population voted for them, therefore 74% had voted against proportional representation. – There are of course a million other issues at stake while voting for your member of parliament including local issues, and painting the general election as a vote for or against proportional representation is clearly ridiculous.
• Everyone says that Nick Clegg is playing the ‘Kingmaker‘, as he and the rest of the Liberal Democrats decide whether they will form a coalition with Labour or Conservatives, therefore helping to grant them an absolute majority. The truth is that Nick Clegg is only playing the ‘Kingmaker’ because Labour and Conservatives cannot possibly conceive of working together.  Everyone is seeing this situation as black and white, either Conservative wins or Labour wins. It is not conceivable at all that they attempt to work together? As far as I know, the Liberal Democrats have been speaking to both of them, however Labour and Conservatives have not been speaking to each other.  This means that the power is in the hands of the party with the least votes between the three main parties. Maybe I’m being idealistic to imagine that Labour and Conservatives could try and work something out, that they would actually have to discuss things with each other and try to bring the members of one over to the point of view of the members of the other in order to pass things through the various houses, rather than sneer, jibe and name-call each other all the time. It would probably make for much more informed discussion happening, which can only be a good thing.

I can see why it is easier to distill things down so that they look black and white, and this perhaps works for really complicated issues in less important areas. However for perhaps more important issues such as the future government of the UK, lets try and keep discussion at a level where biases aren’t formed from the distillation, all options can be seen, and outright lies aren’t told.

Who should I vote for?

As I’m sure you already know, the UK general election has been called for Thursday 6th May.  I do believe it is very important for people to go out and vote.  But even more importantly is that people figure out who it is they should vote for according to their views.  I had a friend at university who voted BNP in a local election because it was the only party that said ‘British’ on it instead of  ‘Scottish’…. we lived in Edinburgh.  When she found out what the BNP stood for she was horrified!  Far better had she stayed away from the polls than vote for a party that was against what she wanted.

You want more? Here’s some with humour.

Not many of us have the time or inclination to read through manifestos and try and decide whether parties have generally stuck to what they’ve said before.  Luckily for us, we live in an age of modern conveniences and where people dedicated to the cause of helping people choose which party to vote for, no matter their views, have come up with some tools!  I’m going to test run a few of those here and tell you how time consuming it is, how likely it is to be accurate, and, scarily, what parties they suggest to me!

Okay. First off, Vote Match!  Vote Match is an ‘Unlock Democracy‘ project in association with The Telegraph, Goldsmiths University of London, and The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

It is very easy to use and definitely for those who don’t want to spend too much time reading things. After telling it which country you live in, you go straight into 30 questions about how you feel about things. You can either agree, disagree, or remain ‘Open Minded’. The only thing I didn’t like about this was there were a few questions where you could’ve done with a bit more information or a button which said ‘It depends’. Next it asks you to select your priorities over 12 issues, what you feel are the most important and least important issues.  It the asks you to select the parties you’d like to be compared with and includes that for accurate results, not to include any part you would never consider voting for. I like to think I’m a pretty open minded person, so I select all parties apart from the BNP. Because lets face it, if the BNP were ever in power I wouldn’t have the power to vote. Next, they offer to email you to remind you to vote. I reckon I probably won’t need reminding, so I skip the option.

Apart from various frustrations with the limited answers you can give to the questions, VoteMatch is very straightforward and easy to use.  My result? UKIP!  UKIP???? UKIP!!!!  I am worried…. but as I look through the answers to the questions I can see why. The quesions where I got frustrated the most with the limited answers have aligned themselves with UKIP… in exactly the ways I was thinking they shouldn’t.  My next match is with the Liberal Democrats, then the Green Party, and then I am tied with the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Interesting.

Next up: Vote for Policies.

The idea behind Vote for Policies is that it keeps you a number of points from each parties manifesto and asks you to choose from the sets of policies, rather than the personalities. It’s a good idea, but actually doesn’t really work in the context its presented in as the points are quoted ad verbatim and it is obvious who some of the parties are due to the language used, or some points which have been brought up in the press.

Nevertheless, Vote for Policies gives you a much more indepth look and is for people who want to spend more time on choosing who they want to vote for. They start off with asking you what issues, out of a selection of 9, you are interested in. I choose all 9.

The sets of policies make for long reading, and you do get torn between a few of them. It would be nice if they had an optional ranking system.  It takes quite a while to get through them, but after the fourth section I start skipping some once I start reading vile things.

My result? Liberal Democrats. I come out Liberal Democrats on Health/NHS, Democracy, Environment, Europe and Welfare. Green on Crime and Immigration (funny, as I didn’t vote Green for MEPs because of their immigration policies, I guess they must’ve toned them down), Labour on Economy, and funnily enough, UKIP on Education.

There may be a few more quizzes out there, but for now I’m heading for bed!

Why is a computer like a big city?

Okay so the question isn’t “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” but at least I have an answer….

Speaking of which, a colleague and I were messing around one lunchtime on Google, giggling at the google predictive search results (“why is a raven like a writing desk?” popped up the first suggestion when I typed in “why”).  Naturally, this got me to thinking about the top searches on Google so after a quick search (on Google), I got to Google Insight.

Rubbing my hands with glee, I decided to ask Google Insight what the most popular search terms in the last 12 months in the UK have been.

The answer? Not very interesting. It’s not ‘Porn’ or ‘Brittenaey Spears’ (yes I know I spelt that wrong) like it was in the late 90s and early 2000s.  No, the rather unexciting ‘facebook’ tops the list, followed far behind by youtube, bbc, hotmail, ebay…

…wait a minute.  People are actually searching for these terms?  Presumably they are looking for these websites, why else would you be searching for facebook or hotmail?  Youtube or BBC I can understand if you were looking for a particular clip on YouTube or news story on BBC, but facebook? Hotmail? Ebay?  And look at the rising searches! Twitter! Even ‘Facebook login’!

This, to me, points to a worrying trend of computer illiteracy.  The government are still pushing the digital age and I do not deny at all that they have gotten far.  When I first arrived in the UK in 1998 my family was one of the few that I knew that had a computer in their house, let alone the internet!  This graph shows the meteoric rise of home computers and internet useage, and for that I appluad what efforts the government made to aid that along (although I will also say that a lot of it will also have to do with the world economy and technology getting cheaper).

However our earlier data makes it clear that computer literacy didn’t come along with home computers and the internet.  A lot of people are turning on their computers, loading up Internet Explorer, and searching for facebook or ‘facebook login’ to get to their favourite social networking site.  This shows a very limited knowledge of how computers work and what can be achieved by them.  People don’t even seem to know enough about computers that they can type in ‘www.facebook.com’ or ‘www.hotmail.com’ into their address bar to get them to the website they want!

I can understand this.  I used to do this when I first started using the internet. I’d load up the browser, type ‘rocketmail‘ into webcrawler, and find my mail that way. When I needed to search for something else, I’d close the window down and open it again just so I could get my search engine up again! But that lasted all of 2 days, until I figured out how to use web addresses and I found other search engines that were not my default homepage.

The problem I think we have today that is demonstrated in the Google Insight results is that people are learning ‘routes’ to get what they want out of their computer. “To get to facebook I have to open internet explorer and find it in google” (even this doesn’t work everytime, this post had to insert a message in bold to tell Google visitors that it wasn’t a facebook login page! Funny right now, yes. But what about the potential for phishing?). “To get to my e-mail I need to search for it in Google”. So yes, we have a lot of people on computers nowadays, and they are doing things on them, but are they really computer literate?

Suppose you moved to a big city. Immediately you figure out how to get to your local cornershop, supermarket and postoffice, how to get to work, and possibly one or two other things like how to get to your local pub. But you don’t stop there, or at least you shouldn’t. Through exploring and visiting new places all the time, you eventually build up a map in your head of your new city, and maps are helpful just to find out where you are and where you’re going.

Computer literacy is like that map. Too many people are just travelling to work (firing up Word) and maybe to their local pub (going to Facebook), but not anywhere else.  They’re missing out on all the museums, the parks, the riverside walks, the great concert venues and architectural wonders of their new city, because they never try to go anywhere new.  The worse thing is that maybe they’d like to visit these places, but they’re too scared to venture out, in case they get lost.

We need to encourage computer illiterate people to spend more time on their computers, to find out what they can do with their computers, and especially what their computers can do for them.  They need to start building a map in their head, to not be scared of installing and using new programs or even learn to use existing programs to their full extent, to play around, to even try their hand at programming, if it can help them create something or save them time.

People are constantly scared of ‘breaking’ their computers through experimentation – I never managed it at the age of 6 and believe me it’s gotten a lot of harder since then.  We need to convince them of this.

I know people who work with computers everyday, who do a myriad of things with computers including working on Word and Excel documents, chatting to their friends on Skype, even editing webpages on Dreamweaver, that don’t have that map in their head, and instead only their remembered routes.  As someone who knows how much computers can help us speed up everyday mundane tasks, entertain us, and aid in creative processes, this frustrates me greatly.

How do we get computer literacy into the lives of the people around us?  It is both a give and take.  As computer literates we need to help and explain, and hopefully the people we are helping will listen.

I am always willing to help people who come to me for help with their computer, and as I help I always make sure they understand exactly what their issue is and how I am fixing it, and how they can do it in the future.  Helping someone on their computer without an explanation is like meeting someone who has no knowledge of their city, blindfolding them, and taking them to a place they wanted to go to, and taking off the blindfold. You may have taken them there, but what happens if they want to go again?

Data visualisation

Although I’m at work, I figured I could do a really quick post about this to reinforce the point I am about to make: Data visualisation is awesome!

My friend Frank sent me a link to the Public Data Explorer at Google Labs, saying he figured I’d like it as an economist.  He was right!  I watched  the bubble graph visualisation embedded in the front page about three times…. the first time just because I was curious, the second time because the first time was over so quickly and random things had caught my eye, and the third pausing and retracing to check who those little outliers bouncing off to the sides and back again were about.

Try it! You can pause at any point and hovering over each bubble will tell you which country the bubble represents.

So in the space of about 5 minutes I had been able to pick out the devastating effect on average life expectancy that the civil wars in the 70s in Cambodia and Timor-Leste had, and the insane genocide in Rwanda in the late 80s/early 90s.  You can also see the South African countries moving out to the left in the late 90s – average age expectancy falling undoubtedly by the spread of AIDS (although the drastic fall in Zimbabwe’s life expectancy may be a bit more than that!).  In recent years however you can see that some of them are coming back up.  Is this due to better medicine to treat AIDS or a fall in victims?  We don’t know, but the data can tell us where to look.

In a nutshell, data visualisation is great for quickly picking out anomalies in data and telling us where to dig deeper.

Now please excuse me as I should get back to work as well as satisfy my curiosity by looking up why the fertility rate in Guinea-Bissau plummeted in the 60s!