1984 again...
Seems like I underestimated the number of CCTV cameras watching me - or, rather, failed to understand just what big business spying is these days. Sorry, I mean I failed to understand how important spying is in big business...either way I may have to rethink the usefulness of online shopping that in the name of convenience saves your purchase lists for reuse later - seems my convenience is only of interest if it means I will give more of my business to the same online shops next time around.
Most scary of all though is to think that in some places my employers could insist that I be 'implanted' with a small glass bubble containing a transmitter in order that they can track me and tell me what to do. There really is no hiding place.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Football footnote
A week on and the place is still talking about the Zebras win. This curiously 21st century poster offering was hand painted on a piece of cloth and hung on the back of a bus:
Madagascar is our pin code and Bafana accepted our pin code!
Seems that getting your pin code right is now understood as the key to getting what you want - wonder what this says about the 'digital divide'?
A week on and the place is still talking about the Zebras win. This curiously 21st century poster offering was hand painted on a piece of cloth and hung on the back of a bus:
Madagascar is our pin code and Bafana accepted our pin code!
Seems that getting your pin code right is now understood as the key to getting what you want - wonder what this says about the 'digital divide'?
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Blue weekend
In the old days (10 years or so ago) the real excitement on a weekend in Gaborone was to go to the airport, take a cup of bush tea in the cafe, and watch the world come and go. Things have changed now since a couple of years back when two big shopping malls came to town. And this weekend the city was positively screaming with life - all in the name of football! Blue flags were everywhere - on cars, on buildings, being waved and being worn. They were even wrapping babies in them!
Now, the more football savvy reader may be wondering how so much excitement could be generated by a team that has, at best, been ranked outside the world's top 100 football playing nations and, at worst, been ranked well outside the top 100. But, every team must have its day and Saturday saw the Zebras with a 2-0 win over Madagascar - cause enough for celebration. And, this being a COSAFA mini-tournament, when Swaziland narrowly lost their own Saturday match, Zebras found themselves faced with the prospect of a match that could give them the unbelievable chance of a semi-final place! But, against Bafana Bafana there seemed little chance. History was made around tea-time on Sunday. Having held the South Africans to a nil-nil draw at full time the Zebras hit home in the penalty shoot-out to finish 6-5. The place errupted. Car horns blasted, small children stood on walls and cheered as an impromtu cavalcade toured the streets and there was much singing and revelling... Monday morning only a few brave souls were up with the sun!
A truly extraordinary 'blue' weekend all round and one that does not bode well for 2010
In the old days (10 years or so ago) the real excitement on a weekend in Gaborone was to go to the airport, take a cup of bush tea in the cafe, and watch the world come and go. Things have changed now since a couple of years back when two big shopping malls came to town. And this weekend the city was positively screaming with life - all in the name of football! Blue flags were everywhere - on cars, on buildings, being waved and being worn. They were even wrapping babies in them!
Now, the more football savvy reader may be wondering how so much excitement could be generated by a team that has, at best, been ranked outside the world's top 100 football playing nations and, at worst, been ranked well outside the top 100. But, every team must have its day and Saturday saw the Zebras with a 2-0 win over Madagascar - cause enough for celebration. And, this being a COSAFA mini-tournament, when Swaziland narrowly lost their own Saturday match, Zebras found themselves faced with the prospect of a match that could give them the unbelievable chance of a semi-final place! But, against Bafana Bafana there seemed little chance. History was made around tea-time on Sunday. Having held the South Africans to a nil-nil draw at full time the Zebras hit home in the penalty shoot-out to finish 6-5. The place errupted. Car horns blasted, small children stood on walls and cheered as an impromtu cavalcade toured the streets and there was much singing and revelling... Monday morning only a few brave souls were up with the sun!
A truly extraordinary 'blue' weekend all round and one that does not bode well for 2010
Monday, May 15, 2006
Where am I?
Happily I don't often lose my mobile phone but, should I do so, I can now be reassured that at least IT knows where it is - all the time, and will tell me where, should I happen to be with it. Not sure if this is a feature of the phone or of the service providers - it does not seem to work in the UK but works fine across several different service providers in at least two countries in Southern Africa. Passing through Johannesburg Airport I gave it a thorough test and found it can correctly identify different parts of the airport - Departure Lounge, Airport Offices etc. and only seems to falter when it comes to different floors: the smoking lounge was identified as Departures though it's on the floor above and the Ladies Toilets as Airport Offices - apparently for the same reason. As far as I can tell its level of accuracy goes as close as a few hundered metres in some instances.
Meanwhile, as I am being astounded by the latent GPS qualities of my phone Tony is not only being blown away by the ability of other phones to recognise music from just a few bars of a tune, but also being scared by the power of search in general and audio/speech search in particular. He also records how there is now software to recognise your friends faces, and thus their pictures, from within your photo albums. I am starting to think about something I read a while ago - that each of us is captured on CCTV at least a dozen times a day
Now even I am feeling a little uneasy. Not about what may be held and used in evidence against me - I've long assumed that as a part of everyday life - but about the fact that far from only being accessible to the big boys like security and law enforcement agencies, the technology for watching the minutiae of my daily life is just as accessible to my granny, or the man at the grocery store, or - whoever.
Happily I don't often lose my mobile phone but, should I do so, I can now be reassured that at least IT knows where it is - all the time, and will tell me where, should I happen to be with it. Not sure if this is a feature of the phone or of the service providers - it does not seem to work in the UK but works fine across several different service providers in at least two countries in Southern Africa. Passing through Johannesburg Airport I gave it a thorough test and found it can correctly identify different parts of the airport - Departure Lounge, Airport Offices etc. and only seems to falter when it comes to different floors: the smoking lounge was identified as Departures though it's on the floor above and the Ladies Toilets as Airport Offices - apparently for the same reason. As far as I can tell its level of accuracy goes as close as a few hundered metres in some instances.
Meanwhile, as I am being astounded by the latent GPS qualities of my phone Tony is not only being blown away by the ability of other phones to recognise music from just a few bars of a tune, but also being scared by the power of search in general and audio/speech search in particular. He also records how there is now software to recognise your friends faces, and thus their pictures, from within your photo albums. I am starting to think about something I read a while ago - that each of us is captured on CCTV at least a dozen times a day
Now even I am feeling a little uneasy. Not about what may be held and used in evidence against me - I've long assumed that as a part of everyday life - but about the fact that far from only being accessible to the big boys like security and law enforcement agencies, the technology for watching the minutiae of my daily life is just as accessible to my granny, or the man at the grocery store, or - whoever.
Friday, May 12, 2006
1984
I have long concluded that just about everything I do and say these days is being taken down and will probably be used in evidence against me. But now I am wondering if I shouldn't be a bit more pro-active, in fact, if it wouldn't help if a lot of us were more pro-active. Perhaps if we could overwhelm the spies with domestic detail and detritus they might leave alone and concentrate on the REAL trouble makers? We could start by virtualising our shopping lists - go to Ta-da, create the list then nip down to the supermarket and retrieve it with our WAP mobile phones. We could annote the list with comments on quality and availability and then SMS it to all our friends...
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of keeping an eye on those who need an eye kept on them (be they criminals or would be terrorists), but I also think that the welfare of the majority is not best served by somebody tracking my every phone call or making my local library tell the govenment everytime I borrow "do it yourself flower arranging".
PS And since the BBC fails to offer the link on its story page mentioned above, the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be found here.
I have long concluded that just about everything I do and say these days is being taken down and will probably be used in evidence against me. But now I am wondering if I shouldn't be a bit more pro-active, in fact, if it wouldn't help if a lot of us were more pro-active. Perhaps if we could overwhelm the spies with domestic detail and detritus they might leave alone and concentrate on the REAL trouble makers? We could start by virtualising our shopping lists - go to Ta-da, create the list then nip down to the supermarket and retrieve it with our WAP mobile phones. We could annote the list with comments on quality and availability and then SMS it to all our friends...
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of keeping an eye on those who need an eye kept on them (be they criminals or would be terrorists), but I also think that the welfare of the majority is not best served by somebody tracking my every phone call or making my local library tell the govenment everytime I borrow "do it yourself flower arranging".
PS And since the BBC fails to offer the link on its story page mentioned above, the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be found here.
On the way to the airport...
A small highly streamlined and polished car zooms past proudly shouting P155 TOL in highly stylised italics. Glad to be leaving the land of CRP registrations and heading back to the bundu - even if winter is setting in there - I relish the prospect of absolute clear blue sky as far as the eye can see in all directions, heat while the sun shines, and the smell of woodsmoke when the sun has gone.
A small highly streamlined and polished car zooms past proudly shouting P155 TOL in highly stylised italics. Glad to be leaving the land of CRP registrations and heading back to the bundu - even if winter is setting in there - I relish the prospect of absolute clear blue sky as far as the eye can see in all directions, heat while the sun shines, and the smell of woodsmoke when the sun has gone.
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