Tag: information age

the wrong message

Facebook is in the news again, with its new messaging service – here’s the report from the BBC site. There is just so much I disagree with in the comments and attitudes reported there that I don’t know where to begin. Here are just a few details from the article:

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook co-founder): “Maybe we can help push the way people do messaging more towards this simple, real-time, immediate personal experience.”

Leaving aside the fact he sounds as if he wants to push people into doing things his way, the phrase “simple, real-time, immediate personal experience” catches my eye. To me, that sounds like a description of conversation. I have a phone for that. And when I have time, I try and actually meet up with the people I want to have a “personal experience” with.
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anti-social networking

What’s the good of having a personal blog if you can’t use it occasionally for a personal rant? Today is one of those occasions.

Yesterday the subject line of an email urged me to PASS IT ON; the content of the message was simply:

VIRTUAL FRIENDSHIP IS AN OXYMORON

I loathe the impersonalisation of communications on the web. If someone wants to tell me that they’d like to keep in closer touch, I’d like to see something in the message indicating that it was intended for me personally.
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the smallest room in all the world

After rain, sunshine:
tomorrow, there will be
mushrooms for breakfast

mushrooms growing in grass
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a knotty solution

knotted cable
fixed (allegedly)

Well, the problem with my phone and internet connection was finally identified: apparently you can’t hope for a telephone to work when the cable is totally unattached.

I have my suspicions about which of the ‘technical’ guys was responsible, as there have been no more high winds since last week when it was fixed temporarily, and I don’t think the eagles that the village is proud to claim have started frequenting the area have been trying to perch in my orchard, so I can’t blame them.

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that the photo shows what is considered to be a solution. Just what do they think is going to happen to those exposed wires the next time we have a storm?

be careful what you wish for

telephone cables
not exactly a wireless connection
 
Where British Telecom users often say ‘Telecon’, Spanish customers of Telefónica refer to the company as ‘Timofónica’, and I suppose most other national telecommunications companies have similar nicknames.

Currently, I’m debating whether the situation is best described as tele-non-communication or being tele-incomunicada.

A fortnight ago, the router was destroyed by a mains glitch during a storm. Well, we weren’t actually here when it happened, but that seems the likely explanation as some hundred routers round the village needed replacing.

Then we had high winds and the internet connection kept waxing and waning and eventually the phone line died completely.
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