blogcutter

Back in 1995, the book Being Digital (by Nicholas Negroponte ) was published:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_Digital

Fast forward to 2018 and Don Norman writes about being analog and more specifically, about how we are analog beings trapped in a digital world:

https://jnd.org/being_analog/

For starters, let's just say that I feel much more in synch with Norman than with Negroponte.

Now don't get me wrong. Technology has made our lives easier in a multitude of ways. But do we not have the right to decide to what degree we wish to embrace newer technologies?

Are we raising a new generation that believes that to be human means simply to be able to identify the traffic lights, motorcycles or fire hydrants in a particular two-dimensional on-screen image? What an impoverished view of the human race! Just what a piece of work IS man, anyway? And what a piece of work is the computer that we increasingly stake our lives upon?

It doesn't help matters when governments and service industries decree that we MUST interact with them via cellphone, tablet or laptop, whether we want to or not. It means that common sense, human judgement and discretion, deeper thought and reflection, and long-term planning inevitably take a back seat. And I haven't even gotten started on our right to privacy, for ourselves and our families.

A few examples may be in order here. ArriveCan. Income tax. Cash. Cheques. Rogers outages. Zoom meetings. You get the idea.

Just recently, Alterna Savings changed their website. To continue online banking with them, customers (who supposedly are also members) were asked to input both a cell phone number and an e-mail address so that Alterna could send a 4- or 5-digit code to each destination that the customer/"member" would key in to "prove" they were indeed the "correct" customer/member logging in, rather than an impostor. Only then would the customer get access to their own accounts through online banking. Yes, I did try phoning and getting "help" after a considerable wait-time.

Honestly! What are people supposed to do if they don't even HAVE a cell phone or computer? It's so sad, because I really believe in co-ops where the individual is a member rather than the hapless customer of a Big Bank.

I haven't decided on my future with Alterna yet. I've tried using telephone banking with my main accounts and that still works. I think I can still use ATMs to withdraw cash. There's still one account I have with them that they've threatened to declare dormant and impose fees on. They notified me of that via snail-mail but the letter did not clearly indicate when the dormant status would take effect. Maybe I'll look into other credit unions.

But then there's government, which we just have to live with. I still send in a paper return for my taxes but the actual payments now have to be made through my computer banking. I have to pay a fee every 5 years to renew my Government of Ontario identification card and my Government of Ontario health card. Canada Post no longer delivers to my door. Increasingly, you cannot even use cash to pay for government documents like passports.

Kind of gives the lie to that little statement "This note is legal tender in Canada", don't you think? Frankly I don't care if that $20 bill depicts the late Queen Elizabeth II or the recently inaugurated King Charles III - I just want it to be real and valid!

That's something I'd like to look at as we investigate possible Constitutional reforms!

I rarely agree with Diane Francis' columns but I know a lot of people do. Here's the one that appeared in yesterday's paper:

https://www.seaforthhuronexpositor.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-the-disturbing-world-of-deepfakes/wcm/09a248a0-6145-4cca-a135-49e55615fe88

And here's what I think. Yes, fake news and doctored photos, audio and video are problems. But I don't entirely agree with the solutions she proposes. She states that "A fake filter, or authentication process, along with new laws must be created to protect the public, consumers and voters from such fakes."

I'll deal with the second part of her proposal first: new laws. And yes, laws might be good. I mean, what kind of a society are we if we don't protect our weakest or most vulnerable members? But they tend to be of limited use out in cyberspace which tends not to respect national boundaries. International agreements? Even better, but even harder to enforce. And in cases where they do get enforced, the resultant penalties tend to be a drop in the bucket or a slap on the wrist for the rich and powerful, but a pyrrhic victory for more disadvantaged groups.

Now what about the fake filter? I guess she's subscribing to that old adage that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. But in this instance, I disagree. The trouble is that in her lexicon, "fake filter" seems to refer exclusively to electronic screening processes, which of course may be malevolent as well as benign. She mentions that "social media giants like Google are staging contests to come up with software antidotes." Hmmm... that sounds to me suspiciously like putting the the fox in charge of the hen house and setting the cat amongst the pigeons!

What makes the best bullshit-detector? Most likely a bull, I should think! And who has the most powerful incentive to sift out all the nasty stuff that is injurious to human health and well-being? A human, preferably one with a sufficient level of intelligence and reasoning power to identify the most egregious examples of falsehoods in truth's clothing and refer the ones that look or sound or smell suspect to experts in the appropriate field.

Artificial intelligence may have come a long way over the years, decades and centuries, but we shouldn't confuse a web-crawling search engine with a human mind. Nor should we assume that the geeks designing the filters and authentication processes have no personal or corporate axe to grind. In the hands of a spin-doctor, outrageous statements can all too easily be recast as "key messages" or "expert advice".

So while electronic tools may indeed have a legitimate role to play, the most crucial element by far is the human element. We need better media literacy training and we need to constantly upgrade our skills and awareness or at least know where to turn to address the gaps in our knowledge. While avoiding absurd conspiracy theories, we can still cultivate a certain reasoned scepticism and adapt our thinking as new information or hypotheses emerge.

That's not easy during a pandemic like this one, when so much of our information is coming from online sources and even the state of expert knowledge is very much incomplete. We just have to do the best we can. The future of human civilization depends on it!

According to Alexa, Amazon's cyber-assistant, the mayor of Ottawa is Larry O'Brien. I'm not going to bother finding out what else she doesn't know.

Not that I'm entirely surprised. Back in the 70s, the era of stagflation, I was that obnoxious grocery shopper who would scrounge at the back of the shelves to find that tin of whatever that had a label with a lower (sometimes significantly lower) price label stuck on top. They were just getting into the era of smarter cash registers that could store the current prices of all the products in their inventory. To be fair, they always allowed me to buy the product at the lower price, but I clearly remember one cashier who remarked (in all seriousness), "Gee, it's really weird that The Computer would do that!"

In the ensuing decades, trust in The Computer has certainly not decreased - it just has the potential to bring about much more disastrous results. We get horror stories of the driver who got lost in the bush because he trusted his in-vehicle GPS or Google Maps or Google Streetview rather than that very recent hard-copy map (assuming you're lucky enough to find one any more) or the instructions of a friend or family member who's been the president of an outdoors club and has been taking that route regularly for years.

Then of course there was the Jack Purcell Park rehabilitation fiasco. Someone did a quick Google or Yahoo search and erroneously assumed that the man the park was named after must be the Jack Purcell of badminton fame (who apparently was from Guelph and had no discernible connection to Ottawa). By the time they realized the park had been named after a hockey aficionado noted for mending the hockey sticks of kids in that inner-city neighbourhood, it was too late - they'd already installed light standards resembling badminton rackets. Much embarrassing backtracking followed, with park planners insisting that with a perhaps a few minor modifications, the lampposts COULD be hockey sticks if you were willing to squint hard enough. I guess it just goes to show that you can't always believe what a little birdie tells you.

I've already mentioned in these pages how I sent an e-mail to the Museum of Science and Technology about a photography exhibit pointing out rather substantial errors in three of the bios of the photographic subjects - and it was never even acknowledged.

Anyway, I do see a glimmer of hope in this latest Alexa-blooper. When she errs about a widely known fact like the mayor of a major Canadian city, surely it's only a matter of time until people, Ottawans at the very least, start turning back to those tried and true sources of information - like libraries and librarians!