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Yosemite morning

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

It's alright, we know where you've been.

The connectivity of our world is increasing so rapidly, exponentially, on a daily basis. I was cruising the web today when I found a link to instagram, the very popular mobile sharing photo app which has just been released for the Android platform.

I click on the link on my desktop which takes me to Google Play, one of Google's latest roll-outs. The program automatically tells me what phone I am using, in my case that old dinosaur, the original droid. I click install on my computer and the program is instantly loaded on my mobile phone. Magic. No hands, no wires.

I sort of fail to see what this program is delivering me but that is besides the point for this discussion. I am left with four ways to distribute the photograph, twitter, facebook, tumblr and foursquare. I also have the option of using a geotag. Well, the reality is that  I use none of these services. Gave up the facebook habit two years ago, thank god, never wanted to tweet and saw no need for incorporating foursquare or tumblr into my life. So I guess that this program is not for me. I am peeved that you can not comment on many newspaper or internet sites unless you do it through Facebook. This seems shortsighted, that you are forced to use a third party service in order to be heard.

Google of course is trying to drive traffic to Google+ and is throwing off strong hints that we should be redirecting our blogger profile to our google+ profile. Soon I am sure that it will be mandatory. That is the way they roll. Well I don't want to give up the relative non convergence of my various worlds so that I can spill it all on the table that is Google+. All of your aggregated personal information, your  search habits, etc. wrapped in a neat little bow so that you can be an easier target for directed advertising. Google+ is not really a comfortable working environment, at least for me, still can't grok all the circles and extended family and all that.  Not a workspace I need to utilize. Unless I am forced to, of course.

Google just revamped the blogger platform, giving me a whole host of features I neither want or need in the new package. It is difficult for me to adjust to the new workplace. You have to get into a weird backdoor to access the template designer now, going through layout and finding the tool in a different spot. They have given the user greater control of meta tagging and greater ability to tweak the search engines. Also those that choose to can now utilize dynamic views and a lot of other esoteric stuff.

Me, I find myself a comfortable workspace, I live with it.  I like the widths and the color and the fonts and I do things the same way most of the time and people find that it is a familiar place to come and that it is easily accessible. I don't want to change but will probably be forced to.

Google gave us a weaning period but soon the old interface will be officially dead. I will have to figure out a way to use the new one. It is free after all and it is not like I allow them to advertise on the page so I suppose I should just thank them. They also saw fit to kill Picnik, a really handy Google program that I actually paid for.

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My new car's uconnect bluetooth has some interesting features. I merely say blues, or outlaw country and it finds the musical genre for me. I don't think musicologists are necessarily running the show. Soultown, the great soul station is now officially a subset of hiphop. Right. It also mutes the radio automatically when I am talking to somebody on the phone, a really great feature.

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In other technology news, there is a disclosure this week that local police departments are routinely engaging in the wholesale tracking of people through their cell phone gps. Without a warrant, probable cause or court order, of course. Would Orwell and Huxley be laughing or crying right now? Certainly saying I told you so. The police state wants total information control, soon we will all be wearing little implantable chips. A god fearing patriot with nothing to hide should have nothing to fear, right?

England is trying to trump us this week in the warrantless search for all of your communications department. They may catch us but never fear, John Poindexter's DARPA wet dream never really died, we are just implementing it very slowly. We are still number one. You won't feel the snare until it is tightly wrapped around your ankle bone.

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Check out the ibrain - the machine that can read your thoughts. Can replicators be far behind? Or robots in a day?


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have no fucking idea what you are talking about, but at least i know youré alive and well. please no pictures of your privates with your new google whatever the fuck.
love you, Buzz

Blue Heron said...

You are right, Buzz, it is pretty unintelligible.

Anonymous said...

Fortunately little cameras are tracking our every move and computers are analyzing our communications so if we become unintelligible someone somewhere can tell us what we meant to say while providing a summary of everything of potential commercial value we have done or thought in the last week!