Digital Dilemma, Digital Photos

Digital Distortion

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Some weeks ago on the subway 3 tween-aged girls sat next to me.  One girl was beside me.  One girl was sitting on the third girl’s lap in two seats perpendicular to the ones I was in only because she had spotted what she deemed “the largest pube she’d ever seen” on one of the seats and had refused to sit in it.

I watched in fascination as the horrified girl whipped out her phone to capture and memorialize the moment. Clearly this is the kind of thing one wants to remember.  After a stop or two, the girl on the bottom pushed the other one off and moved to the other seat right on top of the large pube!  The first girl squealed in disgust as the other one sat down on the seat while mumbling it wasn’t really a pube and to get over it.  Within seconds the incident was forgotten, except that it had already been captured with a photo and maybe even a posting.  I can’t help but think this girl’s immediate reaction to memorialize something gross gives the errant hair greater importance than it deserves.

As a regular public transit user even I get grossed out by something once in a while.  However, I can’t recall a single time when I wanted to document it, especially if it was something really ordinary like hair, gum, or a spilled drink.  Most of the time I’m trying to forget the annoying, disgusting, and sometimes traumatic things that happen to me (and others) on public transit.  I certainly don’t want to retain images of gross subway things, even if they did cause a moment of hilarity, laughter, or discussion with somebody else.

When we look back at our lives, and even the way we form our memories, I keep thinking about how easy it is to record things digitally.  In some ways, I think that gives us a distorted sense of what was really important.  Sometimes when I’m really enjoying myself, I’m too caught up in the moment to think about capturing it. Maybe there are times where we take a picture of something thinking that it will be the most important, most life-changing thing EVER and we will always want to remember it.   Then in reality it turns out to be a harmless piece of hair on a seat, instantly forgotten the minute somebody sits on it.

Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

Internet of Things, part II

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Recently I went shopping for appliances. I was overwhelmed with all the options, but space restrictions allowed me to quickly narrow down the list.  I was amazed at the number of “smart” appliances on display, all part of the Internet of Things.  For example, one refrigerator came equipped with a computer inside to track my usage and adjust the energy expenditure based on the activity.

The “smart” fridge has been on the market for several years.  Some of the more advanced models offer to track expiration dates or when a certain product is low so it can be added, automatically, to your grocery list. One model even had an electronic board built in to eliminate handwritten notes and fridge magnets.

I was especially interested in the aspect of saving energy.  My previous refrigerator was so old that a number of friends remembered growing up with the style so I would place it circa 1980’s.  I should also add that I paid for my electricity and I’m sure the fridge was consuming a lot of it, mostly because it was old, enormous, and didn’t seal properly. However, when I had the choice between buying the more expensive “smart” refrigerator or the regular, but still energy-efficient model, I went with the “dumb” one.  It was the thought of maintenance that impacted my decision the most.

Some years ago a friend of mine had a problem with her car.  It was an older model and the mechanic often had to scour the junkyards for suitable replacement parts, as the manufacturer no longer produced them.  One repair had to be customized by the mechanic.  While the replacement part was perfectly functional and able to fix the problem, the computer in the car didn’t recognize the part and refused to work with it making the vehicle unreliable.

This thought crossed my mind when I thought about future repairs on the “smart” fridge.  Would I call a technician or somebody in IT?  Will future repair people need degrees in computer science in addition to learning their trade?  What if there was an internet glitch that caused the fridge to malfunction even if it was still mechanically sound?  What if somebody hacked my “smart” fridge?

The Internet of Things is still gaining momentum and here to stay, meaning we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Digital Dilemma, Facebook, Social Media

Memory Maker

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Earlier this month, at a friend’s house, she read aloud a notification from Facebook informing her that at this time, on this date one year earlier, she had been at Bar X watching Band Q.  It made me think of how much we rely on our digital “external” memories to keep a running log of our lives, so as to not burden our brains with having to remember anything we do.  Yet, we can’t always control how those memories resurface or become connected within our apps.

The FB notification was seemingly only triggered by the date/time.  I find date/time is rarely something closely associated with a memory or experience.  Other elements, such as location, company, smells, ambiance, emotions, etc. are more likely to conjure up memories for me.  In fact, unless something really specific happened on a certain date (e.g. anniversary, birthday, large event), I won’t rely on a specific date as a reference point.

I notice a lot of apps trying to recreate memories for us based on time stamps, geotagging, and contextual clues gleaned from emoticons and tags.  This also means the information has to be available for the app to synthesize.  But how much information has to be captured to imitate how humans remember something?

As mentioned earlier, many of my triggers are based on non-tangible elements such as emotion and smell. Maybe if I put a little emoticon next to every post there could be a running log of my emotions. That way even my emotions could be translated into a readable code ready for analysis so I could be reminded every time I felt a certain way.  But is that useful or beneficial for me?

Would it be cool to know what you were thinking at a certain time/date?  Maybe…

For how long would that information be useful?

Personally, I would rather not preserve and record every moment of my waking life with images and digital logs, even if it was all done automatically.  It would be too much content to search through and manage.  Likely I wouldn’t even care about most of it.  I have a lot of silly thoughts and do some pretty dumb things I would rather not be reminded about.

Also, digitally preserving memories means they maintain the same interpretation every time.  When I preserve memories in other ways, I’m allowed to recreate, or imagine them in different ways.

 

Digital Dilemma

Amazon Dash Button

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Early in 2015 Amazon released a new product/service called Amazon Dash, which allows people to order products directly from their homes.  Whenever a product, such as toilet paper or laundry detergent, is running low, the customer can order the product directly through Amazon by speaking, or scanning the item’s barcode, into a wand.  Once ordered, the customer confirms the order in his/her Amazon account.  Then the order arrives through the mail. I suppose one day we’ll be able to 3-D print it instead.

The Amazon Dash also comes as a button, instead of a wand.  Each button is for one specific product.  Amazon recommends putting the button next to product for re-ordering convenience.  For example, the bathroom would have buttons for toothpaste and toilet paper. Never run out of tp again!

I can definitely see the appeal of Amazon Dash.  By pushing a button, or waving a wand, my house could be turned into a grocery store.  Amazing, creepy, and weird, all at the same time.  I lived over 5 years in an apartment with a steep 3-floor walkup.  I grew accustomed to picking up a few things daily, just to avoid carrying heavy loads up the stairs.  Most of the time I didn’t mind.  It allowed me to try a wide variety of things from different shopping areas around the city.  I knew where to find the best of anything.  I enjoyed seeing what was available.

Would Amazon Dash be able to cater to such specific, specialized grocers?  Or would I be required to get all my specialty items from mega-suppliers?  I did wonder about this and a few other things.

  1. What if I want to switch brands?  Dash buttons are only for one product and come imprinted with the company logo.
  2. What about apartment dwellers?  My building doesn’t accept packages.  I have to retrieve packages from a busy post office with restricted hours, about 10-minutes away.  Pretty inconvenient.
  3. How would I keep track of all the orders coming in?  It can get confusing to keep track of so many orders, all arriving at different times.  If I get everything from the grocery store, everything arrives at the same time.
  4. How would you control annoying guests, like myself, or children, from pushing the dash buttons?  It could become annoying to reject orders all the time.

Amazon Dash, here to stay, or is this just the beginning…

Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

The Construct of Privacy

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I have to admit I’m pretty old fashioned when it comes to calling a cab.  Ideally, I would prefer to hail a cab on the street by waving my arm over any other method, even Uber.  A lot of people who know me always seemed puzzled by this, especially since I love efficiency and convenience.  In both of those areas, Uber clearly excels.  My response is always the same, cabs preserve anonymity, especially if I pay with cash.

I explained my reasons for preferring cabs over Uber to a friend of mine the other day who, incidentally, is 10 years my junior.  “Oh,” he replied, nodding his head slightly.  “I get it, you still believe in privacy.”  I paused for a moment when he said this.  Did I really think I could protect my privacy by refusing to use Uber when I so willingly sign away my soul agreeing to lengthy terms of service every time I use a new app?  The more our privacy rights are infringed upon (e.g. surveillance cameras, lengthy terms of service agreements, etc.), the less likely we are to notice, resist, or object to them over time.  And yet we do it all the time and make compromises for the convenience and thrill of using technology.

People may enjoy publicly displaying and broadcasting the best, the juiciest, and the most exciting parts of their lives through various social media channels, but they often do so from a personal, private device.  Sometimes smartphones (and other handheld personal devices), actually enable people to have privacy.  Contained in one device could be hundreds of personal, private bits of content such as photos, “sext” messages, notes, drawings, voice mails, all of which can be guarded and protected.

My friend also mentioned that a lot of people use Snapchat, a messaging service that deletes the message seconds after the recipient has opened and viewed it.  This may not fall under a traditional definition of privacy, but I would feel more inclined to discuss private and personal things if I knew a record of the details wouldn’t (or couldn’t) be preserved.

As we bumble along trying to redraw and establish the boundaries of privacy, I find myself continually wondering about what it means to have privacy and the impact of digital communications and social media on my rights.

So who, exactly, is constructing the concept of “privacy” these days?

Digital Dilemma, Human Archives

Dad’s Faulkners

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My father’s collection of Faulkner books was one of the first things I moved into my new apartment.  I moved the small box over by hand and placed it carefully on an empty shelf.

My BA in literature was non-conventional and didn’t cover a lot of “dead, white men” authors.  Over the years I filled in some of the gaps, but I never got around to Faulkner while my father was alive.  Afterwards the guilt I felt interfered and I could never commit to reading them.  The last time I was at my mother’s house, I carefully packed up Dad’s collection, which had now survived multiple purging sessions, into a small box labeled “Dad Faulkner + Herman Hesse”.  I placed it in a pile of boxes destined for Toronto.

Dad's collection, boxed and ready for transport.

Dad’s collection, boxed and ready for transport.

Now I feel lucky about the opportunity to discover a posthumous connection with my father, as though our relationship can continue to develop even after his death over 12 years ago.  If I’m really lucky, I might find notes or marginalia, valuable insights about what he was thinking when reading the books.  However, my father and I were always in agreement about keeping books pristine.  We never wrote in books, folded page corners, or highlighted passages.  My father even got annoyed at me for selling back my text books at the end of a semester.  He firmly believed you should hang onto your books as a way to preserve acquired knowledge.

I wonder what he would think about the new ways we think about gaining and maintaining knowledge.  And how some people read books electronically, like his daughter.  I wonder if I would have had the same opportunity if my father’s collection had been digital.  How would I know the Faulkners had been his favorites?  Would I have to rely on a list of stats indicating how many times he had read something, provided I could even access the digital collection?

With the print versions, I can learn about my father from the things he left behind and the condition they’re in.  Things like worn pages and those containing stains or creases, all offer clues as to which passages were re-read or mused over while eating something.  Well-loved items are typically either completely worn out or in pristine condition and visible.

Do we miss out by going digital?

Excited to tuck into the collection.

Excited to tuck into the collection.