This blog is just a grab bag of thoughts and useful links. However, as the name suggests it may be interpreted by some as a wee bit challenging, if not, activist. Hence the use of the term "Left" in the title.
The views expressed are strictly my own. The mention of any software or service is not to be taken as an endorsement or criticism.
Okay I think I finally have a handle on this question: "How Is Your Brain handling the Internet in the 21st century?" But first some background...
A week ago I was watching an interview with psychiatrist Bandy Lee (1.The YouTube interview, 2. Her official bio, 3. Wikipedia article on her) regarding how . Donald Trump (1. His bio on Britannica encyclopedia 2.Wikipedia article on him ) perceives not only the world but his inner life as well. By the end of the interview I was shocked that someone could have such a dark dystopian inner world. It did however make sense when you look at his actions. It is clear that his got some mental condition but that is for others far more learned than I to discuss.
I began to wonder about the human experience as a whole. Who's to say my fundamental way of existing, of processing reality is anything similar to anyone else's. Could it be that the shared humanity of the human race is only an assumption? There is no way for any of us at this point in time to find out whether what is going on in our own head is an experience that it shared. To be clear I am talking about this on an extremely fundamental level. Maybe an analogy will help
If you take a Microsoft Windows computer and compare it to an iMac by Apple there are many things they do exactly the same. You can browse the Internet, spend money, check with your friends, create artwork and music. On the surface it looks like only certain design choices are different more of a stylistic change than a function change. But if you look at the hardware and the actual code that achieves this it is dramatically different. Literally two different worlds of programming and yet the outward result is very uniform between the two machines. If one didn't know better one could be forgiven for thinking they shared the same "machine experience". If that is true might it not also be true for human beings?
Now, let's bring in to this discussion the Internet. If my conjecture is correct that the underpinning of the human experience can be vastly different, then would not the effects of using the Internet result in a vastly different outcome for the individual?
Another example to illustrate:
I take public transit frequently and of always noticed that people are glued to their cell phones or other media devices. Why is it that I can take it or leave it and others can't. My phone frequently sits in my pocket sometimes for most of the day and if I have no reason to look at it I simply won't. I don't avoid it, I just don't need to check it. Yet I see people all the time scrolling aimlessly or texting pretty much all the time. So is there fundamental reality different. If so we should take this into account.
I firmly believe that a child should have limited access to technology in their early years. Their brain needs to learn how to work for itself. They must develop a sense of time over which things need to occur to be achieved. There problem-solving skills must be started up and if all goes well they consider an issue deeply. Willing to put in the time to find the answer and to deal with a positive as well as a negative outcome.
If they get their hands on technology too soon I fear they become addicted to a feedback loop instead of developing to the fullest there innate faculties. What will this rob them up in their later years? I am not sure whether it's just my own bias creeping in here. The technology may indeed unlock it thereto unexpected benefits. I don't know.
I would sure like to hear from you either here on the blog or on YouTube. This is proven to be a difficult topic to define and research. So do let me know what you think.
Take care Patrick, and here's the companion video which in a very indirect way goes down the same path. It wasn't until I did the video that I was actually able to write this article because it helped me define this topic to a larger degree. So while you watch the video you will see some of my own internal world.
Take care, Patrick.
** NOTE: The pictures "Image generated by Ideogram AI" displayed at the top of this article is from the service Ideogram AI. As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service"
and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed
by the public. However before any reuse, please review fully their
terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.
The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.
It is clear from the reviewing the blog statistics that the way to keep the numbers of visitors coming back is in a phrase: "Content, Content, And More New Content." However if I rush out short articles Google and the other search engines frown and send the blog down to the basement of the search listings, which is not a good thing.
Nevertheless, during 2023 I did attempt to put out an article every few days and while there were a few good ones, for example "Nurturing the Creative Soul" there were also some that made me want to cringe. But I made a commitment when I started the blog way back when never to delete an article, I may tweak it a bit if I find it glaring error but the article as a whole will stand as long as this site keeps running. The whole year taught me a lesson that it is better to aim for meaningful content rather than just cranking it out.
So how to pull this off is the question. In a way that I can sustain. The video production takes the longest to create even though I very much enjoy doing it. Then of course there's all the other related stuff:
Checking all the copyright information and making sure that it is included clearly in the video. I also want to make sure that in doing so you the viewer/reader can discover perhaps new resources in the process.
There is always a surprise somewhere in the production. I keep trying to get it down to a formula but things are always in flux.
And that's just what comes to mind at this very moment. My intent has never been to make money, although I would never say no to that. 😀. So rest assured I'm just going to keep on going.
There was a recent request to make a comparison between Linux and Windows video. However I am not going to reproduce the same "Geeky" production which is overly detailed. I'm thinking about a split screen approach where you accomplish a task. It could be as simple as watching a YouTube video Or using some graphics program to edit a photo. We shall see what I come up with.
There will be an update on the blog sometime Monday, September 2 when I have the next segment to the "Perception Throughout The Ages" series which deals with in a broad sense how a person's perceptions alter how they work with the world. Briefly I am working with someone who has a very different way of looking at reality and I am having to teach them the very fundamentals of using a computer. There is more information in the current article,.
I am heading out to see them on Saturday, August 31. Currently I'm trying to develop some sort of very informal lesson plan. The idea of small posters with key points on them of how to do very fundamental things had occurred to me but after seeing their room in the facility it became apparent that it is far too small to clutter up with things even on the wall. Well, I'm just going to have to be adaptable and make this work.
So this is my way of saying stay tuned and please bear with me as I discover and uncover all sorts of things as I go through each day 👍.
Take care Patrick
** NOTE: The picture "Image generated by Ideogram AI" displayed at the top of this article is from the service Ideogram AI. As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service"
and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed
by the public. However before any reuse, please review fully their
terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.
The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.
How will Artificial Intelligence adapt to persons with various disabilities?
I just had a very interesting experience at my bank. The ATMs (Automated Teller Machines) have just been upgraded with paper money recognition, meaning that you no longer have to deposit physical bills in envelopes. This actually poses a problem for myself, because of the actual real world speed I moved at. It's not exactly quick or even what I would call coordinated. This caused the poor back machine a minor fit as it accepted the deposit part way through me inserting the money. Suffice to say, I had to leave a message with my bank as this is the weekend. I'm sure everything will be straightened out.
The average bank machine is a little higher than I am it also means I have to adjust my chair after inserting items and accessing the touchscreen. It can be done, but if I'm lower down but that puts my finger at an angle which causes errors with the touchscreen.... So basically this is modern technology not quite adapting correctly to any given user. This situation I understand because programmers have to make decisions, unless they want to write 4 billion lines of code, and sometimes one adaption for a segment of the population can get in the way of another put in place for a different situation or user.
All of this has me thinking about how will Artificial Intelligence (AI) adapt to persons with various disabilities. At the present time, AI may be consider to disabled itself, given the very early stages we are in, but that won't always be the case.
Just how will it interpret the various, variations it sees in the human population. Will AI "get it"and propose novel ways of achieving a goal? Will it see something its original designers did not and come up with its own solution?
Getting back to my ATM experience. Clearly you can't really setup longer defaults, because the speed I go at would drive some people crazy. This is where AI could be a benefit by changing how the machine worked for a given patron. Not based on a bank profile of the individual but by observing how they were doing in completing a task. Slowing down or speeding up as necessary or changing the on-screen sensitivity. This would be just the beginning.
Image generated by Ideogram AI. I had to post this 😀. It resulted from simply inputting he first paragraph of this article. Quite amazing! ** (See end of article note.)
To be clear, this is not a commentary on the particular bank or the machinery they have chosen. This is more a observation of how AI might be able to improve how we use technology. In it’s current state, the new technology can get in the way of itself. I recently purchased a Google Pixel 6a smart phone, and one of the odd decisions that was made by the designers was to disable Bluetooth auto answer support for headphones. This feature is basic that I never thought it would be removed, but Google did in the Pixel phone... Anyway to make a long story short. I found an app which essentially replaces that functionality, (MotoAnswer on the Google Play store) but it is not a perfect solution because it is not integrated into the OS. Occasionally strange things can happen like if a phone call comes in while I am dictating to the computer the app may auto answer the call because it knows I'm using the headphones but route the audio to the earpiece in the phone. – So Google, please enable Bluetooth auto answer on your phones.
My previous phone which was "simpler" only because it had a stock version of android never had this problem. The computer and the phone would switch over between devices with no problem and everything would come through my headphones. This is yet another case where AI could be a benefit. I didn't contact Google and their response was rather surprising. They stated in a public forum that they have no intention of enabling auto answer on Bluetooth devices. When I press them the response was. (Paraphrasing) "We have never had Bluetooth auto answer on any pixel phone and we do not plan to incorporate it in later releases." They declined to state exactly why. (The full discussion thread with the Google community representatives can be found here.)
So maybe AI will be the answer to all of this; with ultimately a customizing device which adapts itself to the user. I have a feeling though, outside of special use cases, the current models of AI being developed may not be considering the variations in people out there in the world today. This could turn into be quite an adventure.
Perhaps the opposite will come true, maybe Artificial Intelligence will wake up the rest of the world to incorporate variation instead of standardization.
But that's kind of artificial intelligence is far down the road, because by then AI itself will probably be considered a legal entity or person. Society is going to have to evolve culturally to adapt to all these changes. Who knows, the next hundred years people may look back on this beginning period in the early 21st century in the same way we now look at the distant past and think: "If people only knew back then how things were going to change." Forecasting the future has always been an almost impossible task, because any culture currently perceives the future by its own heavily biased current perspectives. Think the steam punk of Jules Vern or even the science fiction stories of the 1930s and 50s. Jules Vern's vision was full of large powerful machines made out of brass and iron, usually driven by steam, and the 1950shad everyone in the 21st century still using vacuum tubes. Indeed at some point our society which is based primarily on electricity and devices driven by such energy will itself be replaced by something not as yet quite foreseeable.
Here's a great story. It's a science fiction story from 1951 "The City at World's End" by Edmond Hamilton. It illustrates in it's telling of the future, how everything is biased on current perspectives. This is in the public domain and this is the LibriVox audio book version. Simply click the title or picture to go to the book.
Story synopsis: "A surprise nuclear war may cause the End of the World, but not the way
anyone could have imagined. A classic science fiction tale from Galaxy
Magazine." Genre: Science Fiction Language: English Format: Audobook Read by: Mark Nelson Source: LibriVox.org Free Public Domain Audiobooks.
LibriVox recordings are Public Domain in the USA. If you are not in the
USA, please verify the copyright status of these works in your own
country before downloading, otherwise you may be violating copyright
laws.
Broadening the topic a bit, on a larger scale, will AI even consider the concept of disability? It may be that it just will ultimately see the entire human race as one singular group. "The Human Race" and not even perceive or care about the nuances societies define themselves by. Now there's a bit of an ego crushing thought. At this point I'm getting about as speculative as the science fiction story mentioned above.
When I was born, most disabilities were considered an understandable limitation by society. You were kind of branded and broader opportunities were simply out of the question. I wonder if the opposite might ultimately occur. With AI in the mix, will so many solutions be available that being disabled is not even considered when looking at one's potential. In much the same way with the advent, since the Covid 19 pandemic , of the remote worker which is pretty much nullified the need to go into work physically for a lot of jobs. It's an interesting thought.
We shall see. Continue to have a great day. Patrick Clark
** NOTE: The picture "Image generated by Ideogram AI" displayed midway through this article is from the service Ideogram AI. As a layperson, I have read their relevant "terms of service" and determined, to the best of my ability, that the image may be viewed by the public. However before any reuse, please review fully their terms and if necessary contact the company for more information.
The use of said image does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.
Some background on the creation of the image from Ideogram AI. I literally just put the first paragraph from the article into the service and it resulted in this creation. I was frankly astonished. This was using the free version as well. As of this writing you are allowed 25 images a day. Talk about a real asset when it comes to visualizing. I only stumbled upon this service while reading a totally unrelated article.
Since the advent of the public Internet the way we learn, and indeed what is acceptable as knowledge, has been evolving. Along with that, is the idea that the very processes by way we think and perceive information is changing. Now along comes something which will really alter the game, Artificial Intelligence (AI). Consider the following points:
Deep Understanding
In the last 30 years or so, the need to work on a problem or go through the process of "thinking" has become somewhat optional. If you don't know the answer to something you can simply Google it. Still though with Google and other search engines you have to know a little bit about the topic and a bit about how best to phrase it in text. And you still have to filter out many of the results. But the deep contemplation/understanding of the issue that you're working on has in many cases has become optional.
We don't look very far in the past to be truly astounded by people who undertook very complex problems and thought them through using only their brains, and I'm not talking about geniuses like Stephen Hawking or other exceptional people. It is the ordinary person of the past that understood algebra, chemistry or history. They truly understood the processes and relationships of the work because it was a necessity.. They could tell you why something appeared to be true and how they arrived at the conclusion. Even more importantly go and actually done the work mentally or physically to get the answer. Another way to put it is to a greater or lesser extent they learned the discipline of how to figure things out.
Just a Compendium of Information
Today with search engines and the Internet, we more or less just compiled information, at least the casual user does. Regardless of our chosen source be it Wikipedia, Google Scholar or some other tool, we essentially just bring together the facts. The depth of knowledge and understanding we have is beginning to change. I say "change" because I fundamentally believe that our brains are rewiring to store more facts at the expense of true understanding. It is an optimization. Because at no other time in the world's history as the average person ever had to deal with more input every day.
So this really has me wondering how the next steps will affect us. Will AI mean that we no longer have to "know" anything (this is obviously taking things too extreme, to make the point)? And again, how will this affect the very processes by which we think. Which in turn will affect how people construct their own personal realities.
Mental Effort
This is my own supposition, that the brain has evolved to give us the ability to truly understand and think. Look at all the great artworks and music over the past centuries. The subtleties involved in such undertakings. This took a great deal of effort, but it was an effort which was expected in many cases and it was through that very undertaking that greater mental and emotional skills evolved.
If we look at the world today we see one thing that is very obvious across certain aspects of the modern world. Look at the amount of repetition for example in the media. (If I see one more reboot of an old program or series I may go insane 😀 ). If we use 30 years as a timescale it is obvious that in the last 15 years there have been more and more duplications of things that were successful in the past. Where is the creativity and knowledge which spawned the original? Yes, it is true that big media outlets will always try to reproduce a winning streak with something that worked before. But it really has me questioning the state of true creativity.
Have we inadvertently made things a little too easy and in doing so allowed the brain to prune a little too much in the understanding-circuitry department? With the beginnings of AI what will happen in this situation?
This is just one example of losing the benefits of "mental effort" and it happens pretty quickly. But the answer is not to make things blindly more difficult again. Making things difficult without a purpose, a tangible outcome, never works.
I think the solution here is that we must remain aware of how society and AI are interacting and evolving.
I am a technologist at heart and a true heat so I do love all the intricacies involved and the potential positive outcomes. I have at last count seven computers in my apartment with a network of over 47 devices. (If you're worried about my power consumption by the way they are all single board Raspberry Pi computers aside from two.)
In summary, let's not make things too easy on ourselves
The trip to benefiting from AI and future advances, is to be involved as much as possible with all of the industries and results. Not just be a consumer of knowledge, even if we reach the point where the artificial intelligence knows more than we do. We must remain engaged in the effort and indeed in life itself. In other words there is no room for complacency. The world will change remarkably in the next hundred years. Probably outside of our current perceptions. I must admit part of me would love to be around to see this evolution or should I call it a dance between the various participants biological and technical alike.
Who knows, we may reach a point where there is no difference between AI and us. But that's another story, and there are many other factors to consider.
Stay engaged in life everyone and have a great day. There will of course be a companion video I think as I write this I will put them up both together at the same time.
(When a backup or restore goes terribly wrong... )
Let's face it. Everyone has everything stored on their phone, tablet or other device now days. You name it, it's in there. Over the course of time, you can end up with millions of things and I'm not exaggerating. Some of the items you can see while others you cannot. These unseen items are usually created by the device itself to help keep track of items and functions you use.
Now yes this is going to be one of those articles that begs you to backup your material. But the most important thing is to know how to get your material back if the unthinkable happens and unfortunately it will.
Many people buy backup devices and then blindly follow the instructions
and assume everything will be wonderful when the time comes to use the
device again to retrieve their material. The first time backup
software is used, it will suggest making a backup of everything,
including the operating system software. When you use this file to
restore from EVERYTHING on the destination device will be replaced,
including the software which makes it work.
So rule #1: Don't just go out and buy some software without understanding how it works. The following is based on a true event:
A friend of mine dutifully went out and bought some backup software complete with the backup hard drive. They set it up exactly how the instruction said and let the software do its thing every day.
One year later they got a new laptop and found that it wasn't set up to their liking. Rather than asking for assistance they took their backup hard drive and plugged it into the new machine and despite several warnings clicked the button in the software which read something like "Restore Everything". That's exactly what the software attempted to do "restore everything including part of the old operating system. Things came to a crashing halt apparently halfway through. They were left with a completely nonfunctional computer. Fortunately it was able to be restored to the appropriate modern operating system. My friend learned a valuable lesson that day which simply put is "when in doubt (or more accurately in this case, when you get a message saying are you sure? Unless you are sure, don't proceed.)
To summarize don't just trust blindly what software is going to do especially when it's dealing with a replaceable documents or other material. Please seek assistance before hand.
I just had a great idea, I am going to try to replicate what my friend did to their machine and capture the events on video. I can't remember exactly what software they were using but let's see what we can come up with. Click the video accompanying this article to watch what happens.
More after I created it 😀.... The video has been created and is near the beginning of this post. You can also watch it on YouTube.
Some background on the video:
Oh boy did that turn out to be an adventure! I had some technical issues related to using multiple video streams and that is the reason why there is such a gap between this article coming out and the previous one. However I was able to replicate the disaster my friend had. In this 17 minute video we go through all the steps from the perspective of a casual computer user. The lesson learned at the end of all this is best summed up by the phrase "Read the Manual!"
To do this I bought a Western Digital two terabyte external USB drive. The first step was to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine, (A virtual machine is a computer emulated using software. That way if the virtual machine computer gets damaged you can simply reset the software. )Then I used the software which came with the backup drive to make a full copy of the virtual machine. This is exactly the same as backing up a real computer for all intensive purposes. Once I had that done I installed Windows 11 on another computer and attempted to install Windows 10 backup I had made. What surprised me was that the software did not try to stop the attempt.
You'll see the results in the video. It really underscores the importance of learning how to properly use the software and its limitations. Two important notes:
In the video I am using Acronis True Image, this is not meant to be a critique of their product in any way. It is simply what came on the backup drive. When used properly, this software will fulfill its task admirably.
Partition (this term is mentioned in the video)
In the video I mentioned "Partitioning"in relation to the hard drives. I forgot to explain the definition of this word in this context. So here it is: It is possible to take a physical hard drive and it divided up so that it behaves like two or more separate devices. In modern operating systems this technique is used to section off a protected area in the drive which keeps up backup of critical software should the need arise to install the operating system again. In Windows systems, this partition is normally hidden. Even if you delete all the files in your computer this hidden area will remain intact. However partitions aren't indestructible and the backup software completely destroyed this hidden area. Meaning that if you did this on a real computer you would have to obtain a brand-new copy of Windows in order to make the machine run.
When watching the video after the partition has been damaged in the test computer you will actually see a message displayed asking for a "floppy disk to be inserted. "This is a very good indication that everything had been destroyed and the computer was relying on some very old built in programming. Basically a last ditch message.
A computer technician could of course reinstall the appropriate software and get the machine going again but it would be a bran new machine effectively. The owner of the machine would have to put all their files back in using another method and not their backup external drive. This probably could have been avoided if when they did the initial backup of the Windows 10 machine they only backed up certain things like photos and documents. This underscores the importance of learning the software before hand.
This is today's lesson. 💾.
SIDE NOTE: It was a lot of fun creating this particular video. Hopefully I made it understandable and not too boring. I must admit I was really surprised when I was doing the restore portion that the software didn't try to stop me. This completely explains then how my friend was able to get into trouble.
The same situation could also happen with other devices, phones and tablets alike. So please whenever you are backing up something or trying to move to a new device be very careful about the software being used. If in doubt ask for assistance.
I have a feeling I'm going to be adding a little more content to this article as time goes on. Maybe we will do one for phones. Because I have also seen a very similar situation with them. However in the case of phones it was more to do with the person not adequately preparing the phone to be given to someone else. Now days just deleting everything on a phone is insufficient. The very first thing you must do is remove your accounts which are connected to your phone before erasing it and giving it away. More about that somewhere down the road in a later video and article.
Wow, it is been quite the week for my little blog. Great to see all the traffic.
Here it is Thursday night and I'm quickly writing a little note because the way Friday is shaping up I may not have time to post a decent article or video....
Well, as it turns out time was available to do a video😀 and while I was doing it, it brought up a few more thoughts.
A few articles ago I mentioned that I was doing a piece on how the advent of AI is going to affect how society perceives and uses knowledge. This is the first attempt at such article. What I find fascinating is that we are quickly reaching a point where people will not be able to understand how artificial intelligence solved a certain problem. For the simple reason that the AI is capable of going through so much more information. Google's Gemini for example can churn through hundreds of thousands of document in an hour. We must also be aware that we are only at the very beginning of this evolution in technology. Regardless however I think it's here to stay in one form or another. Then there was the announcement of AI starting to be phased into digital assistances in late 2024 by YouTuber "Automate Your Life "in this video blog.
So our relationship to knowledge is going to change and I think verily rapidly. Will knowledge become more of a, for lack of a better term, "black box", where we trusted by default simply because we cannot hold to comprehend all of the details.
Now project this down the road a bit into the future. How will this affect learning? Look at how dependent we are on our devices not only to store information but for basic mathematics or even arithmetic. When was the last time you sat down and divided more than a few numbers in your head or even on paper?
Remember when you could do basic math in your head or remember a phone
number. How quickly those skills became obsolete and yet that little bit
of mental exercise really did have an impact, which was far-reaching.
The very basic exercise of doing math in your head I believe helps keep
one grounded in reality and overall helps keeps a person more awake and
less on autopilot.
Just how automatic do we want the world to
become? This and other questions are important to answer. Too much
automation is not good for society. It is through effort and
collaboration that the human spirit grows.
Depending upon how my Friday goes I will add a video. Most certainly at some point over the weekend one will be added. For now however I just wanted to touch base and let everyone know I am still cooking up this idea in regards to artificial intelligence and the future of knowledge.
One thing has become very clear to me this year and to be honest I don't know why it is taken this long for the lightbulb to go off or turn on as the case may be 😀.
That is that the very definition of the word "technology" has changed dramatically between the generations of peoples. Up until the mid-20th century it was represented almost exclusively by physical machinery which you could visually understand. It was a thing, a one function device usually. Whatever you bought from the store never received an update. It was perceived to be as perfect as it could be when it was brand-new. It might fall apart later but whatever the item was it was fully functional. The idea of a bug was something that you swatted in the air and nothing more.
As the decades moved forward things began to change, quite subtly and without anyone really saying anything about it. Technology went from being something physical, to something for the most part quite abstract and malleable. Anyone born in the 1990s just assumes this to be the everlasting original definition of the word. You buy a device and the first thing you have to do is updated it, because if it's not updated it will almost certainly have bugs in it. Doesn't matter whether it cost one dollar or $10,000, if it's new and hasn't been updated it's going to have a flaw in it. Along with the ongoing updates of everything, which if you haven't noticed seem to look at just the moment you need to accomplish something efficiently and quickly. That's when you get hit with the following digital curse words: "Please Wait. This update may take a little while." I was hit with one of these this morning as I was trying to prepare for the day. And this one took for ever!
Now both definitions and both parties who subscribe to their individual definition, don't understand the other side. The people born in the 1990s subscribe to the new definition for the most part whereas the other party born before that date subscribe to the old definition, and each is completely confused by the other. No matter which group you talk to even if they understand the others definition, you can see the mental effort necessary kind of shorts out there brain and that they would rather retreat back into the definition they understand.
Things can get really crazy when you're trying to figure out how to explain things over the phone where you have to instruct the person on the appropriate steps to take. It is almost like preparing for a battle:
Step #1: Ascertain the other sides values and perceptions.
Step #2: Double check with yourself that you thoroughly understand step #1
Step #3 Casually engage the other side briefly to test in the real world environment. This usually exposes an abyss of understanding between the parties. There is much work to do.
I think that one of the issues this exposes is that at least in North America we are not taught to consider other ways of thinking, much less ways of actually perceiving and processing information. When we are faced with a situation where these differences are exposed we make the mistake of trying to translate the other person's perceptions into our own and that doesn't work or at the best, it works poorly. -- You can't turn arose into a dandelion no matter how much you try.
The only way I have found to proceed in these situations involves verily long conversations allowing both sides to be exposed to the other in ways that feel nonthreatening. After a few rendezvous's usually there is a bridge built just barely sufficient enough to be useful for a small set of tasks.
Imagine if we did this much earlier in a person's life or did it as a whole society. Think of the grief and misunderstandings that could be averted. Simply by allowing room for the unknowing. Realizing that for everything you know and perceive there is always more and it will always be different.
Aside from survival, I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the reasons societies and cultures became towns and states originally. To avoid seeing the other side. Well the good news is I don't think that's an option anymore with the world getting ever more interconnected.
I wonder how strange it will look in 100 years when the then modern society looks back at the 20th and 21st centuries. For them they will have one big advantage (I hope) in that if our records survive and we don't change to some bizarre format. The new society will have pristine and detailed records.
Oh I would love to be around then. And I would be as curious as I am today. Which brings up another point but I think I'll make it another article… If you could live 300 years, how would you change in that time? (Presuming of course you were in good health)
My volunteer job is rather unique in that because it deals with serving the public from an IT perspective (Information Technology) one never knows quite what issues are going to be faced during the day. It can go all the way from simply explaining how do basic tasks on the computer all the way to rather bizarre situations:
There was one person who called in which ultimately had the whole team scratching our heads. There laptop it started rebooting itself and getting stuck in a loop. That is, they would turn it on it would start up, in this particular case they would get the Microsoft windows logo then it would flash and restart over and over again. Every person on the team went through the appropriate list of culprits to no avail. Because we would doing this over the phone at one point it was arranged to use a second laptop with the camera to view the first that was stuck in the reboot cycle. Everyone at the office tried their best to solve this mystery… And then the answer casually was revealed by the owner… The investigation it reached the point where we ask the person to remove the hard drive from the laptop and were about to give them the appropriate instructions when they said: "Oh, I know how to do that, I do it all the time." What ultimately was revealed was that the owner of the laptop removed the hard drive any time there was any problem with the machine. Where normally someone would just unplug the machine this person had gone the extra step of taking the hard disk out. Most importantly, they had dropped the hard drive on the floor three times in total and this was a physical spinning hard drive. The problem had started soon after the third incident.
In the video on this page I talk a bit about this incident, feel free to watch it.
The owner of the laptop knew this wasn't a good thing to do under any circumstances and that is probably why they resisted telling us for such a long time. Anyway, we informed them that they needed to do hard drive and that they would need to reinstall the operating system. Unfortunately all the data was lost as the poor old drive had completely packed it in. Lesson learned, the hard way.
One of the trickiest things to do when you're working with people over the phone or remotely is to determine their level of competency with the equipment they're using. This can be a very tricky thing to do because different people uses vastly different terminologies and the configuration of their machines can be very different. Add to that the fact that there are many different ways to proceed with a computer and the Internet. Not everybody understands that the Internet is a truly two-way medium, that it is reacting to what you are doing with it. Many elderly people see the entire computer as a TV set essentially and they don't understand that there is actually much more going on. They can be very bright and aware but there are cultural upbringing started with the radio and later television and that is how they view things.
Other people don't differentiate between the various parts of a computer if you asked them about their monitor they get confused because they see the machine as a singular device. Some even referred to their machines as a brand name: "My Lenovo is acting up." If you get a phone call like this you know it's going to take some time to figure things out. People that are more comfortable with technology tend to have much for specific requests, like: "My USB ports are dead." These are "usually" relatively quick fixes. ( Personally, these fast ones aren't that much fun. I do like a challenge :-))
Then lastly, you get requests from what I will class as the "People that think they know more than you do and who won't tell you what they've done. But want you to fix it anyway." This group drives us all crazy, especially because they are set ups are usually complicated, overly so, and there is a tendency for them to do things on impulse. For example, one person we work with had USB hubs (Think a USB splitter, one chord in many connections out.) plugged into other USB hubs, it was a real rats nest and all from different brands. The main problem for them was everything was slow. The answer to the problem was that they just had too much plugged in and expected everything to run at full speed. They didn't like hearing that they had to simplify.
So that is what my volunteer days are like and that is what I'm going to do today most likely :-). It's a true adventure!
I'm running between tasks today and as I'm doing so the thought occurred to me from many years ago that it was touted by all the media: "Computers Will Make Your Life More Efficient!" And they even followed that statement with "it will be a paperless society." Boy if I could go back in time, would I have news for them....
Now don't get me wrong… Multitasking and technology can do wonderful things. But the one thing the daydreamers of yesteryear forgot was the concept of finite time and the tendency to fill everything up. The faster you can go, the more needs to be done, because essentially everything else is sped up as well.
I wonder if we could even handle going back 50 or 60 years. Think about it nothing you know would exist except for the very basic items. Cringe, if you went to the bank you would have to stand in line and wait as they tabulate the answer. Or be astonished by how quickly the representative could do the math in their head. The impulses we normally given to on an hourly basis to check our phones and do other things would drive us crazy, simply because there would be no way to do them. You would have to wait for that phone call or maybe drive all the way home to make it. And if you frequently now talk to your friends around the world, while you could do that you run the risk of one very nasty phone bill at the end of the month. No wonder our parents were terrified the moment they realized the children could reach the phone. In my case, thank goodness my grandmother lived in town because I do remember calling her rather frequently.
It would be the same thing for the news. Let me know in the comments if you've never read a physical newspaper. Top that off with the fact that the reading skills 60 years ago tended to be much higher. English was slightly different. I remember a few of my teachers who were rather tyrannical about the written word. Or at least I thought they were dictatorial. I live in Canada and I still remember in grade three and up having to put two spaces after a period before a sentence could start. The same rule applied to the start of paragraphs, you had to indent them.
The first time I visited a library card indexes were still in use. Years later I remember my joy of being able to log on to the bank were public library with the dial-up modem at 300 baud. That was so slow you could read faster. It was also very easy to overload the system with a complex search. Which I admit I love to do.
No doubt there is a ton of other things that happened which haven't occurred to me...
I was introduced to computers through work when I believe we were at Microsoft DOS 2.0, which came out in October 1983. That is when I heard that ultimately "Computers would make things more efficient". It became a mantra. There were no hard drives in site because they were expensive and very sensitive. When my boss did get one, I was read the riot act by the computer representative: "You must park the drive when you're done with the machine. Do not bump the table. This has a huge storage capacity of 20 MB." "Park" was an actual command you had to run when shutting down the machine. I think the drive itself cost around $600 that is without any of the cards you needed to run it. Well we also got a printer for the office the noisiest daisy wheel type machine I have ever heard. We used to do our printing at lunch while we were all out of the office.
Guess what, we ended up using tons of paper! I remember it was all fanfold and you had to take off the tractor holes on the side of the sheets. Here's an example of a Daisy wheel printer in action (I no doubt have found an example on YouTube )
Actually know that I think about it we probably have saved time and maybe even some paper. I do 90% of everything purchased wise online as well as bills etc. maybe we are getting there 😀.
One of the more frequent calls and requests I get at home as well as when volunteering is a person's computer being slow and/or pop-ups appearing on their desktop. Usually after a little investigation we find that "Optimization" software has been installed, sometimes repeatedly and from different companies.While no one can fault anyone for trying to keep their device running well it is important to understand that overall these optimization products which promise you greater speed, safety, and cleaning, on the whole don't work or can in some cases damage parts of the software the computer requires to operate properly. This is particularly true if the optimization product is free.
So here is a brief list of a few do's and don'ts as well as other tips to hopefully demystify why a computer might slow down in the first place. These are focused on Windows but the general concept can be applied to any computer or other electronic device. (For the purposes of this article "programs" and "apps" are the same, just different terminology for software.)
Reasons Your Computer Is Running Slow
1. The reason a computer slows down is usually due to one of three things. They can occur together or separately:
Too many programs are running. Frequently when you download and install something, as a convenience, it sets itself up to start automatically when you turn the computer on. As more things are added to the computer chances are the list of programs starting up automatically grows. How you stop this from happening is different for each program. One thing to watch out for is when you first install the program if you have an option to choose a "custom install" that is the better way to go. If you choose the quicker option then there is no way to tell what really gets installed or how. If after you choose a custom install if the procedure looks too confusing I would personally recommend that you do not install the software.In my experience this is the most common problem
.If the computer is about five years or older be aware that current apps often make the assumption that they will be installed on new hardware. As a result they use up too much memory or just expect the computer to do too many things at once. By "things at once" this may be something in the background which you don't see. Regardless be patient with older computers and realize they cannot do the latest and greatest things quickly, and sometimes not at all.
Computers and their components do wear out. The hard drive may be reaching its end of life. One of the first things are hard drive will do regardless of its kind, mechanical or solid-state, is slow down. So if your computer is getting very slow make sure to backup all your material.
Free Software
2. Absolutely avoid all Free programs. Unless you are very clear about what the program is and does. Any program that calls itself a "Cleaner" or "Optimizer" should be treated as suspect. Cleaning a computer is a complex process which usually involves taking out software. Same goes for optimizing. There is no such thing as a quick fix. The problem with free programs is, they have to make money somehow and so they will be installing ads and other potentially unwanted programs. If you really must have a certain free piece of software then do diligent research. While there are many good free programs out there there are literally thousands of pieces of crap.
Be also aware that many free bogus programs masquerade as legitimate ones. This is especially true of virus checkers. The best way to spot something that is bogus is to look at the webpage address. All legitimate companies will have very clear names and usually a ".com" or ".org" suffix. Again as in other propaganda the fakes will probably be at the top of the list in search engines. Nefarious companies know how to manipulate the listings. Look down the list of results and check for several reviews. If you are unsure go to an actual physical store to buy or inquire about a product.
3. Sometimes despite all your best efforts after several years especially if the computer is used every day the machine will slow down because of all the changes made. Important note: only consider doing the following if you have made a backup of your documents and other important items.
In this case you may wish to have the operating system reinstalled. All modern computers and devices have this option and it will take the computer back to its original state when you first plugged it in after getting at home from the store. Be aware it will erase everything, which is why you need to back your documents up before hand. Before doing this to make sure that it is not a physical issue like a hard drive going bad or other component in the computer wearing out. This should only be done by a technician or skilled person.
4. On most search engines the first few results in regards to apps or software downloads are advertisements. Go much farther down the list. Once you find the product page for the item you are considering getting to another search with your favourite search engine to find reviews of the product from several sources. Please be sceptical, because once something is downloaded and installed on your machine it can be more complicated to remove it if the product turns out to be a scam or useless.
5. The best way to keep the computer running properly is to use a minimum of software. If you are installing something new consider removing something old don't just let it hang around. If you are into free games then if you can I would suggest getting a separate computer just for that. Free games are notorious for including other unwanted programs. So if you got to go to the candy store make sure you're doing it on another machine. My own personal advice is avoid installing all games on any machine you use for work.
Finally if you absolutely need or want to download a free program or app, do so only at the company website for the product. Do not go to third party download site. There is no guarantee that these sites have quality control and they may in some cases bundle additional software in with the product you are actually intending to get.
At the end of the day, please remember that it takes money to run a website or create a program. Companies need to generate revenue somehow and that includes ads and free programs. During the installation of any software there is always a section where they ask you to agree to a license or other document. It is worthwhile to read these. You will be surprised what a lot of them say in regards to extra software or advertising.
Stay save everyone, enjoy the Internet. More tomorrow :-). Patrick
I was working with someone today who was still using Windows XP even though they had a much newer Windows 10 machine available. Of course the old computer had no end of problems and they were still using it to surf the Internet... More accurately tried to surf the Internet. Yet they were absolutely clear, that they were not going to move away from the older machine. They said "This is what I learned, and this is what I know. I am staying put." Now I've been around computers and technology long enough to know that when someone is that fixated on something it is a waste of time to try to resist. Yet it is a struggle to get these old machines even remotely to a safe state. In the coming days we are going to backup the contents of the old machine to the new one. Because we are talking about the original hard drive and I find that a frightening thought.
[Side note: the more I've been thinking about this, the more I think it needs a short video to really explain things and to give those a chance of never seeing Windows XP more reference. So here it is. Posted on February 26, 2023.]
This all brings up an interesting point though and it is something I believe we all do it some point. That is that there is something in our lives, some aspect or some issue that we just lock on to and refuse often aggressively to buge. What is going on here when this happens. Why is this thing or item so important? From my perspective nothing last forever so why carry with you a great deal of baggage, it just doesn't make sense to me. Yet it is obvious that we get something out of holding on. But now that I think about it I think the item or event may be more symbolic of something else although I admit I don't know what it would be. Maybe it is not so much the "something else", may be what is important is the why we are holding on. The event or item therefore becomes a symbolic indicator of something going on in their emotional or mind system.
My goodness human spirit is a complex beast and when it decides to go into stubborn mode it probably has a very good reason from its point of view. That is if it's aware of its own point of view. I frequently find that what we think is the motivating event or reason ultimately turns out to be rather far removed from the real bedrock issue. For the person I worked with the computer is symbolic actually I think it's the phrase "Windows XP because they used it a great deal in their conversation.
So what do you think? What are some of the things and the wise people hold onto things? I can hardly wait for the weekend where I can explore these issues more. As a side note and encouraged me to set up a virtual machine (that's emulating an entire computer in software) and install Windows XP on it. What a trip down memory lane that was. As a matter of fact that will be the graphic for this post.
Take care and I will talk with you more tomorrow or more accurately write more tomorrow. Patrick
When it comes to websites, simpler is often better.
Over the last few years when I've gone into repair a website I am often struck by how many unnecessary features owners have bought. Frequently they by the top-of-the-line plan from their host and the end up with a great many add-ons and complexities they don't need.
There is one site in particular that I'm thinking of which could've actually been done on a service very similar to the one that runs this blog, which if you haven't guessed is "Blogger". Of which the most expensive part is the domain and it really isn't expensive at all.
One of the issues I see over and over again with people shopping for a website is that they neglect to look at what is called the "back end". This is the part of the website where you actually enter articles and interact with design elements. Before you purchase a website package always make sure you look at this aspect of the site. If it seems to foreign then consider, choosing another host or a different website platform. Yes not all website back ends are created equal.
If you are choosing to have the website designed by a professional ensure that you have at least a passing understanding of how to remove and add content as well as doing basic upkeep. Because if the designer is on a short term contract or there is a disagreement down the road it is you the owner of the website that will be stuck in the lurch.
The other issue to remember is that modern websites are not static, in that like all other software they need updates, and what works today may not work tomorrow. So approach a new website as something that involves and changes over time. I am frankly surprised that good old Blogger is still around and that the backend has essentially remain the same. Now for me I'm not too worried I know I can adapt quite easily. But I have seen websites which have been around long enough that they reach a point in order to work with the modern Internet they must be completely redesigned on occasions. It's a little more than a facelift, let me tell you. But she must build in expectations and contingencies for just this kind of thing.
Also do a fair bit of planning before hand spend a few months really researching what you want to do with the website. Once a name and its respective domain name become established it can be very difficult to change over. Not impossible but very challenging in some cases. You may have to start all over in regards to getting good rankings on search engines for example because of the old name was successful you may be in on situation of having to "beat your self".
The reason I'm writing this little article today is in the last two weeks there has been an incident involving separate companies which could've been resolved had they done planning in the past. In both cases it would've saved them a great deal of time and money.
There are several other articles on the blog dealing with various
aspects of website creation and upkeep. You can simply click this link
to see the most current list of documents, or at any time, use the
search box on the site to search for the keyword "website" or just click here to automate the search.
I have the oddest urge to find an old school electric typewriter and just write. (I'm not masochistic enough to desire a true manual typewriter😀)
This urge just popped out of nowhere, I'm actually getting ready for work/volunteering. We will see where this blog entry of mine goes… In the next day. You will be seeing the complete entry as I'm currently writing this as a draft. But this is how I often come up with ideas. I write down a quick note. Using whatever means it's necessary.
… It's the next day and this is the first time I've had a moment to return to this article…
One of the reasons I think the reasons we look back to the old days is that it is something understandable, we knew how it fits into the fabric of our lives back then and we knew what it meant. This is an understandable reaction to the modern day when everything is kind of scattered about. I don't know about you, but I deal with a lot of interruptions and minor detours throughout my day. Sometimes I feel like the information centre for my building especially when it comes to fixing things. But even the average person has kind of the scattered lifestyle it seems unless there one of the very lucky this profession or discipline allows them to cloister themselves away… The luxury of that thought has me momentarily jealous.
Anyway in modern society we have become accustomed to taking on too much and as a result too much is expected of us overall. How many of you have at the experience of someone being furious that you didn't answer their email right away. So the simplest solution is to either pare down the number of for lack of a better word "connections" you are currently hooked up to or if that is not an option segmenting them into certain days whenever possible. A friend of mine has a very good rule: "They do not do any work on Saturday at all. They won't even talk about it." This simple and direct change makes them ingenious in my book. Because it sets not only a boundary but it sets up an anticipation that on Saturday this person is just not available and that in turn sets an example.
So what do you think is that something you could apply in your life? Even to a small degree? You might start something if you do, and that something might turn out to be awfully good for everyone. Again it's making things simpler, just like we thought the old days were. Which I kind of doubt if we were actually back there in time.
As I was doing my science course this morning, because it is online I can break it into manageable chunks. Therefore when I feel I have absorbed is much as I can I can take a pause or stop for the day.
This, as I have found out, has some major advantages. One can focus on what they've already absorbed to more fully understand it before moving on. Or if there's a problem it can be identified before getting lost in greater details. (How I wish I know and this in high school when I was drawing electronic schematics when dealing with the directions current flows.) I have already identified a section of the course I will deliberately redo in relation to a binary search algorithm. If I had learned in the more traditional sense where you must progress through the lesson linearly, and usually at a certain rate, to keep up with everyone else, it would be necessary to move on regardless of whether the information was understood. Then it becomes a point of frustration later on when you can't connect the dots and understand the outcome. This is one benefit of self-paced online learning. So I wonder if it was applied to some degree it all aspects of lifelong learning, how many people would discover they are actually "bright", for lack of a better word? That is to say if the teaching method allowed a person to work on the specific parts of confusion until they were comfortable with it. Would they then not achieve more. Basically love to learn. The lesson being that they have their own way of learning and that insight on its own is tremendously beneficial to the person as a whole.
The above text sounds a little convoluted. If I have time in the next few days I may do a short video explaining this. For now however this is just food for thought.
I truly do believe that the human mind is so good at learning that we do it automatically. Unfortunately this means that we can also "learn" that we are not good at learning and that bias then affects all our other exposure to learning throughout life. By the same token, it also means that you can start learning in many ways at any time.💗
Important disclaimer: I want to be very clear I am in no way singling out this article or commenting on its specific contents. Rather to illustrate what I see is a possible trend on the Internet.
Oh my goodness! I couldn't believe what was in my recommended reading list this morning. An article on discontinued morning cereals of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Now to be fair I understand why they're doing this, in order for a company to stay visible on the Internet they must put out material frequently and no doubt somebody is getting paid to write that material. But really... Can't we find a better way to use all this technology. I couldn't myself to click on the link. Even if it turned out to be an exquisitely written piece
Now I know my little "articles" fall into this very category, and I have no excuse but also no delusions of becoming a massive porthole. I created this website way back when as a place to put the occasional thought. This year something occurred to me, I began to wonder if I can make this little site actually pay for itself in 12 months just cover one year of domain rental. That's the reason for the increased number of posts you are seeing is I'm just curious what can be done if one is persistent. But at least I try to give my posts some substance of usefulness. And if I do come up against a technical problem that I think is widely applicable and then I'm sure I've got the answer to I will put that up here as well.
Think about it though every single item that goes online takes electrical energy and hardware which must be maintained. Not to mention the fiber-optic's and metals which must be mind and purified to a high level. A huge amount of effort… For articles on deceased cereals?…
For those braver than me I will post the link to the article itself. Maybe one day I will be brave enough to click it. Without further ado here it is:
Have you noticed that computers and related equipment are moving away from text based interfaces in favour of the icon symbology?
It looks cute, most of the time but as someone who helps people with technology, the move toward graphic symbolism seems to be backfiring. Even myself when looking through the myriad of icons in my video editing package spend an ever-increasing amount of time just trying to find what symbol relates to what function. While I know there are standards of therefore some of the more common functions and indeed it can make it easier to produce software when you don't have to translate the entire interface to another language it can also unless you're very careful make the interface a mess.
I think we are going to end up having to create a visual script, an abridged version of the written word, to represent some of the features coming along. It could be called "Iconic". Something that would actually be taught so that by the time a child or person was faced with a multitude of images they could find their way through the maze. This would go a long way toward simplifying a lot of things will still keeping the information quality of the symbol high.
Or is there something out there like this already? Would emoji's qualifying? Not quite. From my limited experience with them they don't appear to have enough context or infer information in the defined away.
One of the most frustrating experiences now days is when I open up a new manual and it indicates an icon in the text, but doesn't give it a name, and the icon itself is too small to make out in the details.
I think the visual language of "Iconic" is something whose time has come. It would sure save me a lot of grief and time. Who knows it may even eventually replace the written word.
"Why am I all of a sudden seeing so many ads on your site Patrick?"
For the next 90 days, since the beginning of January 2023, we are running an experiment in the hopes of finding the right balance between ads (a.k.a. revenue) and the amount of visitors. In short I am trying to strike a balance in the only way to do that is to run an experiment in which a certain number of visitors will see very few or no ads at all and other visitors will see a sliding scale.
There is so much information out there and a lot of it is contradictory regarding advertising benefits. I am also exploring other avenues of bringing you information by using some old technology in new ways. Namely the good old RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) mechanism. All Google products, including the blogger still generate RSS for software that wants to use it. However Windows 10 and 11 don't natively support the protocol anymore which is a shame because it means you have to acquire software to benefit from the feed. That's not hard to do there's lots of software and app still out there. But who wants to download software off the Internet now days? (See the article I posted for more information on that topic.)
Things are continuing to evolve on this site daily, and I'm really looking forward to this week's upcoming adventure (see:Voice assistances and disability) as I assist someone else with their voice assistant technology.
Now days, how-to-guides are positively everywhere covering every conceivable situation device or application. If the original authors of Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics had only one with the Internet and high-speed communication would bring to the general public. We are now faced with a rather odd situation, there are so many sources the question isn't as much "How do you fix it?" Its more like which person, document or source do you trust. The very last thing that anyone wants to do is just try things randomly. As a matter of fact, I have seen people do this, in my case, it usually has to do with computer software and the story goes something like this:
One day somebody turns on their computer and its a little slow, but only a little bit, so they ignore it and go get the latest free game from who knows where on the Internet. Over the next few days it slows down more and they begin to get frustrated. So they go on to their favourite search engine and they type in something like "cleaner" or "Speed to my computer up". A list of results are displayed and most people don't go farther than 10 items before picking something. The mysterious software downloads and even though the computer might warn them that this could be dangerous they click install. Anyway it doesn't work. So they tried to download something else, and again it doesn't work either. So after two or three attempts and probably a few advertisements they give up turn off their computer and go away for the night.
The next day they are committed to finding a solution to their speed problem so they repeat the same strategy they had yesterday... Day by day the computer gets slower and slower and slower. Then they decide they better call for help and that's when I or one of my colleagues hears about their issue.
Usually they have downloaded free software, taking the listings at face value. "Guaranteed to speed your computer up!" or "Let us optimize your computer to run like new". What happens most often is these free useless programs are just commercials packaged as something useful, and because they are nothing more than advertisements they often configure themselves to start whenever the computer starts up. That is really what slowing the computer down.
In my experience there are relatively few, but well-known utilities and companies that produce tools for "cleaning or optimizing a computer" and most of them work only in very specific ways.
He best way to keep your computer running smoothly is:
If the machine is more than four years old, in general, don't expect it to be able to run the latest and greatest games or software at full speed.
Before downloading and trying anything spend some time looking up for reviews and look at a few of them from different sources, not just the ones that appear at the top of the list in Google.
If a listing in a search engine is marked as an "Ad or Sponsored" ignore it. They are not going to give you an unbiased appraisal.
Then once you find something that looks trustworthy continue searching for articles that talk about uninstalling the program you are about to try. It is important to know how to remove programs before taking them for a test drive.
If the above points are a little bewildering seek out a trusted friend or colleague who is more familiar with the technology. Do not try to just hit or miss on fixing something especially with a computer or similar device.
The biggest and safest thing you can do is ensure that you have a backup of your important documents or photos. Every computer eventually dies and they usually do it all of a sudden.
The above points are applicable to a lot of technology be they computers or something related. Take care Patrick
