Dear World

Some days you seem to do so well, and others you just seem to get things so very very wrong. Thankfully, those getting it wrong seem to be a shrinking minority.

After the attack in Norway, there have been claims that Norway’s security is lax and that they need similar laws and powers to countries such as the UK. CCTV cameras, the right to read emails and tap phone calls easily.

Really? How well has that worked for us?

Anders Behring Breivik said that he wanted to bring about a change in his country, and if they go down this route he’ll have had a small win. It’ll just bring this culture of fear to another country that is largely untouched by paranoia and government control. It’s largely due to Norway’s liberal perspectives that it has managed to stay a relatively peaceful nation for this long, only shattered by a tiny minority who are firing at the wrong people about the wrong issues.

To those claiming that it is wrong that New York has allowed gay marriage, I will be short.

In a world where accusations of extremism are rife, are you really going to go and tell people that they cannot have the option to get married because -your- religious views say they can’t?

Many of this group complain about the use of the burka Muslim countries and how woman are forced to wear them, and yet they force gay people in their own countries to not get married.

Get a grip. 

With the younger generations becoming more open and using social media to make it easier to talk to each other, what will happen when we grow up? Some current influential people, such as MPs, have started using things like Twitter, but it’s not treated as personally as the younger generations. It’s a means to publicize, not to have a conversation. When we’re old enough to be MPs or run the big companies, what effect will this have? We will have grown up with these technologies, we use them to talk about ourselves personally. What happens when when the Prime-Minister has their personal Twitter or Tumblr account?

So, I broke my laptop and I’ve been using my android tablet as my main computer for about a month now.
It took some getting used to, but now it seems so easy. I’ve got used to using google docs and other cloud services, I have all my music and videos. What do I miss? Printing and all my adobe software. No designing and printing posters for me.
Something I have noticed is I’ve started using my social media stuff a whole lot more. I see things appear om my phone, pull out my tablet have a read and reply. It’s just so much easier to stay connected. My foursquare score has rocketed.
I can modify and read most of my documents on the go but I still wouldn’t type any massive documents on this for the sake of my fingers. It still feels a lot more strained than using my full size keyboard and there’s a lot more typos to watch out for.
Over all, pretty happy :-) the battery life lasts for days and I can do most of my work and play on the go. I think I’ll get a dektop for at home and never buy a laptop again at this rate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/15/sxsw-2011-internet-online

Please read this before reading below this line ==> ————————— 

Many people expected the advancement of technology to give us new huge milestones that would mark our path along history, but as our online and offline lives merge more, we notice it less and less. Instead of texting or calling people to find out where they are or what they’re doing, people are already telling us on twitter, or checking in on foursquare, and it seems perfectly natural. This ubiquity of technology from our phones to our laptops and cars gives us a whole world of new opportunities.

One of the things highlighted in this article is the idea of “Gamification” (I will try not to use the cringe worthy word too much) of the world. This idea has been around for a long time, and has gradually been taking shape. Reward points from shops was where this first took a major role in people’s lives, and it’s lead to games like Farmville. That game which people play endlessly but aren’t really sure why. You sow some seeds, plants grow, you harvest them and get some points. But is it really fun?

The idea that just adding some rules and points to life makes it “fun” is known to not work. Psychologists have been looking at motivation for years, and at no point have they said that humans innately enjoy collecting points. Instead, they’ve highlighted the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is when we are motivated to do things from external rewards like money or points, and intrinsic motivation is when we are motivated to do things from our own enjoyment or desire.

time and again it’s been found that intrinsic motivation is much stronger and helps us enjoy life a lot more than any points system. If we are going to use technology to help us enjoy life and be more motivated, we need to make sure we can do things that make us feel like we can make a difference and actually achieve something more than collecting some points. Points shouldn’t be a reward in themselves, but just a way of marking what we’ve been able to do for ourselves.

I’ll stop there before I drown people in text. I think I might make a series of posts…

Be seeing you

So, Bangor.

that tiny little city, tucked up in North Wales that no one really knows. But are things going to change?

The Pontio Project hopes to change the future of Bangor. This £37 Million project hopes to build a world leading Arts and Innovation Center to Bangor, providing a stage to bring together art and science as well as the university and the local population. But will it work?

the Pontio project started long ago, as a group of University Staff who organised art events, from music nights to arts shows, but since then it’s been picked up by the university and developed into this huge project. This project will provide large social spaces, a theatre, lecture rooms, a studio, outdoor amphitheatres and a “da vinci innovation centre” where local businesses and researchers can work together to develop new ideas.

This all looks really good, but does it lead to innovation? I’m not sure that just building a big centre can make a city “innovative” or change it’s culture.

This top down approach really doesn’t include the students or local people much at all, and having an innovation centre without a culture for it just can’t work. We need more projects on the ground, to get people involved and to see what people want out of this project.

Without the culture and projects to support it, this could be as useful as the council’s plan to lay some commemorative tiles to increase tourism.