ThinkingShift

I came across this interesting article in Social Computing Magazine about the different actors, archetypes and discourses that exist in the online social networking world. A number of attempts have been made to map the various cultures prevalent in online worlds. Patrick Lambe of Green Chameleon looked extensively at archetypes in a specific online community and major personas that represent patterns of behaviour have been identified eg Needlers: the type who has a point to make and will make it repeatedly to the point of aggravation; Energy Vampires: a person who drains the energy of an online community perhaps by always taking and not giving back; Elders: the acknowledged expert whose knowledge is respected by the community.

The article outlines 35 online social networking ‘perspectives’ or lenses, which are not strictly archetypes but ways of talking and thinking about social networking. If you are a teenager using MySpace page to stay in touch with friends, for example, the lens through which you look at online worlds might be different from that of an entrepreneur who is looking at ways to market and create business.

I won’t list all 35 perspectives, you can check them out yourself. Some of them are predictable - for example, the Social Perspective - social networking sites help young people to build social relationships and communicate. Or the Paedophile and Predator perspective - social networking is an opportunity to prey on the innocent or vulnerable. But I found some of the other perspectives interesting:

• The Source Critique perspective: social networking sites force younger people to critically assess and be skeptical of what they read online. Partly I agree with this but only to the extent that people are equipped with critical thinking skills - something I’ve ranted about before.
• The Bullying perspective: social networking sites are places were people can bully others, be confrontational or intimidating. Aside from the fact I don’t have time to participate in some of the online communities I’d like to, I hesitate to engage in them because the ones I’m a lurker in are full of often ego-fuelled types who jostle for the top spot of being seen as the most intellectual. Dave Snowden had an interesting observation recently - he reminded us of the Dunning-Kruger effect - where people with little knowledge think they know more than people who have more knowledge. I suspect (rightly or wrongly) that social networking sites are clogged with victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect and this leads to chest-beating, arrogant remarks and so on. There’s a book I’ve ordered - The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen - I’m hoping it won’t be one of those broad-brush “I’m having a rant” type books and will have something meaningful to say about what I presume he sees as digital narcissism that potentially leads to the type of bullying and arrogant behaviour we often see in online communities. I’ll let you know what I think of the book in a future post.
• the Language perspective: online worlds are spaces for the creation of shared language often peppered with misspellings or abbreviations. The Anti-Social perspective will say that this has led to people who cannot write or communicate properly.
• the Surveillance perspective: well, this is clearly my lens. Social networking sites allow for the Identity perspective - constructing, reconstructing and displaying their self-image and identity, but the downside is that your digital identity is public, open to misuse, monitoring and so on.
• the Community of Practice perspective - people with a passion for common interests can gather together, discuss, debate and share.

Speaking of surveillance, the article led me off to 21 Perspectives on Surveillance a run-down of the different lenses through which you can slice and dice surveillance from control to invasion of privacy to Little Sister surveillance. Here’s a sense of a few of the perspectives - check the site to read all of them.

• Big Brother perspective: surveillance is simply a way for Government and private companies to nose around and invade people’s lives - from public webcams to DNA databases and fingerprinting.
• Foucauldian perspective: surveillance is disciplinary and prison-like.
• Security perspective: surveillance provides a sense of security and protection for the individual and society.
• Care perspective: surveillance can provide care and a watchful eye, similar to the kiddie cam in New Zealand I blogged about recently.

The different filters we use in our daily lives informs the way we make sense of the wonderful collage of our physical and online worlds.

Two news pieces from The Guardian caught my eye over the last week. Both articles point to what I see as a deeply disturbing shift in society. First up, a UK law firm has commissioned a survey of over 2000 Britons, which looks into the scale of the black market in counterfeit or fake goods. The report is called Counterfeiting Luxury: Exposing the Myths 2007 and you can download it here.

A few years back, it was rare to see a Louis Vuitton handbag trotting down the road on the arm of some wealthy woman. Now, you can see them everywhere on the arms of teenagers who clearly can’t afford them and we instantly wonder what fake market stall they bought it from. Thailand? Hong Kong? Globally, the fake luxury goods market is worth up to $US467 billion a year and two thirds of the consumers surveyed said they were happy to tell their friends and family that their watch or handbag was a fake, according to The Guardian.

Now, here’s my problem: sales of fake goods have been linked to funding organised crime and terrorism. Read this article from BBC News if you don’t believe that statement or didn’t know about the link. Whilst it now seems to be socially acceptable to pass off a global brand like Louis Vuitton or Gucci and rip off their designs; more disturbingly it also seems to be socially acceptable to turn a blind eye to where the money from the sale of fake goods is going. And a quote from the report really freaked me out:

“I had a mate who bought a (fake) bag off my sister-in-law, he took it to Louis Vuitton in Selfridges saying that he bought it for his wife and wants to change it. They looked over it for ages…in the end they changed it (for a real one)“.

Apart from the audacity of this dude waltzing into Louis Vuitton and thinking he could get away with exchanging a fake for a real handbag and leaving aside for the moment the issue of how he exchanged it without a bona fide purchase receipt - what does this example tell us about contemporary society? It tells us that we would prefer to worry about image and ripping people off than being honest and acting with integrity. And we would prefer to be in denial about funding crime and/or terrorism. As we salivate over our fake Hermes, we would prefer not to think that the item was perhaps produced from the sweat of child labour.

The second article from The Guardian highlights what I have become increasingly worried about - a level of smugness and self-congratulatory behaviour is evident in today’s society. I’ve observed this since I guess Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth hit the screens. Suddenly, we’re seeing and hearing that “green is the new black”; that image-conscious trendy types lined up for hours to get their hands on Anya Hindmarch’s “I’m Not a Plastic Bag”; we turn off a few electric plugs here and there; we switch to driving a Prius; and we talk about carbon credits. And so we congratulate ourselves on doing our bit to prevent climate change or buying more ethically, but the real issue is that we need to consume less, not just switch from X brand to green product.

Green consumerism is the same animal really as contemporary society’s rampant consumerism. Ethical shopping is becoming the latest way to signify social status. As the article points out, green consumerism is a substitute for collective action. No political challenge is met by shopping. It’s like we have two markets operating side by side: the market of goods that damage the planet and the market of green products that damage the planet a little less. We buy green, then go on flying and buying just as before.

Here’s a quote from the article that highlights the rise of smug green consumerism: “In places such as Surrey and the New Forest (UK), farmland is now fetching up to £30,000 an acre as City bonuses are used to buy organic lifestyles. When the new owners dress up as milkmaids and then tell the excluded how to make butter, they run the risk of turning environmentalism into the whim of the elite“.

And so we are in denial again and we prefer to buy a green lifestyle than make individual sacrifices. It’s like obtaining an indulgence to offset a sin. We are not focusing on the political action that needs to take place if we are to lessen (if we can) the frightening impact of climate change. I suppose it’s a struggle between an old order and new one: the old order wanting to continue with “business as usual”, the new order sensing the need to take decisive action before it’s too late. Clearly, Governments are going to have to step forward and regulate - and this is the crux of the struggle perhaps - in our individualistic, hedonistic lifestyles we have no tolerance for Governments regulating said lifestyles or regulating the environment we choose to respect or disrespect. Big business is more concerned with shareholders and increased profits and perceives any move to regulate a threat to their power base and wealth.

I have no doubt that future generations will look back on us with shame and indignation. They will attempt to find out when it was we lost the plot - sometime during the 20th Century when Governments shrank back and allowed big business to run the agenda? sometime in the late 20th Century when we became obsessed with the glittering Hollywood lifestyle and failed to see the glitter and beauty in nature? or sometime in the early 21st Century when clear evidence of climate change began to manifest but we were a society filled with ostriches with collective heads stuck in the sand and more interested in ourselves than preserving the world for our children and grandchildren.

I work in Sydney but live just short of Newcastle - so that’s a 2+ hour journey each way per day. That’s on a good day. As people who travel on the “Newcastle Flyer” express train will tell you, it’s more like the Newcastle Snail, succumbing to mysterious delays or often stuck behind an all-stations train as it winds its way to Sydney.

So it was with some jealousy that I read this article from The Sydney Morning Herald and wished I could be transported back to 1937. Apparently, the Newcastle Flyer took 2 hours and 26 minutes to reach Sydney in those days, which is 5 minutes faster than today. Hello CityRail - let me repeat: 5 minutes faster than today. What the?

Not only that - back in 1955, NSW Railways (as it was then called) moved 280.5 million people around the rail network - that is 5 million more than in 2006. Now, the really intelligent amongst us would figure out that Sydney’s population has grown heaps since 1955, but only two rail lines have been added to the network since then and seven projects have been halted or ceased mid-construction. And those of us who travel endlessly up and down the Newcastle line well know that the plans for a fast rail service between Sydney and Newcastle have been snuffed.

And to add salt to my wounds, apparently back in the good old days, 26 trains an hour or one every two minutes was the norm; now it’s about 12 trains per hour. So perhaps CityRail could go underground and investigate the ghost network that exists under Sydney. There’s a rail mausoleum lying under Sydney’s streets. Over 100 years ago, plans for a sophisticated network were put into action - tunnels were dug and massive concrete sidings were erected. Unfortunately, this transport vision went AWOL and the train tunnels lead nowhere but I’d be happy to have my taxes go towards resurrecting this vision.

I was speaking to an old bloke the other day on the Newcastle Snail, sorry Flyer. We were stuck behind an all-stations train, so there was time for some congenial conversation. He told me that train travel in the “olden days” was a pleasant, almost luxurious experience. With ears pricked up, I listened intently because there’s no way I’d describe my daily travel experience as pleasant or luxurious. I guess he was in his 80s and he told me of a time long gone, when inter-city trains had comfortable seats with wood panel backing. There were places for four people to sit with a table in the middle for playing cards and (gasp) there was a dining car to trot off to and get a coffee or something to eat. You could even (shock, horror) book a seat for an entire year - a seat that was always yours, in the same place, every day. I looked at him with incredulity. Either he’s been smoking the whacky tobaccy or this was the way inter-city trains in New South Wales used to be. What happened I ask? Now I travel on an inter-city train that has seen better days; has graffiti on seats (and these seats are not always clean); and has dingy toilets that no-one in their right mind frankly would go to - you’d rather hang on for 2+ hours!

Now, I know that CityRail is trying. Recently, passengers on the 4.12pm out of Sydney were greeted by very pleasant CityRail employees, handing out a passenger survey complete with a pen. The people in the carriage I was travelling in were speechless - we don’t generally get surveys handed out, let alone accompanying pens.

But seems that frustrated commuters have now taken things into their own hands and set up a survey website to tell CityRail how to lift its game. Ratecityrail.com is the site, set up by a 24-year old (love your work Gen Y!).

And just to prove there is a ghost network under Sydney, I’ve pinched the photo accompanying this post from The Sydney Morning Herald article.

This is a great story from Wired - it has all kinds of stuff that interests me. It’s a tale about one of the most important historical events of the 20th Century. It’s also a sorry story of poor record keeping; sloppy information management; an engineeer who seems to be the only person possessing certain knowledge; and inconsistent decisions about what is or is not valuable historical knowledge. And an extra bonus is that it involves two of my favourite topics: space/NASA and history.

Our story begins in 1969: July 20 to be precise, when Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind” after stepping foot on the dust of the Moon. Interestingly, in Andrew Chaikin’s book, A Man on the Moon, it’s suggested that Armstrong most likely meant to say “That’s one small step for a man.….”. And recent analysis of the lunar landing tapes has shown that transmission static caused the missing ‘a’ to be left out during recording.

But way back in 1969, a young NASA electrical engineer, Stan Lebar, was getting a little nervous about the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. Lebar’s task was to develop the camera that would preserve for posterity the images of Armstrong and Aldrin’s lunar landing. The camera had to withstand the force of Eagle’s landing, operate in near-weightlessness and start sending back to Earth a live feed so that millions of people around the world could participate in this historic event and the Soviets would wish they had beaten the Americans to the Moon. If the camera didn’t work, so the story goes, Lebar (stationed at Mission Control, Houston) would apologise on camera to the world for any stuff-up.

We have to remember that back in the 60s, TV and computers were ‘primitive’ compared to the sophisticated technology of today. The broadcast spectrum used for video was clogged up with data coming back to Earth from Apollo 11 and so there was no space left for the black and white video format of the time. So, as often happens under pressure, an innovative solution had to be devised, in this case, a unique video format: 320 scan lines at 10 fps, transmitted at a meager 500 kHz (compared to 525 scan lines of data at 30 frames per second, transmitted at 4.5 MHz for the black and white format). But this was pretty slow-scan footage and tracking stations on Earth would need to convert the footage to TV images, then beam it to Mission Control.

So far so good. Australia played a big part during the Apollo 11 mission. NASA maintained two tracking stations: the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra and the Parkes Radio Observatory in Parkes. I used to live in Dubbo, near Parkes and once visited the Radio Observatory - it’s true what the article says - the facility was stuck out in nowhere land surrounded by sheep. During the simulation tests for the camera it worked perfectly and the tracking stations were ready.

Another character in our story now enters: Dick Nafzger, who was the 28-year-old coordinator of the tracking stations’ TV operations stationed at Mission Control. He was the guy responsible for converting the slow-scan footage into US Standard broadcast footage. Both Lebar and Nafzger felt the weight of responsibility but were confident the camera and conversion process would work.

As Armstrong pushed himself off Eagle’s ladder and uttered his historic words, the two Australian tracking stations were the first to receive the slow-scan footage, despite high winds buffeting the area and possibly causing signal disruption. Lebar and Nafzger eagerly awaited the first images of this historic and emotional moment and the world held its collective breath.

The camera worked; the live feed streamed down to Earth. But Lebar’s heart skipped a beat or two. The quality of the footage he had seen during camera simulations was not what he saw on the monitor. The live images were grainy and grayish in tone. Lebar thought Armstrong looked like “a fuzzy gray blob wading through an inkwell“. But NASA was happy; the world was happy and so the issue of image quality was soon put aside.

Here’s where the story gets really interesting. Lebar never saw the raw transmission. Only a few tracking engineers ever saw it and thankfully they recorded the live feed onto now obsolete reels of magnetic tape and sent the tapes to NASA for safekeeping. Now, you would think that NASA would preserve these historic tapes with care and index the content appropriately. Mmmm…not exactly: it seems NASA has lost the tapes.

Here’s what seems to have happened:

• a bunch of NASA enthusiasts and tracking engineers from the Apollo 11 mission get together every year for a picnic at the Honeysuckle station, which was closed in 1981. They reminisce and share their stories and in 2002 someone whipped out an old 14-inch magnetic tape of the moonwalk during a BBQ. They gasped and marvelled at the quaint antiquity of the magnetic tape. Then in 2003, still-photos of the original slow-scan footage were passed around at the annual reunion.
• the photos highlighted the impressive quality of the images - far superior to the grainy images shown to the world back in 1969.
• everyone asked: were the raw images really crisper than those the world saw in 1969 and if so, wouldn’t these quality images be on the magnetic tapes the tracking engineers produced and sent to NASA? And where are these tapes now?
• the 14-inch tape was sent to NASA but the format was so archaic no-one had the knowledge or the equipment to play the tapes.
• but here Dick Nafzger re-enters the story. He was still employed at NASA and was the only person left with the know-how of video formats of the 1960s.
• Nafzger knew a colleague who worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and the Center had an old analog recorder - “a 7-foot-high gray machine with big black knobs and huge reel-to-reel spools“. The sort of stuff you see in old sci-fi films of the 50s and 60s. It was the only equipment that could read data from the archaic tapes.
• alas…the tape only had audio and data from an earlier mission, not Apollo 11.
• but…the old analog recorder had shown that old tapes could still be read - so where were the magnetic tapes of the moonwalk in NASA’s cavernous archives?

At this point in our story, the information and knowledge management specialists amongst us might like to take a valium or a strong cup of coffee because from here on, the story gets pretty woeful.

A hunting party was put together: Lebar, Nafzger and Colin Mackellar (an Australian space-nut). Lebar retired in 1987 and had always wondered what had happened to the images that during simulations had been so sharp but during the live-feeds had been so gray and fuzzy. Had the world seen a “lame version of the moonwalk?”. So the hunt was on. And here’s what happened:

• Lebar and Nafzger went to NASA to search for the tapes.
• they were sent to the Washington National Records Center, which holds 4 million musty boxes of old records, including NASA’s. They encountered stacked boxes of various records occupying the space of 14 football fields. (Sounds like one episode of the X-Files I remember where some alien embryo was filed away with thousands of others in some secret squirrel Government warehouse). Boxes of NASA stuff had been sent there just after the Apollo 11 mission.
• Lebar and Nafzger found a data storage system in shambles - no-one knew what was where; there was no barcoding or computerised indexing system. If a box had been checked out, all that remained on the shelf was a yellowed piece of paper functioning as a placeholder. Many boxes have been checked out for decades.
• they found that 140,000 tapes had been checked out of the Records Center and sent back to Goddard between 1979 and 1985 and disappeared - no-one seemed to know of the whereabouts of the tapes. Former Goddard employees were asked if they recalled the boxes but to no avail.
• there is no central database to track NASA files and each NASA facility decides what information is valuable or not. So sometimes records are destroyed or “decommissioned” or sit in someone’s office gathering dust layers.
• the hunting party was told that an employee recalled 14-inch tapes being sent to storage in the Goddard Corporate Park. But the facility had been closed for years and….all the records were destroyed.
• the tapes were possibly “degaussed”or erased so they could be reused.
• the hunting party is still hunting.

And so historic records from NASA’s golden era have possibly been lost forever amidst an organisation that failed to maintain official and appropriate record keeping and didn’t consider how to preserve the data from tapes in now obsolete formats.

The good news is that the old analog recorder will be saved while the hunters continue their search for the lost tapes. NASA has now officially admitted that the tapes have gone AWOL. And Australia may yet play a part in recovering the tapes. Recently, tapes containing data from lunar-surface experiments were uncovered in a basement at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. Perhaps, in some basement somewhere in the world are the missing NASA tapes that contain precious footage of one of humanity’s great moments.

As the Wired article says: One Giant Screwup for Mankind.

I came across this wonderful vignette from The New York Times. It’s a short piece about the footprints of vanished places: favourite coffee shops that have long since closed; a trendy boutique that has morphed into a dry cleaners. The space may vanish, but your memory of it doesn’t. And so you carry around in your head a whole map of long-gone geographical places and perhaps memories of people who died many years ago.

It was synchronicity really reading this article as, over the last few weeks, I’ve been remembering people and places that no longer exist. I remember, for example, in Pitt Street, Sydney (opposite The Westin Hotel) on the corner of a small side street that leads into the MLC Centre - there was once a cake shop. If I say what decade this might have been in, I’d reveal that I really was born in the Jurassic Park era. The door of this cake shop (can’t remember the name) had one of those annoying wire, fly-screen doors that would smack you in the face as you entered if you weren’t careful. But it was filled with old-world cakes and biscuits, not the processed stuff we get today - brandy snaps with fresh cream; vanilla slices with real, soft yellow custard filling, not the nasty custard powder type; pastel pink and chocolate neenish tarts filled to the brim with buttery cream. Every time I walk by this vanished place, it evokes memories of another Sydney in another time. It’s curious to think of how another space has overlaid the vanished one; with people now walking over a spot where I once stood eagerly ordering a brandy snap so many years ago. An alternate, vanished universe overlaid by an existing universe. My mind still thinks I can go there at lunch time to buy something sweet and tempting, but the reality is quite different.

Similarly, when I walk through Sydney’s Strand Arcade, I expect to see a bustling health food store that once existed on the ground floor and sold “alternative” products before they were fashionable. And I expect to see a Cahill’s Restaurant where you could dine on their famous ice-cream cake with caramel sauce. You used to be able to buy this sauce in supermarkets - it was gooey, thick and a wonderful golden caramel colour. I often wonder what happened to the recipe for that famous sauce - I’ve tried to recreate it several times and I’m nearly there, but it just lacks that something special.

My mother used to talk of the Trocadero and Princes - Sydney nightclubs that were requisitioned for Australian and American armed services personnel during WWII and where people danced away their fears and uncertainties, trying to enjoy a fleeting moment of happiness in a world caught up in a maelstrom. She spoke of the dancing costumes she wore - rustling taffeta gowns and whispering soft silks. I know the spaces these nightclubs once existed in and often wonder if the spirits of laughing, dancing couples still twirl silently whilst modern city office workers walk across what was once the dance floor.

When I think of this, I recall David Bohm’s notion of the implicate order. To quote Bohm: “In terms of the implicate order one may say that everything is enfolded into everything“. The explicate or unfolded order is everything we see in this world; it’s our level of existence. The implicate order is a deeper order of existence but there is a constant flow of movement and exchange between the implicate and explicate orders - the universe constantly enfolds and unfolds so that everything in the universe is a seamless extension of everything else and hence everything is interconnected.

Cartesian duality is rejected if we accept that human consciousness, for example, is enfolded into animal consciousness and matter; that every portion of the universe enfolds the whole; that past, present and future time is constantly enfolding back into deeper levels of reality. Bohm suggests that “…sequences of moments that ’skip’ intervening spaces are just as allowable forms of time as those which seem continuous“. Rather than a linear, sequential notion of time, this suggests that the enfolding/unfolding pattern could conceivably result in ‘intervening spaces’ (perhaps thousands of years) and so just as humans may separate for long periods of time yet still “pick up from where they left off”, so may we witness Cleopatra meeting Julius Caesar for the first time as the universe and life ripples through its enfoldings/unfoldings. And so time may be reversible and fractal, a concept that would give new meaning to the adage “history repeats itself“.

If this is at all possible, then perhaps the spirits of long-gone war time dancers can come alive again as the present enfolds and unfolds on the past. Mmmmm…..perhaps I could go back in time and get my hands on that Cahill’s caramel sauce recipe, bottle it up and make millions!

Australia’s Prime Minister is yet to put his autograph on the Kyoto Protocol but at least the Federal Government is smart enough to figure out that wildlife on the world’s driest continent is going to have a pretty rough time as the planet heats up. Australian State and Federal Governments have agreed (a shock in itself really) to create a 2,800 kilometre wildlife corridor according to a piece in Reuters.

The entire East Coast of Australia - from the Australian Alps (south-eastern Australia) to the tropical north - will link national parks, state forests and Government land. Clearly, there’s going to have to be some snappy negotiation with private landowners who might be in the path of the proposed corridor. Not sure either how the animals and plants will find this magical corridor, but presumably as the Land Down Under sizzles under temperatures rising by up to 6.7 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, the preserved areas will function as protective ecosystems.

As one of the scientists involved in the proposal said: “The effects of climate change will likely to be less severe in systems that have some resilience and that we haven’t gone in and buggered-up”.

A thumbs up to the Australian Government for this initiative!

And in related news from National Geographic: the heat is off the sun. A favourite argument of those denying climate change has been that cyclical changes in solar activity have periodically resulted in warmer periods throughout history. The beginning of the 20th Century, particularly the 1930s, experienced warmer temperatures. But that trend reversed after 1985 and cannot explain the rapidly increasing temperatures the world is facing. As one climate scientist quipped:

“Think of the sun as a criminal suspect who has a long record, but a cast iron alibi for the latest crime…..And meanwhile, the fingerprints of CO2 are all over the murder weapon”.

This is very cool and for the amateur astronomers amongst us. You can participate in a new web-based galaxy classification system called Galaxy Zoo and help to classify one million galaxies. Involving the public will help speed up the classification process. I’ve already done my tutorial and passed the galaxy classification test, so am on my way to helping out.

The human brain being better at pattern recognition than a computer, the project will help to confirm whether all galaxies are rotating in agreement with each other (known as the Axis of Evil) or not. After a quick tutorial, you can start identifying the type of galaxy (spiral or elliptical); classify the direction of rotation for the spirals (clockwise or anti-clockwise); and check out whether galaxies are merging. Astronomers often get caught up in the detail, whereas the amateur might be quicker to spot a pattern or classify by gut instinct. Many of the digital images have never been seen before and were taken using the robotic Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope in New Mexico.

The Galaxy Zoo project is harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds : large groups of people collectively make smarter decisions than an elite few. Check out Galaxy Zoo and see if you would classify the galaxy image accompanying this post as spiral or elliptical (I pinched the photo from Galaxy Zoo).

“Let’s Get Ready Sydney” - I’m afraid this is not the latest PR campaign preparing Sydney to welcome a horde of tourists or host some athletic games. This latest slogan is aimed at getting Sydney-siders ready for a terrorist attack or natural disaster and in particular to prepare a Worker’s Go Bag. In the event of a terrorist incident or emergency situation, Sydney’s CBD workers are urged to have their Go Bag packed and ready to go, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Intrigued, I followed this up on the City of Sydney site and checked out what contents are recommended for the Worker’s Go Bag. What I didn’t expect was the advice to pack a cotton pillow case in the bag, just in case you want to schlep your cat with you when you flee. No mention of what to do if you have a dog - pack the kennel in the Go Bag? Actually, this could be a golden business opportunity - “Pet in a Bag: a product for those emergency situations you and your pet may face together.”

Other handy recommended items are:

• toilet paper - okay, may be quite useful. If you’re fleeing by the local public loo and need a pit stop, at least you have your own loo paper, none of that tacky public toilet paper to deal with.
• sunscreen - should the terrorist alert or emergency situation strike during the sweltering summer months, no doubt sunscreen would be a handy Go Bag addition.
• umbrella - a girl certainly doesn’t want to get her hair wet if it’s raining during a terrorist alert.
• comfortable running shoes - good idea, wouldn’t want to be tottering around in stilettos.
• a hat or baseball cap - as you’re running through Sydney’s clogged and panicked streets, fleeing with thousands of fellow citizens, you gotta look the part and have a trendy hat.
• first-aid kit - this is sensible advice for sure and presumably you’d need to pack a ton of antiseptic cream because I doubt that your domestic cat (who probably wasn’t working at the office alongside you when the emergency struck) would go willingly in the cotton pillow case. You’d need to prepare for the nasty scratch marks - forget the terrorists.
• sticky-tape - I have no idea why this item is recommended! Possibly, to tape a “Lost Cat” poster on some building urging fellow citizens to look out for a domestic tabby cat that recently jumped out of a cotton pillow case somewhere in the CBD.

Should there be a terrorist alert or natural disaster, there is little doubt in my mind that Sydney’s streets would be clogged up in a matter of minutes and transport would grind to a halt. As a long distance commuter (4 hours per day by train), the slightest bit of rain or wind seems to adversely affect Sydney’s trains, so we don’t need terrorists to cause havoc with our transport system.

The Let’s Get Ready Sydney campaign also urges Sydney CBD workers to hot foot it to one of three safety sites: Darling Harbour, Hyde Park or the Domain. This will be a handy bit of information for would-be terrorists - strike once, then strike again when Sydney-siders are congregated together at safety sites with cats in bags.

Really, I’m sure the Go-Bag is a well-intentioned piece of advice, but the “cat in the bag” business makes it vulnerable to a good bit of ridicule. I can just imagine us all with checklist in hand, ready to flee -Toilet paper? Check. Sunscreen? Check. Cat? Check.

And of course the cynical amongst us might suspect that this is just another attempt to keep Sydney-siders in a constant state of fear - expecting a terrorist attack at any time from anywhere or anyone.

I did detect a glaring omission. The recommended contents for the Go-Bag did not contain lip-gloss. What would you pack in your Go Bag?

No doubt I’ll be in for some ridicule by confessing that I’ve never read a single Harry Potter book. I was chatting with some people last week - all adults and all devout Potter fans, preparing to line up outside their local bookstore, ready for the doors to burst forth and start selling the seventh book at 9.01am Sydney time Saturday July 21.

Of course, I haven’t been living on Mars. I’m aware of the Harry Potter phenomenon but somehow the thought of reading a book aimed mainly at kids and full of wizards on flying broomsticks and some dude with an odd shaped scar has never appealed to me. I often see adults on trains reading Harry Potter books; I have rarely seen children reading the books but maybe I’ve just not noticed.

As much as I know of the Harry Potter series, it seems to retell a tried and tested fantasy tale - battle of good against evil; young hero valiantly battling the forces of darkness; wizards and magic; mythical creatures; and an odd giant or two thrown in for good measure. So I’m not at all sure what the special appeal is but then I haven’t read the books. I’ve been told (rightly or wrongly) that the first book was a bit “light on” and that with each book JK Rowling’s writing style has become more sophisticated, the storyline more complex, and the tale has become darker.

Some of my friends had marked July 21st in their diaries months in advance so they wouldn’t miss out on the day of publication of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows. One of them even camped out from 5.30am Saturday morning in winter’s icy cold so as to be first in the queue.

Four days before publication, I read about a Canadian chap, Byron Ng, who apparently ’stumbled onto’ a leaked copy of the seventh book, which had been posted onto the Internet. The publishers used GPS to track the trucks delivering the books to book stores and I read that alarms were secured to book crates. So with all the heavy security, you wonder how someone allegedly took photos of the book and released it onto the Internet days before publication. Someone, somewhere, whipped out a camera and took a photo of the 794-page book and ended up with 500 files. The photos made it very difficult for die-hard Potter fans to read - pages were askew, someone’s fingers appeared at the bottom of some of the photos, holding the book; and someone’s brown shoes appeared in photos.

Two days before publication, I decided to have a look at the so-called leaked copy of the book from the Bittorent file-sharing site, the Pirate Bay. Just in case you haven’t laid your hands on a copy yet, possible spoiler alert is ahead - SKIP THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH. I noticed that there was an epilogue taking place nineteen years in the future and something about his scar not having pained Harry over the last nineteen years. Mentioning this to a friend, little did I anticipate the dramatic reaction - I had inadvertently (assuming the leaked copy to be a true copy) revealed that Harry doesn’t snuff it and that maybe he has three children who are later packed off to Hogwarts. And news from The International Herald Tribune has revealed that the leaked copy was indeed the genuine article. Actually, not knowing too much about the Harry Potter series, it seems that this is a fitting ending: neither Harry nor Voldemort snuff it; apparently Ron marries Hermione; Harry marries Ginny; and lots of characters snuff it. So maybe this leaves the door open for books on Harry’s offspring continuing the fight against darkness and evil? Young readers upset at the demise of any characters will have a crisis hotline number to ring for counselling according to The Guardian.

I read that a distressed guy in Canberra had to be rescued from a freezing lake because he’d taken the plunge in to retrieve the receipt for his pre-ordered copy of the book. And apparently 5,000 fans flocked to Waterstone’s bookstore in London to start queuing well before midnight and participate in a glittering launch event.

So I decided to check out what the fuss is all about and headed off with a friend to line up on Saturday morning at a local bookstore. 5,000 fans weren’t in evidence; maybe about 40. But I noted that the majority were adults, some dressed in black gowns and witches hats. When the doors opened, I was pleased to see there was no unseemly fracas and that people in the orderly queue proceeded to whip out a receipt, grab their book, get a photo taken and rush out the door. Quite a few headed off in the direction of a coffee shop, presumably to get cracking on reading the 700+ pages.

With friend’s copy in hand, I turned to the final pages (amidst threats of “tell me the ending and I’ll kill you”) and it seemed that the leaked ending I’d read a few days before was the same as the ending in my hands.

My friend rushed home to spend the entire day reading the book. I decided to read the first book in the series, but didn’t make it beyond page 2 (sorry, but I didn’t like it). I admit to feeling like a social outcast and cannot hold my own in a conversation about the characters and the plots. Okay, back to my book on Indian history :)-

And if you want to read a potter-ed version (sorry) of the final saga, check this out. It’s one person’s chapter-by-chapter description of the book (post-publication), her reactions to the demise of beloved characters, with way too much coffee drinking so she can stay up all night finishing the book and blogging about it. Basically, all I need do is read this and not bother wading through 700 or so pages!

Now here’s some interesting statistics: internet access and online social networks have given an advantage to 61% of the UK population - they can enjoy social interaction; access to job information and Government services; instant communication; and consumer empowerment. But 39% of the population are digitally excluded and therefore socially disadvantaged. The latest research into the so-called digital divide was commissioned by UK Online Centres and the research carried out by FreshMinds. The report is entitled Understanding Digital Inclusion, which you can download here from the UK Online Centre’s Reading Room.

When you consider the digital divide concept, there’s a tendency to think the older generations are the ones at a disadvantage and that when they die off, the world will be filled with younger cyber-savvy people. But the report highlights that 11% of 16 to 24 year olds are digitally excluded rather than included and that digital inequality is increasing and becoming more like a chasm. The report has also found that three in four people counted as socially excluded are also digitally excluded - a double whammy. So if you’re not employed, in poor health, live in social housing and are part of the lowest socio-economic strata, then you are part of the social and digital poor in the UK. But surprisingly, a good proportion of non-users of the Internet reside in connected households.

So digital exclusion is not just about access: it’s about capability and skills to use digital technologies; engagement with digital technologies; confidence and creativity to interact with digital technologies and be a self-sufficient user. It was somewhat trendy to utter the words “digital divide”, “information rich” and “information poor” in the 1990s, but seems these words might still serve as powerful metaphors in a world we thought was wired up.

At the other end of the spectrum, a piece in CBS News echoes comments I made in an earlier post about the MySpace and Facebook generation not being as concerned about privacy. Those who are digitally included are busy sharing their digital biographies and archiving their youth: revealing their secret thoughts, connecting with friends, uploading photos and videos.

But the digitally rich should spare a moment to think about how anyone can find out anything about you on the internet. We recently heard of Miss New Jersey being embarrassed by private photos that suddenly and inexplicably entered the public domain. While we are all busy building our online reputations and constructing our digital (often fictional) lives, employers are equally hard at work checking out social networking sites to see what your online activity reveals about you. What may have seemed fun to share with friends when you were 16 years old may come back to haunt you when you’re 25 years and seeking a top paying job. An 18 year old rather bravely said: “I feel that if I do those types of things, it reflects my personality, so I don’t care what’s put up on the Web…. because I am who I am and it reflects that. And if people have a problem with me, then I wouldn’t want to work with them or know them.”

And even if you’re careful about what you reveal or post online, we all run the risk of others talking about us on some social networking site somewhere. So the gateway into our personal lives and the information that can be trolled by a third party who then makes decisions about us is vast. I read recently of a college professor in North Carolina who scanned Facebook profiles to determine which students to accept into his class. And apparently getting fired by your employer for blog entries is so common now that it’s come to be characterised by the term “dooced.”

But the last laugh surely has to be with those who plan digital autobiographies for their funerals for future generations to watch. Touch screen computers allow a person or family to capture photos,videos and audio of themselves to be preserved. No worrying about past private indiscretions coming back to haunt you - just construct the life story you wish!