ThinkingShift

Well, enough of LOLCats and maps for the moment, great fun though they were. And clearly LOLCats was a lot of fun for the 1,204 people so far who have checked out yesterday’s post on the History of LOLCats. But for now…back onto my pet topics of privacy, surveillance and eroding freedoms. Expect quite a few posts on these issues this week. I was in the bank the other day, waiting my turn, when a poster caught my eye. Something along the lines of this: if you see anyone acting suspiciously or you hear anything that might indicate suspicious activity will take place….inform the police. I’ve noted that average Joe Citizen is increasingly expected to be the first line of defense in the war against terrorists.

Since 9/11, we’ve become a society in the grip of fear - fear of an unexpected terrorist attack; fear of anything or anyone “different”; we are encouraged to watch out for “suspicious activity”. Every Federal Election we have in Australia (our next one is November 24) there is a call to beware, watch out - in 2001, it was the “children overboard” scandal with allegations by Howard that asylum seekers making their way to Australia by boat were throwing children overboard. It was more like “truth overboard”. Then we had the Tampa incident, which basically resulted in the Federal Government calling for stricter border control measures to protect us from the unknown and whipped up a fear of illegal immigrants and evil asylum seekers.

For the 2007 election, it seems we’re being urged to fear an inexperienced Labor Government that would wreak havoc on Australia’s stable economy with its 11 years of economic growth. Thankfully, there’s no call to be wary of illegal immigrants lurking in the shadows or terrorists about to pounce with their weapons of mass destruction (well, not yet anyway).

So I came across this interesting piece by Bruce Schneier (via Boing Boing) called The War On The Unexpected. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“We’ve opened up a new front on the war on terror. It’s an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it’s a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested — even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats”.

Basically, it’s what I saw in the bank - if you see something, squeal. It plants a subliminal notion in our mind that our fellow citizens are to be looked at with a high degree of suspicion. But as the article point outs, average Joe Citizen is not trained or equipped to know the difference between a bomb and a bat detector (apparently, the UK police blew up a bat detector, which had been placed under a bridge to monitor the nocturnal creature’s calls. A concerned citizen rang the police suspecting the bat stuff was a bomb). Of course, the media hype up supposed terrorist threats and politicians are only concerned with covering their butts in the event something does happen. So we face random bag searches; ridiculous bans on liquids and gels you can take onto an aircraft; and fear-mongering politics.

Schneier makes the really good point that people in jobs charged with some notion of authority, such as security guards, police or flight attendants, face a dilemma. If someone reports they have seen an item that could be a bomb or they’ve overheard some suspicious conversation, what do they do: ignore or escalate? If it’s a false alarm, the person will be praised for “doing the right thing, just in case”. And the person he or she escalates to, further escalates and creates a chain of escalation. All in an attempt to cover the proverbial.

And what I think is really scary is a new Federal US law that allows for passengers, who suspect that another passenger is acting nervously or suspiciously, to report any concerns to cabin crew without fear of being sued by the hapless subject of the complaint. Known as the “good faith” law, it was passed by Congress on July 27, 2007. A person’s concern only needs to be based on “”objectively reasonable suspicion” and this term is not defined. So taking an extreme viewpoint (hey, maybe not so extreme) if a nervous traveller spots someone on the plane who is wearing a turban or overhears someone speaking in a Middle Eastern language, then the mind-set or emotional state of that skittish traveller could be classed as “objectively reasonable suspicion” because they’re freaking out over possible bomb plots.

I’m not saying that genuine threats don’t occur or that occasionally a citizen gets it right and reports a real threat. But I think that our current climate of whipping up fear in the shadows is creating a society that is harking back to one we’d rather forget - Nazi Germany - where average citizens were encouraged to report anything unacceptable to their local party chief. Personally, I think we should refuse to be terrorised.

Oh no….just like some posts I did on aliens (which I did largely to distract myself from fretting over the loss of personal liberties in contemporary society), I amused myself this week by delving into LOLCats. Love those kitties. A total waste of time, but there’s no doubt that LOLCats have created an online subculture. Good news is this subculture is all about cute, furry animals; bad news is LOLCats will most certainly cause an infectious case of bad grammar.

So ThinkingShift reader, Pippy H, has asked me to give a run-down of the history of LOLCats. I started this post by uttering “Oh no” because (as with the posts on aliens), I seem to have attracted a whole host of new readers who are LOLCat obsessed. Oh well, I’ll just add these new readers to all my other readers who are obsessed, like me, about privacy and surveillance issues (along with aliens).

Back to LOLCats: I am no expert on the history of these cute kitties, so I needed to do a spot of research. And I also decided to apply some knowledge management techniques to LOLCats by checking out some of the archetypes. But first to the history and if you know of any further or different historical details - leave a comment. It seems that LOLCats is a surprisingly new phenomenon starting in January 2007. And an out of work software developer from Hawaii, Eric Nakagawa, seems to be the culprit. After reading about how LOLCats reached the proverbial tipping point of popularity, I suddenly became pretty jealous of Mr Nakagawa! He found a photo of a chubby, smiling cat on the Internet. The photo had the caption “I can has cheezburger?”. He thought it pretty funny. I’ve tracked the photo he found and here it is.

And this is why Mr Nakagawa is one clever dude because I would have thought “stupid person can’t spell and cats don’t eat cheeseburgers” and I would have moved on.

Mr One Clever Dude didn’t do that. Nope, he created a website with images of cute cats with silly captions written in baby-style talk, which is now known as kitty pidgin. I guess when you’re out of work, this sort of activity keeps your mind active. He called the site I Can Has Cheezburger (the lawyer in me asks: wouldn’t the dude with the original photo and caption be ready to sue Mr Nakagawa for using the caption and idea???). Anyway, Mr Nakagawa runs the website with his partner, Tofuburger (she refuses to reveal her name), and they found that by May 2007, the site was getting 1.5 million hits during the month (I can only dream of reaching this number of visitors…mmmm where’s that cat photo I took the other day??!).

The idea is pretty simple: you snap a digital image of kitty. Add some excruciatingly bad grammar so it looks like the cat is uttering words of wisdom. Submit to the site where images are screened for originality. And hope that your image gets rated on a scale of one to five cheeseburgers (yep, really). So if like me, you’re concerned about privacy issues, you can have kitty say:

So the time between launching the site to a critical mass of users seems to be pretty quick. And just like a good community of practice, I Can Has Cheezburger is sustained and self-organised by its users who create content and add comments.

Now, if you are in the sorry state of having no cat of your own, don’t despair you can still join in the fun. Mr N has thoughtfully built a tool called LOLCat Builder and you can select a photo of a cute kitty and generate an appallingly bad caption, which is then submitted and approved (at least I think this is how it works).

I decided to apply some serious KM techniques to my study of LOLCats. What are the major archetypes? I believe I can break them down into the following:

• Schrodinger’s Cat - just like the famed kitty of quantum mechanics, there seems to be a Schrodinger’s Cat archetype popping up.

• another feline archetype seems to be fat, grumpy kitty:

• then we have the theatrical archetype:

That last image has me a bit worried about cat abuse - check out the legs and tail!

• and then there seems to be something going on with computers and refrigerators - this could be a variation of the Schrodinger’s Cat archetype:

That last image is a personal favourite!

• We have the alien LOLCat archetype:

• And finally, the Something is Invisible archetype:

But some serious research uncovered a little known video that may suggest that LOLCats have been around for a very long time, perhaps since Egyptian times. Here is the video I discovered in a dusty old library - note the interview with an esteemed Egyptologist.

What I haven’t been able to work out yet is why a lot of LOLCats seem to start their sentences with “Oh Hai” - perhaps they’re Scottish cats. But I’m guessing it’s kitty pidgin for “Oh hi”. Can’t wait for the first PhD analysing kitty pidgin! It could be that Anil Dash might be busy analysing kitty pidgin already - check out his blog.

Now, if I was really technical, I’d load up some images of cats onto a newly created website called: I Can has Knowledgz? And I’d have LOLCats say things like: “I wantz to shez mai knowledgz”. Or: “Buzz awf, hai aint sharin.” Or: “Oh hai. Waz this cynefin framzwork aw about? I’z think I’z stuck in the shadoz of complexity. ” (With apologies to all LOLCat lovers - I think I just mangled kitty pidgin).

Sources: Business Week, I Can Has Cheezburger, Wall Street Journal.

I seem to be in a bit of a cartographic and LOLCats phase right now. While checking out some maps of Africa, I stumbled onto these maps of the far side of our satellite, the Moon. Wired Science refers to them as the “most beautiful planetary maps ever”. Not sure I’d go that far. Seem a bit Jackson Pollock to me or a bit “here’s what I had for breakfast after I threw it up”. The United States Geological Survey dudes, in partnership with NASA, have been mapping planets - not sure how it’s done but here’s a map of the far side of the Moon. Pretty awesome.

The colours of the map depict minerals and various geological materials. And here’s the Moon’s western hemisphere:

Source: Wired Science

And at a totally different level, you can map your ideas and thoughts with some pretty cool Mind Mapping tools I’ve found. Mashable has a list of 30+ mind mapping tools. They may not produce a Jackson Pollock like map but they help to model arguments, ideas and perspectives. Considering we’re heading into a Federal Election in Australia on November 24, Australia’s politicians should probably check out Debatemapper, a free web-based tool that can model and evaluate debates in politics and public policy. On the site there’s an interesting debate map showing ex-UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s eighth and final Our Nation’s Future lecture on public life and the relationship between politics and the media in the 21st Century. The verdict? The relationship is stuffed and needs repair.

And Mind42.com is pretty cool as it allows for multiple users and you can include Wikipedia entries. Cornerstone is a highly visual tool that the kids can use (good to get them young into the discipline of organising thoughts if you ask me). So here’s a couple of mind maps using Logotron educational software:

Go here to Mashable to see the complete list of 30+ mind mapping tools - very useful.

Given all the stuff I’ve seen recently on LOLCats, I’m sure there’s a mind mapping tool to map the thoughts of kitty :)-

Despite LOLCats Bible of yesterday’s post, I haven’t scurried back to reading on privacy and surveillance just yet. So today’s post is about another curious site I came across - Eupedia and its maps of Europe. I love old or interesting maps and there’s plenty to find on this site.

Ever wondered what percentage of Europeans have fair hair or light-hued eyes? Can’t say it keeps me awake at night but this map, for example, deals with fair-haired people:

And this map shows density of population:

Whilst this map shows child well-being in Europe (based on a UNICEF report):

This week I’m having a bit of a rest. No reading on surveillance or privacy issues (do I hear a collective sigh of relief?!). No reading on climate change - I’ve been delving into the work of meteorologist and hurricane expert, William Gray, who appears to refute climate change due to human activity and prefers to believe that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated. He has some theory that the increasing evidence of wild and furious hurricanes is due to fluctuations in the Thermohaline Circulation (THC) - still trying to get my head around all this. A future post.

But while researching, I have come across some interesting and curious bits and pieces. So today’s post brings you a few of the ones I’ve saved up.

Now, what do you think this is a picture of? Not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen that’s for sure. But apparently it’s a bit like a cockroach. Sort of can’t be destroyed. You can boil them (eeewww), zap them with radiation, hang them out to dry in exposed harsh, open spaces, freeze them, fling them into space and after 200 years, they’ll still be alive. Mmmmm…..sounds like a few people I’ve had to report to in my working life! Indestructible. Organisation never gets rid of them. But this is a photo of a tardigrade AKA water bear (much better name) or moss piglet (not so great name). Never heard of it; never seen one. But they can live in extreme weather conditions. They were discovered in 1773 by aquatic zoologist, Johann August Ephraim Goeze. These little critters are everywhere in the world. They can be found hanging around at 6000 metres in the Himalayas or enjoying a spot of swimming in deep ocean at 4000 metres below sea level. They grow to about 1mm. Here are some more photos of these very curious water bears:

I must say I find them strangely attractive! And if you cook one at 181 degrees Celsius for a couple of minutes, here’s what it looks like:

Awesome! Once we’ve finished stuffing up the planet, guess these creatures will be the only thing left standing. Oh and maybe cockroaches and a few managers I’ve had to work with. Source: Dark Roasted Blend.

I love LOLCats - totally ridiculous stuff but I love them. But I can’t believe that someone is actually translating the Bible into LOLCat and using a wiki to undertake the task! Known as the LOLCat Bible Translation Project, some people with an awful lot of time on their hands are busy translating the Bible into kitty pidgin (which is the language of LOLCats in case you didn’t know). From what I can tell, the photo below started the whole thing off and someone thought why not tackle the whole Bible from a different perspective.

So here’s a taste of Genesis 1 translated into kitty pidgin:

1. Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded the skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated it.

2. Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz. 4. An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin. 5. An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed the skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

Should you wish to learn correct pronunciation of kitty pidgin, go here to listen to an audio version of Genesis 1. Okay this is probably enough to get me back onto reading about privacy and surveillance issues!! There is also a LOLCat Church. The picture accompanying this post is a cat in Thailand - possibly the only cat on the planet that hasn’t appeared on icanhascheezburger.com!

Sources: icanhascheezburger.com; LOLCat Bible; The Presurfer

As regular ThinkingShift readers know, I love stuff about future predictions. Part of me just wants to be able to hang around for the next 500 years (without getting old of course) and witness all the mind blowing technology that will no doubt emerge. Not too sure I want to hang around though to see if the planet totally blows a gasket or if the world will be a dark, dystopian place.

So on 2spare.com, I found some wild predictions about the future that went a little awry. 87 to be exact. The front runner for number one crazy prediction has to be that of Nikita Krushchev, former leader of the now kaput USSR, who uttered confidently in 1958 that the mighty Soviet Union would bury the West - Communism would triumph over greedy Western capitalism. Oops. Alas, the Milton Friedman-style rampant, destructive global capitalism model is what we’re now all facing. Privatization of public infrastructure using taxpayer’s dollars so that corporatists can make obscene profits. But that’s another post.

Back to the classic predictions. Charles Darwin clearly underestimated the impact of his survival of the fittest theory when he wrote in 1869 “I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone”.

“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist….”. These were the last words uttered by General John Sedgwick, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864. Seems the elephant was well and truly hit.

Margaret Thatcher clearly wasn’t gazing into her crystal ball in 1969 when she was quoted as saying “It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.” Some people might say it would have been better if she hadn’t become PM. And I wouldn’t want this dude as my doctor - Dr Peter Duesberg said in 1988, “That virus is a pussycat”, when he was referring to HIV.

And my all time favourite? A 1926 prediction. “To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances.” Note to Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube, don’t come out with bold utterances, they may come back to haunt you. And you’d think this dude being an inventor might have had a wilder imagination.

The 87 predictions are arranged into various categories: technology; rockets; atomic and nuclear power; radio; film; computers; television and so on. Go off and have some fun.

Let’s just hope that those of us who might suspect that KM is dead, dying or teetering on the brink don’t one day regret making bold assertions :)-

I came across Ezclopedia (alpha), a new knowledge sharing website that seems to be an alternative to Wikipedia. It’s described as: “an online, knowledge sharing website that provides a better alternative for qualified individuals to share their knowledge and provide free, reliable, trustworthy information and get the credit and revenue sharing they deserve for their sincere, knowledgeable efforts”.

And it seems to be organised around three key features:

• collaboration will produce high quality articles: the author who starts off an article is called the Lead Author, whilst those who contribute are referred to as Co-Authors. The Lead Author can invite others to contribute and function as Co-Authors or people can apply to become Co-Authors. Either way, the Lead Author has complete control over who contributes or edits. If you don’t want a Co-Author, you can request a peer-review of an article or you can apply to be a peer-reviewer.
• healthy competition will produce high quality articles: Ezclopedia allows different authors or groups of authors to write articles using the same title. Readers will be able to gain different perspectives of the topic and will ultimately have the power to rank an article higher than others on the same topic.
• authors should receive the appreciation, recognition and reward they deserve (gasp!!): Ezclopedia is a for-profit organisation and they believe it is unethical to directly or indirectly use the content contributed by authors to earn profits without sharing said profits with authors.

Apparently, around 1 million people use Ezclopedia daily - make that 1 million + one now that I’ve stumbled onto the site. It seems to be concentrating on developing trustworthy content, peer-reviewed content, editing control and….credit and potential revenue sharing for contributors. Not sure why it’s called Ezclopedia, a bit of a clunky sounding name but hopefully it will give Wikipedia the sort of competition it needs.

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has just launched its first position paper on Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks. The report makes for very interesting reading. Whilst acknowledging the benefits of social networks, ENISA identifies 15 threats and makes 19 recommendations around making social networking sites (SNS) a safer space.

Four types of threats are discussed: privacy related threats; variants of traditional network and information security threats; identity related threats; and social threats. Here’s a taste of some of the main threats identified:

• digital dossiers: the network never forgets - personal data and profiles on online SNS can be downloaded and stored by third parties creating digital dossiers that could get into the hands of blackmailers and spammers.
• facial recognition: user-provided digital images are a popular component of SNS profiles. The photograph is a binary identifier for the user enabling linking to apparently anonymous profiles, especially when combined with uncontrolled tagging.
• CBIR: Content-Based-Image-Retrieval is an emerging technology that can match identifying aspects of a room eg a vase or painting, in very large databases, increasing the possibilities of locating users.
• reputation damage through ID theft: fake profiles created in order to slander people or profit from their reputation.
• cyberbullying: SNS offer a range of tools which can lead to cyberbullying such as harassment, humiliation or secret sharing.

You can get the report here (scroll to bottom of screen and download the pdf).

I’ve been researching into corporate sustainability and have come across some useful resources that I thought I’d share with you. First up, is a new publication by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development - The New Role of Corporate Leadership in Global Development. Check it out here. A key message for business is: “Given the right conditions, the private sector can improve the lives of people in the low-income segment through direct employment, procurement from local suppliers and delivery of affordable products and services.”

Sorry, but having read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, I’m a tad skeptical about this. Seems to me that relentless privatisation just feeds greedy corporations and is creating a gaping wealth divide. So people in the low-income bracket don’t always get a share of the wealth. And will corporations actively worry about improving the lives of people in this income bracket?? I wonder.

The Wall Street Journal has a special issue on the environment. It looks at topics such as public attitudes towards climate change and personal sacrifice; building green and affordable; alternative energies. I also found the United Nations Environment Programme has just published the fourth Global Environment Outlook. Its compiled by 390 experts from observations, studies and data garnered over two decades. Pretty bad news: the report says that humanity is ravaging the planet so voraciously and so rapidly that future generations will be bequeathed a devoured planet. Earth has experienced five mass extinctions in 450 million years, the latest of which occurred 65 million years ago and the report highlights that a sixth major extinction is under way, this time caused by human behaviour.

Interesting and scary statistics from this report. Here’s a taste.

• climate is changing faster than at any time in the past 500,000 years
• global average temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 Fahrenheit) over the past century and are forecast to rise by 1.8 to four C (3.24-7.2 F) by 2100
• global population is expected to peak at between 8 and 9.7 billion by 2050
• in Africa, land degradation and even desertification are threats; per capita food production has declined by 12% since 1981

The UN report presents four scenarios to the year 2050: “Markets First”, “Policy First”, “Security First”, “Sustainability First”.

Also news about rising sea levels and other disasters related to climate change. 33 cities are predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015 and at least 21 of these cities are highly vulnerable - Dhaka, Bangladesh, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Tianjin in China, Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, Mumbai and Kolkata in India, Jakarta, Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan, Lagos, Karachi, Bangkok, New York, Los Angeles.

643 million people or more than one tenth of the world’s population live in low-lying areas at risk of climate change. In descending order, China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines are countries most at risk.

I remember my grandmother made a rather fabulous cup of tea. Growing up, I much preferred tea to coffee. I do drink coffee (weak and hopefully vanilla flavoured, which causes people in Melbourne to look at me with disgust) but I much prefer tea. My favourite brews are Lady Grey, Prince of Wales and any ginger spiced tea. Green tea too. Never with milk or sugar, just strong and black (or green).I always looked forward to the tea making ritual I participated in with my grandmother. The teapot looked pretty dodgy - old and well worn. But apparently this was a must because the flavour traces of long ago brewed tea would still be in the teapot. You put in one teaspoon of tea per person and…one for the teapot. When I was really little I actually thought the teapot was a very special person because it received its own portion of tea. And then you poured in boiling hot water, boiling being a key point. You covered the teapot with a tea cosy and left it alone for 3-5 mins. You didn’t stir the pot. You waited…patiently.

Clinking porcelain china cups being placed on the table would mean the tea was ready to come out of the pot snuggled in its tea cosy (sadly, crocheted!). This was always a big deal - the tea cups had an oriental design. Very colourful. Dragons with swishing tails of gold. Lotus flowers gently opening up. Chinese figures drapped in silk. The selection of cups went very well with the mahjong set, which had real ivory tiles and Chinese characters depicting the four winds. The steaming tea would be poured. The thinly sliced bread and butter “fingers” would accompany the tea drinking. All would be ready for a gripping game of mahjong. No-one in my family ever drank tea with milk or sugar. So the knowledge of whether you add the milk into the cup first before pouring the tea or add it later is a mystery to me.

When I went to Japan with my uncle for the first time about 18 years ago to visit his business partner, we were treated to a Japanese tea ceremony. Still remains vivid in my mind. Very graceful. Very quiet. Very respectful. The importance of tea making and drinking was clearly on display. I had visions of having a tea plantation. I still read books on tea - the latest being John Griffith’s wonderful book Tea: The Drink that Changed the World. (And how jealous I am of Griffiths. His father was Sir Percival Griffiths who wrote a whopper of a book on the Indian tea industry and was a director of major tea companies. Such inside knowledge!). I often visit the Tea Centre in Sydney. I dislike tea bags as I love to pour hot water over gunmetal gray coloured leaves and smell the aroma. But a tea bag is often what you get in cafes these days. It looks so wet and bedraggled as it sits limply next to the cup once you jiggled it a few times (or is that dangled?).

I’m the only one in my family who ever drank coffee but it doesn’t compare with tea. My parents scoffed at the notion that people would actually go to a “coffee house” or cafe to drink a bitter brew that leaves a nasty taste in your mouth. I inherited my grandmother’s tea set and I am always on the prowl for a smashing looking 1950s tea set - I’ve seen them with multiple pastel coloured cups with shiny gold rims. One day…

Meanwhile, it’s sad to see that Asia may be losing its tea making culture. Consumption of traditional tea is declining because the knowledge of how to brew the tea is not being passed down to younger generations. Tea is struggling for a place in 21st Century Asia where young people living a fast pace can’t always be bothered hanging around for 10 or more minutes while the tea is brewing. They prefer canned soft drinks, canned tea, powdered tea and coffee - quick, instant.The older generation can still find tea houses across Asia but often have to pay up to $1 per gram for prime tea leaves. And there’s the whole stigma attached to tea these days as being an “old person’s drink”. “Our children don’t want to carry on the traditions, so in the future it will be forgotten,” complained Wang Cheng-long, a life-long bulk leaf seller in Taiwan’s historic tea-growing region of Pinglin.

But tea isn’t going down without a fight. Asian tea lovers are attempting to repackage tea. Taiwan tea expert Yang Hai-chuan sells sachets of mixed oolong and green tea leaves at teahouses across Taipei, marketing them as hip flavored beverages rather than the traditional teas that have been drunk for centuries.You can now find all sorts of gourmet flavours: peach spiked teas; licorice flavoured teas; wild raspberry teas; vanilla flavoured teas. One I like is the Honeybush Caramel Dessert Tea, which is a very soothing tea with South African rooibus and caramel. But mostly they come in tea bags.

And so the tea making tradition and the knowledge of how to make a “good cuppa” - knowledge that has survived for 5,000 years since a gust of wind caused some tea tree twigs to waft into a bowl of hot water held by Shennong, a legendary emperor of China and led to the discovery of tea - may soon be kaput.Source: Reuters