ThinkingShift

If you ask astrophysicist, Prof Stephen Hawking, if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, he is likely to quip: “Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare.. some would say it has yet to occur on earth.”

Hawking gave a lecture last week to commemorate NASA’s 50th anniversary. Can you believe that a half century has already gone by since we first flung ourselves into space in tiny capsules (flying death traps if you ask me being someone who’s not keen on confined spaces). I read anything by Hawking, what a mind. And his NASA lecture, Why We Should Go Into Space, was fascinating and gave me hope that we will resuscitate our efforts to “seek out new worlds”. You can read his lecture here on the NASA site and check out the streaming video of Hawking’s lecture (if you can stick through all the introductory comments, it’s worth it get to the Prof and his daughter, Lucy).

The Prof considered whether intelligent life is “out there” (mmm…I know it’s not in some organisations I’ve worked in!) and started off with this reflection:

“Why we should go into space? What is the justification for spending all that effort and money on getting a few lumps of moon rock? Aren’t there better causes here on Earth? In a way, the situation was like that in Europe before 1492. People might well have argued that it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet, the discovery of the new world made a profound difference to the old. Just think, we wouldn’t have had a Big Mac or a KFC.”

And with all the crap that goes on in our world these days (sorry, in dark, brooding phase about humanity), this comment from the Prof had me thinking:

“Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all…..It won’t solve any of our immediate problems on Planet Earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them and cause us to look outwards and inwards. Hopefully, it would unite us to face a common challenge“.

Considering that we are fast depleting our natural resources, searching out new worlds could be the only factor that could possibly unite human kind. Mind you, we’d then rapidly pillage any new world we arrived on.

Now, we all know the decline in the education system around science and the arts and this was highlighted for me when Lucy Hawking said: “In the United Kingdom, a recent survey found that a third of U.K. school children believe that wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the first man to walk on the Moon.” Cough: I’m sure Neil Armstrong will be really pleased to read this. Some blonde bimbos around 17 years old on some reality TV show recently said they’d never even heard of Winston Churchill. Obviously, to conquer space we need a new breed of scientists (along with some trained historians I’d suggest!).

Worse, the same survey found that “40% of children thought Mars was a chocolate bar, 35% of children said the Earth was not an official planet, and extraordinarily, 72% could not identify the Moon from pictures.” Quell horror! Not sure how we’ll be “going where no-one has gone before” if we keep taking the emphasis off science, history, classics and arts education. Thank goodness Lucy and her father are producing kids’ books on science to whet the appetite with great questions like - what exactly does happen when you get to the edge of the Universe? well, very clearly you fall into the abyss of a KM programme that is languishing in some organisation….sorry.

The Prof goes on to consider panspermia (the chance that life hitchhiked from planet to planet on a meteor for example), so maybe other worlds have species that share a similar DNA with us. Although Hawking added: “On the other hand, an independent occurrence of life would be extremely unlikely to be DNA based. So watch out if you meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease against which you have no resistance.”

My UFO fans: sorry Hawking, doesn’t believe we’ve been visited by aliens and says: “We don’t appear to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos?”. And despite “an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven’t heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within the radius of a few hundred lightyears.”

This could be a good thing though: there might be a sensible alien civilization out there, one that doesn’t have nuclear weapons; one that doesn’t spend the majority of its time in hedonistic pursuits or killing off their world; one that respects and tolerates “difference” instead of trying to annihilate it in the name of some higher authority (probably not called God).

Hawking reckons there are three possible reasons aliens haven’t tried to contact us (well, one is that they are super smart and are giving us the flick):

• the probability of primitive life appearing on a suitable planet is very low
• the probability of primitive life appearing may be reasonably high, but the probability of that life developing intelligence like ours may be very low
• life appears and in some cases develops into intelligent beings, but when it reaches a stage of sending radio signals, it will also have the technology to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction. It will, therefore, be in danger of .destroying itself before long (and adds: let us hope this third possibility is not the reason we haven’t seen ET yet).

Lots of great stuff in this lecture, including whether we could actually live on other worlds with a different atmosphere. Go on, pamper the inner Hawking in you and read it.

Some of you might have been around in 1952 (no, I wasn’t!). Seems like it was a pretty interesting year. In 1952, these things happened:

• King George VI of England snuffed it and the present Queen Elizabeth stepped up to the throne
• Dwight D. Eisenhower became US Prez
• Stalin ruled the former USSR with an iron fist
• the hydrogen bomb was detonated for the first time
• and…in Washington….the sniffer out of “reds under beds” - Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican from Wisconsin - whipped up a frenzy by exposing communists in government and even in the entertainment industry. A wave of anti-communism, known as McCarthyism, swept the US and even Australia. I seem to remember my father carrying on about Dr Jim Cairns and whether he had “connections” with Russia and the KGB (I never bothered to check out if he did or not!).

And what I believe is happening is that there is a new wave of McCarthyism threatening to engulf us. Consider this very famous quote by Adlai Stevenson from 1952 (US politician):

“The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.”

Now, just strike out “anti-communism” and replace with “war on terror”. I was reading a book about US history that covered the McCarthy era and it struck me that there’s not much difference between 1952 and 2008: fear of Communists has simply been replaced by fear of terrorists. 

For ANZAC Day 2008, I took this photo of a silent soldier.

Not sure what Darwin and dictionaries have in common but I’ve run out of ideas for swish titles! To excite the inner historian in you, Charles Darwin’s private papers have just been released online, including the first draft of “On the Origin of Species”. 20,000 items and 90,000 images have been released on the Darwin Online site. The private papers collection is here and the first draft of his theory of evolution is here.  And just in case you want to whip up an Irish Charlotte for dessert this weekend, Emma Darwin’s (wife and cousin of Charles) recipe book is here. Cool stuff!

And if a picture says a thousand words, then Merriam-Webster have it covered with their release of an online visual dictionary. So now you can connect words with images. A quick search for “cat” gave me images of cat breeds like these:

No LOLCat images I’m afraid.  I also could have selected the image for Morphology of A Cat and I’d get this image:

What a great resource!! I’ll be spending hours in this visual paradise. 

Do you have a licence to use your camera? To point and shoot? Nope, neither do I. A news item I came across from BBC News illustrates the absurdity of our misplaced and misguided fears about terrorists, terrorism or anything different.

You would think that taking a photo of Christmas lights would be a fairly innocuous activity. Not if you live in Ipswich, UK it seems. Poor old Phil Smith (aka innocent citizen) was practicing his hobby of photography and took a few shots of the stage during a concert that preceded the turning on of the sparkling tree lights. No sooner had he said “snap” than a police officer waltzed over and asked him if he had a licence.

Smart man that Phil obviously is, he responded that he didn’t need one. Bad news for Phil though: he was then promptly hauled off down a side-street (was it a dark alley?) for a formal “stop and search”. Let us pause at this point to recall what I told you way back in June 2007: the UK police have the power under s44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to stop and search people or vehicles in an area at risk from terrorism. And these laws were proposed to be extended to include stop and search of anyone (note to self: must check if those proposed new anti-terror laws went through).

Now, very clearly, the lighting of a town’s Christmas tree lights is an area that terrorists would flock to…not! The police demanded that Phil delete the offending photo (well, perhaps he’s not a great photographer) from his camera. And, as Phil says, he then “slunk home”. He commented:

“People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top”.

You might recall this is what happened to me when I was exploring Sydney looking for urban fragments to snap. I have a pretty big lens on my Nikon D40 and was stopped by security guards and looked at suspiciously by people on the street. Same thing happened in New Zealand in Cuba Mall last week - I got a lot of glances my way and people weren’t just admiring my camera! But in Hong Kong, they could give a toss if you take a photo (or so it seemed to me from my recent experience of trawling through markets and streets taking photos). But terrorists might just twig that a big camera with a huge lens isn’t the smart way to go. Nope, camera phones and small compact digitals can take a pretty good shot too. I would think terrorists would run around with miniature cameras that don’t call attention to themselves. This whole carry on about authorities worrying about amateur photographers taking photos is why I stick mainly to flowers, insects and leaves with my photography.

And I’m intrigued by this question: why is it that Google Street View can roam cities taking photos of innocent citizens and cats sitting in domestic houses but the amateur photographer runs the risk of being hauled away and frisked? I read in The Australian the other day that the Australian directors of Google refused permission for the newspaper’s photographers to take photos of their homes. You can read about it here. I know that Google say that no identifying data will be revealed, but last I read, you had to request Google to take a specific photo down and the process isn’t an easy one. Meanwhile, there is nothing to stop them from cruising by your house and snapping away. US couple, Aaron and Christine Boring of Pittsburgh, are busy suing Google because a car from their fleet meandered down their private road (hello Google: private road!!) into their driveway, all to get a photo of their house. Their legal argument is “mental suffering” and diminished value of their property, along with invasion of privacy. Naturally, I’ll be watching this case very closely.

According to the SMH, Google spent our summer cruising around the streets of Sydney and when they looked at the millions of photos they took, every single one featured a McDonalds, a Dominos and a Go-Lo Discount Variety. What an indictment of Australia!

The above is an image of Monty the cat, who got into a cat fight with Google. Google snapped Monty enjoying the sun in the window of a house in California. Monty’s owner decided to try out Street View maps and typed in the address of the house and hey presto, up popped a street level view of her house. As she zoomed in, there was Monty. The image might look awfully grainy now and you may be laughing but…think about what Google will be able to do when better technology comes along. It’s only a matter of (short) time.

LOLCat image credit: Gizmodo

Perhaps my colleagues Luke Naismith and David Rymer can help me out. Both of them are currently lounging around working in Dubai in the heat, dust and sand. Is there something about camels in Dubai I should know about Luke and David?

Dubai’s crown prince, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (phew!), has just purchased a camel for AUD$2.9 million. Yep, you read correctly - 2.9 million not $2.90. Now, I must say that from the photo, this camel has extremely long eyelashes and a rather appealing face. But I’m not a great lover of camels. I was once on safari in Kenya, in the Masai Mara. It was a 2-week “luxury” camel safari (I think I missed out on the luxury part). I was assigned Stanley the camel, who would guide me safely across the deserts each day. Unfortunately, Stanley and I didn’t see eye to eye. He didn’t like me. I’d go to feed him in the morning, as was our duty whilst on safari, and he’d try to bite and spit.

And then as we were traversing some lonely, dusty part of Kenya in a camel train, Stanley looked off longingly into the distance, made some camel noise and bolted (with me still on said camel). Apparently, Stanley had seen some wild female camels and was lusting after them. The camel train leader had to rescue us both and I traded Stanley in for another camel pronto.

So why would anyone pay millions for a CAMEL?? Does it have diamond-encrusted eyelashes? A tail of gold? Does it have the secret to long life? Has it starred in the latest Indiana Jones film (and therefore had the gorgeous Harrison Ford on its back)? Is it some sort of camel celebrity?

It seems that Dubai recently had a camel beauty pageant (I think they get too much sun over there). And the Sheikh also bought up camels to the tune of AUD $4.8 million. Now, clearly the Sheikh has pots of money and I’m sure he puts it to good use. But a camel beauty pageant?? And paying 4.8 million for CAMELS?

I couldn’t find out any details about these camels to see if they’re special in some way. But I’m concerned about camel discrimination - apparently, the camels are judged in categories based on age and skin colour. Sorry but I didn’t realise that skin colour was an issue with camels. And is there age discrimination going on I ask - if a camel is over 40 years old and a female, is she considered over-the-hill and no longer attractive to male camels? Even worse, the five judges assess the camels’ bodies, along with their necks, heads, lips, noses, humps, legs and feet separately.

So what is it about the camel shown in the photo above that warrants a price tag of 2.9 MILLION??? I realise that the UAE is awash with money but when we have people starving in this world, I’m a bit staggered by this story of Dubai’s prettiest camel.

I’m sure that Luke and David have been immersed in knowledge management in Dubai and perhaps can enlighten us about camel beauty pageants. Meanwhile, whilst they gather the camel knowledge, I’m off to the desert of Central Australia to round up some wild camels!

Source and image credit: The Age

Have you ever read The File by Timothy Garton Ash? Great book that freaked me out - all about when he was an Oxford grad in the 1970s and went to do a spot of research in Berlin. Ended up being surveilled and catalogued by the Stasi - those secret police dudes of the old East Germany. The Stasi built up a considerable dossier on Garton Ash, which he gained access to after the fall of the East German communist regime. If you haven’t read it, hustle to your book store now. Brought back memories of my time in Russia when my friend and I were certain we were being tailed (just prior to the fall of the USSR).

Anyway, when Garton Ash talks about surveillance, I think he knows a thing or two. And when he refers to Britain as a “snooper state”, I take notice. Now, regular ThinkingShift readers will know that I’ve long thought of the UK, the US and Australia as the triumvirate of stupidity when it comes to mindless surveillance. The Governments (and private companies) of these countries snoop and pry. Seems Garton Ash has had enough.

I’m referring to an article he wrote back in January. I’ve been meaning to share it with you but got caught up in sojourning through Hong Kong and New Zealand. But seems that privacy and surveillance issues are hotting up again, so the time is nigh to hit you with Garton Ash (well, his article not him!). And there’s more to come this week on ThinkingShift. Here’s a snippet of what he says:

“Most of your life is now mapped electronically, minute by minute, centimetre by centimetre, through your mobile phone calls, your emails, your web searches, your credit card purchases, your involuntary appearances on CCTV, and so on. Had the East German secret police had these snooping super-tools, my Stasi file would have measured at least 3,000 pages, not a mere 325.”

Further, he says we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. We now have tracking technology that the Stasi would have salivated over: GPS, mobile phones, Google Maps, Google Street View, loyalty cards, search engine data, CCTV and so on.

People I talk to about all this say yeah, we know but what we need is more security around the personal information and data, that way we can safeguard privacy. Yes, well that all depends on whether we can trust our Governments not to abuse their powers, particularly the heightened post-9/11 powers that have gleefully given themselves. And if you think that Governments are benign, then just remember that we have the leader of the so-called free world (that would be Prez Bush) condoning torture and allowing his top dogs like Dick Cheney and Condaleeza Rice to plot and scheme how to torture terrorist suspects in US custody. Yep, just have a read of this article - should Rice become McCain’s VP candidate, then Bush’s disregard for human rights will probably just live on. Weren’t the Nazis hauled into the Nuremberg war crimes trails for crimes against humanity? I think it was Hannah Arendt who years later wrote about Adolf Eichmann, calling him the banality of evil - I wonder how history will judge Bush and his cronies.

Okay: let me get back in control before this turns into a post on US politics! So…what we see now is Governments snatching away our privacy since 9/11 in the name of counter-terrorism. I’m not saying terrorists don’t exist but I recall that the IRA was attacking the UK as long ago as 1939, with Bloody Sunday in 1972 being a pretty violent campaign. Even Sydney’s Hilton Hotel was nearly blown up in 1978 by home-grown “terrorists”. We’ve always had political and religious zealots hurling bombs or kidnapping people but our response since 9/11 has been to err on the side of surveilling everything and everyone. Garton Ash points out:

“Under this government (UK) - of whom the Stasi would have been proud - the balance between state power and individual liberty has been outrageously skewed”.

Yep, and now we have the Australian Government getting into a lather about emails and contemplating the introduction of new laws that would give companies the power to intercept (ie snoop) on emails and internet communications WITHOUT the employee’s consent. Talk about a threat to civil liberties and the increasing power of BIG business. Guess they’ll be fascinated to learn that I often arrange a lunch with a colleague to go shopping for - not suspect electronic equipment - but….lip gloss.

Mind you, lip gloss is apparently a very suspect item. A favourite one of mine was recently confiscated off me at Hong Kong airport. It wasn’t in a plastic bag. Quell horror! I argued the toss with the airport dude, who waved in my face THE RULES (great use that was - all in Chinese). I hope he’s enjoying wearing the tangerine shade.

I just think we really need not to be like blind sheep going off to the surveillance slaughter house. We need to be vigilant about our civil liberties and asking questions. And we need to redraw the boundaries between what is acceptable surveillance and what is down right intrusion and abuse of a citizen’s civil liberties.

I’ve not heard of Banksy before but I like this guy. He’s a graffiti artist in the UK and, like me, he’s incensed about CCTV cameras being up your nose. He snuck up on a CCTV camera in a Post Office yard off Oxford Street in central London. In broad daylight too. Here’s the really fun bit. Whilst the CCTV cameras were supposedly monitoring, watching, surveilling, intruding - Banksy erected some scaffolding, which reached several stories in height and plastered a huge protest slogan that reads “One Nation Under CCTV”. The CCTV camera (or the hidden faces behind it) apparently didn’t raise the alarm. Perhaps it wasn’t switched on?  I have a suspicion that many CCTV cameras are there to remind us of their presence, but I wonder how many are active. Mmm….anyway…

If you look closely at this wonderful piece of art, you see on the bottom left corner a policeman is taking a photo of the graffiti artist (who is depicted as a boy in a bright red jacket), whilst a dog barks. 

Banksy quietly slipped away, having done this sort of political protest a number of times before. I haven’t been able to find out who Banksy is. A bit of an elusive chap. But I did find a group dedicated to Banksy’s works on Flickr. 

Source & image credit: The Telegraph

Today, I am posting more of my recent photos. The first one is the front paw of Max, the wonder collie, not a yeti The rest are from Hong Kong, including an experimental shot. With the experimental photo, I was doing a Hitchcock - you know, how the director, Alfred Hitchcock, always appeared in his films but you really had to be alert to spot him.Enjoy!

I seem to be doing a lot of “sojourning” lately. A brief trip to Hong Kong recently to speak at a conference and I’m just back from 3 days in my beloved New Zealand - Wellington - where I gave an international address on social media at the 6th Annual Information Management summit. I’ve spoken at 5 of these summits, missing out last year as I had to pull out at the last minute, damn.

Now, the really interesting thing about this conference was not me speaking! Nope, it was experiencing social media (the very thing I was yapping about) in action. Because as I was speaking, I was being live-blogged. About 15 mins into my session I became aware that two people in the audience were furiously typing away. And then it twigged: I’m being live-blogged, gulp. Here I was talking about social media (such as blogs) and how you can make connections based on what is of relevance to you or how our private identities and what we have to say is increasingly blurring with public space - and wham, within seconds, two summaries of what I was going on about were available on two blogs.

So thanks to Cairo Walker and Michael Sampson, I can spare you my own summary of this conference. You can read Cairo’s summation here and Michael’s here. Both Cairo and Michael have summarised other sessions from the 2-day conference.

Take the time to check out both blogs by the way. Cairo is a REALLY talented artist and just two amongst her paintings that I’m loving are here and here. This girl has talent with a capital T!  I met Michael for the first time at the conference but am impressed by his blog Effective Collaboration. There’s a wealth of information on his blog from white papers on enterprise collaboration and virtual teams to daily reports.