Blogging vacation

After 140 posts I've decided to take a little blog vacation. Check back in about a month for further updates.

Is It Fireworks or Something Else

As I'm writing this there are fireworks going on over the nearby ballpark. Sometimes I think how lucky I am that I live where I can make the assumption that big loud bangs are fireworks rather than some of the alternatives and that jets screaming through the air above are doing an airshow. My dogs on the other hand have no preconceived notions and immediately go crazy every time there are fireworks. Fireworks are so old fashioned... but nothing has come along to take the place of fireworks. What would be interesting enough to take their place? Does it have to have a hint of danger?

Laws That Were Made to Be Broken

Doesn't it seem like some laws were just made to be broken? Most new cars will easily exceed any speed limit in the United States. Does anyone really drive the speed limit as they weave through their neighborhood. If car makes and municipalities really wanted to keep drivers from breaking the speed limit laws, the technology required probably wouldn't be that difficult. First start with the car design. The car itself tied to a GPS system could evaluate the speed limit and warn the driver that he or she is operating outside the legal limit. I bet that nifty little GM OnStar that assists drivers could easily be modified to 'assist' the driver stay within the law. But drivers don't want to stay within the law... and if drivers don't want to stay within the law, why do we have the laws.

So will there be changes over the next 50 years in automotive safety technology and will it change transportation in general?

Everyone's A Reporter

It's big news that a reporter caught Barack Obama making some comments that I'm sure he'd rather not have been recorder. There's a lot of discussion about how the reporter was let into the fundraiser at all, but in today's world, isn't everyone a reporter? With today's cell phones, people can easily take videos, record conversations and take pictures. We're in a time when bloggers are the first to report events. What new pressures does that put on politicians? What will the people running for president in 2050 be like growing up in an environment like this?

But Was The Information Flying to China?

Yesterday's post was about how information was flying around during the events of the San Francisco Olympic Torch run, but one has to wonder.... how much information is flying around China? Is it possible to keep up with technology when technology and politics are completely linked together? Before the internet countries like Russia and East Germany could control information because it was mainly in print and on TV. It wasn't hard to limit the type of information that people had access too. Scientists could have access to the best information in their field and the government could keep those same scientists relatively in the dark in terms of politics. The Olympic athletes could be proud of the good and ignorant of the bad. But today, to strive to have your country compete with other countries, the people have to have free access to information, and with that access comes change.

What's going to happen twenty years from now to those countries that try and control access to information?

The Torch Was Never So High Tech

I live in San Francisco and I happen to work right near where the Olympic Torch was supposed to start it's very short journey in San Francisco. There were Chinese supporters bused in for the event, protesters of all sorts as well, as a few people who just wanted to see the Olympic Torch, lined up ready to do their thing as the torch went past, but due to some 'altercations' that occurred in the morning, the Torch route was changed at the last minute and for the most part, the sidelines of spectators along the new route were pretty empty.

It's amazing how the Internet and cell phones have changed things for events like this. A huge police force was down with the groups of protesters and supporters, but many probably had to be rerouted quickly to the new location. There were at least five helicopters hovering over the event. The news was being updated with pictures as events occurred. People could use their cell phones to call people at home and find out what was going on rather than hanging around wondering. Information was flying everywhere.

Snap, Your Identity has Been Captured

I was at a store over the weekend and the person behind the counter mentioned that she always asks to see ID because of all the problems with identity theft. She then went on to tell the tale of how she's heard that the latest form of stealing credit card numbers is for the person behind you to snap a picture of your credit card as you are handing it to the salesperson with his or her cell phone. I didn't bother to point out that asking for a photo ID means that the person standing behind you could also get a picture of that making the possibility of successfully stealing your identity even that much more certain.

I'm always wondering what the next form of identification will be. Will finger print readers become much more commonplace? Will there be a push for some kind of DNA reader? Just sluff off off a few skin cells to make a purchase? Retinal scans? And by giving more secure forms of identifications, will we be giving up a piece of ourselves?

Were They All Hiding Their Ipods?

I think it was the classic movie "The Time Machine" where the main character travels through time and the people of the future have shelves of books that are falling apart and they don't know what to do with them. The character is horrified that people no longer read.

What would someone from the past feel today walking into an office where people everywhere are tuning out the world with their ipods? Would it fill someone with horror or would it intrigue him or her? Would today's fascination with computers be considered a scary evolution where people are distancing themselves from each other or would people be jealous of the quick not to mention global communication that is now easily accessible?

Are There Better Books Today?

I was thinking about last Friday's post about how Amazon is changing the rules on the POD publishers and I started thinking about how many more potential books there must be today in comparison to fifty years ago.

And going back even further, before the typewriter, people had to write out their work by hand, go back and check and do all their rewrites by hand. That work alone must have turned off the majority of people who had an inkling that they might like to be a published writer.

Today with kids being able to touch type practically from the time they enter grade school, people can write out what they think, almost as they are thinking it. (Hence why blogging is so popular.) People who fifty years ago would have been considered idiots when it came to spelling and grammar can simply run 'spelling and grammar check' and while it doesn't fix everything it certainly fixes a lot more than what happened before computers. (I just spelled grammar wrong and my computer practically shouted out loud that it needed to be fixed.) And where writing groups might have once been hard to come by, the internet makes it much easier for people to exchange their work either through email, online groups, online workshops, etc in order to polish their work to a higher level than ever before.

So I was thinking that there must be a lot more 'quality' books out there than ever before. Since people who in the past might have had a great story to tell or lesson to teach are now able to easily put their words into writing. But on the flip side, the agents and publishers out there must have to weed through huge fields of material where they used to have just a nice manageable pile of submissions.

What does this mean will happen in the future? Is the day of the formally published book coming to an end? The music business is already seeing the impact of their work being exchanged in digital format and eventually if e-books catch on, this could be a concern for writers as well (maybe it is even now.) In the music business, people will pay to hear their favorite performers live... if a writer spends years on a book and everyone exchanges it digitally, will writers be able to make any money? If writers can't make any money will quality books disappear?

Change is Hard

There is a lot of talk on the blogosphere about Amazon.com's new policy regarding books that are print-on-demand (POD.) Basically if I'm understanding it correctly, if a book is a POD than Amazon wants those writers/publishers to use Amazon's POD service rather than printing it themselves, sending it to Amazon and having Amazon send it out to the customers. If a publisher does not want to use this service then they request that five copies of the book be provided to Amazon ahead of time so that they can still provide timely shipping of their books. The publisher can do their own POD of books not sold through Amazon.

So if I'm understanding this, in the name of customer service Amazon is basically driving companies like iuniverse and and others that made the self-publish business viable into the ground while growing their own self publishing interest Book Surge.

Everyone seems to have been complaining about every move that Amazon has made since the beginning of Amazon time, but... as each change comes along, it seems like we finally adapt and adjust to it. Is this just another blip?

OR is this actually a first step in moving everyone towards e-books? If all small publishers become dependent on Amazon, will Amazon one day be able to say... no more paper books for you self-publish folks.... Everything has to be electronic! And once everything is electronic how will libraries work? Will the whole idea of a public library be eliminated because there are no 'solid' books for people to borrow and read?

There's no question about it, the book business is under massive change and it's hard to predict where we will be in ten or twenty years.

World Autism Day

Well yesterday was in fact declared World Autism Day... who knew? I watched part of an episode of Larry King Live that discussed Autism and some of it's possible causes. Most of the discussion of the bits I saw revolved around whether or not vaccines are a culprit in the increasing rates of Autism. There was one piece that caught my attention which was that the kids with Autism are sometimes diagnosed with a contributing factor after they are diagnosed.... but since they were not tested ahead of time, doctors can't possibly know whether or not this factor existed prior to the onset of Autism (and after the vaccines.)

So given all the technology we have, are we coming to the day when people will be tested and retested from birth? Will you know the genetic mapping of your child before they are even born? Will you be able to post baby's first cat scan on the fridge? It certainly would be interesting.

Something Doesn't Feel Quite Right

A friend of mine mentioned that ever since Daylight Savings Time kicked in she hasn't felt quite right. For her daylight savings has always been an indicator of longer days and warmer weather and because now daylight savings time comes a few weeks early things have felt out of wack. There's also this nasty cold going around the San Francisco Bay area that's a little off for this time... related?

CNN is really having a field day with articles on Autism. I don't know if it's national Autism week or what. There's an article Study: Extreme preemies face autism risk that says:

"That suggests autism may be an under-appreciated consequence of medical advances enabling the tiniest of premature babies to survive, said lead author Catherine Limperopoulos, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal and Children's Hospital in Boston."

Another article points to the vaccines that kids get. Everyone is looking for "what's off" for these kids and one has to imagine that the advances in technology play a part somewhere along the way. If we can be thrown off course by a 1 hour time difference coming two weeks early, what can throw a baby off course?

Will there be shifts in standard practice for raising children in an effort to avoid things like autism and will there be negative consequences because of those shifts?

Volunteering By the Hour

I had some time between jobs once and decided that it was time to give back. I wanted to volunteer and so I started looking at different organizations and discovered that most organizations required at least three hours a week for a minimum of six months. It was quite the commitment since being between jobs is kind of an unpredictable thing. I had no idea when my latest job would come around. Then I discovered One Brick. One Brick sets up events that only last a few hours and you only have to sign up for one event at a time. I had already done 9 months at the SFSPCA at this time and was interested in doing something new, but I certainly wasn't ready to commit to six months, so I did a few One Brick events. My first experience was at the San Francisco food bank. The food bank is really well organized so when it gets volunteers, it doesn't mess around. It has everything setup and boom... work until you drop. And there's such a sense of accomplishment at the end.

In today's world of hectic schedules it's pretty hard to give back time if you work full time. Is One Brick and organizations like it, the future of volunteering? My niece had to do 100 hours of volunteer work before she could graduate from high school. Could there possibly be a time when we would have to do volunteer work? What if as part of our taxes we all had to report 50 hours of volunteer work per year to get special exemptions? Would the majority of people choose to do the volunteer work or would they opt-out for some paying some kind of tax?