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Jargon Watch: Dorking

Google Dorking, to be more precise. Though some startup Internet company (you know, that has a ‘web site’) may want the adjective dropped.
[Maybe they’d better do a ‘); DROP TABLE STUDENTS; — on themselves but that’s another matter entirely]
Which is exepelainifyed in this doc, and at this site (from where I took the doc, duh).

Okay, since it’s Friday afternoon, I’ll leave you with:
h108B4EAA

Off the mApp

Suddenly, we don’t hear anything anymore about ‘apps’. Has the world moved on? Has the concept moved onto the Plateau of Productivity already so quickly ..?
It just struck me. As the news broke that 90% of apps will be free. And there’s hardly any news anymore or Top-10 lists of the hottest, on apps out there for any public. Already some months ago, even acocuntants publicized their shortlist for most useful ones; talk about death spells…

But really, didn’t it all get lost when the distinction between Client and Server got lost again (sic), when no-one (i.e., users) did care anymore whether actual computing was, is done on the phablet or on the mid-/back-end servers..? Because of course large db’s still sit there far away (collecting all your inputs…) and presentation is obviously still done at the end points. But the in-between… E.g., I now have anything on the scale from pure browser(s…) to PDF-downloads; independent of whether the content is permanent or ephemeral latest news and weather predictions [hey it seems they’re ever more off of actual weather …!?!?], content size, specifity (for me individually and/or qua SelectFromWhere IYKWIM), etc.
This also means no-one (…) will care anymore about SaaS or anything below. ‘Cloud’ is something for techies, too. The browser, only recently the up-and-coming single app-li-ca-tion on the (mobile / immobile) desktop, the single one that would seem to matter in the near future, has been pushed aside, for browsing – all ‘other’ serious personal/private business now goes via apps, even if those are sometimes just single-page browser’lets. This’ll all be under the hood, not to be looked at for fear of irresistible stupefied faces. After all this, Consumers and (organisational) End Users will all be one; tapping icons to do one’s … ‘business’..? Because I, too, would fall in that category, the apps may better be very idiot-proof…

Oh well one, the app suppliers may want to re-think their pricing and subscription models; per-consumer delivery of a wide scale of functionality (Ouch! Very Old word!) for either personal non-business, personal-business and employee-scale business uses must be tunable, along with price for value. Ouch again; Even Older word. But the way forward.

Oh well two, IoT took over. Apps are into the productivity phase: Rhetoric or not? (The latter, not.) Is it still wise to invest in a career as future app designer/builder or is the life span of such a career counted in lower single digits and should we assume such capabilities to be staple, basic high school level stuff, like word processing without spelling errors!

I’ll leave you with:
DSCN0399
[Where original tilt-shift, not the kindergarten (?) phone minitiaturisation kind but the  perspective correction sort, may still help. In a sublimated way, too. Vienna]

Mo’Data, Mo’Problems

Some time ago, I was triggered by this tweet (by @meneer; no surprise in that):

that somewhat-translates (i.e., manually, however clunky still better than machine translation as that doesn’t get Dutch unstructuredness…) to: “Bizarro weather picture again: forecast #somechannel/app from the South-East to the North-West, #someotherchannel/app from the North-East to the South-West” referring to some predictions about clouds and (turned out quite torrential) rain passing over the minute geography of the Netherlands.

And another about this article – that explains, in a more scientifically styled prose, that having ever more data makes it ever more difficult to connect the dots you’d want to connect…

Both of which are poignant reminders that:

  • Big Data is not a tool but a mere tool, to be used very carefully even (or in particular?) by the few that have really big data sets. If you collect focusedly, it can hardly be called Big, rather ‘Smart-‘ or just plain ‘data analysis’, no more; if you collect as much as you can, you are destroying objectives achievement – the required method destroys the results;
  • If, very big if, Big Data would result in anything, why haven’t weather predictions improved ..? The enormity of data that had already been around in that arena for decades, will have exploded over the past one, and should have resulted in far better predictions instead of the worse that the predictions seem to have gotten. And we’re talking patterns, not even the zoom-in to tinier details that one commonly associates with BD (the major patterns are usually skipped for being too well known already). Hence, what hope would we have for other areas..?
  • Reliance on apps for info is getting more and more dangerous, almost literally so far, but in an indirect sense, already, widely. What if… when now as already well-known, some search giant might have monopolized Search and skews the results you get…? That would theoretically be a disaster. Oh.

So, think again, be ever more critical of Shallows app usage and reliance… I’ll leave you with:
??????????[Lucca: ‘modern’ Italian parade]

Book by Quote: Tegen Verkiezingen

Yet another ‘Book By Quote’ then. A full of … ‘marvellous content’ one again.

An attempt to subjectively summarise a book by the quotes I found worthwhile to mark, to remember. Be aware that the quotes as such, aren’t a real unbiased ‘objective’ summary; most often I heartily advise to read the book yourself.
This book, should be translated to a great many langauges and be mandatory reading for all high school student least. Many more to include. E.g., ‘grown-ups’, and politicians. Et al.

Here we go then, with David van Reybrouck, Tegen Verkiezingen, Bezige Bij 2014, ISBN 9789023474593:

‘Le peuple anglais pense être libre, il se trompe fort, il ne l’est que durant l’élection des membres du Parlement; sitôt q’ils sont élus, il est esclave, il n’est rien.’
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (1762)

Er is iets vreemds aan de hand met de democratie: iedereen lijkt ernaar te verlangen, maar niemand gelooft er nog in (p.9)

Politici gaan er dus massal van uit dat burgers er andere, in hun [sic; red.] ogen minder hooggestemde waarden op nahouden dan zijzelf. (p.11)

Democratie, aristocratie, oligarchie, dictatuur, despotisme, totalitarisme, absolutisme, anarchie: elk politiek stelsel moet een evenwicht zien te vinden tussen twee fundamentele criteria: efficiëntie en legitimiteit. (p.13)

De crisis van de legitimiteit blijkt uit drie onmiskenbare symptomen. Ten eerste gaan steeds minder mensen stemmen. … Ten tweede, naast kiezersverzuim is er kiezersverloop. … Ten derde zijn steeds minder mensen lid van een politieke partij. (pp.14-15)

Op zich gaat het hier om een heel merkwaardige evolutie: de tijden zijn onvoorspelbaarder dan ooit, flexibel inspelen op acute noden is aan de orde van de dag, maar kennelijk moet het beleid op voorhand tot in de puntjes worden uitgestippeld en dichtgespijkerd, zo groot is het wantrouwen onder de coalitiepartners geworden, zo groot ook de nervositeit voor een afstraffing door dekiezer. (p.17)

Waren zulke projecten vroeger een bron van prestige en kundigheid, tegenwoordig zijn ze op hun best een bestuurlijke nachtmerrie. (p.18)

Bij het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw is souvereiniteit, ooit het fundament van de natiestaat, een zeer relatief begrip geworden. (pp. 18-19)

Politiek is altijd de kunst van het haalbare geweest, en tegenwoordig is het de kunst van het microscopische geworden. (p.19)

Met het beroep van politicus vergaat het zoals met dat van onderwijzer: Vroeger een nobele functie met aanzien, nu een hondenbaan. (p.20)
Continue reading “Book by Quote: Tegen Verkiezingen”

Progress: Hacked (short note)

OK, so there’s progress… hackers (of the ethical kind …! …?) actually improving security, as per your Nest thermostat.
Contrary, of course, to the hacking of your home security system as spelled out here and already ‘predicted’ by means of requiring solutions, quite some time earlier here…

For their, and your, viewing pleasure:
019_19[The ‘old’ shouldn’t be underrated by not being rated well enough…]

Mind posting/reading

This new Mindmeister feature looks interesting:

Except for two things:

  • It will create a bucketload of ‘Tourettists’ at all sorts of public venues (coffee shops, terraces, the beach, side walks, etc.) when all sorts of, mostly, self-inflated hipsterlaggerds start recording their every doodle out loud instead of just clicketing it to Kik / Tele- / Instagram / WeChat / Line / Viber / Wicker / Threema / surespot et al. Yapping out somewhat loud will be even more annoying…
  • Who reads your doodles at the back side ..? Yes this is already an issue with like programs, in particular if (not when) one would use them to sketch outlines and content ideas for concepts / posts / columns / articles / books that might be construed to reflect a societal(ly -) or political(ly less wanted) opinion of sorts.
    Already now, of course, who reads what you’re working on, even when stored off-line ..? But this will become an even greater issue when even the slightest of your mind’s burps might get captured immediately by your own doing.
    How far till this turns into actual mind reading?
    Would someone (AI (yes, being someone), or human if you’re still in old school thinking mode) be able to immediately present you with position-changing tweets etc.?

Well, we’ll see… Singularity, here we come! We want you! After that, we’re done.

Book by Quote: Empire

Yet another ‘Book By Quote’ then. A full of … one again.

An attempt to subjectively summarise a book by the quotes I found worthwhile to mark, to remember. Be aware that the quotes as such, aren’t a real unbiased ‘objective’ summary; most often I heartily advise to read the book yourself. This one too, yes, but with the caveat that some of below’s quotes have been included to demonstrate the deconstructionalist mumbo jumbo you may have to wade through…

Oh and for the record; I like the book, and major parts of its analysis, but certainly not all of it…

Here we go then, with Negri & Hardt’s Empire, Harvard UP 2000, ISBN 067425121-0:

Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. (Ani DiFranco) (p.0)

Putting this society to work and ensuring obedience to its rule and its mechanisms of inclusion and/or exclusion are accomplished through disciplinary institutions (the prison, the factory, the asylum, the hospital, the univeristy, the school, and so forth) that structure the social terrain and present logics adequate to the “reason” of discipline. (p.23)

Power is now exercised through machines that directly organize the brains (in communication systems, information networks, etc.) and bodies (in welfare systems, monitored activities, etc.) toward a state of autonomous alienation from the sense of life and the desire for creativity. (p.23)

By contrast, Deleuze and Guattari present us with a properly poststructuralist understanding of biopower that renews materialist thought and grounds itself solidly in the question of the production of social being. Their work demystifies structuralism and all the philosophical, sociological, and political conceptions that make the fixity of the epistomological frame an ineluctable point of reference. (p.28)

The absoluteness of imperial power is the complementary term to its complete immanence to the ontological machine of production and reproduction, and thus to the biopolitical context. (p.61)

Kant throws us back into the crisis of modernity with full awareness when he poses the discovery of the subject itself as crisis, but this crisis is made into an apology of the transcendental as the unique and exclusive horizon of knowledge and action. (p.81)

Whereas Foucault’s analysis is vast in its diachronic breath, Weber’s is powerful in its synchronic depth. (p.89)

Disobedience to authority is one of the most natural and healthy acts. (p.210)

The capitalization of realized surplus value requires that for the subsequent cycle of production the capitalist will have to secure for purchase additional supplies of constant capital (raw materials, machinery, and so forth) and additional variable capital (that is, labor power) – and eventually in turn this will require an even greater extension of the market for further realization. (p.225)

The centrifugal movement of production is balanced by the centripetal trend of command. (p.297)

And a picture to lighten up:

DSCN7963[Reich]

Continue reading “Book by Quote: Empire”

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord