Flutter: spoof of Twitter
By Rosie Perera | June 18, 2009 at 6:10 pm
This is really funny!
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Twitter as a tool for freedom of speech
By Rosie Perera | June 15, 2009 at 8:51 pm
This is totally cool!
I’m not a Twitter user, though I’ve been watching with some interest as it has become a huge social phenomenon. I think much of what it gets used for is a waste of time and clogs people’s mental space. But this is one time when I can’t help but say “praise God for Twitter!” I’m sure you’ve all heard about the rallies and violence in Iran after the sham election which Ahmadinejad supposedly won. Phone and Internet service has been cut off in Tehran, but people are still able to get messages out via Twitter, and many are live-tweeting about what’s going on. A massive effort among Tweeters worldwide has prevented Twitter from going down for planned maintenance tonight during tomorrow’s daylight hours in Iran.
Here is Twitter’s official statement:
A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).
Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide — we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.
This is historic! How exciting for those who get to be part of it. I’m still not about to sign up for a Twitter account. I’m content to watch from the sidelines. But I do think this is one way that Twitter can be a force for good in the world. Perhaps it will help the Iranian people to evict a totalitarian regime. Let’s pray they can do it peacefully, through the spread of truth, rather than rioting.
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The Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics
By Rosie Perera | March 16, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Written by the Computer Ethics Institute (whose website is now defunct), posted on the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) site:
1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people’s computer work.
3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people’s computer files.
4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.
5. Thou shalt not use a computer to bear false witness.
6. Thou shalt not copy or use proprietary software for which you have not paid.
7. Thou shalt not use other people’s computer resources without authorization or proper compensation.
8. Thou shalt not appropriate other people’s intellectual output.
9. Thou shalt think about the social consequences of the program you are writing or the system you are designing.
10. Thou shalt always use a computer in ways that ensure consideration and respect for your fellow humans.
[Rosie’s response] Those (in my opinion) should be a very basic minimum of computer ethics for Christians. Other things could be added, such as “Thou shalt not esteem thy computer as a god, neither shalt thou consider it to be thy salvation, nor expend all thy wealth towards it and its peripherals,” “Thou shalt not use a computer in ways that harm the environment” and “Thou shalt not use a computer in ways that cause you or a fellow human to sin.”
Most of the items on that list are pretty clear and uncontroversial, and need not be qualified. However, #2, #3, and #6, could be open to some discussion.
#2) This hinges on the definition of “computer work.” If someone else is using a computer for nefarious purposes, and you are in a position to stop it, especially if someone is in imminent danger, then yes you should interfere with their computer work! For most people, though, this would mean merely that you should contact the appropriate authorities who could do something about it. But if you’re a sysadmin, then yeah, by all means, kick the b***ards off! And then contact law enforcement if it’s something really serious like child porn or terrorism or securities fraud.
#3) Suppose you have good reason to believe your child is being stalked by an child pornographer online (she has expressed things to you that make you think this might be the case). You darned well better look in her computer usage trails to find out, with proper explanation to her about why you’re doing it and her implicit permission to let you protect her thusly. Incidentally, for young enough children, it should never get to this stage, as you should be supervising their online use at all times. I’m not clear on how you determine when your child has reached the age of computer responsibility when you should trust her with a bit of privacy in her own use of it, while still being available to project them if necessary. But it’s a gradual letting go accompanied by training in safety. Just as you eventually let your kid walk unaccompanied to a friend’s house once you trust he knows well enough how to avoid being hit by a car. (At least you did back in the good old days when cars were all you had to worry about for your kids.)
#6) I agree with this one, but at the same time I decry the pricing policies of software companies that make it nearly impossible for the poor to have access to their proprietary goods. (The Open Source movement is beginning to change this in some places like India, but it is still a problem worldwide.) While I don’t condone people copying software, I know that the economic reality in Third World countries is such that a lot of people are using pirated software because to buy the legitimate stuff would cost several years’ wages. I have chosen to look the other way, even when I was working at Microsoft and we were supposed to report known cases of software piracy to a special hotline.
I think Christians in Technology need to be at the forefront of a discussion on how to change this reality for poor countries. In our advanced world of North America, Europe and high-tech parts of Asia, access to computers and online information is becoming a necessity for work and life. It is going to one day be the case in Africa and South America as well.
According to Scripture, we will always have the poor with us, but perhaps we should treat them as the Bible would have us treat them. What would it mean to leave the technological “gleanings” for them, for example (cf. Lev 19:9-10 and Deut 24:19-20)? Maybe instead of selling used software on eBay or destroying outdated versions of Microsoft products that can no longer be sold, we should give it away for free to those who can’t afford the latest greatest. And perhaps companies like Microsoft should provide support for older versions of their software for more than 2-3 years, so the poor won’t be left in the dust when they come late to the table.
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Online community?
By Rosie Perera | March 6, 2009 at 2:49 pm
The first of my bi-monthly articles as Comment magazine’s technology columnist has been published online. This column’s focus is technology and community:
http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/897/
There is no forum for commenting on articles there (ironic for a publication called Comment, eh?), but I invite your responses here.
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The future according to Microsoft
By Rosie Perera | March 3, 2009 at 11:06 pm
A friend of mine collected several videos by Microsoft envisioning the future of technology.
http://yapdates.blogspot.com/2009/03/future-according-to-microsoft.html
There are some cool ideas there. I was intrigued to see that in Microsoft’s view of the future, people will still walk into a bank brank and interact with a human being when getting a loan. Handshakes are not a thing of the past, according to this vision.
But I do have concerns about the amount of visual stimulation in such a world, and the emphasis on touch only as a way of manipulating information and images, rather than a way of sensing textures and temperatures. It looks like a world where being in control is the number one priority.
While I’m sure there are wonderful benefits to being able to cure diseases and identify plants instantaneously with technology (as one of the segments in the first video showed), gone is the hallowed sense of time, and the loving interaction with the created world. Everything is mediated through a gadget. When the stethoscope was first invented, people shuddered at the thought that doctors would no longer be listening directly to patients’ chests and diagnosing by physical touch, but there would be this new-fangled technology intervening between them. That is much less personal care. We’ve come far beyond that now, and it looks like it’s only going to get better/worse in the future. There are always trade-offs for improved living conditions.
There’s no doubt that some of this vision of Microsoft’s will become a reality. But will we Christians be at the forefront of making sure the new technology is as human-friendly as possible, or will we take a back seat and let it be “done unto us” and then only have the option of avoidance vs. wholehearted adoption of the new technology?
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Doing technology is Kingdom work!
By Rosie Perera | December 29, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I came upon a recent wall post on the “Christians in Technology” Facebook group: “For ‘Caesar’ I do server maintenance. For God, I am a Sunday School teacher.” I couldn’t let that go by without a comment.
I believe that whatever we do in the world we do for God. Kingdom work is more than just “Christian ministry.” Doing God’s work with our technology skills means more than just using them for the church or missions, or to make money to send to church/missions, or as a platform for evangelism to our co-workers.
“For whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31). We serve the Lord when we serve people, and we serve people when we help them solve their problems with our technology know-how. We aren’t working just for Caesar, but for customers, users, individuals, newbies with computer phobias, bosses and teammates with families they need to feed. Think of them whenever you work.
We are made in the image of a Creator God, which means when we use our inventiveness to create technology, we are imaging God. When God saw what he had made, he called it good. We are of course fallen creatures, and not all that we make with our technology is put to good purposes. But an awful lot of it is, and should be recognized as such. It’s OK to look back, on our Sabbath day, at what we have made during the week and offer it up to God as a good and pleasing gift to him. He did, after all, give us the creation mandate, to take care of this earth, which involves creating tools and techniques with which to manage it and develop its fruitfulness. The root word of ‘culture’ and ‘culivate’ is the same. When we create human culture (including technology) we are cultivating the earth. Notice that while the Bible begins in a garden, it ends in a city, the New Jerusalem. In the final consummation of the Kingdom, all the nations of the earth will bring their gifts, their glory, honor, wealth, yes I believe even their technology, to the New Jerusalem. (Rev. 21).
Finally, we are using our God-given gifts when we create and use our technology. According to the Old Testament, humankind is “ordained to work, keeping always in mind the sanctity of the Sabbath.” (Samuel Florman, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering, 112) The engineer, like Bezalel, is “filled…with the spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts.” (Ex. 31:3, NIV)
I used to feel a conflict between what I did for my work (software engineering, which I was good at and had fun doing) and the “higher calling” of doing work for God’s Kingdom. But I no longer believe in a two-tiered system of God’s work and worldly work. All work is Kingdom work, when done in the spirit of cultivating God’s creation to be pleasing to him and to be of service to the people he created and loves.
To paraphrase Eric Liddell in The Chariots of Fire: “When I program, I feel God’s pleasure.”
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The End of the Internet
By Rosie Perera | November 15, 2008 at 1:58 pm
These are some of my favorite “end of the internet” pages:
http://www.weirdity.com/internet/eoti.html
http://mdesmond.com/end-of-the-internet
http://www.endoftheinternet.com
http://shibumi.org/eoti.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~thesandpit/misc/the_end.htm
http://webnme.com/endoftheinternet.html
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Serendipty
By Rosie Perera | November 15, 2008 at 1:21 pm
My cousin, who is a librarian, recently sent me this quote from Annie Proulx: “I mourn the loss of the old card catalogs, not because I’m a luddite, but because the oaken trays of yesteryear offered the researcher an element of random utility and felicitous surprise through encounters with adjacent cards, information by chance that is different in kind from the computer’s ramified but rigid order.”
While I do think the loss of the tactile dimension of the old wooden drawers in dusty libraries is profound, I disagree that serendipity is gone with computers. Hyperlinks on the Internet can easily mimic with lightning speed what discoveries from adjacent cards used to provide. Want to see other books by the same author? Click on the author’s name in an Amazon.com description of a book. Many online library catalogs have a browse search mode where you can look at adjacent titles. A daily visit to Google Books shows some new random titles each day. Websites that are part of a “webring” link to others on similar subjects and you can discover all kinds of stuff you might never have known about. I don’t think I have any shortage of “felicitous surprise” when surfing the Web. As evidence of that, here are the interesting websites I’ve stumbled upon in the past month (I keep track of any cool new finds in my web “travelogue” file):
November 14, 2008
Quantcast – “The World’s Only Open Internet Ratings Service”; “Quantcast is a new media measurement service that enables advertisers to view audience reports for millions of sites and services to build their brands with confidence.”
November 13, 2008
Tribe – free, member-created groups for every interest – discussions, photos, listings and more; tribes; pretty useless – too many tribes, too much garbage, not enough refinement in the top-level browsing feature
DotSUB – Any video any language; translations of videos
November 11, 2008
Roaring Twenties database
October 22, 2008
Google Guide – tutorial for Google, not affiliated with Google
October 17, 2008
WADP (World Association for the Development of Philately) Numbering System – database of all authentic postage stamps issued by Universal Postal Union (UPU) member countries and territories on or after January 1, 2002.
No, I don’t think we are lacking in delightful discoveries from random walks through the Web as a replacement for library catalogues. If anything, the opposite is the case. It is too easy to discover all kinds of random curiosities and fill our attention with stuff we don’t really need to know about. At least with the physical library catalogue, you could stop when you’d had enough, and you weren’t overloaded with all the lingering evidence of your meanderings. There would have been no temptation to revisit your trails through the “History” in your browser or to mark websites in your “Favorites” for further exploration some rainy day when you felt like wasting more time. In the olden days, you could write down only so much interesting trivia on a pad of paper you had with you, and that was the end of it.
Annie Proulx has it wrong. We have no shortage of serendipity and “felicitous surprise” in the computer information age — we are drowning in it. Far from directing our attention only to rigidly ordered information, the Internet opens up never-ending branches towards new nodes to explore. And we never get to the end of it.
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Think Critically, Act Ethically
By Rosie Perera | November 15, 2008 at 12:33 am
Last week (November 3-7) was National Media Education Week in Canada. The Media Awareness Network, who organized it, posted this video to help publicize it:
Here are some excerpts from their website:
Media education is the process through which individuals become media literate - able to critically understand the nature, techniques and impacts of media messages and productions.
In the digital age, the principles of media education are the same as they’ve always been, but the existence of cyberspace is adding new and challenging questions. How, for instance, does technology affect how we relate to others? Is new technology enriching or undermining culture, learning and a sense of community? What roles do ownership, control and access play? What are the challenges in regulating a global, borderless medium like the Internet?
Interesting things to think about.
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Discipline for the Technologist
By Rosie Perera | August 24, 2008 at 2:34 am
I am not sure whether there is an accepted generic term for those of us who have vocations in technology: programmers, web designers, games developers, software test engineers, database administrators, network administrators, IT managers, and computer geeks of all kinds. I will use the term technologists.
Co-blogger Wan Phek How and I (both technologists ourselves), along with members of the Technology and Theology Group at Regent College, have been in conversation trying to come up with a set of disciplines to help people develop the sort of relationship with technology that maintains a healthy spiritual life.
My friend David Taylor, author of the blog Diary of an Arts Pastor, has recently posted a portion of a talk he gave in which he shared five thoughts on discipline for the artist. But I realized they can apply equally well, with a bit of tweaking, to the technologist. Here they are with my tweaks (brackets and ellipses to show my minor changes, italics for major new additions). You can read the original text here.
—FIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT DISCIPLINE —
1) The disciplines of a disciple of Jesus entail the reconstruction of our whole self. No part is left off. Every faculty of our person has been damaged—head, heart, hand—every faculty requires the re-habituation of its appetites away from sin toward Christ’s good order.
[So many of us] reduce our Christian faith to a set of activities that only addresses parts of our person. For instance, we feed our [minds] with great head knowledge but leave [ourselves] emotionally debilitated. We…study and pray, but neglect…the disciplines of feasting and silence.
The result of our compartmentalized discipleship? We end up as programmers who write world-class software but are immature and egotistical (I know; I worked for a company that seemed to attract such people, and I was one of them!), or web designers who are experts at their craft but who are addicted to the Internet, spend their entire lives online, and have no in-person interpersonal skills.
It’s important for us to remember that a dysfunction in one part of our person will negatively affect the whole. What we need is a model, both comprehensive and sensible, for disciplined life that brings about the God-superintended restoration of our whole person.
2) The disciplines are God’s instruments of grace. They are our way of reverently cooperating with the initiating and sustaining work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Dallas Willard:
“No one ever says, ‘If you want to be a great athlete, go vault eighteen feet, run the mile under four minutes’, or ‘If you want to be a great musician, play the Beethoven violin concerto’. Instead we advise the young artist or athlete to enter a certain kind of overall life, one involving deep associations with qualified people as well as rigorously scheduled time, diet, and activity for the mind and body.”
The disciplines are what strengthen our muscles so that we can become the kinds of persons who do the good “naturally.”
3) Learning a new way of being a human being is hard work. All kinds of forces, inside us and outside, fight against this renovating work. My craving for approval, for example, may lead me to avoid conflict at all costs, including the cost of truly being known. I have to choose—every day—to adopt the kind of habits that will enable me to become a different kind of person, the kind God exultantly imagined before the foundations of the world.
But while plenty hard at first, the way of Jesus eventually becomes easy. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” he once said, and he wasn’t speaking theoretically. He was speaking plainly.
…
4) The consequence of living an undisciplined life, or as Eugene Peterson puts it, an “unscripted life,” is that we become governed by our inordinate appetites. They sabotage our best efforts to grow up. We find [ourselves] using TV, internet, food, books, or busyness to medicate the pain of a deep loneliness and sense of failure.
What the disciplines do is re-orient, day by day, baby step by unexciting baby step, our appetites away from destructive habits towards the narrow way of Christ that leads to life.
5) The disciplines are best practiced in a community of friends. What kind? You only need three. You need 3 friends who are doggedly constant in their love for you; the kind who will walk with you everywhere, loving you no matter what and who are not afraid to tell you when you’re full of crap—a crappy attitude, crappy behavior, or crappy technology.
[Apologies to David for taking liberties with his writing.]
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