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The Problems With 2.0, pt 345314:Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab

This is one of the reasons I intensely dislike the whole “blogosphere” thing and all the related “web 2.0″ stuff is that it contributing to the balkanisation of the Internet.

I read a lot of different rss feeds and web sites, and so many of them are cross-referential it becomes difficult to keep track of who’s saying what, in response to whom and where they’re saying it. What’s worse is that most of them are agreeing with one another, patting each other on the back and congratulating themselves on preaching to the already converted. How often do you see real discussion taking place on the web now? I still think that the traditional useNET system was far better for provoking discussion.

If anybody reads this (there’s no sign of that happening as yet) and disagrees you have two options - you can leave a comment (which I have full control over), or you blog about it yourself - which I can safely ignore. In a structured environment with a reputation system discussion should flourish. Unfortunately I think I may have just described /.

Blogging is destroying the communication aspects of the Internet. I know I’m contributing to this even as I type. Is there a way to stop this?

I’ve seen this in a few places so far, but I had to pick up on it. Conclusive proof that sex is good for you.Dread public speaking? Have a shag first

I posted a thread of this title on the (ever-excellent) Ars Technica Openforum. The content is not quite the same, but hopefully it should get the intention across to the reader. Since, AFAICT, I am the only person reading this, then I suspect that will be achieved and this will serve as a reminder to what I was thinking today. IOW - “Hey, I’m keeping a diary” :)I’ve started to (re)discover the joy of learning. Not for any particular reason, but simply to understand more about things in general. I’ve been reading a lot of Neal Stephenson and I think his approach to writing has fostered this, but other factors have come into play. I’ve spent a good deal of time in Ireland recently so was encouraged to learn more about history (of both the UK and Ireland), whilst questioning the whole nature of “National Identity” (ie, exactly what does it mean to be British? FWIW - I consider myself English).Whilst reading, I encounter many references to other things I’ve seen, done, or read about in the past. More often that not this encourages more curiosity on my part and my intellectual net is being cast wider as a result. Currently sitting on my “to read” pile or awaiting delivery from Amazon are books on philosophy, logic, statistics, national identity, personal identity (and the philosophic questions thereof), history (I realised again how important this is) and the future…

Right now I’ve got two books I’m actively reading

• Quicksilver (Neal Stephenson)
• Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (Charles Townshend)

Plus, I’m also studying for the CISSP so doing some reading on that…

Stephenson (more so than most other authors) brings many threads into his writing - Cryptononicon, for instance, draws in my professional interest of cryptography in particular and information security and (unlike certain other authors) does so by involving experts - particularly Bruce Schneier (whose site I link to). Quicksilver has helped give me renewed interest in history, philosophy, exploration, mathematics and probably everything else.

I hope to draw these things together, spotting links where I can and get a thorough grounding in all aspects of existence (I’m sure there was once a time when an individual could know everything, but that has surely passed).

Maybe there is a fundamental interconnectedness of all things…

Up until yesterday my email was all going through gmail. I was pretty happy with the service - the web interface is excellent and being able to use pop3 to Thunderbird at home handy. The advertising was never particularly intrusive (in fact, I hardly ever saw ads at all), so I’m struggling to come up with cogent reasons for dropping it - but that’s what I did…

I’ve got a nagging feeling that letting a company like Google host and manage my email is not a good idea. I know they were the only major search engine not to cave in to the US DOJ in handing over search results, but I suppose I’m always going to have trust issues…

I realise that my online activities aren’t as secure as they could be and there are privacy implications all over (I spotted a pretty major privacy breach this morning), but I’m hopefully making a start with this. One thing I really want to do is encrypt email as a matter of course - why, in 2006, is this still not done? There’s no point in me using GPG when no-one I communicate with does likewise, so I suppose it’s my job to educate people!

Maybe there’s a campaign to join to encourage widespread use of email encryption…

I’ve registered my own site and moved this blog there. Hopefully I’ll have more incentive to put things here now :)If I get around to it, I might post why I did it. One thing I will say is that it was all pretty painless!

‘Tell us the truth about ID costs’ - Lords harpoon the ID Bill

Some good news at last

This is particularly interesting for me, having an interest in Identity (with an intense dislike of the Government’s ID card plans) and for the constitutional aspects.

This is another demonstration of why a strong second house is vital to the proper running of a country. I’m disappointed that the power of the HoL has been reduced so much over the years (I’m not in entirely sure what should be done with it - having the traditional makeup is clearly an anachronism, but an elected house would not, IMO, have the same will to rebel against the Commons, which would likely have a similar proportion of MPs from each party - I’ll have to think about this some more /digress ) so it’s good to see some bite from the Lords.

Hopefully the new Conservative leadership can follow this through and kill this issue once and for all.

I was going to write something sensible or interesting (there’s lots of things I’d like to write about), but frankly it seems pretty arrogant and vain to do so when no-one is actually reading.I guess this is something that everyone faces and the only way to resolve this is to write for myself…