A while ago, I wrote about the effect of technology on our social interactions and relationships. And now I return with more, sparked with a random thought that entered my head. That thought was that I kind of take for granted the knowledge I have about how all of this crap works. I mean, I’m not good enough at it that I can do anything useful, but I know enough to know that it’s not the result of some sorcelations. And then, at the risk of sounding elitist, what logically follows is the scary thought that most people have no idea how computers or the interwebs work.

This is a problem. It causes an unrealistic expectation of what this thing we have built can and cannot do. This becomes more of a problem now that our society is fairly integrated with it. Ten years ago, people were kind of crawling around and exploring this new-fangled thing. Today, people are participating in it. It has defined our society. We now have this thing sitting around that can reach everyone in the nation that everyone can be a part of.

You may remember that I am a fan of Barack Obama. I have mentioned in passing that one of the reasons why I support him is because of his promise to make government data online in universally accessible formats, which is one of the many things he has included in his technology platform. The thing is, though, this will not be a huge thing to anyone who doesn’t understand how computers work. Most people don’t see why this will help “create a transparent and connected democracy”.

Of course, this ties into the other issue of open formats. People don’t understand why keeping documents as Microsoft Word files is a bad idea. People don’t understand why digital rights management is unnecessary. People don’t question service providers on things like bandwidth caps or network neutrality.

I am a fairly large proponent for using technology to improve our democracy. It stems largely from the same basic argument that I laid out in my last post about social relationships and technology. We’re still not taking technology seriously and using it properly. Again, the same basic problem is the people. Technology is not magic. It doesn’t automatically solve all our problems.

How does our government become corrupt? We let it become corrupt by being uninformed and apathetic. Technology solves one of those problems. Obama’s technology platform gives people the tools to be informed. Making government data available, making live feeds of government proceedings available, web tools to track government finances, and using wikis and blogs for public communication are all ways to give people information and let them do something with it.

It’s these sorts of things that convince me of Obama’s trustworthiness. And the wonderful thing is that he’s proven this power. He’s already crafted legislation that created USAspending.gov, he’s centralized his supporters on his website by giving them forums and blogs, and he’s managed to outraise every other candidate using his website and refusing lobbyist money at the same time. It’s also these sorts of things that have convinced me of the power of technology to shape an open and accountable government.

And this is why we need to understand how all of this works. I’m sure you can see how easy it would be for someone to do just the opposite of all of this and actually take away our rights and freedoms using technology, simply because we don’t understand it. It’s already started with digital rights management and the DMCA in the US. This is why technology occupies a large weight in terms of my political considerations. It’s definitely the reason why I’m an NDP supporter, what with their support of network neutrality and real copyright reform (as opposed to the Conservatives’ and Liberals’ capitulation to American interests).

Again, technology is something that we shouldn’t and can’t be afraid of if we want to harness it for good. If we don’t, we’re just letting it sit around as an easy way to catch up on TV shows when it can be so much more. And the danger is that if we don’t use it, someone else will.

So I’ve gotten bored and ended up looking into subscribing to some of these podcast things. It’s been fairly good so far, I’ve subscribed to two. The first is Downloadable Content: The Penny Arcade Podcast. This is done by Gabe and Tycho who are as hilarious in the podcast as they are in the talks that they’ve given or interviews that they’ve done or the news posts. Very quality conversations as they hammer out comics. Sadly, it’s released fairly irregularly.

The other podcast I’ve subscribed to is The Rissington Podcast, done by Jon Hicks of hicksdesign and John Oxton. The two are fairly recognized (on the Internet at least) British web designers who work at a former air base RAF Rissington. The page has a snazzy design and they are also quite entertaining. They also have some spots that they do like a typeface of the week.

And with that, I’ve run out of things to listen to. While I’m on the subject, I may as well ask for more sites to track on my RSS reader. I’m a fairly picky reader; I don’t read a lot of the large blogs like Kotaku or Joystiq. I prefer small blogs, like 4 color rebellion or The Escapist, since they have this charm to them or reputable sites, like Ars Technica, since they’re usually not full of exaggerated opinion as bloggers are want to do. Also, I’m looking for gaming, technology, or design types of sites.

This just in: I have heard from various sources that Facebook is selling your data through a service called the Facebook Development Platform.

My response: No, no they are frigging not. They are not selling anyone’s personal data. If they are, they certainly don’t need the Development Platform.

“But amg programs that aren’t faecbook are accessing my datas!” you say. Well, it’s too bad that all of those people making angry Facebook groups, thereby sticking it to the man, aren’t as good at software development as they are at parsing through the Terms of Service to take quotes out of context.

The Facebook Development Platform is an Application Programming Interface. Wikipedia says:

An application programming interface (API) is a source code interface that a computer system or program library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program.

The software that provides the functionality described by an API is said to be an implementation of the API. The API itself is abstract, in that it specifies an interface and does not get involved with implementation details.

The API allows a program to make requests without having to know the details of the implementation. What does this mean? Well it means that using Facebook’s API, programs don’t need to have all of your private informations that you hold so dearly, since it can just make requests to the server and process everything without having the entire Facebook database on its machine.

I mean, hell, you need to log in for these programs to work. If Facebook is giving your information away, you have more to worry about than your silly little datas; they’re giving away passwords too! Oh noes! Security breach!

People really should actually read the API docs before accusing Facebook of criminal activity, because you all end up looking like retards to people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about.

In conclusion, Facebook users make me angry.

This thing called social networking has been around for a while now, hasn’t it. I guess it started with that whole Friendster thing and maybe even before that with Asian Avenue to some extent. But it’s only been recently that I’ve joined a social network, namely, Facebook.

I’ve found Facebook very interesting for learning about people: what they do, what they’re interested in, the connections that you have, the places you’ve been, among other things. It can be very useful. However, there are some wrenches in that people throw into the system that effectively render the system completely useless. (more…)

Facebook added some interesting features recently, most notably, the feed. I personally think it’s an interesting idea. The feed acts like an RSS feed but of what your friends have done. Feeds are good and useful.

So then there’s this bunch of users who think this is an invasion of their privacy. These are probably the same people who think Google is invading their privacy. Well here’s a tip I suggest for those privacy advocates: don’t put your information on the Internet if you don’t want someone to see it.

Facebook didn’t break into your house and steal your address and phone number and put it on their website, you put it on their website, so deal with it.

Why don’t you damn kids whine about the real invasions of privacy in our society?