Living The Future Shock

Techno-Junk 

I have a lot of techno-junk. A lot of times, it starts out being the cool thing, but as I keep using it, it just ends up being kipple. I've been using my second 160GB iPod Classic for like 6years. Now I have the choice of moving to an iPod Touch with 128GB or shelling out big and using my phone as the music player. Given that I simply have the iPod Classic as my car audio thing, it's not likely I'm going to shell out for the biggest-capacity iPhone 6S as a music player. I'm going to move to another dedicated audio player and be done with it.

The iPhone has made the point and shoot camera redundant. I have an old Canon G9. In the olden days of 2009, it was a pretty cool compact camera. Of course the camera on the iPhone ate its job, so now it sits on the shelf un-used, and worse still it's far too obsolete in spec to be waved around in public lest people think I am a retro-fetishist. Which goes to show tech isn't worth spending money on until it becomes necessary to have that tech. I've given the Go-Pro cameras a wide berth as a result. They look like a lot of fun if you like strapping the camera on to moving things, but it's hard to argue a need for one on a day to day basis. It's usually easier just to grab the iPhone and shoot video.

Still, I have weird techno-junk which are noise-making devices of various types. These don't go obsolete; they merely extend the sonic palette for recordings so they don't tend to be as bad an investment as a camera. As good as iRig is on the iPhone, it is simply no match for the Catalinbread WIIO pedal for its ability to make my guitar sound like Pete Townshend's tone on 'Live at Leeds'. It never really goes old as a piece of technology; although the desire to want to sound like Pete Townshend on 'Live at Leeds' sort of dates a lot faster than any bit of techno-junk.

It's not all bad news. I have an app on the iPad that can fire samples of an old Mellotron with great accuracy. I have a whole array of synths on the iPad, I could do anything from Kraftwerk style blips to fairly modern trance music sweeps. The option anxiety that arises from my iPad alone is substantial, so it is doing a great job as this sort of noise-making machine. And of course one day it will become this obsolete little tablet that I can't wave around public, but while it can make all these noises, it's going to remain one of my important noise-source units.

The speed at which things become obsolete has me in a bit of a headspin when I survey the things that are going out of date in my lifetime. The LP record lasted about 35years; CD Players lasted about 25; The Walkman went 15years somewhere in there, 20 if you count the portable CD iteration; the iPod era went for about 10years. I feel immense pressure to move on to streamed music but it just runs hard against my instincts. Film cameras of still and moving variety went for decades before digital knocked them off, but the reign of the stand alone domestic digital camera lasted all of 12 years by the time the camera in the phone ate up most of that market. Somewhere in there there was the U-matic video tape which seemed to be around since the 60s for about 25years, and VHS tape which lasted as a popular format for about 20years. DVDs as a media format really only lasted 12 years before HD video and Blu Ray supplanted it; and Blu Ray has really only gone 5 years as a mass consumer format before Netflix and streaming services have killed that market.

You can chalk all of that up to Future Shock. Computers too are accelerating in a disconcerting way. I went 5years with with the G5 PowerMac, 4years with the Tower Mac, and now 2 years with the Mac Mini, and I'm already thinking maybe I should be upgrading the computer soon if I want to be able to edit 4K Video.

As you can see, not only are the product cycles getting shorter, the actual lifespan of any given tech is getting so short. My first iPhone was the 3GS because I was a late adopter. I went three and a half years until it was so obsolete I couldn't show people I was still using it; so that put me onto the iPhone 5S which I've had for 22months - and well, it too is feeling slow, old and obsolete next to the iPhone 6S. I couldn't have imagined that, back 22months ago when I got my 5S. I fear for the lifespan of iPhones and smartphones as a technology, in general. With the pace things are going, there might not be much left in the future of smart phones. I might buy an iPhone 6S the day it goes on sale, but it is in danger of becoming super obsolete, well within the lifespan of its 24month contract.

That's all on the one hand. Contrasting against all that is my pair of Optonica Speakers from the 70s which still sound great. They sound full, broad, punchy and rich. The Arcam Amp powering it is from the mid-2000s, while the CD player is a 5 plate Sony from the late 1990s and it still works great. I have guitars and basses that date to the 1960s and 1970s that work perfectly well, pedals that date to  the early 1980s that still work perfectly well, a 1985 Roland synth that still works fine, and other bits and pieces from somewhere in the last half century that still do what they're designed to do. Somewhere in storage is a top of the range VHS player, and a turntable. All of this stuff still works.

And so gradually you end up being a weird mosaic of tech ownership. I feel like I live in the Bradbury building of 'Blade Runner' ("Good evening JF!") of my own devising and I didn't necessarily plan things that way. I am, to confess, a little more than simply shocked about all this. I never imagined what it would feel like to end up so layered up with the experience of technology. It's even true of this very blog too. When I start blogging over a decade ago, I was the only person in my circle doing it and everybody else was incredulous or disinterested. Now that decade has passed, blogging went from being a fad to a phenomenon to then being reduced to microblogging, and now this kind of blogging -writing out full sentences with the pretence of ecriture - has become somewhat quaint in its archaic-ness.

I write all of this down because I think there is great scepticism about the rate at which things change. The delusion we've been given in our childhoods was that it would be gradual, and mostly linear. The lived experiences inform us that it is rapid and ever accelerating. People think Ray Kurzweil's description of an ever-accelerating technological progress as being fanciful, but I have to tell you the subjective experience of this notion is far more true than the persistent critique that somehow technological development is going to plateau and level off. I won't vouch for the technological Singularity, but I will say that the future change is going to speed up even more.

News That's Fit To Punt- 26/May/2015

The Future's So Dim I Need Those New LED Flashlights

We're spending less on science and research in this country. This astonishing fact drew this article from the SMH:

"Having this reliance on the bottom end of the economy, like small businesses, is a short-term fix," said Andrew Hughes, a lecturer at the college of business and economics at Australian National University. "Cutting back on research is insanity."

Every country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has a plan to grow its scientific enterprise and aid its translation into technology, innovation and development, bar Australia, Chief Scientist Ian Chubb said.

"For 20 years, we have presided over declining levels of participation in science and mathematics" while the country assured itself that students will be fine with calculators, Chubb wrote this month in an article on his website. "I think about the sort of jobs a child in school today might want to do in 10, 20, 50 years. And I wonder, which of those jobs will not require an understanding of science?"

Australian school students underperform in science and mathematics tests compared with every other high-income economy in Asia apart from New Zealand, according to a report issued this month by the 34-nation OECD.

"We're already losing our power in the brains market because we're up against China, India, Japan and South Korea who spend so much more on research and development," Hughes said. "We need to think long-term."

Industry and Science Minister Ian Macfarlane in March said the country ranked 81st out of 143 in a global innovation efficiency measure, putting it "close to average in turning ideas to our advantage". The government is spending about $9 billion a year on science in what is "a conservative financial environment", he said.

And so we have it. Even our Science Minister can't do maths. 81st out of 143 nations is not what most people adept at mathematics would call "close to average". Mediocre, and sub-optimal are terms much closer to the mark that spring to mind.

Once upon a time, this was the fourth nation to launch an object into space. Think about that. USSR, USA, UK, then Australia. We were good at science and technology. Heck, we were formidable! And now, we're going to cut back even more than before.

Yet the nation now ranks in the bottom seven countries based on government spending on research and development as a proportion of gross domestic product, the latest OECD scoreboard shows. 

Australia isn't alone in trying to bolster lower-skilled careers as economies look to shore up manufacturing and fill an increasing number of service-oriented jobs. Both Singapore and South Korea have urged students to consider skipping university. 

Singapore, though, committed to increasing its R&D spending by 20 per cent in 2011-15 over the previous five years, while South Korea spent the second-highest proportion of gross domestic product on research among OECD countries in 2013, behind Israel.
The boost for baristas is partly a result of successive governments' failures during the decade-long mining boom to prevent a hollowing out of the manufacturing sector as the currency strengthened and investment flowed to the mines. General Motors, Ford and Toyota plan to quit manufacturing in the country within two years, while Alcoa last year closed an aluminium smelter and two mills. 

Belinda Robinson, chief executive of Universities Australia, said the research cuts announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey in his budget this month will make matters worse.
"Against the backdrop of low commodity prices and the downturn in traditional industries, a prudent approach to stimulating economic renewal is to invest in, not cut, wealth-generating activities like higher education, research and innovation," she said.

Good grief. The worst aspects of conservative thought is that it fears change so much, it thinks nothing of slowing down progress, shutting down developments that might change the status quo (they like to call this 'the social fabric' - it's bullshit). It's all too easy for these idiots to cut science because not only do they not understand it - as evinced by the number who deny climate change - they fear it.

Evidence Our Government Is Even Worse Than We Thought

Pleiades tells me all the time, "you know, these people are completely fucked."
I'm inclined to believe it.

Six members of the Abbott cabinet have risen up against an extraordinary proposal to give a minister the power to strip an Australian of their sole citizenship. 

The idea, proposed by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton with the support of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, divided a meeting of the cabinet on Monday night. 

The hour-long debate was described by participants as tense and sometimes heated.
The cabinet members who spoke against the proposal were Defence Minister Kevin Andrews, Foreign Affairs Minister and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop, Attorney-General George Brandis, Agriculture Minister and deputy Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, Education Minister Christopher Pyne and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, according to people present in the room. 

The same plan had divided the cabinet's national security committee.
The idea is that even an Australian-born citizen, without any other citizenship, could be stripped of Australian citizenship at the discretion of the immigration minister alone, without a suspect being charged or facing a court. 

Under the proposal, the only protection against an Australian being rendered stateless is that they must also be eligible to apply for citizenship of another country, even if they do not actually hold that second citizenship. 

Ms Bishop posed to the cabinet meeting this question: if Australia were to strip one of its people of citizenship on suspicion of terrorism, would another country be likely to approve that person's application to become a citizen?
The core objection was that an Australian effectively can be rendered stateless, losing fundamental rights and in violation of international law, without due process.

Bloody hell.
They made laws that joining a terror organisation abroad is against the law. Presumably if somebody returns from ISIS / ISIL /Daesh, they will be arrested and hauled in front of a magistrate. But they hate these people so much they want a special law to render them stateless. The mind boggles at this sensibility, and the fact that it was discussed like it's some kind of legitmiate option.

The lunar right is fixated on this notion of "un-Australian" acts, and keep coming up with novel ways to punish the un-Australian-but-still-Australian-by-citizenship citizen. Rendering people stateless and dumping them on other nations was one of the Howard government's favourite tricks, but it's plain ridiculous. The fact that ten years on, Tony Abbott wants to bring back this kind of idiocy speaks volumes about just what a fuckhead he really is.

Science In Australia

The Cause Of Science

This one came in from Pleiades, and I'd meant to post it up but I've been mightily distracted. It's basically a rebuttal to all the people who run around with economic rationalist notions that science budgets should be cut.

There is a view in this country that too much thinking about the sort of Australia we want gets in the way of the “market signals” – the invisible rays that persuade 15 year olds to study physics, or not, that attract graduates into science teaching, or not; and convince the market to wear the risk of bold new ideas, or not.

It adds up to the message that she’ll be right. And it would be an easy message for a chief scientist to sell – if it wasn’t contradicted by the evidence.

Yes, logic says Australian businesses have an incentive to innovate. Three in five of them still say they don’t, while just one in five say that they have introduced new or significantly improved goods or services. Yes, all the research demonstrates that industry and researchers benefit from working together. Our record on collaboration is now one of the poorest in the OECD.

Yes, it makes sense to study a science at senior levels. Australian schools show a decline in the rates of participation in “science” subjects to close to the lowest level in 20 years.

If you really want an in-depth look, here is the actual recommendation tabled. I've spent most of my working career in the arts, and it still incenses me that this government has made very little provision to keep R&D going or for the CSIRO to continue doing the important things it does. I know the government wants to cut everything, but it's clear they have been much too cavalier about the cuts they've made to science and technology. Starting from the disavowal of the NBN down, this government has been a disaster when it comes to developing anything cerebral as a future direction for this country. Instead they've fixated upon more roads.  That, and doing he bidding of whoever lobbies with the most dollars.