Category: Social Commentary

Self-driving Cars in the News

I remember reading about self-driving cars in science fiction novels. Science fiction has provided me with all sorts of interesting ideas to pursue as I’ve gotten older. Many things I thought would be impossible, have become reality over the years and things that I thought I’d never see five years ago, I’m seeing in reality today. People will start to look at how to sell junk car or their old car just so they can get their hands on a self-driving one, this pretty much looks like the future for us all. I discussed some of the technology behind self-driving cars in my Learning as a Human post. The article was fine as it went, but readers have taken me to task more than a few times for becoming enamored with the technology and not discussing the reality of the technology.

The fact of the matter is that self-driving cars are already here to some extent. Ford has introduced cars that can park themselves. The Ford view of cars is the one that most people can accept. It’s an anticipated next step in the evolution of driving. People tend to favor small changes in technology. Changes that are too large tend to shock them and aren’t readily accepted. People are always happy with small changes, they are more likely to buy a car if they see that it has been improved upon slightly (compared to the model that they already have). People find it so easy to buy a new car now, they don’t even need to worry about getting it either, as they can simply just get it delivered to their home by using a shipping company (you can find out more information here at this Cars Arrive Auto Relocation company). Which is great, but what’s so good about a new car that has one small change?

Google’s new self-driving car might be licensed in Nevada, but don’t plan on seeing it in your city anytime soon (unless you just happen to live in Nevada, of course). A more realistic approach to self-driving cars will probably come in the form of conveyances used in specific locations. For example, you might see self-driving cars used at theme parks and college campuses where the controlled environment will make it easier for them to navigate. More importantly, these strictly controlled situations will help people get used to the idea of seeing and using self-driven vehicles. The point is to build trust in them in a manner that people can accept.

Of course, the heart of the matter is what self-driving cars can actually provide in the way of a payback. According to a number of sources, they can actually reduce driving costs by $190 billion dollars per year in health and accident savings. That’s quite a savings. Money talks, but people have ignored monetary benefits in the past to ensure they remain independent. It will take time to discover whether the potential cost savings actually make people more inclined to use self-driving cars. My guess is that people will refuse to give up their cars unless there is something more than monetary and health benefits, as like non self-driving cars, they still need to be checked over every few years, they’re still susceptible to breaking down and needing new parts from online auto parts store TDC Automotive and others similar. So all in all, consumers won’t be jumping at the chance to buy one for the time being.

Even though no one has really talked about it much, self-driving cars have the potential to provide all sorts of other benefits. For example, because self-driving cars will obey the speed laws and run at the most efficient speeds possible in a given situation, cars will become more fuel efficient and produce less pollution. The software provided with the vehicle will probably allow the car to choose the most efficient route to a destination possible and provide the means for the car to automatically navigate around obstructions, such as accidents (which will be notably fewer). People could probably be more assured of getting to their destination on time because they won’t get lost either. Working on the way to work will allow people to spend more quality time with family. It’s the intangible benefits that will eventually make the self-driving car seem like a good way to do things.

The self-driving car is available today. It won’t be long and you’ll be able to buy one. You can already get a self-parking Ford, so the next step really isn’t that far away. The question is whether you really want to take that step. Some people may see self-driving cars as too much of a gamble, luckily we still have used car companies like Zemotor that we can buy our cars from and feeling secure about it. Let me know your thoughts on self-driving cars, their potential to save lives, reduce costs, create a cleaner environment, and make life generally more pleasant at [email protected].

Renewable Energy Inroads

I’m all for making the planet less dependent on fossil fuels, if for no other reason than they represent a finite resource. Renewable energy offers to replace the finite resources we use now with something we can harvest forever. The problem is that many renewable energy sources are really quite dirty. For example, the solar cell that adorns your roof may be killing people in China. In my opinion, we really don’t need to clean up our part of the planet by making China’s part of the planet even dirtier. In the long run, we won’t benefit by that strategy. Just think of all the really interesting poisoned toys China will send our way-toys poisoned by our own toxic waste. The toxins we generate in other countries tend to come back to haunt us.

It was with mixed feelings that I recently read that solar energy will become a major energy source within 15 years. The reasons for the increase in usage are many, but the basic reason is that solar is becoming less expensive to install and maintain.

Even if there is a possibility of solar still being relatively expensive to install, something known as the solar tax credit can ensure that people can claim a tax credit of up to 30% (depending on where you live) that can go towards the costs of your project. In many circumstances, this could persuade more people to incorporate solar energy within their homes or workplace.

There are even schools that are starting to use solar energy and other renewable energy sources now (more here). Often they do this under Act 32, which allows schools to exceed their revenue caps for energy-efficient improvements such as lighting, roofing, heating and air conditioning, energy conservation. Plus, now it’s easier than ever to contact a solar battery supplier and look into purchasing some solar batteries. Not only this but the costs of the solar panels and their installation has gone down considerably, so it’s possible that solar power might actually become less expensive than using fossil fuels at some point. Of course, the savings assume that you’re not storing excess power in batteries. Adding batteries to the picture greatly increases costs and makes solar quite expensive indeed.

There is one benefit to solar energy that many people don’t think about. If the solar panels appear on people’s rooftops in a decentralized configuration, the ability of terrorists to disrupt the electrical system is greatly diminished. A decentralized setup also reduces costs associated with power transmission and could actually do things like reduce cooling costs in summer. Of course, the utilities aren’t crazy about decentralized solar because it cuts into their profits, but the fact of the matter is that we need a better setup than the one we do now. Our system is so fragile right now that I’m often surprised a storm or other simply cause doesn’t knock out major sections of the country.

The bottom line for me is that we really do need to reduce our power usage and embrace renewable energy sources. However, we need non-polluting renewable energy sources or at least sources that pollute less than the ones we have now. I last tackled this topic in More People Noticing that Green Technology Really Isn’t. The fact is, nothing has changed in the technology, but the need to address the technology shortfalls has just become greater. Before a technology that pollutes our planet quite a lot becomes entrenched, we need to come up with answers to deal with the pollution-preferably a better technology.

What are your thoughts on renewable energy? What forms do you feel pollute the least and provide the greatest benefit to people as a whole? Do you see renewable energy becoming the only power source at some point? Let me know your thoughts on these and other energy concerns at [email protected].

Considering Our Future Cyber War

It’s not if a cyber war will happen, but when. Precisely what form such a war will take depends on the perpetrators and their goals. I’ve spend quite of time discussing the relative insecurity of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems out there. However, I’m only assuming that SCADA is going to be targeted at some point because it’s such low hanging fruit and no one seems to have any interest at all in securing. Plus, the attack would be of the sort that we’d have a hard time defending against (and possibly identifying at first as the hospitals fill with victims of some mysterious problem).

I recently read an article by John Dvorak entitled, “What if Facebook Is Hacked Next?” John makes some excellent points, but probably doesn’t go far enough. Why would an attacker stop with just Facebook? Why not attack all of the sources of social media out there, including places like LinkedIn and Twitter? The confusion created by the loss of all social media would be amazing. It could easily act as a smokescreen for some other activity even more devastating than the loss of data. While everyone is scrambling to fix their social media issues, someone could work in the background to do something truly horrible.

Actually, the attacker might not even have to do anything other than disrupt all online activities. Think about the number of jobs lost, the hit to online commerce, and the other problems that such an attack would cause. Perhaps these people are simply waiting until more brick and mortar stores close that people no longer have local resources to help in such an emergency. For example, think about the problems that the loss of online stores would have to IT professionals who maintain huge networks of computer systems. The potential for truly terrifying results is amazing.

A cyber war is coming. Just when it will arrive is the topic of much speculation, but my feeling is that it’ll come sometime soon. What sorts of security measures do you have in place? Have you done anything else to prepare? Let me know about your thoughts on cyber war at [email protected].

 

Radio Shack, We Knew Thee Well

I’m dating myself here, but the first time I entered a Radio Shack was in 1972. I had just finished reading The Radio Amateur’s Handbook and was absolutely fascinated by the whole thought of working with electronics. The combination of reading science fiction and electronics books of various sorts, convinced me to go to a technical high school. I graduated with all the necessary knowledge to become an apprentice electrician. However, entering the Navy moved me into computers, where I remain today. (I started out as a hardware guy and moved into programming later.) Radio Shack was filled with all sorts of cool looking gizmos. It was akin to entering my science fiction books and experiencing what “could be” first hand. The day I finished designing and building my first power supply and amplifier was an absolute thrill. I still have the plans for it somewhere. The mono output of 20 watts seemed fantastic. I’m not the only one with fond memories-authors such as PC Magazine’s Jamie Lendino and John Dvorak have them as well.

Over the years I watched Radio Shack change from this absolutely fascinating place I had to visit every time I passed it to something less. Eventually, it became just a common store-the aisles filled with televisions, radios, and consumer gizmos of all sorts. It got to the point where I could buy the same type of goods just about anywhere for a much lower price. For me, the death spiral was just sad to watch. As a country, we really need stores that encourage people to invent-to think outside the box. Unfortunately, Radio Shack is no longer that store. I visited a Radio Shack in a mall the other day and there were only a few items left for sale at high discount. I helped a friend buy a mouse. It was an odd feeling to leave the store one last time knowing that I’d never see the store I knew and loved in the 70s and 80s again.

Even the salespeople changed over time. During the early 70s when I first started going to Radio Shack, I could hear salespeople talking the talk with any customer that came in. One of them even convinced me to use a different transistor for my amplifier and to rely on a full bridge rectifier to make the output cleaner. If these terms seem foreign, they do, in fact, belong to a different time. The surge of creativity I experienced during that phase in my life is gone-replaced by something totally different today. The young lad I talked with the other day was a salesperson and just barely knew his trade. Gone are the salespeople who really made Radio Shack special.

I yearn for the resurgence of creativity and of stores that promote it. This is one case where brick and mortar stores have a definite advantage over their online cousins. When you go into a brick and mortar store, you can talk with real people, see real demonstrations, touch real hardware, and get that special ethereal feeling of entering the zone of the tinkerer and the definer of dreams. Radio Shack, we knew thee well, and we really need something like you back.

 

The Art of Observation and Writing

People watching is a favorite activity of mine. No, I don’t sit at the bench at the mall and make snide remarks about people’s attire. I’m also not too interested in the exceptions to the rule—someone doing something so absurd that it falls well outside the range of normal human activity. (Although, I must admit that the guy who ended up in a fountain because he wasn’t looking as he was texting, was sort of funny.) No, I’m more interested in how normal people react in normal ways to normal situations. Observation is a key tool for any author because seeing how people act and react is an essential part of communicating thoughts and ideas to them. I can’t see my reader during the reading of one of my books, so observation helps inform me outside of that environment.

On one particular day, I was watching a young couple argue. The precise reason for the argument isn’t known to me and it’s immaterial anyway. The two of them argued for quite some time, each insisting the other wasn’t listening. Both went off in a huff. I’ve always hoped that they made up. The things that struck me was that the two people communicated differently. The wife’s communication was both vocal and emotional. However, it was her body language that said the most. The husband was stiff as a board and you could tell that he had built defenses against any encroaching information that might conflict with his preconceived ideas of how the communication should go. However, he did use his hands quite a lot and did make really good eye contact. His choice of words was the key ingredient in his communication. Two people, communicating two completely different ways, and neither of them hearing the other.

Books are like that sometimes. I get e-mail from my readers that makes it obvious that I didn’t choose the correct manner of communication. Yes, the information they’re requesting is most definitely in the book, but they didn’t see it because the information didn’t appear in a form that attracted attention. In some cases, the reader did see the information, but couldn’t understand it. In a worst case scenario, the reader saw the information, read it, thought it was understandable, and then didn’t apply it correctly. In many cases, I find that the reader really didn’t understand the information after all.

Another couple, on another day, showed me something else. Nuance is often part of communication. The precise formulation of interaction is important. In this case, the husband was following his wife shopping, but I could tell that his interest lay in his wife, not in what she was buying. She picked a particular item up, looked it over, and put it on the shelf. A little while later, they came back. She picked up the same item, looked at it intently, and then put it back on the self. I was surprised to see the man come back sometime later. He bought the item and almost passed me by while wearing a magnificent grin. When asked what was up, he explained that by observing his wife, he found the perfect gift for her—something she really wanted, but didn’t buy because it was too expensive.

The communication between author and reader is often nuanced in ways that defy simple explanations. Yet, when they’re understood, they seem absurdly simple. It’s the reason I employ beta readers, ask questions on this blog, and maintain statistics for my books. All of these observation techniques tell me how you’d like to receive information from me without my having to ask the question directly. I can provide you with the perfect presentation without saying anything at all.

How do you employ the art of observation? Do you find that it provides an effective means of communicating thoughts that might not receive proper treatment when spoken. Send your ideas on the topic to [email protected].

 

Our Borders are Porous

No, I’m not talking physical borders here—I’m talking cyber borders. I’ve talked a number of times about the relative insecurity of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems. My biggest personal concern is how leaks in these systems can affect people with special needs. At a minimum, implanted devices used by people today are open to hacking. However, there are some reports that say that hackers could eventually become murderers. I wrote Accessibility for Everybody: Understanding the Section 508 Accessibility Requirements with the idea that implanted devices and other aids should help people, not hurt them.

However, other sorts of devices are leaky. Just about any hacker could attack our water supply, power grid, or any other utility. A hacker could turn off your car engine by remote control, lock you into the car, and then do whatever nefarious deed seemed pleasant at the time. These posts aren’t meant to scare you as much as to inform you that the borders of your devices are wide open to attack in many cases. Yet, despite a huge number of newspaper articles, radio talk shows, government inquiries, and odd assorted other do nothing activities, surprisingly little has been done to secure anything.

It probably won’t surprise you to know that the latest casualty, in a long list of problematic devices, is the gas pump. Yep, your gas pump can turn against you. I hadn’t really thought about a gas pump as being anything particularly worthwhile to hack. Yes, you could possibly turn on the pump and get free gas or deny someone else their gas, but it really didn’t strike me as something that hackers would invest time in learning about. Actually, it turns out that gas pumps are connected to all sorts of monitors and messing with the pump can cause those monitors to go off. It doesn’t seem like alarms are anything to worry about either, but think about someone intent on disrupting the emergency services network in a city so that they can attack in some other way. While everyone is distracted with the gas pump spills that haven’t actually happened, someone could do something that would cause the city to go into overload because emergency services are already overwhelmed.

The thing that gets me about a lot of these deficiencies is that they aren’t caused by systems that are secured, but someone has manged to get into anyway. They’re caused by systems that have no security at all. That’s right—someone connected those gas pumps to the Internet so they could monitor them remotely and didn’t add any security at all. Someone who knows the right information can just walk right in and cause all sorts of mischief.

From direct attacks on our infrastructure, to feints used for distraction, to personal attacks, SCADA systems will let us down at some point. I’m surprised that we haven’t had a major issue so far. Perhaps someone is out there right now planning just the right sort of attack that’s designed to cause a maximum of damage. Until we make security a priority, these open systems will continue to pose a serious risk to everyone, whether you have special needs or not. Let me know your thoughts about insecure SCADA systems at [email protected].

 

Sending e-Mail My Way

The e-mail was emphatic and I felt bad that I had missed the original missive, but the original had no subject line and I’m leery of opening e-mail without a subject line—it could contain anything. When you send me e-mail, please be sure that it contains a subject. I need to know at the outset that you have a question about one of my books—that the e-mail is legitimate. Otherwise, it ends up in my Junk Mail folder and won’t ever see the light of day. Adding a subject doesn’t take much time and helps me organize my responses to readers. I still receive upwards of 65 e-mails every day and I answer each of them. Having a subject helps me work more efficiently and also makes it possible for me to provide you with better responses.

While we’re on the topic of e-mail, I do encourage you to write me about any book-specific issue that you encounter. It’s always my goal to provide you with the best possible reading experience. I’ll always take your e-mail seriously, answer it as fully as is possible, and provide the fastest response that I can. All this said, I won’t answer e-mails that are outside the boundaries of good social communication. For example, I won’t answer these sorts of e-mails:

  • Please don’t ask me for free consulting. I do provide paid consulting services and will provide you with a bid for consulting services should you require them.
  • Keep any e-mail you send book- or blog-specific. Yes, I’ve had some interesting off-topic conversations, but for the most part, I much prefer to provide a service to people who have purchased my books or read posts in this blog.
  • No, I won’t do your homework for you. Your homework is for your benefit, not mine.
  • I’ll ignore any e-mail that calls my parentage into question or uses inappropriate language. Yes, I understand that you’re essentially anonymous, but courtesy is for everyone, even people online.
  • I don’t perform free code reviews. If you need a code review and would like to hire me, we can discuss my rates.

I truly do try to provide a valuable service through my books, my e-mail correspondence, and this blog. All that I’m asking is that you treat these resources with the respect they deserve. Please contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions.

 

A Problem with Short Attention Spans and Getting Only What You Want

I read more articles every day that talk about how content is distributed today. It isn’t just one sort of content; it’s every sort of content, from writing to music to videos. Books are presented electronically without any ads or other content to disrupt your reading, magazines are becoming a thing of the past as readers blithely read just the article they want to see, music is presented as individual song downloads, and video is streamed without any of the extras that come with a DVD.

The idea is to package content items individually, in the smallest container possible. People consuming the content need not bother with anything that doesn’t immediately attract their attention. The smaller size ensures they can consume the content in seconds (even in my books, I’ve made the size of the sections smaller because I noted that readers weren’t making it through the material and missing important information). As a result, consumers are getting used to seeing just the content they want and not having to work at all to get it. Spoon feeding consumers content is probably something that marketers love because they can keep the consumer well fed and not asking too many questions. The content is focuses precisely the way the marketing folks want it. At some point, the quality of the content can decrease without anyone actually noticing. The somnolent mutterings of a few is all that will otherwise detract from the utter quiet of a new age of customized consumerism.

Inferior content is a problem, but it’s not the problem that you should consider immediately. Lack of diversity will cause more problems than content quality ever will. When music was distributed in albums, you counted on getting two or possibly three hit songs. Some of the remaining songs were pretty bad. However, you often encountered two or so additional songs that didn’t get played on the radio for whatever reason are were quite good. Because you were forced (after a fashion) to listen to all the songs on the album, it became common to discover the gems that no one really thought to hype. A few of those songs ended up being hits in their own right simply because people were forced to listen to them as part of listening to the album as a whole. With customized content, you never hear the good songs because no one is hyping them.

The lack of diversity affects your growth as a person. When you listen to something unanticipated or read an article that you didn’t think you’d like, you experience the world in a new way. An idea or concept that didn’t occur to you before is now part of your being. However, with today’s marketing model, you’re being cheated out of that opportunity. The marketers have determined what you’ll read, hear, and see. They control the picture. Think about it for a minute and you’ll see that I’m right.

Magazines are headed in the same direction. It won’t be long and paper magazines will be gone. Electronic magazines will almost certainly follow the current trend at some point. You’ll read only the article that you were interested in seeing in the first place. The supposed boring article that will broaden your horizons will never see the light of day because you won’t be exposed to it. Sometimes it’s necessary for some agent to force you to see content that you might not otherwise review. In the past, it was the added content that came as part of magazines, books, CDs, DVDs, and other distribution techniques that provided this force. There is no such force today. You don’t really see any additional content when viewing a streamed movie.

We view content with fewer interruptions and in purer form, deadening our minds to new ideas. At some point, the lack of growth will cause additional problems. People who get used to thinking only within the box that they draw themselves are less likely to create innovative ideas. As a society, our ability to create something entirely new, entirely different, will be diminished due to a lack of diversity in the input we provide to our brains.

The solution to the problem is uncomfortable and requires a level of determination that our society lacks in large part today. Because alternative content is no longer provided as part of the package, it’s imperative that you look for content that you might not otherwise enjoy. This means making a conscious decision to read, hear, and view content that you may not like at the outset, but will find grows on you with exposure. Let’s hope that there are enough people who don’t mind being uncomfortable to make this a reality. What are your thoughts on the methods used to package content today? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Considering the Continued Encroachment on Privacy

I keep a close eye on privacy issues because many companies are hoping we’ll all fall asleep and they’ll be able to do whatever comes to mind. I was recently appalled by a ComputerWorld article that describes a new technique that companies such as Verizon and AT&T are using to track you even when you perform tasks such as clearing your cookies. The sort of encroachment on privacy discussed in this article has nothing to do with the usual user sloppiness that I described in An Unreasonable Expectation of Privacy. (In this post I encourage people to keep their private lives private by not posting secrets on Facebook and other social media.) This new threat is different in that companies are actively circumventing your ability to remain anonymous. No matter what you do, companies are now able to snoop on your browsing habits and they’re quite open in saying that they don’t care if you mind.

The use of Unique Identifier Headers (UIDHs) should be illegal. In fact, the companies that are burdening users with this unwanted technology shouldn’t have created it in the first place because it’s a bad idea. The article tries to gloss over the fact that these companies knew full well what they were doing and are sheepishly trying to say that they never meant any harm. The organizations using the technology are stupidly placing the burden on the user to opt out, but giving themselves all sorts of outs for just ignoring the request. Opting out through organizations such as the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) or the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) carries no legal weight. A company can choose to ignore your request and there is nothing you can do about it. If an opt out solution truly is required, it should carry some penalties for companies that choose to ignore the user’s request for privacy.

Of course, you could always question why you should care about companies snooping on your habits. After all, you have nothing to hide. Privacy is important because it allows you to do as you choose. You still have an ethical requirement to behave within the laws that society lays down, but you should also be free to browse where you want on the Internet without someone snooping on you. It’s a short trip from snooping on your browsing habits to other kinds of snooping. As society becomes inured to the snooping, companies can begin performing other sorts of snooping, some of which would be clearly inconvenient or dangerous.

Setting a precedent of allowing companies to snoop without consequence will lead to all sorts of issues in the future. As you lose your freedoms to corporations who really don’t care whether you’re free or not (actually, they’d prefer to enslave you), you begin to lose a lot of what makes our current society worthwhile. It’s time that government did step in and start controlling the use of snooping online (and not actually perform snooping itself). After all, one of the purposes of government is to protect citizens from precisely the kinds of threats that UIDHs represent. Let me know your thoughts about snooping at [email protected].

 

Fun is Where You Find It (Part 7)

The Fun is Where You Find It series of posts is one of the more popular series I’ve created because they all talk about fun things you can do for little or no cost. Of course, the problem that most people are facing right now is some sort of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) mixed with negative feelings about the weather and a general letdown from the holidays. Fortunately, there are a lot of fixes for these issues—all of which hinge on focusing on anything else.

I use a lot of laugh therapy to get past this time of year. Generally speaking, laugh therapy is all about getting a good laugh in every day. You can get the laugh any way that works for you, but I’ll read something funny, view funny videos, or talk with a friend who knows good jokes (not the lame sort that I usually tell). There are even books about laugh therapy if you have problems figuring out how to get a good laugh on your own.

This past Sunday I decided to approach the problem from another angle. I have a number of items that need to be used up, so I decided to use them for a picnic. No, the picnic isn’t outside in the cold. Instead, I put together potato salad, fruit salad, fried chicken, chips, and drinks. I laid a blanket out on the floor in front of my wood stove (which is standing in for the hot summer sun) and watched a summery movie. The whole thing cost me about $5.00, so were not talking a major entertainment expense for several hours of fun.

Of course, the question is whether my little experiment worked. Overall, I felt pretty happy afterward—it was a lot of fun and I plan to do it again. Doing something completely different, something outside the range of normal winter activities, helped me get past some of the usual problems associated with winter by thinking about summer and picnics instead. A lot of the time, how we approach life and what we think about controls our mood, so thinking about summer and picnics in winter is possibly every bit as good as the laugh therapy I normally use. At least, it gives me another alternative.

What sorts of amazing things are you doing to fight the winter blahs? Do you think you might ever try a winter picnic to chase the blues away? Let me know your thoughts about winter fun at [email protected].