The best the Net can be
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Yip, it's sure good when you're feeling horny.
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I'm relatively new to Twitter, but it seems to have a lot of advantages that Facebook doesn't. For starters, it's a breeze to simply stop following someone on Twitter. But unfriending someone on Facebook is in the eyes of many the equivalent of leaving a turd on their doorstep.
And you can choose to follow on Twitter only the people who are interesting. it's a great medium for links to interesting sites.
I also can't abide inane smalltalk - and most of the Facebook entries I read are just that. Nor do I give a crap how many magic fairies or gems my friends are collecting in their online games.
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Actually, 80% of my friends can be traced back to that site
I love you Heather. And the many other wonderful friends that I have met on the internet. It is people, it is people, it is people. That's why I love the net.
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Am I the only one who wants to sing The best the net can be to the tune of the Gillette - the best a man can get jingle?
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You are SO not the only one. Old-ad-earwormers unite!
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only the crumbliest flakiest chocolate
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only the crumbliest flakiest chocolate
Oh dear God, I thought I'd properly forgotten that one...
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Play it again John.
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earworm success :)
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In 1974 our library school class visited the sole government computer. It took up most of a floor of an office block and was fed information by holes punched into cards. At this time library indexing systems often consisted of pushing knitting-type needles through holes punched in cards in catalogue drawers. But the school directors were prescient librarians (as librarians often are) and they ensured the new science of information technology was taught. (Several people from that class went on to work with Paul Reynolds on various projects in various incarnations).
By 1989 my workplace (the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography) had one computer in a smoke filled room, with orange letters on a brown screen. The records we worked with were inputted by one specially trained staff member, after everything had first been compiled and completed on paper.
I learned to extract records from that DOS-based database by carefully following three handwritten pages of instructions which included complicated boolean searching. I remember the excitement when windows arrived and as staff members gradually mastered email and other mysteries after intensive courses. (About this time universities started requiring typed and printed rather than handwritten essays - one paper I did took 15 minutes for each page to print on the dot matrix printer - as I anxiously watched the deadline approach). Soon there were the first attempts at developing websites and learning about html for creating content.
Today I can follow elections in other countries instant by instant via live bloggers or twitterers, get the latest international research papers and information from the autism community as soon as it is available, or watch, in real time, the dismal attempts of technology to stem the earth's bleeding oil a kilometre under the sea.
Yet many, even in Wellington, are excluded from all this because they cannot afford to access it, as even the public library charges an hourly rate which is too much for a beneficiary with no spare cash. So the next step is the real democratisation of information by making it accessible to all.
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Nice story, Hilary. I had my first encounter with computers whilst studying in the USA in the early 80s--using punch cards. Oh the horror, when you mis-punched a card!
It is interesting how work patterns have changed in education. Once upon a time, every university dept had a departmental secretary, whose job was to type out the efforts of teaching staff. Now we do all this work ourselves.
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Once upon a time, every university dept had a departmental secretary, whose job was to type out the efforts of teaching staff. Now we do all this work ourselves.
I know of one department down here where several of the professors still have general staff type out their papers and lectures.
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Today I can follow elections in other countries instant by instant via live bloggers or twitterers
The day of the UK elections, I was following the news via Twitter and the web, while watching Channel 4 and the BBC via justin.tv, and receiving tweets from friends at the Chris Knox fundraiser gig in New York. Tze Ming even tweeted that she was getting the actual news from my tweets while she watched Channel 4 on the telly. It was all quite "right here, right now".
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Yet many, even in Wellington, are excluded from all this because they cannot afford to access it, as even the public library charges an hourly rate which is too much for a beneficiary with no spare cash. So the next step is the real democratisation of information by making it accessible to all.
It's dismal, really. Especially when we make light of the fact that 'even' people in 'really poor' countries are accessing internet and information technologies at what are very rapid rates. I think that this is the silent story of the first part of this decade, one which is being ignored and will have very real effects.
I can't be bothered doing a roundup of articles on this transition, but it's an phenomenon that's been presented quite strongly on Ethan Zuckerman's blog. That blog, and the myriad of things he links to, have opened great new worlds to me. The internet we see and use is one small fraction of an ever-expanding and continually changing universe.
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"right here, right now"
Bleeding edge?
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My other worry is that many students in schools are excluded from school internet use because of the access fees schools charge, or the lack of connection to places where kids are like the special needs units or special education satellite classes. The new broadband to school gate policy does not seem to address these issues..
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I know of one department down here where several of the professors still have general staff type out their papers and lectures.
Lazy sods!
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I know of one department down here where several of the professors still have general staff type out their papers and lectures.
Lazy sods!
Just getting into The Wire, and I was truly confused when the two cops (one homicide and one narcotics) used conventional typewriters. I started to wonder what decade I was in, and then they mentioned the Twin Towers.
Baltimore. Anachronism central, USA. Actually this was discussed in The Guardian back in 2008.
The Barksdale drugs war in the Murphy Homes, on which the first series is based, is referred to by Simon in his book as happening in 1983, which is many drug generations ago. Cars are contemporary but cops peck away at old-fashioned typewriters and the surveillance technology could date back to the TV series of Mission Impossible.
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Just getting into The Wire, and I was truly confused when the two cops (one homicide and one narcotics) used conventional typewriters. I started to wonder what decade I was in, and then they mentioned the Twin Towers.
That wouldn't date it too much. A minor theme in the show was the difficulty police had in getting decent resources. The computers they used for surveillance certainly weren't decades old. But computers to put on a cop's desk? Budget cuts baby.
Also typewriters are very useful for filling in pre-printed forms where things need to go in the box. Police paperwork is often a nightmare.
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