Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

The following is a guest post from a veteran journalist, who also happens to be a reader of this blog:

OK – have we all gotten over the homely Scottish woman who can sing well? How about the brouhaha over Miss California and Donald Trump and whatever it was that she said that riveted a spellbound nation?

Good. I figured as much. These media creations flamed out about as quickly as they flamed on here in ADD Nation.

Now can we move onto something really important — such as what’s going to supplant Twitter as the NBT (that’s Next Best Thing, for all you folks who actually like to see words spelled out to maximize clarity and avoid confusion. And that was Attention Deficit Disorder Nation in the previous paragraph, as if you didn’t know.).

I mean, c’mon, Twitter is so half-hour ago, for crying out loud. For one thing, the name is just too long. For another, how the hell are users expected to use all 140 characters per Tweet? Do the Twitter-meisters think we’re a nation of Faulkners, Mailers and Joyces?

You can expect to see the NBT coming to a cell phone or other wireless driver- and pedestrian-distracting electronic device faster than you can say Susan Boyle. And I already have a name for it: Blip.

That’s right, Blip. It’s faster than Twitter. For example, it has only one syllable, which is an important consideration in ADDN. Each dispatch is called a Bleep, with the sender – or Bleeper – Bleeping, which gives the technology an edgier feeling than Tweet, Tweeter or Tweeting, which, face it, sound so ornithologically cartoonish (you know, “I taught I taw …”). And, Blip has only 70 characters, to maximize speed and minimize meaning, which seems to be the whole point of modern telecommunications.

But hold on. Blip isn’t even out yet, but it’s already so … last paragraph. Which brings us to the NBT faster than you can say SB. It’s It, which has that great “information technology” connotation, plus it’s It, too. Get It? With a name half as long as Blip, it (or is that It?) has only 35 characters, and its (or is that It’s?) dispatches are called, simply and appropriately, I. After all, that’s where all this fabulous technology is apparently leading: sating our nonstop, 24/7 compulsion to tell the world about, as George Harrison put it so succinctly 40(!) years ago, “I, Me, Mine.”

BTW, 35 characters are enough to sa

Update II: Last night, Sunday April 5th, Lesley Stahl issued an on-air correction about her mistakes from the previous week’s story about Conficker. She called it a correction, but it wasn’t even that much. Here is the transcript of her apology which lasts all of about 21 seconds as a part of the introduction to Andy Rooney’s weekly blathering.

“A correction now. We made a mistake last week in using a photograph in a story we called “The Internet is Infected,” about the computer worm known as Conficker. I described the picture as a gang of young Russian hackers. They were not. The photo was provided to us by an Internet security company that appeared in the story.”

I have included below the video of the correction with the original piece just below. However, please note that I have had to include the original story from YouTube (I’ve only listed the second half) because CBS has edited the video on its website to cut any mention of the photo, any hacker by the name of Tempest and other things which were proven to be incorrect. The portion of edited video on CBS’s website occurs at the 10:36 mark. You can see the cut portion, lasting 19 seconds, in the YouTube video below.

But tell me, what should CBS have done in this circumstance? Instead of simply acknowledging the mistake, apologizing to the Finnish kids defamed in the story and moving on, the 60 Minutes team decided on a different route. They made a mistake, attempted to correct it but in the process also deleted any evidence of the mistake from their website. If CBS wants to be taken seriously as a news organization, this crap cannot continue. We know CNN falsifies transcripts and inputs video from Hungary in a story about Serbian rioting, but for CBS to now stoop to this level is unacceptable.

Watch CBS Videos Online

The Internet is Infected, part 2:

Yesterday I mentioned one of Frontline’s latest endeavors with its Digital_Nation project. Jeff is one of the more active bloggers on the project and has had an ongoing discussion about generational stereotypes as they pertain to the latest buzzwords of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. He has posted some interesting reader feedback, including this:

“Here are some more thoughts we’ve received in response to my posts on the haziness surrounding the terms Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. It seems people don’t like to be defined by such simple labels.

A reader writes:

I’ve often found that defining a person as a member of a particular generation is the easy way to describe someone, not the accurate way. Previously we talked about baby boomers and Generations X and Y and now the focus is on Internet Natives and Immigrants. However, like all generalizations, it doesn’t really capture who that person is, what his or her history is or what motivates him or her. Sure there are similarities between people born during a certain time and in a similar place, but often these boxes are created either by marketers or the media without much consideration beyond the superficial. Therefore, how accurate can they really be?

I, like many others I know, am caught yet again between definitions determined by outsiders. In a previous discussion I might have been between Generation X and Generation Y and now I am again between what some might consider the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. These definitions can guide a discussion only so far before they become cumbersome and irrelevant.”

I think a career journalist I know said it best when asked about this habit to simplify and condense our differences: The overwhelming urge of the human race to pigeonhole other members of the human race is constant. It does reflect mental laziness and gives us a (false) sense of security (“Oh, I know this type of person.”). It also dehumanizes others.

It’s also a bane of modern journalism. Why do news organizations feel it necessary to label politicians or others as “liberal,” “conservative,” “right-wing” or “left-wing”?

Disgusting. Absolutely and completely lazy, inaccurate journalism. That is the best way to describe this week’s episode of 60 Minutes on CBS. The idiocy runs so deep, I’m not sure I want to make this post as long as it could be. Lesley Stahl’s report on Internet worms, viruses and the evil-doers who spread them had more holes in it than the Bush administration’s claims of Iraq’s WMD program. Watch it for yourself, but please only take what is said with a grain of salt.

In my day job I’m in the technology industry, so I’m well aware of the problems viruses and worms and hackers and Russian gangsters can pose… Wait, Russian gangsters?!? As a number of people on CBS’ website have pointed out, the “Russians” shown in the program are actually from Finland, but those are merely facts not to worry 60 Minutes. But the real shady part about this report was the fact that not one government official was interviewed for it. We saw experts from Symantec, Google and SecureWorks, an online security firm, but not one from a qualified government official. Now, I understand that most of the expertise when it comes to technology and online security still resides in the private sector, but certainly Stahl could have interviewed the FBI Special Agent in Charge who worked undercover for three years on an Internet forum selling credit card numbers and other financial data with hackers around the world. Or perhaps one of the many, many experts who combat online terrorism in any one of the 15 security agencies within the United States alone. The reporting ended up as more of an infomercial designed to scare the crap out of the viewer and convince him or her to purchase some bloated piece of security software from Symantec which, admittedly doesn’t really do anything to protect you. In addition, the ignorance displayed by Stahl of the online world would be laughable, if it weren’t so scary. She was surprised someone could watch her typing in her information online? Does she live in a cave? I’m sorry to sound harsh on this one, but if you are going to do a report on Internet security some basic education should be required before attempting such a venture. We’ve written about 60 Minutes’ miscues before, but this time it is inexcusable.

Update: CBS has issued the following correction regarding the photo used. (However, they have yet to apologize for the thoroughly crappy reporting job. Don’t expect that one too soon.)

(CBS) A correction: 60 Minutes made a mistake in using a photograph in our story called “The Internet is Infected.” The picture was described in the story as a group of young Russian computer hackers which was inaccurate. The picture, provided to us by an Internet security company, had appeared on a Russian hacker magazine Web site.