Internet Filtering Is More Useful Than Insidious

There’s a book out this week—which I haven’t read—entitled, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. But I did watch a ten-minute talk given by its author, Eli Pariser, and I found his thesis somewhat self-evident and at the same time alarmist.

I hope all of us already effectively deal with the filtering Pariser is talking about. For example, the filtering of friends on Facebook example he cites is a simple options setting, and the moment it was introduced, people felt it and let each other know about it, which is the way the internet deals with unwanted filtering.

If you go to a wide variety of sites, and create intelligent, drill-down searches, unwanted filtering is not going to be a factor. You should also “search” using a variety of search engines and employ other tools as well. I often search on Amazon, as just one example, to find what’s been written, when, and who wrote it.

Filtering can only successfully direct you to choices if your choices are directed. The more you cast about in many directions for distinctly different, unrelated items, the less unwanted filtering has any relevance at all, while each new search you make creates filtering you’ve actively chosen.

Pariser says human editors have been replaced by algorithmic gatekeepers. Algorithms are necessary for the internet to function—and they don’t have the last word. Editors and journalists always and will forever serve a function, whether the model is the past where the power was vested in a trusted few, or today on the internet where we all have more gate-keeping options. Most of us would still rather trust a professional whose job it is to keep the gate than to rely solely on our own vetting of everything—of course we trust sources. The fact that we can choose among many more sources, and even find obscure bits of information ourselves, is surely a good thing—provided we are responsible enough to make some effort to discover the truths we need to know. It’s still far easier in our filtered internet universe in which the filters are easily removed or bypassed than in the old world in which they were opaque and unavoidable.

The internet is like Wikipedia, astonishingly self-correcting. We have far more power to get the straight story than any generation before ours. Filters, understood properly, are useful tools, not blinders.

False Advertising

A person should be absolutely satisfied that a web site or an email or any social media posting is completely legitimate before responding to it in any way. This is because the purveyors of spam have become sophisticated enough to fool even an intelligent casual observer.

For example, I recently got an email describing an interesting job opportunity. It was from a person I didn't know—but there are many in my network I don't know yet and if they have work for me, I want to hear from them. The language of the email was only slightly off-beat—call it a yellow flag, not a red one.

When I went out on the internet I couldn't find the company. Okay, that's almost certainly a red flag—except it meant I didn't find any bad reviews. Could the company simply be new or obscure? Does every business have a web site? Well, probably, yeah, so it was a red flag. Still, I wanted to believe it was a legitimate opportunity and wasn't yet ready to hit "delete."

But the indisputable red flag was that the email appeared not to have been sent to anything resembling my email address, nor was it from any business. These days, all of the email header information can be faked, so if it isn't from a legitimate enterprise—and certainly if it appears it wasn't sent to you—it’s garbage.

I saved myself further trouble, but wasted my time in the bargain.

Six Months to Live

I recently completed a short stint as an IT Technical Recruiter—short, because I didn't make any placements, and particularly because the owner of the recruiting firm I associated myself with and I mutually agreed I wasn't a "good fit."

My most valuable take-away from this experience is the fact that, if you’re an IT pro who finds him-or-herself unemployed for any reason, after six months your career is simply no longer viable.

I've been out of an IT job for far longer than six months. I had no idea my professional life was over. When I learned that it was, I felt how I imagine a zombie must feel when he first notices his accustomed lifestyle evading him.

I have a major IT home project I’d like to finish before I die—as in real death—which involves making one large searchable database out of my two enormous and very distinct existing ones. Perhaps only so my descendents can reconstruct some of the essence of me after I’m gone. This project will ensure me a life in IT while my ruined career remains among the walking dead.

And ensures my digital existence when my real existence ceases to… exist.

Tick-Tock

I don’t appreciate digital clock faces because you have to read them. You can glance at a traditional face with two arms and know immediately it’s ten after two. Digital reads, 2:10—a minimum of two steps, one for the hour, one for the minutes. And with digital, you have to think how close your time is to the hour, or quarter-hour, or half-hour; and how far from noon (or midnight) you are, proportionally. One quick glance at a clock face with hands and you know it all. Digital, well, you have to think about it. Not for very long, hopefully, but it’s not a welcome effort.

Another benefit: With an analog clock face you get aesthetics. There are attractive digital displays out there, but so many more traditional clock faces are minor works of art—especially if you’re into classic utilitarianism.

A mechanical stopwatch is an even simpler pleasure. A glance at one hand and you know how much time has passed—as long as you’re under a minute. All right, I’ll grant that, in the case of a stopwatch, having a digital number blinking at you may be saving mental effort, because you want that single number, and as precisely as possible, usually.

But if a one-second margin for error is acceptable, and you really want to know roughly how close you were to some mark, say 30 seconds, or a minute, then once again the mechanical watch is more friendly to your task.

And, by the way, for any hand-held stopwatch, digital or analog, I feel a one-second margin for error is the best you can hope for. Our reaction time is human.

I'll leave for another day whether "human" is naturally more analog or digital, but I bet you can guess how I feel about that.

Blogging Hiatus

Please read today's post on my Meta blog, which explains my recent absence from these pages.

What Do You Know?

Once in a while I see technical position advertised with the expectation that the applicant can do their work completely from memory. I have a friend who can do this, and he has an amazing career.

Most of us rely on a variety of references to back us up. One of the first lessons I was ever taught ended with this advice: If you’re ever asked if you know something, say yes, take the assignment, and get a manual.

The knowledge most of us carry around with us falls somewhere between total recall and knowing where to go to get it.

I have a personal bias toward knowing where to go. My reasons are that I have too many technical interests to have it all memorized, and also that so much rote memorization tends to crowd out original thinking—including the latest-and-greatest technical information, which becomes out-of-date the moment you commit it to memory.

It does slow a person down, admittedly, if they have to look everything up. Success with technology involves knowing what to know, and where to go to find the rest.

3-Button Mouse, 3-Button Velcro

I lament the demise of the three-button mouse. What an intuitive interface! You would wiggle your three fingers in a balletic dance, and the need for a very large number of keystrokes was eliminated. Of course, you’d have to have a program which incorporated the elegance of the device, and there were few. So few that the 3-button mouse fell out of favor.

I lament the demise of the three-strap Velcro on tennis shoes. Never very popular, people just didn’t get it. That third strap provided much additional comfort. It also provided security. If one of a two-strap Velcro opens, you feel as if your shoe is about to fall off. If you lose one strap and two are still secure, you feel just fine.

The best doesn’t always prevail.