Go slow! For a healthier lifestyle...

Hurry up! A common phrase. Everywhere, via evey-technological-thing, things are moving at apace.

'What? You mean I have to wait 45 seconds to download from the Bay of Pirates?...'

Too often daily life is spent racing around. So if you feel like life is taking you for too fast a ride, there is hope this week until 4th May in the form of Slow Down London, a project to inspire Londoners to find ‘a saner pace of life.’
SDL's emphasis is on slower distractions: slow music and arts; meditation, yoga; slow food; 'slow travel' (hmmm have you travelled London to York lately?); to slow debates about time and pace; and finally finding your own (slow) way to challenge our culture and need for speed.

So we’re moving too fast? Consuming too much information? One could claim that we have hit an information epidemic – imposed by a need for diversionary distractions, at an en mass and on-demand rate.

SDL is suggestive of a need for cultural change as lifestyles get caught up in the constant circulation of social information and being pressures to be in the loop. In such daily life cycles, perhaps there’s room for a new kind of diet plan? Move aside weight loss drug Alli – there’s a new kind of obese lifestyle to combat: Too many Facebook friends; too many tweets...

We need a pill! One that blocks all media and could automatically ‘de-friend’ all contacts. Pop it! And we could be free!

Social Network Sites (SNSs) could provide a round of prescriptive doses to wean their most addicted users - those with a higher Friend Mass Index (FMI) of 5,000 or more.

Our expert says: 'it may help some people with friend loss, but they would have to take a conscious decision to stop poking so much'.

Anyone who wants the medication should go directly to their friendly Social Media Consultant for advice because there are high risk factors for other obsessive behaviour. For example, watching The Wire until a Baltimore accent is perfected and understood, and filling 24hours with 24.

Trials show that by de-friending on a reduced friend diet, can help people lose 50% more friends than turning off the mobile alone.

But if individuals persist in 'just' watching friends, they can expect some negative side effects, including the urge to follow Jonathon Ross Wossy on Twitter.

Dr Mariann Hardey, Social Media Analyst, said: ‘This pill can work and the risks are minimal, but it must play into a larger scale social information management regime. Such lifestyle changes must come first and last – I heartily recommend the efforts of Slow Down London.’
Key points
# Networks with an FMI of 10 to 500 is normal
# By 2050, 90% of men and 70% of women will have an embarrassing picture on Facebook
# Facebook will account for 18 million friendships and 50 million arguments a day

For more serious Slow Down tips why not try my favourite Top Three:

1. Take yourself for a walk – without any media device! But be sure to notify your Twitter followers before you do, they might miss you , and social etiquette says that it would be rude not to.
2. Do not check email first thing in the morning. Erk! As if?! Nothing says ‘good morning’ more than catching up on what you might have missed the day before over tea and toast. This is as routine for as having a shower first thing. A more realistic tactic I am trying to impose is to have an email lock down every other hour. This is to give time on other important projects – such as writing!
3. At the same point each evening, turn off every communication device. Remind yourself of your family and friends away from Facebook. Play games, talk.

I’m sure there are more, so if you can’t be at the SDL, but want to join in, you add your ideas here...

I'll make sure to be slow to reply.

Eye Spy: We ARE under scrutiny

'They've got your number' Charles Arthur reported in last weeks Media Guardian - where every call, email, poke, prod, comment and tweet is logged regarding a source and their contact. Whilst about the context of 'investigative journalism' the article is suggestive of the much more sinister side of checks and 'safeguards' considered an OK intrusion into private lives. Both yours and mine. 'Fine' for investigative journalists and their sources(?!), but (deep breath in)...

{start of rant/} I did not intend, nor do I expect that the collaborative connections I share with others be so exposed and under such 'civil' scrutiny.

So much so, now I MUST take action to protect both myself and others linked to me. This is not the same as an update to Facebook Privacy Settings, but one step away from a serious invasion into private lives.

Should it be fair, that those who are relative slow to catch-up, be left unprotected until the day comes when they have to say 'oh no! I didn't mean to disclose that?' {/end of rant}

And Breathe.

For the past week, press columnists, bloggers, commentators and everday conversations have foamed at the mouth with righteous fury against the behaviour of Damian McBride, Gordon Brown's now very fallen Doctor of Spin. On the one hand the current Government shows initiative for innovative use of technology (DowningStreet on Twitter) as a welcome addition to various communicative channels. Suddenly things seemed more 'open', 'friendly' and 'responsive'. However, following the careless leak of emails and intended blog posts that McBride intended to use for smear of the opposition this prompts an important question - why are there no similar checks and safeguards into the lives and actions of MPs?...

I detest that such activities come out of an assumed knowledge and obsession with social media. Too often I have overheard that a lack of formal acquaintance with technology means you know less than the next person who eats code for breakfast. Comparatively, one persons day-long Facebook use is anothers once-weekly update. And anothers 'new media' is still rooted in 'old media', which could be yet anothers 'social media'. NOW is the time to think about a shared language, understanding and implementation of rules and regulations to protect all. No matter what your 'social media' outlook or preference. Even if you like MySpace (*shudder*).

Will this come 'top down' from the Government? Unlikely. Government policy cannot even cope with safeguarding their own blogs. In all liklihood these are the individuals most likely to be caught 'doing something' 'badly behaved' on the likes of Facebook.

Perhaps it is time that we followed them, as much as they intend to follow us...

Wired. You're Fired!

When not 'here' I also write for another blog GirlyGeekdom. Not usually one to cross-post (that's for a more lazy journo approach), this piece is interesting and worthy enough to 'double up'.

The just lauched UK edition of Wired Magaine. This week I am struck by the obvious; With more technology for our geeky pleasure, are the GirlGeeks being overlooked? I ask: Where are the women writers?... For the front page byline 'Your Life in the Future' - 'your' must refer to the men only...

A particularly pertinent piece is the article 'The People Who Really Run Britain' (PWRRB) (p.136). Thankfully not Bob Quick as Senior Counter Terrorist Officer, but a portfolio of ardent workers who for Philip Sinden 'operate in the shadows'. Individuals who range from the 'nation's memory keeper' - guarding official documentations in an underground 'safe house'; 'the time setter' responsible for keeping the nations clocks to time; to the a 'Channel tunnel guardian' who 'keeps air flowing through the Eurotunnel'.

Only one of the PWRRB's Top Ten is a woman. I do not want to labour the point too much, but it seems appropriate to point out (with the support of GirlyGeekdom) that women are not only the minority in terms of written content in Wired, but the same is also true in terms of subject and article presence. The (only) Woman Who Really Runs Britain is Caroline Porter, 29, a business manager at London Metal exchange. Her role is to control the feeds of metal prices - 'the global reference prices' - that are delivered to the global economy. Without her there would meltdown, literally.

Skip to the front of Wired (P.15) and the 05.09 Contributors Page, of the six main contributors, one, Susan Greeenfield (Baroness no less), is the pioneer of content contributed by women. I am not suggesting that Wired is all male-to-male content. Far from it. UK Wired is, in my opinion, far better than its US counterpart in the publication of balanced, interesting and satisfyingly technology divulgent coverage. But then I flick back again through the magazine and the if the masculine led written word doesn't hit you, the masculine emphasis of marketing and advertisement will. TagHeur watch here, Sony Bravia with football coverage there, Jaguar where 'the thrill lasts much longer' and Tom Ford 'for men' (just to re-assert the masculine message) set the tone for the First Edition.

The 'How to...' contribution from Kevin Braddock and Jack Dyson (a relation?) is a revelation in its inventiveness for instructions for everday living. From 'eating for free', to 'making your own lipstick'. The boys may fail to explain how to raise the profile of women within a wired culture... but maybe they are building to that in the next edition...

Oh and FYI, type 'Susan Greenfield' into the search engine of Wired to reveal...

Your search - susan greenfield - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all the words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.

Search Wired

Top Stories Magazine Wired Blogs All Wired

Yes. Well I think that says it all really.

Time to create my own Wired.

ZeroCool

It’s funny how the days quickly roll by as lives are streamed by the various portals of socially charged information. Hello to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Dopplr…

It doesn’t seem over ten years since our alleged entry into the ethereal arena of cyberspace. And my, didn’t we take it all so seriously ‘back then’.

Over the weekend I re-watched Hacker’s. Director’s Iain Softley’s, 1995, vision of a New York situated cyberpunk culture. Lot’s of smoking, lots of inline - should that be online? ‘waaaaaaay cool dude!’ - skates and 'a 28.8 bps [sic] modem!’. And with Angelina Jolie.

Friends are made, lost along the way, re-made and the movie ends with Angelina getting wet in a pool with not-a-lot-a-on as a result of the games, territorial fights of fancy and the ultimate battle with a ‘big bad wolf’ corporation as led by the hacking community and culture.

So, today, why so 1990s?

One line in the film stands out, when a friend of the ‘PhantonPhreak’s’ asserts, ‘you’re nobody unless you have a handle’ – an individuals self-nominated ‘cyber’ name, the equivalent of what we would use as a username.

Today, it could equally be argued that ‘you’re nobody if you use anything but your real name’. An interesting turn of events. Where once the anonymous identity reigned supreme, now you’re only ‘insanely great’ if your friends can recognise you and be there to track your every movement. To this extent, the Hacker's suggestive nod to George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother ‘I’m watching you’ is suitably fitting.

Today this would be 'we're watching you'... Add to this observation, today the main protagonist ZeroCool would be zero cool, dismissed as a fake persona and consequently receive no friends on Facebook.

There’s been a steady change to the inclusion (intrusion?) of the arrays of technology, applications and resources that supplement our daily social highlights, lowlights and reveal the lowlifes. Perhaps we should all get used to suffering a new malady of data retention.

From today all ISPs will be ‘legally obliged’ to store all details of your internet content and telephony for 12 months. Whilst not the BigBrother central database of communications information – there are longer term outcomes that will affect our civil liberties. One example is how last month Facebook both defended its right to impose, and had users obliged to support, the sites new terms of service. For Zuckerberg this was promoted on the Facebook blog as an opportunity, 'On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information’ – in short, ‘we have your data and we’re not afraid to use it’. Faced with heavy criticism, the threat of legal action and rebel against Facebook by users (the Facebook group, People Against the New Terms of Service, grew to nearly 150,000 members) the company reinstated the old terms of service and with a new Facebook (trust us) group: The Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (with less than 100,000 members).

One day such events will tempt us to look back and recall not only ‘oh what a funny place that little cyber world was’, but to lament ‘oh how we used to be at liberty’… Now that was a funny old world which was far from ZeroCool.

Some questions to keep in mind: What is privacy? How are we surveilled across networks? What values do should we hold important for personal data? How can governments, corporations, and individuals make information safe?...