Binary Balance

The information equivalent of a nuclear bomb detonating over the Shima Hospital that is SOPA / PIPA last week would seem to have put a rather large question mark over the future of the these proposals (thanks to Wikipedia et al.).

Of course, copyright reliant industry’s troubled relationship with technology isn’t new. Historically, it’s been something of a slow-motion rear guard action over the years as technology steadily makes it easier and easier to distribute information. But previous attempts to combat the inevitable seem very quaint now that the stakes have been well and truly raised.

They say there’s only two things that are certain: death and taxes. Well, taxes is a given I suppose, unless you happen to be in a position to mostly lobby your way out of them. Death on the other hand is a little harder to lobby against at present. The Death card in the traditional Tarot deck (as watchers of The Simpsons or readers of Promethea may recollect) is often interpreted as representing change or transformation. In truth, perhaps the one universally inevitable condition is change. Following on from this, I thought I might try an analogy that incumbents such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) could find some affinity with: At present, the movie/TV industry is like the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Once more or less invincible, now they find they are smack in the middle of the molten ore of advancing technology, transforming themselves into all the past shapes stored in their memory in a desperate attempt to avoid their own destruction. Read more...

For what amounts to a long time in the short history of the Internet, Google has been a synonym for large scale. I vaguely remember a quote from a Google employee who – when talking about their work and just how early they need to start thinking about scaling a system up – said something like ‘One day you get something kind of working and the next day you have 5000 users’¹. There’s not many places where a developer is forced to deal with scaling issues basically from the very beginning of a project. Google developers must scoff at warnings about premature optimisation.

The amount of data that Google stores for people and about people is impressive, mindboggling, constantly growing and more than a little scary. The launch of Google+ adds a new dimension that depending on your perspective, could exponentially add to the scariness factor of the information Google is keeping on us.

Every now and again a horror story will come along which deftly highlights the fact that ‘customer service’ and ‘Google’ appear to be mutually exclusive concepts, at least as far as the general public is concerned. Accounts disabled, important data or one’s entire online identity lost, with no recourse. Certainly #FirstWorldProblems if ever I’ve heard one, but none the less I don’t think calling them horror stories is an exaggeration. Read more...