The Frogs Have More Fun...

Flowers



"All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, Fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames.
- These must all be Fairy names !"

(from Child's Garden of Verses
by R.L. Stevenson)


"Anyone can write a short-story.
A bad one, I mean."

(R.L. Stevenson)
----------------

"Science without conscience is the Soul's perdition."
- Francois Rabelais, Pantagruel
- Acc to/above is citated from: Medical Apartheid. The dark history of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday ; 2006 ; p. 1.)

----------------
"In the high society of the first half of the century, marriage, despite it's bestowal status upon the wife, was the most absurdity. Marriage, conferring instanteous rank or money, ... lost most of its prestige and moment right after the wedding. ...By the end of the century, spurred by Rousseau's moralistic Nouvelle Hèloíse, a contrary cult, that of virtue, arose. After 1770 conjugal and maternal love became not merely admissible, but, for some, moral imperatives. ...

[...]
...Rousseau, who sought for himself the crown of morality in ostensibly defending marriage, presents in his Nouvelle Hèloíse the most enticing and extended defense of illicit love ever penned. The root of the problem is that as the century progressed sensibility became confused with morality: passionate feeling, if expressed in a highly civilized mode with grace and nuance, makes us forgive the Rousseau of The Confessions, for example, his pettiness, his jealousies, his betrayals. This moral-amoral byplay, present already in the novels of Richardson, was to be more intense as the century unfolded."
-
Madelyn Gutwirth : Madame De Staèl, Novelist. The emergence of the Artist as Woman (10,15.)

;
"...As the social contract seems tame in comparison with war, so fucking and sucking come to seem merely nice, and therefore unexciting. ... To be 'nice', as to be civilized, means being alienated from this savage experience - which is entirely staged. [...] The rituals of domination and enslavement being more and more practiced, the art that is more and more devoted to rendering their themes, are perhaps only a logical extension of an affluent society's tendency to turn every part of people's lives into a taste, a choice; to invite them to regard their very lives as a (life) style." - Susan Sontag , on 'Fascinating Fascism' (-74; p 103;104-5 at Under the sign of Saturn)
; "Anyone who cannot give an account to oneself of the past three thousand years remains in darkness, without experience, living from day to day." (Goethe) - as cited by Sontag (on same compile; p. 137.)

;
"It is widely accepted that we are now living in the 'Anthropocene', a new geological epoch in which the Earth's ecosystems and climate are being fundamentally altered by the activities of humans. I loathe the term, but I can't deny that it's appropriate."
; (Goulson), Silent Earth : Averting the Insect Apocalypse (2021; p 47.)
;
"It is sometimes said that humanity is at war with nature, but the word 'war' implies a two-way conflict. Our chemical onslaught on nature is more akin to genocide. It is small wonder that our wildlife is in decline."
; (Goulson, 2021 ; 118.)
;
----------------
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." (Voltaire)
- Citated from; (Joy, Melanie), Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows : An Introduction to Carnism(2010; p. 95.)
;

"In the presence of the monster, you have eyes and ears for nothing else."
; (Flora Tristan) : London Journal of Flora Tristan: the Aristocracy and the Working Class of England ; 1842-edit. (tr: 1982. ; p. 71.)

;
"Every minority invokes justice, and justice is liberty.
A party can be judged of only by the doctrine which
it professes when it is the strongest."
Mdme de Staêl
(on) 'Consideration sur le Révolution de la Francaise' [1818]


10/12/08

The Muleskinner Clairvoyant Part 1.2

:Predictions on close future web trends

(By WhAcKo-GeCkO)


If you want to know how important you are to the world,
stick your finger in a pond and pull it out.
Will the hole remain?” (An African saying)


Our soothsayings reaching the second part we're now mainly discussing the recent most evident new developments at Word Wide Web. Everything moving on fast, new apps and devices developed constantly one rarely stops to ask if there´s anything else you might need to be worried than of being left behind that techno-cultural tornado. Our basic futuristic presuppositions in the 1st part gave us some hindsight, that there is, has been and continuosly does. However, the first part also left us wondering the questions on expectable increases in demand for storage space and the simultaneus decrease in the size of electronic devices, both most expectable during the next ten years to come. So now we are to make some techno-social criss-crossings on these aspects (originally we were to discuss things here on much broader scale but the scope of web-concerned stuff is frustratingly large, so...)


In this 2nd part one main topic will be the recently flourishing development of web trends, namely the web 2.0-sites and applications for home and public communication/entertainment networking. This is perhaps not our main area of expertise, we must confess. In fact, people with more up-to-date knowledge from internet and computers these days can without harm skip these 1.2 presuppositions completely (although, don't skip the last chapter). Mostly we are here just noticing the current trends and our own futuristic visions are actually limited on some comments and presuppositions. Generally it would be hopeless task to predict the net for any longer time limit than ten years forward. Besides, our visions would possibly ideally be at best as some ideological and thematical thougts similarly as Roszaks early visionaries discussed in first part of our predictions1.

Our important presupposition concerning some 15-20 years onwards are based on some overall views of changes in geolocative importance (on computers/software manufacture): So far the main center on home computer development has been the geographical area of Silicon Valley. Most likely, technologically presumable at least, that development is starting to reach its limits within some ten years, as alternative areas shall start really flourish elsewhere in the world as well. This will happen, according to our soothsayings, mainly because of broader competition but also for the need on more variabilities and local solutions. Also simultaneously with this trend, the role of the single machine will change more towards single access-point, merely a bare panel as tool for viewing the variabilities of the ever-enlargening "net-experience". The process doesn't necessary mean the demise of Home PC as it nowadays exists, neither the end for the governing companies (in markets), but a wider variability of choices available for users, we suppose.


We also suppose that the areas where new equally influensive technology centers will be born and situated are expected around the globe, some examples as Asian-Pacific, India, perhaps South-America, most likely in the same areas already known as local hi-tech places (Just as an interesting point-of-view, view the Wikipedia list of places named with Silicon prefix around the world, to see where similar hi-tech flourishing most possibly develops.) Yet, the actual results of this trend will most likely become effective after the limits of the ten years devoted to this part(1.2.) of our soothsayings. So far, theres not any real signs of technological main center shifting away from California as many renown web-related companies have been for decades now US-based/owned.


If there is one most influential short-term expectable development affecting the home-computing, that would most likely be the long-awaited triumph of Linux (or similar) OSs, Linux having been recently much campaigned in markets within minilaptops and fx in context of Android-smartphone. But, actually supposed breakthrough of Linux has taken so far taken lot longer time than was often predicted and remains a trend still waiting to gain real influence (but intensively waited to happen by many).


Not necessary adherent to the things discussed in previous paragraphs, but similarly important as an longer time trend in nets continuation is the question of internet privacy. This has long been (and is), mostly the same old question, or say divide, inherited from the Win 95-times mid-1990s, whether the openness or so called traditional closed systems are better to make you safe and sound. According to Jonathan Zittrain the openness has been the driving factor behind the internet we all surf at now, but its been questionized from the beginning and the process (for a new single program or net application) most often overally goes (fx) like:

...a generative platform that invites contributions from anyone who cares to make them. The contributors start among amateurs, who participate more for a fun and whimsy than for profit. Their work, previously unnoticed in the mainstream, beguns to catch on, and the power of the market kicks in to regularize their innovations and deploy them in markets far larger than the amateurs´domains. Finally the generative feature that invite contribution and that worked so well to propel the first stage of innovation begin to invite trouble and reconsideration, as the power of openness to third-party contribution destabilizes its first set of gains.”2


We are not as much worried from Zittrains fears of technology losing generativeness, as our basic belief in nets potential to overcome such intentional aims of control is still strong. However there is reasons for such concern, as can be noticed fx from repeating debates on the question of limiting the net traffic by ISPs and other such demands for supervisory roles show. Also, typical trend which often happens on at certain level the most innovative phenomenoms, often catching popularity on the net in short periods like months (might have been developed years earlier) is that they are consequently bought by big players and soon brought into public use with more forethought tactics(as has been recent trend for some years). Still, we feel thats merely a matter where most (advertisement) money goes, nets communicative and ”cyber-revolutionary” powers most likely cannot be controlled. We believe so, as any demands for that kind of control have proven actually a hopeless task (as examples from some totalitarian countries show).


In spite of actual efforts of control on nets free development, there's always some co-existing important trends that mostly cannot be "chained". Another interesting thing is, besides, that the fastness of development will continuously make a lot of stuff useless in a matter of months even, and overally most likely on couple years periods. Generalizing on this we can suppose that it not only means products will automatically go out of usability in even quicker in the future but that most propably it creates a certain gaps between users wishes and product makers hoping to cash from ever new generations of models. As an example of surprising intermarriage of both has been the phones market we discussed in the first part article, where mobile phones continue to sell every year new models equipped with some latest on-developed applications and services. Still, as side-by result of that has been that the prices of most phones with newest capabilities and services have remained relatively high level for a long time (at least some ten years).


The Torrano Family ; basics, development, future


When considering the ongoing factors of change nowadays in our first part of articles, we found certain most significant developments as the development of social websites and 'new mobile wireless platforms' in form of new generation smart-phones like Iphone and Android. Preceding the modest ongoing mobile networking development, one of the most significant factor on development of net (say from within some 4 to 6 years) has been Bittorrent. That software, or more actually a protocol, is mostly used for downloading media and entertainment content (like ´pirated´ movies and pc-games) and is most typical example of web 2.0 application; its relying on content sharing, and was able to gain huge following in short time. Originally developed as open-source program for sharing Linux-distiributions to users, the code was quickly adapted in the use of rising file-sharing world.

Nowadays, most apparent wars from copyright-concerns being the recent past history, Bittorrent is developed to be in use for every imaginable piece of emerging hardware, software and platform. There´s bittorent handling browsers like Opera, there´s an endless list of clients for bittorrent protocol; fx the most popular like uTorrent, Azureus, BitComet. [For a list of clients currently available, one can see fx p2p-Newssite Slyck ]. Not to mention the ' combined' clients for bittorrent as well as other sharings networks, not to mention the natively bittorrent using devices, not to mention its clients modifications for smartphones (we are not much aware to name certain solutions, so lets just suppose that...its the ongoing prospective future as well). Also, BT was taken in active use commercially as means of distibuting the new space-hungry content like Hdef-video. Even much of the new hardware developed as so called ´closed systems´ (as oppositing the ´generative´platforms, to quote Zittrains terminology) can be hacked to use bittorrent compliant software. From recent such projects one can mention TorrentRelay, a service that allows BT-downloads on Iphone, PS3, WII + other web-enabled devices that don´t natively offer the support. Though in early state of development, service is being mentioned as having a met with a great demand already.3


It seems likely to suppose that BT will remain as the most widely accepted platform on videodistributing-services for at least the next 5 years (´til 2013). After that its quite possible that some other influence has emerged and drive past, but we are not foresight with wisdom if there will be some and which. Surely there is demand oncoming: In Spring 2008 the HD content was starting to gain accentance in typical home-users machines. That meaning not just the discs but also on especially TV-shows available at several P2P-networks, which were the most downloaded choice of the content available. However, at the time most people were not yet having suitable capacity in Broadband, also as the storage spaces were not at the level of demands of extremely space-consuming HighDef video. With new improvements like USB 3.0 flash drives, broadband and processor speeds improved the new format was supposed to quickly come in wide use as typical file-sharers preferred format. Still, downloading of 1080i/p movie would at the time with common 2 Mbits/sec speed take overnight time. So it seems reasonable to suppose that impatient customers, gotten used to quick network transfers, would most likely adopt in change with new hardware to gain from the benefits of new format.4 After some years, most typical user would soforth have in use at least some 5 Mbits/sec connection, some couple Tb Harddrives and perhaps some 32 Gb stick in need for localtransfers (ten years: presume exponential growth...).


However...As we remember from Roszaks teachings, information does not equal to ideas. The increased sharing isn´t any way meaning the shared information is somewhat more inventive, or, generative and unavoidably prosperous wealthy feast of innovativiness. It most likely (already has) overwhelms the online space with the available content so succesfully that typical user hardly has the time think about if there should be as selective as when choosing tomatoes from the groceries. However, consequences from that sharing(-culture) are that the value of media-content is somewhat diminished. Sharing(-culture) has also been helping to create a most user-modified structure where (in time) should personal creations become as appreciated as the 'pirated'-content5 from commercial markets. The democratization on media shows also most obviously in creation of the more independent forms in consumption of the media, that imerely seeks to freed from traditionally given time-scheduels and devices. Think about TV-channels and digital television as aged forms of media delivery. Think about personal, selectively ordered program lists and watch times as well as portable devices used for receiving the media (traditional TV by no means disappearing, but forms of use are becoming more and more various, living room slowly loosing its podium as the only place of homes main media center...). Simultaneously, as TV-shows have become increasingly popular form of torrents, new services for them have also been developed. One of most popular, TIOTI (Tape-it-off-the-Intenet) was (officially) started in 2007 and quickly got similar competitors. Not surprisingly, the feedback from the industry wasn't much appreciating, at least in the beginning.6 Soon (propably already now) many TV-programs are streamed to online distribution as torrents simultaneosly when broadcasted on channels with similar services. I mean, thats just a logical step forward.

Also, returning on the technical aspects more of concern here, the recent new developments on bittorrent architecture give us a hindsight of the coming predictable new improvements in the platform. As bittorrent is decentralized platform in nature, its basis has tradionionally relied on centralized searching via trackers, which means files created on WWW to gather individual users client-programs in transmission of certain file. This is supposed to change, likely in a way what the developmental ´Cubit´-protocol proves to do; to make keyword searching available directly through bittorrent network and such way it would eliminate the need for trackers(on the www) used:

”P2P applications can perform searches but are not very good at it. Distributed hash tables (DHT) are one common approach, but these generally good only at finding exact matches due to the nature of hashes...they are concerned with building robust and truly decentralized P2P networks and they see approximate keyword search as being crucial to that effort...´We do hope that this type of system can be used in place of a centralized aggregator.´”7


Whether this will actually happen is also a question of other developments as well, but its propably one most likely scenario. Actually ´Cubit´ is in developmental state and most users propably would (even if Cubit happens to succeed) propably remain faithfull users of trackers. Yet, capability to pass the time-taking tracker searching would possibly be most wellcomed improvement for the phones uses of bittorrent (increasing trend as we did suppose). So lets hope that will affect on mobile platform most deliquently. No reason to suppose that there wouldn't be bittorrent ´heavy users´ on webphones users as well if the speeds and services are in satisfactory level. And they will most likely be, at least in some modest ten years time-scale...all in all, like any other area connected to the exitement and trendyness of the web, the torrent-scene seems to have but gathered more popularity and become also a mainstream phenomenom. In the next five years this development will also finally see its continuing breakthrough on commercial uses like games and series distribution, so most every form of content becomes available via BT, officially and unofficially.


Conclusive remarks


Finally, as an ending for our internet-weighed part of the futuristics, we will offer some frank foresights on various areas: Taking a simple guideline from an old saying that computing powers will grow somewhat exponentially and we won´t be much misguided. As a brief comparison to that we can mention the worlds population growth, but one can keep in mind that there´s not any supposed highest peak or turn of the trend downwards in foresight as computers concerned.


Gaming


Gaming is expected to be the most driving economic succes factor in the ”new” entertainment industry. Growing (in sales most obviously) are consoles, online-games, and perhaps not surprisingly most influentially the mobile games. Advertising inside games is also becoming propably the norm as staying manner.8 Simultaneusly as ads continue to become increasingly integrated to gaming, localised mobile advertising spreads in the markets. As we notice that already a couple years ago there were fx technologies in development that push adverts directly to phone handsets of by-passers with small servers situated on shops9, and remember that similar techniques on tracking users buying habits and preferences have long been around, we can expect that this will hit the mainstream markets within 5-10 years. Most likely as much arguing will raise as has been the case 'traditionally' on questions internet privacy.

Movies and music are predicted to be outrunned by gaming in close future, but we don´t predict so ground-breaking revolution. No reason to believe that anything would anyway remarkably diminish fx movies sales, be there real revolution on entertainment media-distribution ways, or not. Our visions suppose that most influential improvements will still propably be in the picture quality and graphics effects, as well as on harware the paper-flat screens taken into use in both movie viewing and gaming. Perhaps some 3D-viewing forms will finally become more popular in some newer devices.

As for the home-entertainment media future, Sony's new improved PlayStation system can be mentioned as an typical example: the device is intended to be developed to include most connectivity and shareability as home media center; along with gaming it is to be of use for streaming Bluray's and other content to external devices as fx laptops and cellphones. Online-gaming is to be the main juice but the user can also take advantage of other kind of uses involving streaming, etc.10 The concept propably becomes in time more common in gaming area as well as home networking, though propably not most PS3 customers will eventually use internet mainly with it. Consoles, also without doubt will still dominate the gaming markets as main gaming devices as family users main choices. Virtuality and role-playing as most popular 'new' forms of netgaming propably are expected to represent fastest rising trends.

On basic needs for the computer-power gaming might be considered as some kind of forerunner, so...if we consider the now frontline basic gaming technology as some hint from the coming we might easily suppose that in couple of years (Say 2-5 year scale), the basic norm for the common home-PC needs would be somewhat same as the ”gamer”-intended high-tech machine now (though we must not forget that yet recently laptops were used for other needs as gaming and the coming market of flash-memory using small laptops was also in the beginnings). In spite of that, relatively efficient machines in close future would then have the basic capacities now advertised as in use at hi-tech gaming machines, so compare the relatively recent gaming machine capabilities to most common now: at least core 2 3Ghz processor with internal 12 mb cache (no idea on which level these are to develop, we´re not expertise on these...), 4 Gb (or more) high-speed memory, some 1 Tb HD-space.11 Such capacities have been predicted a long time ago already (B.G. Said some years ago, if I remember this correctly, that in 2010 basic machines would have something like such capacities we´ve just mentioned). In ten year scale the growth should be exponential so one can count from that...in 2012-14 the cheap minilaptop for quick viewing of e-mails and little tasks should easily hold something like the above mentioned capacity(and more, as new techniques are introduced...).


Storage needs


Remembering our picture about storage space developments at the end of first part in our article-series, we can also discuss a little further what comes to advances (needs of any common Joe) in storage needs, easy comparison on using Moorean law as within my own gainings of USB-devices(sticks) tells this much: 2002 I got along with 128 mb, six years later its 2Gb. With similar logic, at 2018 the basic stick(or whatever device used then) will hold some 128 Gb (Just for the case; lets double that prediction for 256 Gb, cause thats just for the basic needs, like e-mails and usable programs + the e-booked British Library small undersection (like physics fx) of content you just can´t live without those days...:) Newer HD´s capacities are harder to suppose; According to an article some 500 Tbytes (50000 Gb! - if I guessed right in decimals...) data-capasity could be available on similar devices to Mp3- and other media-players at 2030.12 Supposedly, that kind of storage amounts would be available only in the newest hi-techs devices, but any common sense tells us that its not impossible to this kind storage spaces being developed also within more traditional solutions. We don´t predict such a devices for a common consumer market being available generally (what's the use? Though if the market trend goes as so far has, its just as expectable...), and also as first rumoured developments of nanotechs are supposed to be extremely expensive (dubious if there will any available for common man even 2030). However its, more than resonable to suppose that anybodys Laptop (or whatever home-PC those days) could then possibly hold some hundreds of Tbytes, or to be more understandable one could theoretically easily hold fx all the textual and/or statistical data of the world (say; all from 1900´s) or millions and millions of MP3´s, all that in your personal computer.


Oss – Will there be Windows anymore?


If that remarkable next generation OS will be Windows, is a question itself...On some next 5 years scale next windows generation named Vienna is promised to be the next MS developing platform. On other hand, Linux is propably more widely used on consumer market than is generally acknowledged13, as nowadays people also may have in use several OS´s carried on sticks. But theres not anything prosperous in close sight to bring down Windows from its place as the ”governing”-system. Meanwhile the open-source development efforts have also actually improved its usabilities to a level that the inter-connectivity between different systems has also improved remarkably.


However, the new improved PC-architectures in close future demands such amounts of power increases that the old x86-basings can no longer provide. According to rumours the project named Midori is claimed to became Microsofts ”post-windows” operating system. The benefits in question of movement away from windows-environment are improvements in between MS´s and other systems and web-applications, but also support for parallelism as some technical improvements in asynchronous processor platforms(or something like that, tasks speeds performances fastening as the main point we suppose...) Current windows code has its limits, but a lot of benefits, not least that its been tested on various configurations of machines in real use. So the fear of losing that is propably more problematic burden in the case of completely new OS-development than technical details in question. Still, there seems to be predictions on partial inclusion of asynchronous technics for the oncoming programming platforms at least. As a new form of OS, then ultimate result will most likely be something in combination of newest creations (like, say cloud-computing) and more traditional forms. 14 Also it is said that the actual focus on proposed new OS architecture by the company is all but clear:

”Microsoft has formally admitted only that Midori is an ´incubation project´- an internal project that may or may not result in an eventual commercial product. As such, Midori could be anything from a complete dead-end, to the OS 95 percent of the world will be running in five to ten years.” 15

So we predict a similar timescale on moving to next level of computing platforms. Whether there will still be another master system or the ring of systems to take the crown we are not blessed in wisdom to know beforehand. Similarly, we don´t dare to predict whether some of the governing companies nowadays will rule, even less whether some of them (and which?) will perish. Most likely in 2018 there will still be fx Microsoft, Google, Nokia, and ...what else? After that period, the path is at least prepared: begins the bright new age with the transmutant devices, nanotechs, scifi-communication systems and ...what else? Just wait and see..:)


Anyway, we suppose that the transition period to completely into the age of asynchronous processors, communicative platforms over certain OSs limits and all that synced to a new generations of products will (in its entity) take most of the aforementioned ten year period. Besides, most likely Windows systems will last in use even after that ten year period in homes at least (by people who don´t bother anymore to see the trouble of investing on the technological wheel of fortunes.) Also, most likely the integration of new web techniques in the same time will most likely affect the development and the gaps (in inter-connectivity) between Windows and other OSs will likely lessen in importance (at least for the more advanced users).

Blogging


Blogs have been an area of extensive growth in recent years, so we suppose that will continue to be a rising trend. This should also be ever-more enlargening phenomenom as even more people annually are able to have their share of computers and internet (mainly in developing countries). So, we don´t predict its fall out of fashion or quickly disappearance in any time soon. Naturally not everybody will ever be interesting fx in writing (to blogs), but similarly there will be always people willing to.


As within the development of marketing, cash-in and similar practices within, blogs (in their most innovative forms and also, overally) will become increasingly integrated within typical social webbing services; they will also remain mostly fuelled by voluntary hobbyists. Blogs will also be used to advertise new, trendy software and hardware products to earn markets quickly among certain specific users. Still, the blogs making it to really cashable channels of marketing will remain as rare as any other similar web-inventions.


However, which are the forms it will develop into? We suppose that increases in social webbing and content developing tools will change blogging possibilities towards even more easier and richer forms of media-weighed web-pages, but also that there will appear unlimited number of variabilities (for blogging). Text will possibly remain as main bone, but other forms can as well become popular channels of expression in them (say fx video-content, or them creating/forming towards new kind of discussion forums of some kind). At least on some some modest ten year scale, the whole concept of net will be more or less revolutionized (again) and the forms of blogging will possibly have changed towards similar directions. Or, alternatively finished as such form it nowadays flourishes.


The main important power in blogging, their nature as democrating communicative channel of common people shouldn´t be underestimated either. In time, they might become even more effective (fx in addition/integration of alternative news-channels like webcasts and new kind of communicative media integrated within). That possibly helps them to gain ever more audience from traditional news-medias. And, not surprisingly results from recent statistics in annual meter in blogging, Technocrati's State of Blogosphere 2008 seem to prove our predictions: blogging was still on increase in 2008. In addition to that one can notice from the results that globally there were some 184 million people who had started keeping a blog (but, only 7.4 M of blogs started were posted during recent 3 months period), 59 per cent had been blogging more than a year (in Europe the average blogging tenure was 33 months, in US/Asia, quite similar), 48 per cent of blogs were from US (27 per cent from Europe, 13 from Asia; propably little unreliable estimate, as the survey was fulfilled on english), from European bloggers 48 per cent were under the age of 34 (from Asians 73 per cent!). On personal blogs maintained, women (83 per cent) were more numerous, men on professional blogs (76 per cent). Also, branding was increasingly becoming popular (as one third had been approached to be brand advocate), most bloggers were spending from 3 to 10 hours blogging per week and most popular topics were news, music and videos. 16


Social webbings


Together with blogging, in recent years social webbing practices have spread like mushrooms in the rain and there´s available every kind of service for sharing, commenting, chating, bookmarking etc. Peoples overall web-profiles have started to become ever more important matter in their everyday life (at least on U.S. We've noticed, and that quite likely predates overall trend) Consequently, we can suppose that in close future your Cyberspace profile might be as important part of your social image as real life contacts. Fx in the development of smartphone uses, the trendy way of social webbings is making these kind of uses more of necessity than rarity. Typically, many of the uses first created for Android-phone as extra apps were somehow using the new social webbings; or as expressed in market-oriented language:

We´ve learned from computers that its really nice to have complete connectivity, to able to connect anything in a kind of open way. We´ve also learned that its really nice to be able to run any application you want to run, also in an open way. For a lot of people and a lot of time during your life, the phone is your main computing platform..."17


That means practically, the new social connectivity and possibilities for sharing notes, contacts, short flicks and is not just limited to trendy smartphone platforms or Facebooks and MySpaces, which are similarly just the tip of iceberg. There´s dozens of web-sites offering and aiming to improve their usabilities for that manner, one can mention some recent like fx Last.FM (music), Flickr (pics and vids). Some services, like Googles Friend Connect make possible to gather and share content from users different web-sites or accounts. Sharingbility and popularity of social webbing sometimes seems even drive over privacy concerns in ways where users will be willing ro reveal their account information to service provider (like in the example of firefox-extension XOOPIT shows, that being a service offering possibility to making the pic and video content shared straighly available to other users of extension. As was noted, the shareability was preferred to privacy as the extension was quickly gaining success among users.)
18


Similar services can be expected to be available (many are already) in mobile use, and their rising popularity has been without doubt one of the most rising trends recently, so again, we suppose that will remain so also on coming ten years. Similarly as similar social- and media concerned services gain ever more audiences (and also as unavoidable result: content) these will be even more evidently fused to other services generated. The trendiness of these services only lttle in time falls out of mode and they become more conventional as forms of "web-experience". After that – we suppose that the new techniques make possible for the people to add in their favored services almost anything available from similar spesified databases, ultimately creating the real ”multimedia haven” where most content is freely (alternatively priced by some low participation fees or advert-including systems) used and shared. Keeping that in mind one can also notice that in 2018 a lot more popular old-dated media will be free digital copyright concerns, even if similar copyright systems and practises still remain in use until that date.


Security, parasites, pests


Concerning the role of Malware, crackware, phishing et similar threats we rely on the following paragraphs mostly on F-secures relatively recent security report. According to it, in recent times there has been enormous raise in the numbers of new and especially modified earlier malware in numbers. Most typical recent (not as well publicly well-known) types of intentional threats were rootkits(new versions), Storm-botnets using of hacking techniques to inject SQL-databases in web-sites (to spread the harmful programs). On mobile front, jailbreaking (using alternative, self/commonly developed programs, placed in a folder other than original developed software) and hacking phones to more openly communicative uses were seen as most security endagering practices.19 Jailbreaking also quickly became common practise in the case of Apple´s popular Smartphone(Iphone)20, much of flag-carrier/fore-runner in the brand new generation of smartphone revolution.


Also, according to another study, significantly high percentage of the users(some 40%) were still using out-dated browsers, which is often main security threat as in the case of on-line surfing. Though web security was in the focus of several companies, the most useful tactics to improve that security were suggested as adding certain ´Best-before´-type labels to browser versions so that users might update them more often.21 So, in the short time level, nothing much new. The user is propably still most common typical security weakness, though computers as platform have become more protected from traditional attacks, web in the same time having been found more hackable in variety of ways.

Besides, also the hardware was now found containing the possibility for security threat, as can be learned from the article on U.S. Military finding its machinery counterfeited (originally chinese manufactured parts, not necessary officials but third party providers). Most typical cases found were the computers parts being an older model than supposed to be when provided. On such cases the machinery itself was found possible to contain trojan/backdoor (doesn´t really much surprise us here at MSW, remembering the early theoremas, mainly Roszaks, which we've discussed on these article-series earlier...) Typically, on common consumer level this kind of security concerns seem less typical and quite unpropable, but actually earlier similar cases had been found on U.S. consumer PC-market too.22


As some combining remarks (from all the aforementioned) we can notice that on information available we are to rely mostly on supposition that most malware is developed in the traditional uses as online spying, theft and botnetting. Nothing much predicts that to change in close future. What makes it diffcult to predict if there will some new kinds of threats is that these are most often developed simultaneusly or as targeting to find weaknesses on new programs and apps security improvements. Most malware is written for Windows-systems, as it still remains worlds most popular OS. Still, at least on a short time trend, we predict that the Ipv6 and new ´safer´ browser developments will most likely lessen the most direct security threats. Also same can be noted from new browser-models, like the recent Google Chrome-project basing on separating the different web-apps driven on browser to different tasks that have no connectivity to each other.23 Be that a new improvement or not, there's yet several reasons to suppose that growth of wireless technologies will spread more security problems in the handsets as well as publicly used other devices.


As some forms of new generation of net-threats one can notice the so called Dos-attacks, which in recent years have gotten increasing publicity, often related to some international conflicts and/or arguing between some nations. These forms of 'cyberattacks' were either nothing new as similar have been seen earlier, and on the other hand their possible effectiveness to other ways than keeping the 'attacked' web-sites down for some time is not generally made known. Also, idenfying the attackers is not so far been found possible (or: not publicised generally). Most likable any nation/or group with capabilities can use Dos-attack effectively, but on basis seen so far we won't predict their development in future to serious cyberwarfare. Even if that would be the case, in the ten years period there's propably still not any sophisticated Matrix/Cyberfiction-stylish sensationable bugs attacking each other in virtual platforms to be seen (wouldn't it be exciting, though). More likely its new forms of regular spying, theftt, identity and bankcard number stealths – not necessary changing the overall uses of net as seen so far. But, its not impossible either that new kind of malware techniques will in time permit typical users to witness some real cyberwarfare (between nations and/or different groups). Also, in my most imaginable moments I can foresee a world where with relavitely low expertise one can indeed start tracking other peoples movements via connectivity devices and use that for some purposes. And, not surprisingly, that is already actually quite possible within the developed 3G-networks (by bluetooth apps, fx). However, in transparent society of positive kind, it should also be no overwhelming trouble for mobile user to track the footprints of such shadower found on trails.


The Environmental concern


In the next (and final) part of our visions, we also hope to be able to discuss more from the other developing areas in close future like biofuels, nanotechs, genetics that, in fact are already affecting our lives. Politics is not within MuleSkinner perspective, ´cause its propably most uncertain and useless area of futuristics to predict. However, in the coming 50 years we predict at least couple major changes in world political area. One affecting factor will, propably be the new economical order, more based on new 'risky' food-economics and the question of how to cope with increasing populations and increasing unequality. However, predicting which nations or unions will vanish, which prosper, we simply find too difficult and boring. Also, the capitalism stabilized as the main governing economical model of the world, we don´t suppose any major changes in that situation. The harmful results of that, for there will be plenty, are much connected to the question whether the environmentally disastrous effects can be slowed or circumvented on one way or another.

No matter how effectively everything is developed, nothing ever comes for free. The unavoidable question raised as consequence from the unforeseen driving economics is: will the nature cope with all this ever-increasing need for power, fastness and commerce? Most likely answer: It won´t. If one is to believe latest reports from climate change and overall warming, results will be devastating and affect all peoples life in every seven continent, with variabilities of course. The IPCC-report (2007) predicts overall warming until 2050, even if the green house emissions can be lowered, and that will suffice to cause floods, disasters, food scarcity, depopulation, etc.24 Although, alternatively it has also been claimed that the whole process of warming is in fact an overscarying scenario, and can be explained more or less just a stemporal variabilities in climate periods25. Even if we believe in changes during oncoming periods and yet don´t think the warming will be as overwhelming as expected, theres still a good deal of evidence already that nature is not adapting to human acrions as easily as conventionally has been believed. Warmer winters, floodings, ice sheets meltings...Just a coincidence?



Whether or not we take the global warming(as has been quite well proven to be happening...) theory as trustable scenario, it seems reasonable to believe that at least most of the IPCC-reports remarks
26 should be seen as real warnings and them must be considered as environmental threats of the future. The enviromental changes, taken for granted or not, most likely will affect peoples lives significantly in the coming ten year period predicted already (directly or secondary via changing world economics, etc.)


From the other influential factors and results, we can take a quick look on FAO´s report Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017, which even more fits into to the period we are hoping to predict here. According to FAO the prices of provisions are more likely to rise in the coming ten year period, after which they will propably slightly decline, but will remain on generally higher levels than prevailing period (1998-2007). Globally, predictions are that; beef and pork may be some 20 percentage higher; raw and white sugar around 30; wheat, maize and skim milk powder 40 to 60; butter and oilseeds more than 60, vegetable oils even over 80 percentage. Also, prices are noted to be more volatile than during earlier period. High prices may be beneficial for some, negative for others. Most notable suffers from that will be farmers of the developing countries and especially the poorer people of the Third World.27 As some of the main causes for negative impacts (like raising food prices) are mentioned (ao.) growing needs for Biofuel sources and also (again), climate change28.


So the Brand New Cybersociety will be the main evil child, one of most significant reasons for deforestated, overpopulated, overpolluted, food scarce and over-globalized world, created by the most dominant force in the forms of 200-year (unstoppable) development: Capitalism? Perhaps, perhaps not and most likely something in between. Overally developments in the web, discussed in this part of the article, are also changes of preferences, changes in manners of life in digitalized society towards new class-economics. Consequently, the coming new generations will be basing their choices on different situations and circumstances. As has been noted, the competition for more effective solutions in the web mostly enlarges the variable available choices for individual user. Same could be the case concerning environmental decisions, choices available for each individual person could be much wider if certain ecological questions would be really taken seriously (by producers, mostly). Whether the commercial drive or the environmental concern will weight more in the future is to be seen.


But to complete our visions covering the lenghtier 50 year period takes propably another vast number of pages full of text, as in the beginning this(1.2) part of article was to contain about half the lenght it is now. So it seems reasonable now to call it off and leave rest of our visions to the next part. Most likely the final chapter will be realized merely in a form of time-line, where the most significant inventions and/or changes on human-nature environments will be placed on propable timings. The time-scale extending further, we will be relying mostly on the presuppositions that have been already mentioned here and also on our science-fictive imagination concerning possible futuristic developments. The actual sources of news, reports, or say, actually verified information/data will serve mostly kind of roadposts in our foresights. Lets hope that will shorten the latter part a little...





SoURCES and NoTES:

(Wikipedia et sim. linked directly in text)


1. 'The MuleSkinner Clairvoyant Part I. A brief look at the close Future Web development.' [On this blog -> indexed under tags: futuristics, clairvoyances]. We, of course not suppose futuristic visions would last as well as Roszaks, nor that them would be as comprehensively based on, say, the archaic history of computerization (90s prevailing decades from todays perspectives). In spite of that, we are also aiming to predict a far larger areas of developments in entity; that is, not just the computers and the transhumanistic oncoming changes within, but also the environmental changes and fx the affects of climate change on humans in global scale. Also, our complete time-scaling aims to reach for a far further period onwards (until 2050s).


2. Anderson, Nate, 2008, ”Book Review: Jonathan Zittrain´s ´The Future of the Internet – And how to stop it”, http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-2008-06-2-admin.ars viewed 23.6.2008 We´re using Zittrains paragraphs cited in the book review, not directly from the book (which we're not familiar with, must confess...)


3.
´Enigmax´, 2008, ”Download torrents on PS3, Iphone and Web-enabled Devices”, http://torrentfreak.com/download-torrents-on-ps3-iphone-and-other-web-enabled-devices-080610/ viewed 22.6.2008


4. Mennecke, Thomas, 2008, ”Blu-Ray Wins, the Internet Doesn´t Care” Slyck 24.2.2008 http://www.slyck.com/story1668_BluRay_Wins_the_Internet_Doesnt_Care viewed 16.6.2008


5. As result, the concepts of 'pirated', 'copied' and 'copyright' have also become increasingly blurred on internet-based activity, in fact so effectively, that within time they are expected to diminish completely and ultimately force the entertainment markets to follow the unavoidable change of form on web-markets. For further comments on that one can view the P2P-documentary 'Steal This Film' (pts 1 & 2), available in freely. See fx Wikipedia article on Steal This Film.


6. Roettgers, Janko, 2007, "TIOTI to launch Tuesday" 1.10.2007, http://newteevee.com/2007/10/01/tioti-opens-to-the-public/ viewed 11.9.2008


7. Anderson, Nate, 2008, ”´Cubit´ P2P search protocol could one day sink The Pirate Bay”, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080617-cubit-p2p-search-protocol-could-one-day-sink-the-pirate-bay.html viewed 22.6.2008


8. Caron, Frank, 2008, ”Gaming expected to be a $68 billion business by 2012”, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080618-gaming-expected-to-be-a-68-billion-business-by-2012.html viewed 22.6.2008


9. [Winder, Dave], 2007, "What's hot in Britain's Silicon Fen", PCPRO March/2007, Issue 149. The article tells (ao) about that kind of project on Cambridge hi-techs; "...the control software can even change the content according to the time of day, or only send information to someone who has been standing outside a shop window for five minutes." , alternatively: "...if you simply walk past, you´re not pestered." (p. 136) According to article no personal data (like telephone numbers) is collected to servers and users can as easily reject from receiving the ads messages.


10. Kuchera, Ben, 2008, ”They say it got smart: a 2008 review of the PS3”, http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/playstation-3-blu-ray.ars viewed 16.6.2008 (contains several web-pages, Pdf available for registered users of Ars Technica -website)


11. What MMO, Issue 01/June 2008. Our information is from this advertisement-magazine for gaming computers, whose content sounds a bit outdated already, as such capacities on memory and hard disk level were also common on regular laptops at the time of writing. Most recent polishings from hi-tech front can of course be checked from web (however, we didn´t bother for that...).


12. Lehto, Tero, 2008, ”500 teratavun muisti mobiililaitteisiin tähtäimessä. Nanotekniikan läpimurto Britanniassa”, http://www.tietokone.fi/uutta/uutinen.asp?news_id=33621&tyyppi=1 viewed 30.5.2008


13. (Acc. to information available for us) Linux market-share noticeably was 0.91 per cent from used net OSs when recently checked on 11.10.2008, see http://marketshare.hitslink.com/( -> Operation systems)


14. Bright, Peter, 2008, ”Midori musigns: Thoughts on a ´post-windows´ OS.”, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080804-midori-musings-thoughts-on-a-post-windows-os.html viewed 9.8.2008


15. Bright, Peter, 2008, ibid.


16. "State of the Blogosphere", 2008, http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere, (Technocrati 2008 blog statistics summary, includes several web-pages), viewed 14.10.2008 The actual numbers of bloggers/blogs come from different sources that may vary a bit, still the trend seems to be still increasing, although a bit slower recently. As some points of interest we can also mention (some of) Internet Content Producer Chris Pirillo's views on future of blogging also cited in report mentioned: "...the process by content is created for one blog or a series of blogs will continue to undergo radical upheavals. This past year, we saw the introduction of countless "microblogging" platforms, to the point where they (themselves) have become a commodity —further pushing individual voices to the Blogosphere’s melting pot. Brand will continue to decentralize, and micro-communities will form within any one of the loosely-structured services (like FriendFeed, which values the continuation of conversation as much as it does the initiation portion).”, "Video will also become increasingly important to convey complex messages that are often lost in text - [...]"


17. Roth, Daniel, 2008, ”Google´s Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web ”, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android (article contains several web-pages, Wired Magazine), [Sentences cited Larry Pages saying according to Roth] viewed 27.6.2008


18. Xoopit Transforms Your Gmail Inbox into a Multimedia Haven”, 2008, http://lifehacker.com/374651/xoopit-transforms-your-gmail-inbox-into-a-multimedia-haven viewed 22.6.2008 The service, offering people availability for media saved on others accounts using it and have their own inbox content including all media there available,like pics and vids, demands people voluntarily relieving their passwords to service provider to be able maintain service. That (according to article) didn´t seem to lessen its popularity.


19. ”F-Secure IT Security Threat Summary for the First Half of 2008: More malware than ever before, Targeted attacks, New ways to infect PCs, and Jailbreaking”,

http://www.f-secure.com/2008/1/ viewed 30.6.2008



20. Jewell, Dave, 2008, ”The iPhone's love/hate relationship with hackers. A year in the making”, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/30/iphone_birthday/ viewed 2.07.2008


21. Hruska, Joel, 2008, ”40% of surfers don´t bother with browser security updates”, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080701-40-of-surfers-dont-bother-with-browser-security-updates.html viewed 2.07.2008


22. Hruska, Joel, 2008, "Chinese counterfeit chips causing military hardware crashes", http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081006-chinese-counterfeit-chips-causing-military-hardware-crashes.html viewed 8.10.2008


23. Patton, Tony, 2008, "What does Google Chrome offer Developers?", http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=729 viewed 16.9.2008 [On Chrome each tab-window in browser is handled like a single distinct session. If one tab goes down for one reason or the other, it shouldn´t affect the other connections user might have open simultaneously. In this manner, Chrome lets user create desktop shortcuts to web pages that can be maintained individually. Though the concept much plays in within Google's own ambitions in favor of using their own applications straight at web, it also shows path for the more flexible and propably safer usabilities for these applications (that being so, we find it less likely that the future will focus around Googles solutions solely or even mostly...) Also, Mozilla was developing basicly similar desktop web-app, also available as Firefox-extension, see: ”Major Update to Prism, First Prototype of Browser Integration”,3.7.2008, http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/03/major-update-to-prism-first-prototype-of-browser-integration/ viewed 9.10.2008 ]


24. IPCC WGII Fourth Assessment Report. Working Group II Contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. (This should be available as pdf from IPCC-site however I couldn't locate it at the moment. A shorter, more recent document containing similar information on climate change and its is co-effects is "Key IPCC conclusions on climate change impacts and adaptations WMO Bulletin, April 2008", pdf also available at IPCC-site.)


25. Lino, Geraldo Luis, 2008, ”Global Warming: Facts and Factoids”, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9199, Global Research ca. Center for Reseach on Globalization. Lino fx states in his article that the whole CO2-question of human created warming is just smokescreen for overall ”new enviromental colonialism”. We are not concerned on Lino's opinions about IPCC, whether them being correct or not, but its unavoidable to take some interest in noticing his opinions on the enviromental dilemme between rich and poorer countries. Certainly among the most actual troubles in developing world are the ones he mentions (not limited to of course): lack of water and sanitation infrastructure, hunger, financial ´globalization´ affecting the deepening political divide between people and possible lack of access to most modern energy sources(or should we say: the inequality in those resources sharing).


26. IPCC WGII Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, p. 7-13. In IPCC-report the overall propability of the climate change results mentioned are divided in three main levels of confidence: 1st of very high confidence, 2nd high confidence and 3rd medium confidence. We' ve only considered worth taking into consideration the ones belonging to the 1st level. The predictions contained are naturally selective for that reason. As well as that it is also notable that they are weighed on results from where enough researched information existed during publication of the 2007 report, that being, we suppose, reason why there´s not any 1st level affects mentioned on South-America or Africa (which, although, can also be seen as intentional means in Report). Most alarming 1st level effects noted are (combining and shortening of sentences done by us): (If) 1-3 C Increase in sea surface temperature, most corals are predicted to face an increasing mortality (unless there is thermal adaptation by corals), Coastal wetlands negatively affected by sea-level rise on certain areas, millions of people at the areas already vulnerable to tropical storms or coastal subsidence are likely to be affected by flooding (until 2080 predicted in report), In Australia significant loss of biodiversity in some ecologically-rich sites as well as risks of storms and coastal flooding, In Europe increased risks of inland floods, coastal flooding and increased erosion, extensive species losses, In North America similar results as flooding and also cities might experience the risks of intensifying heat waves, affects of forest in means of diseaseas, pests extended periods of high fire risk, even more impacts when climate changes combined to pollution and population development, in small islands (esp. on Caribbean and Pacific) increased erosion and reduced water sources.


27. 'OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017', 2008. p. 11-12. [UN Report, PDF available (ao) from FAOs website, www.fao.org.]


28. 'OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017', 2008. [The report concludes also that weak USD typically leads to higher USD-dominated prices of traded goods, which has earlier resulted as them being not as expensive priced in other currencies. As a result one can expect slowering of the price risings, though report notes that prices of most commodities are more expensive than two years before. The factor is considered as permanent in the period predicted. As biofuels are the main new demand for uses of grains and vegetable oils, they are also seen as permanent factor lifting the (food) prices to higher average level. After the ten-year period taken under examination the new demand for sources earlier stated primarily for food commodities market may also predict the new and again, permanent element in future price volatility. , p 44.] (Italics used also in report cited]

1 comment:

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