The Ever-Popular Cloud

What would happen if I wrote the next great American novel on Blogger? Do I own the rights to it? Or does Google (who owns Blogger)? All the information I've published on Blogger goes to Google servers in remote and secret locations. What would stop them from taking my novel and publishing it and reaping the benefits? This is a problem with cloud computing. My information and content "goes up into the cloud" but I don't own "the cloud". The cloud is a property of Google and they let me use it. Cloud computing is extraordinarily convenient. If I need something on another computer, I can just email it to myself and bam, I can download it whenever I want, where ever I am, as long as there is a computer with Web access.

The cloud is addicting. That is something we say all the time: "I'm addicted to [insert technology or digital product]." But I don't think we really are, not like the addiction of drugs which can fundamentally change our biology (although, this may be true of technology as well). I think technology gives the illusion of agency; it makes us feel like we're in control. And we like that. But we're not in control. Google owns this blog. They own every word of it, despite the fact that my name is on the blog and I write everything and I can open it and write whenever I want. This is not my blog. None of the photos on my Facebook account are mine; none of my tweets are mine. However, I do control my online portfolio, mitchmalone.net. I own the server, I own the domain. But I don't think that's why I control it. There must be more to it.

The truly disheartening notion about this lack of agency is how companies can shape us while we use their products. We use Facebook because we like to connect and share things with our friends. Facebook claims that is what it is there for. Have you ever wondered why there is no "dislike" button? I think it's because Facebook is a marketing tool more so than a social networking site. Facebook doesn't want to lose advertising dollars because 90,000 users dislike Coca-Cola. Again, we claim we have control over the digital products we use but I'm convinced we have less than we think. All 500 million users of Facebook could sign a petition to add a dislike button, but it will never happen; Facebook would fail as a business if that happened.

We are distracted by an illusion of control, a notion that we are connecting and sharing with friends, when really we are simply a big focus group, supplying organizations with galaxies of information to help them sell more shit to us.

TV Bachelor

I'm watching the new season of The Bachelor which features Brad Womack, a dude who didn't fall in love via game show three years ago. You see this is Brad's second attempt on the show. During season 11, Brad let the last two remaining girls go and he left alone. He says that he went home and became a broken man. He asks, "How could I not have found somebody?" Indeed. How could it be that on a game show designed to surround one guy with 12 or so gorgeous, nearly infallible women, all of whom are automatically in love with him from the start, and he doesn't get to, you know, have one of them? It's a shame.

Brad Womack isn't really a bad guy. I'm sure he does have issues with commitment (as about 99% of American males do). I'm sure he really does want to find someone, to fall in love, and to self-actualize. This show is just another example of reality TV reshaping the entire human landscape that makes up the contestants. I mean, there is a shot where Womack is talking about how his stoicism and manly physique are a facade and the B-Roll cuts to him flexing his pecks while walking shirtless through a park!

Here's another weird thing about reality TV: no one ever acknowledges the fact that they are on a reality TV show, at least not anything overt. When the girls see Brad, they are shocked. One even slaps him. They question if he's really changed, if he's ready to commit. But what none of them ask is, "Why would you let him back on the show? Why did you choose him as the next Bachelor?" And that's a fair question but those 4th wall-breakers are strictly forbidden. No one would ask that because the answer would invariably be horrible.

Ironically, one contestant, a recent divorcee, is discussing her distaste for the dating scene because "everyone plays games". You realize you're going on a game show, yes? The show is manipulating in the best way: it manipulates the audience and the contestants, especially the psychological mindjob on Brad. I mean here's a guy who couldn't decide on true love on a game show, goes to therapy for three years, and then the show gets him back for more. I'm wondering how much they paid off his therapist so he would endorse the decision to return to the show.

The Best Response

At the end of Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, there is a Book Club section that invites readers to come up with the best responses to some embarrassing, illegal, or career-ending crises. So here are my best responses.

The best response to being caught shoplifting

"No, I did not pay for these and I don't plan to. I suppose that makes me a bad person in this modern society that everyone lives in, but I disagree. I mean take a look around, we're living in a completely mediated world that is entirely removed from any type of natural process. Coupled with this fake world is the pressure to buy stuff. Copious amounts of stuff, most of which we don't need. Like what I stole. I mean think about what makes someone successful; it's all material possessions. A house, money, a BMW, sharp suits, watches, jewelry, hard-wood floors, brass cufflinks, 3D HDTVs the size of a wall, ivory elephant tusks, Brinks Home Security, private security, six airbags, first-class tickets, Apple devices, filet mignon, Criterion collection DVDs, and you know stuff like that. It's all bullshit. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of living in this kind of world with these values. So yeah, I took it. But I did it as a form of nonviolent protest against a world that is actively trying to oppress me and I don't think, you know, you should report this."

The best response to forgetting your best friend's birthday

"First off, I understand if you're upset. I'm your best friend; I know you. And it was a pretty crappy thing to do, to forget your day of birth. But I think we have a great opportunity. We have the opportunity to take this unpleasant moment and turn it into a moment of growth. A moment of growth for our relationship. You know, you tie a rope around a tree and, you know, it becomes a part of the tree, er...Okay, I'm not sure if that really applies to this but I think that analogy kind of works. Anyway, listen, you can get mad that I forgot or we can both concede to being human and grow. I think that would be the best thing in the world for both of us right now."

The best response to hidden video footage featuring employees of an independent franchise of your restaurant chain spitting and defiling food for customers. 

"It's appalling. It's a shame. I mean, honestly, this is a perfect example of just one of the pitfalls of capitalism. It's in a kind of a roundabout way but this is what happens when we just try to make as much money as possible. I mean, it's their store, for all intents and purposes, not ours. But because our name's on the front and on the menus, we now have to defend an entire corporation because some knuckleheads want to spit in people's food for kicks. Although, I can't complain because if these kinds of things didn't happen, we wouldn't need a PR department and I'd be out of a job. But again, it's just capitalism gone wrong. Since they are their own enterprise that uses our products and signage, we have to clean up the messes. But we can't monitor them, so we just have to hope that they care as much as we do about the service, the product, and the customers. And by "we" I mean corporate." 

Failure in Household Appliances

The image on the left is a depleted air-freshener I found in my friend's bathroom. It's the kind that you plug in and set to release a puff of fragrance at a regular interval. This model had five frequencies but I found the thing to be really confusing. Had it been full, I might have been able to test it but it was empty and so I was just left with elusive knowledge in the world, as Donald Norman would say.

The image may be a bit difficult to see on some screens but the "interface" of the thing has a right-turning mechanism set with the numbers one through five that I'm assuming is used to set the frequency of release. But above is a 'minus' and 'plus' sign with a gradient symbol that increases in slope as it approaches the plus side. The desired frequency is then placed at the notch above and below the turning mechanism. The confusing part though is that the numbers in the turning mechanism start at five and go down. So you immediately see that the five is above the minus and the four is above the plus. Well that doesn't make any sense. Does that mean that five is the lowest setting? Or does five refer to the time (possibly in minutes?) that the frequency is set? If that's true then this device might make more sense because at one puff every minute is more than one puff every five minutes. Still, it leaves the user with something to think about before using it.

If we removed the turning mechanism (which I'm assuming is disk-shaped) and flattened it out so the numbers didn't wrap around, the numbers descend from five to one but the minus to plus signs don't match up. It just doesn't make sense.

A rendering of the unwrapped turning mechanism.
This device implies that five is less than one.

But maybe this design flaw isn't as big a deal as I'm making it out to be. It's not that it's just an air-freshener. It's not that it only costs maybe $4. It's that (at least when it's full) you have a degree of flexibility in failure. If I misuse the air-freshener, nothing bad will happen, even if I fail to operate it fifty times. Of course it wouldn't take me that long, but there are no consequences to misusing it or it not figuring it out. And I'd probably figure it out within five tries, as it doesn't have a tremendous amount of options. But this safe rate of failure isn't so for everything. Brakes on a car must be easier to understand and use than, say, the radio or air-conditioning/heating. If you misuse the brakes, or can't figure them out, it could spell your death. If you misuse the air-conditioning, you'll just be hot for a while. And chances are, you'll figure it out minutes later. 

In short, some devices might irritate us, but it's not a big deal if they do. Others however, need to make sense the instant you see it, or the consequences could be dire.