Living in the Future

Tag: Reflection

  • The Importance of Community Involvement: Beyond Social Media

    The Importance of Community Involvement: Beyond Social Media

    like printed on brown wooden scrabble
    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    In today’s digital age, it’s easier than ever to feel connected to our communities through social media. A quick like, comment, or share can give us the sense that we’re actively participating and supporting our neighbours. However, while these online interactions are valuable, they cannot replace the profound impact of real-world engagement. True community involvement requires us to step out from behind our screens and actively contribute to the well-being of those around us.

    The Illusion of Online Engagement

    Social media platforms have revolutionized the way we communicate and interact. They offer a convenient way to stay informed about local events, support causes, and connect with others. However, this ease of engagement can sometimes create an illusion of participation. Liking a post about a neighborhood cleanup or sharing a fundraiser link is undoubtedly supportive, but it doesn’t equate to the tangible benefits of physical presence and action.

    The Power of Personal Interaction

    When we engage with our community in person, we build stronger, more meaningful connections. Volunteering at local events, attending community meetings, or simply spending time with neighbors fosters a sense of belonging and mutual support. These face-to-face interactions allow us to understand the unique needs and challenges of our community, enabling us to contribute more effectively.

    Building a Stronger Community

    Active participation in community activities helps to create a more cohesive and resilient neighborhood. When we work together on projects, whether it’s organizing a block party, starting a community garden, or supporting local businesses, we strengthen the social fabric that holds us together. These efforts not only improve our immediate surroundings but also foster a sense of pride and ownership in our community.

    The Ripple Effect of Involvement

    The benefits of community involvement extend beyond the immediate impact of our actions. When we take the initiative to get involved, we inspire others to do the same. Our enthusiasm and commitment can motivate friends, family, and neighbors to participate, creating a ripple effect that amplifies our collective efforts. This shared sense of purpose and collaboration can lead to lasting positive change.

    Conclusion

    While social media offers a valuable platform for raising awareness and staying connected, it is the actions we take in the real world that truly make a difference. By actively participating in our communities, we can build stronger, more supportive neighborhoods and create a lasting impact. Let’s move beyond the screen and engage with the people around us, fostering a sense of unity and shared responsibility that benefits everyone.

  • A Wild Election (Probably) Appears

    I’m pretty annoyed that the entirety of political discourse in Canada consists of playing in to conservative propaganda that Justin Trudeau has done a terrible job the last 10 years and his time is now up. I’m not saying the liberals are perfect (they are not), and they are nowhere near as progressive as they talk about.

    However, despite missing some key legislation I’m still mad at (electoral reform), they have done a competent job running the country for near a decade now.

    The narrative that the party has to go and we need to usher in a conservative government as a matter of course is a false dichotomy, and since all the media (or any political parties for that matter) want to talk about is PP, that is what we’re going to end up with.

    I’m not worried about myself, but I am worried plenty about the state of political discourse and civility in general, and I think whatever happens next will probably be really bad for the country.

    For the purposes of the next election, there is absolutely no excitement to be had for any even purportedly progressive party (NDP and Liberal are both pretty close to the center).

    I’m probably going to be discouraged from talking about politics very soon so I want to say this now while I still can, but I would love to see an actual popular progressive party pitch something truly revolutionary. The blueprints are there, it’s just a matter of using them.

    I don’t think we should cede the entire political landscape to those who’ve completely given up on kindness and decency to those they don’t completely agree with, and I wish we had a chance to have that conversation with a party leader who was charismatic and showed they care deeply about Canada and its people.

    The last 2 elections I’ve done a Vote Compass policy rundown thing, and while I don’t think I’ll go through that question by question like I have in the past, I am certainly going to talk about my own policy positions, and since there are plenty of positions I hold that aren’t held by any major political party, I don’t think I’m in any danger of breaking the political neutrality public servants are supposed to pretend to have.

  • Car crashes kill an absurd number of people

    The numbers are so huge they are not easily grasped, and so are perhaps best understood by a simple comparison: If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dangerous battlefield the American military has ever encountered. 

    I take the bus to work, and I absolutely love walking and biking. There are certain niche uses where a car is essential, but in an urban centre like Ottawa, many people can get around without relying on a car.

    Having said that, just as many people, if not more, absolutely DEPEND on a car every day for transport to and from work and other social obligations. Most of this is because housing in big cities (Ottawa to some extent, Toronto and New York, for example, just take the example to astonishing extremes) is very expensive, so people choose to live where it’s cheaper, work in the urban centre, and commute for 30-60 minutes by car.

    That thought is crazy to me. Even though I spend a ton of my life listening to podcasts, which are pretty perfect for car trips such as that, the thought of getting into a car every day to drive to the office is not something I think I’d enjoy that much.

    Adding to that, we tend to think of car crashes as a tiny risk in our day to day lives, and it gets worse as those lives come to rely more and more on absolute certainty of normalcy. If our pizza is late, it’s free. If our Uber takes 10 minutes, we complain. When a bus breaks down (or doesn’t show up at all), we’re late for work.

    But in a life (and society) where things are so safe (#firstworldproblems, anyone), the fact that any of us could die in such a quick, violent way on any given day is cause for alarm. We put car traffic above everything else in our transportation system, and yet it’s responsible for so many totally preventable deaths on our roads every day.

    At some point, self-driving cars will take over, and crashes between two of those will be as unlikely as a plane crash is today. But for now, we’re stuck with an incredibly convenient transportation method where countless unknown cars around you are capable of completely changing, or ending, your life in an instant.

    That’s scary, but it gives us something to strive for, and I think car culture as it exists now might be nearing its peak.

    > The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life – The Atlantic

  • The end of green screen, and possibly the beginning of true 3D movies

    Since Lytro’s tech basically captures all the 3D information in a scene, the imagery is unusually friendly to CGI. Placing virtual objects at exactly the right depth in a scene is essentially taking advantage of a native ability of the footage.

    This is possibly the beginning of what I’ve been looking for since the re-renaissance of 3D movies in the last 10-15 years. As the new ‘real’ 3D movies came to theatres, what I really wanted was to be able to view a scene in full 3D (ie. with the right visuals, everything could theoretically be in focus at all times) and to be able to focus on whatever I wanted at any time.

    You have no idea how disorienting it is (unless you do this, like I do) to be engrossed in a 3D movie, just to glance at something in the background of a scene and see that you can’t focus on it. Is that what living with glasses is like? It’s terrible.

    I’m really hopeful that advances in 3D movies along with these Lytro cameras that are capable of capturing all aspects of a 3D scene could mean an overhaul of not only visual effects, but of the 3D movie as a whole. I think if we were to see something like this, we would be able to truly revolutionize cinema. It might take a VR type experience to truly make this happen, but I think at a certain point that’s where we’ll end up, and I can’t wait to focus on the meaningless background part of a scene in a movie, just because I can.

    > Lytro’s new Cinema camera could mean the end of green screen

  • A list of the apps on my phone that can make calls

    Doesn’t require phone number:

    • FaceTime
    • Phone
    • Contacts
    • Facebook Messenger
    • Snapchat
    • Google Hangouts
    • Messages
    • Whatsapp
    Can/does use your phone number:
    • Phone
    • FaceTime
    • Messages
    • Chrome
    • Safari
    • Mail
    • Notes
    Announced, but hasn’t shown up yet:
    • Slack
    As it turns out, pretty much every remotely social company has a way that people can talk to one another in a phone call-type manner. Many of these apps also let you use video chat, but people have no idea. For instance, you’ve been able to make phone calls (and recently, video chats) with any of your Facebook contacts on your phone, for such a long time. But I can routinely blow people’s minds by telling them that, because approximately nobody* knows about this feature.
    Snapchat updated their app yesterday to revamp chat, and added the ability to send video clips or make voice calls to any of your Snapchat contacts who’ve added you back. But none of the features in the update are actually new capabilities your phone didn’t have before, and I’m betting people aren’t going to be making use of this feature any more than they did, no matter how good it is. 
    If I were a gambling man, I’d put money on Snapchat continuing to grow at a rapid pace for quite some time. But people who already have a predefined way of communicating, like my generation and those older than me, won’t use Snapchat for voice calls because to us, the way you make a phone call is by calling a phone number.
    But the kids, they don’t obey these rules. They do whatever their friends are doing, and their friends don’t make phone calls to a phone number. That’s not cool anymore, at least not until their parents stop doing it.

  • Podcasts Like ‘Serial’ Are Encouraging Literacy

    “[L]istening, unlike looking at a written page, is more active, since the brain has to process the information at the pace it is played.” My student Roberto offered similar insight: “I think it helps me out with my reading since I have to keep a pace up.”

    Huh, turns out the best ways for kids to learn aren’t determined by a group of adults telling them what’s best, kids (like everybody) are going to learn best when given options and a choice. And just like I always say, podcasts are a great way to learn and take in new information, and listening isn’t nearly as much work as reading.

    And if learning is work, you’re much less likely to want to keep doing it.

    > Why Podcasts Like ‘Serial’ Are Helping English Teachers Encourage Literacy – The Atlantic

  • The Problem with Homelessness is Poverty

    I attended college pay-as-you-go for a couple years while working, then left because I couldn’t afford to continue and knew better than to take on student debt. My moderate savings was destroyed in my 30s by health care costs that insurance wouldn’t cover. Within the past several years, full-time work that pays a subsistence wage has been hard to come by.

    Another great reason why basic income would be super useful. There are plenty of jobs that don’t pay that much but are vital to the world continuing to run. And with a basic income and solid universal health care, so many of the issues that put people on the streets just don’t come up. This is a long piece but it’s well worth your time.

    > I’ve been homeless 3 times. The problem isn’t drugs or mental illness — it’s poverty. – Vox

  • A Diminishing Willingness to Do or Try New Things

    The technological inertia of adulthood, signified by a diminishing willingness to do or try new things.

    I have been trying, without a great deal of success, to get my friends interested in using Slack to communicate with one another. Slack is a great service with mobile apps, desktop apps, and a really slick web interface that makes communicating with bigger groups of people really simple and easy.

    However, I’ve been trying to get people jazzed about better communication services for the better part of 10 years now, and I’m mostly thwarted at every turn. I honestly feel, deep in my heart, that this failing isn’t because the services I’m advocating for (Google Wave, Facebook Messenger, Google+, Twitter, Google Hangouts, Slack) are objectively bad.

    That being said, I also don’t think my friends, the people I want to keep in touch with the most, are idiots for not being as excited in the next big thing as I am. I am always on the lookout for new technology, but I know I’m rare in being that way. But I also know that there is value in what I’m trying to do.

    When I first got a cell phone, SMS was the only method of communication I used (aside from the very occasional phone call). When I first got an email address, I would occasionally use it to email friends, but its much more vital use was to get me logged in to MSN Messenger.

    I’ve always subscribed to a vast number of different communications services (as I broke down in my last post about this stuff), and I use many of them to keep in touch with just a handful of people. The people I talk to on a regular basis interact with me in a startling number of ways:

    • Some people I know I can reach most easily with SMS
    • Some I know will only check Facebook sporadically
    • Some who keep data turned off unless it’s an emergency
    • Some people I will only message through Google Hangouts
    • Some people answer messages during the day through one chat platform, but use another platform the rest of the time (even though both are available to them at all times).
    In trying to make Slack a thing with my closest friends, what I’m really trying to do is make it really easy for those people to know exactly where and how they can reach me and each other, all the time. Maybe, for some people, that’s actually a failed premise. It’s just something that’s never going to happen.
    It might be that no matter how hard I try, some people are just going to send me a text message when they want to reach me. And perhaps, that won’t change.
    Liberal youth grow older and more conservative, even if their values never actually change in the process. I’m going to do my best to be adaptable, while advocating for new and better at every turn. We don’t have to define ourselves by who we are now, we can choose to present ourselves as the best we can be in the future.
    Communication is a social contract we all enter into, and having it formalized might be scary or uncomfortable to some people. I don’t think it’s too lofty a goal to aim for better than a 14 person group thread in Facebook Messenger as a way for people from all walks of life to interact and figure their lives out. We can do better, and while I’m suggesting one specific option, I’m just trying to do the best I can today.

  • I’m probably not allergic to peanuts because I love them so much

    The early introduction of peanut to the diets of infants at high-risk of developing peanut allergy significantly reduces the risk of peanut allergy until 6 years of age, even if they stop eating peanut around the age of five, according to a new study led by King’s College London.

    Let’s all talk about something we’ve assumed for years. I’m going to be giving my kids peanut butter baths just in case.

    > Eating peanut in early years helps reduce risk of allergy even with later abstinence, study suggests — ScienceDaily

  • Communication is Broken

    Communication is Broken

    Communication is unbelievably important for a properly functioning society. And after ranting a little on Twitter this morning, now seems like as good a time as any to break down the best communication tools, why they’re good, and what they’re good for.

    Today’s communication is broken, we can’t talk effectively with the people we’re closest to, and the very services that aim to bring us closer together are keeping us further apart than they need to. We can do better!

    Let’s keep it really simple to start: 1-on-1 communication. It’s really hard to get this wrong, because it’s fundamentally the easiest thing to do. Effectively, communication between two people can be public, or private. There’s a continuum of more vs. less private, but almost every platform has options for private individual communication. Believe it or not, some people ONLY use these kinds of communication. Here are a few examples (they’re all really old school):

    • Phone Call (voice; tied to a phone number)
    • Email (text, with attachments; tied to an email address)
    • SMS (text, maybe photos; tied to a phone number)

    Like I mentioned, some platforms advertise themselves as much more than private 1 on 1 communication, but they do still have that aspect available. These aren’t as limited, but can function in such a narrow way:

    • Snapchat (ephemeral photos/video and text; tied to an account on one phone at a time)
    • Skype (text, media attachments and video/audio calls; tied to an account with possibility of phone number)
    • iMessage (Text, photo/video, audio message; tied to an Apple ID, but can add phone numbers or email addresses)

    Now, the services covered so far have mostly been private (Snapchat now has *public* Stories), but there are also communication methods that let you communicate with one person, but in public.

    • Facebook Wall Post (text, photos/video; tied to Facebook accounts)
    • Twitter Mention (text, photos/video; tied to Twitter accounts)
    • Google Hangout on Air (audio/video; tied to Google accounts)

    These companies all have their respective private messaging platforms as well (Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messages, and Google Hangouts), which are useful for both individual and group messaging, but they all have their limits, and are easy to use inefficiently.

    Now, instead of getting to the best services that offer the most diverse communication right away, let’s go through an exercise first.

    I’m going to attempt to make a list of all of the communication platforms I make use of in the average week. This is a combination of mobile/desktop, 1-way or 2-way communication, personal/business…this is as exhaustive as I can be on the matter (in no particular order, I’m just going through my phone and computer):

    Google Calendar
    Phone
    FaceTime
    Google Drive
    Nuzzel
    Flipboard
    SoundCloud
    Periscope
    Podcasts
    Reddit
    Google+
    Facebook
    Trello
    IFTTT
    Google Photos
    Facebook Messenger
    Snapchat
    Twitter
    Google Keep
    LinkedIn
    Hangouts
    Email
    Kijiji
    Blogging
    Television
    YouTube
    Slack
    Instagram
    SMS
    iMessage
    Peach
    RSS
    Blogs
    News Sites
    Customer Service Live Chat
    Talking in Person

    I’m sure, even given this exhausting list, that I’ve missed a couple of really obvious communication methods. That being said, they all have various reasons why I use them. I use some more than others, and for a variety of reasons some get used very little (sorry, Peach).

    Having said all of that, The best communication methods I have at my disposal are easy to understand, but have diverse uses. I’m sure I could get by with any of these methods of communication on their own, but it would be difficult. Each has its limitations, and strengths.

    In a perfect world, we would all agree to have accounts for all of these services, and all use whichever one we feel like at a given time. However, for me, the following is (in my mind), a perfect set of tools to satisfy all communications needs. Order in this list is VERY important, and changes/improvements to any of these services could change the order.

    1. Slack
    If I have you on my Slack team, and I know you actually have the app on your phone/computer or visit the website from time to time, this is by far the way I’m going to contact you. The way Slack integrates with the rest of the items on this list makes its prime spot a no-brainer.

    2. Twitter
    I love Twitter (and would only be able to love it more if they got rid of the 140 character limit, though there are plenty of reasons why that’s challenging). Twitter integrates well with Slack, and lets me follow cool people to keep up with the world better than any service I know how to. It’s also a semi-public conversation, and so you can kind of see what everybody is up to.


    3. Hangouts
    Having Hangouts on this list is a no-brainer, simply because of the video chat capability. Hangouts also integrates well with Slack, although I don’t use that feature much, but Slack’s link control is so good that it’s plenty for my needs.

    4. Email
    You always need a fall-back. Sometimes, you’re talking with a stranger, or a distant acquaintance. Sometimes, you just want to be notified of something that pertains to just you. In many cases, email is a good way for people you don’t have on Slack or Hangouts to get in touch with you privately (although Twitter is really fine for that too).

    I’ve extolled the virtues of Slack before, and maybe it’s a failing on my part that so few of the people I’m closest to really get its appeal (since the people I do use it with really seem to get a lot out of it, and I use it extensively even just for my own personal non-communication needs).

    I love Facebook Messenger, but really only because many people have Facebook accounts. If the people I talk to most on Messenger were on my Slack team and actually used the service, I wouldn’t use Messenger nearly as much. And having said that, though Messenger has taken great strides to make messaging fun, fast, and beautiful, it’s INCREDIBLY difficult to keep track of multiple threads, and for groups of close friends who talk about lots of different things, it’s a nightmare. Seriously, use a Slack team for your group of close friends.

    I’m going to keep advocating for Slack and Twitter, because they have been essential to my modern life and I love communicating with them so much. I’m interested to see how communication changes as the online world creeps more and more into our every interaction, and what the next generation of communication services look like.