Life In The Cloud

Seeing the ads on TV (and every other ad-infested medium), you’d think companies like Microsoft want us to move all our computing to The Cloud. (Actually, to Their Cloud.) As if we weren’t already there.

If you spend more time streaming than downloading, you’re already living in The Cloud. If what you’re looking at on your desktop, laptop, smart phone, etc., isn’t stored on that device, then you’re already living in The Cloud.

If what you’re seeing comes from somewhere on the Internet, then you’ve bought into The Cloud. “Wait a Googley-minute,” I hear you objecting. “Where else would I find things?”

Well, once upon a time we created things ourselves and sent them to one another. That was before we had access to the Internet, and through the Internet to one another. Instead of individuals and institutions loosely connected, the Internet became another Big Medium dominated by Big Players.

“So what’s the big deal about The Cloud?” you ask. Think of it in terms of real estate. You know the mantra: location, location, location. In this case, the real estate is all that memory and storage sitting on all those personal devices we use. That’s the real estate we own.

Now look at the big Cloud players. A current list of the top 100 shows Microsoft at 23 and even the oh-so-huge Google only at number 12. While Amazon may be number one, most of the other names in this list are unrecognizable to me and you.

And they want you. OK, not so much you, as millions of you’s, to use their real estate for the things you want to do with your devices. Of course, in this game, you—even millions of you’s—are small potatoes. What the big Cloud players want is millions of organizations to put their data and computing into The Cloud.

Maybe, I’d better reword that. The big Cloud players want businesses, nonprofits, NGOs, and even governments to buy real estate in their Cloud. Amend that: buy or rent. Never ignore rentals.

Where does location come into this game? Isn’t it obvious? The more traffic coming in and out of any big Cloud player’s location, the more valuable the location. Or at least that’s the smoke they’re blowing.

As it is in real real estate, the big Cloud players don’t have to own what they’re peddling. They can be middle-men, wheeling and dealing, pushing their locations as valuable properties.

But the same questions about real real estate still apply. Does this location have sufficient infrastructure? Are the services reliable? Are you being locked in by the high cost of moving? Is the location secure? Will your stuff be safe?

Smart Streets?

Last week’s post asked how smart were these automated cars being hailed as saviors of our highways. I asked many questions, all presuming these cars were autonomous—because that’s how they’re being promoted.

Well, they’re not. Basically, they’re mobile computers and no computer these days is independent of the Internet, or if you prefer, The Cloud. Even your stationary desktop computer gets constant updates from its various hardware and software makers.

Any automated car will be no different and therein lies a whole new set of questions. To what degree are they independent and to what degree are they connected to (controlled by) The Cloud?

Aside from the usual updates for its hardware and software, an automated car needs current information about the streets it’s navigating, not to mention its destination. (Hence the title.)

These cars need The Cloud for updates about traffic, road conditions, and even the roads themselves. It might be possible to load all the roads into the car’s computer, but is it likely?

Point being, there are continual updates to the whole system of roads, but only rarely to your localized region of actual driving. Updating a car with information on all roads is wasteful, and it could be dangerous.

How to update what data will determine the dependency of vehicles on The Cloud and therefore the Internet. If connections go down—even for a minute—it doesn’t mean one car is on its own. Rather all cars in this vicinity using the same connection will be left on their own. This gives us new questions.

Can these automated vehicles be sufficiently autonomous if they lose their Internet connection? Think fail-safe. And don’t assume that simply stopping (or even pulling over to the side of the road) will always be the right option.

The makers who propose these vehicles are big on showing us how these cars avoid obstacles. But the real value of automated cars is controlled traffic flow. That takes coordination, which raises a new set of questions.

There’s the problem of autos from different manufacturers. Or will the government step in and choose a single supplier, or at the very least a single computer system to be used by all?

If there are different manufacturers, will they use the same data? Supplied by whom? (Is all this just a power play by Google?) If they do use the same data, will they all update at the same time?

The more I look at this, the more questions I have. My biggest question is: Are the people selling this concept and those who will have to approve it asking the same questions?

Bubble Basics

People don’t realize they’re being bubbled. You can’t know what you’re missing if you never see it. I know I didn’t see it when I first encountered it. Then I did. Here’s the story.

To start, I learned you can’t test your website’s responses unless you do so on someone else’s computer. Otherwise, you’re not getting your pages over the Internet but from caches on your machine. Can you clear out all of them (including the OS)?

In fact, I saw Comcast’s web salespeople demonstrating its “speed” from inside their offices. These demo machines were in the back room next the huge hard disk servers caching the very Internet pages they claimed to be demonstrating.

The demonstrations didn’t use the Internet at all! The machines were on the same network as those servers. The only “speed” they showed was the ethernet speed of their local network.

Later, I experienced the Bubble Effect when I was looking up my Internet presence on someone else’s machine. The results were totally different from the same search on my machine.

Initially, I was startled. Where did I go? At home, I was ten of the first dozen hits. On another machine, I was lucky to be in the first dozen. I was baffled. (Remember, this was a long time ago.)

Then I realized the search engines (and browsers) knew when I was using my machine to look for me. Since it returned different answers based on that one fact, then what else was different when I looked at the Internet on someone else’s machine?

The other thing I learned about Internet searches when I was looking for my name (Lee Frank) is how stupid the search was. No, really. I could find no way (you might think quotes, but no) to skip over hits like “Lee, Frank”. As in “Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra”.

Clearly, the search engine (Google at that time—a long time ago) treated commas as irrelevant. As I’m sure it considered any other non-alphabetic characters. But that wasn’t all.

In addition, searches returned many more hits for “Lee, Frank”—people whose first name was Frank—than it did for “Lee Frank”. For me this was, as we used to say, bass-ackwards.

When I’m looking for “Lee Frank” (delineated by quote marks), I don’t mean “Lee * Frank” (where * is any non-alpha character). This really messes up a simple target. Even now, testing Google’s search gives me “Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford”!

With returns like this, I don’t care how fast a search is or how many hits it thinks it’s found. Maybe you do. Many people must, because Google is bigger than ever. It’s even the verb for search.

The End of the Internet

All Internet users are aware that China (among others) censors access. Few users outside of China (and other restrictive countries) think their access is censored. How would they know?

If I had said filtered instead of censored, would you know the difference? You’re probably aware search engines use filter bubbles. What about browsers? If they do, how could we tell?

We know how to make the computer do anything. Given the how, who filters the Internet, and why? Google’s search engine uses filter bubbles and not just because they can.

Google filters make sure you see the ads they’re selling. They combine search and ads into one seamless personalized package. Think of it as the monetized you. I’m sure Google does.

The filters of a filter bubble are how a search engine (or a browser) uses your personal online history to block things you weren’t interested in. The bubble describes your own isolated version of the Internet, after filtration. One person to a bubble.

While you may appreciate not seeing ads for things you don’t care about, filter bubbles are no guarantee. If advertisers pay more, their ads will be seen by more people, interested or not.

Whether you’re interested or not, pages will appear in your search because they paid for Search Engine Optimization. Personalization is more about their control than your preferences. Different methods, but in the end a lot like China.

What you see is what you get, but you don’t know what you don’t get, i.e., what you didn’t see. It may not seem important if you’re just browsing for fun, but if you seriously need good answers, if you’re a researcher, writer, or scholar, what then?

If we each see the Internet differently, if we’re all confined to our own personal bubbles, then how can we discuss and compare? How can we apply the scientific method? What is an original source, if we don’t see the same books with the same text?

Saying our Internet experience is personalized, that it’s been filtered into a bubble, sounds somewhat innocuous. It’s not. The bubble is more like the inside of a mirrored prison cell. Being alone in a cell is not personalization; in prison it’s solitary.

If all we see is a reflection of who we already are, then the Internet is no longer the fabled Looking Glass—a path to new and wondrous adventures. If it only reflects who we are, then the glass bubble surrounding us is nothing more than a dumb mirror.

Isolated individual Internets seem to please the masses. If this is the end of the open Internet, the Internet of discovery, will enough people care? Many already don’t. I do, how about you?

Insecurity, Part Three

Last week’s post ended with three questions: Why are we under attack? Who will protect us? Is there no hope for privacy? Here’s three more: Why do I have to do this? How did this problem get so bad? Does my life have to be this complicated?

The most important piece of advice I can give is this: choose carefully. All the concerns in the previous paragraph can be minimized by making good choices. You can do more with less if you simply buy less, and that includes the “free” stuff.

Far too many people buy new technology as fast as it’s announced. They’ll stand in line all night and dive deeper into debt to have the next great thing. Until the next great thing.

The cost of new technology goes far beyond dollars. It burns up your time and punches new holes in what’s left of your security. No matter how dazzling new technology is, you must see past the fun. What are the risks? How much of your life is at stake?

Media extols new technology, but ads are only the good news. Who will tell you about the downside of using public WiFi—whether for email, selfies, or shopping. Sites won’t warn you. Convenience trumps safety when banks push mobile banking.

Saying your data on the Internet is on a Cloud doesn’t make it safer, or quicker, or easier to access, or anything different from what it was before. But calling it a Cloud sounds really cool.

Advertising is all about appearances. Buyer Beware won’t reveal reality. If you want reality, you’ll have work hard and dig deep, Reality is where the risks are. Appearances can hide the risks.

Clouds are as irrelevant as the speed of Google searches. Speed only counts if you get what you want and get out. Google searches aren’t fast if you don’t get what you need right away. Google wants you looking (at ads), not finding. That’s browsing.

Finding is what the Internet does. And tracking. If this was a game, you would be IT (pun intended). When you’re online, how many people are looking at you? Literally if you’re Skyping.

GPS or triangulation reveals where you are. Texting or email speaks your thoughts. A selfie will pick you out of today’s lineup. We have lost any possible expectation of privacy.

What technology doesn’t bother to tell you is what makes the hacker’s job easier. The less you’re aware of exactly how and to what extent you are at risk, the more likely you will be a loser.

Clearly, the best we can do is minimize our losses. Web sites won’t help us; software can’t be bothered; government only listens to lobbies. We have to protect ourselves—and each other.

Insecurity, Part Two

Last weeks post (“Insecurity, Part One”) was getting a little long, so I left a few things out. One was very simple: keep your security information on paper, or hard copy as we used to say.

Or you could use a flash drive or any other medium not ordinarily connected to your computer, and therefore portable. If it’s not connected, it can’t be hacked. If it’s paper, hide it well.

The other point I omitted was Two-Factor Authentication (or 2FA). This was recommended by all the experts interviewed in those news stories last week. Unfortunately, it confused the reporters.

It’s supposed to work like this. You sign on to the site and then the site takes a second step (like sending a code back to you). This is meant to ensure it’s actually you and not some computer.

But no one agrees on just how to do this. For example, Google wants to send it to your phone, regardless of what device you used to sign on. In effect, they want two-device authentication.

It makes sense for the site you just accessed to authenticate by sending you a query to the device you just used. This will work even if you sign on from someone else’s computer. Just carry your security information with you (flash drive, hard copy).

If 2FA is a good idea, why not always use it? Well, for one thing they have to offer it. Currently, I use over twenty sites requiring secure access, but only one offers 2FA. Hasn’t really caught on.

So far, these things I’ve discussed are more work for you and me. The bigger question, which no one—not even the experts on TV—ever mention, is, Why don’t these sites do more to help us?

First, and most obviously, is their lack of imagination in providing Security Questions. Most of them seem only to copy from each other. Very few are unique to a single site. Laziness?

As for passwords, why can’t these sites make sure we don’t use any real words? Why can’t they come up with a way to measure the randomness of passwords, to help us make better ones?

Not only that, why can’t they suggest changing our passwords when they’ve been in use too long? Same goes for Security Questions. They could do all these things, but then they’d have to write some code. Guess our security isn’t worth their time.

Next week, the really big questions. Why are we under attack? Who will protect us? Is there no hope for privacy?

The Dumbing of the Internet

Last Friday, by 10am, I had encountered three appalling examples of an increasingly dumb online world. They reminded me of questions a friend asked at lunch just two days earlier.

She asked, Why was everyone (and everything) getting dumber? Worse, why did it seem no one noticed or cared? (I recalled books from the 80s and 90s about this Dumbing of America.)

Friday, I had been searching for Internet alternatives and happened upon something called ComcastConnect. Was this different from the (I almost said plain ‘ole) regular Comcast?

When I entered my zip code, the site told me the service was not available in my area. Huh? Not only had I used Comcast here, they have a “store” just down the street. Here’s the web page.

Here’s the kicker. The site said what was available was Cox Internet (Essential and Preferred). Since when? These non-competing services have divided this area from the beginning.

My second example revealed dumbness elsewhere. I had been searching for an LED reading lamp on Amazon earlier in the week. After considerable effort, I gave up in disgust.

Friday, in no time at all, I found a number of viable options at the Bed, Bath, and Beyond website. How was it so easy there, and so difficult at Amazon? I could tell you, but it gets technical.

I can say Amazon is not as smart as people think. It’s one thing for Google to waste our time, distracting our searches; they serve advertisers, not us. Doesn’t Amazon want our business?

My final example goes beyond dumb to blithering idiocy. At the VA’s MyHealthEVet site, qualified veterans can reorder prescriptions, find lab results, get appointment lists, and more.

So Friday morning, I tried to get my upcoming appointments for January and February. Couldn’t. The site was unable to set a search date any further into the future than December 2013!

That’s right, they had yet to add 2014 to the year list. I checked this very carefully, but when I went online today, there was 2014. However, a last-minute fix doesn’t invalidate my premise.

These website stupidities are a clue as to the widespread dumbing down of society. I don’t know many things, but I do know websites. Since these have become such a large part of our modern world, my observation is, yes, it’s all getting dumber.

Digital Dissonance

If you look for “Digital Dissonance” online, you’ll find lots of references. (Google claims 8,170 hits.) Although many relate to music (and art), none have anything to say about the psychological dissonance caused by the Digital Revolution.

Aside from music, my AHD gives this definition for dissonance: “Lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict.” If I had to pick one synonym, I’d go with disharmony. And you should know all about cognitive dissonance from Psych 101.

So what’s the deal with digital dissonance? If it’s such a popular phrase, why are there no definitions or examples? Don’t know, but let me offer one: it’s how digital makes us feel one way when reality is the opposite (hence the dissonance).

For example, digital gives us the feeling of anonymity, when in fact our every digital action is documented, tracked, and recorded. These records are maintained and distributed without our knowledge.

Digital gives us the feeling of invisibility, when in fact every movement we make in a world filled with cameras and locators is documented, tracked, and recorded—on who knows how many databases.

Digital gives us the feeling of being in touch, when in fact many are using the technology to avoid actual interactions with others. As Sherry Turkle put it, digital “provides the illusion of companionship without the demands of a relationship.”

Digital gives us the feeling of being in control of this powerful technology, when in fact the technology really runs the show. But you wouldn’t buy the technology if it made you feel it was in charge. Well, it doesn’t, so we buy it—and then buy more.

The dissonance that digital makes us feel is no mere minor discomfort. The more businesses use digital to give us feelings contradictory to the facts, the more they manipulate how we live, where we go, what we buy, and especially, how we think.

Big Business Is Watching You

Remember 1984? Not the year, the book. Remember its famous phrase: “big brother is watching you”? Well, Big Brother—let’s call it government—is indeed watching you, but not as much as Big Business. The Internet is how Big Business watches you.

Simply put, Big Businesses know more about you than you do about them. Not only do they know more, you have no idea what they know—or how they know it. In Who Owns The Future? Jaron Lanier calls this “information asymmetry.”

Some people think of the Internet as a two-way street. Some even think they have an advantage because download speeds (to you) are many times faster than upload speeds (to them). True, but irrelevant. Instead, measure your information vulnerabilities.

Look at the connection in terms of computing power. At one end is your device: smart phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. At the other end are giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—and all their attendant computing power. See the asymmetry now?

While you browse and shop at some Big Business on the Internet, they can be looking at everything you look at—even how long you look. They know all your past choices and can probably predict what you’ll do next.

That’s what they can see at their end. While you’re connected, they can also see things at your end: other sites open on your browser, other programs connected to the Internet, even other programs on your computer. Not to mention your hardware.

Now think about this: if Big Business knows so much about every customer, how do you know the price you see is the same price others see? Where is it written they must sell to everyone at the same price? There’s a dirty word for this: profiling.

The fear in 1984 came from television sets watching the viewers. Farfetched, but that was old technology. Take a look at the camera on your device. How do you know it’s not watching you right now?

_______ Software Companies

Back on August 13, I wrote a post titled, “Terminal Terminology.” As I said there, it’s not just a computer problem. Last week, I solved a terminology problem at the VA—after six months of trying. When I began this post, I tried searching the Internet for relevant items. Again, I was stymied by the stumbling block of terminology.

I thought I’d write a post about the most meddlesome software companies. A post about the worst offenders imposing themselves on our computers—without our approval or even our knowledge. This has been going on a long time, so naturally I tried to find something on the Internet. Couldn’t. No idea what they are called.

How do you label software companies that think they can do whatever they want on our computers? It’s not at all clear they believe these computers actually belong to us. The fact that we purchased these machines, and their software, seems to mean nothing to these blankety-blank companies.

In the past, I’ve written a little about what these companies do. On Sept. 10, it was how Microsoft played fast and loose while installing Microsoft Security Essentials. A few decades back, Microsoft was far and away the worst offender. They justified their behavior by saying these were “updates,” supposedly improving their operating system software. But did we really need all those improvements? I know I didn’t.

These days, when it comes to home computer invasion, Microsoft is no longer the only villain in town. Recently Adobe messed up my attempts to install an alternate PDF reader. (Back in July, I found they used a dangerous upgrade method.) Apple puts tons of unwanted software on my non-Apple IBM-compatible PC. Then there’s Google, a company so big (and rich), they think they can get away with anything.

So I ask you, how do I fill in the blank of this post’s title? Are they merely rude, a term I’ve often used in the past? Or are they something more, something worse? If my computer had feelings, it would feel violated. If it were a country, it would feel invaded. If it were a woman . . . well, you get the idea. What do you call these arrogant bastards?

Just one more question: why is what they’re doing legal?