Living in the Future

Category: Blog

  • Friends in a Digital World

    Friends in a Digital World

    I’ve been told throughout my life that I don’t have many friends. I’m certainly not one to mind being characterized in that way, but I started wondering if that is actually true, or even if there is a tiny bit of truth to a statement of that nature.

    I’m sure there are lots of people in my neighbourhood, in Ottawa, in Canada, and in the world who have a fear or open dislike of personal or social interactions in one form or another. I wouldn’t say that my thoughts go that far, but I can say with almost complete assurance that I often find menial social interactions (small talk, etc.) unnecessary, to the point that I would rather say nothing in some social situations than to try to pointlessly fill time with chit-chat with anybody I have nothing in common with.

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    Post by Mike Attrell.
    I am much more comfortable in social interactions with only one or two other people. Perhaps this means I’m on the very low end of the autism spectrum, who knows. When I am in larger groups, I tend to stick to engaging in conversations with the people I already know than to branch out and meet new people. It doesn’t help that I know I have a bad habit of trying to pay attention to conversation and immediately forgetting people’s names as I am introduced to them. Having said that, it’s worth noting that a lot of the things I find pleasurable (obscure TV shows, a majority of pop music, web design, video production, writing, science and learning, etc.) are things that I don’t have in common with most people, and so I find it easier to keep them to myself than to bring them up in conversation or to try to get to know new people.


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    Post by Rob Attrell.
    In fact, a good majority of the people I encounter in my day-to-day life are what I would consider acquaintances, and are not friends by most strict definitions. I don’t really know too much about what is going on in their lives, and they don’t really know much about me outside of the time we spend together (in sports, work, leisure, etc.).

    That brings me around to the main point of writing this. With social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, etc., etc., etc., what does it mean to be friends with somebody?

    I have a strong feeling in my gut that when I let someones friendship request on Facebook sit “pending”, it affects my relationship with that person. Most people I talk to would see it as a slap in the face if I don’t accept their “friendship” immediately, and this is such a tightly engrained part of the human condition that there is literally a stigma associated with “un-friending” somebody on Facebook.

    Personally, I don’t use Facebook’s friends list feature as a measure of my association with a person. I know plenty of people I see regularly and spend time with who I have never considered being “friends” with, and all of my current “friends” are really only grandfathered in since I started to allow people to follow my Facebook feed without actually being my friend (something Facebook allowed starting in 2012, like Google+). Since I use Facebook to post updates publicly, like Twitter (you have the choice of your audience every time you post something, like Google+) I don’t actually need the concept of “friends” on Facebook, and in fact I don’t use Facebook that way.

    If not for Facebook Messenger (which will apparently start indexing the contents of your private messages now, so there’s that) I wouldn’t use Facebook at all, but I still don’t want to alienate people. I post all kinds of content on Google+, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, on this blog, and across the internet in 100s of places. If you want to see what I’m doing on the Internet, or send me a message via IM, email, video chat, anything, you are free to do so. Please don’t think that my not accepting your “friend request” on Facebook means that I don’t want to interact with you online, or that I don’t want to get to know you better. I just think there are better ways to keep my digital life and social connections organized, and you’re welcome to follow me (sending me a friend request also automatically subscribes you to what I post on Facebook), and if you have followers enabled (from the link) maybe I’ll follow you back. Send me a message on Hangouts at +Rob Attrell.

    If we’re friends in real life, that can be enough. We don’t need to prove it on Facebook.

    I have more to say on real life vs. digital friendships, but I’ll save it for another day.
    While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out the latest video on my new YouTube Channel, +Attrell Update! Hope you like it!

  • Too Much of a “Good” Thing – DON’T take too much acetaminophen

    In reflection on my latest Attrell Update video, I wanted to bring up another thing which I haven’t really understood about modern society. This ties in nicely with one of the things I neglected to mention in my top 10, incomprehension of statistics (I intend to publish that video this week).

    I have always been curious about humans and their dependence on medications, salves, balms, creams and elixirs. The placebo effect has been shown to play STRONGLY into all kinds of pains and aches, even showing results on systemic diseases that shouldn’t possibly be cured by the powers of the human body. Statistics on the placebo effect have shown that most drug therapies probably aren’t necessary and would be almost as effective as treatment with sugar pills (or other placebos).

    I don’t mean to imply that humans shouldn’t take any medications. The discovery of vaccines, penicillin, antiseptics, pain-killers, cancer therapies, etc. have lengthened life-spans and improved quality of life in later years for humanity as a whole, and that is excellent. However, dependence on these medications can be just as bad as for addicting substances like narcotics.

    The “safe” dose of Tylenol is getting
    smaller and smaller.

    Seemingly benign drugs like Tylenol are just as likely to lead to the placebo effect’s nasty little sibling, the nocebo effect. If you have been taking acetaminophen (Tylenol) since childhood and find that you can correlate its use with a relief of headache or pain symptoms, it’s possible that as you get older (and bigger) that you deem it necessary to start taking 2 Tylenol when you are feeling unwell, or that you move on to extra strength Tylenol, or even take 2 extra strength Tylenol (the maximum dosage recommended on the package is 1 cap every 4-6 hours depending on pain, or 8 per 24 hours).

    It is a fairly well known phenomenon for drug companies to overstate potential benefits of increasing medicinal doses of drugs, and we were taught in my medicinal chemistry classes that there has in fact been little/no clinical benefit in even taking more than one regular strength Tylenol. Drug companies will benefit from the fact that a) people think they need MORE for stronger pain, and b) if you “harmlessly” swallow more of their product, you will run out quickly and you will buy more, especially if your treatment benefits from the medication as well as from the placebo effect. It is more than likely that if you have a headache (caused by something as benign as dehydration) that taking a nap and a big drink of water will make you feel better. So drug companies really have nothing to lose by trying to upsell you on these kinds of treatments.

    **Don’t even get me started on homeopathic/”natural” remedies and the lack of regulation on that multi-billion dollar industry.

    The issue is, as we learn more and more about drugs like these, we can start to see that they have side effects that can start to become MUCH more serious than a simple headache. As I read today, it turns out the FDA (in the US) has actually stopped recommending the prescription of extra strength Tylenol (or any generic acetaminophen) and has tried to stop the sale of dosages of the drug higher than 325 mg (extra strength is 500 mg). The reason they did this (4 MONTHS AGO, mind you) is that they found that the incidence of liver damage and even liver failure to be much higher than acceptable ranges given the efficacy of the drug (and comparisons to other drugs with similar benefits, like Advil (ibuprofen)).

    Livers can heal, but it is something that takes a long time, and taking any acetaminophen is being shown to cause more damage than initially thought.

  • Don’t Tell Me

    Don’t Tell Me

    It is in the nature of humanity to want to experience something for ourselves.

    We have all done it at one point or another, but requesting “no spoilers” is a really weird concept if you think about it. *Note, there are no spoilers contained within the text of this post. But stay away from Twitter…

    First of all, in reality, there is no such thing as a spoiler. You wouldn’t ask somebody not to tell you about something they heard on the news, or not to describe an event, simply because you wanted to have the story told to you by somebody else, or in another medium. In a world where something as simple as a TV show ending can merit people who are weeks or even years behind asking to please not get any details about the show until they have had a chance to digest it. I know people who are still wishing to not know what happens on the last episode of Breaking Bad, a show that ended 6 months ago.

    The real spoiler is in the show’s title.

    Does hearing a single outcome that is revealed in 10 seconds over the course of a 30-60 minute piece really merit that kind of blissful incertitude for such a long time? If knowing a plot point in a TV show before you have seen it could ever render your own viewing of that show unnecessary, did you really enjoy watching the show?

    I can and do spend time watching sporting events that I know have already ended and whose scores I already know. The fun of being entertained is entirely in the narrative that the story weaves and how the entire thing plays out, not a synopsis or box score.

    I couldn’t help myself but to read this morning about the major points of the finale of How I Met Your Mother, and out of courtesy, I will not share them here. But I feel a lot better now knowing what happened, even though I won’t be able to watch the episode until tonight. It has been 9 years in the making, and I have been following the show since midway through the fourth season. I thought about trying to spend all day being extremely careful not to hear anything about the show, but since I found out what happened, I have only wanted to watch the episode itself more.

    Knowing what is going to happen in sports, or in TV or movies is a very comforting thing, especially when other aspects of your life might make you uncomfortable or uneasy or you tend to stress a lot about things you don’t know. I have watched episodes of Community, Big Bang Theory, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Arrested Development, Happy Endings, and others MANY, MANY times. I see new things each time I watch, and I think I actually enjoy the episodes more when I know what’s coming. And we all have movies we love to watch over and over again, even when we can quote every line.

    What makes life itself so difficult is its unpredictability, with twists and turns rivalling even the most well-written scripts. You will never be completely satisfied with a storyline, and I’m sure you can ask any writer if they feel comfortable with the way they wrapped up a story and they will be uncertain that they did things the “right” way.

    The fact is, in life as in entertainment, there is no “right” way for a story to play out. All stories are told in the same way, as they have for all of human history. There is little gained from knowing specific details of a story, and the “how” is a lot more satisfying than the “what”. I cannot wait to watch the How I Met Your Mother finale, and I will take solace in the comfort of knowing that at least some things in life, I can know for certain.

  • Attrell Update

    Hey sister (and to anybody else reading this),

    As you are well aware, you’re not living in Canada right now. In fact, you’re actually studying in Dijon, France right now. What you might NOT have known, is that since we stopped living together (when I moved away for school) is that I’ve been missing you (a lot!) and wishing I had a good way to keep up with your life.

    What I’m proposing is pretty simple really: we keep YouTube video journals, updated weekly, that let the other know what is going on in our lives, or just talks about anything we want! Really, the video above explains it all.

    I made a YouTube channel for us (here, or here: +Attrell Update) and I’ll let you start the proceedings. Let me know which day of the week you’d like to take to post your video, and I’ll pick one that’s on the other side of the week.

    I got the inspiration for this idea from two brothers, John and Hank Green, doing a similar project for the last few years (+vlogbrothers) and they have really gotten to have fun with it, and I think we can do the same!

    See you very soon, I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

  • Bad Relationship Advice (You Should Take)

    Bad Relationship Advice (You Should Take)

    Friends,

    Far be it for me to give any kind of help with others’ relationships, but in this case I think I’ve stumbled on something that might actually be useful for a lot of people who tend to get in trouble when they are just trying to have fun (as I am often wont to do).
    One of my favourite shows AND it fits this post perfectly!
    Basically, I treat my social relationships as a game a lot of the time (serious situations notwithstanding, obviously) and it tends to cause friction more often than it needs to when discussing extremely stupid stuff.
    That being said, here’s what I propose:
    Treat conversations with people you care about like a game of Hollywood Squares.

    In case that needs some explanation, Hollywood Squares is a game that has been on TV in various forms for a REALLY long time. There are modern versions of concepts that are very similar to this (like @Midnight and I assume Celebrity Game Night), but the basic premise is getting funny people together and letting them have a good time for entertainment. They are asked questions and are given free rein to provide one joke answer to the question that pops into their heads, before continuing to seriously address the question.

    I think that relationships, more than anything, are about having fun spending time with the person you’re with. Keeping that in mind, I think that people should be given a free pass to give one joke answer to a non-serious question (and even perhaps serious questions to break tension, so long as it’s not abused).
    My very favourite kind of humour (wow that is a very British sentence) is off-the-cuff, ad-libbed humor that ties together past situational references in humourous ways. This means that sometimes a really well-phrased (but not socially considerate) joke will sometimes escape my lips, and I don’t think it necessarily warrants a massive blowback every time it happens.
    I’ve already brought this up with my sig. oth. (a abbrev. I have simultaneously coined and disavowed myself from) and have asked for this opportunity in our relationship. I hope it will really help, and if it leads to any hilarious happenstances I will be sure to keep you updated.
    Side note: I really do think that most things we as humans tend to be sensitive about are so funny for the very reasons we’re all sensitive about them, because we can all relate. I constantly try to break down barriers of stereotyping with socially conscious jokes, following in the footsteps of my heroes like Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Stephen Colbert (Stephen Colbert). I think we could all do with a little less sensitivity and a little more humour.

  • I stayed in touch with ALL the cool people in my life with this one weird trick.

    Hello friends and family,

    Here’s an idea for you, do yourself a favour and give it a try:

    First, log in to your Gmail account, henceforth called your Google Account (Gmail).

    Now that you’ve done that, head to the sidebar where your display picture and chat list are and click on your display picture (you will see the options shown over there).

    Right at the top, click on “Try the new Hangouts”. You will be shown a message explaining Hangouts, and though it will seem foreign, click OK and once your email reloads, you are ready to start exploring Hangouts in all its glory.

    For starters, once you’ve taken the above steps, you can click on the new chat search (called “New Hangout”) and start typing my name. Depending on how close friends we are, my name and photo should show up right away and you can begin typing out a message to me. Say hi and I’ll welcome you to the wonderful world that is Hangouts!

    Now that you’re all connected and ready to go, it’s time to discover what you can do with Hangouts. If you head to Google+, you will see that your same chat list will appear on the right side of the window. If they’re not there yet, click the Hangouts button at the top right of the window and they’ll pop up right away.

    You can start a free phone or video call from your computer, iOS or Android device (download the Hangouts app here from your phone, this page also contains a ton of info about the app).

    This week on +Future Tech Chat, we will be discussing all of the details of Hangouts, and comparing it to the myriad other chat and video apps available to you, and hopefully we can convince you that Hangouts is the place to be.

    As a final note, while Google+ is awesome, it definitely isn’t necessary to use Google+ in order to use Hangouts.

    You can check out the discussion on Hangouts and other chat apps here too, starting live at 12:30 PM EST on Saturday, March 22nd, 2014. If you’re reading this after the episode has aired, the video will be watchable in its entirety. Hope you like it!

    And remember to tune in to +Future Tech Chat every week for a new episode. We’re also starting a blog which will cover tech questions and cover topics like this.

    Follow us @FutureTechChat on Twitter or Future Tech Chat on Facebook, and be sure to subscribe and follow on YouTube and Google+ to stay up to date!

  • The Future in the Present

    The Future in the Present

    Hello friends, family, and other,

    The following is a shameless plug for something I’ve been working very hard on lately. If you like the idea, please share it with friends and family!

    I’m writing this now because I’ve been working on a project for the last 6 weeks that is a culmination of a lot of thinking I’ve done since finishing my master’s degree in 2011. So far, it has consisted of a weekly live video chat with some of my more technologically inclined friends, but I hope to expand this project more soon. I call it +Future Tech Chat, and in these discussions we delve into the world of the near technological future, or the recent present to share ideas and information about technology with the world.
    I have a lot of strong ideas about technology, the internet, and the world we now live in. I’m eager to talk about these ideas and to share them with you, and I really hope you like what my friends and I have done so far. We’ve discussed cell phone carriers and data plans, social media, “the cloud” and many other little topics in between. The episode this week covers digital photography, a topic that has become very near and dear to my heart in the last year. The motivation for covering photos and video in the context of the internet stems from a conversation I had with my sister on the weekend. She is currently studying in Dijon, France for a semester, and she has been taking lots of pictures (as girls her age are wont to do when travelling). When we had a video chat last weekend, she wanted to share a collection of pictures she took with her phone with myself and my parents (who are in Calgary and were also on this video call).
    As is so often the case, we had to give up this endeavour right away, because she had no system in place to keep her photos backed up online. She had been sharing small sets of photos on Facebook, but if she wanted to keep her family and close friends more updated on her life in France, she was unaware that there are valuable sets of tools to do just that on the internet. I intend to address that tomorrow at 12:30 PM on the next Future Tech Chat (viewable here directly!). These chats are scheduled as events on the Google+ page +Future Tech Chat and can be viewed directly from there, or on the YouTube channel.

    Mostly, what I want to accomplish with this weekly (for now…*foreshadowing*) webcast is to be able to open the eyes of those around me to the possibilities that the internet and our current technologies present to us on a daily basis. For those people out there who wish to do more with technology, to solve problems and to bring people closer, this is the place for you.
    For now, if you have any questions or suggestions for topics you’d like to see discussed (no tech topic is off-limits), there are a few ways to get in touch with me or to stay in the loop about the project (or to provide advice/constructive criticism).

    In order of relevance:

    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLLe2Yfu9BLr4_bhmejCicQ (subscribe and/or leave a comment)

    Google+: +Future Tech Chat (follow the page and/or leave a comment)
    Twitter: @FutureTechChat (follow the account or tweet @ me)
    Facebook: Future Tech Chat (like the page and leave a comment)
    *I do not like Facebook for this because it limits reach of posted content from people and pages to encourage paying to promote posts)
    And thanks to +Mike Attrell, +Carolyn Higman and +Nick Maddox for helping me out in getting this started! If you are interested in participating in a future chat, please let me know.

    This playlist contains all the tech chats we’ve had so far, I hope you enjoy them!

  • Future Tech Chats

    Is anybody interested in participating in my next tech chat (in the future)? We had a lot of fun in the last one! Probable time is this weekend (February 22nd – 23rd) midday.

    Working on topics now…

     

    Let me know, and be sure to check out last weeks!

  • iCloud and Auto-Uploads (Extra details)

    In case you haven’t seen my latest video, you can watch it here: 
    I just want to provide a little additional detail for those interested about this idea. First of all, it would work equally well on Android with Google+ Photos as it does with iCloud on iOS. 
    Also, for those of you who don’t know anything about networks or photo stream, and who will note that it actually isn’t much of a drag at all for me to upload that photo to several networks as I did in the video, in that it seems quick, note that I am on Wifi in the video, and that means that anything I upload goes about 5 times faster than it would if I was on a data network, and that usage caps on home internet are much higher than they are on cellular networks.
    In addition, this example only used one photo, whereas if you were taking photos at an event, you could want to upload an album of any number of pictures, each of which can be 1-2 MB. Multiply that by 10-20 in one go, as I have done frequently, and you will see that uploading all of those photos 3 times, and then a 4th time to post any photos to another network (such as Twitter or Instagram) will start to seriously slow down your phone and will use a lot of data. 
    With the changes I suggest in the video, you will alleviate a lot of network congestion on cellular networks, and corporations whose servers store your photos can use their networks to quickly and efficiently save copies of your photos without requiring you to upload them separately to each service.
    I’ll be back next week with more on cell phones and mobile technology, so subscribe to my YouTube channel here and add me on G+ at +Rob Attrell for more interesting videos.

  • Your cell phone provider might be screwing you. [This is not click-bait, it might actually help you]

    Hey guys, if you have a few minutes to fill out this nifty survey of cell phone plans, I would really appreciate it. It’s for a project I’m working on regarding cell phones and the contracts that bind us all to carriers. Fill it out below, or click here to see the survey on a new page.

    I will be collecting answers for about the next 48 hours, until Wednesday evening. If you are interested in participating further in this project, drop me a line.

    **I am in Canada, but I’d love to hear what international folks have to say about their plans!

    Thanks to +Mike Attrell for help preparing this survey!