Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘technology’

Jun 27

Android-logo
1 Comment

Brand Power’s Effect on Software Design

Android robot logo.

Image via Wikipedia

A good friends of mine recently casually replied: ‘Don’t be so pedantic’ (or something along those lines) in response to me commenting that what they referred to as their ‘iPhone’ actually was an Android phone. It’s not that the person is stupid (far from it) or didn’t know what kind of phone they owned.

It was just their way of referring to this new type of phone with the fancy, animated buttons, a ‘large’ screen and computer like behaviour (and so complicated that even Bjarne Stroustrup finds it too much – allegedly). The power of Apple’s brand is such, that the average phone user (sometimes) thinks ‘iPhone’, even when they see an Android phone.

I guess there is nothing new here – the Danish word for ‘instant coffee’ is ‘Nescafe’. The French fought hard to regain ‘Champagne‘ (and leaving the Australians with the word ‘sparkling wine’), and similar for the Greeks over the word ‘Feta‘ (this time the Danes lost). As a consumer, it doesn’t really matter – although the producers may or may not like the association.

However, it is quite different for software…. Read more

Jun 23

Damon Horowitz speaking at TED

The Moral Operating System

We (as in those of us involved with software development in its broadest sense) are not often, if ever, asked about the moral implications of ‘our’ software. Sure, most have heard of the privacy discussion about the information stored within browsers, the cloud or with other organisations. But morality rarely figures as part of the discussion.

It was about ten years ago, that I first encountered the talk of (mobile) software’s ability to track the user’s location and ‘contextualise’ the behaviour – e.g., display ads for the movie running at the cinema, that you happen to walk past. Foursquare, Google Latitude, and Facebook Places are three such services available today – albeit for other purposes, but stay tuned for that movie ad.

However, the privacy discussion is not just about privacy settings (easy or not). Damon Horowitz certainly asked some interesting questions about morality and technology in his recent TED presentation titled ‘moral operating system‘. It is akin to the discussions found in science about morality, e.g., hydrogen bomb; and the what if Weismann’s barrier is permeable – should we (still) apply gene therapy, if we also risk a heritable change to our DNA?

Developing software hasn’t so far been associated with these types of moral questions, but it seems that our technology has reached a critical mass where we might need to get used to discussing these. More isn’t just more . . .

Jun 3

Social Network Segment
1 Comment

Digital Me – Or what’s really wrong with the online portion of our lives

The Great Experiment, a.k.a. The Internet, rolls on at ever greater speed – but I would like you to stop for a moment and think about the points below. There are some fundamental problems, that I believe needs addressing to avoid the experiment going bad. In no particular order:

Social Networks are fundamentally broken. To illustrate, imagine if emails only work within the same domain – e.g., you’d need a hotmail account to email hotmail users, and a gmail account to email Google users. The idea about email would become useless, yet, this is exactly how social networks work today. Users today ‘fix’ the problem by moving to the same the domain (i.e., Facebook) and thereby artificially inflating the perceived value of the network – in effect re-creating the web version of Microsoft’s Windows monopoly. I for one could do without another one of those monopoly. The truly scary scenario is when people start to see the Internet = Facebook (or any other company – shiver). There is a good cover story on IEEE Spectrum about Diaspora – four New York guys working towards an Internet not dominated by a single company. Read more

Mar 14

6 Comments

The silliness of smarter-than-you machines

SkyNETAhh, the silliness of people.

John Kelly, Head of IBM research, said according to the Economist: “We are at a moment where computers and computer technology now have approached humans“. The moment of singularity is near, and the next president/prime minister will be SkyNET. Blah blah blah . . .

Apart from making great headlines, the debate is just plain silliness.

Think about it for a moment. Read more

« Older Entries