A Mind @ Play

As society tries to catch up with the overwhelming advancements in technology of the past few decades, it is unsurprising that governments and legislators find themselves plugging the gaps where criminality can flourish. Developments in encryption, obfuscation, distribution and anonymisation give criminals and privacy activists alike a broad toolkit for conducting their activities away from prying eyes. In Cybercrime and the Dark Net, Cath Senker offers a brief and easily digested overview of this bewildering digital landscape. The book is essentially a collection of short vignettes covering a wide variety of different forms of cybercrime, with an essentially separate second section surveying the dark net.

Der Klappentext behauptet, dieses Buch sei „Der stumme Frühling“ des literarischen Geistes. Zwar vergleicht man hier Äpfel mit Birnen, aber im Kern gibt es in diesem Buch eine provozierende Erörterung der Auswirkung verschiedener Techniken auf die Funktionsweise des Geistes. Carrs Hauptthese, die er in seinem Artikel „Is Google making us stupid?“ schon ausführlich erklärt, ist, dass das Internet Veränderungen in unseren Hirnen auslöst, die unsere Denk- und Erinnerungsvermögen nicht unbedingt positiv verändern. Grundsätzlich spielt das Internet die Rolle eines Universums der Ablenkung, das eine unendliche Vielfalt an leichter Unterhaltung und sinnlosen Unterbrechungen einführt, wodurch wir unsere Gehirne nach einem süchtig-machenden Muster von ineffektivem Multitasking trainieren. Wir heben die neue Technik auf ein Podest, als Eingang zu einer neuen Welt des Wissens und der Kommunikation, die viele Vorteile im Rahmen von sozialer Wechselwirkung, persönlicher Freiheit und wissenschaftlicher Bemühung mit sich bringt. Carr ist jedoch der Meinung, dieses Portal sei beileibe nicht ohne Nachteile, dass diese Technik unsere Fähigkeit des tiefen Denkens und das effektive Nutzen des Gedächtnisses beeinträchtigt.

The blurb claims this book to be a “Silent Spring” for the literary mind. That is certainly comparing apples to oranges, but at the core to this book there is a thought-provoking argument about the impact of various technologies on the workings of the mind. Carr’s main thesis (to be found almost in its entirety in his article “Is Google making us stupid?”) is that the Internet is changing our minds, our ability to think and the way we use our memories, and all this not necessarily for the better. Essentially, the Internet is a universe of distractions, offering endless light entertainments and pointless interruptions that train our brains into an addictive shallow pattern of ineffectual multitasking. We hold up the new technology on a pedestal as a doorway to a new world of knowledge and communication, bringing with it benefits for social interaction, personal liberty and scientific endeavour, but Carr claims that this portal is not without its drawbacks vitiating our ability to think deeply, or use our memories effectively.

The Fold

Many of us are probably familiar with the idea advanced in the early days of the Internet, that most users don’t know how to scroll through a website. Today that seems pretty unbelievable. The vast majority of websites, and indeed many of the most regularly visited, not only favour scrolling but to a large extent rely on it for navigation. So have the rules of the so-called ‘fold’ changed since the Internet’s inception? And what role should it play in decisions made regarding a website’s design today?

Viewing the web can be a very personal experience. Depending on your very own choice of browser, monitor or resolution, the web can look a very different place. If you’ve ever for some reason been forced to view one of your regularly visited websites on a much lower resolution monitor, for example, you’ll know what I mean. What once appeared spacious and easy to read suddenly seems squashed and cluttered. The cute little thumbnail images now take up good chunks of room and force you to scroll around them to get at the text. And should that site employ a fixed-width design that is wider than the current resolution, even more space goes to waste with the appearance of a side scrollbar.

The Great Belt Bridge

Many of us have found ourselves in this position. Your business or group make use of an online system, such as a forum, wiki, blog etc., which you then wish to augment or combine with some other system. How you go about doing that, of course, depends entirely on your goals and the systems you’re trying to use together. Design and styling are usually the least of those worries.

The problem which consistently presents itself when attempting such a combination is what to do with the userbase. Whilst this issue can sometimes be simply ignored, in the hope that only a small number of the users of one system will need access to the second, this isn’t always the case. When it comes to one userbase requiring access to two or more systems, the first question that needs to be answered is whether the user information should be shared, enabling a unified login procedure amongst other benefits. Requiring users to sign up to various different pieces of the puzzle is a time-consuming process, and one that many will find confusing and unnecessary. And since different online systems often have conflicting requirements when it comes to usernames and passwords, for example, this can also lead to more lost password checks and work for the system administrator. However, programming such functionality oneself certainly isn’t within the realms of the abilities of all of us, and keeping such modifications functioning across various systems and versions can be a painful procedure.

In the last year, I heard how Dublin City Council had given up on plans to run a free, city-wide wireless Internet programme on the grounds that it was against EU regulations, anti-competitive and bad for the consumer. As Ireland currently has some of the slowest and most expensive broadband options available in Europe, it seems obvious how the consumer will benefit from having to continue paying for their poor services. But there could be a nicer alternative to centralised WiFi. In a post much earlier this year, Bruce Schneier generated a lot of debate when he claimed he leaves his wireless network open and unprotected for just about anyone to use. This he considers a common courtesy, and whilst acknowledging the risks, considers them to be largely inflated. As many of the people commenting on his article or reporting about it elsewhere point out, there are risks involved, and as far as many of the people in authority are concerned, his common courtesy leaves him much more culpable. Many ISPs stipulate that sharing a connection in this manner would be a breach of contract, and from a legal perspective infringements undertaken by someone piggybacking the network could result in a rather unwelcome investigation for the owner.