Here’s an old drawing I did many moons ago. I called it “Man and Machine”. I think what I was trying to convey is pretty clear. Even as a young man long before this golden age of the Internet and gadget nirvana I wanted to comment on the relationship of Man and technology. I found it humorous that the very machine we created to help us would in turn need our help.
Google Plus continues to grow with over 60 million users after six months and they keep adding new features little by little. One of the most important features that I am hoping to see soon is something called Public Circles. Let me explain why I think this will become important for the future of the social network. Take a look at this PaiChart (Infographic I made).
Right now, members can publish several different types of posts.
1. Private Messages. Members can send messages to another individual member (or several at a time). These are like direct messages on Twitter.
2. Public Stream. All posts sent to the public stream appears in everyone’s stream that happens to be in any of your circles
3. Your Circles. You can send messages to one particular circle or several at a time or all of them at once.
This means only the people you’ve added to those circles will see those messages.
4. Extended Circles. This is a little tricky but basically it means you don’t know who’s going to see your messages
due to the fact that messages will be sent to the circles that belong to the people you’ve added to your circles and so on.
5. Public Circles (Not here yet). I would love to see public circles because it would allow members to send messages to a particular group
of members curated according to a particular topic. We could use #Hashtags to target the public circles we want to send messages to.
For example, if I post something with the #Photography hashtag then only the members who’ve subscribed to that public circle will see it
and not everyone in your circles.
Why not just stick with regular hashtags then? Well, because the downside to hashtags is that they are always public so everyone in your circles
sees every post you send with hashtags to the public stream which could be annoying to many of them. Being able to isolate where the messages go
could be very useful.
Another benefit to Public Circles is the fact that they would be self-curating as people could add/remove themselves at any time. If you get tired of seeing posts about photography then you can easily unsubscribe from that public circle. There could be other topics you want to try instead.
As for managing these public circles, that’s something that has to be ironed out. Google could assign moderators to monitor each public circle or the members of public circles could vote for and elect the admins. We should also be allowed to create our own public circles which could be about topic under the sun. They would be like Twitter lists.
I know Google has Sharable Circles where we can curate a circle and then share it with others who can then copy them to their own collection of circles. That’s totally different than public circles because this involves a lot of manual manipulation for each member. We have to add/remove each member to each circle where as a public circle has people adding/removing themselves. Of course we can still maintain our own private circles if we choose to do so.
Basically, public circles would be like the new age hashtag where members can subscribe and unsubscribe any time they want. There would/should be a directory of every Public Circle available for all members too. We should be able to see who’s in each public circle as well. We can choose to join the public circle or create our own based on that public circle like we can do with sharable circles.
What do you think of the idea for Public Circles? Wouldn’t you like to be able to subscribe/unsubscribe to self-curating public circles as well as create your own? This could be invaluable for brands and businesses too.
Here’s an episode of the new version of The Outer Limits which ran again from 1995 to 2002. This one was called “Stream of Consciousness” and aired in 1997. It was truly a prophetic tale as it depicted how dependent the world would be on the Internet which they called The Stream. This was a time before the web exploded into what we all know and love today. AOL was king and our connections were all based on slow dial-up modems for the most part.
In the story, due to a brain injury, Ryan Unger cannot enjoy the benefits of a neural implant that allows other people to tap into The Stream — a direct connection into all human knowledge. He tries, unsuccessfully, to keep up with everyone else by using a long-forgotten skill: reading books.
Unfortunately for the human race, the Stream has been erroneously programmed to crave information instead of knowledge. Soon, it begins to turn the human race into its slaves to attempt to locate and process every single bit of information, a process that will lead to the human race’s extinction as people stop doing everything to obtain the desired information.
Ryan’s injury keeps him from falling under the sway of the Stream, leaving him the only person who can stop it. The Stream will not allow itself to be shut down, however, and it commands the humans under its control to defend itself from Ryan. In the end, Ryan succeeds in shutting down the Stream and saving mankind. Cut off from the mental crutch humanity has used for so long, the entire population (save Ryan) are reduced to a child-like mental state. Ryan finds himself needing to teach mankind the old ways of acquiring information again — from books.
Opening Narration
“We quantify our world in order to learn. We break it down into facts, numbers, information. But how far dare we go before we destroy its mystery?”
Closing narration
“We make tools to extend our abilities, to further our reach, and fulfill our aspirations. But we must never let them define us. For if there is no difference between tool and maker, then who will be left to build the world?”
Here’s a link to SynchTube to watch it with others online in real-time
http://www.synchtube.com/r/Vtci
Frank Capra is my favorite movie director of all-time which makes Robert Riskin one of my favorite screenwriters of all-time because he penned most of Capra’s best work for the screen. The best of their films together included:
Every once in a while I hear something that grabs my attention no matter what I’m doing. That happened today when I had the TV on in the background on HBO and it played a promo of movies coming up this year and the music just caught my attention. I whipped out my shazam app and it found out the name of the song and artist, “All at once” by The Airborne Toxic Event. I just loved the song so much…the music and the lyrics. It’s such a rare treat when it all clicks together like that. Here are a couple of different versions of the amazing song.
Here’s the black and white performance video of All At Once by The Airborne Toxic Event
Here’s the recorded version with lyrics
“All At Once”
We were born without time
Nameless in the arms
Of a mother, a father, and God
When the world would wait for us
A thousand years in the crush
Of our eyes, fearless, and awed
So quietly, we’d fade into sleep
With nothing on our mind(s)
Hoo, hoo, hoo..
And then we longed to be loved
In the rush, we become
Some things we thought we’d never be
We were surprised by how hard
Left wary and scarred
From the nights spent feeling incomplete
And all those evenings swearing at the sky
Wishing for more time
All the promises we broke when we tried
Just wastin’ all our time
Hoo, hoo..
We grow old all at once
And it comes like a punch
In the gut, in the back, in the face
When it seems someone’s lied
And our parents have died
Then we hold onto each other in their place
And I feel the water risin’ around us
Maybe that’s okay
Yeah, I feel the world changin’ all at once
I guess it’ll be okay
Hoo, hoo, hoo..
And we all had one hope
There was someone lookin’ down
To return our bodies to each other
And the ground
Social networks like Facebook and Google Plus are battling it out right now for supremacy and video chat has become one of the fiercest battlegrounds. Google has taken the lead with its hangout feature which supports up to 10 video participants at the time while Facebook has improved its chat feature by adding video capabilities.
I believe the next battle will involve improved audio capabilities as the world becomes ever mobile and on the go. Being able to communicate verbally on mobile devices hands free while driving or doing other things has become increasingly important.
In the past, there has been social networks based on audio communication (hence my term SocialAudio). The best of them all was a service called Utterz.com which came out before the age of the iPhone and smartphones hit its stride. They were smart by allowing their members to use any cell phone which then posted their audio files online so it was both a mobile and web social network. You could also listen to audio posts while driving hands free. You can also reply and cycle forward and backwards thru messages of those you were following and even from the public timeline. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they were never able to become as popular as Twitter or Facebook and vanished.
If Google integrates Google Plus with its Google Voice product then they could provide the most impressive SocialAudio network ever. Since they’ve already started integrating G+ with their other products, this is not that far fetched. Users would be able to communicate via audio in real-time or via recorded messages any time any place.
In the mean time, there are some other services that operate in the SocialAudio arena. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Here’s a video demo he did about Shoutomatic.
Here’s a demo of AudioBoo
Intro to Audioboo from Mark Rock on Vimeo.
Breaking Glass (1980) is a favorite film starring Hazel O’Connor who wrote and performed all of the original songs. This was like the punk version of Bette Midler’s The Rose which came out around the same time. Both stories were similar in that they followed the rise to fame of a female music artist and the disillusionment they encountered personally once they reached the top.
Hazel has a wide range of songs in the gem of a movie. She has some high tempo stuff and soft ballads (My favorite being WILL YOU) and everything in between. The movie starts off with her “Writings on the Wall” and just sets the tone of what’s to come. You should check it out.
Here’s the opening and closing sequences as well as the song “BIG BROTHER”
Here’s my favorite track from the movie, “WILL YOU”
Here’s the concert performance for Eighth Day including her Tron outfit and laser show. Hey, it’s 1980.
I’ve always loved Ellen Foley. Most people don’t know the name but once they hear that she sang the female part on Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” they remember her. Sadly, though, they think she’s the singer that appeared on Meatloaf’s music video for the song but that was Karla Devito who lip synced to Ellen’s powerful voice. It should have helped launch Ellen’s career and it did lead to her critically acclaimed solo album “Night Out” but sales were not great despite praise from Rolling Stone magazine a cult following. I really liked her solo efforts too but for whatever reason she never really made it big commercially but everyone agrees that she was a great singer and a dynamic performer. Checkout the songs below. She also did a stint on the popular TV series Night Court but it was only one season.
As for her personal life, Ellen dated Mick Jones from the clash at their peak and this ill-fated relationship was the inspiration to one of their biggest hits, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” which covered their tumultuous times.
Here’s her Facebook page
Here’s the most popular song she did. Meatload’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Such a shame that Ellen didn’t get to perform in the popular music video which featured Karla DeVito instead.
Another popular collaboration was with Ian Hunter on his big hit “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”
Here’s a live version with Ian Hunter
Stupid Girl from The Kenny Everette Video Show
Stupid Girl
We Belong to the Night
What’s a Matter Baby
Shattered Palace (Sons of Europe)
Another version of Shattered Palace. Ellen was never more beautiful here
From a TV special called 3 Girls 3, here Ellen sings the Eagles’ New Kid in Town.
Ellen performing the song written about her in recent times. “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
SILENT RUNNING is a wonderful science fiction film that was released 40 years in 1972. It was directed by Douglas Trumbull who was the special visual effects master for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek:The Movie, and other sci-fi classics.
This story has Bruce Dern and some others tending to the last vegetation of the rain forest in giant domes in outer space. They have robots on board to help them named Hewey, Dewey and Louie who resemble R2D2. Eventually, Dern learns that they are supposed to destroy this remaining forest and head back home but he does not agree with the orders and tries to protect it.
Joan Baez sang a couple of songs including the title track and the wonderful song used at the end “Rejoice in the Sun”.
Here’s the finale (Spoiler Alert) which I believe makes the movie so memorable. I still get chills and feel moved when I see this.
The notion of the last remnants of planet Earth’s rain forest floating through space forever with only robots as the gardeners is an emotional concept. Reminds me of how I felt at the end of A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and realizing how brief our sojourn is here on Earth.
Here’s the theatrical trailer
Bruce Dern talks about Silent Running and how it found an audience many years after leaving the theaters.
The future kitchen will have appliances that follow one another like we do on social networks…SmartToasters and Multi-TouchFridges communicate with digital pantries to keep things in stock and even place orders with local grocers. Recipe apps query the DigitalPantry and adjusts the shopping list accordingly. Some of these things are already here but there isn’t a universal platform where they can all communicate with one another yet. The digital language hasn’t been established yet but it’s coming much like Ethernet and Token Ring from years ago. The HomeNetwork could tie it all together… not just inside the home but also with the outside world such as the grocery store.
1967
