Tag: Apple

R.I.P. Information Hwy

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I’m watching The Politician on Netflix while working out. Deep into the second season, the scene unfolds on a teen and mom in their kitchen, arguing about which state senator to vote for in the upcoming New York election.

Teen is a first-time voter, just 18, and wants to vote for the 24 yr old male candidate running on the Green ticket, vs. the mid-aged female 20 yr incumbent, virtually unchallenged in every election till now.

“Boomer,” the child mocks her mother who is listing the contributions of the older incumbent against the sole climate platform the 24 yr old is running on. “The world is gonna end in 10 yrs, Mom.”

“I am barely a boomer, okay?” the mom defends. “So don’t throw that shit at me,” she says. “And the world is not going to end in 10 yrs, Jayne!” She goes on and lists all she does for her daughter, the vegan cooking, the composting, and even the hyper-vigilant recycling her child insists on. “And still, I am the problem, according to you.”

“Not YOU, Mom. People your age.”

Right about now I feel my body tense as I run on the machine. I AM her mother’s age.

“Let me tell ya something, Jayne. People YOUR age think you know everything and you are fucking naive. When I was your age, I thought I knew everything too.”

“We’re not naive, Mom. We’re INFORMED. You had, what, like two newspapers, three networks. I’ve got a SUPER COMPUTER in my pocket.”

She is, of course, referring to her cellphone, and, in fact, showing the viewer how naive this child really is.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t come back at Jayne. Mom doesn’t know (nor the writers of the show apparently) that the SUPER COMPUTER in both their pockets, well, isn’t informing them of anything but what they already believe. So, in effect, it is MANIPULATING this ignorant, yet rather arrogant child, and anyone else who believes they have a SUPER COMPUTER in their cellphone.

The cellphone you all carry around, (as I don’t have a smartphone, so really, it is all of you), is a RECOMMENDATION ENGINE. It isn’t INFORMING you, it is RECOMMENDING you read, watch, buy, and even think about what Google, Facebook, Instagram…etc., wants you to. Every social platform you are on, every YouTube vid you watch, every document you SEARCH for, shows you what they think you will be RECEPTIVE to. Marketing pros know that it’s off-putting to get information opposed to what we already believe, regardless of the truth in the information. And they want to endear themselves to customers, not piss us off.

Today’s internet is NOT unlimited access to unfettered information like the world wide web once was. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything through SEARCH that isn’t already somewhere in your belief system. Searching for anything now, you will only get back what Google thinks you should see, to manipulate you to buy the offerings, or into the messaging of their affiliate marketers. A crystal-clear example of this can be seen in the Netflix film The Great Hack. Russia paid Google and Facebook fortunes in ad campaigns pushing the conservative Republican agenda to get Trump elected.

Now, the internet is a MARKETING ENGINE to make these social media platforms money. Every time you log onto Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Google, they ‘scrape’ your posts, simultaneously putting ‘cookies’ on your mobile and laptop to follow you wherever you go on the net, and in real life. Your mobile has an accelerometer in them, which says how fast you are moving, and GPS to inform Google and their like where you are on the planet, revealing when and where you shop, what you buy, how much you spend, what you read, watch, glance at, or frequently visit.

Machine Learning, Natural Language Process, Deep Learning, AI, are all software processes that analyze all that data from trillions of posts, texts, IMs, and searches, and then CORRELATE that data for patterns of behavior through COLLABORATIVE FILTERING.

COLLABORATIVE FILTERS [à la] Wikipedia:

Collaborative filtering is a method of making automatic predictions (filtering) about the interests of a user by collecting preferences or taste information from many users (collaborating).

In other words, gathering and filtering your data from the net tells Google and Facebook what you (and those like you) will likely buy, or what rhetoric you’ll likely believe in the future. Then these social platforms slam you with marketing targeted AT You, not “For You,” as they claim.

They tell you it’s to HELP YOU find things you’ll like quicker. But this is a flat-out lie. They want to SELL YOU offerings and ideas supported by their affiliate marketers (like Russia).

Google SEARCH is the only way to find anything now, locally or globally, since phone books don’t exist anymore. But Google is ONLY returning the businesses buying the most ad space and spending the most money on their platforms. I used to get pages and pages of returns on any given subject 10 yrs ago. Now I only get a few pages before Google says, “We have omitted some entries very similar to those already displayed.” And while they do indicate you can search the omissions, this too is a joke. Google simply will not give you information that they feel you don’t need (and won’t serve their agenda), based on your internet and cellphone usage history.

My 19 yr old daughter, and most of her friends, are on the same page as Jayne in The Politician. They are simply ignorant of what it is they are addicted to, and how their phones are manipulating them to THINK, FEEL and ACT the way these social platforms and their affiliate marketers want them to. She is SURE that “no one is manipulating ME, Mom!” She “knows” when she’s being hit with ads, and she “just ignores them.”

BULLSHIT.

My daughter, you, me, can’t ignore them when we don’t even know they are happening while we IM through Facebook on our mobile.

Example:

Mary is IMing a good friend on Facebook, whining about her marriage “in crisis.”

Facebook’s algorithms are scraping her and her friend’s IM for SENTIMENT ANALYSIS to find out where Mary might be vulnerable to purchase something…anything really, as FB has advertisers that sell just about everything.

The next ad Mary sees on her mobile is for a singles dating site. The ad is targeted at divorcees, showing an older woman having fun with a stunning man, and the copy says, “Your second chance at true love.” In a few short sentences, the copy describes the relationship you’ll find on their site like a Cinderella story, the evil stepmom played by the partner’s spouse.

A while later, Mary goes on to YouTube, and the next series of ads she sees vacillate from singles dating sites to divorce lawyers. The ads appear on the side of her emails, and in her Instagram feed, and most anywhere she goes online.

Mary never mentioned divorcing her husband when IMing her friend. She’d not even thought of it, really. In fact, she’s frequently sounded off about her relationship to friends through IM, as many do. And it isn’t the first time Mary has gotten these dating and lawyer ads. It’s been going on a long time now, one ad after the other every time she even posts a back-handed joke about marriage in general, regardless if through her phone or laptop. And after this last fight with her husband, well, like the ads keep saying, Mary deserves more! Like the ads say, she can find someone better than her husband. And like the ads say, a divorce will, “Open her life to the possible!”

These ads appear whenever Mary is feeling vulnerable about her marriage. (Marketing is an iterative process.) And instead of looking to make it work with her husband, after a while all Mary wants to do is divorce and open her life up to new possibilities.

To Google, Facebook, Mary’s divorce is a WIN! Their algorithms and the engineers who code them don’t know they’ve torn apart a family, for their profit. The software did its job and rewarded their advertisers. Some lawyer who advertises on their site just got themselves a client. Some dating app that spends millions annually in affiliate marketing on their platform just got a new subscriber. Multiply that with the hundreds of thousands of businesses doing affiliate marketing on the net, and you have, well, today’s internet.

NOT a SUPER COMPUTER. And no longer, “The Information Highway.”

But simply a RECOMMENDATION ENGINE, a marketing tool in which YOU are a PRODUCT of the platforms you frequent.

The Internet is God

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Last night my husband got very sick. He was vomiting simultaneously with diarrhea and shat himself. He was restless through the night and got up early, clearly still feeling ill.

This morning when I came downstairs I asked him how he was feeling. Not so great, he told me. Still have diarrhea, but I’m not feeling as nauseous. I still can’t hold water down though. I think I have the norovirus, or food poisoning.

I put on my Dr. Mom role. Whatever is in your system you have to get it out, I told him. So, drink a lot. Start with water, or Gatorade for the electrolytes. Sip it throughout the day if it makes you feel sick drinking.

I don’t know if that’s the best idea. The internet says I should avoid drinking if I keep throwing it up, he told me he’d read earlier, likely off some bullshit site selling pharms but claiming to be ‘medical,’ like WebMD.

I felt my irritation building as he sat at the kitchen table and scrolled his laptop. You lost a lot of fluids last night, I told him. You need to replace it to help your system fight whatever you’ve got. And you need to eat something. How about a banana? They’re binding. Or a piece of dry toast, no butter.

Let me look it up and see what they recommend, he said and continued scrolling and reading.

Are you kidding me? I asked, miffed. Who are ‘they?’ The Internet!? By the time you find any real information on not only what is wrong with you but also what to do about it you’ll be convinced you need hospitalization. I’ve played Dr. Mom to our kids hundreds of times. Stomach flu, even norovirus is manageable with a few key steps. You don’t need to look it up! You need to stay hydrated. Bananas are binding and will help suppress diarrhea, I told him. Water will help flush your system of whatever is bothering you.

I know why he got sick. It’s the height of Spring, and we’re in New Jersey for his mom’s 90th. By the second day there he was suffering with recurring bouts of rapid-fire sneezing. Wheezing. Continual runny nose. Four days of severe allergies taxing his immune system, and he got on a plane to come back to the w[b]est coast. And while his allergies eased on the plane and entirely once home, someone in overpopulated New York City — the cesspool of the country, the crowded airports we waited in for hours with delays at Newark, or on our plane had something, and he got it.

Used to think the internet was the savior of mankind. Now, I fucking HATE CELLPHONES and the INTERNET! Both spread lies on a global scale, enable massive, unrelenting GREED, convert blind believers (Christians) into Trump supporters. And most all of you are addicted to both!

Raise your hand if you know someone who constantly pulls out their phone during casual conversation to ‘get the facts’ (what a joke!) on whatever the subject of your dialog. Hella annoying! I’d rather contemplate the answer than have it served to me by an unreliable source.

We got together with a friend of my husband’s while we were back east. He’s ‘one of those guys’ who whips out his phone to check if whatever is being said is ‘right.’ He read aloud with authority whatever [garbage] he found on the net. But iterating the first thing that pops up on his phone screen is, well, idiotic. Today’s internet makes it impossible to find any real facts without hours of searching multiple sources well beyond Google or Chatgpt, and even then, the information you’ll find is limited to the recommendation engines behind most platforms.

Do you pull out your mobile when you’re on the toilet, in line at the store, even with friends or fam? Text someone? Check your email? Scroll Insta? Look for…whatever? At both airports, on both planes, in line at any store, in most public places packed with people, or even just a few passing by, and most everyone is on their phones most all the time. Take your face out of your phone and look around to see what I’m saying here is real. The TRUTH*. Instant access to the internet through cellphones or tablets are creating a massive addiction problem. People are relying on their connected devices like junkies rely on heroin. And like the drug, it may feel good upfront getting that dopamine rush from instant access to entertaining ‘information,’ regardless how amusing there is little truth to what most are getting from quick searches. And addicted phone users supply far more data to AI engines making them easier to manipulate you with personalized, targeted messaging. The Republicans have used mobile marketing far more effectively than the Democrats. Clearly.

WebMD says I’m supposed to eat bananas for the diarrhea and stay hydrated with water or tea or something with electrolytes, my husband read aloud this morning. Like most today, he’s becoming one of the converted, a true believer in the Internet, whoever he deems them to be.

That’s what I said, I defended. Without looking on the net, I added cuz I was feeling pissed off, and a bit scared of his internet addiction right then. My husband doesn’t go to the toilet without his phone or laptop. The Internet has become his God. And I have no interest in, nor trust in blind believers.

Cellphone and Internet usage, whether for ‘convenience’ or entertainment or ‘information’ is moving humanity in the WRONG direction, away from compassion, empathy, and quality, to idiocracy. It is creating more blind believers than any religion. Your cellphone and the internet are TELLING YOU WHAT AND HOW TO THINK. Think you know why there is no customer service at Macy’s, or why most retail is shutting down? Yeah, Amazon, but more to the point, no one protests their spending their life hours in the long line at Macy’s because they are on their phones, being entertained by messaging to convince us to buy [into], try, subscribe!

GET A CLUE! It costs me (and likely you) MORE to order plane tickets for New Jersey using Chrome than on Edge. Why? Dynamic or Personalized Pricing, except the profit is for the airline, and the assholes who make and manage their SaaS. Google (who runs Chrome) has more data on my spending habits, my income, my ‘purchasing power’ than Microsoft. Clearly. So Alaskan Airlines went with Googles data and charged me over $40 per ticket more. And most everything you buy online now has variable pricing — you are CHARGED MORE the more data you give them through your phone because every site you look at, every platform you engage with, every purchase you make through your mobile is recorded and sold to the highest bidder.

Have I lost you yet? You want to be ENTERTAINED, not brought down with the TRUTH. Look it up and the Internet will tell you I’m a conspiracy theorist. The Internet saves lives! It moves society forward.

Well, it sure has. It’s creating a planet of junkies.

Don’t think of yourself as an addict? Well, if you got this far and are reading this on your phone right now, put it down and look into a mirror. NOT a selfie. A real mirror and then ask yourself to tell you the TRUTH. Most addicts can’t see it — can’t admit to being addicted. That’s why the #1 Rule in Alcoholics Anonymous is first to ADMIT YOU ARE AN ADDICT.

Do you care you are a junkie, addicted to your phone? If you don’t believe you are, then put it down and leave it for two hours. How many times do you think to pick it up? Just check it, quick check, see if it has anything you must know about right now?

It doesn’t. That’s algorithms designed to convince you to stay on your device. That way you are a target for selling — products, services, messaging, belief.

If you are one of the very few junkies who understand mass addiction to corporate talons is bad for society globally, take the Internet off your phone so you’re not tempted to spend hours every day blowing away your life’s time on mindless content meant to get you to blindly believe whatever political agenda or corporate America is selling you.

 — 

*How can you trust I’m not touting conspiracy theories, that I’m telling you TRUTH here? My husband is a software architect that helped design the first recommendation engine [for Netflix]. I have been marketing SaaS startups in Silicon Valley since the dot com boom in the late 1990s, and teaching entrepreneurs developing SaaS and ‘AI’ at Stanford and Cal Berkeley for a decade. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what you all do not know — that I too could be an ignorant addict like most of you. It’s certainly easier to live with your head up your own ass. Too harsh? Maybe. But really, in the long run, ask yourself what kind of world are you leaving for our children when everyone is a junkie sucking on the corporate tit.

APPLE IS EVIL

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

“Apple is evil,” I told the man tapping his iPad to retrieve my son’s information at middle school registration.

His bushy eyebrows furrowed. “No they’re not. They’re great! They practically gave the district iPads for every grade, student, and even all the admins. And next year we’ll be going digital with most textbooks,” he said enthusiastically.

“You think Apple is giving away iPads because they support education?” I inquire while filling out my check to the public school to which we already pay ever increasing taxes.

Again his brow furrowed and a frown was perceptible between his heavy peppered beard and thick mustache. “I know the kids come home and ask their parents to buy Apple. But they should. It’s a great product!”

And a lot more expensive than most comparable phones, PC’s, and tablets out there. If Apple is supporting education, why are they charging parents, and everyone else they’re not giving their computers to, 30-50% more than any other computer manufactureur? I’m now in the position of having to buy both my kids Macbooks or iPads so they can do their homework. And the topper— Apple will saddle us with yet another monthly connection bill.

The ignorant admin sat behind a long folding table, between two women, one of three men in the auditorium of 50 volunteer parents. His arms were folded across his protruding belly, his expression—an indulgent grin, the kind where it’s obvious he’d tuned me out. He’s a diehard Apple fan, one of Steve Job’s faithful followers, a blind believer. And faith is BLIND. He’s a devote of Apple, thinks the computer makes him more creative, because that is Apple’s brilliant marketing—making the ignorant believe they’ll be more creative on a Mac than any other computer.

I used to be a diehard Apple fan. My father gave me my first computer, a desktop PC (whose brand I don’t recall) back in the late 70’s. Monitor and PC were one unit, matte gray screen supported only a text interface with bright green type, in one size only. It was hard to use, kept losing my files, freezing up, shutting down. Then along came the Mac. I started with the llc and fell in love with the UI’s ease of use; the stability of the OS; the selection of exclusive programs for graphic and marketing pros. In fact, Mac’s marriage with Adobe virtually invented today’s desktop publishing with software such as PageMaker, Illustrator and Photoshop, originally only for Macs until the 1990s.

I was a Mac fanatic all the way through the G4s, until I could no longer afford to get ripped off. The advent of the Adobe suite working seamlessly on Macs made it easy for businesses to take their marketing efforts in-house. By the mid 90s, freelance gigs were harder to come by, and clients expected consultants to have the latest technology (like their in-house departments boasted). Maintaining my Mac systems—the high priced software combined with the continual investment in extended memory needed to run, it was costing me practically as much as I was making. Even after Adobe opened their platform, and offered their software to PC users at a third of the price for Macs, I was loyal to Apple.

Moved from graphics to mostly creative direction and content writing at the turn of the millennium. Needed a laptop for quick communication with clients and couldn’t afford what I needed to even run Photoshop on a Macbook. Got a Toshiba, with more memory, faster clock speed, great graphics card…etc. Photoshop was $355 less than for the Mac. By the early 2000s I’d replaced most all the software I had on my Mac with their PC versions that worked seamlessly on most any computer we had, and I’ve had no need to buy Mac products since. And we’ve saved a hell of a lot of money!

Business knows when they sell to children, they have a customer for life. This is particularly true with electronic tools. Kid learns at school how to create reports on a Macbook with iMovie. iMovie is Apple’s proprietary software, and can only be used on Mac platforms. I have a choice of many video editing products for Windows/Linux/Firefox that are more powerful than iMovie, starting at just $49. We have no need of iMovie, yet for the kids to function in school they must have both formats, or at least Mac available at home to work on projects outside the classroom.

To date, the new Macbook base model is priced at $4000 for 4TB of hard drive space, and a 14-core CPU, and 20-core GPU. Compare that to the $2200 Dell XPS 16 laptop featuring the same processor, same storage space, and a separate graphics card. We have three laptops, and four PCs in the house. We don’t need, and I don’t want to get back in bed with Apple. Their ‘discounts’ to our schools, accepted by education admin without a clue, once again, leaves parents paying the bill.

On Being Cool

by jcafesin, posted in children, Family, family life, Middle School, moms, parenting, parents, raising kids, Teen, Tween

Had a meltdown on my tween son when he asked, yet again, for an iPad at breakfast this morning.

Before the iPad he wanted a laptop. He’d insisted he needed my old HP the moment I purchased my Toshiba, though he could give no reason why he had to have it, since he had a powerful PC with an enhanced graphics card for gaming in his room. After weeks of needling me, I finally gave him my old laptop to share after backing up [mostly] everything. He loaded the same games he had on his PC, and played them in bed on the laptop for about a week, until he inadvertently downloaded a virus which destroyed every program, every file on the machine—all seven years of my work. (Between ‘mostly’ and ‘everything’ I’d backed up turned out to be the Grand F**king Canyon.)

Prior to the laptop, he needed an iPhone. He’s had a cellphone since the 5th grade, when he started walking the quarter mile home from school. In the two years he’s had it, he forgets it at home most of the time unless I remind him to bring it with him. More often than not the phone has no charge because he doesn’t remember to charge it. Though all his friends have cellphones, he’s exchanged numbers with no one, and, upon inquiry, this seems fairly typical among his contemporaries.

Before the iPhone he had to have a video camera, which he got for his birthday. He used it a few times to tape episodes of Sponge Bob off the TV so he could view them later through the camera’s viewfinder. That lasted about a month, until he tired of it and he hasn’t touched the camera since.

An iPod was before the video camera. I use his iPod when I’m recharging mine, since in the four years he’s owned it, he’s used it maybe 10 times collectively.

He sat at the kitchen table this morning eating his cereal telling me how badly he needed an iPad. They are so cool, he insisted, giving me his puppy face, and good for school, he assured me, though was unable to define how, since a home PC with internet access was all his middle school required. He kept at it throughout breakfast, bargaining away all other gifts for his upcoming birthday in exchange for just one iPad.

And I blew a gasket.

He wanted too damn much! He asked for too much with no purpose. What the hell was the point of all these things when he didn’t even use them?

To be cool, mom, he said through tears.

His palpable shame was a knife through my heart. At 11 years old, crying had ceased to be acceptable, except in tragic situations, and me yelling at him wasn’t tragic. I sat down at the table adjacent to him and stared at my son, fighting tears from overwhelming me as well.

Being cool isn’t about what you have, I reminded him gently. Cool is about what you are, who you are, what you do that makes you special, separates you from the crowd. He was a straight A student, in advanced at math, played electric guitar, but every accomplishment I pointed out just made him cry harder.

None of that matters, he insisted. No one cares about that stuff. And being a nerd might pay off later, but right now no one his age knew or cared who Bill Gates was, he said, throwing my refrain back at me.

Your dad would ask why cool matters, was the lame response I came up with. I knew cool mattered, even to me, but especially for a kid becoming a teen.

It just does, my son assured me. And I’m not, he added shakily, unable to stop the new round of tears.

My heart in my throat, and struggling to swallow back my own tears stopped me from lecturing, but I again reminded my son that iPads and iPhones and video cameras are tools, nothing more, and possessing them doesn’t make one cool.

Yes, mom, he patronized me. But an iPhone is still cool, and so are iPads.

They are cool, undeniably, I told him. And that makes the engineers who invent Apple’s products cool, but not so much the people who use them. I needed to be sure he understood what “cool” really is, and perhaps remind myself as well.

Michael has an iPhone and an iPad and he’s totally popular, my son insisted. Everyone likes him. He has tons of friends and no one picks on him, ever.

Cool means Popular when you’re 11, and I suppose even for adults. Most of us want to be liked, admired, feel special, unique, seen as cool. But I knew Michael wasn’t popular because of his iPad and went about trying to enlighten my son without losing his attention. I pointed out Michael’s rather jovial demeanor, and reminded my son that this popular kid was also an avid sportsman, into soccer, basketball, baseball…etc, the ultimate key to cool for boys in school.

Perhaps Michael’s popularity had nothing to do with his iPad, I suggested. And to further my reasoning I asked, If Evan had an iPhone or iPad do you think he’d be more popular?

Evan is a jerk, my son proclaimed. He’s mean and rowdy, and he has an iPhone, mom. His eyes seem to sparkle with awareness of his own words. Then he smiled. He got it, and I smiled, too, for about a second, until his expression darkened again. But I’ll never be like Micheal, do what he does. I suck at sports and don’t really care about ’em. And I’m not exactly what you’d call upbeat.

And I’ll never write like Stephen King, or Ray Bradbury, or John Fowles,” I said.

Who are they? he asked.

Famous authors you’ve obviously never heard of. Forget it. Tell me, who else is cool, dude? Name five, other than your classmate, Michael. Anyone. Doesn’t even have to be one of your contemporaries.

Greenday, he looked to me for approval.

Okay. Who else?

Death Cab [for Cutie] (another rock band). Thomas Edison. Einstein. And Jason, at school. All the girls really like him.

I laughed. Why?

I don’t know. He’s short, but kind of buff already, I guess. He’s on the track team, and the basketball team, and he tells everyone he lifts his dad’s weights. He’s really into working out.

And what do all five you just named have in common?

He fiddled with the remainder of the Crispex in his bowl as he pondered my question.

They’re all good at something.

And how do you get good at anything? yet another of my canonical refrains.

Practice.

You bet. Find something you love, that turns you on, and work at it, my beautiful son. Practice your guitar more, and become a great musician. Invent a new video game instead of playing someone else’s creation. Learn how to program and develop apps, show us you need an iPad as a tool to create with.

He brightened, smiled at me. I had his full attention again, my reason for slipping in the iPad comment.

Owning an iPad is easy, my baby, and meaningless, just one of many who do, and more who will. Creating with one is cool. Cool is as cool does, kid. Pursue a passion and you’ll be engaged, entertained, and so enraptured in the process you won’t notice or care if you’re popular. And how cool is that! ; – )