Second-class citizens

The internet has been great in levelling the playing field for everyone using it. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, how old you are, or what gender you are, you can share your view on the internet and get loads of information from anywhere.

Or can you?

You may be wondering what I’m talking about. Whether I’m going to talk about governments watching what people do. Whether I’m going to talk about internet access. Whether I’m going to talk about class actually mattering on the internet.

Actually, I’m going to talk about content availability. What I find when using certain features on the internet is that some services are only available in the USA.

I was amazed to hear that a couple of years ago, Google introduced a music previewing feature in search results. I went to Google and did a search… no music previews. It was only after a bit of searching around that I realised that this feature is only available in America. How stupid. People listen to music all over the world, why should this feature only be available in the USA? Copyright issues, probably.

Another similar instance is when I downloaded the service Boxee for my laptop. Turns out that in the UK, you can only get a couple of features. So Boxee is pretty pointless: I can search YouTube and the BBC iPlayer much more quickly in FireFox than on Boxee, so they’re loosing out on the non-American market. Probably down to copyright again.

It’s interesting. The internet has completely changed everything in the world: the way people communicate with friends, the way people meet new people, collaborate, share ideas, research, broadcast ideas, buy and sell stuff, distribute products, make money, play games and much more. So why can’t things like copyright rules adapt to this?

If somebody decided 20 years ago that the internet shouldn’t be used to transfer money, then many of the things above wouldn’t be there today.

We need to change our attitude, we need to treat everyone equally otherwise it’s pretty pointless having services for the entire world if you can only use them in the United States of America!

What’s happened to software?

About 10 years ago, when I was 7, I remember our computer. We had a Windows 95 PC and it had some pretty cool features. Looking back now, it was pretty cool (mainly for the novelty value) and I wish I could get some of the stuff onto my clunky Vista machine (which actually has more RAM than the 95 PC had hard disk space).

We had some cool things… some awesome screensavers (including macaroni dancing to the macarena!), some cool games, and, of course, Microsoft Works.

We had internet access, but I never knew the password for the dial-up connection so I never used it. Software was the main reason I ever used the computer.

Whiz forwards 10 years, and people don’t use software as much as they used to. We use internet browsers, maybe a mail client and an office package – and I’m pretty sure that’s all most people ever open. Because we don’t need to. Everything we need now is on the internet, downloading and installing software is a hassle… and then there’s the threat of viruses!

Now why’s this such a big issue? Well it’s not really, but I’ve just started my A-level computing project at school and we have to build a program using Visual Basic. I was sitting down and thinking about what I could actually build which would be useful to somebody and I found it extremely difficult. Every time I thought of an idea, I had to remind myself that it would involve some sort of connection to the internet. That’s fine, but it often defeats the object of the program.

Programs now seem so pointless, because all these services are now available on the cloud – even Microsoft Office! But we are heavily dependent on the internet when using computers. If I don’t have an internet connection at my computer, I stop using my computer, because there’s not much else I can really do!

So when I think back to Windows 95, and the maze screensaver, or Comix Zone, or making random publications because I didn’t have anything else to do… it seems a shame that everything we do is in the same window – we haven’t built software which interacts very well with web services which means that the software is often quite pointless in today’s very connected world.

Syncing the world

With every new bit of technology released in the world, the world is becoming much more connected. This is great! There is, however, a minor issue with all of this. Keeping everything in sync.

I am a regular Facebook user. I like to keep up to date with what my friends are doing, who is commenting on my photos, wall and so on. For this reason, Facebook sends me emails alerting me when things happen. This is great, it keeps me informed.

But what about when I’m not at my laptop? I get SMS updates to my phone. I have also downloaded Facebook Notifications for my Macbook.

What’s the problem? I get notified several times about the same action. I get a text, an email and a little notification. I also get a notification on Facebook itself. I don’t need to be told 4 times about 1 little thing that’s going on. I think we need a system which keeps everything in sync. If I’m out of the house, it sends me the text, and not the other notifications. If I’m at my computer it sends me a Facebook notification. If I’m not at my computer then it sends me an email.

Now this isn’t a problem I have with Facebook, it is the same with all websites. And with the current infrastructure, it is very difficult to do any different. Email is a very old system – it has been around years before I was born! SMS messages adopt a very similar structure to emails, and this is okay, but it doesn’t utilize the available modern technologies in a way which makes people’s lives easier!