consumers, Social Discourse, society

T M I, Please

Some people give too much information (TMI), some businesses want too much information. Personally, I want to control who has my information.

Image from Pixabay.

I’ve got three examples to talk about, all cases where businesses I’ve interacted with demanded far too much information from me for what they were giving.

I’ll start with the generic hair cutting place in Toronto. I don’t live in Canada anymore, but I occasionally visit. On this visit, I also needed to get a hair cut. So I went to one of the chains.

They cut my hair, no problem, but when I went to pay, it became a problem. I forget how much it was, but I had exact change, so it didn’t matter.

The cashier wouldn’t take my money. She wants my phone number first. She adamantly would not take my money until I supplied a phone number.

I don’t have it now, but at the time I took a picture of the board that stated services offered and prices. Nowhere on the sign or in the shop was there any notice saying that you had to give up personal information for a simple hair cut.

So I give her the old Hollywood standard, 555-1212.

“Is that a real number?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sir, I need your phone number.”
“No, you need the money, and it’s right here. I’m trying to give it to you.”
“Sir, I can’t complete the transaction until I enter your name, phone number, and date of birth into our computer.”
So I gave her the mayor’s name, 555-1212 and January first, 1901.
“None of that’s real, sir. I need real info.”
“I’ve given you info so you can complete your form. My only legal obligation here is to pay you the price you’ve posted. Here’s the money, thank you, I don’t need a receipt. I won’t be back.”

You may argue that I’m just giving a poor working stiff a hard time. But that’s a fallacy. Her employer put her into that situation, not me. Her employer wants you to give in because you feel for the poor, underpaid worker being forced to do this grunt work. But giving in doesn’t actually help her, it helps the employer.

This past week I bought a blender as a birthday present. The store offered me different options to pay, including paywave (maybe you call it “Tap & Go” Whatever, you touch your debit card to the reader and the transaction goes through). I chose that. We’re in a pandemic and the less people who touch things the better.

The salesperson tried to take my card from me to perform the paywave transaction. I didn’t let him. It’s a pandemic, we’re minimizing touch. I touched my card to the reader. The transaction went through, he printed 2 copies of the transaction and a separate receipt. So I’ve got the receipt and the blender.

The salesperson suddenly tells me he needs to see my card again.

“Why?”
“I need to swipe it in the store’s computer.”
“Why”
“To close the transaction.”
“I have the receipt. Have you been paid?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a problem with the payment?”
“No.”
“Then why do you need my card?”
“I need the numbers from your card for our files.”
“Why?”
“Store policy.”
“Why?”
“To … assist with your warranty.”
“My warranty is between Philips and me, not your store.” (I didn’t take the ‘extended warranty’) Again I verbally made sure that they had my money, and I had the receipt. I thanked them and left.

I saw an ad on a news site that I read. The ad was for a funky furniture shop, and it had a ‘view catalogue’ link. I like the bookshelf they showed in the ad so I clicked the link – exactly what they want potential customers to do! What do I get? A form I’m supposed to fill out before they’ll honour me with a peak at the goods they’re trying to sell me.

Looking the form over, I noticed that there was only one actual mandatory field, email address. Now I’m not going to give them even that. I don’t know yet whether I’m actually interested in their products, never mind some kind of email newsletter or God knows what else.

If they want to validate the address before I can see the catalogue, I’ll just go away and hopefully they’ll see enough stats on people being turned away by the form that they’ll rethink their strategy.

So I made up an address, one I’d never used before, joeshmoe@fuckoff.com and hit enter.

A “Welcome back!” banner loaded, and full access to the catalogue. So I’m not alone! There are others out there who are also fed up with this crap! Woo-hoo, I have a tribe!

Are we tribe mates, you and me?

education, errata, society

Of Peacocks and Practical Jokes

I’m not sure how vague I need to keep this one, but I’ll try to write it so that if you were there you’ll either know the story or be able to recognise the events. If you weren’t there, hopefully this will still be an amusing anecdote.

I had an employer who encouraged practical jokes. He wasn’t very good at them himself, but he saw them as a sign of a healthy work environment. Usually they were small things and not very memorable.

Then there was the time we created a news network, a revolution, and a plot to kidnap a person. All because of peacocks.

This was a school, and it had peacocks. They’re pretty birds, but they poop a lot and often in doorways or on sidewalks. The school decided to get rid of them (not knowing that the peacocks were killing the snakes – we’d learn that too late).

Many of us objected to the culling of the peacocks, and we decided to protest by making our own t-shirts, the Peacock Liberation Front. This is the photo I took and the graphic I made.

We decided that as a protest, we would kidnap the student-body president from the cafeteria at lunch time and “hold him hostage” until he had finished having lunch with us (we ordered pizza). We had flyers and we had a link to the Peacock News Network, a page put up on the school website (see image below).

Our demands were, of course, return the peacocks, for which we’d exchange the student.

We put this whole thing in motion, then…

The night before, our target, the student president, violated a major school rule and spent lunch in the Dean’s office as punishment. We couldn’t make a public “kidnapping” of him and we really couldn’t reward him with pizza when he was being punished.

So the “joke” collapsed.

Other than a few of us having t-shirts, I don’t think there’s any remnant of the story at the school.

I still have my t-shirt, in storage in Canada. I have the graphic here, and may reprint it for myself or even sell it on t-shirts again.

errata

The Shadow of Steve Jobs, Part 1

We weren’t very big, but our clients were. There were the names you all would know – BMW, Subaru, GlaxoSmithKline, Corning, Dr. Scholls, Gallo Wines – and big names that only Canadians would be familiar with – Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, Loblaws.

Steve Jobs in 1995

The company owner was an absolute devotee of Steve Jobs and everything Apple (as was I at the time). He was also the point man on the sales team (we were a small shop).

Apple announced a new and much improved MacBook. Then they announced the caveat: only available in America.

The owner called me into his office, upset at this apparent snub. (This was 25 years ago, I’m not going to quote what was said, because memory isn’t accurate at that range) The gist of the conversation was that he wanted this shiny new toy and he wanted me to help him get it.

We discussed and discarded the idea of going to the States to buy one. No, he wanted it delivered here.

So we worked out an email, addressed to Steve Jobs.

We stated that although we were very small, we were a trusted service supplier to, and in the boardrooms of, companies Apple was trying to court.

Currently, we explained, we went in and did our presentations with MacBooks, which was often noted and discussed. We were very enthusiastic about Apple.

But our IT department wanted the whole shop to standardise onto Windows (which was true). If we couldn’t go into these boardrooms with state-of-the-art Macs, we’d be forced to do it with state-of-the-art Windows laptops, and Apple would lose an evangelical edge in those boardrooms.

We sent it to steve@apple.com.

About a week later, we got a call from the largest Apple dealer in Toronto (this was way before Apple stores) telling us that one of these brand new, not-available-in-Canada laptops had been sent to them with specific instructions to sell it to us and only us (There was an underlying tone that this transaction was being scrutinized).

I got to go with the boss to the store to buy the laptop. The whole sales staff gathered around as we unboxed it, registered everything and gave it a test boot. There was lots of ‘ooh’ing and ‘aaw’ing.

Finally, one of the staff asked the question they were all holding back, “Who are you?”

I don’t know that we had a satisfying answer for them except that we were the guys Steve Jobs listened to.

It felt good.

Journalism

Facebook vs Australia

I’m fascinated by the Facebook v Australia war playing out right now.

As I understand the war, it was incited by the Australian government threatening to pass a law that any post of Australian media onto social media meant that the media source had to be compensated by the hosting site. So if I posted a news story from ABC (Australia Broadcast Corporation) onto Facebook, Facebook – not me – would have to pay ABC for the link.

That’s just not how the internet works. Which brings up two possible streams of thought:

A) Shouldn’t ABC be monetising the clicks that such a posting leads to, rather than trying to monetise the post itself?

Or B) If this is how we want the internet to work (creating unsinkable silos of information), we have to redefine every aspect of HTML, usr behaviour and the history of the internet.

Facebook’s response has been to remove all Australian media from Facebook, and, going one step further, to remove all Australian government pages and information from Facebook.

The first part seems a good way to demonstrate the flaws in the Australian government’s logic, the second part shows what the internet would look like if such legislation were enforced, and it’s not pretty.

The ABC’s website is replete with notices like this.

I don’t often side with Facebook (ed note: have I ever?) but in this case, I think they’re right. The legislation is ill-advised and fundamentally rethinks a tool (the internet as a whole) that is too well-entrenched to be radically changed at this time.

Here’s an overview from the Australian media’s perspective. Interestingly, if I understand what they’re fighting about, I might have to remove this link or else pay for it.

I don’t allow commenting on this website, so if you want to explain to me where I’m wrong, the best way is to find me on twitter @StephenGParks. If I’m wrong or ill-informed, I’ll amend this article as I deem it needs it.

consumers, Creativity, critical thinking, economics, society

Can Cinemas Survive?

A forum that I participate in was asked the question, “This pandemic aside, are cinemas still relevant to our entertainment experience or has TV supplanted them completely?”

I … had some thoughts.

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

From a technological perspective:
TV has caught up to and even overtaken cinema – TV screens are huge, Dolby and other cinema-quality audio streams are available, and streaming bandwidth and/or blue-ray allows for the delivery of better picture quality.

From the social perspective:
TV offers greater flexibility in timeshifting, pausing, rewinding to catch a missed piece of dialogue. or continuing at another time. Theatre’s main advantage is the “experience,” which other than seeing a picture in a crowd, is also being improved upon by consumers watching TV at home.

From a content perspective:
Theatre’s exclusivity window keeps shrinking. So movies can be enjoyed at home sooner. Certainly, the pandemic has accelerated this, as studios have product they want to monetize and theatres can’t fulfill that desire.

As for the quality difference between movies and TV shows, that’s been dwindling for some time. For me, HBO’s Rome was the first indication that TV could supplant movies as the home of epic storytelling.

I think many studios are coming around to the idea that serialized TV is a better format than movies. Look at how characters like Jack Ryan are migrating from movie releases to TV seasons. Marvel’s various forays into TV series have shown them that the format was viable for something cinematic like WandaVision.

From the studio’s economic perspective:
Movie theatres aren’t owned by studios, so they have been until recently a necessary middleman between the studios and their profits. If the studios can build streaming services, then they own the middleman’s share of profits as well.

From a consumer’s cost perspective:
Taking a family to the movie theatre twice a month could easily set you back $100. How many streaming services (with massive libraries) could you sign up to for the cost of taking your family to see those two movies? Yes, buying the components of a home theatre are not insignificant, but they’re coming down, and it’s a sunk cost – this commitment isn’t only used for home theatre, it plays many other entertainment, informative, and potentially educational roles.

So for consumers, I think the shift from movie theatres to home theatre experience is inevitable. And I think studios realize it and are planning accordingly. If any of you are old enough to remember theatres before the megaplex concept, then you know that theatres have been losing audience for a long time and have been trying to reinvent the traditional experience.

However, we need to acknowledge that there’s also a socio-economic consideration here. While the price of entry for enjoying cinema is coming down, it’s still:
A) a good TV;
B) Broadband internet; &
C) The ability to afford streaming services or purchase Blu Ray discs and own a player.

Not everyone has the funds to support that kind of infrastructure.

Will theatres disappear completely? Probably not, but I would expect they’ll end up more like the DVD-bongs that thrived in Korea in the early 2000’s – a small room that you rented to view a movie with a hand-chosen audience.

Mass capacity theatres may be preserved for special premiers in select cities, or they may just join vaudeville as castouts of modern society.

critical thinking

Haunted by a Conversation

Let’s go way back to 1984. I was living in Hamilton, Ontario and our football team, the Tiger-Cats, had made the Eastern division finals against rivals the Toronto Argonauts, winner to play in the national football championship, the Grey Cup.

There was no domed stadium, this was sitting on a cold bench, outdoors, in November in Canada. Our section of the sold-out stadium was one of only three allocated to our fans but we made up for it by being louder and more boisterous than all the Argoes fans present.

Somehow, against odds, our team won.

After the victory (in double over time), the Ti-Cats came to our end of the field and cheered us! (Later, my family said that the TV commentators also talked about how loud and energetic we were).

The Ti-Cats were going on to the Grey Cup backed by fans like us!

And we were going home, an hour or so drive once traffic dispersed.

On the way out of the stadium we were shouting and being arrogant. We’d won, we had the bragging rights. A lot of Argo fans weren’t happy, but this is Canada, no guns (I’m looking at you USA) and no violence over stupid stuff like football games (I’m looking at you England).

One Argo fan, a woman about my age (say 20) came up to me and tried to reason with me. Statistically, she argued, the Argoes were a far superior team. Don’t you think it would’ve been better if the Argoes had won? The Ti-Cats can’t beat the western champs. Only the Argoes have a real chance. Don’t you want the Eastern conference to have the title?

I didn’t argue that if they couldn’t beat us, how could they promise to beat whoever won the western championship. I didn’t argue that we had earned it and they hadn’t. Nope. Instead I gloated. I told her that I didn’t care, that denying Toronto the chance to play for the cup was enough.

She walked away.

I’m much older (36 years older) than I was in November 1984. I think about that short exchange a lot, especially with the way politics is going.

For so many now, winning isn’t as important as denying your opponent the chance to win.

So much of what led to Donald Trump’s ascendancy wasn’t about him winning, it was about punishing people you didn’t like. It was about denying someone else something, not because you wanted it, but because they did.

Of course there was a lot of vilification and vitriol stirred in with that movement but at it’s core it was summed up by t-shirts that said, “Trump 2016 Fuck Your Feelings”. The intent was to derive joy from someone else’s frustration or pain.

And that’s what I felt, way back in 1984.

critical thinking, Language, Malaysia, Namibia

Odd Thoughts on Language and Climate

This question came about when I was discussing an oddity of English language on Twitter. I noted in passing that both Malay and Tagalog (often spoken in the Philippines) don’t have past tenses. Nor do a lot of tropical languages.

Image by MustangJoe from Pixabay

This got me wondering: Does tropical weather affect how we perceive time so much that it changes the need or desire to develop tenses?

Some of these languages don’t have future tenses either. It would be like speaking English this way: “Yesterday, I go to the store. Today I go to the store. Tomorrow I go to the store.” The only time markers are the actual words for the days.

I’ve been living in Malaysia for seven years now. When you live in a place without seasons, days, weeks and months just fly away. The sense of urgency is gone. (Note, I also lived in Namibia, and there “Africa Time” is a common expression for the lack of concern about urgency or timeliness.)

For those who can’t place Malaysia on a map (I’ve met a few) look at Australia. Go up the left side and keep going. You’ll pass through Jakarta and hit Singapore. Singapore is an island just off of the southern tip of the Malay peninsula.

critical thinking, education

What can you do with a degree in Political Science? Give it back!

Like many of you who are reading this, I have a BA in what could be called the Liberal Arts. Unlike many of you, I got it at a university that is more famous for its agricultural programs, a university where you could smell the fields of various fertilizers being tested, a university that embraced country music and line dancing.

Image from Pixabay.

In my university residence, we lived in pods of six students – four in single rooms and two in a double. My pod was four aggies, a business major and myself, a poli sci.

I came from a city more famous for its steel mills and pollution than its culture. To me, our podmates were salt of the earth, good drinking buddies and a lot of fun.

The business major, on the other hand, came from the big smoke, and this rural university was beneath him. To him the aggies were “back-ass country f*cks.”

Don’t worry, the distaste was mutual, and where he had language as a weapon, they had skills.

Did you know:

  • That if a door is closed, and you exert enough pressure on it, you can get a gap between the door and the door jam? Stuffing pennies into the gap will make the door almost un-openable once you stop putting pressure on it.
  • That a skilled farmer can climb up the outside of a three-storey building and enter through a window?
  • That really small pieces of uncooked beef are very hard to find until long after they’ve gone rotten and stunk up a decent sized bedroom?

I don’t remember now what all else they did to him (back in the 1980s) but it wasn’t a fair fight, even if he obviously picked and perpetuated it. His most biting response was, “that’s OK. I’ll own your farm one day.”

For the most part I fit in with the aggie crowd. Almost all of my friends in the first two years of uni were farmers. I went to their challenge pubs, I sat in on some of their classes, I visited their farms. When a group of dippers (2-year diploma students instead of full 4-year BSc students) petitioned the university to start a chapter of Alpha Gamma Ro (an Aggie-centric fraternity) I was invited to be a founding member of the chapter.

My one (forgivable) flaw, in their eyes, was my field of study: Political Science. Our school had a real political divide between the right-leaning aggies and the left-leaning artsies, and I was seen as being on the wrong side by my friends and neighbours.

Once, there was a seminar being offered: What You Can Do with a Degree in Political Science: Options for Your Future. I found a copy of the flyer on my bedroom door. Under the title, “Options for Your Future” had been scribbled out and one of my friends had added, “Give it back!”

It was meant as a joke and that’s how I took it. We all laughed about it.

Times weren’t as polarized then as they are now.

What brought this to mind is discussions I’ve been a part of recently that dealt with the lack of critical thinking apparent in today’s political climate and specifically under-graduate studies, how classes, courses, and especially majors designed to promote critical thinking are not popular.

Then tonight a promoted tweet in my timeline appeared, introducing HumanitiesWorks.org, a website specifically designed to dispel myths about the value (or lack there of) of an education in the Humanities.

One of many talking-point images available at HumanitiesWorks.org.

It’s a start, an entry point to a conversation that we need to continue.

Dune, Frank Herbert

Prelude to Dune: Why Ornithopters?

Yet in Frank Herbert’s Dune (and subsequent books), ornithopters are a key mode of transport throughout the universe.

Why?

sandworms

We know that after the Butlerian Jihad, thinking machines were outlawed (although I’d argue that rule gets bent a lot – the hunter-seeker dart that tries to kill Paul and Mapes seems to cross the line). However, that doesn’t mean that aircraft should be banned. Any World War II vintage aircraft would be fine, as probably would any aircraft up to the beginning of this century if not further (and thus any aircraft that existed in Frank Herbert’s lifetime).

So why ornithopters? The technology predates helicopters and well as airplanes, having been designed and tested at least as early as the thirteenth century. It’s not a case of the story making the author’s technology outdated, Herbert knew airplanes and helicopters.

Ornithopters are less fuel-efficient, less load-bearing, and more problematic than either. That’s why the concept has been mostly abandoned.

Worse yet, ornithopters are inefficient even by the Dune universe standards.

We know that they have anti-gravity. Baron Harkonnen and the Sardaukar all wear anti-gravity belts. Surely a spice harvester should be equipped with such a technology and not be waiting for an ornithopter to pick it up. Surely the personal aircraft of the Duke of the planet should use this much better, if not state-of-the-art, technology.

There’s a lot in Dune that’s about the race to improve humanity, not our technology (again, the Butlerian Jihad influence), but still the discrepancy of the ornithopter is odd within the Dune universe.

I can think of only one reason to include it and make it a key element of the universe: Frank Herbert thought they were cool or exotic and would make the story memorable in some way.

And honestly, I can’t argue with that.

Writer • Nomand • Educator