So by now I thought the world would have caught up with this massive piece of news. It occurred two days ago and I am still having trouble finding any information about it.

Google smacked China. Basically what happened was Google became aware that it was under highly advanced and targeted attacks against its Gmail section. It was originating from inside China and going after the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Then they got serious and started digging. Finding that dozens of US, European and Chinese Gmail account for activists were being routinely accessed, not through Google’s breach but through each account holders breach. Add in to all this that the attack was not just on Google but on around 20 other large companies this is massive news.

With this Google has been sharing around the information it has gathered so far with other relevant parties.

The upshot of this? When Google first entered into China, opened up offices and started up Google.cn I was impressed. I have lived in China for a while and the greatest problem there, is not the corruption, the systemic caste system of communist party members and non-members. No the greatest problem is knowledge about the world and current events. opening up Google like this could only be a good thing… and then we found out that Google would filter the results. I can see their argument, opening up the internet is a great achievement and paying for it by censoring some results was a small price. however like the rest of the world China is hurriedly going ass-backwards on how the internet should work.

So now Google has flat out said “No, no more. We will not censor results for you. if you don’t like that then we will take our ball and go home.” effectively? Suck it China.

This is amazing, this is  wonderful and yet I can’t find much information or coverage on this. The ramifications are huge. If nothing else this should force a light onto China, if Google does pull out then everyone will sit up and pay attention.

As I said the greatest problem in China is the lack of world knowledge, so the greatest threat to the Chinese government is people waking up and paying attention.

I realise that people have been banging on and on about this for a while. Everyone should be aware of what my stance is on this, however I wanted to cover two points that I only really encountered recently.

First, just in case, the internet filter is a scheme by which the Australian government will filter websites at the URL level. This is being put forth as a way to protect the children, the rallying cry of people with ulterior motives.

I will not be pointing out the flaws of this service, that has already been covered many times, for more reading go here.

No, what has me more worried are two things. One, the only people who really seem to care about this are tech people. People who understand the dangers of limiting our access to a free and open internet, the people who understand the “think of the children” as a ploy. This is anecdotal, sure, but the general response from people who don’t quite understand it is “what’s your point? It’s a good thing right? it stops child porn!” I am not sure how to combat this, there does not seem to be any form of widespread movement against it, No Clean Feed are doing their best but they can only do so much. Add in the fact Conroy is being a sneaky bitch by trying to get it passed in February but will not implement anything until after the election.

The other thing that worries me more and is a growing trend to match the trend of the world’s leaders trying to filter the internet. The tech people, the people who are the best placed to understand what is going on and to do something about it. The overwhelming response? “It’s so stupid, they can put this in place but I will just get around it!” No! That is not the point! Open access to the internet is not something you should have to “get around”. What about the average user? Should we not be fighting this trend of retardation? Should we not be using our knowledge to show why open access to the internet is the best possible option?

The thing that gets most people, is you have to pay for the good with the bad. Let me explain. All forms of freedom are tempered. The freedom of speech means that you are free to speak what you believe in without fear of reprisal. The flip side is you will hear a lot of things that you don’t agree with. The freedom to access whatever reading material’s or magazine’s you want means that you have to allow porn. There is always a price. The freedom of having an unrestricted, open internet mean everyone can access what sites they want without judgement. That also means, again, lots of porn.

This all comes back to the original problem. The filtering will go through under the banner of Think of the Children. however the same argument stands. The government should not be able to judge what you can and cannot do. If you as a parent are worried about your children, how about you act like a parent and do your fucking job? do you let your children have their own machine in an unmonitored area? Then anything that happens is your fault. Do you notice your children spending hours a day on the machine? How about connecting with your children over what is it currently their main pastime.

We as tech people need to stop saying this will not affect me because we can circumvent it. We need to start doing something about educating people to the dangers of this god awful scheme. If someone says “Think of the Children” then simply help them setup OpenDNS on their children’s machine. It’s worth the effort.

The internet is one of the greatest developments for humankind. We all know this; it is often touted as the great leveller. As in no matter of race, colour, creed, education everything is open to you through the internet. When else have you been able to listen to what music you want to, watch what you want, the ability to listen to lectures from the worlds smartest people?

The dark side of this is not spoken often or not viewed often.  For example, one of the major problems is social skills. I am not one to say that people being raised now are having their skills erased through internet use. However not too long ago the norm was you made friends with the people around you. You befriended your neighbours purely because they were your neighbours. You were exposed to different opinions and different points of view. Well now you can filter that out. If my particular interest is in early 80’s Mecha Anime then that’s what I will hunt out. I will befriend people through this and ignore the people who disagree with me.

This avoidance of dissent and the narrowing of views on the surface looks strange but not dangerous until you realise that they can quickly become feedback loops. If I only believe in the Republican Party style of politics I will surround myself (online) with people who agree with me. Because everyone I know believes this way than anyone else I see or meet who thinks different to me is obviously in the minority and can be safely ignored.

Dissent and debate is the only way to ensure an idea survives and thrives however the internet does not lend itself to this. One of the main reasons is succinctly and powerfully put forward through John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

Again though this is well trod ground. Anyone who has spent any length of time on the internet will find that these communities become more insular and closed off. There is another dark side to the Internet that I only realised recently; yes you may call me slow.

For anyone who spends a lot of their time on the internet it becomes just an extension of their normal community. It no longer has that sense of size and depth. Fair enough, however stick with me here. One of the greatest challenges of starting this writing shtick was completely unconscious to me. It is the same challenge I face when I fire up 3DS Max or Photoshop. I had set this blog up and started writing a few pieces and posting them but I never really told anyone about it. I finally forced myself to isolate myself and to seriously think about it. Turning off the iPhone, the music, closing the tweet deck and stepping away from the computer. It was simple when I thought about it seriously.

Millions of people are better than me.

There. Because the internet seems so small at a glance I can find people who are infinitely more skilful at drawing then I ever will be, better at max, better writers, better at everything. With this crippling feeling why bother?

Once I understood what it was I could logically think my way around it. Of course I should write if I feel I have something to say, no one will be able to say what I do. I should get back into Max because no one will model what I can. I should draw inspiration from what I find not feel crippled. So while the internet gives us access to the sum of all human knowledge it also gives you access to millions of people who are better than you.

The Great Leveller indeed.

So by know everyone should know about the amazing leak up on Wikileaks. They somehow managed to get their hands on over 500,000 pager messages starting from 3am 11/9/2001 to 3am 12/9/2009. They announced it yesterday and they said they would release it in chronological order following the time frame. So of course I stayed up to read through the pagers as they came through.

As we had a day to wait and wonder what would occur some people had the more outrageous ideas of finding something like:

D Cheney – grats on  job well done

While others were far more in the realm of reality of just thousands and thousands of messages of people freaking out.

I was not sure what to expect but it seemed like one of amazing moments that rarely come around. Reading through them this morning, catching up on everything really brought back those old memories and feelings. Of me sitting on the PC leeching anime when someone hit me up with “turn on your fucking TV right now!”. The disbelief and shock and horror came flooding back.

Reading the pager messages really shows that no one had any real idea of what was going on or how to deal with it. You can steadily watch the military ratchet up their readiness but no one has any real idea of what to do. There are so many conflicting posts that people where just scared and passing along everything they heard.

As Wikileaks don’t do any real editing themselves they have just dumped these posts wholesale onto the site so a lot of the combing is being done over on Reddit. With people trawling through thousands of these things and posting the ones that are funny, poignant, scary or just interesting. A lot of the pager messages of course are simply automated texts as the computers blithely go about their business. Of course the very first hint of something wrong is this:

08:46:46 Arch [1612975] D ALPHA PAGE FROM lifeline: alert 8933585 ETS appl nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com ETS RTCE: – Market data inconsistent…Cantor API problem Trading system offline on nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com, run by etsuser on nbetpsd27, pid = 24277

The gs.com is Goldman Sachs. The Cantor systems are part of Cantor Fitzgerald who were on the floors that got hit. The first thing we get, the first response is of a trading system going down. The first human responses followed exactly one minute later:

• 08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA Someone just told me there was an explosion at
• 08:47:48 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA wtc….BR
• 08:50:25 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA A plane crashed thru the twin towers. Real bad..BR

Apart from those incredibly chilling ones you do get the ones that lighten the mood and give it a more human edge to it:

2001-09-11 09:30:54 Skytel [004678448] A ALPHA THE WORLD TRADE CENTER WAS HIT BY TWO PLANES. TURN ON THE T.V. IF CAN. PS… THE FURNITURE ARRIVED AND LOOKS GREAT. IRIS

Of course… furniture. Or the ones that make you die a little inside:

“2001-09-11 10:07:46 Arch [0975617] A ALPHA Don’t leave the building. One of the trade towers just fell. Please be careful. Love you – Tiffany”

The funny ones:

2001-09-11 06:31:26 Metrocall [1162127] D ALPHA From: 4044766632@airmessage.net Subj: Message from a two-way device Good morning sexy man!! Got my zebra thongs on!!! Feeling a little animalistic!!!

Or just the downright lucky ones:

2001-09-11 07:51:33 Skytel [002691994] C ALPHA TAKE YOUR TIME. I WILL NOT BE AT 1WTC UNTIL 9:30 A.M. THANKS, SHAWN

Apart from being voyeuristic what is the point of releasing these? I believe they are important for being cathartic, of showing the human side, of showing that in the panic no one had any idea of what was going on but people were still sending messages like:

2001-09-11 08:45:39 Metrocall [002324586] C ALPHA I love you and miss you very much!!!!!!xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo I waited to wave at you at the doorway and you didnt :( I paged you…. you didnt call :( Did I make you angry with me? I love you

Will we learn anything we don’t already know? Probably not. Smarter people than me are currently writing scripts to try and pull out important data.

But will it help people? Of course, this release of emotion and the chronicling of such a defining historic event is priceless. Yes there will be a lot of complaints and some rightly so as no identifying data was stripped out so phone numbers and email address are still in there. However it belongs on public record it should not be lost or buried and hidden way. It should be published, held up as an incredible account of what happened.

About a month ago I got access to the early beta of Google Wave. I initially joined with a few friends and we started playing around with it. I then decided to write up a post of the experience.

So a month down the track has my opinion changed? Has the luster worn off? Kind of and yes. My opinion has not changed but my original take was a lot more generous and optimistic. Now that the novelty has faded and I have had the chance to look more critically at it the flaws.

Fundamentally what they are trying to achieve with Wave is admirable. I have not seen this attempted in such a scope before. This reimaging of how we communicate. Before all, digital forms of communication have been direct analogues of its physical counterpart. Instant Messaging is the phone and Email is the snail mail. Wave was a brand new way of doing things, of starting from the basis of technology and building from there.

Well there lies the problem I think. Email and IM work. Sure they have their flaws but the barrier to entry is so low and the use of them is so easy and convenient that changing the norm will be incredibly difficult.

Now to the flaws of Google Wave. It suffers from the old problem of Jack of all trades, master of none. You can use Wave as an IM platform, as an email like client, as a collaboration tool you can even use it as a rudimentary file transfer platform. However all the individual parts are weak and combined together does not improve it.

Instant Messaging. If I use an instant messaging client it is unobtrusive, small, light weight and responsive. I need to talk to someone then double click the icon in the system tray and then from the menu double click their name and away we go. It is discrete and easy to use, tracking our chat history if I want and still has drag and drop file transfer, also because chat platforms have become so open you can grab something like trillian which can patch into all the platforms so you can chat with anyone regardless of what software they use. With Google Wave I need to open a browser, login, start a new Wave and invite you. Now we can talk. Traditional IM takes ~2-3 seconds to start a conversation, Google Wave ~10-30 seconds.

Email. If I have a computer I will have my email client setup on it. There is no question there. Email has many, many problems ranging from the obvious, Spam, to trust, how do I know that DarthVader@hotmail.com is really the Dark Lord of the Sith? However as I said before the barrier to entry and ease of use is so low that almost everyone has access to email. For Google Wave if it was purely emailing your family and friends then it is almost comparable and in some cases much better. Wave’s track easier and turn them more into conversations you can follow instead of having to scroll through masses of text in an email. However what if I am emailing a business a question? Why do I need to add them as a contact to my Google account to add them to the Wave? Instead of email where you only need the address in Wave you need them added to your contact list. Yes Wave has some nicer features here for email like functions but email still remains easier and more palatable to use.

Collaboration. As a collaboration tool, again Google Wave has some fantastic ideas, the ability to replay Wave’s, for nested conversations and the simple drag and drop interface. For very small project’s I can see this being useful. However for serious collaboration project’s then an actual tool designed and written for this end is much more robust. Something like Sharepoint and even creating your own Wiki. When using Google Wave and the post count and the amount of people grew the Wave’s slowed down immensely. I understand it’s a beta but the amount of content created with even relatively simple projects is still an incredible amount I do not believe that a Wave could cope.

To sum up I like what they have tried to achieve and I believe the fundamental idea, this approaching communication from a digital background, is amazing. However I also think that the problems with Google Wave are built into the way it works so continuing down this path, trying to fix the symptoms as fixing the underlying problems is not possible.

Fixing Google Wave would require such a massive effort and a reworking and rewriting from the ground up that I think it would be simpler to view Wave as a first attempt; take what was learnt and start again.

Wave needs to be hosted in the cloud as it is now, accessible from a browser. It also needs a desktop component that synchronizes with the cloud so it can run like a common email client taking the load off the browser which at the moment simply cannot handle it. It also needs a third IM-like interface, say a mini version that would run in the system tray and would have a stripped down version that would still synchronize with the desktop client and the cloud. That would fix most of the issues I have with Google Wave.