Category Archives: ramblings

Body and Tech: My Year in Quantified Self

Though I’m a qual, I started quantifying my self a year ago.

Not Even Started Yet

This post is long. You’ve been warned.

This post is about my experience with the Quantified Self (QuantSelf). As such, it may sound quite enthusiastic, as my perspective on my own selfquantification is optimistic. I do have several issues with the Quantified Self notion generally and with the technology associated with selfquantification. Those issues will have to wait until a future blogpost.

While I realize QuantSelf is broader than fitness/wellness/health tracking, my own selfquantification experience focuses on working with my body to improve my health. My future posts on the Quantified Self would probably address the rest more specifically.

You might notice that I frequently link to the DC Rainmaker site, which is a remarkably invaluable source of information and insight about a number of things related to fitness and fitness technology. Honestly, I don’t know how this guy does it. He’s a one-man shop for everything related to sports and fitness gadgets.

Though many QuantSelf devices are already available on the market, very few of them are available in Quebec. On occasion, I think about getting one shipped to someone I know in the US and then manage to pick it up in person, get a friend to bring it to Montreal, or get it reshipped. If there were such a thing as the ideal QuantSelf device, for me, I might do so.

(The title of this post refers to the song Body and Soul, and I perceive something of a broader shift in the mind/body dualism, even leading to post- and transhumanism. But this post is more about my own self.)

Quaint Quant

I can be quite skeptical of quantitative data. Not that quants aren’t adept at telling us very convincing things. But numbers tend to hide many issues, when used improperly. People who are well-versed in quantitative analysis can do fascinating things, leading to genuine insight. But many other people use numbers as a way to “prove” diverse things, sometimes remaining oblivious to methodological and epistemological issues with quantification.

Still, I have been accumulating fairly large amounts of quantitative data about my self. Especially about somatic dimensions of my self.

Started with this a while ago, but it’s really in January 2013 that my Quantified Self ways took prominence in my life.

Start Counting

It all started with the Wahoo Fitness fisica key and soft heartrate strap. Bought those years ago (April 2011), after thinking about it for months (December 2010).

Had tried different exercise/workout/fitness regimens over the years, but kept getting worried about possible negative effects. For instance, some of the exercises I’d try in a gym would quickly send my heart racing to the top of my healthy range. Though, in the past, I had been in a more decent shape than people might have surmised, I was in bad enough shape at that point that it was better for me to exercise caution while exercising.

At least, that’s the summary of what happened which might make sense to a number of people. Though I was severely overweight for most of my life, I had long periods of time during which I was able to run up long flights of stairs without getting out of breath. This has changed in the past several years, along with other health issues. The other health issues are much more draining and they may not be related to weight, but weight is the part on which people tend to focus, because it’s so visible. For instance, doctors who meet me for a few minutes, only once, will spend more time talking about weight than a legitimate health concern I have. It’s easy for me to lose weight, but I wanted to do it in the best possible way. Cavalier attitudes are discouraging.

Habits, Old and New

Something I like about my (in this case not-so-sorry) self is that I can effortlessly train myself into new habits. I’m exactly the opposite of someone who’d get hooked on almost anything. I never smoked or took drugs, so I’ve never had to kick one of those trickiest of habits. But I often stop drinking coffee or alcohol with no issue whatsoever. Case in point: I’m fairly well-known as a coffee geek yet I drank less than two full cups of coffee during the last two months.

Getting new habits is as easy for me as kicking new ones. Not that it’s perfect, of course. I occasionally forget to bring down the lid on the toilet seat. But if I put my mind to something, I can usually undertake it. Willpower, intrinsic motivation, and selfdiscipline are among my strengths.

My health is a significant part of this. What I started a year ago is an exercise and fitness habit that I’ve been able to maintain and might keep up for a while, if I decide to do so.

Part of it is a Pilates-infused yoga habit that I brought to my life last January and which became a daily routine in February or March. As is the case with other things in my life, I was able to add this routine to my life after getting encouragement from experts. In this case, yoga and Pilates instructors. Though it may be less impressive than other things I’ve done, this routine has clearly had a tremendous impact on my life.

Spoiler alert: I also took on a workout schedule with an exercise bike. Biked 2015 miles between January 16, 2013 and January 15, 2014.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So Close, Yet So Far

Flashback to March, 2011. Long before I really got into QuantSelf.

At the time, I had the motivation to get back into shape, but I had to find a way to do it safely. The fact that I didn’t have access to a family physician played a part in that.

So I got the Wahoo key, a dongle which allows an iOS device to connect to ANT+ equipment, such as heartrate straps (including the one I bought at the same time as the key). Which means that I was able to track my heartrate during exercise using my iPod touch and iPad (I later got an iPhone).

Used that setup on occasion. Including at the gym. Worked fairly well as a way to keep track of my workouts, but I had some difficulty fitting gym workouts in my schedule. Not only does it take a lot of time to go to a gym (even one connected to my office by a tunnel), but my other health issues made it very difficult to do any kind of exercise for several hours after any meal. In fact, those other health issues made most exercise very unpleasant. I understand the notion of pushing your limits, getting out of your comfort zone. I’m fine with some types of discomfort and I don’t feel the need to prove to anyone that I can push my limits. But the kind of discomfort I’m talking about was more discouraging than anything else. For one thing, I wasn’t feeling anything pleasant at any point during or after exercising.

So, although I had some equipment to keep track of my workouts, I wasn’t working out on that regular a basis.

I know, typical, right? But that’s before I really started in QuantSelf.

Baby Steps

In the meantime (November, 2011), I got a Jawbone UP wristband. First generation.

That device was my first real foray into “Quantified Self”, as it’s normally understood. It allowed me to track my steps and my sleep. Something about this felt good. Turns out that, under normal circumstances, my stepcount can be fairly decent, which is in itself encouraging. And connecting to this type of data had the effect of helping me notice some correlations between my activity and my energy levels. There have been times when I’ve felt like I hadn’t walked much and then noticed that I had been fairly active. And vice-versa. I wasn’t getting into such data that intensely, but I had started accumulating some data on my steps.

Gotta start somewhere.

Sleepwalking

My sleep was more interesting, as I was noticing some difficult nights. An encouraging thing, to me, is that it usually doesn’t take me much time to get to sleep (about 10 minutes, according to the UP). Neat stuff, but not earth-shattering.

Obviously, the UP stopped working. Got refunded, and all, but it was still “a bummer”. My experience with the first generation UP had given me a taste of QuantSelf, but the whole thing was inconclusive.

Feeling Pressure

Fastforward to late December, 2012 and early January, 2013. The holiday break was a very difficult time for me, physically. I was getting all sorts of issues, compounding one another. One of them was a series of intense headaches. I had been getting those on occasion since Summer, 2011. By late 2012, my headaches were becoming more frequent and longer-lasting. On occasion, physicians at walk-in clinics had told me that my headaches probably had to do with blood pressure and they had encouraged me to take my pressure at the pharmacy, once in a while. While my pressure had been normal-to-optimal (110/80) for a large part of my life, it was becoming clear that my blood pressure had increased and was occasionally getting into more dangerous territory. So I eventually decided to buy a bloodpressure monitor.

Which became my first selfquantification method. Since my bloodpressure monitor is a basic no-frills model, it doesn’t sync to anything or send data anywhere. But I started manually tracking my bloodpressure by taking pictures and putting the data in a spreadsheet. Because the monitor often gives me different readings (especially depending on which arm I got them from), I would input lowest and highest readings from each arm in my spreadsheet.

Tensio

My first bloodpressure reading, that first evening (January 3, 2013), was enough of a concern that a nurse at Quebec’s phone health consultation service recommended that I consult with a physician at yet another walk-in clinic. (Can you tell not having a family physician was an issue? I eventually got one, but that’s another post.) Not that it was an emergency, but it was a good idea to take this seriously.

So, on January 4, 2013, I went to meet Dr. Anthony Rizzuto, a general practitioner at a walk-in clinic in my neighbourhood.

Getting Attention

At the clinic, I was diagnosed with hypertension (high bloodpressure). Though that health issue was less troublesome to me than the rest, it got me the attention of that physician who gave me exactly the right kind of support. Thanks to that doctor, a bit of medication, and all sorts of efforts on my part, that issue was soon under control and I’m clearly out of the woods on this one. I’ve documented the whole thing in my previous blogpost. Summary version of that post (it’s in French, after all): more than extrinsic motivation, the right kind of encouragement can make all the difference in the world. (In all honesty, I already had all the intrinsic motivation I needed. No worries there!)

Really, that bloodpressure issue wasn’t that big of a deal. Sure, it got me a bit worried, especially about risks of getting a stroke. But I had been more worried and discouraged by other health issues, so that bloodpressure issue wasn’t the main thing. The fact that hypertension got me medical attention is the best part, though. Some things I was unable to do on my own. I needed encouragement, of course, but I also needed professional advice. More specifically, I felt that I needed a green light. A license to exercise.

Y’know how, in the US especially, “they” keep saying that you should “consult a physician” before doing strenuous exercise? Y’know, the fine print on exercise programs, fitness tools, and the like? Though I don’t live in the US anymore and we don’t have the same litigation culture here, I took that admonition to heart. So I was hesitant to take on a full fitness/training/exercise routine before I could consult with a physician. I didn’t have a family doctor, so it was difficult.

But, a year ago, I got the medical attention I needed. Since we’re not in the US, questions about the possibility to undertake exercise are met with some surprise. Still, I was able to get “approval” on doing more exercise. In fact, exercise was part of a solution to the hypertension issue which had brought this (minimal level of) medical attention to my case.

So I got exactly what I needed. A nod from a licensed medical practitioner. “Go ahead.”

Weight, Weight! Don’t Tell Me![1]

Something I got soon after visiting the clinic was a scale. More specifically, I got a Conair WW54C Weight Watchers Body Analysis Digital Precision Scale. I would weigh myself everyday (more than once a day, in fact) and write down the measures for total weight, body water percentage, and body fat percentage. As with the bloodpressure monitor, I was doing this by hand, since my scale wasn’t connected in any way to another device or to a network.

Weighing My Options

I eventually bought a second scale, a Starfrit iFit. That one is even more basic than the Weight Watchers scale, as it doesn’t do any “body analysis” beyond weight. But having two scales makes me much more confident about the readings I get. For reasons I don’t fully understand, I keep getting significant discrepancies in my readings. On a given scale, I would weigh myself three times and keep the average. The delta between the highest and lowest readings on that same scale would often be 200g or half a pound. The delta between the two scales can be as much as 500g or over one pound. Unfortunately, these discrepancies aren’t regular: it’s not that one scale is offset from the other by a certain amount. One day, the Weight Watchers has the highest readings and the Starfrit has the highest readings. I try to position myself the same way on each scale every time and I think both of them are on as flat a surface as I can get. But I keep getting different readings. I was writing down averages from both scales in my spreadsheet. As I often weighed myself more than once a day and would get a total of six readings every time, that was a significant amount of time spent on getting the most basic of data.

Food for Thought

At the same time, I started tracking my calories intake. I had done so in the past, including with the USDA National Nutrient Database on PalmOS devices (along with the Eat Watch app from the Hacker’s Diet). Things have improved quite a bit since that time. Not that tracking calories has become effortless, far from it. It’s still a chore, an ordeal, a pain in the neck, and possibly a relatively bad idea. Still, it’s now easier to input food items in a database which provides extensive nutritional data on most items. Because these databases are partly crowdsourced, it’s possible to add values for items which are specific to Canada, for instance. It’s also become easier to get nutritional values for diverse items online, including meals at restaurant chains. Though I don’t tend to eat at chain restaurants, tracking my calories encouraged me to do so, however insidiously.

But I digress.

Nutritional data also became part of my QuantSelf spreadsheet. Along with data from my bloodpressure monitor and body composition scale, I would copy nutritional values (protein, fat, sodium, carbohydrates…) from a database. At one point, I even started calculating my estimated and actual weightloss in that spreadsheet. Before doing so, I needed to know my calories expenditure.

Zipping

One of the first things I got besides the bloodpressure monitor and scale(s) was a fitbit Zip. Two months earlier (November, 2012), I had bought a fitbit One. But I lost it. The Zip was less expensive and, though it lacks some of the One’s features (tracking elevation, for instance), it was good enough for my needs at the time.

In fact, I prefer the Zip over the One, mostly because it uses a coin battery, so it doesn’t need to be recharged. I’ve been carrying it for a year and my fitbit profile has some useful data about my activity. Sure, it’s just a “glorified pedometer”. But the glorification is welcomed, as regular synchronization over Bluetooth is very useful a feature. My Zip isn’t a big deal, for me. It’s as much of a part of my life as my glasses, though I wear it more often (including during my sleep, though it doesn’t track sleep data).

Stepping UP

I also bought a new Jawbone UP. Yep, despite issues I had with the first generation one. Unfortunately, the UP isn’t really that much more reliable now than it was at the time. But they keep replacing it. A couple or weeks ago, my UP stopped working and I got a replacement. I think it’s the fifth one.

Despite its unreliability, I really like the UP for its sleeptracking and “gentle waking” features. If it hadn’t been for the UP, I probably wouldn’t have realized the importance of sleep as deeply as I have. In other words, the encouragement to sleep more is something I didn’t realize I needed. Plus, it’s really neat to wake up to a gentle buzz, at an appropriate point in my sleep cycle. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the UP just for this, but it’s something I miss every time my UP stops working. And there’s been several of those times.

My favourite among UP’s features is one they added, through firmware, after a while (though it might have been in the current UP from the start). It’s the ability to take “smart naps”. Meaning that I can set an alarm to wake me up after a certain time or after I’ve slept a certain amount of time. The way I set it up, I can take a 20 minute nap and I’ll be awaken by the UP after a maximum of 35 minutes. Without this alarm, I’d oversleep and likely feel more messed up after the nap than before. The alarm is also reassuring in that it makes the nap fit neatly my schedule. I don’t nap everyday, but naps are one of these underrated things I feel could be discussed more. Especially when it comes to heavy work sessions such as writing reports or grading papers. My life might shift radically in the near future and it’s quite possible that naps will be erased from my workweek indefinitely. But chances are that my workweek will also become much more manageable once I stop freelancing.

The UP also notifies me when I’ve been inactive for a certain duration (say, 45 minutes). It only does so a few times a month, on average, because I don’t tend to be that inactive. Exceptions are during long stretches of writing, so it’s a useful reminder to take a break. In fact, the UP just buzzed while I was writing this post so I should go and do my routine.

(It’s fun to write on my iPad while working out. Although, I tend to remain in the aerobic/endurance or even in the fitness/fatburning zone. I should still reach mile 2100 during this workout.)

Contrary to the fitbit Zip, the UP does require a charge on a regular basis. In fact, it seems that the battery is a large part of the reliability issue. So, after a while, I got into the habit of plugging my UP to the wall during my daily yoga/Pilates routine. My routine usually takes over half an hour and the UP is usually charged after 20 minutes.

Back UP

It may seem strange to have two activity trackers with complete feature overlap (there’s nothing the fitbit Zip does that the Jawbone UP doesn’t do). I probably wouldn’t have planned it this way, had I been able to get a Jawbone UP right at first. If I were to do it now, I might get a different device from either fitbit or Jawbone (the Nike+ FuelBand is offputting, to me).

I do find it useful to have two activity trackers. For one thing, the UP is unreliable enough that the Zip is useful as a backup. The Zip also stopped working once, so there’s been six periods of time during the past year during which I only had one fitness tracker. Having two trackers means that there’s no hiatus in my tracking, which has a significant impact in the routine aspect of selfquantification. Chances are slim that I would have completely given up on QuantSelf during such a hiatus. But I would probably have been less encouraged by selfquantification had I been forced to depend on one device.

Having two devices also helps me get a more accurate picture of my activities. Though the Zip and UP allegedly track the same steps, there’s usually some discrepancy between the two, as is fairly common among activity trackers. For some reasons, the discrepancy has actually decreased after a few months (and after I adapted my UP usage to my workout). But it’s useful to have two sources of data points.

Especially when I do an actual workout.

Been Working Out, Haven’t You?

In January, last year, I also bought an exercise bike, for use in my apartment. I know, sounds like a cliché, right? Getting an exercise bike after New Year? Well, it wasn’t a New Year’s resolution but, had it been one, I could be proud to say I kept it (my hypothetical resolution; I know, weird structure; you get what I mean, right?).

Right away, I started doing bike workouts on a very regular basis. From three to five times a week, during most weeks. Contrary to going to a gym, exercising at home is easy to fit in my freelancing schedule. I almost always work out before breakfast, so there’s no digestion issue involved. Since I’m by myself, it means I feel no pressure or judgment from others, a very significant factor in my case. Though I’m an extrovert’s extrovert (86 percentile), gyms are really offputting, to me. Because of my bodyshape, age, and overall appearance, I really feel like I don’t “fit”. It does depend on the gym, and I had a fairly good time at UMoncton’s Ceps back in 2003. But ConU’s gym wasn’t a place where I enjoyed working out.

My home workouts have become a fun part of my week. Not that the effort level is low, but I often do different things while working out, including listen to podcasts and music, reading, and even writing. As many people know, music can be very encouraging during a workout. So can a podcast, as it takes your attention elsewhere and you might accomplish more than you thought, during a podcast. Same thing with reading and writing, and I wrote part of this post while working out.

Sure, I could do most of this in a gym. The convenience factor at home is just too high, though. I can have as many things as I want by my sides, on a table and on a chair, so I just have to reach out when I need any of them. Apart from headphones, a music playing device, and a towel (all things I’d have at a gym) I typically have the following items with me when I do a home workout:

  • Travel mug full of tea
  • Stainless steel water bottle full of herbal tea (proper tea is theft)
  • Britta bottle full of water (I do drink a lot of fluid while working out)
  • three mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Nexus 7)
  • Small weights,
  • Reading glasses
  • Squeeze balls

Wouldn’t be so easy to bring all of that to a gym. Not to mention that I can wear whatever I want, listen to whatever I want, and make whatever noise I want (I occasionally yell beats to music, as it’s fun and encouraging). I know some athletic people prefer gym workouts over home ones. I’m not athletic. And I know what I prefer.

On Track

Since this post is nominally about QuantSelf, how do I track my workouts, you ask? Well, it turns out that my Zip and UP do help me track them out, though in different ways. To get the UP to track my bike workouts, I have to put it around one of my pedals, a trick which took me a while to figure out.

2014-01-22 18.38.24

The Zip tracks my workouts from its usual position but it often counts way fewer “steps” than the UP does. So that’s one level of tracking. My workouts are part of my stepcounts for the days during which I do them.

Putting My Heart into IT

More importantly, though, my bike workouts have made my heartrate strap very useful. By pairing the strap with Digifit’s iBiker app, I get continuous heartrate monitoring, with full heartrate chart, notifications about “zones” (such as “fat burning”, “aerobic”, and “anaerobic”), and a recovery mode which lets me know how quickly my heartrate decreases after the workout. (I could also control the music app, but I tend to listen to Rdio instead.) The main reason I chose iBiker is that it works natively on the iPad. Early on, I decided I’d use my iPad to track my workouts because the battery lasts longer than on an iPhone or iPod touch, and the large display accommodates more information. The charts iBiker produces are quite neat and all the data can be synced to Digifit’s cloud service, which also syncs with my account on the fitbit cloud service (notice how everything has a cloud service?).

20140103-162048.jpg

Heartrate monitoring is close to essential, for workouts. Sure, it’d be possible to do exercise without it. But the difference it makes is more significant than one might imagine. It’s one of those things that one may only grok after trying it. Since I’m able to monitor my heartrate in realtime, I’m able to pace myself, to manage my exertion. By looking at the chart in realtime, I can tell how long I’ve spent at which intensity level and can decide to remain in a “zone” for as long as I want. Continuous feedback means that I can experiment with adjustment to the workout’s effort level, by pedaling faster or increasing tension. It’s also encouraging to notice that I need increasing intensity levels to reach higher heartrates, since my physical condition has been improving tremendously over the past year. I really value any encouragement I can get.

Now, I know it’s possible to get continuous heartrate monitoring on gym equipment. But I’ve noticed in the past that this monitoring wasn’t that reliable as I would often lose the heartrate signal, probably because of perspiration. On equipment I’ve tried, it wasn’t possible to see a graphical representation of my heartrate through the whole workout so, although I knew my current heartrate, I couldn’t really tell how long I was maintaining it. Not to mention that it wasn’t possible to sync that data to anything. Even though some of that equipment can allegedly be used with a special key to transfer data to a computer, that key wasn’t available.

It’d also be possible to do continuous heartrate monitoring with a “fitness watch”. A big issue with most of these is that data cannot be transferred to another device. Several of the new “wearable devices” do add this functionality. But these devices are quite expensive and, as far as I can see in most in-depth reviews, not necessarily that reliable. Besides, their displays are so small that it’d be impossible to get as complete a heartrate chart as the one I get on iBiker. I got pretty excited about the Neptune Pine, though, and I feel sad I had to cancel my pledge at the very last minute (for financial reasons). Sounds like it can become a rather neat device.

As should be obvious, by now, the bike I got (Marcy Recumbent Mag Cycle ME–709 from Impex) is a no-frills one. It was among the least expensive exercise bikes I’ve seen but it was also one with high ratings on Amazon. It’s as basic as you can get and I’ve been looking into upgrading. But other exercise bikes aren’t that significantly improved over this one. I don’t currently have enough money to buy a highend bike, but money isn’t the only issue. What I’d really like to get is exercise equipment which can be paired with another device, especially a tablet. Have yet to see an exercise bike, rower, treadmill, or elliptical which does. At any price. Sure, I could eventually find ways to hack things together to get more communication between my devices, but that’d be a lot of work for little results. For instance, it might be possible to find a cadence sensor which works on an exercise bike (or tweak one to make it work), thereby giving some indication of pace/speed and distance. However, I doubt that there’s exercise equipment which would allow a tablet to control tension/strength/difficulty. It’d be so neat if it were available. Obviously, it’s far from a requirement. But none of the QuantSelf stuff is required to have a good time while exercising.

Off the Bike

I use iBiker and my heartrate monitor during other activities besides bike workouts. Despite its name, iBiker supports several activity types (including walking and hiking) and has a category for “Other” activities. I occasionally use iBiker on my iPhone when I go on a walk for fitness reasons. Brisk walks do seem to help me in my fitness regime, but I tend to focus on bike workouts instead. I already walk a fair bit and much of that walking is relatively intense, so I feel less of a need to do it as an exercise, these days. And I rarely have my heartrate strap with me when I decide to take a walk. At some point, I had bought a Garmin footpod and kept installing it on shoes I was wearing. I did use it on occasion, including during a trip to Europe (June–July, 2012). It tends to require a bit of time to successfully pair with a mobile app, but it works as advertised. Yet, I haven’t really been quantifying my walks in the same way, so it hasn’t been as useful as I had wished.

More frequently, I use iBiker and my heartrate strap during my yoga/Pilates routine. “Do you really get your heart running fast enough to make it worthwhile”, you ask? No, but that’s kind of the point. Apart from a few peaks, my heartrate charts during such a routine tends to remain in Zone 0, or “Warmup/Cooldown”. The peaks are interesting because they correspond to a few moves and poses which do feel a bit harder (such as pushups or even the plank pose). That, to me, is valuable information and I kind of wish I could see which moves and poses I’ve done for how long using some QuantSelf tool. I even thought about filming myself, but I would then need to label each pose or move by hand, something I’d be very unlikely to do more than once or twice. It sounds like the Atlas might be used in such a way, as it’s supposed to recognize different activities, including custom ones. Not only is it not available, yet, but it’s so targeted at the high performance fitness training niche that I don’t think it could work for me.

One thing I’ve noticed from my iBiker-tracked routine is that my resting heartrate has gone down very significantly. As with my recovery and the amount of effort necessary to increase my heartrate, I interpret this as a positive sign. With other indicators, I could get a fuller picture of my routine’s effectiveness. I mean, I feel its tremendous effectiveness in diverse ways, including sensations I’d have a hard time explaining (such as an “opening of the lungs” and a capacity to kill discomfort in three breaths). The increase in my flexibility is something I could almost measure. But I don’t really have tools to fully quantify my yoga routine. That might be a good thing.

Another situation in which I’ve worn my heartrate strap is… while sleeping. Again, the idea here is clearly not to measure how many calories I burn or to monitor how “strenuous” sleeping can be as an exercise. But it’s interesting to pair the sleep data from my UP with some data from my heart during sleep. Even there, the decrease in my heartrate is quite significant, which signals to me a large improvement in the quality of my sleep. Last summer (July, 2013), I tracked a night during which my average heartrate was actually within Zone 1. More recently (November, 2013), my sleeping heartrate was below my resting heartrate, as it should be.

Using the Wahoo key on those occasions can be quite inconvenient. When I was using it to track my brisk walks, I would frequently lose signal, as the dongle was disconnecting from my iPad or iPhone. For some reason, I would also lose signal while sleeping (though the dongle would remain unmoved).

So I eventually bought a Blue HR, from Wahoo, to replace the key+strap combination. Instead of ANT+, the Blue HR uses Bluetooth LE to connect directly with a phone or tablet, without any need for a dongle. I bought it in part because of the frequent disconnections with the Wahoo key. I rarely had those problems during bike exercises, but I thought having a more reliable signal might encourage me to track my activities. I also thought I might be able to pair the Blue HR with a version of iBiker running on my Nexus 7 (first generation). It doesn’t seem to work and I think the Nexus 7 doesn’t support Bluetooth LE. I was also able to hand down my ANT+ setup (Wahoo key, heartrate strap, and footpod) to someone who might find it useful as a way to track walks. We’ll see how that goes.

‘Figures!

Going back to my QuantSelf spreadsheet. iBiker, Zip, and UP all output counts of burnt calories. Since Digifit iBiker syncs with my fitbit account, I’ve been using the fitbit number.

Inputting that number in the spreadsheet meant that I was able to measure how many extra calories I had burnt as compared to calories I had ingested. That number then allowed me to evaluate how much weight I had lost on a given day. For a while, my average was around 135g, but I had stretches of quicker weightloss (to the point that I was almost scolded by a doctor after losing too much weight in too little time). Something which struck me is that, despite the imprecision of so many things in that spreadsheet, the evaluated weightloss and actual loss of weight were remarkably similar. Not that there was perfect synchronization between the two, as it takes a bit of time to see the results of burning more calories. But I was able to predict my weight with surprising accuracy, and pinpoint patterns in some of the discrepancies. There was a kind of cycle by which the actual number would trail the predicted one, for a few days. My guess is that it had to do with something like water retention and I tried adjusting from the lowest figure (when I seem to be the least hydrated) and the highest one (when I seem to retain the most water in my body).

Obsessed, Much?

ObsessiveSpreadsheet

As is clear to almost anyone, this was getting rather obsessive. Which is the reason I’ve used the past tense with many of these statements. I basically don’t use my QuantSelf spreadsheet, anymore. One reason is that (in March, 2013) I was advised by a healthcare professional (a nutrition specialist) to stop counting my calories intake and focus on eating until I’m satiated while ramping up my exercise, a bit (in intensity, while decreasing frequency). It was probably good advice, but it did have a somewhat discouraging effect. I agree that the whole process had become excessive and that it wasn’t really sustainable. But what replaced it was, for a while, not that useful. It’s only in November, 2013 that a nutritionist/dietician was able to give me useful advice to complement what I had been given. My current approach is much better than any other approach I’ve used, in large part because it allows me to control some of my digestive issues.

So stopping the calories-focused monitoring was a great idea. I eventually stopped updating most columns in my spreadsheet.

What I kept writing down was the set of readings from my two “dumb” scales.

Scaling Up

Abandoning my spreadsheet didn’t imply that I had stopped selfquantifying.

In fact, I stepped up my QuantSelf a bit, about a month ago (December, 2013) by getting a Withings WS–50 Smart Body Analyzer. That WiFi-enabled scale is practically the prototype of QuantSelf and Internet of Things devices. More than I had imagined, it’s “just the thing I needed” in my selfquantified life.

The main advantage it has over my Weight Watchers scale is that it syncs data with my Withings cloud service account. That’s significant because the automated data collection saves me from my obsessive spreadsheet while letting me learn about my weightloss progression. Bingo!

Sure, I could do the same thing by hand, adding my scale readings to any of my other accounts. Not only would it be a chore to do so, but it’d encourage me to dig too deep in those figures. I learnt a lot during my obsessive phase, but I don’t need to go back to that mode. There are many approaches in between that excessive data collection and letting Withings do the work. I don’t even need to explore those intermediary approaches.

There are other things to like about the Withings scale. One is Position Control™, which does seem to increase the accuracy of the measurements. Its weight-tracking graphs (app and Web) are quite reassuring, as they show clear trends, between disparate datapoints. WithingsWeightKg WithingsLeanMassPercent

This Withings scale also measures heartrate, something I find less useful given my usage of a continuous heartrate monitor. Finally, it has sensors for air temperature and CO2 levels, which are features I’d expect in a (pre-Google) Nest product.

Though it does measure body fat percentage, the Withings Smart Body Analyzer doesn’t measure water percentage or bone mass, contrary to my low-end Weight Watchers body composition scale. Funnily enough, it’s around the time I got the Withings that I finally started gaining enough muscle mass to be able to notice the shift on the Weight Watchers. Prior to that, including during my excessive phase, my body fat and body water percentages added up to a very stable number. I would occasionally notice fluctuations of ~0.1%, but no downward trend. I did notice trends in my overall condition when the body water percentage was a bit higher, but it never went very high. Since late November or early December, those percentages started changing for the first time. My body fat percentage decreased by almost 2%, my body water percentage increased by more than 1%, and the total of the two decreased by 0.6%. Since these percentages are now stable and I have other indicators going in the same direction, I think this improvement in fat vs. water is real and my muscle mass did start to increase a bit (contrary to what a friend said can happen with people our age). It may not sound like much but I’ll take whatever encouragement I get, especially in such a short amount of time.

The Ideal QuantSelf Device

On his The Talk Show podcast, Gruber has been dismissing the craze in QuantSelf and fitness devices, qualifying them as a solved problem. I know what he means, but I gather his experience differs from mine.

I feel we’re in the “Rio Volt era” of the QuantSelf story.

The Rio Volt was one of the first CD players which could read MP3 files. I got one, at the time, and it was a significant piece of my music listening experience. I started ripping many of my CDs and creating fairly large compilations that I could bring with me as I traveled. I had a carrying case for the Volt and about 12 CDs, which means that I could carry about 8GB of music (or about 140 hours at the 128kbps bitrate which was so common at the time). Quite a bit less than my whole CD collection (about 150GB), but a whole lot more than what I was used to. As I was traveling and moving frequently, at the time, the Volt helped me get into rather… excessive music listening habits. Maybe not excessive compared to a contemporary teenager in terms of time, but music listening had become quite important to me, at a time when I wasn’t playing music as frequently as before.

There have been many other music players before, during, and after the Rio Volt. The one which really changed things was probably… the Microsoft Zune? Nah, just kidding. The iRiver players were much cooler (I had an iRiver H–120 which I used as a really neat fieldrecording device). Some people might argue that things really took a turn when Apple released the iPod. Dunno about that, I’m no Apple fanboi.

Regardless of which MP3-playing device was most prominent, it’s probably clear to most people that music players have changed a lot since the days of the Creative Nomad and the Rio Volt. Some of these changes could possibly have been predicted, at the time. But I’m convinced that very few people understood the implications of those changes.

Current QuantSelf devices don’t appear very crude. And they’re certainly quite diverse. CES2014 was the site of a number of announcements, demos, and releases having to do with QuantSelf, fitness, Internet of Things, and wearable devices (unsurprisingly, DC Rainmaker has a useful two-part roundup). But despite my interest in some of these devices, I really don’t think we’ve reached the real breakthrough with those devices.

In terms of fitness/wellness/health devices, specifically, I sometimes daydream about features or featuresets. For instance, I really wish a given device would combine the key features of some existing devices, as in the case of body water measurements and the Withings Smart Body Analyzer. A “killer feature”, for me, would be strapless continuous 24/7 heartrate monitoring which could be standalone (keeping the data without transmitting it) yet able to sync data with other devices for display and analysis, and which would work at rest as well as during workouts, underwater as well as in dry contexts.

Some devices (including the Basis B1 and Mio Alpha) seem to come close to this, but they all have little flaws, imperfections, tradeoffs. At an engineering level, it should be an interesting problem so I fully expect that we’ll at least see an incremental evolution from the current state of the market. Some devices measure body temperature and perspiration. These can be useful indicators of activity level and might help one gain insight about other aspects of the physical self. I happen to perspire profusely, so I’d be interested in that kind of data. As is often the case, unexpected usage of such tools could prove very innovative.

How about a device which does some blood analysis, making it easier to gain data on nutrients or cholesterol levels? I often think about the risks of selfdiagnosis and selfmedication. Those issues, related to QuantSelf, will probably come in a future post.

I also daydream about something deeper, though more imprecise. More than a featureset or a “killer feature”, I’m thinking about the potential for QuantSelf as a whole. Yes, I also think about many tricky issues around selfquantification. But I perceive something interesting going on with some of these devices. Some affordances of Quantified Self technology. Including the connections this technology can have with other technologies and domains, including tablets and smartphones, patient-focused medicine, Internet of Things, prosumption, “wearable hubs”, crowdsourced research, 3D printing, postindustrialization, and technological appropriation. These are my issues, in the sense that they’re things about which I care and think. I don’t necessarily mean issues as problems or worries, but things which either give me pause or get me to discuss with others.

Much of this will come in later posts, I guess. Including a series of issues I have with self-quantification, expanded from some of the things I’ve alluded to, here.

Walkthrough

These lines are separated from many of the preceding ones (I don’t write linearly) by a relatively brisk walk from a café to my place. Even without any QuantSelf device, I have quite a bit of data about this walk. For instance, I know it took me 40 minutes because I checked the time before and after. According to Google Maps, it’s between 4,1km and 4,2km from that café to my place, depending on which path one might take (I took an alternative route, but it’s probably close to the Google Maps directions, in terms of distance). It’s also supposed to be a 50 minute walk, so I feel fairly good about my pace (encouraging!). I also know it’s –20°C, outside (–28°C with windchill, according to one source). I could probably get some data about elevation, which might be interesting (I’d say about half of that walk was going up).

With two of my QuantSelf devices (UP and Zip), I get even more data. For instance, I can tell how many steps I took (it looks like it’s close to 5k, but I could get a more precise figure). I also realize the intensity of this activity, as both devices show that I started at a moderate pace followed by an intense pace for most of the duration. These devices also include this walk in measuring calories burnt (2.1Mcal according to UP, 2.7Mcal according to Zip), distance walked (11.2km according to Zip, 12.3km according to UP), active minutes (117’ Zip, 149’ UP), and stepcount (16.4k UP, 15.7k Zip). Not too shabby, considering that it’s still early evening as I write these lines.

2014-01-21 18.47.54 2014-01-21 18.47.48 2014-01-21 18.46.47

Since I didn’t have my heartrate monitor on me and didn’t specifically track this activity, there’s a fair bit of data I don’t have. For instance, I don’t know which part was most strenuous. And I don’t know how quickly I recovered. If I don’t note it down, it’s difficult to compare this activity to other activities. I might remember more or less which streets I took, but I’d need to map it myself. These are all things I could have gotten from a fitness app coupled with my heartrate monitor.

As is the case with cameras, the best QuantSelf device is the one you have with you.

I’m glad I have data about this walk. Chances are I would have taken public transit had it not been for my QuantSelf devices. There weren’t that many people walking across the Mont-Royal park, by this weather.

Would I get fitter more efficiently if I had the ideal tool for selfquantification? I doubt it.

Besides, I’m not in that much of a hurry.


  1. Don’t like my puns? Well, it’s my blogpost and I’ll cry if I want to.  ↩

“Post-” Society

(Note: The following is a draft I submitted for publication in a magazine. After some back-and-forth with the editors, I decided not to publish it through that route. I was trying something different, with this text. It was meant to be heavily edited after the fact but it was also a deliberate attempt at mixing things up. A later version, after getting feedback on this draft, has a type of internal dialogue serving as commentary. Wasn’t trying to be cute, but I was playing with a few things.)

Post-industrial, post-Rock, post-colonial, post-PC, post-War, post-Impressionism, post-structural, post-digital, post-colonial…

Perhaps more than any other prefix in the English language, “post-” serves as an index of social change. While it may denote a phase in personal development or bodily function (“post-prandial” might be my favourite), it often pinpoints pivotal events of a social scope.

The issue of scope helps bring up a key characteristic of the “post-” prefix, at least in the way many authors use it. The period it defines would seem to be general, global, universal. Such an assumption of universality represents a key sign of ethnocentrism, a culturally-rooted perspective deemed to apply outside of culture. The notion that “the whole World” lives through the same social change calls for some nuance. Though World War II had impacts globally, the term “post-war” means different things in different parts of this globe. Uncritically assuming the relevance of a “post-” term regardless of context collapses a large variety of social dynamics into a simplified, “worldwide” phenomenon.

Conversely, social commentators apply several of the “post-” terms exclusively to their own contexts, using these terms to delimit a specific social system to which they assign global significance. Though different from the assumption of universality, this distinctive use of “post-” terms demonstrates further forms of ethnocentric thought. Calling one society “post-racial” to the exclusion of other societies deemed to be “racial” serves as self-congratulation more than as insightful analysis.

The case of the term “post-industrial” deserves discussion. Unlike many other “post-” terms, this term denotes a fairly straightforward phenomenon: a shift away from the manufacturing sector, occurring at the end of the 20th Century, accompanied by an emphasis on the service sector and on information technology. Though the term has attained some relevance in non-specialist contexts, some usage patterns come from academic discourse.

For instance, sociological textbooks use the term in diverse contexts. In some of those contexts, the term refers to a general principle, according to which some broad social changes accompany the end of industrialization, across the world.

In other contexts, “postindustrial” takes an evolutionary meaning, marking a key step in the inexorable evolution from “preindustrial” and ”industrial” social systems. This usage follows ideas proposed by Gerhard Lenski, who based his “societal taxonomies” on technological distinctions. Though not in itself deterministic, such an emphasis on the power of technology to define social evolution plays admirably into technological determinism. North American popular culture promotes a similar view of history, with societies advancing from one stage to the next along with appropriation of diverse technologies. Sid Meier’s Civilization games propose a clear version of this model and developers could substitute “Post-Industrial” for “Future Era” (though the presence of a “Modern Era” after the “Industrial Era” may complicate this progression).

Those usage patterns bear some of the marks of ethnocentrism. Whether the “post-industrial era” represents a worldwide or country-specific phenomenon, a notion coined in a given context comes to apply to a much broader scale.

The diversity of views on social change make this ethnocentric tendency all the more problematic. Archæological research, at least in its popular forms, proposes a view of social change occurring through a switch from one historical period to the next. Though widespread, this notion has a decidedly non-universal application. Apart from favouring a linear instead of cyclical view of time, “post-” terms imply complete, abrupt, and irreversible changes.

Here lies the crux of the “post-” concept. “Post-” implies a radical shift in social order, a point of no return, a clear boundary between an “after” and a “before”. Though used while focusing forward (toward the future), the “post-” terms cling to preceding events. “Post-Apartheid” underlines the importance of South Africa’s segregationist regime, while “post-Soviet” underscores the secession from the USSR at the end of the Cold War. Though emphasizing change, “post-” terms maintain the memory of past events all the while cutting bridges to the past. In this sense, events labelled through “post-” terms may sound like adolescent rebellion. “No, really, I’m totally a different person, now.”

Labels for artistic genres (and eras) help foreground the rebelliousness of many “post-” terms. From “Post-Impressionism” to “Post-Grunge”, artistic branding proceeds by a rejection of some artistic developments immediately preceding it. Whether or not artists themselves use those terms, their art appears as a reaction to a certain body of artistic activity. Describing novels as “Post-Romantic” and bands as “Post-Bop”, literary and music critics put artistic creativity in a special type of box. Not only do artists typically dislike the attribution of restrictive genre labels to their production, but the “post-” prefix poses a further issue to creators looking forward instead of back. Like a ball and chain, a “post-” genre label restricts movement.

Clearly, creative endeavours involve combinations of ideas and forms regardless of the eras in which they appeared original. Artistic usage of “postmodern” connotes such combinations. Though some may perceive postmodern art as a reaction to modernism, its incarnations bring together forms originating in diverse eras. In this view, postmodern art revolves around mashups, remixes, collages, and other forms of reappropriation. Such a context makes “genre-defying” into a cliché, genre labels appearing quaint to practitioners of postmodern art.

Here, the boxed-in version of social change becomes increasingly awkward. Instead of stable periods separated by radical shifts, postmodern art proposes an intermingling of old and new, of contemporary and ancient elements. Going back and forth between different sets of æsthetic precepts, the postmodern artist can break the shackles of genre labels. Though similar attempts at mixing rules may characterize transition periods between other eras in art history, postmodernism can make this type of blending into an artform.

The output of postmodern creativity can occasionally sound like that of “premodern” art. Yet, as Pierre Menard’s Quixote (described by Borges), the appropriated version differs from the original through the difference in context. Used in “Jungle” music, a sample from a funk and soul version of a gospel-inspired song takes on meanings very different from the original. Similarly, a collage including a replica of a classic painting brings new significance to that element.

This mixing of elements from different eras may make life difficult for archæologists trying to date a piece of postmodern art by focusing on external features alone. Thankfully, archæological research uses more data than an object’s mere appearance.

Postmodernism in social sciences acknowledges the potential for a blurring of distinctions, whether they concern historical periods, political entities, or social identities.

Part of this revolves around breaking rules, or at least questioning them. We can go back to the teenage idea, from earlier. Postmodernists in social science often make it their duty to revolt against authority. As with postmodern art, this reaction goes beyond the succession of historical eras. Though postmodern thinkers might perceive modernist authors as the main figureheads eliciting insurrection, the rebellion needs not focus on a given cast of characters.

Applied to social contexts, “postmodern” matches “postindustrial” as described above and several social scientists use the terms interchangeably. Postmodern societies focus on information technology and deemphasize manufacturing. Tracing back connections between industrialism and modernism, a peculiar view of history emerges.

Among “post-” terms described here, “Postcolonialism” may have the least currency in mainstream Euro-American discourse. Yet, the notion of a “postcolonial” present opens a new dimension in thinking about social change.

Unlike “postindustrial”, “postcolonial” involves no linear, preordained evolution. Few scholars would perceive the transition away from colonialism as a necessary and natural progression. Teleology needs not apply. Like post-Soviet states and post-Apartheid South Africa, postcolonial societies bear the scars of problematized pasts. Though individual members from all of these political entities (Uganda, Belarus, South Africa…) may nostalgically bemoan the loss of past structures, the general theme of independence from former powers resonates with talk of progress. Like other “post-” terms, postcolonialism marks an irrevocable transition.

Post-colonial theorists, like Frantz Fanon and Edward Saïd, go beyond the study of post-independence states. Given an association between colonial and “Western” thought, decolonialization entails a move away from Eurocentrism. Here, nuance and the acknowledgment of diversity help break the moulds in which colonialism has tried to place ideas. In this sense, postcolonialism shares with postmodern art a propensity for boundary defiance.

We can find a peculiarity of postcolonialism, among “post-” terms, in that scholars who use the term consider colonial aspects in the present time period. In other words, despite the “post-”, postcolonialism occurs in parallel with colonialism. Most “post-” terms imply a finished state, equivalent to perfect verb forms in English grammar: “We have done this (modernism, Grunge, industrialization, Impressionism…) and can now move on”. Colonialism, in post-colonial theory, moves on.

Feminism provides a useful angle from which to tackle postcolonialism. Over the last several decades, different phases of feminist thought have served as an academic equivalent to “disruptive innovation”. Though present in academic writing since its inception, feminism has only begun disrupting academia once scholars began acknowledging the impact of inequalities on their work. This acknowledgment corresponds loosely with both the onset of “Second wave feminism” and the so-called “Human Rights Movement”. Postcolonialism took roots during the same period, as diverse groups gained independence from colonial powers. Yet, more than sharing a 1960s timeframe, the feminist impact and the postcolonialist spark both demonstrate the power to challenge established order.

Postcolonialism, like Second wave feminism, problematize scholars’ complacency and obliviousness. In both cases, overwhelmingly large contingents (women and colonized people) have asked academics: “But have you thought about us?”. These contingents’ appropriate representation in academic contexts has preoccupied scholars ever since. Even more important, the notion that these contingents may have insight to share on a variety of topics served as a wake-up call for social scientists and other practitioners.

At this point, you may conceive of several “post-” terms as connected with one another to form a type of conceptual network. For instance, though postcolonial societies may differ from postindustrial ones (in fact, few societies belong to both taxonomies), links between the two concepts appear clearly once we take into consideration a basic tenet of Dependency Theory.

Similar to people associated with “post-” terms, dependency theorists rebelled against Modernization Theory which posited a linear and universal evolution toward modernity and postindustrial systems. As set out by diverse authors from Prebisch to Wallerstein, Dependency Theory claims (among other things) that material conditions of former colonies relate to the control exercised by those states most often classified as postindustrial. According to Dependency Theory, the postindustrial markets force other societies (especially postcolonial ones) to maintain industrial economies. In this context, Dependency Theory represents Modernization Theory’s “post-”.

Several “post-” terms act as temporal indices, marking the passage from one historical phase to another. Dates can then fill conceptual gaps between them. Occurring simultaneously but in distant locations (say, Estonia and South Africa), significant changes necessitating the creation of new “post-” terms may serve as contexts for one another. Because of this synchronicity, certain time periods in the recent past appear particularly significant. The formula “X occurred; meanwhile, Y happened” strike many observers’ fancy. For instance, the early 1960s marked the beginning of diverse independence movements throughout Africa and the early 1990s marked the end of both Soviet and Apartheid regimes. Causal connections exist between some of these events, especially through yet other historical events (World War II and the Cold War serving as major turning points). Unsurprisingly, connections between these significant events have provided fodder for proponents of linear views of history. At the same time, though, these connections allow for alternative views of history, some of which may not strictly follow linear thinking.

More specifically, event-based “post-” terms provide a context for debates about discontinuity and continuity. Do the shifts implied by these “post-” terms cause the disappearance of the conditions which made possible a previous orders? Can modern and postmodern, colonial and postcolonial, Rock and post-Rock coexist? What signs point to the end of a transition period from an era to its “post-”?

Siding with Michel Foucault’s episteme instead of upholding Thomas Kuhn’s “paradigm” allows us to take into account coexisting frames of reference. Both Kuhn and Foucault talked about history of ideas, the temporal dimension of epistemology. However, a key distinction between them can serve to foreground the important debate about continuity through change. While Kuhn focused on what Stephen Jay Gould called punctuated equilibria, one paradigm succeeding another, Foucault left room for the type of complex interaction we have seen in postcolonialism and postmodernism. Though we may evaluate the relative currency of diverse epistemes, one episteme needs not replace another. Difficult to conceive, a mix of epistemes could evoke a postmodern collage or the dialectic tension between postcolonial societies and imperialism.

The current trend for “post-” terms (some would call it a “fad”) tends to emphasize radical shifts instead of complex blends. Used to the archæological and often teleological views of history, social commentators prefer clear-cut concepts like “post-War” and “postindustrial” to fluid ones like “postmodern” and “postcolonial”. However, looking at continuities instead of shifts may help us situate the deeper significance of “post-” terms.

Though narrower in usage than most other “post-” terms, the so-called “Post-PC era” merits some attention, here, as it evokes a radical shift while demonstrating the value of fluidity.

At its root, the “post-PC” concept revolves around a shift in form factor. Following the lead of a certain corporate executive, industry analysts know label smartphones, tablets, and wearable computers as “post-PC devices”. These devices require a “post-” term because laptops and desktops already own the term “PC”.

Personal computing still matters, probably more than before, but new devices differ significantly from devices commonly labeled as PCs (laptops and desktops, for instance). In the 1990s, we could have labelled “personal digital assistants” as personal computers. Post-PC devices share many characteristics with PDAs. The distinction between the two types of devices relates directly to events unfolding in the meantime. To stretch the analogy, a PDA released today (with the same technical specifications as those built in the 1990s) could represent both old technology and a post-PC device.

The term “post-PC” indexes a transition, as we speak, from personal computers to other computing devices. Such transitions have occurred throughout the history of computing. Together, they provide support for Kurzweil’s (and, to a lesser extent, Vinge’s) version of “technological singularity”. The assumption of a grammatical perfect, embedded in “post-” terms, connotes a key distinction between the Post-PC era and the transition periods which preceded it. Despite comments to the contrary made by the corporate executive who popularized it, the term “Post-PC” would seem to imply an expected end to personal computers as we know them. “We have done personal computers, now we can move on.” Of course, computer makers will continue to build PCs alongside “post-PC devices” in the foreseeable future. But the radical shift announced by the “post-” term may make it impossible for PCs to retain their original significance. As we have seen with other “post-” terms, objects change their meaning through radical shifts. In practice, one might expect that PC usage will shift as “post-PC devices” increase in importance: some may become personal servers or hubs, while others could be shared in distributed systems (“Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?”).

Implicitly, the post-PC concept applies globally. In line with a popular version of Modernization Theory, this concept implies that “one day, everyone will join us in the post-PC world”. As with a common reading of Everett Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovations, technophiles assume that adoption of certain tools will reach saturation once “laggards” follow the lead set by “early adopters”. Even if this pattern may help predict market penetration, it provides little insight on the human dimension of technology, which includes knowledge and usage.

Tools on their own signify close to nothing. They become meaningful technology through such things as use cases, literacy, and subversion. Not only may the same tools mean different things according to context, but people often use diverse sets of tools to accomplish the exact same goals. The concept of “technological appropriation” involves both usage and knowledge, the human components of technology. Appropriating a tool involves placing this tool in a broader context. Unintended uses of a tool represent a remarkable form of reappropriation based on usage. Skills needed to master a tool (a smartphone or a saxophone, for instance) contribute to technological; so does the tool’s design. By creating a new tool, a user displays a high level of knowledge related to that tool. Such an appropriation pattern runs at the core of Steven Levy’s “hacker ethic”.

In that sense, people around the world may surprise observers by their use of PCs and post-PC devices alike. One part of this surprise may come from John Perry Barlow and Nicholas Negroponte have bothe the “leapfrog effect” (itself a partial challenge to stricter versions of Modernization Theory). Using post-PC devices requires no prior use of PCs, the same way that cellphones need not follow landline phones. Further, as Heather Horst, Mizuko Ito, and others have demonstrated in the case of cellphones, tools find diverse applications across the World, often challenging assumptions about patterns of technological adoptions. Then, those devices which some label as “post-PC” may in fact open possibilities outside of personal computers as we know them.

On the other hand, reappropriation of personal computers may also surprise those who believe in a post-PC future. As conceived from a folkloristic perspective, one of functionalism’s key insights lies in the fact that social groups maintain a practice if (and only if) it fulfills a function. Personal computers may still fulfill a function in the future, though that function may be radically different from what we currently consider to be personal computing.

Already, shared use of PCs has shifted their place in computing. A family’s desktop computer, with or without separate user accounts, serves a purpose quite different from that of the original personal computer. A cybercafé’s terminals represent another case of PC reappropriation. You can find further examples of reappropriation in case modifications and even subvertive uses of PC cases (the “Macquarium”, for instance). Reappropriated PCs may become something new, sometimes quite unlike a PC.

Examples of creative approaches to technological appropriation abound. In Amélie, Raymond Dufayel’s use of a camcorder as a clock may appear as a waste, given relative prices of clocks and camcorders. Conversely, milk crates used as bookshelves connote thriftiness.

Some reappropriations (often imposed by external conditions) have problematic consequences, as documentaries on “E-Waste” make painfully clear. Technological appropriation takes many forms, often unexpected ones. Teleological approaches to technological development, as the one embedded in the term “post-PC”, often mislead.

Several “post-” terms lead us to think about Globalization… as a “post-national” notion. Defining “global” in contradistinction to “International” helps us along the way. Global corporations differ from multinational in working at a such a high level that national governments matter less than production, distribution, and consumption networks. Most of these enterprises may have corporate headquarters located in specific countries, but entrepreneurial activities may happen outside of these headquarters, distributed across facilities located around the World.

Globalization and postnationalism do differ. Opponents and defenders of worldwide trade can play a semantics game, as they position themselves along dividing lines. Social scientists opposed to economic globalization often support (or even predict) a move to “democracies without borders”. Conversely, economic globalization’s defenders may very well oppose a postnational system of governance, on the grounds that it could lead to totalitarianism. Still, the core notion behind both postnationalism and globalization remains stable, regardless of ideology: a significant decrease in the relevance of nation-states.

Though taken as an ancient concept, the nation-state constitutes a relatively recent innovation. Whether or not national identities resulted, as Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson have argued, from sociopolitical maneuvering, the strict association between a country and its exclusive “nation” (descendants of the same “people”) mostly came about during the last 200 years, in the Americas and Europe. Prior to this shift, states consisted mostly of kingdoms and empires, with other political entities working outside of the state model. (Since Elman Service, cultural anthropologists have defined these other models as bands, chiefdoms, and tribes. Though Service meant his typology to be evolutionary and these models display increasing complexity, most contemporary scholars use these terms without evolutionary undertones.) , Basing themselves on national identity Instead of a monarchic order, nation-states restrict ethnic diversity.

The national era shrouded key concepts in mystery. Though used interchangeably, “citizenship”, “nationality”, “ethnicity”, and “national identity” differ considerably. The potential for confusion came from the fact that nation-states focus on ancestry, with the core citizenry belonging to a single ethnic group. Thus, Italians traced back their roots to Etruscans and French people got West Africans to talk about “Our ancestors, the Gauls”. Many claims to national ancestry serve nationalistic self-interest more directly than historical accuracy. When the nationalist creation of Germany led Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm to collect fairytales, the Brothers Grimm likely had no idea that many of these tales had diffused from Asia and elsewhere.

At the present time, almost all human beings belong to sovereign states yet few of these states adhere even loosely to the nation-state model. Somalia, Japan, and Armenia have limited ethnic diversity. In this sense, most of us already live in a postnational world. National identities still matter, possibly even more than in the recent past, sustaining ethnic pride or causing conflicts. Yet nation-states now appear mostly as figments of nationalists’ imaginations.

Editors of The Alpine Review describe their publication as a “post-digital” magazine. I agree that we can only conceive of this publishing model once digital forms have taken hold. However, the “post-” term could mislead if it gave one the idea that we have already gone “beyond digital”. Of course, diverse authors propose different versions of the term. Deloitte’s usage deviate’s widely from Roy Ascott’s, though both relate to economic conditions. The core point remains that digital technology only defines part of our existence.

As “post-” terms go, though, “post-digital” relates more directly to continuous co-occurrence like “post-PC” and “postcolonial” eventful shifts like “post-Impressionism” and “post-Apartheid”. It seems clear to most that digital and print (in its post-digital version) will coexist for a while. More generally, digital and analog maintain their relevance, regardless of technocentrism. Digital technology may affect us deeply, but we remain as physical beings.


Alex Enkerli

P.S.
Unless, that is, we all become “post-humans”.

Twenty Years Online

This month marks the 20th anniversary of my first Internet account. I don’t remember the exact date but I know it was in late summer 1993, right before what became known as “Eternal September”. The Internet wasn’t new, but it still wasn’t on most people’s proverbial “radars”.

Had heard one of my professors, Kevin Tuite, talk about the Internet as a system through which people from all over the World were communicating. Among the examples Tuite gave of possibilities offered by the ‘Net were conversations among people from former Soviet Republics, during this period of broad transitions. As a specialist of Svaneti, in present-day Georgia, Kevin was particularly interested in these conversations.

During that fated Summer of ‘93, I was getting ready to begin the last year of my B.Sc. in anthropology, specializing in linguistic anthropology and ethnomusicology. As I had done during previous summers, I was working BOH at a French restaurant. But, in my free time, I was exploring a brand new world.

In retrospect, it might not be a complete coincidence that my then-girlfriend of four years left me during that Fall 1993 semester.

It started with a local BBS, WAJU (“We Are Joining You”). I’m not exactly sure when I got started, but I remember being on WAJU in July. Had first been lent a 300 baud modem but I quickly switched to a 2400 baud one. My current ISP plan is 15Mbps, literally 50,000 times faster than my original connection.

By August 1993, thanks to the aforementioned Kevin Tuite, I was able to get an account on UdeM’s ERE network, meant for teaching and research (it stood for «Environnement de recherche et d’enseignement»). That network was running on SGI machines which weren’t really meant to handle large numbers of external connections. But it worked for my purpose of processing email (through Pine), Usenet newsgroups, FTP downloads (sometimes through Archie), IRC sessions, individual chats (though Talk), Gopher sites, and other things via Telnet. As much as possible, I did all of these things from campus, through one of the computer rooms, which offered amazingly fast connections (especially compared to my 2.4kbps modem). I spent enough time in those computer rooms that I still remember a distinct smell from them.

However, at some point during that period, I was able to hack a PPP connection going through my ERE account. In fact, I ended up helping some other people (including a few professors) do the same. It then meant we could use native applications to access the ’Net from home and, eventually, browse the Web graphically.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

By the time I got online, NCSA Mosaic hadn’t been released. In fact, it took a little while before I even heard of the “World Wide Web”. I seem to remember that I only started browsing the Web in 1994. At the same time, I’m pretty sure one of my most online-savvy friends (likely Alex Burton or Martin Dupras) had told me about the Web as soon as version 1.0 of Mosaic was out, or even before.

The Web was a huge improvement, to be sure. But it was neither the beginning nor the end of the ‘Net, for those of us who had been there a little while. Yes, even a few months. Keep in mind that, at the time, there weren’t that many sites, on the Web. Sure, most universities had a Web presence and many people with accounts on university networks had opportunities to create homepages. But there’s a reason there could be Web directories (strongly associated with Yahoo!, now, but quite common at the time). Pages were “static” and there wasn’t much which was “social” on the Web, at the time.

But the ’Net as a whole was very social. At least, for the budding ethnographer that I was, the rest of the ‘Net was a much more interesting context for observation than the Web. Especially newsgroups and mailinglists.

Especially since the ‘Net was going through one of its first demographic explosions. Some AOLers were flooding the ‘Net. Perhaps more importantly, newbie bashing was peaking and comments against AOL or other inexperienced “Netizens” were frequently heard. I personally heard a lot more from people complaining about AOL than from anyone accessing the ’Net through AOL.

Something about the influx which was clear, though, is that the “democratization” was being accompanied by commercialization. A culture of open sharing was being replaced by corporate culture. Free culture was being preempted by a culture of advertising. The first .com domains were almost a novelty, in a ‘Net full of country-specific domains along with lots of .edu, .net, .org, .gov, and even .mil servers.

The ‘Net wasn’t yet about “paying for content”. That would come a few years later, when media properties pushed “user-generated content” into its own category (instead of representing most of what was available online). The ‘Net of the mid-1990s was about gaining as much attention as possible. We’re still in that mode, of course. But the contrast was striking. Casual conversations were in danger of getting drowned by megaphones. The billboard overtook the café. With the shift, a strong sense of antagonism emerged. The sense of belonging to a community of early adopters increased with the sense of being attacked by old “media types”. People less interested in sharing knowledge and more interested in conveying their own corporate messages. Not that individuals had been agenda-free until that point. But there was a big difference between geeks arguing about strongly-held opinions and “brands” being pushed onto the scene.

Early on, the thing I thought the Internet would most likely disrupt was journalism. I had a problem with journalism so, when I saw how the ‘Net could provide increased access to information, I was sure it’d imply a reappropriation of news by people themselves, with everything this means in the spread of critical thinking skills. Some of this has happened, to an extent. But media consolidation had probably a more critical role to play in journalism’s current crisis than online communication. Although, I like to think of these things as complex systems of interrelated trends and tendencies instead of straightforward causal scenarios.

In such a situation, the ‘Net becoming more like a set of conventional mass media channels was bad news. More specifically, the logic of “getting your corporate message across” was quite offputting to a crowd used to more casual (though often heated and loud) conversations. What comes to mind is a large agora with thousands of people having thousands of separate conversations being taken over by a massive PA system. Regardless of the content of the message being broadcast by this PA system, the effect is beyond annoying.

Through all of this, I distinctly remember mid-April, 1994. At that time, the Internet changed.  One might say it never recovered.

At that time, two unscrupulous lawyers sent the first commercial spam on Usenet newsgroups. They apparently made a rather large sum of money from their action but, more importantly, they ended the “Netiquette” era. From this point on, a conflict has emerged between those who use and those who abuse the ‘Net. Yes, strong words. But I sincerely think they’re fitting. Spammers are like Internet’s cancer. They may “serve a function” and may inspire awe. Mostly, though, they’re “cells gone rogue”. Not that I’m saying the ‘Net was free of disease before this “Green Card lottery” moment. For one thing, it’s possible (though unlikely) that flamewars were somewhat more virulent then than they are now. It’s just that the list of known online woes expanded quickly with the addition of cancer-like diseases. From annoying Usenet spam, we went rather rapidly to all sorts of malevolent large-scale actions. Whatever we end up doing online, we carry the shadow of such actions.

Despite how it may sound, my stance isn’t primarily moral. It’s really about a shift from a “conversational” mode to a “mass media” one. Spammers exploited Usenet by using it as a “mass media” channel, at a time when most people online were using it as a large set of “many-to-many” channels.

The distinction between Usenet spam and legitimate advertising may be extremely important, to a very large number of people. But the gates spammers opened were the same ones advertisers have been using ever since.

My nostalgia of the early Internet has a lot to do with this shift. I know we gained a lot, in the meantime. I enjoy many benefits from the “democratization” of the ‘Net. I wouldn’t trade the current online services and tools for those I was using in August, 1993. But I do long for a cancer-free Internet.

Confessions of an App Buyer

When it comes to apps, I’m clearly a tire kicker. After deleting a few from the US App Store (now that I live in Canada), I have 943 .ipa files in my “Mobile Applications” folder. Most of them were free. Some (especially a few music apps) were rather expensive. I have 104 apps installed on my iPad, 116 on my iPhone. There’s some overlap but actually not that much.

Apps I Use the Most

iPhone

On the iPhone, several of the apps I use the most are stock apps.

Stock Apps

  • Mail
  • Alarm
  • Safari
  • Messages
  • Calendar
  • Settings
  • Find My Friends (Not officially a stock app, but close enough)
  • Camera
  • App Store
  • Phone
  • Music
  • Photos
  • Reminders

Quick Services

I use a number of apps for quick services, like looking up information or posting an update:

  1. Drafts
  2. Facebook
  3. Twitter
  4. Foursquare
  5. Weather
  6. STM Mobile
  7. Google Maps
  8. SoundHound
  9. ING Direct
  10. LinkedIn
  11. YouTube
  12. Virgin Mobile Members’ Lounge
  13. Timer
  14. Wikipanion
  15. Facebook Messenger
  16. Pushmail
  17. 1Password
  18. Jawbone UP
  19. fitbit

I don’t really use other apps on a regular basis.

iPad

On the iPad, the situation is rather different.

Stock Apps

These are the stock apps I use regularly on the iPad:

  1. Mail
  2. Safari
  3. Messages
  4. Settings
  5. Calendar
  6. App Store

Regular Apps

I use all of the following apps on a regular basis:

  1. 🙂 Sudoku +
  2. Downcast
  3. Solebon Pro
  4. Rdio
  5. Drafts
  6. Facebook
  7. Twitter
  8. Dropbox
  9. Wikipanion
  10. iBiker
  11. 1Password
  12. YouTube
  13. Google Maps
  14. Day One

Apps for Teaching and Research

When I teach and/or am active in research, I use these apps on a regular basis:

  1. Keynote
  2. GoodReader
  3. iThoughts HD
  4. Notability
  5. OmniOutliner

App Value

If I get to think about value and cost, there are some clear differences. Some of the apps I use regularly are part of a paid service (Virgin Mobile…), have to do with a hardware device (Jawbone UP and fitbit), or come with a freemium service (Rdio and Dropbox). Other apps have to do with ad-based services (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter…).

And then, there are the one-time purchases:

  1. Keynote
  2. iThoughts HD
  3. GoodReader
  4. Notability
  5. Solebon Pro
  6. 🙂 Sudoku +
  7. Downcast
  8. Drafts
  9. iBiker
  10. OmniOutliner
  11. 1Password
  12. Wikipanion
  13. Day One
  14. STM Mobile
  15. Timer

The first ten are particularly interesting, I find. They’re pretty much in decreasing order of value, but not in decreasing order of price. OmniOutliner is the most expensive but, if I’m honest with myself, I don’t draw that much value from it. Maybe the situation will change when OmniOutliner 4 for Mac comes out, but I doubt it. I’d rather use an iPad version of FoldingText.

Teaching and Research Workflow

In some ways, Apple’s Keynote is part of the justification for me to have an iPad. I don’t have a laptop, anymore, and I use “slides” in the classroom. Not really as part of the “presentation”, more as a way to structure the class meeting. It’s really ideal, but it ends up working quite well in my workflow. I’ve been thinking about, looking for, and using several other solutions over the years. For instance, I used to create printable and screen-friendly PDF files using OmniOutliner and LaTeX. And I’ve used the classroom desktop to edit some slides during class time. For instance, I might ask students to create exam questions and I’d add them to the slides during class time. But presentation software (including PDFs) never really covers my whole teaching workflow.

In this sense, iThoughts HD is a neat addition to my workflow, and some students have commented on it. I don’t really use it for “traditional” mindmapping. In my case, it’s more of a tool for brainstorming with students. For instance, I can ask the class for some themes connected to the material with which they’ve been working. I might rearrange some of these, or group them. Used to do this on slides, but the mapping format helps a bit. Plus, it’s easy to export those items to a list that I then add to our course site.

GoodReader is also part of my teaching (and research) workflow. For some of my courses, most of the texts we use are available as PDFs. Using GoodReader, I annotate these texts in my own “special” way, which makes it easy afterwards to create outlines or other material for the class meetings. In fact, this process is so useful that I’ve been scanning several texts to make sure I could use GoodReader with it. As I also use GoodReader for research-related texts, I might also start transforming Web content to PDFs. (GoodReader used to be even more useful to me as, before the Dropbox for iOS came about, I was using it as a “deposit box” for PDFs.)

Notability is also part of my research and teaching workflow. I’ve used it in the field as an alternative to my LiveScribe “smartpen”, as I can take notes paired with audio recordings, which is a particularly useful thing to do during an open-ended interview or a meeting. I’ve used it in class in the same way, when I’ve had guests. I kind of wish I could use it to create “ProfCasts” during class time.

Speaking of wishlists, I would probably “pay good money” for the optimal tool in my teaching and research workflow. Not an “everything but the kitchen sink one-stop shop for all of my needs”. That’s usually painful-to-use bloatware. But something which fits my workflow like the ideal mattress or slipper. Part of what I’m thinking about is the way Horace Dediu uses the Perspective app, which was partly developed with his workflow in mind. My own workflow is almost the complete opposite of Horace’s. Basically, though I do use “presentation software”, I try not to “present” material that I previously created. In fact, my dream scenario has a bit more to do with the Donahue app than with Perspective. It could even have something to do with web>clicker, though I’ve been on the record about my distaste for these proprietary solutions.

Games and Podcasts

Though it may sound trivial, I do draw quite a bit of value from the two casual games and the podcatcher on my list. In fact, a very common behaviour for me on my iPad is to switch between the two casual games as I listen to podcasts. Downcast is my current podcatcher, but the value I derive from it has to do with the podcasts themselves. Like weather apps and many productivity apps, no app is the ideal solution for me. I could imagine a Netflix-like subscription service which would add a lot of value to my podcast listening. Solebon Pro and 🙂 Sudoku + are my favourite casual games by far. I’ve been using Solebon Solitaire apps since my PalmOS days. In some ways, I feel bad that I haven’t paid more for those apps but I probably wouldn’t have paid more. However, I’d gladly support a crowdfunding campaign from either of these developers.

Other Neat Apps

The Drafts app is an interesting case. I only discovered it fairly recently, but it’s the kind of app which makes me rethink my workflow. I already get quite a bit of value from it, but I know I could do more with it. For instance, by creating an “action” to append content to a plain text file in Dropbox, I’ve made it into the ideal tool for me to send tasks to my “GTD inbox”. This is an app for which I could imagine “extras”, including paid ones. Could be tricky, but there might be something there.

Unlike fitbit and Jawbone UP, the iBiker app is a standalone third-party app. Despite the name, it’s not just about biking. I’ve chosen it as the app I use to track my workouts, especially walking and exercise biking. It connects with my ANT+ sensors (a heartrate strap and a footpod) via a Wahoo Fitness dongle. It’s similar to many other apps, but I chose it over others because it’s available on the iPad. Partly because of battery use, I prefer using my iPad for these things. This is an app which connects with a freemium service but, unlike Dropbox and Rdio, most of its value comes from the app itself (at least in my case). I do use it to sync with fitbit, but there could (and perhaps should) be better ways to do this.

OmniOutliner for Mac used to be a very important app, for me. I derived quite a bit of value from that desktop app and my teaching workflow was even tied to it, for a while. I’ve since switched much of my Mac OS outlining to Hog Bay Software’s FoldingText which, like the Drafts app for iOS, is unfolding as a really neat solution. I’ve tried a number of outliners on iOS and, for a while, I was quite happy with Hog Bay Software’s TaskPaper. However, because Jesse Grosjean is now focusing on FoldingText, I’ve mostly abandoned TaskPaper. I feel like we’re in a transition period before we can get a FoldingText(-friendly) app on iOS. In the meantime, I’ve been using OmniOutliner for iOS a bit more. The fact that I’m beta-testing OmniOutliner 4 on Mac OS is also part of it. But, unfortunately, I can’t say OmniOutliner is that useful to me right now.

App Costs

App developers are fond of talking about the App Store. Marco Arment (whose posts about the App Store prompted this post), has devoted a significant portion of his (dearly missed) Build and Analyze podcast to questions surrounding the App Store. Before releasing Vesper, John Gruber linked to items preemptively defending his app’s price. And I’ve read from enough versions of the “app buyers are cheap” attitude that pressure has been building up.

So, in this sense, this post is a follow-up to the following posts on app prices and business models:

The last one is about the Mac App Store, and I have a lot more to say about Mac software, in general, and the MAS specifically. But that will have to wait for another post. App bundles will probably be a significant part.

“App Discovery” Is Expensive

During the past five years, I’ve spent quite a bit of money on software (both on iOS and on Mac). Probably not nearly as much as I’ve spent on hardware, but still a significant amount. And, quite likely, more than I had spent in the previous twenty years. Altogether, the software from which I derive the most value has probably cost me a small fraction of the what I’ve spent overall. Which means that most of the money I’ve spent on software is for things from which I derive little to no value. In other words, my benefit/cost ratio in apps is fairly low. It’s as if I had paid several times more money than I actually did, for these few apps that I really find useful in my workflow. Developers of those valuable apps didn’t get that money from me. But other developers (and, in the case of App Store apps, Apple) did get some of my money for things that I don’t use. You could say that this money was spent in “app discovery”. If you add the inordinate amount of time spent trying these apps, the lost value is actually pretty high. In fact, because of the time and effort in finding and trying apps, it makes little difference whether those apps are paid or not.

You might blame me for my app buying behaviour, for making bad purchasing decisions. In the end, though, I almost feel like I’m getting the raw end of a lousy deal. Of course I entered that deal with some insight into the situation. I could simply stick to a few well-known apps, the way people did when Microsoft was so dominant. And I do derive some value from the “app discovery” process, as I get to think about possibilities. Yet I find a problem with the way the whole system works, in terms of finding the software I might find useful. App stores themselves are supposed to be solutions to the “app discovery” problem and it’s clear to me that they’re far from ideal. Software available at no initial cost (including shareware, demoware, and FLOSS) may not be the solution either, given the effort needed to try them. Some podcasts do provide some help, especially Mac Power Users and Systematic (both on 5by5), but they’re also “part of the problem” as they get me to buy some of the software I end up not using much.

Speaking of Systematic, host Brett Terpstra is an interesting figure, in this whole thing. He’s an app developer with at least one paid app Marked ($4) in the Mac App Store. But he’s mostly a developer of “solutions”. His projects are quite diverse and many of the things he’s created are free to use. In fact, he’s created a number of “one-off” solutions which aren’t part of that project list but remain useful (for instance, he created a script for me to convert lists from one text format to another). Pretty much a “scratch your own itch” kind of person, he’s someone who can “develop his way out” of a number of situations. More than with many other developers, I wish I had even a tiny fraction of his skills. Yet Brett’s “Top Three” lists have contributed to making me spend more time (and money) on “app discovery” than I probably should reasonably spend.

A fairly obvious analogy can be made between app developers (like Brett) and auto mechanics. Way back when, most car drivers were also mechanics and most computer users were coders. I don’t drive but I do use computers a fair bit.

I Am Not a Coder

Early iPhone Rumours

[The Lar.me/2ke link originally pointed to Mike Davidson’s 2005 piece. More explanations here.]

[Update, a bit later… Added some thoughts, links, and tags…]

While listening to the Critical Path podcast on 5by5 with Asymco’s Horace Dediu, I got stuck on Dediu’s comment that there weren’t iPhone rumours when Google acquired Android. After a quick search, I ended up on this 2005 piece by Mike Davidson (written eight months before the Google purchase), so I tweeted to @Asymco with a link to Davidson’s post. Several people, including Dediu himself, tell me that this wouldn’t qualify as a rumour (though my own definition of rumour probably differs from theirs). Still, I’ve received some comments about how insightful this piece was. It was partly based on a November 2004 piece by Russell Beattie, which was itself a partial reaction to a short Ross Mayfield post about a “WiFi iPod”. In comments on Davidson’s piece, Ste Grainer mentioned a Robert X. Cringely piece about a Mac Media Centre.

I later found a NYT piece from 2002 which contained an actual rumour about the “iPhone”, including the name:

industry analysts see evidence that Apple is contemplating what inside the company is being called an ”iPhone.”

This, I think, would qualify as a rumour in most people’s definitions, though it didn’t include “leaked prototypes”.

But back to this Davidson piece, which might have been more insightful than the NYT’s one or even Beattie’s…

In hindsight, Davidson’s piece was both prescient of what would actually happen and telling in what didn’t happen. He talked about satellite radio, Plays for Sure, and WiMAX none of which panned out as planned. Also, Davidson surmised some things about Apple’s “content play” which were both less ambitious and more impactful (on Apple’s bottomline) than what actually happened. Apple’s 2007 move against DRM might have been surprising to the 2005 Davidson. And it’s funny to think back to an era when high prices for flash storage made it prohibitive to build a mobile device… 😉

Basically, though, Davidson was speculating about an integrated device which would replace several devices at once:

It won’t be long before the cell phone is your camera, your music player, your organizer, your portable web client, your remote control, and your digital wallet

[We could argue about Android’s NFC play being closer to the digital wallet ideal than Apple’s passbook. The other parts are closer to a Treo anyway…]

In the abstract at least (and in Steve Jobs’s way of describing it), the iPhone has been this integrated communicating device about which people had been talking for years. So, kudos to Mike Davidson for predicting this a while in advance. He was neither the first nor the last, but he painted an interesting portrait.

Now, there are other parts to this story, I think. Given the fact that work on what would become iOS devices (iPad first, we’re told) hadn’t begun when Charles Wolf told the New York Times about a device called “iPhone” internally at Apple, I get the impression that the rumours predated much of the actual development work leading to the device. Speculation happened later still. It seems to relate to a number of things demonstrated by STS generally and SCOT specifically. Namely that technological development is embedded in a broader social process.

I also find interesting some side notions in all of these pieces. For instance, ideas about the impact the device might have on people’s usage. Or the fact that the move from the Treo to the iPhone ends up being quite significant, in retrospect. Even Davidson’s points about headphones and retail stores seem to relate to current things. So does the existence of the iPod touch and Apple TV in Apple’s lineup, addressing Mayfield and Cringely, respectively.

I also end up reflecting upon the shift from the “digital hub” strategy (peaking around 2007 or so) to the one revealed with iCloud, “Back to the Mac” and, yes, even Apple Maps. Dediu devotes much time to his mentor Clay Christensen’s notion of “disruptive innovation” and spent part of this latest Critcal Path episode talking about the risks behind Apple not being disruptive enough.

All of this makes me think…

Not that I have a very clear idea of what might happen but, recently, I’ve been thinking about the broader picture. Including the Maps kerfuffle. The importance of social disruption. Apple’s financial state and market presence. The so-called “Post-PC” era in relation to other “post-” notions (post-industrialism, post-colonialism, post-nationalism, post-modernism…). The boring nature of the Google/Apple conflict. The recent financial crisis. The tech world’s emphasis on Apple. The future of academia and education. The iconicity of Steve Jobs…

As Mike Wesch has been saying:

We’ll need to rethink a few things…

Concierge-Style Service

Disclaimer: This is one of those blogposts in which I ramble quite a bit. I do have a core point, but I take winding roads around it. It’s also a post where I’m consciously naïve, this time talking about topics which may make economists react viscerally. My hope is that they can get past their initial reaction and think about “the fool’s truth”.

High-quality customer service is something which has a very positive effect, on me. More than being awed by it, I’m extremely appreciative for it when it’s directed towards me and glad it exists when other people take advantage of it.

And I understand (at least some of) the difficulties of customer service.

Never worked directly in customer service. I do interact with a number of people, when I work (teaching, doing field research, working in restaurants, or even doing surveys over the phone). And I’ve had to deal with my share of “difficult customers”, sometimes for months at a time. But nothing I’ve done was officially considered customer service. In fact, with some of my work, “customer service” is exactly the opposite of “what the job is about”, despite some apparent similarities.

So I can only talk about customer service as a customer.

As job sectors go, customer service is quite compatible with a post-industrial world. At the end of the Industrial Revolution, jobs in the primary and secondary sectors have decreased a lot in numbers, especially in the wealthiest parts of the World. The tertiary sector is rapidly growing, in these same contexts. We may eventually notice a significant move toward the quaternary sector, through the expansion of the “knowledge society” but, as far as I know, that sector employs a very small proportion of the active population in any current context.

Point is, the service sector is quite big.

It’s also quite diverse, in terms of activities as well as in terms of conditions. There are call centres where working conditions and salaries are somewhat comparable to factory work (though the latter is considered “blue collar” and the former “white collar”). And there are parts of the service industry which, from the outside, sound quite pleasant.

But, again, I’m taking the point of view of the customer, here. I really do care about working conditions and would be interested in finding ways to improve them, but this blogpost is about my reactions as someone on the other side of the relationship.

More specifically, I’m talking about cases where my satisfaction reaches a high level. I don’t like to complain about bad service (though I could share some examples). But I do like to underline quality service.

And there are plenty of examples of those. I often share them on Twitter and/or on Facebook. But I might as well talk about some of these, here. Especially since I’m wrapping my head about a more general principal.

A key case happened back in November, during the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, here in Montreal. Was meeting a friend of mine at the conference hotel. Did a Foursquare checkin there, while I was waiting, pointing out that I was a local. Received a Twitter reply from the hotel’s account, welcoming me to Montreal. Had a short exchange about this and was told that “if my friend needs anything…” Went to lunch with my friend.

Among the topics of our conversation was the presentation she was going to give, that afternoon. She was feeling rather nervous about it and asked me what could be done to keep her nervousness under control. Based on both personal experience and rumours, I told her to eat bananas, as they seem to help in relieving stress. But, obviously, bananas aren’t that easy to get, in a downtown area.

After leaving my friend, I thought about where to get bananas for her, as a surprise. Didn’t remember that there was a supermarket, not too far from the hotel, so I was at a loss. Eventually went back to the hotel, thinking I might ask the hotel staff about this. Turns out, it would have been possible to order bananas for my friend but the kitchen had just closed.

On a whim, I thought about contacting the person who had replied to me through the hotel’s Twitter account. Explained the situation, gave my friend’s room number and, within minutes, a fruit basket was delivered to her door. At no extra charge to me or to my friend. As if it were a completely normal thing to do, asking for bananas to be delivered to a room.

I’m actually not one to ask for favours, in general. And I did feel strange asking for these bananas. But I wanted to surprise my friend and was going to pay for the service anyway. And the “if she needs anything” message was almost a dare, to me. My asking for bananas was almost defiant. “Oh, yeah? Anything? How about you bring bananas to her room, then?” Again, I’m usually not like this but exchanges like those make me want to explore the limits of the interaction.

And the result was really positive. My friend was very grateful and I sincerely think it helped her relax before her presentation, beyond the effects of the bananas themselves. And it titillated my curiosity, as an informal observer of customer service.

Often heard about hotel concierges as the model of quality in customer service. This fruit basket gave me a taster.

What’s funny about «concierges» is that, as a Québécois, I mostly associate them with maintenance work. In school, for instance, the «concierge» was the janitor, the person in charge of cleaning up the mess left by students. Sounds like “custodian” (and “custodial services”) may be somewhat equivalent to this meaning of «concierge», among English-speaking Canadians, especially in universities. Cleaning services are the key aspect of this line of work. Of course, it’s important work and it should be respected. But it’s not typically glorified as a form of employment. In fact, it’s precisely the kind of work which is used as a threat to those whose school performance is considered insufficient. Condescending teachers and principals would tell someone that they could end up working as a «concierge» (“janitor”) if they didn’t get their act together. Despite being important, this work is considered low-status. And, typically, it has little to do with customer service, as their work is often done while others are absent.

Concierges in French apartment buildings are a different matter, as they also control access and seem to be involved in collecting rent. But, in the “popular imagination” (i.e., in French movies), they’re not associated with a very high quality of service. Can think of several concierges of this type, in French movies. Some of them may have a congenial personality. But I can’t think of one who was portrayed as a model of high-quality customer service.

(I have friends who were «concierges» in apartment buildings, here in Montreal. Their work, which they did while studying, was mostly about maintenance, including changing lightbulbs and shovelling snow. The equivalent of “building superintendent”, it seems. Again, important but devalued work.)

Hotel concierges are the ones English-speakers think of when they use the term. They are the ones who are associated with high-quality (and high-value) customer service. These are the ones I’m thinking about, here.

Hotel concierges’ “golden keys” («Clefs d’or») are as much of a status symbol as you can get one. No idea how much hotel concierges make and I’m unclear as to their training and hiring. But it’s clear that they occupy quite specific a position in the social ladder, much higher than that of school janitors or apartment concierges.

Again, I can just guess how difficult their work must be. Not only the activities themselves but the interactions with the public. Yet, what interests me now is their reputation for delivering outstanding service. The fruit basket delivered to my friend’s door was a key example, to me.

(I also heard more about staff in luxury hotels, in part from a friend who worked in a call centre for a hotel with an enviable reputation. The hospitality industry is also a central component of Swiss culture, and I heard a few things about Swiss hotel schools, including Lausanne’s well-known EHL. Not to mention contacts with ITHQ graduates. But my experience with this kind of service in a hotel context is very limited.)

And it reminds me of several other examples. One is my admiration for the work done by servers in a Fredericton restaurant. The food was quite good and the restaurant’s administration boasts their winelist. But the service is what gave me the most positive feeling. Those service were able to switch completely from treating other people like royalty to treating me like a friend. These people were so good at their job that I discussed it with some of them. Perhaps they were just being humble but they didn’t even seem to realize that they were doing an especially good job.

A similar case is at some of Siena’s best restaurants, during a stay with several friends. At most places we went, the service was remarkably impeccable. We were treated like we deserved an incredible amount of respect, even though we were wearing sandals, shorts, and t-shirts.

Of course, quality service happens outside of hotels and restaurants. Which is why I wanted to post this.

Yesterday, I went to the “Genius Bar” at the Apple Store near my university campus. Had been having some issues with my iPhone and normal troubleshooting didn’t help. In fact, I had been to the same place, a few months ago, and what they had tried hadn’t really solved the problem.

This time, the problem was fixed in a very simple way: they replaced my iPhone with a new one. The process was very straightforward and efficient. And, thanks to regular backups, setting up my replacement iPhone was relatively easy a process. (There were a few issues with it and it did take some time to do, but nothing compared to what it might have been like without cloud backups.)

Through this and previous experiences with the “Genius Bar“, I keep thinking that this service model should be applied to other spheres of work. Including healthcare. Not the specifics of how a “Genius Bar” works. But something about this quality of service, applied to patient care. I sincerely think it’d have a very positive impact on people’s health.

In a way, this might be what’s implied by “concierge medicine”: personalized healthcare services, centred on patients’ needs. But there’s a key difference between Apple’s “Genius Bar” and “concierge medicine”: access to the “Genius Bar” is open to all (customers of Apple products).

Sure, not everyone can afford Apple products. But, despite a prevailing impression, these products are usually not that much more expensive than those made by competitors. In fact, some products made by Apple are quite competitive in their market. So, while the concierge-style services offered by the “Genius Bar” are paid by Apple’s customers, costing those services as even the totality of the “Apple premium” might reveal quite decent a value proposition.

Besides, it’s not about Apple and it’s not really about costs. While Apple’s “Genius Bar” provided my inspiration for this post, I mostly think about quality of service, in general. And while it’s important for decision-makers to think about the costs involved, it’s also important to think about what we mean by high quality service.

One aspect of concierge-style service is that it’s adapted to specific needs. It’s highly customized and personalized, the exact opposite of a “cookie-cutter” approach. My experience at BrewBakers was like that: I was treated the way I wanted to be treated and other people were treated in a very different way. For instance, a server sat besides me as I was looking at the menu, as if I had been a friend “hanging out” with them, and then treated some other customers as if they were the most dignified people in the world. Can’t say for sure the other people appreciated it (looked like they did), but I know it gave me a very warm feeling.

Similar thing at the “Genius Bar”. I could hear other people being treated very formally, but every time I went I was treated with the exact level of informality that I really enjoy. Perhaps more importantly, people’s technology skills are clearly taken into account and they never, in my experience, represent a basis for condescension or for misguided advice. In other words, lack of knowledge of an issue is treated with an understanding attitude and a customer’s expertise on an issue is treated with the exact level of respect it deserves. As always, YMMV. But I’m consistently struck by how appropriately “Genius Bar” employees treat diverse degrees of technological sophistication. As a teacher, this is something about which I care deeply. And it’s really challenging.

While it’s flexible and adaptable, concierge-style service is also respectful, no matter what. This is where our experiences in Siena were so striking. We were treated with respect, even though we didn’t fit the “dress code” for any of these restaurants. And this is a city where, in our observations, people seemed to put a lot of care in what they wore. It’s quite likely that we were judged like annoying tourists, who failed to understand the importance of wearing a suit and tie when going to a “classy” restaurant. But we were still welcomed in these establishments, and nothing in the service made us perceive negatively judged by these servers.

I’ve also heard about hotel staff having to maintain their dignity while coping with people who broke much more than dress codes. And this applies whether or not these people are clients. Friends told me about how the staff at a luxury hotel may deal with people who are unlikely to be customers (including homeless people). According to these friends, the rule is to treat everyone with respect, regardless of which position in the social ladder people occupy. Having noticed a few occasions where respectful treatment was applied to people who are often marginalized, it gives me some of the same satisfaction as when I’m treated adequately.

In other words, concierge-style service is appropriate, “no matter what”. The payoff may not be immediately obvious to everyone, but it’s clearly there. For one thing, poor-quality service to someone else can be quite painful to watch and those of us who are empathetic are likely to “take our business elsewhere” when we see somebody else being treated with disrespect. Not to mention that a respectful attitude is often the best way to prevent all sorts of negative situations from happening. Plus, some high-status people may look like low-status ones in certain of these situations. (For instance, friend working for a luxury hotel once commented on some celebrities looking like homeless people when they appeared at the hotel’s entrance.)

Concierge-style service is also disconnected from business transactions. While the money used to pay for people providing concierge-style service comes from business transactions, this connection is invisible in the service itself. This is similar to something which seems to puzzle a number of people I know, when I mention it. And I’m having a hard time explaining it in a way that they understand. But it’s quite important in the case of customer service.

At one level, you may call it an illusion. Though people pay for a service, the service is provided as if this payment didn’t matter. Sure, the costs associated with my friend’s fruit basket were incurred in the cost of her room. But neither of us saw that cost. So, at that level, it’s as if people were oblivious to the business side of things. This might help explain it to some people, but it’s not the end of it.

Another part has to do with models in which the costs behind the service are supported by a larger group of people, for instance in the ad-based model behind newspapers and Google or in the shared costs model behind insurance systems (not to mention public sectors programs). The same applies to situation where a third-party is responsible for the costs, like parents paying for services provided to their children. In this case, the separation between services and business transactions is a separation between roles. The same person can be beneficiary or benefactor in the same system, but at different times. Part of the result is that the quality of the service is directed toward the beneficiary, even though this person may not be directly responsible for the costs incurred by this service. So, the quality of a service offered by Google has to do with users of that service, not with Google’s customers (advertisers). The same thing applies to any kind of sponsorship and can work quite well with concierge-level quality of service. The Apple Store model is a bit like this, in that Apple subsidizes its stores out of its “own pocket”, and seems to be making a lot of money thanks to them. It may be counterintuitive, as a model, and the distinction between paying for and getting a service may sound irrelevant. But, from the perspective of human beings getting this kind of service, the difference is quite important.

At another level, it’s a matter of politeness. While some people are fine talking financials about any kind of exchange, many others find open discussion of money quite impolite. The former group of people may find it absurd but some of us would rather not discuss the specifics of the business transactions while a service is given. And I don’t mean anything like the lack of transparency of a menu with no price, in a very expensive restaurant. Quite the contrary. I mean a situation where everybody knows how much things cost in this specific situation, but discussion of those costs happens outside of the service itself. Again, this may sound strange to some, but I’d argue that it’s a characteristic of concierge-style service. You know how much it costs to spend a night at this hotel (or to get a haircut from this salon). But, while a specific service is provided, these costs aren’t mentioned.

Another component of this separation between services and their costs is about “fluidity”. It can be quite inefficient for people to keep calculating how much a service costs, itemized. The well-known joke about an engineer asked to itemize services for accounting purposes relates to this. In an industrial context, every item can have a specific cost. Applying the same logic to the service sector can lead to an overwhelming overhead and can also be quite misleading, especially in the case of knowledge and creative work. (How much does an idea cost?) While concierge-style service may be measured, doing so can have a negative impact on the service itself.

Some of my thinking about services and their costs has to do with learning contexts. In fact, much of my thinking about quality of service has to do with learning, since teaching remains an important part of my life. The equation between the costs of education and the learning process is quite complex. While there may be strong correlations between socioeconomic factors and credentials, the correlation between learning and credential is seems to be weaker and the connection between learning and socioeconomic factors is quite indirect.

In fact, something which is counterintuitive to outsiders and misconstrued to administrators at learning institutions is the relationship between learning and the quality of the work done by a teacher. There are many factors involved, in the work of a teacher, from students’ prior knowledge to their engagement in the learning process, and from “time on task” to the compatibility between learning and teaching methods. It’s also remarkably difficult to measure teaching effectiveness, especially if one is to pay more than lipservice to lifelong learning. Also, the motivations behind a teacher’s work rarely have much to do with such things as differential pay. At the very least, it’s clear that dedicated teachers spend more time than is officially required, and that they do so without any expectation of getting more money. But they do expect (and often get) much more than money, including the satisfaction of a job well done.

The analogy between teaching and concierge services falls down quickly if we think that concierges’ customers are those who use their services. Even in “for-profit” schools, the student-teacher relationship has very little to do with a client-business relationship. Those who “consume” the learning process are learners’ future employers or society as a whole. But students themselves aren’t “consuming teaching”, they’re learning. Sure, students often pay a portion of the costs to run educational institutions (other costs being covered by research activities, sponsorships, government funding, alumni, and even parents). But the result of the learning process is quite different from paying for a service. At worst, students are perceived as the “products” of the process. At best, they help construct knowledge. And even if students are increasingly treated as if they were customers of learning institutions (including publicly-funded ones), their relationship to teachers is quite distinct from patronage.

And this is one place for a connection between teachers and concierges, having to do with the separation between services and their fees: high quality service is given by concierges and teachers beyond direct financial incentives to do so. Even if these same teachers and concierges are trying to get increased wages, the services they provide are free of these considerations. Salary negotiations are a matter between employers and employees. Those who receive services are customers of the employers, not the employees. There’d be no reason for a concierge or teacher to argue with customers and students about their salaries.

In a way, this is almost the opposite of “social alienation”. In social sciences. “alienation” refers to a feeling of estrangement often taking place among workers whose products are consumed by people with whom they have no connection. A worker at a Foxconn factory may feel alienated from the person who will buy the Dell laptop on which she’s working. But service work is quite distinct from this. While there may be a huge status differential between someone getting a service and the person providing it and there can be a feeling of distance, the fact that there’s a direct connection between the two is quite significant. Even someone working at a call centre in India providing technical support to a high-status customer in the US  is significantly different from the alienated factory worker. The direct connection between call centre employee and customer can have a significant impact on both people involved, and on the business behind the technical support request.

And, to a large extent, the further a person working in customer service is from the financial transaction, the higher the quality of the service.

Lots has been said about Zappos and about Nordstrom. Much of that has to do with how these two companies’ approaches to customer service differ from other approaches (for instance, avoiding scripts). But there might be a key lesson, here, in terms of distancing the service from the job. The “customers are always right” ethos doesn’t jive well with beancounting.

So, concierge-style service is “more than a job”.

Providing high-quality service can be highly stimulating, motivating, and satisfying. Haven’t looked at job satisfaction levels among these people, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were quite high. What managers seem to forget, about job satisfaction, is that it has an impact beyond employee retention, productivity, and reputation. Satisfying jobs have a broad impact on society, which then impacts business. Like Ford paying high wages for his workers, much of it has to do with having a broader vision than simply managing the “ins and outs” of a given business. This is where Hanifan’s concept of social capital may come into play. Communities are built through such things as trust and job satisfaction.

Again, these aren’t simple issues. Quality customer service isn’t a simple matter of giving people the right conditions. But its effect are far-reaching.

It’s interesting to hear about “corporate concierge services” offered to employees of certain businesses. In a way, they loop back the relationship between high-quality service and labour. It sounds like corporate concierges can do a lot to enhance a workplace, even  making it more sustainable. I’d be curious to know more about them, as it sounds like they might have an interesting position with regards to the enterprise. I wouldn’t be surprised if their status were separate from that of regular employees within the business.

And, of course, I wish I were working at a place where such services were available. Sounds like those workplaces aren’t that uncommon. But having access to such services would be quite a privilege.

Thing is, I hate privilege, even when I’m the one benefitting from it. I once quipped that I hated library privileges, because they’re unequally distributed. The core of this is that I wish society were more equal. Not by levelling down everything we have, but by providing broader access to resources and services.

A key problem with concierge-style services is that access to them tends to be restricted. But it doesn’t sound like their costs are the only factor for this exclusiveness. In a way, concierge-level service may not be that much more expensive than standard service. It might be about concierge-style services being a differentiating factor, but even that doesn’t imply that it should be so restricted.

I’d argue that the level of quality of service that I’ve been describing (and rambling on about) can be found in just about any context. I’ve observed the work of librarians, gas station attendants, police officers, street vendors, park rangers, and movers who provided this level of service. While it may difficult to sustain high-quality service, it does scale and it does seem to make life easier for everyone.

Using WordPress as a Syllabus Database: Learning is Fun

(More screenshots in a previous post on this blog.)

Worked on a WordPress project all night, the night before last. Was able to put together a preliminary version of a syllabus database that I’ve been meaning to build for an academic association with which I’m working.

There are some remaining bugs to solve but, I must say, I’m rather pleased with the results so far. In fact, I’ve been able to solve the most obvious bugs rather quickly, last night.

More importantly, I’ve learnt a lot. And I think I can build a lot of things on top of that learning experience.

Part of the inspiration comes from Kyle Jones’s blogpost about a “staff directory”. In addition, Justin Tadlock has had a large (and positive) impact on my learning process, either through his WordPress-related blogposts about custom post types and his work on the Hybrid Theme (especially through the amazing support forums). Not to mention WordCamp Montrealofficial documentationplugin pagestutorials, and a lot of forum– and blogposts about diverse things surrounding WordPress (including CSS).

I got a lot of indirect help and I wouldn’t have been able to go very far in my project without that help. But, basically, it’s been a learning experience for me as an individual. I’m sure more skilled people would have been able to whip this up in no time.

Thing is, it’s been fun. Close to Csíkszentmihályi’s notion of “flow”. (Philippe’s a friend of mine who did research on flow and videogames. He’s the one who first introduced me to “flow”, in this sense.)

So, how did I achieve this? Well, through both plugins and theme files.

To create this database, I’ve originally been using three plugins from More Plugins: More Fields, More Taxonomies, and More Types. Had also done so in my previous attempt at a content database. At the time, these plugins helped me in several ways. But, with the current WordPress release (3.2.1), the current versions of these plugins (2.0.5.2, 1.0.1, and 1.1.1b1, respectively) are a bit buggy.

In fact, I ended up coding my custom taxonomies “from scratch”, after running into apparent problems with the More Taxonomies plugin. Eventually did the same thing with my “Syllabus” post type, replacing More Types. Wasn’t very difficult and it solved some rather tricky bugs.

Naïvely, I thought that the plugins’ export function would actually create that code, so I’d be able to put it in my own files and get rid of that plugin. But it’s not the case. Doh! Unfortunately, the support forums don’t seem so helpful either, with many questions left unanswered. So I wouldn’t really recommend these plugins apart from their pedagogical value.

The plugins were useful in helping me get around some “conceptual” issues, but it seems safer and more practical to code things from scratch, at least with taxonomies and custom post types. For “custom metaboxes”, I’m not sure I’ll have as easy a time replacing More Fields as I did replacing More Taxonomies and More Types. (More Fields helps create custom fields in the post editing interface.)

Besides the More Plugins, I’m only using two other plugins: Jonathan Christopher’s Attachments and the very versatile google doc embedder (gde) by Kevin Davis.

Attachments provides an easy way to attach files to a post and, importantly, its plugin page provides usable notes about implementation which greatly helped me in my learning process. I think I could code in some of that plugin’s functionality, now that I get a better idea of how WordPress attachments work. But it seems not to be too buggy so I’ll probably keep it.

As its name does not imply, gde can embed any file from a rather large array of file types: Adobe Reader (PDF), Microsoft Office (doc/docx, ppt/pptx/pps, xsl/xslx), and iWork Pages, along with multipage image files (tiff, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, SVG, EPS/PS…). The file format support comes from Google Docs Viewer (hence the plugin name).

In fact, I just realized that GDV supports zip and RAR archives. Had heard (from Gina Trapani) of that archive support in Gmail but didn’t realize it applied to GDV. Tried displaying a zip file through gde, last night, and it didn’t work. Posted something about this on the plugin’s forum and “k3davis” already fixed this, mentioning me in the 2.2 release notes.

Allowing the display of archives might be very useful, in this case. It’s fairly easily to get people to put files in a zip archive and upload it. In fact, several mail clients do all of this automatically, so there’s probably a way to get documents through emailed zip files and display the content along with the syllabus.

So, a cool plugin became cooler.

Syllabus Database (archive)

[gview file=”http://blog.enkerli.com/files/2011/08/syllabusdb-0.2.zip” height=”20%”]

As it so happens, gde is already installed on the academic site for which I’m building this very same syllabus database. In that case, I’ve been using gde to embed PDF files (for instance, in this page providing web enhancements page for an article in the association’s journal). So I knew it could be useful in terms of displaying course outlines and such, within individual pages of the syllabus database.

What I wasn’t sure I could do is programmatically embed files added to a syllabus page. In other words, I knew I could display these files using some shortcode on appropriate files’ URLs (including those of attached files). What I wasn’t sure how to do (and had a hard time figuring out) is how to send these URLs from a field in the database: I knew how to manually enter the code, but I didn’t know how to automatically display the results of the code when a link is entered in the right place.

The reason this matters is that I would like “normal human beings” (i.e., noncoders and, mostly, nongeeks) to enter the relevant information for their syllabi. One of WordPress’s advantages is the fact that, despite its power, it’s very easy to get nongeeks to do neat things with it. I’d like the syllabus database to be this type of neat thing.

The Attachmentsplugin helps, but still isn’t completely ideal. It does allow for drag-and-drop upload and it does provide a minimalist interface for attaching uploaded files to blogposts.

First Attach Button (Screenshot)
Screenshot of First “Attach” Button

In the first case, it’s just a matter of clicking the Attach button and dropping a file in the appropriate field. In the second case, it’s a matter of clicking another Attachbutton.

Second Attach Button (Screenshot)
Screenshot of the Second “Attach” Button

The problem is between these two Attach buttons.

File Uploaded Screenshot
Screenshot of the Uploaded File

The part of the process between uploading the file and finding the Attach button takes several nonobvious  steps. After the file has been uploaded, the most obvious buttons are Insert into Post and Save all changes, neither of which sounds particularly useful in this context. But Save all changes is the one which should be clicked.

To get to the second Attach button, I first need to go to the Media Library a second time. Recently uploaded images are showing.

Images Only Screenshot
Screenshot of the Media Library Only Showing Images

For other types of files, I then click All Types, which shows a reverse chronological list of all recently uploaded files (older files can be found through the Search Media field). I then click on the Show link associated with a given file (most likely, the most recent upload, which is the first in the list).

Second Attach Button (Screenshot)
Screenshot of the second “Attach” Button

Then, finally, the final Attach button shows up.

Clicking it, the file is attached to the current post, which was the reason behind the whole process. Thanks to both gde and Attachments, that file is then displayed along with the rest of the syllabus entry.

It only takes a matter of seconds to minutes, to attach a file (depending on filesize, connection speed, etc.). Not that long. And the media library can be very useful in many ways. But I just imagine myself explaining the process to instructors and other people submitting syllabi for inclusion the the database.

Far from ideal.

A much easier process is the one of adding files by pasting a file URL in a field. Which is exactly what I’ve added as a possibility for a syllabus’s main document (say, the PDF version of the syllabus).

Course Data Screenshot
Screenshot of the Course Data Box

Passing that URL to gde, I can automatically display the document in the document page, as I’m doing with attachments from the media library.  The problem with this, obviously, is that it requires a public URL for the document. The very same “media library” can be used to upload documents. In fact, copying the URL from an uploaded file is easier than finding the “Attach” button as explained previously. But it makes the upload a separate process on the main site. A process which can be taught fairly easily, but a process which isn’t immediately obvious.

I might make use of a DropBox account for just this kind of situation. It’s also a separate process, but it’s one which may be easier for some people.

In the end, I’ll have to see with users what makes the most sense for them.

In the past, I’ve used plugins like  Contact Form 7 (CF7), by Takayuki Miyoshi, and Fast Secure Contact Form (FSCF)  by Mike Challis to try and implement something similar. A major advantage is that they allow for submissions by users who aren’t logged in. This might be a dealmaking feature for either FSCF or CF7, as I don’t necessarily want to create accounts for everyone who might submit a syllabus. Had issues with user registration, in the past. Like attachments, onboarding remains an issue for a lot of people. Also, thanks to yet other plugins like Michael Simpson’s Contact Form to Database (CFDB), it should be possible to make form submissions into pending items in the syllabus database. I’ll be looking into this.

Another solution might be Gravity Forms. Unlike the plugins I’ve mentioned so far, it’s a commercial product. But it sounds like it might offer some rather neat features which may make syllabus submission a much more interesting process. However, it’s meant for a very different use case, which has more to do with “lead data management” and other business-focused usage. I could innovate through its use. But there might be more appropriate solutions.

As is often the case with WordPress, the “There’s a plugin for that” motto can lead to innovation.  Even documenting the process (by blogging it) can be a source of neat ideas.

A set of ideas I’ve had, for this syllabus database, came from looking into the Pods CMS Framework for WordPress. Had heard about Pods CMS through the WordCast Conversations podcast. For several reasons, it sent me on an idea spree and, for days, I was taking copious notes about what could be done. Not only about this syllabus database but about a full “learning object repository” built on top of WordPress. The reason I want to use WordPress is that, not only am I a “fanboi” of Automattic (the organization behind WordPress) but I readily plead guilty to using WordPress as a Golden Hammer. There are multiple ways to build a learning object repository. (Somehow, I’m convinced that some of my Web developing friends that Ruby on Rails is the ideal solution.) But I’ve got many of my more interesting ideas through looking into Pods CMS, a framework for WordPress and I don’t know the first thing about RoR.

Overall, Pods CMS sounds like a neat approach. Its pros and cons make it sound like an interesting alternative to WordPress’s custom post types for certain projects, as well as a significant shift from the main ways WordPress is used. During WordCamp Montreal, people I asked about it were wary of Pods. I eventually thought I would wait for version 2.0 to come out before investing significant effort in it.

In the meantime, what I’ve built is a useful base knowledge of how to use WordPress as a content database.

Can’t wait to finish adding features and fixing bugs, so I can release it to the academic organization. I’m sure they’ll enjoy it.

Even if they don’t ever use it, I’ve gained a lot of practical insight into how to do such things. It may be obvious to others but it does wonders to my satisfaction levels.

I’m truly in flow!

iCloud Reality

This post is a follow-up to both the WWDC 2011 keynote and my previous post, in which I used iCloud as inspiration for some “cloud computing” dreams.

“Whoa!”, you say, ”two posts about iCloud within 24 hours? This guy must really about iCloud!”

Actually, I don’t care about iCloud itself. Now that it’s been announced, I can say that I’ll welcome it, as a replacement for MobileMe and enhancement to the “iTunes ecosystem”. But it’s not that major a thing, in my mind.

Point is, I don’t blog because I really care about specific things. I blog because it’s fun to do.

In this case, it’s pretty easy to do. Nothing groundbreaking in this blogpost, but it’s a neat context for blogging, in my mind. Almost like a writing exercise. And a placeholder for further thoughts on “cloud computing”, Apple, and mobile devices. I do “care” about all of these things in the sense that I’m curious to see what might come out of them. But my universe probably won’t collapse if these things all take an unexpected turn.

Why don’t I blog about Android? Well, mostly because I don’t have an Android device and don’t plan on getting a smartphone or a new tablet in the foreseeable future. I do follow Google news (especially through TWiG but also through some generalist tech blogs, like TNW) and there are some things I find interesting, in what Google offers. But that’ll have to wait for another day. (I do have a blogpost in mind for “What I Like about Google”.)

So… iCloud, eh?

Well, pretty much as rumours predicted, overall. Which is neither awe-inspiring nor so disappointing. I’m looking forward to some features which made it in and somewhat lukewarm about several of the things they announced. Not overwhelmed but not really underwhelmed either. So I’m “whelmed”.

An announcement about which I have positive feelings isn’t about iCloud: Mac OS X Lion will be available for download in July, at a reasonable price (30$). Since my 2006 Mac mini doesn’t support Lion, the news may not impact me that directly but it does mean that I’ll be able to install it on the MacBook of the person about whom I really care. And it might mean that we’ll see updated Mac minis in July. So, timing should be good, for me, in terms of getting a new computer before the semester starts.

Speaking of Lion, I’m rather puzzled by the announcement (rumoured a few days ago) that the server version will come at an extra cost. Guess I had misunderstood a previous announcement that Server was included in the normal version of Mac OS X to mean that it would be included at no extra cost. During the keynote, it was announced that Server would be an App Store purchase, though no price was mentioned. Looking on Apple’s site as I’m writing this, I find out that Mac OS X Lion Server will cost 50$. Not free, but not as bad as I feared, until a minute ago.

Now, about the iCloud and iOS5 announcements…

One thing I find remarkable (and which also applies to Mac OS X Lion) is how precisely rumours end up matching the actual announcement. For a company which is known as being so tightly sealed, it’s kind of unexpected. What’s more awkward, though, is that it doesn’t seem to have that much effect on dulling down audience reactions. Almost everything which was announced today has at least been rumoured yet the crowd was very enthusiastic at some points. Now, it’s a very specific crowd, which comprises a number of die-hard Apple enthusiasts (after all, their business may depend on Apple, to a fairly large extent). But I must admit I was surprised by some of these reactions, especially pertaining to iOS5. I can understand that the new notification system may be a big “wow factor”, to many of these developers. It might help them make their apps more useful. But I was genuinely surprised that tabbed browsing got such a positive response. I personally don’t miss tabbed browsing on iOS4 and almost wish we could keep the current approach to switching between preloaded pages. But members of the audience seemed quite happy about the change. Of course, their reactions are shaped by many factors, as in a tv show. But I felt like one who didn’t get the joke. “So, y’all wanted tabbed browsing, all this time? Ok…”

The announcement of a PC-free feature of iCloud was quite similar. I understand that it’s pretty neat, and it does correspond to a lot of things Gruber has been saying for a while. But how big of a deal is it, for developers? What am I missing, here? I’m sure I’ll be told, soon enough. Or the audience reaction was exaggerated because of other factors.

Speaking of Gruber. A statement of his, made before the keynote, got some people thinking (including myself):

Don’t think of iCloud as the new MobileMe; think of iCloud as the new iTunes.

I’d say it’s a bit of both. While iCloud does make iTunes optional in some cases, it doesn’t completely negate any need for it. On the other hand, iCloud will officially replace MobileMe.

What’s happening to MobileMe?
Effective June 6, 2011, if you had an active MobileMe account, your service has been automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After this, the MobileMe service will no longer be available.

What will happen to the content I have on MobileMe?
Apple has announced a new service called iCloud which will be available this fall and free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users.

Sounds to me like as direct a replacement as possible. And it makes all the sense in the world. No news on “Find My iPhone”, but I’d be surprised (and disappointed) if it were abandoned, the way eCards were abandoned in the transition from .Mac to MobileMe.

Not that Gruber was wrong or that his advice was misleading. It’s just that MobileMe users are directly impacted. As one of those rare people who purchased a MobileMe license since the iPad came out, I do welcome the news. If this hadn’t been announced, I probably wouldn’t have renewed my MobileMe license (due at the end of this month). So the timing is right, for me. While it was expected, based on rumours, it’s a “classy move”.

It must also mean that Apple isn’t finding much value in selling MobileMe, anymore. One might say that iCloud is more valuable as a selling point for iOS5 and OS X Lion devices than MobileMe was as its own revenue stream. We’ve heard from Apple Store employees (and I heard from other people dealing with Apple retail) that Apple was pushing MobileMe whenever it could. In this sense, the change is clueful.
In fact, there’s something about free, in this case. Now that MobileMe is free, I might actually start using it more.
As mentioned in my last post, I haven’t been making intensive or extensive use of MobileMe. I did use the “Find My iPhone” on occasion and the synchronization has been somewhat helpful, despite the fact that I use Gsync. But I wasn’t really using the other features, including email, gallery, and iDisk. Now that I know how it’ll fit in the coming year, I find it somewhat easier to “invest” in these tools.

That’s the rational argument, and it might not actually hold so well. For one thing, we still don’t know how seamless the transition to iCloud will be. And some MobileMe features have been left undiscussed. So, counting on the MobileMe to iCloud transition might be ill-advised.

There are some less-rational motivations behind my possibly-intensified use of MobileMe. One is that I feel almost an obligation to give free services a chance. And, though MobileMe itself hasn’t changed, doing more with it might give me a taste of what’s is likely to happen with iCloud.

Although some MobileMe features have not been mentioned in terms of iCloud.

One glaring omission is iWeb. As mentioned before, the web publishing application hasn’t been updated along with other parts of iLife (most notably, iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand). Unlike the other pieces of the iLife suite, it almost requires MobileMe to provide significant value (although you can also publish via FTP). I was daydreaming about iCloud becoming a webhost and it’s conceivable that Apple might follow that route at some point in the distant future. But, right now, it sounds like iWeb’s value proposition has become less interesting than it ever was. It’s possible that iWeb-created sites maintained through MobileMe will continue to be supported beyond the transition to iCloud. But it sounds unlikely.

And there might be a missed opportunity, here. As is often the case, with technology companies, iWeb sounds like an afterthought, for Apple. Maybe it’ll be like Apple TV and go from a “hobby” to something closer to the central strategy. But I doubt it. In part because iWeb doesn’t really fit in the “Digital Hub” vision which, as Jobs finally reminded us, has been central for Apple for the better part of the last decade.

Speaking of the digital hub… In a way, it was a very telling part of today’s presentation. It does demonstrate a clear vision for something which been carried out through iLife and the whole “iTunes ecosystem”. The picture of a Mac surrounded by PDas, digital cameras, and other peripherals requires some adjustment, to accommodate for iOS devices and wireless connections. Bul the idea has remain relatively unchanged, as we prepare for the so-called “post-PC era”.

Yet this “digital hub” notion shows some weaknesses, in terms of imagining the future of “cloud computing”, the alleged target of the iCloud announcement. Not that I have any idea whether or not Apple will succeed “in the cloud space”. I wouldn’t bet either way. But Apple’s “digital hub” shows a few signs of constraining the imagination.

For one thing, hubs are a rather specific way to organize things. The laptop or desktop computer is now “just a device”, and there’s a lot of insight hidden in this conception of “devices”. But it’s also more hub than spoke. Regardless of how important Apple products have been for road warriors, the notion is still that users have specific places where some devices remain. Several parts of the iCloud announcement make it possible to overcome this model, but I’d argue that the model remains dominant in the minds of many Apple employees and customers.

A better way to put it, perhaps, is that Apple is transitioning away from the digital hub model into a much more fluid structure. Addressing the digital hub model might have been a way to pave the road to an ethereal future, with “cloud computing ” and seamless integration of multiple devices. But I have my doubts. For instance, description of WiFi iTunes Sync in the iOS5 video has a mention of physical proximity to a machine running iTunes. It confuses me a bit, since it also sounds like it’ll be possible to use iOS5 devices without any access to a machine running iTunes, It might be that the description is inaccurate (you can sync your devices through “iTunes in the cloud”, wherever you are). Or the two types of synchronization are different, in that one pairs your iOS5 device with a given Mac or PC while the other lets you use your iOS5 with iCloud content. But I tend to link my confusion to a clash between two models. It’s more likely that I just “don’t get it”, and it all makes sense in the grand scheme of things. I’m fine with that.

In other words, feel free to disagree. Maybe the iCloud announcement means that the “digital hub” era is over and that what comes next bears only limited resemblance to the Mac surrounded by peripherals. Or the restrictions are more important than I imagine and the “cloud” is but a surface enhancement to what remains a decidedly “hub-centric model”.

Time will tell.

One part of the iCloud announcement that I find positive is about document sync. I recently started using iWork and iWork.com as a significant part of my workflow. Several things are missing from this, including an easy way to synchronize documents across iOS and Mac OS X devices. Unless I misunderstood, it sounds like iCloud will make this process seamless. I have my doubts as to how it might work in practice (synchronization is a relatively difficult problem, when there are multiple instances of the same context). But it might still be a time-saver, for me. In a way, it’s almost like taking away a pain point.

At the same time, no mention has been made of collaboration, in any way, shape, or form. As it stands, iWork.com makes it possible to share documents but collaboration is extremely limited in that case. In fact, unless I’m mistaken, it’s not even possible to allow public downloads of these documents. Unlike, say, Slideshare. In this sense, GDocs is very likely  remain a much more desirable solution for any form of collaboration. And since GDocs doesn’t handle iWork documents so well, sharing document for further collaboration will long remain a sticking point,in my workflow.

What’s more promising, though, is document sync as a replacement for some uses of Dropbox. I’m sure the GoodReader developer(s) have been giving iCloud a lot of thought. After all, the app can already use iDisk, Dropbox, WebDAV, GDocs, and other “cloud services”. I also hope that Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay Software will add iCloud to TaskPaper sync, along with Dropbox. And I’m guessing that other apps will spring out, making good use of iCloud’s document sync. The WWDC crowd sounded fairly enthusiastic about this. And I’m sure advantages over iDisk are painfully obvious to several people. I’m mostly glad that it’ll be available for free to all iOS5 and OS X Lion users.

(By the by… I’m assuming that iCloud will be free to iOS5 users without Mac OS X machines and to OS X Lion users without iOS devices. It’d be very surprising but also very frustrating if it weren’t the case. Official mentions I’ve seen didn’t address this and I’ve learnt to be wary of assumptions about that which “goes without saying”, in Apple announcements.)

(Also by the by… Is “OS X Lion” the official name of the OS? Sounds like it. Not sure it’s significant but it could make sense in a “post-PC era”, with the Mac as “just another device”.)

Something iCloud doesn’t do, in this context, is completely replace Dropbox, in most use cases. For one thing, with documents in general as with iWork documents specifically, no mention has been made of collaboration and it sounds like it won’t really be possible to use iCloud to share documents efficiently.

This is where I would have let my mind wander, despite the fact that Apple has a spotty track record in collaboration. Basically, iCloud makes me wish for an integrated solution which combines: real-time collaboration in document editing (GDocs), seamless document sharing (Dropbox), online identity (Twitter/Facebook), and fluid group formation (Apache Wave, née Google Wave). Apple wasn’t going to create this, but the iCloud announcement was a context for me to think about such things.

Google is much more likely to do something like this. GDocs already has many of the required features, and we keep hoping that the “social Web” projects grouped under the “Google Me” label will benefit Google products more generally. But there seems to be an arbitrary separation between work collaboration and “social features”, for some reasons. So I’m not holding my breath. I’m just dreaming of an openly available solution making it even easier to collaborate with diverse people in diverse contexts.

Anyhoo… Back to the keynote.

An intriguing announcement during the iOS5 section was News Stand. It sounds like it’s mostly about the distribution mechanism but I wonder if it may not also mean that Apple is giving publishers some tools to make it easier to create iOS content. Apart from Apple’s relationship with publishers (which sounds more lovey-dovey than some publishers’ rhetoric makes us believe), there’s something about content creation that I really wish could be put in the hands of normal individuals.

In a way, it goes back to the iWeb issue. The rest of iLife can be quite useful, in terms of “user-generated content”. But given the number of professional, amateur, and would-be developers using Apple devices, one might expect some content creation tools, especially in terms of Web content. Tumult Hype is a neat example of an app which could be part of the content creator’s arsenal. But I could just imagine some Apple-crafted software app to handle Web content the way other contents are handled in GarageBand and Logic Studio; iPhoto and Aperture; iMovie and Final Cut Studio. iPhoto is the only one of these which was addressed in the keynote. But they could all be part of a broader strategy, helping people get creative and share their creativity. Given that something as basic as WYSIWYG HTML is very difficult on iOS, the lack of Apple-built Web tools becomes something of a thorn.

Speaking of “user-generated content”… Photo Stream was announced, as part of iCloud. Apart from “iTunes in the Cloud”, it’s one of the biggest sections of the iCloud feature set. Problem is, it’s pretty much a blindspot, for me. I might not be the only one, judging yet again from audience reactions during the keynote. But I’m specifically immune to enthusiasm about photo-related features.

I mean, I’m sure Photo Stream can become very popular. It’s almost stereotypical as the kind of feature which gets “normal people” excited. And by “normal people” I don’t mean non-geeks. I mean people who react positively to pictures. I just don’t have the same relationship with anything visual. I rarely use my phone or iPod touch’s cameras. When I do, it’s mostly about documenting something (à la Evernote) or scanning a QR/barcode. So Photo Stream is wasted on me.

The one feature I was possibly most excited about is one which wasn’t mentioned but that I still think might be part of the iCloud reality: OTA podcasts. I listen to a number of podcasts and synchronization remains an issue. It’s the main (though not single) reason I connect my iPod touch to my Mac mini. I’d really benefit from being able to synchronize podcasts while “on the road”, using any reliable WiFi connection. To be honest, if it’s not included in iCloud/iOS5, I’ll be disappointed. Not to the point of abandoning the platform. But I admit that my expectations are that it’ll happen, and I see it as relatively important.

Much of it is a convenience feature, as I won’t have to go back to my “home base” just to get updated podcasts. But it may change my relationship to said podcasts, as I’ll be getting them more regularly, the way I’m now able to follow a large number of blogs using Reeder and Instapaper. Problem is, podcasts aren’t the type of content iCloud will host and it’s possible that the omission from the keynote was purposeful. Five years after transforming iTunes into the dominant “podcatcher”, it’s possible that Apple may be marginalizing podcasts in a rather serious way. I sure hope the opposite is true, and there’s a lot which could be done to make podcasts (and iTunes U) shine in the iCloud ecosystem.

But, again, I’ve been learning not to get my hopes up.

iCloud Dreams

Got lots more to blog, including something about “received knowledge”. And a list of things I love about Google. (I’m also getting started on “logical punctuation”, as you may already be noticing…)

But, at the risk of attracting trolls and Apple haters, I thought I’d post some notes from a daydreaming session. In some ways, it’s easier to write than the rest. And it’s more “time-sensitive”, in that my thoughts will likely sound very silly, very soon.

But I don’t care.

So, yes, this post is about iCloud, which will be officially unveiled in a few hours. No, it doesn’t mean that I expect anything specific from iCloud or that I trust Apple to deliver something awesome.

Contrary to what some people seem to think, I’m no Apple fanboi. I use a number of Apple products and I find several of them to be close to the ideal in my workflow, but I don’t have any sort of deep involvement in “the Cult of Mac”, Apple Inc., AAPL, or even Apple-focused development. I use the tools and like them, but I don’t think Apple will save us any more than will Facebook, Dell, Google, Amazon, Twitter, HP, or Microsoft.

[Automattic, on the other hand… 😉 ]

So, back to iCloud…

According to many, “cloud computing” (whatever that means) is a domain in which Apple has been relatively weak. I tend to share that opinion, despite the fact that a number of tools that I use have to do with either “the cloud”, Apple, or both. What might give trolls and haters some ammo is that I do have a MobileMe subscription. But there’s a lot I dislike about it and the only features I really find valuable are “over-the-air” syncing (henceforth “OTA”) and “Find My iPhone”. And since I use GSync on my iPod touch, MobileMe’s OTA isn’t that incredibly important. Depending on what iCloud may be, my MobileMe renewal (which comes up in a few days) could be a very hard sell. I don’t regret having it as it did help me retrieve my iPad. But it’s rather expensive if it’s the only thing it does. (Then again, so is insurance of any kind, but I digress…)

So, I’m no MobileMe poweruser. Why would I care about iCloud?

In some ways, I don’t. Or, at least, I didn’t. Until very recently, though I saw rumours about Apple’s new “cloud services”, I was only vaguely intrigued about it. I did think that it might solve my MobileMe issue. But I treated these rumours with a lot of skepticism and a rather low level of interest.

Yet, today, iCloud has been giving me a drift-off moment. Like Android did, at some point.

It’s not that I have predictions to make about iCloud. I’m not even speculating, really. But it got me to think. And, I admit, I enjoy thinking.

Without further ado (about nothing), my fanciful thoughts stemming from a short daydreaming session about iCloud…

The main thing people seem to be expecting  (based on rumoured negotiations with music publishers) is a music streaming service similar to Music Beta by Google or a digital file storage service similar to Amazon Cloud Drive. Both of these are quite neat and I could see myself using something like this. But it’s not exactly what makes me dream. While iTunes integration might make Apple’s version of a music streaming service somewhat more useful than the others. Besides, rumours have it that, through agreements with the recording industry, iCloud might sync music without requiring long uploads. It’s quite possible that this only works with tracks purchased on iTunes, which would upset those whose expectations are high, but could already be useful to some.

Where I’m beginning to drift off, though, is when I start thinking about OTA for podcasts. It’s been high up on my wishlist, as a feature, and you might say that it’s a pet peeve with iOS devices for podcatching. Having to sync my iPod touch to my main desktop just to have my podcast list up-to-date is a major hassle. Sure, there are apps which sync podcasts OTA. Problem is, they can’t add podcasts to the native iOS media player, which is a dealbreaker in my case. (As absurd as it may sound to others, one reason this is a dealbreaker is that I now listen to everything at doublespeed. Hey, it’s my podcast library and I listen to it as I want, ok?)

So, OTA podcasts would constitute a significant enhancement to my experience. Nothing absolutely required and possibly not that significant for others, but it’d really help me in more ways than one could imagine.

Thing is, syncing my iPod touch isn’t just about podcasts, even though podcatching is my main motivation to sync. After all, I don’t listen to podcasts yet I still sync my iPad. So, what else? Well, backing up is the main other thing, and it might be one of the core reason for Apple’s implicit insistence on syncing. That’d be classic Apple. Data loss can be such a big problem that they’d “do what they can” to prevent users from losing data. Far from perfect, in my experience (I ended up having some problems when I lost my “iTunes Library” file). And quite annoying when it meant that the sync would take a very long time to finish at precisely the point when I’m trying to leave home. But a classic Apple move, even in the way Apple haters may mean it.

So OTA synchronization of the whole iOS device, and not just podcasts or music, would be a definite plus, in this perspective. If it does end up coming with iCloud, it’d provide support to the idea that the tethering of iOS devices to desktop computers is really about ensuring that users back up their devices…

…and stay up to date. Firmware updates aren’t that frequent, but they’re probably a major part of the equation for Apple.

But not so much for me. If OTA podcasts were available, I’d still sync my iOS devices on occasion, through whatever means necessary. In fact, were I to use an Android device, a backup app would be essential, to me. So still not much dreaming from the backup aspect of iCloud.

Although… Sync is much broader than preventing device-specific data loss and making sure your device has the latest firmware.

For one thing, it does encompass some of the aforementioned OTA functionalities in MobileMe. Useful, but still not dreamworthy.

We get a bit closer to a “dream come true” if we talk about Xmarks, a bookmark-sync service originally meant for Firefox.  Sure, it sounds incredibly prosaic. But OTA bookmarks would open up a wide range of possibilities. This is about a qualitative difference from going OTA. In the case of backups, it’s about avoiding an annoyance but, arguably, it’s not really about changing something major about our behaviour. (Then again, maybe it is, with people who don’t back their devices up.) Point is, with something as simple as bookmarks, OTA is “disruptive”. At least, it gets me to daydream. One reason is that:

…no matter how fundamental they have been for the Web, links and bookmarks have yet to find their full value.

Hmm… Ok, perhaps a bit hyperbolic… So let me rephrase…

There’s still a lot to be done with URLs and, as simple as they are, I love thinking about links. Maybe I’m just obsessed with URLs.

As it so happens, I have a full list of thoughts about “link processing” and I’ve already blogged about related topics (on more than one occasion, in different contexts, going back to relatively early blogposts). And I even think social science can help.

I mean, think about it! There’s so much you can do, with links! Much of it is obvious, but I’d argue, rarely discussed. For instance, it’s very clear that we can post links pretty much anywhere. Doing so, we’re sharing their “content”. (In a semiotic sense, links are indices. I wish we can move from the “semantic Web” to the “semiotic Web”. But that’s another issue.) Sharing a link is the basic act of the social Web. It’s so obvious and frequent that it seems not to require discussion”.

Another obvious thing about links: we can measure the number of times they’re followed. In 2011, more than thirty years after hypertext has been introduced as a stable concept, much of the Web’s finances still relies on “clickthroughs”. Seems important.

And there’s a lot of processing which can be done with URLs: shortening them, adding them to “to do” lists, checking them for validity, keeping them in link libraries, archiving their “content”, showing them as external or internal links, preventing them from “rotting away”, showing the wordcount or reading time of the item they “target”, display them as QR codes, abuse them, etc.

As you can notice, it’s easy to get me on a tangent simply thinking about URLs. What’s this have t’do with iCloud, you ask? Probably not much, in terms of the actual service which will be announced at Moscone. But I’ve been dreaming about iCloud as a way to integrate Diigo, Instapaper, Delicious, reddit, digg, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Spurl, The NethernetXmarks

Hey, I told you I was dreaming! Something as simple as managing, processing, sharing, and archiving links in iCloud could lead to just about anything, in my imagination.

And speaking of Xmarks… It’s now owned by Lastpass, a company which focus on password management. IMHO, some Lastpass-like features could make their way in diverse products, including iCloud. Is this far-fetched? Possibly. But secure handling of passwords can be a major issue in both of Apple’s new operating systems (Mac OS X Lion and iOS5). From “keychains” to SSO, there’s a lot of work to be done which relates to password management, in my mind.

Which leads me to think about authentication in general and the rumours about “deep Twitter integration in iOS 5”. (Not directly related to iCloud, but who knows?) Again, something which can send me (and others) on drift-off moments. What if this integration suddenly made iOS devices more useful in terms of social networking services? Something to ponder, if one has a propensity for pondering.

At the same time, given the relative lack of activity on iTunes Ping, I wouldn’t bet on Twitter integration having that major an impact by itself. Not unlike Google, Apple has a hard time making a mark on the social Web. Now, if Twitter integration does connect to everything else Apple does, it could lead to interesting things. A full-fledged online identity? Access to contacts for not only messaging and photo sharing but for collaboration, group management, and media sharing? Not betting on any of this, but it could be fun. Again, not specific to iCloud, but quite related to “The Cloud”. If Twitter integration is deep enough, in iOS 5, it’d be possible to use iOS devices for “cloud computing”, getting further into the “post-PC era”.

An iCloud feature which is expected by several people, is something like an OTA version of the “iTunes file sharing” feature in iOS. Several apps (especially Apple’s own apps) use iTunes and a USB cable to share files. It was a welcome addition to iTunes 9.1 but it’s rather inconvenient. So many other apps rely on Dropbox for file sharing.

Which leads me to dream about iCloud as a replacement for Dropbox. Sounds extremely unlikely that it’ll have the full Dropbox feature set, especially if one thinks about the “Pro 50” and “Pro 100” plans on Dropbox. But I dream of the day when Apple’s iDisk will compete with Dropbox. Not that I’m convinced it ever will. But it’d make Apple’s devices all the more useful if it did.

Something similar, which isn’t frequently discussed directly, in connection with iCloud rumours, but which would rock: Mozy– or Carbonite-style backup, for Mac OS X machines. Sounds very unlikely that Apple will ever offer something like this but, as crazy as it may sound, the connection between Time Capsule and iCloud would be great if it went that far. From a user’s perspective, the similarities between Time Machine backup and “backing up in the cloud” (à la Mozy/Carbonite) are quite obvious. The advantages of both are clear. And while no hardware announcement is supposed to make its way to the WWDC 2011 keynote, I’d give the Time Capsule some consideration if it provided me with the equivalent of what I currently have with Mozy. Not to mention that Mozy has already sparked some drift-off moments, in me, before they announced their new plans. What if I could have a single service which combines features from Mozy, Time Machine, Dropbox, and YouSendIt?

I even think about the possibilities in terms of web hosting. As it stands, MobileMe does allow for some Web publishing through the iWeb application in its iLife suite. But iWeb has never been a major effort for Apple and it hasn’t been seen a significant update in quite a while. What if iCloud could become a true webhost just like, say… iWeb.com? (Semi-disclaimer: I won a free account with iWeb.com, last Fall, and I host some sites there. I also know some of the people who work there…)

Yet again, I don’t expect this to happen. It’s not speculation, on my part. It’s a daydream.

The reason this makes me dream is that I find all these things to be related and I wish they were integrated more seamlessly. Something about which Apple haters may not care much is the type of integration represented by iTunes. As clunky as iTunes may be, in some respects, it’s quite a success in terms of integrating a lot of different things. In fact, it probably overextended its reach a bit too much and we need to replace it. Apple needs to replace iTunes and we should also replace iTunes in our lives.

Like Gruber, I end up thinking about iCloud in relation to iTunes more than in relation to MobileMe. But I also dream about the ideal cloud service, which would not only sync and backup files between iOS devices, hundreds of millions of iTunes store accounts, and Macs, but replace several of the services for which I’m paying monthly fees.

Here’s to dreaming…

Other parts of this crazy, iCloud-infused daydream, in notes form:

Reply to Alex Gagnon’s Google Paradox

[Tried adding a comment directly on Alex Gagnon’s Posterous blog, but it kept stalling. So I’ll post this here, which may make for a different kind of interaction. Besides, I’d like to blog a bit more.]

The Google Paradox – Marc-Alexandre Gagnon.

We seem to be finding very different answers to rather similar questions. So I sincerely hope we’ll have the opportunity to meet and discuss these things in a local café.

But still, a few thoughts, in no particular order.

Let’s be clear on what we mean by “culture.” Sounds like there’s a tension, here, between the ways the concept signifies in: “cultural industry,” “Minister of culture,” “pop culture,” “our culture,” and “nature vs. culture.” As a cultural anthropologist, I tend to navigate more toward the latter contexts, but there are significant connections through these diverse conceptual frames.

Speaking of significance… It can be a useful concept, with some links to “relevance.” Especially if we think about Relevance Theory as defined by Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber. Their theory is about communication and cognition, with some strange claims about semiotics. Significance can bridge the gap between their notion of relevance and what insight semiotics may provide.

Chances are, you’re not really singling out Google, right? Blekko and Bing are providing similar results for similar reasons. Google may be the target of most SEO, but current search engines share a fairly unified notion of “quality content.”

Speaking of quality… As mentioned on Twitter, we might think of quality as a social construct. Especially “now.” The modern era had a lot to do with tastemakers, which were given some “authority/influence/power” through a rather specific social process. Similar to what @ChrisBrogan and @Julien call “trust agents.” In sociology, we talk about “gatekeepers” in pretty much the same way. And Duchamp woke a few people up in showing the effects of museumization. We had similar things in music, though my courses in musical æsthetics paid relatively little attention to these.
The basic insight from most “posts” (postcolonialism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, postnationalism, postindustrialism…) is that rigid structures may crumble. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, of course, but also the very idea of the Nation-State with “checkbox democracy” focused on the representation of predefined “interest groups.” Self-labeled arbiters of good taste, of course, but also the notion that “quality” is an immanent feature of the art object.

And speaking of art objects… People still talk about masterpieces, great works, and cathedrals. But we may also talk about the bazaar, “the eye of the beholder,” and “life as an art form.” Life is too short for everyone to be looking at the same old “artworks.” After all, “Life, sex, and art aren’t spectator sports.”

As for our logocentrism (“language media”), it’s difficult but possible to get beyond this ethnocentric bias. Part of this was prefigured in much 20th Century philosophy (from Russell to Davidson) and popular culture (Wings of Desire). But we can have a broader approach. In anthropology, we work on several things which are directly related to this, from linguistic anthropology and the ethnography of communication to cognitive anthropology and the anthropology of senses. We may live in a “visual” society but our obsession is with language. Which has a lot to do with the fact that the Internet was set in a Euro-American context.
But “our culture” isn’t a prison. We can adopt a broader worldview.