What is our privacy? What do we trade it for?

I just read an article at ZDnet.com with the thinks that I'm thinking about. Here is the article:

Is privacy dead, or just very confused?

The article just asks the questions about our privacy on the internet. The thing we missed out in those last 10 years when the internet started to step into our lives and bombed us with newer possibilities and services was the time to sit down and think about it. In the general mindset of the people there is no shared understanding of what is appropriate to post/upload/share/tag in general. And I was very rarely in an open discussion about this topic in my surrounding, and that bothers me to.

Just thinking about the on hand problems with tagging - you have no option to influence someone tagging you on a picture. While you can additionally remove the tag, the time between you noticing yourself tagged on an embracing post and actually taking steps against it can be already to late, not to mention the fact, that if you have a lot of common friends with the person who uploaded the pic, then it doesn't help much either...
This is the side of a tagged person, on the other hand the person who took the pictures has to make a hard time creating permissions for just those people who he wants to share the pictures with.

Of course the possibilities in advertising and marketing are also huge. I like the idea, that Facebook implemented now, which gives me the opportunity to forbid applications to use me as a reference for advertising their services. (Like: Join MySuperApplication and do something to your friend Anonymous...)

I'll need to sit down someday soon and get a clear point on the does and don't on all the social networks I use. You give something and you get something in exchange, but it would be stupid to share ones life with the internet.

Dancing

I had a strange feeling the last 2 weeks. A part of the joy in dancing just disappeared. I made some mistakes, but mainly some kind of a spirit was missing, and I didn't know what the problem was. For a while I though the way I'm changing, with more and more experience my style of dancing changes and with it the excitement fades a bit. It was an unpleasant feeling.
The other day I was talking to a new guy about dancing and what I have heard from others, while one particular sentence stuck in my mind. He sad something like this: "When I dance with a woman, there is nothing else on this world except of her. She is the thing that I desire the most, and I want to have her.". So before my last dance class I decided to dance for her and not for myself.
This small change in mindset made me realize in some moments, that I behaved precise: "step, step, step, find your partner, catch her, now direct her to your right, and start again". I wanted to get the perfect movement coordination. After that I told to myself to take more care about the stuff around me. I don't know if this change of thought changed my style of dancing, I just know that somewhere I payed more attention to my partner, I don't know if it was just a small sentiment that overcame me, I definitely want to find out. The fact is, when I cared, I felt more alive, more connected, like I dance with a person, while I was dancing before with a "thing".
I'm deeply sorry for the time I didn't pay attention!

Is this music? Give me a break!

"Gush, terrible! Give me a beer and two shots!"

I just read the lyrics below on a friends blog, and though I know the song from somewhere...

"If you want it

You already got it

If you thought it

It better be what you want"

So I googled it out and found out it was from Madonna and Justin Timberlake (4 minutes)... At that point I had a bad feeling, but curiosity pushed me into listening into it. I remembered the few times I was clubbing on this song, where it was bearable, and remembered I always was with good friends and after a nice number of shots at that time. God bless I learned to ignore music as is in that state, and just drift away with the people around me!
While listening to that "music" I couldn't find anything at all that would make me say, yes, that was good. A monotone bass in the background, a hornlike continuous sound in the foreground using the same old notes, as every other hit (I mean I don't have that good ears, but that is already a cliche). The "singing" has also no added value, except of the fact, that Madonna and JT are doing it.
Please note the article is about the song itself, I do like some of Madonnas older songs, and I look up to her for what she accomplished, even this song is a good example of how good she can adopt to the needs of the listeners. If the folks want it, give it to them, but I can't feel any joy listening to this. And I would like to have better mainstream music... or internet radios. I like to search for new music, but it gets harder and harder to find something worth to try.

PS: sorry, for everyone who likes the song. It definitely is catchy, but I see no value in this song, that could last longer than a summer rain...

The Rocky is down

I just read in the news, that the first big news paper in the US closed down: The Rocky Mountain News, also called as the "our Rocky". 230 people lost their jobs. This year would have been the 150th birthday of the newspaper. In this occasions the coworkers made a small video (18 minutes + credits) about how it inflected their lives, their dreams. It is a well made movie, very sad with a small insight in how the news work.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3390739&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1


My opinion is based on my own deductions from Alvin Tofflers books: The Third Wave

The part of the video that struck me, as I'm interested in the topic, is where they were talking about the fact, that the crisis in the news industry was new (less than 10 years old), and they couldn't find a successful business model to tackle the problem.
While the rise of the internet as the main media and news provider/advertisement tool is really a problem that appeared just around a decade ago, the problems first hints about the struggle of the paper news providers was foretold already in the 70's.
Toffler wrote, that already in the 70's individualization was an important change in the mindset of the people. This change led to a variety of new products we are enjoying now. Individualism and localization led also to the expansion of small local newspapers/weekly/monthly papers of an area, about a hobby. These small papers made it possible that the huge newspapers lost readers and needed to localize some parts of their papers to the regions they were sold to.
I think this could have been the first warning to the media industry in general, and that they should have been more aware of possible changes. From that time on, individual projects kept appearing to appeal on the specific needs of customers, which were better to advertise for a selected group of people rather than to the major public.
The first networks like the internet were created at that time. Sci-fi like Star Trek was already produced in that era. The change in access to information could have been felt. Here the question is, what strategies where implemented to stay above the water, and what new ideas where they using to stay profitable. And for me it is even more surprising, when journalist talk about this unsuspected change... It is their work description.
Though it is always easier to have a big mounth afterwards, and it is also true, that noone likes to see, how something they based their lives on slowly fades away...

it's late, I hope I wrote down some stuff, that made sense...