Posted in : Identity

Movie review : The final cut

Be the editor of your life

Editing lives

I watched this movie last week : The final cut. I would define it as an organic SF movie. Probably my favorite genre. Same aura as Eternal sunshine, but unfortunately with a weaker scenario. Organic because it’s one of those movies where technology is part of life, and not obviously futuristic, I like that. In this movie, the computers were wooden, and their look and feel was very retro, old, almost anti-technological, it was very interesting to observe.

I like the idea that technology could be embedded in your furniture and fade in your environment. I like the idea that technology could be something not fragile, not a sign of wealth or advancement. I like the idea that technology could be for everyone.

However even if organic in its form, technology was still depicted in the movie as a threat or something evil like in most SF movies. But here its evilness was less obvious as it was not used as a weapon, its evilness was rather more ideological. Should you or shouldn’t you let your life be recorded on an organic implant? Well, what movie would ever tell you that you should?

The context : Privacy and technology

The movie treats the subjects of privacy and technology and life. The story starts in a future where it is the norm to let your life as you see it (not your thoughts) be recorded on a “Zoe” implant that was implanted in your body at your birth. This implant is semi-organic, so as you grow it becomes part of your body and it’s impossible to remove. People don’t know if they have an implant or not and know it very late, after 21 when “they’re old enough to understand”. Implanting the child is a choice of the parents, and the implant is a commercial product that you buy for your child. But you have to do it at the child’s birth. Interesting context, isn’t it?

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Please format me

Facebook is building a library of people

I’ve read about the new Facebook Timeline feature today. It’s a feature that lets you see your data organized in a timeline in your profile. It looks like this:

Facebook new Timeline feature

Like anything they do, it left a bitter taste on my mind. I already understood why people use this, but I still get rather sad thinking that humanity is willingly formatting itself into that stuff.

The web is a recording device

The web is a recording device, it means that whatever you put there, it’s going to be recorded and be a trail of you. Right now, thanks to the diversity of the sharing platforms available online (unfortunately still not diverse enough), you can have several trails, you can move your trails from there to there, you can delete your entire trail, you can decide of what is left of you online. With tools as popular as Facebook, that just offer you the interface, people tend to forget the innate freedom they have to broadcast from their own “antenna”, and they start formatting themselves into that single possibility of the Facebook profile, because it’s easy. They leave to Facebook the power to format, present and keep their data in a way that they can remember their life, but not in a way they chose to remember it. The format is fixed, inflexible, not customizable, you can just get stuck there without you even noticing. After allowing to list unborn children as family members, it’s clearer and clearer where Facebook is taking its crowd.

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Show me the numbers !!!!

The use of numbers to describe online representations of people: the difference between a database of things and a database of "people"

This article is about the forced display of numbers to describe online representations of people, it studies the cases of Twitter and Facebook. What is the difference between an online database of things, like an online shop, and an online database of “people”, like a social network? What’s wrong with numbers? The answer could seem common sense, but this reflection was intentionally developed in detail for the technical minds. Continue reading

I recently noticed that now when someone adds you as a friend on Facebook, this line appears under the name :

I find this line very inappropriate. Why is it there? Am I supposed to judge this person from those numbers? And make my decision of confirming or refusing based on these numbers? WHY ? Maybe for people who use Facebook to add strangers it’s useful to know if the account is real or not, but if really the goal is to “connect people” why tag them with numbers like this?

You know, it feels like when you see a product, you immediately look for the price tag. This line feels like the price tag. It’s like your scores. A measure of your influence and even worthiness. What use could this have other than to make people judge each other by numbers? Is it to encourage people to post more, have more friends etc? I wonder how the meeting to decide this went …

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