THB smartphones turn people into purposeless fools

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Week 11

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Motion: THB smartphones are a multi-purpose tool
Role: Deputy Leader (opp.)

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I do not own a smartphone. Out of curiosity, I once borrowed my “legendary” girlfriend’s mobile phone and held it in my hand in a kebab restaurant after a meal. I went online into social media and tried to run my business there. It was hopeless. The arrows did not follow my directions. I could not get anything done. I could watch but I could not interact. It was a miserable experience. I do own a mobile phone of the old school for calls and texts. The tardiness and unresponsiveness of mobile phones is still their major drawback. Even if they would work wonderfully with the fastest available 5G connectivity, most people cannot afford that but have to rely on something cheaper and nastier.

Addiction to Mobile Phone Is Like Chainsmoking
People use their mobile phones like a life-long smoker employs cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes or snuff. Smartphoning and tobacco products provide a break in the grey monotony of everyday life and a bridge to some alternative universe. The relief of the mobile phone is external, the relief in nicotine internal. The experience can also be built into a chain, as we have seen happen. People cannot always stop their online co-existence; just look at all the people in public transportation with devices in their hands complete with a source of noise and earbuds, just the same as they may light a smoke from the stub of the earlier one and thus build a continuity.

There is also another dimension that they share. Both are ritualistic, routine behaviours, where ritual, sameness and similarity is key. People usually smoke a certain brand and are loath to swap it for something else, even if tobacco brands smell alike and probably also burn alike. When people surf on the Internet, they usually divide their time between few destinations, unable to choose alternative ones, even if the internet is a vast, oceanlike place with lots of places to go. A habit forces people to just consume the content of a select few sites.

Mobile Phones Fit Into One’s Breast or Other Pocket
There is also the similarity that a mobile phone is handy in the same way a pack of cigarettes is; it can be fitted into most pockets in one’s garments. It is easy to produce. Both are rectangular in shape. Earlier mobile phones were not so similar. Nokia Communicator, for instance, was different in shape, so it did not bear the likeness of a pack of smokes. You also need to protect both against humidity and moisture. A mobile phone won’t work around wet, and ciggies don’t catch fire if they are damp.

What I’m saying is that smartphones are alike packs of cigarettes. It has been said of the latter that at one point they were “the World’s cheapest status symbol”, which meant that they were brand products that even peoples in the underdeveloped world could buy and have. I fear that that distinction now goes to smartphone, as it so readily available all over the world. Refugees have smartphones. Their spread is alike that of Marlboro Reds that are also everywhere, like Coca-Cola is. And then there is their affordability. Smartphones have that quality as they can usually be bought in installments on an installment plan, and that is why they are affordable to everyone and also bought by relatively poor people. Loco alimenti circenses ludicras habent.

Smartphones Are the Postmodern Equivalent of a Pack of Cigarettes
I think that I have proven that smartphones are not a multi-purpose tool that they are claimed to be but rather something more sinister. They are the postmodern version of a pack of cigarettes. A drug. A drug of the upper and/or downer family. Surprisingly many things unite the two as a common factor, as has been demonstrated above and earlier on. And what does that mean by extension?? That – they’re bad for you!! of course. 

Like smoking has been phased out by successive steps in society, beginning in 1995, when the first anti-smoking measures were imposed legislatively, it is likely that smartphones could go toward the same fate, except that there is no such legislation so far, not even bills in the pipeline. All the same, changing that is just a matter of time, not of opportunity. Parliaments could swiftly turn against smartphones with help from imaginative MPs and multipartisan committees.    (Here is a related article I discovered only later on.)

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Käyn mobiilia yhteiskuntaa vastaan vahvoilla argumenteilla, jotka pohjautuvat todellisuuteen ja sen luonteeseen. Minua ei haittaisi, vaikka faxit, kaapeli-tv, lankalinjat ja puhelinkopit olisivat vielä käytössä, koska niihin liittyy 1900-luvun romantiikkaa. Vastapuolen edustajista ja heidän assertioistaan tuskin on pulaa, koska älypuhelimet ovat lyöneet niin hyvin itsensä läpi yhteiskunnallisesti, joten tästä tulee rehellinen ja tasaväkinen väittely.

THS alternative theories as to why the Soviet Union foundered

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Week 50

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“Digital World…provided by our leaders? Forget it… We have 1st World needs but 3rd World means.”

Date: 7th Dec 2020
Motion: THS alternative theories as to why the Soviet Union foundered
Role: PM (gov.)

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These days, it is fashionable to be a Communist, or a Socialist, if you ask the average young generation-Y, millennial person (b. circa 1984 – 1999) from a “privileged” background, meaning lower or upper middle class, at a North American, European or Australian university. The idea is toyed with in any circle that is not part of agricultural or industrial labour, that is, services and the creatives industries, including the arts, such as documentarists or theatremakers. These people may have lost perspective because of their own situation as to what it was like when the Soviet Union was still alive and breathing (down our necks). Even in the 1960’s, lots and lots of well-to-do kids thought that the Soviet Union was “cool”.

If millennials were 5, 15 or 25 years older than they are, they could have experienced the oppression of a communist regime firsthand, in their own butts. And, it’s likely that they would not be so romantic about it as an “economical arrangement”. The communist doctrine was built around the slogan: “To everyone according to one’s needs and from everyone in accordance with one’s a-bi-lities!” What it boiled down to, in reality, was that the communist elite enjoyed most of the privileges available to the average Western citizen, while the communist male grunt had a life expectancy of 40 to 50 years and a long wait for any of the Western comforts that he wanted to have in his life.

I have been thinking about the demise of Communism from a novel perspective. It all happened so neatly at the beginning of the Nineties. Communism folded right then and right there, relatively bloodlessly, and it happened simultaneously in all of the involved countries, except for China and Cuba and 3rd World countries. This is fishy. My present outlook is that communism folded for a specific reason, and it is not one that is mentioned in public on a regular basis.

The Economical Sphere
I think that communists could have survived economically into the present day. They could take care of their people’s basic needs. Agriculturally, they could have jumped onto the newer cultivation methods and means and that way boost their production of produce. Industrially, they could manufacture anything out of leather, metal, rubber and such staples of the analog world. Moreover, China is still a Communist country, even if it slowly began to raise its profile since 1978, when a new leadership took over after Mao. Over time, the Chinese could have given Russian communists what they wanted, through inter-Socialist trade, along with the new levels and rates of base-industrial production.

The Military Sphere
When nuclear weapons were developed in the 1940’s and perfected over the subsequent decades, Russia was one of the spearheading countries. It still has a hefty arsenal of nukes left in its silos and vaults. Besides, nukes have not gotten “old hat” yet. They are still the most potent military defensive deterrent against offensives. I would claim that the Soviet Union did not collapse because its military became old-fashioned, notwithstanding the fact that Mathias Rust flew successfully with his Cessna aeroplane onto the Red Square in 1987.

The Technological Sphere
The Real Reason why communism collapsed, in my opinion, is the fact that it could not have successfully made the transition from the analog world into the digital world. The reason is the economical framework. In the East, economies were so burdened, fragile and overstretched that they could only function under the old world order of the analog world. The West, on the other hand, had all kinds of surplus deposits of wealth, competitivity and initiative to undertake the great leap to digitalisation or digitalism. If the Soviet Union had steadfastly still remained analog, while North America, Europe and Australasia switched to digital, it would have been too embarrassing, too clear a proof that the system had failed, and therefore the prevailing powers in the Soviet Union let the network of Socialist countries instead crumble under their own weight. They knew that the rubble from that collapse would go digital one way or another. We know that the building of the digital infrastructure began in the West in tandem with that collapse, and that at least the first phase of that work is by now all but done.

Millennials seem to want to have a system that could not have given them what they needed and wanted the most in their youth and beyond and which has come to brand their generation: a computer linked up to a working computer network. The problem with communism, also any future forms of communism seems to be that it would never be as free as capitalism and thus able to form a protective shield against some kind of threat or a conducive means for some kind of opportunity that market economies can form. Market economies practice “arbitrary” economical evolution rather than “planned” economical evolution, something which makes them more pliant and resourceful before the future. Like a Galapagos island hit by a stray meteor(ite).

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Puol(ue)eni aloittajana esitän suuntaviivat sille, mitä seuraavaksi tapahtuu. Minulla on paljon vapautta ja vastuuta. Tästä on se seuraus, että parini ja häntä seuraavan puhujan pitää joko kompata ideaani keksien sille kaikenlaisia muitakin seurauksia, ja syitä tai sitten keksiä omatekoisia, vaihtoehtoisia syitä Neuvostoliiton maillemenolle. Opposition tehtävänä on puolustella tavanomaisia selityksiä sille, miksi itäblokki kaatui, mitä se sitten keksiikään. Tämä tarjoaa luonnollisesti hyviä mahdollisuuksia POI:ille, jos selitykset ovat huteria.

THW say that people can be turned into bits and bytes

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Week 38

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“See you in a bit” is a new way to look at the human condition.

Date: Sep 15th, 2020
Motion: THW say that people can be turned into bits and bytes
Role: Minister (gov.)

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Sometimes when I dine out I come across a type of people that I cannot relate to. This type, sometimes many specimens of it, sits a bit from me, has a loud voice, watches a cellphone while speaking loudly, does not have socks, has a cap on inside a room and peppers the delivery with expletives that are always totally unnecessary (have no emotional or informational value). In short, in restaurants I sometimes sit next to chavs or yobs, as this demographic has been named in Britain.

A question needs to be asked. What is a chav or a yob, deep down? What is the value system of one, because it is expressly that value system that makes me wince at them rather than their external appearance, which is almost always “healthy” or, as more cultured people would call it, vigorous. Analysing their irritationability, I can crack it down to the core points of friction. Chavs annoy me because their every impulse is hedonic, conservative or materialistic. They also seem to be entirely about taking and being even (as opposed to giving). They accept the animal within themselves, while they do not care about the human in other people around them. This makes one want to isolate them from the rest of humanity in, like, a penal colony in Australia or the Åland archipelago.

One Extreme: Hedonic, Conservative and Materialistic People
One does not have to be young to be extremely philistine. Old people abound with philistines. What is required is a constitution and disposition that does not value any higher purpose for existence. Exploitation, gains (however small), possessions, property, ownership and the militant protection of that ownership by guards, policemen and army personnel and officials are what make the philistine tick. Philistines abide by laws only because those same laws guarantee that the law of the jungle cannot take their possessions away from them. One shudders to think what they would if it wasn’t for the law/s. Philistines do not do culture, which they substitute sports for. Philistines are more morning than evening people. They don’t have trouble sleeping.

Another Extreme: Ascetic, Liberal and Idealistic People
We can also come up with the “antipode” to the people I detest. They represent the opposite in each of the enumerated qualities. These people are not about filling their stomachs with the bodies of dead animals, repressing a group of people for one’s own gain or only dreaming about new things to buy into one’s digs. One can quickly see that they, too, are kind of a caricature. Theirs’ is a human quality so loaded with progressiveness that it might be impossible to accomplish to a vast majority of people. And, as conversationalists, they must, because I have hardly met with anyone of them, be dreary, as they cannot put themselves in the shoes of a dedicated follower of fashion, for example. They possibly lack a sense of empathy about human shortcomings, and therefore, culture bores them, while everything else fascinates them.

News: Most of Us Do Not Represent These Extremes
I think it must be clear by now that a lot of or most people on planet Earth or in your circles of friends and acquaintances are situated somewhere between these exacting poles of extreme behaviour. They are not merely about me-me-me and the sensory release, but they do not, either, fully devote themselves to a higher cause if they do not receive temporary physical rewards or even binge behaviours having a balancing effect. I would say that most people receive a gratuitous mix of feelgood by everything they do, own, think and say on a daily basis from a myriad sources. And most of it is intuitive. People do not plan how and that they get a kick from almost everything they get up to. It is an end result from genes, early nurture of a mixed quality, years of schooling, health, choices of a mixed quality and an instant and constant feedback from the world.

So, if the “extreme” types are HCM and ALI, there are also six other types of varying middle ground between them. On the one side they are HCI, HLM and HLI and on the other side they are ALM, ACI and ACM. One’s own type one can be ascertained in choosing one side in the binary questions of hedonic/ascetic, conservative/liberal or materialistic/idealistic. You should not think about what you have once been, e.g. in teenage or early adulthood, but how and what you are now and presumably well into the future (you are allowed to change, but it’s not very likely, if you are already past 25). You also should not be startled that you do not represent one of the stereotypes (i.e. extremes) because, as said, majority of people represent the middle ground in some extenuating way.

What conclusion could be drawn from this speculation? One of the clearcut conclusions is that we people can be pared down to personality types based on this crude characterisation. If there are 8 bits in a byte, as there were in the early days of home computing, one can also say that there are 8 personality types (2 to a power of 3, or 2ˆ3 = 8) within this matrix (as presented above) and therefore one can arguably say with uncertainty that people can be reduced to bits and bytes and zeroes and ones, just as well as all kinds of human-derived artifacts (film, paintings, photos, music) can be rendered into digital data.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Tämä puhe on “kiemurteleva” kahdella tapaa. Ensinnäkin aloitteen sanamuoto on faktisesti “believes”, jos se on muotoa “would say”, koska “say” ei ole minkään oikean toimenpiteen tekemistä. Toinen rimpuilu liittyy ajatukseen binääristen ominaisuuksien muuntamisesta jonkinlaiseksi koodiksi. Tärkeää on kuitenkin ymmärtää, että kyse on tietojenkäsittelyn perusteiden soveltamisesta ihmiseen tai ihmisen attribuutteihin eikä siitä, että ihminen jotenkin muutettaisiin sähköksi tai teleportattaisiin johonkin toiseen paikkaan. Aloite testaa ihmisten kykyä erottaa elektroniikan ja tietojenkäsittelyn terminologiaa toisistaan. Parilleni annan myös luvan tehdä vastaavanlainen 3x binäärisyyden koodi ihmisestä (esim. parein mies/nainen, akateeminen/ei-akateeminen, perheellinen/yksinelävä), jos hän ei keksi muuta käsittely-lähestymistapaa, ja jos II tiimin 1. puhuja ei keksi omaa lähestymistapaansa, hän voi kopioida meidän lähestymistapamme omakseen jälleen yhtä toista 3x binäärisyyttä esitellen.

THR the marriage of digitalism & journalism

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Week 43

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A lot of the stuff people share on social media is newspapers’ digital headlines and stories. It works to some extent that way. It works a lot worse when newspapers turn their gaze to digital content.

 

Date: Oct 22nd, 2019
Motion: THS the marriage of digitalism & journalism
Role: Secretary (opp.)

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If we think about the media today, there is a type of column or essay that is being written all over and again, a little bit like reinventing the wheel. That type of column is the how-wonderful-is-the-mobile-phone-as-an-invention and social-media-is-overbearing-or-awesome variety. It has been written so many times over by so many people that one does not care about reading it a single time more. It has become an embarrassment. The Tech column is an embarrassment, because it is being written hundreds, thousands or a myriad times by people who are not tech-savvy, meaning that they would design mobile-phones, write code, design software or distribute those products out to the world. The tech column is typically being written by the layman or laywoman who barely knows how to use that gadget correctly. Usually people only command the gadget to the extent that they can figure out its usability on their own or ask other people for advice on how to use it, without consulting the manual. So, it is probable that these advisers only know about 35 % of the possibilities that open up on that device, being blithely ignorant of the rest.

A similar kind of development in the Swedish-Finnish press, most notably on the pages of the daily Hufvudstadsbladet (est. 1864), is the letters-to-the-editor about the status of Swedish vs. Finnish in Finland. I would be genuinely delighted if I knew how many inches (yards really) inches (probably miles) of paper and ink have been devoted over the years to this issue; all the instances when people have mused on whether Swedish is about to die out, whose fault it is if it is so, whether it is good to school Finnish- and Swedish-speaking pupils and students in separate classes, in separate schools, in joint classes or in joint schools, if it’s better to expose children to the foreign domestic language at an early age or a maturer age and if Swedish people who live on the West Coast and South Coast understand each other. That’s another wheel that is being reinvented as decades go by. And it does not stop from spinning.

But let us go back to the original issue. The embarrassing tech column comes in multiple varieties. The three most common are these:

We Live in a World in Flux This is the type of column that marvels at the passing of time and how different life is now compared to past few decades (typically the 70’s, 80’s or early 90’s.) However, it becomes redundant when what is being said was first true 20 years ago and there is nothing that has fundamentally changed. Suddenly it becomes apparent that those “backward” past few decades brought with them a lot more societal change and something new each and every year.

We Use the Damn Things Too Much The harmony-seeking column laments our use of mobile technology and seeks to counterbalance it with cooking, handicrafts, literature, movies, pets, physical exercise and TV. It is more typically written right before holidays, during holidays and right after holidays, as down time “surprisingly” springs to mind for its writers. In any event, the importance of reminding people about things other than digital things is about as useful as telling them about the correct use of toothpaste and a toothbrush. Of course that “other stuff” is useful! It’s just that people have learnt and become perhaps disillusioned with those other things many decades and years ago.

The Young Ones Do It Even Better The forward-looking column praises the younger generation for being so tech-literate at a very young age. It is oftentimes contrasted with how clumsily the writer him- or herself uses that damn thing and how it is often necessary to ask for guidance from someone a quarter of one’s own age. Lest we forget, this “prodigy” comes with a price. That young person is often an ignoramus who does not know anything else than tech on the consumer level. He or she may not know what the Axis Powers and Allied were in World War II, and it’s not wise to explain, because the explanation would just beget more need for explanation as the whole rests on clayen feet. With the digital generation, the facetious question, “At what school did you miss your education?” may finally become literally true. It is not good if the tech knowledge is the only thing that the young one has.

I’d rather we Moved On from our present trenches, when it comes to writing columns and writing about tech. We have heard it once or twice or thrice already. The next step is around the corner. Or, better still, we could stop and begin marvelling at all the things we can achieve with the advent of those marvellous mobile or so digital devices and the narrowing of gaps that has been brought about by technology.

But then again, maybe that won’t ever happen. Some signs are worrying. Photography has almost died at the hands of the layman with the advent of digital cameras. Rock n’ Roll, especially indie rock and college rock, the way it was known, has all but died in the hands of university students with the advent of digital music-editing software. Writing homespun software on one’s home computer has long been an extinct art thanks to the ubiquitous app industry that does the same thing on an industrial scale, as teamwork and over national boundaries.

The list may become longer.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Myönnän käyttäneeni temppua, jossa käyn aloitteen ulkopuolella (2. kappale) ihan vain sen takia, että puheeseen tulisi riittävästi mittaa, aasinsillan kautta. Siinä on se kaiken varalta. Jos saan kuitenkin kysymyksiä yllin kyllin, voin yhtä hyvin ohittaa tuon kappaleen tarpeettomana ja keskittyä kysymyksiin vastaamiseen, jolloin annettu aika tulee myös täyteen. Olen ajatellut tämän puheen “väliportaan puheeksi”, tai ehkä parempi sana on ‘linkittävä’, jossa kritisoin hallituksen aloitetta omin sanoin mutta oletan samalla, että puhuja vasemmalla puolellani ja puhuja oikealla puolellani keskittyy täydellä voimalla aloitteen kahteen avainsanaan, digitaalisuuteen ja journalismiin. Jos he osaavat niitä vastustaa, kukin tahollaan, teemme yhdessä hyvää jälkeä.