Joe's Jottings

Month: April 2010

  • Apple – why 2014 could be like 1984

    Back in 1984, Apple had Ridley Scott direct a very imaginative advert to launch the Macintosh computer.  It ran twice – once on a small TV station late at night to get it in the running for some awards, and the second time at half time in the Superbowl American Football game on 22nd January 1984.  And it never ran again.  The message from Apple was that their new machine would shatter the conformity that people like IBM (and by extension Microosft) were putting on the computer market, by making computing available to the masses.

    The advertisement ends with the line:

     “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984″. ”

    The problem was that the Macintosh was so expensive that few people could afford it.  It was a pain in the rear to write software for – so relatively few folks wrote software for it, especially as the market was small compared to that offered by the PC.  As it turned out, 1984 wasn’t at all like 1984, but no thanks to the Macintosh which even today, in all it’s forms, occupies only 10% of the computer operating system market space, even if you include iPhones.

    From day one, there was always something ‘control freak’ about Macintosh, all of it’s successors, the iPhone and now the iPad.  As I mentioned above, the original Macintoshes were not easy to write software for, and Apple didn’t make life easy for developers.  the situation persists today; to write software for an iPhone, iPod or iPad, you have to run the emulator kit on a Macintosh of some sort.  Let’s do a quick comparison – if I want to develop an application for my Blackberry, I download teh tools from the Blackberry website and get it running on my PC running Windows.  For free.  If I want to write an application for an iPod or iPhone….I first of all have to join the Developer Program at $100 a year.   Then I can download the SDK.  To run the SDK I need a machine running Mac OSX.  Oh look…only Mac’s can legally run Mac OSX…very much a closed garden.

    Early Macintoshes came with no network connection; obviously this is no longer the case but it should have given us the hint that Macs were not really designed to talk with the rest of the world.  Fortunately for Apple, some of the people involved saw sense and gradually the more open Macintosh that people use today in it’s numerous forms came in to being.  And gadgets like iPhone, iPod and iPad emerged in to the market, able to interact with the Internet and other media.

    But let’s look at what this actually means.  First of all, aaccess to applications and media for these latter machines is very much controlled by Apple in terms of:

    • Control of the means of production – make sure non-Macintosh / Apple users cannot easily develop applications.
    • Control of the means of distribution – iTunes store, various recent high profile cases of applications being banned from the iTunes store makes it difficult to get applications in to the world.
    • Control of the means of communication – these devices lack the ability to easily handle ‘standard’ add ons such as USB or cheap memory cards, like SD.  iPhones have also frequently been tethered to particular telephone companies. 
    • The fact that  iPad comes without Flash, for example, suggests that Apple are adopting a policy of attempting to control content that is usable on their kit.

    Let’s ignore the stupidities around making devices reliant on rechargeable batteries in which the battery can only be changed by returning it to the manufacturer. 

    The natural progression for Apple would be to continue growing as a media and services company, rather than as a hardware house.  By an iPad, and rely on Apple for much of your available content and software.  And Apple can also ensure that you don’t leave the ‘walled garden’ of Apple acceptable content by making sure that the inbuilt iPad browser doesn’t handle some common media formats like Flash.  How will they fund all this?  Easy – you’ll pay.  Apple have already stated that they are rolling out an advertising model for iPad / iPod / iPhone applications in which the application provider would be able to get 60% of advertisng revenue generated via their application – the other 40% going…well….you know where.

    Control of content, hardware and communication.  2014 could very much be like 1984 if Apple gets it’s way.

  • A hint of mortality

    Today Guy Kewney died of cancer.  He’d been ill with Liver and bowel cancer for a year.  For those of us who got involved in personal and home computing ‘at the start’ Guy was effectively ‘Mr Personal Computer World’.  He didn’t own it, but his column was often the one we all read first.  One of Kewney’s claims to fame was that he invited the ‘Uncle Clive’ persona for Clive Sinclair – true or not I guess we’ll never know, but it did wonders for Sinclair and his machines. Kewney also had a massive amount of influence in terms of how he got a lot of folks interested in writing for the magazines – even those of us who never wrote an article for Kewney felt motivated by him.  There’s a nice piece here by Jon Honeyball, which sums up Kewney pretty well.  The sad thing is that for many people he’ll be remembered not for his journalism, but because the BBC ended up interviewing a taxi driver called Guy Goma instead of Guy Kewney a couple of years ago.  Typical BBC….

    I had a certain sympathy with Kewney because he wrote the ‘NewsPrint’ section of PCW which gave industry news- I did a similar job for a few months for a small technology newsletter, and the job almost killed me.  Guy, thanks for the articles and the inspiration.

    Over the years I’ve been saddened on a number of occasions by writers that I first encountered in my childhood or teens.  Back in 2008 I commented on the passing of Sir Arthur C Clarke, and a few weeks ago I learnt that a radio amateur called Norman Fitch, who for 21 years had written a column about VHF radio communications for the UK Amateur Radio movement’s ‘house magazine ‘Radio Communications’ had died.  Way back in 1989, I remember reading about the death of a chap called MG Scroggie, who’d written one of the books that got me interested in amateur radio in the first place. 

    When Johnny Cash died I was saddened – another part of my childhood passed away.  I guess that when people that we grew up knowing, or those that are our contemporaries, die, it’s a constant reminder of our own mortality.

    And oddly enough, whilst I’ve been writing this piece, I heard that Malcolm McLaren, one time manager of the Sex pistols and arguably the creator of much of the UK Punk Scene – and very much a figure from my own teens – has also died today at the age of 64.

  • Too few experiments in school science

    I’m a science geek – always have been, always will be.  When I was a kid I had microscopes, telescopes, chemistry sets – anything that allowed me to do experiments.  By the time I went to secondary school I was already pretty practically inclined in the laboratory, having done quite a few of the experiments that I was expected to do at school in the garden shed at home.  Fortunately I managed to avoid explosions, poisoning, fire and accidentally opening portals to other universes a la Fringe.  I appreciate that i was lucky in having parents and an aunt and uncle who actively supported my interest in matters scientific.

    Articles like this from the BBC, noting that there is inadequate experimental science done in schools, sadden me greatly.  In the early 1980s I was involved with writing computer software for schools.  It was suggested back then that ‘virtual labs’ could replace some of the practical work carried out, saving money, reducing the need for equipment and also offering health and safety advantages.  I was quite a supporter of this idea for a while – thankfully some of my colleagues talked me out of it.  They were wise enough to realise that so much of science education is the tactile, the experiential – the smells, sounds and sights of experimentation. 

    It’s easy to think that there is little value in repeating ‘classic’ experiments – after all, the answer is already known!  However, the importance is in understanding what theories the experimental results supports and in learning how to actually do an experiment – the theory and practice of the scientific method.   And there’s enormous value to be obtained in experiments when, despite care and attention, the results aren’t what’s expected – that is when true scientific investigation can begin at any age.

    Unless we do something to re-discover the rich practical experiences offered to science pupils 20 or 30 years ago, it’s inevitable that the standing of this country in terms of research and industry will falter.  We cannot built a modern scientific and technological economy based purely n the ‘soft science’ that seems to be offered in today’s classrooms.  Whilst it’s useful to be able to debate the pros and cons of social policies on scientific issues, it’s equally important to be able to identify fallacies in scientific arguments, and perhaps even put together simple experiments to demonstrate complex issues – after all, ‘hands on’ experiences tend to cement learning.

    A breathtaking example of how simple, practical science brings home concepts was given by the late Richard Feynman during the enquiry in to the explosion that destroyed the Challenger space shuttle.  In a simple experiment involving ice water and a piece of rubber, he showed that at low temperatures the rubber (which was the material used as O ring seals on the booster rockets of the Challenger) became hard and distinctly un-rubbery, and was no longer fit for purpose.  He cut through months of bullshit in 5 minutes, in an experiment of elegant simplicity and with a little showmanship.  The perfect demonstration of scientific principles applied to solving a major engineering disaster.

    My own contribution to trying to make science a more practical business for both school and home is a new web site I’m starting up called Hands On Science.  It’s hopefully going to be full of experiments and demonstrations that can be done with the minimum of equipment but that demonstrate in an interesting way many scientific principles.  It’s only just started up, but I’d welcome comments over the weeks to come – and ideas!

  • The ‘father’ of home computers dies…

    A few days ago one of the pioneers of the home computer revolution of the 1970s died.  Ed Roberts, an MD in Georgia, died after a long battle with Pneumonia.  Back in the 1970s his company, MITS, moved from model rocket telemetry, to calculators, then to building the first ‘computer kit’ – the Altair 8800 – for which Bill Gates and Paul Allen provided a BASIC interpreter.  The Linux and Apple Fanbois amongst you may now know who to blame for Microsoft… 🙂

    It’s debatable that without the Altair 8800 another home computer – in kit or ready built form – would have come along.  The Apple 2 followed behind theAltair, as did many other similar machines, but the Altair was first.

    The Altair 8800 was basically a microprocessor chip with enough associated ‘gubbins’ to make it work – it could be chipped up to have 8k of memory – my laptop here has 4,000,000 k of memory – and could even handle a keyboard and eventually a video display – although when you got it out of the box (and after you’d soldered the thing together) it'[s user interface was a bank of toggle switches and some LEDs.

    Yup – you programmed it, entered data and read the output in binary.  It was safe to say that in the mid 1970s, as far as computers were concerned, men were real men, women were real women, and real programmers did it in binary with a soldering iron tucked behind their ear. The fact that within 10 years of the Altair being launched teenagers were typing their own programs in to Spectrums, ZX-81s, BBC Micros, Apples and the rest is a monument to the excitement and speed of those early days of computing.

    And, by golly, it was FUN! Even the act of getting your computer working in the first place was part of the game – you learnt to code in machine code from day one because either nothing else was available or you realised that in order to make anything useful happen with only a few HUNDRED bytes of memory you needed to right VERY ‘tight’ code.

    I built my first computer in the mid-1970s – well, not so much a computer as a programmable calculator.  I took an electronic calcul;ator and wired up the keyboard to some circuitry of my own invention that mimicked keypresses.  Programming this beast involved changing the wiring in my circuit – running teh program involved pressing a button and after a few seconds the answer would appear.  I then got even smarter, and managed to work out how to introduce some decision making in to my gadget.  Fortunately, I blew the output of the calculator up soon afterwards – I say fortunately because I then found out about microprocessors and ended up building some simple computer circuits around 6800 and Z80 microprocessors, rather than carrying on with my rather ‘steampunk’ programmable calculator!

    Ed Roberts’s machine wasn’t an option for me; my pocket money wouldn’t cover the postage from the US.  But the fact that people were doing this sort of thing was very exciting, and by the time I left university in 1982 I’d already spent time with ZX81s and Apple 2s, and had written my first article for the home computer press – a machine code monitor and loader program for the ZX81 in ‘Electronics and Computing Monthly’.  I was reading in the magazines about the developments of software from up and coming companies like Microsoft – even in those pre-PC days – and for a few years in the early 1980s the computing field in the UK was a mish-mash of different machines, kits, ready made stuff – and most people buying these machines bought them to program them.  How different to today.

    I have to say that I’ve always thought that the fun went out of home computing when the PC came along, and when Microsoft and Apple stopped being ‘blokes in garages’ and started being real companies.

    Ed Roberts – thank you for those fun packed years!

  • Dr Who – lazy writing or social engineering?

    And so the new incarnation of Dr Who has his first adventure on BBC One, with 27 year old Matt Smith as the latest actor to portray the eponymous Time Lord.  The one thing about Doctors these days is that if you don’t like the current one, there’ll probably be another one along in a couple of years…. 🙂

    As well as teh Doctor, we have his new assistant, Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillan, who encounters the Doctor whilst dressed as a Kissogram Policewoman and agrees to travel with him.  She does, however, insist that she comes back before the following morning, as she has ‘stuff’ to do.  What we know, but what she doesn’t tell the Doctor, is that the stuff is her Wedding Day.

    Hold on a minute…picking up a new assistant at the time of her Wedding…haven’t we been there before with the dreadful Donna Noble, who turns up in the TARDIS actually in her Wedding Dress on the day of her Wedding?  Come on folks – that is laziness of the highest order.  There are lots of ways in which assistants have been introduced to the Doctor, but to have two of them introduced in what has to be an unusual way like this is really lazy writing and serious imagination failure.

    Or…could it be another piece of social engineering on behalf of the Dr Who / Torchwood writing ‘establishment’?  OK – I know that may seem a little extreme but I’ve muttered on numerous occasions in the past about the rather ‘heavy handed’ PC attitudes that have permeated some of the episodes of both Doctor Who and Torchwood – to the degree that some of the dialogue grates.  Several of the characters have frequently seemed to fit a set of PC stereotypes, and I’m afraid that this introduction of a second assistant at a point in which she is basically committing herself to a traditional lifestyle again grates. 

    Just think about it – a Doctor who appears to be getting increasingly younger with each incarnation, in looks and behaviour.  An occasional character in the form of Jack Harkness who cannot die and is forever young.  A young woman running away from what some folks would label the ‘humdrum’ of normal life.  Just seems a little bit ‘Lost Boys’ here – reflecting a lifestyle and belief structure in which people are unwilling to grow up.

  • A millstone around their necks

    Easter is the holiest time of the year for Christians – this year has been special for all the wrong reasons as well, though.  The recent stories around what appears to be institutionalised failings in dealing with accusations of and cases of Child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in different parts of the world are the sort of things that make any decent people – Catholic or Protestant, believer or non-believer, recoil in horror from the initial breach of trust and then the ongoing failure of the institutions and organisations involved to deal effectively with the offenders.

    The fact that some of the stories also allegedly involved a department of the Church that was the responsibility of the current Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, makes the whole situation so much worse.  The Pope himself has commented on the affair; the institution of the Vatican, on the other hand, seems to have made a total mess of every aspect of the business, and one can only hope that the legal authorities in the countries in which these crimes have taken place can get enough evidence together to pursue the whole business through the legal system, and clean house where the Vatican has failed to do so.

    Because it is essential that this business IS cleared up as soon as possible; the victims need justice and if at all possible what compensation and restitution can be offered.  The Church needs to be able to show that it has acted, and needs to be able to start regaining the trust of ALL Christians.  Whilst I continue to have Faith in Jesus Christ, and faith in the Anglican Church as an institution, my trust in the institution of the Catholic Church – not, I should add, individual Catholics – is currently being sorely tried.

    I feel that the Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t go far enough in his recent comments, particularly after the Pope parked a few Ecclesiastical Tanks on the Lawn of Lambeth Palace in the issue of women Bishops in the Church of England.  But that, as they say, is another story.

    For me, any cover-up is unacceptable; the Roman Catholic Church can not pretend these things didn’t happen; the current sight of senior Vatican officials doing the equivalent of standing there with their eyes and ears closed, hoping the whole thing will go away, is the most un-edifying and un-Christian thing that could possibly be done, and I hope that if proof of cover up and conspiracy is found, all responsible will be bought to justice.

    There is a Biblical precedent which I hope that the abusers and their apologists will bear in mind.  Matthew 18:6, to be exact.  The King James Translation – still the best, as far as I’m concerned – says it wonderfully.

    “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

    There we go.  Millstones, anyone?

  • And there’s one more thing…

    My guilty secret for today – I love ‘Columbo’.  No, not Colombo, capital city of Sri Lanka, but Columbo, dishevelled Los Angeles murder squad detective in the 1970s TV detective series of the same name.  I’ve just watched an episode this afternoon – it’s sort of comfort TV for me, I have to admit.  No matter how smart the villain, how heinous the crime, you know that Columbo will eventually get his man (or woman) – you even get to see, in the first 15 minutes or so, the murder take place, who did it and how he did it.  The trick for Columbo, and the entertainment for the viewers, is trying to work out what tiny error the villain of the piece has made that will eventually be spotted by our scruffy and (at first glance) slow-witted hero and that will lead to their downfall.

    Yes, it’s a derivative and predictable formula – and I think that that’s what makes it such wonderful ‘comfort TV’ – you know roughly what you’re going to get, how it’ll be paced, etc.  Classic ‘cliche’ Westerns were known as ‘horse operas’ – they had the same predictability of structure as did theatrical operas.  The 1930s and 1940s saw the rise of the ‘space opera’ in science fiction – similarly stylised stories based on mainstream adventures, and of course we’re all aware of the soap opera – the less said about that particular genre, the better! 🙂

    Columbo is undeniably ‘crime opera’ – it grew out of a series called ‘Mystery Movie’ that used to run on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings on, I think, ITV in the 1970s – it featured a number of different crime investigation based series – Macmillan and Wife and Banacek were two others I particularly remember.  They were staples of TV consumption in the Pritchard household in my adolescence, and I have particular memories of them being on TV whilst I was doing homework or dashing in and out of the garden!  Just like an opera which, by tradition, isn’t over until the fat lady has sung, an episode of Columbo isn’t anywhere near over until he’s turned to teh murderer when leaving a room, asked ‘Sir…just one more thing?’ and then asked the question that will eventually break the case. 

    One of the things I love about Columbo – and I think a lot of the actors who took part also loved it – is that you get the chance to see a lot of stars play murderers or  victims.  Two of my personal favourites are Johnny Cash – playing a murderous musician – and Patrick McGoohan.  McGoohan turns up a couple of times as a murderer – in one episode he plays the commander of a military academy, and in a second episode he’s the campaign manager for a politician.  I doubt that this sort of casting would be possible today, and it’s a shame.

    The ongoing ‘in jokes’ in Columbo – his rather elderly Peugeot car, his habit of getting mistaken for a delivery man or (worse still) tramp due to his dress, his apparent forgetfulness and rambling anecdotes – all contribute to the charm of the show.  And it IS a charming show – it’s gentle, mannered and definitely reflects a different age of TV entertainment as far as TV cop shows are concerned.  For me it provides happy memories of a time when my life was certainly simpler, and a reflection back on a world that seems much further away in history than 30 years.  And the stories and writing – there’s no post modernism, no ‘knowing nods’ to the audience.  It takes itself, on the whole, seriously and it works.

    Now…how on Earth would he get on with Gene Hunt?

  • Happy Customers – banks should have us stuffed and mounted!

    It’s 1943 and we’re in Stalag Luft XXIIIb, a prison camp for allied prisoners of war, somewhere in the centre of Germany.  In the centre of a hut, allied prisoners sit around a table which has a reasonable amount of food on it.  In the corner of the room, a couple of German guards, the Camp Commandant and two Swiss Civilians from the International Red Cross are asking questions.

    “So, Flight Sergeant,” begins one of the Swiss,”are you being well treated?  I can see from the food here that you’ve been receiving the red Cross food parcels….”

    “Well….yes……” the Sergeant looks nervously at the Commandant, who is staring at him with an intense expression normally seen before he utters the words ‘Solitary Confinement, 21 days.’. “Very well, thank you, sir.  The Germans are a great bunch and feed us well….”

    “Excellent…excellent….now, Commandant, can we see another hut please?”

    The Germans and Swiss leave the hut, and after a few minutes a guard returns and sweeps the food in to a bag, removes the only working light-bulb and says “Vell, English-pigs, zat is ze visit of ze red Cross over for another 6 months – back to normal food for you!  Remember to cook ze food vell to kill ze weevils!”

    OK…it’s a cliche of popular fiction, but I was reminded of thsi today by a news item from the BBC – that most people seem happy with the service they get from their banks.  I admit that I was rather gob-smacked at this, especially the figure that about 90% of folks who’ve NOT shifted banks are happy with their current bank.  Then I read further and noted that 48% of people wouldn’t think of changing banks because it would cause too many problems, and that’s when I started thinking of the above scenario.  No doubt more folks would love to change banks if they thought that they could do so with ease, be guaranteed of finding another bank that would take them on as customers, and also not get any ‘comebacks’ from their bank in the meantime.

    It perhaps says a lot today about how cowed we are on the whole that we put up with the way our banks have played with our money and charged us for the privilege; anyone who’s been in debt knows that you are locked in to your existing financial service providers for a while after you have debt problems because your credit record is damaged, and often it’s only as ‘existing customers’ that you survive.  Coming to a new bank as a new customer would probably see you thrown back.

    I’d like to believe that the banks are starting to listen and making things easier for people; I have to say my own bank has recently been more reasonable than I’ve experienced for some years – which is great news – but I think that it’s going to be a long time before I can look at these sorts of surveys and take them at their word.

  • Social Search…waste of time?

    I’m a big user of search engines.  Despite my grumblings and pontifications on here about Google, I still use them the most because they’re still the best out there.  I hope that Bing – despite the daft name – will one day come to challenge Google, but until then, I just Google.  It’s been interesting recently to see Tweets start appearing in search results, and I’ve commented in this blog on the topic.  The most recent work being done by Google that they feel will improve the search experience for us all is explored in this piece from the BBC, and I’m particularly interested in the comments made about ‘Social Search’.

    First of all, what is Social Search? 

    My definition of a true Social Search tool is one that would give weight to a number of different aspects when searching.  These would include:

    • The normal search criteria as entered in to any search engine that you care to use.
    • Your location, intelligently applied to any searches that might be expected to have a geographical aspect to them.
    • A weighting applied to favour the results based upon material that meets the criteria you’re searching on that may have been placed on the Internet by people or organisations within your personal or professional network.

    To give an example – you do a search for restaurants.  The search engine makes a guess about your location based on previous searches, geocoding based on your IP address or, coming real soon, tagging provided with the search request specifying your location based on a GPS in the device that you’re using for the search.  The search engine then determines whether your ‘friends’ have done similar searches, whether they’ve done any reviews or blog posts about restaurants in the area, posted photos to Flickr, or are actually Tweeting FROM a restaurant as you search, whatever.  The results are then returned for you – and ideally would be tailored to your particular situation as understood by the search engine.

    And this is roughly what the Google Social Search folks are looking at.

    “….returns information posted by friends such as photos, blog posts and status updates on social networking sites.

    It is currently only available in the US and will be coming to the rest of the world soon.

    Maureen Heymans, technical lead at Google, said this kind of search means the information offered is personal to the user.

    “When I’m looking for a restaurant, I’ll probably find a bunch of reviews from experts and it’s really useful information.

    “But getting a review from a friend can be even better because I trust them and I know their tastes. Also I can contact them and ask for more information,” she said.

    In future users’ social circles could provide them with the answers they seek, as long as individuals are prepared to make those connections public.”

    Of course, the million (or multi-billion) dollar question is how far are people to go in terms of making their networks available to search engine companies in such a way that results can be cross referenced in this way.  Once upon a time I’d have said that folks wouldn’t, as they value their privacy, but today I’m not so sure.  Given that we have seen sites where people share details about credit card purchases, I’m not convinced that people value their privacy enough to not allow this sort of application to take off, at least amongst the ‘digital elites’.

    Of course, hopefully it will be up to us whether we participate in using Social Search – I guess all of us who blog or Tweet will find our musings being used as ‘search fodder’ unless we opt out of making our contributions searchable.  Will I use Social Search?  If it’s at all possible to opt out, No.  And here’s why.

    Because I doubt the results will be as relevant to me as Google and all the other potential providers of SOcial Search think they will be.  Let’s face it – these companies will not be doing it for nothing – some where along the way the ‘database of intentions’ will be being supplemented and modified based upon the searches carried out, and such information is a goldmine to marketers and advertisers.

    But the relevance to me?  I’m yet to be convinced – and here’s why.

    If I really want the opinions of my friends, family and occasional business contacts on what I eat, wear, watch or listen to then I’ll ask them directly.  Just because I know someone doesn’t mean that I share any similarity in viewpoint or preferences at all.  I have friends with very different interests – Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Agnostics  and Atheists, people from the political left and right, party animals and stay at homes…the differentiation goes on.  This is because I pick my friends based on what they’re like as people – not necessarily because they share interests or beliefs.  As it happens, I’m occasionally quietly offended by what some of my online friends say – but that’s life.  We don’t always have to agree or share the same beliefs.  

    Therefore, the idea of biasing my search results based on what people I know search for, prefer or comment on is potentially useless.  If I wish to know what my friends think or say – I’ll talk to them, email them or read their tweets / blogs / whatever directly. 

    I feel there’s also a serious risk of ‘crystalisation’ of beliefs – a sort of friendship groupthink emerging.  Think of what it was like when you were 13 years old and spotty.  For many teenagers it matters to be ‘in with the in-crowd’; Social Search could contribute to the return of that sort of belief structure amongst peer groups.  By it’s nature, the people who will be ‘opinion leaders’ in your Social Search universe will be those friends who are most online and who share the most.  Their activities will hence bias the results returned in Social Search.  It might not be such a problem for them, though – people who have a high Social Search presence will undoubtedly come to the attention of advertisers and opinion formers who might wish to make use of that ‘reputation’.

    One of the great advantages of good, old-fashioned, non-social search is taht you will occasionally be bowled a googly (pitched a curve ball for my transatlantic friends!) that might lead you off in to whole new areas of knowledge.  You may be prompted to try something new that NONE of your friends or colleagues have heard of.  Whilst these results will still be in the results, if they’re on the second page, how many of us will bother going there?  We’ll become fat and lazy and contented searchers.

    So….I think I want to stay as an individual.  For now, I’ll happily turn my back on Social Search!