Category: Commentary

David Cameron just asked:

in our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?

By “we”, he means the security professionals around the world. In effect, he would be demanding keys to banking transactions, online shopping carts, email, WhatsApp, iMessage, movie DRM, WiFi passwords and every other secured transaction on the market. It’s already illegal to refuse to give your password to the security forces but the response from the vendors of these products would not necessarily to be to hand over the keys; it’s more likely to cause them to withdraw their products and services from the islands. Just to use one example, iMessage would simply not be able to operate on these shores and it would therefore be illegal to use it. It would be illegal to use your own VPN, without having some sort of governmental back door in there.

We’ve seen how effective banning guns has been. Yes, we have very few guns deaths but criminals still have them and I think Camerons special advisors are underestimating the ease of criminals in creating their own bespoke networks on the Internet and via wireless.

The fact that criminals are on the public Internet is a boon to law enforcement. It actually gives the government a chance to intercept. The alternatives are worse: criminal networks will run their own messaging networks on the Internet with non-backdoored communication channels or they’ll create their own closed darknets.

The problem with being to see every conversation is that they’ll look at every conversation. Surveillance will become an inexhaustible drain on technology resource; an ever-rising cost as they trawl through data a mile wide but only an inch deep.

While they’re inspecting your To-Do lists for secret words and deciphering your pattern of movements and check-ins on Swarm, they’re going to miss the deliberate attempts.

It’s not whether we want to be able to ready everything, David. It’s whether it’s appropriate, whether it’s necessary and whether it would be effective. It would cripple our digital industries and for all of these reasons, it’s important to see it for what it is. An undeliverable. It’s designed to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of voters.

I’ve always tried my best. When I was setting up QCON, I ignored the advice of naysayers. Similarly when I was writing RPGs for Crucible Design; some said it couldn’t be done. It was the same when I brought the Star Trek Megagame to QCON; it’s not possible. But it was.

I sacrificed a lot to achieve things – lost things along the way. It was the same when I set up MACSys – I remember being advised by a (now) director of InvestNI not to start because his company was going to crush us. They didn’t. Not by a long shot.

There are things that didn’t work. A sustainable accelerator/incubator for instance; mostly because I was unwilling to mortgage the startups of NI for pennies to a peppery developer who didn’t value startups at all. But I guess it was also my fault; maybe I just wasn’t the right guy to run it. Too grumpy, too suspicious, too pessimistic and definitely not naive enough.

But what about tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.

Malachi O’Doherty isn’t a believer. He’s written a lengthy and repetitive note complaining about the lack of a real economy in Northern Ireland. And if he is reflective of the philosophers in the province then he’s right.

“There’s no such thing as the NI economy and we’ll never be self-sufficient financially, such is our reliance on the Exchequer, but attracting more visitors can at least help us to pay our way”

This patronising opener relegates our region to knitting jumpers and mass-producing cultural knickknacks, or as he puts it “little ceramic orangemen”. We’ll all end up driving minivans around the Belfast murals and stopping at a street corner to comment sadly about what might have been without seats packed full of ghoulish tourists.

But smaller nations have prospered. Estonia endured years under the boot of the Soviet Regime and yet now boasts an economy that is not only an economic marvel but a socially and culturally progressive wonder.

The “Northern Ireland doesn’t have an economy” refrain is something I hear from the Nationalists in our midst. It’s part of the whole “Failed State” rhetoric and they do their damnedest to ensure that it remains true. That we maintain a massive welfare bill, that our people are spending their cognitive surplus in identity feuds and not in being productive members of society. And while they are happy to maintain Northern Ireland as an open sore on the British economy, the leads parties of Unionism are equally keen to maintain the status quo – citing that our dependence on the British economy is exactly the reason to stay in it.

Malachi is right that we will not progress while our leadership is wasting its time on identity disputes. We maintain segregated schools, much to the horror of thinking people everywhere who always point to that as the root of the identity issues in Northern Ireland. It’s so obvious and yet why don’t our leaders do something about it?

The Corporation Tax bill was presented yesterday and I have to believe that it will not pass through Parliament (mostly because Labour hates it and there’s not enough time before the election). So I believe the UK government sold us a sop in return for our compliance. But, in this complex negotiation it has to be said that our politicians were also hiding their true card under the table. As if a hasty deadline and economic hardship could force change in Northern Ireland. I don’t believe the Conservatives will deliver on Corporation Tax but then I also don’t believe that our leaders will delivery on peace, reconciliation, the economy, restoration of education, maintenance of health and everything else they may have committed to. We just have another holding pattern while everyone outside of Northern Ireland waits for the “bitter generation” to just grow old and die. Civilisation, as represented by almost everywhere else, can wait for us to grow up.

I deliberately used Malachi’s desert analogy in the title because of something that people forget about a mirage. A mirage is an image of a far-off place, transported into view via optical refraction of light in the atmosphere. In this case, we can see a mirage of a prosperous economy, we can even see the mirage of a society that is finally happy with their own identity. But we will never reach that mirage by repeating the mistakes of the last seventeen years.

I wrote: some day people will build cities around this

The thing that I loved about the Segway was the thing I loved about the Sinclair C5, the Ford Ka and the New Bus for London.
…
These are transportation devices that were built for tomorrow. They polarise – you either love them or hate them (or ridicule them) but you can barely ignore them. (The New Bus for London was designed and is manufactured here in Northern Ireland by Wrightbus).

I think it’s important to consider what we build and always build for tomorrow. Create things that polarise opinions.

I am reminded of this when I read Om Malik:

“If I make something different, then I don’t really have any competition. Either people like what I do, or they don’t like what I do.” Such a simple statement, but so hard to implement, because many find such comfort from hiding in the herd.

He also includes this quote from Ed Catmull, president of Pixar Animation Studios:

“It’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.”

In today's #MondayNote: "Legacy Media vs. Digital Native, the culture shock, in one chart. http://t.co/sUO5zbBQEA pic.twitter.com/kdxxSRqcDd

— filloux (@filloux) November 24, 2014

How the diagram describes traditional media?

Weak, insufficient, short-sighted. structurally limited, barely sustainable, ossified, weak leadership, terrible, no tolerance for failure, lost, outdated, impaired development.

YIKES!

I would add “blissfully ignorant in the way the dinosaurs must have passively admired a falling star”.

Chris Hazzard of SF doesn’t like the current mess in our education system to be defined as “segregated”. I don;t know if he has a separate word but even his language belies sectarian divides.

Of course, it is John O’Dowd, Education Minister and SF MLA who presides over the education policy that Integrated Education is the policy – but never have I seen less of a policy-adhered-to than this.

The 11plus, for segregating on ability, was too “integrated” for SF so they abolished it. Meaning that Catholic Schools train their indoctrinated charges for the “GL” while Protestant* Schools train their children for the “AQE”. Both of them unregulated, unstandardised and it’s a few select schools that actually require results from both sets of exams.

We can harp on about how Health is failing under the DUP but Education is failing under SF. And if there were ever two departments, out of the thirteen we have, which absolutely were required, it would be health and education.

Asked Integrated sector not to continue using term "segregation" when discussing schools – many parents proud to chose Catholic education

— Chris Hazzard (@ChrisHazzardSF) November 19, 2014

@ianjamesparsley loaded language suggests parents are actively segregated into camps – not fair or reflective of complex situation

— Chris Hazzard (@ChrisHazzardSF) November 19, 2014

@ChrisHazzardSF @dmcbfs @ianjamesparsley 80% of parents say they'd choose integration if it was available. Segregationists ensure it's not.

— Newton Emerson (@NewtonEmerson) November 19, 2014

Arlene has been playing around with an app on the Internets that seems to transform anyone into Simon Cowell.

I've given @cimota the Facetune treatment. So subtle, right?! #whocouldtell #undetectable #simoncowell pic.twitter.com/NHcopSFP0Q

— Arlene (@MaidofMuscle) November 17, 2014

One of the highlights of my week is two hours at the Magee Campus of the Ulster University with the Creative Technology students

The assignment I give them are about building practice in the business skills needed for being a good entrepreneur as well as being a good employee. It’s just as important for employees to understand balance sheets and profit and loss though these classes are often reserved for those who volunteer to take them.

My assignment on Tuesday was on the subject of crowdfunding. The last assignment involved building brand materials, product design, presentation skills (and attempting humour and delight) for a nonsense product they dreamed up. This time it’s about building awareness, gathering followers and backers and generally raising the profile of a Kickstarter for a local company, Billygoat Entertainment. It’s important to note that I have no links, financial or otherwise, to this company.

Here’s their KS link: https://…./projects/billygoat/hm-spiffing-a-comedy-3d-space-themed-adventure-gam

And here’s their video:

They also have demos available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

The assignment should be challenging, it should be helping them become aware of the steps needed to promote a Kickstarter campaign and if it helps Billygoat Entertainment too, that’s a bonus.