Seneca on this vale of tears

"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears."

Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone unveiled

Samsung has unveiled its latest flagship smartphone - the Galaxy S3.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17935684

Another shiny-shiny new piece of gadgetry on the market, with the Galaxy S3 marking the next round of smartphone generations - quad-cores, super displays, mega megapixels etc.

Despite my fawning interest in the latest gadgets, I admit I do think that when it comes to smartphones I'm nearing 'feature-saturation'; while for years always had a personal wishlist of things I'd like to see on my phone, being honest currently in my tablet and phone I think I have pretty much all the things I'd really use (tho not of course all the things that would be nice to have). This is not to say all the generations have just been pointless gimickry, things like wifi tethering, good multitasking, media streaming and copious memory were all in my view valueable new elements, but overall I've suspected that the latest range of was due to include mere improvements on such existing funcitons, rather than additions of new really useful ones.  In particular I thought quad-cores weren't something I really needed on a phone. However, having looked at the latest S3 features, I think I might actually be proved wrong:

The most notable (to me) features :

• 4.8 screen with 309ppi Super AMOLED display. Probably about as large and detailed as need get in my view (maybe too large, will have to hold to decide)
• 1.4 GHz quad-core with 1GB of RAM
• smart power system whereby front camera tracks eyes and dims screen if detects you're not looking at it. Could be a nice feature if works seamlessly.
• video-in-corner to allow do other tasks in parallel. While might seem pretty useless, personally have often been watching a documentary or something and want to scribble a note, thought etc. in parallel.
• streaming to TV, streaming from PC
• 50 GB of dropbox space
• mirror function : send screen output to another device. Very cool for gaming (and reminds me of the main reason I broke with Apple: because on my IPOD touch the TV out was disabled by fiat - but supported by hardware as evidenced by jailbreaked versions -  from outputting games to TV)
• 8MP camera with flash. Probably nearing as good as one can get with the squashed optics on a phone (at least without some new step change in technology)
• voice control seems to be the big new thing, and Samsung has it's own version S voice (to rival Apple's Siri) but I'm still not convinced this will really work out - tho admittedly have yet to try the latest systems
• some deal with renting movies via the phone (good when coupled with stream to tv option)
  

Apart from the ability to write a message without interrupting a video, the areas where I think such (and presumably other 2012) phones do stand out is in movies and gaming. As someone who often rents movies on itunes and connects my ipod to TV to play it back, the possibility to rent on the phone, and stream to the TV is very appealing. Furthermore as an occasional gamer, but not committed enough to buy the latest consoles, the play on screen with phone as controller, backed by high processing power, is indeed something that I woudl actually consider a bonus, and not just a gimmick.
And of course while happy enough with my current phone camera, 12MP plus flash,plus processing features while not a quantum step (and already probably in plenty of recent phones) does bring this area to perhaps it's final level.

So all in all surprisingly impressed by the latest Galaxy, and just hope that large screen fits in my Christmas stocking (and budget) :-)

news nibbling - think before you read

Throughout history information has been the driver of progress-  the more we knew, the more we could do. While in previous ages it was only a lucky elite who had the time and resources to be involved in this process , the impetus was always a common human drive, which is why the internet, perhaps the ultimate information gathering and disseminating technology, has been seized upon and spread into every area of modern life. We are hard wired by evolution, and encouraged by culture, to discover and learn, and the one hunger which is considered always 'good', is the hunger for knowledge.

But is it possible that we could have too much of a good thing? Reading an piece on concentration recently I identified all too well with the statistics on how much time is diverted into online distraction. While of course we all click occasionally on light and meaningless topics, funny youtube links etc. the real point is that most of this time is not necessarily spent on such frivolous 'junk' but on seemingly worthwhile matter, like news, comment or reports. But the article's description of 'the long tail of information porn' made me realise that ultimately there might be not too much difference between this supposedly worthy weighty stuff, and the lighter dross, since both tap into innate urges for the novel, the desire for new facts to tickle our fancy, even if an intellectual one. These cravings are now amply catered to via the internet, and it is perhaps worth considering if there are parallels between the way we satisfy, and satiate, ourselves informationally, and how modern advances allowed us to go from simply providing for, to pandering to, other urges. Our dispositions were shaped by our evolutionary history, and the problem arises when a drive matched to a scarce natural resource, is confronted with artificial plenty. The classic example of this is our taste for sugary and fat things, and how this healthy drive is driven unhealthily  haywire by the hyper-sources of these substances modern society has created: fast food to sweets. Even though we know too much is bad for us, we are driven to start, for evolutionary emotional reasons, and find it hard to stop for rational ones.

It is possible that a similar (if much weaker) story is now starting to play out with information. Last year I encountered for the first time the phrase 'psychological obesity' and it struck me as encapsulating the dangers perfectly. Could it be that we are getting so used to gorging ourselves on information, and over relying on the mechanisms which deliver it, that we are at risk of missing out on the real benefits that underlie it, and which made it an evolutionary goal? It seems ludicrous to suggest that more information is anything but a good thing, but maybe in harsher times and societies the same could be thought about food, and what would seem to be the insane possibility of eating too much. The point is what we learn is only in important in so far as it contributes to what we actually know, and what we can do with it. Just as food is only a resource to enable the production of energy, to be able to DO things, information and even knowledge itself is only a means to an end. Since it worked for most of our evolutionary history nature has used the shortcut of embedding in us the emotional drive for the means, but now that the normally required levels can be surpassed, we must use our rational self-control to focus on the meaning instead.  We need to realise that we cannot drift through the new oceans of information scooping up data like whales with plankton, since as in all areas, we can over consume and like the obese body disabled by too much resources, we won't be able to use even some of them properly.

There is however probably a psychological side to this problem, since apart from the drive for gain, their is our powerful aversion to loss. Faced with a deluge of data we need to choose what is most important and relevant to us, but to choose somethings is to discard others, and this we hate doing. In the material domain we (mostly) have grown to appreciate we can't actually have it all, at the same time, but we are less used to such limitations in our mental worlds. Furthermore this involves one of the more personal and poignant kinds of loss, since to choose to know is to choose what to be, and we are particularly reluctant to close off possible futures, possible selves. Choice is hard, which is why we find it easier to surf endlessly on the tsunami of information, rather than swim in any particular direction. We feel like we're doing valid travelling, but really we're going nowhere.

To really move forward we not only need to obtain information, we need to process it, and apart from the requirement of manageable amounts, we also need to develop the mental mechanisms and habits to do so properly. Again the internet and other technology are a double-edged sword, since while they provide us with valid and valuable tools and shortcuts, they do not (yet, and for the foreseeable future) provide the complete answer. To use data we need to know more than just how to access it, which webpage or search tool will find it for us, but how to interpret it, and how it relates. While I may not need to know the exact dates of events leading up to say the first world war, knowing where to find them will never allow me apply this information in another area. Only if I have analyzed the history, thought about the chronology, recognize the patterns, will I actually UNDERSTAND what is otherwise simply a sequence of events, and be able, for example, to spot parallels and resonances in current situations. Wikipedia means I do not need to clutter my mind with the minutiae, but I can only use it do to help me once I have already understood the meaning.

Unfortunately this takes time, and effort. We must choose what we want to know, and then educate ourselves, and there is no taskbar which can speed this process up for us, since we need to allow our minds to mull and manipulate the data, and bring its unparalleled pattern matching powers to bear. But in this too the mood of the internet is against us, because the constant drive for the new, means constant changeover, and little time for such consideration. I was struck once by a comment a travel blogger made to me about how even when writing about places and societies that were hundreds or even thousands of years old, in the blogosphere there was a mentality that if it was not immediate, not in real time, it somehow was less relevant. When writing about a trip along the ancient route of the silk road, he felt like there was a demand for him to post while on the move,, from phone or netcafe, even though the thing being written about had not changed for centuries. The web audience feels that anything written in the past or retrospect, is somehow already dated, and this is not just removed from what is needed for proper knowledge, but anathema to it.  I admit I succumb to this prejudice myself often enough, for example if choosing a new psychology book to read anything more than 10 years old feels somehow outdated and less worthwhile than a newer text. While of course theories develop, a classic remains a classic just because it achieves an insight that lasts, and it could be argued that a decade old book that is still around, has proved its worth by its endurance against something new which might be a flash in the pan. Ironically the effect of the modern zeitgeist is to trap us in the now, while the point of deep knowledge is to allow us to escape to the past and future as well.

So, the upshot of this is I feel that it wouldn't be a bad thing to impose on myself a bit of a 'digital diet'. Just as one can count calories to manage one's weight, I think one needs to become an information connoisseur. To know anything I need to accept I cannot know everything.