Empowering killing...

 The demand for "kill switches" on smartphones has prompted an about-face by manufacturers and carriers to offer an opt-in capability on new phones starting in 2015.

CTIA-The Wireless Association, a wireless communications trade group, said on Tuesday that smartphones manufactured after July 2015 for sale in the US will include "a baseline anti-theft tool" that is either preloaded or can be downloaded. The voluntary agreementalso stipulates that mobile carriers will support the availability and use of this tool.The anti-theft software will be capable of: remotely wiping data from the device in the event of loss or theft; rendering the smartphone inoperable to unauthorized users, except for emergency services calls and, if available, user-defined emergency phone numbers; preventing unauthorized reactivation "to the extent technologically feasible"; and restoring operability and user data if possible and desired by the authorized user. [More]

At first blush, this appears to be a reasonable step to addressing the increasingly troublesome smartphone theft problem in major cities. (Here in the farm we're wrestling with the smartphone-tilled-in problem, of course).  Some don't think this goes far enough, however.

“The wireless industry today has taken an incremental yet inadequate step to address the epidemic of smartphone theft,” Mr. Leno said in a statement. “Only weeks ago, they claimed that the approach they are taking today was infeasible and counterproductive. While I am encouraged they are moving off of that position so quickly, today’s ‘opt-in’ proposal misses the mark if the ultimate goal is to combat street crime and violent thefts involving smartphones and tablets.” [More]

But after all the anxiety of bad guys taking your phone and doing naughty things with it dies down, and adding the troubling alleged linkage of the NSA to the Heartbleed virus, I'm thinking how easy it will be for smartphones to be rendered pocket junk by the government.

Maybe this possibility already exists at the carrier level and we just aren't aware of it, but even from my distance of the libertarian fringe, easier communications shutdown can be seen as a bug, not just a feature.

The silence shortage...  

It is slowly dawning on me that the future may belong to people who can, you know, shut up. As a committed and prolific talker/writer this is doubly disturbing. But ubiquitous, instantaneous communications have changed the rules for public (and ostensibly private) utterances, and most of us haven't quite grasped the consequences.

It's not just gaffes - which should be in the running for Overused Word of 2012. It's seemingly innocent statements easily taken out of context, ad lib diversions from tightly scripted information controls, or just a collections of words that can be analyzed in convoluted ways by people like me with way too much access to too many minds.

Just this week we saw some missed opportunities, for example:

• Mitt Romney, after a gracious concession speech, erased any doubt of his indiscretion with a remark he could have swallowed instead: "The president's campaign, if you will, focused on giving targeted groups a big gift," Romney said in a call to donors on Wednesday. "He made a big effort on small things."
• Israel's Interior Minster thought it was a good time to channel Curtis LeMay: On Saturday, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai was quoted by Israel's Haaretz newspaper as saying that the goal of the operation was "to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years".  

And I needn't mention Mourdock and Akin. 

Or so many seemingly smart people who somehow think their e-mails are private.

The New Rules seem to me to be: Everything is on the record and forever. The truth is out there but so is all the other stuff you think out loud about.

Reluctantly, I am forced to the conclusion that this century will belong to reticence and discretion, both individual and in groups. Simply remaining silent more often will pay off defensively as you will have less baggage to carry forward and more degrees of freedom. (Although to be fair, tolerance for opportunistic flip-flopping seems to be increasing - perhaps as a consequence)

Of course, these words will come back to haunt me, I just realized.

I notice they didn't test calls to Dad...  
  
Calling to talk to Mom is good for you.

Wired flags a new study that proves many mothers across the country right: For your own sake, you should call home more often. The research comes from Evolution and Human Behavior. It finds that a phone call to mom provides significant stress relief while instant message conversations won’t quell the nerves.
The conversations happened after research subjects took a stressful test. As subjects spoke (or typed) with their mothers, the researchers measured changes in levels of cortisol (generally linked to stress) and oxytocin (a hormone linked to pleasure). When subjects talked on the phone, cortisol levels dropped and oxytocin went up. But IMing with Mom looked the same as having no contact at all. [More]

I also note the test was for girls calling home.

The real fight over the Internet...

Several coincidental (or maybe not) developments underscore the growing importance and vulnerability of the Internet in virtually every aspect of modern life. 

First, from Egypt, note the usual pattern of capturing the TV and radio stations was preempted by a government shutdown of the nations ISP's. 

The domino-like takedown of the ISPs indicated the government didn't have a master shutoff switch, but ordered each company to flip their in-house switches.

"This sequencing looks like people getting phone calls, one at a time, telling them to take themselves off the air," James Cowie, chief technology officer for Renesys, said in the company's blog. "Not an automated system that takes all providers down at once; instead, the incumbent leads and other providers follow meekly one by one until Egypt is silenced."

Vodafone Egypt issued a statement saying all mobile phone operators had been ordered to suspend services in selected areas. "Under Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply with it," the company said.

The Egyptian government is not the first to shutdown the Internet during political unrest. The Burmese government ordered a takedown in September 2007, and Nepal severed all international Internet connections after the government declared martial law in February 2005.

The fewer the ISPs, the easier it is for governments to impose a blockade. Burma, for example, had only two ISPs in 2007. Shutting down the Internet in developed nations, such as the U.S., would be far more difficult, if not impossible, because of the many ISPs operating in the countries with networks linked to other networks inside and outside the borders, experts say. [More]

Now stay with me, as one commenter thinks this presages a new pattern for - of all things - the NFL.

Facebook and Twitter may get credit for changing the face of northern Africa and I'll go out on a limb and say they'll play a huge part in the dissolution of another global force: the NFL Players Union.

      No one wants to talk about a possible lock-out and the threat of a football-free autumn of 2011, especially not around here as the Packers are poised to take on the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.   That's fine, because a trip to the Big Game is a rare and wonderful thing, something to be savored and not sullied with labor pains.
      But once the last piece of confetti hits the Cowboy Stadium field, the NFL will shift it's focus not to preparing for a new season but making sure there IS a new season.    Owners opted out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, claiming players salaries are cutting way too far into their profits.    Players defend the status quo, saying that there is no game without them and that they should be paid accordingly.    Owners will say that they can't go on like this, not when so many teams need new stadiums to compete.    Players will say all that they want to do is...play.    A lockout looms in early March.
      That's when the fun will begin, especially among the rank and file.
      More and more players are taking to Facebook and Twitter, supposedly to clue friends and followers in on how they feel about the events of the moment.    What some DON'T realize is how far their words reach in a digital word.  [More]

Our current hold-our-nose partnership with Mideast dictators to help counter terrorism suddenly is put in different light when juxtaposed next to the Obama administration position on Net Freedom.

Now comes the test. The Internet Freedom Agenda may have just undermined an ugly pillar of the U.S.’ Mideast strategy — supporting dictators — without doing much to aid the discontented millions that might replace it. While Obama tepidly calls on Mubarak to let people keep tweeting, Egyptian protesters may want the U.S. ”to completely get out of the picture,” as one told al-Jazeera. “Just cut aid to Mubarak immediately and withdraw backing from him, withdraw from all Middle Eastern bases, and stop supporting the state of Israel.”
That’s exactly what Mubarak never demanded — and why the U.S. fears what comes next. ”The traditional debate is that we’re willing to use these tyrants because they’re useful,” explains Marc Lynch, a George Washington University political scientist. “But if we continue to see developments like those we’ve seen over the last couple weeks, if they can’t hold on to power, it doesn’t matter if they’re useful in counterterrorism.”
Not that the U.S. did much to persuade Egyptian protesters it’s on their side. The Obama team “could have come a lot stronger, prevented the Egyptian government from the crackdown on Internet communication, but they didn’t,” says Sherif Mansour from the human-rights group Freedom House. That makes Obama look either impotent or callous.

And it shows the Internet Freedom Agenda to be a dodge. The heart of the issue is whether the U.S. actually sides with the protests spreading around the Arab world — first Tunisia, now Egypt, and in Jordan and Yemen as well. Asking Mubarak to bring back the Internet pales in comparison to the annual $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid he receives. [More]

But even in the face of such demonstrations of the exploding power of the Internet, so-called Big Government haters can't wait to make it another arm of a domestic police state.

Thanks to the GOP takeover of the House, the odds of such legislation advancing have markedly increased. The new chairman of the House Judiciary committee is Lamar Smith of Texas, who previously introduced a data retention bill. Sensenbrenner, the new head of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, had similar plans but never introduced legislation. (It's not purely a partisan issue: Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, was the first to announce such a proposal.)

Police and prosecutors are the biggest backers of data retention. FBI director Robert Mueller has saidsaid last year that Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," meaning logs of which Web sites are visited. that forcing companies to store those records about users would be "tremendously helpful in giving us a historic basis to make a case" in investigations, especially child porn cases. An FBI attorney

And the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which will be sending a representative to tomorrow's hearing, previously adopted a resolution (PDF) calling for a "uniform data retention mandate" for "customer subscriber information and source and destination information." The group said today in an e-mail exchange that it still supports that resolution.

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, says the push for legislation is an example of pro-regulatory Republicans. "Republicans were put in power to limit the size and scope of the federal government," Harper said. "And they're working to grow the federal government, increase its intrusiveness, and I fail to see where the Fourth Amendment permits the government to require dragnet surveillance of Internet users."[More]

It is curious to me that in the litmus test for socialist downsliding how a health insurance mandate is a hideous theft of our rights, but tapping my computer is prudent behavior enforcement.  This action, along with others will reveal that the Tea Party activists have been naive tools, IMHO. [Kudos to Cato for calling them out, BTW]

Back on topic, I think all of us, and especially the rural community where communication faces different hurdles, better pay more attention to seemingly abstruse Internet control debates and regs. We could find ourselves in a world where the most power tools for popular redress and opinion are dangerously at risk. It will involve homework we don't want to do and relationships with people very unlike us, but we have several dogs in this fight.

Tired of bullets?...

You're not alone.  There is a small but growing segment of teaching as well as speaking who find PowerPoint to be less the magic bullet (heh) it seemed to be a few years ago.

Teaching with PowerPoint has a different pace and structure than teaching with chalk or markers. It’s not just about overall fast vs. slow (though that’s part of it), but about when you go fast and when you go slow. When I use the board, I write down the major points, terms, definitions, etc. That forces me to slow down at exactly the moment when I’m making a big point and students should be attending closely. Once the critical information is on the board, I can elaborate, discuss with the class, ask questions, etc. while it hangs up there behind me for students to refer to. And since writing slows me down, I don’t give as much emphasis to relatively minor points — giving students an additional cue as to what’s more and less important. (“Don’t ignore this completely, but it’s not as central as what I said earlier.”) You can reproduce this kind of pacing and structure with PowerPoint, but in practice it’s difficult to do during a live performance in front of a classroom. You have to write your presentation with delivery (not just content) in mind. Otherwise it’s just too easy to blow through major and minor points at a constant pace.
Another point that she makes… I still use PowerPoint in my big introductory classes (though I make my own slides from scratch, use animation to help regulate my delivery, and try to avoid the mind-numbing bullety templates). I always have a few students ask me to post the notes before class. I don’t — I post them after class, but honestly, I have sometimes wondered if I’d be better off not posting them at all. Carolyn modestly writes “while [posting notes] is great for a lot of students, it doesn’t work for me…” but I actually think this describes most students. A lot of students misread their internal cues — if it feels like they are expending a lot of effort then they think they must be struggling with the material. Actually, though, if the professor is presenting challenging material, then you shouldn’t feel relaxed — relaxation is a sign that you’re probably thinking superficially or zoning out, not that you’ve quickly mastered the material.

I also found it impressive that Carolyn reached this conclusion on her own. Because frankly, it’s fundamentally very difficult to introspect into your own learning processes. A few years back, when I started moving away from PowerPoint, I got feedback on my student evaluations from people who wanted more PowerPoint. When I talked with students who felt that way, they thought they’d be able to focus more on the material if they didn’t have to bother taking notes. I realized that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what note-taking does for you. I’ve been getting less of that feedback lately — maybe because I’ve gotten better at using the board, or maybe because recent students have been around PowerPoint longer and see its limitations more clearly. [More]

Having spent a lot of time watching other PPT presentations (mostly mediocre, IMHO) I think a new balance needs to be found. Teachers and presenters are getting lazier and I think the audience is following their example.

At the very least, after you finish your PPT, halve the number of slides and bullets and you'll be about right, I've found.

I rate this as good news...

While we in the country insist on lots of local control over public matters, what it usually boils down to is politics and self-interest on a microscopic scale.  It also means very little gets done. Slowly.

When siting communications towers or wind farms, the best and worst of our civic commitment is on display.  Higher authority is not to be despised in such cases.

The unanimous “declaratory ruling” made good on a promise FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski made in an otherwise coolly received speech at an industry conference in early October. Under the new rules, state and local governments must act within 90 days of receiving an application for a co-location, that is, a tower site to be shared with other operators, and 150 days for other applications. Carriers have complained that governments are frustrating their efforts to improve coverage by sitting on tower applications indefinitely.

The FCC also ruled that state or local governments may not use the fact that wireless service is available from another carrier as ground for rejecting an application. And they may not require a zoning variance for every cell site. [More]

One small step for better broadband and phone coverage.

The power of public conversation done well...

Just last week I heard three separate comments and read many more about the state of public debate in the US.  One of these comments was how watching TV was just too upsetting, and the commenter said his family was now turning off all news, even the ones they used to like.

Certainly the times have forced the pace of change and those changes threaten how we live our lives.  You can't have a massive recession, war and terrorism, fundamental policy change and historic political events unfold in a smooth easy-to-understand narrative.

But the real fulcrums for this reaction, I think are new media strategies being adopted by communications companies to rebuild readership and viewership. In the short run, highly partial recounting of the news seems to be effective to attract audiences.

But lately the long-term viability of this idea seems in question.

Chayefsky imagines cynical television executives who create a ratings sensation out of the nightly rants and ravings of Beale. The host energizes the nation with his cry, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" It's hard to find a film that better captures the rotten vibe of the early 1970s, when America found itself suffering through one downer after another: failing companies, tense foreign relations, high unemployment, rampant incivility, spiraling deficits, corruption in high places, a seemingly endless war. Sound familiar?

Beck often cites Beale as an inspiration and a tribune for our own times. "I think that's the way people feel," he told an interviewer. "That's the way I feel" — like the fist-shaking, hair-pulling Beale. Whether channeled by a playwright on the left or a talk-show host on the right, anger and distrust can be dramatized and monetized. But do they ever really go anywhere?

The trouble with this prophecy is that we never find out what happens to the people watching Beale. Do they stay mad forever? Does their screaming ever lead to something better? Does the rage merely migrate, sending new audiences with new enemies to scream from more windows? And if the time comes when every audience is screaming, who, in the end, is left to listen? [More]

The public temper tantrum may be a working answer for selling aspirin, but if you have to communicate a corporate message to a public whose attention seems to be floowing the loudest outrage, how do you do that?

Bob Greene found one interesting answer in the last place you would expect: the words of Richard Nixon.

One answer may be found in an unlikely place -- in words spoken by the most divisive political figure of his era.

Richard Nixon, in his first inaugural address during a time of widespread public rage in the United States, talked about "reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth."

Nixon's presidency would end in shambles. But on its first day, here is what he said about how to soothe the anger that was consuming the nation:

"To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves. ... To lower our voices would be a simple thing."

Some people's feelings about Nixon undoubtedly cloud their opinion of everything he ever did. Yet what he said as he took office in a time of nonstop partisan conflict is worth considering as we pass through similar days:

"In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

"We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another -- until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices."

But maybe that has become impossible. The pedals are mashed against the floorboards now, and our engines are roaring too loudly for any calming voice to be heard. We seem to be approaching the bad part of the movie. The part where we find out that no one wins. [More]

It is such an approach that is  exemplified by this.

The corporate response by ADM to the new movie "The Informant!" was IMHO, masterful. In fact, all of us at USFR watched it and immediately grasped the skill and effectiveness of the video, but more importantly the attitude underlying the message.


(One caveat: none of us understood the washed out and rather bleak background - presumably shot through a window at the HQ - but hey, that's just TV people quibbling)

I remember the Midwestern drama that unfolded during the investigation.  I also recall the exceptional reporting of columnist Alan Guebert, whose legwork was remarkable and indefatiguable.  If he had some web presence I would link, but he apparently is betting all on a print comeback or something).

I followed the increasingly bizarre aspects of the case with detached bemusement.  And yes, it did alter my opinion of ADM.  To be fair, I worked during college across town in Decatur at Staley, at the time a rival of ADM, so I was hardly unbiased.

But regardless of what you think about ADM, this little gem of communications illustrates something I had hoped to begin witnessing.  In a world of shouting and industrious misrepresentation, a calm, confident voice commands immediate respect and trust.  It need not be seen by millions to have large effects either, because unlike the rants, it does not have to be reinforced daily.

Our bodies do not tolerate permanent outrage well. Sooner or later, we have to adjust our brain chemistry to allow our cardiovascular system to endure, to name just one physical threat.  In fact, I think the decision to turn off cable news could originate in brains desperate for relief.

ADM could have marshaled facts and created bullet points too. But as someone who has stepped away from PowerPoint during my presentations, I can reinforce the idea of the power that simple narrative now has.  No quick cuts, special effects, or interwoven music or images - just one person talking to you in conversational tones.

Don't get me wrong.  I suspect the script wasn't dashed off twenty minutes before filming and I hope Ms. Podesta didn't do it in one take (trust me - it's harder than it looks), but I think the increasingly popular choice for corporate voices will resemble this example more than stern attorneys deflecting questions or talking heads exchanging acidic barbs.

Agriculture at every level should notice this, as we engage in public debates on everything from trade policy to animal rights.  America is developing a hunger for listeners and brief-talkers.  Above all, they want to feel better - not worse - after the exchange.

The urge to mount vigorous and strident public relations campaigns often arises from people who produce vigorous and strident public relations campaigns, I have found. It is job security not to suggest quiet forbearance or (God forbid!) good-natured tolerance of what will prove to be soon forgotten nonsense.

We need to instead 1) do our job well, 2) bear more than our share without complaining, 3) keep our sense of humor, and 4) be the calm voice that helps those we serve find refuge from the din of acrimony.

Several thousand were to me...

Lest you think government can't get anything right, this encouraging news.

A federal judge has issued two temporary restraining orders designed to stop what officials describe as a wave of deceptive "robo-calls" warning people their auto warranties are expiring and offering to sell them new service plans.
"Today the FTC has disconnected the people responsible for so many of these annoying calls," Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said Friday.
"We expect to see a dramatic decrease in the number of deceptive auto warranty calls, but we are still on high alert," Leibowitz said in a statement posted on the agency's Web site.
The FTC filed suit against two companies and their executives on Thursday, asking a federal court in Chicago to halt a wave of as many as 1 billion automated, random, prerecorded calls and freeze the assets of the companies.

Officials say the calls have targeted consumers regardless of whether they have warranties or even own cars and ignore the Do Not Call registry. They say telemarketers have misrepresented service agreements consumers have to buy for warranties that come with the price of the car. [More]

More interestingly, in this era of deabte over the role of government, how would limited-government backers approach this problem?  Or would they consider it a problem?  Is it free enterprise, and simply a cost of owning a phone?

Hold the phone...

Or sell it.  It seems Verizon is tired of not fixing all those pedestals I have run over mowing roadsides during my farming career.  They have sold my phone business.

Verizon continued their move to exit the rural local exchange business with the announcement today of the sale of 4.8 million access lines to Frontier Communications of Stamford, Connecticut. It’s a bold move by Frontier, almost tripling them in size and catapulting them to one of, if not the largest, service provider focused on rural markets in the U.S. Frontier will have over 7 million combined access lines after the acquisition. The new Frontier and the combined CenturyTel-Embarq will be extremely close in size and either could qualify as the largest U.S. rural service provider, depending on the choice of measurement. The operations Frontier will acquire include all of Verizon's local wireline operating territories in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin. In addition, the transaction will include a small number of Verizon's exchanges in California, including those bordering Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. [More]

Now, of course, my heart leapt with anticipation of true high-speed broadband (>3 Meg for me), but who am I kidding?  Anyhoo, one of my neighbors has 5 Meg!! at his farm (wireless), and I'm going to duplicate his setup if I can.