Christmas Odyssey

Posted on 19/12/2011 by pier@visualid.com

Arctic conditions at Dublin Airport

This time last year, our part of Europe was in the icy grip of winter, and many Irish living abroad were struggling to make it home in time for Christmas. Ironically, I found myself “at home” in Holland for my mother’s birthday, and then tried to get back home to Dublin in time for Christmas. Things did not quite turn out as expected, and it took me more than 3 days of travelling through snow-covered airports and iced-over railway stations to get back in time for Santa’s visit to my real home in Goatstown.

This was the very first time I came to appreciate the power of “social media”, keeping in touch with friends and family throughout my journey via SMS, Email, Twitter and Facebook. This blogpost attempts to put all of the messages that I sent during those 80 hours – and some of the ones I received – in chronological order.

I was lucky enough to make it home in time to help Santa with his deliveries. To all of you who missed out on following me on Facebook and Twitter during those days, and of course to all of you who did, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year.

Email, November 26, 2010
ITINERARY/RECEIPT – All times are local.
From Eindhoven (EIN) to Dublin (DUB)
Mon, 20Dec10 Flight FR1965 Depart EIN at 18:25 and arrive DUB at 19:05
PASSENGERS
1. MR PIER KUIPERS ADT

The Start

I take the 13:00 train from Amsterdam to Eindhoven to begin my journey back home to Dublin.

SMS, December 20, 2010 at 17:28
Flight delayed. Supposed to leave now but not sure has it even landed here yet…

SMS, December 20, 2010 at 17:30
There’s about an inch of snow here but not snowing now. No plane either, though…

6 hours

SMS, 20 December 18:57
URGENT-Your Ryanair flight has been cancelled – please visit www.ryanair.com for free rebooking/refund

SMS, December 20, 2010 at 19:51
Amsterdam Dublin €300 with Aer Lingus. No Ryanair until friday at the earliest

SMS, December 20, 2010 at 20:15
Aer Lingus Booking Ref:28VPT2
EI0607 21DEC AMS-DUB
dep 15:10 arr 15:50.

SMS, December 20, 2010 at 21:40
Still on train travelling at snail’s pace. Jobien picking me up from station. Still snowing there?

12 hours

Twitter, December 21, 2010 at 0:07
OK, so I’m back in Amsterdam, having spent 6 hours in Eindhoven waiting for a Ryanair flight. Dublin Airport closed. Yikes.

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 8:48
Got stuck in Holland due to weather, trying to get home on 3pm flight.

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 9:41
Looks like dublin is in chaos. Praying that airport stays open

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 12:37
On my way to airport, but just heard that “We have had to suspend operations until 17.00 due to a recent heavy snowfall.” fucking great.

Twitter, December 21, 2010 at 13:17
On my way to Schiphol, second attempt at going home. Wish me luck.

24 hours

Twitter, December 21, 2010 at 13:36
Just in from Dublin Airport: “We have had to suspend operations until 17.00 due to a recent heavy snowfall.”
Great.

Andrew Watchorn
Does that mean that you’re just in from Dublin Airport or just in from Dublin airport – as in news. Former = Congratulations. Later = Commiserations!

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 16:39
Hell on earth. Queue at rebooking desk 3 miles long.

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 16:45
If you’re online, would you mind checking if ferries from holyhead are sailing?

Caoilte Guiry
Holyhead to Dublin:0040-0630, 0130-0630 or 1310-1810 (at £41) on 22nd according to national express. I’ll check bus routes too as its quite busy apparently

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 17:25
Stena offices closed, am on the train. Packed to capacity, people standing. What a madhouse

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 17:27
Everything booked out until Friday, including Cork. Thousands stranded. Trains chaos. Making my way to ferry to England, is only hope to get home before Christmas. Not joking.

30 hours

Twitter, December 21, 2010 at 18:48
Flight cancelled, nothing available until Friday. Making my way to Hook of Holland to try and catch a ferry to England.

England here I come

Facebook, December 21, 2010 at 20:30
Fuck Dublin Airport

SMS, December 21, 2010 at 21:55
Status update: Just pulled away from the quay, ferry from Hook of Holland – Harwich. Arriving tomorrow 7am, then train to London, onward to Holyhead. Across the Irish Sea, and home for Christmas:-)

Twitter, December 21, 2010 at 22:40
And the band played “Dreaming of a White Christmas” When the ship pulled away from the quay…

Henk Kuipers 
It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you
etc. etc.

Twitter, December 21, 2010 at 22:47
OK guys, this is it. On the North Sea en route to Dublin, with just that pesky bit of land inbetween. Wondering when I’ll lose my network.

42 hours

Foursquare, December 22, 2010 at 7:43
Harwich International Station
So far, so good

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 8:56
Home sounds like a good place to be! Just arrived in London, gonna check flights. Will keep u posted

Foursquare, December 22, 2010 at 10:07
Liverpool Street Platform 6
Getting tube to Euston station…

Mark Palmer 
You seem to be running to your new schedule OK. Good luck with the rest of your journey.

Chaos at Euston Station

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 10:21
In London Euston waiting for delayed train to Chester. No flights available until Saturday. Not sure if I’ll make Holyhead in time for tonight’s ferry…

Foursquare, December 22, 2010 at 10:41
London Euston Station (EUS)
See if Virgin can get me a ticket all the way to Dublin

Facebook, December 22, 2010 at 11:14
Train to Chester delayed. Massive crowd here, but maybe it’s always like this :-/

Twitter, December 22, 2010 at 11:28
Chester train cancelled. Fuck.

Sinead Lawlor
Don’t lose hope!!

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 11:41
Train to Chester cancelled. Now on the train to Crewe.

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 11:42
It’s unlikely that I’ll make the 5:15 ferry. There is one at midnight, it appears. Still need to get from Crewe to Chester to Holyhead first, though…

Twitter, December 22, 2010 at 12:07
OK, on train to Crewe, it’s a start. Seat with table, power supply and free wifi – no excuse, better do some work :-(

Twitter, December 22, 2010 at 12:15
Right, so the wifi is useless. View from window nothing but SNOW. Read my book?

48 hours

Snowy landscapes near Birmingham

Twitter, December 22, 2010 at 13:07
Picture postcards views of snowy English lanscapes near Birmingham somewhere

Foursquare, December 22, 2010 at 13:54
Crewe Railway Station (CRE)
On to Chester

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 15:03
Given up on ferry, Fully booked so no guarantee of getting across. Eoin got on alright, the bastard. Booked flight from BMX at 20:15

Facebook, December 22, 2010 at 15:57
Leaving Chester, heading back to Crewe. Stena not accepting any more passengers until Friday, so not heading to Holyhead but to Birmingham to catch a flight – hopefully…

Gerry McLoughlin
Jesus Pier, I hope you get sorted.

Tom Wiebe
I sense a book in the making…

Willie Van Velzen
ya poor git!

Email, December 22, 2010 at 14:30
Passenger(s): MR PIER KUIPERS
Flight: EI0277 – Wed 22 Dec 2010
Departs: Birmingham-Terminal 1 (BHX) 20:15
Arrives: Dublin-Terminal 1 (DUB) 21:15
Status: Y/Economy Class CONFIRMED
Airline: Aer Lingus

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 17:14
Made it to Birmingham Airport, flights looking good. fingers crossed.

Foursquare, December 22, 2010 at 17:44
Wetherspoon, Departure Lounge (BHX Airport)
FECK! DRINK!

53 hours

Facebook, December 22, 2010 at 17:53
Having travelled all this way over land, getting on a flight at this stage feels like cheating. But let’s not speak too soon – it may yet be cancelled…

Facebook, December 22, 2010 at 20:49
OK, flight’s delayed until 2300. Things are looking up for the anti-cheating squad.

Facebook, December 22, 2010 at 20:56
In Birmingham Airport sipping pint of ale. Flight delayed until 23:00. Aer Lingus gave me a €5 voucher – yay. I lost it – sigh.
Recent experience has taught me that delay is the first step to cancellation…

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 21:39
I am so goddamn bored and homesick. Entering day 4 of my attempts to get back. I’ll get the Aircoach to Stillorgan and a taxi from there no matter what the time, they go all night.

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 21:56
Latest news: flight delayed until midnight. I think I’ll have a pint, so.

SMS, December 22, 2010 at 22:16
Delayed, estimated 0001, gate opens 1 hr 5 mins. Believe it when i see it.

Now boarding...

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 0:35
“passengers please proseed [sic] to departure lounge by 2355.” Woah. I’d better drink up.

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 1:26
NOW BOARDING AT GATE 48. Oh yeah, baby.

SMS, December 23, 2010 at 00:27
I can SEE the plane, and people getting off it. They’re very slow, though…

61 hours

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 2:56
Guess what? My flight has been CANCELLED.
Aer Lingo are putting us all in the Hilton tonight, along with the crew who need their 12 hour beauty sleep now, rather than flying us back to Dublin first.
OK so. Whatever.

SMS, December 23, 2010 at 2:56
Latest travel news: flight from Birmingham CANCELLED at the last minute. Staff need their 12 hour beauty sleep. We’re told we’re flying tomorrow at 14:45. Yah right. All of us being transported to the Hilton now (at 2:45am)

Foursquare, December 23, 2010 at 3:56
Hilton International Birmingham
Ireland? Huh? Where’s that?

Dave Slater
Well, at least you’ll get to see what the outside of the National Exhibition Centre looks like – which I am sure has always been one of those boxes in life you wanted to tick.

Pier Kuipers
Heh. I ticked that box a few months ago when I was here for a meeting. Any other suggestions as to why being here might be a good thing?

Dave Slater
Pier, I was just trying to give you some encouragement.

69 hours

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 10:12
From Dublin Airport via Twitter: “We are temporarily suspending flight operations for about 30 minutes to allow the runway to be sprayed with de-icer.”

Ronan Doyle
i think dublin is closed until 1.30 :-0

Willie Van Velzen
snowing heavily in Leixlip at the moment

Ronan Doyle
Ever feel like that steve martin from Planes, Trains & Automobiles??

Mr Flight Delayed

SMS, December 23, 2010 at 10:55
Dublin Airport closed until 13:30 to clear snow

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 11:13
Latest News > 09.30: Flight Operations Suspended At Dublin Airport
Think Happy Thoughts.

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 12:43
The name is Delayed. Flight Delayed. And that’s Mr Delayed to you.

Andrew Watchorn - Classic!

Johan Sölve - Bummer.

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 13:45
Look! I got another boarding pass for my collection.

73 hours

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 14:09
Yesterday Dublin Airport was open, but we had no plane.
Today we have a plane and a crew, but no Airport. Two out of three ain’t bad?

Facebook, December 23, 2010 at 14:11
Dublin Airport Flight operations resumed at 13.00. Woot!

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 16:21
“ladies and gentlemen, can you please take your seats to enable a speedy departure so we won’t miss our slot”.
HURRY UP YOU MUPPETS!

77 hours

Arctic conditions at Dublin Airport

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 18:06
LANDED IN DUBLIN

SMS, December 23, 2010 at 18:07
Just landed after circling for 30 minutes. Nowhere for the plane to park, pilot describing “chaos & confusion”.

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 18:22
Chaos at Dublin Airport with planes fighting over spaces as if they’re in the car park at Tesco’s

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 18:45
Our plane’s captain needs a martialler to guide him to our parking spot. Can anyone help?

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 18:48
That should be “marshaller” of course. Anyone with a couple of torches and big earphones will do.

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 19:09
OK, plane’s parked. But now the air bridge is stuck, so we can’t get off. Oh, and it’s snowing again.

Twitter, December 23, 2010 at 19:42
And bingo: Dublin Airport closed.

SMS, December 23, 2010 at 18:53
Getting next available aircoach out of here

SMS, December 23, 2010 at 19:56
Sitting on bus but not going anywhere fast. It’s supposed to go to stillorgan shopping centre, trying to find out. Chaos here.

The Finish – 80 hours

I finally arrived home at sometime after 21:00 on the 23rd December. I shared a taxi with a fellow Christmas 2010 Veteran from the Burlington to somewhere in Goatstown where the taxi driver told us to get out, because he wasn’t driving any further through the snow drifts.

Twitter, December 25, 2010 at 1:25
Merry Christmas to all, and especially all of you who kept me company on Facebook and Twitter during my recent odyssey – thank you!


View Christmas Odyssey 2010 in a larger map

Posted in Holland, Human Experience, Ireland | 3 Comments

Pinpointing Ireland

Posted on 14/11/2011 by pier@visualid.com
Templemore or Thurles

Templemore or Thurles?

One of my clients asked me to put together a location map for a chain of hardware stores in county Tipperary, to appear on a new website. I was given a bunch of business cards with the relevant contact details. When I finally got around to do some work on the map, I discovered that these details consisted of nothing more than phone numbers and email addresses alongside the name of the town in which each store is located.

Thinking that visitors of the new website might want a slightly more accurate location than Google’s perceived town centre of “Thurles” or “Roscrea”, I asked my client to come back with an actual address for each store. This time, I was given a list with addresses such as “Cahir Road, Cashel” and “Templemore Road, Thurles”.

Looking at Google’s map of Cashel, I see that the Cahir Road stretches for 1.5 kilometres from the centre of town to the M8 motorway on the outskirts, hardly a pinpoint location. Asking Google to find the Templemore Road in Thurles proves even more elusive, when one of those red markers is firmly planted in the centre of the Thurles Road in Templemore (spot the difference of around 14 kilometers).

OK, so I deploy some common sense and trace this road in the direction of Thurles, hoping that we will see the expected exchange between the name of the town and that of the road. No such luck. According to Google, when the N62 coming from Templemore reaches Thurles, it is called the Brittas Road — the Templemore Road simply does not exist, other than in local folklore, maybe. Or maybe Google’s got it wrong, horribile dictu.

Eventually I had no other choice than to take a virtual trip on Google Streetview down the various Main and other Streets of county Tipperary — ultimately pinpointing all of the listed hardware stores. Happy days.

This is not the first time I’ve struggled trying to find a precise location on Irish soil. Every other week or so, I may receive a text message from my daughter’s coach telling us that the next match is against Such-and-Such in Somebody’s Park. Invariably I have no clue as to how I might get to the relevant grounds, and rely once again on Google to help me out.

A match in Hermitage Park landed a Google Maps marker in the middle of a housing estate in Rathfarnham. Alongside the “Park”, there’s a Drive, Court, Grove and a host of other examples of how to avoid using the word Street — but no sign of a sports field. Of course Google is blissfully unaware that locals (and GAA veterans) refer to the sports grounds in nearby St. Enda’s Park as, you’ve guessed it: Hermitage Park.

None of this would be a problem if Ireland had post codes like the rest of Europe, or maybe even the Rest Of The World. Combined with a house number, the average post code will translate into a GPS-friendly point on the map that leaves little room for confusion — or maybe that’s just my utopian view. As it stands, Dublin is the only city in Ireland to use primitive postal districts, carving the city up in 22 chunks, with odd numbers for the northside, even for the south, and a lone alphanumeric 6W for the posh.

On his website, a South Dublin solicitor states his address as “DX 225 002 Clonskeagh”. It’s a mystery where this cryptic pseudo-postcode comes from, but its progressiveness has to be admired. There are currently several unofficial postcode systems deployed in Ireland, such as GeoDirectory, GoCode and Loc8 Code — but these would be largely unfamiliar to the average punter, and the codes they produce don’t look anything like the one displayed by our solicitor. In fact, their codes appear to be shortcuts to geographic coordinates supplied by Google, and so my front garden would have a different code than my back garden.

Playing with their iPhone apps, I discover that my office is in Dublin L67 CRJ6 (GoCode) — or maybe that should be Dublin NR4-77-B13 (Loc8 Code). Either way, these codes point to my office in Tallaght, and then tell us that it’s the Blessington Road (correct) in Lucan (huh?) — compliments of Google.

Over the past decade, there has been plenty of talk by various ministers about plans to introduce post codes in Ireland. It seems that this project has so far been assigned to the category of perpetual procrastination, along with electronic voting and the rail link to the airport. I’d hate to guess how many millions have already been spent on coming up with suggestions that the post code format should be “memorable” and “alpha-numeric”.

Confusion in Clonskeagh

For now, it seems that we will have to make do without postcodes for the forseeable future. Finding addresses such as St. James’s Terrace in Clonskeagh will therefore remain a challenge when relying on Google, ending up in Dolphin’s Barn instead. Of course we can’t really blame Google when no. 2 St. James’s Terrace, Clonskeagh, is the exact same building as no. 4 Clonskeagh Road. So that’s St. James’s Terrace, Dublin 8. No wait, 6. It’s in Dublin, somewhere.

Johan Sölve liked this post
Posted in Ireland, Technology | Tagged | 3 Comments

Pax Vobiscum

Posted on 28/10/2011 by pier@visualid.com

missalI belong to a declining group of people who attend mass on Sundays. That may be a bit strange considering I’m a Dutch protestant, the son of a vicar – and one would expect to find me in the pews of the Church of Ireland or something similar. But that’s precisely the point – there is nothing similar to the Calvinist church of my youth to be found in Ireland, at least not in the mainstream. When in Rome, do as the Romans do; and so I became a practising non-Catholic in a country with increasing numbers of non-practising Catholics.

The first mass I ever attended was the Final Profession of a nun, the sister of one of my friends. I guess I didn’t start of with the Light version of the mass. It was all very bizarre — and I’m not just talking about the nuns lying prostrate before the altar. To a simple Calvinist like me, the pomp and ceremony of incense and multiple celebrants were as alien as the standard elements of bell ringing, kneeling, and of course the transubstantiation.

By now, I could be considered a veteran mass-goer and the routines of the mass hold few surprises. Nevertheless, it still amazes me how Catholic congregations mumble their communal prayers without any attempt at keeping time with each other. It took me years to work out the words to some of the basic prayers that every real Catholic can say in their sleep and are deemed so well-known that they are not even printed in misalettes — until recently, that is.

In their wisdom, the powers that be in the English speaking Catholic Church have decided that those familiar prayers and recitations now need to be changed. When the priest says “Peace be with you”, we are no longer to respond with “And also with you”. Instead, we should say “And with your spirit”, apparently because this is a more accurate translation of the original Latin, “et cum spiritu tuo”. And that’s just for starters.

Explanations on some Catholic websites attempt to justify the new English text from a theological point of view. “Of one being with the Father” becomes “Consubstantial with the Father”, supposedly because the English language is incapable of capturing the true meaning of the original Latin.

I would have thought that revised translations of religious texts reflect the language of the time in which they were published. The often used parody of “bible-speak” is based on archaic translations with sentences such as “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.” (Luke 18:19.) Apart from the obviously outdated English vocabulary, the problem with this type of translation is the literal word-for-word interpretation of the ancient Greek text, resulting in strangely constructed sentences. It’s a bit like translating “qu’est-ce que c’est” with “what is it that it is”.

So maybe the new missal is theologically more correct. In my opinion however, the choice of wording is a step backwards, alienating even more people from a church that could surely do with some modernisation. This would have been an opportunity to weed out some of the male-centered language in favour of more gender neutral wording, but alas.

Looking through the text of the new missal, things are looking good when we see that the publishers have accepted the current liberal translation of “et vobis fratres” in the Confiteor into “and you, my brothers and sisters”. Apparently there is no theological objection to asking forgiveness from both male and female members of the congregation.

However, when we get to the Creed, it seems that these same sisters are not deemed worthy of salvation. The generally accepted phrase in the familiar version of the Creed, “for us and for our salvation”, has been replaced with “for us men and for our salvation”. Sure, that’s what it says in the Latin original — but can our sisters not be saved as much as they can be forgiven?

The new missal does not tell us what to say when the priest tells us good morning at the beginning — so I take it our response does not need to involve his spirit. Thanks be to God.

Posted in Religion, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

640k Should Be Enough

Posted on 26/09/2011 by pier@visualid.com

“Designers are scum.” My coworkers can confirm that I sometimes come out with sweeping statements like this one, usually when I’ve been emailed yet another yousendit link to a 250MB PDF with designs for a few web pages. If the finished site were even half that size, each page would still take half an hour to load.

Bill Gates, a while ago.

Bill Gates once famously said (or didn’t say, one can’t be sure) that “640K should be enough for anybody” in reference to computer memory (RAM). That was sometime in 1981. Ten years later, our graphic design studio had two Mac IIci computers with 8MB of RAM — more than 10 times “enough”.

We all know that everything related to technology has developed along an exponential curve since those days. The phone I’m using to write this post is about one hundred times more powerful than one of those Macs; you’ve heard it all before.

Although I don’t think I fall into the Silver Surfer category of computer users, I’m certainly no novice. And just like my mother who would insist I eat all my dinner because she remembers what it’s like to have very little, I appreciate how much a Megabyte really is. Everything we produced on those Macs had to fit on a 1.4MB floppy disk if it was to leave our studio.

The proliferation of increasingly powerful computers has done away with their users’ concerns about keeping file sizes within certain limits. As a result there is now an enormous amount of digital waste being generated. Full A4 size high resolution images are used both in print and on web pages where they are displayed at a fraction of their original size — without the designer feeling the need to resize these images first. If Megabytes were bad for the environment, our planet would by now no longer be able to sustain life.

But it is not only the users who have been allowed to become wasteful with their bits and bytes. The modern progammes they use are just as guilty of producing superfluous digital junk — starting with bloated operating systems. Earlier versions of Adobe Illustator produced documents in almost readable PostScript code, but it now saves files in impenetrable PDF format. Export a Word document as HTML, and the result is a horrifying mess of outdated code that’s impossible to work with.

I belong to a generation of developers who are self-taught and started out writing code by hand – partly out of geekiness, but mainly because code-generating applications such as Dreamweaver did not yet exist. Those young web designers of today are spoilt for choice with WYSIWYG editors, GUIs and JavaScript and CSS libraries — so much so, that some of them don’t seem to realise that you really don’t need jQuery to perform basic functions that have been part of JavaScript since time began.

As for graphic designers — they should all be forced to work with a Mac IIci for a couple of months before being let loose in the real world. That should teach them how a design for a few web pages might actually fit on a 1.4MB floppy. And then upload it to the server by carrier pigeon.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments

Push and Pull

Posted on 02/09/2011 by pier@visualid.com

I remember when I first read about the terms push and pull technology in relation to internet stuff. Pull technology is when you go to visit a web page, so you initiate the communication, pulling the information down from wherever it happens to be stored. Push technology is where the contact is made by the server or content provider, pushing stuff to your computer such as new posts on a news feed you’ve subscribed to.

Gary Larson's take on Push and Pull

In the early days of the Internet, pretty much everything was served up through pull technology. The arrival of mobile phones has seen a massive increase in push, and not just smartphone things such as Twitter, email and mobile app notifications — even the humble text message is a very clear example of push technology.

So it seems that our media experience is shifting from pull to push, and we are becoming passive consumers of whatever it is that is pushed down our gullets. Or is it?

If we can just forget about the Internet for a second, we may realise that push technology has been around for quite a while. Good old television is push — you sit in front of a box and you watch whatever happens to appear on screen. If you don’t like it, you can push a button and have something else pushed into your living room. Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on.

Outdoor advertising is the ultimate push technology, in that the recipient does not even have to turn on a particular device in order to receive the information. It may not be as accurately targeted as a phone beeping in someone’s pocket to tell them that Wet Dog Ice Cream is on special offer in their favourite deli — but it has been tried and trusted for centuries.

When we visit a library, we can avail of what I consider pull technology in a low-tech kinda way. This truly is where we decide which information we would like to absorb, assuming we don’t live in some totalitarian state where half the books have been burned.

If we consider today’s online equivalents of the television and the library, we are immediately drawn towards YouTube and Google – both are of course Google, but let’s forget that for the moment. My children no longer watch television like I used to when I was their age — ignoring the fact that I didn’t have a lot of options. Instead, they huddle in front of the family computer to watch the latest episode of Annoying Orange, or some American soap that has never aired on this side of the Atlantic. They decide what they want to watch, and when — in comparison to traditional television, that’s a shift from push towards pull. Fifty-seven channels and somethin’ on all of ’em.

Now let’s take a look at Google vs the traditional Library. Before you start arguing that Amazon or Wikipedia would be more appropriate comparison candidates, I’m jumping to my own defense: Google is by far the most-used tool for people who look for information in this day and age. Back in 1975, if you were told by your history teacher to write an essay about something, you would go to the library to do your research and find out more about the topic. Nowadays, you Google it.

At first glance, looking for information in a library and searching with Google appear to have the pull factor in common: you decide what you want and ask the knowledge provider to get it. But hold on a second. Google is amazingly fast when it comes back with results, we’ve all noticed that. The results also appear to be eerily relevant to me, if only by showing me businesses that are located close to where I happen to be, for example.

Of course this is no coincidence. Google filters out an enormous amount of stuff that is deemed irrelevant – by Google, that is. Admittedly, if I’m looking for a French restaurant, I’d like Google to show me the ones in Dublin, if that’s where I happen to be. If I go to google.com, I am automatically redirected to google.ie. That makes sense. It appears however, that there is an awful lot more filtering going on in the background — more than the average user may be aware of. So much so in fact, that when we pull information from Google, it is skimmed off the top of what has already been pushed in our direction. Let’s not forget about the contoversy surrounding Google in China. And I’m sure Jim Corr has something to say about this, too.

Google’s auto-complete functionality lists suggestions as soon as you start typing your query, tempting us to just click on one of those, rather than completing our own search terms. If we make a spelling mistake, Google helpfully suggests a correction and takes the liberty of showing you the results for the corrected version — not your supposedly mistaken phrase. In Decemer 2004, when someone searched for “I love Jews”, Google famously suggested “Did you mean: I love Jesus?”.

Maybe the Google experience could be referred to as nudge technology. Users can fight back, however, and our submission to Google’s nudge is the equivalent of not changing TV channels because the remote is somewhere under the couch. I have seen my kids exhibit this lazy behaviour by routinely selecting one of the first results Google comes up with, rather than actually looking through the results to see what might be of real interest.

Of course the content that’s presented to us on YouTube has also been filtered and customised based on our previous online behaviour — or even based on the content of our emails, if we’re using Gmail, as my friend Dave Slater pointed out the other day. So what I thought was changing from push to pull, turns out to be some sort of pre-pushed pull. As for the information we receive through subscription feeds and other push notifications, as well as banner ads — these have been chosen and pre-filtered either by ourselves or by our perceived tastes, and can be described as, well… pre-pulled push, I guess.

So which is it? What’s better? I’m confused.

I like to think that push represents exposure to new ideas and other cultures. It can open our minds.

Push also represents indoctrination and oppression. It forces information down our throats.

Pull may represent free will and the chance to make our own minds up.

Pull also means that we play it safe and only get what we like to see, read or hear. It can inadvertently narrow our minds.

You decide — I wouldn’t like to push it. Or should that be pull?

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment