My Festivus Grievances: 2009

Last year I made a list of all of the technologies that worked my nerves for Festivus. Well ladies and gentlemen, Festivus is among us once again and I am just cranky enough to take another crack at a 2009 list. So sit back and don your Oscar the Grouch demeanor because I'm about to complain. I am in just such a mood since an old lady snapped "Move it!" in Fairway Market today because I took too long to find the saffron. Holiday shopping makes me hostile. Bah humbug. Happy Festivus.

Natali's Tech Letdowns for 2009

• MobileMe. The service is mostly fine except for the fact that it doesn't sync shared calendars from iCal. So if I want to sync my Google Calendar to my iPhone, I am SOL. Yes I know there are other solutions to work around that so please don't email me about them. I shouldn't have to find a workaround. I pay $100 per year for MobileMe. I want fully-functional synced calendars on my iPhone gosh darnit!


• Google Wave. Seriously, WTF? I can't figure out the purpose of this program other than for people to bug me in a new way. Pass.


• Mobile chargers. The European Union now has a law that mandates standard mobile chargers. Why can't we have that? I'm sick to death of carrying different chargers. We have czars that are in charge of our electronic lives now. Can't one of them fix this?


• AT&T Wireless. Their crappy coverage is the bane of my existence. It makes me want to shout profanities into the universe for minutes on end. It makes me behave unladylike. I #$%&ing hate you, AT&T!


• Earbuds. Why can't they be retractable and indestructible. Is that too much to ask for?


• iTunes. Actually, I don't have a problem with it as much as my mother does and I cannot offer her advice or support from across the country over the phone. When I get a call from her asking about iTunes, I blame the dropped connection on AT&T.


• Windows Mobile. I want to like these devices, I really do. But why does it take me 53 clicks/pushes/steps to accomplish what the iPhone can do in one swipe? Way more complicated than is has to be.


• Facebook. Over it. Sick of it. Can't add any new friends anyway so I'm on information overload. Need to take a break from caring. Facebook and I may get back together in the new year.


• The Barnes and Noble Nook. What a letdown. Such great promise, such bad execution.


• Apple rumors. This is the thing that I hate the most about my job: pretending that I care about Apple speculation and having to postulate an opinion. "What do I think about a tablet? Oh I think...(insert BS here)." I hate that. I have better things to do with my mental CPU.

That's all I've got now that I've sufficiently worked myself up into a frenzy. Tomorrow, I'll throw off the grumps and get back to the holiday spirit but this has been a fun and much-needed vacation from that. Air your grievances in the comments if you have them!

Blooper Reel Time

Annual outtakes on CNET TV. At the risk of sounding too girly, I've had a bad hair year.

Giving Back Just By Shopping

Please watch this special episode of Loaded. It is about how to give back while you are shopping this holiday season and beyond. This piece breaks my heart a little but at least we know how to do something to help.

Thank you for watching, sharing, and doing anything you can to help other people.

Namasté.

My Holiday Wish List

Dream big, right?

Technological Determinism Is False

I read that today in Yochai Benkler's book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom." He defines "technological determinism" as the expectation that technology will produce a new social structure. I have thought this for a long time in my career as a technology journalist, although I had not articulated it quite so eloquently. Just because you can build a new product, Web site, social network, or gadget, does not mean that you should. A nascent technology, in and of itself, will not change the world.

So what are the tools that do evolve our communication? I have been reading a lot about the democratization of information through "new media," which I assert is quickly becoming a throw-away term. Some academics believe that the Internet does not at all level the playing field like we expect it could/should. Matthew Hindman argues that the Internet actually preserves the patterns of concentrated control that have existed in the media for decades in his book, "The Myth of  Digital Democracy." All of this literature is starting to dull my enthusiasm for the power of social media, or at least make me want to play a little hard to get with technological determinism.

Hindman acknowledges that there is a lot of talk on the Internet by the Average Joe. But Average Joe is not being linked to, commented on, or otherwise memed. So is Joe yelling into a tunnel? If Joe blogs in a forest, does he make an impact?

Of course I am approaching this from the standpoint of a news reporter. The word "news" implies that information is new or novel. That is very seldom the case in news reporting. I am under no illusion that the news I bring to my viewers is 100% something that they have not heard of before. Broadcast simply can't compete with the Internet in that way. So in this time of communication evolution, we must ask ourselves which technologies will be deterministic and which will be filed away in the history books as no more than an artifice.

Barry Glassner argues that the media's love affair with any given phemenon is cyclical. He writes about this in "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things," a book which I helped research in its second edition. I am afraid that this applies to the Internet's love affair with new-ness. We get excited about anything novel but our burning love cools all too quickly as we look for the "next Facebook." It is as if we are in a constant state of digital anomie.

I wish I could wrap up this blog post with some declarative theoretical assertion but unfortunately these thoughts are still in progress. But it has been WAY too long since I blogged here and I figured unfinished thoughts would be better than no thoughts at all. So consider this media theory ad lib. Feel free to fill in the blanks with your opinions in the comment section.