Staying Connected

When I visited Japan three years ago, I was stunned to see how many people poked at their phones as they rode the trains or walked along the streets. I had heard a lot about Japan's high-tech industry, and I thought this strange phenomenon was a local quirk limited to Japan, whose society is known for its attachment to technology.

In this respect, Japan was just ahead of the curve. Now, three years later, Manhattan is no different. During my daily commute, I spend considerable effort avoiding bumping into the many people staring down at their plams. I am even occasionally guilty iWalking myself. Whenever we're bored, our phones offer an easy escape to another world of email, tweets, and blogs.

Of course, I realize I'm not pointing out anything new -- countless articles are written on this subject, many coming to different conclusions about what the new phenomena of information at our fingertips, constant connectivity, and faster computing mean for our society: we're getting stupider, we're becoming smarter, the singularity is near, etc. One of the more fun conclusions from this trend is that the reason we haven't met any aliens is because they're busy playing computer games.

I don't know where this technological progress will lead. Information technology allows science to advance at a faster and faster rate, forming a positive feedback loop. Being constantly connected is addictive, and I imagine as technology improves, this trend will get stronger and stronger. I see myriad benefits, but also some downsides. As we spend our minutes checking email and tweets, we leave fewer hours for things that are immediately less fun but ultimately more fulfilling -- like reading a long novel or even simply thinking deeply without interruption.

I got thinking about all this during my recent trip to Israel, where I didn't have the constant connectivity I am now used to. I had no iPhone reception, the internet connection in my hotel was spotty, and I even used physical maps to navigate while driving. And even though it was a bit frustrating, in many ways it was nice to be off the proverbial digital leash.

While I think that technology, including information technology, is a big net plus for society, there's also some real danger of us ending up like those imagined aliens. I don't know if we have any power to change the course this arrow is taking, but I want to stay connected to the real world, even as I inevitably become more connected to the virtual one.

So while I'm happy you're reading this post, maybe it's time for a walk -- without your phone.

Caveat Surfer

A recent article got me thinking about laws and the internet. A couple days ago, the Latvian police apprehended a researcher at the University of Latvia who they claim hacked into government systems and obtained tax documents of various officials. Apparently, there was a security flaw that allowed anyone to access Latvian tax records by basically visiting the proper url. So this alleged "hacker" probably wrote a simple shell script to get 7.5 million tax documents and sent them to a journalist. He now faces a possible 10 years in jail for essentially executing an illegal command.

Now, we don't really know what he did, and I have little knowledge of Latvian law, but it got me thinking about what I'd ideally like the law to be. On one extreme, we have people who write viruses and purposely cause lots of damage; on the other extreme are people who steal wifi from the local coffee shop (even they can get arrested).

This Latvian story falls somewhere in between -- unlike the wifi "thief," the Latvian hacker probably should have known what he was doing could get him into trouble, but do we really want to live in a society where you can be sent to jail for visiting a website? It seems one problem is that visiting a website can include everything from buffer overflow attacks to illegal currency transfers. But this incident feels more like the Latvian government put sensitive information online and then decided to arrest anyone who accessed it.

I guess it's unavoidable that laws about the digital world, even more so than laws about face-to-face interactions, will have seemingly arbitrary lines between what's legal and what's not. But there should be some burden on people and governments to reasonably protect their own data -- and freedom for all of us to poke around a little.

Reddit has some interesting comments on this story.

For a blog on these types of issues by people who have thought about them more than I, visit Freedom to Tinker.