In 0s and 1s we Trust
Earlier today I was sitting in the RFK Library at the University of Guam writing out an article for Guamology, unfortunately however, after writing a few paragraphs, the program shutdown unexpectedly, and with it the entire article was erased.
It’s all to familiar to many of us, for Windows users it’s usually a ” ‘ProgramX’ has encountered a serious error and must close” or the infamous Blue Screen of Death (commonly referred to as BSOD). Macintosh users usually don’t encounter a crash or error screen and when OS X Tiger was introduced a few years ago the OS X operating system was labeled as having a “No-Crashing” policy… soon however, Mac users discovered they have their very own crash screen… the “Mac Black Screen of Death”. While Macs seem more resistant to errors and crashing, they still crash. The Mac forums on apple.com even list a number of various error codes that occur within OS X.
We live in the 21st Century, the age of the Information Revolution. Every part of our lives revolve around technology it seems. Everything from television viewing, automobiles, our credit reports, cellphones, Blackberry s, work and business, school, etc. Our lives are being taken over by billions and trillions of 1s and 0s. Binary is the fundamental block of all electronic information, just like how atoms make up everything we see and how cells make up our bodies. While there are many good things that accompany technology, there are also so many flaws to relying on 0s and 1s, bits and bytes, megas and gigas.
In America and Guam by association, technology is everywhere. To communicate with others, it seems everyone relies on text-messaging or using IM and social networks like MySpace and Face Book, rather than face-to-face contact. Business meetings are done over Skype or MSN Messenger, school study groups IM each other from different areas, even families communicate more thru cellphones and texting than they do in-person at home.
Most people I know, myself included, rely on hard drives to store our memories of the past few years. Everything from pictures and home videos of vacations and birthday parties to essays and reports, everything is stored on a few hand-sized metal discs spinning at 72,000 rpm’s with a very delicate read/write head that can easily bounce out of place after time causing a computer crash. Most people don’t even remember black books or Rollodex… instead we all leave our important contact information in our Outlook contacts or the very delicate and tiny Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. Also, enterntainment trends have certainly changed over the years thanks to the onset of Peer-2-Peer sharing, media sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, and musical entertainment is usually found on LimeWire, Torrents, or MySpace music pages.
Ask yourself this:
- When was the last time you had actual pictures printed and placed in a scrapbook or album? (Excluding special occasion photos or studio portraits)
- How often do video media sites such as YouTube serve as “quality entertainment” or a primary source of entertainment to you?
- When was the last time you purchased an actual audio CD or movie or visited the theater rather than relying on iTunes, Limewire, Torrents, P2P sharing, Netflix, or On Demand?
- How often do you rely on WikiPedia or Google, rather than going to the local library or bookstore and finding research the old-fashioned way?
- When’s the last time you wrote a friendly letter, birthday card, or greeting card instead of sending an IM, text message, or e-mail?
For those I’ve asked and posed these questions to, there was usually a shrug of the head, a hand on their chin, and a raised eyebrow. Thus followed by an “I don’t know.” response.
We’re already deep into the murky waters of technological dependence, and we all need to learn to wean off of our binary and hexadecimal friends and interact more with our vocal chords and handwriting. We rely so much on technology to do everything for us. Have you watched the most recent season of Fox Network’s 24, Eagle Eye, or Live Free/Die Hard? The plots of each revolve around how easy technology can be used against us and how much mankind relies on technology for daily functions. Our memories and mementos, our finances, our private and personal information, propaganda and mass media, it’s all managed and controlled thru technology. While I’m a big user and relier of technology, it’ll only be awhile before we hand over the keys to the castle to Big Brother if we haven’t already.
It’s time to step back and unplug.
for us locals: pronounced 'you ya' not 'zyoo zya' from yona! 
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Congratulations Ed and Marie. Wish you lots of success. Hope to make it up there to try the ...
Yuya's got the best local music video! AND... shot in our vill! shame on us! hehe. 
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Comment by Michael Lujan Bevacqua on 20 February 2009:
You’re talking about all my fears and my dependencies as a grad student writing a dissertation. I find myself constantly saving things, sending them to different email accounts, putting them on different flash drives, so that when my clunky old computer finally does crash for good, I’ll still have my dissertation and won’t literally have to start all over.
Sometimes when I’m writing at night and I start to hate my computer. Hate looking at it, hate always having to use it, hate the noise it makes which makes me worried its gonna explode, then I like to go swimming. One thing that I’ve come to realize in my life is that especially since the power on Guam is more reliable then it was ten or five years ago, I’ve forgotten what its like to be outside when its dark with only the stars as your light.
I first saw in the film “Stereo Future” about the concept of Light Pollution, where plants are even being adversely affected by all the lights at night, and its actually weakening them. I’d never really thought about it before that, and I wonder if we are being affected as well. Now, especially when I’m stressed with writing, I enjoy every once in a while finding a beach without too many lights nearby and just heading out swimming and floating in the darkness, beneath the stars and the moon.
Great post Jayton.
Comment by Jayton Okada on 20 February 2009:
My secret mad-scientist side to my persona has always wanted to create a way to shut off all lights all over the world, so that everyone can walk outside and view the stars.
If all the lights in all major cities were turned off, and if its the right time of the year,
you’d actually get to see the “Milky”-ness of the Milky Way!
Oh well, now I’m craving chocolate and caramel
But on a serious note, we do rely to much on computers.
Just last night, my mom was prepping to burn images and data for her paper… I get a knock on my door in the late evening. Mom’s lost her folder… and we couldn’t get it back.
Imagine if it were a dissertation.
If you do work like a dissertation, I’d recommend investing in a external e-sata hard drive (80GB-160GB is usually good). They cost under $100 now. If you shop online often, I recommend Iomega drives. The best though are Western Digital’s MyBooks and MyBook passports.
I also recommend straying away from USB Flash/thumb/jump drives over 8GBs in size.
A lot of people ridiculously spend upwards of $50 for a thumb drive and rely on it as a permanent storage solution.
Flash memory is volatile and susceptible to damage very easily.
Everything from heat, magnetism, static electricity, and the occasional instance of accidentally leaving the drive in your pants’ pocket and throwing it in the wash.
Flash drives should be only used as a way to transfer and temporary store. Buying internet storage or using external hard drives like I’ve mentioned above are the best methods to long-term data storage for big projects.
I also recommend using a “ghosting” program to make occasional backups of your data onto DVD. Norton Ghost is one of the best, but there are free ghosting applications. You can find them and other great tips and apps at LifeHacker.com (they also occasionally have Leo’s Zen Habits stories on the site too!)
If you’re working on large research papers or projects, I also recommend streamlining your workflow and keeping everything associated with the project in the same folder. Utilize your desktop space and create folders for each project and subfolders and subfolders within the subfolders to organize all your data. Spending a few minutes to an hour once or twice a month organizing your files on your desktop and user folder is great and keeps things organized.
The more organized you can be as a computer user, the less chance of losing data.
But always make backups of the important things when you can.
Utilize online backup solutions for media and photos such as PhotoBucket, Flickr, and Shutterfly.
Mozy is a great online backup utility.
And if you want to have scheduled backups for specific folders and locations on your computer and wish to have them automatically saved to CD or to a thumb drive (remember use thumb/flash drives as backups.. not permanent storage solution), I recommend Cobian BackUp.
I’ll be organizing and putting a “tips and tricks” list which includes the aforementioned tips and applications later this weekend.
Comment by Kel Muna on 20 February 2009:
* When was the last time you had actual pictures printed and placed in a scrapbook or album? (Excluding special occasion photos or studio portraits) I think it was the late ’90’s
* How often do video media sites such as YouTube serve as “quality entertainment” or a primary source of entertainment to you? Every day
* When was the last time you purchased an actual audio CD or movie or visited the theater rather than relying on iTunes, Limewire, Torrents, P2P sharing, Netflix, or On Demand? I bought my most recent DVD last month…but I bought it online.
* How often do you rely on WikiPedia or Google, rather than going to the local library or bookstore and finding research the old-fashioned way? Pretty much all the time.
* When’s the last time you wrote a friendly letter, birthday card, or greeting card instead of sending an IM, text message, or e-mail? It had to have been a few years ago.
Jayton, this is an incredible article – thanks for all the insight!
Deleted files lost in crashes…all too familiar to me. I’ve lost tons o’ stuff because I didn’t take the time to make backups. Everything from Shiro’s Head files during post production (video, audio, docs, etc.) to important docs and records.
One time, while living in southern California there was an unexpected wild fire headed our way and the county was on the brink of evacuation. That was nuts! I didn’t know where to start. Of course I couldn’t take everything I wanted with me, so I was forced to start backing up all of my media which took me over a day – non-stop! Luckily we didn’t have to leave, but nonetheless it was a crazy wake-up call.
If you want, you can check out the post on my old blog here: “What Would You Take With You?”
When I think about Guam and technology, though, I can’t help but to wonder why gadgets and gizmos play such a HUGE part in the everyday lives of local consumers? The internet, telecommuting…okay. I’ll even bend for digital cable. But Iphones, Blackberries, PSP’s, Gameboys, OH – AND THE DREADED BLUETOOTH!!! AAAAARRGHGGHG! I mean – it seems like there’s a new ad in the paper for new arrivals of cell phones every week! And I personally know people that always buy the latest gadget just to have it. (hey, I made a rhyme!)
I don’t know – the utilization of new technology is one thing. But dependency…I’m not so sure. Hypocritical, one may ask? Well, if all things digital suddenly went kaput, I think I’d be happy producing live plays (says the DIY filmmaker whose film wouldn’t have been possible without digital [in]dependence).
It’ll take more time to promote, but I’d still be happy.
Now excuse me as I go backup my thumbdrive.
Comment by Jayton Okada on 21 February 2009:
Heh, yeah.
Well, I’m a very technology-dependent person as anyone would know.
The difference is I understand where dependence and oppression start and end.
Comment by Sarah on 21 February 2009:
On a slightly different but related note-do you all start writing with free-hand and then type into a computer, or do you go straight into the computer, first?
Pingback by Computer How-To: Organizing and Saving Data : Guamology on 23 February 2009:
[...] continuation of my previous post, “In 0s and 1s We Trust”, here are a few helpful tips for backing up, storing, and organizing data. Organize your data – [...]
Comment by Jayton Okada on 23 February 2009:
Sarah, what is this “free-hand writing” you speak of?
So basically you get my point, it’s all type for me.
Then again, I’ve had chickenscratch handwriting all my life.
Comment by Kel Muna on 24 February 2009:
I go from the legal pad to the keyboard only if I’m trying to build on story/premise ideas. These are usually done for on-the-spot brainstorming or inspired writing. Most of the time, though, it’s straight from the keyboard. These days, I’ve been typing so much, it doesn’t matter which hand I use to write with they both look the same. The penmanship that I was so proud of throughout my scholastic days is now a sad shadow of its former self. Bleh.
Comment by Sarah on 24 February 2009:
Maybe that’s why you guys are so productive! I’m wasting too much time writing things on paper and never getting it into the computer!
Comment by Michael Lujan Bevacqua on 27 February 2009:
I used to lament the fact that I hand wrote everything in notebooks before typing it into my computer, but now I see it as a blessing. Because as I type my writing into the computer, I’m not just retyping it, but I’m reading, editing, and often times reflecting on what I’ve written. It actually helps me alot in terms of working through arguments. Well this is just for academic stuff, for blog stuff, thankfully I can just type straight into the computer.