When information goes unchecked

Recently, because of technology, we receive news about the disasters and unrest from different parts of the world at just a click. Putting aside all the pros and cons about using technology to our advantage [or disadvantages], I just want to highlight something which can be quite disturbing.

 

Last weekend, I was awed when I saw an sms which was supposed to be a poem by a famous poet Li Bai [Tang dynasty] and it actually predicted the Sichuan earthquake in the same year as the Beijing Olympics:

北暮苍山兰舟四
京无落霞缀清川
奥年叶落缘分地
运水微漾人却震

but as much as I was amazed and impressed by how the great poet actually had the ability to predict the tragedy a few hundred years back, I wanted to find out the title of the poem.

 

And guess what? A quick search online revealed that there was NEVER this poem; never existed! In fact, there were previously two other versions which netizens had “cooked” up:

日暮苍山兰舟小，
本无落霞缀清泉。
去年叶落缘分定，
死水微漾人却亡。

and

法暮苍山兰舟家，
国无落霞缀清乐。
去年叶落缘分福，
死水微漾人却亡。

and from what I gathered online:

这诗是这样的，真正的来源是——侠客梦第四卷：江湖搏命第一百零一章日暮苍山兰舟小作者：燕随心。这里仅仅作为文章的题目所体现出来。剩下都是爱国人士所撰写的。

还有刘长卿《逢雪宿芙蓉山主人》较为接近。我想这是今人假托中华诗歌以至唐代诗歌的顶级巨星李白之名义而要表达一种民族的愤慨与爱国之情罢了。刘长卿《日暮苍山》原文是：

日暮苍山远，天寒白屋贫。

（写诗人投宿山村时的所见所感）
柴门闻犬吠，风雪夜归人。

（写诗人投宿主人家以后的情景）

Well sorry, I am just disgusted by the distortion of facts. The netizens are very creative, and I must say that they are concerned with current affairs. However, to mislead people with false information shouldn’t be encouraged. What’s more, this sms has been so widely circulated [it started from China and it's now circulating widely in Singapore too] that it makes people believe it’s real! And so I realize that 1) IF I wasn’t IT-inclined, I would probably have taken the sms as it is and believed it, without stumbling upon this fact by googling it; 2) IF I wasn’t IT-inclined, I would have never realized it was not a poem which held the prediction since hundreds years ago.

Okay fine, and IF technology wasn’t this advanced, I probably would have never received that sms nor rant here.. hahaa~ :p However, bottomline is: one should be responsible and NOT spread untrue information around isn’t it?

How is life without…

Wow, it has been quite a while since I have last posted here. Have been busy with the final project submission(s) and examination(s). And right after I’m done with all that, my internet was down till recently. Hahaa~ Is that coincidence or what? Well, because of that, I’ve come to realize how dependent we are with technology. How is life without….

 

 

… internet connection?

1) Unable to watch shows online, but to spend more time on watching TV programmes and those available on external hard drive;

2) Unable to check e-mails;

3) Unable to chat with friends, much less able to make plans for gatherings;

4) Unable to surf websites to search for jobs online;

etc.

BUT I felt “freed” from all those obligations =D

 

 

… mobile phones?

So happened that I was to meet a friend for a course on Sunday, and because we had been able to meet during course time (which so happened to have ended the previous week), we had been fixing our meeting time and date via MSN. Hence on Sunday, I was quite worried that we might not be able to keep to our agreed time and it was made more uncertain as we did not have each other’s mobile number (how genius we were :p).

 

 

And because of that, we have come to realize that people of the past do not need to be worried about last minute withdrawal or not turning up. Everyone will keep to their promises and appointments, hence they just need to come to a consensus of a time and place and everyone will turn up. Maybe it’s precisely because we have this tendency to cancel our appointment at the last minute because “something has cropped up”. How frequent does such “unexpected circumstances” happen in your life? Are we really that busy now that we can’t even keep to agreed appointments?

 

 

… schedule book/PDA?

Well, I guess most, if not all, of us are so busy that we can’t simply agreed to fix a date and time offhand anymore. We rely quite a lot on our schedule books/PDAs in order not to make false promises. Is your schedule book filled with appointments and reminders too? =D

 

 

Oh well, just to name a few. :p

Trapped in the lift experience

For the first time in my life, and first incident in the 13 years of my living experience here, I was trapped in the lift (last Thursday). Nevermind why and how, but after the incident, I was filled with thoughts about this incident would have been different if it had happened, say, 5 years back.

 

This time round, when we entered the lift and it refused to move nor open, we sounded the alarm, and at the same time used my mobile phone to call the lift maintanance company for assistance immediately. Help arrived in 5 minutes. Woah! Fast isn’t it? Apart from the fact that help was near, I would like to attribute the speedy arrival to the use of the mobile phone. Let’s say this happened a few years back, and when mobile phones were not yet so handy and popular, what could your pagar help in this situation? You will probably have to wait for help to come after you sounded the alarm, and not knowing how long you might have to wait (especially if this was in the middle of the night or something when none of the residents could be awake and hear it).

  

That’s probably one of the plus points for the use of technology and of its advancement. =) For emergency uses, it’s really a beauty. I remembered watching this on Meteor Gardens (ya ya, that show) whereby one of the characters used the quick-dial button on his mobile to alert his buddies that he was in danger (he was “kidnapped” by his mother). Good way to ask for help eh? =D

 

However, there are down-points to this super good function too. Just the other day, I was sleeping, and I must have heard the notification that I’ve a new sms, so I replied to it and held on to my phone while I drifted back to sleep. And the next thing I know, I saw a sms from one of my Indonesian youth (living in Indonesia right now) asking me why I called her because when she picked up the phone, no one answered her. GOSH~! That must have been me hitting the quick dial and called her accidentally in my sleep. hahaa~ =D So embarrassing.

Viral

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” – Albert Einstein

Well, the issue about the sponsored ad on google is more or less part of the past now. The ads are changed and there have been quite a number of ‘discussion’ on the blogosphere for the past few days. Oh well, for the better or the worse, the parties involved did not step out to take the issue by the horn.

This can mean two things: 1) yes, slowly, people will stop talking about it and it will become ‘just another in(ac)cident of the past; 2) many years down the road, when someone do a search online, all these will still surface because even though the wind has died down, the damage is already done, and it’s permanently there on the web.

This whole issue has shown that ‘word of mouth’ is faster than ever in this new era with the advanced technology. Just like the Edison Chen’s case which made headlines for at least 1.5 months. It was precisely because of the internet that the culprit could upload the pictures and ’share’ them with everyone anywhere in the world. This is where people comment, support, comfort or slam the characters involved; this is also where journalists could send back reports faster than ever before. If rumours have legs, those legs must have made good friends with technology to work hand-in-hand.

“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.” – John Tudor

It’s very real. It’s viral. Previously, during one of the forums that I attended, one of the speakers was speaking on the topic about how children can access restricted content because they were able to gain access to the internet where information is widely shared. If it was in the past, to learn about another country, you will probably have to borrow a book from the library; right now, you may just type the country name into any search engine, and ta-la~ you will know right away its population, religions, places to visit, find accomodation etc –> all with a click!

This is so amazing!

Evolution of technology

Previously I’ve blog about this in my personal blog wrt this topic (see here and here). Today, someone brought up this topic again and I thought it would be interesting to look at it after one month.

I could still remember clearly how excited I was when I got my first pager. It was something sleek and a way to interact with my fellow peers. When improvement to the pager was made (from being able to let you know who ‘paged’ for you to allowing you to read a short message), things got more interesting and we even started to send ‘encoded’ messages to friends. Who still remember what ‘5201314′ stands for? =) And just a couple of years later, we saw (and heard) less and less of the once-famous statement: “Hello, xiang ka pager?” (Hello, who paged for me?) whenever we (especially those uncles) returned call to the number shown on our pagers.

And so comes our new love — the mobile phone. The first HP in my family was one which my mum and I happened to chance upon this roadshow at Tampines Mart, and we applied it for my dad. It was from Alcatel and being the new gadget, we ‘experimented’ with it and slowly learnt from our peers how to send SMSes. It was interesting to find that a mobile phone now serves an additional function other than just to make phone calls. I got my first HP when I was in high school and it was a Motorola phone, really really small in size; much smaller than my palm in fact and I ‘acquired’ the skill to type SMSes at a stunning speed. =D

By now, our mobile phones have improved so much with so many more functions like the MP3, camera, calendar, etc. It has also become slim, with more sleek and trendy look. With the coming of the 3G technology, it’s more than just a phone; we can now surf the internet on the go and do video-conferencing. Subscription plans by the various service providers have also changed since. Free SMSes, MMSes, talk-time etc are included in various plans in order to attract consumers. Although it is not yet a throat-cutting competition among the providers, for the case of the SG context, it’s highly difficult for another provider to penetrate into our market because it’s too small and concentrated.

Another gadget would be camera. In the past, to own a camera seems to be a possession for a ‘higher status’. Polaroid cameras were popular at one time because of its ability to provide instant photos and I remembered all the fun we have as teens to play around with that. A similar machine then evolve — the NeoPrints. These tiny instant pictures could come in card size or stickers so that a few of us could share with one photo-shoot. Other than that, we also exchanged neoprints with one another so that we can keep the pictures of our friends. Then come along digital cameras. With new improvements/additions to functions such as anti-shake (we do not need to fear our photos will turn out blurred!), ability to view the photo-shoot result immediately and not wait until the photos are developed, etc makes life so much more easily. For most, we can also record videos using our cameras. Hence, we do not need to carry around many gadgets for one outing.

I am ‘trigger-happy’. When I was in Korea last fall, I took so many photos which would be able to capture my feelings and thoughts at that very moment, to take home precious moments which will serve as wonderful memories in the future. ^_^g