Like so many geeks these days, I’m living my life inside of plain text files. Rather than rehash all the benefits, I’ll just link to Michael Schechter, but the biggest benefit is portability. I’ve found a system that works, for the most part, to keep my life in sync, based around Dropbox, nvALT, and any of a growing number of Dropbox-enabled iOS text editors. [1] As long as I don’t try to futz with it, it works fine.

Like any geek, however, I find excuses to futz.

It all started when I decided I wanted to give Simplenote a second chance, after seeing Patrick Rhone endorse it on App.Net. I quickly realized it didn’t work the way I wanted, so I decided to ditch it. It’s perfectly possible to live in Simplenote if you don’t want to use anything else. The moment I tried introducing other applications into this, all hell broke loose. The first problem came when, while trying to extricate Simplenote from my workflow, it populated my note folder with duplicates upon duplicates of files, because of a quirk in the way nvALT stores its synchronization settings. I ended up having to pull the recent documents out of the folder, and restore my text files from a Time Machine backup. Thinking this was the end of it, I happily went about my life for a few weeks, until I wanted to do some editing on my iPad in WriteRoom.

Apparently, the way WriteRoom synchronizes documents involves keeping a copy of everything on my device. Launching WriteRoom to do some work on a document I’d created in Drafts resulted in it trying to synchronize over 1,000 plain text files into my Dropbox folder that it had picked up during my tryst with Simplenote—though I failed to realize it at the time. I just figured that, since I hadn’t launched WriteRoom in a while, it was taking its time synchronizing all the stuff in my Dropbox folder. Eventually, fed up with the time it was taking, I reinstalled Byword, and did my editing in there. The magnitude of the problem didn’t hit until I got to work and found an error message form nvALT about being unable to load my files. Near as I can tell, Writeroom not only dumped 1,000 some odd text files—mostly duplicates—into my Dropbox, but it also overwrote nvALT’s settings file.

All this shows the shortcomings still inherent in keeping data, any form of data, in sync across multiple devices and applications. I don’t envy developers who have to muck about with either iCloud, or writing their own solution. [2] The myriad of things that can go wrong, handling every potential exception, even the best team of developers will have issues. Frustrating as it is to be Bare Bones Software, and unable to hook Yojimbo up to iCloud and have it work, it’s a minor miracle that even the stuff that does work, like Dropbox or Simplenote, actually works. Just make you back everything up, regularly.

There seems to be another fad brewing of Internet-enabling home appliances. This happened before, when the Internet was just starting to become common in homes. The pitch, then, was exactly the same: “imagine if your fridge knew you were low on milk, and it could remind you to pick some up on the way home, or even order milk to be delivered!” Never mind the difficulty of having your fridge tell how much milk is in a container. There's something to be said for unitaskers. Years ago, I caught an episode of The Price is Right from the 70s on cable TV. One of the prizes was a refrigerator with a built in 8-Track player. ¹ The first thing I thought was that if the 8-Track player breaks, which they were wont to do, you probably couldn't replace it. A “dumb” refrigerator may not be able to remind you that you need milk, but it is a lot easier to repair when the inevitable happens.

There's two reasons a company tries to wed a new technology to an existing, perfectly good product. One is to spike sales in a saturated market, such as the push for 3D TV a year or two ago, or for Internet-enabled Smart TVs now. ² The other is because there's some sort of synergistic business partnership that needs to be promoted. ³ In either case, it's not to the benefit of the consumer, but to benefit someone's bottom line and stock price. A third option also exists: to have something to show off at the latest CES so that it doesn't look like the R&D team has been sitting on their butts all year.

Good products are those that solve a problem. Great products are those that solve a problem someone didn't know they had. The best products are those that solve a problem so well that you don't know how you survived without it. The people who promote the “Internet of things” look like they're selling products that solve problems, but really they're just adding complexity that runs the risk of creating new problems. How do you solve that? Replace your $3,700 Internet-enabled Smart Fridge with the latest model, even though it still (hopefully) works as a fridge. Convergence only works when the technologies that converge complement each other. Putting an ice and water dispenser in your refrigerator door works, because you go to your fridge for ice and water. Putting a touchscreen computer that can check email in your refrigerator door does not.

There's some great applications for Internet-enabled home gadgets. If you're a big TV watcher, being able to program your TiVo to record a show from your smartphone away from home is pretty neat. If you like to come home to a properly cooled or heated house, having a Nest thermostat might be worth the time and cost. Those paranoid enough to want a home security system probably would love to be able to arm it from their smartphone. However, I don't see much beyond this in terms of utility. Most people don't want to bother with setting it up, and the geekiest among us will find the limitations of the hardware and software to be more painful and less fulfilling than hacking your own solution. I'm convinced that, in time, most Internet-enabled appliances are going to look more like Honeywell's Kitchen Computer than the actual future of our homes.

Yesterday, electronic musician Grimes posted something to her personal Tumblr site. It began “I don’t want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living.” As a fan, as soon as I heard about it, I rushed to read. One part caught my attention, immediately:

I don’t want to be infantilized because I refuse to be sexualized.

I don’t want to be molested at shows, or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction.

I don’t want to live in a world where I’m gonna have to start employing body guards, because this kind of behavior is so commonplace and accepted, and I’m pissed that when I express concern over my own safety it’s often ignored until people see firsthand what happens and then they apologize for not taking me seriously after the fact…

And later:

I’m tired of creeps on message boards discussing whether or not they’d “fuck” me.

To be honest, I’m not surprised at any of the claims she’s making. It’s an unfortunately inevitable effect of how certain groups behave on the Internet. For a woman, especially in a male-dominated public space, the expectations will be that you do certain things, and behave in a certain way. Woe be unto you if you don’t. If you have an open ear, you’ll know this is a topic that comes up with disturbing regularity in the technology world. A great discussion of this came on episode 8 of 5by5’s The Crossover, and for every woman who speaks up about inappropriate behavior from men, there are too many more who keep quiet. I’ve not heard a musician speak out about this harassment until now, but I’m not surprised at all.

I’ll come clean: I first discovered Grimes through 4chan’s music board. [1] This was not long after the album Visions was released, and when her song “Oblivion” and its music video were getting its first wave of traction on the Web. In less than a year, discussion about Grimes on the board went from talk about her music and her videos to her perceived attractiveness, and nothing else. [2] I don’t think it’s a leap to go from expressing that sort of attitude on a message board and projecting it in reality with misbehavior at a concert. It’s a minority of people, but their impact is massive. As the Internet has lowered the barriers of communication between artist and audience, it seems to me that some members of the audience are trying to erode those barriers in other places, to ill effect.

I feel as if we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this as the Internet becomes the primary way for an artist in any form to find an audience. When you combine attention seeking (the good kind) with the lack of social awareness that pervades a lot of Internet culture, and the darker corners in particular, it creates a powderkeg situation. This is different than the phenomenon of “haters.” In any sort of artistic career, haters come as soon as you have a modicum of success, and if you don’t learn how to deal with it early, you won’t have a career to worry about. Now, there’s unprecedented access to artists—you need to be on, 24/7—creating your public image, and addressing the community of true fans. Fame is stressful, ask anyone who’s been given it.

While some of these are problems that will plague any professional artist in the Internet age, we have to return to the issue of gender. Women are forced to put up with more than men in these fields, typically because of entitled men who view women as nothing more than sex objects. This is an old problem, but one that is seeing an unfortunate uptick as communities of like-minded people form, and groupthink pervades. For an idea of what this is like, visit /r/mensrights on Reddit some time. [3] It plays hosts to a bizarre persecution complex that renders feminism and gender equality as a conspiracy to subjugate all men.

The current situation sucks for anyone who isn’t a creepy, obsessive fan. If there’s a way out, it’s to do what Grimes has done. By casting a public spotlight on the unacceptable behavior coming from the community at large, it exposes them. Nobody likes being exposed, and public shaming is typically a good way to shut down people, at least temporarily. It shunts them back into the dark corners, where they belong. An artist should not, and must not change who they are to make the art they want to make. The persona they affect is not an invitation. Behind the fame, the music videos, the albums, and the image, is a human being who deserves respect. The Internet can be used to dehumanize those we don’t like, but it allows the famous to humanize themselves.

Audience Quality > Audience Quantity.

This simple statement is quite often overlooked by people trying to be a success on the internet and is quite often thought about in the reverse. But I have had much greater success in my endeavours since I considered things this way.

Myke Hurley’s guest post on 512 Pixels

I’ve written before about our bias towards big numbers of eyeballs (or ears, in this case), but Myke Hurley expresses it far better than I could. A smaller, more engaged audience is more valuable. They’re more likely to give you money, and they’re worth more to advertisers because they’re more likely to give them money. Most importantly, an engaged audience gives you, the creator, the most valuable thing of all: the knowledge that you’re creating something that resonates with people. A number is just a number. An email, or an @-reply from an audience member is something real, tangible, and powerful.

I recently read an article on The Atlantic proclaiming the Internet has spawned a narcissism epidemic. [1] The article has some good points wrapped in a veneer of technological fear, but that’s how you get people to read articles of that nature. There maybe an uptick in narcissistic behavior online, but the study may be conflating correlation with causation. It stands to reason that a more narcissistic person would use Facebook more. If you want attention from people you know, that’s where to go. This is the nature of the beast. [2]

Social media enables the latent narcissism in (almost) all of us. We want to be loved by some number of people, typically more than one. Suddenly, we have the ability to speak to a huge audience, and we’re all too happy to oblige them. Or, to quote my friend Jonathan Pfeffer, “The Internet is a void.” Nature abhors a vacuum, and so the empty spaces of the Internet created by free, open publishing platforms are going to get filled with “content,” and not all of it is going to be of value to us. Fortunately, we don’t have to see it if we don’t want to. [3] The narcissists also have their enablers. These enablers are not the platforms, but the people on the platforms who read, like, share, and comment on what gets posted. If they’re rewarding junk, then junk will get posted. Nobody would be posting pictures of their lunch on Instagram, if other people didn’t approve of it somewhere, no matter how much mockery they get.

When you’re in a creative field, seeing this can rub you the wrong way. Comic artist Spike refers to it as The Backpat Delivery System, wherein artists talk up a big game about what they’re going to do, maybe post some work-in-progress stuff, and rake in the kudos without actually producing any completed work. The backpats are, it seems, enough to satisfy the craving for attention that any creative project unleashed on the world is seeking, so the actual project goes undone. Then, there’s the cottage industry around criticizing everything under the sun to consider, as it’s easier to tear down than build up, and the backpats will be delivered just as often.

The real problem of Internet-enabled narcissism is its potential to divert someone’s attention from creating real, good, interesting things, into the ratholes of unfinished show-off projects at best, or trolling at worse. The Instagram-lunch posters are not the problem, nor are the people who build empires of the self among their own friends, real or “Internet.” The short-circuiting of our reward system by the Internet’s Backpat Delivery System can too easily keep a creative individual from producing what they’re capable of, when they’re too busy rolling in their potential audience’s premature adoration.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check my URI.LV stats.