Bassetti Foundation - Tag Archive

Facebook and the Inevitable End

7 Replies Jonny Hankins

Facebook is again in the press, this time about its proposed sale, or if you like the sale of the data it has collected about you and me, but Christopher addressed this issue in a post a couple of weeks ago, and I would like to raise another issue involving the mighty corporation.

Facebook state that they have over 800 million registered users, and that more than half of them use their account on any single day. Incredible stuff, it seems they have a lot to sell, but here in the US several states are trying to tackle a serious ethical and moral issue, what happens to their data when users die?

What happens when users die?

In the world about one person in every 113 will die in a year, obviously Facebook is generally used by young people who are relatively rich in that they have access to a computer, so this rate would be much lower, but even taking that into account thousands of Facebook users must die every year.

And that leads me on to the point of this, one of my more morbid posts. If these people haven’t made a will or named a benefactor for their account, what happens to the data? The current legal state of play is this; in the event of a user’s death their next of kin does not have the right to alter or take down their Facebook page. Obviously if they were in possession of the deceased person’s password they could do it (although it might be illegal to do so), but without this information they have no way of removing the data.

This is not only a question of privacy, but also of tact. Many families suffering bereavement do not like to see the deceased’s Facebook page open to the world, or even worse see the photo of their loved one in their ‘friends’ every time they open their own Facebook account. The issue is being addressed in the US with several politicians pushing for legislation that would allow family members access to deceased people’s pages, and Facebook do have a policy on freezing the accounts of dead people but it is a painfully slow process. They require death certificates and other documentation all of which takes time and is probably a very unpleasant experience.

The NC Times and Wall Street Journal both carried articles this week about a young man who posted a picture of himself with a gun in his mouth before commiting suicide and the problems his family had getting the photo removed. It remained for some time and caused a great deal of distress to many people.

On a slightly lighter note you might like the idea of life after death, and fortunately now you can have it, with the new ‘digital afterlife Facebook application’ called If I Die.

Yes you can post on your wall directly from the grave (preparation required while still in life) and communicate with your friends here back on Earth.

I have written about Facebook on a couple of other occasions regarding what I see as far from clear privacy rules, and you can read them here and here if you are interested, and you can download a free will and testament here if you feel you need it.

Here is a short report on the BBC website reporting on the problem.

Jonny’s 7 Links Challenge Response

11 Replies Jonny Hankins

Well first a big thanks to Christopher for nominating me for this 7 links challenge post, and I will get straight into it. I should say that a couple of my choices are more like web articles than blog posts because there is no way of commenting, but as this is how I got into blogging and because the vast majority of my posts have historically been in this format I include them nevertheless (apologies if this is bending the rules). Now at last anyone can comment upon them here and I am all ears.

The Lucky 7 strikes again

Most beautiful

My most beautiful post involved an interview with a member of the US Congress, Michael Capuano. Congressman Capuano represents Boston and Cambridge, home of MIT, Harvard University, Boston University and 30 other research institutions, and the ward once held by President Kennedy. I was interested in the politics that lie behind technological development, and as he represents more scientists and global research organizations than anyone else on the planet I wanted to speak to him.

My wife thought I had lost the plot as I started sending e mails to Congress, but as you can see I did get in touch with him, he granted me an interview and I posted the transcription in its entirety and wholly unedited on the Bassetti Foundation website (with his clearance).

Most popular

Without doubt my most popular posts are within the series I wrote here on Technology Bloggers about the environment. Some of the posts created a lot of discussion and all in all the series got more than 50 comments. Within the series I would have to say that ‘Engineering a Solution to Global Warming’ was the most popular, and it certainly stirred some debate.

Most controversial

Although it passed by relatively unnoticed (a bit off target for Technology Bloggers but posted anyway) I would say that my most controversial post was that about US immigration. The post talked about the fact that technology has allowed US borders to move overseas and many travelers now enter US jurisdiction in a foreign airport before even boarding the aircraft. The ethical and political implications seem to have gone unnoticed however by the general public.

Helpful

The most helpful post is about buying spyware on the net, again on the Bassetti Foundation website. I did not buy anything I might add, but used the post lots of times to provoke debate in the various Italian secondary schools I worked in as an English teacher. Among other more obvious products the post is about mobile phone technology that allows a person to listen in to another person’s conversation and receive copies of their texts. All you need is the box or serial number from your girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband’s or anyone else’s phone.  You order the software over the Internet and it is downloaded directly into the phone (any smart phone will do) without the owner’s knowledge when they go online, and you spy. Some even allow you to listen to the surrounding area when the target phone is turned off using the inbuilt microphone. Not legal to use in most countries but legal to buy.

Surprisingly successful

My most surprisingly successful post involves an interview with Marta Milani, one of my ex students, also on the Bassetti Foundation site. Marta took up athletics while at school, and after leaving she became a member of the Italian Army athletics squad. I followed her career until one day I saw that she was competing in an international meeting where Oscar Pistorius (a South African athlete who races with 2 carbon fibre legs) was competing. I have an interest in prosthetics as one of my other posts here shows, one day having a new body part might seem a good idea, harder wearing, does not burn, stronger etc, it’s only like having a crown on a tooth or a new hip or knee after all. I tracked Marta down and interviewed her about the place of technology in sports. A couple of years later Marta managed to qualify for the World Championships and in an incredible result got to the semi-final. She will also be competing in the Olympics this year as current Italian champion over 400mtrs, and as a result my post gets a lot more readers than I ever imagined. Unfortunately the interview was conducted in Italian although the introduction and summary of the conversation is in English.

Underrated

Probably my first foray into blogging was and remains the most underrated post. Posted on the Bassetti Foundation website it did not receive any comments. The post is entitled ‘Drugs for People, Not for Profit’ and is a report on changes in how drugs companies conduct their business, the ethics and marketing involved in the production of new medicines and the falling rates of new patents.  It was is a complex post and took a lot of research (and reading) so I was rather disappointed, but I learnt from the process.

Excellent

Well I would have to say that I think my most excellent article appeared on the Innovation Excellence website in their blog entitled ‘Responsibility in the Processes of Innovation’. Although it didn’t receive any comments it was widely circulated, and I think that it is my best written to date. The article really looks like it could be published anywhere, it doesn’t look like a blog or even an online publication but resembles old school academia, and in fact I took the base from an entry in the Dictionary of Social Sciences about Responsible Innovation that refers to the foundation that employs me. I cannot take all the credit though as the piece is very much a joint effort, I translated the base article from Italian and expanded upon it.

Writing about your own work creates a strange sensation, particularly if you want to talk about it in glowing terms as required by some of the categories above, but it makes you think about your public voice. As I don’t know 5 other bloggers I am open to volunteers for nomination on my part, applications below.

Is cost and pollution free power already here?

11 Replies Jonny Hankins

In this the fifth post in my series I will introduce some of the inventions that claim to produce free and/or pollution free energy. I would like to make it clear from the outset however that I do not know whether these techniques actually work. Many of them have been patented, some replicated and some demonstrated several times. Some defy the accepted laws of physics. Some have been proven false.

The magnet motor promises free endless power

The following examples are just a few drawn from dozens found on the internet.

The patenting of machines that claim to harness energy directly from the atmosphere has a long history. At the turn of the 20th century Nikola Tesla registered several patents for inventions of this type. One particularly simple device is known as his ‘aerial device’. It is something like a large insulated sheet of metal with a capacitor and transformer attached below it. The metal plate vibrates, possibly due to static and the capacitor is charged. The transformer lowers the voltage and the current can be fed into the system. It works day and night and the size of the metal sheet determines how much power is produced. Tesla’s biography is here.  As you see he was not a crank, without his work we would probably not have computers today.

Tesler’s invention might be described as producing free energy, and this is certainly one aim for inventors of these types of objects. Another objective however is to build a machine that produces more power than it uses to operate it. Simple enough, I use 10 units of power to make the machine work, and the machine provides me with 11 units of output, or more. There are several machines that claim to succeed in this goal. It even tells you how easy each project is to construct, how well it is likely to work and how reliable the ideas upon which it is based are.

First to free energy. The internet is full of demonstrations of magnet motors and how to build them. This video is an example. The builders claim that using only magnets they can build a motor that spins without any external force being applied. A quick search will find plans and detailed explanations of materials needed and results expected. The only problem seems to be that the results are ‘physically unexplainable’ and many people say impossible. Are these machines fraudulent? I would love to know, because if they are not then it looks like clean electricity is possible today.

Other systems involve using different types of fuel from those conventionally thought of. A current example is the claim made about recent successes in what we in the non-science world call ‘cold fusion’ and is correctly termed a low energy nuclear reaction.

Early last year engineer Andrea Rossi and Physicist Sergio Focardi built a machine in Bologna Italy that they claim can produce huge amounts of power without polluting or causing radiation using only nickel as a fuel. The nickel is turned to copper during the process (proof of a nuclear reaction taking place) but only tiny amounts of fuel are used. There is however an undisclosed secret ingredient to the operation, and Rossi will not divulge his secret to anyone, including Focardi. The two demonstrated the machine on at least 2 separate occasions last year and are currently constructing a huge version for trials later this year. See this article on the Bassetti Foundation website for a fuller explanation and links to a video of their demonstration.

The water powered car is another thing to look at, and has been in existence for many years. There are several videos on the Internet demonstrating converted internal combustion engines that run on water. In this video inventor Paul Pantone demonstrates his “GEET Plasma Reactor Motor”, explaining how it works and showing it running. Here we get into conspiracy territory however, as the video states that after posting the video on Youtube the inventor was arrested and denied medical therapy while under arrest. There is an implicit claim that those in authority did not want his invention to be made public, but this is not backed up by any evidence however.

A related story is of the guy who invented a car that ran on water in the 1980’s.  Stanley Meyer built a sort of dune buggy and the Pentagon reportedly showed interest in his invention.  He died in strange circumstances however in a car park outside a restaurant in Ohio in 1998, probably poisoned. Some (as this video demonstrates), go as far as to say that he was murdered by the state but again without providing evidence, but the conspiracies abound once more. Several other sites claim that his car was then stolen along with all of his plans and technology, although there are several long videos and rediscovered tapes on Youtube in which he explains how the car works. As the photo below demonstrates, modern versions do exist today. This water powered car was built in Japan, watch the video on this website.

Japanese water powered car

And here to the thorny matter, many of these machines are available to buy today, well the plans are at least. The Hojo motor promises free electricity for example, but at a price, and what if you buy the plans to discover that you can’t get the thing to run?

This article describes how the Federal Trade Commission investigated allegedly false claims by a well-known inventor and character in this field named Denis Lee. They found that the promoters ‘are marketing a product that cannot exist and function as claimed’ and allowed complaints to be filed. Pseudo-science and marketing at its best we might say.

If you want to read more about these devices the free energy website will keep you occupied for days. Chapter 16 should be your stating point.

I would love to hear from anyone that has either constructed or seen any of these machines in real life. Next week I will conclude the series so speak now, of forever hold your peace!