Given the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve seen a good deal of discussion of antibodies and immunity lately. I’ve found much of it to be misguided. I’ve researched and given a good deal of thought to the subject and would like to ask you all to consider the following. As a disclaimer, I am not a doctor. I have the opportunity to discuss things with doctors, but I have no formal medical training. My training is in engineering – the science (art?) of making things work.
How a virus (like the COVID-19 virus) works:
The virus enters the body through your breathing mechanism – mostly eyes, nose, mouth – and gains access to the soft tissue in your lungs and breathing passages.
The virus attaches itself to a soft tissue cell, takes over the cell, and turns that cell into a virus factory, producing more of itself (the virus).
As the virus moves through your cells, it kills those cells while producing an excess of that virus, some of which is expelled from your body by coughing, breathing, etc. (also known as being infectious).
Absent an immune response, this process would eventually kill the infected person (as in no longer able to breathe), but this is generally not what kills.
Immune response – this is what tends to be confusing:
Immunity is a continuum. If you were to be 100% immune from a virus, it would mean that your cells don’t react to the virus, as discussed above. That’s not the kind of immunity we are talking about here – and I’m thinking it’s rare but don’t know that. Having 0% immunity to a virus is, I believe, also rare. If that were the case, you wouldn’t last long in this world. That’s why immunosuppressed/immunocompromised people are at so much risk.
All of us have a naturally occurring immune response to a viral infection. As I understand it, when our body detects the presence of a viral infection, it produces antibodies – cells that attack and destroy bodily intruders. It takes time for the body to discover what type of antibodies it takes to fight any given virus type.
The fight between antibodies and viruses, and the byproducts that fight produces, and other actions the body takes is what ends up causing most death and organ damage.
In the context of COVID-19 (and many other viruses):
“I have no immunity to COVID-19” means your immune system hasn’t yet learned exactly how to fight the virus, so it will take a while for it to learn. Hopefully, you survive that process (without severe organ damage). If you are immunosuppressed by age or other ailments, I understand that to mean it will take even longer (probably dangerously longer) to do so.
“I have immunity to COVID-19” means your body has somehow developed the antibodies it takes to REDUCE THE TIME it takes for your body to figure out how to fight a new COVID-19 viral infection. Note that this DOES NOT mean you will not get infected. I believe the only way to avoid infection is to avoid the virus – which is very difficult in the midst of active infections near you. It means that your body will more effectively fight off the infection. It also DOES NOT mean you will not be contagious when you are infected. That depends upon how much excess virus you expel into your environment when you are infected.
I’m personally quite skeptical – given the contagious nature of COVID-19 – that “immunity” is even close to meaning “not contagious.” I hope I’m wrong about that. There is a lot of simplistic discussion going on in articles and posts that I find surprising. I thought I would attempt to address them here.
I think the answer to our dilemma is to get a vaccine that gives us the highest level of immunity possible, and then for those with immunosuppression, we need to find ways for them to protect themselves. I suspect they’ve been dealing with this for most of their lives, so they probably already know how to do it, but this might be a harder virus to protect against.
I’ve been trying to figure out what is behind the Hillary hatred phenomenon. I haven’t had many discussions with people who seem to fit the bill as yet. I did post the following comment on Facebook yesterday:
“I sure wish I could understand the perspective that leads to this phenomenon.”
I did receive a reasonably thoughtful (as in not abusive and not an incoherent rant) response for a former co-worker who isn’t fond of Mrs. Clinton. I won’t identify him unless he finds this and asks me to. He had the following to say:
“Bill and Hilary are both products of the Hippy counter culture generation. It appears to me that they both embraced the culture. The generic attitude is that they can do or say whatever they want to get their way but they will attack and discredit anyone who disagrees with them. I have yet to hear Hilary say one real thing in this election that tells me what SHE is going to do to improve America other than circumvent the constitution if she can She appears to have a disdain for the constitution that she would be taking an oath to support.. From what I see she will trample the constitution as she needs to be do what SHE wants to do. I do not want someone in the White House that thinks they are above the law and can make it up as they go along. This is why I do not want her in the White House. I am not saying that I think that Trump is much better. She is in the history books as having been kicked off of committees for unethical behavior.”
I did have another person comment on another post regarding Trump’s pre-debate stunt with the accusers of Bill Clinton. I tried asking this person what she thinks is behind this hatred, but she had said at the end of her comment “rant over” and I’ve received no response. I guess the rant – which was quite reasonable as well – was indeed over. So far at least.
I responded to the above response to the hatred answer from my former co-worker with the following:
“…many thanks for taking the time to respond. Instead of responding point-by-point or anything like that, I’d like to offer you my theory. I think it might touch on your response, but you’d have the be the judge of that. There have been massive changes in our country centered around cultural norms (mores). These changes have been driven largely by the entertainment industry and forces commonly associated with the progressive movement. These changes have been VERY fundamental in nature and centered around tolerance for different views of sexuality and the treatment of women, minorities and religion in our country. These changes fly in the face of traditional Christian views at a minimum, and I’m sure there are other reasons for resistance (unemployment, automation, globalization, job loss and other upheavals). Given that the Clintons have been around for 35 years or so, it is not terribly surprising that these new values might be superimposed over them and be the cause of much hatred and resentment.
Personally, I don’t have much use for religious gatherings, but I DO practice what Jesus taught to the best of my ability. I am in FULL support of these new changes for our culture in terms of tolerance. As a former manager who has had experience with change management, I certainly wouldn’t have managed these changes such that they came at all of us so quickly. BUT, I understand how as we made progress (or whatever you would like to call it), and as other people in our country saw their lifestyles oppressed while other people were fighting and winning tolerance for their lifestyles, that we ended up with a snowball of changes. I believe Jesus would have told us to be tolerant. I do not understand how anyone reading the NEW TESTAMENT could come to any other conclusion. In fact, how could we possibly expect to have a country of immigrants without tolerance? The key to me is to define the laws of our country so that no person or group can put their beliefs into practice if it hurts another person or group. This is tough, but I happen to believe that’s what our founders intended. They likely wouldn’t have imagined the kinds of changes we are undergoing, but tolerance and opportunity were (I think) the prime reasons we came to this continent in the first place.
Hillary Clinton, and before her Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, are seemingly the face of this tolerance movement. I think this is the likely catalyst for the phenomenon. There is obviously more, but I can’t quite figure out how that “more” could result in such hatred.
I have some discomfort with the Clintons in the White House again with reference to Mr. Clinton’s philandering. I think his behavior was atrocious, but I don’t see how exactly I could put myself in the position of judging Mrs. Clinton for her response to his actions. In the case of alleged sexual assault, I AM very sensitive to the fact that our culture has historically made it very difficult for sexual assault victims (see cultural changes above). However, in any case it should not be up to the spouse of an alleged perpetrator of ADULT sexual assault (certainly not if the spouse doesn’t believe the allegations) to ‘prosecute’ the perpetrator – plain and simple. I think the Clintons – and particularly Mr. Clinton – have done much to atone for his philandering through philanthropy. It is SHOCKING to me that anyone can see their efforts as anything but a good thing – except as a political issue, which is the SHOCKING part. No – I don’t want an active, unrepentant philanderer in the White House. I don’t have AS MUCH of a problem with a repentant philanderer, which is how I view Mr. Clinton. I have no reason to believe that he is anything other than that.
I’m sorry, but I also can’t find any credible evidence that Mrs. Clinton was kicked off of any committees for unethical behavior.
Thanks again. I really am interested in trying to understand what is causing Mrs. Clinton to be viewed as the devil.”
No response as yet.
I am deadly serious about what I said in my response. I’m watching the news as I write (yes, MSNBC), and they are reporting on new allegations by women who say they were motivated by Mr. Trump’s denials during the second debate. It is being reported that Trump is going to go “nuclear” on Bill Clinton in response to these new, false and heinous (paraphrase) allegations against Mr. Trump.
Anyone else care to try to explain the Hillary hatred phenomenon to me?
By the way, please get yourself registered and vote!
When I try to reason through what is happening this election season, I find myself becoming sad and afraid for our country. On one side, we have a woman who has become the ruling class proxy for a large group of people with a yawning chasm of resentment. On the other side, we have a man who wants to take our country back from, well, someone … no, anyone or perhaps everyone … and make it great again. In the process, we now find ourselves in a situation where we can’t have a reasonable conversation about politics with anyone from “the other side,” not to mention our own side at times.
I believe I can reason pretty clearly, as can many people. But, how does one reason when neither side will suspend their beliefs long enough to listen to an alternate view? Even without this problem, a key barrier remains in that the issues are relatively complex in general. It takes serious time and effort to become informed enough to even attempt to think things through. When one cannot spend the time, then the fallback is to decide who one trusts and listen only to that source and assume every other source is tainted.
In political discussions, the result is often oversimplification, ridicule, and outright nastiness. Social media is often the vehicle for such (non-)discussions, and it amazes me how ugly some people can be to other parties involved. Many of the comments (mostly not discussion points) on social media are terribly hurtful and likely wouldn’t be made in face-to-face discussion – I suppose because participants consider social media their opportunity to suspend empathy.
This leads me to an idea to conduct an experiment. I am planning to write a series of articles in which I will attempt to intelligently and compassionately discuss what I see happening this election season. I have set commenting so that all comments must be moderated before posting. I will review all comments, and post only those that are thoughtful and compassionate. If you want to curse or be ugly, please feel free. If your comment contains any substance worth sharing, I will attempt to translate it into something fit to print and include it in the comment section. If there are enough comments, and I may attempt to report statistics regarding the nature of the comments, but we’ll see. I am hoping this format will result of some productive discussion, but given what is actually going on today, I’m not that hopeful.
Update: I found it more appropriate to write most of my “articles” on Facebook. I am duplicating them here:
5Oct2016 Post to my timeline – the morning after the VP Debate
IF Mike Pence’s goal during the Vice Presidential debate last night was to campaign for a Pence presidency, then I would have to admit that Mr. Pence demonstrated at least a slight edge over Tim Kaine. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, Mike Pence is NOT in fact running for President – he is running for Vice President on the Trump ticket – in case anyone (like Mike Pence perhaps?) forgot that last night.
IF Mike Pence’s goal was to “show Donald Trump” how it’s done, then Mr. Pence did a decent job. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, however, Mr. Pence’s tendency to throw the Donald under the bus (mostly by his flippant dismissals) was really rather disconcerting and, given Mr. Trump’s penchant for loyalty in his allies, can’t be sitting particularly well with him this morning.
The main criticism being leveled at Tim Kaine is too much enthusiasm, and perhaps too much preparation – thereby forgoing spontaneity.
I admit to a bias, but I saw Mr. Kaine demonstrate an uncommon command of facts and language (not to mention debate), and a willingness AND ability to defend himself and his campaign. If and when Mr. Kaine decides to run for the Presidency, this debate performance will likely stand him in good stead, and I believe there were actually undecided voters who were listening to him and might well have been persuaded. It WAS a tough slog to listen to that debate, though. A saying comes to mind about trying to fit too much of something into too small a bag.
All of that said, I feel confident in saying few things about the debate last night, but one thing I do feel confident in saying is that Donald Trump lost in a fairly big way. His behavior is in many, many cases indefensible, and in very few cases was he defended last night. The IDEA that Mr. Trump needs to be shown how to be presidential is also really quite disturbing. Republicans may indeed be pining for an alternative to a Trump candidacy, but Mr. Trump is the man they selected, and they are stuck with him so they might as well bite the bullet (but please be careful when you do it).
4Oct2016 Post to my timeline – Just after the VP Debate
Mike Pence accuses the Clinton campaign of hurling “an avalanche of insults” at the Trump campaign. If Mr. Pence means the Clinton campaign hurled the avalanche of insults Trump has hurled at the world back at their source, then he was absolutely correct. BUT, how is that then an avalanche of insults BY the Clinton campaign?!
MAYBE Mr. Pence has never listened to his candidate actually speak when he’s off the TelePrompTer(?)! With his denials of Trump’s actual ON CAMERA behavior, that would seem to be the only possible explanation.
Followed the next morning by a comment on my own post
Mr. Pence’s main defense when faced with all of Mr. Trump’s insults from the campaign trail was to point out Mrs. Clinton calling half of Mr. Trump’s supporters – a short time later modified to some with an expression of regret – deplorable. I don’t know that I think it was a good idea for Mrs. Clinton to give Mr. Trump and his team talking points, but have you watched what goes on at some of Mr. Trump’s rallies? There is some highly deplorable behavior going on, and it didn’t take Mrs. Clinton saying it for me to know it.
3Oct2016 Post to my timeline – after watching Trump Rally comments
Oh, Donald, Donald. Yes, ISIL uses barbaric techniques. It appears you have NO EARTHLY IDEA why they do this. They do it to BAIT BAIT-ABLE, and instill FEAR INTO FEARFUL people like you. They know their best chance to kill westerners is if westerners are there fighting them or protecting civilians – in their own back yard. Your plan is to send our soldiers into their lands to follow their narrative.
Hillary’s plan is as much as possible to have people with local interests fight their own battles. If they need our support, we will give it, but not by direct combat unless our troops are somehow directly attacked. In this case our support troops would of course defend themselves.
Yes, these are deadly people. But why do you insist upon trying to elevate the significance of these people into an existential threat to our country? The ISIL threat to our country is NOT currently even close to existential, and is unlikely to become so – plain and simple. Your apparent fear-mongering efforts to make it so are rather incomprehensible. Why do you insist upon inflating their importance beyond reason? This is helping ISIL win their propaganda war and recruit followers – is that your aim? Do you really wish to increase the percentage of the followers of Islam who will resort to violence against us?!
I know you won’t believe me, because you are out there making others fearful enough that they will vote only for you. Why would they vote for someone who isn’t as afraid as you?
Why was I surprised that you would take advantage of your supporters?
3Oct2016 Post to my timeline – after watching comments at another rally
Oh, Donald, Donald. You talk about surprising ISIL like you think any war we fight with them will be conventional in nature. Have you ever heard of the concept of asymmetric warfare? In case you are wondering, it occurs when one side has overwhelming force where using that force results in unconventional warfare – many things including city-based street fighting and, yes, TERRORISM. It’s not as simple as this, but that is pretty much what’s behind the terrorism we are seeing today.
Perhaps you should attempt some subtlety?
2Oct2016 Post to my timeline – thoughts regarding linked article
Rudy Giuliani (http://www.nbcnews.com/…/christie-giuliani-trump-s-manipula… – around 2:25 in the video) says “people have a hard time understanding how taxes work. If Donald Trump hadn’t taken those losses, he could’ve been sued by his investors, he could’ve been sued by his business partners…” and he goes on about this – even invoking “fiduciary duty” to his business partners – trying to make us think he’s an expert.
I CALL BS!
You don’t have a fiduciary duty to yourself – a fiduciary duty REQUIRES 2 or more parties. It is a concept to represent a duty between a fiduciary and someone else. I DO have a decent understanding of taxes and how they work.
The taxes Rudy is discussing are Donald Trump’s PERSONAL taxes. IF we were talking about his business taxes, that would be an altogether different matter. He really doesn’t have a legal obligation to tell anyone (even his spouse, since if he’s filing jointly she has to sign the form as well and is presumed to be fully informed and making her own decision about signing) anything about his personal taxes. In fact, the Donald is making a very big deal right now about this! What he does on his personal taxes is a personal decision between him and his tax man and the tax agency..
Mr. Giuliani, that was either REALLY dumb or really deceitful! Let’s call it DUMB, in which case clearly YOU are the one who has a hard time understanding how taxes work. I prefer that answer, but if it’s actually deceit, then you are simply trying to confuse the American people so that they don’t know what they should or should not be concerned about. Why don’t YOU tell us which it was.
Oh, and it’s NOT genius – it’s taxes 101.
3Oct2016 Post to my timeline – followup to above post
Oh, Donald, Donald. Fool me once ($900 million tax loss carry forward), shame on you. Fool me twice (plan to eliminate the estate tax – and NO, It is NOT a tax on death), shame on me. Fool me three times (lower taxes for businesses and the rich), then what?! And yes, I DO believe you will “FIX” our system of taxation – as in “FIX” it in your favor, which is what you’ve proposed. And you might well be the only person in the country who would stoop to that (“only I can fix it”). Just another example of your likely inability to separate the national interest from your personal interest.
3Oct2016 followup comment to my post
Today the Donald says “I have a fiduciary duty to pay” the least taxes possible. DUTY TO WHOM, you might reasonably ask. Not only did he mispronounce fiduciary, but you simply can not have a fiduciary responsibility to yourself – the statement makes no sense.
25Sep2016 Post to my timeline
Julie Prentis Watts forwarded a link to a Ken Robert’s blog post (https://kenrobert.com/…/trump-is-everything-i-was-taught-n…/) last night. I feel like I may have written it myself (which I didn’t). The comments are also quite interesting. “Replace Trump with Hillary and you have the same thing!” BUT YOU DON’T. Just because people say it over and over again without meaningful evidence does NOT make it true. We don’t have to even dig for evidence of what the Donald does – he unashamedly promotes it. “You have to treat women like s**t” from page 43 in the Nov 1992 New York Magazine (https://books.google.com/books…) near the bottom of the first column. This is the man who just YESTERDAY said he will champion women (What – as penance?!). If you go to KenRobert.com today (at least right now), he has a post in response to the assertions about Hillary. The Donald calls president Obama “The Great Divider,” which, in Donald-speak means that Donald Trump IS THE GREAT DIVIDER.
How did desire to believe become evidence in our country?
The Donald is a BIG fan of the “some people believe…” “evidence” style. Then there is the “all of my friends believe,” to which I would respond “they most certainly do NOT.” Not ALL of them anyway. I think you could honestly say that most of the time he doesn’t either, but he’s not afraid to prey upon those who do or are wishing they did.
Summary
There are a few others, but that’s most of my flurry of political posts. Hopefully it doesn’t end up to have been against my better judgement. It doesn’t feel like it right now.
I’d like to ask anyone reading this post to answer the following poll. Call it Genealogy, Family History, or… If you don’t work on your Family History, why not?
It’s tough to come up with a device that reasonably simulates the relationship of an individual to the rest of the world. When I was thinking it through a year or so ago, it seemed like I was coming up with a computer game. It’s been hypothesized – and being a Computer Engineer it is pretty natural for me to accept – that the human consciousness amounts to a program running in the human brain. We have at least 5 (probably more, but these 5 describe things pretty nicely) senses with which we interact with the outside world. There is no direct physical contact between our program and our world. Our consciousness seems to be able to encompass things – like our bodies, our cars, … – and be able to have a sense of where those things we have encompassed are in the world in relation to other things for navigation, collision avoidance, etc. We seem to build a 3D model of the world in our brains and move ourselves (whatever we are encompassing at the time at least) through that world. As we do this, we are running ourselves through scenarios to determine where we will be safe, where we will be in trouble, how we will reach our objectives, etc. The last time I read on the topic was The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger – I considered this to be an excellent and revealing discussion. Metzinger calls consciousness our Phenomenal Self Model, or PSM.
If this all sounds complicated, that’s good. If it doesn’t, then unfortunately you are probably vastly underestimating what you are going through as a human being. Our program of consciousness is far beyond anything we scientists and engineers have so far been able to imagine – at least as an implementation.
Take this a big step further. What we’ve been discussing in these essays is understanding and managing relationships with other human beings. What this implies is that you are attempting to create a model in your brain for how people will respond to your actions – hopefully in a manner that will meet your objectives. Evidently our brains and the programs they run are built for these sorts of things. While these essays are not really ABOUT relationships, relationships are central to good things and bad things, so we must attempt to understand them. Our approach might be:
Objective – have my neighbor “like” me
Possible Plan – act “fun,” smile, say nice things, show interest in their interests
Empathize – Attempt to put yourself in your neighbor’s shoes, and figure out how your neighbor might react to your possible plan
Modify – If you can’t empathize with reacting as your neighbor the way you wish them to react, then go back to “Possible Plan,” rethink, and try again
Implement Plan
Integrate – Take the reactions you’ve observed and use them to change your objective if needed, and start back at “Possible Plan” repeating as necessary
This process of reflection and running yourself through scenarios and making/executing plans is highly likely to be rewarding, and seems to be ignored more as we continue to be inundated with information. I just watched Amber Case’s TED Talk “We Are All Cyborgs Now:”
She presents a very interesting perspective including a reference to the fact that we do NOT take enough time to reflect on our actions since we have an almost limitless number of things we can “check” if we are so inclined. The act of checking things is likely just easier than taking some time to reflect upon what is important to you and then making/executing a plan.
There are several reasons why I chose the bubble analogy. The most important is that your relationships have no direct connection to your body, and yet, if you chose, it is at least possible to try to encompass them in your Phenomenal Self Model (PSM). Trying to predict, much less to productively influence, someone else’s opinions and actions toward/about you is no mean feat. Add more people and actions that can occur that are removed from your direct experience by one or more levels and it can become truly complex. Bubbles are also interesting because they at least seem at times to defy the laws of physics (of course they don’t, but that’s another discussion). Using bubbles as a device to discuss the properties of relationships seems like a reasonable fit. You might wish to attract another person or group, repel, increase your value in someone’s eyes, make yourself (seem) fun to be with, make yourself seem like a solid business partner, make yourself seem like you can’t do something so that “they” won’t ask you to do it, etc., etc. Of course, you can do this with or without the internet. The internet primarily gives you more volume to encompass with your PSM, and more opportunities to influence. Maybe this is where the sixth sense argument I referenced earlier applies.
There are good reasons to get a representation of your photographs (recorded images) scanned so that they can be stored in digitized form:
If you have your negatives and prints properly stored, then with digitization you have a 3rd form with several options available for storage
There are computer tools available that can be used to enhance your photographs (restoration, modification, creation of collages/posters, etc.)
There are computer tools available that can be used to share your photographs with others
Etc.
There is much discussion and some controversy over how best to scan your recorded images. On a good negative, there is likely much more information available for scanning than you need for simple images. Much depends upon what you will wish to do with the scanned images in the future. If you wish to print large, high resolution images, then you need higher resolution scans. If you plan a one-to-one print, then some say a 300 dpi scan is sufficient. The higher resolution scans use significantly more storage capacity. What to do?
Yes, your prints/negatives might deteriorate or be lost, damaged, or destroyed. However, unless you take no care of them – which I gather is unfortunately the case for a lot of prints/negatives – then the probability that they will become useless is much higher than that they will be destroyed. As clarification for this statement, a recorded image is in danger of becoming useless in my definition when there is no one who remembers anything interesting about the photo. An image is recorded so that it can evoke something in the mind of the observer. The act of computerizing a recorded image does nothing to address this fundamental issue. The memories that make a recorded image useful are far more fragile than the recorded image.
My answer to “What to do?” is to get a reasonable representation of your photos digitized somewhere, and find a way to use that to get your recorded images documented – the latter being the most important aspect of the exercise. I gave my answer away in a prior post – “Photo Indexing Project” – so feel free to have a look at that post. I’ll be talking more about what I believe is a good solution to the problem in the future. You have time to figure out the RIGHT way to scan your photos – but with every day that passes you are losing opportunities to acquire the stories behind some of them.
We received a Christmas Card for 2010 from a couple Julie and I know from High School. This summer when I was working on our photos, I was in our home town and I nearly called his mother to discuss possibly working with his family to document their photos. I learned in their card that his mother died in October. While I don’t know yet whether she was still capable of helping with the project, it seems to me like this was probably a tragic missed opportunity and it makes me sad that I didn’t help these good friends preserve some of their family memories!
For our purposes in these essays, I’ll define relationships to you as encompassing people who know you, or know of you and can influence aspects of relationships that are important to you. You might find it useful to graph your relationships on a 2X2, with one axis representing increasing importance of a relationship to you, and the other axis representing your level of overt efforts to influence that particular relationship – either directly or indirectly. This process of discovery as you determine which relationships matter and why is, depending up the complexity of your situation, one of the more important and perhaps difficult you can perform. There are lots of articles out there discussing relationships, connectedness and things like degrees of separation. I encourage you to seek them out as they are interesting and sometimes relevant to this discussion. Remember that you do not need to have intentional or direct contact with someone to have a relationship with them, and even these indirect relationships can be quite important to you.
If you are closely managing your relationships, this probably means that you are actively trying to influence people to think what you want them to think about you and their relationship with you. This can be quite complex, and can involve understanding not only the relationship you are trying to influence, but the relationships that person has with others that will influence how they view their relationship with you. Recall in an earlier post that “I went out on a limb just a bit” and made the following statement:
“I submit to you that all of the good things and all of the bad things” that happen to us “in this world happen to us because we are social.”
For purposes of this particular portion of the the discussion, I should probably replace “because we are social” with “because of or as a result of our relationships.” Relationships are central and crucial, whether we recognize/admit it or not.
I’m making the argument that the central discussion of Internet Use, then, is about how it affects your relationships and how it helps or hinders you from getting what you need and avoiding what will harm you. If you are able, please consider your relationships with, and then without the Internet. Please consider and answer the following poll:
Since you found this series of essays, you are probably at least somewhat familiar with the Internet. You likely know that regardless of whether or not you use the technology, there will be things about you here. Public records are available – some freely and some for the determined among us. There may be things mentioned about you by friends, relatives, enemies, news organizations, volunteer organizations, etc. You might put your head in the sand and ignore it, but the fact is that there are likely things here about you. Effort you put into understanding what is said about you – with and without the Internet – and that you put in to managing how that information affects your relationships can pay dividends for you (if you are at least somewhat adept). Unless you are a hermit – which you can’t be if you are reading this – you are busily affecting the relationships others possess and may be trying to manage (By the way, please feel free to affect my relationships by clicking “Like” on these essays and making (hopefully nice) comments!).
While arguable, I believe that the most significant impact of the Internet on relationships and knowledge is to accelerate the process of acquiring information (as an Engineer, I could argue that this in the ONLY direct impact, and the rest is consequential). For the most part, the information made available about people on the Internet is something that, with time and persistence, could have been acquired elsewhere. I say could have been. I don’t say would have been. The time compression concept is a game changer in many ways. Just like digital photography is creating an explosion of (digital) photographs, the Internet has created an explosion in the availability of information – some of it about you, and some of which would have never been “said” without the Internet. In fact, the internet seems to encourage people to say things that perhaps should never have been said. And what is said might be true, half true, or complete fabrication from any given source at any given time.
At a fairly basic level, what this means to your relationships is:
Significantly more opportunity for indirect relationships
More opportunity for relationships in general
Many more sources of problems and solutions
Things that are said, with or without attribution, that can be very difficult if not impossible to control and can gain exposure to a wide audience very quickly
More opportunities to occupy time that causes you to withdraw from important relationships
Possibly spending too much time passively checking “things” and not enough time spent on active relationship planning and implementation of those plans
Exposure of enough (sometimes seemingly unimportant) information to give “Bad Actors” what they need to cause you harm
The list can go on.
A bit more discussion of Bad Actors is likely worthwhile. It is possible to underestimate this problem just as it is possible to overestimate it. Public records provide lots of revealing information. Some localities protect this sort of thing more than others, but in many places I can figure out your home value for tax purposes (along with your address), and pretty good estimate of your home’s market value, contact information, and if I’m persistent enough, a whole lot more. Recall, though, that this information was already available – the Internet simply makes if faster and perhaps simpler to access it. Unless our government legislates more privacy on the Internet, there is likely not much you are going to be able to do about this issue. Remember – this is PUBLIC INFORMATION. You can try if you like. In my opinion, it is likely better to know what is said about you, and protect yourself much as you would without the internet. Be VERY private with your social security numbers, credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers, etc. When banks ask you to use your mother’s maiden name or brother’s middle name or anything like that, you might do well to have a secret response to this type of question rather than using the actual information since these things are discoverable. Be very cautious about using publicly available wifi for internet access. Don’t use a financial service that isn’t https – the “s” at the end tells you it is an encrypted service and it is very difficult for anyone to determine what is being communicated between you and the service in that case. If you are on a public wifi and using http (not https), it is possible for someone skilled and also on the same network to see what you are doing and even access the service you are using and pretend to be you. They likely won’t be able to change/access your passwords, etc., but they would be able to change information you post, and likely be able to see things about you that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. The probabilities are at least somewhat in your favor on this, but be aware that bad actors are out there and be as prudent as you are able to be. You should also be very careful about sharing settings on your computer when using this type of network. Since the information people can get about you can be very timely, you will want to consider that giving someone your location in a Tweet or Facebook entry can give a Bad Actor information that will help him/her cause you harm. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive treatment of computer security. Just recall that as in your non-Internet life, you are certainly no less vulnerable in your Internet life and in some ways likely more so. Share on the Internet only what you are willing to share in your non-Internet life, and know that you run a higher risk of reaching an unintended audience than you would without the Internet. If you have questions about this topic, please feel free to ask them in comments. I can not assure you an answer, but will try to at least help you in your research on the topic. Just keep in mind that people are more likely to find information that has been shared about you by you and others, and the information they find about you has a better chance to be timely information.
I mentioned in a recent post that Julie has collected a large quantity of family historical records. This includes a surprising quantity of photos, some of which were waiting for us at our parent’s homes. Since we’re “free as birds” we’ve been spending some of our time there. Looking at stacks of photo albums, suitcases full of loose photos, and Julie working tirelessly at assembling our family history compelled me to devise a project to put all of these photos online and provide a system for documenting them.
As I looked through the photos, the thing that really frustrated me was the fact that most of them had no documentation. Some did, and we’re lucky for that. The rest are just photos with a hint here or there via resemblance, an occasional print date, etc. Old photos are cool – at least many of them. Even the ones with documentation mostly just state simple facts – who, when and maybe where. Very few provide family or other historical context, what was happening in the photo or what led to the photo, etc. Julie and I are very fortunate that my mother and both her parents are alive and their memories are quite good. They’ve already played a significant role in this project, and we plan for that to continue.
The information that can be used to make a photograph a meaningful family heirloom exists in the minds of people that know something about the photograph. As time passes, memories fade and people die. Attempts are made to pass along these memories, but rarely are they organized or lasting. Computers and the Internet provide amazing opportunities to solve problems like these. So far, I’ve uploaded around 12,000 photographs. Most of these came from our parents collections – their own and their ancestor’s. It would be interesting to know how many photo prints others have in their collections, so please take a moment to answer the following poll:
When someone comes around to the conclusion that they want to “organize” their photo collection, the task can seem overwhelming. To scan or not to scan, and how to I approach scanning? Should I physically organize the photos? What about photos that are already in albums? How do I document the photos, and how do I associate the documentation with a given photo? The questions are many, and I haven’t found many useful discussions of the subject.
Between Joel and I, we’ve put together a pretty good solution to the problem of DIY computerization of a significant photo collection. We’re working hard to perfect the solution, and in the process, we’ve discovered quite a few things. One of the more significant is that it is REALLY hard to get people interested in the problem. This is much like Genealogy in general – either you are interested and have time and have the propensity and you work on it, or the stars aren’t aligned and you don’t. It’s a lot of work (Genealogy AND organizing your photo collection). Computerization and the right approach dramatically changes the level of work involved, but it’s still a lot of work. I’m sure I’ll talk about the photo organization approach more in the future.
We have concerted efforts by several companies today to index public records. The amount of information available already makes the pursuit of genealogy through online research very fruitful – to the point where offline Genealogists can no longer claim that there is nothing but junk online with respect to Genealogy – that’s simply no longer the case.
Why aren’t there more efforts in place to promote the indexing of family records like photographs? These would naturally be conducted by the families themselves, since they are the ones that would gain from the exercise if anyone would. I suppose it gets back to the problems I discussed in an earlier post about gaining broader participation. Let me conclude with another poll:
I briefly introduced a device – “The Relationship Bubble” – in the introduction to this series of essays. I did this immediately after discussing what it MIGHT have been like as a baby inside your mother’s womb. At that point, that was your life. You had few if any needs that weren’t automatically satisfied. You could interact with the world, but only in very limited ways. At certain points along your journey as a fetus, you began to sense things. You began to touch, taste, hear, and probably smell. You interacted with your mother in various ways, including how you moved, what you touched/pushed/prodded/kicked, etc. You were developing your first relationship, and for the more sensitive families your mother was probably helping you develop other relationships as she described your actions – either real, imagined, or created by her.
In this context, you could say your mother’s womb was your first relationship bubble – fairly literally in fact. That said, even as early as this, your family and perhaps others were likely creating a more figurative but no less important relationship bubble for you. This relationship bubble is made up of things like your family relationships with the rest of the world, your family background, aspirations, limitations, etc., etc. These castles in the sky that others create about you (intentially or otherwise) become what I’m planning to term your relationship bubble. Over time and as you begin to be more adept at communications through your own actions, you adopt more and more of your own bubble and then over time you begin to control more significant portions of it. You are never in complete control of your relationship bubble, and it lives on even after you die.
Your relationship bubble is bounded by the things that any other individual is exposed to about you that influences their beliefs about you. It starts out with a life of its own – since it is initially created in the context of our situations – and then we have opportunities to influence it until we die and then it lives on in people’s heads and evolves as others want it to evolve until what is left is largely what you and others recorded about it and what others choose to record about it posthumously. I choose not to for purposes of these essays, but you might call this bubble your identity. It is really how others perceive you, and how they choose to influence how others perceive you – which becomes a part of your bubble just as much as, and sometimes more than your own actions.
Comprehending the concept of a relationship bubble and attempting to exercise some level of control over it is highly significant and challenging. Please take a moment to read the story about “Blind Men and an Elephant.” Now consider that, while not something the observer can touch (unless you are in physical contact with the observer – totally unnecessary to the development of perceptions about you), the part of your relationship bubble that is exposed to any given observer is dependent upon their frame of reference, the information that is made available about you from any source, etc. This will be different – sometimes dramatically different – from one observer to the next. It might even be useful for you to consider your relationship bubble to be separate for different people and/or constituencies in your life.
Some people manage their relationship bubble carefully and extensively. Others pretend that it doesn’t exist. The rest of us are on a continuum between these extremes. The essence of this series of essays is to discuss how internet use influences the management of our relationship bubbles.
We sold our house in Garland earlier in 2010 after about 7 months on the market. The experience of downsizing our belongings was painful to say the least! I could – and may well at some point – go on and on about the experience, but I wanted to note some fairly specific observations at this point. We ended up at the end of the day with over 10 boxes of photos and other family records that Julie has accumulated from quite a number of sources. She had all sorts of stuff handed down from various estates – either from the estates themselves or from others who simply didn’t know what to do with the materials. My Mother still had a couple of suitcases full of photographs from her parents and my dad’s parents estates, and she says she shared the photos from her parents’ estate with her brother. Some of our own stuff was likely mixed in with the collection, but our own extended well beyond those 10 boxes.
Julie has been pursuing family history for about as long as she can remember, and the bug has really taken hold as all of the latest internet tools have really started gaining traction – ancestry.com, familysearch.com, etc. She really started trying to use computers for the task in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s when she published a 2 volume set on the Berven family. She used the Personal Ancestral File program at the time to help organize the documentation, and the Berven descendants enthusiastically supported the effort. We had a couple of family reunions in the Estherville area, and Julie even needle-pointed a 4 generation family tree that’s currently hanging at my Mother’s house. Life interrupted these efforts for quite a while, and I managed to lose that particular PAF file for her in attempts to back up the system she was using (which is ironic and disturbing, but that also is another story). We have the entire text of the book in several forms electronically, and several copies of the book, but given all the special Norwegian characters used in the book, it would have been a real time-saver to be able to convert the files to gedcom and upload them. Water under the bridge…
Julie is slowly but surely getting the Berven Family History rebuilt on ancestry.com. It is now a history of all branches of our children’s family tree – Prentis, Tennant, Main, Stephens, Watts, Needham, Hansen, Berven and related families. As far as we can tell (and we’re in the business), she’s using most of the best that the Internet currently has on offer for the task. She has varying levels of collaboration ongoing with large numbers of people. I’m biased in my belief, but others have told her that her tree is a fine work. She’s done it all out of the goodness of her heart (and it’s mighty good). She helps others selflessly, and others help her almost without exception on the same generous terms.
Aside from tooting Julie’s horn, my goal here is to openly wonder a bit about the pursuit of family history in general. She spends a great deal of her time at this – searching, communicating, collaborating, investigating, sleuthing, etc., etc. She has over 41,000 people in her main tree, and the main lines in the tree are well researched and documented. There are over 5000 photos – including tombstones, documents, people, etc. I believe this pursuit is and has pretty much always been a highly specialized pursuit and the folks that do it tend to become a “designated family historian.” Other family members send information their way when they learn something, but other than that many probably don’t get involved in the heavy lifting. I suspect that as more and more tools become available, the problem of involvement is becoming more acute.
The biggest question in my mind centers around how the barrier to involvement might be lowered to get more people involved in the process?
Is the problem of low involvement centered around difficulty, lack in interest, lack of time, …?
So far, the television series put together by ancestry.com – “Who Do You Think You Are?” – is excellent and seems well targeted. Hopefully with repetition, it will start to address any lack of interest that exists, and then it will be up to industry participants – ancestry.com included – to “seal the deal” with potential new participants and create some more designated family historians!
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