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An Era of Space in CrazyTown
I think everyone will agree with me that the year 2020 was a nightmare from the start. Everyone I know was begging for 2020 to be rebooted, and the world has become a CrazyTown.
This post was written on May 31, 2020, at least that was the date where I live, and I had just finished watching the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon capsule. It might be hard to believe, but I’m sitting here crying as I type this, and I’m not sure if I can fully explain why, but I’m going to do my darndest to try.
As far as I’m concerned, that launch was the true start to 2020. Sure, by May, it’s nearly half over, but it wasn’t until that launch that I finally felt like hope was on the horizon. It wasn’t until that launch that I could finally breathe deeply again.
To US English or to UK English? Is that really the question?
Frequently, I find myself in the middle of a conversation talking about whether something should be written in US English or UK English. Sometimes, it’s related to how something is punctuated (and yes, there is a difference between the two for some punctuation rules). Sometimes, it’s in regards to whether a story would work better written in one versus the other—normally focused on whether a story set in the UK should be in UK English. And sometimes, it’s connected to the frustrations that those around me have with Americans who don’t understand that UK English is different to US English.
Within these conversations, I find myself becoming a bit of a broken record, asking the same questions over and over again. And it all comes down to one idea…
Who is your target audience?
So, let’s break this down and really look at why understanding who your target audience is will determine which variant of English you use.
Is the next generation really that disconnected?
There is no doubt about it: the world that I grew up in is gone. It was filled with kids having water fights in the streets, our house being the place where all the hoses seemed to converge. It was bikes and bells, and doing what we could to get the ball away from the dog. It was riding the Tonka toy fashioned to look like a Jeep down the driveway (mom rode that toy down the driveway too). And it was pen pals with snail mail and waiting for the postman to come.
You were at the mercy of whatever the TV networks decided to air. You didn’t like what was on, you either lumped it or read a book. Phone conversations were scratchy at best and, in some areas, party lines were still a thing. There were phone boxes on every street corner, and cash paid for everything.
The concept of cell phones didn’t exist in my youth. Car phones were for the rich only. The internet was this unheard-of thing, and modems required you to place the handset from the phone onto this chunky device with pulses and high-pitched noises going down the phone line.
Video calls and streaming your favorite show to a handheld device wirelessly was something seen only in science fiction. Genetic modification of human embryos was the source of freaky war story lines from Star Trek. Yet, here we are.
Science fiction has become science fact.
Yeah, the world I grew up in is definitely gone, but there will always be those who wish we could go back to the way things were. Their reasoning is often linked to some comment as to how out of touch with the rest of the world the next generation has become—how the next generation is so caught up in an internet world that they’re missing the life in the local neighborhoods. In some aspects, I agree with them. But while I would love to cling to those go-outside aspects of the world that have vanished without me even noticing, there are other aspects of this new internet-based world that I have openly embraced and would never look back.
But these changes that I see in my world and in myself, was it really just technology that brought them on? Have we, as a society, really changed all that much?
Has our new level of technology brought about a level of disconnect between the generations that wasn’t there before?
We Let Them In: Is Privacy Dead?
Protecting oneself on the internet is something that I’m highly passionate about. There are so many ways to get into big trouble within our online interactions that I’ve made it a personal mission to understand the true nature of the dangers out there.
This is the world that my children have grown up in. They have never known a life when the internet didn’t exist. Social media in its various forms has become a massive part of the way they’re expected to interact with the world at large, and it’s my job, as their mother, to ensure that they know how to navigate this internet-based world safely.
With the increase in internet dependency within our daily lives, there are certain questions that have started to leak to the surface of my consciousness. Almost everything that we do is now online, with very few exceptions.
Sure, you have social media, YouTube and blogs, and TV through the internet means that we can watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it. However, you also have online banking, and you can buy your groceries online. I can pay for my car registration and file my taxes online. I order replacement gas bottles for the house through an app on my phone and I can report issues regarding water leaks or other hazards in my neighborhood using a different app.
My children were expected to submit their homework assignments online. They were even required to sit major exams using online tools. When they were still in high school, I got their report cards sent to me through an online website.
My husband gets his payslips online, and I get paid by overseas clients through online services. Even my royalty checks come in through online payments.
Everything about our world has shifted to online.
New Zealand, as a whole, has become a near cashless society, with EftPos found almost everywhere you go. Those payments go through the internet. Sure, I do have some cash in my wallet, but not much. Everything of importance is bought and paid for using online means.
Yes, this shift to an internet-based society has, for the most part, made our lives easier, but has it really made it safer?
How has this push to doing everything online affected our sense of privacy and security?
We Let Strangers In: Internet Bullies
Have you ever been in a situation where you have given your opinion on something based on your knowledge and expertise only to be shot down by one ignorant fool? Have you ever had that experience on social media? And have you ever found that when you chose to ignore the ignorant fool on social media that they kept coming after you—attacking your character? And, to top off the whole experience, did you need a friend to step in and handle it, for fear that you would just explode on public channels?
I would be surprised if I encountered anyone savvy with the social media world who hasn’t experience the troll attack at least once. It seems like a rite of passage to the internet world. For the most part, we’re able to ignore the trolls, because they’re after some strange definition of self-gratification, enjoying taking everyone else down into the dark hole of hell. But what if the troll is actually a stranger that we have openly let into our lives, influencing us?
The Strangers We Let See Facebook
It’s been a while since I’ve written on my personal blog. This has been for a few reasons, the biggest of which I’ve been focusing on my fictional writing, trying to finish my crime novel.
Well, the draft of my crime novel is complete, and it currently in the hands of a developmental editor. While I wait patiently for his comments (and trust me, it has been a patient wait, as I’m not ready to delve back into edits yet), I thought I’d turn my attention back to something else that I’m just as passionate about.
Protecting ourselves on the internet.
For years, on the Editor’s Blog on Black Wolf Editorial, I’ve been writing about some of the hidden traps associated with working online. Back in February, I decided to start a series here on my personal blog that delves into the mind of the bad guys who use the internet to prey on the innocent.
In the first post, I wrote about Twitter and how it’s actually what we post that can be more of the security risk. Today, I want to look at some of the settings on Facebook, things that many of us never bothered to consider a risk.