Keeping In Touch

 So the Calendar marks another close of year.  For me, my posts here have reached their sweet seventeenth year.

I appreciate the contribution of friends and family around the world who have directly shared various valuable links and posts with me - theirs is such a rich tapestry of what concerns and inspires them.   Their taking time and effort to reach out to me is never to be underestimated.  At times we may have nothing to say, but such links and posts are just a valued way to keep in touch.

At the same time, have I sent to many Whats App messages, posted unnecessary photos or videos and spent more time on screen instead of doing other things?

It can be disappointing and sad that on the other hand, despite more effective ways of communicating in this technologically more advanced world, the world can witness less hellos, less reaching out, more scamming and more silence in varying levels of personal interaction.
Only messaging text adds more burden to the eyes, loss of social verbal skills and over use of light emitting screens. 

Social media in the worst criticism can be dominated by relentless flouting of divisive views that refuse to compromise,
dodgy video clips that may contain intrusive viruses and signs of personal boredom.  The beast can be addictive, all consuming and trivial in the end - we have to be mindful of this.

The sole reliance on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok posts assumes everyone else spends time to check your posts.   The cyberspace can be full  of overloaded data like the debris circulating over Planet Earth.  Something can be amiss if one has not spoken to a Facebook contact in years - it can be obvious.  Individual brains can be transformed by the daily use of clicks, deletes and scrolling on a screen - are we becoming less patient, getting more sucked in on our stubborn beliefs and feeding on a dangerous addiction?

Getting connected in person is a different dish from broadcasting on Facebook, Tik Tok video clips or WhatsApp chat groups.

Apart from the agendas of obvious influencers social media mechanisms are often utilised by many to be a record of personal and family lives.  This virtual record is now dependent on wifi and external parties, instead of just the retro but independent photo album.  Many contacts can just be not interested in your personal or family records.  Those who truly are interested in you usually keep in touch in varied other ways.

Time is a personal asset that can never be replaced.   When someone offers you that, it is priceless.  Never take for granted when someone uses time, energy and interest to keep directly in touch.  Their time is an opportunity cost which can otherwise be used for their own personal development in their continuing journey of life.

#yongkevthoughts

Eatery Reviews

 

In this age of increasing disinformation, hidden propaganda, manipulative commercialism and social media hype, are we helped when we check an internet review of an eatery?

Are the scorings reliable?  One person's sense of taste can be another's disdain.  Can an eatery take litigation when its operators opine they have been unfairly assessed?

When goggling began, most reviews of foodie venues were dominated by text.  Then came the barrage of still images, many micro focused with blurred backgrounds, some echoing the ambiance of the place and all illustrating and supplementing what is written.

Eventually images in all forms took over with a crescendo.   Video clips, tantalising angles and added music made viewers really feel we are there with the influencers.  You Tube and Tik Tok fast tracked this waterfall of visual feasts.  Decisions and sensations were more made visually rather than upon listening to the audio.  Next, how do we bring in the wafts of Umami smell and aroma?

Individuals or groups of individuals can perfect the art of foodie tasting with humour, energy and internet income.   Some incorporate travelogues, in a varying range from the upper class seat experience of long haul aircraft flights to more obvious ads for tour itineraries.  Foodie reviews are transforming, experimenting and continuing to use new technology.   I wonder who watches the TV travel or cooking programmes anymore.

Perhaps nothing is as delightful as unplanned dropping by an eatery and enjoying the food, pushing aside any preconceived opinions from one's self or others.   The art and science of culinary sensations is best achieved by stepping on to the venue itself and utilising one's gut feel on the spot.

This brings to the matter of Michelin food guides, rankings and their requirement that winning eateries must fulfil prestated conditions each year to maintain their Michelin rank status.

Opinions of Michelin award teams are usually from individuals who are not local to the culture and country where they swoop in and make their assessments.   Are judges with local preferences and palates not important enough to be given more consideration?  Are restaurant design, elegance and pricing observed distracting from niche taste, strange cooking skills and heritage styles?

Can Michelin award judges have an inherent and unacknowledged bias against the vageries of things foreign? Is fusion cooking standing a better chance of being recognised by Michelin?

It can be amusing in contemporary times that scrolling on screens has fuelled the process of choice of eateries.  And then there is easy access to wifi and the need to post things on a real time basis - just after one bite and several posted images, an opinion of the food must be formulated.  There is not even sufficient time to digest the dish in the body before an opinion on a bite of morsel of food becomes viral.

Another disturbing tribal live screen following is that of fans watching what individual influencers eat every evening.   Does it reflect the pervasive extent of boredom that this can become a watching sport?

I know of people who quietly enjoy what they have eaten or drunk - and quietly go on to the satisfaction of having completed another day.  Such humans will not give impressions of food unless asked.

So there are millions of food images hanging about our cyberspace Universe. What eventually happens to them when they are no longer viewed? 

The eatery business needs regularity of custom, excitement of venue and marketing in all aspects. 
Word of mouth in the locality is no longer enough as greater mobility brings in diners from far and wide.
The post impact of a declared pandemic has changed significant
parameters for businesses that pay much rent, cannot rely on staff being available and depend on broken supply chains.  Social media  in this respect can help, but if not managed optimally, it can also be a two edged sword.

As for other things in life, success can bring about its own down stream challenges.   Cynicism can set in potential customers with too much hype in viral foodie opinions.

Relaxed venues begin to have three sit down sessions an evening.   Surcharges of whatever variety begin to be charged to so called milking the cow while the going is good. 

It all starts with someone giving an opinion for the world to see, read or hear in an entertaining way.

#yongkevthoughts

The News

What the news media ignores, or omits. For example, how strong those umbrellas are folded out and used in street protests in Hong Kong. I wonder who manufactures them.

How news can be repeated throughout the day, whether anyone is tuning in or paying any attention to them.

How sensational news is prioritised over good news.

How advertorials continue to be blatantly pushed through in news items, without respecting the intelligence of the recipient.

How breakfast shows can thrive with the unimportant, the trivial and in rush hour of early morning.

Why there is a proliferation of read news at set times of the day or night, when the public wants to be able to access the news at their own leisure.

How the agendas of broadcasters and web site publishers reinforce the attitudes and mindsets of people who already think alike, instead of opening their mindsets.

How news can be faked, how authentic news can be twisted, and how facts can be selectively argued.

How news can be emphasised according to culture, lifestyle and ignorance of the target audience.

How local news still dominates in a more globalised and inter-dependent world.

How broadcast news just increasingly makes us listen to what we want to hear anyway.

How news is often seen or interpreted through the goggles of the political spectrum.

How personal opinion is presented as news.

How news is withheld, crafted or selected.

#yongkevthoughts

Blocked Number, Forwarded, Dissemination and Not Picking Up

With a smart phone, there are so many ways to connect and communicate with.

Examples are text, WhatsApp, Facebook, Email, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, Twitter, Line, Messenger, voice call and voice message. The last two means are increasingly in disfavour or less used, especially with those under 40 years old. Every individual can be contacted in all these separate ways - and may inadvertently miss important communication simply because he or she had no time to or simply does not check every such channel on a regular basis.

Many have turned off audio or visual notifications as their regularity can raise our stress levels, due to the sheer volume of messages, mostly unimportant, received.

Twitter encourages wording a short message quickly, perhaps with not much forethought and with a risk of messaging in the heat of the moment. Traditional letter writing may be passe but usually allows our minds and emotions to have sufficient time to settle down first.

Snapchat allows you to display images for a short while, while you can keep a long running gallery of images in Instagram. Both play on our visual responses and a picture is really worth more than a thousand words.

What is posted in cyberspace is there forever, even after the act of deleting them. The smart phone makes it so easy to post. Just reflect on Facebook, utilised by so many who are brought to grief many years later with mutterings of long ago when they were younger, not so wise and more outspoken.

Every major and minor workeable invention of humankind has been subject to perpretations of fraud, deceit and abuse. Sad but true. 

Social media crimes cover the spectrum from finance to love to taking advantage of another person in various other ways. Traditional telephone landlines have already been used to manipulate on the pyschology of call recipients. So now the same bastardly approach is utilised to target social media recipients.

It can be as simply starting with the phone callers blocking out their identities or phone numbers. Therefore the recipient sees a Blocked Number on his or her phone. I am reduced to being filled with uncertainty, higher risk and hesitation to answer in such a situation.
What do you reckon you would do in a similiar scenario? Why would people block out their phone numbers when calling you?

It may be nothing sinister. Not so long ago, a previous generation picked up the landline phone naturally when it rang, with no means of knowing who called.

Yet many now do not pick up such calls. The logic now is that if it is urgent or valid enough, the caller will contact you in other ways.

Many who pick up calls with a Blocked Number can be confronted with unknown and menacing voices from the other side, a kind of Twilight Zone of experience. Worse are initial seemingly kind voices trying to eventually solicit personal data, or play on the inherent kindness and trust of innocent and well behaved citizens of our society.

Threats and scams made include a veil of extortion, a play on our potential greed (the strange caller promises of monetary gain in exchange for your personal data) and auto recorded voices stirring up fear and discontent. Seduction techniques include grooming target recipients to develop an emotional attachment to the caller to eventually extort or make the recipient part with money.

The first premise for responders like us is to quickly realise that there is no level playing field when dealing with such callers. The key response is to realise it is a dangerous game, every word of your voice can be recorded and you can fight back by contacting the entity or company the call is claimed to be made from.

This serious situation started with marketing calls made at dinnertime many years ago, with call staff pressured or induced to make hard to earn commissions at call centres. More people these days do not have a landline at home, so such calls and even more risky ones have now moved to the smart phone, which supposedly accompanies the owner everywhere.

Risky and manipulative calls and contacts are used increasingly by specific political parties to literally drive their message to the masses. These can result in fake news being disseminated by people whom you know share similar strong views with you. Think of WhatsApp. We have to really think more for ourselves and respect our own intelligence, especially when facing a barrage of cleverly modelled news communicated so easily and fast on your hand held daily companion.

This over use of such approaches have turned many people off, until they limit the use of their increasingly expensive phones. 

The inherent expectation held by many that you are always by your phone has to be smashed. Even if that smart phone is on your side, there should be no expectation of users checking their phones all the time. The quality of life is enhanced when I begin to only check my smart phone at limited stages of the day.....unless it is a phone call.

If it is urgent enough, do make a normal phone call or drop by for a face to face meet up.

The easy and instantaneous delivery of videos and images can be a two edged sword. They can result in pleasure and pain - and definitely a running out of storage space on your hand held device.

Weren't we told before that hacks and non-benign viruses can be spread through email attachments, whether in text, picture or video, many years ago? Now WhatsApp offers that risky channel.

It is said the dangers are elevated the more captivating and well made the WhatsApp messages are. Just like being at a snake oil show, we as the audience must increase our caution when we are faced with loud content, less signs of validity and no acknowledgement of source ( usually "forwarded").

Do not be a used party in spreading a wildfire we may regret or really do not want to be part of.

#yongkevthoughts

Social Media Messages and News - Stop First to Think

It is usually in our human nature to share experiences, knowledge, news and information.

One may expect human beings to gather around physically and face each other to do so, but this is no longer necessary.

They come in various forms in our contemporary world. We need not even speak to each other, but transmit almost instantaneously what we share in graphics, videos, pictures, text and more. Such startlingly efficient sharing communication is enabled by code, artificial intelligence, analytical cookies, wi-fi, gateways and monitored channels.

We do so with rising expectations of the quick and easy. The convenience can come with a cost.

We learn to lower our trust levels when messages in whatever format can be tampered with an intent to manipulate.

Racial, religious and political matters are especially vulnerable to be disseminated with an intent to arouse our deep set emotions, stir our beliefs and shake our convictions.

Hence the rise of the risks in whether things shared are authentic.

What are the signals that alert us to a higher possibility of receiving mischevious, false, compromised and tampered messages?

1. Messages featuring provocative negativity or over rated hope on an uneven emphasis.

2. Messages with no ownership and attachments with no trace of a time stamp.

3. Messages with sensational graphics and tone of voice over.

4. Messages with images that cannot be authenticated and so can be put out of context.

5. Messages from unknown and highly dubious websites.

6. Messages that test your inner instinct of being too good to be true, or make you want to authenticate further.

7. Messages from parties known to slip through fake news to you.

8. Messages sent instantaneously to groups of recipients can signal higher risks.

9. Messages from unknown or untraceable parties and yet claims to originate from famous persons.

10. Messages that intensify matters when every one should step back and calm down.

Each of us can just respect and utilise our own level of intelligence to avoid being sucked into furthering the progress of social media messages that cause problems if shared.

Step back from a message received if the first gut feel is bad on a suspicious message.

Always question the agenda of the party who shared the stirring message to you.

You can be the only person to break the chain of such suspicious messages. In the end, it is best not to respond.

Social Media Addiction and Downside

It is scary. The three apps I most often use are Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook.

They are all owned by the same business entity, which has more customers than many corporates, more users than populations of many nations and more followers than some religions.

I ask myself, what happened to the pleasure of speaking on the phone? Increasingly we can use our fingers more than our vocal chords. 

Our life routines and special moments are punctuated by electronic images and words that can be disposed as fast as they are created, or so we think. The huge number of records of every human being having access to wi-fi grows exponentially and are not just kept by the person who created them. Data is over analysed but not necesarily for benign and progressive purposes.

Data is not just kept on an aggregate basis, but details can be sliced and detailed. 

The addiction to using apps can be experienced akin to the pleasure of drug induced states, gambling thrills and rewards of repeatitive behaviour. Is communicating through social media really the same as meeting up face to face with social friends?

Have you observed how often software updates are required of you? Are such updates of more benefit to your provider than to you as a user?

It is easier to access electronic records than physical ones. And not just by you.
Each of us resents being manipulated by others in the face, but can willingly increase our risks of further manipulation by forces unseen, unheard and unrealised.

We have been induced to look for information the easier way by Googling, but have we truly stopped to query about the validity of such purported facts? 

It is easier to search for news on screens than to read them on paper. This simple situation illustrates the two edged sword nature of electronic information - easier does not mean true, harder does not mean fake, faster does not mean sincerity, slower does not mean not meaningful.

The sanctity of ethics is not protected, because it can be subserviant to other demands and priorities of your provider of the data and information you digest. Your personal data, life moments and images which you happily contribute to cyberspace are not yours for privacy anymore, but swallowed up to in turn sell you not just consumer goods, but ideas, politics and cultural beliefs. 

The Big Brother is smiling - even more as it is so easy for individual human beings to tell Him everything. 

You, as a speck on this Earth of human beings, can be naive to want to share and connect, but you have compromised yourself in this process. You are also possibly connecting unwittingly to forces darker than what you thought exist.

Such forces can be too big to fail and each of us are too small to resist. Despite regulation, protests and hearings, the relentless push of the giants carries on.

#yongkevthoughts

Using Facebook

In view of the greater risks to privacy, security and integrity when posting on Facebook, I emphasise my policy when using this facility.

1. Not everything that happens in my life are posted on Facebook - when scanning my FB postings, you do not know all my friends, relatives and positive people in my life - many choose not to be seen, photographed or mentioned in Facebook. Several of my friends have asked me not to post them or their activities with me in real life on Facebook. You do not see all events I am involved in, and most of the time if a photograph appears, thay are not on line real time.

2. I shall use Facebook to share positive, significant, inspiring matters - and topics which need thoughtfulness, decision making and action to follow up with. I shall try my best not to post speculative, rabble rousing and false news from external websites. Facebook users must think more for themselves and not accept that news feed on Facebook is necesarily true, just like we do not fully trust the traditional press, Tv news channels and other social media outlets.

3. Unless stated, the images and videos that appear on my Facebook postings are copyright to me and protected under Creative Commons. Do ask permission from me if you wish to use them for commercial profit.

4. I encourage you to let me know if any of my statements or third party reports that appear on my Facebook postings are not accurate or correct - and I shall follow up to acknowledge your concerns.

5. If I have emerging trends in my Facebook postings, it does not necessarily mean I want to buy them, or are interested forever in such things, or have a mindset that reflects such implied views. I retain the right to change my views or mindset on products, people, politics, social matters and more. 

6. My Facebook postings are subject to my own actions on deletions, changes and retention.

7. I utilise Facebook for moderate fun, positive diversion and sharing on an intelligent basis. I do not believe in applying to a wide extent that everybody is interested in me, wants to connect with me or wants to share with me. I do not want to connect with every one , only individuals who give me positive vibes.

8. I do use other means of communication apart from Facebook. So my Facebook is not totally me, and I am not just living a Facebook life.

#yongkevthoughts