The On Screen Electronic Divide

 It has been like trampling through the jungle.

Accounts, apps, email addresses, websites and more cry out for your passwords.   Some insist on a specific set of characters, caps, punctuation and numbers.  The more careful entities do a two factor authentication.   Airlines and banks provide electronic fingermark access.  Others send a one time use six digit pin to your nominated mobile telephone number.

And yet the fraudsters and scammers are lurking in the bush.

Out in the wild world are people using online love lures.  Victims usually have not met their scam better half in person face to face - and depend on messages, electronic photos and online voices.  I am confused, don't you think you want to feel a budding lover in the flesh first in any serious relationship?

There may be a rising tendency for on screen commercial transactions to avoid meeting the other side.  We are not interested to meet the cook in our food deliveries.  We get our payments from human beings we are not interested to know.   So many consumers only interact with the middle broker or deliverer - or maybe not.  Even parcels are just left at your nominated place and the deliverer simply takes a photograph of where he or she left it.

House recipients put up front door cameras with apps on phones.   Gone are the days that we get a chance to chat with service people.   Is it because human beings are so entangled with other things that they cannot wait for a delivery?   Yet we patiently wait for the arrival of the plumber, electrician, gardener and tradie.

There used to be someone home to receive things.   Now they can go to lockers in shopping centres.  Oh yes, the traditional local post office is gone.   Fancy cafes are more popular in suburbs - and everyone perhaps goes there on  a regular basis more than any other place.  Cafes can play another role as collection centres, more than newsagents.  

Online commerce has spiked to such proportions that the cardboard and materials used to pack parcels are becoming a menacing disposal matter. 
Some deliveries still insist on a signature by the recipient - and the seller just wants any form of mark, not a proper personalised signature, as proof of receipt.

How do we get satisfied that we are actually interacting with kosher and authentic other parties online?

As online consumers, we are always challenged that we are not robots.   We hardly get to authenticate parties on the other side of the electronic interface.   It truly feels like a one sided way of we always having to prove ourselves in an electronic transaction.

#yongkevthoughts

Numbers 2025

 In 2025:

Narendra Modi rules over 1.46 billion across India.

Xi Jin Ping presides over 1.424 billion across China.

Pope Leo XIV heads over 1.4 billion Catholics across the world.

The European Union has 449 million in an emerging political union of still rather independent states.

Donald Trump is President over 340 million people across the USA.

Indonesia's 294 million people currently have President Prabowo Subianto.

Pakistan has 255 million people under President Asif Ali Zardari.

Nigeria has 238 million residents in a country ruled by Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Brazil has 213 million people currently ruled by Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bangladesh, located beside India and Myanmar, with 175 million people, currently has a caretaker government under Prime Minister Muhammad Yunus.

Russia has 146 million residents across a nation presided by Vladimir Putin.

Japan with 123 million people currently has Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru.

The Phillippines has a population of 121 million under President Bong Bong Marcos Junior.

#yongkevthoughts

Clutter

 Clutter.....

Unknowingly.  Without any intention
.  They seem to creep up.  Before the sweeping conquest of most things online, clutter was more tangible, more physical, more visible.

It was one of the two times a calendar year we could leave things beside the pavement for Council services to collect
and dispose for us ratepayers.

Not everything, there are guidelines of what we can throw.  No chemicals, oils, paints, computer devices, toxic things, nothing too large.   Small furniture, mattresses, lawn mowers, kitchen gadgets, metal and pails seem okay.

How did households accumulate such items?  Once  they were useful, many times they were loved, always they provided joy.  Perhaps the original users and owners had moved on.   Maybe they had exceeded their useful life.  Many could have borne scars of peeled paint, loose screws and damaged corners.

When the items were removed, most likely from where they had been sitting for so many years now, a space was freed up.   The vibes of space and energy can move to a more positive stance when things that are hardly used are finally removed.

Why have such items been still kept but no longer used?    Are owners hanging on to sentimental memory or plan to use them again in the near future?   Everyone of us have wardrobe items from the past that we have not worn for a while.   We can have treasured books in our personal library that we read long ago.   Before wifi came and took over our lives, we had physical media in tangible storage for entertainment. Each of us have souvenirs from enjoyable tours.   

As baby boomers live longer, as houses become empty nests due to migration of the younger generations and as family elders downsize, the question of clutter and the need to dispose of household items can rear its ugly reality.

Every individual has silo interests echoed in personal possessions.

What is a person's treasure can be another's garbage.   What was lovingly cared for daily can become disposable in the eyes of another.

There can be a comfort zone in keeping something or not.   In a family scenario, will younger generations still keep the items valued by parents?   Will a spouse have the same cherished mindset over specific items prioritised by the other half?

Human beings are born with no attached material belongings - and so likewise when they pass on.  The human penchant for attachment especially to material things is how civilisation  and society have conditioned us.  Letting go of things is a trying process.    Over attachment leads to the accumulation of clutter.

Other people may call it clutter, but what we hold on to can represent our efforts, devotion and time spent in building them up.  It is essential to understand this perspective.   Then only can third parties comprehend the strong attachment of persons to things that cannot be let go of.

Clutter has emerged in cyberspace -  on screen records, documentation, images, videos and graphics for example.   As these are not that in the face physical, we may not fully recognise the extent of such clutter - until we run out of online capacity in our devices.

Everyone of us faces the responsibilityto manage clutter of whatever kind.  Is it much better that we control, manage and decide on matters of our own clutter?

Amidst the so called clutter, there can
be hidden gems.  The question then becomes when and to whom does the realisation of such hidden gems occur.

#yongkevthoughts

When It Is Fraud

 "i have not lost my memory, but I still do not seem to remember". So goes a line from an old British movie.

When asked to respond to concerns of the serious lack of competition in the supermarket sector across Australia, a representative of the business sector is said to proudly state that " but they are making profits to serve investors".

I cannot see the humour and logic in such pronouncements that miss the essential point.  More of such publicly made statements can be heard from those in authority, to detract and distract from issues they cannot explain.

"The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth."
(Jean de la Bruyere)

"Our ability to manufacture fraud now exceeds our ability to detect it." ( Al Pacino).

Albert Camus once stated
'Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object."

"Fraud is the daughter of Greed." ( John Grant)

"Force and fraud are, in war, the two cardinal virtues.”
— Thomas Hobbes

"The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that."
(Pearl Bailey)

"If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud."
-  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"If it is too good to be true, it is probably a fraud."  (Ron Weber)

In Australia, there is more legal requirement to ensure truth when selling toilet paper in advertisements, than when in flagging political ads.

Whether it is in the context of business, politics, government service, communication media or international initiatives,  each of us must observe the words and actions who promise one thing and enact another. 

Confucius can have the final say.
"Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to
propriety;
make no movement which is contrary to propriety."

#yongkevthoughts

Screen Messaging

 The variety of contemporary social media communication, on screens of all sizes,

spreads across various options.   Messages, especially social ones, are sent at all times of the day or night, with little regard for the niceties of rules after hours and with the apparent gusto of the convenience of the sender.

The existence of group chat messages, although purposeful when they started being available, has witnessed its down side.   Arguments have broken out due to the steadfastness in belief and principle held and expressed by specific individual participants.   Much controversy has arisen over matters and issues practically beyond the control of such indivuduals - and arguments breaking out in group chats over various people taking a stand of their own views.

This further leads to the observation that many such online chat groups serve the need to reinforce the comfort and assurance of those who want to hear and read what they already believe in - and such chat groups are not for those who have a healthy interest in listening to or trying to understand other views on the same subject.

Line, Tik Tok, Instagram, Whtssapp, Signal and Telegram, to mention a few, supposedly have varying degrees of supposed privacy and encryption.

All offer voice, video, message and attachment capabilities.   Some restrict the number of words in text messages, all have storage capacity limits.  Unless one occasionally deletes the creeping build up of content on such apps, there can be inevitable grief.   Many in a group chat app utilise the feature of disappearing messages after a predetermined time, but will some members  miss some earlier messages shared if they do not regularly check such group messages?

Do we want to carry a chat without using audio at all - consisting of finger taps that may not spell properly,  some in a rush without careful thought and others in  such a casual manner of using lingo that will be not acceptable in formal writing.  The art of writing has been undermined and rare do we get to read a message with the grace of full grammar, punctuation and careful thought.  To me, conversation with some other human being is best carried out face to face and by articulating our spoken abilities.

There can be an expectation of a fast reply in messaging.   The reality is that such written messages can be only read at the next opportunity when the recipient has time to do so.   Yes, apps do offer features as well when the message sender knows that their message has been read by the recipient.  It must be borne in mind that each message recipient has a basic human right to be not using a cyberspace device all the time and be free of on screen demands as well - there are other things to do with our personal time.

The over crowding of messages, say on Whats App, does dilute the importance of written messages going through this Meta owned channel.    When a specific sender usually bombs recipients with an over whelming load of messages filled with casual links of video and web connections, many of no mutual interest on the part of the recipient, there can be an inevitable outcome.   Recipients lose interest in such messages, pyschologically withdraw from opening the offered links and inevitably will miss opening  the occasional significant personalised messages from the sender.

This dilution of paying attention in reaction to such overloading of otherwise not personally important messages has occured in the use of emails not long ago.
Such messages can reek of propaganda from a political and commercial view point.   The daily receipt of such communication can be compared to junk in the phyaical post box of old and the advertisements forced upon our viewing pleasure in paid or free to air streaming services.

Daily greetings do mean the effort and concern of meaningful friends or relatives
who make time to reach out to us.  At times, the recipient may not check his screen messages daily.  Is it considered rude not to always respond on a timely basis?

Images and weblinks can be attached on messaging apps, much like what we used to do with emails.  Several types of attachments can pose higher risks of containing cyberspace viruses or attacks, especially when images received can be automatically saved on to your gallery in your smart phones.

Short form written messages can be made in haste.  Recipients can misinterpret, take it out of context or not realise the true intended tone of such messages.

Formal issues are best written on documents or emails for recording purposes rather than left to the casualness of other communication methods.

Video clips can use up limited device storage capacity in our smart devices rather quickly.   Deletion of content can become a regular exercise in using apps.

You Tube links can be short, middling or long in requiring your time to view their clips.   For many of us, our attention span has sadly shortened to quick injections of dopamine to our physical brain wiring.

The instinctive need to share with and forward to friends and relatives can be an inherent human behaviour.    We discover new things on and off when we are informed.   We can be more willing to inquire and trust when we are communicated by someone we know in person, rather than from third parties.   However the recipient can have a problem with information overload.

Is there a protocol of politeness that we have to respond to every message sent to us?   What about messages that are forwarded from other chats, messages that originate from people or sources we do not know, but transmitted to us by a person we know?   Time and time again on the other hand we are advised to not click on dubious links.

In a working envionment, information sent or discussions made on apps may no longer be accessible, unlike emails or email attachments.

So how do we manage and learn to say no in response to the above situations?  I myself plead guilty to committing several of the misdemeanours discussed above.

#yongkevthoughts