Category Archives: technology

The Future is Now! – A Backup Story

So, I was sitting around my local co-working space today, when someone asked me what I thought about offsite backup services and what I would recommend. Without missing a beat, I said, “The one I offer.” I then proceeded to give the elevator pitch and explained the benefits.

“Great!”, the other person exclaimed. Then, a few minutes later he stated his desire to sign up and asked when we could set up a time.

“You have your laptop sitting there so how about right now?”, I asked.

To his amazement, and appreciation, I took my wallet out of my pocket, removed the tiny USB 8GB drive I keep within. I plugged it in, launched the installer for the backup client software, entered the settings, and began the backup.

“So, how will I pay you? Do you need me to send you a check? PayPal?”, he asked.

“I can take a credit card right now, on the spot, if you prefer.”, which he agreed to.

I took out my Square reader, plugged it into my iPhone, swiped the card, charged it, and sent him the receipt via email. The entire process from decision to completion took about 5 minutes.

The future is now.

Thoughts on the iPad 2

OK, so I have finally had a chance to sit down and catch up on all of the big iPad 2 news of today and I do have to say that I am typically impressed. I use that phrasing because this is exactly the kind of second revision update one would expect from Apple in this area. They have never been a company that rests on their laurels or suffered even the hint of competition1 in a market they pretty much defined.

They improved everything. It’s thinner (Thinner than an iPhone 4!), faster (Dual Core!), has front and rear cameras (Facetime!). Even the new cover, not to be mistaken for a case, is engineered and imagineered to the nth degree. What’s not to love? If you were a hold out on the original iPad because you knew that Apple was likely already making something even better, well, wait no longer this is the machine you want.

That said, what about those of us who have the first generation iPad? You know, the one I’m writing this on right now? Is this so significant an upgrade that it has somehow magically rendered ours near useless in comparison?

I think not. I think if you were using and loving your iPad before today’s news, you can and should do so after it. It is still very much the magical and revolutionary 2 device it was when you woke up this morning. You know, when you launched the iPod app, fired up the latest episode of Enough, streamed it to your Airplay speakers, swiped through the New York Times, while you sipped free-trade coffee, and pondered what a blessed and wonderful life you had. A life filled with things you could only dream about as a kid and still foreign to 95% of the world’s population. A life free from the guilt your mother tried to instill when she told you to eat all of your vegetables because there were starving children in Asia and you should be grateful to have any food at all. Instead, you get to enjoy this still magical device and just tuck away in hidden places the possibility that those vegetable starved kids likely grew up to work in the factory that made said magic for you.

So yes, the iPad 2 is great if you need one. If you have an iPad today, the one you have is best.

Also, eat your vegetables.

  1. This word should be read as if in air quotes because that is how it was meant. And, no, Android is still not there and likely never could be in my opinion. ↩

  2. Air quotes again. ↩

Meditations on Erasing, Outsourced Memory, and The Second Self

What if you were to erase your digital past? All of it. Start fresh. Today.

All of those photos of past loves. All those documents of work from two jobs ago. All of that stuff you have been clinging on to that has no real impact or relevance today. The stuff you will likely never need again. What if you were to make the conscious choice to erase it in order to move yourself faster forward? Not because you need the space. Not so you can run around calling yourself “minimalist”. What if your reason for doing it was no more than being more focused on the present and more prepared for the future. A recent essay from Ev Bogue has had me meditating on just that.

The fact is, that technology is catching up in such a way that increasingly it will hold onto the past and those memories for us. Our Second Self 1, as Ev has coined it, will contain our memories so we don’t have to. We will be able to search for and access all of this stuff if we ever need it again. It will be out there. Especially if it matters. Do we really need it in the same physical and cognitive space as the things that are important and relevant today?

For instance, if I were to delete this site tomorrow, you could still find a lot of the content. Especially the important stuff. Google caches it. The Wayback Machine remembers it exactly as it was. Perhaps, even more fundamentally, the really important stuff has been retweeted, reblogged, taken to heart and put into practice, and all but lives on far beyond the words in this container. Would it be the end of the world if I erased it and started over?

Another example is Dropbox and CrashPlan. I put everything I can now, including all of my documents, into Dropbox. CrashPlan does incremental backups of my machine every 15 minutes. If I were to erase something from my system, it would not truly be gone. Both have the ability to restore deleted content. If I really needed something back I could find it and retrieve it. The technology has become my long term digital memory – keeping multiple copies and versions so that I can focus on the things that are important and relevant now.

Then there are the other things I’m letting my second self build and remember as I go. Any link I share on Twitter is remembered by my Pinboard. As is every item I read in Instapaper. Not to mention the many, many, things I send there manually. I don’t need to save that interesting link I read that may or may not be important to find later. I don’t need to keep it. If I read it I will be able to find it. My second self will remember. My primary self can therefore have more cognitive space and technological ability to work with what I need today.

My mind also turns to those who recently lost all of their email due to a GMail snafu. They opened up their email today and poof all of it is gone. On one level, I think about the consequence of trusting and outsourcing such memory and data to the technology, the cloud, the second self. The loss of control. The loss of things that really do matter today. On another level, I envy it. How nice might it be to start over and send out a message to all of my contacts letting them know what happened and to send their message again if it was important.

It causes me to challenge myself about the nature of control. Am I controlling the data? Is the data controlling me? Do we really ever have control over it in the first place? Is the loss of control frightening or, in some ways, cathartic? Does the true control and empowerment come from being able to take it or leave it? To erase?

Just a few of the things I’ve been meditating on lately and hopefully will spur some further thought for you as well.

  1. The ideas of Second Self and Augmented Humanity I find to be very interesting and important ones and Ev is a thought leader in this area. If you want to get a glimpse of where humanity is headed in the very present future, this is a must read. ↩