On The Net - Computing News

with Chris Goh

There are some traditions you can imagine that will not change for a long time.

It may be a mother singing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to their child from a child music prodigy that was Mozart, or great words recited like, "Out out brief candle, life's but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage..." from Shakespeare, whose works keep playing on and are heard more and more. If they ever do disappear, the world would be a lesser place.

Can you imagine then a world without such heritage, a world without those key markers that determine our heritage, our meaning, our sensibility? It's so easy to dismiss, but our whole paradigm of thought, of ideas, all transcended from our history. Original thought is hard to find, and when you need to convey it, you need to communicate using words that people can relate and have context to.

If you can understand what I'm saying, you will appreciate the attempts of many cultures around the world at reclaiming their lost heritage and discovering the lost context of their ancestor's ideas, beliefs and the importance of historical artefacts that can give meaning to who and what they are.

One of the great beauties of technology now is it can provide cultural communities with the ability to learn and share their past with others. Even in the western world movies have given us a new understanding of issues like discrimination, war and humanity.

It will be interesting how others view in the anals of history, because unlike our ancestors where records were kept on cave walls, stone tablets or on paper, the information age hides them all in hard drives and the real physical words are written in code. The truth and the real irony is that in this day of communication and prolific information sharing, how much loss of information will there be to our future generations? How much culture have we already emptied in our desktop recycling bin or deleted in our Email inbox? Time will only tell, with future computers, whether they will be able to interpret our archaic computer languages and backup tapes. There is something to be said about books - they don't need a power supply to show history lost.

HotNews

In a bid to compete with Google's new Beta GMail, Yahoo has increased the E-mail quotas of its users to 100Mb which is still a 10th of Google who boast a big 1 Gigabyte.

Those of you who are regular readers will know that there is a whole lot of virus pretending E-mail from Banks, now be prepared. Some of these new ones may attract your ego. If you get E-mails saying that you have been head hunted for a great job and to look at the position description, think twice, or if you are being congratulated because your colleagues have nominated you for an award. Who said the days of regular mail was over.

As mobile phone cameras have become popular, so has the ethical debate on its use. Following in part Korea's lead, the US now has created a Video Voyeurism Prevention Act that has just past the Senate and now has the House of Representatives to go. This act will make it illegal for people to publish pictures taken in secret, in particular places or the shooting of particular things, eg up skirts. It's a shame one has to legislate to make people do the right thing.

In America, Burt Rutan will possibly be in a couple of months the first private citizen to fly an aircraft into space to claim the X-Prize of $10 million US. This is an extraordinary feat that brings commercial viability to space travel. To claim this prize, three people must fly twice over 100km, which is then classified space within a fortnight period. Their spacecraft named SpaceShipOne has reached 64km, which is already a record.

HotSites

www.languages-on-the-web.com

Want a portal to the world's languages and cultures? This is an excellent place to peruse the diversity and depth that surrounds us.

www.ilovelanguages.com

If that is not enough, then this specialised list from the Online World Library should be the pick of the bunch. Handpicked and updated regularly it includes online dictionaries to free translation services.

www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus

The United Nations has put together the CyberSchoolbus to educate children about the world we live in, including topics such as human rights, poverty and religion. A very well put together site.