Sounds like sooner or later, an entire section of this website is going to be dedicated to people missing the point. Here comes another one of those so-called “studies” “demonstrating” that the youth is plagued by an “Internet Addiction”.

These people are trying to assimilate the absorption of drugs to the use of Internet, making fools of themselves in the process. Hey, the more they’re wrong, the more I laugh.

With drug use, the end is the absorption itself. Nobody gets high on an Internet connection, watching bits go by or something. Internet is a tool. A means to an end. And in the context of social websites, what is this end? Connecting with people. Wow, how wrong is that? You were just trying to be more social, and you’ve just been slapped with a disorder.

Humans are social animals. Lock someone up for 24 hours without any connection to the outside world, and we’ll see if he doesn’t show any disturbing symptoms. We’re so much more social now than our cave-dwelling ancestors, so doesn’t it seem natural that our well being is tied to the tools that allow us to maintain these social interactions to the level they’ve reached?

And that’s just the social network angle. More bullshit is distilled across the article:

In one extreme example in South Korea reported by the media, a couple allegedly neglected their three-month-old daughter, who died of malnutrition, because they were on the computer for up to 12 hours a day raising a virtual child.

Wow, really? That’s scary. About as scary as when people forgot to take care of their child when their ass was stuck in an old fashioned couch, facing a good ol’ TV. Just not much more, though.

And then there’s this:

The center’s website cites various examples of students who ran up large debts or dropped out of college due to their obsession.

Yeah? Wouldn’t that be a gambling addiction then? You know, something completely unrelated to Internet?

And finally, a very touching quote from a student:

I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening

Well, that’s too bad for you then, because it seems you’re sickened over nothing but air. What would you say if this quote read something like “I can’t go anywhere on foot, I have to take a car. I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening”?

Evolution is natural.

Evolution means tomorrow doesn’t look like yesterday.

I suggest you start getting used to it.

Funny that. Somewhere in the wordpress tools, I installed a plug-in to track traffic on this website. Turns out somebody wandered around my Heavy Rain post after googling “heavy rain strip”. Imagine his disappointment. Oh yeah, no doubt, he’s a ‘he’.

Okay, let me help you:

There.

Interestingly enough, you know what I did to get this screenshot? Yup, I googled “heavy rain madison titties”.

And the world safely goes round and round.

Forget about bank robbers, serial killers and international terrorists; the guy at the top of the Most Wanted list is the poor schmuck that a court will manage to hold accountable for the world changing around us. If you find him, the RIAA and MPAA want him. Major actors in the software industry want a shot at him. Everyone in the newspaper industry wants him, too.

That fucker, how dare he?

I had an interesting conversation the other day: my interlocutor was the kind of person who barely, barely knows the difference between an internet connection and an internet browser, and who seemed content with it. Fair enough. The guy only had one email address (the one his ISP set up), which, he told me, he couldn’t even use because of all the spam.

A second went by as I tried to process the thought. I blinked. Spam? Those things our ancestors used to fight with bare hands? But I thought they were extinct!

And that’s the beauty of virtual worlds; the world we see is the one we choose to make. Remember the annoying web pages of yore, the ones that tried to hypnotize you with a sea of  ridiculous animated GIFs? Well, they’re probably still out there. The difference is that no one sees them anymore, because we collectively (yet unconsciously) decided we didn’t want to suffer their sight anymore; they got buried by the magic of Google’s PageRank.

If Internet was a physical world, our cities would be build on top of heaps of crap. Thank God it isn’t.

Not so long ago, somebody I know was telling me how he had never used Wikipedia. His argument was that it wasn’t to be trusted:

“I heard that when a malicious change is made, it only takes a couple of minutes to fix it; but if someone changes Napoléon’s D.O.B., the person responsible for finding out which is which doesn’t necessarily know the right answer.”

It used to be, we dreamt of a monolithic computer that would know all (hello, Multivac); you’d walk up to it, and ask a question either directly or through a punched card (depending on the decade you were in). And the computer would know the answer, the way you know how to conjugate verbs or an academic knows what Napoléon’s dates are: by referring to an academic source of information. You can look around all you want nowadays, you won’t find such a thing. We do, however, have a system that gives the same result, except through very different means: by simply indexing the whole world, we have a statistical source of information.

As an example, we’ve tried for years (decades) to teach word processors to correct our mistakes: typos, orthographic mistakes, and grammar errors. A 12-year old could do it. And yet a computer still can’t, not really (admittedly, a lot of progress has been made, but programmers still took decades to achieve this).

Now on the other hand, if you simply google “napoleon 1769 1821″, without a doubt (and without even clicking on any result), you know you have the right, official, 100% certified dates for Napoleon. As another example, let’s say you’re not sure whether “unconstitutional” or “inconstitutional” is the proper spelling; just type in both, and see for yourself, again, without accessing any specific website other than Google.

Does Google know what Napoléon’s dates are? Does it have any clue as to the proper orthography of the word  “unconstitutional”? Has it been taught any grammar rules? Absolutely not. And yet you can have certainty through 2 indicators: the number of results, and the type of results - are the top links leading to official, commercial or academic websites?

The interest of this, of course, is that a single, authoritative source of information can be mistaken, voluntarily corrupted, involuntarily biased, unavailable, etc, while a statistical source - a mass of information stored all over the place - is a distributed, incorruptible source of information.

For an in-depth explanation, there’s an entire chapter in The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (some of it can be read here, in case you’re too lazy and/or cheap to by the book).

TED really is an invaluable resource. Any given day, there’s something interesting to discover. Of course, I can’t post here every time this occurs, but I’ll have to make an exception this time: Seth Godin talks to us about Tribes and why they matter. I suggest you read his book to find out much more, but if you want to have an idea of what it is first, go check the TED video.

You know when you sort of understand what’s around you, but that it all gets clearer with a simple nudge? That’s how this book works. The way Seth talks about managers (vs Leaders), it’s like he’s been working for my company: managers are here to handle processes that are already in place, and not to innovate. Most of them will tell you how things are still the same they were before. They’ll actively fight change to justify their paycheck.

But Seth hasn’t been working for my company. He just picked up on an universal trend that needs to go away, and he has a plan to make it go away. How not to take everything he says for granted when his views are so dead on?

Come on, do youself a favor and visit Seth’s blog and TED on a regular basis.

Not exactly a Lacoste fanboy, but this has some nice design:

http://www.lacoste-future.com/en/.

Bloggers are like rappers, they like to contribute to each other’s work.

My good friend Freddy owns a blog where he describes his experience of being a consultant. An interesting read, as Freddy is good at everything he does - both being a consultant and a blogger.

For the time being, most of it is in French, but my contribution - a quick description of what my professional environment is like - is the first of a series of posts in English.

Find it here !

Hi, my name is Eric ‘Spiffre’ Miffre and this is a “hello world”.

Alright, I guess I’m going to start off with explaining a bit about what this blog is about; basically, it is about everything I find related to the entertainment industry. So you only have two words here, but it includes a hell of a lot, so let me boil it down to the main points of interest I have:

• “Entertainment” standing for: the video game industry (of course) and the film industry.

• “Industry” standing for: everything business. Because yes, I have personal interest in business and marketing, even though it’s not what I do for a living. Turns out, I believe there’s a lot to learn in everyday life that can be useful when building (and leading) a business.

But enough chit chat, let’s get this thing rolling: welcome to spiffre.eu, stranger !