Note to my lovely English-speaking audience: my blog articles are usually in English so that everyone can read them. But this is so France-centric (2012 presidential elections) that I’m doing this one in French. The Google translated version is here, for those who are feeling adventurous. We’ll be back with our regular programming soon.

Pendant l’entre deux tours de l’élection présidentielle, j’ai eu quelques réflexions que j’ai partagé avec ceux qui me font la gentillesse de me suivre sur les réseaux sociaux (sur Google+ en particulier, celui-ci se prêtant à mon sens plus que les autres à la discussion).
Ces textes, j’ai du me faire un peu violence pour les écrire : l’ambiance était vraiment rude sur le net, et j’avais l’impression que le fait de parler m’attirerait les foudres de certaines de mes connaissances. Dit comme ça ça semble idiot ; quelques jours seulement après l’élection (moment où j’écris ces lignes) penser qu’il puisse y avoir eu tant d’animosité semble exagéré. Mais c’était pourtant le cas : je ressentait une vraie intolérance, qui ne me paraissait pas justifiée. Pire, qui m’effrayait ! Et je pensais ne pas être le seul dans ce cas…

L’une des raisons pour lesquelles je me suis lancé était donc celle-ci : expliquer pourquoi ces attitudes me paraissaient injustifiées ou exagérées, et renouer (à mon petit niveau) un dialogue plus sain. Au final, j’ai choisi cette voie au lieu de m’outrer dans mon coin des invectives faciles (et violentes) que je voyais ici et là.

L’autre raison était le désespoir de constater la pauvreté des débats télévisés. Toujours intéressé par la politique, j’ai tenté de suivre les discussions et de comprendre les enjeux en écoutant parler ceux qui les détiennent. Hélas, je n’y ai trouvé qu’engueulades, coupures de paroles, outrages feints et attitudes indignes de notre république. Déçu, j’ai voulu créer des propres mini-discussions, contrôlées par un ton de départ posé, analytique et réfléchi. Quelques extrêmes mis à part, les discussions sont restées polies et respectueuses, et j’ai pu constater qu’il n’y avait aussi des gens capables de se parler même quand ils n’étaient pas d’accord. Ca m’a fait beaucoup de bien, et c’est déjà ça !

Enfin, en relisant ces trois messages, je me suis rendu compte que je construisais en fait ma réflexion sur l’image de la droite en France dans son ensemble, en cercles excentriques (le leader, le parti, les sympathisants). D’aucun prétendront que tout ça est le fait des “excès de Sarkozy”. Je crois qu’ils se trompent ; je parle bien de l’image de la droite en France, telle que je la ressent depuis que j’ai l’âge de voter. Je ne vais pas refaire mes réflexions ici, les textes parlent d’eux-mêmes.

Bref, je ne voulais pas que ces analyses et ces réflexions disparaissent dans les méandres de Google+. Je les ai donc copié ici pour la postérité, ainsi que les liens vers les articles originaux qui incluent les commentaires et les discussions qui en ont découlé. J’y reviendrais sans doute un jour, histoire de voir comment les choses ont évolué. D’ici disons… cinq ans ?

1) 30 avril 2012 - Le cas Sarkozy

Je suis désolé mais j’en ai un peu marre de la diabolisation de Sarko… Qu’on ne l’aime pas, qu’on vote contre, je comprends tout à fait (on est en démocratie, Dieu merci !). Effectivement c’est pratique : Sarko est l’antéchrist, du coup tout ce qu’il fait est condamnable et néfaste… Ca motive les troupes, c’est sûr. Mais voir ces thèses exhultantes où les “anti” condamnent d’un bloc toute l’action du gouvernement en s’esclaffant me désolé profondément. S’ils regardaient un peu au delà de nos frontières, ils comprendraient, par exemple, que la France était dans le sac de l’Espagne ou l’Italie au début de la crise. Et que ça plaise ou non, ce sont sans doute les décisions de Sarko et de son gouvernement qui nous ont évité leur sort. (Et je ne parle même pas de la question de l’age de la retraite, arraché aux opposants à la réforme, sous les yeux incrédules du reste du monde qui ne comprenait pas comment nous pouvions encore être à 60 ans.)

Je ne comprends pas non plus comment on réussi à transformer en insulte le terme “Merkozy”, quand d’une part c’est le couple France-Allemagne est le socle qui a permis à l’Europe de rester solide face à la crise, et quand d’autre part tout le monde constate que l’Allemagne est l’un des pays où les choses se passent mieux qu’ailleurs. Faut-il être borné pour vouloir jeter absolument ce bébé avec l’eau du bain ! Les oeillères sont-elles si solidement ancrées que Merkel et l’Allemagne deviennent des objets de ridicule, simplement parce que Sarkozy les a “fréquentés” ? Ne devrait-on pas plutôt aller chercher là-bas ce qui fonctionne, et essayer de l’adapter chez nous ? Au lieu de ça, on a droit à “Ha ha, Merkozy, c’est fini, hi hi hi, jus d’pipi!”… Désolant. Ce ne sont que quelques exemples, mais ils m’attristent profondément.

Alors je ne dis pas qu’il faut applaudir quand Sarko ouvre la bouche, loin de là. Pas plus que je ne dis qu’il faut se boucher les oreilles quand Hollande fait ses discours. Mais j’ai bien l’impression qu’en ce moment, c’est l’inverse qui se produit : tout ce qu’a touché Sarko est démoniaque, honteux, risible, dangereux… Et je n’en peux plus. Si le contraire se produisait, et qu’on criblait Hollande des mêmes balles, je serais tout aussi épuisé.
Ok, soyons honnêtes, peut-être que je serai un peu moins épuisé, étant de tendance plutôt de droite. Mais ça me désolerait tout de même, et je me fendrait d’un message similaire. Parce que la question n’est pas d’être pour ou contre untel ou untel ; la question est de pouvoir réfléchir un instant avant de porter un jugement, au lieu de sombrer dans la bête répétition qu’on a apprit en n’écoutant que des gens qui sont du même avis que nous.

Bref, si on n’aime pas Sarko parce qu’il “divise” et qu’il est “clivant” (admettons), ça ne veut pas dire qu’on est obligé de se transformer en automate moqueur qui raille d’office tout ce qui vient de la droite. D’ailleurs si vous faites partie du camp Hollande et que vous m’avez fait l’amitié de lire ces lignes, je vous demande de me faire cet immense plaisir : essayez de penser à une action de Sarko que vous approuvez, et notez-là dans les commentaires. Une seule suffira, juste pour le principe, juste pour l’exercice intellectuel…
(Et pour montrer que je ne suis pas non plus renfermé sur moi-même, je citerai simplement cette émission que je produit : dans “The Phileas Club”, j’invite chaque mois des gens du monde entier à discuter les sujets d’actualité internationale. Nous n’avons pas toujours les mêmes avis, mais nous réussissons toujours à nous parler et à nous écouter. Avoir cette vision “extérieure” de la France – et du reste du monde – m’a ouvert les yeux sur beaucoup de choses…)

En conclusion de ce petit coup de gueule, je dirai que je sais bien que je ne vais convaincre personne de quoi que ce soit ; mes diverses timelines continueront à être criblées de “Merkozy, tout pourri !”, et je continuerai à me tenir la tête dans les mains, affligé. Mais au moins, là, pendant cinq minutes, j’aurai exprimé un peu mes frustrations…

Aller, bonne soirée à tous !

- Lien et commentaires -

2) 1er mai 2012 – De l’image de la droite

Une chose qui me dérange dans les jugements portés par la gauche sur les idées ou les propos de la droite : j’entends souvent que la droite est insultante ou méprisante (quand elle parle du chômage par exemple), et je ne partage pas cette analyse. J’essaye de comprendre pourquoi ; raisonnement expérimental en deux étapes.
1 ) D’abord, l’impression qu’à gauche on privilégie souvent la “gentillesse” à l’analyse de la réalité. C’est ce fameux “angélisme”, une forme de démagogie qui voudrait qu’on exprime une compassion facile, plus séduisante, même quand elle n’est pas applicable dans les faits. Je me doute que les gens de gauche ne seront pas d’accord, mais je pense vraiment qu’il y a une part de vérité là dedans ; continuons en tous cas le raisonnement pour l’exercice.
2) En conséquence, le fait de s’écarter de cette forme de “compassion artificielle” (si on admet qu’elle existe), et d’exprimer une réalité plus dure, est considéré comme insultant ou méprisant, parce qu’elle tranche et prend position (qui dit prendre position dit opposer une vision à une autre).
En schématisant, si on prend le cas d’un groupe qui doit prendre une décision difficile, c’est la différence entre quelqu’un qui essaye de contenter tout le monde en faisant des promesses plutôt irréalistes, et quelqu’un qui se met à dos une partie du groupe en prenant des décisions qui ne leur plairont pas, mais qui sera applicable.

Dans le cas du chômage évoqué plus haut (ou de la protection sociale en général), si à droite on évoque les situations problématiques où certains abusent du système (théorie qui ne me semble pas invraisemblable), on répond à gauche, sur un ton indigné, que “c’est insultant et méprisant pour les chômeurs, parce que ce sont des gens qui veulent travailler”. Bien sûr, la majorité des chômeurs veulent travailler, mais ça n’est pas le sujet de la discussion, et ça ne veut pas dire qu’il n’y a pas aussi des abus (dans ce système comme dans d’autres)… Du coup, cette “fausse indignation” devient contre-productive, occultant un problème réel, au prix d’une analyse cohérente de la situation.
Bref, je pense que cette attitude est l’une des raisons pour lesquelles je retrouve chez certains une image de la droite beaucoup plus dure que celle que je m’en fait..

Précision : Je suis conscient qu’il y a de la démagogie dans les deux camps (forcément), et des abus partout. Mais ici je parle simplement de cet exemple précis d’une droite jugée méprisante à tort (à mon sens), et j’essaye d’expliquer ce que je comprends des causes de cette image. Ce message n’est donc pas destiné à attaquer qui que ce soit, mais simplement à analyser certaines de mes impressions, et à les soumettre à la discussion publique (et respectueuse) de mes gentils followers. Et hop, smiley ! ->

- Lien et commentaires -

3) 4 mai 2012 – Ceux qui “douvent” avoir honte

[Pauvre droite oppressée !]
Je fais volontairement un titre ironique pour exprimer l’idée de ma troisième (et dernière) tirade politico-préoccupée de la campagne, histoire de désamorcer les réponses énervées qu’elle pourrait provoquer. Oui, je suis conscient qu’il y a de vrais gens qui souffrent dans le monde, et non je ne mets pas les sympathisants de Sarko dans le même sac. Voilà, ça c’est dit !

Maintenant le sujet que je voulais évoquer, encore une fois en réflexion personnelle et toujours ouverte à la discussion : j’en ai marre d’avoir ce sentiment que je “devrais” avoir honte d’être de droite. D’abord parce que je ne suis pas fondamentalement “de droite”, mais plutôt “du coté qui me semble avoir les idées les plus efficaces”, comme tout le monde. Il se trouve que mes analyses et mon expérience m’amènent à penser que les idées de la droite du spectre politique français fonctionneraient mieux, tous comme les analyses et les expériences de certains autres les amènent à penser que les idées de la gauche seraient plus bénéfiques au pays. En France, on veut tous un pays épanoui, qui crée de la richesse pour tous, où tout le monde a toutes les opportunités et où tout le monde est protégé. Personne n’est le grand méchant loup dans cette histoire : nous avons simplement des idées différentes sur le système qui nous permettrait d’y arriver. Détail intéressant, dans la majorité des pays développés, la plupart de ces idées qui me semblent importantes à défendre (sécurité sociale, éducation pour tous ou assurance chômage) feraient sans doute de moi un partisan de la gauche sociale-démocrate aussi…

“Ah oui, mais c’est pas de toute la droite qu’on parle, c’est Sarkozy qui pue vraiment !”
Le problème, c’est que je ne partage pas cette analyse, et que ça ne fait pas de moi un demeuré ou un collabo. Je ne pense pas que Sarkozy soit raciste ou xénophobe, si convaincu que vous soyez du contraire. Je serai heureux d’en discuter autour d’un café si nous nous croisons un jour ; pour le moment, disons que si j’étais d’accord avec cette idée je ne voterai pas pour lui, ça sera plus simple. Et je ne pense pas non plus qu’il soit plus magouilleur ou qu’il ne se traine plus de casseroles qu’un autre homme politique français (merci de nous épargner vos exemples, il y en aurait autant dans l’autre camp. Et la tolérance du peuple Français face à ces abus serait d’ailleurs un sujet intéressant à évoquer, mais ce serait un autre débat).

Au-delà de ça, ce qui me gêne est qu’il y a un climat de condamnation, une sorte d’opprobre de facto jetée sur la droite (ou du moins c’est mon expérience). Quand il n’y a personne de droite, on se convainc que la droite est l’empire du mal. Et si on apprend que quelqu’un est “de droite”, on se demande comment il peut faire une telle chose, on se dit que ce n’est pas possible et qu’il est soit égaré soit trop simple pour comprendre. Au mieux on lui fait les gros yeux et on lui explique à quel point ce choix est néfaste et condamnable, et au pire on ne veut pas lui adresser la parole (et on lui jette quelques remarques ou quelques insultes bien choses). Ca n’est pas exactement la même chose, mais c’est un peu comme si j’invectivais chaque sympathisant de Hollande que je croise (ou sans cibler quelqu’un de précis, sur les réseaux sociaux par exemple), en expliquant les méfaits du communisme, les dangers de l’extrême gauche et le péril dans lequel ces choix mettraient le pays. Je suis sûr qu’il y a des abrutis pour le faire, mais je ne les regarde pas avec plus de considération que ceux dont je parle ici.

Reprenons un peu de perspective : comme je le disais, certains expliqueront sans doute que Sarkozy est un cas extrême mais que le reste de la droite est acceptable, et que quand l’actuel président sera parti on pourra redevenir respectueux et souriant… Mais ce n’est pas moi qui ai inventé l’ineptie de la “pince à linge” pour aller voter Chirac en 2002, et ce n’est pas moi non plus qui me suis imposé ce sentiment de devoir taire mes opinions pendant que les autres les salissent, au risque de créer un malaise offusqué dans la conversation. Ce problème n’est pas nouveau, et il n’est pas né avec Sarkozy. Je connais des gens des deux “bords”, et je n’ai pas le même sentiment de l’autre coté.

Bref, être de droite n’est ni un crime ni une honte, c’est simplement un choix de politique, généralement plutôt réfléchi. Ce n’est pas plus l’apanage des ignobles nantis qui veulent s’engraisser sur le dos des travailleurs, ou des xénophobes vicieux qui y voient l’occasion de remettre en place les étrangers qu’ils haïssent secrètement, que le choix du vote à gauche n’est l’exclusivité des syndiqués enragés qui veulent venir à bout du capital ou des fonctionnaires paresseux qui veulent se la couler douce toute la vie. Il y a des cas extrêmes partout, mais dans la majorité des cas le vote est un choix sérieux qui arrive au terme d’une réflexion respectable. Plus que respectable, c’est un choix que la république nous impose de respecter. Donc j’aimerai bien qu’on ne me le renvoie pas à la figure en permanence, même indirectement.
Il est facile de parler de rassemblement, d’unité et de respect (fièrement opposés au “mépris” et aux “clivages”) quand on invective le coté d’en face dans la même phrase. Quelle ironie ! La moitié de la France vote à droite, il ne me semble pas raisonnable que la moitié du pays soit xénophobe et/ou manipulée.

Et je noterai en conclusion que j’ai généralement essayé de prendre le contrepied de ces à-priori : si je parle ici ou là de mes préférences politiques ce n’est bien sûr pas pour convaincre les gens, mais plutôt pour montrer par l’exemple à ceux qui sont convaincu que la droite est pleine d’ogres terrifiants que l’on peut être raisonnable, attentif et respectueux, et être de tendance de droite tout de même.
Et au-delà de ça, c’est pour montrer qu’il est possible de se parler, de s’écouter, et d’échanger nos idées et nos opinions sans s’envoyer des casseroles à la figure, même quand on n’est pas d’accord. J’affirme d’ailleurs qu’au final, on en ressort tous grandis, et que c’est comme ça, pas en n’écoutant que ceux qui sont d’accord avec nous, qu’on enrichi la démocratie. J’ai l’art d’enfoncer les portes ouvertes, mais vu le niveau des discussions de cette année, télévisées ou autres, c’est peut-être nécessaire… Et à propos de démocratie, disons-le encore une fois : j’espère que vous irez tous voter dimanche, quel que soit votre choix.

Bon week end à tous, camarades !

PS : “Ah oui”, se diront encore certains, “mais ça c’est Patrick; lui il est cool, ça va, c’est ‘le bon mec de droite’… C’est des autres dont je parle”. Je laisserai à ces gens-là le soin de réfléchir par eux-mêmes au ridicule et à la condescendance de cette idée.

- Lien et commentaires -

4) 6 mai 2012 – Et de conclure…

J’ai beaucoup discuté politique avec vous ici ces derniers jours, mais puisque j’aime donner mon avis sur tout je ne pouvais pas terminer sans envoyer un dernier message, ça ne surprendra personne.

D’une part pour remercier tous ceux qui ont participé à ces discussions, parce que j’y ai trouvé un sérieux et un respect que j’étais atterré de ne pas trouver dans les combats de coqs que l’on voyait dans les média traditionnels. Je perdais presque espoir dans la santé du débat politique dans notre pays, et vous m’avez montré qu’il y avait encore des gens pour se parler et s’écouter.

Et d’autre part, bien sûr, pour féliciter de manière inconditionnelle le candidat élu : la France a choisi, et François Hollande est désormais notre président à tous. Nous nous devons de placer nos espoirs en lui et de lui souhaiter bon courage ! Nous avons la chance de vivre dans un pays où la démocratie et les libertés sont fortes, célébrons le dignement.

Et ajoutons-y un traditionnel “Vive la république, et vive la France !”
Aller, qui le reprend en coeur avec moi ?

- Lien et commentaires -

• Background syncing for documents and data
  iCloud-stored documents suffer an important flaw: they are only synced when the application is launched. This defeats half the purpose of syncing to local storage in the first place (a strong differentiator with Google’s approach), the problem being that if you don’t have an internet connection when you launch your app, you don’t have your document at all.
  So I’d like to see these documents downloaded to all devices the moment they’re updated or saved. Basically, the system should manage this syncing, not the application itself.
• Web apps for iWork (and iLife, and more)
  This is another one I feel really makes the iCloud offering incomplete: the iCloud.com version of iWork barely allows downloading documents, and the only trace of iLife is the semi-hidden iPhoto journals repository. Also AWOL are Reminders and Notes.
  I believe the bare minimum would be for documents to be viewable on the web. Hopefully the closing of iWorks.com means its features (viewing, sharing, commenting) will be rolled into iCloud.com, but I would also like to see full galleries for iPhoto (events, faces, etc) and iMovie, as well as a Garageband “jukebox” for example. Being away from your own machine wouldn’t mean you’re completely cut off from your “stuff”, which is the whole point of iCloud. Heck, the welcome screen on iCloud.com is organized as a series of apps, so let’s get more apps!
  NB: Basic editing would be a nice bonus, but I could see Apple never going there (their idea is that your “devices” are the best place for your documents, not a web browser).
• Full iPhoto syncing
  This goes along with the previous point: photos on iOS are still synced through iTunes, which makes absolutely no sense (and means the changes you make in iPhoto on iOS aren’t synced with its MacOS counterpart, which makes even less sense). You should be able to determine what albums / events / folders you want to have on your iOS device, and it should sync automatically through the cloud: what you change on your computer is then reflected on your iPhone/iPad. And if you have iPhoto on your iOS device, the opposite would be true as well.
• Document compatibility for iWork, iLife, and more
  Lastly, but most importantly, is document compatibility for Apple’s productivity and lifestyle suites. This is the last piece to make iCloud truly compelling. Actually let me rephrase that: without it, iCloud is hardly compelling at all (nice, but not great). Basically, I want to be able to edit a Pages document on my iPad, and find it already downloaded and ready to use on my Mac when I get home. I know the next version of MacOS will allow for applications to access iCloud documents as well as traditional disk documents, so that’s what I’m hoping for. Across the board.

To be honest, all of these features seem like no-brainers. So much so that I believe that they’re not only coming: they were planed all along, and might have gotten delayed (they decided to “go with what was ready”). With all these features, iCloud becomes coherent, logical and truly useful.

I guess we’ll have to wait until WWDC and the iOS / MacOS updates to hear what happens!

• Background downloading
  I understand why applications aren’t allowed to multitask. Battery life, security, yada yada, I agree with all that. But I’d love to get a way for applications to silently download content even if they’re not active; RSS feeds, podcasts, emails, etc. It could be limited in different ways: only when the device is plugged in, or only once an hour per app, or only for apps that have been used in the past week… Or all of the above. Bottom line is, batteries are probably good enough now that if Apple allowed for a limited version of background downloading (not background processing), it would be more of a benefit than an issue.
  It works with NewsStand, I think it should be expanded a bit beyond that.
• Live icons
  By that I mean icons that can change to indicate different statuses. Again, it could be limited to preserve the aesthetics of the OS, and I’m sure Apple would check for every app that requests that Lordly privilege, but some apps could definitely use something like that: in some cases, having to launch an app just to get half a second worth of information is counter-productive, and there has to be a way to tackle that issue without compromising iOS’s advantages. I think.
• Third party Siri API
  Yeah, that’s an obvious one. I don’t know how it could even work and not make a gigantic mess of things, but being able to talk to different apps through Siri would be quite cool. Maybe with a limited set of commands per app? Or a list of app-specific keyword activator? Who knows…
• Facebook integration
  Another obvious one. I don’t use Facebook all that much, but honestly if you have Twitter integration, you have to have Facebook integration as well. And I’d love to get Google+ too while we’re at it, but I think that’s probably a bit less likely.
• Game Store
  That’s not so much something I want as something that might happen anyway: last Christmas, an official “Game Store” app was seen on the app store for a few days, before it was removed (and confirmed as a “work in progress”). So it might never actually come out, but with games trusting a huge part of all the apps lists and charts, it would make sense to put the them in a different store: games on one side, everything else on the other.
• Game pads, or official iOS game pad specifications
  Most gamers agree that smartphones and tablets could be genuinely great gaming machines… if only they could use a “proper” controller (tablets especially). They are getting fabulous amounts of computing power after all, and input seems like it is the only thing holding them back from “real gaming greatness”. Don’t get me wrong, touch is great for some games, it just isn’t ideal for all types of games. We’ve even heard ramblings about Apple playing around with experimental external game pads, and given the success of iOS gaming it’s hardly surprising they’re exploring the idea.
  Of course, apps would still need to be fully usable without the external controller, for compatibility’s sake and for those who don’t want the hassle of logging a controller around… But I would definitely get one.
• Proper stylus support
  That’s more of a pipe dream than an actual hope. It’s also more to about hardware than software, but what the hell, let’s be outrageous.
  We all know it: capacitive screens are great for touch and crappy for styluses, and resistive screens are crappy for touch and great for styluses. While the former is clearly the better choice if you can only have one, everyone would still love to be able to take notes and draw properly as well if it was possible… It doesn’t seem to at the moment, but it’s still in my list. Maybe an official standard for active devices would help adoption in apps? That’s unlikely to happen until Apple fully embraces styluses as well, and that’s unfortunately still a long ways off.

What I’m not so keen on:

• Actual multitasking
  Yes I know, as I implied in the previous list, I’m a heretic… Some of you probably think that multitasking is good, that it would solve so many problems and allow apps to do all sort of cool stuff.
  Well yes, multitasking would of course have lots of benefits. But it would also have dire implications for the system as a whole: processes running forever, slowing the machine and eating up battery, lists to plow through to make sure you don’t have something running that shouldn’t be, etc etc… If I wanted multitasking, with the good and the bad, I’d be using an Android phone. It’s good that iOS and Android are different. It gives us choice. I like my phone baby simple, and for now I think iOS doesn’t really need true multitasking.
• Bigger screen
  Again, we’re getting into hardware territory, but I’ll be daring.
  I don’t really think I want a bigger screen. Wait, scratch that, I’d love a bigger screen: I just don’t want a bigger phone. If they manage to make the screen larger (edge to edge?) without making the phone significantly bigger, I’ll go for it. But I don’t think I’d like a gigantic 4.5 inch screen if it made the phone bigger in the process. So until they find a way to make that physical conundrum work (foldable screens!), I’ll by happy with my “small” iPhone.
  Oh, and while we’re on hardware: I want my phone to be thinner and lighter too, but I would go for “same size and weight for more battery” if that was the choice.
• 3D anything
  3D is crap. Cameras, screens,  all of that, I don’t care for any of it. It might be just me; I have a very hard time seeing the 3D most of the time, and at best it attains the level of “not too annoying”. Maybe there will come a day when technology makes it awesome (and not headache inducing), but I haven’t seen that yet. For now, 3D is a no-no for me.

I think that’s it for my list. Anything I forgot?

It’s all in the iPad

Let’s be clear: Windows 8 is absolutely and completely a result of Apple’s iOS and iPad “revolutions”. They showed us that traditional PCs are unnecessarily complex for the common man. With the iPad announcement, we started looking at computers differently. My analysis was the concept of “easy computing“, and what it meant for the future of IT. In short: “if your parents can’t program a VCR, how in the world can you expect them to setup a computer, fool?” We realized then that we need something way easier for computers to become really mainstream and actually usable by everyone.

The Apple hare and the Microsoft tortoise

Microsoft has understood the importance of this shift, and how it applies to desktop computing specifically, better than anyone else. They have made Windows 8 is the ultimate “making things easy” OS. Most ironically (deliciously?), they are beating Apple at their own game: in the “easy computer” department, Windows 8 is blowing MacOS out of the water.
Many people cried foul when they saw the latest Apple OSes, arguing that they were on the path to betraying the spirit of what a “real computer” ought to be. But this is Apple’s DNA: they want to make easy computers that everyone can use. MacOS is taking safe baby steps though, simply adding “layers of simplicity” on the existing system. Windows 8, on the other hand, goes all the way, changing the system and the interface completely.
Microsoft is imposing their will on the users in an almost Jobsian way: their product is simple, beautifully designed, incredibly well thought out for both touch screens and mouse+keyboards, and they are saying “we’re doing it and you will like it, period”.

Windows 8 is actually where MacOS could end up in five or six revisions: a sort of MacOS/iOS hybrid. And if Apple has been taking things slowly and preserving consensus, I think there are a few guys in Cupertino thinking “crap, we should have taken this all the way”.
There’s cause for panic: Windows 8 is ready, and over the next couple of years, hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to it. Some will hate it at first (your mom will ask where her start button is, and your geek friend will explain how this is an OS for babies). But after a while they will get used to it, and traditional desktops will look like noisy and smelly trucks, when all you need is a nice and comfortable car (Steve Jobs Analogy TM). What Steve Jobs was talking about, Steve Balmer and Steven Sinofsky are doing. Yeah, I didn’t see that coming either.

Don’t get me wrong, there will still have traditional desktops, even way down the line. Many of you will probably even prefer those, I suspect. And many will elect to stay on Windows 7 for the foreseeable future I imagine. But in the meantime, Windows 8 will be bringing “easy computing” into the mainstream, and I don’t think there will be any going back after that…

Conclusion

So here it is: I think Apple might very well be missing the boat on the “iOS-ification” of the desktop. Surprisingly, it’s Microsoft that has “iOS-ified” their desktop OS fast and well, and MacOS is looking a bit messy and confusing by comparison. And as much as I love my iPad, the same could even be said for iOS… to a smaller extent.
I believe 2013 will see a synergy and scale for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 that will bring Microsoft back to the front lines of the (easy) desktop, tablet and phone markets.

And beyond this, I think that when we look back on this decade a few years from now, we’ll consider that it’s Microsoft, not Apple, that will have successfully implemented the most important change in the desktop PC world since the Graphical User Interface: the real advent and democratization of the “easy computer” and the Post-PC era.
Strong words, I know! We’ll see what happens (as in, I’m not 100% sure it willl), but I personally can’t wait.

Side note: Windows Desktops and Gatekeepers

A small subsection in this article to talk about the “desktop” in Windows 8 and controlled environments like Gatekeeper and App Stores. I’m sure a lot of you think that I’m conveniently forgetting about the “Windows 7-like desktop” part of the UI, and that Windows is less evil than Apple’s Gatekeeper feature, which will severely restrict what you can do on your computer, or some such intellectual mess. Well, my answer is this:
- First, the desktop in Windows 8 exists, sure. But it will only exist on some machines (ARM powered machines won’t have it), and it is also a much less important than people want to believe. Its scope is severely reduced, and it’s almost there as a token compatibility effort for most people (even if you can’t live without it). In that sense, MacOS is still a lot more desktop metaphor centric, I assure you.
This also means that Windows 8′s focus is squarely on the Metro interface. And that also means it’s on the Windows Store, where the experience is just as controlled as it is on iOS. Sure, you can go to the desktop, launch a browser and install a program “on your own”. But most people won’t. And if we’re allowed to speculate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it made into an “option” in future versions.
- Second, you have to stop being freakin’ crybabies about Gatekeeper. For those who don’t know, Gatekeeper is a piece of software in the next version of MacOS that makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to install programs that Apple hasn’t “checked” and can’t remove. It makes things a lot safer, but also gives Apple more control in the process.
Problem is, the very reason you like the Mac is that it is simpler and easier than a Windows machine, right? Well, increased ease of use is the reason you’re disliking it now! It doesn’t make sense; you’re just drawing a line in the sand and saying “ok, this, right here, is exactly how easy I want things to be, so Apple shouldn’t go farther down the road of simplification, ever.” I really don’t think that’s fair: Apple’s pledge is to make technology disappear behind ease of use, not “to make a computer that a specific group of users like”.
Oh and by the way, that Gatekeeper thing could solve the very real problem of computer security. There are drawbacks, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the benefits. Nor of the fact that Gatekeeper doesn’t out right “prevent” anything; it merely “warns”. This might change in the future, but again, this becomes speculation.

Back on point. To those who think the new MacOS and the new Windows are philosophically different, I say this: you’re a bit delusional, mate. Or you’ve drunk some sort of powerful Kool-Aid. Or you just can’t deal with the reality that computers as we know them won’t be the main players in town anymore. Because the reality is that Microsoft and Apple are designing their OSes with exactly the same end goals in mind, and they are putting in place very similar implementations, no matter how hard you want to believe that one is good and the other is evil.

So what changed? A few angry readers will argue that we “used to be real geeks”, and that we’ve now sold our souls to the Great Steve in the Sky. For iDevices, sure, there’s probably a bit of that. But Macs are different: PC enthusiasts didn’t start recommending and buying Macs because they changed, they did so because the world has changed. Macs just came along for the ride…

So let’s count the ways the Mac VS PC fight today isn’t the one it was 15 years ago:

1) It’s the Internet, stupid.

First and foremost, the way we use computers has dramatically changed. It’s hard to imagine today, but back in 1995 our computers where incredibly limited machines, and their functions were almost exclusively work related. Word+Excel were what most people did. Today, “most people” use computers as email/Facebook/YouTube devices. Any machine will do that; Mac or PC, they’re both great at it, no argument.
So the difference between what one can or can’t do has dramatically much less validity.

2) The Digital Hub.

Same story: computers weren’t really part of our everyday life back then. Part of our work life, sure. But today you will actively manage your music, your photos, your videos and many more parts of your life on those things… Our whole lives have become digital, so we really can’t look at computers the way we did when they weren’t.
Remember the “hub for our digital lives”? Has the Mac become an incredibly awesome solution that will solve all your digital hub conundrums in a second? No. Are they a bit better than an out of the box PC? Yeah, I think so. And the average mom probably thinks so too.

The two points above could be summed up like this: the word “computer” was meant for a very different kind of machine fifteen years ago. Arguments we had then don’t apply anymore. For the then “work machine”, I would argue the scale was tipped in favor of the PC. For today’s “Internet and digital hub for everyone”, things have largely evened out.

3) Prices.

It might be an impression, but it seems to me that Macs used to cost two or three times the price of a good old Compaq PC. Four if you would take the time to buy the parts and build it yourself (which I used to do for all my machines). You think Macs are expensive today? Kid, you you should have seen it then !
A current Mac laptop is probably about 40% to 80% more expensive than a comparable Windows machine. Still an much higher price tag, of course, but a lot let ridiculously unjustifiable. And yes, maybe I’m also not a starving student anymore, so that might be a bit on me as well…

4) Similar hardware.

Not only were they incredibly more expensive, their performance was also very questionable. I still remember Apple apologists explaining that “dual processor machines” where going to become an industry standard for all machine, just because Steve had said so (remember we’re talking dual CPUs here, not dual core). Of course Jobsie was only spinning their inability to get PowerPC CPUs up to the standards that Intel and AMD had set, and ended up hilariously switching to the competition that they had so strongly disparaged for years.
The point is, all computers now run on Intel compatible CPUs, and spec differences have faded away there too.

5) Specs don’t matter anyway.

Another point is the fact that specs don’t even really matter anymore. We’ve gotten to a point where all machines can do what most people need to do. Who cares if you’re packing 4, 8 or 16 gigs, or if your Core i3 doesn’t run as fast as my Core i7? They can all play music, surf the web and play HD YouTube videos, and that’s enough for most people. We used to worry a machine would be unusable for certain tasks… Now it’s not a concern anymore.
One more way in which the differences between Macs and PCs have faded away, in use cases this time.

6) Cross platform gaming and consoles.

Another big thing you could really only do on PCs was a certain kind of gaming. There used to be two types of games: PC games and Console games. While the divide certainly still exists to some degree, it’s been very much lessened in recent years. Today, most PC games are also available on consoles. There are a few more games on the Mac too, but many gamers will have a console anyway, so they’ll get what they need even without a Windows machine. Of course some people will always want to have a PC for certain games, but the decision is nowhere as clear cut as it used to be.

7) Industrial design.

It might be Jony Ive changing things or it might be my tastes evolving, but I wasn’t really super fond of Apple’s design until the Unibody MacBook. Those machines are a work of beauty, and I can see myself paying a premium for that kind of industrial design alone. That was absolutely not the case 15 years ago. Or even 5 years ago. And I believe that the design is actually something that has become even more apparent for most consumers: all other things being equal (all computers can fulfill the consumer’s needs), the Macs are shinier.

8 ) MacOS was crap. There, I said it.

I’m sure I’m going to get some flack for this one, but I did spend quite some time with MacOS back then, and it honestly made me miss Windows very very very much. MacOS was a breakthrough in 1984, but by 1998 it was a blind, lame, flee infested dog. And it took Steve Jobs’ despotic will to take it out in the back yard, shoot it dead, and replace it with an OS that would make the Mac software good again.
Side note: the same funny people who defended the PowerPC also defended MacOS pre-X. I still makes me laugh (and cry).

Conclusion

You get the idea: in my opinion, the fight back then wasn’t at all what it is today, and people who are still clinging to the conclusions they had formed back then are thoroughly out of touch with the current realities of the computer industry. As I said earlier, the word “computer” carries a very different meaning now; PCs are still cheaper, they’re still uglier, and they’re still a great choice for most people. But I believe that the Mac’s design philosophy makes for a much better “computer” than it did back then.

Indeed, the Mac was thought into existence with the goal of making a “simple” computer. The problem was that computers were performing complex and qualified work related tasks back then, so a simple computer didn’t make much sense. It was an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked yet, a fun theoretical design without a practical application. It’s only with the commoditization of digital and networked information from the past 15 years that the Mac’s true calling has sprung into existence. Now, everyone needs a “simple” computer, and the specifications gap has narrowed. It should be no wonder that Macs fare better today than they did yesterday…

PS1: It should be no surprise to anyone either, by the way, that they are now being brought closer to iOS: that was always what the Mac was supposed to be. Its ideal was a simple computer for people who don’t like computers. And there’s a whole lot of those people out there now. I’m ready to bet there’s even one of them inside the hearts of most of us “real PC nerds”. And he comes out for air every once in a while…

PS2: For the record, I’ll also add that I do own both a Mac laptop and a PC desktop, and the later is still my preferred go-to machine. I like the Mac well enough (the large multitouch trackpad for example is a work of genius), but my needs are better answered by the Windows machine at the moment. It also doesn’t hurt that I know these things inside and out, software and hardware; “normal” people usually don’t.

No, ladies and gents, the real French kiss is something quite different, and far more disturbing: it’s the everyday greeting performed by kissing someone on the cheek.

Horrifying, I know. French people kiss each other on the cheek every day. Men casually kissing women, women kissing each other, and sometimes two men are even caught pecking at each other’s face. Hard to fathom, but it happens every day. This practice, which regularly horrifies even the boldest of Japanese tourists, has been a hallmark of our culture for generations, and must constitutes the true pinnacle of French depravity. It is such an integral part of our daily lives that we barely think about it, and launch head first into a lips powered hello that shames most self respecting native of foreign extraction.

It is a mystery indeed. And as all great mysteries, it demands studying and understanding. So I’ve decided to throw my two ethnological cents in, and try to explain the details of this strangest of practices, in three questions.But first, a bit of vocabulary. That “kiss-on-the-cheek” is called the “bise” in French (pronounced roughly like a shorter / harder sounding version of “bees”).

Ok, now we’re ready.

1) The important question: who to kiss?
Short answer: everyone is a potential bise recipient. Friends, family, people you’re meeting for the first time, men, women… It’s all fair game.
Long answer: it’s horribly complicated. It all depends on the region and the social circle you’re in, and the relationship you have with the person in front of you.
The easiest way to go about it is this: as a rule of thumb, girls kiss guys and girls, and guys kiss girls. Two guys will usually prefer a heterosexually affirming handshake-with-a-smile, but as I said it is not uncommon for them to also “faire la bise”. This will happen mainly if they are close and intimate friends, or they are shallow and annoying fashion people.
Seriously though, it is very difficult to know which guys to kiss when you’re a guy. Even I do it with some of my closest friends, but not with some of my other equally close friends. No real reason, just a force of habit. If you’re unsure, just follow the rule of thumb detailed earlier and you’ll be safe: girls kiss everyone, guys kiss girls.

2) The truly important question: how to perform the kiss?
Now that is an interesting one. I’m sure a few of you at least are imagining some sort of hot and steamy kiss festival taking place every morning in every office building in the country, as coworkers greet each other lustfully when they get in to work. Get your filthy collective mind off the gutter, sirs and madams, we are not that kind of people… that early in the day!
Seriously though, there is nothing sexual about the bise. It is really just a greeting, as hot and steamy as shaking someone’s hand (which can be quite hot and steamy in its own way, although that is unlikely to be sexually arousing). I’m sure some New Yorkers or Italians know what I’m talking about: it’s like saying hello, nothing more. The question is though, how do you do it exactly? Should cheeks touch? Should the lips actually come in contact with the skin? Do you stay three respectful centimeters away and make a deafening “smacking” sound?
Well, the French bise is a healthy mix of all of that: cheeks touch, lips sometimes lightly touch the cheek, and the sound is a respectful natural “kiss in the air”. Do anything else and it’ll seem odd. If you don’t touch cheeks and people might think you’re afraid they are contagious (sometimes, they are). If you kiss the cheeks too openly and it might seem a bit forward and make people uncomfortable (with the notable exception of the “One Kiss” detailed below). And if you suck a gigantic “smack” too close to the ear because you were afraid of a little of physical cheek contact, you’ll render someone partly deaf and they will start disliking you, which isn’t great. As in most other areas, practice makes perfect…

3) The really super important question: how many kisses does the ritual include?
That one is 80% local customs, 20% social circle. Basically, if you’re from the sticks (not Paris), four is standard. Parisian suburbs will go to three, and proper people (Parisians) will stop at two. If you couldn’t tell, I’m a Parisian.
This might seem like a detail, but it is probably the most important aspect of all, as it will determine your social standing in an instant. Kiss someone twice in some remote town in the south, and you will be branded an uptight Parisian ass. Go for a third kiss at a house party in Paris, and forever be known as the uneducated hoodlum who knows nothing of proper society. And of course, if you go for a fourth kiss in a suburban club, they will laugh at the simple boy who just got off the train from cow country.

It is important to note however that there are two outliers in the “number of kisses” category: fashion, and the “One Kiss”.
Fashion is a special kind of Parisians that will do four kisses. As I said, they are shallow and waste valuable time kissing twice as much. We hate them.
One kiss is the opposite: if you have a very very close friend of the opposite sex, you can do the One Kiss. This is a perfect case of “less is more”, and you should be careful in how you wield this powerful weapon (that’s what she said, hehe). Indeed, stopping short of the second “standard practice” kiss will carry heavy meaning.
It says: “I know you so well, we have shared so many intimate moments, I consider you a very special person. We don’t need two kisses, that’s for those losers over there that we don’t really care about as much. We put more in that one kiss than we do in two others, and we know it. Oh, and there, I’ll also throw in a mini hug-like gesture and a sincere smile with that kiss, along with a deep understanding look right into your eyes, because I do genuinely care about you“. Just so you get an idea of what would create the conditions for the One Kiss status, here are a few examples:
- Two hour phone conversations in the middle of the night.
- Having helped them through a tough breakup, but not having taken advantage of it.
- Making out in a club, half drunk, then going for a kebab at 4 in the morning.
- Sex as a one time thing, but it didn’t quite work out. Ok, maybe two times, just to make sure.
You get the idea. Basically, the One Kiss is half way between “friends” and “in a relationship”, but it usually does not go past that point. It’s also different from the “best friend” status, as it usually involves a heterosexual girl and a heterosexual guy; they could be lovers, but they’re not. We’re still very much in friendship territory, just a stronger brand of it. And yes, with a healthy side of innocent flirtation.

Ok, I guess that’s it! I hope you enjoyed this little crash course in “faire la bise”, and please do let me know if you’ve had traumatizing (or enjoyable!) experience with that fascinating French practice. Or how it works in your country, I know we’re not the only ones doing it.

Oh, and I almost forgot: have a lovely Christmas and a fantastic new year everyone, and hugs to all, wherever and whoever you are! (That’s not a French thing, it’s just a Patrick thing.

I’m usualy more than a little skeptical about these things. Over emphasized titles trying to alarm you and ridiculous conspiracy theories are not my thing, but I still watched it to make sure. Well, I have to say, the title is probably accurate: getting educated about the arithmetic Dr. Bartlett is detailing here is incredibly important, and I urge you all to watch it, bear with it, and make an effort to understand it.

Here’s the gist:

• The doubling time for a growth rate of 1% per year is 70 years. The world population’s growth rate is ~1.15%. That sounds tiny, but if you’re under 20, you’ll probably live to see it reach *14 billion*. (Damn, we just reached 7 billion a few days ago!)
• Optimistic estimates, which include all the oil *left to discover* (as in: that we have not found yet) put the peak oil production in ~2020. From there, we start having *less* oil every year. It’s a bell shaped curve and it keeps going down.

Put these two together, and you start getting the feeling we’re screwed. The best part: all this is fact, not belief or rhetoric. It is happening, there’s no way around it.

(Here is a link to the full playlist of all eight videos playing in sequence.)

The way we are living now will not go on forever. It actually won’t go on for more than a couple of decades. The only solutions are: stop population growth, and find alternative sources of energy. I’m confident we will do at least the second one, but we need to:
1) Understand how important all this is.
2) Hope to God it will be enough for everyone (it won’t).

Please do watch the lecture that goes into much more detail. It’s not some “hippie bullshit about saving mother earth”, as some people might see environmentalist movements. And it’s not some ridiculous conspiracy theory about the banks and secret societies controlling the future of the world either. I hope you know and trust me enough that you understand I wouldn’t serve you such nonsense.

It’s really about what is actually happening in the reality that we live in, and understanding where we are heading. And deciding for yourself whether you/we should do something about it. As the title says, mighty important stuff…

As usual, please let me know if there is something I’m missing here (which is always possible!)

PS: if you know how to embed the video so it plays the playlist, going automatically to the next video, please let me know.

I love technology. It’s a kind of magic. It makes things possible that had only been dreams. A few decades ago, computers were going to change the world. And now they have, and we feel like we were part of something important. Steve Jobs was a big part of that something. Because of his vision and obsessions, he was perhaps the biggest part of all. If many of us feel that we’ve lost someone “close”, it’s probably because he has contributed so much to that “something important” that connects us all.

But it’s not about technology

My lingering feeling of sadness comes from somewhere else. It’s even more personal than that bond we all share. What I feel is the loss of someone that had the courage to live the way I try to live every day.

When I was 18, I was in a bad accident and had to stay in a hospital for a few months. Thankfully the damage was ultimately minimal, but the experience changed me, as it would anyone I’m sure. My priorities shifted. Suddenly, only a few things mattered: passion, and choices, and life.

Life, because death is coming for all of us, maybe sooner than we expect.
Choices, because making excuses will bind you more surely than chains.
Passion, because it is the only thing that should matter, everything else is secondary.

So I decided that I would live my life following one rule. Every time I’m faced with a really important decision, I ask myself: If I don’t do it, will I regret it when I’m 70?
If the answer is yes, then I have to do it. I just have to, no excuses. There are always reasons not to do something. But if you know in your heart that decades from now you’ll look back and regret not acting, reasons and excuses don’t matter.

…

When I turned 25, I had to make a decision.

I had studied computer science for a couple of years, and hated it. I completed the two year course, but instead of entering a lucrative computer engineer career, I went on to study Japanese. It had no hope of practical application, but it was such a breath of fresh air. Such an interesting field, with new friends and new things and ideas and views of the world I never knew existed. I loved it, I was alive.
After four years, I realized that to really know Japan, I had to live there. It was crazy:
I was 25, it was time to settle down, get a job, plan for the future… This was the first time I really asked myself the question: “if I don’t do it, will I regret it when I’m 70?”
My answer was: if not now, when? If I do get a job, a family maybe, I’ll never do it. And when I’m 70 and my grandchildren come to visit, I won’t be able to tell them about the cool crazy adventure I lived, and I’ll be sorry I didn’t do it. So I found a way to go.

I spent four years there. They were some of the richest and most transformative years of my life, and I cherish them more than I can say. But by the end, I had had my fill. And surely, now I should settle down… Probably, but I didn’t. In Japan, ripped away from everything I knew, I slowly discovered that I didn’t have to be a “scientific type”.
I discovered that for all the love I bore computers and bits, everyone has a bit of art in their soul. Mine was filled with moving images. I loved cinema so much, I had to be part of it. Again, I asked myself the question. I wasn’t 20 anymore, and starting something different would have been a bit crazy.
But I didn’t think of it that way. I wasn’t “almost 30″, I was just someone who had something important in their heart. You can guess what the answer was.

So I came back to France, and found a way to get into the movie industry. I worked on movies, TV shows, ads… A couple of years into it, I discovered there were production companies dedicated to Japanese clients. They became my safety net in that difficult field. When there was no work elsewhere, I could often count on them.
I didn’t always eat as much as I wanted, but I loved my life. Full of surprises, and travels, and new experiences, and hard work. And funny stories I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren. And it wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t decided to study Japanese all those years ago. Looking back, I could connect the dots.

…

I could go on, but I’ll save it for a boring tale of “my life to this point” when I turn 40.
For now, here’s what I know:

• No one can be happy every day of their life, but you should be happy most days.
• You should be thankful for what you have, not spiteful for what you don’t.
• If the job is tame but you’re alive three nights a week when you’re dancing, then it’s ok.
• If you work hard to provide for the family that is your joy every night, then it’s ok.
• But if you get up in the morning and see no passion in your life for too many days in a row, you should do something about it.

That is the philosophy I constructed for myself over the years. It started with my dad, who showed me you shouldn’t ever settle, and continued with the traumatic event that made me aware of my mortality. I’m trying to explain this clumsily, but someone else has said all of this so much better than I ever could. In 2005, Steve Jobs gave that famous Commencement Address at Standford University. When I first saw it, I almost cried. He was speaking to my soul and my heart, with words that I wished I could have put together. That day, Steve Jobs told the world what I had felt for years.

And it wasn’t about technology. It was about passion, and choices, and life.
If you’ve never seen it, I urge you, I beg of you, please watch it now. And if you find it speaks to you, please act on it. Today. Not tomorrow, not next year. Start hatching a plan to live your life right now. Start searching for a way to live your passions. Not tomorrow, today. Because if you put it off, life will pass you by, one day at a time.

I admired the CEO and the visionary more than I can say. But I think it is that Steve Jobs that I’m grieving for. The guy whose ideas on life resonated so much with mine.

I have always been rather careful with who I friend and what I share,
but I suspect this will be a nice reminder to a few people.

The latest changes to Facebook are groundbreaking (details here), but they also mean that now, more than ever, you should have a handle on who sees your stuff, and what that stuff is. So here are two cardinal rules of Facebook I strongly encourage you to follow:

First, it’s time to purge your friends list (and keep it clean).
You’ve hesitated for years. You’ve wanted to, but just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. I understand. It’s hard. You feel guilty. I understand, but it’s time. Because the new Facebook means two things: you’ll be sharing a whole lot more stuff, and everything you’ve ever shared will be exposed.
So yes, it’s time. You have to get rid of all these “friends” that aren’t really your friends. The drunk dude that you meant at that party once. The girl who’s updates you “like” sometimes, because she’s hot. That guy you knew in high school but haven’t talked to in fifteen years. Yeah, these aren’t your friends. Facebook a tool to communicate with the people in your life you care about, not a contest to get the biggest friend count. So seriously, do it now, or you’ll be sorry later.

Second, you shouldn’t post things that would sink you if they went public.
The question you should ask yourself before posting anything online is: “if this becomes public, am I ok with it?” If the answer is no, don’t post it. Not in your private BFF group, not as a secret picture to your boyfriend, not as a direct message to your mom. Nowhere. On the internet, nothing is ever truly safe. There are hacks, policy statements nobody reads, policy changes nobody understands, disgruntled a-holes out to get you, and much more.
So just do yourself a favor and assume everything you post could end up being public, and that’s it. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t share private stuff: it’s ok to share something private (baby pictures) with the right group of people (your folks). But if it’s something really private or shameful (I’ll let your imagination run wild here), do not post it, period. Ever. E-VER.

TL;DR: You didn’t think it was possible, but you’ll soon bring even more of your life on Facebook. And you’ll love it in spite of the privacy concerns, because it’ll give you more and cooler interaction with your friends. If you like sharing bits of text (most people do), you’ll love sharing tastes and activities and you’ll never look back.

Part I: The Gist

I was watching the Facebook keynote yesterday, where Mark Zuckerber was giving the details of what is probably the most ambitious update to his social network yet. Midway through, I stopped everything and went on Google+ to deliver this eloquent quote: “Zuckerberg is seriously blowing my mind right now”.
That was over 24 hours ago. I’ve had time to sober up, compose myself, and think about what was announced and whether or not is is actually groundbreaking. And here’s where I stand today: “Zuckerberg seriously blew my mind last night”.

Here’s why: he found a way to bring even more of our real lives into Facebook.
It might seem trivial to you, but brilliant ideas often seem that way.
Stay with me here: until now, we were mostly sharing status updates and photos. These are actually a very small percentage of what makes up our lives. With these changes, Facebook is bringing another enormous chunk of our lives into the world of social networking. Music, TV shows, movies, sports, games, and much much more… All of this will soon become available for sharing with your friends and family. And we’re not talking about you saying you like The Doors; that was always possible. We’re talking about your friends listening to The Doors with you, right there and then, as you fire up the song from across town or across the continent. We’re saying they can start watching The Shining for the first time, because you felt like watching it again that night. One click, and boom, they’re there. It just works. We’re actually talking about bringing the immense power of sharing that we already know to a whole new section of what we do. Sharing tastes, not just thoughts. Come on, tell me all that doesn’t sound like a huge amount of fun!
Not excited? Ok, different approach. Can we agree that life and communication were different before we had social networks? That brought on a huge change, right? Back then, we went from social networks that covered 0% of our lives (they didn’t exist) to social networks that cover 10% of our lives (text and photos). That was huge. Well, now we’re going from social networks that cover 10% of our lives (text and photos) to social networks that cover 40% of our lives (tastes, culture, activities, etc). After that, the ones where you can only share bits of texts and photos will have to seem incredibly dull… or at least very niche.

Part II: Details

Part I was the general idea and the main part of the article. If you’re not interested in technical details you can stop reading now; the rest of the article is mostly my understanding of how and why all of this is coming together.

The thought process that brought about the new Facebook

First, they understood their main set of problems:
- Facebook has so many users, what they need now is for sharing to expand.
- Apps are a great way to share (many do so on Twitter) but it crowds the feed.
- The Facebook feed is already super messy and crowded, getting worse by the day.
Then, they engineered a set of solutions:
- Moving the feed to the side and renaming it “the ticker”.
- Making a system for apps to share even more (music, food, sports, everything).
- Creating a new feed that magically shows only the cool stuff from the ticker.
And here are the expected results for the new Facebook:
- Users share tons more stuff that they didn’t share before (through apps).
- Facebook has more info for friends to see, and advertisers to pay for.
- Haters hate but Facebook wins at the Internet, for like the 5th time in a row.

Going deeper

So here are the features that Zuckerberg announced at the F8 opening keynote:
- The Timeline, a new kind of profile that organizes everything you’ve ever posted or shared into a beautiful (and scary) scrapbook style life story page.
- The new Open Graph, which allows developers to make you share even more of your life with your Facebook friends (and advertisers).
- The new Feed, launched a few days ago (but is part of that whole affair), which chooses which updates to display more intelligently.
I’ll leave the Timeline behind for now (although it is awesome), and discuss how the new Feed and the new Open Graph are coming together to realize the vision.

1) The New Feed
Until now, the norm on every social network has been the good old linear feed. A giant chronological list of all the relevant updates. That was great when we shared less, but now it’s become a complete mess: dozens, sometimes hundreds of updates, and you have to dig into all of them and hope you’ll find something cool. It’s unwieldy and everyone knows it. Yet everyone uses the same model; Google+, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram…
A few days ago, Facebook retired that feed to a tiny upper right corner, renaming it the “ticker”. You can still look at it, but that’s not “the feed” anymore. It doesn’t drive your experience. They replaced it with a new feed, created by a magical algorithm that tries to guess what’s important to you, depending on how often you come on the site, what your friends are sharing, and a million other things. Essentially, it should surface important stuff that happened since you were last here, not what happened 10 minutes ago.
NB: I realize Facebook already had the “top stories” view, but this is much larger.

2) The New Open Graph
By doing a lot of complicated and scary things (less asking for permission, longer caching times, etc), Facebook is creating a completely new social ecosystem which applications can use it to start broadcasting update to “the ticker”. This is a bit similar to the way that Twitter works when broadcasting what you do on different apps. Facebook wants more of that, because it creates an incredibly deep information pool. But they’ve also been bitten by too much crap in the feed. So the solution is to allow applications to post what you’re doing to your ticker. And they’ll be posting a lot of it. Listen to music on Spotify? Enable the app and it’ll go on the ticker. Watching TV on Hulu? Same thing. Read a book? Ticker. Liked an article? It’s there too.
And here’s the killer feature: click any one of those updates, and you can see/hear/read/play what that thing. It’s a direct line to what your friends are doing. You’re not just reading about it, you’re experiencing it with them, in real time if you wish to.

3) How it comes together
I know what you’re thinking: it’s too much. If Twitter is confusing, something like that will be impossible to follow. Many people even use Flipboard to read Twitter, because it’s just too much crap to sift through.
Well, on Facebook you won’t have to. remember that “new feed”? It does all that for you. It’s almost an integrated Flipboard of sorts. These annoying updates, they go to the ticker. That’s the “Twitterlike backbone of information”. You can look at them if you really want, but you don’t have to. What you’re looking at is the new feed, which selects and organizes all that information. It can recognize patterns, figure out what’s trending, understand what’s important… But you don’t have to know what’s behind it, it “just works”.
Haven’t been on Facebook it three days? You’ll have a summary of the important things that happened. A new TV show five of your friends have been watching, a recipe your parents cooked and your sisters loved, and that playlist your girlfriend created last Tuesday. And if you’re there every hour, you’ll see things happen almost in real time, with a lot more minute details, because the algorithm knows you’re there often.

Conclusion: Neato, right?

Yup. Well, at least in theory. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to see how this whole thing actually performs. But if it works, everybody wins. For Facebook, it’s going to be great. They get more info on everyone, and can sell more ads and make more money. Yay! And for users, it’s going to be great… if you’re ok with the fact that you’ll be sharing a lot more information.

Bonus 1: A few things that need saying.

1. Reading all this, you might think I’m a Facebook fan, but I actually don’t use it all that much, and I like Google+ a lot more. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to its importance, or to its amazing ability to know what works and adapt to what people want.
2. I’m not predicting the future here. All of this might fail; I am just amazed by the reasoning, the concept, and the potential. What happens next, gods only know. I think it’ll work, but it’s just my humble opinion.
3. We’re only talking about social networking here. Some people have been taking the piss out of tech commentator for propping it up as a “major shift” (MG Siegler shares my enthusiasm). But of course we’re not talking about an actual world changing event. If you care about social networking (and, to an extent, the Internet), you should pay attention. If you don’t, you can safely go about your business, there are more important things happening indeed.
4. With all that said, I think Zuckerberg is a genius. Jobs or Gates caliber. He has the rare gift for forming a vision and understanding what the future will be, when other are scrambling with what’s happening now. Also, many people found him awkward, but I thought he did a very solid presentation, leaping from a truly poor speaker a few years back to a very engaging one today. I think he’s been watching a lot of Steve Jobs tapes… and it’s working.

I’ve heard a lot of outrage in the past 24 hours, mostly divided in two camps: those who hate the new Open Graph because it’s too much sharing, and those who hate the new feed because it’s too confusing. And both these groups usually predict this will be the end of Facebook. Right. Ok, lesson time:

• If people wanted to leave Facebook, they’d have left Facebook.
• If people didn’t want to share on Facebook, they wouldn’t share on Facebook.

On sharing: People love to share. They’re shy at first, but eventually they do it. Why? Because it’s cool to be part of your friends and family’s life, even if they’re 1000km away, even if you don’t see them every week. Facebook, and social networks in general, are a wonderful tool, and what you loose in privacy, you gain in enjoyment. This won’t change.
On interface: Sure, there are revolts sometimes, and Zuck is clever enough to adapt and compromise and scale things back a bit. Maybe it’ll happen here and all of this will have to be scaled back. But if History teaches us anything, it’s that this kind of outrage usually isn’t real. If it’s still there two months from now, I’ll worry. I’m betting it won’t be.

But you don’t have to take my word for it; despite the repeated prophecies of their demise, they now have 800 million people using their service… That’s 50 million more than they did in July! Come on, admit they are doing something right, even if you (or I) don’t like it all that much. I’m not saying there can’t be a different opinion, a reason why this is a bad idea or  why it will fail miserably. For all I know it very well might fail, and I could be completely off the mark here. But for the love of God, if those who think so could explain it with other arguments than “it sucks” or “I hate it”…

NB: I also really like the “this is not new” argument. These people take a look at Twitter and say “I can already send text messages to my friend”. And there is another interesting lesson that came out of these discussions: Google Wave has become the Godwin point of technology. Anytime someone announces something original and tech commentators are excited about its potential, someone will say: “you liked Google Wave and it failed!”

[Edit, Sept 25th] Reorganized the structure of the article, which was confusing. Also changed up a few sentences for clarity, and moved the previous conclusion (warning people about sharing too much and “friends”) to a separate upcoming article.