I bet you are "consuming" different media in different ways now.

I don't much like the notion of "consumption" - so oral and infantile. And consuming media?!  But leaving that aside, it's interesting to see how it's changing.

Last night my mate Rob (b. 1956) said he's on his first week for 20 years without having The Guardian delivered. He found there was too much unread paper piling up. He now reads it on his iPad, but he'll still get the Saturday edition.

Myself, I haven't bought newspapers more than occasionally since the early 1990s, even though I started working life as a news hound. These days I regularly scan the headlines of the Guardian and the New York Times because they have apps for the iPhone and good writing.

I've had paper editions of the Economist and Wired since 1996, and until I got the iPhone I used to read them cover to cover. Now, I find back issues piling up.

I've never been big on TV. For a couple of months in early 2009, when I was feeling at a real low, I watched maybe 2--3 hours in the evening, along with a slug of Jack Daniels. These days, it's maximum one hour in the late evening, usually something I've recorded on the Sky box - Lie to Me, Wallander or a comedy show.

We have DVDs and I occasionally buy new ones, but I never watch them.

We don't have a radio except in the car, but I do now listen to the Today Programme on my iPod radio while I'm doing my physical jerks. For the rest, I get my radio in podcasts, of which I have around 1,000 now.

So looking just at my own media consumption behaviour, the big trends are 1) away from paper to screen, 2) time-shifting of broadcast content and 3) impact of the iPhone as a one-stop media resource for live radio, podcast radio and written content.

Is the Web dead like Wired magazine says?

Very interesting piece in my stalwart Wired Magazine about how use of the Internet is increasingly moving away from browser-based "pull" activities on websites that Google can index, and towards app-based "push" activities.  The Web is not the same as the Internet - it's just one use of the Internet.

This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It's driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it's a world Google can't crawl, one where HTML doesn't rule..

As somebody who works through the Internet, rather than with it or in it, I'm not really able to comment on the validity of the analysis, but I find it very interesting. >>>>>>.

Also interesting is this new initative from Ecademy, the social network where I've been active since 2004:  The purpose of the Ecademy Digital School is to train members and prospective members to become an Ecademy Digital Coach (EDC).  >>>>.  Fair play to Thomas and the crew, they've been at it a long time and Thomas is absolutely obsessed with it all. But can they deliver?

The upside of lies and deception

There are a number of shows around at the moment dealing with deception.

There's a Radio 4 show called "The Unbelievable Truth".
A TV panel game called "Would I lie to you?"
There's a BBC TV series about grifters called "The Hustle" which involves the "heroes" creating elaborate long cons in the spirit of Robin Hood.
And there's FoxTV's "Lie to Me", about an organisation run by an expert in lie detection.

All of these are part of a long, long history of stories in which the heroes either succeed in avoiding deception, or succeed in deceiving others.

An ability to deceive others is apparently a corollary of "theory of mind" that most human beings develop in early childhood. It requires the ability to imagine how another person perceives the world. (as does empathy).

Correspondingly, the ability to detect deception is important, not least to avoid being tricked into unwittingly handing over valuable resources.

In an ideal world, some think there would be no deception and everyone would be innocent and guileless and trust would not be an issue. However, that's not the case and never will be, and maybe that's a good thing.

If there were no deception, there would be no magicians, no illusionsts, no painters, no movie-makers, no poets, no writers, no fiction, no works of imagination.... and we would be lulled into dull, unquestioning acceptance that what we perceive without reflecion is The Truth.

How has Apple got away with screwing up our iPhone 3G?

A couple of months ago the world waited with baited breath for the release of the OS4 upgrade for Apple's iPhone operating system.

I didn't rush to upgrade the OS on my 3G, but a day or two later when I synched my phone with iTunes, it installed the upgrade.

Since then the phone has run slower, some of the apps just quit or stop working - even Apples own apps. The phone hangs and generally performs worse than it did when I first got it.

In short, my User Experience has downgraded, not upgraded.

Sure, OS4 works fine in 3GS phones and of course on the latest iPhone, but why the heck did Apple release it for 3G iPhones as well?
Did they test it on 3G iPhones at all?
If they did, didn't they notice how it screwed up performance?
If they did notice it screwed up performance, why did they release it for the 3G iPhone?
And given the widespread problems that 3G iPhone users have reported, why hasn't Apple worked out an OS4 fix to rectify it?

I now have a phone that was delivered to me less than 18 months ago, which works worse than when I first got it entirely because of software made and delivered, in a closed system, by the manufacturer. If that's not an Apple screw-up, what is?

Social Media help friends and family connect more

I'm increasingly convinced that a major benefit of Social Media is in reinforcing connections with people we already know but may not see or speak to as often as we would like.

Thanks to Twitter I have regular connections with my brother-in-law Mike in Sheffield - we never used to interact except when he came to visit.  Also thanks to Twitter and Flickr, I keep up to date with friends in my home town between our monthly photo group meets and occasional chance encounters.

Let's get physical

Just back from two weeks in Greece, bronzed, more toned and barely heavier than I was before, I'm trying hard not to feel smug, but it isn't working.

The first day of the holiday the kids had a windsurfing course and I eavesdropped for a refresher - I tried windsurfing several times in 1982 and thought it should be easy enough to get back into. However, the first day this time was awful - falling off into the sea countless times, struggling back onto the board, hauling the mast and sail up with my arse sticking out and my legs wobbling, falling off again, looking and feeling like a complete dork. After an hour or two I realised why I hadn't done it for a long time and decided to give up. But then, at the end of the session it all came together for a minute or two and I thought maybe I'll stick with it.

So I tried again and ended up going out windsurfing morning and afternoon, for about 3-4 hours a day, graduating to a smaller board (155 litres) and a bigger sail (5.0 sq metres). Gradually I fell off less, needed less hauling back upwind by the rescue boat, and was able to ride the winds at some speed. Mind you, I was constantly overtaken by kids in small sailing boats, because boats go faster than windsurfers. But I stuck with the windsurfing because it's more like riding the waves and the wind bareback - holding on to the boom, you have direct physical contact with the force of the wind. And, as I discovered, it does great things for the upper body muscles and the core strength.

For one such as me who spends most of my working time sitting and writing, there's something deeply refreshing and humanising about getting really physical. I realise I'm very lucky to be able to do it, both financially and from a health perspective - my mum is now in rehab after falling and breaking her femur. So I intend to make the best of it for as long as I can.

In this increasingly IT- and screen-mediated world, there's a real danger of retreating from our physical beings and living far too much in just our heads. In doing so, we lose physical awareness and what I think of as Body Intelligence. When we live fully in our bodies, we are more grounded and benefit from a more rounded understanding of life