16-02-2019
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
SCIENCE & TECH<br />
SATurDAY,<br />
FeBruArY <strong>16</strong>, <strong>2019</strong><br />
5<br />
Google permeates almost every facet of online life, making it difficult but not impossible to remove.<br />
Photo: Arnd Wiegmann<br />
Is it possible to remove Google from our life?<br />
Jack Schofield<br />
Google's motto used to be "don't be evil",<br />
but in the eyes of some it has now taken<br />
on the mantle of the "evil empire" from<br />
Microsoft, which Bill Gates and crew<br />
inherited from the IBM mocked in the<br />
Mac's launch advert in 1984. The EU has<br />
fined Google €2.4bn (£2.2bn) for abusing<br />
its search monopoly by favouring its<br />
products. Most recently, Google was<br />
fined €4.34bn for "very serious illegal<br />
behaviour" in using Android "to cement<br />
its dominance as a search engine",<br />
according to the EU's competition<br />
commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, a<br />
charge the company contests.<br />
Google started by taking over the<br />
search engine market. It now dominates<br />
smartphone operating systems<br />
(Android), browsers (Chrome), webbased<br />
email (Gmail), online video<br />
(YouTube) and maps. It is also<br />
challenging in other areas with its own<br />
cloud platform, an online office suite,<br />
Chromebooks, Waze, Nest and so on.<br />
Google is far advanced in driverless cars<br />
(Waymo) and artificial intelligence<br />
(DeepMind). Resistance is futile. You will<br />
Linda Kinstler<br />
Should one be so unlucky as<br />
to find oneself, as I did, lying<br />
awake in bed in the early<br />
hours of the morning in a<br />
hostel in La Paz, Bolivia,<br />
listening anxiously to the<br />
sound of someone trying to<br />
force their way into one's<br />
room, one could do worse<br />
than to throw a chair under<br />
the doorknob as a first line of<br />
defence. But this is not what<br />
I did. Instead, I held my<br />
breath and waited until the<br />
intruder, ever so mercifully,<br />
abandoned his project and<br />
sauntered down the hall.<br />
The next morning, when I<br />
raised the incident with the<br />
hostel employee at the front<br />
desk, he said the attempted<br />
intrusion had just been an<br />
innocent mistake, a<br />
misdirected early-morning<br />
wake-up call gone wrong,<br />
and what was the big deal,<br />
anyway? Fuming, I turned to<br />
the highest authority in the<br />
be assimilated.<br />
We can probably agree Google has won<br />
by delivering high-quality products, and<br />
more than 40 corpses in the Google<br />
Graveyard - soon to be joined by its awful<br />
social network, Google+ - prove it doesn't<br />
always win. But there are other problems.<br />
First, Google now controls web<br />
development to the point where not even<br />
Microsoft can compete, as shown by the<br />
latter's recent decision to replace its<br />
EdgeHTML browser engine with the<br />
open source Chromium on which<br />
Google's Chrome browser is based. Users<br />
were supposed to benefit from<br />
competition between rival<br />
implementations of open web standards,<br />
but today Chromium and therefore<br />
Chrome is the standard.<br />
As Firefox-developer Mozilla has<br />
pointed out, "from a social, civic and<br />
individual empowerment perspective,<br />
ceding control of fundamental online<br />
infrastructure to a single company is<br />
terrible". Second, many of us have<br />
problems with Google's business model,<br />
which the Harvard Business School<br />
professor Shoshana Zuboff has called<br />
"surveillance capitalism". Google<br />
world of international travel,<br />
the only entity to which<br />
every hotel, restaurant,<br />
museum and attraction in<br />
the world is beholden: I left<br />
the hostel a bad review on<br />
TripAdvisor.<br />
TripAdvisor is where we<br />
go to praise, criticise and<br />
purchase our way through<br />
the inhabited world. It is, at<br />
its core, a guestbook, a place<br />
where people record the<br />
highs and lows of their<br />
holiday experiences for the<br />
benefit of hotel proprietors<br />
and future guests. But this<br />
guestbook lives on the<br />
internet, where its<br />
contributors continue<br />
swapping advice, memories<br />
and complaints about their<br />
journeys long after their<br />
vacations have come to an<br />
end.<br />
Every month, 456 million<br />
people - about one in every<br />
<strong>16</strong> people on earth - visit<br />
some tentacle of<br />
TripAdvisor.com to plan or<br />
assess a trip. For virtually<br />
every place, there exists a<br />
corresponding page. The<br />
Rajneeshee Osho<br />
International Meditation<br />
Resort in Pune, India, has<br />
140 reviews and a 4 out of 5<br />
rating, Cobham Service<br />
Station on the M25 has 451<br />
reviews and a rating of 3.5,<br />
while Wes Anderson's<br />
fictional Grand Budapest<br />
Hotel currently has 358<br />
reviews and a rating of 4.5.<br />
Over its two decades in<br />
business, TripAdvisor has<br />
turned an initial investment<br />
of $3m into a$7bn business<br />
by figuring out how to<br />
provide a service that no<br />
other tech company has<br />
quite mastered: constantly<br />
updated information about<br />
every imaginable element of<br />
travel, courtesy of an evergrowing<br />
army of<br />
contributors who provide<br />
their services for free.<br />
Browsing through<br />
TripAdvisor's 660m reviews<br />
finances its free services by tracking users<br />
and targeting them with advertisements.<br />
In fact, it tracks you across the web even<br />
if you never visit any Google properties<br />
because other websites commonly use<br />
Google AdWords, AdMob, DoubleClick,<br />
Google Analytics, and its other tracking<br />
or advertising products.<br />
From your searches and site visits,<br />
Google probably knows more about you<br />
than your mother or your spouse, and<br />
there's no telling where that information<br />
will eventually end up. If you use an<br />
Android phone, Google can also track<br />
your physical location, and if you turn<br />
that off, you lose directions, "find my<br />
phone" and other features.<br />
The simplest way to avoid most Google<br />
products is to switch to the Microsoft or<br />
Apple equivalents, in whole or in part.<br />
Some would see this as jumping out of the<br />
frying pan into the fire. However, Satya<br />
Nadella's new Microsoft is different from<br />
the old one, and driven by other metrics<br />
(usage instead of units). It is building a<br />
broader cross-platform ecosystem than<br />
either Google (everything online) or<br />
Apple (everything on Apple).<br />
TripAdvisor: Travel in the 21st century<br />
The world's biggest travel site has turned the industry upside down.<br />
Photo: Getty<br />
is a study in extremes. As a<br />
kind of mirror of the world<br />
and all its wonders, the site<br />
can transport you to the<br />
most spectacular<br />
landmarks, the finest<br />
restaurants, the most<br />
"adrenaline-pumping"<br />
water parks, the greatest<br />
"Hop-On Hop-Off<br />
Experiences" that mankind<br />
has ever devised. Yet<br />
TripAdvisor reviews are also<br />
a ruthless audit of the earth's<br />
many flaws. For every<br />
effusive review of the Eiffel<br />
Tower ("Worth the hype at<br />
night," "Perfect Backdrop!"),<br />
there is another that<br />
suggests it is a blight on the<br />
face of the earth ("sad, ugly,<br />
don't bother"; "similar to the<br />
lobby of a big Vegas casino,<br />
but outside".)<br />
TripAdvisor is to travel as<br />
Google is to search, as<br />
Amazon is to books, as Uber<br />
is to cabs - so dominant that<br />
it is almost a monopoly. Bad<br />
reviews can be devastating<br />
for business, so proprietors<br />
tend to think of them in<br />
rather violent terms. "It is<br />
the marketing/PR<br />
equivalent of a drive-by<br />
shooting," Edward Terry,<br />
the owner of a Lebanese<br />
restaurant in Weybridge,<br />
UK, wrote in 2015.<br />
Marketers call a cascade of<br />
online one-star ratings a<br />
"review bomb". Likewise,<br />
positive reviews can<br />
transform<br />
an<br />
establishment's fortunes.<br />
Researchers studying Yelp,<br />
one of TripAdvisor's main<br />
competitors, found that a<br />
one-star increase meant a 5-<br />
9% increase in revenue.<br />
Before TripAdvisor, the<br />
customer was only<br />
nominally king. After, he<br />
became a veritable tyrant,<br />
with the power to make or<br />
break lives. In response, the<br />
hospitality industry has<br />
lawyered up, and it is not<br />
uncommon for businesses to<br />
threaten to sue customers<br />
who post negative reviews.<br />
Why Silicon Valley can’t fix itself<br />
Ben Tarnoff<br />
Big Tech is sorry. After<br />
decades of rarely<br />
apologising for anything,<br />
Silicon Valley suddenly<br />
seems to be apologising for<br />
everything. They are sorry<br />
about the trolls. They are<br />
sorry about the bots. They<br />
are sorry about the fake<br />
news and the Russians,<br />
and the cartoons that are<br />
terrifying your kids on<br />
YouTube. But they are<br />
especially sorry about our<br />
brains.<br />
Sean Parker, the former<br />
president of Facebook -<br />
who was played by Justin<br />
Timberlake in The Social<br />
Network - has publicly<br />
lamented the "unintended<br />
consequences" of the<br />
platform he helped create:<br />
"God only knows what it's<br />
doing to our children's<br />
brains." Justin Rosenstein,<br />
an engineer who helped<br />
build Facebook's "like"<br />
button and Gchat, regrets<br />
having contributed to<br />
technology that he now<br />
considers psychologically<br />
damaging, too. "Everyone<br />
is distracted," Rosenstein<br />
says. "All of the time."<br />
Ever since the internet<br />
became widely used by the<br />
public in the 1990s, users<br />
have heard warnings that it<br />
is bad for us. In the early<br />
years, many commentators<br />
described cyberspace as a<br />
parallel universe that could<br />
swallow enthusiasts whole.<br />
The media fretted about<br />
kids talking to strangers<br />
and finding porn. A<br />
prominent 1998 study<br />
from Carnegie Mellon<br />
University claimed that<br />
spending time online made<br />
you lonely, depressed and<br />
antisocial.<br />
In the mid-2000s, as the<br />
internet moved on to<br />
mobile devices, physical<br />
and virtual life began to<br />
merge. Bullish pundits<br />
celebrated the "cognitive<br />
surplus" unlocked by<br />
crowdsourcing and the<br />
tech-savvy campaigns of<br />
Barack Obama, the<br />
"internet president". But,<br />
alongside these optimistic<br />
voices, darker warnings<br />
persisted. Nicholas Carr's<br />
The Shallows (2010)<br />
argued that search engines<br />
were making people<br />
stupid, while Eli Pariser's<br />
The Filter Bubble (2011)<br />
claimed algorithms made<br />
us insular by showing us<br />
only what we wanted to<br />
see. In Alone, Together<br />
(2011) and Reclaiming<br />
Conversation (2015),<br />
Sherry Turkle warned that<br />
constant connectivity was<br />
making meaningful<br />
interaction impossible.<br />
Still, inside the industry,<br />
t e c h n o - u t o p i a n i s m<br />
prevailed. Silicon Valley<br />
seemed to assume that the<br />
tools they were building<br />
were always forces for good<br />
- and that anyone who<br />
questioned them was a<br />
crank or a luddite. In the<br />
face of an anti-tech<br />
backlash that has surged<br />
since the 20<strong>16</strong> election,<br />
however, this faith appears<br />
to be faltering. Prominent<br />
people in the industry are<br />
beginning to acknowledge<br />
that their products may<br />
have harmful effects.<br />
Internet anxiety isn't<br />
new. But never before have<br />
so many notable figures<br />
within the industry seemed<br />
so anxious about the world<br />
they have made. Parker,<br />
Rosenstein and the other<br />
insiders now talking about<br />
the harms of smartphones<br />
and social media belong to<br />
an informal yet influential<br />
current of tech critics<br />
emerging within Silicon<br />
Valley. You could call them<br />
the "tech humanists".<br />
Amid rising public concern<br />
about the power of the<br />
industry, they argue that<br />
the primary problem with<br />
its products is that they<br />
threaten our health and<br />
our humanity.<br />
It is clear that these<br />
products are designed to be<br />
maximally addictive, in<br />
order to harvest as much of<br />
our attention as they can.<br />
Tech humanists say this<br />
business model is both<br />
unhealthy and inhumane -<br />
that it damages our<br />
psychological well-being<br />
and conditions us to<br />
behave in ways that<br />
diminish our humanity.<br />
The main solution that<br />
they propose is better<br />
design. By redesigning<br />
technology to be less<br />
addictive and less<br />
manipulative, they believe<br />
we can make it healthier -<br />
we can realign technology<br />
with our humanity and<br />
build products that don't<br />
"hijack" our minds.<br />
Apple founder Steve Jobs posing with a<br />
Macintosh computer.<br />
Photo: Ted Thai<br />
What to consider before buying a mobile phone<br />
Jack Schofield<br />
Phone manufacturers and others<br />
can and do test their phones, usually<br />
for certification purposes. The<br />
performance test results you want, if<br />
you can get them, are the Total<br />
Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) value for<br />
reception and the Total Radiated<br />
Power (TRP) for transmission.<br />
These probably don't qualify as<br />
easy for an ordinary punter to<br />
understand. Also, they are derived<br />
by testing performance in ideal<br />
conditions with a simulated base<br />
station in an anechoic chamber, not<br />
with a fading signal on a wet and<br />
windy hillside.<br />
Either way, I don't think phone<br />
manufacturers are likely to use TIS<br />
in their marketing. There are too<br />
many variables for it to be a reliable<br />
guide to real-world reception. For<br />
example, studies have found<br />
significant differences between<br />
holding a phone in the left hand and<br />
holding it in the right hand, which I<br />
assume is connected with the way<br />
manufacturers position their<br />
antenna(s). The size of your hands<br />
and the angle at which you hold the<br />
phone also make a difference.<br />
The tests were created by the CTIA<br />
- originally the Cellular<br />
Telecommunications Industry<br />
Association - to certify wireless<br />
devices' over-the-air performance,<br />
and a brief glance at the 591-page<br />
PDF will show how complicated it is.<br />
For example, you could measure<br />
peak performance with a directional<br />
aerial, but then users would have to<br />
orient the phone towards the unseen<br />
transmitter for the best results.<br />
Instead, the CTIA requires the<br />
"average spherical effective radiated<br />
receiver sensitivity (TIS) to be<br />
measured". This should mean a<br />
phone works equally well in all<br />
directions, but it's complicated to<br />
calculate and still a compromise.<br />
Another problem is making<br />
antennas work with different 2G, 3G<br />
and 4G phone networks that operate<br />
at different frequencies. A phone<br />
that works well with GSM 900<br />
might be terrible with UMTS 2100.<br />
The downside of having a phone<br />
that talks to most networks is that it<br />
won't be optimised for the one you<br />
actually use.<br />
Also, because human bodies have<br />
not been standardised, TIS and TRP<br />
measurements are made with<br />
dummy heads and hands filled with<br />
liquid. Results may vary if you use<br />
real people. In the end, the only<br />
measurements that matter are the<br />
ones you get with your head and<br />
hands with the specific frequencies<br />
used by your EE network. We are<br />
left with "ask a friend" and the notvery-helpful<br />
"try it and see".<br />
Most tests assume that all models<br />
of a particular phone will perform in<br />
the same way, but Ofcom found<br />
differences. As with other products,<br />
phones that look identical can vary.<br />
In some cases, they may have been<br />
assembled in different countries,<br />
and use slightly different<br />
components. In others, the circuitry<br />
may have been revised between<br />
editions. Even if the internal<br />
components seem to be the same,<br />
there could be some sample<br />
variation, without a phone actually<br />
being faulty.<br />
This makes me wonder if your<br />
Moto 3 is below average in reception<br />
performance. In most cases, no one<br />
would ever know, but you are<br />
literally an "edge case". With a new<br />
phone, it might be worth asking the<br />
supplier for a different sample, but it<br />
may be too late for that.<br />
It would be interesting to know<br />
what would happen if you swapped<br />
phones and sims with your wife. You<br />
may have a bigger capacitance than<br />
your wife, electronically speaking,<br />
and possibly much bigger hands.<br />
Both can and do affect reception. If<br />
your Moto 3 works better in her<br />
hands, then either you or your sim<br />
are degrading the performance. It<br />
might be worth getting a new sim.<br />
As you already know, using your<br />
phone on a selfie stick can improve<br />
performance. You may also get<br />
better reception by not touching the<br />
phone and using the built-in<br />
speakerphone. You could also try<br />
using a signal booster or repeater.<br />
Why is it that some smartphones have better reception than others and is there any way to<br />
find out which ones are best before buying them?<br />
Photo: Samuel Gibbs