When Phones Were Phones!

Do you ever pine for the days when mobile phones were just that, phones you could carry with you? Simple small, light single purpose devices that did a couple of things really well... make and receive phone calls and send and receive txt messages.

Not these expensive multi-purpose phone cum computer cum email cum TV cum DVD player cum Camcorder cum Camera cum Hi-Fi System cum everything devices. Not these mega expensive, mobile connected, everything, everywhere portable computing devices that also happen to do phone calls… and also happen to track your every move!!!

Pine for a world were word processing, voice recording, video recording and playing, music making and shopping and constant email contact didn't follow you everywhere you go? A world where you could walk down the street without bumping into people stumbling aimlessly around head buried in their 'Mobile Device'? A world where you didn't have to put up with white ear bud wearing, inanely smiling people living in a world of their own laughing at some in joke email or personal video message, or something, whatever!

Well I got fed-up of the multi-touch, multi-media world lately and decided to go back to the good old days of only 10 or so years ago. To my favorite mobile phones that I have owned over the last 30 years (and I have owned a lot and always had the latest)... the Ericsson T28 and the Ericsson R320.

Lovely phones, small, light, long battery life and great for voice calls and txting. Both have voice activated calling and great reception and the T28 is a brilliant and totally classic piece of design that has never been replicated. A button activated flip out mic and auto voice calling and just so small and light when compared to the expensive and relatively fragile iBricks most people carry around these days. A mere 83gms and 97 x 50 x 15 mm with 4 0r 5 hours of talk time and a massive 65 hours of standby time. These things don't need charging everyday like those multi-media iBricks tend to.

Picked them both up really cheap on eBay and their in great condition. Perfect to throw in the pocket and forget about until you need to call or txt someone and then to know that you will always have good reception and don't have to worry about holding them in a particular way or standing  close to the window or something equally daft that we have come to take for granted with those expensive multi-media mobile devices.

Maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old man but I really don't know what the latest tech is adding to the world... maybe its just a tech addiction that feeds corporate coffers and has us throwing perfectly good devices away just so we can have the newest, greatest and latest Android or iPhone. I remember some technology wag saying many years ago that the only thing sure about the future was that the phone companies would make a lot of money... you only have to look at the high street proliferation of mobile phone shops and who are the global giants to see how right they were.

So I thought it was time to go back to the future and get rid of my iDevices and invest in some proper mobile tech. So I thought about which were my favorite phones of all time given I had been an early adopter and always had both personal and work provided mobiles upadted very regularly. The Nokia 8110 was good and the Motorola Razr to, but the Ericsson phones of the late 90's early 2000's were the best ever.

I think mobile phones reached an apogee at the Millennium and it has been all down hill since then.

The Ericsson R320 is actually my favorite ever phone, I had one one they came out in 2000 and kept it for years. It even has an infrared port (remember those :-) and can be configured for email and simple WAP browsing etc... but who needs those things. I just want a good reliable sturdy phone that is going to do the job it's designed for and both these classic retro Ericsson phones do the job, brilliantly!

The T28 has got to be the retro classic and in my opinion has yet to be bettered as a small, light basic mobile phone. Very Star Trek, actually! Born in 1999 it will live long and prosper :-)

I now use both and always carry the T28 when I go anywhere. Long live the real mobile phones from the time when phones were phones were phones...

Enjoy!, Tom

ps: I recently picked up a job lot of T28's, some T28 World, T28s and T28sc models and plan to refurbish them, so if any of you fancy a great little classic 'retro' phone that does what a good mobile phone should then just drop me an email at tom@ravenred.net or call me on my R320 at 07519 839 604
... going cheap to good homes :-)

Like Frogs In Boiling Water (The Age of Surveillance - Part 1)

I know a thing or two about surveillance and about technology. I have been a senior IT executive for over twenty years and spent the last three years working for the NZ Army, where I was Director of Knowledge & Information. I was also Project Manager for their future focused Land C4ISR Programme - technology in the 'operational theatre', whether that be at home or abroad..

C4ISR stands for Computers, Communications, Command & Control, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance... quite a mouthful, eh? Well that's why the military is riddled with acronyms and everyone speaks in a sort of TLA code, but I digress.

Part of my role in Force Development and part of the role of the Battle Labs we ran was to look at an evaluate new technologies for the C4ISR capability so I was exposed to some of the latest military and civilian technology in this area. Believe me the capabilities of this stuff are scary especially when applied to the 'Homeland Security' arena and directed at the 'domestic' population, in other words the civilain populations of the very countries who are utilising this stuff. And, by the way, making big bucks selling it to other governments around the world.

Now I can't tell you all I know about the latest Surveillance tech or I would have to shoot you :-) but I just wanted to put into context some of the stuff I will be writing about in my blogs and let you know that I'm not just 'talking out of my backside' I have actually worked in this arena for the NZ Defence Force and with the allied powers of the 'Anglosphere' for the last three years.

So hopefully now that I've 'come out' this can provide some context as I delve deeper in forthcoming blogs into the issues of surveillance, electronic warfare and the brave new world of digital identities, transparency and the pervasive tracking of the online and offline activity of individuals and groups.

We are all just grist for the intelligence analysis mill and this throws up a whole lot of questions and issues, especially in regard to our concepts of privacy and freedom and some of the underlying principles our western civilisation is supposed to be built apon.

Do we live in a democracy? Do we live in a Panopticon prison with no visible walls? Do we really have any privacy or freedom in the brave new electronic age?

So in future blogs I will be examining some of these questions in an attempt to raise the profile of these issues and stimulate debate.

For to long now we have been like the proverbial Frog in the slowly warming water... if we are not careful we will boil to death because we just don't notice the change in temperature. Perhaps we need to get out before its to late.

The Panopticon and Permanent War

I had to lift my camera high above the fence that cordons off Parliament Square to get this shot. Notice the ubiquitous surveillance camera on top of the buildings tower?
Britain is the most surveilled nation in the world with the average Londoner being photographed 400+ times a day. In this age of high resolution colour images, face recognition software and integrated tracking systems its a scary thought.
This remarkable invasion of privacy has become the norm in our post 9-11 society where you can never really escape from the cameras except way out in the countryside. "So if you have nothing to hide whats the problem" you may say. Or 'It makes us safer and protects us from terrorism". Really? - that all kind of depends on the watchers being fair and never making mistakes doesn't it? and just whose definition of terrorism are we quoting here? My big concern is Who watches the watchers? ... this whole big brother thing is just far to open to abuse and misuse.

Having been in local and central government for the last few years, albeit in New Zealand not the UK, my biggest concern are the careless bureaucrats and the state machine which just churns on regardless and can easily destroy peoples lives through mistakes and false profiling for example.

The potential for abuse in this 'Panopticon' Grid we live in is not the only fear, IMHO the potential for cock-up and incompetance far outweighs the potentail for conspiracy or deliberate acts of abuse.

So you don't have to be paranoid to live here, but it helps! because they really are watching you... everywhere and all the time.

Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon is now a reality and we already live in a Police State that is in a permanent state of war, where we are the controlled proles kept quiet by the opium of consumerism and celebrity culture. Does that sound familiar?