Going deep into the technologies that Sci-Fi movies like Back To The Future Part II predicted for 2015 to give our take on their real success and how we feel about them.
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Going deep into the technologies that Sci-Fi movies like Back To The Future Part II predicted for 2015 to give our take on their real success and how we feel about them.
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Geoff 0:08
And welcome back to another episode of Toast & Roast. That’s not our opening song. But as always, I’m your co host, Geoff, and I’m here with Georgie.
Georgie 0:23
It’s me.
Geoff 0:24
It’s me. It’s you.
Georgie 0:25
It’s me.
Geoff 0:27
It’s—oh, wait. You know how every time we do like a Hello World example?
Georgie 0:35
Yeah, like—
Geoff 0:36
The frickin theme song pops into my head from—
Georgie 0:39
Saddle Club?
Geoff 0:39
From Saddle Club. Yeah. This is the, this is the hazard for growing up, or the side effects of growing up with two older sisters that you get introduced to a wide variety of TV shows.
Georgie 0:56
But do you think that they made that Hello World knowing at all, but it was the first thing you learn in a lot of programming languages?
Geoff 1:05
Hell no. Right? I mean, but you’re right, I think I guess like how, how did they come up with a Hello World as the starting example, “hello, world program”. Okay. So for people who don’t know don’t code, it’s often that if when you start off with a new piece of software, that they give you an example that is that essentially prints “hello world”, whether it’s in your browser, or it’s in some kind of command terminal, which I won’t even try to describe what that is.
Georgie 1:47
It’s the thing that in movies, it looks like the hackers—
Geoff 1:50
Ah. Yeah.
Georgie 1:52
That’s how it’s portrayed and a lot of media, is that the terminal. Is, is that? I don’t even? Yeah, you’re right. I don’t even know how to describe it.
Geoff 2:03
I think that’s pretty good. Yeah. If you ever watch like, let’s say you watch Mars, the movie with Matt Damon, not Matt Damon. Mars. Mars movie. It’s the guy who always gets lost. Yeah, it is Matt Damon. Yeah.
Georgie 2:21
Wait, have we talked we talked about—
Geoff 2:22
The Martian, sorry.
Georgie 2:24
The Bourne movies.
Geoff 2:25
Yeah, we have talked about the Bourne—
Georgie 2:26
You said you haven’t seen them? No, I haven’t seen i It’s so funny. I mean, not funny. But yeah.
Geoff 2:33
It’s your all time favorite series. Apart from—
Georgie 2:38
Back to the Future.
Geoff 2:40
Oh, Back to the Future? What about John Wick? You know?
Georgie 2:45
Oh fuck off. I fucking hate John Wick.
Geoff 2:50
John Wick. So the Martian. That’s what I keep calling it the Mars movie. But in in the Martian. Matt Damon hooked like opens up these two laptops. And he he drags like a window from one laptop across to the other laptop. And I thought that was the most mind blowing thing of any concept. I’m like, holy shit. Imagine if we could just drag from one laptop over to the other seamlessly. We’d be, we’d have so much of a better life, but not really.
Georgie 3:22
But like, wait, it says 2015—so it’s not very long ago.
Geoff 3:26
Yeah, yeah. Anyways, so he opens up two very old looking laptops, because he’s gone on a Mars mission. The Martian, and then that’s the thing that he types in. Which is a terminal in there somewhere. Laptops...
Georgie 3:42
Wait, so he types Hello World?
Geoff 3:44
No, it doesn’t type Hello World. But he uses the command line to type Hello World.
Georgie 3:48
Oh. Okay.
Geoff 3:49
Yeah. Are people photoshopping stuff in there? So stuff—
Georgie 3:54
I bet this is memed.
Geoff 3:58
Yeah. Yeah, everything gets memed these days. This poor guy, but he has one of those older satellite esque esque kind of laptops.
Georgie 4:06
What time period is it set in?
Geoff 4:08
It’s a good question. The Martian, 2015, directed by Ridley Scott, of course, because she is the original the OG person who goes into space. “Screenplay from the 2011 model”, like what year is this?
Georgie 4:27
Novel, oh.
Geoff 4:29
It’s based on a novel, I didn’t even know.
Georgie 4:32
Hey, it’s Jeff Daniels.
Geoff 4:34
In 2035. So I’d expect people to be able to drag a window from one operating system to another in 2035 I guess.
Georgie 4:44
But why? Why would they, you said they were really old looking, the laptops?
Geoff 4:47
Yes, they did. Oh, I mean, I guess it doesn’t look too old. It looks like a regular satellite esque kind of laptop. So maybe I misremembered. That protection.
Georgie 5:01
Yeah, so speaking of like this, like technology in movies that like when they’re set in different time periods, and asking the question of is this, is this relevant? Or is it an accurate prediction? I think, since we just mentioned Back to the Future reminded me of that, someone had actually discussed some of the elements of Back to the Future, which was released in the 1980s. And—
Geoff 5:32
Right.
Georgie 5:34
I don’t know actually, sorry, it’s Back to the Future II where they go to 2015.
Geoff 5:39
Oh.
Georgie 5:40
Yeah. And so the things that were predicted in the film, were like, hoverboards I think they had a smartwatch, flying cars, and some of the things were not not accurate, such as the hoverboard. Oh, actually, no, no, such as the flying cars. But the hoverboard, we do have some kind of, some kind of crappy—
Geoff 6:02
Oh god, the two-wheel thing?
Georgie 6:04
Yeah, but they had like smartwatches they had other really sort of like remote. I can’t remember. But there was actually a list of some of the things in Back to the Future II.
Geoff 6:15
Technologies...
Georgie 6:16
Yeah.
Geoff 6:17
Technology predictions. “10 predictions that came true”.
Georgie 6:22
So there were some really good predictions in there.
Geoff 6:25
Personal drones. Yeah, it’s not bad. Tablets and mobile payment technology. Yeah. biometric devices, hands free gaming consoles, smart clothing and wearable technology. Er, that’s debatable. I don’t know if any of the smart clothing really got to—
Georgie 6:45
Oh, actually, the lace, like what they had in the film was shoe laces that shoes that lace themselves. And I think Nike actually tried to make something like that, but it didn’t take off.
Geoff 6:58
I think they made one and I remember a YouTuber who, those Nike self tying shoes. Yeah. I remember one YouTuber reviewing it because they’re the only ones that were able to get a hand, hand on them.
Georgie 7:12
But you know what, like, I just prefer shoes you can, sneakers you can slip on?
Geoff 7:16
Yeah. Like Vessi. Not sponsored.
Georgie 7:21
Why do you need laces at all? Oh, I love me lace, laceless shoes.
Geoff 7:26
Yeah, that’s MKBHD, of course this the only guy on on the entirety of YouTube that gets his hand on the weird stuff like this. Videophones. That’s cool. Waste fuelled cars.
Georgie 7:41
Yeah, kind of like from environmentally friendly, environmental perspective.
Geoff 7:47
Hydrogen fuel cell car. Okay. Hoverboards we did make something like that. The Lexus created a hoverboard. But I mean, no one can actually buy and use one. Actually, I remember seeing a video about this. They had no board. And they were like, going left and right on the I mean, up and down the half pipe or quarter pipe or whatever you want to call it. And that was it. That’s all I saw from it.
Georgie 8:21
I’ve always thought that these were really shit. Like—
Geoff 8:24
They don’t get you anywhere. That’s for sure.
Georgie 8:26
Yeah.
Geoff 8:29
Got four big-ass, like I don’t know, perpendicular to the floor, facing wheels.
Georgie 8:38
Yeah.
Geoff 8:39
I think the definition of hover is is very specific.
Georgie 8:45
Yeah.
Geoff 8:47
And if you achieve that, which is a cushion of air underneath a—what, remained in one place in the air?
Georgie 8:58
Yeah. As in, to hover over something.
Geoff 9:01
Okay. Yeah. A definition of hovered technology? Anyways. So—
Georgie 9:07
Yeah, like practically. You’re right. If you manage to get air under the thing, and it’s basically floating, it’s hovering, even if it is like two centimetres.
Geoff 9:16
Yeah, this thing is like, way way.
Georgie 9:20
So it doesn’t matter how large this hoverboard is and how unwieldy it looks, but it’s fucking hovering.
Geoff 9:26
They got Tony Hawk to ride it. Of course they did. This guy still coming out with video games. I don’t know if you ever really saw the Tony Hawk series.
Georgie 9:36
I played a little bit on PlayStation, but that was like, fucking 10 years ago.
Geoff 9:40
Yeah, I loved it. I don’t, I played like the very first one on the PlayStation or something. Something about like grinding on a bar for as long as you possibly can. And then watching Tony Hawk, stack it at the end of it. It’s great.
Georgie 9:56
Yeah, I actually wanted to learn how to skateboard. But I’ve never, I guess I’ve never bothered going through like, following through with that.
Geoff 10:06
Oh yeah. One of my ex co workers they got a, the electric skateboard from god, I can’t remember what it’s called now. Tec... skateboard. It’s a really popular one.
Georgie 10:23
I don’t remember. I feel like I have a friend who has one as well but...
Geoff 10:28
Electric skateboard... not Evolve the more expensive one, uh, shit... I can’t remember what it’s called now. It’s like really long?
Georgie 10:40
Not a booster, no?
Geoff 10:42
Yeah. Booster board.
Georgie 10:42
Oh it is, okay, yeah.
Geoff 10:44
Boosted. Yeah. So he got a Boosted he got a Boosted mini which is about, I don’t know, the size of this one? What’s the width, what’s the length of this thing? It’s 6.9 kilos or 15 pounds, it is... not very specific on the length of it. Anyway, it’s like a half a skateboard. And I was like, okay, cool. So I want, I wanted to get one of these Boosted electric skateboards since living, since starting work in Pyrmont. And basically, you start, you get a train into the city. And then you have to walk another, I don’t know. 15, 20 minutes across a bridge across—
Georgie 11:35
You go Town Hall, right. And you go across—
Geoff 11:37
Yeah, yeah.
Georgie 11:38
Oh my god, I hate Pyrmont. No, like, no, no offense to anybody who actually like lives there. What I mean is, I used to work in Pyrmont. And I didn’t like doing that walk across the bridge.
Geoff 11:49
Yeah, it’s, I mean, if you don’t want to walk it, then you can probably take a bus but then you gotta wait for the bus.
Georgie 11:57
Can you take the light rail?
Geoff 11:58
Yeah, light rail. But basically, I would see tons of people on electric skateboards every day. And it really sold me on that idea that you know, what, if—I can’t, I can’t skateboard at all. I don’t have the you know, the balance for it. But if you took away the fact that you had to kick off with your feet, I had it in my mind that I would be sold, I’d be like, perfectly fine. Didn’t work out that way. Because I tried out the electric skateboard and stacked it. I sat on it. And I was like, this is still doesn’t feel safe at all. So abandoned that idea too.
So what’s the bottom like? It’s not like any actual... because don’t some of them... do they actually have—
They have battery on it.
Georgie 12:50
Oh. Wait, so it’s it was six kilos. Oh my god. It’s too heavy. I don’t want to deal with it.
Geoff 12:57
That too, right? I’d have to carry it onto the train.
Georgie 13:00
It’s like a little suitcase. That’s like a little carry on baggage.
Geoff 13:05
Because once you reach the doors to like, like—train stations are inside for the most part to get to itm so you have to actually carry it and you might have to carry it up flights of stairs to get into the, onto the platform. And I was like yeah, if I can’t tie that to my bag... No bueno.
Georgie 13:26
Yeah, I still think like—manual, are they called manual? Actual skateboards.
Geoff 13:32
Haha, manual skateboards.
Georgie 13:33
Yeah, I don’t know. I still like, like them. You know, I feel like they’re easier to carry. Even though I have no idea how to ride one, but I feel like they’re easier to carry. You have you have more control over it, I guess.
Geoff 13:55
Yeah. I, well, it’s like you have a press button to accelerate. And I guess if it, like the tricky part is not accelerating so fast. That you may fall off. And with a skateboard. That’s not, no way you can push off and continue at, I don’t know, six kilometres an hour or however fa—woah, this thing goes to 38 kilometres power or 23 miles per hour. So—
Georgie 14:22
Hmm. At this point, I feel like I’d rather get a bicycle maybe?
Geoff 14:26
Yeah, electric bicycle. So you don’t have to ride as hard. My colleague has one.
Georgie 14:34
Yeah.
Geoff 14:36
But yeah, actually, they’re kind of illegal in Australia still, in—
Georgie 14:40
Illegal in what sense?
Geoff 14:42
Illegal in a sense that it’s too, actually to fast for the sidewalk, because sidewalk allows electric vehicles. But those are like for the old people. Like motorised thing, okay. Can’t say “just for old people” because many other people might—
Georgie 14:57
Like mobility impaired people who need—
Geoff 14:59
Mobility impaired, four wheel electric vehicles that drive at like, one kilometre an hour.
Georgie 15:10
I think it’s, I think you can go up to ten. I’m pretty, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people wheelchairs, like electric wheelchairs go a lot faster than me just walking on the pavement. So I think they can be quite fast. But I feel like maybe five to 10 is probably the safe.
Geoff 15:26
Reasonable.
Georgie 15:27
Yeah.
Geoff 15:27
If you hit someone, they won’t like, break a bone? Maybe?
Georgie 15:32
Yeah.
Geoff 15:35
But yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re still illegal on the sidewalk, and they’re too slow to go on the road. The they’re not considered a bike. So like—
Georgie 15:46
Yeah, and we don’t have very, we don’t have extensive cyclists lanes. So even if you couldn’t use those, which you probably you should I would say, I don’t think they, they’re not everywhere. So.
Geoff 15:58
Yeah, they’re very limited. So all in all, it’s a bit of a grey area, because government has decided to just not touch it. And everyone just rides it however they want.
Georgie 16:14
Yeah. I thought about a scooter. But that also feels slightly unwieldy.
Geoff 16:20
I thought about it, too. I was like, you know, what, if I can’t ride a skateboard, I’ll just get a scooter with handles on it.
Georgie 16:28
Yeah, fold it up, and then just kind of carry it, right.
Geoff 16:32
I’ve seen really, really thick ones. I, we’re not, we’re not talking about little tiny, flat shaped scooters.
Georgie 16:40
Yeah.
Geoff 16:41
But if you get the, I don’t know if it’s cheap or expensive. But one of the I think the early models of electric electric scooters—
Georgie 16:48
Oh yeah they’re really like clunky.
Geoff 16:50
Yeah, really clunky. Like they whole, have a whole fusion reactor on it. But I think different places name scooters differently. We’re talking about the like, kind of like a flatbed with two wheels on either side, and a, a straight upwards pole with two handles on it, Scooter.
Georgie 17:11
Yeah.
Geoff 17:11
I don’t know. Maybe they call it a push scooter in some places.
Georgie 17:15
Yeah, but basically not the one that’s like—
Geoff 17:18
Motorised.
Georgie 17:18
Motorbike. Yeah.
Geoff 17:24
Vespas?
Georgie 17:25
Yeah, not like those. Yeah.
Geoff 17:29
So yeah, that kind of like, squash that...
Georgie 17:31
Best to just fucking walk.
Geoff 17:33
Yeah, fucken walk. I’ve thought about it actually, as well, because I got my electric car. And you might, you may have to park a little bit further away from where you want to be. So I was like, “What if I get an electric scooter for the last mile?” You know?
Georgie 17:52
Is it worth it?
Geoff 17:53
Yeah. No, it’s not. Like, there’s a charger at the Broadway shopping centre. Which is maybe a 15 minute walk away from actual city centre. So I was like, you know, what? I’ll park it there, I’ll charge it. And then I’ll hop on a scooter, I’ll zip up into the city. But no, I don’t do that often enough. Let’s see what else on this list. Video glasses. Oh, yeah. Google got into some heat about this, hey.
Georgie 18:32
Like because they’re, they’re useless?
Geoff 18:35
I think they breached some privacy laws, because it has technically has a camera on it. And people are walking around filming people without their consent, perhaps.
Georgie 18:45
Okay, so this, this opens up a strange door.
Geoff 18:48
Yeah.
Georgie 18:49
So if I walk outside in my neighbourhood, and look at people walking their dogs and stuff, they’re out in public. And they know that, like, and so even people who want to who choose to dress in their pajamas and stuff like that, like basically, they walked out in public, I see them, I see their dogs. And I see when their dogs do a poop and they don’t pick up the poop. Like if I had glasses on, like Google Glasses or some kind of glasses, and I was recording that. How different is it? Compared to me just getting my phone out and recording a video in public? People know they’re in public. So where was the actual sort of privacy problem like?
Geoff 19:33
Here we go. “Reasonable expectation of privacy. On one hand, the increased documentation of events will help court solve crimes and reach just outcomes. However, what effect will this have on our privacy rights?” Oh god, “the Fourth Amendment protects all persons from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. A search is considered unreasonable or violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. For example, a federal judge recently ruled that the NSA violated reasonable expectations of privacy by intercepting private phone records. However, what happens to one’s reasonable expectation of privacy is if we can reasonably expect everything we do to be documented by Google Glass, as our expectation, privacy expectations decrease, will police ability to reasonably document citizen activity increase?” Oh. I guess if it’s like, becomes normal, from like, consumers perspective that we are recorded all the time that that means that the police can record all the time.
Georgie 20:44
Oh, so like a surveillance thing. I was thinking, what if you’re wearing these Google Glasses, like is the problem like, let’s say I go and, let’s say I go to a restaurant, and then I go and use the bathroom, and I’m wearing the glasses.
Geoff 20:58
Hahaha.
Georgie 21:00
And people don’t know that their record being recorded? Like obviously I’m just, you know, I’m not gonna see, I might see people in the bathroom like putting on makeup or washing their hands or whatever, people walking into the cubicle. But then, I don’t know, like, let’s say I go and do my business. And I’ve got these glasses on. It’s recording everything that’s happening without me like knowing? And I guess maybe that’s the sort of reasonable expectation of privacy is, it’s not reasonable. I can’t always tell or remember or know that I am recording versus if I’m holding literally holding like a phone.
Geoff 21:32
Yeah.
Georgie 21:33
If other people don’t know that I am recording just by looking at them?
Geoff 21:39
Yeah, I guess we just give up all of our privacy. It’s almost like everyone says it’s okay to give up all privacy where it’s not entirely okay to give all privacy. Some people may be self conscious about their toilet activities. And then like, I was just thinking, okay, so if, if recording in bathrooms is unacceptable, then maybe Google Glass can GPS, recognise you’re in a, or like, do a scan of the surrounding, say you’re in a bathroom and then censor it. But then that question, that’s a censorship question, what is and isn’t allowed to be censored?
Georgie 22:19
Yeah. And that if they know that those are bathrooms, what if they then use that information? To do something? Not so ethical?
Geoff 22:28
Yeah.
Georgie 22:28
Now knowing where the bathrooms are?
Geoff 22:31
They’re like, “It seems you spent a little bit too long in the bathroom. We organised a doctor visit for you in the next couple of days.”
Georgie 22:42
Yeah, it becomes a bit too... Yeah. Like, it’s kind of like that whole thing where you’re just like, is, is Google is somebody like listening to me talking because you get ads that are targeted to a literally something you thought about?
Geoff 22:55
The algorithm is too good. I remember when I looked up this one, mask, don’t look it up everyone, but you’ll probably—if you want to, it’s Airinum, Airnium? Airinum. Yeah, this mask, that I have now called Airinum. And I didn’t get it because they advertised it to me. But the I remember when they first came out, their ads were were so sticky. Like, if you Googled it, if you talked about it, you’d all of a sudden get the ads for a month on and just about this mask. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty impressive. I really believed that they were listening in on what I was saying. But because every time I would like, talk about it to my friend, all of a sudden they started getting the ads for the for the mask.
Georgie 23:55
Yeah.
Geoff 23:57
But having said that, looking into the technology, it’s unreasonable for your phone to constantly be cataloguing everything you say, otherwise, you’d have zero battery. So anyone thinking that you’re actually being listened to all day, it’s like, I have no solid evidence.
Georgie 24:21
I don’t—yeah, I know you don’t have solid—but I don’t know. I have definitely been times where I did not look something up, like in, on the internet, I did not write it in a message to anybody on any app on my phone, I didn’t, I was, wasn’t affected by anything I had recently searched but maybe just thought about it. And then I talked to somebody about it in the car or something or like I just verbally said it to someone, not recording it—and then like soon after that I get like, targeted with some like the same thing or similar thing. And it’s a little bit weird. That’s that’s times when I’ve thought, hmm.
Geoff 25:09
Yeah, there was this one time I was in San Francisco—I don’t know if I told you this story. But I was sitting next to somebody on the bus. And I was scrolling through Facebook. And Facebook suggested, what seemed very likely to be the person next to me as a friend. Like, I’m like, no joke. I was like, wait, is this this? Is this a person sitting next to me? And lots of people tell me I should have just asked, but—so I sat there going, holy shit. Like, is it literally suggesting the person next to me? And in my mind, I’m like, theoretically, yes, you could get a GPS signal on the person’s phone next to me. My phone, Facebook realises we’re in close proximity, and then suggests that person as a friend.
Georgie 26:11
Fucken creepy.
Geoff 26:12
That is creepy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it happen anymore. Granted, I don’t scroll through Facebook anymore. But that at some point in time, they were testing something along those lines, I think.
Georgie 26:25
I think it could be similar to how it could be the networks around you, like were you connect, like were you friends with anyone else in San Francisco?
Geoff 26:35
Oh.
Georgie 26:36
Or online.
Geoff 26:37
No, I think this was very much a random person. No friends in common as far as I can remember.
Georgie 26:44
Yeah, cuz I get that look here like where I live and sometimes I get recommended to be a friend with someone I’ve seen at the gym, but that’s probably because I follow some of the personal trainers at the gym on social media and then they follow them. And they think we’re all mates.
Geoff 27:08
But they’re wrong because Facebook is wrong... sometimes.
Georgie 27:14
In my case Instagram. But is basically Facebook.
Geoff 27:18
Basically Facebook. Like, I won’t get into it but there’s there’s been like all this craze about how Facebook lost one percent of its like annual projected revenue, whatever.
Georgie 27:32
I assume that’s a lot of money.
Geoff 27:34
Yeah, I think they went down a billion dollars or something like that.
Georgie 27:41
Mm? That’s a lot!
Geoff 27:41
Yeah, Facebook loses 1%... or something like that. Facebook loses users for the first time? No, no. One percent value or something like that. 200 billion of value in one afternoon, no that makes, that’s okay. Profit... Yeah, all the companies are—
Georgie 28:10
I guess Meta now, they’re called.
Geoff 28:12
Re-value at a... Oh yeah, Meta. All the companies are being reevaluated. So it’s not too surprising that they’re all—here we go, Meta’s total revenue slipped 1% to 28.9... 8 billion down from, down from... “but the company fended off declining”... anyways, slipped 1%. Whatever 1% of 28.8 billion is, which is $2 billion, I guess.
Georgie 28:45
Wait, that’s not how you maths?
Geoff 28:46
One percent is 200 million?
Georgie 28:48
The way you’d math is that is 99... Actually, I don’t know.
Geoff 28:51
Yeah, let’s not going to math again, we already got into a math episode.
Georgie 28:57
It’s a lot of money, it seems.
Geoff 28:59
Oh, yeah. Okay. 2.88 billion into one of its apps up up from—wait, no, I’m reading, I’m reading sparsely. Anyways, they slipped in their... “Kylie Jenner has criticised changes in Meta has made to try to compete with Tiktok”.
Georgie 29:16
Like she knows shit? Sorry. No offense.
Geoff 29:21
Yeah, she’s the one who’s like, moved the needle the most but like I feel like you know, like, giving celebrities that much credit is a little bit farfetched. Did you see that Instagram change.org?
Georgie 29:37
The, yeah, the you sent me like a petition that says make...
Geoff 29:40
Oh that’s the one, yeah.
Georgie 29:41
Yeah. I’m surprised this didn’t come up earlier. But I’m also exhausted of like, talking about social media changing and being different from what it was and...
Geoff 29:57
Yeah, that’s like, the companies decided to go in that direction. So what the hell, let them go in that direction.
Georgie 30:06
Yeah, I mean this, this, this is the case for, I guess a lot of companies I might have worked for in the past, like change happens. Can stick around if you want, wanna see what happens? If you’re not a fan, like, you have the choice to leave, I think—um, also—
Geoff 30:25
All my friends and all my money is there!
Georgie 30:28
So I’ve been at my current company for almost seven years, and I’ve seen a lot of change there. Not all of it has been easy to get, to go through. But I personally have found it has helped to be patient and understand that some change can take a long time. But then like, also with social media, like, no one’s making you keep your Instagram account, if you don’t like it, then you can just not use it.
Geoff 30:59
Yeah, there’s other platforms that I can’t think of. But also, yeah, keep if you want to keep up with your friends just send each other the pictures, right?
Georgie 31:14
Dude, I sent this to people back in 2006, when they were like, “Hey, come and join this thing called Facebook. And I can invite you to my birthday party with all these events and stuff”. And my response was, “you have my phone number”, but nobody fucking liked it. People get stuck on these websites and these social—because I understand, actually—I’m reading a book called Because Internet. And it’s, it’s written by a linguist who talks about some of the ways that we communicate online and the different sort of generations of people online. And she goes on to say, about Facebook, is you might notice a lot of people who are parents or they have children, and they like to use Facebook to keep in touch with people from their real life. Whereas a lot of other people, usually younger, don’t like Facebook as much and they prefer other social media where they can actually make friends. Because that’s, that’s what they kind of value.
Geoff 32:29
Ah, yeah, interesting. So the creation of connections rather than maintaining existing connection.
Georgie 32:36
Yeah, so there’s a difference in the way different people use different social media sites.
Geoff 32:43
Yeah. And I don’t know when the last time you went into Facebook was— do you, you don’t even have a Facebook do you?
Georgie 32:49
I’ve never had a Facebook, never. So if you see a Georgie Cooke out there, I’m watching you, it’s not me.
Geoff 32:56
Yeah, actually, we can just go to like, Images. I cannot type today but yeah.
Georgie 33:05
You cannot type.
Geoff 33:06
I cannot type. Why am I, why can I not get to Google Images without having such difficulty, Face... Yeah. Oh my god. Like they basically, oh my, Facebook.
Georgie 33:20
What are you looking for?
Geoff 33:23
I’m looking for the feed I guess. Can anyone show an evolution of the feed? Hey, right. So kind of started like that. And the, actually kind of started like this. Basically MySpace. I don’t understand why why we like left MySpace, but this actually looks like it. And then we got to here. And then you kind of saw like, feed? Stories!
Georgie 33:54
Yeah. Oh, speaking of stories. So like, because you use Instagram occasionally.
Geoff 34:02
Yeah.
Georgie 34:03
And they’ve got the circles at the top of the people’s avatars?
Geoff 34:06
Yeah, yeah.
Georgie 34:07
So you know how Stories have the avatars of the people and they’re all in little circles?
Geoff 34:12
Yeah.
Georgie 34:13
Yeah. And the circles have a colored line around them when there’s something new to watch, and you click on it, or you tap on it. And once it’s done, it goes to the end of the queue or whatever. Now, I’ve seen, I’ve seen websites do this. They have at the top of their website, like e-commerce. At the top of their website, they have these circles to promote their new products. And I’m like, what are you doing? You’re an e-commerce website trying to sell products. Why are you borrowing from social media?
Geoff 34:51
Yeah.
Georgie 34:52
Let me send you an example. Have you seen it?
Geoff 34:54
I don’t think I have. Not yet. We’re all being AB tested by, by Instagram. Like they reverted my thing. But actually, lots of people have gotten the got the stupid Tik Tok format. Oh, cool. Someone’s gonna someone’s gonna buy my mic stand. Just. But what was ah—I had this tangential thought about face... like not Facebook, specifically. Oh, Google. Right. Oh man. I think I was watching a doco about this. But essentially, like Google’s original, original thing was, you know, getting people to websites fast, right, getting people to the answers, they want fast. And then you can kind of check, you can kind of really see right now that Google has is starting to do the opposite of that. A great example of the Google taking away business from from other sites is that you can, you know, “flights to Japan”, right, you Google it. And you get basically the top results. With like a little box up the top. And I think this is this is too big. Or flights to anywhere, really. I think... let me Google Flights to Perth, because I just came back from. Yeah. Alright, so you can see the card at the top. And you can basically search for flights. Without—
Georgie 36:36
Oh, without actually ever clicking? Yes, yes.
Geoff 36:40
Yeah. And they’re basically taking away. And on top of that, and this is probably what the video was about, was like self preferential businesses and why Google is a monopoly. And basically, it’s that actually, Google doesn’t surface the best results here. The best flights. In some cases, these are people who have partnered with Google to get there to get their prices here. So yeah, Google is has definitely gone way, way be—like way past their original like idea where now you just go to Google for everything. And you never leave Google. Oh, it was. It was, Last Week Tonight.
Georgie 37:29
Yeah. I saw that video. Yeah. John Oliver I did a segment on it.
Geoff 37:35
Yeah. Tech monopolies. Ah, that’s so good. Yeah. Anyone interested, go and watch that. And he does such a good job of making things funny and digestible.
Georgie 37:46
I fucking love that guy. Actually, I saw him, I saw him at the State Theatre, like a few years back. And this is one of those sort of moments where you kind of had to be there. So like, the only person I was with was with Nick. So you’re not going to get this, but I just thought it was quite funny. At the end, he asked. “Does anyone have any questions?” And I know like when they’re a really famous comedian, they don’t, they obviously can’t answer everyone’s question. But as he was, or between him, his sentences, somebody from the audience shouted, “Have you ever loved it?” It’s that’s what it sounded like. And he heard it like that. And he was, he said, “What was that? Have you ever loved?” It was it was quite funny, because they sounded like they were in pain or something.
Geoff 38:39
Yeah. “Have you ever loved?”
Georgie 38:40
Yeah, pretty much. But he’s so fun. You know, what I really love about John Oliver is his hand gestures. And the way he enunciates things. When he says something. I’ll give an example.
Geoff 38:54
“No, dolphins can’t love!”, or something like that.
Georgie 38:57
Yeah, exactly. And I can’t do his accent very well, but his enthusiasm and his hands are sort of like almost slamming the table.
Geoff 39:06
Yeah the slamming,
Georgie 39:07
I will not do this!
Geoff 39:08
I will not do this. I will not be a puppet or something like that, yeah. So good. And he really, I mean, we didn’t, I didn’t notice this, and not many people, I guess notice this. But when you ask a question of Google, they just have these accordions that you can just get the answer for, without going to the website. And, of course, the problem here is that visits to websites equals revenue for those websites, but based on AdSense, and visit visitation rates, give you you know, give you, I guess, credibility to say like, you should give me money for the amount of people I draw for ads. So yeah, Google then. And then I realised that, yeah, when you open one of these, it continues to answer more and more questions. And you just stay here. You never leave Google. You just keep opening up these accordions that keep flying in every time you want. Every time you finish getting one of your questions answered.
Georgie 40:15
“Are sharks attracted to period blood?” What the fuck?
Geoff 40:20
Do you want to know?
Georgie 40:21
Well, guess what, Geoff, you’re not going to be going to the website because the answer’s right there.
Geoff 40:26
Oh, I don’t... like this stuff can sometimes be taken out of context. I find that—
Georgie 40:31
Oh, yeah.
Geoff 40:31
When I read this, the answer’s right at the top. I’m like, that sounds like BS and I read the actual article, I’m like, oh, there’s like hun—like a whole paragraph before and after explaining it.
Georgie 40:41
Yeah, the context is important. Actually does Duck Duck, Duck Duck Go use this, because that’s what I use.
Geoff 40:47
I want to go, to Duck Duck Go.
Georgie 40:50
So let’s ask like, do the same thing... “dolphone”?
Geoff 40:58
Oh look, dolphins love, see, “do dolphins love?” and you can probably maybe get an answer from that blurb. But then—
Georgie 41:09
But they don’t do that accordion thing. Actually. I’ve watched other people, like you just did, go on Google and ask a question or try to get information and I actually find that those accordions and those other things that are not actually the links to the websites, I find them rather distracting and I almost ignore them consciously. Subconsciously, sorry.
Geoff 41:29
Yeah. I yeah, I think, every, I use Google mostly for you know, Googling movies.
Georgie 41:38
What is the meaning of life?
Geoff 41:29
It’s 42. But no joke. The meaning of five is to be happy if anyone really wants to know. It’s true. Yeah, the the first few results for most things, just like videos, I’m like, I don’t want videos, scroll, scroll, scroll, like, just images, scroll, scroll, scroll. It’s like, give me a website that gives me the answer.
Georgie 42:03
I think it depends on what you’re looking for. Like, I don’t—OK, I feel like I must have some kind of different way of searching, searching search engines because I did a comms degree, and it was really important that we find like, academic articles.
Geoff 42:22
Oh.
Georgie 42:22
And very important that when we do our research, we find reputable sources. And especially now, right with the amount of misinformation we have on the internet. I think that’s even more important to fully and thoroughly read the sources of your information. So I don’t think it’s a very good habit to have, and I don’t try to have this habit of just reading the the, the thing that comes up on the screen after I search, I usually open up articles and read and try to figure out if they’re from a reputable source.
Geoff 42:55
Yeah, you know, who isn’t being reputable right now? Us! Because we haven’t ended our episode yet. So yeah, thanks guys for joining us today. The, what was it. You can follow us on @toastroastpod on Instagram and Twitter.
Georgie 43:14
And you can find us, as in our episodes—
Geoff 43:19
You can find us down the road, watching you.
Georgie 43:24
On Apple podcasts, Spotify, probably not anything Google, but I don’t know actually. And and the big, the big dolphin love.
Geoff 43:39
So yeah, see you next week.
Georgie 43:41
Bye!