Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "internet"

Meeting up for a coffee is nothing new, in England the first coffee house was opened in 1652 and the new experience of coffee was joined a few years later by drinking chocolate. Samuel Pepys declared that drink an excellent cure for hangovers and other ills. It seems the early coffee houses banned women; imagine the expression on the faces of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century men if they could see modern coffee shops full of young mums and prams. A destination and a meeting place in every town, sometimes tiny and independent, others belonging to corporate chains.
A few years back, Woolworths finally collapsed in the recession, a sad day for those of us who had been shopping in its branches all our lives; buying presents for our parents, pick-a-mix sweets, records, then DVDs, children's clothes. Suddenly there was a Woolworths size gap in high streets across the country. Many became 99 Pence or Pound Shops.
But in Southbourne Grove our Woolworths shell underwent an enterprising transformation and the 'Ludo Lounge' came into being. A lounge bar with a 'used Retro' look, old wooden tables with church pews and school chairs to sit on, made more comfortable with scatterings of cushions. Here from 9a.m. to 11p.m. you can meet for coffee, eat all day, take part in a weekly 'pub quiz', choose a book from the community shelf, read free newspapers or play scrabble. Families welcome, adults come for an evening out. The staff are young and cheerful.
Perhaps the biggest difference to Samuel Pepys' day is free WiFi, one of the reasons why coffee shops abound, you can relax and still keep in touch with the rest of the world. No doubt Samuel Pepys and the other men who conducted their business over coffee would have loved the internet.

Have you signed the petition? Thousands of others have - the online petition that is.
At the end of March the International Court of Justice in the Hague ordered Japan to stop granting permits for its Antarctic whaling programme, which allowed for the cull of up to one thousand whales each year. A victory for online petitioners? Of course Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, real brave people in real ships, have been the ones at the forefront defending the ocean and the creatures that dwell there. But at home we on the internet are busy signing everyday, bumble bees to orangutans, every creature deserves a voice.
38degrees.org.uk , AVAAZ.ORG , SumOfUs.org and others offer the chance for many voices to be heard, the encouragement to the little person to start their own petition for a local issue. Of course sitting at your computer is easier than marching, safer than protesting on the streets, but it is a way open to everyone on the internet. And if one day that knock comes on the door from the Thought Police and you and your computer are taken away, then you know you have joined the noble ranks of those who risk everything to speak out.
What to protest against? Just about everything. Even if you have no money to invest, the bank that holds your humble little account may be investing in something harmful or unsustainable and so probably is the government you pay your taxes to. Can we assume that most governments care little about ordinary people, that big companies are more concerned for their shareholders than the environment?
Even if you don't sign, information is there on the internet making you aware of issues you didn't know existed and it is up to you to decide what are the true facts.
Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. Online petitioners will be thinking of companies that do not use palm oil from sustainable sources. Others will be campaigning to save the humble animal that plays such an important role in the New Testament. Donkey Sanctuaries are popular, but there are a lot of overworked donkeys worldwide who need protection.
What will you sign? This week I have made sure a cabinet minister resigns, I am still trying to protect the Great Barrier Reef, ancient English woodlands and our local 'Noddy Train'.

'Are you on Facebook?' A common question; in days gone by people would have asked 'Are you on the telephone?' More recently the question in social and business contexts will have been 'Are you on the Internet?' Now it is usually assumed you are and the query will be 'What's your e-mail address?' If addressing the elderly, tact is required, some would be insulted at the suggestion that they may not be keeping up with the times, whilst others will retort angrily that they have no intention of getting a computer.
When I was in the Brownies I had to resit my Golden Hand badge - I had failed the telephone test. All that was required was to make a phone call, in my case at the home of a stranger ( a respectable middle aged woman I hasten to add; now days she would have had to go through numerous checks first ) as my parents did not possess a telephone, which was the reason why I was nervous.
My mother, tied up with two younger children, once sent me and my sensible older friend to a phone box with a message for my father at the office and detailed instructions for the telephone box. We failed to master buttons A and B and the message was never sent. You will gather that our friends and neighbours did not possess a phone either, perhaps it was considered too expensive or unnecessary.
Now we can skype across the world with several people and several generations squeezing onto the screen.
But Facebook is different from e-mailing and skyping, it is not personal and most of us have a love hate relationship. Are we there to see people's holiday pix, show off how many friends we have, to have a laugh or check if family members are still alive? I logged in recently to be confronted with a large, square, brown fury creature with a large shark mouth. In various shots he was depicted with a cigarette in his mouth, a can of beer in his fury mitt and a piza on his plate. This was my introduction to a new family member from Japan, Domo Kun Plush, who now shares a rented room with a human family member. You never know who you are going to meet on Facebook.

How many thousands of words do writers write, how many millions of letters of the alphabet? But when it comes to the General Election we can only write one letter out of 26 - X! Whether we write fact or fiction, most of us like to find the words to express our opinions and in some ways it does not matter who is in power, because they are not going to listen to us! But has the internet given us People Power? We can sign up to belong to 38 Degrees for example, sign petitions and write our opinion on many important topics. Perhaps it won’t be long before people can do more than tick Yes or No in a referendum – a computer could collate people’s wants and needs and MPs and The Cabinet would base their actions on this. Sounds like a dream, but would it work? Many issues are not that simple, too complex for even the cleverest minds – what if ‘the people’ wanted an option that would keep their cosy comfortable lives running in the short term, but would result in long term disaster for Planet Earth?
I don’t know the answer to that, but in the meantime, whichever country you live in, keep an eye and ear out for what your leaders are doing. But be careful, because they may be keeping an eye on what you are doing.

This week we all arrived in the future, 21st October 2015, as imagined in the 'Back to The Future' films. We are not all riding on hoverboards and experts discussed what they got right and wrong. A form of ‘Skype’ existed, but the internet was missed completely.
This is not the first time most of us have lived to see the future, there was 1984; George Orwell’s Big Brother has surely been watching us for a long time.

'Things to Come' is claimed to be the first classic science fiction film, a 1936 British black-and-white film from United Artists, produced by Alexander Korda and written by H.G. Wells. Coming very close to the truth, World War Two begins in 1940 with aerial bombing, but continues into the 1960’s. The people of the world have forgotten why they are fighting, Humanity enters a new Dark Age. The world is in ruins and there is little technology left. I have never seen the film, but the U tube clip of the trailer is fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atwfW...
Most of us are probably more familiar with Sir Arthur Bliss’ rousing score.
The film looks as far as our future, by 2036 humans are living in underground cities, there is a planned flight to the moon…

Writers and film makers can look into the future and if it’s not too far ahead we will find out if they were right. Scientists claim time travel is impossible and certainly not to the past, citing as proof that nobody has ever visited us from the future. But how can we be sure? Human beings do not change over centuries, so we could pass them unaware in the street.
In ‘Three Ages of Man’ the stranger is sent on a journey he would have never believed possible, but as a scientist says to him ‘Just because something is impossible doesn’t mean it can’t happen.’ Read the novel and wonder who the people you meet in the street really are!
www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Ages-Brief-Enc...

Do you keep a diary or resolve to keep one every New Year? Many years ago I was given a five year diary which lasted at least a decade of good intentions and still has many blank pages, but it does record some major life events; if anyone can ever decipher the tiny writing crammed into the allotted space per day and year.
In more recent years I received a handsome note book blissfully free of dates. I vowed to keep a journal for the purpose of preserving the art of handwriting and recording family history. Released from the obligation of daily jotting I would devote several pages to important events and places and people visited. I haven’t yet recorded Christmas.
But I am onto the third gift journal. Each entry begins with a few neat sentences, but quickly deteriorates into a cramped scrawl, especially if I am lounging with my feet up on the sofa. I imagine the diarists of old would need to sit upright at their bureaus to be able to handle their quill and ink.
In the unlikely event of me becoming a famous author posthumously, will my family be tempted to burn these diaries and journals to protect my reputation? If they bother to look at them they will find no scandal (there is none to help in the fame stakes ), nor salacious details of non writing activities at home. But hopefully my jottings will be a unique personal account of everyday life in the early years of the Twenty First Century.
And which will last longer, the paper books or this Blog? When I needed to look up a previous blog about the River Thames I typed in ‘Janet Gogerty Sandscript River Thames’ and up it came, from over two years ago; will it be there forever? Will our Goodreads Blogs and book reviews float through the ether into eternity, or only until the internet is switched off?
Like radio waves beaming out into space will the billions of words on the internet still be out there somewhere when the electricity is switched off for good? Will our Facebook posts and e-mails be accessible to clever Alien archaeologists or future Earth scientists? If so then, Greetings from 2016 A.D.

SERVER NOT FOUND, words guaranteed to strike dread in the hearts of anyone expecting to go on line in the next few seconds. When I saw those words I tried every device in the house, only to get the same answer. I did not need to go on the internet, it was a catching up with housework day. At least we hadn’t had a power cut; electricity not WiFi was all that was needed to work the washing machine, vacuum cleaner and most importantly the radio, the only companion that makes chores bearable.
So why was I experiencing medium levels of stress, anxiety and restlessness? First cause was the question Why? Obviously the Internet works by magic, but what had broken the spell and would the magic ever return?
Second worry; I was due to Skype family in Australia early the next morning.
Third problem; I needed to update my website with the next episode of the serial.
Finally came the hollow panic: what was I missing while off line? Would I be the last relative to put a sad emoticon on Facebook if a baby wasn’t well or if someone was in casualty? Were there any important e-mails?

There was a time when I wasn’t on Facebook or Skype, further back I didn’t have an e-mail address. There is a telephone in the house attached to a land line, which at some stage beams up to a satellite. I could just phone Australia. Anybody could phone me if there was an emergency. I could get on with writing my novel on Microsoft Word, if I ever finished the housework. So why was I still anxious?

When the long suffering Cyberspouse came home from work he did not realise the gravity of the situation, commenting calmly that Virgin was probably ‘down’. However, he decided he would unplug the router and plug it in again. Instantly, messages and Whatsapps pinged into our mobile phones. Facebook lit up the large screen of my desk top computer. I was delighted, proof indeed that the internet works by magic. The way to restore it is by a magic spell that I cannot perform; the internet has to be switched off and on by someone who is not a technophobe and who is totally uninterested in social media.

I was late cooking dinner that evening because I had to check all my multi media connections. And what had I missed? I was in time to see sunset pictures from Facebook photographer friends and to sign a petition to save a cow swimming in the harbour after escaping from a live export ship in Fremantle Port, Western Australia.

Of course I am not a Facebook Fanatic. After several years of being blissfully without a mobile phone I now have my first (third hand ) Smart phone and with it comes the security of knowing I can check Facebook while I am out to make sure I’m not missing anything. Also I can take photographs with my phone and post them, so that Facebook friends do not miss anything I’m doing out in real life.

Read about what can go wrong on Facebook in two stories in my anthology Dark and Milk ‘You Have One Friend’ and ‘Friend Request’
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Milk-Jane...

Catch up with the Friday Serial at my website
http://www.ccsidewriter.co.uk/chapter...