Company House Records is home to some of Cape Breton’s most well-known artists: Slowcoaster, Carmen Townsend, and The Tom Fun Orchestra. The new website is part of the indie label’s rebranding effort.

The label is named after the iconic houses built between 1850 and 1920 by mining and steel companies to house their workers. They now represent one of the most potent connections to industrial Cape Breton’s identity: labour movements, cooperatives, multiculturalism, community. Many miners and steelworkers were later able to purchase the homes.

Heritage Canada Foundation recently added the Cape Breton company house to its list of Top Ten Most Endangered Places. The list raises awareness about historically significant sites that are threatened with demolition, the goal being to prevent sites on the endangered list from making it onto the list of the worst heritage losses in Canada.

With coal mining and the steel plant gone, many company houses have fallen into disrepair from neglect or abandonment. But they may be saved, according to the Heritage Canada report, as advocates for the preservation of company houses work with advocates for affordable and assisted housing, for example through HomeMatch. Rebranding, indeed.

1. Attend a kid’s birthday party at the Two Rivers Wildlife Park along the Mira.
2. Stand on a grassy hill.
3. Check wind speeds and direction by doing that thing where you stick your finger in your mouth and then hold it (your finger) up in the air. (Optional)
4. Take your party-favour kite, put the reel in a child’s hands, and throw the kite into the wind.
5. Take the line in your hands, to prevent decapitation of nearby children when the wind changes direction.
6. Smile (someone’s taking a picture).

(Photo: Morwenna Hancock)

Designing for the web is different than designing for print in countless ways, many of which come down to the differences in how the two are consumed. For example, print designers see the finished product as it will be seen by end-users. Web designers, on the other hand, have to account for all sorts of variability in end-use, including differences in users’ screen resolution, computer and internet speeds, and choice of web browser.

As the Mozilla Foundation’s Open to Choice campaign puts it, “the Web browser is the lens through which we look at the virtual world, and the medium by which we connect, learn, share and collaborate.” However, some people don’t know they even have a choice of web browser. The computer on almost every office desk is a PC running Windows that came out of the box with IE already installed. (One wonders whether incorporation comes with a Microsoft contract.)

With a little over 50% of the usage share of web browsers, Internet Explorer is indeed an institution. But it is a good product? Does it load web pages as fast as other browsers do? Does it allow users to customize it? Does it protect users’ online security and privacy? Does it render websites the way designers intend?

No, no, no, and… almost.

While different web browsers may render the web differently, making “cross-browser compatibility” tricky sometimes, web standards such as those produced by the World Wide Web Consortium (or W3C) are designed to reduce that variability to near nil, ensuring the web renders as intended no matter which “lens” the user is looking through.

Web standards matter because they ensure everyone the same experience on the web; reduce the amount of time and money wasted trying to design one way for one browser and another way for another browser; and give developers guidelines to ensure their work is accessible to those with disabilities.

That said, there is a place for experimentation, and that place is called My Own Website. If you’re viewing this site in Internet Explorer, the navigation area looks like this:

If you’re viewing this site in Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome, the navigation area looks like this:

Internet Explorer is, at best, slow to adopt web standards, and even slower to adopt experimental, cutting-edge stuff. But it’s not like rounded corners that are all-code-no-images are going to make your experience of the web more open, safe, easy and fast. There are plenty of other reasons, like the ones described above, to ditch IE.

Firefox is made by Mozilla, a strong advocate for keeping the web public, open and accessible:

The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible. It’s the most powerful communication tool in the history of humanity and the nervous system of trade, education, governance, activism, and play. It lets a single idea achieve global impact. All without needing someone else’s approval or permission…. The web must be protected from confusion, monopoly, exploitation, centralization and control.

Opera accounts for about 2.5% of the global market share of web browsers. Doesn’t sound like much until you realize there are almost 2 billion people online.

Chrome is just plain fast. Faster than a potato gun. Faster than sound waves. Faster than lightning.

Following up on his (in)famous article in The Atlantic Monthly, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicholas Carr argues (this time in Wired*) that the way we read online is changing our neurophysiology. (CBC interview here.)

It was Marshall McLuhan who pointed out that the way information is transmitted determines the way it is received, not only providing the stuff of thought but structuring the way of thinking. The Web – as Carr’s argument goes – promotes less-focused reading: hyperlinks direct your attention elsewhere; multiple tabs, windows, apps divide if not divert your attention entirely; animated flash ads dare you to do anything other than… what was I saying?

The result is a loss of focus, literally rewiring our brains to make us less likely – indeed less able - to engage in deep reading/thinking.

Internet guru Clay Shirky responds that abundance is good, and notes that reading is not gone, just the certain kind of reading associated with literary and academic types. While Carr laments the impending passing of the “complex, dense and ‘cathedral-like’ structure of the highly educated and articulate personality,” Shirky says good riddance.

But deep reading/thinking doesn’t simply require being able to follow a linear argument; it involves circling in on an idea, along the way picking up contextual aids – and counterarguments – from around the periphery. In a nutshell, context creates meaning and contributes to understanding. Notwithstanding philosopher Hilary Putnam’s quip that any philosophy that fits in a nutshell belongs in one, nothing (arguably) embodies this philosophy better than the hyperlink. There is a limit, of course, to the amount of context one can handle; passing the threshold is called ‘information overload’. But segregation (‘de-linking’) is not the answer.

The paradigm of information segregation is the University and its ‘disciplines’, a model of the ‘specialization’ trend described by Adam Smith and theorized by F. W. Taylor. Hence the “cathedral” metaphor must be recast in light of – or in the shadow of – the information “silo”.

The Internet is in many ways the University’s antithesis. (In many ways not.) And in its present incarnation – as a carry-over from the Industrial Revolution – the University is in many ways a problem in need of a solution. The Web might be just the thing.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the unprecedented scope and complexity of the problems the world faces demands an equally complex (syncretic and interdisciplinary) approach to social and biological systems; to the interconnections within, between and among them.

The Medium and The Message

Etsy’s Mandy Brown, writing on A List Apart, suggests that what might look like attention-deficit hyper-surfing is similar to the reluctant, reflective and ritualistic way we approach traditional print media: scanning the front page of a newspaper for topics of interest or perusing the back cover of a book before deciding to commit. There is a fidgety dispersal of attention leading up to the part where you actually attend to something.

Once I find an article I want to read online, I click Readability, a bookmarklet that converts any noisy webpage into a serene e-book format; and then Shift-Command-F, which sends my Chrome browser into full-screen mode so that I’m not beckoned by open tabs and windows or desktop applications.

Carr’s argument conflates the medium and the message – the means and the format, the tool and its use – the way people often conflate the Internet (physical transmission of information) and the Web (virtual presentation of information). If New Media is turning us into attention-deficit twits, how much of the blame lies with the mode of transmission; how much with the method of display? This is an important distinction, because the Internet isn’t going to change much (it’ll get faster), whereas the Web is profoundly if not infinitely malleable.

Sure, even with my focusing strategy, some attention-drain is bound to result from knowing a vast sea of information and entertainment is only a click or key-stroke away. But the same is true mutatis mutandis of a bookshelf at arm’s reach, or a newspaper’s half-dozen other sections scattered across my coffee table. (Isn’t the hyperlink’s precursor the footnote?)

In fact, there’s an even more powerful attention-drain even closer: one’s own imagination. Remember daydreaming? “Of course you don’t,” says Walter Kirn in The Atlantic, arguing that the ubiquity of handheld devices, and the subsequent availability of limitless entertainment, heralds the End of Boredom. On the contrary, this suggests to me that we are insatiably bored.

Since the advent of interactive media we’ve been told that a shift is underway, from “lean back” (TV) to “lean forward” (Web). But the victory of the active over the passive mode is mitigated by the brain- and bum-softening effects of half a century of television, which has produced a sedentary and less-than-curious populace. Do we have a hunger for engagement, or simply an insatiable appetite for entertainment?

Again, Shirky:

“Someone born in 1960 has watched something like 50,000 hours of television already… more than five and a half solid years… Somehow, watching television became a part-time job for every citizen in the developed world.”

The turn from passive to active media frees up this “cognitive surplus”: time and energy that can be put toward something productive and useful and that is otherwise wasted in front of the boob-tube.

“Once we stop thinking of all that time as individual minutes to be whiled away and start thinking of it as a social asset that can be harnessed, it all looks very different. The buildup of this free time among the world’s educated population – maybe a trillion hours per year – is a new resource.

“Americans watch about 200 billion hours of TV every year. [Using] … a back-of-the-envelope calculation … all the articles, edits, and arguments about articles and edits [on Wikipedia] represent around 100 million hours of human labor.”

Given that our thinking has been structured (in McLuhan’s sense) by television – Carr’s real if unacknowledged target – we must be vigilant about not reproducing its mind-enslaving effects. (Perhaps rewiring a rotted brain is a good thing?) Indeed, some of the results of the pooling of cognitive surplus are less than inspiring. But some are empowering, even transformative. The meaning of a tool is its use. In other words, the Internet can be as much about interruption as disruption.

*Excerpt from The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. By readability standards, Carr’s website is ironically less-than-exemplary: low-contrast, “computery” font, and – while I suppose he might be challenging conventions - right-aligned text is simply crossing the line!

I only got as far as the first sentence in James Joyce’s Ulysses, but that was far enough to meet “Buck” Mulligan, the namesake of Cape Breton grit-folk duo Buck and Kinch.

The website I made for Hinson and Merlin (not sure whom is Buck and whom Kinch) invites you to galk at the pair, inflict their music upon yourself, even do both at the same time. And maybe – just maybe – do both at the same time in real life.

“Kinch” is one of Buck’s nicknames for Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alterego whom we meet earlier in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (which I have read!).

The Bras d’Or lakes may be deemed a biosphere reserve if the Canadian Commission for UNESCO accepts the nomination document submitted today by the Bras d’Or Lakes Biosphere Reserve Association (BLBRA).

A biosphere reserve is an area which demonstrates a balanced relationship between humans and the environment. It’s an enlightened approach to sustainability, in that it doesn’t exclusively prioritize the so-called ‘natural’ environment over the socio-economic human one – which is no less natural.

I designed blbra.ca with this balance in mind. The aesthetic is “wilderness austerity”; the functionality is opposable-thumb-friendly.

What’s interesting about the designation is that it doesn’t confer any special powers to a governing organization over the area. The principal benefit is international recognition. And the main goal is education and the promotion of sustainable development – in a way that includes all those with an interest in the area:

• The Biosphere Reserve may chose to expand the scope of existing conservation, research, monitoring, and education projects.
• Local students might become more involved in research and monitoring projects.
• College and university students could carry out projects in areas such as tourism or community development and ecosystem studies.
• Governments, corporations and other agencies could help to finance these projects.

There are over 550 biosphere reserves in over a hundred countries, including 15 in Canada.

(Reprinted in the Cape Breton Post, Saturday print edition for June 19; and whatsgoingon.ca)

Cape Breton’s ‘next generation’ came together at a recent day-long conference organized by the Cape Breton Partnership to discuss ways to “attract and retain the younger generations to work, live, play and start families” in the region.

From listening to the panelists and discussing the issues with some of the attendees, it was easy to perceive a dynamic split between, on the one hand, those who believe Cape Breton needs to become more ‘international’ to compete in a globalized millenium; and, on the other, those whose vision for Cape Breton’s future involves promoting and developing its existing assets, particularly in culture (including agriculture). In short, go global vs. go local.

The ‘global’ case

A young professional who teaches business at Dalhousie reported that out of an entire cohort of 20 students, every last one planned to leave Halifax. In order to compete, then, Sydney (if not Cape Breton) must become more like the places for which kids are even leaving Halifax.

Recommendation: direct flights to London; dredge the harbour.

The ‘local’ case

Many in attendance agreed that – notwithstanding the hokeyness of the sentiment – Cape Breton’s greatest asset is its people, followed by the scenery in close second. The combination of people and place has produced a culture of love of family, community and nature; not to mention a distinct, even world-renowned artistic culture. Young people can certainly benefit from experiencing more of what the world has to offer before returning home to Cape Breton, which they will, pulled by these forces.

Recommendation: instill values in the very young; cross your fingers.

Splitting the Difference?

We can’t – nor should we – make it hard for youth to leave. Important experiences await them, ‘out there’. But we must make it easier for them and others to come (back or otherwise) – with their degrees, their experiences, their expectations, and their entitlements.

The trick to attracting and ‘retracting’ (as opposed to retaining) young people can’t be to try to become like somewhere else. After all, if today’s radically mobile youth can live anywhere in the world, what would make them choose this anywhere over anywhere else?

Nor can the answer to that question be to take for granted that family and community ties will be enough to make youth stay put when their employment options often consist of an imaginary container port and some very real call centres. Not to mention this totally ignores the problem of how to attract people ‘from away’. Like it or not, with its rapidly dwindling – and aging – population, attraction will overtake retention as a priority for the region.

All of this means, yes, promoting Cape Breton’s unique assets – its people, scenery and culture. But it also means developing those assets: investing in the arts, transportation, and housing.

Cape Breton already is a place where artists and innovators, professionals and entrepreneurs, farmers and homesteaders can make a life and a living – surrounded by wonderful people, beautiful scenery, and fiddle music (kidding). With a little planning – equal parts vision and gusto – it could be world-class local.

Recommendation: Cape Breton doesn’t need to become like somewhere else; Cape Breton needs to become more like itself.

Cape Breton’s four distinct musical traditions – Acadian, Mi’kmaq, Gaelic and songs of the coal mining tradition – are featured in a new website launched yesterday by the Beaton Institute at Cape Breton University.

MUSIC: Cape Breton’s Diversity in Unity features over 100 songs, more than 20 videos, and more than 175 photos from the Beaton’s archives. The digitization of the materials ensures their preservation while increasing accessibility to the public. The Internet is made for projects like this.

Each page includes info about the song, a short bio of the artist and/or performer, lyrics, translations, transcripts in the case of videos, and educators’ resource guides that teachers can download and use in their classroom.

For various reasons, they couldn’t use a content management system, so the site is pure old-fashioned HTML, hand-coded, from scratch, by me.

It was a pleasure to work with the project’s team which included the Beaton’s staff. The songs were selected and re-mastered by Allister MacGillivray. Music consultants were John Alick MacPherson; Janice Tulk; Dan Doucet; and Jack O’Donnell of the Men of the Deeps. Educational consultant was Eric Favaro. Christie MacNeil did pretty much everything else.

CAKE (Community on Aging Knowledge Exchange) is a project of the Gerontology Association of Nova Scotia (GANS). The website’s primary audience is those who work with older Nova Scotians, but it may prove to be especially valuable to seniors themselves, especially those living in remote or rural areas (so long as they have internet access, either at home or at their community centre or C@P site).

Shortly, I’ll be developing a discussion forum on the site for seniors interested in socializing with other seniors. GANS will train groups of seniors to use the forum, with the expectation that those seniors will then train others.

The goal of the forum is to reduce the risk – and effects – of social isolation. In this respect it can benefit rural- and urban-dwelling seniors alike given that isolation need not be a matter of physical proximity. It can take the form of emotional ‘distance’ from family and friends, or be the result of health or financial issues. Isolation increases not only the risk of suffering from depression and developing chronic health problems but indeed social isolation has a direct effect on mortality in those over the age of 65.

And don’t think for a second that it’ll never work because Seniors resist new technologies. StatsCan reports that seniors are the fastest growing group of internet users.

Before

Here’s the WordPress theme they started with (click to enlarge):

After

And here it is after I worked a little magic (visit the site):

Facebook’s “Like” button is about to start popping up all over the web. By installing a plugin, visitors to your site who are already logged in to Facebook (which is increasingly likely) can recommend your content with one click the same way they currently endorse friends’ status updates with a thumbs up.

It’s a no-brainer for Facebook, which will be able to collect even more information about users’ preferences. By analyzing the data, Facebook will be able to report to – for example – CNN.com about what “type” of person likes what kinds of content on CNN.com.

CNN.com will in turn be able to tell advertisers what types of people – with what types of purchasing habits – visit the site and read which articles, allowing advertisers to personalize – or target – their message.

Internet radio site Pandora (US only), for example,

“will now be able to look directly at your Facebook profile and use public information — name, profile picture, gender and connections, plus anything else you’ve made public — to give you a personalized experience. So if I have already publicly stated through my Facebook interests page that I like a musical artist — say, The Talking Heads — the first song I hear when I go to Pandora will be a Talking Heads song or something that Pandora thinks is similar.” (Source: gigaom.com)

It’s essentially that scene in Minority Report where John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is identified via retinal scan and then deluged with hyper-personalized ads, a prospect I’ve always found intriguing for its potential to reduce the amount of message-waste in my life.

Ads for next year’s Lexus, last month’s weight-loss fad, and this week’s scented thingamagig are psychic pollution –  messages that have no chance of attracting my business and simply clutter my limited mental space. If I could avoid blanket advertising by pre-selecting ads for Guinness, Apple, and Malcolm Gladwell books… it’s perhaps a small price to pay.

Facebook didn’t invent the “If you like X then you might like Y” model. What Facebook is supposedly doing is pioneering an invasive method for determining that you like X in the first place. (Is it an invasion of privacy if you walk into a music store wearing a Bruce Springstein shirt and the saleperson tries to sell you Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible?)

I almost can’t help responding to this kind of announcement – and its inevitable backlash – with “Welcome to the future,” despite the fact that I find the future underwhelming and uninspiring, and I more or less agree with the backlash.

My problem is with the logic of the if-then model itself. Cass Sunstein has documented the tendency of internet users to seek out and consume content that reinforces their existing beliefs and preferences, partly due to the fact that the medium makes it so easy.

When looked upon favourably, “narrow-casting” as it’s called is the consumption equivalent of filtering out ads for stuff you’re not interested in. The difference is that being exposed to ideas one opposes and art that challenges ones sensibilities expands one’s sense of self and the world, whereas being exposed to more and more ads simply expands one’s repertoire of jingles.

The end result of narrow-casting is necessarily narrow-mindedness, the principle beneficiary of which is the status quo. I’d rather see a dislike button on web content, that data might be collected so that people with similar Facebook profiles to mine can someday receive recommendations of the form: “If you like X, then you might dislike Y. Therefore you’ll be doing yourself a favour by reading Y.”