Have we learnt yet to use the Internet?

I've had quite a few conversations lately about the Internet, the privacy of sites (or lack of it) and generally, the fact that as a technology-enabled society, we have not yet learnt how to use it properly. We can't have, it is such a new medium.

Only today I was looking through a book I got out of the library about using the web for teaching. It is SOOOOO out of date (talking about HTML etc and downloading times... what teacher needs to learn HTML when you have Blogger, Wordpress, etc etc?) When was the book published? 2000! 11 years ago and it has become almost completely redundant. That's not long, not even a generation.

My arm is still not well, so I will keep this post brief, but let me leave you with a quote from a podcast I was just listening to, which prompted me to write this post.

"People have not gone through enough history to understand where it (technology) can hurt you and where it can help you."

Jeff Moss, Black Hat

BBC's Peter Day's World of Business: Cyber Security

When You are Forced to STOP.

I was so looking forward to "going back to work". I put this in inverted commas, because I freelance and so "going back to work" might seem a bit strange, as it involves crawling to my lounge table and switching on my computer, but I suppose it's a mindset.

As I was saying, I was looking forward to "doing my stuff" after two wonderful weeks of doing NOTHING (really, just walking, conversing, sleeping and eating - oh, Spanish food...) and then my body said "Ha Ha, no way!" and gave me a frozen shoulder.

A frozen shoulder is the result of a calcification in the bone (extra calcium deposits) which leads to inflamed (technical word for really painful) tendons, which results in very limited movement in the shoulder. According to my physio, it is the most painful non-traumatic injury. It is something that just happens and there is very little that can be done about it: mainly, take pills and go to physio - and use your arms properly.

I had the same thing on my left shoulder a few years ago - and I don't remember the movement restriction lasting for so long. I now think that is because I'm right-handed and therefore I was able to operate more or less ok.

So, for three days I have done very little. (I really didn't need a rest, believe me, I was more than rested.) But these kind of injuries need to be treated like any illness, as the body is working extra hard to combat the invader - in this case, an extra bit of calcium. (They said calcium was good for you....)

So, the results of this:

- We've bought a water filter. The water is London has a lot of calcium and I am beginning to think whether this is contributing to my excess. Apparently frozen shoulders are uncommon in under-40s and I've already had two. I probably brought the first one on myself through much unproper use but not the second one...

- I'm learning to do more things with my left hand. I've always thought that it would be good to work towards being ambidextrous - but like with most learning, it doesn't make sense to go through it unless you are going to use it. So here we are.

- I'm having interesting chats with myself about whether I should get worried about the fact that there are many things I need to do that I really shouldn't be doing. Putting everything into perspective and wondering whether my professional life will suffer that much if I put everything on hold for another two weeks. I doubt it.

Shame that this is all I'm going to type today because I have a nice piece on wanting to save time which I wrote on my notebook. It will have to wait.