A bit like Bullock: How life is a little like the movie “The Net”.

Dec 19

You might be a middle-aged digital dinosaur if you still remember this movie but, back in 1995 “The Net” (Starring Sandra Bullock) was a bit of a hit movie depicting a digital recluse coder who gets her identity stolen and actually has to go outside … to get it back.

The movie raised a lot of chuckles in the theatre as it depicted the daily life of Angela Bennet. Working from home fulltime she hardly leaves the house and orders everything online. From pizza to groceries and from software to styling products (just check out that hair). She communicates online with her clients who have never met her in real life and don’t know what she looks like. It was an exaggerated depiction of a lifestyle that would, despite the modern day possibilities of the internet, never become mainstream .. right ?

Flash forward a quarter of a century.

Flash forward a quarter of a century and look around. After day 300 of “working from home” I finish up my umpteenth videoconference with a team that I have never ever met in person. Unlike in “The Net” I do know what they look like but only as far down as their bellybuttons. The chime of my video doorbell rings and delivery guy number 3 of the day drops off another package. Via the Ring app on my phone I instruct him to just leave it on the doorstep. I wait to open the door until he drives off. I have truly mastered the art of consumption-without-human-contact.

Most of the conversations I have (aside from those with my dog and my spouse) are also with computers. I ask Google for the weather, tell Siri to play Retrowave music in the bathroom and try to convince Alexa to disclose the the actual age of Jennifer Connelly. The Netflix computer algorithm suggests I should watch some Spanish sitcom tonight and at about 10pm my Smartwatch tells me I should go to bed if I want to be rested tomorrow morning.

I’m worse than Bullock.

Looking back at my day, I’m not “like” Bullock in the net .. I’m even worse. The combination of the technology at hand and the current Covid Crisis has decreased the “face to face” human interactions significantly. We mail-order everything online, communicate digitally instead of face to face and are (almost) perfectly happy with the convenience. Sure, right now its because pandemic is sweeping the globe, and sneezing within a five yard radius from other people is considered extremely rude .. But still… Will things ever go back to “normal”?

This probably isn’t normal.

The answer is: Probably not. Even the biggest internet-hater has now tasted the sweet nectar of home delivery and thanks to working from home, none of us will ever need to wear pants again (maybe thats a bit strong). But I hope we don’t forget the value of human interaction. Buying something else because they are “out of stock” at the store helps you discover new products. Waiting in line at the restaurant gives you the opportunity to meet new people. Convenience is one thing, but I hope we all are social animals at some point. So when all of this covid stuff is over I thrive to go outside, shop “realtime”, meet people face to face and do all the inefficient “analogue” stuff that doesn’t take place behind a screen. If only so nobody can steal my identity 🙂

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KW1507 Tablets through time.

Nov 15

After ten years have past since the launch of the famous iPad tablet we take a look back through history and ask ourselves: Is the tablet ready to serve as a replacement for our desktop? We rant about the pro’s and cons of android vs IOS and how Microsoft came close to the holy grail. Topped of with some fancy tunes from ScannTec its another show from the Knightwise.com bunker.

LINKS

DISCORD

The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link

CREDITS

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KW1506 Lockdown Lifestyle part 2

Aug 09

In the second part of “Lockdown Lifestyle” we focus on filtering the information coming your way via Social Media and being aware of the “reality distortion field”. We train you to help tech organize your day and talk about the goals you want to set for yourself.

LINKS

DISCORD

The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link

CREDITS

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KW1505 – Lockdown Lifestyle Part 1

Jul 30

We are back (from the dead?) with a new show talking about the impact of “working from home” during the lockdown. In part 1 of a two-part episode we talk about how to use technology to enhance your digital (and analogue) lifestyle during the lockdown. How do you use tech to separate Work/Life/Play and stay sane during crazy times.

[Lockdown Lifestyle part 2]

LINKS

DISCORD

The action is happening over at our Discord server: Join by clicking this link

CREDITS

  • Mix & Production: Knightwise
  • Music: Italo Brutalo – Avion [Youtube]

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KW1503 – Digital Renaissance

Apr 28

Your ears do not deceive you, in this time of social distancing and zoom-based happy hours, the members of the knightwise.com discord bring you a roundtable of geeky goodness.

CREDITS

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Getting the band back together.

Apr 27

Its been a while since I blogged. Hell, its been a while since I did anything of great importance for Knightwise.com. And for that i want to apologize. I could blame the usual scapegoat of not having enough time, and in part that is true. But only in part. The other half was a lack of effort that stemmed from a single thought: Why bother ?

Pretty harsh words because at the source of that thought lies that once thing I was lacking. That sole thing podcasters and content creators crave whenever they put something out on the interwebs: Feedback. The lack of steady shows coming out and the “dispersion” of the community over multiple Social Media platforms (The die-hards on Telegram, some on Facebook, hardly any on Twitter and none on the blog) did make podcasting feel like shouting into the void. That taxes your motivation, decreases your show output and .. fewer shows, less feedback etc.

With the Covid19 crisis breaking out across the globe that changed. Suddenly I had a more “stable” workroutine (I work from home full time now) and many of the die-hard wiseguys were online during my office hours. That sparked some contacts, conversation and .. some ideas.

It was Wiseguy (lets call the core team that) Regravity that came up with Discord. True enough, producer KDMurray had already suggested it a while ago but as an alternative to Telegram it never “went” anywhere. That was until we started talking about the “open mic” voicechat hotline the guys over at HPR have. As the digital version of a 90’s partyline you can “call in” to their mumble server and chat. Kind of like “office banter” but you aren’t at work and they are not your colleagues.

We tried it out together with Konrad, Gerjon, KD and Regravity and pretty soon we were having a cosy chat. Of course.. give a podcaster a microphone and he has a stage, so pretty soon the idea bubbled up, why not DO a show this way? Recordbot Craig was added to the list, everyone dusted off his USB microphone and we set a time in my busy schedule to actually record a show.

The result was great! Having multiple hosts in the room bantering over a subject gave me back the feelings I had back in the days of the Global Geek Podcast, a sense of camaraderie and sharing the (chat)room with a people who are a lot smarter then I was, enriching the show.

Slowly but surely we started experimenting with other functionalities of the platform. After (accidently) broadcasting the sounds of our living room while having diner and watching ‘Friends’ the idea popped up: What if we could use this as place not only for recording, but also for broadcasting? So this sunday we gave it a try and did a (closed) livestream of a DJ set for the community. Channels were added where you can share what you are watching, what you are reading and more. The sense of “community” started to grow.

Before I tell you about todays monumental apex, I want to say WHY I start to love Discord as opposed to Facebook and other Social Media. ONE: its pure geek. As a pumped up spiced up version of IRC, it gives us a LOT of sharing and collaboration abilities, while still staying true to the roots of a classic “chatroom” where you are represented by your Avatar and your handle and NOT by who you ‘actually’ are. You can come in and show us your geek side, and nothing else. Its chaotic, its technical, its fun. I can (finally) ditch my ‘real’ name and embrace the Knightwise persona once again.

However, while hanging out today we decided that it was time to embrace discord in full by trying to get as many members on board from the community as we could. I started pumping out Facebook PM’s, shared posts on the Facebook Community and started trolling long forgotten ‘follow’ lists on twitter with one message: We are rebooting the community, come to Discord. In a few hours time something amazing happened. Like a scene from a movie where the different retired members walk in one by one to once again form a fantastic rock band, they came. Dave, Herne, Thorgal, Peter… voices and friends from long gone walked in and .. started to chat.

I want to say something that might sound cheesy, but I think I had a moment of pure joy seeing everybody walk in that way. It was amazing to see a community coming back together and exchanging banter and quips. It made me realize that the one thing what was keeping me from doing shows was not an audience or feedback, it was a community!

I remember @moonenmoonen’s wise words years ago: It’s not about the SIZE of your community/listeners, its about the interaction you have with them. And its great to see everybody coming together again on a platform where we can pull in their knowledge and interactions and put them into a show with hardly any effort. Its like .. technology working for us instead of the other way around.

You can find our Discord at: https://discord.gg/w3ZG9WM

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KW1501 – 10 Geeky Projects for 2020

Jan 05

Welcome to 2020!
This week Knightwise takes us through a list of projects to help stretch our geek muscles and maybe try out some new ways to use or think about technology as we slide into the new decade. We’ve got, things to learn, ways to protect your privacy and your data, projects to try and services you might want to support.

Links

Connect with the Community

Credits

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KW1405 – Merging Your Operating Systems

Dec 29

Sliding from operating system to operating system is always cool, but the borders between the different OS’es sometimes make things hard. What if we took those away? We show you how using Virtualbox to merge your machine’s, your applications and your files using Virtualbox.

Links

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