technology

FaceTime during African sunrises and other musings

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ This morning I FaceTimed the family. Child Number 1, a musical girl, was having sinus pain. So I looked up there and noticed Taylor Swift and a hall of high school girls having a party. Looks like they’d moved from my daughter’s inner ear. I suggested this may be causing her pain,

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The children of the Nile and a rhythm of rest

MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ So I’m back in this East African nation for a working visit. It’s also a good time to get myself unplugged. You know, rested and rebooted. The warm days and the warm people and the children help. If you visit (and why don’t you, sometime?) you’ll know what I mean. The children of the Nile,

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You’re sleeping with your phone?

So, apparently 90 per cent of 18-29-year-olds sleep with their smartphones. This, one more reason why having a phone with a low IQ isn’t the worse thing. And one more reason why it’s not a great idea to get a kid a phone. Being active in bed too young has its consequences. One is you go crazy.

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A billion friends can’t be wrong

So the owners called the other night. Actually they texted. Nobody calls anymore. They said I was getting too many friends, too fast. I said no, there’s a mistake, I only have three friends and two of them are our rabbits  — Sam and his live-in girlfriend. No, Friends, they said again, with a capital

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The Death of Kony 2012

So, in the beginning was the microchip. No, it was the iPad. No, no, it was Facebook. Really, this is what it was. For sure.

Yes, in the beginning was Facebook. And Facebook was with God, and Facebook was God. And Facebook created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty and formless and dark, and the spirit of Facebook hovered over its waters.

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Not with a bang but a whimper

BERLIN – So Hitler was called to lurk among us. And never showed. Not even in Germany.

This regarding Kony 2012, the strange and shrinking campaign that in its posters — now hung virtually nowhere — features Hitler idling behind warlord Joseph Kony and Osama bin Laden.

The square-moustached megalomaniac has made a bigger splash online. On YouTube, an impersonator of the führer is enraged over the world’s apparent inaction against Kony. “Get my laptop,” he tells his generals, with English subtitles, in this satirical video with a million views.

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Konymania: this is not Uganda’s reality

LONDON — The world is getting faster. And stranger. Have you noticed?

This is what I know. I think. I mean, sometimes it’s hard to know what we know. Take Joseph Kony. He’s someone who, thanks to social media, you likely know.

I’m betting you know Kony is that Ugandan warlord with a strangely genteel face, that he’s abducted thousands of Ugandan boys and stole their souls when he made them into so-called soldiers.

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