Now the PM and her partner, Clarke Gayford, have shown off their daughter to the world (video at the end of this post), it reminded me of my own experiences in the maternity ward many years ago.
Iâm not a parent at the time of writing: Iâm talking about the 1980s when I visited Wellington Womenâs Hospital (as it then was), to wait for my Mum, a postnatal midwife, to finish work.
The 1980s donât seem that long ago to me, and all these memories are still very clear, but when you relay the story, you realize decades have passed.
Mum shifted to WWH in 1980, when it first opened, and I still recall having a preview tour of the building before it opened. New carpets, new fixtures. Hand-held buzzers hooked up to the wall where you could call for a nurseâhow modern! The 1980s had well and truly arrived, and how lucky of those patients, because this place was like a hotel. We really did think it was that flash in 1980.
And it was a nice place to visit. I finished school at St Markâs at 2.45 p.m. and the bus would usually get to the hospital by around 3 p.m. There was a long walk to the building at the back, taking an internal route, and walking through a basement tunnel with painted stripesâit felt like a science-fiction movie. Iâd get to Ward 15 and I was expected to wait in the TV room.
The TV room was next to the âday roomâ, which really meant the smoking room, where new Mums could pop in and have a fag. Every now and then, youâd get a naughty new mother whoâd take an ashtray into the TV room, where Iâd be waiting, but we are talking the early 1980s, and the term secondhand smoke had not entered the vernacular.
Of course, we youngsters werenât allowed to change the channel if adults were watching. Unfortunately, in the days of two state-run channels, most new mothers would watch Prisoner, and I donât mean The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan. I meant the Australian soap opera Prisoner, set in a womenâs prison, and known to British readers as Prisoner: Cell Block H. I could never comprehend why anyone would watch the sheer misery of the storylines about a womenâs prison, but I suppose in the early 1980s, these ladies were thinking: âNo matter how tough things are for me, at least Iâm not in Wentworth.â I would wait patiently for 3.30 p.m. to tick by, and Lynne Hamilton singing âOn the Insideâ (itself a depressing, haunting theme tune) and the Grundy logo were signs that relief was coming. However, to this day, I still know this blasted song, and can play it by ear on a piano. Without checking online:
On the inside the roses grow,
They donât mind the stony ground.
But the roses there are prisoners, too,
When morning comes around.
Only once do I remember a Mum offering me control of the TV during the Prisoner hour to watch whatever channel I wanted, and of course, that meant the childrenâs programming, eventually an after-school show imaginatively titled After School, hosted by a cheerful Te Reo-speaking man called Olly Ohlson.
Mum would be another 15 to 30 minutes, so my time in front of the telly was fairly limited. Weâd walk home to Newtown in those days, and my memory of that journey home was that it was often sunny. Of course, that couldnât have been the case, as I have equally strong memories of below-zero temperatures on the radio in the morning in 1981, and very grey weather watching Springbok tour marches (including fights between protesters and police officers) outside my window growing up. Those may or may not be the subject of another blog entry, as Iâm not traditionally one to post childhood reminiscences on this blog.
It appears my friend Justin was spot on: I probably was part of a test group trialling longer Instagram videos since April.
Today, Instagram announced that people could upload 10-minute videos, and an hour for those with big followings. This news article (hat tip to Cachalot Sang on Twitter) says thereâll be a new app called IGTV, although Iâve always just uploaded mine via regular Instagram. I havenât cracked nine minutes yet, but Iâve uploaded videos in the high eights. Regular Instagram seemed to balk at doing anything too large. Also bear in mindâarguably from someone who has had more experience of this than anyone in Instagram-landâthat these uploads take ages and can sometimes fail.
Donât be disappointed if your views are low, since Instagram only counts full views. I have videos still saying they have had zero views, yet I have likes and, in some cases, comments. Not everyoneâs going to sit back and watch these in full.
I had noticed that in the last week, my videos, all of which are over a minute, have successfully uploadedâup from the one in two ratio that I experienced when Instagram first gave me the ability to upload videos longer than one minute in April. No wonder, if the official announcement was made today: they probably began allowing all the big ones through.
As the one user (that I know of) who has publicly been uploading videos of over a minute for nearly two months, welcome to the club. I hope youâll enjoy it.
Thatâs it for ânet neutrality in the US. The FCC has changed the rules, so their ISPs can throttle certain sitesâ traffic. They can conceivably charge more for Americans visiting certain websites, too. Itâs not a most pessimistic scenario: ISPs have attempted this behaviour before.
Itâs another step in the corporations controlling the internet there. We already have Google biasing itself toward corporate players when it comes to news: never mind that youâre a plucky independent who broke the story, Google News will send that traffic to corporate media.
The changes in the US will allow ISPs to act like cable providers. I reckon it could give them licence to monitor Americansâ traffic as well, including websites that they mightnât want others to know theyâre watching. As Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, puts it: ‘We’re talking about it being just a human right that my ability to communicate with people on the web, to go to websites I want without being spied on is really, really crucial.’
Of course I have a vested interest in a fair and open internet. But everyone should. Without ânet neutrality, innovators will find it harder to get their creations into the public eye. Small businesses, in particular, will be hurt, because we canât pay to be in the âfast laneâ that ISPs will inevitably create for their favoured corporate partners. In the States, minority and rural communities will likely be hurt.
And while some might delight that certain websites pushing political viewpoints at odds with their own could be throttled, they also have to remember that this can happen to websites that share their own views. If it’s an independent site, it’s likely that it will face limits.
The companies that can afford to be in that âfast laneâ have benefited from ânet neutrality themselves, but are now pulling the ladder up so others canât climb it.
Itâs worth remembering that 80 per cent of Americans support ânet neutralityâthey are, like us, a largely fair-minded people. However, the FCC is comprised of unelected officials. Their ârepresentativesâ in the House and Senate are unlikely, according to articles Iâve read, to support their citizensâ will. Hereâs more on the subject, at Vox.
Since China censors its internet, we now have two of the biggest countries online giving their residents a limited form of access to online resources.
However, China might censor based on politics but its âGreat Wallâ wonât be as quick to block new websites that do some good in the world. Who knew? China might be better for small businesses trying to get a leg up than the United States.
This means that real innovation, creations that can gain some prominence online, could take place outside the US where, hopefully, we wonât be subjected to similar corporate agenda. (Nevertheless, our own history, where left and right backed the controversial s. 92A of the Copyright Act, suggests our lawmakers can be malleable when money talks.)
These innovations mightnât catch the publicâs imagination in quite the same wayâthe US has historically been important for getting them out there. Today, it got harder for those wonderful start-ups that I got to know over the years. Mix that with the USâs determination to put up trade barriers based on false beliefs about trade balances, weâre in for a less progressive (and I mean that in the vernacular, and not the political sense) ride. âThe rest of the worldâ needs to pull together in this new reality and ensure their subjects still have a fair crack at doing well, breaking through certain partiesâ desire to stunt human progress. Let Sir Tim have the last word, as he makes the case far more succinctly than I did above: ‘When I invented the web, I didnât have to ask anyone for permission, and neither did Americaâs successful internet entrepreneurs when they started their businesses. To reach its full potential, the internet must remain a permissionless space for creativity, innovation and free expression. In todayâs world, companies canât operate without internet, and access to it is controlled by just a few providers. The FCCâs announcements today [in April 2017] suggest they want to step back and allow concentrated market players to pick winners and losers online. Their talk is all about getting more people connected, but what is the point if your ISP only lets you watch the movies they choose, just like the old days of cable?’
I see the media (led by the Murdoch Press) have been reporting that Instagram plans to let people upload videos of an hour long. Itâs a ârumourâ at the moment, apparently.
As those of you who follow this blog know, Iâve been able to upload videos exceeding one minute since April, and one theory that Justin Bgoni, whoâs the bursar at my Alma Mater, St Markâs Church School, advanced when I mentioned it to him was that I must be part of a trial.
That makes perfect sense and it shouldnât be a surprise that someone with a great financial mind like Justinâs would conclude this. He says: weâre in New Zealand, itâs a small country, and there are probably 10,000 people who have been given the capability in advance. Soon, he theorized weeks ago, Instagram will roll it out to the general public. I think heâs right.
Iâve so far fielded two questions from strangers on how I do this, and I tell them the truth: Iâve just been able to, and I was as surprised as anyone else.
I donât claim to have âspecial super powerâ like this user doesâand when I visited his Instagram, he doesnât have a single video over a minute, so goodness knows what heâs talking about. (Having said that, I do like a lot of his uploads.) If youâre uploading 10 one-minute videos into a single post, that doesnât count: almost anyone can do that, and it doesnât take special powers, just patience.
There is a limit for me, however. Iâve attempted four times to upload a 9âČ3âł video to Instagram, and have failed each time, so we can conclude that thatâs too long. However, I have managed 8âČ37âł as of today, so the present maximum length on Instagram must be between the two times.
I havenât discovered too much more since I last posted on this topic, other than enjoying the freedom of having the greater length. (Instagramâs probably noted that, which is why the rumours have begun surfacing.) Engagement is still rather low on the long videos, for starters. Instagram only (rightly) counts full views, so there are videos with likes but 0 views recorded.
Itâs nice, once again, to be ahead of the ball when it comes to these technologies, just as I have been with Google and Facebook. The exception here is that itâs been a positive feature rather than the usual negative ones, though I realize that since itâs Instagram, it comes with a load of Facebook-linked privacy issues. Just today it fired through another alcohol ad despite my having turned them off in my settings, again underlining Facebookâs blatant dishonesty.
Yet here I am, still using one of their services despite having mostly de-Facebooked (and de-Googled years before that). Like millions of others, Iâm still a sucker because I continue to use a service they own.
Speaking of the Murdoch Press and Google, we (at work) actually deal with the former when it comes to advertising. Let that sink in for a moment: I trust Murdochs more than I trust Google when it comes to our usersâ privacy. Thatâs saying something.
