Today, we know that many people are fooled by deepfakes, thinking they are real. But when we look at deepfake damage we think of adults. What about children?
It’s probably just as well that Fred Rogers passed away in 2003, years before technology allowed us to create deepfakes of everything.
Including Fred Rogers.
Grok. Not Fred Rogers.
Rogers occupied a unique role. He transported his young viewers from their real world into a world of make-believe, but took care to explain to his young viewers that there was a difference between make-believe and reality. For example, he once hosted a woman named Margaret Hamilton, who explained that she was not really a witch.
Margaret Hamilton and Fred Rogers.
Note the intelligence with which Hamilton treats her audience, by the way.
But back in Mister Rogers’ day, some people imposed make-believe on Rogers’ own make-believe, something that distressed Rogers because of his fear that it would confuse the children. Rogers objected to most of these portrayals, with the exception of Eddie Murphy’s. Children were fast asleep by the time “Mister Robinson” appeared on TV on Saturday nights. And Murphy’s character addressed serious topics such as gentrification.
Mister Robinson on gentrification, 2019.
But today we see things that are not real, but even adults think they are real. And that’s the adults; how do today’s children respond to deepfakes? If children of the 1930s were confused by a witch in a movie, how do children of today respond to things that look all too real?
“Last October, a 13-year-old boy in Wisconsin used a picture of his classmate celebrating her bat mitzvah to create a deepfake nude he then shared on Snapchat….
“[M]any of the state laws don’t apply to explicit AI-generated deepfakes. Fewer still appear to directly grapple with the fact that perpetrators of deepfake abuse are often minors.”
Once again, technology outpaces our efforts to regulate it or examine its ethical considerations.
A single loss does not define your entire life. As the sporting world teaches us, Olympic losers and other competitive losers can become winners—if not in sports, then elsewhere.
The human drama of athletic competition
When I was young, the best variety show on television didn’t involve Bob Mackie dresses. It instead featured Jim McKay, introducing the show as follows.
Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport…the thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat…the human drama of athletic competition…This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!
A technological marvel when originally introduced, this variety show brought sporting events to American viewers from all over the world.
And these viewers learned that in competitions, there are winners and losers.
But since Wide World of Sports focused on the immediate (well, with a bit of tape delay), viewers never learned about the losers who became winners.
Jim McKay and his colleagues were not retrospective, but were known for the moment. In one instance that was NOT on tape delay, Jim McKay spoke his most consequential words, “They’re all gone.”
Vinko Bogataj
(Note: some of this content is repurposed because repurposing is cool.)
Turning to less lethal sporting events, remember Jim McKay’s phrase “the agony of defeat”?
For American TV watchers, this phrase was personified by Vinko Bogataj.
The agony of defeat.
Hailing from a country then known as Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), Bogataj was competing in the 1970 World Ski Flying Championships in Oberstdorf, in a country then known as West Germany (now Germany). His daughter described what happened:
It was bad weather, and he had to wait around 20 minutes before he got permission to start. He remembers that he couldn’t see very good. The track was very bad, and just before he could jump, the snow or something grabbed his skis and he fell. From that moment, he doesn’t remember anything.
While Bogataj suffered a concussion and a broken ankle, the accident was captured by the Wide World of Sports film crew, and Bogataj became famous on the “capitalist” side of the Cold War.
“He didn’t have a clue he was famous,” (his daughter) Sandra said. That changed when ABC tracked him down in Slovenia and asked him to attend a ceremony in New York to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Wide World of Sports” in 1981.
At the gala, Bogataj received the loudest ovation among a group that included some of the best-known athletes in the world. The moment became truly surreal for Bogataj when Muhammad Ali asked for his autograph.
Bogataj is now a painter, but his 1970 performance still follows him.
Over 20 years after the infamous ski jump, Terry Gannon interviewed Bogataj for ABC. As Gannon recounted it on X (then Twitter), Bogataj “got in a fender bender on the way. His first line..’every time I’m on ABC I crash.'”
Some guy at the Athens Olympics in 2004
Since the Paris Olympics is taking place as I write this, people are paying a lot of attention to present and past Olympics.
The 2004 Olympics in Athens was a notable one, taking place in the country where the original Olympics were held.
But during that year, people may have missed some of the important stories that took place. We pay attention to winners, not losers.
Take the men’s 200 meter competition. It began with 7 heats, with the top competitors from the heats advancing.
Within the 7 heats, Heat 4 was a run-of-the-mill race, with the top four sprinters advancing to the next round. If I were to read their names to you you’d probably reward me with a blank stare.
But if I were to read the 5th place finisher to you, the guy who failed to advance to the next round, you’d recognize the name.
KBWEB Consult tells the story of another competitor in the same 200 meter event in Athens. Chris Lambert participated in Heat 3, but didn’t place in the first four positions and therefore didn’t advance.
Nor did he place in the fifth position like Usain Bolt did in Heat 4.
Actually, he technically didn’t place at all. His performance is marked with a “DNF,” or “did not finish.”
You see, at about the 50 meter point of the 200 meter event, Lambert pulled a hamstring.
And that ended his Olympic competition dreams forever. By the time the Olympics were held in Lambert’s home country of the United Kingdom in 2012, he was not a competitor, but a volunteer for the London Olympics.
But Lambert learned much from his competitive days, and now works for Adobe.
KBWEB Consult (who consults on Adobe Experience Manager implementations) tells the full story of Chris Lambert and what he learned in its post “Expert Coaching From KBWEB Consult.”
I haven’t done one of these in a while, but it’s important to remember that just because you lost a particular competition doesn’t mean that all is lost. We need to remember this whether we are a 200 meter runner who didn’t advance from their heat, or whether we are a job applicant receiving yet another “we are moving in a different direction” form letter.
In the meantime, take care of yourself, and each other.
As Bredemarket, and in my previous positions, I have written a number of technical pieces of varying lengths. Many of these were designed to communicate non-technical concepts to a technical audience.
I just completed such a piece on Saturday. And no, it wasn’t a blog post or white paper, or even a web page analysis.
It was a set of instructions on how to use three remotes to access three pieces of entertainment hardware.
A couple of years ago, lightning hit the home of one of my relatives. While the home was for the most part undamaged, her living room television set was fried. So for the past two years, she has had to go to her bedroom when she wanted to watch TV.
So on Friday, my wife and I trooped down to the store and purchased a smart TV, along with a newer DVD player, and a swivel mount to hold the smart TV on her cabinet.
Early Saturday afternoon, the mount, TV set, and DVD player needed to be set up. In true Bredemarket fashion, I did not get involved with the drilling or any of the other hardware installation; two friends took care of that part. (I know my limits.) They even took care of the cabling, so that both the cable box and the new DVD were connected to the new TV via the two HDMI ports.
Once that was done, it was time for the software guy (me) to go through the TV setup, and then to pair both of the new entertainment devices with the existing cable remote. If all had worked well, all three of the devices could have been controlled through the single cable remote, with some minimal instructions to my relative on how to switch between all the devices.
(It is relevant to note that my relative is a senior citizen, so the instructions needed to be easy-to-understand AND minimal.)
Sadly, all did NOT work well. I ran into two problems.
First, despite trying all of the suggested codes, I was unable to pair the DVD to the cable remote.
Second, even if I had successfully paired the DVD, the cable remote was lacking an all-essential “TV input” button, so the cable remote on its own could not switch between the TV’s HDMI1 input (cable) and the HDMI2 input (DVD). The cable company offers newer remote controls, but that didn’t help me on Saturday.
So that’s when the writer kicked in. Using my non-preferred word processing platform (Notes on my iPhone), I drafted a short document with four sections:
The introductory section: “When watching [cable system], the [cable system] remote can control [cable system] functions plus the TV volume (and turning the TV on and off)”
Five steps “(t)o switch from watching [cable system] to watching the [brand] DVD” (using both the TV remote and the DVD remote, but not the OTHER DVD remote that looks similar)
Five steps “(t)o switch from watching the [brand] DVD to watching the [cable system]” (using both the TV remote and the cable remote)
A fourth section, “John’s technical notes,” in case someone other than my relative wanted to figure out what was going on
I didn’t try to incorporate graphics into my Notes text, so I had to use textual descriptions such as “the circles control.” After initial testing (me) and a second test (my wife), the instructions were printed.
Technically the project is not complete because the document has not gone through the final testing stage (my relative), but this is probably the most important document that I’ve written this week.
Yes, the project that I completed for my client on Friday was also important, but you have to keep family happy.
And no, Bredemarket cannot offer this service to paying clients because I usually work…um, remotely.
Bredemarket 