Just think about this for a minute: Pretty well no one has physical picture albums any more, all our precious photos are ephemeral ones and zeros, viewed on phones and computer screens, occasionally streamed to our TVs. Ditto music. When did you last buy a CD? Or rent a DVD.

None of this revolution in content consumption is a problem in itself but it requires a change in our awareness paradigm to ensure that we aren’t caught out. The world is moving towards an all encompassing digital reality so it’s something that has to be engaged, understood and absorbed into your life practice.

It’s easy to understand photos or music when you have a physical object in your hands. If you lose that object you lose the music or the memory. It used to be common for someone to say “I’ve lost my address book, please let me know your address and phone number”. Or “where is that CD (or resume, or photo) I’ve misplaced it?” But now nothing is physical, all is digital with the pros and cons of binary data.

Binary means everything is combinations of 1’s or 0’s. Everything. Video, music, images. The more complex the data the more ones and zeros to represent it. Computers are simply computing those billions of ones and zeros into a form that we can comprehend: an image of the grandchildren, or a YouTube video, a manuscript of a novel or a passport application. The nature of binary data means it’s really easy to store any type and amount of data be it video, documents, music or images.

It’s easily stored and just as easily lost into the ether.

Part of our attraction to the modern digital world is the simple ‘everything available all the time’ nature of it. The lost address book is a thing of the past, it is so simple to have your address book synching across your several devices rather than a physical book — although I still hear of people losing their friend’s contacts.

As long as you make sure you understand these implications of digital data, if not the technology behind it, all will be well. There are said to be only two types of people using computers — those who have lost data and those who will lose data.

Your data is your responsibility.

A computer or phone manufacturer will replace a faulty device but the critical stuff, the data on it, is important only to you, the user of the device. The good news is that it is very easy to store and save your data as long as you heed a few simple rules of the digital paradigm:

* you must have at least two copies of your data.

* you are only as safe as your most recent backup.

* backups have to be running all the time as a seamless aspect of modern life, not an occasional task to be performed when you remember.

* having more than one backup is good practice.

So what is a backup? Assuming your data is based on a computer then the backup is a complete mirror copy of the computer onto another storage device, usually an external hard-drive. If the computer dies then it’s data has died with it but you have a copy on the backup drive. Whew, breathe a sigh of relief and recover the data onto your new computer.

Usually your smartphone will be backed up onto the computer as well which is then a part of the computer backup. Modern computers let you backup to several external hard drives so you can have more than one backup. You can take one of these with you wherever you roam so you have a copy of your digital life with you at all times.

But can’t we just backup to the Cloud? This is a question I hear regularly nowadays. What is cloud backup? The ‘cloud’ is just a computer, probably based in another country, belonging to a company like Google or Apple who allow you some space on it to store your data. It’s all very well as a secondary backup but not as your main backup for obvious reasons: you have no control over the computer. If it dies and your data is lost they will apologise and wash their hands of you! They also have access to your data for marketing purposes with all the privacy implications that implies.

Another essential aspect of the cloud backup is that unless you are on the NBN fast broadband network or in a metropolitan area with cable internet then forget it. We have a lot of data so backing it up takes too long on old ADSL 2 or the equivalent. Hundreds of gigabytes of data costs plenty to store. Most cloud services give you maybe 10GBs free then you pay for excess amounts. I have almost 120GBs of music and 40GBs of pictures so my cloud storage would be huge. Much simpler to have multiple physical backups. If you are one of the fortunate ones on the NBN then it makes sense to use a cloud backup as well as a physical hard drive.

The pro is that your data is digital and easy to save, move around and share.

The con is that it is easy to delete or lose and it’s only you who can safeguard it.

Also realise that your data is big, getting bigger and will continue to grow as long as you live.

Be careful, protect your precious data. Make sure that you have more than one copy of it at all times.

To contact Tom Hain or find out more about his services go to: https://mrmacintosh.com.au/

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Whatever Apple does affects everyone in the modern connected world whether you use iPhones or other brands, or whether you use a Mac or a PC. It is so influential not because it has class leading hardware and software integration or the newest features – indeed other platforms often add new features faster than Apple does. But it has a unique influence because its users spend more money on their devices than anyone else’s users. Much more money, almost EIGHT times as much on iOS devices than Android/Windows according to Forbes, the money people.

Which means that it is taken more seriously by commercial interests like software developers than other platforms. Apple leverages this influence into power in its negotiations when making deals and acquisitions with media companies. So what Apple does affects you whether you use their devices or not.

A huge amount of Apple’s profits, currently 76%, come from iPhone sales, but what happens when everyone has them and revenue tails off? Although the iPhone bubble shows no sign of bursting in the short term, global smart-phone sales are declining. They can’t rely on ever increasing iPhone sales without diversifying, or they will go the way of Nokia and Blackberry who rigidly stuck with their existing business models into oblivion.

Apple may not have the largest share of the mobile phone market – but they have the most profitable, and where they lead, others follow.

At this point Apple have barely dipped their toe into the Digital Content business apart from gradually building up iTunes into a business generating US$5 billion per quarter. Digital Content being all the different media we consume on our various devices, computers and TV’s, but currently excluding cinemas. If you consider that they have the money to buy outright any number of media conglomerates with a ready portfolio of movies and TV shows you have to agree they are taking it slowly. They aren’t always the first players but when they do act it is with market-changing effect. There were smart-phones before the iPhone became the default standard and started the smart-phone revolution.

With their war chest of US$155 billion Apple can make serious waves. When they do move into a media area a sizeable part of their user base will move with them. They have the largest database of active credit card users in the world, well over half a billion. It’s much simpler to convert those users to a new service than it is to recruit new users, even when that growth is going along quite nicely thank you, with tens of thousands of new users joining iTunes every day.

They could create or buy their own movie studios and begin making feature films and TV shows which would be initially exclusive to Apple users. Could do. What they will do remains a secret that they keep to themselves until the moment they are ready to make the move.

January 24, 1984 – Steve Jobs introduced the new personal Apple Macintosh computer. He may be gone, but the product – and the blue jeans – live on.

Their move when it comes would threaten existing media businesses much like the current Spotify/Pandora versus Apple Radio battle over streaming music which is panning out over the next few months. We can imagine similar battles with Neflix over movies, BlockBuster over video and of course the big one – sport. Apple have the clout to outbid anyone and grab, say, the next World Cup, the next Olympics, the so-called World Series of Baseball and even the biggest sporting weekly global TV event, English Premier League Football. Apple could quickly control that most reliable regular TV income generator much as Fox has done to date, and, of course, you could subscribe via iTunes!

Other digital media companies like Samsung have to keep an eye on what Apple are doing and tailor their offerings accordingly so Apple does actually have a much greater effect than statistics like total handset sales might imply. They lead and others have to follow so whatever device you use Apple has a disproportionate influence upon it whether you like it or not.

Stories about Apple’s research into other areas, like cars, may be premature, but don’t rule out one day driving an Apple car to work listening to your iPhone play through the car’s sound system having spent the previous evening watching your favourite TV show on your Apple TV. Your partner is in the passenger seat watching the rest of the show on the car screen because he/she fell asleep during the last 10 minutes last night and the show has automatically loaded into the car so he can finish it.

This Big Brother is quietly spoken, with immaculate taste and always seems to wear blue jeans…

To contact Tom Hain or find out more about his services go to: https://mrmacintosh.com.au/

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About four years ago I came across some fascinating information: apparently all newly born babies and all newly dead people have immensely high levels of DMT, (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) an illegal but natural psychedelic, in their systems. Enough samples have been taken to deduce that this applies to absolutely all of us. As I have obviously already been born, the birth side of things wasn’t the more interesting part to me, but the fact that I am, unfortunately, going to experience death meant I was intrigued.

Now in my sixties, I’d been thinking for a while that perhaps it was time to get to try to come to grips with the whole question of dying and what comes afterwards and to me this looked like a good way in. After all there could be worse ways to begin and end your life – and so began a phase of my life that continues to this day: research into DMT, which I also see as also research into myself.

DMT is a compound that occurs naturally in our bodies, evidently made in the pineal gland right in the centre of our brains. It is a structural analog of serotonin and melatonin, and a functional analog of other psychedelic tryptamines. Normally it is present in very low concentrations but in times of stress or potentially dangerous situations —such as imminent death—it floods into the brain at very high levels. It is manufactured by our brain and we self-dose if we believe we might be about to die. Extraordinary.

DMT is the chemical basis for pretty well all other psychedelics like psilocybin or magic mushrooms, peyote, mescaline and most others. It’s a pretty amazing discovery: when we die our brains give us a full on psychedelic trip.  Move over Don Juan.

I began by reading some seminal works, the first one being ‘The Spirit Molecule’ by Dr Rick Strassman, detailing how he obtained funding for a scientific laboratory study of the effects of DMT in varying doses on the human being – in this case volunteers. As soon as the DMT wore off, within 20-30 minutes, the subjects were questioned and answers written down and collated. Another certainty began to emerge – when DMT wears off there is no physical after effect, no ‘come down’, it is completely non-toxic.

More strange things came to light. For example, the human foetus in the womb receives a dose of DMT at exactly 49 days. All foetuses, always. What does this mean? Well the Tibetan Book of the Dead­­—a sort of manual as to how reincarnation happens according to the Tibetan understanding of these things – states that the soul enters the foetus at exactly…you guessed it, 49 days!

So could it be that as we incarnate into and out of this physical world we get a dose of DMT to enable the transition. I started to see that DMT is a compound that our body, or our organism uses to enable the transition between states. The state of life, the state of death – DMT is a transition mechanism.

I finally determined to get hold of some DMT and try it for myself. It is considered a class A or schedule 1 drug by most western countries, right on a par with heroin, cocaine and meth-amphetamine which seems harsh to say the least. Around this time I found that the two main ways of taking it are as a regular drug, either smoked or injected, or in ceremony as Ayahuasca. I found that Ayahuasca has a long history amongst some South American Amazonian countries like Peru, with their Shamans having used used it for thousands of years in healing ceremonies.

Ayahuasca is a brew of several plants with high DMT levels and includes Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOI’s) which are chemicals that prevent the monomine oxidase enzyme in our stomachs breaking DMT down before it can have any effect, which they do really fast. So if you eat some, perhaps inadvertently, and nothing happens, the MIO’s have done their job, and as DMT is naturally present in many plants and animals this is necessary. The several plants are all brewed together and then consumed in an Ayahuasca ceremony, the effect lasting for several hours rather than the 20-30 minutes if smoked or injected.

I decided to put out feelers in the local community to see if I could acquire some DMT but nothing happened for quite some time. Then I heard of someone who could get some. It couldn’t be bought – it was only gifted. Eventually a friend obtained a little lump that looked rather like the gum from a fir tree but less sticky. We met up at his house with his wife who had offered to watch over us in case of any dramas and with a little pipe we were ready to go. He smoked first, passed the pipe back and leant back on the lounge. My turn.

I had already decided to take a really good dose. I noticed from Dr. Strassman’s research that lower levels of DMT merely produced euphoria in increasing amounts, but nothing radical. However, as soon as a high enough dose was administered all subjects entered a completely different condition, but only when this level was reached. So I took two deep inhalations and passed the pipe back.

And immediately I seemed to fall out of regular reality into another world.

It was completely familiar. I remembered this place quite clearly. Where from I didn’t know, but I knew I had been there before. I was moving through space without any physical feeling but a lot was going on around me. There were visions, colours and light and a sense of travelling. I wanted to go to the source rather than be distracted and as I ‘passed’ levels there was a sense of fun and humour in the offerings of possible sexual pleasure or massive wealth, but I was determined that there should be no distractions and so I moved on until I came I arrived at a plateau past every level of everything.

There was silence and then a huge eye rather like the Aztec or eastern symbolic eye that I have seen in mythical painting appeared in front of me. It was alive and seemed to regard me in a slightly abstract way. No words, but there was a feeling almost like ‘What are you doing here?’ I didn’t know…

At one point I could see a long string of lifetimes below me strung like nodules or pearls on a string and I knew that they were lives I had lived or even might be going to live – scores of them. And then there was a view of other dimensions or worlds that I could see into, but as I moved towards them I realized that I didn’t know if I entered them whether I would be able to return, so I held back.

Some time after that I gradually became aware of the room and of music playing. I opened my eyes and could see my friend’s lounge room but when I closed my eyes the other world re-imposed itself. I oscillated between the worlds for a while and progressively the regular world got more defined and I was back ‘here’.

It was over. It had taken 25 minutes and it was me again in this world with no echoes of the other that I had just travelled through. I wasn’t tired although I was quite affected by what had happened. We went for a walk outside and discussed our experiences. I knew that not only had I been somewhere real but that I had been there before. It was a different ‘place’ to the one we inhabit now but no less tangible. It might sound odd but the experience was totally authentic.

I read further and continued to process what had happened. My readings suggested that the next step was the full Ayahuasca journey or ceremony. Although many people had journeyed to Peru to seek Shamans and Ayahuasca where it was part of a long healing tradition and completely legal, it was also beginning to be established in the West as local people, some of whom had Shamanic training in Peru, began to set up their own local circles to explore the brew. It is a booming phenomenon globally with stories occurring regularly in mainstream media of people participating in Ayahuasca ceremonies all over the world.

Pablo Amaringo: Ayahuasca Ceremony.

This is an extremely important point with Ayahuasca: it is to be taken in ceremony with a Shaman or at least someone experienced in the ceremony to moderate and shape it. It is not a recreational drug – the ceremonial setting is implicit in the contact with the nature spirits and entities that many people experience and the issues that may arise in each person to be dealt with.

After a few months I made a connection. To experience an Ayahuasca ceremony you need to be invited to the circle, for obvious reasons of confidentiality. I spoke with someone who had been in ceremony locally and she recommended me to the facilitator. I received an email inviting me with some available dates, chose one and then was sent instructions as to what to avoid in my diet the week before the ceremony. I showed up at the address at the appointed time and the next stage of my research began.

The ceremony was carefully ordered, smoke from some herbs was ritually waved all around our bodies as we entered the temple room, invocations were made, songs sung, a sense of respect and anticipation pervaded the group. After some basic house keeping instructions we expressed our intentions aloud one by one and were called up to get our dose of the brown liquid. We had been warned that it is a foul tasting concoction but I found it quite palatable. I downed it in one swallow then back to my place in the circle, got comfortable and waited for something to happen. We were all directed to have our own experience and not interact with each other during the ceremony.

During the intention setting I had asked: “Who am I and what should I do with the rest of my life?” so I sat with that and meditated, focusing on my breathing.

After a while I forgot what I was doing, immersed in my breath and suddenly became aware that everything had changed. I was acutely aware of my consciousness and noticed colours and patterns swirling around the room, so I closed my eyes. Then there was a presence, an entity who was inside me and outside at the same time. We were in communication without words. She was immense and incredibly powerful but gentle at the same time. I could feel that she was conscious of me, we were in a place together. The intention that I had set sort of rose up, not in words but in awareness, if that makes any sense.

Who am I?  Immediately it was answered: You are my lover, remember? Memories clicked into place. I was indeed her lover. I had always been. I remembered and it was unbelievably wonderful to recollect.

What should I do with the rest of my life?

Love me. In everyone and every situation I will be there.

These words I am awkwardly attempting to recreate here were not really the communication – it was simply a oneness in which were we were exchanging ‘thoughts’ which weren’t thought. Questions arose in me, a series of things that welled up from inside were answered immediately with an understanding that seemed to come from an eternal place.

Time passed and a second cup of the brew was offered. Music, aromas, colours and sounds varied from intense to gentle. Beautiful songs were played that expressed the immensity that we were experiencing, throwing light on some of the things that occurred in the journey that I was undertaking.

Eventually, hours later things were returning to ‘normal’. The effect of the brew was wearing off and apart from fantastic colours, sounds and other visual effects that continued quietly for some hours, the ceremony was over. The circle was brought to a close and we left the temple for the main house where soup, bread and warmth awaited.

In the morning we shared our experiences. Many people had life changing realisations and made major break-throughs. Some had found it difficult or challenging, some just had a good time.

So what has this period of research into Ayahuasca and DMT shown me? Well, I am now definitely unafraid of dying. I am in no hurry to get there and won’t pretend that there isn’t some little apprehension, but it is minor. I feel a connection with the entity inside me in a real way – she is there all the time even though I may not be aware of her. She isn’t really a ‘she’ but an immense all-powerful divinity, sort of gender-neutral but manifesting as She, Mother Earth or Gaia much of the time. Known as La Madre — the Mother — by the Ayahuasca fraternity.

I know that I am, as the saying goes, ‘a spiritual being having a physical experience’. It will eventually end but something else will occur, of that I am certain. For this knowledge, obtained experientially rather than being taught intellectually, I am very grateful. Completing an Ayahuasca ceremony has been extremely positive and helpful in my personal development, but is certainly not to be taken lightly.

It’s not called ‘The Work’ for nothing.

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We’ve all being using Google for so long that it’s become a verb, ubiquitous. We so loved the search giant with its ‘don’t do evil’ motto that we didn’t really notice the changes that had crept into our search results: advertisements. And as seems to happen with even the best relationships, we now have to make decisions where before we just trusted.

There is a tendency in humans to leave well alone, as in ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. A homily that masks the reality that there is so much to deal with in modern life that being able to rely on something means one less item on the To Sort Out list (which is why I drive a Toyota). Google has for ages been happily off that list. Sure a few adverts crept into the top of our search queries but hey, we can deal with a few ads right? Been dealing with Nigerian spam for years even before the Russian hacker stuff showed up, we have history and experience on our side.

Then there was the beginning of privacy concerns with Street View in Google Maps where we were told that Google cars were routinely gathering any data they could from un-protected WiFi routers as they drove past. That didn’t seem so cool, particularly when they then had to be coerced by the courts into deleting said information. What did they want with the data anyway? But we let it slide, not enough to put them back on the To Sort Out list, which has plenty of more pressing items on it…until we reached our current situation where there are more ads than regular search results on our search page! Where the collection of private data from our search and browsing habits is the norm and not unusual at all in companies such as Microsoft and FaceBook as well as Google, and is in fact what you agree to when you click to Allow a bit of software to install our your internet device. That’s modern public arena ethics for you.

The problem arises because if advertising is how you generate your revenues then you have to move towards optimizing those revenues by always increasing advertising, which we search users don’t really like!

At this point there is a surprise. The other modern giant who has moved from cult computer company to The Biggest Mob in the World steps in. Apple’s policy is to collect no personal data, (this is of course apart from your iTunes account details allowing you to make purchases) a surprise from a huge company who aren’t exactly squeaky clean in other areas, like the working conditions for overseas workers for example.

And they don’t do search – or do they? Installed on all almost 1 billion Apple devices worldwide, both Mac computers and iOS devices like the iPhone or iPad, is Spotlight the built-in search software which has had embryonic internet search features added gradually over it’s last few iterations. Arriving imminently is a new operating system for computers and more importantly i-Devices, with greatly advanced Spotlight capabilities so that you won’t need to visit Google at all. Just a touch command to open Spotlight and you can search right from whatever you are doing on the device. Search with no ads and no data collection. So those of us with Apple devices can sidestep the issues with Google and still not have to add them to the To Sort Out list! Result. We also can rest easy knowing that as Apple doesn’t generate revenues from search results – and that isn’t about to change. The new iOS system will also allow ad-blockers to be installed in browsers like Safari for the first time. I sense a war a-brewing as Apple’s moves begin to eat into Google’s revenues.

The fast changing pace of tech companies shows no sign of letting up and can both drive change and perhaps cause their downfall as consumers move with the tides as well. Who could have foreseen Microsoft fall from its seemingly impenetrable status of a decade ago to being the also ran which it currently is in the internet area. Who would foresee Google tumbling from their great height? But perhaps this is what we are witnessing as this world of rapid changes throws up other surprises.

The difference with tech battles is that we are directly affected compared to more remote battles between say, big oil or finance companies. We are using these devices every day so we care and influence the battles outcomes.

Meanwhile if you want to make a change to your search while waiting for the dust to settle in the war of the big guys try DuckDuckGo duckduckgo who offer search with no data collection. They are an Open Source company who decided early in their life to offer Search with no personal tracking, no collection or sharing of your personal information. They’re a built-in search page option in Safari and Firefox, but not of course in Google Chrome!

Tom Hain’s business Mr. Mac is well known in the Northern Rivers: mrmacintosh.com.au

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