Blog Title: Question Technology

Tech-pontificator Kevin Kelly has a long piece in the NY Times magazine about screens. An excerpt:

When technology shifts, it bends the culture. Once, long ago, culture revolved around the spoken word. The oral skills of memorization, recitation and rhetoric instilled in societies a reverence for the past, the ambiguous, the ornate and the subjective. Then, about 500 years ago, orality was overthrown by technology. Gutenberg’s invention of metallic movable type elevated writing into a central position in the culture. By the means of cheap and perfect copies, text became the engine of change and the foundation of stability. From printing came journalism, science and the mathematics of libraries and law. The distribution-and-display device that we call printing instilled in society a reverence for precision (of black ink on white paper), an appreciation for linear logic (in a sentence), a passion for objectivity (of printed fact) and an allegiance to authority (via authors), whose truth was as fixed and final as a book. In the West, we became people of the book.

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I'm skeptical. One of the messages from Naomi Baron's book Always On was that, perhaps surprisingly, today's youth are likely reading and writing more text than their parents did. There are differences in how they use text (and some reasons for concern) but there's little doubt that they're still hooked into a kind of word culture. So I don't buy Kelly's idea here, unless he has some real evidence for it (and Kelly's style seems heavy on opinion and low on evidence).

Kelly has been posting many lengthy articles like this one to his blog recently, which has made me suspect that he has a book forthcoming, and indeed he does according to the blurb at the end of the NYT piece: "Kevin Kelly is senior maverick at Wired and the author of “Out of Control” and a coming book on what technology wants." What technology wants? Interesting...

One of those recent blog posts in particular caught my eye. It's called The Pro-Actionary Principle and in it he rejects the precautionary principle, or at least his interpretation of it, which looks a lot like a straw man to me. He argues instead for his own "pro-actionary principle" based on extropian/futurist Max More's earlier document by the same name. I think Kelly and More's project is flawed from the start because it is based on a faulty premise --  that the precautionary principle means "technology must be proven safe." Perfect proof is almost never possible and the intention is not to hold up progress until it is achieved. Governments that use the precautionary principle seem to understand this without any difficulty.

This is a good little rant by Joel Spolsky (of "Joel on Software" fame) about what he sees as a trend in current science books. He starts off by commenting on a review of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book...

I haven't read anything by Malcolm Gladwell, but I have read Jeffrey Kluger's Simplexity and I also found it disappointing for similar reasons. I expected Kluger to get around to explaining some actual theory or scientific work going on at Murray Gell-Mann's Santa Fe Institute, but Kluger never got beyond anecdotes and simplistic "storifying," if that's a word.

Update: After more thought, and after reading some comments on Joel's post and a good counterpoint by Dan Saffer, I feel like clarifying my opinion on this...  I think there is great value in pop science books, in articles written by non-experts, and in anecdotes. I read Joel's piece not as a rant against all those things but against those things badly done. Where you draw the line on that is probably a personal thing -- it depends on the reader. I was probably not the intended type of reader for Kluger's book (I think this is partially the fault of the publisher for marketing that book in the science category instead of business).

My point in quoting Joel's article here is not to bash non-experts or "soft" science writing. I think he's probably right that there are more and more "big think" books out there that are not very original or substantive.

Techno Tuesday is by Andy Rementer.

If you're in the San Francisco area you might want to check out this upcoming Synthetic Biology debate with Drew Endy and Jim Thomas. It takes place Monday November 17th and is sponsored by the Long Now foundation. Here is their description:

Bioengineer Drew Endy is the leading enabler of open-source biotechnology. Technology activist Jim Thomas is the leading critic of biotech, based with ETC Group in Ottawa.

"Synthetic Biology includes the broad redefinition and expansion of biotechnology, with the ultimate goals of being able to design and build engineered biological systems that process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials and structures, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health and our environment." -- Wikipedia.

Synthetic biology is swarming ahead all over the world, at a self-accelerating pace far greater than Moore's Law, with a range of impacts far greater than genetically engineered food crops. Jim Thomas raises the question: "Is Synthetic Biology reckless or wise from the perspective of 'the long now?'. I feel the synthetic biology community is driven by immensely short term assumptions and motivations, and as a result the medium term prospect for this platform holds both predictable problems and nasty surprises."

Drew Endy says: "Jim and I have somehow managed to establish a productive working relationship, and feel that there is now a once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop the cultural foundations needed to support long term and constructive discussions of the issues existing and emerging with biotechnology---safety, equity, security, community, and so on."

The point of Long Now debates is not win-lose. The point is public clarity and deep understanding, leading to action graced with nuance and built-in adaptivity, with long-term responsibility in mind.

Link: Synthetic Biology Debate (Long Now Seminars About Long-Term Thinking)

Audio and video of the talk will be available at the Long Now site after the event.

The ETC Group has a lot of good material about the issue on their site: ETC Group - Synthetic Biology.

If you're in or around Beacon, NY, check out Andy Rementer's upcoming show:

A classic Techno Tuesday strip by Andy:

The US is once again demonstrating its supremacy when it comes to screwing up elections (with technology). Kim Zetter at Wired's Threat Level blog is tracking problems with electronic voting machines in early voting. That blog is a good jumping-off point for lots of other coverage. Regarding touchscreens in particular I posted more at my other blog.

I found this article at the American Prospect by Sam Boyd to be very informative: What Are Those Squiggly Lines on CNN Telling You? He digs into the history of "dial-testing" and the criticisms of it.

Previously: Graphing the debates (live!)

Richard Dooling (whose new book is Rapture for the Geeks) has an op-ed in today's New York Times about computers and the financial crisis. Excerpt:

Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers, added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that all of that imaginary wealth is locked up somewhere inside the computers, and that we humans, led by the silverback males of the financial world, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, are frantically beseeching the monolith for answers. Or maybe we are lost in space, with Dave the astronaut pleading, “Open the bank vault doors, Hal.”

As the current financial crisis spreads (like a computer virus) on the earth’s nervous system (the Internet), it’s worth asking if we have somehow managed to colossally outsmart ourselves using computers. After all, the Wall Street titans loved swaps and derivatives because they were totally unregulated by humans. That left nobody but the machines in charge.

Link: The Rise of the Machines.

Dooling points to a related essay by science historian George Dyson at Edge: Economic dis-equilibrium.

Novelist Jonathan Franzen has a good essay in the current issue of Technology Review. It's a complaint about cellphones, though it meanders into personal memoir about 9/11 and his parents (kind of an odd article to see in Technology Review). It begins:

One of the great irritations of modern technology is that when some new development has made my life palpably worse and is continuing to find new and different ways to bedevil it, I'm still allowed to complain for only a year or two before the peddlers of coolness start telling me to get over it already Grampaw--this is just the way life is now.

I'm not opposed to technological developments. Digital voice mail and caller ID, which together destroyed the tyranny of the ringing telephone, seem to me two of the truly great inventions of the late 20th century. And how I love my BlackBerry, which lets me deal with lengthy, unwelcome e-mails in a few breathless telegraphic lines for which the recipient is nevertheless obliged to feel grateful, because I did it with my thumbs. And my noise-canceling headphones, on which I can blast frequency-shifted white noise ("pink noise") that drowns out even the most determined woofing of a neighbor's television set: I love them. And the whole wonderful world of DVD technology and high-definition screens, which have already spared me from so many sticky theater floors, so many rudely whispering cinema-goers, so many open-mouthed crunchers of popcorn: yes.

Link: "I Just Called to Say I Love You": Cellphones, sentimentality, and the decline of public space (free registration required)

Also in this issue, and also a little unusual, is a book review by Emily Gould of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and a new collection of Walter Benjamin writings, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. The gist of her article is: Shirky is a cheerleader, Walter Benjamin was a pessimist (and complicated). Link: "It's Not a Revolution if Nobody Loses": A new age of "technological reproducibility" is here. Ugh.

The picture at right is from a forthcoming Penguin Great Ideas edition of Benjamin's essay.

I just learned about Convergence 08, a two-day event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA featuring a bunch of futurists and other thinkers on technology. From their buzzword-heavy blurb:

The speaker list includes some heavyweight futurists/technologists like Paul Saffo, Aubrey de Grey and Peter Norvig, and at least one critic, Denise Caruso.

I'm not sure I get the idea of an "unconference" as the main event, though. I thought those were typically free, alternative forums that took place outside big conferences.

I apologize for going off-topic and getting all political but some things are more important than technology right now. And in this post I'm responding to another blog that's nominally related to technology and society: the Diagnosis blog at The New Atlantis. They don't have comments so I thought I'd rant here.

The New Atlantis publishes some good work occasionally, but at times they stray too far into (their right-wing) politics. In a post last week called Biden's Phony Health Care Argument, The New Atlantis's "health care policy expert" James Capretta tried to set the record straight on Joe Biden's statements about McCain's health insurance plan during the VP debate -- the plan where McCain wants to give you $5000 to go buy your own health insurance (actually $5000 for families, $2500 for individuals). Biden pointed out that employers are paying $12000 per person on average, leaving a $7000 gap for you to make up on your own.

Here is the first part of Capretta's argument:

Here’s how it would really work.

Suppose a worker gets $50,000 in cash wages and $12,000 in health insurance.

Right now, he pays federal income taxes on the wages but not the health insurance. Let’s assume, for reasons of simplicity, that the tax rate he is paying is a flat 25% on his wages. He therefore pays $12,500 in federal income taxes. His after-tax, after-health-care income is $37,500.

Now, under the McCain plan, his employer keeps paying the premium, which is now counted as income to the worker. He therefore pays federal income taxes on $62,000, or $15,500.

But he also gets a tax credit of $5,000 for health insurance, which means that, all in all, he owes $10,500 in federal taxes, or $2,000 less than he does today. His after-tax, after-health-care income is $39,500.

Ignore the fancy tax math -- it's irrelevant here. Capretta is figuring out the best case scenario -- you get the tax credit and your employer still pays for your insurance. That's not very likely, given how employers will have every reason to drop health insurance coverage once McCain sets them free.

What about the other case then? Capretta:

First off, I love the illusion of choice -- "if the worker decides" -- as if everyone will have that luxury. Second, he's assuming your employer will give you a $12000 raise! Is he serious?

That second sentence is quite a howler: "His employer is indifferent to how he pays his worker as long as total costs are the same." Ha! Employers are struggling to pay health insurance costs. They want this plan because it will offload their costs to others.

Capretta also deceives by ignoring the rising cost of health insurance. For many companies it's increasing by double digits every year, I believe. Will McCain's tax rebate keep pace? How about those fantasy raises?

I'm not sure if The New Atlantis is just repeating Republican talking points on this or if this is their original analysis. My guess is the former, given how McCain and others are saying that "if you do the math," his plan will benefit you. This is some kind of math... more like nonsense and deception.

I'm no health policy analyst and I confess I don't know all the details of either candidate's plan. Nor do I think Obama's plan goes far enough, but it's clearly the better choice. More than that -- it's the only choice that isn't insane.

In my fantasy world I envision a president Obama with an overpowering mandate to clean up the current messes and enact some truly rational, liberal, people-centered policies. One of which would be single-payer health care or something like it. I've been reading this new fantasy book: 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care (see also Physicians for a National Health Program). It's fantasy in the US, of course, but not in the rest of the civilized world.

This is from Lewis Lapham's preamble in the current issue of Lapham's Quarterly. The theme of the issue is Ways of Learning.

A new book about the singularity, this one by novelist Richard Dooling: Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ. From the publisher description:

Dooling has a website and blog.

My wife and I watched last Friday's presidential debate on PBS and I'm glad.  It was only later that I heard about the graphical extravaganza that I missed by not watching CNN:

(Image from WSJ's Numbers Guy blog by Carl Bialik: Scoring the Debate Live on CNN.)

This screenshot is the HD version.  I gather that non-HD viewers saw the bottom part but not the analyst scorecards on the sides.  The "audience reaction" lines along the bottom represents data from 32 focus group viewers.

Carl Bialik at the WSJ compares it to a sporting match and says he and friends "were alternately distracted, bemused and befuddled by all the data."  But apparently CNN didn't think it was distracting enough -- regarding the audience lines, Bialik says, "The audience rarely went sharply positive or negative, so he [CNN's executive producer for elections] plans to zoom in on the center of the scale."  So basically the idea is not to indicate any kind of accurate measure. They just want to show pretty lines going up and down.

The CNN graph is a distraction, of course, and yet another manifestation of the triumph of surface/sensationalist crap over reflection and substance, but it's more than that too.  People's perceptions will be shaped by it, both directly, in the sense that the scores guide them in their thinking, and indirectly by what they cause people to miss by not paying closer attention to the candidates.  Can CNN not leave the viewers alone for 90 minutes to think for themselves?

I was surprised to learn via Google that real-time polling data was presented during debates way back in 1992. This article at a site called the Museum for Broadcast Communications claims that the experiment was a success: The Debate Pulse.

Silicon valley techies have a way of taking this sort of thing to a new level, and they didn't disappoint.  Via Valleywag comes this plot of Twitter activity during the debate, created by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone (see The Debate: A Twitter Play-by-Play). Feast your eyes on this colorful monstrosity:

(click to enlarge)

I challenge anyone to point to something meaningful in that mess.  Okay, lots of purple means lots of people twittered about Iraq after McCain said something provocative about Iraq.  Big surprise!

Twitter even has an election site where you can watch live election-related brain farts as they arrive from the quick fingers of the Twitterati: Twitter Election 2008.  I get that people chat about the debate, online and off, but I object to the suggestion that any of this real-time data is meaningful.  I likely muttered a few things during the debate myself, but I'm sure none of it was worth remembering.