At this point, most of my work is going into the monster mind-map (java); otherwise, I really enjoyed working on two of the papers below:
For next semester, honestly, I'm having trouble finding relevant courses so I expect to be focusing in independent study courses delving into the history of encyclopedias and trying to hack away at my growing reading list.
When I watch shows like Ghosthunters, I'm struck by how enamored they are of their infrared cameras and digital recorders. Firenze has an interesting article on how the medium of photography was similarly, originally, receieved.
Paul Firenze Spirit photography: how early spiritualists tried to save religion by using science j=Skeptic v=11 n=2 y=2004 pp=70-78 r=20041214
An interesting review of how early spiritualists and scientists alike viewed the new technology of the camera to objectively capture the supernatural
77 [Alfred Russel Wallace's] most important argument was "the fact that phantasms, whether visible or invisible to persons present, can be and have been photographed." He rested his case for the truth of the apparitions by arguing that one cannot dispute "the test of objectivity afforded by the photographic camera in the hands of experts and physicists of the first rank, rendering any escape from the conclusion simply impossible."
77 Nathaniel Hawthorne objected to these practices of capturing the supernatural: "if these phenomenon have not humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate in a spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point than it has ever before reached while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings whom death, in requital of their gross and evil lives, has degraded below humanity! To hold intercourse with spirits of this order is to stoop and grovel in some element more vile than earthly dust.
I wonder if there is any literature on how conventions such as "calling it," double-dares, eany-meany-miny-moe and such have evolved? These are "games" that are used to facilitate decision-making and arbitrate disputes in childhood culture. Are such practices a training ground for adult interdependent decision-making? Do they capture or even inform adult notions of fairness and efficacy? For how long do people persist in using these practices? And, finally, where do they come from? I expect such conventions could have a very long history -- over the centuries.
One of the benefits of open source software is that I can ask questions and report bugs and receive a timely response. Last night, I sent a question to a software developer about his package; this morning, he noted that I had confused his package with another, but was able to help me nonetheless!
I seemingly spend a lot of time running web pages on my local file system through lynx for the textual information, and then cutting-and-pasting it into an email message. The following function will add the text dump of an html file to the KDE clipboard automatically.
function lyd { dcop klipper klipper setClipboardContents "`lynx
-dump $@`" ; }
Upgrading my pyblosxom install can be a bit tricky:
Generate an empty file: `echo >> date_head.html`
"2004-05-28 13:55:35,982 INFO Couldn't open latest comment pickle for writing"
but it's now logged and doesn't throw an exception.
Another semester's work out of the way.
This small script [mbx-pp.py] will take the plain-text portions of messages in a Unix mailbox and turn them into a pretty HTML document.
When reading various scholars attempts to engage with the difficult subject of technological determinism, I've collected the following analytical variables with which they contend. I've also attempted to integrate them into a metaphor of a man trying to move a large stone.
In one of my classes, our discussion tends to get confused as to the meaning of an interest versus a value. My own understanding is very much influenced by the book Getting to Yes: from the point of view of negotiation one should disclose one's interests instead of insisting upon a position. For example, two boys might fight in a schoolyard over the possession of an orange. The one boy's interest is to eat the fruit, the other boy's interest is the use the skin in a science experiment. They have taken incompatible positions, though their interests are not so.
Extending this framework to include values I would offer the following. Values are the beliefs or assumptions one has about the world that informs one's actions. Interests are the values instantiated in a particular context for a particular agent. Positions are then the stances an agent takes in fulfilling its interests. The agent might be a person or a community; the values may be latent/hidden or in conflict with one another; the interests are dependent upon the context and the agents understanding of that context; and there maybe more than one position that satisfies one's interest, and this too can be confused and muddled.
C. Edwin's Baker Media, Makerts, and Democracy is a wonderful book for considering the pro/anti regulatory positions on media policy. What I find refreshing is that it debunks the overly simplified market/libertarian arguments usually presented in a economic/instrumentalized fashion with straight forward economic arguments that anyone can understand. (I would very much like to see this text reviewed by free-market proponents though I can find very little comments on the Web perhaps indicating it does not yet have a wide audience.)
While I was reading the book I was placing what I was learning in the context of examples about the Internet and blogs. So, the fact that he provides a postscript on Internet and digital technologies was an extra bonus! In particular, he addresses the question of whether voluntary content creation on the behalf of digital music, video, or journalistic production is significant:
"The new technologies expand the universe of people offering information, opinion, and other communicative contents to strangers. They may empower "volunteers ," unpaid individuals who construct Web pages and create content solely out of a desire to create, report, and communicate, whether for personal expressive, political, charitable, or more nearly self-interested reasons.... nevertheless, to the extent these volunteers with pages or postings are no more read than were the earlier leaflets when distributed on street corners, the fact that they now can self-published makes less difference than they often naively hope" (Baker 286).
He identifies four ways in which these new tools can change what consumers and citizens receive: digital technologies reduced the cost of copying and delivering content; they can reduce the difficulty of finding materials; they can reduce the costs of media producers in assembly and synthesizing inputs; and digital technologies can reduce the bottlenecks and gatekeepers related to distribution. Yet, as he showed in earlier chapters there are economic scenarios in which more content can displace less but better content, "Many people would experience a net loss if they deemed access to hundreds of randomly selected street corner speakers (or the speakers with pages) but lost access to the York Times" (289). He also asks the much-discussed question of whether the cost of investigative journalism can be born by volunteers; this is yet to be seen. Furthermore, citing Sunstein's evidence (Republic.com) he notes that when people discuss an issue with those of a like mind there positions become more extreme; this can lead to a segmentation and radicalization of the public. Baker also notes that even with much content, the concentration of "hits" will fall on a limited number of sites (preferential attachment). And one of the more interesting results of his analysis is that content itself can become more generic even though there are more outlets: "If the only way to write a letter is by hand, the norm would be individualized letters. But if copy costs are negligible, the temptation increases to send the same letter to multiple "friends" (292). This tendency was what led me to start one of my own blogs: instead of sending many personal emails to my family and friends while traveling I began to create one report and then slightly customize it, eventually I abandoned even this and instead created travel scenes and blog entries.
A worthwhile book.
C. Edwin Baker. Media, Markets, and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
I found it interesting — and amusing — that the rhetoric of the RIAA has shifted towards arguing that P2P systems are competing with legal services; this ahistoric rendering forgets that the music industrutry would've never offered music services without the appearence of systems like the original Napster!
Legal music sites "shouldn't have to compete with businesses based on illegal downloading," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "That's why we are sending a clear message that downloading or 'sharing' music from a peer-to-peer network without authorization is illegal, it can have consequences and it undermines the creative future of music itself."
If you need further evidence as to why using a Social Security Number (SSN) for identification is a bad idea consider this new story from real life. AppleBank recently launched its on-line banking service. In order to sign up for the on-line service I have to provide my SSN and telephone pin number. While I thought my pin number might be the last four digits of my SSN, I didn't even bother trying it: "That would be insanely insecure. I'll call during business hours and figure it out."
I've just got off the phone and I was - sadly - right, the only thing you need to access an AppleBank on-line account that has not yet been activated is the person's SSN! When I said this to the customer service representative she responded, "That's the way it's set up." I'm just glad I changed my password before someone less scrupulous figures this out: god help you if you are a NYU student with an AppleBank account.
I recently re-discovered Sam Ruby's automatic trackback scipt for pyblosxom entries and made some tweaks for my own purposes:
Unfortunately, I noted — too late — that an autoping.py also comes with pyblosxom, which includes some of Wari's tweaks for caching, so that's three variants! Oh well, perhaps someone will have some time to re-factor the best of each.
The theory of evolution is used to describe (or even generate) characteristics within some population based on three processes:
Consequently, the operation of these three processes can be used to describe the development of organisms and their characteristics.
For example, within a population of birds a characteristic of a single bird raising the alarm upon seeing a hawk can be described as follows: a community of birds with that characteristic will likely be more successful in a predatory environment than those without — even if it disadvantages the particular bird that does the warning! Note, that this "inclusive fitness" says nothing about the altruism or will of the bird, or even the desire of genes. While the term "selfish gene" or koan-like statements such as, "the chicken is merely a way for an egg to create more eggs," are useful as a rhetorical device to focus on the salience of the gene, it is inappropriate with respect to the theory. Once the point is made, an evolutionist warns that it is incorrect to associate genes with a desire of their own. It is merely a descriptive/generative theory for why certain organisms/characteristics emerge.
Richard Dawkins, a supporter of the theory above, was challenged as to whether he could identify any domain other than biology in which these three process operated; he responded with the theory of memes in the concluding chapter of his book The Selfish Gene. In memetics one can ask why a particular idea (a variation) is common within the population of ideas, and does it have any particular characteristics that favor its reproduction or selection within that environment? For example, one might identify chain letters within a population of postal mail. (See Chain Letters and Evolutionary Histories.) What can explain the appearance of this phenomena, what is the relationship of those characteristics to an environment such that they are reproduced or selected? A chain letter tends to be reproduced because it demands that you reproduce it; when you do reproduce it you are asked to send it to multiple recipients who do the same (a geometric growth rate); and it promises favors or threatens catastrophes. All good reasons to find that within a particular environment chain letters are common. Consequently, a theory of memes can be useful in identifying ideas, or even the boundaries of a collection of sympathetic ideas, and their characteristics that permit them to perpetuate within a cultural environment. Dawkins had proposed some interesting analytical variables for memes including copying-fidelity, fecundity (rate of reproduction), and longevity. However, these can be difficult variables to use, just as they are for genes. For example, when exactly can we say that a new species has appeared? Or when is an offshoot of a religion, no longer that religion?
Lago notes that academia is ruining the Internet for him: upon reading an interesting blog entry, his reflex is to respond with a bibliography of all the relevant readings that should have been done before the entry was posted. I've noted a similar character in my present academic training, and it grates upon me. One of my most frequent complaints takes the form of asking, "where's the white-board?" In most of my previous experiences a knowledge of the literature was very useful. However, at some point we would gather around a white board, define our terms, sketch a model, and thrash out a design or understanding that we were happy with. In the social sciences, it seems, one cannot even think without first burying one's self under a century of literature.
A problem characteristic of the engineering field is the "not invented here" syndrome: engineers are likely to resort to their own designs without first consulting the field. Yet, I find myself wishing I had that sort of problem again as I feel myself growing trapped in a morass of unimaginative citation.
I've noted that a common source of disagreement and even exit within open source communities is the handling of software bugs. In my experiences in the open standards communities the ways in which issues are represented with respect to their standing of consensus or dissension is affected by the processes, culture, and media of discourse (e.g. bugzilla, IRC, e-mail, Wiki, etc.).
Consequently, I'm interested in the extent to which communications media, issue tracking and bug tracking software reflect cultural values of how a community should come to agreement, or even to productively disagree. For example, culturally, can a developer close a bug report simply because he does not think it is of a priority? Technically, does the software permit the developer to specify an appropriate status for an issue, or reassign it to a more appropriate owner?
Can you point me to examples of disputes arising over the categorization or responsibility of bugs? The implementation of new tools, categories, or processes that are hoped to mitigate such problems? If so, please let me know!
In a values in technology class we are reading The Ruination of the Tomato. The class discussion is lamenting the sorry state of the modern tomato, and I responded as such:
You don't *have* to buy those tomatoes: you can buy "on the vine" tomatoes for $3.99/lb, the cruddy "red" ones cost $0.99/lb that's a fourth of the price! So how do you keep discussions like we're going to be having from slipping into "oh, this is so terrible, everything should be like X", where X is your preference or childhood memory? Can we do more?
Which brings me to my theory of selecting cherry/grape tomatoes: I believe much of the taste in a tomatoe is in its skin, consequently smaller tomatoes have a higher surface area to volume.
Kramer, Mark. "The Ruination of the Tomato" In Controlling Technology: Contemporary Issues, W.B. Thompson (eds.) Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991, 131-141
While I was home for the holidays, I read a book of my brother received for the holidays: What Should I Do With My Life by Po Bronson. A great book for those -- and this includes nearly everyone I know -- who confronts the big question of what to do with your life, some notes:
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