Friday, May 24, 2002

Through the Magic of the net I found another conference that looks like a winner.  Pop!tech I gotta admit, I go to conferences less and less for who's on stage, but rather what is going on in the audience. Last year at Pop!Tech the speakers were extraordinary. The kinds of folks you usually don't get to have dinner with at Jing Jings. The Maine Governor. The guy who invented Ethernet. The president of the ACLU. You know, THOSE kind of people. But, the audience was even better. I met a school teacher who'd been to both the North and South Pole. WTF? Can you imagine having a teacher like that? Her eyes were alive. She was 80 something. I met people who've invested in products I love -- the main investor in ICQ was there, among others. I had dinner with journalists from the Christian Science Monitor, the San Jose Mercury News, and CBS's News*Bytes, among other notable news organizations. My friend Buzz was there and we started a friendship that I'm sure will last the rest of our lives. (Buzz is CEO of ActiveWords and a lawyer -- ActiveWords has changed my life because now I can make the keyboard do even more stuff like open apps, or answer emails). But, how do we share that "conference outside the conference" experience? I can't weblog that kind of stuff effectively (I don't eat dinner with my laptop). That'd be like me trying to explain the experience of drinking this glass of Merlot that's right next to me waiting to be consumed. At Pop!Tech this year we'll have a wireless network. That's a given. We'll have power strips. That's a given. We'll have streaming video and audio of all the sessions. That's a given. But, how do I involve the Webloggers in the whole experience of the conference? Of eating Lobster with folks like Dan Gillmor or John Perry Barlow? Of going to a party in an expensive house that looks like it's out of Sunset magazine and meeting the guy who owns the sailing record for going around the world the fastest? I can't. The conference changed my life. It redirected me. It put me in touch with people who continue to change my life. Anyway, I'm rambling. Time to go to dinner. More later. [Scobleizer Radio Weblog] 1:46:07 AM     Wired News is carrying an interesting story about hybrid investigations into the nature of time.  Anybody Really Know What Time Is? I found the web site for the conference and can only hope that they post some of the content. 1:43:43 AM     James Burke changed my life with his special The Day the Universe Changed which aired on PBS in the mid-1980s.  Up to that point I had mildly assumed that I would grow up to be a scientist or an astronomer but all of that was overturned during the course of that series.  It changed my whole perspective on the way the world works and primed me for the paradigm shifting ideas of Thomas Kuhn and others who have made the point that our worldview changes over time and cannot be said to lock into any bedrock truth.  Basically this was the beginning of my postmodern education. So I went off to college and studied English and philosophy and then ended up working in technology, c'est la vie.  What I learned in college deepened my knowledge and confirmed my ideas about relativism.  I think I've developed a nuanced conception of relativism that acknowledges difference and similarity at the same time.  Donald Davidson is particularly interesting on this point, especially the essay "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme."  He makes the point that to even begin to have a conversation with someone is to have an immense amount of shared knowledge or shared conceptions.  Thus the idea of a pure conceptual relativism is called into question.  (Thanks Professor Rovane) So I'm happy to hear about Burke's latest project to build a multimedia Knowledge Web that takes his ideas from the TV series Connections and the books like The Pinball Effect and puts it all online.  If I get the time I might even become a volunteer. 1:37:42 AM     Here's an interesting thread from Kuro5shin on the already ubiquitous nature of technology that acknowledges the fact that we are already cyborgs just by virtue of the many technological enhancements to ourselves that we use everyday, e.g. eyeglasses, drugs.  Admittedly this may stretch the definition of cyborg a bit but the realization that our tools affect the way we live and interact with the world needs to be remembered. Cyborg Salvation I: Man-With-Tools. I have noticed that lately I react to cyborg ideas with a bit of "bah-humbug".   While many of us would love to embrace technology more closely, bring it onboard the body-tissue-bus, I have become discouraged with the medical difficulty of normal existence.  We don't have a good handle on immune system control.  Grafting-in electro-mechanical devices won't make this easier.  And even if medical sciences do succeed in making microprocessor implants as common as cosmetic surgery, will the change in existence really qualify as an evolutionary step? But, while thinking about my "bah-humbug" attitude about cyborg mythology, I realized I nearly am one, or at least I may think/behave like a cyborg.  I seem to be dependant on my artificial appendages. [kuro5hin.org] 1:19:48 AM     I followed this link and found an interesting story about weblogs but found an even more interesting connection to another online community that needs more investigation: GAZM.   Kuro5shin is already one of my favorite community sites and in most cases easier to read than Slashdot. Paul Andrews: News by the People, for the People.  [Scripting News] 1:06:31 AM     Found this at BoingBoing and since LeGuin is one of my favorite writers I figure it needs more publicity.  There is also an entire web site with the complete history and all the briefs on the Eldred case.  This kind of stuff almost makes me want to be a lawyer (yikes!) LeGuin's Eldred brief This is a PDF of the National Writer's Union (et al)'s amicus brief on the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, to roll back the Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998. It's brilliant -- and Ursula K. LeGuin is a co-signatory! Link 12:54:37 AM     Not much to add here.  Read the report and support the EFF. Just a few days ago I had the vision of a future world in which you needed to pay a continuous license to see the backgrounds of your digital pictures.  Reading this it is not hard to imagine a time when you will need to pay the postcard publishers for the right to include images of the Grand Canyon, the White House, Disney World, (insert any tourist destination here) for their permission to put the backgrounds back into your family snapshots.  The politics behind all of this appears to be building to a boil.  We have to make sure that the digital codes don't usurp the process by closing off our options before the discussion even begins. Digital Content Smackdown. "In Hollywood Wants to Plug the 'Analog Hole', Cory Doctorow reveals key points of the 'Content Protection Status Report' filed with the Senate Judiciay Committee by the MPAA — a document that lays out the Evil Empire's Internet-destruction plans, which involve turning humble ADCs (Analog/Digital Converters) into content permission valves that would govern approximately the full range of 'content' use: 'Under its proposal, every ADC will be controlled by a "cop-chip" that will shut it down if it is asked to assist in converting copyrighted material — your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo. The report shows that this ADC regulation is part of a larger agenda. The first piece of that agenda, a mandate that would give Hollywood a veto over digital television technology, is weeks away from coming to fruition. Hollywood also proposes a radical redesign of the Internet to assist in controlling the distribution of copyrighted works. This three-part agenda -- controlling digital media devices, controlling analog converters, controlling the Internet -- is a frightening peek at Hollywood's vision of the future.' You know what to do. If you don't, read Cory's report." [Doc Searls Weblog] Be an informed consumer. Read up on this stuff. Make your voice heard. Librarians especially need to consider how destructive such a future would be on our ability to circulate digital content (as in, we won't be able to). [The Shifted Librarian] 12:50:09 AM     Stanford links genius and manic depression...I feel SO much better now... (via FARK) [MetaFilter] The link between genius and depression is becoming more and more of a scientific fact, at least based on the limited reading I've done.  The most interesting book I read on the subject was Eccentrics by David Weeks.  Weeks studied a group of eccentrics in England and found them to be healthier and happier than "normal" people.  Now is that an artifact of the English cultural tolerance for eccentricity or an actual fact.  Hmm..the world is full of research possibilities. from an interview on PBS DAVID GERGEN: What I found interesting about your book was not only fun, of course, but the fact that you studied about a thousand eccentrics, mostly in Great Britain and here in the United States, and, and then tried to determine what characteristics they had. It was interesting what characteristics you came up with. DAVID WEEKS: Yes. They're permanently non-conforming from a very early age, and there's a great overlap between eccentric children and gifted children. They develop differently, though. The eccentrics become very, very creative but they're motivated primarily by curiosity. They have extreme degrees of curiosity, and they're very independent-minded. Their other motivation is fairly idealistic. They want to make the world a better place, and they want to make other people happy. They have these happy obsessive preoccupations, and a wonderful, unusual sense of humor, and this gives them a significant meaning in life. And they are far healthier than most people because of that. They have very low stress. They're not worried about conforming to the rest of society, low stress, high happiness equates with psychological health. They use their solitude very constructively, and physical health, because of that. They only visit their doctors perhaps once every eight or nine years, which is about twenty times less than most of us do. 12:40:11 AM     I love stuff like this.  Break the cliches. Apples and Oranges: The Final Comparison "The apples and oranges ploy is ubiquitous.... Indeed, there is an apples and oranges pandemic. Last year, the term was cited in the media 2,876 times, according to a Nexis search. The good news is that this is down from the year 2000, when journalists and their sources used apples and oranges an unprecedented 3,220 times, or nearly nine times a day. The bad news is that it's the first time the use of the term has dropped since it was first cited in Nexis in 1975. That year, apples versus oranges was found only three times—first and most notably in the Feb. 3, 1975, in Business Week. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon was being grilled on domestic oil price hikes versus OPEC oil prices. He told a reporter, 'I think you're comparing apples with oranges.' It was used then as it is today: as a stopper. Apples/oranges doesn't advance one's own position; it puts a cork in someone else's. The person who uses it doesn't want to make a comparison, so they simply discount the validity of one. They're saying, 'It's not fair to make that comparison" and they probably think that too. What they mean is, "I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with what that comparison tells me about the situation.' It establishes authority on an issue with zero accountability. It ducks the question and serves as the last word. It is a genius cop-out....  [Darwin Magazine] [The Shifted Librarian] 12:28:34 AM     This website reminds me of some of the great books written by John Paulos on Innumercy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.  Math innumeracy is a stunning problem in America and the more we can all learn about numbers and statistics the better we will be able to judge the events of the day. How to Feel Insignificantly Small..... "A View from the Back of the Envelope 'These pages are about approximation, and some of the fun it enables.' Examples, exercises, and links to help you grasp concepts of magnitude and scale, such as large and small numbers, the size of the world, and expressions of length, area, volume, and speed. There are sections on simplifying numbers, exponential notation, Fermi problems, using your body as a ruler, and other ways to help visualize size and scale. http://www.vendian.org/envelope/ Subjects: Mensuration | Dimensions | Size judgment | Approximation theory | Cosmology Category: Specific Resources Created by: mg on May 19, 2002 - updated May 23, 2002 | Comment On This Record" [Librarians' Index to the Internet] Indexed, cataloged records in online directories don't get any better than this. Great resource, too! [The Shifted Librarian] 12:10:35 AM     I used to work at Barnes and Noble and was always a bit discusted with the marketing people being in bed with the publishers.  As my tenure continued we received more and more merchandising recommendations from the head office: the table displays, the endcaps (end of aisle displays for those who never worked retail), the book dumps (the cardboard displays that come direct from the publisher), and the Discover new writers program.  All of these were gradually being controlled by the central marketing department and by extension the publishers.  The publishers never give the chains direct kickbacks but they have tons of schemes for increasing the discounts big buyers receive. The American Bookseller Association took some of the publishers to court on behalf of independent booksellers.  I left B&N in 1997 and haven't really monitored the trade since then but the story below makes me think things haven't improved. As a final note I believe the net impact of the book chains has been positive by bringing more books to more people than before.  I remember trying to find interesitng books at B. Dalton mall stores during the 80s and finding nothing but schlock, especially the philosophy sections which were usually 4 shelves of new age dreck to one shelf of western phil.  Nowadays I still buy books at the chains but I try to do it less often than I buy books from independent booksellers like Ruminator Books or Dreamhaven. The Wolf Is Inventorying the Sheep. "Borders to Let Publishers Pay to Manage Its Categories "Publisher's Weekly Daily earlier this week reported that 'Borders will divide its book inventory into 250 categories and invite publishers to co-manage, or 'captain' the category. The captain will 'influence' Borders' buying decisions, including which titles, the number to be bought, and how the books get displayed, though Borders retains right of final decision. For the privilege of being 'captains,' publishers chosen as category managers will pay $110,000 annually and $5,000 per employee to be trained by Borders in how the system works. So far, HarperCollins will captain Borders' cookbook and romance sections, and Random House will co-manage the early readers category.' " Source: DOROTHY-L listserv" [h2Oboro lib blog] This is just sooooooooo wrong. Borders nosedives in my estimation. [The Shifted Librarian] 12:01:49 AM

© Copyright 2002 Todd Suomela. Last update: 6/5/2002; 1:55:58 AM.