Social Mode

Ron Currie Jr delivers a really fun, clever read in Everything Matters! The book cover sells the book as more of comedy than than the sci fi/philosophy/absurdist mystery it is. The essential question of the book – does anything we do matter?

The premise is set up with the unavoidable apocalypse that only the main character, Junior, knows about. He has always known when humanity will end. The book covers how Junior navigates life – from birth to the apocalypse – knowing that it will all be over and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. In the end, Junior is left with a choice… hide his knowledge from everyone and live with this lonely knowledge or reveal his secret and suffer a different set consequences.

Currie uses a variety of viewpoints and literary devices to give the story context and arc. I particularly liked the subtle countdown, sort of a reverse page numbering used when the omniscient narrator/being giving Junior his knowledge talks. It leaves you with a sense of “uh oh” i know this is going to end… which is part of the point of the story. We know the ending and we know exactly when it ends and the countdown gives the reader the sense of just how far we’ll get into the characters lives before it all ends… and the dread was real for me.

The prose moves your brain right along. Reading it in one longish sitting is possible and fun. Currie develops the main character reasonably well. The secondary characters aren’t always developed much further than some basic behavior patterns. The book does move along a large time horizon though – making character vignettes rather difficult.

Generally a good reading experience… so…. do we get anywhere with the big question: does it all matter?

No. I didn’t. And I didn’t expect to. Does it all matter is a personal question. I presume the answers I get from this book are the personal perspectives of the author. Ultimately it is an optimistic view that family, love, connection matters – even at the expense of intellectual honesty. Ah, isn’t that a secondary big question?! Is it “better” to keep certain facades intact to make life bearable/enjoyable versus really chasing and embracing truth, no matter its ugly consequences?

Everything Matters Review

–––––––

Jul 14
There’s a great deal of confusion about what is meant by the concept “computational knowledge.”

Stephen Wolfram put out a nice blog post on the question for computable knowledge. In the beginning he loosely defines the concept:

So what do I mean by “computable knowledge”? There’s pure knowledge—in a sense just facts we know. And then there’s computable knowledge. Things we can work out—compute—somehow. Somehow we have to organize—systematize—knowledge to the point that we can build on it—compute from it. And we have to know methods and models for the world that let us do that computation.

Knowledge

Trying to define it any more rigorously than above is somewhat dubious. Let’s dissect the concept a bit to see why. Here we’ll discuss knowledge without getting too philosophical. Knowledge is concepts we have found to be true and that we somewhat understand the context, use and function – facts, “laws” of nature, physical constants. Just recording those facts without understanding context, use, and function would be pretty worthless – a bit like listening to a language you’ve never heard before. It’s essentially just data.

In that frame of reference, not everything is “knowledge” much less computational knowledge. How to define what is and isn’t knowledge… well, it’s contextual in many cases and gets into a far bigger discussion of epistemology and all that jive. A good discussion to have, for sure, but will muddy this one.

Computation

What I suspect is more challenging for folks is the idea of “computational” knowledge. That’s knowledge we can work out – generate, in a sense, from other things we already know or assume (pure knowledge – axioms, physical constants…). Computation is a very broad concept that refers to far more than “computer” programs. Plants, People, Planets, the Universe computes – all these things take information in (input) one form (energy, matter) and converts it to other forms (output). And yes, calculators and computers compute… and those objects are made from things (silicon, copper, plastic…) that you don’t normally think of as “computational”… but when configured appropriately they make a “computer”. Now to get things to compute particular things they need instructions – (we need to systemitize… or program it). Sometimes these programs are open ended (or appear to be!). Sometimes they are very specific and closed. Again, here don’t think of a program as something written in Java. DNA is an instruction set, so are various other chemical structures, and arithmetic, and employee handbooks… basically anything that can tell something else how to use/do something with input. Some programs, like DNA, can generate themselves. these are very useful programs. The point is… you transform input to some output. That’s computation put in a very basic, non technical way. It becomes knowledge when the output has an understandable context, use and function.

Categorizing what is computational knowledge and what is not can be a tricky task. Yet for a big chunk of knowledge it’s very clear.

Implications and Uses

The follow on question once this is grokked — What’s computational knowledge good for?

The value end result, the computed knowledge, is determined by its use. However, the method of computing knowledge is valuable because in many cases it is much more efficient (faster and cheaper) than waiting around for the “discovery” of the knowledge by other methods. For example, you can run through millions of structure designs using formal computational methods very quickly versus trying to architect / design / test those structures by more traditional means. The same could be said for computing rewarding financial portfolios, AdWords campaigns, optimal restaurant locations, logo designs and so on. Also, computational generation of knowledge sometimes surfaces knowledge that may otherwise never have been found with other methods (many drugs are now designed computationally, for example).

Web Search

These concepts and methods have implications in a variety of disciplines. The first major one is the idea of “web search”. The continuing challenge of web search is making sense of the corpus of web pages, data snippets and streams of info put out every day. A typical search engine must hunt through this VERY BIG corpus to answer a query. This is an extremely efficient method for many search tasks – especially when the fidelity of the answer is not such a big deal. It’s a less efficient method when the search is really a very small needle in a big haystack and/or when precision and accuracy are imperative to the overall task. Side note: Web search may not have been designed with that in mind… however, users come more and more to expect a web search to really answer a query – often users mistake the fact that it is the landing page, the page that was indexed that is doing the answering of a query. Computational Knowledge can very quickly compute answers to very detailed queries. A web search completely breaks down when the user query is about something never before published to the web. There are more of these queries than you might think! In fact, an infinite number of them!

Experimentation

Another important implication is that computational knowledge is a method for experimentation and research. Because it is generative activity one can unearth new patterns, new laws, new relationships, new questions, new views…. This is a very big deal. (not that this has been possible before now… of course, computation and knowledge are not new! the universe has been doing it for ~14 billion years. now we coherent and tangible systems to make it easier and more useful to use formal computation for more and more tasks).

P.S.

There are a great many challenges, unsolved issues and potentially negative aspects of computational knowledge. Formal computation systems by no means are the most efficient, most elegant, most fun ways to do some things. My FAVORITE example and what I want to propose one day as the evolution of the Turing Test is HUMOR. Computers and formal computation suck at humor. And I do believe that humor can be generated formally. It’s just really really really hard to figure this out. So for now, it’s still just easier and more efficient to get a laugh by hitting a wiffle-ball at your dad and putting it on YouTube.

What is Computational Knowledge and What Are The Implications

–––––––

Jul 9
Read a great piece today (which I found on Slashdot…) on the state of violence in video games. It’s remarkable in that it’s author is a life long gamer (like myself) and he starts to drop some value anchors.

If we come to that, should it be illegal to simulate player imposed suffering of photorealistic humans in video games? If so, where do we draw the line with regards to realism? For example, BioShock is “OK” now, but how much more realistic will the virtual human’s appearance and behavior have to get before virtual murder is considered genuinely and irreversibly harmful for the player?

Will it matter if it’s done “by hand and knife” in a holodeck-style brain-machine interface, or if it’s executed through a 10-button game controller? Will it matter if it’s a quick death or a slow, drawn-out one? Will it matter if the human-killing enacted by the player fits the legal definition of murder or if it is done in self-defense?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know that they won’t come easy, especially if the game industry fights back against government regulation. As we grow ever closer to 100% graphical and situational realism in games, hopefully game publishers will decline to encourage the stunningly accurate simulation of gratuitous human suffering.

My concern is not that these violent simulations described will happen; they probably will at some point. I’m concerned that we as an audience will continue to consider gratuitous virtual murder a form of mainstream entertainment. The kind of violence I’m describing should be relegated to the bottom, back-corner shelf of any game store — not by law or punishment, but by consumer demand.

This is a great debate to engage in now! We can define the values and shape our behavior. If we don’t actively define them, it will still passively happen and we may end up having to unlearn a bunch of values. And, as Mr. Edwards points out, we just don’t know how that will turn out. At some point the realism of the games and the idea that you are controlling something virtual will erode and we’ll have real trouble telling the difference between what is real world behavior and what is virtual. When and what that looks like we just can’t say. We already have real legal and social issues regarding what happens on social networks – and those are not realistic and/or even close to as full person engaging as modern games.

I’ll give you one my own experiences… and for those that have played a first person shooter on the PC or X Box live know just how insanely over the top scary the live voice chatter between people can get. When I was actively playing Halo 3 you would hear multiple times a session about how other players want to ass-rape, gang bang, whack and kill those fags/mutherfuckers and their mothers. This language and threats would be made whether there was a 10 year old on the other end or a bunch of adults. I’m not using made up language here. One time I let the audio escape out of speakers instead of my headset and it kinda freaked my wife out. “People really talk like that on there?” Yes. Yes they do.

Do I think that language itself means someone will go out and do those things? no. Do I think repeated exposure and reinforcement that associates that langauge and winning and “earning buddies or friends” starts to seep into non-gaming behavior? Absolutely.

I now report all language like that. I don’t know if XBox or Microsoft aggressively pursues it. I hope so. One time I even tried to track down someone I thought crossed the line with another player. This is an impossible task.

My thinking on this is related to other conversations about the impact of news media on events and the slippery evading authorities behavior encouraged during the #iranelection stuff on Twitter.

The last 12 months have been a whirl wind of big things… presidential shifts, big world events, wars, economic troubles, unemployment, technology advances, health care… just huge value disruptors. There’s an obsession with Real Time right now. More Data Faster! The challenge is you can’t reflect on values in real time. you can’t set anchors and see where you stand against them. No, we don’t have to stop and reflect – we can keep charging ahead. That approach will have different consequences than if we stop and reflect. I can admit I’m a bit frightened by the consequences of this relentless acceleration towards more data faster – technical progress at all costs – we’ll sort it out later. (And those that know me understand I’m not exactly a patient person and love change)…

Video Game Violence Evolving Dangerously

–––––––

Jul 1
Though the argument between Gladwell and Anderson is fun to read and stimulating it completely misses the point of why Anderson is wrong about Free and why the newspaper industry is having trouble.

“Information wants to be free” doesn’t mean free as in beer… it is free as in freedom. Even putting it in that context that line has nothing to do with what’s going on in media.

The ad model has crumbled for broadcast TV and newspapers and magazines. It doesn’t mean that advertising globally is over or that charging for content or supporting content via advertising has crumbled. It is the failure of the cost structures of the troubled media. Ads simply don’t make the money they used to for these organizations. Why? Well, as we’ve discussed many times on this blog and elsewhere, because advertisers really know how to count eyeballs and transactions now. That puts pricing pressure on campaigns (especially long term deals and premium upfronts).

Why can’t Youtube make money? Plenty of advertisers put ads on youtube. No users click or respond to them. Not enough to cover the $360 million a year bandwidth bill. It would be pretty easy to actually turn a profit with Youtube. It would just have to stop being so Youtube-ish – i.e. get rid of the fluff content, make more ambitious ads, etc. etc. I’m sure that will happen once Google feels like Youtube can’t be significantly touched from easy competition. I’m sure this will happen soon.

This whole thing about making everything free or whatever. It’s hogwash. People pay for stuff they value. They click on ads that don’t suck and are relevant. The newspaper industry, as its old model stands, needs to change. Big deal. It will. yes there will be micro publishing and competition from bloggers and all that. Big deal.

I never really believed in the long tail either. Every company I’ve seen financials for that bet on the long tail hasn’t made a dime. If you look on itunes and amazon and shopping sites and news sites it’s still the hits that make the money. And hits cost money to make. and people value them, so they buy them. This applies to music, movies, articles, books, celebrities, products…. i’m not saying you can’t make money from the long tail… you can… but that’s like comparing making money from hotdog carts (the long tail of lunch) to running a multi-national chain like mcdonald’s (hits!). or maybe not. but hopefully you get my point.

I do agree with Gladwell on one point – there are no iron clad laws… except maybe one.. there are no iron clad laws.

Gladwell Anderson Argument Misses the Point

–––––––

Jun 30
TechCrunch opines on the open government efforts and the pros and cons of being more open. I’m troubled by this statement:

Except there is one big problem: indifference. Most people will not do anything with that data.

If we approached all policies and strategies to increase citizen involvement with an assumption of indifference why would we try anything at all?

This is incredibly self-defeating and has almost no prior evidence to support the claim. Yes there are those currently motivate to abuse this openness. And that abuse may be the motivation to get currently inactive citizens active – they can now compete with the politically powerful using the same data.

Of course there are citizens that are indifferent. However, I think more often than not ignorance or competiting objectives are the issue not blatant indifference. People care deeply about our government. No not everyone is going to showcase that care by mashing up government data. We’re better off with the chance that we all can do that if we want.

Indifference as an assumption is self-defeating

–––––––

Jun 30
In the last couple of months we’ve had several high profile events (reporter escape, #iranelection, swine flu) on the planet that demonstrate the direct influence the media has on events. As much as journalists and media personnel attempt to be impartial reporters they never are and never can be. It’s simply impossible to report on an event without impacting it especially in this ever more everything digitally connected to everything else. This is not necessarily bad or misguided. What is problematic though is operating media properties without careful navigation of the fine line between influence and observation and consuming media without judging it’s impact.

I’ve recently read the Dave Cullen book, COLUMBINE. On top of its literary positives this book does an excellent job of picking apart the media coverage’s direct influence on the events as they unfolded and our analysis (and current thinking!) on the events, the people, the causes. People died as a result of the fundamental misunderstanding about media’s impact on events. People’s lives continue to be out of sync with what really happened and why it all happened because of the media’s impact on the events and investigations.

I suspect we’ll look back on the Iran election in a similar light. Perhaps, in this case, media will be a more positive influence.

The recent NYTimes+Wikipedia strategy is another example of potential grave misunderstanding. In this case the potential influence of media was recognized before hand but…… now that it is public how we can manipulate media and the Internet population there’s another problem looming. Are we opening a can of worms by allowing the media to be used strategically in political and military efforts?

I recently had a mini-debate on facebook about whether it was a such a good idea to encourage folks to confuse and hide identies behind false settings and proxy servers on Twitter during the Iran Election. Though the intentions behind these activities seem worthwhile – helping citizens fight for political freedom – this is a slippery precendent to be setting. Where do we draw the line on using the shifty nature of online media as a strategy? How can we legally hold criminals accountable for these same actions? How can we identify suspicious behaviors when we’ve encourage this use of media by everyone? Is it OK for journalists to use this tactic when pursuing a story?

Trying to understand the world is difficult enough. The Internet and new approach media is great for its openness, DIY approach and general “we’ll figure it out as we go” utility. However, unchecked by the very people creating and consuming it as the situation is now we’re only creating more confusion and muting the considerable utility of this platform. What I am directly saying is that all of us in media (reporting and tool building) need to spend a little more time reflecting and strategizing and a little less time trying to be the first on the scene, the one with the most pageviews, the one with the exclusive. This approach won’t come about without some direct actions on our part and lives depend on figuring this out.

Media and Journalists Impact on Events

–––––––

Jun 29
Methinks the best experience will end up combining real time search with regular web search. Yes, it’s nice to have unfiltered immediate information in certain situations like breaking news or emergencies. Outside of that synthesis is essential to keep the noise to signal ratio down.

I don’t so much mind the metaphor used on TechCrunch today of consciousness and memory.

Imagine having just memory or just real time consciousness – it somehow wouldn’t be very efficient for the processing of information into action. TC brings this up. Yesterday’s Michael Jackson and celebrity death coverage and the malware issues showcases that without some non-real time synthesis things get pretty messed up.

Thinking through this is not that hard. Though you can’t use citation analysis to filter results like in PageRank, you can do similar things to get some confidence interval in the real time results. However, the more accurate you make that the more processing time it will take and, thus, it will be less real time. I think some hybrid of rapid filtering with a real time pressentation of streams with a big note that says UNFILTERED or UNVERIFIED should do just fine at the top of regular web results.

I’d use that kind of experience, for what it’s worth…

Real Time Search Challenges

–––––––

Jun 26
So it’s not that will doesn’t exist; it’s that the free part is problematic — a lot of people see free will and say, “Well, you’re showing there’s no free will; therefore, people have no intentions or will.” No. There is will, and will can be shaped by a host of factors: your genetic background, your early experience with your home and your family, your caretakers, you playmates, cultural influences bombarding us through the media and through socializing with your peers (and, thus what they like and what they think and what they believe from their parents). All this is being soaked up like a sponge by little kids.

— John Bargh, Conversation on EDGE.org

and more zingers…

we’re much more accurate about predicting other people than we are at predicting ourselves. All these things going on inside of us get in the way, and especially the positive illusions about ourselves.

It’s a great read. if I put a link right here, I bet you’d read it (you’re expecting the link but it’s here instead!)

In Free Will, It’s the Free that’s Problematic

–––––––

Jun 24
A nice example of how the 24/7 “news” cycle forces the media to generate news to fill in the blog posts and airwaves.

Media personnel far outnumber the David Letterman protestors.

Pretty hilarious picture. Not so hilarious when this stuff is taking coverage away from actual issues… like health care reform, Iran, North Korea, a couple trillion in government spending….

Media Created News

–––––––

Jun 16
BBC reports on simulations run by astronomers suggesting we could see some planets collide in a billion years or so.

What’s fun is that you can actually ATTEMPT to run these computations in Wolfram|Alpha. Here’s mercury in 1 billion years. Unfortunately the one thing I want to be able to show is the orbits of the planets and that is pushing W|A to the heuristic timing limit.

I can put this into Mathematica and work it out using more local CPU power. Then again, I like just playing with numbers to see where I can take this. Here’s Mercury at 199,999 years. Things get gnarly.

Planet Collision Reports BBC … in 1 billion years … Unverified by Wolfram|Alpha

–––––––

Jun 11

Knowledge

Computation

Implications and Uses

Web Search

Experimentation

P.S.