Question Technology

Nicholson Baker Appreciates Wikipedia

Nicholson Baker has a wonderful article about Wikipedia in the current New York Review of Books.  It's ostensibly a review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, but the best parts are Baker's personal observations as a Wikipedia reader, contributor, and "inclusionist" fighting against the unnecessary deletion of articles.  An excerpt (which is not really representative -- you should read the whole thing):

The Pop-Tarts page is often aflutter. Pop-Tarts, it says as of today (February 8, 2008), were discontinued in Australia in 2005. Maybe that's true. Before that it said that Pop-Tarts were discontinued in Korea. Before that Australia. Several days ago it said: "Pop-Tarts is german for Little Iced Pastry O' Germany." Other things I learned from earlier versions: More than two trillion Pop-Tarts are sold each year. George Washington invented them. They were developed in the early 1960s in China. Popular flavors are "frosted strawberry, frosted brown sugar cinnamon, and semen." Pop-Tarts are a "flat Cookie." No: "Pop-Tarts are a flat Pastry, KEVIN MCCORMICK is a FRIGGIN LOSER notto mention a queer inch." No: "A Pop-Tart is a flat condom." Once last fall the whole page was replaced with "NIPPLES AND BROCCOLI!!!!!"

This sounds chaotic, but even the Pop-Tarts page is under control most of the time. The "unhelpful" or "inappropriate"—sometimes stoned, racist, violent, metalheaded—changes are quickly fixed by human stompers and algorithmicized helper bots. It's a game. Wikipedians see vandalism as a problem, and it certainly can be, but a Diogenes-minded observer would submit that Wikipedia would never have been the prodigious success it has been without its demons.

This is a reference book that can suddenly go nasty on you. Who knows whether, when you look up Harvard's one-time warrior-president, James Bryant Conant, you're going to get a bland, evenhanded article about him, or whether the whole page will read (as it did for seventeen minutes on April 26, 2006): "HES A BIG STUPID HEAD." James Conant was, after all, in some important ways, a big stupid head. He was studiously anti-Semitic, a strong believer in wonder-weapons—a man who was quite as happy figuring out new ways to kill people as he was administering a great university. Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball.

Link: The Charms of Wikipedia (New York Review of Books)

Baker has a new nonfiction book out next month called Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.

James Howard Kunstler's New Novel: World Made by Hand

Orion magazine has a review by John Galvin of James Howard Kunstler's new novel, World Made by Hand.  An excerpt:

Islamic Fundamentalists have blown up Los Angeles and DC. That puts the global economy into a smoking tailspin. A flu pandemic has wiped out a good third of the population, maybe more. Oil, or access to what’s left of it anyway, is as good as gone. The Chinese have reportedly landed a man on the moon, but that’s probably more legend than fact in these paranoid times. The federal government has retreated to Minnesota, of all places (because who would attack them up there?), and with resources limited, race wars have erupted across the South. The globe is no longer flat (sorry, Tom Friedman!). It’s as round and as large as it’s ever been.

Such is the fictionalized world envisioned by James Howard Kunstler in his new book, World Made by Hand. This isn’t a sci-fi view into a future one hundred or fifty years away. It’s anti–sci-fi, set maybe ten to twenty years out.

Link: World Made by Hand.

Kunstler is best known for his non-fiction.  His most recent is The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.

Liveblogging Your Vasectomy

On a related note... Medical science blogger "Abel Pharmboy" liveblogged his vasectomy last week.  You can relive the adventure here if you have the stomach: Liveblogging the Vasectomy Chronicles.  It's yet another proud milestone for the web.  I don't know who is creepier -- the blogger who did this or the readers who tuned in live.

(Via io9.)

"Sperm Bank Love" and other Repro-Tech Tunes

In response to the previous post, reader Mark sent in a link to his entertaining songs about reproductive technology and other issues: Sperm Bank Love.

Podcast: Brave New Family

The CBC Radio show Ideas posts some of its shows as (limited-time) free podcasts.  I've been listening to a new two-part series called Brave New Family that's an excellent exploration of the consequences of sperm donation.  The summary:

Sperm donation has proven to be a Pandora's Box. The vast majority of donor dads do not want to be found. In rare cases some children are seeking and finding dad and half-siblings in the process. Science journalist Alison Motluk explores the complex portrait of the brave new family.

Links: Brave New Family (a short article and list of references), Podcasts.

Note that these podcasts are only available for a few weeks.

Ideas is the show that broadcasts the Massey Lectures.  I just noticed they've got a new series called How to Think About Science that looks very interesting too.

Googling God

I find this title amusing, though I know nothing else about the book: Googling God: Searching for a Faith You Can Believe in.

Further investigation, via Google of course, leads me to The Church of Google, a group of people who believe Google is God (or at least make this argument for the purpose of appearing clever on the internet).

It's apparently not just the kooks who think this, though.  New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman has made the same argument -- see his 2003 column Is Google God?.  Okay, maybe Friedman is a kook.  Novelist Douglas Coupland has also compared Google with God (see this Time magazine article).  Coupland may be a kook but he's a better writer than Friedman.

And one can't forget Ray Kurzweil, who has said that Google's database may evolve into a god (see this 2006 CNN Money feature that imagines four possible futures for Google, one of which is Google is God).

See also: Google image search on Google and God.

Daniel Solove's The Future of Reputation

Daniel Solove's recent book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet is now available for free online.  I learned this via Danah Boyd's blog -- she is apparently the one to thank for this, and she offers kudos to Yale University Press.

As someone who has been aware of this book since it appeared, I'm happy that I can now read a chapter or two for free, but I'll probably still wait to get it from the library.  I'm not likely to buy it in hardcover or to read the whole thing online.  If the publisher had put it out as a $20-or-cheaper paperback in the first place I'd have snapped it up quick.

Does Kids' Reading Need to be More Interactive?

That's what the new LeapFrog Tag promises.  From the New York Times:

This week, LeapFrog pulls the wraps off the LeapPad’s successor, the Tag, a thick, white and green plastic stylus that turns paper books into interactive playthings. LeapFrog is betting that the $50 Tag, which will be available this summer along with an 18-volume library that includes children’s classics like “The Little Engine That Could” and “Olivia,” will be the hit it badly needs. It calls the Tag its “biggest launch ever.”

The Tag, officially called the Tag Reading System, works a lot like the LeapPad. Children can tap a word with it and the stylus reads the word, or its definition, aloud. They can tap on an image to hear a character’s voice come alive. Interactive games test their reading comprehension. At its simplest, the Tag can also act as an audio book and simply read a story from beginning to end.

Link: LeapFrog Hopes for next hit with Interactive Reading Toy, via Crooked House, Popgadget.

The Tag also tracks reading progress, which parents can monitor on a website.

I know LeapFrog puts a lot of research into its products so I'm sure the design of this toy is well thought out, but this seems like technology in search of a problem.  Is gadgetry like this going to promote more love of reading or more love of gadgetry?

Engadget did a post on this device recently, and one of the comments includes this:

I have 2 small children, and while we do a lot of "conventional" work on their reading, the Leapster has been useful and effective.

As well, the Leapster has gotten my kids using technology, and getting comfortable with it, from an early age. Both of my kids (4 and 7 years old) read well above their age level, and their tech-literacy is far above their peers.

What kind of tech-literacy do 4-7 year-olds need?  Nobody needs that early a start, do they?  I don't have kids, so maybe I'm just out of touch.  Getting kids familiar with the tools they'll use in school makes some sense, but there's got to be a limit to how young the pressure for techno-literacy needs to go (check out the i-grow PC concept for an idea of where we may be headed).

America's Meat Industry: Extreme Cruelty

Salon has an interview today with the Humane Society investigator who triggered the recent beef recall with his undercover video of a "downer" cow being dragged to slaughter: Extreme acts of animal cruelty.

See also the Human Society's Factory Farming site.

More on Lessig

Shelley Powers has posted an excellent analysis at her blog.  Excerpt:

There are probably a half dozen organizations focusing on political campaign reform, some more successful than others. There's Clean Money Clean Elections, efforts by Public Citizen, and Open Secrets Tracking the Payback. All of these organizations are populated by people who have been committed to this action for years, even decades. People knowledgeable about the issues and problems, as well as informed about the loop holes (and how to plug).

Which then leads us back to the whole Change Congress platform. Here we're talking about an organization populated by neophytes who got a hankering to "change Congress", without once considering that some of most important changes must occur at the local and state level, and in the executive branch, as well as Congress. Populated by people who seem to think that all one needs is a weblog, the right social network (and associated tools), and a leader who is wired.

In a way, this new Change Congress movement is precisely why I would not vote for Lessig. Rather than join with others who have been working these issues for the last several years, start up a new effort with lots of cool slogans and neat videos, and catchy phrases–no real plans, no organization, no experience. After all, all we need to make change is a catchy video and a great speech, right?

Link: Shiny, Happy People Going to Congress (via Seth Finkelstein).

Google Health: Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Those aren't my words.  That's from the title to a post by John Paczkowski on the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog.  In regard to Google's new pilot program with the Cleveland Clinic to store patients' health records, he writes:

Of course, by making such records easier to share with medical providers, Google may be making them easier to “share” with less well-intentioned entities. Health insurance carriers. Potential employers. Online marketers. The government.

Google, too.

As the World Privacy Forum pointed out yesterday, companies like Google are not governed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA. “Don’t assume your medical records are protected no matter where they are: HIPAA privacy protections generally do not follow the health-care files,” the WPF warned. “HIPAA’s protections generally do not ‘travel’ with or follow a medical record that is disclosed to a third party outside the health-care treatment and payment system. … After you have disclosed your health care information to a PHR (Personal Health Records) outside the privacy protections of the health care system (HIPAA), your information can be used or redisclosed by the PHR in ways that would not be permitted for the same information if held by your doctor or health plan. Depending on the applicable privacy policy, health records outside of HIPAA can potentially be bought and sold, shared with merchants, and even disclosed to employers.”

Link: New from Google: "Google Privacy Disaster Waiting to Happen"

Update: Lots of interesting discussion on this: see Michael Zimmer, Fred Stutzman.  Michael Zimmer has also been discussing privacy concerns with Microsoft about their similar efforts: More designing for privacy: Microsoft HealthVault.

Lessig for Congress?

Silicon Valley free culture favorite Lawrence Lessig is considering a run for US Congress.  His mission, outlined in a 10-minute video you can see at lessig08.org is to "change congress" by removing the corrupting influence of money.

I'm sure Lessig is a smart guy and the anti-lobbying, anti-corporate message is surely important (and I fully support it) but it's anything but original, having been put forth by John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and almost every cliche TV drama politician ever to grace the screen.  I can't see Lessig's pretentious PowerPoint playing well beyond his core nerd base, and even those followers might lose interest once we hear any other policy positions from him (if by chance he doesn't follow all of the techno-libertarian ideals).  If ever there were a candidate to typify the Facebook effect (or whatever we're calling the internet-popularity-doesn't-translate-into-votes phenomenon), then Lessig is surely the one.

I don't mean to sound unnecessarily negative.  It just sounds like Jackie Speier is a better all-around candidate for the Democrats.

See also coverage at BoingBoing, Valleywag, TechCrunch, Andrew Sullivan, Wired.

NEA Responds to Steven Johnson's Criticisms of Reading Report

On February 7th, Steven Johnson criticized the NEA's recent report about declining rates of reading because he says they ignored reading on computer screens (Link: Dawn of the digital natives, The Guardian).  It turns out he was wrong, as Sunil Iyengar and Mark Bauerlein of the NEA write in the Guardian today: There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading.  Excerpts:

Steven Johnson diminished the significance of reading problems in the Britain and the United States, and misrepresented our research into the issue. His biggest error was to assert that "in almost every study [the US National Endowment for the Arts] cites, screen-based reading is excluded from the data."

He goes further, accusing our report of "simply excising screen-based reading". In fact, the majority of the report's data on reading derives from large population studies asking people how frequently they read anything whatsoever for pleasure - a category so broad as to include text of any length in any format through any medium, from books to cereal boxes to, yes, computer screens.

For example, in 2004 the US department of education asked 17-year-olds "How often do you ... read for fun on your own time?" With no limitation specified on where or how this reading was done, 19% replied "Never or hardly ever", more than double the 1984 rate of 9%. This is hardly an outcome to dismiss.

[...]

Johnson denies there is any evidence of damage linked with excessive viewing and surfing. Yet sufficient data has led the American Academy of Pediatrics to advise parents to keep children's rooms free of electronic media. Reading is at risk, but so are the minds of the young; we need a more critical view of their digital environment and its omnipresent allure. Now is the time for educators and intellectuals to produce sound empirical studies of the risks and benefits of electronic media.

A Techie Discovers Irony, re: Lee Siegel

Blogger academHacK has discovered that Lee Siegel's Against the Machine is available in Kindle format, which, you know, is ironic.  Link: Saturday Humor: Fearing Technology, via Smart Mobs.

Here's more irony: an "academic" who can't capitalize words properly! ha ha.  Gosh, this is easy.

Seriously, though, I just finished reading Siegel's book yesterday and my thoughts are mixed.  He makes some good points about participatory culture and internet hype, but the book is much more a piece of cultural criticism (not technology related) than anything else.  He spends more words criticizing American Idol than he does criticizing YouTube.  So I find it puzzling that the book was given such a provocative title, but I guess that's marketing for you.  I also think his logic is pretty weak, though the book is really more a rant than an argument.

And of course Siegel points out clearly in the book that he's not blindly anti-Internet, which should ease academHacK's mind.

Techno Tuesday: Why am I here?

Techno Tuesday is by Andy Rementer, who writes: Techno Tuesday is on a holiday for the next few weeks. In the meantime, here is something from the vault.