Question Technology

TV, Cognitive Surplus, and Wikipedia

This past weekend Clay Shirky posted a transcript of a talk he gave called Gin, Television, and Social Surplus that's been getting a lot of links around the blogosphere.  Following on themes from his book, Here Comes Everybody, he tells a story that goes like this: We gained lots of free time (a "cognitive surplus") in the 40s and 50s because of shorter workweeks.  We squandered the surplus by watching TV sitcoms and the like.  Now we're finally waking up from this "collective bender" and putting our energies into better things, like editing Wikipedia.

I have a number of problems with this story.  First of all, did we gain free time in the 40s and 50s?  I'm not an expert, but what I've read about work life has said that Americans are working more hours now than they did at the beginning of the 20th century, not less.

Second, is the time now spent editing Wikipedia or doing other things online really coming from time formerly spent watching TV?  In other words, even if there's a negative correlation between TV viewing and online activity, correlation doesn't imply causality.

Third, who's to say which of these activities is more valuable?  Shirky has a couple of fairly simple rules for assigning value.  Producing is better than consuming -- so writing a blog or posting to a mailing list is better than watching TV or reading.  Activity is better than inactivity or passivity -- playing World of Warcraft is more valuable than watching a movie.

I think those rules are awfully simplistic and don't seem to get at the heart of what's valuable.  Some TV shows and movies are far more sophisticated works of art than are most video games.  Reading a book can be a much more efficient way to deepen one's understanding of a topic than debating it online.  Even an adolescence wasted watching Gilligan's Island (an example of Shirky's) might reward you later with the creative juice to launch a career writing postmodern novels.

It's wishful thinking to believe that all of these new technologies will bring forth some great creative and intellectual bounty.  We've already got hundreds of millions of blogs -- how much have they really changed things?  How important is Wikipedia, really? If it disappeared tomorrow would anyone be truly inconvenienced?  I doubt it -- Google would turn up another source or you'd go look in the library if it really mattered.  Yet think of all the energy and hours that have been put into Wikipedia.  The return on investment just doesn't seem that impressive.

Libraries and Denial

Over at Library Juice, Rory Litwin has started an interesting discussion about the mission of libraries today.  He begins:

I would like to propose that the current era in librarianship, which is normally characterized as a “period of rapid change,” is perhaps better described as a period of denial. It is a period in which librarians are scurrying to disassociate themselves from their own profession as it tends to be thought of, with a sense of desperate shame.

What am I talking about? I’ll exaggerate a bit to make my point. I’m talking about librarians who say,

We’re not about books! We’re about computers! Don’t associate us with books! We don’t want to be saddled with that! When people hear the word “library,” we want them to think words like “Future,” “Hi Tech,” “Information Age,” and “Shiny Gadget!” Fellow librarians, don’t even use the word Book! It’s a no-no! Bad word! Hurts! Pretend you don’t even know what one is!

Link: Librarian: Accept Yourself

Here in the Bay Area I just noticed that my local library is pushing a new campaign called Free2, which seems like a big effort to rebrand the library as pretty much anything but a place to borrow books (it's a "21st century community center").  The blurb:

This campaign is designed to raise awareness of libraries in the Bay Area (at least initially). It encourages you to visit more often, whether that means stopping by your local branch to check out the latest video game or accessing the online catalog or participating in a program or activity.

It challenges stereotypes of dusty bookshelves and shush-happy librarians. It promotes how libraries sit in the heart of our communities. It recognizes that our libraries are among our most revered public institutions. It honors their great legacy of innovative partnerships. And it demonstrates an important fact in the Digital Age -- that our libraries are the number one point of Internet access for millions without connectivity at home, school or work.

Indeed, the question is not whether libraries are relevant today. But whether they can keep pace with the increased demand for their services and materials. With your help, they can.

And if you can come up with a good slogan for the campaign you could win an iPod or a video camera!

To their credit, I did find some mention of books on the site.  The video on the front page is of library users saying what they like about their library -- turns out some of them go there for books (who'd have thought?).

Humans United Against Robots

Humans United Against Robots (HUAR) is a tongue-in-cheek campaign "designed to educate and aware the citizenry of the world of the impending attack that computers and robots will put into effect against humans."  I like the art, if not the grammar.

HUAR is apparently a side project of web comedians Keith and the Girl. 

I heard about it today when one of its members called in to an NPR Science Friday show about robots.

Techno Tuesday: Nomads

Techno Tuesday is by Andy Rementer.

Tom Slee on Here Comes Everybody

I'm still making my way through Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody.  So in lieu of my own review, I'll point you to Tom Slee's mixed review.  I also have mixed feelings about the book.  Shirky tells some great, convincing stories about the power of group organization through digital technology, like that of the protesters in Belarus whose use of mobile phones was crucial to their success.  But he also lapses into techno-fluff theorizing on topics like how the internet is changing the news media, where his ideas seem pretty shaky.

P.D. Smith on Scientists and Superweapons

Peter D. Smith, author of Doomsday Men, has a good article up at 3 Quarks Daily about mad scientists and related topics.  An excerpt:

The physicist [Freeman Dyson], who worked on weapons projects as well as the Project Orion atomic spaceship in the 1950s, thinks there’s more than a grain of truth in the Strangelove stereotype. "The mad scientist is not just a figure of speech," says Dyson, "there really are such people, and they love to play around with crazy schemes. Some of them may even be dangerous, so one is not altogether wrong in being scared of such people."

Recently, I was powerfully reminded of Dyson’s comment while reviewing the reissue of Dan O’Neill’s classic nuclear history The Firecracker Boys (1994). In 1958, physicist Edward Teller, the self-styled father of the H-bomb, turned up in Juneau, Alaska, and held an impromptu news conference. He was there to unveil Project Chariot, a plan to create a deep-water harbour at Cape Thompson in northwest Alaska using thermonuclear bombs. Seventy million cubic yards of earth would be shifted instantly using nuclear explosions equivalent to 2.4 million tons of TNT. That’s 40% of all the explosive energy expended in World War II. Some firecracker.

Locals said they didn’t need a harbour. They also raised understandable concerns about radioactivity. After all, the year before, Nevil Shute had published On the Beach, one of the best-selling of all nuclear fictions (four million copies by 1980), in which the world dies a lingering death caused by fallout from a nuclear war fought with cobalt bombs. Teller was unfazed by the criticisms. That year he had defended atmospheric nuclear tests, claiming such fallout was no more dangerous than “being an ounce overweight”. He tried to reassure the Alaskans: “We have learned to use these powers with safety”. He even promised them a harbour in the shape of a polar bear.

Link: Someday this crazy world will have to end.

AI Panic!

AI Panic! is a smart and funny blog by AI researcher and PhD student Robin Baumgarten:

What's AI Panic?

This site is dedicated to research and unveil the perils, imminence and probabilities of a hostile takeover of the world through artificial intelligence. I will stay on the lookout for you and post articles, research papers and break-throughs of everything that could affect this danger.

Who's panicing?

Not me. Not yet, at least. And you probably shouldn't, either. But staying alert and informed doesn't hurt.

Link: aipanic.com

Britannica Online Free for Bloggers

Encyclopedia Britannica has made an interesting move with their online presence: they're offering it free for all web publishers, including bloggers.  I learned about this at TechCrunch, which has a post detailing the program: Encyclopedia Britannica now free for bloggers.

Not only can bloggers access encyclopedia articles for free, their readers can access any article they link to.  For example, you should be able to read this entry on history of technology (you'll see ugly ads, though; it's ad-free when you sign in).

I signed up out of curiosity and because I'm unable to resist free books.  I can't say I use encyclopedias much these days, but I do look at (and link to) Wikipedia more and more, and this will probably sway me to check out Britannica in such cases.

Their welcome email alerted me to the "Google Subscribed Links" program, which I hadn't heard of before.  It tweaks Google to include results from "trusted providers" when you search.  That's a good idea and will probably also get me checking out Britannica more often, since I won't have to go directly to their site to search.

Techno Tuesday: Online Doctor

Techno Tuesday is by Andy Rementer.

Indra Sinha: Animal's People

Animal's People by Indra Sinha is set among survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal.  Sinha writes on his blog that it "is a story about poor people coping with tragedy and injustice. The book could have been set anywhere where the chemical industry has destroyed people's lives. I had considered calling the city Receio and setting it in Brazil. It could just as easily have been set in central or south America, west Africa or the Philippines.  In the end it was Khaufpur and India."

Animal's People recently won the Commonwealth writer's prize and it was shortlisted for the Man Booker.

Link: Indra Sinha's website and blog.

I learned of Sinha through an older book of his called The Cybergypsies (available in a new edition at Amazon UK).  I picked it up in Italy to read on the flight home.  It's a novelistic retelling of early pre-web life on the net in the late 80s and 90s.  Sinha was an active member of these addictive online communities, explored through means of dial-up BBS's and text-based roleplaying adventures.  Sinha tells of infiltrating a hacker board and other adventurers with activists, roleplayers, and other online pioneers that he calls cybergypsies.  It's absorbing and strange reading.

Bill Buxton's CHI 2008 Closing Keynote

I'm back from CHI and will be posting notes about it over the coming weeks (I am so not a live-blogger).  There were a number of sessions that I think will be of interest to readers of this blog, starting with Bill Buxton's fantastic closing plenary.  He threw out the canned talk he had planned to give and instead improvised along the theme of "Being Human in a Digital Age."

I hope video of the talk gets posted, but until then you should check out Nate Bolt's rough transcript.  Here are a few points from memory:

• The level of discourse about technology, and human-computer interfaces in particular, is awful.  He contrasted two articles he and he wife were reading on a plane recently: hers was a review of an art exhibit, his a review of the $100 laptop (OLPC).  Hers was deeply written and considered the exhibit within social, historical, and philosophical contexts -- something that's just naturally a part of art criticism; his talked about technical specs and barely considered the human context of the device.  We don't have a well-developed practice of "interaction criticism" (a theme that popped up elsewhere at CHI too).  HCI professionals should take time out to write for a public audience.
• Creativity requires a culture that values it.  This is a theme he has written about earlier in a short article "What if Leopold Didn't Have a Piano?"  Mozart was a genius, but the culture he was born into valued and supported creativity -- if it didn't he might have grown up instead to be the greatest sausage maker in Salzburg.  Our current emphasis on individuality risks losing these values.
• There is a lot of choice in how we design and use technology.  Culture can change.
• Good design is aware of its history.  Jonathan Ives doesn't just invent things for Apple, he borrows creatively from history (and this is a good thing).  All new technologies percolate for at least 20 years before they become big -- Buxton's "Long Nose of Innovation" theory.
• Much of Buxton's HCI work has simply been aimed at getting back to where we were.  In the 1970s he worked at the National Film Board of Canada editing soundtracks using one of the most sophisticated and usable computer systems yet built (two-handed, mouse, chord keyboard, graphical display).  Since then he's been trying to achieve what its designers had already done back than.  Buxton's chapter in the book HCI Remixed talks about this: My Vision Isn't My Vision: Making a Career Out of Getting Back to Where I Started.
• On fostering creative values in business, he recommends Yvon Chouinard's (badly titled) book Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia).

At CHI 2008 next week

I'll be in Florence next week for CHI 2008 (and won't be blogging).

If you happen to be going too and want to meet up, send me e-mail.

Techno Tuesday: Little Piggy

Techno Tuesday is by Andy Rementer.