Question Technology

Radiation Treatment Errors and Bad Design

The New York Times has an excellent investigative report into radiation treatment errors. They tell the story of two patients who died due to errors, and report on the frequency of these events. Sadly the errors usually look preventable in hindsight. And predictably, manufacturers of the machines blame the technicians who operate the machines, when in truth a main cause is bad software design without proper attention to safety and usability practices.

Link: Radiation Offers New Cures, and Ways to do Harm.

The article is the first in a series called The Radiation Boom. This kind of deep reporting is what makes the NYT and organizations like it so valuable.

Michael Sandel on Genetics and Morality

"It is tempting to think that bioengineering our children and ourselves for success in a competitive society is an exercise of freedom. But changing our nature to fit the world, rather than the other way around, is actually the deepest form of disempowerment. It distracts us from reflecting critically on the world. It deadens the impulse to social and political improvement. So I say rather than bioengineer our children and ourselves to fit the world, let's instead create social and political arrangements more hospitable to the gifts and the limitations of the imperfect human beings that we are."

- From the Reith Lectures given earlier this year by Michael Sandel, quoted at Biopolitical Times blog.

Sandel's book about the ethics of genetic engineering just came out in paperback: The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.

Scientists debate dangers of AI

From the New York Times:

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.

While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.

The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.

[...]

A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25, is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.

Link: Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man

The Complexities of Dying in a High-Tech Era

I thought this recent Fresh Air interview with Robert Martensen was very good: End of Life Care in America, A Doctor's Diagnosis. Martensen discusses the problem of medical intervention in the very final stages of life.

He has written a book called A Life Worth Living: A Doctor's Reflections on Illness in a High-Tech Era.

From the book description:

Critical illness is a fact of life. Even those of us who enjoy decades of good health are touched by it eventually, either in our own lives or in those of our loved ones. And when this happens, we grapple with serious and often confusing choices about how best to live with our afflictions.

 

A Life Worth Living is a book for people facing these difficult decisions. Robert Martensen, a physician, historian, and ethicist, draws on decades of experience with patients and friends to explore the life cycle of serious illness, from diagnosis to end of life. He connects personal stories with reflections upon mortality, human agency, and the value of “cutting-edge” technology in caring for the critically ill. Timely questions emerge: To what extent should efforts to extend human life be made? What is the value of nontraditional medical treatment? How has the American health-care system affected treatment of the critically ill? And finally, what are our doctors’ responsibilities to us as patients, and where do those responsibilities end? Using poignant case studies, Martensen demonstrates how we and our loved ones can maintain dignity and resilience in the face of life’s most daunting circumstances.

Novelist Jim Harrison's blurb gets to the heart of the matter:

“A Life Worth Living is a deeply engaging book. It can be read as a self-defense manual. In fact it should be read by, say, anyone over forty-five because we are all destined to do battle with the medical industrial complex which seems quite confused about helping us out of life. Martensen, who is both an M.D. and an historian of medicine, gracefully illumines the problems we all face.” – Jim Harrison, author of Returning to Earth

Bioethics in the Age of New Media (and Robo-Pets)

I love this cover (the book sounds interesting too). Bioethics in the Age of New Media by Joanna Zylinska, forthcoming in May:

Bioethical dilemmas—including those over genetic screening, compulsory vaccination, and abortion—have been the subject of ongoing debates in the media, among the public, and in professional and academic communities. But the paramount bioethical issue in an age of digital technology and new media, Joanna Zylinska argues, is the transformation of the very notion of life. In this provocative book, Zylinska examines many of the ethical challenges that technology poses to the allegedly sacrosanct idea of the human. In doing so, she goes beyond the traditional understanding of bioethics as a matter for moral philosophy and medicine to propose a new "ethics of life" rooted in the relationship between the human and the nonhuman (both animals and machines) that new technology prompts us to develop.

After a detailed discussion of the classical theoretical perspectives on bioethics, Zylinska describes three cases of "bioethics in action," through which the concepts of "the human," "animal," and "life" are being redefined: the reconfiguration of bodily identity by plastic surgery in a TV makeover show; the reduction of the body to two-dimensional genetic code; and the use of biological material in such examples of "bioart" as Eduardo Kac's infamous fluorescent green bunny.

Zylinska addresses ethics from the interdisciplinary perspective of media and cultural studies, drawing on the writings of thinkers from Agamben and Foucault to Haraway and Hayles. Taking theoretical inspiration in particular from the philosophy of alterity as developed by Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Bernard Stiegler, Zylinska makes the case for a new nonsystemic, nonhierarchical bioethics that encompasses the kinship of humans, animals, and machines.

The cover reminds me of this (Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide by Blay Whitby). I wonder how many other robo-pet book covers there are.

One more (yes, I'm a bit too obsessed with book design): Introducing Artificial Intelligence by Henry Brighton.

Polity's Digital Media and Society Series

I'd seen a couple of these books before but didn't realize they were part of a series. All 8 books sound excellent. Here is the blurb for the recently published Search Engine Society by Alexander Halavais:

Search engines have become a key part of our everyday lives. Yet while much has been written about how to use search engines and how they can be improved, there has been comparatively little exploration of what the social and cultural effects might be. Like all technologies, search engines exist within a larger political, cultural, and economic environment. This volume aims to redress this balance and to address crucial questions such as:

• How have search engines changed the way we organize our thoughts about the world, and how we work?
• What are the 'search engine wars', what do they portend for the future of search, and who wins or loses?
• To what extent does political control of search engines, or the political influence of search engines, affect how they are used, misused, and regulated?
• Does the search engine help shape our identities and interactions with others, and what implications does this have for privacy?

Informed members of the information society must understand the social contexts in which search engines have been developed, what that development says about us as a society, and the role of the search engine in the global information environment. This book provides the perfect starting point.

Link: Digital Media and Society. The site also has a blog and some links to resources and course syllabi.

Synthetic Biology Debate

If you're in the San Francisco area you might want to check out this upcoming Synthetic Biology debate with Drew Endy and Jim Thomas. It takes place Monday November 17th and is sponsored by the Long Now foundation. Here is their description:

Bioengineer Drew Endy is the leading enabler of open-source biotechnology. Technology activist Jim Thomas is the leading critic of biotech, based with ETC Group in Ottawa.

"Synthetic Biology includes the broad redefinition and expansion of biotechnology, with the ultimate goals of being able to design and build engineered biological systems that process information, manipulate chemicals, fabricate materials and structures, produce energy, provide food, and maintain and enhance human health and our environment." -- Wikipedia.

Synthetic biology is swarming ahead all over the world, at a self-accelerating pace far greater than Moore's Law, with a range of impacts far greater than genetically engineered food crops. Jim Thomas raises the question: "Is Synthetic Biology reckless or wise from the perspective of 'the long now?'. I feel the synthetic biology community is driven by immensely short term assumptions and motivations, and as a result the medium term prospect for this platform holds both predictable problems and nasty surprises."

Drew Endy says: "Jim and I have somehow managed to establish a productive working relationship, and feel that there is now a once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop the cultural foundations needed to support long term and constructive discussions of the issues existing and emerging with biotechnology---safety, equity, security, community, and so on."

The point of Long Now debates is not win-lose. The point is public clarity and deep understanding, leading to action graced with nuance and built-in adaptivity, with long-term responsibility in mind.

Link: Synthetic Biology Debate (Long Now Seminars About Long-Term Thinking)

Audio and video of the talk will be available at the Long Now site after the event.

The ETC Group has a lot of good material about the issue on their site: ETC Group - Synthetic Biology.

Convergence 08

I just learned about Convergence 08, a two-day event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA featuring a bunch of futurists and other thinkers on technology. From their buzzword-heavy blurb:

On November 15-16, 2008, the world's most dangerous ideas will collide in Mountain View, California. Convergence⁰⁸ examines the world-changing possibilities of Nanotech and the life-changing promises of Biotech. It is the premier forum for debate and exploration of Cogtech ethics, and ground zero of the past and future Infotech revolution. Convergence⁰⁸ is an innovative, lively unconference, the first and only forum dedicated to NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) technologies.

Link: Convergence08.org.

The speaker list includes some heavyweight futurists/technologists like Paul Saffo, Aubrey de Grey and Peter Norvig, and at least one critic, Denise Caruso.

I'm not sure I get the idea of an "unconference" as the main event, though. I thought those were typically free, alternative forums that took place outside big conferences.

Considering long-term ramifications of technologies

The New York Times has a good article today by Cornelia Dean about our growing need (and ill-preparedness) to consider the long-term impact of new technologies, particularly geoengineering and nanotechnology.  Excerpt:

Last year, a private company proposed “fertilizing” parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet.

This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. So a growing number of experts say it is time for broad discussion of how and by whom it should be used, or if it should be tried at all.

Similar questions are being raised about nanotechnology, robotics and other powerful emerging technologies. There are even those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies as inherently dangerous.

“The complexity of newly engineered systems coupled with their potential impact on lives, the environment, etc., raise a set of ethical issues that engineers had not been thinking about,” said William A. Wulf, a computer scientist who until last year headed the National Academy of Engineering. As one of his official last acts, he established the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society there.

Rachelle Hollander, a philosopher who directs the center, said the new technologies were so powerful that “our saving grace, our inability to affect things at a planetary level, is being lost to us,” as human-induced climate change is demonstrating.

Link: Handle With Care

The Need for a Treaty to Control Human Genetic Engineering

Jamie Metzl has an article in the current issue of Democracy magazine calling for a global treaty, modeled after the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to manage the risks of human genetic engineering.  Some excerpts:

What would a Genetic Heritage Safeguard Treaty (GHST), based on the NPT model, look like? Above all, it would require states possessing greater knowledge in the field to share basic-science capabilities with others, in exchange for all members agreeing to common protocols and appropriate regulations (requiring, for example, the non-inheritability of germline genetic manipulations and the banning of human reproductive cloning). [...]

Although the prospect of human genetic modification is terrifying to many, it is an emergent reality that holds both tremendous promise and unimaginable danger for the world community. As difficult as it will be to establish an international framework for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the dangers of this revolutionary advance, the alternative–allowing these capabilities to emerge unregulated and unchecked–will prove nationally and internationally destabilizing and dangerous to the future of our species. This may sound like science fiction, but it is fast on its way to becoming our reality. America and the world must do far more to prepare. A Genetic Heritage Safeguard Treaty, modeled after the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, can be one important step in the right direction.

Link: Brave New World War (free registration required).

The article was also reprinted by the Center for Genetics and Society (no registration required): Brave New World War.

New Book: Enhancing Me - The hope and the hype of human enhancement

I just picked up a copy of Enhancing Me: The Hope and the Hype of Human Enhancement by Pete Moore.  From the book description:

In Enhancing Me, Pete Moore examines the ways in which technology can change our bodies, our brains, our emotions, and how long we live. He talks to people who have actually been 'enhanced' to find out what it's like and how beneficial it is; and to the experts to find out what the future holds - including a look at some of the more controversial, headline-grabbing claims.  He also looks at what drives us to want to be 'superhuman', and the consequences for the individual and society alike:I

• If you could live forever, would you want to?
• If you could download your mind onto a computer, would you still be you?
• Should we insert chips into our children, so we can track where they are?
• Should we force violent criminals to have mood-controlling brain implants?
• Would you want technology to improve your memory… or help you forget?

I've only read a couple of chapters, but it seems quite good.  It's written for a popular audience but is not too terribly dumbed down.  The glossy full-color presentation makes it look a bit like a museum guide (which it sort of is -- see below) or a Rough Guide.  That also makes it a bit pricey at $20 in the US.  My only other quibble is that it's missing a bibliography or further reading guide (though Pete Moore does have suggestions on his own website).

Enhancing Me is part of a book series called TechKnow, produced by the Dana Centre, which is affiliated with the London science museum. The Dana Centre is "a stylish, purpose-built venue in London (UK). It is a place for adults to take part in exciting, informative and innovative debates about contemporary science, technology and culture." They host multiple events every week on science and technology issues. It sounds like a fantastic project -- I wish they had something like that here.

So far there are four other books planned for the series, covering computer games, human enhancement in sports, living online, and the consumer electronics industry.  The site has previews, blogs, and videos for each.

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).

How to address fear about WiFi health risks?

Dale Dougherty writes at O'Reilly Radar about supposed health hazards of wifi, and how a small number of residents used this fear to force Sebastopol, CA to stop a plan to permit city-wide public wifi.  An excerpt:

One can see the fear spreading. Science should be a way to dispel such fears but it is clear with this group of people that science cannot be trusted. They put forth the idea that science should be able to prove that there is no harm and therefore eliminate any risk, and without such proof, we should not move forward. They use this logic to recommend a "precautionary" approach, which is their keyword for a "know-nothing, do-nothing" approach.

[...]

Now, I don't know that wireless (or electricity) is without harm. I can read the research that does exist and learn more -- if I have the time and reason to do so. However, I do not like the smell of fear, and when people justify actions based on their own fears, I become suspicious that the concern is unwarranted. If it wasn't wifi, it would be flouride. Something is needed to affix to their anxiety. I can only be glad that they weren't alive when the city decided on electrification a century ago.

Link: Hazards of Wifi - O'Reilly Radar.

Like Dougherty, I'm willing to bet that wifi isn't dangerous, but I still have problems with what he says.  For example: "it is clear with this group of people that science cannot be trusted."  Well, we do have examples where scientists has been wrong in similar situations and should not have been trusted as quickly -- think pesticides and radiation fallout from nuclear tests and accidents.  How do scientists earn trust?  By having a good track record and by providing evidence.  Have they provided enough evidence that wifi is harmless?  I don't know, but what I've read seems to suggest that more studies could be done.  The precautionary approach does not (I think) call for absolute proof, but only for strong evidence -- I think Dougherty's characterization of it is simplistic.

Dougherty doesn't like people basing their decisions on emotion, but how different is it when he bases his decision on blind faith in the scientists' word?  It's right to be suspicious when the critics offer nothing but blind fear, but I think it's also right to be suspicious when the advocates offer nothing but blind faith.

How to Think About Science

(Post updated below with more on later shows and a response to a comment.)

I've been listening to the excellent "How to think about science" series from CBC Radio's Ideas show.  The basic premise of the show:

If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it?
Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study.

Link: How To Think About Science.  (That link has the shows in Real Audio format.  For MP3 format go to the podcast archive.  It's also listed on the iTunes store.)

I've listened to the first six shows so far.  The first two, featuring interviews with Simon Schaffer and Lorraine Daston, are particularly good.  What strikes me about this series (and, to a lesser extent, anything I read from historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science) is, first, how old-hat this stuff is to specialists -- to them the "science wars" are over and we're now living with a more realistic, less mystical understanding of how science really happens, thanks to the sociologists and others who hashed it out in the 80s and 90s.

The second thing that strikes me is that, from an everyday person's point of view, this stuff is still completely new.  Most people (and scientists) know nothing of the fabled science wars, and still think of science as "received truth" and scientists as infallible.  Furthermore, many people are still threatened by any effort to simply describe scientific practice and are quick to label it as "anti-science." 

The response to this radio series itself gives an indication of how threatening this type of discussion still is.  A discussion at the "Center for Inquiry," some sort of online forum about science, labels the series "anti-science," "pseudo-intellectual BS," and one commenter calls for a letter writing campaign against the CBC!  One only needs to listen to the show to realize how bizarre and ironic this reaction is.

A frequent refrain in these interviews is the difficulty these thinkers have had in trying to make it clear that they do not intend to undermine or debunk science, but merely to understand how it works, and in some sense to apply the principles of scientific scrutiny to science itself.  What's also apparent in this show is that there is no monolithic sociological critique of science, and how these thinkers themselves have been fallible and mistaken.  What emerges is a picture of the variety of approaches to understanding science and the need for dialog.

Update, March 31 -- I'm now caught up with the series (the first 15 episodes anyway) and I think I can understand now where the hostile reactions are coming from, though I still disagree with them.  Jim Royal writes in the comments:

If you're only six episodes into the series so far, you've heard the reasonable parts of the series. Starting around episodes 7, 8 and 9, things start getting weird. I think my favorite bit is where the host asserts without a shred of evidence that many scientists "feel they know when they are being looked at, think their dogs are telepathic, experience premonitions, doubt the world is all in their heads."

This is episode 9 with Rupert Sheldrake.  He has done controversial research, to be sure, but I think the point of the show was mostly to tell his story and not to push his theories.  According to him the "sense of being stared at" is real (among everyday people -- I don't believe he tested scientists) and can be reliably measured.  I'm skeptical but I don't have any problem with scientists doing and publishing that research.  He claimed that he couldn't get it published, despite the fact that others repeated and validated his experiments.  I think that's an interesting situation -- why are others so unwilling to permit that kind of research?  The Ideas show dug into this issue and, while it was sympathetic to Sheldrake, I don't think it was trying to present his theories as truth.  Surely this issue crops up elsewhere in scientific practice, though maybe not to such extremes.

Again from Jim:

That particular episode ended with the assertion that scientific results are all the same everywhere in the world, regardless of local customs, cultures, or religions because scientists collude with each other to keep out ideas that would upset their world view.

The series moved from examining the boundaries of science to entertaining crackpots to outright paranoia.

I don't remember that assertion, or at least not stated in quite that way, but I agree that it's an caricature.

Some of the other episodes didn't do much for me:  I like some of Wendell Berry's writing but I thought a whole episode about farming and local knowledge seemed like too much (similarly with the Dean Bavington episode about cod fisheries).  Sajay Samuel said some interesting things but his approach is a bit too abstract for me.  David Abram was rather disappointing: repetitive and a bit too new-agey for my taste.

On the other hand, I'm glad that they're going for diverse viewpoints and I don't expect to agree with or appreciate all of them equally.  And I don't think the trajectory is strictly downhill -- the last two episodes, with Evelyn Fox Keller in the first and Barbara Duden and Silya Samerski in the second, were very good.

Presidential Candidates Invited to Science Quiz, er, Debate

The Science Debate 2008 campaign sent out invitations to the four major candidates recently for the debate, now set for April 18th if anyone shows up.  In the invitation they write:

This is a policy debate.  It is not intended to be a science quiz. Nor are we interested in state-level battles such as the evolution versus creationism/ID debate.  Our goal is to find out how aware candidates are of America's major science and technology problems and opportunities, and how they propose to offer the kind of visionary leadership and policy solutions that will tackle those challenges and ensure America's place as the most scientifically and technologically advanced nation on earth.  This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are such a leader.

It's telling that they needed to reassure candidates that it's not a quiz, because when Science Debate first came on the scene it was clear that many of the people pushing for it wanted a quiz.  There was gloating in comment boards about the chance to make fun of candidates who don't believe in evolution or don't understand science.  (Not that those are excusable -- thank the gods that Mike Huckabee doesn't have a chance of winning.)

There are important science and tech policy issues to discuss, but I'm still skeptical of the need for a separate debate on this.  (Previous post: Do we need a presidential debate on science?)

There have been several recent articles on the story:

• New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog
• Wired (where the commenters definitely don't get the quiz vs. debate distinction, and the techno-libertarians are upset Ron Paul wasn't invited).
• Nature expresses skepticism: Nature's The Great Beyond blog, Nature editorial.
• The New York Times addresses the quiz vs. debate problem as well.
• Biopolitical Times points to Nature's doubts and has some good quotes.
• There's some interesting discussion (and confusion) in comments at the blog of Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, two of the organizers: The Intersection.