21st Century Silliness

They call the new mini-segways many things including hoverboards (which they are not), but I have to say that they do have at least one cool use:

The Glass May Be Half Full

So much misery in the world, at least as the newspapers report (there is less violence and poverty than 10/20/30 years ago but whatever), and much fear of the apocalypse.  But then we have this:


I had scoffed at 3D printing, having no clue about its potential.  I still don't understand it--what goes in the machine?  But if it can do stuff like this, and other things I have seen lately, well, we live in a pretty amazing time.  Of course, this is probably all just a diversion by the intelligent computers....  this video provides quite a shot of perspective sauce to start the day.

Are 3D Printers the Replicators of ST-TNG?

Are the new 3-d printers the replicators we are familiar with from Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Lots of concern that these devices, which can apparently make guns, will end any effort gun control and otherwise let anyone create anything.

But are we there yet?  Can they reproduce something so that the internal chemistry, the internal wiring, whatever is all the same?  More importantly, are these things so cheap that anyone can have them?  I simply do not know.  But I sincerely doubt that anyone can simply get one of these things and pump out tons of guns, bullets or whatever.  Especially when guns and bullets and whatever are easy to  get at a fraction of the price.

Lots of fear-mongering, but until the supply and demand of these things leads to quality/quantity/input/output dynamics that compete with guns, I am more worried about the conventional gun manufacturers and their political power than the new cool devices.

Saturday Silliness: Dating in the 21st Century

Mucho glad I am not single for many reasons (including some that have to do with Mrs. Spew), but here is another one:

Simplest, Gold-Plated Plane

I love the contradictions in this one piece on the next USAF bomber.  They want it to be a simpler, less expensive plane, seemingly learning the lessons from previous planes--the incredibly expensive B-2 bomber in particular:

“We are going to make our best effort to not over-design the aircraft,” says Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz. “We are intent on ordering a capability that is not extravagant.”

Wow, sounds great.  But then what do they want the plane to have?

• stealth (which is expensive, since it requires special skin that helps to evade radar and more);
• "capable of intelligence gathering, conducting electronic warfare and linking to offboard sensors"
• "non-kinetic weaponry, including high-power microwave weapons, lasers and electronic attack."
• "large magazine, which means small or repeating weapons, long-range radar and the ability to judge the effects of electronic attacks." [Won't the long-range radar make the plane easier to find since radar is the sending of signals to bounce off of stuff?  I am no expert here so correct me if I am wrong.]
• "at least some supersonic dash speed"

Ok, so that is a pretty minimal, stripped down order for a cheap plane, right?  Of course not.  It is early in the process so maybe someone will decide that tradeoffs must be confronted and the plane may end being fast but not so stealthy or stealthy but not so great at electronic warfare, etc.

All I can think of this: more things change, the more they stay the same.

One Person Can Make a Difference

Unfortunately.  The web and networks now alone smaller and smaller groups to have louder and louder voices, as witnessed by the TLC Muslims in America fiasco.  Yes, we had hoped that the amplification of individual political power via the internet would be a good thing, but that is because we imagined the folks using the new technology to be ones with whom we agreed.  Instead, we find that voices of intolerance can reverberate far beyond the lunatics that make the initial utterance.  We found this to be the case when Terry Jones burned a Koran in Florida, causing violence to break out in Afghanistan.

This is a problem for political science because we focus less on individuals and more on groups, structures, and institutions, and folks like the median voter.  Nuts, by definition, live way beyond the 95% confidence interval and dwell within the error term.  What does that mean? Our models tend to focus on typical, average folks, not those that are outliers.  How do we think systematically about those who are pretty random in their thinking and behavior?  I suppose that is what chaos theory is for, but most social science is not all that compatible, I think, with that approach.

The other challenge is for society (especially the media) to learn is that just because something reverberates does not mean we need to pay heaps of attention and overreact.  We now live in an era where a single person can make a @#$@#$-load of noise.  That does not mean we need to twitch and dance every time it happens.  It means we need to learn to think first before we over-react, whether that is Lowe's, the media or anyone else.

The good news is that the same technologies that allow one person to be loud also facilitates the organization of a counter-response by the forces of reason.  The backlash against Lowe's and against this random voice of intolerance is pretty heartening.  So, we, as usual, must take the good with the bad.

Infinite Batteries?

I was listening to a Bill Simmons podcast today where he was talking with Nathan Hubbard of Ticketmaster.  A major focus of their discussion was how event entertainment was changing since people can get great experiences while watching from home on their huge HD televisions/sound systems. They both seemed to like not just using phones as tickets (making it pretty impossible for scalping without monitoring) but also using the smartphones during games and concerts to access additional stuff, like player stats. 

And I have just one question: do these smartphones have infinite batteries?  I get nervous having my phone serve as airplane ticket (tried it once thus far), as the phone can start losing power pretty quickly.  I guess the new stadia might have power-jacks everywhere.  Otherwise, we are going to start carrying spare batteries around, just like the average soldier of the US, Canada and other advanced militaries. 

I see their point, but unless smartphone batteries get much better fairly quickly, I am not sure we can turn every event into a smartphone-compatible experience. 

Otherwise, an interesting podcast about what technology is doing to the event business.

Weapons of Mass Distortion

Dudes, they have a catapult.  So, they are loading it with pot.  Gnarly!  Ok, first subs and now catapults.  I guess where there is a profit, there is a way.  What this really tells us, regardless of the stupidity of metaphors like a "war" on drugs, we are in an arms race.  And it is cheaper to build offensive systems (catapults) than defensive systems (fences).  We might want to think a bit about what technologies we deploy in this arena and think about how hard or easy it is for the other side to counter.   That way, we invest wisely.  Not unlike SecDef Gates realizing that expensive systems to land on beaches might not make too much sense in a world with guided missiles.

Type Much?

I disagree with this piece.  I really do.  Yes, really.  It argues that putting two spaces after a period is wrong.  I disagree.  It is hard enough to read student papers, for instance, when they no longer use commas, but not having sentences that clearly end.  And a new one begins.  But if we only use one space, then the sentences will seem to run together. Right. So, let me ask my readers: do you prefer one space? Or two?  I will not change, but I will know whether I should feel shame.  Or not.

The Future is Here

The Electric Car, that is.  See the NYT review of GM's effort--the Chevy Volt!  I still worry about maintenance, but the car seems the perfect combo of electricity first, gas second, to get real miles and real speed and real savings.  Canadians are concerned about battery performance in the frickin' cold, so that will be a test.  But the more I delay buying the next car, the more likely it is that it will be an electric one.

Mr Watson, I Don't Need You?

One response to the budget crises at universities is to reduce or eliminate the phone each prof has in their offices.  This seems crazy at first, but technological change and cultural adaptation may have made normal phones somewhat irrelevant except as a potential resource suck.  Each phone has a cost regardless of how much it is used, and then some folks will over-use the phone, I suppose.

How do I communicate with my students?  Almost entirely by email?  With colleagues elsewhere?  Mostly by email.  I have a handful of significant conversations a year on the phone with co-authors.  I do some media stuff (radio interviews) by phone.  I have not gotten in the habit of using my cell phone to replace my landlines, so it is not so much that substitution as much as it is using email.  Now that my new laptop has a camera built in, I could be skyping more in the future. 

How would I feel if McGill got rid of the phone in my office?  I guess I would be mildly inconvenienced, especially since my cell phone service tends to be poor.  Plus I would be more likely to forget to turn off my phone before heading off to class. 

What do my readers think?

The Irony of Updates

Last night, I allowed Microsoft to update my computer.  This morning, my network adapter seems to have disappeared.  Pretty strange update.  Blogging may decline until I get my computer fixed.  On the bright side, I feel pretty good about the laptop we got for my daughter, as it is a handy backup for me.  Plus with dropbox, I can go right to work.

Sometimes Science is Just Stupid

Teaching robots to lie?  This cannot possibly end well.  I teased my students the past week about how we identify ourselves, as human is rarely a choice chosen because there is no relevant other.  Well, not until the aliens arrive, the apes take over, or when the machines arise.  Sooner rather than later?  The Terminator movies show how the scientists are shocked that their creations might cause the demise of humanity, but reality is a bit different--precisely because these scientists have seen the Terminator movies.  Yet they still try to invent ways to get robots to become deceptive??  Who is giving them the grant money?  Where is the research ethics board to ask about the implications down the road?

Time to stock up on supplies for the end of days, eh?



HT to Will Leitch.

Holy Military-University Complex, Batman!

Very interesting how life (or killing) imitations art: the guys designing wearable military technology not only are inspired by Batman, but use the name and related images (Dark Knight).*  The piece has interviews with the folks inventing the next generation of equipment for Special Forces types.  See if you can spot the hidden link to my grad school of UCSD.






*  Hat tip to Jason Ferrell 

An Apple a Day?

My computer is sick, exposed to heaps of viruses, trojans and whatever else while plugging into a hotel computer network.  So, of course, my Mac friends recommend moving to Apple computers.  Their smugness probably does more to turn me off than the relative values of PC vs Mac machines.  But they have a point, so why do I resist mightily?  Why do I not join the Apple world of virus-free computing?  Why stay with the more flexible but complex and dangerous world of intel/microsoft?  Let me consider the possibilities:

• It might just be a matter of time.  Mac's are not invulnerable to viruses but since the market share is small and more people seem to resent Bill Gates, more folks write viruses for Microsoft.  If I move over, it may just be a small breather until Apples gain the focus of the nasty folks (and what pieces of work these bastards are.  I am inconvenienced but it makes them no money and they don't even know me, so what is the point other than to compensate ...?)
• PC's are cheaper.  Yep, still are, after all these years.  And there are heaps of choices of the various pieces--which monitors, keyboards, trackballs, software, etc.  So, PC's still win the price/flexibility argument.  But then again, I am buying my work machine with the school's cash, so this probably does not matter to much right now.  
• Compatibility--path dependence is a constraint.  I have two other machines in the house (wife and kid; no, the dog and the cat are computer-less and pretty resentful as a result), so if I got a Mac, it would not be the same flavor as the other machines.  This used to matter more when there was less sharing/swapping/compatibility than there is now.  Still, the new computer would be an outlier.
• Learning a new system would be a pain.  Macs are supposed to be intuitive and easy to learn.  But I have ingrained habits and ways of working with my machines.  Of course, I will soon have to learn Windows 7 and Office 2010, so this point is largely moot.
• The costs of PC-ness are a yearly bout with viruses and other challenges.  Sure, it pisses me off for a weekend, but I have survived.  I have not lost any data, and the computer techs at McGill should be able to clean it what I have not been able to eliminate.
• Apple people are annoyingly smug.  They are hipsters.  Do I really want to become like them?
• I am lazy.  Doing things the same way is the least work in the short run.  And in the long run?  The machines will be controlling us. 

The Future of Protesting Heresy

Just delightful.  Let's not tell the book-burning types that burning an i-Pad or Kindle would be potentially toxic.  They don't believe in Evolution, but let's not interfere with the contemporary application of Darwin's Survival of the Fittest.

Better Living Through Technology

Nice to know that  I have some company--here's an op-ed by Steven Pinker that says that powerpoint and other technologies actually do not make us dumber.

"NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber."

But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.

Wow, facts.  Damn.  Pinker goes on to show that the brain is not so infinitely elastic that the new technology is really changing how brains work.  Yes, twitter can be distracting--believe me, I know.  I have now vowed to do more of my reading away from my computer so that I can return to pre-internet reading speeds.  Well, I'll try.

And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet.

Indeed.

Bad News is Good News?

Interesting op-ed today in the New York Times to mark Memorial Day.  Evolving technology and increased attentiveness has meant that the unknown soldier may not exist in future wars.  That is, in the past, there would be unidentified remains, but the last few wars have had no such casualties due to DNA analysis.  So, all those we mourn now are known.  Certainly an improvement but I guess it is up to the sociologists to tell us whether unknown soldiers resonate more or less with the general public as a reminder to the costs of war.

Speaking of the costs of war, the article had this picture:

We The Media

Interesting post (HT to a Roger Ebert tweet) about the changing nature of media: The People Formerly Known as the Audience.  Very nice take on how the listeners/viewers are now creators/editors.  Blogs have replaced the printing press, that podcasts have moved into the terrain occupied by radio ("we have found more uses for it than you did"), video is no longer dominated by a few, and we now network horizontally rather than vertically.

Look, media people. We are still perfectly content to listen to our radios while driving, sit passively in the darkness of the local multiplex, watch TV while motionless and glassy-eyed in bed, and read silently to ourselves as we always have.
Should we attend the theatre, we are unlikely to storm the stage for purposes of putting on our own production. We feel there is nothing wrong with old style, one-way, top-down media consumption. Big Media pleasures will not be denied us. You provide them, we’ll consume them and you can have yourselves a nice little business.
But we’re not on your clock any more. Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press, has explained this to his people. “The users are deciding what the point of their engagement will be — what application, what device, what time, what place.”
We graduate from wanting media when we want it, to wanting it without the filler, to wanting media to be way better than it is, to publishing and broadcasting ourselves when it meets a need or sounds like fun.

 Read the whole thing.  Very interesting take on the impact of the internet and everything else.  Perhaps the big media can soon sing "I about to lose control and I think I like it."  Or not.

Speaking of Responsiblility

I know it is important to ring the bell and alert people to threats.  But one must do so in ways that do not actually encourage or inspire the evil-doers.  In today's NYT, a former CIA official makes it pretty clear how one should best sabotage a nuclear power plant.  One could argue that the former nuclear plant maintenance guy already passed these kind of secrets to Al Qaeda.  But it reminds me of the story (true?) that the US declassified nuclear bomb designs in the 1960's after China's first bomb test, with the idea that the genie was out of the bottle.  Just as China was not the only country seeking nuclear weapons, it might just be the case that (a) Al Qaeda may not be the only group interested in such information; and (b) thanks for telling AQ that this guy was reliable. 

It reminds me of the Washington Post, shortly after 9/11, illustrating the optimal path for a small plane if it wanted to fly over the capital while dispersing chemical or biological weapons.

Again, it may be the case that the secrets have already been spilled.  But not everybody gets the memos from Al Qaeda, so broadcasting this on the NYT opinion page would seem to be a bad idea.  Or am I wrong?