Tag: Thinkin’ and Theory

Come Along – Let Google Do The Thinking For You

Remember when there was the whole “calculators in class” argybargy back when wideleg jeans were out before they were in again but after the second time they were out? Well, Lord Goog may be setting up a similar non-mathematical quandary:

One of the more experimental products was called Google Squared, which will go public in the next month or so. It takes information from the web and displays it in a spreadsheet in “split seconds”, something Ms Mayer said would normally take someone half a day to do. During the demonstration, a query for “small dog” was typed into the search box. Seconds later a table popped up showing photographs of various dogs, their origin, weight and height in a clear and simple layout.

Sounds like homework done in a snap to me. Of course, on one level this is good and really just a tabular representation of a results sheet that drags information from Google images, news and general web searches. And it will demonstrate the importance of gathering and sorting different classes of data into useful format. But it will also carry the air of authority so that there will be tension with the idea of improving on Google’s presentation as well as the problem of knowing to what degree the analysis presented is purely based on Google and what is the individuals.

Should we care? Should figuring stuff out and digging for information be valued even if the results are a bit like a nine year old’s take on a pancake breakfast, messy and less than appetizing?

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Jay’s Party Of One On Free Speech

Being the leftist libertarian that I am, I have a certain affinity for what Jay is writing about these days, like this one, on the theme on better regulation of the regulation of free speech – though we are not on the same page in any ways and I think he wanders in unnecessary and potentially unhelpful areas. And I wrote the following comment and, being uncaffeinated as yet, thought it worth saving as I suspect Jay’s comment function may be unintentionally set back at “Abyss Mode”:

I was going to make a point about the third [class of free speech protections – libel, copyright and incitement arguments]. You can’t say that it is not the role of the state when it reaches inciting hatred as that is at the extreme criminal law and at a lesser point still within mischief or breach of the peace. But all enforceable by the state though the court and police systems and not administrative tribunals. And libel is not about property, it is about reputation – though they are connected. Civil society has a layer of regulation that is about decency on a human to human level. Loss of that respect leads to many wrongs including potential loss of property values. But it is not limited to that. A poor and unknown person without wealth can be libeled if, through the status, dignity is denigrated. This becomes a useful tool in creating a civic identity and standards of speech and interrelation – not socialism but civic republicanism. Without that, there is only true moral relativism, that Satan spawn of Ayn Rand’s wacko ideas.

See, libertarians will never admit that they are the actual source of moral relativism, the loss of community standards of decency and acceptability that carries with it a myriad of complications. Well, I suppose that that is because libertarians will admit nothing, it being just a selfish day dream in the guise of a philosophy wrapped in the illusion of a political theory.

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Narcissim Used To Be A Fault

Can we be collectively narcissistic? Could it be that too much access and too much information can be too much? What happens to a society when everything is ok and everything should be open and available to and from all? Is it only simply a flourishing or are their limitations inherent either in a healthy society or being human? We can hardly be both tribal and non-hierarchical. We can hardly be exposed and not take in or be shaped by that exposure. Yet that seems to be a working principle:

“Most of the content on the network is contributed by the users of the internet,” he said. “So what we’re seeing on the net is a reflection of the society we live in. Maybe it is important for us to look at that society and try to do something about what’s happening, what we are seeing.

He added: “When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror.”

That is an odd analogy. You do remove the mirror when it is a distraction, is aimed into someone else’s space or is just in the wrong place. It does not seem to capture what we are. Is it possible that we are so obsessed with not having certain people tell us the modern is corrupt that we have determined that free discourse is an absolute, utterly uncorruptible and uncorrupting?

Group Projects: What Will Happen To The Giant Leek Contests?

I know I go on but all this digital stuff is a bit depressing. Just look at these British stats:

The average Briton now spends 50 hours per week on the phone, using the net, watching TV or listening to the radio. However, the mix of how much time is spent on each one has changed radically over the last few years. Daily mobile phone use is up 58% on 2002 and, over the same period, net use has grown 158%. By contrast Britons spend far less time watching TV, listening to the radio or chatting on a fixed line phone.

But what else are they not doing? Talking to people face to face? Playing games? Planting giant vegetables? With the collapse of content in favour of Web 2.0 flashing lights and curved edges, it is getting harder and harder to see any societal shifts or any new generation as empowering so much as distracting and that reminds me of one thing – the fall of Rome. Sure you can compare the fall of Rome to just about anything but that does not mean I can’t pull out the old chestnut for present purposes. So a few questions:

  • What new non-digital activity have you taken on to balance your life…or even to unbalance it?
  • What non-digitalness would you like to take on if you have the resources or the guts?
  • What would you rather compare to the fall of Rome?

There you go. Pure brilliance once again in the seven minutes before I have to rush out the door.

Why Does Convergence Fail?

…or is it just an attempt to cross-breed whales and goldfish? This article about NBC’s 600 million blown in trying to converge something with something else is illustrative:

Most embarrassing, an effort to increase traffic by introducing a syndicated television program, “iVillage Live,” resulted in a month-to-month drop in visitors to the iVillage Web site. Introduced last December, “iVillage Live,” carried on NBC-owned stations in 10 cities, was seen as a failure on its own, suffering from low ratings, poor production quality and a certain nagging cloying quality. It ceased production in June, but is still running in repeats and will return, after a full makeover, next month.

Running repeats. Excellent plan.

It reminded me for some reason that may not be exactly clear in my mind of the movie 24 Hour Party People that was on over the weekend about the rise and fall of mid-80s Manchester rave scene that spawned Happy Mondays and the use of ecstasy. Effectively paid for by New Order through flipping their record sales to subsidize the money pit of everything else, the movie notes how the entire time was a financial flop due to the failure of the clubs to control the actual money flow. Ravers bought drugs not beer. A bubble economy except for the pushers.

What they may have in common is the acceptance of the insistence that a concept is viable supporting external investment of money and other resources, including public interest.

As a general concept that may be useful and something that explains many things. David recently wrote a good comment here about to the effect that (because I can’t find it at the moe) through blogging he has come to the conclusion that people understand their own beliefs very poorly. Maybe this is the human condition, however, and that all things are bubbles to some degree as we thrive on hope and expectation more than knowledge.

Fix The Record

So what do you do with cheats? Fix the record says Curt Schilling:

Schilling also had some choice things to say about Jose Canseco, the former Major League All-Star who has freely admitted to using steroids, and who detailed his usage in a 2005 book. “Jose Canseco admitted he cheated his entire career,” said Schilling. “Everything he ever did should be wiped clean. I think his MVP should go back and should go to the runnerup.” Former Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell, who finished second in the 1988 American League MVP race, has stated numerous times that he thinks the trophy should be taken away from Canseco and given to him.

This is entirely reasonable. Sports rely on integrity as much as tradition and performance to attract our attention and gain our devotion. So there is no reason not to fix the wrong of these records any more than there is no reason to consider Ben Johnson a champion.

But can the principle be extended? Sports is something of a last bastion of the appearance of integrity it seems. We have celebrity crooks like Conrad Black, Martha Stewart and Lindsay Lohan – not to mention political criminals like Scooter Libby and maybe even our own Senator Eric Berntson. Why do they, too, not meet with the universal castigation they deserve so richly? We have fallen into a trap as a culture of fretting about the institutions by which we judge our wrong-doers. To what end? Who gains? It operates in a very similar way to how professional sports leagues and international sports bodies circle wagons to insulate themselves from taint. It is a reaction, of course. The same sort of reaction that you hear these days from people who actually suggest that if you do not understand dog fighting you do not understand the US South. Others are blamed. The wrong is diminished.

We fail to address wrongs at our own peril as sooner or later we stop being able to tell right from wrong…and then stop even being able to trust that there is right and wrong. A moral vacuum is created. So ask why those empowered to determine things are undermined by cranks and naysayers when you see it happen. Ask why, too, when the person so empowered does not act.

The Cheats Around All Us

For a blogger of some heritage relative to the medium – yes, I am now part of Canada’s blogging heritage being well into my fifth year of it – I hope I have no sense of my own importance. Sure, I did once…but that was 2004 when bloggers were going to rule the planet, leading through words alone, thrilling with my intellectual purity and strident adherence to the one or two ideas I had, striding over cities and past agricultural valleys like the uber-man I clearly had created myself to be…through blogging. No, it became far less rapidly apparent than it should have that the clickity-click of the pajamamen was only what it appeared to be. So I settled into that, relaxed and accepted it for what it was. After, say, 2005 or so.

Which makes me think of that poor schlep of an NBA ref whose name popped up during a FBI wiretap of some mobsters talking about gambling. And even if it did not happen that way, I like to think that it did because it paints the problem so clearly. As with the vanity of bloggers, the root of the cheating ref is that sin of self-importance. Why does some git who gets to blow a whistle for traveling or makes that call between whether the ball was falling or still on the ascent when it was blocked think he deserves more, think he should be as wealthy as the players around him? I have seen this first hand. I have known an inordinate number of lawyers who ended up in the big house or worse through the inability to understand that the client’s money is in that pile and yours is in that smaller stack over there. Heck my “financial adviser” at a small town Ontario bank branch in the mid-90s ended up face down in the river one Saturday morning after it was discovered Friday night that there was an extra 3 million in the wrong bank account.

People like to think they are more than they are. Which is weird. If I have come to any conclusions now that the majority of my years on earth are past me it is that most people deeply misconstrue what this whole experience means. Not in an evil bad way but a far simpler way. Which is not far off what the Book of Job was telling us all along: we cannot even see the strings around us let along know who or what is pulling them. The fool thinks otherwise and walks around with reversed mirrored glasses, convinced and sometimes even finding a career in writing newspaper columns or as talk-show host.

But that ref thought he could pull strings and never stand out. Rewrite rules for gain. So now an entire sport – and not one that I particularly loved – is thrown in the grey zone with professional wrestling and figure skating. It gets you thinking about what else is around you that can be monkeyed by one or two people as easily as you can shift figures between a lawyer’s trust fund and general ledger or by making up mortgages for people who do not exist. You have to have a situation where there is plenty of rule calling. The NBA ref blows the whistle more than once a minute. Who else so closely controls the situation? A ref in soccer called 53 fouls is the Argie-Chile game the other day. Someone else calculates your pay packet deductions, your mortgage payment, your electricity bill. Does the specter of the cheat infuse it all? That is why games ought to be so good – that marble is either out of the circle or it is not, the blowing pin is standing or it is not. We turn to games we play or watch for certainty as much as honing or enjoying skill. There should be more with less chance for cheats – whether of the whistle blowing or blabby false prophet varieties. So bowl. Bowl your hearts out and know there is good in the world. That is all I can tell you in these troubled time. Bowl.

Group Project: Group Thought

Yesterday Jay wrote the following about his own comment:

David, my bad…

If the CPC wants to advertise on Pam Anderson’s left nipple it’s cool with me. (But it was a fun rant nonetheless.)

My immediate reaction was that he would never have written that if we had been talking about a union rather than a political party of the right. This raises an interesting point that is one of the fuzziest in the world of political blogging. When organizations with power that demand your loyalty and coerce your funds and represent your opinion are the organizations you favour, it is OK. But when it is an opposing position, it is Satanic. Yet the function of the coercion is essentially the same whether it is a trade union, a political party, a religious community or a sports team. Chris actually illustrated the point well in relation to peanut butter.

So that being true, why do we hold on to our given set of ideals so closely if we know the failings of all ideals? Why not admit that we live from individual anecdote to anecdote as the lamb lives from one blade of grass to the next?

Group Project: What Were We Like And What Are We Like Now?

…and what are we becoming? I know I go on but this new report on the state of privacy and surveillance technologies in the UK reminded me of this one about blogging, especially this passage:

…before the telegraph, for example, almost all ordinary people read entire newspapers and were generally very up to date on all issues of the day. It was not uncommon for politicians and other famous people of the day to come to town and speak literally for hours on end about complex issues facing people. Ordinary townspeople would know exactly what was being discussed and were not spoken down to or had the subject matter dumbed down for them. Postman relates one typical example where Lincoln was speaking somewhere for something like six hours, excused everyone to go home and eat supper, and then resumed speaking again an hour later. Then the telegraph made the spread of information much, much quicker. But because of all the dots and dashes, information became sound bites overnight. As a result, people’s tolerance for lengthier, meatier writing began to wane. And newspapers at the time who began getting their news from far away over the telegraph began writing shorter and shorter stories.

It’s the general proposition that I think interests me – as usual – how we as humans go about largely unaware of these sorts of quick shifts and are not very good at assessing whether they are good or bad, whether we are smarter or dumber because of them, freer or less free. The promise and the payout. We no longer think about things that were quite common ideas quite recently, like the information divide – which I think I think is as much due to the general ease of internet access as much as the awareness that most internet use is idle and recreational. No one considers access to a phone as a measure of full functional participation now either.

So, without getting into the goodness or the badness, how far could people go in immersing themselves into the unimportant and the abandonment of individual privacy while still being functional in a democracy? Are they even related? Do I need a coffee?

Speaking Of Campaigns

Speaking of political campaigns, a subject most facinating, what we are witnessing to our south is even more interesting than questions Iggeriffic. Consider this:

As this country’s most outspoken and polarizing social conservative, the two-term Pennsylvania Republican senator has been in Democrats’ cross-hairs for two years. Now they’re moving in for the kill.

Recently when chatting with a northern New Yorker mention was made that this year might well be the end of the thirty years of a particular brand of conservatism that began – people will shake their heads now in disbelief – with the rise of Jimmy Carter in 1976, when the words “born again” entered the political arena with legitimacy for the first time. It has been that long since I would have imagined conservatism as a general thing being able to be described as “on the run” as the quote above does. It has been a long time since the moral majority might not have enough votes. To be fair, these things certainly have natural cycles as no theme captures the public imagination forever, but that is perhaps especially the case after corporate and public scandal, after it becomes apparent that debt financing is all that actually gets trickled down.

But, as in most things, there is a penchant to count one’s chickens before they are hatched. Needless to say I will be a gawking at the TV tube come election night. I’d have another US election pool but Kateland and I began our falling out over the last one, something I could not bear to repeat. But maybe I should. Maybe it is time. The Vote Master, after all, is back.