Thursday, January 29, 2004
SARS Evolution Traced
Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: "Findings published online today by the journal Science describe how the (SARS) virus has evolved and provide potential clues to developing effective treatments. "
Monday, January 26, 2004
Predicting hacker patterns
New Scientist: "(S)oftware engineers at Icosystem in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have developed a program that can predict what is coming next by 'evolving' future hacker and virus attacks based on information from known ones. "
Friday, January 23, 2004
Cybertracker Conservation Project: An Exemplar of Network Learning
Inside Learning Web Log: "Cybertracker is a mobile technology designed to facilitate the recording of field data linked to a GPS system. Maps and databases are then used to analyze the data collected. More importantly, the scientists involved in this have developed a social network, perhaps we might call it a smart mob, that bridges a cultural divide."
Our Bayesian Brain
Subconsciously, Athletes May Play Like Statisticians: We base our decisions on "subconscious memory... (at) the point when uncertainty becomes great enough to give past experience an edge over current observation."
Eurekster -- social networking search engine?
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things: "eurekster, 'the only search engine with personalized results,' launched today after several months of beta testing. The site promises to 'show you What's Hot with your friends... results get better as you invite more friends.' Is there a word for that post-Friendster/Tribe/LinkedIn/SixDegrees oh-god-not-again feeling I'm getting as I read the launch announcement? Like, HTML rug burn?"
George Soros on Cooperation
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: "I think that the reliance on military power is sort of an excess of this Social Darwinist point of view. I had been opposed to market fundamentalism as a philosophy or as an ideology. Namely, that life is a struggle for survival, and the struggle manifests itself mainly in competition. And the competition is, who is stronger? And the survival of the fittest is basically the survival of the strongest in competition. But, in actual fact, survival also requires cooperation. And there is a need for having rules to which everybody agrees for us to survive. And there are also problems like the environment, that can only be … and maintaining peace in the world, that can only be achieved through cooperation. So there's a misinterpretation of the Darwinist theory of survival of the fittest --- that achieving power over others is the goal. And that is not really the basis of our civilization."
Patternhunting Shoplifters
The Register: Birmingham’s Retail Crime Operation (RCO) has gone live with a new database system that can predict patterns of criminal behaviour based on past experiences."
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Malcolm Gladwell interview
Failure Magazine: "a philanthropist in New Jersey gave away copies of the book and said he would give money to any library in New Jersey that would use the principles of 'The Tipping Point' to make libraries more popular. I loved that."
Experiment Shows You Really Should 'Sleep On It'
Scientific American: Recent findings from a study at University of Lubeck in Germany show that participants who were allowed a good night’s sleep were twice as likely to find the shortcut to a mathematical puzzle as were those who hadn’t slept.
CNN: "The German study is considered to be the first hard evidence supporting the common sense notion that creativity and problem solving appear to be directly linked to adequate sleep, scientists say. Other researchers who did not contribute to the experiment say it provides a valuable reminder for overtired workers and students that sleep is often the best medicine."
CNN: "The German study is considered to be the first hard evidence supporting the common sense notion that creativity and problem solving appear to be directly linked to adequate sleep, scientists say. Other researchers who did not contribute to the experiment say it provides a valuable reminder for overtired workers and students that sleep is often the best medicine."
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
For a Bigger Brain, Juggle
Print Article: "Juggling and probably other visual skills that take time to master increase the size of your brain. "
Sunday, January 18, 2004
What Power Law?
Ross Mayfield's Weblog: "After reviewing data of work relationships, information flows and knowledge exchanges from hundreds of consulting assignments inside Fortune 2000 organizations Valdis Krebs... found some people were better connected than others, but the extreme hubs found in power law networks just were not evident. This conclusion fits well with Duncan Watts observation that the more you ratchet up the requirements for a link, recognized connections diminish, and the less you see power laws."
Dave Winer replies to Clay Shirky's issue of blog inequality
Dave Winer replied with some good common sense regarding the "trouble with inequality and the role of "fitness" in power laws: "(B)logs are not like television networks. A blog with an audience of 15 makes total sense in lots of cases. You don't measure the value of a blog by how many people tune in. In fact, I believe the value of a blog goes DOWN as more people tune in. That's been my experience. You waste more time trying not to evoke readers' emotions. And that is a waste of time, and it turns you into an actor or a Washington pol, anything but a blogger."
Inequality and the role of "fitness" in power laws
Joi Ito's Web: "All disruptive technologies and innovations break power law curves by exhibiting exceptional fitness."
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Scoundrels of Consensus Science
Caltech lecture by Michael Crichton on "consensus science" - Nanodot: "Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled."
Friday, January 16, 2004
Recursion, Rules and Language
New Scientist: "Mastery of the underlying rule of recursion is the key to human flexibility, Premack believes, allowing humans to think in the abstract, use metaphors and comprehend concepts such as time. It probably arose as the brain evolved into a more complex organ, but is not located in a single brain region."
Thursday, January 15, 2004
RSS in Education
Weblogg-ed Vol.2: Using Weblogs in Education: "Frankly, I'm still amazed at the concept that we can pretty much automate our research into a particular topic that we want to follow on a regular basis."
zephoria: social norms are not behind other points of regulation
zephoria: social norms are not behind other points of regulation: "People don't think about how the technology is evolving because it's not evolving in a direction that meets their needs."
The Future of Search?
Better search results than Google?: "Consider it a 21st century Dewey Decimal System designed to fight information overload. But unlike libraries, Vivisimo doesn't use predefined categories. Its software determines them on the fly, depending on the search results. The filing is done through a combination of linguistic and statistical analysis, a method that even works with other languages."
Jim Moore on the value of blogs
Jim Moore's cybernetics, politics, emergence, etc. : Home Page: "Blogs have a special social relevance because they allow their bloggers to create and maintain a network of weak social ties (which) are the vital links for social progress. Social progress may be (oversimply, of course) defined as the spread of good ideas across society, and the combination and recombination of people into new groups that can take collective action... Loose ties are voluntary. Thus ideas and actions that grow across networks of weak ties can perhaps be presumed to be better vetted by each person--based on merit rather than coercion. Perhaps this process of individual discernment helps filter out bad ideas seeking to spread across the network (and) contributes to collective wisdom being developed across the loose-tie long distance network as a whole, and thus also within the strong-tie local communities at the edges."
Evaluating Social Network Services
Life with Alacrity: Christopher evaluates the major social networking sites using the criteria of Barriers of Entry, Barriers of Maintenance, Barriers of Usefulness...
Glogs (Cyborg Blogs) and Wearable Computers
Blogger Blog, the Blog for Bloggers: "Suppose you are at a party and meet a famous politician who slips you a bit of information that is going to be announced later that evening. Suppose further that with a blink of your eye (literally) you can catch a photo, compose a blog, and post the scoop to your blog site --all before the politico can turn to squeeze the next hand in line. Welcome to the world of cyborg blogging. "
Of course, glogs are logical extensions of not-so-fashionable wearable computers such as EyeTap: "Our group designs, invents, builds and uses wearable computers and digital prosthesis in ordinary day-to-day settings. Cybernetics draws upon electrical engineering, mathematics, control theory, biology and psychology to build feedback loops that include both technology and humans. "
If you think this is irrelevant to you, consider "Someday you, too, might be a cyborg... 'The wearable computer allows me to explore my humanity, alter my consciousness, shift my perspectives so that I can choose -- any given time -- to see the world in very different, often quite liberating ways' (Salon.com Technology | Professor lives life as cyborg).
Of course, glogs are logical extensions of not-so-fashionable wearable computers such as EyeTap: "Our group designs, invents, builds and uses wearable computers and digital prosthesis in ordinary day-to-day settings. Cybernetics draws upon electrical engineering, mathematics, control theory, biology and psychology to build feedback loops that include both technology and humans. "
If you think this is irrelevant to you, consider "Someday you, too, might be a cyborg... 'The wearable computer allows me to explore my humanity, alter my consciousness, shift my perspectives so that I can choose -- any given time -- to see the world in very different, often quite liberating ways' (Salon.com Technology | Professor lives life as cyborg).
"Creative Class War" by Richard Florida: "Cities from Sydney to Brussels to Dublin to Vancouver are fast becoming creative-class centers to rival Boston, Seattle, and Austin. They're doing it through a variety of means--from government-subsidized labs to partnerships between top local universities and industry. Most of all, they're luring foreign creative talent, including our own...
"From bloggers and programmers to members of the National Academy I have spoken with, all find the Zeitgeist alien and even threatening. My friend says it is like trying to research and do business in the 21st century in a culture that wants to live in the 19th, empires, bibles and all...
"But the bigger problem isn't that Americans are going elsewhere. It's that for the first time in modern memory, top scientists and intellectuals from elsewhere are choosing not to come here."
"From bloggers and programmers to members of the National Academy I have spoken with, all find the Zeitgeist alien and even threatening. My friend says it is like trying to research and do business in the 21st century in a culture that wants to live in the 19th, empires, bibles and all...
"But the bigger problem isn't that Americans are going elsewhere. It's that for the first time in modern memory, top scientists and intellectuals from elsewhere are choosing not to come here."
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Is Friendster changing our Friendships?
Wired 12.01: View: Howard Rheingold, "Social network literacy is not about how many connections you have, but how well you use them to navigate your life. "
A Perfect Brainstorm
Inc.com | A Perfect Brainstorm: "Why do the best ideas always seem to happen in the shower?"
The Game of Life
Wonders of Math - The Game of Life: "Life is probably the most often programmed computer game in existence... Life is just one example of a cellular automaton, which is any system in which rules are applied to cells and their neighbors in a regular grid... In addition to the original rules, Life can be played on other kinds of grids with more complex patterns."
Googlewashing
Fresh Inc.: Googlewashing: what "makes it much more difficult to find a legitimate site for a term since the most relevant sites seem to be pushed to the bottom of the pile."
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
MySmartChannels
I'm not that interesting... | MySmartChannels: "To demonstrate some of the benefits of such a platform, we decided to build MySmartChannels - a demo application built on the MyST platform. MySmartChannels enables individuals and organizations to easily create and organize pools of information around the MyST Web services platform, providing a variety of features including, secure weblogging, intelligent searching, automatic Office XP smart tag generation, news feed generation, and much more. Users can publish and organize thoughts, ideas, and writings about any topic that's important to their areas of expertise. Colleagues, co-workers, and business partners can be invited to subscribe or collaborate on relevant topics."
Meet the Blogs
BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis: "He tries so hard to write that he ends up writing nothing. He fears a conversation with his audience and so he refuses to have one. This Other Roger is a dinosaur. In a million years, he will be petroleum. Then he will be petroleum jelly. Full circle."
Dude, Check This Out!
Dude, Check This Out!: "Dude, Check This Out! is an entirely new application for finding, storing, and retrieving all the great stuff that you find on the Web. The Dude is the easiest way to share that stuff with your friends and other contacts, and it's also a great way to meet people who think like you.
Could this really be "Social Networking with a Purpose?"
Could this really be "Social Networking with a Purpose?"
Blogging Berkeley
Weblogg-ed Vol.2: Using Weblogs in Education: "The UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is using weblogs extensively, not only to facilitate courses and provide students a publishing medium, but also as a subject of scholarly inquiry. "
A Plea for Media Literacy in our Nation's Schools
Recent research shows that A Plea for Media Literacy in our Nation's Schools: "(c)hildren under 6 spend as much time in front of a screen as they do playing outside and three times as much as they spend reading or being read to. Those numbers don't decline as the children grow older." This massive exposure to mass media may be resulting in significant changes in emotion, attention, memory, learning and behavior while reinforcing the growing gap between what author Mark Prensky refers to as "digital tourists" and "digital natives."
As Robert Sylwester writes in The Effects of Electronic Media On A Developing Brain, "Screenagers emotionally understand electronic media in ways that adults don't -- as a viral replicating cultural reality, instead of as a mere communicator of events." Sylwester suggests that media targeted at young people often bombards it audience with images of violence, aggression and sexual themes that trigger irrational fear responses while suppressing reflective, analytical thinking.
Both the rise of media consumption and its potential dangers emphasize the critical importance of supporting media literacy, the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate information in a variety of media.
Interestingly enough, research from 1991 conducted in the Australian public school system show that girls are consistently more skilled in media analysis than boys despite the fact that "(w)omen are comparatively disadvantaged and receive less favorable representation in the media. It could be that females have more to gain from recognizing the cultural underpinnings in our media and more to gain in challenging them."
As Robert Sylwester writes in The Effects of Electronic Media On A Developing Brain, "Screenagers emotionally understand electronic media in ways that adults don't -- as a viral replicating cultural reality, instead of as a mere communicator of events." Sylwester suggests that media targeted at young people often bombards it audience with images of violence, aggression and sexual themes that trigger irrational fear responses while suppressing reflective, analytical thinking.
Both the rise of media consumption and its potential dangers emphasize the critical importance of supporting media literacy, the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and communicate information in a variety of media.
Interestingly enough, research from 1991 conducted in the Australian public school system show that girls are consistently more skilled in media analysis than boys despite the fact that "(w)omen are comparatively disadvantaged and receive less favorable representation in the media. It could be that females have more to gain from recognizing the cultural underpinnings in our media and more to gain in challenging them."
Monday, January 12, 2004
Ouiki Glogs
Ouiki Glogs: "The systems work with CyborgLogs (known as cyborglogs or ``glogs'') from a community of portable computer users, or they can also be used with a mixture of portable (handheld or wearable), mobile (automotive, boat, van, or utility vehicle), or base-station (home, office, public space, etc.) systems..."
Saturday, January 10, 2004
PC to Phone SMS
Teleflip Home: "The next time you need someone to email you directions, a recipe, sales information, or maybe just a few sweet nothings... tell them to TELEFLIP it, at:
yourcellphonenumber@teleflip.com."
yourcellphonenumber@teleflip.com."
Thursday, January 08, 2004
Valerie, a Domestic Android
Valerie, a Domestic Android: "Valerie is the most advanced android in the world having more degrees of freedom than any android shown up to now. She uses the AT&T speech synthesizer giving the most human-sounding voice available today. She is also easily the most anthropomorphic android available. She will have a high degree of artificial intelligence due to our proprietary AI software - and a generalized interface to the internet (the only existing super-intelligence). Order now - before you get backlogged in a 3 year waiting list!"
Blogging and the invisible audience
Blogger Blog, the Blog for Bloggers: "We all have different motives for blogging. I would guess that the motive that perhaps unites all bloggers is the desire to reach out to others with similar interests... I have this thought, and the only way I can make it concrete is by putting it into writing, having that invisible person to talk to. It becomes your soap box. At the very least, it allows me to express my thoughts and observations, whether anybody's listening or not."
Wikis: unstructured collaboration that leverages informal networks
Online Community Report: "Wikis are constantly in motion and reflect the current shared understanding of the group... They are also cool because they are the antithesis of traditional enterprise software with its top-down design the imposes process, ontology and structure upon users."
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
A Loss of Learning
Inside Learning Web Log: A Loss of Learning: "Perhaps we can also look at weeding out as a means to eliminate those that will not submit themselves to the established norms for learning at the university. At the same time I saw a number of my friends in undergraduate studies decide to quit not because they couldn't handle the courses, but because they didn't want to. They couldn't see the relevance."
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Mac Founders Push for New Ideas
Wired News: Mac Founders Push for New Ideas: "Jef Raskin -- known by many as the 'father of the Macintosh' -- (is) developing a new computing environment, called The Humane Environment. His project is a result of his belief that today's computers have not evolved much since the early Macs. Indeed, he believes that the modern GUI must change -- and quickly. 'I think it was really good for 20 years ago,' he says, 'but cognitive psychology has learned a lot since then.'"
