Category: Social Impact

Dan Bricklin on online piracy

Online piracy is not like shoplifting [SATN]

Pirating works online is really more like kids watching a baseball game through a hole in the outfield wall, or listening to a concert just outside the gate. There is no out-of-pocket expense for that particular copy, just a possible loss of potential revenue. If your costs are low enough and you have some sales, you can tolerate lost sales that have no expense and still actually make a profit. (It’s like some summer concerts where the patrons pay a lot to sit in seats up front while thousands of others sit on the field outside listening for free.)

More insightful comentary from Dan Bricklin. ONe of the reasons that I enjoy reading blogs is the chance to see reasoning in progress when I see so little of it elsewhere. I think what I need is a Jolly Roger flag to stick on my laptop. The RIAA and others are using the piracy meme to obscure issues rather than clarify. But with Bricklin’s perspective I conjure images of Captain Hook and Peter Pan rather than Bluebeard.

TIA, ESP, and data mining humility

TIA – the new ESP research? [SATN]

…And I am afraid that the country is unable to understand that the so-called scientists (including Adm. Poindexter) who are leading this are about as clueless as the ESP researchers were, as to their biases, etc. Clever computer science, even powerful and correct computer science, will serve the same role in this process that the powerful statistical methods served in the Dr. Rhine’s ESP research enterprise. The math was not wrong… but it helped create a delusion.

Typical smart, thought provoking, commentary from David Reed about the dangers of data mining and powerful statistical techniques when used to ask vague and stupid questions.

David deeply understands that powerful tools are dangerous unless they are wielded very carefully by people you can trust.

Googlewash or Agenda Setting?

Googlewash. Andrew Orlowski: Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed… in 42 days. Orlowski discusses how a small group of A-list bloggers can quickly redefine terms in the eyes of Google…. [Google Weblog]

Very thought provoking commentary on the interaction between A-list bloggers and Google around the phrase “the second superpower” which Jim Moore introduced in his new blog and which lines up with some of Joi Ito’s recent thinking about emergent democracy.

Granted that technologists have a predisposition for liking rational utopian forecasts, it’s still interesting to see how these early adopters can have a disproportionate impact by leveraging these new tools. “Googlewash” is a clever term but I find it too pejorative. We are in an economy of ideas after all. Figuring out how to take advantage of this new environment to devleop and spread those ideas is a good thing. I do worry a bit about connecting this new found power to more traditional forms of influencing and shaping agendas. I hope, and suspect, that that is part of Dave Winer’s agenda in his new role at Harvard.

Reed on the Myth of Interference

My article on David Reed is in Salon. Salon today is running “The Myth of Interference,” an article I wrote about David Reed’s idea that the federal policies intended to prevent radio signals from interfering are based on bad science…. [Joho the Blog]

With this concluding quote from Reed

“The best science is often counterintuitive,” says Reed. “And bad science always leads to bad policy.”

Definitely worth reading, both for its specific message about a different way to think about regulating radio and the deeper issues of how to think about the interaction between policy making and technology development and evolution. I would tweak Reed’s final comment to read “a bad understanding of science always leads to bad policy.”

I sometimes wonder whether we wouldn’t have better policy if policy makers took the same care to not over-design their solutions that Reed and his colleagues took when they formulated their end-to-end argument.

Interview with Robert Kahn on ARPAnet history

Putting It All Together With Robert Kahn. Robert Kahn is one of the original architects of the internet, along with Vinton Cerf. This wide ranging interview traces the history of the original ARPANet and NSFNet as they became the internet we know today. Some interesting tidbits near the end of the article about his original plans for The Digital Library Project, digital objects and identifiers for digital objects. By Unknown, Ubiquity, March 11, 2003 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily]

Nonsense about RFID tags in Benetton's fashions

RFID tags in Benetton clothing. Benetton is buying 15 million RFID (radio frequency identification) tags to attach to the labels in their clothing as an anti-theft measure. People are freaked out (again) about privacy issues, but the reality (at least today) is that the range of RFID tech is too short for someone to drive by your house and scan your closet. Still, it does make sense to zap the tags out of commission once items are paid for. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]

Yet another example of magical thinking and technological ignorance driving debates. This post is about the only one I’ve seen out of dozens that points out that everyone’s fears are based on false assumptions about the technology. So, for example, we see this kind of nonsense quoted in a Wired News piece on the issue [by way of Privacy Digest]:

Mike Liard, an analyst with technology research and consulting firm Venture Development, said the more companies that embed RFID tags in their products, the more likely it is for someone to drive by a home and say, “Look what we’ve got in there. An HDTV is in there, and she wears Benetton.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if some marketing analyst would like to do this. It also wouldn’t surprise me if some unscrupulous technology consultant would take their money without bothering to explain that the range of RFID scanners is on the order of 2 meters. But that doesn’t make the actual prospect of black vans roaming the suburbs any more likely or any more feasible. If it still bothers you, line your closets with aluminum foil, but wouldn’t it be easier to develop a shred of understanding about what is and isn’t technologically possible?

More on Memex and weblog traces

The record of the race. Vannevar Bush: As We May Think. “Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race.” (397 words) [dive into mark]

Mark also picks up on this Vannevar Bush/Memex meme associated with the Google/Pyra announcement. More interestingly, scroll down to the bottom of his post for an interesting example of a weblog “trace.”