Category: Social Impact

Google’s University library project

Now this sounds fascinating. Both in its own right and it what it may portend for how the relationship between learning and institutions is likely to evolve. One more example
of the resources becoming available to anyone who has the motivation to learn. One thing that suggests to me is a potential role for guides to help others who want to navigate what will be a fairly messy and complex environment over the near term.

Battelle’s scoop on Google’s University library project. Mark Frauenfelder:
John Battelle has the scoop on Google’s “Project Ocean.” From an email he received: “Harvard University is embarking on a collaboration with Google that could harness Google’s search technology to provide to both the Harvard community and the larger public a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries. In the coming months, Google will collaborate with Harvard’s libraries on a pilot project to digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the University’s extensive library system. Google will provide online access to the full text of those works that are in
the public domain. In related agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library.”

Link

[Boing Boing]

UPDATE: Edward Vielmetti offers some more information on Michigan’s participation in this project

Paperbacks vs. computers

Sometihng to keep in mind if you find yourself getting too wrapped in in technology for its own sake.

A five dollar paperback book will dance on the grave of a five thousand dollar computer. Global Algorithm 1.9: Unstable Networks
by Bruce Sterling, 1996

“There’s nothing more grotesquely temporary than a computer …

I moved house recently. This caused me to make a trip to the Austin city landfill. Austin has a very nice landfill actually, it’s manned by well-meaning Green enthusiasts who are working hard to recycle anything usable. When I went there last month I discovered a heap of junked computers that was two stories high. Dead monitors, dead keyboards, dead CPUs, dead modems. The junk people in my home town get a stack that size once a week.

I had to pay some close attention to that mighty heap of dead computers. It had all the sinister lure of the elephants’ graveyard. Most of those computers looked like they were in perfect working order. The really ominous part of the stack was the really quite large percentage of discarded junk that was still in the shrinkwrap. Never been used, and already extinct …

Even paperback books have a far longer lifespan than computers. It’s a humble thing, a book, but the interface doesn’t change and they don’t need software upgrades and new operating systems. A five dollar paperback book will dance on the grave of a five thousand dollar computer.”

[Purse Lip Square Jaw]

Parody of copyright billboard

I’ve been working in Boston lately and I’ve seen the original posters and done my share of sneering. And I’ve grown increasingly annoyed at what I have to sit through in the movie theater after paying for my tickets.

I do wonder what the right mix should be between education, ridicule, and civil disobedience toward industries struggling to hold off the future. Why is it that reasoned discourse seems the least likely alternative?

Parody of copyright billboard. Cory Doctorow: While in Boston for WorldCon, I spotted these copyright warning posters in the lighted advertising podium. Trevor points to a much better parody. Link (Thanks, Trevor!)
[Boing Boing]

Endangered Devices – Buy an HDTV for Freedom!

Don’t tell my 15-year old who’s been lobbying for HDTV, but this is the sort of thing most likely to get me to act sooner rather than later. It strikes me that the efforts of industries to preserve themselves by criminalizing behaviors are more likely to lead to widespread civil disobedience than to anything helpful to their cause.

[foo] Endangered Devices – Buy an HDTV for Freedom! (Offer not good after 7/05). Wendy Seltzer, lawyer for the EFF (join here), talks about the drive to mandate building restrictions devices into hardware that plays media content. The broadcast flag requires HDTV devices to check for a “do not redistribute” flag in the content they receive. With the flag, they can’t output high-def digital or record it. She says that this mitigates against open source software since it is modifiable; all tuners would have to be closed source. “In the post broadcast flag world, no one can bulid a TiVo without first asking permission from the FCC.” Until July 1, 2005, it’s capable to… [Joho the Blog]

More on Woody Guthrie’s sense of humor

I don’t get a whole lot of comments here, but when I do get them they are generally well worth sharing. I thought this one was worth elevating to the level of its own post.

Comment on post 4343 on 8/10/04 by mrG. Woody had more than a sense of humour, he actually lived what he preached, and as yet another proof, here’s a story I first heard from Utah Phillips and later had it confirmed from someone who had toured with and heard it from Steve Goodman: The story goes Woody and Huddie (Leadbelly) walked into a NYC music publisher’s office to sell a new song they’d written. The publisher heard their song and knew it would be a hit, so he started fumbling through his desk to find a standard contract. Woody and Huddie said, “No need for all that. Gentleman’s deal: You pay us $50 cash, we shake on it, the song is yours.” You can imagine. The NYC bigshot music publisher’s eyes lit up with dollar signs. He peeled $50 out of his own wallet, gave it to those yokels and they gave him the sheet music, and they shook hands and parted. The NYC bigshot music publisher was ecstatic: He’d just bought a sure-fire chart-topping double-platinum hit for $50. Woody and Huddie were pretty happy too: That was the fifth NYC bigshot publishing company they’d sold it to that morning … By the time the lawyers were through with it, nobody owned the song, it became public domain, free for all, part of the artistic commons to be freely sung and resung by anyone with a mind to sing it. the song was “Goodnight Irene”.

Woody Guthrie had a sense of humor

Somedays the thing I worry about most is the total loss of humor that seems to infect lawyers and accountants, particularly those in the vicinity of intellectual property. In a world this complex, humor and perspective are more necessary than ever. Ultimately, this is why I expect the hacker mentality and ethic to prevail.

JibJab Threatened Over Use Of Woody Guthrie Song. For the last few weeks, the JibJab site and their amusing political parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” has been getting passed around the net. It’s well done, and deserves much of the praise it’s been getting. However, it appears the folks who own the rights to Woody Guthrie’s music are anything but pleased, and are demanding that JibJab stop distributing the flash movie. Their biggest complaint seems to be that “This puts a completely different spin on the song,” which will “damage” the song. Anyone who can’t see how utterly ridiculous this is has no job watching over Woody Guthrie’s music. Guthrie, after all, is the same singer who once put the following copyright notice on his work: “This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” Apparently, no one told the folks at the humorless Richmond Organization. [Techdirt]

Transportation Futuristics

You’ve just got to love this stuff! Some engineer is always dreaming up something new and improved. Great lessons in why good engineering doesn’t equate to feasible systems in the real world.

Transportation Futuristics.

heli_alum.jpg image

I would advise not clicking on the Transportation Futuristics link unless you have 30 minute or so to kill, because the Berkeley online exhibit is chock full of yesterday’s future today, and if you’re like me it’s impossible to stop looking at all the kooky ideas. Even better, as much as I love design concepts (like this aluminum commuter helicopter), a lot of the strange devices are actual prototypes that failed to take off (literally or figuratively).

Read – Transportation Futuristics [BerkeleyEDU via BoingBoing]

[Gizmodo]

History of the Automatic Teller

The ATM is one of the now ubiquitous technologies that make up the backstory of our digital lives. If you want to grasp where things are today and where they are likely to go, one excellent way to start is to invest some time and effort in understanding how this backstory fits together.

History of the Automatic Teller. XopherMV writes “The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away. All at once, he had a flash of inspiration. ‘Golly, all the teller does is cash checks, take deposits, answer questions like “What’s my balance?” and transfer money between accounts,’ recalls Wetzel, now 75 and still living in Dallas with his wife. ‘Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!’ And with a $4 million go-ahead from Docutel’s parent company, that’s exactly what he and his engineers did. Read more about the story of the ATM.” [Slashdot:]

Your Personal Data, Out of Control.

It may be a bit over the top but it’s worth thinking about anyway. I suspect the most unrealistic aspect of this animation is the attentiveness and friendliness of the customer service rep.

Your Personal Data, Out of Control. The American Civil Liberties Union has created a clever animation about how personal data is spreading via linked databases to create the most detailed dossiers on all of us. The scenario, a call to a pizza-delivery service, is exaggerated. But it’s clearly the direction in which we’re heading. The ACLU offers specific suggestions on how to slow this rampaging privacy invasion. [Dan Gillmor’s eJournal]