Chauffeur Google gets into the car business with an auto-driving car.
Stock trader In many of the world’s markets, nearly all stock trading is now conducted by computers talking to other computers at high speeds. As the machines have taken over, trading has been migrating from raucous, populated trading floors.
Jeopardy champion Watson conquered puns and pop culture to beat the human champs.
Proofreader A program called Soylent, is "an add-in for Microsoft Word that uses a distributed copy-editing system to perform tasks like proofreading and text-shortening, as well as a type of specialized edits its developers call The Human Macro'."
Lawyer One expert estimates that the shift from manual document discovery to e-discovery would lead to a manpower reduction in which one lawyer would suffice for work that once required 500.
I observed the passing of the print era a couple of days ago with a visit to my neighborhood Border's, which is one of at least 200 around the country that are closing. It's a melancholy experience to be in a disintegrating temple to the printed page, where the 40%-off wrapping paper is flying off the shelves but people still aren't buying the actual books.
Appropriately, I bought a copy of "Technopoly," in which the late cultural critic and curmudgeon Neil Postman warns that we have become tools of our tools. From his introduction:
Stated in the most dramatic terms, the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living.
No offense, Dr. Bob, but I don’t want to deepen our relationship. To be honest I don’t look forward to seeing you. In fact, I would prefer to maintain the sanctity of our dentist-patient relationship by keeping our interactions infrequent, in person and fully covered by insurance.
But now that Dr. Bob has joined Facebook I have one more unrequited friend request to feel guilty about when I log in. And one more reason to hate Facebook.
But I’m not the only one of Facebook’s 600 million users who has “issues” with the platform. It has been criticized for both its privacy policies and the way it explains those policies. Recently it introduced a trial privacy statement that doesn’t change the policies, but attempts to be clearer and easier to use. Comments are invited, so head over there and see if you can figure it out.
The language of the new policy is definitely clearer, and Facebook gets points for that. Yet the interface is designed to be “visual and interactive," which means that there are tabs and menus galore and I still get a nagging feeling that I may be missing something important. Something like this announcement shared by one of my Facebook friends: "Tomorrow Facebook will change its privacy settings to allow Mark Zuckerberg to come into your house while you sleep and eat your brains with a sharpened spoon. To stop this from happening go to Account> Home Invasion Settings> Cannibalism> Brains and unclick the 'Tasty' box.”
Dan Ariely, a Duke University professor of behavioral economics and the author of "The Upside of Irrationality," describes a simple experiment he used to figure out why online dating systems don't seem to work. It's an interesting video, even if you're not in the market for romance. The problem, he says, is that the reductive nature of the profiles encourages people to be even shallower online than they are in real life.
Online dating sites assume that people are easy to describe on searchable attributes. They think that we're like digital cameras, that you can describe somebody by their height and weight and political affiliation and so on, but it turns out that people are much more like wine. That when you taste the wine you could describe it, but its not a very useful description, but you know if you like it or don't--It's the complexity and the completeness of the experience that tells you if you like a person or not. And this breaking into attributes turns out not to be very informative.
Maybe it's a stretch, but this "breaking into attributes" is exactly what I find troubling about so much utopian transhumanism. It's a sort of comic book vision of the future, in which a compendium of technologically enabled "enhancements" will improve human beings so much that they evolve into a new species of transhumans.
Egypt tops the week's list of things to be hopeful about, but here are a few more, both courtesy of Inhabit. The first is a National Geographic tour of a bunker in the Arctic that is a sort of Noah's Arc for saving seeds in case of the apocalypse.
Nice to know that the aliens who discover our planet after we trash it will have a botanic treasure awaiting them.
Hey kids, are you looking for a fun new way to look busy while avoiding productive work? How about something really random?
The folks at Fireside, a new blogging social network, have created a Random Startup Generator that spews out amusing "coming soon" Web sites that mock all the aspiring Facebook, Linked In, and Quora wannabes that have plenty of hype but not much of a business plan.
But if Web start-ups aren't your thing, and you are the arty, intellectual, and extremely lazy type, check out the Random Exhibition Title Generator, a wicked little gadget that lets you generate absurdly pretentious titles for imaginary art/design/architecture exhibits. Every time you refresh the site you get an important-sounding title such as "ReMixing Rubbish: The Dysfunction of Complacency," which could help you turn that collection of discarded Post-It notes in your waste basket to a groundbreaking exhibition on post-modern culture. Or not.
Then again, if you are arty and not-so-lazy, and actually produce artwork, you might like the Abstract Art Title Generator, which randomly generates impressive titles for abstract paintings or photos. With a title like "Tremulous Approach" or "Element and Machine," your blurry Flickr photos could be the next big thing. Or not.
On the other hand, if you are the literary type, perhaps you'd prefer the Malcom Gladwell Book Title Generator, which allows you to generate guaranteed Gladwellian best-seller titles such as "Vague: The Power of Generalizations to Impress the Bored" or "Nothing: What Sandcastles Can Teach us About North Korean Economic Policy." Actually, these fake titles, which mock Gladwell's real best-sellers such as "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," are entirely too clever to be generated randomly. (While the other title generators mentioned above are programs that really do make random combinations out of sets of words, the Gladwell parody is actually just a funny pop-up Web site with a series of spoof book covers.)
Finally, if you really want to be productive in a non-virtual way—say you'd like to knit some striped socks—you can check out the Random Stripe Generator created by blogger Caitlin at her Biscuits and Jam blog. You select as many colors as you like, pick the thickness of the stripes, and her script will create a lovely random stripe pattern. You can refresh to get a completely different look with the same colors, or you can start all over again with new colors and widths.
I created the example above and named it "Linear Soul," courtesty of the Abstract Art Title Generator. A masterpiece! Or not.
A little girl leads chants in an image by Matthew Cassel/Justimage.org. Notice the microphones, cameras and cell phones trained on the girl.
While Egyptians are waging war over their future in Tahrir Square, there's another battle raging among those who are observing the uprising from more comfortable seats. I'm talking about the Twitter controversy.
It was widely reported that the seemingly spontaneous revolt in Tunisia was organized by a group of online activists with a Facebook page. Meanwhile, Egyptians are tweeting their revolution from the streets, and the mainstream media has turned to Twitter to get real-time reports from people on the ground.
But Malcom Gladwell, best-selling author of "Blink," "Outlier," and "The Tipping Point" argues that social networking is not a real factor in the protests.
There are a thousand important things that can be said about their origins and implications: as I wrote last fall in The New Yorker, “high risk” social activism requires deep roots and strong ties. But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented.
Meanwhile, a Wired blog made the rather obvious observation that people aren't risking their lives because Twitter told them to.
...don’t confuse tools with root causes, or means with ends. The protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are against dictators who’ve held power — and clamped down on their people — for decades. That’s the fuel for the engine of dissent. The dozen or more protesters that self-immolated in Egypt didn’t do it for the tweets.
So are Internet tools such as Twitter, blogs and Facebook really revolutionary or is the whole discussion just a distraction from what is really important here?
Gladwell dismisses Twitter in large part because of his observation that social networks rely on "weak links." And while that is true-- I am Facebook "friends" with a number of people that I would not recognize if I passed them on the street--the weakness of social networking links really has no bearing on why they have become essential tools for dissidents in repressive regimes. Moreover, Gladwell seems to conflate the kind of low-stakes "armchair activism" I practice when I "like" a cause on Facebook with the far riskier and more important activism of a blogger in Tunisia or this 26-year-old woman who posted an powerful video on YouTube on Jan. 18.
The Internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs have allowed people in Tunisia and Egypt to do two things. First, they have used Facebook to organize and communicate with each other, essentially slipping under the radar of governments that restrict dissident activity. During the long days and nights of protest, they have also used Twitter to find each other on the streets and share logistical information about the location of blockades and thugs.
Second, these "everyday people" have been able to broadcast their point of view to the world, bypassing the state-controlled media in their own countries as well as the international media that may not reflect the activists' perspective. On a pragmatic level, Twitter allows one person with a mobile phone, on a street in Cairo, without access to a computer, much less a television network, to broadcast to the entire world. That is new. That is not the equivalent of Paul Revere riding through the streets.
These are heady days for activists, and scary days for dictators. At the moment, dissidents seem to be staying one step ahead of their leaders with social networking platforms. Even when Hosni Mubarak shut down the Internet, activists found ways to work around it thanks to online support from around the world. Another challenge to state and corporate power is Wikileaks, which despite the focus on Assange is a distributed network that is dependant on a community of global volunteers.
On the other hand, though technology such as Wikileaks gives would-be revolutionaries new tools for openness, it also gives states and corporations ever more sophisticated tools of surveillance and control just as fears of terrorism are making those Big Brother scenarios more politically palatable.
It is a battle that won't end soon, and Lee Siegel explores the issue in his New York Times book review of Evgeny Morozov's "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom." Siegel and Morozov apparently can't get their heads around the paradox that the Internet could be a force for good in repressive regimes as well as being a danger in other contexts.
Clinton’s strange double perspective, in which the Internet is liberating in undemocratic societies yet fraught with potential harm here, is the kind of contradiction Morozov is out to expose. He labels it “digital Orientalism,” the belief that in repressive societies, the Internet can be a force only for benevolent political change.
Meanwhile, my hero Frank Rich also seems to be setting up straw men and knocking them down. Clearly he has viewed this revolution by watching TV and reading Times coverage, not by swimming in the Twitter/YouTube/blogger stream that has allowed an amazing group of people on the ground to speak directly to people all over the world.
For the final word on the subject, here's an actual Egyptian, comedy writer Haisam Abu-Samra, blogging from Cairo:
Make no mistake: Facebook and Twitter helped connect thousands of frustrated Egyptians and united them under the single goal of overthrowing the regime.
It's a thoughtful post, and the amazing World Wide Web means you can read it yourself! But I'll let him sum it up:
The web is in many ways a more modern, much larger version of the kinds of public spaces and forums that have made citizenship possible throughout history. Losing it for a week didn’t stop Egyptians from protesting or airing their frustrations; we still know how to use physical public spaces, after all. But it did remind us that a forum for the open exchange of words and ideas is central to any sustainable democracy; alternatively, we end up in a perilous cycle of control and chaos.
Mayan Woman on a cell phone in Guatemala/Ashabot Flickr photo
TGIF, because it is time for another round of good news and Developments That Are Not Depressing!
Here's a project that could bring the wealth of information on the web to people without computers--and even to those who are illiterate. From Fast Company:
Tim Berners-Lee is best known as the father of the World Wide Web, but his latest side-project in Senegal and Mali--the World Wide Web Foundation's VOICES project--aims to give youth and families without typical computing abilities a way to access the Internet with voice-enabled apps.
It is an ambitious project, focusing on health and agriculture, that would create an open, voice-enabled platform that would allow people to call in and "talk" to the web.
This is part of a larger trend in which countries and impoverished populations without access to reliable electrical grids and a traditional telecommunications infrastructure are finding ways to enter the digital age. For the most part, they are doing it through basic cell phones.
In Haiti, store owners and customers are using a "mobile money" system that allows their cell phones to serve as debit cards. With a few taps on the phone, people can get remittances from relatives abroad or buy something at the corner store. The project allows aid agencies to transfer food vouchers to people's phones, making the whole process cheaper and more efficient for everyone involved. No printing, no waiting in line--and as one store owner pointed out to an NPR reporter--no chance of getting cholera from handling dirty money.
Likewise, during a trip to Guatemala a few years ago I learned that cell phone usage had penetrated even the most remote indigenous areas. The pre-paid business model meant peasants and coffee plantation workers could use cash to purchase phones and plans. There was no need for a credit card or even a billing address, which was critical to cell phone adoption in a country in which 45% of the adult population is illiterate.
The Internet is down, but the Tweeting frrom Tahrir Square in Cairo goes on. Above is a Tweet from a hometown friend who always seems to be in the thick of things.
For many of us, a day without Internet would be would be like a day without caffeine. We'd be a little bored, a little edgy, maybe even a little cranky. But we'd survive. Even without the Lolcats.
But for the citizens of Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak "unplugged" the internet last week, the stakes are much higher. On a practical level, real-time information is critical for demonstrators, but also critical for anyone trying to stay safe and keep track of friends and relatives. And as the government clamps down on traditional journalists (they shut down Al Jazeera's Egypt bureau over the weekend), Egypt's bloggers, tweeters and ordinary citizens want to make sure that the world bears witness to their struggle. As the Guardian reports, "innovative Egyptians are finding ways to overcome the block. They are relaying information by voice, exploiting small and unnoticed openings in the digital firewall, and dusting off old modems to tap foreign dial-up services."
In an amazing demonstration of the power of social networking, free-speech advocates around the world have galvanized to make sure that Egypt does not go entirely dark.
On Monday, Google announced a little piece of programming magic that should allow people in Egypt to Tweet without an Internet connection. "Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground," said a Google blog post Monday. "Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection."
By leaving a voicemail on one of three designated international numbers, people in Egypt will be creating an automatic Tweet with the hashtag #Egypt.
Unfortunately, free speech doesn't come cheap. As in China, Iran and other repressive regimes around the world, dissident bloggers in Egypt have been persecuted and imprisoned. So while it's important to get the word out, it may be equally important for bloggers to take extraordinary measures to hide their identities. Before the Internet was shut down, Egyptians with a fear of retribution turned to the Tor Project, a sort of "underground railroad" for the net, which uses a system of bridges or "relays" to allow people to use the net anonymously. Although the system is free and available to anyone with a yen for online privacy, it can be a life-saver in a repressive regime.
"People in Egypt right now that are using the Internet really need to cover their tracks,’’ Tor's Jacob Appelbaum told the Boston Globe. “Let’s pretend that the government doesn’t fall. . . . We don’t know if they have analysts working in real time to try to find activists, and we are trying to make sure that people have access to Tor, so that people aren’t hunted down in the streets.’’
The system relies on volunteers around the world who configure their computers to serve as relays. Data packets from users who wish to remain anonymous take a random path through several of these "donated" relays, which means that no observer at any point can tell where the data came from or where it is going. The system was apparently used by Tunisian social media activists as well.
As usual, the pundits responded to the President's State of the Union address with tired, inside-the-beltway bloviation, tediously parsing the old tax vs. spend debate and analyzing Obama's political strategery.
I think they missed the point. The SOTU was a futurist's speech, intended to focus our minds on the accelerating change that we cannot avoid and that demands new ways of thinking.
I have just discovered that there is a secret war raging on my behalf. Right here, right now, even as I type these very words.
I have just discovered my Typepad spam comments folder.
Unbeknownst to me, an army of bad little Sir Spam-a-Lots have been hurling random letters, nonsense phrases and vile URLs at my innocent blog. Meanwhile, a valiant army of Typepad defenderbots--housed somewhere in The Cloud I suppose--are tirelessly fighting back with their superior AI, shielding us from the barrage of mischief.
