TechnologyReview.com - Dollars Over Democracy

TechnologyReview.com - Dollars Over Democracy Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have cooperated with the Chinese governmen to prohibit searches on the terms "democracy," "freedom," "human rights," "Taiwan independence," or "demonstration".

Google? "Don't be evil?"

Python will assimilate you

Python will assimilate you: "Some notable past objections against the language appear to have died away:

* PythonWhatsThat (1999)
* JavaJavaJava (2000)
* DotNetDotNetDotNet (2001)
* DynamicTypingIsADangerousAndMorallyQuestionableActivity (2002)
* ItsNotFastEnoughForRealWork (2003)"

Important announcement to all of my readers.

Say hello to Marcie!
;->

The Technium

Kevin Kelly is working on a new book, and it should be a doozy.
It's very much a work in progress, but one key point seems to be the following (I'm reading between the lines and haven't read that the lines themselves too rigorously)...

...that the technosphere has a global meta-intelligence of some sort with its own history and perhaps "manifest destiny." He calls this technological species the technium.

A few things I don't think he has quite said yet are

• that the the technium not only predates humanity, it probably created humanity. Or at least co-created humanity. As suggested by the ape scene in the movie 2001: a space odyssey, pre-human tool use must have created selection pressures that radically altered the path our biological evolution would otherwise have taken. As Jimmy Durante noted, clothes make the man.
  
• that the technium evolves by a darwin-esque selection process
• that the resulting meme/gene co-evolutionary process is the real story
• and that (as I argued in "Are Species Intelligent?") there is a very real and theoretically sound sense for thinking of the larger systems of which we are a part as thinking intelligences

Somewhat coincidentally, I am developing a course called Innovation and Invention in Information Technology that touches on many of the same issues. Here's an outline of the topics I have in mind. I would welcome suggestions, references, comments, etc.

➢ Information Technology and the Expansion of Human Potential
• Three possible futures:

• Biology and Technology are Destiny:
Historical and emerging interactions between human nature and technology
Augmenting Basic Human Biology
• The Human Environment:
from tribal campfires to Burning Man
from clothing to wearable computers
• Sensation and Perception:
from eyeglasses to cochlear implants,
from cave paintings to sensor nets to weather.com
• Cognition:
from the abacus to the computer.
from thinking and drawing to simulation and visualization
from pow-wows to teleconferences
• Action:
from levers to robots
from transportation to telecommuting
➢ Augmenting Culture, Society, Technology, and Art
• Collaboration:
from hunting to warfighting
from the tribal village to the global village
• Communication:
from writing to telecommunications
from text to hypertext to collaborative authoring
• Virtualization and Shared Visions:
from cave paintings to virtual realities
from music to multimedia
from barter to e-commerce
from ideas to intellectual property
• Collective Intelligence:
genes, memes and culture
social networks and social network visualization

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium: Recent Innovations in the Scientific Method ...with a comment from me if I pass his screening.

iball $695

http://www.audiovisualizers.com/library/store/iball/iball.htm

How I explained REST to my wife...

How Ryan Tomayko explained REST to his wife... Good metalogue

"...the possibilities are endless.

Each of the systems would get information from each other using a simple HTTP GET. If one system needs to add something to another system, it would use an HTTP POST. If a system wants to update something in another system, it uses an HTTP PUT. The only thing left to figure out is what the data should look like.

Wife: So this is what you and all the computer people are working on now? Deciding what the data should look like?

Ryan: Sadly, no..."

python list comprehensions can be intuitive if you squint

Sexy title, eh?

I read a collaborator's code last night and was struck by the number of times you see things like

newList=[]
....for thisThing in thatList:
........for thisOtherThing in thisOtherList:
............newList.append( somefunc( thisThing, thisOtherThing))

and then we can do something with the newList (or dictionaries; similar story).

This lead me to see if I could make list comprehensions be intuitive. I think I succeeded.

To cut to the chase, the above can be rewritten as

[somefunc(thisThing,thatThing) for thisThing in thatList for thisOtherThing in thisOtherList]

Its not more easy to read with long-winded names like this-- (and easy-reading is usually the highest priority for me and python)-- but it is concise and versatile.

So let's try to make them our friend

Given this,
>>> vec = [2, 4, 6]
>>> newList= [x*3 for x in vec]
>>> newList
[6, 12, 18]

vs, the usual way...

newList=[]
for x in vec:
newList.append( 3*x )

To me, [x*3 for x in vec]was never intuitive. (Apparently the syntax comes from mathematical set theory.)

But here's how I can make it livable: give me a list whose elements are 3*x
where each x comes out of vec

[ give me a list
3*x whose elements have the value 3*x
for x in vec for each x in vec ]

So here are some things you can what you can do with this.

Add inner loops:
>>>[x*y for x in vec for y in vec]
[4, 8, 12, 8, 16, 24, 12, 24, 36]

You you can add conditionals. (this is what python's filter function does)
Let's filter extract all the numbers divisible by 3
>>> [x*y for x in vec for y in vec if x*y % 3 == 0]
[12, 24, 12, 24, 36]

Generate lists of tuples or anything else.
Let's see what numbers generated the last set...
[(x , y, x*y) for x in vec for y in vec if x*y % 3 == 0]
[(2, 6, 12), (4, 6, 24), (6, 2, 12), (6, 4, 24), (6, 6, 36)]

Two times 6 is 12, 4 * 6 is 24... oh, right!-- at least one of the factors must be divisible by 3. You can put multiple ifs in here too.

And, as in our first example, invoke other functions
[multiply(x,y) x in vec for y in vec ]
[2, 4, 6 ]

You could probably extend and nest these things hugely, and achieve all the unreadability of lisp.

Don't do that.

Coincidentally, this topic is in the air these days.
See The fate of reduce() in Python 3000 by Guido van Rossum

Moore on more

Moore on more: "Will the additional computing power you get from following Moore's Law ever get us to computers with the equivalent of human intelligence?
Moore: Human intelligence in my view is something done in a dramatically different way than Von Neumann computers, and I don't think the route we're pursuing now is going to get to something that looks like human intelligence.

I do think, though, that eventually we will change our approach and do things much closer to the way they're done biologically and have a very big chance to get into something that looks for all intents and purposes like human intelligence. But I really don't think it's a simple approach. The amount of power that we would need to do everything the human brain does is probably more than we generate on Earth by our current approach.

"

Quantum Leap

Quantum Leap
Is this cool, or what?

Quantum cryptography allows two parties to send secret encryption keys to each other while testing to see if anyone has attempted to intercept them. The keys are sent, one photon at a time, over standard optical fibers; each photon represents a binary 1 or 0. What makes the system so secure is that any attempt by an eavesdropper to intercept the photons will alter them—alerting the sender to a security breach.

Tool turns English to code TRN 032305

Tool turns English to code TRN 032305: "Tool turns English to code"
Someone went to an awful lot of trouble with this April Fools joke: or went to even more trouble simulating one.

Geopolitics of Green Energy

As promised, Thomas Friedman on Geo-Greening (geo-politics of green energy)

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Geo-Greening by Example: "By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists - and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them - through our gasoline purchases. The oil boom is also entrenching the autocrats in Russia and Venezuela, which is becoming Castro's Cuba with oil. By doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are also setting up a global competition with China for energy resources, including right on our doorstep in Canada and Venezuela. Don't kid yourself: China's foreign policy today is very simple - holding on to Taiwan and looking for oil.

Finally, by doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are only hastening the climate change crisis, and the Bush officials who scoff at the science around this should hang their heads in shame. And it is only going to get worse the longer we do nothing. "

see also this ($2.95)

Ocean Power Fights Current Thinking

Ocean Power Fights Current Thinking:

This will be the first of several posts on alternative energy. I have a recurring fascination with this problem, and it has been rekindled by Thomas Friedman's trenchant discussions of the links between middle east terrorism and US energy policy.

"Recent advancements in the technology indicate that with a relatively small investment from the government, wave energy could soon compete with other renewable sources.

Wave energy systems place objects on the water's surface that generate energy by rising and falling with the waves. The wave energy in turn moves a buoy or cylinder up and down, which turns a generator that sends the electricity through an undersea cable to a power station on the shore.
...
In addition to having greater energy potential than other renewable sources, ocean energy is viewed as more aesthetically pleasing. Wave energy systems "have less visual impact" than offshore wind farms because they are partially submerged, according to Cliff Goudey, director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Fisheries Engineering Research.
...
If testing programs succeed, ocean energy could become cost-competitive with wind energy in as little as four years, according to EPRI's Bedard. However, Bedard is doubtful that the current administration will have a sea change of opinion on ocean energy. "The administration is basically a coal and oil administration," Bedard says."

yet2.com - Tech of the Week Detail

Zoom by Squinting Interesting idea. I wonder what users think?

Invention Is a Flower, Innovation Is a Weed

Invention Is a Flower, Innovation Is a Weed:
Bob Metcalfe begins his article with the question, "Why should you listen to me about innovation?"

Hey, I think the title alone is worth the price of admission.

AJAX analysis: interesting...but wrong.

The Man in Blue makes an interesting point

"While I am suitably impressed with the uses that have brought dynamic retrieval of data via JavaScript into the spotlight of late (Google Maps ... ummmm ... Google Suggest ... ummmm ...) I am yet to be persuaded that it will (or should) have a ground breaking effect upon the Web at large."

... I still see web applications as essentially different from web pages. Much like intranets, they don't have to play nice with other sites or standards (of the non-XHTML kind), because they are closed systems. Their aim is to complete a set task, not to hold linkable, publicly accessible information. When you send an e-mail, do you want its confirmation screen to be recorded in history for public posterity?

I think the essential characteristic defining the divide between an application and a web page is probably this public linkability. If the essence of your project is static information that should be available to a wider community (be it five friends or five continents), then it is most suited to a web page.

Interesting distinction...but I think its wrong. Mightn't you want be interested in a web app where the collaborative development of public links was a dynamic real time activity?

Indeed, I'm not sure I see the value of distinguishing between web apps and web pages. In 1992 I used to have the same problem distinguishing "multimedia" from "web stuff". I now realize the issue was one of communities of practice. Multimedia developers and new-fangled web developers were different people using different tools for different markets and different media. But that was a historical accident. They were actually trying to do the same things and acheive the same effects, and they eventually (I think, sort of) converged.

So what does that imply about when to use and not use AJAX? Um, I think that's pretty obvious--if you want non-disruptive time data exchange with the web browser, its the thing to use.

What's not so obvious is knowing what non-disruptive time data exchange with the web browser is good for. But I think we're getting some really interesting ideas...

Three Futures. Pick One.

Virtual Killing, Real Death

In Hunting, Tech Pushes Envelope of What's Ethical: "A San Antonio entrepreneur recently created an uproar with a Web site, www.live-shot.com , that aims to allow hunters to shoot exotic game animals or feral pigs on his private hunting ranch by remote control, with the click of a mouse, from anywhere in the world."

hmm, let's combine this with an article about missile-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

"The Predator was first used exclusively for reconnaissance missions, Vanzanten observed. He noted that unlike conventionally piloted aircraft, the UAV can remain airborne over a particular area for up to 20 hours.

Vanzanten also said that Hellfire-missile-packing Predators flew combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

or maybe something about Columbine...?

MusicViz

From Tim Bray...

Giant Steps, Illustrated

Via the reliably-excellent Antipixel, this remarkable animation built around John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. Watching it, I feel like someone installed a window in the side of Coltrane’s head and I’m looking in. Don’t miss it.

I still think Music Visualization is a huge untapped opportunity for digital art and information visualization. (Insert plug for my Macroscope Manifesto here.)

Becoming Transhuman, or, whatever happened to the inventor of Virtual Reality Markup Language.

Mark Pesce's Playful World
Becoming Transhuman, video, 72 minutes, 2001.

The first part of this unique video-essay is the best evocation I've ever seen of the fantastic voyage from big bang to death of the universe (including 2001, for example). The latter part is a unique forward-looking personal synthesis of mysticism and science. (and "forward-looking" is an understatement).

Altogether remarkable. This is what the web is for.

Using "found" audio and video sources, Becoming Transhuman is a narrative of what-we-are-becoming, broken into three sections: an affirmation of the positive dimension of human growth, a recognition of the darker side of human nature, and a contemplation of our ever-more-precarious position. It premiered in May 2001 at MINDSTATES.

To play the film, in Real format,
click the link appropriate to your speed:

Becoming Transhuman (DSL)
Becoming Transhuman (ISDN)
Becoming Transhuman (56K Modem)