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Propagation of Trust and Distrust |
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| Topic: Technology |
6:08 pm EDT, Jul 31, 2004 |
A network of people connected by directed ratings or trust scores, and a model for propagating those trust scores, is a fundamental building block in many of todays most successful e-commerce and recommendation systems. In eBay, such a model of trust has significant influence on the price an item may command. In Epinions (epinions.com), conclusions drawn from the web of trust are linked to many behaviors of the system, including decisions on items to which each user is exposed. We develop a framework of trust propagation schemes, each of which may be appropriate in certain circumstances, and evaluate the schemes on a large trust network consisting of 800K trust scores expressed among 130K people. We show that a small number of expressed trusts/distrust per individual allows us to predict reliably trust between any two people in the system with high accuracy: a quadratic increase in actionable information. Our work appears to be the first to incorporate distrust in a computational trust propagation setting. Propagation of Trust and Distrust |
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Manifesto for the Reputation Society |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:32 am EDT, Jul 19, 2004 |
Information overload, challenges of evaluating quality, and the opportunity to benefit from experiences of others have spurred the development of reputation systems. Most Internet sites which mediate between large numbers of people use some form of reputation mechanism: Slashdot, eBay, ePinions, Amazon, and Google all make use of collaborative filtering, recommender systems, or shared judgements of quality. But we suggest the potential utility of reputation services is far greater, touching nearly every aspect of society. By leveraging our limited and local human judgement power with collective networked filtering, it is possible to promote an interconnected ecology of socially beneficial reputation systems -- to restrain the baser side of human nature, while unleashing positive social changes and enabling the realization of ever higher goals. Manifesto for the Reputation Society |
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Mapping Knowledge Domains |
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| Topic: Technology |
9:34 am EDT, Jul 16, 2004 |
This is a special issue of PNAS from April 2004, now freely available. Here are a few papers of note: Coauthorship networks and patterns of scientific collaboration
From paragraph to graph: Latent semantic analysis for information visualization
A method for finding communities of related genes
Tracking evolving communities in large linked networks
Traffic-based feedback on the web Mapping Knowledge Domains |
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Nature Review of 'Human-Built World' [PDF] |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:14 am EDT, Jun 15, 2004 |
The book review is on page 2. Ultimately, this reviewer calls the book "rewarding if unsatisfying." But, then, he's British. :) The visionary contributions of Marshall McLuhan go unremarked. I'm surprised by this ... Human-built World is a virtuoso overview of the various relationships between technology, commerce, society, art and the military. At least one Nature reader ( http://www.lettersfrombabylon.com/2004/05/popular-science.html ) felt that the review was clouded by an attempt to make political statements in the process of discussing the book. I tend to agree. Nature Review of 'Human-Built World' [PDF] |
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Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:05 am EDT, Jun 15, 2004 |
America's foremost historian of technology delivers the goods. A must-read. To most Americans, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential. Hughes nimbly charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture |
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Evolution and Structure of the Internet |
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| Topic: Technology |
11:28 pm EDT, Jun 9, 2004 |
Viewed in this analysis from a statistical physics perspective, the Internet is perceived as a developing system that evolves through the addition and removal of nodes and links. This perspective permits the authors to outline the dynamical theory that can appropriately describe the Internet's macroscopic evolution. The presence of such a theoretical framework will provide a revolutionary way of enhancing the reader's understanding of the Internet's varied network processes. Evolution and Structure of the Internet |
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Pricing and Architecture of the Internet | Andrew Odlyzko [PDF] |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:27 am EDT, May 26, 2004 |
With telecommunications in a slump, the search is on for ways to re-invigorate this key industry. The main problems are clearly economic much more than technological, and many of the proposed remedies would lead to new architectures for the Internet that would provide for greater control by carriers. They would drastically reduce the role of the end-to-end principle, the main foundation for the success of the Internet, in which functionality resides at the edges of the network. In communications, the general trend has been towards decreasing price discrimination and simpler pricing. The history of transportation presents a different picture. It is conceivable that telecommunications might break with its historical record and follow the example of transportation. It is therefore of interest to examine the evolution of pricing and quality differentiation in transportation. Pricing and Architecture of the Internet | Andrew Odlyzko [PDF] |
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The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century |
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| Topic: Technology |
2:08 pm EDT, May 22, 2004 |
The Engineer of 2020 Project centers on an effort to envision the future and to use that knowledge to attempt to predict the roles that engineers will play in the future. It is intended to provide a framework to position engineering education in the US for what lies ahead, rather than waiting and then trying to respond. Bran Ferren (President at Walt Disney Imagineering) gave a keynote address to the committee. The participants used scenario-based strategic planning with the help of Peter Schwartz (a director at the Long Now Foundation). G. Wayne Clough, president of Georgia Tech and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, chaired the committee that prepared this report. Committee members include: Alan Kay, now of HP Labs; Robert Lucky, of Telcordia and long-time IEEE columnist; and Henry Petroski, of Duke, and best-selling author. Noticeably absent? Gates. Jobs. Joy! The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century |
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A Review of the FBI's Trilogy Information Technology Modernization Program |
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| Topic: Technology |
12:03 am EDT, May 19, 2004 |
The FBI is in the process of developing a modern information technology (IT) system -- the Trilogy program -- that is designed to provide a high-speed network, modern workstations and software, and an application -- the Virtual Case File (VCF) -- to enhance the ability of agents to organize, access, and analyze information. Implementation of this system has encountered substantial difficulties, however, and has been the subject of much investigation and congressional concern. To help address these problems, the FBI asked the National Research Council (NRC) to undertake a quick review of the program and the progress that has been made to date. This report presents that review. The current status of four major aspects of the program -- the enterprise architecture, system design, program management, and human resources -- are discussed, and recommendations are presented to address the problems. The full text of this new report is available in PDF. Herb Lin is one of the co-editors of the report; you may remember him as co-editor of Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society. Among others, Matt Blaze was a member of the committee; and of course the sponsoring CSTB includes many notables, including Dave Clark, MIT; Eric Benhamou, 3Com; Randy Katz, UCB; Butler Lampson, Microsoft; Eric Schmidt, Google; and Andrew Viterbi. A Review of the FBI's Trilogy Information Technology Modernization Program |
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National Science Panel Warns of Far Too Few New Scientists |
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| Topic: Technology |
9:10 am EDT, May 7, 2004 |
The United States faces a major shortage of scientists because too few Americans are entering technical fields and because international competition is heating up for bright foreigners who once filled the gap. The solution is for the United States to work harder at developing its own scientific talent. But a board report shows declining interest among young Americans in science careers. The board in its report noted "a troubling decline" in the number of Americans training to be scientists and said such trends "threaten the economic welfare and security of our country." The 2004 report on indicators says the US ranks 17th among nations surveyed in the share of its 18-to-24-year-olds who earn natural science and engineering degrees. "I don't think America is getting fat and lazy," Dr. Richardson remarked. But he added that if the nation failed to make the right investments soon, "we're going to be left behind in a cloud of dust." National Science Panel Warns of Far Too Few New Scientists |
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