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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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| Topic: Arts |
1:28 am EST, Feb 19, 2005 |
We are freed, at the end of these two dramas, not because the playwright has arrived at a solution, but because he has reconciled us to the notion that there is no solution -- that it is the human lot to try and fail, and that no one is immune from self-deception. We have, through following the course of the drama, laid aside, for two hours, the delusion that we are powerful and wise, and we leave the theater better for the rest. David Mamet on Arthur Miller. Attention Must Be Paid |
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My Career in Bumper Stickers |
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| Topic: Media |
1:25 am EST, Feb 19, 2005 |
Several years ago, I took a job as a gossip columnist for my local newspaper. In this role, I was to invent fake gossip. In my column, which is called "Heard by a Bird," I began to transcribe amusing bumper stickers I saw on Main Street. One day it struck me that I could write my own messages, and pretend they were real -- just as Jorge Luis Borges suggested it was superior to write reviews of imaginary books, rather than actually write the books. I would create, if not true bumper stickers, then the rumor of bumper stickers. My Career in Bumper Stickers |
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Laurels for Giving the Internet Its Language |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:00 am EST, Feb 19, 2005 |
Vint Cerf, who was a graduate student working in Len Kleinrock's lab at UCLA when the first Arpanet link was installed there in 1969, is aware of the egos involved in this debate over legacy. He said he hoped the announcement of the Turing Award would not rankle colleagues. I work down the hall / "next door" to Cerf's co-author on RFC 675, "Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program" and on a January 1974 conference paper which actually precedes the publication of the canonical and widely cited Cerf-Kahn IEEE paper of May 1974 cited in this Katie Hafner piece. I haven't had a chance to chat with him about this NYT article, but he didn't seem at especially "rankled" this past week ... and while it's no fun to miss out on a chance to read your name in the Gray Lady, I should think that any inkling of rankling is more likely attributable to losing out on a share of the $100,000 prize. Laurels for Giving the Internet Its Language |
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Why Societies Need Dissent |
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| Topic: Society |
11:19 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
In this timely book, Cass R. Sunstein shows that organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Sunstein demonstrates that corporations, legislatures, even presidents are likely to blunder if they do not cultivate a culture of candor and disclosure. He shows that unjustified extremism, including violence and terrorism, often results from failure to tolerate dissenting views. The tragedy is that blunders and cruelties could be avoided if people spoke out. Dissenters are often portrayed as selfish and disloyal, but Sunstein shows that those who reject pressures imposed by others perform valuable social functions, often at their own expense. Why Societies Need Dissent |
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Born Losers: A History of Failure in America |
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| Topic: History |
11:08 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser -- the label and the experience -- in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America |
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| Topic: Cryptography |
11:01 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
... filled with political intrigue, heroes and villains, and enough twists and turns to keep readers immersed. This book's highlight is the story of a mysterious book discovered in 1912 and named for its owner, Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript has a coded text enhanced by hundreds of illustrations depicting exotic plants, astronomical phenomena and strange "strings of tiny naked women cavorting in a variety of fountains, waterfalls, and pools." Various experts have attributed the manuscript to Roger Bacon -- but as it has kept its secrets from some of the world's greatest cryptanalysts, including some in the CIA and England's MI-8, as well as the largest supercomputers in the world, the attribution remains speculative. But these efforts make a compelling story for readers of the history of science and of code breaking. The Friar and the Cipher |
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| Topic: Physics |
10:58 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
This is the book that Freeman Dyson recently reviewed for The New York Review of Books. Publishers Weekly has given it a "Starred Review." Through crisp prose, interesting analogies and ample insight, Brian Cathart makes the basics of nuclear physics accessible while demonstrating the passion scientists have for their work. Cathcart instills in the reader a sense of excitement as the nuclear age unfolds around the world. The Fly in the Cathedral is a riveting and erudite narrative inspired by the dreams that lead the last true gentlemen scientists to the very essence of the universe: the heart of matter. The Fly in the Cathedral |
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The Digital Person: Technology And Privacy In The Information Age |
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| Topic: Technology |
10:52 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
"A pathbreaking account of the threat to privacy in todays digitized world." Praise for The Digital Person: Bruce Schneier: "An unusually perceptive discussion of one of the most vexing problems of the digital age ... a fascinating journey into the almost surreal ways personal information is hoarded, used, and abused in the digital age." Publishers Weekly: "[T]his book is so refreshing ... it offers insights into the current state of privacy in America and some intriguing prescriptions for altering that state of affairs. ... Anyone concerned with preserving privacy against technologys growing intrusiveness will find this book enlightening." Chapter 1 is available online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=609721 The Digital Person: Technology And Privacy In The Information Age |
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| Topic: Health and Wellness |
10:44 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
What does a pack of cigarettes cost a smoker, the smoker's family, and society? This longitudinal study on the private and social costs of smoking calculates that the cost of smoking to a 24-year-old woman smoker is $86,000 over a lifetime; for a 24-year-old male smoker the cost is $183,000. The total social cost of smoking over a lifetime -- including both private costs to the smoker and costs imposed on others (including second-hand smoke and costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) -- comes to $106,000 for a woman and $220,00 for a man. The cost per pack over a lifetime of smoking: almost $40.00. The Price of Smoking |
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Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy, by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh |
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| Topic: Technology |
10:41 pm EST, Feb 18, 2005 |
Open source software is considered by many to be a novelty and the open source movement a revolution. Yet the collaborative creation of knowledge has gone on for as long as humans have been able to communicate. CODE looks at the collaborative model of creativity -- with examples ranging from collective ownership in indigenous societies to free software, academic science, and the human genome project -- and finds it an alternative to proprietary frameworks for creativity based on strong intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights, argues Rishab Ghosh in his introduction, were ostensibly developed to increase creativity; but today, policy decisions that treat knowledge and art as if they were physical forms of property actually threaten to decrease creativity, limit public access to creativity, and discourage collaborative creativity. "Newton should have had to pay a license fee before being allowed even to see how tall the 'shoulders of giants' were, let alone to stand upon them," he writes. The contributors to CODE, from such diverse fields as economics, anthropology, law, and software development, examine collaborative creativity from a variety of perspectives, looking at new and old forms of creative collaboration and the mechanisms emerging to study them. Discussing the philosophically resonant issues of ownership, property, and the commons, they ask if the increasing application of the language of property rights to knowledge and creativity constitutes a second enclosure movement -- or if the worldwide acclaim for free software signifies a renaissance of the commons. Two concluding chapters offer concrete possibilities for both alternatives, with one proposing the establishment of "positive intellectual rights" to information and another issuing a warning against the threats to networked knowledge posed by globalization. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is Program Leader at the International Institute of Infonomics at Maastricht University. He was one of the founders and is the current managing editor of First Monday, the peer-reviewed Internet journal. Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy, by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh |
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