From the New Yorker, July 14, 1951:

The most encouraging word we have so far had about television came from a grade-school principal we encountered the other afternoon.

"They say it's going to bring back vaudeville," he said, "but I think it's going to bring back the book."

...

It's only a question of time, our principal felt, before the new literacy of the television audience reaches the point where whole books can be held up to the screen and all their pages slowly turned.

Anticipating the Kindle, I suppose. (Once it goes color, the Kindle may do well selling comic books.)

Great moments in predicting the future, television edition

How the author helped Afghans build a thriving soap and body-oil business — and overcame the incompetence of America’s aid establishment

Scents & Sensibility

The following list was prepared by Alan Kay for his students and is presented here for those who want to learn more about the ideas and philosophies that influenced the creation of Squeak.

This ought to keep you busy in 2008.

Alan Kay's Reading List | Squeakland

In the future, offshore platforms could be run by robots alone, with human beings staying on land.

Robots Taking Over The Job On Offshore Oil Drilling Platforms

Al-Qa'ida is deliberately "grooming" children and young people to carry out terror attacks in Britain, the head of MI5 warned today.

Al-Qa'ida 'grooming children for UK terror attacks'

Terrorism experts say radical groups are targeting teenagers as young as 14.

I suppose it's time to rethink this:

"Children in the back seat, lower suspicion, we let it move through," Barbero said. "They parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back."

A new, younger jihadi threat emerges

These new fusion centers, over 40 of which have been established around the country, raise very serious privacy issues at a time when new technology, government powers and zeal in the "war on terrorism" are combining to threaten Americans' privacy at an unprecedented level.

Moreover, there are serious questions about whether data fusion is an effective means of preventing terrorism in the first place, and whether funding the development of these centers is a wise investment of finite public safety resources. Yet federal, state and local governments are increasing their investment in fusion centers without properly assessing whether they serve a necessary purpose.

There's nothing wrong with the government seeking to do a better job of properly sharing legitimately acquired information about law enforcement investigations — indeed, that is one of the things that 9/11 tragically showed is very much needed.

But in a democracy, the collection and sharing of intelligence information—especially information about American citizens and other residents—need to be carried out with the utmost care. That is because more and more, the amount of information available on each one of us is enough to assemble a very detailed portrait of our lives. And because security agencies are moving toward using such portraits to profile how "suspicious" we look.

See also:

Perfect Information and Perverse Incentives: Costs and Consequences of Transformation and Transparency

Securing Privacy in the Internet Age

Geek War on Terror

Tom Noonan on Computer Security

What's Wrong With Fusion Centers

Proteins are the most diverse and versatile set of biological macromolecules, having crucial roles in all biological processes. Now that researchers have identified whole complements of proteins (proteomes) for many cell types, they are pushing the frontiers of protein science: from the regulation and function of single protein dynamics to the evolution and inhibition of protein–protein interactions.

Proteins to proteomes

Interested?

While data mining represents a significant advance in the type of analytical tools currently available, there are limitations to its capability. One limitation is that although data mining can help reveal patterns and relationships, it does not tell the user the value or significance of these patterns. These types of determinations must be made by the user. A second limitation is that while data mining can identify connections between behaviors and/or variables, it does not necessarily identify a causal relationship. Successful data mining still requires skilled technical and analytical specialists who can structure the analysis and interpret the output.

Data mining is becoming increasingly common in both the private and public sectors. Industries such as banking, insurance, medicine, and retailing commonly use data mining to reduce costs, enhance research, and increase sales. In the public sector, data mining applications initially were used as a means to detect fraud and waste, but have grown to also be used for purposes such as measuring and improving program performance. However, some of the homeland security data mining applications represent a significant expansion in the quantity and scope of data to be analyzed. Some efforts that have attracted a higher level of congressional interest include the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project (now-discontinued) and the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) project (nowcanceled and replaced by Secure Flight). Other initiatives that have been the subject of congressional interest include the Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX), the Able Danger (2, 3) program, the Automated Targeting System (ATS), and data collection and analysis projects being conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).

As with other aspects of data mining, while technological capabilities are important, there are other implementation and oversight issues that can influence the success of a project’s outcome. One issue is data quality, which refers to the accuracy and completeness of the data being analyzed. A second issue is the interoperability of the data mining software and databases being used by different agencies. A third issue is mission creep, or the use of data for purposes other than for which the data were originally collected. A fourth issue is privacy. Questions that may be considered include the degree to which government agencies should use and mix commercial data with government data, whether data sources are being used for purposes other than those for which they were originally designed, and possible application of the Privacy Act to these initiatives. It is anticipated that congressional oversight of data mining projects will grow as data mining efforts continue to evolve. This report will be updated as events warrant.

Data Mining and Homeland Security: An Overview

Data through October 2007, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller(R) Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show broadbased declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States, marking the 10th consecutive month of negative annual returns and the 23rd consecutive month of decelerating returns.

The 10-City Composite’s annual decline of 6.7% is a record low. The previous largest decline on record was 6.3% recorded in April 1991. In October, the 20-City Composite recorded an annual decline of 6.1%.

“No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the current state of the single-family housing market remains grim,” says Robert J. Shiller, Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC. “Not only did the 10-City Composite post a record low in its annual growth rate, but 11 of the 20 metro areas did the same. If you look at the monthly figures, every MSA went down in both October and September. Eleven of the 20 MSAs, in addition to the two composites, recorded their single largest monthly decline on record in October. For both the 10-City and 20-City composites this was a decline of 1.4% over September.”

Miami surpassed Tampa in October, reporting a double-digit annual decline of 12.4%. Tampa followed with -11.8%, Detroit with -11.2% and San Diego with - 11.1%. Six of the metro areas are now posting double digit declines in their annual growth rates. Atlanta and Dallas finally entered negative territory, with declines of 0.7% and 0.1%, respectively, leaving only Charlotte, Portland and Seattle as the MSAs still experiencing positive annual growth rates.

Broad-based, Record Declines in Home Prices in October