This is Richard Saul Wurman's current project, at least since he sold TED to Chris Anderson. The information design of the site is excellent. Worth a look.

19.20.21.

Francis Fukuyama:

The collectivism of the war effort [in World War II] is something that has entered America’s national consciousness, and is one of the reasons for people still remembering this a “the good war.”

It goes without saying that none of America’s wars since then have inspired this degree of innocent championing of American unity and common purpose. Korea, Vietnam, and the current Iraq war have been far more divisive. There were celebratory films made about the 1991 Gulf War, but that was a war fought by professional soldiers cut off from a home front that neither participated nor was asked to sacrifice. The cynicism bred by Vietnam has returned in full force as a result of the current war in Iraq, and one wonders whether there will ever be a national struggle in the future that will be commemorated in the manner of Victory at Sea.

The Marines have lost a thousand men in Anbar province over the past few years. Their story is every bit as heroic as those who fought on Guadalcanal, but I suspect that they will be remembered more like their heroic compatriots in I Corps during Vietnam—not as typical representatives of a great and united people, but as individuals caught in a strange and incomprehensible struggle.

Rabaul and American Collectivism

The latest column from Alex Ross.

The Internet may be killing the pop CD, but it’s helping classical music.

This is a follow-up to the thread, Beyond the Musical Avant-Garde.

The Well-tempered Web

THE LABORATORY FOR FINANCIAL ENGINEERING is a partnership between academia and industry, designed to support and promote quantitative research in financial engineering and computational finance.

MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering

What is the potential for a divergence in views among civilian and military elites (sometimes referred to as the civil-military gap) to undermine military effectiveness? The authors propose a five-stage analytical framework that encompasses the main areas where a civil-military gap might have an impact. Using an existing survey-based dataset (prepared and administered by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies) to inform this framework, they find a variety of differences among the military and civilian respondents. However, most of those differences disappeared when the authors focused on the attitudes that are pertinent to civilian control of the military and military effectiveness. The major exception to this pattern related to such military personnel policies as women in combat, the military’s policies with regard to sexual harassment, and whether gays should serve in the military. In contrast, most of the other measures of military effectiveness appear to be influenced more by views of the military threat facing the country and views of foreign policy — where all military officers and civilians share similar perspectives. Overall, concerns about a civil-military gap and possible erosion of the principle of civilian control of the military appear to be overstated.

The Civil-Military Gap in the United States: Does It Exist, Why, and Does It Matter?

Another thing about the Internet that surprises me is that it's so unregulated and inexpensive. Pretty much anyone can afford to post pretty much anything they want, and it's visible to pretty much everyone in the world. Who would have expected such a cornucopia of free speech? It's almost too good to be true.

Did you know that terrorists use the Internet ?!?

It's a kind of miracle that government and business didn't manage to take over the Internet. It grew while they weren't watching. I just hope the public won't ever be bullied or bamboozled into letting the bosses bottle up the genie. That's something we need to keep an eye on.

Keep your eye on the Obelisk.

Rudy Rucker, On The Future | Forbes Magazine

We examine what drives the diffusion of different types of information through email networks and the effects of these diffusion patterns on the productivity and performance of information workers.

In particular, we ask:

What predicts the likelihood of an individual becoming aware of a strategic piece of information, or becoming aware of it sooner?

Do different types of information exhibit different diffusion patterns, and do different characteristics of social structure, relationships and individuals in turn affect access to different kinds of information?

Does better access to information predict an individual's ability to complete projects or generate revenue?

We characterize the social network of a medium sized executive recruiting firm using accounting data on project co-work relationships and ten months of email traffic.

We identify two distinct types of information diffusing over this network - 'event news' and 'discussion topics' - by their usage characteristics, and observe several thousand diffusion processes of each type of information.

We find the diffusion of news, characterized by a spike in communication and rapid, pervasive diffusion through the organization, is influenced by demographic and network factors but not by functional relationships (e.g. prior co-work, authority) or the strength of ties.

In contrast, diffusion of discussion topics, which exhibit shallow diffusion characterized by 'back-and-forth' conversation, is heavily influenced by functional relationships and the strength of ties, as well as demographic and network factors. Discussion topics are more likely to diffuse vertically up and down the organizational hierarchy, across relationships with a prior working history, and across stronger ties, while news is more likely to diffuse laterally as well as vertically, and without regard to the strength or function of relationships.

We also find access to information strongly predicts project completion and revenue generation. The effects are economically significant, with each additional 'word seen' correlated with about $70 of additional revenue generated. Our findings provide some of the first evidence of the economic significance of information diffusion in email networks.

Productivity Effects of Information Diffusion in Networks

We investigate the long held but empirically untested assumption that diverse networks drive performance by providing access to novel information.

We build and validate an analytical model of information diversity, develop theory linking network structure to the distribution of novel information among actors and their performance, and test our theory using a unique ten month panel of email communication patterns, message content and performance data from a medium sized executive recruiting firm.

While our theory and results demonstrate that network structures predict performance due to their impact on access to information, we also find important theoretically driven non-linearities in these relationships.

Novel and diverse information are increasing in network size and network diversity, but with diminishing marginal returns. There are also diminishing marginal productivity returns to novel information, consistent with theories of cognitive capacity, bounded rationality, and information overload.

Network diversity contributes to performance even when controlling for the performance effects of novel information, suggesting additional benefits to diverse networks beyond those conferred through information advantage.

Our theory and results suggest subtle nuances in relationships between networks, information and economic performance, and the methods and tools developed are replicable, opening a new line of inquiry into these relationships.

Network Structure & Information Advantage

Developments in information and communication technology and networked computing over the past two decades have given rise to the notion of electronic government, most commonly used to refer to the delivery of public services over the Internet. This volume argues for a shift from the narrow focus of "electronic government" on technology and transactions to the broader perspective of information government--the information flows within the public sector, between the public sector and citizens, and among citizens--as a way to understand the changing nature of governing and governance in an information society.

Contributors discuss the interplay between recent technological developments and evolving information flows, and the implications of different information flows for efficiency, political mobilization, and democratic accountability. The chapters are accompanied by short case studies from around the world, which cover such topics as electronic government efforts in Singapore and Switzerland, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's effort to solicit input on planned regulations over the Internet, and online activism "cyberprotesting" globalization.

A sample chapter, "From Electronic Government to Information Government," is available.

Governance and Information Technology

Rudy Rucker has a new book. Doctorow declares it "vintage Rucker."

Snippets from reviews:

Alt-cultural folk strive to save Earth from digitized doom ...

A computer mogul's threat to replace messy reality with clean virtuality and by a memory-hungry artificial intelligence called the Big Pig propels nanotechnologist Ond Lutter, his autistic son, Chu, and their allies on an interdimensional quest for a golden harp, the Lost Chord, strung with hypertubes that can unroll the eighth dimension and unleash limitless computing power.

Rucker takes on the volatile field of nanotechnology and the presumed inevitable "singularity" of human and computer unification.

More here, including (next month) the novel itself.

Postsingular, by Rudy Rucker