March 26, 2004

getting there second

file under: thoughts about things

my previous post about NASA's Stardust mission was spawned after reading a Wired article about the Probe Flotilla to Scour Planets.

as evidenced by my post, the story of Stardust really did it for me. i was so fired up that i decided to submit the links for that site to boingboing.net.

NOTE TO SELF: always read all of boingboing before submitting a link. do a full text search if necessary.

as it turns out, someone else had already submitted a link about aerogels, which they had found on the Stardust web site. by the timing of things, i'm pretty sure they found the Stardust web site just like i did, by using the Wired article.

the link timeline of shame
here is how events unfolded with respect to link generation (all events occur on 03.26.04):

• 02:00am PT: Wired posts article about probe flotilla; article contains link to Stardust web site
• 03:30am (Timezone unknown): Link about aerogels posted on hinterlands.cc (doesn't anybody sleep around here?)
• 09:26am (Timezone unknown): boingboing posts a link to the aforementioned aerogel post
• 11:37am PT: rPm becomes fascinated with Stardust, and reads everything on the Web site
• 01:12pm PT: rPm completes post about Stardust and feels good
• 01:14pm PT: rPm posts Stardust link suggestion on boingboing, ignorant of the fact that if he had scrolled down the page a bit before posting, he would have seen that someone else had already done it
• 03:56pm PT: rPm looks at the boingboing RSS feed and sees aforementioned post about aerogel; he thinks "what an interesting coincidence!"
• 03:57pm PT: rPm realizes with both humor and sadness that he got there second, about seven hours late

on almost being first
this happens to me a lot. it seems to be happening more lately, or at the very least, i'm more aware of it. i'll think something or write something that i think is terribly witty, pat myself on the back for said idea or writing, and then find out that someone on the net had the same idea or wrote almost the same thing two [hours|days|months|weeks|years] ago (my post on link reciprocity is a good example of me discovering this in real time while i write a post).

it's really embarrassing. it makes me realize that i'm far from alone in my ideas, which can either be good or bad, depending on your perspective. it also makes me wonder about how original ideas really come about. are there original ideas, or are we all just pulling from a collective "idea sea," and some of us are just better fishermen than others?

i'm sure someone's already thought about that, though, so i'll just save myself the trouble and do a google search.

Posted: 03.26.04 at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

stardust

file under: thoughts about things

our tax dollars are spent on a lot of questionable things, many of them stupid (e.g., the multi-billion dollar missile defense system that will never, ever, ever work).

and then there is the incredible work that NASA is doing. tax dollars spent to understand the universe and to invigorate our sense of wonder.

i'm not talking about the Mars rover mission. don't get me wrong - it's about as cool as space missions get, but for some reason, it didn't push my geek buttons in the same way that Stardust did.

Stardust is a tiny robot whose incredible mission is to capture the dust from a comet and bring it home to earth. if Mars rover is the big, popular kid who gets all the attention, Stardust is his scrappy, determined little brother.

the surface of comet Wild 2, as captured by stardust

the mission of the little robot-spacecraft-that-could reads like a science fiction story; it captures my imagination and makes me feel like a kid again.

...

mission synopsis or sci-fi story?
a tiny probe is shot from the earth in Feburary 1999. its mission is simple - go collect the stuff of stars, the dust being ejected from the surface of comet Wild 2; bring home samples. about 1/1000th of an ounce will do, provided the captured dust particles are unharmed.

in the course of its mission, stardust will fly a total of 3 billion miles. it hurls around the sun twice in elliptical orbits, at an average speed of 48,000 mph. at its furthest point from the sun (aphelion), 253 million miles distant, it is farther away than any solar-powered object we have ever created.

after reaching aphelion, it flies around the sun again, finds its way to comet Wild 2, and then passes through the comet's dust cloud (coma). during its 13,000 mph close encounter, it extends a tennis-racket-shaped collection grid filled with aerogel, a substance almost indistinguishable from air. the dust particles slam into the grid at 3.8 miles per second, but this cosmic catcher's mitt slows them down in a microsecond and leaves them undamaged. it cradles them in a delicate web of silicate networks, protection for the journey home.

the return capsule must fly another 1.14 billion miles to get home. it must survive a descent through earth's atmosphere; during its 28,000 mph re-entry, parachute snap, and landing, it will experience loads up to 100 times the force due to gravity (a human being would black out at about 5g's). on its final descent, it is traveling faster than the Apollo space capsules and 70% faster than the space shuttle on re-entry.

it will finally come to rest in the Utah desert on Sunday, January 26, 2006 at 2:45am. its precious cargo, 1/1000th of an ounce of cosmic dust, will help unlock the secrets of comets and the shrouded early history of our solar system.

aerogel - the coolest stuff there is
the collection grid used to capture cosmic dust is filled with aerogel, a substance closer to air than anything else. NASA's stardust web site is full of photos like the one below.

aerogel is 99.8% air, yet it can support a brick, stand up to scorching flames, and safely capture cosmic dust traveling 13,000 mph

a high-speed flyby
the animated sequence below is what stardust captured when it flew past Wild 2. we've become so jaded to images from space; my sense of amazement and wonder came back after reading the story of the little robot that took these pictures, and the billions of miles it traveled to get them.

what stardust experienced as it flew through wild 2's dust and gas cloud

cool facts
the number of cool facts about the stardust mission fills an entire page. i was ooh-ing and aah-ing and wow-ing through all of them...here are a few Stardust highlights:

• It is the first U.S. mission launched to robotically obtain samples in deep space and return them to Earth.
• It is the first U.S. mission designed to return samples from another body since the Apollo missions to the moon.
• It is the first NASA mission dedicated to exploring a comet.
• Scientists hope to collect more than 100 particles from a newly discovered beam of particles streaming into our Solar System from other stars in outer space.
• Comet Wild 2, the destination of Stardust, almost collided with Jupiter in 1974, causing its orbit to be deflected closer to the Sun.
• By circling back to swing by Earth to get a gravitational slingshot out to the comet, Stardust uses a smaller rocket. This saves over 8 million dollars.

in the gutter, looking up at the stars
i felt like a kid again reading and seeing the hyperreal story of Stardust. it seems that much news in the world today beats us into depression or apathy or anger or sadness. why no t have incredible stories like that of Stardust front and center, right next to the ones about war and suffering and insanity? maybe more people would look up at the stars and remember that we all share them.

Posted: 03.26.04 at 1:12 PM | Permalink

March 25, 2004

amazing things in washington

file under: thoughts about things

some amazing things happened Wednesday in the Sept. 11 Commission hearings. richard clarke, the former white house counterterrorism chief, spoke his mind in a way that none previously has in these hearings:

• he took responsibility and openly apologized for failures, both his and others
• he stared at partisan bickering until it went and hid in the corner
• he spoke eloquently and intelligently about complex matters of foreign policy, national security, and humanity in the modern world
• he actually answered the questions that people asked him, as opposed to doing the political-CYA bob-and-weave
• he told it like it is, on multiple occasions:
• sometimes, american government needs body bags before it's willing to take action
• condoleeza rice is a liar and sycophant who is uninterested in facts that deviate from her views or those of the white house she supports [that's a paraphrase]
• white house advisors often put administration policy in the best light when speaking in public, regardless of the scary grandma hidden in the attic (so to speak)
• he made it abundantly clear that the bush administration is looking for bumper-sticker solutions to charles dickens problems

Posted: 03.25.04 at 12:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

robbery and the net as amplifier

file under: technology

i've been following a thread about a fairly well-known blogger who was recently robbed. she has been chronicling some of her feelings (see why my robbery matters), and also pursuing the perpetrators, online.

it makes me wonder about a few things, and reminds me of when i got robbed...

...

net as amplifier
social networks can be used as a means to willfully (or unintentionally) destroy or enhance reputation. i believe this to be true independent of the internet; the net just makes it easier and faster for those with the connections.

the aforementioned blogger posted pictures of her robbers on her blog. i am certain that she did this with the best of intentions, but there could be unintended consequences to her action, and the social network amplifies them (both the good and the bad). one could imagine scenarios where one or more of the men in those photos were drunk, irresponsible, yet innocent, bystanders. i am not saying this is the case, but rather pointing it out as a possibilitiy in other situations.

in devious hands, this process of net amplification could be used to smear and distort people's actions and events. in other hands, it could accelerate the wheels of justice to good end.

the net is no different than other media channels in this sense - it is a neutral vehicle that is ambivalent about the quality or accuracy of the content it carries.

i got robbed once
fwiw, i experienced something similar...i had my entire bank account drained in a matter of days after a debit card theft.

through serendipity and deduction, and with the help of the police and others, we were able to apprehend the "thug." our perp turned out to be none other than my next-door-neighbor's girlfriend. she was a blond, white, 26-year-old woman, who also happened to be a closet sociopath / bulimic / cocaine addict who had been robbing friends and family blind and pilfering identities wherever she went; she finally got caught, but left quite a wake of wreckage behind her.

after the sting in which she was caught, i met with a us attorney to provide a statement. this woman stole a total of roughly $70,000 and caused pain to dozens of people spread across several states. how long could she go to jail? the us attorney consulted a table (plot depth of crime vs. type of crime vs. how many offenses) -->2-3 years, maximum (it's all a formula).

i went to her sentencing hearing. justice was served, such as it was. she cried at her hearing, where she was sentenced to 1000 hours of community service, a year in a halfway house with an electronic tracking bracelet, and drug rehab programs. she also had to pay back all she stole (mostly to financial institutions who had already reimbursed their clients).

when i walked out of the hall of justice, i felt no satisfaction. i felt hollow and sad for the desperate hell of that woman's life, one that i couldn't really understand. she committed a crime and needed to face consequences, but prison wouldn't have helped her. who knows what happened to her after a year spent wearing that bracelet.

i drew my own mixed conclusions from those experiences, and they're harder to articulate than i would have imagined. after all was said and done, i'd say forgiveness provided me the most lasting and meaningful resolution.

Posted: 03.25.04 at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 23, 2004

search_rPm

file under: about this blog

search functionality has been added to docrpm.com. it is now possible to search current posts and blog archives. i should have done this two years ago...redesign will happen sometime soon. i know it needs to be done.

thank you for your attention.

Posted: 03.23.04 at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 22, 2004

ready-fire-aim in social network services

file under: technology

with more social networking tools than you can shake a mouse at (see Judith Meskill's list for proof), there are bound to be some real losers. so far, i'm not sure if there are any winners, but that remains to be seen...the night it still young.

one of the main problems here is the "build it and they will come" mentality (as opposed to finding out what people need first, then building somethinig to meet that need). danah boyd articulates the issue well.

in addition to her other arguments, she asks, what problem do we have that social network [tools] give us insight into? insight is important, and i think the failures of the current crop of applications do give us insight. among other things, they make it abundantly clear how difficult it is to model human relationships with things like ontologies or controlled vocabularies (Clay Shirky has made this point recently). this wouldn't come as a surprise to many people.

in addition to insight, the question of value is central, in my opinion...if social networking tools solve a problem that's meaningful to people, then they deliver value.

if one agrees that there is a horse-cart inversion going on here, there's another question that follows: why are so many intelligent people building things with questionable (or unknown) value, flawed logic, or just plain silly assumptions?

money is the first and most obvious answer. a lot of the visible activity is probably just bandwagon jumping because social networking software is the coolest thing since internet incubators or selling pet food on the web.

another explanation is more satisfying to me...people have an intuitive feeling that social networking applications are new and exciting and can offer something valuable beyond just making friends or getting dates.

social network applications are exciting candidates for systems with emergent properties. the simplest way to discover these properties is to build first, watch things emerge, and then refine and rebuild once you have a better idea of how these things are really useful. granted, this may not be the best way to do things, but in the absence of other approaches, it's the occam's razor solution.

in essence, developers are building sociological laboratories on the net, turning people loose, and watching the results. this is implied in eric schmidt's statement about google and social networking apps: "Social networks will get better as we figure out what problem they're intended to solve."

ok, he probably means social networking tools, but even so...there is an assumption being made here that social networking tools are necessary, that they are intended to solve any problem.

time will tell. after all, human beings have been doing reasonably well without social software for thousands of years (modulo things like war, of course). so relationship software exposes the thousands of connections each of us shares with other people...it makes us see how we're hyperconnected.

does it follow that social network software makes us better? or does it just make some things a little easier? is it evolution or revolution?

the next time someone starts frothing at the mouth about friendster or orkut or whatever, ask them that question...i'd be interested in their response.

Posted: 03.22.04 at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 15, 2004

bert, i'm scared

file under: thoughts about things

i've seen this a few times on the net...it's one of those things that you laugh about, pause, then wonder if you should have laughed.

do you know what your terror-alert level is? i'm having a stop-drop-and-cover flashback.

Posted: 03.15.04 at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

anti-social software ... buy now!

file under: technology , thoughts about things

ok...this cartoon is really, really funny (if you're a geek or someone who's a little fed up with all that email from friendster or orkut or YASNS).

Posted: 03.15.04 at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

orkut rants part II

file under: thoughts about things

it seems i'm not the only one who got steamed about orkut. i just did it a few months later than lots of other people...

danah boyd has hit a lot more points in her entry about orkut, and has linked to a number of other posters.

i will point to one more thoughtful post: jeremy zawodny took things a step further and asked the question, why would google be interested in orkut? of course he's right (it's all about the users), along with others who point to possible applications like social-network-filtered search.

Posted: 03.15.04 at 10:45 AM | Permalink

outsourcing rhetoric

file under: thoughts about things

the next time someone on either side of the political aisle talks about the scourge of outsourcing of american jobs, think twice. actually, think three times. this is carefully calculated rhetoric designed to provoke an emotional response in american voters (and in the powerful labor unions whose support politicians need).

the truth of the matter is a bit more complex.

the wall street journal published an article today with the headline "more work is outsourced to U.S. than away from it, data show". figures from the U.S. Commerce department released on friday show that the U.S. has a $53.64 billion surplus in trade in private services...other countries exported $131.01 billion in services to the U.S., whereas we outsourceed (imported) $77.38 billion.

outsourcing of services has increased more rapidly than have our exports, but not by much. certainly not enough to justify all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that's been going on lately.

it's an election year. politicians will manipulate and distort information in such a way as to bolster their campaigns. the average voter will often swallow their manipulations wholesale, without trying to get at the "real" information (if there even is such a thing).

Posted: 03.15.04 at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 14, 2004

future impossible

file under: my life , thoughts about things

i went to a friend's place in berkeley today for an impromptu BBQ, an opportunity to enjoy the sun.

before elaine and i arrived, i thought to myself, i've known this guy for 19 years. 19 years. when i was a kid, 19 years was an age to which you aspired, not a period of memory or acquaintance or anything else. and then i remembered how we met...

he and i were in the same math class our freshman year in college (math 4, uc berkeley, 1985). we also shared the same section. he was the weird guy who sat in the corner with a backpack that had bands like 'bauhaus' and 'sisters of mercy' scrawled across the blue canvas with liquid paper.

i was thinking tonight, imagine if he and i had been pulled aside one day and told, "look...in 19 years, you two will be sitting on the deck of a multimillion dollar home in berkeley owned by you (Mr. X). one of you will be a partner at a respected management consulting firm with 3 kids, the other will be a freelance internet consultant with a PhD in condensed matter physics." we would have laughed. possibly hysterically. and yet that's how life worked out.

anything can happen. it's all a mystery. we're driving down a road at night, and our headlights are only showing us part of the road, even though we might think or wish it were otherwise.

Posted: 03.14.04 at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 12, 2004

orkut's velvet rope

file under: technology , thoughts about things

social networking is all the rage, or at least it seems to be. i keep hearing about it everywhere i turn (NPR, friends, blogs, san francisco magazine, the checker at the grocery store). i have my doubts about most of these players, but there is a recent entrant that pushes a different set of buttons: orkut

...

orkut was one service with which i was not familiar (negative web geek points). it's a "google-affiliated" social networking application that, from what i read, is a combination of friendster and tribe and ryze and [insert other social networking app here]. there was recently a party to celebrate the launch of orkut, and reading the descriptions made me slightly queasy.

bubbly anyone?
the social networking craze definitely seems a bit "bubblish". whenever i hear about launch parties with people slapping each other on the back for being www-celebrities, and launching a service with no viable business model or clear value proposition, alarm bells go off and i feel like puking over the side of the boat. commentators and reporters have been noting the hype factor for some time now, and don't take this quite as seriously as insiders do...

still, one gets the sense that VCs are swimming these waters like sharks, and people are thinking they can build the first money-printing machines of the 21st century web. i have no doubt that money will be made, but only by relevant applications that offer something beyond vague, and possibly undesirable, promises of expanding your network of friends.

the net's velvet rope
the thing that troubles me about orkut is the thing that some are claiming is so cool: it's invitation only. for me, this feels like the net equivalent of the velvet rope at some too-cool-for-school metropolitan club. no one likes those either, except for the people who get behind the rope and feel more socially relevant as a result. eventually these ropes become more fit for the gallows, in my opinion - exclude and die.

but it's about the community
forgive me if i'm being impolitic, but...bollocks.

the orkut web site proclaims the following:

one source indicates that orkut has around 130,000 users at present. in what sense is this a close-kit community? studies have shown that the social channel capacity of humans is about 150 people (see Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point, p.179 and references cited therein)...that's to say that 150 people is about the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have genuinely social relationships.

a service like orkut was destined to grow rapidly. it follows from basic six-degrees-of-separation arguments (see The Small World Experiment and related links for more information, if you're unfamiliar with the concept). the people who built the system had probably watched friendster, and knew what they were up against, especially with the name of google floating in the background.

my point is that it's ludicrous to say that a web service (a la orkut) is invitation-only in order to maintain a close-knit community. there is no such thing in a social networking application like orkut, one that has the power of google behind it and that grows to hundreds of thousands of users in the space of a few months. many communities will exist within the orkut meta-community, defined by the relationships between its members, but there is no orkut community per se - a city, maybe, but no community with close social relationships amongst all of its members.

exclusion, hype generation, and business obfuscation
the invitation-only requirement on orkut simultaneously creates a sense of exclusion (for those not invited) and exclusivity (for those who are). i can come up with a few possible reasons for the invitation only policy:

• limit the service to the technorati elite: this doesn't make much sense...even with an invitation only policy, exponential growth through densely connected social networks would guarantee that many members would not be a part of this ill-defined group
• limit the service to those who really care about networking, as opposed to tourists: this is equally unlikely. in fact, by making it exclusive, they have probably generated more interest among people likely to be tourists. i can just imagine the party conversations..."are you on orkut?" [pause] "orkut? what's that?" [pause] "oh...you don't know about it?" [person A drops person B's hipster quotient, person B wants to get on orkut to regain status]
• generate buzz and differentiation from the anyone-can-join melee (and concomitant growth issues) happening at friendster: this seems much more likely...after all, everyone is on friendster, right? who would want to join such chaos? [you wouldn't, probably, but perhaps for another set of reasons beyond the scope of this entry.] orkut is a little late to the party, and they want to generate interest. it just seems to me that this is an insulting way to do it, one that sends the wrong message to people interested in being a part of new online communities.
• manage the (pedestrian) technology problem of scaling: this is possible, but depending on how deep the google affiliation goes, it's hard to imagine. google has to have an infrastructure that could easily support something like this without a great burden on their systems. maybe i'm wrong...

the real reason for the invitation only policy is unimportant. what matters in my mind is that the stated reason is so blatantly false...this immediately leads to the conclusion that there is some other reason that's not being stated, and that it probably has something to do with manipulative marketing, generation of (possibly undeserved) hype, and the obfuscation of true motives. business are by no means required to state all of their objectives to the marketplace, but at least come up with more convincing lies (or don't say anything at all).

the power and peril of open doors
in my partially informed opinion, social networking applications should allow anyone to join, but should transparently protect users from scale issues and other problems associated with mob dynamics (see Shirky's a group is its own worst enemy). if you want to facilitate more close-knit communities, then allow users of the system to create invitation-only groups. what they do in those groups, and what value they derive from them, is their business (provided that said groups don't violate other laws etc. etc.).

the problem with any open door policy is that sometimes the "wrong" people come through the doors. maybe they're not cool. maybe they don't have the interests that organizers were hoping for. maybe they're disruptive or crude or insulting or generally ill-mannered. but that's ok - sufficiently stable, open communities have ways of dealing with people who actively disrupt and act to the detriment of the community (e.g., charters, rules of conduct, etc.). they also welcome and benefit from diversity and openness; this is their strength.

closed-door groups deal with this problem in a more proactive way - they set up a barrier to keep others from getting inside the walls in the first place. their community is defined more narrowly. in some cases, for very small groups of individuals with a focused interest, this makes sense (e.g., ex-employees of the Acme Widget Design Company of San Francisco). in other cases, closed-door groups act more like country clubs - the requirements for entry have little to do with shared interests, and everything to do with things like economics or social status.

the (un)egalitarian web
one of the things i always liked about the internet was the sense of egalitarianism (perhaps it's illusory, but the spirit seems there). everyone had access to about the same content and interaction potential, with exceptions for places where public/private distinctions make clear sense. blogs and social networking applications have been expanding and enhancing these ideas in many ways, by increasing the number of geniune voices on the web and establishing communities with new and unusual contexts.

applications like orkut, or rather the exclusive policies associated with the application, are a step backwards and to the right. in my opinion, they establish a bad precedent, one that i suspect others may start to follow. get ready for the country-club web...

a side note about orkut's T&Cs
independent of my feelings about their entrance policy, orkut are also doing something that, in the words of one commentator, is unconscionable. take a look at orkut's terms and conditions before you sign up:

in other words, whatever content you create or post on orkut, they own. period. that just plain sucks.

Posted: 03.12.04 at 11:22 AM | Permalink

March 11, 2004

link reciprocity

file under: technology

hyperlinks are becoming a currency in the digital age, but one limited to those with the power to create and destroy them.

i went to a friend's web site recently (URL withheld to protect the "innocent"), and noticed that the link to my home page had dropped off his blogroll. what??? dropped me from the secondary navigation? had i slighted this friend in some unbeknownst way? was some kind of digital payback going on? granted, it was kind of petty of me to care in the first place, but hey, links matter if you want people to read your site. and why would i write on the web if i didn't also hope that people would read?

it then occurred to me that links have become a form of currency. i'm probably not the first to say this. in fact, i'm probably about the 10,000th. but links matter to people.

link reciprocity is a term i'll use to describe the you-link-to-me-i'll-link-to-you phenomenon. i'm sure someone else has thought of that one too [pause---google search---ok, yeah, here is another blog about the exact same damn thing].

that guy i just linked already thought about it and wrote a lot on this topic. i'm not gonna write any more. you get the point. ;-)

ps: do you think he'll link to my site because i just cited him?

pps: he mentions in his intro that this phenomenon is not new. it has been happening in academia for years. of course, i should have realized this, since it used to happen to me all the time when i was in that world.

Posted: 03.11.04 at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

prescience redux

file under: thoughts about things

in a previous entry entitled Prophecy and Free Will, i examined the relationship between prophecy, imagination, and free will, specifically in the context of Frank Herbert's Dune universe.

a recent post on virtualtravelog.net examines the limits of prescience, but in a different context, one bounded by the concrete reality of the year 1945. specifically, john discusses a 1945 Atlantic Monthly article by Vannevar Bush called As We May Think, which put forward a series of interesting technology-oriented predictions.

john's analysis on virtualtravelog.net is sound, as always, and provides many interesting insights that i won't repeat. i would like to add, however, more notes of praise for vannevar bush, and to highlight a few other areas where mr. bush missed the mark in his largely utopian predictions. there's also a bit of an intersection with my previous post on prophecy...so, for the interested reader:

...

a few historical notes about vannevar bush
vannevar bush was, without doubt, one of the great scientific men of the twentieth century. he was, for all intents and purposes, a physical embodiment of the scientific and technological knowledge extant in the United States in the World War II era. he was a diplomat, a politician, an engineer, a mathematician, and probably a humanist (if one can make inferences from his politics).

his list of accomplishments is long, but he may be best known as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, as co-creator of Raytheon, as a key organizer of the Manhattan project, and as the founder of the national science foundation and the system of research that supports many of today's universities. in 1945, he also "predicted" a large number of things, most notably the "memex" (a desktop device that sounds pretty much like today's personal computer) and the rise of the information age.

it is sad that he is not remembered more clearly. before i read john's essay on bush's predictions, i had only heard of him in passing in graduate school; i knew nothing of his contributions to modern american science and technology.

it is even sadder why he is most likely not remembered: he, along with j. robert oppenheimer (creator of the atomic bomb), staunchly opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb. at the time, McCarthyism was in fashion, and oppenheimer was cast out of washington as a communist and a national security risk. bush supported him in the historic senate hearings, but to no avail; after oppenheimer's fall, bush become progressively disillusioned with the relationship between science and politics in the US, and fell out of touch with science policy and washington himself.

[full disclosure: my admiration for oppenheimer is transparent; it no doubt colors my views on bush, although i will try to keep my biased comments to a minimum.]

prediction v. extrapolation
extrapolation is the process of making inferences about the future based on known facts and observations. prediction verges on prophecy, and has an air of the mystical (or the religious, depending on your view of these things). it may seem like a sematic distinction, but i believe it's an important one: vannevar bush was making extrapolations based on the state of science and technology in 1945. he was not making mystical predictions a la nostradamus. this is not to lessen his amazing ability to synthesize a massive body of knowledge and put it to bear on extrapolating one possible future. if one agrees that bush was extrapolating, not predicting, then the use of the term prescience may not be warranted either...it stands to reason that many of bush's extrapolations were incorrect, given his incomplete knoweldge regarding future discoveries in physics, chemistry, and materials science which would subsequently be applied to technological innovation.

bush's content utopia v. the reality of copyright issues
bush's vision of the memex as a desktop repository for the body of human knowledge was compelling. it was also fatally flawed with an idealism to which many scientists are susceptible (also known as the 'build-it-and-they-will-come' mentality). the reality is that people get money for generating content (e.g., the publishers of scientific journals, magazines, books, and just about anything else). copyright and money go hand in hand, and bush failed to take into account the fact that content leads to copyright leads to money leads to greed leads to hoarding of said content.

in the real world, at least for the foreseeable future, the body of human knowledge will not be made available, free of charge, for access over the internet or through any other means. wars are being fought in the trenches of digital and international copyright to address some of these issues, but the victors won't be apparent for some time to come. until then, we will have to satisfy ourselves with limited access to free content - bush's visions of the memex solving the "selection" problem (i.e., of finding content once it has been created and stored) have yet to be realized.

a laudable omission
vannevar bush didn't talk about the use of scientific advancement for other means. in the ashes of world war II, he looked idealistically towards a brighter future, one where we had learned our lessons, as millions lay dead across the world's battlefields, and as entire societies would be wounded for generations to come. he looked to where scientists would (and should) turn their intellects in the post-war years, and he imagined some grand things.

sadly, we did not learn our lessons in world war II, and i don't think we ever will. science and technology will always be used in warfare. if recent history is prologue, then technology will become more important in the wars of the future (cf. Iraq). scientists, well-intentioned and otherwise, will inevitably get sucked into the fray.

muad'dib, meet vannevar bush
paul maud'dib felt the terrible burden of prescience. his son leto felt it even stronger. every decision is tied into a web of consequences, many intended, most unintended. perfect prescience is a prison, because the prognosticator is trapped by his knowledge of consequences. bush's extrapolations about the memex probably inspired some scientists, maybe even those who were involved in the initial developments of the PC and the internet. his ideas had consequences, some good, some bad.

did vannevar bush think about the consequences of his extrapolations? are futurists responsible in some measure for the futures they foresee? is there even a point to making extrapolations based on a limited (even flawed) body of knowledge?

at some point, extrapolation and prediction merge into fantasy, creative stories about a world that could be; extrapolations and predictions become dreams. if we didn't fantasize about other worlds and futures, these dreams would die, along with vannevar bush's idealism. i, for one, would be very unhappy in a future without dreams...

Posted: 03.11.04 at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 10, 2004

point reyes pics

file under: thoughts about things

pictures from a recent camping trip to point reyes are now available here.

it was a quick, somewhat last-minute, trip, but it proved to be one of the best i've had in point reyes. it helps that winter seems to have summarily vacated the bay area, leaving behind anomalous (but welcome) sun, warmth and good cheer about things in general.

highlights of the trip included:

• a hill-free hike that even i could do without whinging about my pack being too heavy and "who picked this hike anyway?"
• the best weather i've ever seen in the fog belt that is normally point reyes
• the company of friends Pete and Aidan (just met and catching up with, respectively)
• a 5-hour bonfire on the beach, started using the box of wood aidan dragged for 3 miles
• the bottle of small-batch bourbon brought by friend Pete, which helped the fire in its mission to keep us warm
• a quick day-hike with aidan spent talking about everything and nothing at all, as needed
• an hour spent on the beach, with book cracked, shirt off, and toes firmly buried in sand

day-tripping in the bay area...enough said

Posted: 03.10.04 at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 4, 2004

a mighty weed

file under: thoughts about things

weeds will outlive the cockroaches after the cockroaches have outlived us.

this is the conclusion i've come to after spending 2 hours removing roughly 411,268 weeds from the gaps between the flagstones that tile our very modest-sized backyard (when i say modest, i mean it's the postage-stamp version of a real backyard, although we still love it).

and i'm not done. there are still more weeds. i need to finish the flagstones, and then venture in amongst the plants, where the weeds are playing the am-i-a-cute-happy-plant-or-a-nasty-soil-eating-cancer game we all love so much. they play this little masquerade, thinking we won't pull them out. a lot of the time, they're right.

as i was hunched over in my garden, with failing circulation (due to overly tight gardening kneepads) and with what felt like the back of an 80-year-old, i made a few notes:

• plants (usually the nice one you bought last week at Home Depot or some rare orchid you've been breeding for years) can be pulled with almost no effort, like they don't even have roots, whereas weeds might as well be anchored in concrete
• weeds, specifically those with tap roots, come loose quite easily, and then always snap with a small, dirt-muffled laugh just when you think you've got them, leaving precisely 1 inch of root in the soil (no amount of further digging will expose the root that was left behind, by the way - nice try)
• the exquisite care taken at the outset of a weed-pulling session (e.g., have i got all the root?; oh...i can't compost all that dirt; i should leave behind the moss between those stones, etc.) is invariably replaced by wanton weed, plant, and dirt destruction, where the ends justify any means
• just when you think you're done...

weeding is like fighting entropy...it's a losing battle. so i've decided to take a zen attitude - enjoy the ride, be one with the earth. say hello to the worms and the potato bugs and the earwigs in your garden, and don't worry about leaving those roots behind, because you always will. maybe there's a life lesson here, but my knees hurt too much to see it.

Posted: 03.04.04 at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)