Minding the Planet

The Next Generation of Web Search -- Search 3.0

The next generation of Web search is coming sooner than expected. And with it we will see several shifts in the way people search, and the way major search engines provide search functionality to consumers.

Web 1.0, the first decade of the Web (1989 - 1999), was characterized by a distinctly desktop-like search paradigm. The overriding idea was that the Web is a collection of documents, not unlike the folder tree on the desktop, that must be searched and ranked hierarchically. Relevancy was considered to be how closely a document matched a given query string.

Web 2.0, the second decade of the Web (1999 - 2009), ushered in the beginnings of a shift towards social search. In particular blogging tools, social bookmarking tools, social networks, social media sites, and microblogging services began to organize the Web around people and their relationships. This added the beginnings of a primitive "web of trust" to the search repertoire, enabling search engines to begin to take the social value of content (as evidences by discussions, ratings, sharing, linking, referrals, etc.) as an additional measurment in the relevancy equation. Those items which were both most relevant on a keyword level, and most relevant in the social graph (closer and/or more popular in the graph), were considered to be more relevant. Thus results could be ranked according to their social value -- how many people in the community liked them and current activity level -- as well as by semantic relevancy measures.

In the coming third decade of the Web, Web 3.0 (2009 - 2019), there will be another shift in the search paradigm. This is a shift to from the past to the present, and from the social to the personal.

Read the rest here...

Nowism -- A Theme for the New Era?

Here's an idea I've been thinking about: it's a concept for a new philosophy, or perhaps just a name for a grassroots philosophy that seems to be emerging on its own. It's called "Nowism." The view that now is all there is.

Certainly we have all heard terms like Ram Das's "be here now" and we may be familiar with the writings of Eckhart Tolle and his "Power of Now" and others. In addition there was the "Me generation." Lately there is a shift towards the real-time Web, what I call the Stream.

These are all examples of the emergence of this trend. But I think these are just the beginnings of this movement -- a movement towards a subtle but major shift in the orientation of our civilization's collective attention. This is a shift towards the now, in every dimension of our lives. Our personal lives, professional lives, in business, in government, in technology, and even in religion and spirituality.

I have a hypothesis that this philosophy -- this worldview that the "now" is more important than the past or the future, may come to characterize this new century we are embarking on. If this is true, then it will have profound effects on the direction we go in as a civilization.

Read the rest here...

How Social Media Changes Content Distribution from Web Sites to People to Software

I've written a new article about how content distribution has evolved, and where it is heading. It's published here: http://www.siliconangle.com/social-media/content-distribution-is-changing-again/.

Video: My Talk on The Future of Libraries -- "Library 3.0"

If you are interested in semantics, taxonomies, education, information overload and how libraries are evolving, you may enjoy this video of my talk on the Semantic Web and the Future of Libraries at the OCLC Symposium at the American Library Association Midwinter 2009 Conference. This event focused around a dialogue between David Weinberger and myself, moderated by Roy Tennant. We were forutnate to have an audience of about 500 very vocal library directors in the audience and it was an intensive day of thinking together. Thanks to the folks at OCLC for a terrific and really engaging event!

Watch My best Talk: The Global Brain is Coming

I've posted a link to a video of my best talk -- given at the GRID '08 Conference in Stockholm this summer. It's about the growth of collective intelligence and the Semantic Web, and the future and role the media. Read more and get the video here. Enjoy!

Peace in the Middle East: Could Alternative Energy Be the Solution?

I have been thinking about the situation in the Middle East and also the rise of oil prices, peak oil, and the problem of a world economy based on energy scarcity rather than abundance. There is, I believe, a way to solve the problems in the Middle East, and the energy problems facing the world, at the same time. But it requires thinking "outside the box."

Middle Eastern nations must take the lead in freeing the world from dependence on their oil. This is not only their best strategy for the future of their nations and their people, but also it is what will ultimately be best for the region and the whole world.

It is inevitable that someone is going to invent a new technology that frees the world from dependence on fossil fuels. When that happens all oil empires will suddenly collapse. Far-sighted, visionary leaders in oil-producing nations must ensure that their nations are in position to lead the coming non-fossil-fuel energy revolution. This is the wisdom of "cannibalize yourself before someone else does."

Middle Eastern nations should invest more heavily than any other nations in inventing and supplying new alternative energy technologies. For example: hydrogen, solar, biofuels, zero point energy, magnetic power, and the many new emerging alternatives to fossil fuels. This is a huge opportunity for the Middle East not only for economic reasons, but also because it may just be the key to bringing about long-term sustainable peace in the region.

There is a finite supply of oil in the Middle East -- the game will and must eventually end. Are Middle Eastern nations thinking far enough ahead about this or not? There is a tremendous opportunity for them if they can take the initiative on this front and there is an equally tremendous risk if they do not. If they do not have a major stake in whatever comes after fossil fuels, they will be left with nothing when whatever is next inevitably happens (which might be very soon).

Any Middle Eastern leader who is not thinking very seriously about this issue right now is selling their people short. I sincerely advise them to make this a major focus going forward. Not only will this help them to improve quality of life for their people now and in the future, but it is the best way to help bring about world peace. The Middle East has the potential to lead a huge and lucrative global energy Renaissance. All it takes is vision and courage to push the frontier and to think outside of the box.

More News Coming out of Burma

Only now the full horror of the situation in Burma is emerging.

My Burma Meme Spreads to 17,000 Web Pages in just one week!

I've been tracking the progress of my Burma protest meme. In just under one week it has spread to almost 17,000 web pages and it continues to grow. (For the latest number, click here). It's great to see the blogosphere pick this up, and I'm glad to be able to do something to help raise awareness of this important human rights issue.

This meme is also an example of an interesting new way to spread content on the Web -- whether for a protest or an ad or any other kind of announcement. It's kind of like a chain letter, but via weblogs. There are many different ways to structure these memes with varying levels of virality and benefit to participants. For some earlier work I've done on meme propagation on the Web see my GoMeme experiments from a few years ago. In those experiments I created a series of memes that spread widely through the blogosphere, based on different viral messages, surveys, and benefits to participants. Other people then tracked the statistics of the memes as they spread. It turned out to be a very interesting study of superdistribution of content along social networks.

Help the People of Burma -- Post this Meme on Your Blog!

Note: This is a new kind of online protest that uses blogs to spread a petition globally. To participate, just add your blog by following the instructions in this blog post.

This not an issue of partisan politics, this is an issue of basic human rights and democracy. Please help to prevent a human tragedy in Burma by adding your blog and asking others to do the same.

By passing this meme on through the blogosphere hopefully we can generate more awareness and avert a serious tragedy. As concerned world-citizens this something we bloggers can do to help.

How to participate:

1. Copy this entire post to your blog, including this special number: 1081081081234

2. After a few days, you can search Google for the number 1081081081234 to find all blogs that are participating in this protest and petition. Note: Google indexes blogs at different rates, so it could take longer for your blog to show up in the results. Also note -- if you want an accurate count of the number of blogs that joined this petition, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the Google results and click to view results that were omitted because they were similar.

3. If you know how to add tags to your blog posts, add the Technorati tag 1081081081234 to your post as well. This will make your post findable sooner in Technorati.

THE SITUATION IN BURMA AND WHY IT MATTERS TO ALL OF US

There is no press freedom in Burma and the government has started turning off the Internet and other means of communication, so it is difficult to get news out. Individuals on the ground have been sending their day-by-day reports to the BBC, and they are heartbreaking. I encourage you to read these accounts to see for yourself what is really going on in Burma. Please include this link in your own blog post.

The situation in Burma is increasingly dangerous. Hundreds of thousands of unarmed peaceful protesters, including monks and nuns, are risking their lives to march for democracy against an unpopular but well-armed military dictatorship that will stop at nothing to continue its repressive rule. While the generals in power and their families are literally dripping in gold and diamonds, the people of Burma are impoverished, deprived of basic human rights, cut off from the rest of the world, and increasingly under threat of violence.

This week the people of Burma have risen up collectively in the largest public demonstrations against the ruling Junta in decades. It's an amazing show of bravery, decency, and democracy in action. But although these protests are peaceful, the military rulers are starting to crack down with violence. Already there have been at least several reported deaths, and hundreds of critical injuries from soldiers beating unarmed civilians to the point of death.

The actual fatalities and injuries are probably far worse, but the only news we have is coming from individuals who are sneaking reports past the authorities. Unfortunately it looks like a large-scale blood-bath may ensue -- and the victims will be mostly women, children, the elderly and unarmed monks and nuns.

Contrary to what the Burmese, Chinese and Russian governments have stated, this is not merely a local internal political issue, it is an issue of global importance and it affects the global community. As concerned citizens, we cannot allow any government anywhere in the world to use its military to attack and kill peacefully demonstrating, unarmed citizens.

In this modern day and age violence against unarmed civilians is unacceptable and if it is allowed to happen, without serious consequences for the perpetrators, it creates a precedent for it to happen again somewhere else. If we want a more peaceful world, it is up to each of us to make a personal stand on these fundamental issues whenever they arise.

Please join me in calling on the Burmese government to negotiate peacefully with its citizens, and on China to intervene to prevent further violence. And please help to raise awareness of the developing situation in Burma so that hopefully we can avert a large-scale human disaster there.

Dangerous Situation in Burma Developing

The nation of Myanamar (Burma) is currently ruled by a repressive and corrupt military dictatorship. Past attempts to bring about democracy have met with violent crackdowns by the government, usually against unarmed civilians. In one past incident, approximately 3000 protesters were killed by the military.

Now a new situation is developing that could rapidly lead to mass civilian casualties, if the international community does not intervene in time. Led by thousands of Buddhist monks, approximately 100,000 Burmese civilians marched to demonstrate their support for democracy in Burma.

So far the military has not reacted with violence, but there are growing warning signs that this may happen soon. The international community, and all people who believe in freedom, should stand up and support the brave citizens of Burma who are putting their lives at risk for the principle of democracy, a principle which unfortunately is eroding worldwide according to a recent study.

Reverse Anthropology: Native Tribe Visits UK to Study Brits

Check out this fascinating article about a new show on the BBC:

ne bright morning in St James's Park and a stream of tourists approaches Buckingham Palace, where trumpets will shortly herald the Changing of the Guard. In the middle of the crowd walk five very short, very odd-looking men. They carry camcorders, gesticulate wildly, and talk in a language no one can understand. In the heart of picture-postcard London, this bizarre group stands out like a sore thumb.                                         

  Further investigation reveals that a film crew is tracking the party, at a   discreet distance. Something is going on. In fact, the cameras are bearing   witness to a historic event: the odd-looking group, whose skin is dark and   whose smiles are wide, and who all measure around five feet tall, are on the   verge of completing an extraordinary social experiment.

The Rise of the Social Operating System

In recent months we have witnessed a number of social networking sites begin to open up their platforms to outside developers. While this trend has been exhibited most prominently by Facebook, it is being embraced by all the leading social networking services, such as Plaxo, LinkedIn, Myspace and others. Along separate dimensions we also see a similar trend towards "platformization" in IM platforms such as Skype as well as B2B tools such as Salesforce.com.

If we zoom out and look at all this activity from a distance it appears that there is a race taking place to become "the social operating" system of the Web. A social operating system might be defined as a system that provides for systematic management and facilitation of human social relationships and interactions.

We might list some of the key capabilities of an ideal "social operating system" as:

• Identity management
  • Open portable identity
  • Personal profiles ("personas")
  • Privacy control
• Relationship management
  • Directory and lookup services (location of people to communicate with)
  • Social networking (opt-in relationship formation, indirect social connectivity via social networks)
  • Spam control
• Communication
  • Person to person communication
    • Synchronous (IM, VOIP)
    • Asynchronous (email, SMS)
  • Group communication
    • Synchronous (conferencing)
    • Asynchronous (group discussions)
• Social Content distribution
  
  • Personal publishing (blogging, home pages)
  • Public content distribution
• Social Coordination
  • Event management (scheduling, invitations, RSVP's)
  • Calendaring
• Social Collaboration
  • File sharing
  • Document collaboration (communal authoring/editing)
  • Collaborative filtering
  • Recommendation systems
  • Knowledge management
  • Human powered search
  • Project management
  • Workflow
• Commerce
  • Classified advertising
  • Auctions
  • Shopping

Today I have not seen any single player that provides a coherent solution to this entire "social stack" however Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL are probably the strongest contenders. Can Facebook and other social networks truly compete or will they ultimately be absorbed into one of these larger players?

Enriching the Connections of the Web -- Making the Web Smarter

Web 3.0 -- aka The Semantic Web -- is about enriching the connections of the Web. By enriching the connections within the Web, the entire Web may become smarter.

I  believe that collective intelligence primarily comes from connections -- this is certainly the case in the brain where the number of connections between neurons far outnumbers the number of neurons; certainly there is more "intelligence" encoded in the brain's connections than in the neurons alone. There are several kinds of connections on the Web:

1. Connections between information (such as links)
2. Connections between people (such as opt-in social relationships, buddy lists, etc.)
3. Connections between applications (web services, mashups, client server sessions, etc.)
4. Connections between information and people (personal data collections, blogs, social bookmarking, search results, etc.)
5. Connections between information and applications (databases and data sets stored or accessible by particular apps)
6. Connections between people and applications (user accounts, preferences, cookies, etc.)

Are there other kinds of connections that I haven't listed -- please let me know!

I believe that the Semantic Web can actually enrich all of these types of connections, adding more semantics not only to the things being connected (such as representations of information or people or apps) but also to the connections themselves.

In the Semantic Web approach, connections are represented with statements of the form (subject, predicate, object) where the elements have URIs that connect them to various ontologies where their precise intended meaning can be defined. These simple statements are sometimes called "triples" because they have three elements. In fact, many of us are working with statements that have more than three elements ("tuples"), so that we can represent not only subject, predicate, object of statements, but also things like provenance (where did the data for the statement come from?), timestamp (when was the statement made), and other attributes. There really is no limit to what kind of metadata can be stored in these statements. It's a very simple, yet very flexible and extensible data model that can represent any kind of data structure.

The important point for this article however is that in this data model rather than there being just a single type of connection (as is the case on the present Web which basically just provides the HREF hotlink, which simply means "A and B are linked" and may carry minimal metadata in some cases), the Semantic Web enables an infinite range of arbitrarily defined connections to be used.  The meaning of these connections can be very specific or very general.

For example one might define a type of connection called "friend of" or a type of connection called "employee of" -- these have very different meanings (different semantics) which can be made explicit and also machine-readable using OWL. By linking a page about a person with the "employee of" link to another page about a different person, we can express that one of them employs the other. That is a statement that any application which can read OWL is able to see and correctly interpret, by referencing the underlying definition of "employee of" which is defined in some ontology and might for example specify that an "employee of" relation connects a person to a person or organization who is their employer. In other words, rather than just linking things with the generic "hotlink" we are all used to, they can now be linked with specific kinds of links that have very particular and unambiguous meaning and logical implications.

This has the potential at least to dramatically enrich the information-carrying capacity of connections (links) on the Web. It means that connections can carry more meaning, on their own. It's a new place to put meaning in fact -- you can put meaning between things to express their relationships. And since connections (links) far outnumber objects (information, people or applications) on the Web, this means we can radically improve the semantics of the structure of the Web as a whole -- the Web can become more meaningful, literally. This makes a difference, even if all we do is just enrich connections between gross-level objects (in other words, connections between Web pages or data records, as opposed to connections between concepts expressed within them, such as for example, people and companies mentioned within a single document).

Even if the granularity of this improvement in connection technology is relatively gross level it could still be a major improvement to the Web. The long-term implications of this have hardly been imagined let alone understood -- it is analogous to upgrading the dendrites in the human brain; it could be a catalyst for new levels of computation and intelligence to emerge.

It is important to note that, as illustrated above, there are many types of connections that involve people. In other words the Semantic Web, and Web 3.0, are just as much about people as they are about other things. Rather than excluding people, they actually enrich their relationships to other things. The Semantic Web, should, among other things, enable dramatically better social networking and collaboration to take place on the Web. It is not only about enriching content.

Now where will all these rich semantic connections come from? That's the billion dollar question. Personally I think they will come from many places: from end-users as they find things, author content, bookmark content, share content and comment on content (just as hotlinks come from people today), as well as from applications which mine the Web and automatically create them. Note that even when Mining the Web a lot of the data actually still comes from people -- for example, mining the Wikipedia, or a social network yields lots of great data that was ultimately extracted from user-contributions. So mining and artificial intelligence does not always imply "replacing people" -- far from it! In fact, mining is often best applied as a means to effectively leverage the collective intelligence of millions of people.

These are subtle points that are very hard for non-specialists to see -- without actually working with the underlying technologies such as RDF and OWL they are basically impossible to see right now. But soon there will be a range of Semantically-powered end-user-facing apps that will demonstrate this quite obviously. Stay tuned!

Of course these are just my opinions from years of hands-on experience with this stuff, but you are free to disagree or add to what I'm saying. I think there is something big happening though. Upgrading the connections of the Web is bound to have a significant effect on how the Web functions. It may take a while for all this to unfold however. I think we need to think in decades about big changes of this nature.

Web 3.0 -- Next-Step for Web?

The Business 2.0 Article on Radar Networks and the Semantic Web just came online. It's a huge article. In many ways it's one of the best popular articles written about the Semantic Web in the mainstream press. It also goes into a lot of detail about what Radar Networks is working on.

One point of clarification, just in case anyone is wondering...

Web 3.0 is not just about machines -- it's actually all about humans -- it leverages social networks, folksonomies, communities and social filtering AS WELL AS the Semantic Web, data mining, and artificial intelligence. The combination of the two is more powerful than either one on it's own. Web 3.0 is Web 2.0 + 1. It's NOT Web 2.0 - people. The "+ 1" is the addition of software and metadata that help people and other applications organize and make better sense of the Web. That new layer of semantics -- often called "The Semantic Web" -- will add to and build on the existing value provided by social networks, folksonomies, and collaborative filtering that are already on the Web.

So at least here at Radar Networks, we are focusing much of our effort on facilitating people to help them help themselves, and to help each other, make sense of the Web. We leverage the amazing intelligence of the human brain, and we augment that using the Semantic Web, data mining, and artificial intelligence. We really believe that the next generation of collective intelligence is about creating systems of experts not expert systems.

The State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script on Camera

This is quite an amazing video clip -- a news anchorwoman on MSNBC took a heroic stand and refused, on air, to lead with more news about Paris Hilton, despite her fellow anchormen and her producers trying to force her to. They actually almost get into a scuffle as she tries to burn the story with her lighter on camera! You've got to watch this. Mika Brzezinski has just proved she is perhaps the only major network journalist in America with a spine. She should get an award for this. Where do I sign up to join the Mika Brzezinski fan club?

Breaking the Collective IQ Barrier -- Making Groups Smarter

I've been thinking since 1994 about how to get past a fundamental barrier to human social progress, which I call "The Collective IQ Barrier." Most recently I have been approaching this challenge in the products we are developing at my stealth venture, Radar Networks.

In a nutshell, here is how I define this barrier:

The Collective IQ Barrier: The potential collective intelligence of a human group is exponentially proportional to group size, however in practice the actual collective intelligence that is achieved by a group is inversely proportional to group size. There is a huge delta between potential collective intelligence and actual collective intelligence in practice. In other words, when it comes to collective intelligence, the whole has the potential to be smarter than the sum of its parts, but in practice it is usually dumber.

Why does this barrier exist? Why are groups generally so bad at tapping the full potential of their collective intelligence? Why is it that smaller groups are so much better than large groups at innovation, decision-making, learning, problem solving, implementing solutions, and harnessing collective knowledge and intelligence? 

I think the problem is technological, not social, at its core. In this article I will discuss the problem in more depth and then I will discuss why I think the Semantic Web may be the critical enabling technology for breaking through the Collective IQ Barrier.

Very Cool Laser Graffitti Technology

Josh sent me this link. It's a video of a new technology for doing laser graffitti on the sides of buildings at night. Josh and I have been discussing how to do this for years. You could also project onto clouds. And of course with a computer to control the image you could make some very nice looking pictures, and ads...

Congratulations to Adam Cheyer and Change.org

My friend and colleague, Adam Cheyer, from SRI, recently helped to advise and launch Change.org -- a social network for nonprofit activism. It's a great site for a great cause. It's also a great example of a special-purpose social network -- a useful social network. Congratulations to Adam and the team over there! Read the TechCrunch review here.

Young Student Documentary Making Waves

A documentary film shot by a teenager is shocking audiences. The film replicates a study done in the 1950's on race, showing how black children view themselves and white children. The results are surprising. Watch this link for an excerpt from the film (after the ad clip).

New Cancer Wonder Drug: No Pharma Will Fund It Because it Can't be Patented

A new "miracle drug" appears to cure many types of cancers in a novel way. But the catch is no pharmaceutical company will fund research in it because it can't be patented! Maybe it's time to start a government agency or a non-profit that funds research and development, and distribution of, wonder drugs that are not patentable, for the public good. They could sell the drugs at cost as a non-profit -- so they would recover their investment, without making a profit. If the Gates Foundation really wanted to help cure the world's diseases this is a model for how they could do it. We can't rely only on for-profit big-pharma ventures to solve all our problems. As this case illustrates, there are potential solutions that are not only effective but also inexpensive, which are falling through the cracks because they are not defensible exclusive commerical product opportunites.

Children of Men Needs to Be Seen

Go see the film Children of Men -- it's a bleak, brilliant, entirely convincing vision of the near future -- and has great action too. Here's a YouTube video that makes the case for why this film should win an award.

Minding The Planet -- The Meaning and Future of the Semantic Web

NOTES

• Master Copy can be found at this URL or http://tinyurl.com/yynb93
• Last Update: Tuesday, November 7, 2006, 10:17AM PST
  
• License -- This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Deed.  If you would like to distribute a version of this article, please link back to http://www.mindingtheplanet.net from your version, thanks.
• Printable version -- Click here to download the printable PDF version of this article
• Illustrated Version -- See the version by the Lifeboat Foundation

 

Prelude

Many years ago, in the late 1980s, while I was still a college student, I visited my late grandfather, Peter F. Drucker, at his home in Claremont, California. He lived near the campus of Claremont College where he was a professor emeritus. On that particular day, I handed him a manuscript of a book I was trying to write, entitled, "Minding the Planet" about how the Internet would enable the evolution of higher forms of collective intelligence.

My grandfather read my manuscript and later that afternoon we sat together on the outside back porch and he said to me, "One thing is certain: Someday, you will write this book." We both knew that the manuscript I had handed him was not that book, a fact that was later verified when I tried to get it published. I gave up for a while and focused on college, where I was studying philosophy with a focus on artificial intelligence. And soon I started working in the fields of artificial intelligence and supercomputing at companies like Kurzweil, Thinking Machines, and Individual.

A few years later, I co-founded one of the early Web companies, EarthWeb, where among other things we built many of the first large commercial Websites and later helped to pioneer Java by creating several large knowledge-sharing communities for software developers. Along the way I continued to think about collective intelligence. EarthWeb and the first wave of the Web came and went. But this interest and vision continued to grow. In 2000 I started researching the necessary technologies to begin building a more intelligent Web. And eventually that led me to start my present company, Radar Networks, where we are now focused on enabling the next-generation of collective intelligence on the Web, using the new technologies of the Semantic Web. 

But ever since that day on the porch with my grandfather, I remembered what he said: "Someday, you will write this book." I've tried many times since then to write it. But it never came out the way I had hoped. So I tried again. Eventually I let go of the book form and created this weblog instead. And as many of my readers know, I've continued to write here about my observations and evolving understanding of this idea over the years. This article is my latest installment, and I think it's the first one that meets my own standards for what I really wanted to communicate. And so I dedicate this article to my grandfather, who inspired me to keep writing this, and who gave me his prediction that I would one day complete it.

This is an article about a new generation of technology that is sometimes called the Semantic Web, and which could also be called the Intelligent Web, or the global mind. But what is the Semantic Web, and why does it matter, and how does it enable collective intelligence? And where is this all headed? And what is the long-term far future going to be like? Is the global mind just science-fiction? Will a world that has a global mind be good place to live in, or will it be some kind of technological nightmare?

Is Moral Judgement Hard-Wired Into the Brain?

A Harvard University researcher believes that moral judgement is hard-wired into the brain:

The moral grammar now universal among people presumably evolved to its final shape during the hunter-gatherer phase of the human past, before the dispersal from the ancestral homeland in northeast Africa some 50,000 years ago. This may be why events before our eyes carry far greater moral weight than happenings far away, Dr. Hauser believes, since in those days one never had to care about people remote from ones environment.

Dr. Hauser believes that the moral grammar may have evolved through the evolutionary mechanism known as group selection. A group bound by altruism toward its members and rigorous discouragement of cheaters would be more likely to prevail over a less cohesive society, so genes for moral grammar would become more common.

A World Without Elephants

This is so sad. Elephants are increasingly being wiped out due to encroachment by nearby human populations, and also by inept human attempts to help them -- and of course by poaching. As their species is increasingly backed into a dead-end corner, and as older elephants are separated from their herds, younger elephants are developing psychological disorders and are becoming violent. Meanwhile female elephants are not learning to rear their young properly, leading to developmental disorders and social problems that then ripple from generation to generation. All of this is adding up to a downward spiral for elephants worldwide -- and in fact, as the article illustrates, elephants in completely separate communites around the world are starting to exhibit signs of "going crazy."  I've always loved elephants and I wish there was something that could be done.

Humanity is so out of balance with the rest of planet. I'm a realist though -- I don't believe that governments, or even the majority of people in the world, will ever just sacrifice their own gain for the good of the environment or any other species. Only if it is clearly tied to their survival or personal gain, will most people and governments "feel the pain" enough to change their behavior.

The solution to the tragedy of the commons is to privatize, or to somehow connect what happens in the commons to everyone's survival and benefit. Locally, elephant survival and well-being could be assured if the local government and people were paid to maintain them as a world resource. I think that there really should be a form of global taxation whereby every government pays into a fund that is then used to pay certain local communities around endangered resources and species to protect and steward them.

If there was a way to turn their environments and endangered species into resources that earned money for them (more money than they could earn by destroying them), then they would finally be motivated to take care of them. I doubt that any other kind of solution will ultimately work. Maybe I'm too cynical or too much of a realist or a pragmatist. But I really do think this solution would work, not just for the elephants, but the rainforests, the whales, coral reefs and fisheries, etc.

The Sell-Off of America

This article by Germany's best-known economics writer provides a fast and high-level overview of how the American empire is losing (has lost?) its economic power. While the dollar is still the world's currency of choice, the USA no longer controls it. Furthermore, with increasing trade deficits, the outsourcing of labor, and spiraling debt, the US economy is poised on the edge of collapse. And the American middle-class has and will bear the brunt of this shift as it plays out over the next few decades.

Excellent Strategic Analysis of North Korean Crisis

This article in the Atlantic Monthly presents the best analysis I've seen of the strategic situation on the Korean penninsula, and various US options (and potential mistakes to avoid). It's really a fascinating read, and quite educational, for anyone concerned about what might happen in that arena.

The Next Sexual Revolution?

This article is an over-the-top and somewhat gonzo review of an experimental nasal-spray that promises to revolutionize sex. It is currently in clinical trials. The very idea of nasal spray would seem to be one of the bigger turn-offs there is, but in this case they've found the override button. The writer gushes that it could be the next big thing and that it will make everyone want to tear of their clothes and jump each other, etc. Hilarious. I probably should buy stock in this company!

Sign of the Times - View from the Top of World of Warcraft

This critical article by an ex-World of Warcraft player is a real sign of the times -- the kind of article that people will read in a few hundred years as a window into our particular moment in history. The author reached the highest levels of the game and found that it was ruining his life as well as the lives of other players. Eventually he left the game for good. His article details how the game ate up more and more of his time, ruined relationships, and created a false sense of accomplishment in players. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for online gaming, but it is interesting and not necessarily healthy when people start spending more of their time, and investing more of their identity, in an imaginary world rather than the real one. Generally people who spend most of their time living out fantasies in imaginary worlds are called "crazy" -- unless they are online gamers.

Interesting Proposal for Stopping Online Pedophiles

I came across this interesting project that aims to stop online pedophiles by setting 100,000 online honeytraps. It calls for 100,000 volunteer adults to post online profiles in various services posing as minors. They then use these a bait and wait to be contacted by pedophiles. Once contacted they basically set the hook and then do a sting operation with the help of law enforcement agents. The idea is that by doing this the odds of an online profile of a minor actually being a trap, and thus the odds of a pedophile getting caught are increased enough to scare and/or catch the majority of online sexual predators. It's kind of like a "neighborhood watch" for the Web. I don't know how legal it is, but at least it makes sense statistically.

Of course, there's an easier way to catch pedophiles these days: Just visit the US House of Representatives.

Fascinating Stat: Of the World's 100 Largest Economic Entities 51 are Corporations, 49 are Nations

Wow -- As of 2000, of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are corporations and 49 are nations.

A Proposal to Make the Media (and Society) Better

I am concerned by what I'm viewing in our national media lately. Viewed from outside (and also from wihtin the USA), it would appear that our nation is obsessed with, and plagued by, an increasing spree of horrible crimes and abuses of human rights. Is this really what it is like to live in America, or is this simply the media's extremely biased reporting?

The media of any social organization, whether a small community or an entire nation, serves as the primary means by which the members of that organization understand and assess the state of the whole. As such the media serves a function to a collective that is similar to "self-awareness" in an individual person. Self-awareness is a feedback loop. It not only serves as a mirror by which an organization can view reflections of its state, it also conditions the planning and execution of further actions by its organization. When people look in the mirror of the media, they not only understand the system they are in, but they also may make choices and further actions based on what they see there.

The pivotal role of media as the central influencer of societal psychology and behavior is often underestimated. And it is through this lens that I view the recent headlines, which are primarily focused on school killing sprees and abuse of children as of late -- with sadness and concern. By sensationalizing such tragedies, and providing lurid details over and over again, the media is actually contributing to the ongoing proliferation of these same behaviors. While I'm not suggesting that censorship is a better alternative, I do think that leading mass media organizations, in their blind quest for more attention and ad dollars, are behaving irresponsibly by sensationalizing -- indeed almost celebrating -- murder, torture, sexual abuse, and other horrible acts as if they are the latest attractions in some kind of societal variety show.

These atrocities should be reported, but the style and manner in which they are reported should be the opposite of sensationalism. They should be more like funerals -- which is after all what these stories are really about. There should be an element of sadness, respect for those affected, concern for those who might read or view such images and stories, and restraint. In particular details of how various horrible crimes were planned and executed are not necessary and not beneficial in telling the story -- they only serve to inspire, trigger and teach would-be copycats to do the same thing. Furthermore by rewarding perpetrators of such crimes with massive publicity (which in many cases is what such egomaniacs are hoping to achieve by committing their crimes) the media is actually playing right into their hands.

As usual I have a radical proposal to fix this: What if the media gave exposure to stories in direct proportion to the number of people actually affected by those stories?

What if stories were evaluated on several dimensions to determine how much exposure to give them -- for example, geographic range, number of people directly impacted, political relevance, etc? The size of a story would therefore be determined by its real effect on the population. Contrast this to what the news media does today where in fact the prominence of a story is often inversely proportional to the number of people directly impacted by it. The media currently amplifies the most shocking news, regardless of how many people are directly affected or involved. A shocking crime that directly affected only 2 people is quickly amplified to the main national headline of the day for a population of 300 million. That is simply out of balance with reality.

For example, horrible as they are, the recent school killings only directly affect a relatively tiny percentage of the national population: So why should they be the main focus of the national news headlines for weeks on end? According to this proposal, such stories would be mere blips on the collective radar. They would not be headline news for the entire nation, and/or if they were they would quickly fall out of the headlines. I'm not downplaying the importance of these stories to the affected people and communities -- nor am I downplaying the broader significance of the trends they may be indicative of -- I'm simply pointing out that these stories, tragic as they may be, get disproportionately too much national media exposure compared to other stories that affect much larger segments of the population such as for example -- stories related to the economy, the environment, the war and upcoming elections, etc.

US Banking System Collapse in 2008?

I recently listened to a talk by Dr. David Martin, given at the Arlington Institute, a think tank I advise. You can listen to it here. It takes some patience to get to the main point -- but you will be rewarded with a mind-blowing new perspective on what may unfold in the next few years.

Dr. Martin describes why he predicts a very likely total collapse of the US Banking system in 2008.  Even more surprising is that he explains how the only hope for bailing out the US economy at that time may in fact be Muslim financial institutions -- the financial entities of the Muslim world -- because they are the most cash rich entities on the planet, and unlike our banks they are not exposed to intangible asset risks.

In other words, as Dr. Martin explains, if for no other reason than this, we should think twice before bombing Iran and the rest of the Middle East back to the Stone Age -- they may in fact be our economy's only hope and we may soon be in dire need of their help. This is a radical hypothesis, but based on very realistic data and in particular, new laws that are going into effect in the global banking world in January, 2008. On the other hand this could be Y2K all over again.

In any case, this is one of the more intriguing ideas I've come across in a long time. Please listen to the talk and then share it with other people. Dr. Martin's hypothesis may or may not be correct, but it certainly should be heard by more people so that it can be debated and brought to the attention of global decisionmakers as soon as possible.

Contextual Ad Targeting On Your Life

This article discusses a new research project at Google where they are working on a way to run contextual ads on your computer that reflect what is taking place in the room around you. The technology works by using the computer microphone to make brief snippet recordings of your room where you are. It then tries to recognize music or TV content that is playing. Next it matches that to a database of ads in order to show ads on your screen that are related to what is heard in the room you are working in. This sounds almost like a joke -- except that it probably isn't. I'm not sure what the benefit to me the consumer would be for letting Google eavesdrop on my life to that extent. Do I really need more relevant ads THAT much? What a strange world we live in.

A Good Article on Lack of Search Privacy

This article from the Guardian raises the red flag about the vast amount of personal information that search engines are collecting, and the risks to individual privacy that entails. The article was really well written and made some good points. I've blogged about my thoughts about this issue in a previous post.

Privacy and Search

The recent negative hype about the lack of privacy in search results got me thinking about the needs of online services versus those of individuals. Is there a way to satisfy both constraints?

AOL's accidental data release was one thing that worried me. Google's "personal search" feature, where the log of all your searches is displayed, was another. The fact that everything you search for and click on, during your entire life, could potentially be logged, owned, accessed, and shared, by and with parties other than yourself, without your consent or even your knowledge, is a step towards a world I wouldn't want to live in.

The arguments in favor of allowing this to continue either hinge on commercial needs or homeland security and law enforcement. Regarding commercial needs: just as in other situations where commercial needs pose risks to individual privacy (such as medical records for example), the government needs to step in and regulate if the industry can't do an adequate job of self-regulating. And regarding industry self-regulation, it can easily become a case of wolves guarding sheep, and so has to be carefully regulated by government on a meta-level. As for the needs of homeland security and law enforcement, access should be strictly regulated (and in theory, it already is). 

The thing is, even if governments and industry stepped up and took responsibility for regulating this situation, one can never be sure that future regime change, accidents, or individuals or groups with both access and a motive won't lead to future privacy violations. As a result even ironclad assurances, laws, and strict procedures by organizations and governments, won't protect anyone against such unknowns. The only truly safe solution is one that puts all of the control, and all of the responsibility and liability, for one's own private data, in one's own hands. In a digital world, where everything is potentially recorded and logged forever, this is really important.

The solution is, I think, that individuals, rather than search companies, should own and control their searchstreams and their clickstreams such that they can make use of that information for their own personalization needs, and they can selectively (and either authentically or anonymously) share it with other services if and when they want to. Someone should build an infrastructure that enables this and then make it an API that all services and apps can use. The folks at Attention Trust and Root Markets are on the right track. This is a very interesting business opportunity.

I would like to see a search engine and a search toolboar for Firefox that enable you to search anonymously. I did a little research (on Google, how ironic) and found Proxify, Kaxy and Mezzy. They seem interesting although perhaps a little clunky seeming. What we need is a high-profile, really polished, professional, well-funded, simple anonymous proxy for Google. And a Firefox toolbar to go with it.

If a service like what I am describing existed (and there was some level of independent audit that could assure me that it really didn't capture or save anything private without my permission -- for example if all the code was open source and vetted), then I would definitely always use it instead of going directly to Google. Does it exist already? Let me know. If not, someone should build it. In fact, I wouldn't mind if it showed me ads, just like Google does. So it could make money from my searching. I would bring my business there as would most people who have educated themselves about this issue.

Finally, wearing my corporate hat for the moment, as someeone building an online service in the search space, if there was a suitable (and that is the key term here...) way that the service my company is building could give individuals control of their private data while also still being able to learn from it in aggregate and/or anonymously for individuals, that would be great. As an online service provider I don't really want to have to worry about keeping such private information and all the overhead and potential liability that goes with it.

Online services do need to learn from the behavior of their users in order to personalize content and target ads, etc. But they don't need to necessarily house that data themselves, nor do they need to necessarily be able to key it to the real identities of their users. If there was an infrastructure that enabled my service to learn, personalize and target, without having to hold and manage the dataset underlying that capability, that would actually be a potential savings to my business, and a reduction of risk, and a benefit to my users. The thing is, while early attempts to enable this do exist, they aren't mature enough to rely on, and nobody knows how well they will scale or whether they will have enough funding and traction to last. So in the meantime those of us building online services are in a gray area -- we need certain features for our services to function well, and we also would like to find a way to protect privacy for the individual. This is the connundrum of the moment. It's a business opportunity for someone out there.

Kill the Penny

A bill has been proposed to do away with the penny -- that most useless an annoying of coins. Thank you!!!! As far as I'm concerned, if you can't buy a payphone call with it, or 10 to 15 minutes on a parking meter, then it's just not worth having anymore -- so I would also propose getting rid of nickels and dimes too. I proposed this in an earlier blog post here.

A Tribe That Views Time Differently

A tribe in South America has been found to have a reverse concept of time from all known cultures:

New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates they have a concept of time opposite to all the world's studied cultures -- so that the past is ahead of them and the future behind.

China About to "Strike Hard" Against Civil Unrest

Chinese officials are preparing to "strike hard" against civil unrest. Are they planning another Tiannamen-style massacre? There is something fundamentally wrong with a government that has to torture, repress, and murder it's own people (and its neighboring peoples) on a regular, systematic basis in order to maintain stability. China isn't the only country guilty of such crimes, but they are certainly the most visible. As one of the largest, and most important, nations on earth -- and as a key member of the global community -- China really should hold itself to a different standard. Just because protestors are comprised of disenfranchised peasants, workers, students and ethnic minorities does not mean that their lives and causes are without value. In fact, the whole point of the Maoist revolution was ostensibly to liberate the lower classes from oppression -- so I find it very ironic that the regime that grew out of that revolution is now actively oppressing the very same people it was formed to liberate. Worse still is that the Chinese government -- with or without Google's support -- cannot possibly succeed at a policy of repression in the long-term. Eventually, the more acts of violence that are perpetrated against the Chinese people, the more disillusioned those people will become. And eventually the regime will fall out of favor and be dissolved. Since that is the inevitable outcome of the current direction of Chinese policy, why not just spare the needless loss of life, and take a different approach now? The Chinese government should find a way to listen to its people and work with them to build partnerships and solutions from the bottom-up instead of forcing them to comply from the top-down. Anyway, what I say doesn't matter -- I'm sure the Chinese government is not reading this blog. Fortunately, capitalism is like a virus, or an acid, that is already colonizing China and will inevitably result in a shift to something like democracy there, eventually. It's just too bad that so many people have to suffer in the process.

Privacy Nightmare

The ACLU has a nice little animation of what life will be like once the government, and corporate America, have access to all personal data. It's a nice little simulation.

Doomsday Vault to House World Seed Bank

The Norwegians are planning to create a deep underground vault near the North Pole to house a backup copy of seeds for all known varieties of crops. The goal is to ensure food supplies and enable humanity to regenerate in the event of nuclear war, global warming or other catastrophes. It's a good idea. This is similar to my own idea for what I call the Genesis Project, which would provide a backup of critical human knowledge as well, and a system for helping humanity relearn it, in case we get knocked back to the Stone Age for some reason.

Big Thinkers' Most Dangerous Ideas

The Edge has published mini-essays by 119 "big thinkers" on their "most dangerous ideas" -- fun reading.

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

 

How to Kill a News Story

This is a fascinating article by an investigative reporter for CBS News on the various tactics used by opposing parties who want to prevent, spin, or kill negative articles in the press. Quite interesting, and unsual to find coming from a major news organization. (And here's an interesting post about this post).

Now They are Patenting Storylines

A truly horrible innovation. Someone has figured out how to patent storylines, for example unique plots and they have a published (but not issued) patent. Hopefully writers everywhere will blow this out of the water.

20% of Your Genes Belong to Them

From Boing Boing today:

Xeni Jardin: A report in this week's issue of Science says 20 percent of human genes have been patented in the United States:

The study (...) is the first time that a detailed map has been created to match patents to specific physical locations on the human genome. Researchers can patent genes because they are potentially valuable research tools, useful in diagnostic tests or to discover and produce new drugs.

"It might come as a surprise to many people that in the U.S. patent system human DNA is treated like other natural chemical products," said Fiona Murray, a business and science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and a co-author of the study.

I have long felt that patents should not be granted on naturally occuring phenomena -- such as the DNA of any species. It is simply absurd to grant a patent on something that has existed in the public domain for millions or even billions of years! It's simply an absurd abuse of the legal system, for the benefit of corporate greed, in my opinion. I do believe that patents should be granted for new inventions (although I think all patent rights should expire much faster than they presently do -- which would solve many of the problems in the patent world) -- but it is simply wrong to allow patents on naturally occuring physical phenomena. Discoveries are not inventions.

Strange But True -- Low Frequency Audio as a Social Instrument

This is really fascinating:

Scientists used to consider the frequency band of 500 hertz and below in the human voice as meaningless noise, because when a voice is filtered, removing all higher frequencies, ne hears nothing but a low-pitched hum. All words are lost. But then it was found that this low hum is an unconscious social instrument. It is different for each person, but in the course of a conversation people tend to converge. They settle on a single hum, and it is always the lower status person who does the adjusting. This was first demonstrated in an analysis of the Larry King Live television show. The host, Larry King, would adjust his timbre to that of high-ranking guests, like Mike Wallace or Elizabeth Taylor. Low-ranking guests, on the other hand, would adjust their timbre to that of King. The clearest adjustment to King's voice, indicating lack of confidence, came from former Vice President Dan Quayle.

The same spectral analysis has been applied to televised debates between U.S. presidential candidates. In all eight elections between 1960 and 2000 the popular vote matched the voice analysis: the majority of people voted for the candidate who held his own timbre rather than the one who adjusted.

From this site.

You do what you eat?

This article presents some fascinating evidence that nutrition has a direct relationship on behavior, particularly antisocial behavior.

Another Actor Running for Office?

Oy Vey. CNN just reported that Virginia Democrats are rumored to be asking Ben Affleck to run for the Senate. Note to the Virginia Democrats: Ben Affleck is an A-C-T-O-R not a politician. Am I the only one who is completely fed up with actors running for (and holding) public office? I mean what exactly are their job-qualifications anyway? Pretending to be someone they are not for a living? Memorizing scripts? Drinking, gambling and carousing? Clowning for the cameras? Hmm.. Come to think of it, maybe actors are ideally qualified to be politicians. But not good politicians.

I'm sorry but why in the world should Ben Affleck be in the Senate? What exactly does he know about being a Senator? Besides, he hooked up with Jennifer Garner -- something I, and legions of other Alias fans, will never forgive him for. Is he just jealous of the Governator? Or this all just a publicity stunt for an upcoming Sequel to some horrible J-LO movie in which Senator Ben and his kid's nanny, J-LO, team up to save the world? Come-on, people, what happened to the concept of real Leaders, you know -- statesmen -- people who actually have some actual understanding of Government, let alone experience?

We wonder why America is not what it used to be. Well, perhaps it's because the government is increasingly run by showboating businessmen and Hollywood celebrities with no political experience, instead of real public servants with a lifetime of practical wisdom about how to grow and lead a nation.

Human-Brained Monkeys Pose Ethical Challenge

A cutting-edge research program is injecting human brain cells into monkey brains, to investigate whether this causes their brains to become more "human." This poses a potential ethical challenge: If the monkeys do become more human, would they be considered "human subjects" and be protected by ethical guidelines governing research onto humans? At which point does a monkey qualify as a legal Person? Could a more humanlinke monkey, or a state attorney on it's behalf, file suit against scientists who harmed it or deprived it of its rights? If a monkey becomes more humanlike, do we have the right to hold it against its will? Super-intelligent monkeys used to be the stuff of the Wizard of Oz, and Flash Gordon science fiction -- now we're actually making them --  what a world we live in! Hey, I have an idea, instead of trying to make monkeys more like men, could we figure out a way to make men LESS like monkeys??? Let's start with the politicians!

Fascinating Article -- Surviving a Nuclear Attack on Washington DC

This article is very interesting not only because it provides an unusually detailed scenario of what would happen if a nuke was detonated in the Washington DC area, but also because it provides counter-intuitive guidance for how to survive such a situation, as well as information about new medical treatments for helping both first-responders and victims to combat radiation sickness. Let's hope nothing like this ever happens!

New Ice Age Coming Much Sooner than Expected?

Significant new research findings indicate that a new ice age may be starting sooner than anyone expected...

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream — the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream — the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea — has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

Click here for the full article