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Folktologies -- Beyond the Folksonomy vs. Ontology Distinction

First of all I know Clay Shirky, and he's a good fellow. But he's simply wrong about his claim that "tagging" (of the flavor that is appearing on del.icio.us -- what I call "social tagging") is inherently better than the use of formal ontologies. Clay favors the tagging approach because it is bottom-up and emergent in nature, and he argues against ontologies because pre-specification cannot anticipate the future. But this is a simplistic view of both approaches. One could just as easily argue against tagging systems because they don't anticipate the future -- they are shortsighted, now-oriented systems that fail to capture the "big picture" or to optimally organize resources for the long-term. Their saving grace is that over time they do (hopefully) self-organize and prune out the chaff, but that depends both on the level of participation and the quality of that participation.

Turning comments off for a while...

Typepad seems to be suffering another spate of comment spam -- so I'm disabling comments for a while and taking them off the front page. Sorry about that. Will consider bringing them back if Typepad can do a better job of blocking spam.

Cell Phones Become Credit Cards

It's finally happening in the USA -- your cell phone is about to morph into a credit card, and soon will evolve into your digital wallet. Read more.

New Sony Creation Box Makes TV's Better

Sony has released its new Creation Box in Japan -- it processes regular TV signals to make images clearer, flicker free, and more vivid -- and it enables zoom functions. Pretty interesting idea -- but why bother? Aren't we all going digital anyway? How long a shelf-life will this product have? Still it's a pretty cool idea.

Hafnium Bombs - The Next Superweapon

Here is a fascinating article about DARPA's "high risk, high payoff" quest to develop an exotic new Hafnium bomb -- a new kind of weapon that emits huge amounts of gamma rays from a very small package. This thing packs the bang of a conventional nuke in a package as small as a hand grenade -- and the gamma ray burst that results can penetrate deep into bunkers and through thick materials. Of course, it would really be a bad idea to toss a Hafnium grenade unless you could run incredibly fast. But that said, Hafnium weapons may be a big part of our future (or who knows, maybe they're already part of our present?). Beyond military applications, it seems this technology could offer a very promising new non-fossil fuel energy source, if it weren't so expensive to produce.

Study Finds that Second-Hand Smoke Dulls Children's Brains

A new study has found that exposure to even low levels of second-hand smoke at home had a significant negative impact on children's reading and math performance at school.

Scientific Study Probes Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

A new study demonstrates the power that other people's beliefs have over a person's behavior. Specifically it found that parents may unwittingly cause self-fulfilling prophecies in their children's behavior...

Time and again, research has demonstrated the power of an individual's self-fulfilling prophecies - if you envision yourself tripping as you walk across a stage, you will be more likely to stumble and fall. New evidence suggests that previous studies have underestimated not only the effect of our own negative prophecies, but also the power of others' false beliefs in promoting negative outcomes.

The study involved 115 parents and their seventh grade children. Parents filled out questionnaires that measured their beliefs about their children's alcohol use and the children also filled out a questionnaires at the start of the experiment, including items assessing their past alcohol use. Twelve months later, the children answered a questionnaire that ascertained their recent alcohol use. The results showed that parents' beliefs predicted their children's alcohol use beyond the risk factors - the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. This self-fulfilling effect was strongest when both parents overestimated their child's alcohol use - the synergistic accumulative effect.

However, when one or both parents underestimated their child's alcohol use, their child's predicted increase in alcohol use was similar, showing there was not a synergistic accumulation effect for positive beliefs. This pattern of showing synergistic accumulation for negative beliefs but not positive ones might reflect the manner in which people process negative and positive information. For example, research shows that negative information is more salient than positive information, perceived as more useful, and influences evaluations more. In addition, people also weigh costs more than rewards when making important decisions. Thus, the greater power of unfavorable versus favorable beliefs may reside in how people process negative versus positive information.

These results could be significant when applied to the context of stereotyped groups that frequently bear the brunt of negative, false beliefs. In their everyday lives, individuals from stereotyped groups more often confront unfavorable than favorable beliefs from multiple perceivers due to consensually held stereotypes. A favorable belief may not be able to counteract the harmful effect of an unfavorable belief when there is a preponderance of unfavorable beliefs competing with it. Over time, the negative self-fulfilling prophecy effects could become more powerful as the number of people with negative perceptions increases.

Read the rest of the article here

Scientists Discuss their Beliefs in the Unknown

The New York Times has published a wonderful and fascinating set of mini-essays by leading scientists about their beliefs in the unknkown and unexplained -- from consciousness, to God, to life on other worlds, and the existence of true love.  There are some terrific thoughts in it -- one of thoses rare articles that breaks through stereotypes and opens the door to new paradigms. We rarely hear scientific voices venturing this far. It's a great read for anyone interested in science and the Big Mysteries of life, the universe and everything... (you have to register with NYT to read it if you haven't already; do it -- it's worth it to read just this article alone!). (Thanks to Joe Rockmore for finding this article!)

Skeletal Systems of Cartoon Characters

I found this delightful series of drawings of the skeletons of popular cartoon characters at The Unreasonable Man, a blog I read. Very smart, take a look!

You've Got To Hear This Album...

My friend, Bari Koral, just released her new album, "Confessions of an Indie Girl." Bari is an incredible talent -- and this is her best album yet. She tours most of the year and has a large following, but she is still undiscovered by the mainstream. This review says it all:

"Confessions of an Indiegirl is A CLASSIC.  A sure bet to be one of the biggest releases of 2005.

Feels like it should be a blockbuster hit. Comparisons to such artists as Chrissie Hynde, Lucinda Williams, Norah Jones, Shelby Lynne and Fleetwood Mac, while inevitable, are in no way limiting."

--Al Muzer, The Aquarian

You can read the whole review, listen to clips of every song, and BUY A SIGNED COPY of the record now at: www.cdbaby.com/bari3

I really hope a lot of people hear this album -- it really is a "classic" -- I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

Her website is www.barikoral.com -- a new version of the site will be going up very soon.