Desert of My Real Life

{August 2, 2009} Recognizing Patterns for NetFlix

My area of research when I was in computer science was artificial intelligence. AI is a broad field with many subfields, each of which has many applications. Within AI, I was particularly interested in pattern recognition via machine learning techniques. When I left computer science, I turned my research attention to the topic of this blog and began to focus more and more on the impact of technology on society and media technology issues. So I was quite interested this morning when my favorite National Public Radio show, On the Media, broadcast a story that shows the connection between these two research interests.

Pattern recognition sounds like an esoteric subfield of AI. But in today’s computer-focused society, there are many useful applications of pattern recognition. For example, I worked on two problems in microbiology while I was a graduate student. My master’s work involved looking for patterns in strands of DNA of an organism called Onchocherca volvulus which causes river blindness. We were trying to determine whether we could determine the evolution history and path of the organism to help with understanding the epidemiology of the disease. For my PhD, I worked on the famous “protein folding problem“, trying to predict the 3-dimensional structure of a strand of protein by looking at just the sequence of amino acids that make up the protein. The theory is that if we can predict the 3-D structure, we can predict the function of the protein as well and the implications of that are far-reaching. As I said, there are many practical applications of pattern recognition by computers.

On today’s edition of On the Media, there was a story that reminded me of the fact that pattern recogniton by computers is everywhere in our society. The story was about a contest by NetFlix, the DVD rental site. NetFlix allows subscribers to rate movies via a star system, where one star means “hated it” and five stars means “loved it”. Based on the ratings that a particular subscriber has given a set of movies, NetFlix attempts to recommend other movies that the subscriber will enjoy. NetFlix’s business model depends on these recommendations since a larger percentage of their movie rentals come from subscribers listening to these recommendations. Without the recommendations, subscribers would likely run out of movies that they know they want to see and then would eventually give up their subscriptions. But predicting what movies a person will like is a very difficult problem.

NetFlix does a pretty good job with their movie recommendation system, Cinematch, but if they can make better predictions, they’re likely to hang on to more subscribers. So they created a contest, offering a million dollars to anyone who can develop an algorithm that does 10% better in its predictions than Cinematch. Apparently, a number of groups immediately were able to develop algorithms that were 5% more accurate than Cinematch. Even getting to 8% more accuracy didn’t take that long. But a number of intriguing issues made reaching the 10% mark difficult. One of the most interesting is known as the “Napoleon Dynamite problem.” Napoleon Dynamite is a quirky, independent movie that came out in 2004. It seems that it is quite difficult to accurately predict whether a particular subscriber will like or dislike this movie. In fact, two people whose likes and dislikes are quite similar can disagree drastically about Napoleon Dynamite. So getting to the 10% mark will probably require a solution to the “Napoleon Dynamite problem.”

The contest closed a couple of days ago, although no winner has yet been announced. NetFlix says that they received 44,014 entries from 5169 teams in 186 countries. One of the requirements of the contest is that the winners must disclose their techniques to the world. Although getting more accurate movie recommendations is not a life or death problem, the solution to it is likely to provide insight into how to accomplish other pattern recognition tasks. And that’s good news for all of us.

{July 18, 2009} New Kindle Developments

I was talking to my dad tonight about the Kindle. He’s a fan and wants one, but feels as though he doesn’t read enough to justify the expense. I’ve written about the Kindle before and have said that I have a problem with Amazon’s high pricing of electronic books. Now Amazon has screwed up in another way and I have mixed feelings about that.

Recently, Amazon removed all traces of the digital versions of two of George Orwell’s classic novels, 1984 and Animal Farm, from their web site so that Kindle users can no longer purchase them. That action is not controversial. Amazon’s other actions, however, are controversial. Amazon also removed all digital traces of the novels from the Kindle devices of users who had purchased the novels. It turns out that the publisher who sold Amazon the rights to distribute the novels did not actually own the copyrights (in the US) for them. When Amazon determined that they were illegally selling the digital version of the novel, they stopped selling it. But they also retroactively removed the digital versions of the novels from those who had purchased it. People in the blogosphere writing about this issue have conflicting ideas concerning Amazon’s reaction. Some are outraged while others think Amazon did the right thing.

The difference in these two points of view comes down to values. Those who think Amazon did the right thing liken this to the police confiscating a stolen car from your driveway. You never had the right to own the item, whether you purchased it knowing it was stolen or not Those who think Amazon did the wrong thing believe that the users had purchased the item in what they thought was a legal manner and, therefore, Amazon should have left well enough alone. In fact, many are making the argument that situations such as this are arguments against digital distribution of content since the ownership of digital content is so ephemeral. The truth seems to be somewhere in between these two extremes, I think. There are two reasons that this is not the same as the police confiscating a stolen car. First, Amazon had a duty to determine that they were selling a legal product. They failed in this duty and should be held liable in some way for that failure. Second, once Amazon discovered their error in illegally selling the product, they were less than forthcoming about the remedy. They did refund the purchase price of the novel but they didn’t clearly explain what had happened and clearly notify those who had purchased the novels that they were being removed. Instead, Amazon surreptitiously removed the novels from the Kindle devices. That’s wrong. On the other hand, Amazon is not the devil in this situation. They honored the copyright of the novels and, most importantly, they refunded the purchase price. They tried to do the right thing.

As in so many situations, the real issue here seems to be about Amazon’s lack of forthrightness about the issue once it was discovered. The cover-up of the crime once again turns out to be worse than the crime itself. Did we learn nothing from Watergate?

{July 17, 2009} Board Games ‘R Us

A friend of mine recently posted a list of board games that she had as a kid (and wished she had never gotten rid of). She had quite an interesting list. So I decided to go check out the site that she linked to and discovered a game that I think I’m going to have to buy. The game is called THE AMAZING DUNNINGER MIND READING GAME. Here’s a quote from the web site that describes the game.

Based on extensive research, Dunninger has developed the Mind Reading Game, to prove that anyone can read a thought! Not a game of chance, the Mind Reading Game provides an experiment to demonstrate that a coincidental thought can be gained by two persons without the aid of recognized communication to a degree that precludes the possibility of chance.

The game includes a “receiver board with built-in temples.” I really want to know what that means. This game combines my interest in games with my interest in weird beliefs. What more could I ask for?

{June 30, 2009} Experiments in Online Education

Ian Schreiber, co-author of Challenges for Game Designers, is undertaking an interesting experiment in online education this summer. He is offering an online course called Game Design Concepts via Web 2.0 tools (a blog, a wiki, a discussion board, Twitter and so on). None of this is revolutionary. What makes this experiment interesting is that Ian is offering the course entirely for free and allowing an unlimited number of people to register (or not) for the course. Registration closed yesterday (June 29th) with 1402 registrants. Many, many more people (myself included) will probably follow the course informally without registering for it.

One thing that I wondered was why Ian would decide to do this. In his own words, here’s why:

I have many motivations for starting this project, some selfish and some altrusitic. Best to be up front about it:

Game design is my passion, and I love to share it with anyone and everyone.

I have taught some classes in a traditional classroom and others online, and I want to experiment with alternate methods of teaching.

By exposing my course content and viewing the comments and discussions, I can improve the course when I teach it for money.

It is a career move. If this course is successful, it gives me greater exposure in my field and promotes my name as a brand.

The reason that I find most interesting is the last one. I wonder how he knows that a successful course will lead to “greater exposure” and branding his name. But let’s assume that assume that success will mean that he gets these things. I also wonder how he will determine whether the course is “successful.”

Most of the materials that Ian is providing come in the form of text–twice a week blog postings, a wiki and so on. These items are not really much different than the book that he requires the students to buy for the course. In other words, so far this sounds like a correspondance course. But online education differs from other types of correspondance courses in its ability to allow interaction between a faculty member and a students as well as between two students. With 1402 students, I don’t think Ian will have much time to interact with the students individually. He puts the students into online groups and so they should have the opportunity to interact with each other. Of course, the quality of the experience that one has in such a situation is likely to depend on the other students in one’s group. It could be a great, meaningful experience if there is a critical number of students in the group who engage in thoughtful online discussions and group project work. It’s unclear at this point how many of the 1402 students will have this experience.

In explaining that there is a text book required for participation in the course (but no other expense), Ian says, “It’s still cheaper than a college education.” He’s absolutely right. The idea of getting together a group of people who are interested in learning the same thing is nothing new. I participate in a two-person academic book club and in a teaching reflective practice group to accomplish something similar to what Ian is trying to do via this class and I find both to be among my most rewarding activities. The difference between my book club and Ian’s class, however, is that the class has a single person (a teacher) who is structuring the experience while in the book club, we both take responsibility for structuring the experience. This responsibility ensures that we are both serious about the work we do in our book club meetings. But if enough of the people in Ian’s class are serious about the work, I think this will be a “successful” experience.

{June 28, 2009} The Decision Engine

I’ve seen a couple of commercials on TV for Microsoft’s newest product, Bing. Microsoft claims that Bing is a “decision engine.” What exactly is a “decision engine”? According to a press release from Microsoft, a decision engine “goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload.” In other words, information is no longer power. Products like Google (Microsoft’s competitor) present too much information in response to searches and humans now need help (more help than Google can give) to be able to make sense of it all. And Microsoft steps in with Bing.

The traditional search engine does a good job of helping people find information, according to Microsoft’s press release, but the explosion of information means that people have difficulty actually using that information to make informed decisions. So Bing will actually help us make decisions! That seems like a bold claim to me especially since search engine optimization is typically incremental rather than revolutionary. Is Bing as revolutionary as the phrase “decision engine” implies? It’s difficult to say at this point but even Microsoft’s own promotional materials make me doubt it.

According to the press release, Microsoft did some research about the kinds of things that people search for and found that lots of people are interested in four areas when they search the web: “making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.” Ok, so there’s the first way that Bing is not really a “decision engine.” The tool will be optimized to deal with searches that are related to these four areas and the press release makes no mention of whether the tool will help me make other kinds of decisions.

The optimization strategy for dealing with these four areas also doesn’t seem particularly revolutionary to me. The press release gives a bit of detail about the focus of the strategy. In particular, Bing provides “great search results”, an “organized search experience”, and it simplifies tasks and provides insights. What do these things mean?

“Great search results” simply means that Microsoft’s research found that only 25% of searches provide information that satisfies the searcher. So in creating Bing, they tried to increase this percentage. No details about how they’ve done this, however. But don’t all search engine manufacturers try to provide results that are as relevant as possible? So this is not a revolutionary strategy.

Microsoft also did some research and found that people want the results of their searching to be organized. So they added some organizational features to Bing. These features include “Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results.” When Microsoft uses the words “relevant” and “intuitive”, I am skeptical. Remember “Clippy”, the paper clip cartoon character that was supposed to help us when we used Office? Or how about the fact that Microsoft claims that they changed the menu structure in the Office suite for Vista so that the menus would be more “intuitive”? There are too many examples that show that what Microsoft considers “relevant” and “intuitive” doesn’t match what most people consider “relevant” and “intuitive”. So this statement from the press release doesn’t convince me that the claims that Bing is a “decision engine” is anything more than hype.

Finally, Microsoft claims that they use the strategy of simplifying tasks and providing insight. Again, most search engine manufacturers probably want to do this so the strategy itself is probably not revolutionary. But the fact that Bing focuses only on four primary areas of searching might mean that the tool can be optimized to simplify tasks and provide insights into these four types of searches.

I haven’t yet used Bing. The only way to know whether it really is a “decision engine” that will revolutionize the way we use the information provided on the Web is to use the tool. Microsoft has had a search engine tool for a long time (quick–do you know what it’s called?). It was called Live Search before it was upgraded and renamed to Bing. But the fact that you probably didn’t know that name is an indication that the old tool was probably not very good, certainly not better than Google. Given Microsoft’s record with upgrades, I feel pretty sure that calling Bing a “decision engine” is nothing more than hype.

{June 19, 2009} Travesty of Justice

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled in a case from Alaska that the state does not have to provide physical evidence (which the state still has) to a man who has been in prison for 16 years for the purposes of new DNA testing (which the man has agreed to pay for himself). Ed Brayton provides an excellent analysis of the case and explains the negative impact of the decision on our justice system.

{June 4, 2009} Changing Medical Technology

I just finished reading My Lobotomy by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Howard Dully received a transorbital lobotomy (also known as an “ice-pick lobotomy”) when he was 12 years old. The doctor who performed the lobotomy was the king of transorbital lobotomies, Walter Freeman. The book chronicles Dully’s life as well as his search, more than 40 years after the lobotomy, for answers as to why this surgery was performed on him. It’s a harrowing story, especially because by almost all accounts, Dully was a normal kid. The problem in his life seems to have been his step-mother who for some reason just didn’t like him and was probably afraid of him because he was a big kid.

Antonio Egas Moniz was the pioneer of the lobotomy and in fact, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949 for his work in this area. By the late 1950’s, with the introduction of drugs that worked far better than lobotomies, the procedure fell out of favor in the mainstream medical community. In fact, some have characterized the lobotomy as the biggest mistake ever made by mainstream medicine. My favorite quote about the lobotomy comes from Norbert Weiner who is the father of cybernetics. He said on page 148 of his book Cybernetics, “…prefrontal lobotomy …has recently been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier.”

Reading My Lobotomy is an eye-opening experience. Throughout the entire book, I wondered where the authorities were. Surely there were adminstrators at the hospitals where Freeman worked who realized that his methods for diagnosing patients as having major psychoses were problematic. Why did they let him continue to practice for so long? What about all those doctors that Dully’s step-mother took him to who said he was a fine, normal kid? Why did none of them recognize that she was going to continue in her pursuit until she found the diagnosis she was looking for? The problem, of course, is that at the time, a lobotomy could be prescribed for conditions as mundane as “youthful defiance” or even just “moodiness.” There is no doubt that Howard Dully was a defiant youth. Reading the book, I get a portrait of him as a really smart kid who was bored in school and who probably had attention deficit disorder as well as an incredible amount of stress as a result of being an abused child. But the kind of trouble he got into was normal kid stuff and probably could have been dealt with by someone paying a little bit of attention to him and maybe challenging him a little more in school.

The other question that kept popping into my head was whether things are better now. Could this sort of thing happen today? Obviously, there are not a lot of lobotomies performed today but kids are put onto serious psychotropic medicines all the time. What kind of safeguards do we have in place to protect kids (or adults for that matter)? Do we require multiple physicians to look at a kid before he or she is diagnosed as schizophrenic or bipolar or whatever? My guess is that we don’t. Although it seems like the effects of taking drugs for these conditions would not be permanent in the same ways that having a lobotomy would be permanent, some of the stigmatization that Dully describes would be present and very damaging simply with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or some other serious mental disorder.

One of the most moving parts of the book is the afterword to the paperback edition of the book. Dully is contacted by two brain researchers to have a detailed MRI taken of his brain to determine the kind of damage that was done by the ice picks. The researchers suspected they would find little damage because Dully seemed so normal, too normal for someone who has had a lobotomy. What they found was brain damage that was so significant that if it had been done to an adult, that person would be a vegetable. But because Dully had the surgery when he was 12, his brain was still maleable. It adapted to the damage so that after 40+ years, he was a normally functioning adult. Dully then says that he had always felt burdened by the lobotomy, like something really bad had been done to him as a child. After the MRI, he realized that he actually was quite lucky that he had the lobotomy at such an early age. If it had been done even five years later, he probably would never have left the institutions he grew up in. He would never have had a life with a wife and kids and a job. So he now sees his life as lucky. It’s an inspirational shift in perspective, I think, and I’m not sure how many of us would be able to make that shift.

From a technology standpoint, this story reminds me that we have developed lots of tools that we can use in a variety of situations. But having the tools doesn’t mean that we should actually use the tools. And when we do use the tools, we need to put into place significant checks and balances to avoid abuses of power and to protect the powerless as much as we can. I don’t think we’ve really learned these lessons yet.

By the way, National Public Radio did a 22-minute documentary about Howard Dully back in 2005. Here’s that story–I strongly encourage you to listen to it by clicking on “Listen Now” in the upper left corner of the page.

{May 30, 2009} Recycling

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a couple of old, unused computers lying around your house gathering dust. In my house, we had six computers until recently, two very old desktops, two relatively old laptops and two new laptops. We had accumulated these six computers in just 11 years since we had a fire in 1998 which destroyed most of our belongings, including our computers. It’s amazing how quickly we accumulate new computers. A lot of this quick accumulation is the result of planned obsolescence, the idea that computer manufacturers design computers to either fail or not be able to keep up with newer technology in a certain period of time. And then, of course, there’s the question of what to do with the old computer when we get a new computer. In fact, the EPA estimates that 30-40 million computers will become surplus each year for the next several years. The EPA also classifies these surplus computers as “hazardous household waste” so simply dumping the computer into a landfill is dangerous.

When I purchased my newest laptop, I got a form to send in along with my old computer so that it could be recycled. The problem with this form for me was that I really wanted to recycle the old desktop computers but they are HUGE and I really didn’t want to pay for the shipping even though the recycling itself would be free. So I decided to check out the options at my local transfer station. It’s a “transfer station”–not a “landfill”–so I was hopeful that they’d have a solution for me.

It turned out that for $8 each, I could dispose of both of the computers at my local transfer station. I believe $5 of the $8 was for the monitor. Apparently, the glass in the CRT of the monitor contains a high amount of lead. The tower portion of the computer contains mercury, cadmium and fire retardant. The mouse, keyboard, speakers and so on apparently don’t contain hazardous waste although since they are made of plastic, they still should not end up in a landfill.

My local transfer station hires a company to take away the hazardous portions of the computer and that’s why we have to pay a fee. When I placed the monitors and the towers in the appropriate sections of the transfer station, I noticed that there were upwards of 50 other systems there, many of which were far older than mine and which looked like they had been there for a long time. I live in a really small town and so I do imagine that it would take a while to accumulate the number of systems that would make a trip to the town by the recycling company worthwhile. Since we’re a small town, our transfer station is completely out in the open, with no building covering any of the materials dropped off there (which raises a whole other issue of what happens when paper gets wet and the fact that we pay by weight to have it taken away). So I did wonder what the environmental impact of having those computers systems sit out in the weather for all these years might be. But at least they won’t end up in a landfill.

{May 23, 2009} Security Theater

Nothing captures the public’s attention like a named killer. Jack the Ripper. The Boston Strangler. Son of Sam. Zodiac. The Night Stalker. The Green River Killer. Last month, a new name was added to this list: The Craigslist Killer. It turns out that Philip Markoff, the medical student who was arrested (and who has pled not guilty) for the murder of Julissa Brisman in Boston, is not the first killer dubbed “The Craigslist Killer.” In fact, quite a few murderers who met their victims via the popular classified advertising site have been dubbed “The Craigslist Killer.” What’s interesting about this latest murder, however, is the response from the administrators of Craigslist.

Police claim Markoff had attacked several other women in the days leading up to his alleged murder of Brisman. He apparently found his victims on Craigslist in the “Erotic Services” section of the online advertising site (although it isn’t clear that all of them were found in that section–I’m making an assumption based on Craigslist’s response to the murder). An earlier victim, for example, had advertised as an exotic dancer. Brisman advertised her services as a masseuse. When Brisman was shot, Markoff was allegedly attempting to restrain her, presumably in as a prelude to robbing her, as he had his earlier victims. By all accounts, Markoff is an unlikely suspect, a Boston University medical school student with no criminal record and no history of legal problems.

In the wake of this murder and series of crimes against women, several attornies general have called on Craigslist to do something to prevent future use of the web site by predators. Craigslist has responded. They will remove the section called “Erotic Services” and replace it with an “Adult Services” section that will be “monitored” by Craigslist employees. Any sexually suggestive advertisements will expire after seven days. This response appears to have satisfied the attornies general for now but to me, this is an example of what Bruce Schneier has called “security theater,” an action which is about making us feel safer without any real consequence to actual safety.

To see what I mean by this, think about the Brisman case. She was advertising her services as a masseuse. I’m not sure whether her advertisement was under “Erotic Services” but let’s assume it was. I’m also not sure whether her advertisement was sexually suggestive but again, let’s assume it was. So if someone were to write the exact advertisement that she had used today, Craigslist employees would review it and presumably decide it was one of the ads that needs to expire in seven days. In those seven days, many Markoff clones would review that ad and presumably call for those services. Is the woman now any safer than Brisman was? And after the ad expires, the woman will now write a new ad. Does the fact that her ad expired in seven days make her any safer? And what is more likely to happen is that the woman advertising masseuse services will NOT write a sexually suggestive ad (because she know that it will expire in seven days) and will therefore, NOT have her ad expire in seven days. Is she any safer than Brisman was?

It is completely unclear to me how a Craigslist employee reviewing “Adult Services” advertisements could have saved Julissa Brisman. So perhaps what we should be calling for is the complete elimination of both “Erotic Services” and “Adult Services” advertisements. Brisman was advertising as a masseuse. Do we want to go so far as to claim that ALL massages have an underlying erotic dimension and that they therefore should ALL be banned from advertisement? Why don’t we ban those advertisements from all newspapers, both in print and online, then? In fact, there have been many murders in which the murderer and victim met through newspaper classified ads (just google “lonely hearts killers” to get a sense) and yet those advertisements have not been banned. Maybe they should be. But then we should also ban all advertisements for masseuse services from the Yellow Pages, right? In fact, maybe we should ban massages altogether.

The response by Craigslist to the fact that an alleged murderer met his victim via their web site is all about theater, about making us feel safer rather than really making us safer. In actuality, nothing could have stopped Markoff from robbing someone and in those robberies, someone who resisted him was likely to get injured and perhaps even killed. Why do we need to kid ourselves otherwise?

{May 22, 2009} NeMLA 2010

There have been quite a few stories that have captured my attention in the nearly six month break that I’ve taken from writing entries in this blog. I will be sharing several of those stories in the next few days. In the meantime, I recently had a panel proposal accepted for the Northeast Modern Language Association conference that will be held in Montreal in April 2010. Here’s the call for papers for my panel:

Playing Web 2.0: Intertextuality, Narrative and Identity in New Media

41st Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

April 7-11, 2010

Montreal, Quebec – Hilton Bonaventure

A recent Facebook spoof of Hamlet by Sarah Schmelling illustrates the current proliferation of experiments in narrative form and intertextuality found in new media. Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis, blogs and social networking sites, allow the average web user to actively participate in online life. Given our societal bent toward postmodernism, it is not surprising that much of this online participation is characterized by a proclivity to challenge and play with traditional conventions. This panel will examine play, defined in the broadest sense by Salen and Zimmerman as “free movement within a more rigid structure”, using Web 2.0 tools and new media. Some questions of interest to the panel include: Are there particular attributes of new media technologies that encourage play? How is new media play different from/similar to play found elsewhere? What impact do new media technologies have on our notions of play? What are the motivations of those who engage in play via new media technologies? Some example topics for the panel include: experimentation with new literary forms using social networking conventions (such as the 140-character status update); creation of online identities using text-based tools such as blogs; development of fictional worlds by fans of popular culture narratives using wikis and blogging tools; the use of casual online games to influence attitudes and behaviors concerning issues of social importance.

Submit 250-word abstracts to cleblanc@plymouth.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2009

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation

Email address

Postal address

Telephone number

A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)

The 41^st Annual Convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2010 Convention will be posted in June: http://nemla.org/.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

Travel to Canada now requires a passport for U.S. citizens. Please get your passport application in early.

About

Archived Posts

Categories

Blogroll

Admin