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daltonlp writes "A number of smart folks have speculated that Google might leverage its computational resources to create some kind of massive online application delivery platform. Here's why they are probably wrong." One of more intelligent insights into Google, and it's pleasantly devoid of theories of Google taking over the world.

daltonlp writes "A number of smart folks have speculated that Google might leverage its computational resources to create some kind of massive online application delivery platform. Here's why they are probably wrong." One of more intelligent insights into Google, and it's pleasantly devoid of theories of Google taking over the world.

daltonlp writes "The Flickering Mind deals a crippling blow to the blind faith that educators and politicians place in computers as solutions to education's woes. The level of research and breadth of evidence is tremendous. The book sums up America's past 20 years of false promises, senseless faddism, and wasted millions in attempts to computerize the nation's education system. And no, open source won't help a bit." Read on for the rest of Dalton's review of The Flickering Mind. The Flickering Mind author Todd Oppenheimer pages 512 publisher Random House (Oct. 2003) rating Excellent reviewer Lloyd Dalton ISBN 1400060443 summary An extremely well-researched critique of technology's role in education.

What's bad: The first 350 pages of The Flickering Mind are as depressing as anything I've read. In case after case, Oppenheimer describes politicians' and educators' mindless acceptance of claims by technology pundits and technology companies. The sheer number of tax dollars poured into worthless software and soon-to-be-obsolete hardware is appalling The fact that so few lessons have been learned in 20 years beggars the imagination.

Those are my words, not the author's. The book's examples are laid out in very plain, factual language. No raving rants, no wild tangents. Just record after record, study after study, interview after interview.

Oppenheimer has researched the book by interviewing teachers, students, former students, educational software employees, district policymakers and government officials across the U.S. People with hands-on experience using things like distance-learning systems, CD-ROM-based textbooks, math and reading games, multimedia software, student laptops, school intranets, web-based research papers, and dozens of pieces of educational technology.

A recurring theme in these interviews is how computers either make formerly easy things harder (like classroom discussion), and hard things avoidable (students who know how to copy-paste don't have to construct sentences).

"One English teacher could readily tell which of her students essays were conceived on a computer. "They don't link ideas," the teacher said. "They just write one thing, and then they write another one, and they don't seem to see or develop the relationships between them."

The many interviews give The Flickering Mind a personal feel, and make the reading easier. In many ways, it's like a record of the author's travels from school to school. But one of the book's great strengths is Oppenheimer's unwillingness to rely on anecdotal evidence. Much of the book is devoted to analyzing studies of technology's impact in schools. A good chunk of these studies are commissioned by firms that sell educational software. Not surprisingly, they tend to be shallow and nonscientific. Many pages are spent pointing out flaws in this research. This becomes important when Oppenheimer turns the same critical eye on studies which support his own conclusions. An interesting sub-topic of the book is how very few truly objective educational technology studies exist.

All the evidence against computers as useful learning tools wouldn't be so alarming if computers didn't cost so much. But educators seem especially blind to the continual costs of staying on the technology bandwagon. There are two faces to this problem, and The Flickering Mind addresses both. The first is schools cutting faculty and programs in order to purchase hardware and software. The second is local and national governments granting subsidies and to companies who promise to assist schools with technology. In both cases, taxpayers foot the bill.

The Flickering Mind relies mainly on educators' own criteria for determining how technology helps learning (can the kids read, write, and do math?) But it also takes time to puncture the oft-recycled dogma that society has a shortage of graduates with high-tech skills:

"When employers who were fretting about this gap were asked what skills mattered to them, this is what they said: Most important of all is a deep and broad base of knowledge. "Want to get a job using information technology to solve problems? Know something about the problems that need to be solved." This statement reflected the sentiments of nearly two thirds of the Information Technology Association of America's members. Following far behind this priority was "hands-on experience" with technical work, which less than half the nation's IT managers considered critical (Most apparently felt perfectly capable of teaching those skills on the job.)

What's good:

All is not Luddite doom-and-gloom. The Flickering Mind is careful to highlight the areas where computer technology helps kids learn. Many schools do benefit from computers--as long as the computers are in central labs (not in the classroom), and not networked. One school has a senior-level class in which students build the computers used in the labs. Programming classes are valued by upperclassmen with an interest in technology careers. Some educators have made adjustments, like the teacher who removed all but a single-size font from the machines "so the students can write instead of wasting time adjusting the text".

The final third of the book is an uplifting counterpart to the ignorance and frustration described in the first two thirds. Oppenheimer gives details of visits to several schools which buck the trend of embracing technology as an end in itself. They use computers, but not in the class:

"In an aging brick building on New York's Upper East Side, a dozen teenagers of varying ages, half of whom look like street kids, pull their desks into a circle as their teacher distributes several thick handouts. "You're killing trees," one student complains."

"Yes," says the teacher. "I'm killing lots of trees"

After the students have spent fifteen to twenty minutes with the handouts, discussion begins. The debate is constant and heated. Whenever the dialog bogs down or goes off course, the teacher quickly interrupts. "I want to hear some pieces of evidence here!" he insists.

A university professor contrasted former students of this school with others she'd met: "I've had the experience of asking students a question and there's a one-sentence answer. And it's not a question of shyness or dumbness, but the person hasn't learned how to develop an idea. How to make a statement and then qualify and describe and give examples and illustrations. Each and every one of these people could do that."

Conclusion

The Flickering Mind is one of the most well-researched books I've read. It is well worth checking out from your library. It's even more worth buying, because you'll likely be re-reading it and lending it to your friends.

You can purchase the The Flickering Mind from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

daltonlp writes "I haven't felt this satisfied after finishing a science fiction novel since Ender's Game. I waited some weeks to review it, to make sure I wasn't simply infatuated. Oryx and Crake is woven from a great many themes near and dear to SF, but it's primarily a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve--except in reverse (the world isn't beginning, but ending)." Read on for the rest of Dalton's review. Oryx and Crake author Margaret Atwood pages 374 publisher Random House, 2003 rating Worth reading reviewer Lloyd Dalton ISBN 0385503857 summary A retelling of the story of Adam and Eve--except in reverse. The world isn't beginning, but ending.

The novel is a mad scientist story, where humans play God for pleasure and profit. It's a last-human-left-alive story. It's a projection of a dystopic future, where all political and economic power is held by militaristic corporations.

Most of these themes have been explored before, and they're introduced in the first couple chapters of the book. But they're handled so well, I feel like I'm spoiling the reader's experience by listing them here. Never mind, read the book anyway. Maybe you've seen this stuff before, but you haven't seen it written like this.

The measure of science fiction isn't the uniqueness of its concepts--it's what the author can do using the ideas as tools. It's about how intensely a book can penetrate into the reader's imagination, and this is driven by a writer's talent (not the raw ideas).

Margaret Atwood writes stories that are deeply layered and voiced in an incisive, conversational tone. Despite its bleak themes, Oryx and Crake is far from depressing--it's mostly cheerful and upbeat, which turns out to be a fine way to write about obsession and love and revenge and the end of the world. Somewhat like Neal Stephenson, Atwood's writing doesn't take itself too seriously. It's chock full of wordplays and grimly humorous subtexts. The result is a book that works as both a dark comedy and an allegoric drama, but feels like a conversation between the author and the reader.

Some parts of Oryx and Crake approach horror--not blood & guts horror, but what someone from the 1700s might feel if a time traveler explained the basics of how nuclear weapons, school shootings and Internet porn work today. Atwood pulls very few punches when imagining the possible extensions of humanity's greed, lust, hatred, and cold-bloodedness. Her easy pace, artful characterization and humorous touch fully engages the reader's mind, and her willingness to shock takes full advantage of the open target. The result is a mental chill that takes a long time to fade.

It's not a perfect book. Even at 374 pages, some episodes of the story arc seem abbreviated. Some of Atwood's future visions seem a bit contrived, but this depends on whether she's going for humor, symbolism, shock value or sheer inventiveness on a given page. Most pages (including the following excerpt) are a well-stirred mixture:

"On day one they toured some of the wonders of Watson-Crick. Crake was interested in everything--all the projects that were going on. He kept saying "Wave of the future," which got irritating after the third time.

First they went to Decor Botanicals, where a team of five seniors were developing Smart Wallpaper that would change colour on the walls of your room to complement your mood. This wallpaper--they told Jimmy--had a modified form of Kirilian energy-sensing algae embedded in it, along with a sublayer of algae nutrients, but there were still some glitches to be fixed. The wallpaper was short-lived in humid weather because it ate up all the nutrients and then went grey; also it could not tell the difference between drooling lust and murderous rage, and was likely to turn your wallpaper an erotic pink when what you really needed was a murky, capillary-bursting greenish red.

That team was also working on a line of bathroom towels that would behave in much the same way, but they hadn't yet solved the marine-life fundamentals: when algae got wet it swelled up and began to grow, and the test subjects so far had not liked the sight of their towels from the night before puffing up like rectangular marshmallows and inching across the bathroom floor.

"Wave of the future," said Crake."

It's too early to tell if Oryx and Crake will earn Atwood the same acclaim as The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale. Regardless, it's a powerful book--unnerving, moving and well worth reading.

You can purchase Oryx and Crake from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

daltonlp writes with the review below of John Gall's 1977 work Systemantics, writing "Most of the systems described by the author are societal or economic systems (governments, corporations, universities). Computer programs are mentioned, but they aren't the primary focus. But Systemantics doesn't distinguish between types of systems. In fact, its theories and arguments seem especially applicable to computer systems." (Read more below.) Systemantics author John Gall pages 111 publisher Quadrangle / The New York Times Book Company (1977) rating Insightful +5 reviewer Lloyd Dalton ISBN 0812906748 summary "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works." Years ago, I saw this quote and committed it to memory. I've finally had the pleasure of reading the book it comes from. I was amazed that Systemantics was written in 1977. It's far more relevant today than it was then, because more people write more software today.

That means theories like
Systems in general work poorly or not at all.

Some might question whether this is really true for computer systems built with modern technology. After all, for a computer to function, millions of microscopic parts must act in perfect synchronicity at superhuman speed.

But in reality, computers fail much more frequently than we notice. A large chunk of their innards are dedicated to failing gracefully. There's ecc in just about every piece of hardware. Without it, computer hardware would fail too often to be usable. Software is no different--it can fail sooner or later, gracefully or catastrophically, but it's going to fail. Overall, computers work poorly, but they work.

Complex systems usually operate in failure mode.

In other words, something's always broken at any point in time. The measure of a complex system's quality is how drastically a particular failure impacts the rest of the system.

Loose systems last longer and work better.

Most Slashdot readers probably read the above and think either "Hallelujah!" or "Duh." But it's a small example of something I liked a lot about Systemantics. Buried under several layers of satire and pessimism is a genuine desire to help the reader avoid the mistakes of past systems designers and managers. There's more to this book than just pessimism.

What's Bad: Systemantics suffers a little from being a quarter-century old. Several references to Watergate and a few other cultural nods may be a bit lost on anyone under 40.

But the book's only real flaw is the author's occasional condescending tone. Every dozen pages or so, Gall takes the opportunity to criticize a real-world example. Some of these anecdotes serve as supporting evidence for an argument. Others are genuinely entertaining (the section on Job Goals and and Objectives is outstanding). But the author sometimes tries too hard to be satirical, and comes across as flat or patronizing, or departs on tangents unrelated to the book's central ideas.

Summary: Despite small imperfections, there's a wealth of real knowledge in this small volume. The author helpfully outlines the main points at the book's end (some of which I've bulleted above). The book's overall message couldn't be more clear if it summarized itself. Which it nicely does:

It is hardly necessary to state that the very first principle of Systems design is a negative one: Do it without a system if you can.

Systems are seductive. They promise to do a hard job faster, better, and more easily than you could do it by yourself. But if you set up a system, you are likely to find your time and effort now being consumed in the care and feeding of the system itself.

• New problems are created by its very presence.
• Once set up, it won't go away, it grows and encroaches.
• It begins to do strange and wonderful things.
• It breaks down in ways you never thought possible.
• It kicks back, gets in the way, and opposes its own proper function.
• Your own perspective becomes distorted by being in the system.
• You become anxious and push on it to make it work.

Eventually you come to believe that the misbegotten product it so grudgingly delivers is what you really wanted all the time. You are now a Systems-person.

You can find used copies of Systemantics from bn.com and other online sources, though good-condition copies fetch high prices. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

daltonlp writes "Many stories under the "patents" topic on Slashdot are about objectionable patents (Amazon's one-click purchase patent, for instance). These stories typically draw comments full of righteous indignation and jeers about the incompetence of the US patent & trademark office. Don't you wish you could package that sentiment in a handy, bound volume? Maybe with a few more hard facts than you're likely to find on /. ? Well, now you can." Read on for the rest of Dalton's review of Michael Perelman's Steal This Idea. It's not a new book, but it seems more relevant every day. Steal this Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity author Michael Perelman pages 272 publisher Palgrave Macmillan (April 2002) rating Worth Reading reviewer Lloyd Dalton ISBN 0312294085 summary A hard-hitting look at the state of the U.S. patent & trademark system.

Most of the themes and arguments in Steal This Idea will be familiar to anyone who's read a Slashdot thread on patents. Michael Perelman is an economics professor at California State University. In Steal This Idea, he takes the position that patents (and trademarks, to a lesser extent) hurt science and the economy more than they help. He makes a pretty convincing case.

Roughly half the book is devoted to the negative effects of patents on scientific research. Perelman claims that tying research to intellectual property skews the balance of study away from basic research on fundamental problems, and toward short-term research geared toward improving existing products. Several real-world examples are given--many of the most potent come from the world of biological and pharmaceutical research:

Two decades ago, Philip Needleman, then a researcher at Washington University, in St. Louis, and his co-workers postulated the existence of two cyclooxygenase enzymes, COX-1 and COX-2. By 1990, Dr. Needleman, then chief scientific officer at Pharmacia, had guessed that the COX-2 enzyme plays a critical role in inflammation. By 1992, three other groups, including one at Rochester, had confirmed the existence of the enzymes by describing the genes that control their production. Although Rochester won the patent, the competing teams at UCLA and Brigham Young University claim that their work was fundamental.

Whether UCLA, Brigham Young, or Rochester deserved the patent is beside the point. More important is the idea that the granting of a patent on a bodily substance permits the owner to demand royalties from any company that produces a medicine that targets the substance.

Perelman gives historical evidence of IP hampering the development of new technology. His best example is the thicket of radio patents that entangled the baby radio industry, until the U.S. government voided many of them in the interest of accelerating radio technology during WWII.

Finally, Steal this Idea makes the case that scientific progress in the last half of the twentieth century owes a greater debt to basic research from academic and publicly-funded scientists and researchers than to corporate research. The concern is based on the large amount of time (decades, rather than years) needed for basic scientific discoveries to become marketable products is largely ignored by corporate research, which is focused on quarterly results.

It's curious that the internet--maybe the most obvious example of this, is barely mentioned. After all, business research has failed miserably at defining network protocols that match the resilience and utility of the network designed by publicly-funded scientists in the 60s. This may be because Perelman is less interested in obvious examples than lesser known ones, of which there are several in the book.

The second half of the book argues against patents (and Intellectual property in general) in terms of economic theory. Economics is Perelman's area of expertise, but it is not mine. I had to read most of these chapters twice before I understood them. They're interesting stuff, though. Perelman illustrates various ways economists attempt to shoehorn non-tangible goods (information) into economic models based on "lumpy objects." He illustrates the flaws in several of these models, and how these flaws translate into inefficiencies in actual markets.

Good: The book isn't just a rant, although it sometimes reads like one. Perelman is firmly biased against IP, and he sometimes uses a few paragraphs to rail against corporations in general. But the book is logically laid out, and presents evidence in well-defined pieces, always clear about what each example is meant to illustrate.

The examples. Those mentioned above are just a few of the many real-life events noted in Steal this Idea. They comprise the bulk of Perelman's case against patent IP. It's always tough to build an argument on anecdotal evidence, but in this case, there's a great deal of evidence.

The scope. I had doubts that a 211-page book could do justice to the issues with every type of intellectual property. Fortunately, Perelman doesn't attempt to cover copyrights, and barely touches trademarks. The overarching theme of the book is that intellectual property (mainly patents) in the hands of corporations works against the original goals of its creators--to encourage innovation and help the economy. The book does a solid job of supporting this claim.

Bad: IP is supposed to be a "limited" monopoly. Patents are, arguably, the most "limited" of the three types of IP in the US (copyrights, patents and trademarks). Perelman could have acknowledged this, and given concrete examples of why the limits aren't enough to balance the monopoly power. He doesn't explicitly do so.

Copyright is nowhere to be found. That's not all bad, since any book would be hard-pressed to do a better job of handling copyright issues than Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright . Still, Steal this Idea might have included a few more references to copyright-specific cases or works, if only to encourage further reading (patent & trademark examples include many references).

Perelman gives some illustrative figures about why the patent mess is so bad, and why the USPTO is unable to control it. But there's not much meat there. Hopefully, someone will take a more in-depth look at the USPTO itself, and how it operates.

Conclusion: Steal this Idea has a great deal of information, packed into a fairly short book. It's a good companion to Digital Copyright, and well worth reading for anyone interested in how IP works (or doesn't work).

You can purchase Steal This Idea from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.