Slashdot Mirror

Also, there are several related links on the Personal Security page of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society.

Finally, if you want the wire version of the story, click here.

Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technoloy and Society

Now, for the first time, newspapers are starting to catch on to what they can and cannot do. Technological advances have changed the scarcity of information - which was the papers' key advantage - into a vast abundance of information.

Now, newspapers need to adapt in two ways. First, they need to recognize that their role is now that of the ballyhooed "Content Providers." As a former employee of The McGraw-Hill Companies (owner of mags like Aviation Week, Business Week, Coal Week, Nucleonics Week, and even more arcane pubs), I can attest firsthand to the difficulties every company is having in trying to map out its electronic future.

Being a content provider means newspapers need to clearly assess what their strengths and weaknesses are. Papers that mostly regurgitate stories from the Associated Press will have a tough time in the future, as wire stories are available immediately everywhere. Papers that have their own (1) news collection infrastructure, (2) local news coverage, and (3) creative opinions will thrive.

Also, being a content provider means that individuality counts. If you have a reputation for clarity and formality (like the New York Times), capitalize on that. If you have a reputation for conservatism (like the Washington Times) or for liberalism (like the Village Voice), emphasize that reputation. If you have great community coverage, focus on that. If you you just repeat what others have said, and only have readers because your newspaper has a local name on the masthead and is the only newspaper readily available in your area, you've gotta figure out something that makes you special, or you're gonna wither away. Scarcity doesn't work anymore.

Second, newspapers need to recognize that they should not try to compete with the power and immediacy of the Web. Already, many daily newspapers have weekly magazines which provide an opportunity for more reflective and work-intensive pieces that people would rather read on paper than on screens.

More newspapers should shift in that direction, directing their news gathering assets toward bigger, time- and labor-intensive projects which the wire services could never do. They should consider moving to a less frequent publication schedule, and attempt to become more of a center for calm jouralism and mature, deliberative debate. That is the best way newspapers can serve themselves and democracy. At least that way, an infrequent paper edition won't compete against a spin-off online.

Katz, your acquaintance is absolutely right to panic. While the newspaper subscription rates are still not awful, the demographics of newspaper readers will change drastically in the next few years, forever altering the subscription landscape. What is the best technique from here on out? Newspapers should start forging alliances with one another, rather like television networks, with rings of affiliates. They can protect their interests and provide solid content that (as with television) has one crew doing national news and a local crew doing local news. Alliances with other media (like the Washington Post and New York Times deals with MSNBC and ABC News, respectively) will help in making web sites useful, giving paper editions the leeway to calm down, slow down, and do some meaningful writing.

Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Now, for the first time, newspapers are starting to catch on to what they can and cannot do. Technological advances have changed the scarcity of information - which was the papers' key advantage - into a vast abundance of information.

Now, newspapers need to adapt in two ways. First, they need to recognize that their role is now that of the ballyhooed "Content Providers." As a former employee of The McGraw-Hill Companies (owner of mags like Aviation Week, Business Week, Coal Week, Nucleonics Week, and even more arcane pubs), I can attest firsthand to the difficulties every company is having in trying to map out its electronic future.

Being a content provider means newspapers need to clearly assess what their strengths and weaknesses are. Papers that mostly regurgitate stories from the Associated Press will have a tough time in the future, as wire stories are available immediately everywhere. Papers that have their own (1) news collection infrastructure, (2) local news coverage, and (3) creative opinions will thrive.

Also, being a content provider means that individuality counts. If you have a reputation for clarity and formality (like the New York Times), capitalize on that. If you have a reputation for conservatism (like the Washington Times) or for liberalism (like the Village Voice), emphasize that reputation. If you have great community coverage, focus on that. If you you just repeat what others have said, and only have readers because your newspaper has a local name on the masthead and is the only newspaper readily available in your area, you've gotta figure out something that makes you special, or you're gonna wither away. Scarcity doesn't work anymore.

Second, newspapers need to recognize that they should not try to compete with the power and immediacy of the Web. Already, many daily newspapers have weekly magazines which provide an opportunity for more reflective and work-intensive pieces that people would rather read on paper than on screens.

More newspapers should shift in that direction, directing their news gathering assets toward bigger, time- and labor-intensive projects which the wire services could never do. They should consider moving to a less frequent publication schedule, and attempt to become more of a center for calm jouralism and mature, deliberative debate. That is the best way newspapers can serve themselves and democracy. At least that way, an infrequent paper edition won't compete against a spin-off online.

Katz, your acquaintance is absolutely right to panic. While the newspaper subscription rates are still not awful, the demographics of newspaper readers will change drastically in the next few years, forever altering the subscription landscape. What is the best technique from here on out? Newspapers should start forging alliances with one another, rather like television networks, with rings of affiliates. They can protect their interests and provide solid content that (as with television) has one crew doing national news and a local crew doing local news. Alliances with other media (like the Washington Post and New York Times deals with MSNBC and ABC News, respectively) will help in making web sites useful, giving paper editions the leeway to calm down, slow down, and do some meaningful writing.

Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

It almost has become a category now -- the "be afraid" studies. In 1998, we had "the more time people spend online, the more depressed they get" report. That came after 1997's big "Net addiction" survey and, in 1995, Marty Rimm's "the Net's just one big porn site" study. Each had its own serious methodological problems, but each was quick to blame the Net for various social ills.

Right on. Read it here.

A. Keiper

I'm very much a Popperite, too, even though I'm quite far from the border of Marxism. I appreciate your thoughts - this is the kind of exchange I see less and less of on Slashdot.

Yours,
A. Keiper
Washington, D.C.

The point is, a bunch of researchers with a pre-defined notion of acceptable societal behaviour went out, selected a group of people without 'net access, gave them access, and then measured how they spent less time on other things.

Actually, KaCee, the study you describe sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, the study that these Stanford professors conducted was hardly that interesting or rigorous. I dissect it below.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

The point is, a bunch of researchers with a pre-defined notion of acceptable societal behaviour went out, selected a group of people without 'net access, gave them access, and then measured how they spent less time on other things.

Actually, KaCee, the study you describe sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, the study that these Stanford professors conducted was hardly that interesting or rigorous. I dissect it below.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Lots of people have criticized the study on the social effects of Net use without looking at the study itself. That's understandable, given the overwhelming amount of press coverage it's gotten. But since a few people have asked for more substantial analysis, here are a few of my thoughts. Some of the most important flaws in the study.

(The study can be found here:
ht tp://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/februa ry16/internetsurvey-216.html.)

(1) Know the researchers. Norman Nie, the study's lead author, is a Stanford political science professor who has a vested interest in proving that people are uninterested in one another: he has substantially based his career on showing how Americans are detached from civil society. He has done several studies on voter participation - with the understanding that low voter turnout is a bad thing (instead of a sign of voter contentedness). Look at the list of his publications for yourself - it is rife with his belief that Americans are forgetting what "citizenship" is all about.

Nie's work is reminiscent of the work of Robert Putnam, who argued that American society was in steep decline because more people are - get this - bowling alone. These goofy, academic simpering simpletons believe that there is always a cloud to every silver lining, and if they took a few moments to bring their heads out of the oxygen-deprived ivory tower, they would see how wrong they are - and they would be laughed to death.

(2) The question is suspect. From the outset, the study intends to frame the question inappropriately, asking whether we will "live in a better informed and connected, more engaged and participatory society" (the sort of society Nie would prefer, based on his previous leanings), or will live in a society "of lonely ex-couch potatoes glued to computer screens, whose human contacts are largely impersonal and whose political beliefs are easily manipulated."

Whoa! Why is that framed in black or white, one or zero, with nothing between? Are citizenship and society simple on-or-off characteristics, which you've either got or you haven't? From the very first page, the study betrays its authors' intent: to show that anything less than ideal citizenship is dangerous.

(3) Is a quantitative study the best way to answer these questions? The study is a product of Stanford's "Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society." The study reflects their juvenile belief that human society, in all its complexity, can be summed up in numbers: "For answers to these questions, we must move from ideological claims to empirical evidence."

Again, false! Empirical evidence - putting numbers on human social behavior - does not answer the underlying questions at all. As the discussions on Slashdot have shown, the important questions here are ideological. It is not enough to say that people have gone from spending X hours with friends to spending Y hours with friends. Knowing the simple numbers tells you bubkus - you still need to know whether and why spending time with your friends is good, and which aspects are being preserved as technology changes our society.

(4) Extreme conclusions are reached with minimal data. The study says that the people who have used the Internet the longest report that they spend more time online. The authors conclude that the data therefore, "strongly suggest a model of social change with not only a growing number of Internet users, but with web users doing more and more things on the internet in the future."

O, the surprise! People who have done something for a while may want to do more of it? That seems pretty natural - but where is the evidence for "a model of social change"? The only way to squeeze significant "social change" out of these data is by extrapolating - and that is dangerous with data so sparse, and especially with data of a developing scenario. My favorite example of a misguided extrapolation is this: At the time of Elvis's death, there were under 300 Elvis impersonators. By 1996, there were over 7,000. By extrapolating that rate of increase, we can know that one out of every four humans on the planet will be Elvis impersonators by 2020.

(5) So What? The study's conclusions are hardly alarming.

Look at the chart that purports to show that "Social Isolation Increases" as Net use increases.

The first flaw in this chart is that "social isolation" supposedly is what happens when you don't talk on the phone, or talk to your family, or attend events outside the home. If, however, you go shopping regularly, e-mail your family, and go to school or work every day, you are considered "socially isolated." Huh?

The second obvious flaw is in the dotted lines, which don't actually represent anything. The only real data are the dark, plotted points; lines representing trends really shouldn't be drawn with so little data. It's just a sloppy representation of the data.

Finally, so what? Less than one out of six people who use the Internet more than ten hours a week (the highest category on the chart) said they spend less time with their family or their friends, or spend less time at events outside of the house. Those are hardly numbers to cry about? Come on, now! I'd be concerned if, say, 60 percent of the people who use the Net that often report that they occasionally kill their neighbors' pets, but staying off the phone is hardly an apocalyptic signal.

(6) Human behavior doesn't fit into neat little check boxes. The professors conclude vehemently (they wrote it in bold and italics) that, "Clearly the media are competing... You can't surf the web and watch TV at the same time."

What silliness. As James Gleick showed in his brilliant Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, we are animals especially able to multi-task. We absorb media from wherever we can, and can successfully navigate between television, radio and the Web simultaneously - because we can mentally tune between them during commercials, or during those painful minutes as we wait for the X-Men trailer to download. Claiming that we cannot concurrently absorb input from multiple media is plain silly! We adapt easily - we can watch television, carry on phone conversations and flip through Playboy all at once - so why pretend we are handicapped when it comes to newer media?

(7) The study relies on people's perceptions, not facts. A typical flaw in quantitative studies is that they purport to show facts about behavior - while they only really show facts through the filter of people's perceptions.

So does the study actually show that people spend the same amount of time in traffic, or more time at work? No, the study's authors didn't follow people around to measure time spent at home and time spent in the office - they asked people to report on themselves. Everybody knows how difficult self-assessment is; how accurate can these results be?

What's more, we should be suspicious about this "Internet is making us work more" claim. Is it true that time spent "at work" is the same as time spent working? Hasn't everybody who has access to the Web at work used some of that time (a lot of time, for some of us) fooling around online? We don't need a study to prove it - just look at all the companies that are spying on employees' computer use and even firing them because of "inappropriate" Net visits while on the job.

(8) Surveys can give you any answer you want. It is well known in political circles that polls can be tweaked to elicit any desired answers from respondents. In particular, the placing of key questions in a long list can affect the responses.

Here's a silly example of what I mean. Try it on a friend or coworker (if you still interact with friends or coworkers, which might surprise these academics). Ask the following questions. What color is grass? What color is money? What color do people supposedly turn when they are envious? What color is a cucumber? What color is at the top of a streetlight?

If the questions follow in rapid succesion, the answerer will be so accustomed to the pattern - all the answers would seem to be green - that they would probably mindlessly answer "green," for the last question, although the correct answer to the last question is red.

That is an oversimplified way of representing a serious problem with quantitative research that depends on answering questions. When you look at the questions (here) asked in the study, you get a similar feeling - the questions could be tweaked to get alternative results. In particular, Question 19, the question which has generated all the grand debate here on Slashdot and elsewhere, is a question that, perhaps accidentally, makes respondents feel self-pity and guilt. It asks respondents to rate whether using the Internet has affected each of these behaviors:

Working at the office
Working at home
Shopping in stores
Commuting in traffic
Reading newspapers
Watching television
Spending time with your family
Spending time with your friends
Watching television
Attending events

Imagine if the questions were framed in the way that the authors of this study are framing the results now. Imagine if the question asked: "Do you feel that using the Internet has isolated you socially?" or "Do you feel lonely because of the Internet?" or "Do you contribute less well to society because of the Internet?" or "Do you feel like your life is missing something, and you are now a pawn of corporations that pour their crass commercialization into your cranium over the Net without the buffering effects of friends and family?"

Conclusion: If you out to prove something statistically, you'll succeed. This study, which got hundreds of hours and thousands of column-inches of press coverage, is not serious or significant: it is an attempt by supposedly impartial professors to prove an ideological point while ostentatiously disdaining ideology.

I would be delighted to hear others' further criticism of the study itself - its aims and methodolgy.

Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Lots of people have criticized the study on the social effects of Net use without looking at the study itself. That's understandable, given the overwhelming amount of press coverage it's gotten. But since a few people have asked for more substantial analysis, here are a few of my thoughts. Some of the most important flaws in the study.

(The study can be found here:
ht tp://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/februa ry16/internetsurvey-216.html.)

(1) Know the researchers. Norman Nie, the study's lead author, is a Stanford political science professor who has a vested interest in proving that people are uninterested in one another: he has substantially based his career on showing how Americans are detached from civil society. He has done several studies on voter participation - with the understanding that low voter turnout is a bad thing (instead of a sign of voter contentedness). Look at the list of his publications for yourself - it is rife with his belief that Americans are forgetting what "citizenship" is all about.

Nie's work is reminiscent of the work of Robert Putnam, who argued that American society was in steep decline because more people are - get this - bowling alone. These goofy, academic simpering simpletons believe that there is always a cloud to every silver lining, and if they took a few moments to bring their heads out of the oxygen-deprived ivory tower, they would see how wrong they are - and they would be laughed to death.

(2) The question is suspect. From the outset, the study intends to frame the question inappropriately, asking whether we will "live in a better informed and connected, more engaged and participatory society" (the sort of society Nie would prefer, based on his previous leanings), or will live in a society "of lonely ex-couch potatoes glued to computer screens, whose human contacts are largely impersonal and whose political beliefs are easily manipulated."

Whoa! Why is that framed in black or white, one or zero, with nothing between? Are citizenship and society simple on-or-off characteristics, which you've either got or you haven't? From the very first page, the study betrays its authors' intent: to show that anything less than ideal citizenship is dangerous.

(3) Is a quantitative study the best way to answer these questions? The study is a product of Stanford's "Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society." The study reflects their juvenile belief that human society, in all its complexity, can be summed up in numbers: "For answers to these questions, we must move from ideological claims to empirical evidence."

Again, false! Empirical evidence - putting numbers on human social behavior - does not answer the underlying questions at all. As the discussions on Slashdot have shown, the important questions here are ideological. It is not enough to say that people have gone from spending X hours with friends to spending Y hours with friends. Knowing the simple numbers tells you bubkus - you still need to know whether and why spending time with your friends is good, and which aspects are being preserved as technology changes our society.

(4) Extreme conclusions are reached with minimal data. The study says that the people who have used the Internet the longest report that they spend more time online. The authors conclude that the data therefore, "strongly suggest a model of social change with not only a growing number of Internet users, but with web users doing more and more things on the internet in the future."

O, the surprise! People who have done something for a while may want to do more of it? That seems pretty natural - but where is the evidence for "a model of social change"? The only way to squeeze significant "social change" out of these data is by extrapolating - and that is dangerous with data so sparse, and especially with data of a developing scenario. My favorite example of a misguided extrapolation is this: At the time of Elvis's death, there were under 300 Elvis impersonators. By 1996, there were over 7,000. By extrapolating that rate of increase, we can know that one out of every four humans on the planet will be Elvis impersonators by 2020.

(5) So What? The study's conclusions are hardly alarming.

Look at the chart that purports to show that "Social Isolation Increases" as Net use increases.

The first flaw in this chart is that "social isolation" supposedly is what happens when you don't talk on the phone, or talk to your family, or attend events outside the home. If, however, you go shopping regularly, e-mail your family, and go to school or work every day, you are considered "socially isolated." Huh?

The second obvious flaw is in the dotted lines, which don't actually represent anything. The only real data are the dark, plotted points; lines representing trends really shouldn't be drawn with so little data. It's just a sloppy representation of the data.

Finally, so what? Less than one out of six people who use the Internet more than ten hours a week (the highest category on the chart) said they spend less time with their family or their friends, or spend less time at events outside of the house. Those are hardly numbers to cry about? Come on, now! I'd be concerned if, say, 60 percent of the people who use the Net that often report that they occasionally kill their neighbors' pets, but staying off the phone is hardly an apocalyptic signal.

(6) Human behavior doesn't fit into neat little check boxes. The professors conclude vehemently (they wrote it in bold and italics) that, "Clearly the media are competing... You can't surf the web and watch TV at the same time."

What silliness. As James Gleick showed in his brilliant Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, we are animals especially able to multi-task. We absorb media from wherever we can, and can successfully navigate between television, radio and the Web simultaneously - because we can mentally tune between them during commercials, or during those painful minutes as we wait for the X-Men trailer to download. Claiming that we cannot concurrently absorb input from multiple media is plain silly! We adapt easily - we can watch television, carry on phone conversations and flip through Playboy all at once - so why pretend we are handicapped when it comes to newer media?

(7) The study relies on people's perceptions, not facts. A typical flaw in quantitative studies is that they purport to show facts about behavior - while they only really show facts through the filter of people's perceptions.

So does the study actually show that people spend the same amount of time in traffic, or more time at work? No, the study's authors didn't follow people around to measure time spent at home and time spent in the office - they asked people to report on themselves. Everybody knows how difficult self-assessment is; how accurate can these results be?

What's more, we should be suspicious about this "Internet is making us work more" claim. Is it true that time spent "at work" is the same as time spent working? Hasn't everybody who has access to the Web at work used some of that time (a lot of time, for some of us) fooling around online? We don't need a study to prove it - just look at all the companies that are spying on employees' computer use and even firing them because of "inappropriate" Net visits while on the job.

(8) Surveys can give you any answer you want. It is well known in political circles that polls can be tweaked to elicit any desired answers from respondents. In particular, the placing of key questions in a long list can affect the responses.

Here's a silly example of what I mean. Try it on a friend or coworker (if you still interact with friends or coworkers, which might surprise these academics). Ask the following questions. What color is grass? What color is money? What color do people supposedly turn when they are envious? What color is a cucumber? What color is at the top of a streetlight?

If the questions follow in rapid succesion, the answerer will be so accustomed to the pattern - all the answers would seem to be green - that they would probably mindlessly answer "green," for the last question, although the correct answer to the last question is red.

That is an oversimplified way of representing a serious problem with quantitative research that depends on answering questions. When you look at the questions (here) asked in the study, you get a similar feeling - the questions could be tweaked to get alternative results. In particular, Question 19, the question which has generated all the grand debate here on Slashdot and elsewhere, is a question that, perhaps accidentally, makes respondents feel self-pity and guilt. It asks respondents to rate whether using the Internet has affected each of these behaviors:

Working at the office
Working at home
Shopping in stores
Commuting in traffic
Reading newspapers
Watching television
Spending time with your family
Spending time with your friends
Watching television
Attending events

Imagine if the questions were framed in the way that the authors of this study are framing the results now. Imagine if the question asked: "Do you feel that using the Internet has isolated you socially?" or "Do you feel lonely because of the Internet?" or "Do you contribute less well to society because of the Internet?" or "Do you feel like your life is missing something, and you are now a pawn of corporations that pour their crass commercialization into your cranium over the Net without the buffering effects of friends and family?"

Conclusion: If you out to prove something statistically, you'll succeed. This study, which got hundreds of hours and thousands of column-inches of press coverage, is not serious or significant: it is an attempt by supposedly impartial professors to prove an ideological point while ostentatiously disdaining ideology.

I would be delighted to hear others' further criticism of the study itself - its aims and methodolgy.

Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

As others have said, the reply to the last question was especially poor. Those who believed that the Internet's ability to give immediate textual information would somehow inject substance into our political discourse have been disappointed so far, and will continue to be disappointed.

In fact the Internet has had the opposite effect: it has pushed serious, substantial discussion of issues even further from the campaign trail. While it is not as shallow as television (which has given us politics as "infotainment"), it is not much better.

I found something else just as distressing as the vapidity of Green's final answer: the questions Slashdot selected for him did not further investigate some of the effects of technology on politics. Is Dick Morris right in arguing that Internet polling will take power out of Washington's lobbyists, or will technology be used to increase the power politicians already have? The perspective of someone working on the frontlines of a presidential campaign would have been useful.

Then again, his answer to that profoundly important question might have been as sadly shallow as his final answer was.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

As others have said, the reply to the last question was especially poor. Those who believed that the Internet's ability to give immediate textual information would somehow inject substance into our political discourse have been disappointed so far, and will continue to be disappointed.

In fact the Internet has had the opposite effect: it has pushed serious, substantial discussion of issues even further from the campaign trail. While it is not as shallow as television (which has given us politics as "infotainment"), it is not much better.

I found something else just as distressing as the vapidity of Green's final answer: the questions Slashdot selected for him did not further investigate some of the effects of technology on politics. Is Dick Morris right in arguing that Internet polling will take power out of Washington's lobbyists, or will technology be used to increase the power politicians already have? The perspective of someone working on the frontlines of a presidential campaign would have been useful.

Then again, his answer to that profoundly important question might have been as sadly shallow as his final answer was.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

I also disagree with your major point about the value of a science based on prestige over a science based on profit. While your reference to Lysenkoism is appreciated, it is important to remember what Kuhn showed us: that the prestige-based practice of science has, on more than one occasion, led to a stifling of innovation. Certainly there are great incentives and enticements to achieve in science based on prestige - such as enthronement in the ranks of the Founders' Club, along with the Father of Electromagnetism (Faraday), the Father of Chemistry (Lavoisier), and the Father of the Information Superhighway (Gore). Or even imagine the prestige of having something named after you: like the Newtonian Era, Euclidean geometry, Boolean algebra, Brownian motion, the Richter scale, the coulomb, degrees Fahrenheit, the Rorschach test, the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram, Avogadro's number, the Moho (Mohorovièiæ) discontinuity, and the Chandrasekhar limit.

But each of those names carries with it an aura of authority given by the scientific community that can become inappropriately sanctified, thereby undermining the insights of those who challenge scientific doctrine. That's why science is so conservative a practice; the power of prestige and priority makes radical departures unwelcome.

I wonder what you think of the proposal I ended my excessively long rant with: designating a special class of patent to allow temporary profit.

Yours,
A. Keiper

The first option is public funding. This can take several forms, all of which have one thing in common: no one reaps profit from the research, except the beneficiaries of its application. When you sit at home and write freeware or participate in an open-source project, you are publicly funding research in a sense. The project you are participating in costs money, even if you don't shell out a dime, because you are spending time that you could instead be spending holding down a second (or first) job.

A second type of public funding is charitable funding, from nonprofit foundations. Often, however, this money comes with strings attached. Researchers looking at aging might get gobs of cash from nonprofit foundations funded by the geriatric, but with the understanding that the conclusions will help improve some condition or point in a certain direction. In fact, many foundations that fund research select who to fund based on each project's previous results. That means a researcher trying to prove the mental inferiority of blacks (I'm thinking of J. Philippe Rushton here) is likely to get funding from a foundation with a history of racism (as he did). Researchers trying to prove that there is a genetic cause for homosexuality will get funded by those with a vested interest in that debate. An organization trying to get funding to search for life beyond Earth will get funding from a group that belives life is out there. But some dude who wants to figure out what makes a dead frog's legs twitch will probably never find a Deceased Paroxysm Society to fund his work. (This thought consciously echoes jd's thoughtful post.)

That second type of public funding is, as you might imagine, a little tainted; you are expected to show results for your money. Occasionally, there are some foundations that will fund research without considering results necessary, but these organizations are rare - and for an understandable reason: It is not natural for people to give without expecting something in return. A few very altruistic groups will do so, but it is an unusual trait. Even the patrons and sponsors of history's greatest scientists, like the Medicis who poured rivers of cash into the coffers of Florentine researchers and artists, got paid back in a currency they highly valued: social prestige. What could be snazzier than letting the world know that you've got crazy ol' Leonardo downstairs writing backwards and drawing flying machines?

Our natural reticence for giving without expecting to receive is the reason for the third type of public funding: taxes. Taxes are a form of coercion, but often a forgiveable one. We all pay for things that will benefit all of us, or at least many of us. The mail and the military and Medicare.

But government - this should surprise no one - is not constituted of impartial wise men who are unfallible judges of the public good. Funding for research projects is the result of a treacherous process of application, rejection and (frankly) supplication. (Some of us have to use a similar process to get a date.)

The scientific projects that government chooses to fund are very selectively chosen, since government has limited funds. (It is good that government has limited funds, since that means we have kept more of our own money.) So the government will fund research that improves our collective national security - the Manhattan Project, the current missile defense projects, and even DARPANET all come to mind. The government will also fund research that improves the general welfare of the population - hence, the Genome Project and the work of the CDC. Some projects have switched between those two categories: the race to space was well-funded at first because it served national security interests; today, it only gets money because NASA points out the many mundane benefits of our space endeavors.

Do we really want government to do much more than that? Is is wise for us to allow government the power to fund whichever projects it wishes? Hasn't the long and sorry history of government abuse shown us that we should remove power from the hands of government whenever possible? And isn't this especially true in the arena of science and technology, because progress in those fields yield inordinate power - which government cannot be trusted to safeguard? Government's history of using new technologies to preserve and entrench its own power has led James Burke (among others) to describe the Internet's creation as fortuitous and accidental.

Government's appropriate role is to perform those tasks that we cannot perform ourselves. And as the innovations of private industry in the last century have shown, each day there are fewer things we cannot do ourselves; in many regards our need for government is diminishing.

And indeed, none of the three types of public funding I described above work well. Personal, sacrificial public funding leaves you with no food on your table. (Hence the completely understandable buyouts of Slashdot and l0pht.) Funding from foundations is too rare, and often tainted by bias. And government funding - which has admittedly led to many of our greatest scientific and technological triumphs - lends itself to abuse, so it should be spared as often as possible.

What about private funding, then? Strident private corporations often have the courage to tread where public foundations cannot - and for an obvious reason: while a foundation cannot hope to make serious profit from the research it funds, privately funded research can make some moolah. An side benefit of private research, then, is that it acts as a creator of wealth. If you need evidence of the positive effects of privately-funded research, all you need do is look around you. For that matter, look right in front of you: affordable and usable computers are preponderant today only because of the competition fostered by private innovation.

The last line of the article above clucks that we should despair if "science, and if biology in particular, became a victim of new monopolies." Quite right: but corporations are not all monopolies . That's one place where government's rod should not be spared; it should aggressively act to increase competition by refusing to suffer a monopolized marketplace.

We needn't sob when some inventor or innovator "caves in" to the "profit motive." We should cheer him on, since it means he has developed an idea which intrigues people enough that they are willing to pay for it. (And more importantly, he can afford to feed himself.)

I'd like to respond to a few arguments made by others in previous postings. First, Idrach wrote that "We know that proper scientific research can be done with free software - Seti At Home." Well that's simply not true; while the software is free on our end, it was created by the hard work of programmers who got paid, and their paychecks came from somewhere. (I already wrote about Seti above.)

zyqqh wrote that he would like to see "the free-market philosophy be limited when it comes to pursuit of knowledge. As long as universities prosper, we will see good research, which doesn't get hogged by some corporation, and which remains in the public domain for the good of mankind." Well, you have very little to worry about, because most universities are corporations and businesses funded by the cash flow of undergrad tuition and endowments paid for by benefactors. But even so, is it better to keep knowledge hermetically sealed in institutions of higher learning? Isn't it better to release that knowledge into the frothy and unpredictable arena of profiteering savages - who will fight over it and make it useful? Imagine if Google (or any of the other Internet start-ups that began in schools) had remained the profitless property of the universities that birthed them. What reason would Stanford have to continue operating Google after the first few years? But transition it into the marketplace, and it will be available for longer, and will be forced to improve.

I've already responded to a number of the assertions in vlax's well-considered post, I'd just like to say a little more. First, it is false that science can't function in secret. Why do you say that? Even publicly funded research can happen in secret, like the Manhattan Project and any number of government endeavors of which we only hear snippets. As for the dig at Hawking, Gould and others getting rich from their research (or rather, its popularization), so what? Good for them. I don't see how their money decreases the legitimacy of their work. I may have missed your point.

Finally, I'd like to back-track a little bit. Despite everything I said, there are still instances where public funding is wholly appropriate. I strongly believe government funding should continue to go to projects which we cannot ourselves do - which is why I am disturbed by the current lack of interest in the space program. What's more, I believe that a mix of private and public funding has great potential, especially in the spectacular race to complete mapping the three billion human gene sequences.

And I am also extremely disturbed by the ability of companies to turn bits and pieces of nature into proprietary information. Not just Celera (as was mentioned in the parent article), but Human Genome Sciences, Incyte and others are applying for patents on genes.

This is an echo of the same problem facing those involved in the copyright debate today: we have to strike a balance between protecting the public's right to have innovation and competition, and protecting the companies' right to make a buck off their work. There are no easy solutions here, except perhaps offering a special class of short-term patents that expire after a set number of years, allowing companies to deservedly profit from their work and investment.

The reckless granting of patents and copyrights, and the occasional monopolistic corporation, must not mislead us into believing corporate science is evil. Public funding is sparse, and occasionally dangerous. Far better to get our money from the deep pockets of investors willing to take a risk than to suckle at the teat of a possibly pernicious government.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

The first option is public funding. This can take several forms, all of which have one thing in common: no one reaps profit from the research, except the beneficiaries of its application. When you sit at home and write freeware or participate in an open-source project, you are publicly funding research in a sense. The project you are participating in costs money, even if you don't shell out a dime, because you are spending time that you could instead be spending holding down a second (or first) job.

A second type of public funding is charitable funding, from nonprofit foundations. Often, however, this money comes with strings attached. Researchers looking at aging might get gobs of cash from nonprofit foundations funded by the geriatric, but with the understanding that the conclusions will help improve some condition or point in a certain direction. In fact, many foundations that fund research select who to fund based on each project's previous results. That means a researcher trying to prove the mental inferiority of blacks (I'm thinking of J. Philippe Rushton here) is likely to get funding from a foundation with a history of racism (as he did). Researchers trying to prove that there is a genetic cause for homosexuality will get funded by those with a vested interest in that debate. An organization trying to get funding to search for life beyond Earth will get funding from a group that belives life is out there. But some dude who wants to figure out what makes a dead frog's legs twitch will probably never find a Deceased Paroxysm Society to fund his work. (This thought consciously echoes jd's thoughtful post.)

That second type of public funding is, as you might imagine, a little tainted; you are expected to show results for your money. Occasionally, there are some foundations that will fund research without considering results necessary, but these organizations are rare - and for an understandable reason: It is not natural for people to give without expecting something in return. A few very altruistic groups will do so, but it is an unusual trait. Even the patrons and sponsors of history's greatest scientists, like the Medicis who poured rivers of cash into the coffers of Florentine researchers and artists, got paid back in a currency they highly valued: social prestige. What could be snazzier than letting the world know that you've got crazy ol' Leonardo downstairs writing backwards and drawing flying machines?

Our natural reticence for giving without expecting to receive is the reason for the third type of public funding: taxes. Taxes are a form of coercion, but often a forgiveable one. We all pay for things that will benefit all of us, or at least many of us. The mail and the military and Medicare.

But government - this should surprise no one - is not constituted of impartial wise men who are unfallible judges of the public good. Funding for research projects is the result of a treacherous process of application, rejection and (frankly) supplication. (Some of us have to use a similar process to get a date.)

The scientific projects that government chooses to fund are very selectively chosen, since government has limited funds. (It is good that government has limited funds, since that means we have kept more of our own money.) So the government will fund research that improves our collective national security - the Manhattan Project, the current missile defense projects, and even DARPANET all come to mind. The government will also fund research that improves the general welfare of the population - hence, the Genome Project and the work of the CDC. Some projects have switched between those two categories: the race to space was well-funded at first because it served national security interests; today, it only gets money because NASA points out the many mundane benefits of our space endeavors.

Do we really want government to do much more than that? Is is wise for us to allow government the power to fund whichever projects it wishes? Hasn't the long and sorry history of government abuse shown us that we should remove power from the hands of government whenever possible? And isn't this especially true in the arena of science and technology, because progress in those fields yield inordinate power - which government cannot be trusted to safeguard? Government's history of using new technologies to preserve and entrench its own power has led James Burke (among others) to describe the Internet's creation as fortuitous and accidental.

Government's appropriate role is to perform those tasks that we cannot perform ourselves. And as the innovations of private industry in the last century have shown, each day there are fewer things we cannot do ourselves; in many regards our need for government is diminishing.

And indeed, none of the three types of public funding I described above work well. Personal, sacrificial public funding leaves you with no food on your table. (Hence the completely understandable buyouts of Slashdot and l0pht.) Funding from foundations is too rare, and often tainted by bias. And government funding - which has admittedly led to many of our greatest scientific and technological triumphs - lends itself to abuse, so it should be spared as often as possible.

What about private funding, then? Strident private corporations often have the courage to tread where public foundations cannot - and for an obvious reason: while a foundation cannot hope to make serious profit from the research it funds, privately funded research can make some moolah. An side benefit of private research, then, is that it acts as a creator of wealth. If you need evidence of the positive effects of privately-funded research, all you need do is look around you. For that matter, look right in front of you: affordable and usable computers are preponderant today only because of the competition fostered by private innovation.

The last line of the article above clucks that we should despair if "science, and if biology in particular, became a victim of new monopolies." Quite right: but corporations are not all monopolies . That's one place where government's rod should not be spared; it should aggressively act to increase competition by refusing to suffer a monopolized marketplace.

We needn't sob when some inventor or innovator "caves in" to the "profit motive." We should cheer him on, since it means he has developed an idea which intrigues people enough that they are willing to pay for it. (And more importantly, he can afford to feed himself.)

I'd like to respond to a few arguments made by others in previous postings. First, Idrach wrote that "We know that proper scientific research can be done with free software - Seti At Home." Well that's simply not true; while the software is free on our end, it was created by the hard work of programmers who got paid, and their paychecks came from somewhere. (I already wrote about Seti above.)

zyqqh wrote that he would like to see "the free-market philosophy be limited when it comes to pursuit of knowledge. As long as universities prosper, we will see good research, which doesn't get hogged by some corporation, and which remains in the public domain for the good of mankind." Well, you have very little to worry about, because most universities are corporations and businesses funded by the cash flow of undergrad tuition and endowments paid for by benefactors. But even so, is it better to keep knowledge hermetically sealed in institutions of higher learning? Isn't it better to release that knowledge into the frothy and unpredictable arena of profiteering savages - who will fight over it and make it useful? Imagine if Google (or any of the other Internet start-ups that began in schools) had remained the profitless property of the universities that birthed them. What reason would Stanford have to continue operating Google after the first few years? But transition it into the marketplace, and it will be available for longer, and will be forced to improve.

I've already responded to a number of the assertions in vlax's well-considered post, I'd just like to say a little more. First, it is false that science can't function in secret. Why do you say that? Even publicly funded research can happen in secret, like the Manhattan Project and any number of government endeavors of which we only hear snippets. As for the dig at Hawking, Gould and others getting rich from their research (or rather, its popularization), so what? Good for them. I don't see how their money decreases the legitimacy of their work. I may have missed your point.

Finally, I'd like to back-track a little bit. Despite everything I said, there are still instances where public funding is wholly appropriate. I strongly believe government funding should continue to go to projects which we cannot ourselves do - which is why I am disturbed by the current lack of interest in the space program. What's more, I believe that a mix of private and public funding has great potential, especially in the spectacular race to complete mapping the three billion human gene sequences.

And I am also extremely disturbed by the ability of companies to turn bits and pieces of nature into proprietary information. Not just Celera (as was mentioned in the parent article), but Human Genome Sciences, Incyte and others are applying for patents on genes.

This is an echo of the same problem facing those involved in the copyright debate today: we have to strike a balance between protecting the public's right to have innovation and competition, and protecting the companies' right to make a buck off their work. There are no easy solutions here, except perhaps offering a special class of short-term patents that expire after a set number of years, allowing companies to deservedly profit from their work and investment.

The reckless granting of patents and copyrights, and the occasional monopolistic corporation, must not mislead us into believing corporate science is evil. Public funding is sparse, and occasionally dangerous. Far better to get our money from the deep pockets of investors willing to take a risk than to suckle at the teat of a possibly pernicious government.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

According to the article, some researchers think the financial aspirations of scientific researchers are "a blatant conflict of interest, while others say only that the matter needs further scrutiny."

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

According to the article, some researchers think the financial aspirations of scientific researchers are "a blatant conflict of interest, while others say only that the matter needs further scrutiny."

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Their research is extremely important, but there is a great deal of ignorance about the possibilities for and risks involved with gene therapy and other genetic research. Just as the cloning of Dolly triggered an enormous public response, many researchers in this and other biotech fields fear getting bad press. Based on the political pressure they have faced in the past two months because of the unreported "serious adverse events" in their trials, I would say their fears were well-founded. In fact, in the past months many gene therapy projects have slowed or even halted because of the political pressure.

That's not to say that financial worries have had no effect - it's just that those concerns are part of a bigger picture.

If you're interested in reading more about this and related issues in biotech, see the Biotech page of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society .

- A. Keiper

Their research is extremely important, but there is a great deal of ignorance about the possibilities for and risks involved with gene therapy and other genetic research. Just as the cloning of Dolly triggered an enormous public response, many researchers in this and other biotech fields fear getting bad press. Based on the political pressure they have faced in the past two months because of the unreported "serious adverse events" in their trials, I would say their fears were well-founded. In fact, in the past months many gene therapy projects have slowed or even halted because of the political pressure.

That's not to say that financial worries have had no effect - it's just that those concerns are part of a bigger picture.

If you're interested in reading more about this and related issues in biotech, see the Biotech page of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society .

- A. Keiper

Their research is extremely important, but there is a great deal of ignorance about the possibilities for and risks involved with gene therapy and other genetic research. Just as the cloning of Dolly triggered an enormous public response, many researchers in this and other biotech fields fear getting bad press. Based on the political pressure they have faced in the past two months because of the unreported "serious adverse events" in their trials, I would say their fears were well-founded. In fact, in the past months many gene therapy projects have slowed or even halted because of the political pressure.

That's not to say that financial worries have had no effect - it's just that those concerns are part of a bigger picture.

If you're interested in reading more about this and related issues in biotech, see the Biotech page of the Center for the Study of Technology and Society .

- A. Keiper

Certainly, mitigating or reducing the effects of the natural aging process seems a more realistic short-term goal than waiting for nanotechnology to make cryonics feasible.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Certainly, mitigating or reducing the effects of the natural aging process seems a more realistic short-term goal than waiting for nanotechnology to make cryonics feasible.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

The word lonely has two definitions. One corresponds roughly with the definition used in this study - physical solitude. While it is not difficult to imagine many Netizens as lonely in this sense, I really can't think of regular Net users who fit the second, more important definition: "Dejected by the awareness of being alone." (Definitions from the AH3.) The Internet does have interesting implications for personal psychology - as recent discussions about Internet addiction have shown - but by far, its ability to keep people connected and involved with other people outweighs this dubious loss of physical interaction. What's more, for people condemned to physical solitude by old age, ailing health or other conditions, the Internet can be a lifeline that lets them interact with more freedom than ever before.

What about the professors' other fear - that the Internet will alter our civil society beyond repair? Perhaps they fear we will all become soulless hermits, surrounded by our machines and isolated from other people, like in Asimov's Naked Sun . But is our civil order really threatened by something we choose to do, on our own, because it pleases us? The end of feudal communities, the flight to suburbia, the break-up of the nuclear family - these were all social trends which resulted in people farther apart from one another physically. Only because this latest trend - our ability to contact others anywhere, anytime, without leaving one location - involves technology are the Cassandras clucking. The important thing to remember is that, to the extent increasing Web use is a trend at all, it is caused by millions of individual people deciding for themselves what they want to do; that makes it a pleasant and unprecedented expression of our freedom.

And this leads to my final point: What do these professors think we need to change? Who do they think should make the decisions for us? Should a panel of professors make rules saying, "People should spend no more than X hours online each day"? Any time a new study comes out claiming to descry some evil trend technology encourages, we should eye it suspiciously. More often than not, such studies have sinister implications for our freedom to pursue happiness as we wish.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

The word lonely has two definitions. One corresponds roughly with the definition used in this study - physical solitude. While it is not difficult to imagine many Netizens as lonely in this sense, I really can't think of regular Net users who fit the second, more important definition: "Dejected by the awareness of being alone." (Definitions from the AH3.) The Internet does have interesting implications for personal psychology - as recent discussions about Internet addiction have shown - but by far, its ability to keep people connected and involved with other people outweighs this dubious loss of physical interaction. What's more, for people condemned to physical solitude by old age, ailing health or other conditions, the Internet can be a lifeline that lets them interact with more freedom than ever before.

What about the professors' other fear - that the Internet will alter our civil society beyond repair? Perhaps they fear we will all become soulless hermits, surrounded by our machines and isolated from other people, like in Asimov's Naked Sun . But is our civil order really threatened by something we choose to do, on our own, because it pleases us? The end of feudal communities, the flight to suburbia, the break-up of the nuclear family - these were all social trends which resulted in people farther apart from one another physically. Only because this latest trend - our ability to contact others anywhere, anytime, without leaving one location - involves technology are the Cassandras clucking. The important thing to remember is that, to the extent increasing Web use is a trend at all, it is caused by millions of individual people deciding for themselves what they want to do; that makes it a pleasant and unprecedented expression of our freedom.

And this leads to my final point: What do these professors think we need to change? Who do they think should make the decisions for us? Should a panel of professors make rules saying, "People should spend no more than X hours online each day"? Any time a new study comes out claiming to descry some evil trend technology encourages, we should eye it suspiciously. More often than not, such studies have sinister implications for our freedom to pursue happiness as we wish.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

The following is the full text of a letter I wrote to the Wired interviewer.

Dear Lakshmi Chaudhry -

Your recent interview with Dr. Borg is fascinating on a philosophical and sociological level; she makes several useful points about how the sexes are socialized and educated differently. The broad idea she tried to get across, that women deserve equal opportunities with technology, is right on the money. However, the interview is also quite misleading.

The first problem is with the age of Dr. Borg's data. A quick search of the Department of Education web page shows that the most recent data on the sexes' fields of study date back to 1995-96 - hearkening back to a time when only a fifth the number of people who use the Internet today were online. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the percentages (both male and female) of students entering computer science have increased in the intervening years, given the opportunities for exciting and lucrative employment in that field.

Second, it is important to look at the data as a whole. Only 324 women received bachelor degrees in computer science in 1971; in 1995, over 6,900 women did. Put another way, women received 14 percent of all comp-sci bachelor degrees in 1971, and 28 percent in 1995. The number of women granted masters in computer science went from 164 in 1971 to 2,699 in 1995. The number of women granted doctorates in computer science went from 3 (!!!) in 1971 to 161 in 1995.

So, on the whole, the number and the percentage of women getting degrees in computer science has increased dramatically.

Dr. Borg claims that the number of women going into engineering has "leveled off in the last five years." Dr. Borg probably has little or no data from the last five years, since there is such a dearth of available evidence. But let's consider the data that are available, which go through 1995-96. What can she possibly mean?

* Has the number of women getting undergrad degrees in engineering decreased? Nope - the number and the percentage have both held pretty steady since the late 70s. About 2 percent of all women who get bachelors get them in engineering, and about 13 percent of all men who get bachelors get them in engineering.

* What about compared to men? Have men been outpacing women in getting these degrees? No. In the 50s and 60s, men received very nearly 100 percent of all engineering bachelors. By 1980, women earned 10 percent of them, and by 1996, women earned 16 percent.

* Has the number of women getting bachelors in computer science decreased? Yes - in fact, this is the only "leveling off" anywhere in the data. However, this is because the number of women AND men getting bachelors spiked in the early 80s and decreased through the mid-90s. As far as the data indicate, fewer women AND men are getting bachelors in computer science, but despite the dip, the percentage of women scholars getting comp-sci degrees is holding steady. A related statistic, the percentage of the comp-sci degrees that go to women, has barely moved, except to parallel the spike in the mid-80s.

To summarize my two main points: (1) the data Dr. Borg and others cite to prove that the technology gender gap is widening are severely out of date; and (2) even so, the data do not actually show what they purportedly show.

Dr. Borg's fearful and pessimistic attitude ("I'm quite frightened. ... [T]he rollercoaster will go down eventually.") is not warranted, and not justified by facts. Yes, there is a technology gender gap, but it is closing.

Now, I greatly admire many things you have written, including your recent piece on the Harris polling firm, which did a good job of explaining a technical matter. However, the sentence used to summarize your article on Wired's homepage ("the number of women in computer science is actually decreasing") doesn't even correspond to Dr. Borg's claim, which is that the *percentage* of women in these fields is decreasing. Also, you seem to miss that point (percentages vs. numbers) in your follow-up question, asking about "these declining numbers" - when in fact, the numbers are not declining.

(Incidentally, you asked about math and *sciences*. In other fields of scientific endeavor, the gender gap has disappeared. For example, in biological sciences over half of all degrees have gone to women in recent years.)

This is very important, and deserves clarification, not just because your interview is in danger of crossing the line between journalism and activism, but because these distorted and outdated facts can inappropriately influence policymakers. Politicians and regulators are apt to act on incomplete evidence, and if they are fooled into believing the technology gender gap is widening, they may make inappropriate decisions.

Thanks for your time.

Yours,
Adam Keiper
Washington, D.C.
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

**************
Post-script: My letter was published on Wired's Rants and Raves page. I also received a gracious reply from the interviewer, who acknowledged that "Maybe I should keep a closer eye on the dek (front-door teaser) next time." -ATK

The following is the full text of a letter I wrote to the Wired interviewer.

Dear Lakshmi Chaudhry -

Your recent interview with Dr. Borg is fascinating on a philosophical and sociological level; she makes several useful points about how the sexes are socialized and educated differently. The broad idea she tried to get across, that women deserve equal opportunities with technology, is right on the money. However, the interview is also quite misleading.

The first problem is with the age of Dr. Borg's data. A quick search of the Department of Education web page shows that the most recent data on the sexes' fields of study date back to 1995-96 - hearkening back to a time when only a fifth the number of people who use the Internet today were online. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the percentages (both male and female) of students entering computer science have increased in the intervening years, given the opportunities for exciting and lucrative employment in that field.

Second, it is important to look at the data as a whole. Only 324 women received bachelor degrees in computer science in 1971; in 1995, over 6,900 women did. Put another way, women received 14 percent of all comp-sci bachelor degrees in 1971, and 28 percent in 1995. The number of women granted masters in computer science went from 164 in 1971 to 2,699 in 1995. The number of women granted doctorates in computer science went from 3 (!!!) in 1971 to 161 in 1995.

So, on the whole, the number and the percentage of women getting degrees in computer science has increased dramatically.

Dr. Borg claims that the number of women going into engineering has "leveled off in the last five years." Dr. Borg probably has little or no data from the last five years, since there is such a dearth of available evidence. But let's consider the data that are available, which go through 1995-96. What can she possibly mean?

* Has the number of women getting undergrad degrees in engineering decreased? Nope - the number and the percentage have both held pretty steady since the late 70s. About 2 percent of all women who get bachelors get them in engineering, and about 13 percent of all men who get bachelors get them in engineering.

* What about compared to men? Have men been outpacing women in getting these degrees? No. In the 50s and 60s, men received very nearly 100 percent of all engineering bachelors. By 1980, women earned 10 percent of them, and by 1996, women earned 16 percent.

* Has the number of women getting bachelors in computer science decreased? Yes - in fact, this is the only "leveling off" anywhere in the data. However, this is because the number of women AND men getting bachelors spiked in the early 80s and decreased through the mid-90s. As far as the data indicate, fewer women AND men are getting bachelors in computer science, but despite the dip, the percentage of women scholars getting comp-sci degrees is holding steady. A related statistic, the percentage of the comp-sci degrees that go to women, has barely moved, except to parallel the spike in the mid-80s.

To summarize my two main points: (1) the data Dr. Borg and others cite to prove that the technology gender gap is widening are severely out of date; and (2) even so, the data do not actually show what they purportedly show.

Dr. Borg's fearful and pessimistic attitude ("I'm quite frightened. ... [T]he rollercoaster will go down eventually.") is not warranted, and not justified by facts. Yes, there is a technology gender gap, but it is closing.

Now, I greatly admire many things you have written, including your recent piece on the Harris polling firm, which did a good job of explaining a technical matter. However, the sentence used to summarize your article on Wired's homepage ("the number of women in computer science is actually decreasing") doesn't even correspond to Dr. Borg's claim, which is that the *percentage* of women in these fields is decreasing. Also, you seem to miss that point (percentages vs. numbers) in your follow-up question, asking about "these declining numbers" - when in fact, the numbers are not declining.

(Incidentally, you asked about math and *sciences*. In other fields of scientific endeavor, the gender gap has disappeared. For example, in biological sciences over half of all degrees have gone to women in recent years.)

This is very important, and deserves clarification, not just because your interview is in danger of crossing the line between journalism and activism, but because these distorted and outdated facts can inappropriately influence policymakers. Politicians and regulators are apt to act on incomplete evidence, and if they are fooled into believing the technology gender gap is widening, they may make inappropriate decisions.

Thanks for your time.

Yours,
Adam Keiper
Washington, D.C.
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

**************
Post-script: My letter was published on Wired's Rants and Raves page. I also received a gracious reply from the interviewer, who acknowledged that "Maybe I should keep a closer eye on the dek (front-door teaser) next time." -ATK

Clearly the Web is useful for raising money - candidates have raised millions of dollars online this year, to the point where the Web may seriously influence national American politics for the first time. (In fact, Mr. Gore's Democratic opponent, Mr. Bradley, has apparently raised more money over the Internet than in 45 states.)

But beyond the money, what do you see as the long-term effects of the Internet on politics? Do you, like Dick Morris, envision the Internet transforming into a forum for political reform, a place where citizens will "make their voices heard" directly, thereby diminishing the power of lobbyists and "entrenched interests"? Or will our political system simply transfer to the Web with a few adaptations to adjust to the faster speed of Web life? How will politics in the information age - I mean decades down the road, not months - be practiced differently than today?

A. Keiper ________________________
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

Clearly the Web is useful for raising money - candidates have raised millions of dollars online this year, to the point where the Web may seriously influence national American politics for the first time. (In fact, Mr. Gore's Democratic opponent, Mr. Bradley, has apparently raised more money over the Internet than in 45 states.)

But beyond the money, what do you see as the long-term effects of the Internet on politics? Do you, like Dick Morris, envision the Internet transforming into a forum for political reform, a place where citizens will "make their voices heard" directly, thereby diminishing the power of lobbyists and "entrenched interests"? Or will our political system simply transfer to the Web with a few adaptations to adjust to the faster speed of Web life? How will politics in the information age - I mean decades down the road, not months - be practiced differently than today?

A. Keiper ________________________
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

One of the important implications of claiming there are "continents" on the web is that each continent, with its own culture and habits and (most important) patterns of use may end up with different structural design from the others.

For instance, Bill Joy of Sun argues in this Techweb piece that there are "six webs," each with different uses and needs.

Whether you call them webs or continents, will they remain associated? Will there be new means of accessing each one? How long will the web model last? Will Internet architecture develop layers to meet the varying needs of the different communities that wish to be online, but not in a cookie-cutter way?

In other words, beyond the "cultural" differences on the web (which sometimes mirror, sometimes amplify and often usefully distort cultural differences in society), what will the physical implications be, in terms of how we connect?

A. Keiper
____________________
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

One of the important implications of claiming there are "continents" on the web is that each continent, with its own culture and habits and (most important) patterns of use may end up with different structural design from the others.

For instance, Bill Joy of Sun argues in this Techweb piece that there are "six webs," each with different uses and needs.

Whether you call them webs or continents, will they remain associated? Will there be new means of accessing each one? How long will the web model last? Will Internet architecture develop layers to meet the varying needs of the different communities that wish to be online, but not in a cookie-cutter way?

In other words, beyond the "cultural" differences on the web (which sometimes mirror, sometimes amplify and often usefully distort cultural differences in society), what will the physical implications be, in terms of how we connect?

A. Keiper
____________________
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society