At the heart of the problem is this: government officials want to take the template of institutions that we have in meatspace and force it upon cyberspace - not recognizing the enormously detrimental effects that might have.
You see it in lots of arenas:
1. Net taxes. Even though the Congress said no decisions should be made until the Advisory Commission on E-Commerce made its recommendation(s), the President is meddling already. Here, the pro-tax politicians want to insert a tax code designed for the Great Depression on the Internet! That makes no sense!
2. Intellectual property. As everyone on Slashdot knows, the government and major corporations aren't ready to reexamine the idea of "copyright," because they don't see that the notion of "copying" has completely changed in the information age.
3. Law enforcement. News is out this morning from Wired (click here) that law enforcement officials are considering reducing the amount of anonymity (and pseudonymity, one presumes) Net users can enjoy.
4. Equity. Based on data several years old, the government is spending $2 billion (!!!) to help close the digital divide. Using the "chicken in every pot" mentality of FDR (and later LBJ), they intend to "solve" the problems of technological inequality, not realizing how slow, late and meaningless their action is.
There are dozens more examples, but the point is this: the pace of innovation is leaving policymakers in the dust, and they are going to keep making uninformed decisions that may plague us for years . Our only recourse is an intensive campaign to educate them in the new realities, while respecting how difficult this period of transition will be.
You're definitely right about increasing Congressional hostility toward NASA - including among lots of political conservatives, which is why I was pleasantly surprised to read Krauthammer's article. Last year, the pressure in Congress was so bad that the first version of the budget would have forced NASA to actually cut programs it had already started.
I just wish politicians had the courage to talk about the importance of space exploration, instead of being cowed by the "let's solve all our problems here on Earth first" crowd.
Somebody on Slashdot has as a signature file something like the following: "Faster. Better. Cheaper. Pick any two you want - you can't have all three." Seems right to me.
Re:"New" and "Old" Makes no Sense
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You're right that it's easy to categorize things by age - but that's the problem. Taking that easy way out is what led people in the first place to make the mistaken assumption that the "new" media would replace the "old."
Instead, the situation is a lot more complicated, and interesting - and analyzing its complexities seems (to me) more useful than making quick, inaccurate judgments.
Sounds like just one more reason the overhyped and purposeless space station program should be scrapped in favor of something scientifically useful and socially ennobling, like a mission to Mars. I largely agree with what Charles Krauthammer wrote in his recent Weekly Standard piece on this topic.
Re:Books will stay on paper
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I recall an essay by Isaac Asimov in which he wrote that the ideal medium (for storytelling, not everything) would be one that could be used to privately convey stories with technology easy to master, requiring only a minimum of power to run infinitely. This ideal medium should be personal, small enough to fit in a pocket, and intelligent enough to pick up right where a user left off without a great deal of nuisance. It would be easy to navigate and multiple people would be able to use it (perhaps not simultaneously) with a minimum of fuss.
Then, he said, this ideal medium was already invented: the book.
Of course he wrote this in the 70s, before he could envision personal computers and the power of manipulating data. Also, he was naturally biased (having written more books than any other American). Still, it's a good point: until a medium can overcome every advantage of books, they aren't likely to disappear.
"New" and "Old" Makes no Sense
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Why artificially divide the world between "new" and "old" media? That makes no sense. Why is television considered a "new" medium, when it is centuries younger than bound books?
It seems to me to make much more sense to keep dividing and criticizing media along more traditional lines:
The speed of the medium. How quickly can you publish? Books are slow, the Web is lightning fast. This characteristic is important, because books permit more time for deliberation, while the Web's speed means things can be published without being thoughtful. (Present company excluded, of course...)
The forced format of the medium. Books have usually been text, magazines now have lots of pictures, newspapers are moving to more graphical formats, television is tied to pictures, and the Web might soon bring everything at once. "Old" and "New" makes no sense here; everyone wants to convey information in a way that makes the most sense for the information itself and for those who consume it.
The number of people who can be involved. Books are generally very prohibitive; they are usually written by just one person. Newspapers, magazines and TV programs are often the result of collaboration - but they do not allow serious, prolonged interaction. The Web permits dialogue, often with amazing results (like Slashdot, or the new online academic journals). But there are always exceptions: many Web sites are top-down (without dialogue) and many newspapers have ample letters sections (encouraging public dialogue).
It just seems to me that calling some media old and some new is a particularly useless way of trying to dichotomize what is, in fact, a richly intricate and complex process.
Irony of ironies: Data records on floppy disks relating to an an archaeological dig decayed by 5 percent in under a decade - after everything had survived the journey from the Bronze Age intact.
Thanks for a great summary of the problems with keeping data viable. Maybe some/. reader will create a start-up to help schools and businesses deal with the problem, perhaps by creating the "museum" you alluded to. (I notice, for instance, that the domain www.datadecay.com is still available.)
I have a question, however, about the other end of the data life-cycle: its birth. Certainly data disappears, but what is the best way to describe or define "data," broadly generally? What is the best definition anybody here has ever heard for "information"? I'm having trouble finding a straight answer. Is data (information) a representation of something in the real world? Is it like a shadow of something else? We have seen how it can be created, we have seen how it can evolve, and we have seen how it can fade away and die, but what is the best definition of what it is?
This is one of those philosophical questions that just nags at the mind. If anybody can suggest definitions (or resources), I'd be grateful.
Your objection seems to be against the entire notion of spying and intelligence collection generally, not Echelon in particular. After all, that's what intelligence collection is - countries secretly gathering information to prepare for situations which would otherwise surprise them and endanger their interests. If your objection is against spying and intelligence collection as a whole, well, you have a perfectly legitimate (or at least consistent) point.
My argument in the main posting was merely that Echelon doesn't seem to be all that different from what we already publicly knew about ordinary intelligence collection.
Well, I'm a bit of a retard. The analysis I just wrote was of Mr. Campbell's April 1999 report called Interception Capabilities 2000, which I had been led to believe was a mirror of today's report. That older report is still quite interesting, and well worth a read-through if you have the time. I look forward to seeing the latest report, which I assume supercedes the older one, when those EU servers are back online.
Anybody remotely familiar with ordinary intelligence collection techniques should not be overly surprised by Mr. Campbell's report. Intelligence collection, particularly COMINT and SIGINT (communications and signals intelligence) have become extraordinarily difficult for intelligence agencies, what with the proliferation of new communications technologies. So much effort has been poured into these two areas that intelligence of other types is faltering. Reams of satellite data are collected every day, but only a fraction of it is ever analyzed. HUMINT (human, or "spy," intelligence) is sometimes left dangerously undervalued, which is sad because it often provides the best advance data. And the nascent field of MASINT (measurement and signature intel) is not getting the attention or the funding it deserves.
So what are the biggest revelations in this report, for those already familiar with intelligence collection? And for those who are new to the field and just worried about Echelon, what are the most important facts to remember?
1. Nobody is spying on you unless they already have reason to suspect you.
"The geographical and processing difficulties of collecting messages simultaneously from all parts of the globe suggest strongly that the tasking of these satellites [and other resources, as the report states] will be directed towards the highest priority national and military targets."
2. NSA has a much better grasp of Internet communications than would at first seem possible. The sheer immensity of Internet traffic and its global reach would seem to handicap NSA intelligence collection efforts. Not so, according to the report.
"Since the early 1990s, fast and sophisticated Comint systems have been developed to collect, filter and analyse the forms of fast digital communications used by the Internet... [A] large proportion of international communications on the Internet will by the nature of the system pass through the United States and thus be readily accessible to NSA... Although the quantities of data involved are immense, NSA is normally legally restricted to looking only at communications that start or finish in a foreign country. Unless special warrants are issued, all other data [like domestic U.S. e-mail] should normally be thrown away by machine before it can be examined or recorded... Much other Internet traffic (whether foreign to the US or not) is of trivial intelligence interest or can be handled in other ways [and usually reached by OSINT, "open source" intelligence]."
3. U.S. companies like Microsoft have purportedly cooperated in these intelligence collection efforts. This is unorthodox, to say the least. The following claims made in the report are allegations without a great deal of substantiation.
"According to a former employee, NSA had by 1995 installed "sniffer" software to collect such traffic at nine major Internet exchange points (IXPs). [A list follows.]... The same article alleged that a leading US Internet and telecommunications company had contracted with NSA to develop software to capture Internet data of interest, and that deals had been struck with the leading manufacturers Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to alter their products for foreign use... The companies agreed to adapt their software to reduce the level of security provided to users outside the United States. In the case of Lotus Notes, which includes a secure e-mail system, the built-in cryptographic system uses a 64 bit encryption key. This provides a medium level of security, which might at present only be broken by NSA in months or years... [In 1995, the] companies agreed to adapt their software to reduce the level of security provided to users outside the United States. [Actually, this was not so much an agreement as a direct government requirement for exports.] In the case of Lotus Notes, which includes a secure e-mail system, the built-in cryptographic system uses a 64 bit encryption key. This provides a medium level of security, which might at present only be broken by NSA in months or years.
4. They don't tap your phones.
"Effective voice 'wordspotting' systems do not exist are not in use, despite reports to the contrary," according to the report. "Fax messages and computer data (from modems) are given priority in processing because of the ease with which they are understood and analysed." The only special phone technology the NSA has are systems that identify speakers by their voiceprint, which "have been in use since at least 1995."
5. The FBI may know more than it should. Collaboration between the intelligence community and FBI is seriously frowned upon, especially since it is occasionally the FBI's job to investigate breaches of protocol by the intelligence community. Yet, according to the report, the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) was set up by the FBI in 1993, and has served as a guiding body for much of the COMINT work that fits under the name "Echelon."
"The work of ILETS has proceeded for 6 years without the involvement of parliaments, and in the absence of consultation with the industrial organisations whose vital interests their work affects."
Why is it important to keep the NSA (collection of intelligence) and the FBI (domestic crimes) separate? "Any failure to distinguish between legitimate law enforcement interception requirements and interception for clandestine intelligence purposes raises grave issues for civil liberties. A clear boundary between law enforcement and 'national security' interception activity is essential to the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
6. The study has no real proof of corporations inappropriately benefiting from collected intelligence.
Businesses do not get help from intelligence agencies - governments do. The study admits this: "There is no evidence that companies in any of the UKUSA countries are able to task Comint collection to suit their private purposes."
Generally, there is nothing ethically wrong with a country collecting economic intelligence about another country. If intelligence is to be useful in any way, we need to know important economic data so we can act on them if necessary. The only ethical problem would be if specific businesses got help, but other than a spurious hint of impropriety, the study doesn't really have any proof. All it has is this quotation from a Baltimore Sun article: "Former intelligence officials and other experts say tips based on spying... regularly flow from the Commerce Department to U.S. companies to help them win contracts overseas."
7. Echelon or not, the intelligence agencies are losing.
Every day, U.S. intelligence collection agencies slip farther behind. They are in sorry shape right now, with huge input, and very limited analysis capabilities. And in the end, the study admits that "[t]he use of strong cryptography is slowly impinging on Comint agencies' capabilities... [I]n the absence of new discoveries in physics or mathematics, Moore's law favours codemakers, not codebreakers."
Let me know if you think I've missed any of the study's major revelations.
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.
USA Today ran an article today on this very topic.
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.
Thanks again, vlax, for a thoughtful reply. I see your point about the value of prestige motivations in science, which I'll have to consider for a while longer. I'll certainly pick up Gold's book right away, thanks for referring it.
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.
Re:Jon, *please* leave the research to the pros.
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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.
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.
(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.
While Green made a few good points (in particular, how the transition to Linux paralleled the campaign's newly-learned frugality, and how references to the site on different media platforms like TV boost visits), overall the interview was weak.
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.
Thanks for replying; these are all good points. I still disagree slightly about Gould and Hawking, since I think their fame came not from their research but from their broad and clearly-written popularizations of their fields.
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.
Funding has to come from somewhere. Research - whether it's DNA research, astronomical observation or computer programming - costs money. This is undeniably the case, and nobody here has disagreed. To state the question more clearly, then, Where should research funding come from?
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.
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."
Personally, I suspect that wider concerns (only partly related to money) have forced these gene therapy researchers to keep their failures as quiet as possible - especially fear of public backlash.
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.
The professor quoted in this article has made his career out of studying aging. Other recent studies (such as this) have pointed to other causes of aging, so we should remember that it is a complex process with many different causes which we should not expect to "master" any time soon - although everyone's fingers will undoubtedly be crossed.
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.
So what should we do differently?
on
LonelyNet
·
· Score: 1
These professors and other Luddites see spending time in front of a computer instead of sipping tea with neighbors as dangerous to both personal well-being and to civil society. They are wrong on both counts.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
You see it in lots of arenas:
There are dozens more examples, but the point is this: the pace of innovation is leaving policymakers in the dust, and they are going to keep making uninformed decisions that may plague us for years . Our only recourse is an intensive campaign to educate them in the new realities, while respecting how difficult this period of transition will be.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
I just wish politicians had the courage to talk about the importance of space exploration, instead of being cowed by the "let's solve all our problems here on Earth first" crowd.
Somebody on Slashdot has as a signature file something like the following: "Faster. Better. Cheaper. Pick any two you want - you can't have all three." Seems right to me.
Instead, the situation is a lot more complicated, and interesting - and analyzing its complexities seems (to me) more useful than making quick, inaccurate judgments.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Then, he said, this ideal medium was already invented: the book.
Of course he wrote this in the 70s, before he could envision personal computers and the power of manipulating data. Also, he was naturally biased (having written more books than any other American). Still, it's a good point: until a medium can overcome every advantage of books, they aren't likely to disappear.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
It seems to me to make much more sense to keep dividing and criticizing media along more traditional lines:
The forced format of the medium. Books have usually been text, magazines now have lots of pictures, newspapers are moving to more graphical formats, television is tied to pictures, and the Web might soon bring everything at once. "Old" and "New" makes no sense here; everyone wants to convey information in a way that makes the most sense for the information itself and for those who consume it.
The number of people who can be involved. Books are generally very prohibitive; they are usually written by just one person. Newspapers, magazines and TV programs are often the result of collaboration - but they do not allow serious, prolonged interaction. The Web permits dialogue, often with amazing results (like Slashdot, or the new online academic journals). But there are always exceptions: many Web sites are top-down (without dialogue) and many newspapers have ample letters sections (encouraging public dialogue).
It just seems to me that calling some media old and some new is a particularly useless way of trying to dichotomize what is, in fact, a richly intricate and complex process.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Irony of ironies: Data records on floppy disks relating to an an archaeological dig decayed by 5 percent in under a decade - after everything had survived the journey from the Bronze Age intact.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
I have a question, however, about the other end of the data life-cycle: its birth. Certainly data disappears, but what is the best way to describe or define "data," broadly generally? What is the best definition anybody here has ever heard for "information"? I'm having trouble finding a straight answer. Is data (information) a representation of something in the real world? Is it like a shadow of something else? We have seen how it can be created, we have seen how it can evolve, and we have seen how it can fade away and die, but what is the best definition of what it is?
This is one of those philosophical questions that just nags at the mind. If anybody can suggest definitions (or resources), I'd be grateful.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Thanks,
A. Keiper
My argument in the main posting was merely that Echelon doesn't seem to be all that different from what we already publicly knew about ordinary intelligence collection.
Yours,
A. Keiper
Apologies,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
So what are the biggest revelations in this report, for those already familiar with intelligence collection? And for those who are new to the field and just worried about Echelon, what are the most important facts to remember?
1. Nobody is spying on you unless they already have reason to suspect you.
"The geographical and processing difficulties of collecting messages simultaneously from all parts of the globe suggest strongly that the tasking of these satellites [and other resources, as the report states] will be directed towards the highest priority national and military targets."
2. NSA has a much better grasp of Internet communications than would at first seem possible. The sheer immensity of Internet traffic and its global reach would seem to handicap NSA intelligence collection efforts. Not so, according to the report.
"Since the early 1990s, fast and sophisticated Comint systems have been developed to collect, filter and analyse the forms of fast digital communications used by the Internet... [A] large proportion of international communications on the Internet will by the nature of the system pass through the United States and thus be readily accessible to NSA... Although the quantities of data involved are immense, NSA is normally legally restricted to looking only at communications that start or finish in a foreign country. Unless special warrants are issued, all other data [like domestic U.S. e-mail] should normally be thrown away by machine before it can be examined or recorded... Much other Internet traffic (whether foreign to the US or not) is of trivial intelligence interest or can be handled in other ways [and usually reached by OSINT, "open source" intelligence]."
3. U.S. companies like Microsoft have purportedly cooperated in these intelligence collection efforts. This is unorthodox, to say the least. The following claims made in the report are allegations without a great deal of substantiation.
"According to a former employee, NSA had by 1995 installed "sniffer" software to collect such traffic at nine major Internet exchange points (IXPs). [A list follows.] ... The same article alleged that a leading US Internet and telecommunications company had contracted with NSA to develop software to capture Internet data of interest, and that deals had been struck with the leading manufacturers Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to alter their products for foreign use... The companies agreed to adapt their software to reduce the level of security provided to users outside the United States. In the case of Lotus Notes, which includes a secure e-mail system, the built-in cryptographic system uses a 64 bit encryption key. This provides a medium level of security, which might at present only be broken by NSA in months or years... [In 1995, the] companies agreed to adapt their software to reduce the level of security provided to users outside the United States. [Actually, this was not so much an agreement as a direct government requirement for exports.] In the case of Lotus Notes, which includes a secure e-mail system, the built-in cryptographic system uses a 64 bit encryption key. This provides a medium level of security, which might at present only be broken by NSA in months or years.
4. They don't tap your phones.
"Effective voice 'wordspotting' systems do not exist are not in use, despite reports to the contrary," according to the report. "Fax messages and computer data (from modems) are given priority in processing because of the ease with which they are understood and analysed." The only special phone technology the NSA has are systems that identify speakers by their voiceprint, which "have been in use since at least 1995."
5. The FBI may know more than it should. Collaboration between the intelligence community and FBI is seriously frowned upon, especially since it is occasionally the FBI's job to investigate breaches of protocol by the intelligence community. Yet, according to the report, the International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) was set up by the FBI in 1993, and has served as a guiding body for much of the COMINT work that fits under the name "Echelon."
"The work of ILETS has proceeded for 6 years without the involvement of parliaments, and in the absence of consultation with the industrial organisations whose vital interests their work affects."
Why is it important to keep the NSA (collection of intelligence) and the FBI (domestic crimes) separate? "Any failure to distinguish between legitimate law enforcement interception requirements and interception for clandestine intelligence purposes raises grave issues for civil liberties. A clear boundary between law enforcement and 'national security' interception activity is essential to the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms."
6. The study has no real proof of corporations inappropriately benefiting from collected intelligence.
Businesses do not get help from intelligence agencies - governments do. The study admits this: "There is no evidence that companies in any of the UKUSA countries are able to task Comint collection to suit their private purposes."
Generally, there is nothing ethically wrong with a country collecting economic intelligence about another country. If intelligence is to be useful in any way, we need to know important economic data so we can act on them if necessary. The only ethical problem would be if specific businesses got help, but other than a spurious hint of impropriety, the study doesn't really have any proof. All it has is this quotation from a Baltimore Sun article: "Former intelligence officials and other experts say tips based on spying ... regularly flow from the Commerce Department to U.S. companies to help them win contracts overseas."
7. Echelon or not, the intelligence agencies are losing.
Every day, U.S. intelligence collection agencies slip farther behind. They are in sorry shape right now, with huge input, and very limited analysis capabilities. And in the end, the study admits that "[t]he use of strong cryptography is slowly impinging on Comint agencies' capabilities... [I]n the absence of new discoveries in physics or mathematics, Moore's law favours codemakers, not codebreakers."
Let me know if you think I've missed any of the study's major revelations.
Thank you.
Yours,
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
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
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.
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:a ry16/internetsurvey-216.html.)
ht tp://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/report/news/febru
(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
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
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
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