If you ever wondered about the importance of provenance and the big dollar value of historical artifacts, you might find this interesting. Forgers tend to be clever, mediators have a profit margin, and buyers tend to be over-enthusiastic if the item is in demand. In the end, the science is hard to deny. Stay tuned for the blame, excuses, and other justifications.
Anyone remember telephone numbers anymore?
Back in the classroom teaching Understanding Users, am covering human working memory and its limits we all experience when being bombarded with new data. I used the example of trying to remember someone’s telephone number the first time you hear it while trying to find a place to write it down. You know, it’s the classic example of how you rehearse the data continually until you can dump it externally. In the course of this, I came to realize that most students of a certain age have not experienced this specific example. Technology has moved us all along and phone numbers are not rehearsed in memory until recorded anymore are they? People just call and leave a record, or they instantly mail/txt numbers to each other in real time, letting the computer do the work. How many telephone numbers can you even remember anymore without checking your phone? Time for me to get some new examples now that ‘cognitive offloading’ is the norm.
Let’s treat information space like the environment
In my Follett Lecture at Dominican University this week I examined the true nature of our information space and introduced the argument of considering information space in the same manner we conceive of the environment. To this end, we recognize the information space in which the majority of the world resides (and all will reside in soon) to be a new ecology that should be shared and managed on a global level to serve humanity. While I realize there are many criticisms we can level against the way our species has managed the planet, there is little disagreement that the environment needs protection, monitoring and the application of standards on how we use it. Can we start to consider the world of information in the same way?
To do this does require our taking more control. Large corporations cannot continue to be allowed to act in the interests of profit over people. Regulations of the kind introduced for data privacy in Europe are a model that we would do well to apply more widely. Technology that plays purely on the natural cognitive tendency to react to movement, change and dopamine loops needs to be understood for what it is, and alternatives developed. And consumers need to make their dollars count by purchasing better, more human-centered products.
Yes, this will require a sea change in governmental regulation, a willingness on politicians’ part to take more than campaign gifts from Facebook, Google and the like, and a massive educational effort in digital literacy (in the truest sense of the term) but we need to start. Universities need to lead the way here and offer intellectual leadership in helping the world to understand the benefits and pitfalls of technology choices, to increase our understanding of how the information world is structured and shaped, and to help craft appropriate policies for managing this new ecology into the future. Most universities like to make bold claims about addressing big challenges, and among them the environment is nearly always listed. Well it’s time to treat our information space equivalently while there’s still time.
How our political representatives love to hear from us
After watching Paul Ryan on one of the Sunday political shows dismissing as a left-wing attack his own words from a couple of years ago on the need to properly vet bills before approving them, I started to think about the way our record of what we say and the means we enable things to be said are becoming messed up. So now, what I said last year on a topic has no relevance this year, if I say so, might be typical political discourse but when politicians are so dismissive of their own words, how likely is it that they will pay any attention to ours?
Mr Ryan’s office, I am informed, turned off their phones and fax machines last week when irate citizens started calling in large numbers to express their views on the proposed health care bill. My own representative in my gerrymandered state was even cleverer. His phone lines immediately went to voice mail, and in a pretense at listening, asked me to leave a msg. Amazingly, I had 2 seconds, after which I was told my time was up. Huh? I barely got my name out. So I called again. Same thing. So I called several times in a row, each 2 second recording continuing where I left off from the last one. Was Representative Williams listening? Of course not, but he could say he was. This is what technology has enabled. Fakery, chicanery and pretense, wrapped up in a advertising bubble of family values. Yeah, technology has made us smarter, right?
PPR talks now online
I greatly enjoyed this year’s Patient Privacy Rights Summit in DC. I usually do not get to attend the same conferences as physicians, policymakers, lawyers etc but this annual summit brings them all together, along with varied invited speakers, to discuss the emerging health information infrastructure. The organizers asked me to provide a closing address and while we had some technical set up difficulties, you can find it here. We need more people to speak up and agitate for our rights in the coming information world, and health is one area where we can all recognize the importance of privacy.
while here, check out the opening address from Deanna Fei, who provide an account of being on the wrong end of health privacy concerns that might shock you.
When blogging is life and death
Most comments on the dangers of social media and blogging tend toward warnings about off-the-cuff comments or presenting a public face that you will not be ashamed of in a year’s time when meeting someone new or applying for a job. Jon Ronson’s new book ‘So you’ve been publicly shamed‘ is bringing back and shedding some new light on the well known examples such as the woman tweeting before getting on a flight from UK to South Africa and disembarking hours later to find she’d created a maelstrom of hate by her supposedly off the cuff comment about AIDS. People really do use the tools to humiliate other and the cost, Ronson argues, can be to make others unwilling to speak freely as we collectively get sucked into groupthink. All true and bad, one imagines, but it can be even worse.
The mainstream media have given more attention to this new book than they have the fact that once again, a blogger who espouses atheism has been murdered because of their words they use. In Bangladesh, a blogger was hacked to death this week. Washiqur Rahman was attacked in the street, in daylight. His ‘crime’ was writing about the dangers of religious fundamentalism. He was right. But he was not alone. Earlier this year another blogger, American Avijit Roy was murdered by what are described as machete-wielding assailants while returning from a book fair with his wife (who lost a finger in the attack). Three bloggers have been so murdered in the last two years in that country. And of course, this is on top of the case in Saudi Arabia where public flogging of a blogger for ‘insulting Islam’ actually brought a murmur or two of disapproval from international allies.
One of the less known aspects of free speech suppression (which is everywhere) is that aethesists are among the most suppressed groups. It is estimated that espousing atheism is a crime punishable by death in 13 countries:Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. And that’s just the list of countries where it is enacted as law. There are many more where crimes against atheists are largely ignored and rarely persecuted. And yet religious groups continually campaign that they are the ones who feel persecuted and need laws protecting them. Protect one, protect all surely — is not that a fundamental of all major religions? Those who speak out and pay the ultimate price deserve more than a small column in the euphemistically titled ‘free press’.
The real point here is that I believe shaming others for ignorant tweets is likely a lower point on the same continuum of crowd-hysteria that leads to machete murder of bloggers. This is a concern for people who use social media to chastise but never imagine themselves as fanatics or bad people. The technologies underlying rapid shaming and the behaviors they enable should be studied as more than a curiosity of our age or as a marketing vehicle for corporate identity and personal image making. But I guess there’s less money or fame in that type of work. Come in Information Science……there’s a research question to answer.
KM meets ML – Information the driver for leveraging distributed expertise
Interesting talk from Jean Claude Monney, now leading KM initiatives at Microsoft. I am generally disappointed in most KM discussions, they seem strong on claims, short on evidence and spend a lot of time trying to change people’s behavior despite everything we know about how humans and organizations operate. That said, sometimes people do push this area forward. Give it a listen – this is short on visuals but there are some deep issues discussed within. Time for a KM comeback?
Achieving Excellence in Global Value Chain – Jean-Claude Monney Group VP STMicroelectronics from Jean-Claude F. Monney on Vimeo.
iSchool and Iron Mountain launching new partnership
Am delighted that we’re engaging in a series of open educational sessions with Iron Mountain — it’s a wonderful relationship for us, Iron Mountain are great to work with and this promises to open up new avenues for the study of information management outside of the traditional approaches. See more here The launch event is this week at the AT&T Conference Center here at UT. Open to all, and watch for new events.
The new world order is scarily familiar
Two somewhat unrelated news items caught my eye this week and suggested there is a long way to go before we understand what the new technologies of information mean for our world, and, more importantly, how to leverage their benefits. News of the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will dominate news now from that country, perhaps deflecting the rather more terrifying coverage of Raid Badawi’s treatment at the hands of authorities. In case you missed it, he’s been sentenced to 1000 lashes, 10 years of imprisonment and fined close to $250,000 for blogging. Yes, you read that right – for blogging. Not hate crimes, not some imagined insult to a god, not murder, just blogging. And if you read his blog, you will note that the writings are generally smart, insightful and aimed at encouraging intelligent discussion. Oh, and don’t forget, Saudi Arabia is one of our allies.
Now, looking at that link above, think about this. A federal judge in Dallas yesterday sentenced journalist Barrett Brown to jail for another five years (he’s served more than one already) for providing a link to hacked material. You can add almost a $1m fine to that too. But at least he did not get any lashes, right?
Journalists rightly point to the chilling effect Brown’s sentence has on investigative reporting, arguing that if one accidentally linked to hacked data, such as some of those leaked customer files so many companies seem to have a hard time securing, you would likely be similarly prosecuted. Showing distinctly more sangfroid at the news than I would in his shoes, Brown stated :
“Good news! — The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex. For the next 35 months, I’ll be provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by Bureau of Prisons officials and staff and otherwise report on news and culture in the world’s greatest prison system. I want to thank the Department of Justice for having put so much time and energy into advocating on my behalf; rather than holding a grudge against me for the two years of work I put into in bringing attention to a DOJ-linked campaign to harass and discredit journalists like Glenn Greenwald, the agency instead labored tirelessly to ensure that I received this very prestigious assignment. — Wish me luck!”
He won’t be the only one who needs it!
iSchool faculty in Top 5 UT Inventions of 2014
What is it? Ciaran Trace, assistant professor in the School of Information, and Luis Francisco-Revilla, research associate at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, created software for a large touch-screen, table-top computer called an Augmented Processing Table (APT). The APT helps archivists and curators to better access, share and process both physical and born-digital materials.
Tell me more: The invention garnered the first Archival Innovator Award from the Society of American Archivists in 2013, with the team’s work being described as, “groundbreaking, overcoming professional and philosophical boundaries, embracing innovative ideas and emerging technology, and rethinking current standards and commonly-used models for arrangement and description in modern archives.” Ultimately, APT Research Team’s work will not only help people in the field of archival science follow best practices for processing but also will increase and enhance access to “reliable, accurate and trustworthy collections of information.”