Question Technology

Britannica Online Free for Bloggers

Encyclopedia Britannica has made an interesting move with their online presence: they're offering it free for all web publishers, including bloggers.  I learned about this at TechCrunch, which has a post detailing the program: Encyclopedia Britannica now free for bloggers.

Not only can bloggers access encyclopedia articles for free, their readers can access any article they link to.  For example, you should be able to read this entry on history of technology (you'll see ugly ads, though; it's ad-free when you sign in).

I signed up out of curiosity and because I'm unable to resist free books.  I can't say I use encyclopedias much these days, but I do look at (and link to) Wikipedia more and more, and this will probably sway me to check out Britannica in such cases.

Their welcome email alerted me to the "Google Subscribed Links" program, which I hadn't heard of before.  It tweaks Google to include results from "trusted providers" when you search.  That's a good idea and will probably also get me checking out Britannica more often, since I won't have to go directly to their site to search.

The Solitary Vice: Against Reading

The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman starts with some provocative questions:  What if reading isn't as important as we're led to believe?   What if reading doesn't make you a better person?   Is it "Cool 2 Read," is reading "Fundamental," is it necessary to "Get Real @ The Library"?  Brottman bristles at slogans like this and questions whether forcing reading on people is a good thing.  She believes reading can in fact be a uniquely valuable activity, but it's all in how you do it: read what excites you, read what helps you grow.  Don't read the classics if they bore you (watch a movie version instead).

The "anti-reading" provocation is only the hook for Brottman's book.  The remainder is a reading memoir.  Brottman shows by example the value she found by reading in genres that are normally looked down upon -- celebrity biography, true crime, comics.  She teaches literature and knows her way around the classics and literary theory, yet she also knows much about the different ways that people learn and think.  Brottman is not so much against reading as against the simplistic rhetoric and elitism that surrounds it.  I liked this book for taking a more subtle stance than most debaters in the perennial "is reading dead?" discussions.

Mikita Brottman has a website with more about the book and her other writing.

How to address fear about WiFi health risks?

Dale Dougherty writes at O'Reilly Radar about supposed health hazards of wifi, and how a small number of residents used this fear to force Sebastopol, CA to stop a plan to permit city-wide public wifi.  An excerpt:

One can see the fear spreading. Science should be a way to dispel such fears but it is clear with this group of people that science cannot be trusted. They put forth the idea that science should be able to prove that there is no harm and therefore eliminate any risk, and without such proof, we should not move forward. They use this logic to recommend a "precautionary" approach, which is their keyword for a "know-nothing, do-nothing" approach.

[...]

Now, I don't know that wireless (or electricity) is without harm. I can read the research that does exist and learn more -- if I have the time and reason to do so. However, I do not like the smell of fear, and when people justify actions based on their own fears, I become suspicious that the concern is unwarranted. If it wasn't wifi, it would be flouride. Something is needed to affix to their anxiety. I can only be glad that they weren't alive when the city decided on electrification a century ago.

Link: Hazards of Wifi - O'Reilly Radar.

Like Dougherty, I'm willing to bet that wifi isn't dangerous, but I still have problems with what he says.  For example: "it is clear with this group of people that science cannot be trusted."  Well, we do have examples where scientists has been wrong in similar situations and should not have been trusted as quickly -- think pesticides and radiation fallout from nuclear tests and accidents.  How do scientists earn trust?  By having a good track record and by providing evidence.  Have they provided enough evidence that wifi is harmless?  I don't know, but what I've read seems to suggest that more studies could be done.  The precautionary approach does not (I think) call for absolute proof, but only for strong evidence -- I think Dougherty's characterization of it is simplistic.

Dougherty doesn't like people basing their decisions on emotion, but how different is it when he bases his decision on blind faith in the scientists' word?  It's right to be suspicious when the critics offer nothing but blind fear, but I think it's also right to be suspicious when the advocates offer nothing but blind faith.

How to Think About Science

(Post updated below with more on later shows and a response to a comment.)

I've been listening to the excellent "How to think about science" series from CBC Radio's Ideas show.  The basic premise of the show:

If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it?
Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study.

Link: How To Think About Science.  (That link has the shows in Real Audio format.  For MP3 format go to the podcast archive.  It's also listed on the iTunes store.)

I've listened to the first six shows so far.  The first two, featuring interviews with Simon Schaffer and Lorraine Daston, are particularly good.  What strikes me about this series (and, to a lesser extent, anything I read from historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science) is, first, how old-hat this stuff is to specialists -- to them the "science wars" are over and we're now living with a more realistic, less mystical understanding of how science really happens, thanks to the sociologists and others who hashed it out in the 80s and 90s.

The second thing that strikes me is that, from an everyday person's point of view, this stuff is still completely new.  Most people (and scientists) know nothing of the fabled science wars, and still think of science as "received truth" and scientists as infallible.  Furthermore, many people are still threatened by any effort to simply describe scientific practice and are quick to label it as "anti-science." 

The response to this radio series itself gives an indication of how threatening this type of discussion still is.  A discussion at the "Center for Inquiry," some sort of online forum about science, labels the series "anti-science," "pseudo-intellectual BS," and one commenter calls for a letter writing campaign against the CBC!  One only needs to listen to the show to realize how bizarre and ironic this reaction is.

A frequent refrain in these interviews is the difficulty these thinkers have had in trying to make it clear that they do not intend to undermine or debunk science, but merely to understand how it works, and in some sense to apply the principles of scientific scrutiny to science itself.  What's also apparent in this show is that there is no monolithic sociological critique of science, and how these thinkers themselves have been fallible and mistaken.  What emerges is a picture of the variety of approaches to understanding science and the need for dialog.

Update, March 31 -- I'm now caught up with the series (the first 15 episodes anyway) and I think I can understand now where the hostile reactions are coming from, though I still disagree with them.  Jim Royal writes in the comments:

If you're only six episodes into the series so far, you've heard the reasonable parts of the series. Starting around episodes 7, 8 and 9, things start getting weird. I think my favorite bit is where the host asserts without a shred of evidence that many scientists "feel they know when they are being looked at, think their dogs are telepathic, experience premonitions, doubt the world is all in their heads."

This is episode 9 with Rupert Sheldrake.  He has done controversial research, to be sure, but I think the point of the show was mostly to tell his story and not to push his theories.  According to him the "sense of being stared at" is real (among everyday people -- I don't believe he tested scientists) and can be reliably measured.  I'm skeptical but I don't have any problem with scientists doing and publishing that research.  He claimed that he couldn't get it published, despite the fact that others repeated and validated his experiments.  I think that's an interesting situation -- why are others so unwilling to permit that kind of research?  The Ideas show dug into this issue and, while it was sympathetic to Sheldrake, I don't think it was trying to present his theories as truth.  Surely this issue crops up elsewhere in scientific practice, though maybe not to such extremes.

Again from Jim:

That particular episode ended with the assertion that scientific results are all the same everywhere in the world, regardless of local customs, cultures, or religions because scientists collude with each other to keep out ideas that would upset their world view.

The series moved from examining the boundaries of science to entertaining crackpots to outright paranoia.

I don't remember that assertion, or at least not stated in quite that way, but I agree that it's an caricature.

Some of the other episodes didn't do much for me:  I like some of Wendell Berry's writing but I thought a whole episode about farming and local knowledge seemed like too much (similarly with the Dean Bavington episode about cod fisheries).  Sajay Samuel said some interesting things but his approach is a bit too abstract for me.  David Abram was rather disappointing: repetitive and a bit too new-agey for my taste.

On the other hand, I'm glad that they're going for diverse viewpoints and I don't expect to agree with or appreciate all of them equally.  And I don't think the trajectory is strictly downhill -- the last two episodes, with Evelyn Fox Keller in the first and Barbara Duden and Silya Samerski in the second, were very good.

Does Kids' Reading Need to be More Interactive?

That's what the new LeapFrog Tag promises.  From the New York Times:

This week, LeapFrog pulls the wraps off the LeapPad’s successor, the Tag, a thick, white and green plastic stylus that turns paper books into interactive playthings. LeapFrog is betting that the $50 Tag, which will be available this summer along with an 18-volume library that includes children’s classics like “The Little Engine That Could” and “Olivia,” will be the hit it badly needs. It calls the Tag its “biggest launch ever.”

The Tag, officially called the Tag Reading System, works a lot like the LeapPad. Children can tap a word with it and the stylus reads the word, or its definition, aloud. They can tap on an image to hear a character’s voice come alive. Interactive games test their reading comprehension. At its simplest, the Tag can also act as an audio book and simply read a story from beginning to end.

Link: LeapFrog Hopes for next hit with Interactive Reading Toy, via Crooked House, Popgadget.

The Tag also tracks reading progress, which parents can monitor on a website.

I know LeapFrog puts a lot of research into its products so I'm sure the design of this toy is well thought out, but this seems like technology in search of a problem.  Is gadgetry like this going to promote more love of reading or more love of gadgetry?

Engadget did a post on this device recently, and one of the comments includes this:

I have 2 small children, and while we do a lot of "conventional" work on their reading, the Leapster has been useful and effective.

As well, the Leapster has gotten my kids using technology, and getting comfortable with it, from an early age. Both of my kids (4 and 7 years old) read well above their age level, and their tech-literacy is far above their peers.

What kind of tech-literacy do 4-7 year-olds need?  Nobody needs that early a start, do they?  I don't have kids, so maybe I'm just out of touch.  Getting kids familiar with the tools they'll use in school makes some sense, but there's got to be a limit to how young the pressure for techno-literacy needs to go (check out the i-grow PC concept for an idea of where we may be headed).

NEA Responds to Steven Johnson's Criticisms of Reading Report

On February 7th, Steven Johnson criticized the NEA's recent report about declining rates of reading because he says they ignored reading on computer screens (Link: Dawn of the digital natives, The Guardian).  It turns out he was wrong, as Sunil Iyengar and Mark Bauerlein of the NEA write in the Guardian today: There is good reason to be worried about declining rates of reading.  Excerpts:

Steven Johnson diminished the significance of reading problems in the Britain and the United States, and misrepresented our research into the issue. His biggest error was to assert that "in almost every study [the US National Endowment for the Arts] cites, screen-based reading is excluded from the data."

He goes further, accusing our report of "simply excising screen-based reading". In fact, the majority of the report's data on reading derives from large population studies asking people how frequently they read anything whatsoever for pleasure - a category so broad as to include text of any length in any format through any medium, from books to cereal boxes to, yes, computer screens.

For example, in 2004 the US department of education asked 17-year-olds "How often do you ... read for fun on your own time?" With no limitation specified on where or how this reading was done, 19% replied "Never or hardly ever", more than double the 1984 rate of 9%. This is hardly an outcome to dismiss.

[...]

Johnson denies there is any evidence of damage linked with excessive viewing and surfing. Yet sufficient data has led the American Academy of Pediatrics to advise parents to keep children's rooms free of electronic media. Reading is at risk, but so are the minds of the young; we need a more critical view of their digital environment and its omnipresent allure. Now is the time for educators and intellectuals to produce sound empirical studies of the risks and benefits of electronic media.

Presidential Candidates Invited to Science Quiz, er, Debate

The Science Debate 2008 campaign sent out invitations to the four major candidates recently for the debate, now set for April 18th if anyone shows up.  In the invitation they write:

This is a policy debate.  It is not intended to be a science quiz. Nor are we interested in state-level battles such as the evolution versus creationism/ID debate.  Our goal is to find out how aware candidates are of America's major science and technology problems and opportunities, and how they propose to offer the kind of visionary leadership and policy solutions that will tackle those challenges and ensure America's place as the most scientifically and technologically advanced nation on earth.  This is your opportunity to demonstrate that you are such a leader.

It's telling that they needed to reassure candidates that it's not a quiz, because when Science Debate first came on the scene it was clear that many of the people pushing for it wanted a quiz.  There was gloating in comment boards about the chance to make fun of candidates who don't believe in evolution or don't understand science.  (Not that those are excusable -- thank the gods that Mike Huckabee doesn't have a chance of winning.)

There are important science and tech policy issues to discuss, but I'm still skeptical of the need for a separate debate on this.  (Previous post: Do we need a presidential debate on science?)

There have been several recent articles on the story:

• New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog
• Wired (where the commenters definitely don't get the quiz vs. debate distinction, and the techno-libertarians are upset Ron Paul wasn't invited).
• Nature expresses skepticism: Nature's The Great Beyond blog, Nature editorial.
• The New York Times addresses the quiz vs. debate problem as well.
• Biopolitical Times points to Nature's doubts and has some good quotes.
• There's some interesting discussion (and confusion) in comments at the blog of Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, two of the organizers: The Intersection.

Ebook Week is Coming!

Who knew there was a "read an ebook week"?  It's apparently March 2-8 and in preparation a blog called Epublishers Weekly has posted a list of 30 reasons to read an ebook.

Link: 30 Benefits of Ebooks (via lifehacker).

Because I'm feeling snarky I'll play devil's advocate and tell you what's wrong with the list, or at least the first 10 items for now.

I should say up front that I'm not totally opposed to ebooks.  I think with the right design they'll work, especially for travelling.  I'll probably even buy one as soon as they're cheap enough, are free of DRM (and don't make me pay twice to own both a paper and an electronic copy), and are pleasant enough to use.

The first item on the list:

1. Ebooks promote reading. People are spending more time in front of screens and less time in front of printed books.

How many of those people have the attention span when at a computer to read more than a few pages at a time without stopping?

2. Ebooks are good for the environment. Ebooks save trees. Ebooks eliminate the need for filling up landfills with old books. Ebooks save transportation costs and the pollution associated with shipping books across the country and the world.

Ebook readers aren't without environmental costs.  And is there really a "need" to fill up landfills with old books?  (Recycling? Hello?)

3. Ebooks preserve books. (The library of Alexandria was burned and the collection ruined. Richard Burton's wife, after his death and against his wishes, destroyed a book he had been working on for ten years. The original manuscript of Carlyle's The French Revolution was lost when a friend's servant tossed it into the fire.) Ebooks are ageless: they do not burn, mildew, crumble, rot, or fall apart. Ebooks ensure that literature will endure.

Last week I went to a course taught by design guru Edward Tufte.  Among the interesting artifacts he showed: a 400+ year-old first edition of Galileo's book, and a copy of the first English translation of Euclid.  These were not falling apart -- far from it.  He was walking around with them and flipping the pages.  How likely is your favorite ebook format to last 400 years?  Ebooks are far from "ageless".  The idea that paper books fall apart quickly is a myth.

Furthermore, ebooks do not necessarily "preserve" books.  This has been discussed recently with respect to Google's book scans.  OCR and plain text don't save drawings and formatting.  That same Galileo book had hand drawings in line with the text -- easy to do 400 years ago but a pain to preserve with today's software and electronic formats.

Fires happen and books get lost, but so does data, and when data goes it's usually massive and instantaneous -- there's no fire extinguisher.

4. Ebooks, faster to produce than paper books, allow readers to read books about current issues and events.

Book printing and distribution can happen very fast (think of the 911 report and other recent current events books that were rushed out).  Ideally publishers would post e-book versions in advance of print versions for early buyers, just as software is sometimes available for download before CDs are shipped.

5. Ebooks are easily updateable, for correcting errors and adding information.

True, but I'd rather have those corrections available as addenda on the web or as carefully planned second editions than have them made in real time to the book.  Am I supposed to revisit the book every time the author changes a word?

6. Ebooks are searchable. Quickly you can find anything inside the book. Ebooks are globally searchable: you can find information in many ebooks.

True, if searching is what you want to do (this is mostly irrelevant for fiction, for example).  A good index can be easier to use than a search interface.

7. Ebooks are portable. You can carry an entire library on one DVD.

Can't argue there.  Portability is the main, and possibly only, thing ebooks have going for them.

8. Ebooks (in the form of digital audio books) free you to do other activities while you are listening.

It depends on the activity and it's debatable whether you retain the information as well as when reading.  It's a different experience -- you can't easily back up to reread a sentence on an audio book, and you can't search or browse it later.

9. Ebooks can be printable: and thereby give a reader most or all of the advantages of a paper-based book.

A stack of papers is less appealing than a bound book.  Sure you could take it to Kinkos to bind it, but that'll cost you more than buying a printed version in the first place.  Book printing kiosks might work but the quality will probably be low.  Furthermore, this argument is kind of silly -- I could just as easily say "you can scan in your printed book and make it an ebook; therefore a printed book has all the advantages of an ebook!"

10. Ebooks defy time: they can be delivered almost instantly. Ebooks are transported to you faster than overnight shipping: in minutes or in seconds.

It's good to learn patience.

How Software Affects Your Thinking

New Scientist magazine had a short piece recently about a study of physics students' use of Wolfram Mathematica software, which is a symbolic math program that does algebra and calculus and many other things.  The researchers found that, while the software is a powerful supplement, it "narrows the breadth of their thinking.  Their reasoning is drawn into local attractors where they look to calculation schemes to resolve questions instead of, for example, mapping the mathematics to the physical system at hand."  They don't recommend banishing the software; rather they say instructors should be aware of this effect and watch for it.

The New Scientist piece is here: Physics tool makes students miss the point (subscription required for full text).  Oddly, the print magazine, where I read it, has a much softer title: "When it's time to sit back and think again."

The research paper, by Thomas Bing and Edward Redish is called "Symbolic Manipulators Affect Mathematical Mindsets" and is available at Arxiv.org: abstract, full paper (pdf).

New Scientist's harsh title led Theodore Gray, one of Mathematica's co-founders, to write a lengthy rant at the Wolfram company blog: Flipping Out over Technology in Education, which I confess I have not read in full.  I think he's right insofar as the title is bad.  The rest of the New Scientist article seems fair, though, and it's only 466 words so you can't expect much nuance.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course (as the article states).  It's easy to get trapped into certain kinds of activity when it'd be better to step back and rethink your approach to a problem.  I saw this when I taught programming and watched students flail away at the keyboard, and I've done it myself way too many times.

Steven Johnson Questions Rumors of Reading's Decline

In an article in the Guardian, Steven Johnson responds to the recent NEA report and other worries about the decline of reading in the US.  His main point: they ignore all the reading we do on computers.  Not to mention cereal boxes!

Link: Dawn of the digital natives.

I'm working on a more serious response to post later.

Sandbox Summit on Kids and Technology

The first Sandbox Summit, a conference "exploring the way kids play, learn, and connect in a digital world" took place at last week's CES.  From an AP story:

The International Consumer Electronics Show is such a glitzy celebration of technology that it was striking to see a set of panel discussions here Tuesday exploring whether electronic connectedness is valuable for children.

Are computers and electronic toys providing creative new outlets for kids to play, socialize and learn? Or does staring at screens all day addle the developing mind and hinder critical thinking skills?

It's a little of both, judging by the commentary at this first "Sandbox Summit" at CES. The trick, participants said, is for parents to intelligently monitor their children's use of computers and communication devices.

Link: 'Sandbox Summit' debates tech and kids (AP/Globe and Mail)

There is a website and blog for the conference series here: Sandbox Summit.

Libraries and Generation Y

From NYTimes/Reuters:

More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books, according to a survey released on Sunday.

Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y, the survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project said.

"These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down," said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a report on the survey results.

"Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries," she said.

Internet users were more than twice as likely to patronize libraries as non-Internet users, according to the survey.

Link: Generation Y Biggest User of Libraries: Survey.

More details on the report are here: Pew Internet: Libraries Report. 

I'm curious as to how many of those young people visit the library because they're in school or recently out of school and the library is convenient and familiar.  In the questionnaire they asked whether you've "gone to a local public library," so I guess that rules out school libraries, though it's not clear how careful they were about this.

Knol Predictions

1. Google will change the name, probably before it even launches.  Not just because it's an ugly word.  Google should have learned with Froogle that puns don't translate and that you don't make up new words if you want to keep brand loyalty.  (Froogle became Google Product Search, which became Google Shopping). They'll end up calling this something simple.  My guesses:

• Google Encyclopedia (in your face, Wikipedians)
• Google Library (in your face, librarians; perhaps too similar to Google Books)
• Google Answers (taken?)
• Google Articles (more likely)
• Google Reference (most likely)
• Google Homework (isn't that what this is for, anyway?)

2. Google won't attract real experts unless they pay real money.  Andrew Keen is swooning over knol because Google promises to pay the authors.  But ad revenue won't be real money unless you write one of the few most popular articles -- and subsequently spend much of your time responding to comments and keeping it up to date.  Who but family (is it coincidence that their sample author shares a last name with their lead engineer?) or those truly hard up for cash (bloggers and journalists probably aren't expert enough to qualify) will go for this?  If a subject expert wants to earn some cash they'll write a magazine article.  If they want prestige and publicity or to summarize knowledge in their field they'll write a survey article for a journal.

Ursula Franklin on Computers and Bibles

Reading the following made me think of Negroponte's mission with the $100 laptop.  Ursula Franklin is talking about the importance of technological literacy, meaning more than just technical skills (as Bill Gates would have us define it -- see his Skills You Need to Succeed).  Franklin writes:

Another aspect of technological literacy requires attention.  What textbooks are being used?  What are our primers?  I recall a conversation a number of years ago with a colleague who had just negotiated a large donation of computers for his institution with one of the big computer manufacturers.  Since we respected each other, I could say to him, "Please, just stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and reflect.  Think about the analogy between your computer gift and the gift of free Bibles."  In the not so distant past many good people, for the honourable purpose of literacy and education, donated Bibles to teach "heathens" to read.  When Bibles are used as primers, the process becomes more than simply learning how to read.  The newly developed literacy brought with it an acculturation that often resulted in the loss of indigenous cultures.  How different is the cultural programming of the computer from the cultural programming of the Bible?  Should we not be asking, "How can we bring technological literacy to our students using our texts and primers without imposing undisclosed techno-values to the detriment or destruction of the students' own cultures and values?"  This doesn't mean that we should not teach for fear of indoctrination, but rather that we need to use many primers and explicitly transparent programming, elucidate the purpose, strengths, and limitations of all devices or programs, and, most importantly, clarify the social assumptions that are embedded in every design.

From an address given in 1991, printed in The Ursula Franklin Reader, 2006, p.332.

More about Ursula Franklin: Library and Archives Canada.

New Word: Knol

Google has blessed us with a new service and a new word: Knol, "which stands for a unit of knowledge."  I'll write something later about the service (see TechMeme for what people are saying), but first I wanted to say something about that word.  What an ugly word!  I assume it's pronounced "nawl" rather than "nole" because it's derived from "knowledge".  That guttural "ol" feels like you're gagging when you say it.

I want to propose an alternate definition: "knol" is the sound of a cat vomiting.  I don't think there's a word for that yet and knol seems like a good candidate.  It's usually repeated, as in knol-knol-knol... followed by the delivery.  If you've never heard a cat vomit, you really must (I'm sure you can google it).  One of our cats woke me up this morning with her knolling.  I was thankful that my wife got up and treated the knol-spew with pet stain remover so I was saved from this task.

Link: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge (Official Google Blog).