Archive for March, 2007
Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Digital Culture, Extended, Technology
March 28, 2007 at 10:40 am
Why not use the Web to create marketplaces of willing human beings who will perform the tasks that computers cannot? Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, has created Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online service involving human workers, and he has also personally invested in a human-assisted search company called ChaCha. Mr. Bezos describes the phenomenon very prettily, calling it “artificial artificial intelligence.”
“Normally, a human makes a request of a computer, and the computer does the computation of the task,” he said. “But artificial artificial intelligences like Mechanical Turk invert all that. The computer has a task that is easy for a human but extraordinarily hard for the computer. So instead of calling a computer service to perform the function, it calls a human.”
Now I see how we’ll meet those absurd estimates of AI in the next 40 years! It’ll be little people hiding inside a mechanical box! If they’re smart, they’ll dress the mechanical box up like a swank 1960’s era robot.
…at the NY Times.com
Posted in Books, Media
March 27, 2007 at 2:34 pm
“An intense undergraduate, in the sharp panic of an identity crisis, rushed to his professor: ‘I don’t know who I am. Tell me, who am I?’ The professor replied wearliy, ‘Please, who’s asking the question?’”… Michael Gazzaniga (Ed.)… at Powells.com
Posted in Blurb, Technology
March 27, 2007 at 12:34 pm
“Six weeks ago I set out upon an experiment to rewire my son’s brain. Last weekend we returned to the Sensory Learning Institute for follow-up testing after completion of the 30 day treatment. He had gone to the clinic for 12 days, and then we continued the light therapy portion of the treatment for another 18 days at home. Some of the test results were encouraging. One of them was jaw-dropping. Tinkering with neurology isn’t like programming a TiVo.” … Part 8 at Wired.com
Posted in Extended
March 24, 2007 at 11:26 am
I’m a huge fan of Lennard J. Davis’ work in disability studies, but I think I need to disagree with his take on buying and reading books. Or at least, half disagree.
Reading habits, like sleeping habits, are individual and varied. I like to read four or five books at once. It’s like being at a horse race — only one or two of the books might win. I don’t feel committed to finishing every book I start, and, in a way, isn’t it the writer’s fault if I’m not pulled along? I’m an inveterate book buyer, but like many collectors I don’t always think the proof of the pudding is in the reading. I’ve got some beautiful volumes that I will probably never read. Do I really want to read all the books of Sir Walter Scott or von Krafft-Ebing? I just like owning them.
Once I’m more than 10 or 20 pages into a book, I’m committed. I’ll suffer through a terrible story simply to see where it goes. I just can’t start a book and not finish it (in fact, I have constant anxiety about the fact that I started Galatea 2.2 over a year ago, adored it, and stopped halfway through because some large work project or other got in the way. I’m at a standstill trying to figure out whether I need to start over or just finish the unread portion someday.) I, too, read several books at once, and I do enjoy owning books for the sake of owning them, but I have every intention of reading them all some day.
Lennard J. Davis at The Chronicle on books.
Posted in Blurb, Digital Culture
March 21, 2007 at 2:45 pm
“There’s going to be an imaginary world in which I have an imaginary house where I will put the imaginary awards I won performing imaginary tasks as an imaginary person in a completely different imaginary world. So if you’re wondering what separates a hobby from psychosis, the answer is “about 600 bucks.”…Lore Sjöberg… at Wired.com (You were all right… I adore this man.)
Posted in Democracy, Extended, Science
March 21, 2007 at 1:58 pm
The former Vice President insisted that the link is beyond dispute and is the source of broad agreement in the scientific community.
“The planet has a fever,” Gore said. “If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, `Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it’s not a problem.’
Look, if the popularity of scientology is any indication, we are just totally screwed and Al Gore is just plain wrong on this.
Al Gore on global warming at CNN.com
Posted in Blurb, Evolution
March 18, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Scientists have discovered that the clouded leopard found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is an entirely new species of cat… at World Wildlife Fund
Posted in Blurb, Comics
March 18, 2007 at 10:20 am
“Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation”… Neal Stephenson in the NY Times on 300.
Posted in Atheism, Democracy, Extended
March 16, 2007 at 11:34 am
I was hoping to make this piece just one of the little blurbs one column over, but I couldn’t choose just one quote to highlight. Instead, I offer 3, and a promise that this is a beautifully well-written piece by Jeff Sharlet for Harpers. (Those of you who frequent the same haunts as I do might recognize his name from some of the best Killing The Buddha pieces, as well as his wonderful book based on the same [see also the co-author Peter Manseau's wonderful account of growing up as the son of a Christian priest and nun who refused to leave their orders despite their relationship]).
His invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorist attacks (also known as “signs”), victory or defeat in battle, at the ballot box, in bed. Those unable to feel His soothing touch at moments such as these snort at the notion of a god with the patience or the prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire, a supreme being able to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to abide two men kissing. A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god? His followers must be dupes, or saps, or fools, their faith illiterate, insane, or misinformed, their strength fleeting, hollow, an aberration. A burp in American history. An unpleasant odor that will pass.
[...]
The cause behind every effect, says fundamentalist science, is God. Even the inexorable facts of math are subject to His decree, as explained in homeschooling texts such as Mathematics: Is God Silent? Two plus two is four because God says so. If He chose, it could just as easily be five.
[...]
“We may need another 9/11,” he declared slowly, a teacher reciting a lesson, “to bring about a full spiritual revival.”
Posted in Blurb, Philosophy
March 16, 2007 at 11:07 am
“Vegetarianism has always been less about why you should eat plants than about why you shouldn’t eat animals. And so arguments about vegetarianism, by drawing attention to rights that we claim for ourselves but deny to other animals, inevitably involve basic questions about what it is to be human”… at The New Yorker