Voice of the Prokonsul

Titles, good intentions, (unintentional?) censorship, sci-fi, ]oh my.

2012-01-18T19:49:00.002-05:00

I initially attempted to post this as a comment to a blog. After two days and numerous attempts, I am giving up. Either the blog owner(s) are censoring my comment, or there is some weird technical snafu.

Response to World SF 2011 Retrospective Part 1

I appreciate Kaz's and this blog's attempt to cover Polish market, but if you are going to do something, please, do it properly, or don't mislead the reader with a title that suggests a comprehensive overview ("a recap on Poland", "Overview of recent Polish science-fiction"). State your intentions or biases clearly up front in the blog ("this blog entry will cover some recent releases on the Polish market, with the focus on female writers, and with a disclaimer that the author does not read Polish and relies on secondary sources"). Otherwise, one's good intentions may backfire, as shown by the blog comments, where numerous readers comment in similar vain as I. In fact, I came to that blog through a Polish premier sci-fi and fantasy magazine (Nowa Fantastyka), which commented on Facebook about that blogpost, curtly (and roughly translated) as: "a person who knows little of Polish sci-fi and fantasy is writing weird things about it".

As several others have said, if you want to have a good overview of a specific non-English market, get somebody who reads that language. And if you cannot, then pretty please, don't mislead the readers with claims that you'll do something (comprehensive overview) when this is not your intention (and/or ability, due to lack of literacy in a given language).

Overall, I think that it is a great that somebody is trying to provide the English-speakers with some information on the rich happenings in the rest of the world. I hope that the The World SF Blog keeps trying. It is human to err, after all - but those that don't try, at least, will never succeed.

On a sidenote, any overview o Polish 2011 should wait for the results of various 2011 award ceremonies, most notably, the Zajdel Award. Readers interested in the overview of Polish sci-fi and fantasy up to about 2005 may also want to check the Wikipedia article on the subject. This article could use an update for the last few years (hint!).

Make a backup and restore from it on N900 (Maemo)

2011-01-30T16:02:00.002-05:00

Note: this is an instruction for N900 (Maemo) users who are not very familiar with Linux. If you live and breathe Linux, go to Maemo wiki page on Manual backup and restore instead.

Recently, my N900 developed a severe case of USB port failure, which required me to send it in for repairs (luckily, it was still covered by the 1-year producer warranty). Annoyingly enough, Nokia as part of its privacy-protection policy will erase all your data (presumably reformatting/reflashing your phone, or whatever is the correct term for what they do to smartphones there...). And no, you cannot opt out of this :( Kind of makes me curious - what guarantee do I have that Nokia techs will not snoop around my phone all they want anyway before they clean the data? But I digress.

Unfortunately, there is no good guide to making backups (or restoring from them). The manual has a brief and decent information on creating or restoring from a backup (p.102-103, see also p.111); it however assumes your backup will be on phone's drive or a microSD card, which is not always the case, and forgets some crucial details (such as the importance of the file structure - more on that later). Maemo wiki pages (Manual backup and restore and what I presume is the page about the backup app) are, as usual, written in the higher geek, which may be fine if you know your way around Linux. For non-Linux users like myself, they are (as almost everything on Maemo wiki), pretty useless :( I found only one page online with a partial guide and some screenshots... hence, I decided to write this one.

It took me a while, but I was able to master the N900/Maemo backup/restore, and I even figured out how to do so with a faulty usb cable, no microSD, no wireless or Internet connection. Even in the perfect situation, with no hardware failures, backup/restore is not very userfriendly - I certainly wouldn't expect my parents to be able to do it.

So, to save you all some time, here's my guide to back and restore with N900.

1. How to access the default back-up application (in high geek the app seems to be called osso-backup, not that I can find that name in the application GUI...):

1.1 Access menu (top left, the symbol below - but if you don't recognize it, really, how long did you have the phone?):

1.2.Scroll down to the backup application, open it.

Here are the three applications useful for backup operations.

2. How to make a backup (using the default app mentioned above).

2.1 Click on New backup button in the bottom left, the procedure is fairly simple. On the first screen, you name your backup and select whether the backup's location is your phone's harddrive or a microSD card (if you have one in your phone); on the second you can (de)select stuff to backup (but why would you...?) and once you click select button, the backup will proceed. It should take about a minute or so.

The backups will be saved in the "backups" folder in the whatever passes as the top-level (root) directory (for Maemo's default File Manager and my Windows Total Commander when it accesses Maemo; note that there is some weird Linux hidden structure that you can access with other apps, like Mindnight Commander; I find it confusing as heck...). Whatever you chose as the name of your backup will be the name of the relevant subfolder in the "backups" folder (so, if you named your backup "backup december", you'll find the "backup december" subfolder in the "backups" folder). Simple, right?

This is the backup app main menu. Pretty self-explanatory, no options are hidden at the top or are "right-clickable" anywhere, as far as I can tell.

Note that based on the screen above, you'd expect to find a "backups" folder in the root directory, and within it, two folders: "Backup test" and "Backup december."

2.1.1 As the backup app itself notes, it will back up Communications and Calendar, Bookmarks, Settings, Application list. What it means is that it will not backup anything else, such as: Application settings, your documents, photos, music files, and such. If you want to back them up, you'll have to manually copy them to wherever you keep your back-ups (and I strongly suggest you keep them somewhere outside your phone, like on your computer harddrive).

2.1.1.1 Now if your USB cable is working, you can transfer the backup folder to your computer. I suggest you transfer the entire "backups" folder, because you'll need it for restoring (it is not created by default after a fresh install...).

2.1.1.2 How to copy that stuff? Assuming you have a working USB cable, I use Total Commander on Windows. Your platform and soft may vary (although for Windows, I do believe TC is "the best" file management tool there is...), but you should be able to access N900 and copy files over just like you'd do with any removable drive

2.2 Note that if your N900 is connected to something (your comp, presumably) by a USB, and that device can access files on your smartphone, the backup application will not work, it will complain about "USB cable connected." If you are just charging, it should still be ok, but if you connected in the mass storage or pc suite mode, it won't.

2.3 If you have a microSD card, after you click the new backup option, the backup app on the screen where you name your backup will have a choice of where you want to save your backup (location: your_device or external_memory_card). You can also copy the "backups" folder between those locations manually. If the proper file structure was preserved - as in "backups/your backup name" is in the card's root directory), the backup app will see them.

Frankly, unless you find yourself in the unlikely situation with broken USB port, no Internet/wireless and an urgent need to make the backup before your device fails completely, skip the 2.4 and go to 3 (restore) section.

2.4 If you want to use Bluetooth, don't - unless it is your last resort. It is much more painful than using the device drive/copy over the USB method (preferred) or the microSD; I had to do so because I found myself with a device with a broken USB port, no microSD (I should've just bought one...), no wireless or Internet connection. If so do you:

2.4.1 Make the backup on device harddrive as instructed above.

2.4.2 Establish a Bluetooth connection between N900 and the device (your comp) you want to transfer files over. This is the part I find very annoying, I was following the manual / guides on both devices, yet it took ages before they saw one another. I have no desire to waste hours of my life trying to replicate it, plus even if I did, it would only cover Windows XP on one end. If you know any good guides to N900 Bluetooth, post them in the comments.

2.4.3 Once you have a Bluetooth connection between your platforms, use the phone's File Manager to transfer files. Annoyingly, it cannot transfer folders, fortunately, you'll only have to transfer six files. Start the File Manager, click on your N900 (or the microSD if this is where you saved the backup), go to "backups" folder, go to your folder, click on each file, chose share, chose Bluetooth. On your target device, don't forget to copy the files to the "backups/name of the backup" structure properly. Note that File Manager, just like the backup app, will not work if another device can access the smartphone's file structure (which shouldn't be the case if you have restored to using Bluetooth, but keep that in mind for some weird occasions).

To use File Manager Bluetooth transfer, "right click" on the file, chose Share, and this menu will appear.

2.4.3.1 Alternatively, you may be able to use some better file manager on your computer to access N900. I think I was able to use something on XP, but I am not sure (it was a month or so ago). If you cannot, use the File Manager option I discuss above.

2.5 Come to think of it, you could probably use an email to send the files, or share them through a website, FTP or in some other ways. As when I was doing my backup I had no Internet connection or even wireless, those where not an option for me.

3. How to restore (using the default app).

3.1 Select backup to restore (highlight it), click restore. Keep in mind that the backup has to be in the proper file structure ("backups/your backup name") for the backup up to see it. The backup app can find them on N900 harddrive or the microSD. Note that a fresh install will not have a "backups" folder, so if you just copied the "your backup name" folder, you'll have to recreate the "backups" folder in the phone's root directory (or on the microSD card). This caused me some grief as I did not realize the importance of the "backups" folder early on, and I spend a while researching things on the net trying to figure out what to do with those files, before I realized (myself, no help to the net) that I need to recreate the backup folder structure in the phone's root directory... on the bright side, this folder is just a name, nothing special (but keep in mind it is a lowercase "backups", not "Backups").

This will NOT restore your applications, to do so you need to go to Application Manager, and from the top menu, chose Restore applications. This will give you a list of the applications you can restore, based on your backup file, all checked by default. Uncheck those you don't want, proceed to the installation (make sure your device is plugged in, this will drain the battery quickly). This may take a while, check the device periodically to click through some license/warning screens. I ended up redownloading and installing 300mb content in an hour period.

To restore applications, go to Application Manager, click the Application manager pull down menu at the top, and you'll see the following three options. Chose Restore applications, obviously.

Of course, this will not restore stuff not backed up (documents, music files, etc.). Copy those over manually (if you have backed them up manually before).

If you have some problems, try to ensure you have no more than one backup to restore from (I am not sure how the app handles multiple backups). And it seems to give me grief when I try to restore applications for the second time ("operation failed" trying to generate an app list), so make sure you select what you want properly the first time (or you may have to install them manually one by one later).

I hear there are other backup applications out there. Links to any how-to-use guides and reviews there will be certainly appreciated.

Oh, and for a while now I've been thinking that I should post a review of N900... we will see :)

Preeliminary survey results of ICT use by social movements worldwide - snippet

2010-11-06T18:24:00.000-04:00

So I am in the depths of analysis, but here's a short set of interesting numbers I just compiled. I was looking at member age ranges by sampling frame, here's the percentage of organizations with young membership (18-30 as percentage of total number of organizations in that frame...

ALL    21.84%
PITTSBURGH-BASED    14.29%
GLOBAL 16.34%
POLAND-BASED    26.43%
INNOVATIVE* 37.04%

*INNOVATIVE - my snowballing sampling scheme, based on surveying the movements/organizations whose webpages revealed significant Web 2.0 knowledge.

It appears that innovative organizations have the youngest membership; followed by Polish in the middle, and at the other end, we have the global/Pittsburgh organizations.

Now, here are the same stats for the oldest membership (over 50):

ALL    11.21%
PITT    10.71%
GLOB    16.99%
PL    5.71%
IN    7.41%

Global organizations have the older membership, but Polish ones are again an interesting outlier, having an even smaller number of old-membership organizations than the Innovative group. I wonder if this is because older generation in Poland has no tradition of activism?

So, as expected, we can talk about young members using new tools more often, but the Polish data does make for another interesting and unexpected story

I am now compiling the data, expect more in the coming months. I hope to be able to give you full analysis coming Spring.

Briding of global digital divide

2010-07-29T11:14:00.000-04:00

I was looking at some archival stats on Internet usage.

Compare the Top 10 Internet languages in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and the latest (Dec 2009 for me, your mileage may vary as that link is dynamic).

Look at the 2004 numbers: it is very much the core, developed, First world, China aside.

Still, its pitiful penetration numbers aside... what was (is?) wrong with France, Spain and Portugal? Their penetration numbers are China-like (~10%), whereas the rest of Europea was around 50%.

Now, look at 2010. In addition to China, whose penetration number have improved greatly (from 2004's 8% to 29.7%), note the inclusion of Arabic (17.5%) and Russian (32.3%).

Oh, don't get confused with langauges and countries. I was for a moment shocked with low penetration numbers for French, Spanish and Portugal, but remember - those languages are spoken in many periphery, developing, Third World countries in Africa and Latin & South America- thus the pitiful results (here are EU stats, and here is a breakdown for Spanish language, for example).

One of the most interesting numbers, for me, is the diminishing percentage of English-speakers as the % of Internet users - from 35.9% in 2004 to 30.1% in 2009.

And how about tripling of Internet users totals in non-Top 10 languages (from 100m to 300m), or nearly doubling of Internet users totals (from 800m to 1,400m) in that period?

Around 2006 the stat site started to report "Internet Growth for Language (since 2000)". For 2006, it was 128% for English, 346% for Chinese, 436% for non-Top 10 languages, and 189% for all languages. In 2007, Arabic enters the chart, with 940% growth (!). For 2009 we have 251.7% for English, 1162% for Chines, 2297% for Arabic, 525% for non-Top-10 languages and 400% for the world.

Global digital divide still exists, no doubt about that. But it is being bridged, as the rest of the world is catching up. 'bout time...

PS. Here's an interesting take on this from The Economist.

Abdication of Jimbo

2010-05-11T13:16:00.003-04:00

Well, maybe not a total abdication, but Jimbo has relinquished a substantial portions of his powers. See his announcement and the context.

In an upcoming academic article I discuss why calling Wikipedia a monarchy/dictatorship, while not too off the mark in its very early stages, is no longer true. It's nice not to be contradicted by the current events :)

Preeliminary survey results of ICT use by social movements worldwide

2010-04-22T15:36:00.003-04:00

The first results of my global survey are here. So, what are the numbers? See them on Google Docs.

Those are very early results, and I am hoping to increase the response rate significantly (as in: from ~5% to at least 15-30%). A more international response would be nice, too, although it is inevitable that a Western/English bias will appear (English hegemony of the Internet, etc.).

The results linked above combine results from my local and current global survey, for a net total of 62 responses. For results from the first, local survey (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) only, see here.

Once I get enough responses from the global survey, I will post another update here.

The survey is still ongoing (and likely will be for a few more months). If you would like to take it, and did not receive an @ from me with the invitation to it, you can use this generic link to access the survey.

Another Big Cyc protest song translated: Dictator

2010-04-18T12:28:00.003-04:00

Some time ago I translated into English the Mówi Bagdad (Baghdad Speaking) protest song by Big Cyc. Now, I did it for the Dyktator (Dictator) song.

Source of Polish lyrics: link

The music video clip, on youtube, till it is taken down:

This the Polish version. There is also a Belorussian, which I once saw on youtube, but I think it was already taken down :(

Translation:

I know a tyrant with a black moustache
Who likes sports very much
He plays hockey and basketball
Sometimes he goes to a tennis court
Puts a shot at opposition
In Duma he sneaks like a cat
He values light atlhetics
Because he loves the sickle and the hammer

refrain:
Lukashenko - concrete, hammer, wall, dres
Lukashenko - Brezhnev, Stalin, Pinochet

He knows the secrets of economy
Best student of the kolkhoz schools
He doesn't like to read the papers
He hates the word "BISON"
You can be beaten to a pulp
If you sing like I do
Freedom in a police state
Dicatorship in the shadows of the bars

refrain x 2

Civil disobedience 1: Chihuly's photos on Commons

2010-03-08T11:30:00.011-05:00

For a while now I wanted to showcase some interesting images deleted from Wikimedia Commons due to copyright paranoia. For those unfamiliar with our modern copyright laws, not only a lot of photos on the net are copyrighted and you cannot reuse them - but a lot of objects CANNOT BE LEGALLY PHOTOGRAPHED. For example, almost the entirety of modern art, even if it is on public display, cannot be photographed.

First case:

1) Three photos of mine of a decorative sculpture in the foyer of Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, US.

Photos:

Commons deletion discussion: here

Summary: modern art is copyrighted by artists (in this case, Dale Chihuly), that includes photos of it. There is no freedom of panorama in United States. This means that you cannot take pictures of Mr. Chihuly's works and share them with others, no matter how much you'd like to advertise his wonderful creations.

Outcome: photos will be deleted from Commons collection, which will entitle their removal from various articles, such as on Mr. Chihuly and Phipps Conservatory. Note how the copyright that is supposedly protecting the artists is in fact hurting them, in this case limiting the informative content of the primary reference work about them.

Current use examples:

Expect them to disappear soon.

Solution: wait 70 after Mr. Chihuly's death (unless copyright is retroactively extended, again...). Or contact him and ask for permission (assuming he is still the copyright holder and haven't sold the rights to that particular sculpture to the Gardens). Unfortunately, this is quite time consuming, and few Wikimedia volunteers take care of that, when so many other tasks need doing. I have done it myself a few times in the past, and on occasion managed to save an image or two, but it is a time consuming task (communicating with real person, with no guarantee they'll bother to reply, and then having to convince them to give permission to release the photos under a free license - which is likely a concept they've never heard of - and then have fun explaining why Wikimedia needs the commercial-use-allowed one... (because our ethics requires we explain to them what the free license we need entitles in detail...)). Compared to that, categorizing some images or translating descriptions is so much easier... sigh.

So Mr. Chihuly's article on Wikipedia will soon be gutted of all images of his works. Feel free to tell me how this benefits him :)

Note: This blog post is by no means intended as a jibe against Mr. Chihuly (who is almost certainly unaware of how the law is "protecting him"), nor against Wikimedia Commons (which being a non-profit organization on a donation budget cannot really risk being sued by somebody, with all the costs it incurs). It is however intended a a jibe against the current copyright system, showing how it is hurting all of us - artists and the public, both of which it claims to protect.

In the coming months, I intend on covering other media deletions from Commons (and maybe a few examples of when images were saved). Stay tuned,

Preeliminary survey results of ICT use by social movements in Pittsburgh - update

2009-08-25T14:16:00.003-04:00

A month ago I released the preliminary results with ~10% response rate and promised that I'll release new results when we cross magical numbers of ~20% and (target) ~30%. Now we are midway at ~20% and hence I'd like to update you the new insights gained from the survey.

Before I go into the numbers, first, an interesting observation that comes from some interviews / phone conversations I recently had with some of the respondents. Many do not consider their organization a part of a "social movement" - yet at the same time they are happy to be listed as a group for "social justice and change" on TMC website. This shows that there is an interesting difference between academic (ivory tower...) definition of what a social movement is, and what an average person (activist...) thinks of it. Plus, from the academic perspective, there is the problem of blurry boundaries - some organizations may be seen as not part of the movement itself, but rather, of the allied "movement community", which can be best understood as the attitude "we are not activists, but we broadly support them". And since in real life it is often difficult to distinguish where the movement stops and the community begins, it is understandable that my survey will reach both spectrums - which I think is fine, as community organizations are no less important (if less showcased) than the movement ones. So if you are not sure if your organization is part of the movement, you can rest assured that as long as you are fine with being listed on TMC list, you are part of the larger community that I am interested in :)

Now, back to business. With the response rate doubling, what has changed?
* a few newer organizations have replied (out of 19 respondents, 3 are in the "our organization is 2 years or younger group", and 16 are in "our organization is 5 years or older group")
* as for areas of focus, environment (9 respondents), health (7) and community and social services (7) are still among the most popular, but have been joined by education (7) and human rights (7).
* so what's unimportant? Culture (4), intellectual property / free culture (6), Internet / network neutrality / digital divide (6) and religion (4) were all selected but ranked only in the third tier ("Least important" - but still important enough to be ranked as third), and
economy / promoting business / labor / trade and commerce (6) is in the middle tier
* ~75% of organizations indicate they have non-members (supporters) who participate in their organization activities, about half have non-members who recruit others for the organization
* at this point, for every new innovative technology I suggest (from blogs through video-sharing sites, wikis to Twitter) there are respondents who indicate their organization finds it useful for something.

For the results to be considered reliable for academic research, a responce ratio of 30% is needed (which translates in ~10 more people taking the survey). Hopefully, in about a month, I'll be able to report that the local survey is done, and move on to my second stage - the international survey.

It is my hope that once the results are fully analyzed, you'll be able to look at what your peers are doing, and thus find some helpful solutions and strategies to benefit your organization.

Thanks to all that took the survey, and to those that will take it - a few minutes of your time greatly contributes to our understanding of how organizations desiring social change are using the tools of the Digital Age.

Teaching with wikis and Wikipedia

2009-08-23T15:58:00.002-04:00

Recently I run into an excellent quote:

... the future of communication and an informed citizenry will depend increasingly on the Internet rather than on television or the print media. That doesn't mean we should stop teaching the traditional essay and research paper, but it does mean we need to teach students to work in other genres, such as writing for blogs and wikis, creating podcasts and PowerPoint presentations, and participating in social-networking sites. They need to be comfortable in a variety of online environments, understand Web etiquette, know how to protect their privacy and respect the privacy of others, and learn how to evaluate various sources of information.

-- William Pannapacker, associate professor of English at Hope College, "On Stupidity, Part 2: Exactly how should we teach the 'digital natives'?", The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 5, 2008

Hear, hear.

Personally, I see no reason not to assign Wikipedia articles as assignments, and many reasons to do so. Students improve their digital literacy, learn about the site they use so often (and why indeed it can be sometimes unreliable), have something to show for their hard work (a digital artifact, useful to others, instead of a paper that's going to the next trash bin as soon as the course has ended), Wikipedia gets some nice content and the teachers can get help from Wikipedia volunteers (for example, when I am grading students articles, I am also aided by advice from Wikipedia content reviwers). It's a win-win-win situation for everyone :)

Sometime in the near future I want to write a follow-up to my first academic article, Teaching with wikis and Wikipedia. Three years down the road, I am happy to say that most of what I wrote than is still useful - but some updates are needed.

Crucial things I have learned could be summarized as follow: students are lazy, and need motivating. Carrots will only work for a few - you need sticks as well. Hence in the wiki assignment, which depends on students contributing to it regularly, you need graded deadlines to avoid a relatively common phenomena where most students ignore the assignment till the last few weeks/days.

Overall, teaching with Wikipedia has been an enjoyable experience, not only to me but also to other Wikipedia editors - and to the students themselves (at least those who were sufficiently motivated to try to learn something). My last class, despite having just one month and a half, managed to expand three (out of six assigned) articles into Good Articles - and that did exceed my expectations. Now I wonder if the new class, lasting 4 months, will be able to do this to all assigned articles, and if they succeed, I am thinking about replicating the great achievement of the MMM project, and aiming to have the students write Featured Class articles.

On the subject of initiatives related to teaching with Wikipeida, it is worth to check out:
* the Wikipedia Educator's Guide
* the Best practices in assigning Wikipedia articles as coursework to students
and of course
* the Wikipedia:School and university projects

A gift for my friends in social movements

2009-08-12T22:33:00.009-04:00

With the G20 coming to Pittsburgh, a lot of my friends and colleagues involved in social movements are having the time of their lives :)

I thought they deserve a break - hence here's an anti-Iraq war song by Big Cyc, a popular Polish anti-establishment rock band, Mówi Bagdad (Baghdad Speaking). (For better or worse, Poland had one of the largest and longest staying contingent of troops in Iraq)

Please note that youtube is likely to remove this video as a copyvio - I am confident that a search for the song title will yield a reupload somewhere (I wonder what Big Cyc members think about that... I send them an email some time ago asking for some freely licensed materials for their article on Wikipedia but they never replied :( ).

I found Engrish (Pogrish...?) words for the song at some blog. Here's a version that's at least free from major grammatical errors:

Big Cyc - Baghdad Speaking

Janek is going to Baghdad — wants to fight
Young wife will in Poland — proudly lives
Muslims want to — wipe out the infidels
Blood and sweat pour on dry sand

Polish Army pays poorly — everyone knows
Smuggling can pad it up — it’s ok
Again a bomb in Tikrit — shadow of death
Suicide terrorist with dynamite — began the day

Salamu, salamu, salamu alaykum
As-salamu, salamu, salamu,

You can hear silent bullets pass over helmets
Screams of torn people — children’s squeal
Polish soldier has character — tough guy
He doesn't know what he fought for all year long

Janek returns to Warsaw — human wreck
Without money, wife and fame — something wrong
Mr. Minister loudly praises — all is fine
Although they didn’t read Koran — they want to fight

Salamu…

Organizational intertia

2009-07-31T15:14:00.002-04:00

At a recent large academic conference, my paper, for some reason, was given a wrong name. When I asked for it to be correct, I was told that the print program was out, so they could only offer a correction in the form of a leaflet inserted into the program - reasonable. But when I asked them to correct the entry in an online schedule listing, I was told that "since the online program is intended to resemble the final program we cannot make the change there either".

?!!

One would think that the very purpose of an online program is to be a better version of the printed one, particularly, one that can be easily changed to reflect changes to schedule... but as we can see from the above, some people still cannot adjust to the realities of the cyberspace (which is ironic because my paper is on an Internet-related subject :D).

Oh well. Being a lowly grad student I know better than to try to reform a major (academic) institution myself. Been there, tried, failed :)

Youth today... and the future

2009-07-28T16:33:00.004-04:00

So I had my final lecture today (teaching university undergrads about "sociology of the family") in the summer class I was teaching, and as usual in my classes, the final lecture looks at the future. We watched a video of Kurzweil, and had a discussion about things like genetic engineering, life expectancy, aging society, the Internet and so on. At one point, however, I was shocked: vast majority of the students seemed very opposed to the idea of immortality (which is increasingly becoming a serious possibility according to some scientists).

Interestingly, theirs were not the arguments I was used to hearing in the past ("it's not natural/it's against the religion/etc."). No, this bunch was rather... very, very pessimistic. They talked about boredom ("why would you want to leave forever? you'll just keep seeing more human misery"), about how the future will be scary (citing sci-fi antiutopias - Huxley, Wells, etc.), about how we have to deal with overpopulation and scarce resources and how immortality is unsustainable, and they even considered (and roughly supported) the idea that the government should make it illegal for people to achieve immortality (!).

I haven't held enough discussions on this subject to know if this group represents an outlier, or is there some current of pessimism about the future that is surfacing about the modern youth?

Being a singularitarian optimist myself I found their pessimism unsettling. Not to want to see the wonders of the future, not to want to live one life's fully... that's what *I* find scary.

Comparing Wikipedia to Second Life (popularity contest)

2009-07-27T12:32:00.001-04:00

I recently found that a Wikipedia-related presentation of mine in a sociological conference (ASA in SF - let me know if anybody else is going there) got shifted to a Second Life track (it was supposed to be about online communities in general, but mysterious are the ways of conference and panel organizers).

So I thought I should at least pay a token attention to SL, and I thought about a brief numerical comparison. It is possible to consider the number of total registered accounts (en-Wiki 2009: ~10 mil, other Wikimedia Foundation projects 2009: ~10 mil, Second Life 2008: ~15 mil) but I run into a problem trying to get a wiki-equivalent of "average/highest number of active editors" (SL in early 2008: ~40,000 - but that's just for people logged in, doesn't say anything about their activity - one can leave a SL client running in the background... just like one can be logged in to Wikipedia for weeks).
What about Wiki? After some thought and discussion and a useful tool that was designed I begun compiling some stats based on a number of unique editors listed at RC page. There is still not enough data to see a clear trend, but numbers seem roughly consistent at about 800 registered users / 400 ips editing en-Wikipedia per hour and 90/30 per 5 minute periods.

As for Alexa traffic rank, SL is at megere ~4000, compared to our Top 10, but that of course simply reflects the fact that Wikipedia is useful for non-logged in users as well.

I wonder if we can indeed answer whether Wikipedia or SL is more popular? Wikipedia is more popular in general, but for logged in (registered) users, which one would be?

Preeliminary survey results of ICT use by social movements in Pittsburgh

2009-07-22T15:38:00.004-04:00

I am a strong believer that science is for the people, not to be locked in ivory towers. Hence, over the coming months I will be publishing a series of blogs documenting research progress in my PhD dissertation, which, roughly, aims to survey and analyze how social movements are using new information and communication tools (think new media - blogs, twitter, wikis, etc.). This analysis should also show the wider public why such research is actually useful :)

To this date, while individual use of some of those tools in organizations was studied, nobody has tried to do a comprehensive analysis of how Internet-era ICT are affecting the social movements. This seems to be to be a major omission on the part of social movement researchers, and I believe that deeper understanding of this issue will be of much use both to the scholars, and to the movement activists themselves.

The first stage of my research involves surveying movements local to my region, which is Pittsburgh. Later stages should provide data on national and international levels.

The Pittsburgh survey takes advantage of the existence of a local social movement coordination organization, the Thomas Merton Center. A downside to this is that TMC has a left wing bias, and thus this survey is likely missing some right wing movements. This should not be an issue with the latter surveys, which will be based on more neutral sampling schemes. TMC list of "justice groups" has approximately 200 entries (193 to be exact), out of which, 125 seem to have or had online presence (i.e. I was able to find their contact info in form of an email (112) or web-based contact form (13)). I should note here that the TMC list has online contact info only for ~15% of the movements, the other 50% I googled myself.

This yields the first interesting statistic: in Pittsburgh region, we can say ~65% of movements have online presence. In other words, a decade into the 21st century, ~35% of local movements have never entered the Internet - an interesting comment on a digital divide, and a contradiction to an existing statistic by Surman (2001) who estimated, nearly a decade ago, that in the developed world, ~90% of voluntary organizations have internet presence. I am already wondering what will be the findings of my larger scale surveys.

Out of 125 online contact addresses, 2 have opted out before from being ever contact for future surveys (according to surveymonkey - the tool I use - database), and 21 have bounced, which indicates to me that that movement is no longer active. Thus the real sample size is 102. Out of those, I have gotten, two weeks and two mailings into the survey, 11 replies (10.7% response rate).

Here I want to heartily thank all the people who have taken time to complete the survey so far, and I should note that the survey is still open (and will be for several weeks), so if you would like to improve our understanding of the ICTs in movements in Pittsburgh, please consider taking the survey :) (please use a personalized email invitation link instead of this one if I have got a survey invitation from me before)

Now, onto the preliminary results. 11 is a relatively low respononse rate, and this does impact the validity of the results somewhat (just a few more responses would do wonders here). If and when I get more responses, I will post an updated analysis. Still, with 11 responses there is enough data to see some interesting patterns. I am bolding those that I found most surprising/interesting:

* all surveyed movements concentrate on local or regional issues
* 80% of surveyed movements are 20 or more years old, all are 5 or more years old
* more responses are need to reliably judge areas of interest, currently, environment, health and social services are the leading areas, but I think this may change if and when more movements reply to my survey
* most movement who replied have few hundreds members
* on average, organizations which replied have ~16 computes connected to the Internet
** Those two may indicate that primarily representatives of larger movements have responded to my survey so far... although it's hard to be sure, as there is no data on size of local movements (maybe most or nearly all movements are that large? Yet somehow I have my doubts here)
* all movements indicate that they have non-members (supporters) who participate in their organization activities, about half have non-members who recruit others for the organization
* member's age distribution seems to be concentrated in the 31-50 range
* majority of respondents think that Internet is very important to the organization (~60% declared it is very important, ~30% as important, only ~10% (=1...) as very unimportant

The second part of the survey, due to its matrix build, needs more replies to be valid; still, here are current highlights:
* face to face communication seems to be the single most important when it comes to management, recruitment, and fund raising, but ICTs become more important when it comes to interacting with other organizations. Usage of traditional mail, websites and emails is popular as well, but there a minority (10-20% = 1-2) of respondents indicate that their movements use new innovative technologies (blogs, internet foras, social tagging, social networking, Twitter, etc.).
* about half of the respondents agree that younger members are much more likely to use the Internet; only 15% disagree
* Internet seems to be used equally by all members, no matter what their rank in the organization
* Usage of tools is dependent on their recentness, more or less as we would expect, although interestingly, texting is used by three organizations - but only in since about a year
* There is strong correlation between ICTs - whether pre-Internet or post-Internet - and a feeling that they give both the individual and the organization more of a say. I would like to say that the the new ICTs are slightly more correlated with that then the old ones, but validity is really an issue here (more replies are needed for me to be able to discuss that)
* there seems to be a general interest in the ICTs, and several respondents indicated that their organization may use the newer, more innovative ones in the future
* at least two of the surveyed organizations are familiar with and are using wikis

That's it for the preeliminary analysis. Once again, I'd like to thank all who have taken (and will take...) their time to fill the survey. If you have not done so, I hope that the analysis above does show how valuable even one answer can be.

I will make a new update when the survey closes with more than 20 respondents, or as soon as that number is reached (and I will make further updates for each 10 more respondents). In theory, past studies suggest I should eventually get about 30 responses, since online survey response rate is about 30%. I will let you know if this holds true in my case :)

PS. The full dataset, minus any potentially confidential information (like emails and such) will be make available online once the survey is completed. Science is for the people...

Facelift

2009-07-20T03:16:00.002-04:00

Long overdue, but it's time to bring this blog up to modern standards. Replacing 2004 template with 2009...

Wikipedia statistics updated

2009-07-19T12:27:00.001-04:00

Wikipedia en statistics have been updated updated, first time since 2006.

Find out more about it at Erik's blog (post1, post2).

Where Wikipedia doesn't work

2009-07-16T18:32:00.003-04:00

I have to wonder why Wikipedia community has so much trouble researching itself. Sure, we love to talk about ourselves - we have blogs, newspapers (Signpost), podcasts... but when it comes to serious research, the initatives fail one after another.

Wikidemia, Wikipediology, Wikimedia Research Network - all dead. Even the Wikipedia in academic studies is doing poorly if I am not there to update it - you'd think that increasingly more numerous scholars studying Wikipedia would at the very least bother to advertise their work - apparently not :(

It took us years to get a side wide survey in 2008 - and even it had to be done by outside scholars, with all the transparency and communication problems that implies (there were some rumors about making data set publicly available, but if there has been any confirmation, I am unable to find it). The community survey project, the General User Survey, was never consulted, and there are no signs that we will have a 2009 (or 2010) survey.

There are signs of hope. The usability project looks promising. The Foundation has recently hired a Research Analyst. Yet...

My general impression of this is CHAOS. Things are being done on many foras. There is the usability project, there is the Wiki-research-l listerv, there is Wikidemia, there is the Wikimedia Research Network, things are annouced in Foundation blog or via press releases, there are initatives of individual non-English chapters (for example, non-English surveys of users...).

Some time ago I tried categorizing research pages on Wikipedia and on meta, but it's a loosing fight, particularly since there is no central place to announce them (research is being done and discussed everywhere possible, from Wikipedia subuserpages to people's own blogs). There is little to communication between existing foras, which have different members are differ in openness and focus, old foras are being abandoned due to little activity, new ones are founded by people who don't know about the old ones, research efforts are likely duplicated in various places, and the cycle goes on... it's a chaos, and pretty messy one at that :(

I hope that the new Research Analyst (whoever s/he is) will start by bringing an order to this, and creating some central forum for all of those initiatives, preferably based on a wiki somewhere.

PS. If you know of Wikipedia research initiatives / foras I missed, do let me know. I wonder how big is the iceberg that I a tip of I am ranting about :)

Wikipedia: increasingly more reliable

2009-07-05T15:17:00.003-04:00

Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals has compiled some interesting statistics related to citation of academic journals in Wikipedia. Wikipedia may still have much unreliable info, but it has made lots of progress in the past few years, as current tens of thousands of reliable citations prove.

And of course, instead of resting on laurels, Wikipedia is now taking this opportunity to increase its coverage of the very subject of academic journals...

On the word "wiki" - and its real application

2009-06-03T08:57:00.004-04:00

The just published issue of First Monday has an interesting paper, which employs the word "wiki" but in fact goes beyond what is usually meant by it, applying it to the studies of identities. I find the paper interesting, but the usage of the word wiki in this context, even more so. Behold the evolving language - or at least, academia's love for coining neologisms :)

Read the paper here: Wikidentities: Young people collaborating on virtual identities in social network sites by Kerry Mallan, Natasha Giardina

Another thought: the paper misspells the "Condorcet's jury theorem" writing instead about the "Concordet Jury Theorem" (Condorcet comes from theorem's inventor, Marquis de Condorcet). If First Monday articles were a wiki, this could be easily corrected. As it is... the paper, pretty modern as far as academia goes, does not even allow easy commenting on its contents. I wonder when this will change?

Flickr vs. Wikimedia Commons: why Flickr is doomed

2009-06-01T03:59:00.003-04:00

I was always puzzled why people prefer to use Flickr to Wikimedia Commons. Flickr, after all, has litte to offer compared to Commons: Flickr allows you to upload images, set copyright, tag them, comment on them, and is not fully free - Wikipedia allows you the same, plus is completly free, and comes with a community that will actually IMPROVE your images - by adding missing categories, correcting wrong ones, improving/translating description, etc. As far as I can tell, the only feature that flickr offers that seems useful and is not implemented on Commons, is mapping part of the image and commenting on it. And of course, for those strange people who don't like others using their work, flickr allows the use of non-free licenses...

Yet:

Flickr popularity on Alexa: 33 most popular site online

Wikimedia Commons popularity: 186 most popular site online

What gives? I think that the flickr is more popular because it looks more "cool", and with the snowball effect, it reaches more people. It's also slightly more user friendly, and better integrated with popular networking sites like Facebook. Wikimedia Commons is not that popular outside the Wikipedia crowd. Yet with Commons "wisdom of the crowd" approach, its steadily improving quality of images, and drive to move useful and freely licensed images from Flickr to Commons, while Flickr keeps accumulating more and more crap, I'd predict that in few years, time, Flickr will be relegated to a repository of porn, non-encyclopedic images and copyright violations.

Google's copyright paranoia

2009-05-31T13:16:00.002-04:00

Lessig's Free Culture book has been released under a Creative Commons license. So how come Google Print's three editions consist of one limited preview and two no previews??

Help pretest my survey

2009-05-15T14:28:00.003-04:00

A crucial part of my PhD thesis is a survey for movement activists about their usage of communication tools. A crucial part of that is that the survey must be as clear and as short as possible. Here's where I need help: I need a few kind souls to read through the survey (link), and to note any parts that are confusing, contain errors (I am not a native English speaker...), and let me know how long did it take you to complete the survey (I hope that it is doable in ~20 minutes).

You can reach me by commenting here, at my Wikipedia talk page, at Facebook, or at piokon at post dot pl. Thanks,

Google Library and Commons

2009-04-28T19:58:00.006-04:00

I've just discovered that Google now allows you to save public domain books into your library. What good are public domain books for Commons, you may ask? Well, in addition to being interesting historical documents, public domain books, by default, are full of public domain images. In other words: Google Books project does not only collect text, but alongside, quietly, it is collecting a vast amount of old illustrations, photos, maps and such. Examples:

[Please note, those images may not be available in full view to users outside of the United States - reason] (PS. And indeed now that I am in Poland I am seeing junk...)

I've saved a few dozens old Polish books into my library, most of them have at least several old illustrations, photos, or maps. I have no idea when I'll have time to move them to Commons, but I wonder if we should create a dedicated project that would catalogue useful books (those that have media) and report on the progress of their assimilation?

It appears Google have scanned lot of duplicates of the same book; they don't seem to have any mechanism on reporting duplicates, and their reports on damaged pages seem somewhat buggy, too. Still, for a free service, it's a great tool!

Some useful tips for working with images from Google Print:
* you can switch to html mode while browsing a public domain book (small link somewhere to the right and middle of a page) and save the resulting image as a jpeg

PS. Surfing the web, I discovered this excellent blog ("Inside Google Book Search") devoted to Google Book Search; note the use of images from Google Book public domain books.

Some interesting studies on Wikipedia

2009-04-20T17:43:00.002-04:00

Wikipedia's coverage and conflicts quantified: this important study tells us which topics are best covered in Wikipedia, and also, which topics generate most conflict.

What's really interesting is the that "philosophy" and "religion" have generated 28% of the conflicts each. This is despite the fact that they were only 1% and 2%.

Preliminary results from the UNU merit survey: Preliminary results from the General User Survey of 2008 are available.

What I found quite interesting, in addition to the (expected but still not fully understood) the great disproportion in terms of gender among contributors, was the low rate of responders from Poland (around ~15 place, and only tenth as much as those from Germany) when compared to the fact that Polish Wikipedia is the 4th largest. The researchers are somewhat surprised at the rates of response from various countries; they have for example excluded the responses from Russian Wikipedia, which were the second most numerous group (Russian Wikipeda is the 10th most largest).

Copyright issues with pictures and mods of games: explanation and advice for game designers and fans

2009-01-19T13:15:00.004-05:00

This is a repost of a forum post I created for BoardGameGeeks.

Summary
Many of us take pictures of games we love, and post them here and on other sites. Others make game aids and other mods, and then share them (or brag about them) on the web. Most, if not all, of game designers not only approve of that, but welcome this, as such viral marketing by fans is a major help to them. But... in fact, people who post such pictures almost always break the law. While it is unlikely the game designers would ever sue a fan, one can wonder if all heirs who inherits the rights or the lawyers of a big company that acquires them will be always so considerate... but there is a simple solution. Below, I'll describe the legal basis of why taking the pictures (or making mods or game aids) is illegal, and how it can be easily and legally rectified, with but a small declaration on the part of the game designer(s) that don't want their fans to be breaking the law and have legal troubles in the future.

Still, for those who will say: "but there are millions of pictures, mods and gaming aids, on BGG and elsewhere, and nobody is being sued", here is some food for thought:
* copyright-conscious sites (Wikipedia, YouTube, and increasingly others) constantly delete a lot of such pictures (videos, etc.), and it pains me to see so much good, fan made effort wasted
* I don't know about you but I don't want to be an exception and find myself sued "for publicity" when a big, evil corporation acquires the laws for a game I took pictures of and their lawyers decide that they can make a short term profit out of my savings
* and I don't want the above to happen to sites like BGG, run by well meaning fans but with little knowledge of the legal issues behind copyright and how it can suddenly rise its ugly head and bite them when they are least suspecting it
* finally, I don't like the fact that most of us, myself included, are copyright criminals, and I'd like to do something to change it. Educating people about the evils of modern copyright and easy solutions makes me feel better :)

Bottom line: if you are a game producer, and you want your products well and legally illustrated and promoted by fans, use a free license. Among other things, they are free to use, too, and in practice, it requires nothing more then a once-in-a-lifetime dedication of a few minutes of your time to put up a small declaration on your website (and on your future products, an additional sentence in a manual or on the box). If you are a gaming fan who takes pictures or creates gaming mods, ask the producer to use a free license, and release all your works under a free license yourself.

Why should we care?
Well, for several reasons. If you like BGG:
* knowing possible legal problems facing BGG and what can be EASILY done to solve them could be useful at some point
If you are a gaming fan who likes to take pictures, and posts them online (or makes gaming aids, gaming mods and such - yes, this applies to you people as well!):
* knowing what the law says, when you break it and what you can do not to break it is usually quite valuable
If you are a game designer:
* knowing what the law says and what can you do (quickly, easily and for free) to have your fans not break it sounds like a good idea
* this will also make it easier for the fans to do their viral marketing stuff :)
* further, Wikipedia is the most popular website on the web; if you google for a popular game, its entry will usually come up next to BGG entry. Further, with a little effort (often on the part of your fans) you can have your game mentioned on Wikipedia's front page, a page with something like tens of millions hits daily. So if you have your game described and well illustrated on Wikipedia, you'll read on :)

Why is posting pictures of games illegal?
Please note that laws differ in different countries, but what I write below holds true for most, and unfortunately, due to international nature of the web, anybody suing for copyright infringement is going to chose the best (most restrictive) law (and since both US and EU laws are among the most restrictive, and used to passing verdicts on such international cases, assume the worst).

While I am not a lawyer, years of hanging out around copyright conscious people on Wikipedia (a project which is very copyright conscious, up to having what some describe as "Nazi volunteer copyright police" :)) have taught me that what it boils down to is that a lot of items are copyright protected to an extent that while you can take a picture of that item, you are not allowed to distribute it. The technical, legal term for a photo (or a mod, or a gaiming aid) is "derivative work".

This applies primarily to photos of modern art. Modern art means for example computer screenshots of movie and computer games, but also pieces of board/card/miniature/other games. You CAN take a photo of such objects - the copyright to it belongs to you and the artist(s) - but you cannot legally publish it without the artists explicit permission.

To give you an example: Copyright of game X is owned by the company X. A fan M makes a mod of the game X, posts pictures online, which are in turn reproduced by fan N and hosted on site A. M, N and A violate copyright of X. N and A violate the copyright of M. In other words, they are criminals... (yes, probably millions of Internet users are criminals, not realizing it... did I mention that the current copyright laws suck?). If the company X is a reasonable one, it will understand that M, N and A are helping it and do nothing. If not, they may be a target of "cease and desist" letters or worse. The company X can however very easily make it legal for fans to mod/take photos/etc. of their games. See the next section for what, exactly.

Please note that the current copyright laws were created due to lobbying of big media corporations (Disney and such) and indeed they don't benefit anybody but them. They certainly don't benefit an average gamer or game designer; instead they hurt us. In the next section I will describe how we can easily deal with them.

Some links of interest for those who want to read a little bit more about specific laws, their interpretation and reasons behind them:
Wikipedia experts on images on the concept of "derivative work"
Wikipedia experts on images on the concept of "freedom of panorama"
Wikipedia experts on images on the concept of "fan art"
An excellent series of essays mostly about why writers (and other artists) should use free licenses, by a renown sci-fi writer, Eric Flint
A free online book that several years ago made people realize how evil and twisted the copyright law can be

Let me quote from that book here:
"There has never been a time in history when more of our 'culture' was as 'owned' as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now."

Easy solution
So US copyright law (and international law) is close to evil. And it harms not only the end users, like us, gamers, but often, the companies themselves: they like the viral marketing of their products... but very few know how to do it legally. Yet it is in fact very easy. It requires nothing more then a small declaration on your website (and in your future products, an additional sentence in a manual or on the box).

Legally means two thing, basically:
* a company should put on their website and on their products a note that it allows some taking and distribution of their photos under free licenses and if they want fans to make mods (such as the giant catan 3d versions and so on), other modifications. Note that free licenses such as Creative Commons are detailed enough that they can still protect the commercial rights of the producer, while allowing fans to legally make (noncommercial) photos, mods and such. In other words, a producer, by taking a few minutes to add a Creative Commons logo and note to their websites and future products, loses nothing, but makes it legal for fans of their products to help with viral marketing :) In other words, free licenses like CC give the artist/copyright holder a legal way to say "you can republish my works under certain conditions and you don't have to try to contact me to get my permission which is required under traditional copyright" or in other words "go and legally spread your love for my products").
* anybody taking a photo and uploading it online should clarify that the photo is under a free license, for the same reasons as above (or to spell it out: if you don't use a free license on your photo, anybody reproducing it is violating your copyright and you can sue them...).

If a free license is not used, a fan who does not want to break law has to contact the copyright holder (game designer), and ask him for a permission to do what they want (make a mod, or post a photo of the game). The copyright holder has to reply. Legal issues ensue when the fan and copyright holder are under various jurisdictions... (for the record, Creative Commons is now mostly international and universal).

If it seems like a hassle, blame to lawmakers, and understand that lack of the above will preclude, for example, illustrating the game article on various law-conscious sites. If you are still annoyed, there are organizations involved in trying to change the existing laws, see links leading from the above Wikipedia article on "free content" for more details (the free culture movement is my personal favorite).

To end, here's a short minute guide on how to freely license your work:
* if you are a game designer, or similar: go to Creative Commons website, spend half a minute with their license generator, take the generated html code, put it on your website, add some custom note if you want to your fans, include in your future releases, and rest assured that your fans can now legally spread photos and such of your games
* if you are a photo taker, make sure that when you upload your photo, you add a note on the CC licenses. Many sites (flickr, Wikimedia Commons) ask you to chose a license. Don't be lazy and chose a free license, not the evil default of "all rights reserved". If the site you upload your photos to doesn't have a free license option, bug them until they add it.

PS. But what about fair use?
Fair use in any way is a legal nightmare, and there is a consensus among the interested legal experts that nine times out of ten, a case revolving around fair use will end up with the fair use being invalidated and the person claiming they had the right to use it, paying the damages... for those reasons, fair use is being phased out from Wikipedia, and is currently accepted only on English language Wikipedia (and in a few years, there won't be any fair use images on Wikipedia). This essays of Eric Flint (linked above) discusses the problems of fair use in detail.

PPS. This post was inspired by some replies to my thread in the Settlers of Catan discussion which in turn was inspired by deletion of SoC images from Wikipedia

PPPS (May'09). Commons have liberalized its policies towards fanart: see the new Commons:Fanart policy. This policy a nutshell: Educationally-useful fan art can be accepted on Commons provided it has not been copied from any creative element of the original copyright work such as a movie, TV show, comic book or computer game.

Confession of a fansubber

2009-01-03T14:54:00.001-05:00

Confession of a pirate: an interesting article, certainly related to the "free culture" phenomena. Defeat? Victory? Both? A step in the right direction? Read on:

Dattebayo to Drop Naruto Effective 1/15/2009

The joy of ignorance

2009-01-02T17:38:00.004-05:00

Or why do I love Wikimedia Commons (the Wikipedia-style media repository). It's not only because I can upload my high resolution, sometimes a bit crappy images :) It's not only because the images can be displayed on Wikipedia. It's because they will be near perfectly categorized - time, place, type... and if I don't know how to categorize them - I can just wait and see how somebody will categorize in in the future. Now, I know little about life sciences: animals, plants, etc. But I still take photos of them... and what happens?

I upload a picture that in my vast knowledge I name "Black bird on grass" :) and categorize it in "unidentified birds". A month later, somebody else updates it to "Unidentified Passeriformes". Few months later, we have the bird narrowed down to "Turdus merula".

Watching this happen to all of my images, from mushrooms to strange parts of machinery, is really fun :)

Feeling like testing your visual knowledge? Try the "Category:Unidentified subject". I think I see a camel...

PS. In other news: my Wikipedia adventures were blogged about by Durova.

Obama's Facebook transcript

2008-12-22T10:22:00.002-05:00

Regarding this article in LATimes, on Obama and Facebook. What makes it different from a 1000 similar ones, is that this contains Obama's Facebook wall transcript...

My first thought is "Prima Aprilis". If not, I wonder how did this become public... and is this a violation of privacy? How private is Facebook, really? Semi-private? Do we need a new definition of privacy for that? Can I freely share the transcript of my wall? Yours? Who owns the copyright? Me? You? Facebook?

Second thought. Looks fascinating as material for document studies... it's not only a blog of one politician, it's a blog of one politician and his interactions with others. In few years, when the new series of Obama's biographies will be written, I can't imagine ones that would be comprehensive without studying this material.

Third thought. If this is true, based on the names I saw (not only Obama, but Clintons and other names even I recognize...), it likely means that Facebook is no longer a "college students" phenomena...

Accelerando

2008-12-05T12:45:00.004-05:00

Accelerando is a great sci-fi novel from Charles Stross, touching upon the theme of technological singularity. It is available as a free ebook, under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License!

Thus, I can legally reproduce parts of it here. This is the collected chronology of the future, found throughout the book (minus spoilers):

Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.

It's night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore's Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2 x 10²⁷ kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 10²³ MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 10²³ MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPS being added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time. About ten years after that, the solar system's installed processing power will nudge the critical 1 MIPS per gram threshold – one million instructions per second per gram of matter. After that, singularity – a vanishing point beyond which extrapolating progress becomes meaningless. The time remaining before the intelligence spike is down to single-digit years ...

Welcome to the second decade of the twenty-first century; the second decade in human history when the intelligence of the environment has shown signs of rising to match human demand.

The news from around the world is distinctly depressing this evening. In Maine, guerrillas affiliated with Parents for Traditional Children announce they've planted logic bombs in antenatal-clinic gene scanners, making them give random false positives when checking for hereditary disorders: The damage so far is six illegal abortions and fourteen lawsuits.

The International Convention on Performing Rights is holding a third round of crisis talks in an attempt to stave off the final collapse of the WIPO music licensing regime. On the one hand, hard-liners representing the Copyright Control Association of America are pressing for restrictions on duplicating the altered emotional states associated with specific media performances: As a demonstration that they mean business, two "software engineers" in California have been kneecapped, tarred, feathered, and left for dead under placards accusing them of reverse-engineering movie plot lines using avatars of dead and out-of-copyright stars.

On the opposite side of the fence, the Association of Free Artists are demanding the right of perform music in public without a recording contract, and are denouncing the CCAA as being a tool of Mafiya apparachiks who have bought it from the moribund music industry in an attempt to go legit. FBI Director Leonid Kuibyshev responds by denying that the Mafiya is a significant presence in the United States. But the music biz's position isn't strengthened by the near collapse of the legitimate American entertainment industry, which has been accelerating ever since the nasty noughties.

A marginally intelligent voicemail virus masquerading as an IRS auditor has caused havoc throughout America, garnishing an estimated eighty billion dollars in confiscatory tax withholdings into a numbered Swiss bank account. A different virus is busy hijacking people's bank accounts, sending ten percent of their assets to the previous victim, then mailing itself to everyone in the current mark's address book: a self- propelled pyramid scheme in action. Oddly, nobody is complaining much. While the mess is being sorted out, business IT departments have gone to standby, refusing to process any transaction that doesn't come in the shape of ink on dead trees.

Tipsters are warning of an impending readjustment in the overinflated reputations market, following revelations that some u-media gurus have been hyped past all realistic levels of credibility. The consequent damage to the junk-bonds market in integrity is serious.

The EU council of independent heads of state has denied plans for another attempt at Eurofederalisme, at least until the economy rises out of its current slump. Three extinct species have been resurrected in the past month; unfortunately, endangered ones are now dying off at a rate of one a day. And a group of militant anti-GM campaigners are being pursued by Interpol, after their announcement that they have spliced a metabolic pathway for cyanogenic glycosides into maize seed corn destined for human-edible crops. There have been no deaths yet, but having to test breakfast cereal for cyanide is really going to dent consumer trust.

Welcome to the eve of the third decade: a time of chaos characterized by an all-out depression in the space industries.

Most of the thinking power on the planet is now manufactured rather than born; there are ten microprocessors for every human being, and the number is doubling every fourteen months. Population growth in the developing world has stalled, the birth rate dropping below replacement level. In the wired nations, more forward-looking politicians are looking for ways to enfranchise their nascent AI base.

Space exploration is still stalled on the cusp of the second recession of the century. The Malaysian government has announced the goal of placing an imam on Mars within ten years, but nobody else cares enough to try.

The Space Settlers Society is still trying to interest Disney Corp. in the media rights to their latest L5 colony plan, unaware that there's already a colony out there and it isn't human: First-generation uploads, Californian spiny lobsters in wobbly symbiosis with elderly expert systems, thrive aboard an asteroid mining project established by the Franklin Trust. Meanwhile, Chinese space agency cutbacks are threatening the continued existence of Moonbase Mao. Nobody, it seems, has figured out how to turn a profit out beyond geosynchronous orbit.

Two years ago, JPL, the ESA, and the uploaded lobster colony on comet Khrunichev-7 picked up an apparently artificial signal from outside the solar system; most people don't know, and of those who do, even fewer care. After all, if humans can't even make it to Mars, who cares what's going on a hundred trillion kilometers farther out?

Getting back to the history lesson, the prospects for the decade look mostly medical.

A few thousand elderly baby boomers are converging on Tehran for Woodstock Four. Europe is desperately trying to import eastern European nurses and home-care assistants; in Japan, whole agricultural villages lie vacant and decaying, ghost communities sucked dry as cities slurp people in like residential black holes.

A rumor is spreading throughout gated old-age communities in the American Midwest, leaving havoc and riots in its wake: Senescence is caused by a slow virus coded into the mammalian genome that evolution hasn't weeded out, and rich billionaires are sitting on the rights to a vaccine. As usual, Charles Darwin gets more than his fair share of the blame. (Less spectacular but more realistic treatments for old age – telomere reconstruction and hexose-denatured protein reduction – are available in private clinics for those who are willing to surrender their pensions.) Progress is expected to speed up shortly, as the fundamental patents in genomic engineering begin to expire; the Free Chromosome Foundation has already published a manifesto calling for the creation of an intellectual-property-free genome with improved replacements for all commonly defective exons.

Experiments in digitizing and running neural wetware under emulation are well established; some radical libertarians claim that, as the technology matures, death – with its draconian curtailment of property and voting rights – will become the biggest civil rights issue of all.

For a small extra fee, most veterinary insurance policies now cover cloning of pets in the event of their accidental and distressing death. Human cloning, for reasons nobody is very clear on anymore, is still illegal in most developed nations – but very few judiciaries push for mandatory abortion of identical twins.

Some commodities are expensive: the price of crude oil has broken eighty Euros a barrel and is edging inexorably up. Other commodities are cheap: computers, for example. Hobbyists print off weird new processor architectures on their home inkjets; middle-aged folks wipe their backsides with diagnostic paper that can tell how their cholesterol levels are tending.

The latest casualties of the march of technological progress are: the high-street clothes shop, the flushing water closet, the Main Battle Tank, and the first generation of quantum computers. New with the decade are cheap enhanced immune systems, brain implants that hook right into the Chomsky organ and talk to their owners through their own speech centers, and widespread public paranoia about limbic spam. Nanotechnology has shattered into a dozen disjoint disciplines, and skeptics are predicting that it will all peter out before long. Philosophers have ceded qualia to engineers, and the current difficult problem in AI is getting software to experience embarrassment.

Fusion power is still, of course, fifty years away.

Sleep cycles pass; the borrowed 3D printer on Object Barney's surface spews bitmaps of atoms in quantum lockstep at its rendering platform, building up the control circuitry and skeletons of new printers (There are no clunky nanoassemblers here, no robots the size of viruses busily sorting molecules into piles – just the bizarre quantized magic of atomic holography, modulated Bose–Einstein condensates collapsing into strange, lacy, supercold machinery.) Electricity surges through the cable loops as they slice through Jupiter's magnetosphere, slowly converting the rock's momentum into power. Small robots grovel in the orange dirt, scooping up raw material to feed to the fractionating oven. A garden of machinery flourishes slowly, unpacking itself according to a schema designed by preteens at an industrial school in Poland, with barely any need for human guidance.

High in orbit around Amalthea, complex financial instruments breed and conjugate. Developed for the express purpose of facilitating trade with the alien intelligences believed to have been detected eight years earlier by SETI, they function equally well as fiscal gatekeepers for space colonies. The Sanger's bank accounts in California and Cuba are looking acceptable – since entering Jupiter space, the orphanage has staked a claim on roughly a hundred gigatons of random rocks and a moon that's just small enough to creep in under the International Astronomical Union's definition of a sovereign planetary body. The borg are working hard, leading their eager teams of child stakeholders in their plans to build the industrial metastructures necessary to support mining helium-three from Jupiter. They're so focused that they spend much of their time being themselves, not bothering to run Bob, the shared identity that gives them their messianic drive.

Half a light-hour away, tired Earth wakes and slumbers in time to its ancient orbital dynamics. A religious college in Cairo is considering issues of nanotechnology: If replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of a pig, how is it to be treated? (If the mind of one of the faithful is copied into a computing machine's memory by mapping and simulating all its synapses, is the computer now a Moslem? If not, why not? If so, what are its rights and duties?) Riots in Borneo underline the urgency of this theotechnological inquiry.

More riots in Barcelona, Madrid, Birmingham, and Marseilles also underline a rising problem: the social chaos caused by cheap anti-aging treatments. The zombie exterminators, a backlash of disaffected youth against the formerly graying gerontocracy of Europe, insist that people who predate the supergrid and can't handle implants aren't really conscious: Their ferocity is equaled only by the anger of the dynamic septuagenarians of the baby boom, their bodies partially restored to the flush of sixties youth, but their minds adrift in a slower, less contingent century. The faux-young boomers feel betrayed, forced back into the labor pool, but unable to cope with the implant-accelerated culture of the new millennium, their hard-earned experience rendered obsolete by deflationary time.

The Bangladeshi economic miracle is typical of the age. With growth rates running at over twenty percent, cheap out-of-control bioindustrialization has swept the nation: Former rice farmers harvest plastics and milk cows for silk, while their children study mariculture and design seawalls. With cellphone ownership nearing eighty percent and literacy at ninety, the once-poor country is finally breaking out of its historical infrastructure trap and beginning to develop: In another generation, they'll be richer than Japan.

Radical new economic theories are focusing around bandwidth, speed-of-light transmission time, and the implications of CETI, communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Cosmologists and quants collaborate on bizarre relativistically telescoped financial instruments. Space (which lets you store information) and structure (which lets you process it) acquire value while dumb mass – like gold – loses it. The degenerate cores of the traditional stock markets are in free fall, the old smokestack microprocessor and biotech/nanotech industries crumbling before the onslaught of matter replicators and self-modifying ideas. The inheritors look set to be a new wave of barbarian communicators, who mortgage their future for a millennium against the chance of a gift from a visiting alien intelligence. Microsoft, once the US Steel of the silicon age, quietly fades into liquidation.

An outbreak of green goo – a crude biomechanical replicator that eats everything in its path – is dealt with in the Australian outback by carpet-bombing with fuel-air explosives. The USAF subsequently reactivates two wings of refurbished B-52s and places them at the disposal of the UN standing committee on self-replicating weapons. (CNN discovers that one of their newest pilots, re-enlisting with the body of a twenty-year-old and an empty pension account, first flew them over Laos and Cambodia.) The news overshadows the World Health Organization's announcement of the end of the HIV pandemic, after more than fifty years of bigotry, panic, and megadeath.

Greetings from the fifth decade of the century of wonders.

The solar system that lies roughly twenty-eight trillion kilometers – just short of three light-years – behind the speeding starwisp Field Circus is seething with change. There have been more technological advances in the past ten years than in the entire previous expanse of human history – and more unforeseen accidents.

Lots of hard problems have proven to be tractable. The planetary genome and proteome have been mapped so exhaustively that the biosciences are now focusing on the challenge of the phenome: Plotting the phase-space defined by the intersection of genes and biochemical structures, understanding how extended phenotypic traits are generated and contribute to evolutionary fitness. The biosphere has become surreal: small dragons have been sighted nesting in the Scottish highlands, and in the American midwest, raccoons have been caught programming microwave ovens.

The computing power of the solar system is now around one thousand MIPS per gram, and is unlikely to increase in the near term – all but a fraction of one percent of the dumb matter is still locked up below the accessible planetary crusts, and the sapience/mass ratio has hit a glass ceiling that will only be broken when people, corporations, or other posthumans get around to dismantling the larger planets. A start has already been made in Jupiter orbit and the asteroid belt. Greenpeace has sent squatters to occupy Eros and Juno, but the average asteroid is now surrounded by a reef of specialized nanomachinery and debris, victims of a cosmic land grab unmatched since the days of the wild west. The best brains flourish in free fall, minds surrounded by a sapient aether of extensions that out-think their meaty cortices by many orders of magnitude – minds like Amber, Queen of the Inner Ring Imperium, the first self-extending power center in Jupiter orbit.

Down at the bottom of the terrestrial gravity well, there has been a major economic catastrophe. Cheap immortagens, out-of-control personality adjuvants, and a new formal theory of uncertainty have knocked the bottom out of the insurance and underwriting industries. Gambling on a continuation of the worst aspects of the human condition – disease, senescence, and death – looks like a good way to lose money, and a deflationary spiral lasting almost fifty hours has taken down huge swaths of the global stock market. Genius, good looks, and long life are now considered basic human rights in the developed world: even the poorest backwaters are feeling extended effects from the commoditization of intelligence.

Not everything is sweetness and light in the era of mature nanotechnology. Widespread intelligence amplification doesn't lead to widespread rational behavior. New religions and mystery cults explode across the planet; much of the Net is unusable, flattened by successive semiotic jihads. India and Pakistan have held their long-awaited nuclear war: external intervention by US and EU nanosats prevented most of the IRBMs from getting through, but the subsequent spate of network raids and Basilisk attacks cause havoc. Luckily, infowar turns out to be more survivable than nuclear war – especially once it is discovered that a simple anti-aliasing filter stops nine out of ten neural-wetware-crashing Langford fractals from causing anything worse than a mild headache.

New discoveries this decade include the origins of the weakly repulsive force responsible for changes in the rate of expansion of the universe after the big bang, and on a less abstract level, experimental implementations of a Turing Oracle using quantum entanglement circuits: a device that can determine whether a given functional expression can be evaluated in finite time. It's boom time in the field of Extreme Cosmology, where some of the more recherché researchers are bickering over the possibility that the entire universe was created as a computing device, with a program encoded in the small print of the Planck constant. And theorists are talking again about the possibility of using artificial wormholes to provide instantaneous connections between distant corners of space-time.

Take a brain and put it in a bottle. Better: take a map of the brain and put it in a map of a bottle – or of a body – and feed signals to it that mimic its neurological inputs. Read its outputs and route them to a model body in a model universe with a model of physical laws, closing the loop. René Descartes would understand. That's the state of the passengers of the Field Circus in a nutshell. Formerly physical humans, their neural software (and a map of the intracranial wetware it runs on) has been transferred into a virtual machine environment executing on a honking great computer, where the universe they experience is merely a dream within a dream.

Brains in bottles – empowered ones, with total, dictatorial, control over the reality they are exposed to – sometimes stop engaging in activities that brains in bodies can't avoid. Menstruation isn't mandatory. Vomiting, angina, exhaustion, and cramp are all optional. So is meatdeath, the decomposition of the corpus. But some activities don't cease, because people (even people who have been converted into a software description, squirted through a high-bandwidth laser link, and ported into a virtualization stack) don't want them to stop. Breathing is wholly unnecessary, but suppression of the breathing reflex is disturbing unless you hack your hypothalamic map, and most homomorphic uploads don't want to do that. Then there's eating – not to avoid starvation, but for pleasure: Feasts on sautéed dodo seasoned with silphium are readily available here, and indeed, why not? It seems the human addiction to sensory input won't go away. And that's without considering sex, and the technical innovations that become possible when the universe – and the bodies within it – are mutable.

Greetings from the last megasecond before the discontinuity.

The solar system is thinking furiously at 10³³ MIPS – thoughts bubble and swirl in the equivalent of a million billion unaugmented human minds. Saturn's rings glow with waste heat. The remaining faithful of the Latter-Day Saints are correlating the phase-space of their genome and the records of their descent in an attempt to resurrect their ancestors. Several skyhooks have unfurled in equatorial orbit around the earth like the graceful fernlike leaves of sundews, ferrying cargo and passengers to and from orbit. Small, crab like robots swarm the surface of Mercury, exuding a black slime of photovoltaic converters and the silvery threads of mass drivers. A glowing cloud of industrial nanomes forms a haze around the innermost planet as it slowly shrinks under the onslaught of copious solar power and determined mining robots.

In high orbit above Jupiter the huge nexus of dumb matter trade is rapidly biting into the available mass of the inner Jovian system. The trade in reaction mass is brisk, and there are shipments of diamond/vacuum biphase structures to assemble and crank down into the lower reaches of the solar system. Far below, skimming the edges of Jupiter's turbulent cloudscape, a gigantic glowing figure-of-eight – a five-hundred-kilometer-long loop of superconducting cable – traces incandescent trails through the gas giant's magnetosphere. It's trading momentum for electrical current, diverting it into a fly's eye grid of lasers that beam it toward Hyundai ⁺⁴⁹⁰⁴/_-56. As long as the original Amber and her incarnate team can keep it running, the Field Circus can continue its mission of discovery, but they're part of the posthuman civilization evolving down in the turbulent depths of Sol system, part of the runaway train being dragged behind the out-of-control engine of history.

Weird new biologies based on complex adaptive matter take shape in the sterile oceans of Titan. In the frigid depths beyond Pluto, supercooled boson gases condense into impossible dreaming structures, packaged for shipping inward to the fast-thinking core.

There are still humans dwelling down in the hot depths, but it's getting hard to recognize them. The lot of humanity before the twenty-first century was nasty, brutish, and short. Chronic malnutrition, lack of education, and endemic diseases led to crippled minds and broken bodies. Now, most people multitask: Their meatbrains sit at the core of a haze of personality, much of it virtualized on stacked layers of structured reality far from their physical bodies. Wars and revolutions, or their subtle latter-day cognates, sweep the globe as constants become variables; many people find the death of stupidity even harder to accept than the end of mortality. Some have vitrified themselves to await an uncertain posthuman future. Others have modified their core identities to better cope with the changed demands of reality. Among these are beings whom nobody from a previous century would recognize as human – human/corporation half-breeds, zombie clades dehumanized by their own optimizations, angels and devils of software, slyly self-aware financial instruments. Even their popular fictions are self-deconstructing these days.

A singular new reality is taking shape.

Welcome to the moment of maximum change.

About ten billion humans are alive in the solar system, each mind surrounded by an exocortex of distributed agents, threads of personality spun right out of their heads to run on the clouds of utility fog – infinitely flexible computing resources as thin as aerogel – in which they live. The foggy depths are alive with high-bandwidth sparkles; most of Earth's biosphere has been wrapped in cotton wool and preserved for future examination. For every living human, a thousand million software agents carry information into the farthest corners of the consciousness address space.

The sun, for so long an unremarkable mildly variable G2 dwarf, has vanished within a gray cloud that englobes it except for a narrow belt around the plane of the ecliptic. Sunlight falls, unchanged, on the inner planets: Except for Mercury, which is no longer present, having been dismantled completely and turned into solar-powered high-temperature nanocomputers. A much fiercer light falls on Venus, now surrounded by glittering ferns of carbon crystals that pump angular momentum into the barely spinning planet via huge superconducting loops wound around its equator. This planet, too, is due to be dismantled. Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus – all sprout rings as impressive as Saturn's. But the task of cannibalizing the gas giants will take many times longer than the small rocky bodies of the inner system.

The ten billion inhabitants of this radically changed star system remember being human; almost half of them predate the millennium. Some of them still are human, untouched by the drive of meta-evolution that has replaced blind Darwinian change with a goal-directed teleological progress. They cower in gated communities and hill forts, mumbling prayers and cursing the ungodly meddlers with the natural order of things. But eight out of every ten living humans are included in the phase-change. It's the most inclusive revolution in the human condition since the discovery of speech.

A million outbreaks of gray goo – runaway nanoreplicator excursions – threaten to raise the temperature of the biosphere dramatically. They're all contained by the planetary-scale immune system fashioned from what was once the World Health Organization. Weirder catastrophes threaten the boson factories in the Oort cloud. Antimatter factories hover over the solar poles. Sol system shows all the symptoms of a runaway intelligence excursion, exuberant blemishes as normal for a technological civilization as skin problems on a human adolescent.

The economic map of the planet has changed beyond recognition. Both capitalism and communism, bickering ideological children of a protoindustrial outlook, are as obsolete as the divine right of kings: Companies are alive, and dead people may live again, too. Globalism and tribalism have run to completion, diverging respectively into homogeneous interoperability and the Schwarzschild radius of insularity. Beings that remember being human plan the deconstruction of Jupiter, the creation of a great simulation space that will expand the habitat available within the solar system. By converting all the nonstellar mass of the solar system into processors, they can accommodate as many human-equivalent minds as a civilization with a planet hosting ten billion humans in orbit around every star in the galaxy.

Welcome to the downslope on the far side of the curve of accelerating progress.

Back in the solar system, Earth orbits through a dusty tunnel in space. Sunlight still reaches the birth world, but much of the rest of the star's output has been trapped by the growing concentric shells of computronium built from the wreckage of the innermost planets.

Two billion or so mostly unmodified humans scramble in the wreckage of the phase transition, not understanding why the vasty superculture they so resented has fallen quiet. Little information leaks through their fundamentalist firewalls, but what there is shows a disquieting picture of a society where there are no bodies anymore. Utility foglets blown on the wind form aerogel towers larger than cyclones, removing the last traces of physical human civilization from most of Europe and the North American coastlines. Enclaves huddle behind their walls and wonder at the monsters and portents roaming the desert of postindustrial civilization, mistaking acceleration for collapse.

The hazy shells of computronium that ring the sun – concentric clouds of nanocomputers the size of rice grains, powered by sunlight, orbiting in shells like the packed layers of a Matrioshka doll – are still immature, holding barely a thousandth of the physical planetary mass of the system, but they already support a classical computational density of 10⁴² MIPS; enough to support a billion civilizations as complex as the one that existed immediately before the great disassembly. The conversion hasn't yet reached the gas giants, and some scant outer-system enclaves remain independent, but the inner solar system planets, with the exception of Earth, have been colonized more thoroughly than any dusty NASA proposal from the dawn of the space age could have envisaged.

From outside the Accelerated civilization, it isn't really possible to know what's going on inside. The problem is bandwidth: While it's possible to send data in and get data out, the sheer amount of computation going on in the virtual spaces of the Acceleration dwarfs any external observer. Inside that swarm, minds a trillion or more times as complex as humanity think thoughts as far beyond human imagination as a microprocessor is beyond a nematode worm. A million random human civilizations flourish in worldscapes tucked in the corner of this world-mind. Death is abolished, life is triumphant. A thousand ideologies flower, human nature adapted where necessary to make this possible. Ecologies of thought are forming in a Cambrian explosion of ideas: For the solar system is finally rising to consciousness, and mind is no longer restricted to the mere kilotons of gray fatty meat harbored in fragile human skulls.

But first, the operating software on the human side of the network link will require an upgrade.

Welcome to decade the sixth, millennium three. These old datelines don't mean so much anymore, for while some billions of fleshbody humans are still infected with viral memes, the significance of theocentric dating has been dealt a body blow. This may be the fifties, but what that means to you depends on how fast your reality rate runs. The various upload clades exploding across the reaches of the solar system vary by several orders of magnitude – some are barely out of 2049, while others are exploring the subjective thousandth millennium.

While all this is going on, the damnfool human species has finally succeeded in making itself obsolete. The proximate cause of its displacement from the pinnacle of creation (or the pinnacle of teleological self-congratulation, depending on your stance on evolutionary biology) is an attack of self-aware corporations. The phrase "smart money" has taken on a whole new meaning, for the collision between international business law and neurocomputing technology has given rise to a whole new family of species – fast-moving corporate carnivores in the Net. The planet Mercury has been broken up by a consortium of energy brokers, and Venus is an expanding debris cloud, energized to a violent glare by the trapped and channeled solar output. A million billion fist-sized computing caltrops, backsides glowing dull red with the efflux from their thinking, orbit the sun at various inclinations no farther out than Mercury used to be.

Billions of fleshbody humans refuse to have anything to do with the blasphemous new realities. Many of their leaders denounce the uploads and AIs as soulless machines. Many more are timid, harboring self-preservation memes that amplify a previously healthy aversion to having one's brain peeled like an onion by mind-mapping robots into an all-pervading neurosis. Sales of electrified tinfoil-lined hats are at an all-time high. Still, hundreds of millions have already traded their meat puppets for mind machines, and they breed fast. In another few years, the fleshbody populace will be an absolute minority of the posthuman clade. Sometime later, there will probably be a war. The dwellers in the thoughtcloud are hungry for dumb matter to convert, and the fleshbodies make notoriously poor use of the collection of silicon and rare elements that pool at the bottom of the gravity well that is Earth.

Energy and thought are driving a phase-change in the condensed matter substance of the solar system. The MIPS per kilogram metric is on the steep upward leg of a sigmoid curve – dumb matter is coming to life as the mind children restructure everything with voracious nanomechanical servants. The thoughtcloud forming in orbit around the sun will ultimately be the graveyard of a biological ecology, another marker in space visible to the telescopes of any new iron-age species with the insight to understand what they're seeing: the death throes of dumb matter, the birth of a habitable reality vaster than a galaxy and far speedier. Death throes that, within a few centuries, will mean the extinction of biological life within a light-year or so of that star – for the majestic Matrioshka brains, though they are the pinnacles of sentient civilization, are intrinsically hostile environments for fleshy life.

Welcome to decade eight, third millennium, when the effects of the phase-change in the structure of the solar system are finally becoming visible on a cosmological scale.

There are about eleven billion future-shocked primates in various states of life and undeath throughout the solar system. Most of them cluster where the interpersonal bandwidth is hottest, down in the water zone around old Earth. Earth's biosphere has been in the intensive care ward for decades, weird rashes of hot-burning replicators erupting across it before the World Health Organization can fix them – gray goo, thylacines, dragons. The last great transglobal trade empire, run from the arcologies of Hong Kong, has collapsed along with capitalism, rendered obsolete by a bunch of superior deterministic resource allocation algorithms collectively known as Economics 2.0. Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Luna are all well on the way to disintegration, mass pumped into orbit with energy stolen from the haze of free-flying thermoelectrics that cluster so thickly around the solar poles that the sun resembles a fuzzy red ball of wool the size of a young red giant.

Humans are just barely intelligent tool users; Darwinian evolutionary selection stopped when language and tool use converged, leaving the average hairy meme carrier sadly deficient in smarts. Now the brightly burning beacon of sapience isn't held by humans anymore – their cross-infectious enthusiasms have spread to a myriad of other hosts, several types of which are qualitatively better at thinking. At last count, there were about a thousand nonhuman intelligent species in Sol space, split evenly between posthumans on one side, naturally self-organizing AIs in the middle, and mammalian nonhumans on the other. The common mammal neural chassis is easily upgraded to human-style intelligence in most species that can carry, feed and cool a half kilogram of gray matter, and the descendants of a hundred ethics-challenged doctoral theses are now demanding equal rights. So are the unquiet dead; the panopticon-logged Net ghosts of people who lived recently enough to imprint their identities on the information age, and the ambitious theological engineering schemes of the Reformed Tiplerite Church of Latter-day Saints (who want to emulate all possible human beings in real time, so that they can have the opportunity to be saved).

The human memesphere is coming alive, although how long it remains recognizably human is open to question. The informational density of the inner planets is visibly converging on Avogadro's number of bits per mole, one bit per atom, as the deconstructed dumb matter of the inner planets (apart from Earth, preserved for now like a picturesque historic building stranded in an industrial park) is converted into computronium. And it's not just the inner system. The same forces are at work on Jupiter's moons, and those of Saturn, although it'll take thousands of years rather than mere decades to dismantle the gas giants themselves. Even the entire solar energy budget isn't enough to pump Jupiter's enormous mass to orbital velocity in less than centuries. The fast-burning primitive thinkers descended from the African plains apes may have vanished completely or transcended their fleshy architecture before the solar Matrioshka brain is finished.

It won't be long now ...

Welcome to decade the ninth, singularity plus one gigasecond (or maybe more – nobody's quite sure when, or indeed if, a singularity has been created). The human population of the solar system is either six billion, or sixty billion, depending on whether you class the forked state vectors of posthumans and the simulations of dead phenotypes running in the Vile Offspring's Schrödinger boxes as people. Most of the physically incarnate still live on Earth, but the lily-pads floating beneath continent-sized hot-hydrogen balloons in Saturn's upper atmosphere already house a few million, and the writing is on the wall for the rocky inner planets. All the remaining human-equivalent intelligences with half a clue to rub together are trying to emigrate before the Vile Offspring decide to recycle Earth to fill in a gap in the concentric shells of nanocomputers they're running on. The half-constructed Matrioshka brain already darkens the skies of Earth and has caused a massive crash in the planet's photosynthetic biomass, as plants starve for short-wavelength light.

Since decade the seventh, the computational density of the solar system has soared. Within the asteroid belt, more than half the available planetary mass has been turned into nanoprocessors, tied together by quantum entanglement into a web so dense that each gram of matter can simulate all the possible life experiences of an individual human being in a scant handful of minutes. Economics 2.0 is itself obsolescent, forced to mutate in a furious survivalist arms race by the arrival of the Slug. Only the name remains as a vague shorthand for merely human-equivalent intelligences to use when describing interactions they don't understand.

The latest generation of posthuman entities is less overtly hostile to humans, but much more alien than the generations of the fifties and seventies. Among their less comprehensible activities, the Vile Offspring are engaged in exploring the phase-space of all possible human experiences from the inside out. Perhaps they caught a dose of the Tiplerite heresy along the way, for now a steady stream of resimulant uploads is pouring through the downsystem relays in Titan orbit. The Rapture of the Nerds has been followed by the Resurrection of the Extremely Confused, except that they're not really resurrectees – they're simulations based on their originals' recorded histories, blocky and missing chunks of their memories, as bewildered as baby ducklings as they're herded into the wood-chipper of the future.

It has been a long time since Aineko passed this way, and in the meantime the space around Hyundai ⁺⁴⁹⁰⁴/_-56 has changed out of all recognition. Back when the great lobster-built starships swept out of Sol's Oort cloud, archiving the raw frozen data of the unoccupied brown dwarf halo systems and seeding their structured excrement with programmable matter, there was nothing but random dead atoms hereabouts (and an alien router). But that was a long time ago; and since then, the brown dwarf system has succumbed to an anthropic infestation.

An unoptimized instance of H. sapiens maintains state coherency for only two to three gigaseconds before it succumbs to necrosis. But in only about ten gigaseconds, the infestation has turned the dead brown dwarf system upside down. They strip-mined the chilly planets to make environments suitable for their own variety of carbon life. They rearranged moons, building massive structures the size of asteroids. They ripped wormhole endpoints free of the routers and turned them into their own crude point-to-point network, learned how to generate new wormholes, then ran their own packet-switched polities over them. Wormhole traffic now supports an ever-expanding mesh of interstellar human commerce, but always in the darkness between the lit stars and the strange, metal-depleted dwarfs with the suspiciously low-entropy radiation. The sheer temerity of the project is mind-boggling: notwithstanding that canned apes are simply not suited to life in the interstellar void, especially in orbit around a brown dwarf whose planets make Pluto seem like a tropical paradise, they've taken over the whole damn system.

New Japan is one of the newer human polities in this system, a bunch of nodes physically collocated in the humaniformed spaces of the colony cylinders. Its designers evidently only knew about old Nippon from recordings made back before Earth was dismantled, and worked from a combination of nostalgia-trip videos, Miyazaki movies, and anime culture. Nevertheless, it's the home of numerous human beings – even if they are about as similar to their historical antecedents as New Japan is to its long-gone namesake.

Humanity?

Their grandparents would recognize them, mostly. The ones who are truly beyond the ken of twentieth-century survivors stayed back home in the red-hot clouds of nanocomputers that have replaced the planets that once orbited Earth's sun in stately Copernican harmony. The fast-thinking Matrioshka brains are as incomprehensible to their merely posthuman ancestors as an ICBM to an amoeba – and about as inhabitable. Space is dusted with the corpses of Matrioshka brains that have long since burned out, informational collapse taking down entire civilizations that stayed in close orbit around their home stars. Farther away, galaxy-sized intelligences beat incomprehensible rhythms against the darkness of the vacuum, trying to hack the Planck substrate into doing their bidding. Posthumans, and the few other semitranscended species to have discovered the router network, live furtively in the darkness between these islands of brilliance. There are, it would seem, advantages to not being too intelligent.

Humanity. Monadic intelligences, mostly trapped within their own skulls, living in small family groups within larger tribal networks, adaptable to territorial or migratory lifestyles. Those were the options on offer before the great acceleration. Now that dumb matter thinks, with every kilogram of wallpaper potentially hosting hundreds of uploaded ancestors, now that every door is potentially a wormhole to a hab half a parsec away, the humans can stay in the same place while the landscape migrates and mutates past them, streaming into the luxurious void of their personal history. Life is rich here, endlessly varied and sometimes confusing. So it is that tribal groups remain, their associations mediated across teraklicks and gigaseconds by exotic agencies. And sometimes the agencies will vanish for a while, reappearing later like an unexpected jape upon the infinite.

Welcome to the twenty-third century, or the twenty-fourth. Or maybe it's the twenty-second, jet-lagged and dazed by spurious suspended animation and relativistic travel; it hardly matters these days. What's left of recognizable humanity has scattered across a hundred light-years, living in hollowed-out asteroids and cylindrical spinning habitats strung in orbit around cold brown dwarf stars and sunless planets that wander the interstellar void. The looted mechanisms underlying the alien routers have been cannibalized, simplified to a level the merely superhuman can almost comprehend, turned into generators for paired wormhole endpoints that allow instantaneous switched transport across vast distances. Other mechanisms, the descendants of the advanced nanotechnologies developed by the flowering of human techgnosis in the twenty-first century, have made the replication of dumb matter trivial; this is not a society accustomed to scarcity.

But in some respects, New Japan and the Invisible Empire and the other polities of human space are poverty-stricken backwaters. They take no part in the higher-order economies of the posthuman. They can barely comprehend the idle muttering of the Vile Offspring, whose mass/energy budget (derived from their complete restructuring of the free matter of humanity's original solar system into computronium) dwarfs that of half a hundred human-occupied brown dwarf systems. And they still know worryingly little about the deep history of intelligence in this universe, about the distant galaxy-scale bursts of information processing that lie at measurable red-shift distances, even about the free posthumans who live among them in some senses, collocated in the same light cone as these living fossil relics of old-fashioned humanity.

Now go buy the book and support the author :)

Military space opera updates

2008-12-03T13:32:00.005-05:00

What sparked this post were the news of Legend of Galactic Heroes (Japan's most famous military space opera) "please publish novels" petition (go and sign it!). I though I might as well throw in some other updates.

Central Anime is releasing LoGH DVD version. You have to praise those guys for dedication, I believe the group is responsible for the first English subtitled, old-millennium VHS releases of the series, and this DVD sub is their fourth (I think) LOGH release. For those not in the know, LoGH has never been released in an English speaking country, as it is reputed to be "too long and with a plot too complex" for the Western audience. It has also been called Babylon 5 of anime... nuff said.

Check out LoGH youtube treats: season 1 opening, season 2 opening, season 3 opening, season 4 opening, season 1 ending, season 2 ending, season 3 ending, season 4 ending, , Gaiden season 1 opening, Gaiden season 2 (aka Spiral Labyrinth) opening, Gaiden ending 1, Gaiden ending 2, Gaiden ending 3, Gaiden ending 4

In the meantime, Japanese, happy in their own little world (and who can blame them? :), are releasing a new LoGH game. It looks pretty good. Mind you, the first minute of the three is made by scenes from anime, not the game itself (makes for a decent trailer for both, though).

For those of us who don't speak Japanese, there is a LoGH mod-in-works for Sins of a Solar Empire. Take a look at the mod, I think it looks impressive - I am just hoping it will avoid the fate of most projects out there and will actually get finished. Sins... is a good game, give demo a try.

Moving on. Honor Harrington series is finally, after a hiatus of several (4!) years, getting the long awaited and delays sequels. "The Shadow of Saganami 2", now under its new official name Storm from the Shadows, is available as an ARC ebook (printed release coming out in the next few months). As always, you can read a good part of the book as a "snippeted" preview at Dahak's site. And don't forget you can get the first few books in the series free (as ebooks) from Baen's Free Library! A sequel to Crown of the Slaves is planned for release after March 2009... let's hope.

On the subject of Honorverse, one of the nice discoveries I've made early this year, while looking for Honorverse addiction substitute, was the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. Every book begins with few pages of a fleet report... need I say more? Large scale fleet actions abound.

Well, back to the news. Few weeks ago a new military space opera anime premiered: Tytania (trailer, opening, ending), based on books by the Yoshiki Tanaka, the same writer who created LoGH. There was a nice space battle in episode 5, although the next few episodes seem to concentrate more on space opera then on the military aspects. Still, a good series (I have seen 5 episodes so far and episode 6 promises a battle...).

Another new release from earlier this year was Macross Frontier (trailer, opening 2, ending 2, the series has so much music... go here for more). An interesting story of a well-armed convoy looking for a new planet to settle. Superb animation and music, and a decent story, if mecha heavy... in other words, all we have come to expect from Macross.

Finally, those are a bit old but deserve a honorable mention, because I was rewatching them recently: Starship Operators (English trailer, opening, ending), packed full of interesting tactical 1:1 spaceship battles. And never forget Crest/Banner of the Stars (Crest English trailer, Crest opening, Crest ending 1, Crest ending 2, Banner trailer, Banner opening, Banner II opening).

As a wise men once said, a perfect life consists of several things. Good music, beautiful women, and space battles in the background.

Singing off,

Slashdotted

2008-11-30T12:27:00.001-05:00

Seems I was slashdotted :)

Demise of blogging

2008-11-21T13:12:00.003-05:00

So I don't blog as much as I used to - I was surprised to realize recently I went half a year without blogging. I wonder why... for now, while I mull over it, dearly hoping it's not because I have nothing more interesting to say, a link from The Economist - their idea why why blogging is on decline: we're mainstream now, folks.

More Wikipedia statistics!

2008-10-29T16:41:00.002-04:00

There is a blog dedicated to Wikipedia statistics: Infodisiacs

Another blog of an interesting Wikipedian: Durova

Best political cartoons (KAL's) - now online!

2008-05-09T21:09:00.004-04:00

De gustibus non est disputandum, of course, but since I've started reading The Economist I've considered KAL's work to be of highest quality around.

Recently - better late than never - The Economist have added his cartoons to their website, with a gallery of his work from 2006.

One of my favourites:

PS. Don't miss animated KAL's work on youtube!

On AIs and samurais

2008-04-06T21:20:00.002-04:00

My translation (well, mine with help from several other people who provided useful feedback and corrections) of a short story-like interlude of this great book was just published on the official pages of the author in question.

Check it out here.

Polish museums do not like photographers

2008-03-27T13:24:00.002-04:00

But this may be changing. I thought I'd just make a brief note in English about a recent development - several Polish blogs and even mainstream media articles have run some recent articles on that subject, criticizing museums who forbid people to take photos. Hopefully change is not far...

Read more (on Polish Wikinews): "Kiedy dowiemy się, dlaczego nie można robić zdjęć w niektórych polskich muzeach?"

For whom the bells toll

2008-02-28T19:31:00.003-05:00

Two major print encyclopedias cease production

No suprise there. Back in 2004 in related news I blogged that ex-CEO of Britannica compared dictionaries to dinosaurs. In 2006 Nature dealt a death blow to Britannica. Recently I found out that Alexa graph comparing popularity of Britannica to Wikipedia has lost its usefulness - because Britannica line is now FLAT, so I have to use two graphs. Let them finish the story:

Popularity of Wikipedia vs...

...popularity of Britannica.

Books 2.0

2008-02-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

I am quite impressed by a recent (read: I have not checked the website for over a year) face lift of Webscriptions (Wikipedia article, official site). It's a perfect example of how a supposedly 'old' business (in this case, book publisher) can be revamped and succesfully grow in the era of the Internet.

Baen Free Library (Wikipedia article, official site) was of course the start. Bean only gave away samples of each book (close to the first half is usually free), but they actually give free ebooks of dozen of books in their free library; attach cds with even more books to every hardcover - and make them downloadedable online. Long story short, they discovered that they can attract many new readers that way, readers who will be willing to pay for printed books, and even pay extra for special ebooks (one of the most interesting innovations is what they call ARC - Advanced Reader Copies; for the cost of 25$ you can follow the draft of the book as it is being written!). You can find more information following the links above, but Baen revenues (and those of their authors) have been steadily rising. The more stuff they give away for free, the more money they make. A sign of new era, certainly - and of a wise business strategy embracing the new era. Oh, and did I mention that Baen gives you a wide choice of ebook format, including plain txt and html with no copy protection? Yes, they do believe in viral marketing (and you know what? It works, as seen on this very example :D).

But anyway this is a bit off topic, as I was going to write about the interesting twists of the webscription website. So, what can a book publisher do in the era of the Internet?

RSS enabled news. Whenever a new book, special offer or such are available, why not deliver that info to the willing consumers. Easily accessible catalogue, by author, category, publisher. A basic search option for other stuff. And perhaps the most innovative and so obvious in retrospective - ability to rate books and write your own reviews (example). If it works for Amazon, why not for the publisher who wants to sell books and bypass the middleman?

I see great future for Baen Books under such management. Companies who will be able to utilize Internet in such innovative ways will reap great rewards. Others... not so much.

How long will we live?

2008-01-28T16:51:00.000-05:00

Recently The Economist has published a very interesting article: Abolishing ageing: How to live forever. Considering that it is not a fringe publication, but a reliable mainstream one, it is certainly worth checking out. If The Economist thinks technologies increasing our life expectancy are worth writing about, they are no longer just a dream of a science-fiction authors.

For a follow up, read the very interesting article by Ray Kurzweil: The Law of Accelerating Returns.

Of course this may not happen. But it looks more and more likely that it will.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind leaving forever. Or at least for a few thousands years :)

And if this seems weird or intimidating, do read Yudkowsky and Anissimov on the concept of shock levels:
* Future Shock Levels
* Future Shock Level Analysis

Lessons for the day:

Don't fear the future just because it's likely to be different.

Don't underestimate the probability of change because change intimidates you personally.

Hear, hear

2008-01-25T09:37:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia Signpost:

Reference books? Give me Wikipedia - In response to a professor calling Internet sources "white bread" (see archived story), the author of this article states that the notion that the Internet is eroding our research skills echoes the past mantra that the lower classes should not be taught to read. He argues that the professor is blaming the messenger and not the message, and the problems that are blamed on the Internet have always plagued students: the way that their work is marked may be reinforcing that using predigested material is acceptable. The author questions the assumption that because something is bound in book format, it is therefore more reliable.

It's nice to see this argument coming not from a wizkid but a seasoned journalist.

Recently I witnessed several people being highly critical of sources like Google Print. They rant about "selective quoting" and how people will not read books but just tiny paragraphs or sentences.

So what? I have read many books. And in 90% of cases (non-fiction wise), the traditional rule that 'most of everything is useless' holds true quite well. Most of books have some useful arguments or facts - but much more filler. Being able to Google through hundreds of books in few dozen minutes, and find what I am looking for is extremly useful. Sure, I may miss some useful random snippets I'd otherwise find, but you know what - I will find them anyway, reading other books in the free time generated by the fact I am not reading others :)

The increase in research productivity that is being generated by easy access to searcheable databases is only just begining. With more and more sources being accessible full text through open licences, the revolution, not much smaller than the invention of writing, printing or the Internet is upon us. It was one thing to have the theoretical means to access lots of information. It's quite another to be actually able to do so.

And for those who want to preserve their ivory towers... "The avalanche has already begun. It's too late for pebbles to vote."

Amusing

2007-12-25T13:58:00.000-05:00

Time to share some fun.

First: the Church Sign Generator

Second. Bureau of Communciation forms.

LOL!

And Merry XMAS!

Life for life: a wasted effort

2007-12-11T16:27:00.000-05:00

Wasting one's time is bad. Wasting's public money is worse. How often do we see that? Yes, a rhetorical question. Here's one of the most recent examples, this time, from Poland.

Polish Ministry of Culture and the Institute of National Remembrance have sponsored a new documentary. "A Life for a Life" (Polish: "Życie za życie"), is a 33-minute film that recounts the heroic efforts of Poles who helped Jews during the Holocaust premiered Wednesday; efforts that often ended in death (Poland was the only country where helping Jews was punishable by death). Notably, more Poles than any other nationality have been honored by the Yad Vashem institution in Israel as "Righteous Among the Nations" for rescuing Jews.

Such documentary is certainly a commendable action. Yet... there are no immediate plans to show the film abroad, reports the press. Ummm... so what's the point of making the documentary? To show it in Poland, where most people are quite aware of those facts?

Of course, I hear you say, we live in the age of the Internet. Those who want should be able to download the film from the dedicated website or buy a DVD. Right?

Perhaps if the documentary makers lived in the 21st century. There are no plans to distribute the film online. There are no plans to sell DVDs. There are no plans to show the film anywhere in Poland (at least, no such plans were annouced on the documentary website as of today).

It's a shame Polish taxpayers have to waste their money on such obsolete thinking; if it was made available online - even on youtube - and popularized by bloggers - it could have achieved something. With no extra cost to the makers or the current sponsors. As it is, it is a wasted effort.

I wonder who is at fault. Some government bureaucrat? The producers? Did they not even think of the possibility of free online distribution and reaching millions? Or are they constrained by some idiotic copyright issues? Either way, whatever effort and money went into making this documentary, it's unlikely to be seen by more than few hundred people in Poland (at best), and it certainly will not be remembered by anybody. A footnote in the Polish documentaries, and an item on the CV of people involved in its production. Yes, that's how we want our governments to spend money, right?

Here's hoping somebody will pirate the movie online. This way it may, just may, do some good.

Sigh.

P-blogs revisited once again

2007-11-28T18:02:00.000-05:00

Back in 2004, and later in 2005 I wrote why politicians should be blogging.

Indeed, the number of people - and politicians - blogging has been increasing. A month after I blogged about it a second time, Wikipedia got an entry on "political blog" - and not by me (although it would be too much expect that I've coined that term, I am proud to have foreseen that).

Blogs are becoming a force that can 'make or break' people. Consider Dean US presidential campaign, or various politicians that have resigned after blogosphere shined light onto some of their more shady activities. I am sure there are and will be more politicians podcasting and videocasting, too. But the most important thing on the Web 2.0 is the 'human to human' interaction - or in that case, 'human to politician' (pun partially intended).

On Web 2.0 people consider themselves more equal and deserving a reply. A politician that will reply to his blog comments, that will show he is ready to discuss issues with his constituents 24/7, will surely be more popular than his more traditional counterpart (let's not forget the generational change, too - this simply will be expected and normal for the future generations).

Consider, now, how this can impact political decision making. The representatives will be brought closer to the electorate; some may even start polling the readers of their blog on what they should do.

Perhaps we will even see a form of direct democracy with representatives reduced to little more than voicing the demands of their blog readers.

Likely it will not happen exactly like this. But one way or another, Web 2.0 will change quite a few things. And our politics will surely be no exception.

Real voice of the Prokonsul

2007-09-23T13:01:00.000-04:00

I got interviewed by Wikipedia Weekly!

Among other things, I blabbered about: Is there a cabal? Are Polish Wikipedians different? Is Wikipedia facing a crisis? How to encouraging civility and cooperation? How to use WP in the classroom to benefit both the student and the project?

TTags: Wikipedia

WikiScanner: more good stuff to come?

2007-08-28T22:02:00.000-04:00

WikiScanner seems to be the hot wikitopic of the month (read more: Wikipedia Signpost, Wired).

Instead of repeating the things that others have wrote about already, I'd just post you to a slightly more hidden but quite interesting link: this Wired article is a gateway to their "report an edit and sort them by most popular/new/etc."

My personal favorite: NSA removes link to ECHELON

That said, this is all a tip of iceberg. It is still not that easy to just specify an organization and see what it has done. And the concentration on US government and corporations, while not suprising, is probably missing over the "really interesting" stuff. I am waiting to find out what edits have come from such interesting entities as State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus, Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, Ministry of State Security or Gazprom...

Unfortunatly, the IP ranges of those organizations are not well known. Or are they...?

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikiscanner, Wikipedia

The conversion of Kniaz Jarema

2007-08-03T16:33:00.000-04:00

Translation of Kniazia Jaremy nawrócenie (song by Jacek Kaczmarski, translation by yours truly).

Tremble in fear Cossack masses,
horsers rear high,
Knyaz Jarema is converting,
Discarding Orthodox faith.
Storm is coming, hearts are uneasy,
Peasants - bearded priests and icons,
And him - Lord King of Rus,
Duchy bringing to the Crown.

Twenty years his soul slept,
Till he saw Rome's cross' light,
Knyaz Jarema, Knyaz Jarema,
His children will fear his wrath.

Louldy plead Ruthenian folk:
- Look into your soul, lord,
Cause you give up all for nothing!
And forsake us with your politics!
Their pleas powerless,
Knyaz prayed all night,
- Who loves me - will go with me
Or I will see him on stake!

Twenty years his soul slept,
Till he saw Rome's cross' light,
Knyaz Jarema, Knyaz Jarema,
Blood of Rus' he offers to God.

- You will not reach through piety,
Royal antechambers,
Firestorm will grip Zaporizhia,
Your inheritance will burn!
- Before the inheritance is my homeland,
Before my homeland is salvation,
For Christ's wounds,
Let the generations burn!

Twenty years his soul slept,
Till he saw Rome's cross' light,
Knyaz Jarema, Knyaz Jarema,
He inflamed the souls of many.

- Blood for you, not the offices,
Hate, not love, for prince of Rus',
We are for Rzeczpospolita,
Like nails to be shortened!
- If he shortens, he will be burnt,
For I will block with my cross,
The Coroniers will yet see,
Wisniowieccy's on their throne.

For hearts content the topic,
Lies in the crypt under glass,
Knyaz Jarema, Knyaz Jarema,
Father of children put on stake,
Knyaz Jarema, Knyaz Jarema,
Neophite, as politician.

TTags: Poetry, Kaczmarski

Wikis and Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool

2007-05-10T15:52:00.000-04:00

I've just learned that my article was published by International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. In January, but let's skip this miscommunication technicality - instead, this little delay allows me to review what, if any, impact my work has had.

First, IJoITaDL makes it very easy for others to read its contents. Being open access journal, it belongs to the still rare but growing faction in the academic community, which argues that making academic works available online free of charge to anyone, thus being true to the science mission of educating the public and spreading knowledge is actually a good idea. Such approach is still being opposed by the "tradional" faction, which prefers restricting access to academic works from "unwashed masses" beyond "pay-per-acccess" traditional databases, which until recently did a splendid job of ensuring that unless you are an employee or student at a rich Western university, or go through slow and cumbersome interlibrary loan (again not available in most non-Western countries), you will have to pay few dozen $ for the privilige of reading anything but an abstract. Guess where my sympathies are :)

Therefore I was nicely - but not very - suprised when the editor of the journal told me today that my article has received 2320 page and an even larger number of downloads as part of the entire January issue :) A brief web search on my article led to some interesting findings:
* Google Scholar doesn't see it? :(
* it is mentioned in blog comments and such - so indeed somebody reads it :)
* somebody thinks its "somewhat scholarly" :)
* somebody discusses it in Finnish :)
* it was mentioned in British Council and various databases

I couldn't find any more in-depth reviews or references, but it's a nice start :)

TTags: Wikis, E-learning, Wikipedia

Hilarious reminder

2007-04-05T12:27:00.000-04:00

Few months ago I posted 2 photos from Wikimania which had me in it. Now I found a third :)

This is a group of Wikipedians making fun of the semi-serious hate site, Wikitruth.

What's not so fun is that some find the above photo controversial and demanded - and succeeded - in censoring it out from Wikipedia itself...

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006, Wikiturth

Wales on copyright

2007-03-19T15:36:00.000-04:00

Doing some research, I spotted an interesting quote by Jimbo Wales: I am not a thief - I'm the founder of Wikipedia, but bad law treats me like a teen music pirate. The quote comes from Newsweek International (2005-11-28 : 71) - and to much of my suprise, it was not picked up and reffered to anywhere online. With a little effort, I tracked the article - unfortunatly Newsweek's articles are not free. The article can be accessed by subscribers of Newsweek, BL Direct, and Expanded Academic ASAP (via InfoTrac) (sorry, no direct link I could find). The article may be over 2 years old, but what Wales notes is even more applicable today, as the struggle of free culture continoues. Here are a few interesting excerpts from the article:

*"bad copyright laws are increasingly affecting a much more important group of cultural producers"

*"we [Wikipedians] are forced to become copyright experts, because so much of our cultural heritage is being threatened by absurd limits on fair use of information in the public domain. I get two to three threatening lawyergrams each week; one I just received from a famous London museum begins, typically, "We notice you have a number of images on your website which are of portraits in the collection of [our museum]... Unauthorized reproduction of such content may be an infringement..." I now respond with a two-part letter. First, I patiently and tediously explain that museums do not and cannot own the copyrights to paintings that have been in the public domain for hundreds of years. And then I simply say: "You should be ashamed of yourselves." Museums exist to educate the public about our shared cultural heritage. The abuse of copyright to corner that heritage is a moral crime. "

*"The excuse normally given, that producing digital reproductions is costly and time-consuming, and museums need to be able to recoup that cost, is entirely bogus. Just give us permission, and Wikipedians will go to any museum in the world immediately to make high-quality digital images of any artwork. The solution to preserving our heritage and communicating it in a digital form is not to lock it up, but to get out of our way."

*"This issue, public-domain artworks, is about an abuse of existing law. But the law itself is also a problem. Copyrights have been repeatedly extended to absurd lengths for all kinds of works, whether the author aims to protect them or not. Even works that have no economic value are locked away under copyright, preventing Wikipedians from rewriting and updating them."

*"We have the people to do it. We have the technology to do it. And we will do it, bad law or no. But good law, law that recognizes a new paradigm of collaborative creativity, will make our job a lot easier. Copyright reform is not about kids' stealing music. It is about recognizing the astounding possibilities inherent in the honest and intelligent use of new technologies."

TTags: Copyright, Jimbo Wales, Free culture, Wikipedia

A forgotten poem

2006-12-25T13:03:00.000-05:00

Long time ago (read: several years), when I was still gamemastering Earthdawn in Kraków (good old times), I found a very nice journa l. Around that time, when I was on holiday in some warm southern European country, I stumbled upon a very nice Earthdawn poem. Being unable to save it (era of floppy drives, and don't ask me why I didn't get one, I don't remember); I wrote it down on a paper bag :) And I can tell you why I wrote the poem down instead of the url: it was unfinished, and I liked it so much, that I decided to finish it myself (which, amazingly, I did).

Today, I found the bag. A quick internet search seems to indicate the page is no longer online (I thought it was on that journal page, but it isn't); I can't find it in the Internat Archives... so I decided to rewrtie it from the paper bag here, and help ensure it is immortalized on the web.

The poem is dedicated to the twelve Passions of Earthdawn. As any fan of Earthdawn knows, three of those entities went mad during the Scourge; the poem as I found was the post-Scourge variants, missing three strophes - as it is considered unlucky to mention the names of the Mad Passions. Long story short, I wrote the missing strophes, and I am still happy with that job.

Disclaimers: if the unnamed author ever comes forward, kudos to him! In few places I couldn't read my old scribblings so I had to change his words; and in a oneor two others I replaced his verses with my own when I thought they sounded better. So, without further due, the new Hymn to the Twelve Passions:

The first to enter with this song,
To leave her out would do much wrong
For Astendar comes forth from our art
And by her love burns heart to heart.

With money comes Chorrolis touch,
The glint of gold, the jewels, and such.
And glad for trade he makes your mind,
For beauty's sake, he walks behind.

About the home is Garlen realm,
For any ilness she is a balm.
A gentle touch beyond the view,
A mother stays to comfort you.

Within the woods, the restless wild,
Jaspree galoops, storm and mild.
Outside the city, rules he there,
All things of nature are in his care.

Boundaries forged of stone and brick,
Upandal builds them well to stick.
With thoughtful planning, patent tries,
He's nearby when machines rise.

Thystonius, champion of the brave
Honors war, strife, for valor's sake.
For all who live and die by sword
They may be certain he's their lord.

Freedom's sacred to us all,
Lochost brings change to any soul.
For life is change as all may see
And seeing change we are all free.

The wind blows strong to charge your feet,
Flonranuus in your speed you greet.
He aids the body and helps soul fight,
With blaze of future, always bright.

Mynbruje's law is justice and truth.
Rights and duties live under her roof.
Those left behind or falsly blamed,
Will topple giants with sound of her name.

Feared by many he brings good health,
Vestrial cares not for signs of wealth.
Pride worst enemy, friend of quick wit
His laughter echoes with many a trick.

In every pattern there is her trace,
And laws of man reflect her grace.
Erendis is hard work that brings us peace.
When she is gone, all is amiss.

There is always first and and foremost,
And Rashomon is one behind such post.
Where there is need for wisdom, not speed,
His words should be the ones they heed.

TTags: Earthdawn, Poetry

The cabal

2006-12-23T09:02:00.000-05:00

The CABAL

Source: Image at Wikipedia

I am there, too - second from the right, front row :) On a more serious note, this does seem to prove (since we have no stats yet) that Wikipedia is male dominated...

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006

Movie advert 7 (Kochaj albo rzuć)

2006-12-04T14:41:00.000-05:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
6th POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: Kochaj albo rzuć

When? December 8 (Thursday) 7:00PM-9:00PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Movie genre: comedy

Year: 1977; director: Sylwester Chęciński; length: 116m; color; English subtitles.

Last part of the saga of the two families in "Sami swoi" and "Nie ma mocnych". The seniors of both families with their granddaughter visit relatives in Chicago where the differences in customs, life conditions and habits create many comic situations.

It was one of the most popular Polish comedies of its times and still remains an old favorite. Lubomierz has a museum dedicated to the movies, and Toruń has a statue of the two main heroes, Kargul and Pawlak.

Winner of 1974 Polish Film Festival audience awards. IMdB ranking of 6.9/10.

TTags: University of Pittsburgh, Poland, Movie

Movie advert 6 (Nie ma mocnych)

2006-11-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
6th POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: Nie ma mocnych

When? November 2 (Thursday) 7:00PM-9:00PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Movie genre: comedy

Year: 1974; director: Sylwester Chęciński; length: 84m; color; English subtitles.

The main characters are the same two quarreling pesant families introduced in "Sami swoi" (shown the previous month). The action of the film starts 18 years later. The old quarrels have been forgotten, but new problems keep popping up. They have no adult male successors to inherit the farms. But they have a granddaughter, and a plan…

Winner of 1974 Polish Film Festival audience awards. IMdB ranking of 7.8/10.

TTags: University of Pittsburgh, Poland, Movie

The wheel of history

2006-10-17T00:07:00.000-04:00

It is interesting to note that much of the trouble we have today with copyright was foreseen and discussed by people hundreds of years ago. I throughoutly enjoyed reading the 19th century speeches by Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, which you can find here. Also, take note of this essey by Eric Flint, which directed me there in the first place.

TTags: Copyright

Yalta, translated

2006-10-14T13:36:00.000-04:00

My translation of 'Jałta' by Jacek Kaczmarski.

Like new tsar s' residence,
Servants know their duties,
Far were the Tatars resettled,
From where the world is judged.

Widows now see, the walls listen
How coughs with his cigar the Lion,
How squeks the wheelchair pushed
with broken Democrat inside.

But nobody sees and nobody hears,
Highlander's doings in Crimean night,
When with faithful comrades' gesture
He speaks with his legandary power.

Don't blame Stalin,
He was not pulling the strings,
It was not his fault,
That Rooslvelt in Jałta had no strenght.
When the triumvirate together formed
the history of the world,
- It's obvious who played the Ceasar's role
and such is the truth behind Jałta.

In the weak light of cigar's butt
Floated the face of Albion's lion:
Let's not talk about the Baltic,
Why would Europe need so many states?

Poles? - after all there is just the matter
that they have to live somewhere...
Poland, it was always trouble...
The Cripple cares and shakes.

But sooths them master of the house,
Stroking his yellowish moustache:
My country will lend them a helping hand,
Later they can do what they want.

Don't blame Churchill,
He was not pulling the strings,
After all, the triumvirate was only there
So Stalin would get what he desired.
Who values peace,
Will always back out of the fight -
Win will the one who fears not the wars
And such is the truth behind Jałta.

The palace's walls strain to hear
When to the Cripple speaks the Lion -
- I believe in Stalin's thruthful words
He seems to care for Soviet's blood.

And so the Cripple nods to that,
Unbroken guardian of democracy
Stalin, he's the man of the century
The men of state, the leader!

As alliance of great ones, it's not a cabal
It's the world's future - freedom, order -
With them, the weak will survuve,
And receive his share... of losses.

Don't blame Roosvelt,
Think what he had to endure!
Pipe, cigar's smoke and bottle,
Churchill, who cared not for alliances.
After all, three empires talked
about the borders, unclear ones:
- and in the details, Beria lied,
And such is the truth behind Jałta.

So delegations flew away,
Quiet became the tsar's Crimean castle.
And when the West was loud with guns,
Humans like cattle were hearded East.

The free world later celebrated freedom,
The fronts suddenly became empty -
Flowers fell on the president's grave,
And there were transports, so many transports.

The red dawn follows the night
The voters voted, and Churchill left!
And there the transports of live people,
And there the camps of long death.

So don't blame the Big Three,
History's judgement was behind it
Designed in every detail -
Each of them protected, what they had.
They could have erred, in the moment -
He was not a Pole, not a Balt...
Only the victims are always right!
And such is the truth behind Jałta.

TTags: Poetry, Kaczmarski

Exploding encyclopedia

2006-10-13T18:51:00.000-04:00

As much as I am a fan of Wiki, some things make me wonder...

And if this is in, have you ever thought about what is out?

And then, of course, we have BJAODN. Enter at your peril. And don't say I didn't warn you...

TTags: Wikipedia, Humor

The Dogma of Otherness

2006-10-12T16:58:00.000-04:00

One of the most intriguing concepts I have run into recently is the 'The Dogma of Otherness' described by David Brin. In the time and place where political correctness and cultural relativism are much more popular than arguments about benefits of the Western culture, Brin ironically and with a tongue-in-cheek manages to show how the very critiques of the Western culture in fact manage to provide compelling arguments about its unique advantages. The logic he employs is very simple - perhaps even right there along the lines 'it's so simple only a genius can see it' :> His argument, in essence, boils down to the simple statement that the (modern) Western culture is the only one which not only allows but encourages critique of itself, thus it invites change (for better), is in the best position to assimilate good parts of other cultures, and (even if it is not 'polite' to say so) is the the most tolerant and positive of them all.

To illustrate his argument, let me quote from his essay:

"Anthropologists tell us that every culture has its core of central, commonly shared assumptions--some call them zeitgeists, others call them dogmas. These are beliefs that each individual in the tribe or community will maintain vigorously, almost like a reflex.

"It's a universal of every society. For instance, in the equatorial regions of the globe there's a dogma that could be called machismo, in which revenge is a paramount virtue that runs deeper even than religion. From Asian family centrism to Russian pessimism, there are worldviews that affect nations' behavior more basically than superficial things like communism, or capitalism, or Islam. It all has to do with the way children are raised.

"We, too, have our zeitgeist. But I am coming to see that contemporary America is very, very strange in one respect. It just may be the first society in which it is a major reflexive dogma that there must be no dogmas!"

"But think, for a moment, how unique this is . . . how unusual this cultural mind-set has to be! Throughout history nearly every human society has worked hard to ingrain its children with the assumption that theirs was the only way to do things. Oh, we still get a lot of that here. It probably comes automatically with flags and nations and all that tribal stuff. But where and when else has the societal dogma also included such a powerful counter-indoctrination to defend otherness?"

"The Dogma of Otherness insists that all voices deserve a hearing, that all points of view have something of value to offer."

Is there really a war of memes? Perhaps. But if there is, the dogma of otherness gets my full support - especially over other memes that Brin describes as its opponents (feudalism, machismo, paranoia, and "the East").

Links of interest:
*begining of 'The Dogma of Otherness' essay (unfortunatly the full text is not online, but you can get it from a library near you or buy online)
*The New Meme - another of Brin's essay's which discusses this issue (this one has full text available)
*Survival of the Fittest Ideas: The New Style of War -- a Struggle Among Memes (excerpt from Brin's speech)

Googling for "The Dogma of Otherness" produces also some other people's comments about this issue, but I think reading original Brin first is a better idea.

TTags: Culture, Brin

Movie advert 5 (Sami swoi)

2006-09-28T16:47:00.000-04:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
5th POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: Sami swoi

When? October 5 (Thursday) 7:00PM-9:00PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Movie genre: comedy

Year: 1967; director: Sylwester Chęciński; length: 81m; color; English subtitles.

The movie is the story of the two quarreling families, which after the end of the Second World War were resettled from Kresy to the Regained Territories, after Poland's borders were shifted westwards. The bad blood between them runs to the times one of Karguls plew a few inches ('3-fingers-width') into the Pawlak's territory, for which one of the Pawlaks hit him with a scythe and them escapes fearing retribution, emigrating to United States. Years later, he comes back, and finds that both families live peacefuly. His brother, Kazimierz, tells him the story of how the families came to terms, in a form of Romeo and Juliet-like marriage between Pawlak's son, Witia, and Kargul's daughter, Jadźka.

It was one of the most popular Polish comedies of its times and still remains an old favourite. Lubomierz has a museum dedicated to the movies, and Toruń has a statue of the two main heroes, Kargul and Pawlak.

TTags: University of Pittsburgh, Poland, Movie

Photos from wikimania

2006-08-11T13:21:00.000-04:00

To browse almost all photos, check 'wikimania2006' tag at Flickr and Category:Wikimania2006 on Commons. Here are some of the photos with yours truly:

From the left: Andrea (member of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees), Jimbo Wales and myself. Photo byMidom.

Others and me :) (2nd from the right). Also by Midom (tnx).

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006

Citizen Journalism

2006-08-07T10:39:00.000-04:00

After Wikimania ended, there are still some aftershocks, the most important of those likely being the Citizen Journalism Unconference. The theme is citizen journalism, we have notes added on conference wiki, and you can see other content with 'citmedia06' tag (technocrati, flickr, etc.).

TTags: Citmedia06

Vanity

2006-08-07T09:59:00.000-04:00

I was blogged about in the The Chronicle of Higher Education blog: Dispatches From Wikimania.

It's nice, but they missed few key points:
* sure, Wikipedia would benefit from the articles, but is is a minor issue. The major one is that the entire world would benefit from their contributions, and students themselves would realize that their work is useful instead of gathering dust on some shelves somewhere;
* one of the major advantages of having students learn how to contribute to Wikipedia is having them realize that writing papers does not have to be a boring assignment, but instead it's somehting millions of people do for fun;
* Wikipedia (and wikis in general) which were designed from bottom-up as the ultimate collaborative tools allow teachers to raise any collaborative learning activities to a new height;

I plan to have my PP slides downloadable soon - it seems like the promised download at Wikimania site has some delays.

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006

Wikimania Day 3 Report

2006-08-07T06:46:00.000-04:00

Day 3 of Wikimania conference begun with the meeting of those interested in studying the 'great social experiment' that Wikipedia has, accidentaly, become. The Wikimedia Research Network got (hopefully) a much needed boost in members, as did one of the most important projects out there, the General User Survey. The GUS project is designed to fill in the giant missing gaps in our knowledge of Wikipedians: while we know their general numbers and can say a little about their productivity or some other editing patterns, many basic questions like the age, education, gender, or what do they (we...) think of MediaWiki interface can be answered with little more then some educated guesses. So GUS project is extremly important for those interested in 'who' keeps the Wikipedia project running.

While the big annoucements seemed to have ended with the revelations of the first two days, lot's of tiny useful things where discussed, from the new ultimate 3-D modelling tool, Sketch Up (which may not be very wiki related but it's free and so intuitive that it promises a new revolution in grapic design), through WikiPhone promising a better collaboration between Wiki users, the Great Firewall of China, the single login idea and the goodies of MediaWiki 2.0.

PS. Later in the day I got my picture taken with Jimbo :) All in all, it was another great day, and the biggest flow of the conference seems to have been its ending too soon.

PS2. As usual, I recommend browsing through Technocrati 'wikimania2006' tag for more relations!

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006

Wikimania Day 2 Report

2006-08-06T00:09:00.000-04:00

I spent the entire day at the 'teaching' track. Among the most interesting things is the new partially ready software that will give the MediaWiki sotftware (the wiki software run by Wikipedia and many other wikis) functionality of the course management system. Everbody was also excited with the news about the upcoming WYSIWYG editor I mentioned yesterday.

And that's honestly the notable part of my day. Lot's of other issues, but nothing of general interest. Still, general impression: a great, great place. Try to catch some of the live casts from the tommorow's last day, or search for podcasts and videocasts using the 'wikimania2006' tags: there is lots of stuff, see technocrati, flickr, del.icio.us and likely other stuff I am not aware of :)

Trivia: Wiki-blog of Wikimania

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006

Wikimania Day 1 Report

2006-08-04T23:15:00.000-04:00

So it all started with Jimbo Wales welcome and introduction (available as podcast). Andy Carvin has already blogged a good summary so just go read it there if you like :) (there is also some stuff here.

Among the highlights and my personal favourites is Wales annoucement of WYSIWIG editor coming to Wikipedie in some unspecified future (with the help of great folks from SocialText), the potential of SemanticWiki and the great (as expected) speach by Lawrence Lessig (and his control of PowerPoint?? was just amazing, I have never seen anything like this... plus he showed two AMVs :D). Listen to Lessig's mp3 and read Andy's notes again, or hopefully we will have some video published soon...

TTags: Wikipedia, Wikimania2006

Wikipedia alliance with Library of Congress and USHMM

2006-07-21T12:08:00.000-04:00

"Wikimedia Foundation representatives met this week with officials from two major institutions regarding the issue of access to archival materials. The Library of Congress has expressed interest in including Wikipedia content as part of its archive collection, while also indicating that it could make a sizable amount of its own material available for use on Wikimedia projects. In addition, use of a substantial collection belonging to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is being negotiated (...) The material would be available on terms compatible with Wikipedia licensing.. " (read the rest of Signpost story) It's nice to see traditional knowledge holders are begining to realize their goals are compatibile with Wikipedia. This is the snowball effect I have been mentioning from time to time - one of the factors supporting Wiikipedia exponential growth. Sure, they will be exceptions. But whenever somebody "breaks" and starts cooperating with Wikipedia, it makes it that much easier - or necessary - for others to follow his suit. And one of the beauties of this is that when you start working with Wikipedia, you enter the realm of open sourced and copylefted information. If Library of Congress starts supporting GFDL or CC, it will be a good day for all citizens :)

TTags: Wikipedia

Wikipedia news flash - 15 July 2006

2006-07-15T14:08:00.000-04:00

Rosenzweig's excellent academic article on Wikipedia draws relatively little attention from outside world, which is a shame, because all who read it agree it's top class. Have you read it yet? If no, it's a must.

Wikimania is almost here. But if you cannot make it to Boston, do not worry - Wikimania is open to online participation, too! There will be live audio and video streams, and of course live possibility to offer feedback during various discussions, Q&A sessions, and such.

Another chapter in Wikipedia's Holy Grail Quest - the stable version part probably two digits :) What is the stable version idea? Well, trying to merge two opposites: the basic idea of wiki 'anybody can edit it' with the basic criticism of wiki 'anybody can edit it' :) The last chapter was quite enjoyable, and as often happens, was started with some journalist's misunderstanding of Wikipedia...

For those who want more coverage of Wikipedia 'grand experiment', there are two sites that should be followed at least as closely, if not more, then my posts:
* Wikipedia:Signpost " a community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering events and stories related to the English Wikipedia", published each Monday
* Wikizine, "an independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community"

Last but not least, I am crossposting this post with w.bloggar between the two blogs I am now involved with: my Voice of the Prokonsul and Luke's great brainchild, Digital Citizen.

TTags: Wikipedia

Historian's review of Wikipedia

2006-07-10T14:57:00.000-04:00

An excellent academic article about Wikipedia, nicely written (no 'scholarese'), by Roy Rosenzweig: "Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past" (Journal of American History 93 (1): 117-146).

It offers a great introduction to Wikipedia (something many journalists increasingly writing about Wikipedia should look at), compares Wiki to Encarta and an academic database, and discusses the role of history and historians on Wikipedia. It has many good points - on why studends use Wikipedia (and why they should not), on why academcis should contribute to Wikipedia, and many others. Excellent read!

TTags: Wikipedia

Late update: assembled varia

2006-06-03T23:15:00.000-04:00

I know I have not posted much recently. And honestly, I don't think I will go back to my good posting days soon. Don't despair - I am fine (or is that a reason to despair?). I have just been busy - with Wikipedia, with a MMORPG some friends are trying to get me addicted to, and with various aspects of real life.

For a time I thought I could transform this blog into a Wikipedia news reporting site, but after some time I realized there is little point in competing with Wikipedia:Singpost. I always believed that in numbers, there is strenght.

That said, I am sure from time to time I will stumble upon something that I want to share with others. Thanks to the progress of technology, there is already a perfect tool for tracking blog updates: news aggregators. For example, I use Bloglines. It saves you time you'd have to spend checking all those blogs for an update. Great time saver.

Talking about news aggregators, there is a new species worth nowing about. This new bunch works even with site without RSS-feed (read: it works with *any* site). I use feedwhip it to subscribe to a great webcomic I blogged about some time ago :)

Last but not least, I wanted to take this opportunity and report on a new interesting thing out there: an online non-free sciene-fiction and fantasy magazine: Jim Baen's Universe (wiki). Yeah. Non-free. And it's a good thing! I am serious. Those authors need money to live. By paying for the stuff you get REALLY good stuff: Benford, Wolfe, Drake, Flint, Ringo.... this is not 'cheap fanfiction'. This is good stuff, with pro-editors, pro-writers, pro-...well, it's good. And few bucks is not much. In addition, did you know that short story market worldwide is poor business? Bean is taking a risk with this online publication (although ebooks on average are much less risky then print publications). So if you like short stories - support Bean. You don't have to read them all now... invest for the future :)

Well, I am off. Write you... sooner or later.

TTags: Wikipedia, Science-fiction

The Economist on Wikipedia

2006-05-08T11:12:00.000-04:00

Although The Signpost is doing a great job covering Wikipedia coverage in press, I'd like to draw your attention to the recent article in The Economist: The wiki principle. It's nice to see that my favourite print media source is taking the right stand. As usually, it's a great read. See also what Wikipedians thought about it (warning: this link is going to be obsolete at some point).

As for the resons why my updates have been rare in the past month: 1) real life (end of term) 2) Wikipedia, as always 3) I finally got caught in an MMORPG...

PS. See you at Wikimania!

TTags: Wikipedia

Wikipedia presentation at University of Pittsburgh

2006-03-28T17:08:00.000-05:00

For those of you who want more than just to watch me on your screen, you have the opportunity to attend my my 1:30h presentation at the University of Pittsburgh, organized with the help of the great people from the CIDDE department.

Learning Opportunities for Faculty: Wikipedia
presented by: Piotr Konieczny, a Wikipedia administrator and Dr. Carol DeArment, CIDDE

“Wikis,” a type of website that allows users to easily add and edit content, are especially suited for collaborative authoring. The most popular wiki is Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, which is the largest encyclopedia in the world and is in the Top 20 most popular sites online. Wikis in general and Wikipedia in particular have the potential to be both research and teaching tools. This workshop will provide an introduction to wikis and the Wikipedia, and promote discussion about how they can benefit University teaching.

When and where?
Friday, April 7  Noon to 1:30 p.m.
815 Alumni Hall
Center for Instructional Development & Distance Education

To Register: Contact Michelle Lane at lanecidde.pitt.edu or call 412-383-9729.

That's the official blurb. I can promise you that I'll try to make it as useful as possible: I'll be doing lot's of live 'how to' demonstrations, and I hope that anybody leaving this presentation will be able to go online and instantly implement the tools that I will be showing. Personally I believe that wikis (and Wikipedia) are the best thing that has happened to educational system since the introduction of blackboard (lower case). They have extreme potential in reshaping the classroom, finally breaking it from the rigid framework of the industrial era, and introducing it to the new digital revolution. Blackbroad (upper case) and similar tools might have been a good start, they did little more than just another tool to an existing classroom. Wikis, among other things, allow the studends to become not just the consumers of knowledge, but to be the creators themselves - with all the increased effectivness and feeling of self-realisation that comes with that.

Power to the wikis! And see you there.

PS. Please don't bring any rotten tomatoes or eggs :)

TTags: Wikipedia, teaching, University of Pittsburgh.

Movie advert 4 (Potop)

2006-03-27T12:06:00.000-05:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
4rd POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: Potop (The Deluge) - Part One

When? March 30 (Thursday) 8:00PM-10:00PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Movie genre: Historical, action, romance

Year: 1974 Duration: 315 minutes Other: Color, Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Jerzy Hoffman. Starring Daniel Olbrychski as Andrzej Kmicic, Tadeusz Łomnicki as Michał Wołodyjowski

The Deluge, a sequel to With Fire and Sword, is also based on the 19th century novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz (a 1905 Nobel Prize Winner in literature), nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1974. The setting is the 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then the largest European state. The story take place in the 17th century during the Swedish invasion and occupation, known as The Deluge, which left Poland in ruins. A historical war epic on a grand scale, with many battles and duels, excellent costumes, props and scenery recreating this forgotten setting, the end result is a picture that looks like it was beamed straight from the 17th century, and the level of realism really adds to the immersive nature of the story.

IMDb rating: 8.4/10.

To be followed:

March 16 (Ogniem i Mieczem, Part 2 of 2) (1999)

Room opens at 7:00 p.m, so if you want to practice your Polish, feel free to arrive early and talk with us!

TTags: University of Pittsburgh, Poland, Movie

Wikipedia news: Britannica strikes back, Nature counterattacks

2006-03-23T22:41:00.000-05:00

Three months after well-respected journal Nature published a study that claimed Wikipedia is almost as accurate as the 200-years old Encyclopædia Britannica, the Britannica dinosaur has awaken from it's slumber and has striken back: Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature (and of course their responce had to be published in a pdf...). As might have been expeted, Britannica claims that "Almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading." The Nature has replied declining their request to retract the article and "rejected those accusations".

The story has already made it to mainsteam media, so you can keep track of the recent developments with Google News.

See also Wikipedia Village Pump (news) discussion on this subject.

And in releated news, this should stirr the waters even further: there is a paper coming in Journal of American History, claiming that "the prose on Wikipedia is not so terrific but most of its facts are indeed correct, to a far greater extent than Wikipedia's critics would like to admit".

PS. In case you wonder, Wikipedia has corrected all the errors by late January 2006. As for Britannica... who knows? They claim to have no errors, after all. :>

TTags: Wikipedia, Britannica, Nature.

Watch me live on videocast!

2006-03-22T15:18:00.000-05:00

For the first time ever, you can see me live at a videocast! On 12:00 (GMT-5) at Pitt CIDDE's videocast website as I'll be talking about wikis and wikipedias in teaching. During the videocast (which should last about 20 minutes) you can send me questions via that website. Later you can download the videocast (or mp3 audio). Enjoy!

On a related note, I think people at CIDDE are doing a tremendous good job, experimenting with new tools and providing useful instructional movies about them - online and for free. Keep up the good job!

TTags: Wikipedia, teaching, videocast, University of Pittsburgh.

Varia

2006-03-16T18:54:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the brief format, but I am a tad busy.

Comics on copyrights

Film on nanotechnology

France keeping right on track

1,000,000 down, how many more to go?

2006-03-01T18:40:00.000-05:00

Wikimedia press release: March 1, 2006 The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. The article is about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, and it was started by Wikipedia contributor Ewan Macdonald. Wikipedia is a free, multilingual, online encyclopedia with 3.3 million articles under development in more than 125 languages.

Wikipedia Signpost notes that in terms of the number of articles, the English Wikipedia will have doubled in size in slightly less than a year, after reaching 500,000 articles last 17 March.

And we have still barely scratched the surface of the humanity's knowledge. I look forward to many, many years of Wiki's growth.

Although 2 million pool is closed (I voted for 20th June 2007, and feel preety confident I should be no more then few months off), feel free to guess when we will cross the 5 million articles treshold. I think I'll take some time before voting there, but I'd expect each next million will be much easier - so 3 millions should take no more then about two years. 20th June of 2008, perhaps? :D

TTags: Wikipedia.

Wiki extras, copyrights info nuggets and trivia

2006-02-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

I found some off-wiki wiki-friendly tools that I think are definetly worth checking out.

Qwikia is a search engine that not only searches through non-en wikipedias, but trnaslates the entries. Considering that there is still a lot entries on pl wiki that I know of that are so far untranslated, I'd estimate that this nifty tool in practice increase Wiki database by a third.

WikipedizeText can imbede any text with hyperlinks to related Wiki articles. Great for any kind of online papers/assignments you have to turn in - or for blog posts :)

Some copyright/copyleft related articles:
* UK official terrifies with copyleft Firefox - how can you give your software for free and allow others to sell it? LOL.
* BBC notices some benefits of non-pernament copyrights. About time...

Also, interesting stuff happening over the net:
* Google launches it's own 'Page creator', which supposed to be a kind of WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly create your own homepage.
* a guide on how to get your personalized tv station with RSS and BitTorrent. If only the media industry would embrace this concept instead of fighting it. I would be happy to ditch the cable (which I am not watching anyway, I just need the Internet...) and pay some kind of tax (or other form of payment) for the ability to use such tools legally.

TTags: Wikipedia, Copyrights.

More Wikipedia news: The work is going on

2006-02-22T18:22:00.000-05:00

More news from the wikiworld out there:

Wikipedia Signpost has an interview with Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Some of my favourite parts"

WS: Raul654 asks: "Where do you see Wikipedia in 10 years?"
JW: I don't know. My favorite answer to this is to say, the real question is: where will the world be after 10 more years of Wikipedia. :)

WS: David.Monniaux asks: "The Foundation receives daily accusations of libel from semi-well-known people who have an entry on Wikipedia or are mentioned in some Wikipedia entry. What do you propose? Would a strict application of the rule of citing controversial claims suffice, in your opinion?"

JW: Yes. I think that our current systems do a good job of addressing these sorts of complaints, although it is very time-consuming for us here in the office. What really works wonders is a very strict application of the rule of citing controversial claims particularly relating to biographies of living persons. The new policy on biographies of living persons is a very strong step in the right direction.

In related news:

China Wiki-censorships attracts media attention. Good - but China is known for caring little about western public opinion. Wonder if it will do any good.

Some people still think that their topic deserves special treatment...now, some concerns raised are of course valid - but they affect many other topics. And the end effect is quality improvement. Just consider the entry on 'Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy' today and 2 weeks ago. Isn't it better? QED.

Now this is a better description of the 'propaganda wars'. And in the end, we will end up with a better article. Anybody wants to bet against me that in 2 months that article will be 1) more NPOV and detailed then today 2) more stable?

Paul Saffo: "Wikipedia is a researcher's dream". Amen to that.

And more stories on Signpost...

TTags: Wikipedia.

News from Wikipedia: defamation of a Wikipedian?

2006-02-16T21:05:00.000-05:00

The Times falsely accuses an innocent Wikipedian of being a 'saboteur': One saboteur, codenamed Thruston, changes the same sentence in Blair’s entry on an almost daily basis to accuse him of setting out to “destroy” civil service neutrality.. One can easily see that Thurston hardly edits Blair's article and that his single edition was not vandalism at all.

Most likely stemming from journalist misunderstanding that the user in question reverted vandalism, not initatied it. I wonder if they will apologize?

In other news, Wikipedia Signpost reports following stories:
* Wikipedia hits Top 25 sites
* new external peer review gives Wiki thumbs up (mostly).
* and others - check Signpost for other news!

With Wikipedia approaching the millionth aricle (975,000 now and growing at about 1,000 per day), my bet on 20th June 2006 in the Wikipedia:Million pool seems to have been two pessimistic. Me - too pessimistic. Who would've thought. If Wiki growth can suprise even me... it's a good day to live on :)

There is still time to vote in the 2 million pool though :)

TTags: Wikipedia, Media, Bets.

Movie advert 3

2006-02-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
3rd POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: With Fire and Sword (Ogniem i Mieczem) (part 1)

When? February 23 (Thursday) 8:00PM-10:00PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Movie genre: Historical, action, romance

Year: 1999 Duration: 175 minutes Other: Color, Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Jerzy Hoffman. Starring Izabella Scorupco and Michal Zebrowski

With Fire and Sword is based on the 19th century novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz (a 1905 Nobel Prize Winner in literature). The setting is the 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then the largest European state, torn apart by the civil war (Chmielnicki uprising). A historical war epic on a grand scale, with many battles and duels, excellent costumes, props and scenery recreating this forgotten setting, the end result is a picture that looks like it was beamed straight from the 17th century, and the level of realism really adds to the immersive nature of the story.

To be followed:

March 16 (Ogniem i Mieczem, Part 2 of 2) (1999)

Room opens at 7:00 p.m, so if you want to practice your Polish, feel free to arrive early and talk with us!

TTags: University of Pittsburgh, Poland, Movie

The Wikipedia Muhammad Cartoons Debate

2006-02-10T23:34:00.000-05:00

Well, well, not only is the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy one of the most edited pages in Wiki recently (with Wikipedia founder, Jimbo Wales, even stepping in to moderate the discussion at one point), but the very Wiki article (not issue!) had been described by an Iraqi ebook: The Wikipedia Muhammad Cartoons Debate: A War Of Ideas.

See also recent Wikipedia Signpost story on this subject: Controversial cartoon leads to fierce debate.

TTags: Wikipedia, Islam, Muhammad cartoons

Lego - embracing the new open source culture

2006-02-06T00:21:00.000-05:00

Gotta love Lego.

Within weeks of the original Mindstorms debut, a Stanford graduate student named Kekoa Proudfoot reverse engineered the RCX brick and posted all of his findings, including detailed information on the brick's underlying firmware, online. Several other engineers quickly used Proudfoot's revelations to design their own Mindstorms tools, including an open source operating system (LegOS) and a C-like programming alternative to RCX-code (Not Quite C, or NQC). Lego's Danish brain trust soon realized that their proprietary code was loose on the Internet and debated how best to handle the hackers. "We have a pretty eager legal team, and protecting our IP is very high on its agenda," Nipper says. Some Lego executives worried that the hackers might cannibalize the market for future Mindstorms accessories or confuse potential customers looking for authorized Lego products.

After a few months of wait-and-see, Lego concluded that limiting creativity was contrary to its mission of encouraging exploration and ingenuity. Besides, the hackers were providing a valuable service. "We came to understand that this is a great way to make the product more exciting," Nipper says. "It's a totally different business paradigm - although they don't get paid for it, they enhance the experience you can have with the basic Mindstorms set." Rather than send out cease and desist letters, Lego decided to let the modders flourish; it even wrote a "right to hack" into the Mindstorms software license, giving hobbyists explicit permission to let their imaginations run wild.

Soon, dozens of Web sites were hosting third-party programs that helped Mindstorms users build robots that Lego had never dreamed of: soda machines, blackjack dealers, even toilet scrubbers. Hardware mavens designed sensors that were far more sophisticated than the touch and light sensors included in the factory kit. More than 40 Mindstorms guidebooks provided step-by-step strategies for tweaking performance out of the kit's 727 parts.

I think there is bright future for LEGO. And a lesson for some dinosours out there. Read the original story here.

Update: Lego community has created some great resources online. Below are a few pictures of my childhood...

TTags: Lego, Copyrights

Movie advert 2

2006-02-03T16:26:00.000-05:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
2nd POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: Rejs

When? February 9^th (Thursday) 7:30PM-9:00PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh)

Movie genre: Comedy

Year: 1970 Duration: 1 hour, 0 minutes Other: Black&white, Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Marek Piwowski. Starring Stanislaw Tym.

Rejs (The Cruise) is the mother of all cult films in Polish cinematography. Shot in a quasi-documentary style, with a cast featuring few professional actors, it is a perfect parody of the People's Republic of Poland, reducing a weekend river cruise to a hilarious parody of the entire communist system.

A stowaway (Stanisław Tym) sneaks aboard a ship departing on a cruise down the Vistula River. The captain takes him for a Communist Party cultural coordinator (KO) and the intruder gladly adapts to his new role, immediately setting to work at manipulating the passengers and crew into silly and vaguely humiliating games. Before long, Tym has got everyone under his thumb and created his own comedic dictatorship.

To be followed:

February 23 (Ogniem i Mieczem, Part 1 of 2) (1999)
March 16 (Ogniem i Mieczem, Part 2 of 2) (1999)

Room opens at 7:00 p.m, so if you want to practice your Polish, feel free to arrive early and talk with us!

TTags: University of Pittsburgh

Singularity update

2006-02-03T16:21:00.000-05:00

From epaper to hibernation, new breakthroughs are paving the way towards the Singularity. This amusing piece about Google future may not be that far from reality, actually...

TTags: Singularity

Wikipedia vs US Congress

2006-01-30T17:52:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia does not tolerante 'vandalism' or 'POV pushing', no matter where it comes from. Apparently, some people with IP address tracing back to US Congress have been engaging in just that - and it has gotten serious enough for Wikipedia community to implement one of the middle steps of the dispute resolution process, known as the Request for Comments. Earlier steps include normal taking and mediation, and the only step left after failed RfC (which is not binding) is the binding ruling by Wikipedia Arbitrators (during the process known as Request for Arbitration).

From Wikipedia page:
I am opening this RFC in order to centralise discussion concerning actions to be taken against US Congressional staffers who repeatedly engage in revert wars, blank content, engage in libelous behaviour or violate WP:NPOV, WP:CIV. The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy. The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians. They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.

The editors are currently blocked, but only for a week, so I feel this RFC is needed for the community to comment. I feel that a 1 week block is not enough.

It will be interesting to see if mainstream media picks that up.

Update: It did. Most of the Google News: Wikipedia stories are about this (note: link relevancy subject to change in few days).
See also this Wikinews story.

TTags: Wikipedia, Congress

Events reminder

2006-01-25T17:27:00.000-05:00

Are the Archives Doomed? with Rick Prelinger of the Prelinger Archives - Thursday, January 26, 2006 4:30 pm to 6 pm

And best Polish sci-fi/comedy at 7pm.

All at Pitt.

TTags: University of Pittsburgh, Copyright, Copyrights

Wiki news: the Tron chapter

2006-01-20T21:09:00.000-05:00

It figures. I get a little bit behind on current happenings, and an interesting story has to pass me by :)

German Wikipedia was shut down for a few days by German court: big thumbs down for Germany, apparently joining China in an attempt to silence the reality (if only for a three days). Although it's nice to see that the judges had enough wit to lift the shut down orders, it should have never been issued in the first place. Let's hope this never again happens: imagine if just suing about some detail could couse a Wiki to be shut down.

If the parents of the deceased hacker 'Tron' wanted to keep the low-down status, they should've known better then to go against Wikipedia. The English wiki was never affected, as it is not a subject to any German verdict anyway, and the news buzz (and blog buzz) generated by their actions surely will have an opposite effect to what they wanted. For other interesting indicators, note that the page did not even exist on en-wiki before the shut down of de-wiki.

Wikipedia Signpost has it's own story on that, of course. Note it already has cost us ~~at least 500 euro~~ to deal with this... well, legal vandlism, I guess. It's really annoying to see that money donated by people of good will around the world has to be spent on such trivial issues. Update: as has been pointed out in the comments (tnx!), the 500 euro is a bail amount, thus refundable. Other costs are presently unknown AFAICT.

Conclusion: if you want to gain fame, try to be anonymous by acting as the elephant in the porcelain shop (that's a Polish proverb, btw).

On a related note, I wish I could read German.

Also, Wikipedia Signpost has an interestign article on constructive reactions to being slandered on Wiki.

TTags: Wikipedia, Censorship, Germany, Tron

Wikibook special: the Lessig edition

2006-01-20T21:00:00.000-05:00

I've learned recently that Lawrence Lessig, the Creative Commons champion, is engaging in yet another experiment: he is working on an update of his book (Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace), but instead of doing it alone - he has created a wiki (Code V.2) to recruit helpers.

A great idea, if anybody wants my opinion :)

TTags: Copyright, Copyrighst, Wiki, Lessig

Movie advert

2006-01-20T01:17:00.000-05:00

Polish Student Alliance
in Pittsburgh, PA

invites you to the
POLISH MOVIE NIGHT
(free)
Movie of the week: Seksmisja

When? January 26^th 7:30PM-9:30PM

Where? 4130 Posvar Hall

Movie genre: Sci-fi, comedy

Year: 1984 Duration: 2 hours, 0 minutes Other: Color, Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Juliusz Machulski Starring Jerzy Stuhr, Olgierd Łukaszewicz, Beata Tyszkiewicz

A cult Polish production
The two main characters, Maks and Albert, played by Jerzy Stuhr and Olgierd Łukasiewicz, respectively, submit themselves to the first human hibernation experiment. Instead of being awakened after a few years, they wake up in the 21st century, in a post-nuclear world, where all humans have retreated to underground living facilities, and, what's most important, where men had died out as a result of subjection to a specific kind of radiation.

To be followed:

February 9 Rejs (1970)
February 23 (Ogniem i Mieczem, Part 1 of 2) (1999)
March 16 (Ogniem i Mieczem, Part 2 of 2) (1999)

Room opens at 7:00 p.m, so if you want to practice your Polish, feel free to arrive early and talk with us!

TTags: University of Pittsburgh

Mozilla/Firefix Wallpapers

2006-01-19T12:16:00.000-05:00

A really interesting wallpapers for Mozilla/Firefox can be found here.

Mozilla socrealism... ingenious :)

TTags: Mozilla, wallpapers, socrealism

The AMV War

2006-01-17T12:47:00.000-05:00

According to Lessig, the copyright hounds may be preparing for a new war, and their target are AMV (anime music videos). Lessig is optimistic that we will win - I hope so. Kudos to the AMV community, and to their defenders!

And if you haven't seen some, what are you still waiting for?

On a related note, reading Lessig's article on AMVs in FT I found this staggering sstatistic: According to a recent Pew study, almost 60 per cent of US teenagers have created and shared content on the internet. Now, in an excellent class I attended last term (Digital Governance, University of Pittsburgh, dr Stuart Shulman) I learned that only 4% of net users actually contribute the content. But if 60% of the new generation do it... can you imagine the consequences?

It will be BIG. And my mood just got much better :)

TTags: AMV, Anime music video, copyright, copyrights, music videos, University of Pittsburgh, Pitt

The forgotten controvercies of Freud

2006-01-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

I find it interesting, when assigned a reading by some academic (past or present), to read his biography. Much of one's work can be better understood in the context of one's experiences. And who'd be better for such analysis then the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud?

He is a much more interesting persona then I'd have thought. In the spirit of the early scientists, he experimented on himself - trying to come to grips with his own phobias. A compulsory smoker - he smoked a box of 30 cigarettes per day (!), an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant, he destroyed his personal papers and notes at least twice. Additionally, his later papers were closely guarded in the Sigmund Freud Archives, access to which was restricted and spawned at least one controversy. Last but not least, his death was a suicide (via euthanasia due to cancer pain, to be precise).

We often look at Freud as the 'shrink', forgetting he was a prominent social theorist - sociologist - as well. After reviewing his various works I do have to say I find his approach to civilization and religion perhaps the most intriguing of his life's works. In Civilization and Its Discontents he presents a fairly pessimitsic, bleak view of our civilization: that by attempting to solve problems (lack of food, security) civilization forces us into unnatural behaviour (family, law) which thus results in mental sickness (neurosis and such). Religion, according to him, is similar to Marx 'opium for the masses. In the The Future of an Illusion he critizes ogranized religion as actually being a 'collective neurosis', arguings that religion has tamed asocial instincts and created a sense of community around a shared set of beliefs, thus helping the civilization, yet at the same time it has also exacted an enormous psychological cost to the individual by making him perpetually subordinate to the primal father figure embodied by God. Finally, in one of his last books, Moses and Monotheism, he deconstructs the Bible using his theories, arguing that Moses only led his close followers into freedom, and that they subsequently killed Moses in rebellion either to his strong faith or to circumcision. Freud explains that years after the murder of Moses the rebels formed a religion which promoted Moses as the Saviour of the Israelites. Freud said that the guilt from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then drives us to religion to make us feel better.

TTags: Freud, religion

This and that

2006-01-14T22:48:00.000-05:00

First a warp drive, now some phasers :) This, at least, was more to be expected.

For a government run near-monopoly, BBC is suprisingly innovative and user friendly: check out their new RSS feed initative.

TTags: energy weapons, RSS, BBC

Wiki-news

2006-01-11T23:09:00.000-05:00

An interesting article: Isreali journalist comes to grip with Wikipedia. It's a nice, subjective - but fair - read. "Wikipedia is going to be around for yet another day." Yep :)

Chineese want their Wiki dose. "Chinese students and intellectuals are expressing outrage at Beijing's decision to prohibit access to Wikipedia, the fast-growing on-line encyclopedia that has become a basic resource for many in China." Good for them, let's hope they win.

Wikipedia itself, in the meantime, is electing it's judges. Yes, we have judges, lawyers, police... :)

TTags: Wikipedia, Censorship, China, Israel

Understanding new generation

2006-01-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

Social networking seems to be catching on - yet another exponential trend? Definetly something to be aware of if you are involved in university - no matter whether you are a student, lecturer, TA...

TTags: social networking

Reporter plagiarizes Wikipedia

2006-01-08T11:34:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia Signpost has an interesting story - how Wiki can be a victim, not the source of plagiarism.

Update.

TTags: Wikipedia, plagiarism

That came sooner then I expected...

2006-01-07T11:05:00.000-05:00

KurzewilAI.net newsflash: A "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States Air Force and Department of Energy.

TTags: space travel

Free Hacking Matter

2006-01-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

A nice book about nanotechnology and programmable matter has been released as a free pdf. Enjoy - but beware of criticisms.

Also - check out this gadget - is the electronic paper newspaper here at last?

Newsflash

2006-01-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

World Economic Forum Participants to Blog - that should be an interesting read

BusinessWeek speaks out against patents - let's hope somebody listens

P2P party - go Sweden, I'd vote for them :) This actually deserves a longer post, but I am tired and sick today, so just a thought: in the coming era of e-democracy, politicians (and parties) will increasingly concentrate on single matters, as they realize people don't have time to read long party manifestos, or go back and check how many of 1001 promises were kept. Logically this should lead to some politicians submitting every single of their desision to a vote of his electorate and voting as the majority wishes...

Firefox endorsment by Economist

2006-01-01T12:57:00.000-05:00

Bit of an old news - Dec 14th 2005 - but an interesting article in The Economist nonetheless.

Tommorow I am flying back to US. Will blog soon :)