Pros and Cons of Autonomous Cars: Part 1

I recently attended my grandson’s wedding in the faroff state of Iowa and, at a family gathering, I listened to a discussion on the pros and cons of driverless cars.


The elder folks argued that the software required by a system of communicating vehicles would be so complex as to almost insure a disaster.; software engineers know that when a bug is fixed in a program of sufficient size, the odds are that several new bugs will be introduced by the changes. Robot cars would be unpredictable, even dangerous, and the experiment is doomed to failure.


The younger faction responded.that a robot chauffeur would actually be safer from human error (drunk drivers, tired or incompetent drivers..) if all cars were driverless. Of course, there would be a transitional period when there would be a mixture of driverless and human driven cars which would be tricky because the weak link in that scenario is you and me --- the human driver. Also, according to some studies indicate some problematic tradeoffs; especially comfort vs optimization of road capacity. There are virtually no complex solutions without some tradeoffs and autonomous cars are no exception.


But there is more to an autonomous vehicle than its ability to act as a robot chauffeur. Cars would become a part of the “Internet of Things”. If you’re not already knowledgeable about this, here is a definition from Google:


Internet of things

noun
a proposed development of the Internet in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data.

And here is a link to an understandable presentation from Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/simple-explanation-internet-things-that-anyone-can-understand/

And here is a caveat from the second part of Google’s above definition:

"if one thing can prevent the Internet of things from transforming the way we live and work, it will be a breakdown in security"


When we take into account that cars are “things”, we can organize The Pros and the Cons of autonomous cars into three categories: Safety/Security, Time, and Money. Let’s take a look at some of the most interesting and important arguments in each category

Safety/Security

Pros: Somewhere between 81% to 99% of car crashes are the result of human error On the other hand, computers are not easily distracted and they don’t drive under the influence so there would be no need for a designated driver.. A computer-driven car should be safer.

Cons: As part 2. of the definition of the “Internet of Things” implies the security of autonomous vehicles would be problematic. If you think viruses and malware are annoying on your cell phones and home computers now, they will be more annoying and dangerous in a self-driving vehicle. There have already been successful experiments in hacking into.the software involved.
(Search on the phrase, “Researchers Hack Into Driverless Car System,Take Control of Vehicle “)


Time

Pros: Speed limits could be increased safely since every car knows what every car is doing and where it is (not to mention where the slowdowns are); thus commute times are reduced;

Cons: Some studies show a tradeoff between time and comfort; saving timecan make the ride herky-jerky.





Money
Pros:
Gasoline/Battery usage would be optimized as they are controlled by a computer.

Money would be saved on parking as the car can drop you off to work and park itself out of the high-rent district and return to drive you home.

Cons:

The cost of driverless cars could be too much for many citizens.. Estimates of the cost for design, implementation and testing are in the $100,000+ range.


And, finally, to make the debate even more complicated, driverless cars should be compared with similar modes of transportation that are already in place like passenger trains. For starters, trains would provide a smoother, faster ride than driverless car so some argue we should apply our efforts to driverless trains instead.

Stay tuned.

My Top Three Internet Annoyances

The Internet is a double-edged sword. It helps us shop, watch movies, and settle bar bets. On the other hand, it is full of false information (Obama is an undercover Muslim), weird diets (Lose 15 pounds in 3 days!) and lots and lots of sites that begin with the phrase “Top 10”, or “Top 5” or “Top ”.


It is these sites that perhaps annoy me the most. Don’t get me wrong --- I really do appreciate the plethora of “Top Whatever” reviews when I’m considering a new laptop or camera or a mini version of a Pilot G-2 pen that will actually fit in my tee-shirt pocket --- virtually any piece of merchandise. On the other hand, I cringe when I see something like “ Top 3 Ways to Lose Belly Fat” , “5 Ways to Stop Constipation” or “How to pick safe stocks that will triple your investment !!!”. I’m not sure why these come-ons are so prevalent, but the advertisers must think they are effective or we would not be seeing so many of them. This got me to thinking about which is the most attractive number for these sorts of come-ons? Is it 5 or is it 10 or even 20? I was pretty sure it wasn’t 20 (who has that kind of time?) but curious about the rankings from 1 to 10.


In a previous column I discussed Google’s NGram site which graphs the frequency of usage for any phrase you input between 1800 and 2000. For this experiment, I found the usage of all the occurrences from “Top 1” to “Top 10” (plus Top 20 and 100). The Ngram chart I got was and was not surprising (before you read further, what would you guess the order of usage was?) Which phrase was used the most during the last 200 years?

I was not surprised to find that the winner was ....”Top 10” which had double the number of occurrences as “Top 20”, but was surprised that the second place was taken by 20 --- I was dead wrong about the “Top 20” phrase which really took off in the 1950s but then I remembered the Music Charts back then most always comprised the Top 20 popular songs. Following were: 1, 100, 5 (100 and 5 were very close, and essentially the same by the year 2000), 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 4, and 9 bunched together as the least referenced. Now there’s some trivia that could possibly buy you a beer at the bar.

Another annoyance is the message I get when I decline to subscribe to a web service such as one that tracks stocks or sports or politics. Usually I’m given only two options: Yes!!! Sign me Up” and “No thanks I’m not interested in or < I’m not interested in becoming smart, rich and famous> or some equivalent snarky, passive-aggressive response designed specifically to make you change your mind. There’s nothing quite like being patronized by a computer. Nothing.

The final annoyance that I have space to complain about is sort of a semi-scam. It usually appears on a search for merchandise. For example, the other day I realized that my Camry was over 12 years old and might need a new set of rotors and brake linings, so, on a whim I started to search out prices for a newer car to get a feel for the market. After navigating several sites that purportedly Toyota has approved, I found most of them wanted my email address before I could receive a quote which I don’t like to do as it just makes for more junk mail in my Inbox. I could have given them my decoy email address that I use for such cases,

but guessing that the site would just ask for more personal information, I just cancelled the transaction. After much searching, I found the actual Toyota website which did display list prices with no fuss or bother.

I’m sure that you, dear reader, have your own set of Internet Annoyances and I’d be interested in hearing from you. Please use my website (www.tec-soc.blogspot.com) or my email (denenbsa@google.com) to share.

Potpourri: Revisiting Smartphones, Musing on Cyborgs and Editing DNA

I feel that it’s necessary to attempt to clear up any misunderstandings concerning my previous column, “Smartphones more distracting, isolating than useful” . The title I originally submitted was “Why I don’t own a Smartphone” and my intent was to explain why smartphones are not for me, mainly because I realize how easily distracted I am. I most certainly did not wish to imply that smartphones should be shunned by everyone --- only that one must consider the downsides as well as the many upsides. Recall that the March 8, 2015 column, “”Accentuate the Positive...“ was entirely devoted to singing the praises of how and why smartphones are the perfect technology for advising troubled teens. So, one more time: if you think you can handle the downsides, then dive in but please weigh the decision carefully. As our elders have advised:. Look before you Leap.




More to the point, I stumbled onto a TED Talk: “Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now” which deals with much the same issues I raised in “Why I don’t Own a Smartphone” and extends it into the field of “cyborg anthropology”. Quite a mouthful. She begins her talk with the startling pronouncement, “ I would like to tell you all that you are all actually cyborgs, but not the cyborgs that you think. You're not RoboCop, and you're not Terminator, but you're cyborgs every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices.”




She goes on to give the classical definition of the word Cyborg: "an organism to which exogenous (fancy word for ‘outside the system’) components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments." and, from an anthropological perspective, describes how humans have pretty much always used tools of one kind or another but this new tool, this network of computers comprising the Internet, is different. Up until the dawn of the digital computer age (circa 1940) humanity used tools that extended physical limitations --- such as stone chisels, trebuchets and jet planes. This newest tool, the computer, the heart of the Internet, extends our minds. This idea is not new --- indeed Doug Engelbart (http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html) referred to these new machines as “mind augmenters”. and Vannevar Bush: before him explored this idea shortly after World War II.

(http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/)




Space limits the number of insights Amber Case presents so it would be well worth your time to search for “ Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now.” It’s less than 8 minutes and it’s what Infotainment ought to be: educational, enlightening and enjoyable.




While I certainly am not an expert in molecular biology, it seems to me that “editing dna in human embryos” qualifies as an ethical issue between technology and society. If we look at it from a computer science viewpoint, the term “edit” is usually associated with files of text, graphics, music and the like ---certainly not human dna! For example, when I edit a text file, there are only three operations that can be performed: Insert, Delete and Replace (actually only two as Replace can be simulated by applying Delete and Insert appropriately but it’s convenient for the user to have a separate Replace operation).As an added bonus, most modern word processor apps provide an “UnDo” operation as well.




As we all know from our experience with Word processors, if we make a mistake while editing, it is possible, even easy, to correct the mistake. Not so (so far) when editing the dna of a human gene and this could lead to unintended consequences. So modifying a gene’s dna incorrectly is much much more than an “OOPS!” moment. While it is true that scientists usually have a good idea of the intended outcomes of an experiment there’s always that, no matter how minute, possibility of a disaster. Let’s hope that nothing goes wrong. For the gory details point your browser at: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/18/441408880/british-scientists-seek-permission-to-edit-dna-in-human-embryos

Why I don’t own a Smartphone

There are two reasons I don’t own a smartphone. The first is more complicated, so let’s address that one first. As a sometime Buddhist, an important goal, for me, is to be in the present moment. This is very difficult as I am easily distracted so if I don’t watch myself, on the way to the mailbox. for example, I can see some weeds in the garden which I start to pull and I discover a japanese beetle...you get the idea. That’s problematic enough but there is an even more insidious force which diverts my attention and that is the ongoing conversation in my head which I guess many of us have. Zen Buddhists call that “the mad monkey” -- swinging from branch to branch, never stopping to experience the present moment. This buzzing in our minds works to divert our attention from what’s actually happening in the present moment and I believe certain technologies, like the smartphone, contribute to this unwelcome phenomenon.

My basic premise is that while we create technology, technology also changes us causing a strange symbiosis which can be summed up by the phrase,”I change It, It changes me.” I worry that if I acquire a smartphone, then I will be carrying around an internet-enabled computer and the temptation to use it will be overwhelming and I don’t want to be overwhelmed. This phenomenon is not limited to technology -- it can occur in the arts as well. Let’s take a look at how that goes.

Back in the olden times, people could only listen to music when played by live musicians. Granted, one had to have wealth enough to pay for this pleasure which excludes about 99% of us but, nonetheless that’s the way it used to be. As time progressed so did technology and by the early 20th century Edison had found a way to record sound waves and before we knew it, many more of us had phonographs and records to play on which the music was recorded. We then had the luxury of listening to the great composers whilst sitting in our living rooms and sipping a cup of tea or perhaps something stronger. We no longer had to travel to listen to music and most everyone thought this a “good thing”. But the experience of listening to music was mediated by the technology on which the music was recorded. There’s a good reason we call it ‘media” --- it mediates or intervenes between me and the direct experience and cannot help but mitigate it. It means that any experience mediated through technology is is necessarily diminished.

Then the music delivery technology begins to change fast. Still in the 20th century, Sony invents the Walkman and, as its name promises, allows us to leave our living rooms and go outside and isolate ourselves from our environment (this includes other people) while enjoying our chosen playlists. Many more modifications allowed us to arrive at the present day where our music arrives from “the Cloud” and is then transported into our ears via earphones from our smartphones.

Many would call this progress but it has a price. Technology has allowed us to isolate ourselves from one another. Worse, it raises a barrier between you and what’s happening right now --- the present moment. Is it worth the price? Everyone must decide that for themselves but many are not even aware that a decision has to made --- we just accept the new shiny technology as progress (a good thing) and fail to reflect on its dark side.

Due to limited space, I have left out several steps in the evolution of the relationship between music and technology (such as the probable fact that our ancestors played music on a bone flute about 40,000 years ago), but my claim stands: Technology mediates and thus has the ability to isolate as well. Personally, I think anything that comes between me and experiencing the present moment is not useful; it is a step backwards. And a step backwards can hardly be called “progress”.

The second reason I do not own a smartphone is that my wife has one and when I need it, I can borrow it from her.

Is the Internet Changing Us?

Do you ever wonder if technology like the Internet is changing us? If so, you’re not alone.

There are many people interested in this issue of how we create the technology but then it ends up changing us --- for the better? A good question.

Professor Sherry Turkle works in the Program of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT and is the founder and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Turkle has also presented two very interesting TED talks. TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design devoted to spreading ideas via interesting speakers giving short presentations on a very wide range of subjects; if you have not yet viewed TED.com, treat yourself to one at your earliest convenience.

In her first TED talk in 1996, Turkle came across as an evangelist for the Internet. She enthusiastically endorsed its promise of connecting humankind and believed that we would use the information gained through this virtual world to enhance our endeavors and make us more fully human. However, in 2012 she did another TED talk recanting her prior position. Instead of enhancing our lives, she argued that it is instead degrading them. Technology has allowed us to hide from real encounters with others as well as assuage our boredom. Her exact words were, “As a psychologist, what excited me most was the idea that we would use what we learned in the virtual world about ourselves, about our identity, to live better lives in the real world.”

On the other hand, she admits at the start of her 2012 talk that she loves getting texts; in fact she had just received one from her daughter just minutes before going on, “Mom, you will rock.” Turkle goes on to point out, “I'm still excited by technology, but I believe, and I'm here to make the case, that we're letting it take us places that we don't want to go...those little devices in our pockets are so psychologically powerful that they don't only change what we do, they change who we are. ”

Her epiphany came when she was visiting a nursing home where she was part of team treating an elderly woman who was grieving over a child who had recently died. Turkle’s part was to supply a “sociable robot” to give the patient the calming feeling that they were understood. This particular robot was constructed to resemble a baby seal and it was doing an amazing job of comforting her as it appeared to be understanding and following the conversation Many on the team found this amazing, but Turkle did not. She remembers, “...that woman was trying to make sense of her life with a machine that had no experience of the arc of a human life. ..That robot can't empathize. It doesn't face death. It doesn't know life...We expect more from technology and less from each other. And I ask myself, "Why have things come to this?"

Have things come to this? I believe so and I agree with Turkle that the root of the problem is control; in this case, it’s control over where you choose to put your attention. She says, “So you want to go to that board meeting, but you only want to pay attention to the bits that interest you. And some people think that's a good thing. But you can end up hiding from each other, even as we're all constantly connected to each other.”

I would add another factor to why we spend so much time “alone together”and that is: boredom.. We humans, at least in this culture, just cannot deal with being bored for any appreciable length of time. Whether we’re in traffic, waiting at the check-out or just plain “at loose ends” it’s a frustrating and often claustrophobic experience. So, to combat the boredom, we have TV, smartphones, and even books to assuage the pain of boredom. What to do?

Ironically, there’s an app for that, “Headspace” which is described in the July 6&15 New Yorker.. “The Higher Life”. Is this Two Wrongs making a Right or is it just fighting fire with fire (which, in fact, works in extreme cases? Stay tuned.

Around The Internet

Although I base my research primarily on articles from the New Yorker and Atlantic Magazines, the New York Times and the Washington Post newspapers as well as several websites such as the MIT Technology Review, Google Tech, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, today’s column springs from two articles in the 5/24/10 Press Republican. Although They both appear on the same page, but they illustrate vastly different aspects of technology’s effect on society.

The first, “Researchers making strides with Cheyenne supercomputer” describes how the biggest, newest, fastest computer can help society with solving problems that were previously deemed intractable such as accurate weather and earthquake prediction. Housed in Cheyenne, Wyoming this “giant brain”, appropriately named “Yellowstone” can perform 1.5 quadrillion operations per second.

When I read this fact, I paused and remembered my experience working on an earlier supercomputer, the ILLIAC IV, during the late 60s to early 70s at the University of Illinois (you may recall HAL’s reference to ILLIAC I in Kubrick’s classic film “2001” ). It’s claim to fame was that it was capable of performing one million operations per second --- that’s a billion times faster. This line of thought led me to considering the obvious question, “What kind of ‘operation’ are we talking about here? Surely not brain surgery. If you guessed that it’s more likely some internal electronic computer operation such as doing arithmetic you’d be right on track. In fact the ILLIAC IV was advertised as achieving a “megaflop” in one second which was an acronym for “ one million floating point additions”. And what, you may ask, is a “floating point addition” as opposed to a plain vanilla one? Well,like any technical problem, the details are somewhat technical but the gist is that the computer circuitry for adding whole numbers is simpler and faster than the circuitry for adding numbers with decimal points (which are called “floating point”), so, unlike in a social situation, it’s more glorious achievement to do a “flop”.

ILLIAC IV was not a commercial success; only a few ILLIACs were sold to government agencies but many of its technical innovations were incorporated into future generations of supercomputers leading to Yellowstone. (Makes you wonder if the Edsel possibly had similar effects on automobiles...)

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry after I read the second article on the Science page, “Ready for liquor bottles smart enough to talk to Smartphones?”. When I first started following the development of the “Internet of Things” I was moderately impressed with the idea that milk cartons could be designed with gizmos that broadcast to your smartphone/watch when they were past expiration date or down to one-quarter and that it was time to start thinking about adding them to your grocery list. But this “advance” seems to me to have crossed the threshold of common sense. Based on those frames that continuously scroll through photographs of your grandchild’s last birthday or your recent travels, this advance allows you to post a scrolling text from your smart device (smartwatch, smartphone, tablet, pc, etc, etc etc...) that will display ala Times Square Banner Headlines on your...wait for it....liquor bottle.

While I can understand the benefits accrued to the purveyor of spirits (it can also track the location of the bottle which, in and of itself, is a tiny bit creepy) I fail to see how it will help me become a better person (unless, in its next version, it will sound warnings that I’ve had my limit and refuse to dispense for 24 hours). This is a good example of an NTTT technology (Not Thought Through Thoroughly).

On the plus side, here’s an amusing example that low tech still survives somewhere in this world: “Police in India this week arrested a pigeon on charges of spying for Pakistan. The bird,..., reportedly had a "stamped message" on its body that ... included a Pakistani phone number. An X-ray of the bird didn't show anything out of the ordinary, but police have nevertheless registered it as a "suspected spy" and are keeping it in custody.” (www.theverge.com/2015/5/29/8685369/india-arrests-pigeon-spy-pakistan)

My faith in a Deity with a sense of humor has been restored.

The Right to be Let Alone

“There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?”
(http://rense.com/general31/keepbigbrothershands.htm)

The preceding was a direct quote made almost 20 years ago by John Ashcroft as a Republican Senator in a statement criticizing the Clinton administration’s proposal to place an encryption/transmission device ( nicknamed “Clipper Chip”) into every US phone. This would have allowed the FBI and other national security agencies access to the phone calls made by all Americans. While the Clipper Chip proposal was never implemented, the Privacy issues it raised in the 1990s have returned with a vengeance to the current national discussion of Security vs Privacy. (http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2014/08/)

Ashcroft went on to become the Attorney General of the United States of America during the George W. Bush administration and although a staunch conservative, he might be surprised by the current actions of the NSA to expand its domestic spying capabilities. Ashcroft, as well as other critics, have cited unwarranted phone surveillance as a violation of the Fourth Amendment which includes protection of citizens’ privacy from the US government.

Another reason supporters defend the right to privacy is they trust the government to “promote the general Welfare” of its citizens and this includes, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, more than a century ago, has famously said, “the right to let alone” (not “left” alone as it is often quoted). And while we may argue over the meaning of “general welfare” and even whether the Preamble grants certain rights to all citizens, most agree that privacy is an important component of the good society.

A comprehensive and interesting analysis of this issue, by Stuart S.Taylor, Jr., can be found at :http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2014/big-snoop

The article begins with an attention-grabbing sidebar containing a hatful of information it has gathered from you just visiting the site (although, it listed my town as Redcay rather than Beekmantown). The article contains “The divergent views of four respected experts help frame the debate over the future of the NSA in the Snowden Era.”, a comprehensive history of covert government operations and intelligence gathering, short “Word on the Street” video opinion polls and podcasts, as well as a nice graphical timeline explaining the major Supreme Court decisions shaping the interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. Comments on the role and effectiveness of the NSA’s methods vary from, “ When searching for needles in a haystack, you need the whole haystack." to “They're draining the ocean in order to catch a few fish.” Despite the author’s obvious bias against Snowden’s motives I would recommend it to you most highly.

A tragi-comic video analysis by John Oliver can be found at: http://qz.com/377271/video-john-oliver-meets-edward-snowden-and-isnt-afraid-to-ask-the-tough-questions/

As the link above reveals, Oliver asks Snowden some tough questions such as why he released this cache of classified documents to journalists without reading all of them and whether he thought through the consequences of his actions before he released them.

The video also shows how little US citizens care about domestic NSA surveillance and while some recognize Snowden’s name, they are unsure of who he is and what he did. The underlying serious purpose of Oliver’s interview is to rekindle interest in the Privacy vs Security debate as Congress must act by this June to renew, revise or let lapse those sections of the Patriot Act which allow what Snowden calls, “domestic spying” and the government terms, “intelligence gathering”.

I am not arguing against the need for security; we humans need our society to protect us from one another because, well, we’re only human. But like most real-world situations, this is not a simple black vs white choice as too much security stifles individual freedom and too little may be asking for trouble. Our job is to find an appropriate balance. That said, it would be wise to remember Hecate’s warning (in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”) about overconfidence in our ability to control our world: “You all know that security is mortals’ chiefest enemy.”

Accentuate the Positive...

Most media emphasize negative stories over positive ones. We’re more likely to see headlines like, “Fire Destroys Local Chicken Coop” or “Yemen invades Ukraine” rather than “How Technology helps Suicidal Teens”. So, to help balance the scales, here is a positive story about technology.

The Feb 9, 2015 New Yorker Magazine contains an inspiring piece, “R U There?” by Alice Gregory describing the work of the Crisis Text Line (crisistextline.org). Nancy Lublin (CEO) and Stephanie Shih have teamed up to create a crisis hotline targeted toward teenagers that uses only text messages to communicate. The rationale is that this is a more natural, effective and non-threatening approach for communicating with teens.

The rationale behind this innovative approach is that texting is in a teen’s DNA (almost) and is usually their main method of communication with peers --- landlines and phone calls are so 1990s. As Gregory points out, “Communications by text message is halting and asynchronous [not synchronized], which can be frustrating when you’re waiting for a reply but liberating when you don’t want to respond. If you’re a parent,you know that, even if your son does not text you back about where he is, he has read your message. If you are a distressed teen or a counsellor, you know that what you say will be read.”

Investigations performed at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research back this up: “People are more likely to disclose sensitive information via text messages than in phone conversations.” Apparently the privacy afforded by texting overrides the fear that a record of the conversation is somewhere in cyberspace. Texting can also hide emotions (tears) and seems to move the conversation straight to the point much faster than voice. It also allows clients the ultimate privacy: not only do others in proximity not hear them --- they do not hear their own voice making embarrassing revelations. This facilitates a more open conversation and hopefully, a more effective prescription from the counsellor.

At a personal level, I remember when, back in the nineties, we were running our Computer Science program using a large centralized computer which was accessed by the students via remote terminals (sort of like your PC or Mac but not as smart) whose screens were capable of displaying only alphanumeric characters (the digits 0-9, the upper and lower case alphabetic characters and a few special punctuational characters like: ,./?() etc.). One cluster of these terminals was in a small room just outside the faculty offices so we could help students who were stuck on a programming assignment. One day I noticed the room was empty except for two students sitting next to each other typing away and occasionally giggling. I surreptitiously looked over at their screens and saw they were texting one another using the system chat software. My first reaction was to look away as a courtesy to their privacy but not before it registered that they were indeed chatting at a very superficial level --- much as we all do when making idle conversation ( Whassup? Not much. ...)

My subsequent reaction was, ‘Oh, no --- we’re doomed!” If the next generation prefers to communicate through a heavily mediated technology when they are sitting right next to each other and could use a perfectly good old-fashioned method like talking face-to-face, then civilization as we know it must be on the downward road (paved with good intentions) to Chaos.


But as time has passed, my judgement has softened. Texting allows the user more control over the conversation; you don’t have to respond immediately to a text, you can take a few minutes to mull over your response. A text message is less annoying to receive than a phone call and it’s more private --- especially when you’re in a public place.

An ironic development allows newer smartphones to provide an option where you can speak your message and it gets converted to text which you then can send as a text message. So we seem to have gone full circle: I speak into my phone which converts it to text and then sends it. I’m still waiting for the technology that allows me to send messages using brain waves.

Whom do You Believe?

Author's Note: This column does not cohere well. The point I was trying to make was how our beliefs influence our trust and how liberals and conservatives trust different news sources and living in this "echo chamber" results in a no-compromise, polarized society. In retrospect, Haidt's taxonomy is a weak way to explain this. [SD]


In this column I will attempt to transcend the shackles of Technology and address an issue in the lofty world of Science. Traditionally, science is placed on a higher intellectual pedestal than technology since the reasoning goes: Science lays the theory and the technology, more of a craft, follows. Scientists do science; engineers do tech. However, some anthropologists claim that the process in fact goes in the other direction: technology advances science not vice-versa.; for example, when technology delivers more accurate measuring instruments, science is able to advance. I’m a great compromiser and believe both can be true at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive --- one does not necessarily rule out the possibility of the other.

But what if a large chunk of the general public does not trust science or more specifically government scientists? I was advised as a young professor that the most important thing I could do during the first week of class was to learn all of the student’s names. This, I was assured, would increase the odds that the students would listen to what I had to say because just knowing their names increased their trust in me. And conversely, you can’t hear what someone you don’t trust is saying. This simple fact can have significant consequences.

For example, I stumbled across this article in my Google news feed

www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/19/the-reason-it-smells-after-a-rainfall-was-unknown-until-mit-researchers-observed-this-phenomenon/ and jumped on it because I remembered that “petrichor” (which describes the smell after a rain on dry soil) was one of my daughter’s favorite words so I forwarded her the article which includes much interesting and useful information such as, “This research may help explain how rainfall may spread diseases such as E-coli through the environment and even to humans.”

Then I began to read the comments. Here is a representative sample:

“My life is complete now that I know this vital information.”

“Well, according to Liberal educators. We can’t believe them until the government tells us so. Since they are all knowing, and all seeing. So we will not believe them until we hear a PSA. And have a law requiring Mother Earth to get a permit and pay taxes.”

“...these guys are super smart. They’re 36.2% sure that this was the hottest year in the history of the world. This is the kind of concrete data point worth collapsing the world economy for. I can’t wait till they tell me butter and eggs are good for me again!”


While I could sympathize with the butter and eggs part of the last comment , I wondered why most of the comments following this cool article were suspicious, even hostile to government -sponsored research (actually performed at MIT). I recalled reading about Moral Foundations Theory and Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Righteous Mind” in which he proposes six categories of ethical values:


“Values and their opposites:

1.  Care/harm: cherishing and protecting others.

2,  Fairness/cheating: rendering justice according to shared rules.

3.  Liberty/oppression: the loathing of tyranny.

4.  Loyalty/betrayal: standing with your group, family, nation.

5.  Authority/subversion: obeying tradition and legitimate authority.

6.  Sanctity/degradation: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions. “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Foundations_Theory


One could argue that Loyalty includes Trust and the above comments are from folks who do not trust their government.

In other words, if our beliefs are more heavily influenced by these six values than by data presented by untrusted government scientists, it’s easy to deny the science. It’s easier to construct arguments denying or questioning the science than it is to change your belief systems.

Also of interest is that when Haidt interviewed self-identified Conservatives and Liberals,he found that, of the six values, Liberals care mostly about Liberty, Fairness and Care while Conservatives stress all six values about equally. If the research pans out, one could make the argument based on this data that Conservatives have a more balanced approach to making ethical decisions. (Please no hate mail from Progressives --- I’m a left-leaning independent centrist and nice to little children and animals.).

Here is another good analysis by PEW Research which helps to explain political differences:

http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/

Law Lags Technology

I started writing this column on Dec 21, 2014 and while this subject may be somewhat dated by the time it’s published, the ramifications for technology’s effect on society are clearly important. I speak of the SONY hack on Nov 24, 2014 which contained the warning not to release the movie, “The Interview” and all of the news dominoes which fell as a result.


Besides the titillating revelations about who gossiped what to whom in Entertainment-Land, there is the much more important issue of blackmail and cyber-hacking between nation states. It’s one thing for a hacker in the US to invade your privacy with some silly malware and quite another for some foreign country (let’s say hypothetically it’’s north of South Korea) to blackmail a corporation based in Japan with offices in the USA.


The apparent reason for the hack was to retaliate for showing a movie that depicted the assassination of the leader of the northern Korean state (which seems, at best, disrespectful). But,for me, the most interesting issue is the clash of cultures. In the US we pride ourselves on being a representative democracy that reveres “private property” and in which the “freedom of expression” is sanctified (it is, after all, the very first amendment to our constitution).


Corporations ( the latest Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding) are not allowed to vote and are responsible only to their shareholders (despite the vision statements they issue laying out their responsibilities to the little people) On the other hand, the hackers purportedly work for an authoritarian, centralized society where there is no private property and no notion of the distinction between industrial espionage and government aggression. In other words, we make a distinction between actions between corporations and between governments and the hacker country does not. In this country if corp A is hacked by corp B, their formal legal recourse is decided by civil courts (Civil cases usually involve private disputes between persons or organizations. Criminal cases involve an action that is considered to be harmful to society as a whole. (http://litigation.findlaw.com/filing-a-lawsuit/civil-cases-vs-criminal-cases-key-differences.html)

However, there is no clear body of international law about adjudicating conflicts involving aggressive hacking between Nations: “Today, the international community lacks consensus regarding the generally accepted principles of law applicable to cyber conflicts.”

(https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/cerl/conferences/cyberwar/papers/reading/Kanuck.pdf) This usually means is that if nation A plants a virus which cripples he centerfuges for refining nuclear material for nation B, rather than take A to International court, Nation B, like any normal third-grader will strike back with a hack of its own --- like swapping the internet links for Facebook and PornHub in the state of Georgia, for example.


The frustrating irony is that a democratic government responsible to its people seems to be losing this battle because a ruthless centralized state can act and respond more quickly and brutally.


Will this mean that our country will trade more of it’s citizens’ privacy and liberty for more security? Or, should we heed the Zen warning, “The best way to clear up muddy water is to leave it alone.” Or do we follow the advice of Thomas Jefferson and/or Patrick Henry, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Or try to strike a balance between the two strategies?


As I mentioned previously, I knew that many more dominoes were destined to fall since I first wrote this column on Dec 21, 2014. Here are just a few:


There is evidence that it was Iran and not North Korea that sponsored the SONY hack.(

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/29/sony-hack-iran-cyberattack-cyberwarfare-war-north-korea-threat-column/21014021/ ) Supposedly,those sneaky Iranians left false fingerprints in the code which pointed back to North Korea.


A defector plans to airdrop 100,000 DVDs of the movie from helium balloons into North Korea. He believes, as Charlie Chaplin did with “The Dictator”, that the best weapon against tyranny is satire and that once North Koreans view “The Interview”, Kim Jong-un will be laughed out of power. www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-01-02/the-interview-to-be-airdropped-into-north-korea-using-balloons


“The Interview” is to have "a wide release" in the UK and Ireland, Sony Pictures has confirmed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30707904