Have just been catching up on monthly newsletters. Attaching links direct to the two that came out late (they've been back-posted):
If you have subscribed to receive the newsletter via email, they will be sent out later today as a single message with attachments.
posted by Joining Dots at 2:45 PM. Permalink
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In the first issues of Wired UK (May 2009), there is an article by Baroness Susan Greenfield 'What are we expecting from consciousness?' It might have been better titled 'Why technologists should butt out of my playground' :-) but that's not quite the focus here.
There is no doubting that Baroness Greenfield is a highly intelligent person. The trouble with some highly intelligent people is their habit of dumbing down statements in an attempt to explain 'their stuff' to mere mortals like me. And the worst habits involve misleading analogies. Baroness Greenfield dismisses the need to attempt to model consciousness:
"The idea of a model is that you focus on the salient features and jettison the extraneous ones. A model for flight, as exemplified by an aeroplane, would simply be the defying of gravity. We can leave out the feathers and beak."
"So if we are to model consciousness, then we would have to know what the salient physical brain/body process(es) was/were and what bits of the brain and body we could ignore. The thing is, if we knew that, than we would have already solved the problem and there would be no need to bother with a model at all."
The analogy fails. If you compare an aeroplane with a bird, then actually it does have comparible features (those required for flight). The beak is the hole where you insert the hose from the fuel tanker (birds eat worms, a beak is not an effective design for consuming gasoline). The feathers are required by the bird for lift, speed and direction. (A bird with just the skeleton of their wings is going nowhere). Aeroplanes have man-made wings with flaps instead of organic wings made up of skeleton, muscle and feather.
And the argument for not needing a model fails too. Models can serve two purposes - prove a theory or prove a concept based on a theory. The former is used to learn, the latter to apply. With Baroness Greenfield's argument, we would have never invented aeroplanes at all, we would have just understood how birds fly ('problem solved'). Progress comes from applying what we know, not just knowing.
That all said, I actually agree with her rebuttal of technologists like Ray Kurzeil claiming computers will surpass human consciousness within the next few decades. Advances in current technology alone are unlikely to achieve such a goal. Even if we could model consciousness, the application will almost certainly be very different to what humans do, just as aeroplanes fly in a very different manner and for a different purpose to what birds do...
Related posts: Do books matter? (Don't think Baroness Greenfield is a fan of technology)
posted by Joining Dots at 2:23 PM. Permalink
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One of my pet research projects during the past 10 months has involved dabbling in virtual worlds to understand if/when they will become a mainstream technology. The outcomes from the research will be publishd at a later date. In the meantime...
If you have heard about Second Life, it's more than likely you'll have seen it gain press attention for all the wrong reasons (if you really want to know, see here and here for examples but be warned, one link involves flying genitalia).
Beyond the simple fact that any world, real or virtual, will bring out the good and bad in human nature, virtual worlds offer a range of interesting possibilities. From copying real life to doing stuff not possible in real life to integrating and complementing real life, virtual worlds can assist education, communicatio, process simulation and prototyping new ideas. The research I am currently working on includes experimenting with 3D taxonomy management and syncing data between a virtual office and SharePoint site...
Here are some examples of the work people have created using virtual worlds:
An aware winning example of integrating the virtual and the real including Minority Report style user interfaces
A great example of 'not possible in real life'. Both movies show how much easier it has become to create professional looking short animations with everyday tools. Bryn Oh is an amazing artist/builder
Not as professional looking as the previous examples (devil is in the details, as usual), this is a video of the NHS training hospital in Second Life (developed by Imperial College, London)
posted by Joining Dots at 9:00 AM. Permalink
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posted by Joining Dots at 11:58 AM. Permalink
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Stop the clocks, blogging has recommenced :-)
Couple of cheat posts coming up, starting with this one, which are really reproductions of comments I've left on other posts but with added juice.
Henry Blodget posted the following article on Silicon Valley Insider: It's time for Microsoft to face the reality about Search and the Internet
It's a great article and worth a read. Here's the comment I left there:
I think people make a good point in highlighting that competition in search is a good thing for us as consumers. Just not sure it's a good thing for Microsoft
Comparing with the likes of SQL and Exchange is comparing apples with pairs*, I always tell people to never underestimate just how hard MS will work to develop the winning product. But past successes have always been about bringing in a lower cost product with good enough features to compete against an expensive market leader (the business intelligence and systems management markets being two of the latest focus areas gaining ground in the enterprise software market).
Competing against 'free', a product used by one audience and paid for by another, is a completely different challenge and one that MS has yet to succeed in. Time will tell. But I doubt it will come from competing like for like. Google didn't knock Alta Vista off the top by copying their business model. To take over a market means to do something different that weakens the incumbent players. Adding to the challenge is that 'free' or 'freemium' models have yet themselves to stand the test of time. Somebody somewhere always has to pay, one way or another. Making money from sales of a product or service still have far more long term potential than making money from people paying for the attention you've managed to capture.
And that all said, I still wouldn't underestimate MS, Google isn't the only one who can create 'waves'** under cover
I suspect the ol' Google vs Microsoft debate will rumble on for a few years yet. Steve Ballmer and quite a few influentials within Microsoft would like a big slice of the advertising market that is a fair bit bigger than the software market. But I'm still not confident that's the right goal.
The argument goes that people are becoming used to not paying for online services. Yet Flickr has done quite well getting people on to premium accounts. Virtual worlds and multi-player online games like World of Warcraft also seem to find plenty of paying customers (I'm one of them, and a girl too - take note, Xbox team. I'm in that market that Nintendo noticed whilst considered a has-been at no.3 in the console market a few years ago). I'm also in that apparent small minority who pays for their music online. Amazon has done quite well just selling stuff that you go looking for rather than have thrown at you in a glitzy banner, eBay isn't doing so bad either. None of them dependent on advertising revenue. The last two examples have both made money from closing the distance from customer to seller without advertising interrupting the process.
And who wants to be an advertising company anyway? Google succeeded 'cos they managed to make the ads as unobtrusive as possible and came up with a great revenue concept (auction the search words) to get companies competing for what little ad space there is. Most people seem to dislike ads unless it is for the exact company they are looking for (I do a search for Hilton Hotels, I want the damn official web site, not a million travel web sites) or something completely original (that ends up in the 'top 100 ads' TV chart). Even worse are the fake web sites that get into search results only to present you with a page of even more ads than the search engine dared to show you.
Advertising is not a loved market. Microsoft is not a loved company. I don't know if that's the synergy they see but it's not a great start. Without doing the research, I'm guessing the margins in advertising are not as healthy as software. And Google may be raking the cash in from ads but is pouring a fair chunk back out again, not least running the hardware to support YouTube.
What is right is the desire to create a new market. Monopolies (natural or otherwise) and market domination rarely last for very long... unless funded by government but let's not go there today. Microsoft needs to keep testing new waters and best do it whilst there's oodles of cash in the bank than start when it's running out. And call me biased because I used to work there, but I still hope all this Google chatter is smoke and mirrors whilst they work on something worth paying for.
* Oh dear, didn't notice I'd used pair instead of pear when posting the original comment, and you can't go back and edit them. Oops.
** Google cleverly making waves (Techcrunch)
posted by Joining Dots at 7:11 PM. Permalink
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I'm not even going to dare talk about the frequency of the newsletters :-) Hoping to get back on track, but I know I said that last time... Usual topics: systems, the design of them and the individual dots - people, information and technology. Enjoy
And finally, for a bit of fun...
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posted by Joining Dots at 1:19 PM. Permalink
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Usual topics: systems, the design of them and the individual dots - people, information and technology. Enjoy.
And finally, for a bit of fun... how homeworking can reduce your CO2 footprint :-)
Want to receive this list via email? Instructions to subscribe can be found under Newsletter. Looking for stuff about SharePoint? It now has its own specialist site: SharePoint Guide
posted by Joining Dots at 2:19 PM. Permalink
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