The End of Cyberspace

links for 2010-04-29

• A Little Respect: Involving Citizens in Technology Assessment | The Intersection | Discover Magazine
  "It became apparent after two years-worth of numerous discussions with a variety of stakeholders, that reopening the “old” OTA would leave little, if any, opportunities to invoke contemporary applications critical to 21st century governing: decentralized expertise (tapping the knowledge of scientists across the nation) and citizen engagement, to name but two."
  (tags: citizenscience policy science diy amateur)
• Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model [pdf]
  "A new report from the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars defines the criteria for a new technology assessment function in the United States. The report, Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model, emphasizes the need to incorporate citizen-participation methods to complement expert analysis. Government policymakers, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and citizens need such analysis to capably navigate the technology-intensive world in which we now live."
  (tags: science2.0 policy decision-making amateur citizenscience)
• Why Your Allergies Are Getting Worse | Mother Jones
  "[T]his year's pollen counts, especially in the southeast, are through the roof, and... a new study from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) suggests allergies will likely become even more fierce if the planet continues to heat up. Researchers found that not only is spring coming earlier, making for a longer allergy season, but warmer weather allows hickory and oak, two of the most allergenic tree species, to thrive almost everywhere in the US. Another factor: Some plants, such as ragweed, are actually making more pollen as the environment changes. "As trees that use the wind to pollinate undergo stress from heat or lack of water, they begin to produce more pollen to compensate," explained NWF climate scientist Amanda Staudt. Scientists have already observed this phenomenon in cities, where C02 levels are an average of 30 percent higher than in suburbs and rural areas. "Cities are where we’re seeing increased pollen production," explains Demain.
  (tags: health climate allergies)
• Hand-drawn maps from firefighters, club-hoppers, Boy Scout dads, grandmothers, and Alexander Calder. - By Julia Turner - Slate Magazine
  "No matter what it looks like, a handmade map offers several advantages over a road atlas or the directions you get from Google.... The crucial advantage of the handmade map is that it is designed for a particular person confronting a particular task... A proper atlas must include every street name, not just the names of the streets you're looking for. By comparison, the minimal amount of information [on a hand-drawn map] makes for a map that's easier to use than one that's cluttered with detail.... Homemade maps also play with scale in fascinating ways:" by magnifying unfamiliar areas or tricky places, they can distort scale to increase comprehension.... Handmade maps also tend toward straight lines and right angles, a phenomenon spatial psychologists refer to as "rectilinear normalization."... Homemade maps often include error indicators, signs that you've taken a wrong turn or gone too far.
  (tags: mapping visualization information communication)
• Better military technology does not lead to shorter wars - University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  It is generally assumed that military technology that is offensive rather than defensive in nature leads to shorter wars. Yet, a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg shows that this assumption is not correct.
  (tags: military technology)

links for 2010-04-29

• A Little Respect: Involving Citizens in Technology Assessment | The Intersection | Discover Magazine
  "It became apparent after two years-worth of numerous discussions with a variety of stakeholders, that reopening the “old” OTA would leave little, if any, opportunities to invoke contemporary applications critical to 21st century governing: decentralized expertise (tapping the knowledge of scientists across the nation) and citizen engagement, to name but two."
  (tags: citizenscience policy science diy amateur)
• Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model [pdf]
  "A new report from the Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars defines the criteria for a new technology assessment function in the United States. The report, Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model, emphasizes the need to incorporate citizen-participation methods to complement expert analysis. Government policymakers, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and citizens need such analysis to capably navigate the technology-intensive world in which we now live."
  (tags: science2.0 policy decision-making amateur citizenscience)
• Why Your Allergies Are Getting Worse | Mother Jones
  "[T]his year's pollen counts, especially in the southeast, are through the roof, and... a new study from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) suggests allergies will likely become even more fierce if the planet continues to heat up. Researchers found that not only is spring coming earlier, making for a longer allergy season, but warmer weather allows hickory and oak, two of the most allergenic tree species, to thrive almost everywhere in the US. Another factor: Some plants, such as ragweed, are actually making more pollen as the environment changes. "As trees that use the wind to pollinate undergo stress from heat or lack of water, they begin to produce more pollen to compensate," explained NWF climate scientist Amanda Staudt. Scientists have already observed this phenomenon in cities, where C02 levels are an average of 30 percent higher than in suburbs and rural areas. "Cities are where we’re seeing increased pollen production," explains Demain.
  (tags: health climate allergies)
• Hand-drawn maps from firefighters, club-hoppers, Boy Scout dads, grandmothers, and Alexander Calder. - By Julia Turner - Slate Magazine
  "No matter what it looks like, a handmade map offers several advantages over a road atlas or the directions you get from Google.... The crucial advantage of the handmade map is that it is designed for a particular person confronting a particular task... A proper atlas must include every street name, not just the names of the streets you're looking for. By comparison, the minimal amount of information [on a hand-drawn map] makes for a map that's easier to use than one that's cluttered with detail.... Homemade maps also play with scale in fascinating ways:" by magnifying unfamiliar areas or tricky places, they can distort scale to increase comprehension.... Handmade maps also tend toward straight lines and right angles, a phenomenon spatial psychologists refer to as "rectilinear normalization."... Homemade maps often include error indicators, signs that you've taken a wrong turn or gone too far.
  (tags: mapping visualization information communication)
• Better military technology does not lead to shorter wars - University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  It is generally assumed that military technology that is offensive rather than defensive in nature leads to shorter wars. Yet, a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg shows that this assumption is not correct.
  (tags: military technology)

links for 2010-04-28

• Tweetage Wasteland : We All Have Photographic Memories
  "The digital age gives a new (and almost opposite) meaning to having a photographic memory. The experience of the moment has become the experience of the photo."
  (tags: memory photography)
• "Why Not?" to "Hell Yeah!": How We Planned A TED Event In 32 Hours | Social Entrepreneurship | Change.org
  A "group of us volcano strandees in London planned and executed an event called TEDxVolcano last weekend. This is the story of how we did it, and five lessons about social capital mobilization that extend far beyond the ash plumes of Eyjafjallajokull." The lessons: #1. Cultivate Networks Way In Advance Of Using Them. #2. Identify Key Partners Early. #3. Ask For A Lot. #4. Talk Publicly (Because You Don't Know Everyone Who Can Help). #5. Say Thanks Constantly. BONUS: Distribute Praise Widely. [Though it's easier to pull this off in London than, well, just about anywhere else.]
  (tags: conference organizations socialnetwork entrepreneurs)
• Joshua Shenk, "What Makes Us Happy?" The Atlantic (June 2009)
  Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
  (tags: happiness psychology research philosophy depression aging exercise)

links for 2010-04-27

• Transcript: NIC Chairman Thomas Fingar Presents "Global Trends 2025" | Atlantic Council
  Very interesting talk about the 2025 global trends scenarios.
  (tags: scenarios forecasting foreignpolicy policy globalization)
• The anti-PowerPoint Generals - By Tom Ricks | The Best Defense
  Mattis also spoke without any computer graphics. "The reason I didn't use PowerPoint is, I am convinced PowerPoint makes us stupid." I don't know if I'd go that far, but its absence of verbs does seem to me to emphasize aspirations without saying what actions we intend to take to realize them. Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who also spoke at the conference, also took a pop at PowerPoint, saying that when combined with certain ill-advised metrics, it "is really dangerous."
  (tags: powerpoint communication military presentation)
• Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets - July 2009 - Armed Forces Journal - Military Strategy, Global Defense Strategy
  Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make. Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.
  (tags: powerpoint communication military education presentation management)
• Small Wars Journal: SWJ Blog: The TX Hammes PowerPoint Challenge (Essay Contest)
  PowerPoint has been the 21st Century’s solution to the age-old requirement for organizations to report information between various levels of bureaucracy—whether it be a sales pitch to board members, or an air crew mission briefing for a flight of Black Hawk helicopters. But PowerPoint is only as smart as those who are using it. In the military, business and even in NASA, misuse of PowerPoint can cause confusion and frustration. In the hands of a poor communicator, PowerPoint can spread misinformation, leading to bad decision-making. But we will also look at the flip side of the coin: despite the pervasiveness of elaborate PowerPoint presentations within the military, we will also look at PowerPoint presentations that would be considered poor by conventional standards, but actually communicated a message far more effectively than many other presentations.
  (tags: powerpoint military communication presentation)
• Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint - NYTimes.com
  Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession.
  (tags: communication military productivity technology powerpoint infographics)

links for 2010-04-26

• Persistent Forecasting of Disruptive Technologies
  Technological innovations are key causal agents of surprise and disruption. In the recent past, the United States military has encountered unexpected challenges in the battlefield due in part to the adversary's incorporation of technologies not traditionally associated with weaponry.... [T]he Committee for Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies [was tasked] with providing guidance and insight on how to build a persistent forecasting system to predict, analyze, and reduce the impact of the most dramatically disruptive technologies. The first of two reports, this volume analyzes existing forecasting methods and processes. It then outlines the necessary characteristics of a comprehensive forecasting system that integrates data from diverse sources to identify potentially game-changing technological innovations and facilitates informed decision making by policymakers.
  (tags: innovation technology research forecasting future2 methodology)

links for 2010-04-22

• World Climate: A Computer-Simulation-Based Role-Playing Exercise — Climate Interactive
  World Climate (formerly the Copenhagen Climate Exercise, or CCE) is a role-playing climate simulation designed by MIT and Sustainability Institute that gives groups from 10-60 an experience of reaching a global agreement to mitigate climate change.
  (tags: simulation games climate paperspaces)
• R. Buckminster Fuller Digital Collection: World Game
  (tags: paperspaces worldgame buckminster_fuller archive games)
• Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism (pdf; sub req)
  (tags: games architecture design augmented_reality endofcyberspace digital-physical digital_culture digital_city)
• Raoul Bunschoten, "Scenario Games: Vital Techniques for Interactive City Planning" (PDF; sub req)
  "Scenario games are planning methods to test the viability of prototypes before they are developed by the participants. A scenario game should be the community of a prototype; to sustain this community and its interactions through the game and the life of a prototype is the key to the success of a coevolving plan, a dynamic master plan. Over the years, we developed game rules and started using the four basic processes we formulated after many attempts with role modeling and other characters failed: erasure, origination, transformation and migration as the drivers of the game. The four basic processes create the dynamic substance of the narrative while importing other key processes that form a reality through which a prototype can be tested. Participants are actors through these processes, but become authors once they insert prototypes."
  (tags: games paperspaces media simulation)

links for 2010-04-20

• Rodolfo Llinas M.D., Ph.D.
  Publications list.
  (tags: neuroscience)
• Ilya Farber, "The world within the skull," Nature (2001), rev. of Llinas "I of the Vortex" (sub req)
  "Llinás argues convincingly that the centralization of motor control produces the need for the organism to monitor and predict its own bodily state. The pervasive, intimate, moment-to-moment 'sense of self' that we all enjoy is thus to be understood not as the product of some evolutionary leap in cognitive or perceptual sophistication, but as a functional prerequisite for the deliberate control of action."
  (tags: neuroscience embodied_learning cognition evolution review)
• Jay Seitz, "The bodily basis of thought," New Ideas in Psychology (2000)
  "Classical cognitivist and connectionist models posit a Cartesian disembodiment of mind assuming that brain events can adequately explain thought and related notions such as intellect. Instead, we argue for the bodily basis of thought and its continuity beyond the sensorimotor stage. Indeed, there are no eternally fixed representations of the external world in the “motor system”, rather, it is under the guidance of both internal and external factors with important linkages to frontal, parietal, cerebellar, basal ganglionic, and cingulate gyrus areas that subserve cognitive and motivational activities. Indeed, the motor system, including related structures, is a self-organizing dynamical system contextualized among musculoskeletal, environmental (e.g., gravity), and social forces. We do not simply inhabit our bodies; we literally use them to think with."
  (tags: neuroscience cognition embodied_learning)
• Trends in Neurosciences : The moving origins of ‘self’ (sub req)
  "Llinás goes on to suggest that the ultimate function of the brain is prediction, and that the self is the centralization of prediction. This argument is advanced in a linear fashion, supported by a wealth of information on the physiology of motor control. One reason why this rationale is so persuasive is because the motor ‘card’ is precisely what has been missing from play in a number of theories of consciousness. The unsatisfactory nature of concepts of mind based on sensory perception, and the uneasy discomfort generated by such hypotheses, is laid bare by this, now patently evident, idea. Although the argument is complex, the basic idea is simple and almost obvious. Such simple ideas are the stuff of quantum leaps in science."
  (tags: neuroscience future future2 prediction evolution cognition)
• Review of Rudolfo Llinas, "I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self," American Scientist, 2001
  "Active movement—what Llinás calls motricity—is the very source and main stem of mental life. "That which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement." Only organisms that move have brains, Llinás points out. A tree has no need of a central nervous system because it's not going anywhere, but an animal on the prowl needs to see where it's headed and needs to predict—perhaps even envision—its future place in the world. The poster—child organism for this close connection between motricity and mentality is the sea squirt. This marine creature starts life as a motile larva, equipped with a rudimentary brainlike ganglion of about 300 neurons. But after a day or two of cavorting in the shallows, the larva finds a hospitable site on the bottom and puts down roots. As a sessile organism, it has no further use for a brain, and so it eats it!"
  (tags: cognition movement neuroscience future future2)
• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B (May 12, 2009, 364 (1521))
  "Just as physicists can explain complex systems with a small set of elegant equations (e.g. Maxwell's), it might be possible for the multidisciplinary study of the brain to produce a list of well-defined universal principles that can explain the majority of its operation. Given exciting developments in theory, empirical findings and computational studies, it seems that the generation of predictions might be one strong candidate for such a universal principle. Predictions in the brain is the focus of the collection of papers in this special theme issue."
  (tags: memory brain learning neuroscience prediction future future2)

links for 2010-04-19

• These two rock climbers take risks that would paralyze you with fright. How? - By John Dickerson - Slate Magazine
  Nice piece on climbing, risk and fear.
  (tags: climbing risk psychology)
• Corporations love to talk about going green, but not many are planning for a changing climate
  "In the mainstream business world, climate-change adaptation strategies are scant. The reasons for inaction are sometimes simple, but also counter-intuitively complex.... Adaptation strategies have essentially zero PR value.... Climate change takes place over decades, and corporate timescales generally max out in the five-to-seven-year range.... Finally, even if the effects of climate change are foreseeable, they can be impossible to hedge." As Dan Ariely puts it, "climate change is a problem that is perfectly designed to make people do nothing: It happens far in the future; its effects will be felt most greatly by other people; and the efforts of any one individual are minuscule."
  (tags: climate decision-making risk catastrophe environment)
• David J. Kalupahana, "The Buddhist Conception of Time and Temporality," Philosophy East and West, Vol. 24, No. 2, Time and Temporality (Apr., 1974), pp. 181-191.
  (Note: Available to JSTOR subscribers only.) On early Buddhist ideas about time and temporality.
  (tags: philosophy time buddhism)
• The Golden Rule of Social Neuroscience « The Committed Parent
  "It takes a more organized, integrated brain to help organize a less organized, less integrated brain. This organizing principle is responsible for much of the early development in our lives, including general intelligence. It is our parents’ more organized brains that help with organizing ours – mostly through contingent communication and by finding creative ways to soothe our discomforts and ease our anxieties."
  (tags: neuroscience psychology)
• Jan Chozen Bays, "Mindful Eating," Tricycle Magazine (2009)
  Obesity and other disorders reflect "an increasingly unbalanced relationship to food. One of the primary causes of this imbalance is a lack of an essential human nutrient: mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of paying full, nonjudgmental attention to our moment-to-moment experience. We can use mindfulness to free ourselves from unhealthy eating habits and improve our overall quality of life."
  (tags: mindfulness eating nutrition diet)
• Eating Mindfully, Dr. Susan Albers - Book Overview
  "A mindful eater is nonjudgmental, compassionate and above all aware of the taste, texture and process of eating. Being mindful means knowing exactly how your body feels at all times. You are so closely in touch with what is going on inside that you know the exact moment you are satisfied rather than stuffed or starving by learning the why, what, when and how you eat."
  (tags: food health mindfulness nutrition)
• Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful LIfe
  Collaboration between Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and Harvard nutritionist Dr. Lilian Cheung.
  (tags: mindfulness fitness diet nutrition eating)
• Eating the Moment
  (tags: mindfulness psychology diet eating health food)
• Mindful Eating: Thich Nhat Hanh Discusses Mindful Eating
  Mindful eating is very pleasant. We sit beautifully. We are aware of the people that are sitting around us. We are aware of the food on our plates. This is a deep practice. Each morsel of food is an ambassador from the cosmos. When we pick up a piece of a vegetable, we look at it for half a second. We look mindfully to really recognize the piece of food, the piece of carrot or string bean. We should know that this is a piece of carrot or a string bean.
  (tags: mindfulness food diet meditation eating)
• Welcome to the CAMP System
  Here you will learn the basics of approaching food with mindfulness. The method used here is the CAMP System--a new, powerful and different approach to food relationships and weight management. Using mindfulness in all aspects of eating, the CAMP System focuses on how you eat, not what you eat.
  (tags: diet food nutrition health mindfulness eating)
• The Center for Mindful Eating
  The Center for Mindful Eating "is a forum for professionals across all disciplines interested in developing, deepening and understanding the value and importance of mindful eating. TCME provides a wide variety of resources and training for those seeking up-to-date information about mindful eating practices, research, and education.... Mindful eating draws substantially on the use of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness helps focus our attention and awareness on the present moment, which in turn, helps us disengage from habitual, unsatisfying and unskillful habits and behaviors. Engaging in mindful eating meditation practices on a regular basis can help us discover a far more satisfying relationship to food and eating than we ever imagined or experienced before. A different kind of nourishment often emerges, the kind that offers satisfaction on a very deep emotional level."
  (tags: food health nutrition diet meditation mindfulness behavior)

links for 2010-04-18

• Your Laptop Could Detect The Next Earthquake : NPR
  "By downloading a free program, you and your laptop could help researchers pinpoint earthquakes and even sound an early warning to surrounding areas."
  (tags: earthquakes science sensors endofcyberspace)
• Yves Smith: Debunking Michael Lewis' The Big Short
  Lewis' need to anchor his tale in personalities results in a skewed misreading of the subprime crisis and why and how it got as bad as it did. The group of short sellers he celebrates were minor-leaguers compared to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and John Paulson. But no one on the short side of these trades, large or small, should be seen as any kind of a stalwart hero and defender of capitalism. Circumstances converged to create a perfect storm of folly on the buy side, beginning with essentially fraudulent mortgage originations at ground level, which the short-sellers - whether trading at the multimillion or multibillion dollars level - took advantage of. That they walked away with large profits may be enviable, but there was nothing valiant about it. In the end, Main Street, having been desolated by a mortgage-driven housing bust, now found itself the buyer of last resort of Wall Street's garbage.
  (tags: economics)

Laptops as earthquake sensor networks

NPR reports on a brilliant combination of DIY, citizen science, and SETI@Home P2P-like systems that reach into the real world:

By downloading a free program, you and your laptop could help researchers pinpoint earthquakes and even sound an early warning to surrounding areas.

Newer models of laptops manufactured by companies like Apple and Lenovo contain accelerometers -- motion sensors meant to detect whether the computer has been dropped. If the computer falls, the hard drive will automatically switch off to protect the user's data.

"As soon as I knew there were these low-cost sensors inside these accelerometers, I thought it would be perfect to use them to network together and actually record earthquakes," geoscientist Elizabeth Cochran of the University of California at Riverside says.

So a few years ago, Cochran got in touch with Jesse Lawrence, a colleague at Stanford. They whipped up a program called the Quake-Catcher Network. It's a free download that runs silently in the background, collecting data from the computer's accelerometer and waiting to detect an earthquake.

Laptop accelerometers aren’t as sensitive as a professional-grade seismometers, so they can only pick up tremors of about magnitude 4.0 and above. But when a laptop does sense a tremor, it'll ping the researchers’ server. "And when our server receives a bunch of those, we then say, 'This is a likely earthquake,'" Lawrence says.

Up until now, scientists have been hampered by the lack of enough sensors around the world to monitor and record earthquake data. Cochran and Lawrence hope their application will help build a network of earthquake sensors thousands of laptops strong.