Screenshot: A Weblog

*Sigh* I had been sitting on this link to the Christie's auction of the Origins of Cyberspace collection for a week, not getting around to posting it, but I guess it's old news now. The collection is amazing, and I actually hope that a group will be able to purchase the whole thing to keep it together (and presumably display it). If not, one starts asking how much they would pay for a copy of the original notes from Godel's lecture "On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems". Estimated at $2000! Or pick up a 1920's IBM manual for only $1200! A first edition of the Newell, Shaw & Simon paper on chess playing programs at $1500! First edition Turing on "Computing machinery and intelligence"? $3000. Or go whole hog on the $10,000 first edition of Shannon's master's thesis. Old books are one of my weaknesses, and the thought of actually owning some of these things makes me drool. Mmmmmmm ... von Neumann.....

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Breaking news at CNN: People can hold collaborate online using Wiki's, Weblogs, and RSS!

Am I the last holdout in refusing to adopt the word "blog"? I keep waiting for it to fade back out of existence, and I fear I missed the transition point where everyone gave up and decided to go along with it. Weblog is descriptive; blog means nothing, sounds unattractive, and smacks, to me, of an attempt to brand what is a generic communication medium. You don't see journalers running around saying "I jaled our conversation in my jal this morning."

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A new, informal study shows that scientists may be self-censoring to avoid controversial research. This article presents this as fairly categorically bad, implying that those raising the controversies are stifling academic freedom and intellectual endeavors. But isn't it good if our scientists are feeling pressure to stop and think about whether the advantages of their research are really worthwhile? Am I supposed to feel bad that "Others said they have given up experiments on dogs - traditional objects of medical research - to avoid the wrath of animal rights activists."? Or this statement:

Today, Blass said, ethics overseers are unlikely to allow anything that involves tricking a research subject. As a result, even though he'd like to follow up on Milgram's work, he said he censors himself by not bothering to try.

Putting aside the fact that ethics boards do allow trickery or misleading a subject so long as the methodology is well-reviewed to ensure no harm to the subject, these complaints sound frighteningly close to researchers lamenting that if the world understood how important their work was, they would see that risking the well-being of a couple of subjects was a necessary risk. We have ethics review boards to ensure that these decisions are made with greater objectivity than is possible in an individual with a passion for their own work. As a generalization, I would suggest that a research proposal with so little methodological justification that one wouldn't bother even proposing it from fear of controversy is a research proposal in need of more work.

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Over at American Scientist, Naming Names is a great article about the rate at which we are using up our various namespaces - online, and in the physical world. Just clicking through to look at the figures is informative (there are some very nice ones). I enjoyed the analysis of how full a namespace has to get before it becomes too difficult to find a unique name.

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And you thought learning Java was hard: Perspex is a new AI-focused language in which "it is a new, geometrical computer instruction that looks like an artificial neuron. Any existing computer program can be compiled into a network of these neurons.". I am clearer on the use of this in practice for its potential robustness than on the argument for it with respect to AI. Put this on the shelf as something to read more about "when I have time".

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I think the college prerequisites system needs to be rethought. Today in class, I was discussing various types of behavior that are classified as exhibiting human intelligence, and after suggesting "guessing", mentioned the relevant scene at the end of Star Trek IV: The One With The Whales. There wasn't a single student in the room who had seen it. I commented to them that a more useful pre-req for my class than Psych. 101 might be Amanda's Pop Culture 101 - a common lexicon of science fiction movies and television would be a good base for class discussion.

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