Category: Web/Tech
B.F. Skinner on Online Education
Skinner’s teaching machines didn’t catch on, perhaps because the technology of the time was not flexible enough, but he was right about most of the advantages of teaching machines including immediate feedback both for reinforcement and enthusiasm, individualized pacing, gamification and increases in learning speed.
My TechCrunch interview about *Average is Over*
It was done with the excellent Andrew Keen, here is part of their write-up:
…Cowen isn’t a dystopian and he doesn’t believe that smart machines are taking jobs from human beings. ‘The smartest and most successful people in the future, he believes, will manage the smart machines. And as these smart machines become more central in how we manage our education and healthcare, he says, “human psychology” – the art and science of motivation – will become increasingly valuable. This is what he calls “the next big thing.” In the future, Cowen insists, power will lie with the humans who partner with rather than own the algorithm. And in this age of the smart human/machine partnership, traditional algorithm-centric companies like Google will be old businesses – “like GM”, he predicts.
“Marketing”, Cowen writes in Average Is Over, is the “seminal sector for our future economy.” But Cowen’s intriguing definition of marketing lies in figuring out how to motivate people and to get them to feel better about themselves. Everyone in the future economy – from doctors to educators to entrepreneurs – will be coaches. But who is going to own the operating platform in the age of the smart machine? That’s the trillion-dollar question which even Tyler Cowen isn’t smart enough to answer.
Who Will Prosper in the New World?
That is a new and short essay from The New York Times, adapted from my almost-out (Sept. 12) book, Average is Over: Powering America Out of the Great Stagnation. Here is an excerpt from the short piece:
Your smartphone will record data on your life and, when asked, will tell you what to do, drawing on data from your home or from your spouse and friends if need be. “You’ve thrown out that bread the last three times you’ve bought it, give it a pass” will be a text message of the future. How about “Now is not the time to start another argument with your wife”? The GPS is just the beginning of computer-guided instruction.
Take your smartphone on a date, and it might vibrate in your pocket to indicate “Kiss her now.” If you hesitate for fear of being seen as pushy, it may write: “Who cares if you look bad? You are sampling optimally in the quest for a lifetime companion.” Those who won’t listen, or who rebel out of spite, will be missing out on glittering prizes. Those of us who listen, while often envied, may feel more like puppets with deflated pride.
Read the whole thing, interesting throughout.
You can order my book on Amazon here. On Barnes and Noble here. On Indiebound.org here. And from Penguin here.
*The Second Machine Age*
The authors are Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, and the subtitle is Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.
It is due out January 2014, self-recommending, and it is likely to be the best and most important economics book of the forthcoming year.
iheartpundits.com
That is the new web site run by my colleague Jerry Brito. It ranks what is hot now on the web, drawing upon wonky articles and sources, no cat photos, etc. I have found it very useful in the beta version.
Computers which magnify our prejudices
As AI spreads, this will become an increasingly important and controversial issue:
For one British university, what began as a time-saving exercise ended in disgrace when a computer model set up to streamline its admissions process exposed – and then exacerbated – gender and racial discrimination.
As detailed here in the British Medical Journal, staff at St George’s Hospital Medical School decided to write an algorithm that would automate the first round of its admissions process. The formulae used historical patterns in the characteristics of candidates whose applications were traditionally rejected to filter out new candidates whose profiles matched those of the least successful applicants.
By 1979 the list of candidates selected by the algorithms was a 90-95% match for those chosen by the selection panel, and in 1982 it was decided that the whole initial stage of the admissions process would be handled by the model. Candidates were assigned a score without their applications having passed a single human pair of eyes, and this score was used to determine whether or not they would be interviewed.
Quite aside from the obvious concerns that a student would have upon finding out a computer was rejecting their application, a more disturbing discovery was made. The admissions data that was used to define the model’s outputs showed bias against females and people with non-European-looking names.
The truth was discovered by two professors at St George’s, and the university co-operated fully with an inquiry by the Commission for Racial Equality, both taking steps to ensure the same would not happen again and contacting applicants who had been unfairly screened out, in some cases even offering them a place.
There is more here, and I thank the excellent Mark Thorson for the pointer.
Canine markets in everything
At a recent class in New York City on how to use iPads, an instructor had a remedy ready for distracted students: She smeared the screen with peanut butter.
One student, a Hungarian hunting dog named DJ Sam, ate it up.
Dog trainer Anna Jane Grossman began providing private iPad lessons to dogs last year. About 25 of her clients have signed up, and she is planning a 90-minute iPad clinic for dogs later this month, where they will learn to nose the screen to activate apps.
“People always say, ‘Oh, can you have my dog do my online banking?’ ” Ms. Grossman says. In reality, dogs don’t “necessarily do very useful things on the iPad,” she adds. “But I don’t necessarily do very useful things on the iPad either.”
Ms. Grossman is part of a nascent but growing group touting the use of apps for pets. They say the apps can entertain pets stranded alone at home, teach valuable motor skills and even promote social behavior by engaging loner animals.
Felines are involved too:
Brooklyn cat owner David Snetman intended to let his cat, Pickle, play with his iPad until he tired of it. An hour later, Pickle was still whacking at the screen. Although Pickle’s interest never flagged, Mr. Snetman hasn’t let him play again since. “It seems very frustrating for him,” Mr. Snetman says.
…He and business partner Nate Murray developed it after an app they designed for children flopped. They now have three cat iPad apps, including one that allows cats to paint on a screen and “Game for Cats,” which encourages cats to swat a laser dot, mouse or moth scurrying across the screen. Mr. Murray says the apps have been downloaded more than one million times. The basic version of the original is free; others sell for $1.99.
There is more here, interesting throughout. At first I thought this was a kind of novelty item, but there is a good deal of evidence that many of the pets are quite absorbed in these games or perhaps even obsessed with them. Is it wrong for me to think that some of these games are, using behavioral inducements, actually torturing the pet, a bit like perpetual catnip?
Fabio Rojas on Twitter as an electoral predictor
It turns out that what people say on Twitter or Facebook is a very good indicator of how they will vote.
How good? In a paper to be presented Monday, co-authors Joseph DiGrazia, Karissa McKelvey, Johan Bollen and I show that Twitter discussions are an unusually good predictor of U.S. House elections. Using a massive archive of billions of randomly sampled tweets stored at Indiana University, we extracted 542,969 tweets that mention a Democratic or Republican candidate for Congress in 2010. For each congressional district, we computed the percentage of tweets that mentioned these candidates. We found a strong correlation between a candidate’s “tweet share” and the final two-party vote share, especially when we account for a district’s economic, racial and gender profile. In the 2010 data, our Twitter data predicted the winner in 404 out of 406 competitive races.
There is more here.
Is the Fourth Amendment Now Illegal?
In my view the fourth amendment is routinely being violated by the federal government. But is the fourth amendment, in particular the right to be secure in one’s papers, now illegal? Maybe. Violations of the fourth amendment by the federal government encourage the use of encryption but that avenue may now being blocked. Lavabit, the secure email service used by Edward Snowden, has suddenly and mysteriously closed with the creator leaving this message:
I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.
Other secure email providers have also shut down.
Recently I asked for suggestions to add to the Bill of Rights. One of mine was:
Congress shall pass no law abridging the right of the people to encrypt their documents and effects. (Modern supplement to the fourth amendment.)
I guess that amendment isn’t going to pass. I should not be surprised. In 2003 I said the cyber-libertarians were naive to dream of a new world of privacy and liberty built on the foundations of the internet and public key cryptography. Sadly, I got that one right.
Hat tip: Lynne Kiesling.
Addendum: Here is a longer account of what may be going on with Lavabit. Key graph:
There are already two theories as to what a FISA order against Lavabit may have looked like. First, FISA could have ordered Lavabit to insert spyware or build a back door for the N.S.A., as American and Canadian courts reportedly did to the encrypted e-mail service Hushmail, in 2007. Second, FISA could have ordered Lavabit to permit the N.S.A. to intercept users’ passwords. But the truth may never come out.
Smart Phone Ethics
Here is David Pogue, an excellent technology reporter but a lousy economist, reviewing the Moto X in the NYTimes:
You get your customized phone within four days, courtesy of Feature 2: it’s assembled right here in these United States. The components are still made in Asia, but they’re put together in Texas — you can lose less sleep worrying about underpaid Chinese workers.
David does not explain how a decrease in the demand for Chinese workers increases Chinese wages. Hint: It doesn’t. Perhaps, however, I have done David a disservice; although his argument fails as economics it succeeds as psychology. People who buy American probably will worry less about underpaid Chinese workers. Out of sight, out of mind.
Addendum: Adam Smith’s thoughts on China and ethics, most notably the importance of using reason not emotion to make ethical decisions, remain relevant.
Is Amazon Art a doomed venture? Let’s hope so
I do not think it will revolutionize the art world:
Amazon has just announced that it’s partnered up with over 150 galleries and art dealers across the US to sell you fine art through its new initiative Amazon Art.
The site offers over 40,000 original works of fine art, showcasing 4,500 artists. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, makes it the largest online collection of art directly available from galleries and dealers. Partners in the project include Paddle8 in New York, the McLoughlin Gallery in San Francisco, and the Catherine Person Gallery in Seattle.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon—which will reportedly take a 5 to 20 percent cut on all sales—was planning to launch the new service. At the time, it seemed that plenty of galleries thought that selling art online via Amazon may be distasteful. Clearly, that negative feeling hasn’t stopped Bezos & Co..
Given Amazon’s last attempt at selling art—a project with Sotheby’s back in 2000 — only lasted 16 months, it’ll be interesting to see how the initiative works out.
I expect the real business here to come in posters, lower quality lithographs, and screen prints, not fine art per se. And sold on a commodity basis. There is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think it will amount to much more aesthetic importance than say Amazon selling tennis balls or lawnmowers.
Should you buy this mediocre Mary Cassatt lithograph for “Price: $185,000.00 + $4.49 shipping”? (Jeff, is WaPo charging you $250 million plus $4.49 shipping? I don’t think so. )
One enduring feature of the art world is that a given piece will sell for much more in one context rather than another. The same painting that might sell for 5k from a lower tier dealer won’t command more than 2k on eBay, if that. Yet it could sell for 10k, as a bargain item, relatively speaking, if it ended up in the right NYC gallery (which it probably wouldn’t). Where does Amazon stand in this hierarchy? It doesn’t look promising.
Their Warhols are weak and overpriced, even if you like Warhol. Are they so sure that this rather grisly Monet is actually the real thing? I say the reviews of that item get it right. At least the shipping is free and you can leave feedback.
I’ve browsed the “above 10k” category and virtually all of it seems a) aesthetically absymal and b) drastically overpriced. It looks like dealers trying to unload unwanted, hard to sell inventory at sucker prices. I’m guessing that many of these are being sold at multiples of three or four over auction price histories. Is this unexceptional John Frost worth even a third of the 150k asking price? Maybe not.
Amazon wouldn’t sell you a kitchen blender that doesn’t work, or that was triple the appropriate cost, so why should they sully their good name by hawking art purchase mistakes? If you’ve built the best web site in the history of the world, which they have, you may decide that quality control should not be tossed out the window. Much as I admire their shipping practices, what makes Amazon work for me is simply that they sell better stuff and a wider variety at cheaper prices. Why give that formula up by treading into a market where such an approach won’t make any money? Why compete in a market where an awesomely speedy physical delivery network means next to nothing?
Overall, I don’t see the advantage of Amazon over eBay in this market segment. One nice thing about eBay is that you can see if anyone else is bidding and also that surprise quality items pop up on a relatively frequent basis, due to a fully decentralized supply network. You also can hope for extreme bargains and indeed I have snagged a few in my time. On the new Amazon project, supply is restricted to a relatively small number of bogus, mainstream galleries, about 150 of them according to the publicity.
eBay has the advantage with “free for all,” and good galleries and auction houses have the advantage when it comes to certification and pricing reliability. I don’t see the intermediate niche that Amazon is supposed to be trying to fill.
I’m a big fan of Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post, but if you’re looking for the case against that move, just click on that Monet purchase and see what happens.
Online Therapy as Good as Face to Face
A small study suggests that online therapy is as effective as face to face.
Online psychotherapy is just as efficient as conventional therapy. Three months after the end of the therapy, patients given online treatment even displayed fewer symptoms.
Six therapists treated 62 patients, the majority of whom were suffering from moderate depression. The patients were divided into two equal groups and randomly assigned to one of the therapeutic forms. The treatment consisted of eight sessions with different established techniques that stem from cognitive behavior therapy and could be carried out both orally and in writing. Patients treated online had to perform one predetermined written task per therapy unit – such as querying their own negative self-image. They were known to the therapist by name.
“In both groups, the depression values fell significantly,” says Professor Andreas Maercker, summing up the results of the study. At the end of the treatment, no more depression could be diagnosed in 53 percent of the patients who underwent online therapy – compared to 50 percent for face-to-face therapy. Three months after completing the treatment, the depression in patients treated online even decreased whereas those treated conventionally only displayed a minimal decline: no more depression could be detected in 57 percent of patients from online therapy compared to 42 percent with conventional therapy.
If therapy works well online imagine what else might work online?
How to frame your food decisions
According to research published this spring, people make healthier menu choices when calories are listed beside each item – but they make even better choices when they’re told how far they’d have to walk to burn off the calories consumed. This makes sense: for most of us, a calorie is a nebulous, hard-to-visualise thing, while a listing such as “burger: 2.6 miles” brings things sharply into focus. Somebody, it occurs to me, ought to design an app along these lines, for eating out: it would ask me what kind of food I’d like, then direct me only to those restaurants sufficiently far away that I’d neutralise the effect of the meal by walking there. In the mood for salad? There’s a place on the corner. Hungry for sausages, cheesy chips and a large slice of cake? Time to dig out the hiking boots.
Here is more, by Oliver Burkeman, via Claire Morgan.
Microsoft, Security and the NSA
New from The Guardian:
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
…The NSA has devoted substantial efforts in the last two years to work with Microsoft to ensure increased access to Skype, which has an estimated 663 million global users.
One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. “The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete ‘picture’,” it says.
Kickstarter and the NEA
Indeed, people have been saying since last year that Kickstarter funds more art-related projects than the NEA. And it’s true! For 2012, the NEA had a total federal appropriation of $146 million, of which 80 percent went toward grants. Kickstarter funded roughly $323.6 million of art-related projects if you include all design and video-related projects, which make up $200 million of the total.
That is from Katherine Boyle. Note that the actual comparison has less weight on the NEA side than this portrait might suggest. The NEA itself notes: “Forty percent of the NEA’s funds go to the 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies and the six regional arts organizations in support of arts projects in thousands of communities across the country…” To be sure, these are “grants,” but there is still room in the process for overhead — that ogre of non-profit work — to intervene as yet another grant has to be made.