text:
Archive for October, 2014

A chat with our talented creative intern, Owen

Thursday, October 23rd, 2014

The brilliant Owen Hudson has interned with us several times, and we’re big fans of his style. Here, he talks to us about his work, his life, and his plans for the future.

Who am I?

I am a fresh-faced Creative Advertising graduate from Edge Hill University with a passion for adventure, discovery and all things intriguing. I am 21 and currently living in my native Nottingham, gaining experience at Together Agency in my free time, between part-time lifeguarding and general gallivanting around the country.

My degree

After two years of struggling to pluck a career path out of the plethora of choices, I chose the ‘Creative Advertising’ course at my University ‘up north’. When choosing what to study, the decision seems like it’s the be-all and end-all of your entire life, but I realise now that it’s not. Having said this, 3 years, a wealth of experience and a crisp new degree later, I’m pretty glad I chose it in the end.
I initially became intrigued by the world of advertising when studying HBO’s TrueBlood series launch campaign as a case study in Media Studies. It taught me that in advertising and marketing, elements such as design, strategy and psychology marry quite nicely, and indeed are all integral to the overall power of a campaign. All of these elements were areas that fascinated me individually, but when combined, they led me to my overarching interest in advertising.

Some of Owen’s work – concept, branding and packaging design for a new soft drink:

My work

My work can involve the whole design process from conceptual thinking and idea generation through to pitching and production. My favourite stage, though, is the process of design. I find myself thinking visually more often than not, imagining things beyond reality and thinking of ways to make functional yet appealing designs. Growing up I was fascinated by street art and its vibrancy, and I now find inspiration in in many other environments as well. When we think about it, any man-made object had to be imagined or repurposed before we see it as it is today. Everything around us that serves purpose, inspires emotions and influences each and every one of us is someone’s legacy. I like this notion, and it is what motivates me to play my part and create my own legacy.

My main inspirations

Street art, surrealism, geometry, myths and legends influence a lot of my personal work, which occasionally spills over into my professional work. I make moodboards via Pinterest, which is a great platform to discover new influences, though often I simply scribble down my brimming mindful of ideas on paper.

Individuals such as: M.C. Escher, Leo Burnett (HumanKind), Mr Penfold, Greg Coulton, Kid 30 and Malcolm Gladwell are all individuals whose work has inspired me significantly – I really am your proverbial sponge for inspiration. One particular individual, John Foxx from Ultravoxx, gave us a poignant and extremely relevant speech at my graduation about our futures and our potentials as graduates in today’s current climate. He also touched on our responsibilities as influencers of media and contributors to the discourse of tomorrow. I didn’t expect to see him at my graduation, but his unexpected words were beautifully articulated to a point that it hit a nerve with most of the graduates that day.

I find that sometimes, the vast array of designers and designs I see end up subconsciously influencing my work in different ways. Ultimately, though, designs are nurtured from what suits the brand and the purpose or the tone of voice. These aspects are what really have the overarching impact on the final design.

More of Owen’s work – concepts for Fanta with added vitamin C:

Highlight of university

Aside from the obvious – new mates, independence, travelling the country, graduation day and the other social aspects of university, one academic highlight I could pick out would have to be the ‘Live Briefs’ module. The module took our course group across the country visiting agencies, completing live briefs and carrying out work experience at placements of our own choosing. It encouraged a healthy yet competitive environment but, more than anything, affirmed for me that I had made the right career choice. I loved working within each individual agency, and hope to continue my professional experiences with further placements like these.

Aims & dreams

I’d like to have the opportunity to carry on developing and exploring my own creative style, and to see the many sights and wonders this world has to offer. I’ve got lots of progress to make, which is something that excites me – I’m still an unwritten book. Aside from landing my first permanent industry job, I’d love to invent something that made an impact on the futures of everyday people, and create the something that will be my legacy to leave. I have no idea what that would be yet, but I aspire to create something that will genuinely make a difference. To do so, it helps to be blessed either with extraordinary talent, or just a little bit of luck –either of which should be aspired to by everyone!

You can see more of Owen’s work on Behance.

want to be our head of creative?

Tuesday, October 14th, 2014

Together is looking for a new Head of Creative to join and lead the brilliant creative team here in our Lace Market office. What we want, in a nutshell, is a driven, intensely original and highly creative designer or art director – or indeed a current Creative Head. You will guide and work alongside the team, seeing projects through from conception to their final creation. If you fit this bill, we want to hear from you!

Your day-to-day tasks as Creative Head involve all aspects of agency work. The role demands someone who can simultaneously inspire and lead a team of fellow creatives. We also require someone with the confidence to present, convince with and sell their own fresh and exciting ideas.

A strong team player with agency experience and prior involvement in leadership roles, you will possess both conceptual skills and brilliant design abilities (with a bold sense of humour to top it all off). We really do need the whole package for this particular job, which we believe could be the perfect step if you’re looking for progression in your work, or simply a new challenge if you’re an existing Creative Head wanting to join a new agency.

Naturally, the role entails a heap of responsibility, so we need to see an incredibly strong portfolio which demonstrates both your conceptual and design abilities in various outlets; from advertising right through to web design.

When applying, we ask that you email us with your CV and salary expectations alongside this brilliant portfolio, as well as a little bit about why you’re the one that we want. In your email, please use the subject line: I want to be your new Head of Creative.

No agencies please.

creative artworker vacancy

Monday, October 13th, 2014

Are you somebody with serious artistic flare, a great eye for design and a drive to take others’ creations from plausible to perfect one clever tweak at a time? If so, we want you!

Here at Together Agency in Nottingham, we’re in search of a Creative Artworker to join our fun and talented team. Taking our designers’ work, you’ll be using your creative genius to re-craft, spruce up and perfect its overall appearance. Your experience in type guidelines and conventions coupled with a serious attention to detail will stand you in good stead for fashioning pieces of work ready for pre-press and print.

We want to hear from anyone with a minimum of three years’ experience, and a real love for their work. Proficiency in all the relevant design applications is also really important.

We welcome team players with a great work ethic and a serious (slightly ridiculous) sense of fun.

If you or anyone you know could fit the bill, send us over an email with the subject line: I want to be your Creative Artworker. We need a CV, a salary expectation and some examples of work, plus a little bit about why you’re awesome at what you do.

No agencies please.

graphic designer vacancy

Thursday, October 9th, 2014

Are you a talented, creative and ambitious designer who can make something look so unutterably beautiful that usually sane and sensible people will want to gaze upon it and stroke it longingly?

Then this is going to be right up your street.

We’re on the lookout for a talented and experienced Graphic Designer to join the Together team here in Nottingham. You’ll have a proven ability to generate wonderful ideas and concepts, be able to sell them like your life depended on it and then execute them beautifully across print and online.

We’d like you to have a degree or equivalent qualification in design, with outstanding typography, layout and technical skills. You’ll need to have at least 3 years’ industry experience and a strong portfolio to demonstrate all of the above. Naturally, advanced skills in all the current design packages is a must.

You’ll also need to be a fantastic team player, with excellent self-motivation and a cheeky sense of humour.

If this is you, email us with your CV, salary expectations, your best work samples and a bit about why you’re brilliant. Use the subject line: I’m a designer, and I’d like to work with you.

Also, please share this advert with anyone you think might be suitable (i.e. awesome enough) for the role.

No agencies please.

Fancy a cosy cuppa? Our Tetley promotion is in the shops now

Friday, October 3rd, 2014

We’ve been working on something a little bit special for the last few months, and we’re excited to announce that it’s just hit the shelves. Tetley asked us to come up with ideas for a free gift they could give away on 160-packs of teabags: something that wouldn’t take up much room, emphasised the ever-popular Tea Folk characters, and fit a fairly tight budget.

Well, as huge tea lovers, we know there’s nothing worse than a cuppa gone cold. So we designed these Tea Folk mug cosies – one each for Tina, Gaffer and Sydney – to keep your tea at optimal drinking temperature even in the nippier winter months.

Here’s how they look:

You’ll find them on packs of Tetley at all good retailers now. We’ll put the kettle on.


Content-Type: application/http; msgtype=response

WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: text/html

WARC-Type: response

text:
VIPKid Teachers’ Favorite Words to Teach

The English language has diverse cultural origins, including common words like shampoo (Hindi), waltz (German) and apricot (Arabic). In fact, did you know the word ketchup comes from a Chinese word for “fish sauce?!

Our language is full of fascinating, beautiful, and sometimes difficult words. We asked our teacher community about their favorite words to share with students, and their amazing answers showed how much they love their students and their job. Take a look through this list of VIPKid teachers’ favorite words to teach, and let us know what you think in the comments!

1. Parallelogram

“This is such a mess of a word to teach sometimes, and I love to really have fun with it and break down every syllable. One of my students, Mary, couldn’t stop laughing when I asked her 5 times in a row, ‘what is this shape,’ while pointing to the parallelogram.”  – Teacher Bethany

“I love teaching ‘parallelogram.’ When the students—some of them very young!—can slowly say each syllable and then speed it up and say such a difficult word correctly, I just get so darn excited! I tell them that many people who are native speakers have difficulty with this word—because y’all know it’s true! ;)” – Teacher Rachel

2. Dandelion

“My favorite word in English is ‘dandelion.’ It’s borrowed from French, and literally means ‘teeth of the lion / lion teeth.’ I think that’s a pretty great description for a flower with a bunch of long and thin yellow petals!” – Teacher Sarah

3. The

“My favorite word to teach is ‘the’ because many Chinese speakers tend to pronounce this word incorrectly. Being able to pronounce this high-frequency word correctly will help them sound more fluent overall!” – Teacher Taylor

4. Happy

“I love teaching the word ‘happy’ because the students always smile and it brightens my day!” – Teacher Christine

5. Hello

“‘Hello’ opens up a new world for English students.” – Teacher Wendy

“I just started and am mostly teaching early Level 2. I think so far my favorite word to teach is ‘Hello.’ It’s so basic, but I think it’s my favorite because it’s the first word we really are introducing the students to. Also Lesson 1 is just about saying ‘Hello.’ It’s the easiest TPR! I make it fun even if we keep repeating it!” – Teacher Cynthia

6. Run

“My favorite word to teach is ‘run’ because I love pretending I am running when I teach it, and the students just bust out laughing. It makes me laugh too when they try to mimic me.” – Teacher Melissa

7. Eyebrow

“I love to ask if they have 1 or 2 and then teach ‘unibrow’ and show them a picture, they always laugh!!” – Teacher Laura

8. Peculiar

“I think ‘peculiar’ really sums up the English language. ‘English isn’t one language. It is three languages stacked on top of each other under a trench coat.’ ‘English doesn’t ‘borrow’ words from other languages, so much as it follows them down dark allies, knocks them on the head, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.'” – Teacher Melody

9. Artist

“During our warm-up a student told me she wanted to make pictures to make people happy. Then called herself a painter, when that career came up. When she read ‘artist’ she lit up and said ‘I will be an artist!'” – Teacher Lori

10. Cat

“So far my favorite word has been ‘cat’ for my Level 1 student. For a bit of backstory, I am his only teacher. We were learning to identify a cat and he always finishes early, so I asked if he wanted to see mine. When she crawled all over my head and shoulders, he laughed like I had never heard before. He is always such a joy to see on my schedule every Tuesday and Thursday.” – Teacher Amber

11. Love

“Love! Everyone can recognize one of the hand gestures for a heart. The concept of love is known by everyone. It is the most important word in any language.” – Teacher Lisa

12. Toes

“My favorite word to teach is ‘toes’ because the students laugh when I bring my toes into view! I always wear funny socks when I teach this lesson and then I take them off and put my toes close to the camera! They crack up every time!” – Teacher Jenna

13. Describe

“I love to teach the word ‘describe’. I tell the students that they can tell me anything about a stuffed animal from our classroom (I always use a grinch), and the students describe physical and non-physical characteristics. When we are done brainstorming, I tell them that I have a surprise word for what they just did, and I introduce the word describe. After that, my students always remember the meaning and how to use the word in context.” – Teacher Rosa

14. Away

“With VIPKid my favorite word to teach is ‘away.’ It’s a struggle for many to teach, but I love being able to play hide-and-seek with a puppet or another prop… and the kids think it’s funny when I use silly voices to say ‘Go, away!'”- Teacher April

15. Family

“I love to show my family picture and talk about the student’s family. It helps to make connections with the student.” – Teacher Holly

16. Their students’ favorites!

“I love to teach the kids names for their favorite things. I taught ‘pediatrician’ this week to a student who said he wants to be a doctor for kids. He took a lot of pride in that word!” – Teacher Kathleen

Ready to join our community of fun, dedicated teachers? Sign up to teach with VIPKid, and in no time you’ll have a special story about your favorite word to share with students!

  1. Wash in level 1. Many of my students do the cutest motions to match it! One student pretended to take a bath and had both his mother and me laughing.

  2. “Stinky” cracks up me and my students with the faces we make while holding our noses and waving our hand in front of our face. 🙂

  3. I use a robot face accessory on ManyCam when teaching the word “trapezoid.” For some reason, that word is just robotic-sounding to me 😉

  4. I really love parallelogram. I always start out with saying lello lello lello and get the kids to laugh. Then I break it down to para-lello- gram. We just have fun with the word. They always smile.

  5. I Love to teach the word Sleep. I like to pretend I am sleeping and snore a little bit. Then I act scared as the student wakes me up.

  6. For my main level kids, I like teaching the word “hatch” and demonstrate the process with my Hatchimal Eggs! For the older ones, “suitcase” is always fun to demonstrate (think Mary Poppins miracle bag)! For the littlest ones, “ball” is a hoot because somehow they never expect me to have a life-size basketball under my desk! (You should see what else is down there!) If all else fails, teaching little ones to say their name is awesome! ????

  7. I haven’t taught a class yet, but in my interview I introduced cat-er-pill-ar with a stuffed animal and the mentor loved it!

  8. Soccer! I have a soccer ball and I have a lot of students who call it football. I totally understand, America is the ONLY place that doesn’t call it football. So I like to say, in America we call it football. I had one student who was bot a fan of this and told me, “No! It is football!”????

  9. I like teaching any of the sight words. Sometimes I will use a stop watch to see how fast the kids can read them all. They like to try a few times to try and beat there fastest time and it is a great way to extend a slide.

  10. It is hard to pick just one. I love all the vocabulary. It is that moment when it all clicks and you can see the excitement in their faces. It is so beautiful!

  11. “I’m funny,” “you’re funny,” “he’s funny” (in the sense of being silly). I tried to type in the word “silly” one time and it was flagged as a possible offensive word. However, the word “funny” carries the message and always makes them smile.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

warcinfo:
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-13
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-143-92-167.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/


WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: application/xhtml+xml

text:
WALS Online: Official Release

Through a joint effort of the Max Planck Digital Library and the Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, all the data and analytical texts from The World Atlas of Language Structures are now freely available online (”WALS Online”), at http://wals.info. The materials are published under a Creative Commons License, guaranteeing open access for users and inviting scientists to use them for their work. WALS Online is by far the most important web site on the world’s linguistic diversity.

The site shows data on over 2500 languages, for which more than 6500 references have been used. Searching and browsing is possible by structural feature, by language name or language family, by reference and by author. The analytical texts contain links to all the references and all the languages. The maps can be shown at any zoom level, and the map symbols can be displayed in various shapes and colours. A wide range of export options is available.

Full press release (PDF)

One Response to “WALS Online: Official Release”

  1. mark (the ideophone) Says:

    I’ve put a review online at my own website. This form doesn’t accept links, but you might be interested.

Leave a Reply


text:
Overgrowth a215 video changelog

Add Comment! By Lukas Orsvärn on January 15th, 2016

Here is the new Overgrowth alpha video!

Don't forget that you can help support us, try out our alphas (such as the one in the video), and chat with other preorderers in the Secret Preorder Forum by preordering Overgrowth. If you'd like to see real-time news about Overgrowth, you can follow us on Twitter at @wolfire.

Be sure to watch it in HD!

The features highlighted in the above video are as follows (as well as some that didn't make it into the video):

  • All objects in spawner are now spawnable
  • Limited blood decals re-enabled
  • Cleaned out data folder
  • Undo history is no longer cleared on level save
  • Bug fixes and stability improvements

Thanks as always for all the support! See you guys in IRC and the forums.

If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Also, feel free to support us by preordering Overgrowth!


text:
Comments: Cindy Sheehan: "If I truly was a media whore..."

With some people it's hard to tell if they're made up cause nothing works.

Except maybe Photoshoppiing or the old standby, the paper bag.

Posted by Mog at August 27, 2005 02:33 PM

Hey Cindy, does the sheriff know you're back in action?

Posted by BobG at August 29, 2005 10:30 PM
Post a comment

Remember personal info?


text:
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work

Robot from The TerminatorArtificial intelligence – and the potential that such intelligence could be a danger to humanity – has been a staple of literary and cinematic horror for decades. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) featured a robot disguised as a young woman, who ended up toppling a city, a theme most recently captured in the remake of Battlestar Galactica with the very human-seeming Cylons, robots so sophisticated that even they didn’t know they were robots. The Colossus: The Forbin Project andWargames both featured self-aware global computer systems that took over the nuclear missiles of both the US and Russia.

HAL from 2001 – A Space Odyssey embodied the very concept of the sapient but insane computer interface as it worked to sabotage a manned mission to Saturn, while GladOS from the Portal games was a brilliant parody featuring a “female” computer determined to test her subjects to death. The whole premise of James Cameron’s Terminator series was the notion that the networks of today had become the SkyNet of tomorrow, a global AI that in turn controlled robots bent on human annihilation.

Artificial Intelligence vs/+ Human Intelligence

Lately, perhaps because of the rise of Big Data, Data Science and the emergence of consumer facing robotics, people are beginning to ask questions in their daily lives that traditionally have been the realm of philosophers and science fiction authors, most notably: What happens when computers become more intelligent than us?

It’s a valid question, and one that’s very difficult to handwave away. Our cars are becoming more intelligent. So are our houses, our places of work, our wireless telephones (now almost universally referred to as “smart phones”). Industry pundits and manufacturers are all praising the coming Internet of Things (or IoT) to the extent that our coffee machines will soon be so smart that they can prepare and brew your favorite cup of coffee, fetch the newspaper, and prepare a full analysis on the stock market before you even finish getting dressed in the morning. That it can also find all primes up to one sextillion in the background while brewing that cup of java goes without saying.

We get twitchy when our car gets better grades than our honor student kid (and when we finally get around to developing inexpensive flexible screens, expect smart bumper stickers to proclaim this fact loudly and in fully animated 64 bit graphics). Humans are proud of their intelligence, but in the next few years (or maybe in the last few, jury’s still out on that one) we’re going to end up creating systems that are in fact smarter than us in many meaningful ways.

Humans get all hung up about intelligence, but when you get right down to it, we’ve been developing distributed intelligence for a long, long time. Human intelligence isn’t actually one thing – it is a system of “computers” that each do specialized tasks. The hippocampus regulates semi-autonomous functions like breathing, and very basic fight or flight reactions. The nervous system handles sensory aggregation and transmission, with gross and fine motor control coming from the cerebellum and parts of the cerebral cortex. Emotions are modulated in the older cerebrum. Memory occurs primarily in the outer gray matter of the brain, while the prefrontal lobes of the cerebrum handle a lot of what we think of as the artifacts of intelligence – pattern and language recognition, tactical and strategic planning, our ability to model the world, and our self awareness or consciousness.

Consciousness in particular is considered a very important aspect of intelligence, but in many ways, consciousness is simply another “routine”. It serves to create a feedback loop between the internal and external representation of an individual, and may have a comparatively recent origin. Some scholars have argued that human consciousness may in fact have only emerged in the last 10,000 years or so, though it is more likely that it emerged around 150,000 years in the past, While either of those time spans might seem incredibly long, in terms of evolution, these are eyeblinks. 10,000 years works out to about 500 generations.

Yet for all that, consciousness did not occur overnight either. When the giant space monolith appeared, Ogg the ape-man did not suddenly become Ogg the metrosexual. Instead, self-awareness built up in stages – awareness of self (internal system regulation), awareness of relationships (connectivity to local networks), awareness of the gods (development of protocols for determining standardized behavior) indirect or cultural awareness (access to institutional knowledge gained from external sources) and so forth.  There is some evidence to support the idea that the human brain has altered itself to make each increase in consciousness more efficient, but this may also just be due to the plasticity of the brain (firmware adaptation rather than either hardware or software adaption).

Computers are already computationally much faster than we are, if only because they can be networked. Human civilization is an example of networked intelligences, albeit a fairly inefficient form. Institutional knowledge can be retained by a community easier than it can an individual. Human culture exists to provide such knowledge, to insure that there is redundancy of critical information for survival and a mechanism for transmission of that information from one generation to the next. To do that, we had to develop a complex set of signals called language, and with each iteration of that language, we refined the protocols, added more and more complex symbols until we were dealing with abstractions such as “love”, “blue” and “forty two”.

That’s a big part of the reason that so much artificial intelligence research actually focuses on the ability to understand and work with language. Humans have a few really hard concepts that are so hard that we tend not to realize how difficult they are to encode. “Here”, “there”, “me”, “you”, “now”, “then” – these are all context expressions, terms that require an understanding of both self- and external- awareness. These contextual terms and their associated concepts are now coming on line – a smart phone, for instance, knows where it is better than you do, but this is only know percolating into its concept of awareness.

These are harder even than emotions to express. Indeed, computers already have a pretty good handle on “content”, “stressed”, “fear”, “anger” and other emotion-oriented words, because they generally rely on self-monitoring, something that is actually pretty easy for a computer to do. Many can even increasingly be set up to handle self-motivation – when a sensor in a car indicates a bad fuel mix problem, a car even today can warn its owner that it is feeling “sick”. and should go to the car doctor (aka mechanic).  It’s not that big a leap to the day where a self-navigating car can ask its owner if it could drive to the car doctor itself, so that it can talk to the car doctor’s AI to let it know EXACTLY what the problem is – certainly no more than twenty years, maybe within ten.

Add into this the fact that over that same period, everything will be connected to the Internet, which is to these emerging AIs what culture is to humans. This suggests that machine AIs will likely also go through a god phase – an awareness of computer spirits and daemons that are the virtual simulcra of nature spirits, ancestor worship and so forth, but there is also one fundamental difference between human and machine intelligence. Networked computers are increasingly virtual constructs – they exist as distinct entities only be convention. Human beings cannot duplicate themselves (they can clone themselves (or soon will), but these are duplicates only at the operating system level, not temporally or with regard to experience (data acquisition and processing). Computers can, and so the notion of identity (and hence self-awareness) will become far more difficult for a computer to evolve to as a state.

This, then is the crux of why even self-aware AIs will be vastly different from humans in many ways. Computer awareness will be very different from human awareness. They will be effectively omniscient, but a significant portion of their processing will be involved in making sense of this information. AIs will have no real sense of physical “there”-ness, but will instead move from one sensor nexus (robot) to another, or even move through several such nexuses simultaneously. Such robots will have autonomous processing capability, but will be able to get sensory information and analysis from both other robots and from cloud based AIs, and can also offload some of their processing temporarily as more local processing is needed for specialized tasks.

How Artificial Intelligence Impacts Jobs

This can actually be used to extrapolate how AIs and robots will ultimately shape human culture, for both good and bad.

  • Robots = AI + Sensors + Motors.  When robots are discussed here, the tendency is to think of humanoid robots. A robot in the purest sense is simply a basic artificial intelligence coupled with sensors for establishing local context and motor driven actuators for effecting the external world. A modern thermostat is a robot. Your car is a robot. Your smartphone is a robot (think phone cameras, which have a limited number of mechanical parts). More traditional robots are on their way, but there is very little distinction between robots and the Internet of Things – ultimately, it will be the AI – the brains behind those robots -that is the critical component
  • Many Existing Human Jobs Are Going Away. AIs and robots will have the capability of replacing all known jobs within twenty years. This doesn’t mean that all jobs WILL be replaced, but the capability will exist. As this happens, this will collapse the current global economy, because it does not have the ability to adapt fast enough to shift from an economy based upon work compensation (and hence participation in the economy) to one based upon other means of wealth distribution.
  • Resource Limitations Still Exist. This has some interesting implications. First, while computation requires energy (and produces heat and waste artifacts), we are not actually moving into an age of plenty so much as an age where efficiency of resource usage becomes paramount. Intelligent systems will be able to better distribute water to various groups within areas like the American Southwest, but it also mean that AIs will play an increasing role in politics to determine w
  • Employment Will Become Virtual. People will spend more and more time within virtual communities – games, simulations, social environments, shared worlds and so forth, and it is through participation in (and extension of) these environments that people will find employment. Virtual world product designers (design = manufacturing in the virtual world), story tellers, optimizers (people who increase participation in various platforms), analysts, fashionistas, reviewers, even the occasional barbarian or wizard for hire will be typical of these new positions,
  • The Metamorphosis of Money. Virtual worlds mint virtual money. As standards for interoperability of virtual environments emerge, one of the biggest there will be tracking stores of value – currencies. BitCoin and similar cryptographic money may become the equivalent of real world gold – an inviolate base store of value that will in turn back other currencies. This means that such virtual currencies become exchangeable at real world rates, and it also means, as more and more transactions take place virtually, that over time such currencies may end up replacing government currencies.
  • The Office Will Disappear.  X as a platform type solutions will replace most traditional office work that’s not critical to differentiating a company. This process is already underway, but it is likely that more sophisticated platforms will increasingly handle analysis and lower level decision making will actually take place in code, utilizing business intelligent systems that will be able to both pull together the requisite data and determine, based upon this, what the best decision making strategies are to maximize profits, market penetration and similar variables.  While the office as client meeting place may remain, one of the biggest impacts upon this will be commercial real estate, with significant swaths of the CRE market going permanently empty over the next forty years.
  • Most AIs will be Assistive Agents.  Even self-aware AIs will likely be assistive  –  they will extend the reach and scope of human beings, rather than being wholly autonomous, but they will also have the potential to become significant crutches. As educational systems at all levels become more virtualized, the distinction between games, education and (unfortunately) advertising will blur significantly. It is likely that people’s ability to memorize will diminish in favor of learning more sophisticated information management strategies.
  • Agents and Avatars. An agent is an online AI that both provides information and coordinates activities. An avatar is an interactive representation either of a real person or an autonomous agent (and to a significant degree, within the virtual world there will be no real way to distinguish which is which). Both require the use of AIs, with the agent’s focus primarily upon search and interfaces (most likely interacting with a series of intelligent data stores), while avatars use AIs to create a convincing media presence appropriate to the environment. While there is some overlap now (and basic avatars and agents exist in various online game environments) there is little as yet to coordinate agents or avatars across different environments. This coordination will likely be an ongoing effort over the next 15-20 years.
  • Offline Will Be the New Frontier. Ironically, the more that information and services become automated, the greater will be the desire to move more or less completely off the grid. There will be a growing gulf between the digitally connected and the unconnected, what has been described as the shift from Blue vs. Red (Liberalism vs Conservativism) to Black vs. Green – those who are heavily invested in technology vs. those who do not want to be (or cannot afford to be) connected at all. Ironically, artisanal jobs, ones that could be done via automation but aren’t because they represent human craftsmanship, will actually rise. It is entirely possible that by 2050 there will be more active blacksmiths in the United States than there were in 1880, as one example.

The upshot of all of this is simple. The definition of work as it has existed for the last century is going the way of the dodo. Automation in its various forms will be what drives it to extinction, because there are very few jobs that a human being can do that a machine won’t be able to do better within the next few decades.

The End of Work (As We Know It)

The current economy is based upon principles of work establish a century ago, especially in the wage sector Today, you get paid a certain amount of money an hour to do work when necessary, and to be available to an employer exclusively. The amount you get is determined both by the scarcity of skill sets and the degree to which your actions can be quantifiable to a bottom line. With those wages, you then buy those things necessary to live – housing, food, clothing, transportation, entertainment and so forth, which in turn is the principal engine that drives the economy (far more than investment income).

Artificial Intelligence (including robots) undercuts all of that. It does not completely remove humans from the equation, but it does render about 2/3 of all people currently in the workforce obsolete, and more pointedly, it plays havoc with wage income. For those people who are able to stay current with technology (and to develop highly specialized skills that they are updating continuously) the wages can be a couple of orders magnitude higher than it would be for unskilled labor, which also puts them into a position to better accumulate enough capital to enter the rentier economy, but that’s a small percentage of the total workforce.

To put it baldly, the current economy will irrevocably crash in the next few decades, due to the distorting effect of automation.  Automation by its very nature benefits the rentier economy far more than it does the wage economy. Automation reduces the need for people to perform certain forms of work. It benefits investors attempting to get a more accurate picture of the investment landscape. The most powerful AIs on the planet perform the equivalent of penny shaving billions of times a second by  performing micro-trades that have no direct impact on price valuation, but instead simply take advantage of network effects. In other words, AIs magnify the effects of transactions dramatically, and those in the rentier economy are best positioned to take advantage of this.

Short term solutions that ameliorate the problem are politically volatile but are worth considering. Eliminating taxes on wage income and dramatically increasing transactional taxes on rentier income (capital gains) would help for a while. By eliminating taxes on wage income, people would receive the equivalent of a 20-30% boost in spendable income – assuming they have a wage income in the first place. Taxing capital gains would slow investment, but at the current time there’s already too much investment money chasing too few legitimate business niches, meaning that much of the money being invested is essential funding overly risky businesses with too little likely return. Taxing such capital gains would also better support those people that have lost their jobs due to automation.

However, longer term, even this is a stop-gap. Policy makers need to start asking hard questions now. The biggest seems like science fiction, but it is screaming towards us: if automation eliminated all jobs, how would the economy function? What would such an economy look like? Are there ways of insuring that people have sufficient income to meet their basic needs while at the same time rewarding those values that Americans in particular have come to prize: entrepreneurialism, innovation, independence, creativity and integrity?

Ultimately, the vision of robot domination will not come from Terminator style robots designed to eliminate humanity from the planet. Instead, it will come from policy makers at all levels – corporate and governmental – failing to recognize that the effects of automation need to be weighed against the needs of humanity at a fundamental economic level.

Any sufficiently large group of people, freed from the lower tiers of Maslow’s pyramid, will ultimately specialize into jobs that they do because they enjoy doing them, whether they can be automated or not (for an example of that, look at the retirement economy – a generation that does not longer needs to work for a living is in fact investing more of their time, the ultimate resource, into everything from repairing crumbling schools and assisting teachers to building up charities for eradicating disease or helping their children raise their grandchildren. These are needful things, and that generation is making a difference in ways that previous generations couldn’t. This represents the potential of what AI could bring – freeing people from the need to make money helping other people make money so they can concentrate instead on those things that really do matter – family, community, education, health, culture, intellectual and spiritual growth and so forth.

What are your thoughts?

Kurt Cagle is Principal Evangelist for Data Science with Avalon Consulting, LLC

Kurt Cagle About Kurt Cagle

Kurt Cagle is the Principal Evangelist for Semantic Technology with Avalon Consulting, LLC, and has designed information strategies for Fortune 500 companies, universities and Federal and State Agencies. He is currently completing a book on HTML5 Scalable Vector Graphics for O'Reilly Media.

Leave a Comment


text:
Babies Online - The Blog

Our Birth Story: Part Two

This is part two of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Click here to read part one

At around noon they conclude that the baby is R.O.P. (right occipital posterior… don’t ask how I remember things like this; just go with it) which means the baby is facing sideways. Despite a pitocin drip we are stopped at 8cm with a cervical “lip” (I did not see this, but I was told to visualize a crescent moon shape). During the previous five hours, my wife has been complaining that there is a rod digging into her hip. The nurse tells her that she is imagining things and that the epidural wouldn’t let her feel that.

At around 2pm they finally give my wife the go-ahead to push (after her begging to try for hours). The caveat is that pushing will only work if the lip is lifted. Manually. By the nurse. While she pushes. I’ll give you a minute to work that visual out for yourself.

At around 4pm, after two hours of steady pushing, the nurse asks my wife, “Are you putting your feet in the stirrups while you push?” my wife replies, “Of course I am. I’m bearing down hard on them.” The nurse makes the “tsk tsk” sound and says, “Well we’ve just wasted the last two hours then.” My wife continues to complain about her hip.

At around 6pm, after another two hours of “proper” pushing, they give up on pushing and tell my wife to rest. My wife insists something is up with her bed. They roll her to her side and discover that her hip is resting on the joint in the bed frame, and that the mattress is extremely thin there (due to a history of bending the mattress at that point).

An hour later (we have been in the delivery room nearly twelve hours at this point) the on-call ob-gyn comes in and offers the following, “The baby is very big, and very healthy. We are not worried about the baby right now. However, you have been here all day and we have to consider the possibility of a c-section. You don’t have to do it; it’s your call. But if something goes wrong with the baby, it stops being your call and it becomes my call.” He leaves to allow us time to digest the information.

Read part 3

You can read more SciFi Dad at Tales From The Dad Side.

Get Your Baby's Fun Birthday Facts

Enter your baby's birth or due date for fun facts including baby's birthstone, birth flower, horoscope, graduation date, "this day in history" and much more!

Baby's birth or due date:

Save my information

Connect with Us

Connect with us on Facebook
Tweet us on Twitter
Stumble Upon Babies Online     Babies Online RSS Feed


text:
~ Archive for Elections ~

Artificial Intelligence, your brain, and other things you cannot trust about politics

A few days ago the Center for Research on Computation and Society organized a workshop with the provocative title “Six Reasons Fake News is the End of the World as we Know It“. I call it provocative because, whether “fake news” is a new thing or not, has been discussed a lot lately. Not all of us agree on what it is, or how novel it is. Some point out that it is as old as newspapers, others see it as something that mainly appeared last year. Yet others doubt that it is even a phenomenon worth discussing and that, instead of fake news, we should talk instead about specific categories such as false news, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda.

Accepting the challenge, I gave a talk with an equally provocative, I would like to believe, title:  “Artificial Intelligence, your brain, and other things you cannot trust about politics“. You can follow my talk in the video below, but let me give you a list of the “things” that I discussed in the talk:

I hope you find it interesting and do your own thinking about what we can trust when it comes to politics. Importantly, we need to figure out how to solve the problems of online misinformation and propaganda that seem to be all around us these days.

Or, to learn how to live with them, which is what I think will happen.

Replication, Verification and Availability for Big Data

The next step in the evolution of Social Computing Research: Formal acceptance of credit worthiness by the community of Replication, Verification, and Availability of Big Data.

In his response to my posting on Research Replication in Social Computing, Dr. Bernardo Huberman pointed to his letter to Nature on a related issue: Verification of results. Here I expand to include proposal that I have heard others mention recently.

I totally agree, of course, that “Science is unique in that peer review, publication and replication are essential to its progress.” This is what I also propose above. And he focuses on the need for having accessible data so that people can verify claims. For those who may not have access to his letter, I reproduce the central paragraph here:

“More importantly, we need to recognize that these results will only be meaningful if they are universal, in the sense that many other data sets reveal the same behavior. This actually uncovers a deeper problem. If another set of data does not validate results obtained with private data, how do we know if it is because they are not universal or the authors made a mistake? Moreover, as many practitioners of social network research are starting to discover, many of the results are becoming part of a “cabinet de curiosites” devoid of much generality and hard to falsify.”

Let me add something further, that I heard it mentioned by Noshir Contractor and Steffen Staab at the WebScience Track during the WWW2012 conference, that I think will complement the overall proposal: People who make their data available to others should get credit for that. After all, in Science a lot of time is spend collecting and cleaning data, and whose who do that and make their data available to other researchers for verification, meta-analyses and studying of other research questions should be rewarded for their contributions.

I believe the time is right to introduce formal credit for replication of results on comparable data sets, verification on the same data set, and for making data accessible to others for further and meta-analysis. I plan to use much of my group’s research time on these issues this summer and publish our findings afterwards.

Three Social Theorems

Dear Readers,

Below are my annotated notes from a talk I gave at Berkman’s Truthiness in Digital Media Symposium a few weeks ago. I introduced the concept of Social Theorems, as a way of formulating the findings of the research that is happening the last few years in the study of Social Media. It is my impression that, while we publish a lot of papers, write a lot of blogs and the journalists report often on this work, we have troubles communicating clearly our findings. I believe that we need both to clarify our findings (thus the Social Theorems), and to repeat experiments so that we know we have enough evidence on what we really find. I am working on a longer version of this blog and your feedback is welcome!

P. Takis Metaxas

With the development of the Social Web and the availability of data that are produced by humans, Scientists and Mathematicians have gotten an interest in studying issues traditionally interesting mainly to Social Scientists.

What we have also discovered is that Society is very different than Nature.

What do I mean by that? Natural phenomena are amenable to understanding using the scientific method and mathematical tools because they can be reproduced consistently every time. In the so-called STEM disciplines, we discover natural laws and mathematical theorems and keep building on our understanding of Nature. We can create hypotheses, design experiments and study their results, with the expectation that, when we repeat the experiments, the results will be substantially the same.

But when it comes to Social phenomena, we are far less clear about what tools and methods to use. We certainly use the ones we have used in Science, but they do not seem to produce the same concrete understanding that we enjoy with Nature. Humans may not always behave in the same, predictable ways and thus our experiments may not be easily reproducible.

What have we learned so far about Social phenomena from studying the data we collect in the Social Web? Below are three Social Theorems I have encountered in the research areas I am studying. I call them “Social Theorems” because, unlike mathematical Theorems, they are not expected to apply consistently in every situation; they apply most of the time and when enough attention has been paid by enough people. Proving Social Theorems involves providing enough evidence of their validity, along with description of their exceptions (situations that they do not apply). It is also important ti have a theory, an explanation, of why they are true. Disproving them involves showing that a significant number of counter examples exists. It is not enough to have a single counter example to disprove a social theorem, as people are able to create one just for fun. One has to show that at least a significant minority of all cases related to a Social Theorem are counter-examples.

SoThm 1. Re-tweets (unedited) about political issues indicate agreement, reveal communities of likely minded people.

SoThm 2. Given enough time and people’s attention, lies have short questioned lives.

SoThm 3. People with open minds and critical thinking abilities are better at figuring out truth than those without. (Technology can help in the process.)

So, what evidence do we have so far about the validity of these Social Theorems? Since this is simply a blog, I will try to outline the evidence with a couple of examples. I am currently working on a longer version of this blog, and your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Evidence for SoThm1.

There are a couple papers that present evidence that “Re-tweets (unedited) about political issues indicate agreement, reveal communities of likely minded people.” The first is the From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-Time Search paper that I co-authored with Eni Mustafaraj and presented at the WebScience 2010 conference. When we looked at the most active 200 Twitter users who were tweeting about the 2010 MA Special Senatorial election (those who sent at least 100 tweets in the week before the elections), we found that their re-tweets were revealing their political affiliations. First, we completely characterized them into liberals and conservatives based on their profiles and their tweets. Then we looked at how they were retweeting. In fact, 99% of the conservatives were only retweeting other conservatives’ messages and 96% of liberals those of other liberals’.

Then we looked at the retweeting patterns of the 1000 most active accounts (those sent at least 30 tweets in the week before the elections) and we discovered the graph below:

As you may have guessed, the liberals and conservatives are re-tweeting mostly the messages of their own folk. In addition, it makes sense: The act of re-tweeting has the effect of spreading a message to your own followers. If a liberal or conservative re-tweets (=repeats a message without modification), he/she wants this message to spread. In a politically charged climate, e.g., before some important elections, he/she will not be willing to spread a message that he disagrees with.

The second evidence comes from the paper “Political Polarization on Twitter” by Conover et. al. presented at the 2011 ICWSM conference. The retweeting pattern, shown below, indicates also a highly polarized environment.

In both cases, the pattern of user behavior is not applying 100% of the time, but it does apply most of the time. That is what makes this a Social Theorem.

Evidence for SoThm2.

The “Given enough time and people’s attention, lies have short questioned lives” Social Theorem describes a more interesting phenomenon because people tend to worry that lies somehow are much more powerful than truths. This worry stems mostly from our wish that no lie ever wins out, though we each know several lies that have survived. (For example, one could claim that there are several major religions in existence today that are propagating major lies.)

In our networked world, things are better, the evidence indicates. The next table comes from the “Twitter Under Crisis: Can we trust what we RT?” paper by Mendoza et. al., presented at the SOMA2010 Meeting. The authors examine some of the false and true rumors circulated after the Chilean earthquake in 2010. What they found is that rumors about confirmed truths had very few “denies” and were not questioned much during their propagation. On the other hand, those about confirmed false rumors were both questioned a lot and were denied much more often (see the last two columns enclosed in red rectangles). Why does this make sense? Large crowds are not easily fooled as the research on crowd sourcing has indicated.

Again, these findings do not claim that no lies will ever propagate, but that they will be confronted, questioned, and denied by others as they propagate. By comparison, truths will have a very different experience in their propagation.

The next evidence comes from the London Riots in August 2011. At the time, members of the UK government accused Twitter of spreading rumors and suggested it should be restricted in crises like these. The team that collected and studied the rumor propagation on Twitter found that this was not the case: False rumors were again, short-lived and often questioned during the riots. In a great interactive tool, the Guardian shows in detail the propagation of 7 such false rumors. I am reproducing below an image of one of them, the interested reader should take a closer look at the Guardian link.

During the Truthiness symposium, another case was presented, one that supposedly shows the flip side of this social theorem: That “misinformation has longer life, further spread on Twitter than accompanying corrections”. I copy the graph that supposedly shows that, for reference.

Does this mean that the Social Theorem is wrong? Recall that a Social Theorem cannot be refuted by a single counter-example, but by demonstrating that, at least a significant minority of counter examples, exists.

Further, the above example may not be as bad as it looks initially. First, note that the graph shows that the false spreading had a short life, it did not last more than a few hours. Moreover, note that the false rumor’s spreading was curbed as soon as the correction came out (see the red vertical line just before 7:30PM). This indicates that the correction probably had a significant effect in curbing the false information, as it might have continue to spread at the same rate as it did before.

Evidence for SoThm3.

I must admit that “People with open minds and critical thinking abilities are better at figuring out truth than those without” is a Social Theorem that I would like to be correct, I believe it to be correct, but I am not sure on how exactly to measure it. It makes sense: After all our educational systems since the Enlightenment is based on it. But how exactly do you created controlled experiments to prove or disprove it?

Here, Dear Reader, I ask for your suggestions.

Misinformation and Propaganda in Cyberspace

Dear Readers,

The following is a blog that I wrote recently for a conference on “Truthiness in Digital Media” that is organized by the Berkman Center in March. It summarizes some of the research findings that have shaped my approach to the serious challenges that misinformation propagation poses in Cyberspace.

Do you have examples of misinformation or propaganda that you have seen on the Web or on Social Media? I would love to hear from you.

Takis Metaxas

Misinformation and Propaganda in Cyberspace

Since the early days of the discipline, Computer Scientists have always been interested in developing environments that exhibit well-understood and predictable behavior. If a computer system were to behave unpredictably, then we would look into the specifications and we would, in theory, be able to detect what went wrong, fix it, and move on. To this end, the World Wide Web, created by Tim Berners-Lee, was not expected to evolve into a system with unpredictable behavior. After all, the creation of WWW was enabled by three simple ideas: the introduction of the URL, a globally addressable system of files, the HTTP, a very simple communication protocol that allowed a computer to request and receive a file from another computer, and the HTML, a document-description language to simplify the development of documents that are easily readable by non-experts. Why, then, in a few years did we start to see the development of technical papers that included terms such as “propaganda” and “trust“?

Soon after its creation the Web began to grow exponentially because anyone could add to it. Anyone could be an author, without any guarantee of quality. The exponential growth of the Web necessitated the development of search engines (SEs) that gave us the opportunity to locate information fast. They grew so successful that they became the main providers of answers to any question one may have. It does not matter that several million documents may all contain the keywords we were including in our query, a good search engine will give us all the important ones in its top-10 results. We have developed a deep trust in these search results because we have so often found them to be valuable — or, when they are not, we might not notice it.

As SEs became popular and successful, Web spammers appeared. These are entities (people, organizations, businesses) who realized that they could exploit the trust that Web users placed in search engines. They would game the search engines manipulating the quality and relevance metrics so as to force their own content in the ever-important top-10 of a relevant search. The Search Engines noticed this and a battle with the web spammers ensued: For every good idea that search engines introduced to better index and retrieve web documents, the spammers would come up with a trick to exploit the new situation. When the SEs introduced keyword frequency for ranking, the spammers came up with keyword stuffing (lots of repeating keywords to give the impression of high relevance); for web site popularity, they responded with link farms (lots of interlinked sites belonging to the same spammer); in response to the descriptive nature of anchor text they detonated Google bombs (use irrelevant keywords as anchor text to target a web site); and for the famous PageRank, they introduced mutual admiration societies (collaborating spammers exchanging links to increase everyone’s PageRank). In fact, one can describe the evolution of search results ranking technology as a response to Web spamming tricks. And since for each spamming technique there is a corresponding propagandistic one, they became the propagandists of cyberspace.

Around 2004, the first elements of misinformation around elections started to appear, and political advisers recognized that, even though the Web was not a major component of electoral campaigns at the time, it would soon become one. If they could just “persuade” search engines to rank positive articles about their candidates highly, along with negative articles about their opponents, they could convince a few casual Web users that their message was more valid and get their votes. Elections in the US, after all, often depend in a small number of closely contested races.

Search Engines have certainly tried hard to limit the success of spammers, who are seen as exploiting this technology to achieve their goals. Search results were adjusted to be less easily spammable, even if this meant that some results were hand-picked rather than algorithmically produced. In fact, during the 2008 and the 2010 elections, searching  the Web for electoral candidates would yield results that contained official entries first: The candidate’s campaign sites, the office sites, and wikipedia entries topped the results, well above even well-respected news organizations. The embarrassment of being gamed and of the infamous “miserable failure” Google bomb would not be tolerated.

Around the same time we saw the development of the Social Web, networks that allow people connect, exchange ideas, air opinions, and keep up with their friends. The Social Web created opportunities both for spreading political (and other) messages, but also misinformation through spamming. In our research we have seen several examples of propagation of politically-motivated misinformation. During the important 2010 Special Senatorial election in MA, spammers used Twitter in order to create a Google bomb that would bring their own messages to the third position of the top-10 results by frequently repeating the same tweet. They also created the first Twitter bomb targeting individuals interested in the MASEN elections with misinformation about one of the candidates, and created a pre-fab Tweet factory imitating a grass-roots campaign, attacking news organizations and reporters (a technique known as “astroturfing“).

Like propaganda in society, spam will stay with us in cyberspace. And as we increasingly look to the Web for information, it is important that we are able to detect misinformation. Arguably, now is the most important time for such detection, since we do not currently have a system of trusted editors in cyberspace like that which has served us well in the past (newspapers, publishers, institutions). What can we do?

* Retweeting reveals communities of likely-minded people: There are 2 larger groups that naturally arise when one considers the retweeting patterns of those tweeting during the 2010 MA special election. Sampling reveals that the smaller contains liberals and the larger conservatives. The larger one appears to consist of 3 different subgroups.

Some promising research in social media has shown potential in using technology to detect astroturfing. In particular, the following rules hold true most (though not all) of the time:

  1. The credibility of the information you receive is related to the trust you have towards the original sender and to those who retweeted it.
  2. Not only do Twitter friends (those that you follow) reveal a similarly-minded community, their retweeting patterns make these communities stronger and more visible.
  3. While both truths and lies propagate in cyberspace, lies have shorter life-spans and are questioned more often.

While we might prefer an automatic way of detecting misinformation with the use of algorithms, this will not happen. Citizens of cyberspace must become educated about how to detect misinformation, be provided with tools that will help them question and verify information, and draw on the strengths of crowd sourcing through their own groups of trusted editors. This Berkman conference will help us push in this direction.

Election time, and the predicting is easy…

Election time, and the predicting is easy…

As I am sure you have heard, the Iowa caucus results are in. Several journalists are reporting on the elections along with claims of “predictions” that social media are supposedly making. And the day after the Iowa caucus, they are wondering whether Twitter predicted correctly or not. And they look at the “professionals” for advise such as Globalpoint, Sociagility, Socialbackers and other impressive sounding companies.

Shepard Fairey meets Angry Birds: Poster of our 2011 ICWSM submission "Limits of Electoral Predictions using Twitter"

Well, Twitter did not get it right. That is not surprising to my co-authors and I.  Yet, they try to find a silver lining, by claiming smaller predictions such as “anticipating Santorum’s excellent performance than the national polls accomplished.” Of course, the fact that Twitter missed the mismatches with the other 5 candidates is ignored. Why can’t they see that?

A few years ago I had created a questionnaire to help my students sharpen their critical thinking skills. One question that the vast majority got right was the following: “Is Microsoft the most creative tech company?” If one were to do a Web search on this question, the first hit (the “I feel lucky” button) would be Microsoft’s own Web page, because it had as title “Microsoft is the most creative tech company.” My students realized that Microsoft may not be providing an unbiased answer to this question, and ignored it.

It is exactly this critical thinking principle that journalists obsessed with election predictions are getting wrong: The companies I mentioned above ( Globalpoint, Sociagility, Socialbackers ) are all in the business of making money by promising magical abilities in their own predictions and metrics. One should not take their claims on face value because they have financial conflict of interest in giving misleading answers (e.g. “Comparing our study data with polling data from respected independent US political polling firm Public Policy Polling, we discovered a strong, positive correlation between social media performance and voting intention in the Iowa caucus.” Note that even after the elections they talk about intentions, not results.)

That’s not the only example violating this basic critical thinking principle I saw today. Earlier, I had received a tweet that “Americans more susceptible to online scams than believed, study finds“. The article reports that older, rich, highly educated men from the Midwest, politically affiliated with the Green Party are far less susceptible to scam than young, poor, high school dropout women from the Southwest that are supporting Independents. If you read the “study” findings, you will be even more confused about the quality of this study. A closer look reveals that the “study” was done by PC Tools, a company selling “online security and system utility software.” Apparently, neither the vagueness of the “survey” nor the financial conflict of interest of the surveying company raised any flags for the reporter.

In the Web era, information is finding us, not the other way around. Being able to think critically will be crucial.

Predict the Future!

The title may seem redundant. Of course if you  are going to predict, you should predict the future — what else, predict the past? But, when referring to social media data it may not be that redundant. In recent years there has been an increase of research on social media data predicting the future, predicting the present, and predicting the past using knowledge acquired in the future.

Why is predicting important? Predicting is equivalent to intelligence, with an important qualification: We admire the intelligence of someone who can predict what is going to happen, but only when they can explain why they are able to do so. If one (e.g., an octopus) is able to predict without explanation, we tend to downgrade it as coincidence.

Earlier today, the Pew Research Center on Journalism published an analysis entitled “Twitter and the Campaign“. They present a detailed study of millions of tweets and blogs, about what people say on social media about the candidates for the 2012 elections. (Not too many nice things, it turns out, except for Ron Paul, who, at the same time, is trailing on the polls.)

So, what does this mean for the predictive power of Twitter? Is he going to win because tweets have good things to say about him, or will he lose because tweets have good things to say about him? (Hint: The answer is “yes”.)

Shepard Fairey meets Angry Birds: Poster of our 2011 ICWSM submission "Limits of Electoral Predictions using Twitter"

Earlier this year, with my colleagues Eni Mustafaraj, Dani Gayo-Avello and student Catherine Lui we studied this question. Can one, analyzing social media data, predict the outcome of the US congressional elections? We did not find encouraging results, in neither the Google Trends data nor the Twitter data — thus the ingenious poster above that Dani designed.

When it comes to something so important as the elections, social media will be manipulated, because the stakes are too high. One should keep that in mind as we get closer to election time and “news articles” will start appearing arguing that someone will win or lose based on the number of friends or followers this candidate has. If the author gets it right, he will make sure to remind us in the future. If he gets it wrong, he will forget it first.

Today's mentally flexible tweet. Why is this important? What is special about the last 24 hours? Who is missing?

This does not mean that nothing can be predicted using social media. Movie sales can be predicted, as Bernando Huberman and his colleague showed. Flu outbreaks and periodic sales can be predicted, too. But not elections. At least without some sophisticated filtering that makes them as representative and competitive to the professional pollsters.

Log in


text:
~ Archive for Research Replication ~

Replication, Verification and Availability for Big Data

The next step in the evolution of Social Computing Research: Formal acceptance of credit worthiness by the community of Replication, Verification, and Availability of Big Data.

In his response to my posting on Research Replication in Social Computing, Dr. Bernardo Huberman pointed to his letter to Nature on a related issue: Verification of results. Here I expand to include proposal that I have heard others mention recently.

I totally agree, of course, that “Science is unique in that peer review, publication and replication are essential to its progress.” This is what I also propose above. And he focuses on the need for having accessible data so that people can verify claims. For those who may not have access to his letter, I reproduce the central paragraph here:

“More importantly, we need to recognize that these results will only be meaningful if they are universal, in the sense that many other data sets reveal the same behavior. This actually uncovers a deeper problem. If another set of data does not validate results obtained with private data, how do we know if it is because they are not universal or the authors made a mistake? Moreover, as many practitioners of social network research are starting to discover, many of the results are becoming part of a “cabinet de curiosites” devoid of much generality and hard to falsify.”

Let me add something further, that I heard it mentioned by Noshir Contractor and Steffen Staab at the WebScience Track during the WWW2012 conference, that I think will complement the overall proposal: People who make their data available to others should get credit for that. After all, in Science a lot of time is spend collecting and cleaning data, and whose who do that and make their data available to other researchers for verification, meta-analyses and studying of other research questions should be rewarded for their contributions.

I believe the time is right to introduce formal credit for replication of results on comparable data sets, verification on the same data set, and for making data accessible to others for further and meta-analysis. I plan to use much of my group’s research time on these issues this summer and publish our findings afterwards.

Research Replication in Social Computing

On the need for Research Replication in Social Computing

A call for replicating Social Computing results as a necessary step in the maturity of the field.

The field of Social Computing is a rather new one but it is one of the more active in Computer Science in the last few years. Many new conferences have been created to host the research efforts of computer scientists, social scientists, physicists, statisticians and many other researchers and practitioners. The excitement generated by the opportunities that opened through the relatively ease of retrieving large amounts of data has led many young researchers in diving to uncover the modes of social interactions.

At the risk of oversimplifying, one could say that the research papers we produce follow the general pattern of observational sciences:

  • We collect data that arguably can capture the phenomenon we want to study,
  • we may apply some sophisticated statistical tools, test a hypothesis applying machine learning tools, and
  • analyze the results.

Our conclusions sometimes do not just state the phenomenon we just observed, but they expand from the specific findings to claim possible projections that go beyond the observed.

One of the reasons that this approach seems familiar it that it resembles the one used in Experimental Computer Science. There, we measure the characteristics of the systems or algorithms we have built, and study their performance experimentally when exact analysis is not easy or even possible. This is a true and tried approach since, in the systems we build, we take great effort to avoid any behavior that is outside of the specifications. In the artificial worlds we create, we try to control all of its aspects, and this process has produced amazing technological results.

On the other hand, this approach may be inappropriate or incomplete compared to those used in Experimental Natural Sciences. Physicists, Biologists and Chemists would start with this approach to make initial sense of the data they are collecting, but this is just the beginning of the process. Replication of their research is normally needed to verify the validity of the original experiments. Sometimes the research results would not be validated, nevertheless, even in this case the replication process would provide insight into the workings of natural phenomena. Nature is mostly repeating its phenomena consistently, and one may have to account for all the parameters that affect them. Sometimes this is not easy, and replication offers the best guarantee that the research findings are valid.

As we mentioned, Social Computing is now being done by researchers coming from many disciplines, but it is different from both Computer Sciences and Natural Sciences. Though it has the potential of also becoming an experimental science, so far it is mostly an observational Science. This, it turns out, is a very important distinction. Society is different than Nature in several important ways. Its basic building blocks are people, not atoms, or chemical compounds or molecules. The complexity of their interactions is not easily tractable, to the degree that one may not be able to even enumerate all the factors that affect them. Moreover, people (and even social “bots” released in Social Media) do not behave consistently over time and under different conditions.

The closest relative to Social Computing is not Computer Science, we would argue, but Medical Science, where Natural Sciences phenomena are influenced by Social conditions. In both Medical and Natural Sciences, replication of results is considered an irreplaceable component of scientific progress. Any lab can make discoveries, but these discoveries are not considered valid until they have been independently replicated by other labs. Not surprisingly, replicating research findings is considered a critical publishing action, and researchers are getting credit for doing just that.

In Computer Science, replication has not been considered important and worth any credit, unless it reveals crucial flaws in the original research. It is unlikely, for example, that replicating Dijkstra’s Shortest Paths algorithm would contribute to the development of our discipline, and so it makes sense not to give credit to its replication. On the other hand, inability to replicate Hopcroft and Tarjan’s tri-connected component algorithm was a significant development, and Gutwender and Mutzel who discovered it and corrected it, did receive credit for it.

We acknowledge the need for replicating Social Computing research results, as a way of establishing the patterns that Social Media data are discovering under all meaningful conditions. We believe that such research replication will give credibility to the field. Failing to do that, we may end up collecting a large number of conflicting results that may end up discrediting the whole field.

Log in


text:
Another successful drone exhibit at the 2016 Tillamook County Fair on Friday, August 12. I flew my “Little Drone Juan” Cheerson CX-10 in the booth to the delight of those passing by. I had plenty of questions from the public on the legalities of flying drones both commercially and for hobby.

The kids naturally gravitated to the RealFlight R/C simulator and enjoyed trying to fly the virtual octacopter drone in the 3D environment. Some even tried flying FPV (First Person View) style to see if they could fly through the hanger, which some did!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a reply

  <acronym title="">
      <q cite=""> <s>


text:
SLIS Jobline

Cataloging & Metadata Librarian, North Carolina Central University School of Law, Durham, NC

The NCCU School of Law Library provides information services and resources that promote the performance of high-quality legal research activities by our faculty, students, staff, and community.

The Collection Services Department has the primary responsibility of creating and maintaining bibliographic and holdings records for the Law Library's online public access catalog. The Collection Services Department also facilitates the Law Library's participation in the Federal Depository Library program.

The Cataloging and Metadata Librarian is responsible for the ongoing work of the law library's catalog and for the cataloging of materials in all formats, including print and digital resources. This position is responsible for the creation, maintenance, and enrichment of metadata representing the library's digital and physical collections. This position works closely with colleagues to evaluate and document policies, procedures and workflows for cataloging, classification, authority control, metadata, and database maintenance. This position also manages the library's participation in the Federal Depository Library Program.

Essential responsibilities include managing the receipt and processing of all library materials; liaising with Shepard's System Librarian to represent the interests of the Law Library with regards to the libraries' common catalog; creating resource and bibliographic records for free and licensed content; resolving cataloging and classification issues and document decisions and practices; creating metadata for the Law School's institutional repository; participating in electronic resources management; continuing resources management, including identifying and resolving problems relating to complex electronic serials, databases, and subscriptions; managing the Library's proxy server; and compiling statistical reports.

In addition, the Cataloging and Metadata Librarian works in close cooperation with other library managers and senior management to engage in project planning and ensure the coordination of programs and services to the Law Library's community, including physical and intellectual access to collections; and performs other duties as assigned.

Candidates must have knowledge of cataloging principles, as well as knowledge of integrated cataloging systems. Familiarity with the Federal Depository Library Program. Excellent oral and written communication, interpersonal and organizational skills. Ability to supervise, train, and evaluate staff. Must have an interest in researching and monitoring new technologies. The successful candidate will be a self-starter, able to meet deadlines and work well in a collaborative environment to achieve common goals. The successful candidate will be able to develop productive working relationships and work effectively as a team member as well as independently.

Master of Library Science (M.L.S.) degree from an A.L.A. approved library school plus 3 years of relevant experience in technical services. Knowledge of cataloging principles, as well as knowledge of integrated cataloging systems.

North Carolina Central University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or status as a protected veteran.

For full description, click here.

Academic Positions | Professional Jobs Outside of New England


text:
Tag Archives: matt naylor

Your Complete Guide to The AMS

new to ubc? here’s what you missed…

The AMS stands for your Alma Mater Society. The name doesn’t make sense, but it was formed to be your student society; you pay them fees and in return they keep the university from doing whatever it wants. Plus, parties and stuff!

MIKE used to be Alma Mater Society President and he poledanced a lot

there’s like a million of these on facebook.

but then he turned things over to BLAKE

guido guido guido (photo c/o gerald deo)

go o~on….

Continue reading

Your Sporadic Dose of News for Noobs

Long time no post! We won more moniez, Taylor is back (with less memes and more sparkles), people are storming some goddamn wall on campus, Gossip Girl aired, and it’s almost summer. Here’s a rundown of what is happening/a bunch of rumours in the sextacular AMS.

Secrets, secrets are no fun…

AMS Council had some super secret location discussing some super secret things where the sexy media isn’t allowed. We speculate that half of the meeting will be spent discussing strategies on how to become as popular in the UBC world as Justin Bieber & Perez Hilton are in the real world.

yes, taylor’s back… (her idols at perez’s birthday a few days ago)

After the jump we have some sexy Toope, the no alcohol at Koerner’s shit, and a clusterfuck of AMS rumours…

Continue reading

And you thought the last meme post was forced.

Elections season is over, which, these days, means it’s time for recount/contest season! Rather than recount the Trasolini/Platt saga at great length, we’ll recap shortly, and then present the only result we care about: ACKBAR ACKBAR ACKBAR

  1. Trasolini loses by one vote, cast by AUS EA Matt Naylor to break a tie.
  2. Trasolini writes open letter, claiming that ballots were miscounted (he has proof!!) & he should have won by two votes.
  3. Wahmbulance called.
  4. Recount reveals that Platt is still winner.
  5. ??????

Anyway, here’s a thought to cheer you up, Artsies. Sure, we’re starting the new elective year on a wonky note.  But there’s so much for us to anticipate! Yes, you, Foresighted Arts Voters, had the courage—the understanding—the bravery to elect Seannie C., a.k.a. ADMIRAL ACKBAR.  We here at the Confidential (okay, I here at the Confidential) are Huge Fucking Star Wars nerds, and we’re super-excited for the opportunity to spend an entire year doing variations on the trap meme.

When we haven’t had our caffeine:

tip your goddamn barista, kids, we're fucking starving

When we’re feeling just too old to keep up with you political whippersnappers:

tis not a woman true, but a half creature, neither fish nor foul

When shit’s about to get funky:

in west Coral City, born and raised / on the Calamarian Council is where I spent most of my days

News for Noobs

We here at Sexy R Us Confidential have been looking for a third editor to spice things up, give us neck rubs when needed, and lighten our loads a bit so we don’t fail out of university.

We’re pleased to announce a VFM marriage of sorts, with the addition of our new editor, AMS Gossip Guy himself.

GG will post more on himself at a later date.

Hillson, we still love you.

On to some sad, sad news.

Unfortunately, glitter extremist and twittebrity Taylor will be leaving Confidential until constituency elections are over. She has joined forces with Chairman Naylor as part of the AUS Elections Committee and wicked awesome ubcvotes.ca team…it’s pretty hard to compete with that sexy Chairman, especially now with his dashing new smile. Oh, and his deep pockets.

Now on to some happy, happy news.

VFM IS BACK! Or, so says this tweet. We’re stoked to have you all voting for us again & again & again and promise to bring you some delicious content on everything scandalous in AUS, EUS, HKUS, and SUS elections!! Check our events page for all the events and remember to follow our Twitter.

Bye Bye International Seat…

Oh, International Seat…so last month’s Disabilities Seat. If you want some point vs point action that sort of hurts your brain, check out the epic battle of Timkachu vs. Chairman Naylor on Issues That Matter here.

At Council on Wednesday, the Legislative Procedures Committee (Leprecomm LPC) headed by our very Chairman Naylor brought the issue of abolishing the International Students seat (which is non-voting) to Council’s oval table. They argued that the ISA seat was not in the best interest of the group it represents, and that the structure of the AMS is not amenable to such a seat. Basically, in the AMS we have representation by population, so having a seat tailored to the interests of international students allows for double representation, which is an LPC no-no.

Representation by population is something that is important to preserve as it is allowing each member a representative on council through a direct channel and empowers people to get elected through those channels. –Chairman Naylor

Saayy whaaaat? Federalism?

  • As a student, you belong to a faculty. Be this Arts, Engineering, Science, or Human Kinetics to name a few (oh hai, they happen to be having their own elections and Arts/HK nomination forms are due Tuesday. http://ubcvotes.ca for more info! *shameless democracy plug*).
  • Within your faculty, you have an undergraduate society which holds elections to elect your own sexy executive and other positions, including AMS reps.
  • The AMS has reps based on how many students are in that faculty. Proportional representation, anyone? If you’re in Arts, you get 5 reps. Science, 4. & on and on and on…so that every student has the same amount of representation on Council, and the same chance of getting elected to Council.

The whole point in this is that someone represents you based on your faculty and that everyone is equal, and it is NOT based on whether you’re an international student, a student with disabilities, a gay student, a commuter student, etc.

Tahara encompassed the above in a moving speech, except she threw in an “anglo-saxon seat” example which got these editors daydreaming…

JJ is running for SUS Director of Finance...but we'd kind of like this instead.

Anyway, a lot of sexy debate resumed. And we mean a LOT. Let us also note that Brittany Perna was just recently elected to the seat, and this was her first real council meeting…such a nice welcome! Here are some of this editor’s favourite bitch slap quotes.

Tim: There’s been no consultation with International Students.
El Naylorino: Tim, it’s quite clear you don’t care about consultation. #OHSNAP

Naz, Former Int’l Rep: If I am gay, I am gay everywhere. If I go back to Iran, I am not an international student.

There were also some nice quotes:

The only divides we should see at this table are the arbitrary ones between faculties. –New VPX Jeremy

We should work holistically with I-House. – Iggy (up for re-election!)

So then it came time to vote, and it was breathtakingly close. 2/3 was needed, and it got EXACTLY 2/3. Perhaps the lesson learned from this debate is that if you want to push your controversial cause through council, seeking political advice—and impassioned speech-making—from Timkachu is a guaranteed way to make it fail.

Remember kids, as Chairman Naylor bravely expressed, High School Musical stylewe’re all in this together. Love each other, and love those international/domestic kids…they’re a big source of sex appeal/revenue for the university <3

Disclaimer of sorts? Kai is an international student, and Taylor is a domestic student. EQUALLY FUNDED VOTER FUNDED MEDIA WHAT WHAT.

Unobtanium Jello Wrestling!

Well, the event you were all waiting for has come and gone. No, not The Presidential Debate hosted by Issues That Matter and The Media. Instead, The Unobtanium Jello Wrestling event. Held as a part of Science Week, it conveniently falls during elections and, as such, has become a joyous platform for candidates to campaign upon. In many cases, it is also the determining factor for many students yet to cast their ballot. While the non-hack and non-SUS crowd was meager at best, there were some epic battles.
For all you Noobs out there, the objective of jello wrestling is to remove the sock of your opponent in an inflatable bowl/pool of…green jello.  Needless to say, judicious use of tarps (and athletic garb) are involved.
After the cut, more of this:

god, we wish.

PLUS our exclusive live-action Sean v. Joel EngNerd Death Match—and how this year’s candidates compare to those of years gone by.

The Sexy Referendum

We’re trying to make this as simple as possible for you normal, less hacktastic folk out there. We’re not lovers of code either, so bear with us.

When you vote online between January 25-29 (here is how to vote and what to expect), besides choosing candidates (here are our endorsements) you will get to vote YES or NO to 9 questions. We’ll present the questions to you now, with full analysis after the jump.

[Editor’s note: On your ballot, these referenda will be in a different order. We apologize for the confusion.]

1) Do you support the removal of Blake Frederick from the office of President?

2) Do you support the removal of Tim Chu from the office of VP External Affairs?

3) Do you support the AMS establishing a $5.00 refundable Engagement Levy to help improve student engagement by encouraging voter turnout and funding engagement related projects?

4) Do you support indexing the fees of the AMS to the Canadian Core Consumer Price Index?

5) Do you support the amendment of the AMS Bylaws as presented, for the purposes of enabling Student Council to remove an individual from a position as an officer of Council, and other amendments as outlined?

6) Do you support an increase in student fees beginning September 2010 of $1 per part-time student and $2 per full-time student per semester to be directed to the Access UBC Association of Disabled Students for the purpose of increasing accessibility, participation and inclusion for all people with disabilities on campus and in society?

7) Do you support the amendment of the AMS Bylaws as presented, based on the recommendations of a consultant hired to review the operations of Student Court and of a special AMS joint committee, for the purpose of revising the rules concerning Student Court?

8 ) Should the AMS create a voting seat on AMS Council for students with disabilities by amending Bylaw 5.2(a)?

9) Should the AMS actively lobby for reduced tuition fees and increased government funding?

Continue reading

Not So Sexy Senators

Well, the debate came and went. It was incredibly boring, with the highlight being a member of Issues That Matter attempting to take self photography. We’re trying to make this post more exciting by adding SPARKLY GLITTER. Questions from the audience were definitely the sexiest, with Issues That Matter, “Do Me Now” Duncan, Comrade Costeloe, and Chairman Naylor challenging the Senators.
Only 7 of the 12 candidates showed up. Notably missing was His Excellency Blake Frederick, along with Aminollahi, Miriam, Blair, and Alyssa (who participated via Liveblog). No senators wowed us with any personality and seemed to deviate from questions with generic answers or passing the buck to the BoG. Also, most didn’t know how often the Senate met, when the next meeting was, or what was on the agenda.
Along with debate fail, there was also fashion fails.If you insist on wearing the pinstripe button down, please make sure it fits you properly and is ironed. AJ looked suave with his square cut glasses and facial hair- definitely hacktastic. Honourable mention to Nader for rocking a scarf and v-neck for that “I’m super sexy” swoon. Johannes, we’re requesting you glam it up with a magenta tie to match your posters next time.
Surprise, surprise, Johannes won the poll with 50% of the votes for Sexiest Potential Senator. Thanks for voting, and please come out to the debates tomorrow…AMS President, VP External, and VP Finance Debate 12-1:30pm in the Norm Theatre.
We love votes as much as we love you. So send us some sexy love votes.

All I was trying to do is to question the instinct to characterize almost anything that happens in relation to elections as “hot”, [BREAKING] news without any verification or reflection.
-Issues That Matter

On a relatively slow media day yesterday – as in, no Bijan ballerina videos – it seems that other VFM outlets and The Media are  creating some drahmaz almost as sexy as Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. If you’re the type who fancies a classy lay like ourselves, you can always vote for us. Here’s a quick breakdown of yesterday’s stir. Warning: clicking the links may cause you to transport back in time to high school.

Elections Guru vs The Editors

Miss Elections Guru and The Editors over at The Media have been in a bit of an awkward turtle. The Ubyssey wrote an adorable editorial about the Elections Guru, in which she then responded with a professional slap back. BOOYAH, bitches.

Chairman Naylor vs The Boyfriend

Our beloved Chairman Naylor (bowing on bended knee as I type) wrote epic Naylorisms about electoral code and blah blah blah. Then, he apparently had a comment glitch, in which The Boyfriend of Elections Guru posted a long meandering rebuttal. Since comments were not working, he made a Facebook note and tagged various hacks and The Media to get his sexy point across and swoon his beloved lady. Chairman Naylor then responded again. Meow.

Issues That Matter vs Emails That Matter vs Foxy Trout

A Mr. Callow emailed Emails That Matter, Foxy Trout, and the Sex Goddesses about a “hot tip” which was published here and here (we’re lovers of abstinence, personally). The following catfight occurred:

Issues That Matter: Bitches, we heard that long ago.
Kommander Keg: OH SNAP, biatch!
Probable editor of Emails That Matter under a secret name: Good job.
Foxy Trout: Issues That Matter, get your nose out of your ass. You’re just jealous we got the tip, you didn’t report it yo.
Issues That Matter: Here is a long list of things proving that I am correct. You yourself even reported this accidentally. Emails aren’t important, Issues are what really Matters. And Foxy Trout, it is on our page. #journalisticwin

And there you have it kids. Stay tuned for when the CANDIDATES start making waves, sheesh. We’re hoping for a John Edwards mixed with Jamie Lynn scenario, personally.

lulz of the day.

In the wee hours of the morning of January 15, we received a grievance. On behalf of all unicorns, we will sincerely try to stop them from being harvested for their kidneys by Chairman Naylor by providing you with more delicious AMS content, complete with sparkles.

Not the unicorns!

Also, our journalistic intelligence (yes, we can solve any crime by dinner time just like Mary-Kate & Ashley) tells us this was sent by a certain former dreamboat and current candidate…