Fair Use Lab

Attention Economy – October 31, 2011

Mark Willis — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:25:33 +0000

Misha Glenny: Hire the hackers! | Video on TED.com
Despite multibillion-dollar investments in cybersecurity, one of its root problems has been largely ignored: who are the people who write malicious code? Underworld investigator Misha Glenny profiles several convicted coders from around the world and reaches a startling conclusion.
‘DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You’ – Exploring the World of Cybercrime | PRI’s The World 101011
Anchor Marco Werman talks about the borderless world of international cyber crime with Misha Glenny, whose new book is called “DarkMarker: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You.”
Ayesha Khanna on smart cities and the Hybrid Age | Spark
According to Ayesha Khanna, the end of the so-called “Information Age” is nigh. Ayesha is the the director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, and she says we’re starting to enter a new age — the “Hybrid Age” — which is characterized by pervasive computing, biotechnology and nanotechnology, and “the emergence of technologies as a social actor.” That is, a time defined by our social interactions with the machines around us. This week, Nora interviewed Ayesha Khanna about the hybrid age, and about another of Ayesha’s areas of expertise: smart cities. You can hear the full, uncut interview or download the MP3. [runs 32:15]
Spark 157 – October 2 & 5, 2011 | Spark
Psychology professor Jennifer Steeves of York University explains how human beings recognize one another compared to facial recognition software. And Alessandro Acquisti from Carnegie Mellon University reveals some surprising research into how regular recognition tech can identify “anonymous” people. | Jure Leskovec is an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford, and he analyses past human behaviour online to predict future outcomes. And he’s discovered he can correctly predict who your next friends on Facebook will be. | What happens when cities can monitor and respond to the people who live in them? There is no end to the Spark obsession with this question. Ayesha Khanna, director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, talks to Nora Young about the potential, and the challenges of smart cities, and what becomes possible when sensors are embedded everywhere.
Steve Jobs and Apple’s Innovative Advertising – On The Media 100711
Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs died this week at the age of 56. Bob remembers the tech giant, and discusses Apple’s iconic “1984″ Super Bowl commercial, which he says is one of the best advertisements ever made.
The Loss of a Valuable Journalistic Tool – On The Media 100711
For years, health care reporters have employed a government database called the National Practitioner Data Bank, containing information on malpractice payouts. The public version of the database hides the names of physicians, but after a reporter was able to identify an anonymous doctor, the public database was taken offline. Bob talks to Charles Ornstein of the Association of Health Care Journalists about why the database is important, and attempts by journalists to regain access to it.
Digital Public Library of America
The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all. The vision of a national digital library has been circulating among librarians, scholars, educators, and private industry representatives since the early 1990s, but it has not yet materialized. Efforts led by a range of organizations, including the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive, have successfully built resources that provide books, images, historical records, and audiovisual materials to anyone with Internet access. Many universities, public libraries, and other public-spirited organizations have digitized materials that could be brought together under the frame of the DPLA, but these digital collections often exist in silos.
MediaBerkman » Blog Archive » RB 185: The Next Generation Library 101711
What would a digital version of your public library look like? There’s more to it than e-books and digital reading devices. Librarians, scholars, innovators, and techno-wizards are collaborating under the mantle of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to build a next generation public library. Such a thing could incorporate one or more of many different elements: a set of physical buildings; a purely digital archive with an open API layer for coders to play around with; a full fledged digital lending library. And when the DPLA converge on the National Archives in Washington, DC this Friday (you can check out the agenda and tune in to a livestream here) they’ll get to work out just a few of those ideas.
MediaBerkman » Blog Archive » RB 184: Intellectual Property — Not Just For Lawyers Anymore 101211
It’s time to stop thinking about intellectual property as something purely for your legal counsel to deal with. That’s the driving idea behind John Palfrey’s aptly titled new book Intellectual Property Strategy. Companies and institutions that have to worry about creative works, trademarks, or brands would be well-suited, Palfrey says, to seize the sword and shield from the attorneys (who tend to be aggressive and/or defensive about IP) and exercise a little more flexibility and creativity with intellectual property on their own. Palfrey sat down with David Weinberger for this week’s Radio Berkman to talk about why.
Spark 159 – October 23 & 26, 2011 | Spark
There’s been a sharp decline in the number of young people studying Computer Science. Mark Allemang is a professor at Sault College in Sault Ste Marie Ontario who has seen this decline first hand, as more and more courses are canceled in community college. But why do so-called digital natives lack interest in pursuing careers in tech fields? David Ticoll is the executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow’s ICT Skills, and he thinks the key is in not limiting education in computers to a hard category of ‘computer science’, but in thinking of educating young people in hybrid skills. (Runs 10:00)
Full Interview: Douglas Rushkoff on Program or Be Programmed | Spark 101211
Nora Young: “Today I interviewed Douglas Rushkoff, an author and keen observer of new media and digital culture. I wanted to talk to him about his most recent book, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. He argues that in learning to code, or at least learning a little about coding, we can better understand the biases of digital technology, and the design decisions that go into our digital technologies. In short, we don’t need to be passive consumers of new technology.”
Full Interview: Rob Spence on Cyborgs, Eyeborgs, and Human Augmentation | Spark 100511
Rob Spence is a documentary filmmaker. He’s also a self-described cyborg. His latest project, Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary launched in conjunction with the launch of a video game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution. In it, Rob looks at the current state of cybernetics, and asks how far off a Deus Ex-like future might be.
CFP 2012 ADA: Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability
April 24-25, 2012 | Proposals are due December 5th, 2011 | The theme for the Twelfth Annual Multiple Perspectives, “Experience Understood in Image, Poetry, Narrative and Research” reaches across disciplines, professions and modes of knowing for a fuller understanding of disability. The theme facilitates our twelve year exploration of disability as a reflection of the human condition as seen through the lenses of environmental, theoretical and social constructs as well as personal experience. Preference will be given to presentations that encourage conversations across the typical divisions (medical and social, education and employment, research and practice, business and government, rights and charity …) or focus on the parallels, distinctions and intersections with race, gender and ethnicity.
The ‘Worm’ That Could Bring Down The Internet : NPR 092711
As many as 12 million computers worldwide have been infected with a highly encrypted computer worm called Conficker. Writer Mark Bowden details how Conficker was discovered, how it works, and the ongoing programming battle to bring down Conficker in his book Worm: The First Digital World War.
delicious beta status
Welcome to the Delicious Beta Status blog. During the beta period, this page will serve as the primary source for engineering team updates on migration issues, bugs we’re fixing, and feedback we’re receiving from the community.

Attention Economy – September 26, 2011

Mark Willis — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:22:44 +0000

The Hacker Toolkit: Social Engineering – On The Media 092311
Alex Goldman: “There’s an air of alchemy and mystery that surrounds the world of hacking, because it’s perceived as being so technical. That’s part of what makes hacking seem so illicit to non-hackers. But some of the most well known hackers have obtained information using an incredibly low-tech method. That method is called “social engineering.” Put simply, social engineering is the process of fooling people into divulging sensitive information. In a lot of ways, it’s not too far off from calling your high school pretending to be your parents in order to excuse an absence. If you can convince people that you are entitled to access certain information, or even trick them into creating situations where you can get access to it, you’re a successful social engineer.”
Word Watch: Hacker – On The Media 092311
This year we’ve heard stories about hacking, from The News of the World scandal to the exploits of groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec. But the way the media uses the word hack diverges sharply from the way it’s used by actual hackers. On the Media Producer Alex Goldman explores the history of the word and how its meaning has shifted over time.
The Hacker Law – On The Media 092311
Passed in 1986, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was specifically meant to target hacking. But in recent years it’s been used to prosecute a much wider swath of behavior, some of which has nothing to do with hacking. Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation talks to Brooke about the perils of having such a vague law on the books.
Death for Blogging – On The Media 092311
Last week the mutilated bodies of a man and a woman were found dangling from a pedestrian overpass in the Mexican boarder town of Nuevo Laredo, with notes explicitly warning that those posting the wrong things on the internet will share the same fate. As Drug cartels in Mexico turn their sights on blogs and twitter feeds, the mostly-anonymous social media may have an advantage that eludes mainstream journalism. Louis Nevaer of New America Media discusses the drug wars and the possibility of a newly empowered Mexican social body.
Mexican Drug Cartels Now Menace Social Media : NPR 092311
In areas where they are powerful, the Mexican drug cartels silenced the mainstream media by threatening and killing journalists. Now they seem to be extending the practice to social media. Many Mexicans have had to rely on social media to find out what’s going on in their cities after newspapers, TV and radio stations stopped reporting on drug-related violence. But last week, the mangled bodies of a young man and woman were hung from a highway bridge in Nuevo Laredo along with a sign that read: “This is what happens to people who post funny things on the Internet. Pay attention.”
Neurotic Physiology blog at Scientopia.org
Scicurious has a PhD in Physiology from a Southern institution. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at a celebrated institution that is very fancy and somewhere else. Her professional interests are in neurophysiology, specifically the interactions of neurotransmitter systems. Having obtained her PhD, she wishes to further her career in science writing, education, and research. She often blogs in the third person.
Spark 155 – September 18 & 21, 2011 | Spark
Do you know anyone who staunchly refuses to carry a cell phone? Or simply won’t sign up for a Facebook account? Turns out, there’s a name for that: “technology refusal.” Nora interviewed Alice Marwick, who studies social software at Microsoft Research and recently wrote a blog post titled “If you don’t like it, don’t use it. It’s that simple.”
Freakonomics: Where have all the hitchhikers gone? | Marketplace From American Public Media 092111
Besides the fear of an axe murderer, there are valid reasons why hitchhiking has died off. Freakonomics Radio’s Stephen Dubner discusses those reasons and tells us why you should care. “If you care even a little bit about transportation, about cost and congestion and accident risk, carbon emissions, all of that, you’ve got to be depressed to learn the following thing — about 80 percent of all passenger-vehicle capacity in this country goes unused.”
Bioethicist HPV Bet Ends Without Bachmann Acknowledgement – Bloomberg 092211
Bioethicist Art Caplan said his challenge to Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann for evidence that a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer caused mental retardation ended without Bachmann acknowledging it. Caplan, director of the center for bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, offered to pay $10,000 to a charity of Bachmann’s choice if she could find such a patient by noon today. Bachman claimed in television interviews on Sept. 13 that a woman told her that the shot, usually given at age 12, triggered mental retardation in the woman’s daughter.
The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925

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Attention Economy – September 19, 2011

Mark Willis — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:06:01 +0000

The story of Rose, a deaf girl in Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck, is told primarily in pictures. “We experience [Rose's] story in a way that perhaps might echo the way she experiences her own life,” Selznick explains.[Source: NPR]

‘Wonderstruck’: A Novel Approach To Picture Books : NPR 091311
“Wonderstruck” is the story of Rose and Ben, a young boy and girl who live years and worlds apart. By the end of the book, the reader learns they have a special connection. But from early on, they have one thing in common: She is deaf and he loses his hearing when he is struck by lightening. [Author/illustrator Brian] Selznick says the idea for the book began forming when he saw a documentary about deafness and deaf culture. One of the deaf educators emphasized how hyper-attuned deaf people are to the visual world. So Selznick set out to tell the story of a deaf character in pictures. “We experience [Rose's] story in a way that perhaps might echo the way she experiences her own life,” he explains.
How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages? (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) 091211
If the Web page survives this first — extremely harsh — 10-second judgment, users will look around a bit. However, they’re still highly likely to leave during the subsequent 20 seconds of their visit. Only after people have stayed on a page for about 30 seconds does the curve become relatively flat. People continue to leave every second, but at a much slower rate than during the first 30 seconds. So, if you can convince users to stay on your page for half a minute, there’s a fair chance that they’ll say much longer — often 2 minutes or more, which is an eternity on the Web. [What's a Weibull distribution? Weibull is a reliability-engineering concept that's used to analyze the time-to-failure for components. The model's hazard function indicates the probability that a component will fail at time t, given that it has worked fine up until time t... when analyzing Web visits, we simply replace "component failure" with "user leaving the page." ]
Roger Ebert Talks Friendship, Food (And Missing It), And Living ‘Life Itself’ : NPR 091311
Melissa Block interview with Roger Ebert, whose new memoir is “Life Itself”: “Ebert still churns out half a dozen reviews every week, and typing has become his means of speech. “This is ‘Alex,’” he explains, “a voice that came built into my computer.” Alex is part of a text-to-speech program; Ebert types, Alex speaks the words. The words flow at a remarkable rate, given that he laboriously hunts and pecks with just two fingers across the keyboard. | I came to talk with Roger Ebert about his life as a film critic and his life with illness. Because typing is a long and exhausting process for him, we agreed that I’d send some questions in advance.”
Khan Academy | Learn almost anything for free
With a library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 150 practice exercises, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
Learn to code | Codecademy
Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It’s interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.
ERIAL Project | Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries
The Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project is a two-year study of the student research process. The project is funded by an LSTA grant awarded to Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) by the Illinois State Library. The goal of the project is to understand how students do research, and how relationships between students, teaching faculty and librarians shape that process. ERIAL is also an applied study—that is, research pursued with the purpose of uncovering, understanding and addressing social problems. As such, its goal is to use the results to develop more user-centered library services.
Full Interview: Cathy N. Davidson on Evolving Education | Spark 090211
[re attention blindness; William James on attention] Duke University professor Cathy N. Davidson is author of the new book “Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn.” She believes that how we learn is a relic of 19th century values, and if it has any chance at relevancy, must embrace aspects of our digital lives that are normally shunned by scholars – technology, collaboration, and yes, even distraction.
Spark 154 – September 11 & 14, 2011 | Spark
On this episode of Spark: The Future of Education, The Myth of the Digital Native, and Designing Memorials for 9/11. | The Myth of the Digital Native: It’s easy to assume that anyone under the age of 25 is “tech savvy”, but it turns out that’s not entirely true. A new study of undergrads suggests that these so-called “digital natives” are not so digitally minded after all. Nora speaks with Andrew Asher, the lead anthropologist on the project, as well as Eszter Hargittai who has researched differentials in how much young people know about tech. (Runs: 12:28)

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Attention Economy – September 12, 2011

Mark Willis — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:45:19 +0000

Visitors at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum can touch the names of those who perished in the attacks. The names are cast in bronze parapets ringing the reflection pools that now fill the footprints of the Twin Towers. It is a worthy example of a universal design element that also provides tactile accessibility to blind visitors. [Source: C-Span live stream]

9/11 Memorial Webcam | National September 11 Memorial & Museum
EarthCam’s live webcam brings into view the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Use the navigation tools to direct the camera. You can also save the high definition image on your computer, print it or share it with friends.
National September 11 Memorial & Museum | World Trade Center Memorial
All The Names: Algorithmic Design and the 9/11 Memorial | blprnt.blg 061011
Jer Thorpe: “The project was to design an algorithm for placement of names on the 9/11 memorial in New York City. In architect Michael Arad‘s vision for the memorial, the names were to be laid according to where people were and who they were with when they died – not alphabetical, nor placed in a grid. Inscribed in bronze parapets, almost three thousand names would stream seamlessly around the memorial pools. Underneath this river of names, though, an arrangement would provide a meaningful framework; one which allows the names of family and friends to exist together. Victims would be linked through what Arad terms ‘meaningful adjacencies’ – connections that would reflect friendships, family bonds, and acts of heroism. through these connections, the memorial becomes a permanent embodiment of not only the many individual victims, but also of the relationships that were part of their lives before those tragic events.”
Jer Thorp on Algorithmic Design and the 9/11 Memorial | Spark
On the newly opened 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City, the names are laid according to where people were and who they were with when they died. Jer Thorp had the difficult task of designing an algorithm for placement of the names, and he talks to Nora about the challenges of using math and computer science to tackle a very, very sensitive problem. (Runs: 13:44)
Remembering the Twin Towers Using Augmented Reality | Spark 082911
Brian August has created an app that uses augmented reality to add a silhouette of the World Trade Center to images of New York City’s skyline. He calls the project 110 Stories, and he tells Nora why he thinks this app is about more than the destruction of the twin towers. (Runs: 8:47)
The criminalization of speech since 9/11 – War Room – Salon.com 091011
The case is an example of prosecutors’ aggressive use, in the decade after Sept. 11, of the preexisting law that bars providing “material support” to officially designated terrorist groups. In a landmark case last year, the Supreme Court endorsed the government’s broad interpretation of the material-support law in a way that critics say criminalizes speech. The expanded use of the material-support law is an important part of the legacy of 9/11 and the legal regime erected in response to the attacks.
The Talk Online – Web Offers Both News and Comfort – NYTimes.com 091201
[Dave Winerlinks to this] NYT writeup, the day following 9/11/01, on the role bloggers played in getting the first information about the attacks.
Scripting News: My 9/11 | 091011
Dave Winer: “I realize I am a strange duck from the standpoint of 9/11. I experienced it from California, and blogged it, as my NY counterparts couldn’t. I received their emails and pointed to their pictures and stories. I acted as an online anchor, and learned a lot that day, and grew a lot, all while being scared out of my mind and depressed. The blogging helped me get through it.”
Scripting News: 9/11/2001
Dave Winer’s historic blog post from 9/11 — still linked on the net.
Newly Released 9/11 Audio – On The Media
This week, Rutgers Law Review published an archive of conversations between air traffic controllers on the morning of September 11, 2001. Jim Dwyer of The New York Times wrote about the newly released audio, and talks to Bob about what we can learn from them.
Arbitrary Restrictions on Photographers – On The Media 090911
At times during the last decade, authorities have arbitrarily stopped photographers from taking pictures in the name of national security. For example, University of Maryland student Reza Farhoodi was removed from his seat at a Washington Redskins game because he was using a ‘professional camera’ – even though there is no prohibition against using ‘professional’ cameras at football games. Brooke spoke with attorney Morgan Manning about being forbidden to photograph.
[webdev] Web Design Update: September 9, 2011
via Laura Carlson; Volume 10, Issue 11, September 9, 2011. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development.
Hugh Herr – ‘The Double-Amputee Who Designs Better Limbs’ : NPR 081711
Nearly 30 years ago, Hugh Herr lost both of his legs in a climbing accident at age 17. Today, he runs the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab and designs better prosthetic limbs for other amputees.
Masked Anonymous Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Profits – NYTimes.com
When members of Anonymous, the hacker group, appear in public to protest censorship and what they view as corruption, they don a plastic mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century Englishman who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask.
Remix Breakdown: Turning Adele’s ‘Rolling In The Deep’ Into A Summer Jam : NPR 090511
“When you’re in the remixing game you look for certain things in a song. Certain songs have a lot going on in them that are really hard to eliminate when all you want is the vocal sample or basic idea,” Dirlam says. “Every single DJ that has remixed ‘Rolling In The Deep’ owes Rick Rubin a huge kiss on the lips. Rubin strips down songs and exposes them for what they are. Here you have claps, guitars, bass, piano, her voice, and that’s it.”

Project Gutenberg Founder Made eBooks As Free As The Air

Mark Willis — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:26:57 +0000

Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook and founder of Project Gutenberg, died Sept. 6 at age 64. His vision of freely accessible digital texts curated on the Internet, in the public domain, has had a defining influence on my life as a blind reader.

I am hardly alone in my debt of gratitude. I remember a story Norman Coombs told me years ago about his first contact with Project Gutenberg. He was so thrilled to read Shakespeare using his computer with voice synthesizer that he downloaded the Complete Works, just so he knew he would have it all in an accessible format whenever he wanted. Whether he read all of Shakespeare – or not – the accessibility was empowering. Norm’s book, The Black Experience in America, is accessible now via Project Gutenberg.

Hart understood this transformational drive for access to literacy when he wrote in July: “One thing about eBooks that most people haven’t thought much is that eBooks are the very first thing that we’re all able to have as much as we want other than air. Think about that for a moment and you realize we are in the right job.”

Amen, and thank-you, Michael Hart!

The Guardian recounts how Hart published his first digital text on the Internet:

In 1971, Hart was given extensive computer time by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, he pondered carefully what to do with his time. “I happened to stop at our local IGA grocery store on the way. “We were just coming up on the American Bicentennial and they put faux parchment historical documents in with the groceries. So, as I fumbled through my backpack for something to eat, I found the US Declaration of Independence and had a lightbulb moment. I thought for a while to see if I could figure out anything I could do with the computer that would be more important than typing in the Declaration of Independence, something that would still be there 100 years later, but couldn’t come up with anything, and so Project Gutenberg was born,” he said in an interview in 2002.

Today, Project Gutenberg is one of the largest collections of free ebooks in the world.

“What allowed me to think of this particular use for computers so long before anyone else did is the same thing that allows every other inventor to create their inventions: being at the right place, at the right time, with the right background. As Lermontov said in The Red Shoes: ‘Not even the greatest magician in the world can pull a rabbit out of a hat if there isn’t already a rabbit in it’,” said Hart in 2002. “You have to remember that the internet had just gone transcontinental and this was one of the very first computers on it.

“Somehow I had envisioned the net in my mind very much as it would become 30 years later. I envisioned sending the Declaration of Independence to everyone on the net… all 100 of them… which would have crashed the whole thing, but luckily Fred Ranck stopped me, and we just posted a notice in what would later become comp.gen. I think about six out of the 100 users at the time downloaded it.”

Who Profits From Those Anonymous Guy Fawkes Masks? Time-Warner

Mark Willis — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:32:25 +0000

A protester in a Guy Fawkes mask at a rally in San Francisco on Aug. 15, 2011. Time Warner earns a licensing fee on the sale of the masks. [Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/NYT]

Even if you have the best of idealistic intentions, it’s hard not to get sucked up in The System. According to Nick Bilton in the NYT:

Anonymous, the hacker group, has jostled with the Iranian government and the Church of Scientology and has briefly shut down the Web sites of Visa, MasterCard and other global corporations.

When members appear in public to protest censorship and what they view as corruption, they don a plastic mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century Englishman who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

Stark white, with blushed pink cheeks, a wide grin and a thin black mustache and goatee, the mask resonates with the hackers because it was worn by a rogue anarchist challenging an authoritarian government in “V for Vendetta,” the movie produced in 2006 by Warner Brothers.

What few people seem to know, though, is that Time Warner, one of the largest media companies in the world and parent of Warner Brothers, owns the rights to the image and is paid a licensing fee with the sale of each mask. Read more

Attention Economy August 28, 2011

Mark Willis — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:25:20 +0000

Scripting News: New header on Scripting News 082211
Dave Winer: “ you might want to click this link and have a look at the home page, because there's a new header here. It's notable not just because it looks good, but it's text, not a graphic. I knew when I saw Google Web Fonts that I was going to use it, but it took a bit of experimentation and thinking to figure out how. It's always a good idea to let things settle-in a bit before moving. Your first intuition is not always so good. But after a while, you figure it out. “
Musicians Reclaim Their Copyrights – On The Media 092611
In 1976 Congress changed copyright law so that any musician who wrote a song after January 1st, 1978 could apply to reclaim rights to those songs after 35 years. So in 2013 there’s a long line of 1978 hitmakers who stand to regain their valuable songs and albums. Duke professor James Boyle explains to Brooke why the windfall for Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Funkadelic and others is being fought tooth and nail by the record industry.
Oscar Pistorius win 100m at Beijing Paralympics – YouTube
Oscar Pistorius, the Blade Runner, win the gold medal at 100m (class T44) at the Beijing Paralympic Games 2008
BBC Sport – World Athletics 2011: Pistorius denies blades will give an advantage
South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius tells BBC Radio 5 live's Mark Pougatch that he is feeling "nervous" but insists he is ready to compete in the 400m at the World Athletics Championships in Daegu. Pistorius will become the first ever amputee to race at the highest level after shaving nearly half a second off his personal best to qualify for the Championships. The man known as 'Blade Runner' also insists his prosthetic limbs do not give him an unfair advantage over his able-bodied competitors.
The ghostwritten op-ed: an unacceptable deception | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk 082611
Dan Gillmor: “Society has a blind spot about this practice – and applies a double standard. If we catch a student paying someone to write his or her paper for a class, or even if the actual writer does it for free, we give the student a failing grade. Or, in some cases (such as in a journalism school), we might well invite the student (and perhaps the collaborator, too, if it's another student) to quit altogether. One school of thought says ghostwritten op-eds are a lot like speechwriter-written speeches. Since we all know that most famous people don't write all their own lines for speeches, goes this defence of the practice, we should assume the same with a byline – whether on a book or an op-ed. It's a tempting analogy, but wrong in a key way: a false byline is an outright, direct lie. And news organisations that run these pieces are encouraging dishonesty, which they compound, albeit with good motives, by helpfully editing often turgid prose to make it more compelling.
Major ISPs agree to "six strikes" copyright enforcement plan
American Internet users, get ready for three strikes "six strikes." Major US Internet providers—including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable—have just signed on to a voluntary agreement with the movie and music businesses to crack down on online copyright infringers. But they will protect subscriber privacy and they won't filter or monitor their own networks for infringement. And after the sixth "strike," you won't necessarily be "out." Much of the scheme mirrors what ISPs do now. It would be much easier to see "education" focus as a principled stand by content owners if they hadn't spent years suing such end users, securing absurd multi-million dollar judgments in cases that they are still pursuing in court. As it is, the shift looks more like a pragmatic attempt to solve a real problem through less aggressive measures after the failure of scorched earth tactics.

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Attention Economy – August 25, 2011

Mark Willis — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:12:29 +0000

Barefoot into Cyberspace – The Book! | The Barefoot Technologist
Barefoot into Cyberspace is an inside account of radical hacker culture and the forces that shape it, told in the year WikiLeaks took subversive geek politics into the mainstream. Including some of the earliest on-record material with Julian Assange you are likely to read, Barefoot Into Cyberspace is the ultimate guided tour of the hopes and ideals that are increasingly shaping world events. Beginning at the Chaos Communications Congress of December 2009, where WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg first presented their world-changing plans to a select audience of the planet’s most skilful and motivated hackers, Barefoot Into Cyberspace interweaves an insider’s take on the drama that ensued with a thoughtful mix of personal reflections and conversations with key figures in the community aimed at testing the hopes and dreams of the early internet pioneers against the realities of the web today. [available as free CC accessible texts HTML, PDF, ePub]
The Barefoot Technologist | Becky Hogge’s website
Becky Hogge is a freelance optimist. Her writing on information politics, human rights and technology has appeared regularly in UK political magazine the New Statesman, and she has also been published in, among others, Index on Censorship, the Guardian, Prospect, Dazed and Confused and The Face. View her porfolio. For two years, Becky was the managing editor, and then technology director, of the award-winning global politics magazine openDemocracy.net. During her time with openDemocracy she helped establish the China environment website chinadialogue.net – the world’s first truly bilingual blog – along with editor Isabel Hilton.
BBC – Outriders: Barefoot with Becky Hogge 081711
Becky Hogge’s book – Barefoot into Cyberspace follows her journey through Germany’s legendary Chaos Computer Club through meetings with extraordinary hackers like Rop Gonggrijp and Julian Assange and asks some tricky questions about the nature of online new radicals and activists. We talked about the politics of code and the people who work on making our online environment open.

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Attention Economy August 23, 2011

Mark Willis — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:06:04 +0000

How Music May Help Ward Off Hearing Loss As We Age : Shots – Health Blog : NPR 082211
Older people often have difficulty understanding conversation in a crowd. Like everything else, our hearing deteriorates as we age. There are physiological reasons for this decline: We lose tiny hair cells that pave the way for sound to reach our brains. We lose needed neurons and chemicals in the inner ear, reducing our capacity to hear. So how can you help stave off that age-related hearing loss? Try embracing music early in life, research suggests. “If you spend a lot of your life interacting with sound in an active manner, then your nervous system has made lots of sound-to-meaning connections” that can strengthen your auditory system, says Nina Kraus, director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University. Musicians focus extraordinary attention on deciphering low notes from high notes and detecting different tonal qualities. Kraus has studied younger musicians and found that their hearing is far superior to that of their non-musician counterparts.
PLoS ONE: Musical Experience and the Aging Auditory System: Implications for Cognitive Abilities and Hearing Speech in Noise | Parbery-Clark et al. 2011
[from abstract] Given that musical experience positively impacts speech perception in noise in young adults (ages 18–30), we asked whether musical experience benefits an older cohort of musicians (ages 45–65), potentially offsetting the age-related decline in speech-in-noise perceptual abilities and associated cognitive function (i.e., working memory). Consistent with performance in young adults, older musicians demonstrated enhanced speech-in-noise perception relative to nonmusicians along with greater auditory, but not visual, working memory capacity. By demonstrating that speech-in-noise perception and related cognitive function are enhanced in older musicians, our results imply that musical training may reduce the impact of age-related auditory decline.
‘Porgy And Bess’: Messing With A Classic : NPR 082111
Porgy and Bess, the classic American folk opera about love and life in an African-American fishing community, was the culmination of a great dream for collaborators George Gershwin, his brother Ira, and author Dubose Heyward. But it wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped when it premiered in 1935. So, 76 years later, the Gershwin and Heyward estates are bringing Porgy and Bess back in a new adaptation. The piece is now in previews at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., with plans to move it to Broadway in December. | Bess is still a beautiful drug addict torn between her brutish boyfriend Crown and her growing love for the charming, disabled beggar Porgy… the opera never explains why Porgy is disabled, so playwright Suzan-Lori Parks turned to the source. “In the book, you go to … Dubose Hayward’s original novel — and you realize he’s crippled from birth, so he put in the line,… ‘I’m crippled from birth, God made me to be lonely.’
Social Security disability on verge of insolvency – Politics Wires – MiamiHerald.com 082111
AP: Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security’s disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency. Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs. The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants – many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved – and worsening the financial problems of a program that’s been running in the red for years. New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security’s much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well.
Is It Ever OK To Block Social Media? – On The Media 081911
When an authoritarian government blocks access to social media, democratic governments are quick to call foul. But this summer’s wave of flash mobs, looting and disruptive demonstrations are prompting authorities in democratic societies to explore cutting off access as well. Faced with a large demonstration on a subway platform, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit recently cut off some cell phone service to block protesters from communicating. Bob spoke with BART deputy police Chief Daniel Hartwig about that decision and with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jillian York about the potentially dangerous precedent.
Books Are No Longer An Ad-Free Zone – On The Media 081911
You might think it’s blasphemy to put advertisements in books, but it’s happening. Still, advertising in analog books simply isn’t very effective. Digital advertising, with its ability to personalize ads and track who’s buying what, may make placing ads inside e-books more effective than advertising inside traditional books. WOWIO is already putting personalized ads at the start and at the end of e-books. Bob spoke with CEO and Chairman of WOWIO Brian Altounian.
An Early Success From Amazon Publishing – On The Media 081911
After struggling in vain to try and get her book published through regular channels, author Deborah Read ended up publishing a very successful book through Amazon Publishing. Bob talks to Deborah about how she managed to find success outside of the publishing mainstream.
What Amazon is Up To – On The Media 081911
This week, Amazon Publishing announced its first marquee hire, bestselling self-help guru Timothy Ferris. Amazon’s foray into publishing actual books has unnerved some in the publishing industry, who fear that the company’s size (it has more money than all the major publishing houses combined) could lead to a vertical monopoly over the book world. Publishing industry watcher Mike Shatzkin talks to Brooke about the publishing landscape Amazon is entering and how the company may reshape it.
Don’t Throw It Out: ‘Junk DNA’ Essential In Evolution : NPR
There’s a revolution under way in biology. Scientists are coming to understand that genetics isn’t just about genes. Just as important are smaller sequences of DNA that control genes. These so-called regulatory elements tell genes when to turn on and off, and when to stop functioning altogether. A new study suggests that changes in these non-gene sequences of DNA may hold the key to explaining how all species evolved.
Black Researchers Getting Fewer Grants From NIH : NPR 081911
A study in Science magazine now finds that the black scientists who do start careers in medical research are at a big disadvantage when it comes to funding. Raynard Kington president of Grinnell College, wondered whether black scientists got as much grant support from the National Institutes of Health as do other scientists. He’s a former deputy director of the NIH. Kington and his colleagues took into account factors like the nature of the institutions where black scientists work, their training and their history of landing research grants. The grant gap was quite substantial. Getting a grant is never easy, but in round numbers, white researchers succeeded about 25 percent of the time, and blacks succeeded about 15 percent of the time. An obvious question is whether this is the result of overt racism.
8enefits For Severely Disabled Children Scrutinized : NPR 081811
[Supplemental Security Income program for severely disabled children] Advocates for children and people with mental illness have rallied against the potential cuts. Sixteen of the largest advocacy groups, including the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, have formed a coalition to protect the SSI program for kids and launched a major campaign to lobby Congress. SSI currently provides cash assistance and Medicaid to the families of 1.2 million low-income children who struggle from severe disabilities, at a cost of $10 billion a year. Since 2002, the program has grown by nearly 40 percent.
Several Reboots Later, The IBM PC Turns 30 : NPR 081311
Thirty years ago this week, IBM released the first personal computer. It was a computer designed for the average American, and the average American couldn’t get enough of it. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks to Dr. Dave Bradley, one of the 12 engineers who designed the original IBM personal computer and who also invented the control-alt-delete function.
» Ashif Jaffer Offended by Offence
York University would not allow Jaffer to write his exams while accompanied by a teaching assistant – the extraordinary accommodation that had enabled Jaffer to graduate from high school as an “Ontario Scholar” (a student who achieves 80% or higher in six Grade 12 courses). It is asserted that Jaffer needs a teaching assistant during exams to “help get the full answers out so that he can write them down” because Down syndrome has “altered” his brain’s “retrieval functions ” (Daniel Girard, “School Denies Access”, Toronto Star, December 5, 2006, p. D6). Although it is not clear if Jaffer was accepted in a degree program at Ryerson, the documentary raises questions about the extent to which universities should accommodate the mentally disabled. It is one thing to allow intellectually challenged people to audit courses and benefit from participating in a university environment; it is another to award degrees that assume that certain skills and learning outcomes have been achieved.
Ryerson University – School of Disability Studies
Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies, established in 1999, is the first in Canada to offer a degree education that is strongly rooted in a disability studies perspective. We offer a distinct undergraduate program that illuminates the extent to which the lives of disabled people are shaped by patterns of injustice, exclusion, discrimination and the rule of social, cultural and aesthetic ‘norms’. Put another way, Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies does not teach about disability, but rather teaches about social and material worlds, beginning from disability.

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Mapping Controversies in Citizen Bioscience

Mark Willis — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:26:48 +0000

The academic buzzwords “bio-politics” and “citizen bioscience” at MiT7 led me into a discourse about science that was new to me. It came from a specialized cultural studies perspective that some call science studies, and Bruno Latour was an oft-cited source for its theoretical underpinnings. It isn’t the discourse of science journalism or the sociology or history of science, but a postmodern critical conflation of all those perspectives, and more.

“Narrative” – who owns it, who controls it, who disrupts it – was the holy grail of almost every argument at Media in Transition 7. After Marina Levina’s talk on Citizen Bioscience in the Age of New Media, I plunged passionately into a debate that seemed to be a reduction of individual vs. institutional narratives. I was alarmed by the notion that “citizen bioscientists” could conduct genetic research without the human protections oversight of the informed consent and institutional review board (IRB) process. To my surprise, I was defending Institutional Science, at least as far as it embraces the protection of human subjects in research. Even as I took on this role, I remembered something I wrote in the role of a disability rights activist in Not This Pig:

At the intersection of law, medicine, and science, institutions wield great power to shape both the information and the decisions we make in the informed consent process. According to Bruce Jennings, “We must not underestimate the power of science and technology to colonize and dominate the contemporary imagination” [13]. In other words, when we make decisions based on informed consent, especially in circumstances when our autonomy is most vulnerable, the marketplace of ideas may not be as free as it should be. Read more

Since MiT7 I’ve continued to wrestle with conflicting perspectives about human subjects research. I do not think that the reductionist schema of individual vs. institutional science is sufficient for understanding the potential risks of genetic screening and recombinant DNA technology. The schema needs to be expanded to include population perspectives, or what Karla F.C. Holloway calls cultural bioethics. And it needs to be grounded in a historical context that does not ignore the 20th-century legacy of eugenics, the Holocaust, and secret Cold War radiation experiments.

Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance. Maybe I’m working my way toward the process Bruno Latour calls mapping controversies.

Mapping Controversies (Wikipedia) | About MACOSPOL – Mapping Controversies on Science for Politics