The Useless Machine is Useful!

Three years ago, the most useless machine - ever! - was introduced on YouTube.

I wondered many times how to write a coherent article about this, and I came to the conclusion that there is really no coherence to this machine.  That's the intrigue and beauty of it.

The following are simply things that came to mind. 

Playing peekaboo

I played with a friend's baby by coming close to her with my iPhone and making the requisite silly face and sounds.  She reached for my iPhone, then swung it down.  Come closer, reach for it, swing it down.  Our peekaboo game went on forever, and her delight was unending.  

Here's the video I took with said iPhone.

Maybe that's why this machine has had over 8 million views.  It harkens to a time in our lives, which we don't remember, when games were nonsense yet we played them for hours.

So it may be useless, but it's downright fun.

Reflecting on Sisyphus 

Imagine a steep hill, where you are tasked with rolling up a heavy boulder.  You get to the top, thinking it's a landing, and pause.  But that boulder rolls back down with accelerating speed.  It is your mandate to go back down, and roll it up again.  In fact, it is your fate that you undertake this labor forever, because the boulder will only roll back down again from the top.         

This is about Sisyphus, who was a king in Greek mythology, and was punished by the gods with a seemingly meaningless, unrelentingly task.  Albert Camus drew on this myth to advance his philosophy about the absurdity of life. 

This machine undoes the very thing we do.  Martin Seligman called it learned helplessness, a psychological state we come to, if our efforts repeatedly have no impact. It's a sad commentary, isn't it, if any of us is relegated to living a life like this.

So it's not only useless but also demoralizing.  

Dealing with politics

How about this?

The mind behind this calls it political machines, and adds "This is a visual metaphor of your hard-earned tax dollars at work." If this reminds you of President Obama and Governor Romney debating one another, ahead of the big elections, then it's a perfect metaphor indeed.  Back-and-forth, back-and-forth, like a filibuster.

But you see the block of wood eventually slips off.  May we conclude, then, that conflict between people inevitably breaks down and thus paves the way for resolution? 

So it's useless, but not useless indefinitely. 

Thinking about jidoka

Jidoka essentially is a feature or function that stops a manufacturing process, if something goes wrong.  It's used in the Toyota Production System, and it prevents a problem from snowballing down the line and becoming bigger and unmanageable.

For decades it has been a preoccupation of researchers, professors and consultants:  How to deal with human fallibility in manufacturing or essentially in any endeavor.  But imagine engineering like this machine.  Common mistakes can be corrected right away.  Safety risks can be prevented.  Innate flaws can be controlled for.

So it's positively useful, after all.

Making a business

His name is Brett Coulthard, and a year after that first video he incorporated a company called The Frivolous Engineering Company.  Apparently the dude's been making a variety of these puppies and selling them like a doggie couple taking fertility pills!      

Here I am, a fellow entrepreneur, laboring on my own brand of engineering, drawn from a complex theoretical framework and practical model, and praying that my stuff sells even just half as well as this dude's.   

It's a wild thing sometimes to see what really makes people tick and to see a business thrive.  It's awesome and brilliant!

So it's useless, but it makes money.  You can't knock that.  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Who Really Won the "Debate"?

This past Tuesday afternoon, October 16th, Jimmy Kimmel Live asked people off the street, "Who won 'last night's' debate?"

 

The rub?  The debate between President Obama and Governor Romney actually took place that Tuesday evening.  So, as of that afternoon, there was no debate the night before.  On the face of it, these people made for a hilarious video, commenting on a debate that hadn't taken place.  Chuckles and guffaws, all around.

Let's step back, and reflect on this.

The scientific slant

It may be easy to conclude that the average America is ignorant or dishonest, as some YouTube viewers suggested, but I say, Not so fast!  We do not know how many people the producers actually interviewed, and what proportion this handful of unfortunate souls, who made it on video, represented.   

To draw a conclusion about a group of people requires proper statistics and research methods.  There are over 300 million Americans, for example, and it is categorically impractical to interview every single one of them, in order to determine the population's characteristics, such as knowledge and honesty.  

Social scientists, then, resort to random sampling.  In brief, they may secure an enormous list of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and randomly select, say, 1000 people to contact.  This process can be as simple and silly as putting each of their names into a large basket, shaking it well, and picking out one name at a time.  The point is, there mustn't be any bias or prejudice in the selection of these 1000 people.

The sample size itself has to be large enough to lend 'power' to the statistical analysis, and social scientists determine this figure on a study-by-study basis. 

So the producers may have kept approaching people, until they had the handful who were funny enough to air on the show.  But to conclude that Americans were ignorant or dishonest from this episode is patently unfair and wrong.  The colorful language, notwithstanding, this particular viewer had it right:

People. These are not representative. I could walk around Hollywood and ask random people if they worship Satan. I might have to go through 4-500 interviews but I'm sure I could pull a couple idiots. No one knows how many people needed to be interviewed to find these dumbasses.    

The internet slant

In general, there may be two camps regarding the accuracy or truthfulness of stuff on the internet. One is dismissive, and relies just minimally on information culled online.  The other is believing, and looks at it and reacts to it as if it were in fact, well, fact.

That said, let me mention this.  I'm working on a film project on bullying, so when I stumbled on an article about a young lady who was bullied and recently committed suicide, I took immediate notice, read it through, and clicked on a link to watch a video of her.  Needless to say, I was saddened by her story, and angered at the perpetrators.  

Then, I made myself pause, breathe, and reflect.  I have much research to do on this terrible issue, and I have to remind myself to keep a skeptical mind on what I watch, read, and hear about.  The marvel of the internet is the absolute wealth of information, accessible literally at our fingertips.  The challenge, as they say, is to separate 'the wheat from the chaff.'  It is not so easy to distinguish the real and accurate, from the fake and erroneous.

I propose a third camp, in between the dismissive and the believing camps I mentioned above, which is open but cautious to the breathtaking fare of information online.  It is always a good idea to check multiple, trustworthy sources to help us determine the accuracy of a story.  

This segment from The Jimmy Kimmel Live looks genuine, but the vast majority of us are not privy to the strategizing and planning that they go through in closed quarters.  So we don't know for sure.    

The psychological slant

We seem prone to doctor our stories, in order to make ourselves look as good as possible in the eyes of others.  This leads us to look at things and describe them in certain ways.  There is enough evidence suggesting that if we were to have 100 people witness the same, particular event, we'd come away with multiple versions of the story.  We're just not in sync on many things, it seems.

In part, this is due to the real limitations and pitfalls of the thinking machine in our head.  What we pay attention to, what we say and do, how we relate, are often narrowly determined.  Also, in part, it can be attributed to what psychologists call 'social desirability.'  That is, we fashion our outward persona, as best as we can, in ways that others expect and value and, in our parlance nowadays, simply like.

So, assuming this video is in fact genuine, we find this handful of people exposed for their baldfaced misrepresentations.  Lies, dishonesty, and foolishness, we can add.

But at the end of the day, I would like to say they represent a real part of our humanity.  The irony is that they probably speak true to many of us watching them:  we, who are selectively attentive, occasionally reactive, and often keen to impress.

So, laugh at them, but only for the sake of a genuine, harmless fun.  Let's not laugh at them harshly.  

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD 

Can Tracking ID Solve Texas School Truancy?

The simple answer is, yes, of course.  How such technology is implemented is a more complicated issue, however.

John Jay High School in San Antonio, Texas, caused a stir recently by implementing an ID technology that tracked students’ whereabouts, according to NBC News. School officials cited truancy as a major problem, and believed that this tracking device would solve it and thereby help the school recover lost state funding due to under-reported attendance.

Is this a solution that causes more problems than it solves? 

Privacy and safety are at the heart of the issue for some students, parents, and organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). After all, if administrators can track students, then so can predators intent on harming the students. Stalkers can find a way to track them well outside the school confines.

For me, this speaks to real quandaries of our society: Install freedom as if it were a birthright, and people are prone to see it as license to do what they want and secure what they need. Take that freedom away in the case of wrongdoing, however, and they have to realize there are boundaries within which they have to stay. They expect to be protected, yet rail at the stewards of freedom if they see the latter crossing those boundaries themselves.

I do not know if school officials have in fact crossed lines of civil rights. Still, these are real issues they have to answer to. In a way, technology is conceived in a moral vacuum. But operated under idealistic yet murky human affairs, technology becomes a lightning rod and the solutions it proposes raise questions.

Did a tracking solution work in similar circumstances? 

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I used to work for a company that had a problem, and resorted to a measure, similar to John Jay High School. Many employees were coming in late, leaving early, and-or missing work altogether. New executives came on board, and in short order implemented a system that locked doors throughout the office complex and required special IDs for us to enter and exit. By end of the week, managers received tracking reports of our whereabouts and timings.

This company is outside the US, and there is no ACLU. So we cannot simply speak out to the media.  But this didn’t prevent us from communicating our displeasure.

For example, one time I was escorting a business visitor into our office, and had difficulty opening one door. A good colleague breezed in, and opened it for us. In passing, she smiled sardonically and said casually, “You see how much they trust us.” She was a manager herself, and a conscientious, hardworking one at that.

Was our truancy problem solved?

You see, in this country, local citizens have privileges that expat workers like me didn’t. That’s well and good, but expats are 80% of the population. So those local citizens are in fact the privileged few. In our case, expat managers often felt hesitant, if not outright unwilling, to discipline their local employees, for fear of reprisal coming from those privileged few.

Enter technology to the rescue.

I worked hard to build relationships with colleagues, managers, and executives at this company, and I was fortunate to have gained their respect and commendation. So, from personal observations and private conversations, I can say that employees who were prone to be ‘missing-in-action’ remained so. If their expat managers were not going to do anything about this, before Big-Brother technology, what reason or reassurance did they have to act on tracking reports?

Moreover, I can say this: Engagement is a measure of employee motivation and commitment. One time our company scores were lower than international averages, and lower still about two years later. So the solution that executives implemented apparently were not working. Why? Because they failed to get at the root of the problem. In essence, theirs was a high-tech ‘band-aid,’ applied merely to symptoms of the problem. What’s worse, it didn’t eliminate the symptoms!

Is there an alternative for John Jay High School?

Only time will tell how well their ID tracking system will work. But there must be so many ways to ‘game’ or breach this, that it’s hard for me to imagine that it will work. Moreover, the manner by which school officials communicated and implemented this looks to be, at minimum, a public relations nightmare. For civil organizations to say that this system is “dehumanizing” is serious.

I wonder how much officials probed into the root causes of the truancy problem and, more importantly, how well and how completely they’ve grasped these. In the battle on civil rights, this problem seems to have slipped out of the radar. Did they carefully scenario-plan their ID tracking system, and anticipate this media uproar and make contingency plans?

I wonder if they could’ve targeted only the problematic students, thus leaving the otherwise conscientious, high-performing students alone. Perhaps after failed efforts to redress their truancy, officials could’ve installed micro-chips in their IDs as a disciplinary measure. Within the purvey of school policy and civil rights, they fully engage and inform these students' parents, but otherwise keep communications discreet. Officials can then remove the micro-chips, once the students demonstrate responsible behavior.

The media could still catch wind of such a measure, especially if a couple of those truant students and-or their parents approach reporters. But then if they do, they’d be exposing their truancy to the public. I doubt they would do that.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Reinventing Inventions

A friend posted an article on LinkedIn about the cool Retina Display of the much heralded, newly released iPad3 (marketed simply as iPad). I commented, Apple has redefined the very device that they themselves defined.

This article from The New Yorker spoke intelligently and persuasively on the state of affairs and the outlook for Apple, at this point in time, in the news not just for the amazing take-up among consumers of that iconic iPad, but also for their decision to pay out dividends to shareholders from massive cash coffers.

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If Steve Jobs were still alive and well, and had, say, another decade to innovate and launch insanely great products, he would have had to do things that broke his own mold. There is such an onslaught of tips from management gurus and business leaders alike, which speak to what he did to become successful and which draw lessons learned and best practices. But this is a conventional, misguided way of learning, developing and improving. The man himself probably would not have followed his own lessons and practices.

To this point, then, I ask, What does Apple have to do, in order to buck historical trends in competition and diseconomies of scale?

It is to evolve, and become something that it cannot even conceive of now. It has to morph into new states, systems, models and talents. It has to reinvent the very algorithms of invention.

The question now is, Can Apple do this? Of course, no one knows for certain, not even those at Apple. But if it can, then the answer is ‘yes’ to bucking those historical trends.

There is an even greater precedent for this that John Cassidy, with The New Yorker, didn't speak to:  the human race, and other species of life that have endured across millennia, by virtue of their ability to evolve.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Talent Trumps Products

From the beginning, as I helped my daughter with her math homework and tests, I encouraged her, and guided her, on learning the underlying principles and concepts.  She had to solve several problems on a regular basis, so this was our focus. Making sure she completed what she had to, for her class, and making sure she did well on her tests.

But regardless of what section in her book we were working on, we kept an ongoing effort to learn those principles and concepts. Once she grasped these, I told her, she could solve a thousand problems easily. In fact, it didn’t matter how many problems she had to solve. As long as she understood what she had to do, essentially, she could solve them all.

Kevin Rose, right, now with Google (image credit)

All of this as a preamble for speaking to what Google, Twitter and Facebook are doing, of late, as CNN Money reported. Anyone with cash can acquire any company that is within their means. It’s the products, tools and systems, then, which are the spoils of victory. But acquiring the talent behind all of these spoils is an even greater letter to write home about. The brains inside those talented people, and their motivation, ability, and energy (MAE), can conceivably create more of those cool products.

A few key people, then, newly gathered under wing, can come up with a much greater number of products, tools and systems, than even big companies can afford, but which are an imperative to the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook.

Polynomials are among the most complex in math, certainly for a great majority of 7th graders. But my daughter, one among students at this grade, clearly has a knack for polynomials. More importantly, as I told her, she’s been grasping those underlying principles and concepts more and more, and in doing so built up her fundamental abilities to grasp newer, more complex math.

What’s the connection here?

I am juxtaposing my daughter with Kevin Rose, founder of Digg and Milk, who is the latest talent acquisition by Google. You see, it’s about helping her build her own talent, because it is this which will help her grasp and do many more cool, complex things in her life.

Oh, by the way, for a girl who was struggling with math, and hating it, she now has a running A+ average grade for this quarter, and has not been getting anything less than an A- in her tests in recent weeks.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

The Tripartite Model and STEM

A former general manager once called me a dilettante. He was a smart man, who had a way with words, and this was veiled but unmistakable hostility. He meant that I pursued and dabbled in different subjects, which, to him, indicated lack of serious focus.

I can admire men and women, in all fields of endeavor, dedicating their lives to a particular profession, research or art. They take a vertical approach that plunges them deeply into a subject, and they earn the right, over time, to be called experts in that area.

While there is truth to anyone describing my tact as horizontal, in contrast, it isn’t entirely true.

You see, I’m creating a Tripartite Model that forthrightly positions science, art and religion as a complete epistemology. This being a better way for us to grasp things about ourselves, our world, and our universe. This effort requires that I go both horizontally and vertically.

I graduated with a BA in psychology and a PhD in clinical psychology. I don’t mind describing myself as a psychologist, but more accurately I position myself best as a thinker. Over the past two years, for example, I’ve poured over Albert Einstein (physicist) and John Nash (mathematician); written scores of poetry, while schooling myself in the work of master painters like Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rothko and Picasso; and learned as much as I could about Islam from Muslim friends. All far afield, in the eyes of my colleagues, from psychology.

But why not?

I have always held to the belief on life as being infinitely interesting. That there are so many intriguing things to explore, discover and grasp. Many of which, in the wide-eyed world of media and technology, are free and accessible literally at our fingertips.

So why not?

Kareem Abdul Jabbar (image credit)

Basketball legend, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, spoke recently to high school students and their parents in Chicago, and I can only underscore what he encouraged and advised. That they may very well pursue their love in sports and entertainment.  But for goodness sake, explore other subjects, too. Especially those as critical to our day and age as STEM:  science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Because only through such exploration, which is horizontal, can they know their potential and realize it. Well said, Kareem.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Type I and Type II Errors are Real Possibilities

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Statistics, research and analysis often have to work with uncertainties and ambiguities, despite their occasional posturing as precise and accurate. We as human beings are blessed with intelligence, yet it seems we are also cursed with limits and pitfalls in the very thinking capabilities that give rise to that intelligence.

So imagine a crowd of, say, 1000 people. They’re milling about in a mall, heading in and out of shops, as you watch them from a high balcony. Depending on what you subscribe to, as far as the attributes of people are concerned, you may decide that among these 1000 people, a great majority are good guys but a notable minority are bad guys. What’s more, you’re privileged to have varying, but less than complete, amounts of information on every single one of them. Your job is to identify, and of course stop, any would-be bad guy intent on committing harm.

Got the scenario, so far?

You commit a Type I Error, if you dismiss a guy who’s actually bad. You commit a Type II Error, alternatively, if you arrest a guy who’s actually good. Remember what I said about statistics at the outset, and remember that any information about any one guy is bound to be incomplete. So the likelihood of either a Type I or Type II Error is very real, in our shopping mall scenario or any other human situation.

That’s the rub, for me, as I read Google Adds (Even More) Links to the Pentagon about the (even more) intricate relations between Google and the US military.

I can feel reassured that the Pentagon serves its purpose of protecting us Americans, by drawing on Google’s far reaching and sophisticated means for gathering, organizing and analyzing information on the internet. I can also feel afraid that because there is no such thing as perfect, foolproof means of intelligence, a Type I or Type II Error can occur.

You see, emotions as far as our lives are concerned are not either-or, mutually exclusive phenomena. So I can very well feel varying degrees of both reassured and afraid at any given moment. Nonetheless, I can pray, too, that these giant organizations that impact our lives, whether we like it or not, avoid any such errors and do indeed safeguard us, above all.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Googol [squared], Coming up

You may already know the story. Google is a misspelling of the word ‘googol,’ which is an unimaginably large number. Specifically, it’s 10 raised to the 100th power. In time, maybe sooner than we think, Google will have to change its name, because its gathering of data on the internet will surpass a googol. How about googol squared, that is, 10 raised to the 200th power?

My friend, Patrick, often sends me great articles on business and leadership, and among these are about Big Data from McKinsey Quarterly.  In time, I’m sure, a googol will actually be small data, because it is the point of these articles that Big Data will only become Bigger Data.

How big? This article from Business Insider helps us grasp how big, specifically by comparing it to traditional media and older technology. A time and a world, after which our children were born into.

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DVDs are gradually becoming passe, because of easy and direct downloads of videos and music to our devices. Still, it’s staggering to know that it would take 168 million of these little buggers to house the amount of information consumed on the internet. In one day.

It would take the US Postal Service two years to process our mail, if their collective mailbags brought in the number of e-mails that easily get bandied about in cyberspace. 294 billion. And the USPS is one of the best in the world, in my experience. 

There was time when, well, Time was one news magazine of choice, along with Newsweek and US News & World Report. For me, it was better to digest my news once a week, than try to keep up with it on a daily basis. Just the two million blog posts in one day, authored by many more reporters than any of these publications can hire, would apparently keep Time humming for 770 years.

 
Finally, iPhone sales outpaces births in a given day: 378,000-to-371,000. I know it’s foolhardy even to imagine each of these babies holding an iPhone coming out of the womb. For, sadly, the majority of them, I’m sure, are born to impoverished circumstances. But imagine, nonetheless, if Apple can sustain this sales growth indefinitely, then in time there will be many more of these hotsellers floating around than there are people.

It’s mind-boggling, to say the least. But there we have it. Our capacity as humankind has accelerated in a geometric (i.e., exponential) progression.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Just Dive In

Guy Kawasaki (image credit)

Just dive in, Guy Kawasaki advised.

It is my personality first to think things through and plan things out. But in the swift acrobatics of media and technology, I am learning to simply jump in and get my feet wet. I didn’t hesitate, for example, to get into Google+, when I got an invite.

However, I hesitated a long time to create a page on Facebook, as I really wanted to clarify my intent and build my know-how. But I realized there was so much more to figure out. The best way to do this, as I learned, was to navigate through it over time, as I added post after post and tried feature after feature (e.g., highlights, albums and shares). So, planning notwithstanding, I simply needed to dive in.

Setting goals, identifying targets, and confirming purpose are all well-and-good, too. I have always believed in Stephen Covey’s habit of begin with the end in mind.

But again in the rapidly evolving landscape of media and technology, we may not fully grasp what it is we really want to achieve. At least not in the initial stages. We may have an inkling that social media is powerful and useful, but how to use it to our advantage may not be so clear until we’ve immersed ourselves in it.

So once you’ve dived in:

• Enjoy, make friends, converse with people. 
• Keep eyes wide open, tease out lessons learned. 
• Share what you think, what you’ve learned, what you figure out. 

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

The Pwn Plug

I heard about the Pwn Plug on Google+, and ars technica described it as a little white box that can hack your network. I am certain that in information and computing technology, and perhaps espionage in particular, this unassuming little device is not at all a breakthrough creation.

A practice of subterfuge 

I know it’s common practice for a company to test its procedures and systems surreptitiously. Retail outfits will engage "mystery shoppers," for example, to come into their stores, buy stuff to check how their staff serve customers, and report back to management. So it’s no surprise that a bank will test its security by having a faux technician like Jayson Street come in, and their staff, apparently trained to be friendly and accommodating, welcome him with open arms. I gather that his client has been duly informed and advised on his findings.

You get the picture. Surreptitious efforts like these are a test, above all, of the people who implement those procedures and manage those systems. If the staff have been properly trained, sufficiently reminded, and clearly held accountable for what they have to do on the job, and they fall down from such a test, then they can be reprimanded accordingly.

Still, let’s keep this in mind. Even the smartest, most capable and conscientious staff will fall down on the job. Why? Because like everyone else, they’re only human and they’re prone to mistakes. Also, when you have someone like Street deliberately offering a sham reason to get into your building, and he installs a device that looks very familiar to many Americans, I ask, Who among us haven’t been fooled at least once?

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The Pwn Plug even comes with “stealthy decal stickers” that say “fressh,” as its maker Pwnie Express shows on its website (above).  So it literally masquerades as a plug-in air freshener (below). Frankly it’s about subterfuge, and unfortunately all kinds of people have been subjected to such.

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A question of ethics

My point in all of this?

 There may in fact be legal grounds for the maker of Pwn Plug to keep making such devices. There may in fact be legal grounds as well for companies to keep doing these kinds of tests on their procedures and systems, and on their people, too.  But I question the ethics of such business practices. 

The fact that Pwn Plug can easily hack into your networks is a serious issue, of course. Privacy is already a growing concern for ordinary denizens on the internet, like me, and I can only imagine how extraordinarily more complicated it is for major companies. There are people out there, who are intent on doing evil and inflicting harm. The livelihoods of people working for those companies depend on proper measures of safety and security. Resorting to subterfuge, however, is at best questionable ethics.

You see, ours is indeed a brave new world. While the tools and tricks of the trade are age-old, there is so much more at stake now. So many more opportunities and such growing wealth of data for people to ply their type of trade. Just as we have to institute real practical measures, we ought to stop, even for a moment, to question the ethics of all of this, and act accordingly.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Magic of Technology

When I saw the iPad, I saw it as a storytelling device. 

So begins Shilo Shiv Suleman’s effort to enable storytelling with technology and thus make it a truly multi-sensorial experience.

From her TED Talk 'Using Tech to Enable Dreaming'

Children love acting out what they read and interacting with other children, and we know that this is a wonderful, effective way for them to learn. We know, too, that many of them already have the best of media sites and cool technology at their disposal. So what Suleman introduces here is not really a new idea.

But what is engaging is the wonder and the fantasy she exudes. She says,

I was terrified by this idea that I would lose the ability to enjoy and appreciate the sunset without having my camera on me, without tweeting it to my friends. It felt like technology should enable magic, not kill it.

To this end, then, her interactive iPad story asks children to go outside, and take photographs of things that they’re naturally keen anyway to look at, play with, and take home.  Then, they can post their photos onto the story, and share them with good friends who live near and far. Facebook, and the new Pinterest, allow such posting and sharing already. But, once again, Suleman helps them experience magic in ways they naturally love.

In the last 10 years, children have been locked inside their rooms, glued to their PCs...  But now with mobile technology, we can actually take our children outside into the natural world with their technology.

Finally, her storytelling speaks both to the locality of the children’s culture, such as in the screen shot from her blog (below), and to the universality of being curious, social and kindly. This way, it’s relevant to them and to friends who hail from different cultures.

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Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Lost Greek City of Pavlopetri

People on Twitter are not all that interactive or connected, as compared to those on Facebook and YouTube.  Nonetheless, I’ve really liked it at as a news source, not quite on par with Google News, but  second to it and LinkedIn third.

Accordingly, I found this National Geographic article on my Twitter news feed - Extreme Scientific Imaging - which posted a few brilliant images that modern-day technology can now produce.  These are things we would have difficulty seeing otherwise.  Here’s an example:

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It’s an image of a Greek City, Pavlopetri, off the southern coast of Greece. It’s about 5000 years old, but sunk about 3000 years ago. The technology was created by a robotics team from the University of Sydney, and this won first prize in an Extreme Imaging Competition.

I never cease to marvel at what some people can conceptualize and create. In key respects, this blog on media, technology, internet and digital is a homage to that. Still, I was keen to hear about this underwater city. But the little write up on this image focused virtually exclusively on the technology and the competition.

Enter Wikipedia. It’s not news that this city was mostly likely a trading port for textile and pottery. But I am eager to hear more about its planning, as researchers so far have noted streets, buildings, and tombs in Pavlopetri. The full research will be published in 2014.

Thankfully, the underwater remains of Pavlopetri are protected by UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - which aims to prevent destruction and looting, among other things.

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Heaven forbid that millenniums from now, Chicago should sink into Lake Michigan. But if so, generations of our progeny will see its superb planning. Which, sadly, we cannot say for cities like Abu Dhabi or Dubai. In these latter cases, our progeny may marvel at the sophisticated engineering, but turn somber at their Babel-like conceit as well as their circuitous, closed-loop arteries.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Ecosystem Watchdogs Holding Feet to the Fire

Google under fire

In its latest ooops, Google had to explain quickly how its DoubleClick ad app managed to slip by the tracking blocks of the Apple Safari browser. It was Stanford University graduate student, Jonathan Mayer, who discovered it, as reported by Inquirer Technology - Google bypassed Apple privacy settings—research.

Google reportedly did not realize that the app opened Safari browser doors to a slew of DoubleClick ad tracking cookies, which would otherwise have been rejected.

“The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser,” the California company said in a released statement. 

“We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers,” it continued. “It’s important to stress that, just as on other browsers, these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.” 

US legislators and privacy advocates lashed out at Google, accusing the company of trampling on people’s privacy and calling for an investigation.

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Path under fire

Similarly, earlier this month, CNN shared a WIRED article - Path CEO: 'We thought we were doing this the right way' - that Arun Thampi from Singapore busted Path, an upstart social media site, for hauling users’ entire address books onto its servers, without an opt-in feature for users. CEO Dave Morin had to do a mea culpa.

“We thought we were doing this the right way. It turns out, we made a mistake.” 

“We used the data for the sake of simplicity,” Morin tells me. “Any time you build a network, you have to help users find their friends. And that entire experience is designed to suggest people who you’re close to.” In other words, it’s the whole point of the app itself.

But that’s not an easy sentiment to convey to users who feel their privacy has been violated. Morin told me he wants to take all measures possible — all explained in a blog post — to prove to users that Path is serious about privacy. “We’ve deleted the entire collection of user contact information from our servers,” Morin says. “Unlike some other companies, we believe that users should have complete control over their data. This is just the right thing to do.”

Carrier IQ under fire

Just two months ago, analytics firm Carrier IQ was in very similar hot water, when security researcher Trevor Eckhart caught them with their pants down, as PCMag.com reported - Carrier IQ 'Vigorously Disagrees' with Critics.  The sleuth in this situation said the firm deployed software that tracked personal information on our mobile phones, unbeknown to users (e.g., texts, calls, and whereabouts). 

Really disturbing, if in fact true.

“While a few individuals have identified that there is a great deal of information available to the Carrier IQ software inside the handset, our software does not record, store or transmit the contents of SMS messages, email, photographs, audio or video,” the company said in a statement released Thursday.

Carrier IQ also said that it “vigorously disagrees” with allegations that the company has violated wiretap laws.

Carrier IQ also quoted Infidel Inc. security analyst Rebecca Bace as saying that “allegations of keystroke collection or other surveillance of mobile device user’s content [by Carrier IQ] are erroneous.”

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If this were a US court, the defendants’ responses ranged from swift, apologetic and combative. These allegations prompted would-be prosecutors (i.e., lawmakers) to express diplomatic yet pointed concern. How are we citizens reassured that, at this very moment, our privacy rights are in fact being upheld? Who among this legal dramatis personae is (are) actually telling the truth? What are we indeed to believe?

Of course, we have to be watchful, and take cautious action in our bustling media sites and with our take-for-granted technology devices. I, for one, am so glad that in this dizzying ecosystem, we have the likes of Mayer, Thampi, and Eckhart serving as our watchdogs!

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Music Discoveries on YouTube

When my daughter, Eva, was a little girl, my wife and I would be tickled at the things she’d find on the ground. From dropped, forgotten coins, to colorful, shiny stones. From sweet, tiny flowers, to sometimes mysterious shells at the beach. From her height and vantage point, she saw many of things that we adults had long since overlooked and ignored.

I’m reminded of her, as I think how enthralled I am by what I find on YouTube on a daily basis. Just by keeping an open eye and a sense of wonder.

If you see the glass as half-empty, then you probably think YouTube is just full of crappy, stupid videos. If you see, on the other hand, the proverbial glass as half-full, then there truly are gems to be found and treasured.

So here are three of my favorite recent discoveries in music.

 

Lindsey Stirling is not just talented but also entertaining. If you think that listening to a violinist play is as much fun as waiting for water to boil or for paint to dry, then you’re in for a treat with this lovely lady. She exudes joy and energy, she hip-hops and shuffles, and she dramatizes her performance. Plus, the filming of her videos is no crude work of an amateur. Imagine her musical range, too. From covering Yiruma’s ‘River Flows In You,’ to performing LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’! Go on, explore her YouTube channel and Facebook page. You know how to find her.

 

Abelardo, Gustavo and Angela Vázquez form a sibling trio from Mexico, called Vázquez Sounds, and they’re 16, 14 and 12, respectively. I didn’t get a chance to watch the Grammys earlier this year, so I didn’t see Adele make a killing with awards.  So YouTubing her, I discovered this lovely brothers-and-sister act. Their cover of ‘Rolling in the Deep’ has nailed down over 96 million views! I believe their father is a music producer, and I bet he helped them make their videos. So what are you waiting for? Go forth into cyberspace and enjoy their videos. Pronto!

Finally, Avivakova is a talented performer and composer. It’s simply not often that we find YouTubers who perform an original composition. This, plus the fact that she plays my favorite instrument, make her quite a pleasure to watch and listen to. This lovely piece is ‘Twilight March,’ and apparently it was difficult to perform. While both hands were occupied with playing the treble, she needed another hand to handle the steady beat of the base. That hand happened to be her foot! So Google her, YouTube her, Facebook her. You know the drill!

So who’s your lovely discovery today? Me (wink)? 

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Spotlight on Bill Clinton

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The date was September 16th 1998. It was before the much heralded decade of iWhatevers and Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It was also the day Karen and I welcomed our daughter, Eva, to our world. We saved the Chicago Tribune as a memento of that day. Two copies, in fact.

The thing was, that time was when then-US President Bill Clinton was in a political and personal row over White House intern Monica Lewinsky. That sex scandal and impeachment efforts dominated the front page of the Tribune (sigh). What were we welcoming our daughter to?

Our news consumption was mainly through traditional media: print, TV and radio. It was on TV, for example, that we heard Clinton deny having any sexual relations with ‘that woman’ and insisting on privacy for his family. It was in the Tribune, also, that we read about florid details of the very things he denied. What privacy he called for, he himself indelibly breached with his shenanigans. He was the butt of jokes on radio talk shows, deservedly so.

Now I hardly ever pick up a (print) newspaper anymore.  Instead, it’s Google News where I find out that Lewinsky is back in the spotlight, in a title crafted deliberately by the Los Angeles Times to draw clicks to its article and pages.  It is about a documentary on Clinton, and I watch the trailer on YouTube.

Here’s the lengthy description of the documentary, accompanying this trailer. So, you see, the Los Angeles Times’ trite ploy notwithstanding, Lewinsky occupies only a bit part of the spotlight. Thankfully.

Coming to PBS beginning Monday, Feb. 20. From draft dodging to the Dayton Accords, from Monica Lewinsky to a balanced budget, the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton veered between sordid scandal and grand achievement. In CLINTON, the latest installment in the critically acclaimed and successful series of presidential biographies, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE explores the fascinating story of an American president who rose from a broken childhood in Arkansas to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history and one of the most complex and conflicted characters to ever stride across the public stage. It recounts a career full of accomplishment and rife with scandal, a marriage that would make history and create controversy and a presidency that would define the crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. It follows Clinton across his two terms as he confronted some of the key forces that would shape the future, including partisan political warfare and domestic and international terrorism, and struggled, with uneven success, to define the role of American power in a post-Cold War world. Most memorably, it explores how Clinton’s conflicted character made history, even as it enraged his enemies and confounded his friends. The program features unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, as well as interviews with foreign leaders, members of the Republican opposition, childhood friends, staffers from Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas, biographers and journalists.

Our daughter is 13 years old now, and our world has been radically changed in her young lifetime. Clinton is quite the elder statesman now, is apparently in high demand for keynote speeches, and travels globally for his philanthropy.  Maybe for ongoing philandering, too.  (Apologies, I couldn't resist the pun.)

Eva is very much a child of the golden decade of media and technology. But it’s no small irony, I suppose, that this documentary, so parsimoniously titled ‘Clinton,’ will be aired on traditional (PBS) TV. I will have to unplug, and watch it on plain old traditional media!

Thank your for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

The Adjusting Hotel Tower and Pool Table

Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery.

So said James Mark Baldwin, an experimental biologist and writer.

I am intrigued not so much by how things change in general, but more by how things adjust in particular to their surroundings. We know, for example, that life on earth adapts to survive, in response to changes in climate and terrain, food and water, and threats and disasters. Baldwin’s contention is right-on, and is the underpinning of the evolution of life.

What about non-living things? I’ve consulted quite a bit in the Middle East, and had the pleasure of staying at the best hotels. A few times I was on the Skybridge at the very top of the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, and could feel the swaying of its walkway, as if slow dancing with the wind high above the glittering Saudi Arabian capital.

Four Seasons Hotel, Riyadh

I understand that architects and engineers have to build-in that sway. Otherwise their towering buildings and monuments risk breaking off, or toppling altogether, against stiff winds high above the ground. In this case, adaptation is a technological marvel and, if nothing else, a safety necessity.

Here is another, cool technology:

I traveled on a cruise ship with my family, and it was easily our best vacation. Something relaxing about being at sea, and everything luxurious with all the food, shops and amenities at our disposal. The large Royal Caribbean ship was steady as she went in the Central American waters. Still we felt minute undulations of the waves, which we quickly adapted to and hardly ever noticed throughout our cruise.

A conventional pool table, however, does not adjust. In fact it relies not only on a stable grounding, but also on a level playing surface. On a cruise ship, then, the solution is this gyroscopic self-adjusting pool table.

The seminal notion of evolution, thanks to Charles Darwin, is survival of the fittest. It has two critical implications: One, what defines fit is this innate ability to adjust and adapt. Two, without this innate ability, a species has little chance of survival over time.

There is no question, then, that besides life, the Four Seasons Hotel and the gyroscopic pool table are fit!

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Black History Month and STEM

A recent Google blog spoke about the company’s celebration of Black History Month. I love the fact that they partner with historically Black colleges and universities, partly to move their recruitment efforts along. In this still entrenched economic climate, I’m sure that means a lot to graduates to have opportunities to work for one of the best companies around.

In particular, too, I love their build up of the STEM curricula for students: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. At its essence, for example, technology enables us to do things we otherwise cannot do. From traveling to places, to watching an infinity of programs, to making friends around the globe. Some students, perhaps even teachers, question the value of learning mathematics, when the formulas, problems and calculations they labor through may prove useless in life. At least that’s what they wonder.

To wit, the following image is from a friend on Facebook:

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In fact, mathematics underlies many of the simple things we do everyday life. From telling time, to handling money, to baking a cake. At a deeper level, it’s an indispensable companion to science, in the human endeavor to learn more about our physical world, for example.

The US has a shameful blotch in its history, concerning its treatment of Blacks. While its present day culture still harbors racial tensions, it’s come a long way over decades to promote greater harmony among people from all walks of life. Google, of course, being one of those promoters.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD