Day of the Algorithm

Kevin Slavin waxes part philosophically, part metaphorically about algorithms in his TED Talk.

What are algorithms?

In brief, they’re like an accounting of the patterns that underlie things in our reality. In the film ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ for example, John Nash, well acted by Russell Crowe, is the genius but eccentric mathematician who at one point tried to discern the algorithm of pigeons’ movement. They’re basically mathematical in nature, and once discerned they become a powerful analytic tool.

In speaking, too, of algorithms running amok, Slavin seems to create some horror film, which may aptly be titled, for example, as ‘Nightmare on Wall Street’ or ‘Amazon Does Halloween.’ So if you’re able to get past the confusion over the stuff he speaks about, then you may feel frightened.

Further, as I was following the US Open tennis tournament online one year, I found more stuff on algorithms.

Put in the hands of sophisticated technology (i.e., instrumentation and computing), these IBM algorithms can crunch large volumes of data and do analysis of such breadth, depth and speed, as to be humanly impossible to do otherwise.

What’s more, many of us know that the information search and quick results we get from Google are also based on algorithms that can handle data that far exceed 39 million points.  What you may not know is that the name Google is a ‘mistake’ from the word googol, which is the number 10 raised to the 100th power.  Indeed the former PhD students from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had a vision for the infinite world of algorithms.  Slavin emphasizes that these are very real phenomena and they have real-world practical applications  and they generate oodles of cold hard cash.  There is reason, then, for CNN Money to refer to Google’s stuff as "the almighty algorithm."

What do I think about all of this?  To be honest, it's awesome and intriguing, and a touch unnerving.  Slavin may very well be right:  That we are creating things that we don’t fully grasp or, worse, don’t fully control.  Since we have a film theme in this article, let me add one more:  ‘Matrix,' which his talk reminds me of, too.  The creators of this trilogy deftly combined cool and geeky.  It is a future where smart machines and sentient robots not only control the small surviving numbers of the human race, but also aim to eradicate them completely.

Is that kind of future truly a part of the human fate?  Maybe.  We don’t know, and will never know, exactly what the future holds for us.  Regardless, I think that Matrix world is several decades away.  So we have plenty of time and opportunity to make sure that we proceed reasonably with our mathematics and technology.  That while we don’t have perfect knowledge, grasp or foresight into anything, we can pay attention to what we’re doing and creating, learn honestly and openly from what is happening, and then be willing to stop or at least adjust our way forward.

Otherwise we will need a savior-hero of the likes of Neo.

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

Ron Villejo, PhD

Her Morning Elegance

The props are simple enough. A mattress, sheets and pillows. This lady and her lover live a Bohemian existence apparently, as the bed is simply on the floor. Along with a scattering of small lamp, notepad, and cheap sneakers, all on the floor, too. The tools aren’t overly sophisticated, either. Camera and tripod, situated for a single top-down angle. Also, an animation software for scripting and story-boarding.

The result? One of the loveliest music videos I’ve seen, garnering both popular and critical acclaim. Have a look.

Some people may characterize these days as a dour age. There is plenty of negative to go around in this world, they say, especially those bad things that knock daily on their door and just let themselves in because the door is never locked. So, judging solely by the lyrics that ‘speak’ to this lady’s life, these people may claim her as one of their own. Dour and sullen. Have a read.

And she fights for her life
As she puts on her coat
And she fights for her life on the train
She looks at the rain
As it pours
And she fights for her life
As she goes in a store
With a thought she has caught
By a thread
She pays for the bread
And she goes
Nobody knows

Sun’s been down for days
A winter melody she plays
The thunder makes her contemplate
She hears a noise behind the gate
Perhaps a letter with a dove
Perhaps a stranger she could love

Yet, for Oren Lavie, the creative energy behind this delightful music video, something as ordinary as everyday life doesn’t have to be, well, so ordinary. Or so dour, either. Here he is performing his song Her Morning Elegance, on the Jimmy Kimmel show. 

The Jimmy Kimmel show knew enough about the song to make a bit of silliness to it, and Lavie responds with a smile. His tune is light and jazzy, and lifts up the mood where it otherwise would have been dragged down by “sun’s been down for days, a winter melody she plays.” Here, too, his musical tools are relatively commonplace. Keyboard, a microphone, a simple accompaniment of instruments.

Stir all of this in the pot, and now add a pinch of rosemary, thyme, and cinnamon. That is, pretty actress Shir Shomron. I’m sure this video was a joy for her to perform in, but I don’t imagine the acting required of her was easy or simple. With eyes closed, she had to portray motion, paradoxically, by her still postures. All in keeping with the drama, humor, and music of the video.

Of course, Lavie had the talent of staffers behind him, too. Collating over 2000 photos and weaving them seamlessly into a motion picture was, I’m sure, a labor of love for them. 48 hours of shooting and weeks of preparation and post-shoot production, for a video lasting less than 4 minutes, must be testament to the complex efforts behind this.

Even the making of this music video was, in itself, a well-crafted video.

Altogether the props and tools to make this music video didn’t require the cinematic, technical genius of a Steven Spielberg. We regular people can make such a video, if we wanted, and I’m sure many people have done so. What Lavie and his mates bring to the table, however, is artistic genius a plenty. We can stand in awe, mouth agape, in the presence of artists who are so talented within the confines of their genre, say, poetry or dance or painting. But the talent of this crew runs through multiple genres, resulting in a work of art that is truly multimedia and cross-art in nature. Writing, singing, directing, photographing, acting, and filming.

In the end, all that was required of technology was simply to enable their talent.

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

Ron Villejo, PhD

Transformers Furniture

“Transformers, Beds in disguise,” one viewer astutely comments, to a video on a cool space-saving line of furniture.

“Transformers” is the awesome hit film from 2007, in which a Peterbilt truck turns into the top stud Optimus Prime and a yellow Camaro into the likable ‘bot Bumblebee. It’s a marvel for cinematographers to create magic from technology, so much so that I kept wanting to super-slow motion that transformation and figure out how they actually make it happen.

But this space-saving line from Resource Furniture is no science fiction.  It’s as real and as useful as it can be.  Have a look.

An Apple device has sophisticated, cutting-edge technology inside its sleek, minimalist design.  But this furniture is remarkable for its lack of electronics, and its reliance solely on the ingenuity of the designer, engineer and manufacturer.  Yes, Steve Jobs aimed for simplicity of use for his iPhone and iPad.  But transforming a table into a bed is so simple that anyone of us can do it without knowing much about the mechanics of it.

It reminds me of Einstein’s notions of space and time.  These two phenomena are bound up, such that they become one in his terminology, that is, spacetime.  Imagine drawing a point A and a point B on a sheet of paper.  Now fold it, so that the two points touch each other.  You see that the distance between the two points is compressed.  So if you were a traveler, you would dramatically shorten your journey from A to B, provided that the highway on which you traveled could actually be folded like a sheet of paper.   This is the physics notion of a ‘wormhole.’  It’s a passage that allows you to travel to any point in space at some fraction of the normal time.

I’ve been to cities like New York, Tokyo and Stockholm, where space in the places I lodged was clearly at a premium, that is, tight and sparing.  How spacious they would’ve been, if they had acquired Resource furniture.  Paradoxically it’s about compressing more things into such space as underneath the bed and behind the wall, so that you have more space elsewhere.  A family on a budget could therefore live comfortably in a modest home, with two school aged children, for example, sharing a tiny bedroom.

Let’s bring Newton into our discussion now, shall we.  His physics was about motion, force, and mechanics.  While Einstein boldly challenged, and corrected, his outdated notions of gravity, somehow I couldn’t help but see Newton in this furniture.  With some clever use of springs, levers, and pivots, this furniture takes just fingertip strength to transform and set up.  The force of gravity, for example, is neutralized by these devices so well that a 450-pound bed virtually floats down from its vertical position to its horizontal placement.  The aforementioned children can easily tidy up their room and fold up their bed in the morning, and set up once again in the evening, all on their own power.

The company tagline is “Space.  Reinvented.”  That says it all. 

Cool stuff, eh.

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

Ron Villejo, PhD

Apple, a Human Failing

Steve Jobs would've admitted, I’m sure, that he was no saint. His tectonic success over the last decade of his life, notwithstanding, he would not call himself a categorical success. By many accounts, he was an ass to work for, to collaborate with, and certainly to manage. The first 10 years of Apple were as roller coaster-thrilling in broad daylight, as it was dark foreboding nightmare.

The revolutionary MacIntosh that Jobs and his renegade team worked on, in the early 1980s, led to a video which was of such Orwellian proportions that it took the public’s breath away.

There was one problem with the Mac: It was a commercial flop. The cult-like ad apparently didn’t translate to what mattered most to the Board: cold, hard cash. Robert Cringely said, Jobs “ran amok at Apple. He cost the company a lot of money. He was wasteful, self-indulgent, a brat."  In this scenario, I wouldn’t blame anyone on the Board for looking at him as a financial liability, let alone as immature and headstrong.  For sure, he deserved these characterizations. He was idealistic and perfectionistic, and clearly had flaws in his judgment. When he engineered a take-me-or-leave-me confrontation with then-CEO, John Sculley, much to his shock and chagrin, the Board chose the latter.

Have a look at the video that recounts all of this.

You see why I titled this article “Apple, a Human Failing.” Let’s step back, shall we, and reflect on this a bit.

No matter how visionary, how revolutionary, how standout of a leader all of us see Jobs, he was only human after all.  No different from the flesh-and-blood we all are.  No more gifted than any of us, for we are born with a brain to grasp things and with hands to get things done. And, for being quintessentially human, no less exempt from faults, errors, and shortcomings.  Let me make this clear: I am one of his most ardent fans. But I will say this, too: He himself had quite a bit to contribute to his ouster from Apple.  He needed to accept a good share of the responsibility for what happened in that fateful mid-1980s day at Apple.

The Board’s decision to oust him was, in retrospect, also a human failing. Michael Moritz said, “The knee-jerk reaction of conventional people is to elbow what they see as disruptive forces aside.”  We see this a lot, and we can see quite a bit of truth in it, don’t we. My thought, well, why not? Honestly, the last thing any of us need is something disruptive. Think about not just the esteemed Board of Directors, but also the employees at Apple. Like it or not, Jobs at that time must’ve represented a threat to all of their livelihoods, if the company were in fact to have sunk, post-Orwellian Mac. So it was easy enough, and even understandable, for Moritz to refer to those who dismissed Jobs as conventional people. But we are all conventionally human, after all, and that sort of elbowing seems to be part of our natural makeup.

Years later, Sculley admitted that the Board made a mistake in their decision. In the video interview above, he didn’t go so far as to say that they should’ve ousted him, instead. Still, he reasoned that with Jobs’ extraordinary talent, the Board should’ve found a way to work with him. If any of us truly had the gift of foresight and prophecy, we would’ve seen the bristling future talent of Jobs. If they had a crystal ball, the Board would’ve seen iTunes, iPhones and iPads dancing into view. So the next best thing in human affairs is to admit a mistake. You know what they say, To err is human; to forgive, divine.

But let me offer one more reflection:  Imagine that the Board had that proverbial crystal ball, and decided to keep Jobs onboard and to elevate him to CEO. From our vantage point in the present, spoiled now from the innovations that repeatedly came out of Apple coffers, we might have thought that that would’ve been the right decision. Me, well, I’d ask, How can we be so sure? It’s really not a simple thing to weigh. Press me, though, to offer a personal slant, and this is what I'd say. I think that Jobs needed much more time, and frankly a series of failures, in order to become what we saw of him over the last decade.  He needed 1985 – 2000 (15 long years, 25 years since the founding of Apple) to learn, to mature, to hone his considerable, unquestionable talent. In the end, I don’t think all of these cool gadgets that we now possess would’ve been iSuccesses in the 1980′s or 1990′s. So perhaps the irony of this is that the Board made the right decision at that time. Just perhaps.

I hope you see that this human failing is not really an indictment on any of us. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement of what we are all about and how complex and uncertain our affairs truly are. At least, in part. In a future article, I promise to write "Apple, a Human Triumph."  This, too, as we now know of Jobs and scores of others, is part of who we are.

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

Ron Villejo, PhD