Category Archives: Science & Technology

The Wired 40. Yahoo as the “McDonald’s” of Cyberspace !?

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Wired Magazine has named their top 40 “wired” companies.  The selection sounded a bit vague and trendy to me but lists are fun.    Wired says this is how they picked them:

We start by looking for the basics: strategic vision, global reach, killer technology. But that’s not enough. To land a spot on our annual Wired 40 list, a business also needs the X-factor – a hunger for new ideas and an impatience to put them into practice.

Notable points:  Google at top of list, Apple second. Yahoo at number 5, the “McDonald’s of Cyberspace” (!?), Microsoft 36th.

Social Networking challenges/problems detailed at GnomeDex

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When he’s asked to do it, Jeremy Z is very good at cutting through the technobabble and getting to mission critical ideas about how programs can be put to work for people.

Here’s a nice summary of his “bitch session” at GnomeDex where it appears they had some great ideas about social networks.

Looks to me like a lot of these apply to many types of tech development.

Dr. Schneider! Just say NO to alarmism. Alarmism misdirects resources.

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Later …. Wait, I think I'm being too hard on Schneider who later qualified the quote below to apply only to soundbite decisions when getting interviewed… ]

He apparently did not mean it to be as broad and sweeping as it sounds below]. However, I do think the quote reflects the current behavior of many scientists who are choosing to accept alarmism because it suits their needs.

My initial post:

A great intellectual frustration for me is trying to understand why super bright, well informed people who all subscribe to the idea of rational, scientific inquiry often disagree – sometimes violently – about the interpretation of well studied phenomena. I now think the answer can be found by noting how our pesky human intellectual inadequacies combine with our "tribal" tendency to agree with our friends and challenge our enemies, especially when we are under personal attack. This in turn focuses attention on a "too narrow" spectrum of information and people, which in turn leads to faulty analysis or suspect statements – even by very competent intellects.

Stephen Schnieder is an internationally respected Stanford climatologist and biologist and a key author of the IPCC report which is the key Global Warming reference work. He's also one of the harshest critics of Bjorn Lomborg and his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist". Back in 1996 Schnieder got to the heart of the challenge of mixing science and politics in the statement below and his answer to critics who often accuse him of alarmism based on the following statement he made in an interview:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both. [bolding added]

Yikes Dr. Schneider – please JUST SAY NO to effectiveness if it is going to compromise your honesty – that should not be an ethical bind for a scientists who should be held to a higher standard of honesty.

I sure don't like his idea that "offering up scary scenarios" somehow serves the long term best interests of the public. It sure looks like Schneider would support Al Gore's alarmism as an important part of getting the public to act on an issue many hold very dear (reduction of greenhouse gases in the hopes of stopping global warming), but I think a more functional view is that the role of science should be to offer the unvarnished truth, and to *challenge* alarmists and political or economic vested interests when they report facts selectively or inaccurately. Only with accurate analyses can we allocated resources most effectively to the myriad problems of earth.

The irony of it all is that global warming alarmists cite potential human death catastrophes from global warming, yet simply ignore the *fact* that there are many human catastrophes going on *right now* in many parts of the globe. Before you ask me to focus my attention and hundreds of billions of dollars of tax money on the (slight) possibility that global warming will rise sea levels 20 feet, I ask you to focus your precious attention, and a few dozen billion, on the easy to solve problems of the world like clean water, intestinal disease, and malaria. Deal?

Lomborg is too scientific for his own good?

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After reading "The Skeptical Environmentalist" I was astonished at how effectively Lomborg challenged many of the ideas about the environment I'd been holding dear for so long. I was especially impressed by the case he makes for allocating resources based on analysis of the lives saved and a cost benefit approach rather than the often irrational, politically motivated spending that saves only a few but costs a lot.

This led me to a fascinating email exchange with the editor of Scientific American, which had blasted Lomborg in a very long critique of the book. The SA critique was written by four internationally recognized experts, but in my view they'd done little more than attack Lomborg personally and suggest – speciously – that his objective was to disparage a scientific approach to problem solving.

What consistently impresses me the most about Lomborg is his willingness to take on his critics point by point, addressing their concerns with citations and what only appear to be legitimate personal criticisms. (Such as noting that climatologist Schneider used to warn about potentially catastrophic global cooling but now warns of potentially catastrophic global warming).

I suggest that Lomborg is thinking very clearly and applying science appropriately, but has challenged his critics effectively and aggresssively enough that they've responded in an emotional fashion rather than a scientific one.

The enthusiasm many scientists seem to show for Al Gore's excellent but misguided propaganda film "An Inconvenient Truth" reflects poorly on the state of scientific thinking. I think it reveals the limitations we primates, even those primates high on the scientific food chain, have with mathematical constructs and allocation of risks, costs, and benefits.

Later: Wadard does NOT agree with me or Lomborg – the debate continues over at Global Warming Watch:

Here's a clear thinking piece by Lomborg

What is YOUR LIFE worth to the Dept of Transportation? About 2.7 Million.

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This cost allocation study Notes that the EPA is willing to spend almost twice what the Dept of Transportation is willing to spend to keep YOU alive. The numbers seem old so there may be some adjustments, but interesting is this:

In policy and regulatory analyses, EPA uses a value of $4.8 million to represent the cost of a premature death. This value is the mean of estimates from 26 studies dating back to the mid 1970s that have attempted to place a value on the cost of premature deaths. Estimates from those studies range from $0.6 million to $13.5 million, reflecting the large uncertainties in trying to estimate the public's willingness to pay to avoid premature death.

The Department of Transportation has adopted a value of $2.7 million per premature death, based on a comprehensive 1991 study by the Urban Institute

People are reluctant to accept this type of "dollar valuation" analysis even though it's commonplace in legal settlements and is a VERY APPROPRIATE way to allocate public funds. Note that the 4.8 million dollars the EPA spends to save a life would save thousands of lives if spent in alternative ways. One can argue that the complexity of this type of analysis undermines the rationale behind using this "lives for dollars" game, but it's a weak argument. Yet even with this appropriate method of trying to allocate dollars to lives and then allocate them most effectively, we tend to apply funding in odd ways and squander billions due to political budgeting.

The Internet Open = news at the speed of enthusiasm

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The French Open ended moments ago, and already the Wikipedia biography of winner  Rafael Nadal – aka "Raffy Boy" for those of us who don't know him – has been revised to reflect the win against Roger Federer.

This news items, like the big tech news items of today Scoble leaves microsoft which was accurately posted extensively at many blogs before conventional news outlets could even have hoped to find out, strongly indicates that the internet has the potential to react to breaking news more quickly, more accurately, and perhaps most importantly, *VERY CHEAPLY*.    Millions of potential reporters are out there, enthusiastically posting blog items or revising websites in response to what interests them.
Can all that info and energy come together in BBC style global network fashion?   Certainly it has not happened yet and BBC remains the best global news distribution network by far.  However it should not take long for news mashups to leverage the millions of online reporters who daily post tens of millions of online reports into a simply spectacular news resource.  

Although it may be too far ahead of it's time to succeed, I sure like like Newsvine, which I think gives us a good glimpse of the future of news, which dovetails nicely with the future of the internet, which dovetails nicely with … our future.

Almost 5000 dead and counting

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No, not from the Indonesian earthquake – indeed a terrible tragedy. Global warming? Ha – not even the most alarmist proponents make this claim. Nope, not from terrorism, which tragically took perhaps 5 or even 10 lives today despite *trillions* of dollars spent fighting wars and providing security across thousands of first world venues.

Malaria killed the 5000. Today. And yesterday. And tomorrow. 1-3 Million per year with some indications the count has been historically too low on this disease.

But let's not worry about Malaria because the cost to dramatically reduce transmission is …. $2.50 for nets that protect people while they sleep. $5.50 for the really good nets that can protect people for 5 years.

More death news you won't see on CNN or FOX. Yet today (nor yesterday or the days before) I didn't see anything on CNN or FOX about this ongoing life and death battle with parasitic diseases where the death toll eclipses that of *all wars ever fought for all time*.

CNN did, however, have a long report lamenting the fact that that about 100 people per week die waiting for organ transplants. We better get to work on that, because why spend $2.50 for a net to save a kid's life when you can spend $250,000.00 giving a rich guy a extra few years?

Watch out for the … Amazon!

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Over at Webmasterworld someone was noting Amazon's new free commercial website service and wondering if they were watering down their brand with all the new online services Amazon is offering. 

To the contrary I think the Amazon strategy is brilliant and the idea is to water down the OTHER brands by commoditizing things like commercial sites and search. The relationships they are establishing will pay modest but very long lasting dividends.

The global search niche, by comparison, is hugely profitable but is always threatened by "the next best thing" since users will tend to jump to the best search having little stake in the brand itself.

Amazon has nothing to lose in the areas of free website, storage, web services, etc. I think they are very clever to provide complex, data intensive services.

They are also lucky to have one of the best tech evangelists in the form of Jeff Barr who is spreading the word about some of the new services in his excellent presentations such as the one he gave at MIX06. 

Save the world, ignore global warming

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As I noted before I actually admire and respect Al Gore for his passion regarding the environment and his sincerity about creating a better world. However I wonder if his global warming alarmism is misguided.

Here is a short and articulate summary by the controversial "skeptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg of the view that Global warming is happening but that those suggesting dramatic measures are proposing we waste time and innovation better spent on problems we *can* solve.

Personally, I'm incredibly frustrated by how *every source I've read* suggesting global warming remedies fails to even attempt a cost benefit analysis when this should be a key concern due to the overwhelming costs associated with, for example, Kyoto Protocol implementation.

Lomborg suggests:
… in a curious way, global warming really is the moral test of our time, but not in the way its proponents imagined. We need to stop our obsession with global warming, and start dealing with the many more pressing issues in the world, where we can do most good first and quickest.

Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" suggests that many of the sacred cows of the environmental movement, including Global Warming, are supported more by political and ideological rather than scientific and mathematical motivations.

Lomborg has been villified in some scientific circles and if I can get permission I'll post some very interesting correspondence I had with the editor of Scientific American, which challenges Lomborg in what I feel are more personal rather than scientific ways. Lomborg's critics are notoriously vicious with ad hominem attacks on Lomborg rather than attacking his math and scientific assumptions. I'd suggest this is a strong indication that we should be paying more attention to Lomborg's analyses of pressing global concerns and that we should be careful to review the motivations of ALL of those involved in the global environmental debate.

Wikipedia on Global Warming – an excellent summary

EPA's Global Warming Site
Cooler Heads Coalition – industry funded I think. Note the paper about Terraforming Mars using injected greenhouse gasses! These guys seem to LIKE global warming!

Global Warming, or Global Alarming?

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Tim O'Reilly's looking forward to the upcoming film by Al Gore about Global Warming.
It's called "An Inconvenient Truth" and premiers very soon.

I respect Al Gore for many reasons, but I'm concerned by what appears to be a "propagandistic" rather than "scientific" lean to this film (this is based on clips and comments by those who have seen the film). I do not think Gore is a clear thinker on this topic and sees himself more as a "prophet".

If we focus on addressing the many global problems like health and economies of the developing world we can get a spectacular return on the investment of mental and monetary capital. Collateral advantages will be reductions in terrorism and a huge boost in good will and personal satisfaction.

Investing in alleviating human causes of global warming has no clear path to success, yet the costs are simply staggering.

Tim replied to my concerns, which I posted over at his blog. I love the internet for letting little old me, and thousands of others, actively engage with some of the world's best and brightest. Whatever one's views on the *most* pressing problems, certainly the collective application of innovation has the power to bring us the solutions.

Joe —
I see you've read The Skeptical Environmentalist. And I certainly agree with Bjorn Lomborg that there are other pressing problems where there is a great return on investment. But it also seems to me that many of the things that would be required to help with global warming could have enormous payoff. Critics talk about enormous costs, but it seems to me that the costs of the current way of doing things are always hidden.

A great example of this is railroads vs. automobiles. There's always been a huge debate about rail from the north bay down to San Francisco, with critics talking about the $150 million projected cost as a subsidy. But no one talks about the tens of billions of dollars of subsidy represented by the creation and maintenance of the highway system. Railroads are expected to carry their costs and described as uneconomic because they need subsidies, but the automobile industry managed to get much larger subsidies baked into the economy and hidden so that they no longer even appear as subsidies.

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I agree with Tim that some hidden economic subsidies are not always identified in discussions, but Economists do talk about and study these relationships. Unfortunately these observations are almost always buried in the politically/emotionally motivated budgeting processes. Political budgeting is not rational budgeting.

He's also right that greenhouse alleviation *might* have a big payoff, especially from things like alternative energy innovations that we might not explore unless we tackle global warming more aggressively. Still, the benefits seem so very unclear that I'd rather have the government spend my money on alleviating the abundant clear, present, and (most importantly) CHEAP-to-fix dangers like global health and poor education. (I'm against much of the excessive military and security spending as well as potential global warming big spending.)

I'd even suggest that the positive technology spinoffs from $250,000,000,000 towards global health and development would simply dwarf those from that investment in Greenhouse gas alleviation (or military or first world health care, etc, etc).