Monthly Archive for September, 2011

Black and White and Dead All Over?

Published on September 28, 2011 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

For those who care deeply about the future of journalism, the phone-hacking scandal could hardly have been less well timed. Professional journalism’s survival is threatened by the economic impact of digital technologies. The plurality and diversity of voice upon which representative democracy depends is in jeopardy. Needed urgently is debate about how well-resourced, professional news gathering can be sustained. Instead, tired 20th-century concerns about the ethics and ownership of popular newspapers are diverting attention from critical 21st-century realities.

The alleged hacking of Milly Dowler’s mobile telephone generated a moral panic that was seized upon instantly by a curious alliance of elite establishment and left-progressive opinion. At the same time, it diverted attention from a crucial debate that was beginning to gather momentum. That discussion, about whether professionally edited, fact-based journalism can continue to play the role of an estate, not just an industry, in the multimedia age will remain important after those responsible for phone hacking have been identified and punished.

There is a crisis in journalism that has nothing to do with hacking and relates directly to the conduct of public affairs. It started with recognition that the internet has weakened the authority of large-scale professional media organisations and progressed to predictions that the web will destroy it. Many thinkers in the field of journalism and media studies believe this and find the notion irresistible. They burble with delight at the possibility that the power of big media may be shattered by what laymen call blogging and they grace it with the oxymoronic title “citizen journalism”.

To Read More…

Photo: Courtesy of Text and Digital Media, Jacobs University Bremen

Brain Navigation

Published on September 23, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

By Sarah Zhang, Harvard Gazette

The brain of a mouse measures only 1 cubic centimeter in volume. But when neuroscientists at Harvard’s Center for Brain Science slice it thinly and take high-resolution micrographs of each slice, that tiny brain turns into an exabyte of image data. That’s 10¹⁸ bytes, equivalent to more than a billion CDs.What can you do with such a gigantic, unwieldy data set? That’s the latest challenge for Hanspeter Pfister, the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

Pfister, an expert in high-performance computing and visualization, is part of an interdisciplinary team collaborating on the Connectome Project at the Center for Brain Science. The project aims to create a wiring diagram of all the neurons in the brain. Neuroscientists have developed innovative techniques for automatically imaging slices of mouse brain, yielding terabytes of data so far.

Pfister’s system for displaying and processing these images would be familiar to anyone who has used Google Maps. Because only a subsection of a very large image can be displayed on a screen, only that viewable subsection is loaded. Drag the image around, zoom in or out, and more of the image is displayed on the fly.

To Read More…

Google 21st Century Robber Baron

Published on September 21, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

From Scott Cleland at Forbes:

In June, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt publicly asserted “we’re a law abiding company.” Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will test that public representation when Mr. Schmidt testifies publicly under oath for the first time. Overwhelming evidence belies Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ credo and corroborates that Google has become the 21st century’s quintessential robber baron. No “law abiding company” has this long of a rap sheet.

Cleland has a strong opinion. Others may have equally strong opinions more favorable to Google. The Internet, and the World Wide Web which inhabits it, are environments that have existed no more than half of a human lifetime. Few social institutions have grown so fast and penetrated people’s lives so thoroughly. They are not like the weather, happenings largely or entirely beyond human influence. How can humanity as a whole make intelligent choices concerning their impact on ourselves and our descendants?

For the article…

Image: Guillaume Paumier / Wikimedia Commons

To Clear Digital Waste in Computers, ‘Think Green,’ Researchers Say

Published on September 19, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

Provided by Johns Hopkins University, PhysOrg.com

In a recent paper published on the scholarly website arXiv, Johns Hopkins University computer scientists Ragib Hasan and Randal Burns have suggested familiar “green” solutions to the digital waste data problems: reduce, reuse, recycle, recover and dispose.

“In everyday life, ‘waste’ is something we don’t need or don’t want or can’t use anymore, so we look for ways to re-use it, recycle it or get rid of it,” said Hasan, an adjunct assistant professor of computer science. “We decided to apply the same concepts to the waste data that builds up inside of our computers and storage devices.”

With this goal in mind, Hasan and Burns, an associate professor of computer science, first needed to figure out what kind of computer data might qualify as “waste.” They settled on theses four categories:

Unintentional waste data, created as a side effect or by-product of a process, with no purpose.

Used data, which has served its purposes and is no longer useful to the owner.

Degraded data, which has deteriorated to a point where it is no longer useful.

Unwanted data, which was never useful to the computer user in the first place.

To Read More…

Photo: Royce Faddis / JHU

Michael S. Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg, Passes Away

Published on September 15, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

Dr. Gregory B. Newby, Project Gutenberg

Michael Stern Hart was born in Tacoma, Washington on March 8, 1947. He died on September 6, 2011 in his home in Urbana, Illinois, at the age of 64. His is survived by his mother, Alice, and brother, Bennett. Michael was an Eagle Scout (Urbana Troop 6 and Explorer Post 12), and served in the Army in Korea during the Vietnam era.

Hart was best known for his 1971 invention of electronic books, or eBooks. He founded Project Gutenberg, which is recognized as one of the earliest and longest-lasting online literary projects. He often told this story of how he had the idea for eBooks. He had been granted access to significant computing power at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. On July 4 1971, after being inspired by a free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, he decided to type the text into a computer, and to transmit it to other users on the computer network. From this beginning, the digitization and distribution of literature was to be Hart’s life’s work, spanning over 40 years.

Hart was an ardent technologist and futurist. A lifetime tinkerer, he acquired hands-on expertise with the technologies of the day: radio, hi-fi stereo, video equipment, and of course computers. He constantly looked into the future, to anticipate technological advances. One of his favorite speculations was that someday, everyone would be able to have their own copy of the Project Gutenberg collection or whatever subset desired. This vision came true, thanks to the advent of large inexpensive computer disk drives, and to the ubiquity of portable mobile devices, such as cell phones.

To Read More…

On Steve Jobs

Published on September 13, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

By Thomas Beller, N+1

I go to the Apple store on the Upper West side to replace a battery. The city is sparkling, almost too bright. We’d had an earthquake, which was almost comic, and a hurricane, which was almost not, but that was in the past. The present rolls on.

Walking into an Apple store is always a bit awe-inspiring. There is the vaulted ceiling, the feeling of transcendence. The monks all wear blue T-shirts. I am a disciple. I bought my first Apple computer in 1985. Upstairs, the store is austere, pleasant, the tables of iPads untouched like plates waiting for food.

Downstairs, where the genius bar is located, is packed with humanity. It’s something of a shock, like there is a sale at Filene’s Basement.

I wait my turn. The man in the blue shirt is an accelerated version of the usual cool, almost drugged affect of Apple employees. The battery needs replacing. He gets my battery. Directs me to the line. It’s very long.

To Read More…

Image: Staircase, Upper West Side Apple Store, from obblogato.wordpress.com

Call for Journal Editor

Published on September 7, 2011 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society seeks an editor, or team of editors, for a one-year term. This is an opportunity to make a significant contribution to what we believe is one of the leading journals in its field, the journal’s associated conference and, more broadly, the knowledge-community which the journal and conference seek to serve.

The roles of the editor are to:

write an introduction for the Journal volume which would be included in the first issue for the year, and possibly on the website, the newsletter and other appropriate places or for the purposes of marketing and promotion.
collate papers addressing a theme of the editor’s choosing into a book, to be launched at the conference at the completion of the editor’s term. The chapters may be drawn from submissions to the journal during this or recent years, and other material as considered appropriate.
actively solicit manuscripts for the Journal from well-known and notable members of the community—these would could be refereed if the author wished, or regarded as ‘invited papers’.
assist the Commissioning Editor with suggestions of supplementary peer reviewers for specific papers (and this will never be burdensome – note that the Commissioning Editor of the Journal finalizes a majority of the peer reviewer requirements based on thematic matching and ‘mutual obligation’ principles in which all author requested to review up to three other papers).
promote the journal throughout their network and other associated networks.
maintain regular communications with the community via periodical blog posts to the community website (which feeds automatically to our email newsletter, Facebook and Twitter).

The editor will be offered a complimentary electronic subscription to the Journal, free copies of the book which they edit, an electronic subscription to the book series as well as complimentary registrations to attend the conferences at the beginning and end of their term.

Qualifications

The Editor of the Journal must possess the following attributes:

They will have successfully obtained higher degree, and have academic teaching and scholarly research experience in an area related to the subject matter of the Journal.
They will have published in this or other comparable scholarly journals.

Applicants are asked to send:

a cover letter outlining their interest and relevant experience, and the ways in which you would propose to enhance the profile of the journal
a curriculum vitae
a special theme outline: a title with paragraph explanation.

Please send applications and supporting documentation to journals@techandsoc.com

The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011.