This is old news but talk of Google’s Public DNS brought up this bit of data: Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it? After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds. Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction. Just a friendly reminder that computers are not pure syntax manipulators; they are embodied systems with complex non-formal behavior to which we are highly sensitive.

I just read an excellent article called The Dark Side of Digital Backchannels in Shared Physical Spaces. I have nothing to really add to the analysis, except to say that these are circles I wish I traveled in. I should move to Silicon Valley and become a freelance philosopher. The article also references the Online Disinhibition Effect, which I had somehow forgotten to mention in my classes this semester, so I was grateful for the reminder. The Wikipedia entry for online inhibition effect lists six components: You Don’t Know Me (Dissociative anonymity) You Can’t See Me (Invisibility) See You Later (Asynchronicity) It’s All in My Head (Solipsistic Introjection) It’s Just a Game (Dissociative Imagination) We’re Equals (Minimizing Authority) However, when online tools are used in shared physical spaces, they transform them into what Adriana de Souza e Silva and others call hybrid spaces. In such spaces, the first four components are not as relevant or applicable, and so the hybrid inhibition effect may only involve the last two, and I think the one that best explains the Twittermobbing at conferences is the last one. Perhaps I am too deep into my research to see outside my own little world, but it strikes me that one might plausibly interpret Turing’s test as an endorsement of disinhibition in the last two senses: that we ought to treat our interactions with some machines as a game among equals, contrary to our normal biases against machines. In other words, although the online disinhibition effect is often discussed as a negative consequence of shared digital spaces (Wikipedia links its article to antisocial personality disorder, for instance), it is important to remember that sometimes disinhibition can be a virtue, especially when the norms that inhibit us are themselves negative and stifling.

Hadn’t seen this yet, recording for posterity.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

David Chalmers at Singularity Summit 2009 — Simulation and the Singularity. First, an uncontroversial assumption: humans are machines. We are machines that create other machines, and as Chalmers points out, all that is necessary for an ‘intelligence explosion’ is that the machines we create have the ability to create still better machines. In the arguments below, let G be this self-amplifying feature, and let M1 be human machines. The following arguments unpack some further features of the Singularity argument that Chalmers doesn’t explore directly. I think, when made explicit and taken together, these show Chalmers’ approach to the singularity to be untenable, and his ethical worries to be unfounded. The Obsolescence Argument: (O1) Machine M1 builds machine M2 of greater G than M1. (O2) Thus, M2 is capable of creating machine M3 of greater G than M2, leaving M1 “far behind”. (O3) Thus, M1 is rendered obsolete. A machine is rendered obsolete relative to a task if it can no longer meaningfully contribute to that task. Since the task under consideration here is “creating greater intelligence”, and since M2 can perform this task better than M1, then M1 no longer has anything to contribute. Thus, M1 is ‘left behind’ in the task of creating greater G. The obsolescence argument is at the heart of the ethical worries surrounding the Singularity, and is explicit in Good’s quote. Worries that advanced machines will harm us or take over the world may be implications of this conclusion, but not necessarily so. However, obsolescence does seem to follow necessarily from an intelligence explosion, and this on its own may be cause for alarm. The No Precedence Argument: (NP1) M1 was not built by any prior machine M0. In other words, M1 is not itself the result of exploding G. (NP2) Thus, when M1 builds […]

Been arguing about AR, archiving for posterity. Augmented reality Augmented reality will be the most important technological and social change since the widespread adoption of the internet. The internet has been around for decades, but it wasn’t until computing hardware was ubiquitous that the technology was able to serve as a platform for radical social, political, and economic change. Similarly, AR technologies have been around for a while, but only now is the hardware ubiquitous. Everyone is carrying computers in their pocket, computers that are networked and equipped with cameras and GPS, and are about as powerful as the PCs that fueled the first few years of internet. My personal hope is that the Hollywood-backed push for 3D multimedia will promote the widespread use of “smart glasses”, connected by Bluetooth to the smart phone in your pocket, with a HUD for fully-immersive, always-on AR. The technology is already there, or close enough for early adopters, it just all needs to get hooked up in the right way. AR tattoos Your face is a social business card 3D AR on the fly From image to interactive 3D model in 5 minutes Photosynth + AR] Arhrrrr The future of advertising Ali G QR Google Translate Hand from above Projection on Buildings Pinball The Ladder is a mixed-reality installation. The room is plain apart from a window, cut high into the wall and a ladder. A tiny virtual character, that can only be seen through the computer screen, stands on a ladder and looks out of the window to the physical world. He keeps voicing concerns as to the nature of the world, tracing shapes with his hands and trying to describe the scene. The screen is on a rig so that you can pan it across the room but the boy stays […]

Can someone explain this comment to me? It sounds almost like something I’d say, but in the mouth of someone else I have no idea what it means. “Humans are good with language,” says Boris Katz, lead research scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the principle group working with Nokia. “We want language to be a first-rate citizen” on cell phones, he says. |link|

I decided to start importing my Google Reader shared items directly into this blog using FeedWordPress. The reason for this change is that my blog has always served as a repository for examples and material to use in class. Currently my shared items are broadcast only through Reader itself, and through Buzz, but everyone I tell to use Buzz looks at me like a cultist. In any case, it would be nice to have access to the material without signing into my Google account. That means a lot of stuff posted here won’t be my own writing, but it will be clearly marked as not my own, and will be tagged as autoblogging. I’ll still post my own occasionally, but it would be nice to have my blog active in at least some capacity instead of just sitting dead. I used to import my blog posts onto Facebook, but I don’t want to overload the news stream with my shared items, so I’ve stopped importing into Facebook. That means when I write a post by hand, I’ll have to bring it to Facebook manually; but that’s ok because I’m not writing much anymore anyway. And I don’t expect Facebook to stick around much longer. This might result in some of my (two) readers receiving multiple copies of my posts in various media streams. If it is annoying and there is anything I can do to help it, let me know.