Here are a few links from the last week or so that I never quite got the chance to post.
Sites like FourSquare are pretty cool. The basic idea is that by “checking in” at a location friends will know to find you there, and businesses will get to know their best customers.
But one concern is that it doesn’t take a sophisticated hacker to track another person’s location. Earlier this year, a trio of Dutch software developers put up a site called PleaseRobMe.com. The principle was simple: pull data from Twitter and Foursquare and post the username and (self-reported) locations. And many users weren’t paying attention to their privacy settings.
This has given me pause on a number of occasions–even for blogging while on vacation. I see this as a great counterargument to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that “the age of privacy is over.” There are a few perfectly legitimate reasons to keep some information private.
via Location Services Raise Privacy Concerns – International Business Times.
AT&T: drop net neutrality or U-verse gets it (Ars Technica)
AT&T has told the FCC that if it reclassifies broadband providers as common carriers, it will “have to re-evaluate whether we put shovels in the ground.” Interestingly enough, AT&T has already admitted that they are investing less in the development of this badly needed high speed network.
“AT&T has already slowed down U-verse deployment under the current Title I regime,” declared S. Derek Turner [of Free Press], “so to blame the FCC for the company’s own investment decisions is simply disingenuous.”
This points out the crucial difference between the understandings of Net Neutrality proponents and opponents. Providers see their network as “their ball,” while we’re asking them to build the playground.
Journalism scholar Dan Gillmor argues “Let’s subsidize open broadband, not journalists” at Salon.com. He begins by arguing that the Post Office Act of 1792′s enabling of cheap publication (and distribution?) of news papers “was an outright subsidy, for a social purpose.” The result? “It was central to the rise of the nation as a society based on knowledge.”
Based on what I’ve read over the years, I think he’s spot on. What’s more, he’s correct to argue that a direct subsidy to news organizations would be a bad idea (the relationship would be a bit too close), but that we have a timely solution that’s quite similar to the Post Office Act — Internet Neutrality.
Gillmor makes the following point that I hope he and Salon will permit me to quote at length:
In the 1950s, America’s state and local highways were relatively well developed. What the nation decided it needed, and what corporate America couldn’t begin to provide, was a robust system of long-distance roads.
With data, the reverse is true: the long-distance data highways, the “backbone†networks, exist in abundance. What we really need now is better local conveyances, the ones running to and into our homes. Big telecom carriers say they’ll provide these connections — that is, they may provide these connections if they feel like it — only if we allow them to control the content that flows on those lines.
Imagine if we’d given the interstates to corporations that could decide what kinds of vehicular traffic could use them. If you want to worry about a threat to the journalism of tomorrow, consider the power being collected by the so-called “broadband” providers right now.
I couldn’t have said it much better myself (and I’ve tried!). Because of the high investment costs and the natural monopolies of networks like roads and wires, a public investment makes great sense. I hope Gillmor’s argument reaches the ears of those who need to hear it.
Miller McCune addresses The Real Science Gap in this (rather long) article. It provides a lot of food for thought in talking about the current structure of training (and paying) our future scientists. A brief historical bit about Vannevar Bush’s (yes, the memex guy) 5 suggestions for “the basic structures of civilian research that remain to this day,” including what became the NSF.
The article goes on to criticize that we have too many scientists in universities, for too long, working at too low wage on faculty projects not of their choosing. There is some truth to these claims, but their suggestion is pretty shocking:
Any change in the science labor market would, of course, require dismantling the current system and erecting something that would value young scientists for their future potential as researchers and not just for their present ability to keep universities’ grant mills humming. This would mean paying them more and exploiting them less. It would also mean limiting their numbers by both producing and importing fewer scientists, so incomes could rise to something commensurate with the investment in time and talent and the high-level skills of a Ph.D.
Fewer scientists?! I personally do social science, which is pretty hard, but hard sciences are even more difficult. One has to wonder if we would be where we are today if someone 50 years ago had argued for fewer scientists. Sure, there is a lot of work that is wasted (failure is an integral part of the scientific process), but this time is an investment that has brought us where we are today. Arguing to throw the whole thing away is incredibly shortsighted.
Note that the comments are worth a skim. There are a few other interesting articles about this and related problems:
