Lucas Wilson-Richter

I’m confused about something, namely: how you can be both passionate and detached.

Example: I was working on a problem the other day, something about grade point averages for a graduate employment campaign. This problem and I have a history. I was determined to solve it, if not once and for all, then as close as practical. Then I ran into a roadblock – something or other to do with writing results back to a database. The details aren’t important. I asked my 1up for help, and he obliged by telling me that I should change my approach and avoid the roadblock completely.

I hated that idea. Admittedly I was already a bit cranky because I was hungry (cf. my blood sugar issues), but I was also really attached to my way of solving the problem. The idea that we should take a few extra steps for caution’s sake (like not writing to the DB before we check the results) was repugnant. Surely we should just get it done, right?

The problem here is that I was attached to my solution, not to solving the problem. So how do we avoid that? How can you be both passionate about solving a problem, and detached from your solution?

Sorry, Prokofy. Most of your argument got lost amongst all the name-calling.

I don’t think anybody can sensibly suggest that CC is the solution to all problems with copyright (or -left) and intellectual property. But it’s a lot closer than a standard copyright license to encapsulating the reality of digital media: once I have a copy of something, I can share it for (nearly) free. That’s not going to change soon or quickly.

CC also lets us think of a new idea: determining what things are worth, based on what people pay for them on their own (i.e. vendor doesn’t dictate the price). I’m not saying that this is inherently better than a world where the vendor does dictate the price, but new ideas are worth examining. You, Prokofy, personally cited an example where you got something before you paid for it, and wished to pay for it in order to show your appreciation. So you can’t argue that that doesn’t happen. Now sure, there are freeloaders out there who won’t pay a cent unless you make them, so our price will probably adjust down rather than up, which is fair enough, given the non-scarcity of freely replicable digital goods. But I think there’s a future for a model like this, and I know of businesses that run on this kind of business model, specifically restaurants in which you pay what you think your meal was worth. Zero is an option, but it’s a very bold statement. This restaurant lives or dies by the quality of its output. And that’s the way it should be.

A direct example may be appropriate here: you argue that CC has no practical use case that isn’t compatible with copyright. I disagree, specifically on the case where an organisation is concerned about getting sued for infringing copyright, and needs material for an ad or whatever. CC licenses are ideal here, because content creators are not always contactable to ask permission. I, for example, was asked for permission to use some of my work, and it took me 2 months to even read the request. This happens. I CC-license my amateur work so that others know they have my permission to use it, without needing to bother me about it. Sure, copyright can sort of cover the kind of situation I mentioned above, but it’s by no means assured. Under copyright, I could turn around and sue this organisation for infringement at any time. And chances are, they couldn’t afford that.

CC or a similar model has a place and a future. It’s not a complete replacement for copyright, but it does have its uses, which copyright can’t encompass.

Also, Prokofy: sticks and stones.

I was watching this magnificent video about a new technology named Sixth Sense on TED, and while I’m blown away by the use of technology to amazing effect, I can’t believe that this will become a mainstream technology on any timeframe short of generations. Watch the video if you haven’t already, and then we’ll discuss my concerns.

Infrastructure

The first thing that came to my mind was bandwidth. Sure, iPhone users have increased 3G usage by a dramatic margin, but that’s nothing compared to what demand would be like if these things became mainstream. My guess is that the increase in Google’s traffic (and FaceBook’s, and LinkedIn’s, and all those other services with information about people and places) would be expressed in orders of magnitude. We’re talking about huge bandwidth demand here, as well as a significant increase in demand on computation resources (meaning efficient software and lots of metal). There are some pretty huge challenges in meeting those requirements, and I see Amazon making a killing with their Elastic Compute Cloud, and Google doing the same with App Engine. Fortunately, wearable technology such as this is unlikely to become mainstream quickly (see below for why), so we have the chance to develop our infrastructure to cope, without necessarily relying on a few huge providers.

The time for visual search will come with the adoption of this technology. You can only tack barcodes on so many things before you get sick of them. What will really add to the power of the Sixth Sense is the ability to search on an image (i.e. find me information on the object in view right now. That obviously still has a long way to go, but if anything’s going to drive demand for it, this will.

One other question also comes to mind: what happens when 2 people are using this technology to look at (and get information on) the same item? Obviously a limitation of this system is that only one projector can use a surface at a time. That’s just the way this will work, until we get it working on a pair of glasses (which would raise problems of its own). Presumably an etiquette would develop about “viewing rights” on any given space or thing, but it is a question that needs consideration.

Social issues

The thing that really leapt out at me when I watched this video was the reactions I imagined from non-nerds. There are the obvious “is it magic” questions, but I can imagine many people asking what this is going to do to our minds, especially memory and recall. My favourite example is the shot from the demo video where Pranav (the speaker’s student) looks at another person, and he views relevant keywords about that person on his new acquaintance’s chest.
I see three big problems with this:

• First of all, if somebody’s shining a projector on my chest, I could easily imagine feeling like my personal space had been invaded regardless of whether or not anything has physically entered my “bubble”. This gets the conversation off to a bad start, because I feel like the owner of said projector has intruded, before he’s even started talking. So personal discomfort is an issue.
• Second, my technology-wearing buddy Googles me every time he talks to me, how do I know he actually remembers anything about me? Remembering people and the little things about them is one of the ways that we demonstrate our level of care for another person. If I can walk up to a vague acquaintance and ask her, “so how’s Polly (their dog)”, what does that tell her, especially if she never told me she had a dog? Sounds stalker-tastic to me.
• The last big problem is privacy, which may be a vanishing concern in years to come, but still has some importance in the here and now, and reputation, which will be a concern forever, because that’s how societies work. Suppose I’m the subject of some controversy, for example I’m under investigation for a serious crime. The way Google (the gold standard of search) works at the moment, I have no control over what comes up when a search is performed on me. So if someone sees me and the first word that comes up on my chest is “rapist”, that’s going to cause me some serious problems. The truth of the statement is irrelevant here. What matters is the fact that I’ve been labelled as such, and anybody who looks at me will know it. Damaging. This is the stuff ruined lives are made of.

Am I wrong? Are there other big problems I haven’t noticed? Tell me about it. I’m curious.