People Get Distracted! Blame Technology!

from the trend-pieces dept

With Nick Carr's book out, misleadingly suggesting that the internet is bad for our brains, it looks like the NY Times has decided to a trend piece on the same concept, except even more misleading. Practically the entire article hinges on one family whose father is sometimes distracted. The article opens with the fact that he once missed an email from someone who wanted to buy his company. And, um, it's because the internet makes us dumb? The connection is never made. The fact that people miss emails all the time, just as they might have missed snail mail in the past, is never made either. Honestly, the guy in the article sounds a lot like me, in terms of how I work, but he also sounds a lot like my Dad back when I was a kid and he would have his desk of papers disorganized. That's not a condemnation of technology. It's just that some people can be a bit absent-minded at times. Of course, the article throws in quotes from neuroscientists and other studies to give it that scientific coating, but what the researchers talk about has absolutely nothing to do with what makes someone miss an email or want to spend some time playing video games. It's one of those newspaper trend pieces that sounds good, but doesn't even come close to holding together its central thesis if you look at the details.

Filed Under: blame, multitasking, technology

Obama Complains About iPads And Xboxes As Diversions

from the innovation-not-good-enough-for-you dept

You would think that, in an age when the President is supposed to be encouraging innovation, that new high tech products that are selling in massive numbers and are creating new uses for technology and new ways to communicate and share information would be seen as a good thing. And, as a President often considered to be more "technologically savvy" than his predecessors (and who fought hard not to give up his Blackberry after getting into office) that President Obama would be careful before blatantly slamming some of the most popular technologies around. No such luck. Obama was known, back during his campaign, for occasionally arguing against video games for children, but now he seems to be going further. In a recent Commencement address at Hampton University, President Obama first admitted that he didn't know anything about some modern technologies, but that didn't stop him from lambasting them either:

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation."

Huh? Yes, it may be true in some cases, but such a blanket statement across all of those things is blatantly wrong. Ridiculously wrong. Information can be a distraction, but it's also incredibly empowering, and yes, that includes on iPods, iPads, Xboxes and Playstations. In fact, turning information into entertainment is often a very good way of helping to empower people. While he's right to be concerned about false information that can be found online, as he discusses in the speech, the proper response is not a blanket attack on the tools people use to access the information, but on recognizing that you fight misinformation with better information. You fight ignorance with education. And you recognize that these kinds of technological innovations and tools can help with that, in that they can spread good information and education, rather than being seen as part of the problem.

Filed Under: president obama, technology

Get Your Country's Technology-Related Excuses For Not Winning The World Cup In Now

from the there's-always-next-year dept

The next World Cup (wait, can we say that?) soccer tournament begins in less than two months, and it looks like some folks are already lining up the excuses for when their team underperforms on the pitch. The latest one: blaming the use of iPods and video games for preventing teams from building a "collective spirit." An English coach started the riff by saying, "I'm not a big fan of these big earphones on the way to games," and that "my thing with the iPod generation is that when they leave the ground and go away to their closeted little lives they shouldn't forget what's got them where they are and what impact they can have." It should be added that his team currently lies near the bottom of the top English league, and their problems likely run much, much deeper than their players' headphones. But hey, just like when your nation fails at the World Cup, it's a lot easier to blame technology than anything legitimate, like at the last tournament, when Brazil's poor performance was blamed on Ronaldinho's interest in scoring on his PS2 (and his girlfriend) rather than for his team. This pining for the good ol' days also ignores the idea that technology can deliver some benefits to players and their teams as well, and that the current generation of players might be more effective at bonding over some video games than beers, cards or whatever else their forerunners got up to.

Filed Under: blame, technology, world cup

Bad Things Happen When Politicians Think They Understand Technology

from the not-so-good dept

With health care reform out of the way, lots of politicians are pushing out new legislative ideas, hoping that Congress can now focus on other issues -- so we're seeing lots of bad legislation proposed. Let's do a two for one post, highlighting two questionable bills that many of you have been submitting. The first, proposed by Senators Schumer and Graham, is technically about immigration reform, which is needed, but what's scary is that the plan includes yet another plan for a national ID card. Didn't we just go through this with Real ID, which was rejected by the states? Jim Harper, who follows this particular issue more than just about anyone, has an excellent breakdown of the proposal, questioning what good a national ID does, while also pointing to the potential harm of such a plan.

Then we have the big cybercrime bill put forth by Senators Hatch and Gillibrand Senators Rockefeller and Snowe (updated, since there are two separate cybersecurity bills, and its the Rockefeller/Snowe one that has people scared), that tries to deal with the "serious threat of cybercrime." But, of course, it already has tech companies worried about the unintended consequences, especially when it requires complying with gov't-issued security practices that likely won't keep up with what's actually needed:

"Despite all [the] best efforts, we do have concerns regarding whether government can rapidly recognize best practices without defaulting to a one-size-fits all approach," they wrote.

"The NIST-based requirements framework in the bill, coupled with government procurement requirements, if not clarified, could have the unintended effect of hindering the development and use of cutting-edge technologies, products, and services, even for those that would protect our critical information infrastructure."

They added the bill might impose a bureaucratic employee-certification program on companies or give the president the authority to mandate security practices.

This is one of those bills that sounds good for the headlines (cybercrime is bad, we need to stop it), but has the opposite effect in reality: setting up needless "standards" that actually prevent good security practices. It's bills like both of these that remind us that technologically illiterate politicians making technology policy will do funky things, assuming that technology works with some sort of magic.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, immigration, national id, politicians, technology

Why Shouldn't Jurors Be Able To Use Technology To Do More Research?

from the yeah,-that's-not-going-to-work dept

We've pointed out in the past that, eventually, the judicial system is going to have to come to terms with the fact that people use technology to research and communicate, rather than trying to pretend it can be stopped. But, it sounds like that's going to take a while. Courts are increasingly looking to ban jurors from using any kind of technology. And yes, before we go through this again, we understand the arguments why courts do this (so no need to keep repeating it in the comments like last time). The question is does this really make sense? The idea that you have no outside influences in making a decision as a jury is an idealistic fantasy anyway. Jurors always make decisions based on their own history and experiences. It's part of what makes a jury a jury. Otherwise, you'd just have one guy who would weigh all the facts in a case and who would always pop out a perfect decision. So, if we can admit that jurors are always bringing outside information (in the form of their own life history and knowledge) into the court room, can't we at least begin to understand why there's an argument for letting smart jurors make use of technology to better understand the issues at play?

Filed Under: juries, jurors, research, technology

USPTO Rejects Submission Because It Was Faxed 'Upside Down'

from the these-people-guard-our-innovation? dept

It's no secret that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has outdated technology. But did you know it was so bad they can't even figure out how to rotate a fax? Erik Sherman alerts us to a story he's written about the USPTO rejecting a faxed submission, because it was "received upside down." Seriously.

Your request to record a document in the United States Patent and Trademark Office was received via electronic fax on [date and time in 2010 omitted].

The faxed submission was received upside down. We are unable to continue processing these images.

Please resubmit your document.

My guess? Perhaps the "technology" to rotate a document was patented, and the USPTO didn't want to pay the licensing fee.

Filed Under: fax, patents, technology, uspto
Companies: uspto

Technology Blamed For Bad Grammar Despite Total Lack Of Causal Evidence

from the wow dept

We were just recently reporting on yet another in a very long line of studies that showed that instant messaging and texting was actually helping kids have better writing skills. So, it was interesting to see an article published up in Canada (thanks to Marcus Carab for sending this in) that claimed a study "proving" that Twitter and texting was causing grammar and spelling problems for students. But, if you read the details of the article, they don't say that at all. It's entirely made up by the reporter. It's done with a neat little rhetorical trick. The title of the article says:

Students failing because of Twitter, texting

Okay, fair enough. Let's see the details of how Twitter and texting are leading students to fail.

The opening paragraph is:

Little or no grammar teaching, cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, all are being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can't write properly.

First note that the reporter combines "little or no grammar teaching" with "cellphone texting, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter," even though those are very, very different issues. Onto the next few paragraphs, where the rhetorical "switch" is pulled:

For years there's been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students.

Now there seems to be some solid evidence.

Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills.

Almost a third of those students are failing.

Now, if you're not reading carefully, you might think this claimed that there was "proof" that texting or social networking sites were leading students to fail. But that's not what's being said at all. The only "proof" is a study showing that students aren't doing well on a particular grammar test. It presents no evidence as to why. It also presents no evidence that suggests that it's any worse than at any time in the past, since it doesn't present any historical comparison at all. It just says a bunch of students are failing and blames texting and Twitter, despite all those actual studies that say the opposite.

Nowhere else in the article does it present any evidence at all that texting or Twittering has anything to do with the grammar skills of students. Instead, there are a few people who suggest the real problem was that first one listed: the lack of any grammar instruction in high schools. But, I guess that doesn't make a very good headline or opening of an article.

Filed Under: grammar, schools, students, technology

Did The Automobile Dehumanize Walking? No? Then Does Google Dehumanize Intelligence?

from the no dept

Kevin sent over one of Nick Carr's latest ramblings, attacking Google and its VP Marissa Mayer for saying: "It's not what you know, it's what you can find out." That statement is a little too bland to actually catch on, but is hardly a new idea. In fact, we've argued that this is the case for many years. If you have regular access to a vast computer network that lets you find stuff, you can actually have your biological brain focus on more important things, rather than cramming it with things you can easily find out. In fact, with various studies suggesting the real key to intelligence is better forgetting rather than better remembering, you could argue that not having to remember certain things can be of great benefit.

But not to Nick Carr, apparently. To him, this means that people are becoming "intellectually dehumanized." And this is a bad, bad thing:

Truth is self-created through labor, through the hard, inefficient, unscripted work of the mind, through the indirection of dream and reverie. What matters is what cannot be rendered as code. Google can give you everything but meaning.

But this presupposes all sorts of incorrect things -- such as the idea that what information you don't store in your brain can't be used for sussing out meaning. It reminds me of the people who insisted, years ago, that calculators would destroy everyone's ability to do basic math, and that this would inevitably lead to the downfall of society. Sure, I may not totally remember my times tables, but being able to quickly use a calculator to figure out something isn't really a problem at all. And, much more importantly, it means that I can do much more complex mathematical calculations as well. The same is true of Google. Sure, we may not remember little bits of information here or there, but we can more easily bring together a much, much, much larger corpus of information, and synthesize that in a useful way in our brains. There is no rule that you should only use what's stored directly in your mind to think about things.

The calculator didn't dehumanize math. The automobile didn't dehumanize walking. And Google, most certainly, has not dehumanized intelligence. It's only enabled it to do much, much more.

Filed Under: dehumanizing, nick carr, technology, tools
Companies: google

Novelist And Poet Says Google Books And The Kindle Are 'Nazi' Technology

from the hello,-luddite dept

If you thought that author Sherman Alexie's views on the Kindle were quintessential luddism, you haven't seen anything yet. Reader JonMontgo alerts us to a rather stunning opinion by novelist and poet Alan Kaufman who goes into full rant mode, calling Google Books and the Kindle to be the end result of Nazism. It's hard to read this and not wonder if someone flipped a bit somewhere. He goes on and on, making wild cognitive leaps that have no basis in reality. The basic summary is that Nazis used "high tech" methods to more efficiently exterminate the Jews, and thus, pretty much any modern technology that hasn't been carefully reviewed to make sure it can only be used for good purposes, is a continuation of Nazi efforts. Furthermore, the Nazi's hated books, and thus, these new technologies are really designed to kill books, and claims that paper books are killing trees are simply propaganda from people trying to destroy books. Seriously. Here's just a bit:

Today's hi-tech propagandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form that society would be better off without. In its place, they want us to carry around the Uber-Kindle.

The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas, where every examination of a text leaves behind a trail, a record, so that curiosity is also tinged with a sense of disquieting fear that some day someone in authority will know that one had read a particular book or essay. This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit.

Now, to be sure, there are reasonable concerns about the electronic trail we leave in using technology. And there are concerns about who really "owns" the digital book you access, and how much control you have over it as well as how much data you send back. But comparing it to the Nazis and concentration camps? That goes way overboard. And yet, Kaufman hasn't just leapt off that board, he's done so gleefully, in great detail:

The Nazis often were, by their own lights, well-intentioned idealists working for a better tomorrow. And their instrument was modern technology, aspects of philosophical and aesthetic modernism and the old religious concept of supercession implicit in the Christian notion of progress. Jews were outmoded, useless, they said. Most high level Nazis, like Himmler or Heydrich or Eichmann, did not feel visceral hatred towards the Jew. Rather, they looked upon them coldly as something that simply needed to disappear so that the new life could get on its way. And the means by which they sought to do so was first through a propaganda campaign that portrayed Jews, in Wagnerian terms, as a drag on the visionary energies and bursting vigor of the new Aryan man, and then by the implementation of this decision to eliminate Jews through ever more sophisticated state corporate and scientific technological means. And yet, during the war crime trials at Nuremberg, while Nazi Jurisprudence was tried and hanged, Nazi technological attitudes were not put on trial.

The victorious Allies did not mandate that technology, which had been turned to such murderous ends, must pass an ethical standard review from an international body, like a UN of technology. No such body of decision came about. To the contrary, even while the war crime trials of Nazi chieftains were in session, American and Soviet governments were recruiting high-level Nazis to their intelligence services, military armaments industries, and space programs. So that, while in jurisprudence terms Nazi social and political values were delivered a blow, the Nazi fascination with technology merged seamlessly with that of their conquerors: us.

Normally, I would just call Godwin's Law, and move on, but this is just beyond bizarre. Automatically assuming that all new high tech is a straight line from the Holocaust is just sickening and delusional beyond pretty much any level of standard luddism.

Filed Under: alan kaufman, books, google books, kindle, nazis, technology
Companies: amazon, google

NYC Cabbies Who Resisted Credit Card Machines... Now Making More Money Because Of Them

from the resisting-technology dept

A rather common theme around here is how often various industries resist the use of new technologies, fearing that those technologies will somehow harm or even destroy the industry. And yet, before too long, the opposite turns out to be true. Remember how Jack Valenti declared the VCR to be the "Boston Strangler" to the movie industry? Just a few years later, revenue from VCR rentals and sales represented a massive part of the movie business's yearly income. It happens over and over again. The NY Times has a different kind of example of the same basic thing. Two years ago, Mayor Bloomberg in NY pushed for taxis to be required to take credit cards. The cabbies resisted, complaining that it would cause all sorts of problems. They even went on strike over the issue.

And yet, two years later, having easy to use credit card readers in the back of every cab means that more people are taking cabs, because it's easier, and they tend to tip more as well. Part of that is because the machines have "preset" tip suggestions that many riders use, which often result in higher tips than average. While the article still quotes a few angry cab drivers who insist that higher tips aren't true, the reporter was able to review the receipts from a few cabs and found that the average tip was 18%, with the preset tip suggestions being used more than half the time. While it's still early, it certainly seems like this was yet another overreaction to new technology that has actually ended up helping, rather than hurting.

Filed Under: cabs, credit cards, nyc, technology