NY Times Says No To Useful App Rather Than Improving Memory

from the backwards-thinking dept

I have to admit that, while I became a fan of Twitter a while back, it jumped up to a new level when I started using a client-side app called Tweetdeck. While the app has many problems (it is still beta), it allows you to make use of Twitter in a very different way -- laying out a series of groups and searches in near real time, such that it turns the stream of information into a series of very useful flows. From the perspective of trying to stay up on certain types of news, it's become the most important app on my desktop. There are many, many things I wish they would improve upon, with a big one being memory management. It sucks up memory like crazy. However, my solution was to go out and buy some more memory for my laptop. Apparently, the NY Times has gone in the other direction. Mathew Ingram points to an internal memo at the NY Times where it says that due to Tweetdeck's memory issues, the paper is asking employees not to use it anymore -- though, to their credit, it doesn't appear to be a demand, but a request. On top of that, the NY Times suggests that other apps can do the job. That may be true, but I've tested a bunch of different competing apps (hoping they could get over Tweetdeck's other shortcomings) but I'm back on Tweetdeck because those other apps have even more problems, but Ingram again explains the better solution: "I agree that Tweetdeck can be a memory hog, and can sympathize with the NYT-- but the solution is buy more RAM, not exclude Tweetdeck."

Filed Under: apps, memory, tweetdeck
Companies: ny times, tweetdeck

Google's PageRank Works Like Our Brains

from the what's-your-brainrank? dept

We've joked in the past about how Google effectively acts as a a secondary or "backup" brain for many people. However, perhaps it wasn't so much of a joke. New research on how human memory and recall works suggests that the process is quite similar to Google's PageRank in determining what things are more important and should be recalled first. Basically, Google's PageRank looks at "popularity," not just in terms of how many links a site gets, but also in terms of how popular those links are. Thus, if you get linked from a more popular site, that's more valuable than getting linked by a bunch of non-popular sites. It turns out that the brain does something similar in linking concepts, judging not just the popularity, but the popularity of the concepts linked to the concepts. In fact, using Google's PageRank turned out to be a better predictor of how a brain would prioritize words than more commonly known methods.

This could be an interesting finding for the artificial intelligence community. After all, many in the AI community have been trying to figure out how to make computers act more like human brains for years, and various brute force methods haven't worked all that well. Obviously, the AI world has worked on various neural net research for quite some time, but it's nice to see at least some confirmation from the psychology side concerning a way to match up brains and algorithms. A couple years ago, we noted that intelligence was often correlated to people who knew what to forget rather than trying to remember everything. What that really shows is that good brains are better at prioritizing and ranking the importance of something -- and that's exactly what PageRank is intended to do. So, now, we just need Larry Page to get back from his honeymoon and get to work on BrainRank. Or would that be PageBrain? Of course, it's also worth noting that with the rise of search engine spamming, rumor has it that Google doesn't use PageRank that much any more. Perhaps that just means that our brains are vulnerable to concept spamming as well...

Filed Under: brains, memory, pagerank, psychology, recall
Companies: google

When Your Backup Brain (i.e., Technology) Takes On Primary Memory Functions

from the i'd-say-it's-bad,-but-my-computer-disagrees... dept

For years, we've talked about the idea that computers and the internet are becoming something of a backup or second brain. The more we use these technologies, the more we allow them to remember stuff for us -- knowing we can always track down that information. In fact, Clive Thompson's latest column is about how the generation of kids growing up online tend not to remember little things that older generations definitely remember, like phone numbers and birthdays. Why remember those things when they're easily stored away and easily accessed thanks to technology? While Thompson talks about how nice it is that he can feel much smarter while he's connected, he also worries that it makes him "mentally crippled" when not connected. There may be something to that idea. After all, a few years ago there was a story about Steve Mann, a professor who had been living his life with a wearable computing system for 20 years. At an airport, he was forced to take the apparatus off and immediately had trouble functioning normally. He had become so reliant on the technological enhancements, that being without them left him somewhat crippled. While few people will have reached that point, it's certainly suggestive of what happens if we become too reliant on those external backup brains. That's not to say we shouldn't be using technology for this purpose -- or even that it's not a good thing. However, we should be aware of what it means and potentially the impact should it go away (temporarily or permanently).

Filed Under: human computer interaction, memory