The most important political issues to me have always been based around personal freedom and empowerment. I feel like all other interests and concerns should step aside in favor of giving individuals the most freedom and opportunities to live the life they most desire. I also feel like such a mission is a cooperative effort, acknowledging that people working together are capable of achieving far greater net accomplishment than a few individuals climbing to the top on the backs of others. It is with these values that I have great concern for the current position of the US government on many issues. Here is what I believe should happen if we are to truly achieve status as a great nation of great individuals:
1. End the War on Drugs
Nearly every academic analysis of the war on drugs in recent years has determined that it is a failure that has cost the world more money and lives than it has saved. Further, while the war itself is a drain on resources, drug legalization would help raise money, albeit a small amount. But the main reason that the war on drugs must end is that it constitutes, in its very principle, a violation of the human right to consume or not consume anything we choose. If a government were truly acting in the best interest of its citizens, this would be the most straight-forward change to make.
2. Replace For-Profit Health Insurance
On the topic of human rights, health (along with financial mobility) is an often-marginalized aspect of freedom. As individuals, we have nothing if not our health. This is why we cannot allow private, self-interested institutions to have a monopoly on decisions about our healthcare. A public healthcare service would allow all citizens a high standard level of care, improving overall health and reducing the cost of healthcare as a whole by emphasizing preventative care and best practices.
3. Campaign Finance and Lobby Reform
It should be apparent to anyone: allowing private money to affect the strength and message of public political campaigns will result in the rich and powerful having their interests catered to by politicians. This hardly ever works out in the favor of the masses. Imposing a limit to the amount that private interests can contribute to a political candidate and budgeting for publicly funded elections would help even the playing field to allow the public to rally around candidates who truly speak with their voice.
4. End Corporate Personhood
The notion that corporations are people is both practically absurd and politically dangerous. In addition to enabling undue influence in politics by large and irresponsible corporations, the status of personhood seems to come with no liability that natural persons must deal with. You cannot arrest a corporation or send them to jail. So, while corporations enjoy the benefits of being regarded as persons, they suffer none of the drawbacks. This outlook weighs heavily in their favor and must be struck down.
5. Keep the Internet Neutral
Lawmakers don’t know what to make of the Internet, so they let their most vocal (read: generous) constituents tell them what to think. To this end, we have had numerous attempts at regulating the content and flow of the Internet. Such measures are always heavy-handed, misguided and vague pieces of legislature that display no foresight or savvy. The UN has proposed that Internet access should be a human right and attempts by businesses to censor and manipulate that right are a terrible precedent.
6. Rebalance Taxes
Today, taxes are treated like a punishment on people who aren’t financially savvy enough to avoid them. Much has been said recently about the top 1% and their lack of contribution, accumulating wealth rapidly while the rest of society finds that their financial mobility resembles feudal Europe. While the rich insist that their wealth allows them to provide jobs for others, the numbers simply do not tell the same story. Their wealth will do much more good in the hands of the public, enabling lower and middle class families to invest and build their lives without such a heavy tax burden.
7. Refocus On Infrastructure, Science, Technology, Health and Education
In a world where every fix must be quick and cheap, it would be refreshing to once again embrace the concept of investing in our people and our future. Infrastructure, science, technology, health and education; the US has fallen behind its contemporaries in every category. Despite the optimism with which people regard life in the States, it is unfortunately much more pleasant in other parts of the world these days. These sectors are important for both societal strength and long-term economic growth. It is a shame that we are so focused on paranoid national defense and costly band-aids for the banking industry.
8. Reform Intellectual Property Law
As they stand, intellectual property laws are less about protecting creators and more about stifling competition. When there exist firms whose only reason for existence is to purchase patents for the purpose of litigation against potential infringement, you know something is wrong. Patents themselves can be so vague so as to eliminate entire classes of products from being developed. Copyright law is also getting out of hand, with the RIAA and MPAA able to fund legislation through the US Congress. We should be encouraging the exchange of ideas and information, not jealously guarding it with aggressive legislation and litigation.
9. Repeal the Patriot Act and NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act)
It’s been over a decade since 9/11, yet we are still looking for ways to skirt around due process. From a concerned citizen’s perspective, it seems like the government has very little respect for the freedom that we’re all supposedly born with. It has been demonstrated that the security measures instituted in the last 10 years have been largely for show, with the few breakthroughs coming through traditional (and legal) information gathering techniques. It’s time to return to the rule of law that the authors of the US Constitution envisioned.
20 January 2012
Of Piracy And Entitlement
You can’t escape the topic du jour: piracy of copyrighted intellectual property. First, the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) protests and now the take down of MegaUpload. I’ve made it clear that, in its current form, copyright law needs to change and the companies enforcing that law are often doing so to lash out in defense of their dwindling influence. That doesn’t mean, though, that I support wholesale redistribution of copyrighted content for profit. That is what MegaUpload is accused of and, after reading the indictment, I have to agree that they seriously played the game wrong.
In this game, there are two rules: don’t hijack content for your own profit, and don’t taunt the sharks. MegaUpload did both. And they got bitten.
The indictment can be read here: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/78786408
I’ll summarize it here:
As a website driven by user-submitted content, they would not have been held liable for illegal content uploaded to their servers if they had shown significant concern for the fact that such activity was happening. In actuality, any concern they might have shown was plainly false, as evidenced by their DMCA procedure of deactivating a link to a file rather than removing the file completely. Sure, they wouldn’t have made nearly as much money, but they also wouldn’t be in jail right now.
Now, you might ask what the difference is between MegaUpload and a torrent site like The Pirate Bay. The big difference is that MegaUpload actually hosted offending content on servers that they paid for and made money directly from the viewing and downloading of said content. Torrent sites, on the other hand, simply aggregate information about potentially downloadable files. The files themselves are distributed amongst the anonymous users and never actually hosted in a central location. Torrent sites may make money from advertisements displayed while users browse the listings, but a listing is a mere reference and nothing more. Torrent trackers are a little closer to the action, and they actually facilitate the connection between users sharing their files, but at no point does either the tracker or the torrent listing site actually possess a single byte of copyrighted data.
So here’s my beef: people are playing it off like MegaUpload was the victim of a corrupt government crackdown. It’s as if they feel entitled to unchallenged piracy. They knew they were sticking it to the man by taking part in the parade and they are offended that the cops were waiting for them at the end of the street. I feel like this attitude is absolutely devastating to the otherwise legitimate message that the act of piracy attempts to convey.
Let’s get our story straight here. Piracy exists because the barrier to enjoy copyrighted content is unnecessarily high. It costs too much. It is not easy enough to acquire. It is not available in the formats users desire. It is riddled with boobytraps to restrict our freedom to enjoy it how users want to. Very little of the money users pay actually goes to the creators of the content. Pirated versions present a superior user experience. By pirating content, users are voting for a better, more affordable product, not simply a free product.
What users do NOT want to convey is that they are entitled to free content at the producer’s and distributor’s expense. Further, in order to successfully convey the right message, users must also demonstrate that they are well-informed and respectful of the law, despite not agreeing with it. MegaUpload was not respectful of the laws that they violated and lashing out in revenge for them is tactless, immature and delusional.
In this game, there are two rules: don’t hijack content for your own profit, and don’t taunt the sharks. MegaUpload did both. And they got bitten.
The indictment can be read here: http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/78786408
I’ll summarize it here:
- They were aware of the existence of offending files on their servers.
- They had the capability to detect offending files at any time.
- They did nothing to prevent the upload of offending files.
- DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down requests resulted in only the deactivation of a link to an offending file, not the removal of the file itself, allowing other links to the same file to continue to work.
- They created for-pay services that specifically capitalized off of copyrighted material.
- They offered uploaders rewards for uploading heavily downloaded files, but did not punish them for uploading copyrighted material.
- They inserted advertisements in front of streaming copyrighted material.
- They willingly and swiftly identified and took down child porn, but not copyrighted material.
- They presented the facade of a legitimate media sharing service by manipulating their “top files” listing to only display legal files.
- They presented the facade of a personal private online storage service, but only offered such capability to their highest tier of paying customers.
- They made no payments to the copyright owners whose content they made money from hosting and streaming.
- They copied videos directly from YouTube to effectively create a larger collection of videos.
- The management of the site themselves used MegaUpload to upload, download and share copyrighted material.
- Actually remove the files indicated by DMCA requests.
- Not reward users if the file they uploaded was found to violate copyright law.
- Use their knowledge of existing offending files to prevent them from being repeatedly uploaded.
- Offered to compensate copyright holders.
As a website driven by user-submitted content, they would not have been held liable for illegal content uploaded to their servers if they had shown significant concern for the fact that such activity was happening. In actuality, any concern they might have shown was plainly false, as evidenced by their DMCA procedure of deactivating a link to a file rather than removing the file completely. Sure, they wouldn’t have made nearly as much money, but they also wouldn’t be in jail right now.
Now, you might ask what the difference is between MegaUpload and a torrent site like The Pirate Bay. The big difference is that MegaUpload actually hosted offending content on servers that they paid for and made money directly from the viewing and downloading of said content. Torrent sites, on the other hand, simply aggregate information about potentially downloadable files. The files themselves are distributed amongst the anonymous users and never actually hosted in a central location. Torrent sites may make money from advertisements displayed while users browse the listings, but a listing is a mere reference and nothing more. Torrent trackers are a little closer to the action, and they actually facilitate the connection between users sharing their files, but at no point does either the tracker or the torrent listing site actually possess a single byte of copyrighted data.
So here’s my beef: people are playing it off like MegaUpload was the victim of a corrupt government crackdown. It’s as if they feel entitled to unchallenged piracy. They knew they were sticking it to the man by taking part in the parade and they are offended that the cops were waiting for them at the end of the street. I feel like this attitude is absolutely devastating to the otherwise legitimate message that the act of piracy attempts to convey.
Let’s get our story straight here. Piracy exists because the barrier to enjoy copyrighted content is unnecessarily high. It costs too much. It is not easy enough to acquire. It is not available in the formats users desire. It is riddled with boobytraps to restrict our freedom to enjoy it how users want to. Very little of the money users pay actually goes to the creators of the content. Pirated versions present a superior user experience. By pirating content, users are voting for a better, more affordable product, not simply a free product.
What users do NOT want to convey is that they are entitled to free content at the producer’s and distributor’s expense. Further, in order to successfully convey the right message, users must also demonstrate that they are well-informed and respectful of the law, despite not agreeing with it. MegaUpload was not respectful of the laws that they violated and lashing out in revenge for them is tactless, immature and delusional.
19 January 2012
A Word On Piracy of Intellectual Property
Let’s analyze the current debate about intellectual property, along with the bills SOPA and PIPA. I will begin with an observation:
Content distributors support SOPA and PIPA. Content creators and sharers are against SOPA and PIPA.
By now, everyone should be up to date on what exactly are SOPA and PIPA, but to sum it up, they are twin bills going through Congress that seek to punish sites for featuring copyright-infringing content. These bills were funded by groups like the RIAA and MPAA to protect their businesses against the new and growing threat of unauthorized internet distribution. This is done under the guise of protecting “American” intellectual property against foreign theives.
Earlier today, the world’s most popular site for copyrighted content sharing, The Pirate Bay, issued a press release that made a fine point:
There you have it: Hollywood and the MPAA would not exist today if not for the initiative to skirt existing copyright law. Now, they are the ones who are fighting hardest to uphold it in the wild frontier of the Internet.
Content creators, otherwise known as artists, oppose SOPA and PIPA because they understand how sharing not only plays a part in their creative process, but also benefits their careers by exposing their work to a larger audience. Gone is the Metallica mentality. Artists do not create in a vacuum. They are influenced by other artists. They sample and borrow snippets to create whole new pieces. Andy Warhol’s legacy would be diminished if not for wholesale copying of images of Campbell’s Soup and Marilyn Monroe. The entire “jungle” genre of electronic music is based off the unauthorized sampling of a single piece of copyrighted music. Every aspect of society and culture is built from the pieces that came before it.
The Internet decentralizes artistic promotion. No longer are artists required to sign with a label or distribution company in order to get their works seen and heard by an audience. The quality of their work speaks for itself as their audience distributes it willingly based on their enjoyment. The whole process builds community, loyalty and collaboration like nothing that centralized distribution could ever hope to achieve. In other words, the RIAA and MPAA now have a better, more efficient competitor, and they’re trying to use Congress to stamp it out.
Of course there is the question of if actual damage is caused by illegal sharing and usage of copyrighted material. The going rate for music sharing is a penalty of around $150,000 per song. When it costs about $1 to purchase a song, coupled with the fact that only but the most extremely popular songs are downloaded as many times from a single source, such a charge is outrageous and completely out of line with similar crimes. Serious fraud and property damage carries lesser fines. If damage is caused by illegal sharing and usage, it is unlikely to match the magnitude that their fines indicate.
If we were to value every song at such an enormous rate, it would be safe to say that the barrier of entry for using any song in, say, a video montage would force the montage creator to forgo music completely. The result is that nobody hears the music, nobody gets curious and looks it up. Nobody listens to the album that its on and develops a love for the artist. Nobody buys tickets to the concert when the artist visits their town. The distributor and the artist lose out by restricting use and enjoyment of their product to only people who have been distinctly marketed to and have paid the upfront cost. In this way, it is likely that distributors are actually harming their business by aggressively enforcing their copyrights.
In the meantime, while the artist or distributor may not be paid up front by the consumer who illegally downloads a song, there are more opportunities for both parties to make money. The consumer may later purchase the song or album, or may purchase a subsequent song that they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. There are concert tickets and merchandise to consider. There is word of mouth, which gets an enormous boost when consumers don’t feel like their wallets are being pried open.
In 1979, Fred Rogers, known for his PBS show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, appeared before the Supreme Court to testify against the idea that recording a television show with a VCR (or Betamax in this case) is piracy. The Supreme Court upheld his testimony in their ruling. It seems that the lesson was not learned, however, because distributors still consider music sharing to be theft. The primary motivation for this classification must be victimization because it does not coincide with any economical analysis.
With any shift in the way intellectual property is distributed, it is up to the artists and primary distributors to change their tactics or else they fall behind the trends, which are far more powerful than legislation. Fashion designers, in response to having their designs copied by counterfeiters, have resorted to making their designs more complex, using materials and construction that are impossible to replicate with ease. The rock band Foo Fighters recorded their latest album Wasting Light using only analog equipment and every CD was packaged with a small section of the master tape, thus giving the consumer incentive to purchase a valid copy of the album. Solutions are out there, but it takes a certain sense of entitlement to think that using the courts is an acceptable substitute for coming up with them.
The reason why movies and music are pirated in the first place has less to do with getting things for free and has more to do with accessibility. Media is overpriced to begin with, and when people can afford it, they are required to put up with a range of hassles in order to enjoy it. DRM (digital rights management) and copy protection often prevent consumers from enjoying their purchase in many ways. The measures that companies put in place to protect their content from being stolen ends up motivating consumers to find an alternative distribution without those hassles. Still, despite all of this, companies are posting record profits while weathering ever-increasing piracy rates.
It is understandable to be sympathetic towards the MPAA, the RIAA and the gaming industry. After all, the existing law is on their side and every business has the right to pursue a profit. Not to mention that companies are obligated to enforce their copyrights, lest they lose them. Further, it seems to be that the people most responsible for the alleged copyright infringement are the ones calling for copyright law reform, stating that there has been a paradigm shift -- one that they started. But, as a society, a few principles should be held above all other motives. Freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas top that list, and any legislation that supposes to inhibit these principles, either by direct restriction or by interpretation of vague statues, should be struck down swiftly and conclusively.
Content distributors support SOPA and PIPA. Content creators and sharers are against SOPA and PIPA.
By now, everyone should be up to date on what exactly are SOPA and PIPA, but to sum it up, they are twin bills going through Congress that seek to punish sites for featuring copyright-infringing content. These bills were funded by groups like the RIAA and MPAA to protect their businesses against the new and growing threat of unauthorized internet distribution. This is done under the guise of protecting “American” intellectual property against foreign theives.
Earlier today, the world’s most popular site for copyrighted content sharing, The Pirate Bay, issued a press release that made a fine point:
Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear". He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
There you have it: Hollywood and the MPAA would not exist today if not for the initiative to skirt existing copyright law. Now, they are the ones who are fighting hardest to uphold it in the wild frontier of the Internet.
Content creators, otherwise known as artists, oppose SOPA and PIPA because they understand how sharing not only plays a part in their creative process, but also benefits their careers by exposing their work to a larger audience. Gone is the Metallica mentality. Artists do not create in a vacuum. They are influenced by other artists. They sample and borrow snippets to create whole new pieces. Andy Warhol’s legacy would be diminished if not for wholesale copying of images of Campbell’s Soup and Marilyn Monroe. The entire “jungle” genre of electronic music is based off the unauthorized sampling of a single piece of copyrighted music. Every aspect of society and culture is built from the pieces that came before it.
The Internet decentralizes artistic promotion. No longer are artists required to sign with a label or distribution company in order to get their works seen and heard by an audience. The quality of their work speaks for itself as their audience distributes it willingly based on their enjoyment. The whole process builds community, loyalty and collaboration like nothing that centralized distribution could ever hope to achieve. In other words, the RIAA and MPAA now have a better, more efficient competitor, and they’re trying to use Congress to stamp it out.
Of course there is the question of if actual damage is caused by illegal sharing and usage of copyrighted material. The going rate for music sharing is a penalty of around $150,000 per song. When it costs about $1 to purchase a song, coupled with the fact that only but the most extremely popular songs are downloaded as many times from a single source, such a charge is outrageous and completely out of line with similar crimes. Serious fraud and property damage carries lesser fines. If damage is caused by illegal sharing and usage, it is unlikely to match the magnitude that their fines indicate.
If we were to value every song at such an enormous rate, it would be safe to say that the barrier of entry for using any song in, say, a video montage would force the montage creator to forgo music completely. The result is that nobody hears the music, nobody gets curious and looks it up. Nobody listens to the album that its on and develops a love for the artist. Nobody buys tickets to the concert when the artist visits their town. The distributor and the artist lose out by restricting use and enjoyment of their product to only people who have been distinctly marketed to and have paid the upfront cost. In this way, it is likely that distributors are actually harming their business by aggressively enforcing their copyrights.
In the meantime, while the artist or distributor may not be paid up front by the consumer who illegally downloads a song, there are more opportunities for both parties to make money. The consumer may later purchase the song or album, or may purchase a subsequent song that they wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. There are concert tickets and merchandise to consider. There is word of mouth, which gets an enormous boost when consumers don’t feel like their wallets are being pried open.
In 1979, Fred Rogers, known for his PBS show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, appeared before the Supreme Court to testify against the idea that recording a television show with a VCR (or Betamax in this case) is piracy. The Supreme Court upheld his testimony in their ruling. It seems that the lesson was not learned, however, because distributors still consider music sharing to be theft. The primary motivation for this classification must be victimization because it does not coincide with any economical analysis.
With any shift in the way intellectual property is distributed, it is up to the artists and primary distributors to change their tactics or else they fall behind the trends, which are far more powerful than legislation. Fashion designers, in response to having their designs copied by counterfeiters, have resorted to making their designs more complex, using materials and construction that are impossible to replicate with ease. The rock band Foo Fighters recorded their latest album Wasting Light using only analog equipment and every CD was packaged with a small section of the master tape, thus giving the consumer incentive to purchase a valid copy of the album. Solutions are out there, but it takes a certain sense of entitlement to think that using the courts is an acceptable substitute for coming up with them.
The reason why movies and music are pirated in the first place has less to do with getting things for free and has more to do with accessibility. Media is overpriced to begin with, and when people can afford it, they are required to put up with a range of hassles in order to enjoy it. DRM (digital rights management) and copy protection often prevent consumers from enjoying their purchase in many ways. The measures that companies put in place to protect their content from being stolen ends up motivating consumers to find an alternative distribution without those hassles. Still, despite all of this, companies are posting record profits while weathering ever-increasing piracy rates.
It is understandable to be sympathetic towards the MPAA, the RIAA and the gaming industry. After all, the existing law is on their side and every business has the right to pursue a profit. Not to mention that companies are obligated to enforce their copyrights, lest they lose them. Further, it seems to be that the people most responsible for the alleged copyright infringement are the ones calling for copyright law reform, stating that there has been a paradigm shift -- one that they started. But, as a society, a few principles should be held above all other motives. Freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas top that list, and any legislation that supposes to inhibit these principles, either by direct restriction or by interpretation of vague statues, should be struck down swiftly and conclusively.
10 December 2011
On Interfaces
Two movies, both depicting law enforcement in the future, have me thinking about the way in which we interact with electronics these days and where we’re headed with interface design. I begin by saying that the movies have it mostly wrong. In Timecop, released in 1994 and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, the cars of the future (in this case 2004) resemble airplane cockpits that require numerous switches to be toggled before a voice command is given to the self-driving vehicle. I laughed as I imagined myself performing this exhausting routine at every stop along my Sunday errand run. We should be grateful that cars today turn themselves on when you approach them. At least they got the voice command part right. Simplicity is key.
Even though this car drives itself, it is still a pain in the ass.
So is elegance, but it is by far the most difficult element of interface design to pair with simplicity. In the 2002 film Minority Report, the famous scene where Tom Cruise manipulates a reactive wrap-around display with graceful hand gestures inspired many interface designers over the next several years to actualize something similar. Out of that thread was spun intermediate incarnations that made their way to TED talks, as well as consumer products like the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect. And I’m here to say that, despite the sales figures and sense of elegance that these interfaces project, they are not simple.
Exhausting
I received a Nintendo Wii for my birthday roughly a year after it was released. I was anxious to experience what everyone was drooling over, so I bought games like Metroid Prime and Mario Kart. I was sorely disappointed. The act of holding up my hand and waving it around seemed almost draconian when I considered it against the alternative of needing only to wiggle my fingers across a keypad or to flick my wrist with a mouse in my hand. The act of aiming in Metroid Prime became exhausting and I quickly switched to button-based steering in Mario Kart as it was far more precise than actually turning the controller like a steering wheel. While the Wii remote inspired many new types of games that were enjoyable when played with a full range of motion, many players eventually found ways to minimize their physical exertion to properly manipulate the gyroscope inside it. The Wii craze was almost like a dance that goes along to a popular song; entertaining and fun for those who enjoyed the physical element, but unnecessary for experiencing a game. And the Kinect is more of the same.
Am I the only one who finds this less fun than using a controller?
Ultimately, I don’t want to wave my hand to manipulate my computer display -- I want to give a thought command. I’ll settle for just moving fingers, though. The interface in Minority Report was quite impressive visually, but using it would be exhausting. If I had to lift my arms and hold them out while arranging files on my computer, I would spend considerably less time on it. My girlfriend might like that, but I don’t.
She just wanted to forward a funny cartoon to her grandchildren.
Simplicity, therefore, is a minimal amount of effort required to perform tasks. But let’s get back to elegance. I see it as a sort of aesthetic flow associated with using an interface. Abundant elegance is why the Minority Report scene was so influential, especially when you consider the score it was set to (Franz Schubert's Symphony #8 in B Minor, an homage to the late Stanley Kubrick). But elegance is empty without simplicity in the world of interface design. As much as I detest the company and its former CEO, Apple has set the standard for simplicity and elegance in two markets; smart phones and laptop computers.
Politics and cost aside, there is an elegance to Apple’s smart phone iOS that its main competitor Android fails to grasp. The essence lies in movements; both by the graphical elements that the operating system displays and by the fingers that manipulate them. Android feels like it apologizes for the lack of buttons and tactile response, while the iOS embraces the flat glass screen as a tactile element in itself, relying more on swipes and multi-touch gestures than finger taps. Having used both, I find myself helplessly enslaved by the horrible politics surrounding the iPhone simply because I cannot part with the superior interface design. First world problems, I know.
Meanwhile, the multi-touch trackpad that Apple uses on all of its laptops has no competition. Though many people have preferences in using either Mac OS X or Windows, both systems are negligibly different to a normal user. Once again, cost and politics aside (as well as PC gaming tendencies), the process of using an Apple laptop is both simple and elegant, miles ahead of any Windows-based interface. And that includes touch-screens (once again, this requires too much movement for such simple tasks).
This is one of only two reasons to buy a Mac.
Surprisingly, Apple has failed to improve its desktop computing interface beyond the standard of the classic Windows-based PC, and in some cases has regressed. While laptops are more likely to be used for simple tasks and general productivity, desktop computers provide a more potentially demanding experience when it comes to interface design. A trackpad might be suitable for a small screen with no more than a couple windows open at any one time, but a large, high-resolution monitor with many elements on display and graphical programs requiring to-the-pixel accuracy is too much for mere touch. This is why a mouse is still superior for desktop computing and gaming. I will even add that while a Mac user may see their mouse’s lack of a button (or a second button, for that matter) as more simple, it is not an appropriate or useful “optimization” to the design of a mouse. Using a PC mouse with multiple buttons allows the user to approach the future of computing with mere finger flicks and maximum control with a single appendage.
As the reader, you’re free to disagree with me on any of these points. These are the aspects of interfaces that I think are important, but which interface you enjoy most is a personal thing. That’s why they still make manual transmissions for cars. That’s why they have a handset extension for mobile phones. But interfaces will always succeed by allowing the user to do more with less effort and by appealing to their sense of style at the same time.
I found this picture of you disagreeing with me.
Even though this car drives itself, it is still a pain in the ass.
So is elegance, but it is by far the most difficult element of interface design to pair with simplicity. In the 2002 film Minority Report, the famous scene where Tom Cruise manipulates a reactive wrap-around display with graceful hand gestures inspired many interface designers over the next several years to actualize something similar. Out of that thread was spun intermediate incarnations that made their way to TED talks, as well as consumer products like the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect. And I’m here to say that, despite the sales figures and sense of elegance that these interfaces project, they are not simple.
Exhausting
I received a Nintendo Wii for my birthday roughly a year after it was released. I was anxious to experience what everyone was drooling over, so I bought games like Metroid Prime and Mario Kart. I was sorely disappointed. The act of holding up my hand and waving it around seemed almost draconian when I considered it against the alternative of needing only to wiggle my fingers across a keypad or to flick my wrist with a mouse in my hand. The act of aiming in Metroid Prime became exhausting and I quickly switched to button-based steering in Mario Kart as it was far more precise than actually turning the controller like a steering wheel. While the Wii remote inspired many new types of games that were enjoyable when played with a full range of motion, many players eventually found ways to minimize their physical exertion to properly manipulate the gyroscope inside it. The Wii craze was almost like a dance that goes along to a popular song; entertaining and fun for those who enjoyed the physical element, but unnecessary for experiencing a game. And the Kinect is more of the same.
Am I the only one who finds this less fun than using a controller?
Ultimately, I don’t want to wave my hand to manipulate my computer display -- I want to give a thought command. I’ll settle for just moving fingers, though. The interface in Minority Report was quite impressive visually, but using it would be exhausting. If I had to lift my arms and hold them out while arranging files on my computer, I would spend considerably less time on it. My girlfriend might like that, but I don’t.
She just wanted to forward a funny cartoon to her grandchildren.
Simplicity, therefore, is a minimal amount of effort required to perform tasks. But let’s get back to elegance. I see it as a sort of aesthetic flow associated with using an interface. Abundant elegance is why the Minority Report scene was so influential, especially when you consider the score it was set to (Franz Schubert's Symphony #8 in B Minor, an homage to the late Stanley Kubrick). But elegance is empty without simplicity in the world of interface design. As much as I detest the company and its former CEO, Apple has set the standard for simplicity and elegance in two markets; smart phones and laptop computers.
Politics and cost aside, there is an elegance to Apple’s smart phone iOS that its main competitor Android fails to grasp. The essence lies in movements; both by the graphical elements that the operating system displays and by the fingers that manipulate them. Android feels like it apologizes for the lack of buttons and tactile response, while the iOS embraces the flat glass screen as a tactile element in itself, relying more on swipes and multi-touch gestures than finger taps. Having used both, I find myself helplessly enslaved by the horrible politics surrounding the iPhone simply because I cannot part with the superior interface design. First world problems, I know.
Meanwhile, the multi-touch trackpad that Apple uses on all of its laptops has no competition. Though many people have preferences in using either Mac OS X or Windows, both systems are negligibly different to a normal user. Once again, cost and politics aside (as well as PC gaming tendencies), the process of using an Apple laptop is both simple and elegant, miles ahead of any Windows-based interface. And that includes touch-screens (once again, this requires too much movement for such simple tasks).
This is one of only two reasons to buy a Mac.
Surprisingly, Apple has failed to improve its desktop computing interface beyond the standard of the classic Windows-based PC, and in some cases has regressed. While laptops are more likely to be used for simple tasks and general productivity, desktop computers provide a more potentially demanding experience when it comes to interface design. A trackpad might be suitable for a small screen with no more than a couple windows open at any one time, but a large, high-resolution monitor with many elements on display and graphical programs requiring to-the-pixel accuracy is too much for mere touch. This is why a mouse is still superior for desktop computing and gaming. I will even add that while a Mac user may see their mouse’s lack of a button (or a second button, for that matter) as more simple, it is not an appropriate or useful “optimization” to the design of a mouse. Using a PC mouse with multiple buttons allows the user to approach the future of computing with mere finger flicks and maximum control with a single appendage.
As the reader, you’re free to disagree with me on any of these points. These are the aspects of interfaces that I think are important, but which interface you enjoy most is a personal thing. That’s why they still make manual transmissions for cars. That’s why they have a handset extension for mobile phones. But interfaces will always succeed by allowing the user to do more with less effort and by appealing to their sense of style at the same time.
I found this picture of you disagreeing with me.
02 December 2011
The Great Tournament
What would you say if I told you that a football team was going to win its first million games? I'm guessing one of two things. Either you would say that it is impossible or that it could only happen with the help of god. Now, what would you say if I told you that the odds of some inanimate atoms coalescing together to form a living organism were even lower than a football team's chances of winning a million games? A billion? You'd probably say the same thing; that such an event was either impossible or that a god would have to be involved to help things along. So here we are, each a collection of inanimate atoms that have come together to form an immensely complex living organism. Just thinking about the odds is enough to make someone a believer. Now, what if I told you that a football team winning its first million games was inevitable?
Think about a college football single-elimination tournament with a million rounds. I'm not sure how many teams would have to start the tournament to make it that long, but bear with me for a moment. Let's fast forward to the end of the tournament, round #1,000,000. Both teams in this round are undefeated up to this point. (They have to be, or else they wouldn't be here.) That means their records are at 999,999 wins and 0 losses. Now, outside of this tournament perspective, you would say that it is impossible for any football team to win 999,999 games in a row. But here we are, with two of them. And the winner will reach a million. Guaranteed.
Nature is like an infinitely long tournament. In any given moment in time (round), in any given event (match), out of infinite possibilities (teams), only "one" thing can happen (winner). What determines what happens? Physics, quantum probabilities, starting positions, etc. (We can get into that in another post.) The end result is what we experience as our current reality. We look at all of the possibilities competing for the chance to continue and believe that, given the individual odds, it is impossible for any single one to occur, but the reality is that, due to the tournament nature of existence, there will always be a winner. We live in the winning scenario.
Now, when believers look at existence, they see a college football team with a record of 999,999 and declare that only a team with the guidance of god could accomplish such a feat. Rationalists, on the other hand, understand that a team with an undefeated record is 100% inevitable, given that nature works like a tournament of events. You could still argue that the specific team that wins the tournament was guided by god the entire time, but that would be unnecessary and misleading. If you were to look at the field of competitors at the beginning of the tournament (the big bang), you could not say which would be the winner. There would be too many competitors that each would have a minuscule chance of winning, and too many rounds where anything could happen. We can only comment on what we see before us now, the current results of The Great Tournament; both improbable and inevitable.
Think about a college football single-elimination tournament with a million rounds. I'm not sure how many teams would have to start the tournament to make it that long, but bear with me for a moment. Let's fast forward to the end of the tournament, round #1,000,000. Both teams in this round are undefeated up to this point. (They have to be, or else they wouldn't be here.) That means their records are at 999,999 wins and 0 losses. Now, outside of this tournament perspective, you would say that it is impossible for any football team to win 999,999 games in a row. But here we are, with two of them. And the winner will reach a million. Guaranteed.
Nature is like an infinitely long tournament. In any given moment in time (round), in any given event (match), out of infinite possibilities (teams), only "one" thing can happen (winner). What determines what happens? Physics, quantum probabilities, starting positions, etc. (We can get into that in another post.) The end result is what we experience as our current reality. We look at all of the possibilities competing for the chance to continue and believe that, given the individual odds, it is impossible for any single one to occur, but the reality is that, due to the tournament nature of existence, there will always be a winner. We live in the winning scenario.
Now, when believers look at existence, they see a college football team with a record of 999,999 and declare that only a team with the guidance of god could accomplish such a feat. Rationalists, on the other hand, understand that a team with an undefeated record is 100% inevitable, given that nature works like a tournament of events. You could still argue that the specific team that wins the tournament was guided by god the entire time, but that would be unnecessary and misleading. If you were to look at the field of competitors at the beginning of the tournament (the big bang), you could not say which would be the winner. There would be too many competitors that each would have a minuscule chance of winning, and too many rounds where anything could happen. We can only comment on what we see before us now, the current results of The Great Tournament; both improbable and inevitable.
12 November 2011
You've Become An Atheist, Now What?
All right, you've decided that god doesn't exist. I'm right there with you, but please forgive me if I question your motivations. If you're new to atheism, I'd say it's a good bet that your foundation of non-belief is still a little shaky. I don't assume to know why you've decided to declare yourself as a godless heathen, and don't think that I don't believe you, but as I'm about to explain, there's more to atheism than simply declaring that god doesn't exist. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: all that being an atheist means is that you don't believe in a god. There is no doctrine or set of morals that you have to follow. What I mean by "more" is this: the idea of god is so pervasive in our society and its believers are so persistent in touting their arguments, it is thus imperative that you reinforce your raw disbelief with real knowledge and rational thoughts.
Many people find themselves turning away from god because they cannot fathom why evil exists despite his omnipotence and supposed benevolence. Others still have had bad experiences with Church clergy. There are even some who simply never grew up with much religious pressure and gradually realized that there wasn't anything to believe in. I'm one of those. However, if you're a logician, you may notice that none of these reasons for turning away from god are actually arguments against his existence. They're primarily emotional intuitions that god probably doesn't exist, but, at best, you can say that you merely doubt his existence or maybe even misunderstand his nature. That's what a believer would pounce on when trying to turn you back to the flock, anyways.
When you think about it, no matter how you define god, the question of if one exists or not is ultimately a question about how reality works. If we believe that god actually interacts with reality, then studying the world should reveal god's nature. If god does not interact with the world, then contemplating one's existence is futile. The quick truth of the matter is that the people who are intimately involved in studying the world are the ones who are most likely to not believe in god. Why is that? Two reasons: the more we understand about the world, the more we see that it follows predictable and unbiased physical laws, and personal experiences of god can be generalized with well-understood psychological principles. What that means is that if god does exist, the most specific definition we could give it would be that of the unchanging, unpersonified laws of physics. That's a far cry from the classically defined meddling god of the bible.
But let's be honest, it's not always the big broad views of the world that inspire all of us to believe in god, sometimes it's the personal touches that we experience in our lives. It's the coincidences that make us feel like someone is looking out for us. It's the privileges we have that we must thank someone for. It's the strength we cannot find anywhere else but in something greater than us. Sometimes, it's even the voice inside our head that we cannot deny. The best response to all of that is always skepticism; is it really god? Do we have any proof? Could we be mistaken? Could it be that we are misled about the rarity of luck? Could it be that for every good thing we experience, we're ignoring a dozen bad things? Could it be that we have the strength within us already? Could it be that the voice is really our own?
If I were a doctor treating you for religion exposure, this would be my prescription:
Many born-again Christians claim that they used to be atheist as well. This is a tactic to make the atheist position appear to be assailable, but the truth may be that they never really understood what it meant to lack belief in a god. It all boils down to a single idea: reinforce your understanding of the world with real knowledge and the understanding of how knowledge is defined. With that foundation, any argument that seeks to tell you that you're wrong must pass through the same gauntlet of scrutiny that every other truth that we know about the world had to survive before we called it truth. You'll find that god, any way you look at it, fails the test every time. Then you'll know that you're really an atheist.
My personal resource list:
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Introduced me to a new way of thinking about historical analysis, probabilities, and so-called "experts."
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - Helped me understand that decision-making is not always about our preferences and abilities.
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins - Gives a thorough-but-basic overview of evolution and all of the sciences that go into understanding it.
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - Details the nature of natural selection by analyzing it's smallest unit; the gene.
A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss - This hour-long talk will update you on the current state of physics and cosmology in terms of understanding how the universe may have begun and how it may end.
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene - A thorough understanding of the physical nature of existence. Was just turned into a NOVA miniseries for easy consumption.
Many people find themselves turning away from god because they cannot fathom why evil exists despite his omnipotence and supposed benevolence. Others still have had bad experiences with Church clergy. There are even some who simply never grew up with much religious pressure and gradually realized that there wasn't anything to believe in. I'm one of those. However, if you're a logician, you may notice that none of these reasons for turning away from god are actually arguments against his existence. They're primarily emotional intuitions that god probably doesn't exist, but, at best, you can say that you merely doubt his existence or maybe even misunderstand his nature. That's what a believer would pounce on when trying to turn you back to the flock, anyways.
When you think about it, no matter how you define god, the question of if one exists or not is ultimately a question about how reality works. If we believe that god actually interacts with reality, then studying the world should reveal god's nature. If god does not interact with the world, then contemplating one's existence is futile. The quick truth of the matter is that the people who are intimately involved in studying the world are the ones who are most likely to not believe in god. Why is that? Two reasons: the more we understand about the world, the more we see that it follows predictable and unbiased physical laws, and personal experiences of god can be generalized with well-understood psychological principles. What that means is that if god does exist, the most specific definition we could give it would be that of the unchanging, unpersonified laws of physics. That's a far cry from the classically defined meddling god of the bible.
But let's be honest, it's not always the big broad views of the world that inspire all of us to believe in god, sometimes it's the personal touches that we experience in our lives. It's the coincidences that make us feel like someone is looking out for us. It's the privileges we have that we must thank someone for. It's the strength we cannot find anywhere else but in something greater than us. Sometimes, it's even the voice inside our head that we cannot deny. The best response to all of that is always skepticism; is it really god? Do we have any proof? Could we be mistaken? Could it be that we are misled about the rarity of luck? Could it be that for every good thing we experience, we're ignoring a dozen bad things? Could it be that we have the strength within us already? Could it be that the voice is really our own?
If I were a doctor treating you for religion exposure, this would be my prescription:
- A basic understanding of the natural sciences: physics, biology (especially evolution and neurology), and cosmology.
- A basic understanding of the social sciences: psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics.
- Exposure to logic: the black swan theory, and probability theory.
- The cultural history of religion.
- Countering apologetic arguments.
- Pointing out flaws in your old beliefs.
- Reconciling your old beliefs with your new knowledge.
Many born-again Christians claim that they used to be atheist as well. This is a tactic to make the atheist position appear to be assailable, but the truth may be that they never really understood what it meant to lack belief in a god. It all boils down to a single idea: reinforce your understanding of the world with real knowledge and the understanding of how knowledge is defined. With that foundation, any argument that seeks to tell you that you're wrong must pass through the same gauntlet of scrutiny that every other truth that we know about the world had to survive before we called it truth. You'll find that god, any way you look at it, fails the test every time. Then you'll know that you're really an atheist.
My personal resource list:
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Introduced me to a new way of thinking about historical analysis, probabilities, and so-called "experts."
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - Helped me understand that decision-making is not always about our preferences and abilities.
The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins - Gives a thorough-but-basic overview of evolution and all of the sciences that go into understanding it.
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - Details the nature of natural selection by analyzing it's smallest unit; the gene.
A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss - This hour-long talk will update you on the current state of physics and cosmology in terms of understanding how the universe may have begun and how it may end.
The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene - A thorough understanding of the physical nature of existence. Was just turned into a NOVA miniseries for easy consumption.
09 November 2011
Occam Guides The Way
What is Occam's Razor and why is it useful?
Occam's Razor is a preliminary tool of logical deduction. It states that when comparing two or more explanations for a phenomenon, the explanation with the fewest unproved assumptions is the most likely. It is useful in determining likelihood, but one should not be mislead in thinking that it points directly to the right choice. For a skeptic, Occam's Razor is about finding the most realistic explanation to favor while waiting for more information.
Here's an example:
Let's say you have to explain how the universe began. You do some measurements and calculations and discover a possible way that the universe could have begun on its own, using the existing laws of physics. You also have the alternate explanation of "god did it."
Now, let's compare these two options:
1. The theory where the universe started as a result of the laws of physics is simple, elegant, scientifically substantiated and mathematically sound. All elements of this argument are previously defined and proved. It's also falsifiable. The only thing missing is a direct observation.
2. The idea where god created the universe creates more questions than it answers. Yes, god did it, but what is god? Does god actually exist? What was god's intention in creating it? How do you prove it?
Both options explain the same thing, and are equal only because we lack a definitive smoking gun. In the future, as we learn more, this may change, but at this moment, all that matters is that either of these two answers COULD be true. We need a way to decide which answer is more likely.
Here comes Occam's Razor. Using it, we cut out explanations that introduce more questions than they resolve. The Razor favors the explanations with the fewest assumptions. Thus, option 2 is cut. WHY do we do this? Well, over history, it has repeatedly shown itself to be a reliable way to recognize bullshit for what it is. Occam's Razor predicts correct explanations quite well, too. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it is a good pragmatic tool.
Let's look at another application of Occam's Razor:
When trying to decide between materialism (matter and energy are the only things that exist) and dualism (apart from physical matter and energy, there is also a spiritual element to the world) we have to look at the assumptions that both positions make.
1. Materialism: Currently, physical matter and energy are the only things we have proved to exist in our world with any reliability. As a result, we find no compulsion to explain various mysteries like consciousness in terms of anything except physical phenomenon. While there is no smoking gun that shows the physical structure of our brains creating consciousness, we are able to manipulate the quality of consciousness very accurately through physical means.
2. Dualism: Without a smoking gun for materialism, dualism fills the unexplained gap with a simple answer - that of a spiritual element. However, this element is not clearly defined, nor has it been measured. It is one giant assumption.
As you can probably tell, Occam's Razor clearly favors materialism because we have indirect, but measurable evidence for it, while dualism seems to only exist as an option because materialism hasn't been explicitly proved.
Occam's Razor is a preliminary tool of logical deduction. It states that when comparing two or more explanations for a phenomenon, the explanation with the fewest unproved assumptions is the most likely. It is useful in determining likelihood, but one should not be mislead in thinking that it points directly to the right choice. For a skeptic, Occam's Razor is about finding the most realistic explanation to favor while waiting for more information.
Here's an example:
Let's say you have to explain how the universe began. You do some measurements and calculations and discover a possible way that the universe could have begun on its own, using the existing laws of physics. You also have the alternate explanation of "god did it."
Now, let's compare these two options:
1. The theory where the universe started as a result of the laws of physics is simple, elegant, scientifically substantiated and mathematically sound. All elements of this argument are previously defined and proved. It's also falsifiable. The only thing missing is a direct observation.
2. The idea where god created the universe creates more questions than it answers. Yes, god did it, but what is god? Does god actually exist? What was god's intention in creating it? How do you prove it?
Both options explain the same thing, and are equal only because we lack a definitive smoking gun. In the future, as we learn more, this may change, but at this moment, all that matters is that either of these two answers COULD be true. We need a way to decide which answer is more likely.
Here comes Occam's Razor. Using it, we cut out explanations that introduce more questions than they resolve. The Razor favors the explanations with the fewest assumptions. Thus, option 2 is cut. WHY do we do this? Well, over history, it has repeatedly shown itself to be a reliable way to recognize bullshit for what it is. Occam's Razor predicts correct explanations quite well, too. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it is a good pragmatic tool.
Let's look at another application of Occam's Razor:
When trying to decide between materialism (matter and energy are the only things that exist) and dualism (apart from physical matter and energy, there is also a spiritual element to the world) we have to look at the assumptions that both positions make.
1. Materialism: Currently, physical matter and energy are the only things we have proved to exist in our world with any reliability. As a result, we find no compulsion to explain various mysteries like consciousness in terms of anything except physical phenomenon. While there is no smoking gun that shows the physical structure of our brains creating consciousness, we are able to manipulate the quality of consciousness very accurately through physical means.
2. Dualism: Without a smoking gun for materialism, dualism fills the unexplained gap with a simple answer - that of a spiritual element. However, this element is not clearly defined, nor has it been measured. It is one giant assumption.
As you can probably tell, Occam's Razor clearly favors materialism because we have indirect, but measurable evidence for it, while dualism seems to only exist as an option because materialism hasn't been explicitly proved.
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