Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Cyberchondria
With people doing self-diagnosis (say with WebMD), "you've got a raging stomachache and you're feeling kind of fatigued, so you search online for the cause of your malady and conclude that you've got cancer." This link to the related Microsoft study is via Lifehacker and NYTimes.
Monday, November 24, 2008
University of the Future?
Maybe here is the solution to some of our large class sizes. . . . from Chronicle of Higher Education, November 28, 2008
Jeffrey R. Young, “Will Electric Professors Dream of Virtual Tenure?”
Excerpts . . . .
Last month at the NASA-Ames Research Center, a group of top scientists and business leaders gathered to plan a new university devoted to the idea that computers will soon become smarter than people.
The details of Singularity University, as the new institution will be called, are still being worked out — and so far the organizers are tight-lipped about their plans. But to hold such a discussion at all is a sign of growing acceptance that a new wave of computing technologies may be just ahead — with revolutionary implications for research and teaching.
The idea that gave the new university its name is championed by Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist who argues that by 2030, a moment — the "singularity" — will be reached when computers will outthink human brains. His argument is that several technologies that now seem grossly undeveloped — including nanotechnology and artificial-intelligence software — are growing at an exponential rate and thus will mature much faster than most linear-minded people realize. Once they do, computers will take leaps forward that most people can hardly imagine today.
Computerized research assistants might even do some of the work that graduate assistants do today. Professors will be able to assign hundreds of these electronic assistants to problems without having to get grant money to pay them.
Computers will become better at teaching than most human professors are once artificial intelligence exceeds the abilities of people. . . . These new computer teachers will have more patience than any human lecturer, and they will be able to offer every student individual attention — which sure beats a 500-person lecture course.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Volume 55, Issue 14, Page A13
Jeffrey R. Young, “Will Electric Professors Dream of Virtual Tenure?”
Excerpts . . . .
Last month at the NASA-Ames Research Center, a group of top scientists and business leaders gathered to plan a new university devoted to the idea that computers will soon become smarter than people.
The details of Singularity University, as the new institution will be called, are still being worked out — and so far the organizers are tight-lipped about their plans. But to hold such a discussion at all is a sign of growing acceptance that a new wave of computing technologies may be just ahead — with revolutionary implications for research and teaching.
The idea that gave the new university its name is championed by Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist who argues that by 2030, a moment — the "singularity" — will be reached when computers will outthink human brains. His argument is that several technologies that now seem grossly undeveloped — including nanotechnology and artificial-intelligence software — are growing at an exponential rate and thus will mature much faster than most linear-minded people realize. Once they do, computers will take leaps forward that most people can hardly imagine today.
Computerized research assistants might even do some of the work that graduate assistants do today. Professors will be able to assign hundreds of these electronic assistants to problems without having to get grant money to pay them.
Computers will become better at teaching than most human professors are once artificial intelligence exceeds the abilities of people. . . . These new computer teachers will have more patience than any human lecturer, and they will be able to offer every student individual attention — which sure beats a 500-person lecture course.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Volume 55, Issue 14, Page A13
Sunday, November 23, 2008
If you liked this ...
There is an interesting article by Clive Thompson in this Sunday NY Times Magazine on the progress of the $1 million Netflix challenge to improve their recommender results by 10%. The article does not shy away from the mechanics of search algorithms, including a discussion of how Singular Value Decomposition is useful for summarizing the search space. This level of detail often left out of the popular press when describing algorithms.
(By the way, one of the earliest and most cited papers on SVD is Deerwester, S., Dumais, S. T. , Furnas, G. W., Landauer, T. K., & Harshman, R., Indexing by Latent Semantic Analysis, JASIS, 1990.)
Thompson goes to talk about the “Napoleon Dynamite” problem and Netflix’s internal debate of whether hiring cinephiles to tag all 100,000 movies would help. The article ends with Pattie Maes questioning whether computer search alone with ever be enough. Instead, future recommender systems might need to a mixture of algorithmic and social networking tools.
In all, it the article provides a great discussion of rather complex issues about recommender systems. He makes it clear how progress can measured empirically, how difficult it is to improving algorithms even by a fraction of a percent, and science can advance through an open dialogue among highly competitive research teams.
(By the way, one of the earliest and most cited papers on SVD is Deerwester, S., Dumais, S. T. , Furnas, G. W., Landauer, T. K., & Harshman, R., Indexing by Latent Semantic Analysis, JASIS, 1990.)
Thompson goes to talk about the “Napoleon Dynamite” problem and Netflix’s internal debate of whether hiring cinephiles to tag all 100,000 movies would help. The article ends with Pattie Maes questioning whether computer search alone with ever be enough. Instead, future recommender systems might need to a mixture of algorithmic and social networking tools.
In all, it the article provides a great discussion of rather complex issues about recommender systems. He makes it clear how progress can measured empirically, how difficult it is to improving algorithms even by a fraction of a percent, and science can advance through an open dialogue among highly competitive research teams.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Women and Computer Science
The NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html) reported this week on the noted decline of woman in computer science in recent years. As the graph in the right indicates, interest in CS for female college freshman has dropped from 4.2 to 0.3 since 1982. Recent trends are no better. "In 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. By 2004-5, the number had declined to only 22 percent. ... at research universities like M.I.T.: women accounted for only 12 percent of undergraduate degrees in computer science and engineering."The article goes on to point out that there is a little agreement as to the cause of the decline and therefore little agreement on how to reverse the trend.
Friday, November 21, 2008
E-mail Responses: Rational or Random?
I chanced upon this news report in Northwestern University that reports on some research that a faculty member in chemical and biological engineering had done on whether (timely?) responses to e-mail are rational or random by studying 3000 e-mail accounts. I couldn't find the actual paper, but if someone did, please leave a comment.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Now Online: "Europeana", Europe's Digital Library
According to this press release, Europe's digital library is open to the public today:
Europeana, Europe’s multimedia online library opens to the public today. At www.europeana.eu, Internet users around the world can now access more than two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archival documents, paintings and films from national libraries and cultural institutions of the EU's 27 Member States. Europeana opens up new ways of exploring Europe’s heritage: anyone interested in literature, art, science, politics, history, architecture, music or cinema will have free and fast access to Europe's greatest collections and masterpieces in a single virtual library through a web portal available in all EU languages. But this is just the beginning. In 2010, Europeana will give access to millions of items representing Europe's rich cultural diversity and will have interactive zones such as communities for special interests. Between 2009 and 2011, some €2 million per year of EU funding will be dedicated to this.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Act now...
This is off-topic. It has little to do with Information Science, but it has a lot to do with getting things moving in the school. Here is an article that is worth reading (in my humble opinion) to reduce process inefficiencies and getting to action. It starts with a quote from DaVinci: "I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Some Need to Rethink the Immediate Future
An article in today’s New York Times – Ashlee Vance, “Tech Industry Feels a Slump,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/technology/15tech.html?th&emc=th, suggests the need for the School to do some intense contingency planning for next academic year, especially in terms of recruiting.
Here are some excerpts:
The technology industry, which resisted the economy’s growing weakness over the last year as customers kept buying laptops and iPhones, has finally succumbed to the slowdown.
In the span of just a few weeks, orders for both business and consumer tech products have collapsed, and technology companies have begun laying off workers. The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2000, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly a fifth of its jobs.
This time around, the tech sector finds itself at the mercy of a double-barreled slump in both corporate and consumer spending caused by the housing decline and the economic crisis on Wall Street. Technology companies are also feeling the effect of frozen credit markets as business and government customers struggle to finance computer and software purchases that can run to millions of dollars.
Here are some excerpts:
The technology industry, which resisted the economy’s growing weakness over the last year as customers kept buying laptops and iPhones, has finally succumbed to the slowdown.
In the span of just a few weeks, orders for both business and consumer tech products have collapsed, and technology companies have begun laying off workers. The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2000, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly a fifth of its jobs.
This time around, the tech sector finds itself at the mercy of a double-barreled slump in both corporate and consumer spending caused by the housing decline and the economic crisis on Wall Street. Technology companies are also feeling the effect of frozen credit markets as business and government customers struggle to finance computer and software purchases that can run to millions of dollars.
Need to Rethink Next Year?
An article in today’s New York Times – Ashlee Vance, “Tech Industry Feels a Slump,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/technology/15tech.html?th&emc=th, suggests the need for the School to do some intense contingency planning for next academic year, especially in terms of recruiting.
Here are some excerpts:
The technology industry, which resisted the economy’s growing weakness over the last year as customers kept buying laptops and iPhones, has finally succumbed to the slowdown.
In the span of just a few weeks, orders for both business and consumer tech products have collapsed, and technology companies have begun laying off workers. The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2000, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly a fifth of its jobs.
This time around, the tech sector finds itself at the mercy of a double-barreled slump in both corporate and consumer spending caused by the housing decline and the economic crisis on Wall Street. Technology companies are also feeling the effect of frozen credit markets as business and government customers struggle to finance computer and software purchases that can run to millions of dollars.
Here are some excerpts:
The technology industry, which resisted the economy’s growing weakness over the last year as customers kept buying laptops and iPhones, has finally succumbed to the slowdown.
In the span of just a few weeks, orders for both business and consumer tech products have collapsed, and technology companies have begun laying off workers. The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2000, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly a fifth of its jobs.
This time around, the tech sector finds itself at the mercy of a double-barreled slump in both corporate and consumer spending caused by the housing decline and the economic crisis on Wall Street. Technology companies are also feeling the effect of frozen credit markets as business and government customers struggle to finance computer and software purchases that can run to millions of dollars.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
The Last Professors
As we try to be responsible, efficient, and smart about our academic programs in the new world of fiscal crisis, students demanding to be treated as customers, the aims of being business-like, and the temptations of new funding sources with many strings-attached, a book like Frank Donoghue’s The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008) is an important read.
Any academic, whether connected to the humanities or not, ought to read this book, because it provides a good list of how corporate influences, new uses of information technologies, and new challenges to the fiscal bottom-line all contribute to radical redefining of what faculty ought and can do in the university. Faculty are reduced to productivity measures, salesmanship, revenue generators, and societal or business relevance. Donoghue reflects, for example, that “disciplines that hold out the promise of money and cultivate a knowledge of money both attract and produce expert professionals who stand at the farthest remove from the humanities” (p. 69). I would argue that those of us not in the humanities, momentarily safely-ensconced in professional schools, ought not to be too smug about this impact on the humanities; it is possible that the same forces squeezing that sector of the university could come back to pressure other activities in professional schools – such as the constituencies they serve and what research they determine to pursue.
In other words, Donoghue’s commentary can be read as a roadmap indicating future challenges ahead for every component of the university. He predicts, for example, the eventual disappearance of tenured faculty, and he makes a compelling case for this happening because of the increasing attention to fiscal matters as the determinants of all academic affairs. Donoghue also predicts a new kind of credentialism for undergraduate education: “The B.A. and B.S. will largely be replaced by a kind of educational passport that will document each student’s various educational certifications from one of several schools, the credentials directly relevant to his or her future occupation” (p. 84). From my vantage in a professional school, I would argue we can already see some of this in our new masters students, where they often seem ill-equipped in their knowledge, critical thinking and research skills, and other areas – some of these problems perhaps attributable to more of a stress on vocational goals rather than being educated broadly and deeply (and where they see our own graduate degrees as just a credential to practice).
Donoghue sees as what’s at stake is the very meaning of higher education, and he thinks that faculty must “use the tools of critical thinking to question that the widespread assumption that efficiency, productivity, and profitability are intrinsically good” (p. 88). And this may be harder to do than we think. He considers the advent of online education, and rather than critiquing because of pedagogical and related issues, Donoghue expresses concerns because it potentially shifts the ownership and control of teaching to the course management businesses, something that has not happened yet although there are troubling signs of what lies ahead. We need to be mindful of the implications of all that we do, even those decisions that seem straightforward and commonsensical. I admit to losing sleep sometimes over what appear to be the simplest things, because I worry about their long-term consequences.
Any academic, whether connected to the humanities or not, ought to read this book, because it provides a good list of how corporate influences, new uses of information technologies, and new challenges to the fiscal bottom-line all contribute to radical redefining of what faculty ought and can do in the university. Faculty are reduced to productivity measures, salesmanship, revenue generators, and societal or business relevance. Donoghue reflects, for example, that “disciplines that hold out the promise of money and cultivate a knowledge of money both attract and produce expert professionals who stand at the farthest remove from the humanities” (p. 69). I would argue that those of us not in the humanities, momentarily safely-ensconced in professional schools, ought not to be too smug about this impact on the humanities; it is possible that the same forces squeezing that sector of the university could come back to pressure other activities in professional schools – such as the constituencies they serve and what research they determine to pursue.
In other words, Donoghue’s commentary can be read as a roadmap indicating future challenges ahead for every component of the university. He predicts, for example, the eventual disappearance of tenured faculty, and he makes a compelling case for this happening because of the increasing attention to fiscal matters as the determinants of all academic affairs. Donoghue also predicts a new kind of credentialism for undergraduate education: “The B.A. and B.S. will largely be replaced by a kind of educational passport that will document each student’s various educational certifications from one of several schools, the credentials directly relevant to his or her future occupation” (p. 84). From my vantage in a professional school, I would argue we can already see some of this in our new masters students, where they often seem ill-equipped in their knowledge, critical thinking and research skills, and other areas – some of these problems perhaps attributable to more of a stress on vocational goals rather than being educated broadly and deeply (and where they see our own graduate degrees as just a credential to practice).
Donoghue sees as what’s at stake is the very meaning of higher education, and he thinks that faculty must “use the tools of critical thinking to question that the widespread assumption that efficiency, productivity, and profitability are intrinsically good” (p. 88). And this may be harder to do than we think. He considers the advent of online education, and rather than critiquing because of pedagogical and related issues, Donoghue expresses concerns because it potentially shifts the ownership and control of teaching to the course management businesses, something that has not happened yet although there are troubling signs of what lies ahead. We need to be mindful of the implications of all that we do, even those decisions that seem straightforward and commonsensical. I admit to losing sleep sometimes over what appear to be the simplest things, because I worry about their long-term consequences.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Rare Books and Teaching
Roger Mummert, "Handle This Book! Curators Put Rare Texts in 18-Year-Old Hands," NY Times, November 2, 2008, in the special education supplement, writes about the emergence of new courses about the history of books and printing for undergraduates. Mummert notes, "Courses on the history of the book itself have grown along with the ascendancy of electronic information. Students today often blindly grant authority to the online world. Curators want to reconnect them with original sources and teach them to question those sources." One of the potential beauties of an I-School is the possibility of providing well-rounded exposure to both technology and traditional issues such as the nature of the printed or manuscript book. The question is, as always, how to do it.
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