Personalization has its dark side. Just like other information access technologies..

This is my reflection on a recent TED talk that I recommend to watch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Eli Pariser observed that information personalization is everywhere and it creates a bubble that shields one from the real world. What a surprise!

I hope that we all understand that some kind of tunnel vision is a back side of any information access technology that attempts to help one funding a needle in a haystack. Card catalog and simple (non-adaptive) search were steps in this direction. When you search in a classic library catalog for books you only see books relevant to your query. It's already a form of tunnel vision. Without library catalog search functionality you would have to browse the shelves and have chances to encounter some nice books you were not aware about. Wouldn't it be nice to keep finding book this way? But alas, we all use search instead of digging into the library stacks. Search shields you from mostly irrelevant stuff it and make your work more efficient. Loosing some gems on the way, but making many new things possible.

Nice to see that people like Eli finally can recognize that personalization makes another step into this direction. This is a sign that recommender systems area is coming of age and going through the same process as user modeling went about 10 years ago - recognizing problems associated with personalization. In user modeling area the problem of one-shot uncontrolled personalization has been discussed at length and a number of suggestions of controllable, transparent personalization was made. I guess, time to focus on that for recommender systems. Recognizing back side of every technology is vital to make it better!

Redefining the goals of a PhD program/degree

I found the opinions expressed in this article extremely interesting and true. The extreme specialization offered from PhD systems today makes their outcome interesting and relevant to a very small part of the general crowd. I truly believe that in iSchools the barriers across disciplines are indeed less strict but maybe we need to put even more effort. Definitely there are many challenges that we need to account for, for the reformation discussed in the article, but this article is a start to stimulate more thoughts and to motivate taking actions towards this direction.

Let's pick our ballot at random next time!

In this interesting article, it is shown that a parliament would govern a society more efficient if some of the legislators were elected "randomly". These randomly selected legislators are not politicians but just civilians (that most probably satisfy a set of criteria). The paper provides a golden rule for the number of independent legislators taking into account the size of the parliament as well as the elected percentage of each party in the parliament.

It is surprising that adding randomness in a social system boosts its efficiency. In the same direction it will be interesting to see if adding randomness in an online social system/network helps it achieve its goal. E.g., for twitter, if we randomly follow some people does this increase the entropy of the information we obtain from the "tweets" ? Online social networks suffer from a large number of issues (e.g., spam, multiple accounts, etc.) that add challenges to similar studies and/or approaches to boost the efficiency of the underlying system.

Wikipedia vs. the Universal Decimal Classification

This is an interesting graphic comparing Wikipedia's social classification and the Universal Decimal Classification.

Trouble Brewing for the iSchool at Seattle?

I regularly read a blog from/for library school students known as HackLibrarySchool, and found this posting today. Hmmm?

Speak up! Advocating for the UW iSchool
Heidi Kittleson 02/03/2011 at 6:12 AM

For those of you who don’t know, I attend the Information School (iSchool) at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. And while I, like most students, have had both positive and negative experiences in my education (you have or can read about them here or on my blog), I want to take a moment to express my deep concern for the future of the iSchool and the irreplaceable service it provides through its students, faculty and staff.

Washington, like many other states, has been dealing with a severe budget crisis. Since 2009, the University of Washington (UW) has lost 30% of its state appropriation — $132 million — and I have just become aware that after another round of proposed funding reductions, UW will have lost 50% of its state appropriation in just 3 years.

Last week the student leaders of the iSchool received an email from the iSchool’s dean – Harry Bruce. In the email, he attached both a letter the UW interim president, Phyllis Wise, sent to the legislature and press, and the budget reductions scenario worksheet. Reading the email and the attached documents left me shocked and horrified. On the list of possible actions as a result of the proposed reductions is this:

“Consider consolidating the Information School with another college and significantly reduce course and degree offerings.”

This. Cannot. Happen. It cannot happen for the ‘simple’ reason that there is not enough money for it to exist on its own. The iSchool recently began its centennial celebration. Although it has changed names, locations on campus and has evolved through the lifecycle of the Information Revolution, throughout its nearly 100 year history, its mission, vision and impact on Seattle, Washington and the Pacific Northwest have only expanded during that time.
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Read the rest of this post at http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/speak-up/