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On the deification of social norms.

In this note, I focus on Coleman’s treatment of social norms. I believe his treatment is deeply unsatisfactory. It is a piece of crypto-functionalism, in spite of his official rejection of that method (pp. 259-260) and his professed methodological individualism (p. 5). It is also somewhat panglossian, in its emphasis on the beneficial effects of norms. Although Coleman is fully aware of norms that benefit only a subset of the relevant community, at the expense of others, he completely ignores norms that make everybody worse off (examples are offered later). In my opinion, social norms cause vast amounts of pointless suffering.  (Elster, 2003)

Information query.

After an initial look at the newest version of the Google Book Search Project settlement (others have reviewed it in much more detail than I), my impression is that this project is going to be much less than it could have been.

The class of books included in the newest version of the settlement, for instance, seems much narrower than that in the original project goal: to search the world’s books.  And the negotiations regarding access to “orphan” works remain muddled through the necessity of dealing with an arbitrary group of rightsholders created out of nothingness by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers.  Much more broadly, however, I am disappointed that current copyright and antitrust laws intended to create and promote social value seem to have become, in practice, impediments to achieving that value.

Much of the controversy surrounding and delaying the resolution of the Google Book Search Project concerns revenues:  either who will receive what portions of revenues from digital books right now, or who will receive what portions of those revenues in the future.  While such concerns are not unimportant, they are also, given current circumstances, indeterminable.  The future of the information marketplace is clearly a target that is moving too rapidly for lawyers and their briefcases to hit.   Yet, even with the consequences of their aim uncertain, the slings and arrows of legalities continue to fly.

Here’s basically what I want to know:  If new technology allows me to search the world’s books, why can’t I?

Could someone at the Department of Justice explain that to me?

Some numbers.

1. I’m watching Flash Forward on ABC.

I read the novel too.  It’s not Robert Sawyer’s best novel, but it’s okay. (I haven’t read all Sawyer’s books, so I can’t say which is the best exactly — but Flash Forward definitely isn’t.)

Here are a couple of interesting passages from Sawyer’s Flash Forward (pp. 166-7) that reference Tipler’s Omega Point:

…Tipler says there are 110,000 genes that make up a human being.  That means that all possible permutations of those genes…amount to about ten to the tenth to the sixth people…[and] you could reproduce all possible humans that could ever exist, and all possible memories that they could ever have, in ten to the tenth to the twenty-third bits.

Ten to the tenth to the twenty third is a very, very large number.  But it is, nevertheless, a finite number:  a number with a limit.

And here are some more, not quite so large but equally interesting numbers, from an article published in 1963 by John Senders…

Three calculations of the number of different things stored in the world’s libraries yield estimates from 7.5 x 10⁷ to 7.7 x 10⁸. At 10⁵ words per volume, five letters per word, and 12 bits per letter, the information capacity used for storage is between 4.6 x 10¹⁴ and 4.6 x 10¹⁵ bits, and is increasing at about 2 x 10⁶ bits per second.

These are, again, very large numbers.  Once upon a time, both sets of numbers might have been inconceivably large.  Now, however, the last set of numbers — the number of bits in the world’s libraries — is not only conceivable, it is manageable.

2. The most recent round of Google Book Search Project settlement negotiations were completed on Friday, November 14, just before the midnight deadline set by the judge overseeing the settlement.

The idea behind the Google Book Project is to make all books in all libraries available to the public.  As ideas go, it’s a very good one.  Lawyers, guns, and money have cut that idea back a bit –although not yet erased it as a good idea or as an achievable goal.

I am now wondering, however, based on the numbers above, which will come first:  The ability to search through the accumulated knowledge of all mankind with something like the Google Book Search Project OR the ability to generate all possible knowledge that could ever exist,  from scratch.

3. The first possibility — cataloging all available human knowledge — would be, in chess, sort of like taking all chess games that have ever been played and creating a index of those chess games that can then be searched for good moves and bad moves.  We more or less have something like that right now.  It looks something like this:  Current Index of All Chess Positions.

The second possibility — generating all possible human knowledge — would be, in chess, sort of like taking the rules of chess and then, based on those rules, generating all possible chess moves that could ever be played.  We are now working on doing just that.  It’s called a brute strength method of playing chess, and chess programs that use this brute strength approach, beginning with Deep Blue, include Rybka, the current world chess champion.

Rybka can refer to a large database of chess games and chess moves, as necessary.  More critical to its ability to play chess, however, Rybka can generate lots and lots of chess moves that have never been played.  And, at least potentially, chess programs like Rybka may be able generate all chess moves that ever will be played.

The rules for generating all possible human knowledge are, of course, likely to be a bit more complex than the rules for generating all possible chess moves.

But, if those rules are determinable and, most importantly, if those rules are finite, then there seems to be little doubt that those rules can and will be used to generate knowledge.  And, given enough time, that generation of knowledge can and will become complete.

It’s going to take a while, of course, because there are a lot of bits involved.  But then the Google Book Search Project is taking a while too, not only because of all the bits, but because of all the lawyers and the money.

So here’s a question to ponder:  Which sorts of problems are likely to be solved sooner — the inconceivably large bit problems or the incredibly obtuse legal problems?

Or, an even better question:  Which sorts of problems, when and if solved, make the other sorts of problems irrelevant?

Lions, tigers, and backchannels, oh my.

I am perfectly okay with students using laptops and mobiles in my classroom.  Of course, I do teach in the School of Mass Communication.  And, of course, I expect students, regardless of what I am teaching, to use their laptops and mobiles in the classroom to supplement what’s going on in the classroom.  But, with that single caveat, no problem whatsoever.

Here are my reasons:

1. Usefulness.

Laptops and (increasingly) mobiles are useful to record information (e. g., taking notes, or even taping the entire lecture).  And they are useful to communicate information.  Let me dwell on that second one.

Sometimes lectures are one-way streets.  That can be fine, depending on the circumstances, but, equally fine can be a two-street, with lots of class discussion and interplay among students and lecturer.

Unfortunately, when I was student (as I still am), I remember very often being very annoyed at the amount of class time discussions took from the lecture (which I really wanted to hear) and gave to the comments of other classmates (which I sometimes I felt were less useful than the lecture).

But, suppose technology could provide both the one-way superhighway and, simultaneously, the two-way country road.  Suppose, as a student, you had the capability to listen to the lecture and simultaneously, without interrupting the lecture, engage in running commentary that could aid further thought about, participation during, and understanding of the lecture?

You have that capability.

Simultaneous and participatory commentary during a lecture is live and well; it’s called a backchannel.   And backchannels are an accepted – and desired — feature of every scholarly academic conference I’ve attended for some time now.  (E.g., read this.)

Of course, you can only have a backchannel if you have the technological capability to provide that backchannel AND if you have a willingness on the part of lecturer and students to allow and use that backchannel.

Are backchannels — and similar forms of new media communications — disruptive to a traditional lecture?  In this sense of “disruptive,” probably so.

Are they beneficial to the lecture?  In my mind, most definitely.

Are they inevitable components of the lecture of the future?

Oh yeah.

Currently, we have the technological capability at Loyola to push our lectures — at least some of our lectures — into the future.

Do we have the willingness?

2.  Hypocrisy.

Again: Laptops and mobiles are accepted — and desired – communication tools at every scholarly conference I’ve attended.  They’re used for backchannel participation (without which you would miss much of the conference’s value), and for many other purpose as well – all supplemental to conference content.

And, if I’m doing something and benefiting from doing it – REALLY benefiting from doing it — why shouldn’t I be teaching my students to do it too?

Isn’t that the idea?

Rupert Murdoch vs. the Sandman.

1.  At the core of digital communications is something called packet-switching.

In brief, packet-switching takes messages that were once indivisible and divides those messages into tiny little “packets.”  Once messages are in these packets, it’s lots easier to send those messages over telecommunications networks, like, for instance, the internet.

The Sandman is a personification of packet-switching.  (That’s the Sandman in Marvel Comics, by the way, not the Sandman in the Roy Orbison song).  The Sandman can dissolve into little particles of sand — packets — and these little particles of sand can then go wherever they want to go.

2.  Suppose I just want a banana.

I go to a grocery store to buy a banana.  But this particular grocery store doesn’t sell just bananas.   To buy a banana, I have to buy a mango and a pear, and I have to rent a grocery cart (getting a free coupon for future grocery cart rentals in the process), and I have to listen to the grocery cart rental guy try to sell me a time-share condominium in Marigny.

The grocery cart rental guy calls this the Banana-Mango-Pear “Package.”

I ask the grocery cart rental guy if I can buy just the banana part of the package.

“No,” says the grocery cart rental guy.  “The Banana-Mango-Pear Package is indivisible.”

3.  In the olden days when I bought a newspaper…

…I got news and sports and editorials and this and that and (once upon a time) lots and lots of advertising.  Somewhere in there was probably what I wanted to read — but it was locked inside the newspaper package.

Currently, when I get on the packet-switched internet and Google the news, I get lots of little newspaper “packets.”  Maybe one of those packets is the New York Times.

When I go to the NYT website, I find more little packets — headlines, they call them.  So I click on a headline, and I read what I want to read.

And I say yay for the NYT, because I didn’t have to buy a mango and a pear to eat a banana.

4.  Some people think the NYT is packet-switched too much.

These people think the NYT is nuts.

These people would like for the NYT to sell you a newspaper package — because that’s what newspapers have sold you for a a long time, and that’s what  some people are still trying to sell you.

5.  Some other people think the NYT is not packet-switched enough.

If the NYT can packetize their news, these other people ask, why can’t the NYT packetize the price of their news?

If I only read Malcolm Gladwell’s articles in the New Yorker, for instance, why shouldn’t I pay just for those articles?

“Packetized” payments for individual articles — or even individual words — are called micro-payments.

That’s pretty much what grocery stores do when they sell you a single banana:  they charge you a micro-payment.  And some people think that’s a really good idea for newspapers like the NYT and magazines like the New Yorker.

Others don’t.

6.  But, before the Sandman becomes the Micropayment Man…

…he gets to bust up Rupert Murdoch and the newspaper packaging cartel.

Shouldn’t take long.