A PhD about all that is useless unless offered
I was this afternoon at the workshop Active Identities in La Cantine, the new co-working space in Paris.
Four presentations, uneven in preparation. The focus ended-up on:
I would like to apologise about my long silence: I’ve been spending an unhealthy time trying to understand what was said about the too many subjects that I care about. Many ideas were expressed by others, often not receiving the attention I though would have been interesting. Little time was left for me to express what I though was missing — but I shall soon post several ideas, not as fresh as a what a decent maturation demanded.
I just came out of the presentation of my latest paper at Orange Labs (my private employer: I’m under a joint contract with them and Université Paris X - Nanterre) I was expecting to make it available as soon as I was out.
Sheer luck; the whole thing went very wrong, and I hadn’t the strength to defend the approach and framework that I’ve chosen (apply a social graph to a coordination game). I’m exhausted, and I’ve have to lick my wounds before reviewing everything again.
My friends know how much of an Apple fan I am: a self-confessed hegenomic, found of beautiful typography. The recent ‘iBrick’ crackdown shook my convictions: I love both the idea that the iPhone can succeed as a beautiful object, and open platforms. If people want to learn the hard way that design is not a democracy, so be it—great ideas will come out of it, the same way they popped off Google Maps.
Apple made clear that it’s update would ruin hacked devices; their press release received the usual headline treatment, and comments were abundant everywhere the hacks were made available. The update offered a box less easy to hack (not what those who installed the app wanted) and an exclusive access to Starbucks iTunes—what L337 hacker would buy a track, let along a Linda Lemay cheesy tune—while sipping a Posh-coffee instead of Kool-Aid? [Note: I have no idea what Kool-Aid is, but I was told this is the drink of choice when you unlock iPhones.]
What really puzzled me was that instead of the usual “I agree to sell you my soul and all of my family’s savings because I never read the ~” waiver, Apple put in bold characters that the update would ruin you device. Things were clear—users were not rational.
Jobs had to have the agreement with Starbucks rollin’: he wanted his device to be safe. He let people do something else for a while—why some users, facing the clearest of all message, neglected it? Some illusion of a Promethean invisible safety shield? This experience is an experiment in limit irrational behaviour. I don’t know of a psychological theory that would account for it, but I’d love to hear one.
Update: Someone wrote me about the “could”/“would” issue, that I hadn’t noticed first; I guess that I am a little bit too fluent in legalese.
I’m in the middle of revising a paper, and a bit lost in bibliography: I’m acutely suffering of the usual “Oh Lord! Why haven’t I seen this one before?”
The paper itself should come appropriately as I plan to give an argument on whether “social services” (phone, e-mail, social graphing services) should encourage compatibility — e.g. is it in MySpace interest to allow its users to ‘friend’ Facebook accounts? After all, Hotmail and Yahoo! users have been able to send e-mails one to another for years and both companies greater profit. Such a decision made Theodore Weil, of AT&T fame, able to transform ‘theaterophone’ into was became today’s three billion user network.
But that is not my point today: what I would love to tackle is my fear of missing key-arguments in my area. Google Scholar has a comprehensive database of scientific paper, SSRN is more specialised; with CiteSeer and others all proved amazingly useful. I can go up citation tracks, and down; but I can’t see an weighted list of what I’m missing. I can’t vote down approaches that I noticed but do not want to follow on.
It is rather similar to Amazon or Netflix recommendations — but based on data withheld by private scholarly publisher or National Science Institutes — and both types proved to be not so agile so far.
Recommendation system are easy to set up; so far, most of them use a string input: I would like to hand a BibTeX file as an input. Is anyone able to help?
My idea would be to list the papers associated to each element in my input list (same references, referred by); remove the inputs from the potential list, ordered by how often they came up. All this could be weighted, too.
Last question: would this favour academic diversity?
According to its subtitle, this blog is about “all that is useless unless offered”: I’ve always been very impressed by a culture able to produce Milan’s caffè sospeso. The title is actually a reference to what could be a French equivalent. Rest assured: you didn’t miss it during your last trip here; giving half of what you buy hasn’t got anywhere beyond tax imperative so far.
Two economic reasoning could explain that rationally:
I’m not sure $200 is below many people’s attention threshold, and I assume the idea being the program to sell the “$100 laptop for children” in developed countries, under the brand XO — as explained by the XO Giving program — is another form of rational generosity, based on distinction. The computer is highly recognizable, and it can trigger spectacular personal gratification, based on visible altruism.
I like the leveling impact: what can help my children education will help someone else’s too; it’s not a as much a hierarchically structuring transaction as a symbolic tie, much like what pen-relation used to promise. This distinction by ethic argument might be concurred by the announced scarcity:
A very limited number of laptop computers will be available for this promotion beginning November 12th.
as can be seen in the FAQs.
I could also be the reckoning of massive possible framing and network effects to come in the making of software: with a generation of lesser-advanced countries children engaging in programming by lack of any other valuable training, computing might shift to a different form of programming. Children who grew up in the more developed countries, learning from the unique design principles could end up having a spectacular competitive advantage in taping those inventive ressources.
The true selling argument for me? The e-ink screen:
the XO’s screen can be viewed as clearly as a newspaper in broad daylight.
unless I missed something, such a screen is not available as less then the double.
Blogged with Flock
Yahoo! announced its intentions over Zimbra recently, and the impressive price tag made me very happy: a good idea can be worth a significant share of a billion.
The first time that I heard about Zimbra was three years ago: Gmail was the hottest thing in town, and Google Calendar was under heavy speculation; I was considering a PhD become things seemed magical then. They were. Somehow pretended he could make an e-mail client understand that “next Wednesday, noonish?” ment the 23rd, at 12:00; that blew me away. I wanted it right away, I wanted this guy to have all the help he could get — and for the first and only time in my life, I forwarded the link to everyone in my address book, and I mean everyone.
Until a week ago, I remember this massive spamming as an inexplicable mistake, a sour memory: Zimbra went off the radars for so long. . . Even if the price tag includes far more then just the idea that a computers should grasp queries in natural language (the loud buzz around PowerSet proves that point much better, actually) I am proud to think again that such a simple feat is both difficult, and extremely precious. And I am very eager to finally be able to use it.
Blogged with Flock
Labels replaced folders in my mailbox, feedreader and (I am looking forward) in my folders: a Call for paper can now both be Important, about Social Network and related to a travel to the USA. The same idea applies to the academic papers I read: one can both be from someone in my lab, relevant for Econometric issues and spot-on as an example in my coming draft. The same idea should apply to journals as labels of those papers: a paper should be both part of Science because it’s a major step, and The European Journal for Labor Economics, because that’s what it’s about. Here is a very interesting idea on how to make it happen:
http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/game.pdf
If you have grad students handy, do you think you could try that? I’m suggesting a 10 papers per quater threshold, with a relevance constraint — though I have to confess it doesn’t appear to be that necessary, as students have limited time and focused interests.
Éric Schmidt recently describe the future of computing as viral software, very much like what Facebook is offering. Was I right to decide two years ago to study social networks as a support for digital business model? I hope so. More on that soon.
“A few grains of rice, really, Your Lordship”
The legend of checkers is a beautiful tale, and I was long fascinated by the humility of the wiseman who, as a payment for inventing it, asked for a little food: one grain on the first square, then two on the second, four, eight, etc. — up to 264 grains, i.e. a few millenia of current global rice production. I never really like the game, but I have been feeling sad tonight, for no apparent reason. I checked the news, and I saw that Checkers are not only a finite game, but a finished one. That must be the reason of my loneliness: Go is the only mystery left, before the Singularity.
I’ll be back to normal topic tomorrow: lots of news, indeed.
