This past week, I was watching one of my favorite TV shows House, and I was surprised when they mentioned The Wisdom of the Crowds(WOC). For the most part, the show got the main points of the theory correctly; i.e., the aggregation of knowledge from many diverse people can perform better than a single expert opinion. In the scene, the patient does not trust his doctors and posts a $25,000 reward to the person who first presents the correct diagnosis. After receiving many different opinions, he aggregates them, takes the diagnosis most often given, and demands treatment. Of course, this fails and everyone is given the impression that the theory is faulty. One problem - this is not a true example of the theory.
The problem is the style of the monetary reward - it encourages quackery opinions to stand-out more than normal. A fundamental principle that is often ignored when discussing WOC is the incentives for offering opinions are often small and are rarely monetary or form transitional wealth. An example of transitional wealth is money: I can give someone a dollar and they can now use that dollar to buy something. Non-transitional wealth only possesses value to the person who created it. An example is pride: I can create pride in myself and I may be able to find pride in the actions of others, but I cannot be proud and give that pride to someone else. Another good example is Last.fm. By labeling songs, I can recover them quicker, but someone else may find my choice in labels confusing, wrong, or meaningless. The wealth is entirely within me.
The reason it is important to monetize opinions and effort in this fashion is that it acts as a noise filter; i.e., The Wisdom of the Crowds does not mean every nut delivers an opinion. For example, if I poll the average person on the street (at least in America), I will find some very wrong answers. Most people do not know what a molecule really is. This might explain why many people have a fear of things with "chemicals," which is a rather ridiculous statement that I have previously ridiculed. Further, only 1/3 of people can state what the purpose of DNA is. In other words, the average opinion is, well, average.
We can actually think of WOC from a statistical sampling perspective. While it's true that on average the group opinion will be better than an individual, it does mean that this is occurs with probability of one. The purpose of the WOC is to remove bias, but not expertise. Or from a Bayesian perspective:
P(correct answer AND crowd) = P(answer|crowd)P(crowd)
If I have a bunch of creationists, I am not going to get the correct answer (evolution). Same for medical diagnosis. If I tell people that they'll get $25,000 if they guess the correct answer, then their monetary gain is high. Unless their monetary cost is high as well, they'll offer any crap-based solution they could get from a little bit of time on Wikipedia. Worse, in this particular example, it's the cranks and quacks who are more likely to respond. Who do you think will respond quicker to that reward, a guy going around selling reflexology out of his Winnibego or the Head of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins?
However, I must admit that my ears perked when I heard the phenomena cited on a primetime TV show.
I recently was amazed at the amount of crap that Bill Maher stated in this video:
First off, it is not true that you go to jail in the USA if you practice alternative medicine. Rather, alternative medicine is protected. For example, anything you consume can be protected as a "dietary supplement" under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was pushed by the bipartisan team of Orrin Hatch (R) and Tom Harkin (D) (bipartisan does not mean good). The DSHEA states that it is up to the dietary supplement manufacturer to ensure the product is safe. There is no need to prove efficacy or safety in a controlled setting prior to marketing. Further, while it is true the manufacturer must ensure that any material on the label is true, any claim can be stated by using the catch-all phrase:
"These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent _______."
In other words, "we made all this shit up and didn't even bother to test it. Here, have seconds." The FDA only steps in if they can find evidence that it is harmful after people have been affected; e.g., Zicam. In fact, Zicam is a great example because it is even mislabeled as a homeopathic treatment, but is not one since the concentrations in Zicam are way too strong - strong enough to have any effect (whether good or bad) disqualifies it as being homeopathic. So, not only are alternative medicines not regulated as medicines, there is not a regulation on themselves.
Second, Bill Maher's statement that we have not improved in the cancer fight is a bold face lie. Cancer rates have been steadily declining for years. But why research when you can just make crap up?
Third, his statement that we have such a big health care system because "we are so sick" is absurd. I am going to refrain from the public/private debate because this blog is about science and engineering and not politics. But Maher's assertion about the size of our health care system is not correlated with any health markers. Rather, it is simply a matter of diminishing returns and efficiency. In fact, if our problem was simply tied to health, we would not be arguing over whether people are covered by insurance. Instead, we would be fighting about ways to make people healthier; e.g., tax on sugars, increased physical education in schools, anti-smoking legislation, etc. (Note: I am not giving any opinion on whether we should do any of these; I am just stating that we would probably be debating these topics.)Regardless of your stand on health insurance, this is largely absent from the debate, except as a way to raise funds for a form of public health. The reason is that our health is not tied to the increase in health care costs.
Next, Maher goes into the conspiracy theory that "Big Pharma" is only interested in treating symptoms is wrong on two fronts. First, several Western medicines and treatments are specifically designed to treat the underlying disease and not symptoms. For example, antibiotics are specifically designed to kill the bacteria causing the infection. You cannot get more offensive than that. If you have heart surgery, an improperly or non-functioning heart valve is either repaired or replaced. This is not to say that all Western medicines treat the underlying case. In some cases, there is no proven cure; therefore, we do the next best thing, which is to manage symptoms. This does not mean that research there is no research into fixing the underlying cause. For example, in 2007 we saw the first vaccine against bird-flu and in 2006 we saw Gardasil. Second, when did alternative medicines start treating diseases? For example, homeopathy was developed before Germ Theory and specifically treats symptoms. Like cures Like? That is treating symptoms. If I have a cold, homeopathy says that the cure is onion because both cause my eyes to tear and agitate my mucus membranes. These are not the cause for the cold - they are the symptoms. Not one homeopathic practitioner ever links onion to the death of viral rhinopharyngitis.
I have no idea why Maher gets a pass from the skeptical and scientific community. It's likely due to his non-religious beliefs. However, this is a gross mischaracterization. The truth is that Maher is religious, but not in the Westernized "only one God in the sky" fashion. He's religious in that he believes in unproven methodologies. Jeffrey Tobin is right: there is no such thing as alternative medicine; it's either medicine, unproven, or disproven. Acupuncture? It's not alternative; it's not medicine because it does not work any better than a placebo. Anytime you put faith in unproven methodologies, you are making a non-scientific statement about the world. Saying there is a "life force" called Qi is nothing more than a religious statement.
Even if Maher were correct about cancer rates not declining (and he clearly is wrong), it does nothing to validate his point. This is simply a straw-man argument. Just because we do not have a solution does not mean you get to make up whatever crap you want to fill in the holes. It does not work for Intelligent Design and it does not work for medicine. Of course, science does not know everything. If it did, we would not be running experiments because, we would already know the answer. But that does not mean that we do not know something. Is there a cure for all cancer? No, but that does not mean we have not found ways to cure some cancers, detect and treat earlier, and increase the life expectancy if diagnosed.
So, to sum up: Bill Maher has more in common with Creationists than he would probably like.
There has be a lotofpress about a recent article in Ear & Hearing, but I found a good bit of it misinformed, sometimes grossly. For example, here are some disturbing misinterpretations:
1) "After years of Mom telling you to turn off the music to protect your ears, there’s finally scientific evidence that music can be good for your hearing."
2) "Music training can help reorder nervous system"
3) "The findings strongly support the potential therapeutic and rehabilitation use of music training to address auditory processing and communication disorders throughout the life span."
In actuality, the paper discusses none of these. I'll take these in turn:
1) This is actually two different statements: that there is benefit to listening to music loudly and that just passively listening to music can help. The most irresponsible is the former. While I'll admit that the statement does not directly say that increasing volume is beneficial, their slight attempt at humor implies it. The study did not discuss any possible benefit about listening to music loudly. As for the later ("passive listening to music can help") is definitely not within the paper. In fact, the study compared people with extensive musical training versus those with no musical training. The amount of time listening to music passively was not a variable within the study. Further, the so called "Mozart effect" has repeatedly been shown to be false (for a some references click here; for a funny discussion, one can check Penn & Teller's Bullshit!), despite the rather sillyproductmarket. The distinction between passively learning and actively learning is significant because it is true that research indicates the musical training may increase cognitive abilities in non-musical areas (see the "article" link above), but this cannot be said for passive listening.
2) The paper does not specifically address anything about the brain being rewired. In fact, since all musicians started practicing an instrument before the age of seven, it is likely that the brain wasn't being "rewired," but rather being "developed" in a different environment. This gets into (3) because...
3) The authors do not say anything about the potential for therapeutic products. Again, since the musicians had extensive training and started before the age of seven this study cannot answer the question about whether the effect can occur if someone begins training at a later age.
So just what did the study say?
I encourage you to read it first hand, but this is effectively what it says:
1) When presented with noise from the same source, people who have received life-long musical training performed better in remembering and processing oral sentences in four-talker babble.
2) When the noise is presented from coming from the same source (i.e., loud speaker), there was no difference.
3) The processing part is important because it signifies that working memory is the determining factor.
The authors then hypothesize that because musicians are better able to pick up on low-level auditory cues, they have more resources for working memory, and, therefore, able to process oral information more efficiently.
This is yet another call to caution whenever research is being presented by the media. It's important to ask to read the final article, including the headline, before you agree to give your consent.
Phew! It's been a while! Guess I've been busy getting a MIREX submission for chord detection completed. Anyway, news of the day: recently Terry McBride sat down with Paste Magazine for a quick "Where are we going?" interview. It's a very quick, but good view of how the music industry is finally dealing with their new role.
Wow. Imagine if you were stranded on a desert island, without a calculator, and you needed to quickly multiply two large numbers. I mean, when you are stranded on a desert island, life is fairly hectic. When you need something multiplied, you need it now!
Well, thank God, Albert Clay has found the code to mentally multiply two numbers. Actually, I should say "cracked" the code, since that is what the headline said. Funny, I do not remember anyone encrypting math. Was I given a key in third grade when I learned my multiplication table? Damnit! What did I do with that?
I think the opening line from the original article in The New & Observer was even more laughable:
"On a yellow scratch pad, Albert Clay works out a math problem that can stump a calculator -- and all of the ciphering occurs inside his white-haired head."
Wow, that's impressive if true. What was the problem? Fermant's Last Thereom? Maybe the Riemann Hypothesis? How to love? Surely, this must be difficult!
54,321 x 12,345 = ?
(Collective groan). Really? That's not special! What kind of crappy ass calculator couldn't do this? Apparently, the pocket calculator could not display enough digits. Again, not special. If you have a 10 digit display, then you can enter 10,000,000,000 x 10 and the calculator will be unable to display the result unless it can do scientific notation. And a pocket calculator!?!? Was his abacus in the repair shop? Ok, well what is the trick?
"Suffice it to say you multiply the digits on the right, cross-multiply and add the digits in the center, then multiply the digits on the left."
That's not a code! That's math! This is not a short-cut. It's just doing the problem in a different way so that you can remember the steps easier. It's almost as if you can't just create information from nothing. Damn you Shannon! But wait, this old fart will sell you his "secret" for only $33. Why? For what purpose? The only value this has is as a party trick for a really, really dull person at a really, really dull party.
"Dude, this party is so lame!"
"Not to worry braugh, I scored us some paper and #2 pencils. We can long-division the shit out of this party!"
Christ, I wish I could say that this was a just some small town paper in rural America, but this is my hometown newspaper and served the area known as The Research Triangle.
Note: The intent of this article is not meant to persuade one for or against a government, single-payer health care system. Rather, it is to address the specific application of tax dollars to medical methodologies that do not hold up to the rigors of scientific testing.
When I started this blog, I made a promise not to discuss politics unless it crosses the lines of promoting woo through legislation (note: I do not care if a politician believes in crap (for this blog), but I do care if they want to force taxpayers to pay or believe crap). Dennis Kucinich has given me just such a chance with a recent blog post on the Daily Kos. Specifically, this is to address the following comment:
"One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine)."
This should make anyone who has an understanding of science shudder. What is wrong with this amendment? First, in order for something to be alternative to medicine means that it either has not been shown to be medically (i.e., scientifically) effective or has been disproven to be effective under numerous rigorous test. For instance, here are some examples:
Homeopathy. This is may be my favorite medically-based pseudoscience. Want to cure a cold? Take an a small amount of onion (because both onion and a cold cause you to tear up and affect the mucus membranes in your nose), dilute it with water to the point that you would need a container the size of the solar system to have a realistic chance of retaining just a single molecule of the onion, then ingest or drink a small amount of the diluted solution. How do the practicioners of homeopathy justify their treatment when there is zero probability that I have ingested a single molecule of the onion? Water has memory, which is strengthend by shaking the "mixture" at each stage of dilution. No joke. They really want to throw away everything we know of chemistry. Further, the more you dilute something, supposedly it gets more powerful. Take that physics!
Essentially, this legislation not only allows for any treatment to be used, but the government will now pay for it! While we are at it, why not allow for people to get energy tax benefits because they claim their car is a perpetual motion machine? Is it not bad enough that the government has spent $2.5 billion researching CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) only to find it does not work? The only thing worse than spending this amount of money is to then ignore the findings and pay for people to get ineffective treatment!
Anyway, I encourage people to write to their congressman or congress woman to voice their concerns about any legislation that uses tax dollars to administer disproven medical methodologies.
I'm busy getting ready for the ISMIR deadline, but it was extended so I can take a few minutes to write. Yesterday, the Naked CIO posted an anti-social networking column. To his credit, he says that he likes increased social connectivity; however, this could be similar to when a Creationist says they are not religious and then spend the next few paragraphs arguing for the existance of a designer. The Naked CIO's main problem is how social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, will impact the work place (Note: I'm on Twitter now). Simple: people will learn how to use the technology.
I have a few problems with some specific arguments he makes. He starts by stating that email and instant messenging have blurred the line between formal communication between discussions on work-related matters and regular social interaction. One problem with this argument is his hidden premise that formality is more productive and healthy to the work environment. In reality, there are plenty of reasons to believe this is not true. Email, local wikis, and instant messenging have allowed for a lot of wasteful formal structures to be eliminated. It is no longer necessary to have a formal board meeting on every topic. I'm reminded of my first job out of college as a great example. The organizer started the meeting by saying that we had a meeting next month to plan a project and he wanted to get together to plan for the meeting. I'm not kidding. After 5 minutes I got up and left. He sent someone after to me when I didn't return and asked what I was doing. I had set up a project mailing list with an archive. Second, it is not fair to say that email and other technologies are the reason for decreased formality. Formality may have degraded for the simple reason that it is not necessary for increased productivity and can even become a negative by wasting time and making people remain silent because it would be rude to speak. As an example, overall attire has progressively moved from a coat and tie environment to khakis and polo shirts as the social norm. Why? Comfort.
He then goes through some scenarios that he feels may impact businesses. Here are the problems and my solutions:
1) Is a tweet from a company executive an official statement? Response: Depends. It's called a disclaimer. Columnists use this all the time so that the media outlet is not held responsible for opinion.
2) What if a friend mentions the possibility of layoffs on a social networking site and that negatively impacts the company, even if there are no layoffs coming? Response: Yes, new technologies make our jobs easier, even the job of being stupid. Social networking sites make it easier for young women to become targets of pediophiles, but it does not change the problem that teenagers are irresponsible and nieve. Most social networking sites have an option to send a private message versus posting to the known universe. The non-digital anology would be something like this: imagine you are sitting at a coffee shop near Wall Street with a friend. You are talking about potential layoffs with your company and you know this is sensitive information. You can either whisper it quitely or yell at him through a bullhorn. Yes, there might be an occasional idiot that unknowningly betrays his company, but there are idiots everywhere. We should not stop progressing as a culture because idiots cannot take care of themselves.
3) How do we resolve the issue of privacy when people can "Google" one another. Is it right for a company to do this type of background check on a potential employee? Reply: Is it right for a potential employee to lie or withhold information that may negatively impact his ability to work? Why should companies assume that everyone who applies for a job is trustworthy? People lie on resumes. People lie in interviews. Here's an example: an interviewer asks a candidate "What's your biggest weakness?" The candidate pauses, glances to the side, and replies, "Probably that I work to hard." Seriously? That's your weakness? The Naked CIO uses his brother as an example and questions what would happen if a company saw that his brother is a musician. Well, if he tours a lot and will miss work, then I fault your brother for withholding that information. The company should know if he's going to be missing work to tour or at least, be tired all day because he's playing music at a local club until 2 AM. Companies should know if you have another job. Heck, it's probably illegal not to tell them if you have to sign a disclosure agreement and your other job or hobby is in a related area. If your brother is an amature and maybe only has a couple gigs a month, your company will not care. Hell, it's better than what 90% of men do, which is sit on the couch and drink beer while watching football.
I'll never understand these nostalogic "those kids today" thoughts. Society evolves as technology evolves. You either learn to use it or end up complaining about the good ole' days.
My fiancee and I both think the coolest science story as of late is the Large Hydrogen Collider (LHC), even though neither of us are physictists. That's why I was a little discouraged to see this obviously biased science press release. Just from the headline and first sentence, I thought, "Uh-oh, they are spending money on unnecessary safety measure just to please the scientific-illiterate."
For those who may not know, the LHC is a giant particle smasher, which scientist hope will answer many pressing questions, such as the existance of the Higgs boson, many particles predicted by supersymmetry, and how dark matter and dark energy work. However, many people are frieghtened over essentially ignorance because they fear the LHC will produce stable micro black holes and strangelets (and I'm sure many other things). Safety studies were conducted and stated that there was no danger. You can read more on this here. Fox News even goes so far as to show an artist's illustration of a black hole (note: they don't even show a micro black hole since there are galaxies swirling around the black hole... which is weirder still black holes are generally in galaxies).
So, when I saw that the LHC was being delayed due to "safety," naturally I thought this meant that they were going to devise someway to stop something that wouldn't happen anyway. It's kind of like Lisa Simpson's tiger repellant rock. Anyway, after reading the article, I found out that "safety" was in regards to the EQUIPMENT. It had nothing to do with any type of safety for humans!!! Of course, you wouldn't know this unless you read the whole article, but most people only read, especially when posted online.
And this is not to fault FoxNews, since the story came from the Associated Press. So what are the morals of this tale:
All reporting is biased, even if unintenionaly.
You really do have to read the whole article.
Scientists need to be careful about the words they use. They never should have used the word "safety." Instead, they should have said something along the lines of "taking measures to protect equipment."
Congrats, Anita on the excellent CrunchGear writeup! It appears that MIR research is starting to pick up steam in terms of popular opinion. Don't forget to read the comments of the article. Now, get back to work! The people want more!
Disclaimer: This blog is non-political, but can discuss how science, journalism, and politics interact. I will try my best to simply state the facts and point to where I see a misinterpretation or omission of scienctific principles. As such, I intentionally did not post this until after the election.
Recently, I wrote about the new responsibilities engineers have when describing technical findings with science journalists. Shortly after my post, I began to see many articles stating that a committee put together by The Department of Homeland Security found that data-mining technology should not be used to track or identify terrorists because the technology would not work and privacy-rights would be violated due to false-positives. At first, I did not pay attention to this story, but I started to see more and more stories saying that ultimately, this task is futile.
Futile? Really? This implies that we know the limits of data-mining as a science. I guess we can cancel all those conferences next year. Unlike many of the journalists, I chose to actually read the report beyond the Executive Summary and found the comittee's objectives and conclusions were mischaracterized. First, the committee said that such technologies should not be used right now "given the present state of the science" (italics added) and should never be trusted in a fully automatic sense. The report also says (in a few places), that research should continue.
Second, this report is mostly a legal report and only uses the technological aspects as background. One common theme in the report is that false positives will occur, which results in privacy violations. However, the report fails to give the conditions under which a particular invasion may be justified. Clearly, the answer is not all or none, since privacy violations occur legally in non-terrorism contexts. For example, many common law-enforcement techniques such as DNA testing, witness accounts, and even confessions have a false-positive rate. Where are the calls to dismiss these technologies or to stop investigating crimes in general?
So what were the real conclusions in the report in regards to using data mining techniques for counter-terrorism efforts?
1. No fully automatic data-mining technique should be used.
Specifically, the document says that since there is always the possibility of false-positives, data-mining techniques can only be used to identify subjects for further investigation. This is not really new.
2. Technology can be used to reduce the risk of privacy intrusion.
Specifically, the technology can be used as a filter. The report gives an example, where only images with guns detected automatically are seen by humans for further investigation.
3. "Because data mining has proven to be valueable in private-sector applications... there is reason to explore its potential uses in countering terrorism.
Once again, proving my point that engineers and scientists need to be careful about how they describe their research and findings to journalists.
4. Programs need to be developed with specific goals and legal limitations in mind. In addition, programs must be subject to continual review.
The truth is that many of laws or legal understandings are based on judicial precidents and are rarely cleaned up by Congress. This becomes an issue when technologies change and new laws are not written. Any legal decision is largely based on the facts in the particular case and will not encompass the facts to apply a law in a broader context. A similar problem is seen in our obsolete copyright laws.
For what it's worth, I do not blame the reporters entirely. Reading a 372-page document is a lot to accomplish with a ever-shrinking new cycle. But this does demonstrate that engineers and scientists need to be careful about how they state their finding, since public perception and even legal policies can be altered by their mischaracterization in the media
The music information retrieval (MIR) community has seen an increasing amount of press time in the past couple weeks (see here and here). As this type of research gets more press coverage, an important issue is how the researchers interact with the press. Recently, my favorite podcast, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe interviewed Sharon Begley, the Senior Science Editor at Newsweek, about how science and media interact (podcast #166).
First, she discussing that relying on journalists to get the word out is sure-fire way to never get any press. Surprisingly, for someone in "Big Media," she applauds The New Media paradigm. Self-promotion, however, raises many ethical considerations since a few researchers are apt to over-publicize their results and well before any peer-review process has taken place. I think it is key that researchers limit their publicity until after some form of peer-review. For example, you will not hear any results about my research on this blog until it has been approved for publication.
Second, the press is a profit-making machine. Therefore, the fantastical will always get more press than the consensus. The same pressures that apply to other media types, especially in the face of The New Media. Generating readers will be the main point of any major media outlet. Generally, the story will be modified to be mostly true, but the key point may still be lost. It is up to the researchers to keep their message intact.
Third, researchers cannot expect the press to understand everything in their. At best, you can hope for some amount of scientific knowledge from the press, but they will always trust a Ph.D. in some science, even if the guy is crank (e.g., creationists, homeopathy, etc.). Being able to describe research in comfortable layman's terms is an essential skill for any scientist/engineer.
As someone engaged in music recommendation research, I am constantly hearing about the latest arguments from both sides over music intellectual property (IP) rights. I was a little surprised that college football is currently having issues over IP rights. Specifically, the issue seems to stem from live blogging, which is a very inefficient way to give live updates. It seems the NCAA views bloggers as a threat to TV and Internet coverage rights. It also appears that since the NCAA rents venues for private events, First Amendment Right issues may not come into play. Yes, it is true that the First Amendment is a protection from the government, not other people or organizations (at least, the way it is written).
However, I have hard time believing that live blogging is a threat to TV and Internet coverage revenue. Who really says, "hey, I could watch(or listen to) the game, but I would rather continually hit refresh on my browser and read what is going on!"? The truth is that live blogging is more than likely going to enhance people's enjoyment of the event. Apparently, the NCAA is against the idea of interactive media and (like the music industry) prays we stay in the 20th century.
Even more importantly, how in the heck is this going to be enforced? As I said, pulling out a laptop and posting to a blog repeatedly throughout a game is inefficient. I could do the same with my phone using Twitter's services, and I have the cheap-o free Samsung that I got for renewing my contract with my cell provider! Technically, anyone can microblog about the game. Is the NCAA really going to stand around every section in the stadium and look for people texting? They cannot even stop the frats from sneaking liquor into the stadium and get blind, stinking drunk!
Maybe, just maybe, we should really evaluate whether a new technology indeed trully is an infridgment on IP rights and whether that will translate into an actual revenue loss before we start over-reacting.
John C. Dvorak, recently wrote that everyone is losing perspective, in large part, because of the Internet. I found it hard to believe that someone as knowledgeable about technology would be so mislead as to fear it. He writes that there is a "decline in general perspective," which he defines "generalized or common knowledge." Further, this is due to the explosion of the Internet contributing bloggers, podcasts, etc. Mr. Dvorak leads us to believe that because of the Internet, people only read the news they want to read and fail to get a general, standard perspective.
However, there are a few problems with this theory. First, at no time was there ever a general, standard perspective. Everyone has their own perspective, which may be similar to others' perspective, but is still wholly unique. The idea that there ever was a single, unique interpretation speaks of thought control (cue Pink Floyd... "Teacher leave them kids alone").
Second, how was this general perspective even decided? Majority vote? Nope. By a handful of "middle-aged white men [sitting] around a table in a room" (quote from Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger). It's not general knowledge that Dvorak is begging to return, but the knowledge deemed important by a small group of people from a limited demography. Further, there has always been bias in reporting. It has only been recently that it has come to the spotlight. Despite Fox New's stance, there is no such thing as "fair and balanced" (ask any liberal). In fact, Mr. Dvorak's example of The New York Times is hardly bias-free (ask any conservative).
Mr. Dvorak believes that custom newspapers, which tailor to a reader's interests, makes people only read news they want. While this is potentially possible, newspapers have never exactly been a solution to this either. How many people read the newspaper from front to back, never missing an article? From experience, I can safely say that my Mom read the sports about as much as I read the Home and Garden section, which was... never!
Another cause for concern according to Mr. Dvorak is that those "gosh darn kids today" do not read newspapers and are the ones who really fail to get the "general perspective" (quotes are added to this from now on because the thought is complete rubbish). Maybe when Mr. Dvorak gets back from yelling at the kids to get off his lawn he'll ask himself a few questions such as:
How many kids where reading the newspaper before the Internet? How many kids just read the sections that interested them (e.g., Sports, Comics, etc.)? How many kids now have replaced reading those sections with similar sites on the Internet (e.g., ESPN.com, CNN.com, Comics.com)?
Sadly, Mr. Dvorak gives no data on any of this or any of his other claims. The truth is that we have a wealth of resources available to us. True, some are fictitious and utter nonsense, but it is not like these viewpoints only came about with the rise of the Internet or blogs. There were idiots in the past, there are idiots now, and there will continue to be idiots in the future. The Internet is a medium and nothing more. In fact, I couldn't be happier that these people have found a medium on the Internet because I can now board a plane without being harassed.
I think that Mr. Dvorak assumes that a newspaper is akin to an Encyclopedia, but again, even an Encyclopedia may have an implicit bias. As Mr. Weinberger points out in Everything is Miscellaneous, the wisdom of the crowds as lead to a truly consensus view (e.g., Wikipedia). Further, Mr. Weinberger states that one can actually view the degree to which consensus has been reached by looking at the history of pages. This allows for one to see if the post is new, is being changed a lot, or has settled into a stable state (i.e., consensus has been reached).
I am not really sure if it was Mr. Dvorak's hope of looking like someone who is afraid of technology or someone who is nostalgic for the "old ways," but he succeeded in both. The true cause of the decline in traditional media is that it is too static and mankind has evolved. Simply put, traditional media is just not enough anymore and is no longer a "good thing".
It seems I can always count on California to overreact and come to some illogical conclusions. While music and video piracy is still a problem for the major record labels, I find it hard to believe that there is any detriment to public health. I have never heard of anyone being physically or even emotionally hurt by such a crime. There has never been anyone dragged to the emergency room due to an illegal download. In fact, unless you are traveling around the coastal waters of Somalia and other parts of the Indian Ocean, I would have to say your chances of being hurt by anyone engaged in piracy is minimal. I'm starting to wonder if those running the Los Angeles government have confused The Pirates of the Caribbean with the nightly news. They even go to say the welfare of the country's citizens are at stake. I know the RIAA believes that dead people and pre-teens are a horrible aggitators and need to be stopped, I have never been in any immediate threat because on of my neighbors may have obtained the newest Sun Kil Moon album illegally. This whole statement screams of such ridiculous overstatements that it should trigger one's skeptic sense.
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