Legatissimo.info - News

Technology will become increasingly disruptive

kyle — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:49:07 -0500

For a while I've wanted to write an in depth post regarding my thoughts about the future. In lieu of that, I'll provide you with my thesis and an article that supports its underlying premise.

We are, as a world, transitioning to a society marked by rapid technological development. This technological development will be disruptive. Disruptive of current structures of wealth, disruptive of established governments, and disruptive of current definitions of what it means to be human. These thoughts have largely been inspired by Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. Anyway, I present the following evidence:

Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways -- in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

Weeks after the fact, Guardian still wrong

kyle — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 11:18:00 -0500

A few weeks back I made a post about how a "fact" from Gullible.info made it into an article in the Guardian UK, via Wikipedia. Basically what happened is some reporter probably didn't want to be bothered with earning their paycheck, so they just lifted material from the Wikipedia page on Timothy Leary. It was shoddy journalism for a reporter to include unverified information from a Wikipedia page in what is supposed to be a credible news source.

And now, nearly three weeks after I emailed them and told them their article contained completely fabricated information, it hasn't been corrected. The lede still reads:

He exhorted America to "turn on, tune in and drop out" and claimed to have discovered a new primary colour - which he called gendale. Now Timothy Leary, the eccentric spokesman of the 1960s counter-culture, is to become the subject of a Hollywood movie.

I received one reply to my email about this error:

Your link to the article doesn't connect and I can't find such an article in our archive. Do you have some more information to help me find it?

Best wishes,
Murray Armstrong

Apparently because the URL had a line break in it (between the http:// and the domain) it didn't get parsed into a link, and it seems as if copying and pasting is out of the question. I emailed back a link that wouldn't break, but I still haven't heard anything.

Of course, no one is keeping score when it comes to the accuracy of Wikipedia, but for the record, I was able to make the correction to the Wikipedia page myself.

(Note: Gullible.info is also hosting a discussion about the "color," if you're interested.)

Update: The mistake has been corrected, the fabricated info is now gone. Huzzah!

Digg this article

Seven steps to the creation of truth

kyle — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 15:57:00 -0500

It was never just a possibility. As far as I am concerned, it was an inevitability. A few months ago Gullible.info created truth.

No, it didn't make Truth. I'm talking about little-t-,-as-small-as-you-can-make-it-t truth. I'm talking about the kind of truth that says it takes years for gum to pass through the digestive system. The kind of bastardization of facts that exists only because there are enough people who believe it that for all intents and purposes it becomes true. The kind of truth that composes the Napoleonic definition of history: "a set of lies that people have agreed upon." This is what Gullible.info has finally made, a citable "fact."

From a June, 2005 post on Gullible.info:

Emperor penguins are the most photographed Arctic animals.
Egyptian politicians personally sweep the front stoops of constituents' homes during election season.
A group of MIT students invented a board game based on chess that takes three days to play.
Kansas has the most steakhouses per capita in the US.
LSD guru Timothy Leary claimed to have discovered an extra primary color he referred to as "gendale."

He exhorted America to "turn on, tune in and drop out" and claimed to have discovered a new primary colour - which he called gendale. Now Timothy Leary, the eccentric spokesman of the 1960s counter-culture, is to become the subject of a Hollywood movie. source ;-)

Now you're probably wondering how you can be so fancy as to create truth, too. I mean, it's pretty useful to be able to create citable evidence in a pinch. Well, I've outlined the seven steps involved in the procedure:

On a whim register a domain name that people will come to associate with only the highest caliber of information, I don't know, something like Gullible.info
Load it up with fake trivia. The faker the better.
Sit back and watch. Your work is done.
An overeager, under-informed chap reads one of the splendid "facts" and puts it in a Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia article seen by a lazy reporter who doesn't realize that their entire job is dependent on the vetting of information, regardless of the source.
Let someone delete any references to your "fact" from the Wikipedia article because they can't find any legitimate citation for it.
After the "fact" is published, someone will likely add it back to the Wikipedia article because, hey, it's got a citation, so it must be right!

(Note: I'm giving the Guardian UK reporter the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they got the information off of Wikipedia, if they got it off Gullible.info, we've got bigger fish to fry.)

All of these points represent a failure of information, on some level. Yes, the very first thing people will get up in arms about is the fact that it is my fault that this disinformation exists in the first place. I readily acknowledge and accept that. Of course I've wrestled with the moral ramifications of Gullible.info before. Consequently, that's why I didn't address that particular subject in this post. I would only be rehashing old material. Disregarding that aspect, it's important to take a look at this from the standpoint of information on the Internet in general.

I've said it for years: the nature of information is changing. The people who don't fundamentally alter the ways in which they interface with information will find themselves misled. Not just by Gullible.info, but in more serious ways by sites like MartinLutherKing.org -- a white supremacist group's website.

The safe thing to do is assume that any information you find online isn't necessarily wrong, but assume that it isn't very valuable. What does that mean? Basically it means that you shouldn't use it to make any decisions that could 1) cost you money, 2) damage your health, 3) etc, etc. It could be impeccably accurate, it could be completely off the mark, or it could be somewhere between those points. But the key thing is that you have no way of knowing for sure where on that spectrum it falls.

People are busy. And we need to have information that we can trust. That's why we pay for things. We pay for newspapers, we pay for news organizations. We pay these people to verify information for us. We pay them to make sure that it's correct. Of course just because we pay for something doesn't mean that it's necessarily true, but for the most part, it's a safe assumption to make that it's probably more true than false. That is to say, on our spectrum, the information they tell us is going to fall more towards the true side.

Now whenever we process information, we should run through a little check: what is the value of this information and what is the significance it will play in my life. For the most part, I believe that everyone does this already. Sure people will go to Gullible.info and erroneously believe that the Titanic was carrying 750,000 plates when it sunk. But 99.998% of people won't have their lives changed by that piece of incorrect information. It's worthless information, so people don't devote too much energy to verifying it.

Now here's where a major disconnect occurs: When information is published in a mainstream source, it becomes worth more. We make the assumption that they have standards of verifying information before publishing it. Now if that group it takes information at one value level, and promotes it to another without ensuring accuracy, it creates false value, and problems like this occur.

And it all comes together here. When you access information on Wikipedia, you are making a choice to trade breadth for minor cuts in accuracy. A distributed-editing system is inherently like this. The information you find there isn't necessarily wrong, and I'd go as far as to say that it's probably correct. Or rather, it's correct enough if you're just causally looking into a subject. The minor degradation of quality is more than recouped by the tremendous diversity of articles on the page. When you access information in The Guardian UK, you don't expect the same breadth, but you do expect greater accuracy. But to Wikipedia's credit, I was able to simply go in and edit the page myself, correcting the error that was mostly my fault. That's something I can't do with the Guardian.

Commencement, heraldic trumpets, and my hour long chat with George H W Bush

kyle — Mon, 22 May 2006 11:29:00 -0500

As of yesterday afternoon, I am no longer a student at the George Washington University, instead I join the ranks of alumni they'll hit up for money a few times a year. The Commencement ceremony was held on the national mall, just in front of the Capitol building. It's a pretty big thing, usually with around 20,000 people in attendance. It's full of pomp, circumstance, academic regalia, and two herald trumpet players.

Now what is a herald trumpet, you're wondering. This is a herald trumpet:

It often has a banner hung from the extraordinarily long bell, and folks play them when they want to look cool. Here's where I enter the equation. As a graduating senior in the music department, I was selected to be one of the two people who play the fanfares to open the commencement ceremonies -- this year, keynoted by former president George H. W. Bush and his lovely wife Barbara.

Okay, I thought, this should be pretty cool. I'll get to stand on stage with a former president, play a few notes, and go sit down with my friends. Except that's not exactly how it happened.

I was waiting backstage with the other trumpet player and the university marshall, when she told us it was time to go on. We walked towards the platform where we saw the Bushs standing there waiting. George shook our hands, talked to us a bit about jazz, and I thought that was pretty cool. I'm not a huge fan of his policies, but you've got to respect the fact that this man was, at one point in time, the leader of the free world -- that's pretty impressive.

Along with one other person I didn't know, the six of us walked up on stage. The university marshall pointed at us and we played. Then the graduating student started to process in. But, lo and behold, who was standing next to me? Why, Bush senior, of course. And for the hour while people processed in -- 45 minutes to an hour, I'm not exactly sure -- I stood next to him and chatted.

We talked about his grandkids. We talked about his advice if I go into politics: "Never get between a man with a camera and an Oriental woman." -- What? We waved at people. We talked about the research I did for my thesis on volunteer integration in political campaigns via emergent technology. The other trumpet player's phone rang -- it was on vibrate -- but when he told Bush that, the former president insisted that he give him his phone, and he called the person back and left a message saying something to the effect of "This is George H. W. Bush, number 41, sorry I missed you, congratulations." We talked about how it's a weird feeling to be elected president, how impressive the oval office is, and what it's like to go to school in the District.

The photo editor of the school newspaper was there taking pictures, and being the outgoing senior design editor, I was able to get a CD of all the pictures he took. I asked Bush if I could get the picture signed, and he told me to mail it to him, and then he gave me his business card. If I can find a scanner, I'll get a picture of it uploaded.

It was an unexpectedly awesome/surreal day. And now after that little adventure yesterday, I'm here at my full time job working away. I can't wait until I get the picture back signed. It's gonna look great in my collection.

A huge thanks to Sam Sherraden, outgoing Hatchet photo editor extraordinaire, who gave me a CD of a bunch of wonderful photos of Bush and me. Have fun in China, Sam.

Finding a home

kyle — Fri, 12 May 2006 08:02:00 -0500

The week before I left home freshman year for Foggy Bottom, I was convinced that I only needed two things: a P.O. box and a job. They were legacies of my childhood. I needed a permanent address and I needed to stay busy. While I had deeper worries about coming to college, somehow, I thought, if I could take care of those two things, everything else would fall in place.

And without much planning on the job front, before I really stopped to consider what I was doing, on my third day in college, I found myself gainfully employed by the second-oldest newspaper in Washington, D.C.

If I had known how much my life would be influenced by The Hatchet, I probably would have stopped to think. But even if I had done that, I would have pushed forward, anyway - especially knowing what I know today.

Now, staring down a commencement date within spitting distance, I can see just how much my personal, professional and academic development were shaped - some professors might suggest "stunted" - by The Hatchet. But for all its ups and downs, the experiences and achievements I have been a part of in the last three years have impacted me in tremendous ways.

The start of my employment was unceremonious. About the closest thing to a "welcome aboard" was when Mosheh Oinounou lost my high school portfolio, which consisted of a half dozen issues of my semi-monthly/monthly/whenever-we-could-get-it-out-the-door high school newspaper. (Mosheh, if it's any condolence, Barnett found them when he was cleaning the office.)

Within days of becoming The Hatchet's newest production assistant, I was making graphics and corrections. Within weeks, I was cursing the old XantÃ©, making pages and moaning about missing fonts. And within a couple of months, give or take, I don't recall exactly, I was promoted to assistant production manager. I had become a part of The Hatchet, and it had become a part of me - and the walls of the production "office" will never be the same because of it.

The job was an interesting one. I wouldn't go as far as to say that production is the glue of the newspaper. But we are the house ads; we are the leading and the kerning; we are the last deadline before it hits the fan. We wrestle with the computers and turn off the lights. We take stories, photos and ads and put them together like a big puzzle, and then we check the jumps, and somehow when the paper comes out the next morning, the jumps are off anyway.

Things coalesced. I settled in. And when Andrew Snow called me late one February night, five months into my employment, I knew something was wrong. He told me I had to come to The Hatchet. I told him I'd be there as soon as I could.

That evening we learned Jenny Dierdorff, production manager, my boss and friend, had taken her own life. While it ripped us apart individually, it brought us all closer together. We carried on. Despite the strain of not just missing a key staff member but dealing with the emotional toll of losing a friend, we went to press on-schedule after a production night that still seems like it should have been impossible.

Unwittingly promoted, I can say with total certainty that if it weren't for the hard work and dedication of Sarah Brown, Kyle Spector, Josh Stager and of course Andy Phillips, there's no way I would have been able to hold things together. Forced into shoes I didn't think myself capable of filling, I had to step up, but the support I had made my transition possible.

As we pushed forward into the spring, a sense of normalcy slowly began to return. Instead of just working hard to hold things together, we could work on improving the paper.

To impress oneself is the hallmark of success, I think. For me, it's a great feeling to do something that I didn't know I could do. I know the reputation I have around The Hatchet builds me up as some kind of miracle worker. Can't think of a headline for this fancy layout? "No sweat, Stoneman will think of something." It's flattering, and it would be a lie to say that I don't enjoy a bit of ego stroking from time to time. But I think that my reputation is more or less undeserved. Sure, it may look like I know a lot of stuff, but I'm really just picking it up as I go.

When I was in high school, I worked as a counselor for a week-long science camp that was run through the public schools. Though I still remember the Latin names of most of the native Oregon trees, one idea that I come back to more often is a bit of advice the staff would give to the incoming student leaders: fake it 'til you make it. It's disarmingly simple, but it's served me very well.

Back in March, Michael Barnett approached me to see if I was interested in designing a 32-page magazine about the basketball team. "Of course," I told him. Never mind that I had never designed a magazine before; never mind that beyond my understanding of the technical workings of the computer programs involved, I didn't have much of an idea what I was doing; never mind any of that. Even though I didn't know how to make a magazine, I knew I could fake it.

I'm going to let you in on a secret that I haven't told anyone before. I've been faking this whole time. Hell ... I'm still faking it.

But that's the thing about me; I don't do something because I know how to do it. I do something because I don't know how to do it. That has been why I have loved working for the Hatchet so much. I can succeed. I can fail. And that's okay. We're all doing the best we can; making the best newspaper we know how to make.

I came to college with two dilemmas - where could I get my mail, and where could I spend my time - and I'm leaving with one solution. Three years ago, after only a few days on the job, I explained my P.O. box plan to an editor, who promptly dismissed it. "Just have it all sent to The Hatchet," she told me. So I did. And for the last three years when anyone asked me what my home address is, I've always said, "2140 G St."

-30-

-The writer has been designing pages and doing magic tricks at The Hatchet since September 2003.

Joy, numbers, &c.

kyle — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 11:32:59 -0500

How do you measure success? How do you quantify freedom? How do you gauge hope or joy? The answer is not as obvious as it would seem. Contrary to what most believe, these qualities can not be measured with a ruler. Keep this in mind today. And when someone suggests that a yardstick be used to calculate one of these esoteric ideas, please remind them that they are intangible concepts, and therefore cannot be measured in inches or feet, and especially not in some unit borrowed from the "metric" system.

Gullible.info forums are up and running

kyle — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:08:47 -0500

After a few days of hacking and playing, Andrew and I have a pretty nice install of Vanilla forum running over at factcheck.gullible.info. I've got some lofty goals for the project. But first I need you to register an account.

I think you all will be smart enough to figure out how the public/private forum discussions are going to work. In-jokes 4eva.

Craziness is okay, but only if we're the same religion

kyle — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 12:53:11 -0500

Wikinews is running a story about a woman who had her custody rights denied because of her involvement with The Church of the Subgenius. Don't get me wrong, the subgeniuses are a bunch of crazies, but if you want to start taking away people's kids because of religious insanity, Marguerite Perrin's kids should be the first to go.

The problem here is the double standard. It's okay to be crazy if you're a Christian, that just shows you're dedicated to your beliefs. But if you're anything else, waaatch out.

Can we get John Ricci to 1,000?

kyle — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:24:14 -0500

Consider this a contest. The wonderful John Ricci has posted an inspiring list of 800 things you probably didn't know about him.

Here's a sampling of some of my favorite:

91. When I was in high school, most of the students were quite friendly to me.
636. When I see a theater, I say "mooovies!".
409. I still remember my high school locker combination: 29-12-30.
695. I don't walk up or down an escalator, since that sort of defeats the purpose,
unless it's a narrow escalator and someone in a hurry is behind me.
490. I save any 1965 quarters I get (the first year of the current copper-nickel
composition), for use at special places or events.

Well, 800 is a good job. He sure beat John Hodgman's 700. But why stop there? Let's go for the gold. I'm putting $10 bucks up (via paypal -- I know they suck, sorry) to whoever posts the best John Ricci style fact about yourself. This contest will be open until I get 200, and then I'll pick the winner...all by myself.

Here's some rules:
1. As many guesses per person as anyone wants
2. Bonus points if you provide a link that shows someone else was cheating
3. I get to pick the winner and no one gets to whine. If I pick my best friend just because he had the best entry, so be it. I'm going to pick what I think is the best, no matter whose it is.

I'll pick out some more of my favorite from the real list as I work through the whole list.

Multi-touch screen display is incredible

kyle — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:49:27 -0500

If I had a tag for "awesome" I would use it right now. Alas, I don't -- you'll just have to buck up and deal with that. Some fine folks at MIT have put together something that looks like it's straight out of the future. It's a touch screen display that takes multiple inputs and uses them to navigate around a wonderfully designed interface. See the demo real here (mirror).

Found this via Eyes on Creativity.