19 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasp... 1 
notes
notes12 DEC 2017 by ideonexus
The Consensus of Cyberspace
In the real world the empty page might scare the writer. as the blank screen might intimidate the programmer, but now individuals found themselves in the position of having to "boot up" an entire universe of meaning, without any easy reference to the constellation of familiar objects that tend to reinforce the tentative definitions obf newly ereated artifacts. Say, for example, one wished to create a chair in cyberspace, circa 1985. The most that can be said is that this "chair" won't look ve... 1 notes
notes25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
When Information is Cheap, Attention Becomes Expensive
Negative reviews are fun to write and fun to read, but the world doesn’t need them, since the average work of literary fiction is, in Laura Miller’s words, “invisible to the average reader.” It appears and vanishes from the scene largely unnoticed and unremarked. “Even the novelists you may think of as ‘hyped’ are in fact relatively obscure,” writes Miller. “I’ve got a battalion of perfectly intelligent cousins who have never heard of either Jonathan Franzen or Dave Eggers... 1 notes
notes25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
Children's Art Has Its Own Logic
Even simple scribbles are meaningful. While it was once thought that kids only scribbled to experience the physical sensation of moving their arm along the page, “now it’s been shown that when children are scribbling … they’re representing through action, not through pictures,” said Boston College’s Winner. “For example, a child might draw a truck by making a line fast across the page and going ‘zoom, zoom,’ and so it doesn’t look like a truck when the child is done, but i... 1 notes
notesThis reminds me of Sagan's pumpkin-carving, where he made random cuts and took out chunks to make it scarier with more "bloody guts."
09 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
Storing Information In a URL
What is This?
My Example
urlHosted is an experimental web app that misuses the part after the "#" of a URL to store and read data.
The app is unhosted. See this definition from unhosted.org:
Also known as "serverless", "client-side", or "static" web apps, unhosted web apps do not send your user data to their server. Either you connect your own server at runtime, or your data stays within the browser.
This means this app neither stores nor sends any of your data to any server. Inst...Folksonomies: hacking encryption
Folksonomies: hacking encryption
1 notes
notesStore the content of a page inside the URL and have this site render it.
25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Jay Rosen: Information Overload
Filters in a digital world work not by removing what is filtered out; they simply don't select for it. The unselected material is still there, ready to be let through by someone else's filter. Intelligent filters, which is what we need, come in three kinds:
A smart person who takes in a lot and tells you what you need to know. The ancient term for this is "editor." The front page of the New York Times still works this way.
An algorithm that sifts through the choices other smart people have... 1 notes
notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
PETWHAC
PETWHAC stands for Population of Events That Would Have
Appeared Coincidental. Population may seem an odd word, but it is the
correct statistical term. I won't keep using capital letters because they
stand so unattractively on the page. Somebody's watch stopping within
ten seconds of the psychic's incantation obviously belongs within the
petwhac, but so do many other events. Strictly speaking, the grandfather
clock's stopping should not be included. The mystic did not claim that he
could stop... 1 notes
notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Counterpoint to "US Oligarchy" Finding
As usual. It implies that the views of 'average Americans' are abrogated by the economic elite. As the PDF clearly states on page 14 "It turns out, in fact, that the preferences of average citizens are positively and fairly highly correlated, across issues, with the preferences of the economic elites." It also turns out that the paper defines 'average American' as someone at the 50% income level, and 'economic elite' as someone at the 90% income level or above, which works out to $146,000. Th...Folksonomies: politics governance
Folksonomies: politics governance
1 Does the research actually find that people who organize and attempt to influence government actually do?
24 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Florence Nightingale Worshiped Quantification
[Of her] Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed—and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief—that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator—to say nothing of the politiciantoo often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she we...Folksonomies: virtue quantification
Folksonomies: virtue quantification
1 Described here as being virtuously dedicated to statistics and measurement in medicine.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Early Days of the Printing Press was Like the Early WWW
As was the case during the early days of the World Wide Web, however, the quality of the information was highly varied. While the printing press paid almost immediate dividends in the production of higher quality maps,10 the bestseller list soon came to be dominated by heretical religious texts and pseudoscientific ones.11 Errors could now be mass-produced, like in the so-called Wicked Bible, which committed the most unfortunate typo in history to the page: thou shalt commit adultery.12 Meanw...The glut of books produced a situation of "too much information" similar to the one produced by the world wide web.
