Category Archives: Gadgets and Technology

Debating how fast high-speed rail should be

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Some legislators in Illinois are questioning whether plans for 110 mph trains actually are high-speed trains. However, as you might expect, working out the details and the funding is complicated with many involved parties:

Officials at Amtrak, which has minimal expertise in operating high-speed rail, don’t see a problem topping out at only 110 mph. An infusion of billions of dollars in federal and state funding will mean better Amtrak service in the Midwest — just don’t mistake it for true high-speed trains.

The genuine article, service at up to 220 mph, is being planned in California and Florida. It already exists to a lesser degree on Amtrak Acela Express trains that get up to 150 mph on small portions of the route between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

While 110 mph would be faster than current trains, there are some who argue that the speed must be dramatically increased from current levels to have the trains compete with airline travel and attract customers.


Digital input and downtime for the brain

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Americans are inundated with information from digital devices: computers, phones, televisions, and more. According to the New York Times, research suggests all this digital usage could leave the brain with a lack of downtime and this has consequences:

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

This has some interesting implications for the future if these findings are replicated:

1. We could have a lot more breadth than depth.

2. We could be better synthesizers of information (having an ability to pull a lot of things together) but have less creativity. Or perhaps the general definition of creativity will simply change from the ability to generate new ideas to an ability to put together ideas together.

Teachers losing jobs over Facebook; some examples

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has some examples of teachers losing their jobs because of certain Facebook posts.

Some of the examples are quite egregious and I find it hard to believe some of them had no qualms about posting them in the first place. While a few of the teachers suggest that information was intended to be kept private and available only to friends, it pays off to be safe and just not post messages like these at all.

Issues with the world’s largest digital library

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While Google seems cleared to become an important scholarly destination due to its efforts to create the world’s largest digital library, Geoffrey Nunberg argues the system has some critical problems:

But to pose those [scholarly] questions, you need reliable metadata about dates and categories, which is why it’s so disappointing that the book search’s metadata are a train wreck: a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess…

But I have the sense that a lot of the initial problems are due to Google’s slightly clueless fumbling as it tried master a domain that turned out to be a lot more complex than the company first realized. It’s clear that Google designed the system without giving much thought to the need for reliable metadata. In fact, Google’s great achievement as a Web search engine was to demonstrate how easy it could be to locate useful information without attending to metadata or resorting to Yahoo-like schemes of classification. But books aren’t simply vehicles for communicating information, and managing a vast library collection requires different skills, approaches, and data than those that enabled Google to dominate Web searching.

I’m sure Google is interested in correcting some of these issues – even their famous search algorithm is under constant scrutiny as they search for more optimal ways to present information.

Even as these problems are ironed out, it does seem like having this kind of digital library could transform scholarly research. Just as I can’t imagine a world where all sociology articles are online (and I can access many of them), years from now we may look back and wonder how people operated without a vast online library of digital books.

Varying statistics about DNA matches

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NewScientist has a story about a criminal case that demonstrates how scientists can disagree about statistics regarding DNA analysis:

The DNA analyst who testified in Smith’s trial said the chances of the DNA coming from someone other than Jackson were 1 in 95,000. But both the prosecution and the analyst’s supervisor said the odds were more like 1 in 47. A later review of the evidence suggested that the chances of the second person’s DNA coming from someone other than Jackson were closer to 1 in 13, while a different statistical method said the chance of seeing this evidence if the DNA came from Jackson is only twice that of the chance of seeing it if it came from someone else…

[W]e show how, even when analysts agree that someone could be a match for a piece of DNA evidence, the statistical weight assigned to that match can vary enormously.

I recall reading something recently that suggested while the public thinks having DNA samples in a criminal case makes the case very clear, this is not necessarily the case. This article suggests is a lot more complicated and it depends on what lab and scientists are looking at the DNA samples.

Technology to pull us together

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Facebook has introduced a new feature (Facebook Places) that allows users to “check-in” at certain locations. Facebook’s vice president of product suggests this is exactly the sort of technology that will bring us together rather than pull us apart:

“The entire goal of this product, and in general what we’re trying to develop here, is that the ‘third place’ is alive and well and that technology can actually be the thing that pulls us away from the TV and out to the nightclub or out to the concert or out to the theater or out to the bar,” Cox said. “Technology does not need to estrange us from one another.”

The concept of the “third place” was developed in Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community first published in 1989. Oldenburg says the third place is the space between home and work. This sort of space has recently disappeared from the lives of many Americans whereas our ancestors had spaces where they could gather with friends and community members and vent about and discuss work and family and politics.

Facebook, of course, is not the first to introduce this technology. But since it has such a big user base, perhaps it can change how humans interact in social spaces. Or perhaps not.

Meeting romantic partners online

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Time reports on some research that suggests meeting romantic partners online is becoming a regular way of life:

Nearly 30% of new couples now meet online. Today the Internet is the second-most common way to meet a partner, according to results from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together Survey, with web introductions ranked only behind introduction by mutual friends.

Taken in 2009, the survey polled more than 4,000 Americans about their romantic relationships.

Looking online for partners is quite different than the traditional methods. For one, it expands the potential pool of partners. Before the Internet, people were generally limited to their personal connections, the institutions in which they were a part (work, religious organizations, civic organizations, etc.) or their weak ties (introductions by mutual friends). Two, it involves a different process of presenting oneself. Instead of an initial face-to-face interaction, the two people create profiles and search for matches.

According to the story, the research also found that those people who met each other through church had the highest relationship satisfaction.

Google CEO Schmidt talks about its future

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The Wall Street Journal reports on a conversation its editors had with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Some of the nuggets of information (with some help of this Telegraph piece):

-The world of targeted information is near at hand. Schmidt says, “a generation of powerful handheld devices is just around the corner that will be adept at surprising you with information that you didn’t know you wanted to know.”

-Google might even help plan out what you should be doing: “”I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” he elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.””

-From the Telegraph article: “Mr Schmidt said he believed that every young person will one day be allowed to change their name to distance themselves from embarrasssing photographs and material stored on their friends’ social media sites.”

-About privacy regulation: “Mr. Schmidt says regulation is unnecessary because Google faces such strong incentives to treat its users right, since they will walk away the minute Google does anything with their personal information they find “creepy.””

Some fascinating insights into how Google hopes to be part of people’s lives in the future. The piece about young people perhaps needing to change their names once they reach adulthood in order to escape their online past is a reminder of how much information is available on the Internet.

A better life with a mouthguard

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I’ve seen a story or two about this before and Time also explores how an Bite Tech/Under Armour mouthguard might improve your life.

The key, according to the makers, is that the mouthguard prevents clenching of the jaw and therefore improves physical performance and concentration. This mouthguard “moves your lower jaw forward. The combination opens the throat, improving breathing.” According to the article, studies by the maker show the mouthguard does increase performance – but just a bit.

Be prepared to see a cheaper model – $60 – made available to the public early in 2011. Whether this becomes a must-have accessory for many people remains to be seen…

Bill Gates suggests a change is coming in higher education

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Bill Gates made a prediction about the future of higher education at a conference last Friday. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on Gates’ comments:

“Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university,” he argued at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif. “College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based.”

Gates went on to argue for a need to lower higher education costs and make such education more widely available. Also at the conference, Nicholas Negroponte claimed e-books will replace printed books  in five years.

There are clearly benefits to having class in-person but the rising cost of higher education will put pressure on schools to offer more Internet based classes.