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Clay Shirky on the Need for Better Information Filters
Last month, Clay ShirkyL1 gave a presentation with the title “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter FailureL2” at the Web 2.0 ExpoL3. 1 Shirky admits up front at the start of the talk that the topic is something new that he is exploring, and as a result the ideas are not fully formed. (I get lost in how the last of his three examples applies to the topic at hand, for instance.) But his viewpoint is a refreshing way to look at the issue of “information overload” from a new perspective, and it is worth looking at even in this raw stage. For starters, he says that we’ve been facing information overload for the past 500 years — since the introduction of the Gutenburg movable type press gave readers more books than they could possibly read. What has changed in the last decade has been how past information “filters” are no longer effective.
Video of Clay Shirky’s talk at Web 2.0 Expo. 23 minutes, 51 seconds.
Shirky posits that the expense of printing a book made publishers both the creators of the object and filters for information printed in objects. The relatively high up-front costs of producing the book meant publishers in the position of selecting only the best information to print. Publishers were, in effect, a kind of filter of quality for the onslaught of information as a way of reducing their risks of printing content that no one would want to read. The internet has driven the cost of publishing to near zero, and as such the “pre-publication” filter that publishers provided is no longer in place. (He calls this “post-Gutenburg economics.) In Shirky’s words, “the filter for quality is way downstream from the site of production.”
Shirky points to some examples of filters and talks about their effectiveness. For inbound communication, the example is e-mail spam and how spam filters must be constantly tuned. This is a pretty clear example of what he is talking about — the cost of production is cheap and the assessment of quality is done by the reader, not the producer. The second example is one of outbound communication; Shirky tells the story of a colleague who attempted to use Facebook privacy settings to slowly disseminate the fact that she had broken up with her colleague. (That isn’t what happened. P.S.: Karen Schneider — your name pops up briefly in one of Clay’s screenshots!) The third example is that of a student that faced expulsion from a Canadian university because he started a Facebook homework groupL4. Shirky’s point with this example seems to be that a filter-of-inconvenience was removed through the use of technology — that a study group of 147 students wouldn’t actually occur in real life but was replicated on Facebook.
Some other quotes that caught my ear:
- “Managing your privacy practices is an unnatural act… Privacy is a way of managing information flow… The big question we’re facing around privacy now is that were not moving from one engineered system to another engineered system with different characteristics. We’re moving from an evolved system to an engineered system.”
- “The inefficiency of information flow wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. That’s what privacy was.”
- “What the internet does is allows large systems that are free-rider tolerant rather than free-rider resistant.”
- “It really is about rethinking the [higher education] institutional model. You have to have group conversation. You have to have individual effort. You have to design a system that accommodates both.”
- “If you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe it is a fact.” –Yitzhak Rabin
The REEM-B humanoid robot
Automaton reader Davide wrote to let us know that his team at Pal Technology has developed REEM-B, a humanoid robot designed to assist humans with everyday tasks. They recently presented a teleoperated prototype at an event in Abu Dhabi, where the company is based (though much of the development took place in Barcelona, Spain). This YouTube video shows a fancy introduction of the robot (and looks something like what I hope commercials for robots will look like one day on TV), but the following video is a little more informational about what REEM-B can do:
Davide tells us:
The robot has some unique features: its batteries last more than 2 hours (twice as much as Asimo). It has 41 degrees of freedom and it has object, face and voice recognition. It's the first biped robot implementing laser-based SLAM [Simultaneous Localization and Mapping] and it is probably the strongest humanoid in the world, since it can walk carrying up to 14 kg. The first robot (REEM-A) was created in just 1 year, and REEM-B in the following 2 years.
He also points out that his team is hiring.
Like Asimo, REEM-B still hasn't achieved full autonomy, requiring a human operator to tell it where to go and what to do. "Pour me a glass of Coke" isn't understood; specific tasks must be commanded on a lower level. However, the mapping capabilities, manipulation, and facial recognition are impressive. Plenty more videos are available here.
I would like to extend my generous offer to test out any prototypes in my home. I've got some dishes that need washing.
Robot Bicycle Parking Lots in Tokyo are Commuters Heaven
To solve the bicycle parking problem in Tokyo, Robotic parking lots were create to park commuters bikes quickly, safely and efficiently. With the huge population in Tokyo, there is also a huge amount of commuters, traveling and rolling on their bicycles. There are thousands and thousands of individuals who ride their bicycle to work, to the train station or simply as a cheap, practical and efficient mean of transportation in Tokyo. Since there are so many bicycles on the streets, there is an increasing need for viable parking places for these bikes. This robot garage is a wonderful creation that easily aids with the bicycle parking dilemma.
For bicycle riders, this solution could not be much simpler. For approximately $18 a month, individuals have access to this bike parking garage for an entire month. As they arrive, they place their bicycle in the intended area, swipe their member’s magnetic card, and a robot comes to take your bicycle to storage for the day (or longer).
The robot hands come pick up the bike, tag it using RFID, and store it underground with the thousands of other bikes. It has been mentioned by regular users that it usually takes approximately 10 seconds to retrieve their bicycles when returning.
This is a wonderful creation that is extremely space efficient since it is underground. While providing a great solution for commuters, it does in fact help promote commuting by creating such a practical, cheap and easy solution.
Next parking challenges are for cars: make the smart car a reality and take great parallel parking tips from a robot to be installed in real vehicles.
Via: Treehugger
House building robot is bad news for Brickies
Boffins at the University of South California have developed a robotic gantry that builds up walls to almost any shape and specification without any manual labour, plans are input into a computer and the concrete laying machine goes about its duty, able to finish an entire house within a day without a single tea break.
Behrokh Khoshnevis is the brainchild behind this building machine after looking into methods of rapid construction as a way to reconstruct areas devestated by natural disasters such as earthquakes which have plagued his native Iran.
Not only a labour saver of note but the machine is environmentally sound too as reports claim up to seven tonnes of waste are produced by convential house building and the machine would also negate the need for heavy vehicle usage too.
Khoshnevis has also had interest from NASA in his machine as a potential builder of a lunar habitat.
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