5 ethics principles big data analysts must follow; TechRepublic, 1/2/17

Michael Kassner, TechRepublic; 5 ethics principles big data analysts must follow

"Big data is not only big—it is also powerful and error prone, notes Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst with Altimeter Group, in her 2014 TED talk. "At this point in our history... we can process exabytes of data at lightning speed, which also means we have the potential to make bad decisions far more quickly, efficiently, and with far greater impact than we did in the past."

Besides the potential for bad decisions, Etlinger believes that humans place too much faith in technology, including, for example, our blind acceptance of charts and graphs developed from big data analysis."

Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker Looks Back on a 2016 as Dark as Any Dystopian Future; Slate, 12/30/16

Sam Adams, Slate; Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker Looks Back on a 2016 as Dark as Any Dystopian Future

[Kip Currier: Sophie Gilbert's Atlantic article nicely sums up the techno-angst mood of Netflix's Black Mirror TV series-- a technology-infused Information Ethics-y update of Rod Serling's classic Twillight Zone:

 "Black Mirror, a British speculative anthology series created by Charlie Brooker in 2011, considers the murky relationship between humans and technology, the latter of which often threatens to progress so quickly that our ethical frameworks don’t have the chance to catch up."]

"Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker is best known for exploring dystopian futures, but in Charlie Brooker’s 2016 Wipe, he looks back at a year that was as dark as any future he’s envisioned."

Why time management is ruining our lives; Guardian, 12/22/16

Oliver Burkeman, Guardian; Why time management is ruining our lives:

"Personal productivity presents itself as an antidote to busyness when it might better be understood as yet another form of busyness. And as such, it serves the same psychological role that busyness has always served: to keep us sufficiently distracted that we don’t have to ask ourselves potentially terrifying questions about how we are spending our days. “How we labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, in what reads like a foreshadowing of our present circumstances. “Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”

You can seek to impose order on your inbox all you like – but eventually you’ll need to confront the fact that the deluge of messages, and the urge you feel to get them all dealt with, aren’t really about technology. They’re manifestations of larger, more personal dilemmas. Which paths will you pursue, and which will you abandon? Which relationships will you prioritise, during your shockingly limited lifespan, and who will you resign yourself to disappointing? What matters?"

Jonathan Nolan Responds To That Westworld Location Theory; Slashfilm.com, 10/17/16

Peter Sciretta, Slashfilm.com; Jonathan Nolan Responds To That Westworld Location Theory:

Minor spoilers re "Westworld" plot themes

[Kip Currier: Viewers of Season 1 of the popular new HBO series "Westworld"--a reimagined reboot of the 1973 film, based on Michael Crichton's eponymous novel--have increasingly seen the protect-at-all-costs value of Westworld's Intellectual Property, as well as privacy concerns. Showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy Nolan touch on these issues below:]

"In regards to the computer terminals where the Delos staff communicate to their loved ones back home, [Lisa Joy Nolan] says:

Regardless of where they are, the park is very, very vast, and you don’t rotate home often. You don’t have open communication where you can just pick up a phone. Even senior people have to go to the coms room – because [the park is] protecting their intellectual property. We’re hoping to paint a portrait of the culture of the corporation.

[Jonathan] Nolan (who was a showrunner on Person of Interest, a series about a computer system that could analyze all forms of public and private data to predict the future) seems to be very interested in the aspect of big brother looking in on our communications. As for how it relates to Westworld, he says the Delos corporation wants to protect its intellectual property and the privacy of the park’s guests:

In Westworld, the value of the park is all in its intellectual property, it’s all in the code. So regardless of the park’s location, they would be extremely careful with that code and making sure its virtually impossible to smuggle it out of the park. And there’s the privacy of the guests – you’re not going to have a good time in Westworld if somebody is Instagramming your activities. I’m amazed [th]at [sic] Las Vegas has survived the Instagram age. In episode 2, when the guests come in, we don’t see this, but we assume these guys have cell phones that they’re not allowed to bring in the park. We very much think this is a path where culture may be going – that we’ll get over-exposed and sick of the interconnectedness of our lives that we’ll hunger for places [that offer disconnected privacy]. We’ll hunger for a moment where we can go back toward having some privacy."

Most Scientific Findings Are Wrong or Useless; Reason, 8/26/16

Ronald Bailey, Reason; Most Scientific Findings Are Wrong or Useless:

""Science, the pride of modernity, our one source of objective knowledge, is in deep trouble." So begins "Saving Science," an incisive and deeply disturbing essay by Daniel Sarewitz at The New Atlantis. As evidence, Sarewitz, a professor at Arizona State University's School for Future Innovation and Society, points to reams of mistaken or simply useless research findings that have been generated over the past decades...

In his 1972 essay "Science and Trans-Science," the physicist Alvin Weinberg noted that science is increasingly being asked to address such issues as the deleterious side effects of new technologies, or how to deal with social problems such as crime and poverty. These are questions that "though they are, epistemologically speaking, questions of fact and can be stated in the language of science, they are unanswerable by science; they transcend science." Such trans-scientific questions inevitably involve values, assumptions, and ideology. Consequently, attempting to answer trans-scientific questions, Weinberg wrote, "inevitably weaves back and forth across the boundary between what is known and what is not known and knowable."...

Ultimately, science can be rescued if researchers can be directed more toward solving real world problems rather than pursuing the beautiful lie. Sarewitz argues that in the future, the most valuable scientific institutions will be those that are held accountable and give scientists incentives to solve urgent concrete problems. The goal of such science will be to produce new useful technologies, not new useless studies. In the meantime, Sarewitz has made a strong case that contemporary "science isn't self-correcting, it's self-destructing.""

Drones and M&M’s Help Vaccinate Endangered Ferrets; Future Tense via Slate, 7/14/16

Matt Miller, Future Tense via Slate; Drones and M&M’s Help Vaccinate Endangered Ferrets:

[Kip Currier: Following on the heels of the Facebook story below, another positive application of technology: specifically, the ingenius use of drones (much in the press over the past few years as a technology deployed for military/national security/reconnaissance purposes) in an 11th hour rescue of highly endangered North American black-footed ferrets from extinction in the wild.]

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just announced a plan (h/t the Verge) to save wild ferrets in the Great Plains region using brilliant combination of drones and M&M’s candy. Endangered since 1967 and thought to be extinct twice, the black-footed ferret is one the rarest mammals in North America—just 300 are thought to live in the wild. According to the FWS, the “primary obstacle” to this species’ recovery is its susceptibility to a virus called the Sylvatic plague, similar to the bubonic plague in humans.

That’s where the drones come in.

To protect the ferrets from the plague, they need to be vaccinated. But tracking down wild animals is tough, which is why the FWS has partnered with private contractors to develop a vaccination delivery system in which unmanned aerial systems (aka drones) will fly above the ferrets’ territory in northeastern Montana and drop M&M’s candies coated with the vaccine in the area.

Strangely, it won’t be the ferrets eating the vaccine candy. Prairie dogs, which make up more than 90 percent of the ferrets’ diet and are thought to be the main source of infection for the ferrets, are the intended targets of the treats."

When You Become The Person You Hate On The Internet; NPR, All Tech Considered, 3/29/16

[Podcast, 6 min. 27 sec.] Sarah Hepola, NPR, All Tech Considered; When You Become The Person You Hate On The Internet:

"For years, I've complained about the random hatred of the Internet. It was the worst part of writing online: Show up with your heart in your hand, and a bunch of strangers line up to throw rocks in your face. I was so freaked out by comments on my own stories that I had once considered not writing at all anymore. I badly wanted a thicker skin, but I also knew I had become a writer because I was thin-skinned. I took on other people's discomfort, and I flinched at the tiniest finger flick of rejection. I was a sensitive person — but I had just done a very insensitive thing.

I would never have said this to his face. But technology is such a bait and switch, giving you the feel of anonymity at the very moment your words have the farthest reach. And my comment was exactly the kind of random stone-throwing that had wounded me over the years".

Apple’s Privacy Fight Tests Relationship With White House; New York Times, 2/26/16

Michael D. Shear and Katie Benner, New York Times; Apple’s Privacy Fight Tests Relationship With White House:

"Current and former White House officials say Mr. Obama appreciated the attention that Mr. Cook brought to issues like immigration, gay marriage and climate change. When Mr. Obama solicited Apple and other companies to support his ConnectED program for technology in schools, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Cook’s decision to pledge $100 million worth of iPads and MacBooks, calling it “an enormous commitment.”

There were also tensions. White House officials were not happy about Apple’s decision to shelter billions of dollars in offshore accounts and have repeatedly pressed Mr. Cook to explain the company’s need to build its blockbuster products in China rather than in the United States.

But the encryption debate, and the government’s legal action against Apple last week, are testing the relationship with the company more than any other.

“A company thinks very hard before it defies the government,” said Nicole Wong, who was Google’s lead lawyer when Google resisted a Justice Department request for user data. But if a disagreement happens, “it’s not bad for this policy conversation to happen transparently in a court proceeding.”"

America Needs to Figure Out the Ethics of Gene Editing Now; Wired, 4/23/15

Nick Stockton, Wired; America Needs to Figure Out the Ethics of Gene Editing Now:

"In an international first, researchers in China have reported doing experiments that involve editing the genome of a human embryo. Ever since scientists developed the ability to cut and splice DNA, they have worried over the safety and ethical implications of applying those techniques to the human genome. Now, though the reported work was preliminary and not completely successful, researchers will have to contend with a challenging set of questions about this newly-opened genetic frontier...

Within the past few months, several groups of scientists around the world have called varying levels of caution1 on just this type of research—calling for no more human embryo modification. They’re worried about all the science-fiction problems you’d imagine: The technology has the potential to erase genetic diseases, but it could also be used to make designer humans. And this kind of genome editing is on what’s called the “germ line,” which is to say, the edits get passed along to subsequent generations.

WIRED spoke to many of the people who called for moratoriums in two of world’s top scientific journals, to see what they thought about this Chinese research, and what it means for prioritizing the national discussion on the ethics of germline editing."

The case for quitting e-mail; Washington Post, 3/20/15

Anne Applebaum, Washington Post; The case for quitting e-mail:

"What to do? Increasingly, the answer — not just for government officials but for all of us — is going to be: Don’t use e-mail. Or at least don’t use e-mail for anything that you wouldn’t put on a postcard. And maybe don’t use e-mail for anything that you wouldn’t mind seeing published in a newspaper. Although we are used to thinking of e-mail as a “private” form of communication, it’s just become too easy to steal and will only become more so.

As a result, these methods have become readily available to all kinds of people, not just those who work for governments. The same is true of bugs and recording devices, many of which are now so cheap, small and portable that they don’t require special investment to install, let alone special espionage training. In London, the Sunday Mirror is on trial for hacking into celebrities’ telephones, repeatedly, over many years. If tabloid journalists can do it, anybody can. Recording a telephone conversation is easy, bugging a restaurant or a hotel room even easier. Public officials are just now waking up to the fact that they live in a world of total surveillance. It won’t be long before the rest of us are going to discover the same thing.

Technology may eventually provide solutions, perhaps in the form of user-friendly encrypted e-mail systems, perhaps in the form of new-generation sweepers that can detect the latest bugs. The legal system may eventually catch up, too. But until then, life for anyone who wants to be protected from any kind of prying — from snooping companies, from governments, from media, from ex-spouses — will have to move in the opposite direction and use less technology. If you don’t want to be overheard, it’s not enough anymore to stay away from Facebook: Don’t use e-mail, don’t talk on the phone and do speak in person, preferably outside. Above all, write letters. The postman might read it, but the government, your colleagues and the Sunday Mirror probably won’t."

The Emily Posts of the Digital Age; New York Times, 3/29/13

Alex Williams, New York Times; The Emily Posts of the Digital Age: "Are manners dead? Cellphones, Twitter and Facebook may be killing off the old civilities and good graces, but a new generation of etiquette gurus, good-manner bloggers and self-appointed YouTube arbiters is rising to make old-fashioned protocols relevant to a new generation... But perhaps the fastest-growing area of social advice — one that has spawned not just videos but also Web sites, blogs and books — is the Internet itself, and the proper displays of what’s been termed “netiquette.” There are YouTube videos on using emoticons in business e-mails, being discreet when posting on someone’s Facebook wall, limiting baby photos on Instagram, retweeting too many Twitter messages and juggling multiple online chats. “We’re living in an age of anxiety that’s a reflection of the near-constant change and confusion in technology and social mores,” said Steven Petrow, an author of five etiquette books including “Mind Your Digital Manners: Advice for an Age Without Rules,” to be published in 2014. (Mr. Petrow is a regular contributor to The New York Times, writing an advice column on gay-straight issues for the Booming blog.)"