We Are! ... Happy Valley? Penn State applies for trademark on moniker; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 2, 2019

Bill Schackner, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; We Are! ... Happy Valley? Penn State applies for trademark on moniker

"Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney in Washington, D.C., tweeted about the Penn State application Dec. 28, calling it a “trademark ‘land grab.’”

He said Happy Valley should remain in the public domain, since the university did not create the expression and the words are used broadly in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He said others should be able to profit from it.

“It’s a generally accepted term for a geographic area in which the university happens to reside,” he said. “It seems out of place for the university to come in and say they should be the exclusive provider of Happy Valley clothing throughout the country. That’s exactly what they are asking to do.”"

2019: The Year of the Wolves Can the Constitution withstand the partisans?; The New York Times, December 31, 2018

David Brooks, The New York Times; 2019: The Year of the Wolves

Can the Constitution withstand the partisans?

"The story reminds us how thin the crust of civilization really is. It reminds us of what otherwise good people are capable at moments of severe stress and crisis, when fear is up and when conflict — red in tooth and claw — takes control."

The New Congress Has A Record Number Of Women — But Very Few Republican Women; NPR, January 3, 2019

Danielle Kurztleben, NPR; The New Congress Has A Record Number Of Women — But Very Few Republican Women

"Both parties also have different ideas about how important diversity is. One in 3 Republicans believe there are too few women in political office. In comparison, 8 in 10 Democrats think so, according to the Pew Research Center.

Walsh adds that pitching a candidate's gender as a positive factor is a tough sell in a party where "identity politics" is an insult.

"On the Republican side there is a real shunning of identity politics. In fact, when Paul Ryan became speaker, he thought that the number one reason that there was the kind of partisan gridlock in Washington was because of identity politics," she said. "So that makes it harder it makes it harder when you go out to raise money and make the case for why why do elect more women, if you can't talk about the substantive difference that they make by being there.""

Spider-Verse Is The First Movie To Properly Understand The Meaning Of Spider-Man; ScreenRant, January 1, 2019

Max Farrow, ScreenRant; Spider-Verse Is The First Movie To Properly Understand The Meaning Of Spider-Man

"With his love for graffiti and music, Miles is not the same every-man that Peter is. Indeed, as an American teenager of color, he reflects the modern and diverse world that we live in. However, he also serves as a literal embodiment of how fans from every corner can see themselves within Spider-Man. Into the Spider-Verse depicts Miles being inspired and shaped by Spider-Man’s legend to become a hero in his own right. And this is key to the movie’s inclusive message...

Before Into the Spider-Verse's hilarious post credit scene, the film ends with another quote from Stan Lee:

“That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero.”

Superheroes can serve as comic or violent fantasies, but at their heart they are stories about people learning to be better themselves. Peter Parker and his comic books act as a springboard for Miles Morales to achieve greatness, as he recognizes how to use his abilities responsibly. But the lesson that we can all change for the better is not one that Peter or Miles must learn on their own – we too can be inspired by Miles' story in Spider-Verse. Indeed, it’s an empowering and universal message that anyone can live by. As Miles says in his voice-over at the end of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, anyone can wear the Spider-Man mask. Therefore, everyone has the potential to do good in this world, just like the every-man superhero, Spider-Man."

Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better; The Washington Post, December 27, 2018

Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post; Tech predictions for 2019: It gets worse before it gets better

"2018 is a year the tech industry wishes it could forget. But 2018’s problems aren’t going anywhere.

It was the year we came to grips with how little we can trust Facebook and how much we’re addicted to our screens. It was the year that online hate and misinformation became an unavoidable reality and Google, Microsoft and Amazon faced revolts from their own employees over ethical lapses. It was the year Apple became the first trillion-dollar company — and then lost a quarter of that when we yawned at its new iPhones.

Even YouTube’s “Rewind 2018” video is already the most-disliked video in history.

When my Post colleagues and I looked into a crystal ball to make this list of nine intentionally provocative headlines we might see in 2019, it was hard to see past the problems we’re bringing with us into the new year.

New technologies like 5G networks, alternative transportation and artificial intelligence promise to change our lives. But even these carry lots of caveats in the near term.

I’m still optimistic technology can make our world better. So here’s a glass half-full of hope for the new year: 2019 is tech’s chance to make it right."

Experts Reveal Their Tech Ethics Wishes For The New Year; Forbes, December 30, 2018

Jessica Baron, Forbes; Experts Reveal Their Tech Ethics Wishes For The New Year

"We can only hope that 2019 will be the year when the ethics of emerging technologies becomes a central part of discussions on innovation and progress.

Below, I've asked some prolific tech ethicists about their hopes for the upcoming year and to share with readers what they would like to see people and policy bodies pay more attention to before the opportunity passes us by.

Their answers cover a wide range of topics from AI to the Arctic.

Here's what they had to say:"

Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars; The New York Times, December 31, 2018

Simon Romero, The New York Times; Wielding Rocks and Knives,Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

““They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Mr. O’Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses.

“They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife, who helps run the business.

At least 21 such attacks have been leveled at Waymo vans in Chandler, as first reported by The Arizona Republic. Some analysts say they expect more such behavior as the nation moves into a broader discussion about the potential for driverless cars to unleash colossal changes in American society. The debate touches on fears ranging from eliminating jobs for drivers to ceding control over mobility to autonomous vehicles.

“People are lashing out justifiably," said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike. 

“There’s a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart,” Mr. Rushkoff said. “Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.””

Question Technology; Kip Currier, Ethics in a Tangled Web, December 31, 2018

Kip Currier; Question Technology

Ars Technica’s Timothy B. Lee’s 12/30/18 “The hype around driverless cars came crashing down in 2018” is a highly recommended overview of the annus horribilis the year that’s ending constituted for the self-driving vehicles industry. Lee references the Gartner consulting group’s "hype cycle" for new innovations and technology:

In the self-driving world, there's been a lot of discussion recently about the hype cycle, a model for new technologies that was developed by the Gartner consulting firm. In this model, new technologies reach a "peak of inflated expectations" (think the Internet circa 1999) before falling into a "trough of disillusionment." It's only after these initial overreactions—first too optimistic, then too pessimistic—that public perceptions start to line up with reality. 

We’ve seen the hype cycle replayed over and over again throughout the World Wide Web age (and throughout recorded history), albeit with new players and new innovations. Sometimes the hype delivers. Sometimes it comes with an unexpected price tag and consequences. Social media was hyped by many through branding and slogans. It offers benefits; chief among them, expanded opportunities for communication and connection. But it also has significant weaknesses that can and have been exploited by actors foreign and domestic.

Since 2016, as example, we’ve acutely learned—and are still learning—how social media, such as Facebook, can be used to weaponize information, misinform citizenry, and subvert democracy. From Facebook’s “inflated expectations” Version 1.0 through multiple iterations of hype and rehype, to its 2018 “trough of disillusionment”--which may or may not represent its nadir--much of the public’s perceptions of Facebook appear to finally be aligning with a more realistic picture of the company’s technology, as well as its less than transparent and accountable leadership. Indeed, consider how many times this year, and in the preceding decade and a half, Planet Earth’s social media-using citizens have heard Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg essentially say some version of “Trust me. Trust Facebook. We’re going to fix this.” (See CNBC’s 12/19/18 well-documented “Mark Zuckerberg has been talking and apologizing about privacy since 2003 — here’s a reminder of what he’s said”) Only for the public, like Charlie Brown, to have the proverbial football once again yanked away with seemingly never-ending revelations of deliberate omissions by Facebook leadership concerning users’ data collection and use.

To better grasp the impacts and lessons we can learn from recognition of the hype cycle, it’s useful to remind ourselves of some other near-recent examples of highly-hyped technologies:

In the past decade, many talked about "the death of the print book"—supplanted by the ebook—and the extinction of independent (i.e. non-Amazon) booksellers. Now, print books are thriving again and independent bookstores are making a gradual comeback in some communities. See the 11/3/18 Observer article "Are E-Books Finally Over? The Publishing Industry Unexpectedly Tilts Back to Print" and Vox’s 12/18/18 piece, “Instagram is helping save the indie bookstore”.

More recently, Mass Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were touted as the game-changer that would have higher education quaking in its ivory tower-climbing boots. See Thomas L. Friedman's 2013 New York Times Opinion piece "Revolution Hits the Universities"; five years later, in 2018, a MOOCs-driven revolution seems less inevitable, or perhaps even less desirable, than postulated when MOOCs had become all the rage in some quarters. Even a few months before Friedman’s article, his New York Times employer had declared 2012 as “The Year of the MOOC”. In pertinent part from that article:

“I like to call this the year of disruption,” says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, “and the year is not over yet.”

MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events, but this is the year everyone wants in. [Note to the author: you might just want to qualify and/or substantiate that hyperbolic assertion a bit about “everyone”!] Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses.

Nick McKeown is teaching one of them, on computer networking, with Philip Levis (the one with a shock of magenta hair in the introductory video). Dr. McKeown sums up the energy of this grand experiment when he gushes, “We’re both very excited.” 

But read on, to the very next two sentences in the piece:

Casually draped over auditorium seats, the professors also acknowledge that they are not exactly sure how this MOOC stuff works.

“We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks,” says Dr. McKeown.

Yes, you read that right: 

“…they are not exactly sure how this MOOC stuff works.” And ““We are just going to see how this goes over the next few weeks,” says Dr. McKeown.”

Now, in 2018, who is even talking about MOOCs? Certainly, MOOCs are neither totally dead nor completely out of the education picture. But the fever pitch exhortations around the 1^st Coming of the MOOC have ebbed, as hype machines—and change consultants—have inevitably moved on to “the next bright shiny object”.

Technology has many good points, as well as bad points, and, shall we say, aspects that cause legitimate concern. It’s here to stay. I get that. Appreciating the many positive aspects of technology in our lives does not mean that we can’t and shouldn’t still ask questions about the adoption and use of technology. As a mentor of mine often points out, society frequently pushes people to make binary choices, to select either X or Y, when we may, rather, select X and Y. The phrase Question Authority was popularized in the boundary-changing 1960’s. Its pedigree is murky and may actually trace back to ancient Greek society. That’s a topic for another piece by someone else. But the phrase, modified to Question Technology, can serve as an inspirational springboard for today. 

Happily, 2018 also saw more and more calls for AI ethics, data ethics, ethics courses in computer science and other educational programs, and more permutations of ethics in technology. (And that’s not even getting at all the calls for ethics in government!) Arguably, 2018 was the year that ethics was writ large.

In sum, we need to remind ourselves to be wary of anyone or any entity touting that they know with absolute certainty what a new technology will or will not do today, a year from now, or 10+ years in the fast-moving future, particularly absent the provision of hard evidence to support such claims. Just because someone says it’s so doesn’t make it so. Or, that it should be so.

In this era of digitally-dispersed disinformation, misinformation, and “alternate facts”, we all need to remind ourselves to think critically, question pronouncements and projections, and verify the truthfulness of assertions with evidence-based analysis and bonafide facts.