Neal Koblitz, professor of mathematics at the University of Washington, begins his critique of computers in K-13 mathematics education as follows: “In Peru, as in many Third World countries, the system of public education is in crisis. Teachers’ pay — traditionally low — is falling rapidly because of inflation. The schools are dilapidated, and there is no money for basic supplies. …”
In the Times, Sam Grobar has written a great article — a great screed, really — about how much people love to complain about their smartphones even though they accomplish so much for so little cost.
… a New York Times article by Randall Stross about how fast and cheap broadband access is in Hong Kong compared to the U.S.: “Hong Kong residents can enjoy astoundingly fast broadband at an astoundingly low price. It became available last year, when a scrappy company called Hong Kong Broadband Network introduced a new option for its fiber-to-the-home service: a speed of 1,000 megabits a second – known as a “gig” – for less than $26 a month.”
Did you smile? Now your computer can answer that question: MIT’s Media Lab is developing technology whereby your computer, with the help of a webcam, can read facial movements to analyze whether you’re smiling.
Watson may have triumphed at Jeopardy!, but Brian Christian examines computer intelligence more closely in the Atlantic. Christian recently participated in the Turing Test: “I will sit down at a computer and have a series of five-minute instant-message chats with several strangers. At the other end of these chats will be a psychologist, a linguist, a computer scientist, and the host of a popular British technology show. Together they form a judging panel, evaluating my ability to do one of the strangest things I’ve ever been asked to do. I must convince them that I’m human.”
The IBM supercomputer named Watson has beaten two Jeopardy! champions in a three-night marathon. The computer was awarded a $1 million prize, but the BBC reports that “the victory for Watson and IBM was about more than money. It was about ushering in a new era in computing where machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what humans are really asking them for. Jeopardy is seen as a significant challenge for Watson because of the show’s rapid-fire format and clues that rely on subtle meanings, puns, and riddles; something humans excel at and computers do not.”
The Roman Catholic Church, which hasn’t always seen face-to-face with modernity, has embraced at least one product of the digital age. The BBC reports that senior officials in the Church in the U.S. and the U.K. have approved a Confession iPhone app.
A new paper by William Jack and Tavneet Suri looks at M-PESA, a mobile-money transfer service in Kenya. Mobile banking has become particularly popular in the developing world, where safe, reliable banking has historically been limited, and often available only to the wealthy. The authors conclude that M-PESA has been wildly successful in Kenya: “We estimate that M-PESA had reached nearly 40 percent of the adult population after a little more than 2 years of operation, and that now, approaching only the fourth anniversary of its launch, is used by more than two-thirds of households.”
Technology is supposed to improve outcomes and efficiency especially when it comes to “health-information technology” (HIT). But it’s not always that simple.
New technologies give rise to other new technologies and complementary goods. I love my iPhone and, living in a warm climate, I always have fingers warm enough to operate the heat-sensitive letters on its screen. But in a cold climate, I would have the same problem others have – I would have to choose between being able to operate the iPhone and having warm fingers.
Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story (more here), paints a compelling but amazingly bleak picture of a future ravaged by the twin evils of predictive analytics and texting. Following the truly prescient Snow Crash, his characters are obsessively plugged into their “äppäräts,” souped-up versions of today’s app phones. (One of the funnier lines occurs when one character makes a disparaging reference to another character’s outmoded hand device, saying: “What is this, an iPhone?” (Kindle 1244).) Here is a world where credit scores, eHarmony-compatibility predictions and rankings are ubiquitously at hand. Characters routinely choose the reality of the shadows on their screen over the real world.
A recent article from the Chicago Tribune reported “an enormous surplus of LCD panels that has accumulated over the first nine months of the year.” This surplus arose partly because prices of flat-screen TVs had not fallen throughout much of the year-and the quantity demanded had accordingly been constant.
This year, we emailed an electronic letter reporting on our family events and offering best wishes to all the friends and relations to whom in the past we had snail-mailed Jewish New Year greeting cards. We felt guilty about switching away from the time-intensive activity of buying, signing and addressing snail-mail cards, and worried that the email would signal others that we viewed our time as too valuable to spend on a card. We don’t.
As security guru Bruce Schneier writes, “the arms race continues.” I do wonder if, when, or how there will be a computer users’ revolt against tracking tools like this one.
Anya Kamenetz of Fast Company writes about the TED phenomenon: “By combining the principles of ‘radical openness’ and of ‘leveraging the power of ideas to change the world,’ TED is in the process of creating something brand new. I would go so far as to argue that it’s creating a new Harvard — the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years.”
I was working at my desk recently when I heard a loud electronic chirp. I’d never heard it before. I was willing to overlook it once, but then I heard the chirp again, and again, and again, about every 30 seconds.
Every year, I teach the production possibility frontier in terms of the two outputs that students can produce-fun and learning. To introduce technical progress, I ask for examples, first sector-specific progress, then general improvements in technology.
As widely reported in the press recently, analysis done by the online dating site OKCupid finds that iPhone users are more sexually active than those who have Blackberrys or Androids.
Bad news: with all due respect to Terrafugia, unless you’re a fan of Futurama it’s probably going to be awhile before you see a flying car. But cars that drive themselves are coming, probably within most of our lifetimes and possibly sooner than you might think. They will drastically cut traffic congestion, improve safety, and be a terrific boon to those like the young and the old who are deprived of mobility. The ability to take our hands off the wheel will also undoubtedly send sales of Big Macs and mascara skyrocketing. But do we have the drive to make robot cars a reality?
Small technical changes often shift our production possibility frontier outward, and make a big difference in our well-being, even if they don’t increase measured GDP.
Ushahidi, the online mapping tool we’ve blogged about before, is now being used by rescue workers in Haiti and Chile.
Gizmodo lists eight “Regrettable Tech Inventions” and their inventors’ apologies for them, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s apology for the double-slash in web addresses — “Really, if you think about it, it doesn’t need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //”
The Economist has a special section this week on mobile phone technology in emerging markets. The section includes articles on trends in mobile phone ownership, the role mobile phones are playing in economic development, and new uses for the technology.
One of the people you’ll meet in SuperFreakonomics is a remarkable physician at Washington Hospital Center (WHC) named Craig Feied. He has had a hand in many technological innovations that are pushing medicine, hard, into the future (or at least the present).
I am the first to say this and surely I will not be the last, but: isn’t it strange that with all the technological improvements in our lives in the past few decades, the audio fidelity of so many of our phone calls is so abysmal?
Japan’s Keihin Express Railway Co. has set up “smile scanners” at 15 of its stations, where railway employees have their smiles assessed by software in the hopes of perfecting a customer-friendly look.
Just because a technology has been superseded doesn’t make it completely irrelevant.
Raise your hand if you have a drawer filled with old cell phones just waiting to be responsibly recycled. Keep your hand up if most of those phones have been in the drawer for over a year. Of the 160 million cell phones discarded annually, 75 percent of them end up in drawers or trash cans. A new company, Cycled Cells, takes in old cell phones, sometimes paying for them, and either recycles the phones or, if they can be rehabilitated, distributes them to phone-needy people around the world. They even pay for postage.