Sunday, May 03, 2009

What's Next in IT?

Just over a month ago we learned that Microsoft had decided to bring its 'Encarta' encyclopaedia to an end. Like almost all Microsoft products, Encarta was widely popular; but eventually, it seems, it could not keep pace with the popularity (or rapid development) of Wikipedia -- nor indeed with the vast and constantly-developing encyclopaedic resources of Google: as Randall Stross wrote in yesterday's New York Times, 'The Google-indexed Web forms a virtual encyclopedia that Encarta never had a chance of competing against.'

I wonder if you, gentle reader, have ever made any systematic or substantial use of Encarta. If not, you might like to get a taste of the Encarta house style (while you still can) by clicking on their entry on Google itself.

In any case, Google (and Wikipedia) have had sure and steady ascendancies since their inceptions. I can remember a colleague, by about the year 2000, saying 'my home page is Google, and yours should be too.' Already by then, it seemed quite clear that it was leaving other search engines in the dust.

Very few people still remember the encyclopaedia project that was called Nupedia; fewer still will recall that I was on the board of that enterprise when it was active, as one of those responsible for the oversight of the Classics-related entries. Nupedia was founded, about a decade ago, on some of the same premises as Wikipedia, and on some fundamentally different ones; it came to an end not without some sadness and disappointment. But I mention it now because to no one involved in its early days did it occur that Nupedia might founder and fail.

I am guessing that the same could be said of Encarta. To be sure, they are not entirely commensurate examples, as Encarta has been in development since the 1980s, and (as Stross cites) claims to have been 'the No. 1 best-selling encyclopedia software brand for the past eight years.' So in terms of calendar years and of dollars earned, Encarta has had an honorable run -- whereas Nupedia was snuffed a-borning.

We could speculate on the problems entailed -- and the differences between, say, Wikipedia and Encarta. Two salient differences are that Wikipedia is both free and open-source. Free: you can make a donation to Wikipedia, as a discreet link at the top of the page indicates, but this is entirely optional. Open-source: this issue was at the heart of the Nupedia controversy, as some thought that encyclopaedia entries ought to be composed and vetted by experts. (Respect for Wikipedia's accuracy level rose considerably after a 2005 report in the British journal NATURE indicated that Wikipedia's overall accuracy, in matters scientific at least, rivaled that of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Britannica, of course, protested that the study was inaccurate, but NATURE has stood its ground. And indeed, 'accuracy' is a fluid notion when it comes to things like Wikipedia, because the very text of the encyclopaedia itself is continually changing -- probably literally by the minute. This is the peculiar strength of open-source content, particularly when it has such a vast and interested readership. Of course, the constant changing to which Wikipedia is susceptible also means that it runs the danger of constantly also having new error introduced; but if we take a macro-level view of things, over time the material is likely to be refined and refined to a point of extreme accuracy.

I am not privy to the inner workings of the behemoth that is Google, but given its runaway success (and corresponding gigantic monetary worth), it is safe to speculate that those in charge of it are overseeing a more or less constant process of updating and improvement in the technology. While it is not open-source software, it is so phenomenally valuable at this point that it would be absurd for them not to take every precaution to preserve their online supremacy.

The fledgling phenomenon that is the Internet may still be too young for us to pronounce upon long trajectories of development at this point. Still, it has been around long enough for us to observe some trends already, a few of which we have noted above. What I am interested in today is: what is it that makes some kinds of information technology succeed and others fail? I assume it is some combination of luck, shrewd timing, effective marketing, and intrinsic quality (the latter including, inter alia, efficacy and user-friendliness). A possible additional aspect (and Google and Wikipedia might both be cases in point here) is flexibility -- the capacity to change and adapt to the very march of progress.

Another question: is there a way to know, except in hindsight, which items are ultimately bound for success? This may never be possible -- or, again, it may just still be too soon in the overall history of IT to discern such signals reliably. But with the rapid recent proliferation of such items -- blogger.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, digg.com, and so forth -- I am sure that these are questions that weigh heavily on those with the most at stake in their development.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Susan Boyle Phenomenon: 'She reordered the measure of beauty'

Chances are that by now you are one of the tens of millions of people who have viewed Susan Boyle's jawdropping performance on BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT (probably at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY, though there is a higher-quality version at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PPlkOyaqaQ). This clip went viral with a rapidity astonishing even for the 2009 internet, and even as I write, people continue to email it to their friends, to repost it on the web, to broadcast news stories about it on radio and television, and to write about it in newspapers and ... in blogs like this.[[1]] A quick search on YouTube will reveal that some of them even post videos of the reactions of their friends and families as they watch the Susan Boyle clip.

Two details very commonly remarked upon in reporting on this phenomenon (and it is surely 'phenomenal' in the colloquial sense of that word) are [a] the compulsion to watch it over and over again, and [b] the tears that it provokes in its viewers. I am fascinated by both of these, but especially the latter, and curious about its causes. I am pretty sure that one of them is the heart-tugging sweep of the cinematic, John-Williams-like orchestral music that accompanies the 'Broadway anthem' Susan has chosen to perform: 'I Dreamed A Dream' (from Les Misérables; music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, libretto by Alain Boublil). But I am equally certain that there are other factors at play here.

Watching this unassuming middle-aged woman stand up before an audience of many thousands, open her mouth, and pour this remarkable singing out into the air is astounding, for a variety of reasons, some of which have been commented on numerous times by now: first, one experiences a satisfaction akin to Schadenfreude as this audience's smug, condescending expressions turn to shock, then wonder, then thrill, as a number of realizations dawn on them: they have simply not taken the measure of this person; the sounds filling their ears provoke pure, intense pleasure; and they are in attendance upon a moment of rare and perhaps historic beauty. Second, one watches with the awareness that this is a classic 'underdog' situation: she who was despised and scorned succeeds, against all odds, in carrying the day. And third -- this is not something that has been widely commented on, if at all -- the medium is (at least partly) the message: the lyrics of the song are, precisely, about dreaming that one could achieve a better life.

I find it difficult to believe that Susan Boyle has chosen this song just for its music. In just a few comments before and after her performance, she sketches in the contours of her own life; one can easily fill these in further, by some quick reading on Wikipedia and in the rash of news reports that appears to be multiplying hourly about her.[[2]] And as one ponders these, one begins to surmise that perhaps the lyrics of that song are particularly meaningful to her.

Susan is the youngest of nine children; lives alone with her cat in a small village in Scotland; is currently unemployed. She was the caregiver for her mother, who recently died at the age of 91. As of the evening of her performance on BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT, she had never been married.[[3]] We are told that people in the village 'made fun of her' at school (though not why specifically), and that she had never had the opportunity to see if she could fulfil her dream of becoming a professional singer.

The contrast between all of this everydayness (and sadness) and the glamour of her night on stage could hardly be more dramatic. Maybe we should not be surprised -- and surely it is not coincidental -- that when Susan went before the cameras on BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT, she sang:
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high, and life worth living;
[...]

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.
If this woman is just now getting her first shot at success at age 47, it is a safe bet that she knows a thing or two about having one's hopes torn apart, one's dreams turned to shame.

Susan's is not the best possible performance of 'I Dreamed A Dream.' It is arguably not even the best available on YouTube.[[4]] But I think it is better than those one can find online by Patti LuPone, who created the role in 1985, or even by Elaine Paige, the legendary singer/actor whom Susan aims someday to rival. And anyway that is not really the point. The point is that Susan Boyle is at a liminal moment in her lifetime. Against all odds, public success of a kind and degree vouchsafed to very few of us is within her grasp. Will she be this year's winner on BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT? And even if not, will she get the record deal and the world tour prophesied for her? If not, the closing lyrics of the song,
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
could end up sounding bitterly prophetic.

I am sure that most people, like me, hope that she wins the entire competition. I hope she also gets that record deal and becomes a millionaire. But in a moral sense, Susan Boyle has already won a great victory: as Patricia Williams astutely observes, 'the reason Boyle is a heroine has little to do with her transforming any aspect of herself. Rather, it was she who transformed the audience, it was she who challenged their beliefs.'[[5]] In Lisa Schwarzbaum's words, she has 'reordered the measure of beauty.'[[6]] In a world so hasty, so focused on superficials, and so pervasively cruel, that is no small achievement.



NOTES

[[1]] See, for just three important examples, Lisa Schwarzbaum, 'Why we watch ... and weep,' Ian Youngs, 'How Susan Boyle won over the world,' and Sarah Lyall, 'Unlikely Singer is YouTube Sensation.'

[[2]] Indeed Susan already has her own Wikipedia page, at the bottom of which are links to many, many online references to her.

[[3] She also claimed that she had 'never been kissed,' though this may have been a joke.

[[4]] For some strong (professional) competition, see Ruthie Henshall's performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt-IBJpEMzA.

[[5]] Patricia Williams, 'I know those sneers. I've heard them too.'

[[6]] Schwarzbaum (note 1 supra).

Thursday, March 19, 2009

DID YOU KNOW?

'did you know?' is a five-minute youtube slide show [with an apposite but forgettable sound track by fat boy slim] that presents a dizzying array of data on the present and future [plus just a dash of the past] of information technology. it appears to have been made in 2008, so some of it may already be dated. we are told that the material was 'researched' by karl fisch, scott mcleod, and jeff bronman, but there are no citations included for any of it. some of the factoids listed here seem to have been mentioned just because the numbers involved are impressive [e.g., the #1 ranked country in 'broadband internet penetration' is bermuda; the 25% of india's population with the highest IQs is greater than the total population of the USA]; perhaps these have some integral connection to the overall message of the piece, but i'm not clear on what that would be. and i'm not sure that fish, mcleod, and bronman were quite clear either: the final screen of the presentation says: 'so what does it all mean?' -- which might be an underlying message, of sorts, in itself.

i'd be interested to know what other viewers make of this piece; my first reaction was one of mild panic. this is doubtless partly because of the frantic pace of the presentation; but after some reflection [and recuperative silence] i'm coming to feel that the deepest source of my disquiet was the video's assertion that progress in technology is moving too fast for anyone -- even today's young people, even those young people who are studying to equip themselves for careers -- to keep up with. we can build, and are hastening to build, faster and faster computer processors; but we have not yet found a way to speed up commensurately the function of the human brain.

the closest i could come to finding a central message in this video was at 1:49: 'we are living in exponential times.' here is where the parade of statistics comes into clearer focus: there were, monthly, 31 billion searches on google in 2008, as opposed to 2.7 billion in 2006; to reach a market audience of 50 million, it takes [took?] television 13 years, as opposed to 3 years via ipod and 2 years via facebook; the number of internet devices in 2008 was one billion, as opposed to one thousand in 1984, and one million in 1992; it is estimated [by whom? when?] that a week's worth of the new york times contains more information than a person [where? of what level of income or education?] was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century; it was estimated that 4 exabytes [4 x 10^19] of unique information would be generated in 2008 -- more than in the preceding 5000 years.

at 3:28 my educator's antennae went up even further: 'the amount of new technical information,' they assert, 'is doubling every 2 years ... for students starting a 4-year technical degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.' i'm not sure that conclusion follows by logical necessity, but at the very least, one can say that the body of knowledge relevant to a technical-degree student's curriculum is expanding dramatically, even whilst s/he is in school.

so: 'what does it all mean' for teachers and learners in the humanities? the issue of speed is paramount here; while the totality of information in [say] classical studies is increasing annually, it is certainly not increasing at this exponential rate. and while some factors are shifting -- the length of an average student's attention span, for example -- some things are not appreciably speeding up: the rate at which one can learn to read ancient greek or latin, or the rate at which one can read, think about, and absorb ancient authors. these things continue at more or less the same marked pace as they have always done; and so do other human experiences, like digestion or orgasm or dreaming. and as in the case of such other human experiences, i'm not at all sure we would be wise in speeding them up, even if it were possible to find a way to do so. the number of good meals one can experience in a whole long lifetime is perhaps sizable, but still finite; and though i'm reading more or less constantly, i recognize that the number of books i will be able to get through, even if i live to a ripe old age, will be but a small fraction of all the books ever written. but those very limitations are an integral part of what makes me prize these experiences so highly.

so in the face of this gigantic mountain of pleasures, physical and intellectual, one becomes more acutely aware than ever of the importance of spending our days wisely [noting in passing that this may, sometimes, involve reclining under a palm tree at the beach]. but i doubt i am alone in feeling that this frantic acceleration of technological culture in the 21st century is not, by its speed, conducive to making wise decisions about such things. if anything, it serves rather to agitate, confuse, and unsettle me.

is the best solution, then, to dig in one's heels and become a luddite? i would not say so. on the contrary, i am constantly looking for ways to harness new technologies for more effective teaching and research in classics. my 1985 essay in vergilius, though it seems almost ptolemaically antique now, used then-novel software to search for and examine vergilian echoes in horace. my website, CORAX [www.corax.us], was founded in 1997, making it one of the very first websites devoted to classics. and so forth. but one of the most important things i've learnt about education in the past two decades is that new technologies, for all the dazzling impression they make, are and remain means for humanists, not ends. another is this very point about time, speed, and acceleration: that what it means to be human is profoundly bound up with the pace at which we experience each hour, each day. and a third thing is that -- a' propos of being human -- the humanities still offer wisdom that no other discipline seems to be able to impart. far from being a mere lagniappe of education, the study of the humanities [and of the greek and roman classics in particular] is still uniquely effective at preparing young people [and the not-so-young] to live more richly, more beautifully, and more thoughtfully each day. without such wisdom, we are not much more than droids -- regardless of how many trillion calculations per second our brains might someday achieve.

if an education of this sort has to be absorbed at a certain pace, and no faster, then so be it: chances are that that fact is itself connected to the pace of our inner [sensory and intellective] experience of the world around us too. but to the extent that fisch, mcleod, and bronman are correct about the extent of I.T. acceleration in this new millennium -- to the extent that these external, logistical aspects of human existence are speeding up -- to just such an extent will it be vital that we not lose sight of those aspects of our lives that cannot and should not be hurried.

to sum up: i'm as enamored of speed as the next guy. i'm as capable as anyone of being exhilarated by a speedier car or train, a quicker microwave, or a faster CPU. but if it turns out that there are some crucially human traits or functions that seem to proceed best at a certain rate, and no faster, then i think we should not only not apologize for that, but should also celebrate and cherish them for what they are. because, in the long run, we might just discover that they come very close to telling us what and who we are.