Relevant History

The examined spy

That's the title of an article by Thanassis Cambanis about IARPA's efforts to improve the accuracy of forecasting-- and effort that's funding the Good Judgment Project, which I'm involved in.

In a field still deeply shaped by arcane traditions and turf wars, when it comes to assessing what actually works — and which tidbits of information make it into the president’s daily brief — politics and power struggles among the 17 different American intelligence agencies are just as likely as security concerns to rule the day.

What if the intelligence community started to apply the emerging tools of social science to its work? What if it began testing and refining its predictions to determine which of its techniques yield useful information, and which should be discarded?... “We still don’t really know what works and what doesn’t work,” said Baruch Fischhoff, a behavioral scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. “We say, put it to the test. The stakes are so high, how can you afford not to structure yourself for learning?”...

Fischhoff and a who’s who of social scientists from psychology, business, and policy departments hope to foment a similar revolution in the intelligence world. Their most radical suggestion could have far-reaching effects and is already being slowly implemented: systematically judge the success rates of analyst predictions, and figure out which approaches actually work. Is intuition more useful than computer modeling? Is game theory better for some situations, and on-the-ground social analysis more accurate elsewhere?...

That remains only a proposal so far, but the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, or IARPA — a two-year-old agency that funds experimental ideas — is already trying a novel way to generate imaginative new steps to make predictions better. It is funding an unusual contest among academic researchers, a forecasting competition that will pit five teams using different methods of prediction against one another.

Of course, one can argue-- and indeed many of my fellow futurists will argue-- about what constitutes a "working" forecast, and some may go so far as to claim that even a completely wrong forecast can be useful under the right circumstances.

Memory improvements after bariatric surgery

Yes, it sounds a bit like an obscure joke, but via Future Pundit comes this new piece of research suggesting "a link between weight loss and improved memory and concentration." From the abstract:

Growing evidence has shown that obesity is associated with poor neurocognitive outcomes. Bariatric surgery has been shown to be an effective intervention for morbid obesity and can result in improvement of many co-morbid medical conditions that are associated with cognitive dysfunction. The effects of bariatric surgery on cognition are unknown....

We performed a prospective study total of 150 subjects (109 bariatric surgery patients enrolled in the Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery project and 41 obese control subjects who had not undergone bariatric surgery). These 150 subjects completed a cognitive evaluation at baseline and at 12 weeks of follow-up. The demographic, medical, and psychosocial information was also collected to elucidate the possible mechanisms of change. [S]urgery patients had improved memory performance at 12 weeks of follow-up... The present results suggest that cognitive impairment is common in bariatric surgery patients, although these deficits might be at least partly reversible. Future studies are needed to clarify the underlying mechanisms, in particular, longitudinal studies using neuroimaging and blood markers.

[To the tune of The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, "The Golden Age," from the album The Golden Age - EP (a 4-star song, imo).]

I'll have "white men are the real minority" with a side of Sichuan pork

Joshua Green in the Atlantic, on "class warfare:"

I've always loved that phrase because it's such potent hyperbole, the product of expensive focus grouping and crafty political wordsmithery as surely as is the phrase "millionaires and billionaires," except "class warfare" has that extra dimension of apocalyptic consequence and the undertone of victimization that work so well together even though they shouldn't, like sweet-and-sour soup.

Quote of the day: Same planet, different worlds

From the New York Magazine article on bottle service:

"Some of the girls definitely think, 'He’s going to fly me to California and make me his wife!' But then most of them are just like, 'Guess who I just did in the bathroom?' "

Ummm. Wow?

It actually gets better, and if the whole piece were a song, it would be Steely Dan's "Everything Must Go" playing in a small club around 1 a.m.

Kelly... is hooking up with a 20-year-old male model but he’s not here tonight and she’s got her eye out for something else. Girls like her are either dating older men with money or young and good-looking ones without. There is a stupendous symmetry to this. The rich old men want to be young and good-looking and the young ones want to be rich, but both are sleeping with the same girl....

The exchange happens like this. A girl will say to a guy she has not slept with yet, but perhaps they have kissed or she’s let him touch her, "I'm short on my rent" or "There's this dress I really want." After sleeping with him a few times, she might say, "I need a tan. I should go to Miami." The beauty is in the subtle gaucheness.

Robert Darnton on "a font of proverbial nonwisdom"

Robert Darnton challenges "five myths about the information age" that, taken together, "constitute a font of proverbial nonwisdom."

1. "The book is dead." Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year.
2. "We have entered the information age."... [E]very age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time.
3. "All information is now available online." The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives.
4. "Libraries are obsolete." Everywhere in the country librarians report that they have never had so many patrons.
5. "The future is digital." True enough, but misleading.

It used to be said that the difference between God and Robert Darnton was that God was everywhere, while Darnton was everywhere but Princeton. Now that he's Harvard's university librarian, I wonder if the joke has migrated and updated?

[To the tune of The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, "The Golden Age," from the album The Golden Age - EP (a 4-star song, imo).]

Quote of the day

From Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise:

Some people can be funny without being vulgar, and some can be both funny and vulgar. I should recommend you to be either the one or the other.

[To the tune of Choir of King's College Cambridge, "Tallis: Spem In Alium Nunquam Habui," from the album England My England (a 2-star song, imo).]

Prize

Last week I heard that my "Futures 2.0" article has been recognized with an outstanding paper award:

Every year Emerald invites each journal’s Editorial Team to nominate what they believe has been that title’s Outstanding Paper and up to three Highly Commended Papers from the previous 12 months. Your paper has been included among these and I am pleased to inform you that your article entitled “Futures 2.0: rethinking the discipline” published in foresight has been chosen as an Outstanding Paper Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2011.

It's not as competitive or mysterious or lucrative as, say, the Macarthur (call me, guys); but still it's a nice little piece of recognition.

The list of 2010 winners is here; it looks like the 2011s will all be posted soon.

[To the tune of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Easy Money," from the album The Lyre Of Orpheus (a 4-star song, imo).]

What inspired this piece of research?

Submitted without comment:

Patrick Markey, Charlotte Markey, "Pornography-seeking behaviors following midterm political elections in the United States: A replication of the challenge hypothesis," Computers in Human Behavior, v. 27 n. 3 (May 2011).

The current study examined a prediction derived from the challenge hypothesis; individuals who viciously win a competition of rank order will seek out pornography relatively more often than individuals who viciously lose a competition. By examining Google keyword searches during the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections in the United States, the relative popularity of various pornography keyword searches was computed for each state and the District of Columbia the week after each midterm election. Consistent with previous research examining presidential elections and the challenge hypothesis, individuals located in traditionally Republican states tended to search for pornography keywords relatively more often after the 2010 midterm election (a Republican victory) than after the 2006 midterm election (a Democratic victory). Conversely, individuals located in traditionally Democratic states tended to search for pornography relatively less often following the 2010 midterm election than they did following the 2006 midterm election.

The power of the social sciences!

"We can't send a search and rescue team into Plato's Cave"

XKCD has been on fire recently.

Back in California

I'm back in California, and slowly readjusting to life in the Pacific Time Zone. My mother went back to Virginia on Tuesday, my wife and I did our taxes, the kids are starting to angle and maneuver for summer programs and favors, and I've nearly finished unpacking all the books and articles I acquired in Cambridge.

Just to make my return to California official, a couple nights ago I fired up the grill and flame-broiled dinner.

via flickr

The next day I went to my favorite cafe to work.

back among my people, via flickr

Even as I get back into my previous life, I'm trying to keep alive some things I started doing in Cambridge. We haven't yet found a good source of cider or a 500 year-old pub, but I'm biking as much as possible, and am going to get a new non-shock absorbing front fork for my mountain bike, so I can use my giant English wicket bike basket. (I genuinely don't care how it looks.) And we put up a bird feeder outside the kitchen, like the one we had in England. Even though it mainly attracted squirrels.

birds in cambridge, via flickr

[To the tune of Eddie Hazel, "California Dreamin'," from the album Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs (a 4-star song, imo).]

Even Uwe Boll can watch "Battle: Los Angeles" and say, "Man, this sucks"

When Roger Ebert calls your movie an "assault on the attention span of a generation," you know you're in trouble:

Here's a science-fiction film that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them.

Ouch!

[To the tune of Johann Johannsson, "Part V: The Sun's Gone Dim and the Sky's Turned Black," from the album IBM 1401, A User's Manual (a 5-star song, imo).]

Last night in Cambridge

On our last night in Cambridge, my son and I took a long walk through Jesus Green and the colleges.

the cam beside jesus green, via flickr

On his last trip to Cambridge my son had bought a wool hat with a cat's face on it, and wore it pretty much nonstop since February. So naturally he wore it tonight.

my son outside st. john's, via flickr

It was a perfect evening, clear and cool. Early evenings like this, when the sky turns deep blue and the lamps come on, are probably my favorite part of the day in Cambridge: visually the town is at its most vivid and mysterious.

all saints' pass, via flickr

We went down Trinity Lane to Garrett Hostel Lane, which is the path I took every day to the lab.

trinity lane, via flickr

trinity lane, via flickr

The view of the Cam from the bridge is one of my favorite: no matter how many times I crossed it, it always impressed me. I've been very lucky with commutes. When I lived in Chicago, my drive to work took me down Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue; in California, it's been to Stanford, Sand Hill Road, and downtown Palo Alto. None too shabby. But this is the best of all.

clare bridge from garret hostel lane bridge, via flickr

trinity college backs, via flickr

The challenge now is to get to the airport in the wee morning hours tomorrow. And then, after that, to make something out of the three months-- to make this sabbatical the start of something important, rather than an interesting lark. I know there are a couple great articles here, and maybe a book, if I'm really diligent; certainly I believe strongly in the idea of contemplative computing, and think it's one that deserves a wider audience-- and to be improved by being discussed and tried out and stress-tested by people other than myself.

I've learned an immense amount here. Not only do I have much better grasp on the HCI literature than I did when I came here (though there's still a lot I don't know, despite the best attempts of my colleagues to tutor me), but I've discovered works-- in particular Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, but also Seneca's Letters, Virginia Woolf's Room of One's Own, and others-- that I think will influence me pretty deeply in my normal life, not just my thinking and writing (though the boundaries between those three are pretty thin when all goes well). And there's probably no better place to practice contemplation of all sorts than here.

the cam near our house, via flickr

I have a sinking suspicion that the project is a bit of a disappointment to Microsoft, though; it's at once not quite philosophical or theoretical enough, nor has it expressed itself in a prototype. So this only more motivation to produce something great: I feel the need to prove that the odd choice of a futurist as a visiting fellow was a good one after all.

Unfortunately I can't finish the work here: to remain would be too disruptive of our normal lives. After three months here, I feel very much at home-- I can conduct a normal life here, rather than just be a tourist-- but I know my regular life is waiting for me in California.

a t-shirt shop on bridge street, via flickr

But I'll be back.

via flickr

Less than 48 hours in Cambridge

Took the kids to London again yesterday, and went to the Science Museum. Naturally I gravitated to the airplane display, which includes a beautifully-stages collection of engines, and a number of planes, including a Hurricane and Spitfire.

via flickr

From there we went to Harrods, which I think is something everyone should see, but which is far too rich a place for me to actually think about buying anything. These days, it seems to be an ingenious technology for attracting back from Asia and the Middle East a little of the money that we sent over to buy oil and flat screen TVs: I would have felt distinctly underdressed in my REI and Royal Robbins traveling kit, were I more clothes-conscious (or rather, mindfully contrarian about fashion).

via flickr

Part of me thinks that places like Harrods are absurd and unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, and that they symbolize everything that's going wrong with global capitalism: the incessant attention to luxury goods, the promotion of exclusivity, the encouragement of a particular variety of class consciousness summarized by David Brooks complimenting rich people on their intelligence and good looks.

At the same time, I can't help but be impressed at how good they are at what they do. And maybe we really should have a place where someone can say, "But is this elevator pharonic enough? Are we sure we can't dial the Egyptianness up to 12?"

We've got two more nights in Cambridge, then we're leaving at the crack of dawn on Saturday. Fortunately, with the family all here I've been playing a combination of B&B owner, butler, dad, son, and tour guide, so I'm not really focused on the fact that I'm returning to California. Which is generally a good thing for me, i think. After three months here, I'm in no danger of going native-- I could live here for decades and still think of myself as American or Californian, even if I started saying "Cheers" rather than "Thank you"-- but I do feel comfortable here in a way that is expanding, and a little reassuring.

via flickr

The challenge now will be to build on what I've done here, rather than have this be an interesting and restorative three months that represent a break in my regular life.

Quote of the day: Ursula K. LeGuin

Via The Wisdom of the Hands, this from Ursula K. LeGuin's Always Coming Home:

It was a good thing for me to learn a craft with a true maker. It may have been the best thing I have done. Nothing we do is better than the work of handmind. When mind uses itself without the hands it runs the circle and may go too fast; even speech using the voice only may go too fast. The hand that shapes the mind into clay or written word slows thought to the gait of things and lets it be subject to accident and time. Purity is on the edge of evil, they say.

Susan Blackmore on leaving academia

This echoes feelings I've had, and I've heard plenty of other people express:

I have given up my secure academic job as Reader at the University of the West of England for the vagaries of life as a freelance. And why? Because I want to work - really work - and my job made that impossible.

Am I mad? The losses include a reliable salary, a pension, sick pay, a heated room, and a computer that someone comes to mend when it breaks down. But I can do without those (I think). The gain is a true academic life at last. I can devote my time to thinking, and reading and writing; to sharing ideas with others; to asking questions of the universe and trying to find the answers. The simple fact is that I could not do these things and the job.

I'm reading Blackmore's Zen and the Art of Consciousness, which I think does a brilliant job of communicating how difficult meditation and mindfulness exercises are.

On the Eye

After the Transport Museum, we went on the Eye. Thanks to a quirk of timing, we had an entire compartment to ourselves.

via flickr

Previous to getting on the actual ride we went to the "4D experience," which is essentially a 3D movie with dry ice and the occasional water effect to get viewers wet, plus extremely loud music. As we were leaving it, I heard a kid say, half-admiring and half-sarcastic, "That was the STUPIDEST THING EVER!"

via flickr

And indeed it was that instantly recognizable form of dumb that lives by the motto, when in doubt, make it Really Really Loud. Nonetheless, the view was a spectacular as always, even though it was kind of cloudy.

via flickr

Even my daughter enjoying taking pictures and interacting with the security camera.

via flickr

Transport Museum

Today we took Mom and the kids to the London Transport Museum.

via flickr

It's at Covent Garden, and is a fun place, but with the exposed metal and the multiple school groups, it tends to be a little loud. Still, it's worth it, and it's not like noise is NOT part of the experience of public transportation.

I think my favorite part was the room devoted to transportation advertising and design. The Underground and the rail system has had an amazing history of getting great industrial design, and even if their work isn't always brilliant, they're trying hard.

via flickr

Indeed, the whole museum is beautifully designed, and works very well.

via flickr

Punting on the Cam

On Sunday morning my kids and mother arrived from California. Monday morning we went punting on the Cam. I'd been once before, but Heather and I felt it was worth it to take Mom and the kids, and let them enjoy the experience.

via flickr

It was a little cold, but still it was nice: it turned out we had a boat all to ourselves, and a pretty good guide.

via flickr

I don't think it's something I would do very often, but it's quite lovely. The Backs are really great. It was also cool to go under the bridge that I cycled on to go to work these last several months (that's it below).

via flickr

There were a few other boats out, but not enough to make the river really crowded.

via flickr

Of course, not everyone was completely captivated by the experience. But your standards are really high when you're twelve.

via flickr

The end

It had to happen some time....

via flickr

Packing up my office

It's my last day at Microsoft Research Cambridge. with the exception of a couple papers, which I'll finish reading and then recycle, I seem to have cleared out my office pretty completely....

my office before the cleanup, via flickr

It's been an extraordinary time, and I've been able to do some work that I think will bear some good results. It'll continue to evolve when I'm back home, but I think I'm onto something, even if the current version of the magnum opus is still evolving rapidly.

Gotta take my boxes of books downstairs (the Cambridge and Ely bookstores have done very well by me) and finish a couple readers' reports. Then rewrite the introduction of the essay.