three cheers for teamwork.

In my earlier post about The Race for the Double Helix, I wrote a bit about Watson and Crick's competitive approach to science.  Is there an alternate approach; something more "teamwork-based?"

Can our "race" mentality really be fixed?  According to Foldit, it can.  Fold.it is an online protein folding video game.  You can actually play a game - and a fairly entertaining one at that - and simultaneously help solve problems that have been baffling scientists for years.  Granted, there's a big learning curve, but there have been big results.  Apparently one of the pieces of the AIDS puzzle was found when Foldit gamers cracked a case in 3 weeks that scientists had been working on for 15 years.  If you want to learn more about it you can go here or here.

The Foldit story is proof that competition isn't the only thing that motivates scientists.  Foldit's success is based on several ideas, three of which are:

1. People are smarter when they work together.  The fact that we all reason differently can be one of our greatest advantages.

2. People work better when they are having fun.  People will keep doing something if they enjoy it.

3. People are often driven by something more than just selfish motives.  We're more benevolent than we think.

Ctrl+Z.

I saw someone sitting on a bench as I walked across campus; he was staring at a tree and transcribing what he saw onto a large sketchpad...  He's an artist.  I admire his dedication; his bare hands must be freezing, and who knows how long he's been out there.  And it's all for the sake of putting a tree on paper.

Let's say he's drawing in pen and makes a big mistake, or the pen bursts and spurts ink all over the drawing.  What he do?  Ctrl+Z, right?  Wrong.

What happens to us when we start to believe that nothing we do is necessarily permanent, that everything can be undone with the push of a button?  The "cut and paste" mentality of virtual reality doesn't always hold true for real life.  Knowing (or at least believing) that what I put on the internet doesn't have to be permanent might cause me to have one of two attitudes, or a combination of both:

1. "I can ridicule and demoralize people on the internet...  I can always delete it later."

"Four things come not back - the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life and the neglected opportunity."

One needn't look far to see the actions of people who don't understand or don't believe this adage - especially the part about the spoken word and the sped arrow - and many of these people are proving it in cyberspace.  Take a look at the string of comments below almost any article, and you'll most likely see people taking jabs at each other and saying things that they might not have the guts to say in person.  I really believe that the way people behave on online forums has a negative effect on how they behave in real life.

2. "I can publish something now, even though it's incomplete... I can always change it later."

Is the assumption that I can go back and "tweak" whatever I've created always necessarily a bad thing?  Maybe not.  In Digital Civilization, we are encouraged to publish blog posts even if they're not polished or even complete (that explains his blog posts, you might be thinking).  Knowing that my publication will be there to alter later if needed, I can put it out there now and see what happens.  Although I'm still learning how to do that, I suppose it can definitely be a good thing.

So...  I'm going to post this now and tweak it later.  After all, I can do that.

the race for the double helix.

I'm slowly learning about what "open science" really is.  The website OpenScience.org defines it like this:

Open science is the idea that scientific knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as is practical in the discovery process.

This definition is based on "sharing" - what's mine is yours, right?  While it sounds great, I don't know if it can work.  The concept is flawed at best.  In the competitive society and economy in which we live, there are many things that just can't be shared.  I doubt, for example, that we would expect any company to share R&D information with its rivals; Coke wouldn't share a new formula with Pepsi, and Apple would definitely not share a new idea with anyone.  What selfish people, right?  I suppose they have the right to be selfish.

But science should be different, many people argue.  And in spite of my lack of knowledge on the subject, I think I agree; however, people are competitive.  I was reminded of that today as I watched a movie called "The Race For The Double Helix," which is about Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA.  At first glance, it was great open science - they used, after all, information that had been collected by researchers in several laboratories, including that of Rosalind Franklin.

But was it really open science?

It seemed to me to be competitive, secretive, selfish science.  Of course, it was a movie, and I'll need to find time to inform myself a bit better on the actual events.  But it was no doubt a race.  The film paints a stark contrast between Watson & Crick and Rosalind Franklin.

• Watson & Crick - They wanted to make history.  They talked a lot about winning the Nobel Prize.  There was another scientist also working on a DNA structure model, and their goal was to beat him to it.  In a world where everyone "shares," they would have collaborated.  But they didn't!  They fought it out!
• Rosalind Franklin - She didn't understand why the other scientists saw the race for the double helix as just that, a race or some kind of game.  She was a champion of open science, believing that all scientists "should stand on each other's shoulders." 

Francis Crick's character at one point says, "Problems don't belong to people."  I would agree, especially when it involves making peoples' lives better.  But if people in other fields have the right to keep their findings secret, do scientists have that same right?

cocaine and google's new privacy policy.

Every time I log on to Gmail, Google has been asking me to take a look at its new and improved privacy policy.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of ignorant people who just click "I Agree" instead of actually reading the "Privacy Policy" and "Terms of Use."  And I am one of them.

But an uncanny coincidence sparked my interest.  The ads on my Gmail page are eerily relevant to my recent online activity.  I thought, "Maybe this privacy policy will tell me more."  It's written in clear and simple language, and although I won't say I've read the whole thing, I'm in the process.

As far as I can tell, the policy doesn't mean that much will change.  Apparently, Google has already been collecting my information, including device, search, and location information.  It's just that now they've decided to tell me about it.  Here's the link if you want to know more.

So...  Google, Facebook, and other sites collect our information, allegedly to make our internet experience even better.  Should we be worried?

I guess it depends on who you ask.  Unauthorized use of private information is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in this country.  Take United States v. Jones, for example.  A few years ago, police received a warrant to place a GPS tracker on the car of Antoine Jones, who was suspected of involvement in narcotics.  Police then used the device to track his movements over the next month, leading to the seizure of almost 100 kilograms in cocaine.  Last month, the Supreme Court decided that such an action was in violation of the fourth amendment.  One of the questions raised by such a case is this: Should I really expect my sensitive information to remain that way once it's on the Internet?  Justice Sotomayor said:

"… it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties… This approach is ill-suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers… I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year."

Google's new policy says that it promises not to share your information, unless it is deemed necessary in order to "meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process, or enforceable governmental request."

What is that supposed to mean?

for the birds.

As I started my research on crowdsourcing, the only examples that I could think of were Threadless.com and Wikipedia.  Crowdsourcing seemed to me to be somewhat of a novelty or a concept only valid for entertainment and amusement.  Not so.

Take ornithology, for example (that's the study of birds).  Ornithology was transformed by the internet age.  As Jeff Howe says, 

"Before the birth of the Internet, bird-watching was the province of an enthusiastic, small cadre of devotees.  But in recent years bird-watching has undergone a rapid growth in popularity.  By 2006, nearly 50 million Americans were engaged in some form of "wildlife watching".  

That's a lot of people watching birds!  What is the product of such an upswing in avian aficionados?  It's not just greater harmony with the outdoors.  This new generation of bird-watchers has made huge contributions to what we now know about birds.  In fact, according to Chris Wood, a researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,

"In many cases amateur birders are more competent at gathering, correctly identifying, and recording numbers of birds than professional ornithologists.  This basic form of data collection is precisely what birders have always specialized in."

That thought draws my attention to the plight of the professional birders, the ones who have done their homework and committed to full-time observation.  This is the human version of disruptive innovation.  What do you do if you're trying to make a living studying birds, and other people do it just as well, or apparently better, for free?

I have a feeling that this isn't a problem unique to the bird world.

 

twitter 24/7.

So...  I decided to get a Twitter account to see what they have to offer.  I haven't used it much, but I did do some exploring to get more acquainted with it.  Anyway, when I logged off, I read this on the screen:

"You've signed out of Twitter.  Now go mobile."
And I thought to myself...

"Wait...but I just got off Twitter.  Why would I want to get back on Twitter on my phone?"

And it was as if Twitter replied, "Oh I know.  But I want you to get back on."

"On my phone?"

"Yes, on your phone."

Aside the world in which we live, we also kinda live in a sort of pseudo-world, and many companies like Twitter want me to spend as much time in that alternate universe as possible.

Why..?

the experiment.

Why do people question the facts?  What even makes a fact a fact?

Aristotle came up with some good stuff, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  His contributions to society as we know it are no doubt immeasurable.  We owe a lot to thinkers like him, who provide us with valuable information.  Of course, thinkers are human, and humans are human.  Sometimes we get it wrong.

Aristotle's theory that objects of greater weight fall at a greater speed was believed to be true for over a thousand years.  But was it really believed?  I thought this youtube clip, albeit a tad dramitized, illustrates the importance of questioning supposed fact:

Maybe some people did have a hunch that Aristotle was mistaken on some points, but didn't feel it was their place to propose a change.  Maybe they felt inadequate.  Maybe they were afraid.  At any rate, we should all be seekers and defenders of truth.

After all, "what good is knowing the truth, if you're not willing to defend it?"

[more on this later]