Ira Glass has the most absorbing tales. This one is no different, and it is about a topic that I am familiar with. The whole show is embedded below, and if that does not work - the link to the original story on This American Life is here.
Favorite quote from the show: Shenzen looks like Bladerunner threw up on itself.
Over a period of 35 minutes, the narrative evolves slowly, from a funny self-effacing confession to a pondering, visceral narrative designed, not as much to shock, as to prod new life into a story that has almost nothing new to give. To round it all up, Act II of the show is typical NPR - the other side of the story - including this opinion arguing the benefits of sweatshops.
Finally, it is easy to see this as something specific to Apple, while it is not. Having Apple on the headline does bring in the eye-balls, but the story is no different for Samsung, or any of the other makers of electronics. Once again, it is the Apple side of the camp, that put it together in an easy to use package.
The whole story is an hour long - but well worth it.
While the idea itself is obviously interesting, that is not the only reason I posted this. There is this post that I wrote on this blog, back in 2002. The idea of that post is surprisingly similar to that conveyed in the book.
I imagined a universe where matter is defined as...
"nothing but the extract of the information conveyed to us by the various input devices."
Going further, one could define the entire universe, with all of its constituent parts using ...
"A way in which there is no difference between the various units of matter, energy, ideas, minds and everyother thing in the universe. This unified way of looking at the universe is going to help us define the entire universe on a one dimensional scale rating information content."
I am super kicked that my ramblings of 9 years ago were not that empty. In no way is this meant to claim that post was even remotely complete - but there was that germ of a thought.
Came across an interesting article the other day on NPR. The article talked about the difficulty in implementing a wiretapping law in the age of the communication capabilities of the Internet. The audio is embedded below.
In the old days of wired telephony, communication happened when a fixed wire carried voice from the speaker to the listener. Wiretapping during this era was literally tapping a wire. The fact that communication took a pre-determined route between the participants made wire-tapping technically simple.
It was this pre-determined route for communications that, during cold-war, led to the development of the Internet. Ironically, the original requirement for the internet (having no fixed path, and therefore no single failure point) makes intercepting communications that much more difficult.
Communication on the Internet is a vague concept. Anything can be, and is, communication. Sending email, downloading files, instant messaging, viewing websites, watching video or having conversations via Skype - it is all a form of communication. Not to mention the continuous chatter of all the devices on the network, constantly talking to each other. Hence any law that deals with eavesdropping is challenged by a target that is designed to withstand the very thing that is required of it. The NPR article does a great job of identifying the problems of any intercept solution - loss of security, misuse, and the loss of privacy.
I think there is another aspect, that links back to the idea of network neutrality. The nature of network neutrality means that anyone can build a tool that can use the Internet to communicate. With the widespread availability of communication and encryption libraries, means that building a small tool that can only communicate with copies of itself is trivial. The only way to prevent this would be to prevent the user of the Internet by applications that are not explicitly authorized.
In other words, a neutral network, makes successful eavesdropping extremely difficult, if not impossible. The only way to have an "Intercept Solution" that works is to have a network that is directly involved in what is flowing across it. Forget corporate greed stratifying the Internet. In the long run, it might still be the need to eavesdrop that might trump the case for network neutrality.
For a while now, we have been big fans of NPR, so much so that all of our radio dials - car, receiver, clock - are set to FM 89.7 WUWM. Unlike the TV however, none of the radio receivers have a screen. So we hardly, get to see how the voices on our radio actually look like. So when we came across these couple of videos, I had to figure out a way to share. The first one features voices from the Milwaukee station - WUWM.
The second one features voices from NPR. NPR is the national service that produces most of the programs that run on the local stations like WUWM.
Professor Hans Rosling, is the co-founder of a very interesting website called Gapminder. The website is dedicated to using graphics, animation and interactive charts to display and interpret global data. The tools initially developed by the site, now lives as the Motion Chart gadget within Google docs.
The technology, while not cutting edge, is nifty. Information of up to four dimensions plus time is displayed beautifully in an interactive way. There is no dearth of data around, but having a way to view, interpret, understand and communicate the knowledge hidden within all that data is what makes the data usable.
This is a perfect example where technology meets society in ways deeper than Facebook and Twitter can. Where technology directly faces societies' challenges and is able to directly make a difference. Something like the Random hacks of kindness, a story I heard on NPR a couple of weeks ago (embedded below).
Back to Prof Hans. He hosts a BBC program that makes statistics sexy and enjoyable. After the break is a wonderful visualization of the progress made by humanity in the last two hundred years. A simple, yet powerful, metric of life as we know it.
With Gold price scaling new heights during the current recession, there has been a justifiable explosion of interest in the shiny, yellow, inert metal. But the question it begs is - why Gold? What is it that make the metal Aurum, with 79 protons so special.
Turns out there is an explanation - a chemical explanation. NPR and Planet money tackled this recently, and requirements for an element to be a form of currency are these:
Not a gas
Doesn’t corrode or burst into flames
Doesn’t kill you
Relatively rare, but not too rare
Available during ancient times
Does not tarnish
Has a reasonably low melting point
There is only one element that fits the bill - Gold. The question of course is why do we need to restrict ourselves to elements and not include things like alloys. Not sure if chemistry may have an answer for that question.
The audio of the story from NPR embedded below. Turns out NPR is no longer providing embed code, so had to use a CC shared flash player from Dewplayer to embed the MP3 file from NPR. Thanks NPR, Dewplayer and Creative Commons.
Funny story on NPR about a guy who, one day, decided to embark upon a cross-country quest to correct typos. Jeff Deck, the founder of Typo Eradication Advancement League, and his buddy Benjamin Douglas, set out to not just identify, or photograph, but actually fix typos in public signs. It went well, until the duo were busted for “fixing” a historic marker at the Grand Canyon. Vandalism - was the term the authorities preferred instead.
They are back, with a book now, that chronicles their journey. For two and a half months they were out and about, finding 437 typos and correcting more than half of them. While they found some support for their effort, there also was a lot of apathy. Culminating in the run-in with the law.
Now here's the rub - imagine finding typos in this publication. Ah the sweet-sweet irony.
On the subject of the English language. Marketplace program had an interesting segment about a non-profit center called the Center for Plain Language. The mission of the center is to make sure we use simple, understandable and actionable language in our conversations.
I am sure we have all seen this before - the use of dense verbiage while writing. Lawyers have been guilty of it, doctors relish it; hell even I love long-winded sentences. If you live in the US, you would have seen a lot more of this because of the need to be politically correct all the time. It is about time, we thought beyond the need to be absolutely politically correct, and instead gave language the greater attention it deserves.
An interesting piece produced by NPR about the change in the portrayal of the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) over the ages in the Indian Cinema. An interview with WNYC Reporter Arun Venugopal.
