Filtering Methods
Collaborative filtering systems connect a person's needs with content based on ratings by others with similar interests and needs. Depending on the system, filtering may be based on human or machine analysis of content or a hybrid approach (Herlocker, Konstan, & Riedl, 2000). An example of the hybrid approach is Google Images, which uses a machine analysis of file names and text content in the page around images in combination with its Image Labeler. The Image Labeler is a game of sorts where users accumulate points for matching key words with a randomly selected partner, with more points awarded for providing more specific terms. The two sets of data are combined and then used in searching (Google, 2009).
Doctorow (2001) claims that observational metadata by a machine is more reliable than that created by humans, listing several obstacles to dependable human-created metadata including people's inability to fully report their own behavior and the ambiguities and non-neutral nature of many measurement and reporting techniques. Avery & Zeckhauser (1997) suggest that some incentive to evaluate content is necessary to avoid issues where the majority of users wait for others to evaluate content for them.
Some of the problems with the lack of human-created metadata may be due to the types of tools available to catalog resources. As I've mentioned before, the complex metadata standards like LOM were designed by engineers and just take too much time to implement; however, with the advent of many Web 2.0 tools there is an abundance of tagged resources and RSS feeds that easily work together. However, an abundance of tags does not necessarily solve problems without causing new ones. Tagging with a common or ambiguous word may cause unrelated content to be displayed together, and spammers may mark their garbage such that it displays alongside legitimate content (Walker, 2005). A closed community might help keep these ambiguities under control, but restrictions would likely lead to lower participation.
Communities
Communities use social interaction to combine existing knowledge with new knowledge to meet their needs. One piece of content may mean different things, based on the context in which it is used (Burnett, Dickey, Kazmer, & Chudoba, 2003). The question is how to make open tools like Del.icio.us, Twitter, and Flickr work to facilitate individual communities without blending them all together or limiting access. It may be ideal to build or expand collaborative filtering capabilities that work in conjunction with manual tagging and machine analysis of content. In order to be successful, such a collaborative filter should filter out irrelevant information and provide a means for community members to access relevant information at the appropriate time, based on the behavior of others in the community (Walker, 2002).
De Souza & Preece (2004) point out two components by which an online community can be assessed: sociability and usability. The sociability component applies to any community, whether online or offline and includes the people, purposes, and policies involved. The usability component focuses on the technical and HCI issues of the software used. In their framework, these two components have to be aligned to produce success. Web 2.0 tools do well in terms of usability, based on the large numbers of people blogging, tagging, editing wikis, and otherwise collaborating. In terms of sociability, there is still work to do. It is easy to set up whitelists of content producers or tags once you know about them, but finding that content to begin with is difficult to do.
Web 2.0 Technologies
Walker (2005) lists Flickr tags that are related to the tag "bush" including: protest, election, politics, kerry, president, graffiti, snow, war, vote, iraq, tree, winter, cameraphone, cheney, and antibush. These associations among terms are then described as "sheep paths in the mountains" that have just formed over time, with no systematic approach. Over the past few years, clusters and pools of related content have made it a little easier to find what one is looking for. Now when searching for that same term, instead of just listing a few related tags, Flickr will prompt the user to see the clusters of related tags such as bush/green/nature/tree or bush/protest/war/iraq. These clusters help bring the sociability level of Flickr up towards its usability level which has been high for awhile now, however they are still based on manual tagging of content.
So one tool has begun to work on becoming a little bit more community-friendly, but how are the rest doing? Digg does well at quickly floating news stories in and out of the spotlight, based on their popularity within certain categories, but it is done by manual voting and categorization. Youtube videos can be associated with channels, contests, groups, categories, and tags, in addition to being rated by viewers. Videos can also be prioritized based on the number of overall views, but not by views of those similar to the user, which would be ideal. Wikipedia allows users to collaborate on documents and hold behind-the-page discussions before doing so, but in order to find a page that might be interesting to the user, a text-based search engine is used. Wordpress and Blogspot seem to follow the same pattern as these other popular tools, using RSS and tagging and linking, but not following a truly dynamic model that builds rules based on behavior and interests rather than cataloging by humans. Much of the human-generated data is good data, but it is simply not enough to narrow down the results by removing false positives. Combining with observational data and machine-generated contextual data will help triangulate the most accurate results for each individual user. Twitter and third party tools built on its API may be the closest to success with its ability to bring together both spontaneous and organized groups of people in real time for any given event.
Good Examples
For an example of non Web 2.0 collaborative filtering, we can look to TiVo (Ali & van Stam, 2004). TiVo still depends on users give shows they watch a thumbs up or thumbs down rating, but it has a few additional features most current Web 2.0 tools do not. It recommends shows the user might like, based on other shows they have watched and rated using correlated pairs of shows. It can also predict a "thumbs level" for unrated shows based on other characteristics.
For another example, Google tracks the searches and site visits of users that are logged into Google while they surf. Users can view statistics on their surfing habits and receive recommendations from Google for searches, web pages, videos, and gadgets the user might like based on the user's searches.
What's Next?
So if Google and TiVo can utilize a combination of factors to pinpoint content that would be appropriate for a user's general searching or entertainment needs, how do we harness those algorithms to extend the widely available Web 2.0 tools so they are more effective in the classroom or in business environments? Setting up a closed system is an option, but as mentioned above, a more open system should encourage more participation. With several of the tools such as wikis and blogs designed for teamwork and collaboration, it seems that the most useful collaborative filters would be those that perform well with newly created, unrated content that is identified by RSS feeds and then quickly react to the actions of users.
I'm not really sure how all these pieces ultimately fit together, but I am interested in further study on the topic. As I have been reading about virtual communities and open content lately and using several of these Web 2.0 tools for various projects, I am drawn to the power that is given to the masses to create content and influence politics, education, and many more aspects of our lives that were not open before. Traditional newspapers have new competition. There are free alternatives to the content traditionally provided by textbook publishers.
With my background in business, I believe that a reasonable amount of competition can be a very good thing. Enabling teams to more efficiently communicate with each other prevents duplication of effort and miscommunications within the group, as well as allowing the group to meet synchronously or asynchronously as schedules allow. Collaborative filtering seems to be an important next step in enabling virtual communities to better utilize the resources currently available to them. The tools for generating new content within a well-known context seem to be well developed, but an essential component of successful teamwork is better organization and dissemination of content and culture that already exist in order to maintain order when certain dynamics of the group change.
REFERENCES
Ali, K., & van Stam, W. (2004) TiVo: Making show recommendations using a distributed collaborative filtering architecture. Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data mining.
Avery, C. & Zeckhauser, R. (1997). Recommender systems for evaluating computer messages. Communications of the ACM, 40(3).
Burnett, G., Dickey, M.H., Kazmer, M.M. & Chudoba, K.M. (2003) Inscription and interpretation of text: A cultural hermeneutic examination of virtual community. Information Research, 9(4).
de Souza, C. S., & Preece, J. (2004). A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities. Interacting with Computers, 16(3), 579-610.
Doctorow, C. (2001) Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. Retrieved from http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm.
Google (2009). Google Image Labeler. Retrieved from http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/.
Herlocker, J., Konstan, J., & Riedl, J. (2000). Explaining collaborative filtering recommendations. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
Walker, A. (2002). An educational recommender system: New territory for collaborative filtering (Doctoral Dissertation, Utah State University).
Walker, J. (2005). Feral hypertext: When hypertext literature escapes control. Proceedings of the 2005 ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, 46-53.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Wilt Thou Pass or Flunk?
And it came to pass, early in the morning of the last day of the semester, there arose a multitude smiting their books and wailing. And there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, for the day of judgment was at hand and they were sore afraid. For they had left undone those things which they ought to have done, and there was no help for them.
And there were many abiding in their rooms, who had kept watch over their books all night, but it naught availeth. But some there were who arose peacefully, for they had prepared for themselves the way, and made straight the path of knowledge. And those wise ones were known to some as the burners of the midnight oil, but by others they were called curve-spoilers.
And the multitudes arose, and ate a hearty breakfast, and they came to the appointed place, and their hearts were heavy within them. And they had come to pass, though not all would.
And some of them repented of their riotous living and bemoaned their fate, but they had not a prayer. And as the final hour approached there came among them one known as the professor, he of the diabolical smile, and passed paper among them, and went upon his way.
And many and varied were the answers which were given, for some of his teachings had fallen among the fallows. Many who had not a prayer in their hearts had nothing but BS to offer up in hopes of pacifying this professor.
And when they had finished, they gathered up their belongings, and went away quietly, each in his own direction, vowing to themselves in this manner, "I shall not pass this way again. It is a long road that has no turning."
And there were many abiding in their rooms, who had kept watch over their books all night, but it naught availeth. But some there were who arose peacefully, for they had prepared for themselves the way, and made straight the path of knowledge. And those wise ones were known to some as the burners of the midnight oil, but by others they were called curve-spoilers.
And the multitudes arose, and ate a hearty breakfast, and they came to the appointed place, and their hearts were heavy within them. And they had come to pass, though not all would.
And some of them repented of their riotous living and bemoaned their fate, but they had not a prayer. And as the final hour approached there came among them one known as the professor, he of the diabolical smile, and passed paper among them, and went upon his way.
And many and varied were the answers which were given, for some of his teachings had fallen among the fallows. Many who had not a prayer in their hearts had nothing but BS to offer up in hopes of pacifying this professor.
And when they had finished, they gathered up their belongings, and went away quietly, each in his own direction, vowing to themselves in this manner, "I shall not pass this way again. It is a long road that has no turning."
Friday, April 24, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Huge Ratios
I work in one of the nicest buildings on campus, so I often see campus tours of future students and their families come through. Student-teacher ratio is a big thing to a lot of people, so it always surprises me when I see the ambassadors (tour guides) showing off the 500-seat auditorium. Shouldn't they avoid that room?
Monday, March 23, 2009
Second Grade Economy
I was talking with two second graders on the way to school this morning. One mentioned a few people he knows that have to work two jobs, and the following exchange took place:
Obviously the economy didn't start going down right when Obama came into office like D said. I wonder where kids get that stuff, though. Is it like a game of Operator, with news agencies not quite reporting everything properly, then parents not quite understanding what is reported on the news (or maybe they listen to Rush), then the kids don't quite understand what their parents say, and then other kids at recess don't quite understand what the other kids say, and then one of them talking to me blames the entire recession on Obama?
If only the fix could be as elegantly simple as proposed by A. Just lower taxes so everyone will have more. In theory it's a great idea. The problem is that the bigger government gets, the more we depend on it. Private enterprises can't compete with government subsidized programs, so they fail. Then when tax revenues dip, the government programs fail. So do we raise taxes to prop up government programs and further reduce the amount available for private spending? The opposite effect, at least in the short term, of lowering taxes means government programs will be cut, and although that leaves people with more of their own money, it takes time for private enterprises to grow back, and the poor who rely on government programs while not paying any taxes themselves simply see a cut in services with no more money to make up the difference.
There are no easy answers.
Me: It's just a hard time for people right now.
D: It started right when Barack Obama became president. It must have been something he did.
A: Maybe Obama will make the bosses of companies pay less so they'll have more money to pay their employees.
Obviously the economy didn't start going down right when Obama came into office like D said. I wonder where kids get that stuff, though. Is it like a game of Operator, with news agencies not quite reporting everything properly, then parents not quite understanding what is reported on the news (or maybe they listen to Rush), then the kids don't quite understand what their parents say, and then other kids at recess don't quite understand what the other kids say, and then one of them talking to me blames the entire recession on Obama?
If only the fix could be as elegantly simple as proposed by A. Just lower taxes so everyone will have more. In theory it's a great idea. The problem is that the bigger government gets, the more we depend on it. Private enterprises can't compete with government subsidized programs, so they fail. Then when tax revenues dip, the government programs fail. So do we raise taxes to prop up government programs and further reduce the amount available for private spending? The opposite effect, at least in the short term, of lowering taxes means government programs will be cut, and although that leaves people with more of their own money, it takes time for private enterprises to grow back, and the poor who rely on government programs while not paying any taxes themselves simply see a cut in services with no more money to make up the difference.
There are no easy answers.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Feel the Chemistry
My office is in the same building as the Chemistry Department. It's in a renovated portion of a storage room in the basement, but it's nicely done, so it's not as bad as it sounds besides the poor cell phone reception.
In the classroom right next to my office, Chemistry holds weekly departmental seminars, where they bring in experts from around the world to hold lectures. The following are some of the exciting topics recently:
Mixed in with all these loquaciously incomprehensible seminar sessions is this presentation coming up in a couple weeks:
I might just attend that session instead of only eating their treats and going back to my office.
In the classroom right next to my office, Chemistry holds weekly departmental seminars, where they bring in experts from around the world to hold lectures. The following are some of the exciting topics recently:
- Tuning Photophysical Properties with ancillary Ligands in Ru(II) Mono-Diimine Complexes
- Meso-Tetraarylporphyrins - Synthesis of, Selective Derivatization, and Possibilities of Application
- Catalytic and Regulatory Mechanisms of Tyrosine Hydroxylase
...and everyone's favorite... - Nanomolecular Architectures: The Application of Crystal Engineering to Metallodendritic Assembly
Mixed in with all these loquaciously incomprehensible seminar sessions is this presentation coming up in a couple weeks:
- How To Make Your Students Hate You Less If Not Necessarily Love You More
I might just attend that session instead of only eating their treats and going back to my office.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Celebrity Death Match
During the Pitt-UConn game that just ended, one of the announcers made some comment in an ominous-sounding voice about a player calling the game a "celebrity death match." A quick search turns up about 100 hits of the same AP article, most of which contain some reference to celebrity death match in the title. The article contains the following:
Nope, he's not referring to pro wrestling.
With all the research sports writers are used to doing for obscure records like the most consecutive home court regular season nonconference wins, you'd think they could have googled "Celebrity Death Match" and clicked on the first link to figure out he was talking about a bloody claymation MTV show pitting various celebrities against each other.
It was simply a way of stating that it's going to be a physical game, and someone might get bloody. As much as the sports media made a big deal about calling this game a celebrity death match, they have no idea what it even means. Of course, it doesn't come close to how excited they are when they get to say "Big Dance". Every time someone writes or says "Big Dance" I can picture them thinking, "Hee hee, I understand the phrases that athletes use. I'm in. I'm down with the playas." Of course, you are.
"We want UConn. It's going to be just like it was the last time -- it's going to be a celebrity death match," Blair said, laughing, invoking some pro wrestling terminology.
Nope, he's not referring to pro wrestling.
With all the research sports writers are used to doing for obscure records like the most consecutive home court regular season nonconference wins, you'd think they could have googled "Celebrity Death Match" and clicked on the first link to figure out he was talking about a bloody claymation MTV show pitting various celebrities against each other.
It was simply a way of stating that it's going to be a physical game, and someone might get bloody. As much as the sports media made a big deal about calling this game a celebrity death match, they have no idea what it even means. Of course, it doesn't come close to how excited they are when they get to say "Big Dance". Every time someone writes or says "Big Dance" I can picture them thinking, "Hee hee, I understand the phrases that athletes use. I'm in. I'm down with the playas." Of course, you are.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Little Brother
Introduction
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author and activist. His book Little Brother stands in both the science fiction and activism camps. He builds an argument for everyone to learn more about the technology that is pervasive in our lives, with a story of daring teenagers taking on the government. The book's byline, "Big Brother is watching you. Who's watching back?", hints at this showdown between technophiles and bureaucrats. San Francisco is turned into a police state after the Bay Bridge is blown up by terrorists. A group of teenagers fight back against abusive behavior by agents of the government, using their tech-smarts to expose injustices and force the government to reign in an overzealous Department of Homeland Security. Although at first glance the storyline appears over the top, neither the injustices being done nor the technologies used to expose them are very far off from what is happening today. Political ideologies aside, what saves the lives of these kids and many others is education and openness.
Background
The most obvious work that this book may be compared to is George Orwell's 1984. In that book, Big Brother is the iconic face of The Party (or government), and Winston Smith is the protagonist who rebels and is eventually brought into submission by The Party. At the beginning of Little Brother, the protagonist Marcus goes by the handle w1n5t0n, pronounced Winston. The term Little Brother is used by the media in the book to describe the members of the Abuses of Authority movement, "who watch back against the Department of Homeland Security's anti-terrorism measures, documenting the failures and excesses." There are several similarities in the storylines, with characters devising methods to avoid surveillance, dealing with issues of who to trust, and government-sponsored torture. The most notable deviation from the 1984 script, other than Marcus being a nonconforming teenager rather than an experienced government employee like Winston, is that Little Brother has a relatively positive ending. Although the strings are not tied up as neatly as a Perry Mason episode, it's not at all a stretch to say that Marcus and friends "win" in the end.
Another book that provides a more scholarly approach to a similar topic is Larry Lessig's Code: Version 2.0. Both books point out that technology may be manipulated to whatever end we desire. The only way to ensure biases or bugs are eliminated is through transparency, since trust is often lacking. An important concept in Lessig’s book is that of latent ambiguities, which come about since technology moves faster than the law. A current example of this is the complaint from the Author’s Guild that Amazon’s e-book reader Kindle would be able to read books aloud without…gasp…purchasing audio rights. [Doctorow's response to the Kindle controversy]
Little Brother is aimed at young adults. It seeks to lure in these digital natives with fast-paced action, distrust of adults, cool technology, and a sprinkling of sexuality. It is important that this next generation make the leap from being consumers of technology to producers, so there will be new creators of technology to take the place of the baby boomers as they begin to retire.
In the foreword of the book, Doctorow states the following: "This book is meant to be something you do, not just something you read. The technology in this book is either real or nearly real. You can build a lot of it. You can share it and remix it. You can use the ideas to spark important discussions with your friends and family. You can use those ideas to defeat censorship and get onto the free Internet, even if your government, employer or school doesn't want you to."
In the afterword, Bruce Schneier, a well known security technologist, and Andrew Huang, a researcher known for hacking the Xbox, point out the amount of dysfunction in the world today. Security through obscurity seems to be the pervasive method in the world for keeping us safe; however, openness and courage to stand up for our freedoms is what will make us safer. Schneier admonishes us to pay attention to the world and try to figure out how it works, and by doing so we will begin to worry about the things that will actually make us safer and stop relying on technologies that can be defeated with a little bit of knowledge and a ballpoint pen.
Summary
The book follows the exploits of a seventeen year old high school student, Marcus Yallow, who uses technology to his advantage work his way around the technical measures instituted by his school district to keep the students in line. The school is truly a place that Paolo Freire would speak out against, as students are monitored and disciplined for speaking their minds; they are oppressed, rather than being allowed to participate in the learning process.
In rebelling against the oppression, these students learn about and utilize technology to encrypt chat sessions, block RFID tracking, and confuse gait-recognition cameras in the halls. As they are out skipping school, a terrorist attack occurs, and Marcus and his friends are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as possible suspects in the attack. After being held and questioned for several days and then released, they return to a city which has been locked down by the DHS. Innocent people are being stopped and questioned by police to ask why they visited certain parts of the city, since they are tracked by their RFID cards that are used for payment on bridges, toll roads, and mass transportation.
Marcus organizes an underground movement utilizing a special Linux distribution called ParanoidLinux that could run on Xboxes that had been handed out for free by Microsoft the previous year. They teach other youth around the city to reprogram RFID cards to throw off the DHS's data mining techniques. The movement gains momentum, but eventually it becomes obvious that the DHS has infiltrated the so-called Xnet. A small group of Xnet members use encryption technology to create a trusted group within the Xnet. The more this trusted group organizes and tries to rebel, the more they realize that the DHS is closer to figuring out who they are. Their only choice is to go public with the abuses being handed out by the DHS, as they bring in more agents and apply more pressure to finding these supposed terrorists.
In a conversation with his father, who did not know Marcus was the leader of this group rebelling against the DHS's tactics, his dad points out that, "The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining. The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?" Marcus' response was, "Taking away our privacy isn't catching terrorists: it's just inconveniencing normal people." His father seems willing to accept the inconveniences of being stopped without cause while looking for the bad guys, while Marcus is actively fighting for rights guaranteed us in the Constitution. In the process they address some of the latent ambiguities that Lessig discusses in Code: Version 2.0.
The publisher provides a free Teacher's Guide which contains writing activities for students with thought-provoking questions to help students enhance their analysis of the book. This is a nice addition for classroom use, covering issues such as understanding truth and reality, history, research techniques, code transparency, privacy and surveillance, righteous rebellion, torture, legal and civil rights, marketing techniques, protests, trust, and problem solving. There is really something in this book for everyone. With the book’s Creative Commons license, a teacher can download and distribute the book for free to students. If the sex or some of the language is a little too risqué, it can be legally modified.
Evaluation
Very little can hold the short attention span of the upcoming generation, but this novel has what it takes to keep them motivated to turn the page while learning a little bit about technology. The action and exciting technology are enough to keep the reader hooked, even as Doctorow explains the basics of cryptography, networking, IP tunneling, and RFID. It is enjoyable to learn more about the technologies, even though most people would not admit to being interested in such things. He directly ties technology into the story and how these teens are using the technology to fight back. Schneier states, "Cory invited me into the last few pages of his book because he wanted me to tell you that security is fun. It's incredibly fun. It's cat and mouse, who can outsmart whom, hunter versus hunted fun. I think it's the most fun job you can possibly have. If you thought it was fun to read about Marcus outsmarting the gait-recognition cameras with rocks in his shoes, think of how much more fun it would be if you were the first person in the world to think of that." Doctorow did a good job of showing how fun and interesting a more advanced understanding of technology can and should be. With the afterwords by Schneier and Huang, he ties back to his statements at the beginning of the book to explicitly remind the readers why he wrote it.
Unlike movies like Independence Day, Jurassic Park, and The Net, where technology is incorrectly utilized in unrealistic ways, the technologies in Little Brother either already exist or would be relatively easy to implement. The ParanoidLinux distribution mentioned in the book did not exist at the time the book was written, but interested Open Source programmers have begun putting together an operating system that mirrors the capabilities mentioned in the book. Much of the software used already exists, but the ParanoidLinux distribution is simply bringing them all together in one package. The use of real technology is very important, as it removes some of the need for suspension of disbelief, making it easier to get lost in the story.
A more in depth look at the characters in the story, however, reveals a superficial, one-dimensional nature to most of the players. There was just a lack of complexity that was somewhat distracting. The evil characters are pure evil. His friends and family are either 100% supportive of him or want absolutely nothing to do with his plans. We do get inside Marcus' head as the majority of the book is written in first person, from his point of view. We see Marcus' inner struggle and growth as the reluctant leader in the rebellion he spawned on a whim, but see little character development in those around him. Marcus does have fights with one of his friends and his girlfriend, but they seem to be more devices in furthering Marcus' growth rather than their own. I kept waiting for the twist, like his girlfriend being a spy or his dad working to help the DHS improve its data mining techniques as they close in on Marcus. That twist never came. Even the supposedly surprise DHS informant was not out of line with previous interactions with that character.
Conclusion
As technology departments at universities around the country struggle to attract females into their programs, Little Brother can be used as a recruiting tool. There are just as many tech-savvy, important females in the story as there are males. Computer Science suffers from a lack of understanding among both males and females as to what you can do with a degree in that field besides sitting in a dark basement writing line after line of code. Being able to program is an important part of the story, but so is understanding and using technology that has been created by others in unique ways.
I hesitate using the term "must-read", but Little Brother is high up on my recommendation list. It is not often that a book with a decidedly technology-rich storyline can reach out to both readers that are tech-savvy and less knowledgeable in a way that makes them want to learn more. Doctorow makes it easy for his readers by telling them what he wants them to do when they finish the book, presenting a compelling story, concluding with another call to action, and providing a list of more sources to turn to with their new-found interest in security, technology, and counterculture books and electronic resources.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author and activist. His book Little Brother stands in both the science fiction and activism camps. He builds an argument for everyone to learn more about the technology that is pervasive in our lives, with a story of daring teenagers taking on the government. The book's byline, "Big Brother is watching you. Who's watching back?", hints at this showdown between technophiles and bureaucrats. San Francisco is turned into a police state after the Bay Bridge is blown up by terrorists. A group of teenagers fight back against abusive behavior by agents of the government, using their tech-smarts to expose injustices and force the government to reign in an overzealous Department of Homeland Security. Although at first glance the storyline appears over the top, neither the injustices being done nor the technologies used to expose them are very far off from what is happening today. Political ideologies aside, what saves the lives of these kids and many others is education and openness.
Background
The most obvious work that this book may be compared to is George Orwell's 1984. In that book, Big Brother is the iconic face of The Party (or government), and Winston Smith is the protagonist who rebels and is eventually brought into submission by The Party. At the beginning of Little Brother, the protagonist Marcus goes by the handle w1n5t0n, pronounced Winston. The term Little Brother is used by the media in the book to describe the members of the Abuses of Authority movement, "who watch back against the Department of Homeland Security's anti-terrorism measures, documenting the failures and excesses." There are several similarities in the storylines, with characters devising methods to avoid surveillance, dealing with issues of who to trust, and government-sponsored torture. The most notable deviation from the 1984 script, other than Marcus being a nonconforming teenager rather than an experienced government employee like Winston, is that Little Brother has a relatively positive ending. Although the strings are not tied up as neatly as a Perry Mason episode, it's not at all a stretch to say that Marcus and friends "win" in the end.
Another book that provides a more scholarly approach to a similar topic is Larry Lessig's Code: Version 2.0. Both books point out that technology may be manipulated to whatever end we desire. The only way to ensure biases or bugs are eliminated is through transparency, since trust is often lacking. An important concept in Lessig’s book is that of latent ambiguities, which come about since technology moves faster than the law. A current example of this is the complaint from the Author’s Guild that Amazon’s e-book reader Kindle would be able to read books aloud without…gasp…purchasing audio rights. [Doctorow's response to the Kindle controversy]
Little Brother is aimed at young adults. It seeks to lure in these digital natives with fast-paced action, distrust of adults, cool technology, and a sprinkling of sexuality. It is important that this next generation make the leap from being consumers of technology to producers, so there will be new creators of technology to take the place of the baby boomers as they begin to retire.
In the foreword of the book, Doctorow states the following: "This book is meant to be something you do, not just something you read. The technology in this book is either real or nearly real. You can build a lot of it. You can share it and remix it. You can use the ideas to spark important discussions with your friends and family. You can use those ideas to defeat censorship and get onto the free Internet, even if your government, employer or school doesn't want you to."
In the afterword, Bruce Schneier, a well known security technologist, and Andrew Huang, a researcher known for hacking the Xbox, point out the amount of dysfunction in the world today. Security through obscurity seems to be the pervasive method in the world for keeping us safe; however, openness and courage to stand up for our freedoms is what will make us safer. Schneier admonishes us to pay attention to the world and try to figure out how it works, and by doing so we will begin to worry about the things that will actually make us safer and stop relying on technologies that can be defeated with a little bit of knowledge and a ballpoint pen.
Summary
The book follows the exploits of a seventeen year old high school student, Marcus Yallow, who uses technology to his advantage work his way around the technical measures instituted by his school district to keep the students in line. The school is truly a place that Paolo Freire would speak out against, as students are monitored and disciplined for speaking their minds; they are oppressed, rather than being allowed to participate in the learning process.
In rebelling against the oppression, these students learn about and utilize technology to encrypt chat sessions, block RFID tracking, and confuse gait-recognition cameras in the halls. As they are out skipping school, a terrorist attack occurs, and Marcus and his friends are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as possible suspects in the attack. After being held and questioned for several days and then released, they return to a city which has been locked down by the DHS. Innocent people are being stopped and questioned by police to ask why they visited certain parts of the city, since they are tracked by their RFID cards that are used for payment on bridges, toll roads, and mass transportation.
Marcus organizes an underground movement utilizing a special Linux distribution called ParanoidLinux that could run on Xboxes that had been handed out for free by Microsoft the previous year. They teach other youth around the city to reprogram RFID cards to throw off the DHS's data mining techniques. The movement gains momentum, but eventually it becomes obvious that the DHS has infiltrated the so-called Xnet. A small group of Xnet members use encryption technology to create a trusted group within the Xnet. The more this trusted group organizes and tries to rebel, the more they realize that the DHS is closer to figuring out who they are. Their only choice is to go public with the abuses being handed out by the DHS, as they bring in more agents and apply more pressure to finding these supposed terrorists.
In a conversation with his father, who did not know Marcus was the leader of this group rebelling against the DHS's tactics, his dad points out that, "The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining. The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?" Marcus' response was, "Taking away our privacy isn't catching terrorists: it's just inconveniencing normal people." His father seems willing to accept the inconveniences of being stopped without cause while looking for the bad guys, while Marcus is actively fighting for rights guaranteed us in the Constitution. In the process they address some of the latent ambiguities that Lessig discusses in Code: Version 2.0.
The publisher provides a free Teacher's Guide which contains writing activities for students with thought-provoking questions to help students enhance their analysis of the book. This is a nice addition for classroom use, covering issues such as understanding truth and reality, history, research techniques, code transparency, privacy and surveillance, righteous rebellion, torture, legal and civil rights, marketing techniques, protests, trust, and problem solving. There is really something in this book for everyone. With the book’s Creative Commons license, a teacher can download and distribute the book for free to students. If the sex or some of the language is a little too risqué, it can be legally modified.
Evaluation
Very little can hold the short attention span of the upcoming generation, but this novel has what it takes to keep them motivated to turn the page while learning a little bit about technology. The action and exciting technology are enough to keep the reader hooked, even as Doctorow explains the basics of cryptography, networking, IP tunneling, and RFID. It is enjoyable to learn more about the technologies, even though most people would not admit to being interested in such things. He directly ties technology into the story and how these teens are using the technology to fight back. Schneier states, "Cory invited me into the last few pages of his book because he wanted me to tell you that security is fun. It's incredibly fun. It's cat and mouse, who can outsmart whom, hunter versus hunted fun. I think it's the most fun job you can possibly have. If you thought it was fun to read about Marcus outsmarting the gait-recognition cameras with rocks in his shoes, think of how much more fun it would be if you were the first person in the world to think of that." Doctorow did a good job of showing how fun and interesting a more advanced understanding of technology can and should be. With the afterwords by Schneier and Huang, he ties back to his statements at the beginning of the book to explicitly remind the readers why he wrote it.
Unlike movies like Independence Day, Jurassic Park, and The Net, where technology is incorrectly utilized in unrealistic ways, the technologies in Little Brother either already exist or would be relatively easy to implement. The ParanoidLinux distribution mentioned in the book did not exist at the time the book was written, but interested Open Source programmers have begun putting together an operating system that mirrors the capabilities mentioned in the book. Much of the software used already exists, but the ParanoidLinux distribution is simply bringing them all together in one package. The use of real technology is very important, as it removes some of the need for suspension of disbelief, making it easier to get lost in the story.
A more in depth look at the characters in the story, however, reveals a superficial, one-dimensional nature to most of the players. There was just a lack of complexity that was somewhat distracting. The evil characters are pure evil. His friends and family are either 100% supportive of him or want absolutely nothing to do with his plans. We do get inside Marcus' head as the majority of the book is written in first person, from his point of view. We see Marcus' inner struggle and growth as the reluctant leader in the rebellion he spawned on a whim, but see little character development in those around him. Marcus does have fights with one of his friends and his girlfriend, but they seem to be more devices in furthering Marcus' growth rather than their own. I kept waiting for the twist, like his girlfriend being a spy or his dad working to help the DHS improve its data mining techniques as they close in on Marcus. That twist never came. Even the supposedly surprise DHS informant was not out of line with previous interactions with that character.
Conclusion
As technology departments at universities around the country struggle to attract females into their programs, Little Brother can be used as a recruiting tool. There are just as many tech-savvy, important females in the story as there are males. Computer Science suffers from a lack of understanding among both males and females as to what you can do with a degree in that field besides sitting in a dark basement writing line after line of code. Being able to program is an important part of the story, but so is understanding and using technology that has been created by others in unique ways.
I hesitate using the term "must-read", but Little Brother is high up on my recommendation list. It is not often that a book with a decidedly technology-rich storyline can reach out to both readers that are tech-savvy and less knowledgeable in a way that makes them want to learn more. Doctorow makes it easy for his readers by telling them what he wants them to do when they finish the book, presenting a compelling story, concluding with another call to action, and providing a list of more sources to turn to with their new-found interest in security, technology, and counterculture books and electronic resources.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest are important to pay attention to, especially in politics but also in other aspects of the business world. Our capitalist society is founded on the fact that people will naturally act in their own interests. A conflict of interest occurs when someone is in some position of responsibility that would allow them to personally benefit themselves or their loved ones at the expense of whatever group they represent or over which they have responsibility.
Disclosure is generally required when a conflict of interest is present. If the conflict is severe enough, the person will step aside and let someone else handle the decisions in question.
So what happens when the person with the conflict of interest is the expert in the topic? For example, if a state legislator is also a public school teacher, bills relating to funding public education and specifically relating to teachers' salaries would obviously be conflicts of interest. Do we want everyone with a stake in public education to step out of the room and let only the construction experts work on the public education budget? Then when it's time to allocate money for construction projects, those who work in construction will leave the room while the teachers come back in and set the construction budget? Of course not. Neither group has the expertise to efficiently allocate the money for the other group. Disclosure is always appropriate, but recusal may not be the best course of action in such a situation.
So, my humble reader(s), if you've made it this far, here's your theoretical situation. A professor writes a textbook and wants to use it in class. Requiring students to purchase the textbook results in more money for him or her, so there's the conflict of interest. Letting someone else choose another book may result in a less effective classroom experience if the professor's book would be better aligned to the structure of the class. Anyone that is a proponent of open education already has a solution most of the way formulated. What about all the capitalists out there? What's your solution?
Disclosure is generally required when a conflict of interest is present. If the conflict is severe enough, the person will step aside and let someone else handle the decisions in question.
So what happens when the person with the conflict of interest is the expert in the topic? For example, if a state legislator is also a public school teacher, bills relating to funding public education and specifically relating to teachers' salaries would obviously be conflicts of interest. Do we want everyone with a stake in public education to step out of the room and let only the construction experts work on the public education budget? Then when it's time to allocate money for construction projects, those who work in construction will leave the room while the teachers come back in and set the construction budget? Of course not. Neither group has the expertise to efficiently allocate the money for the other group. Disclosure is always appropriate, but recusal may not be the best course of action in such a situation.
So, my humble reader(s), if you've made it this far, here's your theoretical situation. A professor writes a textbook and wants to use it in class. Requiring students to purchase the textbook results in more money for him or her, so there's the conflict of interest. Letting someone else choose another book may result in a less effective classroom experience if the professor's book would be better aligned to the structure of the class. Anyone that is a proponent of open education already has a solution most of the way formulated. What about all the capitalists out there? What's your solution?
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