The Dark Side of Information

July 1, 2013

Free information will be our doom, Quartz‘s Jaron Lanier asserts in, “Free Information, as Great as it Sounds, Will Enslave Us All.” From high-frequency trading to online marketing, insists Lanier, big data is being used by those with the resources to collect and manipulate it to enrich themselves. Meanwhile, those of us with just paltry, personal devices are the ones creating the information, creating the value that fuels such systems. It is an argument that has been advanced before, and Lanier pursues the thread:

“Something seems terribly askew about how technology is benefiting the world lately. How could it be that so far the network age seems to be a time of endless austerity, jobless recoveries, loss of social mobility, and intense wealth concentration in markets that are anemic overall? How could it be that ever since the incredible efficiencies of digital networking have finally reached vast numbers of people that we aren’t seeing a broad benefit? . . .

“While people are created equal, computers are not. When people share information freely, those who own the best computers benefit in extreme ways that are denied to everyone else. Those with the best computers can simply calculate wealth and power away from ordinary people.”

See the article for its supporting arguments. Lanier does not leave us hanging for a potential solution. He recalls a suggestion he credits to Ted Nelson, which the IT pioneer made back in 1960: embed a “universal micropayment system” into any digital communication network, so that each individual who contributes any bit of data would get a bit of compensation in return. In that reality, for any tweet each of us sent, search query we made, or even security-camera image of us that was later used by any organization (for whatever purpose), we might become a few cents richer.

Interesting idea; can it gain any traction before the current system is set in stone?

Cynthia Murrell, July 01, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Amazon Workers Strike in Germany

July 1, 2013

What’s not to love about a job at Amazon? Well, some German workers feel there is room for improvement. Yahoo News informs us that “Amazon Workers in Germany Set for Second Strike for Higher Pay.” The trade union Verdi called for the strike to take place on June third at Amazon’s Leipzig logistics center. The brief write-up informs us:

“Amazon employs around 9,000 people in Germany and has come under fire from the union for refusing to implement a collective agreement on employment conditions similar to deals at other mail order and retail firms.

“The union is also pressing for higher basic pay and bigger supplements for night shifts. . . .

“Amazon said its workers’ earnings were already at the upper end of what logistics companies pay in Germany. It said that it was willing to continue talks with Verdi but did not see a common basis for negotiations for now.”

Ah, more hassles for Amazon. So far, it doesn’t look like the company acknowledges much merit in the complaints. According to PressTV‘s “Amazon Workers in Germany Resume Strike Over Pay,” about 300 Leipzig employees walked out the doors Monday, while some 600 from the Bad Hersfeld facility joined them. Verdi says delivery times are being affected, but perhaps not enough to get management’s full attention. Will workers persist, and, if so, will they make any headway?

Cynthia Murrell, July 01, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

To Search or Not to Search

July 1, 2013

In the Community section of AIIM, the global community of information professionals, we spotted an interesting post: “Search Is Lost Without Found.” The author, having recently attended Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summit, discusses the low turnout and the growing interest level in big data instead of enterprise search.

The gist of the message at the show was the idea that search is an unsustainable business on its own. He explains the speech made by Shawn Shell, Hitachi Consulting VP of its Microsoft Platform Practice. Shell concludes that people do not fundamentally enjoy search because it leaves them in an interim state of pure guesswork.

The author tells us that as much as people enjoy searches that fit a typical action-outcome scenario, there will always be a need for research through the discovery side of search. He continues:

“There’s a reason that sky-cracking brainstorms don’t open in the middle of workflows. It’s because they’re time-resistant, if not defiant of sequential procedures. Circles have taken their lumps lately. I blame the vanishing rotaries on a preoccupation with linear expression — a bias that tends to favor causality at the expense of circuitry. Whatever inspires you to search there is widespread agreement that search is not meant to inspire more searches but bias the outcome towards more actions.”

The age-old conflict between taking immediate action versus spending time researching and reflection while taking pause from action is torn right out of the pages of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and is manifested in search theory. As search remains the main artery of any virtual world, we can only hope that the author is right and a balance between the two poles on the spectrum will be maintained.

Megan Feil, July 01, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

LucidWorks Makes Exciting Leadership Announcements

July 1, 2013

LucidWorks continues to grow and expand, not just in the open source community, but in the enterprise and Big Data community at large. In response to the growth, LucidWorks is adding to its leadership. Read all the details in the press release offered by PR Newswire, “LucidWorks Announces Board and Leadership Appointments.”

The release says:

LucidWorks, the company transforming the way people access information, today announced that Grant Ingersoll, CTO and co-founder of LucidWorks, has been named to the board of directors. The company also announced that Will Hayes, previously head of Splunk business development, has joined LucidWorks as chief product and marketing officer. The changes will enable LucidWorks to continue its rapid worldwide growth in response to surging demand for highly accurate, scalable and cost-effective search applications. The moves will also help LucidWorks become an even stronger partner and technology resource for the Lucene/Solr developer community.”

Ingersoll has been with the company since the beginning and continues to provide visionary leadership. Hayes joins the team bringing an eye for marketing and business savvy, rounding out the current team. The LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data offerings have been big hits at the major conferences this year including Berlin Buzzwords, Lucene Revolution, and the Hadoop Summit. Keep an eye on LucidWorks as the excitement continues.

Emily Rae Aldridge, July 1, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

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