Old Code, New Code: Can You Make It Work Again… Sort Of?

March 18, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

Even hippy dippy super slick AI start ups have a technical debt problem. It is, in my opinion, no different from the “costs” imposed on outfits like JPMorgan Chase or (heaven help us) AMTRAK. Software which mostly works is subject to two environmental problems. First, the people who wrote the code or made it work that last time catastrophe struck (hello, AT&T, how are those pushed updates working for you now?) move on, quit, or whatever. Second, the technical options for remediating the problem are evolving (how are those security hot fixes working out, Microsoft?).

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The helpful father asks an question the aspiring engineer cannot answer. Thus it was when the wizard was a child, and it is when the wizard is working on a modern engineering project. Buildings tip; aircraft lose doors and wheels. Software updates kill computers. Self-driving cars cannot. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Did you get your model airplane to fly when you were a wee lad? I think I know the answer.

I thought about this problem of the cost of code remediating, fixing, redoing, upgrading or whatever term fast-talking sales engineers use in their Zooms and PowerPoints as I read “The High-Risk Refactoring.” The write up does a good job of explaining in a gentle way what happens when suits authorize making old code like new again. (The suits do not know the agonies of the original developers, but why should “history” intrude on a whiz bang GenX or GenY management type?

The article says:

it’s highly important to ensure the system works the same way after the swap with the new code. In that regard, immediately spotting when something breaks throughout the whole refactoring process is very helpful. No one wants to find that out in production.

No kidding.

In most cases, there are insufficient skilled people and money to create a new or revamped system, get it up and running in parallel for an appropriate period of time, identify the problems, remediate them, and then make the cut over. People buy cars this way, but that’s not how most organizations, regardless of size, “do” software. Okay, the take your car in, buy a new one, and drive off will not work in today’s business environment.

The write up focuses on what most organizations do; that is, write or fix new code and stick it into a system. There may or may not be resources for a staging server, but the result is the same. The old software has been “fixed” and the documentation is “sort of written” and people move on to other work or in the case of consulting engineering firms, just get replaced by a new, higher margin professional.

The write up takes a different approach and concludes with four suggestions or questions to ask. I quote:

“Refactor if things are getting too complicated, but  stop if can’t prove it works.

Accompany new features with refactoring for areas you foresee to be subject to a change, but copy-pasting is ok until patterns arise.

Be proactive in finding new ways to ensure refactoring predictability, but be conservative about the assumption QA will find all the bugs.

Move business logic out of busy components, but be brave enough to keep the legacy code intact if the only argument is “this code looks wrong”.

These are useful points. I would like to suggest some bright white lines for those who have to tackle an IRS-mainframe- or AT&T-billing system type of challenge as well as tweaking an artificial intelligence solution to respond to those wonky multi-ethnic images Google generated in order to allow the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Team to smile sheepishly and apologize again for lousy software.

Are you ready? Let’s go:

  1. Fixes add to the complexity of the code base. As time goes stumbling forward, the complexity of the software becomes greater. The cost of making sure the fix works and does not create exciting dependency behavior goes up. Thus, small fixes “cost” more, and these costs are tough to control.
  2. The safest fixes are “wrappers”; that is, no one in his or her right mind wants to change software written in 1978 for a machine no longer in production by the manufacturer. Therefore, new software is written to interact in a “safe” way with the original software. The new code “fixes up” the problem without screwing up what grandpa programmer wrote almost half a century ago. The problem is that “wrappers” tend to slow stuff down. The fix is to say one will optimize the system while one looks for a new project or job.
  3. The software used for “fixing” a problem is becoming the equivalent of repairing an aircraft component with Dawn laundry detergent. The “fix” is cheap, easy to use, and good enough. The software equivalent of this Dawn solution is that it will not stand the test of time. Instead of code crafted in good old COBOL or Assembler, we have some Fancy Dan tools which may fall out of favor in a matter of months, not decades.

Many projects result in better, faster, and cheaper. The reminder “Pick two” is helpful.

Net net: Fixing up lousy or flawed software is going to increase risks and costs. The question asked by bean counters is, “How much?” The answer is, “No one knows until the project is done … if ever.”

Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2024

Humans Wanted: Do Not Leave Information Curation to AI

March 15, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

Remember RSS feeds? Before social media took over the Internet, they were the way we got updates from sources we followed. It may be time to dust off the RSS, for it is part of blogger Joan Westenberg’s plan to bring a human touch back to the Web. We learn of her suggestions in, “Curation Is the Last Best Hope of Intelligent Discourse.”

Westenberg argues human judgement is essential in a world dominated by AI-generated content of dubious quality and veracity. Generative AI is simply not up to the task. Not now, perhaps not ever. Fortunately, a remedy is already being pursued, and Westenberg implores us all to join in. She writes:

“Across the Fediverse and beyond, respected voices are leveraging platforms like Mastodon and their websites to share personally vetted links, analysis, and creations following the POSSE model – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. By passing high-quality, human-centric content through their own lens of discernment before syndicating it to social networks, these curators create islands of sanity amidst oceans of machine-generated content of questionable provenance. Their followers, in turn, further syndicate these nuggets of insight across the social web, providing an alternative to centralised, algorithmically boosted feeds. This distributed, decentralised model follows the architecture of the web itself – networks within networks, sites linking out to others based on trust and perceived authority. It’s a rethinking of information democracy around engaged participation and critical thinking from readers, not just content generation alone from so-called ‘influencers’ boosted by profit-driven behemoths. We are all responsible for carefully stewarding our attention and the content we amplify via shares and recommendations. With more voices comes more noise – but also more opportunity to find signals of truth if we empower discernment. This POSSE model interfaces beautifully with RSS, enabling subscribers to follow websites, blogs and podcasts they trust via open standard feeds completely uncensored by any central platform.”

But is AI all bad? No, Westenberg admits, the technology can be harnessed for good. She points to Anthropic‘s Constitutional AI as an example: it was designed to preserve existing texts instead of overwriting them with automated content. It is also possible, she notes, to develop AI systems that assist human curators instead of compete with them. But we suspect we cannot rely on companies that profit from the proliferation of shoddy AI content to supply such systems. Who will?

Cynthia Murrell, March 15, 2024

Microsoft and Security: A Rerun with the Same Worn-Out Script

March 12, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

The Marvel cinematic universe has spawned two dozen sequels. Microsoft’s security circus features are moving up fast in the reprise business. Unfortunately there is no super hero who comes to the rescue of the giant American firm. The villains in these big screen stunners are a bit like those in the James Bond films. Microsoft seems to prefer to wrestle with the allegedly Russian cozy bear or at least convert a cartoon animal into the personification of evil.

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Thanks, MSFT, you have nailed security theater and reruns of the same tired story.

What’s interesting about these security blockbusters is that each follows a Hollywood style “you’ve seen this before nudge nudge” approach to the entertainment. The sequence is a belated announcement that Microsoft security has been breached. The evil bad actors have stolen data, corrupted software, and by brute force foiled the norm cores in Microsoft World. Then announcements about fixes that the Microsoft custoemr must implement along with admonitions to keep that MSFT software updated and warnings about using “old” computers, etc. etc.

Russian Hackers Accessed Microsoft Source Code” is the equivalent of New York Times film review. The write up reports:

In January, Microsoft disclosed that Russian hackers had breached the company’s systems and managed to read emails belonging to senior executives. Now, the company has revealed that the breach was worse than initially understood and that the Russian hackers accessed Microsoft source code. Friday’s revelation — made in a blog post and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — is the latest in a string of breaches affecting the company that have raised major questions in Washington about Microsoft’s security posture.

Well, that’s harsh. No mention of the estimable alleged monopoly’s releasing the information on March 7, 2024. I am capturing my thoughts on March 8, 2024. But with college basketball moving toward tournament time, who cares? I am not really sure any more. And Washington? Does the name evoke a person, a committee, a committee consisting of the heads of security committees, someone in the White House, an “expert” at the suddenly famous National Bureau of Standards, or absolutely no one.

The write asserts:

The company is concerned, however, that “Midnight Blizzard is attempting to use secrets of different types it has found,” including in emails between customers and Microsoft. “As we discover them in our exfiltrated email, we have been and are reaching out to these customers to assist them in taking mitigating measures,” the company said in its blog post. The company describes the incident as an example of “what has become more broadly an unprecedented global threat landscape, especially in terms of sophisticated nation-state attacks.” In response, the company has said it is increasing the resources and attention devoted to securing its systems.

Microsoft is “reaching out.” I can reach for a donut, but I do not grasp it and gobble it down. “Reach” is not the same as fixing the problems Microsoft caused.

Several observations:

  1. Microsoft is an alleged monopoly, and it is allowing its digital trains to set fire to the fields, homes, and businesses which have to use its tracks. Isn’t it time for purposeful action from the US government agencies with direct responsibility for cyber security and appropriate business conduct?
  2. Can Microsoft remediate its problems? My answer is, “No.” Vulnerabilities are engineered in because no one has the time, energy, or interest to chase down problems and fix them. There is an ageing programmer named Steve Gibson. His approach to software is the exact opposite of Microsoft’s. Mr. Gibson will never be a trillion dollar operation, but his software works. Perhaps Microsoft should consider adopting some of Mr. Gibson’s methods.
  3. Customers have to take a close look at the security breaches endlessly reported by cyber security companies. Some outfits’ software is on the list most of the time. Other companies’ software is an infrequent visitor to these breach parties. Is it time for customers to be looking for an alternative to what Microsoft provides?

Net net: A new security release will be coming to the computer near you. Don’t fail to miss it.

Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2024

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An Allocation Society or a Knowledge Value System? Pick One, Please!

February 20, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

I get random inquiries, usually from LinkedIn, asking me about books I would recommend to a younger person trying to [a] create a brand and make oodles of money, [b] generate sales immediately from their unsolicited emails to strangers, and [c] a somewhat limp-wristed attempt to sell me something. I typically recommend a book I learned about when I was giving lectures at the Kansai Institute of Technology and a couple of outfits in Tokyo. The book is the Knowledge Value Revolution written by a former Japanese government professional named Taichi Sakaiya. The subtitle to the book is “A History of the Future.”

So what?

I read an essay titled “The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy.” The thesis of this essay is that Sakaiya’s description of the future is pretty much wacko. Here’s a passage from the essay about the allocation economy:

Summarizing used to be a skill I needed to have, and a valuable one at that. But before it had been mostly invisible, bundled into an amorphous set of tasks that I’d called “intelligence”—things that only I and other humans could do. But now that I can use ChatGPT for summarizing, I’ve carved that task out of my skill set and handed it over to AI. Now, my intelligence has learned to be the thing that directs or edits summarizing, rather than doing the summarizing myself.

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A world class knowledge surfer now wins gold medals for his ability to surf on the output of smart robots and pervasive machines. Thanks, Google ImageFX. Not funny but good enough, which is the mark of a champion today, isn’t it?

For me, the message is that people want summaries. This individual was a summarizer and, hence, a knowledge worker. With the smart software doing the summarizing, the knowledge worker is kaput. The solution is for the knowledge worker to move up conceptually. The jump is a metaplay. Debaters learn quickly that when an argument is going nowhere, the trick that can deliver a win is to pop up a level. The shift from poverty to a discussion about the disfunction of a city board of advisors is a trick used in places like San Francisco. It does not matter that the problem of messios is not a city government issue. Tents and bench dwellers are the exhaust from a series of larger systems. None can do much about the problem. Therefore, nothing gets done. But for a novice debater unfamiliar with popping up a level or a meta-play, the loss is baffling.

The essay putting Sakaiya in the dumpster is not convincing and it certainly is not going to win a debate between the knowledge value revolution and the allocation economy. The reason strikes me a failure to see that smart software, the present and future dislocations of knowledge workers, and the brave words about becoming a director or editor are evidence that Sakaiya was correct. He wrote in 1985:

If the type of organization typical of industrial society could be said to resemble a symphony orchestra, the organizations typical of the knowledge-value society would be more like the line-up of a jazz band.

The author of the allocation economy does not realize that individuals with expertise are playing a piano or a guitar. Of those who do play, only a tiny fraction (a one percent of the top 10 percent perhaps?) will be able to support themselves. Of those elite individuals, how many Taylor Swifts are making the record companies and motion picture empresarios look really stupid? Two, five, whatever. The point is that the knowledge-value revolution transforms much more than “attention” or “allocation.” Sakaiya, in my opinion, is operating at a sophisticated meta-level. Renaming the plight of people who do menial mental labor does not change a painful fact: Knowledge value means those who have high-value knowledge are going to earn a living. I am not sure what the newly unemployed technology workers, the administrative facilitators, or the cut-loose “real” journalists are going to do to live as their parents did in the good old days.

The allocation essay offers:

AI is cheap enough that tomorrow, everyone will have the chance to be a manager—and that will significantly increase the creative potential of every human being. It will be on our society as a whole to make sure that, with the incredible new tools at our disposal, we bring the rest of the economy along for the ride.

How many jazz musicians can ride on a particular market sector propelled by smart software? How many individuals will enjoy personal and financial success in the AI allocation-centric world? Remember, please, there are about eight billion people in the world? How many Duke Ellingtons and Dave Brubecks were there?

The knowledge value revolution means that the majority of individuals will be excluded from nine to five jobs, significant financial success, and meaningful impact on social institutions. I am not for everyone becoming a surfer on smart software, but if that happens, the future is going to be more like the one Sakaiya outlined, not an allocation-centric operation in my opinion.

Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2024

Is AI Another VisiCalc Moment?

February 14, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

The easy-to-spot orange newspaper ran a quite interesting “essay” called “What the Birth of the Spreadsheet Can Teach Us about Generative AI.” Let me cut to the point when the fox is killed. AI is likely to be a job creator. AI has arrived at “the right time.” The benefits of smart software are obvious to a growing number of people. An entrepreneur will figure out a way to sell an AI gizmo that is easy to use, fast, and good enough.

In general, I agree. There is one point that the estimable orange newspaper chose not to include. The VisiCalc innovation converted old-fashioned ledger paper into software which could eliminate manual grunt work to some degree. The poster child of the next technology boom seems tailor-made to facilitate surveillance, weapons, and development of novel bio-agents.

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AI is going to surprise some people more than others. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Not good but I gave up with the prompts to get a cartoon because you want to do illustrations. Sigh.

I know that spreadsheets are used by defense contractors, but the link between a spreadsheet and an AI-powered drone equipped with octanitrocubane variants is less direct. Sure, spreadsheets arrived in numerous use cases, some obvious, some not. But the capabilities for enabling a range of weapons systems strike me as far more obvious.

The Financial Times’s essay states:

Looking at the way spreadsheets are used today certainly suggests a warning. They are endlessly misused by people who are not accountants and are not using the careful error-checking protocols built into accountancy for centuries. Famous economists using Excel simply failed to select the right cells for analysis. An investment bank used the wrong formula in a risk calculation, accidentally doubling the level of allowable risk-taking. Biologists have been typing the names of genes, only to have Excel autocorrect those names into dates. When a tool is ubiquitous, and convenient, we kludge our way through without really understanding what the tool is doing or why. And that, as a parallel for generative AI, is alarmingly on the nose.

Smart software, however, is not a new thing. One can participate in quasi-religious disputes about whether AI is 20, 30, 40, or more years old. What’s interesting to me is that after chugging along like a mule cart on the Information Superhighway, AI is everywhere. Old-school British newspapers like it to the spreadsheet. Entrepreneurs spend big bucks on Product Hunt roll outs. Owners of mobile devices can locate “pizza near me” without having to type, speak, or express an interest in a cardiologist’s favorite snack.

AI strikes me as a different breed of technology cat. Here are my reasons:

  1. Serious AI takes serious money.
  2. Big AI is going to be a cloud-linked service which invites consolidation just like those hundreds of US railroads became the glorious two player system we have today: One for freight and one for passengers who love trains more than flying or driving.
  3. AI systems are going to have to find a way to survive and thrive without becoming victims of content inbreeding and bizarre outputs fueled by synthetic data. VisiCalc spawned spreadsheet fever in humans from the outset. The difference is that AI does its work largely without humanoids.

Net net: The spreadsheet looks like a convenient metaphor. But metaphors are not the reality. Reality can surprise in interesting ways.

Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2024

School Technology: Making Up Performance Data for Years

February 9, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

What is the “make up data” trend? Why is it plaguing educational institutions. From Harvard to Stanford, those who are entrusted with shaping young-in-spirit minds are putting ethical behavior in the trash can. I think I know, but let’s look at allegations of another “synthetic” information event. For context in the UK there is a government agency called the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.” The agency is called OFSTED. Now let’s go to the “real” news story.“

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A possible scene outside of a prestigious academic institution when regulations about data become enforceable… give it a decade or two. Thanks, MidJourney. Two tries and a good enough illustration.

Ofsted Inspectors Make Up Evidence about a School’s Performance When IT Fails” reports:

Ofsted inspectors have been forced to “make up” evidence because the computer system they use to record inspections sometimes crashes, ­wiping all the data…

Quite a combo: Information technology and inventing data.

The article adds:

…inspectors have to replace those notes from memory without telling the school.

Will the method work for postal investigations? Sure. Can it be extended to other activities? What about data pertinent to the UK government initiates for smart software?

Stephen E Arnold, February 9, 2024

Alternative Channels, Superstar Writers, and Content Filtering

February 7, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

In this post-Twitter world, a duel of influencers is playing out in the blogosphere. At issue: Substack’s alleged Nazi problem. The kerfuffle began with a piece in The Atlantic by Jonathan M. Katz, but has evolved into a debate between Platformer’s Casey Newton and Jesse Singal of Singal-Minded. Both those blogs are hosted by Substack.

To get up to speed on the controversy, see the original Atlantic article. Newton wrote a couple posts about Substack’s responses and detailing Platformer’s involvement. In “Substack Says It Will Remove Nazi Publications from the Platform,” he writes:

“Substack is removing some publications that express support for Nazis, the company said today. The company said this did not represent a reversal of its previous stance, but rather the result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies. As part of the move, the company is also terminating the accounts of several publications that endorse Nazi ideology and that Platformer flagged to the company for review last week.”

How many publications did Platformer flag, and how many of those did Substack remove? Were they significant publications, and did they really violate the rules? These are the burning questions Singal sought to answer. He shares his account in, “Platformer’s Reporting on Substack’s Supposed ‘Nazi Problem’ Is Shoddy and Misleading.” But first, he specifies his own perspective on Katz’ Atlantic article:

“In my view, this whole thing is little more than a moral panic. Moreover, Katz cut certain corners to obscure the fact that to the extent there are Nazis on Substack at all, it appears they have almost no following or influence, and make almost no money. In one case, for example, Katz falsely claimed that a white nationalist was making a comfortable living writing on Substack, but even the most cursory bit of research would have revealed that that is completely false.”

Singal says he plans a detailed article supporting that assertion, but first he must pick apart Platformer’s position. Readers are treated to details from an email exchange between the bloggers and reasons Singal feels Newton’s responses are inadequate. One can navigate to that post for those details if one wants to get into the weeds. As of this writing, Newton has not published a response to Singal’s diatribe. Were we better off when such duels took place 280 characters at a time?

One positive about newspapers: An established editorial process kept superstars grounded in reality. Now entitlement, more than content, seems to be in the driver’s seat.

Cynthia Murrell, February 7, 2024

Flailing and Theorizing: The Internet Is Dead. Swipe and Chill

February 2, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

I do not spend much time with 20 somethings, 30 something, 40 somethings, 50 somethings, or any other somethings. I watch data flow into my office, sell a few consulting jobs, and chuckle at the downstream consequences of several cross-generation trends my team and I have noticed. What’s a “cross generational trend”? The phrase means activities and general perceptions which are shared among some youthful college graduates and a harried manager working in a trucking company. There is the mobile phone obsession. The software scheduler which strips time from an individual with faux urgency or machine-generated pings and dings. There is the excitement of sports events, many of which may feature scripting. There is anomie or the sense of being along in a kayak carried to what may be a financial precipice. You get the idea.

Now the shriek of fear is emanating from online sources known as champions of the digital way. In this short essay, I want to highlight one of these; specifically, “The Era of the AI-Generated Internet Is Already Here: And It’s Time to Talk about AI Model Collapse.” I want to zoom the conclusion of the “real” news report and focus on the final section of the article, “The Internet Isn’t Completely Doomed.”

Here we go.

First, I want to point out that communication technologies are not “doomed.” In fact, these methods or techniques don’t go away. A good example are the clay decorations in some homes which way, “We love our Frenchie” or an Etsy plaque like this one:

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Just a variation of a clay tablet produced in metal for an old-timey look. The communication technologies abundant today are likely to have similar stickiness. Doom, therefore, is Karen rhetoric in my opinion.

Second, the future is a return to the 1980s when for-fee commercial databases were trusted and expensive sources of electronic information. The “doom” write up predicts that content will retreat behind paywalls. I would like to point out that you are reading an essay in a public blog. I put my short writings online in 2008, using the articles as a convenient archive. When I am asked to give a lecture, I check out my blog posts. I find it a way to “refresh” my memory about past online craziness. My hunch is that these free, ad-free electronic essays will persist. Some will be short and often incomprehensible items on Pinboard.in; others will be weird TikTok videos spun into a written item pumped out via a social media channel on the Clear Web or the Dark Web (which seems to persist, doesn’t it?) When an important scientific discovery becomes known, that information becomes findable. Sure, it might be a year after the first announcement, but those ArXiv.org items pop up and are often findable because people love to talk, post, complain, or convert a non-reproducible event into a job at Harvard or Stanford. That’s not going to change.

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A collapsed AI robot vibrated itself to pieces. Its model went off the rails and confused zeros with ones and ones with zeros. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. How are those security procedures today?

Third, search engine optimization is going to “change.” In order to get hired or become famous, one must call attention to oneself. Conferences, Zoom webinars, free posts on LinkedIn-type services — none of these will go away or… change. The reason is that unless one is making headlines or creating buzz, one becomes irrelevant. I am a dinobaby and I still get crazy emails about a blockchain report I did years ago. (The somewhat strident outfit does business as IGI with the url igi-global.com. When I open an email from this outfit, I can smell the desperation.) Other outfits are similar, very similar, but they hit the Amazon thing for some pricey cologne to convert the scent of overboardism into something palatable. My take on SEO: It’s advertising, promotion, PT Barnum stuff. It is, like clay tablets, in the long haul.

Finally, what about AI, smart software, machine learning, and the other buzzwords slapped on ho-hum products like a word processor? Meh. These are short cuts for the Cliff’s Notes’ crowd. Intellectual achievement requires more than a subscription to the latest smart software or more imagination than getting Mistral to run on your MacMini. The result of smart software is to widen the gap between people who are genuinely intelligent and knowledge value creators, and those who can use an intellectual automatic teller machine (ATM).

Net net: The Internet is today’s version of online. It evolves, often like gerbils or tribbles which plagued Captain Kirk. The larger impact is the return to a permanent one percent – 99 percent social structure. Believe me, the 99 percent are not going to be happy whether they can post on X.com, read craziness on a Dark Web forum, pay for an online subscription to someone on Substack, or give money to the New York Times. The loss of intellectual horsepower is the consequence of consumerizing online.

This dinobaby was around when online began. My colleagues and I knew that editorial controls, access policies, and copyright were important. Once the ATM-model swept over the online industry, today’s digital world was inevitable. Too bad no one listened when those who were creating online information were ignored and dismissed as Ivory Tower dwellers. “Doom”? No just a dawning of what digital information creates. Have fun. I am old and am unwilling to provide a coloring book and crayons for the digital information future and a model collapse. That’s the least of some folks’s worries. I need a nap.

Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2024

Why Stuff Does Not Work: Airplane Doors, Health Care Services, and Cyber Security Systems, Among Others

January 26, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

The Downward Spiral of Technology” stuck a chord with me. Think about building monuments in the reign of Cleopatra. The workers can check out the sphinx and giant stone blocks in the pyramids and ask, “What happened to the technology? We are banging with bronze and crappy metal compounds and those ancient dudes were zipping along with snappier tech.? That conversation is imaginary, of course.

The author of “The Downward Spiral” is focusing on less dusty technology, the theme might resonate with my made up stone workers. Modern technology lacks some of the zing of the older methods. The essay by Thomas Klaffke hit on some themes my team has shared whilst stuffing Five Guys’s burgers in their shark-like mouths.

Here are several points I want to highlight. In closing, I will offer some of my team’s observations on the outcome of the Icarus emulators.

First, let’s think about search. One cannot do anything unless one can find electronic content. (Lawyers, please, don’t tell me you have associates work through the mostly-for-show books in your offices. You use online services. Your opponents in court print stuff out to make life miserable. But electronic content is the cat’s pajamas in my opinion.)

Here’s a table from the Mr. Klaffke essay:

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Two things are important in this comparison of the “old” tech and the “new” tech deployed by the estimable Google outfit. Number one: Search in Google’s early days made an attempt to provide content relevant to the query. The system was reasonably good, but it was not perfect. Messrs. Brin and Page fancy danced around issues like disambiguation, date and time data, date and time of crawl, and forward and rearward truncation. Flash forward to the present day, the massive contributions of Prabhakar Raghavan and other “in charge of search” deliver irrelevant information. To find useful material, navigate to a Google Dorks service and use those tips and tricks. Otherwise, forget it and give Swisscows.com, StartPage.com, or Yandex.com a whirl. You are correct. I don’t use the smart Web search engines. I am a dinobaby, and I don’t want thresholds set by a 20 year old filtering information for me. Thanks but no thanks.

The second point is that search today is a monopoly. It takes specialized expertise to find useful, actionable, and accurate information. Most people — even those with law degrees, MBAs, and the ability to copy and paste code — cannot cope with provenance, verification, validation, and informed filtering performed by a subject matter expert. Baloney does not work in my corner of the world. Baloney is not a favorite food group for me or those who are on my team. Kudos to Mr. Klaffke to make this point. Let’s hope someone listens. I have given up trying to communicate the intellectual issues lousy search and retrieval creates. Good enough. Nope.

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Yep, some of today’s tools are less effective than modern gizmos. Hey, how about those new mobile phones? Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Good enough. How’s the MSFT email security today? Oh, I asked that already.

Second, Mr Klaffke gently reminds his reader that most people do not know snow cones from Shinola when it comes to information. Most people assume that a computer output is correct. This is just plain stupid. He provides some useful examples of problems with hardware and user behavior. Are his examples ones that will change behaviors. Nope. It is, in my opinion, too late. Information is an undifferentiated haze of words, phrases, ideas, facts, and opinions. Living in a haze and letting signals from online emitters guide one is a good way to run a tiny boat into a big reef. Enjoy the swim.

Third, Mr. Klaffke introduces the plumbing of the good-enough mentality. He is accurate. Some major social functions are broken. At lunch today, I mentioned the writings about ethics by Thomas Dewey and William James. My point was that these fellows wrote about behavior associated with a world long gone. It would be trendy to wear a top hat and ride in a horse drawn carriage. It would not be trendy to expect that a person would work and do his or her best to do a good job for the agreed-upon wage. Today I watched a worker who played with his mobile phone instead of stocking the shelves in the local grocery store. That’s the norm. Good enough is plenty good. Why work? Just pay me, and I will check out Instagram.

I do not agree with Mr. Klaffke’s closing statement; to wit:

The problem is not that the “machine” of humanity, of earth is broken and therefore needs an upgrade. The problem is that we think of it as a “machine”.

The problem is that worldwide shared values and cultural norms are eroding. Once the glue gives way, we are in deep doo doo.

Here are my observations:

  1. No entity, including governments, can do anything to reverse thousands of years of cultural accretion of norms, standards, and shared beliefs.
  2. The vast majority of people alive today are reverting back to some fascinating behaviors. “Fascinating” is not a positive in the sense in which I am using the word.
  3. Online has accelerated the stress on social glue; smart software is the turbocharger of abrupt, hard-to-understand change.

Net net: Please, read Mr. Klaffke’s essay. You may have an idea for remediating one or more of today’s challenges.

Stephen E Arnold, January 25, 2024

Research: A Slippery Path to Wisdom Now

January 19, 2024

green-dino_thumb_thumb_thumbThis essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.

When deciding whether to believe something on the Internet all one must do is google it, right? Not so fast. Citing five studies performed between 2019 and 2022, Scientific American describes “How Search Engines Boost Misinformation.” Writer Lauren Leffer tells us:

“Encouraging Internet users to rely on search engines to verify questionable online articles can make them more prone to believing false or misleading information, according to a study published today in Nature. The new research quantitatively demonstrates how search results, especially those prompted by queries that contain keywords from misleading articles, can easily lead people down digital rabbit holes and backfire. Guidance to Google a topic is insufficient if people aren’t considering what they search for and the factors that determine the results, the study suggests.”

Those of us with critical thinking skills may believe that caveat goes without saying but, alas, it does not. Apparently evaluating the reliability of sources through lateral reading must be taught to most searchers. Another important but underutilized practice is to rephrase a query before hitting enter. Certain terms are predominantly used by purveyors of misinformation, so copy-and-pasting a dubious headline will turn up dubious sources to support it. We learn:

“For example, one of the misleading articles used in the study was entitled ‘U.S. faces engineered famine as COVID lockdowns and vax mandates could lead to widespread hunger, unrest this winter.’ When participants included ‘engineered famine’—a unique term specifically used by low-quality news sources—in their fact-check searches, 63 percent of these queries prompted unreliable results. In comparison, none of the search queries that excluded the word ‘engineered’ returned misinformation. ‘I was surprised by how many people were using this kind of naive search strategy,’ says the study’s lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant professor of computational social science at the University of Central Florida. ‘It’s really concerning to me.’”

That is putting it mildly. These studies offer evidence to support suspicions that thoughtless searching is getting us into trouble. See the article for more information on the subject. Maybe a smart LLM will spit it out for you, and let you use it as your own?

Cynthia Murrell, January 19, 2024

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