Flagships Lost in a Sea of Money, Fame, and Power
February 10, 2019
I read “The Ethical Dilemma Facing Silicon Valley’s Next Generation.” The headline sounds like an undergraduate essay created by a Red Bull crazed philosophy major at Duquesne University. (I should know. I attended Duquesne when working on an advanced degree in — wait for it — medieval religious literature.)
But this essay is not going to be read by a slightly off kilter professor with a passion for Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Augustine’s On Christian Teaching.
No. This essay is aimed at those interested in technology and the intersection of Silicon Valley, Stanford University, and the scorched earth approach of “move fast and break things” wizards.
The write up includes this observation:
Stanford is known as “The Farm” because the verdant 8,000-acre campus was once home to founder Leland Stanford’s horses, but today tech firms and venture capitalists treat the 16,000-person student body like their own minor league ball club.
And the university is now flicking the switch on the archives of the university library which contains documents like Pausanias’s description of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Stanford’s leaders, professors, and students may have forgotten the injunction (which I have anglicized):
Know thyself or gnóthi sautón
But universities, public and private, want to be just like Stanford.
The Ringer reports:
Professors are revamping courses to address the ethical challenges tech companies are grappling with right now. And university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne has made educating students on the societal impacts of technology a tentpole of his long-term strategic plan.
I found this item of information interesting:
In 2013, Stanford began directly investing in students’ companies, much like a venture capital firm.
One would think that universities provided education. The Ringer makes this somewhat surprising statement:
Stanford and computer science programs across the country may not be adequately equipped to wade through the ethical minefield that is expanding along with tech’s influence.
Who is equipped? Consultants from McKinsey, Bain, or Booz Allen? Politicians? Perhaps universities should seek council from the top three officials in Virginia to add an East Coast flair to the ethical challenge? What about individual thinkers? Jeffrey Skilling (Wharton and Enron) and Martin Shkreli (the pharma bro)? Soon El Chapo (a bro-chacho) will have time on his hands once a verdict is rendered in his trial.
Courses about ethics are sprouting like flowers after April showers in a temperate zone.
I underlined in yellow this passage which is almost bittersweet:
The [ethics] course’s popularity is a sign that the gravity of the moment is weighing on many Stanford minds. Antigone Xenopoulos, a junior majoring in symbolic systems (a techie-fuzzie hybrid major that incorporates computer science, linguistics, and philosophy), is a research assistant for CS181. She wasn’t the only student who quoted a line from Spider-Man to me—with great power comes great responsibility—when referencing the current landscape. “If they’re going to give students the tools to have such immense influence and capabilities, [Stanford] should also guide those students in developing ethical compasses,” she says.
Yep, Spiderman. Spiderman.
Net net:
- Stanford is not the “problem”; Stanford is one member of a class of entities which cultivate and harvest the problem
- Silicon Valley has and continues to function as a high school science club without a teacher supervisor
- Technology, unlike a cat, cannot be put back in a bag.
Years ago I did some work for an investment bank. One of the people in a meeting was filled with the the George Gilder observation about convergence. I asked this question of the group of 12 high powered people:
Do you think technology could be like gerbils or rabbits?
The question evoked silence.
The situation today is that the interaction of technology has created ecologies in which new creatures are thriving. The result is that certain facets of a pre-technology world have been crushed, killed, or left to starve by the new digital animals and their inventions.
The Ringer’s article reminded me that “ethics” and the ability to understand oneself are in danger of extinction.
As one of the investment bankers for whom I did some work was fond of saying, “Interesting. No?”
Stephen E Arnold, February 10, 2019
High School Science Club: Employee Walk About
November 1, 2018
High school science club management methods face an interesting situation. The science club has a hierarchy. The whiz kids on the lower levels of that hierarchy are not getting with the program. Allegedly a small percentage of Google’s work force are unhappy with handling of alleged sexual misconduct. Here in Harrod’s Creek, we assumed that members of the high school science club school of thought worried about math, Fourier transforms, and k-means. If “We’re the Organizers of the Google Walkout. Here Are Our Demands” contains accurate information, some affected by high school management methods have other interests; for example, fairness, respectful behavior, and other old fashioned ideas.
I learned:
All employees and contract workers across the company deserve to be safe.
Fancy that.
Here’s an outrageous demand:
A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously. The process today is not working, in no small part because HRs’ performance is assessed by senior management and directors, forcing them to put management’s interests ahead of employees reporting harassment and discrimination. The improved process should also be accessible to all: full-time employees, temporary employees, vendors, and contractors alike. Accountability, safety and an ability to report unsafe working conditions should not be dictated by employment status.
What’s next for practitioners of high school science club membership? Better business processes? Executives not given to dalliances with fascinating methods of motivation? More responsible decision making? Nah, HSSCM methods are just better.
Google’s implementation of such management methods is as interesting as the company’s progress on solving death.
Stephen E Arnold, November 1, 2018
Analytics: From Predictions to Prescriptions
October 19, 2018
I read an interesting essay originating at SAP. The article’s title: “The Path from Predictive to Prescriptive Analytics.” The idea is that outputs from a system can be used to understand data. Outputs can also be used to make “predictions”; that is, guesses or bets on likely outcomes in the future. Prescriptive analytics means that the systems tell or wire actions into an output. Now the output can be read by a human, but I think the key use case will be taking the prescriptive outputs and feeding them into other software systems. In short, the system decides and does. No humans really need be involved.
The write up states:
There is a natural progression towards advanced analytics – it is a journey that does not have to be on separate deployments. In fact, it is enhanced by having it on the same deployment, and embedding it in a platform that brings together data visualization, planning, insight, and steering/oversight functions.
What is the optimal way to manage systems which are dictating actions or just automatically taking actions?
The answer is, quite surprisingly, a bit of MBA consultantese: Governance.
The most obvious challenge with regards to prescriptive analytics is governance.
Several observations:
- Governance is unlikely to provide the controls which prescriptive systems warrant. Evidence is that “governance” in some high technology outfits is in short supply.
- Enhanced automation will pull prescriptive analytics into wide use. The reasons are one you have heard before: Better, faster, cheaper.
- Outfits like the Google and In-Q-Tel funded Recorded Future and DarkTrace may have to prepare for new competition; for example, firms which specialize in prescription, not prediction.
To sum up, interesting write up. perhaps SAP will be the go to player in plugging prescriptive functions into their software systems?
Stephen E Arnold, October 19, 2018
Self Regulation: How Does That Work for Teen Aged Science Club Members?
June 15, 2018
I like the Platonic ideal of self regulation. Better yet let’s try for crowd sourced regulation. Tie dye T shirts are cool too.
Sometimes, it seems, humans are the answer. Unpaid, helpful humans. Motherboard profiles the little-sung YouTube “super users” in, “‘Are You Batman?’: How YouTube’s Volunteer Army Gets Channels Undeleted.” Writer Adrianne Jeffries opens with an anecdote in which an individual known as @Contributors_YT may have helped an unfortunate YouTube broadcaster get his channel back. She then explains:
“Increasingly, YouTube creators are getting help from anonymous YouTube super-users, including @Contributors_YT, who have access to a backchannel that allows them to escalate complaints to YouTube employees and sometimes get mistaken channel deletions or ‘false strikes’ against videos reversed. These super-users volunteer for YouTube through a company initiative that used to be called ‘YouTube Heroes’ but is now known as two separate programs, Trusted Flaggers and YouTube Contributors. They patrol the official YouTube Help Forum and social media, where many of them use TweetDeck to sift for keywords that signal distressed YouTubers. Most of the time, the volunteers simply add expertise, offering advice on everything from how to get more subscribers to technical support. They know YouTube’s Community Guidelines inside and out, and can usually figure out why action was taken and help fill in the gaps around YouTube’s notoriously poor communication with creators. Sometimes they pass along messages from YouTube staffers related to specific cases. But lately, as YouTube ramps up enforcement due to negative press coverage about the prominence of violent videos and conspiracy theories on the platform, they’ve been intervening more and more when videos or channels are incorrectly penalized. For YouTubers who get wrongly caught up in the company’s enormous, faceless content moderation machine, these volunteer crusaders are their last hope.”
See the article for several more examples of these YouTube do-gooders helping those who have been wronged by the zealous algorithm. It is worth remembering that, by now, some of these broadcasters have put years of work into their YouTube presences, and many rely on them for income. Should social media sites embrace the old school notion of editorial control and responsibility?
Nah. Nothing is more satisfying than watching self regulation in action. From Amazon reviews to comments offered to viewers of a live stream of the Hawaii volcano eruption, good judgment is on display.
Cynthia Murrell, June 15, 2018
Can Presscoin Keep News from Going Fake
February 23, 2018
Fake news is a topic that has everyone on all sides of the aisle concerned. However, One innovative idea merging fake news and big data might have solved the problem. We learned more from a recent The Next Web story, “PresscoinL The Largest Crowdfunding Effort to Address the News Crisis.”
According to the story:
As the GDP of the PressCoin economy grows, the value of tokens will rise.
And blockchain keeps it honest. Our hope is to grow a decentralized media network reaching 100 mln engaged ‘users/prosumers’ in five years time, and to meaningfully address 10 percent of the news media industry within a couple of years of that.
PressCoin’s business strategy rests on these legs:
- Shared Design Philosophy– Open Collaboration, Partnership, and Decentralization
- Shared Technology Infrastructure– Seamless media technology cloud, underlying big-data systems, advanced APIs for engagement and analytics
- Shared Business Services– Consumer Data Intelligence, Monetization, Enterprise Sales, Ecosystem Partnerships, Strategic Relations
- Shared Developer Network– This fertile playground for agile experiments in the news/media/journalism sphere
- Shared Fiat/Crypto Financial Services Infrastructure– Built on Cointype
- Shared Venture Arm– Foster disruption within the ecosystem
While PressCoin is just getting off the ground, big data is already sorting out whether fake news can be trusted. One interesting use has been the story of how fake news might not have had that big an impact on the 2016 election. This could be the dawn of some very insightful times.
Patrick Roland, February 23, 2018
Gartner Starts 2018 with Stale Spam
December 31, 2017
After a decade of New Year blog posts I was running out of ideas. But, I received an email from a Gartner Group professional named Brandon Pineres.
I don’t know Brandon. I don’t know anyone in Florida I would trust to walk my 11 year old boxer Max.
I assume Brandon is a person who is trying hard to sell me Gartner’s consulting services. He may be eager to convert me to a dot point in one of Gartner’s intellectually challenged Magic Quadrants. (BCG’s Bruce Henderson probably shakes each time he contemplates what happened to General Eisenhower’s grid which BCG whipped into the cash cow, star, loser graphic decades ago.) Brandon may be hoping that I will write a check for %55,000 or more so I can give a talk at one of Gartner’s networking events.
Quick tip: Navigate to Beyond Search and run a query for Gartner. I have written about or mentioned Gartner a handful of times. Try this write up, for instance: Cacaphones.
His spam (email I did not request) enjoined with wonky syntax like “being that” and offered with great good cheer:
Having attempted to reach out to you over the last few weeks I wanted to follow up one last time before the end of Gartner’s financial year. Being that Gartner is a publically traded company, we are being offered the most aggressive commercial flexibility now. I have the ability to get you unlimited access at a highly discounted price. I would love to work with you to explore the most cost effective Gartner solution that can support ArnoldIT’s strategy in 2018. Would you be interested in having an exploratory dialog today and discuss the commercial incentives and how you can work with your key analysts in 2018 to accelerate time to revenue and increase awareness with your buyers?
Does the tone and approach reminds you of the baloney some business school majors absorb from adjunct professors who don’t want to work at Wendy’s or McDo’s?
Also, I have no record of Brandon’s “reach out.” I have been sitting in my office working on the second edition of the best selling “Dark Web Notebook” and making Dark Cyber videos. I am not sure Gartner can help me with my strategy. I suppose if he attends the Telestrategies ISS events at which I lecture, he might pick up an idea or two about where my research is headed. Well, maybe not.
Brandon does not think I know that Gartner Group is publicly-traded. I do know this. I also know that Gartner Inc. has trended down, flopping around $123 a share. In an effort to pump up revenue, Brandon’s spam is, according to mid tier consulting firm reason, going to generate revenue from me.
Wrong.
As a former Booz, Allen & Hamilton professional and veteran of some other reasonably interesting jobs, I typically pay little or no attention to what I call mid-tier consulting firms and their staff. I have done odd jobs for some other blue-chip outfits, but I have not involved myself with the mid-tier or bottom-feeders unless I was paid by them to show up at an event or write a short report. In my experience, the non-blue chip firms buy reports from people like me and then put their name on them. Want proof? Check out the erstwhile Dave Schubmehl, an administrative master, at this link.
Several points:
- Why not spend a moment to research the person before sending spam? Spam might have unintended consequences.
- Why pretend to have tried to contact me and I, because of stupidity or indifference, did not respond to unsolicited email?
- Why assume that a former Booz, Allen person will write a check to a mid-tier consulting firm’s offer of low-ball pricing and help making contacts?
My hunch is that there are people who will fall for this type of marketing.
I won’t and don’t. A word of advice from the sage of Harrod’s Creek: Don’t spam me. I can be frisky plus I have time to write humorous essays about those who don’t take the time to learn about my background.
Brandon, I bet 2018 will be a better year without unsolicited emails. What do you think?
Now I have to email your message with headers to my pals at spam@uce.gov.
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2017
Google Allegedly Skews Results Listings to Help Itself: Surprise?
January 24, 2017
I read a Wall Street Journal recycling research from a search engine optimization outfit called SEMrush. The idea is that Google looks at a user’s query and puts links to its products where its search users will see them and click on them. Doesn’t Diego Simeone’s kid play professional soccer. I suppose the successful coach of Athletico Madrid has skewed other coaches’ interest in his gifted, advantaged progeny.
My Wall Street Journal online account doesn’t work. No joy. I take the dead tree version of Mr. Murdoch’s flagshipish newspaper, but it is a hassle to provide links to online content which will not appear. Therefore, I have watched the “revelations” about Google’s fiddled results as it flashed around the interwebs.
I noted a version of the story with the crafty title “’Google Buys Ad Space above Search Results to Promote Its Own Products – Giving It an Advantage over Its Online Competitors’. The write up provides a clear explanation of Google’s alleged misdeeds. I can hear the shouts from some, “Bench Simeone’s kid.”
The write up asserts:
According to the Journal, whenever someone enters a search term in Google related to pieces of hardware, ads for the relevant items sold by either Google or a sister company would appear in the most prominent spot on the page 91 percent of the time. In 43 percent of instances, the top two ads were for Google-linked products.
The write up embraces the meat of the SEMrush research revelation:
Google’s practice of favoring its own product ads on relevant search results has raised questions over whether it is violating anti-trust laws.
My view is that Google displays information in search results which attempt to accomplish these goals. Remember. These are my observations based on my research for my three Google monographs and the columns I wrote about Google for Information Today for two or three years. Links to the articles are on my LinkedIn page and on the Information Today Web site.
Observation 1. Google makes decisions like any other Sillycon Valley company; that is, product managers or their ilk cajole engineers to make changes which generate revenue. Some senior executives are unaware or partially aware of these manual and algorithmic tweaks. In large, chaotic outfits, only a handful of people may know what’s been twiddled. Most in the outfit don’t care what their colleagues are doing. The consequences can range from nuking traffic to a Web site to giving pride of place to a Google “fave”.
Observation 2. Google needs clicks itself. What is the company going to do to push some of its own products. Why plug the iPhone when one is selling the Pixel. The Pixel marketers who manage to get some space on results screens can’t manufacture enough phones to meet demand. Some of the Pixel’s flaws go unfixed because the craziness of the Pixel allows miscommunication, missteps, and misunderstandings to flourish in the Google greenhouse. Producing clicks is tough even for Google because only a tiny fraction of Web and mobile search users click on ads and pay attention to their messages. My view is that silver tongued Googlers talk their products to the top. Google engineers just want life to be marketing to leave them alone as I perceive the work environment. The “pride of place” phenomenon has spread like mould in wallboard. Those who should be paying attention are involved with Loon balloons and wrangling for slots in President Trump’s administration. The business processes themselves allow the present results policies to flourish and become the de facto way to do business.
Observation 3. Google needs to pump up revenue. I know that most of the Wall Street wizards think I deserve to live in a backwater in rural Kentucky. But the reality is that the shift from desktop search traffic to mobile search traffic has started a fire in the USS Google’s lower deck. Alphabet, the parent company, has to find replacement revenues before the search revenue starts to flat line and maybe drift down. Thus, the need for money feeds the indifference to the business processes which allow Googlers to promote the company’s products in order to pump up sales. Whether Google transfers cash to buy ads or whether an engineer does what a sleek Google MBA wants makes no difference to me. The result shaping has been a characteristic of “relevance” since 2005 or 2006. Precision and recall have been killed in the battle for revenue.
I don’t like or dislike the Alphabet Google thing. I have paid some attention to the company since I met Larry Page at a search engine conference. I was, as I recall, one of the people who said on our panel that truncation was going to be in Google’s future. Mr. Page laughed at me and said, “Never.”
Guess what?
Google implemented truncation when it started to get serious about clustering and other not so CLEVER methods.
Once advertising enters search processes, objectivity, precision, and recall are doomed. After 16 years, I find it amusing that experts are just now discovering that Google search is not the same as running a query on the old fashioned Westlaw system.
There are other little surprises in the Alphabet Google system too. I documented many of these for my clients between 2002 and 2010 when I grew tired of hearing people say, “I am an expert in search.”
Yeah, right. That’s why it has taken 16 years for the nature of Google search results to catch users’ attention.
Shaped results? Ad placement fast dancing?
Big surprises, right?
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2017
Real Time Remains Complicated and Costly
July 14, 2016
I love it when search and content processing vendors yammer about their “real time systems.” Years ago I did a report for a client in Europe about the costs of real time. Summarizing the six month research effort is easy: Real time is tough in computer systems. Latency exists.
To get a sense of how tough it is to accelerate certain online actions, navigate to “Legendary Hedge Fund Wants to Use Atomic Clocks to Beat High-Speed Traders.” Despite the wonky “legendary,” I noted this comment:
Patent application no. 14/451,356 [to find this puppy use US2016/0035027] has one goal: to outrun the speed demons of Wall Street. The 16-page document was quietly published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in February. Replete with schematic drawings, the filing describes a novel way for “executing synchronized trades in multiple exchanges.” The invention consists of not only sophisticated algorithms and a host of computer servers, but atomic clocks — precisely calibrated to vibrations of irradiated cesium atoms — to sync orders to within a few billionths of a second.
I also highlighted:
Its invention, developed by the firm’s co-chief executive officers, Robert Mercer and Peter Brown, first sends an order to a central server, which breaks it up into multiple smaller orders. Those are then routed to venues that offer the best prices and most liquidity, much the same as brokers do now. But before that happens, the smaller orders are sent to servers located as close to the exchanges as possible, along with instructions on the precise times they should be executed. The co-located servers sync their transactions so HFT firms won’t have enough time to identify an order on one exchange and then race to another to trade against it. A crucial part of the system is the optical, atomic or GPS clocks that will be used synchronize those orders. Renaissance says in its application that GPS clocks are accurate to within nanoseconds and any time differences between them are “too small to be perceived” by HFT firms.
How much is an atomic clock centric trading system? A well heeled Wall Street firm can afford these systems. The reason is that the infrastructure to pull off this near real time approach is out of reach for many outfits.
How close to real time is a search and content processing system? You can believe the index is up to date, but I would suggest that you are looking at last week’s leftover barbeque chicken in a Tupperware box. Saying “real time” is less difficult and expensive than shaving milliseconds off an online action. Enjoy that chicken?
Stephen E Arnold, July 14, 2016
Remote Companies: No Office, No Physical Presence
June 16, 2016
I came across a database of companies with [a] no office and no physical presence or [b] jobs for people who don’t have to show up at a facility. The idea is that outsourcing and the gig economy make it possible for a firm to do provide products and services without folks hanging around the coffee machine or hunching over a laptop in an open work space. (Commutes are bummers. Years ago, I learned to read the Washington Post whilst creeping along the jammed expressway from Rockville to Bethesda. My really cheap Pinto was perfect for this type of slog.) You can access Remotebase and browse job listings and the names of the companies for free. It seems the service is free. Most of the companies whose links I explored were new to me; for example, the canine inspired Corgibytes and the Google killer DuckDuckGo. Think of it. Work from a public library, a Pinto or equivalent, a coffee shop, or (heaven forbid) an airport lounge.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2016
Quote to Note, Nay, Memorize from Yahoo
February 23, 2016
I read “Yahoo Forms Panel to Explore Strategic Options.” I looked past the notion that a committee can come up with options beyond sell this puppy. I did find a gem of a phrase in the write up. Here’s the keeper:
Mayer said in a statement, while emphasizing that everyone at Yahoo wanted to return the “iconic company to greatness”.
I like the notion of Yahoo as an icon. I think directories from the 1990s should be icons. The concept of greatness is a good one. My hunch is that revenue would be a help for whatever Yahoo is going to return to.
My thought is that the Yahooligans and the Xoogler look more like a business school case study for a course covering Touchstones in Internet Successes and Failures. I am debating whether Yahoo is a success or a failure. I have decided. Failure: Geocities, the Google GoTo Overture legal matter, the Semel reign, the CEO with sketchy credentials, the internal squabbling, et al.
Yep, let’s have a committee meeting. Great idea. Thank goodness I have IBM Watson to pick up the slack created by the silliness at Yahoo.
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2016
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