Old News Flash: Old-Fashioned Learning Methods Work. Amazing!
February 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Humans are tactile, visual learners with varying attention span lengths. Unfortunately attention spans are getting shorter due to kids’ addiction to small screens. Their small screen addiction is affecting how they learn and retain information. The Guardian shares news about an educational study that didn’t need to be researched because anecdotal evidence is enough: “A Groundbreaking Study Shows Kids Learn Better On Paper, Not Screens.” American student reading scores are at an all time low. Educators, parents, bureaucrats, and everyone are concerned and running around like decapitated chickens.
Thirteen-year-olds’ text comprehension skills have lowered by four points since the 2019-2020 pandemic school year and the average rate has fallen seven points compared to 2012. These are the worst results since reading levels were first recorded in 1971.
Biden’s administration is blaming remote learning and the pandemic. Conservative politicians are blaming teacher unions because they encouraged remote learning. Remote learning is the common denominator. Remote learning is the scapegoat but the claim is true. Kids will avoid school at all costs and the pandemic was the ultimate extended vacation.
There’s an even bigger culprit because COVID can’t be blamed in the coming years. The villains are computers and mobile devices. Unfortunately anecdotal evidence isn’t enough to satisfy bigwigs (which is good in most cases) so Columbia University’s Teachers College tested paper vs. screens for “deeper reading” and “shallow reading.” Here’s what they found:
“Using a sample of 59 children aged 10 to 12, a team led by Dr Karen Froud asked its subjects to read original texts in both formats while wearing hair nets filled with electrodes that permitted the researchers to analyze variations in the children’s brain responses. Performed in a laboratory at Teachers College with strict controls, the study – which has not yet been peer reviewed – used an entirely new method of word association in which the children “performed single-word semantic judgment tasks” after reading the passages. Vital to the usefulness of the study was the age of the participants – a three-year period that is “critical in reading development” – since fourth grade is when a crucial shift occurs from what another researcher describes as “learning to read” to “reading to learn”.”
Don’t chuck printed books in the recycling bin yet! Printed tools are still the best way to learn and retain information. Technology is being thrust into classrooms from the most remote to inner cities. Technology is wonderful in spreading access to education but it’s not increasing literacy and other test scores. Technology is being promoted instead of actually teaching kids to learn.
As a trained librarian, the utility of reading books, taking notes in a notebook, and chasing information in reference materials seems obvious. But obvious to me is not obvious to others.
Whitney Grace, February 9, 2024
Flailing and Theorizing: The Internet Is Dead. Swipe and Chill
February 2, 2024
This 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:
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.
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
Habba Logic? Is It Something One Can Catch?
January 30, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I don’t know much about lawyering. I have been exposed to some unusual legal performances. Most recently, Alina Habba delivered in impassioned soliloquy after a certain high-profile individual was told, “You have to pay a person whom you profess not to know $83 million.” Ms. Habba explained that the decision was a bit of a problem based on her understanding of New York State law. That’s okay. As a dinobaby, I am wrong on a pretty reliable basis. Once it is about 3 pm, I have difficulty locating my glasses, my note cards about items for this blog, and my bottle of Kroger grape-flavored water. (Did you know the world’s expert on grape flavor was a PhD named Abe Bakal. I worked with him in the 1970s. He influenced me, hence the Bakalized water.)
Habba logic explains many things in the world. If Socrates does not understand, that’s his problem, the young Agonistes Habba in the logic class. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough. But the eyes are weird.
I did find my notecard about a TechDirt article titled “Cable Giants Insist That Forcing Them to Make Cancellations Easier Violates Their First Amendment Rights.” I once learned that the First Amendment had something to do with free speech. To me, a dinobaby don’t forget, this means I can write a blog post, offer my personal opinions, and mention the event or item which moved me to action. Dinobabies are not known for their swiftness.
The write up explains that cable companies believe that making it difficult for a customer to cancel a subscription to TV, phone, Internet, and other services is a free speech issue. The write up reports:
But the cable and broadband industry, which has a long and proud tradition of whining about every last consumer protection requirement (no matter how basic), is kicking back at the requirement. At a hearing last week, former FCC boss-turned-top-cable-lobbying Mike Powell suggested such a rule wouldn’t be fair, because it might somehow (?) prevent cable companies from informing customers about better deals.
The idea is that the cable companies’ free of speech would be impaired. Okay.
What’s this got to do with the performance by Ms. Habba after her client was slapped with a big monetary award? Answer: Habba logic.
Normal logic says, “If a jury finds a person guilty, that’s what a jury is empowered to do.” I don’t know if describing it in more colorful terms alters what the jury does. But Habba logic is different, and I think it is diffusing from the august legal chambers to a government meeting. I am not certain how to react to Habba logic.
I do know, however, however, that cable companies are having a bit of struggle retaining their customers, amping up their brands, and becoming the equivalent of Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts for kids and adults. Cable companies do not want a customer to cancel and boost the estimable firms’ churn ratio. Cable companies do want to bill every month in order to maintain their cash intake. Cable companies do want to maintain a credit card type of relationship to make it just peachy to send mindless snail mail marketing messages about outstanding services, new set top boxes, and ever faster Internet speeds. (Ho ho ho. Sorry. I can’t help myself.)
Net net: Habba logic is identifiable, and I will be watching for more examples. Dinobabies like watching those who are young at heart behaving in a fascinating manner. Where’s my fake grape water? Oh, next to fake logic.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2024
No Digital Map and Doomed to Wander Clueless
January 4, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I am not sure if my memory is correct. I believe that some people have found themselves in a pickle when the world’s largest online advertising outfit produces “free” maps. The idea is that cost cutting, indifferent Googlers, and high school science club management methods cause a “free” map to provide information which may not match reality. I do recall on the way to the home of the fellow responsible for WordStar (a word processing program), an online search system, and other gems from the early days of personal computers. Google Maps suggested I drive off the highway, a cliff, and into the San Francisco Bay. I did not follow the directions from the “do no evil” outfit. I drove down the road, spotted a human, and asked for directions. But some people do not follow my method.
No digital maps. No clue. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing.
“Quairading Shire Erects Signs Telling Travelers to Ignore GPS Maps Including Google” includes a great photo of what appears to be a large sign. The sign says:
Your GPS Is Wrong. This is Not the Best Route to Perth. Turn Around and Travel via the Quairading-York Road.
That’s clear and good advice. As I recall, I learned on one of my visits to Australia that most insects, reptiles, mammals, and fish can kill. Even the red kangaroo can become a problem, which is — I assume — that some in Australia gun them down. Stay on the highway and in your car. That’s my learning from my first visit.
The write up says:
The issue has frustrated the Quairading shire for the past eight years.
Hey, the Google folks are busy. There are law suits, the Red Alert thing, and the need to find a team which is going nowhere fast like the dual Alphabet online map services, Maps and Waze.
Net net: Buy a printed book of road maps and ask for directions. The problem is that those under the age of 25 may not be able to read or do what’s called orienteering. The French Foreign Legion runs a thorough program, and it is available for those who have not committed murder, can pass a physical test, and enjoy meeting people from other countries. Oh, legionnaires do not need a mobile phone to find their way to a target or the local pizza joint.
Stephen E Arnold, January 2024
Omegle: Hasta La Vista
November 30, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
In the Internet’s early days, users could sign into chatrooms and talk with strangers. While chatrooms have fallen out of favor, the idea of talking with strangers hung on but now it’s accompanied by video. Chat Roulette and Omegle are popular chatting applications that allow users to video chat with random individuals. The apps are notorious for pranks and NSFW content, including child sexual abuse. The Independent shared a story about one of the two: “Omegle Anonymous Chat App Shuts Down After 14 Years.”
Omegle had a simple concept: sign in, be connected to another random person, and video chat for as long as you like. Leif K-Brooks launched the chat platform with good intentions in 2009, but it didn’t take long for bad actors to infiltrate it. K-Brooks tried to stop criminal activities on Omegle with features, such as the “monitored chats” with moderators. They didn’t work and Omegle continued to receive flack. K-Brooks doesn’t want to deal with the criticism anymore:
“The intensity of the fight over use of the site had forced him to decide to shut it down, he said, and it will stop working straight away. ‘As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s,’ wrote Leif K-Brooks, who has run the website since founding it.”
Omegle’s popularity rose during the pandemic. The sudden popularity surge highlighted the criminal acts on the video chat platform. K-Brooks believes that his critics used fear to shut down the Web site. He also acknowledged that people are quicker to attack and slower to recognize shared humanity. He theorizes that social media platforms are being labeled negatively because of small groups of bad actors.
Whitney Grace, November 30, 2023
Contraband Available On Regular Web: Just in Time for the Holidays
November 28, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Losing weight is very difficult and people often turn to surgery or prescription drugs to help them drop pounds. Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus are popular weight loss drugs. They are brand names for a drug named semaglutide. There currently aren’t any generic versions of semaglutide so people are turning to the Internet for “alternate” options. The BBC shares how “Weight Loss Injection Hype Fuels Online Black Market.”
Unlicensed and unregulated vendors sell semaglutide online without prescriptions and its also available in beauty salons. Semaglutide is being sold in “diet kits” that contain needles and two vials. One contains a white powder and the other a liquid that must to be mixed together before injection. Jordan Parke runs a company called The Lip King that sells the kits for £200. Parke’s kits advise people to inject themselves with a higher dosage than health experts would advise.
The BBC bought and tested unlicensed kits, discovering that some contained semaglutide and others didn’t have any of the drug. The ones that did contain semaglutide didn’t contain the full advertised dosage. Buyers are putting themselves in harm’s way when they use the unlicensed injections:
“Prof Barbara McGowan, a consultant endocrinologist who co-authored a Novo Nordisk-funded study which trialled semaglutide to treat obesity, says licensed medications – like Ozempic and Wegovy – go through "very strict" quality controls before they are approved for use.
She warns that buyers using semaglutide sourced outside the legal supply chain "could be injecting anything".
‘We don’t know what the excipients are – that is the other ingredients, which come with the medication, which could be potentially toxic and harmful, [or] cause an anaphylactic reaction, allergies and I guess at worse, significant health problems and perhaps even death,’ she says.”
The semaglutide pens aren’t subjected to the same quality control and wraparound care guidelines as the licensed drugs. It’s easy to buy the fake semaglutide but at least the Dark Web has a checks and balances system to ensure buyers get the real deal.
Whitney Grace, November 28, 2023
Complex Humans and Complex Subjects: A Recipe for Confusion
November 22, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Disinformation is commonly painted as a powerful force able to manipulate the public like so many marionettes. However, according to Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, “Human Beings Are Not Puppets, and We Should Probably Stop Acting Like They Are.” The post refers to in in-depth Harper’s Magazine piece written by Joseph Bernstein in 2021. That article states there is little evidence to support the idea that disinformation drives people blindly in certain directions. However, social media platforms gain ad dollars by perpetuating that myth. Masnick points out:
“Think about it: if the story is that a post on social media can turn a thinking human being into a slobbering, controllable, puppet, just think how easy it will be to convince people to buy your widget jammy.”
Indeed. Recent (ironic) controversy around allegedly falsified data about honesty in the field of behavioral economics reminded Masnick of Berstein’s article. He considers:
“The whole field seems based on the same basic idea that was at the heart of what Bernstein found about disinformation: it’s all based on this idea that people are extremely malleable, and easily influenced by outside forces. But it’s just not clear that’s true.”
So what is happening when people encounter disinformation? Inconveniently, it is more complicated than many would have us believe. And it involves our old acquaintance, confirmation bias. The write-up continues:
“Disinformation remains a real issue — it exists — but, as we’ve seen over and over again elsewhere, the issue is often less about disinformation turning people into zombies, but rather one of confirmation bias. People who want to believe it search it out. It may confirm their priors (and those priors may be false), but that’s a different issue than the fully puppetized human being often presented as the ‘victim’ of disinformation. As in the field of behavioral economics, when we assume too much power in the disinformation … we get really bad outcomes. We believe things (and people) are both more and less powerful than they really are. Indeed, it’s kind of elitist. It’s basically saying that the elite at the top can make little minor changes that somehow leads the sheep puppets of people to do what they want.”
Rather, we are reminded, each person comes with their own complex motivations and beliefs. This makes the search for a solution more complicated. But facing the truth may take us away from the proverbial lamppost and toward better understanding.
Cynthia Murrell, November 22, 2023
A TikTok Titbit
November 20, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I am not sure if the data are spot on. Nevertheless, the alleged factoid caught my attention. There might be a germ of truth in the news item. The story “TikTok Is the Career Coach of Chice for Gen Z. Is That Really a Good Idea?” My answer to the question is, “No.?”
The write up reports:
A new survey of workers aged 21 to 40 by ResumeBuilder.com found that half of Gen Zers and millennials are getting career advice off the app. Two in three users surveyed say they’re very trusting or somewhat trusting of the advice they receive. The recent survey underscores how TikTok is increasingly dominating internet services of all kinds.
To make its point the write up includes this statement:
… Another study found that 51% of Gen Z women prefer TikTok over Google for search. It’s just as popular for news and entertainment: One in six American teens watch TikTok “almost constantly,” according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey. “We’re talking about a platform that’s shaping how a whole generation is learning to perceive the world,” Abbie Richards, a TikTok researcher, recently told the Washington Post.
Accurate? Probably close enough for horseshoes.
Stephen E Arnold, November 20, 2023
Publishers and Remora: Choose the Right Host and Stop Complaining, Please
October 20, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software involved.
Today, let’s reflect on the suckerfish or remora. The fish attaches itself to a shark and feeds on scraps of the host’s meals or nibbles on the other parasites living on their food truck. Why think about a fish with a sucking disk on its head?
Navigate to “Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry.” The article reports as “real” news:
Many news companies have struggled to survive after the tech companies threw the industry’s business model into upheaval more than a decade ago. One lifeline was the traffic — and, by extension, advertising — that came from sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now that traffic is disappearing.
Translation: No traffic, no clicks. No clicks and no traffic mean reduced revenue. Why? The days of printed newspapers and magazines are over. Forget the costs of printing and distributing. Think about people visiting a Web site. No traffic means that advertisers will go where the readers are. Want news? Fire up a mobile phone and graze on the information available. Sure, some sites want money, but most people find free services. I like France24.com, but there are options galore.
Wikipedia provides a snap of a remora attached to a scuba diver. Smart remora hook on to a fish with presence.
The shift in content behavior has left traditional publishing companies with a challenge: Generating revenue. Newspapers specialized news services have tried a number tactics over the years. The problem is that the number of people who will pay for content is large, but finding those people and getting them to spit out a credit card is expensive. At the same time, the cost of generating “real” news is expensive as well.
In 1992, James B. Twitchell published Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America. The book offered insight into how America has embraced showmanship information. Dr. Twitchell’s book appeared 30 years ago. Today Google, Meta, and TikTok (among other digital first outfits) amplify the lowest common denominator of information. “Real” publishing aimed higher.
The reluctant adjustment by “white shoe” publishing outfits was to accept traffic and advertising revenue from users who relied on portable surveillance devices. Now the traffic generators have realized that “attention magnet” information is where the action is. Plus smart software operated by do-it-yourself experts provides a flow of information which the digital services can monetize. A digital “mom” will block the most egregious outputs. The goal is good enough.
The optimization of content shaping now emerging from high-technology giants is further marginalizing the “real” publishers.
Almost 45 years ago, the president of a company with a high revenue online business database asked me, “Do you think we could pull our service off the timesharing vendors and survive?” The idea was that a product popular on an intermediary service could be equally popular as a standalone commercial digital product.
I said, “No way.”
The reasons were obvious to me because my team had analyzed this question over the hill and around the barn several times. The intermediary aggregated information. Aggregated information acts like a magnet. A single online information resource does not have the same magnetic pull. Therefore, the cost to build traffic would exceed the financial capabilities of the standalone product. That’s why commercial database products were rolled up by large outfits like Reed Elsevier and a handful of other companies.
Maybe the fix for the plight of the New York Times and other “real” publishers anchored in print is to merge and fast. However, further consolidation of newspapers and book publishers takes time. As the New York Times “our hair is on fire” article points out:
Privately, a number of publishers have discussed what a post-Google traffic future may look like, and how to better prepare if Google’s A.I. products become more popular and further bury links to news publications… “Direct connections to your readership are obviously important,” Ms. LaFrance [Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic] said. “We as humans and readers should not be going only to three all-powerful, attention-consuming mega platforms to make us curious and informed.” She added: “In a way, this decline of the social web — it’s extraordinarily liberating.”
Yep, liberating. “Real” journalists can do TikToks and YouTube videos. A tiny percentage will become big stars and make big money until they don’t. The senior managers of “shaky” “real” publishing companies will innovate. Unfortunately start ups spawned by “real” publishing companies face the same daunting odds of any start up: A brutal attrition rate.
Net net: What will take the place of the old school approach to newspapers, magazines, and books. My suggestion is to examine smart software and the popular content on YouTube. One example is the MeidasTouch “network” on YouTube. Professional publishers take note. Newspaper and magazine publishers may also want to look at what Ben Meiselas and cohorts have achieved. Want a less intellectual approach to information dominance, ask a teenager about TikTok.
Yep, liberating because some of those in publishing will have to adapt because when X.com or another high technology alleged monopoly changes direction, the sucker fish has to go along for the ride or face a somewhat inhospitable environment, hunger, and probably a hungry predator from a bottom feeding investment group.
Stephen E Arnold, October 20, 2023
Do Teens Read or Screen Surf? Yes, Your Teens
October 2, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I am glad I am old. I read “Study Reveals Some Teens Receive 5,000 Notifications Daily, Most Spend Almost Two Hours on TikTok.” The write up is a collection of factoids. I don’t know if these are verifiable, but taken as a group, the message is tough to swallow. Here’s a sample of the data:
- Time spent of TikTok: Two hours a day or 38 percent of daily online use. Why? “Reading and typing are exhausting.”
- 20 percent of the teenies in the sample receive more than 500 notifications a day. A small percentage get 5,000 per day.
- 97 percent of teenies were on their phone during the school day.
The future is in the hands of the information gatekeepers and quasi-monopolies, not parents and teachers it seems.
What will a population of swipers, scrollers, and kick-backer do?
My answer is, “Not much other than information grazing.”
Sheep need herders and border collies nipping at their heels.
Thus, I am glad I am old.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2023
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