Alphabet Google Back in the Medical Info Business
February 7, 2017
I worked on a project years ago related to Google’s push into medical records. I delivered my monograph and then watched as the Google health push followed a familiar trajectory: Excited team, stealth operation, partnership with a big health care outfit, and then fizzle wizzle. You may recall the breathless Computerworld reportage.
By 2011, health was dead. The idea that the GOOG could help those who were suffering never went away. Evidence one assumes to be accurate suggests that Dr. Google has finished ze’s post doctoral work and returned to the office.
Navigate to “Dr Google Gets Real: Intent Search Giant Launches Doctor Approved Responses to the Most Commonly Asked health Questions.” My goodness, the headline echoes the Ziff/Information Access Health Reference Center from the late 1980s. (To keep you up to date, gentle reader, I worked at the Ziffer at this time and was involved in that then ground breaking project.) The wheel keeps on turning over well tilled ground once again.
According to the “real” news write up, the new Google service rolls out in Australia. Hey, where is that country in relation to my Doc in the Box?
I learned:Google has launched a new health search tool to show reliable information. Health searches will now provide information fact-checked by a team of doctors. The feature will include the condition, symptoms, diagnosis, and prevalence. Australians can now trust Dr Google to provide them with accurate information.
The approach seems to be one in which curated questions are answered. The user asks a question, and the system displays the answer. Just like the 1988 Health Reference Center and the subsequent approach of that wonderful search system AskJeeves.
The service is optimized for mobile, of course. I noted this statement:
The feature will include an outline of the condition, symptoms, diagnosis, and prevalence according to age at the top of search results.
The differentiation of the Google service from visiting a real doctor is important. Real doctors like real journalists like to maintain a membrane between their expertise and the masses. I noted this statement from a real Australian doctor who comments about the system in an objective (of course) way:
‘What this has done has improved the quality and accuracy of the information people will get when they do the very frequent health searches because up until now the results of the searches were indiscriminate in terms of their veracity and reliability.’ But the information should not be used to form a diagnosis, warned Dr Bartone. ‘It is information – it is not knowledge. It is essentially to aid a person’s understanding around a certain condition,’ he said. ‘A diagnosis is based upon taking a history, an examination and knowing the past medical history of that patient and a management plan is formulated on all those inputs,’ said Dr Bartone.
And don’t forget:
Any health concerns should be discussed with a GP.
And DeepMind and health? Well, Google does have those NHS records.
Stephen E Arnold, February 7, 2017
Learning the Aboutness of a Web Site or Other Other Online Text Object
February 7, 2017
Quite by accident the Beyond Search goslings came across a company offering a free semantic profile of online text objects. The idea is to plug in a url like www.arnoldit.com/wordpress. The Leiki system will generate a snapshot of the concepts and topics the content object manifests. We ran the Beyond Search blog through the system. Here’s what we learned:
The system identified that the blog covers Beyond Search. We learned that our coverage of IBM is more intense than our coverage of the Google. But if one combines the Leiki category “Google Search” with the category “Google,” our love of the GOOG is manifest. We ran several other blogs through the Leiki system and learned about some content fixations that were not previously known to us.
We suggest you give the system a whirl.
The developer of the system provides a range of indexing, consulting, and semantic services. More information about the firm is at www.leiki.com.
Stephen E Arnold, February 7, 29017
How to Quantify Culture? Counting the Bookstores and Libraries Is a Start
February 7, 2017
The article titled The Best Cities in the World for Book Lovers on Quartz conveys the data collected by the World Cities Culture Forum. That organization works to facilitate research and promote cultural endeavors around the world. And what could be a better measure of a city’s culture than its books? The article explains how the data collection works,
Led by the London mayor’s office and organized by UK consulting company Bop, the forum asks its partner cities to self-report on cultural institutions and consumption, including where people can get books. Over the past two years, 18 cities have reported how many bookstores they have, and 20 have reported on their public libraries. Hong Kong leads the pack with 21 bookshops per 100,000 people, though last time Buenos Aires sent in its count, in 2013, it was the leader, with 25.
New York sits comfortably in sixth place, but London, surprisingly, is near the bottom of the ranking with roughly 360 bookstores. Another measure the WCCF uses is libraries per capita. Edinburgh of all places surges to the top without any competition. New York is the only US city to even make the cut with an embarrassing 2.5 libraries per 100K people. By contrast, Edinburgh has 60.5 per 100K people. What this analysis misses out on is the size and beauty of some of the bookstores and libraries of global cities. To bask in these images, visit Bookshelf Porn or this Mental Floss ranking of the top 7 gorgeous bookstores.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 7, 2017
Scanning for the True Underbelly of the Dark Web
February 7, 2017
Some articles about the Dark Web are erring on the side of humor about it’s threat-factor. Metro UK published 12 scary things which happen when you go on the ‘Dark Web’, which points out some less commonly reported happenings on the Dark Web. Amongst the sightings mentioned were: a German man selling pretzels, someone with a 10/10 rating at his carrot (the actual vegetable) marketplace, and a template for creating counterfeit Gucci designs. The article reports,
Reddit users shared their stories about the ‘dark web’ – specifically Tor sites, invisible to normal browsers, and notorious for hosting drug markets and child pornography. Using the free Tor browser, you can access special .onion sites – only accessible using the browser – many of which openly host highly illegal content including pirated music and films, drugs, child pornography and sites where credit card details are bought and sold.
While we chose not to summarize several of the more dark happenings mentioned by Redditors, we know the media has given enough of that side to let your imaginations run wild. Of course, as has also been reported by more serious publications, it is a myth that the Dark Web is only filled with cybercriminals. Unless pretzels have qualities that have yet to be understood as malicious.
Megan Feil, February 7, 2017
Search, Intelligence, and the Nobel Prize
February 6, 2017
For me, intelligence requires search. Professional operatives rely on search and retrieval technology. The name of the function is changed because keywords are no longer capable of making one’s heart beat more rapidly. Call search text analytics, cognitive insight, or something similar, and search generates excitement.
I thought about the link between finding information and intelligence. My context is not that of a person looking for a pizza joint using Cortana. The application is the use of tools to make sense of flows of digital information.
I read “Intelligence & the Nobel Peace Prize.” My recommendation is that you read the article as well. The main point is that recognition for those making important contributions has ossified. I would agree.
The most interesting facet of the write up is a recommendation that the Nobel Committee award the Nobel Peace Prize to a former intelligence operative and officer. The write up explains:
the Committee would do well to consider information-era criteria for its nomination this year and going forward into the future. An examination of all Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to date finds that none have been awarded for local to global scale information and intelligence endeavors – for information peacekeeping or peacekeeping intelligence that empowers the peace-loving public while constraining war-mongering banks and governments. It was this final realization that compelled me to recommend one of our authors, Robert David Steele, for nomination by one of our Norwegian Ministers, for the Nobel Peace Prize. We do not expect him to be selected – or even placed on the short list – but in our view as editors, he is qualified both for helping to prevent World War III this past year, publicly confronting the lies being told by his own national intelligence community with respect to the Russians hacking the US election,[5] and for his body of work in the preceding year and over time…
My view is that this is an excellent idea for three reasons:
Robert Steele has been one of the intelligence professionals with whom I have worked who appreciates the value of objective search and retrieval technology. This is unusual in my experience.
Second, Steele’s writings provide a continuing series of insights generated by the blend of experience, thought, and research. Where there is serious reading and research, there is information retrieval.
Third, Steele is a high energy thinker. His ideas cluster around themes which provide thought provoking insights to stabilizing some of the more fractious aspects of an uncertain world.
If you want to get a sense of Steele’s thinking, begin with this link or begin reading his “Public Intelligence Blog” at www.phibetaiota.net. (In the interest of keeping you informed, Steele wrote the preface to my monograph CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access.)
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2017
Googling on the Google Pixel: Let Us Count the Ways
February 6, 2017
I read “There Are Too Many Ways to Google on Android.” I don’t use a Google Pixel phone. What’s interesting about the write up is that the litany of options underscores one big point about the Alphabet Google thing: Getting organized is not part of the company’s ethos. In the Google quest to offset the erosion of the desktop boat anchor desktop search ad model, Google is putting search in places which seem to have surprised the with-it author of the “There Are Too Many Ways…” article. The options include:
- Allo
- Assistant
- Chrome
- GBoard
- G button
- Google Now thing or whatever it is called
- Screen search
The idea seems to be that putting search as many places as possible will generate clicks. Clicks spawn ads some hope.
Stepping back, Google Pixel is emulating the featuritis I once heard senior Googlers says was a Microsoft disease.
For me, it hints at desperation and a lack of product focus. Hey, where is that Universal Search? Obviously not in the Google Pixel.
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2017
Probability Algorithms: Boiling Prediction Down
February 6, 2017
I read “The Algorithms Behind Probabilistic Programming.” Making a somewhat less than familiar topic accessible is a good idea. If you want to get a sense for predictive analytics, why not read a blog post about Bayesian methods with a touch of Markov? The write up pitches a more in depth report about predictive analytics. “The Algorithms Behind…” write up makes it clear to peg prediction on a method which continues to confound some “real” consultants. I like the mentions of Monte Carlo methods and the aforementioned sporty Markov. I did not see a reference to LaPlace. Will you be well on your way to understanding predictive analytics after working through the article from Fast Forward Labs. No, but you will have some useful names to Google. When I read explanations of these methods, I like to reflect on Autonomy’s ground breaking products from the 1990s.
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2017
Oracle Pays Big Premium for NetSuite and Larry Ellison Benefits
February 6, 2017
The article on Reuters titled Oracle-NetSuite Deal May Be Sweetest for Ellison emphasizes the perks of being an executive chairman like Larry Ellison, of Oracle. Ellison ranks as the third richest person in America and fifth in the world. The article suggests that his fortune of over $50B is often considered as mingling with Oracle’s $160B in a way that makes, if no one else, at least Reuters, very uncomfortable. The article does offer some context to the most recent acquisition of NetSuite, for which Oracle paid a 44% premium on a company of which Ellison owns a 45% stake.
NetSuite was founded by an ex-Oracle employee, bankrolled by Ellison. While Oracle concentrated on selling enterprise software to giant corporations, the upstart focused on servicing small and medium-sized companies using the cloud. The two companies’ businesses have increasingly overlapped as larger customers have become comfortable using web-based software.
As a result, it makes strategic sense to combine the two firms. And the process seems to have been handled right, with a committee of independent Oracle directors calling the shots.
The article also points out that such high surcharges aren’t all that unusual. Salesforce.com recently paid a 56% premium for Demandware. But in this case, things are complicated by Ellison’s potential conflict of interest. If Oracle had done more to invest in cloud business or NetSuite earlier, say four or five years ago, they would not find themselves forking over just under $10B now.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 6, 2017
Visualizing a Web of Sites
February 6, 2017
While the World Wide Web is clearly a web, it has not traditionally been presented visually as such. Digital Trends published an article centered around a new visualization of Wikipedia, Race through the Wikiverse for your next internet search. This web-based interactive 3D visualization of the open source encyclopedia is at Wikiverse.io. It was created by Owen Cornec, a Harvard data visualization engineer. It pulls about 250,000 articles from Wikipedia and makes connections between articles based on overlapping content. The write-up tells us,
Of course it would be unreasonable to expect all of Wikipedia’s articles to be on Wikiverse, but Cornec made sure to include top categories, super-domains, and the top 25 articles of the week.
Upon a visit to the site, users are greeted with three options, each of course having different CPU and load-time implications for your computer: “Light,” with 50,000 articles, 1 percent of Wikipedia, “Medium,” 100,000 articles, 2 percent of Wikipedia, and “Complete,” 250,000 articles, 5 percent of Wikipedia.
Will this pave the way for web-visualized search? Or, as the article suggests, become an even more exciting playing field for The Wikipedia Game? Regardless, this advance makes it clear the importance of semantic search. Oh, right — perhaps this would be a better link to locate semantic search (it made the 1 percent “Light” cut).
Megan Feil, February 6, 2017
Synthetic Datasets: Reality Bytes
February 5, 2017
Years ago I did a project for an outfit specializing in an esoteric math space based on mereology. No, I won’t define it. You can check out the explanation in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The idea is that sparse information can yield useful insights. Even better, if mathematical methods were use to populate missing cells in a data system, one could analyze the data as if it were more than probability generated items. Then when real time data arrived to populate the sparse cells, the probability component would generate revised data for the cells without data. Nifty idea, just tough to explain to outfits struggling to move freight or sell off lease autos.
I thought of this company’s software system when I read “Synthetic Datasets Are a Game Changer.” Once again youthful wizards happily invent the future even though some of the systems and methods have been around for decades. For more information about the approach, the journal articles and books of Dr. Zbigniew Michaelewicz may be helpful.
The “Synthetic Databases…” write up triggered some yellow highlighter activity. I found this statement interesting:
Google researchers went as far as to say that even mediocre algorithms received state-of-the-art results given enough data.
The idea that algorithms can output “good enough” results when volumes of data are available to the number munching algorithms.
I also noted:
there are recent successes using a new technique called ‘synthetic datasets’ that could see us overcome those limitations. This new type of dataset consists of images and videos that are solely rendered by computers based on various parameters or scenarios. The process through which those datasets are created fall into 2 categories: Photo realistic rendering and Scenario rendering for lack of better description.
The focus here is not on figuring out how to move nuclear fuel rods around a reactor core or adjusting coal fired power plant outputs to minimize air pollution. The synthetic databases have an application in image related disciplines.
The idea of using rendering engines to create images for facial recognition or for video games is interesting. The write up mentions a number of companies pushing forward in this field; for example, Cvedia.
However, the use of NuTech’s methods populated databases of fact. I think the use of synthetic methods has a bright future. Oh, NuTech was acquired by Netezza. Guess what company owns the prescient NuTech Solutions’ technology? Give up? IBM, a company which has potent capabilities but does the most unusual things with those important systems and methods.
I suppose that is one reason why old wine looks like new IBM Holiday Spirit rum.
Stephen E Arnold, February 5, 2017
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