The Internet of Infomercials: Datasphere Thumbtypers Fret
November 30, 2020
I found “The Ad-Based Internet Is About to Collapse. What Comes Next?” interesting because of two points. The first was this passage:
For example, even as the value of the digital ad industry was continuing to rise, the average clickthrough rate on Google’s display ads fell to 0.46% in 2018, ad fraud was expected to jump 21% to $42 billion in 2019, and a Google study found 56% of its display ads may not even be seen by a human. These stats suggest the product being sold is not nearly as effective or valuable as many purchasers of digital ads believe it to be.
Massive hucksterism. Got it.
And how about a fix to the Internet of Infomercials? Try this:
Logic editor Ben Tarnoff suggests that the proper organizational structure would depend on the scale of the service. In some cases, cooperatives would be ideal.
Several observations:
- The author is describing external characteristics of online information, not the dynamics of the datasphere
- Cooperation is an interesting idea; however, in a datasphere, cooperation is not the “it takes a village” fairy tale
The nature of online is now being considered by thumbtypers. News flash: It’s too late to pull disconnect. Goldfish in a fish bowl accept their environment as the norm. Replace the glass container with zeros and ones and what do you get? Fish in one environment trying to figure out another environment without the means to figure out what’s TikTok-ing, Parler-ing, and Facebook-ing.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2020
NLP Survey: Grains of Salt Helpful
November 30, 2020
Curious about the “state” of natural language processing? Surveys dependent on participants who self-recruit or receive a questionnaire as a result of signing up for a newsletter have to be consumed with a grain of salt and bottle of monosodium glutamate. You can get a copy of a survey sponsored by John Snow Labs via this url. This is a Medium content object, so be prepared to provide information of value to certain large organizations.
The principal findings from the survey of 571 respondents include:
- People are spending money for entity recognition and document classification
- Sparc and spaCy are popular
- One third of those responding use an indexing “helper” tool.
Data about budgets are scant. Percentages are not what fuel a sales person’s interest.
For Beyond Search, the single most important finding is that four cloud services do the heavy lifting for those into NLP: AWS, Azure, Google, and IBM. Which cloud service is most popular among the NLP crowd? Give up? The survey says, “Google.”
Not surprisingly cost and complexity are holding back NLP adoption and expansion. And what is John Snow Labs? An NLP outfit. Index term: Marketing.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2020
Younger Person Explains the Information Age
November 30, 2020
Do you pay attention to young people? Some have great ideas; others edge up to an idea and back away; and others just explain the world the way it really is. To test your receptivity to that I call the jejune ethos, navigate to “The Paradox of the Great Information Flood.” Note that the younger person does not go with the “tsunami” metaphor. This is no wave; this is a flood which means, according to Dictionary.com:
A great flowing or overflowing of water, especially over land not usually submerged. Any great outpouring or stream.
One minor point: Floods recede, but let’s look at other revelations.
- Central authority is not a hot ticket.
- More information produces more uncertainty.
- Existential wobbling and nihilism-on-the-rise are us.
How do these observations stack up against the reality of online information. I would point out a few modest differences; for example:
- Online information fosters surveillance ecosystems
- Online information erodes traditional structures; that is, the authority thing, the certainty thing, and the wobbling thing
- Online information evolves into monopolies; for example, Google in search and other FAANG centroids
- Online information requires deleting “old”, “historical,” and fungible data and information
- Online information is manipulable; that is, the deep fake capability is the norm
- Online information facilitates blurring the real with the construct; that is, gameification of data and experience.
Net net: The essay addresses observable facets of the information flood. Floods and tsunamis don’t capture what has been in operation since the mid 1970s. Floods go away; waves pass.
Digital information refines permanence. Hello, world. You are neither brave nor new. Thumb typers are justifiably uncertain, wobbly, and suspicious of “authority.”
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2020
Virtual Private Networks: Are These Private?
November 30, 2020
About a month ago, Google rolled out its own virtual private network. The timing was mostly in sync with Facebook’s expansion of encrypted services for its chat apps. Is encryption good for users, good for large technology companies, and good for law enforcement.
The story “Google One VPN: Everything You Need To Know” is representative of the coverage of Google’s VPN. I noted:
Google isn’t new to the world of VPNs. It actually has used one for its customers on Google Fi for many years now. Essentially with Google Fi, whenever you connected to a public WiFi network, you would automatically be connected through Google Fi’s VPN. As mentioned before, this is because Public WiFi networks are not secure. So while keeping you from using a lot of data, since Fi charges per gigabyte, it also kept you protected. Now, Google is just moving its VPN to where everyone can use it. Whether they are a Fi customer or not.
The write up does not answer the question about the “goodness” of the Google service. The write up asserts:
Google has said numerous times that it will not use the VPN connection to track, log or sell your browsing activity. But then again, how will we know that Google is not doing that? We won’t. And that goes for any other company too. It’s up to you, whether you trust Google not to collect this data when you’re using its VPN. But don’t forget, that if Google really wanted that data, it could easily get it from your Android smartphone too.
As I said in response to questions posed to me by a former CIA professional (view full 20 minute video here):
Online services are inherently surveillance mechanisms.
Many will not agree with this Arnold Law. That’s okay, but VPNs are particularly interesting because the user agreeing to participate in an allegedly secure and private man in the middle service. How secure is a man in the middle service?
Another good question just like “Are VPNs private?”
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2020
New York Times Divulges Core Trade Secret by Recycling Old News
November 27, 2020
The New York Times published a detailed explanation of one of its crown jewels, an honest to goodness trade secret. The news appears on page A2 of the November 26, 2020, newspaper of record. Some may quibble with today’s dump of secret information, but apparently the Gray Lady was not will to let old news rot from indifference. A version of today’s announcement appeared in May 2020 here.
What was this Eureka moment? Here’s the clue:
A Wirecutter Obsession: Spreadsheets
Yes, a digital page with rows and columns. Yep, there was a crude precursor in the distant past by an alleged Babylonian scribe. There there was LANPAR just 50 years ago. But the technology remained undiscovered but for a few trivial products like VisiCalc, 1-2-3, and every MBA’s touchstone, Excel.
Crowing like a coq galois, I noted this statement:
Wirecutter journalists have to be data nerds.
With such a momentous revelation appearing on a day when many fierce but technologically challenged competitors doing the faire le pont, the NYT may be able to recover from this inadvertent recycling of trade secrets.
Button up, people. This is not the slow moving era of Yellow Journalism. This is thumb typing time for those too busy to do “real news.”
But a spreadsheet? Brilliant. Who said invention was dead in the US of A?
But the NYT should be worried. The Norwegian chicken producer Norsk Kylling is shifting from Excel to Info Cloud Suite. Catch up with those chickens so another rooster crow can grace the Gray Lady’s barnyard. But wait! Maybe the NYT uses Oracle, Google, or possibly green ledger paper?
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2020
Another Stanford University Insight: Captain Obvious Himself Knocked Out
November 27, 2020
I read “Researchers Link Poor Memory to Attention Lapses and Media Multitasking.” What was I doing before I read this article. Oh, right. I was watching TV, surfing the Tweeter, having a bagel, pumping my legs on an under my desk exercycle, and talking on a landline phone. Imagine, a landline.
The article which I had to reread multiple times because, well, I just don’t remember why, states:
A new study reveals a correlation between multimedia multitasking, memory loss, and difficulties in maintaining attention.
Well, there’s an insight. What? Multi-tasking does not work so well? Who knew?
The write up clarifies:
Differences in people’s ability to sustain attention were also measured by studying how well subjects were able to identify a gradual change in an image, while media multitasking was assessed by having individuals report how well they could engage with multiple media sources, like texting and watching television, within a given hour. The scientists then compared memory performance between individuals and found that those with lower sustained attention ability and heavier media multitaskers both performed worse on memory tasks.
Wow. Concentration may be an indicator of a person who is not dumb enough to watch TikTok video gems while driving a smart auto to a Covid testing facility and listening to a podcast about how wonderfully intelligent Vox real news people are.
There’s good news from the Stanford experts; for example:
“We have an opportunity now,” Wagner [one of Captain Obvious’ detractors] said, “to explore and understand how interactions between the brain’s networks that support attention, the use of goals and memory relate to individual differences in memory in older adults both independent of, and in relation to, Alzheimer’s disease.”
What was I doing? I forget.
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2020
The Middle Kingdom Aims for Chip Design Dominance
November 27, 2020
No big deal. Just one more example of technological diffusion. Well, that’s a positive way to explain what’s going on. “China Aims to Shake US Grip on Chip Design Tools” reports:
Shanghai Hejian Industrial Software, founded in May, hired a high-ranking, China-based R&D executive from Synopsys in late October, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The executive worked for the U.S. company for nearly two decades, they said. Shanghai Hejian Industrial Software is backed by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission Of Shanghai Municipal Government and renowned Chinese venture capital firm Summitview Capital, according to online disclosures by the company. The third startup, Amedac, was founded in September 2019 by Chieh Ni, a former vice president of Synopsys China who worked with the U.S. company for 10 years. Synopsys, moreover, holds a more than 20% stake in the startup and Ge Qun, global senior vice president at Synopsys and chairman of its China operations, serves as one of the board directors at Amedac. Other key investors of Amedac include Summitview Capital, and the state-owned Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
What’s up? The Middle Kingdom crowd wants to become the chow chow of chip design. Not familiar with these fun beasts? Why not get acquainted?
The former employees of US chip design companies are likely to rely on these fine animals to protect their labs, meeting rooms, and manufacturing facilities? One never knows when the Chihuahuas from the US Department of Commerce will want to romp.
Stephen E Arnold, November 26, 2020
OpenText: The New Equilibrium. Think How? What?
November 27, 2020
I read a weird content marketing, predicting the future article called “OpenText CEO: Organizations Must Rethink Approach to Business, Technology.” OpenText is interesting for a number of reasons. It is a Canadian outfit. The company owns more search and retrieval systems than one can remember. Fulcrum, BRS, Dr. Tim Bray’s SGML search, and others. There are content management systems which once shipped with an Autonomy stub. I dimly recall that OpenText was into Hummingbird and maybe Information Dimensions too.
Wow.
Now a company which ostensibly sells content management is suggesting that there is a “new equilibrium” on deck for 2021 is fascinating. I am not sure about the old equilibrium which seemed slightly crazy to me, but, hey, I am just reading what a Canadian outfit sees coming. I would prefer that the said Canadian outfit invest in enhancing the technologies it has, but I am flawed. That’s probably part of the old equilibrium.
The write up reports that the new equilibrium is part of the great rethink:
We are going through the fastest technology disruption in the history of the world. The shift to Industry 4.0 had already resulted in a huge increase in connectivity, automation, AI, and computing power. The response to COVID-19 has accelerated this process and forever changed the business environment.
Okay. How is that working out?
The pandemic has also forced a huge shift in time-to-value. Five years ago, companies would wait two years to deploy an ERP system. Now, the expectation is that you will have a solution in weeks, or even days.
Ah, ha. New system deployments have to be done faster. Is this an insight? I thought James Gleick’s Faster explained this process 20 years ago. That seems as if the OpenText insight has moved slowly through the great Canadian intellectual winter. Where is the management guru who lived on a sailboat in Canada when one needs him?
The new equilibrium for OpenText sounds a whole lot like Amazon Web services or the Microsoft Azure “blue” thing. I noted:
These cloud solutions enable businesses to re-invent processes and seize emerging opportunities faster, easier, and more cost-effectively. Developer Cloud is particularly exciting. It will provide a platform for developers to create custom solutions to manage information, and will help build a community of innovators working together to create better enterprise applications.
From my point of view, this content marketing fluff has not changed my perception of OpenText which is:
OpenText software applications manage content or unstructured data for large companies, government agencies, and professional service firms.
Services, new equilibrium, rethink. Got it. Enterprise search. Jargon.
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2020
Fact Checking Backward Through Time
November 26, 2020
Hooray for the truth! Though Business Dateline introduced corrections to online news stories in the mid-1980s, most online indexing services never bother to fix errors. Now, Internet archive the Wayback Machine is addressing this oversight with “Fact Checks and Context for Wayback Machine Pages,” the site announces on its blog. Writer Mark Graham reports:
“Fact checking organizations and origin websites sometimes have information about pages archived in the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive has started to surface some of these annotations for Wayback Machine users. We are attempting to preserve our digital history but recognize the issues around providing access to false and misleading information coming from different sources. By providing convenient links to contextual information we hope that our patrons will better understand what they are reading in the Wayback Machine. As an example, Politifact has investigated a claim included in a webpage that we archived. Our.news has matched this URL to the Politifact review which allowed us to provide a yellow context banner for Wayback Machine patrons. In a different case, we surfaced the discovery that a webpage is part of a disinformation campaign according to the researchers at Graphika and link to their research report. As a last example, the Internet Archive archived a Medium post that was subsequently removed based on a violation of their Covid-19 Content Policy.”
The post supplies screenshots to illustrate the yellow context banners in each of the above examples. Graham makes it a point to acknowledge the work of several organizations that make it possible for the Wayback Machine to supply this context: FactCheck.org, Check Your Fact, Lead Stories, Politifact, Washington Post Fact-Checker, AP News Fact Check, USA Today Fact Check, Graphika, Stanford Internet Observatory, and Our.news. We are glad to see veracity still matters to many.
Cynthia Murrell, November 25, 2020
Yodaesque Insight from the Tweeter
November 26, 2020
I read “Twitter to Relaunch Account Verifications in Early 2021, Asks for Feedback on Policy.” Ommmmm. Ommmmm. Account verification. The Tweeter thing, the destroyer of coherence, the maker of faux wizards, has a thought. Tie a Tweeter thing account to a verifiable entity. This is revolutionary or, as Yoda might say, “Revolutionary this is.” Ommmmm. Ommmmm.
I learned:
Twitter will initially verify six types of accounts, including those belonging to government officials; companies, brands and nonprofit organizations; news; entertainment; sports; and activists, organizers and other influential individuals. The number of categories could expand in time. Twitter’s verification system, which provides a blue checkmark to designate accounts belonging to public figures, was paused in 2017 as the company tried to address confusion over what it meant to be verified.
What a startling concept is this? How loud must be the voices from the Victoria Falls must be.
Hey, China likes the idea. Even geezers sitting around the old fashioned truth burning stove in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, thinks this is a Yodaesque insight. More accurately, Yoda has a moment of semi-clear thinking. I hear the fail whale thrashing.
Ommmmm. Ommmmm.
Stephen E Arnold, November 26, 2020
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