'Well-made and sturdy, the
supermarket trolley comes with a variety of plastic food items --
bananas, packets of cereal -- that can be scanned with a handheld
scanner attached to the cart. Pass an item in front of the scanner, and
the cart speaks its name and the number of items. Scan the item again,
and the cart speaks its color, the food group and its nutritional
benefit.
'Aimed at preschoolers, the cart is billed as teaching numbers, counting, quantities and simple food facts. . .
'Lyle preferred the exploratory mode and its free-form play. The game
mode, when asked to find certain items, was not altogether successful.
Lyle had no trouble finding the first item asked for but lost interest
before finding the second one, preferring to scan items at random.' [Wired News].
A splice of mice: Mickey isn't the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. [Animation World Network].
Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse.
Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard's scientists
invented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its Supreme Court
says the university doesn't deserve a patent - at least not until the
politicians have had a chance to think the ethics of biotech over. [National Post].
As with Mickey, business concerns slam into public concerns here.
It doesn't make much business sense for patented genes to be freely
accessible. After all, you don't want your rivals rummaging through
your research work.
This isn't just a standard big business line. As biotech develops,
smaller firms, entrepreneurial boffins often, universities even, are
entering the market as niche developers. Like artists, writers,
coders and other intellectual property creators, they want to
safeguard their work so they can be properly rewarded.
Fine, but when it comes to biotech, sole ownership of this kind of
information isn't in the public interest. Charging for
access is likely to discourage research. Ideas develop most rapidly,
most fruitfully through free exchanges of information. And it goes against common sense, moral sense, for private groups to have monopolies over such fundamental knowledge.
Think eugenics here. Think perfect blue-eyed, blond-haired babies. Think the Boys from Brazil.
Scientists as scientists tend to agree that science should be open to all, should be open
source. According to Michael Morgan, formerly executive director of
research at the Wellcome Trust, research and competition were enhanced
when the results of the Human Genome Project were immediately made
public - for free - over the Internet. [Globe and Mail].
Business
argues, however, that open source can sit alongside proprietary code.
An academic institution, like Harvard, can apply its expertise to
become a business and generate wealth for the good of its staff and
students, for the greater good.
Perhaps. But GM mice, unlike Mickey or Windows XP, scamper through the
real world. Clicking through standard intellectual property arguments
when faced with invention at such a fundamental level, at a time when the news is one long brave new nightmare, isn't enough.
Corporations are exercising property rights over their biotech
creations. How morally right is this? To enclose a creature's genetic
code? To turn such fundamental information, the stuff of
life, into something that can be bought and sold?
Like much else in life, as the public debate over patenting life
splutters on in parliaments and in the media, the business of business
happens quietly in the background. The corporations are shaping the
biotech agenda. In universities even.
Canada's politicians may ponder long and hard. They won't be able to
ignore the pressure from corporate lobbyists. Canada has to play the
same free trade rules as the rest of the world. Patent law there, as
everywhere else, will be reinvented for the 21st Century.
Meanwhile, challenging the idea of minting money out of minting life is
left to the scientists. The Canadian decision came the day after the
publication of the draft complete mouse genome. Scientists from 27
institutions in six countries took part in the £87m Mouse Genome
Sequencing Consortium. [Independent].
The consortium is in the public sector. All its data is in the public domain.
Real or cartoon, mice or men, code of all sorts will cheer loudly.
Trusting Linux: Despite throwing cash around during his tour of India last week, Bill Gates failed to persuade at least one Indian to fall for Windows.
Digvijay Singh, chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, told Gates that he's decided to plump for Linux, Microsoft's open source rival, when considering software for government projects.
'For us it is not a question of Microsoft versus Linux. It is just a matter of choosing between a free software and a monopoly. We feel that when we are putting public information out in the open, then it should not be through a proprietary software.' [India Times].
The developing world, when given the choice, prefers Linux.
Computer industry reports predict Linux use will spread to two-thirds of Chinese software developers over the next year. [Linux Devices].
Linux will be run in some 33 percent of computers in Latin America. [Forbes].
In India, Linux powers the new $268 Simputer designed to bring cheap computing to tribal villages. [Register].
Just like everybody else, countries on a tight budget find that Microsoft software is expensive, bloated and riddled with bugs and security holes.
Like everybody else, they find themselves on a perpetual upgrade cycle, splashing out every few years on computers big enough, fast enough to deal with the spec demanded by the latest version of Windows.
Like everybody else, illegally copying software is becoming less of an option as corporations push through tough anti-piracy laws.
Linux's overriding advantage for sovereign states, however, may be its inherent trustworthiness. Governments can check its code and make sure it doesn’t contain any back doors, any holes left for foreign intelligence services to peer through.
Microsoft targets India: Bill Gates' charitable foundation is giving
$100 million to fight AIDS in India. It's not an altogether altruistic move.
The Alpha geek is on a tour to drum up public sector business and see off the
threat from Linux. Embracing and extending as usual, Microsoft plans to invest
$400 million in its Indian operations over the next three years.
[NY Times].
iMakeWorlds: With 18 million copies sold so far, the Sims is already the
world's most popular computer game. Will Wright, ultimate code god of the Sims, expects
the social interactions possible in Sims
Online, launched next month, to evolve into marketplaces and governments.
The character he plays in the beta version is called Alan Greenspan. [Wired].
Taking digital liberties: As the US Supreme Court discusses copyright protection and whether Mickey Mouse should go free, Brewster Kahle, director of the nonprofit Internet Archive, is outside the Court Building printing off books on demand from his Bookmobile.
Kahle wants an enriched public domain in which universal access to human knowledge is a right:
'We want to have a million books for everyone to use. We can't build a library to hold a million books -- the building would be just too big! So we use the Internet. We download a book from the Internet. We print it out, put a binding around it, you get to pick the book you want.' [Salon].
Life in Pandemonium: On general release in October, Naqoyqatsi ('Civilised Violence'), the last in Godfrey Reggio's trilogy of non-narrative films about our world falling out of step with nature, describes the expansion of technology, the new digital spaces surrounding us. [QTime trailer]; [Koyaanisqatsi].
Copyright wrangling: It's ironic that both these articles, first in
early June in Salon
and then yesterday in the Washington
Post examine the illegal copying of music, the stealing of intellectual
property. Compare and contrast the two articles. Is the similarity in the pieces
just a coincidence? Is David Segal guilty of stealing Dan Levine's ideas or
is he creating something new from them? Segal adds facts and figures to Levine's
more subtle piece. Does that put him in the clear? I think it does. . .
My take on the Post article: having finished off Napster through the courts, the music industry
is now going guerilla. It's planting spoof files on p2p networks like Kazaa
and Morpheus to stop what it considers
is the theft of over two billion songs a month.
There's an increase in CD-R sales as new releases reach the shops and this
reveals the extent of music piracy, it claims.
But Eric Garland, president of BigChampagne,
a company that measures online file-sharing traffic, says what the industry
is doing smacks of desperation.
'When you've got a consumer movement of this magnitude, when tens of millions
of people say, "I think CD copying is cool and I'm within my rights to
do it," it gets to the point where you have to say uncle and build a business
model around it rather than fight it.' [Washington
Post].
Beggaring belief: Fortune magazine lists the 'greed' merchants,
the top US tech executives who became 'immensely, extraordinarily, obscenely
wealthy' by selling stock at inflated prices while investors were being
told to buy.
The top three: between January 1999 and May 2002, executives at Qwest
Communications made $2.26 billion through selling company stock; executives at Broadcom made $2.08 billion; executives at AOL Time Warner made $1.79 billion.
'Executives and directors of the 1,035 corporations that met our criteria
took out, by our estimate, roughly $66 billion. Of that amount, a total haul
of $23 billion went to 466 insiders at the 25 corporations where the executives
cashed out the most.' [Fortune].
Net gains: Scott Rosenberg on why the internet matters even after the
pop of the tech stock bubble: 'Hundreds of millions of people around the
world continue to bend it to their own ends, in chaotic, unstable and unpredictable
ways. As a generator of instant wealth, the Net may now be a big bust; as a
generator of instant ideas, it keeps thrumming along.' [Salon].
Live virtually: No need to protest about income disparity gaps, corporate
sleaze or Bush's foreign policy misadventures. Click the icon on the screen
and you too can build yourself a better, brighter tomorrow.
As computers get more powerful and broadband becomes standard, virtual spaces
like EverQuest are expected
to turn into boom worlds for the companies that own them.
EverQuest has 433,000 players who pay $12.95 a month. Creating relationships
and societies out of the EverQuest virtual playground, subscribers generate
$5m a month for Sony.
The typical player spends 20 hours a week living in EverQuest. According to
Edward Castronova,
an economics professor at California State University at Fullerton, one-third
of adult players spend more time in the game world than in their paying jobs.
Not surprisingly, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Vivendi-Universal and Disney
are pouring millions into developing online worlds.
In December, LucusArts and Sony release Star Wars Galaxies. Next year, Sony
releases PlanetSide: a first-person action game set in an online world.
Consultancy Themis
Group says that by 2003, revenue from online games will double to $635m.
That's more than the revenue expected from the latest Star Wars film. [Business
2.0].
Yesterday was Hiroshima Day: At a ceremony to mark the dropping 57 years
ago of the first nuclear bomb, Tadatoshi Akiba, mayor of Hiroshima, protested
against US unilateralism: "America has not been given the right to impose
a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world. . . Rather, we, the people
of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority
to destroy the world." [CNN].
Fat chance when the US is contemplating the use of mini-nukes, low-yield nuclear weapons designed
to destroy underground bunkers. [Guardian].
Freeman Dyson, physicist, on the corruptive power of nuclear weapons:
"I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible
if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release
this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these
miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that
gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible
for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes
people when they see what they can do with their minds." [From
the film The
Day After Trinity].
We are Google: Google currently delivers 3,190,000 entries for 'Islam'; 832,000 entries for 'Judaism'. Which tells us what? More Jews than Muslims use the internet? Jews have a greater interest in comparative religion? 'Man' gets 69,400,000 entries; 'Woman', 22,400,000; 'Mars', 7,700,000; 'Venus', 2,390,000. So? We're living in a feminised world that's desperately searching for a better understanding of what men want? [Smackdown].
Imagine a world in which everybody had access to the internet. The ability to peer into the word rankings of particular communities would give an amazing, dynamic insight into collective thought processes. Reworked continuously, word rankings would mirror our minds, the minds of our neighbours, our enemies.
English and Brazilian word rankings are bound to be quite different from each other. Would subtle changes in Google word rankings precede sporting fixtures? elections? wars? earthquakes. . ?
The zeitgeist according to Google is currently biased towards the West and the US and towards English. But Google's ability for capturing the essence of what's going on can already be seen: the top word for September 2001 was 'Nostradamus'. [Google Zeitgeist].
Want to know if the Brazilians are shaking at the prospect of meeting England in the World Cup? Give it a couple of years. By 2006, the 10 O'Clock News will consist of nothing but analyses of the Google sporting zeitgeist by the BBC's chief Google editor and a professor in Google studies. [First Monday].
