The Great Geek Manual

Thomas Jefferson and George Washington recorded daily weather observations, but they didn’t record them hourly or by the minute. Not only did they have other things to do, such data didn’t seem useful. Even after the invention of the telegraph enabled the centralization of weather data, the 150 volunteers who received weather instruments from the Smithsonian Institution in 1849 still reported only once a day. Now there is a literally immeasurable, continuous stream of climate data from satellites circling the earth, buoys bobbing in the ocean, and Wi-Fi-enabled sensors in the rain forest. We are measuring temperatures, rainfall, wind speeds, C02 levels, and pressure pulses of solar wind. All this data and much, much more became worth recording once we could record it, once we could process it with computers, and once we could connect the data streams and the data processors with a network.

How will we ever make sense of scientific topics that are too big to know? The short answer: by transforming what it means to know something scientifically.

This would not be the first time. For example, when Sir Francis Bacon said that knowledge of the world should be grounded in carefully verified facts about the world, he wasn’t just giving us a new method to achieve old-fashioned knowledge. He was redefining knowledge as theories that are grounded in facts. The Age of the Net is bringing about a redefinition at the same scale. Scientific knowledge is taking on properties of its new medium, becoming like the network in which it lives.

- “To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data” by David Weinberger, January 3 2012.
First posted to The Atlantic.

1875
Thomas Edison is issued a patent on a “Telegraph Apparatus.” (US No. 158,787)

1903
The first trans-Atlantic radiotelegraphic message is sent from President Roosevelt to King Edward VII by way of the stations at Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Poldhu, England. It is not generally known whether the message was relayed by ships on the Atlantic or whether it was received directly from Cape Cod in its complete form. A station even larger than the one at Poldhu was begun in 1905, at Clifden, Ireland, and in 1907 this plant and a twin station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, were opened for limited commercial trans-Atlantic radio service.

1904
Thomas Edison is issued a patent for an “Electrical Automobile” designed with a driving motor that may be conveniently and effectively utilized for the purpose of charging the batteries. (US No. 750,102) The design uses a small turbine steam engine connected to the armature of an electric motor. By reversing the rotation of the motor-armature, the electric motor converts to a generator for charging the batteries. A clutch is used to disconnect the motor from the driving wheels while charging. Under usual operations, the motor runs off storage batteries.
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I think the Net generation is beginning to see knowledge in a way that is closer to the truth about knowledge — a truth we’ve long known but couldn’t instantiate. My generation, and the many generations before mine, have thought about knowledge as being the collected set of trusted content, typically expressed in libraries full of books. Our tradition has taken the trans-generational project of building this Library of Knowledge book by book as our God-given task as humans. Yet, for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument. That social activity — collaborative and contentious, often at the same time — is a more accurate reflection of our condition as imperfect social creatures trying to understand a world that is too big and too complex for even the biggest-headed expert.

This new topology of knowledge reflects the topology of the Net. The Net (and especially the Web) is constructed quite literally out of links, each of which expresses some human interest. If I link to a site, it’s because I think it matters in some way, and I want it to matter that way to you. The result is a World Wide Web with billions of pages and probably trillions of links that is a direct reflection of what matters to us humans, for better or worse. The knowledge networks that live in this new ecosystem share in that property; they are built out of, and reflect, human interest. Like our collective interests, the Web and the knowledge that resides there is at odds and linked in conversation. That’s why the Internet, for all its weirdness, feels so familiar and comfortable to so many of us. And that’s the sense in which I think networked knowledge is more “natural.”

- “What the Internet Means for How We Think About the World” by Rebecca J. Rosen, January 5, 2012.
First published by The Atlantic.

Audio Fiction and Podcasts

• Listen to author Alberto Chimal of Mexico City reads his story “Variation on a Theme of Coleridge” from Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, an anthology of new Mexican fiction never before translated into English at Oneironomicon.
• Listen to “Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul” by Daniel Abraham.
• Listen to “Beautiful Dreamer” by Edward McKeown at Beam Me Up!
• Listen to “Black Hill” and “The Worm That Gnaws” by Orrin Grey at Journey Into…
• Listen to “The Day the Icicle Works Closed” by Frederik Pohl at Podmatic.
• Listen to “Found Manuscript” by David Lindblad at Cthulhu Podcast.
• Listen to “Health Tips for Traveller” by David W. Goldman at Toasted Cake.
• Listen to “Illusion” by Jean Rhys at Miette’s.

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1836
The first electrical journal in the US, the Electro-Magnetic Intelligencer, is first published.

1838
Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate early elements of the telegraph system, including a code which will come to be known as Morse code.

1896
The X-ray machine is exhibited as the “Parisian sensation” to the public for the first time in the US at Casino Chambers in New York City, for twenty-five cents admission.

1903
Guglielmo Marconi’s third North American wireless station in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts, transmits a two thousand word signal, including a message from President Theodore Roosevelt, to the station at Glace Bay, Canada to be forwarded to Poldhu, England, but due to the signal’s strength, it is received directly by England, becoming the first transatlantic radio signal to be transmitted eastward.
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technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things.

The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

What about the claim that Internet access is or should be a civil right? The same reasoning above can be applied here — Internet access is always just a tool for obtaining something else more important — though the argument that it is a civil right is, I concede, a stronger one than that it is a human right. Civil rights, after all, are different from human rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings.

Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection — without pretending that access itself is such a right.

- “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right” by Vinton G. Cerf, January 4, 2012.
First published by The New York Times.

After rounding the bases through girls, black girls, white girls to black girls, vegans and even Wookies, The “Sh*t [People] Say” meme finally makes its way to the world of comic books, with predictable and fairly on point results. If you’ve ever spent any significant amount of time in a comic shop or a superhero comics message board, you’ve probably heard the vast majority of these at least once, possibly more, possibly out of your own mouth.

Art

• Harry Potter Retro Travel Posters
• Simpsons Movie Parody Posters
• Painting John Carter
• “Tyrant of the Salvage Yards” by Andrew Chase is a T-Rex built of scrap metal.

Comics

• News: DC Comics announced “Justice League No. 1″ was the best-selling comic book published in 2011 based on total sales
• Alan Moore hangs out with V for Vendetta-masked Occupy protesters
• Comics store zones in on Internet success

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