Sharing Research Over YouTube: Good Idea?

Wired Science posted an article today* about ongoing dissertation (doctoral) research in developing gesture based systems for guiding aircraft. Wired created their article in great part from an MIT news release from 2 days ago. Content issues aside (subject for another day) there are fascinating cultural issues inherent to these releases.

The PhD candidate conducting much of the research (Yale Song) posted a YouTube video describing his work (all these secondary links can be reached from the primary Wired article). What I find interesting is the manner he chose to go public - that he chose to Really Go Public via YouTube. Traditionally, academic doctoral research focuses dissemination on conferences and journals for other academics.

There are good reasons for this tradition. First, the details of computing and engineering doctoral research are often highly technical and most easily understood by one's academic peers. As it should be: obtaining a PhD is supposed to involve breaking new ground and exploring innovation. Meeting this expectation means you have to delve deep deep deep. If you are a researcher, you no doubt have experienced the rapid glazing over of eyes when you start to explain nuances of your work to a lay audience. Even a well educated lay audience. It takes skill and practice (lots of practice) to share cutting edge technical research with those inside your field, let alone those outside your field. Not for the faint of heart.

Second, the academic reward system values publications at journals and conferences, in some cases books, but almost never public media. Again, this makes sense: it is from peers who are well versed in your subject matter that you can receive informed critique, feedback and support. A strong argument can be made that traditional media is often ill equipped to deal with cutting edge technical research. I'm sure you don't need me to show you recent examples of mangled and inaccurate reporting of scientific research in the popular media.

However, we know that people engage with audio - visual information more readily than they do with text alone. (Academics may be the exception - we DO love to read :)  It seems only natural that we find ways to take advantage of non-traditional dissemination venues for research - doesn't it? 

Thus, I was both delighted, surprised, yet not surprised to see a doctoral student online very clearly explaining his work. Part of me wonders: why is he doing it? I can't imagine he gains any official value added for his CV (aka "resume"). Another part of me concludes: it is only natural for the current generation of up and coming researchers to break out and add YouTube videos to their professional portfolio. Video can be an incredibly effective communication medium.

Yet another part of me suggests: Researchers shouldn't have to confine themselves to traditional dissemination outlets and/or wait until they are well established to share their work with the greater public. Should they? There are so many potential benefits of intelligently sharing cutting edge research with the greater public.  Why aren't more people doing it?


*Wired Science article

Pattern Matching and Information Discovery in Professional Journalism

My day might have been called Tangled in Twitter. It morphed into a Recursion  that spiraled inwards but then morphed again, this time into clusters and patterns that caused seemingly unrelated events to make a lot of sense. In some ways a typical day, but in the end, not really. Jonathan Stray, a journalist at the Associated Press (see my last post if you want a full introduction), is part of a team working to use search engine technology to cluster and categorize "big nasty document sets" such that information emerges that would probably otherwise never have been found. When you are dealing with millions of data points, you could use some algorithmic help.

Tonight a light bulb went off in my head  about the important social potential of computationally driven pattern matching when applied to enormous linguistic data sets. Without my own almost overwhelming set of seemingly unrelated activities today, I don't know if I would have made the connection quite so solidly. So I'll fill you in. I'll also point out the globally significant ways computing is starting to be used in Journalism and where Artificial Intelligence could be used in the future if people like Jonathan keep doing what they are doing.

It all starts with data points. Lots and lots and lots of data that initially seem unrelated. My day's data points included: a morning Skype call that left my brain a bit sore; literally minutes later, before I could even make it  5 feet to the caffeine, an unplanned Skype call from a colleague who wanted to discuss project paperwork issues (groan); a tear up and down the freeway to run an important errand; within seconds of walking in the door a request for another unscheduled Skype call to discuss, among other things, "bandwidth issues" (in retrospect I find this really amusing); a round of phone calls to a clinic about a topic I have been trying to make sense of for 6 weeks; the next unscheduled Skype call; at one point I got annoyed at Twitter for being dense and impenetrable when I least wanted it to be; woven around all of this I was getting lost in journalism-related website after website, trying to figure out where all the behind the scenes computing technology was located, what it was doing and how it was constructed (that was fun). Last but not least this evening I had yet another mind stretching Skype call, this time to Africa, so part of the day was spent on logistical planning for that.

The cool moment, when the patterns of my day fell into place, came in the evening after I bailed for a while, went to a yoga class and worked on getting my legs around behind my head (very non cognitive, thus freeing the mind up to become receptive to new things). I came home and listened to a recording of Jonathan giving a talk about the infinite number of ways in which documents (with all their text data) can be arranged; he reminded his audience that the algorithm we choose for any analysis is based upon preconceptions we hold about the end results;  those preconceptions impose a framework which in turn affect the results. Stop and think about that for a few minutes.

[pause...]

The group Jonathan works with isn't concerned about my preconceptions, personal bandwidth or discoveries about how I allocate my time, who I choose to allocate it to, and what communication methods I use. Yet thinking about the personal internal "algorithms"  I use to structure my actions and make my choices, as well as what I bring to that analysis, led to a mental reorganization of my day. The light bulb turned fully on after I listened to Jonathan's talk (filled with absolutely nifty visuals of course) about mining information from Iraq and Afghanistan war logs for previously unknown patterns of casualties - and other information, really, you just have to watch the video - AND after I thought about the conversation we had a few days ago about the potential of Artificial Intelligence to aid the process of rapid discovery and dissemination of information to the public.

Jonathan is active in the machine learning and semantic web communities. Where he finds the time to read all the reports he reads, I don't know, but he follows the latest advances from academia, industry and the government, including DARPA reports (which, if you have read any official government reports, you know are sometimes tortuous). He follows twitter feeds, open publications by the intelligence community, reports and advances in the fields of law and finance. Well, I guess the ability to suck up and absorb information like an industrial vacuum cleaner is part of what makes a successful journalist. But it makes even more sense to me now why a computer scientist/journalist would see the enormous potential in harnessing AI to mine for information, scrape all the social media outlets, suck up data in real time and dynamically transform it into useful public information.

This is what Jonathan wants to do more of in Journalism. Get those tech savvy journalists and set them to work analyzing the gobs and gobs (my word choice) of data out there that has been (and is being) collected - data that is only going to increase exponentially. And why not? Suddenly this whole idea of "computational journalism" which two months ago seemed a puzzling term makes a whole lot of sense. As I see it,  incorporating AI into document analysis is a logical, practical and viable way to go. For example, what do you think an artificial neural network might make of some of these data sets?


The video you must watch that shows clustering at work on big nasty document sets (and explains how it works too).

Journalism Meets Computing - In A Big Way

"You should go talk to that guy over there, Jonathan Stray, he is really interesting". That was all I needed to hear to set my feet zipping across the room where I plunked myself down on the floor next to Jonathan and, telling him he came highly recommended, asked if I could interview him for my blog. A momentary look of surprise crossed his face but he said yes. That was in March, during the Interdisciplinary Computing meeting I wrote about. Computational journalism was a hot topic and my source had told me Jonathan was a computer scientist who had entered the field of journalism. Cool. Very cool. So with little ado, we exchanged contact information and I happily planned for our conversation. We had that conversation a few days ago. Surprises awaited me.

I had a fairly standard set of  "get to know you" questions lined up until I started doing a little background investigation. I tossed out my original questions. I hadn't really paid attention to the affiliation on his name badge, but at some point it dawned on me (duh) that "ap" stood for Associated Press. Small moment of anxiety as I realized I had asked a Journalist (note the capital J) if I could interview him. I got over it. I started reading Jonathan's blog (link at end of this post) and realized this guy really is a computer scientist too. On one end of the spectrum he writes about such things as experimenting with putting his iPhone in the freezer to reset the WiFi (it worked - sort of) complete with technical explanation. I was right with him through the whole fascinating story. How often does someone write well enough to suck you into wanting to know the nitty gritty details of how to ice a phone? On the other hand, Jonathan also writes in his blog about about some pretty deep and serious cultural issues, describing what he sees so realistically that is almost creepy. I can't shake off one entry from Jakarta that juxtaposed prostitutes, people digging through garbage and blow dart sellers (blow dart sellers???) against fast paced sales of skin whitening creme by those (presumably with income) who wish they were White. I have traveled a lot, yet I was still stopped in my tracks several times by the implications of Jonathan's blog entries.

I guess I neglected to mention that Jonathan oversees a group of developers (yes, as in computer programming developers) at the AP who produce "interactives". I went and took a look and found the AP Economic Stress Index for the US. I was able to zero right in on San Diego County. This month, the Overall Stress Index is 13.79, the Unemployment Rate is 10.2% (ow!), Foreclosure Rate is 2.2% and the Bankruptcy Rate is 1.84%. At least it is worse in Los Angeles: Stress Index is 15.93%. The oveall rate in California is 16.9%. The only state to have it worse is Nevada, at a crushing stress index of 20.67%.

You can zoom all around the country and check out what is going on back to 2007 when the recession began. There is information to explain what it all means if you want to read it. What a way to tell a story.

How did this all come to be? 

It all started out like a "typical" computer kid story: the movie Tron was a pivotal moment, reading computer graphics textbooks in high school for fun, getting a degree in CS and Physics....an MS in CS...a developer job at Adobe....challenging, cutting edge technological work. Good money, good hours, good exposure.

Then Jonathan took some time off and went backpacking in Asia. He described to me that it seemed an "almost impossibly different reality" - how could such different cultures exist on the same planet? He started writing.

Came back to Adobe...then went backpacking overseas again. More writing ensued. It turned out that at the time, at the University of Hong Kong Rebecca MacKinnon was on the journalism faculty studying global online media policy, specifically, Chinese censorship of the Internet. That was too good to pass up: Jonathan enrolled in an MA program.

Cultural study, writing and developing information for the public good, technology.....

As if on cue, a job almost tailor made for him appeared at the Associated Press. What does Jonathan like best about his job?   The job requires he be right on the edge of what is possible in the constant evolution of technology and journalism.

There is a lot more to say about this. So I'm going to pause here, and pick up in the next post. Even if I did not feel compelled to share more about what I learned from speaking with Jonathan about the integration of computing and journalism, he himself said something that tells me I must. Sound bites. We live in a world of soundbites and too often all we get are soundbites. Not the full story. So... to be continued.

Jonathan Stray's Personal Blog

Interdisciplinary Computing Meeting Number 2: Day 1, Part 1

Back in January I reported on a meeting on Interdisciplinary Computing I attended in San Diego. I am at a followup meeting in Tucson - we had our first jam packed mind stretching day today.

The group of people attending this meeting is extremely diverse which makes things interesting. We started off the day with an entire table full of people involved with creating a new area called computational journalism, and we have quite a few people at the intersection of physics and computer science. There are other interdisciplinary areas represented here as well, but perhaps one of most interesting observations I made today is that we have such a strong contingent from the arts and humanities.This has injected some fascinating perspectives into the conversation. They all soon split up and spread around, but it was impressive to walk in the door and see all the journalists and media people! I new this was going to get interesting.

We covered a lot of ground. Here are a few of the highlights from today - things that really jumped out at me:

We had several breakout sessions to discuss topics including exemplars of Interdisciplinary Computing (IC), lessons learned, what is it that motivates faculty (and industry professionals as well) to pursue IC, and given what we revealed among ourselves, what are effective supports for faculty to pursue IC? Action Items in other words.

One of the surprises for me right off the bat, was to learn that the field of Journalism (not "Computational Journalism", but "Journalism") is currently having serious discussions within the community about how to define themselves. Now, in CS, we have been having this discussion for a long time and the discussion evolves about as fast as the field. But Journalism - I would not have guessed. It is not a new field; it was an eye opener for me, and others I believe, to hear that another field is wrestling with the same question: "what does it mean to be a journalist?" ("what does it mean to be a computer scientist?"). There is something to be learned from this shared definitional wrestling for meaning.

After pondering the issue all day I asked a question about it at our end of afternoon discussion. The most interesting part of the response, for me, was when one of the faculty heavily involved in developing the area of computational journalism opined that this common "problem" was one of the reasons he felt his field and computer science were able to work together. Because (I'm paraphrasing here) both fields are working to define an identity (or redefine, or refine, choose your pov), they are able to come together and form something new and original. I took that to mean there was a fluidity and flexibility supporting interdisciplinary collaboration, in part because the disciplinary boundaries were not so rigid; those in each field who were interested in IC used the identity challenge as an opportunity to break new ground.

In another breakout session (discussing what motivates the faculty who are already doing IC) the table I was sitting at spoke about how for many people "it is in our blood" and those people will do IC whether they are new faculty, established faculty or somewhere in between. Our table at least, had universal agreement on this point, countering the point I have heard (and others have often made) that the people who do IC are either 1) those who are brand new and have nothing to lose - i.e. they want to break new ground and are full of enthusiasm or 2) those who are secure in tenured positions and feel that it is now "safe" to pursue this passion.

It was interesting to hear a table full of people focus not on funding as a primary motivator (although everyone agrees that funding is needed and critical) but on personality - passion, interest, determination, being a maverick (someone tossed out that phrase). It was nice, I have to admit, to be surrounded by a table full of people who felt as I do, that it is "in our blood" (I was not the one who popped out with that phrase but it certainly feels accurate to me).

A question of course comes from this last point: how to support those who want to pursue IC but who are not in either of the three categories: new and fearless, established and "safe", or ordained by virtue of personality. How to support those who will perform IC given an conducive environment? Because it became clear to all of us I would hazard to say, that a conducive supportive environment is absolutely vital for achieving critical mass and developing self sustaining IC initiatives and programs.

These are some of the strong impressions that lept out at me today as I left the indoors for the first time at 5:30 pm to unwind some kinks in the outdoor hotel pool. A good place to let things soak. In my next post, tomorrow hopefully, I'll talk about some of the actionable ideas we came up with.

WikiLeaks will profoundly affect Computing in 2011

Happy New Year everyone.

In reading and listening to many of the online outlets discussing the significant stories in science and technology for 2010, WikiLeaks often comes up. The interesting issue for everyone, but especially those of us in the computing field, is the debate about whether WikiLeaks is a positive force in society or a destructive one. Your answer to this question flavors your opinion about the aggressive moves the US and others are taking against WikiLeaks personnel and equipment. Just today, the FBI in the US seized servers in the state of Texas after being led to them by IP information provided by Paypal who was not happy about being attacked.

The link I provide above for WikiLeaks may cease to exist at any time after I post this online. That says something.

WikiLeaks states on its site:

"WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organization dedicated to bringing important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for independent sources around the world to leak information to our journalists. We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources anonymous, thus providing a universal way for the revealing of suppressed and censored injustices."

Do you agree? With their mission? Their tactics? Their results? Is their behavior a new Internet driven way to expose and fight injustice? Many people believe so and believe that they operate in the only way that they can, and that the strong reactions against them just prove that point. They point to the benefits of their actions in forcing discussion and consideration of topics that might otherwise be pushed to the side.

But many global governments do not agree at all. They view WikiLeaks as a threat to national security and in some cases have even called them terrorists. How much of their reactions are a knee jerk reaction to having communication control wrested from them in a new way?  How much is well founded anger based upon sensitive secrets and political maneuvers that we probably should not know? After all, "leaking" news is not a new phenomenon. In some cases the leaks are planned and orchestrated by governments. But not always.

The jury is out on this one. I confess I do not yet have a well formed opinion. This is a complicated subject. It is so heavily political that it his hard to untangle what data should be used for forming a judgement of the merits of WikiLeaks.  There are multiple layers of WikiLeaks actions, the subsequent counter actions of other entities, and the subsequent re-actions by WikiLeaks or its independent supporters to being attacked virtually and through legal processes. When a story goes viral on the Internet, even when confined to a specific community, then the cats are out of the bag and can't be put back in.

This is an unfolding story that will have important repercussions in 2011 for social issues in technology and computing. Because whatever happens to WikiLeaks will continue to have a strong outward ripple effect - how will other reporting agencies respond? With vigor, or with fear? Will they report more, and ever deeply into investigative journalism using the power of the Internet or will they self censor themselves?

I have not followed the leaks and societal repercussions enough to have formed an opinion about whether they are in fact spurious, significant, trivial, or just unclear because of all the behind the scenes machinations of governments. For example, I do recall that the US government was embarrassed by having some information revealed about how members of the Obama administration supposedly felt in private about other world leaders. Is this trivial? Who cares if the Secretary of State or the President (or someone else at a similar level) thinks that world leader so and so is a dork (I'm making that word up). We all hold private opinions of people we treat with respect because we feel we must. But...is the revelation significant because people lose face in the global community where so much goes on behind closed doors and the public never knows about it until years later when an ex politician writes a memoir? (Sometimes thoughtful and fascinating and sometimes a self serving sleep inducing bore)

Computing technology has fueled this whole new take on the meaning and implications of free speech. Where to draw the lines and how to determine them?

Talk about crossing disciplines....

So I am convinced that some of the longest and more profound societal impacts will be outgrowths of the WikiLeaks events going on today. This is a story that will ripple outwards across the global pond in unforeseen ways.

I wish I could fast forward 12 months to this time next year and see what has happened. I dare to predict that the results on computing use will be profound, whether the average citizen is aware of it or not.

I hope 2011 is a peaceful and happy year for everyone and that you focus on what is most important in your life, not just what is in front of your face at any given moment.

Journalists and Coders Combine Forces

Right after my last somewhat downbeat post about the possible  future of Skype, I ran across this post that lifted my spirits. This looks like collaboration in a new and possibly very fertile way. It is supported in part by the Mozilla Foundation which really caught my attention:

"Hacks/Hackers, Mozilla, the Medill School of Journalism, The Media Consortium and others are teaming up to develop a solid six-week online curriculum that will benefit both "hacks" and hackers (that's journalists & programmers, in plain English). Each week the course will focus on a different topic, and each week the participants will be joined by a different subject-matter expert (or two) from the field of news innovation. The course readings, online participation, and a seminar are expected to require roughly 4-6 hours per week."


The full story is here.