We Got Problems?

"Things Are In The Saddle And Ride Mankind" - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

"Houston, we've had a problem" - Commander James Lovell,
Apollo 13, April 13, 1970

A list of idiosyncratic and partial answers:

Problem: Machines Do What You Command, Not What You Intend

The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost and presumed destroyed when it shot within 35 miles (57 kilometers) of the Martian surface as controllers were attempting to put it into orbit. At that altitude, the craft -- which was traveling at least 10,000 mph -- would have been torn apart in the planet's atmosphere. The minimum survivable altitude was about 53 miles (85 kilometers), mission operators said, while the original target altitude was about 125 miles (200 kilometers).

The peer review preliminary findings indicate that one team used English units (e.g., inches, feet and pounds) while the other used metric units for a key spacecraft operation. This information was critical to the maneuvers required to place the spacecraft in the proper Mars orbit. Mars Climate Orbiter

The Internet Connects Us Together, Therefore My Machine Knows Your Address

Problem: You've Got Mail!

White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly By John Markoff. New York Times, July 18, 2003.
In the past, to tell President Bush — or at least those assigned to read his mail — what was on your mind it was necessary only to sit down at a personal computer connected to the Internet and dash off a note to president@whitehouse.gov.
Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it.
Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman, described the system as an "enhancement" intended to improve communications. He called it a "work in progress," and advised members of the public who had sensitive or personal matters to bring up with President Bush to use traditional methods of communications, like a letter on paper, a fax or a phone call.
He said the White House, which gets about 15,000 electronic messages each day, had designed the new system during the last nine months in partnership with a private firm that he would not identify.

The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? By Matt Richtel. New York Times, July 6, 2003
Mr. Lax, a 44-year-old venture capitalist, is sitting in a conference for telecommunications executives at a hotel near Los Angeles, but he is not all here. Out of one ear, he listens to a live presentation about cable television technology; simultaneously, he surfs the Net on a laptop with a wireless connection, while occasionally checking his mobile device — part phone, part pager and part Internet gadget — for e-mail.
Some people who are persistently wired say it is not uncommon for them to be sitting in a meeting and using a hand-held device to exchange instant messages surreptitiously — with someone in the same meeting. Others may be sitting at a desk and engaging in conversation on two phones, one at each ear. At social events, or in the grandstand at their children's soccer games, they read news feeds on mobile devices instead of chatting with actual human beings.
These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. — online compulsive disorder.
Dr. Hallowell and John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard and a psychiatrist with an expertise in attention deficit disorder, are among a growing number of physicians and sociologists who are assessing how technology affects attention span, creativity and focus.

In the Lecture Hall, A Geek Chorus by Lisa Guernsey, New York Times, July 24, 2003
"At the University of Maryland, it started as an innocent question posed in an e-mail message to those attending WebShop, a three-week lecture series about the Internet."
"Over the past year, as wireless networks have been introduced in hotels, university auditoriums and conference halls, people with laptops have realized that they do not have to sit idly during the presentations. Some people, of course, ignore speakers entirely by surfing the Web or checking their e-mail - a practice that has led some lecturers to plead for connectionless auditoriums or bans on laptop use."
"At high-tech conferences where everyone is already wired to the gills with BlackBerry pagers and cellphones and can cope easily with constant connectedness and streaming information, the concept of multitrack communication channels almost seems matter-of-course."

Anybody Can Put Anything On The Web, Therefore Your Children Can Find Pornography

Solution: Our Software Will Save Us

"Upon discovering that library patrons, including minors, regularly search the Internet for pornography and expose others to pornographic images by leaving them displayed on Internet terminals or printed at library printers, Congress enacted the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which forbids public libraries to receive federal assistance for Internet access unless they install software to block obscene or pornographic images and to prevent minors from accessing material harmful to them." Supreme Court of the United States, June 23, 2003.

"If, on the request of an adult user, a librarian will unblock filtered material or disable the Internet software filter without significant delay, there is little to this case" Justice Kennedy, concurring

The decision turns on the capability of IT software...

"We therefore have to take the statute on the understanding that adults will be denied access to a substantial amount of nonobscene material harmful to children but lawful for adult examination, and a substantial quantity of text and pictures harmful to no one."
"Instead, the Government's funding conditions engage in overkill to a degree illustrated by their refusal to trust even a library's staff with an unblocked terminal, one to which the adult public itself has no access." Justice Souter, dissenting

"Rather than allowing local decisionmakers to tailor their responses to local problems, CIPA operates as a blunt nationwide restraint on adult access to an enormous amount of valuable information that individual librarians cannot possibly review. Most of that information is constitutionally protected speech. In my view, this restraint is unconstitutional." Justice Stevens, dissenting

"He cited a number of cases in which filters have blocked inoffensive information because search terms set off the protective software, including references to the poet Anne Sexton, Super Bowl XXX and Dick Armey, the former House majority leader." Librarians Size Up Internet Filter Law's Impact New York Times, June 24, 2003

"Critics complain that the words triggering many filters cause the programs to block legitimate sites about, for example, breast cancer...A list of such words can be surprising to the uninitiated: interracial, shower, toilet, pregnant, toys, underage, puffy, latex, teen, free, lolita, watersports." New York Times, Sunday, July 6, 2003

"Don't bother trying to find 'Toppenish' on the Internet using filtered computers in the Yakima Valley Regional Library System - even at the library in Toppenish. Bess, a widely used anti-pornography filter installed on some of the regional library's terminals, block the town's name as a search term as it zeros in on the fourth through eighth letters." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Monday July 7, 2003

Enough Time For Internet Chat, But Not Enough Time For Small Talk

Result: Bowling Alone, But Our Aim Is Improved

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures...Putnam shows how changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women's roles and other factors have contributed to this decline.

"The more time people spend using the Internet the more they lose contact with their social environment. This effect is noticeable even with just 2-5 Internet hours/week, and it rises substantially for those spending more than 10 hours/week, of whom up to 15 percent report a decrease in social activities." Internet and Society Normal Nie and Lutz Erbring, Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, February 17, 2000

"The three experiments described so far indicated that video-game playing enhances the capacity of visual attention and its spatial distribution. We next examined the temporal characteristics of visual attention and asked whether the pressure to act rapidly on several visual items, which is inherent to most action games, alters the ability to process items over time, particularly the ability to avoid 'bottlenecks' of attention that often occur in temporal processing."

By forcing players to simultaneously juggle a number of varied tasks (detect new enemies, track existing enemies and avoid getting hurt, among others), action-video-game playing pushes the limits of three rather different aspects of visual attention. It leads to detectable effects on new tasks and at untrained locations after only 10 days of training. Therefore, although video-game playing may seem to be rather mindless, it is capable of radically altering visual attentional processing. Action video game modifies visual selective attention by C.S. Green & D. Bavelier, Nature 423, 534 - 537 (29 May 2003)

"When an accountant names Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million in the World Series of Poker last May...Everyone wanted to know how a man who had never before sat down at a tournament table could clean out so many skilled professionals...Mr. Moneymaker may never have been in the same room as other players in a tournament of Texas hold'em poker, but he had played extensively online, where the game is faster but the money is just as real...Many players hone their craft with simulation software that allows them to test strategies by playing out thousands or even millions of hands. The New Card Shark by Peter Wayner, New York Times, July 10, 2003

The Internet Gives Us Digital Identities

Result: Find Love, Become A Mutant, Get Publicized, Spied Upon, etc.

"Of the 120 men she traded messages with online in her first four months of Internet dating, Kristen Costello, 33, talked to 20 on the telephone at least once and met 11 in person. Of those, Ms. Costello dated four several times before realizing she had not found the one."

"Ms. Costello, a fourth-grade teacher in Florham Park, N.J., remains convinced that the chances of finding her life partner are better online than off."

"Online dating, once viewed as a refuge for the socially inept and as a faintly disrespectable way to meet other people, is rapidly becoming a fixture of single life for adults of all ages, backgrounds and interests." Online Dating Sheds Its Stigma as Losers.com by Amy Harmon, New York Times, June 29, 2003.

"He is an ugly mutant, prideful and lewd. The spectacle of his wealth is surpassed by the vulgarity of his tongue. He sexually accosts strangers - be they femail, male or neuter - and is renowned for his undying fetish for feet."

"The deacon does not physically exist, of course. In the year 2003, at the blue-collar end of Madison, Wis., he is a struggling, frustrated 27-year-old computer repairman called Richard L. Stenlund."

"Most are merely playing a game, reaching for intermitten diversion. But for some players, these virtual worlds known as massively multiplayer games - filled with real friendships, real love affairs, real jealousies, real hatreds, real esteem - are almost as important as that world of bills in the mail, office politics, personal pain and unfulfilled dreams."

"Rick Stenlund is one of those players." Voyager to a Strange Planet by Seth Schiesel, New York Times, June 12, 2003

"William Sheehan does not like the police. He expresses his views about what he calls police corruption in Washington State on his Web site, where he also posts lists of police officers' addresses, home phone numbers and Social Security numbers."

"State officials say those postings expose officers and their families to danger and invite identity theft. But neither litigation nor legislation has stopped Mr. Sheehan, who promises to expand his site to include every police and corrections officer in the state by the end of the year."

"The law generally draws no distinction between information that is nominally public but hard to obtain and information that can be fetched with an Internet search engine and a few keystrokes." A web site causes unease in police by Adam Liptak, New York Times, July 12, 2003

UW Disturbance Task Force Photos: In the early morning hours of Sunday, September 28th, a riot occurred at NE 47th St and 18 Ave NE, on Greek Row of the University of Washington. Damaged during the incident were private cars, several police cars, a fire hydrant and street signs. Several robberies also occurred as well as fist fights and rock throwing. The Seattle Police Department is looking for videos and/or photographs of the above incidents. If you were a victim or a witness that has yet to contact the Seattle Police, please call the Tip Line at (206) 233-2666. http://www.cityofseattle.net/police/uwtaskforce/

Who is in jail in Snohomish county?    http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/jail/Reports/daily_jail_register.htm

"Corporate executives are becoming increasingly aggressive about spying on their employees, and with good reason: now, in addition to job shirkers and office-supply thieves, they have to worry about being held accountable for the misconduct of their subordinates."

"As of 2001, more than a third of all American workers with access to computers, or 14 million in all, were being monitored in one way or another..."

"A growing band of specialists in a field called Human-resource forensics are using the latest technology to record everything from the Web sites employees visit to the files they delete to the data they download..."

"The key, says Arthur G. Tisi, chief executive of atthought.com, a technology-services company in Tarrytown, N.Y., is being consistent and 'maintaining a moral compass'." New Kind of Snooping Arrives at the Office By Marci Alboher Nusbaum, New York Times, July 13, 2003