The Cost Of Your Privacy - Not Even 30 Silver Coins

Most people don't like to think about it - privacy that is.  They hope (or pretend) that it still exists in this electronic age.  But every day companies and governments learn more about us - often with us willingly supplying the information.

How did it happen that we so freely give up our most private details?  Although we've always given up bits and pieces of it whenever we applied for credit or purchased something online, large scale harvesting of private data didn't begin until Google offered Gmail to the public.  I bet most people, when they signed up for a gmail account, didn't realize that they made a pact with the devil: in exchange for free use of its service, they gave Google permission to rifle through all received or sent emails - ostensibly only to present "targeted" advertising in the margins of a personalized gmail web page.  Subsequently, Google went a step further and developed "Chrome" - a free browser whose use is predicated on its users agreeing to let Google snoop on the user's browsing habits.  Again, most people just hear from their friends how fast Chrome is...they don't know that they're agreeing to have Google harvest certain browsing-related information.  But who cares, right?  After all, Google promises to "do no evil".

Google's successes and the continued commoditization of computer hardware have led other software & hardware companies to join the bandwagon.  Foremost among them being Apple.  The company that, in 1984, made a big marketing splash by warning us of an Orwellian future where "Big Brother" is watching everything we do - has now morphed into what it warned us against.  Its iTunes store has always held our music related preferences and credit card information, but with the advent of the iPhone and iPad, Apple's wealth of information about us has increased exponentially: it now knows what types of applications we like, what books and magazines we read, how much time we spend on the web - heck, it even knows where we are at every moment in time (see the recent revelation that the iPhone and Google's Android kept the phone's latitude/longitude information in a local cache that was occasionally forwarded to their company's respective servers).  And now Apple wants you to keep your emails, calendars, contacts, and all other manner of data on its "iCloud" servers.  I'm guessing that you won't get an option to encrypt that data either.  After all, that would make it difficult for Apple to provide you with the benefits of "targeted advertisement".

The vast majority of the population (including some technically savvy people I count as friends) doesn't know of this data harvesting - those that know either don't care about this loss of privacy or gain from it.

Should we be worried?  I think so.  When I signed up for my gmail account, I was fully aware of the implications.  I optimistically bought into Google's "Do No Evil" mantra.  I think maybe I was naive.  Google is a corporation - its only obligation is to make money for its shareholders.  "Do No Evil" is no assurance that some day the needs/desires of the investors won't be put before the need for privacy of its customers.  More disturbingly yet, Apple is now hoping that we keep our entire digital life on their servers.  The company will make it easy and cheap.  It'll extol the convenience of the service; it'll offer much of the service for free - all in an effort to become *the* hub for our online information...the harvesting of this data can't be far behind.

Big Brother Is Watching

Will Smartphones Destroy the Web?

I started writing this blog early last year and never finished it.  Today I saw the draft and thought it was even more appropriate today than last year...

Today's smartphones are amazing devices: aside from making phone calls and texting, they let us play games and surf the web at ever increasing speeds. So, what's not to love?

The danger appears in a feature that is becoming ubiquitous in smartphones: apps and app stores. Huh? How could those tremendously useful little applications found on the iPhone, Droid, etc. threaten the web? Quite simply: by existing.

Before the arrival of the iPhone, the Web blossomed into an indispensable information tool to which everyone with a Web browser had access. During this incredibly fruitful time, Web standards ruled and they became more and more sophisticated as the needs of the users of the Web and the applications they desired grew more demanding. Since standards underpinned everything, browsers continued to be able to support users. The Web ecosystem was flourishing.

But now more and more developers are foregoing developing their applications for the web.  Lured by the highly sophisticated but platform-specific APIs offered by cellphone manufacturers, they are spending their time and resources developing "apps".  Since apps do not work across platforms, mobile phone vendors achieve greater and greater "lock-in" as their app stores (and user dependence on them) grow.  Balkanization.  Suddenly only Apple users can access some information - information that used to be accessible to anyone with a Web browser.

Ergo: apps destroy the promise of the Web: access to information by all.

Does Technology Make Us Blind To News?

On my way home yesterday, I caught the tail end of a radio piece on the demise of the physical newspaper: online news was to eclipse the traditional format.  An interesting comment was made: online news providers have begun customizing their news towards what they think their audience wants to read.  At first blush one might think "well, that's great!  More of what interests me and less of what doesn't!".  The interviewee in the radio piece, who worked for a physical newspaper, pointed out how this can lead to an under-informed public.  I thought that was a very good point!  Think about it: if you're just interested in sports and technology and your online news provider knows that about you (either directly via forms you filled out or indirectly via your click-through pattern on previous visits to the site), then the news provider might begin to show you just those types of stories - since it leads to you spending more time at the site...which leads to more advertising dollars.  The downside is that you may begin to miss out on other important news or cultural events.  In a physical paper, being totally "uncustomized", you get to see everything - even if it doesn't interest you: so even if you're just interested in the sports section, you might still catch a glimpse of the latest political wrangling or invasion or....

This problem isn't unique to the Web.  It's not just the evil corporations who are withholding news from us in order to maximize their profits - we, ourselves are using technology to isolate ourselves from the 'unpleasantness' of the real world.  On cable we have hundreds of channels to choose from - we usually surf to the ones that entertain us the most; on the web most of us have customized home pages on yahoo or google - what do we customize them with?  Maybe a sports section, a technology section, the weather?  How many of us include multiple sections on world or US news?  The arts, etc.?

In essence, technology is making us all into something akin to idiot savants: our depth of knowledge in the areas that interest us is becoming ever greater - while our knowledge of other areas is becoming ever more shallow.

Super Heroes - East and West

As a kid, I was a big comic book fan.  Although I read Superman, Spiderman, The Green Lantern, and The Fantastic Four, my favorite was always Batman.  I guess I could identify better with this "normal" guy who made himself a super hero through wit and hard work rather than via a gift from nature or accident.

In adulthood, I didn't continue this hobby.  Taking their place were science fiction & fantasy movies,super hero films...and Kung Fu flicks.  Aside from Batman, the martial arts movies became - and still are - some of my favorites.  Recently I wondered why.  I came to the conclusion that I liked to watch Kung Fu movies for the same reason I enjoyed Batman: the heroes in all cases were men (or women) who, through years of training and hard work, became masters - heroes.  They achieved great things entirely on their own.

As far as I know, in the West (e.g. the US) there is far more interest in super heroes of the "accidental/environmental" kind than there is in the "hard working but human" kind - at least judging by the available movie and TV shows.  In Asia  (e.g. China), there appears to be far more interest in the "hard working but human" kind - at least judging by the movies that come from there, the few I've seen on TV while visiting China, and my wife's disinterest in movies involving the other kind of heroes.

Does this difference in preference say something about the two cultures?  Does the idea that Westerners prefer super heroes who got their powers through accident (e.g. "Hulk", "Spiderman", etc.) or by nature ("Superman", "Heroes", etc.) suggest that Westerners believe that everything is possible (a good quality) or that they expect/hope things to happen "for free" (not needing to work for things - a bad quality).  Conversely, do Chinese believe that everything is possible with enough hard work (a great attitude) or do they lack the confidence to say "everything is possible"?  I don't have an answer - but I think it's a neat lens through which to view the two cultures.

Another difference between east and west is the depiction of the super heroes' personality.  Whereas the Eastern kung fu master is almost always serene and wise, western super heroes are often just like you or I - they have complex lives that they cannot always cope with.  Having to constantly hide their identities (another difference with heroes from the east) definitely causes them stress.

Where Is The Cool Video Eyewear?

The cell phone is increasingly becoming the center of our digital universe: we use it not only to communicate with one another, but also to surf the web and consume audio and, increasingly, video media.  We appear to be accepting and working around its inherent physical limitations: screen size and poor audio.  But do we have to?

Even a few decades ago, researchers played with the notion of head-mounted displays (HMD) - displays that were mounted on the head (initially via ugly helmets, later with less bulky visors/glasses) and which could project images directly in front of its user's eyes.  Despite gigantic leaps in miniaturization elsewhere in the electronic industry, HMDs seemed to have never come into vogue.  I have always wondered why - because the idea, to me, is the path to the cell phone's future!

Imagine wearing a cool set of shades which wirelessly communicate (wireless HDMI, anyone?) with the cellphone in your pocket to provide either an augmented- or totally virtual-reality to your eyes - at an eye-popping resolution that could never be attained within the tiny physical dimensions of a cell phone screen.

One company, Vuzix, has been selling pretty good looking eyewear for a few years.  But it doesn't seem like it's terribly successful at it - the glasses haven't progressed much from when I last looked at them 5 years ago: the resolution has become reasonably acceptable (their high-end model provides 1024x768), but it still relies on unsightly wires to communicate with its video/audio source.  Has the industry progressed so little because of lack of demand?  Do people think such eyewear would just look too geeky or do they simply not see the potential?

Have you guys ever seen Layar?  It's an augmented reality application that I first encountered a couple years ago - it's pretty amazing: it uses your cell phone's built-in GPS and camera to show you, through the cell phone's screen a reality that has been "enhanced" with the information you'd like to see.  For example, one day I was standing in the middle of a street in Philadelphia when my daughter whined about being hungry.  I took out my iPhone and brought up the Layar application and asked it point out restaurants around me.  I simply held up the phone and looked at the screen.  As I swept in a 360-circle, the street scene in the phone showed little bubbles indicating where the restaurants were.  Very cool.  Layar can be configured with all sorts of location-based information.

Now imagine how cool it would be if you didn't have to pull out your cell phone?  If you were wearing glasses that always superimposed interesting information (where you configure what's interesting) in your field of view?  Initially, this could be Layar-style location-based information.  But in the not-to-distant future, this information could include facial recognition (no more embarrassing silence because you forgot the name of the person in front of you).  This is not science fiction stuff we're talking about - the technology is all there (the iPhoto application on the Mac can already go through my photo collection and connect it to previously identified faces).

I just wonder when someone will come up with the eyewear to enable all of this.

Longer School Year - A Followup With Links

I did a bit of searching and found an extensive study on the subject by the National Center for Time and Learning:

http://www.timeandlearning.org/databasefullreport2009.html

The study tracked 650 schools (both charter and public/district) that offered an expanded school day or year (on average these schools offered 25% more school time than the national average of 178 days/1100hrs) and found a statistically significant correlation between an expanded school time and student performance.  The full report, including detailed results can be found here:

http://www.timeandlearning.org/images/12.7.09FinalDatabaseReport.pdf

My daughter (she's a 7th grader in Millstone) also found a news article about Obama proposing a longer school year.  What's most interesting about the article is the table that lists the school years of other countries.

My daughter and I are now independently researching  states who have mandated a longer school year.  So far, she's found Kansas and Ohio.  Our goal is to look into whether these states have standardized tests and whether test scores show improvement after they have moved to the longer school year.  This might take a bit longer.  We'll let you know what we find.

An expanded school year may mean an increase in teacher salaries (the above report states that, on average, teacher salaries rose 14%; but the report also mentions that the proportion of schools in the study that were in economically depressed areas were higher than the national average.  To me, this means that teacher pay in those areas were also depressed - so the 14% pay increases seen in these schools may not reflect the increase a suburban school district such as ours would face).  But, again, our BOE just gave our teachers a 6% raise for really no reason I can discern other than a feeling by the union that teachers 'deserved it after not getting any increase the previous year' (never mind that inflation was near zero and there were no measured student performance improvements in the school district).  So if we decided to move towards an expanded school year, there should be significant wiggle room in salary negotiations.

On a related front, the Millstone Examiner published what I thought was an interesting letter by a teacher of 46 years.  The author's main thrust was that teachers should not solely be graded on the results of standardized tests as Christie seems to propose.  I actually agree with this teacher!  A better empirical way to assess a teacher's effectiveness is to measure the *progress* his students make relative to their academic history.  For instance, student A takes a test both at the beginning and end of 7th grade and improves his math score by 10%.  But in 5th and 6th grade math, his score improved 20% each year.  This is an indication that the 7th grade teacher is not teaching this student as well as expected.  If the other students in his class also show reduced improvements, the lack of effectiveness on the part of the teacher is confirmed.  This method of assessing teacher performance is beginning to be used in some schools across the country.

The author of the Examiner article also makes the point that fostering a 'culture of learning' is just as important, if not more so, than the teacher: if kids are around parents who don't place much importance on academics or if kids hang out with other kids who don't value education, then they themselves will value education less.  The author also found and admits that it's definitely true that K-12 schools don't adequately prepare kids for college: he found that almost 2/3 of the students who attend community college need to take remedial courses to bring them up to a college level!  If true, that's pathetic.  Parents wake up!  You're basically paying for your child's education twice: once through property taxes into the ineffective K-12 system, and then again in the form of an extra year or so of college tuition on remedial courses!

How About A Longer School Year?

Taking a step back from the budget, I want to return to the topic of how to improve the education of our children: have the various BOEs ever considered lengthening the school year?  I don't know if it's the panacea for all that ails our educational system, but we might want to consider it.  As you are no doubt aware, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that for 2009 the US once again ranks in the lower middle of the pack when it comes to reading and below average in math and science (for complete PISA results, see 2009 PISA Results).  And this is despite the US continuing to spend more per pupil than nearly any country on earth (secondary school per pupil spending) and despite the fact that US teachers are the highest paid on earth (for teacher average salaries by country see: Teacher Salaries By Country).

Given that many of the countries who outscore us on PISA appear to have longer school years, perhaps that is something that should be looked into?  Extending it to something like 200 days (as in Australia) or 220 days (as in Germany) should be possible without much additional cost to the township (in my simple view, teacher and most administrative positions are already paid for, so the main additional costs would be running the buses and keeping the building open).

Of course, in my mind, accountability and performance based pay should stand first and foremost in improving our children's education.  I find it pretty strange that a society which preaches capitalism and the power of the free market, should shield the members of the educational institution from its power.  In a free market, only the best teachers would educate our children - and at the lowest possible cost.