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Weiye Loh

Wi-Fi is killing trees, study finds | Crave | CNET UK - 0 views

crave.cnet.co.uk/...ing-trees-study-finds-50001681

Environment Wi-Fi Internet

shared by Weiye Loh on 27 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • The tree-loving folks of Dutch city Alphen aan den Rijn commissioned the study after finding abnormalities on trees that couldn't be explained by known viral or bacterial infections. Over the last five years, the study found that all deciduous trees in the western world are affected by radiation from mobile-phone networks and wireless LANs.
  • Over 70 per cent of trees in urban areas in the Netherlands are afflicted by Wi-Fi sickness, displaying significant variations in growth, and bleeding and fissures in their bark. That's compared with just 10 per cent showing symptoms five years ago. Meanwhile, trees in wooded areas remain happy and healthy, untroubled by wireless unwellness. 
Weiye Loh

Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From | Magazine - 0 views

m.wired.com/...1

Invention Cultural Industries Innovation

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Say the word “inventor” and most people think of a solitary genius toiling in a basement. But two ambitious new books on the history of innovation—by Steven Johnson and Kevin Kelly, both longtime wired contributors—argue that great discoveries typically spring not from individual minds but from the hive mind. In Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Johnson draws on seven centuries of scientific and technological progress, from Gutenberg to GPS, to show what sorts of environments nurture ingenuity. He finds that great creative milieus, whether MIT or Los Alamos, New York City or the World Wide Web, are like coral reefs—teeming, diverse colonies of creators who interact with and influence one another.
  • Seven centuries are an eyeblink in the scope of Kelly’s book, What Technology Wants, which looks back over some 50,000 years of history and peers nearly that far into the future. His argument is similarly sweeping: Technology, Kelly believes, can be seen as a sort of autonomous life-form, with intrinsic goals toward which it gropes over the course of its long development. Those goals, he says, are much like the tendencies of biological life, which over time diversifies, specializes, and (eventually) becomes more sentient.
  • We share a fascination with the long history of simultaneous invention: cases where several people come up with the same idea at almost exactly the same time. Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio—all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • It’s amazing that the myth of the lone genius has persisted for so long, since simultaneous invention has always been the norm, not the exception. Anthropologists have shown that the same inventions tended to crop up in prehistory at roughly similar times, in roughly the same order, among cultures on different continents that couldn’t possibly have contacted one another.
  • Also, there’s a related myth—that innovation comes primarily from the profit motive, from the competitive pressures of a market society. If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.
  • The musician Brian Eno invented a wonderful word to describe this phenomenon: scenius. We normally think of innovators as independent geniuses, but Eno’s point is that innovation comes from social scenes,from passionate and connected groups of people.
  • It turns out that the lone genius entrepreneur has always been a rarity—there’s far more innovation coming out of open, nonmarket networks than we tend to assume.
  • Really, we should think of ideas as connections,in our brains and among people. Ideas aren’t self-contained things; they’re more like ecologies and networks. They travel in clusters.
  • ideas are networks
  • In part, that’s because ideas that leap too far ahead are almost never implemented—they aren’t even valuable. People can absorb only one advance, one small hop, at a time. Gregor Mendel’s ideas about genetics, for example: He formulated them in 1865, but they were ignored for 35 years because they were too advanced. Nobody could incorporate them. Then, when the collective mind was ready and his idea was only one hop away, three different scientists independently rediscovered his work within roughly a year of one another.
  • Charles Babbage is another great case study. His “analytical engine,” which he started designing in the 1830s, was an incredibly detailed vision of what would become the modern computer, with a CPU, RAM, and so on. But it couldn’t possibly have been built at the time, and his ideas had to be rediscovered a hundred years later.
  • I think there are a lot of ideas today that are ahead of their time. Human cloning, autopilot cars, patent-free law—all are close technically but too many steps ahead culturally. Innovating is about more than just having the idea yourself; you also have to bring everyone else to where your idea is. And that becomes really difficult if you’re too many steps ahead.
  • The scientist Stuart Kauffman calls this the “adjacent possible.” At any given moment in evolution—of life, of natural systems, or of cultural systems—there’s a space of possibility that surrounds any current configuration of things. Change happens when you take that configuration and arrange it in a new way. But there are limits to how much you can change in a single move.
  • Which is why the great inventions are usually those that take the smallest possible step to unleash the most change. That was the difference between Tim Berners-Lee’s successful HTML code and Ted Nelson’s abortive Xanadu project. Both tried to jump into the same general space—a networked hypertext—but Tim’s approach did it with a dumb half-step, while Ted’s earlier, more elegant design required that everyone take five steps all at once.
  • Also, the steps have to be taken in the right order. You can’t invent the Internet and then the digital computer. This is true of life as well. The building blocks of DNA had to be in place before evolution could build more complex things. One of the key ideas I’ve gotten from you, by the way—when I read your book Out of Control in grad school—is this continuity between biological and technological systems.
  • technology is something that can give meaning to our lives, particularly in a secular world.
  • He had this bleak, soul-sucking vision of technology as an autonomous force for evil. You also present technology as a sort of autonomous force—as wanting something, over the long course of its evolution—but it’s a more balanced and ultimately positive vision, which I find much more appealing than the alternative.
  • As I started thinking about the history of technology, there did seem to be a sense in which, during any given period, lots of innovations were in the air, as it were. They came simultaneously. It appeared as if they wanted to happen. I should hasten to add that it’s not a conscious agency; it’s a lower form, something like the way an organism or bacterium can be said to have certain tendencies, certain trends, certain urges. But it’s an agency nevertheless.
  • technology wants increasing diversity—which is what I think also happens in biological systems, as the adjacent possible becomes larger with each innovation. As tech critics, I think we have to keep this in mind, because when you expand the diversity of a system, that leads to an increase in great things and an increase in crap.
  • the idea that the most creative environments allow for repeated failure.
  • And for wastes of time and resources. If you knew nothing about the Internet and were trying to figure it out from the data, you would reasonably conclude that it was designed for the transmission of spam and porn. And yet at the same time, there’s more amazing stuff available to us than ever before, thanks to the Internet.
  • To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap. Another example is spectrum. One reason we have this great explosion of innovation in wireless right now is that the US deregulated spectrum. Before that, spectrum was something too precious to be wasted on silliness. But when you deregulate—and say, OK, now waste it—then you get Wi-Fi.
  • If we didn’t have genetic mutations, we wouldn’t have us. You need error to open the door to the adjacent possible.
  • image of the coral reef as a metaphor for where innovation comes from. So what, today, are some of the most reeflike places in the technological realm?
  • Twitter—not to see what people are having for breakfast, of course, but to see what people are talking about, the links to articles and posts that they’re passing along.
  • second example of an information coral reef, and maybe the less predictable one, is the university system. As much as we sometimes roll our eyes at the ivory-tower isolation of universities, they continue to serve as remarkable engines of innovation.
  • Life seems to gravitate toward these complex states where there’s just enough disorder to create new things. There’s a rate of mutation just high enough to let interesting new innovations happen, but not so many mutations that every new generation dies off immediately.
  • , technology is an extension of life. Both life and technology are faces of the same larger system.
  • Weiye Loh on 30 Sep 10
     
    Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From By Wired September 27, 2010  |  2:00 pm  |  Wired October 2010
Weiye Loh

New Study Shows EMF Effect On Brain - So What? « Health « Skeptic North - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...ect-on-brain-%e2%80%93-so-what

Science Health Mobile Wi-Fi

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • In the past 6 months, Skeptic North has run several articles about WiFi, cell phones and the purported health effects that radio-frequency electro-magnetic fields (RF-EMF) may or may not have on the brain and body.  Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the controversy remains to be a popular story in the media, perhaps because of the ubiquitous nature of cellular technology and the popular meme of the hidden dangers of modern life.
  • over the news this week were reports of a new study purporting to show a link between cell phone EMF radiation and increased brain metabolism.  The study was conducted by a well-respected group of NIH researchers conducting tests at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.  The study is available in abstract for free here, but you have to pay to have access to the full text version.  Reporters all over network news told a simplified story of the paper by Volkow et al, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and drew conclusions outside the scope of the study, inflaming an already overly effulgent debate.
  •  I and others have continued to insist that there is no good evidence of any effect by the microwave radiation emitted by cell phones, cell towers and other electronics on the brain and other body systems, let alone that this radiation causes cancer or other serious illnesses.  The syndrome referred to as electro-hypersensitivity remains un-proved and unfounded, but it seems like there is new evidence that shows that the normal levels of radiation emitted by a cell phone can effect neuronal cells in the brain.
  • Weiye Loh on 26 Feb 11
     
    This study is what it is: another thread in the fine woven cloth of our knowledge of nature. It is not a panacea, nor does it refute any evidence that there is or is not a risk of health effects from cell phone use, nor does it show a mechanism of how EMF could alter biological systems. Anybody who purports that it does is basing this conclusion on ideology, not science.
Weiye Loh

Evaluating The Evidence for Cell Phones and WiFi « Critical Thinking « Skepti... - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...dence-for-cell-phones-and-wifi

Mobile Wi-Fi Radio Waves Cancer Uncertainty

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • he “weight of evidence” approach to evaluation of causality is often vilified by cell phone and WiFi scare mongers as being an inadequate way to judge the evidence – often because it disagrees with their own sentiments about the science.  If you can’t disqualify the evidence, then you can go after the method of evaluation and disqualify that, right?  Of course, the weight of evidence approach is often portrayed as a dumbshow of putting all the “positive” trials on one side of the scale and all of the “negative” trials on the other and taking the difference in mass as the evidence.  This is how Dr. Phillips characterised it in his paper on electromagnetic fields and DNA damage, as well as his appearance on CBC Radio.  Of course, the procedure is much more like a systematic review, where all of the papers, regardless of their outcomes, are weighed for their quality. (The higher quality studies will have good internal and external validity, proper blinding and randomisation, large enough sample size, proper controls and good statistical analysis; as well as being reproduced by independent investigators.) Then they are tallied and a rational conclusion is offered as to the most likely state of the evidence (of course, it is much more involved than I am stating, but suffice it to say, it does not involve a scale.)   This is standard operating procedure and, in fact, is what we all do when we are evaluating evidence: we decide which studies are good and we pool the evidence before we make a decision.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11
     
    n many discussions of the "dangers" of WiFi and cell phones, the precautionary principle is evoked. It is the idea that we have "an obligation, if the level of harm may be high, for action to prevent or minimise such harm even when the absence of scientific certainty makes it difficult to predict the likelihood of harm occurring, or the level of harm should it occur."  It is important to note that the precautionary principle or approach is required when we do not have a scientific consensus or if we have a lack of scientific certainty.  It is used often in European regulation of potential health and environmental hazards.  "Scientific certainty" is an important clause here, because it does not mean 100% certainty. Science can never give that absolute a result and if we required 100% certainty of no risk, we would not walk out our front doors or even get out of bed, lest we have a mishap.
Weiye Loh

Analysis: Hold the panic on cell phones and cancer | Phones | iOS Central | Macworld - 0 views

www.macworld.com/...phone_cancer_who_analysis.html

Mobile Wi-Fi Radio Waves Cancer Uncertainty Causation Model

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Today’s cell phones are, essentially, extremely sophisticated radios and, as such, emit electromagnetic waves. Much like the vast majority of radiation that surrounds us—from visible light to AM and FM radio waves—electromagnetic waves do not possess enough energy to interact directly with the tissues in our bodies in a way that can cause direct damage. “The radiation that cell phones emit is nowhere near the kind of radiation that x-ray machines, for example, emit,” says Perras. “X-rays […] have much, much shorter wavelengths. Consequently, [they] carry much more energy and thus have much more penetrating power, which is required to be able to image the interior of the human body.”
  • X-rays and other “hard” waves are called ionizing radiation because they can interact with the human body in a way that leads to the creation of chemical compounds called free radicals that can, in turn, be responsible for mutations and the incidence of cancer.
  • The focus of much of the currently-ongoing scientific research, then, is on whether the radiation emitted by cell phones is focused enough to be absorbed into the body and cause heating, which could, in the long run, damage human tissue and eventually lead to cancer.
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  • The issue is particularly important because most users still hold their phones close to the head; since the brain is particularly sensitive to external stimuli, even a small amount of heat could lead to medical trouble in the long term.
  • What makes it challenging to determine if a link between cell phones and cancer actually exists are the many variables involved. “The incidence of brain tumors is quite small, making it more difficult to study in large numbers,” says Dr. Eric Olyejar, a Radiation Oncologist from Ironwood Cancer and Research Centers, based in Chandler, Ariz. That means “quantifying the lifetime dose each patient received is extremely difficult.”
  • To make things more difficult, cancer often develops as a result of many different factors. “Family history, exposure to chemicals or radiation, growth defects, the amount of radiation that is actually coming from the phone, amount of time used, proximity to the brain, skull thickness, and wave frequency are only a few of the many variables,” Olyejar says.
  • cell phones have become so ubiquitous that it’s hard to compare the health of users and non-users.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11
     
    Do cell phones cause cancer? Nobody really knows for sure, but scientists are determined to keep an eye on the ever-evolving evidence that continues to accumulate on the subject. That's the gist of a report recently released by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the United Nations body responsible for oncological studies. In the report, IARC scientists have classified cell phone usage as a possible cause of cancer, meaning that, while the data currently available is still inconclusive, the subject deserves further research before a call can be made one way or another.
Weiye Loh

Android phones record user-locations according to research | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...d-phones-record-user-locations

Location Android Apple Privacy

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • The discovery that Android devices - which are quickly becoming the best-selling products in the smartphone space - also collect location data indicates how essential such information has become to their effective operation. "Location services", which can help place a user on a map, are increasingly seen as important for providing enhanced services including advertising - which forms the basis of Google's business.
  • Smartphones running Google's Android software collect data about the user's movements in almost exactly the same way as the iPhone, according to an examination of files they contain. The discovery, made by a Swedish researcher, comes as the Democratic senator Al Franken has written to Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs demanding to know why iPhones keep a secret file recording the location of their users as they move around, as the Guardian revealed this week.
  • Magnus Eriksson, a Swedish programmer, has shown that Android phones – now the bestselling smartphones – do the same, though for a shorter period. According to files discovered by Android devices keep a record of the locations and unique IDs of the last 50 mobile masts that it has communicated with, and the last 200 Wi-Fi networks that it has "seen". These are overwritten, oldest first, when the relevant list is full. It is not yet known whether the lists are sent to Google. That differs from Apple, where the data is stored for up to a year.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In addition, the file is not easily accessible to users: it requires some computer skills to extract the data. By contrast, the Apple file is easily extracted directly from the computer or phone.
  • Senator Franken has asked Jobs to explain the purpose and extent of the iPhone's tracking. "The existence of this information - stored in an unencrypted format - raises serious privacy concerns," Franken writes in his letter to Jobs. "Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of a user's home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken - over the past months or even a year."
  • Franken points out that a stolen or lost iPhone or iPad could be used to map out its owner's precise movements "for months at a time" and that it is not limited by age, meaning that it could track the movements of users who are under 13
  • security researcher, Alex Levinson, says that he discovered the file inside the iPhone last year, and that it has been used in the US by the police in a number of cases. He says that its purpose is simply to help the phone determine its location, and that he has seen no evidence that it is sent back to Apple. However documents lodged by Apple with the US Congress suggest that it does use the data if the user agrees to give the company "diagnostic information" from their iPhone or iPad.
Weiye Loh

In a Brooklyn Loft, Twitter Stars Find Common Ground - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...05Twitter.html

Twitter Social Media Face-to-Face

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 May 11 - No Cached
  • Five years ago, a group like Studiomates probably wouldn’t have been a group at all but rather two dozen strangers in search of a Wi-Fi signal at Starbucks. The 26 members, who each pay $500 a month for a desk, are mostly engaged in independent projects in unrelated fields, and have no practical reason to work together. But as the new media pundit Clay Shirky said at the South by Southwest conference in March, “we systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.”
  • “Sure, we could all be home doing what we do, but why would we?” Tina Roth Eisenberg (a k a swissmiss) said as her studio mates clacked away at their MacBooks. “I just like being around nerdy creative people all day long. It helps make sense of all the information coming at us.” Studiomates is an especially information-oriented bunch, and an influential one, too. In addition to her swissmiss blog and Twitter following of 200,000, Ms. Eisenberg is the founder of Creative Mornings, a popular monthly speaking series that has young designers in four cities talking.
  • Much of the content for her blog and Twitter feed comes from the casual conversations at Studiomates. “The day-to-day distraction level may be slightly higher,” Ms. Popova said. “But in terms of the influx of the building blocks of productivity — ideas, story tips, the interesting people who come in — an environment like this is priceless.”
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