Friday, March 07, 2003

We're Number Two! (Part II) This is an issue I feel strongly about. We are in danger of becoming a technical second rate country in a few more decades (if not sooner). Our research labs , at least in my areas, are mostly gone either through company contraction or due to being exported off shore. Dave ------ Forwarded Message From: "Robert J. Berger" Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 22:54:17 +0900 To: Dave Farber Subject: China accelerating into the future These headlines came across my virtual desk today. Unfortunately you must pay to read the articles, but the headlines do speak for themselves. The point that hit me is that China is moving ahead with engineering, bio-tech and modern post-industrial production while the US seems to be distracted while it unconsciously falls into a fog of spin and anti-intellectualism , banning scientific experiments based on religious fundamentalism and slowing down investment in new manufacturing and innovation. US Scientists are already moving their labs to China do do biotech research that is banned here in the US. Guess who is going to be the most powerful nation in a decade if our government keeps up our their retro-behaviors.... ATIP (Asian Technology Information Program) has released a new Chinese Science and Technology Digest for February 15-28, 2003. Headlines: China Will Invest 700 Billion Yuan (~US$85B) for Scientific Development 8.2 Billion Cell Phone Short Messages Sent Last Month in China Chinese First Digital Chip Developed in Shanghai China's Information Technology Sector Reports Slowdown China Discovers New Genes That Cause Parkinson's Disease China Puts New Anti-AIDS Drug in Clinical Use China Approves Production of HIV Testing Reagent Oracle to Train 4,000 Chinese Software Engineers Annually Organ Transplant Center Opens in Shanghai To view this newsfeed, please visit the ATIP website at: To subscribe to the China News site, please visit: http://www.atip.org/CHINANEWS/ (via interesting people) 8:30:51 PM    comment [] World of Ends (Doc Searls and David Weinberger) There are mistakes and there are mistakes. Some mistakes we learn from. For example: Thinking that selling toys for pets on the Web is a great way to get rich. We're not going to do that again. Other mistakes we insist on making over and over. For example, thinking that: ...the Web, like television, is a way to hold eyeballs still while advertisers spray them with messages. ...the Net is something that telcos and cable companies should filter, control and otherwise "improve." ... it's a bad thing for users to communicate between different kinds of instant messaging systems on the Net. ...the Net suffers from a lack of regulation to protect industries that feel threatened by it. When it comes to the Net, a lot of us suffer from Repetitive Mistake Syndrome. This is especially true for magazine and newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the movie industry, and the telephone industry, to name just six. Thanks to the enormous influence of those industries in Washington, Repetitive Mistake Syndrome also afflicts lawmakers, regulators and even the courts. Last year Internet radio, a promising new industry that threatened to give listeners choices far exceeding anything on the increasingly variety-less (and technologically stone-age) AM and FM bands, was shot in its cradle. Guns, ammo and the occasional "Yee-Haw!" were provided by the recording industry and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which embodies all the fears felt by Hollywood's alpha dinosaurs when they lobbied the Act through Congress in 1998. "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it," John Gilmore famously said. And it's true. In the long run, Internet radio will succeed. Instant messaging systems will interoperate. Dumb companies will get smart or die. Stupid laws will be killed or replaced. But then, as John Maynard Keynes also famously said, "In the long run, we're all dead." We'd like to avoid the wait. Subtitled "What the Internet is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else", the rest of this excellent article explains what it all means, how it all hangs together, and why it has such enormous potential. There are additional links to essential readings and resources. Well done, gentlemen, and THANK YOU. Knowledge equals power, yes yes, but does it equal enough power to keep the gang of six mentioned above to use their financial clout to ruin a very good thing? They are already chipping away at the edges. But we are the customers in this case, and we need to get informed and organized real quick. Frankly, I am not optimistic: no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. They will do their best to bring us bread and circuses, and we will slowly forget what could have been. 8:11:21 PM    comment [] The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002 So sayeth the Science Fiction Book Club, and it's hard to fault their choices. JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings clocks in at number one of course. I will point out a few favorites of mine: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe at #11, Little, Big by John Crowley at #31, and Neuromancer by William Gibson at #6. 3:39:43 PM    comment [] ART ALERT: Pictoplasma A collection of over 4750 contemporary character designs from a whole wide load of artists, designers and companies world wide. Very cool. via metafilter... 2:59:42 PM    comment [] Dance of the Spin Doctors: Mind Shrapnel (David Weinberger) Too bad Happy Tutor's reappropriation of the Cluetrain Manifesto didn't take the opportunity to fix #74, the most obviously wrong thesis in the batch: We are immune to advertising. Just forget it. [original] We are immune to advertising, whether corporate or political. Just forget it. [Tutor] If only. Yesterday the guy behind the desk at the auto repair shop complained lightly, "People think I'm the Shell Answer Man." It has to be at least 20 years since the Shell Answer Man ads were on TV, but there he is, still stuck in our heads. Marketing shrapnel. And when my wife and I went to buy a new washing machine, I entered the process sure that Maytag is a reliable brand. No, we're not immune. But the Internet does give us a way to check whether we're thinking clearly or it's just the shrapnel talking. (JOHO) 2:16:53 PM    comment [] Caring For Your Introvert (Jonathan Rauch) Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice? If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out? If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands-and that you aren't caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world. I know. My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert. (Caring For Your Introvert, Atlantic Online) (Via JOHO) 1:46:14 PM    comment [] Bushisms (Mark Crispin Miller) "[U.S. President George W. Bush] has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he's speaking punitively, when he's talking about violence, when he's talking about revenge. When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine. It's only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes." Miller is the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder. This quote comes from David Isenberg via David Weinberger. We must never misunderestimate out glorious leader and the hidden wells of wisdom buried deep, deep in his penis sized brain. I meant to say peanut. Funny how the mind works. For some examples -- and they are many: Bushims.com Complete Bushisms I fell sorry for picking on the guy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. To have placed the fate of the western world in his hands -- and more importantly in the hands of his cronies, who are after all (one hopes and prays) the brains of this particular administration -- is cause for great alarm, and indicative of the coming era when we will see an America in decline. We are headed for the Bush leagues as it were. 1:28:38 PM    comment []

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