The strangest conference

I went to a conference the other day, about intellectual property in cyberspace and all that. The experience turned out to be quite surreal.
When I entered the building, there were only three people standing around. One of them were shouting commands, seemingly to a technician that I couldn't see; as with all conferences, Murphy's law was upon them. This went on for a while. I was quietly sitting at one end of the auditorium. I didn't really know anyone there and wasn't in the mood to network, so I decided to just wait for the show. On stage, nothing was happening, though.

Half an hour had gone by, and there was still not much happening on stage. Some people, who looked like technicians, would show up now and again, but disappear just as quickly. While waiting, I almost dosed off. My head was slowly sinking towards my chest when, with a jerk, I woke up again -- looked around as if nothing had happened. By this time, there were more people in the auditorium, many of them complaining loudly about what seemed to be shoddy organizing. Then, presto, as if out of nowhere, the keynote speaker suddenly appeared on stage. Apparently, enough time had been wasted so he went straight into his talk.
Although the talk was interesting, I found myself drifting. There were so many weird characters at this conference, so I couldn't help look around. Sure, we don't need to wear suits at conferences these days but this is ridiculous, I thought to myself upon noticing an older gentleman with short shorts. Behind me, there was a woman wigh a huge bloody hat on -- flowers and all. As if the presence of all these characters weren't enough, a number of the participants were half asleep and many were discussing things loudly that had nothing to do with the lecture. I felt like I was back in primary school.

While trying to understand what kind of weird conference I was attending, a friend of mine messaged me and asked where I was. "I'm at this crzy cnfrnce. Lots of weeeird ppl. It's free, so come by if u want". Sure enough, my friend showed up a few minutes later. In general, I must admit I'm not completely used to Dutch manners, yet (I'm originally from Norway, but work in the Netherlands now). Still, I was quite suprised when my Dutch friend came through the doors and strolled down the aisle mid-lecture with clogs on!!! That's right, huge bloody wooden shoes. He sat down next to me, and I couldn't help but feel slightly embarrased by the spectacle he was making. He shouted, so the whole auditorium could hear, "what's all this then?". I don't know if it was to prove a point or not, but at the other end of the auditorium, a woman shouted back "a lecture about intellectual property". Weird, I thought, but this was when things started becoming even weirder. Suddenly, I felt like I was having problems seeing the stage. My vision was getting blurry! What the heck is happening? As this happened, I heard people around my make the same complaints. One man shouted "I can't hear anything", the woman with the flowery hat behind me shouted "Even worse, I can't see anything". People started getting out of their seats, run out for a moment, and come back in again. The guy who had been shouting to the invisible technician started shouting again. My friend said "This sucks. I'm outta here". I was sitting there trying to figure out what the heck was going on. It was at this point the shout-to-invisible-technician-man got up on stage and shouted to all of us. "If you want to see the lecture again, you have to press stop and then start on your quicktime players". Second Life conferences are weird.

Why open access publishing is troublesome

In various email lists etc. there have been a lot of discussion about the future of paper journals and the superiority of open access on-line journals. Although I agree that information should be widely accessible and that many (especially independent) researchers are left out of the loop due to the cost of subscribing to journals, the solution is not to just move access-restricted journals into the public domain, nor to abolish paper journals. Sometimes there's made a connection between the seemingly inevitable demise of other physical media (e.g. cd's and similar will be entirely replaced by digital downloads) but this is a very misleading analogy. The most important thing about scholarly research and academic journals is that they have to be subject to a quality control, usually in the form of a peer review. Although there's nothing difficult about doing this with open access journals, the main problem is that it is difficult for the reader to know the extent and quality of peer review. The reason is that with open access journals, there is often no discernable body that puts its reputation at stake. If a journal is rumoured to not take the peer review process seriously, then no respectable publisher would let that continue. Blackwell, Springer etc. have a reputation at stake. With online journals, there is often no such stakes involved. I'm not saying that this is foolproof (there are probably many instances of shoddy journals hiding behind a respectable publisher), but at the very least it is a more reliable indicator than anything found on the Web. Thus, the alternative to the current system cannot bypass the important role of the publishers. The alternative, in other words, is not to start up a host of independent, ad hoc journals, but rather to sway the publishers to find alternative and more accessible means of publishing their journals. The reason why the analogy with record companies does not hold, is that there is no such requirement for peer review and quality control in music. Research is not a matter of the taste of the consumers, but the quality of the research; and currently the best way we have of controlling the latter seems to be peer-review and to have it done through a publisher with a reputation at stake. In more constructive terms, I think the sustainable road to more open access journals is to sway the publishers, not to simply set up alternatives whose scientific quality is difficult to assess.

Men, computer games and methodological flaws.

Researchers have appearantly found that reward regions in the brain are more active in men than women when playing computer games and, the researchers conclude that this is why men are more prone to be hooked on computer games. The video game they used in the experiment was "a vertical line (the "wall") in the middle of a computer screen. When the game begins, 10 balls appear to the right of the wall and travel left toward the wall. Each time a ball is clicked, it disappears from the screen. If the balls are kept a certain distance from the wall, the wall moves to the right and the player gains territory" (see picture) and the researchers state that "This is a fairly representative, generic computer game" *sigh*

This actually reminds of a story I saw on CNN yesterday about the lack of proper defense for the alleged 9/11 terrorists in their upcoming trial. A political scientist claimed that this is the worst thing the US could do if they want "revenge" on the terrorists, because if they are convicted without having a proper defense, this just removes all credibility from the process. I think there's a similar thing going on with these video game experiments. I do not really doubt that there's a grain of truth in the result, but when making such elementary methodological mistakes and mind-numbing generalization, they really are doing themselves a disservice -- it just removes all credibility from the process. I'm not just picking on this experiment in particular, but I've seen a lot of the same problems with the most cited experiments on violence in computer games, including the interesting but far from conclusive research by Craig Anderson. What's worse it that the media, when picking up these stories, usually omit any caveats and methodological footnotes, which results in the kinds of headlines that ultimately might sway the public opinion.

I think the sensible thing to do is to not jump to conlusion on either side. Allow me to make a sweeping generalization on my own: On the one hand, gamers and hackers too often claim that all kinds of so-called piracy is good and that virtual violence has nothing at all to do with real violence, whereas policy makers and media all too often claim that piracy is just ultimately a form of selfishness and that every murderer out there has been playing violent video games (which, even when true, could by at any end of the causal chain). Neither is true, and in championing either extreme it just makes it more difficult for the sound and carefully weighed considerations to come to the front.

In the words of Jascha Heifetz (which just happened to be the quote of the day on my Google home portal): "No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other."

Searle's rational beer drinking in action

One of the modern works of philosophy that has influenced me the most is John Searle's Rationality in Action -- but probably not for the right reasons. I do not agree with all of Searle's hypotheses (if they can even be referred to as such), but I do find the book incredibly thought-provoking. One of the reasons is that it reads like a novel. It's a heck of a roller coaster where you find yourself nodding when reading one page, and vehemently shaking your head (or banging it into a wall) when reading the next.

When I first read the book almost 10 years ago, I used to make fun of it. One of Searle's central theses is that there can be such a thing as desire-independent reasons for action, in contrast with what he terms the classical model. Take the following example. A man orders a beer, drinks the beer, and the bartender asks the customer to pay. According to Searle, I have no desire right there and then to pay for the beer; there is nothing in my motivational set that would give me a reason to pay for the beer. According to Searle, the reason for paying for the beer is not a desire to pay that I have right there and then, but a desire-independent reason that I created at the time of ordering the beer. I think the gut reaction to this argument for most readers, including myself, is that I do have a number of desire-dependent reasons to pay for the beer: I desire not to get punched by the bartender, forced to do the dishes, lose face in front of my drinking buds, be denied another beer and so forth. I feel really slow for not really realizing it until about the third time I read the book, but this is the wrong way to see it. Searle's claim becomes more understandable if we look at it in terms of rational justification. Let's say I order a beer, drinks it, and then the opportunity arise that I can get away with not paying for the beer at all. Surely, many would take the opportunity and not pay for the beer, but let us say that I decide to actually pay for the beer. After having settled the bill (and reminded the bartender that I owed him money), my drinking bud might ask me: "What the heck did you do that for?". In that situation, it would be a perfectly rational thing to claim that "Well, because I ordered it and thereby promised to pay for it". Searle's point is not whether this is the reason why we usually pay (often we only pay because we don't want to face the consequences of not paying), but that the desire-independent reason is a reason for action. It is perfectly rational (and incidentally, ethical) to act upon the reason that I created in the past even though I do not have any desire whatsoever to do so. In other words, if I had no desire to pay for the beer, no general moral desire to keep my promises or any other desire that could possibly motivate paying for the beer, it is still a perfectly rational thing for me to do if I decide to pay for the beer. Once I realized this subtlety, Searle's book made a whole lot more sense and I highly recommend it -- at least for its terminology and ability to provoke thoughts. To continue the novel analogy, Searle is both hero and anti-hero in this book. At some points you will think of him as a cranky, arrogant geezer, but at some points he's the little child that points out the emperor's lack of clothes.

Starry night -- The Magic of Second Life

There's a misconception in the department where I work that I spend all my time "playing" Second Life and that my PhD is dedicated to SL alone. This is far from the truth, and Second Life is but one instance of how virtuality might have a profound effect on the quality of our lives, which is the subject of my thesis. I tend to especially emphasize this point whenever talking to someone who know very little about what Second Life is and its possibilities and limitations. Second Life has unfortunately gotten the stigma that it's either just another computer game, or that its primarily inhabited to perverts and leaches; verificationist researchers and sensationalist journalists (not sure which one of those is worst). What people tend to overlook - or never allow themselves to discover -- is that Second Life is ultimately about creativity. Those who stay in SL do it because of the creativity, those who make money do it because of creativity -- good researchers and journalists look for the creativity! This tends to drown in all the negative headlines. Just as you are about to give up and let Second Life become a sleazy hobby you don't tell anyone about, along comes the true geniuses of Second Life; those who make it a fantastic place; those who understand what it's all about; those who remind you that it's not about the age play, camping chairs or meatspace opportunism after all. Along come the true SL'ers like Robbie Dingo. Robbie has recreated Vincent van Gogh's masterpiece "Starry night" in Second Life. As if this testament to the creativity of SL wasn't enough, the marvellous feat has been documented in a machinima that left me speechless. If you go to Robbie's blog, you can watch the video. I highly recommend the high-resolution version, but in this virtual age of instant click-satisfaction, the youtube version does some justice to the masterpiece as well:

OpenOffice ups and downs

In starting my PhD dissertation I had to make a difficult choice on what word processor to use. I've heard bad things about Microsoft Word's ability to handle large documents, and I have always disliked it because of the limited ways in which you can format paragraphs. The importance of tweaking different paragraph parameters and using consistent styles is something I really learned in Adobe Framemaker, which still remains my favorite program. I decided against it, however, in part because of problems with portability (converting to/from Word is a nightmare and some times you need to submit documents in .doc), but the thing that tipped the scale was something as simple as not being able to do multiple undos in the framemaker version I've got, and my current university not having a license for newer versions. So, I decided to go with Openoffice. I was extremely happy to find out that Openoffice offered many of the same formatting options that Framemaker does, and also heard good things about the way it handles large documents. Some months later, I'm starting to regret the choice, however. As with Framemaker's achilles heal, the devil is in the details:

• Openoffice does not allow you to view two pages side by side while editing. This is frustrating as hell.
• Openoffice does not allow you to cross-reference autonumbered paragraphs. This works like a charm in Framemaker, but in Openoffice you have to manually 'set reference' everywhere you want to point a cross-reference to.
• An imported image was suddenly lost from my document. Might be just a case of "shit happens"but trust is everything in this business, and I thereby lost a big chunk of it.

So, now I'm dreading that I some time in the future have to give up on openoffice and spend a lot of time transferring my document, formatting and all, to whatever I end up with. Oh well. As we say in Norway" "That time, that sorrow". If anyone have experience with pros and cons of differen word processor when it comes to large documents, I'd be happy to hear about them.

Update, February 21, 2008:
I'm back with Microsoft Word. What did it for me was that I, after so many years of doing manual referencing, finally discovered that Endnote actually is a great program. I think I used to perceive Endnote in the same way that I perceived user manuals from IKEA, but I'm over that now. What makes Endnote great, however, is the seamless integration with Word and that's what won me over. Strange how it somehow feels bad to "give in" to Microsoft.

Update, April 23, 2008
I somehow knew this was an ongoing process. I'm still with Word, but recently upgraded to Word 2007 and finally I'm starting to feel confident. I've seen reviews that its ability to handle large documents is vastly improved, the layout is much better, endnote integration (see above) even more seamless, and, at the end of the day, it just gives provides the reliability I need. Apperently, Microsoft isn't all bad. Still, as a computer ethicist I somehow feel bad bad about relying on Microsoft (I'm also an avid user of Outlook [!]) -- and for thinking that Google is the best thing that has happened to the Web.

Radiohead makes piracy unethical

I recently wrote about Radiohead's release of their new album in digital form, downloadable from their Website with a price-tag that you decide yourself -- ingenious. One of the interesting consequences of this way of releasing their album is that it make piracy unethical -- beyond reasonabe doubt. One of the common arguments pro piracy (or, more politically correct, file sharing) is that sharing an mp3 file is radically different from stealing a album. The latter involves depriving someone (e.g. the record store) of their property, whereas file sharing does not. This argument has some credibility, since the claim is that we cannot simply transfer our moral judgment regarding traditional forms of stealing and apply them straightforwardly to file sharing. Importantly, however, we cannot deduce from this that that piracy is justifiable. This would be, in fact, a logical fallacy of the following form:

If you deprive someone of their property, you are committing an act of theft
I do not deprive someone of their property [I'm just making a copy]
Ergo, I am not committing an act of theft (or any other moral wrong-doing)

Obviously, the argument is invalid. Arguing in this form would be the same as claiming that killing someone with a knife is murder, but since I used a gun I did not commit murder. In order for the argument to work, the first premise would have to be a bi-conditional, or what is known as if-and-only-if (iff). If the first premise goes "If and only if you deprive someone of their property, then you are commiting an act of theft", then the argument is valid, but you would have a hard time proving the first premise. And even if that works out, you might "prove" that file sharing is not tantamount to stealing, but still there's a long way to go before showing that it is not unethical in some other way.

Anyway, what I wanted to point out is that Radiohead has turned this around. Traditionally, many arguments pro and con file sharing have been carried out by comparison with "real life" crimes. This comparison does not hold in this case. Instead, you have to make a comparison between paying at least a symbolic sum for the album (the minimum price is 0.45GBP), or to download it for free somewhere else. The deprivement-argument does not hold anymore (if it ever did). Another argument is that "I wouldn't have bought the CD anyway, so nobody's left worse off". This argument also becomes more difficult to pull off, when you have in fact downloaded the album. Thus, downloading the Radiohead album without even a symbolic sum becomes, at least in my mind, a more clear-cut example of unethical behaviour than downloading an album released only on CD.