Chris Boese's Weblog

Active vs. passive media for kids?

This was a central question that drove my dissertation, although active and passive media is an overgeneralization, and this article is an oversimplification. But even if it is only trending this direction, I think it is worthy of note.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the pointer!

Boing Boing: Kids online turn into creators

Kids online turn into creators
Foe Romeo reports on fascinating research suggesting that the Internet turns kids into creators, not consumers, of media.

Even more interestingly, the study found that 17% of young people have sent pictures or stories to a website and "online creativity can be encouraged through the very experience of using the internet." That is, the more time kids spend online, the more likely they are to produce their own content. And interaction breeds interaction. Does that mean we can safely assume that as internet usage increases its media timeshare, more and more people will become creative producers as well as consumers?

[...]

Link(via Plastic Bag)

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:20:32 PM

I'm trying out Firefox 1.0

Although half the time my dyslexia reverses it and I can't remember whether to call it Firefox or Foxfire, and then I worry it is an early '80s film with Jodie Foster... oooh, duck that flashback!

Wired News: Firefox 1.0 Makes Flashy Debut

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65668,00.html

02:00 AM Nov. 11, 2004 PT

A decade ago, geeks greeted the release of Netscape's new web browser with great anticipation. A similar sense of expectation surrounded each subsequent version of Netscape Navigator and, to a much lesser extent, updates to Microsoft's upstart Internet Explorer.

All that excitement came to an end three or four years ago, when Microsoft seemed to have won the so-called browser wars and promptly stopped adding new features to IE. But it was déjà vu all over again Tuesday, complete with swamped servers and abused refresh keys, with the release of Firefox 1.0.

The Mozilla Foundation, inheritor of the Netscape programming code base, made the very first non-beta version of its open-source browser available for free at 1 a.m. PT Tuesday. Soon after its release, Mozilla's servers were overwhelmed.

Firefox 1.0, available for the Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems in more than a dozen languages, is the result of two years of work. The browser is an absolute joy to use -- smart, fast and very user-friendly, while still offering a slew of advanced programmable and customizable functions for those who want to tinker.

In a press release, the Mozilla Foundation states that Firefox 1.0 is more compatible with websites written specifically for Internet Explorer than the beta versions that preceded it, and has new updating capabilities which will grab and install new browser versions, extensions or security fixes automatically.

There's also a new find function that appears in a toolbar across the bottom of the page, better bookmarking, more flexible pop-up blocking, live bookmarks that display Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, news feeds from the bookmark itself or in a sidebar, and good online fraud-protection features.

[...]

I guess if I wanted to have a real flashback, I could pretend Firefox/Foxfire was released by NCSA in Illinois, and dream my way back to 1993 and Mosaic, eh? But this is lots better than the old gray screens Marc Andreessen built. I like it pretty fine, but still have to be weaned off my standby news feed reader. And I do still use Safari at home.

Chris

The best election map site I've seen...

Aside from the New York Times interactive electoral map, which is buried somewhere in their site now (that's poor design, it doesn't even come up on searches). I like the maps at this site because they break it down by county, while the NYTimes map has two choices, geographic and electoral, and the electoral gives each state a grid square per electoral vote. I may have to go steal a screenshot from there for example, because I do want it for comparison. It is a Flash interface.

But here is the terrific county and "bubble proportion" map, by population, I think. (the curvy lines in the proportional map still bug me). Still, it is an interesting exercise in information visualization. I include some text for better explanation of the cartogram.

Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results

Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman
University of Michigan

[...]

The (contiguous 48) states of the country are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate (George W. Bush) or the Democratic candidate (John F. Kerry) respectively. The map gives the superficial impression that the "red states" dominate the country, since they cover far more area than the blue ones. However, as pointed out by many others, this is misleading because it fails to take into account the fact that most of the red states have small populations, whereas most of the blue states have large ones. The blue may be small in area, but they are large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election.

We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage -- which has little to do with politics -- but to the number of their inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. Thus, on such a map, the state of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the acreage of Rhode Island.

[...]

The answer seems to be that the amount of red on the map is skewed because there are a lot of counties in which only a slim majority voted Republican. One possible way to allow for this, suggested by Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University, is to use not just two colors on the map, red and blue, but instead to use red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters. Here is what the normal map looks like if you do this:

And here's what the cartogram looks like:

Pick a narrative, any narrative

Lately I've had a pet peeve with the media (duh, just one?).

No, what's bugging me is this assumption that for every statistic, for every result, there is a narrative.

Some county went this way, but by the barest of margins. In the hands of some reporters, this translates into a narrative that religious people are superior organizers who are finally willing to stand up for their values. That translates into a whole "trend" story about religious people standing up for their values with superior organization.

But then a recount shows that county going the other way. Suddenly there is an instant new narrative, add water and stir. African Americans rallied behind their candidate in the face of rain and long lines, facing down the barrage of negative ads like underdogs, to make a bold statement against the incumbent.

Suddenly there is another recount, and Nader has miraculously taken the lead. All the other narratives vanish in a poof, as if such an absurd idea never even was entertained. Nader the Crusader wasn't just an underdog... he was a man with a mission, uncompromising, and clearly voters reacted to this and fell in behind his strong leadership and consumer values (cue the music and waving flag in background... because journalism plays best when it looks like a campaign commercial, right?). Voters saw in him a man who speaks for them. (choke up here...)

This is all just so much crap. Yes, there are reasons for every statistic, and real analysis to be done, but this excessive need to force every blip into a ready-made narrative out of the Writer's Digest Master Plots book I have here just makes me ill. But beyond the repetition of trite tropes (say that three times fast, trite tropes, trite tropes, trite tropes), the thin margins and the possibility that a recount could give a different result and make a reporter look REALLY stupid seems to have no effect on the creation of the narratives. Nothing seems to curb this excessive urge to force every event into a canned, cliche'd, pre-made storyline.

There are two New Republic articles that just brought that whole thing home for me. The lead in each was something of a parody (with the word "eventually" in parenthesis in the titles), so there was one article from each campaign, about how the journalists in each entourage reacted to the early exit poll results that were later reversed.

Here's a bit from both of them:

LIBERALS (EVENTUALLY) DESPAIR.

Night Falls

by Ryan Lizza
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041115&s=lizza111504

Boston, Massachusetts

The expectations had gotten so out of control that, on Tuesday afternoon, we reporters gathered in the ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza had already moved on to the second-, third-, and fourth-day stories. The exit polls seemed to show such a clear sweep of the battleground states for John Kerry that the news of his victory already seemed stale. What would the more solidly Republican Senate mean for Kerry's ambitious health care plan? Who would he appoint to replace ailing Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist? Most important, how could Kerry co-opt John McCain, a Republican frontrunner for the 2008 presidential election? Yep, it's true. We were already speculating about the dynamics of Kerry's reelection campaign. Some got to work on pieces about the transition. A newspaper reporter at a major daily polished an article about George W. Bush's concession speech. Now that we "knew" the winner, the whole campaign seemed so obvious. The Swift Boat attacks had come too early to do any real damage. The Clintonites added late in the campaign were geniuses. Karl Rove's base strategy was delusional.

A feedback loop between staffers and the media only reinforced the dangerously wrong conventional wisdom. Everywhere, Blackberries clicked and crackled as people beamed each other the addictive exit polls. With Kerry aides floating among the press corps, conversations evolved from "What are you hearing?" in the morning to "Are you moving to Washington?" in the afternoon. I compared notes with Jamie Rubin, a senior foreign policy adviser. He popped open a message on his PDA that showed two long columns of state abbreviations and numbers. The first line showed Kerry ahead by 17 points in one swing state. We agreed to swap any new numbers that came our way. The exit polls were like crack.

And from the other:

CONSERVATIVES (EVENTUALLY) REJOICE.

Turn Around

by Michael Crowley
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041115&s=crowley111504

Early on Election Day, you could see the Republican story line developing: bloggers steal election. As exit polls showing amazingly good news for John Kerry careened around the Web--widely enough to shake the U.S. stock market--panicky conservatives lashed out at what they saw as a rush to judgment that was biasing news coverage even before the polls closed. At National Review Online, writers fumed that the base was growing demoralized at the early numbers, potentially depressing turnout, and wondered if this might be phony data circulated by Kerry operatives. One poster argued that the way the exit polls were shaping early news coverage amounted to a "media debacle."

That didn't last for long. By night's end, it was Democrats--furious that Fox and NBC had called Ohio for George W. Bush--who were shrieking (again) about a stolen election. Republicans, meanwhile, felt vindicated--enough to stay at a Washington rally until six in the morning, when White House Chief of Staff Andy Card arrived amid the discarded signs and broken glasses to declare that George W. Bush had won a "decisive" victory. But it was a long and nerve-racking trip to get there.

Both of these bits seem to me to expose more about what is wrong with the conventions of journalism than anything else.

Chris

A snapshot of our times

Earthtime, of course, but also human-centric. What a nifty neato cool Flash interface! And it uses RSS feeds! Updated hourly, with archives (or whatever they are) backward in time. Created by Jonathan Harris. Good job, dude!

10 by 10

Here is what they say about it on the site:

10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life.

10x10 is ever-changing, ever-growing, quietly observing the ways in which we live. It records our wars and crises, our triumphs and tragedies, our mistakes and milestones. When we make history, or at least the headlines, 10x10 takes note and remembers.

Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other.

10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds.

With no human editors and no regulation, 10x10 is open and free, raw and fresh, and consequently a unique way of following world events. In 10x10, we respond instinctively to patterns in the grid, visual indicators of relevance. When we see a frequently repeated image, we know it’s important. When we see a picture of a movie star next to a picture of dead bodies, we understand the extremes that exist in our world. Scanning a grid of pictures can be more intuitive than reading headlines, for it lets the news come to life, and everything feels a bit less distant, a bit closer to heart, and maybe, if we're lucky, gives us pause to think. If you'd like to learn more about 10x10, you can read how it works.

Man, I love the intuitive part, and the use of visuals when RSS has become so text-dominant. I was just complaining on the Pew Survey on Internet predictions about that very thing the other day.

Here's some of the nuts and bolts, from another section on the site:

Process.

Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input.

Sources.

Currently, 10x10 gathers its data from the following news sources:

Reuters World News
BBC World Edition
New York Times International News

Photography.

All photographs within 10x10 come from the aforementioned news sources, and full copyright ownership is maintained by those sources. 10x10 uses the images purely for artistic and educational purposes, and does not profit in any way from their use.

Now HERE's my question. Where is the RSS feed where I can "subscribe" to the site in my own newsfeed reader?

And could this interface be adaptable to BECOME a customized news feed reader? I know, there's the image problem in text-heavy sites... but imagine, instead of Reuters, BBC, and NYTimes, you can "customize" the feeds it scans, so each person's version is personalized to their subscriptions?

Wow, that would be really cool.

Chris

The problem of the "black box"

Here's a terrific article in Wired about the inauditability (is that a word?) of the electronic voting systems currently gaining traction across the US.

Of particular note is the story of a questioned election during the Reagan years... and the actions of a company called Sequoia Voting Systems.

I would like to see public accountability for a public interface, with companies like Sequoia, as well as Diebold. I find it suspicious when results show outstanding ballots in excess of the margin in a close state like Ohio, and suddenly, in the next few hours, EXACTLY that number of votes magically shows up in the results.

The public good is at issue here, and the public should demand open systems. I really don't care that the voting software be open source. That seems less than necessary. BUT there needs to be an exhaustive audit system, both with paper trails, and with markers to show if the code has been altered at any time during the actual voting process. These are glaring shortcomings in the current code, and they are inexcusable.

Chris

Wired News: Pols, Don't Count on Recounts

By Kim Zetter Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65563,00.html

09:33 AM Nov. 02, 2004 PT

When candidates start demanding recounts in the aftermath of Tuesday's election, many will make an unsettling discovery: In the districts that used electronic voting machines there won't be a way to conduct a meaningful recount.

That's because the paperless machines provide no method for conducting an independent analysis of the votes other than what's in the machine's memory. And collecting the data necessary to prove fraud or irregularities on a touch-screen machine will be uphill battles, since courts and election officials have been unsympathetic to losing candidates making such claims in the past.

As many activists have pointed out over the past year, conducting recounts on e-voting machines means that election officials simply re-run the same electronic data on the same machines. If machines recorded the votes inaccurately the first time or if the counting software contained flaws or malicious code that produced untrustworthy results, a recount using the same software would produce the same untrustworthy results. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.

The other option is to examine the internal workings of the machines. But since the software used on the machines is proprietary, most courts have been unwilling to grant candidates access to the code.

This hasn't always been the case. In 1984, a court did allow plaintiffs in a disputed election to examine the source code. That year, when Ronald Reagan was re-elected president, lawsuits in Florida, Indiana and West Virginia charged fraud and vote manipulation in local races. Fingers pointed to the company that made the machines used in the election -- Votomatic punch-card machines, made by Computer Election Systems, or CES, of Berkeley, California, which used computer software to tally the votes. Experts said the company designed the machines and software so that vote totals could easily be altered without leaving a trace.

Losing candidates in one race charged that when the computer acted up on election night, a CES employee inserted control cards into the machine. The plaintiffs sued to retrieve the source code, and the court, for once, consented. When computer experts examined the software, they determined that CES had changed the computer's instructions for tallying votes on election night. But because the program lacked adequate auditing mechanisms to track the nature of those changes, no one could determine if the company had rigged the election. The plaintiffs lost the case because the court ruled that their claims were mere conjecture.

"Mere conjecture" is a phrase likely to be heard a lot this year. That's because election officials and courts so far have not been helpful in providing losing candidates with backup and peripheral data, such as machine audit logs and software source code that might help determine if votes on a machine were recorded inaccurately.

"How can you show fraud or error if you've been denied access to any of the tools that can show you the existence of fraud or error?" said California attorney Greg Luke, who has litigated election disputes. "We need to get procedures in place long before elections that tell officials what they need to preserve and hand over in a recount. It's a messy thing to try to have courts step in and tell people what they should have been doing from the beginning."

[...]

Read the whole article

Bipartisan Experiment at ABC: T-Shirt Wars

Hey, you may have thought they were fighting a war with Iraq, but the REAL dangers in this world are people who express dissent by wearing T-shirts, as ABC News finally found out why many people have been reporting since early this year.

ABC News Investigations: Campaigns Rally Against Wrong T-Shirts: Wearing opponent's gear can mean arrests, ejections

By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ

NEW YORK, Nov. 1, 2004 --  Behind the scenes of one of the most contentious presidential races in recent memory, both Democrats and Republicans have organized what can only be called the T-shirt defense squads.

It is an all-out effort to spot T-shirts supporting the other candidate and block them from view, or in some cases to actually have the T-shirt-wearing offenders ejected or arrested.

ABC News conducted a bipartisan experiment in which producers and volunteers went to rallies for each candidate wearing the other party's T-shirt, and found that each campaign had its own methods of preventing the shirts from being seen.

"We've reached a sad state of affairs when a T-shirt is that offensive," said Yale professor Robert Post, a specialist in First Amendment law. "It tells me that these are photo opportunities, and not about dialogue."

[...]

The rules were to behave exactly the same at each rally, to be polite participants and to leave when asked. The ABC News team obtained tickets for all of the events attended — tickets for Kerry events can be attained from the official campaign Web site and tickets for Bush events from local Republican party or campaign offices.

[...]

"I'm sorry, but they're Kerry shirts," a female Bush volunteer said. "We were told not to let people with Kerry shirts into the rally."

And as they approached the gates of the stadium, Lance "Chip" Borman, a Bush campaign worker and attorney who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, directed them toward the Brevard County sheriff's deputies waiting at the exit.

"Hey folks, it's a private event," he said. "Can you find your way to the nearest exit? Maybe some law enforcement can help?"

[...]

A second team of ABC News producers waited until entering Space Coast stadium before showing its Kerry-Edwards T-shirts, but was still quickly spotted and ordered out by Borman, who identified himself as working for the Republican National Committee.

He said the rally of some 18,000 people was a "private event," and it made no difference that producers Christine Romo and Jessica Wang had tickets and remained silent and respectful.

"But you wore the shirts; you wore the shirts," Borman said. "And honestly, if you would have come without the shirts and sat quietly, you would have had a fun time and enjoyed it, but I mean it's not that kind of event." He then instructed the sheriff's deputies to escort the ABC News team out to the parking lot.

[...]

Post said that First Amendment laws most likely did not apply to these rallies, as the ticketed campaign events in private venues would be seen legally as private affairs.

"But what does apply are the basic morals of politics," he said. "And the morals of politics are, we talk to the people whom we want to convince. That's how we get votes. We convince people to vote for us, and we give them reasons when they disagree."

And at Kerry's Boca Raton rally, one of the faithful Democrats could be seen calming a woman upset at the sight of the Bush-Cheney T-shirts.

"Feel proud that we let them in," he said. "That's what democracy is all about, that's what we're fighting for."

ABC News' Vic Walter, Jessica Wang, Christine Romo contributed to this report.

Don't Let Problems at the Polls Take Away Your Right to Vote

A friend emailed me this. It's from an online organizer, he's listed with New York State Common Cause and TrueMajority.org: Andrew Greenblatt, but I feel comfortable passing it on.

We've read news reports about plans to challenge voters at polling places around the country. Don't let some political hack deny you your most fundamental right as an American citizen: your right to vote. Below, we've created a short guide to protect your rights and advise what to do if someone tries to take them away from you. I encourage you to do two things:

1) Print out this email and take it with you when you go to vote. That way, if you have any trouble, you'll know what to do on the spot. 2) Forward this email to everyone you know who might be voting tomorrow. It may make the difference between their voting and not voting.

Hoping you won't need this,

Andrew Greenblatt
Online Organizer

A QUICK GUIDE TO AVOIDING PROBLEMS AT THE POLLS

Before you go to the polls:

Find your correct polling place. Click here:
http://www.mypollingplace.com. They are getting crushed with
requests, so if you don't get through right away, try again later or
just call your local Board of Elections.

To avoid confusion and save time, study the ballot. Check your local
newspaper for a copy.

Find a form of identification to bring to the polls. Unless you are a
first-time voter who registered by mail without sending
identification, you have the right to vote without providing ID.
However, to avoid hassles just bring ID anyway. A government-issued ID
is best (such as a driver's license), but you can also bring a utility
bill, paycheck stub, phone bill, or similar papers with your name on
them. If your ID does not have a signature, bring two forms of
identification.

Allow plenty of time to vote, preferably in the morning. There may be
lines. Bring something to read. If the line is really long, consider
getting a box of donuts or cookies to share to lighten the mood.
Someone might be challenging voters just to slow things up in the hope
that long lines will scare away voters. If this is happening, let
folks in line know so it stiffens their resolve to stay and cast vote.

Learn your voting rights:

Even if you are not on the voter list, federal law gives you the right
to a "provisional ballot." Insist on one and vote. A regular ballot is
preferable, so you should do whatever you can to get a regular ballot
first, like going home and getting a second form of identification or
going to the polling place where you are definitely on the voter list.
But rather than be turned away, demand a provisional ballot.

You have the right to vote if you are in line when the polls close.
Stay in line until you vote.

Find out if your employer will give you time off to vote, if necessary.

At the polls:

If you are confused about ANYTHING or feel you are being harassed, ask
the official poll workers to help. Do not rely on fellow citizens for
advice about the ballot, how the voting machines work, or why you are
not on the rolls. If someone is challenging your right to vote, ask
the poll workers to intervene.

If someone harasses you, don't cause a ruckus. Just ignore the
harasser, report it to a poll worker, and let the voting process
continue. What kinds of things might somebody try? Well, in the past
people have insisted on more ID than is required or argued that
someone is at the wrong polling place.

If something goes wrong, document it. Write down what happened, when,
and descriptions of the people involved, including their names, if you
can get them. If you have a camera or camera-phone, take pictures.

Report voting problems to an organization ready to respond to problems
at the polls:

Common Cause: Call 1-866-MYVOTE1. This is a hotline you can call to
report any voting problems.

1-866-OUR-VOTE. This hotline has been set up by a coalition of
nonpartisan groups to deal with the most serious problems on Election
Day. They have hundreds of lawyers standing by to immediately respond
to the most egregious problems. 1-866-OUR-VOTE is the "911" of voter
suppression hotlines. Please don't call unless your problem is serious
enough that you have to talk to a lawyer immediately.

Contact the media. If something is going terribly wrong at a polling
site and you have reported it to the folks above, you might want to
then call local radio, television, and newspaper reporters. Often
problems clear up quickly after a reporter arrives.

It's odd that it's come to this. But given how hard Americans have
fought for the freedom to pick our government, it ought to take a lot
more than these inconveniences and ham-handed attempts by desperate
political operatives to dissuade us from casting a ballot. See you at
the polls.