I have no reason to think that Coursera, or any other MOOC, has anything but noble intentions when it comes to data collection and data mining. I certainly believe that the leaders of the companies are motivated by a desire to improve education. But Coursera is a for-profit business, backed by venture capitalists. Sooner or later, it will have to make money, and, given the current excitement in Silicon Valley and elsewhere about the commercial potential of “Big Data,” it seems inevitable that the company and its investors will explore “other business purposes” for its data, including ones that would bring in revenues.In their excitement to join forces with MOOC providers, university administrators and professors may not be giving enough thought to all the data that’s going to be collected and all the research activities that are going to be pursued. It’s an oversight they may come to regret.
Ask yourself: Why is it so vital that I be smoothened? There’s no functional advantage to eliminating clothing wrinkles—unless you are competing in a timed event that favors reduced drag coefficients. What you’re really doing when you leave your house in ironed clothes is engaging in an elaborate signaling ritual. You demonstrate that you have devoted time and resources to ironing (or to compelling other people to iron for you), which in turn connotes respect for a (silly) social compact. You use your crisp clothes to advertise yourself as a rule-follower, and you hope that in turn you will derive benefit from being perceived as one who follows rules. “Oh, he took the time to press his shirt before he showed up for this job interview. So I guess he must be a reliable and trustworthy employee.” It’s thinking like this that encourages broad-based evil to fester.
When mass-produced cars appeared, they had an impact on the whole of society. What might be the equivalent social implications of driverless cars? And who might go the same way as the buggy-whip makers? Electronics and software firms will be among the winners: besides providing all the sensors and computing power that self-driving cars will need, they will enjoy strong demand for in-car entertainment systems, since cars’ occupants will no longer need to keep their eyes on the road. Bus companies might run convoys of self-piloting coaches down the motorways, providing competition for intercity railways. Travelling salesmen might prefer to journey from city to city overnight in driverless Winnebagos packed with creature comforts. So, indeed, might some tourists. If so, they will need fewer hotel rooms.Cabbies, lorry drivers and all others whose job is to steer a vehicle will have to find other work. The taxi and car-rental businesses might merge into one automated pick-up and drop-off service: GM has already shown a prototype of a two-seater, battery-powered pod that would scuttle about town, with passengers summoning it by smartphone. Supermarkets, department stores and shopping centres might provide these free, to attract customers. Driverless cars will be programmed to obey the law, which means, sadly, the demise of the traffic cop and the parking warden. And since automated cars will reduce the need for parking spaces in town, that will mean less revenue for local authorities and car-park operators.
When people are no longer in control of their cars they will not need driver insurance—so goodbye to motor insurers and brokers. Traffic accidents now cause about 2m hospital visits a year in America alone, so autonomous vehicles will mean much less work for emergency rooms and orthopaedic wards. Roads will need fewer signs, signals, guard rails and other features designed for the human driver; their makers will lose business too. When commuters can work, rest or play while the car steers itself, longer commutes will become more bearable, the suburbs will spread even farther and house prices in the sticks will rise. When self-driving cars can ferry children to and from school, more mothers may be freed to re-enter the workforce. The popularity of the country pub, which has been undermined by strict drink-driving laws, may be revived. And so on.
What ho? The primary decree of the fisticuffs guild!h/t our friends at San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore.
The Pininfarina workshop, c.1960, from Turin European Metropolis
Even feminist writers seem to react somewhat more harshly to women who disagree with them than to men. The men are sexist doofs. The women are traitors with terrible motives and worse morals.Since I’m a soft-libertarian squish, the beauty is that I get these things from both sides–many more from progressives, to be sure, but enough from the other side to know that it’s very much a bipartisan vice. And I’m hardly alone; name any female op-ed writer or politician, and I guarantee she gets the kind of cricisim that will make your eyes bleed. And that’s just the overt stuff–the covert stuff is probably more harmful.
It seems to be some sort of universal that women who make forceful political arguments garner a particular sort of vitriolic reaction. 150 years since the feminist movement really got going, it’s still the case that women doing “male things” get seen very differently from men–and not just by men, but also by women, as studies have repeatedly shown. Men who take charge in a business situation are forceful and competent; men who argue passionately for their political views are warriors. Women who do the same thing are … well, a word that I try not to use, whether or not I’m writing for a family blog.
Lord of the Rings demography in infographics. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Most people don’t appreciate the beauty and aesthetics in science. Consider mathematics. There are infinitely many theorems “out there” that a mathematician can devote him or herself to solving, but only a tiny fraction of them are interesting, surprising, elegant, gorgeous, awe-inspiring. These latter judgments aren’t themselves part of mathematics. Rather, it requires the mathematician to have an aesthetic opinion – it is through these choices of which theorems to try to prove that the mathematician becomes artist, just as the artist must select only certain stimuli from an infinity of stimuli to throw down on paper or in a score.And this applies to science just as well. There are infinitely many science “problems” I could be working on, but one has to remind oneself that not all of them are equally interesting, important, cool, kick-ass, stunning, lovely, etc. Most problems are disasters in this aesthetic sense, and so one keeps digging for the shiny gems, the ones worth spending a couple years or more trying to crack.
Yet another photo-essay, this one on the history of the London Underground