Consider Bookhling

I’ve finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem some days ago. As is usual with all his works so far, I enjoyed it immensely. This is the kind of book that grips your attention and never let it go, the sort of reading experience that many people don’t get to enjoy very often past a certain age. Other than some technicality like how stable elements from one universe can remain stable even in another universe (and if it is because the physical laws are the same, what caused those elements to be different enough to be incompatible with life forms in another universe) that keeps on nagging at the back of my mind, I see no reason to criticize the book in any way. Of course, Neal Stephenson won’t be winning Nobel prize for writing the Anathem, but he never meant for it to be that kind of work, did he?

The premises of Anathem is obviously reflective of that of the current world we live in, notably the ubiquity and evanescence of information. The fact that most people lack learning of significant depth (which isn’t really all that much of a change from any other time in history) while becoming increasingly irreverent of the devotion to learning itself is a trait of the modern world frequently discussed in variety of media. Anathem also devotes quite a number of pages to discussion of the issue, and I hit upon a simple idea while thinking about a section on dangers of unintentional misinformation born through insubstantial learning.

In conventional process of teaching and learning, an individual opts to become a node of a degree of knowledge. The individual-node then connects with other individuals of varying degrees of learning and transmit his/her learning to those individuals in a process reminiscent of propagation of thermodynamic equilibrium. Currently the system of public knowledge-the web-is like an ever expanding vacuum. Lack of reliable sources of data and knowledge combined with abundance of random bits of knowledge that remain nonetheless incoherent and worthless in light of a greater system of thought is the symptom of such a vacuum. Maybe this symptom can be alleviated once the academic sector of the knowledge network begins to open its data to the world at large? Maybe the web itself can become a coherent learning environment through steady injection of respectable nodes of knowledge that expands along with the noise of the internet vacuum. I believe we already have the beginnings of the groundwork for such a project in the guise of openscience/science 2.0. If the openscience movement remains unhampered by the increasing haranguing of special interest groups and economic fundamentalists, we might be able to observe a true renaissance of human learning some time in the future that makes current advances in human network and information technologies pale in comparison.

I find myself writing less and less these days. With the amount of workload I had been subjected to lately, most of my writings tend to be in physical format. They are written on notebooks with ink and lead, and usually accompanied by crude drawings to illustrate ideas that words alone can’t describe effectively (my horrible verbals skills take part of the blame). Or else they are so closely related to my current work/thesis that I can’t help but to feel a bit reluctant to share them with the unknown masses of the global network, a source of endless chagrin for me since I consider myself an avid believer in the openscience/science 2.0 future. Of course, then there is the fact that I am getting increasingly worn out by the time I get home which makes it harder for me to stay up like an insomniac manic compulsive and type away musings in the night.

During my recent sojourn through the net I came across an interesting blog post in a random tweet. The post is titled “Enhancing Multitasking to Enhance Our Lives“, and it should resonate with anyone who experienced the effects of the distracting information overload that is so common to people of our generation. The author describes her experience with the occasions of information overload and proposes an interesting system to organize her information based on the ‘tabbing’ system found in most modern web browsers (she focuses on FireFox, however). It is an interesting read and I would recommend it to anyone who uses the net for reasons other than viewing random junk on youtube and facebook, i.e. serious work (not that there’s anything wrong with occasional youtubing or facebook-networking).

The problem of information overload had been around for a disturbingly long time. While the modern world wide web stands out as one of the most important achievement (emergence?) within the information history of humanity, there are recorded cases of respectable figures of society complaining of information overload in 1700’s, citing the emergence of political/philosophical ‘pamphlets’ that were so common in those times. If we still had the proper records I’m sure we would have been able to find some similar parallel in any civilization with a copy-distributable system of information not limited to written language, dating from the age of Sumerians. While the overloading capability of information in this day and age is disturbing, I’m sure we’ll be able to find a decent method of organization and concentration through all that mess just as we have done so for thousands of years… There are already quite a number of strides being made in that regard, like the integration of AI-like systems of increasing accuracy and sophistication, and smaller scale community based toolset proposals like the one made in the aforementioned blogpost (as for the web browser project for helping concentration in face of massive amount of information, I’m placing my bets on Google Chrome-based Academic research browser… I believe there are already a number of webkit based research oriented browsers on the OS X platform).

The real problem of such abundance of information might be the social implications of the breadth-first approach to the information lacking introspection and patience. The world at large is already quite a problematic place with massive disenfranchisement of certain sectors of the general human populace from the fruits of human civilization. Access to superficial information without any depth might as well work to exacerbate the discontent of the population at disadvantage… While there are plenty of legitimate reasons for people to be discontent with their situation, lack of understanding as to the true cause of their condition will commingle legitimate discontent with perceived fantasy… At that stage any well-mannered group of concerned citizens might as well turn into a group of frenzied mob, turning their anger towards certain generalized group of people/culture/circumstances as was frequently observed throughout the course of human history. Of course, I am running a sort of generalized simulation, but it is true that proliferation of knowledge without depth can be destabilizing to the society at large.

Neal Stephenson’s recent book, Anathem, also talks about the possible dangers and discomforts of the information overload. Those of you who like nine hundred pages of science fiction and philosophizing might want to pick it up. Personally I enjoyed it very much, and might put up a review sometime soon.

(Update: The LHC beam came full circle at last!)

The LHC first beam came and went. The LHC experiment itself is active right now, with about 3/8th of the ring active and 60,000 particles observed in one shot. Of course, it is set to increase to the full capacity eventually.

I am very proud to say that I have participated in the biggest scientific experiment ever undertaken by humanity no matter how indirect the method. Those of you out there who have not participated yet style yourselves supporters of science should hang your head in shame… Just kidding. Though you should really feel disappointed.

The main goals of the LHC experiment is put succinctly by Michael Sean Wright at his blog (which I happened to catch by chance).

Why did Matter triumph over Anti-Matter?
Why do particles have mass?
What is the nature Dark Matter?
What was the state of mass in the moments right after the Big Bang?

These are some of the questions entire cabals of scientists lose sleep over in their ceaseless pondering and amazement at the face of the universe in front of us. I am exhilarated to say the least. What will this experiment (the LHC experiment is, of course, a long term experiment. It is not about singular results obtainable over an experiment or two) teach us about the universe? What system of the world? I would have to be dead on the inside if such questions did not get my heart running!

McCain and Obama will be gone and done away with sooner or later. LHC experiments will remain with us so long as the human civilization thrives, perhaps changing the fundamental nature of how humanity sees the universe around themselves.

Here are some resources in case you are still interested in a bit of LHC first-beam catch up.

http://blogs.uslhc.us/?p=346

U.S. LHC blog.

http://cosmicvariance.com/2008/09/09/live-blogging-the-lhc-startup/

LHC live blogging.

http://webcast.cern.ch/index.html

LHC webcast service (severely congested at the time of the first beam event. I had to switch to BBC livecast)

There are two big events from today to tomorrow, one of them truly big in the sense of its possible impact on humanity and the sciences, and the other one big in the sense that it is a release celebration of a book by one of my favorite authors hosted by one of the more interesting groups around today. Both of them will be on the net through live webcast, so anyone interested should set the alarm bells on their clocks today.

The first and the most important is the upcoming live webcast of CERN lab LHC first beam. The Large Hadron Collider went though so much drama and uncertainty (pun intended) from inception to its recent power-up, this event will be quite emotional for the people who worked on the project as well as the large portions of the members of scientific community at large (and there are lot of them, I assure you). The first *beaming* of the tens of kilometers large apparatus is set to begin at 10th September 2008 9am CEST (GMT+2), which roughly translates into around 10th of September 3am EST in NYC. Considering that the technical and scientific magnitude devoted to this project likely dwarfs that spent for building the Great Wall, it would be tragic for anyone even remotely interested in the advances of sciences to miss this significant event. I know I will be up and about in the night, despite the fact that I have early workday tomorrow. It is worth the anguish of a day without sleep I say! So please remember to make a ruckus and wake up members of your family in support of the sciences when the beam goes off. (Fermilab in U.S. is hosting a pajama party in honor of the event, though the registration is closed I am sorry to say)

The second even is the release party for the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson, hosted by the Long Now foundation. While Neal Stephenson might not be the greatest writer alive, he is certainly one of the most interesting. I preordered my copy from Amazon in a heartbeat when I heard that he was set on publishing a new book after a long period of inactivity. The Long Now foundation itself sounds as interesting as the man himself, focused around the concept/building of millennial clock. Those people should be well worth checking out if you are interested in humane pursuits that stretches beyond mere decades or centuries. I personally find such devotion to long-term pursuits to be very attractive in this day and age where vast majority of information seem to be relegated to the role of a junk food.  Since the basic premise of the Anathem itself revolves around the millennial clock concept, the Long Now foundation is throwing a party of sorts in celebration of the release of them book, with some readings and performances that will be streamed through a live webcast at the Long Now website. The webcast is set to begin on 9th September at 7pm PST, so I guess it will be around 10pm EST in NYC (interestingly enough, the year is written as 02008 on the Long Now website. Maybe we should all begin adding zeros in front of our year marks from now on).

P.S. There is a teaser stream running at the LHC first-beam webcast site describing what they are doing at CERN. For some reason I can not stop thinking about the background music they used in the stream.

A little life update, as usual.

Now I am not as busy as before… Meaning that I have fewer deadlines to worry about at the moment, though there are a number of them looming on the horizon. Now that I have a bit of time I want to write a proper blog post like I did before, but the sudden relaxed lifestyle led to an unexpected flood of ideas and curiosities that I just do not know where to begin writing now. Oh well, I guess I gotta take it slow and one at a time.

Google Chrome had been generating a lot of fuss since the very moment it was released, from the interesting user interface and multi-processing/self-contained architecture to its future development as a product of the ubiquitous Google nation (especially with Android OS set to come up in a very near future, and who knows what other surprises Google has in store for us with all their employees getting 1/5 workday set aside for personal projects). Those of you who have not tried Chrome yet for some strange reason should at least give it a whirl, see how it is like.

Despite some issues with the technical execution (usually centering around accessibility issues and memory-hogging… Which should be expected of a beta product) and the draconian EULA included with the default Chrome distribution (which Google claims is a mistake on their part), I must say that I like this browser, and can not wait to get my hands on the final release. There is certain atmosphere of simplicity and elegance sewn into the very fabric of the program itself that appeals to me. It is like looking at a baby. So little now, yet with so many promising future ahead of her/him/it.

Indeed, the true appeal of Google Chrome is not what it is right now, (though it is one nifty browser as it is) but what it can become and what it can push other browsers to aspire to, using its extensive database support, opensourced architecture, and inevitable wave of third party plugins.

Now that I think about it, maybe even the whole memory-hogging issue of the beta Chrome is some part of its intended design acting up (of course, it is the multi-process architecture gone bad, but beyond that). With Snow Leopard update coming soon from Apple widely proclaiming full support/utility for the 64bit+ architecture, it makes me think if Google also has in mind some sort of 64bit utilizing browser architecture that had been designed from the ground up to take advantage of the advances in hardware/software mode.

Whether you like Chrome or not, its development in the future will certainly be worth keeping tabs on.