Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Euphemisms. Often, they originate as a way of saying something in a way that is not considered offensive by others (people in general, religious authorities, governments). Like this example from Eleanor Stern’s article : “Consider the rate at which words for concepts like “toilet” are replaced and euphemized: ladies’ room, lavatory, privy, W.C., washroom.” There is even a term for it: “In linguistics, this would be called a “replacement vocabulary”. Or as Luke Fleming and Michael Lempert said: “A familiar irony haunts all these efforts: proscription is, in a word, productive.” In other words, taboos drive the creation of new words.”   In the Age of the Internet, there’s a new driver for euphemisms as social media censors certain content. It might be because that company (Facebook, Twitter etc) is for and against certain topics. Or because society’s mood calls for that stance. Or because governments demand it.   But social media is just filtering by algorithms...

As algorithms make more and more decisions, any accusation of bias or an outright error in the decision gets redirected at the algorithm. Seth Godin cites a few such examples : -          That important mail that landed in the spam folder; -          Who gets stopped at airports for extensive checks; -          Google’s search results; -          Facebook’s news feed. As Godin says, this begins to sound more and more like “hiding behind the algorithm”. But why blame the algorithm “as if it wrote itself”? Isn’t it obvious, asks Godin, that “someone wrote that code”? What happens next when AI (an algorithm) begins to write new algorithms?! “As AI gets ever better at machine learning, we'll hear over and over that the output isn't anyone's responsibility, because, hey, the algorithm wrote the code.” While there...

There was a time when this was how science was done, wrote Jon Turney: “Find a plausible theory for how some bits of the world behave, make predictions, test them experimentally.” But now? “All the action is in silicon — not in the world, or even the lab.” ‘Silicon’ as in algorithms, data mining and computer simulations. Kevin Kelly noticed this trend in his 2008 article where he pointed out that Google Translate uses “zillions of datapoints which in aggregate link "this to that" from one language to another”. What does that technique for understanding, he wondered? “If you can learn how to spell without knowing anything about the rules or grammar of spelling, and if you can learn how to translate languages without having any theory or concepts about grammar of the languages you are translating, then what else can you learn without having a theory?” George Box famously said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Box’s comment became all the more ...

A few days back, Michael Brown, an unarmed black man was shot dead by cops in a small town called Ferguson in the US. The incident sparked riots and protests to which the cops then responded with a shock and awe approach: they came out dressed like soldiers, sniper tripods and all! Unbelievable. Zeynep Tufekci wrote an article on that from a different perspective : “Ferguson is about many things, starting first with race and policing in America. But it’s also about internet, net neutrality and algorithmic filtering.” Say what??? How did the Internet get dragged into this? Tufekci said one of her friends wondered whether it would become national news. Another friend responded: “Yes Ferguson will make news, another friend tweeted, because… well, here you go: Twitter.” Of course, the friend was right. After all: “Now, we expect documentation, live-feeds, streaming video, real time Tweets.” Soon enough, Tufekci found her Twitter feed filled with Ferguson. But not on F...

“We know that if you ask people what movie they want to see next week, they’re likely to mention a classy art film. But, if you ask them what movie they want to see tonight, they’re more likely to mention a mindless blockbuster.” -          David Brooks Netflix isn't that big a name in India, but it's huge in the US. The company was founded by Reed Hastings in 1997 who “saw a way to combine Americans' love of movies with their love of not getting off the sofa even to go to the video store”! So how did they do it? Remember this was way back in 1997, with the Internet just starting to catch on. So the company mailed DVD's to customers; who after viewing it, would mail the DVD back. Today, of course, with increased network speeds, the company streams movies (the way YouTube does) to your PC/laptop/phone/tablet. Netflix is famous for its recommendation algorithms that suggest what you might want to view next. So much so that Xavier Amatria...

I read this old article on Twitter by Nicholas Carr only recently (he wrote it when Twitter was just starting to catch on) but it was still fun to read. I loved his description what Twitter does: “Twitter unbundles the blog, fragments the fragment. It broadcasts the text message, turns SMS into a mass medium.” The difference from the telegraph is illuminating: “The telegraph required you to stop and ask yourself: Is this worth it? Twitter says: Everything’s worth it!” Nothing seems to have changed between now and then it comes to what people tweet: “And what exactly are we broadcasting? The minutiae of our lives.” Or to put it more colourfully: “Twitter is the telegraph of Narcissus. Not only are you the star of the show, but everything that happens to you, no matter how trifling, is a headline, a media event, a stop-the-presses bulletin.” Reduced to tweet size, that would be: “Look at me! Look at me! Are you looking?” And once Twitter got critical mass, it b...

Lots of people advocate openness, transparency and sharing in the context of ideas. Some take it too far, though, when they advocate that even algorithms should be available for everyone to see. Like when European regulators start pushing Google to open up its algorithm that ranks websites. The stakes are very high. For most of us, search is synonymous with Google. And few look beyond the first couple of results that Google throws up. Any lower and nobody even knows the site exists! If you own a bookstore or hotel and show up low down the list, it is disastrous for business. No wonder it is businesses that are pushing to open up Google’s algorithm. (Some of them complain they are ranked lower even though they are the most relevant result). It’s obvious why Google itself would be against the idea. After all, once the algorithm is public property, out goes Google’s monopoly. And its multi-billion dollar empire. Well, you might say, that’s just too bad for Google. But is there any other ...