As the financial crisis continues to unfold, both in Greece and in other countries in Europe, a seemingly common response, especially among young people, is to leave their country and move to greener pastures. The lead article of a national newspaper on Sunday, November 21, splashed across the first page the main reasons to leave Greece. The BBC Magazine also ran this week an article on Irish leaving, or wishing to leave, their country.
Why should then somebody stay?
People do move around. A few years back I visited Bodie in California. Bodie was founded in 1876 to exploit a deposit of gold-bearing ore, boomed from 1877 to the late 1880s, and then started declining; in 1915 it was labelled a ghost town. Today it is a tourist attraction. People did not stay. It looks like having been taken out of a Western movie. But it may be exactly because it looks like it is putting on a show that I cannot take it seriously as the stage of any human drama.
A more recent example of a ghost town is the story of Centralia in Pennsylvania.Centralia was deserted by a mine fire that probably started in 1962 and still burns today in tunnels beneath the town. The attempts to extinguish it were unsuccessful. In the 1960s and 1970s people complained of health problems related to fire byproducts, such as carbon monoxide and dioxide; yet residents were unaware of the magnitude of the problem until in 1979 the then mayor of the town and gas-station owner "inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F (77.8 °C). Statewide attention to the fire began to increase, culminating in 1981 when 12-year-old resident Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole four feet wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet in a backyard. Only the quick work of his cousin Eric Wolfgang in pulling Todd out of the hole saved Todd's life, as the plume of hot steam billowing from the hole was measured as containing a lethal level of carbon monoxide".
In the 1980s people started relocating with financial support from the U.S. Congress. In 2009, formal evictions began. The departure was not without acrimony. People were divided in two camps, those wanting to move and those insisting to stay, even ignoring the fire's existence, as narrated by journalist Joan Quigley in her book The Day the Earth Caved In. In a recent podcast interviewees relate how ugly it turned: families were split; a molotov cocktail was thrown through an apartment window at 4 a.m.; a woman was stabbed and killed by her husband.
Remarkably, a handfull of people have stayed in Centralia, living there, and refusing to leave their homes. In the podcast, eleven people were found still in the town, living literally on top of a fire.
Which reminded me of Julio Llamazares's novel La Lluvia Amarilla, a monologue of the last inhabitant of a village called Ainielle in Huesca, Spain, reminiscing about his, and the village's past, and preparing for his, and the village's death.
For what should then somebody, we, stay?
Perhaps because it is more difficult than giving up. Perhaps because it is more interesting to stick it out instead of throwing in the towel, because it is the decent thing to do, as some of the citizens of Oran did. So that, paraphrasing Gabo's, Colonel, after seventy-five years, or whatever the length of our life may be, minute by minute, we will be able to feel pure, explicit, invincible, and ready to reply: Shit.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
A Review of Engineering Play
[A Review of Mizuko Ito's Engineering Play for ACM Computing Reviews ]
As many young parents, I watch children's software with a mix of opportunity and trepidation. Studies show that video games may benefit cognitive functions [1], but at the same time violence can he disconcerting. Moreover, children are increasingly spending more time on digital media creating, communicating, even building identities, so that the discussion about children's interaction with computers is getting wider and wider.
Mizuko Ito's Engineering Play is a welcome addition to the discussion, putting children's software into perspective. Ito, a cultural anthropologist, observes that such software already has a history of some decades. Putting on a historian's hat she shows how digital products targeting children have evolved from the 1970s to our day, and how these products interact with existing institutions and, intriguingly, how children themselves appropriate them, often in ways that stand in direct contrast to the expectations of grown ups.
Ito distinguishes three types of children's software. Academic software aims squarely at improving a particular academic skill taught at school. Entertainment software (also called edutainment) consists of games with a wholesome kids-friendly appeal—a Walt Disney version of the digital world—but without any pretense other than providing fun. Construction software builds on the ideas of Seymour Papert that the best way to use a computer is for allowing kids to build things with it; in a sense, passing the hacker ethic to kids. The LOGO programming language was a prime exemplar, but SimCity and related titles are also in this category.
The evolution of these genres makes clear, however, that the intentions of the pioneers in each of them notwithstanding, the path they eventually took was heavily influenced by the institutional and corporate frameworks in which they were adopted and produced respectively. Simply put, they did not change schooling, but rather adapted to it; and they did not change the software and media industry, but rather became an integral part of them.
In the concluding section of the book, Ito notes that if she where to place her bets on which genre has the potential to transform childhood learning, it would be construction, a position that will be close to the heart of many computer scientists. Rebecca Mead, in a recent article in The New Yorker [2], points out that the design of children playgrounds has been following two different tacks: on the one hand we have playgrounds with the four "S"'s—the swing, the sandbox, the seesaw, and the slide. On the other hand, we have playgrounds where children are provided with stuff like wood and metal and various tools for kids to do whatever they want with it. Construction software may be the digital equivalent of such imagination play spaces.
The book is good reading as it is. If it could benefit from something, it would primarily be some better editing—the prose gets heavy sometimes, although readers accustomed to social studies may find the style familiar (I wondered at the number of times "contestation" appeared). While there are plenty of references, there are two endnotes for the whole book, which raises the question why there are there in the first place. The anthropological research related in the book took place in the late 1990s, but it does not seem out of date. Overall the book deserves a wider readership than anxious parents.
[1] C. Shawn Green Alexandre Pouget and Daphne Bavelier. Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games, Current Biology, Volume 20, Issue 17, pp. 1573–1579, 14 September 2010.
[2] Rebecca Mead, State of Play, The New Yorker, July 5, 2010, pp. 32–37.
As many young parents, I watch children's software with a mix of opportunity and trepidation. Studies show that video games may benefit cognitive functions [1], but at the same time violence can he disconcerting. Moreover, children are increasingly spending more time on digital media creating, communicating, even building identities, so that the discussion about children's interaction with computers is getting wider and wider.
Mizuko Ito's Engineering Play is a welcome addition to the discussion, putting children's software into perspective. Ito, a cultural anthropologist, observes that such software already has a history of some decades. Putting on a historian's hat she shows how digital products targeting children have evolved from the 1970s to our day, and how these products interact with existing institutions and, intriguingly, how children themselves appropriate them, often in ways that stand in direct contrast to the expectations of grown ups.
Ito distinguishes three types of children's software. Academic software aims squarely at improving a particular academic skill taught at school. Entertainment software (also called edutainment) consists of games with a wholesome kids-friendly appeal—a Walt Disney version of the digital world—but without any pretense other than providing fun. Construction software builds on the ideas of Seymour Papert that the best way to use a computer is for allowing kids to build things with it; in a sense, passing the hacker ethic to kids. The LOGO programming language was a prime exemplar, but SimCity and related titles are also in this category.
The evolution of these genres makes clear, however, that the intentions of the pioneers in each of them notwithstanding, the path they eventually took was heavily influenced by the institutional and corporate frameworks in which they were adopted and produced respectively. Simply put, they did not change schooling, but rather adapted to it; and they did not change the software and media industry, but rather became an integral part of them.
In the concluding section of the book, Ito notes that if she where to place her bets on which genre has the potential to transform childhood learning, it would be construction, a position that will be close to the heart of many computer scientists. Rebecca Mead, in a recent article in The New Yorker [2], points out that the design of children playgrounds has been following two different tacks: on the one hand we have playgrounds with the four "S"'s—the swing, the sandbox, the seesaw, and the slide. On the other hand, we have playgrounds where children are provided with stuff like wood and metal and various tools for kids to do whatever they want with it. Construction software may be the digital equivalent of such imagination play spaces.
The book is good reading as it is. If it could benefit from something, it would primarily be some better editing—the prose gets heavy sometimes, although readers accustomed to social studies may find the style familiar (I wondered at the number of times "contestation" appeared). While there are plenty of references, there are two endnotes for the whole book, which raises the question why there are there in the first place. The anthropological research related in the book took place in the late 1990s, but it does not seem out of date. Overall the book deserves a wider readership than anxious parents.
[1] C. Shawn Green Alexandre Pouget and Daphne Bavelier. Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games, Current Biology, Volume 20, Issue 17, pp. 1573–1579, 14 September 2010.
[2] Rebecca Mead, State of Play, The New Yorker, July 5, 2010, pp. 32–37.
From Dürer to Walton Ford
Episode 75 of BBC Radio 4's excellent A History of the World in 100 Objects series was about Albrecht Dürer's "Rhinoceros" print. The print was very successful: "Using wood-block allowed him [Dürer] to print around four to five thousand copies of this image during his lifetime, and nobody knows how many millions have sold in other forms since. This image stuck. In works of natural history, above all, Dürer's rhino turned out to be unshiftable, even when more accurate depictions of the animal were available. In the seventeenth century, copies of this print could be seen on the doors of Pisa Cathedral and in a church fresco in Colombia in South America. It's appeared on ceramics everywhere from Meissen to Liverpool, and it's now a popular T-shirt and a fridge magnet."
Dürer, however, had never seen a live rhinoceros, which may explain why the depicted beast differs from the real one. It has an extra horn, and it is"covered with armour plating, not really skin, and that armour plating is worked just like metal armour - with swirls and scales and spirals, which manage to look military and decorative all at the same time".
The rhinoceros was inspired by a real one. In 1514 the Portuguese nobleman Alfonso d' Albuquerque, who established the Portuguese colonial empire in India, received the rhinoceros from the Sultan of Gujarat, and, probably not knowing what to do with it, sent it over to Portugal to his king. It created a sensation in Lisbon, and then the Portuguese king forwarded it as a present to the Pope in Rome. Unfortunately, it never made it there. "The ship carrying it was hit by a storm off La Spezia, and sank with all hands. Although rhinos are competent swimmers, since this one was chained to the deck, it also drowned."
In our own time Dürer's rhino has been reincarnated in a painting by Walton Ford, an american artist that paints watercolors of animals in the tradition of John Jay Audubon. Ford straddles the boundary between illustration and painting, as his work, although deeply naturalistic, is frequently disconcerting. There is something in a painting that enables a second reading. One can see that in his excellent Pancha Tantra, which by the way has become a favorite reading of my toddler children.
One of Ford's most striking paintings is The Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros, a retake of the Dürer masterpiece, where the rhino is shown dramatically at the moment the water comes gushing over the ship, on his legs. Chained on the mast, the rhino is meeting death.
Apart from the wrenching imagery and the vivid colors, it is the different conception of nature in the two works, Dürer's and Ford's that struck me. In Dürer's print, nature is powerful, to be admired, its strength resembling that of human manufacture (so witness the rhino's armor), but transcending it. In Ford's painting, nature is drowning, victim of human vanity and incompetence. The difference five hundred years have made.
Dürer, however, had never seen a live rhinoceros, which may explain why the depicted beast differs from the real one. It has an extra horn, and it is"covered with armour plating, not really skin, and that armour plating is worked just like metal armour - with swirls and scales and spirals, which manage to look military and decorative all at the same time".
The rhinoceros was inspired by a real one. In 1514 the Portuguese nobleman Alfonso d' Albuquerque, who established the Portuguese colonial empire in India, received the rhinoceros from the Sultan of Gujarat, and, probably not knowing what to do with it, sent it over to Portugal to his king. It created a sensation in Lisbon, and then the Portuguese king forwarded it as a present to the Pope in Rome. Unfortunately, it never made it there. "The ship carrying it was hit by a storm off La Spezia, and sank with all hands. Although rhinos are competent swimmers, since this one was chained to the deck, it also drowned."
In our own time Dürer's rhino has been reincarnated in a painting by Walton Ford, an american artist that paints watercolors of animals in the tradition of John Jay Audubon. Ford straddles the boundary between illustration and painting, as his work, although deeply naturalistic, is frequently disconcerting. There is something in a painting that enables a second reading. One can see that in his excellent Pancha Tantra, which by the way has become a favorite reading of my toddler children.
One of Ford's most striking paintings is The Loss of the Lisbon Rhinoceros, a retake of the Dürer masterpiece, where the rhino is shown dramatically at the moment the water comes gushing over the ship, on his legs. Chained on the mast, the rhino is meeting death.
Apart from the wrenching imagery and the vivid colors, it is the different conception of nature in the two works, Dürer's and Ford's that struck me. In Dürer's print, nature is powerful, to be admired, its strength resembling that of human manufacture (so witness the rhino's armor), but transcending it. In Ford's painting, nature is drowning, victim of human vanity and incompetence. The difference five hundred years have made.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
From Pentominoes to Conspiracy Theories
A couple of years ago I bought Katamino, a wooden Pentomino puzzle. I felt a surge of nostalgia when I saw it in a shop, as I vaguely remembered Pentominoes from Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth, which I had read in my early teens. I was also convinced of the game's educational value to my kids, who were three years old and one year old when I brought the puzzle home.
I explained the game to the eldest and let him play by giving him a small puzzle, that is a short area to fill with any of the available pieces. He did fill it, but not in the way I expected. He started putting in the pieces on the area to be filled. Then, as the area filled up, he continued adding pieces, but standing on their vertical sides, instead of lying down horizontally. For example, he would add the "I" piece standing up on one square, instead of lying down and using up four squares. Like most parents I guess, I was thrilled by this display of non-lateral thinking, and withheld any urge to show the "correct" solution.
After a while I recalled that I had seen somewhere this kind of unconventional thinking in tackling hard Computer Science problems. After some searching, I found that Scientific American had run an article on the topic: "On the Spaghetti Computer and Other Analog Gadgets for Problem Solving", Scientific American, 250(6):19-26, June 1984. The article was written by A. K. Dewdney and the material has been reprinted in books; I own "The Turing Omnibus", which I consider a great way to introduce Computer Science.
I checked Dewdney's Wikipedia entry and was surprised to find that "he has developed hypotheses which disagree with the official version of events surrounding the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, in which he claims that phone calls from the planes must have been faked and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77".
I am not an expert in this discussion; others are far more knowledgeable. Skeptic magazine offers a series of interesting podcasts. The August 10, 2010 Skepticality installment featured author David Aaronovitch talking about his book "Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History". Among other things, Aaronovitch mentioned the 9/11 conspiracy theories and talked about David Ray Griffin. Aaronovitch noted that Griffin is obviously a very intelligent person, but still held strange views about the attacks, involving the use of thermite or nanothermite to bring down the buildings.
The Skepticality podcasts are produced in the US. Closer to Aaronovich, over in the UK, on October 29, 2009, Noam Chomsky gave a talk in the London School of Economics. The topic of the talk was "Human Rights in the 21 Century". At the end of the talk the audience was invited to ask questions; and one question was about the veracity of some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Chomsky replied by noting that people advocating such theories should put them under review in the appropriate venue; for instance, if somebody argues that traces of some explosive, or whatever, were found among the rubble, they should submit their views in an appropriate scientific journal to be judged on their merits.
This does not happen. The Internet has made discussion more open, but has allowed conspiracy theorists to blossom, as they tend to flock together—in fact, it seems that the advent of online communities has rather facilitated parochialism than encouraged openness. Moreover, intelligence guarantees neither rationality not reason.
I explained the game to the eldest and let him play by giving him a small puzzle, that is a short area to fill with any of the available pieces. He did fill it, but not in the way I expected. He started putting in the pieces on the area to be filled. Then, as the area filled up, he continued adding pieces, but standing on their vertical sides, instead of lying down horizontally. For example, he would add the "I" piece standing up on one square, instead of lying down and using up four squares. Like most parents I guess, I was thrilled by this display of non-lateral thinking, and withheld any urge to show the "correct" solution.
After a while I recalled that I had seen somewhere this kind of unconventional thinking in tackling hard Computer Science problems. After some searching, I found that Scientific American had run an article on the topic: "On the Spaghetti Computer and Other Analog Gadgets for Problem Solving", Scientific American, 250(6):19-26, June 1984. The article was written by A. K. Dewdney and the material has been reprinted in books; I own "The Turing Omnibus", which I consider a great way to introduce Computer Science.
I checked Dewdney's Wikipedia entry and was surprised to find that "he has developed hypotheses which disagree with the official version of events surrounding the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, in which he claims that phone calls from the planes must have been faked and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77".
I am not an expert in this discussion; others are far more knowledgeable. Skeptic magazine offers a series of interesting podcasts. The August 10, 2010 Skepticality installment featured author David Aaronovitch talking about his book "Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History". Among other things, Aaronovitch mentioned the 9/11 conspiracy theories and talked about David Ray Griffin. Aaronovitch noted that Griffin is obviously a very intelligent person, but still held strange views about the attacks, involving the use of thermite or nanothermite to bring down the buildings.
The Skepticality podcasts are produced in the US. Closer to Aaronovich, over in the UK, on October 29, 2009, Noam Chomsky gave a talk in the London School of Economics. The topic of the talk was "Human Rights in the 21 Century". At the end of the talk the audience was invited to ask questions; and one question was about the veracity of some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Chomsky replied by noting that people advocating such theories should put them under review in the appropriate venue; for instance, if somebody argues that traces of some explosive, or whatever, were found among the rubble, they should submit their views in an appropriate scientific journal to be judged on their merits.
This does not happen. The Internet has made discussion more open, but has allowed conspiracy theorists to blossom, as they tend to flock together—in fact, it seems that the advent of online communities has rather facilitated parochialism than encouraged openness. Moreover, intelligence guarantees neither rationality not reason.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Vanity Fair and Isocrates
A recent article in Vanity Fair provides a sobering, and bitter, account of the financial and social situation in Greece. The contributor, Michael Lewis has obviously done his homework. People may disagree over some of his attributions regarding the causes of the crisis, but it is difficult to argue against his portrayal of the generalised malaise in the country.
Near the end of the article, Lewis mentions a sign bearing a sign from the ancient orator Isocrates: "Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress."
This is a oft-quoted piece in Greece, usually bandied about to explain our evil doings as a result of excessive freedom, or the dangers of democracy for an unruly populace. The quote, however, seems a bit too apt for the situation, so I decided to check a bit more. I am not a classicist, so me checking took the form of brute-force search in the Perseus digital library project. I found the following, broadly related pieces, but not the oft-quoted one:
Areopagiticus 20 (Αρεοπαγιτικός 20)
Ancient Greek:
οἱ γὰρ κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον τὴν πόλιν διοικοῦντες κατεστήσαντο πολιτείαν οὐκ ὀνόματι μὲν τῷ κοινοτάτῳ καὶ πραοτάτῳ προσαγορευομένην, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν πράξεων οὐ τοιαύτην τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι φαινομένην, οὐδ᾽ ἣ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἐπαίδευε τοὺς πολίτας ὥσθ᾽ ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν μὲν ἀκολασίαν δημοκρατίαν, τὴν δὲ παρανομίαν ἐλευθερίαν, τὴν δὲ παρρησίαν ἰσονομίαν, τὴν δ᾽ ἐξουσίαν τοῦ πάντα ποιεῖν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἀλλὰ μισοῦσα καὶ κολάζουσα τοὺς τοιούτους βελτίους καὶ σωφρονεστέρους ἅπαντας τοὺς πολίτας ἐποίησεν.
Modern Greek:
Εκείνοι λοιπόν που είχαν τη διοίκηση της πολιτείας κατά την παλαιότερη εποχή, εγκατέστησαν πολίτευμα που δεν είχε μόνον όνομα προσφιλέστατο σ’ όλους και γλυκύτατο, ενώ στην πραγματικότητα δεν έδινε την εντύπωση αυτή στους πολιτευομένους και δεν προετοίμαζε τους πολίτας ώστε να θεωρούν την ακολασία δημοκρατία, την παρανομία ελευθερία, την αθυροστομία ισότητα δικαιωμάτων, ούτε τέλος την εξουσία να κάνουν όλα αυτά ευδαιμονία, αλλά πολίτευμα που παρέδιδε στο μίσος και στην τιμωρία τους ανθρώπους αυτού του είδους και που κατώρθωσε με τον τρόπο αυτό να κάμη όλους τους πολίτας καλύτερους και φρονιμώτερους. (Μτφρ. Α.Μ. Γεωργαντόπουλος, Μ. Πρωτοψάλτης & Ι. Ιωαννίδη–Φαληριώτη.)
English:
For those who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which in name merely was hailed as the most impartial and the mildest of governments, while in practice showing itself the opposite to those who lived under it, nor one which trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness,1 but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser. (Translated by George Nolin)
and
Ancient Greek:
κατεστήσαντο γὰρ δημοκρατίαν οὐ τὴν εἰκῇ πολιτευομένην, καὶ νομίζουσαν τὴν μὲν ἀκολασίαν ἐλευθερίαν εἶναι, τὴν δ᾽ ἐξουσίαν ὅ τι βούλεταί τις ποιεῖν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῖς τοιούτοις μὲν ἐπιτιμῶσαν, ἀριστοκρατίᾳ δὲ χρωμένην: ἣν οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ χρησιμωτάτην οὖσαν ὥσπερ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν τιμημάτων ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις ἀριθμοῦσιν, οὐ δι᾽ ἀμαθίαν ἀγνοοῦντες, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ μηδὲν πώποτ᾽ αὐτοῖς μελῆσαι τῶν δεόντων.
Modern Greek:
Eγκατέστησαν (δηλαδή) το είδος εκείνο της δημοκρατίας, όχι αυτό που δεν έχει καθορισμένη πολιτική, και που θεωρεί ότι η ακολασία είναι ελευθερία, και το δικαίωμα να κάνη ό,τι θέλει ο καθένας, ευτυχία, παρά το πολίτευμα εκείνο που αυτά τα πράγματα τα κατακρίνει, και όπου κυβερνούν οι άριστοι· τον τύπο αυτόν του πολιτεύματος που είναι χρησιμότατος, οι πολλοί τον συγκαταλέγουν εις τα πολιτεύματα που έχουν βάση την περιουσία, όχι από αμάθεια, πως δεν το ξέρουν, παρά διότι ποτέ ως τώρα αυτοί δεν ενδιαφέρθηκαν για παρόμοια ζητήματα.- (Μτφρ. Ε. Πανέτσος)
English:
For they established government by the people, not the kind which operates at haphazard, mistaking licence for liberty and freedom to do what one likes for happiness,1 but the kind which frowns upon such excesses and makes use of the rule of the best. Now the majority count the rule of the best, which is the most advantageous of governments (just as they do government based upon a property qualification) among the distinct kinds of polity, being mistaken, not because of ignorance, but because they have never taken any interest in the things which should claim their attention. (Translated by George Nolin)
If my search efforts came up with the correct results, it shows that people can be trusted to be inventive when pushing against liberty.
Near the end of the article, Lewis mentions a sign bearing a sign from the ancient orator Isocrates: "Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress."
This is a oft-quoted piece in Greece, usually bandied about to explain our evil doings as a result of excessive freedom, or the dangers of democracy for an unruly populace. The quote, however, seems a bit too apt for the situation, so I decided to check a bit more. I am not a classicist, so me checking took the form of brute-force search in the Perseus digital library project. I found the following, broadly related pieces, but not the oft-quoted one:
Areopagiticus 20 (Αρεοπαγιτικός 20)
Ancient Greek:
οἱ γὰρ κατ᾽ ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον τὴν πόλιν διοικοῦντες κατεστήσαντο πολιτείαν οὐκ ὀνόματι μὲν τῷ κοινοτάτῳ καὶ πραοτάτῳ προσαγορευομένην, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν πράξεων οὐ τοιαύτην τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι φαινομένην, οὐδ᾽ ἣ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ἐπαίδευε τοὺς πολίτας ὥσθ᾽ ἡγεῖσθαι τὴν μὲν ἀκολασίαν δημοκρατίαν, τὴν δὲ παρανομίαν ἐλευθερίαν, τὴν δὲ παρρησίαν ἰσονομίαν, τὴν δ᾽ ἐξουσίαν τοῦ πάντα ποιεῖν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἀλλὰ μισοῦσα καὶ κολάζουσα τοὺς τοιούτους βελτίους καὶ σωφρονεστέρους ἅπαντας τοὺς πολίτας ἐποίησεν.
Modern Greek:
Εκείνοι λοιπόν που είχαν τη διοίκηση της πολιτείας κατά την παλαιότερη εποχή, εγκατέστησαν πολίτευμα που δεν είχε μόνον όνομα προσφιλέστατο σ’ όλους και γλυκύτατο, ενώ στην πραγματικότητα δεν έδινε την εντύπωση αυτή στους πολιτευομένους και δεν προετοίμαζε τους πολίτας ώστε να θεωρούν την ακολασία δημοκρατία, την παρανομία ελευθερία, την αθυροστομία ισότητα δικαιωμάτων, ούτε τέλος την εξουσία να κάνουν όλα αυτά ευδαιμονία, αλλά πολίτευμα που παρέδιδε στο μίσος και στην τιμωρία τους ανθρώπους αυτού του είδους και που κατώρθωσε με τον τρόπο αυτό να κάμη όλους τους πολίτας καλύτερους και φρονιμώτερους. (Μτφρ. Α.Μ. Γεωργαντόπουλος, Μ. Πρωτοψάλτης & Ι. Ιωαννίδη–Φαληριώτη.)
English:
For those who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which in name merely was hailed as the most impartial and the mildest of governments, while in practice showing itself the opposite to those who lived under it, nor one which trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness,1 but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser. (Translated by George Nolin)
and
Ancient Greek:
κατεστήσαντο γὰρ δημοκρατίαν οὐ τὴν εἰκῇ πολιτευομένην, καὶ νομίζουσαν τὴν μὲν ἀκολασίαν ἐλευθερίαν εἶναι, τὴν δ᾽ ἐξουσίαν ὅ τι βούλεταί τις ποιεῖν εὐδαιμονίαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῖς τοιούτοις μὲν ἐπιτιμῶσαν, ἀριστοκρατίᾳ δὲ χρωμένην: ἣν οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ χρησιμωτάτην οὖσαν ὥσπερ τὴν ἀπὸ τῶν τιμημάτων ἐν ταῖς πολιτείαις ἀριθμοῦσιν, οὐ δι᾽ ἀμαθίαν ἀγνοοῦντες, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ μηδὲν πώποτ᾽ αὐτοῖς μελῆσαι τῶν δεόντων.
Modern Greek:
Eγκατέστησαν (δηλαδή) το είδος εκείνο της δημοκρατίας, όχι αυτό που δεν έχει καθορισμένη πολιτική, και που θεωρεί ότι η ακολασία είναι ελευθερία, και το δικαίωμα να κάνη ό,τι θέλει ο καθένας, ευτυχία, παρά το πολίτευμα εκείνο που αυτά τα πράγματα τα κατακρίνει, και όπου κυβερνούν οι άριστοι· τον τύπο αυτόν του πολιτεύματος που είναι χρησιμότατος, οι πολλοί τον συγκαταλέγουν εις τα πολιτεύματα που έχουν βάση την περιουσία, όχι από αμάθεια, πως δεν το ξέρουν, παρά διότι ποτέ ως τώρα αυτοί δεν ενδιαφέρθηκαν για παρόμοια ζητήματα.- (Μτφρ. Ε. Πανέτσος)
English:
For they established government by the people, not the kind which operates at haphazard, mistaking licence for liberty and freedom to do what one likes for happiness,1 but the kind which frowns upon such excesses and makes use of the rule of the best. Now the majority count the rule of the best, which is the most advantageous of governments (just as they do government based upon a property qualification) among the distinct kinds of polity, being mistaken, not because of ignorance, but because they have never taken any interest in the things which should claim their attention. (Translated by George Nolin)
If my search efforts came up with the correct results, it shows that people can be trusted to be inventive when pushing against liberty.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Predicting Technology
Albert-László Barabási, a scientist and prominent figure in complex systems research, recently published a book called Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do. In his research, Barabási has been able to predict human mobility patterns from mobile phone data. In a paper he co-authored and appeared in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1177170) the abstract goes: "we find a 93% potential predictability in user mobility across the whole user base. Despite the significant differences in the travel patterns, we find a remarkable lack of variability in predictability, which is largely independent of the distance users cover on a regular basis". In a review of his book, published in the June 10, 2010 issue of Nature, the reviewer notes that "Barabási’s success in predicting human mobility patterns from mobile-phone data leads to his plausible, if ominous, suggestion that individuals could be constantly tracked using such techniques coupled with widespread surveillance technologies. Yet his predicting human activity assertion that the prediction of most things we do at the individual level 'is growing increasingly feasible' is not persuasive. Our predictability, to the extent that our choices and movements form a pattern, relies more on extrapolation of past behaviour — as exploited by web-based ‘recommender systems’ that draw on our purchase or browsing history — than on burst characteristics. Similar to avalanches and earthquakes, bursts have statistical orderliness but remain unpredictable as individual events".
The difference between a statistical orderliness and prediction of individual is crucial since it perhaps allows such notions as freedom of will, spontaneity, and serendipity, to survive. Moreover, when thinking about the review I could not help recalling that the discussion seemed somehow familiar. I located the déjà vu in my teenage readings, and in particular in the Foundation Series. In it a mathematician, Hari Seldon, has developed a branch of mathematics that can predict the future, by working on big masses of people. This branch of mathematics, called psychohistory, is shown to be remarkably successful, but fails dismally when a single individual, called The Mule, with formidable mental powers, manages to become master of the world (or almost); psychohistory had not, and could not, predict The Mule.
Fiction predicts science's predictions — and its limits.
The difference between a statistical orderliness and prediction of individual is crucial since it perhaps allows such notions as freedom of will, spontaneity, and serendipity, to survive. Moreover, when thinking about the review I could not help recalling that the discussion seemed somehow familiar. I located the déjà vu in my teenage readings, and in particular in the Foundation Series. In it a mathematician, Hari Seldon, has developed a branch of mathematics that can predict the future, by working on big masses of people. This branch of mathematics, called psychohistory, is shown to be remarkably successful, but fails dismally when a single individual, called The Mule, with formidable mental powers, manages to become master of the world (or almost); psychohistory had not, and could not, predict The Mule.
Fiction predicts science's predictions — and its limits.
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