Mundane Science Fiction

For the curious:

• A 5-minute radio interview with Geoff Ryman on "mundane" science fiction from a blog on the theme.
• Wikipedia's entry on mundane sf.
  

Weeks 6 & 7: Technoutopianism and Technological Determinism

Please post here if you are signed up to blog about Geoff Ryman, Marshall McLuhan, or Pierre Levy and Hans Moravec.

Writing Resources

Even if you were unable to purchase Lunsford's The Everyday Writer, you can still use the accompanying web site, where you can find plenty of tutorials, exercises, and other resources if you need assistance with your writing:

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/everyday_writer3e/default.asp?uid=0&rau=0

Check out the 20 Most Common Errors in student work, the tutorial on evaluating online sources, and most importantly, the section on documenting sources using MLA format:

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/everyday_writer3e/docsource/1d.html

"ebooks" should not be "books"

Cory Doctorow writes "It seems to me that electronic books are different from paper books, and have different virtues and failings." He largely attributes the current "failure" of ebooks to the fact that copyright laws and publishers/authors that those laws are supposed to protect have not caught up to, or in some aspects even acknowledged, the onset of a new paradigm - namely the proliferation of information technology, and the connectivity and file-sharing capabilities it has brought.

I agree with Doctorow in that there is something inherently paradoxical in the way publishers distribute and market ebooks today. Take, for example, the e-textbooks that are sold in the Cal Student Store. The benefit of making anything digital lies in its increased maneuverability and convinience. In order for ebooks to be beneficial, they need to be fully searchable, easily copied and quoted, and accessible anywhere. However, these commercial ebooks can only be viewed through a web-browser with internet access after a password protected log-in, the text and images cannot be copied, and they can only be printed one page at a time. So what is the end product? Something very close to a paper printed book, only it is projected on a compute screen, with none of the added functions a computer is capable of providing. This situation is analogous to someone computing 5 + 5 on a modern supercomputer. We don't need an alternate version of printed books; simple paper will suffice for that function, just as it has for centuries. The computer wasn't invented to mimic the function of paper books, and to limit its functionality is like limiting the functionality of a super computer to only perform the functions of a pocket calculator. Furthermore, this attempt by publishers to enforce their copyright not only leads to no additional benefit for the reader, but it is in fact crippling the usability of ebooks. Instead of just opening a paper bound textbook, we now need to start our computers, find internet access, log onto the site, etc. etc.

What we need is an entire paradigm shift. We don't just need to loosen our paranoia of copyright infringement, but also need to rethink the entire concept of a "book" in an electronic context. The name "ebook" is somewhat of a misnomer, because it has the capability of being something completely different from a "book". The traditional book, by the restrictions placed on it by its simple media of paper and ink, have been largely sequential. But electronic books do not have this restriction. No longer should we need to read "explanations of this idea is given later on in the book" or "see footnote". With the power of hypertext, a book should resemble not a tree-like structure, but a brain map of interconnected thoughts. And who is to say a published "ebook" cannot contain a link to Wikipedia to explain relevant context? What about the incorporation of audio, graphics, video, and other multimedia content into a "book"? Who is to say that a ebook file of a chemistry book cannot contain rotating 3D graphics of a molecule, or that a ebook of Shakespeare's plays cannot contain a interactive image of the stage set?

I believe we need to let go of the idea that "ebooks" are "books". True, they are "books" in the sense that it contains text that conveys some kind of information. But other than that, placing the restriction of "books" on "ebooks" cripples the functionality of this new form electronic media.

I Am Blogging It: Maybe I'm destroying it

At the end of Henry Jenkins' article titled "Blog This!", he begs of the reader, "So blog this, please" (181). As Jenkins states in the article, blogs are becoming ever more popular as people are posting, well, just about anything. Jenkins argues that bloggers are "...expanding the range of perspectives and, if they are clever, creating order from the informational chaos"(180). Comparing bloggers to the "committees of correspondence" that distributed revolutionary texts, Jenkins attempts to show that bloggers have the power to "shape the information environment almost as powerfully as corporate media" (181). I agree that blogs give a very wide range of opinions on vast amounts of information and have shaped and will continue to shape the media landscape. I don't agree, however, that me blogging, as I am now, will help blogging or the Internet at all. I believe it will make the Internet worse.

There are many blogs I read, have read, and genuinely enjoy. However, for every blog I enjoy there are hundreds of thousands of blogs that I will never get a chance to read, and the vast majority of these blogs will be of no value to me. Thanks to search engines such as Google, we typically do not get lost in a jungle of pointless blogs, most of which have a few introductory posts and since then have been forgotten. Even if a gem is randomly found within the vast maze of the Internet, unless it is already a large and well known blog that is embraced by a large audience, it would be very difficult to find again unless the reader bookmarks it, which most readers probably wont. Between typing the sentence before this and this sentence, I attempted to find my friend's blog that was a dream journal; I could not. A new blog following an article's advise on an evening in boredom will just further dilute the readership of blogs. It will be made, published, and forgotten to be ignored by the few web surfers that happen to drift by. "Stuff White People Like", a blog my friend used to read religiously, has only had 9 blog posts in 2009. In the previous year It had posted over a hundred times and was popular enough to prompt a book release. I haven't heard my friend speak of the blog for many months now. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but a simple Google search about dead blogs leads to a mass of blog posts about dead blogs.

The most successful blogs, in my opinion, are typically those that are run by multiple people that are committed to continuing the blog. Individuals creating blogs and posting their opinions on random topics generally tend to clog up the Internet, even if it is well maintained due to the fact that most people don't want to pend time reading about a random person that they never heard of talking about random topics. Successful blogs such as Cute Overload, Make Zine, Gizmodo, Gawker, Smashing Magazines, Mashable, Google blog, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Blog, Fail Blog, etc. are all about specific topics. Although the topics each blog covers varies greatly, a blog that is good for the Internet must be liked by the users of the the Internet. If someone wants to have opinions on a subject, creating a decentralized personal blog without a community is a waste of time and weakens the image of blogging as a powerful tool. Joining the community of daily readers, engaging in comments, and communicating with committed blog writers is a more effective way of strengthening blogging. Unless there really are not enough blogs that talk about how one politician is superior to another, the formation of a blog for such a topic is unnecessary.

http://xkcd.com/635/

- Joshua Ziesmer

Missed Class Monday

I was wondering if anyone could fill me in on some of the main points emphasized on Monday (with respect to the readings or otherwise), as I missed that lecture.

It would be greatly appreciated!

Notes on the Deviance of Textuality

N. K. Hayles has simultaneously opened my eyes and confused me terribly when it comes down to the notion of “media translation.” I look on my past self as one who naively embraced at face value the oversimplification that physical and electronic representations of text are, in a broad sense, two sides of the same coin. While this is true to the extent that these texts carry the same “actual order of words and punctuation,” the method and styles of delivery incorporated into these two domains collectively and fundamentally alter the interpretation and, therefore, the meaning of the text that is read. This is a point that I had never considered, and while I agree with it in some ways, I am stubbornly resistant in others.

As Hayles noted, electronic text is in the nascent stages of what will almost certainly be exponential growth over the next hundred years and beyond. But, at this point in history regarding the interpretation of different forms of text, I am inclined to ask a fundamental question: so what? In my opinion, information is information, regardless of how it follows its strangled path from the mind of an author to that of a reader. Once a person has read something and has theoretically understood the text and subtext, hasn’t the author’s purpose been fulfilled (here, I am assuming that the author’s purpose would be informative, over experiential)? The manner in which the information is presented will enhance, diminish or leave unscathed the reader’s ability to comprehend the text and subtext based on personal experience and preference (i.e. if a reader despises reading on a computer, they may not glean the same pertinent information from an eBook as they would from the physical analog). Obviously, many writers are interested not only in the information or thoughts they convey but in the manner or style in which they are conveyed in. In such contexts I completely agree that there is much style to be lost in any translation that alters the author’s originally form of presentation.

Hayles also remarks how no physical or electronic text can ever be duplicated on pg. 94. I completely agree with this, but would ask whether or not these differences (say, between “identical” copies of the same edition of a physical book) actually manifest in varied informational interpretation by the reader. I would say that such interpretation of text and subtext would more rely on the reader’s mental facilities and nuanced personal contexts to comprehend and form a customized perception of that information. To give a personal example, I just bought a used textbook from the student store. I opened it up and saw that vast portions of it had been highlighted over. To me, reading text that has been highlighted by someone other than myself is distracting and occasionally perplexing. I will (hopefully) absorb the same information from the book that all my classmates will, but the added distraction may end up diminishing my capacity to do so. In such a way, nearly identical copies of the same book (highlighted and not) could have very different effects.

On an unrelated note, I thought that the following Van Lieshout quote on pg. 111 was very interesting “You do not buy software, you rent a first draft...the buyer has turned into an unpaid beta tester...” I had never thought of it that way. I feel like such a tool!

Lost in Translation

Where I once thought that transferring novels and poetry to the internet was merely a transitional issue, I now believe that I was sorely mistaken. I have read Haiku that were originally written in Japanese and I thought that they were rather simplistic at the time. But later on I realized that there was something lost. Something that cannot transcend the barriers set forth by different languages. Where a poem in German may rhyme very well and flow easily off the lips, once translated to Portuguese, it may sound as if a child who does not understand syntax wrote the poem. The same thing could be argued in relation to the book to e-book issue. Will a hyperlink in the middle of a text ruin how one navigates the text? As noted by some of my classmates, things like hyperlinks will cause them to click them immediately without even finishing the sentence or even the rest of the passage.

Even text online without regards to hyperlinks can be problematic. When people send documents or retype passages for other people to see, errors can be made. And these errors make something new every time. A new work is written when there is simply a minor coding error, almost causing texts to evolve in a sense. Where something in book form says "the olive tree," it can be improperly translated onto a new media source and cause it to say "the oil tree." Granted there is no such thing as an oil tree, it merely serves as a rather crude example of how simple changes can cause different meanings.

The best way to get around the issue of text online would be to merely make some texts exclusively online. There could be authors of books and then there could be another division of authors of eBooks. Online poets could create a niche for themselves and make the internet do things that would be otherwise impossible for the pen and paper poet. Hyperlinks could create new avenues for poets and writers to work with, to make their work more interactive and even allow people to get more of a personal meaning by taking their own avenue (somewhat like those Choose Your Own Adventure). Rather than trying to force the page from a book onto the screen, people should try to adapt to the screen and use it for a different avenue.

Dream Machines, why hypertext is awesome

Dream machines
In Theodore Nelson’s dream machine, I found it very amusing how he hated the whole concept of learning. It is intriguing that Nelson was the one that introduce hypertext, and how it can be used simplifying learning and enhance development. On page 312 of the New Media reader, the diagram of the brick wall and how it represents the teachers and the computer. While hypermedia, can directly get to the students. Taking the prefix, hyper-, it means above and beyond. So Nelson wanted unlimited resources and information that are not affixed to the minimum textbook that teachers are using to teach students. Hypertext/media has made it easier to navigate to what one is searching for because it is not in a linear way but in a web connecting to many different relations.
First, what is a hypertext? It is complicated to describe, but we all seem to know it when we see it."A hypertext system is one in which links may be specified between different places in the text." – John Lavagnino. Books offer a primitive sort of linking process because in that notes in the text may refer to footnotes, which may refer the reader to further texts like maybe five to ten books. For a computer system which is what we are interested in, takes the user straight to the material, or, if you prefer, brings the linked material to the reader.

A second major positive of a hypertext system is that the universe of the hypertext is infinitely expandable and unlike printed text that is limited, one can find many answers and obtain more. So why shouldn’t we use hypertext and get data all at once and in different forms whether it is in video, media, textual, and so forth.

To some a hypertext is not simply a fancy version of a print document, but is a document of a different order, where the opportunities offered by the medium are fully considered and explored. This is what Nelson was trying to argue that hypertext was a revolutionary way to search and achieve. It created the ease of research and learning with a click of a button and that with it come hyper- or infinite knowledge.

Ch. 5: Personal Computers and Personal Meanings

In the fifth chapter of The Second Self, author Sherry Turkle explores the role of the computer, in both professional and personal environments, and the effects that computers have on their users. An interesting point that was established from the beginning of the chapter was the difference in the use of the computer, especially in more technical users, in the workplace or professional setting and at home or as a personal computer. The example that she gave for this was programmers and how their programming in a work environment was much different than the programming that they could do with their personal computers at home. At the time many programmer’s jobs were to write small parts of individual code for a greater program, but the freedom to start and finish a complete program was not a reality. That is why personal computing became much more enjoyable for these programmers because they could actually write programs the way they wanted to. One of the people interviewed for this chapter, named Cark, said this about professional versus personal programming,

“If you never or rarely get to finish things at work, if your job is basically to make little pieces and its somebody else’s to make them fit into a whole, then working with a computer at home can give you an experience of getting it all together.”

With the highly technical population, especially with programmers, the personal computer became their “creative outlet” and after a day of programming at work all day, it was still desirable to be able to have a computer at home to use however they wanted.

Another point that Turkle makes is the role of the computer in influencing the development of the person as well as society as a whole. Turkle states, “ A relationship with a computer can influence people’s conceptions of themselves, their jobs, their relationships with other people, and with their ways of thinking about social processes.” For a computer just being a “machine” it sure has huge influence on people and their lives. An example of this is the idea presented in the chapter saying that personal computers possess the ability to one day be the sole source of education. I cannot imagine a time where children no longer go to school anymore and their access to education would be through a computer.

Turkle also mentions that, at the time, many computer users “demanded a sense of understanding the machine.” This statement is so clearly contrasted by most people who use computers solely for personal use today. The majority of people who use computers these days have no idea how a computer works, whether its the parts that comprise it, the programs used to run it or the code behind those programs. For many users, the solution to any type of computer malfunction is: reboot! While I don’t consider myself completely illiterate in terms of computers and how they work, and I am curious as to how all of the inner-workings of the computer come together, I don’t find myself “demanding” this knowledge to feel fine with using a personal computer.

While this chapter makes solid arguments about how computing, and especially personal computing has changed the individual and society as a whole, some of the future outcomes were not as predicted. Education is not based around computers and schools are still the most prominent forms of education for children, and a lot of the paranoia about having a personal computer has dissolved but along with this loss of the magnitude of computers some of the appreciation and large desire to learn about them has been lost by most of the population. Most users would prefer to have as little technical logic or understanding behind a computer and prefer to use it for its convenience.

Too Much Time on the Computer

At the outset of Sherry Turkle’s excerpt from The Second Self, she boldly claims that “Children use the computer in their process of world and identity construction”. As for assimilating them into this progressive, technological generation, it executes its job by familiarizing them with the processes of the computer, its programs, and by stimulating their minds on the plethora of educational and non-educational video games. However, Turkle fails to specify the amount of time spent on this computer apposed to other activities that can help children grow and mature. Turkle’s points are valid if the children are also using other mediums to discover themselves, and not relying on the computer as their sole source to “forge their sense of themselves” and use it as their only tool towards “development of their personalities and ways of looking at the world”.

The dilemma created by this sole, and I stress the term sole, reliance on computers to build ones personality, is the creation of an inward, intelligent person who spends all his or her time on video games like MMORPG’s and studying. In my past years of playing wow, I’ve conversed with, in the game and in real life, many players who fit into this mold, which has lead me to understand that completely shutting yourself off from the physical world can cause stunted social skills and a reluctance to step outside the now norm of staying on the computer.

I’m not saying that socializing does not happen on the internet, as I have clearly seen in wow, but there is a large distinction between typing from behind a computer screen and conversing with people in real life. For example, on the internet when something extremely awkward is said, it is most likely ignored and the conversation continues. However, in a face to face conversation when that same line is verbalized, it could result in public humiliation and the end of the conversation.

A possible solution to this issue is a balance between time spent on the computer and time spent participating in some sort of social activity, be it sports, band, clubs, etc. I don’t want to sound like I’m on some high horse preaching about nerds, I’ve always been a gamer and will continue to be one.

Chapter 5: The Second Self

“Machines impose their own rhythm, their rules, on the people who work with them, to the point where it is no longer clear who or what is being used. We work to the rhythms of machines – physical machines or the bureaucratic machinery of corporate structures” (Turkle 159).

Reading this quote it is not too difficult to ask: Do we use a computer or does a computer use us? In the simplest sense, the answer is simple: off course, we are the beings, we are in control – we use computers to accomplish tasks, as tools; however, let us reconsider this.

In chapter five of The Second Self, Turkle establishes the computer as a machine and as a tool – determined by the user and the manner of their usage. Taking this quote one step further, analyzing our society, isn’t the need for stronger, better and more efficient computers growing. Turkle points out that from the beginning “prominent literature and popular accounts of home computer use emphasized … how computers could teach French or help with financial planning and taxes” (Turkle 157), what she considers the ‘utilitarian rhetoric’. I think it is interesting to note that our physical infrastructure along with social manners have dramatically changed to make the rise of computers – the machine from the past for the future – occur. In this sense, I do not think that it is too difficult to ascertain that we can be looked upon as being used by computers – for their continued improvement and our greater dependence on them.

Changes in culture have dramatically re-shaped work distribution between man and machine with the computerization of society. Social mechanisms from dating, to establishing solidarity and independence have all dramatically changed – from what they were not too far in the past. New social mechanisms have been added to our collective culture, as email and web chatting replace letter writing and telegrams. Rituals which did not require computers now begin and end with computers and computerized technology. Not only has our pre-existing culture changed, Turkle writes: new groups which “share a unity of place, lifestyle, and passion … have [their] own rituals, language, myths, even its own literature” (Turkle 181) have emerged built on computers. With the advent of computers, it seems that a silent movement started which takes ‘work’ from human beings and instead gives it to the computers with the simple advantage that with these machines humans can do more. As a byproduct of this movement our dependence on computers is continually increasing.

If the ultimate biological purpose of an organism is too reproduce then computers are extremely successful their and are thriving in their expanding niche. But how can view a computer as an organism? Generically there are (among many) six characteristics of life: cells, organization, energy use, homeostasis, growth and reproduction – in one way or another a computer comes really closely to fulfilling these prerequisites. If generic hardware components be considered cells, homeostasis by the use of sensors and fans, growth through downloads and uploads, and reproduction through computer managed computer manufacturing facilities – computers come really close to living especially as research continues into using Deoxyribonucleic Acid instead of traditional silicon chips for information storage. Doesn’t a simple prokaryotic bacterium with plasmid DNA, a simple phospholipids membranes and polysaccharide coatings seem less complex than the world’s largest supercomputer? It is easy to say that it is humans which have caused the rise in computers – but I ask you, is it that different to consider that perhaps it is due to the computers that human beings are becoming more and more depended on them and because of computers that mechanisms and forces continue to push humans to develop the next more advanced computer.

I would also like to say that I do not how much I agree with the central argument of this post – but I do believe it is an interesting concept and one which certainly will become more interesting with time.

Jaskaran Saggu

Artificial Intelligence: Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms

Artificial intelligence has advanced considerably since Alan Turing's article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", published in 1950. Turing speculated that one day computer programs emulating a learning behaviour and heuristic could become possible with sufficient computing power, and he gave certain principles regarding the components such programs would require. From the day the article was published, some of these principles have been gradually developed into sophisticated algorithms, and new algorithms independent on Turing's research have been researched. Many of Turings propositions became fundamental components in advanced artificial intelligence today; others became technologically obsolete because of the lack of sophisticated computing at the time of publishing.

One such computer science field, only suggestively touched in Turing's article, is an fascinating and, quite frankly, mysterious type of algorithm called Artificial Neural Networks. Neural networks are analogous to the processes which occur in our own human brains. More specifically, the algorithm consists of an abstract "brain" in which there are "neurons" connected to eachother in an intricate network pattern. Neurons may send and transmit signals according to pre-designed rules, and by using defined "input" and "output" neurons it is possible to train the network to perform tasks in similar ways as humans do, and more importantly, learn.

Neural networks are so fascinating and ground-breaking because of their very hard-grasped inner workings. To explain with an analogy, consider seeing a team of construction workers, and their end result, a tall skyscraper, in which the intermediary process was hidden. The individual components, the construction workers, tools and material are simple, but the end result is highly complex. Because you do not know how the building was constructed by these simple parts, you are naturally fascinated. This applies for neural networks too. We still only understand their intermediary process on a very shallow level, yet they have showed amazing results, especially when combined with genetic algorithms. By evolving the networks, allowing artificial selection to select the well-suited and eliminate the badly-suited networks, one can "teach" networks to perform complex tasks using complex tools to do so. One can also make the neural network teach itself by implementing a "reward and punishment"-system described by Turing, but compared to networks evolved by genetic algorithms, these networks usually do not adapt as radical and scientifically interesting behaviours as do the genetic algorithm networks.

Some may think that a learning machine, especially after seeing films like The Terminator, is a frightening offspring of science gone wrong. I oppose this view - it is easy to contain an artificial intelligence by providing no physical tools it can use. Comparing this drawback to the scientific interest of neural networks demonstrates that we should accelerate research within this field. Some of the results of neural networks, however, are unexpected and perhaps not really useful. I have researched neural networks myself, as I contributed once in making a computer game in which the opponents (in the shape of tanks) were controlled by neural networks. The opponent was rewarded points for shooting opposing tanks and collecting powerups. I watched the neural networks evolve, and curiously, the tanks did not learn to shoot each other; instead, they chose a pacifistic approach and instead only drove around the track collecting powerups. This actually, in total, gave more points than shooting at the enemy tanks, thus explaining the strange result. Another amusing example comes from military research in the 60's in which  neural networks were trained to recognize hidden tanks in pictures. All went well: Eventually the computer could seem to tell the difference between pictures in which there were tanks and pictures in which there were not. However, when presented with a new set of pictures of hidden tanks, the neural network failed; this obviously puzzled the researchers. They eventually found the problem; the pictures of the hidden tanks were taken on cloudy days, and the pictures without tanks were taken on sunny days. Thus, the military now had a multi-million-dollar computer which could tell if it was sunny or not.

Week 3: More History of Computing and Artificial Intelligence

Post comments to this thread for week three's readings/viewings: the Engelbart "Mother of All Demos" and Sherry Turkle.

Personally, I don’t think Turing answered the question “Can Machines think?”
even when he shifts the question to “Are there imaginable digital computers
that would do well in the imitation game?” Instead, he writes about how a
machine might be thought of as intelligent. This would be done, he writes,
by having a computer convince a person that the computer was really a
different person of a specific gender. By implication, Turing is equating
thinking with the ability to pose as a human. However, the ability for
a computer to fool someone is relatively easy, given
the fact that more than 55% of communication is nonverbal.
This means that it is easy to trick a human when only text is involved.

It would be both very interesting and frightening if scientists were
to go about producing artificial intelligence in the way that Turing
proposes. In a sense, computers (or their software, at any rate) would
be bred to be more intelligent. In his paper, Turing is absolutely
convinced that Artificial intelligence is what is needed. In his conclusion,
Turing wants to teach a computer to “understand and speak English”.
Yet in all of his paper, Turing never says why he wants to do that. This
might have something to do with the fact that Turing thought of his
brain as being a hyper-advanced form of the digital
computer he defined.

artificial intellegence. can machines think

“Can machines think?” Alan Turing had arguments on whether the machines that man has built can think. He uses an example of the mimic game, where an interrogator is to distinguish who is a man and who is a computer. Computers are programmed to do what we want them to do. They understand the words that are coming from us, but it sometimes does what you want, but what you didn’t want at the same time. For example, if I wanted to draw and elephant and I want the computer to do the work I would give it instructions to do so. Let’s say, I tell it to draw a circle for the body. Instead, the computer draws a tiny circle instead of the size I originally wanted. But it is in fact a circle. Therefore one questions if computers do think on their own if not in a different way in which they are programmed.

One distinctive characteristic of the “artificial intelligence” is that it cannot make mistakes. Humans programmed it to do work in a sufficient manner for algorithms and calculation for us. So in a sense to my first point, it’s not wrong in doing to what you are saying, it’s just your fault for not describing it correctly. However, for this reason it is considered errors, errors of functioning and errors of conclusion. However humans wants to feel superior and always in control.But one thing that became interesting was that he stated what if vice versa a computer can become a man, or even better a child for it can have the ability to develop in knowledge. And it will progressively learn and when it does something right, it will have more possibly cause repetition and if it is wrong, it will adjust. And what if, it can develop speech and had eyes and legs to walk? For now it is unimportant, but if so, the world of the “Terminator” can one day be true. Maybe one day we can have one to act as guides for us, such as finding Alenda’s room in Moffit.

I'm lost... help, please!

A thread for questions, clarifications, confusions, frustrations, and general mind-boggling. Are you confused about terminology we've encountered in our reading? Puzzled by something Alenda mentioned in class? Don't be afraid to ask for help here and we can all exercise what Pierre Levy calls collective intelligence.

From last week: HCI, GUI, avant-garde
From this week: cybernetics

Guess who sang these apropos lyrics?

Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help!

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.