Neutral Observer

Earlier this year, a U.S. court struck down laws defending net neutrality. If you're not familiar with it, net neutrality is the concept that all the information going around the Internet should be treated equally. Nothing should be given preferential treatment and allowed to go faster.

The nightmare scenario of an Internet without net neutrality is one in which owners of Internet infrastructure (mainly the big telecommunications companies) close their networks to any businesses who don't pay big bucks. Big companies can do business over the Internet, but anyone else is out of luck.

What I find frustrating about the net neutrality issue is how it exposes the weakness in your average geek's political philosophy. As I touched on when discussing Bill Gates, many techies are politically naive and thus fall prey to simplistic view points. And the most likely is extreme libertarianism or objectivism.

Because of that, your typical geek's answer to pretty much any problem is, “less rules.” Of course, there's plenty to be said for small government and less regulation, but any reasonable person recognizes that government and legislation occasionally has its place. And if net neutrality is important to you, that's going to have to be one of those places.

But the tech world has been slow to admit this. You still find geeks who are very passionate about the need for net neutrality, but then advocate against laws backing up the principles. So - much as I’m worried for the end of net neutrality - I do feel a bit of schadenfreude when I watch uncompromising libertarian geeks forced to lie in the bed they’ve made.

Increasingly, we're seeing the internet and the tech world pitted against politicians. So far, politics has been kicking technology's ass. Beloved tech principles that the Internet is a world-wide, uncensored, private medium are falling, and technology proponents seem powerless to stop it. I wish I could go back in time to the mid-nineties and rub this in the face of geeks in Wired bragging about how the Internet was making government irrelevant. They should have learned to play the political game then; they're going to have to take a crash course now.

Two Tribes

It's amazing how many things in our world come down to dichotomies. Coke/Pepsi, Leno/Letterman, Capitalism/Communism, Edward/Jacob, Bloods/Crips, VI/EMACS, over-the-top/down-the-wall, VHS/Beta, tastes great/less filling, Nintendo/Sega. And now we can add the latest: iPhone/Android.

Except this one isn't really shaping up the same way. For one thing, in each of the other pairings, each side (or its fanbase) was keenly aware of the other side, and had a hate on for them. But not many people really hate Android. A fair number hate Apple and it's devices, but many Android users are only dimly aware of the options. As many have observed, a large number of Android users bought Android phones only because the don't make non-smartphones anymore. As I think I've shown in this blog, Android phones will do anything iPhones will do, though most seem oblivious to it. Everyone knows who Siri is, but how many are aware that pretty much all phones today can respond to voice commands.

And the enthusiasm only seems to go one way.  iPhone users tend to be proud of their products, but you don't see anyone boisterous about Android.  Arguably, the remnants of Blackberry nation have enough pride to give it a bigger impact on society even today.  Huge numbers of people are buying a product that they're not really using, and it's not having much of a cultural impact.

There have been many rivalries where one side is bigger than the other (like Coke vs. Pepsi) or even where one side ultimately wins out over the other (VHS vs. Beta) and there have been rivalries where one side isn't well known (say, Windows vs. Linux.) But I can't think of any other situation where the side that has pop-culture's attention is the one that is far less successful.  You could point to the PC vs. Mac rivalry as one where the users of the winner have no enthusiasm. But Mac users were seen more as an odd cult rather than typical computer users.  For instance, I note that people discussing technology often refer to "iPhones" as shorthand for all smartphones, since everyone knows what an iPhone is, but some people will be confused by smartphone/cell phone/mobile etc.  I couldn't imagine someone in the desktop computer era referring to computers as "Macs," on the assumption people don't know what a PC is.

But, now that I think about it, I do know one similar rivalry situation. And despite the lucky timelines of this example, I swear I hadn't thought of it when I started writing: Android is Tim Duncan to the iPhone's LeBron James.

An Appeal To The Easily Bored

I'm a big fan of being tired of things.  That is, I get sick of trends and tendencies quickly.  But you knew that because I complain about them a lot.  And I'm glad when I see others complain about being tired of things.  If more people are vocal about societal trends they dislike, it will push decision makers to do something about it.

But this week I've seen a number of people in the U.S. and Canada saying that they are tired of yet another attempt to pretend to care about the World Cup.  This usually comes with sweeping statements that no one here cares, they're just pretending to be interested and so on.

That bugs me because it simply isn't true.  A lot of people in our two countries do care and watch.  Certainly it isn't a large number compared to our favourite sports, but it's not an insignificant number either.  And that's why I'm particularly disappointed in my fellow curmudgeons.  Usually, when we complain that some fashion or fad has gone to far, it is because we are pointing out that not everyone in society has the same tastes and priorities, and that some of us are displeased with the trends of the mass-market.  By discounting the soccer subculture, you're trampling the desires of those very people. 

I think this all comes from the fact that soccer is at a very awkward point in its history here.  It's moved beyond the obscure curiosity it once was:  the MLS is still in business, and European soccer is popular enough to merit showings on sports channels.  But on the other hand, it isn't huge: MLS still operates on a much smaller scale than the big pro leagues, and most American sports fans would be hard pressed to name a European soccer team other than Manchester United.  That level of partial success is unusual for us in our high-stakes sports world.  Sports success means superstardom to us, so we're not sure what to do with a sport that has essentially a cult following.

It should be obvious: we do what we do with all other cult followings:  The mainstream occasionally makes awkward reference to it, but mostly ignores it.  And we curators of the obscure admire and praise it, glad that it brings some variety into our culture.  So if you care about a diverse culture, get over being tired of it.

I Refuse To Do A "Wynne" Pun

It's time for a post-mortem on Thursday's provincial election.  With Ontario's Liberals facing a billion dollar scandal, they somehow expanded their minority into a majority.

I mentioned in the past that PC leader Tim Hudak is a poor political strategist, because he tries to speak to both the centre and the far-right, alienating both in the process. This election was a good example: With the government mired in scandal, all they had to do was stand around looking reasonably competent and they'd win. But instead, he had to go and announce his plan to cut 100,000 government jobs.

It's hard to keep track of all the ways that was a bad move:

• Though the Tories wanted the spotlight on the Liberals, they moved it to themselves.
• It made the rather predictable comparisons to Mike Harris very easy.
• It pushed unions and other interest groups to pull-out all the stops.  The Liberals hardly needed to run their own attack ads with so many groups lining up to go negative.
• The centrepiece of the PC campaign was the "Million Jobs Plan" but the vagueness of that plan was emphasized when put next to a solid promise to axe thousands of jobs.
• Presenting the elimination of jobs as a campaign promise looked very out-of-touch.

The commonality in Hudak's miscalculations is that while he comes across like an ordinary guy, he doesn't understand that he sees the world through the perspective of someone deep in the Conservative machine, and thus he reacts to things in a different way than most. Lots of people think - as he does - that government is big and bloated, but he doesn't realize that most people don't translate that into a desire to eliminate jobs. Similarly, many dislike the power of unions, but most don't hate them with the passion he does.  Unfortunately, this sort of political miscalculation is likely something that we'll see more of in the future, as so many people retract into media catering to their political beliefs.

And that's why I'm a little worried going forward. A surprise loss can be a time to reflect on what's been done wrong, but it often turns into excuse-making and incredulous head-shaking about the voters. And before election night was even over, Tory-friendly media outlets were already framing the loss as a strong performance except for Toronto. And judging by what we've seen of Hudak, he's probably now mumbling angrily about labour unions conspiring against him.

As for the New Democrats, they might be more disappointed, since they did trigger the election on what they must have thought were good circumstances for themselves. At first, it looked like the irony would be that they would gain seats in the process of putting a profoundly anti-labour government in power. Instead, the irony is that they will end up with the very same seat-count, but having lost their power because the Liberals won a clear majority. It's like a political Aesop's fable.

Either way, you have to wonder what they were thinking. Combine that questionable strategy with their bland performance, and I wonder if Jack Layton's federal breakthrough has gone to their heads, and they now think they can win any campaign. Andrea Horwath came across as political and distant. She was reminiscent of the federal leaders they had following Ed Broadbent, who were competent and non-threatening, but lacking in the passion a smaller party needs.

You Gotta Have (At Least One More) Faith

In my continuing mission to make Canadian versions of interesting maps of the U.S. I will now tackle religion.  This map shows the most popular non-Christian religion in each state.  Mostly it's Buddhism out west, Jewish in the North-East, and Islam everywhere else.  And for some reason, Baha'i has taken root in South Carolina.  And I never thought Arizona and Delaware would have anything in common, but apparently it's Hinduism.

So I looked up the Canadian figures, and here are the most popular non-Christian religions in each province and territory:

• I assume "Eastern Religions" refers to Taoism and Confucianism.
• As you might guess, Islam is also the next most popular religion for Canada as a whole.
• "No religion" scored higher than any non-Christian religion in each province and territory. And in B.C. and Yukon, it beat any Christian denomination.
• P.E.I. has no Sikhs, and Nunavut has no Jews.  Everybody else has at least a few of each major religion.
• Apropos to yesterday's post, Turks & Caicos next most popular religion is also Islam.

This Country Goes To Eleven

It's Turks & Caicos time again! That once-a-decade moment when Canadians revive the idea of annexing the Turks & Caicos islands. It's a small archipelago just north of the Dominican Republic.  The Premier of the islands came here on an official visit recently, it triggered talk on the idea again.  Politicians mentioned annexation with varying levels of seriousness, and just when I thought it was subsiding, I see this opinion piece in the local paper.

The idea isn't that crazy: Turks & Caicos is a protectorate of Britain, so there's some connection there. And lots of countries have territory off the mainland.  The U.S. has Guam and others.  Australia has Christmas Island, among others.  New Zealand has the Cook Islands. France and The U.K. have islands all over the world half of which they've probably forgotten.  If Argentina was smart, they'd invade some of them instead of being obsessed with the Falklands.  Oh, and that's another good thing about the Turks & Caicos: they aren't also claimed by a country that needs to distract it's people from the collapsing economy.

The argument for adopting the Turks & Caicos is that it would offer Canadians an easy way to go south. Unlike going to Florida, we could keep our money in the country. And we wouldn't have to risk going to America's craziest state.

The argument against is that it would probably be expensive. The islands aren't well developed, so building the infrastructure for a huge influx of Canadian seniors will be a big undertaking. And upping their services to Canadian standards of health care won't be cheap. And then there's the transfer payments: Turks & Caicos would slot in as the ultimate have-not province.

Personally, I'd like to see Turks & Caicos join. It might be expensive, but we are talking about just 32,000 people. So that would just be like adding another Moose Jaw. Or, it's only about an eighth of the number of people we already let in each year as immigrants.

More importantly, it's the slightly crazy project that I've always thought we as a people need to take on just to get ourselves out of our timid, over-comfortable rut. I would have voted for building our own Dubai-like international metropolis somewhere in the arctic, but adding the Turks & Caicos has way more support.

Imitation Of Life

You may have seen news this week that a program passed the Turing Test for the first time.  If you're not familiar with it, Computing pioneer Alan Turing proposed this way to determine if a computer program could be considered "intelligent" or not.  He suggested that if a person typing a conversation with the program could be convinced that they were actually talking to a person typing in responses in another room, then the program could be considered intelligent.  This became known as the Turing Test.  It should be noted that the researchers weren't trying to create a program that all people find indistinguishable from a person; they were trying to fulfil Turing's prediction that within fifty years a program would succeed 30% of the time.  This program succeeded 33% of the time, but it's fourteen years late for Turing's prediction.

Anyway, I was sceptical, because I've seen many claims over the years of programs that could come close to passing the test (say, by getting nearly 30%, or by passing based on very short conversations, or conversations limited to a predetermined subject.) In each case, I'd see transcripts of the conversations, or even online demonstrations, only to find that the conversation was unconvincing gibberish little better than that of early Artificial Intelligence attempts like ELIZA.

Sure enough, it turns out that this program cheats a little. It isn't pretending to be any old human being; it's trying to convince you that it is a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. That gives it the advantage of imitating an immature person using a second language. They aren't releasing transcripts of the conversations, but given the screen capture on the BBC report, it looks like it really leans on that advantage. People must have a very low estimation of either 13-year-old boys or Ukrainians if they found that convincing.

And that brings up a question I've always had about the Turing Test: should the judges be A.I. experts? Off hand, it would seem unnecessary: Surely any ordinary person could judge whether a conversant is human or not. But it's really looking like publicity-hungry researchers are taking advantage of naive judges. I think people who were at least acquainted with the A.I. tricks of the trade would be able to make more informed decisions.

Take, for instance, the aforementioned ELIZA. It doesn't imitate an Eastern-European teen, but rather a psychoanalyst in the style of psychologist Carl Rogers. That's because Rogerian therapists concentrate on turning the patient's statements into questions to guide the patient to their own conclusions. That's relatively easy for a program to fake: just quote the user's words back as a question, relating in the user to carry the conversation.

Another approach was PARRY, a program impersonating someone with severe paranoid schizophrenia. Such people are prone to going off topic, ignoring others, and making non-sequitur statements. Again, that's easy to fake: if the program can't interpret what the user days, it just blurts out something random.

I always found out hilarious that someone had this program talk to ELIZA. Then they had experts read the transcripts of these conversations, and compare them to transcripts of actual Rogerian therapists talking to actual paranoid schizophrenics. The experts couldn't tell which transcripts were real. I still think that's the most impressive attempt to pass the Turing Test.

But there is one way in which the media hype about this test may be warranted.   A few stories have launched into fear-stoking discussions of how we don't know who online might not be human.  Actually, that could be a problem.  While this cheated Turing Test may not be a good indication of the program's intelligence, the simple fact that it can fool people - however it accomplishes the task - could prove useful in online scams.  As several people have joked on Twitter, if your program can convince people it is a Ukrainian boy, then pretending to be a Nigerian Prince shouldn't be much harder.  Turns out that's already happening.