Print Article for : Through The Looking Glass

Your Online Guide » IT Hardwares » Computer Hardware Guide

[T901]Through The Looking Glass

by Stephan Miller, Ste

For those of you who remember using a card catalog at the public library, the change is similar to the one you experienced using a computer to find a book for the first time. No endless cabinets of cards to hunt through. No misplaced cards that meant you wouldn't find the book you were looking for that day. Every book in the library accessible from one keyboard.

In 2.0, knowledge is fast. It moves at the speed of the keyboard and web form. A story from New York hits the West Coast in the time it takes a web page to refresh. And when a network build on speed puts a premium on those sites and bloggers that can get information first, news hits even the gardening forums before it even reaches the cable news networks.

This is drastic transition in the evolution of the speed of knowledge. With the invention of the printing press by Johann Guttenberg in 1440, the rate at which knowledge spread become quicker. Word of mouth was no longer the only way to receive news. Afterwards came mail, newspapers, television, and 24 hour cable news. Each a leap forward from the past form of media.

Then came the internet. Within a few short years, knowledge was accessible from everywhere with a few clicks of the mouse. We can now store more information on our hard drives than we can find at the local library.

Now, with web 2.0, the filter and wait time of search engines is taken out. Some might say that this cuts down on accuracy, but with time, I think it will improve accuracy. Search engines try to guesstimate what searchers want by applying an algorithm to what they type in the form. With the new animal, people are the algorithms.

When I started building my library of musical tastes, I usually discovered new music through people that listened to the same type of music I listened to. If we both listened to Pink Floyd than I might take the chance and listen to some other music they suggested to me. This is a much more effective way to find new information than with an algorithm. Let people be your algorithm. Let links be distributed through the lateral route of tastes, themes, and interests rather than the direct route of search engines that require a user to know almost exactly what they want to find before they search.

There is also a time element involved. Some search engine results are just old. They aren't what you are looking for. Some engines literally make sure links are aged before they are given the status they deserve.

In 2.0, a hour is a long time and a month is a lifetime. When searching through tagged sites or feeds, a site may gain 100 links to it in an hour by taggers. A traditional search engine can't keep up with this. This type of link growth would have to be run through filters to check for spam or other tactics to artificially increase it's rank. And still, the baby gets thrown out with the bath water a multitude of times.

Traditional search engines base all of their ranking systems on the votes of people who know how to build websites or at least post to forums. This is not very balanced. Sitting at the computer screen, you can assume all you want, but step out in the real world and just try to talk to anyone about HTML. Then you realize these are unheard internet votes.

Tagging and other web 2.0 technologies have brought a little more balanced to the system, giving those, whose tech savvy stops at bidding on Ebay, the internet right to vote. And when I finally got the chance to check it out by spending the last few weeks in the stream of web 2.0, I realized my whole vision was a little short sided. Sitting in box, typing code all day can skew your version of the world. Judging the needs of an internet audience by the whims of an algorithmic internet program can skew this vision even more.

Web 1.0 is Plato's cave, only shadows of the true internet traffic flow. As Web 2.0 technologies become more mainstream, the traditional search engine will have to adapt to a more democratic union between "internet land owners" and those who only surf but probably make up a greater part of internet users.

Scanning the past week's news, one gets the distinct impression there has been an unusually high number of "man's inhumanity to man" stories. Darfur, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel. Kidnapped children, boys arrested for planning an attack on their school, and a murdered family in a Dallas suburb. A familiar question tugs at the edges of consciousness when we begin to feel the human experience is laden with these kinds of stories. Does the fact that there is so much cruelty to report speak to the lack of morality in human nature, or conversely to the presence of a moral conscience of some sort? This intriguing question was addressed by James Q. Wilson in his 1993 book, The Moral Sense, but it deserves revisiting in the light of more current understanding.

When considering why "bloodletting and savagery are news," Wilson proposes, "There are two answers. The first is that they are unusual. If daily life were simply a war of all against all, what would be newsworthy would be the occasional outbreak of compassion and decency, self-restraint and fair dealing." The second answer is not far off the first: Wilson says misery is news because it is shocking to us. "We recoil in horror at pictures of starving children, death camp victims, and greedy looters." Wilson believes there is a "moral sense" in us that makes us able to empathize with one another. His book presents some very convincing arguments and is not devoid of science, but his problem, he admitted, was in finding hard scientific evidence to prove the existence of this "sense."

Only three years after Wilson's book was published, three Italian neuroscientists (Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and Leonardo Fogassi) accidentally discovered something that could prove to be the scientific credence Wilson was looking for. During a study of monkey neurons and how they discharge while performing goal-related hand actions like picking up peanuts, the scientists found that the neurons also charged when the monkey observed one of the scientists performing the same action. After further studies, the scientists concluded that "to perceive an action is equivalent to internally simulating it. This enables the observer to use her/his own resources to experientially penetrate the world of the other by means of a direct, automatic, and unconscious process of simulation." They called the responsible neurons "mirror neurons," and extended their studies to explore the same phenomenon related to emotions. What the researchers described as the "activation of a neural mechanism shared by the observer and the observed to enable direct experiential understanding" is what the rest of us call "empathy."

Other cognitive scientists have carried these studies even further and found that the mechanisms related to mirror neurons seem to be defective in autism--thus explaining the social impairments of people with that pathology.

Does this mean that mirror neurons and the resulting capability for empathy are, in some small part, the underpinning of our "moral sense"? Even if this is so--there must be more to learn. As human beings, our abilities to apply empathy go far beyond that of a monkey. While monkeys seem able to anticipate or empathize with "motor" activities that they themselves have experienced, human beings are capable in varying degrees of empathizing with others who experience things they themselves have not.

I say "in varying degrees" because there are obviously those amongst us whose abilities to empathize are impaired, even if not to the same degree as autistics. And this brings us back to the week's news.

If man's inhumanity to man is a reflection of his mirror neurons and a somehow impaired ability to empathize, there may still be hope for change. Neuroscientists now know that the brain is capable of developing new neurons at any age--a process known as "neurogenesis." But the brain's plasticity is notable even in the absence of neurogenesis. Jeffrey Schwartz of UCLA, for example, has had considerable success in treating OCD patients by establishing new patterns of behavior to replace old ones, thereby creating new connections between existing neurons.

Does this mean "old dogs" can be taught "new tricks"? Could new patterns of moral behavior encourage the development of new neurons, even of new "mirror" neurons? Can we build on our basic "moral sense," become more "empathic," thereby reducing instances of man's inhumanity to man? If so, maybe it's time to think about which new behaviors might best replace the old. If not--we should simply resign ourselves to the status quo and ignore whatever feelings of disgust may be awakened by the inevitable headlines on CNN.

Article Source : copy dvd to hard drive

About Author

Both Stephan Miller & -- -- are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Stephan Miller has sinced written about articles on various topics from Blogging, Software and Computers and The Internet. Stephan Miller is a freelance web designer and internet marketer . Stephan Miller's top article generates over 201000 views. to your Favourites.

-- -- has sinced written about articles on various topics from . is a writer and editor with a strong interest in education and the science that underpins family and relationship studies. She began working. -- --'s top article . to your Favourites.