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In last week’s post I mentioned Wikipedia and its use as a resource. I had also mentioned that it isn’t always accurate. However, this isn’t due to a lack of diligence of its contributors.

If anything, the contributors care a bit too much sometimes.

You see, when you visit a Wikipedia article, you may notice some tabs across the top. Three of them – “Discussion”, “edit this page” and “history” tell you a lot about a given article. History shows you the past versions of the page, when they were changed and who changed them (minus an ID it will show IP). Edit this page allows you (yes YOU) to edit a given entry. Discussion is just how it sounds – a discussion on the article.

In some cases the “facts” are in question or are different depending on point of view. So what happens when “facts” collide? An “edit war” – where different people keep changing “facts” back and forth based on what they perceive the reality to be.

Some things are basic enough facts that no one (seriously) argues them. If you step off of a cliff with no form of support you will fall. If you stay out in the sun too long without protection you will get burned. And we all know that the Tiger is the most powerful cat in the world. Or do we? This article alone has over 500 edits done to it, many of them having to do with this very question. Are they really stronger than a lion? How about a bear? Ok, so a bear is not a cat, but shouldn’t this be discussed and mentioned and argued ad nauseum?

If you agree that this is one of the most burning questions of our time, than head on over to the Tiger entry on Wikipedia to join in on this, the most serious question of our time.

If, however, you feel that the argument is silly then head on over here to see more of the lamest edit wars in Wikipedia history. A very very funny look at the most “burning” questions of the day. Also, for the record, a bear could totally beat a tiger. I mean, come on, this is even a discussion?

Note: This was written by me and originally posted on the Rising Tide blog.

Matthew Technology

Virtual worlds and social networking sites have something very much in common with each other. Both, in their most basic form, exist to allow people to connect with each other. In the case of places like Second Life, new friendships are formed along with old ones, perhaps. Though in Second Life it truly can be a “second” life since you can be whoever or whatever you want there.

Social sites like MySpace and Facebook, however, tend to be based on in who you really are (at least in theory). The idea behind these sites is to let you catch up with friends or people you know from diverse locations and share stories, thoughts, ideas, videos, pictures, whatever.

Facebook even has a lot of great games that you can play with friends from all over the world, not to mention TONS of other social applications.

Facebook, which I use, is not without its issues however. But one great thing about Facebook is that they appear to, at times, listen to their user base. Lately, there have been two great examples of this.

First, Facebook changed their Terms of Service without informing their users that they were doing so. These changes were pretty drastic. To sum up: They own everything you put on your page on Facebook and everything you link to and all your pictures and videos and everything. Forever. Even if you stop using Facebook.

Now, setting aside how ridiculous a lot of this is  (so, if I link to a New York Times article, Facebook now owns it? Wow, won’t the Times be surprised)  that is a pretty serious change.  I mean, there isn’t even the ability to opt-out.

This created an incredible amount of outrage.

The result is that Facebook first tried to clarify their policy saying that they didn’t really mean what they said. Shortly after that, however, Facebook switched right back to their old TOS. A solid example of a company making a massive mistake and then fixing it.

Well, they have done it again, but in this case it is usability. After changing their look less than a year ago, they have done it again. Now it is harder than ever to do the primary function of Facebook – keep up with friends. In what some postulate is an attempt to compete with ultra-simple Twitter, Facebook simplified things. But they went way, way too far.

The result is that the user base is very, very upset. Now, what everyone really wants from Facebook, has been set-aside. So why stick with them, right?

Facebook is listening and has announced that they are going to make some changes based on this feedback and make it easier to follow friends again.

Facebook still has a lot of issues. A huge problem brewing is their privacy policy, in which basically once we install a third-party application, we have no privacy at all. No, I don’t know why that game of scrabble needs access to my whole profile. But I know I don’t like it.

Social networking is still relatively new. Every company has had stumbles. Some never recover (looking at you Friendster). However, I have to give credit to Facebook. While they are far from perfect, at least they are listening. Sometimes.

Note: This was originally written by me and published on the Rising Tide blog.

Matthew Technology

Scientists at Aberystwyth and Cambridge have developed a robot named Adam that can perform experiments, and more incredibly, draw conclusions from those experiments.

For the first time ever, a robot has gathered scientific knowledge independently from people. This is a pretty incredible breakthrough. We can now see robots learning without people programming that information into them.

This seems fantastic until they become self-aware and start building terminators to destroy us all.

I kid, of course.

However, I do have a long-standing bet with a friend of mine dealing with robots and their possible effect on our future society, in the very-near term.

The bet states the following will happen by 2015:

• Robotics in the workforce being among the primary issues in the house
• Planes will start to be flown completely remotely and unmanned
• Unemployment will be at least 30%
• 50% of all minimum wage jobs will be replaced by robots

My friend is on the supporting side, I say it won’t happen – at least not by 2015. I believe that in the end the economy can adjust even if robots become as prevalent as he believes. I also believe that while robots might indeed take over a lot of jobs, there are some they just can’t or will not be allowed to do. Think about robot pilots. While perhaps an “improved” auto-pilot could be approved in the future that could basically fly and land the plane, I refuse to believe that no human pilot and co-pilot for that matter would be left out of the cockpit. I just don’t see people reaching a level of comfort where we trust an airplane entirely to a robot with no human “backup”. Sure, we have the Predator now, but that has no people inside. That makes all of the difference.

So who will be right? Let’s all hope I am. Unless you are ready to welcome our new robot overlords.

However, robots are a never-talked about reason for job loss. Check out this video from Drew Carey who points out that many, many more jobs are lost due to robots than have ever been lost because of out-sourcing. Sure, it is tongue-in-cheek, but the point still remains: Robots have taken over an incredible number of jobs. Of course, there are a lot of positives to that as well (which is why I don’t believe the 30% unemployment number – at least, due to robots).

My hope is that more nations will draft something like South Korea’s Robot Code of Ethics. This is based on Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and basically ensures that robots will not be able to harm people or allow people to come to harm.

While it is true we are a long way away from needing such rules in robots now (learning the genetic patterns of yeast, as Adam has done, hardly seems life-threatening) it wouldn’t be a bad idea to set these forth early, so that the standard is understood by researchers going forward.

Because I don’t think any of us want a robot server at McDonald’s gunning us down because we didn’t like our Big Mac.

Note: This was originally written by me and published at The Rising Tide blog.

Matthew Technology