Rants & Raves
I thoroughly enjoyed Charles Platt's "Evolution Revolution" (Wired 5.01, page 158) about the implications of the Human Genome Project. Platt's discussion of computing all cell reactions and growing a virtual person - an infomorph - reminded me of the days of pure Newtonian physics. Once the basic laws governing the interaction of objects were discovered and codified, it seemed logical that, given enough computing power, we could determine the outcome of all future interactions and ostensibly predict the future. This did not turn out to be the case. The wacky world of quantum physics has shown that very small objects behave in unpredictable ways. I suspect (and hope) that human life is just a bit more complicated than the sum of all our cellular reactions and molecular processes. Like the quantum physicists, when we start to analyze the building blocks of life at the smallest level, we will probably be more mystified, not less. Therefore, I don't believe an infomorph is feasible, no matter how powerful our computers become.
Although I was delighted to see Charles Platt's piece on the Human Genome Project, the numerous and sometimes outrageous errors therein had me tearing my hair out and needing to rant. I have been doing molecular biology and computer modeling for almost two decades. And though I have been a loyal Wired reader since the first issue, I am increasingly ticked off by the loose DNA talk that passes for biology in cyberculture.
Netfolk correctly picked up on the profound importance of the genetics revolution, but rather than buckling down and learning biology, they find it sufficient to recombine the jargon - DNA, virus, genetic, evolutionary - into strings of superficial gibberish, the journalistic equivalent of junk DNA. Typical of the genre is Platt's incredible groaner that genetics was "a hopelessly vague science" until "in1953, it was revealed that [DNA was the] control mechanism." Ouch. This flip assertion does horrible violence to the century of brilliant genetics that informed the Watson/Crick structure.
Platt's description of science by revelation makes it impossible for readers to really understand the biology involved. He does make a number of excellent points, especially about the profound social and philosophical dilemmas brought on by modern genetics. Some big issues need to be dealt with. And yet our otherwise literate society continues to mistake molecular name-dropping for real understanding. As a physician, virologist, and writer of DNA sequence analysis programs, I can tell you there is no shortcut to understanding this deep and beautiful subject. By all means, Wired, keep those genetics articles coming, but please, do the homework, sweat the details, and do the subject justice.
Robin Colgrove, Boston
Having worked in the biotechnology industry and related genetic research for several years, I am disturbed by the public's blind faith in the Human Genome Project. Once we have finished mapping the human genome, it will take five to ten times as long to completely understand the complex systems and detailed pathways that the genome contains.
Equally disturbing is the fact that the public is lured - falsely - into believing that one magic gene causes each ailment or disease. In fact, the complexity of the human genome is due to the redundancy of genetic systems and the fact that portions of the human genome are specifically active only in particular organs and physiological systems. Reprogramming DNA is still a long way off, and the related ethical questions will be far more heated than the abortion debate.
How ironic that you titled José Piñera's article on Chile's private pension funds "Give Workers a Free Choice" (Wired 5.02, page 124). When Piñera instituted the Administradora de Fondas de Pension in 1980 - while serving as minister of labor and social security under the Pinochet régime - Chile had not had free elections for eight years (and would not have them for nine more). It is true that workers already in the old system were given the choice to stay there. Employers, who don't have to pay into the AFPs, pushed employees to switch. Without freedom of the press or any forum for public debate, however, scant public discussion occurred. Not surprisingly, The Economist reported that workers still mistrust and misunderstand the system, and - despite the funds' financial success - few believe that they will ever see their money again.
This poor public image is a problem. If consumers don't believe in or understand the system, how can they judge their funds' performance? And how will people react when, as is inevitable, Chile's stock market slows and their personal accounts stop growing so quickly - or start to shrink? Another issue Piñera fails to mention is that over a quarter of Chile's workers are self-employed and therefore not covered by the private-pension system.
Chile's AFP system has an impressive financial track record and deserves to be examined outside the political context in which it was conceived. Indeed, both Peru and Argentina have adopted the system in recent years. But though Piñera's plan brandished the slogan "Give workers a free choice," to imply that Chilean workers had choice in the matter, or that freedom of choice was somehow the government's priority, is to misrepresent the Pinochet régime.
Alex Huneeus, San Francisco
Our efforts at the FCC have been taken to task many times, in the column-lined halls of Congress and the editorial columns of The Wall Street Journal. This goes with the territory. But frankly, we were surprised by Charles Platt's allegations in "The Great HDTV Swindle" (Wired 5.02, page 57).
Something must be weird at Wired when the one periodical that has positioned itself as the voice of the digerati publishes a rant in favor of a government-dictated industrial policy and blasts the only Washington official who has argued that when it comes to setting standards, the government doesn't know best - the market does - and who fought hard to make sure that the computer industry would have a voice in the debate. Chairman Hundt has been harshly criticized by the broadcast industry for his insistence that the computer industry have a chance to compete.
The great HDTV swindle is not about depriving netizens of prettier pictures on big, expensive displays. Those decisions should be made by consumers based on preference and pocketbook. But there is a swindle-in-the-making, one that justifies Charles Platt's vitriolic fervor. Whether the digital TV licenses are auctioned for billions or simply given away, if we don't have clear, enforceable conditions requiring educational programming and free and open forums for political discourse it will be an opportunity lost forever. Spectrum is the American people's best real estate, and before we assign long-term - and free - leases, we ought to make sure that the people get some value from that spectrum. Pretty pictures or quality educational programming? I hope you will agree that the choice is as clear as HDTV.
For Hundt's thoughts on the opportunities of digital broadcast, visit www.fcc.gov/.
Blair Levin
Chief of Staff
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, DC
Don Steinberg's "Digital Underground" (Wired 5.01, page 104) unfairly generalized all recording of live shows as illegal.
In the tradition of the Grateful Dead, bands such as the Allman Brothers Band, Phish, and Blues Traveler encourage tape trading as a way to expand their fan base. This has led to a widespread network of tape traders who swap for a particular live show. If a music group allows trading, nothing illegal has occurred. It is worthless for a taper to sell what he has, because tapes of the same show are widely available. Besides, an overwhelming majority of traders would never turn their backs on the bands they love by selling their recordings.
Poor record companies. They wring their hands about how much money they are losing to bootlegging and counterfeiting. But consider these figures: it costs most record companies about US$1.50 or less per unit to manufacture compact discs, yet retail prices have remained constant since the introduction of CDs more than 10 years ago. It is a little hard to feel sorry for these guys losing money to bootlegging while they reap enormous profits by charging premium prices for CDs even as production costs have dropped.
Remember, too, that most record companies routinely shit on artists who don't deliver multiplatinum sales by not promoting certain records, or not releasing titles at all, and forcing new acts to give up publishing rights to their songs. In this environment, even the artists don't sympathize.
With the capability to deliver music directly from the artist to the consumer over the Internet, record companies could find themselves obsolete in the very near future. The major labels can either embrace these developments or watch their enormous profits start to dry up. And many people won't shed a tear if the latter comes to pass.
Instead of wasting money hunting down bootleggers, the music industry should be paying them for all the free advertising and hype they generate. The Grateful Dead learned early (and often) how to cultivate hungry fans. All of those awful recordings - like empty calories - only make us yearn more for the real thing. As a member of an indie band, I hope someday someone will be interested enough to bootleg our music.
Your readers and Sameer Parekh might want to know that the Anonymizer described in "Making Privacy Pay" (Wired 5.01, page 67) isn't really that anonymous.
I have the unfortunate task of managing our corporate firewall. A few weeks ago, I noticed several accesses to www.anonymizer.com/. Though I'd never heard of this site before, I had a pretty good idea of what it was used for. I also noticed that the actual location the user was going to was passed along with the URL and therefore recorded in the firewall's log file.
I applaud Parekh's efforts and I wish him the best of luck. However, the technical reality of the Anonymizer does not live up to its promise. The service gives people an unwarranted sense of privacy. I'm sure there is a simple technical solution and hope that Parekh will find it.
As an educator, I was pleased to see the Wired interview with Susan Schilling ("The Teacher Who Designs Videogames," Wired 5.01, page 98). I was surprised, however, that a woman who makes "learning by discovery" her motto has an eye that continually wanders back to presentation and content delivery. I was especially surprised by her statement "Technology can't help with all of those social and physical skills you're developing in the classroom."
As an English language teacher interested in using computers in the classroom, I am often asked, "How can the students learn to speak English when they're silently working on the computer?" Instead, I ask myself, "How can students use English when they're working with the computer?" The creativity tools that Schilling mentions lead to discussion, sharing, and collaboration, real-world social skills that leave my students with a sense of ownership of their ideas and the language they use to express them. This rarely happens when knowledge is presented rather than built.
Yes, it's trendy to view the standard model of classroom learning as a remnant of an earlier, inferior age. But isn't this just a convenient and self-serving excuse to justify change - any change - that appears to offer a solution to the current classroom status quo? Clearly the situation is grim, as parents and teachers try desperately to deal with thousands of students who seem incapable of learning within the standard models.
But why can't Janie read? Is it the failure of the old system? No. It's partly because the same technology that makes interactive computer learning possible has put electronic blinders on our children. The incessant consumption of electronic games and media makes for inattentive students. Many cannot sit, listen, or learn with comprehension unless the message is delivered with bright color, strident sound, and animation. Giving them more of this, interactively or not, is no solution.
Text-based learning has done a sterling job of preserving the oral traditions of Jesus, Buddha, Black Elk, and Homer. The thoughts of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Einstein, and the works of Rembrandt, Beethoven, and Monet have come down to us without the aid of programmed interaction. When the electronic culture produces its first Marie Curie, we can begin to regard the medium as a success. And I'm not holding my breath.
Disconnect, stand back, and look at the "Star Wars universe." See it for what it is: a glitzy threepenny opera where hurdy-gurdies crank out repetitive tunes. Such contraptions can never replicate the full, rich symphony of life. Nor can they do a better job of passing its meaning on to our children than flesh-and-blood teachers working in a humane and disciplined environment.
As a Cellcom subscriber, I can attest that "Cellular Obsession" hit the nail on the head. Here in Israel, everyone I know can relate a memorable incident involving someone else's cellular phone. Cell phones are everywhere: on buses, in restaurants, at funerals, in concerts. Still, some places seem sacred. Our morning prayers in synagog have not been disturbed so far. And I have yet to see a cell phone in the sauna at the Hebrew University.
Douglas Trumbull ("Trumbull's Vision," Wired 5.01, page 128) was remiss in his failure to mention the late John Whitney, inventor of slit-scan animation.
Reading the interview, one would think Trumbull alone was responsible for the inventiveness and production of the memorable Star Gate scene in Stanley Kubrick's 2001. But, in fact, Con Pederson wrote Kubrick in the early days of 2001's production, alerting him to amazing effects Whitney had developed and first used in the title effects for Doris Day's The Glass Bottom Boat.
Whitney developed the field of motion graphics in 1960 and provided some of the first techniques in motion control of camera, zoom, and artwork. This work led to the slit-scan technique, which Trumbull and the film crew at Graphic Films modified for the Star Gate sequence. Whitney was awarded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Medal of Commendation for Cinematic Pioneering in 1986 for this and other work.
Great magazine. Now for a little nitpicking. The "2001 Double Take" sidebar says that Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001 predicted "magnetic-tape memory" for computers, unlike the more advanced solid-state memory we have today. However, Clarke did predict solid-state memory chips not unlike RAM and ROM. In the novel, one of the memory units Bowman removes from HAL is described as a "marvelously complex three-dimensional network, which could lie comfortably in a man's hand yet contained millions of elements." This surely isn't magnetic tape. I can't vouch for the movie, but at least in the book Clarke wasn't far off the mark at all.
Tom Dowe's article "News You Can Abuse" (Wired 5.01, page 53) attempts a balanced examination of conspiracy and paranoia on the Net, but ultimately it lapses into the shopworn conspiracy-nut orthodoxy we have come to expect from print journalists. He mentions Oliver Stone no less than four times in a mindlessly pejorative mantra that has become part of the conventional unwisdom.
"How many parents really want their kids to study the movie JFK ... in history class?" he asks. Many of us believe that democracy does not run well on autopilot; eternal vigilance and healthy skepticism of Orwellian farces like the Warren Commission are required. Oliver Stone's great heresy was reaching a mass audience with only a fraction of the mountainous available evidence that the mainstream media has shamefully suppressed.
Dowe also accuses the San Jose Mercury News of overhyping the CIA-crack expos�eacute; on its Web site and tells us that the novelty of every major American newspaper being online now is an "unsettling one." It's only unsettling to the corporate media titans who hopped in bed with the national security empire long ago.
There may be some unfounded allegations on the Net. But I have seen a helluva lot more factual information and reasonable deduction breaking through the corporate media's iron dike as a direct result of the growth of Internet journalism.
Hoo boy, here we go again ...
The key political issues surrounding the search for extraterrestrial life are not those mentioned in Dennis Overbye's profoundly unoriginal "On the Trail of SETI!" (Wired, 5.01, page 139). Half of all Americans believe the government is hiding evidence about UFOs because that is exactly what the evidence suggests! This evidence includes photographs, films, radar and electronic countermeasures data, Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, videotapes, government documents, newspaper and magazine accounts, testimony of well-connected political insiders and military eyewitnesses, and countless published scientific papers going back decades. Scientifically, it's painfully clear to anyone who has taken the time to become familiar with the evidence that SETI is wasting the money of the na�ve billionaires who support it. Hasn't it occurred to Overbye that the US government has no interest in looking for radio signals because it has far better evidence right here on Earth?
The real issue is not whether evidence for ETs exists, but whether the most useful evidence will ever be released. When you request known classified documents on UFOs using the Freedom of Information Act, as many groups have, the request is either flatly refused due to "national security reasons" or the documents are "sanitized" (with a black marker) prior to release. The money being pumped down the SETI rat-hole would be better spent lobbying for the release of these secret files.
NASA and other scientists are trying to whet the public imagination with dreams of a manned flight to Mars ("One-Way to Mars?" Wired 5.01, page 116) and theories on the ease of Martian terraformation have been bandied about. But I believe a manned Mars mission would be a big mistake.
I'd guess that a manned expedition to the asteroid belt would cost even less than the one-way trip proposed by Henry Spencer and would be a greater step toward man's population of the solar system.
While the surface of Mars might be slightly more hospitable than the vacuum of space, the asteroid belt contains more easily accessible resources that don't need to be lifted out of a gravity well. Given metal and oxides from the asteroid belt, and perhaps hydrogen and water from a passing comet, we could build an Earthlike habitat much closer to home.
- Book Note: Po Bronson's The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest was published by Random House in March.
- Undoo-doo: The comment on Sybase in "Windows Winners" (Wired 5.02, page 90) used Wired's language, not Michael Murphy's.
- Editorial Mutation: "The Year After Technology" (Wired 5.01, page 92) implied that aneuploidy is a genetic mutation; it is not a mutation and is not hereditary.
- Mother Error: In "Mother Earth, Motherboard" (Wired 4.12, page 97), it was Northwestel Inc., not Northern Telecom, that blocked International Telecom's Kallback service.
- D'oh!: Apu, not Abu, is the owner of the Kwik-E-Mart ("Mmmm, Digilicious," Wired 5.01, page 167).
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