Different thoughts about thinking differently

Archive for the ‘thinking differently’ Category

Lymbix and the emotional spell check

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

I don’t normally profile businesses on this blog, but I have to admit that I’m intrigued by Lymbix.  There are two main reasons why I find this company interesting:

  1. They are based in my home province (New Brunswick).
  2. Their products are fascinating and full of promise, based on what I’ve seen so far.

Lymbix’s motto is understood. clearly. In a nutshell, their products focus on the emotional content of text.  They are building a gigantic database of information about the emotion content of both individual words and phrases.  They use this data in applications, some of which perform an “emotional spell check” on text.  They currently are compiling this data through crowdsourcing on their ToneADay website.  Disclosure:  I have signed up as a ToneADay worker so I make some small income by contributing to their database.

One application of this work is a literal emotional spell check on E-Mails, with the option of preventing them from being sent if they fail to pass through several filters.  For example, a simple filter check might be to prevent E-Mails from being sent if they contained profanity.  A more complex check might be detect if E-mails contain language that suggest anger or sarcasm (note:  these are just my way of describing how it could work; it might not work exactly this way).

Lymbix is still in its early days and starting to get some products into the marketplace.  It’s hard to say how they will make out but they’ve won a Microsoft startup award and they’re finalists for a KIRA award in their native New Brunswick CANADA  (EDIT: Lymbix won their KIRA award for Best New Startup in New Brunswick – congratulations!).  I hope things go well for them; I think we can use any useful tools to promote better communication.

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Rants

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

These days, you can’t tell if rants are really about expressing opinions or trying to gain allies and enemies.

I started writing a rant.  Then I thought about why I would be writing it.  Then it felt like it would be hypocritical to write and publish the rant for obvious reasons.

So, in this temporary time of personal creative gridlock, I’ll just have to give you this rant instead.

Question – human needs models and video games

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

Would it be better to take a scholarly concept like Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs and express it in more modern terms rather than in the more classic style?

Instead of describing it as a pyramid which you gradually climb as you go from poor, insecure wretch to a superhuman being, would it make more sense to describe our progression of needs as completing levels of a video game?  Or leveling up a character in an online role playing game like World of Warcraft?

Our needs and wants at the first level of a video game are much different than the middle ones or the final level.

The same holds true for a newbie character than an intermediate player or a master player.

Or are video games just a fun waste of time?

 

What do you think?

Amazon Mechanical Turk – abandon hope all ye who…

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Image representing Mechanical Turk as depicted...
Image via CrunchBase

I think I have to blame Seth Godin for revealing the existence of Mechanical Turk to me.  Or Jeff Bezos for letting it happen in the first place.  At any rate, Mechanic Turk exists and it’s a fascinating and occasionally repulsive thing.

The original Mechanical Turk was a scam:  around 100 years ago, people thought they were playing chess against a dumb machine.  As it turns out, the “machine” was actually controlled by a human being, but the other players didn’t know that.

By contrast, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a website that’s a staggering example of crowdsourcing and the atomization of work into commodity pieces.  You use the website to request work to be done and, behind the scenes, it’s separated into small chunks that can be worked upon by individuals for extremely cheap rates.

There’s a lot of work that’s out there that pays less than $0.10 per piece.  It’s hard to tell for sure, but my best guess is that if there’s 100000 pieces of work out there at any one time, at least 40% of them pay less than $0.10 per piece.

This is yet another step in outsourcing and business services, but it’s democratized to the point that anyone with Web access and a credit card can take big jobs and get them done by the equivalent of worker bees.  The most common work items (or Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) as they are called) are things like:

  • image tagging
  • simple data entry
  • audio transcription
  • language translation
  • article/blog post/content writing
  • off site SEO/SMM stuff used to get more hits on people’s websites
  • questionnaires and quizzes

Not to be rude, but there’s a lot more crap out there than I thought there would be.  For example, one job that I stumbled across was indexing X-rated (or worse) computer games.  I guess I shouldn’t (and don’t) think that a commercial site like Mechanical Turk would be an inspiring bastion of group effort, but it feels more like the scummier parts of Craiglist (no offense to Newmark’s baby, it’s just how it has evolved in places) or some sleazy non-descript webpage trafficking in useless crap than it feels like SETI@home or Project Guttenberg.

But here’s the really disgusting thing about Mechanical Turk:

It’s addictive.

Y0u try one or two of these silly jobs and after awhile you notice something.  Even though some of the jobs only pay $0.01 each, you can do some of them in 5 seconds or less with 3 – 5 clicks of the mouse.  Suddenly, being paid a $0.01 piece rate doesn’t seem so bad when you can string together about 500 of them and click mindlessly while watching TV or something.

Some of the work is kind of cool:  I found a fun psychological experiment where I had to share some money with an anonymous partner that might be paid to us as a bonus above and beyond the piece rate.  And so, there are fun little gems and nuggets sprinkled within, so the Mechanical Turk becomes a sort of serendipity engine which is 99.99% crap and 0.01% fun.  It becomes a game.

Meanwhile, you slowly earn enough money to buy 2-3 books from Amazon.com… that’s the other addictive part.  As soon as you amass some significant money (say $5.00 or more), well, now you’re on the path to making $40.00 or $50.00 so you can buy your books and take advantage of free shipping.  And so on.

Mechanical Turk is just a website with a crowdsourcing engine.  It’s not inherently evil, I guess, as long as your job isn’t being consumed by this crowdsourcing application:  then it would suck, I suppose.  The most interesting thing is how people will flock to it in ways to either make money or save money.

There must be a point to this story; I’m just not sure what it is.  I hope we don’t find out while we in line at the dole, though.  Or trying to get into the shelter after eating at the soup kitchen.

Image by robertstinnett


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7 smart ways to keep TV from ruining your brain

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
The ideal television of the future. The realis...

TV is evil, right? It saps critical thinking, encourages overeating, and serves no useful purpose.

Hold on:  let’s look at it from the other side of the remote for just a moment.

Is it possible to watch television in ways that actually expand your mind?

Let me count the ways:

  1. Watch educational children’s television: while this may have limited value for anyone over the age of, say, four, don’t knock it too quickly.  Be honest:  did you learn your ABC’s in kindergarten or while watching Sesame Street?  I know from personal experience that watching Between the Lions helped my kids learn some pronounciation.  And darned if Dora the Explorer didn’t teach them a few words of Spanish (which is not necessarily so helpful in Canada, but every little bit helps.
  2. Watch documentaries on channels like History, National Geographic, PBS, and Discovery.  Maybe even A&E or TLC, but I’m more skeptical about those two channels these days.  Really watch them and challenge yourself to learn something.
  3. Pay attention to commercials and learn how those marketing fiends program us.
  4. Watch a high quality dramatic series. Pick different aspects about them and really stop to analyze them.  Dialog, lighting, music, costumes, cinematography – see how they enhance or detract from the viewing experience.
  5. Watch the news and see if you can spot the edits whereby newsclips are mixed with commentary to attempt to control your thoughts.
  6. This is the Web 2.0, for heaven’s sake.  Use Google while you’re watching a show and learn more about what’s going on.  Use it as a chance to educate yourself.
  7. If all else fails, assuage your soul and feel less guilt by watching a telethon and then donating to a good cause.

Did I miss anything?

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The birth of a nation – I mean a blog

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

If you haven’t seen me waving my hands frantically and screaming on the Interwebs for the past few days, I’ll catch you up really quickly:  I started a new blog called Thoughtwrestling.  If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, then you know that it can be a challenge to maintain one blog, let alone multiple.  So why on earth would I want more than one blog?

I’ll try to keep this succinct:

Broadcasting Brain appears to have limited growth potential without substantial change

I have created this neat little melange of social media, psychology, pop culture and personal opinion, but it’s kind of unfocused and a bit unpredictable.  I know some of you like that (and I do, too) but it’s an acquired taste that probably isn’t going to take over the world any time soon.  I don’t want it to, either.

Broadcasting Brain has structural/infrastructure issues that I don’t feel are worth fixing.

My blogging pal Michael Martine of Remarkablogger once wrote about creating a starter blog to experiment with before you run out and create your “real” blog.  I’m paraphrasing him, but that’s the essential message.

That’s how I’ve come to view Broadcasting Brain – as a starter blog (even thought it wasn’t my first blog). There are things that I would have done differently if I had started today (domain name, permalinks, categories, etc.)  but I really have no desire or will to try to change them now.

I can take everything I’ve learned to date and apply it to Thoughtwrestling.

Broadcasting Brain is my baby and it is almost indistinguishable from me.

I see some advantages in starting a new blog that is not so closely identified with me that I can view more impartially.  That just isn’t going to happen here.  Another reason why I decided to create a new blog.

I want to create a new platform with the potential for growth for both myself and a band of intrepid colleagues.

Other than all of the “interviews” that I’ve done here at Broadcasting Brain, I create all of the content myself.  I just don’t see myself opening up this blog to contributors.  Again, it’s too strongly associated with me.

Thoughtwrestling is designed to be a platform for multiple authors and collaboration, with myself in the role of founder and editor-in-chief.  At the same time, I’ve gotten a great group of people who have agreed to contribute to the blog in some fashion and I trust in their abilities to create excellent content.  Similar blogs would be Dumb Little Man or Pick The Brain (although Thoughtwrestling isn’t attempting to cover exactly the same space as these two great blogs).

Plus there are some things that I’ve done in the design of Thoughtwrestling to allow room for future growth.

I want a way to better capitalize on my actual work skills and experience.

For various reasons, I don’t create much content about my employer or my day job.  The material that I publish here has virtually nothing to do with either.  I still won’t talk about my employer at Thoughtwrestling, but I can incorporate my work skills into that platform more naturally.

I want to have a platform that focuses more strongly on helping other people.

Thoughtwrestling is intended to give people knowledge and tools to do better work.  Broadcasting Brain is my soapbox, my Op Ed column to the world.  It”s more focused on me emptying out the contents of my brain than anything else.

I want to have a blog that allows me to do whatever the heck I want to do.

That would be Broadcasting Brain.  It’s really always been a personal blog with most of the personal omitted.

 

So those are my rationales, for what they are worth.  Broadcasting Brain isn’t going away any time soon.  In fact, I think I’ll enjoy it more with this change in focus.

I do hope you’ll check out Thoughtwrestling, but I also hope you stick around here, too.

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