... There were the rivers of New England, which served as the launching pad for America's first forays into industrial production. This is the old Waltham Watch factory, located on the banks of the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts. Construction on the facility started in the early 1850s. Upriver and downriver there are dozens of other old factory buildings that were built to take advantage of the Charles to generate power, use water for production purposes, or dump waste material. By the time I was a kid, the factories had all closed and the river and environs were extremely polluted. Cleanup began in earnest in the 1970s, and in the 1990s local governments and the state had built a wonderful walking trail, that stretches from Comm. Ave in Newton all the way down through Waltham and Watertown and down to Cambridge and Boston. Meanwhile, the old red brick buildings have mostly been converted to other uses (the old Waltham Watch factory now houses office space and a restaurant, and I believe there's been talk of building condos or apartments).
I find it interesting that just a few miles from this site lie the gleaming office buildings where Microsoft, Oracle, and many other technology firms have set up shop on the banks of Rte. 128. Why did the computer and industrial revolutions concentrate in adjacent areas, 125 years apart? In my mind, the commonality is people -- both movements required brainpower and workers to get started, and nearby cities and towns provided both, thanks to the concentration of universities, transportation links, and large immigrant communities.
Another award for The Industry Standard -- a gold "tabbie" (TABPI is an organization representing trade magazines) for an online feature that we put together last year on the 1st anniversary of the iPhone, called "The iPhone Naysayers." Believe it or not, a lot of people were skeptical of the iPhone when Apple first announced it. We thought it would be interesting to follow up with some of doubters.
Readers and a few other blogs (such as Cult of Mac) really enjoyed "The iPhone Naysayers," and so did the TABPI judges. One had this to say:
"Proves that, whether in print or online, excellent journalism begins with an excellent concept. Add solid reporting, links to additional information within the article, and the opportunity for readers/visitors to comment, and you're making the best use of the Internet's unique information-dissemination capabilities. Awesome."
Congratulations to writer Jake Widman and the small production team for putting the piece together. Thanks also the subjects who responded to our interview requests.
This is very cool. Jay Leno, the comedian and car collector, has written an article for Popular Mechanics about the practical use of 3D scanning and printing.
I wrote about 3D rapid prototyping back in 2007, but the interesting thing about Leno's article -- and the accompanying video -- is he shows an actual use-case scenario that could potentially help out the many thousands of classic car owners who can't run their vehicles because they're missing a part that's no longer manufactured:
"It's a classic example of high tech melding with old tech. There are cars sitting in garages around the country, and they haven’t moved in years for lack of some unobtainable part. Now they can hit the road once more, thanks to this technology."
Leno brings up the case of a deteriorating part for a 100-year old car. While it would be possible to get a machinist to attempt to replace the part, it would be expensive and could potentially take lots of trial and error, if the replacement part is too thick or doesn't quite fit. With 3D "fabbing" technologies, you can not only create a very precise model of the part (according to Leno, "50,000 points per second at a density of 160,000 dots per inch"), you can "print" it plastic. If the part needs to be made into metal, like Jay's old car parts, the plastic models can either be turned into a mold or the 3D data file can be used with a special type of machine that makes metal parts based on 3D models.
Check out the video below, which shows Leno explaining the technology. One of the neatest things about this technology which I wasn't aware of previously is it can actually be used to make working plastic models that have moving parts -- no assembly required! Leno demonstrates a wrench and some sort of steam-engine component made with the 3D printer, and both actually work:
As for cost, Leno admits the 3D scanner and printer are expensive (he says the NextEngine scanner costs about $3000 and the Dimension uPrint Personal 3D printer is under $15,000, which is actually a sharp drop from just two years ago, when printers cost $40,000 and up). That's too expensive for mass production of parts, but most car collectors or owners of old machinery just need single parts or pieces. There's probably potential for an online marketplace to spring up, that lets people trade 3D modeling data files and order parts from 3D print shops onine.
(Update at bottom) This is interesting. A university professor has released a sociology study (which will soon be made into a book) using players in the MMORPG City of Heroes/City of Villains as research subjects (see video at the bottom of this article which shows gameplay). I saw it discussed on Hacker News, and read the article on nola.com that prompted the debate. After reading the 2008 research paper ("Play and Punishment: The sad and curious case of Twixt") I thought that I would give some analysis here on my blog, and add some of my own thoughts regarding academic ethics.
From a high-level examination, the study seems harmless. In it, Loyola professor David Myers exploited differences between the online game's official rules (mostly governing gameplay and competition) and unofficial rules (mostly player-created social norms) to study group behavior. Starting in late 2006, he used his player to build specific scenarios and observed the reactions of other participants.
But drilling down to his methodology, the study veers into uncomfortable territory. Myers didn't just play the game, he actually used his hero character "Twixt" to sabotage other people's enjoyment by violating the game's unofficial social norms. In other words, he took the role of an antisocial griefer to an extreme in order to drive social and emotional reactions, which he then used to support his thesis.
Here's how Myers describes his methodology:
These three sets of behaviors – rigidly competitive pvp tactics (e. g., droning), steadfastly uncooperative social play outside the game context (e. g., refusing to cooperate with zone farmers), and steadfastly uncooperative social play within the game context (e. g., playing solo and refusing team invitations) – marked Twixt’s play from the play of all others within RV.
Translation: He killed other players in situations that were allowed by the game's creators but frowned upon by the majority of real-life participants. For instance, "villains" and "heroes" aren't supposed to fraternize, but they do anyway. When "Twixt" happened upon these and other situations -- such as players building points by taking on easy missions against computer-generated enemies -- he would ruin them, often by "teleporting" players into unwinnable killzones. The other players would either die or have their social relations disrupted. Further, "Twixt" would rub it in by posting messages like:
"Yay, heroes. Go good team. Vills lose again."
The reaction was overwhelmingly negative. People used message boards and in-game chat to tell Twixt how much he was hated, what a terrible player he was, and worse. While Myers was technically following the rules of permitted gameplay, he was violating the rules of conduct to such a degree that even heroes were begging for villains to kill Twixt in the game.
There were also some extremely disturbing reactions to the experiment. Myers received at least one threat to kill him in real life, although it's not certain if the player who said this was being serious, as Myers' real identity was not known to other players at the time. This video interview with Myers discusses the incident:
Computer Game Threat
All in the name of science, right? Anyway, here is how Myers' summed up the implications of his experiments:
In real-world environments, "natural" laws governing social relationships, if they exist at all, are part of the same social system in which they operate and, for that reason, are difficult to isolate, measure, and confirm. In Twixt’s case, however, two unique sets of rules – one governing the game system, one governing the game society -- offered an opportunity to observe how social rules adapt to system rules (or, more speculatively, how social laws might reproduce natural laws.) And, the clearest answer, based on Twixt’s experience, is that they don’t. Rather, if game rules pose some threat to social order, these rules are simply ignored. And further, if some player -- like Twixt -- decides to explore those rules fully, then that player is shunned, silenced, and, if at all possible, expelled.
I had a couple of additional thoughts about Myers' study. When I was in grad school, we devoted some time during the required proseminar to academic ethics. As I recall, experiments in which subjects were not made aware they were taking part in an experiment were to be treated very cautiously. The example that was brought up in class was a 60s-era study that involved a researcher monitoring the activities of men having sex in a public restroom that was known as a pickup spot for anonymous rendezvous. Such a study could not happen now without raising red flags, owing to privacy and consent issues. While Myers' research did not infringe upon players' intimate lives, he apparently did not get their consent and he did not reveal that he was an academic conducting research.
There is also the emotional element to consider. He was manipulating people's feelings for the sake of an experiment. That seems questionable, despite the suggestion in the nola.com article that he was surprised people reacted the way they did.
I believe Myers anticipated he would draw an overwhelmingly negative emotional reaction before he even started his "breaching experiments." It's not just that people hate to lose. Myers has studied video games since the 1980s, and played City of Heroes/City of Villains for thousands of hours before he started his research. Surely he knew that killing other players in such a fashion went beyond griefing -- these virtual characters are representations of the people who play them, and the advanced characters have taken huge chunks of personal time to build. The article on nola.com notes that "Myers was stunned by the reaction, since he obeyed the game's rules." This seems a bit hollow. After all, he acknowledged that his methodology employed "steadfastly uncooperative" tactics -- what was he expecting, a medal? The social rules may not be explicit as the official game rules, but he must have expected negative consequences for violating them in such a manner, just as employing uncooperative behavior in a real-world situation would prompt negative or even angry reactions from others.
... this study is not really an experiment. I label it as a “breaching experiment” in reference to analogous methods of Garfinkel, but, in fact, neither his nor my methods are experimental in any truly scientific sense. This should be obvious in that experimental methods require some sort of control group and there was none in this case. Likewise, experimental methods are characterized by the manipulation of a treatment variable and, likewise, there was none in this case.
He goes on to claim that the lack of consent from the people in his research does not constitute an ethical breach:
The matter of informed consent in this case, because of the reasons above, is really more of a legal than an ethical issue. You will note that I reveal no real-life identities. Nor do I use player globals. The names of toons I do include in the paper are entirely immaterial to the paper’s content and could easily be changed – which I am quite willing to do, though I think it will make little practical difference to the players involved. Most of them, I think, would rather have the names in rather than out. None of them, after all, despite the claims of some, were “treated” or “manipulated” or “harmed” in any way. They were simply observed in how they played within the zone, similar, perhaps, to observing how people shop inside a shopping mall.
This is a false comparison. The players were not "simply observed," they were subjected to what he calls "steadfastly uncooperative" behavior. If he were to employ corresponding behaviors in a shopping mall, the result would almost certainly be verbal abuse from mall patrons and ejection from the property for harassment.
Finally, he refers to a Terra Nova discussion on informed consent, which is a great read. However, he did not follow the same rules of engagement as Terra Nova author Constance Steinkuehler, who says:
My general MO to date has been to keep the lines between my professional identity and my Lineage identity transparent to whoever is interested, treating in-game disclosure of information about my 'academic' life the same way I treat academic disclosure of details about my 'game' life, based on the notion that I am bound to both communities to be generally forthright about what I do.
Feel free to add your thoughts below about these issues.
A video of the gameplay in City of Heroes/City of Villains:
Isn’t it amazing that, after all these years, it still hasn’t dawned on companies like D-Link that simplicity sells? They still don’t get it: spending a little money up front —on hardware design, streamlined software, better manuals -- would save a fortune in tech-support calls and store returns. ...
... In short, D-Link has gone to the considerable expense of inventing, designing and marketing a smart machine that could save a lot of people a lot of cost and complexity — and then hobbled it by making it much too cryptic and technical for 90 percent of its potential audience.
This reminded me of an incident earlier in the week when a relative came to me with his nearly brand-new BlackBerry Curve 8900 and complained that he couldn't get back to the old home menu. When I looked at the home screen, sure enough it had changed to about 40 minuscule icons on a pure white background, instead of the carrier home page, which has a blue graphic and five icons showing the most-used features. He had accidentally changed the home screen some days before and had tried every conceivable way to switch it back. Tech support at work wasn't helpful -- while they support email on the device, they don't handle anything else, because he bought it on his own. He called his employer's CIO, who was sympathetic, but could only advise him to call the carrier tech support. They told him to change the setting in the options screen, but he couldn't find that.
So I gave it a shot. The interface designed by Research in Motion is maddeningly complicated -- many options are only available from specific applications, or are buried in submenus. Changing options often requires multiple clicks to select the menu item, change to another setting, and then saving that setting. I hunted around in various places, including the most obvious place -- the home page icon for display/keyboard -- but could not find what I was looking for. I told him his best option was to go to AT&T store where he had bought the device and have them find the option, but he was afraid they would shrug or be unable to help him.
So I gave it one more try. And lo and behold, one of the last icons on the home menu was labeled "options" (separate from display/keyboard). I found the setting and changed it. He was overjoyed.
But it made me wonder. The BlackBerry UI is so unintuitive that it took five people -- including the CIO of a large organization -- to diagnose what was wrong. We collectively spent an hour or two on the issue.
And he's not the only one. I remember when I got my first BlackBerry several years ago. It was simply placed on my desk by someone in IT without any tutorial or manual. I'm a pretty tech-savvy individual, but I couldn't figure out how to turn it off -- I had to ask another user how to do it. Ditto for changing the phone volume or the position of icons on the screen -- I had to Google the solutions.
If even 10% of BlackBerry owners have similar problems, that represents a lot of frustration and millions of wasted hours every year. Research in Motion surely knows about these problems (the first BlackBerry came out eight or nine years ago) yet it is still shipping products that confound users with their complexity.
Besides D-Link and RIM, what other technology companies (or specific products) can't get a handle on the user experience?
On my browser toolbar I have bookmarks for about 10 really important sites that I visit multiple times throughout the day: Yahoo mail, Twitter, Techmeme, Y Combinator/Hacker News, the Industry Standard, etc.
But there's only one map-related site, and it's not Google Maps. It's the National Weather Service radar map for Boston, which includes all of southern New England (see screenshot, above). It lets me know in near real-time where the clouds and thunder cells are, and plan outings accordingly.
On my iPod Touch, I also use the free Weather.com app. It has a Google maps mashup which shows a cloud overlay over the user-chosen locations, but the graphics aren't as good and there is a lag on some of the data -- and I suspect some innaccuracies about the location of storms, based on visually comparing the NWS map and the mobile mashup from Weather.com.
Nevertheless, the data available to ordinary users via Web and mobile apps is amazing. TV weathermen used to be the gatekeepers for such data, but no longer. That doesn't mean TV weathermen will be disappearing -- they are still valuable for giving context and forecasting -- but for here-and-now reports they have been made obsolete by technology.
