Buying/Selling Used Books--A Job for the Digital Age

The online journal Slate recently had an article by a man describing his job buying and selling used books. The guy has a scanner and software linked to Amazon.com's book marketplace. He goes to thrift shops and library book sales and scans the barcodes of nearly every book there. After scanning the barcode, the software will tell him how much the book sells for used on Amazon, as well as how popular the book is. Based on these numbers, the man will then make a decision as to whether to buy the book or pass on it. He then offers the books for sale on Amazon. People make a living doing this work--he describes some people making $1,000 a week. (Although the author describes how the job can be humiliating.) This is a low stakes version of arbitrage going on throughout the world with the development of the Internet and high-speed communications technologies.

Social Activism and Social Media

In STS302H we will be talking about Wendell Berry's vision of community today. This week in the New Yorker, there is a related article by Malcolm Gladwell. A lot of people have hyped the possibilities of social media to affect social change, and some people have claimed that technologies like Twitter empowered people in Iran to protest the massive election fraud in that country. Gladwell is skeptical. He gives as a counter-example the story of the lunch counter boycotts in North Carolina and notes these were launched by people who had "strong ties" to each other--they were good friends and were committed to each other. Gladwell claims that Twitter and Facebook promote "weak-ties,"--people you are happy to know, but whom you won't risk your life for. Gladwell claims that connections with weak-ties can be very helpful in some situations--finding a job, finding a possible blood marrow donor, but not in others, such as agitating for serious social change. Wendell Berry would translate this into the need to have strong communities where one has strong face-t0-face relations with people.

Big News: No Need to Change Your Oil Every 3,000 Miles

Much of life consists of routine: get your teeth cleaned every six months, go for an annual physical at the doctors', get your car's oil changed every 3,000 miles. These are what we do. The New York Times recently had an article asserting that there is no need to change a car's oil every 3,000 miles. It asserted that changes in car engine and oil technology meant that most cars of recent vintage could go 7,500-10,000 miles between oil changes. We can see several themes in the history of technology in this. One is that while we often concentrate on big changes in technology, often there are smaller ones, like the aforementioned changes in oil and engine technology that can be significant as well. Another point the article made is that now, due to environmental concerns, California has run campaigns urging drivers not to get their oil changed every 3,000 miles. Some people say that doing so only increases the waste oil that needs to be recycled or reprocessed. I sometimes think of technology as a game where the rules are always changing.

The US versus China: Too Many Hamburgers

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has been one of the leading voices crying out that America is in danger of losing the economic/technological race to China. Today he has a piece that repeats many themes he has been harping on. He notes how the Chinese see Americans as a people who always expect that they will be first, but have "eaten too many hamburgers." He also suggests that the "can do" attitude that surrounded the Apollo program is gone in America, but is present in China. China has many problems and their authoritarian structure is certainly one that we wouldn't want to copy. But it will be interesting to see how the United States responds over the next years to the challenge of the rise of China.

Transistors and Grains of Rice

A columnist for Fortune magazine recently wrote an article on the development of the transistor in our society. I wrote a book on the history of the transistor, so this is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. He mentions that 100,000 transistors can be bought for less than the price of a grain of rice! When I was a kid, and when he was a kid, it used to be that a home might have 10 or so transistors in a transistor radio or a transistorized tv. Now it is just about impossible to count how many transistors we own--it is in the many billions. This cheap transistor has made possible many new applications of electronics that would have seemed impossible a few decades ago. Cheap transistors make it possible to have digital paper towel dispensers. One of the great challenges of our day is to try to figure out new uses for cheap transitors.

The Economics of the World Trade Center

In STS302H, we talked about the building of the original World Trade Center, and now a new World Trade Center is going up, topping out at 1776 feet, making it the tallest building in the US. The new WTC, originally called "Freedom Tower," will demonstrate American determination in the face of terrorism, but will the building make economic sense? That is the question Joe Nocera, a New York Times reporter, asks, and his answer seems to be no. He says that the new World Trade Center will be the most expensive office building ever built, costing almost twice as much per square foot as other skyscrapers. This suggests that either the owner of the building will have to subsidize those who want to rent space in it, or charge much higher than the current market rates. Most businesses will not want to pay higher rent just for the privilege of being in the WTC, so that means that the owner, the Port Authority of New York, will have to subsidize rents. This story is a reminder that technologies are symbols, but they also have to work economically. In this case the symbolism of the WTC seems to be overwhelming the economics.

Your Brain on Computers

The New York Times has had a series over the last year looking at how computers affect our brains. The premise of the series is that technology is changing who we are as people. The latest installment is looking at our tendency to be plugged in almost all the time, even when we are doing things like exercising. Some researchers believe that the brain works best and absorbs new material best when it has down time:

"Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Do you have real down time away from all technology, or do you relax with a Wii, an XBox or your IPod? One of the most famous creative moments in the history of technology came one Sunday in 1765, when James Watt went for a walk on the Glasgow Green. Here he came up with the key insight that made his version of the steam engine much more efficient than previous steam engines. Would he have had that moment if he had had an IPod?

Now if you do have some time you want to fill up digitally, the Computer History Museum has just posted on YouTube, two videos of programs that I participated in this summer, one on Indians and their role in computing, the other on the history of semiconductor technology.

Bill Gates and the End of the University

Bill Gates recently predicted that "place-based colleges" would become less important, saying they were good for parties, but were becoming less important for learning. We all know that the costs of college education have risen lately. We also all know about the Internet! MIT has put many of its courses on-line, and some of them have attracted students around the world, most notably a course in introductory physics.

Do we still need place-based universities? Do they provide something that the web cannot? Do you think NCSU will still be around 40 years from now? 90 years from now? As we look at the combination of rising costs, with states financial troubles, it seems like something will have to give.

A Violin Made 300 Years Ago --Republished from Jan 18, 2010

Last Thursday I went to a concert featuring the violinist Joshua Bell--here is his story and the story of his violin. He plays a Stradivarius violin that was made almost 300 years ago (it was made in 1713). It is amazing to think of a technology made 300 years ago and still being best in its class. In the United States, and in Raleigh, it is hard to see anything much older than 50 years. Do you think any technology of our day will still be in use 300 years from now? Will there be any buildings from our day still standing in 300 years? I am always impressed when I go to Europe or India at the old buildings (Taj Mahal 350 years old, Westminster Abbey 1000 years old). What do you think it means for a society where everything has been made in recent history and there is no expectation that something will last for hundreds/thousands of years?

PS Here is a fascinating story about an experiment that Joshua Bell was involved in . Here is the YouTube clip.

Sputnik, Terrorism and China (Republished from Jan 17, 2010)

Sputnik, Terrorism and China

In History 341, we will be reading over the next few weeks about how Sputnik galvanized America to take the challenge of trying to get a person on the moon before the Soviets did. In today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes from China asking "What's Our Sputnik?" He argues that we are spending a lot of time, money, energy, and blood focusing on terrorism, while China is quickly coming on track to supercede us as the world's leading economic power. I remember talking about 6 years ago to a professor in our department who specializes in China and goes to China often. He said that in 2004 he heard from people in China that they wanted Bush to win that year's presidential election because they thought Bush would keep the US bogged down focusing on terrorism and make the US a less effective economic competitor to them. Friedman quotes a Johns Hopkins professor speaking about Sputnik and the contrast with our "war on terrorism,":

“Our response to Sputnik made us better educated, more productive, more technologically advanced and more ingenious,” said the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum. “Our investments in science and education spread throughout American society, producing the Internet, more students studying math and people genuinely wanting to build the nation.”

And what does the war on terror give us? Better drones, body scanners and a lot of desultory T.S.A. security jobs at airports. “Sputnik spurred us to build a highway to the future,” added Mandelbaum. “The war on terror is prompting us to build bridges to nowhere.”

China and Google--Republished from Jan 15, 2010

China and Google are both often in the news, and but last week they were in the news together. Google accused China of launching a cyberattack against it and threatened to pull out of China. Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times writer who has a great deal of experience living in China and his column highlights a number of important themes in the history of technology (some which are a little scary). We talked in class about paradigms. Kristof mentions that the Chinese are putting a lot of effort into cyberwarfare. If China wanted to become a military power that could challenge the US in a traditional way it would take trillions of dollars and many years to develop the various weapons systems and train their military forces. (For example here and here are a post on recent Chinese work in aircraft carriers and how far they are behind the US.) Instead cyberwarfare doesn't require you to build any expensive hardware--just acquire computer skills that you can use in a variety of ways. If Chinese hackers could mess with aspects of the American infrastructure--power-grids, dams, air traffic control systems, etc., they would have a powerful weapon that in any conflict (in some ways more powerful than aircraft carriers and a lot cheaper).

Kristof's column also shows some aspects of the "social construction of technology." Different groups value different things. We in the US value openness. The Chinese value the ability to censor things and keep controversial issues out of the public. There is a tug of war now going on in the Chinese internet about which will win. The Chinese have created "the Great Firewall of China" to control the internet in their country. Kristof shows how innovative Chinese are coming up with ways to get around that Firewall, such as faking out censors by referring to June 4 (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre) by the name "May 35." (Well that probably won't work any more.) Anyhow the question is does the Internet require freedom or can the Chinese customize the Internet to their own values. We will see.

Paradigms in Aviation--Republished from Sept. 6, 2009

We have talked a lot about paradigms. One current example of the difficulties in changing a paradigm is Boeing's new airplane, the 787. Of course Boeing has been building jet aircraft for over 50 years, but in this model, it has done two things dramatically different. First of all, it has subcontracted out much more of the plane than it had done previously and secondly it has built much of the plane out of new materials, composites. This combination has been disastrous so far for Boeing, with their plane being several years behind schedule. Two interesting articles have recently appeared on the 787, Dreamliner, one in the New York Times and one in Portfolio. Why would such an experienced company screw up so badly? Designing a new model commercial airliner is an extremely expensive enterprise (it cost Boeing $10 billion to develop the 777). Boeing managers thought they could save a lot of money (and follow broad trends in business in general), by handing over the development of major sections of the plane to other companies. One can see how this made sense to Boeing managers at the time, but the problems of being at the mercy of other companies to develop Boeing's core product are now clear. I would encourage you to look at these articles, they are very interesting and give a sense of what goes on in the aviation business, with some of the flavor of Angle of Attack, where sometimes technology is not only about technology.

Rings Tones and the Social Construction of Technology--Republished from Aug 26, 2009

In class we are talking about the social construction of technology-how different groups shape a technology in different ways. One interesting example of this is the story of the high frequency ringtone as reported in the New York Times.

This technology takes advantage of the fact that young people's ears are capable of hearing frequencies that older people can't. However high frequency sounds can be painful to hear. The first step in this technology was an "ultra sonic-teen repellent" developed in the UK to drive teens away from places where they might be loitering. So if adults saw this technology as a "teen repellent," teens saw this as a "teen stealth" technology, which would allow them to communicate without adults knowing about it. They developed this high frequency tone into a ringtone, which they could then use to signal each other at school without the adults (teachers) knowing about it. Here we have two different social groups (adults and teens) interepreting a technology in different ways and finding different uses for it.

Globalization and the Iceland Volcano [Republished Post]

We have been talking a lot about globalization in this course and sometimes disruptions to globalization are the things that remind us how much the world has been globalized. This week's Iceland volcano was one such event. Flights from cities throughout Europe have been canceled. Here is an article and a map on the story. While this story covers the business effects. Its affects have also been felt in the US and even in our department. The Boston Marathon, scheduled for Monday, was to have about 600 European runners compete, and many of them will be unlikely to get to this side of the pond now. Our own history department had a conference scheduled this weekend and several of the speakers were coming over from the UK and couldn't make it. It is humbling to imagine what this could mean if the volcano were to continue to erupt over a long period of time, such as year, which was the time over which the volcano erupted last.