Social Capital and How It Affects Real Capital

Doing the daily reading for yesterday's class, it strikes me that we trust other people a great deal in order to live our daily lives. This includes loved ones, obviously, but I am talking about total strangers. How do we know, for example, that those driving on the road won't stop for us when we cross the road on foot? Their car won't be affected, and if more people got hit crossing the road, fewer people would attempt it. This would enable drivers to stop less, since they must stop for fewer people crossing the road. Clay Shirky in his book refers to this as social capital. If we wish to have social capital in our society, we must invest in that capital. Jesus called it service. We must demonstrate that we want to make ethical and moral decisions on a regular basis, for if we do not, the very systems allowing us to make money will break down. Consider the case if no one stopped for pedestrians. It would become more difficult to travel at all, since most people must at least walk through a parking lot at the end of their journey. This is part of what Jesus meant, I think, when He said that by putting others first, we promote our own ends.

The Mathematics of Groups

The most interesting thing about Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, is that it demonstrates that the mathematics behind group forming is inherently tied to that group's structure, longevity, and purpose. His book outlines the power law distribution, Metcalfe's Law, and Reed's law, and shows in a down-to-earth fashion that these theoretical and discreet principles of mathematics profoundly impact the formation of groups in our world. That there are basic, guiding principles which govern complex phenomenon is an idea which feels timeless; yet, interestingly, this idea is younger than the computer itself. This idea was a revolutionary idea in mathematics, and was put forth by Benoit Mandelbrot, famous for discovering fractals. Mandelbrot discovered that some shapes looked similar at different levels of magnification, and also discovered that a relatively simple formula governed this complex and sometimes erratic shape. This self-similar design appears in Shirky's book also, on page thus-and-so, when he starts to talk about how small-world networks look similar to itself at different scales. Thus, he ties into Mandelbrot's fractals, and hence that complex phenomenon can be described by simple rules, but also shows that in spite of that, these phenomenon are still relatively unpredictable. Though he did not mean to do so, Shirky showed how social networks relate to the mathematical framework of fractal geometry pioneered by Mandelbrot, giving us hope that there is a way to examine social phenomena in a mathematically rigorous way.

Tweeting During Conference

I failed in every attempt to create a more descriptive title for this blog post, because I fail in every attempt to describe twitter or the experience of tweeting during General Conference. The speed at which people were tweeting astounded me --- I saw the tweets on twitter of quotes from talks, including graphical quotes, before I saw them on the screen (since there was a delay of live video coverage of about a minute). I tweeted quotes that meant a lot to me. One such quote was favorited many times by my friends, and was by Jeffrey R. Holland: "Defend your beliefs with courtesy and compassion, but defend them. #ElderHolland #ldsconf". I also browsed various hash tags created during conference, including "#ldsconf" and, not surprisingly, "#OrdainWomen". The latter saddened me that so many were online in that discussion, but as with topics discussed in Clay Shirky's book, it is difficult and maybe even wrong to prevent a group from forming, even if someone disagrees with the group's ideals.

Immigration in the United States

Gaming and More

Everyone engages in some addictive behavior or other. Were it not so, everyone would be completely free and able to choose to do the right thing. We would be perfect if we had no addictions. Because of this, it is important that everyone know how to deal with addictions. To that end, and in that light, this article tells us that even doing recreational activities can be addictive. It warns against the evil even of throwing our lives out of balance. This warning reminds the reader that anything can be addicting, and that everyone should learn how to control their own addictions.

Bucking the System

The Philadelphia Inquirer gives an appraisal of The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll, printed on the back of the book. It reads, "Stoll's is the ever appealing story of the little man bucking the system..." And that is right.

While reading the story, I was frustrated with Cliff. His frustration because no one helps him is not unique. Like Cliff, I have had my superiors grumble and complain at even the idea of paying me for what I do. Such bosses see that a job needs to be done, but they view it as a necessary evil. With Cliff, his boss knew that Cliff should be pursuing the hacker, yet still grumbled about this truth, seeing it as overhead. This is not an uncommon phenomenon faced by many computing professionals. Many companies were pulled in to the technology revolution kicking and screaming. For example, I can think of some (without naming names) that view the maintenance of a website as a hoop to jump through before real business can take place.

The worst part about this dilemma is that others still want to see the work happen, but they won't help, even when the work is clearly valuable, even critical. In the book, the NSA and the CIA were heavily interested in Cliff's work, but he never received help from them in doing it. Although he received plenty of recognition for his work, any underappreciated engineer will tell you that this is not the same thing. Getting called at odd hours because yet another problem arose is not my ideal kind of fame.

After all of this, the only motivation the underappreciated engineer has is the job itself. Cliff wanted to catch the hacker. After he did, he moved to Boston and kept on working computer security problems, keeping odd hours, even though that was the one field of labor for which he had received few pats on the back. Despite this, Cliff knew he was doing important work, work that made the world a better place. It allowed him to sleep better at night knowing he had defended the innocent, and even the ignorant. At least, that is how it would make me feel.

What Are We Teaching Our Young Girls?

Many have asked, "why aren't women in computer science more?" This article suggests that items stereotypically associated with boys, such as Star Trek toys, make girls feel less comfortable with the idea of working with computers. Perhaps there is more to it than that many men like to decorate their cubicles with TV show paraphernalia that they watch, but stereotyping seems to be important, even at an early age. There doesn't seem to be a high drop-out rate of women entering computer science, but not finishing. It seems that both the major entry and graduation rates are low, suggesting that any women wanting to study a technical field were deterred from that study long before college. The last time there was a peak in women in computer science was a generation ago. Therefore, it may be how we are raising our girls today that is the chief reason for their avoiding science unnecessarily. I have a little girl, too. I need to teach her that she can do whatever she wants.