Economics Of Evil
Written: 1216887704|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (trolls)
For some time I've been studying the creation of on-line communities. One of our principles in the activist world is that a community needs a bad guy.
Now, one of my examples for non-activist people is Wikipedia, which is one of the most explosively successful on-line communities. The question is, who is the bad guy in Wikipedia?
At first sight, Wikipedia is a purely positive thing. People contribute knowledge, discuss, edit articles. True, there are some idiots, trolls, and vandals, but overall the results seem to be great. So great that Wikipedia does better than any traditional expert-based encyclopedia. So, does this mean a positive community can work?
The other day some friends and I were discussing a new project to create a kind of wikipedia-style encyclopedia of art and antique objects. The question came up… what about edit rights? Who can edit? And in the answer, I finally understood why Wikipedia works, and why the bad guy principle is so right.
"Anyone can edit," I proposed. "But what about vandals, idiots, and trolls?" came the question. "Let them edit, it's part of the process. The original authors get annoyed, fix the articles, and get emotionally attached to the whole thing. The more edit wars you have, the more people care, and the stronger the community".
So, lacking a clear external bad guy, those people who make your life miserable when you try to do something useful may, in fact, be exactly what you depend on to get out of bed in the morning. Here's a toast to the trolls!
Comments: 1, Rating: 1
Aliopacto
Written: 1216658015|%e %B %Y, %H:%M ()
I've been writing short stories over the years. They tend to disturb, that is the point.
I've now put them onto a new site, http://www.aliopacto.com. Alio pacto is Latin for "a different way", it was the title of a book I started some years ago. One of the stories on that site is from the book, the others are random things, the products of early mornings and days on trains.
Comments: 0, Rating: 1
Continuous Exposure
Written: 1216039737|%e %B %Y, %H:%M (gadgets shouldexist)
It struck me that the whole concept of digital camera, in imitating the old film cameras, has a fundamental inefficiency. There is, perhaps, a better way.
I've been taking photos. Nikon D40X with 18-135mm lens, a fast and efficient tool that produces the quality I was used to in the old days of B&W film SLRs.
But is the "shutter" the best way to take a picture?
Let me introduce the concept of "Continuous Exposure" or CE. A CE camera has no shutter, though it does have a button for taking pictures. CE needs decent but not perfect optics, it needs no optical zoom, can achieve film speeds of several million ISO, can achieve resolutions of many orders of magnitude better than the actual sensor. The one thing CE is not good at is capturing fast motion.
CE works as follows. The sensor is always active and captures an image continuously, sending it to an image buffer for processing. The image buffer has a very high resolution, as much as 250 megapixels. The sensor data is added, in real time, to the image buffer, using algorithms to detect movement and shake. The image buffer is constantly re-centred around the sensor data. As the image buffer aquires sensor data, it refines the detail of areas where there is more data, so that even in an image with very light and dark areas, both will aquire fine detail. As the sensor provides more and more data for an image, the image buffer gets more and more detail, achieving its full resolution after a fraction of a second or in some cases, a second or two. When the image buffer has fully resolved the image, a small 'Ready' indicator shows on the camera, and the user can take the image. A picture taken before the sensor is ready will show less detail in some areas, especially those moving more rapidly.
Why use CE? Mainly, it replaces expensive components with software and processing power. A much cheaper sensor, combined with a large image buffer and efficient processor can produce better photos than the best professional equipment. Optical zooming becomes less important, as sufficient detail can be aquired to make very smooth digital zooms. Low light hand-held photography becomes much easier. CE can be combined with video recording; lower-resolution video, and high quality selected images.
CE does not, of course, exist. The way to make it would be to prove the software algorithms capable of producing high quality images from video streams (which can act as a kind of CE sensor simulation). The algorithms, once designed, would need to be turned into silicon, since general purpose computers are not feasible in low power cameras.
