Links

1. Economic Logician: Top Economics graduate programs are not as good as you think.

2. Felix Salmon: Jeff Bezos and His Journalists.

3. Paul Krugman: The Good Web. "When it comes to useful economic analysis, these are the good old days."

4. Ben Zimmer at Language Log: Frances Brooke, destroyer of English (not literally)

5. xkcd cartoon on Increased Risk.

IITM on Twitter and Facebook

Here is what you Nerds of the Internet-public have been waiting for.

From today, IIT Madras officially is on Twitter and Facebook.

You already know it is on Google+, right? Right?

Follow and enjoy.

Do it Write

Today morning -- a weekend day -- I open my email and read this. Flowstate -- a paid app for the iPad to make you write without distractions.

The app launches with a full-screen editor and a countdown timer. You select the amount of time you want to write and start typing away. Sounds like a pleasant experience until you stop writing to look at your tweets and gasp in horror as your wonderful prose is deleted by the app.

First you buy an iPad or one such tablet with a screen full of iconized distractions -- distractions for writing at least. Then you go about finding apps to close off all such distractions in order to write in it. Why buy a tablet for your writing needs? How we go about inventing ways to complicate our lives; and try to simplify them back through more complications.

Another gentleman wrote a book on such distractions. The Shallows. And blamed our 'pronounced jumpy nature in these browsing times' on our online activities as it 'rewires our brains'. Let online activities 'rewire the brains'. But if it is distracting, why not simply pull the plug instead of over-analyzing such distractions. And get on with what you love to do -- writing, in this case (for my kid, it is reading; she doesn't come near the computer; period).

Is it that we don't want to agree on our lack of self-control so invent ways to shift the blame on the distractions -- online activities. I am reminded of the 'time management' books. Book length schemes and suggestions to manage your -- *your* -- time. When in principle all one needs to manage time is to wake up early; early enough; daily.

When we are passionate about and love to do an activity, we find ways to do it amidst all such 'distractions'. A Neal Stephenson -- one of the tech-savvy fiction writers I have read -- had written one of his (actually a three volume set) thousand and odd pages books with his bare hands -- ink on paper. All in our internet times, as tablets and distractions rewire our grey cells. A proof (from here) that he loves what he does? Coming to think of it, you don't see him on the internet more. Doesn't blog; tweets occasionally; and doesn't blame the internet or 'distractions'. But writes thousand-page delectable fiction as staple.

Years back there was a movie called The Piano; after watching it I wondered how such a simple feeling called Love can be transmogrified by the human mind to such complicated feelings and actions.

When internet laws strike: One more post you cannot see

This one is due to a DMCA complaint that I was illegally using content for which I don't have copyright. I haven't seen the complaint, and the site where I was supposed to find it doesn't have it -- at least not yet. All I can say here is that the post has no copyright violation whatsoever -- it had a bunch of links to stories and blog posts about Anil Potti, the science fraudster with money to spend on internet consultants. Blogger has put my post on hold (technically, it has made it a "draft" which I can choose to post, presumably after resolving this problem with them), but I'm sure you will be able to find it in some archive ...

Once again, I am in illustrious company: a bunch of Anil Potti-related posts at Retraction Watch are also down.

The folks at Retraction Watch have filed a counter, and may be able to get their posts back up again.

As I said, I am not able to see the complaint against my post. And, frankly, all the legalese in the e-mail from The Blogger Team has spooked me! I guess I will just wait until the Retraction Watch posts are back up before filing my counter-claim.

Spooky stuff to freak you out

Here's "Tracking the Trackers", a talk by Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs [thanks to Dr. R.V. Krishnan for the e-mail alert]:

The Shallows

Nicholas Carr, Knight Crusader for Online Undistractions, expanded the theme of his Is Google making Us Stupid article into a Pulitzer (non-fiction category) finalist book, The Shallows. After reading six chapters in the e-version, I bought the hard-bound print version of Shallows and completed reading it a while back. The switch to the 'conventional' version is for a reason that Shallows wouldn't anticipate, but was discussed upfront in the more pragmatic (perhaps, as it was written after Shallows,) The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (shall write on this separately). I switched not because of any inherent e-version distraction but because of lack of copious links -- yes, that distracting and abhorrent method to wormhole from one region to another in e-text country -- to flip back and forth, guided by my memory, even as I am absorbed in the e-book. It is an inherent design problem with the e-book device, mentioned in The Pleasures..., yet to be satisfactorily addressed.

Short review (of Shallows): Our increased online activities cultivate an increased level of distraction in us than the internet-noisome-free English lit of yore. Is(n't) Google making us stupid? Perhaps yes, according to Shallows, after chapters of eloquent analysis with a detectable tinge of panic. Analysis that is mostly valid for a library or a dictionary or even a shopping mall. All are sources of such 'distractions' that rewire our brain to make us want something else on the rack than what we hold in our hand. Each of the chapters in The Shallows definitely provides in lucid text, well researched information on the evolution of reading in humans, culminating into an argument for 'unplugging' our reading. Ironically, by then, the argument for 'absorbed reading' is blunted by the prose. So, Is Google making us stupid? But do we need Google to make us so? For instance, if we find online activities distracting and hurting an endearing task we were sure we like to do now -- like writing a book named Shallows -- why not reduce online activities or pull out the internet cable? I am checking this one for the past few months with my online writing -- to minimize my "internet distraction" in order to write a book. It seems possible and not as painful as Nick Carr panics in his book. If we are incapable of discerning, deciding and acting on our priorities, do we need a Google to pronounce us stupid?

Long review: If you have read the above 'link-free' paragraph in one go on your screen, you are perhaps too much into IntraWeb you would already have stopped reading books. Or perhaps you are totally 'unplugged' to retain your ability to grasp my sententious paragraphs above, albeit online. In either case, you don't need The Shallows, leave alone my long review of it to help you decide on its reading. Evgeny Morosov in a best-of-2011-put-down suggested, "This is a book that should have stayed a tweet," about a Jeff Jarvis book. I won't dare to suggest such a verdict for The Shallows with its well researched content. But when viewed as a long argument for a 'patented, off-line un-distracted, concentrated reading', I certainly felt The Shallows could have remained Is Google Making Us Stupid.