D. Murali

Chennai: Real identities with unsheddable tokens, rather than the disposable pseudonyms, may become the norm as endpoint machines increasingly deploy biometric readers, foresees Jonathan Zittrain in ‘The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It’ (www.landmarkonthenet.com).

He speaks of how eBay can certainly profit by making it harder for people to shift among various ghost accounts. And of how Wikipedia could establish ‘a fast track for contributions if they are done with biometric assurance, just as South Korean citizen journalist newspaper OhmyNews keeps citizen identity numbers on file for the articles it publishes.’

“When we participate in other walks of life – school, work, PTA meetings, and so on – we do so as ourselves, not wearing Groucho moustaches, and even if people do not know exactly who we are, they can recognise us from one meeting to the next. The same should be possible for our online selves,” argues Zittrain.

He then introduces the need for ‘reputation bankruptcy’ on the lines of financial bankruptcy, to allow people a fresh start. “We ought to consider how to implement the idea of a second or third chance into our digital spaces.”

Zittrain makes a case for people to be able to express a choice to deemphasise if not entirely delete older information that has been generated about them – be it about political preferences, activities, youthful likes and dislikes. If every action ends up on one’s permanent record, ‘the press conference effect’ can set in, he cautions.

Reputation bankruptcy has the potential, says the author, to facilitate desirably experimental social behaviour and break up the monotony of static communities online and offline. “As a safety valve against excess experimentation, perhaps the information in one’s record could not be deleted selectively; if someone wants to declare reputation bankruptcy, we might want it to mean throwing out the good along with the bad.”

The key, says Zittrain, is to realise that we can make design choices now that work to capture the nuances of human relations far better than our current systems. He is hopeful that online intermediaries might well embrace such new designs even in the absence of a legal mandate to do so.

Engaging elaboration of an earlier research paper by the author.

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Computing for life

EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), the first practical stored-program electronic computer, inspired by John von Neumann’s seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England, informs Wikipedia. “EDSAC ran its first programs on May 6, 1949, calculating a table of squares and a list of prime numbers.” In 1950, the computer came into regular use as a service to the University members.

It had very limited memory, so it could not store all the terms at once; it had to do the calculation in stages. Yet, a scientist who was then trying to decode life was enthusiastic about EDSAC, as one learns from ‘Max Perutz and the Secret of Life’ by Georgina Ferry (www.rbooks.co.uk).

Studying the haemoglobin structure, Max had battled with X-ray diffraction pictures of crystals – each needed a two-hour exposure – and he was hoping to see a pattern from the mass of images. “The goal of X-ray crystallography is to construct a three-dimensional model of a molecule, showing exactly how each atom relates to its neighbours in space, based on the position and brightness of the spots in an X-ray diffraction photograph,” explains Ferry.

A Fourier synthesis of the reflections from a layer in a crystal generates a contour map that shows the disposition of the atoms in that layer, she continues. “Because most of the volume of an atom consists of a cloud of electrons orbiting its nucleus, this contour map is known as an ‘electron density map’; the electron density increases as you get closer to an atomic position.”

The calculation involved in completing a Fourier synthesis consists of long runs of addition sums: with large molecules such as proteins, even with a mechanical calculator, as was available in the 1940s, it was tedious beyond belief, describes Ferry. “It would take the invention of electronic computers to make such calculations a realistic possibility.”

The biography of Max, the man who went on to win the 1962 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, traces how in 1957 EDSAC ran the 70-minute program that for the first time revealed the three-dimensional structure of a protein molecule. Writes Ferry, “The result was a complete surprise…”

For the science-avid.

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The cell multiplier

How much does the adding of one cell phone mean to a developing country’s GDP? The answer, in the case of Bangladesh, is $6,000, according to Nick Sullivan, cited in ‘The New Asian Hemisphere’ by Kishore Mahbubani (www.publicaffairsbooks.com). “In addition to becoming a talking device, the cell phone has fast-forwarded to acting as a mini-PC, which is used for mobile banking. People who did not have bank accounts two years ago are now transferring money via mobile phones.” To Sullivan, the mobile revolution is a silent one, as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution. “You can see the lines crossing between foreign direct investment going up and foreign aid going down. We’re at an extraordinary tipping point actually.”

Mahbubani makes a mention of a 2005 study by Leonard Waverman, of the London Business School. The finding was that an extra ten mobile phones per hundred people in a typical developing country leads to an additional 0.59 percentage point of growth in GDP per person.

“Connectivity is productivity. If you connect people, they are more productive. You can see throughout the developing world that the people are not dependent on aid, their governments are,” reads an insightful quote of Iqbal Quadir, cofounder of GrameenPhone.

“What we have done with aid is empowered the governments in poor countries, put them on their high horses so they don’t have to be concerned with their citizens, because they don’t rely on them for funding. The Bangladeshi economy has gone up because of mobile phones by 2 per cent. That surpasses he money given to Bangladesh through aid.”

Reassuring messages.

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Tailpiece

“The recent fuel crisis gave us the opportunity to come up with a new tool to control attrition…”

“A hike in petrol allowance?”

“We opened a petrol bunk inside our premises!”

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