Who Really Owns Your Phone?

I was working on some text about interoperability on the web, and found myself getting up in arms about how far we've strayed from the initial ideals of the internet.  The web was founded on principles of open, democratic access.  Any computer could put up a website; given an internet service provider, any user could connect to it.

There has been a trend towards closed platforms controlled by a single company, the most popular being Apple's App Store.  These walled gardens offer many benefits -- users can (usually) trust the applications they install, there's one place to go to look for apps, and developers have a centralized place to focus on promotion.  Overall app stores greatly simplify the mobile app experience.

But of course, they have their downsides.  Namely, they are sucking away our freedom and rights to run whatever code we want on our devices.  Developers are subject to arbitrary rejections -- Omar said that a friend's app was recently rejected for being too "avant garde", whatever that means -- which keeps them out of the primary distribution channel, and not available to users at all.

So, just avoid the app store, right?  Not so easy.  The debate over HTML5 websites vs. native apps on mobile is an excellent example of this. HTML5 offers platform independence, ease of updating code, and freedom from app store censorship. Native means the app will be faster, work offline, and have more access to phone hardware.  Which app is going to be more pleasant for the user?

What really frightens me, and makes me feel incredibly hypocritical for writing this on a MacBook Air, is the thought that Apple might make this the dominant model for desktop apps, too.  They are already sort of trying with the App Store on OSX.  I definitely don't want an Apple approval process coming between my laptop and what code I can run.  To be fair, it's a bit worrisome that Google is trying to move to a world where I don't have any access to my hardware except through a (Google-controlled) web browser.

Downloading, compiling, and running arbitrary code is not just for hackers.  The ability to do this is vital for encouraging competition and giving users choice.

Similarly on the web, there's a movement to closed sites that hold our data hostage.  And even though they might offer ways to download our data in a lump, they don't offer easy connections to share and move data between services.  The worst is when they arbitrarily decide to treat services differently and promote or debilitate one over another; see the Instagram/Twitter fiasco.  More and more user creation is moving behind these walls, making it inaccessible to third party applications.  This stifles innovation -- we have to wait for a single company to decide to build and push out features, instead of farming out this work to the wide world of developers, and seeing what sticks.

Unfortunately I don't have any answers, just questions:

What kind of technology can we build that encourages and promotes interoperability in this new world? 

How do we solve the issues of safety and curation if we don't use app store walled gardens?  

What kind of understanding do users have about their choices, and how do we encourage them to make ones that are in their best long term interests?

actually not so transient

I was going back and looking at old posts, because I vaguely remember writing something mean about something that might come back to haunt me today and I was trying to find it to belatedly hide it.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at what I used to write.  Sure, the pictures are all broken and I was clearly very wrong about some things, but I am not totally embarrassed about what I wrote in 2007.  Some of it wasn't so bad.

At times I used this thing like Instagram, but well, now there's Instagram, so I probably won't do that anymore.  I can't believe I started writing here in 2006, over six years ago!  Little did I know visiting MIT in March 2007 that I'd be spending the next five years here (p.s. I just did a linking thing that I hate, using each word for an example of the phrase, but look at little 2007 neha visiting MIT!).  Actually at that point in time I was fairly sure I'd be back in SF real fast.

It's funny, I'm having some of the same dilemmas today that I had five years ago, like the question of where I want to live the rest of my life.  I lived in New York for a few months AGAIN and wasn't totally taken with it... I might just have to give up on having a life there.

Also, I think I was like half libertarian back then.  Defending chain stores?  Yikes.

Most of my sharing has spread to other services, but a lot of it just doesn't happen anymore (unless you happen to find me when I'm particularly up in arms about some issue [sorry Brian]).  No place has taken over as the comfortable place to rant.  I would like to start writing essays on contained topics.  Fear of being wrong or regretting what I write has kept me from doing it for years -- but looking back on this blog makes me feel a little bit better.  I was particularly moved by my friend's article on doing academic inquiry in public (spell check is telling me enquiry is wrong even though being an enquirer is a thing?  WTH english language).  Not writing means you aren't part of the conversation.

I'm still working out where I will write research stuff and where I will write personal stuff, but for now, I will just put everything here.  One of my New Years resolutions is to write a couple of sentences about every article I read, so I started a little tumblr here:  Neha's Grumbles.  It was initially called "Neha's Tidbits" or something but then I realized everything was negative so beware.  Anyway it's amazing how much less crap you read when you are forcing yourself to write about it.

Oh and re: TV go watch Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Homeland.  I also really like Nashville but that might just be because I'm starting to enjoy (tolerate?) country music.  Damn you Taylor Swift.

Records

I got a turntable for Christmas!  I don't know much about vinyl but I'm excited to explore.  So far I've just been buying used records from record stores and craigslist.  I have to admit, I don't completely understand the appeal -- I know a lot of music snobs will say that it sounds better, but I find that hard to believe given the quality of my DAC and lossless digital files.  Is it just nostalgia?  Novelty?  Mastering?  Maybe the art and concreteness of being able to hold your music.

Any advice on where to buy records and what to get would be greatly appreciated!  I think it would be fun to build out a jazz collection on vinyl.

2012 Predictions

Cause, why not?

Here are some ruminations on what might happen this year.

Silicon Valley continues to be surprised the other half of the population exists.

More and more "surprising" success stories (like that of Pinterest or Fab.com) will surface.  There's so much room for growth in areas involving fashion and lifestyle design.  The shopping process for clothes, makeup, personal care products, shoes, jewelry, and home decor is still so flawed.  People who are interested in those areas currently don't have the buying experience that someone who wants, say, a camera would have, and the thought process of the consumer when purchasing those items is usually more irrational -- a random post on a small blog or a picture in a magazine can lead to desire and products selling out.

The explosion of curation and information management applications.

Things are getting crazy.  It's too easy to constantly spend time dipping into the firehose of information coming from friends, email, facebook, blogs, twitter, and other sources online.  We're already seeing the growing popularity of private information management tools like Evernote and Instapaper, and what will come next are even more sophisticated tools to enable a user to quickly skim through a deluge of information, saving the bits and pieces that seem relevant, and then providing contextual results on whatever device when it's relevant.

And editors and curators will become even more important.  We'll start to place a growing proportion of trust in the most popular voices, simply because there's too much to deal with and we need help filtering.

Local businesses will wise up.

Local businesses will start spending smarter to advertise online.  The good businesses will only offer deals when it makes sense to them -- during down times or to get rid of surplus inventory.  Only low quality businesses that have trouble getting customers will continue to offer blanket deals like we see now.  We will also see a lot more dynamic pricing.

Several major security breaches.

In terms of security, things are going to get worse before they get better.  Web application security is still full of holes.  I predict more major companies will experience data loss, and more rogue groups will cause trouble -- and I don't just mean groups like Anonymous defacing company websites, I mean malicious hackers (who might be nationally supported) disrupting food supply chains, utilities, or other major services that aren't properly protected.  

Fall!

It's a new school year!  Remember the first day of school?  Nothing beats that feeling of new notebooks and overwhelmed freshmen.  It's times like this that I love the east coast, and Cambridge in particular.  This is the center of the world for education and you can feel everyone getting ready for the new semester.  In the past I've limited the amount of non-research things I did, but I decided this semester I would take classes in anything I found interesting, regardless of how it connects to my work.  So far I've tried out six classes (about five too many):

6.893, Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science, taught by Scott Aaronson.  I am *really* excited about this class!  I tried taking philosophy classes in undergrad and got really turned off, but I like the idea of approaching it from TCS.  In theory we rarely get to ask what this stuff really *means* and what its implications are to what can be done or known in the world, and I like the idea of indulging in that.  It's 3 hours a week of interesting reading and discussion, and it looks like Scott is going to record lectures, so you can listen in!

9.29, Introduction to Computational Neuroscience and 6.804 Computational Cognitive Science, taught by Michale Fee and Josh Tenenbaum, respectively.  People who study brains and AI here at MIT are starting to ask the big questions again -- there's a new Intelligence Initiative, bringing together people from neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, economics, and biology to get at how intelligence works.  So interesting!  My background in physics and statistics is pretty terrible, so I don't think I'm going to take these classes for credit, though it's nice to learn a new vocabulary and see how other fields operate.

9.S915, What is Intelligence?  Are you seeing a theme here?  This course meets once a week and does a huge survey over all the areas mentioned above -- I'm skeptical about how valuable it will be, in the first class we spent two hours going over statistical learning theory really, really fast.  I still have no idea how to make a good learning algorithm.

6.853, Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory, taught by Costis.  I miss math soooo much, and I find game theory pretty fascinating -- in fact I wrote my NSF planned research essay on game theory, but then proceeded to do something completely different.  I'd like to think about applying game theory to security! There's a pretty cool systems security class being taught this semester too, but I think I might have picked up a lot of what's being taught in my past research.

After a long summer of trying to do one thing and not being very effective, I'm really excited to take classes, go to colloquia, and in general try lots of new things this semester.  It's funny how trying to force one project can be demotivating, devolving into a cycle of trying to work harder/getting less done.  One of my goals this year is to learn to work in a very minimal, effective way.  Last summer I remember being so sad when the days started getting colder, but this year I can't wait for fall.  It's seriously the best season ever (and we need something to brag about weather-wise on the east coast):

• trees exploding in color and crunchy leaves everywhere
• apple picking, apple pies, apple cider, and cinnamon in everything
• cozy sweaters and corduroy
• crisp mornings where you can see the steam on your coffee
• scarves
• the feeling of starting over you get with the new school year

It's funny, I'm actually starting to feel like I'm in the right place.  I've spent three years here unclear on what I was doing and worrying that I was missing the boat on other things -- being able to program and create products is a huge privilege and I worried I was wasting it.  I believe technology (in particular software and the internet) is the fastest, most powerful source of transformation we can harness, but the thought of spending my time on a local-mobile-game-coupon thing never seemed inspiring.  

So far I feel good about what I'm doing this semester.  It feels nice.

Edit:

• cider doughnuts
• boots
• new coats
• PUMPKINS (in all forms: pumpkin beer, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin chai)