Month: February 2003

the attention economy

MTNI / Mass Transit Network International

The 6,390,376 patent relates to smart cards and presentation of information of interest to persons carrying smart cards. In transit, for instance, information of personal interest to a person in the transit station is displayed on a nearby MTNI public display device. The information to be displayed is based on pre-registered information about the person carrying the smart card.

This is interesting and ties into ubiquitous computing, and the idea that information displays can be aware of you and adjust their content to meet your needs, either by displaying information you need or even changing the language in which it’s displayed.

Of course, I can see some negatives: I don’t know that I would want a sign in the Metro to tell all other passers-by that French is not my first language. But it would be helpful to have the arrival time of the next train to your destination be added to the display as you approach.

Congrats to Frank on sticking with this.

which side are you on?

Lagniappe

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a fine article from Norman Borlaug, Nobel Prize winner for his “Green Revolution” work, and a good candidate for the person now alive who has done more to alleviate human suffering than any other. It’s called “Science Vs. Hysteria,” and it takes the European Union (and anti-biotech groups) out in the back yard and beats the dust out of them with a stick.

For the first time in 2 or 3 generations, people are interested in the food they eat — where it comes from, what’s in it, how it got to the market — and they don’t always like what they learn. The food industry has played fast and loose with nutritional information and the effects of chemical additives for too long.

Now the “better living through <fill in the scientific discipline here>” crowd is upset that we won’t just shut up and eat the stuff they’ve cooked up in their labs.

I agree with the premise that a economic and educational equality are worth striving for and that education can lower birthrates, a good thing in the developing world.

What those facts have to do with the handwaving about GM foods escapes me: that evidently makes me a Luddite and an enemy of the poor.

What the GM food industry is really after is a captive market for its products: seedsaving and time-honored thriftiness aren’t good for business, so GM seed crops have been engineered to require ongoing maintenance payments. No payments, no benefits and possibly disastrously low yields — lower than the pre-GMO yields.

I should re-read the Botany of Desire, since it addresses a lot of these issues: perhaps I should send a copy to this starry-eyed fellow.

another use for weblogs

Family Medicine Notes

On the Medscape Technology & Medicine Home Page, there’s a list of medical weblogs (scroll to the bottom of the page) .. hmm … are weblogs useful and/or interesting to physicians? Hard to know. I’ve been getting more (mostly positive)feedback about this weblog lately