Here’s an interesting tale up on a British news site. In short, an author discovered that a couple books she had co-authored years ago had been directly plagiarized and republished under different titles. The theft was caught and the royalties that had been generated from Amazon sales were routed to the correct authors. All’s well that ends well.

The thief however was never really caught. He or she published under what was likely a pseudonym and no flesh and blood person can be connected to the name.

In a way, the scheme is rather obvious. There are millions of under-the-radar books out there—books that have been forgotten or never had much of a fan base. Why not publish them under a new title and try and reap the benefits? (Well, if you ignore the ethical reasons.)

I wonder if down the line it will be easy enough to get software to do all the dirty work. You design a piece of software to create thousands of fake accounts and then upload pilfered books to the Amazon store using these accounts? Maybe you don’t make much but something is more than nothing.

Everyone acknowledges that the internet has radically changed things, even if we’re not quite aware of what those changes mean. I often state that the ease of access to information (and misinformation) that the web provides has big ramifications. For instance, I think the very notion of education and various credentials is weakening when so much information is online. It isn’t a matter of knowing something, but knowing where to find information.

The Wall Street Journal has an op-ed on the declining role of librarians as research helpers. It used to be you went to the librarian to have them look up obscure facts found only in arcane reference books found on dusty shelves; now you google it. As a result..

The mood among some librarians is pessimistic. A New Mexico librarian recently told me: “I spend most of my time making change and showing people how to print from the computer or use the copier. I sure don’t get the reference questions like I used to.”

Later the article makes an interesting point.

One bright spot: Some public libraries have created jobs for “technology assistants,” positions filled by tech-savvy young people with community-college degrees and plans for information-technology careers. Libraries can easily justify this new position: Techies are paid less than librarians or library associates and they offer skills the public increasingly needs. The public library of the future might be a computer center, staffed by IT professionals and few books or librarians.

Perhaps the Library will morph into a kind of IT Support center for the common man. Concerned about whether to upgrade this or that software? Wondering if someone stole your online identity? Go to the library.

There’s a recent Economist article on the advent of CRISPR technology which is a gene editing tool that could be used (at some indeterminate point in the future) to allow parents to design their offspring. Don’t want your kid to have your bad breath? Edit it out with CRISPR. Wan’t your kid to excel at music in a way you never did? Bring on the CRISPR.

The catch is that a lot of attributes interact in ways we don’t understand. It’s possible that making someone too intellectual limits their emotional life or that making someone too empathetic could paralyze them with anxiety*. The article points out an interesting fear, that parents intent on improving their kids could actually damage them.

* These are examples I just made up; I have no idea if they are real.

If CRISPR can be shown to be safe in humans, mechanisms will also be needed to grapple with consent and equality. Gene editing raises the spectre of parents making choices that are not obviously in the best interests of their children. Deaf parents may prefer their offspring to be deaf too, say; pushy parents might want to boost their children’s intelligence at all costs, even if doing so affects their personalities in other ways.

And let’s not forget the elephant in the room.

…if it becomes possible to tweak genes to make children smarter, should that option really be limited to the rich?

One topic I tackle occasionally is the idea of artificial intelligence programs writing content. They are already writing non-fiction news stories, but the big event will come when (not if) AI writes fiction stories. As reported here, a computer science institute is offering a prize for algorithms (the guts of AI) that can generate short stories.

The article’s author touches on something I’ve mentioned in the past: the idea that AI won’t exclusively write the stories, but rather partner with human authors. Imagine a program that spits out a basic story outline which is then massaged by a human author. I expect we’ll see this sort of thing as well as comparable efforts in the realm of music and perhaps some visual arts.

I should note, I’m not exactly happy with this state of affairs, but I have some wearied acceptance and could see myself playing with this kind of technology.

There seems to be a number of articles and op-eds coming out, like this one, implying that working for the internet company Amazon.com is a miserable experience. It entails long hours, ego-shattering criticism and the like. Employees are, according to a few pieces I’ve read, often seen crying at their desks.

I have a hard time getting too concerned. Generally I think that if you don’t like where you work, then quit.

Having said that, I’m rather bemused at some of the defenses of Amazon. They argue that the hyper-competive employee environment is necessary to for Amazon to do great things. As one high ranking employee quoted in the piece linked above says, “We’ve got our hands full reinventing the world.”

I’m sorry, what? How the fuck has Amazon reinvented the world? Because we can now order lots of shit from what is essentially a digital sales catalog? Cool, but not mind blowing. Books are now available on a mini computer (the Kindle?) This might qualify as “neato.” The company may soon be be delivering packages via drones which is interesting but will probably quickly become commonplace. But none of this stuff is really awesome. Curing cancer, that would be awesome. Determining whether string theory is correct, that would be awesome. Figuring out how to maximize everyone’s satisfaction would be awesome.

Delivering Kindles via drones… not so much.