• Queen’s School of Computing was visited by Eli Blevis in late October, an associate professor from the School of Informatics, Indiana University at Bloomington. Blevis is best known for his research in the field of sustainable interaction design, an area which draws from computing, cognitive science, and design criticism. I really enjoyed hearing about his research inspirations, as well as the multidisciplinary nature of his research. His talk raised some good questions as well: Are interaction designers to blame for the technological waste generated by our society? How can interaction design bridge technological divides in our world?
• The man behind the Copyright for Canadians campaign, Michael Geist, a law professor from the University of Ottawa, spoke last month of the ongoing copyright debacle in this country. He documents his own stance on this and other technology-related issues, as well as the may grassroots efforts in this country to ensure we don’t become a digital ghetto (a recent CBC Search Engine topic).
• Aging scientist Aubrey de Grey spoke at the first Changing the World conference in Toronto last month. He identifies several forms of cellular damage contributing to aging, and the prospect of repairing this damage as it occurs (as opposed to preventative or curative measures). With this approach, he hopes to be able to expend the human lifespan to an average of 150 years within 30 years time. Combining this estimate with the law of accelerating returns, he proposes an indefinite human lifespan will be attainable not much longer after that.
• Another Changing the World conference speaker which I enjoyed hearing from was Eric Chivian, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work on stopping nuclear war. Chivian’s current work involves environmental protection and the effect of biodiversity on human health. For instance, bears den for months but don’t develop osteoporosis or kidney problems. He also describes the medical applications of substances excreted by rare frogs. His talk was very enlightening, emphasizing the need to ensure the survival of such species are of great importance to our health.

So why do I hate on cell phones? I’m not a recluse nor a non-person for having this position, which is often the response I get from people when I inform them that I don’t have a cell (and that they would feel naked should they not have their phone on their person at all hours). And no, I’m not worried about poisoning myself with radiation or giving myself a brain tumor either.

While perusing University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist‘s blog today, I came across some interesting factoids that make my position somewhat more justifiable. In his recent article entitled “iPhone Arrival Places Spotlight on Canada’s Wireless Crisis“, Geist points out just how comparatively weak Canada’s mobile infrastructure is. It is an illuminating piece, so I thought I’d share some take-away points:

• Mobile data pricing in Canada is among the highest in the world, creating a significant barrier to the introduction of new mobile services and causing many consumers to carefully ration their mobile use for fear of being hit with a hefty bill at the end of the month;
• Canada ranked 75th [worldwide] in the number of mobile subscribers, trailing countries such as El Salvador, Kazahkstan, and Libya.  It also lagged behind countries such as the United Kingdom, Singapore, Italy, Sweden, and Norway on mobile pricing.
• Canadian data prices are far above the U.S. offer of unlimited data for US$20 per month;
• Last month, the World Economic Forum pointed to problems in the wireless market as a key reason for Canada’s slipping global ranking for “network readiness”;
• The year-long delay of the iPhone – Apple first launched the device last June in the United States followed by France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and Austria – provided tangible evidence that the Canadian market desperately needs an injection of competition (as the sole GSM provider, Rogers was the only carrier capable of supporting the iPhone)

Despite these grim stats, it seems that there may be some good news on the way: An upcoming spectrum auction in Canada may allow for more healthy competition in the Canadian market. Geist has some additional comments and recommendations in this regard for Industry Canada that are well worth reading.

So what am I waiting for? More choice among providers and cheaper data plans would certainly be a start. Until then I will happily rely on email, IM, and land-line phones as primary means of communication. It sure beats missing all that fine print and ending up with a surprise $1000 bill at the end of the month for not clearly understanding your data plan, especially when the cost of sending a simple SMS is about 4.4 times as expensive as sending the equivalent amount of data from the Hubble space telescope.

This is a video pertinent to the issue of Net Neutrality, which includes some well-explained words from World Wide Web inventors, as well as some archival footage relating to the history of mass media communications: a good introduction to the matter in case you are not following the stories.

Although the video pertains to the American telecom industry, the issue is nevertheless a hot topic in Canada as well. We need to ensure that Canadian members of parliament, notably Minister Jim Prentice of Industry Canada, are aware of the public’s opinion on the matter. The alternative, of course, is allowing Bell Canada, Rogers, and Cogeco to turn the Canadian Net into cable television, controlling all content and rendering the internet a one-way form of communication. 

“Little Brother’s my first young adult novel, a book about young people who use technology to fight for the restoration of the Bill of Rights to American politics, setting them square in the crosshairs of the war on terror.”

Apart from reading his daily contributions to Boing Boing, the first work I read by Doctorow was the novel Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town, a story of supernatural characters and free public-access wi-fi set in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Since then, I’ve been enjoying his podcast and short stories from Overclocked, as well as his latest mindbender, True Names, which pertains to rival post-singularity superintelligences competing in the race to convert all the matter in the universe to pure computronium. Aside from writing some wildly imaginative (and diverse) fiction, he is also occasionally featured on CBC’s Search Engine radio program, in which he discusses civil liberties in the digital universe.

Last night he was able to field some questions ranging from literary style to parenting to civil liberties and copyright reform (in fact, it was his coverage of the recent copyright reform debate in Canada that brought the issue to my attention). Afterwards I was able to meet him, whereupon I discovered he at one point was also a CogSci student such as myself! He then asked me a CogSci-related question in regards to whether his newborn daughter, who has just begun to giggle, is merely mimicking the laughing response of her parents, or if laughing is innate behaviour. My answer: as other primates are known to exhibit the laughing response, I imagine the laughing response is both instinctual AND learned, in that the behaviour is hard-wired, but an infant requires some contextual priming to learn how to evoke that proper response. Hopefully that suffices. I may have to check up on that idea and give an update.

The event was hosted by the Toronto chapter of the Fair Copyright for Canadians Facebook Group, and despite the location and weather, a good turnout of people from various backgrounds showed up to chat, voice their concerns, and in my case, learn more about the issues at hand. Pat (coastwise) and myself spoke with a few of the attendees to discuss why they cared about the potential copyright legislation that looms over our country. We met Ren Bucholz of the EFF, an organizer, who was very helpful in explaining more about the inner workings of the potential copyright bill, and the American DMCA. Other organizers included Jason Crocker and Mike Craigen, who are vocal about the implications the bill would have, among which could be a crackdown on their console hardware mod service. Pat has a great write-up of the event on his blog, as does Technology lawyer and blogger Rob Hyndman. Rob seemed very pleased about the turnout from younger people and their interest in the subject:

My main takeaway from the evening was much more than I’d expected – I met several young people who are deeply interested in this issue and startlingly well-informed. Honestly, if you’d told me 20 years ago that a day would come when copyright reform would figure prominently as a public policy issue for young Canadians I’d have scoffed. But here we are, and here they are, and they’re bright, focused, well-informed – and they care. I left the event with a spring in my step, convinced that tomorrow is going to be a better day.

Another conversation which was had involved the business model of corporations which deal with intellectual property and media, and how it should be marketed and sold. It is evident that whether we’re talking about the music industry or Hollywood, we’re talking about dinosaurs – their business model is embarrassingly outdated. Coincidentally, I read a passage from Kurzweil‘s The Singularity is Near the other day regarding intellectual property:

In music, for example, rather than provide leadership with new paradigms, the recording industry stuck rigidly (until just recently) with the idea of an expensive record album, a business model that has remained unchanged from the time my father was a young, struggling musician in the 1940s. The public will avoid wide-scale pirating of information services only if commercial prices are kept at what are perceived to be reasonable levels. The mobile-phone sector is a prime example of an industry that has fallen rapidly with improving technology. If the mobile phone industry had kept calling rates at the level where they weer when I was a child (a time when people dropped whatever they were doing at the rare times that someone called long distance), we would be seeing comparable pirating of cell-phone calls, which is technically no more difficult than pirating music. But cheating on cell-phone calls is widely regarded as criminal behavior, largely because of the general perception that cell-phone charges are appropriate.

It seems that services like eMusic and Amie Street are leading the way in this regards, and we’ll hope that the big guys follow suit, and ideally leave the clunky DRM and device-restrictions at the door. In terms of access to information, those of us in Canada still have to suffer from high prices for mobile internet access and texting services, and expensive internet access in general (for relatively slow internet connections – when you consider Japan or Scandinavia). I’d like to see these services improve – then maybe I’ll consider getting a mobile device.

In summary, it was great to hear the opinions of such a mix of people, and I’ll be looking forward to potential further meetings and conversations. Thanks to Fenwick of the Infoscape Research Lab for letting me know about the event!