My latest Guardian column is “Google admits that Plato’s cave doesn’t exist,” a discussion of how Google has changed the way it talks about its search-results, shifting from the stance that rankings are a form of pure math to the stance that rankings are a form of editorial judgment.

Google has, to date, always refused to frame itself in those terms. The pagerank algorithm isn’t like an editor arguing aesthetics around a boardroom table as the issue is put to bed. The pagerank algorithm is a window on the wall of Plato’s cave, whence the objective, empirical world of Relevance may be seen and retrieved.

That argument is a convenient one when the most contentious elements of your rankings are from people who want higher ranking. “We have done the maths, and your page is empirically less relevant than the pages above it. Your quarrel is with the cold, hard reality of numbers, not with our judgement.”

The problem with that argument is that maths is inherently more regulatable than speech. If the numbers say that item X must be ranked over item Y, a regulator may decide that a social problem can be solved by “hard-coding” page Y to have a higher ranking than X, regardless of its relevance. This isn’t censorship – it’s more like progressive taxation.

Google admits that Plato’s cave doesn’t exist

The IEEE’s Computer and Reliability Societies recently published “Embracing the Kobayashi Maru,” by James Caroland (US Navy/US Cybercommand) and Greg Conti (West Point) describing an exercise in which they assigned students to cheat on an exam — either jointly or individually. The goal was to get students thinking about how to secure systems from adversaries who are willing to “cheat” to win. The article describes how the students all completed the exam (they all cheated successfully), which required them to provide the first 100 digits of pi, with only 24h to prepare. The students used many ingenious techniques as cribs, but my heart was warmed to learn that once student printed a false back-cover for my novel Little Brother with pi 1-100 on it (Little Brother is one of the course readings, so many copies of it were already lying around the classroom).

James and Greg have supplied a link to a pre-pub of the paper (the original is paywalled), and sent along a video of a presentation they gave at Shmoocon where they presented the work. The students’ solutions are incredibly ingenious — the audience is practically howling with laughter by the end of the presentation.

(Thanks, Ben!)

Last Friday, June 8, I was immensely, fantastically thrilled to receive an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University, an institution I have long held in high esteem and where it has been my privilege to serve as a visiting senior lecturer. The degree was conferred in a fabulous ceremony at the Milton Keynes Theatre, just one of the OU’s many graduation ceremonies for the year (the OU specialises in adult and continuing education and is a tremendously democratising force in UK education, and so awards huge numbers of non-honorary degrees every year). As I sat at the front of the stage with my OU colleagues, I had a great seat from which to observe the year’s grads, and to marvel at their diversity in age and background, and to delight in the cheers from the guests they’d brought with them to the event.

My own parents came from Toronto for the occasion, and I was also joined by my wife and daughter. Later in the day, we threw a party with many friends from around the world at Bletchley Park, a nearby historic site famous for being one of the birthplaces of modern computers and cryptography (Bletchley turns out to be a brilliant place to throw a party — take note if you’re thinking of having an event somewhere in the region).

I just wanted to put up a short post here to publicly thank the OU, especially my computer science colleagues Marian Petre, Blaine Price, Ray Corrigan, and Mike Richards, for this honour; and to thank again all the friends, colleagues, and family who made the day so special.

Ray Corrigan has posted Prof Marian Petre‘s introduction from the day, which sets out the case the degree. I was given a few moments to speak about what I think my work means; I’ve pasted that in below the jump.

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I wrote a piece for MIT’s Technology Review on the way that Internet privacy works, and the deficiency of our tools — browsers, phones — in protecting it:

Even if you read the fine print, human beings are awful at pricing out the net present value of a decision whose consequences are far in the future. No one would take up smoking if the tumors sprouted with the first puff. Most privacy disclosures don’t put us in immediate physical or emotional distress either. But given a large population making a large number of disclosures, harm is inevitable. We’ve all heard the stories about people who’ve been fired because they set the wrong privacy flag on that post where they blew off on-the-job steam.

The risks increase as we disclose more, something that the design of our social media conditions us to do. When you start out your life in a new social network, you are rewarded with social reinforcement as your old friends pop up and congratulate you on arriving at the party. Subsequent disclosures generate further rewards, but not always. Some disclosures seem like bombshells to you (“I’m getting a divorce”) but produce only virtual cricket chirps from your social network. And yet seemingly insignificant communications (“Does my butt look big in these jeans?”) can produce a torrent of responses. Behavioral scientists have a name for this dynamic: “intermittent reinforcement.” It’s one of the most powerful behavioral training techniques we know about. Give a lab rat a lever that produces a food pellet on demand and he’ll only press it when he’s hungry. Give him a lever that produces food pellets at random intervals, and he’ll keep pressing it forever.

The Curious Case of Internet Privacy

Tracey Hughes assigned Little Brother to her grade 10 students in Peterborough, Ontario (Canada), and developed some course materials that she’s generously agreed to share with other teachers to remix, adapt, and reuse. She writes:

The intent of sharing my teacher resources for Little Brother stems from my pleasure and success teaching the text with grade 10 English students. Having had such meaningful and engaged discussions with my class has lead to valuable learning experiences for them and lead to valuable teaching experiences for me. Doctorow’s novel has reminded me of the power of youth, the strength of a single voice, and the dangers of power, both universal and personal. It is my hope that these resources will serve as a stepping-off point for you as an educator – obviously posting the “tests” means you’ll need to alter some of the content. Take this work and make it yours! Mash it up, pass it on, share it around, and hey, send me your work. The open network of material sharing that happens on the net (and in the novel) is a reminder to all educators that we so often teach in a bubble where resources and ideas are locked in our classrooms.

1. Tests (1st and 2nd half of LB):
I have designed these tests to cover general content (short answer), thinking components (short paragraphs to demonstrate understanding of character and plot), and application (paragraph-answer questions focusing on themes and concepts found in the novel with extensions to the world of the student). These could be done as group assignments, individual writing tasks, in-class oral work (open book or not) and discussion activities instead of as standard tests.

2. Chapter Questions:
The questions are intended to allow students to engage with the material in the novel. They explore more than just content and ask students to make assumptions, to extrapolate, to make connections to their own world, to do a little research for cultural context references, and to question the author’s intent in specific artistic choices in his writing. They will allow for deep discussion and do not focus solely on general comprehension.

3. Essay Assignment:
I have designed the essay assignment to cover two levels of classes (Applied and Academic) with a focus on understanding themes of power, morality, freedom, truth, and security. Students are asked to move through a number of pre-planning steps and to identify significant quotations from the novel to support their argument. The assignment culminates in a full essay, but can easily be adapted to any form of short writing, arts-extension, group presentation, or individual study activity.