[[ZEITGEIST]]

IPOD RANDOMNESS

The Guardian recently published an article by Steven Levy about the non randomness of the ipod shuffle function. This article concludes that,

1. true randomness is hard to achieve and
2. humans perceive patterns where there are none.

I wonder if a paradoxical interpretation of these facts may better explain what is happening. That is to say

1. randomness is difficult to achieve because the universe is not random and
2. as part of the universe, human beings are attuned to these patterns. This is in fact why there is such a thing as meaningful coincidence. Wasn't this what Jung was talking about when he advanced the concept of synchronicity?

Like levy and everyone else apparently, my ipod tends to favour certain songs over others. The trick is to delete those songs when they get too boring and thus disrupt the pattern of meaningful coincidence. This got me wondering if the ipod analogy could be extended to apply to life. In life, certain pattern clusters predominate, for example a person might have a run of good or bad luck. The wisdom of ipod suggests to me that, if it is the latter, a person should deliberately mess with the patterns of their lives (i.e. change their habits) and this would produce a different pattern configuration. Changing a habit would be the life-equivalent of deleting the oft recurring tune on the ipod. Thus, a whole self help philosophy emerges from the latest must-have consumer durable.

Here is an edit of the Levy article.

____________________

My first iPod loved Steely Dan. So do I. But not as much as my iPod did. By 2003, among the 3,000 or so songs in my iTunes library, I had about 50 Steely Dan tracks. Yet every time I shuffled my music collection "randomly" to mix the tunes, it seemed that the Dan was weirdly over-represented. Meanwhile, it began to dawn on me that there were songs, and even artists, that my iPod had taken a dislike to, if not a formal boycott. Where was Van Morrison? His work was in abundance in my iTunes library, but in my iPod's marathon rock fest, the Belfast Cowboy was perpetually waiting in the wings.

I made it a point to ask iPod owners if their beloved little units were judicious in distributing the songs among various artists or whether they played favourites. People would generally respond with a sigh of relief. Yes! Someone else has noticed! From the results of this admittedly nonscientific survey, it appeared that nearly everybody's iPod seemed to have a favourite artist, or two, or three. After I wrote about [this] in Newsweek, my inbox was flooded with emails - iPod owners were taking serious note of what happens in shuffle, and virtually all of them seemed to think that something funny was happening.

Apple insists that there is no computational flaw in its execution. "It is completely random. It is absolutely, unequivocally random," says Jeff Robbin, one of the original authors of iTunes and later head of the iTunes development team.

Robbin is talking randomness in terms that software can reasonably produce, which is not perfect randomness. Let's look at the way shuffle works. First of all, note what it doesn't do - it's not like mixing all the songs in the equivalent of a big bucket of lottery balls and picking out the next one. Instead…it shuffles the entire library so as to reorder them, just as a blackjack dealer shuffles a deck of cards. If you listen to the entire library all through, you will hear every song once and once only.

True randomness, it turns out, is very difficult to produce. This subject was most famously examined by Claude Shannon, arguably the Father of Randomness. Basically, he defined randomness as a question of unpredictability. If a series of numbers is truly random, you have no possible way of guessing what comes next. If something isn't random (as in the case of what letter might follow another in a message written in English), you have a better chance of figuring out what comes next. That's why it's so crucial to remove the natural redundancy of language from an encoded message and make the coded text look random.

But perfect randomness is an elusive ideal. For instance, if you're flipping a coin, a minuscule weight imbalance might, over the course of millions of tosses, make heads come up slightly more than tails. And if you're randomising on a computer, you have to introduce a "seed", which is a starting point for the algorithm that mixes up the selections. The seed must draw on some unpredictable input of time that begins outside the computer. Otherwise, the results would be the same over and over again.

Paul Kocher, CEO of Cryptography Research concludes that Apple's claims of a high degree of randomness are almost certainly valid. Another expert I consulted, John Allen Paulos, a Temple University mathematician, agreed. He wasn't surprised, though, that iPod users were questioning whether the shuffle was random. "We often interpret and impose patterns on events that are random," he says. "Especially with something like songs. Songs evoke emotion, and some stick in our minds more than others."

Steven D Levitt, the self-described "rogue economist" who co-wrote the bestselling Freakonomics, also fell into the trap. Writing on his blog, he professed constant surprise at how often his iPod shuffle "plays two, three or even four songs by the same artist, even though I have songs by dozens of different artists on it". But as a statistics maven, Levitt understood that the bottom line is that "the human mind does badly with randomness".

Indeed, says Kocher, "Our brains aren't wired to understand randomness - there's even a huge industry that takes advantage of people's inability to deal with random distributions. It's called gambling."

So why does Autofill produce nine Springsteen songs out of 188? Because that is what almost always happens in normal distributions of items from databases. Clusters of something are to be expected. Here's a classic maths trick: gather 40 people in a room and have everyone write down the day he or she was born. What are the odds that two people will have the same birthday? Nearly 100%. It sounds like a coincidence, but mathematicians will tell you it's much more unusual for there to be no such clusters.

We perceive trends when there are none. Poker players invariably believe they can lock into streaks. Backgammon champions swear that dice can go hot or cold. Likewise, people think they can cosmically predict what song will come next on their shuffle.

he seemingly magical effects of the shuffle function - a spooky just-rightness, even brilliance, that comes from great song juxtapositions - were also consequences of randomness. And, in its own way, that was much more disturbing.

[[ZEITGEIST]] Cosmos
I have just discovered that the entire series of Carl Sagan's seminal Cosmos programme are available on google video. Sagan co-wrote and presented the series in 1979, billed as a "personal vision," it covers an ecletic range of subjects from tours of the known and speculative universe, to a brilliantly staged explication of the 'theory' of evolution, which Sagan confidently proclaims is, "not a theory, but fact."

I remember seeing some of the episodes of Cosmos on the BBC around the time when it was first produced. Then its thirteen episodes were cut down and broadcast as 50 minute segments and shown late in the evening. Why the BBC did this I have no idea. The series, although inspired apparently by home-grown documentaries like David Attenborough's Life on Earth, surpasses even these impressive achievements in my opinion. I am astonished revisiting the series again how much of my own speculative day dreams and musings were in fact inspired by the speculations of Sagan. His lamentation of the loss of the Library of Alexandra in the first episode, for example, seared into my consciousness and later manifested in all sorts of ideas which I have speculated upon and been obsessed with over the years. Later in my life, I came to admire Sagan's writing, both his non-fiction works and the novel Contact, which was later made into a cowardly movie by Robert Zemeckis, starring Jodi Foster. Cowardly because Zemeckis did not attempt the books jaw droppingly astonishing ending.

Sagan is of course a superlative teacher, his explanations of even the most gnomic and difficult theories have a clarity and an entertainment value which has not been surpassed. This series has several some heart stopping moments of astonishment, the majority of these are generated, not by the special effects, groundbreaking for the time, but which now appear a little ropey, but by Sagan's conviction and the strenght of the writing . I stongly recommend if you have a broadband connection and thirteen plus hours to kill to tune into google video and watch the show.

[[ZEITGEIST]]
Breathing Earth
This site (requires flash) is really fascinating and a little bit chilling. When you log on it dynamically shows you the number of births and deaths and also the carbon dioxide emitted per second. I logged on for 30 seconds and it was already up to 40,000 tonnes - eek!

[[IMMERSIVE]] Being and Time Glossary of terms
I have just finished the substantial update of the online glossary for Being and Time. It took bloodly ages and a lot of the definitions that were there have been revised, plus new ones have been added which pertain to part one, divisions one, two and three of the work.

[[IMMERSIVE]] At long long last here is the fifth part of my notes on Heidegger's masterwork, Being and Time (Part 1, Division III). Actually this division numbers fifty or so pages so this is only the first ten. I am in the process of updating the
glossary and hopefully this will go online in the next day or so. If you have any comments or questions about the text, please submit them by commenting on this post.

I was partly inspired to write this post by a guy on you tube that performed a strangely affecting version of Amelia. Joni herself is criminally under-represented on Youtube, although perhaps if I were a copyright holder I would be more inclined to say that other acts are criminally over-represented on Youtube - in a very literal sense (lol). but I digress.... This post was prompted by the fact that I looked around for some written praise for my favourite songs and found that they were rarely discussed, hence this write up.

While Morrissey may have written wittier lyrics, I consider the two candidates for the prize of most affecting song ever written to have come from Joni Mitchell 1976 album Hejira. They are Amelia and the title track itself – Hejira.

The title of the album refers to the journey Mohammad's made in 622 A.D. to avoid persecution in Mecca. Like the prophet, Joni's Hejira is obviously one of purging and healing also. According to Brian Hinton's a badly written and somewhat untrustworthy biography, Mitchell wrote the album Hejira while fleeing from the break-up of her relationship with drummer John Guerin. Travelling across the US by Car, Joni dealt with her celebrity by often pretended to be other people, disguising herself by dressing in wigs (Hinton 1996, 190).

The song Amelia is an extended metaphor involving the Aviator Amelia Earhart whose plane was lost over the pacific in 1937. In the song Earhart stands for both female achievement in a man's world and the perilous and self destructive nature of ambition itself. At one point in the song Joni confesses she has spent her whole life in clouds at icy altitudes, alluded of course to her biggest hit song – Both Sides Now.

The track Hejira is far less easy to pin down. In a sense it is a reading of Joni's life on the road. A catalogue of her strange experiences and mood, while at the same time being an implied memento mori for home and security and all these things she left behind.

The lyrics to both songs, although they may be somewhat self consciously poetic at time, seem nevertheless to be a good fit for Wordsworth's dictum that poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquillity." When combined with the scarcity and power of the songs what you have is something crystalline and coldly beautiful.

It's hard to pin down exactly why these songs work as well as they do. It has a lot to do with pristine technique and execution. Like Leonard Cohen, Joni writes, writes and writes her poetry, and yet still manages not to overwrite. Lyrics that seem only intriguing at fist grow in power and stature with each repeated listen. It does not take a genius to infer that Joni was not a happy woman making Hejira. A feeling of melancholy infuses the work and gives it a cohesion that countless revisions would no doubt otherwise have fractured – as is the case with other Joni Mitchell recordings actually.

Ultimately, Joni understands balance. The density of her writing is counterpoised with the sparse arrangements, and here Jaco Pastorius' bass lends the songs an air of spontaneity, not found in either the lyrics or in Joni's precise playing. Despite being narcissistic and self absorbed, the songs are, I think, a genuine attempt to think through the narcissism and self-absorption of her profession. While there are no answers, in the sense of epiphanies, Hejira does presents songs which border on intimate, if not forensic in self examination at times. However, Joni's gaze is unflinching in her search for truth and the songs, in their own way, become a kind of palliative for lesser mortals - a comfort to listen to when you are feeling down, yes certainly, and listening to Joni's songs bequeath to one's otherwise insignificant sorrow (in the grand scheme of things) a sense of epic and cinematic grandeur.

The album's art work is worth a mention. On the from sleeve Joni is decked out like a ingénue from the 1930s, complete with fur coat (a bit of a contradiction for this noted eco supporter surely?) On the inner sleeve she is dressed as a black crow wings spread anticipating Kate Bush's metamorphosis as a bat on Never for Ever.

[[IMMERSIVE]]
If Man is the measure of things, as Protagoras said, then there is no complete reality; but being there certainly is, even then. (Peirce 7.349)

The big bearded philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce argues that what we called reality was made of two separate states: existence and reality (being). Existence is a special mode of reality, which, whatever other characteristics it possesses, has that of being absolutely determinate. Reality, on the other hand is a special mode of being, the characteristic of which is that things that are real independently of any assertion about them (CP 7.349). How are we to make sense of this?

Peirce asserts that whenever we come to know something as a fact, it is by its resisting us. The resistance shows us that something independent of us is there (CP 1.174). When anything strikes upon the senses, the mind’s train of thought is always interrupted; for if it were not, nothing would distinguish fact from fiction. With ever interruption there is always resistance, and so difference between the operation of receiving a sensation and that of exerting the will is merely a difference of degree, not of kind. When we pass from the consideration of the appearance of a fact in experience to its existence in the world of fact, we pass from regarding the appearance as depending on opposition to our will to regarding the existence as depending on physical effects. Thus reality consists of the aggregate of physical effects and of facts which persist in forcing themselves upon our recognition as something other than the mind’s creation. If we experienced no such persistence, life would be a mere dream. As Phillip K. Dick remarked, reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

A fiction on the other hand is a product of somebody's imagination; it has such characters as her thought impresses upon it. Fictions are real in the sense that we really think them. But though their characters depend on how we think, they do not depend on what we think those characters to be. A dream, therefore, has a real existence as a mental phenomenon, because somebody has really dreamt it; and moreover it does not depend on what anybody thinks was dreamt, and in this was Peirce says is completely independent of all opinion (CP 5.405). Therefore the thing dreamt retains its peculiarities by virtue of no other fact than that it was dreamt to possess them. Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.

Applying Peirce's distinction to virtual reality we can say firstly that everything that is thought or experienced has a reality of a kind, this includes life as we experience it, dreams and mediations. Therefore if we want to distinguish these states from each other, judging them simply on the basis of how they appear will not provide us with a solution, since the appearance of reality is at the same time merely the reality of an appearance. However using Peirce's concept of resistances. we can distinguish a hierarchy of reality effects if we consider the resistances that each state imposes upon our being. If we can outline, at least in theory a way of measuring the reality effect of a virtual reality simulation depending on the resistances it offers. We have a way of determining the reality effect of a simulation.











For example in the film The Matrix (1999) the after Morpheus has explained the nature of the matrix to Neo, he exclaims "so none of this is real?" to which Morpheus replies, What is real? if real is something you can hear see taste touch smell then real is just electrical impulses interpreted by your brain." But if we apply Piece's rules we can say that whether the Matrix is real or not is actually immaterial, because if the matrix can affect a person physically, indeed if the Matrix can actually a person, then that person would be wise to take it seriously, whether it was real or not.

Lets take another example, imagine that you are in a virtual reality simulation built by a particularly sadistic engineer. The simulation looks really low resolution, it may even consist of just wire frame graphics, but inside the date gloves you wear are place little knives, so that when you touched a sharp object they would cut your hand. Now you become aware of the fact that brushing against one of those unrealistic wire frame objects actually results in a physical injury and this would mean that you would take the simulation much more seriously that say a simulation with much better graphics but whose surfaces did were not felt to be sharp enough to result in physical injury. What should be hopefully apparent from this discussion is that which we regard as real is not determined by mere appearance: reality is not a symptom of high-resolution graphics but is created in the resistence it offers. Thus reality is a sign of mattering.

Sorry for the lack of posts, I've just finished writing a chapter on video game music for a forthcoming book on new media to be published in the winter (actually I'm not sure when it's going to be published). The writing and research for this chapter has been taking up rather a lot of time. If anyone is checking back here in search of Heidegger updates, I just want to say, don’t worry, I am on it. I intend to get back to Heidegger presently. Actually I think I'll take next week off an do some music, since this has been more sorely neglected than Heidegger.

I am concerned that the government is now committed to nuclear power. I thought we were supposed to live in a democracy (stop sniggering!) and here like the war in Iraq is another situation where the people are not consulted on major issues that affect everyone. I am also concerned that public opinion, according to James Lovelock on radio 4, has moved from something like 99% against nuclear power to 40% for. This in my opinion shows how fragile public opinion is when people rely on the media to inform them.

There is a great sight that Boing Boing linked to called Captain Copyright, Yes, that's right a copyright superhero – why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Oh yes, because its crap. The site is a Canadian initiative to teach children about the evils of copyright theft in the style of a comic strip. I thinking of ripping this off and claiming it as my own work. (Ha, Ha)

I have been getting into web stuff on Goldfrapp recently. Goldfrapp aren’t one of my favourite bands (I can take or leave the albums but I really like some of their single – do you know what I mean?), I especially the glam stomp stuff like "Strict Machine" and "Ooh La La". The video for the latter song is particularly good, a kind of distillation of all those acts I remember watching on top of the pops, like Suzy Quatro, Marc Bolan and Abba. I can't understand why people think Goldfrapp are particularly innovative, or have to ask them about their influences, since they are pretty obvious, well if you are over 35 at least. Personally I think they should open all their concerts with "The Cruch" by the Rah band, in the same way that the Smiths opened their's with "The Montagues and Capulets" from Sergey Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet.

Goldfrapp's website is pretty good. They have a video Q and A session with the band where they come across more like the hippie parents of rockstars than rockstars, but I think its quite funny in an endearing way. I also like this anecdote from Alison, talking about her misspent youth in the Independent:

"I wasn't properly bullied but they had it in for me," she says with a dry little laugh. "And then I got into make-up and Tippex and was well at home." Tippex? For correcting homework? "Inhaling," she laughs. "Then I ended up doing community service, just for being generally bad. They sent me out to make posters but they put me in a room with a lot of solvents so not many posters got made. And the ones that did were unreadable."

[[ZEITGEIST]] Comedian Rob Newman on oil
You must see this. video on Google video. "Rob Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years - but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at ... all school, the places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman's stand-up act and supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand. Quirky details such as a bicycle powered street lamp on the stage brings home the pertinent question of just how we are going to survive when the world's oil supplies are finally exhausted"

[[ZEITGEIST]] back with a vengeance
In a CBI dinner speech on 16th May Tony Blair announced nuclear power was back on the agenda with a vengeance. Nuclear power is seen by some – mainly those in the nuclear power industry!- as being the answer to global warning. However there is the non trivial problem of managing a substance that remains toxic for 4.5 billion years as is the case with uranium-238

While electricity generated from nuclear power does not directly emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the nuclear fuel cycle does release CO2, uranium mining for example is one of the most CO2 intensive industrial operations. And the construction of new nuclear power stations will need to be subsidised, most likely through increases in electricity bills.

Apparently it is not economically feasibly to power the UK using alternative energy sources alone. Presumably because nobody want to implement a cultural change of more efficient energy usage or better insulation. Does this sound like fiddling while Rome burns? Research by the Energy Savings Trust suggests that home generation of power is developing so fast that it could potentially provide 30%-40% of the UK's total electricity needs by 2050.

Sweden generates more nuclear power per person than any other country. With half the nation's electricity coming from nuclear sources. However in Januarey 1991, the Sweden's government agreed to stick to its commitment to phase out nuclear power by the year 2010. The government promised to spend 352 million Pounds to develop alternative sources of power and improve energy efficiency over the next five years.

Finally let us not forget this.