mathpunk.net

I’m thinking about how I work so differently on solo projects than on projects with other people.

Solitary play is just play. It’s fun, and self-absorbing, in a literal sense: your self is absorbed into the play, and we experience ego-less joy for a little while.

Play with playmates may be just play, but it often turns into games, and games have goals. It’s an arbitrary goal, accomplished via suboptimal means, but it’s a goal nonetheless. (If you want the ball in the hole so bad, why don’t you pick it up, walk it over, and drop it in? Because that’s not what golf is.)

I grew up reading “weird stuff”: The Invisibles, Planetary, weird science, industrial music magazines, RE/Search, and other things that were about people who were clearly much cooler than myself. Now that I’ve discovered atemporality as the spine of a design aesthetic, I want to do some solitary play with all of the culture I’ve absorbed over the past 33 years, and all the interesting new culture that is being, uh, cultured by the network.

What I’m trying to say is: If you are reading this blog for a new take on mathematics, economics, and game theory, you ought to check out Math for Primates, the blog/podcast/embryonic-community I’m developing with Nick. Math for Primates is a group project, and so it is relatively focused and goal-oriented despite the silliness and poo-flinging.

If, on the other hand, you believe that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, you should stick around. I’m collecting a bunch of shiny new toys and I’m looking forward to playing with them. This is going to be solo play, so I’m giving myself free license to be self-absorbed and meandering*, until/unless a solo game with a point emerges, at which point all bets are off.

notes for my Brain (links to come):

atemporality (@bruces, @justinpickard)
serious play: Evoke and SuperBetter (@evokenet, @avantgame)
soft development / networked development (@hexayurt, @leashless)
evolutionary health (@johndurant)
learning experience design: networked learning, learning as game, games in learning
consciousness health: luck-training, mind-training

* – Look, I’ll just admit it: I got into atemporality because it gives me wardrobe ideas. I don’t think you understand how much psychic censoring takes place to get me to not discuss my clothing and hair in our ostensibly mathematical podcast. It’s like there’s a fight for influence inside my head waged between the homunculi of John Horton Conway and Dennis Miller.

@leashless serves up elevation and awe. In particular:

Although I do not want to over-stress the parallels between open source software and open source appropriate technology, the fundamental conditions that support these technologies are very similar. There is a rapidly growing network – just over half the human race has cell phones now, and the rest will be online within 10 years. The network and hardware platform make information exchange about solutions possible. Training and education materials are developed internationally, providing low-cost solutions for all. The difference between hacking on a Linux kernel and figuring out a rope pump implementation question – if you have access to a network and people with expertise to support your work – is really not all that large. The commodity hardware – whether it is a cheap computer, or some bits of car tire and washers and a wheel and a rope – is used to solve the problem at hand using knowledge from the network. And there is no shortage of people to research and extend global knowledge in these areas: there are five times as many incredibly smart people in the poor parts of the world as in the rich ones, simply because there are five times as many people. As they begin to come online in the next few years, the collective intelligence of the human race is going to increase by a factor of five. Nobody knows what this means yet, but I’m very hopeful that it is going to enable us to think our collective way out of all kinds of problems that currently look insurmountable.

I call this whole approach to development the “soft development path”. It is ICT and open source heavy, and capital and infrastructure light. I think it is reasonably clear that all of the technologies exist to allow people to enjoy essentially first-world standards of public health and education using relatively limited material resources. It is the only approach I know of to international development – or the future of the human race – which allows everybody to live a good life without destroying the planet in the process. By decoupling personal welfare with economic growth, we become able to provide for everybody. The example of Kerala in India proves that under the right conditions it can be done even without broad-based use of advanced appropriate technology options. The additional leverage of internet-supported appropriate technology roll-out opens up the real possibility of a world in which all people can enjoy a good standard of living, with long life, abundant food and good health, without requiring us to solve many of the apparently intractable political problems which have plagued the global economy and particularly international development over the years.

from http://agit8.org.uk/?p=268 , worth reading slowly

From Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory by Evar Nering, the introduction:

We try to describe intuitively what is meant by a linear system…

[If we know or assume that a system is linear, then:] If we know the outputs for a collection of different inuts, we know the outputs for all inputs that can be obtained by combining these inputs in various ways.

…

So many of the problems that we encounter are assumed to be linear problems and so many of the mathematical techniques developed are inherently linear… Potential theory, the theory of heat, and the theory of small vibrations of mechanical systems are examples of linear theories.

I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten to mention that I’m doing a podcast! On math! (Are you shocked?)

In our latest episode, we talk about the sex lives of lizards, how to be maximally unbeatable at rock-paper-scissors, and while I think we did okay at explaining Quantum Game Theory, we fail to save the Enterprise.

In my continued efforts to champion the creative job application as modern American literary form, here is a bit of my response to “Tell us why the idea of social innovation/enterprise has you all excited now!”

I will freely admit that I’ve done my share of sneering at social innovation entrepreneurs. They can be chipper and self-congratulatory, and they waste valuable characters using your given name in their alarmingly earnest DMs. However, we are moving out of the cheap talk phase of social networks. Within about 7 hours of the Haitian earthquake, I read on Twitter of a number allowing you to text $10 to the Red Cross. As I did so, I realized I was doing it, partly because it was right, but mostly because it was easy. I would use the same device to send the donation as I had used to read it, so there was no context switching; there was no need to fact-check because the information was from someone I’ve learned to trust. Our tools are getting better at convincing us to do the right thing, and making it easier to do it.

Watch for Evoke. It’s going to be the real deal. In the meantime, send 10 bucks to the Red Cross by texting “haiti” to 90999.

I loved this and wanted to post it somewhere. From The Public Domain

Paying attention to the last ten years means we need to realize that nonproprietary, distributed production is not the poor relation of traditional proprietary, hierarchically organized production. This is no hippy lovefest. It is the business method on which IBM has staked billions of dollars; the method of cultural production that generates much of the information each of us uses every day. It is just as deserving of respect and the solicitude of policy makers as the more familiar methods pursued by the film studios and proprietary software companies. Losses due to sharing that failed because of artificially erected legal barriers are every bit as real as losses that come about because of illicit copying. Yet our attention goes entirely to the latter.

I just took a couple hours to work my way through this talk by Eric R. Weinstein on Gauge Theory in Economics. It’s a really good talk; however, it is a math talk, so if you aren’t comfortable with vector spaces being the simplest object in view, I’m not sure how much you’d enjoy it. If you do, though, check it out! A phrase for temptation purposes: “A Rosetta Stone for economics, physics, and geometry.”

But even if you’re not into advanced mathematical brain fry, the underlying point of the talk is very important. According to Weinstein, there is an obviously incorrect economic assumption about human behavior, expressed in this quote:

“…tastes neither change capriciously nor differ importantly between people. On this interpretation one does not argue over tastes for the same reason that one does not argue over the Rocky Mountains—both are there, will be there next year, too, and are the same to all men.”
—Gary Becker and George Stigler, 1977, De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

…and that wrong assumption has affected the discipline of economics as described in this quote:

“That the problems [of changes of taste] have remained central and largely unresolved for twenty-five hndred years no doubt makes some economists think it wise to define them out of the discipline, at whatever cost in realism and relevance.”
M.S. McPherson, ‘Changes in tastes’, entry in The New Palgrave: A dictionary of Economics, 1987, pp 401-403.

In short, economics uses, as a fundamental axiom, the obviously wrong idea that we all prefer the same things to the same degree for our entire lives.

Srsly!

However, I sort of can’t blame any economist who would hope like hell this assumption, while obviously incorrect, would be unimportant. I can’t blame them because, when you assume the obviously wrong idea is in fact wrong, the mathematics behind fundamentally important and useful economic concepts become, to use a technical phrase, really fucking hard. I have compassion for anyone who doesn’t want to go anywhere near an infinite-dimensional function space bundle!

But, still. A crazily wrong axiom has to go. Suddenly, there’s all kinds of low-hanging theorems just waiting to be picked up by mathematicians and physicists and anyone else who is willing to touch a fiber bundle. So, who’s with me?

[ETA: There's a whole interesting undercurrent of the extension of that idea of 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics', and I think that's really interesting from a calculus education standpoint, too. I got too excited about the economics part to mention it!]

After much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, I have submitted an application to Carnegie-Mellon’s Ph.D. Program in Computation Organization and Society. (Why is it that I can manage to multiply octonions, but filling out forms gives me conniptions?) My statement of purpose is below. (I removed the bit where I discuss how my UC Berkeley GPA from 1994-1996 reflects some “games research” in Twisted Metal 2):

Part I.
I intend to work in Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), with Professor Kathleen Carley, Professor Cleotilde González, or Professor James Herbsleb as possible advisors.

I became interested in this area when I discovered the work of Dr. Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Dr. McGonigal creates games designed to “create large-scale collaborative communities, to improve players’ real quality of life, and to solve real-world problems, by overlaying game systems and game content on top of everyday reality.” (from her website: http://avantgame.com/bio.htm#GAMES).

I want to explore the area between these game design principles and the mathematical theory of games. Mathematically, a game is defined by a set of players, a set of strategies, and a set of payoffs. To a massively multiplayer game designer, a game seems instead to consist of a community of sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing players, a set of subgames (i.e., not every player in the community always appears to be playing the same game), and a set of rewards (which may be monetary, virtually monetary in a game with a virtual economy, pseudo-monetary as in a points or grading system, a public list of achievements describing the prowess of a player, or the positive psychological rewards of accomplishment, amusement, excitement, opportunity to display skill, etc.). Where the game theorist is most concerned about how a player might maximize his or her utility, the game designer is concerned with creating an immersive and engaging experience to people at play. In exploring the region in between these two conceptions of what a game is (through theory, simulation, and playable experiments), I aim to develop an understanding of the various ways one can motivate and engage people through play.

Part II.
I am applying to Carnegie-Mellon because I have found no other program exploring the space between the theoretical-computational results of game theory and social network analysis, and the social-cultural aspects of how people socialize, share information, and play in and around the modern world’s rapidly evolving information ecology. My end goal is to apply what I learn in my doctoral research to design new forms of massively collaborative projects, be they educational, civic, scientific, economic, environmental, or humanitarian. The social problems of the 21st century demand collaboration on a massive scale, of a kind that 20th century institutions are not always directly suited for, and the cognitive investment the world spends in immersive games is an untapped resource that might be channeled into solutions.

Part III.
In my education at Portland State University, I took one year each of game theory and quantum game theory. The latter is still early in its development, but has been used by Hanauske, Kunz, Bernius, and König (http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2113) to analyze the 2008 economic crash, using the metaphor of quantum entanglement to account for the influence of socio-economic context factors, leading me to believe it may have utility in understanding the behaviors of communities at play. I also took one year each of elementary graph theory and algebraic graph theory; I am interested in learning to apply graph-theoretical concepts to the dynamics of socially networked gamers.

In the realm of large-scale collaborative games, I was one of the roughly 7,000 people who played Superstruct, the IFTF’s massively multiplayer future forecasting game. The IFTF chose me as one of the SEHI ‘19, the 20 Superstruct players who “turned the superstruct community [into] a true, working engine of ideas”. I also received the Pandora Award (Bronze) from Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager for Google, for my in-game efforts to harness the power of disaffected and angry hackers for good.

Part IV.
Since completing my master’s degree this summer, I have been self-educating myself in Unix, shell-scripting, and data visualization (using Processing). Primed by my experience in Superstruct, I have been monitoring trends in open development, attention management and information filtering, and the legal complexities engendered by the internet’s role as world-spanning copy machine.

One of the functions of this blog is to function as a cover letter for happy mutants and power weirdos. So, I want to talk about the sorts of projects i’m looking for now that my master’s degree is ABP (all-but-paperwork), and also describe the projects I’m already working on. If you’d like to participate, or if you have a research direction to point me in, I’d love to talk more over twitter or in the comments.

Writing (in progress)

I remember hearing during NaNoWriMo that we were writing “zeroth drafts.” That is, we were writing to find out what we wanted to write about. I’m at that stage right now, but the theme is the mathematics curriculum of the next century, inspired by Liz Coleman’s brilliant and damning and generally awesome TED talk. You can get a sense of what it’s going to include by pawing through my delicious bookmarks if you’re so inclined.

Comedy (in development)

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it, but I’ve been a comedian with the Portland improv group The Light-Fingered Five for nearly six years. I was so busy in school I barely noticed it’s the longest-running project I’ve been involved with. Anyway, I figure there is an audience of, oh, dozens of people crying out for mathematical comedy, and it’s up to me to step up!

If you’re in this niche, I’d be really interested to hear from you. I especially want to reach those people who may not have a lot of mathematical training, but have an interest. What maths have you heard about that fired your imagination? Suggestions to date: Bayes’ Theorem; agent-based modeling; dimensionality (e.g., how you can fit an arbitrarily long stick in an arbitrarily small box if you are a sufficiently high-dimensional carpenter).

Math for Primates. A podcast about and around mathematics, with medium to high silliness (especially if I can get the co-host I have in mind). I believe that it’s not technically difficult to podcast with call-in ability, and so I’m really hoping we’ll get to have some of you on as guests!

Math Minus Suck (working title). I want to put together some short math video projects. The high concept is something like Zero Punctuation’s and Scott McCloud’s use of imagery and timing. You can see some of where I intend to take it in the slides I made for my master’s presentation.

Projects I’m Seeking

There are a few kinds of projects that I know enough about to know I’d be interested, but not enough to know how to start learning on my own. I have time; I’m seeking experience through chances to (1) work with interesting people, ideally with (2) a nonzero chance of money occurring. Portland rainy season is coming and it would be pretty rad to have boots without holes!

Data and User Interfaces

I am enthralled by the development of data visualization, open data, data mining, and crowdsourced science and journalism. I’ve been throwing interesting links on this sort of thing under the tag of “datamancy.” I use this as a catch-all term for the new ways that people are turning raw data into pictures and stories that people who don’t speak statistics can understand. I know my next aesthetic step is to save my pennies for some Edward Tufte, but I could use a mentor and a project to train myself on the way of the API, and help me figure out whether I should reacquaint myself with programming through R, Python, Drupal, SQL, or some other environment. On the mathematics side, I understand that my favorite math (combinatorics and discrete mathematics) is involved in some of the theoretical problems of understanding huge data sets.

I’m also interested in user interfaces. Haptic interfaces and pervasive computing and pervasive gaming are clearly neat, and I have many outlandish idea zygotes for how such things might make mathematics and science more intuitive and entertaining. But without knowing what the tools make possible, they are just ill-formed ideas.

Education

I am perfectly happy with the mathematical training I got at my home institution, but it is not on the cutting edge of post-internet education. I am running what experiments I can, but a class Google Group does not University 2.0 make, and as an adjunct I lack the freedom to invent my own course from whole cloth. I want to help figure out the role of social media, user-generated media, online community, and any buzzphrases I’ve left out in math and science education. I’m excited about applying for ph.d. programs for Fall 2010, but I have to wonder if I’m missing out on interesting and vibrant projects that are not primarily academic.

Media Production

I used to make videos for school when I was a kid. It was great fun, but it was a hobby. Now that I’m scarfing down TED talks and The Guild, I really want to get back into it, be it in service to mathematics, or just pure comedy. I figure my next step is pure experimentation with a camera and editing software, and I have a friend with both set up. Yet again, I wonder if there’s not a project in progress that I could help out with and pick up some media skillz, apprentice-style.

Other

In reaction to the “But why?” I tend to get when I talk about majoring in mathematics, I usually say something to the effect that mathematics is training in pure problem-solving, and in breaking complex systems into component parts that may be understood. I think this is a great answer when talking about college in a bar, but it’s not the best search term for jobs sites. If you guys know of anyone with problems to be solved (other than the common problem of “hiring freeze”), point ‘em my way, would ya?

I spent the morning processing IFTF forecasts, leading to the mindmap at the bottom (still a work in progress). My goal was to pick out the forecasts most relevant to my goals of superstructing education and learning. I’m afraid I lack the time and energy to explain the details of each of the forecasts; please let me know of any links to good write-ups so I can make this post more understandable to a wider audience.

THE BASIC ORDERING IDEAS
In the green circles are my favorite “flashpoint” forecasts: those forecasts IFTF identifies as useful launching pads for superstructing. The blue circle is the concept of a Superstruct ecology. These are combinations of superstructures which indicate trends developed by the 7000+ players of Superstruct, and grouped together by IFTF. (Aside: during play I desperately wanted to identify these ecologies, but could not develop the real-time data tools that could have spotted them.) I have noted the three I was the most involved with, and a handful of my favorite component superstructures.

RED IS FOR DOING
The Networked Citizens signal is the increasing online presence & expertise of people (i.e., the “My mom is on Facebook!” signal). The red arrow leading up and right toward The Open Fab Initiative by way of Superstructing Reality (”making”) is my belief that increasingly networked citizens will create the textbook of the future. Multimedia explanations of diverse topics in all the learning styles you could want; physical objects tagged with their scientific and historic principles; mobile-phone-based biology and physics labs for virtual dissection of real-world objects; you get the picture. I’m calling this ill-defined idea The Infinite Textbook (twitter hashtag: #infinitext), and my hope is to help citizen scientists (including my favorite scientists, babies & children) get precisely the knowledge they need in the format they need, even when they don’t explicitly know they need it. You’ll hear more on this as I turn it into a dissertation and working superstructure.

The arrow leading down and right from Networked Citizens toward Community Works by way of Post-Newtonian Governance (”connecting”) leads into the EDU, a unit of f2f learning currency (superstructure in progress) and to twitter hashtag #datamancy, which is my codeword for 1) the hard math & computing problems of working with more and larger datasets, and 2) the softer problem of representing very large datasets in a compelling, dynamic, and visual and/or narrative way.

The EDU is my contribution to an open money society, and if it’s a superstructure with legs you’ll hear more later. Datamancy… I dunno what it is yet. It’s part journalism, part citizen science, part Government 2.0. Still collecting pieces for that one.

Quantum Governance is on the map because I think it relates to the problem of academic credentialing. I haven’t quite sussed out how. A trustnet model of evaluation?

NEXT STEPS
More signals, more connections. Basic multimedia skillz. The mathematics of very large datasets. And, of course, the search for research funding. If you know anyone handing out grants to energetic weirdos…