|
|
|
Main
| Metaforix Mail | Lois
on the Web | Informaticons
For
previous issues, please click here.
METAFORIX MAIL
Volume 1, Issue
24 January 9, 2001
If this
issue of Metaforix Mail contains a data nugget that you find especially
useful or thought-provoking, please let us know (e-mail:
editor@metaforix.com). And please forward this e-letter to a colleague
or friend who might appreciate it as well. Thanks.
CONTENTS
AT A GLANCE:
ON MY MIND: Law and
Order
IN THE MEDIA: "A Wired
World"
METAFORIX
MAIL ARCHIVES
INFORMATICON: Status,
with a Capital S
CYBERSPEAK: Linux
SITE OF THE WEEK:
Foreignword.com
WANTED: YOUR OPINIONS!
ON MY MIND
[From the Editor]
They Also
Serve Who Only Sit and Wait
I
spent yesterday with two or three hundred other citizens of my community,
in a large, dingy, poorly-lit room, waiting to be empanelled on a jury.
Waiting, as it turns out, in vain: the random selection process never
yielded up my name at all, and at 4:00 pm, all prospective jurors remaining
in the pool were dismissed entirely.
Nonetheless, there is always a sense of civic virtue in this exercise
-- never mind the fact that the closest I've come to actually serving
on a jury is my nightly dose of "Law and Order" reruns. But this time
as I waited, I found myself musing about "Under Suspicion," an article
on juries published in last week's New Yorker.
The author, Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgical resident and a research fellow
at the Harvard School of Public Health, castigates the legal profession
for its inhospitality to the sort of rigorous scientific investigation
that in medicine is the norm. Now, I have been known to wax eloquent on
the point that double-blind studies, replete with statistical calculations,
are far from the only legitimate way to gather evidence, and may actually
be less than "objective" by virtue of the way the research question is
framed. Nevertheless, Gawande makes a compelling case that "scientific
experimentation, which transformed medicine in the last century, could
transform the justice system in the next."
For example, says Gawande, over 75,000 Americans per year "become criminal
suspects based on eyewitness identification," usually by means of a physical
or photographic lineup. Yet studies of cases in which defendants were
exonerated after the fact based on DNA evidence show that the most common
cause of wrongful conviction is eyewitness error.
Years of research by psychologist Gary Wells and others suggest that that
eyewitnesses presented with a lineup tend to choose the person who looks
most like the perpetrator they remember, even when the actual perpetrator
is not included in the lineup. Witnesses are just as confident about incorrect
identifications as they are about correct ones, and juries are equally
likely to believe them.
Eyewitnesses who are shown only one individual at a time, however, are
far less likely to make errors than those who view an entire group at
once. And, although this procedure dramatically reduces false identifications,
it does not reduce the number of correct identifications.
Moving from a standard lineup to a sequential one, says Gawande, is a
"beautifully simple" technique that "wouldn't cost a dime to adopt." Why
has the law enforcement system failed to adopt, or even seriously consider,
innovations such as the sequential lineup that might improve the prospect
of justice for all? The crux of the problem is "the clash of cultures
between the legal and the scientific approach," the legal culture of "precedent
and convention" as opposed to the scientific culture of "experiment and
change."
Gawande disapproves of the legal community's resistance to "submitting
its methods to scientific inquiry" and its "ignorance and suspicion" of
science." He appears mystified that the criminal justice system does not
have its own analogs to the teaching hospital. The research he cites surely
bears further exploration.
But equally interesting to me are the questions Gawande does not raise:
Why have some research-based innovations in the justice system, such as
DNA evidence, been accepted so much more readily than others? Apart from
disparaging explanations like "ignorance and suspicion," are there fundamental
elements of the respective professional cultures of law and science that
impede mutual confidence and respect? Do the personalities, skills, and
preferences that draw people to legal versus scientific careers shed any
light on the issue? What can be done to bridge the gap?
If I ever have the opportunity to serve on a jury, I hope to gain some
experiential insight into these questions. For now, I view them in the
same way as I view adaptations to other technologies, such as the Internet.
My perspective on the legal profession is much more admiring and sympathetic
than Gawande's. But we agree that the problem of introducing the scientific
method into the justice system is not the science itself. It's the culture.
Cordially,
Lois C.
Ambash, Editor
editor@metaforix.com
IN THE MEDIA
[a recent news article, feature, or opinion piece]
The Internet
Explosion
On
New Year's Day, PBS's Newshour aired a discussion of how the Internet
has changed the American landscape and what further changes it may engender
over the next few years. The discussion panel, moderated by Newshour
economics correspondent Paul Solman, featured Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist,
composer and author; Katie Hafner, New York Times consumer technology
reporter; Paul Kedrosky, a professor of information technology and strategy
at the University of British Columbia; and Mary Fran Johnson, editor of
Computer World Magazine.
Among the questions the panel considered were these: Is the world shrinking
as a result of the Internet? Have pundits' predictions about the Internet
come to pass? What explains the dramatic fall in technology stocks? How
can we reconcile the rapid pace of technological change with the slower
pace of human change? What has been the happiest result of the Internet?
To view the streaming video discussion or to read the transcript, go to:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/
METAFORIX
MAIL ARCHIVES
Access previous
issues of Metaforix Mail by date by visiting our archives. Or use the
search box on any page of the Metaforix site (www.metaforix.com)
to search by keywords.
INFORMATICON
[a provocative quote, statistic, or piece of data]
"Social
Status Tends to Seal One's Fate"
Emily Eakin, The New York Times, 1/6/01
Social
theorist Pierre Bourdieu, "France's most influential intellectual," has
"'symbolic capital' in spades. The term, one of several for which he is
known, means, roughly, social status, and in the grand theoretical schemes
he has elaborated over the last four decades, it is all-important. Human
society, in Mr. Bourdieu's view, resembles nothing so much as a fiercely
competitive contest in which status is the ultimate prize. To do well, it
helps to have economic capital (financial assets), social capital (networks
of connections, a good Rolodex) and cultural capital (specialized skills
and knowledge, an Ivy League diploma). . . .
"'The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren't simply
hobbies or minor influences. . . .They are hugely important in the affirmation
of differences between groups and social classes and in the reproduction
of those differences.' "
Cyberspeak
[the vocabulary of the information age]
All
Systems Go
Your
computer's operating system (OS) is the software that forms the underpinning
for all the tasks your computer does: the hardware it runs and the other
software applications that allow you to do word processing, surf the Web,
play games, and so forth. By far the most common OS is Windows, a proprietary
OS that is distributed with the vast majority of new computers -- hence,
the antitrust suit against Microsoft.
Linux, dubbed "the little operating system that could" by Wired Style,
is an alternative OS created in 1990 by a Finnish student, Linus Torvald.
Linux is open source software, software in the public domain whose
code can be freely accessed and modified by any programmer. It has been
developed over the past ten years by a worldwide group of volunteers and,
says Business 2.0, is considered "stable, reliable, and powerful."
Over the last couple of years, computer manufacturers such as Dell and IBM
have pre-installed it along with Windows and increasing numbers of software
applications are written to be used on the Linux platform.
Sources: Wired Style, Hale and Scanlon, 1999; www.netlingo.com;
and Business
2.0, 11/14/2000
SITE OF
THE WEEK
"Language,
Translation, and Language Technology"
The
Internet moves quickly, but not quickly enough to keep pace with globalization.
With most sites in English and geared for English speakers, high-quality
language sites can hardly proliferate fast enough.
Enter Foreignword.com, "an Internet site dedicated to the world of languages
and translation." Geared for professional translators and others whose interests
or needs involve language, the site features bilingual and monolingual dictionaries,
machine translation resources, a resume bank of translators, a discussion
forum, and links to numerous related resources. The languages currently
featured on the site range from Afrikaans to Yiddish, with more to come.
To visit this unusual resource, go to:
www.Foreignword.com
GUEST COLUMNISTS
WANTED!
Guest
Columnists and Interviewees Wanted!
Metaforix
Mail seeks your opinions on how information technologies are (or are not)
changing your world of work.
Guest columns are welcome. Contributions are subject to editing for length
and clarity.
If your column is accepted for publication, it will be permanently posted
on the Metaforix web site, along with a link to your e-mail address or URL.
As a small token of appreciation, you will also receive a $10 gift certificate
toward your next purchase at Amazon.com.
Alternatively, you may wish to participate in a telephone interview, which
will be written up for publication in a future issue of Metaforix Mail.
to be considered, please send a brief note indicating your professional
perspective and the topic you would like to address.
To submit a column for consideration or to be considered for an interview,
e-mail editor@metaforix.com.
Please
note that the links contained in Metaforix
Mail are current as of the time of publication. Some of them may no longer
be operative at the time you access past issues.
BACK
TO TOP
To
Volume 1, Issue 23 January 2, 2001
To
Volume 1, Issue 25 January 16, 2001
|
|
