Curating the Internet: Science and technology micro-summaries for October 3, 2019

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(Edited)
Authored by @remlaps

Dark stars could reveal the existence of a mirror world; Jaron Lanier promotes Data Dignity - data ownership and paid Internet services; Stephanie Wehner is inventing a quantum Internet; On robot reliability, humans care more about mistake-free operation than transparency; and sewer workers discover ancient Egyptian temple of Ptolemy IV

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  1. STEEM Dark stars as a cosmic window on a mirror world - In this post, @lemouth continues a discussion on the possibility that our visible world exists as one half of a mirror world, where visible matter is balanced by dark matter. In this conception, the mirror world would contain dark stars, the analog to stars in the visible world, but made up of dark matter. According to the post, like visible stars, these dark stars would emit dark photons. The article explains that a consequence of the electromagnetic force is that visible photons are sometimes converted to dark photons, and vice versa. This implies that dark stars would emit visible matter, and that visible matter could be detected by space observatories like Gaia or Chandra. (This post has a 10% beneficiary setting to direct rewards to @lemouth)

  2. JARON LANIER FIXES THE INTERNET - In three short videos, Jaron Lanier discusses the current problems with privacy on the Internet. For years, Lanier has been saying that people are being short-changed by the advertising industry in the trade-off between information and services, and that the current internet economy incentivizes fake and misleading, sensationalistic information. The problem, he says, is "You're giving away everything, for almost nothing," and that sophisticated computers and algorithms have turned into a, "crazy behavioral manipulation scheme." In this series of short videos, he discusses the problem further and proposes a solution. In short, his proposed solution is that people should pay fees for the Internet services that they use, and they should be paid for their data by the people who use it. In order to accomplish this, he imagines a concept that he calls "Data Dignity", which involves the use of a Mediator of Individual Data (MID) to guarantee - by law - that people are paid for their data, and that they continue to earn royalties over time. By doing this, he says that an average family could earn somewhere around $20k per year, information on the Internet would become more accurate and reliable, and that the big tech companies would like the scheme because relevant data would be more accessible and it would benefit them financially, even if their relative market shares declined.

  3. To Invent a Quantum Internet - In this interview, Stephanie Wehner discusses ideas from a 2018 paper where she was the lead author. She says that the idea is not to replace the existing Internet, but to augment it by adding quantum capabilities in the places where it can be useful. She points to privacy from "man in the middle" attacks as one of the advantages, and suggests that securing and distributing quantum keys would be an early application. The article goes on to describe how quantum networking could enable a manufacturer to provide plans to a supercomputer for simulation without actually revealing the plans in a way that could be stolen. A final benefit from research into a quantum network is suggested in her belief that the work will yield new insights in the fields of quantum physics, computation, and even social sciences.

  4. When it comes to robots, reliability may matter more than reasoning - New research in the area of "human-agent teaming (HAT) led by the US Army finds that humans lose confidence in robots when they make mistakes, even when the reasoning is transparent. In the research, human volunteers witnessed a robot making a mistake, and the researchers explored to see how the mistake impacted human perceptions of reliability, even when the human knew the reasoning behind the mistake. In conclusion, the researchers determined that observing the mistake colored the human's perception of reliability, regardless of the reasoning behind the mistake. However, when the agent was collecting or filtering information, transparency of reasoning did improve the human's perception of reliability, so this is consistent with earlier studies finding that context matters when measuring the impacts of transparency. h/t Communications of the ACM

  5. Remains of Ptolemaic temple unearthed in Egypt's Sohag - While drilling for a sewer renovation project, workers in Kom Shakau village in Tama township in northern Sohag uncovered the ruins of a temple that belonged to Ptolemy IV (221-204 BC). Drilling has now been suspended, and an archaeological project has been launched. The ruins include portions of limestone walls and floors as well as engravings and inscriptions carrying the ruler's name. The article says that the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty began during the reign of Ptolemy IV. h/t archaeology.org

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3 comments
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Thanks for featuring my post! I have actually also found the second one interesting. It sounds a bit weird and complicated to put in place, to my own taste :)

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I agree that I like the second one, but it would be challenging to put it in place. Lanier has been developing this line of argument for years.

Two obvious challenges: First, I'm not sure how you convince people to start paying for something that they're already getting for free (although Cable TV and Netflix both managed to do that in their own times.). And second, in theory I really like the data-broker idea. But in practice (aside from quantum computing) once someone has access to your data I don't know how you stop them from continuing to use it and ducking out on the royalty payments.

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This post has been voted on by the SteemSTEM curation team and voting trail. It is elligible for support from @curie and @minnowbooster.

If you appreciate the work we are doing, then consider supporting our witness @stem.witness. Additional witness support to the curie witness would be appreciated as well.

For additional information please join us on the SteemSTEM discord and to get to know the rest of the community!

Thanks for having included @steemstem in the list of beneficiaries of this post. This granted you a stronger support from SteemSTEM. Note that using the steemstem.io app could have yielded an even more important support.

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