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The Taltos books (due to reading up to Jhegaala)

During the autumn I read the last instalment in Stephen Brust‘s Vlad Taltos series: Jhegaala. Again I put off the review due to work and life, but when I started to write it up this morning I realised that I should probably write up a bit on the whole book series as this is the 11th book. Thus this is more a review of the complete series up to Jhegaala more than on that specific book.

The books tells the life of said Vlad Taltos and is set in a very intriguing futuristic fantasy world. Humans are a minority in the mighty Dragaeran empire where most of the books are set. Vladimir Taltos is one of the few humans (called easterners by the Dragaerans – who logically consider themselves human – though considered ‘elfs’ by the easteners [our kind of human]) not living the life of a second class citizen. He is an assassin when the series start; working for one of the houses of said empire. The series of books follow his life and deeds.

Does this sound like a standard fantasy introduction to you? Yes, I realize that. It probably is! But it is pure entertainment. One of the reasons why I am reluctant to read fiction is not that I consider it a waste of time, but because some fiction books can get me hooked. Hooked in a very unhealthy way. This happened a lot when I was a child and teenager. I remember reading Robin Hood, Treasure island, and The Hobbit in class by sneaking them among my school books (and imagining that my teacher did not see. I guess she did, but figured that it was better that I was reading than staring out of the window daydreaming – my other main occupation during classes at that time). As a teenager I used to stay up very, very late reading. I just could not put down the book until it was done. I developed an interest in other things as self preservation one could say.

Anyway, the Taltos series hooks me in that way. My friend Bastian borrowed me the first couple of books for a weekend a few years back.  I read both in one session. Then begged him for the rest, and have been following it since.

What get me so focused on the Taltos books is mostly the way the world is presented, that Brust hints at future events and build a world structure that is more interfered by the reader than actually outspoken. Something alike the planting of clues by Rowling in the Harry Potter books of, or the  conjuring of a (almost) stringent – though fantastic – Discworld by Pratchett. Not that the style of the Vlad Taltos books are anything like, or even a combination, of those two bodies of work, but they are probably books read by many, so you will get my meaning. Brust has his very own style. Or should I say styles, because it keeps changing, especially between the early books. It is like Brust is trying out different ways of telling the stories, writing in different narrative modes, and borrowing from many genres.

This could give the impression that the books are somewhat unpolished, however I believe it an illusion; Brust is merely trying out styles and paying homage to the classic literature that inspired him. From detective stories, and pulp crime fiction, to classic adventure stories e.g. The three musketeers. Of course it is impossible that all books have the same quality, and in my view a few of them are not as compelling as the others (though still good). The funny thing is that it seem that other friends that have read the books does agree on this, but not on which books we like more or less. Guess that is a good sign.

You are probably somewhat annoyed that I said so little of the story up until now. I just do not know what to tell you without giving too much away. The series is up to 11 books now, and counting (with the addition of a few other works by Brust set in the same world). It is far from finished, but there is no direct epic theme or quest set through the whole volume, as in for instance Jordan’s The Wheel of time. There is simply stories, and episodes from Vlad’s (very exciting and adventurous) life, but during the course of the books one start to sense something bigger in the background. That is what make it so thrilling.

I could not say if Brust planned it this way or if he just make it up as he goes, but in any case it is quite entertaining. And entertainment is the word best describing the books. Rarely does he comment on our own world (as the tradition is in Science Fiction) or, as stated above, set up a multi-volume epic quest in the first books (as is too common in fantasy). Simply said the only major quest line is the mental development of Vladimir Taltos. Brust writes in a way that entertain, stimulates my need to see something bigger working in the background, and at the same time make me enjoy the reading quite some.

So, just now I managed to write quite a bit of text after reading Jhegaala, without saying anything of the book itself. Just about the series, and I haven’t even said what that is about! Sad I know. Well, I just can not without giving some of the story away. Vlad travel east to the land of humans, outside the empire. This is due to some events that happened in some earlier books, but before some others that has already been told as well, and does explain some things hinted at in those books.

Don’t go an buy it just yet though. Or rather do that, but then also buy the 10 previous books as well and read them in the order they were published (this is often a topic of argument when it comes to the Taltos books as they are not published in chronological order, though I do insist that you read  them in the order they were published.  The first book, Jhereg, was published already in 1983, but has since then been reprinted as part of the collection of the first three books bearing almost the same name.  Might be a good place to start. Work your way forward in publication order from there (and don’t expect Teckla [unrelated this is not one of my favorites], the last part of the Jhereg collection, to conclude anything  – the story continues, you need to read the rest of the books as well).

Finally: I can not remember if this is the case in all books, but some of my memories of the last few books is Brust’s uncanny talent for describing food and cooking. I have never been so hungry for proper food while reading before, nor so close to ever start drinking coffee.

.L

Posted 28 December 2009 † lukas § Reviews ‡ Comments (0) °

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Better late then …

My book reading has declined with as I have been getting back into the never ending flood of scientific articles competing compete for my attention. Funny enough, it has not declined as much as my apparent lack of writing even short reviews here. Sad. I have, in fact, been able to read some fiction during the autumn, but been to lazy to write any updates. I hope to remedy this right now by catching up on some of the books.

In September or so I felt like reading some science fiction again, and maybe even catch up on a classic. Said and done, I went out and grabbed Ringworld, a book I have been looking at it in the book shops for years but never picked it up. Larry Niven’s work is known as a masterpiece, and has inspired a lot of later literature.

The main protagonist is Louis Wu, human inhabitant of earth, some time in the future is contacted by a Puppeteer – one of the few alien races that the earthlings have had any contact with – called Nessus. The alien want Louis to help him mount an expedition. The destination is not imminently clear, but the puppeteer is very specific on the type of crew members he want. Louis and Nessus are in time joined by Speaker-To-Animals, from a race that has been at war with humanity several times, and by Teela Brown – a human chosen for her luck. The book tells of their journey and exploration of the distant Ringworld.

In my opinion this is an old school science fiction story, and I mean that in the absolute best possible way. Exploration and ideas has priority over the intrigues. Do not misunderstand me, there is a solid, well written story there and the character interaction is very nice. However, what impress me the most is the grandiosity of the ideas that is presented in the book, and how said characters and story is used to present them. The main concept might be the Ringworld itself. Inspired by the Dyson sphere it is one of those fantastic ideas that seems – at least ot me – to be one of the marks of the science fiction classics of the 1960′s and 1970′s. The exploration of what lies ahead of humankind through great fiction and great thinking.

There are a few passages where the age of the text shows. Ringworld was first published 40 years ago. For instance the time frame for some evolutionary ideas seem kind of short in my opinion. On the other hand 40 years ago genetic science was brand new. That is part of science fiction aging proces, and more importantly the idea is still as fascinating.

I would really recommend this book as one of the classics in SF literature. Why not pick it up on your next flight? It will be worth it, guaranteed. Ah, and if you, your kids, your workmate or any other gamer thought that Halo world came out of nowhere… read it!

.L
Posted 15 December 2009 † lukas § Reviews ‡ Comments (0) °

Why I am not on Facebook (and why it doesn’t matter to t.h.e.m)

When people sometimes ask me why I am not on facebook, or some of the other social networking sites (despite the title, this test is general) I usually joke it away saying something like “oh, I know way too much computer science for that”; just implying that, well, I don’t like to share so much information about my self in one space, and to one closed company.

Most people sympathize with that, even if they do not agree, and some have thought in a similar way, or at least read something in a news paper on how hard it is to get deleted from facebook, et c. So, what I am saying now does probably not make sense to you:  It does not matter, it is too late, if facebook wanted they would know a lot about you!

In fact how they could do this is something very, very fascinating once you start thinking about it! I will explain!

But first, let me say that I still won’t join. Call it out of principle…

So, let me explain what I mean. Let us use facebook as our example, because people know them. (Although any social networking site above a critical size  – that is with enough users – will do.) Then take a person not on facebook, me for instance. I have never registered, and not submitted any information.

However, one day a friend searches for me. Empty result, assuming my name is unique (which it is, more or less). Story ends there probably. No result, my friend does something else, facebook’s memory of the search is cleared.

However imagine instead that the facebook software instead made a table of all unmatched searches, and who made them.  The first time we may say that do not know anything, it could just be a misspelled name. However, say that more people searched. After a while enough people have typed in my name and come up empty handed for a system to say with some security that there may actually exist a person somewhere with the name Lukas Ahrenberg. It can not be a coincidence that (say) 10 people searched for that name.

So, the system then creates a secret file, let us call it a shadow page. This far it has only my name associated with it, but we will see how it can be filled with a lot of information.

So, with time, more people search for me, and the system saves this. At some point, we can start looking at the information they have of themselves on their facebook pages. What could be learned?

Well, probably most of them would be 28-35 years old. Pretty average for any facebook user, but the lack of early 20-year olds would probably say that I am at least 30. People from many different occupations made the searches, but a somewhat higher percentage (again than the average over all face book users) is in a computer related field of work, so it is a good guess that so am I. Many people from different universities, so he may be an academic.

Then, let us see, a few of the people searching have marked each other as friends. They share some common features. Schools perhaps, so they would know where I went to university, and maybe other schools. Some work places with a bit of guessing.

A somewhat higher percentage of both schools and searching persons might be Swedes, so there is a good guess for my nationality. By analyzing the type of connection, and location of the searchers we could find out where he is born, or at least have lived during his life. Again, analyze who searches and their location/relation to others.

There is already a lot of information on our shadow page, but we can do better. Keep it updated when new searches come in, narrow down the probabilities for all information, and check when they happened in time. For instance, within a week two searches on my name happens from people in Vancouver, Canada. Hmm, did he just get to know someone there? No these two people  have no direct relation, but they still live in the same city and work for the same University. Maybe he moved there?

And so on.

It is very interesting when you start to think about it!

By now you might say that “hey, this guy think that several thousands of persons will search for him on facebook, talk about ego”! True, probably not even 10 have searched for my name. But I am just trying to prove a point. I do not know how many would need to search for the probablilites to become small enough, however I am fairly certain that they are not so many as you may think. Remember that the links in facebook carry information; or at least meta information, they do specify types of relations. This specifies distances between people in facebook space, so those searching already have a relation to each other.  Combine this with some basic assumptions and statistics on the life pattern of modern day people, and I think you can narrow it down pretty good.

The requirement here is more that of a broad base, that is most a lot of people need already use the site. Which they do in the facebook case for instance, so one could identify a specific critical mass of the system after which these kind of information collection would be feasible.

The metainformation is also useful for the ‘John Smith’-type searches, where a name may not be as unique as mine. Sure there may be a lot of them, but you can probably assume that the people searching for the same ‘John Smith’ has some kind of relation to each other as well (living in the same city, same job… school, you get it). So, you will probably find a small cluster, separating the different Smiths.

There you have it. Shadow pages. Your life without the need to type in anything. It is enough that enough of your friends already have. Come to think of it, this is a business idea for facebook to serve already complete pages to stressed out CEOs.

The funny thing is that you can only “protect” yourself by being so average that you can not be picked out statistically (disapphear in the information, what I call online camouflage), or by having no friends – as soon as any network is big enough the relation of the information will create a synergy hinting towards the “missing parts” (you).

Finally, I just want to say that this is a thought experiment. I do not seriously think, or want to imply that facebook, or any other site of that size, actually does this. Ah, and before the privacy people start to yell at someone, well, this is not a problem with the networking sites. It is the way of information. Check what I said above about no protection (this is actually not an adequate word because the need of protection is based on your initial mindset about the whole thing, but anyway), this can not be forbidden.

If you see this as  a problem for you and not a thought experiment you should remember that:
a) information wants to be free! (weather you like it or not)
b) just because you are not paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!

.L

Update: As my friend Grzegorz points out… I break with the principles outlined below by actually having been “tricked” to create an linkedin profile. :) Shame on me. I can only defend myself by waving my hands, saying that this text is more meant as an extention of thought when it comes to social networking, and the role of the network.

And while I am on the updating streak: I got a couple of questions regarding the t.h.e.m … from other readers; that is just a fun reference Bosco from the Sam and Max games. This is for fun folks, I am not paranoid, and I don’t wear a tin-foil hat. I just like to muse over things.

Update 2 (March 2010): Seems like there are some research on this. Got noted on the web today. A study from MPI-SWS, and a news post on the subject. Will have a look on that paper.


Posted 11 September 2009 † lukas § Essays and musings ‡ Comments (0) °

Some initial thoughts on the future of online scientific publications

A recent PhD comic is a fun comment on something that I believe will become an important and serious topic of discussion in the science community in the near future (it has been going on for some time already). There are many parallels to open/free software and other on-line publications for instance. The crux for science is the quality control – the peer review process.

Last year I peer-reviewed quite a few manuscripts for a some different organizations, journals, and conferences. I had the time, motivation, and joy to take on almost all requests that I got. Thus, during the first months of this year, 2009, when the thank you emails started popping up I returned to a chain of thoughts that had been in my head for some years: closed publication archives in the age of the Internet. I made some notes, and the comic strip made me return to them once more.

What I have been thinking of is the danger for science when publishing for a closed audience, the funding problem of open access publications, and the management of quality control in free-for-all direct Internet publication.

This text outlines the problem as I see it, but I am not familiar enough with the subject to offer a solution at the time of writing. Merely my thoughts on the way forward.

Over a long period of time distribution has mainly been in hands of publishing houses and academic societies. This has partly been a question of tradition, but I guess it has mostly been the issues of the logistics and costs of publishing. The publishers have arranged for reviews to be performed, for type setting, printing, and distribution. The editors perform an important job by overseeing the flow of manuscripts and overseeing their review process.

The journals and proceedings have then been sold to academic libraries through subscriptions that funded the process. There is a small downside to this: access. To keep subscriptions to the wide flora of journals an institution has to invest a significant sum. In all it has been worth it though. The dissemination of research is an important cornerstone of modern science.

But the world moves forward, and things evolve. Today publishing on the Internet is easy and cheap. Especially self-publishing. (As this text is a proof of. No editor stopping me here for good or evil.) However, while most of the content on the Internet is easily accessible much of its scientific publications are so called closed access. That is, if you do not have an account on an institution with a subscription you will not be able to log in to the publication site and access the articles. It is a way for the publishers to make their subscriptions worth something and thus to be able to get paid.

I will leave the discussion if the cost is just to cover the service or to make money to be, it is not the focus of this text.

What is more interesting is the alternative, called open access. This form of publication has been spoken for extensively during the last few years, and many scientific institutions now publish their texts on-line for anyone to read. The idea is that science should belong in the public. The model for publishers of open access journals today, to keep making money, is to let the authors pay a fee instead of the reader. While this might sound good it can also create some problems. There are already some discussion on the ethics of a pay to publish service (if the journal rejects a paper they loose the fee which in some eyes is bad for business). Another issue is the fact that many research institutions still do not have budgets for publication to that extent.

In any case I believe that open access is the way everything needs to go. Especially on the Internet. It is something that will happen, and it has already happened in some other publishing fields.

Take comics as an example. The on-line comic industry is booming. Why? Because there are many talented people in the world with a story to tell. The syndicated comic industry is a tough place to break in to, but given the ease of self publication (a computer, scanner and, some server space is all you need), when rejected many of these people just said: ‘well, to hell with them, I will just do it on my own!’ . There is a huge amount of comics available on-line. Most of it free for the reader. Sure, some strips are creations that would never had stood a chance and people just do not come back to read them again. Still it did not cost the artist/write much to put it up there and try their luck! Other comics however beats much of what is in print today in numbers of readers.

What would stop a scientist with a rejected manuscript (justly because the research is flawed , or just unlucky by a tough editor, it does not matter), or with an accepted paper but no money for publication, from saying the same ‘well, to hell with them, I will just do it on my own!’ ? And put it out on-line by himself?

What would the results be?

There is a difference between on-line comics and on-line science. Comics are taken as a form of entertainment: an editor or a reviewer of a comic judges its artistic and entertainment value. If the reader doesn’t like it she does not return. In (natural) sciences we should judge if the paper justly describes a body of research and even the world around us. In today’s world, a scientific opinion is closely associated by some kind of “truth”; for good or bad. (Just look at how much different “scientific” studies are used in modern debate. Often supporting opposite claims.) Even if a reader does not like it she may still conclude that it is a true study.

The likeness between comics and science is that to find good publications I still trust reviewers. I do not want to wade through either bad comics or false science to find something I like.

Traditionally this has been the service of the publishers. If a manuscript is published by a good journal I know it may be of quality and I will give it a look.

Thus based on the efforts of editors and reviewers some work is spared the reader, and an amount of trust and prestige is given to the work. Thus, to my point: the risk is that we will lose the very important process of peer reviewing if we do not allow it to evolve and exist on-line.

I should make it clear that I truly appreciate the process of reviewing because I believe dissemination to be one of the pillars of our scientific world, and the quality of the work is helped greatly by reviewers.  The importance for us to share our findings and experiments in a form so that they are understandable and hopefully repeatable by our colleagues. This is a corner stone of science.

Peer reviewing serves a purpose for both the authors (they get early feedback on errors, critique  and can anticipate how their work will be received ) as well as the scientific community  – by trusting the peer reviewing process of a journal we accept that a paper holds a certain standard, and does not have to spend so much energy trying trying to judge if reading the publication is worth the time.

It is the way of science. Evolution. If a work can not withstand the testing questions from some scientific peers it should be developed further. The healthy critic scientific environment we create defines the quality of the disseminations. Science should ideally be published on its own merits.

So where does this put us? We need a peer review process, traditionally organized by the publishers, but open access triumphs closed any day. It is law of the net. Author fees will not work in my opinion. Today’s fees can be in the range of $1000 US and above for a short manuscript that does not even go to paper print, but just get hosted on a server. Compare that to free.

I think this leaves us with three possible futures. Or may be a combination.

The first option is that there will be a coalition of publishers that are deemed “trusted” arranging for reviewing and editorial processes. How they will be funded is then still an open question, and how they will be trusted. Traditions? An independent body? One can easily find arguments against both.

The second way things could go is that universities and research institutions gradually will take over the role of the publishers by self publishing research on the Internet with open access. To some extent we see this already today. The review process might be performed by a process where different institutions performed access for each other. This could however create its own problems of self interest as the independent role of the publisher is removed from the process. And what about new universities, do we trust them less?

The third option is that the review process itself evolves to adapt to the new rules of the net. Editor jobs of other type of open access content such as blogs are performed already today. Reviewing, and then foremost blind peer reviewing, could prove more of a challenge but I am fairly sure that as well could be arranged. Reviewing is already today performed for free by scientists as a service to the community, so costs will not be in the way.

I think it is clear that I favor the third future. Not because I wish to remove the publishing market or have anything against the publishing industry – I am a lover of publications, libraries, editing, and books after all; I would probably take a job as a scientific editor for a journal (at least for some time) if it was offered to me one day.

No, I favor it because I think it is the best possible option, and an intriguing development. The Internet is one of the greatest achievements in human history, and it give us a huge set of new powerful tools for scientific dissemination. For a start, it enables self publishing, I think everyone can agree on that. This leaves quality control. The role of editors and reviewers will still be needed. I believe peer review is needed, that is why I review a heap of papers per year, for free. But the process can not be costly and guarded by access control.

A scientist today does not get paid for her publications. She eat because her university and institute pay her a salary. Scientists publish because it belongs to the job of course, but like the artist we have a message that needs to be told.  Be it out of I-was-first self interest or belief in the truth of the findings. If a too strict or costly control and access process is imposed on the official publication route other ways will be used. That is the natural law of the Internet!

So, I believe in finding a third solution because we have to. If we do not, it could mean that the scientific results are not part of common knowledge in the future; and that threatens not only the way we publish, but the importance of science.

More and more people all over the world is gaining the education and time it takes to understand and participate in the modern scientific process. This will take humanity leaps forwards! Many residents of developing countries have no access to university libraries. But they will have the Internet! In one way or the other.

The Internet will always be there, until someone pulls the final plug. Scientific findings should be an easily accessible part of that. Would you want someone looking for the solution to a problem to read your paper on the matter, or that other guy’s manuscript (rejected or approved) that happens to be available on-line when they search?

—

As you can see this is a matter that interests me greatly. I believe in open access, and in the need for both the functions of the editor and the reviewer, but not necessarily in the roles of today. Given the time I will do some proper reading up on the subject. I have a faint memory of reading a link to proposals for on-line reviewing and such. In the mean time I apologize for any inconsistencies and errors in the text.

I guess I can summarize it as: I enjoy building my ivory tower, but the road there should be paved and the gate open.

.L

Posted 09 August 2009 † lukas § Essays and musings ‡ Comments (1) °

Write-up of some recent reading

I have unfortunately not had the time or discipline to write any reviews of books I finished reading the last few months. A bit late now to remember all the details, however I thought I would mention some of them just to keep count.

First out, we have  What are you optimistic about? edited by John Brockman from edge.org. It is a collection of essays from more or less famous people in science and science journalism answering the question in the book title. Contributions from Dennett, Diamond,  Doctorow, Dawkins; I have no idea why I just chose examples starting with the letter ‘D’, but there are many, many more authors (of almost every letter in the alphabet). Overall the essays are extremely thought provoking, and it is fascinating to experience all the different ideas. It should be said that some authors does of course focus very much on their own agenda and work, but many more just throw out very positive thoughts. It is really fun to read, and the fact that the essays are only from a single page up to just a few pages make this an ideal book to have in the bag. Just nice to pull up while taking a short bus ride or waiting for someone.

I have also read through Sun Tzu’s classical The art of war. Of course, this is not a book to read, but a book to study. Still, I am no warrior, or even spending any time in situations where such strategic advice could be very useful, so I think I can get away by simply reading it. (There are usually different kinds of editions of the Art of war market-like targeted for different kind of people. You can usually see them at airport book shops. The art of war for business for instance… why would you want someone to interpret the wisdom for you? What if they are wrong? I am worried enough that I can not read the original language of Master Sun…) However, it is a classic book, and it is a very interesting read because it still provokes many thoughts. Especially in this day and time. I guess much of wisdom that Master Sun learned and took the pain of writing down 2500 years ago or so still has not gotten in to some military heads today… I think people should read this book! It is interesting, you can find it online for free, but I got the really beautiful little edition from Penguin Books.

The third book I wanted to mention is the first instalment in the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson: Quicksilver.  A fried had borrowed me all three books in the series for a couple of years after I told him that I really enjoyed reading Cryptonomicon. I let the books be for a long time, because I had so many non-fiction books in the queue. I must also admit that I was kind of sceptical to the fact that some of the protagonists in Quicksiver shared names with those of Cryptonomicon, but set in a different time. It did not feel really right. However, I guessed that I worried too much. Once I started reading in April I was hooked. Really hooked. It was a great piece of fiction. It is of course a dramatic interpretation of scientific history, and I guess that some people may complain a bit about that. On the other hand, I bet that Stephenson has done some really thorough research before he started writing, and I do think it is a great way of presenting some very important breakthroughs in modern civilisation. There are fictional books about real wars and other sad things, why not about science and economy (though, personally I count science as positive, but am a bit sceptical about economy)? In any case, it is a great adventure book, and I would jump right on to the second book in the series, but as we are in the process of leaving Europe for a couple of years (2 x 23 kg is what you can bring on that flight) I have returned the books to my friend. I guess I will have to grab them from the first book store when we got our new home set up.

.L

Posted 07 June 2009 † lukas § Reviews ‡ Comments (0) °

The Red Notebook by Paul Auster

I picked up The Red Notebook in a very stylish bookshop in Innsbruck. The store was located a bit off the main street, and had huge night black shelves with bright green details. Quite designed, I think it was called Wiederin.

In any case, I bought some books in German, but then they also had this section of books in English. I had a look and The Red Notebook sort of stood out.

I had never heard about Paul Auster, but decided for the book anyway, and now I have read it.

While Auster is  mostly known as a novelist as far as I have been able to gather this book is a collection of non fictitious odds and ends. There are five parts: The red notebook, Prefaces, Interviews, A prayer for Salman Rushdie, and Why write? Part I, IV, and V are short essays, while II and III: prefaces and interviews, are longer texts.

The essays are the most interesting parts of the book in my opinion. I really appreciated their shortness, only a couple of pages each. Just brief stories from Auster’s life, anecdotes, memories, ideas. Many of them based on the idea of that kind of special coincidences that you only notice when you think about them. Like, when you remember a friend that you have not spoken to in years, and then he calls you on the phone later that day. Those things.

While all of these may seem trivial, there are mostly an idea or a concept that Auster wants to tell with all the stories and some have a meditative feeling. However what mostly impressed me was the language. Beautiful, and very smooth. It is hard to explain, but I had the feeling that it was so very easy to read, like walking without any weight. A beautiful text that just flowed across from the pages. I remember being very impressed while reading. I guess more than I was by the ideas themselves.

So, all in all. Not a book of grand ideas. Maybe not even a necessary book, but if you happen to have it and find yourself with some time. Read an essay or two, just to feel weightless in English.

.L

Posted 11 April 2009 † lukas § Reviews ‡ Comments (0) °

Last and First of Men by Olaf Stapledon

In his foreword to my S.F. Masterworks editon of Last and First of Men by Olaf Stapledon, Gregory Benford suggests that the reader skip the first four parts of the book and start reading at The fall of The First Men. The reason is that the first four chapters are documenting the “history” of the twentieth century, and the future of western civilization. As Stapledon wrote this in the late 1920ies (I guess, book published in 1930), and thus long before some of the 20th centuries most sad history and most amazing scientific discoveries (which sometimes was one and the same thing), what was future then is inaccurate history today.

I would not go so far as insisting on the same course of reading (the recommendation to skip chapter 1-4, was in turn written in the 1980ies). Even this alternative future has some interesting observations and thoughts; and although even the trajectories of that future seems improbable, I somewhat believe that is  because now almost 90 years later we have somewhat different values. So it is indeed an interesting story.

That said, I found the book picking up speed and becoming much more interesting after those first four chapters. So, if you are just giving it a try and not feeling too sure if you will read it or not maybe skipping the first four chapters is an acceptable plan. On the other hand, the text is not hard, so anyone with normal patience will be rewarded by the full scope of the book.

The story of Last and First Men considers humanity as a whole, and not only the Homo Sapiens, but all kinds of humanity that may follow. It is probably best described as a history of the future. The narrator is one of the last men living in a very distant future with knowledge of the whole human history, looking back and explaining to a reader of the 20th century. There is no protagonist or actual plot in the book; instead of drama and tension, there is imagination and philosophy, and written in a very captivating manner. One stay on just to see where everything will develop.

What impresses me about the book is the imagination and thought that has gone into the story. Naturally many of the elements of the story is influenced by the world view and knowledge of the 1920ies, and has to be read with this in mind. However now and then some truly brilliant idea pops out.  Like how a future species manage to map a three dimensional map of the galaxy by having access to many, many views of the night sky through the history.  And many more ideas must be there.

When it comes to technical and scientific ideas, I am impressed that the book foresees genetic manipulating/engineering. Stapledon does puts it some 40 million years into the future and the process is done by changes in the germ plasm -  DNA was not yet discovered when Last and First of Men were written! This does make that particular feat of science fiction writing even more amazing.  Germ plasm by the way is a term first used by the scientist August Weismann in conclusion with a (now defunct?) theory of inheritance (though germ plasm itself does exist in some organisms, see wikipedia), and was probably state of the art science in the early nineteen hundreds.

The book also discuss the process of adapting planets to host life. I do not know how early these ideas popped up in fiction literature, but I am sure that this must be one of the first.

The imaginative science and engineering ideas are however secondary to the future development of the human spirit and the mind. I believe Stapledon wanted to show how, in his view, a brilliant future is dependent on humanism and collaboration. In any of the future civilizations gaining any significant humanistic progress (and thus transforming to a higher order of mind) mankind lives in a world state where he regain his individualism at the same time as he is a part of something that (to me at least) seem like a perfectly working apparatus.

While I find that kind of world order very un-human (humans compete, unfortunately; however that does not mean we should not try to be above that), and in some way naive, I still must salute Stapledon for making me think about things.  It is quite easy to guess that Stapledon went into fiction to present ideas in philosophy and thoughts of the future to a broader audience (as indeed is indicated by his wikipedia page).

It is impressive to see how he imagined the future of civilization, and how human kind will rework itself in order to survive. The question that reading this book presents to at least me is: just how could  this enterprise be achieved?  Stapledon has his new world order, but as it does not seem plausible to me, I am left thinking: How could we get there? In the end I will have to agree with him that the Firs Men (us) could not achieve this. Then how future intelligence could, well that is one of the gems of thoughts that this book has provoked in me.

On the other hand, Stapledon’s point is that these states can not be attained by the First Men (us), and his narrator does indeed point out the fact that the reader could not possibly fathom some of the truths of the future.

Finally, Last and First of Men is worth reading for the thoughts on levels of conciousness and minds. Although not very deep, they are still of importance to the story. In the book higher order of conciousness of the different humanities are attained as a combination of stages of self-insight and social order, often with biological evolution as a base step. While much of this is too fictional, and also not really my style, I find it interesting. This because some kind of conciousness could be formed right here right now; in human communication, in the memes that live in our society. Or why not in the internet? (Was that in the Ender books by the way?) I think that complexity is the base, not necessarily order. This new conciousness would of course be something completely different than Stapledon’s (it will for a start not be more aware of us than we are of our basic neurons), and will not be of any higher order or anything that communicates back to the human mind. In any case, reading the books recalled those philosophical thoughts to me, and that is positive.

So, to end a (again too) long review: this is an interesting book filled with great imagination and philosophical ideas. Read it with the 1920-1930ies in mind, enjoy the future, and get inspired.

.L

Note: Last and First of Men seems to be avaliable through Project Gutenberg Australia.

Posted 28 March 2009 † lukas § Reviews ‡ Comments (0) °

The selfish gene (30th Anniversary edition) by Richard Dawkins

So finally I got time to finish both the book and the review. Lot of things been going on the last few months. Travels ,holidays, and work. In any case, after reading A devil’s chaplain by Dawkins, and also Daniel C. Dennet’s Breaking the spell I decided that it was well time for me to work my way through Dawkins other books. I picked up the 30th Anniversary edition from Uppsala English bookshop as I was back in my old student town before Christmas, put my other reading projects to the side (well except for some fiction and work, but anyway) and got started.

Why The selfish gene and not, say, The god delusion (which might even be more famous today)? Well two reasons. Firstly, as many others, I decided to start from the beginning of Dawkin’s publications. Published the same year that I was born, it is a shame that it has taken me so long time to get around to read it. Classic as it is. Secondly, while Richard Dawkins today is know for his vocal fight against charlatans and religions, that is in my mind just a consequence of his greater ideas. Religion is merely an example of a self a meme (at least that how is I see it now, but my learning of these concepts have merely begun), I wanted to read the original source. Or well, the popular scientific source of that idea. So, The selfish gene.

I like this book. And I especially like how Dawkins writes. I feel I could learn a lot about science writing just by reading him. The text is very clear, and easy to follow. There are not too many jumps or assumptions on what is needed to know. In my case, a basic nature scientific background was more than enough. Dawkins has ha lot of self esteem though, and there are occasional stabs at other writers. Nothing is cruel however; all is well argued.

The book itself starts by the introduction of replicators and what Dawkins (in this text) means when he refers to the gene. What follow is a pretty interesting tale on the basic principles of evolution. Step by step Dawkins argues for how the mechanics of replicators optimizes to propagate as efficiently as possible. On the level of the individual, family, and groups. One point Dawkins is trying to make is that there is no morally good or bad in this. The “selfish” part only applies as a way of describing the optimization (this is a word that the author does not use, but my own way of seeing things). The result is a very interesting explanation of how the world of living things (and well, replicating information) works; everything fits together in a very appealing way. Like only true explanations seem to do.

I read somewhere (was it in the preface, or on the web?) that some people had been left quite depressed, or at least disillusioned, after reading The selfish gene. From the fact that within this world view we are but vehicles for the genes. People who believe that the book robs the human of its spirit and free will. I think they miss the point. Yes, we are but biological vehicles, large lumps of collaborating matter. But that does not mean that we at the same time are anything but beings with our own minds and potential for creation. Everything is evolution. (Well, or the result of.)

What I mean is that we have our own will at another level of resolution than our genes drives our body. Today’s human is as much a product of genetic material as of memes building up our conciousness. However, just as little can the genes decide what you will eat for breakfast tomorrow as the will of the ‘I’ affect the genetic encoding of information.

There are two different discussions going on here. I think that Dawkins make this relatively clear in the book. Actually, I do not know if he even found it necessary to point out in more detail while he was writing. In any case, I will not try to go into the discussion of will and existence. I can not describe my views on the subject clear enough yet, and I do not want it to sound mystical. There is nothing of the sort about it.

In any case, this is a classical book from a evolution and meme-theory perspective. It is really worth the time and energy to read it. When one come to chapter 11 and read about ‘the new replicators’, everything is set up to queue the meme, and the text is very enjoyable. In addition, to me at least, it showed a completely new view of biology, or rather zoology. As an almost mathematical science, which I assume it actually is. When I was in high school, and had to make my choices for university, biology was my least favourite natural science subject (which does not mean that I did not enjoy it). Mostly this was due to the fact that we did it very much by puting names to flora and fauna on pictures. Or at least that is what it felt like. I appreciate that this is something that is really good to know, but I think that if we would have been taught this very more scientific biology, I would have been hooked, and then learned all names and parts in the passing. In any case, that is something extra that this book gave me. A curious interest for zoology. Thanks Professor!

.L

Posted 15 March 2009 † lukas § Reviews ‡ Comments (0) °

CUDA 2.1 emulation mode problems

A few days ago I had to try to run CUDA 2.1 in emulation mode on a windows machine with non-cuda compatible graphics hardware. To my surprise the examples did compile but not run. After some searching around I found the problem in cutil_inline.h. I think.  I posted the workaround at the nvidia forums. Just thought I should drop a small line here to double link so that it would be easier to find.

.Lukas

Posted 06 March 2009 † lukas § CS ‡ Comments (0) °

Programming graphics for Sharp LL-151-3D parallax barrier auto stereoscopic screens

Introduction

About a year ago I got asked if I could provide stereographic output suitable for a single person 3D screen (if I remember it correct it was the Sharp LL-151-3D, but I may be wrong) from one of my programs. As I was programming under Linux, and using CUDA with OpenGL for rendering I needed to figure out how to address the screen. I was not able to dig out any direct description how it worked on the Internet, and thus had to figure it out myself. Afterwards I thought that I should write up a simple example program and post here, but time ran away and I got other things to do. Recently I saw a question about this problem posted somewhere else and remembered what I wanted to do.

I do not any longer have access to the screen and thus can not test an example program for correctness, so I will just describe how to combine a stereo pair for the screen, and give the algorithm. Most graphics programmers in the need of the solution should be able to take it from there.

Background

An autostereoscopic monitor gives the viewer a three dimensional viewing experience without the need of any special glasses, just by looking at the screen. It achieve this by making sure that separate images are viewed by the observer’s left and right eyes. One technical solution for this is to use parallax barriers.

The basic principle is that a set of vertical barriers is located in front of the LCD to block view of more than one image from certain directions. An introduction can be found here. Exactly how this works does not matter in the following, but it allows for two different images to be visible at two different positions in space; corresponding to the left and right eye of an observer. If these images consists of a stereo pair a three dimensional image is perceived.

So in other words: the screen make sure that the frame buffer image sent to it is somehow split up to two different image that is mutually exclusively visible from two different positions in space. The problem is to figure out what screen data goes to the left image and what data goes to the right.

The Sharp screen, like (most) other 3D monitors is addressed through a normal VGA/DVI port, just like normal screens. This means that once you connect it to your graphics card you have to figure out a way to combine your two images so that the monitor correctly show them.

On expensive workstation graphics cards, such as the Nvidia Quadra series, the driver can automatically perform this for example using the OpenGL stereo buffer. However, today’s cheaper “gaming” graphics cards should have that functionality although I guess it is not present in the driver. (At least it wasn’t under Linux when I tried.) I was using a GeForce 9800GT as I recall, but you should be able to program this on any card with a pixel/fragment shader.

So, in order to program our card to send the correct image for stereo-viewing we need to figure out how it interprets the data. Combining several series of data (two images in our case) into a single series (one image) is called multiplexing. There are two different basic ways we can perform multiplexing for the Sharp screen: in time and in space (or well frequency, but I will call it space here).

If the Sharp screen worked by time multiplexing it would accept every second image as the right eye image and every second as the left eye image and then combine them into a single image (or show every second somehow, this is how shutter glasses work by the way).

This kind of screen works by spatial multiplexing though. (I figured this out by implementing the method below and testing. However, it was a fairly safe bet as the barriers themselves divide the resolution of the screen.) So the left and right eye images must be combined into a single image in the frame buffer of the graphics card.

Screen image format

There are of course a great number of different ways to take data from two RGB images and combine them into a single one. The simplest is probably to put the left image in the left half and the right image in the right half. However, considering that the parallax barriers are thin vertical strips over the entire LCD this would require the screen hardware to rearrange the data i an extra processing step. Thus this seem unlikely.

Rather, it would make sense for the monitor to require the image in a ready-to-display format. Thus, in the exact striped pattern as the parallax barrier.

Following this, it would make sense to try to take the first pixel column from the left eye image, the second from the right eye image, the third from the left again, and so on. If one does this however the result is not a stereoscopic image, but rather a striped, blurry version with offset colors. Clearly something is wrong with this approach.

This is the stage where I have seen some experiments at before. The screen does seem to display a different image for each eye, but not the correct one. And what is up with the colors?

Figure : Pixel geometries by Peter Halasz (CC 3.0 Share alike license). Our LCD layout is the lower right quadrant.

Figure 1: Pixel geometries by Peter Halasz (CC 3.0 Share alike license). Our LCD layout is the lower right quadrant.

Focusing on that last question will let us solve the problem. Most color LCD screens has a separate sub-pixel, or element, for each red, green, and blue component. See for example Wikipeda and the lower right part of Fig. 1. A layout like this would create a RGB columns. What if the parallax barriers blocks color channels in stead of whole pixels? This would actually benefit the smoothness of the whole image by making the ‘jumps’ between barriers smaller. So, is it possible to have barriers arranged over the individual color channels and still manage to have the right red, green, and blue values to show simultaneously for each image?

The solution

Figure: A part of an LCD line with the different red, green, and blue elements covered by left and right polarizing barriers. Dashed vertical lines indicate pixel borders. The two different wavy patterns are Left (L) and Right (R) polarizing barrier respectiely.

Figure 2: A part of an LCD line with the different red, green, and blue elements covered by left and right polarizing barriers. Dashed vertical lines indicate pixel borders. The two different wavy patterns are Left (L) and Right (R) polarizing barrier respectively.

It turns out the the answer to that question is yes, and this is also the solution. Consider a barrier pattern of the same size as the color elements. Fig. 2 shows a part of a screen line. The color elements repeats: red, green, blue; red, green, blue; with three elements making up a screen pixel. However, the left and right barriers alternate per element (and not per pixel) as indicated by the pattern overlays and the L and R labels in the image. Now, let us have a look at what information are sifted out by the two different barriers, as shown in Fig. 3.

The L and R barrier separate the image displayed on screen into two separate images. The upper part of the image shows the L(eft) part and the lower the (R)ight part. The boxes show perceived pixels in the new image lines. As can be seen both new images still provide a series of red, green, and blue color triplets. The order of the color elements within one triplet has changed, but this does not have any effect on the color of the perceived pixel.

Figure 3: The L and R barrier separate the image displayed on screen into two separate images. The upper part of the image shows the L(eft) part and the lower the (R)ight part. The boxes show perceived pixels in the new image lines. As can be seen both new images still provide a series of red, green, and blue color triplets. The order of the color elements within one triplet has changed, but this does not have any effect on the color of the perceived pixel.

Note that in Fig. 3 that the barrier separate every second color element into the left image and every second into the right image. The resulting images still have periodic red, green, and blue triplets that may be interpreted as pixels. The boxes in Fig. 3 denotes the a perceived left and right image pixel. (It is larger than the screen pixel, but that is only natural as we multiplex two images in the screen image.) As can be seen, the triplets’ color elements are permuted internally so that the left image has a red, blue, green order and the right one a green, red, blue order. This does not matter however. The perceived color of a pixel is the combined contributions from each of the color components. (This is why all the different pixel geometries shown in Fig. 1 works and all gives the same colors.) What matters is that one element of each base color lies next to each other.

This layout explain why we can not simply take every second pixel in the screen image from every second of the two images we want to multiplex. Each screen pixel gets chopped up so that two of its color elements go to one of the perceived images and one to the other. Thus any perceived pixel will have one wrong color component (and thus also intensity) contribution. This should lead to somewhat blurred image with a color offset, which is exactly what the every second pixel experiment showed.

Now, instead what we need to do when combining the images is exactly the inverse process of Fig. 3: for each pixel on screen we take two color components from one image and one from the other. For the next screen pixel we take the single remaining component from the first image pixel and the two remaining components from the second image pixel, and so on. The algorithm below outlines how to combine two images using this method.

Input: fullScreenWidth, fullScreenHeight // Size of the
                                         // full screen framebuffer
Input: LeftImage, RightImage // Image arrays of size
                             // fullScreenWidth /2 , fullScreenHeight
Output: FrameBuffer // Image of size fullScreenWidth, fullScreenHeight

for y = 0 to fullScreenHeight -1
 for x = 0 to fullScreenWidth -1
   if(x is even) then
      FrameBuffer[x,y] = RGB( LeftImage[x/2,y].red,
                              RightImage[x/2,y].green,
                              LeftImage[x/2,y].blue);
    else
      FrameBuffer[x,y] = RGB(RightImage[x/2,y].red,
                             LeftImage[x/2,y].green,
                             RightImage[x/2,y].blue);
    end if;
  end for;
end for;

The above algorithm should multiplex the two images correctly so that if a stereo pair is used as input the resulting perceived image from the Sharp screen (with 3D turned on) is indeed a 3D image.

As I stated in the introduction, I am not able to provide any screen shots or code from my own experiments, but this is anyway how it works. Let me know if you spot any errors in the text, and if anyone with this screen implements a program after reading this it would be fun to know that it worked out for you as well.

.L

Posted 04 February 2009 † lukas § CS ‡ Comments (0) °