I seem to be making $800 mistakes these days. Got the flight information wrong on the flights to HCIC, and this past Saturday I crashed my bike on wet roads, which destroyed the camera I was carrying and my front brake. Here’s hoping that these things don’t happen in threes…

7:00 – 8:00 Research

• Codev2 by Lawrence Lessig:Lessig’s “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace” was published in 1999. The book quickly began to define a certain vocabulary for thinking about the regulation of cyberspace. More than any other social space, cyberspace would be controlled or not depending upon the architecture, or “code,” of that space. And that meant regulators, and those seeking to protect cyberspace from at least some forms of regulation, needed to focus not just upon the work of legislators, but also the work of technologists.Code v2 updates the original work. It is not, as Lessig writes in the preface, a “new work.” Written in part collectively, through a Wiki hosted by JotSpot, the aim of the update was to recast the argument in the current context, and to clarify the argument where necessary.
• More C&C
• This is tantamount to stating that the social universe resembles the organic universe of Aristotle, in which there can be distinguished a centre and a periphery, a top and a bottom, and a high and a low, rather than the mechanical universe of Newton, homogeneous and lacking any one favoured direction. Without wasting words, we may state that in decision making there is no tabula rasa, any more than there are many decisions that are disputed once they have been taken. [p 113]
  • To Plato and Aristotle alike the universe is spatially finite; it is a sphere, of which the outer portion is divine in nature, the central human and imperfect, the former through a descending series giving the law to the latter.
  • Using the geocentric approach (Normocentric?  Valocentric?) to display/mapping could certainly be a mapping paradigm that could work. Looking at interactions as a sphere allows for multiple perspectives, multiple poles, and interesting projections down to 2D. And from a belief space perspective, people can take their rightful place near the center. And as well, someone who is near the periphery of belief can know that too.
• …consensus polarized in the direction of emerging norms [p 114]
  • Are norms poles that have a position and velocity in belief space? Or are they a manifestation of the group behavior, sort of the position of the average future center (position and variance?) of the group. In other words, do norms have an attraction or are they an implicitly agreed on, emergent, set of beliefs that exist at a certain time? And along these lines, are there patterns that persist over different time spans? I would bet that a circling flock has a centroid of (persistent beliefs), while a stampede doesn’t. This ties back to Arednt’s description of totalitarianism and terror where change is the only constant.
• On the whole here we are looking at, broadly sketched out, the picture of what must occur when a problem evokes a large-scale movement of opinion. People participate in the debate frequently and with intensity. The series of decisions leading to consensus polarizes towards the norm that is emerging and, by this very fact, emphasizes it. Thus these decisions cause the norm to crystallize and facilitate its being embraced fully by each individual, who feels himself a little its creator. Therefore no coercion or forced consensus should enter into it. [p 117]
  • Support for the idea that the norms are not a pole, but a projection of the future?
• Attitude polarization, familiarization and group process
• What happened where a feminist or anti-feminist confederate was present? Of course both were confronting an attitude that had crystallized, had become solidly fixed, and was almost a cultural cliche. The feminist confederate was no longer proposing anything new, but was defending what had become a norm and his or her influence was reinforcing conformity, whereas the anti-feminist confederate seemed to be utterly conservative, a reactionary deviant. Upon examining the data, it was found that their influence had little room in which to be exerted, and that it was weak. Thus the feminist confederates succeeded in polarizing somewhat during the discussion, but to a significant degree (F = 6.56;p < .01), the consensus. On the other hand, the confederate defending an anti-feminist position brought about no reaction, as if this was already ruled out (see Table 5.4). This is why one can no longer observe the former bi-polarization, when the discussions on the status of women set pro-feminists against their adversaries. At any rate the heated atmosphere had cooled down. The researchers noted that there were fewer arguments, and that the discussions were flat and unenthusiastic. An air of nostalgia hung over the groups, who seemed to be asking themselves, ‘But where are the debates of yesteryear?’, just as the poet Villon had once asked, ‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ They knew they were waging a fight that had been won by others quite a time ago. [p 120]
  • This would be the old study, where norms are emerging (beliefs in collision):  This would be stable, evolving norms:  And this would be something like a fixed ideology 
  • Here’s some charts of ideology in Congress. Picture links to article. The variance is interesting – it implies in the chart on the left that democrats are becoming less diverse, while republicans seem to be breaking into sub-populations(?). 

9:00 – 5:00 BRI

• Need to write up stories
• Need to discuss refactoring GeocoderService
• Stories
  • Mock tests for the interface 3 points (fix unit tests)
  • Modify GeoIngestService for document-centric storage of GEM Facts – 5 points
  • Refactor GeoMesaIngestService to GeoMesaDatabaseService – 5 points
  • Business logic for publicly accessible methods
    • Store (produce stunt GEM Json) – 5 points
    • Queries (8 points)
      • By geo coordinate
      • By document and geo coordinate
      • By location name and geo coordinate
    • Deploy – 3 points
• Wrote teh above up as an email and sent off to Matt
• Working on getting the json assembled but the serializer is choking on a null elevation. There is a way to get elevation data from Google, but it requires a separate call. Stuffing in zeros for the time being. Oops:

• private double latitude; private double longitude; private Double elevation;

• No, that’s a feature, but the serializer chokes. Not sure what to do and it looks like everyone has left?

• {  "name": "elevation",  "type": ["null", "double"], <- serializer does not like this  "default": null,  "doc": "The elevation in meters. May be negative, 0, positive, or null, if unknown."  }