Nothing Is a Closed System

I find the intentions of "open systems" compared to "closed systems" fascinating.  Proprietary Apple is airtight compared to Windows which is locked-down compared to free-ranging Linux and others.  I was recently struck by an article by acting coach Anthony Meindl.  It made me think of computer code from a fresh angle:

If you look at your life, the tremendous amount of effort you had to exert to overcome obstacles and get to where you are today speaks of the possibility of your spirit. But it also shows that nothing is a closed system. Nothing. To think otherwise is to limit something that is limitless. That is—you.

Next time we run up against the limits of proprietary code, we might appreciate our strengths, and leverage our creativity to triumph over closed-mindedness.  Not encouraging hacking here, just resourcefulness.

Internet Filtering Is More Useful Than Insidious

There’s a book out this week—which I haven’t read—entitled, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. But I did watch a ten-minute talk given by its author, Eli Pariser, and I found his thesis somewhat self-evident and at the same time alarmist.

I hope all of us already effectively deal with the filtering Pariser is talking about. For example, the filtering of friends on Facebook example he cites is a simple options setting, and the moment it was introduced, people felt it and let each other know about it, which is the way the internet deals with unwanted filtering.

If you go to a wide variety of sites, and create intelligent, drill-down searches, unwanted filtering is not going to be a factor. You should also “search” using a variety of search engines and employ other tools as well. I often search on Amazon, as just one example, to find what’s been written, when, and who wrote it.

Filtering can only successfully direct you to choices if your choices are directed. The more you cast about in many directions for distinctly different, unrelated items, the less unwanted filtering has any relevance at all, while each new search you make creates filtering you’ve actively chosen.

Pariser says human editors have been replaced by algorithmic gatekeepers. Algorithms are necessary for the internet to function—and they don’t have the last word. Editors and journalists always and will forever serve a function, whether the model is the past where the power was vested in a trusted few, or today on the internet where we all have more gate-keeping options. Most of us would still rather trust a professional whose job it is to keep the gate than to rely solely on our own vetting of everything—of course we trust sources. The fact that we can choose among many more sources, and even find obscure bits of information ourselves, is surely a good thing—provided we are responsible enough to make some effort to discover the truths we need to know. It’s still far easier in our filtered internet universe in which the filters are easily removed or bypassed than in the old world in which they were opaque and unavoidable.

The internet is like Wikipedia, astonishingly self-correcting. We have far more power to get the straight story than any generation before ours. Filters, understood properly, are useful tools, not blinders.

My Favorite Algorithm

There are algorithms for everything.

My favorite represents a combination of numbers in a single number. The value of that number is determined as the sum of all 2 ** (N-1) for each N included in the set.

For example, the set containing 1, 7, and 11 is:

(2**0) + (2 ** 6) + (2 ** 10) = 1089
(1) + (64) + (1024) = 1089

This algorithm was particularly useful when computer space and processing time were at a premium. But even today, it’s cool to be able to “say” several specific things with a single number.

The way it works is that each combination will have its own unique number, no matter how many items are in the set, using powers of 2.

Best to limit the range of “N” so you can decode your result number expediently. The software I know that employed this algorithm used it for a range of 1 to 15.