Researchers Demo Flippable-Page E-book Reader

holy_calamity writes "E-readers are getting better but still limit users to keyboard-style interaction. Researchers at Berkeley and Maryland Universities have changed that with a reader that has two "pages". The two displays can be moved like a real book's pages to leaf through a document, or detached to compare and share virtual pages. If they are folded back to create a tablet with displays on each side, you can turn it over to flip pages. A video shows it in action." You may be reminded of the promised second-generation OLPC device, which looks somewhat similar.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iRobot military robots emigrating

Unmanned robots sold to allied nations such as Israel and the United Kingdom are set to make up approximately 15 percent of the U.S. manufacturer's industrial-division revenues for 2008.

Some Teachers Embracing Wikipedia, While Others Blame It

We've seen this before, of course. There are teachers and professors out there who blame Wikipedia for mistakes students make, and even those who demand that the entire Wikipedia be blocked in schools. However, there are those who are a lot more reasonable about it, recognizing that Wikipedia is just one source among many, and there's value in embracing Wikipedia: teaching kids what it is and how to use it reliably. That seems likely to be a lot more effective and useful for training kids how to critically judge the reliability of information out in the real world. Blocking, banning or blaming Wikipedia seems only designed to put one's head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. That's not preparing anyone for the real world.

Techdirt reader cram writes in to point out two contrasting articles that show this dichotomy of thought in action. First is a report out of Scotland last week blaming Wikipedia for kids getting failing grades. This, of course, seems ridiculous. What it really means is that teachers have failed to actually teach kids how to use Wikipedia properly. It's not the fault of Wikipedia -- which is merely an information source. It's a failure of teachers to teach kids how to properly use it. That's why it's nice to see the corresponding article, where students in Australia are now going to have a course available on how to use Wikipedia. That seems a lot smarter than just blaming Wikipedia.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Why Hourly Billing IS Unethical--A Theory

A lot has been written on whether or not hourly billing is unethical.  My colleague and friend, Ric Payne, recently weighed in with his thoughts, mostly in response to something Rob Nixon out of Australia wrote in his newsletter.  Obviously, Ric thinks hourly billing can be ethical.

Our friend and colleague Mark Bailey also weighed in on his Blog, arguing that hourly billing is unethical.  (This post also prompted Mark to apologize to Ric, but I’m going to avoid that debate).

But I think all the posts missed the main reason why hourly billing is not ethical.  To explain, we have to discuss what, exactly, is ethics, as well as a bit of philosophy.

Ethics—originating from the Greek word ethos, meaning habit—is the study of morality.  Morality is concerned with social practices defining right and wrong.  It exists prior to the acceptance by any one individual.  In other words, morality is not a personal choice but a social construct.  I’m sure Hitler thought he was ethical.  So what? 

Ethical theory is a reflection on right actions.  Aristotle wrote that ethics was a branch of politics, and since morality and politics are inseparable the political question is, “How ought we to order our life together?” After all, you would not need to study morality or ethics if you were stranded on an island, since there would be no one to be “just” or “unjust” to.

The Josephson Institute of Ethics, one of our favorite resources for ethics education, defines ethics this way:

Ethics is about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay.  There are two aspects to ethics:  The first involves the ability to discern right from wrong, good from evil, and propriety from impropriety.  The second involves the commitment to do what is right, good and proper.  Ethics entails action; it is not just a topic to mull or debate.

Rather than merely analyzing the consequences of actions, there exists a philosophical theory that holds that one should do what is right.  This is known as deontology, a Greek term meaning duty. 

Deontologists believe in universal principles (thou shall not steal, murder, etc.) and that consequences should not be the only criteria used to judge moral behavior.  The leading deontologist is the German Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).  Kant proposed two questions, “What may we hope for?” and “What ought we to do?”

Kant’s theory places motives for actions as higher importance than the consequences of those actions.  In other words, one should do what is right, for the right reasons.  If one is honest only because they believe honesty pays, it’s not as moral as those who are honest because it is the right thing to do, according to Kant.

Kant proposed broad principles in order to provide a framework for making moral decisions, described as categorical imperatives:

1. Act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law (e.g., no stealing).

2. Act so that you treat humanity whether, in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only (people are to be respected because they have dignity.  Moral agency is what gives humans dignity).

3. Kingdom of Ends formulation:  You should act as if you were a member of an ideal kingdom of ends in which you were both subject and sovereign at the same time.
   

If you apply this test to hourly billing, you find it fails miserably on all the questions, especially the first and third.

Would you want hourly billing to become universal?  Would you want all businesses to utilize it? 

If the Golden Rule is true—treat others as you yourself would want to be treated—how can one defend the morality of hourly billing?

Now Ric countered that he believes it’s ethical as long as the customer knows in advance what the price is, and agrees to it.  That’s true. 

But the reality is, most firms that bill by the hour do not quote fixed prices up-front, they quote hourly rates, or at best, a range of prices.  Again, would you accept that from a hotel, an airline, a grocery store?

My earthquake insurance companies quotes me a fixed premium, even though it really doesn’t know the costs of a future earthquake.  It’s called taking a risk, the source of all profits.

Hourly billing also misaligns the incentives between professionals and customers, and there exists much empirical evidence for this.  Just look at any ABA survey, or advertising survey.  For a detailed explanation of the ethics of hourly billing, the best book is The Honest Hour, by William G. Ross.  This book documents all of the ethical challenges caused by the billable hour in the legal industry.

Ross actually concludes, like Ric, it can be ethical policy; again missing the point completely.

As Aristotle wrote, “It’s not easy to be a good citizen in a bad society.”

Hourly billing creates a bad culture, focused almost exclusively on the convenience of the seller, not the customer.

It’s not how you purchase anything else in your life.  You wouldn’t tolerate it for one minute if any other business tried to price this way.

Hence, it’s unethical. 

I think Kant would agree.

How Surveillance Hurts Free Speech

Sunday's LA Times has a great opinion piece by political writer Julian Sanchez, situating the current debate over FISA reform within the long and sordid history of illegal surveillance in the US.

Going back to the '20s, Sanchez reviews multiple occasions when authorities have used spying powers not to protect the country, but to further the political aims of parties and politicians:

The original FISA law was passed in 1978 after a thorough congressional investigation headed by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that for decades, intelligence analysts — and the presidents they served — had spied on the letters and phone conversations of union chiefs, civil rights leaders, journalists, antiwar activists, lobbyists, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices — even Eleanor Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The Church Committee reports painstakingly documented how the information obtained was often "collected and disseminated in order to serve the purely political interests of an intelligence agency or the administration, and to influence social policy and political action."

Sanchez traces the history of US government surveillance abuses by both Democrats and Republicans throughout the 20th century. He emphasizes that surveillance isn't just a threat to privacy — it's a threat to free speech. That's why today's wiretapping debate matters, even to those who may think they have nothing to fear:

It's probably true that ordinary citizens uninvolved in political activism have little reason to fear being spied on, just as most Americans seldom need to invoke their 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech. But we understand that the 1st Amendment serves a dual role: It protects the private right to speak your mind, but it serves an even more important structural function, ensuring open debate about matters of public importance. You might not care about that first function if you don't plan to say anything controversial. But anyone who lives in a democracy, who is subject to its laws and affected by its policies, ought to care about the second.

The Atlantic Monthly's Matthew Yglesias follows up, putting the current legislative fight over immunizing telephone companies in context:

Given the long bipartisan record of wiretap abuse, and given the greater range of possible abuses under modern technological circumstances, it's all-but-inevitable that if we further weaken the restrictions on the White House's ability to act, that abuses will happen.

It's really baffling to me that Republican members of congress — and all-too-many Senate Democrats — don't see it this way. Unlimited, unaccountable power will be abused, and not always in ways that Republicans like.