2013 Winter Information Issue
True or False: Information Technology is Ruining Our Kids
In September, a clip of Louis C.K. on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show went viral. The comedian launched into a rant about smartphones and how information technology is toxic, especially for children. “They don’t look at people when they talk to them and they don’t build empathy,” C.K. said. “You know, kids are mean. And it’s […]
Would Twain Have Tweeted?
Would Mark Twain tweet if he were around today? Quite likely—he was an enthusiastic early adopter of the high-tech media of his era and an aphoristic genius. “Not that he’d tell the world what he had for breakfast,” says the Bancroft Library’s Harriet Smith, one of the editors of the two recently published volumes of […]
The NSA, the FBI, and Cal
Long before Edward Snowden’s disclosures about massive National Security Agency surveillance programs like Prism and Bullrun, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI cast a wide intelligence net over the nation, especially public institutions, including the University of California. Then, as now, the nation entrusted its intelligence agencies with great power and secrecy to protect it from foreign […]
Gadzooks, MOOCs!
“I’ve been rereading Christensen a lot,” says Armando Fox. The Berkeley computer science professor is referring to business guru Clayton Christensen, famous for his research on how innovations can unsettle existing institutions. For example, how the PC upended the market for mainframes, or how the new business and publishing dynamics of the Internet have thrown […]
Does the Library Have a Future?
Enter the campus from North Gate, stroll south down the wide path from the top of the rise into the swale of Memorial Glade and there it is, front and center, inscribed in granite in letters 3 feet tall: THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY. Doe Library, a century old last year, magnificent heart of UC Berkeley. But […]
Riding the iBomb: Welcome to Life in the Age of Exploding Information
The Acxiom Corporation has me down as Arab. Acxiom is a commercial data broker based in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Big Data company that builds consumer profiles by aggregating information from various public and consumer databases. It then packages and sells that information to marketers who want to more accurately target ads to consumers. One […]
Out of the Gate
Finding My Disorientation We are cycling through Thailand in the scorching heat. Carlos and I arrived in Bangkok six days ago, where we met our friend Laura to plan our cycle tour through Southeast Asia. This is our second day riding and we’re still learning how to find and buy street food. A vendor stands […]
Clark Kerr’s Classic: The Uses of the University Turns 50
Fifty years ago, Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, delivered a speech at Harvard about the university’s role; his talk would roil academe. Some would praise him for delivering an incisive and unflinching description of the modern university, while others would savage him for advocating a “factory” that served industry and government at […]
University Champion
CAA 2014 Alumnus of the Year William Powers Jr. You would not have picked 17-year-old William Powers Jr. for a firebrand when he drove his ’55 Chevy to campus in 1963. He was a gangly blue-eyed kid, nervous, certain that everybody was smarter than he was. He was a chemistry major but always avoided raising his […]
Science Wants to Be Free
In the age of the Internet, why is so much research inaccessible? On January 6, 2011, 24-year-old hacker and activist Aaron Swartz was arrested by police near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for downloading several million articles from an online archive of research journals called JSTOR. After Swartz committed suicide in January 2013, questions were […]
Sculpting Geometry
A Berkeley professor explores the art of math (and vice versa). Carlo Séquin lives in a world of impossible objects and mind-bending shapes. Visiting the computer science professor emeritus’s office is like taking a trip down the rabbit hole. Paradoxical forms are found in every corner, piled on shelves, poised on pedestals, hanging from the […]
Metal Machine Music
Berkeley researchers write programs that jam. From autoworkers to telephone operators, many employees have lost their jobs to robots. Could session musicians be next? It’s more likely than you might think. A trio of Berkeley researchers is developing computer programs that can hold their own with the best jazz artists. The study is part of […]
Tracking Transit
How much is public transit worth? The question at the center of Daniel Chatman’s latest paper seems like it already should have been answered: Just how much is public transportation worth to a city? Although city planning papers had examined public transit’s financial effects before, Chatman, an assistant professor of city and regional planning, found […]
Lizard Legwork
New species lurk in unexpected places. Some of California’s most inhospitable-seeming areas—the Mojave Desert, the runway of LAX, and an empty lot in Bakersfield—are host to four new species of legless lizards, much to the researcher’s own surprise. “Based on this study, there is more biodiversity than we understand now,” said Berkeley herpetologist Theodore Papenfuss. […]
Wrangling Big Data
A Berkeley lab is hard at work making sense of the information age. Imagine a website that could offer you personalized medical advice. You could log on and input your symptoms and medical history. The program would then compare your situation to that of other people with a similar condition, perhaps analyze your genotype, consult […]
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