Ken's Blog

Most people these days count in base ten. And most computers count in base two. In school we learn that there are other possibilities: like base one, or three or four or five. But nobody ever talks about base 1.7, or base 3.4, do they? Why is that? At this point you might be thinking “why would anybody want to count in base 1.7?” That’s a very sensible question. Well, ok then, I’ll tell you.

Let’s take the number 42 for example. It has two digits in base ten, right? Well, in base two it has six digits – 101010₂ – in base three it has four digits – 1120₃ – and in base four it has three digits – 222₄. In base one it’s a lot bigger:

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000₁

That’s 42 zeros, in case you were wondering. But suppose you wanted to use about twenty digits to represent 42? Then you might want something between base one and base two.

Does this sound crazy? Well, it will probably get crazier. Tomorrow I’ll talk about why I’m thinking about this. It’s a tale that goes from brains that overheat when they think too hard, to problems with grandmothers, to computers that learn on their own, to armies of short people in elevators.

All this and more! Stay tuned.

Recently I was thinking about that wonderful old Ahlert and Young song I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter, and I wanted to make sure I had the lyrics right. So I did what most people do these days: I did an internet search. And I discovered, to my utter disbelief, that on the internet the lyrics did not exist.

Oh sure, there’s a Wikipedia page, where you can learn that Fats Waller had a huge hit with this song in 1935, and that since then it has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Bing Crosby to Billy Williams (#3 on the charts) to Nat King Cole, Barry Manilow, Dean Martin, Scatman Crothers, and even Bill Haley (in a rock and roll version, of course). And if you type “I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter” into Google – with the quotes – you get about 136000 hits. But not a single one of those pages has the actual song lyrics themselves. Not one.

I was mentioning this over dinner recently to a group that consisted mainly of hip New York new media artists. They were pretty unanimous in their response of “Who cares?” Around the table there was general dismissal of my concern that great popular culture of eras past should be alive and celebrated on the internet. To me their attitude was incomprehensible. What are we here for if not to inspire those who come after, to pass the torch of what is best in our time and in times before, so that its light might illuminate the minds of the future?

Yes, I know you can purchase these recordings and transcribe the words for yourself, and I’m sure there are books with the lyrics printed in them. But we think of the internet as a vast and growing reflection of our culture; yet it has these sorts of strange and inexplicable holes in it. And it seems that many of the intellectuals of this new medium simply do not care.

Today I mentioned the strange absence of these song lyrics to my uncle Artie, who is in his seventies. He knew exactly what I was talking about, and seemed rather appalled that anyone would think of great song lyrics as disposable. Of course they were all right there in his head, fresh as the first day he heard them. And what did he do? He sat right down and wrote me out the lyrics:

I’m gonna sit right down
And write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you
I’m gonna whisper words so sweet
Gonna sweep me off my feet
Some kisses on the Bottom
I’ll be glad I got ’em
I’ll write and say I hope you’re feeling better
And close with love the way you do
I’m gonna sit right down
And write myself a letter
And make believe it came from you.

So there you have it – now he song is on the internet. Soon it will be up on Google. Then I’m gonna sit right down and search there for this lyric. And make believe it came from you.

Isn’t it mysterious that so many cultures celebrate May the first? In France they all go giving each other lilies, in the Rhineland boys deliver a tree to the girl they love (I’m not making this up), in Scotland they gather on the beach naked, and in England they all just go around Morris dancing.

Of course this is also the day where worker’s rights are celebrated around the world, this being International Worker’s Day. Except of course in the U.S., where we worry that too much worker solidarity could lead poor people to get uppity. Next thing you know poor people will be demanding the right to vote in Indiana! Not to worry – it’s clear that’s not going to happen any time soon, now that our learned Supreme Court has proudly brought back the poll tax. It’s not like those pesky poor people would know how to handle something as complex as democracy anyway, right?

April may very well be the cruelest month, but personally I think of May as the most polite. After all, isn’t it the only month of the year that announces itself by asking “May I”? 😉

 

“And when the gyre slowly turn And cut into the bone The fire lit, the soul will burn     Til nought be left but stone The ageless one can sleep no more The Wraith has circled thrice That He may rise who came before     To weave His ring of ice What is up shall then be down What is far be near For He shall come to wear the crown     And He shall rule by fear And nought but they who know the book Can hope to break His spell Yet well we know a single look     Can burn the Devil well Sing the ancient words aloud Write them on the air Turn His mantle to a shroud     His glory to despair Oh ageless one I call ye now I call thee from thy sleep A single strike upon His brow     And let the blade go deep Oh let the gyre slowly turn And cut into the bone A fire lit, a soul to burn     Til nought be left but stone”

Patiently she worked over the surface of the wood, polishing it to a fine burr, until she could glide her hand smoothly over the hickory stick. When she was done with that, she screwed the top off the first oil jar. It had a nice smell – this first oil had always reminded her of butterscotch. She worked it in, all over the surface, making sure not to miss anything. Then she carefully screwed the cap back on and unscrewed the second jar. Three oils in all, in the proper order, just like Grandma used to do it. When she was done, the polished surface gleamed like fine marble. She lifted the hickory stick up in her hand, just feeling the weight of it. Then she swished it back and forth a few times. Strong, light, just a little flexible. Exactly right.

Then Emily held the stick straight upright with her right hand and placed one end gently onto her upturned left palm. Slowly, carefully, she took her right hand away. The stick seemed to sway a little, and then it held steady, pointing straight up to the ceiling. She concentrated, and into her mind came the words of the old poem, the one that Grandma had taught to Mom, and that Mom had taught to her. As she did this, the stick started to spin like a top, slowly at first and then gradually faster. Then it lifted up, and floated gently off her outstretched palm. Carefully she took her hand away, and the stick continued to spin in the air.

OK, so far so good. This was the part where she was supposed to say the poem out loud. No, wait, not yet. Not until the music. She let the rod pick up speed. It started to make a whirring sound, and then the whirring cleared and turned into a kind of musical whistling. That was it – that was what she was supposed to wait for. It was the old tune, the one Grandma used to hum. And now it was time to recite Grandma’s poem. Except it wasn’t Grandma’s poem anymore. It was Emily’s poem, because now everything depended on her.

Smiling just a little at the thought of that, she started to recite the words.

Continuing the topic from yesterday – which again comes out of lots of interesting conversations with Jan Plass and other colleagues – the question always comes up of whether the potential educational benefits of games for learning might run into the coolness problem: kids may not want to play a game that’s supposed to be “good for them”. If you give middle school kids a game that’s really fun, but by playing it they know that they are actually doing math homework, would this awkward fact make the game so uncool that it is actually no longer fun?

Yet how could things be worse than the way they are now? Standard practice today is to give kids ages eleven through thirteen lots of boring homework exercises to hone their math skills. It’s hard to argue that the current approach is the optimal way to win their hearts and minds, or to show them that math can be fun and exciting. The same material covered via well-designed game play could hardly be any worse for motivating learning than the current status quo. In fact, there is every reason to think it would be better.

But still, I am reminded of that wonderful 1928 New Yorker cartoon drawn by Carl Rose and captioned by E.B. White:

Old E.B. hit the nail right on the head, didn’t he? Kids know. Kids always know.

So how will this play out? Can games make education more relevant and fun? Or will kids merely look at games in education as a surreptitious attempt to make them eat their vegetables? On the other hand, if our educational system embraces game play properly then perhaps school itself may come to seem a lot cooler.

When you play a computer game, what are you learning? And how can we describe the essential pieces of that learning process? My colleague Jan Plass, whose research studies the effective use of technology in education, and I have been having some pretty fascinating discussions and spirited debates about how a game can function as a kind of vehicle for learning. One intriguing problem is how to visualize this vehicle in a way that clearly shows how all of its parts work together. Here is one such visualization:

1. Player’s understanding – ability to play well
2. Game mechanic – the rules of play
3. Aesthetic design – graphics, sound, etc.
4. Narrative drive – the “story” moving the game forward
5. Extrinsic rewards – points, winning, etc.
6. Intrinsic rewards – getting better, improving skill

Everything revolves around the interplay between (1) the model in the player’s head and (2) the mechanic of game play. All of the other pieces are in support of that interaction. Graphics, sound, and so forth (3) serve to add clarity and aesthetic pleasure to the experience, but they are really scaffolding to support that central player/game-play dynamic.

Similarly, a game generally provides some sort of narrative thrust (4), such as “get three in a row”, “capture the enemy king” or “buy up all the real estate”, which helps to focus the interaction in the player’s mind by giving it context.

In addition, the player is rewarded for good play in two ways: extrinsically by earning points, winning games, being the high scorer among a group of peers, and so forth (5) and intrinsically by gaining improving in skill, confidence and ability to take on more advanced challenges (6). In many computer games this increase in skill is often rewarded by “leveling up” – a case where intrinsic reward is augmented by an extrinsic reward.

A game that does not continue to give intrinsic rewards would soon grow tiring. This is why, for example, only small children enjoy tic-tac-toe: Because the highest level of attainable skill is quickly reached by older children and adults, and then there are no more opportunities for intrinsic reward.

The entire above model only really makes sense as a support vehicle to “move” the player’s mind, through a path of maximum fun, in a way that provides continual pleasurable challenges. This tends to result in ever increasing skill, as long as the game lasts. This path of maximum engagement, neither too easy nor too difficult for the player’s current skill level, corresponds to the mental state that Mihály Csíkszentmihályi refers to as “flow”.

One can visualize this as a landscape with an optimal slope. Game narrative and extrinsic rewards move the player and the gameplay forward, while the intrinsic reward of the player’s progression in ability moves the entire structure upward along the slope:

As the entire vehicle moves, the nature of all the components within it might be changing as appropriate: the player’s mental state, the nature of the gameplay, the aesthetic components, the narrative of the game and the rewards offered, both extrinsic and intrinsic.

A good game is one that moves this vehicle along this upward terrain by evolving all these components appropriately to maintain a maximum sense of fun challenge.

It could be argued that the only difference between a good game and a good educational game is in the opportunities for knowledge transfer of the intrinsic rewards (6) out of the game and into other contexts. For example, a rewarding experience playing Worlds of Warcraft can increase a player’s abilities in the “science” of alchemy. But one could well envision an alternate version of WOW with exactly the same gameplay, yet which challenges the player to improve his/her skills in chemistry or some other skill that transfers well to the world outside of the game. That version of WOW could indeed be an effective educational game.

On some level it may be possible to get a sense of the culture of a place, the feeling in the hearts of its people, simply by taking in its geography. Manhattan is utterly artificial, a dominion of pure human invention. When you walk its canyons, mingling with the other inhabitants all dressed in black, you are completely engulfed by the power and hubris of twentieth century technology, from the Empire State Building to Rockefeller Center to Wall Street. The one part that is green – Central Park – is literally surrounded by towering buildings, and is itself completely artificial, a architected fantasy of nature, constructed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1859.

This geography accurately reflects the soul of the populace. Manhattanites believe in nothing so much as the possibility of self-reinvention. We live to enlessly create the world anew as an extension of ourselves. From the galleries of Chelsea to the power lunches of Wall Street to the crowds streaming through the theatre district and Times Square, what is valued and exalted is what is created from the mind, and reality itself is bent to the will of human intellect.

Seattle, where I find myself this weekend, is different. The iconography of Seattle is defined by the tension and opposition between the Space Needle and Mount Rainier. Unlike New York, The Seattle/Redmond area nestles its metropolis within nature, its urban centers of gravity happily split down the middle by a huge natural lake. People here can certainly be as brilliant and intellectually inquisitive as New Yorkers, but they also incorporate an idea of nature into their internal rhythms. They dress down, go hiking in the mountains on the weekends, wear earth tones, and project the laid back air of people who think of themselves as somehow “organic”. Even the iconic music of disaffected protest is Grunge, rather than Punk – not so much Johnny Rotten as Kurt Cobain.

I am enjoying this brief vacation from assertive black into easy earth tone, although even here I walk about in my New York wardrobe. It is not so easy for a Manhattan boy to go native. But I love the feeling, at least for a while, of immersing myself in a great metropolis that is presided over by the vast presence of Mount Rainier, looming upon the horizon like an ancient and watchful God, ever casting its spell upon the culture and the hearts of a city’s populace.

I have been following the comments on yesterday’s post, and I think Lisa and Manooh have both made very thoughtful points – but from completely different philosophical perspectives. It was interesting for me to watch Lisa work through this difficult terrain, trying to be thoughful and intellectually honest about it, while wrestling with points of view that clearly seemed very foreign to her. The only aspect of Lisa’s comments that I didn’t follow was the connection between admiring red poll cows and eating red poll cows. These seem to be two quite separate issues – if you find something beautiful, that’s reason enough to work to preserve its existence, isn’t it? For example, we like having squirrels in our parks, and we don’t need to justify their existence by eating them.

I was completely thrown for a loop by Sally’s comment that I am going off the deep end. I’m not sure what it means to be off the deep end in this context. My opinion is simple: I don’t want to kill any fellow being that has a subjective experience of existence, so given the choice, I choose not to. I understand that this is a minority opinion, but so is being Jewish or Quaker.

I don’t tell people that they are off the deep end because they kill to eat. My objection to The Times editorial was that it implied that there is some kind of mutual sentimental bond between people and the creatures that people kill – a sort of pleasant inter-species friendship. On the face of it isn’t that a contradction? Clearly I am not the friend of what I kill. It might be in my self interest, but it is never in the interest of the other. The fact that The Times felt the need to say something so inherently self-contradictory seemed interesting and worth talking about. If pointing this out constitutes being off the deep end, then what doesn’t?

Yesterday The New York Times published an editorial about the one million dollar prize that PETA is offering for the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.” The Times’ response was interesting:

“We prefer a more measured approach. Ensure the least possible cruelty to animals, by all means, and raise them in ways that are both ethical and environmentally sound. But also treasure the cultural and historical bond between humans and domesticated animals. Historically speaking, they exist only because of the uses we have found for them, and preserving their existence means, in most cases, preserving the uses we have made for them. It will be a barren world if the herds and flocks disappear in favor of meat grown in a laboratory tank.”

By changing just a few words of the above paragraph, we can apply this interesting logic to other contexts:

“We prefer a more measured approach. Ensure the least possible cruelty to slaves, by all means, and raise them in ways that are both ethical and environmentally sound. But also treasure the cultural and historical bond between us and our slaves. Historically speaking, they exist only because of the uses we have found for them, and preserving their existence means, in most cases, preserving the uses we have made for them. It will be a barren world if the happy slaves singing in the fields disappear in favor of crops harvested by machines.”