The Ontology of Mis-Information

An editorial, "We'll Have to Check, Sir," in this morning's Times criticizes the apparent difficulties in purging incorrect information from the government's terrorist "watch list." It's not, at first glance, at all counter-intuitive that organizations put less energy in deleting data than they put into collecting and storing it. Further thought, though, and I think this is a point that's implicit in the editorial, suggests that databases that contain errors may be more costly than you would think. A catalog company, for example, that has stale addresses in its database wastes money when it sends catalogs to nowhere. We might guess that there's an equilibrium somewhere -- the cost of identifying and purging bad addresses stands in some relation to the cost of producing and sending an advertisement to a landfill. The problem comes when the costs are invisible or externalized or when a powerful entity operates on a "better safe than sorry" logic or has the "luxury" of imputing an infinite price for false negatives (e.g., since the cost of letting a terrorist get away is infinite, any effort wasted by a false positive is worth it).

But one wonders whether the Homeland Security policy would stand up to a thorough cost benefit analysis. Unless it has access to infinite resources, every time it detains a Ted Kennedy, or other unfortunately named individual, it is diverting resources from its important duties.

But all this brings up a more general sociology of information question. How should we think about mis-information. I don't mean the act of spreading mis-information. Rather, how should we think about recorded information which is false? This includes information recorded in databases that is incorrect as well as information in circulation that is either false or has been stripped of context in a way that renders it uninformative. It looks like information, but it is not.

One approach is to think like a statistician or electrical engineer and describe it as error or noise. That's helpful, but we probably need to distinguish random noise -- high entropy, "signal-less" gibberish -- and non-random, incorrect signals born of lies, mistakes, or unrecorded change (as when I move and don't update everyone who has me in their database).

How are the data-miners thinking about this? What will we learn about the sociology of information through trying to port concepts from EE? More to come....

Disclosure as Tactic and Strategy

Robert Frank has a nice piece on the "full-disclosure principle" in today's NYT Business section. It's called "To Disclose or Not? Ask the Frogs." Give it a read to find out what the frogs have to say on the topic.

The full-disclosure principle suggests that it's alway better to disclose information to potential adversaries lest they think the worst on the assumption that in a population of competitors there are always some that you are better than; even if you info shows you in a poor light, it will make you look better than those who are in reality worse.

It's a great example of a simple result built on some simple assumptions and which very frequently doesn't seem to hold. Why is that a good thing? Because it points us right toward what is peculiar about the situations where it doesn't hold. This is precisely where we start to do a little "sociology of information." Frank does this in the article when he ponders why political candidates aren't full disclosers.

The Dominant Ideology Hypothesis

The more I look at the scholarship and journalism (actually, a lot of the former is just a step or so beyond the latter) on the internet and related phenomena, the more I am struck by the real domination of the ideology of marketing. Though often dressed up as "X is going on and we need to understand its impact," it seems that most folks are just looking at either new ways to commercialize the net or ways to produce information that's of interest to those who would use the net for marketing. So very little, for example, of what's written about how young people use Facebook or similar has much if anything to do with really understanding youth and the world -- instead, it's mostly fodder for those who want to know how to sell stuff to youth (whether it be music or a political candidate). I know I haven't read everything yet and I'm sure that the piece YOU wrote is an exception, but let me sign off with a simple "I am not yet impressed."

Oh, that title? Marx said something like: "The dominant ideology of any era is the ideology of the dominant group or class." Yup.

It's Been a While...

since the last posting here. What's the main take-away from that observation? There are two: one, last semester I was wicked busy, and two, the more I read and the more I observe, the less enchanted I find the "new media" realm. The one superlative that I think is deserved is that it may be the most self-referential phenomenon the world has ever known.

Courts and the Information Order

Dan Rather is suing CBS and affiliated corporate entities for $70 million. Ostensibly, it's a contract case: CBS promised him something and he says they did not deliver. But the NYT may have gotten the real story right in today's article when a picture of Rather was captioned

"I’d like to know what really happened,” Dan Rather said of the inquiry that led CBS to force him out as news anchor."

Sure, it's a story about a public figure having a somewhat public fight with a former employer. But it's also a story about the information order and the role that courts play in leveling informational playing fields and redistributing information. The rest of Rather's quote points us in the right direction: “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”

Many will focus on the money here and imagine that the main thing the court can do is decide whether Rather has been materially injured and, if so, how he should be compensated. But perhaps in the case of someone who has made 5 or 6 million dollars a year for part of his career, we'll give some thought to the issue if he says "it's not about the money."

Virginia Tech Report and Information

A report on last year's Virginia Tech shootings was released last week (full report | executive summary). It highlights a number of sociology of information issues among its findings:

• Widespread misunderstanding about what privacy laws did and did not prohibit in terms of communicating information about mental to family and school officials
  
  
• Some states report information about mental health to a federal database used to conduct background checks on would-be gun purchasers, but there is ambiguity about what kind of mental health treatment history triggers this action.
  
  
• Errors were made in assuming that initial leads were correct. The report suggests that officials "did not take sufficient action to deal with what might happen if the initial lead proved erroneous."
  
  
• Notification: "The VTPD erred in not requesting that the Policy Group issue a campus-wide notification that two persons had been killed and that all students and staff should be cautious and alert."


• Medical facilities did a good job at providing care but there were many challenges at cross agency communication.
  
  
• "The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner properly discharged the technical aspects of its responsibility ...." but "[c]ommunication with families was poorly handled."
  
  
• "State systems for rapidly deploying trained professional staff to help families get information, crisis intervention, and referrals to a wide range of resources did not work."

What Society Knows

The lead editorial in the NY Times today ("What You Don't Know Can Hurt You") addresses the question of the state's role in the generation of public knowledge. The piece argues that congress should restore funding for census bureau projects that produce important economic data, noting, in reference to financial markets, that "the system cannot thrive without good and timely information." True, no doubt in other sectors too. A question worth asking is whether the political actors who cut funding were aiming only at saving money or keeping government small or were responding to parties who have an interest in restricting the amount and quality of public information that's out there. We can imagine two scenarios: (1) some actors prefer to function in an environment of relative public ignorance; (2) some actors don't want the government to produce and supply information that could be sold for a profit.

We shall see.