Orwell might be winning--YouTube is BIG BROTHER

The final throes of the 2024 US Presidential election are upon us, and the fact that it is purportedly evenly divided in the American electorate speaks volumes to Winston Churchill's opine that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

I try to stay away from political statements in general, but of late, the exhortations of Trump about 'revenge' and getting rid of his enemies 'within' are really bothering me.   Why?  Well, because I just had a Big Brother intrusion on my own work, that both maddens and scares me.   And this is from my 'good friends' at Google (you do remember that "do no evil" is [or was] their corporate motto).

First, as many of you know, I have been diligently working on the COVID stories for nearly five years, along with COPD issues for fifty years.   I have been a strong believer in Data-Driven Decision Making ever since early days at Caltech imbued me with a "cause-and-effect" perspective towards all sorts of events and happenings.  

And I published a short set of slides to a PRIVATE YouTube posting last week that showed correlation factors for COVID cases and deaths over a six-month period (July 1 through December 31, 2021) which is the first full six-month period after vaccines were widely available.

This is BIG DATA representation--choropleths of multiple state cases and deaths along with their average vaccine rates.  Using Johns Hopkins data (correlated with USA Facts data, as we've done for 4 years), I show below the per capita death rates for three clusters of neighboring states -- the Upper Rocky Mtn West, the Upper Great Lakes, and New England, including New York.  I also show the set of aggregated data for absolute and per capita Cases alongside Deaths.   The striking thing is that all three groups have roughly the same Infection Rate, while differing dramatically in Death Rate.  Probably no dispute here, even for the censors who bleap swearing on television.

And then, I found the 'average' vaccine rate per state, and did the calculations, as shown here:

So anyone can run the numbers, and the results won't vary greatly.  But, they cannot run the numbers is they cannot see the numbers, and YouTube CENSORED this.  A phone call revealed that it is but one of many POLITICAL STATEMENTS that they do not endorse, and ThEY SCREEN EVERY YouTUBE, even if it is PRIVATE.   Pleading made no difference.  We cannot publish this.

Holy shit.  

I worked with Hector Molina-Garcia and Terry Winograd and Jim Gray on the original NSF Digital Library Project, for which Sergey Brin and Larry Page did the first Google prototype with Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani.   I recall vividly the day that Hector showed me the BackRub prototype operating.   Motwani and Winograd co-published the first academic paper with Brin and Page.

And later, Susan Wojcicki would lead YouTube for Google, for more than a decade.  She was on the Computer History Museum Board with me.  Her mother, Esther, was a MedaiX@Stanford visiting scholar for years with me.   And Eric Schmidt is an old Sun Microsystems guy, for whom I gave a lecture at Sun circa 1990.   So I know these people, and I've counted them more-or-less as friends as well as colleagues for decades.

But then I saw the San Jose Mercury News front page story today, one of many in a series reporting that Silicon Valley residents are now fearing "high-tech".  And you know what, I'm with them.  THIS IS BULLSHIT, not only worse than X or TWITTER or whatever that asinine thing is that the bouncing idiot proclaims, this is HIDDEN and SECRET and BIG BROTHER.   We don't need to wait for Trump's proclaimed machinations--we've done it to ourselves.

The BIG news drowns out the Big News

 Last week (September 24-30, 2024)  is a great example

Let's start with the BIG news.

First, the Presidential Election--especially Trumpian trumpeting--consumed most of the news cycle, a pattern that we've seen all too well for nearly a decade, proving both the validity of Orwell and Huxley predictions.  And predictably, even though newscasters 'know the impact' keep reporting it breathlessly.

Second, the Hezbollah bombing, and killing of leader Hassan Nasrallah commanded headlines and stories at length, understandably.

Third, Hurricane Helene, spreading widespread destruction to areas with little warning, killing hundreds and leaving countless thousands without food, water, or shelter.   Tragic. 

***********.  

Then, what I would ordinarily consider Big News, from the San Jose Mercury-News, still my go-to online newspaper even though we moved from the Bay area more than a decade ago, carried these stories which I thought significant.   But none of them even went 'national'    Admittedly, the first two went 'local' in Oregon, for a very specific reason.

First, two Fortune 50 companies had alarming (or joyous) news, depending on your point of view, and since they are Oregon's two biggest employers, it caused a local stir::         A.  John Donahoe, CEO of Nike, was relieved of his duties.   The Wall Street Journal had a small squib, and Bloomberg Business had urged this action earlier in the same week.   Seems he didn't earn much employee goodwill (averred my granddaughter!), and revenues and profits were suffering as well.           B. Intel, it was reported, is the take-over target for (a) Qualcomm, or (b) ARM.   And beleaguered CEO Pat Gelsinger even was quoted as saying he thought the company could be saved, especially if the Feds lean in.    Now, how the hell can Intel be in such sorry shape?   This was the behemoth of silicon not many moons ago; proud and aloof even.   And Nike, with little upstart Adidas 'next-door' in Portland--what gives?

Second, another Fortune 50 company, Cisco, announced it was moving its headquarters from its huge presence on Tasman Drive in San Jose to Santa Clara's Santana Row, essentially an upscale mall--beacuse they have better restaurants for lunch for employees.   What BS.   What they announced was that Buildings 8, 9, 10 and 11--the core of Cisco's vast property estate in San Jose--was being abandoned.  WHAT?   This is as shocking, and perhaps as dunb, as when Boeing's idiot beanies decided to move Boeing headquarters from Seattle to Chicago.  How'd that one work out?   And how long before Boeing is a 'break-up' target for the vulture hedge funds?

And then, OpenAI and its charismatic leader, Sam Altman, said something to the effect of "now we;ll have to start charging for ChatGPT."  This at the end of a week featuring a two-day session at the United Nations General Assembly re AI, and an hour special TV show hosted by Oprah Winfrey re AI (with Sam Altman as the first speaker), and a special UNGA Digital Health Symposium with two days of breakout sessions re AI and ML.

Third, a small obituary appeared, for Bob Maxfield, the M of ROLM, where a raft of ex-Sylvania and HP folk started one of the first of the Silicon Valley start-ups.   I turned to the Computer History Museum oral history for Maxfield, and played nostalgia for a day, while wondering why CHM never interviewed R or O or L.   Oshman, the O, was CEO from the beginning, and he indeed did several Si Valley oral histories, though none for CHM.   Gene Richeson (the R), and Walt Loewenstern (the L) have none.  I was in a small Venture group for years with Walt.   A shame that these stories haven't been captured.  Ah, well.

************. 

My thoughts today--AI will prove far more impactful on the world than Hezbollah, and certainly more than any single hurricane--probably as much as summarized world climate change, if not more.  And the life-cycles of Fortune 50 companies and their products, including unintended consequence products, will have way more impact than the news headlines suggest.   But that means changing the perceptions of journalists and readers from today's on-the-spot news into more reflective approaches.  Won't happen.

 Getting ready for the UNGA movie, I found myself in places reverting to 'old stories' -- stories that I love, stories that I know backwards and forwards, stories that I think tell WHY, not just HOW, we're working, and what inspires us.

My colleagues at AstroVirtual have, mostly, been indulgent of this propensity, but for this movie, they urged FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS.  Ever heard that from your team?

So, late one night, after a wonderful dinner with my wife, a daughter, and her daughter, I had this set of troublesome thoughts, and I got up and penned the following.  On reflection, maybe it is worth thinking about.  So, with no more lead-in than that, here it is.

UNGA79

 Well, we did it.   We put together a 9 minute, 58 second (have to stay under 10 minutes, right?) movie about the Virtual 3D Global Health Observatory for the 4th annual Digital Health Symposium at the United Nations 79th annual meeting.  See it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV-7NSYLd7c

Fair warning.   I am awaiting imminent surgery to aid a mobility issue, so I elected to send a movie rather than attend.   Martin Curley, the host (and director of the Maynooth University Innovation Values Institute (IVI), elected to showcase the movie in two different break-out sessions, which resulted in some great exposure for the 84 presenters over three days.   

We anticipate follow-up in three directions.

1. InnovaScapes Institute will donate our 1,024 day COVID database for 3,141 US counties and 196 countries to the Innovation Values Institute for the first fully operational Observatory that they support.

2. AstroVirtual will provide a 5 session seminar workshop for medical researchers on the use of these tools, with a follow-on 5 session advanced seminar depending upon interest.

3. IVI is sponsoring a pan-European Digital Health initiative, with the Observatory as one ingredient.

These kinds of projeccts don't happen overnight, but when they get some traction, the results can be truly inspirational.   We are proud to be part of the developing program.