Divorced from Reality

It was with some trepidation that I submitted my essay in this month's issue of Tech Review. Whether it was the perceived ruthlessness of my former masters at NBC/GE or simply the shame of being seen as a disgruntled former employee ranting in print, I presumed there would be a response. I was dragged away from Christmas carols at the piano in New England by a call from the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 23. The essay was picked up by blogs all through the holidays, and then shortly after the new year, the people at The O'Reilly Factor were among the first to call. In the weeks since the posting, I have received hundreds of e-mails and observed at least as many references in blogs and links, besides the coverage in Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and the Daily Kos.

In Hollywood there was much interest in my description of NBC head Jeff Zucker as a toy action figure from The Simpsons or The Sopranos, while O'Reilly was most interested in allegations of GE dealings with Iran and the bin Laden family. In general the coverage ignored the central point about how networks confuse technology with gadgets and miss the important transformations taking place in media of all kinds. Mostly I was left with the impression that there is enormous pent-up anxiety over the state of network television in the U.S. I received numerous e-mails from former subjects of Dateline segments relating personal stories of being crammed into some preconceived emotional narrative by NBC or Dateline. Journalists hired as consultants by NBC told me of having their own story pitches dismissed or ignored. I was creepily worried that perverted targets of To Catch a Predator would contact me and declare me their hero for going after Dateline. Instead, it was people directly concerned about child exploitation who were happiest that I had taken on Dateline. To them the Predator concept was a stunt that didn't aid in addressing child exploitation on the Web.

There were numerous people who contacted me from within the networks who assured me that their experience was even worse than what I had described. To these stalwart but more than a little disgruntled TV news producers and journalists, my essay seemed to read as a secret diary smuggled from inside the gulag.

I received many requests to go on the air and talk about the essay but in the end refused them all, including the one from The O'Reilly Factor. The Fox producer explained that the show wanted to focus on GE inserting itself into editorial decisions at NBC and also suggested that Bill O'Reilly personally has an interest in keeping a watchful eye on the competition at MSNBC. "You mean Olbermann?" I asked the producer, referring to how Keith Olbermann, whose show competes with O'Reilly, has made much sport of calling the Fox anchor "the worst human being on earth," a very NBC/GE-esque experiment in branding. "Well partly," he said. "The way MSNBC has acted makes the whole profession look bad." I agreed but perhaps for a different reason.

Corporate media such as NBC/GE seek a single truth: the reality of Audience (or: the supremacy of ratings). If lefty performances such as those delivered by Keith Olbermann deliver eyeballs, fine (Don Imus's offenses were fine on MSNBC until they offended sponsors). If faux-conservative screaming about politics from pundits like Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough demonstrate traction, they can dutifully remain part of the revenue engine of GE. Even the bizarre corporate rituals of GE have been mined by NBC for the successful comedy 30 Rock. Any thought that journalism might embody the values of factual truth, a moral right, or civic accountability is merely arcane unless such virtues can also prove themselves by delivering revenue.

In the end, O'Reilly put on a story without me. Fox News did quote extensively from Tech Review and had a picture of me. Headlining on Fox News amounted to something of a milestone for Tech Review and I was proud to have been a part of history. The story O'Reilly ran was about GE, the bin Ladens, and Iran. They also noted NBC's official response to my essay. A spokesman had said that I was so out of touch with reality that there was no reason for them to respond.

But hearing O'Reilly quote NBC about my departure from reality made me proud. As painful as it was to have been axed after nine years of service at NBC, I felt quite happy and a bit relieved to have left this network "reality." For that I owe NBC a debt of gratitude, but I suspect the network brass is too busy figuring out such urgent matters as how to make the Golden Globe Awards a "news event" despite the writer's strike, or picking which bimbos will open suitcases on Deal or No Deal, to accept my thanks.

NBC's reality is a little too real for me. I think I'll just stay detached for now.

Read the Original Essay: You Don't Understand Our Audience: What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC. »

Read the Reuters's article: Former "Dateline" Reporter Blasts NBC.

Wrap Not, Waste Not

Credit: Nicolas Raymond

Each year, reams and reams of wrapping paper are wasted as gift givers tend to overestimate the amount of gift wrap required to festoon their packages. To cut down on all this holiday paper waste, a British mathematician at the University of Leicester has devised a formula for how to most efficiently wrap a present of any shape and size.

In a university press release, the equation's originator, postgraduate student Warwick Dumas, says,

"We have tested different methods of wrapping and our investigations showed that ... cutting the right size of paper will allow consumers to wrap presents in the least amount of time and achieve a classy result."

The formula, which can be applied to any box-shaped item, goes like this:

Area = 2(ab+ac+bc+c²)

"To explain in the most simplistic terms, the minimal area of paper needed to wrap a box-shaped gift is twice the sum of the height times the width, the width times the depth and the height times the depth, plus twice the square of the depth," says Dumas.

In multiple tests, Dumas found that wrapping cubic-shaped objects diagonally used up more paper than wrapping along the edges--except when the object has a square base. Then, the best method is to wrap diagonally, so that the flaps only just meet.

The same equation for box-shaped items may be used to wrap cylindrical gifts whose radius is greater than 87 percent of their height (for example, a squat tin of cookies). Taller cylinders (e.g., tubes of socks) may be best wrapped via a rolling method.

Dumas has teamed up with Bluewater, a major shopping center based in the United Kingdom, to help shoppers reduce their "gift-wrapping footprint." Bluewater plans to hold workshops throughout the holiday season to teach shoppers the ecofriendly wrapping equation.

Of course, minimizing the extra scratch paper you'll need in order to make your gift-wrapping calculations is another problem entirely.

Yahoo Settles Lawsuit

Yahoo announced today that it has settled a lawsuit brought in a California federal court on behalf of two Chinese Yahoo users, Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. The lawsuit alleged that Yahoo turned over electronic records on Shi and Wang to the Beijing State Security Bureau. That information, the plaintiffs argued, directly led to their arrest, conviction, and subsequent torture while each served a 10-year sentence. Yahoo, the lawsuit alleged, was responsible for their treatment.

Yahoo never denied that it did, in fact, hand over user information on Shi and Wang to Chinese authorities. But the company argued that it was forced to in order to comply with Chinese law. And, Yahoo lawyers said, it was unclear what role, if any, the information that the company provided played in the arrest and conviction of Shi and Wang.

News of the settlement comes a week after Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and general counsel Michael Callahan faced harsh questions about the company's business practices in China during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. During that hearing, committee chairman Tom Lantos asked Yang to turn around and personally apologize to Shi's mother, who was seated directly behind the Yahoo executives in the hearing room. Lantos chided Yang and Callahan for doing nothing to help the families of those imprisoned. When Yang said he would personally like to do more, Lantos quipped, "Well, you certainly couldn't do less."

New Jersey Republican and senior House Foreign Affairs Committee member Chris Smith went further. He challenged Yahoo to settle the lawsuit as quickly as possible. After the hearings concluded, Yang reportedly approached the family members of the detainees, asked to speak with them privately, and started the process that culminated today with the announcement that a deal had been reached.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed and are to remain confidential. But the plaintiffs and their families are pleased, according to Morton Sklar. He's the executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, the Washington-based group that brought the suit on behalf of Shi and Wang. "Everyone's first priority is getting the prisoners released. What everybody realized was that if this case continued, that would take four or five more years."

Sklar says that he and his clients feel assured that Yahoo will do everything it can to ensure that Shi and Wang get out sooner than that. "What the settlement and Congressional hearings emphasize," Sklar says, "is that U.S. corporations have to recognize that they must do more, that their responsibility extends beyond the obvious of abiding local laws in the countries they operate in, but also abiding by U.S. laws and international human-rights standards."

Human-rights groups were cautiously optimistic about the settlement. Most welcomed the idea that the families of Shi and Wang will receive some relief and comfort, however cold, from Yahoo. "But we certainly don't want to see companies viewing this settlement as an easy way out," cautioned Amy O'Meara, who heads Amnesty International USA's Business and Human Rights Program. "We don't want them saying we can just settle these kinds of lawsuits, put these problems behind them, and not really deal with the complex problems of censorship seriously."

In a statement released today, Congressman and senior committee member Chris Smith commended Yahoo for settling the lawsuit. But he cautioned that "convening a Congressional hearing every time a U.S. company helps put a human-rights activist in jail should not be their only means of securing justice." He then touted legislation that he is sponsoring, the Global Online Freedom Act. The measure, Smith noted, would "make certain that U.S. companies are not compelled to comply with local Secret Police or any other unlawful policies when operating in foreign markets."

Democrat Tom Lantos, the committee chairman, was less forgiving:

"It took a tongue-lashing from Congress before these high-tech titans did the right thing and coughed up some concrete assistance for the family of a journalist whom Yahoo had helped send to jail. What a disgrace. When I asked Yahoo officials 21 months ago whether the company had reached out to the family to offer help, I was appalled to learn the answer. It was infuriating last week to hear that the company still had not reached out. In my view, today's settlement is long overdue."

The First Annual Body Computing Conference

"Imagine a world," said cardiologist Leslie Saxon, "where you turn on your computer and, along with surfing the Web and turning on YouTube, you can check your or your family members' health stats."

Saxon was opening the first annual Body Computing Conference, at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, on October 26. She offered a definition of body computing: implanted wireless devices that transmit real-time data about the body to doctors, patients, and relatives.

The prospect of such devices interests some of the biggest health-care companies in the country. Panelists included the CEOs of Boston Scientific and GE Healthcare, and high-level executives from Medtronic, St. Jude, Texas Instruments, and Johnson & Johnson.

The conference hall was packed with scientists, engineers, physicians, and venture capitalists.

The heart is a big target of body computing. Several of the panelists, including Jim Tobin of Boston Scientific, discussed implantable heart defibrillators (more technically called implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, or ICDs) that store a continuous record of heart activity that can be analyzed by a cardiologist. (See "Defibrillation's Alternative.")

Other kinds of devices were discussed as well. Garry Neil of Johnson & Johnson talked about miniature, pill-shaped cameras called PillCams that can take thousands of photographs of the inside of the intestine and transmit them to a waist-worn receiver for later downloading. (See "Swallowable Sensors.")

Chris O'Connell of Medtronic discussed devices for diabetics that measure blood-sugar levels hundreds of times a day, revealing trends that may be missed by traditional finger-stick methods. And startup companies, such as MedApps of Scottsdale, AZ, are aiming to perfect systems that wirelessly monitor blood-sugar levels and send the data to physicians via the patients' cell phones. (See "Your Daily Digital Doctor.")

One panel was moderated by Andrew Thompson, the CEO of Proteus Biomedical, a startup based in Redwood City, CA. Since he was the moderator, he didn't talk about his company, but a magazine article distributed at the conference ("Proteus Biomedical: Using Computers to Manage Chronic Diseases," In Vivo, March 2007) describes its goal of creating a "smart pharmaceuticals" system in which computer chips embedded in prescription drug pills send data identifying when they were swallowed.

Then, in the Proteus system, a computer chip attached to the body--either by a patch or by implantation under the skin--monitors the patient's vital stats, such as temperature and blood pressure. The aim is to correlate the pill taking with the patient's physiological responses, thereby refining the patient's drug regimen for maximum effectiveness.

Several panelists noted that such technologies raise new challenges as well as new possibilities. Neal Eigler, the manager of Savacor, a maker of implanted heart monitors, noted that doctors can be overloaded by masses of real-time information but can also practice medicine better if their patients have tools they can use to manage their own condition. Omar Ishrak of GE Healthcare pointed out that doctors and patients need to have the right data, not simply lots of data, and figuring out what the right data are is a substantial challenge.

Privacy was briefly mentioned as a potential issue during one of the question-and-answer discussions. How it's an issue wasn't explored, but one can imagine scenarios. Would an elderly parent want her children to have access to her vital statistics around the clock? Would it be a good idea for spouses to be able to monitor each other's heart rates and blood-glucose levels? Could such technology be used to monitor the consumption of recreational drugs or force compliance with taking psychoactive drugs?

Not all body computing is implanted. Michael Tchao, the manager of Nike Techlab, discussed a collaboration between Nike and Apple that had yielded the Nike + iPod system for runners. It consists, Tchao explained, of a sensor built into a Nike shoe that wirelessly sends data to a receiver plugged into an iPod. So equipped, the iPod can give the runner statistics on time, distance, and calories burned, both visually and by voice. (See "Beyond the Pedometer.")

"Running is a social sport," Tchao reminded the audience, and he demonstrated a system in which runners could upload their running statistics into iTunes to compare them with those of other runners. People could join "virtual marathons" by running at the same time that real marathons occurred, regardless of their location; this had just been done, on October 21, at the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Notably, sensory implants were not discussed. Cochlear implants--implanted devices that enable the deaf to hear by electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve--were not on the agenda. Nor were retinal implants, an equivalent technology for enabling the blind to see, nor spinal cord stimulators for pain control. Spinal cord stimulators block pain with programmable electrodes implanted in the spinal cord.

The martini-bar reception at the end was something of a relief, since it required no body computing at all. It was, however, sponsored by BlackBerry.

Michael Chorost covers implanted technologies for Technology Review. His book, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, came out in 2005.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Attacks Yahoo

Yahoo has a real China problem these days. The company is currently embroiled in a lawsuit in a California federal court over its role in turning over customer information to the Chinese State Security Bureau. That information, which Yahoo says it was required to provide under Chinese law, landed both Shi Tao, a journalist, and Wang Xiaoning, a democracy activist, in jail. Both are serving 10-year sentences. There are credible reports that both have been tortured.

Today, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and chief counsel Michael Callahan were under attack on the East Coast as well. The House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington wanted them to answer some tough questions about the way they do business in China. At issue is Callahan's testimony before two House committees last year: he admitted that Yahoo China did turn over information on Shi Tao, but that executives in Sunnyvale, CA, had no idea at the time that it was Shi Tao that the government was after. Callahan also said that, more important, there was no indication given as to why Chinese authorities were after Shi Tao.

Now, Callahan says that his original account was wrong, and that someone at Yahoo China did know that "providing state secrets to a foreign entity" was indeed the charge being investigated. Callahan and Yang were on Capitol Hill today to apologize for not coming forward to the House Committee with this information, and for the "concern" that this caused the committee.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos led a blistering attack on Yahoo today at the hearing. In his opening statement, Lantos said that Callahan and Yang should be ashamed:

"If you think our witnesses today are uncomfortable sitting in this climate-controlled room and accounting for their company's spineless and irresponsible actions, imagine how life is for Shi Tao, spending 10 long years in a Chinese dungeon for exchanging information publicly--exactly what Yahoo claims to support in places like China."

From the other side of the aisle, New Jersey Republican and senior House member Chris Smith said that it doesn't take a genius to figure out that "providing state secrets" is Beijing's code for cracking down on antidemocracy activists.

"If the Chinese government would prefer that people not know something about life in China, then they make it a state secret. The so-called state secret the Chinese government accused Shi Tao of violating was to pass on a directive calling for censorship of news on the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. I look over to the press sitting to our left. If any of you passed on that information, you would be in prison for 10 or more years."

Yahoo's Yang, at times faltering and barely audible even at the mike, said that the revelations in the Shi Tao case run "counter to all my personal and professional beliefs." He reiterated the company's position: "We continue to believe in engagement in markets like China." In other words, some Internet for China's millions of potential users is better than none at all.

Yahoo's Callahan said that even if the company did know that Shi Tao was being investigated for "providing state secrets," that doesn't mean he lied to Congress in last year's testimony:

"There remains disagreement over whether the reference to state secrets was significant enough to tell Yahoo China anything significant about the case. And I believe that while my testimony could have been more precise, the fundamental point of my testimony remains unchanged: we did not know that the case related to a journalist, dissident activity, or that it was a political case when Yahoo China was required to provide the demanded information."

Lantos would not let Callahan or Yang off the hook, though. He ambushed them with questions about whether their company considered the Chinese government's demands "lawful" and whether "Yahoo collaborated with the Chinese police apparatus in the imprisonment of a freedom-loving Chinese journalist."

Lantos also asked Callahan and Yang to turn around and apologize personally to Shi Tao's mother and Wang Xiaoning's wife, who were seated directly behind the two Yahoo executives. They bowed to both women. The women bowed in return, and Shi's mother wept.

When Lantos asked if Yahoo had done anything directly to help Shi Tao or other imprisoned activists, Yang and Callahan faltered and said no. But they told the committee that the company is working "more broadly"--with other IT companies, human-rights groups, and the State Department--to come up with a code of best practices for doing business in China.

They also said that, in principle, they support a House bill called the Global Online Freedom Act, sponsored by senior member Chris Smith. That bill would make it illegal for companies like Yahoo to comply with the kind of requests that landed it in hot water in the Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning cases.

Women Advancing Science

Jo Handelsman is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Robert Birgeneau is the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

In his much-acclaimed best seller "The World is Flat" Thomas L. Friedman warned that America is slipping further behind China and India in producing scientists and engineers at the peril of the innovation and productivity of our nation. A recent report from the National Academies, "Beyond Bias and Barriers," provides a very direct solution to this conundrum. American science needs more talent and that talent is readily available in a legion of well-trained, but greatly underutilized scientists and engineers who happen to be women. The good news is that a few significant changes in the academic system could stem the loss of these women, thereby fortifying our scientific leadership.

The lack of women among the ranks of the country's university science professors is not due to biological differences between the sexes. There are many genetically determined differences between men and women, but differences in innate ability cannot explain women's low representation in the leadership of science. Women faculty continue to be outnumbered by men even in scientific disciplines in which women have received as many doctoral degrees as men for many years. In some other scientific disciplines, women's representation on the faculty has increased 30-fold in the last 25 years, a rate too rapid to be explained by changes in genetics of the population, illustrating that women have the ability to perform and capacity to endure the rigors of academic science as opportunities open to them. Collectively, the report's findings provide indisputable evidence that social factors, not aptitude or interest, are powerful drivers of the gender composition of the scientific leadership of the academy.

Why are there so many women who excel in science and choose to invest years of their lives in hard, frequently unrewarding work to attain advanced education in science, but so few in academic positions? The Academy committee concludes that a combination of unconscious biases held by both men and women as well as archaic university structures limits the participation of women in academic science.

Unconscious, inadvertent bias often clouds people's perceptions and judgment. Randomized, controlled studies show that when both male and female evaluators are asked to evaluate job applications, they will give the applicant a lower rating and be less likely to hire the person if they are told that the applicant is woman than if they are told the applicant is a man. Similar outcomes are evident when evaluators are asked to review candidates for raises, promotions, or leadership positions. The biases are most evident when the job under consideration is in a male-dominated field, which may explain the slower advancement of women in science than in other academic fields. Studies show the same type of prejudice toward members of certain racial minority groups, which likely contributes to the bleak picture for minority women. For example, in 2002 there were no African American, Hispanic or Native American women in faculty positions in the nation's top 50 computer science departments. Both unconscious and deliberate prejudice also contribute to a chilly climate in many science departments. Women, more often than men, feel excluded from decision-making in their departments and from scientific discourse with colleagues. The cumulative effect of repeated exclusion can reduce productivity and cause women to leave academic positions.

Institutional barriers, such as the tenure system, further augment the difference in men's and women's access to faculty positions. Candidates must establish well-funded innovative research programs, demonstrate their teaching abilities, and contribute to their universities through service, all within seven years. This is a tall order for all scientists, but it is a Promethean task for those who have young children or care of other family members during this same period of life. Since women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of family responsibilities, the collision between the tenure system and family life affects women far more than men.

The Academy report's recommendations are simple. Educating the academic community about the insidious role of unconscious bias in decision-making could substantially reduce the application of that bias. Department chairs can be trained to improve the climate for women faculty, which may require simply using inclusive practices for decision-making and communicating. Lengthening the time to tenure, ensuring that research funding does not lapse because of child bearing, and making lactation rooms, child care, and flexible work schedules readily available will ensure that both men and women can meld careers with family life.

The report makes the straightforward but, nevertheless, bold assertion that the government should enforce equal protection laws such as Title IX as vigorously for science as it does for intercollegiate athletics. This is not a recommendation about special opportunities or treatment; it is an effort to level the playing field and give women the same access to positions in academic science that men have always enjoyed.

The simplicity of the message in the Academy report is both reassuring and inspiring. American science needs more brainpower and now we just have to make sure that we access that talent. Otherwise, Tom Friedman's ominous warning may well come true.