What came after by Sam Winston is an intriguing scifi novel. It describes a near-future dystopia where a handful of large corporations have taken over the USA. After being a puppet to powerful interests, the government has finally been abolished. In some sense, it is the anti-libertarian novel: what if we let the free market prevail? Eventually, some large corporations may become so powerful that they can use force to prevent competition. Though overall credible, I found the absence of any state a bit unbelievable because I view corporations and states as mutually supporting concepts: large corporations may try to control the state, but they rarely try to abolish it. The hero is out to save his daughter, at first, and then he becomes part of a larger fight. The writing is beautiful. Short sentences. Powerful text. An emotional roller-coaster. The novel would make a great movie. Meanwhile, the e-book is cheap ($3.99). I expect the author to write a follow-up.

Unless you live under a rock, you have heard of the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
They recently made a decent movie out of the first book. Like in What came after, the books describe a near-future dystopia where war and oppression have reduced humanity to few towns supporting a relatively wealthy capital. What I found interesting in these novels, is how the main character (Katniss) is an anarchist. That is, she cares for those she love (her tribe), but she is rather immune to big ideas and propaganda. This becomes clearer as the story progresses, and many people have hated the ending for this reason. The trilogy is reasonably priced: you can get all of it for under $20.

In the Trilisk Ruins, Michael McCloskey describes a far future universe where human beings have encountered alien ruins on diverse planets.
These ruins have obvious commercial values: alien artifacts are immensely valuable. Meanwhile, the government has restricted access to these ruins to its own military. The main character is a xenoarchaeologist who is frustrated by the lack of access to these new findings. She decides to embark with a bunch of pirates/mercenaries who hope to visit new alien ruins before the military can get their hands on them. The novel touches on a common theme in scifi: it is unwise to put your military in charge of first contact with aliens. You can get the e-book for $2.99.

The Galactic Mage by John Daulton is a twisted, but fun story. We have human beings from Earth who were in contact with another human civilization across the galaxy. This civilization was apparently wiped out after it sent a warning. A fleet of ships from Earth is assembled to go investigate. Meanwhile, on a remote planet, a bona fide mage has decided to go explore space. He does so by teleporting himself (and his tower) in space. At first, the premise seems unbelievable, and it is, but it is fascinating to see how a mage might explore space. Without any scientific background, he is faced with several challenges such as unimaginable distances. Unfortunately, the novel never quite feels complete: many issues are left unresolved. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining book well suited for teenagers or people looking for a fun little book. You can grab it for $2.99.

Finally, the Empire of the Gods by David Stag is a well written space adventure. It describes a universe where most people live in misery under an oppressive and all-knowing government. The leaders derive their power from mysterious rods that seem to give them the powers of gods. I found it very entertaining even though there are obvious flaws. For example, as in the Galactic Mage, we are supposed to believe that the universe is populated by human beings. Thus, as scifi, this is a so-so book, but thankfully, the novel works well as a fantasy. The writing is solid. The e-book is only $0.99.

Disclaimer: I got Empire of the Gods for free from the author.

We all want and need money. However, for many services, paying actual dollars is inefficient. The transaction costs are too high.

So we need a system whereas perfect strangers can make deals at a very small transaction cost. For this purpose, people use punk money:

• You publicly promise a favor in exchange for a service, you may stipulate the terms.
• The Web records your transaction.
• Your public reputation guarantees the transaction.

Six months ago, I needed a particular piece of software. In exchange for the code, I promised to promote a web site on the Google+ social network. Joshua Grochow won the contract and I owe him.

Punk money should also be able to solve more systemic problems. For example, it is often hard to find good reviewers for research papers. To solve this problem, we create an intermediary between the authors and the reviewers (e.g., a conference or a journal). This intermediary is often supported by a larger organization (e.g., a publisher) seeking financial gain.

As an alternative, I published the following open contract in the spirit of punk money:

1.  Write a research paper in my general area of expertise.
2. Send me the paper.
3. I will read it in a reasonable delay (not 3 freaking months), or tell you that I’m too busy. (If your paper is really bad, I might also ignore you, politely.)
4. I will give you feedback.
5. At some point, I might feel that the paper is quite good, and then I will publicly say so, putting my reputation on the line.

In exchange, you have to mention me in the acknowledgements.

So far one researcher took me up on this offer and I reviewed his paper (privately) within a few weeks. If many researchers adopted a similar open contract, we could create a workable lightweight alternative for scientific publishing. It will not replace journals or conferences, but it is also nearly free compared to the current system.

The famous mathematician Doron Zeilberger has used this punk approach to validate some of his research papers. Indeed, he has a set of papers that only appear on his web site. He validates some of them by asking other mathematicians to review his work. The net result is that you can probably trust these papers, after all some established mathematicians were willing to vouch for the work. Journals cannot offer anything better. In exchange, he acknowledges the other researchers. The transaction happens without an intermediary.

Of course, you could apply the same type of contracts to any type of publication. Perhaps you are willing to review books or novels, and promote them in exchange for some favor. Perhaps you are willing to provide code reviews for open source projects. And so on.

The concept is entirely general. Maybe there is an annoying bug in your favorite open source web browser, and while you cannot fix it yourself, you would be willing to put a bounty. What could it be? Maybe you are willing to have a pizza delivered to the house of the programmer who provides the fix. Or maybe you will post a poem in honor of whoever fixed the problem.

Punk money has three major characteristics:

• There is no real intermediary other than the Web. Or rather, the intermediary is light and easily replaceable.
• There is a written record.
• It is an explicit credit system, not free labor.

In contrast, a site like Stack Overflow allows you to ask a question for free. People who do the hard work of providing a detailed answer get clown money (e.g., reputation points). The intermediary (the owner of Stack Overflow) is not easily replaceable: it is an essential component of the system. Such specialized sites work amazingly well for specific problems, but punk money has far broader potential.

Note: I think there should be a Wikipedia article on punk money. It should trace back the origin of the term and provide sufficient context so that it stands a chance of meeting Wikipedia standards. I am too lazy too do it, but if you do it I will update this blog post with a link to the new entry and, if you wish, a note crediting your effort.

Further reading: See punkmoney.org for a related tool.

Update regarding taxation: The trades I have in mind are already happening without any fiscal consideration. I already review research papers, that’s a service I render. I also benefit from this service when I submit a research paper. I also support open source software (including handling bug reports) while benefiting from the open source software services of others (e.g., Linux). Yet there is no taxation involved.

Update regarding the word “currency”: What I describe is a credit system, not a currency. I used the word currency in my title because it sounded good.

I probably spend too much time reviewing research papers. It makes me cranky.

Nevertheless, one thing that has become absolutely clear to me is that computer scientists do not know about significant digits.

When you write that the test took 304.03 s, you are telling me that the 0.03 s is somehow significant (otherwise, why tell me about it?). Yet it is almost certainly insignificant.

In computer science, you should almost never use more than two significant digits. So 304.03 s is indistinguishable from 300 s. And 33.14 MB is the same thing as 33 MB.

Why does it matter?

• Cutting down numbers to their significant digits simplifies the exposition. It is simpler to say that it took 300 s than to say that it took 304.03 s.
• Numbers expressed without significant digits often lie. Running your program does not take 304.03 s. Maybe it did this one time, but if you run it again, you will get a different number.

Please learn to express your experimental results using as few digits as you can.

As scientists, we are often subjected to strict page limits. These limits made sense when articles were printed on expensive paper. They are now obsolete.

• But we still need to print the articles on paper! At least in Computer Science, almost everyone has adopted electronic media. It is cheaper and more convenient. I carry thousands of research papers on my laptop: I would require a part-time archivist to get the same result with paper. And 99% of all references are a mouse click away. Given a research paper, I can quickly search through it for interesting terms. It is true that paper versions can sometimes be handy. However, we have this marvelous technology called the personal printer. You can get one for $100. And these printers are connected to computers smart enough to print just the pages you need. You need to review the proof of a theorem on paper? Just print out the proof, specifically. Most people who can afford access to printed journals can afford a printer and the printing costs.
• Reviewers prefer to review short papers. It can be more difficult to review a short paper than a long paper. I speak from experience. For example, I am currently reviewing papers for ACM RecSys where we have two tracks: short and long papers. It takes me just as long to review short papers. Indeed, reading the text itself is not the bottleneck. What takes the bulk of my time?
  • Checking the literature is time consuming. I often ask myself: did they really advance the state-of-the-art? Other times, I want to check how the submitted manuscript differ from previous work from the same authors.
  • Reviewing the methodology or the mathematical proof also takes me a long time, especially when the authors have omitted details.

  If the authors expand unnecessarily on uninteresting aspects of their work, or spend much time reviewing elementary facts, it does not slow me down much because I can easily skip it, as long as the work is well structured. In fact, I find that I can get the gist of an entire Ph.D. thesis, if it is well written, faster than I can understand some short research papers. To summarize: the number of pages is not the primary factor determining how long it takes to review a paper. The problem is not that papers are too long, rather it is that they are often written too poorly.

• We want to entice authors to be concise. Everything else being equal, a concise text will be better written and easier to read than its longer counterpart. However, everything else is not equal. For example, Venkatesh Rao’s brief History of the Corporation is a blog post containing 7000 words. It is an order of magnitude larger than most blog posts. Aren’t Internet users supposed to suffer from attention deficit? Surely, nobody has time for such a long blog post? Yet it has become a classic. It has been extensively covered by various Internet news sites and forums, cited thousands of times. This is no excuse to use long and complicated sentences or to repeat yourself: Rao is an expert writer even though he writes long blog posts. So, while it is true that we have little tolerance for boring ramblings, what matters is less the length of the text, and more how interesting it is.

Thankfully, page limits are going away, slowly. Adam Marcus sent me a link to the UIST call for papers where they are openly flexible regarding page limits:

While we will review papers longer than 10 pages, the contributions must warrant the extra length.

Similarly, John Regehr sent me link to the OOPSLA call for papers:

The length of a submitted paper should not be a point of concern for authors. Authors should focus instead on addressing the criteria mentioned above, whether it takes 5 pages or 15 pages. It is, however, the responsibility of the authors to keep the reviewers interested and motivated to read the paper. Reviewers are under no obligation to read all or even a substantial portion of a paper if they do not find the initial part of the paper interesting.

Further reading: Stephen King made a killing his novel The Stand. Yet it spans nearly 1500 pages. Rao wrote several posts on why he shouldn’t be expected to use few words: Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater and Just Add Water.

Update: According to an anonymous reader, copy editing is often charged by the number of pages. So it can cost twice as much to publish a paper twice as long, even if you only publish it electronically.

George Orwell with novel 1984 popularized the idea that by changing the language, you could change the minds. It is easy to forget that we are routinely victims of this strategy.

A fascinating example is the French language itself. I long had this image of the French revolution as the French people, that is, the people who spoke French, rising up. But during the revolution in 1789, only half the population of France spoke some French. The state of France created the French language we know today. It was an act of social engineering to ensure that there would be a united French people.

A widespread instance of this strategy is political correctness. Apparently, it is racist to say that Martin Luther King was black. We don’t have firemen anymore, have you noticed? We have firefighters.

The term climate change is another fascinating example. Prior to 2003, we talked about global warming. It changed when Frank Luntz, a political consultant, convinced the American president to force people to talk about changes instead of warming, because it feels less threatening.

Another example is “intellectual property”. If “intellectual property” is bona fide property, then you should be able to steal it. Can you? The Supreme Court of the United States thinks you can’t steal intellectual property the same way you can steal cars:

(…) interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use.

Yet even judges get confused. Recently a programmer from Goldman Sachs who copied and shared secret software was acquitted of theft charges. Yet, in its verdict, the court writes that he stole purely intangible property embodied in a purely intangible format. He cannot be convicted of theft, so why use the word in the first place? The intellectual property lobby goes even further when it talks about piracy. (Thankfully, they haven’t yet prosecuted someone for actual piracy.) Effectively, they have changed the language, they have gotten us to attribute new meaning to existing words, to associate piracy and theft to the infringement of exclusivity rights.

Scientists often play the same games. For example, to make something sound serious, just append engineering to it: knowledge engineering, software engineering, data engineering.

Experience has taught me to be suspicious of people who spends too much effort redefining words. They are probably not out to help you think clearly.

Credit: Thanks to Marc Couture for the legal reference and an inspiring discussion.

Related video: Too Much Copyright

Further information: Euphemistic Language by George Carlin, Words That Work by Frank I. Luntz, How Not To Say What You Mean by R. W. Holder

Update: I do realize that global warming and climate change refer to different concepts from a scientific point of view. But what people worry about is not so much the change, as change is unavoidable. Rather, we worry about the warming… don’t we? Or are some people really set on preventing any kind of climate change?