When politicians run back and forth overseas to discuss pressing world problems, the press says that there was a “flurry of diplomatic activity.” In the case of Israel and Iran, there are many who believe that “flurry” will turn into a full-blown blizzard (with a subsequent “nuclear winter?”).
Like everything else in our wired world, the business of predicting has been taken over by “the experts” – in this case, the prediction markets, who use “The Wisdom of Crowds” to figure out the future. For example, right now at Intrade, which runs prediction markets for almost anything, from politics to wine vintages, has two Israel-related topics right now: Will Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist (nobody seems to think so) and if Israel or the US will attack Iran.
On the latter question, the predictions are all over the place, depending on which site you look at. The folks at Hubdub seem to think so, while at Intrade, they’re not so sure. Inkling users are much more optimistic that no war will take place. And at StrategyPage, where the watchword is “many minds make quick work of uncertainty,” the many minds don’t even believe that Iran is anywhere close to obtaining nuclear weapons! (They’re pretty bullish on gold, though – I guess they didn’t read my post questioning the whole gold mania thing).
So, is there wisdom in crowds? Most definitely, say people who know the business – such as Noam Danon of Qmarkets, and Israeli company that provides prediction network technology to small and medium sized businesses. I interviewed Danon last summer for Israeli21C, and he told me about the dozens of large corporations using them to set business policy – very successfully. As he says:
“Over the past four or five years, prediction markets have become a buzzword in many large organizations; Google, HP, Nokia, Siemens, the Best Buy retail chain, and many others use them to get an idea of where they should be investing their time and money. All those companies have large departments that specialize in working out prediction markets within the organization.”
Why would prediction markets give an accurate forecast for businesses, but not for Middle East conflicts? Obviously, money is a big motivator – when you have to decide how and where to invest assets, you are going to take the whole prediction process far more seriously. As far as Israel and Iran are concerned, the speculation either way could indicate that people look at the issue academically – after all, there have been no nuclear attacks since World War II, and it seem inconceivable that anyone would want to go down in history as being behind the next one (even the Iranians, North Koreans and Pakistanis, apparently). That, it seems to me, is the verdict of the crowd – with guaranteed MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) if Iran threatens/attacks Israel and/or vice-versa, both sides are doing a lot of “blustering” (another weather word!). Let’s hope the crowd is right on this one!
Thanks to the internet, we can share our most intimate ideas and thoughts with people all over the world. With Twitter, the privilege of getting thousands (or tens of thousands) of people to check out what you think is important in life is accelerated and democratized even further, since you don’t even have to bother with a blog if you want to reach “your public.” In a sense, we’re all celebrities now – just like Tom Wolfe predicted forty years ago, in the midst of the “Me Decade.”
That term, so closely associated with the 1970s, came from the name of an article Wolfe wrote for New York Magazine (it’s a great story, and if you’ve never read it, click on the link!). The article investigated some of the (then) new phenomena that really took hold during that decade – things like religious and secular cults, the sexual revolution, huge divorce rates, and the first stirrings of Christian “Moral Majority” style politics. Wolfe traces these developments to the Sixties, but by the mid-Seventies, they were part of the mainstream, no longer reserved for the hippies.
Americans have always been rugged individualists, and during the Seventies, Wolfe says, they took that individualism and combined it with the money they earned during the (then) “Thirty Year Boom” after World War II to start engaging in activities previously reserved only for the rich and powerful – namely,
“remaking, remodeling, elevating, and polishing one’s very self . . . and observing, studying, and doting on it. (Me!) This had always been an aristocratic luxury, confined throughout most of history to the life of the courts, since only the very wealthiest classes had the free time and the surplus income to dwell upon this sweetest and vainest of pastimes.”
In other words, all Americans could now become part of that class of aristocrats who could see
“my life becoming a drama with universal significance . . . analyzed, like Hamlet’s, for what it signifies for the rest of mankind.”
Wolfe called the new attitude to “Me” the “Third Great Awakening,” comparing it to previous religious movements that changed the face of the world. The “liberation of the self” was a kind of religious movement – it was the liberation of the repressed who for so long had been treated like “the proletariat” by their self-proclaimed social betters. Now, everyone was important, said Wolfe – it was the logical end-product of democracy.
At the end of the article, Wolfe asks:
“Where the Third Great Awakening will lead—who can presume to say? One only knows that the great religious waves have a momentum all their own.”
A great question, at the time, and Wolfe’s article was one of the most influential in the late seventies (at least two professors in my college had us do assignments on it!). But it’s now been forty years since that article was written, and the results of the Me-based Third Great Awakening can now be analyzed.
Most social analysts agree that the internet is the most democratic vehicle for expression in human history. For better or worse, anyone can proclaim him/herself an expert on anything – whether or not they have a graduate degree or years of experience in a field. Of course, if you want people to take you seriously, it helps to have the credentials.
But short of declaring myself a medical doctor or lawyer (or other government-licensed professional), I can pretty much brand myself any way I want. And thanks to blogs, Google (thanks to which we have SEO and can theoretically be seen by hundreds of millions) – and especially thanks to Twitter, I can believe and say anything I want about myself, and broadcast my “Me-ness” to tens of thousands, or even millions. There are so many “marketing experts” out there who claim to have “the secret” to making millions on-line, and maybe they do. But a world (and a platform, like Twitter), where everyone is an expert can only be possible in a world after the Me Decade.
Not that there’s anything wrong with it! I remember a discussion on a Quark xPress newsgroup from about ten years ago, where one of the posters once mourning the “lower quality” of publishing as a result of DTP. In the old days, the guy said, you had to be an “expert” – using the hot type, setting up the plates, etc. Now, any kid could make their own newspaper or magazine, and it was ruining business! As one of those “DTP kids,” I felt bad for this gentleman, who was obviously losing out in what had become an outmoded, dinosaur business. But why shouldn’t I have an opportunity to have my say if the technology allows it?
If there’s anything Twitter proves, it’s that there’s room at the top for everyone. Just like anyone could be an expert on DTP or marketing, and everyone can have their own blog, Twitter lets everyone take advantage of technology to market or brand themselves any way they want. The ability to be who YOU want – and to get others to take it seriously – is the ultimate end-product of the Me Decade, and Twitter is the tool that makes it happen!
Israeli hi-tech may be down – but it certainly isn’t out. That’s the conclusion you would have to reach if you spent time at Tuesday’s Israel Venture Association annual conference. The IVA brings together investors – VC’s and angels – with Israeli companies looking for funding. Over the past couple of years, the organization has been responsible for getting tens of millions in funding for Israeli companies. At the IVA convention, investors and industry folk meet, with the idea that some deals will emerge from the balagan.
While I attended some of the sessions, I found the “startup pavilion” most interesting. While many of the companies presenting in the organized sessions – with sessions on gaming, telecom, cleantech, mobile, and “traditional” areas like semiconductors – were startups too, they were “mature” startups, who were already well funded and, in many cases, already making money. The startups I spoke too were far younger, although some were on the verge of signing contracts (they said) in the areas they specialized in. Some of the more promising ideas: a company that has figured out a way to conduct wide-scale and accurate TV and radio ratings, a better system for oil and water exploration, and an easy way to move pictures between different social network photo sites.
There were also in-depth sessions, as I mentioned, with VC’s choosing companies in their portfolios to present their technology at the show. I went to a couple of them to see the presentations, as did many others. I made sure to check out the Cleantech presentations, sponsored by the California-Israel Chamber of Commerce. Very nice, with discussions of what might be one day great technologies that will save the environment. Of course, with Cleantech a hot area for investments – private and government – the session was jam-packed.
But the discussion was a bit too theoretical for me – lots of “ifs” and “we believes” and “at some point in the futures.” In other words, there are a lot of great ideas and a lot of possibilities – as well as a lot of speculation. A little bored (to tell the truth), I moved on to another session – the one in the next room, called “Semiconductors.”
Well, if I was bored at Cleantech, I’d probably end up taking a nap at Semiconductors! I mean, could there be a drier, less “modern hi-tech” topic for discussion? Apparently, most of the people at the show felt the way I did, because there were barely two dozen people in the room, as opposed to the couple of hundred in the Cleantech room (as well as at the other presentations). As it turned out, though, there was plenty to hear in Semiconductors – plenty of great ideas that are much more likely to change the world – and make their investors a lot more money – far more quickly than Cleantech investments will, at least for now. Let’s just say that the two companies I saw presentations for – Sandlinks, and especially Siverge – have amazing products that will really impact on society.
The lesson? DON’T follow the crowd – it’s usually as lost as you are! For Israel, “old,” tried and true hi-tech is where it’s still at!
I wasn’t looking to become the “poster boy” for Jewish-Arab coexistence when I set out north with my wife last Friday. After 19 years of marriage, we couldn’t resist an invitation from friends celebrating a family event in a Galilee hotel over Shabbat. Our 18 year old daughter, on leave from her National Service job in the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem, was primed to watch our three year old, together with their siblings (15, 14, and 11). Needless to say, we were extremely worried about how “the baby” would take the absence of both parents for the first time in her life (at least one of us had always been with her when the other was traveling or away), but as it turned out, that was to be the least of our worries – the kids, including the youngest, all had a blast.
Other troubles were waiting for us down the road. To get to northern Israel from our part of the country (western Shomron/Sharon), the most efficient route is to take Route 6 north to its current terminus, and then Road 65 east and north. That road, the easternmost within “Green Line” Israel, passes through an area called Wadi Ara, part of a geographic construct called “the triangle.” Its residents are almost exclusively Muslim Arabs, and the centerpiece of the area is a town called Um el-Faham. The most recent news stories about this area came out a couple of months ago, when several Israeli activists got permission to hold an “Israeli flag parade” in the town; the High Court authorized the parade, after police had turned down requests to hold it over and over. It turned out police were right, to some extent; there was minor rioting, and police worked hard to keep the small group of Jews and the much larger group of local residents protesting the parade at bay.
In general, though, Jews – especially people “like us,” observant residents of what some would call a “settlement,” would stay far away from Um el-Faham, and probably never even get within 10 kilometers of the place – if not for Road 65. As it turned out, however, that is where my car decided to break down. What happened and who’s to blame (I have a whole theory about that) are less important than the fact that the car essentially became undriveable an hour and a half before Shabbat – when we still had an hour or so to go to get to our destination!
Kids in yeshivas and day schools – and even secular kids here in Israel – all know the tales of how people sacrifice for the Sabbath, dropping valuable merchandise, money, wallets, etc. in order not to violate the holy day. But in those stories, the traveler always seems to be in a forest or other relatively quiet or calm area, and since in the old days travelers could be on the road for days at a time, they usually carried at least some provisions with them. We, on the other hand, were in the heart of one of the biggest Arab areas in Israel. The date, it’s useful to note, was May 15 – the date Israeli Arabs commemorate as “Nakba Day.”
But all that was a million miles away from our minds. We were preparing for a fun weekend, our first chance to see how the “other half” (the half whose kids stay home when the parents go away!) live. A/C running, music on the radio, it was like a dream. And then the nightmare began. It started with a “funny noise” (I should know better by now what the noises lead to!). But the car seemed OK, so I ignored it. All of the sudden, a little past a place called (I kid you not) “Al Aryan,” the car started kicking and bucking. Impossible to steer, with the temperature gauge shooting up in seconds, I figured we had to get off the road right away. But where? Fortunately, Road 65 is a major commercial strip, so there are businesses and strip malls every few kilometers. Now I needed a gas station – some place to park the car and check out the problem.
And that’s when I met Musa – the Um el-Faham mechanic who saved the day. Which story I will relate in part two (when I get around to writing it!).
Do you know how Google PageRank works? Lots of people out there believe they do – many of them have made turned that understanding into a career, working in SEO to get their clients on the all-important first results page. You can have talmudical-level discussion with some of these people; no question that they know their stuff. Some have even gone on the lecture circuit or written books on how PageRank works.
But can they explain how it works in three minutes or less? Probably not – no, make that definitely not, if the websites of many of these experts are any indication. “What kind of question is that,” I hear an insulted SEO expert saying; “Nobody could explain such a complicated technology in three minutes or less!”
Oh yes they can – and they (or rather he) did just that last week, during the finals of the Israel Famelab contest, a part of the British Famelab, established five years ago in Britain, and expanded to several other countries, including Israel, two years ago. Famelab is a contest designed for graduate students and researchers to “help discover the new faces of science.” According to the rules, the candidate must take an interesting (and complicated) scientific topic, and explain it to a panel of judges in just three minutes (!) in their native language. The winners get a laptop and a free trip to England, where they are honored at the Chelthenham Science Festival.
The PageRank presentation was made by Ohad Barzilai, a candidate for a doctoral degree in computer science at Tel Aviv University. Here’s a rough translation of the highlights of how he explained PageRank (original Hebrew here)
“With PageRank, Google lets the internet make its own popularity standings. The standings are determined by links and connections between sites. The sites with the most links get the highest rankings.”
Okay, even the judges knew that part! But Barzilai goes into the gory details; Google’s bots, crawling around the net, mine the data for links and connections, and builds a database over 20 billion lines long (!), with all the link data between sites correlated. But once that’s done, Google then has to determine the quality of those links:
“Here’s an example: You are an employer interviewing two potential employees. One brings with him ten letters of recommendation, and the other brings only one. But that one was written by Bill Gates. Who would you hire, based on that information? Clearly the letter with Gates’ nod is more valuable. When someone giving a recommendation has an important reputation of his own, we give those recommendations more value. But what if you discovered that Gates’ had written 10,000 such letters? Would you still value his recommendation as you did before? Most likely not; as a person gives out more and more recommendations, those recommendations are worth less.
“That is exactly how PageRank works. Google has discovered an amazing thing: If they apply a mathematical equation called a diagonal lemma to the big list of link results, they are able to get a picture of the importance of the links and the sites themselves. The astounding thing is that Google has discovered, using linear algebra, to mathematically quantify the intuitive standings of popularity and relevance. It’s all done automatically without human intervention. This is what Google does, and they do it better than anyone else in the world does today.
Not bad for three minutes! PageRank a very complicated subject, as you can see from here, a college level course that spends a semester discussing it! Making sense out of PageRank in just three minutes is truly an accomplishment. By the way, Barzilai only came in second place for this – the winner discussed memory and face recognition! Some people fear that Israel’s educational system isn’t doing the job when it comes to training students for science and hi-tech. Looks like they just might be wrong!
Not to sound racist, but there’s no way a person raised in a Western country can’t feel some consternation when a person of clearly Arabic background gets on a plane. 9/11 was just too much of a shock to the system, and it’s impossible not to do some personal profiling, even if you try not to.
The same applies to Arabic text. If you’re from the United States or Israel (and probably lots of other countries) it’s impossible not to look at a page of Arabic writing and not get “nervous” – as in, “it must be some anti-Israel/anti-Jewish/pro-terrorist screed.” We’ve come to expect it, especially in Israel. And if you live in an area where there is lots of Arabic on the radio (such as Israel), you get the same suspicions listening to broadcasts of speakers who are dramatically intoning – something.
Other than learning to understand Arabic, there’s little you can do about the audio “threat” (one of my daughters more or less taught herself Arabic, so she can make out what goes on in these broadcasts). But for the rest of us who are too lazy/uninterested/incapable of learning a new language at this point in our lives, there’s Google Translations. There are lots of reasons not to like Google (like the people here say), but one amazing thing Google has done, imho, is Google Translate, where you can paste in text or URLs and get them automatically translated between dozens of languages – like English, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as Swedish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and of course the more “pedestrian” languages like Italian and French (no offense meant!).
Google Translate has helped me out numerous times – including just this afternoon, as I was writing a feature story on Israeli boxing. As part of the story, I wanted to mention the tragic death of a former Israeli Golden Gloves champ, Karim Nayif Bathish, who was killed a couple of weeks ago in an auto accident. I really wanted a picture of Bathish, but couldn’t find one anywhere – on the English and Hebrew sites, that is. Then I got the bright idea to Google Bathtish’s name in Arabic, seeking out articles about him on Israeli websites in Arabic. As a local hero in Nazareth and Haifa, you’d figure there would be a couple of articles. And indeed there were – complete with picture. The articles were quite factual, and the talkbacks were all what you would expect (mourning for the victim, etc.).
This isn’t the first time I’ve used Google Translate to research an article on Arabic language websites – I actually wrote an article in the JPost about it last year. And of course, I can’t help but check out other stories than the ones I was searching for on these sites. Let’s just say that while some fill the post-9/11 stereotype, most don’t. Believe it or not, “they” are not as obsessed with us as we think they are!
The thrust of my boxing article is how the organization tries to promote co-existence (most of the boxers are Arab or Russian kids). The director of the organization, Dr. Shahade, told me than in 20 years of running the Israel Boxing Association, there hasn’t been one ethnic/religious fight among the boxers! That’s great for kids who are in shape enough to box – but how can the rest of us avoid tension? Maybe Google Translate is the arena for us!
In Israel, the authorities are very focused on collecting taxes (I guess authorities everywhere are). As such, the authorities have set up a variety of mechanisms to make sure that they get their money. Thanks to a computer snafu, though, they managed to get some money that wasn’t theirs – including mine!
Most people in Israel (salaried workers) have their income taxes automatically deducted; technically, they don’t have to file a tax return, unless they have an exceptional expense or deduction (average charitable contributions, credits for dependents, etc. are all factored in already). Independent operators/freelancers/self-employed people, on the other hand, file annual returns. Every two months, you are supposed to pay an advance to the Tax Authority; they give you a little book of receipts where you are supposed to fill in the amount of money you earned, and pay a percentage as income tax. That percentage is determined at the beginning of the calendar year, and is based on your previous year’s income.
It makes as much sense as any collection system, but it’s expected that there is going to be some money owed by either side, since by definition a freelancer/self-employed person does not earn the same amount each year from the same employer (otherwise they might as well take a salary). Between varying income, changing business expenses, new dependents (ie children), and other factors, you could be eligible for a hefty refund – or have to pay a hefty amount to cover your obligation.
Having done this for a few years now, I can also say with authority that it depends on the accountant you have, too. I have a good one. Not that he’s a crook or anything, he just knows his way around the tax codes, and has been able to get me a significant refund each year for the past three years!
According to his reckoning, I was supposed to get about 5,000 shekels back this year. They usually send these refunds out by February, but here it is May, and I haven’t gotten mine yet. What I have gotten, though, are dunning letters demanding that I pay them 2,400 shekels!
Now, let it not be said that I don’t do my part as a taxpayer; there are lots of deductions I don’t take on purpose. I’d rather pay them and have them leave me alone. When I got the first letter (they don’t start threatening until the third), I called up my accountant and asked him what had gone wrong – assuming he had miscalculated or something. “Let me check my figures,” he told me – and called back a couple of days later to tell me that he had been right, and the tax people owed me money! “I even called the tax official in charge of your account,” he told me, “and he agreed completely.” So what happened? “Must have been a glitch. I’m sure they’ll clear it up in a couple of days.”
Nope – and I’ve now gotten a fourth letter! I was all set to write them a check, when I saw the article describing exactly what happened. In his annual report, Micha Lindenstrauss said that the Tax Authority had “lost” the deduction eligibility information for a whole slew of taxpayers when implementing a new IT system. Apparently, there a series of different computer systems that the Authority is trying to unite in a single system – a project that has been going on for the last 18 years (!) – and it still isn’t ready. Now the question is, do I give up, or try to get my money back? Can’t we put some hi-tech entrepreneurs to work on this?
That underground tunnel in the TV show Weeds – the one where they moved drugs and illegal aliens into California from Mexico – was no TV show writer invention. There are probably dozens of such tunnels, similar to the ones dug by Hamas from Sinai into Gaza – except that in Israel, the terrorists move not only drugs, but weapons, like missiles and bombs, through the tunnels. Those are the missiles we hear about almost every day as they are fired at Israeli communities in the Negev.
The tunnels aren’t easy to find, and the tunnel diggers are very good at camouflaging their work. The problem is even worse in the U.S than in Israel (this one was air-conditioned – I guess Mexican smugglers have a higher standard of living that the ones in the Middle East!), because the border with Mexico is much longer than the border between Sinai and Gaza. Unless a cop or border patrolman gets lucky, it’s next to impossible to find the tunnels.
Now, a team of Israeli researchers may have discovered a way to solve the problem. Dr. Assaf Klar and Dr. Raphael Linker, of the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering have come up with a way to use sound waves to detect the existence of tunnels. “Tunnel excavation is accompanied by the release of stresses that cause permanent – though very tiny – displacements and strains in the ground,” says Dr. Klar. “If you can measure these strains in the soil with sensitive equipment, you can find the tunnel’s location.” In other words, you can find an underground tunnel if you know what to listen for!
Called BOTDR (Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry), the technology uses optical fiber that can read the underground topology of an area, “keeping an ear out” for patterns that indicate distortions in the underground soil or rocks. The Technion team applied the BOTDR technology to their system, which is programmed with profiles for all sorts of possible disturbances, such as rainwater dripping into the ground, flowing water, movements of snakes and other underground dwellers, etc. All those disturbances are filtered out – and the system raises an alarm when it comes across a pattern that indicates that a tunnel is being dug – or being used. The pair presented their findings last month at the Defense, Security and Sensing Conference of SPIE, to a rapt audience (so my sources say)!
Israel is the world leader in hi-tech innovations. So many of the internet, cellphone, and gadget inventions that make our lives easier and more fun are born right here in Israel! Get the inside track on the newest ideas and innovations in our bi-weekly Digital Israel Newsletter. Sign up right here!
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Well, if I was bored at Cleantech, I’d probably end up taking a nap at Semiconductors! I mean, could there be a drier, less “modern hi-tech” topic for discussion? Apparently, most of the people at the show felt the way I did, because there were barely two dozen people in the room, as opposed to the couple of hundred in the Cleantech room (as well as at the other presentations). As it turned out, though, there was plenty to hear in Semiconductors – plenty of great ideas that are much more likely to change the world – and make their investors a lot more money – far more quickly than Cleantech investments will, at least for now. Let’s just say that the two companies I saw presentations for – Sandlinks, and especially Siverge – have amazing products that will really impact on society.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3c4cfe0d-e684-4b41-b742-786b58750212)
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Google Translate has helped me out numerous times – including just this afternoon, as I was writing a feature story on Israeli boxing. As part of the story, I wanted to mention the![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2d637cf1-d0c6-45d8-9e18-bc7ea78d41bb)
It makes as much sense as any collection system, but it’s expected that there is going to be some money owed by either side, since by definition a freelancer/self-employed person does not earn the same amount each year from the same employer (otherwise they might as well take a salary). Between varying income, changing business expenses, new dependents (ie children), and other factors, you could be eligible for a hefty refund – or have to pay a hefty amount to cover your obligation.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=a12f6f32-40de-495c-a77e-14c9a618da2f)
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