This video was taped at a recent event at the Johns Hopkins University bookstore. The speaker here is W. Bernard Carlson, author of Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age.
Bernard Carlson talks Tesla at Johns Hopkins Bookstore tonight!
May 1, 2013 by
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Did Tesla really invent a death ray? Could he have provided unlimited free energy to the world? Did he really fall in love with a laser-eyed pigeon? There are many rumors and myths surrounding Nikola Tesla, and biographer Bernard Carlson will separate fact from fiction tonight at the Johns Hopkins University Bookstore at 7 PM.
With a functioning Tesla coil by his side, Dr. Carlson will discuss his new biography, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. 70 years after Tesla’s death, this major new book sheds new light on his visionary approach to invention and the business strategies behind his most important technological breakthroughs. Publishers Weekly calls the book “[An] electric portrait,” and it received a starred review in Booklist.
See you there!
Location:
Homewood – Barnes & Noble JHU Book Store
3330 St. Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Phone: 410-662-5850
Find this event on the PUP Calendar, to set a reminder for yourself and share news of the event.
Tesla wins Geek Madness, named Greatest Geek of All Time
April 30, 2013 by
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GeekWire recently held a Geek Madness. Over several weeks their readers whittled down a field of 32 all-star scientists to name Tesla, the Greatest Geek of All Time.
Tesla entered the competition as the #2 seed in the Math/Science field of competitors, but emerged victorious after vanquishing opponents like Linus Torvalds (ranked 14 on the Technology side), Albert Einstein (1), Charles Darwin (7), and Alexander Graham Bell (15). High praise from a geeky audience and as publishers of Tesla: The Inventor of the Electrical Age, we couldn’t agree more.
Here’s the blow-by-blow from GeekWire:
Tesla led from start-to-finish in the championship match over 14-seed Linus Torvalds, as Mr. Cinderella fell one upset short of what would have been one of the most epic underdog stories in geek history.
But it was Tesla garnering 1,764 of the votes to edge Torvalds, who still managed to do his Linux faithful proud with 1,293 votes to his name.
Read the complete post at GeekWire: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/geek-madness-tesla-named-greatest-geek-trouncing-torvalds/
We hope some of these Tesla fans will show up to meet Bernard Carlson and get an autographed copy of Tesla: The Inventor of the Electrical Age.
Stanford announces partnership with edX making progress for Higher Education in the Digital Age
April 3, 2013 by
I can do everything I need to do from the comfort of my couch. I can order groceries to be delivered to my house, talk to my friends, and write a collaborative paper all online. Today we can do all sorts of things on-line- including getting an education. William G. Bowen, president emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Princeton University, explains what he believes are the benefits of technology in higher education in his new book Higher Education in the Digital Age.
Stanford University announced today that they will be teaming up with edX- a massive open online course (MOOC) platform that offers university-level courses online. The Washington Post reports that Anant Argarwal, president of edX “envisions that any school or company could use it to mount a course, part of what he calls a ‘true, planet-scale democratization of education.’”
Bowen believes that this type of technology can transform higher education by making it more accessible and cost-efficient while still being able to provide quality education. He recognizes the potential downsides of the future of online learning and notes in an article for Inside Higher Ed, “One of the issues is really an equity issue, at the end of the day, will the gap between haves and have-nots be narrowed or widened by this development.”
Plenty of people I know take classes online as their primary route to education and others take classes online in addition to going to physical classes. As online courses and MOOC platforms become more and more prevalent, maybe more of us will be taking classes from the comfort of our couches.
Ethnography and Virtual Worlds is virtually everywhere
November 13, 2012 by
As our existence and interactions have grown increasingly virtual, the arena has rapidly evolved into a new frontier for human life, with many of the complexities, cultural nuances and and social problems of the ‘real’ world. Several years ago, anthropologist Tom Boellstorff, arguably the first anthropologist to study this realm in its rich complexity, published his breakthrough fieldwork in Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Now he has coauthored, along with Bonnie Nardi, Celia Pearce, and T.L. Taylor, Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method, the first ever guidebook for conducting ethnography in virtual worlds, and the book is getting a ton of attention in the blogosphere. For some of the highlights, check out the Mixed Realities piece on the relevance of an avatar, or the wonderful excerpt from the book on New World Notes, or the authors’ Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable here. Naturally the book has gained an enthusiastic following with the Second Life crowd, popping up everywhere from Second Life News to the Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds. Boellstorff is such a natural in virtual worlds that he’s been known to throw book parties in Second Life, where he’s been virtually unfazed by his publicist’s awkwardly manned avatar.
Want to score a internship with the Princeton University Press? Our current interns offer some advice on maximizing your chances
November 6, 2012 by
A few of our interns give us the insider scoop on what it’s like to work at a university press and offer some valuable advice on landing an internship with the Princeton University Press:
EDITORIAL
Juliana Fidler (TCNJ)
Title: General Editorial Intern
Department: Editorial
College Major: Majoring in English with a minor in Spanish
Year: Senior
1.) What does your list of duties for the Princeton University Press include?
I help the editorial assistants with any tasks they need/ask me to complete. The most common ones are compiling image permissions logs, submitting shipping orders, and creating contact lists. I’ve been working on two long-term projects: re-clearing image permissions for an upcoming e-book version of a 2007 book (which means finding and communicating with the various rights holders and keeping track of their responses) and researching courses that could potentially adopt a specific textbook. I also get to attend some editorial meetings.
2.) Are there any special qualifications, skills, or training that you have brought with you to the internship?
I’ve been a writer and copy editor at my college’s newspaper, a file clerk at a law firm, and an intern at another publishing house. So I’d say my training has given me organizational skills—but with creativity mixed in. As an English major (and college student in general), I’ve brought an appreciation for a wide variety of literature and books.
3.) What aspect(s) do you enjoy most about your internship with the Princeton University Press?
I’ve learned a lot by attending the editorial meetings here, so I’m grateful to be able to do that. I also love seeing my long-term projects bear results. And everyone has been very friendly and welcoming, so I’ve enjoyed getting to know people!
4.) In what ways do you think this internship will help you in future job endeavors?
Working at a prestigious university press looks great on a resume, of course, but perhaps more importantly, I think I’ve acquired a lot of foundational skills that I would need to eventually start working in publishing/editorial full time.
5.) What job skill(s) learned at the Press do you feel are most vital to your overall career success?
I have learned a lot about permissions, and I think a basic working knowledge in that area is great for any publishing industry hopeful. The editorial assistants also make a point to keep the editorial interns in the loop regarding the details of new and upcoming books PUP is publishing, so I feel that I’m gaining an understanding of the acquisition-to-manuscript-to-book process (so many hyphens, sorry) that’s beyond just the projects and tasks I complete as an intern.
6.) Would you recommend this internship to others?
Yes!
7.) Is there any advice you can give to those applying for internships, looking for jobs in your field, or ways to maximize one’s chance of getting an internship with the Princeton University Press?
For those applying to internships, I’d say emphasize whatever it is that makes you stand out. I included the link to my study abroad blog in my cover letter, and when I had my interview with PUP (via Skype, from Spain) I found out that the people interviewing me had read through it! I can’t say that’s what got me the internship, but it didn’t hurt. On a related note, I think a great cover letter is important, since it’s more personal than a resume. Also, keep an open mind; I wouldn’t have necessarily sought an internship at a university press (as opposed to a private textbook or trade publisher) initially, but I found PUP on my school’s online recruiting network, and I’m glad I ended up here. In terms of looking for jobs…I’ll be checking out the other interns’ answers for tips, since I’ll be doing that soon!
Closing Remarks:
“I’ve found that PUP is a great place to have an internship, because the experience is clearly intended to expose the intern to what publishing at a university press is like and how it works.”
Anna Sandberg (Rutgers University)
Title: Editorial Reference Intern
Department: Editorial
College Major: Double majoring in Italian and European Studies with a minor in Organizational Leadership
Year: Senior
1.) What does your list of duties for the Princeton University Press include?
CPFS orders, Shipping/Mailing orders, Proofing PUP shorts & other minor publications, Research for editorial assistants such as address look-ups, phone numbers, potential blurbers for publications, etc., Image searches for publications (high resolution copies of images wanted for publications, but not provided by the author/contributor), Contacting sources for image permissions, Data entry, Contract entries, attending various Editorial meetings (Project Review, Hit, etc.) with editorial assistants.
2.) Are there any special qualifications, skills, or training that you have brought with you to the internship?
I worked last fall as an intern with Rutgers University Student Life in an office setting. I was responsible for a lot of email communication and general office work like printing, scanning, photocopying, etc.
3.) What aspect(s) do you enjoy most about your internship with the Princeton University Press?
I like the variety. Sometimes I do get stuck on really lengthy projects, but I like when I do a lot of little things for a bunch of projects in one day. It really gives you an idea of how many different projects each editor is working on at one time. The meetings are also really good to gage how many projects are run at the same time here. I also like the continuity. One day I might be working on address look-ups for a whole bunch of people, and the next week I could be sending books to those addresses for review. It’s nice to see how some of my work is used later on in the process.
4.) In what ways do you think this internship will help you in future job endeavors?
I would like to have a career in publishing (specifically in editing), so this internship is really helpful as experience for job applications. Although I do want to work in fiction for a large publishing company, I’m sure many of the skills that I’ve learned here will transfer or at least serve as a good basis for working elsewhere.
5.) What job skill(s) learned at the Press do you feel are most vital to your overall career success?
I think knowing the process of book publication will be really helpful to my career success since I want to get into publishing. Of course it might not be quite the same for non-academic publishing, but it’s a start. Knowing how to complete mailings, etc. is another skill that I learned at this job and while another publishing company might use another type of database, it’s helpful to know for the future.
6.) Would you recommend this internship to others?
Yes!
7.) Is there any advice you can give to those applying for internships, looking for jobs in your field, or ways to maximize one’s chance of getting an internship with the Princeton University Press?
I think just getting out there an applying is an important step. You may not get every internship you apply for, but that’s why you need to apply to a few. I used my university’s career networking site where different companies post job offerings to find this internship, but if you are looking for an internship in a specific field, sometimes it is helpful to just look on a couple of company websites for information. I’m currently looking for an editorial internship with a large publishing house for next semester and my university’s career site is limited, so I’ve started researching a few prominent publishing houses in NYC and looking for internships at those individual companies.
Closing Remarks:
“The other editorial intern (Juliana) and I both studied abroad last semester in Europe. While it was difficult to find companies willing to interview me via phone or on Skype, PUP was more than willing. They have great communication technology here and they actually use it quite often for meetings with the PUP office in the UK, which I think is really great. It was a really different experience interviewing online that I don’t think many people have. I thought it was really interesting that studying abroad actually helped me get this internship rather than hurt my chances because some companies either don’t have the technology or were unwilling to communicate online or via phone with me.”
MARKETING
Emily Witkowski
Title: Textbook Promotions Intern
Department: Marketing
College Major: Majoring in English with a minor in Interactive Multimedia
Year: Senior
1.) What does your list of duties for the Princeton University Press include?
My job is focused on finding comparable textbooks to the ones we publish and pulling up reports on what universities and professors are using them for what courses so that I can find the professor’s contact information to inform them of the texts we publish. In addition to this, I pull reports on books that we publish to see how they are doing and I help prepare the launch of text books with mail outs and other details.
2.) Are there any special qualifications, skills, or training that you have brought with you to the internship?
There is a lot of research involved in this position, navigating through university websites and textbook distributers like Amazon. So I think research skills were important to have coming into the position, as well as some knowledge of Excel.
3.) What aspect(s) do you enjoy most about your internship with the Princeton University Press?
I love how interns are not only allowed, but encouraged to attend various meetings at the press. As an intern, you’re really focused on your department and what you need to do for your specific jobs, but the meetings provide a wider scope of what exactly this organization does.
4.) In what ways do you think this internship will help you in future job endeavors?
I think there are skills and practices that I have learned here that will translate well to other positions, and I also think there is an impressiveness to working at Princeton University Press that other employers will see.
5.) What job skill(s) learned at the Press do you feel are most vital to your overall career success?
For me, though I feel I have learned some skills here, it is more about the knowledge that I have gained. I have learned a lot more about the different facets of publishing, as well as how universities work. In my employment future, I want to stay in academia, working with universities and schools in general. This specific position affords you the opportunity to read up on all different types of programs at different schools and helps you understand why they do the things they do, why we read the books we read.
6.) Would you recommend this internship to others?
I would definitely recommend this internship to others. I think it is an amazing opportunity and something very interesting to a variety of different people.
7.) Is there any advice you can give to those applying for internships, looking for jobs in your field, or ways to maximize one’s chance of getting an internship with the Princeton University Press?
Don’t be afraid to offer some personal information. What seemed to clinch the position for me here was my involvement in things that did not necessarily have to do with employment or English or publishing. Talk about organizations and clubs you are in even if they don’t seem relevant, and don’t downplay any of your responsibilities or accomplishments. The Press wants well-rounded, interesting employees and interns, so show that about yourself.
Closing Remarks:
“I think people often think a job associated with a top university or a prestigious organization seems unattainable. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same way when I applied. But places like PUP need applications and interest too. I think what has surprised me here in talking to people is hearing about the openings they have and how they want more applicants, so never hesitate! Sending in the application was one of the best decisions I could have made for my college experience.”
PUBLICITY
Holly Jennings (Rider University)
Title: Social Media Intern
Department: Publicity
College Major: Majoring in Public Relations
Year: Junior
1.) What does your list of duties for the Princeton University Press include?
Scans print media into the shared drive for easy retrieval in the future, attends departmental meetings to get an overall view of the function of the publicity department, conducts research related to various books for marketing purposes, researches online blogs for specific topics to obtain information for marketing and publicity, and initiates and monitors blogs on various topics related to specific books, updates mailing lists in the database to ensure they are current and accurate, sets up Facebook pages for each trade title, adds events to the Princeton University Press Facebook site and individual book sites, posts articles and creates features on the blog, completes all other duties as assigned or requested for the general support of the organization.
2.) Are there any special qualifications, skills, or training that you have brought with you to the internship?
I have been doing web design and HTML since I was fairly young – I’ve been self-taught since about 6th grade. My best friend and I used to build HTML/CSS layouts for Xanga, which is an online journal community. Having the skill set to build websites and become familiar with different types of coding is vital to the Social Media Intern position because this is a position heavily based around creativity and putting your own unique touch on things.
3.) What aspect(s) do you enjoy most about your internship with the Princeton University Press?
The aspects I enjoy most about my internship is the freedom to make what you do your own projects. In my department, I’m given a lot of freedom to show off my creativity. I’m allowed to create my own projects and am autonomous in making a lot of decisions.
4.) In what ways do you think this internship will help you in future job endeavors?
Building off of the previous question, I think being responsible for my own projects has taught me a lot about responsibility and self initiation. It’s easy to mess around when you have little guidelines on exactly how your work should be done. In a Social Media Intern position, you’re your own boss, in a sense – it is real sense of accomplishment knowing that your work comes from your own successes.
5.) What job skill(s) learned at the Press do you feel are most vital to your overall career success?
The job skills I’ve learned at the Press that I feel are most vital to my overall career success would definitely be the social media postings. I’ve become very savvy with what types of language you should use in Facebook and blog posts. When you learn how to communicate to your company’s specific key publics in a way that resonates with them, you obtain a priceless skill that is transferable to any type of business you may venture into.
6.) Would you recommend this internship to others?
I would absolutely recommend this internship to others. The Princeton University Press is a very friendly environment and there are an unlimited number of projects that greatly benefit your resume for future employers.
7.) Is there any advice you can give to those applying for internships, looking for jobs in your field, or ways to maximize one’s chance of getting an internship with the Princeton University Press?
If there is any advice I can give to those looking to be chosen for an internship at PUP, I would have to say that building your resume is paramount. Play up your strengths, and try to keep job descriptions to the point while highlighting the important duties and accomplishments that apply to the department you are looking to work for. For me, I made it a point to play up my previous employment in retail on my resume. Although one might not think retail relates directly to social media, the interactions with customers and fellow coworkers have taught me a lot about communicating with others, whether it be in person or through the internet. Another strength on my resume is my GPA. I work hard to maintain a very high GPA, because although a GPA may not be everything to employers, it does help you appear to be a promising employee with a steadfast work ethic.
Closing Remarks:
“For anyone looking for a very respectable and enlightening internship experience, I highly recommend you fill out an application for the Princeton University Press. There are a number of departments that span across many types of college majors. I was really excited when I landed my first internship here as a Publicity Intern over the summer. When I was asked to come back for a second internship as a Social Media Intern, I was thrilled. Doors will open for you if you pursue an internship with PUP.”
To fill out an application for an internship position or for more information about internship opportunities with the Princeton University Press, please click below:
http://press.princeton.edu/jobs.html
Remember Romney’s Dog?
September 26, 2012 by
Of course you do. You could probably refresh your memory of the story in a few clicks. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is the author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, which argues that the all-too-perfect memory of the digital realm has serious implications for all of us. Case in point: Just last week, Mitt Romney suffered a setback at the hands of a certain widely released fundraiser video. It’s a familiar story. Politicians and public figures have suffered countless humiliations courtesy of cyberspace’s refusal to let bygones be bygones, a comeuppance that can seem unfair when the result can mean an entire career of public service cancelled out by one all-too-visible error in judgment (or tweet). Perhaps with so much of life digitally preserved, mankind can learn to adjust and filter accordingly? Read Schönberger’s Election 101 post here.
Remembering Romney’s Dog
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
Mitt Romney’s dog, tied to the roof of the family car during a long vacation drive, is one picture (even if only imagined, based on the light-hearted story told by Romney’s son) that fails to fade. A year ago, aspiring young Democratic Congressmen Anthony Weiner, married to Hilary Clinton’s long-time personal aide abruptly resigned; he had sent partially nude digital pictures of himself together with explicit messages to at least six women he barely knew.
This election cycle is no different from the last. Stories and pictures from a politician’s past appear and shape our perceptions of who he (or she) is. And these images don’t go away, they stay in our collective mind, and no matter how hard politicians try, these images continue to define them in the public eye. At best they go away when the politician does. Rep. Weiner’s images have faded from the public eye, because so has he.
With so much of our daily lives captured digitally, so many digital photos taken, so many billions of emails exchanged, Tweets sent, Facebook Status messages posted, many of the digerati, the self-proclaimed Internet experts, predicted that humans would swiftly adjust to comprehensive digital memory, and develop robust cognitive filters. We would, the argument went, simply disregard the meme of Romney’s dog or Weiner’s explicit messages as an irrelevant little piece of digital trivia that is not representative of Governor Romney or Representative Weiner. If everyone has such skeletons in the closet, why should we bother? Wouldn’t we be better advised to scrutinize politicians’ agendas than their digital memories?
It’s an admirable viewpoint – and always struck me as terribly naïve. For one, not all of us strap our dogs to car roofs for long rides, or send sexually explicit messages to people we barely know. And the ubiquity of digital cameras (and the ease of sharing photos) does not turn us into Exhibitionists or Peeping Toms. But even more importantly, human cognition is primed to remember the exceptional, and to forget the ordinary. That is how we think. For thousands of years it helped us to quickly recognize changed conditions; it made us aware of dangers and saved our ancestor’s (and perhaps our) lives. We have this particular ability to see the red rose in a field full of yellow tulips – and that rose is what we later remember in detail, not the thousands of tulips around it. Because we recognize and remember exceptions, we can’t quickly forget Romney’s dog and Weiner’s explicit messages, even if we wanted to.
Thus, if more of our lives is captured digitally, preserved, and kept accessible, neither politicians nor we ourselves can hope for a cognitive adjustment that lets us put aside extraordinary bits of the past.
In politics this means that we may continue to remember Romney’s dog as much (or more) as his political agenda, even though that’s not how most of us like to see ourselves: rational and objective. It does not only complicate a politician’s life (she has to assume to be constantly watched), it also makes politics an unattractive career. That is troubling for a democracy.
But retaining an ability to forget in the digital age is important not just for democracy, but for all of us. We all have trespassed in the past, and unlike in the analog age these misdeeds are more frequently captured digitally now, and preserved long-term. It may be time to think how we best can rid ourselves of some of these digital memories that are no longer relevant to who we are today.
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and a member of the academic advisory board of Microsoft. His other books include Governance and Information Technology. A former software developer and lawyer, he spent ten years on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Charter Schools, Information Technology, and Experimental Democracy
July 25, 2012 by
John McGinnis, author of the forthcoming Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technological Change will be taking to Election 101 to blog regularly about technology and the election. This week he returns with an unusual structural argument for charter schools. With better tools available for evaluating success or failure of policy, can a case be made for charter schools on the basis that their sheer diversity of approaches provide perfect opportunities for testing which educational policies work and which are outright failures? Read his post here:
Charter Schools, Information Technology, and Experimental Democracy
John McGinnis
Education is again a central topic in many of this year’s political campaigns. One example: a state senate race in California seems to be turning on a debate about education in general and charter schools in particular. While the United States dominates the lists of the world’s greatest universities, it consistently fails to be near the top of the global charts of the best performing K-12 schools. There is a strong consensus in the United States over the need for better education. Political disagreements concern the policies that will improve learning.
The Economist had an article a week ago praising charter schools for generally better performance than other government funded schools. The article concedes that not all such schools work better. Some in fact need to be closed as outright failures.
In my book, Accelerating Democracy, I defend charter schools as injecting experimental dynamism into democracy. Because charter schools vary substantially from one another even within a single jurisdiction, they have the advantage of creating more experiments on different kinds of educational inputs (from smaller classes to merit pay). Because of the relentless increase in computational capacity we have continually better tools to evaluate through careful statistical analysis which policies work and which do not. Just as democracy in the eighteenth century needed to be nested in the technology of its time, like the printing press, so democracy today should be nested in our new information technology. Because we have the tools better to evaluate policy experiments, we should structure our institutions better to test policies. Democracy in the information age should be a more self-consciously experimental democracy.
Some structures of governance encourage experimentation more than others. Federalism, for instance, allows states to devise different solutions to social problems rather than have the federal government impose a single solution. But charter schools provide another experimental structure. Even if they deliver results that are not better on average than public schools, their diversity can help us make progress on choosing programs that make children more knowledgeable and successful. Charter schools take widely varying approaches with some emphasizing a back to basic education philosophy and others more progressive techniques. Some will use merit pay. Others will not. The results of such myriad differences can then be evaluated.
Decentralization at both the national and local level promotes experimentation. In this election season, it is important to think about what are the structures that will allow us to evaluate the success and failure of policies with the tools that modern technology makes available. That is the route to long-term policy progress.
John O. McGinnis is the George C. Dix Professor of Constitutional Law at Northwestern University.
Welcoming new regular guest blogger on Technology and the Election, John McGinnis
June 28, 2012 by
John McGinnis, author of the forthcoming Accelerating Democracy: Matching Governance to Technological Change will be taking to Election 101 to blog each week about technology and the election. Anyone with a twitter account and an iPhone knows that technology has advanced at an explosive pace in recent years. We have, after all, elected the first ‘social media’ president, viral marketing has never been bigger, and prediction technology often seems instantaneous. Yet democratic governance has not yet caught up with all the advancements that have taken place. Technology can, of course, be a boon to democracy in many ways–while social planning was once a top-down enterprise, now we have a stream of information connecting us to the issues everywhere in record time. But technological advancement is not without dangers, and information often moves faster than it can be harnessed to impact public policy. John McGinnis will be dedicating his weekly posts to these issues, and the ways in which the government must keep pace with technological change. Read on for his introductory post:
Predicting the Effects of Policy at Election Time
John McGinnis
In an election season, politicians promise that their policies will deliver wonderful results. But their proposed policies often conflict. Will more government spending or tax cuts generate economic growth? Will charter schools improve educational achievement or is it better to spend more on existing schools? To determine which policies to follow, democracy needs better information about their likely results.
My forthcoming book, Accelerating Democracy: Matching Governance to Technological Change, argues that we can make better policy by bringing democracy within the domain of our digital information revolution. We are all aware that our lives are being transformed as the devices created by exponential increases in computational power connect us to information and to one another faster than ever before. But we have not systematically considered how this technological revolution can improve democracy in our day, as the printing press did in its time.
New or improved information technologies, like empiricism, prediction markets, and dispersed media, can refine our evaluation of past policies and sharpen our predictions of future policy results. But they can do so only if we change laws and political structures to permit the information revolution to wash through our politics. In this post and those to come, I will use events in our current election to describe in more detail how we can improve democratic outcomes by embracing in contemporary politics our accelerating technological future.
I begin with the question of how we can better predict the consequences of an election. Experts predict these consequences all the time. For instance, the economist Joseph Stiglitz stated that Governor Romney’s election would “significantly” raise the risks of a recession. If this statement were true, it would be a reason to vote for the incumbent. But Professor Stiglitz is not only a Nobel winning economist, but also inhabits the left side of the political spectrum. It is not impossible that he is biased against the presumptive Republican standard bearer.
Predictions markets could help us test Professor Stiglitz’s claim. We could make markets in the likelihood of a recession conditional on victory by Governor Romney and conditional on victory by President Obama. One advantage of markets is that they offer powerful incentives against bias. Participants are rewarded for accurate assessments, not ideological frolics. They must put their money where their mouth is. And, not surprisingly, we have evidence that prediction markets are more accurate at evaluating the future than alternatives. They have proved better at predicting the winners of elections than polls.
Prediction markets help answer a fundamental question of democracy. How can America know what Americans know? Prediction markets help pool individual assessments for the collective good. Sadly, United States law greatly impedes the operation of prediction markets because they are seen as internet gambling. The most important such market, Intrade, is thus run out of Ireland. By relaxing our legal prohibitions, we could help generate more innovate prediction markets on a wider range of subjects. Indeed, so important is the information that they can provide, the government should consider subsidizing experiments with these markets rather than banning them. Information is a great public good and government restricts its effective provision at our peril.
John O. McGinnis is the George C. Dix Professor of Constitutional Law at Northwestern University.
Reinventing Discovery reviews abound
June 25, 2012 by
A video book review of Michael Nielsen’s Reinventing Discovery:
And if you’re more into print, here’s a review in Australia’s Inside Story magazine.
If those pique your interest, try reading this free chapter from Reinventing Discovery.
W. Patrick McCray, author of our forthcoming book THE VISIONEERS, on Elon Musk and SpaceX for CNN.com
June 12, 2012 by
Over the weekend, CNN.com published a wonderful opinion piece by University of California-Santa Barbara science historian W. Patrick McCray on the fascinating “visioneer” Elon Musk and his successful launch and docking with the International Space Station last month.
We are publishing Professor McCray’s forthcoming book THE VISIONEERS: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future in January 2013 and one of the main characters of the book, Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, is compared to Musk in the CNN.com piece. Enjoy!
Recently, technology enthusiasts around the planet had the opportunity to get better acquainted with Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX, the first privately owned company to send a spacecraft to the space station.
Launched in the same manner as a Silicon Valley startup, SpaceX designed and manufactured the Dragon capsule, which successfully completed a mission with the International Space Station before splashing down into the Pacific Ocean.
I see Musk, a 40-year-old entrepreneur who made his fortune by co-founding PayPal, as a “visioneer.” That is to say, he is someone who combines scientific and engineering prowess — in his case, a degree in physics — with an expansive view of how technology will upend traditional economic models, and has the ability to inspire others to support his work.
Musk has bold visions for the future. When he finished college, he identified three areas that could change the world. One was the Internet; another was new sources of energy; and the third was transforming our civilization in such a way so that it could expand out into the solar system….
To read the entire article on CNN.com, please click on this link.
Princeton staffers interviewed by Yahoo! News on the Press’s new Princeton Shorts ebook program
June 1, 2012 by
We were delighted to see a Q&A appear this morning on Yahoo! News with Princeton University Press staffers regarding our new Princeton Shorts ebook program. Executive Editor Rob Tempio and Associate Marketing Director Leslie Nangle were interviewed by Yahoo! News contributor Brad Sylvester on a variety of ebook topics including the Princeton Shorts, our ebook program, ebook-hardcover sales comparison, and book publishing in a digital age. It’s a very good look at how we are thinking about our ebook future.
Print Publishers Adapting to E-books and Digital Downloads
By Brad Sylvester
With the rising popularity of tablets, Kindles, iPads, and other capable e-reader devices, one wonders whether e-books will surpass the printed book in the same way that downloadable music has outpaced disk sales in recent years. Are publishers fighting the e-book trend or embracing it? One publisher, Princeton University Press, has a new e-book Shorts Program designed to leverage print material in the e-reader market, not by simply republishing the book in electronic form, but by using it to
create a different product for a different audience.
I recently spoke with Rob Tempio, the Executive Editor overseeing the Princeton Shorts Program and Leslie Nangle, Associate Marketing Director at Princeton University Press to discuss their new approach to e-book publishing and to find out how the advent of online content and e-books have affected the publishing business in general.
What is the Shorts Program at Princeton University Press?
Rob Tempio: The Shorts Program is an effort to extract content from our existing works and publish them as e-books. We take books that we’ve already published and extract a chapter or a set of chapters from those books and repackage them as e-book only products.
What’s your goal for the program? Is it aimed at gaining additional revenue from your existing properties directly through the e-book sales or to help market the hard-copy form of the full book?
Rob Tempio: Additional revenue is definitely one of the purposes, but it’s also to get our content out in a different format for a different audience that we think exists for the book: an audience that might be looking for a briefer version of our longer books. If
someone reads the shorter version or chapter, they might have their appetite whetted for the whole book. That’s certainly the hope. We tie them together pretty closely. There are live links within the e-book leading to the full book. We give them new titles, but the sub-titles indicate that it’s a selection from the larger work.
Leslie Nangle: They are stand-alone chapters. You can read them and enjoy them without ever reading the full book………..
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