New Blog on our blogroll: Be prepared to be blown away by BLOWN TO BITS

There is a new BLOG on our blogroll. It is Blown to Bits and it is associated to the book Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the digital Explostion by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeem, and Harry Lewis.

1. The book is about how life has changed with the digital revolution. For more see my review either in an upcoming SIGACT NEWS or right here. Or better yet, buy the book.
2. The Blog will update the book. Note that there are events that happen in (say) 2009 that the book, published in 2008, would have wanted to cover, but couldn't. When we get time travel we can revisit this issue, and perhaps Abelso, Ledeem, Lewis will write a book on how that technology affects us. They won't need a blog to update the book.
3. The book Freakonomics has a blog associated to it. At first I didn't like the blog since I wanted it to be like the book. The book would take an observation or speculation and get real data on it and draw a conclusion. The blog would raise a question (Example: Why have paperboys on bicycles been replaced by papermen and paperwomen with cars?) and speculate (Example: it is more economically efficient) but not have any real information. This disapointed me since the books strength was to carefuly analyze. But now I like that blog since even raising issues is interesting (Example: I had not noticed that paperboys were being replaced by papermen and papewomen, but now I do.)
4. Similarly, the blog on BLOWN TO BITS cannot be as intellectually satisfying as the book. But it will be a good update on the book. And so far I have been very happy with it.
5. Disclosure: Harry Lewis was Bill Gasarch's advisor.