The Average American Consumes about 34GB of Data Daily

According to an article in the New York Times on Dec 9, UCSD has issued a report indicating that the average American consumes about 34 GB of data per day. This is up about 350% over nearly three decades ago. Are we going to drown in all this data? Can we keep up with the growth of data consumption?

I would imagine that if you had asked one of our founding fathers how they would cope with travelling at 60 mph they would have said that it would have been between difficult and impossible to function at that speed. Certainly if you asked if they could steer a vehicle at that speed you would have been looked at is if you were crazy. Yet, here we are. We think nothing of getting in the car and travelling at that speed. We watch the roadside whizzing past us and don't get too excited about it.

With data consumption it is the same thing, once you get used to dealing with that speed, you really don't feel like it's all that much to deal with.

What I do find interesting are a number of side issues relative to this point that should merit some attention. AT&T appears to be considering "limiting" the unlimited data plan for their iPhone. Particularly in the San Francisco and Manhattan markets. They claim that some iPhone "hogs" are consuming inordinate amounts of data with certain video applications. See this article or this really funny article on this point.

The other notable point is that the cable industry wants to set limits to the amount of data that they provide at the base rate to their customers at about 5GB per month. If this were to be accomplished we would find ourselves having to ration our consumption of data or pay exorbitant rates to get a "full" daily dosage of data.

Whatever your feelings about these developments, one thing is very clear. The amount of data that we will be consuming as the years roll on is going to increase dramatically. This is sort of a form of data pollution. The video density is becoming higher and higher. The number of devices we use this data on is increasing. Our appetite for higher density data on these types of products is increasing dramatically.

What do you think this will mean to our future technology developments? I'd like to hear from you about this.

Permanent Agreement between PA and Friends on Priestley House

On December 1, 2009 The Daily Item of Sunbury, PA reported that the Friends of Joseph Priestley House has come to a long term agreement with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission over the management and operation of the Joseph Priestley House and Museum in Northumberland PA. It is anticipated that the agreement will be signed shortly. Under the agreement the Friends will have complete control of the operation of the site. The state will continue to provide some of the cost to maintain the facility.

The Zillow Effect

I have been watching with keen interest the development of a new class of web sites. As the Internet gathers into its web more and more terabytes of data, it is possible to gather some very valuable information about specific individuals.

Let's use Zillow as the example here. Zillow aggregates publicly available information on residential real estate such as taxes, sales prices, and a host of other things like lot size, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, etc., and makes that information available to anyone who might be interested in looking at it and it is already organized for each specific property. More importantly, Zillow also computes a market value based upon this information. They call it a Zestimate. I suppose, in a way, it is sort of like a FICO score.

You could argue, no, it's not like the FICO score because the FICO score is based upon accurate experience information on the consumers' use of credit. The FICO score can have a significant impact upon a consumers' life, every financial or credit decision involving that consumer usually boils down to what his or her FICO score is. It's like that pesky SAT score that was on your forehead when you applied to college.

If your home is your largest financial investment and the Zestimate is the alleged "score" that you have achieved with that investment, it could materially affect the decisions that are made that involve your financial condition. Zillow is the first to point out in their terms and conditions that financial institutions cannot use the Zestimate as a basis for loan. This makes me think of the porn sites that say that if you are under 18 years of age that you are not allowed to use the site. When was the last time you thought a teenager would heed such a notice?

Additionally, if the Zestimate is lower than it should be it could influence a potential buyer for your home should you want to sell it. If you are contemplating the purchase of a home it could impact your decision about whether to buy that home. Perhaps, you have applied for a business loan and as part of your Net Worth statement you list the equity in your home. No loan officer in the world is going to perform a CMA (Certified Market Analysis) on your home under those circumstances. It is too costly and takes too much time. A quick and easy Zestimate is available to check the number on that Net Worth statement.

Do we really believe that this computed value has any accuracy? This is easily measurable. Take a community and find every sale during a given period of time and compare the sale price to the Zestimate that was in effect at the time of the sale. Just how accurate can such a crude Zestimate actually be?

According to Carol Augustus, a Realtor with Pacific Union in Marin County California, Zillow itself cites the following figures as interpreted for Marin County:

1. 88% of Marin homes are in Zillow

2. 80% have Zestimates

3. 20% are within 5% of a recent 3 month sales price (80% are NOT)

4. 38% are within 10% of a recent sales price (68% are NOT)

5. 64% are within 20% of a recent sales price (36% are NOT)

I, quite frankly, don't know what to make of these numbers. Does this mean that a given home has a 20% chance that another home in the county sold within 5% of the price within the last 3 months? If so, what does that mean? It sounds almost meaningless.

Alternatively, if it means that 20% of the homes are within 5% of a hypothetical sales price, this would be dreaming of a dream. I don't have any other interpretations that could make sense of these cited statistics.

Look at this Zestimate chart below.  The line on top is the Zestimate from mid 2008 through 2013 for a home that I am familiar in my neighborhood.  You can see that it has fluctuated from a low of around $800k to a high of almost $1.4m.  What is most notable is the precipitous drop in 2012.  The coincident lines below are the Zestimate values for the town and Zip Code for this home.  Nothing dramatic there, and there was nothing dramatically different at this home.  How do you explain this kind of variation?

So, now the big question is, what if products like Zillow and their Zestimates become more pervasive and can meaningfully affect your daily life (either positively or negatively)?

Will you have the ability to redress your grievances if you feel you have been maligned? Will there be the equivalent of the Fair Credit Reporting Act to protect consumers from erroneous data being used negatively against them in these new financial marketplaces?

What other products are there out there now, or can reasonably be expected to appear on the web near you in the not too distant future? I'd like to hear from you. Please let me know your thoughts on this issue.

New Posts on Joseph Priestley

Yesterday, Positive Liberty, posted an interesting blog: 'Joseph Priestley on the Swedenborgs'. In this entry they cite known letters between Priestley and the Swedenborgs as described in a recent publication William Blake and the Culture of Radical Cristianity by Robert Rix, Ashgate Pubishing, July, 2007, 178pp.

Oh, the heretics that are among us! I merely mention this as a link and will not elaborate on it here. I note that a reader of that blog responded to the blog, "Oh, I’d have paid to see Priestley answer a Mormon knock on his door…Oy".

Also, an interesting commentary appears in the UUworld.org web site. It covers two recent books about Priestley:Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian, published by the Dr. Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies at the University of London, edited by Isabel Rivers and David Wykes; and, Steven Johnson's recent biography, The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, published last year by Riverhead Books .The article is favorable to the Rivers and Wykes text but fairly critical of Johnson's work. I will add my comments later after I have thought about it some more. Please see my separate post on Johnson's book.

Friends to Staff Reopened Priestley House Temporarily

In an article in the Daily Item, Sunbury, PA, dated two hours ago it has been reported that the Friends of Joseph Priestley House have just signed an agreement with the State of Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commissipn to reopen and staff the Priestley House with volunteer members starting Octover 3.  The Friends will also financially support certain aspects of keeping the site open.  This came about due to the budget cuts that forced the Commission to have closed the site earlier this year on August 14.  The agreement was announced last evening at the annual dinner of the Friends.

This arrangement will allow the public to have access to this important historic landmark and museum until a more permanent arrangement can be found.  Both the state Historical and Museum Commission and the Friends are to be commended for the improvement to the situation.

There has been a press release issued by the Central Pennsylvania Susquehanna River Valley Vistitors Bureau on this in addition to the notice on the Joseph Priestley House website. 

Let's hope that a practical solution for perminent funding of the site can be found.

Friends Report Progress on Operating Priestley House

Susan Brooke of the Friends of Joseph Priestley House reports: "We  are very close to an arrangement that will let us open this fall, with a proposal to hold our annual Heritage Day (costumed event, with chemistry demonstations,) on Nov. 1 as previously scheduled. We meet with the state staff  this Thursday to finalize."

Stay tuned for more information later this week.

Erasmus Darwin and those pesky little critters in the stones

I was doing my usual aerobic gardening work today --I had 8 tons of boulders delivered to the house the other day and I spent the day today breaking them into smaller pieces to border some beds and paths I am building. That sure is hard work. The sledging just gets you real quick, but it's the lifting and hauling the resultant pieces that absolutely does you in. I got about 3 tons broken and moved today in about 6 hours.

What is interesting is the kind of rock it is. It is local field stone. Looks like some was coral a long time ago and the rest is some sort of igneous type rock. Neither of these rocks break real easy. Call me prejudiced, but I would take the good old Connecticut potatoes any day of the week over this stuff out here. I really like the field stones out in Connecticut. So much so, that I brought some of them out here with me when we moved here. The movers weren't too happy about that. One of the rocks is about 600 lbs.

Anyway, there I was breaking open these rocks and you could see that there were these animal fossils preserved in some of them. Nothing to write home about, but still, there they were. My mind went to a passage I read somewhere in one of the Joseph Priestley books I had read that Erasmus Darwin had also been intrigued by the fossils he was finding in the rocks. Don't forget that in that (mid 18th century England) epoch it was still believed by Western culture that the Earth had been created by God some 6,000 or so years ago. The fossils don't fit in real well with that theory. Darwin (this is Charles' grandfather) was on the right path. He was convinced that the history of the Earth was far greater than that postulated by the Church. What Erasmus did not get, though, but his grandson Charles would, was that these primordial creatures would some day 'evolve' into all the living things that we see on the Earth today.

It is very humbling to think of how creative and observant these early scientists of the Age of Enlightenment were. And, they were so brave to tell the world about it in spite of any repercussions that might result from these heretical ideas. We can dismiss this as being obvious, but they did not have the understanding that we now have about the development of the planet.

In fact, Charles Darwin waited many many years after conceptualizing his theories about evolution and natural selection before he ever published his results. He knew that the publication would have profound effects upon the world and would affect the religious deeply because it appeared to contradict the Church's teachings.