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Wikiscanner Creator Profiled in NYT

Here's a snip from Virginia Heffernan's New York Times profile of Virgil Griffith, the creator of Wikiscanner, whom Pesco and I had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago at the Webby Connect conference. BTW, when we met, there were no hot girls clinging to him. But that was at lunchtime, surrounded by sandwiches, and the day was young. Also that is not actually his laptop case, above. Anyhoo: Girls hang on Virgil Griffith. This is no exaggeration. At parties, they cling to the arms of the 25-year-old hacker whose reason for being, he says, is to ?make the Internet a better and more interesting place.? The founder of a data-mining tool called WikiScanner, Griffith is also a visiting researcher at the mysterious Santa Fe Institute, where ?complex systems? are studied. He was once charged, wide-eyed rumor has it, with sedition. No wonder girls whisper secrets in his ear and laugh merrily at his arcane jokes. WikiScanner, which Griffith created last year, makes it possible to figure out which organization made which edits to a Wikipedia entry by cross-referencing IP addresses with a database of IP address owners. You can imagine how much fun this tool is to deploy ? to see how someone with a senate.gov address tinkers with the Jeremiah Wright entry, or how Diebold apparently protects its reputation by deleting criticism of its voting machines and political connections. The promise of WikiScanner is to help free Wikipedia from both propaganda and sabotage. But Griffith says he also aspires ?to create minor public-relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike.? He?s a troublemaker, then. A twerp. And a magnet for tech-world groupies. At the WebbyConnect conference in Southern California last month, I saw it with my own eyes: Griffith, enjoying a White Russian that I first mistook for chocolate milk, reveled in the attention of his female fans. He smiled broadly. He seemed like a young Henry Kissinger, but sweet, or Arthur Fonzarelli, but not a dropout. Internet Man of Mystery (Image: Kevin Van Aelst / NYT; Thanks, Richard Metzger)...

Study Says Closing Roads Might Cut Congestion. Huh?

If a road is constantly clogged with traffic, it must be too small. Build more roads and you'll have less traffic, right? Not necessarily. In a counterintuitive study released last month, three scientists have discovered that drivers choosing between multiple routes to reach their destination the fastest can actually end up slowing everyone down. Limiting their options by closing off certain streets could actually reduce congestion. "The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control," by Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Michael Gastner of the Santa Fe Institute, challenges the idea that more roadway always equals less congestion. It argues that giving drivers fewer choices forces them to work in a coordinated way with other drivers, reducing "selfish" behavior that makes traffic worse.  It's pretty heavy reading, but the study's central argument is built on something called Braess' Paradox, which says that adding capacity to a network where everyone in that network seeks the most efficient route can reduce the network's overall efficiency. If every driver takes the road they think will get them somewhere the fastest, then that route gets bogged down. Here's an example, as provided by the authors of the study: Say you have two options for reaching destination X. One of them is a narrow bridge, the other a longer but wider highway. The combined travel time for all drivers is shortest if half take the bridge and half ride the highway. But drivers only know which route is most direct, so they all head for the bridge. The crush of vehicles creates a traffic jam, so the next batch of drivers chooses the highway. Bridge traffic clears as a result, causing more drivers to choose this route until it clogs again. This back and forth continues until each route ends up taking the same amount of time, a phenomenon known as the the Nash Equilibrium. The problem is that with this equilibrium, average travel time ends up taking longer than it would if the drivers had split the two routes 50/50. By comparing Nash Equilibrium time to optimal travel time, the researchers came up with a ratio they call "the price of anarchy." Using the journey between Boston Common and Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as an example, they found that the price of anarchy is a journey that's 30 percent longer. Close some roads, and drivers are less likely to bounce around, which actually cuts the collective travel time. These findings seem to contradict the theory that traffic moves more quickly when drivers are given more control. For example, some European cities have removed traffic lights and signs, which has smoothed traffic and reduced accidents by forcing drivers to take more personal responsibility (blowing through an intersection because you have a green light doesn't work if there are no signals in the first place). Narrowing drivers' options by closing roads seems to run counter to this. But a piece in The Christian Science Monitor points out that the two traffic models actually share some important features. They both focus less on the individual driver and more on the larger traffic system, and both suggest that a slow and steady approach can get drivers where they need to go more quickly. Photo by Flickr user mark.woodbury