Posted 16:06 by Mark Federman permanent link
Digital Divorce

Who said that Islam is stuck in the past? According to this editorial in today's Global and Mail, "Malaysia is showing the world that it is nothing if not modern in its approach to the ancient sharia laws. An Islamic law court has ruled that it is perfectly legitimate for Muslim men to divorce their wives via wireless text messages or e-mails." Ah progress...
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Posted 15:57 by Mark Federman permanent link
Place Your Bets!

The bright lights at DARPA have created a new game based on world terrorism, called the Policy Analysis Market. It is a futures and derivatives market game based on developments in the Middle East, and other fun spots around the world. According to the site, " Three types of futures contracts will be offered on PAM:

* Quarterly contracts based on data indices that track economic health, civil stability, military disposition, and U.S. economic & military involvement in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey
* Quarterly contracts that track global economic and conflict indicators
* Specific possible events (e.g., U.S. recognition of Palestine in the first quarter of 2005)

In other words, you can place your bets on terrorist attacks, military coups, assassinations, invasions, embargoes, and yes, even an outbreak of democracy. As reported in today's Toronto Star, not everyone is entirely pleased with this game. "Two Democratic senators demanded yesterday the project be stopped before investors begin registering this week. "The idea of a federal betting parlour on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said."

We have frequently observed that sports being the surrogate for war has reversed, so that in the recent war in Iraq, mass media coverage approached that of Sunday afternoon football. This, of course, ensured that the American public would not experience war today in the same way that they experienced it in Vietnam, embedded journalists notwithstanding. Here we see further evidence of that reversal, with real world politics being explicitly made into a game; Risk becomes real. Perhaps we might retrieve famous Las Vegas oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek as "Djimmi the Turk."

Simulating world political situations, contingencies and outcomes is nothing new to policy strategists in governments throughout the world. Often, a game or market metaphor is specifically used to blunt the stark reality of our world so that effects can be dispassionately analyzed. It is a perfect example of how turning the dominant modes of a medium's effects into a game or recreation indicates obsolescence of its effects. However, it is important to realize that the corresponding reversals cause the analysts to become perhaps a little too dispassionate, to the point of forgetting completely about the plights of the human beings affected by the decisions that emerge from these game simulations. Such a game, opened to the public, carries with it this same eventuality.

Financial markets, "have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions," says a DARPA press release. However, their thinking goes beyond this simple statement relating to something as benign as election results. "This price discovery process, with the prospect of profit and at pain of loss, is at the core of a market’s predictive power. The issues represented by PAM contracts may be interrelated; for example, the economic health of a country may affect civil stability in the country and the disposition of one country’s military may affect the disposition of another country’s military. The trading process at the heart of PAM allows traders to structure combinations of futures contracts. Such combinations represent predictions about interrelated issues that the trader has knowledge of and thus may be able to make money on through PAM. Trading these trader-structured derivatives results in a substantial refinement in predictive power. "

Clearly, what the spooks are also banking on are things like "insider trading:" if there someone in the know about an upcoming terrorist attack or other major market shifting event invests to benefit in advance of the event, the Administration has a de facto early warning system, complete with a direct link to the informant. But what about other forms of market manipulation, which in this case turns into reality manipulation? Is it conceivable for someone to actually induce a major event in order to win at this game? And what about legitimate policy makers? The potential for disastrous political, tactical or strategic decisions based on market speculations is tremendous. What if we were to go to war against a country based solely on unsubstantiated speculation about massively destructive weapons?!

Update - July 30, 2003 Only one day after the uproar over the "Terrorist Lottery" plan, the Pentagon has decided not to open the market after all. At the Foreign Relations hearing, [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz defended DARPA, saying "it is brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative. It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative," he said.
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Posted 16:21 by Mark Federman permanent link
R.I.P. Bob Hope - May 29, 1903 - Jul. 28, 2003

Thanks for the memories...
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Posted 22:06 by Mark Federman permanent link
R.I.P. - The Public

"Organizers of next week's Rolling Stones and Friends concert in Toronto for the victims of SARS are attempting to stop photographers from shooting pictures while roaming in the crowd, according to this article in today's Globe and Mail. "This is about artistic copyright," said the executive, who requested her name not be used. "At Woodstock, they didn't have digital cameras. And the spectators didn't sell their pictures, which can be used for T-shirts and posters. Artists rights have come a long way since Woodstock, my friend."

And the public's rights have deteriorated a long way since then, too. Since when is the event or happening itself (as opposed to the onstage antics) a copyrightable performance? What we have seen of copyright becoming corrupted and morphing from its original intent - the grant of a license by the sovereign for a limited time to a creative work in order to promote creativity and expansion of the intellectual commons - into a declaration of property rights, leads to some startling and potentially damaging effects. Not the least of these effects is a direct attack on nothing less than public space itself.

Some basics: Copyright (and similar arguments apply to trademarks and patents, but we’ll leave them for the moment) deals with the right to reproduce - copy - an expressed creative work. The right is a grant by the sovereign, originally the king, but now the state, that is essentially a compromise. The creator has the opportunity to benefit exclusively from his or her creation, but only for a limited time. After that time has elapsed, the creative work comes into the public domain for the general benefit of society, as creativity builds upon creativity. Nothing is completely original; every creation has at least part of its inspiration and influence from creative forbearers.

Normally in these sorts of forums, the copyright introduction precedes a discussion on open source software, or downloading songs on peer-to-peer networks, or the threats to innovation and creativity, or even the threat to the Internet itself, as insightfully proposed in this excellent editorial in Linux Journal by Doc Searls. Such topics are the stock in trade for people like Lawrence Lessig, the law professor who crusades for the preservation and strengthening of the public domain through his writing and organizations like Creative Commons.

But in the case of the day-long concert in Toronto that culminates with the Rolling Stones, we are seeing the first hijacking of public space under the guise of a ticketed rock concert. You see, size does matter. A performance in a club, or even a stadium of 50,000 people could be seen as an event happening in a private venue. But this event is expected to attract nearly 500,000 people to Downsview Park, which is "Canada's first national urban park, in other words, public space. 50,000 people is a full house. 500,000 people is a large town.

By preventing photographers from freely shooting the crowd at a massive, newsworthy gathering in national parkland, an entertainment company has declared the death of public space - or perhaps theft would be a more appropriate, if ironic description of what is actually occurring. And by allowing the entertainment company to have its way unopposed, we are about to provide the hammer that will set another nail into the coffin of the public domain by passively agreeing to extend the definition of copyright to once again favour commercial interests over those of a soon-to-be-extinct Public.

Despite the fact that tickets are being sold for the concert, its sheer size and scope makes the happening at Downsview Park a public event. If, with the wave of a publicist's news release and a cooperating police force confiscating non-disposable cameras at the gate, public becomes private, we have much to fear for the future. Here's why:

In a private venue, the ground changes. That is, the assumed governing rules of our society change unnoticed. When public space is surreptitiously assimilated and covertly converted to private interest in this manner, consider the consequences. Where, for example, would we hold a public forum, but in a privately-owned venue with a privately managed event? Since there is actually no right to free speech in a private "club," and no right to free assembly, freedom from discrimination and so forth, this particular transformation from public to private describes precisely the method whereby constitutions and charters of rights are effectively rendered inoperable, unenforceable and essentially null and void. As Lessig describes in his book Code, we will have indirectly allowed that which could not be allowable by regulation.

What is particularly interesting about this "turn of events" - a.k.a. reversal - is how it corresponds to other reversals that we have been observing and tracking here at the Program. Marshall McLuhan started the ball rolling with his observations of how electric speed-up of communications, and the resulting intensification throughout our society and culture, transforms and reverses the dominant force of our culture from literate back to oral, and society's structures from corporate back to tribal. As private identity and the creation of what we now call "the public" is an artifact of literacy, we would expect to see, and have indeed seen evidence of, the reversal from private identity to public identity via the digiSelf, with personal privacy becoming "publicy." Now, to complete the effects, we have, thanks to the Rolling Stones, the first evidence of the reversal of public space to private space that presages the end of the Public itself.

R.I.P.
The Public
300 B.C. (?) - 2003 A.D.
Died in its sleep from complications of SARS
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Posted 12:26 by Mark Federman permanent link
The World Votes

A new and interesting initiative has popped up that, in small measure, makes explicit what many around the world have felt for a long time. The world votes is a site that "gives people all around the world a voice in the forthcoming U.S. Presidential Election." Shortly before the actual U.S. Presidential election in November, 2004, an electronic ballot will be sent to all who register on the site. Those who receive a ballot will be able to cast their vote, although the results, which will be made available after the polls close in the United States, will have about as much real influence as the majority of people in the U.S. who do not vote at all.

But one of the characteristics of the Global Village, about which McLuhan warned us so many years ago, is that "the speed of information movement in the global village means that every human action or event involves everybody in the village in the consequences of every event." (M. McLuhan, Counterblast) This is truly the case in a world in which one nation has appointed itself as arbiter of what is appropriate and inappropriate in local governance relative to its own interests. Since the justification for the recent action in Iraq seems to be boiling down to an argument of supposed morality - the Iraqi people had suffered under Saddam Hussein and therefore liberating them was captial-R-Right - it is not inconceivable that international moral suasion may, at some point in the future, be influential. If the world votes, and votes in large numbers, initial conditions whereby such moral arguments might be heard will at least have grounding.

Update - 29 July 2003 Wondering how to choose a candidate whose platform reflects your position on various issues? Wonder no longer. The 2004 AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SELECTOR polls visitors on their preferences and weighting on a variety of issues, and then ranks the currently announced presidential candidates according to how closely they match. Statistics are also available by age and sex demographics, geographies and the overall leader according to the collective responses of participants. A must for the informed voter!
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Posted 10:36 by Mark Federman permanent link
Cast Your Votes - The Bogus Contest

In response to the last blog post, mirco comments: "Yes- isn't that a very important point to understand the Bush-administration by looking at it as a Television-Presidency? I remember that Bush, right before he started to bomb Iraq, was saying: "I am tired of seeing this old bad movie again and again", which meant that he actually wanted to change the "Iraq-Screenplay" which he did. Sometimes he seems like the director of the "Global Theater".

This got me thinking: I would suggest, that Bush is not so much the director of the "Global Theater," (or perhaps more accurately, "Global Theater of the Absurd"), as he is its star actor. There are others whose direction of Bush, and the policy of the current Administration, would more precisely cast them in the role of director.

So here's the question and the bogus contest: Which characters in the White House respectively play the roles of Director? Producer? Lighting Designer? Stage Manager? Gaffer? And if you feel like casting some actors (alive or dead - after all, if Fred Astaire can come alive and dance with a dirt devil... 'nuff said!) to play El Presidente and his White House posse in the TV miniseries, add them to the list.
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Posted 22:14 by Mark Federman permanent link
Lights... Camera... Cue the mortars...

Does it strike anyone else as too "movie-of-the-week-y" that the first public appearance of sweetheart-cum-hero Jessica Lynch happens to occur on the same day as the killing of Qusay and Uday Hussein, just as American soldier morale hits new lows, and the noise about Bush's "I did not have uranium with that regime... Iraq..." (or "The British made me do it..." - take your pick) hits new highs.

Bush-the-Younger's Administration is, after all, a television presidency.
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Posted 11:16 by Mark Federman permanent link
A Perspective on David

James Beck was interviewed on CBC Radio this morning about the potential restoration cleaning of Michaelangelo's famous statue of David. Beck, founder of the non-profit organization ArtWatch International, and a professor of art history at Columbia University, reported on the controversy concerning the strong difference in opinions about how the cleaning of this priceless art icon should proceed. The controversy has led to a petition, organized by ArtWatch, urging the chief superintendent of art for Florence, and the director of Florence's Accademia Museum (where the statue of David is housed) to establish an independent commission that will determine the most appropriate method of cleaning and preserving the statue.

For their part, the Florentines want no interference in what they consider their area of authority and expertise. And why should this surprise us? Modern Italians, and in particular, those involved in classic Italian art, are steeped in the mind conditioning of Renaissance art, a very hot medium that promoted specialization, fragmentation and expertise. Any suggestion that there may be other "points of view" are in direct opposition to the effect of the art itself - that there is one true point of view, and only one point of perspective. For the Accademia Museum, and in particular, its director, Franca Falletti, "their entire stake of security and status is in a single form of acquired knowledge, so that innovation is for them not novelty, but annihilation." (Understanding Media, Ch. 7)

This matter of resolving the conflict in the art world will, of necessity, be as meticulous as the eventual cleaning itself. For those involved, the potential damage and longevity of their own identities are as much at stake as that of Michaelangelo's creation.
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Posted 18:12 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Reversal of America - Part... Darn, I've lost count...

This item speaks for itself: "For all they share economically and culturally, Canada and the United States are increasingly at odds on basic social policies -- to the point that at least a few discontented Americans are planning to move north and try their neighbors' way of life... they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society... In some ways, it's now closer to American ideals than America is."

Good gracious - does this mean that the intensification-induced reversal of "peace, order and good government" is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"
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Posted 13:12 by Mark Federman permanent link
Hot Rhetoric

There was an interview with former CIA Director James Wolsey on this morning's The Current on CBC radio. He danced very stylishly around the issues of the accuracy of intelligence relating to Iraq's possession and/or destruction and/or obfuscation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In doing so, he dismissed GWB's now famous sixteen words as "hot rhetoric."

Interesting turn of phrase by the former spy-master. A "hot" medium - that is, "one that extends one single sense in "high definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with data." (McLuhan, Understanding Media) - has always been the media temperature of choice for inflammatory rhetoric and nationalistic propaganda. One of the effects of a hot medium is to engender fragmentation - a "them vs. us" mentality in certain cases. Additionally, a hot medium tends to induce effects that are conducive to almost hypnotic suggestion; it lowers our intellectual resistance by creating conditions of somnambulism. This effect tends to go unnoticed as we are conditioned to ignore the effects - what McLuhan calls the "message" - of the medium in favour of paying attention to the content of the medium.

" World War I was a railway war of centralism and encirclement. World War II was a radio war of decentralism. World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation." (McLuhan, Culture is Our Business)
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Posted 19:30 by Mark Federman permanent link
Iraq and chemical weapons: a view from the inside

With all of the "what did the White House know and when did they know it" flying about relative to the justification for the Iraqi war, it is indeed refreshing to read an interview with someone who really does know. openDemocracy has a tremendously insightful and dispassionate interview with Ron Manley called Iraq and chemical weapons: a view from the inside. "In both the United States and Britain, there is passionate contest over the legitimacy and honesty of government attempts to justify war with Iraq – especially claims of the existence of active Iraqi chemical weapons programmes. In an interview of profound insight, the man responsible for chemical weapons destruction operations in Iraq from 1991-94 talks to Anthony Barnett and Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy about the true extent of Iraq’s capacity to produce, store and deliver weapons of mass destruction." A highly recommended read, regardless of your political stripe.
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Posted 18:55 by Mark Federman permanent link
Understanding Mass Media

So what's the problem with a little patriotism coming through the journalistic channel anyway? Even if we consider that journalists' dogged pursuit of a president's personal malfeasance or dalliances - as in the cases of Nixon and, for some, arguably Clinton - is ultimately beneficial, this is wartime down south, and no true patriot should question the Commander-in-Chief. Right?

Time for a lesson in McLuhan, from our "Understanding Understanding Media" informal reading series:

"The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinion or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance…

"Arnold Toynbee made one approach to the transforming power of media in his concept of "etherialization," which he holds to be the principle of progressive simplification and efficiency in any organization or technology. Typically, he is ignoring the effect of the challenge of these forms upon the response of our senses. He imagines that it is the response of our opinions that is relevant to the effect of media and technology in society, a "point of view" that is plainly the result of the typographic spell. For the man in a literate and homogenized society ceases to be sensitive to the diverse and discontinuous life of forms. He acquires the illusion of the third dimension and the "private point of view" as part of his Narcissus fixation, and is quite shut off from Blake's awareness or that of the Psalmist, that we become what we behold." (M. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964, p. 18-19)

The meaning and importance of this passage might not be evident at first glance, but it is key to becoming aware of the effects of our exposure to a newsmedia that is continually pressured to be none other than "patriotic" or unquestioningly supportive of the current Administration. Our conventional reaction to events we learn about through a medium or some other technology, that it is the content that has the greatest impact on us. Further, we believe that by considering the issues and forming an appropriate opinion, we can protect ourselves from unperceived influences. In this case, for instance, someone who might disagree with the White House's approach to, say, low morale among the troops now mired in the shooting gallery that is today's Iraq, may believe that by holding and expressing that differing opinion, they are immune to the effects of a more conservative press.

McLuhan reminds us, however, that just as perspective in art ("the third dimension") is an illusion, so too is perspective in opinion - the "private point of view." He notes that the latter is "part of our Narcissus fixation," in other words, the hypnotic trance that is induced by the very media we believe we have successfully filtered. Under that hypnosis, "we become what we behold" - here, progressively jingoistic and militaristic, less willing to search for an alternative approach to "with us or agin' us," and increasingly more likely to collectively hold our noses and side with a painted-into-a-corner White House.
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Posted 16:37 by Mark Federman permanent link
That's SO Canadian!

A new epithet is emerging from south of the 49th parallel, one that refers to something being untrustworthy and unreliable - the perfect all-purpose insult for any smear campaign occasion. As the Globe and Mail reports, "Matt Drudge told The Washington Post yesterday that he had received a phone call from the White House communications department tipping him to the fact that reporter Jeffrey Kofman is not only gay, but also Canadian." Kofman is the ABC News reporter who filed a report Tuesday evening that U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering from "plunging morale" after having their tour of duty extended for a third time. Being branded a Canadian seems to have exceeded even being gay as a badge of dishonor (without a "u") among rabid U.S. conservatives.

Do you want further evidence? The large U.S. pharmaceutical companies are sponsoring anti-Canadian advertising initiatives in many states. In Florida, they are "expected to spend $750,000 on an ad campaign, warning consumers of the dangers of Canadian drugs. U.S. pharmacists argue that drugs from foreign countries are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and may be outdated, contaminated or counterfeit." In other words, less expensive prescription medication is SO Canadian!

Now join with me in a rousing chorus of Blame Canada. "Blame Canada. Shame on Canada ... we must blame them, the cause of fuss, before somebody thinks of blaming us."
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Posted 15:58 by Mark Federman permanent link
Terms of Engagement

O.K., so it's been a busy week. And I'm not merely referring to what's happening at the Program; I'm also looking to the postings and comments over at Lessig Blog. Through 5 days of posts - 2 from the campaign and 4 from Howard Dean himself - there were over 753 comments from people participating in the exercise of direct conversation with, and around, the presidential candidate. The comments could roughly be categorized into three types: Citizens expressing their views to Dean, or asking direct questions about policy and platform in a town-hall sort of format; people debating among themselves about one or another opinion expressed in the comments thread, relating variously to the Iraqi war and other policies of the current White House; and (thankfully a small number of) the usual flame-throwing.

While some opponents of the idea of Emergent Democracy might dismiss Dean's efforts as "pandering", at least he is using the 'net as a way of engaging the electorate, as opposed to a certain President who uses the Internet as a shield to protect himself from the electorate, and filter out those who disagree with him.
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Posted 02:09 by Mark Federman permanent link
Blog as Saxophone

Does everyone remember when then-governor Clinton played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall's show? His popularity soared as "the common touch" became plainly evident to his targeted demographic. Well, it isn't exactly a musical instrument, but the effect of reaching the desired demographic may well be on target when presidential hopeful Governor Howard Dean becomes the guest blogger for Lawrence Lessig next week.

Lessig has "great respect for Governor Dean, and especially the clarity of his voice." That's why the good lawyer invited the good doctor to pinch-blog. By accepting, Dean immediately gets the attention of a previously disillusioned, and self-disenfranchising, electorate. The announcement has made the Daypop Top 40, and Lessig's blog is one of the top linked according to Technorati. We've previously noted the potential retrieval of television in the Kennedy-Nixon race. Here the casting is particularly interesting: Internet as the medium that changes politics as television did in the 1960s; Dean as Kennedy. And, especially given the way the White House is White-Washing that little Uranium-to-Iraq incident, casting George W. as Nixon may not be that far off the mark either.
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Posted 15:42 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Cobbler's Children Get Shoes

Is anyone surprised that a telecommunications and networking company - a very large telecom and networking company - is itself organized and operated like an industrial age relic? In fact, most industrial concerns in the Western world are organized and run this way, with operational and functional fragmentation, a focus on procedures and individual responsibilities as opposed to integral processes, and never-ending turf wars. McLuhan tells us that instantaneous communications, with its concomitant evolution from jobs to roles, is supposed to change this within the body corporate. Alas, too few long-established companies have actually realized the message of the 'net.

A particular telecom-cum-ISP was sort of caught flat-footed with respect to its thousands of customers a few months ago when they failed to adequately warn the customers about the Slammer Worm. You see, there was no procedure in place to do so that would enable quick action across the many functional departments that had to be involved according to their internal policy. Moreover, much of what might have been an integral process is lost when it is fragmented and joined at gap-inducing interfaces. It is therefore quite heartening to hear their response to last weekend's so-called hacker contest, even though there are those who considered it mostly hype.

A very well-connected person in their marketing department, who normally plays an interconnecting role among many departments, became aware of the impending hacker contest on the Thursday before the U.S. Fourth of July holiday weekend. Through a small network of specific contacts in the customer service and legal departments, this person was able to initiate a warning message to tens of thousands of individual commercial customers within an hour or so, to notify them of the potential exposure. Where a linear, hierarchical organization previously came up short, a connected network-oriented approach succeeded, within the same company.

When an internetworking company truly learns how to employ the effects of internetworking, good stuff follows!
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Posted 14:52 by Mark Federman permanent link
I Destroyed Saddam's Chemical Arms

Well, not me, precisely, but the fellow who did will be interviewed on the BBC Friday morning (UK time). From openDemocracy: "Ron Manley who oversaw the elimination of Iraq's chemical weapons programme, appears on the BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, with Anthony Barnett, editor of openDemocracy.net, Friday 11th July, 7:15 am British Summertime.

To listen live wherever you are, click here. (be sure to visit a few minutes before the broadcast to make sure you have the right plug-ins. You will require a sound programme that you can download at the BBC) Or you can listen afterwards - the BBC archive all their shows.

Concurrently opendemocracy.net publishes an exclusive interview with Ron Manley who oversaw the destruction of Iraq's WMD capability 1991-94. He went on to become head of verification for the OPCW. Despite his unique knowledge of Iraq's military capacity he was not consulted by the British government on whether Saddam had chemical and biological weapons which posed a military threat. Had he been asked, he would have told them that no significant military threat existed.

Manley argues that any militarily significant biological, chemical or nuclear weapons capability that Iraq had, were eliminated long before the recent war on Iraq, he states "I don't know anybody who believes that the Iraqis have had militarily significant capabilities since 1991". The interview takes readers into the heart of the destruction of Iraq's toxic weapon programme.

His careful words further undermine the claims of the Coalition, especially the Blair government currently embroiled in a row over its justification for the war. The article will be published at the same time as the broadcast.
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Posted 17:15 by Mark Federman permanent link
Dissertation Reveals Security Threat That Has Been Widely Ignored

This one has been making the rounds today. The Washington Post has a story about a George Mason University student's doctoral dissertation that could be a Security Threat. Sean Gorman "has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them." Using mapping algorithms he developed, he can click and zoom on all the connections into, and out of, financial, business, industrial and government locations throughout the United States. The raw data was all publicly available, mostly online. The consolidation of the information - in hyperlinked, mapped form - would be a gift to anyone bent on disrupting the economic or industrial infrastructure of the country.

There is the requisite call for all such infrastructure information to be classified - the so-called security through obscurity - that true security experts will tell you is absolutely the wrong approach. There is also the implication that the existence of the student's work is a security threat - in one presentation to financial industry executives, they suggested that the student not be allowed to leave the building with his laptop. Even the former White House cyberterrorism chief says that the compiled database should be burned.

All of this is rather fun and exciting as far as it goes. What brings it to our notice is how well it demonstrates the linearity of our thinking, or perhaps more precisely, how well we have been trained to be linear thinkers. For example: If this student could do it, the terrorists could do it, and therefore all the original sources of information should be classified. Or: Revealing that multiple communications carriers all provide service through the same physical cable, thereby rendering the notion of "redundancy" ... well, redundant, will be embarassing and costly in terms of customer confidence, so the information should be suppressed. Or how about: Now that the existence of such information is known, let's all-of-a-sudden plan to simulate a mock cyber assault, based on what we (in our Western, linear sort of fashion) might imagine a terrorist would do and see how much simulated mock damage might ensue.

All of these responses are quite predictable, and quite predictably nonsensical. The fact that patterns emerge from discrete points is nothing new. The fact that a network of effects is considerably more than the sum of the effects - demonstrating emergent properties, even - should not be surprising. The fact that we have chosen to ignore our real vulnerabilities over some misguided fear of jeopardizing citizen or customer confidence, and instead choose to put on a great show of restricting rights (that, of course, do nothing to actual enhance security or public safety, and sometimes do the opposite) is just plain wrong-headed. It is, of course, the experts who are most concerned about quashing, classifying or "disappearing" Gorman's work.

Those in positions of power could take a lesson from those who are well-conditioned in network thinking. I'm not referring to thinking about networks, but rather to non-linear thinking that involves exploring for the right questions, and not being so concerned with having all the answers all the time. Sean Gorman's greatest contribution could well be the reminder that those who have a vested interest in the systems as they exist are the wrong ones to be entrusted with their ultimate protection.
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Posted 14:12 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Internet is Shit

The internet is shit, according to the website. And, it's mostly right when it tells us that if something doesn't have a website, that makes it of low quality; "If you can't Google your blind date, that doesn't make them a freak." Essentially, the rant reminds us that the show is over, there's nothing new to see here, and that we should be applying some critical thinking, rather than being hypnotized by hype-fueled gewgaws.

Where the rant goes wrong is in claiming that "the medium isn't the message," making the typical mistake of confusing the message of a medium with the content. The way we are so fascinated by the medium, and do precisely the things that the rant complains about, is prima facie evidence that the medium is indeed the message. The effects - message - of the medium is what changes our behaviour toward one another, and has us running to Google before dates or job interviews. It is what gives almost anything credibility if it has a credible-looking website. It is what subtly and unconsciously influences our thinking and attitudes so that we are unaware of its effects. So, in effect, it is not the Internet that is shit. Rather, with our unawareness of its effects on us, it is we who are turning it to shit. By the same token, with awareness and insight, we have the Midas touch to turn it back to societal gold. The choice is entirely ours.
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Posted 13:50 by Mark Federman permanent link
Troubled Youth Gulag - Tranquility Bay

There are times when I read accounts of such extreme inhumanity and cruelty that I am stopped in thought and action. Today, reading these articles - The last resort (part one) and The last resort (part two) - from UK's Observer Guardian was one such time. It describes a behaviour modification camp to which wealthy Americans (primarily) send their troubled teens to be "rehabilitated." The conditions, as described, would do Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung or Adolf Eichmann proud.

Most of the children are abducted, bound and forced aboard an aircraft to Jamaica. There, they are taught to submit. "Guards take them (if necessary by force) to a small bare room and make them (again by force if necessary) lie flat on their face, arms by their sides, on the tiled floor. Watched by a guard, they must remain lying face down, forbidden to speak or move a muscle except for 10 minutes every hour, when they may sit up and stretch before resuming the position. Modest meals are brought to them, and at night they sleep on the floor of the corridor outside under electric light and the gaze of a guard. At dawn they resume the position. This is known officially as being 'in OP' - Observation Placement - and more casually as 'lying on your face'. Every 24 hours, students in OP are reviewed by staff, and only sincere and unconditional contrition will earn their release. If they are unrepentant? 'Well, they get another 24 hours.' One boy told me he'd spent six months in OP."


Worse than the Observer article are the postings on a message board from some survivors. Inexplicably, the original message board is down. The Google cache version is here.
And I found transcripts of court proceedings in which three former inmates testify to the torture and inhuman conditions on behalf of one teen who is subsequently ordered released and returned to the U.S.

How can we understand the emergence of such facilities? Parents, among other things are responsible for disciplining their children. By handing teens over to such programs (in general) they are obsolescing their parenting role (completely) and extending whatever aspects of parenting the program chooses to implement. Some, apparently, are beneficial: They include self-respect, education, positive peer support and reinforcement with discipline and responsibility. By engaging in multiple ways, there is sufficient balance to prevent over-extension of one "sense" that would result in the frightening reversal displayed in the Tranquility Bay testimony. However, when discipline and torture-induced behaviour modification alone is extended, reversal of the teen into sociopathy or psychopathy should be the expected outcome.

What is worse, I suppose, is that this whole operation - the abduction of the children on parental order, transportation to a foreign country and systematic physical and psychological abuse for years on end - is legal between the United States and Jamaica. Just in case anyone from the current Administration happens to read this.
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Posted 17:52 by Mark Federman permanent link
Buyer Beware

I've been reading Lawrence Lessig's Code recently in preparation for some new course material that we're developing. One of the key points he raises is how architectural changes can indirectly implement regulations that are not constitutionally possible through legislation. Not surprisingly, Lessig was right. The Nation warns, Buyer Beware as it exposes eBay's new policy of cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Or, perhaps to be more precise in these PATRIOTic days, it seems as if eBay has embedded itself with law enforcement agencies. According to Joseph Sullivan, eBay's senior counsel for rules, trust and safety, "If you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details--all without having to produce a court order."

What governments cannot do via legislation, they apparently can coerce companies into doing for them. "In liberal democracies it is assumed that criminal investigation and law enforcement are the sole domain of government. But the trend in the United States, as evidenced by eBay, among many companies, now sees huge private-sector commercial entities becoming, in effect, agents of law enforcement." What will be both interesting and a crucial test for the Reversal of America is when one of these cases comes to court, or rather, is appealed up to the Supreme Court. Is it constitutional for government to accomplish by code, coercion and conspiracy that which is otherwise illegal? Those who love what the United States once stood for would emphatically say No; those who endorse and support the man in the White House who increasingly looks like the Dictator-in-Chief may have forgotten what the United States once stood for. And that is tragic.
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