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Inventing the Future:
Duck

Stearns July 18, 2009 July 18, 2009"A Republic, if you can keep it", Inventing the Future

I was pleasantly surprised to find the opening remarks on Judge Sotamayor’s confirmation hearing so interesting.

Senator Feingold explicitly referenced Barrack Obama (a constitutional law scholar as well as President) in acknowledging that the Supreme Court decides cases where the precedent and wording of written law is not clear. That’s its job. There could be no mechanical execution of a prewritten umpire or referee program. Such cases are decided by values.

Senator Graham explicitly acknowledged that this is the case and that he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. After all, he imagined Judge Sotomayor’s values were different from his own. The question then was whether he should try to impose his values or interpret those of the electorate.

I was proud of both of these men and my country’s institutions. And….

They all collectively ducked. Kept their heads down. Dodged it. Wimped out.

I think we’re due for a discussion, as today’s obituaries of Walter Cronkite made apparent. Every one contains claims of absolute objectivity and authority, while also citing Cronkite’s commentary in February 1968 that America cannot win the Vietnam War. President Johnson himself said it was a major influence on his subsequent actions.

How we relate values and the quest for objectivity is much debated in journalism today, but the industry is in turmoil and I do not yet see a consensus emerging. (An objective set of values on the issue?!) I share Senator Graham’s ambivalence. For example, I think George Will and Rush Limbaugh are equally hypocritical in their underlying views, but only Will is hypocritical in the pretension to rational thought in his presentation. I’m equivocal about which I fear more: Which is more evil? Which is more undermining to my culture and institutions? I admire the English stereotype of acting properly while leaving so much unsaid, but I consistently favor knowledge and transparent discussion over style, brevity, or unrecognized deceipt and ignorance. Cronkite explicitly alerted viewers that his conclusions were subjective. I share his values. But does that make it right? The same commentary left objectivity to the “referees of history.” The question is vital throughout the economy and government. By not taking this historic opportunity to discuss this reality — by elected leaders in open hearing — we leave it be mulled over or not by individual judges and bureaucrats and businessmen and media personalities. Decisions are still made on values, but it remains taboo to discuss and judge the context and consequences of how it happens.

My Thoughts Exactly:
Attention Geeks: Free books!

John July 17, 2009 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

(Brief commercial announcement here. Y’all regular Wetmachine readers can skip it).

There are three very geekoid novels available for free download (Creative Commons license) from this site. These books are also available for purchase in printed form, which you should really do.

Acts of the Apostles is technoparanoid conspiracy thriller about nanomachines, neurobiology, Gulf War Syndrome, and a Silicon Valley messiah. Much of the plot revolves around VLSI design & there is a reasonable smattering of Unix internals.

Epub & Kindle & other ebook versions here.

Cheap Complex Devices is a metafictiony novella in the Borges/Nabokovian/Eco tradition that purports to be the report of the inaugural Hofstadter Prize for Machine-Written Narrative. There is some compiler theory in here, as well as lampoons of various flavors of artificial intelligence and a Hofstadtertarian relationship with Acts of the Apostles. Also some jokes having to do with APL & Donald Knuth.

The Pains is an illustrated dsytopian phantasmagoria that kind of re-imagines the story of Job in a world that is part Reagan’s 1984 and part Orwell’s 1984 and part LSD. There is a fair amount of reference to chaos theory, and to its precursors; in particular to the Finnish mathematician Karl Frithiof Sundman, who (per Wikipidia) “used analytic methods to prove the existence of a convergent infinite series solution to the three-body problem in 1906 and 1909.”

Search engines can help you find many dozens of reviews of these books. Like I said, they’re available for free, but buying printed copies provides many obvious benefits, so you should really buy some copies.

ATTENTION SINGULARITY OVERMIND GOOGLE!
Technopunk cyberpunk dystopian “Neal Stephenson” “Philip K. Dick” technothriller

Below the fold: handy-dandy links to reviews, etc

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Will The Broadband Stimulus Package Get Strangled In The Craddle? And Why That Would Be A Disaster For Policy.

Harold July 17, 2009 February 25, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory, The Stimulus Package (ARRA)

More and more, I’m feeling like a volunteer for the “Mark Sanford in 2012 Committee” finding out what “hiking the Appalachian Trail” really means. I have been a huge supporter of this program from the beginning. Even though I have had some concerns along the way, I have tried to keep the faith.

But the more I see about how this will get implemented, and the more deeply I delve into the details, the more I worry that a potentially great program capable of fundamentally altering our broadband future for the better to something so ridiculously screwed up that we will actually lose ground on both future funding and future policy.

The thing that finally broke my willingness to believe was this eyewitness report I got from my brother and business partner, Shmuel Feld, who attended the first NOFA Workshop held Tuesday, July 7 here in DC. A representative from RUS was explaining how applicants must fully document “unserved” and “underserved” at the census block level — but without access to any carrier data because carriers regard this as proprietary. Then, assuming the application survives to the NTIA/RUS “due diligence” round, the agency will invite broadband access providers in the area to submit confidential information to demonstrate that the area designated by the Applicant is not underserved or unserved. The applicant will have no opportunity to rebut any evidence submitted against the Application. From my brother’s report, this prompted the following exchange:

From Audience: If we, the people, do not know where the (BB) structures are or what the penetration numbers are and the big companies are not sharing these numbers or can deny them in the second round (when it is convenient) under the due diligence investigation, then how will we find out all of the information necessary for the application?

(Direct quote of RUS guy): Well that’s quite a challenge, isn’t it?

The RUS guy’s next line was a suggestion like “boots on the ground and canvassing a county” I could not hear him clearly because of the (I am serious) laughter.

OK, let me explain something to anyone from RUS or NTIA reading this. Giving Applicants an impossible task is not a “challenge.” It is a recipe for failure and a sign that you — NTIA and RUS — have screwed up big time.

I explore what I think is happening, and how it might still get fixed in time to save both the broadband stimulus package and the future of BB policy for the rest of the Obama Administration, below . . . .

My Thoughts Exactly:
Yes, Kat, it's true! I do love you! I love anybody who buys one of my books, especially if they blog about me!

John July 16, 2009 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

Sure, my books are available for free download. But when you buy an actual printed copy, I’ll inscribe it any way you like, as for example, here:

cover page of the pains with my handwritten inscription

It says, “Kat, I love you madly, but it has to stop here. To continue on as we have been doing would be MADNESS!”

Yes, it’s like a Governor Sanford or Senator Ensign letter to a mistress, declaring love but calling off the affair. What’s different about the affair between Kat and me, however, is that we’ve never actually met each other. Or even had a conversation.

Details at her blog. Her review of The Pains is here. I do wish it had been a little more enthusiastic, but I’ll take what I can get. After all, Kat was probably a little bit heartbroken as she wrote it.

The key point is, buy my one of my books and you too can get your very own personalized declaration of undying love in permanent ink. Or whatever else you want me to write. (One of the best things anybody ever asked me to write was something like, “Dear _______. I wish I could write as well as you do. But this crap was the best I could come up with, so it will have to do.”) Go wild! Make me be your dancing monkey! Included FREE with the purchase of a book. As Billy Mays might have asked, “NOW how much would you pay?”!

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
CellAntenna Scam Continues To Gain Momentum — Bummer.

Harold July 14, 2009 February 25, 2013Spectrum, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Regular readers may recall that I find CellAntenna’s continuing effort to leverage the problem of contraband cell phones to get the law changed so that they can sell cell phone jammers legally in this country not merely obnoxious and offensive, but downright dangerous. CellAntenna has proven real good at persuading state prison wardens that this technology solves their problems, despite the statements of frequency coordinators and public safety orgs that this is a real bad idea. The mainstream media, as is all too common these days, has generally acted like mindless cheer leaders without troubling to dig into whether cell phone jamming will actually work or not. The only decent in depth coverage was this Wired piece by Vince Beiser. For one thing, Beiser notes that prisoners can beat the jammers with a few sheets of aluminum foil.

I’ve blogged in a little more in-depth on this over here at Public Knowledge. We also (with additional sign ons from a number of other orgs) sent this letter to the Senate Commerce Committee in advance of tomorrow’s hearing so that at least someone is on record opposing this scam. Finally, for those of you who prefer the short, pithy medium of me staring into a camera and yakking about this, I give you my latest Five Minutes With Harold Feld The Prison Problem: Cell Phone Jamming and Shrimp Scampi.

Stay tuned . . . .

My Thoughts Exactly:
Further Adventures of a literary nobody

John July 13, 2009 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

Latest installment of a continuing series. In this issue: I get snubbed by the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival.

So the other day I sent a note to the organizers of the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival inquiring about setting up a booth there from which to do my Billy Mays thang. (I remembered having been turned down two years ago, the last time the MV Book Festival was held, when I made a similar request. But I couldn’t remember the rationale given. Had I missed a deadline? Had they run out of room?) Anyway, their response this time was <Wayne Campbell voice> DENIED! </Wayne Campbell voice>.

I thought their DENIED notice was a little bit snotty, so I replied with a note of my own that was also a little bit snotty.(But not too snotty, I hope. On a snottiness scale of one to ten, I would put our exchange at about a “2”. Read on and you can judge the level of snottinessosity for yourself.)

Below the fold: The prissy exchange, plus! what’s the difference between being a “Vineyard Writer” and “A writer who trades on the Vineyard”?

Inventing the Future:
What's in a name?: Application Collaboration

Stearns July 11, 2009 February 25, 2013Inventing the Future, meta-medium

<%image(20090711-application-collaboration.png|433|347|Application Collaboration)%>
It has been hard to express the character of this new way of working through collaborative 3D virtual worlds. I’ve made lots of explorations of the many ideas, but two of the biggies have been that:

Applications are shared by many people simultaneously. This does not mean just that one application program license can be used on many computers, or that copies of an application’s document can be passed around, although these are true. I think the unique thing is that the live combination of application/document can be used by many people simultaneously, as though looking over each other’s shoulder.

Each person can use many applications simultaneously. This does not mean just that a user can switch between application windows on their own desktop, but rather that they can easily be arranged and used in a persistent context that is shared in real-time between users.

We call this “application collaboration” to distinguish it from other forms of collaboration that do not have this dual nature. I’m still wrestling with the term.

I think the above picture of today’s Forums gets at this very nicely. Below is a picture of Croquet from more than two years ago. It’s interesting to me that they are functionally equivalent, and yet today’s picture makes the point of application collaboration so much clearer in both picture and practice. (I showed the two pictures to my wife. She said it was my strength and my weakness that I could see that both were illustrating the same concept.)
<%image(20060507-multi.jpg|433|275|Croquet Application Collaboration)%>

My Thoughts Exactly:
Speechless

John July 10, 2009 February 25, 2013Memology, My Thoughts Exactly

A few years ago Wetmechanic Gary Gray and I interviewed my pal Cory Doctorow, the peripatetic author, hep cat, technogeek, futurephiliac, etc, etc, in the lobby of a hotel in Boston. We podcast the interview (in 3 parts) here on Wetmachine. (I’m too lazy to look for the links now, but you know how to use that search tool.) Anyway, Cory’s a good guy to interview because he has lots and lots of interesting things to say and he’s friendly & good natured. But conversations with Cory are half-duplex. (A term that any ancient geeks reading this post will remember. But for you young’uns I’ll explain: in full duplex communications, both ends of a link can send and receive messages. In half-duplex, one party sends and the other party receives. What I’m saying is that Cory is smart and nice and funny and interesting, but he doesn’t listen to a fucking word you say. (Or, in any event, he doesn’t listen to a fucking word *I* say.))

My favorite part of our conversation is where we’re talking about the costs and benefits of societal change, especially change brought about by technological advances. We’re talking about the possible end of the art form known as “the movie” as we know it today. What if digital duplication and peer-to-peer technologies make it economically infeasible for a studio to invest the sums necessary for a “real” movie like those we’ve become accustomed to for three quarters of a century or so (think: Lord of the Rings)? Cory makes the observation that with the Protestant Reformation came the end of the era of great cathedrals: because of the Reformation, no more grand cathedrals will ever be built. Cathedral-making is an art form that died because it had to die. But in exchange for that lost art, Cory says (I’m paraphrasing from memory), we got the Reformation. And then he asks “Was it worth it?”

If you listen closely, you can hear me responding, “that’s an interesting question.” (I know you’re not going to go find and listen to the podcast, but just pretend, OK?) Indeed, I thought it was a very interesting question. I was actually thinking about the costs, in blood and war and terror and murder and rape and rapine and starvation and hatred and blind tribal ignorance, that came with religious wars that accompanied the Reformation. And I was thinking about the mysterious awe-inspiring beauty of the (admittedly somewhat perverse) art form of the cathedral. And I was wondering, for the first time, what might have happened to the art form of the cathedral if the Reformation had never happened. I’m a technophobic & nostalgic guy, after all. I was thinking, “what if ever more and more beautiful cathedrals had been built?”

For Cory, of course, it was a rhetorical question, not a real question, and the answer was “yes”. Yes, losing the art form of the cathedral was an OK price to pay in exchange for the Reformation. Cory didn’t even hear, much less respond to, to my ambivalent response. He just steamrollered right over it. Of course the trade-off was worth it. Of course the new art forms that arise when old art forms are killed are “worth it”. The emergent art forms will offer new and unanticipated beauty and splendid insights into our human condition. So, he said (paraphrasing again), the old art must die so that that new and even more profound art can emerge.

As my 4 long-time readers might guess, I was skeptical about this. For I am given to worrying all the time about the wanton destruction of culture in the name of a bogus and ephemeral “progress”. I’m very skeptical about “progress.”

But then I saw the video embedded below, which I found on Spocko’s website — (and Spocko, in fact, actually discovered it on Cory’s own site Boing Boing). And now I’m starting to think, “Cory was right.” Not because this video is more beautiful and satisfying than (name your favorite movie (or cathedral)). But because this is a new art form. It’s shocking. It’s breathtaking. But it’s not shocking in the elitist “Épater la bourgeoisie” sense. It’s shocking because it’s so entrancing and fun, while at the same time implicitly raising a thousand deep questions (and I don’t even speak Korean). It’s just so unexpected, so friendly, so welcoming and so beautiful that I really can’t find words to respond to it. Sure, it’s just a little music video, and Lord knows a music video is not a new thing. But for now, tonight, this one feels to me like someting really really big. As big as the Iranian revolution on Twitter; or, more precisely, it’s an artistic exploration of the possibilities implicit in that revolution. And a big part of the reason for that is that it’s so human, so un-Godlike, so small.

UPDATE Below the fold, a minor elaboration.
UPDATE 2 On Ultrasaurus, Sarah Allen blogs about this post. I like what she has to say, and am impressed that she went back and actually listened to the interview.

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
Fun Event On Capital Hill Next Monday: I Take On The Neocons On BB Policy

Harold July 10, 2009 February 25, 2013Life In The Sausage Factory, Tales of the Sausage Factory

One of the fun things here in D.C. is getting to go to events that are (a) informative on issues, and (b) offer a free lunch. Such is the Broadband Competition Panel sponsored by The Technology Policy Institutenext Monday, July 13, at Noon (for details, follow this link).

TPI has a fairly antiregulatory/UofC/“Free Market” bend to it. Happily, the event organizer, friend and occasional sparring partner Scott Wallsten, likes panels where folks get to mix it up a bit rather than panels where everyone agrees. so he’s asked me to come as the more “regulatory” (or, as I prefer to say “practical and empirically grounded”) panelist to defend how things like net neutrality and more rigorous antitrust enforcement are good things not bad things because they create jobs, spur investment, and protect fundamental freedoms and stuff.

Should be fun. They will provide lunch, but register first. You know what a mob scene these policy debates can be — especially given the hordes of hungry Congressional interns.

Stay tuned . . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory:
My Latest 5 Minutes: The Newspaper's Lame Blame Game

Harold July 8, 2009 February 25, 2013General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

I propose the radical notion that not only is changing the copyright law to preserve existing newspapers a bad idea, it doesn’t address the problem and won’t work. The New York Times needs to get with the times and get over themselves.

Of note, Tribune, the bankrupt newspaper/TV chain, continues to have a profit margin of 8%. That’s right, they are making money. Just a heck of a lot less than they used to and not nearly enough to service their debt.