Hackers advocate the free pursuit and sharing of knowledge without restriction, even as they acknowledge that applying it is something else.

Tom has been published in the current issue of CACM. His article is currently number one of only 7 references to Francis Fukuyama in the ACM Digital Library. There is a report about Internet voting, two about trust in electronic commerce, an excerpt from The Social Life of Information, and an article by Grady Booch where the title is a take-off on Fukuyama's classic, The End of History. Tom's article is the only one to reference Fukuyama in the context of science/technology policy and academic freedom.

In crafting policy, is it useful to distinguish between basic knowledge and specific vulnerabilities in a finished product?

Tom's opening line refers to "the free pursuit of knowledge." The implication in Joy's argument, and in Tom's response to it, suggests that it is possible, through policy, to wall off certain areas of knowledge in a selective manner, based on some balanced assessment of risk and reward. Set aside the wisdom of the policy issue; it's not clear to me this is even possible.

So much of what turns out to be disruptive knowledge arrives unexpectedly. This much should be obvious by definition. Yet frequently it seems to be brushed aside. Joy focuses on big, deliberate endeavors; he refers to "efforts" like the Manhattan Project.

Although the history of the Internet is deeply intertwined with defense, it is worth noting that the World Wide Web was not the product of a grand-vision project. Well, actually, it was, but that big project was about physics, not information management. The Web arose from an off-the-books "effort" to organize some documentation.

Recall the recent Freeman Dyson articles that I recommended. The next supervirus is as likely to arrive courtesy of a five year old, playing in the backyard, as from a diabolical terrorist with genocidal tendencies.

Inherent in Tom's premise is the idea that one has the ability to distinguish between knowing and doing. At the bleeding edge, on zero budget, with only the vaguest ideas of the applications or impact of what you're exploring, this may not be a reasonable assumption. There is a subtlety between "doing" and "applying"; you might "do" in the lab but "apply" in the wild. But as Tom asks, what if you have no lab? When the wild is your lab, either for lack of resources, or because the wild is your object of study, "doing" and "applying" are often one in the same.

Update: Greg Conti has made the CACM issue available as a ZIP archive.

Academic freedom and the hacker ethic

Civil Liberties and National Security
By George Friedman
Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report - May 16, 2006

USA Today published a story last week stating that U.S. telephone companies (Qwest excepted) had been handing over to the National Security Agency (NSA) logs of phone calls made by American citizens. This has, as one might expect, generated a fair bit of controversy -- with opinions ranging from "It's not only legal but a great idea" to "This proves that Bush arranged 9/11 so he could create a police state." A fine time is being had by all. Therefore, it would seem appropriate to pause and consider the matter.

Let's begin with an obvious question: How in God's name did USA Today find out about a program that had to have been among the most closely held secrets in the intelligence community -- not only because it would be embarrassing if discovered, but also because the entire program could work only if no one knew it was under way? No criticism of USA Today, but we would assume that the newspaper wasn't running covert operations against the NSA. Therefore, someone gave them the story, and whoever gave them the story had to be cleared to know about it. That means that someone with a high security clearance leaked an NSA secret.

Americans have become so numbed to leaks at this point that no one really has discussed the implications of what we are seeing: The intelligence community is hemorrhaging classified information. It's possible that this leak came from one of the few congressmen or senators or staffers on oversight committees who had been briefed on this material -- but either way, we are seeing an extraordinary breakdown among those with access to classified material.

The reason for this latest disclosure is obviously the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to be the head of the CIA. Before his appointment as deputy director of national intelligence, Hayden had been the head of the NSA, where he oversaw the collection and data-mining project involving private phone calls. Hayden's nomination to the CIA has come under heavy criticism from Democrats and Republicans, who argue that he is an inappropriate choice for director. The release of the data-mining story to USA Today obviously was intended as a means of shooting down his nomination -- which it might. But what is important here is not the fate of Hayden, but the fact that the Bush administration clearly has lost all control of the intelligence community -- extended to include congressional oversight processes. That is not a trivial point.

At the heart of the argument is not the current breakdown in Washington, but the more significant question of why the NSA was running such a collection program and whether the program represented a serious threat to liberty. The standard debate is divided into two schools: those who regard the threat to liberty as trivial when compared to the security it provides, and those who regard the security it ... [ Read More (1.8k in body) ]

Civil Liberties and National Security

The US Census Bureau, due to issues related to the separation of church and state, does not ask questions related to faith or religion on the decennial census. Accordingly, there are few sources of comprehensive data on church membership and religious affiliation for the United States. Perhaps the leading organization to address this gap is the Glenmary Research Center, which publishes Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States, 2000. The following series of county-level choropleth maps, which reveals the distribution of the larger and more regionally concentrated church bodies, draws on this resource. The maps are in GIF format.

Map Gallery of Religion in the United States

To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

Why Iraq Was a Mistake

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath ... It may be two or three generations in repairing.

Did you catch that?

... masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly ...

This last point is true, but he could be talking about almost anything in government.

Delta Force founder - 'our credibility is utterly zero'

In an internal memo last October, Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer, who joined Microsoft last year, wrote, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."

The trouble with Microsoft.

Windows Is So Slow, but Why? - New York Times

The temptation is to dismiss it as a joke. Unfortunately, the tower is too loaded with meaning to dismiss. For better or worse, it will be seen by the world as a chilling expression of how we are reshaping our identity in a post-Sept. 11 context.

Let's just forget about a tower; I could really go for another Botanical Garden.

NYT on the freedom tower

The scattered rubbish and tang of urine made me think of structures closer to home in England - run-down tower blocks and motorway exit ramps, pedestrian underpasses sprung from the drawing boards of enlightened planners who would never have to live in or near them, and who were careful never to stray too far from their Georgian squares in the heart of heritage London.

Or Atlanta. (I really want to know what genius thought up the pedestrian underpass. Have you ever seen a "nice" one?)

Hitler and Stalin were intrigued by modernism, which seemed part of a new world of aviation, radio, public health and mass consciousness.

"This web site needs more AJAX!", they shouted in unison.

Fearing ourselves, we need our illusions to protect us, even if the protection takes the form of finials and cartouches, corinthian columns and acanthus leaves.

Feed me, Agent! Tell me what to read next!

As in the cases of the pyramids and the Taj Mahal, the Siegfried line and the Atlantic wall, death always calls on the very best architects.

JG Ballard on modernists and death

This is more exploitative than meditative, but it is about the speed limit -- specifically, the 55 mph posted limit on the I-285 loop around metropolitan Atlanta, GA.

If the authorities were inclined, the students who executed this "meditation" could probably have been tried for conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, or some such thing.

Fortunately for the students, the police were too busy ticketing the drivers going 75 mph in the other direction.

That, and worrying about all the foreigners at the ports. (Pay no attention to the abundantly obvious fact that the containers are foreign, too, and most of them are not being inspected by anyone, regardless of citizenship.)

A Meditation On the Speed Limit

According to a co-founder of Verisign, the key to success is a proven ability to finish fast.

The primary goal of an elevator pitch is to intrigue someone to learn more.

Like that novel you buy on impulse at the airport, the first sentence has to grab you.

One way to do that is to highlight the enormity of the problem you are tackling ...

If you get stuck on this step because the problem you’re tackling isn’t impressively large and obvious, you have a more severe issue to worry about than your elevator pitch.

...

To really expose the genius, the pitch includes a good 10-20 minute tutorial. Who Has Time For This? Not VC’s, and certainly not prospective buyers.

Surely the brilliance of the idea must compel them!
Compel? More like confuse, bore and repel.

Practicing the art of subtext. See also:

Are you just another AFC ("average frustrated chump") trying to meet an HB ("hot babe")? How would you like to "full-close" with a Penthouse Pet of the Year? The answers, my friend, are in Neil Strauss's entertaining book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

But remember:

After a while, he ran out of one-liners and had to have a real conversation.

Practicing the Art of Pitchcraft