There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
The Bottle Imp
Topic: Society
4:51 pm EST, Feb 15, 2009
John Allen Paulos:
While corporate venality and fraud certainly played a role in some of these precipitous declines, the collapses of the various dot-coms, banks, foundations and financial institutions were not primarily the fault of con artists and high-society lowlifes. The responsibility extends far wider.
From the archive, Niall Ferguson:
This hunt for scapegoats is futile. To understand the downfall of Planet Finance, you need to take several steps back and locate this crisis in the long run of financial history. Only then will you see that we have all played a part.
A quite different illustration of our short-sightedness comes courtesy of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp." The story tells of a genie in a bottle able and willing to satisfy your every romantic whim and financial desire. You're offered the opportunity to buy this bottle and its amazing denizen at a price of your choice. There is a serious limitation, however.
When you've finished with the bottle, you have to sell it to someone else at a price strictly less than what you paid for it. If you don't sell it to someone for a lower price, you will lose everything and will suffer excruciating and unrelenting torment. What would you pay for such a bottle?
From the archive, Freeman Dyson:
It's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.
Also, Stewart Brand:
In some cultures you're supposed to be responsible out to the seventh generation -- that's about 200 years. But it goes right against self-interest.
There is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.
What a new Internet might look like is still widely debated, but one alternative would, in effect, create a "gated community" where users would give up their anonymity and certain freedoms in return for safety.
Scientists armed with federal research dollars, working in collaboration with the industry, are trying to figure out the best way to start over.
In other news, cypherpunk futures rose sharply in after-hours trading.
Your Call Is Important to Us.
At a meeting of the Lebanese parliamentary communications committee, MP Marwan Hamada and internal security chief Ashraf Rifi said that Syrian intelligence was wiretapping everyone in Lebanon.
Can you hear me now?
NSA is said to be offering "billions" to any firm which can offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic.
Oh, Canada!
An Ontario Superior Court ruling could open the door to police routinely using Internet Protocol addresses to find out the names of people online, without any need for a search warrant.
"A lot more people would be apprehensive if they knew their name was being left everywhere they went."
Fear not:
We're going to be okay, aren't we Papa? Yes. We are. And nothing bad is going to happen to us. That's right. Because we're carrying the fire. Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.
They are carrying the fire through a world destroyed by fire, and therefore -- a leap of logic or faith that by the time the novel opens has become almost insurmountable for both of them -- the boy must struggle on, so that he can be present at, or somehow contribute to, the eventual rebirth of the world.
We live in a world where the production of secret knowledge dwarfs the production of open knowledge. Depending on whom you ask, government secrecy is either the key to victory in our struggle against terrorism, or our Achilles heel. But is so much secrecy a bad thing?
This film is about the vast, invisible world of government secrecy. By focusing on classified secrets, the government's ability to put information out of sight if it would harm national security, Secrecy explores the tensions between our safety as a nation, and our ability to function as a democracy.
A film by Peter Galison and Robb Moss.
For those in the Boston area:
The Berkman Center, Peter Galison, and Robb Moss present a screening of the film "Secrecy," a film about the vast, invisible world of government secrecy, followed by a roundtable discussion with professors Jack Goldsmith, Martha Minow, and Jonathan Zittrain.
Other screenings are coming soon to Berkeley, Hartford, and San Diego.
Recently, NYT wrote:
It’s hard to imagine what, at this point, needs to be kept secret, other than the ways in which the administration behaved irresponsibly, and quite possibly illegally, in the Masri case.
From the archive, Thomas Powers:
Is more what we really need?
In my opinion not.
But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.
What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears.
Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature, -- the sweet, without the other side, -- the bitter. This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted.
Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He indicates great wrongs which must be revised.
Beware of too much good staying in your hand.
As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
I do not wish more external goods, -- neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure.
From Rumsfeld's Rules:
If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
From a 2007 essay on film noir:
What it was addressing was not our promising future but our dark and anxious past. It was simplistically suggesting that the inflationary 1920s had so overheated our economy and our expectations that we had stupidly “bought” the inevitable retribution of the Depression. In other words, the parade, like film noir, was directing our attention backward, not forward. After the war, we were not so much disillusioned by our prospects as giddily illusioned by them, and the message of film noir was curiously at odds with the national mood.
In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”.
He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself.
But many voters would rather not suffer at all.
From last October, Juan Enriquez:
A solution requires the country to begin to spend what it earns, reduce its mountainous debt, and address massive liabilities, restructure Social Security, pension deficits, military, and Medicare. No wonder politicians would rather spend more of your money now rather than address these problems.
From last November, Slavoj Žižek:
The danger is thus that the predominant narrative of the meltdown won't be the one that awakes us from a dream, but the one that will enable us to continue to dream.
From 2006, Walter Russel Mead:
The difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals is not that fundamentalists are more emotional in their beliefs; it is that fundamentalists insist more fully on following their ideas to their logical conclusion.
The wise men of the market tell us that its main drive is greed.
They tell us that everything is all right, that the fear it now reveals is only temporary, that greed will return soon.
Oh, greed, we miss you terribly!
From 2004, David Crosby:
It is partly their own, you know, greed and, and lack of taste, but it's also partly a condition that's endemic in the country.
From 2005, about "thefacebook":
A successful company needs to have a "clearly articulated product and service," that will "save time or money, offer something someone can't find somewhere else and fulfill a greed or lust factor." The service offered should be "compelling," and one which "draws in new users to get organic grass-roots growth."
From 2007, Alix Goldsmith:
"It’s greed, greed and more greed -- I mean, what’s more important to us, the environment or some stupid golf?"
From 2007, Snow Barlow:
"Here we are, just one species on the earth, and we're grabbing a quarter of the renewable resources ... we're probably being a bit greedy."
The crisis isn’t just about the bursting of the US housing bubble and dodgy sub-prime lending. Nor is it merely a reflection of the perennial cycle in which greed trumps fear to create a euphoric disregard of risk, only for fear to reassert itself as the risk becomes too great. What is revealed by the end-of-the-world trade is that the current crisis concerns the collapse of public fact.
From 2008, Joseph Stiglitz:
We have learned a painful lesson, both in the 1930s and today: The invisible hand often seems invisible because it's not there. At best, it's more than a little palsied. At worst, the pursuit of self-interest -- corporate greed -- can lead to the kind of predicament confronting the country today.
The macroeconomic perils faced by the global economy are deeper and likely to last longer than those presented by the current financial crisis.
In most macroeconomic crises, the worst case -- depression or inflation -- is fairly clear, and modern policymakers have the tools at hand to cope. The worst case now may be both -- stagflation.
The following analysis begins with the Great Depression, then examines five subsequent periods. The final section makes some policy suggestions for escaping the worst effects. The conclusions are not optimistic.
The Great Depression brought the New Deal to the United States. It brought the rest of the world Nazism and universal war. This time, though, many nations have nuclear weapons.
"Maybe we could" is the limit of optimism in this paper. The world ahead looks difficult.
From 2005, Freeman Dyson:
It's very important that we adapt to the world on the long-time scale as well as the short-time scale. Ethics are the art of doing that. You must have principles that you're willing to die for.
From 2006, John Rapley:
As states recede and the new mediaevalism advances, the outside world is destined to move increasingly beyond the control -- and even the understanding -- of the new Rome. The globe's variegated informal and quasi-informal statelike activities will continue to expand, as will the power and reach of those who live by them. The new Romans, like the old, might not enjoy the consequences.
From 2008, Nir Rosen:
"You Westerners have your watches," the leader observed. "But we Taliban have time."
From last week:
A Pakistani court freed one of the most successful nuclear proliferators in history, Abdul Qadeer Khan, from house arrest on Friday, lifting the restrictions imposed on him since 2004 when he publicly confessed to running an illicit nuclear network.
On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?
No place in the United States is likely to escape a long and deep recession. As the crisis deepens, it will permanently and profoundly alter the country’s economic landscape. I believe it marks the end of a chapter in American economic history, and indeed, the end of a whole way of life.
Suburbanization was the spatial fix for the industrial age. It made sense, for a time. How do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life?
Instead of resisting foreclosures, the government should seek to facilitate them. We can’t stop the decline of some places, and we would be foolish to try. We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall.
Jane Jacobs:
When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.
Paul Romer:
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Peter Schiff:
We need a serious recession in this country, and the government needs to get out of the way, and let it happen.
Verlyn Klinkenborg:
Someone from the future, I’m sure, will marvel at our blindness and at the hole we have driven ourselves into.
Alec Dubro:
The personal automobile must be abandoned, and quickly.
From a year ago:
Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow's tenements.
Have you seen "Revolutionary Road"?
Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
The current financial crisis began in August 2007, when financial stability replaced inflation as the Federal Reserve’s chief concern. The roots of the crisis go back much further, and there are various views on the fundamental causes.
It is generally accepted that credit standards in US mortgage lending were relaxed in the early 2000s, and that rising rates of delinquency and foreclosures delivered a sharp shock to a range of US financial institutions. Beyond that point of agreement, however, there are many questions that will be debated by policymakers and academics for decades.
While some may insist that there is a single cause, and thus a simple remedy, the sheer number of causal factors that have been identified tends to suggest that the current financial situation is not yet fully understood in its full complexity. This report consists of a table that summarizes very briefly some of the arguments for particular causes, presents equally brief rejoinders, and includes a reference or two for further reading.
We shall now have to question some of our most deeply rooted assumptions -- not only about the benefits of paper money but also about the rationale of the property-owning democracy itself.
From the archive, Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Many hedge fund managers are just picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. And sometimes the steamroller accelerates.
40% of hard drives bought on eBay hold personal, corporate data
Topic: Computer Security
8:04 am EST, Feb 12, 2009
A New York computer forensics firm found that 40% of the hard disk drives it recently purchased in bulk orders on eBay contained personal, private and sensitive information.
Recently, Decius wrote:
One must assume that all garbage is monitored by the state. Anything less would be a pre-911 mentality.
