Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
<gail>, speaking of footnotes, we're planning a SXSW party (for EFF
and EFF-Austin) with a cyberpunk theme. Odd to think of cyberpunk as
retro. It's really about the 90s and the seminal moments in building
Internet 1.0, and the digital culture that formed at the core of the
network = the fringes of mainstream culture. We were just learning to
think with now-customary fragmentation of focus and attention, which I
think of as a potential evolutionary mutation - unless I'm in a funk,
then it's about devolving as a species. But who knows?

Shakespeare and later Django lived with a different configuration of
consciousness, most likely. I've always thought the evolution of the
human species has been more internal. If we do assume that the our
thinking and conscious experience is evolving and changing, I think it
follows that our interpretation of past culture might miss something.
(Then again, perhaps history and culture stabilize evolution, and we
change less than we might otherwise, because we carry context forward.)
  

    
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/how-the-us-almost-killed-the-internet
/all/

*Those are some illustrations in this Steven Levy article, folks.
  

    
From that article: "In a sense, the tech companies are more like the
NSA than they would like to think. Both have seized on the progress in
computing, communications, and storage to advance their respective
missions. (When you think of it, Google’s original mission
statement—'to collect and organize the world’s information'—might also
apply to the activity at Fort Meade.) Both have sought to fulfill those
missions by amassing huge troves of personal information—and both
offer trade-offs that seemingly justify the practice. Google, Facebook,
and others argue that they can use that information to improve the
lives of their customers far in excess of any discomfort that may come
from sharing that data."
  

    
Link via @omarg. Bedtime in the Internet of Things:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/07/sleep-number-x12-bed/?ncid=rss_truncated

"Sleep Number just announced the x12, which packs a variety of sensors
to monitor your sleeping habits, movement, heart rate and breathing
rate. Basically, then, it potentially eliminates the need for a
wearable fitness tracker, assuming you can do without the activity
monitoring. In particular, the bed has two sections, each of which are
independently adjustable, so that once the bed knows your sleeping
patterns, it can suggest ways you might want to change, say, the head
incline. Additionally -- and this is perhaps our favorite feature -- a
Partner Snore feature allows you raise your partner's headrest to help
ease snoring. (Because anything that introduces passive-aggression to
domestic relationships wins our vote.)"
  

    
*If things weren't bad enough between the NSA and Silicon Valley, now
they've got a Californian water war on their hands.  Maybe they can
retaliate by briskly shutting California's gas pipelines, like Enron
used to do in their heyday.  That'll teach those Stacks:  no fossils,
no cloud, you rascals.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nsa-nullification-california
  

    
(what brady said: thanks for doing this again, guys.)

you're making me want to move to Serbia, bruce.
  

    

nice:

<http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2014/01/07/five-companies-to-fear-fondly/>
  

    

Gail Williams (gail) "Thinking about Django Reinhart reminds me that
his music was radical and not timeless when it was first played."

*I'd agree that the idea of a French gypsy as a maestro of American
Jazz was pretty radical in Django's day.  Likely that seemed rather
threatening to the great and the good, at the time.  But Django
Reinhart is classic now. Nobody can ever be "classic" except in some
"now."  

*Some artist's "nows" are longer than the nows of other artists.

*Tolstoy was a radical Christian Socialist.  His own wife was
freaked-out by his political eccentricities. Tolstoy is classic now,
though.  I'm not sure that we have any other way to get our "classics."

*Our true, no-kidding "classics" are supposed to be from genuinely
remote, ancient times, like the Latin or Greek "classics."  But the
creatives who were making up that stuff back in the ancient, classical
world, they never walked around in their togas in real-time, being all
self-consciously "classical."  

*Ovid, for instance.  Ovid was banished from Rome by Augustus Caesar
-- because of some obscure, yet obviously awful, imperial sex scandal.
I don't know what sleazy mischief that poet Ovid was up to, but it was
so transgressively unbearable that Ovid was banished to a dismal
barbarian village -- a place that's downstream from my current
residence here.  

*I can scarcely stroll out of my apartment, and go to gaze upon the
misty, wintry Danube  (which is a good-sized river by European
standards, and it's quite pretty, too, just check my FlickR set)
without feeling an obscure yet genuine pang about Mr. Ovid.  Having
read some Ovid, I often think about him -- even though Ovid is merely a
dusty, lifeless Roman imperial apparatchik that nobody reads in his
own language nowadays.  

*Could Ovid, in his real life,  possibly have been such an actively
dangerous, busybody little sleazebag nuisance that he really *deserved*
to end up in Bulgaria?

*Ovid is a pretty good writer, and being a writer myself, I'd love to
defend a fellow writer unconditionally.  But -- (let's at least admit
this possibility) -- maybe Ovid really WAS that bad, as a Roman
citizen.  Maybe the classical Ovid wasn't just "radical," but much too
radical.  Ovid somehow placed his sandaled foot on the (as yet
nonexistent) electrified third rail of Roman Imperial politics.  Ovid
got thrown out of town, to the distant rim of the Empire; nobody ever
let him back in.

*It's not implausible to wonder if the classical "intelligence
community" was involved in the dire fate of Ovid.  His fate was
obscure, and maybe that obscurity was deliberate.  Any court with court
poets is bound to have some court spies.  The Emperor Augustus was a
busy man.  The autocrat needed his spies.  

*Somebody -- some unknown but very real person -- had to go inform
Augustus Caesar about Ovid, and Ovid's misbehaviors.  "Listen, Your
Wonderfulness: we've been following this Ovid guy around, while
undercover in our togas.  He's a close friend and media confidante of
this rotten, decadent playboy who's in bed with your out-of-control,
bad-girl daughter, Julia."  That obscure whisper would have pretty well
done it for the author of the METAMORPHOSIS.  Ovid would have been
ancient, Roman, a classic poet -- and toast.

*And that story is why I don't expect the readers of the WELL here to
rush out in a body and abolish espionage.  I also don't expect you to
rise up in your righteous wrath and abolish prostitution, narcotics,
and ancient, classical religions that you may not currently approve of,
like, say, Christianity.  Call me a pessimist if you will, call me a
cynic. I know how to watch a calendar. Pessimism and cynicism aren't
the problems at hand in these matters.

*The problem of espionage is inherently political.  It's a power
relationship.  If I spy on you, and you know it, that's a virtue, it's
"transparency." When you spy on me, and I don't know it, that's a vice,
it's "surveillance."  

*As mediation evolves into ubiquity, mediation becomes more political:
who writes the checkboxes, and who is forced to click on them.  Since
we live in a digital world, you and I both know that it's not "law,"
it's mere "shrinkwrap."  Shrinkwrap is a mockup, it's a prototype, it's
in permanent beta, you don't care, and neither do I.  Until we have to
care, because of some political train-wreck, and then the rampant
lawlessness of shrinkwrap looks pretty awful.

*There's no click box to let Snowden leave Moscow.  There's no click
box to let Assange leave the embassy of Ecuador.  You can't hit a
RETURN key to let Barrett Brown out of custody in Texas. You can't
click a box to grant amnesty to that ex-military gay guy who likes to
change his name so as to spite his jailers. 

*They are some very digital people indeed, but they are at one with
the classic Mr Ovid exiled in Bulgaria, these four guys.  I can't doubt
they'd have a lot to discuss, if they could escape their fetters, and
gather in one spot in space and time.
  

    
*"Use this new technology."  "Oh please, no, I can't do that, because
it's just so geeky and ugly."  I've seen that struggle happen so many
times. Generations of it, even.  There's something voyeuristically
fascinating about it, it's like watching some very halting and clumsy
marriage-courting ritual.

*Now it's "wearables."  She's entirely right of course, they do look
like crap.  But mobile phones used to be uglier than sin, and I bet if
she lost her current mobile in the subway, she could cry.


http://www.elle.com/news/fashion-style/where-is-the-wearable-tech-we-want-to-w
ear

"I get why the Fuelband is cool. I get why it’s important and what it
does. I just don’t want to wear it. It’s like wearing sneakers on the
subway and changing into heels when you get to the office. I get the
point of it. It just kills my vibe.

"I can’t imagine using any of these items—mostly because they’re techy
looking, and not in that sleek, sexy way, but more in a masculine,
rubbery, will-ruin-my-outfit way."
  

    
>we're planning a SXSW party (for EFF and EFF-Austin) with a 
>cyberpunk theme. Odd to think of cyberpunk as retro.

You simply must book Billy Idol.
  

    

"a plaid pajama ninja (cynsa):  you're making me want to move to
Serbia, bruce."

*Well, don't arrive here in your plaid pajamas.

*It's true that it thrills me to see this new Serbia that's rather
like its obscure cousins Slovenia or Slovakia; just another weird,
harmless place with a vowel shortage.  

*It seems to me that positive aspects of their national culture are
coming to the fore these days, that their troubles have long repressed.
 They're more creative now, more expressive, less of an armed camp,
more alive to their own possibilities.  There are events and situations
in Serbia now, like say the Exit Music Festival, or Resonate, or
Share, where one can have a pretty good time in Serbia, and even learn
something new that's worth knowing.

*Still, despite increasing and diligent effort, they don't really have
a tourist industry in Serbia.  It's not yet a sleek and seamless place
to visit.

*The coast of Croatia, any foreigner can manage pretty well; Croatia
has about the same level of material culture as Mexican coastal
resorts.  Croatia's full of tourism professionals who will sell your
kids ice cream from carts in the summer.  Serbia, not so much; they
don't go out of their way to parodize themselves for foreigners, like,
say, my home town of Austin, Texas does on Sixth Street.  

*So, if you show up here in Serbia, they feed you, but they just feed
you what they themselves eat.  You have to sleep in their hotels, use
their own rattletrap buses and taxis, scratch your head over the
relative material deprivation in their shops, etc.   Belgrade is still
an authentic place with its own regional food and music.  If you go
into a cafe, nobody speaks English.  The radio is full of pop hits
rooted in local folk traditions. The newspapers and magazines are
obsessed with the doings of celebrities nobody else has ever heard of.

*In 2014, things are much, much better here, just better by pretty
much any objective standard, but the Balkans have always been poor. 
There have been some occasional rich people around here, moguls,
princes, warlords and so forth, but it was never a prosperous society. 
The Balkans is an ancient region that's been through slavery, and
peasantry, and Communism, with occasional outbreaks of slaughter to
vary the pace.  

*It's just a harsh, rugged part of our world, and although it's
looking pretty good nowadays, quite upbeat even, a marvel of
improvement to tell the truth, you're not going to see a lot of
European Union people lining up for a residency in Serbia.  While the
opposite: Serbs aspiring to live in Europe, or Canada, the US or
Australia -- well, there's nothing more common.  My fondness for their
eccentric and colorful habits doesn't restrain them from getting out
when as they can.  One should trust their judgement there.  When people
vote with their feet, they're sincere about that.

*My guess is that it's the diaspora Serbs who are really changing
Serbia, in this decade.  I don't know quite how that works out, because
the Radikalni are intensely patriotic politicians, they cling fiercely
to symbols of state, church, land and people, they're all about the
braided leather shoes and the hats of extinct river pirates.  But they
just don't act like hicks, any more.  It's because they don't think
like hicks, I guess; they don't remember how. 

*It's hard to say what they do act like, right now.  Like the canny
operatives of some small, regional, European nation-state, I guess. 
They seem to have figured out the nation-state, at about the same time
that everybody else realized that nation-states are almost useless.
  

    

In these annual conversations, we focus on surfaces and seldom discuss
the inner worlds of "three-brained beings," as Georges Gurdjieff
referred to humans. I wonder how our minds are changing as we're
conditioned to think in 140-character bursts of information. What's the
impact of focusing on screens of data as persistently as many of us
do? In the past I argued that those screens are windows on the world,
but windows are analog, constrained, persistent. Through our screens
we're receiving digital signals at an increasingly high rate of speed,
and there's a hypnotic quality to the flow of light, color, and data.

We see details of the lives of our friends and acquaintances in an
attention-challenging stream of Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr posts,
Instagram images, short-burst Vine videos. I just hopped over to
Facebook, thinking to look for examples. I found a post from Howard
Rheingold, an image of Howard with Wavy Gravy, with a long thread of
responses in which he mentioned his trip to Austin with Mr. Gravy back
in the 90s, and I posted a couple of memories of that trip. Then I saw
that Jean Russell mentioned Facebook's "other" inbox, and I couldn't
resist checking it out. There were two Nigerian spam messages offering
to connect me with large sums of money, which I quickly learned to
report as abuse, and a message from a former high school friend I
hadn't seen in something like 45 years. I posted a note back to him.
Then I saw that my friend Tiffany posted a song sung before lunch at
her son's preschool:

Give thanks to the mother earth
Give thanks to the father sun
Give thanks to the plants in the garden
where the mother and the father are one.
Blessings on our meal.

Our song at the end of the day:

I open my eyes to you
I open my heart to you
Together we reach our arms to the sun
and together we are opening our loving hearts
as one.
Thank you for a beautiful day.

Below that, Pat Lichty had posted a photo of Chicago under ice, pretty
surreal, and Mark Frauenfelder posted a link to a medium.com piece,
"Explain Bitcoin Like I'm Five." I resisted the urge to follow that
link, but if I had followed it, I suspect I would have read the first
two paragraphs, saved it, and never looked at it again.

Another friend posts that she's awake again in the middle of the
night, another about "a friend's amazing long term partnership" and
whether it's better to be single. Under that there's a Harry Knowles
defense of Michael Bay's CES bounce, and John Shirley's posted a link
to a Slate post about growing up unvaccinated (in which the author says
"As healthy as my lifestyle seemed, I contracted measles, mumps,
rubella, a type of viral meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly
tonsillitis, and chickenpox."

Surfing social media like this is seductive. It's worthwhile to watch
yourself while you're doing it: see how the gears shift, see how the
attention is conditioned to ebb and flow. Recently concerned that this
surfing activity was creating a worse than usual attention deficit in
my flow of consciousness, I decided focus where sustained attention is
required, e.g. reading books, or building things. Many years of
meditation have already shown me how hyper the monkeys in my head can
be, and how difficult to tame, yet despite that awareness, despite
regular dedicated attempts at focused attention, I was undermining any
potential mindfulness and focus as I was bouncing around Facebook,
Twitter, and other online information streams. We all have different
selves, different "I's" inside our heads. Part of me wanted focus and
consistency, another part wanted to drink from the firehose.
  

    

Just wanted to quickly point out that while Congress 
is as unpopular among the polled as has been noted
here, Congress is very popular with its owners.  
  

    
In case you're wondering who those owners are, here's a 2010 overview
from Mother Jones:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/capitol-hill-top-corporate-sponsor
s
  

    
The state of the world could shift abruptly and catastrophically if a
large asteroid struck the earth. Last year a relatively small asteroid
struck earth's atmosphere above Russia:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fireball_130301.html. It caused
significant injuries and damage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor.

Good to know that somebody's paying attention:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10558514/Nasa-spacecraft-spots-potent
ially-hazardous-new-asteroid.html
  

    
*Looks like I just got a full complement of contributors for
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW.  Tragically, none of them are eighteen.  Maybe one
or two will be struck by an asteroid and I'll be back at the last
minute begging for genius again.

*I've seen some YouTube compilations of people's reactions at
Chelyabinsk, by the way.  It's really frightening and pitiful to be
assaulted in that way -- by some grave danger that is utterly random,
out of the sky.  Worse than an earthquake, really.  It's easy to joke
about something as weird as being killed by an asteroid, but I felt
true sorrow for those people.
  

    
*Here's a nice map of people trying to own Congress.  They don't
strike me as a happy, satisfied bunch of guys.  More like haunted
figures pulling levers at the Sheldon Adelson casino.

http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/71963060721/non-americans-should-get-hip-
to-this-useful
  

    <scribbled by jonl Wed 8 Jan 14 17:25>
  

    
I believe Colorado's going to shift from Financial sector
contributions to Agriculture...
  

    
Fukushima strikes me as an important event of 2013, one whose impact
on the future is likely to be significant, and one whose uncertainty
casts a broad pall.

But it prompted Safecast, too (http://www.safecast.org, a global
sensor network for collecting and sharing radiation measurements to
empower people with data about their environments). People like Joichi
Ito and Ray Ozzie got together and came up with a clever way to croud
source Big Data to provide reality-based information, as opposed to
Jon's Snopes hoax. They've aggregated tens of millions of radiation
readings around the world (including Antarctica recently - so all seven
continents now).

Mind you, any amount of radiation is harmful to human health and the
story's not over yet, but at least we have a way of knowing what's
real, which seems increasingly difficult these days.
  

    
(Yes, I know Fukushima happened in 2011, but its impact was still
significant in 2013. And I meant crowd sourcing, not croud sourcing.)
  

    
From an off-WELL reader:

Hi Jon and Bruce,

Long time lurker, first time poster:

It occurs to me that Bitcoin may be much more than just a great way to
buy drugs online. As software eats industries and robots eat jobs, the
rise of a currency that requires no centralized control seems to
represent an existential threat to the nation-state itself. How are we
doing at acknowledging and handling that, both here in the States and
abroad? Managing currencies are kind of the de facto power of a
late-Capitalist nation, so how do we plan to keep relevant when the
nation-state itself gets crammed through the "digitizer" (see Bruce's
health care screed  a few years back), and how do we influence the way
it comes out on the other side?

Thanks as always for doing this, guys. It's an annual tradition I
always look forward to!

-Toby
  

    
*Hmmm.  One doesn't normally see Cory Doctorow writhing around
sleepless and predicting doom.

http://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/72759474218/we-are-huxleying-ou
rselves-into-the-full-orwell

*I'm not entirely upset about "losing the web," having already lost
bulletin-board systems and the Information Superhighway.  Losing the
"personal computer" is gonna feel like a weird one, but I was alive
before the PC existed and I have an intuition I'll outlive it.
  

    
I'm trying to think of something witty to say about Colorado
marijuana, without moaning for the awful fate of the armies of
prisoners, and the cruel decades of repression and criminality.

*Maybe "sushi pairings" are somehow funny.  I mean, the ideas of
aesthetes in a mountain state eating Japanese raw seafood as they puff
exotic brands of semilegal narcotic.  Probably the Emperor Nero would
have found that genuinely amusing.
  

    
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2014/01/13/140113crat_atlarge_mo
rozov

*When is Evgeny Morozov finally gonna wise up and realize that it was
really the WELL that caused all this stuff that he decries in the New
Yorker here?  Boy, what a scolding he's gonna give us.

*I'd like to take personal credit for destroying Ruskin's Arts and
Crafts Movement, but unfortunately the dates are wrong.  Stewart Brand
though, wow. Somebody they'll figure out that Stewart invented
chemtrails.

*It's got to be him, am I right?  Look at the mountains of evidence!