(dystopic) utopianism...
November 26, 2018 4:44 AM Subscribe
The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand's 'Whole Earth Catalog' - "Brand's generation will leave behind a frightening, if unintentional, inheritance. My generation, and those after us, are staring down a ravaged environment, eviscerated institutions, and the increasing erosion of democracy." ('We Are as Gods and Might as Well Get Good at It')
more on "Silicon Valley"
'General Magic' captures the legendary Apple offshoot that foresaw the mobile revolution - "A new documentary about the small company that was decades ahead of its time holds lessons for every entrepreneur."
How Silicon Valley Has 'Made Work Miserable For The Rest Of Us' - "Writer Dan Lyons says Silicon Valley values are spreading across the country and have made a lot of folks unhappy and stressed at work."
One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future - "Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world."
The internet age has allowed the perfection of this particular fraud - "Pay someone a dollar in customer-acquisition costs, have him pay you back a dollar in revenue, sell that dollar of revenue to investors for $8, and you're rich."
How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes—And A Global Software Sweatshop - "Trilogy became the hot place for young coders to land in the late 1990s. Known for its testosterone-fueled work environment and an alcohol-infused mix of long hours, fast cars, gambling and sex, Trilogy served as the model for Silicon Valley's boys club. Its programmers were paid like rock stars and partied like them, too."
Bill Gates: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley - "You can believe, as I do, that tech companies really are improving life with amazing tools and also admit that sometimes, who wins and who loses is pretty arbitrary."
A 1970s Essay Predicted Silicon Valley's High-Minded Tyranny - "'As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules', [Jo Freeman] wrote in the piece, published in Ms. magazine in 1973. 'Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.'"
Has the modern nation state failed? - "As for those tech-friendly visions of self-organising democratic communities idealised by the geeks who founded Facebook and Google, the less said about them the better. The spectre of the totalitarian secret policeman still makes us shudder; but the surveillance capacities at the disposal of the modern state and its rulers make those historical ghouls look like amateurs. A century after the end of the first world war, we have, it seems, learned very little."
Why innovation isn't dead in Silicon Valley, according to this tech expert - "These digital-to-physical businesses have faced immense challenges in their quest to go beyond software bits. They've disrupted entire industries, but their growth has been slower than their predecessors, because their services come with large logistics and regulatory costs... Evans still believes that the next phase of innovation will be in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and AI. But like the Internet in 2003, he said, it's hard to see all the possible applications and ways that these tools will be used."
The Next Great (Digital) Extinction - "I've been thinking about the GOE, the Cambrian Explosion, and the emergence of the mammals a lot lately, because I'm pretty sure we're in the midst of a similarly disruptive and pivotal moment in history that I'm calling the Great Digitization Event, or GDE."
Look at issuing digital currency, IMF head tells central banks - "Digitalization is reshaping economic activity, shrinking the role of cash, and spurring new digital forms of money. Central banks have been pondering wheter and how to adapt. One possibility is central bank digital currency (CBDC)-- a widely accessible digital form of fiat money that could be legal tender. This discussion note proposes a conceptual framework to assess the case for CBDC adoption from the perspective of users and central banks. It discusses possible CBDC designs, and explores potential benefits and costs, with a focus on the impact on monetary policy, financial stability, and integrity. This note also surveys research and pilot studies on CBDC by central banks around the world."
What Are We Learning about Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services? - "First, the Federal Reserve's 'Guidance on Model Risk Management' (SR Letter 11-7) highlights the importance to safety and soundness of embedding critical analysis throughout the development, implementation, and use of models, which include complex algorithms like AI. It also underscores 'effective challenge' of models by a 'second set of eyes'--unbiased, qualified individuals separated from the model's development, implementation, and use. It describes supervisory expectations for sound independent review of a firm's own models to confirm they are fit for purpose and functioning as intended. If the reviewers are unable to evaluate a model in full or if they identify issues, they might recommend the model be used with greater caution or with compensating controls. "
Break up Facebook (and while we're at it, Google, Apple and Amazon) - "Big tech has ushered in a second Gilded Age. We must relearn the lessons of the first, writes the former US labor secretary [Robert Reich]."
Nationalize Amazon - "Is this a realistic demand? Perhaps not yet, but that's the point."
gene editing interregnum...
How China Walled Off the Internet - "The web was supposed to set the world free. China's is censored, but booming anyway." (The Land That Failed to Fail)
US citizens w valid passports not allowed to *leave* China. - "Bigger implication: Chinese govt acting as if it has jurisdiction over foreign citizens who are ethnically Chinese or have PRC-citizen family members."
Xi versus Deng, the family feud over China's reforms - "The anniversary of 'reform and opening' has sparked a contest of narratives about who was responsible."
Personal Ties, Meritocracy, and China's Anti-Corruption Campaign - "Analysis of the first phase of Xi's corruption crackdown suggests yes, he was going after the most corrupt. Not mainly a purge."
An Intro to China's Policymaking Process - "How is policy formulated in China? Who proposes it? How does it get refined or amended? With no campaigns and therefore no campaign contributions, how do outside stakeholders influence policy? In this Trivium primer, we'll examine all of those questions, walking step-by-step through the way policies are created in the People's Republic."
The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Kingdom of Bicycles - "Toward the end of the Qing dynasty in 1898, the most influential newspaper at the time predicted that 'bicycles will prevail in the future.' ... When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949... it embraced the bicycle as a symbol of proletarian progress."
Sentenced to DEATH for going on a religious pilgrimage? - "China is every bit as bad as Saudi Arabia, but it's so big and powerful that people know they can't really do anything about it, so they turn the other way..."
Chinese Prison Camps: The Dark System - "Detainees in Chinese prison camps are systematically abused. Officially, the country has banned such facilities, but the practice continues in secret. This is the story of three men who were traumatized in such a camp."
China Wants a New World Order. At the U.N, NGOs Are Secretly Paid Cash to Promote Beijing's Vision - "When Patrick Ho was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 18, 2017, the former Hong Kong government official made one phone call: to James B. Biden, the younger brother of the former U.S. vice president, an acquaintance whose number he had on hand. The well-connected Hong Konger asked Biden for a lawyer. Ho was going to need a good one. The U.S. Department of Justice was planning to indict him for using his connections at the United Nations to bribe a U.N. General Assembly president along with several African government officials... records related to the case — including documents submitted by Ho's own attorney — now connect Ho's alleged payments to promotion of a major Beijing foreign policy push called the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature venture advancing investment and infrastructure projects around the world. Belt and Road isn't about only inking business deals; it offers a sweeping vision of a China-centric political and economic global order, one in which countries depend on China, not the West, for prosperity."
China's Polar Silk Road – When a town in Arctic Norway transforms into 'the world's northernmost Chinatown' - "Sitting on the rocky coastline of the slate gray Barents Sea, the hilly city of Kirkenes, Norway is located at a literal crossroads between east and west. Russia is only 20 minutes away by car, while Finland lies 40 minutes south."
The Wandering Earth could be China's breakout sci-fi blockbuster film - "An adaptation of Cixin Liu's The Wandering Earth could be China's first breakout science fiction film."
How ZTE helps Venezuela create China-style social control - "Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new identification card. The 'fatherland card', already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond."
From Windfalls to Pitfalls: Qualcomm's China Conundrum - "Huawei had been quietly pouring 15% of its annual revenue, or more than $61 billion, over the past decade to develop technologies that have the potential to become global 5G telecom standards. One such technology is based on Arikan's polar coding theory. To understand why that's important, a brief explanation of 5G standard development is needed."
Beijing to Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020 - "So dystopian and authoritarian as to defy belief: China will judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior & adopt a lifelong points program that assigns personalized ratings by 2021."
Want To See Your Dystopian Future? Look at China - "The U.S. needs to stand against the surveillance state."
"Where ignorant armies clash by night."
Growth - "I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them representing possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia's or Egypt's? If so, what, exactly? If not, what is it about the 'nature of India' that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else."
Can Economists and Humanists Ever Be Friends? - One discipline reduces behavior to elegantly simple rules; the other wallows in our full, complex particularity. What can they learn from each other?"
Bloodlands - "I feel like the intellectuals writing books in favor of economic growth should try more fear and less idealism. Instead of enticing us with the opportunities of far-future growth, scare us with a picture of what a poorer society would look like."
How This All Happened - "Why this happened is one of the nastiest debates in economics, topped only by the debate over what we should do about it. Lucky for this article neither matters. All that matters is that sharp inequality became a force over the last 35 years, and it happened during a period where, culturally, Americans held onto two ideas rooted in the post-WW2 economy: That you should live a lifestyle similar to most other Americans, and that taking on debt to finance that lifestyle is acceptable."
The Rise of the Resentniks - "What happened? This is the story I would tell."
Michael Chabon on Honoring Star Trek Canon and How Picard Is 'The Hero We Need Right Now' - "He explained how he wants his version of Star Trek to uphold Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of science fiction, the idea that humanity can overcome its darker drives and move forward into a brighter, more promising future. Given the current political climate, Chabon thinks it's time to give humanity hope... and Picard might be that hope we're looking for.
more on "Silicon Valley"
'General Magic' captures the legendary Apple offshoot that foresaw the mobile revolution - "A new documentary about the small company that was decades ahead of its time holds lessons for every entrepreneur."
How Silicon Valley Has 'Made Work Miserable For The Rest Of Us' - "Writer Dan Lyons says Silicon Valley values are spreading across the country and have made a lot of folks unhappy and stressed at work."
One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future - "Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world."
The internet age has allowed the perfection of this particular fraud - "Pay someone a dollar in customer-acquisition costs, have him pay you back a dollar in revenue, sell that dollar of revenue to investors for $8, and you're rich."
How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes—And A Global Software Sweatshop - "Trilogy became the hot place for young coders to land in the late 1990s. Known for its testosterone-fueled work environment and an alcohol-infused mix of long hours, fast cars, gambling and sex, Trilogy served as the model for Silicon Valley's boys club. Its programmers were paid like rock stars and partied like them, too."
Bill Gates: If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley - "You can believe, as I do, that tech companies really are improving life with amazing tools and also admit that sometimes, who wins and who loses is pretty arbitrary."
A 1970s Essay Predicted Silicon Valley's High-Minded Tyranny - "'As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules', [Jo Freeman] wrote in the piece, published in Ms. magazine in 1973. 'Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.'"
Has the modern nation state failed? - "As for those tech-friendly visions of self-organising democratic communities idealised by the geeks who founded Facebook and Google, the less said about them the better. The spectre of the totalitarian secret policeman still makes us shudder; but the surveillance capacities at the disposal of the modern state and its rulers make those historical ghouls look like amateurs. A century after the end of the first world war, we have, it seems, learned very little."
Why innovation isn't dead in Silicon Valley, according to this tech expert - "These digital-to-physical businesses have faced immense challenges in their quest to go beyond software bits. They've disrupted entire industries, but their growth has been slower than their predecessors, because their services come with large logistics and regulatory costs... Evans still believes that the next phase of innovation will be in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and AI. But like the Internet in 2003, he said, it's hard to see all the possible applications and ways that these tools will be used."
The Next Great (Digital) Extinction - "I've been thinking about the GOE, the Cambrian Explosion, and the emergence of the mammals a lot lately, because I'm pretty sure we're in the midst of a similarly disruptive and pivotal moment in history that I'm calling the Great Digitization Event, or GDE."
Look at issuing digital currency, IMF head tells central banks - "Digitalization is reshaping economic activity, shrinking the role of cash, and spurring new digital forms of money. Central banks have been pondering wheter and how to adapt. One possibility is central bank digital currency (CBDC)-- a widely accessible digital form of fiat money that could be legal tender. This discussion note proposes a conceptual framework to assess the case for CBDC adoption from the perspective of users and central banks. It discusses possible CBDC designs, and explores potential benefits and costs, with a focus on the impact on monetary policy, financial stability, and integrity. This note also surveys research and pilot studies on CBDC by central banks around the world."
What Are We Learning about Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services? - "First, the Federal Reserve's 'Guidance on Model Risk Management' (SR Letter 11-7) highlights the importance to safety and soundness of embedding critical analysis throughout the development, implementation, and use of models, which include complex algorithms like AI. It also underscores 'effective challenge' of models by a 'second set of eyes'--unbiased, qualified individuals separated from the model's development, implementation, and use. It describes supervisory expectations for sound independent review of a firm's own models to confirm they are fit for purpose and functioning as intended. If the reviewers are unable to evaluate a model in full or if they identify issues, they might recommend the model be used with greater caution or with compensating controls. "
Break up Facebook (and while we're at it, Google, Apple and Amazon) - "Big tech has ushered in a second Gilded Age. We must relearn the lessons of the first, writes the former US labor secretary [Robert Reich]."
Nationalize Amazon - "Is this a realistic demand? Perhaps not yet, but that's the point."
gene editing interregnum...
- The 'Geno-Economists' Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success - "Critics counter that their methods are naïve, offensive or both, but all agree: Either way, multigene testing will lead to a social upheaval."
- It's Official, The Transhuman Era Has Begun - "Over the next decade, humanity will begin its 'transhuman' era: Biology can then be hacked, depending on lifestyle, interests and health needs. Biohacking falls into four categories: technology augmentation, nutrigenomics, experimental biology and grinder biohacking."
- Exclusive: A new test can predict IVF embryos' risk of having a low IQ - "A new genetic test that enables people having IVF to screen out embryos likely to have a low IQ or high disease risk could soon become available in the US."
- A slippery slope towards designer babies? - "You don't need genetic engineering to create designer babies. All you need is genetic screening. And rich people are already doing it."
- Super-smart designer babies could be on offer soon. But is that ethical? - "Before we get too indignant about the horrors of designer babies, bear in mind that already we permit, even in the UK, prenatal screening for Down's syndrome, a disability that produces low to moderate intellectual disability. It's not easy to make a moral or philosophical case that the screening offered by Genomic Prediction for low IQ is any different. There may be more uncertainty but, given not all IVF embryos will be implanted anyway, can we object to tipping the scales? And how can we condone efforts to improve your child's intelligence after birth but not before? The questions are complicated. How to balance individual rights against what is good for society as a whole? When does avoidance of disease and disability shade into enhancement? Should society be more receptive to disability rather than seeing it as something to be eradicated? When does choice become tyranny?"
- Gene editing and the 'nature vs. nurture' debate - "A lax attitude toward gene editing might turn those countries into dystopias. Or force us to follow suit to stay competitive. Or both."
- Chinese scientists are creating #CRISPR babies - "It's going to be a race between Chinese government designed babies and American private enterprise designed babies."
How China Walled Off the Internet - "The web was supposed to set the world free. China's is censored, but booming anyway." (The Land That Failed to Fail)
US citizens w valid passports not allowed to *leave* China. - "Bigger implication: Chinese govt acting as if it has jurisdiction over foreign citizens who are ethnically Chinese or have PRC-citizen family members."
Xi versus Deng, the family feud over China's reforms - "The anniversary of 'reform and opening' has sparked a contest of narratives about who was responsible."
Personal Ties, Meritocracy, and China's Anti-Corruption Campaign - "Analysis of the first phase of Xi's corruption crackdown suggests yes, he was going after the most corrupt. Not mainly a purge."
An Intro to China's Policymaking Process - "How is policy formulated in China? Who proposes it? How does it get refined or amended? With no campaigns and therefore no campaign contributions, how do outside stakeholders influence policy? In this Trivium primer, we'll examine all of those questions, walking step-by-step through the way policies are created in the People's Republic."
The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Kingdom of Bicycles - "Toward the end of the Qing dynasty in 1898, the most influential newspaper at the time predicted that 'bicycles will prevail in the future.' ... When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949... it embraced the bicycle as a symbol of proletarian progress."
Sentenced to DEATH for going on a religious pilgrimage? - "China is every bit as bad as Saudi Arabia, but it's so big and powerful that people know they can't really do anything about it, so they turn the other way..."
Chinese Prison Camps: The Dark System - "Detainees in Chinese prison camps are systematically abused. Officially, the country has banned such facilities, but the practice continues in secret. This is the story of three men who were traumatized in such a camp."
China Wants a New World Order. At the U.N, NGOs Are Secretly Paid Cash to Promote Beijing's Vision - "When Patrick Ho was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 18, 2017, the former Hong Kong government official made one phone call: to James B. Biden, the younger brother of the former U.S. vice president, an acquaintance whose number he had on hand. The well-connected Hong Konger asked Biden for a lawyer. Ho was going to need a good one. The U.S. Department of Justice was planning to indict him for using his connections at the United Nations to bribe a U.N. General Assembly president along with several African government officials... records related to the case — including documents submitted by Ho's own attorney — now connect Ho's alleged payments to promotion of a major Beijing foreign policy push called the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese President Xi Jinping's signature venture advancing investment and infrastructure projects around the world. Belt and Road isn't about only inking business deals; it offers a sweeping vision of a China-centric political and economic global order, one in which countries depend on China, not the West, for prosperity."
China's Polar Silk Road – When a town in Arctic Norway transforms into 'the world's northernmost Chinatown' - "Sitting on the rocky coastline of the slate gray Barents Sea, the hilly city of Kirkenes, Norway is located at a literal crossroads between east and west. Russia is only 20 minutes away by car, while Finland lies 40 minutes south."
The Wandering Earth could be China's breakout sci-fi blockbuster film - "An adaptation of Cixin Liu's The Wandering Earth could be China's first breakout science fiction film."
How ZTE helps Venezuela create China-style social control - "Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new identification card. The 'fatherland card', already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond."
From Windfalls to Pitfalls: Qualcomm's China Conundrum - "Huawei had been quietly pouring 15% of its annual revenue, or more than $61 billion, over the past decade to develop technologies that have the potential to become global 5G telecom standards. One such technology is based on Arikan's polar coding theory. To understand why that's important, a brief explanation of 5G standard development is needed."
Beijing to Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020 - "So dystopian and authoritarian as to defy belief: China will judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior & adopt a lifelong points program that assigns personalized ratings by 2021."
Want To See Your Dystopian Future? Look at China - "The U.S. needs to stand against the surveillance state."
"Where ignorant armies clash by night."
- Each technological age seems to have a 'natural' system of government that's the most stable and common - "'People power' becomes weak because governments can suppress any rebellion with drones, surveillance, and other expensive weaponry."
- Swarms of killer drones are going to (mostly) replace human infantry - "The automation of war, and warfare, is accelerating as countries race to embrace new AI powered autonomous platforms. The US Marines, who recently announced they want their own fully autonomous F-35's are getting their 'Low Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology' platform, also known as LOCUST, ready for prime time, and they're going to be armed."
- China is developing autonomous killer robots - "A group of some of China's smartest students have been recruited straight from high school to begin training as the world's youngest AI weapons scientists."
- Here Comes 'Smart Dust', the Tiny Computers That Pull Power from the Air - "Machines that sponge energy from the environment to power ultra-efficient devices is no longer a fantasy. Some people even call it perpetual computing."
Growth - "I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them representing possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia's or Egypt's? If so, what, exactly? If not, what is it about the 'nature of India' that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else."
Can Economists and Humanists Ever Be Friends? - One discipline reduces behavior to elegantly simple rules; the other wallows in our full, complex particularity. What can they learn from each other?"
Bloodlands - "I feel like the intellectuals writing books in favor of economic growth should try more fear and less idealism. Instead of enticing us with the opportunities of far-future growth, scare us with a picture of what a poorer society would look like."
How This All Happened - "Why this happened is one of the nastiest debates in economics, topped only by the debate over what we should do about it. Lucky for this article neither matters. All that matters is that sharp inequality became a force over the last 35 years, and it happened during a period where, culturally, Americans held onto two ideas rooted in the post-WW2 economy: That you should live a lifestyle similar to most other Americans, and that taking on debt to finance that lifestyle is acceptable."
The Rise of the Resentniks - "What happened? This is the story I would tell."
Michael Chabon on Honoring Star Trek Canon and How Picard Is 'The Hero We Need Right Now' - "He explained how he wants his version of Star Trek to uphold Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of science fiction, the idea that humanity can overcome its darker drives and move forward into a brighter, more promising future. Given the current political climate, Chabon thinks it's time to give humanity hope... and Picard might be that hope we're looking for.
I think we have this responsibility to continue to articulate a hopeful, positive vision of the future. I think if anything that’s more important now than it was when The Original Series came out... A positive vision of the future articulated through principles of tolerance and egalitarianism and optimism and the quest for scientific knowledge, to me that’s feels fresh nowadays.
Captain Picard is the hero we need right now. He exemplifies in some ways even more then James Kirk—and I’m not gonna get into the Kirk vs Picard argument because I love Captain Kirk, he was my first captain—but Picard is even more of an exemplar of everything that is best about Star Trek’s vision for the future.
This post was deleted for the following reason: This is like a pile of different posts all glommed together. Better to separate out the various subjects for separate posts so people can focus on discussing one topic at a time -- taz
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