The internet: Everything you ever need to know

In spite of all the answers the internet has given us, its full potential to transform our lives remains the great unknown. Here are the nine key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age – and where it's taking us

by John Naughton

 

A funny thing happened to us on the way to the future. The internet went from being something exotic to being boring utility, like mains electricity or running water – and we never really noticed. So we wound up being totally dependent on a system about which we are terminally incurious. You think I exaggerate about the dependence? Well, just ask Estonia, one of the most internet-dependent countries on the planet, which in 2007 was more or less shut down for two weeks by a sustained attack on its network infrastructure. Or imagine what it would be like if, one day, you suddenly found yourself unable to book flights, transfer funds from your bank account, check bus timetables, send email, search Google, call your family using Skype, buy music from Apple or books from Amazon, buy or sell stuff on eBay, watch clips on YouTube or BBC programmes on the iPlayer – or do the 1,001 other things that have become as natural as breathing.

The internet has quietly infiltrated our lives, and yet we seem to be remarkably unreflective about it. That's not because we're short of information about the network; on the contrary, we're awash with the stuff. It's just that we don't know what it all means. We're in the state once described by that great scholar of cyberspace, Manuel Castells, as "informed bewilderment".

Mainstream media don't exactly help here, because much – if not most – media coverage of the net is negative. It may be essential for our kids' education, they concede, but it's riddled with online predators, seeking children to "groom" for abuse. Google is supposedly "making us stupid" and shattering our concentration into the bargain. It's also allegedly leading to an epidemic of plagiarism. File sharing is destroying music, online news is killing newspapers, and Amazon is killing bookshops. The network is making a mockery of legal injunctions and the web is full of lies, distortions and half-truths. Social networking fuels the growth of vindictive "flash mobs" which ambush innocent columnists such as Jan Moir. And so on.

All of which might lead a detached observer to ask: if the internet is such a disaster, how come 27% of the world's population (or about 1.8 billion people) use it happily every day, while billions more are desperate to get access to it?

So how might we go about getting a more balanced view of the net ? What would you really need to know to understand the internet phenomenon? Having thought about it for a while, my conclusion is that all you need is a smallish number of big ideas, which, taken together, sharply reduce the bewilderment of which Castells writes so eloquently.

But how many ideas? In 1956, the psychologist George Miller published a famous paper in the journal Psychological Review. Its title was "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information" and in it Miller set out to summarise some earlier experiments which attempted to measure the limits of people's short-term memory. In each case he reported that the effective "channel capacity" lay between five and nine choices. Miller did not draw any firm conclusions from this, however, and contented himself by merely conjecturing that "the recurring sevens might represent something deep and profound or be just coincidence". And that, he probably thought, was that.

But Miller had underestimated the appetite of popular culture for anything with the word "magical' in the title. Instead of being known as a mere aggregator of research results, Miller found himself identified as a kind of sage — a discoverer of a profound truth about human nature. "My problem," he wrote, "is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals… Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution."

But in fact, the basic idea that emerges from Miller's 1956 paper seems to have stood the test of time. The idea is that our short-term memory can only hold between five and nine "chunks" of information at any given moment (here a chunk is defined as a "meaningful unit"). So, when trying to decide how many big ideas about the internet would be meaningful for most readers, it seemed sensible to settle for a magical total of nine. So here they are.

1 TAKE THE LONG VIEW

The strange thing about living through a revolution is that it's very difficult to see what's going on. Imagine what it must have been like being a resident of St Petersburg in 1917, in the months before Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. It's clear that momentous events are afoot; there are all kinds of conflicting rumours and theories, but nobody knows how things will pan out. Only with the benefit of hindsight will we get a clear idea of what was going on. But the clarity that hindsight bestows is also misleading, because it understates how confusing things appeared to people at the time.

So it is with us now. We're living through a radical transformation of our communications environment. Since we don't have the benefit of hindsight, we don't really know where it's taking us. And one thing we've learned from the history of communications technology is that people tend to overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies — and to underestimate their long-term implications.

We see this all around us at the moment, as would-be savants, commentators, writers, consultants and visionaries tout their personal interpretations of what the internet means for business, publishing, retailing, education, politics and the future of civilisation as we know it. Often, these interpretations are compressed into vivid slogans, memes or aphorisms: information "wants to be free"; the "long tail" is the future of retailing; "Facebook just seized control of the internet", and so on. These kinds of slogans are really just short-term extrapolations from yesterday's or today's experience. They tell us little about where the revolution we're currently living through is heading. The question is: can we do any better — without falling into the trap of feigning omniscience?

Here's a radical idea: why not see if there's anything to be learned from history? Because mankind has lived through an earlier transformation in its communications environment, brought about by the invention of printing by movable type. This technology changed the world — indeed, it shaped the cultural environment in which most of us grew up. And the great thing about it, from the point of view of this essay, is that we can view it with the benefit of hindsight. We know what happened.

A thought experiment

So let's conduct what the Germans call a Gedankenexperiment — a thought experiment. Imagine that the net represents a similar kind of transformation in our communications environment to that wrought by printing. What would we learn from such an experiment?

The first printed bibles emerged in 1455 from the press created by Johannes Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz. Now, imagine that the year is 1472 — ie 17 years after 1455. Imagine, further, that you're the medieval equivalent of a Mori pollster, standing on the bridge in Mainz with a clipboard in your hand and asking pedestrians a few questions. Here's question four: On a scale of one to five, where one indicates "Not at all likely" and five indicates "Very likely", how likely do you think it is that Herr Gutenberg's invention will:

(a) Undermine the authority of the Catholic church?

(b) Power the Reformation?

(c) Enable the rise of modern science?

(d) Create entirely new social classes and professions?

(e) Change our conceptions of "childhood" as a protected early period in a person's life?

On a scale of one to five! You have only to ask the questions to realise the fatuity of the idea. Printing did indeed have all of these effects, but there was no way that anyone in 1472, in Mainz (or anywhere else for that matter) could have known how profound its impact would be.

I'm writing this in 2010, which is 17 years since the web went mainstream. If I'm right about the net effecting a transformation in our communications environment comparable to that wrought by Gutenberg, then it's patently absurd for me (or anyone else) to pretend to know what its long-term impact will be. The honest answer is that we simply don't know.

The trouble is, though, that everybody affected by the net is demanding an answer right now. Print journalists and their employers want to know what's going to happen to their industry. Likewise the music business, publishers, television networks, radio stations, government departments, travel agents, universities, telcos, airlines, libraries and lots of others. The sad truth is that they will all have to learn to be patient. And, for some of them, by the time we know the answers to their questions, it will be too late.

2 THE WEB ISN'T THE NET

The most common — and still surprisingly widespread — misconception is that the internet and the web are the same thing. They're not. A good way to understand this is via a railway analogy. Think of the internet as the tracks and signalling, the infrastructure on which everything runs. In a railway network, different kinds of traffic run on the infrastructure — high-speed express trains, slow stopping trains, commuter trains, freight trains and (sometimes) specialist maintenance and repair trains.

On the internet, web pages are only one of the many kinds of traffic that run on its virtual tracks. Other types of traffic include music files being exchanged via peer-to-peer networking, or from the iTunes store; movie files travelling via BitTorrent; software updates; email; instant messages; phone conversations via Skype and other VoIP (internet telephony) services; streaming video and audio; and other stuff too arcane to mention.

And (here's the important bit) there will undoubtedly be other kinds of traffic, stuff we can't possibly have dreamed of yet, running on the internet in 10 years' time.

So the thing to remember is this: the web is huge and very important, but it's just one of the many things that run on the internet. The net is much bigger and far more important than anything that travels on it.

Understand this simple distinction and you're halfway to wisdom.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know

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Brought to You by the Letter S

Raw Thought

by Aaron Swartz

When you're writing laws, changing the smallest details can have huge effects. But I've never seen anything as big as what happened this week, when the White House gutted an entire section of financial regulation by removing the letter s.

Right now, shareholders of big companies vote to decide who will be on the board of directors by filling out a mail-in ballot called a proxy card. But currently the corporation's CEO gets to decide who's on the card! The result is a board hand-picked by the CEO — and they return the favor by providing CEOs with exorbitant salaries.

The current financial regulation bill — in a provision passed by both the House and Senate — would change that by allowing shareholders with 5% of the stock to come together and propose additional names for the ballot. But the White House is trying to gut this proposal at the last minute, and they've done it in an incredibly sneaky way — they removed the letter s from the end of the word shareholders.

Now instead of shareholders whose stock adds up to 3% coming together, you have to be a single shareholder with 5% of the stock all by yourself. And for most big companies, there just isn't anyone like that. Take GE, for example — its biggest shareholder only owns about 3.4% of the company.

So by removing a single letter, they managed to make this provision completely useless.

The White House is being barraged by major CEOs begging them to keep fighting for this provision — after all, no CEO wants to see their lavish salaries cut! As Barney Frank put it, "I think there are some people in the White House who think, 'Well, we're fighting the financial institutions, but why fight with some of the others, you know, the other corporations?'" Apparently they're so scared of a fight, they're willing to gut a provision passed by both the House and Senate.

If you're interested in fighting for real corporate reform, please sign our petition to the White House:

"Stop lobbying against shareholder power in corporate decision-making — and against protections that would finally rein in CEO pay. That's not change we can believe in."\

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/proxyreform

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Republicans to Unemployed: ‘Get a Job!’

 

by Mike Hall

 

As part of Republican obstruction-at-any-cost election year strategy, Senate Republicans last week once again blocked an extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for long-term jobless workers. The UI extension is part of the jobs bill that could help put the unemployed back to work.

Some Republicans even said it's time for "tough love" to motivate the long-term jobless.

Granted, they are far removed from the day-to-day economic reality of America's workers. So here's a reminder: Today, in the United States, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening, an unemployment rate near 10 percent, at least 15 million people out of work and 6.8 million people out of work for 27 weeks or more. Getting a job is not like going down to the corner for a quart of milk.

Heck, when you still get your taxpayer-funded, congressional paycheck every week ($3,346.15) for not doing very much work, it can certainly alter your view of the economy—even to the point where some Republican politicos actually claim the not quite $300 a week average unemployment check is a "disincentive" for the unemployed to get out of the door and look for work.

Maybe senators think that when the men and women who have been out of work since at least before Thanksgiving (and millions for more than one year) get that bountiful UI check, they sit around the kitchen table and make big plans to spend that dough.

Hey, hon got my check. This sure beats working. What do you say we go to Palm Springs this weekend? We can fly the kids to your mom's and board the dogs at that new spa kennel.

No, senator, the response to a couple hundred bucks a week goes more like this:

Maybe we should think about gassing up the car so we can go down to the food bank and set something aside for your blood pressure medicine. Oh, and there's that foreclosure notice we need to deal with.

Each time Senate Democratic leaders have brought up a UI extension this year, Republicans have delayed and blocked the bill. With the extended UI program set to expire at the end of May, the House passed its jobs bill with a UI extension just before Memorial Day but the Senate left town for vacation and didn't act on the bill. As a result, some 1 million workers who have been out of work for more than a year—remember, one job opening for every five unemployed workers—have no UI.

Along with the incredibly insensitive and out-of-touch "tough love theory," some lawmakers are hiding behind deficit hysteria, even though three-quarters of voters say extending unemployment insurance is more important than reducing the deficit.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/06/21/republicans-to-unemployed-get-a-job/

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Geert Wilders: Change Jordan's name to Palestine

Rightist Dutch leader wants to end Mideast conflict by finding Palestinians 'alternate homeland'

by Roee Nahmias

Geert Wilders, who leads the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) in Holland, said last week he believes Jordan should be renamed Palestine. The Jordanian government responded by saying Wilders' speech was reminiscent of the Israeli right wing.

 

"Jordan is Palestine," said Wilders, who heads the third-largest party in Holland. "Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland."

 

Wilders added that Israel deserved a special status in the Dutch government because it was fighting for Jerusalem in its name.

 

"If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next. Thus, Jerusalem is the main front protecting the West. It is not a conflict over territory but rather an ideological battle, between the mentality of the liberated West and the ideology of Islamic barbarism," he said.

 

"There has been an independent Palestinian state since 1946, and it is the kingdom of Jordan." Wilders also called on the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

 

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3907722,00.html

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Sen. Whitehouse EXPLODES! "America . . must never be on it's knees before Corporate Power"!

by MinistryOfTruth

Prepare to be floored by a speech against Corporate power for the ages.

(T)his American Government of ours should never be on its knees before corporate power, no matter how strong. It should never be in the thrall of corporate wealth, no matter how vast.

crooksandliars.com

   Speaking on the Senate Floor, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) gave the speech of a lifetime on Thursday. Ironically, this was just after Republican House Representative Joe Barton (BP-TX) virtually knelt down in order to kiss the ring of the Feudal Lord/CEO of BP, a multinational fiefdom of Big Oil.

Video, transcript and more below the fold. And get popcorn, this is going to be good. Trust me.

• MinistryOfTruth's diary :: ::

    Put it to scale; consider $23 billion of pure profit, just in one quarter, by Big Oil. And compare: the Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math: for 5% of one quarter's profits, Big Oil could outspend both American presidential campaigns. That may be some politicians' idea of a happy day, because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and needs to be stopped.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

  Channeling the Trust Busters of old, in an eloquent, detailed and truly staggering speech on the Senate floor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse attacked BP, Wall St, the Bush/Cheney age of crony capitalism, and the very essence of corporate power. While going after BP, the Banksters, the 5-4 Supreme Court Citizens United ruling, the "regulatory capture" of vital arms of government oversight, Sen. Whitehouse ties together the economic bankster caused collapse, the exploding oil rig in the gulf, the Corporate greed and influence that caused them and the bought and owned political hacks who helped allow this to happen. Sen. Whitehouse demands that the US Attorney General be given the power to overhaul any Government agency that becomes "captured" by the Special interests they are supposed to be regulating, and in invoking our founding fathers, Whitehouse made the case that corporate greed is the problem, NOT "too much government", as Conservative shills like to shriek. In 9 minutes you will fall in love with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse as he sums up the heart of most of the major problems with the American Government AND the American economy in a way that surely made the spirit of Ted Kennedy smile.

This is what a fighter looks like.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/19/877501/-Sen.-Whitehouse-EXPLODES

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Abuse of meds sends as many to ER as illegal drugs

By MIKE STOBBE

 

For the first time, abuse of painkillers and other medication is sending as many people to the emergency room as the use of illegal drugs.

In 2008, ERS saw an estimated 1 million visits from people abusing prescription or over-the-counter medicines — mostly painkillers and sedatives. That was about the same number of visits from those overdosing on heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs, according to a government report released Thursday.

Only five years earlier, illegal drug visits outnumbered those from legal medications by a 2-to-1 margin.

In other words, the number of ER visits from medication abuse doubled, said Peter Delany of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

"It's a pretty startling jump," Delany said. He led a team that worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the report.

Painkillers and sedatives clearly drove the trend. ER visits for the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone more than doubled from 2004 to 2008. And cases from one kind of tranquilizer nearly doubled.

The estimates are based on emergency room data from more than 200 U.S. hospitals. Many of the cases may be overdoses, but some may come from mixing drugs or combining them with alcohol, Delany said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_he_me/us_med_prescription_abuse

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Sting, Soros, Montel and More: We are the Drug Policy Alliance

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The red-light accounting district

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Homeland Security Chief: OK to Moniter Internet

 

Napolitano: US must balance liberties, security

By LOLITA C. BALDOR (AP) – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON — Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said Friday.

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans' civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

"The First Amendment protects radical opinions, but we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the Internet," Napolitano told a gathering of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

Napolitano's comments suggest an effort by the Obama administration to reach out to its more liberal, Democratic constituencies to assuage fears that terrorist worries will lead to the erosion of civil rights.

The administration has faced a number of civil liberties and privacy challenges in recent months as it has tried to increase airport security by adding full-body scanners, or track suspected terrorists traveling into the United States from other countries.

"Her speech is sign of the maturing of the administration on this issue," said Stewart Baker, former undersecretary for policy with the Department of Homeland Security. "They now appreciate the risks and the trade-offs much more clearly than when they first arrived, and to their credit, they've adjusted their preconceptions."

http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/68-68/2233-homeland-security-chief-ok-to-monitor-internet

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Help Ensure House & Senate Managers "Aren't in a Good Mood" About Shady Auto Deals

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

"What do I have to do to get you into this car?"

"How much can you afford to pay every month?"

"My manager's in a good mood."

These are the car salesman clichés everybody knows. Now they're trying to add a couple more to the repertoire:

"When you take out a car loan - probably the second-biggest financial decision of your life - you don't need a watchdog looking out for you."

"Watch out ... this will cost you a lot more if somebody's representing your interests."

And if you believe those last two statements, allow me to show you this brand new baby - it's got whitewalls and mag wheels, tinted windows, I'll throw in the deluxe sports package along with that ... oh, and we strongly recommend undercoating.

Fortunately, there's something you can do: You can go to this site, prepared by CREDO and Campaign for America's Future, where a simple one- or two-click process will send a fax to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd urging them protect American consumers from shady auto loans. It's easy to do, it's important - and, if you act now, it's absolutely free! (Racing stripe and rustproofing not included with fax.)

It's easy to sound flippant, since everybody knows why we all hate car dealers, but the topic is deadly serious: As we've discussed at length, auto dealer lending practices are a disgrace. A massive, multi-year study showed that African Americans are charged more than whites for the same loans. Auto dealers routinely mark up the loans they offer, without disclosing that information to customers - a practice that costs consumers $20 billion per year and adds an estimated $647 to the cost of each vehicle sold. Auto dealers also play games with "gap insurance" that covers the replacement cost of your vehicle for loan purposes if it's totaled.

Another common car dealer trick is to "sell" a car to a customer by claiming they qualify for a no-interest or low-interest loan, letting them drive away in it, then calling them a week or two later to say the loan fell through. Dealers do this because most customers will have gotten used to the car by then, which means that many of them will accept loan terms that wouldn't been unacceptable at the point of sale.

Car lenders have made a particular point of preying on young soldiers, who are living far from home in great distress. That's why Holly Petraeus, wife of Gen. David Petraeus, is strongly in favor of regulating auto loans. The Petraeus family are hardly known for their left-wing views. Mrs. Petraeus speaks movingly of the harm unscrupulous salespeople have inflicted on our troops.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010062521/help-ensure-house-senate-managers-arent-good-mood-about-shady-auto-deals

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They Get Rich, We Get Ho-Hum Gadgets

by David Prosser

Our economy would become the world's most innovative, our elites assured us, if we gave our rich enough incentives to innovate. We kept to our end of the bargain. So where's the innovation?

The pollsters at Gallup have never asked Americans to name the world's most technologically advanced nation. Neither, apparently, have any other pollsters. But we don't need a pollster to know how Americans would answer that question.

Most Americans, without a moment's hesitation, would almost certainly name the United States as the global techno tops. No other nation, after all, can lay claim to the iPhone or Microsoft or Google. We must be number one.

Only in our dreams. The latest stats show the United States lagging far behind on the high-tech benchmarks that matter most in our daily lives. On broadband speed, for instance, the United States ranks 15th globally in one international comparison, 29th in another.

Indeed, earlier this month, Bloomberg News noted that the federal government's current "national broadband plan," if successfully completed, would give most American homes a decade from now "the same connection speeds available today in Portugal and Japan." 

Singapore, news reports last week indicated, will have by 2013 a broadband infrastructure fast enough to let the nation's every home download a DVD in just a few seconds, at speeds hundreds of times faster than the current U.S. average.

Other nations are also jumping to the global high-tech forefront. Belgium leads the way in smart IDs, the Netherlands in health tech, South Korea in the "telematic" application of info technology to transportation.

The United States has become, in effect, a technological also-ran in one area after another. How could we not know that? What explains the breathtakingly wide gap between technological reality and how Americans perceive it?

Our gullibility may be the culprit. Our rich have spent the last 30 years promising us the best of all possible worlds — if in them we put our trust — and we put our faith in that promise.

We let our lawmakers lavish tax breaks and other incentives on rich people because we believed the rich when they told us these incentives would encourage badly needed investments in innovation.

We let corporate CEOs rake in unspeakable fortunes because we believed these execs when they told us they needed rewards bountiful enough to get their entrepreneurial juices flowing. 

In the end, our movers and shakers guaranteed, everyone would benefit from all these incentives and rewards. Investors and executives would become richer, and the rest of us would enjoy the privilege of life in a sublimely innovative economic powerhouse that delivers endless prosperity and great gadgets.

We average Americans, over the past three decades, have done our best to move this storyline along. And things have worked out fairly well — for investors and executives. They have most definitely prospered — and continue to prosper, even in troubled times.

The latest evidence: the just-released executive pay data from Silicon Valley. Eight execs from Northern California's high-tech heartland took home over $10 million last year. Silicon Valley's top 155 CEOs, the San Jose Mercury News reported last week, together pulled in $579 million.

http://toomuchonline.org/tmweekly.html

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Why Our Nobles Betray Us

 by Cenk Uygur

I understand that it's a little goofy to draw lessons from a fictional movie, but I am going to proceed nonetheless. My wife and I were just watching Braveheart and there was one interesting element in there. In the movie, the nobles of Scotland keep betraying William Wallace who is fighting for the people of Scotland. And my wife asked me why the nobles continually stab Wallace in the back if he is fighting for their country.

As Robert the Bruce explains to Wallace in the movie, "They have much to lose." You see, those nobles profited from the status quo of that time. Wallace means to upend that status quo. It's naïve to think that they will help him because they love their country. Of course, they will work against him because they don't want to lose their status, power and riches. That status quo might suck for everyone else, but it's great for them.

And so it is with our nobles today. We keep expecting the politicians and the mainstream press to do the right thing. That is profoundly naive. Why is a television anchor making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year going to look to change the system? He loves the system. The system pays the bills.

That's even truer of our politicians. The status quo got them elected. The status quo will get them -- and their staffers -- great salaries when they retire and become lobbyists. They'd have to be crazy to change the system that put them up on top.

That's why change must come from outside the system. We keep waiting for the Obama administration to bring us the change they promised. What are we, children? The current system got Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, etc. where they are. They have gotten to the pinnacle of power by playing within that system. They've made millions in that system. That's why they have no intention of actually upending it. They just want to tweak it and do exactly what Obama said he wouldn't do if he got elected -- play the Washington game just a little better.

This doesn't mean you give up all hope. There are some good guys in DC. I recently talked to a House staffer who said that Senator Franken's staff is excellent. The staff is so important because they are the ones who actually write the bills. I asked him why Franken's staff was better than the others. And he had a simple answer -- they don't plan to work as lobbyists in DC when they're done serving in his office.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/why-our-nobles-betray-us_b_619080.html

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Hundreds in Oakland protest Gaza blockade

Marshall Schwartz of Oakland waves an Israeli flag across the road from pro-Palestinian supporters protesting the Israeli Zim Shipping Line at the Port of Oakland on Sunday.

by Victoria Colliver & David R. Baker,

Hundreds of demonstrators, condemning Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, picketed at the Port of Oakland on Sunday and may have prevented an Israeli cargo ship from unloading for the day.

Two shifts of longshoremen agreed not to cross the picket line, leaving nobody to unload the vessel.

"Our objective was to boycott this ship for 24 hours, and we succeeded in doing that," said Richard Becker, with the ANSWER Coalition, one of the groups that organized the protest.

The demonstrators first gathered before dawn at Berth 58, where a ship from Israel's Zim shipping line was scheduled to dock Sunday, first in the morning then in the afternoon, protesters said. It eventually arrived around 6 p.m., Becker said, but by that time the dockworkers had agreed not to show up to unload the vessel.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/20/BA0G1E28CV.DTL#ixzz0rXAScf00

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Good Deal for Gaza

 

 

By Marc Lynch

 

The contours of the response to the Gaza flotilla fiasco are now coming into sharper public view:  the Israeli government will significantly ease the blockade of Gaza in exchange for American support for a whitewash of the investigation of the flotilla incident. As I've said many times on Twitter, this is a good deal. No investigation was ever going to produce anything of any particular value, but easing the blockade of Gaza could have significant positive effects for the people of Gaza, the prospects of Palestinian reconciliation, the peace process, and American credibility in the region. None of those will happen on their own, of course. And nobody is likely to be fully satisfied with the new measures. I've been quite critical of how the Obama team has handled the Israeli-Palestinian track, and particularly the Gaza situation -- and if they had moved strongly to resolve the Gaza blockade a year ago, the issue wouldn't have been there now to exploit. But now, I think they deserve some real credit for nudging Israel towards finally making a move which could over time open up some real new possibilities for progress.

I know a lot of people won't agree with me on this, but trading off the investigation for the blockade was the right move. It is difficult to imagine what value even a real, independent international investigation of the flotilla incident would possibly have. The incident itself was only a minor one in the longer, deeper story of the Gaza blockade -- a fiasco waiting to happen, not a bolt from the blue. An investigation narrowly focused on the flotilla and what happened during the Israeli boarding would be of only marginal value, while the process itself would be hopelessly politicized. The Israeli self-study seems designed to be self-discrediting. By appointing David Trimble, founder of a "Friends of Israel" group, as one of the two international observers, they have more or less guaranteed that the results will be pleasing to their sympathizers and totally discredited in the eyes of everyone else. So be it.

Gaza itself has always been the point for most people, not the flotilla itself. Israel's blockade of Gaza has long been widely recognized as a failure, harming the people of Gaza while strengthening Hamas and serving as a focal point for international anger. Hawks will complain that this is the wrong time to ease the blockade because it will allow Hamas to claim a victory, but that's a weak argument -- Israel, and the United States, have had many long months to ease the blockade on their own terms and have refused. Without a forcing incident, it was clear that nothing would change. But change was clearly needed.

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/20/good_deal_for_gaza

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Jerusalem revives plan to raze Palestinian homes

A Palestinian child walks near rubble in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, Monday, June 21, 2010. Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, pressed ahead Monday with a contentious plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes, that were illegally built, to make room for a tourist center that Palestinians fear would tighten Israel's grip on the city's contested eastern sector. The contested site, called al-Bustan, is a section of the larger neighborhood of Silwan, which is home to some 50,000 Palestinians and 70 Jewish families. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

By AMY TEIBEL

JERUSALEM — A Jerusalem planning body on Monday approved a plan to raze 22 Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem to make room for an Israeli tourist center, a decision that could raise tensions in the divided city and deepen the conflict with the Obama adminstration.

Back in March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pressured Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to hold up the plan so authorities could consult with Palestinians who would lose their homes — a delay that appeared to be aimed at fending off criticism from the U.S.

"Now, after fine-tuning the plan and seeking more cooperation with the residents as far as their needs and improving the quality of their lives, the municipality is ready to submit the plans for the first stage of approval," said Barkat's spokesman, Stephan Miller, before the city's planning commission agreed to the plan.

Final approval, which would require an Interior Ministry green light, could take many more months.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD9GFNNGG0

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17 big questions about the handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

 

 

by Mike Adams

 

What's clear about the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is that the independent journalists are doing a better job of asking the really tough questions than the mainstream media. Sure, CNN, Fox and others are bringing some attention to the matter, and they've done some solid reporting on it, but they haven't yet found a way to ask the deeper questions like why the U.S. government seems to be colluding with BP to cover up the truth about the spill.

Just the other day, I found an article entitled, "16 Burning Questions About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill" on the TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com site (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/...). It was a really insightful collection of important questions, so I've repeated them below. The author of these questions wasn't mentioned on the page, so I regret I cannot properly attribute the list, but I do think they're worth reviewing, so I've included my own commentary and an extra question below.

Here are the 16 questions:

#1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used "as needed" by state governors. So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly? Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public?

Mike's comment: Good question. Much of the response activity to the spill seems to be about controlling the public's perception and limiting media access to the spill site rather than actually cleaning up the mess.

#2) Barack Obama has also announced the creation of a "Gulf recovery czar" who will be in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico region following the oil spill. So is appointing a "czar" Obama's idea of taking charge of a situation?

#3) Because it is so incredibly toxic, the UK's Marine Management Organization has completely banned Corexit 9500, so if there was a major oil spill in the UK's North Sea, BP would not be able to use it. So why is BP being allowed to use Corexit 9500 in the Gulf of Mexico?

Mike's answer: Because Corexit kills sea animals and makes them sink and disappear rather than allowing them to wash up on shore where the emotional outcry would be even worse than it is already.

#4) It is being reported that 2.61 parts per million of Corexit 9500 (mixed with oil at a ratio of 1:1o) is lethal to 50% of fish exposed to it within 96 hours. That means that 1 gallon of Corexit 9500/oil mixture is capable of rendering 383,141 gallons of water highly toxic to fish. So why was BP allowed to dump 1,021,000 gallons of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 into the Gulf of Mexico, and why aren't they being stopped from dumping another 805,000 gallons of these dispersants that they have on order into the Gulf?

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/029030_Gulf_of_Mexico_oil_spill.html

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The BP Oil Spill Re-Enacted by Cats in 1 Minute

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Finding Nemo 2

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Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades

by John Vidal

 

A ruptured pipeline burns in a Lagos suburb after an explosion in 2008 which killed at least 100 people. Photograph: George Esiri/Reuters

GOP congressman apologizes to BP for $20 billion 'shakedown' -- UPDATED

By David Thursday

Things aren't all bad for BP. CEO Tony Hayward appeared before a House Energy panel Thursday and at least one Republican congressman spoke up in his defense.

Rep. Joe Barton called the $20 billion trust fund a "shakedown" and apologized to the oil company.

"I'm speaking totally for myself and I'm not speaking for the Republican Party and I'm not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself, but I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it's a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that's unprecedented in our nation's history that's got no legal standing and what I think sets a terrible precedent for the future," said Barton.

"I'm only speaking for myself. I'm not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong and is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize," he said.

(Nicole): Does it surprise you that Joe Barton's largest campaign contributors come from the oil & gas industries? It shouldn't. Nice that he so blatantly shows his bias against Americans and the worst environmental disaster to hit this country and for his own craven interests. Frankly, I think Nancy Pelosi should make him apologize to Americans on the House floor since he was also the chief architect of the Cheney Oil Act that deregulated oil industry, waived EIRs and allowed this travesty to happen.

Here's his contact information if you'd like to share your opinion of his groveling in front of BP.

UPDATE: The White House responds:

"What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction. Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a 'tragedy', but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now. Members from both parties should repudiate his comments."

UPDATE 2: Nancy Pelosi tweets:

Americans are suffering in the Gulf while Republicans apologize to Big Oil. We need clean energy now. #BPhearing

UPDATE 3: Wow. Per the Politico, there are some very unhappy (Republican!) congresspeople in the Gulf region, calling for Barton's head:

Republicans, particularly Gulf state lawmakers, are furious at Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and may ask him to cede his job as top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee in the wake of his apology to BP Thursday.

"People are calling for his head," said a GOP member of the committee.

[..]Barton, headed into Minority Leader John Boehner's office, said calls for his resignation are "news to me."

Asked whether he planned to stay put as top Republican on the committee, he declared "Damn straight."

Lawmakers were "hunkered down" in Boehner's office to discuss the flap, according to the member who said people were calling for Barton's resignation.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/37820

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Congressional report clears ACORN of wrongdoing — after group forced to disband

By Stephen Janis

When a duo of right-wing provocateurs posing as a pimp and prostitute released selectively-edited videos trying to impugn the community activist group ACORN, both Democrats and Republicans condemned the organization.

Congress then voted to cut off federal funding for the group (a decision that was later ruled unconstitutional). Following negative press and Congress' vote, ACORN effectively disbanded Apr. 1 and reorganized under new names.

But a just-issued report by the Government Accountability Office that reviewed ACORN's federal funding at the behest of Congress  found little grist for the mill for politicians or right-wing bloggers looking to bash the now-defunct advocacy group for the poor.

The 38-page report surveyed over 31 federal agencies, probing how ACORN used federal funds and whether adequate controls on spending existed.

The report found no evidence of fraud, lax oversight or misuse of federal funds.

In fact, the report discovered that ACORN had adequately accounted for spending $40 million worth of major and minor grants awarded by the federal government to the group since 2005 to combat a variety of problems afflicting poor Americans, including lead poisoning, housing discrimination and lack of adequate job training.

The preliminary report on the group's funding also found that of the grants that warranted audits no irregularities in spending were found.  Smaller grantees said that oversight was adequate as well.

Of eight major grants awarded ACORN by the federal government the report found fault with one, a grant by Neighbor Works.

"Neighbor Works determined that ACORN Housing Corporation had not provided a description of what it planned to accomplish under the grant, as required. After Neighbor Works brought this to the attention of ACORN Housing Corporation officials, these officials subsequently provided the documentation. Oversight of sub-awards is generally delegated to grantees," the report states.

Of fifteen sub-grants awarded ACORN by a variety of federal agencies, the report did not find any irregularities.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0615/preliminary-report-clears-acorn/

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Knight Foundation Funds Local Innovation

Newspaper Death Watch

 

If the Knight Foundation didn't exist, someone would have to invent it.

This week the organization that is doing so much to advance the cause of innovation in journalism unveiled its list of a dozen winners of the Knight News Challenge, a contest that "funds ideas that use digital technology to inform specific geographic communities." Not all the winners are focused on geographic applications (one proposes to combine reports from journalists embedded in Afghanistan with Facebook updates from soldiers in the field), but there are some innovative ideas in the group that will get enough funding to at least get off the ground. The best part is that the winners of the $2.74 million in grant money must make their inventions freely available.

You can read all the details at the page linked to above or watch the short video below, which quickly covers each project. What we like about all these ideas is that they're doable with today's technology (several are live  today) and they bring focus to the overused concept of "citizen journalism." Most are also oriented toward leveraging geographic communities, which is where newspaper publishers absolutely must focus. We particularly like these brainstorms:

Local Wiki – Based on Davis, Calif.'s DavisWiki.org, this application of the free-form  social software lets members create their own community Wikipedias. It's a tried-and-true concept, and the grant will help make the customized software available to news organizations and community publishers.

WindyCitizen's Real Time Ads - This new form of online advertising constantly changes, showing stuff like tweets and Facebook updates from the advertiser's site. Adding informational value to ads is a great way to enhance their appeal. Perhaps Google is right that banner ads are due for a comeback.

GoMap Riga – Lets anyone create live, online maps of local news and activities. GoMap Riga pulls content from the Web and places it on a map. Residents can then add their own news media and comments.  There's a mobile and social network integration dimension as well. Riga, Latvia will be the test bed. Lucky dogs.

Front Porch Forum – This site is already active in 25 Vermont  towns; the grant will help expand it to 250. The developer calls it "a virtual town hall space, helps residents share and discuss local news, build community and increase engagement." Not flashy, but eminently practical with today's technology.

CitySeed – Kind of like FourSquare, only with a purpose. This idea was hatched by the team of a professor and a recent graduate of Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, CitySeed lets people plant and share geographically based ideas. So if you think the city should tear down this eyesore of an abandoned building on the corner of Elm and Main, you can geotag the spot and debate the idea.

Tilemapping – Another geo-application, Tilemapping enables publishers to create data-filled maps for websites and blogs. We're not exactly clear what this will look like, but map-based mashups will be critical to hyper-local journalism.

http://newspaperdeathwatch.com/2010/06/knight-foundation-funds-local-innovation/

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U.S. Hopes To Win Afghan Trust, Village By Village

by Tom Bowman

Northwest of Kandahar city, a patrol of American and Afghan commandos slowly moves out of their mud-walled compound and toward Ezabad, a village just a football-field away and right in the middle of Taliban country.

It's midmorning and already scorching — over 100 degrees of desert heat.

The Green Berets are part of this year's major military operation in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province. Their mission is a long, slow effort to convince Afghans to side with their government and not the Taliban.

Everybody else is starting to realize how to fight the war the right way, focused on the population. Because without these people here, we're no good.

- Eli, Green Beret captain

Eli, a 32-year-old Green Beret officer from Idaho, is leading this patrol. For security reasons, only his first name can be used.

A Matt Damon look-alike, Eli wears a floppy camouflage hat and has six tours of duty in Afghanistan under his belt. During many of those tours, Eli says, the Americans weren't fighting the war the right way. Too much focus was on killing the Taliban, he says, and not enough on protecting the people.

"Everybody else is starting to realize how to fight the war the right way, focused on the population. Because without these people here, we're no good," Eli says.

That means providing security to villages like Ezabad and following up by building and restoring schools and clinics, much of it paid for with American money but funneled through the Afghans.

"That way it shows that it's going through the government, not just us coming up here and saying we'll repair your mosque and this, this and this," Eli says.

Obidullah Bawari, leader of Maiwand district, sits in a security shura, or meeting, with Afghan and American military officers in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province. He doesn't visit the villages he represents, he says, because of security risks.

 

Absence Of Afghan Authorities

The problem is that there is no Afghan government in Ezabad. And without that, the Americans say, the war can't be won.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127906967

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Why Marijuana Is Central to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

 

Inspired by the founders' Federalist Papers, a group of reformers have penned a series of essays exploring the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

 

 "Cannabinoids are good."

Have you heard that truth before? – It's something you will understand if you read any further.  You see, science is a truth conspiracy. It's a testing of reality and standing your ground when you find evidence.

In some ways, being American means confronting untruths. To voice "our" truth through language, to create a new set and setting, we turned to the founders and a collection of essays known as The Federalist Papers.

During 1787 and 1788, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote 85 essays in support of the US Constitution. They used the pen name "Publius" in honor of a famed Roman republican – someone they saw as a defender of liberty.

We became "Publius" for the same purpose: to make our sum greater than our individual parts. In doing so, we have created a series of 36 essays to detail the role of cannabinoids in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We began releasing the essays online in 2009 and will conclude this fall. The essays will then be available in book form as The Cannabis Papers: a citizen's guide to cannabinoids.  

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness 

The so-called drug war is becoming better known as a war on citizens – a civil war. It has been a war with two distinct federal laws. The first was the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, which was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1966. Into this vacuum was sucked Nixon's contribution to 21st century drug policy: the 1970 Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. This law contains the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the law making herbal cannabinoids Schedule 1. This means in Bizarro World that herbal cannabinoids have no medical value.

Here we are in 2010 still living under Nixon's law. That is our history: our tomorrow is much different. That's because the tide has turned – and it's a scientific tide. The endocannabinoid system (ECS) and the science surrounding this remarkable biological modulator, have transformed the battlefield and the logic of the CSA. This is no longer a civil war: it has morphed into a war between science and ignorance.

Science is the language of Publius. As Madison, Hamilton and Jay detailed the workings of the US Constitution, piece-by-piece and Article-by-Article, we have given the same care and effort to describing the role of cannabinoids and the ECS in our bodies. We found that cannabinoids shared a strong characteristic from the founding period: the similarity is found in the famous phrase summing up the basic rights of free people – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It is no secret that many people think that there is a Life-giving quality to cannabis use. That is where we began – the anecdotal and lived cannabinoid experience. Since the 1970s, cannabis use has been defined by practice – some combination of the medical/patient model and the recreational/liberty model. We are describing something new – the idea that cannabinoids are necessary to life. The cannabis war will no longer be about use and ideology – about who is sick enough or free enough or responsible enough. What is new today is the science of cannabinoids – and you'll find it more than compelling and often mind-blowing.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/147200/why_marijuana_is_central_to_life%2C_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness/

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Is There a ‘Ronald Reagan Day’ in Our Future? God help Us!

 

 

by BILL BERKOWITZ

February 6, 2011 is the 100^th anniversary of the birth Ronald Reagan. While the official Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission is planning its festivities, conservatives will try to turn it into a full-year of celebrating, honoring and capitalizing politically on the legacy of a decidedly mediocre president.     

 Earlier this year, the brothers Reagan (Michael, the older one, a conservative radio talk show host, Ron, the younger, a progressive radio talk show host), had a spirited, civil, and public disagreement. They weren't facing off at a University of Oxford Debate nor did they spend some time with Oprah; in fact, it wasn't even face-to-face (although a holiday dinner might be quite an event). Rather, through the magic of an assortment of media platforms, the two brothers discussed how their father, Ronald Reagan, might have responded to the Tea Party Movement. 

Michael insisted that his dad "would say 'hear, hear' to those people who in fact [are] out there rattling their sabers if you will to wake up Washington, D.C.," he said in an early-February interview with the Business & Media Institute.  In another venue, Michael said he believed that his father "would embrace the tea party movement if he were alive today."  

During an appearance on the Joy Behar television talk show, Ron said his father "would be un-amused by the tea partiers, with their Hitler signs and all the rest of it.  No, I don't think he'd be cottoning to that much at all."

Arguments about what Ronald Reagan might have thought about tea partiers and other contemporary issues, and over what he thought and did during his 8-year tenure as president will come into bold relief next year when the country celebrates the 100^th anniversary of the birth of America's 40^th president.   

On June 5, 2004, after suffering for quite some time from Alzheimer's disease, Ronald Reagan died. Many in the nation mourned. Many did not. Now, with the 100^th anniversary of his birth around the calendar's corner, it is likely that a fairly large chunk of the public will once again display what writer Gore Vidal has characterized as a unique American type of collective amnesia. Meanwhile, the Ronald Reagan legacy folks – a band made up mostly of of determined conservatives -- will be trying to take full advantage of that condition.

President Barack Obama – with Nancy Reagan at his side – on June 2, 2009, signed into law the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act, which established an 11-member commission to plan activities that will be taking place throughout the year in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of President Ronald Wilson Reagan.

The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project

Founded more than a decade ago, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project (RRLP) was originally dedicated to a political deification of Reagan. The organization's stated "mission" was "to honor and memorialize the historic achievements of … Reagan…. by naming at least one notable public landmark in each state after the 40th president."

The main motivator of the RRLP is longtime conservative activist Grover Norquist, who in 1986 founded an organization called Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a conservative national taxpayer advocacy organization. (Norquist may be best known for his statement: "Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.") The RRLP had ambitious goals which included the naming of at least one notable public landmark in each state, and all of America's counties, after Reagan, It also hoped that a monument to Reagan be erected on the National Mall. There were other goals as well, including replacing Alexander Hamilton's face with Reagan's on the $10 bill, and having half the dimes -- currently with FDR's likeness -- stamped with Reagan's visage. Thus far neither of these exalted goals has been achieved.   

The Legacy Project was successful in getting the capital's National Airport renamed to honor Reagan. And, across the nation there are a number of roads, drives, turnpikes, parkways and freeways, elementary schools and high schools, community centers, and state office buildings bearing his name. Outside the U.S. there's the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on the Marshall Islands, a number of projects in Poland including Ronald Reagan Square (formerly Central Square), in Krakow, Ronald Reagan Park, in Gda?sk, and the Ronald Reagan Monument, in Wroc?aw. There is also the Ronald Reagan Scholarship Fund in the small country of Grenada.

Perhaps the tastiest tribute was the six-foot portrait of Reagan made from 14,000 jelly beans, called "Reagan's Sweet Legacy."    

The Legacy Project's ultimate goal, however, has been more than merely a renaming effort. It is an attempt to rewrite history and have the American people believe that a decidedly mediocre president deserves to be in the company of such presidents as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3294

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Southwest Finds Shipment of Heads on a Plane

Southwest Airlines employee finds human heads on their way to Fort Worth

By SCOTT GORDON

A Southwest Airlines employee called police after finding human heads in a package set to be transported to a Fort Worth medical research company, the airline said.

"It wasn't labeled or packaged properly," said Ashley Rogers, a Southwest spokeswoman. "They called the local authorities."

The incident happened in Little Rock, Ark., last Wednesday, she said.

Little Rock police turned the package over to the county coroner, who questions where they came from and if they were properly obtained.

"We've come to the conclusion that there is a black market out there for human body parts for research or for whatever reason," said Pulaski County coroner Garland Camper. "We just want to make sure these specimens here aren't a part of that black market and underground trade."

The heads were being transported to the Fort Worth office of Medtronic, a leading medical research and technology company based in Minnesota.

Medtronic spokesman Brian Henry said it is common to ship body parts for medical education and research, but he said it is rare for a shipment to be seized.

"We expect our suppliers to follow proper procedures," he said.

Camper described the items as 40 to 60 human heads.

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local-beat/Human-Heads-Found-in-Package-on-Way-to-N-Texas-96529404.html

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What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?

If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's backgrounder.

What is the singularity?

The term singularity describes the moment when a civilization changes so much that its rules and technologies are incomprehensible to previous generations. Think of it as a point-of-no-return in history.

Most thinkers believe the singularity will be jump-started by extremely rapid technological and scientific changes. These changes will be so fast, and so profound, that every aspect of our society will be transformed, from our bodies and families to our governments and economies.

A good way to understand the singularity is to imagine explaining the internet to somebody living in the year 1200. Your frames of reference would be so different that it would be almost impossible to convey how the internet works, let alone what it means to our society. You are on the other side of what seems like a singularity to our person from the Middle Ages. But from the perspective of a future singularity, we are the medieval ones. Advances in science and technology mean that singularities might happen over periods much shorter than 800 years. And nobody knows for sure what the hell they'll bring.

Talking about the singularity is a paradox, because it is an attempt to imagine something that is by definition unimaginable to people in the present day. But that hasn't stopped hundreds of science fiction writers and futurists from doing it.

Where does the term "singularity" come from?

Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge popularized the idea of the singularity in his 1993 essay "Technological Singularity." There he described the singularity this way:

It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown.

Specifically, Vinge pinned the Singularity to the emergence of artificial intelligence. "We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth," he wrote. "The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence."

Author Ken MacLeod has a character describe the singularity as "the Rapture for nerds" in his novel The Cassini Division, and the turn of phrase stuck, becoming a popular way to describe the singularity. (Note: MacLeod didn't actually coin this phrase - he says he got the phrase from a satirical essay in an early-1990s issue of Extropy.) Catherynne Valente argued recently for an expansion of the term to include what she calls "personal singularities," moments where a person is altered so much that she becomes unrecognizable to her former self. This definition could include posthuman experiences.

What technologies are likely to cause the next singularity?

As we mentioned earlier, artificial intelligence is the technology that most people believe will usher in the singularity. Authors like Vinge and singulatarian Ray Kurzweil think AI will usher in the singularity for a twofold reason. First, creating a new form of intelligent life will completely change our understanding of ourselves as humans. Second, AI will allow us to develop new technologies so much faster than we could before that our civilization will transform rapidly. A corollary to AI is the development of robots who can work alongside - and beyond - humans.

Another singularity technology is the self-replicating molecular machine, also called autonomous nanobots, "gray goo," and a host of other things. Basically the idea is that if we can build machines that manipulate matter at the atomic level, we can control our world in the most granular way imaginable. And if these machines can work on their own? Who knows what will happen. For a dark vision of this singularity, see Greg Bear's novel Blood Music or Bill Joy's essay "The Future Doesn't Need Us"; for a more optimistic vision, Rudy Rucker's Postsingular.

And finally, a lot of singulatarian thought is devoted to the idea that synthetic biology, genetic engineering, and other life sciences will eventually give us control of the human genome. Two world-altering events would come out of that. One, we could engineer new forms of life and change the course of human evolution in one generation. Two, it's likely that control over our genomes will allow us to tinker with the mechanisms that make us age, thus dramatically increasing our lifespans. Many futurists, from Kurzweil and Steward Brand, to scientists like Aubrey De Gray, have suggested that extreme human longevity (in the hundreds of years) is a crucial part of the singularity.

http://io9.com/5534848/what-is-the-singularity-and-will-you-live-to-see-it

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