Go Into The Light

Most of this posting is about Transparency  and issues like face recognition.  But essentially it's how those who are fighting hardest to prevent an Orwellian tomorrow keep making the same mistake -- falling into Big Brother's trap.

== Get used to light. USE the light! ==

This article - We Cannot Afford to Lose the Digital Revolution - from The New York Times repeats the same pattern we see every time a concerned and intelligent person looks at information-related dilemmas, nowadays. 

(1) by correctly listing threats to our safety and freedom that will arise from cheaters gathering powers of surveillance and 

(2) absolutely refusing to go beyond the hand-wringing stage, howling that the sky is falling, or demanding we all run and hide! Always ignoring the obvious solution.

“There are four key implications of this revolution that policymakers in the national security sector will need to address: The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of data about human and machine activity will put such extraordinary economic and political power in the hands of the private sector that it will transform the fundamental relationship, at least in the Western world, between government and the private sector. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures.” - notes Glenn S. Gerstell.

And now the State of California’s legislature – responding with sincere worry about misuse and with copious good intentions – is threatening to “ban face recognition systems,” a move of stunning technological cluelessness and out-the-gate utter futility. Worse, because there are ways to fix the perceived problems without shouting at the tide – at a tsunami – not to come in.

There are ways to navigate these (and many other) minefields. Some are on the table. Allocate money to innovation aimed at prevention (including attribution and deterrence). Invest in a skilled and confidently well-prepared professional protector caste that can counterbalance elites of money or criminality or hostile foreign powers.

But above all, there is one antidote to all of the failure modes described in that hand-wringing paragraph. 

It's light. Light that flows ever more upon elites that might abuse power, or at the criminals who might prey on us. If we citizens are doomed to live exposed, how about recognizing and accepting that coming world, and using its salient trait in our favor?

 

It never occurs to them. Even when you explain it in detail and show a myriad historical examples… and even after they nod and say “wow, I get it…” the very next day they are running through the street screaming like chicken little.

Dig it. We have one way out – to go into the light. But none of our paladins of freedom will look, or even notice the light is there.  Sometimes I feel as if I am living in “Poltergeist.”

== Well… maybe a little illumination ==

A worthwhile endeavor I have touted before: ChangeAView.com exists to facilitate productive discussions between people who have different perspectives. “Posting to CAV is based on the idea that we only benefit from fully understanding counter-arguments to our opinions -- and whether or not our views change meaningfully as a result, we will most likely gain something, even if that's just an improved understanding of our own position. Responding to another post helps people understand your perspective on their topic, possibly earning a delta if you change someone's view in the process.” 

Of course this approach is based on an assumption that’s inherently ‘positive-sum’… the idea that I express with CITOKATE or “Criticism is the Only Known Antidote to Error”… or at least the human trait that comes in second only to love itself… curiosity.  If you are mature and confident enough to know that criticism helps to make you better – (it even helps refine your methods so that you can better defeat your enemies) – then you might use ChangeAView.

Alas, there are powerful forces within our society who are terrified by positive sum thinking. This includes many oligarchs whose sycophant flatterers tell them over and over that they really are smart; no really! Some do get positive sum (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, so not all rich dudes are stupid). But those who would rebuild feudalism seem hell bent on crushing the very concept by riling us all against each other, delusionally imagining this might benefit them, over the long run. Hence, the very notion of mutually beneficial argument is in decline.  

I offer another approach, a bit more ferociously competitive, but still aimed at the same place. Helping us solve problems. Helping us grow up a little. For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition."   

Or else see a condensed version, on my website.

But for now, what’s needed is traffic and discussion and lively activity at positive-sum oriented sites like ChangeAView.com… and for different reasons the discussions at TASAT! Perhaps a better use of time than reading what you’re reading right now!

 == Visions of the Future =

“Ring Let Cops Know How Often Their Requests For Camera Footage Were Ignored.” In this case the sousveillance is inherent in the news article and in you spreading it. 

There are two models for omnipresent cameras 
(1) state run and top-down... China and Britain, where cops get instant access
 -- vs 
(2) most cams in the U.S. are privately owned. When asked, everyone in Boston swiftly handed over footage that caught the marathon bomber. But the Seattle pepper spray cops got almost zero cooperation from locals. The difference between those evens in Seattle and Boston amounted to a plebiscite on public trust of the cops and the urgency of their need.

Are these two models of the future? The proliferation of cheap cams will make us all visible, all the time. So what matters is not futilely limiting police view, but the inherent right of citizens to look back and to express (when necessary) vigorous criticism and dissent.

There's an aspect to all of this that is seldom mentioned. In that world of pervasive cams, most kinds of crime will go down or be quickly solved, hence a decent society will have fewer cops. Will that actually be the outcome here? As opposed to China? That depends on us. 

“Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. … Determining the probable calls for a science of futurism. Delineating the possible calls for an art of futurism. Defining the preferable calls for a politics of futurism. The worldwide futurist movement today does not yet differentiate clearly among these functions.”

        -- Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (1969), as related in a recent essay by John Smart. 

Smart also believes we are heading toward a “DandD world” – one where densification (the migration of leading complexity to physical inner space) and dematerialization (the growth of virtual inner space) will be far more important than our dispersal into outer space. Smart speculates that future humanity may use nanotechnology, and new architectures like quantum computing, to make even denser, more capable, and more intelligent systems than biology has to date.

But it goes on, the incredible foolishness of well-intended folks:

San Francisco recently banned facial recognition technology. The city’s ban on the technology could set a nationwide precedent.  Okay, this raises a clear point, though not the one intended. Although it happens much less often, some liberals can be as dumb as their confed opponents. How is this supposed to work, when both hardware and software get better at exponential rates. And cameras get faster, cheaper, smaller, better and more mobile quicker than Moore's law? There are already face recognition apps! Nothing will keep all elites from having this, though by law you might prevent average folks, for a while. How is that supposed to help, again?

----

And yes, a reminder: See my new e-book POLEMICAL JUDO that sets our current crisis in many perspectives you’ve never seen before! I offer 100+ tactics to counter the would-be destroyers of our Great Experiment.