Cynicism vs problem-solving - and a coming film about our civil war

“Humorous” columnist Dave Barry just delivered a riff that is stunningly dumb, declaring that 2015 was nothing but bad news. Incredibly insipid dreck, even in the guise of satire. 

For every bad item on  his list there are ten good things.  In part because that is the rough ratio of human beings who have been gradually improving their lives and those of their children, vs. every one whose luck went worse.  Should we attend to the latter?  Sure! But one reason we care is that technology allows us to see suffering everywhere, in images that tweak and tug at human empathy. The same burgeoning technologies that are now empowering the Black Lives Matter Movement. So that, too, is a kind of good news.

It does not matter if cynical snarks are "supposed to be funny."  Maybe you don't remember that excuse by playground bullies but I sure do.  Whatever his intentions, he contributes the generally insane trend of our times -- disparaging even glancing thoughts toward can-do optimism. 

We face horrid problems, not least of which has been the deliberate effort by fanatics in the U.S. to destroy politics and negotiation as a problem solving methodology.  And gloom merchants feed into this vileness, by getting everyone nodding cynically that things are worse, when they are not.

See below where I decrypt how - blatantly - the Koch-Adelson-Saudi-Murdoch schemers seek to spread this poison among even young liberals.

Make no mistake, cynicism is the tool of playground bullies who have attacked enthusiastic problem solvers ever since we each were six years old. The curled lip sneer and shrug of knowing-nihilism. Anyone promoting that attitude does not deserve to claim they are progressive or eager for a better world. Heck, they're not even conservative.  They are lazy bullies.

This is why dogmatics of both the far left and the Entire Right so hate Steven Pinker's clear statistical proof that per capita violence and poverty have been steeply declining across most (not all!) of the world.  A sane person would look at these facts and feel encouraged that a can-do spirit might accomplish so much more.

== Young Sandersites, yay for you! But this is not the Sixties (thank God) ==

Bernie Sanders is a real scrapper.  While I am not in complete tune with all of his proposals, he is saying many things that need saying and he has sparked excitement among millions of smart, young Americans... enthusiasts who really need to listen closely, e,g, when Sanders  finished the generally excellent pre-NH debate with this:

 "It's important to remember, no matter what that we both (he and Clinton) are 100 times better than any of the candidates the Republicans are offering." 

I have a feeling that we older folks are going to need to use that quote a lot to keep the True Believers from taking us off the rails. The over-wrought wing of the Sanders camp takes me back to my own youth in the 1960s... and that's not all good.  Note, Bernie is sane and he will embrace Hillary, either way.  Remember that. And here are a couple more points:

1- Young folks should be trying hard NOT to be like the sanctimony-addicted Baby-Boom generation. We're a bunch of screaming assholes! Have been since the 1960s, refusing even to notice when the stuff we fought for actually worked or came true! 

Gen Ys and Millennials are supposed to be more logical than us cranky boomers. Self-righteous indignation is a drug high that liberals cannot afford.  They are the last continent of sanity on Planet America. And this... is... not...fucking 1968.

2- Just win.  And by that I mean win the Supreme Court and end gerrymandering and limit money in politics, get a sane Congress filled with grownups who appreciate science and who don't pray for the world to end soon. If we get those things, it does not matter which democrat. Sanders? Hillary? A yellow dog? I... don't... care.  (Much.) Just win.

 3- Please, please everyone look up the phrase "agent provocateur." I’ll bet you that a good fraction of the most-shrill voices attacking Hillary are not "pro-Sanders" in real life. 

Think about it. The Koch-Saudi-Adelson-Murdoch PAC money is not doing them much good anymore through TV ads and such, so I betcha they are shifting a lot of it into social media.  Their billions can buy a lot of anonymous and pseudonymous trash-talkers.

They cannot buy Sanders himself. So take Bernie’s word for it, young zealots.  Calm down, fight for your guy. And whether or not he wins the nomination, come out of the convention arm-in-arm. 

Not in love with Clinton? Fine! Shift your attention to local Congressional and state assembly races! That is where the real difference can be made by young activists.  Change Congress and your state house!  That is the only way that some of Bernie's reforms will happen.

== What gets in the way of problem-solving? ==

 In many ways, our rationality is stunted by the fact that we remain "prisoners of our evolutionary past," as Rich Shenkman argues in his new book, Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics. We are swayed as much by emotions and gut instincts as reasoned analysis of information - with a brain wired back in the depths of the Stone Age. 

Returning to our starting theme...

In "11 Reasons Why 2015 Was a Great Year for Humanity," political economist Angus Hervey marvels that, "We re living through the most astonishing period of human progress in history. And nobody's telling us about it. Hervey notes advances in universal education, access to clean water, and progress in the battles against disease, hunger, poverty and childhood mortality, concluding, "It's easy to be cynical and maintain that nothing is ever getting better. The empirical evidence flatly contradicts this view; looking at what we've already achieved as a species should give us confidence going forward into the future."

Indeed, 2015 was far and away the best year for human exploration of space and the cosmos?  Better than the lamented 1960s yet the taxpayers who funded it all, with pennies, seem unaware. Of that or the myriad other fields where rapid advances are accelerating, and this despite a clearcut and open War on Science, declared by the far-left and the Entire Right.

There is good news and bad.  And the good will not reduce our felt need to save the world. We enlightenment moderate-pragmatists who believe in can-do problem solving, in negotiation and progress must (I'm afraid) become militant. 

Our enemy is not left or right or radical Islam but the underlying hatred of hope that propels so many of the cynical whiner-bullies out there, who would rather wallow in declarations of despair than lift themselves up to cooperate/compete/negotiate/innovate and actually help.

== Militia Spirit? ==

This coming Matthew McConaughey film (watch the trailer) is based on the true story of a county in the deep south that stayed loyal to the Union in the Civil War -- poor white farmers and escaped slaves who rejected the propaganda that they should sacrifice everything for plantation lord aristocrats.

I first learned about the Free State of Jones from Ken Burns's wonderful CIVIL WAR series, where it's revealed that every state in the Olde Confederacy -- except traitor-to-the-bone South Carolina -- saw whole regiments of volunteers march north to fight for their true country -- America -- keeping oaths that they had sworn, instead of breaking their word, just because the slave-holders lost an election.  Indeed, there were loyal counties and swathes of territory flying the stars and stripes all through the South....

... just as there are sincere American conservatives, today, who reject the tsunami of Fox propaganda that they should hate their own, freely-elected government, and kowtow to the new feudal oligarchy that has hijacked the Republican party. The "job-creator" caste of Koch-Adelson-Murdoch-Romney aristos who are fomenting phase 8 of the American Civil War and re-igniting the class conflict that we thought our parents, in the Greatest Generation had ended, at long last.

Will this film rouse sane white conservatives to reject the New Confederacy?  Or will they view it as a call to start militias, on any excuse at all?  And I have to wonder... is anyone in southern Oregon - where I set The Postman - re-reading my book about where this militia "spirit" eventually leads?

I am not the only one aware that we’ve entered a new phase of the American Civil War... While Blue America clings to notions of negotiation, the red-gray portions have long known and participated in re-igniting this 200 year old, recurring national sickness.  And now it is no longer easily-dismissed whackos talking about turning it violent. A former Republican Congressman talks about rekindling the Civil War.

== a lagniappe ==

And finally, a crackpot side-issue I keep returning to. Some lunacies span the entire global community.  One of them is the world’s insistence on supporting the chaotic and deadly-failed city of Mogadishu as the essential core of a united Somalia.  While the last 5 years has seen some progress in expelling the Al Shabbab terror group and restoring basic order, at this rate Mogadishu might be open for real national business by 2060, perhaps.  Meanwhile, the northern 1/3 of Somalia… the historically independent Somaliland … has been flourishing in peace for two decades, despite receiving almost no help from abroad. Hey, here's an idea. Start building south from there.

The value of pessimists… the necessity of optimists

I have long maintained that the greatest blessing and curse of humanity has been our near infinite capacity for delusion.  To firmly believe things that are illogical or improbable, or even decisively disproved by blatant facts.  This gift is what empowers great art -- and we fiction authors have learned to weave ornate incantations, catering to a public need to believe (temporarily) in imaginary events. 

Alas, the downside of this talent is obvious.  We are terrible at perceiving and appraising our own delusional mistakes – witness the almost unalloyed litany of horrid statecraft perpetrated by kings, lords and priests, when their delusions could go unquestioned and unaccountable.

We’ve found a partial solution.  Criticism is the only known antidote to error. If you are blind to some mistakes, others may not be, and they will often be delighted to point out those errors of yours, without charge! (Will you listen: even gritting your teeth?)

The greatest advantage of a free and open society is not the pleasure of liberty (though that’s great). It is the high proportion of disastrous blunders that we manage to catch, in time, that led to our unprecedented ratio of success to failure. Science fiction plays a role, through “self-preventing prophecies,” like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which girded millions to fight against the worst possible failure modes. But other professions do their bit, as well.  

Especially Journalism. Yes, much-maligned (sometimes deservedly) journalism.  One of the 'expert castes' currently under attack in the War-Aganst-All-Spartypants. Individually they are as flawed as any of us. But a profession that lives by asking questions... are you sure you want to dismiss them, across the board?)

== Do warnings bring action? ==

In his book “Lights Out,” Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on America’s power grid is not only possible but likely, that it would be devastating, and that the United States is shockingly unprepared. Imagine a continental blackout lasting not days, but weeks or months. Koppel maintains that a well-designed attack on just one of the nation’s three electric power grids could cripple much of our infrastructure. 

Let me add that terrorism isn’t the only way it can happen. A “Carrington Event” – a massive solar flare like one that fried telegraph systems in the 1850s – could have devastating effects upon our grid and unlinked electronics in the home, (possibly even zapping the rooftop solar systems that are our last bulwark against darkness, unless we learn how to buffer them well). 

Moreover, the 1850s event was apparently not as bad as they come. Studies of carbon isotope anomalies in tree rings suggest that the Sun occasionally belches prodigiously, giving our planet truly major electrical shocks. And note that I have not even discussed another threat – EMP or electromagnetic pulse – that some enemy might use to accomplish the same end.

Surely more attention should be paid to these dangers.  And I regularly consult about such threats with “agencies” who have come to appreciate the unfettered darkside imaginings of science fiction authors.  You want potential failure modes?  Ones not yet on anyone’s horizon? I got ‘em.

And yet, how to reconcile that with the rampant accusations that “Brin is an optimist”?  Easy.  Unlike the certifiably insane cynical grouches all around us, I am able to notice the clear fact that things are (still tentatively) very very good for us, right now.  That our ancestors – including the Greatest Generation so extolled by the Right – would have laughed in the faces of today’s dolor-merchants and their dismal mewlings.  Nor is the mad-right the only locus of grumpy ingrates. Civil libertarians who decry the rising surveillance state are justified (!) and useful… until they neglect to ask – “So, how did we get the present day peak of freedom that I so-worry we’re about to lose?”

Asking that one, simple question empowers us to see a simple truth.  That we did not get here by cowering and hiding.

In fact when we open our eyes to positive trends, we discover they are easily as big as any list of negatives.  From Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined to Peter Diamandis’s Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think to Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near, some of the smartest people alive are pointing out the good news… and how much more there may be, if just a few game-changing breakthroughs line up.

Even in the blogosphere, where the cynical curled lip and playground bully sneer assail any hint of positivity, a few have spoken up, as in this piece listing “11 Reasons Why 2015 Was a Great Year For Humanity.” Wherein the writer, Angus Hervey, opines that: “We are living through the most astonishing period of human progress in history. And nobody’s telling us about it.”   

Indeed, he could have made it a clean dozen reasons, by mentioning something I’ve been saying for the last month or so… that 2015 was by far humanity’s best year in the exploration and understanding of space, the cosmos and our place in the universe.

And the ease of self-deception...

Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind, by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower asserts an answer to one of the great questions of biology; why so many species, ranging from dolphins and chimps to corvids (ravens) and parrots, sea lions and elephants, and prairie dogs, all cluster close to each other under what I’ve called theglass ceiling of sapience,” displaying similar, basic capabilities at tool-use, proto-language and self-awareness. Varki and Brower propose that there is a lethal zone, just a little higher, wherein creatures become fully aware of their inevitable death. Any species who rise into this zone lose fitness because individuals become obsessed with their own mortality, to the detriment of all other considerations, like reproduction.

Under this hypothesis — clearly influenced by the mid-20th Century Freudian “thanatos” complex — humanity burst beyond the glass ceiling by counter-balancing any thanatos obsession with another exceptional skill, that of denial.  Self-distraction, using various mental tricks to ignore — for the most part — the glaring prospect of personal doom.

Alas, my response (admittedly without yet reading the book) is that Freudian and meta-Freudian  models are artifacts of a time when we had a much less clear understanding of the workings of evolution.   In this case, we have a just-so story of creatures becoming so terminally obsessed with mortality that they neglect their offspring. Tasty... but...

Refutation is simple.  Those who find a way to prioritize their progeny higher than scrabbling for an extra few months… those are the ones who will pass on genes, including for the trait of such prioritization.  Indeed, nature is filled with examples of courageous mothers and dads who do exactly that. All that is needed is for parenthood to be an addictive high — and those channels are already present in every species that abides near the glass ceiling. Oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine levels, all reward parental care with overwhelming ferocity. At which point the thanatos distraction will have a potent rival, one far more correlated with fitness and success at the game of genetic procreation.  In other words, sorry. I’m not buying it.

There are other, more plausible, hypotheses for why humanity shattered the glass ceiling by orders of magnitude.  In nature, whenever a trait experiences rapid runaway, the first culprit to appraise would be sexual selection.  In my neoteny paper I posit a rare two-way cycle of sexual selection, in which female and male humans engaged in fierce judgementalism toward each other, demanding ever-inflating sets of exaggerated traits, foremost of which was intelligence.

Jumping to the other end… In Rationality: From AI to Zombies, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains the science underlying human irrationality with a mix of fables, argumentative essays, and personal vignettes.  A decision theorist and researcher at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Yudkowsky is also author of the popular amateur novel Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. 

== And Alack ==

Word arrives here about the recent or imminent passing of the great science fiction editor, David Hartwell.  I am bummed and will have more to say about this soon.

Doom and Gloom?

== You cynics aren't helpful! ==

Finally, someone (else) is making a key point — that liberals and progressives sabotage themselves with gloom, by proclaiming that no past reforms or interventions have done the slightest good.  Nothing has improved, everything is worse and none of the past measures that we strove so hard to achieve has ever worked! 

This reflex is not only counterfactual and kind of sick-minded... it is also spectacularly counterproductive, playing into the hands of those who proclaim: “Yep! Progressive ‘solutions’ never work, and progressives are the first to say so!”

In Progressives Lost the Election, but Their Ideas are Winning, Richard V. Reeves offers statistical evidence that the poor and middle class aren’t doing quite as badly in the U.S. as many have been railing. Does that make him an enemy of progress? Not when he shows relentlessly that:

(1) it was successive liberal interventions that prevented a plummet into poverty for tens of millions and 

(2) we still have a long way to go. Indeed, bragging about their product’s past successes would be the first thing done by any sane salesperson! Suggesting that many of our left-wing friends are not especially, well, sane.

“For progressives, doom and gloom will be a self-defeating political strategy, since it adds steadily to the sense that government doesn’t work. This will be especially true in 2016 after occupying the White House for two terms. The subtext of downbeat progressive rhetoric is, by implication: "Yes, we have already done all these things (the Great Society, tax credits, welfare reform, food stamps), but honestly, nothing has really worked, look how terrible things are becoming," writes Reeves, continuing:

“What they should be saying instead is: "Look at all these government initiatives that have really worked to reduce poverty, improve workplaces, lessen inequality, weaken racism, boost women’s chances, and improve wellbeing. So let’s do more of it! What’s the next problem that we can help to solve?"

Lest you right wingers crow, at this point, fie upon you!  If you had had your way for 70 years, this society would be a festering feudal cesspit of poverty, simmering on the edge of revolution. And you HAVE had your way in the US for 2 decades, and things ARE getting worse for the middle classes! Your oligarchs, in contrast, are doing great. Still, the aversion of our news media - of all kinds - to ever mention good news, is stunningly consistent, almost to the point of evil.

Just one example.  Since the Department of Health & Human Services began a campaign, three years ago, to eradicate fatal  hospital errors, there has been a plummet in Hospital Acquired Illness. Had you heard of this?  Of course not.

All of this riffs along with Steven Pinker’s important book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, wherein he shows absolutely that average per capita rates of both violence and poverty have plummeted, worldwide, every decade since humanity hit its nadir in 1943. 

I take head-on the fury that these facts arouse in people of the left, and the blindness of the right, in my TedX talk, Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be mad as hell? (Follow the slides on Slideshare!)

Caught in the middle are the few remaining liberal-pragmatist problem solvers remaining in a country that once specialized in pragmatism and negotiation and simply getting the job done.

All of this shows that - although the Neo-Confederacy is our worst problem today — a froth of insanity and treason, incited by foreign petro-sheiks who mean us nothing but harm — there certainly is a fair amount of crazy, also, on the other side.

== Satire and Bullshit == 

The New Age Bullshit Generator randomly generates hilariously plausible, touchy-feely psychotech-quantum babble!  Farm-out man! Right-arm!

For a more compact version of this much-deserved satire, see: The Enigmatic Wisdom of Chopra.

But I recommend delving into the intellectual grand-daddy of New Age/postmodernist satirical debunkery, the "Sokal Hoax." 

Okay, I am having some fun skewering the ditzy far-far-left, this time. But let us never forget, cesspits thrive near all fanaticisms. And although the biggest threat right now to our rational enlightenment is the "bullshit mountain" of the Fox'd right, there is definitely a far wing of the other side that wallows in insipid fantasy. 

If you cannot turn your head and acknowledge this, then you have Fused Political Spine Disease and you are part of the problem, not the solution.

Get an ideological chiropractor.  Re-learn how to turn your head and see that dangers lie in all directions. Only then will you earn the credibility (as I have done) to say: "I am very aware of my own side's crazies... and that qualifies me to say, unequivocally, that the other side is worse!"

== Health Care ==

“For all the irrational disgust the right has for the ACA (Obamacare), the law itself is actually a boon to entrepreneurs," writes Steve Benen, It allows brash startups like Uber, Lyft and Airbnb to do their capitalist thing, attracting lots of independent drivers, etc, who can have the courage to take on that lifestyle instead of working for The Man, since health insurance can now be bought affordably outside working for a big company or corporation.  

Just to be plain, this was actually predicted, back when Newt Gingrich presented the ACA as his party’s alternative to “HillaryCare...” 

...before the GOP went completely bonkers and disowned its own… damn… plan. Simply because Barack Obama had the utter gall – the nerve – to … agree to it!  That gave their own damn plan cooties, it appears.

 == On Ebola ==

Pater Tenebrarum observed: “A friend recently asked us whether the massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa could be regarded as a “black swan” in the sense of Nassim Taleb’s definition of the term. After thinking it over, we concluded that yes, it can definitely be characterized as one. Evidently, something is very different about this year’s outbreak compared to previous ones, and a number of unexpected developments have occurred. Chief among them is that a hitherto firmly held belief had to be abandoned. It was thought that the very thing that that makes the illness rather terrifying, namely its high mortality rate, helped in containing outbreaks…  We can definitely state that the current outbreak is anything but “well contained”."

== ISIS CRISIS == 

George Monbiot sarcastically asks (in The Guardian) “Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world? Humanitarian arguments, ifconsistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East.”

Midway into his attempt at satire, he offers this paragraph: “Is there not an urgent duty to blow up Saudi Arabia? It has beheaded 59 people so far this year, for offences that include adultery, sorcery and witchcraft. It has long presented a far greater threat to the west than Isis now poses. In 2009 Hillary Clinton warned in a secret memo that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban … and other terrorist groups”. In July, the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, revealed that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, until recently the head of Saudi intelligence, told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” Saudi support for extreme Sunni militias in Syria during Bandar’s tenure is widely blamed for the rapid rise of Isis. Why take out the subsidiary and spare the headquarters?”

Monbiot leaves out the biggest allegation against that desert kingdom — that it meddles in U.S. governance.  Not just with bribery and blackmail and the usual tools, but above all by supporting and maintaining Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda empire which has deliberately destroyed politics in America, pitting one half of the country (a re-ignited Confederacy) against the other half.  

The Bush family, virtually a branch office of that R’oil House, (holding hands with them and calling Prince Bandar “Uncle Bandie"), plunged us into so many calamities that every single metric of U.S. national health plummeted under the watches of George Senior and George Junior, plus Dick Cheney — losses that measure many trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.  Should we not consider all of that an “act of war”?

In any event, remember this in 2016.  That McCain and Romney distanced themselves from the accursed Bush clan... but surrounded themselves with factotums from the entire Bush-GOP 'brain trust' that delivered the worst governance seen in at least 80 years. Do not believe that anything has changed, till the whole house has been disinfected and cleaned. And finally hope for sane conservatism when that whirring sound goes away... the spinning of Goldwater and Buckley, in their graves.

  

== Bush and more Bush ==

Oh please, please please run, Jeb. By appearances, you seem the least loathsome of your wretched clan, whose terms in office featured exactly ZERO improvements in even one unambiguously attributable metric of US national health.  The first and second time that happened, ever in U.S. history. Indeed, nearly all such metrics plummeted across the spans of both Bush Administrations... a correlation so perfect that it tempts one to imagine it had to be deliberate.

And why not?  As we've seen, the Bushes are so intimately tied to one of the Middle Eastern royal families that W said "Uncle (Prince) Bandaar just about raised me."  A family also co-owns Fox.

So yes, by all means Jeb, run! If the Confederacy succeeds in imposing another Bush rule over the United States, then we in the loyal, Blue half will deserve what we get. And our nation's 200 year Civil War will be over, for good.

P.S. and BTW....  I am still looking for a guerrilla performance art coop who might do a piece of political humor that would far out-do Jib-Jab's famous 2004 "This Land" sketch. 

It might even put the kibosh on this "dynasty" thing, once and for all.

Must we hide behind masks?

== Hide from the Man? ==

"Our world is becoming increasingly surveilled. For example, Chicago has over 25,000 cameras networked to a single facial recognition hub," reads the URME (pronounced U R Me) site:

"We don't believe you should be tracked just because you want to walk outside and you shouldn't have to hide either. Instead, use one of our products to present an alternative identity when in public." What product? A rubber mask bearing the likeness of URME's founder Leo Selvaggio.

If lots of people go around wearing these masks the proto Big Brother system of all those cameras will be…

… ever so slightly inconvenienced, while store-owners and bank guards and mere passers-by will have their tension levels ratchet up. That's pretty much it. Big whoop.

Yeah yeah, I've heard it all. This is a cool stunt and it draws attention to our decaying yadda yadda. And it accomplishes nothing else. Except to help promote the never ending chain of whining from those who think we can protect freedom by moaning "don't look at me!" (I lived in Britain in the 1980s, where the cameras were already blooming like dandelions, inspiring me to write The Transparent Society. In Kiln People I portray how masks will provide only slight and superficial anonymity, till someone is motivated enough to scrupulously backtrack images.)

Yes, proto Big Brothers are all over the place! And yes, the camera networks could help bring us Big Brother! I fear the same outcome and I am just as militant in opposing it. More so!

Only there's this. I know what works… what stands a chance of working. What has already worked well enough to give us the freedom that we do have….

…and it did not come from hiding...

...or whining "don't look at me!"

== Wiretapping updated? ==

Strict-liability two-party consent eavesdropping laws seemed fair when they were passed in dozens of states, back in Stone Age days— like the 1960s -- when the ability to record was unevenly possessed and when furtive recording seemed unfair. Today, it's foolish for anyone to assume, at any point, that what they are saying has no chance of being played back, some other time. In particular, such two-party consent laws have been used to criminalize citizen recordings of their interactions with police and other government officials.

As reported here, the most important civil liberties matter in our lifetimes -- certainly in thirty years -- was hardly covered by the press. In 2013 both U.S. courts and the Obama Administration declared it to be "settled law" that a citizen has the right to record his or her interactions with police in public places. No single matter could have been more important because it established the most basic right of "sousveillance" or looking-back at power, that The Transparent Society is all about. It is also fundamental to freedom, for in altercations with authority, what other recourse can a citizen turn to, than the Truth?

(This was forecast in EARTH (1989) by the way.)

It is important to take a balanced view… not to surrender all expectations of privacy, but to know that openness and accountability will let us both stay free and enforce a little privacy, or at least insist that we be physically left alone.

In particular, the recent rulings about citizen recordings of police absolutely eviscerate the snarky-stupid shrugs of cynics who proclaim that it's all defeat and spirals into Orwellian hell. We can prevent that hell. We know that, because we have prevented it, so far.

Let there be no mistake. The cynics are enemies of freedom, not its defenders. Their tirades of gloom undermine the confidence and can-do spirit of problem solving that might get us across this transition era.

Indeed, sometimes "looking back" works! 

== Owning our data ==

 The Price of Haggling for Your Personal Data: This SLATE article discusses the notion that each of us might leverage and benefit from the economic value of our information.

It is one (absurd) thing to declare "I own all the info about me!" and to demand others not look. That's a non-starter and if we pass laws to forbid the mighty from looking at us, that will only make them furtive about it and ensure we will get no benefit. As Heinlein said: "The chief thing achieved by privacy laws is to make the (spy) bugs smaller."

But it is reasonable to say that people have "interests" and "value" in their information and a right to derive royalties or a fee for its use, especially if some commercial interest is making money off it. 

Moreover it is in an open society that we might be able to track who is using our data and insist on routine and proper payment for such use. The idea of people controlling and selling their data for personal and economic gain — as Jaron Lanier describes in Who Owns the Future? -- and Doc Searls elaborated on in The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge — is gaining traction.

In this interesting article on Slate, John C Havens asserts that it's not just about money: "But it won’t take hold until we answer a more deeply fundamental question: What are we worth as a whole?"

Our data is being swapped about and - as author of The Transparent Society - I don't find open information flows to be the problematic thing. It is the cutting out of us little guys from any participation in the value chain deriving from our data.

Indeed, the way our data is shuttled and sold is invisible to us!

An article by Gregory Maus -- How Transparent Big Data Markets Could Better Protect Your Data...and Your Rights -- suggests setting up transparent, privately-owned, but publicly-regulated markets for the data. "Imagine something like an Amazon, Alibaba, or New York Mercantile Exchange, focused on the purchase and licensing of Big Data. Suppliers could increase their markets, buyers could increase their options, and all transactions would be public record."

Now comes the Hub of All Things (HAT) project. The HAT is building a database which will be owned by individuals who produce data in the first place. That includes social media data, energy use data and internet of things data from our homes, such as the goods you use or the medicines you take. Kind of vague, so far. Indeed, I am doubtful. But over time, we must as a society develop ways that each person benefits from a strong interest in his or her information.

For more on Transparency, Privacy and Accountability

=== Late development ==

Take a look at this video taken by a fellow who launched his quad coptger to sous-veil cops at a police checkpoint. My reaction? That the officers seemed to be doing their jobs with professionalism and no fear of citizen supervision... which they are going to have to get used to. (In fact, their aplomb was kinda impressive.) Of course the drone pilot might still answer to the FAA....

What big-unexpected problem we will face in coming decades? (Contest winners)

My latest novel Existence shows humanity confronting many challenges forty years in the future -- some expected and some unforeseen. Indeed, finding, revealing and exploring unexpected threats... this might be considered one of the most valuable services of good, thoughtful science fiction.

I recently crowd-sourced a question to my Facebook followers: What do you view as the biggest unexpected problem we will face in the next few decades? Many insightful and thought-provoking responses poured in, from profound to comedic, ranging from political instability to economic collapse, civil unrest to over-reliance on machines, social disruption to psychological plagues. Others dealt with problems of over-population and life extension, shortages of water and biodiversity, severe climate change, collapse of our information systems, growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, even meteor impacts.

Here I'm posting the most intriguing responses that got the most fan votes (the top two won fee copies of the brand new paperback edition of EXISTENCE! Note that I do not necessarily agree with all of the cited entries and will respond to a few of them in comments. But all of them show verve and a willingness to peer ahead:

1. What form of government will replace capitalism? This system is devolving at FTL speed, and the world is still unaware of a viable solution to it, while world situation is becoming more erratic and explosive daily. We will find ourselves in need of new ethno-national definitions very soon. Also, what will replace religion, for the same reasons. However, I feel that space exploration and the focus towards space will, at least partially, contribute to the latter. --Margie Lazou

2. Political and economic pressures from spacefaring nations to keep others from having the ability to access the almost infinite resources off-planet; extremely low cost for resources - material and energy - for the space-capable, and artificially high prices for everyone else. --David Christensen

3. Longevity due to augmentation and medical advances will create a need to migrate off planet for resources but those left behind must deal with massive social strain and change along with the burdensome question of what it means to be human. --John Berry Gosnell

4. A plastic-eating bacterium with resistance to all known antibiotics. --Martha Dunham

5. The unexpected loss of a sense of humor in people of European extraction, leading to mass suicide and the end of sit com laugh tracks. --Rhonda Palmer

6. The consequences of a universal lie detector machine. Politics and virtually every other field of human endeavor will be changed by everyone having to tell the truth. The rules that will evolve to deal with social and business situations will rapidly change society. --Kevin Settle

7. The biggest unexpected problem we'll face will be psychological. A depression plague is going to begin to eat away at modern society. We lose a sense of personal control over the modern world (i.e. external locus of control), where people believe that things happen to us, rather than "we make things happen". Apathy and self destructive behavior will no longer be the domain of emo-kids. It will threaten the viability of all societies worldwide, fueled by environmental impacts (historically, we rarely see them coming) and a growing disparity in wealth, power, and liberties. Long term ramifications will include economic collapse, famine, civil unrest and finally social atavism. --Richard Carter

8. Fresh water supplies. --David Caune

9. Biggest unexpected problems? Aren't the expected problems enough?  Biodiversity depletion, climate change, class warfare, outright warfare, the depletion of basically every resource: food, energy, fresh water, a whole whack of strategic minerals including helium, orbital debris. Hell, the only thing "unexpected" capable of killing us more quickly than we're killing ourselves would be a meteor impact or giant-ass solar flare. --Gabriel Emilio Zárate

10. The replacement of skilled and unskilled labor by automation combined with an ever-increasing population could have drastic effects on unemployment levels and civil unrest. --Eric Berman

11. Clinical near immortality will create beyond Malthusian population growth, further stressing Earth's resources. The moral question of when life "ends" will arise, for while they are able to keep the body alive, the mind still fails within 90-120 years. Discussion begins around planned obsolescence being introduced as part of gerontological treatments. --Wes Edmunds

12. The social (A movement away from sexism and tribalism. Along with an exponential expansion of global leisure and tourism.) and economic (Explosive demand and shifting of manufacturing, agriculture, and service industries.) ramifications of the children of 1/5th of the world’s population growing up as a ‘spoiled generation’ with two living parents and four living grandparents focusing all of their energy, hopes and dreams for the future, and their own personal life choices and mistakes on a ‘state mandated’ single child. --Richard Praser

13. A growing number of disruptive technologies and culture's difficulties in adapting. The biggest problem here will be the growing rift(s) between the people who use the technologies and those who don't. (Either by choice or access.) We may find that our culture is not the quickest to adapt, and the United States may be left in the wake of the world, wondering where it went without us. --Luna Rebecca Flesher

14. Collapse of our information systems due to overwhelming amounts of information from untrustworthy sources and the inability to verify sources and filter information effectively. --Eli Roth

15. Fresh-Water Scarcity and the many consequences thereof! Including massive dust-storms that will cause air-quality problems and which will contribute to erratic weather patterns in some of the most populated areas of the World ( especially in China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Middle East, North Africa and the US South-West ). And this will lead to food scarcity and pest-control problems; hence a massive increase in the risk of life-threatening/lethal disease epidemics! Hence social instability in countries that have nuclear and/or chemical weapons! ( OK: all this is actually expected...BUT...). 

But what is unexpected about this: failed states with nuclear/chemical arsenals and the dire need for the Super-Powers to cooperate on direct military interventions: so as to limit overall harm to general populations and mitigate the risk that those very same Super-Powers from going to war with one-another! Hence: a dangerous trend of ever-reduced civil liberties, freedoms and personal security! Hence: an ever-more dangerous, further erosion of trust between the general public and their respective governments! Which will lead to a massive increase in psychological breakdowns and the social disorder and related violence that will further harm our very need for social cohesion based on warranted trust: hence a whole new phenomena: psychological profiling and related witch-hunts! Hence the risk of a new dark ages. And given the kinds of dangerous technologies now in existence: a very real risk of total social meltdown and the subsequent high risk of a final, near-total, if not total, civilization collapse! --Jean-Pierre A. Fenyo

16. The development of mind-machine connections. While they will remain primitive in 30 years time, they will create a rift between those with the resources to afford their implantation and those who cannot. --Bradley Brown

17. I think the next crisis of truly global proportions will come from technologies that prolong life or even eliminate natural death. These technologies will inevitably and necessarily be restricted to a few. Not doing so would result in overpopulation, which would lead to forced birth control or mass starvation. Those who have these technologies will not want their enemies or those of whom they disapprove to live forever (would you allow a Hitler or a Stalin or even just a Castro to live forever?). Nations would want the balance of power that this brings to shift in their favor. But even in the unlikely case where none of this would happen, such technology would have to be deployed gradually and even if the intent were to make it available to everyone, those who are not at the front of the line would perceive it as hoarding and a denial of what they will surely claim is a "god given right".

 And then, of course, religions would get in the mix, calling this an evil and in opposition to the "clear" will of their god. However it happens, there will be two camps: those fervently in favor of it and those furiously opposed to it. This will lead to social unrest, widespread acts of sabotage, probably a few small wars, wildly disrupted economies, famines, plagues, rains of toads, cats sleeping with dogs, and Republicans and Democrats agreeing on something that has yet to be identified. --Claudio Puviani

18. A combination of events, which will result in over-population, lack of natural resources, an under-abundance of food stock, supply and sources culminating in a ridiciulously strained attempt to reach the stars, taking up more time, effort and money than it is really worth. --Stephen Ormsby

19. I see two upcoming problems, actually:

--The need to overhaul the global economic system. In an increasingly globalized world, "capitalism" tends to become associated solely with the U.S. model of industrialized society, while technological progress accelerates, along with obsolescence and resource depletion. This leads to disruptions due to environmental, cultural and legal differences between various countries/blocs; we will also see the need to overhaul the patent system and property rights, as well as redefine individual/collective responsibilities.

--A global religious crisis. With two of the three main Abrahamic religions in full recession - mainly in the highly-industrialized West - relegating proselytism as a secondary (less important) goal, fringe groups and extremist movements are likely to increase their public presence. The crisis of faith experienced mainly in the West will expand across the globe as more people under moderate regimes in developing nations will follow similar paths of questioning, enabled by technological progress and more discoveries in fields such as of bio logy (genetics) and astrophysics. While a truly global jihad seems unlikely, the tensions between believers and agnostics/nonbelievers will continue to grow, and this is bound to lead to cultural upheaval, with hard-to-foresee consequences. --Alex Savulescu

20. Shortages of critical materials for technology, pharmaceuticals, etc. Every environmental and problematic issue boils down to human population, however. We're trading quantity for quality, and there is nothing to stop it. You can't even bring the subject up without a volley of insipid, formulaic, unthinking responses, one of the first of which will be "Why do you want to murder people, you monster?" Given that every path to a survivable future involves some sort of conscious, deliberate action on population, like NOW, I don't see any path that saves us.  --Hank Fox

21. The biggest problem? There are two, I think, and they are intertwined. Climate change and the death of the oceans. --Michelle Connor

Thank you to my many bright readers for their wisdom and insight! We will need a generation of creative, ambitious, and far-seeing problem-solvers to face the unexpected over the next few decades. While not every suggestion was exactly "unexpected," all conveyed the passion of people who think seriously about our path ahead.  The kind of folks who read the literature of tomorrow.

My best-known aphorism is CITOKATE: Criticism Is The Only Known Antidote To Error. Here, we have attempted to shine light into possible (potentially dark) scenarios for the future, foreseeing various obstacles and stumbling blocks we may encounter along our path to creating a brighter future.