Entries Tagged 'politics' ↓

This thread is worth following. In the past couple days:

-Jamais Cascio posted an interesting essay on “The Big Picture“, looking at the important drivers for the next 20 years.

-Prag Programmers published “Augmented Reality: A Practical Guide” (See O’Reilly’s post)

-Schneier posts about using cell phones to detect nuclear radiation. Those in power will want this to detect terrorists, but it will also shine a light on the transport of nuclear fuel and waste.

The futurists are theorizing, the alpha geeks are playing and writing software. It won’t be long until we get a political crisis because of data that citizens weren’t supposed to collect.

A gambit is a chess opening in which material (usually but not always a single pawn), is sacrificed in order to achieve an advantage.

Kasparov was arrested for leading a demonstration against Putin. Following his arrest, he was photographed flashing the v-sign to the media and supporters.

Putin may be a smart man, but he is being severely out-maneuvered by a brilliant strategist.

Paul Hawken, interviewed with Bill McKibben on Blessed Unrest and Deep Economics:

The United States is a confused place, traumatized by war, confused by its media, underserved by its health care system, insecure economically, arrogant in its policies, and unsure of its identity. The country as a whole is internalizing the inner climate of so many, and this gnawing rise of anomie is eating away at the core.

Being familiar with many of the most common cognitive biases is not only useful to lead happier lives; it’s also becoming essential for survival.

Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes. We pursue things that won’t make us happy and perceive the world as more violent than it really is, even as wars have decreased by orders of magnitude. The availability heuristic affects how we (mis-)spend money on security, including in information security.

Jamais Cascio nails it when he says we have trouble envisioning a future that isn’t catastrophic. He appropriately concludes:

Sometimes, being a futurist isn’t about making forecasts or spotting trends.

Sometimes, being a futurist means acting as a civilizational therapist.

All the essays, books and videos linked above can help us do our individual part for this civilizational therapy project. Have fun

I have been a fan of Kiva since Jamais Cascio wrote about them on worldchanging. Kiva works on a simple idea: 20 people in rich countries can each lend $25 to a person somewhere half-way around the world. It’s small change for us, but that $500 can be enough for a borrower to build a decent livelihood.

99.7% of loans made through Kiva are repaid. It’s easy, cheap and changes lives; a lot of people love the idea.

They’ve had trouble keeping their servers up after receiving mainstream media attention, so when news came out that Oprah was to feature them I figured they might crash hard. They were only down for three 20 minute periods. 94,000 people visited the site that day, and 4388 new registered users lent $145,000 - more than triple their previous week’s total.

With two years of operation, Kiva has managed to get some solid data on repayment. Their knowledge and experience is paying off. What mainstream media recognition they are getting is richly deserved.

Because of the sudden influx of loaners, they have run out of businesses to fund. This is an excerpt from their site:

We’ve funded EVERY business on the site!!

[…]

With your help, one day we’ll run out of businesses forever. We at Kiva.org look forward to the day our website ceases to be a functioning microfinance site and instead becomes an online museum dedicated to showing future generations what we used to call “poverty.”

Efficiency Measures Could Cut Data Center, Server Energy Use by Half, or how to get suckered by the anti-Kyoto crazies.

A few years back a story circulated meant to stir FUD against Kyoto. The gist went something like this: computers are using a huge percentage of our electricity consumption! If the US signs on to Kyoto, we will cripple our high-tech economy! oh noes!

The story keeps getting reused, recycled and repurposed. In that way at least, it’s green.

It makes for great marketing material if you’re selling SUN servers (see my comment: That VP is pulling numbers out from where the sun don’t shine). “Data centers alone, Sun calculates, account for 2-3 percent of total world energy use.” That of course is completely outrageous.

Now it’s the EPA’s turn to release numbers. They’re not quite as crazy as SUN’s: now US data centers only consume 1.5% of US electricity (as opposed to energy!). Even the usually sane Worldwatch Institute is being used as a megaphone for this ideologically-driven hack-job (it also got reprinted through Worldchanging).

First off, the EPA report clearly says they’re estimating these numbers:

These energy consumption estimates were derived using a bottom-up estimation method based on the best publicly available data for servers and data centers. The estimation was performed as follows:

• estimated the U.S. installed base of servers, external disk drives, and network ports in data centers each year (based on industry estimates of shipments and stock turnover);
• multiplied by an estimated annual energy consumption per server, disk drive, or network port; and
• multiplied the sum of energy use for servers, storage, and networking equipment by an overhead factor to account for the energy use of power and cooling infrastructure in data centers. (EPA report: executive summary)

Estimates multiplied by estimates, multiplied by an overhead factor. Makes you feel confident public policy is based on sound advice, doesn’t it?

If the numbers were true, it might matter. However many vendors are already trying to sell more energy-efficient servers, and data centers are also looking for cost-effective ways to save money. It’s unclear what the US government could do that the market isn’t already doing.

It’s also doesn’t matter in the sense that energy use in data centers shouldn’t be considered in isolation. Servers are also displacing other energy-intensive applications. If people file their income tax through a server, that’s energy that wasn’t used to transport paper - let alone pulp wood and printing costs.

The EPA report had two objectives. One was to create FUD, the other to delay action. It’s worked admirably well.

I got asked by a friend what I thought of the potential of Facebook to help non-profit and advocacy groups.

Facebook can seem scary. Spammers and spying came up as concerns. Spamming simply isn’t a concern unless your profile is there for everyone to see. However, it would be difficult to design a better intelligence gathering tool to spy on specific activists or map networks. (It would of course produce far too many leads and false positives, although CSIS would probably try to use it for that.)

Canadian law enforcement spies on many innocuous progressive groups. Before the APEC summit, the Raging Grannies and other groups were under surveillance by the RCMP. Don’t trust those flowery dresses, those grannies are commies! Amnesty International are terrorists! The Anglican Church are hell bent on destruction!

So you see, those crazy anarchists that go to logging protests and anti-globalization marches are likely to have pretty thick files. If you think that’s paranoid ranting, read this book: Whose National Security? Those activists probably shouldn’t use facebook for organizing - although they should assume they are being spied on anyways. If a strategy requires secrecy, it’s almost certainly a bad one.

The concerns I have with facebook are that it’s a closed garden, and that all that is written there belongs to a corporation. It is however a very good organizing tool for spreading the word - politically savvy groups should use it while keeping an eye out for more open alternatives. That should include blogs and more usable websites, something most advocacy groups still haven’t clued in to.

After reading about carbon offsets on davidsuzuki.org, I decided to check the prices for the “Gold Standard” vendors they listed*:

planetair.ca - $38, CAD $43.30 with taxes (site includes emission calculators for air travel, road travel and home)

myclimate.org - SFr. 40.00, about $35 CAD.

sustainabletravelinternational.org - $16.12

climatefriendly.com - $19.93

atmosfair.de -  $29.31

Not all carbon offsets are created equal, but these are the best in the world. Clearly, these organizations are still learning to find cheaper ways to finance green projects. This is both expected, and a good thing; it’s the whole point of creating a trade mechanism for these credits.

(*) Not all websites give you a straight price per ton. PlanetAir, MyClimate and ClimateFriendly were all easy to use. The other two required using their calculator to get a price per ton:

• For Sustainable Travel, I picked calculated a package of 4.2098 tons of emissions for $64.20, or $16.12 CAD per ton (today’s exchange rate).
• For Atmosfair, I picked a flight that resulted in 4.1 tons of emissions for 83 Euros, CAD $29.31 per ton.

There’s a lot of people with a thirst to change the world. Giving them tools they find credible is the only way you move them to action. Signing petitions just won’t cut it.

On top of the amazing depiction of what is taking place, there’s a simple message: raise a fuss, contact your politicians, make them know that you care and that you want them to do something. I am trying to convince myself to believe this could work, although i admit that i’m feeling very disillusioned with our political structure.

That’s a very common reaction for activists to hear. Many try to convince you that your letters and petitions will, in fact, make a difference. The net result is that most people take in the information, feel paralyzed, do nothing and end up even more depressed. Information alone won’t change the mind of a politician, let alone most people. That’s fairy-tale thinking.

danah boyd is incredibly smart, thoughtful, caring and informed. The quote is from her entry on The Devil Came on Horseback, a documentary about the genocide in Darfur. I honestly can’t fault her for being disillusioned with her political system, and I wouldn’t dare try to argue that point with her. If people like her can’t really use the message of the activists, rabble-rousers and documentary filmmakers, there’s a problem with the message.

If you use a video of the proceedings of the House of Commons in Canada, prepared to receive a legal nasty-gram as reported by Michael Geist in House of Commons Demands Takedown of YouTube Video. They don’t even care that parody is protected.

I have to admit to some disappointment that I still haven’t received any government response to my opening up MP data (Please don’t sue me).