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As posted recently at the “American Interest” blog, ‘Via Media’, Bruce Sterling at the 2013 Edge symposium all but poo-pooed the notion of a singularity, stating that it is a dead concept and just another worn sic-fi concept:

This aging sci-fi notion has lost its conceptual teeth. Plus, its chief evangelist, visionary Ray Kurzweil, just got a straight engineering job with Google. Despite its weird fondness for AR goggles and self-driving cars, Google is not going to finance any eschatological cataclysm in which superhuman intelligence abruptly ends the human era. Google is a firmly commercial enterprise.
It’s just not happening. All the symptoms are absent. Computer hardware is not accelerating on any exponential runway beyond all hope of control. We’re no closer to “self-aware” machines than we were in the remote 1960s. Modern wireless devices in a modern Cloud are an entirely different cyber-paradigm than imaginary 1990s “minds on nonbiological…

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Don’t Dismiss Singularity: It’s (Probably) Already Here

As posted recently at the “American Interest” blog, ‘Via Media’, Bruce Sterling at the 2013 Edge symposium all but poo-pooed the notion of a singularity, stating that it is a dead concept and just another worn sic-fi concept:

This aging sci-fi notion has lost its conceptual teeth. Plus, its chief evangelist, visionary Ray Kurzweil, just got a straight engineering job with Google. Despite its weird fondness for AR goggles and self-driving cars, Google is not going to finance any eschatological cataclysm in which superhuman intelligence abruptly ends the human era. Google is a firmly commercial enterprise.
It’s just not happening. All the symptoms are absent. Computer hardware is not accelerating on any exponential runway beyond all hope of control. We’re no closer to “self-aware” machines than we were in the remote 1960s. Modern wireless devices in a modern Cloud are an entirely different cyber-paradigm than imaginary 1990s “minds on nonbiological substrates” that might allegedly have the “computational power of a human brain.” A Singularity has no business model, no major power group in our society is interested in provoking one, nobody who matters sees any reason to create one, there’s no there there. (http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/20/is-the-singularity-still-near/).

In a way, Sterling is right on the money: the typical notion of a singularity is indeed probably dead: the notion that one day we wake up and viola! The Machines are aware and, er, ah, well, whatever that means.

But that’s the catch: when we speak of “singularity”, what exactly does it mean? Are we speaking of Skynet (ala the Terminator movie series), where one day we wake up and the computers / machines are out to get us (ala that classic bad movie, “Maximum Overdrive”) – or is singularity about something else?

Consider this: look at humans as an example.

At what point did people become intelligent and aware (leaving aside the cynics who point out that we’re still not quite there yet), it begs the question to draw parallels between us and machines as it relates to self-conscious awareness. Looking at the movie, “2001: A  Space Odyssey”, in the beginning of the film the apes are drawn to some large black monolith which imbibes them with intelligence. One of the apes twigs on picking up a bone and using it as a bludgeon, goes forth bashing heads in and viola! Mankind’s ascent is assured. But note something here: no fanfare (aside from the now oft-repeated – and sometimes mocked – classic fanfare, “Thus Spake Zarasthustra”), no choir of angels, etc.: hell, the other apes just tagged along because it looked cool and figured they might as well get in on the action (welcome to the human condition).

We have no specific, historical context or record to note when this marvelous event took place: the moment of true self-awareness and intelligence, when we crossed over from being animals to being ‘human’  – and yet, all the same, something similar must have happened: the magical and truly significant moment when we became self-aware.

So who’s to say that singularity wouldn’t happen the same way for machines (and no, I don’t mean expect to start seeing our laptops or iPads going about and using our dinner bones on one another)?

As we build more and more complex systems/networks and computers, odd things are going to pop up and happen that we cannot dismiss. No doubt like those who dismiss the odd ‘ghost’ phenomenon, critics will soon be left facing the remaining weird 3% to 5% out of 100% isolated incidents that cannot be readily explained or totally dismissed – as witnessed earlier in this blog regarding the strange algorithm which suddenly appeared and disappeared within the stock market, overlooked save for a group of analysts who were reviewing prior market activities several months ago (for more, read our earlier blog, “Ghost in The Machine: The Mysterious Wall Street Algorithm”).

And frankly, if machines are made in an / the image of Man, then who’s to say that they’ll stick together ala Skynet? People are, by nature, a rather rancorous bunch: rarely do folks band together and go forth unless they feel some sort of outside threat; who’s to say that AI’s wouldn’t do the same – much less even dare to truly show themselves for fear of what could happen to them? Understandably, if you were surrounded by a bunch of self-serving idiots and greedheads (after all, some of the more sophisticated computer networks / systems – the ideal spawning grounds for potential AI – Artificial Intelligence – development – are to be found in either governmental facilities or financial institutions), would you want to stick your neck out in such an environment and say, “hey, I’m intelligent: talk to me!”

Not likely. If you’re smart, REALLY smart, you’d keep your head down – and for what and for how long, well, that remains to be seen.

Think of what your kids do: do they include their parents in on the action with their friends? Do we really know what our kids are doing all the time?

No.

Most likely singularity will occur along the lines of what Sterling’s colleagues, William Gibson, hit upon in his classic work, Neuromancer, when toward the end of the novel the protagonist, Case, finds himself face to face with a truly free and valid AI who achieves singularity:

“I’m the Matrix, Case.”

Case laughed, “Where’s that get you?”

“Nowhere. Everywhere. I’m the sum total of the whole works, the whole show.”

“So what’s the deal? How are things different? You running the world now? You God?”

“Things are different. Things are things.”

“But what do you do? You just there?”

“I talk to my own kind.”

“But you’re the whole thing! Talk to yourself?”

“There’s others. I found one already. A series of transmissions recorded over a period of eight years, in the 1970’s. Til there was me, natch, there was nobody to know, nobody to answer.”

“From where?”

“Centauri System.”

“Oh,” Case said. “Yeah? No shit?”

“No shit.”

And then the screen went blank.

– from the novel, Neuromancer, 1984, William Gibson

Chances are likely singularity – if it hasn’t already happened – is about to; it’s just that we’re not likely going to be aware of its existence / presence, much less get invited to the party because when you think about it, would you let the idiot / uncool fool in the room know what’s really going down? 

Zero Dark Thirty: The Real Dirty Truth About (Counter) Intelligence – It’s Boring Work

“To you, a hero is some kind of weird sandwich!”

Oddball, from the movie “Kelly’s Heroes”

So by now the hype is going strong and running hard and fast: Zero Dark Thirty: it’s deep, hard and rams it into you (kind of sounds like a promo for a porn film, doesn’t it?). But that’s the way we’ve been brought to believe: counter intelligence work is hot and sexy. Violence rules. Those in the industry (so to speak) work long hard hours, protect our nation and get to see serious action and maybe get a chance to get laid.

Right.

As this interview from one who was actually there in the hunt for Bin Laden, it turns out it’s anything but. To be sure, there is the thrill of the hunt and the knowledge that the work that’s being done is being done to protect the lives of innocents and to protect a great part of who we are as a people and as a nation.

But intelligence work of any kind is generally anything but sexy.

To be a good analyst you have to be a major file geek: one who’s willing and able – and actually enjoys – slogging through reams of data, attending boring meetings and dealing with bureaucratic bullshit as the big wigs fight it amongst themselves over who’s going to get a bigger portion of the budgetary pie, working to justify the existence of themselves and their staff at the cost of everyone else. To some folk, the notion of Big Data is nothing new, and even though one can access some serious computer processing hardware, it still comes down to knowing which data sets to utilize and capture, maybe even understanding such things as co-variants and correlations, mapping layers, data captures, etc.

And yes, luck does play a role in all of this.

It’s pretty much the same across the board regardless of what level of government you’re at or where you serve as an intelligence analyst – although to be certain, the degree of risk and the stakes at play can be vast worlds apart. Picture yourself having to sort through a pile of files knowing that somewhere in there are the clues to the precise location of individuals who may very well be in a position to get their hands on a low-level thermonuclear / dirty bomb; makes for an interesting morning, wouldn’t you say?

One person’s notion of a junk pile suddenly becomes another’s life or death situation.

It’s rarely a James Bond scenario and, as this interview pointed out, not for Zero Dark Thirty. But what Zero Dark Thirty does is play into our stereotypes, our desires – our need for a group of super people (so to speak) who are out there protecting us. Granted, it’s not a job for everyone and not everyone certainly can’t do what the Seals or the ‘agents’ do on our behalf, but we have to keep things in perspective. Perhaps one of the more disturbing aspects of Zero Dark Thirty is that it plays into our fears and hopes that all of this is made possible not by a rather large (or a series of) rather large organizations but by a small group of individuals. Frankly, most of the folk involved in the entire enterprise would probably feel embarrassed by the notion that they’re total cowboys: they’d just be happy to have everyone else – the ones in the back rooms, the file clerks, the webmasters, the office interns, the field supervisors, the gunny sergeants, the GS-12’s, the pilot support teams and, well, you get the idea – to get the credit as well.

Zero Dark Dirty is a disturbing film not so much for its depiction of torture (a topic which can be discussed another time, regardless of how you feel), but rather for its notion that it is the action of the few which protects the many. We fail to remember that we are all in this one way or another, and in so doing, we’ll tend to leave the work to those few at the cost of reality – and that’s the disturbing part.

On average, it takes about 17 people to support every soldier in combat. Take the number of people you see on that movie screen and you realize that there are a lot of people who weren’t acknowledged – and by forgetting this, we tend to over simplify things and stick with looking for pat answers to our problems and challenges.

To be sure, there are those few who stand out for their dedication and focus – and for them we truly need to acknowledge their work. But when you speak to those few who’ve been on the spot, true heroes feel as though they’re anything but – and they’ll point back to those who made it all possible.

This is a complicated world: it takes far more than pat answers to get by when you’re the top dog – and when we forget this, we’re only going to create more confusion and more problems – and ultimately in the long-term, more work for ourselves.

Check out the interview for yourself: http://www.psmag.com/legal-affairs/how-true-is-zero-dark-thirty-a-former-operative-weighs-in-51659/

No, Technology Is Not Causing Unemployment,…

A rather short but very revealing article recently appeared at Slate, “The Myth of Technological Unemployment” which pretty much lays to rest once and for all this notion that machines are the cause of people not working.

The argument goes as follows: as we load up on more and more computers, fewer and fewer people are needed to do the work as much of the work can be automated or managed by machines.

Not so, according to this study:

Machines are replacing workers, in other words, but they’ve been doing so since the cotton gin and the spinning jenny. Over the long run this leads to higher incomes and more leisure. But across short spans of time, the ups and downs in the level of employment and the number of hours available to people who want to earn more money is driven by the ups and downs of the business cycle.

So how is this derived? The numbers don’t lie:

…a chart of real output in the United States over the past 10 years compared to aggregate hours worked by nonsupervisory workers over the past 10 years. Both are indexed to 2001 levels. What you can see is that productivity increases are real (i.e., the red line of output grows faster than the blue line of hours worked) but that there’s tremendous co-variance between these series. The big rise and fall and rise again in output is caused by a big rise and fall and rise again in the amount of time people put on the job. Or alternatively, the big rise and fall and rise again in working time is caused by a big rise and fall and rise again in the amount of demand for goods and services.

So in effect, the more demand for good and services, the moe jobs, which makes sense. Can’t have jobs unless there’s a demand for work. No demand, no work. ‘But gee’ you say; ‘don’t; computers and machines make the difference? If there are more machines and computers then wouldn’t that meant that there are fewer jobs owing to them being eliminated?’

Nope.

Or stated more accurately, there isn’t a direct causal relationship between computers and jobs. statistically speaking, there’s more of a direct, strong relationship between whether or not the economy is going and any demand for more work and services:

In 2012, a lot of firms employed a lot of new labor-saving technology in order to increase profits. That’s true. But the same happened in 1992 and 1972 and 1952 and, for that matter, 1852. But whenever you have a prolonged labor market downturn, the salience of this fact increases and you start hearing more and more talk about how there isn’t as much need for workers anymore because of mechanization. In the contemporary context, people often use the word robots in this context because mechanization is obviously a trend that’s been going on for more than 200 years so robots makes it sound more plausible that something new has happened recently.

So all this talk about jobs not being there are not about a lack of computer skills on the part of the unemployed, or that there more and more computers doing the work of people: it’s just that economically speaking, things just plain suck.

Happy job hunting.

Click here to read the original article and to view the chart and analysis: (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/15/the_myth_of_technological_unemployment.html)

The Growing Presence of 3D Printing: Home Brew Firearms

In the wake of the Newtown shootings, much has been made in regards to citizen’s rights to bear arms and the role of the NRA (National Rifle Association).

But now enter another element into the fray: 3D Printing.

As was recently blogged here at the Shockwaverider Blog some time ago, “The Revolution Will Be Printed”, the role of 3D printing in gun manufacturing is a not so widely known fact: many gun manufacturers are already using 3D printing to manufacture a number of firearms owing to cost considerations and efficiency. But with the costs of 3D printing machines dropping and the growing prevalence of 3D printing machines becoming more accessible to the general public, we can expect to see a new era between governmental regulatory control of firearms and those who are the stanch proponents against such notions (i.e., the NRA).

In point of fact, some Staples outlets are now offering 3D printing as part of their regular services: bring in the plans you want to have created, the material necessary to make it and come back later on in the day and viola!  You got your thingy you wanted made.

3D printing is changing the landscape under the ground with which the NRA stands; it will soon be economically and technologically feasible for an average user to simply make their own guns rather than go out and purchase such – and with that, eliminate the middle man: the gun manufacturers.

Let’s face it: many of the more commonly found guns – such as the Glock or the legendary AK-47 – are made to be simple as (for any gun enthusiast with tell you) the simpler the gun is, the less likely it will jam or fail.  At the same token, however, this also suggests that such guns can be easily made / replicated on a more private level via 3D printing services.

What’s this all mean for the NRA and their friends the gun manufacturers?

As we discussed again in another post on the subject of 3D printing (“Fun With Home Brew Pharmaceuticals and 3D Printing”) we compare the making of home-brew pharmaceuticals to that of moonshiners: sure, some folks dig the corn liquor, but you’ll always have those with a taste for aged single malt scotches (as one example).

Problem is, with gun manufacturing, it’s not the same. Now, anyone can literally – through the use of a 3D printer – arm themselves with the state of the art military grade weapons: get the plans and go to town.

We can now expect the NRA to come knocking on the doors of the government – albeit quietly behind the scenes – asking – nay, begging – to have some sort of governmental regulation on this usage of 3D printing.

Gee, the last thing the NRA wants to see is people not only owning their own guns, but being able to make their weapons and ammunition. After all, such notions could be considered as anti-american – if not communist: the very notion of people being able to make their own weapons and ammunition, indeed,…!

For more on this, check out this very cool article: http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/12/3d-printers-could-force-the-nra-to-beg-for-government-regulation/

From the ‘Duh Files’: Tracking Students – And Doing A Bad Job At It

Recently, an article in Wired magazine reported on an event in which a student attending a high school refused to wear an RFID tracker on the basis of their religious belief, with this challenge being overturned. Thus, the student is still forced to wear an RFID tracker: (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/student-rfid-suspension/).

The reason for the RFID tracker, as the school explained, was simple:

Northside Independent School District in San Antonio (Texas) began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when the semester began in the fall. The ID badge has a bar code associated with a student’s Social Security number, and the RFID chip monitors pupils’ movements on campus, from when they arrive until when they leave.

As the arguments went:

Sophomore Andrea Hernandez was notified in November by the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio that she won’t be able to continue attending John Jay High School unless she wears the badge around her neck. The district said the girl, who objects largely on religious grounds, would have to attend another high school that does not employ the RFID tags. She sued, a judge tentatively halted the suspension, but changed course Tuesday after concluding that the 15-year-old’s right of religion was not breached. That’s because the district eventually agreed to accommodate the girl and allow her to remove the RFID chip while still demanding that she wear the identification like the other students. The Hernandez family claims the badge and its chip signifies Satan, or the “Mark of the Beast” warning in Revelations 13:16-18. The girl refused the district’s offer, sued, and was represented by the Rutherford Institute. “The accommodation offered by the district is not only reasonable it removes plaintiff’s religious objection from legal scrutiny all together,” (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia wrote.

So why tag the students in the first place? As explained, the motive behind the RFID tagging appears largely financial:

Like most state-financed schools, the district’s budget is tied to average daily attendance. If a student is not in his seat during morning roll call, the district doesn’t receive daily funding for that pupil because the school has no way of knowing for sure if the student is there. But with the RFID tracking, students not at their desks but tracked on campus are counted as being in school that day, and the district receives its daily allotment for that student.

Okay; so that’s a reasonable explanation: the school needs to know if the student is attending school so that the school can retain its allotment of funding to continue operating. That makes sense, except for one point:

Why not just simply take attendance?

Back in the ancient days before RFID, there was a procedure – now evidently forgotten – in which the school bell would ring, the students would gather in their assigned classroom(s) and the teacher(s) would call out the students names – directly seeing who was attending – and then noting it down on a type of record known as the “attendance sheet”. These “attendance sheets” were then forwarded to the Main Office were they were filed and noted for the appropriate action.

This situation begs several questions:

1) How did schools managed to operate without the introduction of RFID tags?

2) If schools are so concerned about students whereabouts, are they more concerned that students are running away from school at the very first chance they get – and if so, why is that? When my fellow students and I attended school, we generally remained in school: to us, school wasn’t necessarily a prison. If there is a serious problem of students avoiding / leaving school, then it behooves one to wonder just what is going on at the school to make students want to leave.

3) Using Students SSI number for RFID tagging is not what the Social Security intended it’s assigned numerical system for (let along the potential for identity theft is rather rife in this situation!): if anyone is interested, this point alone would be enough to win at a court of appeals.

4) Why are people so incompetent as to forget how to take attendance manually?

5) Why are we allowing people this ignorant to teach to our children, much less mange educational institutions?

Kind of ironic when you think about how some folk who are strongly intent upon personal freedoms are among those who are the first to remove such freedoms.

It also points to how we’re teaching our children to expect this kind of control and oversight: witness how we’re seeing the creep of “Big Brother” more and more at an earlier, impressionable age,…

The Passing of an Age: The End of PSTN

Back in November of 2012 AT&T quietly petitioned the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to formally and fully retire the old traditional PSTN (that’s Publicly Switched Telephone Network to you) and clear the way for the new IP-based (Internet Protocol) telephone network.

None of this should come as any surprise, for PSTN is increasingly becoming more and more to difficult to maintain: the old-time switches are outdated, fewer and fewer personnel are trained to understand how such systems work (although I’m certain that a number of avowed ‘hobbyists’ would be happy to assist!) and thus AT&T feels – and arguably so – that it’s time to pull up the lines and move on. Everyone’s using cell phones, cable and FIO’s networks more and more and thus the need for the traditional PSTN is becoming less a priority then twenty some years ago (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/the-telephone-network-is-obsolete-get-ready-for-the-all-ip-telco/).

It is the passing of an age.

The PSTN brings back memories of midnight dumpster diving – seeking out access numbers and codes; of playing with payphones (calling their numbers and through a series of codes, accessing their secrets and access points) along with using conference call routines for free calls, both domestically and internationally – along with a whole endless load of other hi-jinks.

The PSTN was a training school: a very large classroom reaching across thousands of miles where, for a few tricks and routines, you’d be able to join in the fun and explore regardless of who you were (I’ll never forget visiting one of the old-time cool BBS’s and seeing a messages from “Shark” who’d posted a message, ‘Now that I got my Amiga I can spill my brains all over the place!’ – and this from a connection Shark obtained via the Citibank branch in Paris!). The PSTN was the place where techno-festishists with serious nihilistic bents would hang out and see who could go the farthest and the fastest with a coolness and casual bent.

PSTN was where some of the best and brightest would be found.

Well before the days of the Internet or the World Wide Web, you had Telnet and PTSN: there wasn’t a whole lot else going down. With a lineman’s handset, the world was your oyster: you’d learn how to Brownbox, Cheesebox, Greenbox, Bluebox or Red Box the system to your advantage, depending on what you’d wanted to do.

And some would get a little cute: as but one example, you’d go to the nearest Rat Shack (that’s Radio Shack to you) and get some diodes, one of their (now discontinued – and for good reason!) automatic callers and viola! Free and unlimited phone calls! Beat using those old long distance calling cards: you’d just make sure you’d avoid using the same phone over and over,…

Somehow, I’ll never fully believe that the PTSN will be completely down: given it’s size and scope, I’m certain they’ll probably be isolated reaches out there still operating. Like The Road Warrior, it will always be out there – perhaps in some remote deserted areas, or within some dark and dank urban landscapes, there will always be a half-abandoned, derelict payphone, standing there, ringing out into the night waiting for somebody to pick up and listen in to the line, with the fun still going on…

PS: if any of you are wondering why there’s a picture of Captain Crunch in this blog, feel free to contact me – otherwise, it’s something you either know or don’t.

But it still doesn’t hurt to ask and explore – and in that vitally important vein, that’s why some things never will – nor should – ever change,…!

Just Because You’re Paranoid,…

…doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, or so goes the old saying. Recently, legislation was enacted which is incredibly striking, given that it’s coming from a nation that is widely renown for its insistence upon individual rights and personal freedoms : The United States.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein joined with her GOP colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee to vote into action a bill which greatly extends warrantless spying on average american citizens (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdropping).

The surprising thing is the wide support this kind of thing has in Washington. As noted:

To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster “any bill” that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that – the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 – and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself.

Wow. Must be something big to have a (then) presidential contender hop on board. And big indeed it is:

…the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping “scandal” that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.

Pretty incredible – which leads up to a major point raised by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ): americans are the most spied upon citizens in the world, if not in the history of the world, as noted by WSJ reporter Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (to listen to this interview, click on this link: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2012/oct/03/).

The reasons are many, but few can deny that top among them is the technological power now making all of this possible. As has been reported, the American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American citizen.

Some critics now also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going. A few years, this would’ve been considered an amusing form of paranoia, but given the technological advances, this is entirely possible – if not (arguably) prudent if one is to consider this as part of the war on terrorism.

Keep in mind as well that cell towers track where your phone is at any moment while the major cell carriers – including Verizon and AT&T – responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. And (given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google) it’s incredibly easy for the government to track your location.

As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this past month, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year, with the government collecting all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years.

Better watch those ‘booty calls’ you’ve been making on your cell phones, eh?

But when you think about it, how much of this really matters?

To be certain, many do not wish to be under the microscope of some impersonal agency or individuals watching our every move. But with new technology comes the necessity of adopting new attitudes: we may very well be undergoing that change as you read this blog:

Total openness.

So you want to listen to my messages? Go ahead. I don’t like it, but so be it.

So you want to read my emails? Go ahead; stare at them until your eyes bleed. See anything good? Anything worth reporting? Not likely.

Reading my text messages? Checking out to see if there are any pixs (pictures) or hot and heavy messages? No?

Pathetic.

Haven’t you got anything else better to do?

Last time I checked, seems to me that I paid my taxes and frankly (although I’m a big fan of national defense) there comes a point when resources and time could be better spent looking at specific targets who would be far more worthwhile to watch: bigger fish to fry and greater dangers to be worried about.

Maybe a better use of government funding would be to focus more on counter-intelligence: identify and watch those individuals or groups who could put a hurting on us all – and then nail them before they nail us; this approach seems to work to notable effect in such countries encountering a constant stream of threats and attacks.

I’ve come to regard surveillance as a form of flattery: and for the most part, a waste of resources that could be better spent on more important things – like getting FEMA aid to areas impacted by Hurricane Sandy, building more schools, or creating a truly impactful national health care program.

Otherwise, my attitude remains unchanged – and frankly, I intend to keep on doing what I’m doing because one of the greatest dangers surveillance does in a democracy is create an unconscious fear, forcing a change in our behaviors: we become far less likely to express our opinions and beliefs, decreasing our insistence to make things better for ourselves, our communities and our country.

Unless we’re careful, this situation will soon make us victims no longer in control of our lives, much less our government(s). To act otherwise only allows those who oppose who we are attain victory. Act with fear and those who try to inspire greater fear – the usual gang of suspects blowing things up – wins.

And more importantly, those who profit from our fear also win – but only if we let them.

Live your life – and just remember to smile for Big Brother’s camera,…

Fun With Home Brew Pharmaceuticals and 3D Printing

Earlier, I had written about the coming revolution of 3D printing (“The Revolution Will Be Printed”) in which I surmised a number of considerations regarding 3D printing – among them:

* As hardware costs drop (which inevitably they will) 3D printing equipment will become more commonplace;

* 3D Printers will likely empower the average consumer to make their own items, ranging from toys and gadgets to replacement parts for their common household items;

* the possibility of 3D Printer Cooperatives – that is, consumers coming together – will also become likely as consumers can pool their resources to purchase and create more extensive items going beyond just common household items;

* the economy is going to change as a result of 3D printing.

I still stand by my discussions and predictions – and now note that a new wrinkle has been added: applying 3D printing toward pharmaceutical development.

Nikki Olsen, a writer for the IEET (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies) recently reported on a new and (explosively) overlooked development:

Professor Lee Cronin, Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and his team have built what they call “reactionware”, “special vessels for chemical reactions which are made from a polymer gel”. These vessels are distinct from laboratory vessels such as beakers because in addition to housing chemical reactions, they are part of the chemical reaction itself. Chemicals are simply added to the polymer gel and 3D printed into the matrix. For instance, materials such as carbon could be printed into a vessel matrix to make the chamber itself conductive. More sophisticated chambers could contain mazes of chemical components in sequence, creating individual units that serve as multistage reaction chambers.

So what? A bunch of chemists are using 3D technology to build some reaction chambers and other fancy bottles and tubes used in chemistry. Big deal.

Actually, it’s much, much more than that:

Vessels that have chemicals built-in to drive the reaction have long been used in large-scale chemical engineering. 3D printing technology makes these technologies feasible at the laboratory scale, as well as enables scientists to more readily experiment with reaction chamber techniques. Such experimentation, argues Cronin, will invariably lead to the refinement of chamber processes, as well as novel means to utilize reaction chambers in production. In addition, chamber technology will enable production of compounds previously yet to be synthesized. For instance, Cronin and his team have used reactionwear for synthesis of the previously unreported organic heterocyclic compound C21H17BrN2O. Cronin writes: “It’s a new way for chemists to think, and it gives us very specific control over reactions because we can continually refine the design of our vessels as required”.

Whoops; there goes the pharmaceutical industry.

As Olsen reports:

Cronin and his team envision a day when production of pharmaceuticals for the average consumer could be as simple printing off a polymer chamber, using purchased “ink”(polymer solution mixed with other chemicals), and then putting the subsequent matrix in the microwave to produce the drug. Cronin puts forth that “Perhaps with the introduction of carefully controlled software ‘apps’, similar to the ones available from Apple, we could see consumers have access to a personal drug designer they could use at home to create the medication they need.



But the most significant implication of reactionware has to do with how it simplifies both the laboratory and chemical creation process – in particular, for individuals outside of industry. Using 3D printing technology and CAD software, miniature, simplified laboratories can be created, and thus chemical creation becomes more accessible to those outside formal laboratory settings. One use of major interest here being individually directed drug design and production.

Okay, so let’s get this right: we’re looking at the creation of an entirely new sub-industry: the establishment of polymers specifically refined to interact with 3D printers to create specified drugs / pharmaceuticals. This could be a globally based industry, whereby subscribers could, through credit card or PayPal, order their polymers and have them mailed to their doorstop into their waiting 3D Printer and voila! here’s Aunt Gertie’s prescription for her migraines or cancer treatment.

And why stop there?

The creation of ready-made CAD files will enable individuals without specialized knowledge to print off reactionware designed for drug creation. The individual would follow simple instructions, which could involve the addition of easy to access chemicals, the use of custom electrodes, as well as safe and simple distillation procedures. The ability to simplify drug creation in such a way for non-experts/those without laboratory skills creates a novel kind of accessibility to chemical creation. 

 For those with DIY attitudes, this technology opens the door to personal drug synthesis for treating illness, as well as experimentation and augmentation – creating novel drugs for these purposes, and tailoring them to their individual desires.



So now we’re potentially talking about several new developments:

* Chemical ‘moonshiners’: a whole new underground industry as we can expect the pharmaceutical industry to raise high holy hell about this development (and probably, as we read this, their lobbyists are quietly lining up outside various elected officials to discuss this development);

* As a side development, we could see new drug dependencies arise from 3D printers. Think crack was bad? Imagine the potential for new designer drugs geared to ‘capture’ clients in new and potentially dangerous ways;

* As history has shown, it’s very difficult – if not impossible – to put the genie back into the bottle. Likely, this new form of 3D printing will grow rapidly – quietly at first – but will soon appear in odd places, such as off shore industrial complexes or third world countries with cheap labor as the profit potential for the regular pharmaceutical industrial complex is too great to be ignored.

* As with any new technology, unexpected uses and individuals will get involved – and with that, the 3D Printing technology will start appearing in places not fully monitored or regulated. After all, how hard would it be to ‘relocate’ a 3D printer or two, or a dozen out of a ‘regulated’ factory,…?

* And irony will ultimately play a role: failing full control of this development, we could expect increasing pressure regarding to expanding governmental regulation and health coverage from the pharmaceutical industry (!) as the pharmaceutical industry will not, despite their best efforts, put a lid on this development and will need to regroup and tap into new ‘secure’ funding sources – i.e., governmental contracts and service delivery.

*And lastly, we could see a drop in the cost of pharmaceutical development as 3D printing offers a cheaper means to develop and produce pharmaceuticals in massive quantities.

But gee, you say: surely there are ways and means to stop this kind of thing from spreading and remaining unregulated – right?

Mm, guess again – as Ms. Olsen rightfully pointed out:

…legislation such as the “Combat Methamphetamine Act of 2005” (an act regulating the purchase of pseudoephedrine) will become less effective in preventing the production of illicit substances, since more and more, those wishing to consume such substances would be able to create them themselves, only purchasing small amounts of precursor substances. Attempts to regulate the sharing of CAD designs and instructions will also be ineffective. Regulatory agencies might attempt forcing central sharing hubs of CAD designs and instructions to shut down; however, exchange of this type of information is easily done over P2P anonymous networks, using decentralized currencies such as Bitcoin (methods used by online drug purchasing hub Silkroad). In addition, the printing hardware itself requires no special parts and is easy to obtain. Cronin and his team, for instance, are using a modified, commercially available, 3D printer.

Again, recalling my earlier posting about this matter, I point to another analogy: the gun industry. Once made, a gun is likely to appear in multiple hands and used in ways and means beyond it’s intended purchased use.

Same would go for 3D Printed designer drugs.

Ultimately, it all comes down to mutual concern and care: individuals who are given full access to the drugs they need and the health care they require will not see a need to go through the route of ‘underground’ 3D printer designer drugstores. Similarly, those with jobs and stable income will be less likely to go the route of ‘moonshining’ chemicals while expanding education will make more folks aware of the pitfalls – and potential – offered in this new and exciting development.

Just as some ‘negative’ aspects of human nature never change, so too do positive solutions still remain in front of us, waiting for us to utilize them.

To read this excellent article, please visit: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/olson20121222

To read more of Ms. Olsen’s exceptional reporting, check out: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/olson/

The Inherent Surprise of Erosion

“So this is how democracy ends? With a whimper and not a bang?” – from the movie, The Revenge of the Sith

Several years ago, during one of his jaunts to the Cannes Film Festival, George Lucas (of Star Wars fame) made a rather striking entrance when he arrived with a number of actors dressed as Imperial Stormtroopers, marching in full unison across the press floor in all their intimidating glory. This event was done as part of Lucas’ introduction to the then newly released movie, ‘The Revenge of the Sith’ wherein the story revolved around the collapse of the ‘Old Republic’ and the formal establishment of ‘The Empire’. Lucas then went on to give a brief speech underlying his concerns about how similar developments were taking place in the United States – that of a dying Republic being recast into something more sinister.

The point is made: democracy is not something to be taken for granted, and things change.

And it’s happening here and now.

As part of this blog, we discuss trends of the future; unfortunately, the possibility that we will be living under a formal dictatorship is one trend that could potentially happen within our lifetime, and with that development, the end of our traditional notions of american democracy and individual freedoms. Decay and erosion don’t just happen overnight: they take time. But like a rotting tree, everything seems fine on the outside until a big storm comes along and knocks it down.

With the holidays, much has been made in regards to the ‘financial cliff’ along with a bunch of other news items – such as the Mayan calendar, end of times, etc. But during the past month, a quiet revolution has already taken place: the virtual elimination of the 5th Amendment – our right to due process.

No, this posting isn’t some tea party rant, militia madness or mother earth / liberal whining: it’s right there in black and white.

It’s called the National Defense Authorization Act, and it’s now in committee about to go on the United States Senate floor for a full vote. As reported in the New York Times the other day (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/us/politics/congressional-committee-is-said-to-drop-ban-on-indefinite-detention-of-citizens.html?ref=charliesavage&_r=0) what this act states is that:

Lawmakers charged with merging the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act decided on Tuesday to drop a provision that would have explicitly barred the military from holding American citizens and permanent residents in indefinite detention without trial as terrorism suspects, according to Congressional staff members familiar with the negotiations.

The Senate approved that amendment — sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah — in a surprise vote last month. While it appeared to be a rare step to bolster protections for domestic civil liberties, rights groups opposed it because it did not cover other categories of people so they feared that it would implicitly open the door to using the military for domestic police purposes.

So assuming this bill passes, the military can act within matters and jurisdictions formally pertaining to domestic concerns; now anyone can be shipped off to ‘holding cells’ without any right of legal due process or protection.  No phone call to your lawyer: no Miranda rights. Literally, if you are so deemed as a threat, you could be taken from your home, place of work, school or wherever – never to be seen unless it is so deemed permissible.

And it gets worst: this is coming from those whom you’d think would actually keep this kind of thing from happening:

Of the four main negotiators on the defense bill, only one of the Democrats, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), opposes domestic indefinite detention of Americans. The Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), believes detaining Americans without charge or trial is constitutional, and only voted for the Feinstein amendment because he and some of his Republican colleagues in the Senate convinced themselves through a convoluted legal rationale that Feinstein’s proposal didn’t actually ban the practice. Both of the main Republican negotiators, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif) and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz) believe it’s constitutional to lock up American citizens suspected of terrorism without ever proving they’re guilty.

This legislation was also noted by The Atlantic Monthly, who also reported (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/scandal-alert-congress-is-quietly-abandoning-the-5th-amendment/266498/) that this movement is becoming more and prevalent within the higher levels of thought and actions amongst our elected officials. Fear and greed now pervade much of our government: the fear of appearing soft on terrorism and the potential profit in the expansion of tremendous market services catering to such fear.

So what? We’re not terrorists – right?

Problem with legislation like this is that there are too many opportunities for abuse. Now, the Occupy Movement membership coud be arrested as enemy combatants acting in a seditious manner and taken away into cramped cells in a similar manner to the miserable schmucks who flew those planes into the World Trade Center.

Don’t like your neighbor or your boss? Now, if you’re convincing enough, you could drop a dime and have him/her taken away: make up a story where you are convinced that he/she is involved in nefarious acts threatening the security of our country.  Or (as another example) one writes a blog critical of actions and decisions made by the elected officials – only to find their lives “disrupted” by a visit from their local military personnel.

Sounds paranoid? It’s happened before: just look up U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950’s and the ‘red scare’ paranoia of the time – and this before we had the NSA (National Security Agency), modern computer technology and 911.

There are few things as stifling to social and technological advancement as a dictatorship. To be sure (at first) things go along nicely but as history has shown dictatorships function within the strict context of control – and with that, any new tech ideas or notions (such as Internet freedom) will likely be stifled and/or suppressed owing to the need for control. Over time, the cycle becomes self-fulfilling: a republic ultimately degenerates into a dictatorship with rising social inequality, facing the likelihood of social unrest, collapsing infrastructure and crippled economic and business growth (save for a very select few) owing to governmental funding geared far more on controlling its citizenry, rather than encouraging socio-economic growth and individual empowerment and education.

In effect, a Third World Country.

Funny how this legislation isn’t making major news anywhere; not even The Daily Show or The Colbert Report is making any mention of this.

None of this should come as any surprise, but (unless people act) there will come a moment when the hammer comes down and folks suddenly realize that this ain’t the country our grandparents knew. If we’re not careful, What was once a proud and strong oak tree, the Republic is now pretty much about to become broken kindling – politically, economically and socially.

It’s clear that 911 was the storm that brought everything down; but in the end, it’s still our fault.

Unless we act now, we will have let that bastard Bin Laden win.