NEVER MIND! The whole premise of this earlier post is pretty much busted by this news. Fact of the matter is that the dedicated can get anything they want from anywhere, anytime. Of all people, I shouldn’t have had to be slapped in the face with that particular cold fish. /ME REDACTED
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Nevermind: LAN vs. Cloud Security a Red Herring
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=1197
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Calorie delusion: Why food labels are wrong
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=1187
Counting calories
nobody
Score » 75 out of 100 (75%) Result » Thanks for taking the quiz, we hope you found it informative! Read more in our article The calorie delusion: Why food labels are wrong.
Quiz School Take this quiz & get your score
Counting calories » Quizzes Read the full article from NewScientist.com
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The Delectable Dysfunctional Death Diet
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=1149
Yummy, yummy! Let’s gobble down that delectable dysfunctional death diet! Oh yeah, baby! Go right on ahead and take sides with the 18th century industrialist foody fashionistas; or, maybe consider this and this and ask whether MORE HEALTHY YEARS is enough of a motivator to change human behavior.
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Use Paypal, Get Locked Out Every Time
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=1121
Here we go again. As we’ve been writing here and elsewhere for years, PayPal also assumes that you’re an 3vi1 h4X0r if you protect yourself from ID theft and other data crimes using COTS encryption. Every time I’ve used my PayPal account over the past two years, using my ID protection, this is the email that comes in — like clockwork — within a few hours: Hello Michael Silverton, As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your account. We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party. We have limited access to sensitive PayPal account features in case your account has been accessed by an unauthorized third party. We understand that having limited access can be an inconvenience, but protecting your account is our primary concern. Case ID Number: PP-aaa-bbb-nnn For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. To review your account and some or all of the information that PayPal used to make its decision to limit your account access, please visit the Resolution Center. If, after reviewing your account information, you seek further clarification regarding your account access, please contact PayPal by visiting the Help Center and clicking “Contact Us”. We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks, PayPal Account Review Department Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page. PayPal Email ID PPxxx Right. “We noticed an issue.” Who writes this dreck? I’ve tried a hundred times to ask PayPal to specify the “issue” and they never do. I’ve volunteered PGP keys; asked to added to a whitelist of anonymizer users; I’m willing to go along with Strong Authentication; but PayPal, Google, and others simply are not willing to support User Managed Encryption in any meaningful way. If I turn off my ID protection before I go to the PayPal site, then this doesn’t happen. I’ve repeated and confirmed this a dozen times, at least. So add PayPal to the list of enemies of encryption, and specifically, to the list of enemies of Anonymizer’s commercial ID protection. Finally, if you’re reading this, please don’t waste your time trying to “explain” to me why this happens. I know exactly why it happens: BIG COMPANIES ARE LAZY CHEAPSKATES. Bloated companies don’t want to support public key encryption, because it’s easier and cheaper to just call all protected traffic “suspect” and ignore legitimate users. Clueful users are such a small proportion of the population that they can safely ignore us; so they do just that.
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Web 3.0 HTML 5 Culture Clash: Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=1077
While it seems the pinnacle of tautology to say once again that open source standards must Hold The Center for web development; here I am, repeating the obvious once again, for the sake of the oblivious, who will never even see this. . File under #fatal #futility I suppose. . Yet, the risks to the individual and society of failing that core mission continues to fuel whole NPO’s and even NGO’s. Itemization of risks is not required, but obviously hold paramount the requirement ”to protect the user’s security and privacy online ...” as reminded by Jay Sullivan @ 36:15 @ Google I/O. . Meanwhile, as of just this week, there is now apparently no longer even the chance to clear your Authentic Human Existence with CAPTCHA on Google. Last week, they’d hammer you with a CAPTCHA for the unsavory act of protecting your own traffic, credit card data, SSN’s, etc. by daring to use an anonymizing proxy for search. . Today, you’re just apparently OUT OF LUCK, all because you’re protecting your ID from theft using fully paid, commercial, off-the-shelf encryption; at least that’s the case with Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.5.7. . If I turn off my privacy proxy, the exact same request goes right through without a hitch. Turn it back on, we go back to this:
Please, spare me the condescending, “well, you might have done this or that …. or multiple requests that might look like bullshit … or whatever.” I’m using search like I’ve always used search, nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. Google is simply becoming increasingly intolerant of privacy. Why do you think Google started crowing about how they defend privacy against backwater regimes? Because they want you to compare your baseline expectation to North Korea, rather than to your own historical norms. Help me Obi Wan Templeton, you’re my only hope.
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Bernie Madoff, Scapegoat
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=992
On Huffpost: Yes, he stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people. I know that’s upsetting to them because rich guys like Bernie are not supposed to be stealing from their own kind. Crime, thievery, looting — that’s what happens on the other side of town. The rules of the money game on Park Avenue and Wall Street are comprised of things like charging the public 29% credit card interest, tricking people into taking out a second mortgage they can’t afford, and concocting a student loan system that has graduates in hock for the next 20 years. Now that’s smart business! And it’s legal. That’s where Bernie went wrong — his scheming, his trickery was an outrage both because it was illegal and because he preyed on his side of the tracks. Had Mr. Madoff just followed the example of his fellow top one-percenters, there were many ways he could have legally multiplied his wealth many times over. Here’s how it’s done. First, threaten your workers that you’ll move their jobs offshore if they don’t agree to reduce their pay and benefits. Then move those jobs offshore. Then place that income on the shores of the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes. Don’t put the money back into your company. Put it into your pocket and the pockets of your shareholders. There! Done! Legal! But Bernie wanted to play X-games Capitalism, run by the mantra that’s at the core of all capitalistic endeavors: Enough Is Never Enough. You have the right to make as much as you can, and if people are too stupid to read the fine print of their health insurance policy or their GM "100,000-mile warranty," well, tough luck, losers.
Here’s the full article.
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Obama Cracking Down On Tax Havens (huffingtonpost.com)
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Remix for Progressive Effect
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=976
Inadvertently stumbled across this remix on a slow starting Saturday morning, due to Pandora playing in the background. To recreate: 1. Queue up 04.18.09 NPR Weekend Edition’s interview with Joe Queenan, author of "Closing Time". 2. Queue up the following 4 artists/songs: NiN / Suck, Tool / 46&2, RATM / Killing in the Name, Massive Attack / Teardrop. 3. Mix volumes to taste. "Over the course of time, I got tired of listening to middle class and upper middle class people’s stories, and I got tired to listening to their problems, ‘cuz they didn’t have problems. You know, problems are food, problems are shelter, or problems are somebody down the street has got a gun. Problems are not ‘my daddy doesn’t appreciate me enough’ or ‘I didn’t get into Middlebury,’ those aren’t problems. I wanted to write about what poverty is really like. I wanted to make it clear to people that we don’t all come from the same background. Just because I speak this way, and just because I’ve been to La Sorbonne, and just because I’ve read Marcel Proust: I didn’t start out like you, and there’s a lot of people like me. Don’t you ever think that we all started out the same way, and don’t you ever take your own good fortune for granted.” — Joe Queenan This remix of NPR segments with industrial metal (or anything, for that matter) strikes me as an interesting idea to play with later; overlapping progressive music with progressive dialog.
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Long-Term Outlook - Shilling’s INSIGHT - March 2009
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=946
Courtesy of the relentlessly intrepid Big Picture thinking of Barry Ritholtz:
The deepening recession and spreading financial crisis is the beginning of the unwinding of about three decades of financial leverage and spending excesses. The process will probably take many years to complete as U.S. consumers mount a decade-long saving spree, the world’s financial institutions delever, commodity prices remain weak, government regulation intensifies and protectionism threatens, if not dominates. Sluggish economic growth and deflation are the likely results.
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Jon Stewart Skewers CNBC, His Finest Hour Yet
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=940
Possibly Stewart’s finest hour, yet.
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The Tyranny of Dead Ideas
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=909
Journalist and former Clinton administration adviser Matt Miller discusses his new book “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity.” Miller is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a contributing editor at Fortune magazine. He’s also an award-winning contributor to The New York Times and a commentator on National Public Radio. Miller spoke at the Commonwealth Club of California earlier this week. SOURCE: Minnesota Public Radio Dead Ideas:
Things will always be better; our kids will always do better economically than we have. Free Trade is good, no matter how many people it hurts. Your company should take care of you. (Why are companies saddled providing healthcare, for instance?) Taxes hurt the economy and are always too high. Schools are a local matter. Money follows merit. We live in a just meritocracy.
What we can do about them:
Only Government can save Business. Only Business can save Liberalism (because Free Market pays for social justice programs). Only Higher Taxes can save the economy and the planet. Only Lower Upper Class can save us from Inequality. Only Better Living can save us from sagging paychecks. Only a dose of Nationalization can save local schools. Only lessons from Abroad can save American Ideals.
Will be rebroadcast on Feb 27 on KQED.
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Job Application
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=858
Hello to my fellow digital native interwebz tweeple. I’d like to once again suggest that the era of top secret insider trading 19th century paper resume fluffing and pimping is long over; therefore, you are reading this open application even before the hiring board members and founding team leaders read it. In part because, today, every hiring manager is participating in an increasingly open and transparent team-building process wherein new norms need to be modeled both from the bottom up and the top down. Individually, none of us is perfect; however, each can pledge to continually do our best to fulfill our own part in building a more sustainable, adaptable, accessible world, moving forward. As always, I look forward to learning from the next steps of this ongoing, collectively co-constructed and implemented experiment called life. Subject: Revolutionary startup seeks C-level consumer Internet professional (palo alto) Date: 2009-01-27, 8:41AM PST Position and company highlights: –very competitive salary plus significant equity –work within a dynamic team within a unique, growing company Requirements: –Excellent grasp of Consumer Internet growth strategy, methodology and measurable prior experience. –Ability to design, implement and manage local and regional marketing plan Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster. Please, no phone calls about this job! Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests. Cover Letter Hello, Below, please find my resume, comprehensive digital identity, and more background check material than one could readily pay for: http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/ I am interested in working with the team to attain category leadership through continuous creative innovation in parallel with superior business execution. I believe it is important that we seize the current global market opportunity to model more sustainable, adaptive business norms, derived from already proven best practices. Therefore, I am interested in a progressive company structure; one that enthusiastically adopts a 20x multiple salary cap on all executives; obviously, including myself. Please see http://tr.im/sharedfate for the concept. We can work out the math together if we agree with this principle. I am also interested in a company whose equity structure improves upon the now defunct winner-take-all VC model, by proportionately rewarding each and every team member with an equity stake that parallels the prescribed salary caps, above. We may need to work together to create that new model from scratch. I understand legacy VC risk-reward philosophical justifications; however, we are in a new environment that requires more realistic thinking and recalibrated expectations for what constitutes reasonable returns on capital, moving forward. Within a day-to-day team context, I am consensus-driven and prefer a role wherein I can help to provide the team with the tools and resources required to achieve its objectives; however, wherever consensus conviction or clear direction are lacking, I am able to articulate creative, actionable strategic visions and pragmatic tactical product marketing road maps, as required. I will constantly challenge the team with original, sometimes orthogonal, and even unorthodox thinking. Upon a foundation of daily Specific Task Accomplishments, I will encourage cognitive diversity and open, transparent communication among all team members. I will advocate for a company culture derived from the final published issue of the Whole Earth Catalog, as recently highlighted in Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, namely: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, @silverton Related articles by Zemanta
Steve Jobs on the Stupidity of Living in the Past and Uncertainty of the Future [Steve Jobs] (i.gizmodo.com) “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” (longnow.org) Remember the Whole Earth Catalog? (greatthinkers.suite101.com)
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A-List Attitude Check
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=855
Ever run into an alleged A-lister at a conference or public gathering somewhere and been snubbed or shrugged off like a nobody? Just remember, that’s more of a negative reflection upon them, than upon you; and they haven’t done JACK compared to the true class act legends of the industry. Scroll to 5:25 mins in the video below to find out how the true “A for Authentic” A-listers behave versus those “A for Ass” listers. Choose your future persona in advance.
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Bruce Sterling, Frontiersman
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=848
We were twapping about Web 4.0. Right, yapping; as everything associated with twitter gets a “tw” makeover these days.
From the tweets and blogs I’ve been scanning of late — I actually feel like I’m catching up a tiny bit thanks to the magic called Feedly — the whole Obama thing seems to be sparking a kind of Mass Reverie. So why not join in? I probably should, as I could sorely use the practice at joining in. As a young child I was fascinated, even obsessed, with pioneers; those peculiar humans walking point for society and in some cases the entire human race; you know, like Lewis and Clark, Charles Lindburgh, Ameila Earhart, Madame Curie, people like that. Later, at around age 12, that fascination merged with what I perceived as a kind of ultimate productive pioneer philosophy, when I read Any Rand’s The Fountainhead. Little did I know at the time, my mother was probably experimenting on me to see if she could perform the nifty parlor trick of parading a 12 year old who had read the 645,000 words contained in Atlas Shrugged. She succeeded, and I lived the rest of my relatively maladaptive teen years magically thinking that if I only kept my eyes on my own paper and fully applied myself, I would one day meet the real John Galt and be spirited away to the Colorado Valley, where I could fulfill my destiny as a co-benevolent, co-equal capitalist empire board member. Peer to all mankind; neither superior nor inferior to any, because I’d successfully escaped the fallen world of socialist leeches and morons all around me. I was just a tweeny, so give me a little break, okay? However, it’s not too hard to imagine how this would lead to the experience of feeling like one was surrounded by an entire society that Doesn’t Get It. After all, when I tried to relate to my fellow sixth and seventh graders on the playground with, “Who’s hotter? Dagney Taggart or Dominique Francon?” or, “do you think they are really the same person in different books?” It didn’t exactly win friend and influence people. Well, it did influence them, but not so much in my favor. Toss in a few generations of genetic predisposition to substance abuse, and yeah, well, that’s pretty much a basic setup for an entire life of just not fitting in. What does all this have to do with Bruce Sterling, Frontiersman? I’ll try to connect the dots. After watching Kevin Kelly’s TED talk about the Next 5,000 Days of the web and the Internet of Things, I decided to dig a bit deeper — maybe still searching for John Galt at some vestigial emotional level — and consequently discovered Bruce Sterling. Sigh. He’s not John Galt. However, he did give this talk at Google two years ago and it prompted me reflect upon the most recent decade of life, during which time I indeed accomplished at least some version my Pioneering Dream by working for a decade in the 1990’s and ultimately building the first symmetric Gigabit Ethernet To The Home networks from 1999-2001; promptly after which I finally joined my True Peers, or in Jonathan Livingston Seagull terms, My True Flock, in that soaring mystical realm where pioneers actually most often end up: face down in the mud with arrows in our backs. After a few years of existential convalescence and cognitive behavioral therapy, I realized that pioneering was perhaps not all it was cracked up to be. I know: I’m a slow reader, even slower learner. Maybe I just needed to write a 650,000 word treatise, set on an Asmovian stage, fleshing out the hypocritical failings of objectivism. Nah, too reactionary. Or maybe I just need to find a bar stool next to Reverend Jesse, enlessly reminiscing about back in the day. Nah, too recitivist. Still, after investing forty-some years into a certain way of thinking and being, it’s a little difficult to take a completely new and different approach. Actually, it’s not so difficult personally, but difficult sociologically, because our culture of Industrial Era hyper specialization and interchangeable human parts seriously discourages such change. I mean really seriously discourages it; as in, “you shall now be rendered permanently unemployable and homeless” -type serious. So, the best that I could manage at the time was to backpedal from the pioneering mindset to the frontiersman perspective. A long time loyal friend and ally helped me to find a gig where I could contribute to work on planning for the California High Speed Rail (HSR), which finally recieved a thumbs up vote from California voters. With the encouragement of a great mentor, I helped the City of Fresno to flesh out plans to deploy Smart Cards for their mass transit system; which should eventually plug into the Bay Area TransLink system and HSR, for a truly regional transportation grid. These were great and rewarding projects, but still left me scrapping in the Wage Slave salt mines, far from that mythical Colorado Valley. Not that it would matter these days, I don’t even actually like the weather in Colorado all that much. The people and geology are awesome; but snow? Not so much. This is supposed to be about Frontiersmen, though. Those second-order sociologically innovative souls who follow the trail of blood, sweat, and tears left by the pioneers; who take advantage of the environmental signals left behind by the forgotten and disparaged heroes of yore. Those who seek out shadowy map etchings left on rocks and word of mouth folklore-accepted-as-fact; clues that, though gossamer, do cloak veiled hints about new threats and new opportunities in a new terrain just at the horizon. This is imporant: at the horizon, not over it. Frontiersmen are just too restless and relentlessly curious for the Settler lifestyle. They understand that they are not normal Settlers, yet they constantly seek approval in the form of the satisfaction gained when seeing new wagon trains of Settlers move into a new area and claim it as their own; even claiming that they discovered the place. Whatever. Frontiersmen often name places, things, or trends tentatively and the names don’t often stick. It’s not the names that matter, its more about the process, the progress, it’s about the constant migration toward a New, More Abundant and Sustainable Normal for Everyone. Then, having arrived safely at our Next Big Future, we immediately begin probing the fringes of possibility once again, scanning the skies for circling vultures — icons of ugliness to most, but daemons of progess to us — which point the way again toward those once brave souls, ever face down in the mud with arrows in their back. We hope for even a barely legible scrawled out message, scaps of a not-quite-accurate map, clenched in that now frozen, eternally noble, white-knuckled fist called ultimate persistence and determination. It may be true that constructing oneself as a Frontiersman is still a relatively unwinnable role in terms of widespread contemporary acceptance; after all, even a successful Frontiersman like Sterling was met with a surprising number of blank stares and slack jaws amongst many of the apparently best and brightest at Google. Yet, at least frontiering is a slightly more survivable calling, as there’s more hope for the Frontiersman that the hard work, creativity, and imagination that we bring to bear upon society’s common challenges and opportunities will somehow evolve into something that gets completely past our neologisms and simply becomes “the way we live now,” as Bruce puts it. Wagons, ho.
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HOWTO: Reduce Seesmic Blustering Blather
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=830
Nice presentation of a technique I’ve used myself. In fact I think I tossed a “speakers notes” feature into the request bin at Seesmic at some point. Might be nice to see some kind of AJAXy scratch pad people could use right inside the production space. I know, I know, it’s never enough for the ever-demanding users. The new interface is a great leap forward, Team Seesmic. Congratulations.
I only wish I could invest more time at the site, a 1.4x playback like Bloggingheads.TV would help, as would implementation of the renamed “Conversation As Content” monetization model that I originally proposed under the awkward and overly-literal user as content banner. The latter is not an alternative to present revenue plans, but would be a very innovative complement to existing ideas. In this case, I cannot even lead the horse to water, though; I can only see Horse over There and Water over Here and whistle and coax and encourage and hope that somehow the message gets through and we all get what we’re looking for in the end.
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Goodbye, Mr. President, Hello
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=827
I could rant 10,000 regrets at the end of the Bush Era, but really, this says it much better because this is the generation looking to us for leadership into a better way of life.
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What we have here is a failure to communicate
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=812
In the process of apprehending and communicating the inevitability of The Postscarcity Scenario; in assessing the implications of forging a new Capitalism++ economy; in architecting a 22nd-century-looking Pragmatic Virtual Marketplace that is most adaptable to Accelerating Change, that enables, empowers, and rewards the growing numbers of Users as Content (aka, Conversations as Content); while grappling with the emergence and rapidly expanding prevalence of Augmented Cognition — both Social/Cooperative and Technological/Bio-embedded — we are engaging in exercises to which the Global Warming communications challenge might pale in comparison. “Biting off more than we can chew” would be a masterpiece of understatement in describing the multi-front global institutional and structural transformation underway.
Caption: Eagles are way out of their depth dealing with white swans, let alone black ones. However, there are many important things we can learn from the experience of educating humans about Global Warming. The effort was not only to convey the urgency of global warming, but to Spur Changes to Human Behavior based upon logic and reason, given new, substantiated information. The Research Channel program The Science of Communication explores the complex interactions between information, knowledge, communication, and meme transmission that can induce beneficial new human behaviors. At about 18 minutes into this program, we gain some nice substantiating information about Attention. As an aside, I suspect that attention itself will be experienced as a kind of Final Scarce Resource in the later stages of the Postscarcity Scenario; perhaps still a century away in it’s most palpably inflective consequence. The screen captures below may make a useful accompaniment to the program, should you find it of sufficient interest to view. In the out-of-context context presented here, the final speaker can probably be skipped, unless you are in the business of presenting scientific findings to the media; in which case, DON’T MISS IT!
Arthur Lupia reminds us that attention and memory are pathetically limited. It’s about creating great moments within speeches — or any communication — which will be recalled by the hearer. What people remember is only a fragment of what you present; AND, it may not be what you want them to remember.
This slide contains an augmented social cognition participant’s Three Commandments:
“Because of the bottleneck of ATTENTION, people aren’t going to be paying attention much to what you have to say, and they’re not going to be able think much about what you have to say. So how do you get them to think about things? The idea is, it has to be really relevant to them.” - Arthur Lupia.
Why it drives us crazy to try to convince people of what is Data-Derived Common Sense:
“The fact that you have a title, the fact that you have previous accomplishments, that doesn’t guarantee credibility; credibility must be bestowed by an audience, and it’s based upon the things THEY want.” — Lupia Perceived Trustworthiness + Perceived Knowledgeability = Addressable Attention Potential
Thinking about “under what conditions will someone believe me” is very important, and we can’t take for granted that they will.
“If I have a target audience, why would they pay attention to me? Information transmission is trivial, anyone can do that. Trying to get people to THINK, to give them new beliefs and skills, that’s a different idea altogether. To get their attention, somehow you have to demonstrate to them that their current belief doesn’t work, in a way that affects them. How do you do that? You take down the level of abstraction; you make things real, you make them close, you make things personal. You’re always in a constant battle of attention. The bottleneck doesn’t change just because you have good ideas; and the competition for attention is ongoing. For you to win the battle of attention, it’s important to think about how [your listeners are] viewing things and what their capabilities are.” — Lupia Awesome slide by Molly Bentley, BBC America
While this post has nothing to do with Postscarcity, per se; the hope is that it will help us to better communicate why the Postscarcity Scenario matters, and what we as everyday people can and should do to attain the greatest benefits.
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Just for the Record
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=786
States’ Funds for Jobless Are Drying Up - NYTimes.com We told you so: Progressives were right about the financial crisis but were ignored. Will they be listened to now? - Salon.com
Both of these articles thanks to @wa8dzp!
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Time to Stop Asking Last Century’s Nobel Winners What to Do Next
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=765
I’ve challenged myself with this question: why do we keep declaring defeat of Industrial Capitalism 1.0 instead of its victory of productivity; productivity that is completely off the charts? This is perhaps a better foundation for Capitalism++. The PAST was good and it work in that context; today, we are obliged to build for the NEXT 50, 100, 200 years, bringing to bear the best of our collective, quantitative, and intuitive forecasting capabilities. Perhaps the only problem we really have here is a failure to understand and embrace the SUCCESS of Industrial Capitalism in a way that allows it to take it’s rightful place in American history, while we move forward into possession of all the promises that it made from the very beginning. If we’re actually becoming so efficient as a society and economy that a 70% (and then 60%, 50%, etc) labor participation rate — with our robots and computers doing all the heavy lifting and repetitive information processing — can provide 110% of all required Goods and Services for the entire population, plus sustainable exportable surpluses; then why do we not Claim That Victory Now and move forward with http://usbig.net/ In part, perhaps we’ve been stuck in this loop because we keep looking to people who keep giving us the same roadmaps to 1921. Literally, you’ll find this in the interview, below. Without further ado, some excerpts from an interview with Columbia University Nobel Prize winner Edmund Phelps. During this sleepless late night interview by BBC’s Steve Evans, I scribbled some notes in the margins of this interview. Those scribbles are included below. They’re scribbles, okay? This is just thinking out loud, mostly unedited, with all the attention due any forgotten Dropped Packet. Here’s the thing about dropped packets: retransmission of the exact same data can re-establish and maintain continuity of the connection, right? :-) Steve Evans (Q): Is the current global downturn a permanent indictment of capitalism? Edmund Phelps (A): “It’s a tremendous black eye for capitalist economies As Presently Constructed.” Me: Implying what? No less than reconstruction in a “tremendously” different configuration. We’ve been calling that Capitalism++ for the past half year or so. Yet, Nobel Prize Winners have a definite interest to putting things back together in a way that helps reinforce validity of their awards. Q: So we don’t ask bigger questions about the role of regulation or how GREED operates within a capitalist system? No bigger toughts as there were in the 1930’s? A: “Oh, I’m always ready for a Big Thought, but my Big Thought is that we DESPERATELY NEED capitalism in order to create Interesting Work to be done for Ordinary People. Unless maybe we can go to war against Mars or something as an alternative; we’ve gotta have a healthy business sector; that’s ALWAYS been understood by our Great Leaders over the PAST 100 or 200 years.” Me: So, humans don’t need MEANINGFUL WORK, but “interesting,” and we Nobel Prize Winners know what is required to provide “intersting work” for your feeble, wandering, inept Ordinary Minds. Me: Further, we should therefore keep reconstructing the bygone PAST 200 YEAR; an Emerging Industrial Era’s Military Solution to human productivity. After all, where is your Nobel prize to prove your ideas have even the slightest merit in the eyes of the world’s most petrified academic status quo? Q: How did we get into that world then, where it was assumed that all would be for the better, the less that government did; where the Great Centers of Learning propounded what you now say is Completely Wrong? A: “It was probably and over reaction to The Gospel of The Left in the 1940’s and 50’s in which every problem was something for the government to solve and governments were excellent at solving all problems, and markets were of little use. That was an extremely harmful doctrine because it didn’t allow as much economic freedom for people as they might otherwise like to have but because it didn’t look to grass roots people to do innovation and then express their creativity and then develop their insights. So, economists began to reject that interventionist, big government doctrine, but they swung too far, they didn’t know where to stop. Note to self: Double check with mom-in-law and friends about real street level economic freedom in the 1940’s. Me: Always love a Definitive and Authoritative answer that start with “probably.” And right, “grass roots people” don’t ever intrinsically “do innovation.” Right. Okay. Oh, surely you KNEW it would be somehow blamed on The Left, right? Tossing in the pejorative Gospel for good measure. Q: These are supposed to be brainy people, these economists; I mean, you’re talking about the University of CHICAGO for goodness sakes. I mean, how did A view, which you say is false, so SWEEP the intellectual world? A: “Well, part of it was a hatred for what went before it. Another element is that economists admired tremendously the brilliant technical work that was going into the mathematical models that group up in the 1970’s. And these models had NO ROOM for regulation. These models described markets as SELF-REGULATING.” Me: Part of it? Maybe even a really big part of it, perhaps? Like maybe a 90% part of it was essentially an Emotional Hijacking in nifty math’s syntax? And rooted in hatred; always such a helpful, objective foundation for Domestic Policy. And how surprising! Math with NO ROOM for what we already found emotionally inconsistent with our own world views! How utterly unexpected and shocking. Or not. Me: Finally, ah yes, the ever-entangling allure of brilliant technical work. Where have we heard The Smartest Kids In the Room Syndrome before? Oh, yes, that little pre-global tremor we affectionately recall as Enron. Q: So finally, if we were Slaves to the Elegant Mathematics of the previous few decades, and a policy maker were to now say to you, okay, what are the Do’s and Don’ts as you try and work a sensible way FORWARD, what briefly would you say to them? A: “Well, I think we need to reconstruct economics on the principles that were first introduced by Frank Knight in 1921 and John Maynard Keynes in some of his writings as early as 1921 also. We have to recognize that the potential innovator faces uncertainty. Entreprenuers face difficulties about which they are uncertain in trying to develop a new, innovative idea. Managers, in evaluating a new thing, face uncertainty. Capitalism has done an Amazingly Good Job at bringing out the innovativeness of people in a great many countries; BUT there’s ALWAYS GOING TO BE A DOWNSIDE, there will always be some costs. Perhaps, the one that’s most INHERENT and the one that we will perhaps never get rid of, is CYCLICALITY. We’ll always have a tendency to Pin Our Hopes on Something and then find that we’re wrong; and then the economy will come to a shuddering stop and we’ll have a “scary” downturn. Me: Brilliant, so the way forward should be based upon cutting edge 1921 Economic Understanding. Yes, brilliant indeed. But then, I don’t have a Nobel Prize, so who the hell am I to question such obvious global expertise, right? Me: WHY is there ALWAYS going to be a downside? Because you have a Nobel Prize and use five syllable words? No, that’s not going to be good enough this time. And even if there is such an inevitable cyclicality, WHY does it have to always IMPACT the same people to the same degree of disempowerment and stripping away of individual liberties to CHOOSE one’s daily WORK endeavors? Short answer is: it DOESN’T have to be this way just because the high priests of 1955 proclaim it so. Me: “Scary” downturn is so obviously relative. Maybe it’s merely “scary” if you have to park the fourth car temporarily; but it’s Utterly Devastating, Time and Time Again to those in the Bottom 95% who provide the Entire Supply of Human Energy to operate this supposedly most marvelous machine. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that we can’t do better. I know WAY too many smart people who have thought through a wide range of solutions, not least of all, a Basic Income that provides a permanent hedge against poverty. A2: “I like to think of a talented composer, a very productive composer. Is every day an up day for him? Of course not. There are going to be periods in which the composer is in a slump; in which he doesn’t have new ideas, in which even sometimes he may be despairing. But that doesn’t mean that the composer has not been highly productive over his life.” Me: Okay, so really there is nothing more at stake than your latest symphony, folks. Everything is just fine, so long as we follow the 1921 blueprint for building toward the 22nd century. Got that? Good. I’m glad we’re finally all on the same page. Steve Evans (Host): “No doubt then, governments are busily speed re-reading their Keynes.” Me: Perfect, that’s just the outcome I’d be hoping for. How about you? I’m feeling so comforted and confident now. SOURCE: BBC World Service, Business Daily, 10.12.2008 Addendum On Greed: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7775056.stm Collaboration on Friendfeed: CapitalismPlusPlus
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