describe gaining conciousnes of the institution as a person waking up on a
groggy morning after
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Sunday, June 5, 2011
the ant and the grasshopper
The ant only beats the grasshopper if you consider more misery worthwhile.
"America can be a superpower or a welfare state, but not both."
The Gates Farewell Warning
ok. i'm back from vacation, and i've now read this article. First, wow, ridiculous agenda pimping by the wsj. As for the specific arguments, i'll just ask how many $200+ million-dollar F22s does the author think it would take to withstand the army that 1.5 billion Chinese could send our way?
Seems to me, nothing short of our nuclear arsenal (which we've already paid for) would give us any margin for "victory," especially considering how long our economy could hold out after our biggest source for capital and most of our manufacturing base, strangely, decided to attack their meal ticket here on the other side of the world. So, if we are talking about military conflict with China, then, strategically, we'll just need to stick with our weapons of mass destruction and the mutually assured destruction that has kept modern nation-states from engaging in direct war with on another since Hiroshima.
And in any event, "superpower" is so passe. The cold war power relation paradigm is defunct. The superpower construct only works within a system of nation-states conflict. Within that system, a nation-state was the smallest denominator with the resource access to wage war against another nation-state--with superpowers dominating that system because they had the necessary resources to take on more than one.
But in a global system where 9 people can kill 3,000 in a day, superpower is just another word for target. Like the old gunslinger who spends his days taking challenges from young guns looking to make a name for themselves by taking out the legend, we are just waiting around to lose.
With regard to welfare? Whatever value we decide to place on the life of each american citizen, and how much effort we are willing to make to help each of them succeed through our collective agency, we can't afford to support the superpower illusion any longer. Not only is it financially crippling, but the costs to the american psyche to maintain this pissy dominance and petty, self-aggrandizing snobbery is making us the global asshole hypocrites that nobody wants to play with and which, ironically, is used to justify those who want to attack us...a truly vicious circle.
ok. i'm back from vacation, and i've now read this article. First, wow, ridiculous agenda pimping by the wsj. As for the specific arguments, i'll just ask how many $200+ million-dollar F22s does the author think it would take to withstand the army that 1.5 billion Chinese could send our way?
Seems to me, nothing short of our nuclear arsenal (which we've already paid for) would give us any margin for "victory," especially considering how long our economy could hold out after our biggest source for capital and most of our manufacturing base, strangely, decided to attack their meal ticket here on the other side of the world. So, if we are talking about military conflict with China, then, strategically, we'll just need to stick with our weapons of mass destruction and the mutually assured destruction that has kept modern nation-states from engaging in direct war with on another since Hiroshima.
And in any event, "superpower" is so passe. The cold war power relation paradigm is defunct. The superpower construct only works within a system of nation-states conflict. Within that system, a nation-state was the smallest denominator with the resource access to wage war against another nation-state--with superpowers dominating that system because they had the necessary resources to take on more than one.
But in a global system where 9 people can kill 3,000 in a day, superpower is just another word for target. Like the old gunslinger who spends his days taking challenges from young guns looking to make a name for themselves by taking out the legend, we are just waiting around to lose.
With regard to welfare? Whatever value we decide to place on the life of each american citizen, and how much effort we are willing to make to help each of them succeed through our collective agency, we can't afford to support the superpower illusion any longer. Not only is it financially crippling, but the costs to the american psyche to maintain this pissy dominance and petty, self-aggrandizing snobbery is making us the global asshole hypocrites that nobody wants to play with and which, ironically, is used to justify those who want to attack us...a truly vicious circle.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Thoughts on the new strategic calculus in foreign policy
especially when the standard unit for what constitutes a national-level, existential threat has decreased in size from nation v. nation in 1942 to nation v. (well-financed) rotary club in 2011. This is a result of our developments in science and technology that have exponentially expanded individual productivity in every arena of human endeaver, including its destructive capacity.
Currently, foreign policy making seeks to manage control of human populations only down to the level where they can be considered a threat to national security. In the 20th century, the enormous amount of resources it took to wage existential war meant that the only viable threats to nations came from other nations. Policy makers made their deals accordingly. Under this calculus, endorsing strongmen who can deliver a non-threat population ensures the security of the nation to because it limits the size of any potential opposition below the level of national threat--even while it guarantees some level of opposition by its nature. In other words, if it takes ten men to beat you, you can still win by pissing off only nine of them.
But in an era where 10 men can threaten 300 million, we need to re-evaluate that calculus. How long can we continue to operate even the smallest sized of these opposition factories when it takes so few to make so much destruction?
few disaffected souls to
The dominant paradigm of foreign policy was petrified around the notion that
Our developments in science and technology have exponentially expanded the human productivity in every arena of human endeaver, including its destructive capacity. Ironically, this shift in efficiency, which was pursued by nations to increase their power, may cause the end of nationalism altogether.
bought and paid for by a drive for national power, may cause the end of nationalism altogether.
nation-states by the n insatiable persuit of power by nations, will be the death of nationalism.
as information and technology have escilated the destructive capacity of the individual vis a vis its society. This shift in efficiency, while driven by the insatiable persuits of national power, will be the death of nationalism.
when the technical capacity of the individual exceeds the ability of forensic science to investigate, the few will destroy everything. imagine if you could program a mite-sized program to leave travel to your competitors store of its own volition and attack it; now imagine 10,000 mites.
Stuff like this is evidence that the dominant paradigm for global stability that has shaped foreign policy for everybody's lifetimes is beginning to crumble. We used to base our
there was a rate of exchange which says we will tolerate
Decisions were made about
the
Foreign policy making sought to manage control of populations down to the level where they can be considered a threat to national security. In the 20th century, the enormous amount of resources it took to wage existential war meant that the only viable threats to nations came from other nations. Under this calculus, endorsing strongmen who can deliver a non-threat population ensures the security of the nation to the extent it limits the size of the potential opposition. In other words, if it takes ten men to beat you, you can still win by pissing off only nine of them.
But the advance through modernity is beginning to change the math underpinning the entire security market. The developments of science and technology have exploded individual productivity, not only in business but in every arena of human endeavor, including its destructive capacity. If we now live in a world where 10 individuals can threaten 300 million, how many disaffected and disfunctional global citizens can we afford to create as the price for our autocratic buffer?
That means the world is probably going to get scarier in the short term. Imagine a room full of people where each individual had the capacity to end them all.
can we continue to support a system that
Correcting the calculations of national security will need to account
We can't keep making foreign policy through the paradigm which measure only national threats.
In that case, we can no longer rely on the efficacy of top-down control. We'll need to look to a much messier dynamic like individual buy-in.
technology has changed the math.
is a social good
with regards to ensuring the security of the nation.
The buffer autocracies are valuable to the central power to the extent they can prevent enough human and financial
get away with pissing off nine of them.
These buffer autocracies serve to lock down large swaths of the available financial and human resources that might have been used by national enemies; ultimately to become resources to be used against them.
However, the growth of human technology has begun to challenge the value of that exchange.
If we can no longer rely on top-down control, we need to put our faith in bottom-up participation.
Making foreign policy decisions based on controlling
Currently, foreign policy making seeks to manage control of human populations only down to the level where they can be considered a threat to national security. In the 20th century, the enormous amount of resources it took to wage existential war meant that the only viable threats to nations came from other nations. Policy makers made their deals accordingly. Under this calculus, endorsing strongmen who can deliver a non-threat population ensures the security of the nation to because it limits the size of any potential opposition below the level of national threat--even while it guarantees some level of opposition by its nature. In other words, if it takes ten men to beat you, you can still win by pissing off only nine of them.
But in an era where 10 men can threaten 300 million, we need to re-evaluate that calculus. How long can we continue to operate even the smallest sized of these opposition factories when it takes so few to make so much destruction?
few disaffected souls to
The dominant paradigm of foreign policy was petrified around the notion that
Our developments in science and technology have exponentially expanded the human productivity in every arena of human endeaver, including its destructive capacity. Ironically, this shift in efficiency, which was pursued by nations to increase their power, may cause the end of nationalism altogether.
bought and paid for by a drive for national power, may cause the end of nationalism altogether.
nation-states by the n insatiable persuit of power by nations, will be the death of nationalism.
as information and technology have escilated the destructive capacity of the individual vis a vis its society. This shift in efficiency, while driven by the insatiable persuits of national power, will be the death of nationalism.
when the technical capacity of the individual exceeds the ability of forensic science to investigate, the few will destroy everything. imagine if you could program a mite-sized program to leave travel to your competitors store of its own volition and attack it; now imagine 10,000 mites.
Stuff like this is evidence that the dominant paradigm for global stability that has shaped foreign policy for everybody's lifetimes is beginning to crumble. We used to base our
there was a rate of exchange which says we will tolerate
Decisions were made about
the
Foreign policy making sought to manage control of populations down to the level where they can be considered a threat to national security. In the 20th century, the enormous amount of resources it took to wage existential war meant that the only viable threats to nations came from other nations. Under this calculus, endorsing strongmen who can deliver a non-threat population ensures the security of the nation to the extent it limits the size of the potential opposition. In other words, if it takes ten men to beat you, you can still win by pissing off only nine of them.
But the advance through modernity is beginning to change the math underpinning the entire security market. The developments of science and technology have exploded individual productivity, not only in business but in every arena of human endeavor, including its destructive capacity. If we now live in a world where 10 individuals can threaten 300 million, how many disaffected and disfunctional global citizens can we afford to create as the price for our autocratic buffer?
That means the world is probably going to get scarier in the short term. Imagine a room full of people where each individual had the capacity to end them all.
can we continue to support a system that
Correcting the calculations of national security will need to account
We can't keep making foreign policy through the paradigm which measure only national threats.
In that case, we can no longer rely on the efficacy of top-down control. We'll need to look to a much messier dynamic like individual buy-in.
technology has changed the math.
is a social good
with regards to ensuring the security of the nation.
The buffer autocracies are valuable to the central power to the extent they can prevent enough human and financial
get away with pissing off nine of them.
These buffer autocracies serve to lock down large swaths of the available financial and human resources that might have been used by national enemies; ultimately to become resources to be used against them.
However, the growth of human technology has begun to challenge the value of that exchange.
If we can no longer rely on top-down control, we need to put our faith in bottom-up participation.
Making foreign policy decisions based on controlling
Monday, April 25, 2011
today
I'm working at my computer and i'm thinking that I would like to listen to some symphony music, maybe Dvorak, which i don't have, handy. So pandora* fires up and I make a New World Symphony channel. After a second, the opening bars of Star Wars are blaring forth and i'm thinking, somedays it's nice to live in the future. :)
[pandora is a music server that streams content to me based on what it learns about my particular suggestions. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the sony walkman player and Queen Greatest Hits cassette that I bought at Walgreens and wore out in the 80s when I first started listening to music. I wonder how much further I could have developed my tastes and knowledge of music if I'd started with this back then.
I also think it provides a good way to reference the potential effect technologies have on the people who grow up with them. Start with a baseline figure to represent Current Knowledge and model any learning curve for Knowledge Increase which presumes a positive relationship to Information Access. It is staggering to think about what, over time, the resulting data look like when you factor the different levels of Information Access. I think the potential effect from a conservative projection is still too mammoth not to exert evolutionary pressure on the human brain; re-ordering pathway construction and changing the way information is stored and processed in the brain. If it literally changes the way [0-100%] people think/perceive, what effect will it have on the stability of the social structures and institutions which were built up over centuries and are based on a quickly evaporating model describing human interaction?
Of course, Knowledge Increase is not directly correlated to Information Access, not only because some of that increase is eaten up trying to keep up with the steady increase in the amount of information as time passes and something new gets thrown on the pile of accumulated human content production; and there is also a significant amount of information inflation which is a byproduct of the wider access itself (more to see is more to talk about).
I am also not assuming that all people will engage these new technologies to expand their access to information. I expect that there are many people who choose not to engage in this new technical economy. What I assume is that these will be the people manning the defenses of the system as it teeters.]
[pandora is a music server that streams content to me based on what it learns about my particular suggestions. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the sony walkman player and Queen Greatest Hits cassette that I bought at Walgreens and wore out in the 80s when I first started listening to music. I wonder how much further I could have developed my tastes and knowledge of music if I'd started with this back then.
I also think it provides a good way to reference the potential effect technologies have on the people who grow up with them. Start with a baseline figure to represent Current Knowledge and model any learning curve for Knowledge Increase which presumes a positive relationship to Information Access. It is staggering to think about what, over time, the resulting data look like when you factor the different levels of Information Access. I think the potential effect from a conservative projection is still too mammoth not to exert evolutionary pressure on the human brain; re-ordering pathway construction and changing the way information is stored and processed in the brain. If it literally changes the way [0-100%] people think/perceive, what effect will it have on the stability of the social structures and institutions which were built up over centuries and are based on a quickly evaporating model describing human interaction?
Of course, Knowledge Increase is not directly correlated to Information Access, not only because some of that increase is eaten up trying to keep up with the steady increase in the amount of information as time passes and something new gets thrown on the pile of accumulated human content production; and there is also a significant amount of information inflation which is a byproduct of the wider access itself (more to see is more to talk about).
I am also not assuming that all people will engage these new technologies to expand their access to information. I expect that there are many people who choose not to engage in this new technical economy. What I assume is that these will be the people manning the defenses of the system as it teeters.]
Saturday, April 23, 2011
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