Undulating Ungulate

the future of war

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim.

Stiglitz continues to talk economic sense, in this case how to reduce deficits, and also explains why it will continue to be ignored…

There’s only one problem: it wouldn’t benefit those at the top, or the corporate and other special interests that have come to dominate America’s policymaking. Its compelling logic is precisely why there is little chance that such a reasonable proposal would ever be adopted.

Wifi hacking dangers: “Like it or not, we are now living in a cyberpunk novel,”

The Last Ring Bearer: apocryphal revisionist history of Lord of the Rings.

Somehow missed that they think they have found a gas giant 4 x bigger than Jupiter way out at the edge of the solar system… introducing Tyche

Psyops moving into social media

It’s recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn’t like. It could then potentially have their “fake” people run smear campaigns against those “real” people. As disturbing as this is, it’s not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors

And hey, why not some total crazy:

DNA from William Burrough’s shit to be turned into bio art

In this project, a DNA sample from William S. Burroughs will be isolated, amplified and shot into the nuclei of some cells.

What is the process? –

1: Take a glob of William S. Burroughs’ preserved shit
2: Isolate the DNA with a kit
3: Make, many, many copies of the DNA we extract
4: Soak the DNA in gold dust
5: Load the DNA dust into a genegun (a modified air pistol)
6: Fire the DNA dust into a mix of fresh sperm, blood and shit
7: Call the genetically modified mix of blood, shit, and sperm a living bioart, a new media paint, a living cut-up literary device and/or a mutant sculpture.

Maybe he would approve.

Filed by billy at 11:34 am under culture,politics,sunday mutants,technology,the moose,the world
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Heh. Has been a while. Trawling the mutants list, we find:

* Josh Harris (of We Live in Public fame) makes a bid to head the MIT media lab

“If I become director of the MIT Media Lab, the institution’s primary focus will be to build a working singularities effect of the future, now, in order to understand how it all works.”

* Psychedelic sequence removed from Avatar would probably have made it more interesting.

The ritual consists of the initiate having to eat a worm as well as endure the sting of a scorpion-like creature.  The worm is significant as it eats from the “sacred tree,” presumably the Tree of Souls, and contains a psychoactive alkaloid.  The scorpion provides a potent neuro-toxin that brings the Na’vi close to death.  When combined together, the two compounds unleash a powerful psychedelic experience that allows for the initiate to go on a “dreamhunt” and attempt to contact their “spirit animal.”

* The Big Deal. Heavy think pieces from Vinay Gupta, who is way out ahead of the curve, about what the hell is going on.

I’ve recently written four essays, The Big Deal (#thebigdeal) which combine to paint a new picture of the current state of the world and a future picture showing how grass roots political power can achieve what current models of governance, including government, cannot do alone. This work is partly a critique and expansion on the British government’s Big Society concept, but it also draws heavily on my own experience in futures, complexity science and engineering for the bottom billion. It is an attempt to model the world in a new way; a way which reveals otherwise hidden paths to achieve change.

Yet to read them but flag them necessary.

* Ten myths about welfare. Actually not via the mutants, but this is getting around. If you are in NZ you probably need to read this as we roll into election year.

* Uncontacted Amazon Indians face annihilation Kind of amazing that this sort of thing is still happening. Also amazing that it can still happen, that there is anyone left out there.

* According to this fun sliding tool, all income growth in America in the past three decades has gone to the top 10% of the population. Thus income has declined for the bottom 90% of people. (Yay for unfettered capitalism!) The same sort of trend is probably at work here, as these things go.

Filed by billy at 1:08 am under consciousness,culture,new zealand,politics,the world
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Go, Egypt. Go, people.

Of course, now the real task begins. Setting up and maintaining the life you want to lead. Because the way things are will do all it can to propagate itself in a new guise with pretty words and a new face at the top.

And yeah, once again, it is amazing to have it reaffirmed that massive change is in fact possible, out of seemingly nowhere, peacefully, through the actions of people working together to make things better.

This is what the future looks like.

We can change. The choice is when, and to what.

Way back I quote Ventura thusly:

We are neither governed nor ruled. We are ignored. That most of usdon’t make a peep about it is perhaps an indication that we deserve to be ignored. We’ve demanded to be flattered, agreed with, and comforted; we’ve demanded almost anything but competence. Only a massive shift in public sentiment – and public action – will change things, and no one knows if that’s afoot.
[...]
The only antidote for a failure of democracy is the exercise of democracy. What every government fears most is a million citizens peaceably assembled at its front door, people who won’t go home until they get what they came for.

Wow, and just while trawling through old quotes, here is James Baldwin

But for power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power – or, more accurately, an energy – which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control. For a very long time, for example, America prospered – or seemed to prosper: this prosperity cost millions of people their lives. Now, not even the people who are the most spectacular recipients of the benefits of this prosperity are able to endure these benefits: they can neither understand them nor do without them, nor can they go beyond them. Above all, they cannot, or dare not, assess or imagine the price payed by their victims, or subjects, for this way of life, and so they cannot afford to know why the victims are revolting. They are forced, then, to the conclusion that the victims – the barbarians – are revolting against all established civilized values – which is both true and not true – and, in order to preserve these values, however stifling and joyless these values have caused their lives to be, the bulk of the people desperately seek out representatives who are prepared to make up in cruelty what both they and the people lack in conviction.

(No Name in the Street, 1972)

And as ever, Bucky needs to be reaffirmed:

whether it will be utopia or oblivion will be a touch and go relay race until the very end.

People do stuff, and make stuff happen. Inactivity is also doing. What is your activity, and inactivity, producing in the world? And what do you think the world needs? Because when enough people feel the same, the streets are full.

Filed by billy at 2:41 pm under consciousness,politics,the world,utopia
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Way back here we first mentioned The World – an artificial archipelago in the shape of the world built offshore of Dubai.

Turns out it is sinking, both economically and, well, physically.

I guess this is what you get for being the ideal location for a JG Ballard novel.

Filed by billy at 3:17 pm under oblivion,the world
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While I was at the beach Wikileaks and Assange went stratospheric. I haven’t caught up on most of the details, but had been keeping an eye on it before I went away. Here are some musings.

Julian Assange has WMD

Regardless of their truth value, the sexual misconduct claims against Assange are being used politically to distract the discourse from the revelations of wikileaks. Sex scandal is easier to write about than the detail of political machinations which go against the prevailing propaganda line.

And, like WMD in Iraq, it is a politically acceptable solution, to allow the targetting of an anointed and demonised “bad guy”; in this case to enable a chain of extradition of doubtful legality in the name of vengeance and to protect the freedom to conduct lawless wars.

Remember, Iraq could be invaded by simply being mentioned in the same sentence as Al-Qaeda and 9-11 often enough for a majority of americans to think they were related, and that Iraq was even responsible for 9-11. In the same way, wikileaks, Assange, sexual assault are being deliberately associated.

However, Assange’s alleged sexual misconduct, and what wikileaks is and does, are two totally different things. It feels ridiculous to need to make the distinction, but the discourse needs clarity.
As Anonymous points out, “Neither Wikieaks nor its founder have been charged with any crime in connection to any of the published leaks.”

(Rape and sexual violence, etc, is a serious thing in society, and a conversation that needs to be had; but it is a separate conversation from Wikileaks.)

Wikileaks: Right or wrong?

Wikileaks is not perfect. But perfection is an unreasonable standard, invoked by those choosing to ignore the staggering systemic imperfections they can live with daily as the status quo. Reality is a moral quagmire of grey zones. You do your best, operating in an imperfect world.

If there was nothing to hide, wikileaks would not exist. Those who live in glasshouses are in no place to cast judgement.

Wikileaks is a response to the twisted reality we live in. As it holds up the mirror, do you complain too loudly about what you see?

Wikileaks = napster.

Sharing digital media online has increased exponentially since napster was taken to court.

The attempt to punish wikileaks will fail to achieve its actual goals of stopping leaks. It is the blind reaction of a wounded monster.

The genie is out of the bottle. There are many other leak sites. The principle is established and the means will increasingly be in our hands. The pace and intensity of leaking – of truth coming to light – will increase. And this is on average going to be a very good thing.

What I want to see is ChinaLeaks. NorthKoreaLeaks. RussiaLeaks. Let’s truly globalize and democratize this openness.

The End of Make Believe

I am coming to view the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes as one of the most important statements about human psychology ever made. (The earliest recorded form is actually a very old Arab story, from, if memory serves, the 12th century, or possibly 1200 years ago, memory being funky like that; I am tempted to apocryphally attribute it to the Sufis, who have a way with such tales.)

In ‘Here Comes Everybody’, Clay Shirky talks about the phenomena of “everyone knows everyone knows everyone knows” as a metric of when change happens. This means, for example, I know something, I know you know it too, and you know I know you know it. At this point, the pretense cannot continue. (He gives the example of the year the Berlin wall came down. Everyone knew the situation was fucked, everyone knew that everyone knew the situation was fucked, but when a stream of unchallenged public protests went on, everyone knew that everyone knew that they knew, too, and then it changed.)

Wikileaks achieves the state of everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows.

Wikileaks is not revealing anything new, or at least surprising, to informed observers. Yes, US conduct in Iraq has been appalling. What is new is now we can’t pretend it isn’t, reassured by official spokesmen. We can point to the proof. Yes, the US puts inappropriate diplomatic pressure on other countries, and what is said in public does not match what is said in private. Now we can’t pretend. We can point to the proof. Etc.

Wikileaks makes it hard to pretend not to know – by providing proof of reality, it changes the stakes, and the perception of reality. This is the revolution it poses – a means for the child to say the emperor has no clothes, and for all to hear.

Truth vs Illusion

Thus ultimately, the Wikileaks saga is about truth vs illusion in the modern world. And I am on the side of truth, because, ultimately, illusion kills, and living under illusion brings suffering. Truth kills and brings suffering, too, of course, for that is the nature of our world. But such deaths and suffering by truth are unavoidable; deaths and suffering by illusion are avoidable.

[Edit: this is the most interesting thing I have read about the what and why of wikileaks, and particularly where Assange is coming from. A must read if you are interested in this.]

Filed by billy at 12:08 pm under consciousness,politics,the world  Tagged wikileaks
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It has been really interesting to see the facial expressions and colours people turn when I say I am going to go live at the beach and have *no internet*.

Anyway. Here are some random things I encountered on the internet in the last months that didn’t quite get passed on.

This is possibly the greatest political speech ever. Makes some interesting points about the plight of the minority in a democracy, while being impressively mad.

Via Hamo, and just to mess with nonwrestler‘s head, mind altering parasites. Just creepy and wrong. Thanks, nature.

William Burroughs article on Led Zepellin, and sort of interview with Jimmy Page, from 1975.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic is more interesting than most people.

Breakdown of the 17 million US graduates in menial jobs.

And just cos why not: Aliens have deactivated British and US nuclear missiles, say US military pilots.

Aaaaand, that’s all for a while, folks.

Filed by billy at 1:26 pm under culture,meta,politics,the world
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Wow. This is the most interesting what-is-going-on-in-the-world thing I have encountered in a long long time:

Nils Gilman, co-author of deviant globalisation, giving a SALT talk.

There is so much going on in this talk. Seriously check it out. My summary below is incomplete.

Basically he is mapping the vast underside of globalisation – the enormous flow of cash and people engaged in vastly profitable illegal trades – from drugs, to sex tourism, to organ trafficking, to people trafficking, etc,
and the black financial market underlying it, which is as big as the rest combined since it facilitates it – things that will sound familiar – and places them in an utterly fascinating analysis of how and why this happens, and what it means.

Short version: our weird morality causes asymmetry in the world, which produces opportunities for arbitrage – systemic inequalities which can be leveraged for profit – ie what we ban makes it valuable when it crosses the border, which provides incentives to deal in those things – the harder the push to illegalise them, the more profitable they are.

The organisations making use of this systemic leverage are gigantic, and occurring in places in which the development model has failed and which are borderline failed states.

His provocative argument includes saying this is actually what development looks like – this is “actually happening” development, transferring more wealth from the global north to the global south than anything else that is being done.

This is the system, it is not marginal. It is creating a new class of geopolitical actors – what John Robb calls global guerrillas. In many cases they are replacing functions of the state in a privatised form – health clinics, justice, security, parks, schools – not for the public but their own constituents, their community.

While violent since they are outside the law, they are not revolutionary – they are not trying to take over the state. They don’t usually conflict with the state unless the state attacks them – eg a gang shutting down Sao Paolo for 3 days. They are mostly interested in autonomy, while functionally sapping the state in practice.

What does this mean for the future?

We will not make the world like us. However, it will also not descend into anarchy. Deviant globalisation represents an order, just not a liberal order, an illiberal order. It is not ungoverned, but governed by people we don’t like. They are not failed states – that assumes our ideal of a state – but rather a different kind of order outside of liberal states.

What can we do?

We can make judicious choices. Embrace the reality of the system, and what effects our local prohibitions have elsewhere.

The question then becomes what do we worry about more? (eg) our morality of drug use vs slaughter in the supply chain. He thinks these are not easy choices but that they are not going away.

***

Some thoughts I have about his analysis, however, is that all this arbitrage is parasitic off the liberal global system existing. He is describing something in a dynamic state of evolution, and it is hard to predict where it is going. This is the world system going into flux, losing equilibrium. Tracking it is certainly vital, but prediction is hard, as the out-of-control changes coming to our part of the system (peak oil, climate change, etc) will also affect the deviant global system.

Also, since what he is describing is a system that is effectively unfettered capitalism – unrestricted by any morality – interacting with the arbitrage created by our morality, we could get rid capitalism as an underlying system, thus removing the profit motive, or we can change our morality.

We are defined by what we prohibit; we could change what is allowable. Which brings us back to what is human, what is us, and other, and why, and how do we change that. And all the other stuff in our head, which most of my work for the past few years has been about hacking…

Finally, something I particularly took from it is a map of how and where the warlords of the multi-multi-polar near future are going to evolve.

Filed by billy at 3:24 pm under oblivion,politics,the world,utopia
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Missed a week, since rewriting ate my brain.

First up, the Iraq War Logs wikileaks leak is staggering, and deserves probably multiple posts. You should be following this.

Reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 ‘civilians’; 23,984 ‘enemy’; 15,196 ‘host nation’ and 3,771 ‘friendly’

(One interesting question is whether this can sink the private contractor model of warfighting, as the leaks are particularly damning of blackwater/xe etc.)

This happens as government and legal attacks on wikileaks step up.

Two on visualising money in the world:

The difference more global equality could make

“Consumer democracy” is rendered meaningless by the fact that a few consumers have most of the votes, because they have most of the money…. The rich don’t just have more money than us as individuals, they have more than us collectively.

A map of GDP Density = GDP per capita * Number of people per square kilometer.

A map of GDP Density = GDP per capita * Number of people per square kilometer.

Two free ebooks:
Focus
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto

Old futurist predictions for 2010, compared with what we got

Oh yeah, and this excellent essay about magic by Alan Moore in two parts

…aaaand holy shit, twitter has capped how far back I can track my mutants list; it has grown and there has been a lot happening, but there are several days missing… hmm, may be time to tweak the lists

Filed by billy at 11:46 pm under consciousness,politics,sunday mutants,the world
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Short film by Werner Herzog, about a Brazilian Indian tribe with whom first contact was made (and filmed) in the early 1980s. Herzog goes back twenty years later.

Filed by billy at 11:38 pm under consciousness,culture,the world
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Less linky, more thinky this week.

A new Brainsturbator post:

Albert North Whitehead was fond of saying that the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century was not this or that invention, but the discovery of the technique of invention itself. It is very simple, and was loudly proclaimed by Poe, Baudelaire, and Valery, namely, begin with the solution to the problem, and then find out what steps lead to the solution. In other words, work backwards.

Such is Operations Research, in which metallurgic problems are tackled by psychologists and historians but not metallurgists. For the expert knows too much about a problem in advance. He sees why it is impossible. But teams of intelligent non-experts, not seeing the difficulties in advance, have time and again won through, and at high speed. The new pattern in management is small teams of men of varied competencies, not the pyramid of job hierarchies.”

Vinay Gupta, one of the most interesting and inspiring mutants I’ve come across lately, explains where he is coming from. As a ball park, he is fusing Buckminster Fuller and Ghandi. This is the conclusion from a really excellent inspiring piece.

I meditated until I realized the greatness of these masters, and then I attempted to follow. That’s what is unsaid.

I’m trying to build the tools we need, Free to All, to get us the lives we want, in full knowledge of the consequences of our actions. And the thing that drives me to do that is the thing which is sometimes called enlightenment, the thing that I saw at the top of the mountain, when I talked with god.

Can you create a cultural centre on an island off Abu Dhabi with $27 billion? They are going to try.

The biggest obstacle is still social evolution. Authentic culture is an intangible thing, and it cannot be bought wholesale. Abu Dhabi may want to follow the West’s model of individual creative freedom, but does it really have the stomach to let its people follow their creative visions, and to welcome all work in the name of freedom of expression. Will hopeful artists from around the world converge here in the way they do in NYC or London or Berlin? There are 200 nationalities living side by side, but they are strictly stratified and it is hard to imagine a ‘scene’ evolving out of the grass roots. Right now, Emirati artists are a small elite group; they need roughing up a bit, culturally speaking. But though a culturally forward society in the heart of the Gulf might suit the West, it is too early to get excited. This is still a place bound by rigid social and tribal traditions. The ruling family desire relevance on the global stage, but equally they will not want a rush of radical artists destabilising the social or political status quo.

Have a backlog of stuff to blog at the moment… hmm.

Filed by billy at 10:15 pm under consciousness,sunday mutants,the world
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