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Thursday, August 12, 2004
Blogging forecast 
Why just boob on the tube?
| | These can't be for Amber alone. |
Pumping prophesy
| | Deffeyes is an oil man. He grew up around oil fields, worked in them. He has been a petroleum geologist, a professor of geology at Princeton, and has starred in John McPhee's inaugural book on geology, Basin and Range (later the opening section of the Pulitzer-winning Annals of the Former World). He is now the go-to authority on the world's inevitable confrontation with the finitude of a substance on which all civilization depends, and which takes millions of years for nature to produce. |
| | I'm still standing by my prediction that the smoothed world production curve will peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. Click on January 16, 2004 for details. |
Don't blog home without it
| | A couple of years ago I fell to musing about video as a medium, and how it might be put to new social uses. I tried to think of video as NOT television -- not as highly produced centrally distributed streams of visual and audio narrative content. So what is the structural inversion of television? |
| | Television is produced by someone else than the viewer; it comes on a set schedule; it is composed of many clips; it has high production values. The means of production are expensive, and centralized. |
| | Doing a structural inversion on these qualities lead to the idea of the short video clip, created by an individual, as a media type. |
| | What I came up with is the idea of a wearable camera, rather like a Star Trek communicator pin - which would be turned on when you slap it, and turned off when you slap it second a time (this is the simplest UI I've ever designed!). |
| | When on, it would light a red LED, so anyone present would know they are being recorded. The recording would not be stored locally, but would rather be immediately transmitted via a 2.5G or 3G cellular telephony network to a server. This transmission would be encrypted at the source, and incorporate a space-time stamp (e.g., GPS, or time of flight from three cellular towers). Once in the server, it would be possible for the creator of the video clip to cause it to be served up - but NOT to be edited or replaced - the server would be an escrow server. |
| | There is no viewfinder in Fair Witness. There is no local playback. The lens is wide angle. The video created by fair Witness is not highly produced - it might not be very pleasant to watch, but it would be veridical. And it would be non-alterable, with a provable chain of evidence. |
| | When I joined AT&T Labs I found a receptive audience for the idea of Fair Witness, since I pointed out that this device would create large amounts of data to be shipped about on the AT&T backbone network, and on the nascent AT&T Wireless 2.5G/3G cellular networks. I pitched it as a razor handle that could be given away, to enable AT&T to sell lots of razor blades in the form of the services that would be enabled. |
| | I hired Studio Red, of Redwood City, California to do the concept drawings and mockups. I simultaneously started a systems design, to build the device. |
| | I soon discovered that sufficient compact computer power for implementing Fair Witness did not exist as a buyable system, so I proposed the creation of a very powerful very compact wearable computer system as a prototyping tool for exploring networked rich media services. This became the "Kava Project", for which I was the system architect. Kava was delivered in December 2001 as a Palm III sized wearable Linux computer using a 700Mz Intel XScale processor, a dual CPU AMD DSP, 250M RAM, and 500M Flash, with CD quality digital audio IO, and with 802.11, ethernet, and V90 on daughter cards. It was an Open Source hardware and software platform - the first Open Source project approved by AT&T's legal department. |
| | Kava became "shelfware" as soon as it was delivered, because AT&T Labs announced massive layoffs, and our entire group was laid off. Fair Witness died as well... |
| | ...but I'd love to take the idea somewhere else, and build it out! |
| | Seems to me Rob was just a little ahead of his time with this one. How about putting production into overdrive and giving one to everybody attending the Republican National Convention, bloggers and all? I think it would rock. |
Can I get a witness?
| | Reading J.D.'s story, and following the links, Robert Heinlein's concept of a fair witness (from Stranger in a Strange Land) comes to mind. The Heinlien concordance defines a fair witness as a "Person rigorously trained to observe, remember, and report without prejudice, distortion, lapses in memory, or personal involvement." I'm not saying bloggers are fair witnesses by that definition, but that one can gather a fairly good sense of a subject if enough bloggers are witnessing it, even if they are personally involved, or slant their coverage with personal prejudices and preoccupations. |
| | ...it¹s hard to escape the story of the moment, which is the looming showdown with Moqtada al-Sadr. I go back and forth on how serious the al-Sadr inflammation really is. On the one hand, if Moqtada al-Sadr is killed there will be a bloodbath. If the shrine of Imam Ali is stormed, Shi¹as all over the world will take to the streets. And yet, I suspect any violence from that would be short-lived. There is no real No. 2 guy in the Sadr movement; he¹s the remaining scion of the al-Sadr family. And that¹s the basis of his power, in a nutshell. Yes, he would be a martyr, but people follow him because he¹s got a heavy family name and is the son of a genuine patriot who stood up to Saddam Hussein and paid for it with his life. In the event of his death, his followers would be up for grabs to the likes of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and other smaller, religious parties. His movement would fragment... |
| | But what about the passion of the Sadr City street? Moqtada has been able to rouse the passions of a lot of angry young men who are furious at being ‹ in this order ‹ poor, ignored, occupied and lacking electricity, but it¹s not clear he can lead them anywhere but into an abyss. His fighters can take to the street, but the amount of damage they¹re doing to the MNF and the Iraqi government is quite minor, actually. Militarily, they¹re a pain in the ass more than a threat to the government. They do seem to have a talent for getting government employees to stay home, however; the Mehdi Army ‹ in a delicious bit of political theatre ‹ faxed a press release to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi¹s office warning of an indefinite 1 p.m. curfew and telling all state workers to stay home or be shelled. A lot of them did today. |
| | Anyway, back to the ³street.² An insight I¹ve gained since I¹ve been here is this: No one cares what the street thinks. Well, no one in power, I mean. For all the talk of the Arab street, there has never been a popular revolution in an Arab country based on the passion of the masses. They¹re easily manipulated and utterly disorganized. The one exception would be Iran ‹ which is not an Arab country. Why were the Persians different? I¹m not sure yet, but I suspect it has something to do with a depth of political culture and a thriving middle class that joined with the masses to oust the Shah in 1979. With no petit bourgeoisie to lend political oomph to the street demonstrations, Iran would be Š well, a lot like Iraq is today: a thin, rich strata separated by the poor, angry but inchoate and disorganized masses by a few hardy middle-class souls who really just want to get the hell out of the country. |
| | Mobs are terrifying, but they¹re relatively easy to deal with if you¹re willing to kill a lot of people and say the hell with world opinion. The latter is unlikely to be a problem for Allawi and the Americans, however; world opinion is basically against Moqtada. Oh, sure, you¹ll always have hard-core anti-imperialists who support anyone who stands up to the United States¹ presence in Iraq. They will make their calls for real democracy in Iraq without understanding that Moqtada and his followers don¹t want democracy; they want an Islamic state with Moqtada at the head. And that¹s something that vast majority of Iraqis emphatically don¹t want. If he and his radical followers get slaughtered, I think the world will believe they brought it on themselves. The West¹s brow will remain largely unfurrowed and its conscience untroubled. |
| | 300+ dead in a matter of days in Najaf and Al Sadir City. Of course, they are all being called Œinsurgents¹. The woman on tv wrapped in the abaya, lying sprawled in the middle of the street must have been one of them too. Several explosions rocked Baghdad today- some government employees were told not to go to work tomorrow. |
| | So is this a part of the reconstruction effort promised to the Shi¹a in the south of the country? Najaf is considered the holiest city in Iraq. It is visited by Shi¹a from all over the world, and yet, during the last two days, it has seen a rain of bombs and shells from none other than the 'saviors' of the oppressed Shi¹a- the Americans. So is this the 'Sunni Triangle' too? It¹s déjà vu- corpses in the streets, people mourning their dead and dying and buildings up in flames. The images flash by on the television screen and it¹s Falluja all over again. Twenty years from now who will be blamed for the mass graves being dug today? |
| | We¹re waiting again for some sort of condemnation. I, personally, never had faith in the American selected proxy government currently pretending to be in power- but for some reason, I keep thinking that any day now- any moment- one of the Puppets, Allawi for example, will make an appearance on television and condemn all the killing. One of them will get in front of a camera and announce his resignation or at the very least, his utter disgust, at the bombing, the burning and the killing of hundreds of Iraqis and call for an end to itŠ it¹s a foolish hope, I know. |
| | So where is the interim constitution when you need it? The sanctity of private residences is still being violated... people are still being unlawfully arrested... cities are being bombed. Then again, there really is nothing in the constitution that says the American millitary *can't* actually bomb and burn... |
| | Last week churches were bombed- everyone heard about that. We were all horrified with it. For decades- no centuries- churches and mosques have stood side by side in Iraq. We celebrate Christmas and Easter with our Christian friends and they celebrate our Eids with us. We never categorized eachother as "Christian" and "Muslim"... It never really mattered. We were neighbors and friends and we respected eachother's religious customs and holidays. We have many differing beliefs- some of them fundamental- but it never mattered. |
| | It makes me miserable to think that Christians no longer feel safe. I know we're all feeling insecure right now, but there was always that sense of security between differing religions. Many Iraqis have been inside churches to attend weddings, baptisms, and funerals. Christians have been suffering since the end of the war. Some of them are being driven out of their homes in the south and even in some areas in Baghdad and the north. Others are being pressured to dress a certain way or not attend church, etc. So many of them are thinking of leaving abroad and it's such a huge loss. We have famous Christain surgeons, professors, artists, and musicians. It has always been an Iraqi quality in the region- we're famous for the fact that we all get along so well. |
| | I'm convinced the people who set up these explosions are people who are trying to give Islam the worst possible image. It has nothing to do with Islam- just as this war and occupation has nothing to do with Christianity and Jesus- no matter how much Bush tries to pretend it does. That's a part of the problem- many people feel this war and the current situation is a crusade of sorts. 'Islam' is the new communism. It's the new Cold War to frighten Americans into arming themselves to the teeth and attacking other nations in 'self-defense'. It's the best way to set up 'Terror Alerts' and frighten people into discrimination against Arabs, in general, and Muslims specifically... just as this war is helping to breed anger and hate towards westerners in general, and Americans specifically. A person who lost their parent, child or home to this war and occupation will take it very personally and will probably want revenge- it won't matter if they are Muslim or Christian. |
| | I always love passing by the churches. It gives me a momentary sense that everything must be right in the world to see them standing lovely and bright under the Baghdad sun, not far from the local mosque. Their elegant simplicity is such a contrast with the intricate designs of our mosques. |
| | There's a lovely church in our area. It stands tall, solid and gray. It is very functional and simple- a rectangular structure with a pointy roof, topped by a plain cross or 'saleeb', simple wooden doors and a small garden- it looks exactly like the drawings your 7-year-old nephew or daughter would make of the local church. This simplicity contrasted wonderfully with its stained-glass windows. The windows are at least 30 different colors. I always find myself staring at them as we pass, wondering about the myriad of shapes and colors they throw down upon the people inside. It hurts to pass it by these days because I know so many of the people who once visited it are gone- they've left to Syria, Jordan, Canada... with broken hearts and bitterness. |
| | I remember that in western musical tradition there is something called Grand Beggar Opera. As I watch the poor misguided young men, many of them delinquents and ex convicts stupidly and carelessly roaming the streets of certain slums of Baghdad brandishing their Kalashnikovs and RPG¹s, I am reminded of this term. You might call it the Grand Beggar Army. The way that these fools expose themselves to certain death and extermination with complete lack of any kind of skill in combat and a kind of wanton destructive and blind passion, cannot but inspire a kind of disdainful pity and disgust. The terrorists of other places are quite different; sneaking, treacherous, skillful, clearly with military training and combat experience. Just look at the casualty figures, 300-400 against a handful amongst the forces of Law and Order. |
| | However, what must be done must be done. These people just do not understand the meaning of freedom. Freedom to them is anarchy and a kind of license to engage in an orgy of wanton destruction and abandon to every base instinct. They want to impose their degenerate retarded confused hallucinations on everybody; not to mention the profound complexes of inferiority and hatred born of decades, nay, centuries of depravation and downtrodden living. They are indeed a minority, but a dangerous, lunatic and murderous minority; serpents and blind scorpions let loose; the menace cannot be underestimated. |
| | Their leader has announced on Friday that If the President Ghazi Al Yawer, says that America is a friend, He, ³this leader², says that America is the Enemy! And why is America the enemy, pray? Because she is the only Power in history that has allowed you to practice your religious rites in total freedom and abandon after not only decades, but centuries of oppression and bloody persecution; in fact since the seventh century A.C.! America has done you a favor that would not be repaid if you spend the next thirteen centuries in faithful friendship and alliance with her. Such incredible ingratitude is beyond belief. It seems that this freedom hitherto unknown to you has driven you mad and completely bereft of any rhyme or reason. |
| | But no, the vast majority of the Shiaa people are not with you. In fact those fighting you in Najaf today are the true sons of the holy city. All these policemen, joined by the tribesmen of surrounding countryside (a fact little known by many) are the indigenous real people of the region. You are going to be wiped out and defeated, not by the might of the MNF but by the hostility and rejection of the ordinary majority who are only now beginning to find the way and the means. |
| | As we have said before, patience is required to see this thing through. The Iraqi Government may not be perfect, but still if it succeeds in resolving the security issue this will be the key to subsequent positive developments. Now we are witnessing hopeful signs that this Government does not lack backbone, and it is struggling together with the fledgling new security forces who are beginning to demonstrate increasing determination and morale to impose Law and Order and combat criminals, terrorists and general lawlessness in the country. And due to the overriding urgency of the security issue, we are forced to relegate all other questions to secondary importance at the moment. That does not mean that the issue of democracy and human rights are to be somewhat forgotten in the heat of the battle, and we must always keep in mind the final objectives that we are all fighting for; i.e. a free democratic and peaceful country where the dignity of individuals and human rights are fully respected and guaranteed by Law and Constitution, and actively defended by capable and correct Law Enforcement. |
| | But for the moment, the way to proceed seems quite clear. Full, generous and whole hearted support for this Government and rapid strengthening and upgrading of the New armed and security forces; for there are clear signs that this long and arduous task is finally beginning to bear fruit. Gradually the whole task of internal security can be transferred to the Iraqi forces and the gratefully acknowledged help of our allies can become less and less necessary. We are as concerned as the American and Allied people for the safety and security of the valiant men and women of the MNF and to phase out their direct involvement gradually. The Iraqi people must and will assume the entire responsibly for their security sooner or later. |
| | Meanwhile, two domestic contexts. One is terrorists' very real intention to set off a nuke, among other acts of terror, here in the U.S. The other is a November deadline for picking a president for the next four years. What better informs us about either situation — Reading engaged and thoughtful witnesses? or obsessing, for example, on the paint jobs both candidates have given their own far-gone pasts? |
| | As Jeff Jarvis (to whose heroic persistence at facilitating respectful conversation across many partisan divides I owe many of the links here), witnesses it, |
| | Let's remember a few things: |
| | First, we're not voting for sainthood here, even for a Pope. We're talking about politicians. Do any of us think that there's a politician alive who hasn't stretched something? OK, all of you who raised your hands, I have some WMDs to sell you. Under the Brooklyn Bridge. |
| | Thus, second, let's concentrate on what matters: Doing the job of running the government. |
| | Third, as I've said lately, I'm going to keep calling people on this wasteful and distracting and ultimately destructive game of gotcha. I said it over the Bush National Guard nonstory. I'll say it over this nonstory. It doesn't get us anywhere except mired in bile. Worse, it's just getting boring. |
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