Frictionless Sharing and Curation

There is a lot of hubbub recently over Facebook's introduction of what is being called "frictionless sharing". Frictionless sharing is really a redefining of how people will share interests digitally. The FB "I Like" feature, along with related services, have accustomed people to actively sharing interests with friends. Frictionless sharing ushers in a new era where sharing can be done passively. That is, my activity can be monitored passively, and events are forwarded to friends without my direct involvement.

I think it's pretty clear why people may have concerns...

From a privacy perspective, in a way FB has done people a service. They have made blatant and obvious, and in a manner people can understand, the true power and danger of digital communication. Namely, every thing we do, at the finest level of detail, can in principal be monitored. Activity details can be stored indefinitely, processed, data mined, aggregated and sold. It's a good thing that people are being made aware of this fact.

There are also concerns about data overload, and how activity streams will eventually (and may already) hit a signal-to-noise ratio so low as to be useless. I have to disagree. Or at least I have to say that it is way too early to make this kind of conclusion. In fact, if managed correctly, such an advancement could have beneficial effects not only for the usefulness of sharing online but also benefits for user privacy. Of course the crucial phrase here is "managed correctly."

Taken to its logical conclusion, Facebook is in a position to own two valuable assets: 1. the social graph (that is, identity and association), and 2. user activity streams. At this point users MAY (depending on the pleasure and behest of M. Zuckerberg) be given two types of "curation" tools: a. the ability to manage data streams produced by their on-line activity, and b. the ability to manage data streams of others that they consume. It is also quite possible that FB simply expose these two types of assets to 3rd party developers, which can in turn provide tools for managing these data streams (aka "activity streams".) Of course FB will maintain control, and if there is some risk to their business, can and will rollback access as they see fit.

If nothing else, this presents non-trivial problems in balancing flexibility with simplicity. No doubt users will have to be exposed gradually to these types of services. It's quite possible that FB moved too quickly here, but they have shown every ability to correct and adjust as necessary.

A further complication involves content providers (such as media companies, music sharing sites, etc.) Over time users will develop (potentially complex) control and privacy relationships with a proliferation of content providers, creating a fractured privacy environment, which creates further risk for the user.

No doubt FB is struggling with these many issues as we speak. The recent media attention has almost certainly sent the signal that they may have over-stepped here or moved too quickly. It would be nice to imagine that this will signal a weakening of FB's dominance over these valuable assets, and that we may enter an era where consumers wake up to the value these assets present and the danger of one commercial interest obtaining a monopoly over them. And in turn the rise of more open alternatives...

The Patriot Act and American Civil Liberties

The first subject of tonight's Republican National Security Debate was the continuing and strengthening of the Patriot Act. It certainly was no great surprise that there would be nearly universal support (with the exception of Ron Paul and John Huntsman.) What I do think was interesting was the approach taken to mollify concerns about privacy and civil liberties.

In short, the nearly universal strategy (with the exception of some batshit-crazy comments from Bachmann about phones being wired into walls and Miranda rights for foreign citizens) was to characterize the Patriot Act as something that applies primarily to foreign citizens and in particular foreign terrorists. Here are a few examples (see full transcript):

Gingrich: I think it's desperately important that we preserve your right to be innocent until proven guilty, if it's a matter of criminal law. But if you're trying to find somebody who may have a nuclear weapon that they are trying to bring into an American city, I think you want to use every tool that you can possibly use to gather the intelligence.

Romney: And that is Congressman Paul talked about crime. Newt Gingrich was right. There are different categories here. There's crime and there are rights that are afforded to American citizens under our Constitution and those that are accused of crime. Then there's war. And the tool of war being used today in America and around the world is terror. There's a different body of law that relates to war... And that means, yes, we'll use the Constitution and criminal law for those people who commit crimes, but those who commit war and attack the United States and pursue treason of various kinds, we will use instead a very different form of law, which is the law afforded to those who are fighting America.

This is an effective strategy. It certainly plays perfectly into the fears Americans have of future terrorist attacks, but also directly addresses concerns about the erosion of personal liberties.

Unfortunately it is also extremely misleading, inaccurate and ultimately dangerous. The Patriot Act is in fact a direct assault on the privacy and 4th Amendment rights of American citizens. The details on this are really too numerous to present here, but for an overview of how the Patriot Act effects American citizens, see this recent overview from the ACLU. Here is one excerpt:

The Patriot Act applies the distinction between transactional and content-oriented wiretaps to the Internet. The problem is that it takes the weak standards for access to transactional data and applies them to communications that are far more than addresses. On an e-mail message, for example, law enforcement has interpreted the "header" of a message to be transactional information accessible with a PR/TT warrant. But in addition to routing information, e-mail headers include the subject line, which is part of the substance of a communication - on a letter, for example, it would clearly be inside the envelope.

In some cases, it is certainly possible that candidates taking this position actually believe what they are saying. But I really have a hard time believing that either Gingrich or Romney do not know any better. Of course they do, and at least in Gingrich's case, knew just how far they could go in finessing their response so that voters would hear what they wanted, but they would not veer too far from being technically correct. Still not sure how these guys sleep at night...

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sarah: You know what's good for him?
Burt: To win.
Sarah: For whom and for what?
Burt: What makes the world go round? For money and for glory.
Sarah: For whom?
Burt: Today for me. Tomorrow for himself.
Sarah: You own all the tomorrows because you buy them today, and you buy cheap.
- The Hustler

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."
- The Fountainhead

Rand is the champion of the prime mover. The Fountainhead drives a stake into the heart of collectivism. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", how beautifully egalitarian, what could possibly go wrong? But hidden beneath this would-be nirvana lies a dark underbelly. Nothing less than the systematic stripping away of our fundamental human nature. Our nature to think, to reason, to create and to move mankind forward. Rand shines a bright light onto this dark underbelly of collectivism.


View all my reviews

Myth and the New Atheists

The so-called New Atheists have levied a strong charge against organized religion, and in particular the manner in which organized religion is practiced in the West today. Much of the arguments inherent in this movement are traceable to the excellent essay Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell in 1927.

From a purely rational perspective I find these works, and in particular Russell's position, to be difficult, if not impossible, to tear down. I believe this is an interesting question not only because an important charge made by Russell and the New Atheists is utilitarian in that the lay out the damage caused by organized religion in the modern age, but also the inherent conflict this movement has with the fundamental fact that so many people, educated and otherwise, find religion to be such an important part of their lives. These facts lead to all kinds of intellectual conflicts, such as the number of great scientists often acting as "apologists" for organized religion, trying to find any manner of complex argument to rectify science and religion.

One approach that may have some merit is the notion of myth. We can understand myth as at least one important foundation of any modern organized religion. The literal interpretation of ancient gospel, such as the Bible, is easy prey for the likes of Dawkins and Russell. However, as Karen Armstrong points out in The Case For God, this kind of literal interpretation is really a modern phenomena, and I think results in a straw-man attack, leaving out the heart of the matter. Consider the very powerful Christian myth: "Jesus, the son of God, died for your sins." This myth hits at a very emotional level. The emotional impact is very different than the kind of language relevant to a literal interpretation of the Bible attacked by the New Atheists. It resonates instead at a personal level. I don't need to think about distracting details such as why God would have have a mortal human son, or why an all-powerful God would need to impress mankind in this way. From an emotional level this is immaterial. In this context a sacrifice is being made, the ultimate sacrifice open to God and one that as a parent or child I can feel directly, and it is levied directly at me. Consider how different the impact would be if it read: "Jesus, the son of God, died for our sins." This is a personal statement, directly from God to me. It resonates at a personal, emotional level. Rational considerations are not relevant here.

I believe this is the power that myth plays in the context of religion. Taken together, the myths associated with, say, the Bible resonate with fundamental needs and concerns we have as people to understand and get at basic questions we have about who we are, why we're here, what our purpose is, etc. Rationally it very well may be the case that these questions cannot be answered (beyond the answers provided by, say, natural selection.) But at some emotional level it may be possible through myth to satisfy curiosities of this type.

If this is true, an important observation can be made. In the end, it does not matter at all that these myths are based in any rational or factual foundation. Rationality and some kind of consistent historic fact is simply not relevant here. The litmus test for myth to have value here is that at some emotional level these stories resonate with people and as mentioned above provide some satisfaction to these basic, abstract questions. For example, the Native American Sioux have a myth whereby a group of girls are chased by a bear, they pray to the Great Spirit to save them, and the Devil's Tower rises up from the ground saving the girls. When the girls reach the sky they are turned into the constellation Pleiades. Did this really happen? Is this how the stars of Pleiades was actually formed? Does it really matter? This myth allowed the Sioux to relate to the world around them. It brought the distant stars into something they could relate to more directly, at least in an emotional way.