My most recent post is on the group blog Non-Zero:

The technology we might need for a literal global consciousness is still in the realm of science fiction, which is probably just as well. The mechanism of the brain which directs our conscious attention is not really part of our consciousness itself. Are we really ready to have that power over other people's brains - and trust them with it over ours? Neurons seem prone to certain unwarranted intimacies with each other.

I think we should start practicing with collective intelligence first. This may sound rather similar, but it's something quite familiar.

I realize my leave of absense was rather sudden and unannounced. I thought of leaving a post saying how long it would be - but I did not know myself. I could have left a message, but since I didn't know if it would be days or months, I I wasn't even quite ready to articulate the reasons it was necessary, it wouldn't have been very informative.

I have been thinking about this blog rather hard, wondering if it was worth continuing in objective terms. I think it's a great idea for everyone who enjoys it to blog, but I somehow can't muster enthusiasm for it myself unless there's at least the potential it will serve some purpose beyond that.

For awhile, I looked at the headlines of ten or twelve English language online newspapers published in non English language speaking places around the world, to find news that didn't make it into the mainstream news outlets. I still consider this a worthwhile endeavor, and my sidebar still has a special place for blogs which do those things. So far though, I don't think I've found anything major which the mainstream press didn't pick up eventually. I still tend to glance at the headlines of the New York Times online to see what's happening in the world, and the Washington Times to see what conservatives consider worth talking baout that liberals don't.

I still strongly agree with most of the political views I've espoused over the past few months, but I honestly can't say I'm the best exponent available for any of them.

If blogging or the web are ever going to lead us closer to forming a global brain, there are some great blogs written by people who know a lot more about the technology than I do. Joi Ito of Joi Ito's Web and Flemming Fyunch of Ming the Mechanic are two that come quickly to mind. If I have ever written anything that they have not written better first, it must relate not to that but to the concept of a human global brain as already extant. That concept too has been discussed by people more knowledgeble than I, though to the best of my knowledge more often in print than online. I have found nobody besides myself who has started with the latter concept and methodically tried to deduce what the global brain must be thinking about, so as to become more intimately part of it. I don't have as much time to blog as I did when I first started, so I must limit myself to what seems most valuable here.

By the way, if a partial duplicate of this entry appears underneath here, blame Blogger, though the exact details are not worth recording.

I realize my leave of absense was rather sudden and unannounced. I thought of leaving a post saying how long it would be - but I did not know myself. I could have left a message, but since I didn't know if it would be days or months, I I wasn't even quite ready to articulate the reasons it was necessary, it wouldn't have been very informative.

I have been thinking about this blog rather hard, wondering if it was worth continuing in objective terms. I think it's a great idea for everyone who enjoys it to blog, but I somehow can't muster enthusiasm for it myself unless there's at least the potential it will serve some purpose beyond that.

For awhile, I looked at the headlines of ten or twelve English language online newspapers published in non English language speaking places around the world, to find news that didn't make it into the mainstream news outlets. I still consider this a worthwhile endeavor, and my sidebar still has a special place for blogs which do those things. So far though, I don't think I've found anything major which the mainstream press didn't pick up eventually. I still tend to glance at the headlines of the New York Times online to see what's happening in the world, and the Washington Times to see what conservatives consider worth talking baout that liberals don't.

I still strongly agree with most of the political views I've espoused over the past few months, but I honestly can't say I'm the best exponent available for any of them.

If blogging or the web are ever going to lead us closer to froming a global brain, there are some great blogs written by people who know a lot more about the technology than I do. Joi Ito of Joi Ito's web and Flemming Fyunch of

Monday, May 12, 2003

I was recently invited to join the group blog Non Zero by Kevin Marks of Epeus' epigone. The blog is subtitled "Reflections on the book 'Non Zero' by Robert Wright", and I guess each of the other members has just a slightly different take on that. Robert Wright himself has already done some thinking about how his ideas apply to current events on Slate (which might be a good addition to the sidebar), but we can still have a lot of fun trying to say something he hasn't said better yet.

Yet in the long term British power was spread thinned and thinner, and the number of enemies they had to deal with multiplied, while the life blood of their soldiers was leeched away generation after generation.

History need not repeat itself - if we are determined that it not do so. What is most urgently required is to see faraway occupied countries as a military weakness rather than a military strength. If we disdain empire not merely on moral grounds but on practical ones, we are capable of avoiding the fate of the British empire. What is most strongly required is a public perception that a conquest is not a triumph, but the partial amelioration of a failure of a type of which too many can be fatal. If we are not willing to accept that Syria may ignore our demands, we must be careful indeed what demands we make. We must all unite in war time, but once the war is over we should not laud the leader who lead us into a successful war. Although a bloodless victory is better than a bloody one, every occupation must be seen as a burden.

Congradulate Iain on his victory, and learn a little about how politicians get elected on the local level. This isn't a blog written by a bunch of paid flaks - it's the real McCoy!

The election day battle started around 6:30 on Thursday morning, when a resilient bunch of volunteers went around Romsey delivering "Good Mornings": leaflets reminding people about to go out to work that today's the day to vote, supplemented with some encouraging soundbites about the Liberal Democrat candidate. So far as I was concerned, polling day began very well indeed: I was scheduled to do one of these hellishly early delivery rounds, involving getting out of bed at about 5 am, but I was informed the night before that another activist had volunteered to do my route, giving me a very welcome couple more hours in bed.

Candidates aren't obliged to look smart, but I've never been one to pass up a chance to tart myself up, so I got my sharpest suit on and strode purposefully down to our campaign headquarters. For the next twelve hours I was under the dictatorial control of my agent, partly because he's a formidable campaign manager, but mainly because there's no time for lengthy meetings on polling day: you need to have one guy in charge.

I just read an interesting article on the MSNBC news web site.

Powell: U.S. watching Syria closely:

...

May 4 — U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday the Bush administration would be carefully watching Syria’s “performance” in response to demands that it stop supporting anti-Israeli guerrillas and heed American plans for the Middle East after the war in Iraq. After meeting Saturday with Syrian President Bashar Assad, Powell reported that the country has begun forcing groups the Bush administration considers terrorist organizations to close their offices in Damascus, but more is needed.

We're walking a tightrope here. Of course we have to use our demonstrated willingness to invade other countries to try and put a stop to terrorism - and interference in our efforts to rebuild the country we just invaded. On the other hand, many say that one of the motives for the invasion was to try and get nations in the region to take our willingness to use force more seriously. Now suppose we make a demand, and it seems pretty obvious to us that Syria will accede, but things look very different from the Syrian perspective. Perhaps they don't have full control over that long border, but can't admit it for fear of looking weak. Or perhaps the group we demand they crack down on is more popular than the Syrian government itself. Or maybe they're just plain crazy. Or maybe they believe that fear of world opinion will still prevent us from invading country after country.

Suppose we don't realize whichever one it is, and make our demands more and more insistent, assuming that they will give in when the threat is imminent. According to the new rules, we are practically forced to invade them. The people who said that even if the military build-up to attacking Iraq was a mistake we still couldn't back down for fear of losing respect were mostly the ones who didn't think it was a mistake in the first place - but many did say it. Either we must have a strong principle forbidding us to invade and occupy nations even when they are doing things that make us very angry and we have threatened them if they don't stop, or we must very rarely make threats even though we are capable of carrying them out, or we will end up occupying more and more nations as time goes on.

There are many who don't see a problem with the last alternative. Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless has suggested Iraq and Syria will be enough, but I wonder which nations will interfere in our efforts to rebuild Syria, as well as how that would be financed. If someone interferes with our efforts to rebuild Syria, it would be hand to meekly accept it. Once we have made demands on the meddler with at least the implicit threat of force, if they do not comply we must decide whether we can afford to occassionally be seen as bluffing or not.

This problem is far from unique to us. One of the things I learned from the book Pax Britannica is that this was part of the motivation for some of Great Britain's conquest's. Each conquest of a nation interfering with the management of an already occupied nation left them with more territory and an apparently stronger position - yet also with forces spread more thinly and more new neighbors who might well pose dangers.

It's been longer since I read about the Roman empire, yet I seem to recall something similar. They might well disarm a defeated enemy, in which case they had to defend the occupied nation, or make surrendering to Rome suicidal. Unlike later empires, theirs was economically profitable for a long time. In those days land was much more nearly the equivilant of wealth than it is today, and they were successful from an economic point of view. Early squabbling between rich and poor was settled - the rich got richer, the poor got bread and circuses. I don't think empire could be profitable today, especially if we continue to refuse to head off rebellion by slaughtering the civilian population of repeated troublemakers.

I still need to read more about Athens and other empires (see the comment on my previous post), but a pattern seems to be forming. History never repeats itself exactly, but some problems seem to keep cropping up until faced squarely. The most successful nations today do not seem to be those with the best farmland or most valuable natural resources, but those with advanced technological manufacturing capabilities. If this makes empire less rather than more viable, perhaps empire has become a long term liability rather than an asset. If so it is an ironical one, since only economic and technological success can build an army suffiently advanced to be in danger of the trap of empire. The more liberty under law, property rights, and protection from violence a nation offers it's own people, the more it is in danger of falling into the trap of empire.

This seems a cliff democracies batter themselves against again and again. If the global brain is involved in the question of it's own survival, this is part of it. Of course we haven't bashed our head on it yet - but dubya's popularity has risen, although it remains yet to be seen whether his conquest has made us stronger or weaker.

I realize this post has some ideas in common with the previous one, yet since this issue may be the whole fate of our civilization it's worth thinking about. I'm going to do a little work on my sidebar soon, but I wanted to say this today.

I've been rereading Joi Ito's paper on emergent democracy, and thinking about current events as well. His first quote is from Howard Rheingold, who mentions Athens, as far as I know the first democracy.

I've been reading a little about Athens in conjuction with Joi Ito's paper. I still have much more to learn, but some of my thoughts are crystalizing. Here's a famous funeral oration by the Athenian Pericles online. A great many of his ideals are ones which almost all of us will agree with wholeheartedly today, and it is a pleasure to read them so clearly stated at first - then niggling doubts arise. Think how odd it would be if we still felt comfortable with a summary of any branch of science first made several thousand years ago. If the problem of good government is simpler than particle physics it should be solved already, but if it isn't why has their been so little change in so long a period? Yet there are a few bits most would object to, if only out of a sense of duty.

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this it may be noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not invade our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates, while we Athenians advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbour and, fighting upon a foreign soil, usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their homes. Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.

It seems here is another sense in which democracy may not scale. Pericles speaks elsewhere about how law abiding Athenian citizens are:

The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.

Yet this determination to settle Athenian disputes legally and civilly and peacefully does not lead at all to a belief that international disputes should be settled the same way. Not that there is an actual statement that they believe in marauding for fun and profit, but there is certainly no word against it. Although they did put up some resistance to becoming part of the Macedonian empire at first, they later got behind the campaign against the Persian empire, becoming in effect a willing part of an empire. Yet how can a democracy that is part of an empire be more than a province with a limited ability to govern their own affairs?

Already a few Americans have begun to talk openly of empire. This is not the stated purpose of our government in any way, yet there is no talk of the fate of empires and how we can avoid it. It seems almost to be a bug in all versions of Democracy so far. A democracy that did not unite behind a leader in wartime might be weaker than a tyrrany which did. Yet a democracy which unites behind leaders in wartime almost provides an incentive for leaders to start wars. Perhaps we need a tradition to match support of wartime presidents - a tradition of examining the decision to go to war very critically once the war is over.

Many of the nations which have historically given the most freedom to their own citizens have also been most willing to attempt to control international chaos by brute force. The idea that a dictatorship is a more efficient means of creating peace and prosperity within a nation is pretty much on the trash heap of history, but the notion that it is the best or else the only way to run international order seems to have occured to every nation which succeeded by doing the opposite internally.

I would like to think America is in no danger of falling into this trap. It is pretty clear that Iran and other nations will interfere with our plans for Iraq. Britain and other empires before them had a solution to that - conquer more territory. We all know what happened to them - including our leaders. If we do escape though, it will be at least partly by good fortune. Our constitution has built in safeguards against the problems of many other democracies - but the rise and catastrophic fall of an empire does not seem to have been among the worries of our founding fathers.

If the idea of emergent democracy is in need of a killer app, this is it. I would like to believe that people being more knowlegeble would help, but I honestly can't say that on average the people who don't worry about this are better informed than the people who do. I think the root of the problem is emotional rather than intellectual. We have all been angry enough that not only did we want to hit somebody, we genuinely felt they deserved it. Living in a world where those who cannot restrain this impulse will probably be arrested for assault and battery seems to have enabled most of us to learn to resist it even when it seems impossible. I want the United States to be the first nation in history militarily capable of empire, sorely provoked, and yet resisted the temptation. Perhaps we are on that path already - some say we can rebuild Iraq despite any meddling, some that our show of force will prevent others from not meddling. I think about any time I've been wrong about anything eagerly - it gives me hope.

This is the most detailed information I've seen on the new crackdown in Iran on bloggers. From Diaries of a Steppenwolf.

Apparently the fall of the dictator has had a big impact on Iranian Islamic regime. Those who are in control who possess non-elected power have already felt something.
Recently, a lot of web sites have been banned by a direct instruction from Iranian ministry of telecom. This list includes hadisara, home page of satirist Hadi Khorsandi. Also an entertainment web site called roozi.
But most amazing of them all, is nedstat, which is a hit counter I am using.

There's more on his site.

I'm going to have to repost the previous. I saved it intending to edit it later and add the rest of the connectivity blogs, but somehow the edit link got messed up so I couldn't. I posted instead, and the date stamp link doesn't work either, so I can't use it as a section header for my sidebar. I don't feel like redoing it tonight.

Somehow the tone of Hemlock's Diary (also on my sidebar) exactly matches what much of the world is feeling about the SARS epidemic. If your mainstream media seem sterilized, live from our blogospheric correspondent in Hong Kong - do these two entries really mean they were trying to recruit people off the street to sterilize the streets?

From Thursday, April tenth:

Shenzhen health authorities kill an American English teacher in their latest attempt to cover up their SARS outbreak. The WHO gives full approval, apparently. At the other end of the public-awareness activities scale, plans are being hatched to mobilize the whole of Hong Kong for a massive Easter weekend clean-up. Leading the charge will be the indomitable Betty Tung, who is already busy extracting donations from the great and the good, and will be handing out brooms and kicking slackers’ rears – not least CH's, perhaps – on 19-20 April.

Mon, 21 April
Calling it "The City of the Name of God" paid off. Macau remains free of SARS,.and I am free of the attentions of redoubtable matrons expecting me to make a fool of myself scrubbing Hong Kong's greasy, pus-ridden streets. The old Portuguese place hasn't change since my last visit. An excellent show put on by the Holy Romans in their churches on Sunday. Spent last night watching Peking opera on TV in my hotel room with a bottle of Segada Tinto from the local grocery store. Tastes almost like chocolate.

This is for the connectivity section of my sidebar, allowing me to say more about the blogs in it. When the blogger archive link starts working I'll change the subheader for that section to a hypertext link to this page, and just leave a list of blogs in the actual sidebar itself. Most of the blogs here have some in depth thinking about the blogosphere, connectivity, the global brain, and other related subjects.

Steven Berlin Johnson writes most often about science and computing, although sometimes about other subjects as well. He's been published in Discover magazine, Wired magazine, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Harpers. Much of his column is about things he's worked on, and links to his work published online, and other links and essays that interest him. The reason I added him to my blogroll as soon as I found him is mostly his book Emergence, which I reviewed here.

In some ways this is the most interesting chapter of the book. Like many bloggers, I'm interested in the idea of the Global Brain. This idea has enthusiastic boosters and a few enthusiastic detractors. Steven Johnson looks at it quietly, talks about some characteristics of the web which might hinder the organization of any kind of collective intelligence, and about some of the ways it may be changing to make learning of some sort possible, although not necessarily conscious intelligence.

Joi Ito's Web is at the center of the discussion of Emergent Democracy. His latest writing about it is Emergent Democracy Version 1.3, reflecting the ongoing nature of the online discussion. He has a great looking blog with lots of fun gimmicks - oops I mean advanced features. He talks about both the business side and the programming side of software and computers, has a lively interest in moblogging. He also plays a major role in 'happenings' and other offline interactions of the blogging community. He sometimes writes about politics as well, and his blog is a great place to pick up a high level view of what's happening in Japan. He doesn't write about it every day, so just look in the 'items by category' section of his sidebar.

PN - The Political Network
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