Remember the "me" generation? The self-indulgent tail of the Baby Boom generation? Then came "generation x", then "generation y" (for lack of a more imaginative label)....
Much has been made of the social nature of today's young generation. With younger kids on MySpace, older ones on Facebook, constant sharing of pictures, text messaging, videos, and so forth, this generation is assembling a shared experience like no other before it. This has its downsides, of course; parents and business-minded adults fret that the "kids today" are leaving a trail of cyberdroppings that will follow them into job interviews, lead to stalking and identity theft, and compromise their privacy in ways they can't imagine or appreciate until they're older.
I wonder if this is necessarily a bad thing. Today's adults, like all the ones who have come before, hide their shortcomings and hope that their friends, neighbors, and associates will believe them to be stronger, more principled, and more sensible than they probably really are. The line between public information and private places personal habits and preferences that may be controversial or unsavory well behind the privacy line.
Today's generation may not have the luxury, or perhaps the burden, of keeping all that personal stuff off limits, when so much of it is on YouTube, Juicy Campus, and their own social network profiles. Rather than leading to embarrassment, though, I wonder if this might instead promote a wider understanding of what it means to be human, with all its flaws and frailties. Perhaps the "us" generation will, in the end, be more tolerant of personal differences and less burdened by conformity.
And, what happens when the "us" generation meets "Big Brother"? What happens when the continuing proliferation of data mining, background checks, surveillance, and other tactics of a generation that hordes its own privacy yet seeks compromising information about others meets the openness of a new, more social generation? Perhaps the personal information that Big Brother covets like gold will be recognized by a new generation as nothing but fools gold.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Computer Illiteracy
It seems to me that computer literacy is becoming almost as important as the usual kind of literacy. We've seen cases recently where the lack of computer literacy has led to unjust court outcomes (like that of a teacher who was convicted of exposing her class to pornography when a virus- and spyware-ridden Windows 98 computer in the classroom encountered a Javascript "porn storm" and kept opening a new window for every window she closed....) and, obviously, bad public policy.
An example of the latter can be found in a recent Business Week cover story ("E-spionage: A Business Week Investigation", April 21) in which the magazine tries to describe the origins and effects of targeted malware emails to government agencies and contractors. Along the way, they apparently confuse a domain name registrar with an ISP, and describe "corrupted" Microsoft Office documents that somehow, apparently magically, install malware on the recipient's machine. How do they do this? Malicious macros? Buffer overflows? Are they really .exe files masquerading as .doc files? It would be useful to know. There are ways of recognizing these various kinds of attacks that the magazine apparently doesn't know about.
The best part of the article, though, was a description about how a staffer to Missouri Republican Senator "Kit" Bond recommended that the Senator see Die Hard 4 as background on cyber-terrorism. Bond is quoted as saying that "Hollywood... doesn't exaggerate as much as people might think." If our elected representatives are taking technology lessons from Hollywood, no wonder they think the Internet is a bunch of "tubes". Perhaps that also explains why they think they can successfully wiretap terrorists when any halfway computer-literate user can easily evade monitoring using simple, readily available tools, thus guaranteeing that the only "terrorists" these laws will trap will be the hapless, harmless wannabees.
An example of the latter can be found in a recent Business Week cover story ("E-spionage: A Business Week Investigation", April 21) in which the magazine tries to describe the origins and effects of targeted malware emails to government agencies and contractors. Along the way, they apparently confuse a domain name registrar with an ISP, and describe "corrupted" Microsoft Office documents that somehow, apparently magically, install malware on the recipient's machine. How do they do this? Malicious macros? Buffer overflows? Are they really .exe files masquerading as .doc files? It would be useful to know. There are ways of recognizing these various kinds of attacks that the magazine apparently doesn't know about.
The best part of the article, though, was a description about how a staffer to Missouri Republican Senator "Kit" Bond recommended that the Senator see Die Hard 4 as background on cyber-terrorism. Bond is quoted as saying that "Hollywood... doesn't exaggerate as much as people might think." If our elected representatives are taking technology lessons from Hollywood, no wonder they think the Internet is a bunch of "tubes". Perhaps that also explains why they think they can successfully wiretap terrorists when any halfway computer-literate user can easily evade monitoring using simple, readily available tools, thus guaranteeing that the only "terrorists" these laws will trap will be the hapless, harmless wannabees.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Implicit Messages: Law and Order
Last night marked the end of Jesse L. Martin's long run as Detective Ed Green on Law and Order. Green left a hero thanks to the heroic efforts of the writers, who contorted the plot sufficiently to cast him as a villain before turning him back into a hero by the end. They did this by exploiting the heroic efforts of Green's partner, who wouldn't stop believing in him and continued pursuing leads long after the case seemed to be wrapped up, and members of the DA's office, who wouldn't stop believing in him and discredited their own witness, among other things, to find the truth. The explicit message of this was that Green really was the upstanding, heroic guy we've always believed him to be. A secondary explicit message was probably one of of how your friends will come through for you if you really are an upstanding guy.
But I wonder about the implicit messages. Did the producers mean to imply that your best chance to have justice, if you're improperly accused of a crime, is to have powerful friends in the police department and the DA's office looking out for you? And what does this mean on the day after the program aired, when a judge in Queens acquitted three detectives in the shooting of Sean Bell?
But I wonder about the implicit messages. Did the producers mean to imply that your best chance to have justice, if you're improperly accused of a crime, is to have powerful friends in the police department and the DA's office looking out for you? And what does this mean on the day after the program aired, when a judge in Queens acquitted three detectives in the shooting of Sean Bell?
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Straight Talk
John McCain has distinguished himself by taking stands that seem to be principled, sometimes because they are counter to those of the administration and the rest of his party. Hence, the "straight talk express". With most Americans now against the war in Iraq, his continued strong support for the war seems to be another example of a principled, unpopular stance.
But could it, instead, be due solely to a basic point of confusion?
McCain has several times recently raised the specter of Iran support for "Al Qaeda in Iraq". Does he not know that Al Qaeda is Sunni and Iran is Shi'ite? He also raises the specter of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" gaining control of Iraq. Does he not understand that the Shi'ites have the upper hand in the Iraqi civil war? If not, is it possible that his entire support for the war is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the differences between these two Islamic sects?
But could it, instead, be due solely to a basic point of confusion?
McCain has several times recently raised the specter of Iran support for "Al Qaeda in Iraq". Does he not know that Al Qaeda is Sunni and Iran is Shi'ite? He also raises the specter of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" gaining control of Iraq. Does he not understand that the Shi'ites have the upper hand in the Iraqi civil war? If not, is it possible that his entire support for the war is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about the differences between these two Islamic sects?
Buried Lede
From Business Week, April 7, 2008, "China's Factory Blues", by Dexter Roberts (pp. 78 - 82):
"'Unlike in the last 20 years, when China exported deflation, from now on, China will export inflation,' says Peter Lau, CEO of Hong Kong retailer Giordano International, which has extensive operations in China. (p. 82).
The article describes how Chinese producers have hit the cost floor: the rising yuan, cancellation of preferential policies for exporters, and increased labor and environmental regulations are raising the cost of production in China. This is probably a good policy for China because it squeezes out the lowest cost producers who pay the lowest wages and contribute disproportionately to pollution. However, it's potentially bad new for us because low cost imports have kept inflation in check even as the economy expands. Now, with the economy contracting, the closing of this inflationary safety valve means that the Fed has less flexibility to stimulate the economy. Until now, the Fed has thrown considerable weight behind economic stimulus policies with a rapid series of large rate cuts. Now, that approach is much more likely to cause inflation.
"'Unlike in the last 20 years, when China exported deflation, from now on, China will export inflation,' says Peter Lau, CEO of Hong Kong retailer Giordano International, which has extensive operations in China. (p. 82).
The article describes how Chinese producers have hit the cost floor: the rising yuan, cancellation of preferential policies for exporters, and increased labor and environmental regulations are raising the cost of production in China. This is probably a good policy for China because it squeezes out the lowest cost producers who pay the lowest wages and contribute disproportionately to pollution. However, it's potentially bad new for us because low cost imports have kept inflation in check even as the economy expands. Now, with the economy contracting, the closing of this inflationary safety valve means that the Fed has less flexibility to stimulate the economy. Until now, the Fed has thrown considerable weight behind economic stimulus policies with a rapid series of large rate cuts. Now, that approach is much more likely to cause inflation.
Buried Lede
From Fortune, March 17, 2008, "The Man Who Must Keep Goldman Growing", by Bethany McLean (pp. 131 - 140):
"Goldman spotted the problem early because it is fanatical about pricing its holdings at their current market value - even at times forcing traders to sell part of a position to establish a price." (pg. 140)
Goldman Sachs was the only one of the major independent investment banking firms to make money from the subprime meltdown. The other banks have posted billions of dollars in losses because their subprime holdings have lost so much value. No one knows how much, because the banks can't sell them, so banks like Citi keep taking writedowns, hoping to find the true value of their assets at some point. The exception, apparently, was Goldman, apparently because they sold small amounts of assets periodically, even as they were rising in value, in order to determine what their real market values were. This allowed them to detect falling confidence in the assets before the other banks did.
"Goldman spotted the problem early because it is fanatical about pricing its holdings at their current market value - even at times forcing traders to sell part of a position to establish a price." (pg. 140)
Goldman Sachs was the only one of the major independent investment banking firms to make money from the subprime meltdown. The other banks have posted billions of dollars in losses because their subprime holdings have lost so much value. No one knows how much, because the banks can't sell them, so banks like Citi keep taking writedowns, hoping to find the true value of their assets at some point. The exception, apparently, was Goldman, apparently because they sold small amounts of assets periodically, even as they were rising in value, in order to determine what their real market values were. This allowed them to detect falling confidence in the assets before the other banks did.
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