The inevitable American imperium: the case for recognising the inevitable — and its limitations

Fascinating, thoughtful New York Times Magazine piece by my former Observer colleague, Michael Ignatief, explaining why the US is becoming an imperial power, and what the dangers of that will be. Quote:

“Those who want America to remain a republic rather than become an empire imagine rightly, but they have not factored in what tyranny or chaos can do to vital American interests. The case for empire is that it has become, in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike. Even so, empires survive only by understanding their limits. Sept. 11 pitched the Islamic world into the beginning of a long and bloody struggle to determine how it will be ruled and by whom: the authoritarians, the Islamists or perhaps the democrats. America can help repress and contain the struggle, but even though its own security depends on the outcome, it cannot ultimately control it. Only a very deluded imperialist would believe otherwise. ..”.

Nothing new here, perhaps, but the case is put thoughtfully and eloquently.

DeCSS case fails in Norway. Just as well they’re not in the EU
Register story.

“The entertainment lobby has failed to persuade a Norwegian court to convict a teenager for creating a utility for playing back DVDs on his own computer.

Jon Lech Johansen has been acquitted of all charges in a trial that tested the legality of the DeCSS DVD decryption utility he produced, Norwegian paper Aftenposten reports.

Norwegian prosecutors, acting largely on the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), argued in court that Johansen acted illegally in sharing his DeCSS tool with others and distributing it via the Internet. They claimed the DeCSS utility made it easier to pirate DVDs.

The court rejected these arguments, ruling that Johansen did nothing wrong in bypassing DVD scrambling codes that stopped him using his Linux PC to play back DVDs he’d bought.” NYT version.

Well, that’s one small step for mankind. But the DMCA is being incorporated into the laws of all EU countries as a result of the European Copyright Directive, so if anyone tries the same thing here then they will go to the slammer or face a huge fine. What I’ve never understood is how the Norwegian authorities were conned into bringing the case in the first place.

At last — the computing industry fights back
Mercury News story.

“The high-tech industry plans to launch a sophisticated new lobbying campaign later this month to strike back against Hollywood in a battle to shape rules of the road for new digital technologies.

The Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project — two prominent high-tech trade groups representing Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other industry heavyweights — are forming a new coalition and working to enlist support from consumer and business groups.

They hope to convince Congress that strict copy-protection legislation that sets technological mandates would stifle innovation, harm consumers and threaten an already suffering tech industry.

“These things have a very big impact on our industry and on Intel,” said Intel lobbyist Doug Comer. “It’s not just about, `Are we driving up the price of the chip?’ It’s about what kind of future is being created for digital consumers.”

The entertainment industry had the upper hand in the battle last year, with a carefully orchestrated lobbying campaign and bills introduced by powerful lawmakers. Hollywood-backed legislation filed by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., and Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Los Angeles, would embed copy protection into PCs and an array of consumer devices.

But the legislation had consequences that Walt Disney and other backers hadn’t bargained for. It served as a rallying cry for consumer groups and tech companies to fight for consumers’ rights to make copies of CDs, DVDs and other digital works for personal use, as they do with TV shows and audio tapes…”

Gerry McGovern’s predictions for 2003 (and reflections on his predictions for 2002)
From Gerry’s Newsletter.

Predictions for 2003:
1) The global economy will remain sluggish. The IT sector will struggle to regain momentum. Web services and wireless communications will massively over-promise and under-deliver. This incessant hype that the IT industry is prone to, will damage the genuine potential of these technologies.
2) Organizations will standardize and streamline more and more of their web operations. Multiple websites, with multiple design approaches and publishing processes, will be frowned on as budgets are tightened.
3) Organizations will finally begin to develop return on investment models for their Internet operations. Many will find that their websites are simply not profitable.
4) Information architecture will grow in importance. More organizations will recognize that organizing information efficiently is one of the key challenges they face.
5) The intranet will expand its role as a critical tool by which an organization increases productivity, improves communication and reduces costs.
6) The role of women on the Internet will increase. An example will be in intranet management. Here, the shift of responsibility from IT to corporate communications will gain momentum. (Women dominate corporate communications.)
7) We will see the emergence of the ‘de-merger,’ where large, unwieldy mergers from the boom era, are taken apart so as to make them more efficient and profitable.
8) Spam will continue its inexorable rise. The principle of charging for data sent will begin to gain currency, as the global economy realizes how much spam, and other wasteful communication, is costing.
9) The myth that the Internet is borderless, and thus lawless, will finally die and be buried in 2003. Spam, viruses, terrorism, identity theft, and copyright infringement will be the key drivers for a raft of legislation.
10) Recession or no recession, boom or bust, the Internet revolution will continue apace. More and more of our business, commerce, communication, work and leisure will happen online. In many ways, the Internet revolution has only just begun.

And his recap on his predications for 2002:

1) Although the worst is probably over, there will be no major recovery in 2002. Things will stabilize during the first half of the year, with modest gains from there on.
2) This will be the year of the virus. Security will become an ever-increasing concern.
3) There will be increasing calls for comprehensive Internet legislation, as the Internet becomes more critical to the lives of millions. Copyright, crime and terrorism will be the focus of much legislation.
4) Spam will continue to be a major problem, and will be one of the key reasons people will want a more regulated Internet.
5) Bankruptcies, mergers and consolidation will continue. More people will go to fewer websites, as the Internet becomes controlled by a few mega-corporations.
6) The PC crisis will continue. For a significant percentage of the population there will be no compelling reason to buy a PC. For those that have one, there will be few compelling reasons to upgrade.
7) The wireless and telecommunications sector will continue to flounder. Too much cost, too much hype and too little demand for all these wonderful extra services, will badly hurt these industries in 2002.
8) A two-tier Internet will clearly emerge: for-free and for-fee. 9) Information architecture will become the crucial discipline in website design. This means a greater focus on getting your metadata, classification, navigation and search right.
10) Amazon.com will make a profit.

Roy (‘Woy’) Jenkins is dead

The last of the great lunchers has passed away. Former Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer and founder of the Social Democratic Party, also known as the Claret Drinker’s Friend. At first sight you might think him a booby (especially given his plummy voice and inability to pronounce the letter ‘R’), but he was a shrewd, intelligent and liberal man. I saw him in action once. It was in the early 1970s and I was working in the Back Half [literary section] of the New Statesman. Jenkins came in to deliver the copy of a book review we had commissioned (can you imagine a major politician nowadays bringing in his own copy?) and bumped in to the Editor, Tony Howard. After an exchange of pleasantries, Tony said that they were due to meet that evening at VS Pritchett’s birthday party. “So we are”, said Woy. “You know”, continued Tony, “it’s shameful that he has never had a gong [honour]”. “So it is”, replied Woy, “I’ll do something about it”. And he did: Pritchett was knighted shortly afterwards.

Another way Blogging differs from journalism

When you give an interview to a traditional journalist, you are always at his/her mercy, because they can (re)shape the conversation to suit their purpose. One obvious way to turn the tables is to put your own transcript of the interview on the Web before the interviewer can get his/her version through the editorial filters and production schedules. Here’s an interesting report about a case where a well-known Blogger interviewee did just that.

The Track to Modernity

Fascinating article by Jack Beatty on how the US railroads standardised time — and changed the world. It happened on November 18, 1883, at noon.

“Nineteenth century America was a temporal wilderness. In the 1850s Americans set their watches in as many as a hundred local times. When it was noon in Chicago it was 11:27 in Omaha, 11:50 in St. Louis, 12:09 in Louisville, and 12:31 in Pittsburgh. In a century of riotous change, the railroad’s standardization of time stood out as a challenge to both nature and democracy…”.

Geeks and Hollywood: a puzzle

Browsing, as one does, the musings of the Geek community I am struck by a contradiction. On the one hand, the community is rightly hostile to the ‘content’ industries and their copyright thugs. On the other hand, community members seems obsessively interested in the products of these industries, particularly the movie business. I guess, for example, that there isn’t a self-respecting Geek in the world who has not already been to see the latest Lord of the Rings film. Loathing, as I do, Hollywood and everything it stands for, I find this odd. I contribute as little to its profits as I can (my children are the only conduit through which money trickles from me to Disney). I find our local Warner ‘Village’ entertainment complex physically repulsive, and boycott it because of what it stands for. Why doesn’t the Geek community do the same? Or am I missing something?

My New Year resolution is… I don’t make resolutions

But before you resolve to give up alcohol, consider this:

“The cardiac benefits of low-dose alcohol are evident in study after study. All over the world, moderate drinkers have healthier hearts than teetotalers, with fewer heart attacks from fatty plaque clogging the heart’s arteries and blocking blood flow.

In countries like the United States where heart disease is a major cause of death, this translates into a survival advantage: moderate drinkers live considerably longer on average than nondrinkers.

‘The science supporting the protective role of alcohol is indisputable; no one questions it any more,’ said Dr. Curtis Ellison, a professor of medicine and public health at the Boston University School of Medicine. ‘There have been hundreds of studies, all consistent.'” Cheers! Slainte! Salute!

The tyranny of certainty: and how to avoid it

Splendid lecture by Andrew Sullivan on the scepticism of Michael Oakeshott. Quote:

“Oakeshott’s conservatism, his defense of liberal civil society, liberal constitutionalism — of what many people today would call conservatism but which strictly speaking is a brand of liberalism — was based not on the notion that there are some rights of man that we can know for sure, let alone truths that are self-evident. It wasn’t based upon the notion that a free society generates more wealth or power. It was simply based upon the notion of the limits of human understanding.

This radical defense of liberalism on the ground of skepticism can be described in a certain basic way, which is that we cannot know. As an empirical matter, as a practical matter, human beings do not know the consequence of their actions. They cannot see the future. Their information and data, based on what has happened in the past, is extremely limited. We operate constantly, as human beings, in a fog–a mental, intellectual, psychological fog. This is our reality.

This fog extends not simply to abstract conceptions of what is true or not–which Oakeshott never fully abandoned, but gradually came to relinquish in his interests–but practically speaking as well. How do we know that what we’re going to do is produce the results we want? How do we know that a certain policy is going to bring about the consequences it is designed to bring about? How do we know, when we start a war, where we will end up in that war?

This skepticism leads Oakeshott to two very basic ideas. One is because no one–no one–has the right to certainty, we should do all that we can to prevent anyone with that certainty from running our lives. What this means is that you keep the principles of certainty out of politics. He was thinking, as Montaigne was thinking at that time, of theocracy. Montaigne lived in the time of the wars of religion, and tried everything he could both to uphold the existing norms of Christianity while quietly, bravely, interestingly, fascinatingly dissenting.

Oakeshott’s defense of a small government, therefore, is not based on what traditionally conservatives believe it to be based upon. It’s based upon the lack of knowledge of any group of people in knowing what on earth they’re doing. Keep the government small so it can do as little damage as possible. Whenever certainty arises in public debate, question it, suspect it, doubt it. And alongside this, a form of government, a form of statesmanship, of politicking, which deeply understands the limits of its own knowledge, which moves forward with a sense of judgment, not certainty; by prudence, not conviction….”

In a strange way there are some parallels between Oakeshott’s philosophical approach and the end-to-end design philosophy of the Net’s architecture. And an appropriate humility towards the future on the part of its designers, who knew that they could not know what people would use the thing for in the future.