- George Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ Text of the famous diplomatic dispatch from Moscow by the architect of US policy towards the USSR. Kennan was pondering how best to deal with Stalin. His text is Interesting because we are now wondering how best to deal with Putin.
- What I’ve learned from 10,000 nights in the theatre Michael Billington reflects on his long career as the Guardian’s Theatre Critic. Lovely piece.
- Economic Man is dead, and not before time Paul Collier has written a thoughtful (and not terribly regretful) obituary in the TLS.
- The one-traffic-light rural town with some of the fastest broadband in the US Fascinating piece by Sue Halpern. Confirms the hunch that supplying fast broadband to a community is a great way to revive and empower it. And it was all done by local effort.
When the medium is the message
A couple of weeks ago my Observer column was about podcasting and the pioneering role that Dave Winer played in its evolution. Since Dave often includes a short podcast on his daily blog, I thought I should include an audio version of that particular column. Here it is:
(It’s only five minutes long, but the embed player doesn’t seem to realise that.)
‘Homo economicus’ is dead. Not before time.
Paul Collier writes a thoughtful obituary in the TLS:
Thankfully, we now know that Economic Man is a travesty. Blueprint: The evolutionary origins of a good society by Nicholas Christakis is the latest study to affirm this. It shows why, through the forces of evolution, Homo sapiens emerged as a uniquely social species. Far from being evolutionarily inevitable, Economic Man was culled almost to extinction, surviving only as the highly deviant behaviour we call psychopathic. In hunter-gatherer societies, hunters do not “eat what they kill”: such behaviour would bring social ostracism, so the hunters share their catch. The theorems derived from Economic Man explain the conditions under which a society of psychopaths would be able to function. In most contexts, those conditions turn out to be fanciful: the efficient paradise depicted in economics textbooks has never existed, and never will. Instead, in well-functioning societies, humans construct and abide by a vast web of kindness and mutual obligations of which Economic Man would be incapable.
Linkblog
- Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Deep Dive Into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance The EFF’s analysis of third-party tracking.
- Big Tech’s Big Defector Interesting New Yorker profile of Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who has seen the light — and written a book to prove it.
- Capitalism needs the nation state more than the state needs it. Terrific essay by a great economist, Dani Rodrik. Should be required reading in Silicon Valley. And by tech elites everywhere.
- Mike Bloomberg has just made Trump look reasonable Scathing column by Jack Shafer about the conflicts of interest implicit in a media mogul running for president.
Quote of the Day
“Blameless people are always the most exasperating”
- George Eliot
Linkblog
- Slow-Reading is the New Deep Learning If you want to understand (and retain) something, read slowly.
- China is researching methods of linking DNA to facial recognition Remarkable reporting ny the New York Times. Basically, it’s DNA phenotyping. “The Chinese government is building “essentially technologies used for hunting people,” said Mark Munsterhjelm, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario who tracks Chinese interest in the technology.
- Bestiality, Stabbings, and Child Porn: Why Facebook Moderators Are Suing the Company for Trauma The human costs of making Zuckerberg even richer and keeping the rest of us complacent about social media.
Linkblog
- 52 things I learned in 2019 Fascinating: by Tom Whitwell.
- ‘Distracted walking’: Should it be made illegal? Yes! Smombies are a danger to themselves and others.
- The Internet Archive Is Making Wikipedia More Reliable Wow! Thanks to a new initiative by the Internet Archive, you can click the name of a cited book and see a two-page preview of the work, so long as the citation specifies a page number. You can also borrow a digital copy of the book, so long as no else has checked it out, for two weeks—much the same way you’d borrow a book from your local library. Wikipedia was one of the great ideas of the 20th century. So was the Internet Archive. Now they’re joining forces. Which is why I donate regularly to support Wikipedia. You?
Quote of the day
“Victories no longer assume the form that they are expected to assume or that they had assumed in the past. If victory has historically been associated with the defeat of the adversary in a climactic pitched battle, this vision is now a relic from a bygone era. This is not how wars end in the 21st century.”
Linkblog
- All new cell phone users in China must now have their face scanned How long before the UK governments says: “that’s a cool idea”?
- Dilbert’s creator has two rules for a more civilised Internet Scott Adams on learning from his experience.
- Why clean energy isn’t enough to tackle climate change Sure, we need to switch to renewables and electric cars etc. But first we have to reduce our use of fossil fuels. And that’s the really hard bit.
- How Memes Got Weaponized: A Short History Memes might start as a joke, but some people are starting to see them as the serious threat they can be. Sobering tale.
Loserthink
Scott Adams has a new book out. Note the subtitle. Blurb reads:
Even the smartest and most educated among us can slip into ‘loserthink,’ since we haven’t been exposed to the best thinking practices in every discipline. Psychologists, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, historians, and artists, for example, all see the world through different filters. If we don’t understand the basics of those filters, we’re likely to fall into loserthink. Some signs you’ve succumbed to loserthink include: inability to get your ego out of your decisions, thinking with words instead of reasons, failing to imagine alternative explanations, trusting your preferred news sources, and making too much of coincidences. And with the never-ending stream of urgent notifications on your phone and anger on your social media feeds, it’s easy to feel miserable, defensive, anxious, poor, and sick. But Adams offers a cure for loserthink by teaching you the most productive thinking practices from a variety of disciplines. In this book, you will learn how to… Recognise the walls of your own mental prison and break out. Understand the world in a way you have never seen it before. Be among the most perceptive and respected thinkers in every conversation. Your bubble of reality doesn’t have to be a prison. This book will show you how to break free.