Alan Westin, the legal scholar who transformed our understanding of privacy, has died. His definitiion of privacy (in Privacy and Freedom, 1967) — as the ability to control how much about ourselves that we reveal to others — is still the best definition we have.
The vision behind Google Glass
This morning’s Observer column.
What endears the Google Glass project to me is that it’s the latest instalment in a long and honourable tradition in computer science. It goes all the way back to one of the great luminaries of the business, Douglas Engelbart, the man who invented the computer mouse and was a pioneer in networked computing and the design of graphical user interfaces. (In December 1968, in San Francisco, he gave a live demonstration of what networked computing could do that had a profound influence on the people who built the internet and much of the technology we use today.)
What motivated Engelbart from the outset was a passionate belief that computers had the power to augment, rather than replace, human capabilities. Machines, he believed, should do what machines do best, thereby freeing up humans to do what they do best. And this idea of “augmentation” has inspired a good deal of research in the decades since Engelbart embarked on his mission to change the world.
Aaron’s Law
Lorry Lessig’s wonderful inaugural lecture.
Spring!
Lough Corrib: towards the end of the day
Late afternoon in Co Galway, in one of my favourite spots: the jetty outside Oughterard.
Large size here.
The futility of wanting to be liked
I’m not a fan of David Cameron, but I had given him the benefit of the doubt on the same-sex marriage Bill. My feeling was that he could only have embarked on such a divisive issue (divisive for his party, that is) because he believed passionately in the cause. But Geoffrey Wheatcroft, in a perceptive piece in today’s Guardian puts it down to political ineptitude: it was part of his campaign to de-toxify the Tory party. “Of all Cameron’s own goals”, Wheatcroft writes,
none is stranger than the same-sex marriage bill. Try to set aside the rights and wrongs and look at this in terms of brute calculation of political advantage (and that’s how politicians do view matters, whatever they may say to the contrary). Bear in mind that Cameron’s critics are correct when they say that same-sex marriage was in neither the Tory manifesto (or any other party’s) or the coalition agreement.
To make this clearer, go back 45 or more years, as some of us can, to the famous liberal reforms passed by parliament under Harold Wilson’s government in the late 1960s, on abortion, homosexuality and divorce. I am old enough not only to remember them but to have collected signatures when I was an undergraduate on a petition for the repeal of the existing law criminalising homosexuality, one of my last political activities and for all I know my only good deed.
But although the bills were passed under the Wilson government, they were not introduced by it. They were all private members’ bills. Abortion reform was sponsored by a recently elected Liberal called David Steel, and homosexual decriminalisation by Leo Abse, an eccentric Labour MP (and by another eccentric who deserves to be remembered with honour, “Boofy” the Earl of Arran, a Wodehousian peer who bravely steered the bill through the Lords).
As a result, although the measures were contentious, there was no animosity between parties – or within them, a contrast indeed with this latest episode. So why did Cameron bring in the bill? The answer given by his somewhat diminished claque of sycophantic admirers in the media is that it was part of his mission to detoxify the Conservatives and show they aren’t the “nasty party” any more. In that case he conspicuously failed in his own terms, since more Tory MPs voted against the bill than for it. He has merely reminded us that he is the weak leader of a bitterly divided party.
Wheatcroft’s point is that the Tories were not brought into this world to be ‘nice’. They’re supposed to be competent, he says, and to protect the world for the wilder enthusiasms of the liberal mind. But Cameron doesn’t match up to that elementary requirement — which is why a new poll ranks him just ahead of John Major and Gordon Brown in the competence stakes.
Going Up
Miniature deltas
Walking along a Donegal beach at low tide we were struck by the way the combination of water, tides and sand enacts (or mimics) high-speed geological phenomena. A curving stream heading down the beach cuts out mini-cliffs, which it then undermines, precipitating massive collapses. At another point, as here, a slow-moving stream mimics the deltas of great rivers. I suspect that this is why so many people like living by the sea: things are always changing — through the day as well as through the year.
Larger size here.
Digital capitalism 101
This morning’s Observer column.
Need a crash course in digital capitalism? Easy: you just need to understand four concepts – margins, volume, inequality and employment. And if you need more detail, just add the following adjectives: thin, vast, huge and poor.First, margins. Once upon a time, there was a great company called Kodak…
LATER: It occurred to me that “Digital Capitalism” would make an interesting university course. One of the textbooks I would use is Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System
This recent seminar presentation gives a flavour of Dan in action:
Another essential text would be Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy
Quote of the Day: Non Potest Quae Non Manent
Clay Shirky, writing about Higher Ed’s reaction to MOOCs:
College mottos run the gamut from Bryn Mawr’s Veritatem Dilexi (I Delight In The Truth) to the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising’s Where Business Meets Fashion, but there’s a new one that now hangs over many of them: Non Potest Quae Non Manent. Things That Can’t Last Don’t. The cost of attending college is rising above inflation every year, while the premium for doing so shrinks. This obviously can’t last, but no one on the inside has any clear idea about how to change the way our institutions work while leaving our benefits and privileges intact.
In the academy, we lecture other people every day about learning from history. Now its our turn, and the risk is that we’ll be the last to know that the world has changed, because we can’t imagine—really cannot imagine—that story we tell ourselves about ourselves could start to fail. Even when it’s true. Especially when it’s true.