December 2016

The Purpose is Stasis

2016-12-28T21:37:54+00:00December 27th, 2016|Defense, Tech|

Well over a month since the 2016 election and more than two months since a public ODNI assessment of the matter (an organization which represents the combined views of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies), many people seem to be screwing up the Russia hacking story. For obvious reasons, Clinton proxies have hit the airwaves declaring that it was the linchpin upon which the election turned. For equally obvious reasons, the president-elect and his distressing parade of appointees have dismissed it as the work of conspiracy theorists. Adding to the chaos, disenchanted leftists and paid Russian shills have further stirred the pot of unreality, asking (in a baldly false equivalence) why Democrats should trust the same intelligence agencies that once led the United States to invade Iraq. As a consequence, the issue has become muddied. Only 55 percent of Americans are “bothered” by the hacking story, split almost wholly along party lines.

I want to lay down a few points that are, in my mind, abjectly true. Even before the election, I assumed these things were common knowledge. I realize too late they were not. Interspersed here will be my conclusions, based on the facts as I understand them.

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September 2016

What the Web Used To Be

2016-12-28T21:37:54+00:00September 5th, 2016|Culture, Tech|

What is the internet?

Growing up, it was the Wild West; an uncharted expanse where you could happily lose yourself in that six hours between homework and bed. “Going online” was itself a rite: you did not suffer the pain of establishing a dial-up connection unless you intended to linger awhile. Although there were still safe harbors (my first “home base” was the forum board for the original Sims), there was nothing like a Facebook to keep you rooted to the same spot. You explored and saw crazy stuff. You could follow hyperlinks and drift on the fringe from one boutique website to the next, journeying all night without encountering the mediating power of Google or Wikipedia.

I know for a fact that the internet was smaller back then, but it felt like there was much more to it.

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January 2016

A Brief History of Too Much Violence

2016-12-28T21:37:54+00:00January 18th, 2016|Culture, Defense, Tech|

It was the image of a 7-year-old trauma victim, still strapped in his airplane seat after a 30,000 foot fall, which made me quit my work for the night and go outside to gulp breaths of cold, crisp air. I hadn’t gone looking for the picture — I was doing research on the MH17 crash site — but it was one of the top results, and I habitually zoomed in for a better look. You could still make out the look of terror before explosive decompression had robbed him of his consciousness, hopefully the whole way down.

A few years ago, as talking heads fretted about the increasing photorealism of videogame violence, very few people were thinking ahead to how the web might abet the spread photos and videos of real violence. Yet here we are. In the mid-2000s, raw war footage and snuff films lived only in the dark corners of the internet: carefully guarded torrents and unlisted websites, frequented by a tiny minority of very sick people. Now, at the start of 2016, there’s at most two degrees of separation — a hashtag and a video link — between a funny-but-dumb BuzzFeed article and a choreographed ISIS execution. The worlds are gradually converging.

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February 2015

A Different Sort of Carpentry

2016-12-28T21:37:55+00:00February 8th, 2015|Life, Tech|

A fine wooden desk sits in my room. It’s one of a number that my grandfather refinished. This was his hobby: hunting from one yard sale to the next; eyeing cast-off, beaten-up furniture and evaluating by a checklist only he could see; setting each new acquisition on his workshop operating table; and emerging months later with something reinforced, refinished, and utterly transformed. He was an artist. When I knew I was bound for DC, I drove the desk 400 miles north with me.

Same as I know the desk is something special, I also suspect it’s something I’ll never make. I’m not “handy;” I’ve met only a few people from my generation who are. “Handiness”—the ability look at a problem, rifle through a toolbox, and know immediately how to solve it—seems for a lot of us to be going the way of calligraphy, dedicated photography, or even the humble hometown newspaper. With stuff both cheaper and more complicated, buying another is easier than repairing the one you have.

But before mourning Millennials’ callous abandonment of skills once thought integral to the life of an industrious man or woman (carpentry! canning! sewing!), it’s worth considering what we’ve learned in their stead. This is an interesting exercise: often times, something doesn’t even seem like a “skill” until you meet someone who can’t do it.

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August 2014

People Are Talking About ALS Now. It’s About Time.

2016-12-28T21:37:55+00:00August 25th, 2014|Life, Tech|

My grandmother was a strong, stubborn woman, part Irish and part Pennsylvania Dutch, raised amid the worst of the Great Depression. She didn’t take kindly to anything that slowed her down, and this included the early symptoms of ALS.

By the time the formal diagnosis came, the disorder was moving very quickly. In rapid succession, she lost the ability to climb down stairs; to walk; to sit up; to talk at all. During one of our last visits, I can remember marveling at the steely determination she showed as she raised her hand and pointed.

She became good at pointing. She pointed when she wanted something done; she pointed when she wanted you to know she loved you. The effort she summoned to make this small gesture was the same amount a healthy person might muster to climb a mountain.

She died in 1998 of an unrelated cause, shortly after she lost the ability to swallow. To the end, she remained sharp. It was only her body that failed her.

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January 2014

Interesting Times

2016-12-28T21:37:56+00:00January 9th, 2014|Life, Tech|

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the ancient, subtly backhanded, vaguely oriental curse. The phrase is, in fact, likely a fabrication of a 20th century British imperialist, but it’s still a great saying so let’s just roll with it.

The word “interesting,” before it became a de facto placeholder to deploy in event of any awkward pause, actually had some nuance. It means “engaging the attention or regard” but in a uniquely subdued way. It’s a word that invites thoughtful pause in lieu of immediate action. Something “interesting” is almost never wholly good and can frequently be bad, hence the curse part.

While every generation generally believes that they have it the hardest yet and that their challenges are unprecedented, I think Millennials/Gen Y have something new to alternately brag and complain about: the years into which we’ve come of age really are the most complex, mind-boggling, abstract, and interesting in human history. Successfully navigating this flurry of social and technological change will be the task of our lifetimes and entirely determine the fate of those generations who come after us.

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When computers can do it all, what comes next?

2016-12-28T21:37:57+00:00January 5th, 2014|Tech|

As I helped my dad shop for a new mid-grade laptop over the Christmas holiday. I was absolutely floored by the low-cost options on hand: roughly $400 got you a dual-core 2.2Ghz processor, 4GB of RAM, and ~500GB of storage. If you wanted to go lower, you could nab one of those wildly popular <$250 Chromebooks, sans OS entirely.

Every model available, no matter how cheap, had more than enough power to handle basic consumer applications both reliably and virtually lag-free. For the purposes of the vast majority of users, computers really aren’t “slow” anymore. It’s an incredible change over just five years ago, and the pace keeps on accelerating.

Keeping Moore’s Law alive and well, Intel will be debuting an 8-core processor in the 2014 cycle.  HDD (non-flash) storage costs declined a further 20% in 2013, standing at .00000015% what they did in 1970. A friend recently posted a bandwidth speed test in which he clocked a non-theoretical download speed of 630.85 MB/s, making all regular bandwidth use virtually instantaneous. He could download the world’s first (160GB) 4K video in roughly four minutes.

The world of computing tech seems, very quickly, to be outpacing its practical applications. I don’t believe (unlike a certain apocryphal patent office employee) that everything that can be invented has been invented, but I remain very stumped as to what future inventions might possibly look like.

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