Flushed

While many of us have been using the web for some time, the idea of running an application on a computer you don't own is a relatively fresh idea in enterprise culture. Computing as a network utility is seen as a great way to transfer capital expenditure to operational expenditure, but other issues with cloud computing seem to inspire angst.

When it comes to trusting others with your personal freedom, there is a confusion between the needs for privacy and anonymity. You need the first much less than the second.

What about trusting third parties with your (or your companies) data? When the computers you run your applications on are owned by someone else and located beyond sight, surely there is cause for concern. But the belief in an inherent risk with cloud computing is mainly a marketing strategy for companies (like Microsoft) who came late to utility computing. In reality, third parties deal with their customers valuable assets everyday. One assumes that those still in business do it properly.

Trust problems are twofold between your data and a third party; trust as in "they don't care like I do" and trust as in "they may betray my interests".

The idea that "they" cannot be trusted is not a concept you often hear aired about other vital public networks:

• We run our own power supply here, in case they try to cut us off or reduce our current.
• We collect and filter our own water in case they cut off our supply or taint it somehow. Or it comes out of the tap too slowly.
• We don't use the public phone system - they might be listening. We only use satellite phones.

There is a well known medical condition for anyone using the arguments above without good reason.

Of course, I don't "trust" my electricity supplier in a personal sense. But thanks to capitalism, I know the workers at the power plant have kids. And these parents will not be able to afford to send their kids to the right school if they displease customers too regularly. So annoying me may well lead, inexorably, to little Johnny coming home from his bad school crying, because his head was flushed down the toilet again.

And that I do trust.

Hospitals have their own backup generators, which seems to imply that when its important, you can't trust a public network. In reality, a hospital is not going to have the skills and understanding to maintain a reliable fallback. A lone generator gathering dust in the basement is a costly way to ward off a small risk. For most of us, a sensible fallback is knowing how to find candles and matches in the dark - until the power is restored.

While a power cut maybe the equivalent of losing your data, there is no simple equivalent to your data getting into the wrong hands. But most industrial espionage does not involve high tech skulduggery - just smooth talking on the golf course. Or looking at trash.

Google have a lot of information about me, surely they can abuse this? But Google don't know - or care - who "I" am, and this gets us back to the cloak of anonymity. Google holds massively valuable trend information about how groups move. What an audience search for after a commercial break is worth millions. Compare that to the value of knowing what porn site a minor celebrity browsed - maybe a newspaper exclusive? And for that, the risk of destroying a search providers credibility irreparably overnight. Not good value.

But of course, if the third party is under pressure from your own government, then it is somewhat different. With market defying nonsense like the War on Terror, for example, anonymity is ripped up regularly. Once this happens, any network can be perverted from a transport mechanism for information or materials to a jail system. An outward eye turned inwards, with links turned to restraints.

If you don't trust your service provider, change them. You don't have to use Google. But if you can't trust your rulers, then all decisions - business or personal - are in any case compromised.

Apart from the tax opportunity, representative governments usually end up steering clear of direct interference with network utilities. But as a new network appears, the government is often forced to act as arbiter, planner or wet nurse. Even as the first rail routes were laid, there were fears that it was dangerous for people, especially women, to move at high speeds. (And yes, maybe this does explain Network Rail delays today.)

Perhaps, to be generous, the current government need to protect us all from Internet pirates is just one of these early glitches. Meanwhile, only advocacy, tactical voting or revolution can really stop a government pushing any public network down the pan.

Feathered

Walking through the last section of the Montezuma exhibition at the British Museum, there is a slightly regretful attitude to the displays. Even today, we have little option but to accept that the destruction of the Aztecs is a story seen through Spanish imperial spin. We see paintings of a noble savage, Montezuma, chatting pleasantly with Spaniards, giving up his kingly status to the better catholics. That Spanish court society obviously didn't exist in Technotichlan wasn't a problem. This stuff played well back in Castille.

It is just a solid reminder of the well turned phrase - winners write the history. While the conquistadors had the guns, germs and steel advantage, there was also a fatal misreading of signs. As fascinating as their society was, continuous blood sacrifices really didn't help read runes. What did Quetzalcoatl mean by sending these white strangers? Were they emissaries of the feathered serpent? No. Cortes was not the Messiah, he was just a very naughty boy.

And so we have today's remake of Christian people killing (ig)noble savages in a nation that are also confused over signs. But in this version, the steel advantage is smaller, and the invaders are not lead by Cortes. And this version is playing badly with the audience back home.

In this new blockbuster, the President is both supporting production and trying to change the ending. You see, he doesn't really like the script. He is willing to repeat the old lines about fighting in Afghanistan to make the streets back home safer. Though he wouldn't bomb the Chicago projects to make Illinois safer.

Puzzling about how many troops to send also breaks with the whole vision. The ad campaign has already been paid for. Just Do It!

And you can't change the baddy. Its The Taliban yeah? They wear beards and don't approve of rock music. Why change the enemy to Al-Qaeda? Those guys were written out of the plot in the prequel, and are not due to comeback in for at least another two films. And EA have bought options.

These themes were really developed for the faith based Yoda style politics of Bush and Blair. When a Nobel prize winner repeats them, they lose meaning because, of course they, never had any. But it seems he is unwilling to sack the writers.

To many naïve observers, it would be better to stop prosecuting a war where comparsions with Vietnam loom larger. But from a political point of view, the story comes first. And while the working script is a well known one, it was written for different voices. Ones who wouldn't worry about small details like the resulting corrupt regime.

Lets face it, the whole War on Terror franchise is looking clunky, and was done better in Battle Star Galactica anyway. Whatever the outcome, this one is going straight to DVD.

Cant

I do mean cant; I haven't dropped an apostrophe or changed the vowel to be polite. Dr Johnson explains it to Boswell:

"My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, 'Sir, I am your most humble servant.' You are not his most humble servant. You may say, 'These are sad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times.' You don't mind the times. You tell a man, 'I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.' You don't care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly."

Though he died 300 years ago, Dr Samuel Johnson is still a reasonable choice for patron saint of bloggers; his style of rhetoric is clearly what many modern columnists aspire to - ever since being rude was publicly acceptable. I guess if anything "the mode of talking in society" has largely moved Johnson's way.

Blogging, along with micro blogging, is a mass movement away from the pure consumption of produced opinion. And unlike talking in the pub, a blog post can be scrutinized and rebutted at leisure. But the open nature also breaks away from cabal politics - "are you one of us?" - that colours mainstream political parties and media. Good blogs and forums usually represent the stream of a conversation, not just an isolated rant. At best, they build positively on current waves of opinion.

Which begs the question; if a large set of people are making their opinions public and easily accessible, where does that leave representational politics? Apart from being a member of a jury for a couple of weeks, and voting every four years or so, the vast majority of people don't get involved with the moving parts of government whatsoever. And everyday there is another story that restates how remote MPs are from anything outside the Westminster village.

Internet petitions are the first taste many in the UK have had of direct democracy. The recent successful campaign to garner an apology from Downing Street about the treatment of the mathematician and war hero Alan Turing was revealing. Despite the issue meaning little to most people and the events having nothing to do with the current administration, Gordon Brown bowed to the request. It cost nothing, and the chance to nod to the inevitable was probably appealing.

What direct democracy has is what parliament is losing daily: Legitimacy. An increasingly informed electorate want explanations of illegal wars, expenses scandals and financial disasters. When these are not forthcoming, voters now look for answers elsewhere. And a similar accounting is now required in most countries with internet access. If direct democracy can help bridge the chasm between the average citizen and the political class then it will come about - not with the blessing of politicians, but because the alternatives are unpalatable.

Examples of direct democracy in action are patchy. The Swiss have direct democracy - but to be fair, very little that happens in Switzerland has any parallel in the rest of Europe. The Californian ballot proposition system (The Economist refers to it as the "crack cocaine of democracy.") has recently helped make the state close to ungovernable. The "more services, less tax" conundrum isn't easy to get around if you ask people what they want.

Left to direct democracy, we would certainly have capital punishment in Britain. That's simply because for most people not involved with justice, killing bad people appears to have no downside. Voting on issues that are beyond everyday experience may produce ugly results - but this a known flaw.

One unpalatable outcome of letting the chasm grow wider is increasing political isolationism. The shout that the government should not interfere with family or religion has the equal and opposite implication that the voters sphere of influence should not spread beyond their home. Themes like the War on Terror, designed to keep peoples eye off civil liberties, are fuelled exclusively by fear. Direct democracy drowns quickly when debate is visceral not cerebral.

For now, changes are talked about in code because frankness is potentially disruptive. The terms "moving the seat of democracy out of Westminster", or "a fully elected upper chamber" or "halving the number of MPs" is indeed just cant that means something else: people taking more responsibility from their "representatives".

1988: Almost 300 die when a plane is destroyed

The bomb explosion on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie happened 6 months later. Just a useful perspective concerning current matters.

(from Private Eye covers)

Achoo

The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people:

The plague emerged in two phases. In late spring of 1918, the first phase, known as the "three-day fever," appeared without warning. Few deaths were reported. Victims recovered after a few days. When the disease surfaced again that fall, it was far more severe. Scientists, doctors, and health officials could not identify this disease which was striking so fast and so viciously, eluding treatment and defying control. Some victims died within hours of their first symptoms. Others succumbed after a few days; their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated to death.

You see, when I started writing this article, H1N1 (i.e. Swine flu) was slowly drifting out of the news; but due to tardiness, it is now back in the headlines. That makes the above look a bit more sensationalist than intended. But nothing in this post is specific to this or the next epidemic.

One of the strengths of human societies is that we have built in redundancy. Many lone carnivores simply die if they get too ill or damaged to hunt. If we get ill, usually others can fill in our functions, allowing for rest and recovery.

One of our massive weaknesses is that because we are physically close to many others in our species, viruses get to infect hundreds at a time. Many of us are told not to come in to work if we are infected, for fear of what will happen to the team. An eagle virus, by comparison, would spread very slowly indeed.

Western societies are also getting more segmented and stratified. At one time, everyone was a hunter gatherer, with a little specialised knowledge of local flora and fauna spread through a clan. If you could hunt one animal, you would eventually be able to hunt a similar one before starving. Survival was hard, making everyone less likely to be surprised by new disasters. But the post apocalyptic films that have wily heroes scavenging for parts are no longer possible. Most consumer machines are black boxes, and more systems are centrally managed. Fewer things can be repaired. As I've mentioned in previous articles modern national armies fight with a fragile umbilical chord that supplies them and limits their adaptable movement. Everyone else fights with AK47's, because any goat herder can maintain one.

A virus, maybe related to a strain in existence today, will eventually act as an extinction event for modern human society. We will not suddenly drop like flies, but society will break down because a garment designer couldn't revive a damaged digital communications structure, and a hacker would be hard pressed to mass produce clothing. We will revert back to a society that the available redundancy can support. This is equivalent to the often repeated threat to "bomb a nation back to the Stone Age".

In Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham described how a true disaster is a combination of seemingly unrelated events. This form of black swan cannot reasonably be predicted, making national efforts to plan their way out of possible disasters largely for the benefit of the media.

So having some Tamiflu and a knowledge of what you need to survive will get you through the first few days. But get used to a serious amount of downsizing.

Camera obscura

There was a time when the public trusted any plausible narrative given by the state. People went to war based on radio broadcast descriptions of events happening in nations they knew nothing about. I think it is safe to say we are now in a different place.

Ever since the police beating of Rodney King, image evidence from private individuals has been used to challenge official explanations. Conversely, the lack of CCTV evidence damned the police investigation into the July 7th attacks. The death of Ian Tomlinson updates the same pattern.

This is a strange inversion of the "surveillance society", whereby everyone watches everyone and no-one trusts anything unless it is on camera. But holding authority to account simply by trying to catch them in the act of cheating simply gives power to those who cheat well. And it ironically punishes the usually honest who naively trip up.

Reconstructing events by using any number of restricted viewpoints is no replacement for vital missing facts. If I present you with a black box that contains a photo I made of a scene, I'll happily let you make as many pin holes as you like - you will still struggle to make out whats going on. Especially if I choose the image.

Professional journalists pieced together Watergate, but it would be hard to build up a case by relying on passing tourists getting incriminating evidence on their Nokias. Its more likely than an infinite number of monkeys coming up with the works of Shakespeare, but the focused plans of a well resourced state will only fuck up a small number of times.

No amount of individual observations can replace trust. Even government officials who lie occasionally are a better bet than hoping to trip up the seriously devious. Unfortunately lost trust doesn't really return.

Somehow the current low trust institutions need to be rebuilt. The solution will probably involve systems that break the ties of loyalty to careerist superiors. But this problem won't be faced unless we stop using institutions we no longer trust, and stop making one nation under CCTV.

Panic on the streets of London

The newer, shinier, War against Terror was introduced by Gordon Brown over the weekend, and by a Metropolitan police poster campaign .

Mr Brown's article is by turns depressing and hysterical:

We should be under no illusion, however, that the biggest security threat to our country and other countries is the murderous agents of hate that work under the banner of al-Qaida

The preparation of ordinary citizens who have been co-opted, or "trained and equipped", to deal with problems looks very, er, National Socialist. In any other sphere of crime prevention, this would be, quite rightly, regarded as vigilantism.

What has led the New Labour think tanks to come up with this stuff? I will assume, for charitable reasons, that there is more to it than "because they are cunts".

The government fears losing the reigns of power if another terrorist incident occurs. Even a temporary blip will be magnified during the G20 summit or the London 2012 games. By pre-booking the fear response, they hope people will give them credit for being on a known track should the worst occur.

You might think that a better way to avoid panic is just to lead by example, as opposed to resetting the clock back to 1984. But from an administrative point of view, that may not be an option.

The economic downturn is beginning to undermine the assumption of authority that the incumbent establishment usually has. If stuff just works, there are few reasons to ask questions. But the sudden onset of poverty tends to focus the mind. Yeah, just like hanging does.

And on top of this, the net is providing a ready source of alternative narratives as to why things are as they are - few of the 700 replies to Mr Brown's article are supportive.

Economic collapse. Terrorism. Alternatives.

Outside of alarmist films, most of us settled in the west have little experience with extreme situations. The governments deepest fear is that people will swing wildly between ugly nationalism and dysfunctional behaviour - leaving society kaput. There have been moments in the last few months that hint at this.

None of the above justifies the fear pimping because, ultimately, the governments job is to protect society as it is - not to subvert it to taste.

During the original Irish terrorist troubles, open propaganda was limited to functional reminders not to stop tube trains in tunnels. It was supposed that people did not require the state to fill in the blanks - the history between the English and Irish is twisted, but well documented.

But there were strange moments. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, was subject to a ban on the media broadcast of his voice - in the belief that he had Svengali like hypnotic powers. Laughable today, but that is what panic does. We now know that an awful lot of things were done in our name that we had no idea about - but in most cases they were focused on dealing with the IRA, not selling Double Think.

This may be a way point to further measures, or just the stuttering of a leadership running out of ways to look serious. Either way, prepare for a long hot Summer of Rage.