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  • Book review: Stolen Focus

    Book review: Stolen Focus

    In 2007 Douglas Coupland released the novel jPod. During a trip to the Czech Republic I read it on behest of my girlfriend, and I utterly loved it. Five nerds in cubicles (pods), assigned to their places due to the initial J of their respective surname, in a basement of Neotronic Arts are designing the gore in video/computer games. They’re joined by a sixth member, whose surname also begins with a J and she initially thinks they’re morons. They’re all born at the end of the 1970’s and beginning of the 1980’s and their attention span at work is maximum 15 minutes long. Morally they differ from their parents, they belong to the ego of the digital age and spend lots of time not working (a Gen X trait, Coupland’s generation I dare say). Having read it thrice it remains one of the my favourite books of all time.

    Fast forward to 2008, the year we travelled to the Czech Republic, and “Twitter makes you feel that the whole world is obsessed with you and you little ego – it loves you, it hates you, it’s talking about you right now” as Johann Hari writes. For someone who’s managed Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts for organisations, I can only agree – it’s invasive and takes control of you. I’m happy jPod was released before social media and the new generation of smartphones wrecked the attention span and ability to focus completely.

    “How to slow down in a world that is speeding up?” Hari continues in the book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again. He outlines twelve problems for our individual and collective attention spans, and ability to focus. All of them will not be covered here though. For that, you have to read the book.

    On average a person working in an office is undisturbed for approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Undisturbed by others, that is. The average attention span is merely 47 seconds, because people also interrupt themselves. All the time. Meanwhile it takes 23 minutes to return to a state of focus. Meaning we basically never stay focused.

    Hari interviewed lots of people for this book, James Williams at Oxford Internet Institute being one among them. His words resound deeper than many others (and there’s tons of important words said by intelligent people in the book). We need to take on crucial issues such as climate change, but “when attention breaks down, problem-solving breaks down.” This is a hypothesis Hari clings to, and I concur: tearing attention apart means people can’t concentrate, can’t direct energy on proper things. As Hari writes, “Depth takes time. And depth takes reflection.” Mind-wandering is a state of mind people should enjoy more, but instead blocks it out more or less completely by staring at screens. Also due to the thinking that directed thoughts, meaningful thoughts and chores are good, while letting your brain do “nothing” is useless.

    To flood social media with more information is a very good way of blocking debates and conversations – it shortens the collective attention span. Add actual noise and sounds, which both deteriorate hearing capacities. Somehow we believe it’s an equilibrium: you listen to noise and sounds 50 % of the day, and you can recuperate if 50 % is quiet. But that really depends on the noise (background chatter for instance, or cars passing by), the sounds (simple, more occasional sounds) and the silence. Allowing exposure of sounds and noise for hours each day, combined with voices and music, hurts the ears and hearing. Eventually it will deteriorate by system overload. The same with your brain. It cannot evade being disturbed and deteriorates slowly, making you more stupid.

    Hari interviews Sune Lehmann, a Danish researcher on time, who exclaims that the new upperclass will be the ones with very long attention spans, always able to limit information input and aware of what they are actually doing. The rest of us will simply react to the information fed to us. We read and watch stories about people who can sleep less, eat poor and bad food, and still outperform the average person: the Bond villains and the tech prodigies. They never experience sleep deprivation, never seem to slow down. It’s the opposite of Andy Weir’s main protagonist in Project Hail Mary who states that humans become stupid when tired. We don’t comprehend that the reason behind “greatness” is mind-wandering, thoughtful discussions, promenades, information intake (and helpers, such as wives, butlers or servants): Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt writing their speeches and pondering tough decisions, Harry S. Truman thinking through information and memos before making extremely hard decisions. We desperately need the ability to think in order to grasp and tackle climate change, artificial intelligence and other important issues, though with ruined minds and attention spans we won’t. Another quote from James Williams: “You can only find your starlight and your daylight if you have sustained periods of reflection, mind-wandering and deep thought.” 

    Lehmann reminds me of Cal Newport’s Deep Work: the future will belong to the people who can focus, who can work deep. Because Earl Miller from Massachusetts Institute of Technology says we’ve learned to compare ourselves to computer processors, machine parts with the ability to multitask, when in fact we can’t. When we try to do two or three things simultaneously, our brains are reconfiguring relentlessly. While we may believe we’re doing several things at the same time, our brains constantly start a new chore, gets interrupted by another one, stops and initiates the new chore, then gets interrupted again, stops and tries to reinitiate the first chore but actually has to restart a little bit further back than before, because of the interruption. On it goes. In some small doses it’s worse to check your Facebook feed continuously than to get stoned – and who’s allowed to get stoned at work?

    Hari continues to tackle issues such as school systems reining in our children’s abilities to learn and move (more) freely, diagnosing children with ADHD, how reading on screens is bleeding into how we read paper, and the Western world’s issues with nutrition and obesity (your tired body craves sugar and fat, which is omnipresent, we cannot evade it).

    One thing I appreciate with Hari is how he allows different arguments to meet in the book, carried by other people who oppose one another, or Hari himself. And he ends with hope, telling us about the generation his grandmothers belong to and how one of them fought for universal suffrage in Switzerland in the 1970’s. Regarding the possibility to challenge these twelve distractions, destroying our ability to focus, Hari writes:

    “No source of power, no set of ideas, is so large it can’t be challenged.”

  • At the parliament

    A couple of weeks ago I visited the Swedish Parliament (Sveriges riksdag) to attend an award ceremony. My supervisor got the School for social sciences at Södertörn University to nominate my bachelor’s thesis for an award issued by the Swedish Parliament.

    It was all rather stiff and confused, with some sloppy organization, except for the award winners, who did well during the seminars. Their respective master’s thesis were discussed by legislators and academics for almost an hour. I especially appreciated Elsa, who did an excellent job of discussing her thesis. For a person who’s coded text several times before, her work is very impressive (we all have our fancies, yes), and she was able to code in Swedish, while writing in English. That takes skill.

    So, I didn’t win obviously, but after listening to the winners I really understand why they were chosen and not me.

  • On long, hard thoughts

    Right now The Ezra Klein Show has a series of podcast episodes on artificial intelligence (just like early 2023). Yesterday I listened to the discussion with Nilay Patel (of course I recommend it). Among the things they discussed was how hard thinking was at risk of being discarded with the introduction of A.I. programs such as ChatGPT 4 or Claude.

    People will risk being lazy. Instead of sitting there trying to typing away at your keyboard (or writing on your notepad, or mind-wandering), you’ll turn to your digital assistent. It will be doing the sorting, thinking and writing process instead of the human. It’s tempting to think it’ll help you. But in the long run it won’t.

    Humans thrive when needing to learn, thinking thoroughly on a subject/an issue. Another thing you miss when taking a shortcut is learning. To write slowly requires you to learn, because you need learning in order to write: about your chosen subject, related subjects, about yourself, about people in your vicinity, the society and context you’re in, about past times.

    Sune Lehmann, a Danish researcher, has lead research focusing on how people read and talk nowadays compared to earlier and found that we speak and read faster than before. Inundation of information creates disconnections in the thinking process. Thinking faster, most likely, won’t save time, as Cal Newport writes in Slow productivity and Jenny Odell in her book Saving Time. Only proper thought and genuine dedication will take you there.

    After much resistance I’ve begun to “explore” the four big A.I. programs: Google Gemini (Advanced), OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 (the premium version, that is), Microsoft CoPilot and Anthropic’s Claude. Somehow I’m not very impressed. So far I’m not sure why. Perhaps I’m used to Google Allo (when it existed), Moto X2 and its Google Now, mIRC bots in the 1990’s, advanced web searches, thus not being impressed by programs suggesting rice is a substitute for noodles. No, the earlier versions I’ve mentioned are not as competent and good as the programs from now, but they’ve made me expect more, making it harder to surprise me. Perhaps because it’s autocorrect in action?

    Rice as a substitute for noodles, I already know. I also know proposals on research questions for digital transnational repression, because these programs make suggestions based on what already has been done, not what could be done without no one every having done it. As far as I understand the programs still base suggestions, autocorrect, on what has been done. Getting entangled in futuristic predictions is not what I expect, but somehow more than suggest ideas that have already been suggested many times over.

    Writing on your own can be painstaking. But it creates learning. Being challenged is usually good for your mental and intellectual state of mind. Being served things on a platter won’t make you skilled or learned at things. Doing things will.

  • Book review: How To Do Nothing

    Book review: How To Do Nothing

    Well. I obviously missed this book when it hyped in 2019. Perhaps I’ve seen it in some bookstore, though I doubt it. Since I’m reading books on technology, Brian Christian (a review on his book The alignment problem is coming soon) mentioned this book on The Ezra Klein Show and I finally read it.

    Jenny Odell, an artist and former teacher at Stanford University, wrote a book on how to do nothing (resisting the attention economy), published in 2019, on… many things. Usually, the books is classified as related to technology (and/or science), which can confuse a reader like me, because it’s not about merely about tech’s (contemporary) inherent obsession with attention and/or societal effects, but about being present, bonding with and relating to other beings, forgetting yourself.

    Odell opposes the sense and notion of time, “especially concerning technologies that encourage a capitalist perception of time, place, self and community.” Odell’s desire is ”awareness of one’s participation in history and in a more-than-human community.” We should expand our sense of time, sympathy, empathy and embrace more than ourselves, more than humans. Life isn’t merely about me, my ego. I concur that time is, by many, perceived as production and nothing but production. The Marxist Franco “Bifo” Berardi words are quoted as “time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on “nothing””. Listen to many Swedish debates throughout the years, and you’ll hear the arguments against decreasing the numbers of working hours annually, or why weekends, holidays or daylight “saving time” (another book from Odell I’m soon reading) cost money – time isn’t productive. Swedes are their jobs, their occupation – or nothing, meaning you’re nothing if you don’t have an obvious occupation.

    Furthermore, she problematises how come nurturing and tending is unproductive, or at least not as productive as proper (industrial or consumer-based) production, because it’s not producing something new. The newness is inherit in a capitalist economy.

    Later on she questions the ideal of retreating (dubbed “The green wave” in Sweden during the 1970’s, related to Walkaway by Cory Doctorow, another book in-reading) from the hectic city life, with digital detox “treatments” (my brackets), because they’re simply for people with the right resources at their disposal. She urges us to participate, not hide or be exclusively elusive, and contemplate with others, rather than run away in an meaningless effort of releasing ourselves from society.

    Technology

    Related Odell asks “What does it mean to construct digital worlds while the actual world is crumbling before our eyes?” She argues for placefulness, to be situated in reality, where we actually are at any given moment. How meaningful are digital worlds when climate change alters the very foundation of humanity – is it of any use?

    Odell bashes tech profiles as different as the “tech mogul” (my brackets) Peter Thiel and Tristan Harris (the famous, sympathetic ex-Google employee, co-founder of Center for Humane Technology). She can’t see the difference in their efforts: what are they actually doing to improve the world – to give us more technology? We don’t need it. We must take time to think and act together with other people in real life. We must contemplate and realise the conception and perception of time is different. It simply can’t be seen as merely production.

    “Could augmented reality simply mean putting your phone down? And what (or who) is sitting in front of you when you finally do?” Odell asks. For someone who watched Spike Jonze’s movie Her and adored it, this is a blow. But a good one, right on the cheek where I need it. Reality is where we are, not where we want to be. We cannot create a true disconnect, however much we wish to daydream or watch things on the Internet. You simply cannot wish yourself to Mars or to the next week. You are where you are.

    “… the politics of technology are stubbornly entangled with the politics of public space and of the environment.” Yes. Much has been written on the topic of technology in the shape of social media or the Internet. But Odell turns to the public space. Suddenly, I’m fully aware of the the very few spaces, without money involved, that exist for an inhabitant or visitor of a city/municipality. Most places require you to spend money for presence, and the public spaces (indoors, I might add) are few. It isn’t simply about having money, but being able to be you in a place that doesn’t demand anything from you. Sitting at a table in the public library without spending is undervalued and with so much more than currency. It should be valued more than money.

    One of the best passages of the whole book is on the personality on social media versus real life. The inability to be yourself on social media and the ability to actually change your mind seems to be dissipating. People around you see a complex person, an identity that keeps evolving, whereas the identity on social media is constant, “as monolithic and timeless as a brand.”

    Odell mentions an art student “working” at an American company in 2008, spending her time staring out the window or going up and down the elevator, her job consisted of thinking. Sitting by a computer, secretly or blatantly reading posts on social media or news articles hides behind the mask of working, as you’re actually staring at the computer screen. Looking at the world, thinking things through, isn’t classified as work. It’s a blatant breaking of the rules – being unproductive. I can relate to this very well. It’s better to stare at a turned-off screen than out the window, because the latter signifies “doing nothing”. Even staring at useless Internet webpages is perceived as better than walking the corridors pondering a real issue related to work. People will ask what you’re actually doing staring out that window or on that walk. Is it really productive?

    I will return to the issue of attention in later reviews and posts. I’m thinking about writing much more on this very topic, since, Odell writes “attention may be the last resource we have left to withdraw.” Attention is what you give to something else and time is a factual variable of your very life. Without time, you’re dead.

    Productiveness

    Achieving wealth by saving at least 10 % of your wage and invest in the stock market – FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) – has been a popular concept, or job, or aspiration, for many years in Sweden. Probably since the financial crisis of 2008-2010. As an idea it challenges the classic work ethics: work for 40 years, earn your wage and then retire and do some things (mainly travel and drink red wine) before you die comfortably of old age. Instead, work your ass off (as part of the educated middle class), save 10-50 % of your wage, invest correctly on the stock market, and retire when you’re about 40 years old. Spend the rest of your life with your kids, and do some projects (that remain focused on you, your ego) and beg to all possible gods that the stock market is continuously fed oil, coal and all the rest. Both ideas rest on basic mathematical solutions and – productivity.

    Odell challenges this idea completely, by claiming you should spend together with other people, walking in the vicinity of your house/flat, listen to people, engage with people, feel your emotions and don’t think of time as productive or non-productive, realising diversity species-crossing is as important as you are – everything in your life isn’t simply about you. It’s about multitude.

  • Technoreligion: youth and grown-ups

    Recently, the Swedish right-wing government proposed to outlaw mobile phones in classrooms (compulsory school) because negative results from the PISA results regarding school, “measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.” Previous center governments have proposed the same.

    Simple causation: Bad results leads to conclusion about bad influence leads to obvious solution.

    Approximately 80 % of all schools already have a ban on phones during the school day. So, the proposals are just populist-like ideas, supposed to prove that governments are perceptive and .

    Rather, I see the usual conclusion as backwards, which is an unpopular stance whenever I discuss it with grown-ups. The solutions, from my perspective, is very simple: The grown-ups, first and foremost, must stop using phones so recklessly, so disrespectfully, so much. Don’t expect children and adolescents to put down their devices when the grown-ups show how it’s done: device in hand at all times.

    Our digital toys (a distant relative called them theme parks) are so precious we simply can’t let go of them. But since children are children and can be harmed, they should learn their place and proper behaviour. The idea that grown-ups are role models is completely absent in this conversation.

    It’s considered rude to question the technological “evolution”. Virtually nothing is possible or plausible or feasible to hinder. It’s “development”, the ubiquitous unstoppable force of linear thought and progression.

    Plenty of young children have SnapChat or TikTok. Amazingly, they’re not even 13 years old. Does that matter? They’re not allowed to use these platforms belonging to these companies because they underage. It’s in violation to terms of service. Do parents seem to care? No. Do companies seem to care? No.

    Discord, among others, and video games hav been blamed for exposing children and youth to extremism. Or rather, Discord is a platform serving extremism, while video games are the vehicle used by the extremists to disseminate information, misinformation and disinformation.

    YouTube Kids providing 9-year-olds and 14-year-olds recommendations to videos about guns and gun-related violence, gun-modification and injuries.

    Studies in the U.S. show deteriorating health related to teens, especially girls, which coincides with the introduction of the smartphone. Adam Alter, in his book Irrestible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked, mentions a conversation by a young teenage girl lamenting the presence of a friend, who doesn’t listen to her, because the friend is too focused on her phone to care. Absence in presence.

    Imagine being ten years old and get your first smartphone. You have the usual flora of social media apps. Let’s pretend you receive approximately, generally, 100 notifications during 24 hours. 24 hours, everyday for ten years. When the child has left adolescence and become an adult, they have received 100 * 365 * 10 notifications = 365 000 notifications. A notification is designed to create a reaction: vibration, sound, light. Even one reaction is enough to usually increase the pace of your heart. 365 000 bodily reactions in your child.

    Thus, we have the issue of parents exposing their own children systematically on social media. Once upon a time I blogged about being a parent, even co-creating a podcast on the subject. One reason was the almost total lack of parents writing about being a parent, what it entails. Your tips and tricks, shortcomings, logistics, fears. Most bloggers wrote about consumption or clothing: buying things for your children. And the, almost, relentless pictional depiction of children dressed in clothes, playing with computers or iPads. Grown-ups exposing children. I even saw pictures of children sitting on the toilet, smiling, being only three years old. Imagine a teenager knowing you did that. Once you turn 80 and need to rely on a walker or support taking a shower – imagine your grandchildren photographing you, posting the picture with a funny comment on the Internet. Lucky you!

    It’s fascinating how much the grown-ups want to keep squeezing their own phones. No matter how much youth suffer or are exposed, we simply can’t let go of the screen ourselves. When will it stop?

    My argument? As long as grown-ups can’t be grown-ups, the school cannot help solve the issue. The governmental solution is based on the false causation and premise that mobile phones are used in compulsory school. But in many schools, electronic devices aren’t allowed. They’re given to the staff, kept in lockers during school and returned to the children when they leave for home.

    Since the issue isn’t children using phones in schools, my argument is that grown-ups are to blame. They must stop being addicted, much like a smoking parent must stop smoking rather than stopping their children from seeing parents smoking, or this issue won’t be solved. But since we’re a technoreligious society, where grown-ups hold the power in adherence to laws, the grown-ups won’t put down their phones.

  • The debate on hybrid warfare and Russia

    During the conference Society and defense (Folk och Försvar), the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces said that the Swedish people must acknowledge the contingency of war. It caused an outcry. Presumably, this is posed as a fact to make people realize that we cannot be the ever-present observer, never involved or engaged in truly troublesome things with exogenous causes. We tend to have an immunized perception of catastrophes. What disturbs me is rather how the term of hybrid warfare is used. It’s misleading, to say the least.

    Hybrid warfare is, according to an article on a book about hybrid warfare, a combination of “conventional warfare with non-conventional warfare”. According to this post on NATO’s website, “hybrid warfare entails an interplay or fusion of conventional as well as unconventional instruments of power and tools of subversion”. Prior to this, the author writes “With the advent of modern hybrid warfare, they are less and less about lethal or kinetic force.”

    Of course it depends on how war is defined (usually about a minimum of 1.000 people dead in a conflict between states or defined groups over a period of time, like two years). Is informational “warfare” an act of war? Is disinformation and misinformation “warfare”? Is cyber espionage “warfare”? Is hacking by malware and payloads “warfare”? Are they kinetic or lethal? Both of these sources refer to the Russian interference in Ukraine starting 2014, when Russia mixed conventional weapons on the ground (mainly) with disinformation and deniability, without actually declaring war on Ukraine.

    This also requires referring to the so-called Gerasimov Doctrine by Mark Galeotti. Valery Gerasimov is still the (not-so-succesful) Russian Chief of the General Staff, and current commander of the Russian forces in Ukraine, who in 2014 (what an occurence) mentioned different strategies to tackle the superiority of the West. This lead to the birth of the so-called Gerasimov Doctrine, a doctrine influential in the eyes of many Westerns, as “new thinking” on war. To combine cyber weapons and kinetic force was perceived as a new paradigm. Galoetti didn’t see it as novel.

    I turn to the political scientist Lucas Kello, author of The Virtual Weapon and International Order, to look for definitions of terms and concepts. Although he discusses the terms and consequences of cyberweapons in cyberspace, the discussion can be used to comprehend how words are used and related to a subject:

    The crucial definitional criterion of a virtual weapon lies in its intended and possible effects.

    Does Russia intend to wage war against Finland or Sweden? Most likely not. Are we at war, a prerequisite of the term? No. Kello continues:

    Cyberattack need not result in physical destruction to pose a serious danger to society. […] It is reasonable to impose limits on this language.

    You need to know when to ascribe a term and when not to. Lucas Kello asserts that even though virtual information “has become force itself” in certain situations, psychology and information have long been part of war strategy. Still, they are usually not regarded as a kinetic force, as kinetic weapons, because “human death is the highest form of physical damage.” It remains difficult to harm humans by hacking computers or deploying A.I. (yes, I’m aware of a patient dying when hackers shutdown a hospital in a ransomware attack, and yes, I’m aware of the false suggestion that an A.I.-programme killed an operator, which simply was a simulation made by humans, with no real people involved in the simulation itself).

    It’s important to keep terms apart, and as coherent and adequate as possible. Including more only fuzzies concepts, makes them so general they can’t be applicable anymore. Another important reason to keep terms clean: Sweden and Finland are not at war with Russia, which the term of hybrid warfare denotes, but still mass media and experts utters the term often. Russia is trying to strain and contain our countries, making hybrid threats the proper term rather than hybrid warfare.

    Perhaps, though, I propose a new word. Or two:

  • Book review: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing

    Book review: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing

    As soon as I noticed a book published with this savvy title (and cover, created by Rodrigo Corral) this year, I knew I had to read it: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in five Extraordinary Hacks. Authored by Scott J. Shapiro, professor of law and philosophy at Yale Law School. In his youth, Shapiro spent much time with computers, but later chose a career in philosophy and law. When writing about cyberwar, he returned to computers, re-learning programming, computer science and the lingo: Evil maid attack, bald butler attack, bluesnarfing, phishing, spear phishing, whaling…

    Attempting to answer the simple questions of why the Internet is insecure, how do hackers exploit insecurity and how they can be prevented, or at least decreased in numbers, Shapiro takes us on a journey with five stops, from the late 1980’s to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Minecraft wars 30 years later.

    One of Shapiro’s main arguments is the distinguishment between upcode and downcode. Upcode is the human aspect of cybersecurity, such as regulation, law, and organizational norms, whereas downcode is the technical programming and operating of programs, operative systems and alike. His consistent argument is that upcode regulates downcode. Thus, he opposes solutionism, the view that “technology can and will solve our social problems”. I’ve written about the tech elite earlier in 2023, their engineering-like focus on all issues, they being able to solve everything with math and algorithms, as if reality can be reduced to technicalities. Shapiro continues, with his fantastic sense of humour: “Great news! We can reverse centuries of imperialism, revolution, and poverty with our cell phones.” This connects to Bruce Schneier’s angle on cybersecurity too: focus on the humans primarily.

    Another sentence deeply related to Cathy O’Neil is “Most problems do not have solutions that are reducible to finite procedures.” Solutionism cannot succeed, because it relies on (Alan) Turing’s physicality principle: changes in the digital realm presupposes changes in the physical realm, which means computation, when all is said and done, is a physical process, and relies on control over the physical world, such as cables, servers, and routers.

    The almost inherent insecurity of the Internet of Things (IoT) is quite obvious, another connection to Schneier, who claims the same thing. IoT-devices have very rudimentary operating systems, meaning they’re usually really poorly designed. They have a singular, or few, purposes, rendering them with attack vectors. So, your refrigator might be part of a zombie-net controlled by some angry teenager playing Minecraft, using your very refrigator attacking another server running Minecraft.

    Solutionism dominates so much, represented by ignoration and non-comprehension among programmers and computer scientists, disguised as the common resentment and claims that politics is unfit to kepp up with things technical. The sentiment of solutionism Shapiro compresses in one sentence:

    “Politics becomes engineering; moral reasoning becomes software development.”

    Cybersecurity – it’s a human thing

    Shapiro connects law and legal discussions in the cases the tells. What are the implications judiciously for the hackers, how does the hackers think, and the legal system perceive these acts. In cases where the perpetrator is sentenced, how does the legal system reason?

    I appreciate how he considers gaming and programming culture as overtly (white) male, rendering women targets usually for misogynic hatred, or at least suspicious activites by men against women (and other gender identities, might I add). This touched briefly on the deeply ingrained meritocratic aspects of programming/hacking culture, as covered by Gabriella Coleman in Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking.

    Shapiro also provides us with the combination of basic computers science terms and programming functions, such as the difference between data and code, and how operating systems work. If you don’t understand how very rudimentary programming functions, Shapiro will inform you how it actually works to prove his points, and easen the complexities of cyberspace somewhat. Knowledge will calm you more than ignorance, he reasons, and I concur.

    Mainly he presents various ways hackers exploit humans via their cognition: visuality, irrationality, probability, and time. Hackers are great cognitions and really social beings, at least virtually, and comprehend how some people will be fooled.

    The sense of humour!

    Regarding the oh, so common Nigerian prince/general/rich person mail, Shapiro regularly depicts issues and technicalities through diagrams or pictures, and provides proper examples the reader can understand, such as:

    “This Nigerian Astronaut pushes this internet scam to eleven.”

    Anyone who comprehends this sentence, will enjoy reading a serious book on a serious subject.

    It goes up to eleven

    Of all the books on technology I’ve read, this is the best one. Were I to give people a recommendation on one single book they could read to better grasp the cyber realm, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing it is.

  • Swedish economy – still in free fall

    Last year I wrote about the state of the Swedish economy. I called it “Swedish economy in free fall.” It was a bit crude, though many things on the Internet are. I miscalculated the speed of the fall and anticipated the economy would sort of land in April this year. It didn’t. Things move slower than I thought. Still, how have things gone since? Well, not exactly ssssuper.

    First. The Swedish economy is (finally acknowledged, bring out the champagne!) in recession. It has contracted, albeit not much. Reasons for this acknowledgement? The interest rate has left the 0-mark and entered the realm 4 % (compared to nearly 16 % a brief period in the 1990’s), which leaves lots of households with even greater problems paying mortgages. Many households have spent too much money on houses in the last decades, rendering them very vulnerable to 2 % interest rate.

    Second. This effects the housing market and the construction companies. Approximately 25 % of all contractors have filed for bankruptcy or been obliviated this year. One person working for a construction company mentioned this to me in April, so it’s no surprise to hear news mentioning this number now.

    Third. The housing market is dropping like a stone. Houses/flats aren’t sold. The drop in price is about 15 %. People can’t sell their “expected yield”.

    Fourth. This, in turn, renders more people unemployed, straining the economy of the municipalities and regions (who make austerity decisions in each and every place these days) in the end and decreasing the consumtion, straining the national economy. People use more of their savings on spending, consumtion contracting, even in times of “Black week” and Christmas shopping.

    So, things are getting grim. Finally, some argue that unemployment will grow next year. That’s shocking! Who could’ve thought people would become unemployed in an economic crisis? It hasn’t, like, happened before it seems, although that’s exactly what happens each and every time an economic or financial crisis comes.

    Listening to certain “experts” is like watching a very bleak comedy, French style (French Noir). They seem bent on negating anything that proves a crisis is coming. The employment rate is going strong, the housing market will soon rise again, Riksbanken (the central bank) won’t increase the interest rate further… These unfounded, even dumb, arguments are more like rational people attempting to make sense of something they do not understand, I’m sorry to say: If you borrow too much money, one day you’ll have to pay. It might be sooner, it might be later, but the day will come. And events and things are interconnected, like I’ve stated above. Even if the inflation rate is lessening, the fact is that companies, municipalities and regions have begun to turn lots of people unemployed this year. One thing leads to another. Many people will be tempted to spend money they do not have for decades to come on things they actually can’t have, but pretend to have. Build an economy on such thoughts and you will find yourself in a crisis. Just add time.

  • Democracies in time

    Democracies in time

    The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (abbreviated SVR) seems busy spreading a narrative of Russian invincibility and inevitable Ukrainian defeat. Recently it was visible in one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, where American “experts” asserted Ukraine needs to negotiate immediately. In August CNN claimed The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (abbreviated FSB) was attempting influencing Westerners “through layers of ostensibly independent actors.” A known Swedish blogger accused Svenska Dagbladet for actively spreading this narrative by interviewing an “independent” American “expert”. Anders Åslund disproves the obvious faulty arguments put forward by these kinds of “experts”. Josh Rogin from the Washington Post also wrote a good opinion piece on this very issue. Finish authorities have revealed that Russian intelligence services have been active in foiling Sweden joining NATO. Who could’ve thought?

    In an interview with The Kyiv Independent, Serhii Plokhy argues that we need to brace and prepare for a long war. The coming year might be pivotal and he argues, correctly I think, that short-term memory is dangerous, tending to dominate among political elites. Personally I believe regular people oftentimes see life through a short-term memeory version too. The latest inflation rate or cost of cucumber in the store seems more damaging to the world, and the self, than a long, brutal war.

    Francis Farrelly of the same newspaper wrote an op-ed on the possibility of Ukrainian defeat. It is, to say the least, very critical of the West, and its willingness to really support Ukraine in terms of weapons, ammunition and weapon systems. Overall, I agree, although I think the Biden administration has done a marvelous job all-in-all and definitely compared to if Trump had been president, and compared to the European Union. Without the Biden administration, for all its’ faults, Ukraine would’ve fought a partisan war. The countries supporting Ukraine have the most resources on the planet. Russia has survived this far into the war because of the Soviet stockpiles, because economically, and we hear lots about how Russia has withstood economic pressure better then expected and how much stronger Russia is compared to Ukraine (from certain Western “experts” for instance), Russia has a GDP in comparison to New York state or Canada. So, approximately 150 million Russians produce as much as 20 million New Yorkers or 37 million Canadians. What do we have to fear?

    It makes me wonder if the authoritarians have a better perspective on time than democrats and inhabitants in democratic societies? Of course Putler embarrassed himself so much he couldn’t even show up riding that three-wheeled motorbike (he can’t ride an ordinary motorbike) when he realized his troops were initially pulverized by the Ukrainians. But he also knows how to gamble in the casino of International Politics and Suchlike Affairs. So, he and his men tried all they could to prolong the war in order to outweigh the losses and eventually defeat the West by beating Ukraine on the battlefield or by waiting for the short-term-memory-people in the West to think, and shrug as if it didn’t matter: “nah, not worth it anymore”.

    Johann Hari, among others, has written about our Stolen Focus, our inability to think properly because our attention span is so splintered and the gratification system is constantly set to “On”. For instance, the Swedish economy isn’t feeling too well, but the smallest evidence of a turn, like lessened increase of inflation, means that things are already turning. But an economic crisis isn’t averted by one small improvement, since the crisis itself is built up during decades. If Ukraine can’t “win” on the battlefield once, everything’s lost and we’re prepared to back our bags and go home.

    If democracies and their inhabitants can’t see over the next hill, democracy as a concept is dead. The war between Ukraine and Russia is costly in many ways – that’s war. After all the promises of support for Ukraine, all the “Slava Ukraini” uttered by prime ministers and presidents, we simply can’t surrender for an enemy which seems stronger than initially thought or because a war continues longer than people anticipated. Why wouldn’t it last for years? Swift victories seem fictitious or cineastic. Victories require time, willingess, sacrifice, logistics, money and people.

    Franz-Stefan Gady wrote about the movie Napoleon in Foreign Policy. Firstly, he mentioned the Western thought of “one major, decisive battle” which will lead to absolute and definite victory. Secondly, he writes (and has written before) about teh belief in a game-changing weapon, or a weapon system so strong it’ll lead to victory. None of these two things exist. Nuclear weapons, you say? Yes, they have delayed Western support for Ukraine, but have definitely not lead to some magical victory for the Russian forces.

    An ex-commander in the US military claimed that the People’s Liberation Army (the military of the Chinese Communist Party, not the military of the state) is preparing to invade Taiwan in 2027 at the latest. Even if this is his words, the Chinese and American leaderships are well aware of the risk of war over Taiwan, attempting to defuse the tension. It might not, hopefully, come to pass, although it’s a reminder of the tangible risk of a confrontation between two superpowers, one democratic, one authoritarian, both wanting to shape the world.

    According to a report from a German think-thank, Russia could rather quickly rearm and reconstitute in order to continue aggressions. The current Russian leadership, and many rightwing extremists perceives several states (like the three Baltic states) surrounding Russia as rightfully belonging to the Russian Federation, as former parts of the Russian Empire. The claim of renewed/expanded aggression has been made by the Swedish military and military analysts since the fullscale war on Ukraine.

    Russia has also transformed itself, again, into a full-fledged dictatorship, bent on territorial and influential expansion. Belarus is already virtually annexed. Russia won’t bend because Ukraine negotiates. They won’t bend because NATO or the EU withdraws or abandons Ukraine.

    We can’t be as naïve as Neville Chamberlain and his cohorts and accept dictators and authoritarian states to remain calm and peaceful. Unfortunately, Theodore Roosevelt was right when he wrote you should speak softly and carry a big stick, and that a good navy (here military) is not a provocation to war, it is the surest guaranty of peace. Russia must loose on the battlefield. No one should even consided abandoning Ukraine. You stand by your promise, by your friends.

  • Book review: Quantum Supremacy

    Book review: Quantum Supremacy

    Lately, I’ve become interested in quantum computing and wrote a short paper on the subject, combining the search for quantum computers and equality between nations. While doing some very basic research I encountered a video of a famous physicist talking about quantum computers as the next revolution: Michio Kaku. So I bought his book, with the very long name: Quantum Supremacy: How Quantum Computers will Unlock the Mysteries of Science – and Address Humanity’s Biggest Challenges.

    Kaku’s a very charming man, asserting Silicon Valley might become the next Rust belt, unless they can compete in the race for quantum computers, that the age of silicon is over and the power of quantum mechanics is beginning. Kaku is sympathetic, a man with a positivity, which I admire in a world of too much bleakness and passitivity. However, some of Kaku’s initial assertions are somewhat overrated and even faulty.

    These flaws initially concern me. One is the common perception and confusion regarding Google’s “Quantum supremacy” in 2019. Yes, they claimed supremacy (meaning they could perform something considerably faster than a classical computer (as digital/binary computers are called in relation to quantum)) and rather falsely so. The claim concerned an IBM computer, though IBM retorted with speeding up their computer, refuting Google’s claim. And they seem to have been right, because the computation made was actually more like a simulation than an actual computer calculating. Therefore no real supremacy.

    Secondly, the assertion that a company’s net value on the stock market is a trustworthy evidence of real progress (PsiQuantum valued at $3,1 billion initially, without any computer at all), is no evidence at all, since many companies have been valued bazillions without any sort of product or service near completion (Dot-com bubble anyone?).

    Thirdly, Kaku claims “everyone” is involved and engaged in the race of quantum supremacy, which is a lie rather than an overstatement. Looking at this map, it’s obvious very few countries and companies are actually involved and have the resources to be involved at all. Kaku depicts himself as an overly eager and enthusiastic scientist with a very positive view of the future, which is nice and badly needed, but appears naïve at times.

    After these wild assertions Kaku delves into the real stuff: quantum theory and quantum mechanics and it gets exciting – really exciting (for anyone interested, I can recommend Adam Becker’s “What is real?” as a counterweight to these extremely complex subjects, being one of the best books ever written, giving perspectives on debates, issues and controversies regarding quantum physics.) Kaku presents various interpretations on the aforementioned issues and how they’re related to quantum computing, as well as introduces various quantum computers in use today, including the quantum annealing machine architecture of D-Wave. After reading, one comprehends the immense, erratic difficulty in producing a functioning, stable and predictable quantum computer, and how far away humanity is from a dependable architecture.

    Kaku delivers his pitches about how quantum computers can evolve humankind and solve serious issues, such as climate change, biotechnology, cancer, fusion power etc. At first, I get annoyed, especially with pieces like:

    “In fact, one day quantum computers could make possible a gigantic national repository of up-to-the-minute genomic data, using our bathrooms to scan the entire population for the earlist sign of cancer cells.”

    Well, no thank you, not regarding the lack of privacy and serious misuse of personal data in today’s world.

    But it gets better. Kaku brings us into the field of health care, medicine, and later physics, his specialty, and with these subject he slows down. He enters a more thoughtful, reasoning pace. He’s very dedicated to preventing and curing diseases, with a pathos I find touching. Sometimes he reaches for the stars, hoping quantum computers might aid us in finding cures humanity need in order to vanquish severe diseases afflicting us.

    I’m unqualified to know how quantum computers might help, even though he teaches me about quantum mechanics and physics, which is really enjoyable. And when he slows down, he argues pro and contra, for how quantum computers can help us live longer, and how the search for longevity can result in misery, that things are very complicated and precarious. I appreciate “on the one hand” and “on the other” when he claims that geoengineering is the last desperate step in preventing more damaging climate change, because what seems benign can become malign.

    In the end he goes futuristic again, telling us about a fantastic world with quantum computers in the year 2050. Why has this become a trend? Carissa Velíz uses this method of exemplifying the world of today in the beginning of her book, and David Runciman turns to the year 2053 when he wants to tell us how democracy dies. It’s shallow. Leave it to Ghost in the Shell.

    Then I remember his words on learning machines and artificial intelligence, writing about a conversation with Rodney Brooks from MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory on the top-bottom approach in programming machines and programs:

    “… Mother Nature design creatures that are pattern-seeking learning machines, using trial and error to navigate the world. they make mistakes, but with each iteration, they come closer to success.”

    So, instead of programming every motion and logic from the top-down, AI should rather be based on bottom-down. Kaku continues here with the “Commonsense problem”, which concerns the issue of computers being far to stupid to comprehend simple things very small children easily understand. Children rapidly learn things computers cannot even begin to grasp, simply because children learn by their mistakes. Like other animals and insects, humans correct mistakes and try to do better, while computers are stuck in loops, or simply aren’t fit to understand how come a mother is always older than her children, for instance. Kaku claims classical computers aren’t able to learn so many commonsensical things. Are quantum computers needed for this step to be taken?

    I think of classical AI as Ava in the movie Ex Machina, cunning and learning, but slow and fragile. AI powered by quantum computing might rather be like Connor in the game Detroit: Become Human – an android superior to humans in plenty of ways. Because while reading this book, and some other sources, it’s clear how superior quantum computers might be in sensing, data analysis and processing copious amounts of data.

    All in all, it’s a positive book about what may happen when or if quantum supremacy is reached. By happenstance, Geopolitics decanted published a new podcast episode on quantum computing and artificial intelligence recently, an episode I recommend.