Gardening the Web (2)

I’ve been working away at a new way to think about internet/web policy – one of the reasons why this blog has been so quiet for the last few months. I hinted at this work back in November in the post Gardening the Web.

I’ve now written up a draft; I’d appreciate any feedback. If you’re eager, try the 60-page paper (DOC, PDF); there’s also a 12-page precis (DOC, PDF). For everybody else, here’s the abstract:

Technology and business shifts constantly change the context in which regulators have to make policy for the internet/web. There are also abiding policy imperatives that always need to be met: revenue, economic vitality, public safety, consumer protection, and culture and values.

Policy makers use mental models to frame policy questions and actions. However, technical change calls into question the approaches used successfully to date. This paper outlines a schema for communications regulation that reflects the nature of the internet/web. The framework is inspired by the metaphor of the garden, and is grounded in an understanding of complex adaptive social systems, of which gardens are one example.

A consideration of systems theory yield tactics (tools) and strategies (principles) that guide policy making in meeting the over-arching regulatory goals of stability and productivity. The three guiding principles are fostering experimentation, designing flexible policies, and building in resilience. These principles are implemented through tools such as encouraging diversity, keeping an open mind, delegating, setting clear boundaries, taking a holistic approach, transparency, and modeling policy choices.

The application of the framework is illustrated in a discussion of three current policy questions: video regulation, rules for internet voice services, and licensed vs. unlicensed spectrum allocation.

Hostage to Fortune (2)

Since Rudy's departure has blown away my first prediction for the presidential race (Clinton v. Giuliani; Giuliani wins), it's time for another one.

The first guess was made between Iowa and New Hampshire. This one comes after Florida and before Super-etc. Tuesday. Hillary still seems to have the better odds on the Left, but McCain has been winning media mind-share, so:

Clinton v. McCain; McCain wins.

It's a toss-up among the Democrats. There is another strong possibility:

Obama v. McCain. Obama wins, but is assassinated within two years.

Of course, the Dems may self-destruct at the convention with an Obama/Clinton tie, leading to a brokered nomination:

Gore v. Any Republican; Any Republican wins.

The futility of technology forecasting

I have at last come across the source of a key insight about the futility of technological prediction, e.g. as practiced by Ofcom (and economists passim) when trying to establish the net present value of a long future stream of innovation. Simply put: if you could predict the future well enough for a technology prediction to be meaningful, you would know enough to already have the technology in hand, thus vitiating the prediction.

I’ve come across this trope in various places; I now believe the idea originated with Karl Popper. Charles Pigden, a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Otago referred to it in a Philosopher’s Zone podcast about conspiracy theories. (It’s a great podcast, by the way.)

Popper outlines the argument in the preface to The Poverty of Historicism (available on Google Book Search) as part of a refutation of historicism. Popper contends that he had shown in a 1950 paper, “Indeterminism in Classical Physics and in Quantum Physics,” subsequently updated in a chapter on indeterminism which is part of the "Postscript: After Twenty Years" to his Logic of Scientific Discovery, that, for strictly logical reasons, it is impossible for us to predict the future course of history. He sums up the argument in five statements:

1. The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge.
2. We cannot predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge.
3. We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history.
4. This means that we must reject the possibility of a theoretic history; that is to say, of a historical science that would correspond to theoretical physics. There can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as a basis for historical prediction.
5. The fundamental aim of historicism methods is therefore misconceived; and historicism collapses.

The key step is (2). Popper contends that it is self-evident that if there is such a thing as growing human knowledge, then we cannot anticipate today what we shall know only tomorrow. He provides a logical proof in the papers mentioned above; in short, it amounts to showing that no scientific predictor (human or machine) can possibly predict, by scientific methods, its own future results. Since this logical argument applies to a predictor of any complexity, including societi4s of predictors, it means that no society can scientifically predict its own future states of knowledge.

Factoid: Half of all Americans fall into poverty for a year at some point in their lives

This is a striking reminder of the fragility of daily life, and a selfish reason for everybody to care for the poor.

Source: Mark R. Rank & Thomas A. Hirschl, 2001. "Rags or Riches? Estimating the Probabilities of Poverty and Affluence across the Adult American Life Span," Social Science Quarterly, The Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 82(4), pages 651-669.

From the abstract:

Between the ages of 25 and 75, 51.1 percent of Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty line, 51.0 percent will encounter a year of affluence, while only 21.0 percent of Americans will avoid either of these economic extremes.

The research is based on an analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Poverty is defined using the US Census Bureau criteria. Affluence is defined as ten times the poverty levels. For more on income volatility, see here.

Pandering to the Man

Essay contests played a central role in the intellectual life of the 18th century, as Robert Darnton relates in George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century (2003). Taste was arbitrated by centralized authority – how different from the blog rolls and technorati ratings that are needed to vault a blogger onto the A-list today.

Jacques-Pierre Brissot, who gained momentary fame – cut short by the guillotine – as leader of the Girondists during the French Revolution, was a pathetically persistent self-promoter. He was an obscure hack, a lousy writer, and too outspoken to be published in France. He scorned academies in his memoirs, yet groveled to be represented as “member of diverse academies, known ... by a memoir ... crowned last year at the Académie de Châlons.” Darnton describes a cache of Brissot’s letters which show him “seeking introductions, cultivating endorsements, trying to get his name in journals, soliciting favorable reviews, demanding special treatment in essay contests, and maneuvering to get elected to academies.” [Chapter 8, The skeletons in the closet: How historians play God.]

The academy also figures in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s epiphany during a tramp from Paris to Vincennes, which in his own telling triggered the breakthrough of Discourse on the Arts and Sciences: he was transfixed by a question posed by the Academy of Dijon for an essay contest. [Chapter 5, The Great Divide: Rousseau on the route to Vincennes]

The competition for visibility is fiercer today than ever, but writers are now at the mercy of the mob, rather than the mandarins. Page views make or break a blog, though referrals from the superstars can help. The elites still have their perks, but have to share power with the plebs.

Writing contests are still around, feeble scions of a once-proud house. Book prizes can still make the front page in Europe, but in the US they’re relegated to the book jacket blurbs. The London chatterati probably know who won last year’s Man Booker Prize; care to name this year’s fiction Pulitzer?

Seriously weird numbers

In his article about transcendental numbers for New Scientist, mathematician Richard Elwes suggests that Cantor’s work on the topic had profound consequences: “It means that the range of numbers that human brains and computers are equipped to handle - essentially those easily derived from the integers - are actually just an infinitesimal sliver of the numerical universe. Swarming around the integers and fractions is an infinitely larger collection of transcendental numbers. They are the "dark matter" of mathematics: they constitute the overwhelming majority of numbers, yet known examples are rare.” (e: the mystery number, New Scientist, 21 Jul 2007, p. 38)

Transcendentals are numbers that cannot be related to the integers by any sequence of ordinary arithmetical operations like addition, multiplication, or raising to powers. The square root of two can’t be written as a fraction, and the Pythagoreans found that outrageous enough; but it just multiplying it by itself gets you back to 2, an integer. The number e was proved to be transcendental in 1873, pi less than a decade later. However, finding more examples has proved remarkably difficult.

The article implies that being able to call on a geometric intuition – that is, one that can be referred back to the concrete world – is important even to mathematicians. It mentions that work by Alain Connes that offers deep insights but “defies all usual geometric intuition and is disconcertingly difficult to get to grips with”; however, some more recent work promises to “demystify Connes's extreme levels of abstraction” and provide “a raft of techniques for understanding Connes's abstract geometry in a more intuitive way.” It’s reassuring that not only cognitive scientists like Lakoff and Nunez feel that the practice of even mathematics has to be grounded in the physical.

Eight business technology trends to watch

Three McKinsey consultants have compiled currently fashionable business ideas into a list (registration required); gee, it must be New Year or something.

Nothing very surprising here, but the article does function as a decent annotated bibliography of trendy business books, listed in the "Further Reading" sections.

The list:

Managing relationships

1. Distributing co-creation (Benkler, Chesbrough, Surowiecki, Von Hippel)

2. Using consumers as innovators (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, Tapscott & Williams)

3. Tapping into a world of talent (Florida, Pink)

4. Extracting more value from interactions (Johnson et al., Beardsley et al., Malone)

Managing capital and assets

5. Expanding the frontiers of automation (Hagel, Heinrich, Ross et al.)

6. Unbundling production from delivery

Leveraging information in new ways

7. Putting more science into management (Davenport & Harris, Riedl & Konstan, Thomke, Weinberger)

8. Making businesses from information (Varian and Shapiro)

Hostage to Fortune (1)

I fully expect to be surprised by the outcome of the American presidential primaries, and election. I also expect to be less surprised than I ought to be, because I will have conveniently forgotten just how wrong my prognostications along the way actually were.

The world is a lot less predictable than our memories make it out to be.

To make this a little more more visible to myself, I'm going to record my predictions along the way. (Feel free to join in.)

Today, just before the Iowa caucuses, my forecast is:

Clinton v. Giuliani; Giuliani wins.

"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief." Attributed to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), "Of Marriage and Single Life".

Poetry Corner

In Memoriam Netscape Navigator, Internet Browser

So. Farewell
Then Netscape
Navigator.

You lingered
Much longer
Than we expected –

With your air
Supply
Cut
Off.

eJ Thribb (2 ¾) (internet years)

(For work by E.J. Thribb, see Private Eye.)

Internet stability technology exploited by hackers

In a deliciously devious example of unintended consequences, hackers are exploiting a technology to improve internet stability to hide their malware sites. Andy Greenberg reports for Forbes in Future Phishing, 12/28/2007:

"Fast flux takes advantage of an option built into the Web's architecture, which allows site owners to switch the Internet Protocol address of a site without changing its domain name. The IP-switching function is meant to create more stability on the Web by allowing an overloaded Web site to switch servers without a hiccup. But cybercriminals using fast flux take advantage of the option to move the physical location of their malicious sites every few minutes, making them much harder to block or shut down."

Another lesson, if any were needed, that all technologies are double-edged.

European vs American regulation

An opinion piece in The Economist provides an elegant contrast between policy approaches on either side of the Atlantic. It notes that there's competition to set global regulatory standards, and that Europe seems to winning. For example, American multinationals that invest in meeting European standards may decide that lighter domestic regulation provides a competitive advantage to non-exporting rivals, and may push for stricted US policies. For global companies, it's simplest to be bound by the toughest regulations in your supply chain.

From Brussels rules OK: How the European Union is becoming the world's chief regulator, The Economist, Sep 20th 2007:

The American model turns on cost-benefit analysis, with regulators weighing the effects of new rules on jobs and growth, as well as testing the significance of any risks. Companies enjoy a presumption of innocence for their products: should this prove mistaken, punishment is provided by the market (and a barrage of lawsuits). The European model rests more on the “precautionary principle”, which underpins most environmental and health directives. This calls for pre-emptive action if scientists spot a credible hazard, even before the level of risk can be measured. Such a principle sparks many transatlantic disputes: over genetically modified organisms or climate change, for example.

In Europe corporate innocence is not assumed. Indeed, a vast slab of EU laws evaluating the safety of tens of thousands of chemicals, known as REACH, reverses the burden of proof, asking industry to demonstrate that substances are harmless. Some Eurocrats suggest that the philosophical gap reflects the American constitutional tradition that everything is allowed unless it is forbidden, against the Napoleonic tradition codifying what the state allows and banning everything else.

The oil industry collects 51 cents in federal subsidies for every gallon of ethanol it mixes with gas and sells as E10

BusinessWeek reports that oil companies are trying to stop the spread of E85, a fuel that is 85% ethanol and 15% gas (Big Oil's Big Stall On Ethanol, 1 Oct 2007).

Some academics claim that ethanol takes more energy to produce than it supplies. This is contested; but even a UC Davis study says the energy used to produce ethanol is about even with what it generates, and that cleaner emissions would be offset by the loss of pasture and rainforest to corn-growing.

There's also a nasty little problem with E85: drivers apparently lose about 25% in fuel economy with E85.

Gardening the Web

I believe that it’s productive to represent the internet/web as a complex human system, but that’s an abstract concept that’s hard to grasp. A metaphor that everyone’s familiar with can enliven this idea: The internet/web as a global collection of gardens, and making policy is like gardening.

Just like a garden, the internet/web has a life of its own, but can be shaped by human decisions. A garden is neither pure nature, nor pure culture; it’s nature put to the service of culture. The “nature” of the internet/web discourse is its technology and commerce, separate from the “culture” of politics and policy. Few would claim that the internet/web should be left entirely to a laissez faire markets; it is also a social good, and some intervention is needed to protect the public interest.

Before delving further into the analogy between gardening and making communications policy, here is a summary of the properties of complex systems which apply to both:

1. Hierarchy: systems consist of nested subsystems with linked dynamics at different scales
2. Holism: the whole has properties different from collection of separable parts
3. Self-Organization: systems organize themselves, and their characteristic structural and behavioral patterns are mainly a result of interaction between the subsystems
4. Surprise and Novelty: one cannot predict outcomes of interventions with any accuracy; ny given model under-represents the system
5. Robust Yet Fragile: a system is stable in a large variety of situations, but can break down unexpectedly

Just like the internet/web, there a many kinds of gardens. They vary in scale from window-sill planters to national forests, in governance from personal to public and commercial. Some objectives of gardening are utilitarian, and others aesthetic; some see gardens as primarily productive and others cultivate them for pleasure. Likewise, some see the internet/web as tool, and others as a source of meaning.

While most of the work in a garden is done automatically by the plants and other providers of ecosystem services, humans impose their desires regarding outcomes; similarly, internet/web innovation is driven by entrepreneurs and technologists according to their own agendas, though governments try to impose their will on the outcomes.

Just like the internet/web, managing a garden is often a futile matter; one can never know precisely how things will turn out. Plants that thrive in the garden next door inexplicably languish in yours. Plagues of pests and disease appear unexpectedly. Unexpected consequences abound. For example, people using imidacloprid to control grubs in their lawns may be causing the collapse of bee hives across North America (more).

Just like the internet/web, one can’t stop things coming over the fence from the neighbor’s garden. Birds, squirrels, slugs, and seeds don’t respect boundaries. A garden is embedded in a larger regional system, and its borders are porous. While every gardener can and should shape the garden to their preferences, there is a limit to their independence. The openness brings both plant-friendly bees and bird-chasing cats. Tension with neighbors is inevitable, but can be managed. There is management at many scales, from a gardener’s decision about what variety of tomato to plant for next year, to state-wide prohibitions on planting noxious weeds.

The old silos of traditional communications regulation are like formal gardens or regimented farming. Everything is neat and in its place. There is relatively little variety in the composition and output of the cultivation, and the managers are few and well-defined. Today’s internet/web is more like a patchwork of allotments and wilderness. Control is decentralized, and there is much more variety.

This description of the internet/web as a garden is of course incomplete – like any complex system, different perspectives of the internet will each reveal truths regarding that system that are neither entirely independent nor entirely compatible. The garden metaphor, built on the analogy of the internet/web as a complex system, captures a lot of the key dynamics. It fits with other place-based metaphors for the web (as a building, market, library, or public venue). There is a resonance with tool metaphors, since gardens are as a means to an end, whether pleasure or production. The link to the “internet as communications infrastructure” metaphor is less direct, but they don’t contradict each other.

Mind-boggling

Not the usual fare for this blog, but I found this tidbit amazing: A female Bar-tailed Godwit touched down in New Zealand following an epic, 18,000-mile-long (29,000 km) series of flights tracked by satellite, including the longest non-stop flight recorded for a land bird: a non-stop flight of more than eight days and a distance of 7,200 miles, the equivalent of making a roundtrip flight between New York and San Francisco, and then flying back again to San Francisco without ever touching down.

For more, see USGS story, USGS satellite tracks, and APSN summary.

Lobbying Pays

The September 17th BusinessWeek has a fascinating look Inside The Hidden World Of Earmarks. The tell the story of how the Navy got itself an executive jet that the Pentagon didn’t ask Congress for. Gulfstream lobbied heavily, and the Navy got special funding, known as an earmark. The Georgia Congressional delegation, and Senator Saxby Chambliss in particular, were very helpful - no surprise, since the Gulfstream is built in that state.

BusinessWeek concludes that on average, companies generated roughly $28 in earmark revenue for every dollar they spent lobbying. The top twenty in this game in $100 or more for every dollar spent. For context, the magazine provides these factoids: companies in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index brought in just $17.52 in revenues for every dollar of capital expenditure in 2006.

In Gulfstream’s case, that exec jet deal was worth $53 million. It was just one of 29 earmarks valued at $169 million given to General Dynamics (its parent) or its subsidiaries that year; a nifty 30:1 ROI given that the company spent only $5.7 million on lobbying in 2004.