Thursday, February 26, 2009
More on Fixing the Internet
[This post is so broad-brush, that I'm going to rule up front that nit-picking is out of order. If you want to pick details, I'm wrong, you're right, I give up. But if you sit back, take a deep breath and go with the flow of the big brush strokes, maybe you'll catch my drift, or even propel these lines of thinking in new directions. Thanks.]
I've been asking myself why there are some "disasters that have not happened yet" that I think are worth worrying about, while other supposed threats are "not so much."
In the former class, I'd put (a) Global Climate Disruption, (b) Nuclear War, and formerly, until it happened (c) Economic Collapse.
In the latter class, I'd put the pwning of the Internet, what at least one "fixer" called "Digital Pearl Harbor."
I wasn't always a worrier about Global Climate Disruption. I used to believe that humanity's infinite inventiveness would trump Earth's finite resources.
My climate worry jumped when I learned of two self-amplifying (positive) feedback loops in climate science. The first is that as polar ice and snow decrease, the open water and bare ground absorb more heat from sunlight than their ice and snow-covered equivalents, which, in turn, warms things up even faster. The second loop, more subtle but more profound, is that when land and ocean warms, each loses its ability to hold carbon; then the carbon gasifies into the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect. No ameliorating processes are in sight that would slow either process until, e.g., polar ice coverage becomes negligible.
My worry about the economy increased over the last two years as the news piled up -- house prices rising way much faster than wages, middle-class incomes stagnating or worse, and obscene bonuses for the "innovators" of Wall Street. After early October the obvious story once again was self-amplifying feedback loops, from housing prices to the banking system, from Wall Street to Orchard Street, from deregulation to outright theft, from Nth-order derivatives to the value of the dollar and my ability to buy groceries.
Then there's nuclear war. I worry because there's a small finite probability that a bomb will be exploded somewhere on earth, and a much larger probability that other people will respond by exploding more nuclear bombs. Time is not on our side. There are no obvious self-amplifying processes, but on the other hand, there are no obvious self-correcting processes in sight.
In all three cases, "do the right thing" was generally the right thing. Who's to say no to conservation, economic fairness and peace? There are obvious counter-examples, of course. For the climate problem, fossil-fuel economy and the green revolution are two cases where the short-term "right thing" is proving disastrous in the long run. But in general, the intuitively moral path was also the anti-disaster route.
So let me posit three signs we're heading for a "disaster that has not happened yet."
1. Self-amplifying feedback loops that take us in the wrong direction.
2. Persistent finite probability of hair-trigger, self-amplifying event.
3. We're not going in the "Do the right thing," direction.
Now, about "fixing" the Internet.
Test 1: If anything, badware trends are self-damping, not self-amplifying.
Test 2: The Internet is so far removed from tightly-coupled, hair-trigger accidents-waiting-to-happen that David Weinberger titled his book about the Internet, Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
Test 3: The right thing can't be locking down a good thing -- as many people, including Jonathan Zittrain, have pointed out much more eloquently than I have. The right direction has to be more freedom, more creativity, more ideas, more generativity.
More people than ever are filing their taxes on line according to this Conference Board Report:
If I saw that malicious trends on the Internet that were building on each other -- and maybe they are, and if so it would be important to discover and explicate them! -- then I might easily change my mind about whether the Internet needs fixing. But the trends are going the other way. And the benefits of the Internet are so huge it would be tragic to risk them in a baby-bathwater fix.
What do you think?
I've been asking myself why there are some "disasters that have not happened yet" that I think are worth worrying about, while other supposed threats are "not so much."
In the former class, I'd put (a) Global Climate Disruption, (b) Nuclear War, and formerly, until it happened (c) Economic Collapse.
In the latter class, I'd put the pwning of the Internet, what at least one "fixer" called "Digital Pearl Harbor."
I wasn't always a worrier about Global Climate Disruption. I used to believe that humanity's infinite inventiveness would trump Earth's finite resources.
My climate worry jumped when I learned of two self-amplifying (positive) feedback loops in climate science. The first is that as polar ice and snow decrease, the open water and bare ground absorb more heat from sunlight than their ice and snow-covered equivalents, which, in turn, warms things up even faster. The second loop, more subtle but more profound, is that when land and ocean warms, each loses its ability to hold carbon; then the carbon gasifies into the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect. No ameliorating processes are in sight that would slow either process until, e.g., polar ice coverage becomes negligible.
My worry about the economy increased over the last two years as the news piled up -- house prices rising way much faster than wages, middle-class incomes stagnating or worse, and obscene bonuses for the "innovators" of Wall Street. After early October the obvious story once again was self-amplifying feedback loops, from housing prices to the banking system, from Wall Street to Orchard Street, from deregulation to outright theft, from Nth-order derivatives to the value of the dollar and my ability to buy groceries.
Then there's nuclear war. I worry because there's a small finite probability that a bomb will be exploded somewhere on earth, and a much larger probability that other people will respond by exploding more nuclear bombs. Time is not on our side. There are no obvious self-amplifying processes, but on the other hand, there are no obvious self-correcting processes in sight.
In all three cases, "do the right thing" was generally the right thing. Who's to say no to conservation, economic fairness and peace? There are obvious counter-examples, of course. For the climate problem, fossil-fuel economy and the green revolution are two cases where the short-term "right thing" is proving disastrous in the long run. But in general, the intuitively moral path was also the anti-disaster route.
So let me posit three signs we're heading for a "disaster that has not happened yet."
1. Self-amplifying feedback loops that take us in the wrong direction.
2. Persistent finite probability of hair-trigger, self-amplifying event.
3. We're not going in the "Do the right thing," direction.
Now, about "fixing" the Internet.
Test 1: If anything, badware trends are self-damping, not self-amplifying.
Test 2: The Internet is so far removed from tightly-coupled, hair-trigger accidents-waiting-to-happen that David Weinberger titled his book about the Internet, Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
Test 3: The right thing can't be locking down a good thing -- as many people, including Jonathan Zittrain, have pointed out much more eloquently than I have. The right direction has to be more freedom, more creativity, more ideas, more generativity.
More people than ever are filing their taxes on line according to this Conference Board Report:
About 40 percent of online households are planning to file their federal taxes online this year, up from less than 34 percent four years ago, according to The Consumer Internet Barometer, a quarterly report produced by The Conference Board, the global business research and membership organization, and TNS, a global market insight and information group. The report surveys 10,000 households across the country and tracks who's doing what on the Internet.Amazon sales are surging despite the economic downturn, and on line shopping in general, continue to increase; this is not a sign that malware is taking over or that people are trusting the Internet less.
If I saw that malicious trends on the Internet that were building on each other -- and maybe they are, and if so it would be important to discover and explicate them! -- then I might easily change my mind about whether the Internet needs fixing. But the trends are going the other way. And the benefits of the Internet are so huge it would be tragic to risk them in a baby-bathwater fix.
What do you think?
Technorati Tags: ClimateChange, DavidWeinberger, End-to-End, GreatDepression2.0, JonathanZittrain, Nuclear
Comments:
See: http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_-_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality
Botnets and their related attacks are in fact growing rapidly and becoming harder to fight.
There really is a fundamental flaw in the Internet's security architecture: it doesn't have one.
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Botnets and their related attacks are in fact growing rapidly and becoming harder to fight.
There really is a fundamental flaw in the Internet's security architecture: it doesn't have one.
