Occupy Wall Street, Botnets, and Thousand-Year Storms
Looks like traditional political thinkers are missing the mark altogether (the protests are ‘flailing without purpose’, ‘just rage’,’just jealous’ etc). A more useful analytic framework is to think of the protests as a form of a botnet. Why?
Because the protest isn’t an unorganized mass. It’s an independent system (potentially aggressive), that shares the same environment as the traditional economy. It is driven by internal dynamics (not an emphasis on the external, as classic protests have).
OWS currently consists of thousands/millions/hundreds of millions of cognitive nodes:
- Connecting/infecting new nodes. As part of this, the organization is generating memes, testing against live audiences, and dropped if counterproductive. Trying to build sufficient capacity before…
- Probing attack vectors. A botnet, like a storm, emphasizes growth of its own capacity before attacking (or raining). Mild DDoS on the Brooklyn bridge or around the Bank of America in SF. Anonymous phishing for corruption, etc. This is enabled by…
- Decentralized command and control. Perhaps more specifically, modular design. Each protest in each city is led by independent affiliates (if not further broken down). Crashing a protest in Ohio has no impact on the rest of the network.
Review: Iraq | Perspectives
Iraq | Perspectives (Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography)
Not really sure how to review a photography collection, especially if it’s 6 years of a war photographer’s work. But I can tell you that it was a really ‘grounding’ experience.
Ben basically offers us how the war, a big and important thing, looks like through night vision goggles, and through the back of an armored vehicle. How the fog of war is a frame, and how pretty much everything is irrelevant.
I think he succeeds in offering us a moment to ignore the geopolitics and methodologies of warfare, and instead think about how it’s just people you know, growing up fast, and making do through the suck.
Review: Domestic Violets
Domestic Violets: A Novel (P.S.)
“How have you been, dear?” Helen asks.
I decide not to tell her about the erectile dysfunction, the recent layoffs at my company, how my dad has taken to smoking pot in my extra bedroom, or how my hands smell like French fries even though I’ve washed them three times. “Oh, you know,” I say. “Not too bad.”
The book is about issues that someone my age shouldn’t really care about that much. A midlife crisis- complete with marital problems, the meaningless of corporate existence, kids- set against the backdrop of a cratering 2008 economy.
But it does resonate, not only because Matthew Norman has a hilarious, succinct wit that is painstakingly cut into in a meaty, complex story, (resulting in a goofy grin or chortle on every page) but because we have all had shitty bosses, that nemesis at work, struggled through romantic relationships (“If we were alone together somewhere else, it might help.”), and loved crazy family, even anxious dogs.
And Norman layers his somewhat sardonic, always interesting, insight and observations slowly, to the point where passages of unexpected emotional ferocity have crept up on you, it is almost tough to go on, and you’re wondering how the hell that happened, but you’re already looking forward to the next wave.
This is just a damn good, well-written book. Give the first ten pages a shot and you will be hooked.
“Quality,” Simonton writes, is “a probabilistic function of quantity.”
A genius is a genius, Simonton maintains, because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great.
Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Started at 8, stayed up till midnight, had to have the book wrestled out of my hands, and up at 6 to finish it off by 9. Haven’t done that in a long while.
The author tugs on major geek anchor points.Hundreds of references to everything you cared about growing up, from Firefly to Star Wars to Pac Man.That familiar grandeur of strapping on a sword to your elf avatar, to complete a quest only you can. That hope that immersive online lives will take off during your lifetime.
It’s a lot of fun. Let the book sweep you away.