China’s Firewall
Great Firewall of China lets you input any website and see if it is blocked in China or not.
Interestingly enough – Barnett’s site is blocked but for whatever reason his blog is not. GG’s is not. (Nor is this site.)
Update: Pacific Empire’s Phil is on this too.
Broken Online Job Market
Ben goes after the online job market. He’s mostly right.
On GRIN Technologies
I don’t worry about most new inventions, but there are four technologies I think are worth worrying about. These are the emerging technologies of geno-, robo-, info-, nano- stuff.
The common element among the techniques of GRIN – and the reason they are worrisome – is that they are all self-reproducing.
The more complex a system is the less its behavior can be deduced from the behavior of its parts, and the more its behavior will only emerge when the entire whole is running. Natural ecologies, and organic bodies are like this. Complex software programs exhibit the same kind of irreducibility. The only way to check and verify them is to run them. Mathematically, there are no short cuts but to turn it on. Mathematically, there are no short cuts to finding out what the consequences of the GRIN-ologies will be but to construct them first.
Walling Off Bangladesh
Times –
India is accelerating the construction of a 2,500-mile fence to seal its border with Bangladesh amid growing fears that its Muslim neighbour could become “a new Afghanistan”.
One group said to have links with the government claimed responsibility for 500 synchronised explosions in 63 of Bangladesh’s 64 districts in August.
India’s cabinet has decided to speed up work on the 8ft security fence, which is intended to keep out terrorists and arms smugglers. The fence, which cuts a swathe through some of India’s densest rainforests, will be finished by the end of next year and patrolled by a border security force. Key stretches are being electrified.
On Government Innovation
David Foster from the Chicago Boyz – outlines the systemic failures of an attempt at new ID card system –
Obviously, budgetary constraints are real, and normative regulations must exist and must be followed. And “interest” is a factor in a democracy, or indeed in any political system. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that things are out of balance, and that in our society–and most especially in the areas of society dominated by government–the relative power of the Harold Talbotts has increased at the expense of the relative power of the Bernard Schrievers.
And ends with a call for better innovators in the system –
The recent track record of large programs for defense against terrorism is spotty at best (see another example here, also here.) We urgently need more Schrievers, Ramos, and Gardners in positions of national defense leadership, and most of all we need the sense of urgency to enable them to do their jobs before it is too late.
Frankly, I don’t think it will or can be done. This isn’t a question of the lack of human talent, but rather one revolving around emergent property of the large scale system we’ve built up that makes innovation “‘like swimming in glue”. Requiring that the right people be at the right place at the right time is a sign that something has gone very wrong.