The internet v the world part 1 gatekeepers lose control as we connect

Crikeys Bernard Keane has some thoughts on the challenge to gatekeeping institutions posed by the internet - The internet v the world part 1: gatekeepers lose control as we connect .

Here are some scenes from the internet in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first of the 21st, in no particular order.

* The internet versus music and movies. The digitisation of audio-visual content and higher internet bandwidth enables mass downloading of music, movies and television programming entirely outside the legal copyright system. In Australia, much of it is driven by the FTA television networks’ refusal to screen foreign programs for many months after they’ve screened in the US. The response of copyright owners and media companies is to prosecute individuals, websites or companies that download illegally, or facilitate downloading, and convince governments to impose new, often draconian, copyright laws. Their efforts are futile. About 25% of global internet traffic is estimated to be file sharing, nearly all of it illegal.

* The internet versus lawyers. Lawyers in jurisdictions across the world become increasingly concerned about jurors using the internet to find out about cases. Judges take to threatening jurors with contempt of court if they breach agreements about using the internet. In 2008, a Victorian judge demands the suppression of an episode of Underbelly. As soon as the banned episode is broadcast elsewhere, it is available online and downloaded thousands of times. In 2009, a judge orders Australian websites to take over 1500 articles offline about an individual on the basis that they will prejudice a trial jury. The material remains easily accessible even after removal by the sites in question.

* The internet versus gambling opponents. Moral panic over gambling and pressure from casinos prompts the Australian Government to ban online gambling in 2001. According to the Productivity Commission, the ban fails to prevent continued growth in online gambling at rates similar to other countries. The ban ensures Australians’ money goes to poorly-regulated foreign sites and not safer local sites and Australian taxpayers.

* The internet versus government secrecy. The website Cryptome began publishing classified and confidential government information in 1996. Similar sites like Cartome, Eyeball Series and Cryptome CN also offer other types of information governments want suppressed. Cryptome’s founders claim FBI harassment, the site has its server capacity removed and companies like PayPal refuse to enable contributions to the site. But as WikiLeaks will demonstrate, the harassment appears to have no noticeable impact on the release of material.

* The internet versus transnationals. In October 2009, the transnational energy company Trafigura, which has successfully used the UK courts to suppress reporting of evidence it released toxic waste in Cote dIvoire, obtains a "superinjunction" against the Guardian on the same issue. But "Trafigura" becomes a trending topic on Twitter, and a number of websites and WikiLeaks publish material on the case. The company abandons its attempts to suppress efforts to expose it.

* The internet versus journalists. Some Australian p olitical journalists, angry at criticism of their coverage of the 2010 election, lash out at "parasites", "free riders" and "armchair critics" online. "Just let the professionals do their job" demands one on Twitter. But the editor of The Australian goes further. Angry that online critics are routinely deriding the paper’s partisanship and anti-science stance on climate change, he threatens to sue an academic over tweets made about a presentation at a journalism conference -- though not the presenter herself, a former journalist at his own paper -- and boasts about bringing his lawyers into the matter. His Media Editor then threatens to report another academic to police over a Twitter comment. The result is extensive coverage of the original presentation here and overseas.

* The internet versus the Australian Government. In response to WikiLeaks releasing US diplomatic cables, the Australian Prime Minister labels the act "illegal" and her Attorney-General talks about measures to prevent the release of national security material in the media. He writes to mainstream media editors with the goal of developing a protocol to do so. Later, Australian police advise that WikiLeaks has not broken any Australian laws, and the Prime Minister is forced to carefully parse her claim about illegality.

* The internet versus Big Retail. Australia’s major retailers, used to earning oligopoly profits, are unhappy Australians are using the internet to shop online at overseas sites. They demand the Government take "decisive action" in the form of higher taxes to deter consumers and protect their profits.

The common theme across these examples is that the gatekeepers and the privileged intermediaries of late twentieth century Western economies -- politicians, lawyers, the mainstream media, large corporations -- are threatened by the connectedness that the internet enables.

Humans are, to nick a phrase from David Attenborough, compulsive communicators. The urge to converse, debate, joke, fight, trade, play and form relationships with each other is hard-wired into us. And the internet dramatically expands the community within which we can do that, from one constrained by geography to one only constrained by technology.

And it directly undermines the power of those who want to regulate that interaction, or profit from it. Governments that want to police it. The media that profits by connecting us. The corporations that rely on consumers knowing less than they do. The courts that regard jurors as easily-swayed fools who need to be treated like mushrooms. All now confront interconnectedness on a scale far greater than ever seen before, with far fewer opportunities to regulate or exploit it.

But the gatekeepers and intermediaries are unwilling to let their power go easily, even as it slips away from them. And they reflexively resort to litigation, regulation and prohibition to maintain their power.

{ Read More }

Whom Do We Fear Or Trust

Whom Do We Fear Or Trust? (8/5/08)

A pair of Princeton psychology researchers has developed a computer program that allows scientists to analyze better than ever before what it is about certain human faces that makes them look either trustworthy or fearsome.

In doing so, they have also found that the program allows them to construct computer-generated faces that display the most trustworthy or dominant faces possible.

Such work could have implications for those who care what effect their faces may have upon a beholder, from salespeople to criminal defendants, the researchers said.

Theres another category of people who have a similar concern – politicians. Hmmm... salespeople, criminal defendants, politicians... lots in common there, no? Whats missing from this list... preachers, TV political pundits, military officers... pretty long list.

Unfortunately, we havent figured out how to run any large society, much less a modern one, without government and government officials, so were stuck with politicians for some time to come, Id guess. Well, at least that provides political scientists and researchers into aberrant psychology something to keep busy with.

The research described in the press release above isnt directly about politicians, but its a sequel to work of the principal investigator (Alexander Todorov) that is:

Who Will Win An Election? Snap Judgments Of Face To Gauge Competence Usually Enough (10/22/07)

A split-second glance at two candidates faces is often enough to determine which one will win an election, according to a Princeton University study.

Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov has demonstrated that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election returns. Todorov has taken some of his previous research that showed that people unconsciously judge the competence of an unfamiliar face within a tenth of a second, and he has moved it to the political arena.

His lab tests show that a rapid appraisal of the relative competence of two candidates faces was sufficient to predict the winner in about 70 percent of the races for U.S. senator and state governor in the 2006 elections.

Other reports on this research: here, here.

Duh. At first glance all hes saying is that people tend to make snap judgments about a candidates competence... and those candidates go on to win the election. Thats not surprising, especially if one hypothesizes that voters tend not to go much beyond their snap judgment. And perhaps that is a valid conclusion, though hardly a welcome one.

In fact, Todorov had already published research showing that people make snap judgments about trustworthiness of people in general:

Snap Judgments Decide A Faces Character, Psychologist Finds (8/22/06)

We may be taught not to judge a book by its cover, but when we see a new face, our brains decide whether a person is attractive and trustworthy within a tenth of a second, according to recent Princeton research.

Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov has found that people respond intuitively to faces so rapidly that our reasoning minds may not have time to influence the reaction -- and that our intuitions about attraction and trust are among those we form the fastest.

OK, if Todorovs research is sound, people make snap judgments about whom they will trust or fear. So it would be useful to know more precisely what factors those judgments are based on. His latest research has tried to do just that. Quoting again from the latest press release:

Based on this data, the scientists found that humans make split-second judgments on faces on two major measures -- whether the person should be approached or avoided and whether the person is weak or strong.

From there, using a commercial software program that generates composites of human faces (based on laser scans of real subjects), the scientists asked another group of test subjects to look at 300 faces and rate them for trustworthiness, dominance and threat. Common features of both trustworthiness and dominance emerged. A trustworthy face, at its most extreme, has a U-shaped mouth and eyes that form an almost surprised look.

An untrustworthy face, at its most extreme, is an angry one with the edges of the mouth curled down and eyebrows pointing down at the center. The least dominant face possible is one resembling a babys with a larger distance between the eyes and the eyebrows than other faces. A threatening face can be obtained by averaging an untrustworthy and a dominant face.

This is all rather discouraging. What is not addressed (yet) is how accurate such snap judgments are, especially as regards trustworthiness and competence of political candidates.

Its hardly as though perspicacious people havent been thinking about such issues for a very long time, of course. If I knew Plato better, Im sure thered be some choice observations in there somewhere to cite. Sort of goes along with what he said about the kind of judgments of reality made by people who can observe only shadows on the walls of a cave.

But another astute observer of human nature did have something to say about judging the intentions of people just from studying faces:

Theres no art
To find the minds construction in the face
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4. This is spoken by King Duncan, regarding the Thane of Cawdor, who has just been executed for treason. Macbeth enters right after this remark, and Duncan makes him the new Thane. Slow learner, that Duncan.)

Interestingly, one of Todorovs conclusions is that the kind of face people find most trustworthy is one that features, basically, a smile. Heres Shakespeares take on that, in words he gives to Hamlet:

O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables—meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
(Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

I have addressed previous similar studies along the same lines (by other investigators) here and here.

Discouraging? Yes. Especially so if this research were to accurately describe most of the electorate. But perhaps it would be better to look at whether there are subsets of the electorate that behave quite differently. Perhaps it would work to divide the (potential) electorate into those who have at least some interest in and knowledge of politics and government, and those who dont and basically dont give a damn.

In particular, there is some evidence that "undecided" voters, those who cant make up their minds until just before voting (if they vote at all) dont simply have a difficult time making a careful judgment. Instead, many "undecideds" are actually "low-information" voters, who dont follow politics very closely, and dont especially enjoy the process. Here are some (obviously partisan) anecdotal observations on this from the 2004 election.

If this is correct, then we can write off maybe 40-50% of the potential electorate as a random factor which is basically uninformed about and uninterested in details of politics and government. If they vote at all, their votes will be based largely on impressionistic factors of appearance, charisma, or group identity – snap judgments from the physical appearance of candidates, perhaps. Although many of them wont vote, those that do might make up perhaps 10% of the total, and they are fully capable of swinging any election in one direction or another.

It is often said that a deciding factor in the 1960 presidential election was that in the first televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon, the latter was recovering from illness, looked weak, and had a decided 5 oclock shadow. Nixon lost the popular vote by only 120,000 votes. Given how things turned out after Nixon came back to win the office in 1968, the judgments people made in 1960 may not have been so bad. But still such judgments seem like little more than a coin toss.

Further reading:

Poli Psy? – September 2000 online Scientific American article about the "shallowness" of criteria some voters use in voting decisions

The functional basis of face evaluation – June 2008 research article in PNAS about the research described in the first-mentioned press release

Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes – June 2005 research article in Science by Todorov et al on the relationship between neotenous appearance and perceived competence

Appearance DOES Matter – June 2005 commentary in Science on the preceding article

Tags: political science

{ Read More }

An oil crash is on its way and we should be ready

New Scientist has a rather pessimistic article by Jeremy Leggett on peak oil and related topics - An oil crash is on its way and we should be ready.

FIVE years ago the world was in the grip of a financial crisis that is still reverberating around the globe. Much of the blame for that can be attributed to weaknesses in human psychology: we have a collective tendency to be blind to the kind of risks that can crash economies and imperil civilisations.

Today, our risk blindness is threatening an even bigger crisis. In my book The Energy of Nations, I argue that the energy industrys leaders are guilty of a risk blindness that, unless action is taken, will lead to a global crash – and not just because of the climate change they fuel.

Let me begin by explaining where I come from. I used to be a creature of the oil and gas industry. As a geologist on the faculty at Imperial College London, I was funded by BP, Shell and others, and worked on oil and gas in shale deposits, among other things. But I became worried about societys overdependency on fossil fuels, and acted on my concerns.

In 1989, I quit Imperial College to become a climate campaigner. A decade later I set up a solar energy business. In 2000 I co-founded a private equity fund investing in renewables.

In these capacities, I have watched captains of the energy and financial industries at work – frequently close to, often behind closed doors – as the financial crisis has played out and the oil price continued its inexorable rise. I have concluded that too many people across the top levels of business and government have found ways to close their eyes and ears to systemic risk-taking. Denial, I believe, has become institutionalised.

As a result of their complacency we face four great risks. The first and biggest is no surprise: climate change. We have way more unburned conventional fossil fuel than is needed to wreck the climate. Yet much of the energy industry is discovering and developing unconventional deposits – shale gas and tar sands, for example – to pile onto the fire, while simultaneously abandoning solar power just as it begins to look promising. It has been vaguely terrifying to watch how CEOs of the big energy companies square that circle.

Second, we risk creating a carbon bubble in the capital markets. If policymakers are to achieve their goal of limiting global warming to 2 °C, 60 to 80 per cent of proved reserves of fossil fuels will have to remain in the ground unburned. If so, the value of oil and gas companies would crash and a lot of people would lose a lot of money. ...

Third, we risk being surprised by the boom in shale gas production. That, too, may prove to be a bubble, maybe even a Ponzi scheme. Production from individual shale wells declines rapidly, and large amounts of capital have to be borrowed to drill replacements. This will surprise many people who make judgement calls based on the received wisdom that limits to shale drilling are few. But I am not alone in these concerns.

Even if the US shale gas drilling isnt a bubble, it remains unprofitable overall and environmental downsides are emerging seemingly by the week. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, whole towns in Texas are now running out of water, having sold their aquifers for fracking. I doubt that this is a boom that is going to appeal to the rest of the world; many others agree.

Fourth, we court disaster with assumptions about oil depletion. Most of us believe the industry mantra that there will be adequate flows of just-about-affordable oil for decades to come. I am in a minority who dont. Crude oil production peaked in 2005, and oil fields are depleting at more than 6 per cent per year, according to the International Energy Agency. The much-hyped 2 million barrels a day of new US production capacity from shale needs to be put in context: we live in a world that consumes 90 million barrels a day.

It is because of the sheer prevalence of risk blindness, overlain with the pervasiveness of oil dependency in modern economies, that I conclude system collapse is probably inevitable within a few years.

{ Read More }