-------- Original Message -------- Subject: For IP Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:08:29 -0700 From: Donald Dulchinos <dopod@indra.com> To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Not sure if this is quite right for IP, but as I watch the back and forth on IP especially around privacy and security issues, I understand the nature of public policy is such that arguments must be narrowly framed in a for and against manner. But there are larger societal and technological trends that seem to overwhelm some of the arguments. I've started a web site around the ideas in my new book, Neurosphere (www.neurosphere.org) which might be of interest to some here. An excerpt from the book follows... b b&The war on terrorism as proclaimed by President Bush is the incipient form of conflict within a neurosphere, not across borders but within the skin of a single global entity. The war will not be confined to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or any small collection of countries. The Al Qaeda network is said to operate within more than 60 countries. It is a stunning fact that they operated most successfully in Florida, a state it will be hard for Mr. Bush to declare war upon. And it seems increasingly clear, after 5 years of war, that the supply of fresh recruits to the terrorist cause will continue to grow. So how do you find and defeat this enemy within? On one front of the war, Richard Clarke, cyberspace security adviser to the President War, says b We must secure our cyberspace from a range of possible threats.b But how does one secure an asset whose value comes precisely, like airline travel, from its openness and ubiquity? An asset whose value, says Bob Metcalfebs network effect, increases exponentially with the number of computers, of conscious nodes, connected to it? The Panopticon, the surveillance technology of the 21st century (yet a word coined in the 19th), is about to be unleashed without the niceties of protected civil liberties or the illusion of privacy. This will mean that someone could be watching you, but also that you will be watching everyone. For every knee jerk libertarian encrypting his banal emails there is a webcam exhibitionist begging you to look and see. We can run but we canbt hide, and perhaps we shouldnbt try. The march of technology is inexorable. It is in human nature. And for those who scoff at the idea of universal access and point to the majority of the world still without electricity, let alone Net access, I would point out the ability of the poorest desert nomad to get hold of Kalishnikov technology all too easily. And that is where history comes in...b Don Dulchinos www.neurosphere.org ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]