May 31, 2019--Googling

I take Google and Googling for granted.

I've heard some of the criticism and think I agree it can be a corporate bully. But I do not know enough about the claim, from say Elizabeth Warren, that it is a search engine monopoly and should be broken up in much the same way AT&T was broken up, Google says, in 1984. Perhaps it should be, maybe not. I'm not sure about what's at issue and what would be the public benefit if it were required to disaggregate. 

But more than anything I know I would have difficulty living without it. 

Take Wednesday for example, the morning Robert Mueller, who the New York Times referred to as the Sphinx of Washington, finally spoke directly to the public about his investigation and its findings.

Talking about it afterwards, Rona and I disagreed about what Mueller said or didn't say about the Department of Justice's policy that sitting presidents are immune from federal prosecution. I thought he did not state this explicitly in his report and that Wednesday was the first time he did so.

Rona said she remembered that he dealt with this in his report and the other morning merely reiterated it.

We went back and forth about this for five or ten minutes until Rona said, "Let's Google it." Which she proceeded to do.

I suggested that if she did so it would likely be found in the introduction to the second volume of the report where Mueller dealt with claims that Trump obstructed justice.

One, two, three, with Google's help, in much less than a minute Rona found the quote in the introduction and was reading the germane passage where he, nice going Rona, explicitly stated that he did not charge Trump with obstruction because, as a sitting president, federal guidelines do not allow the special counsel to do so.

A point for Rona who has a better memory than I, and more than just a point for Google which built this powerful system that is an essential tool for accessing so much of the world's accumulated knowledge.

April 13, 2018--Post-Privacy

More than usual people are concerned about privacy. This the result of the news that Facebook did not prevent the sharing of very personal information about 87 million of us. In fact, they sold it to Cambridge Analytica, which, in turn may or may not have used that data in shady ways to support Donald Trump's run for the presidency.

What did people addicted to Facebook (me included) think they were doing with all the data about our intimate selves we so casually handed over to them? 

Facebook makes billions every month but doesn't charge users to use their "platform." What was Facebook's business model that yielded so much money? If we had paused for a minute to think about how Instagram's and Google's and Snapchat's and YouTube's and Twitter's business models make a fortune but do not charge users we would have realized they made their money by selling us out to marketers and political consultants. 

So all the outrage directed toward Facebook sounds a little self-serving and inauthentic. My bet is that hardly anyone will as a result stop using Facebook or the others.

And, it seems to me, that very few people care profoundly about this. I want my Facebook; I don't want to pay to use it; and I don't care very much, perhaps not at all, about losing my privacy.

After all, don't the social network platforms depend upon us eagerly wanting to surrender our privacy? Aren't they ultimately narcissistic-enabling vehicles for us to let it all, or much of it, hang out for "friends" and friends of friends and friends of friends' friends? Isn't the dream of much of this to have one's postings widely shared, go viral? How else can that happen unless we put it all out there to be passed around?

Years ago I had early glimpses of how people were moving to sacrifice privacy for the sake of convenience and expediency. Though at the time I really didn't get it.

About two decades ago I was online at Citibank (not on-line) waiting to deposit a check. This in the day before there were ATMs. Ahead of me were two women who were talking at full volume. One was worried about her daughter, "I'm afraid she's becoming addicted to cocaine," she said loud enough for everyone on line to hear. "I don't know what to do with her. I can't afford to pay for a recovery program. I suppose I just have to hope for the best."  

Her friend put an arm around her and, changing the subject, began to talk, equally audibly, about her boyfriend, "He punched me the other day. We were having an argument and he got violent. Slapped my face hard enough that I think he loosened a couple of my molars." She opened her mouth wide and showed her friend the two teeth. Her friend leaned closer to examine her teeth.

Thankfully, they soon got to the head of the line and were summoned by one of the tellers. The memory is still vivid for me.

A few years later, walking home on Broadway, there was a young woman who appeared to be talking to herself in a very loud voice. Another crazy person, I thought. So young to be talking to herself, I thought. But as I moved quickly to pass her, I realized she was speaking to someone on her cell phone, talking into the wire attached to the phone on which there was a small microphone. Again, without needing to strain to pay attention I could hear every word she said. They were talking about meeting that evening at a local restaurant. All very benign, but evidence that the culture was shifting. I realized we would soon have no need for the phone booths with accordion doors that were still common on urban streets.

Some time after that I was in Washington for a meeting with Alaska Senator Ted ("Uncle Ted") Stevens. He was the chair of the all-powerful Appropriations Committee and I was, I confess, seeking his support for a $20.0 million earmark for a promising public school reform project that, to lubricate the process of seeking his help, we were more than willing to bring to his state.

He was about to be term-limited out of the chairmanship so the timing was urgent. 

We spoke about the project (which he later arranged to be funded) and then he told me that as a consolation for losing the Appropriations chair, he was to become the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. He wasn't, to tell the truth, happy about this. It was a much less powerful position.

"One thing I'm concerned about," he said, "is the responsibility for protecting internet security. Really, privacy. And to be honest with you, I'm 82 years old, and don't know anything about the internet or, for the matter, computers."

"So, what are you going to do?" I asked.

"I'll tell you what I already did," he said, smiling, "I asked my youngest staffers to do a little looking around and see what they could learn about me on the internet. You know, when and where I was born, where I live, who I'm married to. Things of that sort. I told them to get back to me in a week or so and they said no problem."

"I think I know where this is going," I said.

"Well, later in the day, the same day, they appeared in my doorway holding stacks and stakes of paper. 'What's all that?' I asked them. They told me it was what they had already come up with on the internet. You wouldn't believe what they found in just a few hours."

"I would," I whispered. He was on a roll and I didn't want to interrupt him.

"You know I have six kids. Well, not only did they find out everything about Cathy-Ann and me but also about them. Where they were born, how old they are, where they went to school, what they studied, and what they did after college. Also, where they live, and if they owned a house how much they paid for it. They even knew about their student loans and any mortgages on their properties."

He shrugged his shoulders, "And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's enough to say that everything's out there to be found by anyone who knows how to do that. And my staffers told me how easy that is. From what they explained to me I understood why it only took a couple of hours to gather all that information."

"This is terrible," I said, "And so as the about-to-be chair of the Commerce Committee what are you thinking about doing?"

He stared off into space, "Probably nothing."

"Nothing?" I was incredulous. Remember, it was years ago. For most of us knowing about the power of the internet was rather new.

"It's too late," he said, "No one in Congress cares anything about this. They think it's good for business. No one gives a rat's ass about privacy. As I said, it's all over."

This was 2005 and from an 82-year-old senator from Alaska who never turned on a computer. He was still able to see the future.

"It's over. It's all over," he said as I thanked him and turned to leave.

Senater (Uncle Ted) Stevens

April 10, 2018--Up Next, Google

Though Google is more diversified than Facebook (they have a significant cloud business, are deeply involved in self-driving vehicles, smartphones, YouTube, and Blogger, which I use), by far most of their income derives from their original and still core business--as an Internet search engine.

For the latter, users have access to it for "free." Not unlike Facebook.

I put free in quotation marks because as with Facebook there is a hidden cost associated with using Google's search software. 

In exchange for information (I just used Google to search for the other ventures in which they are invested) they charge no fees but get paid by the reams of personal data we so willingly and unthinkably give them access to. 

They in turn sell that data, that big data, to advertisers and others who in turn design and pass along to us unsolicited, tightly personalized, targeted ads.

In this way, for this enormous, global, lucrative segment of their business Google is not so different than Facebook. 

And thus it would be no surprise to find them before long in the same humiliating circumstance as Facebook. Snared or hoisted with  their own petard. 

(Google, as I just did, to find where Shakespeare makes reference to being hoisted with one's own petard.)

Expect that Trump (as his people did with Cambridge Analytica), or, who knows, Hillary or Bernie, had one of their marketing intermediaries purchase demographic and psychographic data from Google that was for good or ill useful in their campaigns.

Most of us haven't been paying attention to what else was going on with our favorite social media or e-commerce sites as we searched and shopped. But now the genie is out of the bottle, Mark Zuckerberg is about to appear before Congress, and most of us would be reluctant to stop using Facebook or Google or Amazon.  

I do not see myself giving up these any time soon much less back shopping in the mall or looking up anything in the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm addicted. 

January 20, 2016--What's Playing in Somalia and On Reunion Island?

I love my Netflix.

I know there is current controversy about their ratings--the company is coy about them, which suggests they are not as high as advertised. The concern about the truth is not academic or about the truth itself but about Netflix's valuation--how much it is worth and how justifiable is its current lofty stock price.

I don't care about that except that I do have an investor's interest in the so-called FANG stocks. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. I do not at this point in my life believe in owning that many shares of individual companies, preferring broad-based securities funds, but I do own a decent amount of Amazon stock, am thinking about buying more, and am considering making an equivalent investment in Netflix.

After all, boldly last week, the CEO of Netflix announced that they are making their streaming service available in 190 large and small countries from China to Somalia.

And just yesterday Netflix announced that they are signing up surprising numbers of subscribers in many out-of-the-way places.

Now people from Madagascar to Reunion Island can catch Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards.

"They must have pretty good Internet connections," CEO Reed Hastings joked the other day when he learned that the Reunion Island folks were among the first to subscribe.

Now Netflix is scrambling to dub their shows in dozens of languages to keep up with the already burgeoning demand.

I remember back in the day, when nation-buidling still seemed to some like a good idea, that the thought was that if we could help bring versions of Western democracy to underdeveloped places such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya young people especially would clamor for MTV and once they could tune in all would be well in the world.

We see now what that culturally imperialist and naive strategy has yielded. Among other things--ISIS.

Now here comes Netflix.

To some in Yemen, seeing the evil Kevin Spacey character, fictional U.S. president Francis Underwood ensconced in the White House, will feel that what they believe to be true about our actual president is in fact true.

November 13, 2014--T-Shirts Make the Man

Like so many other things in Silicone Valley this trend likely started with Steve Jobs, for many years Apple's guiding genius.

Once, twice a year he would stride out on stage at their headquarters in Cupertino, CA, for a show-and-tell that featured the latest iPod, iPad or iPhone. Prior to that this was not what traditional CEOs did to launch their latest products. They would hang back in their corner offices and leave it to the sales and PR people to announce new Game Boys or office software.

Jobs, super salesman and egoist that he was, did this himself in dramatic fashion--in dark ambient light with only him, the Apple logo, and the newest MacBook Pro theatrically illuminated. And rather than appearing in a bespoke suit and Turnbull & Asser shirt and tie, he wore lived-in jeans and a body-revealing black mock-turtleneck shirt with the sleeves pushed up.

This became just as much his signature look as Gloria Steinem's aviator glasses or Donald Trump's comb-over. It also set the tone for other IT magnates. Everyone from Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg subsequently took to rolling out new products and services casually dressed. Zuckerberg shows up in his legendary hoodie or, more recently, in his Steve-Job's jeans and short- or long-sleeved T-shirt.

As reported in Tuesday's New York Times, Mark Zuckerberg, in spite of appearances, thinks a lot about his--if I can call it that--attire.

He wears an identical gray T-shirt every day. He said, "I want to clear my life so I have to make as few decisions as possible beyond serving this community." (My italics)

I get it--not having to think about clothes clears his mind. He avoids the angst of needing to think should it be the gray T-shirt again or maybe a blue or black one. It also saves closet space--one drawer is all he needs for a half dozen or so.

In the Times piece he did acknowledge Steve Job's inspiration--well and good--but claimed he is also influenced sartorially by Barack Obama.

Yes, he did comment about the "simplicity" of Obama's wardrobe. He didn't elaborate, but I suppose he means that Obama always turns out in one of his signature navy or dark gray Hart Shaffner Marx suits. Like Zuckerberg that too enables the president to make as few decisions as possible while serving the community. In his case that community being the United States of America.

In the meantime I worry about poor Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, and Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google. Both are far from buff, a bit roly-poly and though they try to look sleek and youthful, when they appear on stage to reveal the latest in cloud computing or Google Glasses in their version of Jobs-Zuckerberg outfits, they look a bit disheveled.

But at least they don't try to stuff themselves into T-shirts.

November 5, 2014--The New Mediocre

As if we didn't have enough to complain about. We need to make it worse?

That's just what Vanessa Friedman did in a column in last Sunday's New York Times Review, "Mired in Mediocrity."

The title of her piece says it all--things globally, but especially in the United States, are stalled out because we are accepting, even embracing what she calls "the new mediocre."

Her bonafides? She is the Times' chief fashion critic and fashion director. More about that in a moment.

Let me summarize her indictment--

The idea that mediocrity is "the new normal" originates, Friedman claims, with Christine Lagarde, director of the International Monetary Fund, who applied that term to the global economy. It could use a jolt, Lagarde correctly suggests, to get it going, mired as it is, "muddling along with subpar growth."

Fine. But to generalize this to just about everything else is questionable. I do not want to come a across as Pangloss, seeing everything to be the best in "this best of all possible worlds," but to see everything to be the worst in this worst of all possible worlds goes way beyond the defensible and slips more into whining than legitimate analysis.

When she sees the newly emboldened Republicans putting forth an economic agenda that is made up of "a compendium of modest expectations," Friedman sees this this to be a manifestation of "the new mediocre."

Ranging far afield, she sees Twitter losing participants and thus income not because as a fad it is fading but because it has become an example of "the new mediocre."

"Old-guy action films" and "comic-book-hero" flicks that are predominating at the box office, squeezing out higher-quality art-house Indies, is yet more evidence that the the movies that are thriving--what else is new--are yet more evidence that "the new mediocre" is all-pervasive.

And then there is clothing, fashion, Friedman's expertise. Here she sees the same thing--mediocrity.

Enduring the recent spate of fashion shows in New York and Europe, she sees little evidence of new ideas among designers. Rather, she unhappily reports, everything seems deja vu--1960s-style "rock chick dresses," 1970s "flared trousers," 1980s "power jackets," and even 1920s "flapper frocks."

It doesn't get any worse than this, in this worst of all possible worlds.

I've been hearing from disillusioned and generally despondent friends that the Friedman piece sums up what they have been thinking and feeling about the contemporary world. That we are in fact mired in mediocrity. That this not only explains what they are seeing but also helps reconcile themselves to their own unhappy and frustrating circumstances. "It's not my fault," they are in effect saying, "but the larger world's."

I have been pushing back, claiming that though there is much to not feel good or optimistic about, to balance things, one could contemplate making a case in opposition to "the new mediocre" in support of "the new excellent."

A list of things to feel optimistic about would include--

All the advances in medicine and healthcare. Yes, the system for its delivery is deeply flawed, but if one has various types of cancer or needs life-saving, minimally-invasive surgery, with any good fortune, methods and tests and medications are now available that a scant few year ago were only dreams. "The new excellent."

If one is fortunate enough to be in the top 25 percent academically, public education capped by still the best higher-education system in the world could be considered an example of the new or continuing excellent.

Then there is Google, wirelessness, iGadgets, the Internet itself and all the possibilities that these enable--more "new excellent."

Evidence-based philanthropy, best exemplified by the Gates Foundation, which just last week announced it is stepping up its promising efforts to eradicate malaria, is, as part of "the new excellent," making progress on many fronts from environmental conservation to potable water to sustainable economic development. Yes, I know the counter list, but the picture is more balanced than the "new mediocre" people are claiming.

Even in regard to military hardware, while waiting for peace and sanity to break out in the world, drones, as one example of excellence of its own sort, enable battles to rage that inflict fewer civilian casualties than conventional methods. I know many of my anti-war friends (include me among them) will blanch at this, but in realpolitik terms this represents "progress."

At a different level of things to feel good about is the New Brooklyn, ATM machines, E-ZPasses, and the ubiquitousness of really wonderful coffee--my counter case to worrying too much about power jackets and flapper frocks.

One reason to consider the excellent to be at least as pervasive as the mediocre is that it can motivate one to shake the funk, get up off the couch, turn off the TV and iPhone (at least for a few hours a day), and look for ways to become engaged with making things a little better for yourself and the larger world. To take the opposite tack is to me to waste one's life.

April 17, 2014--Today's Luddites

A young friend who is making his way quite nicely in the IT field (he is a software builder with investable ideas for a company of his own) was talking the other night about the Luddites.

In addition to being impressed that he knew anything at all about them, he had interesting things to say about today's version.

We began by comparing the power of the Gutenberg Revolution with the advent of the Internet--"I think," he unsurprisingly said, "that the Internet will prove to be an even more powerful cultural and work-shifting technology. Everything is and will change, from knowledge acquisition to the way work is structured."

Though two generations removed from his, though feeling threatened by so much change that I do not and never will fully understand, I agreed. But, I wondered, as we moved on to compare the structure of work brought about by the Industrial Revolution with the Cyber Revolution, that the changes we are seeing globally are likely to be much more disruptive than those brought about when we shifted, less globally, from an agriculture-based economy to one dominated by machines and mass production.

"You're making my point for me," he said, wanting to retain control of the direction of the conversation. "But though I am in my small way contributing to these paradigm-shifting developments, I am worried about some of the trends that I see, unintended consequences--there are always some--that may not turn out to be either benign or progressive."

"Say more," I said, pleased to cede the direction of the conversation to him.

"In the past, the actual, historic Luddites got it wrong. They thought that brining waterpower and machines to the manufacture of textiles would both alienate labor further and ultimately lead to fewer jobs--machines would replace workers."

"What you're saying is correct. They did go about literally and metaphorically smashing the very machines that they felt would replace them."

"And they turned out to be wrong. Right?"

"Say more."

"Rather than replacing workers, though many were dislocated and/or needed to learn machine-based skills, over time the capital invested in mechanization, which temporarily shifted the economic balance more toward capital (things like machines and factories) than workers and wages, over time--and this is important--the balance shifted: more workers were ultimately needed and the demand for them, plus unionization, led to higher wages."

"Correct. Classic economic theory," I said, wanting to sound relevant, "says this is what happens historically as the result of capital outlays and aggregation."

"But back to my but," he pressed, "I do not see this happening now. And maybe it will not happen even during the upcoming decades."

"What won't be happening?" I admitted to myself that he was leaving me behind.

"IT, information technology . . ."

"I know what IT is."

He smiled at me. "It may turn out that IT will permanently not only dislocate workers but also make much of human, hands-on work work itself redundant."

"Redundant?"

"OK, obsolete. No longer needed. And, here's the worry, this may wind up permanently replacing the old, classic economic model. We may see a longterm shift in the balance between capital and wages. A shift in the direction favoring capital. The data in many countries, very much including ours, are trending in this direction."

"OK. But what about the Luddites?"

"Well, it may be a generational thing--with people from, forgive me, your generation serving as the contemporary Luddites. You, I mean they," he smiled again, "may be decrying these cyber innovations because you, I mean they, are feeling left behind by more than age. But, they may be right."

"Slow down. You're losing me. Right about what?"

"That the new machines, actual and virtual, will in fact replace hands-on workers (except maybe in health care and restaurant work). Replace them for the foreseeable future. Maybe permanently. Maybe if displaced, redundant workers acquire new skills there may not be enough jobs for them. Look at what goes on in auto assembly plants these days. Cars are now made more and more by robots. Yes, at the moment humans have to make the robots but after they are deployed (capital investment) very few actual workers are needed. Just maybe to grease the machines and manipulate them via computers."

"Wow," I couldn't help but say. "That's quiet a future you're presenting."

"To be truthful, these are not only my ideas. There are people who know tons more than me about this who are studying what's going on and alerting us to the changes."

"I know that," I said. "I've been reading some of their stuff too."

"And I'm seeing it where I work. What in the past would have required dozens of workers requires very few. Considering the economic size and reach of a Google and a Facebook, to mention a couple, they have relatively few workers. That's one reason they're so profitable. And my own guess is that if you look at them five years from now they'll be even bigger and will have even fewer employees. This is a very big deal." I

"Could you pour me a little more wine? I need some." I slid my glass toward him.

While doing so, he concluded, "In other words, you Luddites are right!"

February 25, 2014--Two Young Friends

I have two young friends, recent college graduates, who were hired by Google to do significant work.

Both are liberal arts graduates with just BA degrees; and, since I know next to nothing about what kind of work is available for art and communication major types at a place such as Google, I wondered what the H.R. folks there might have had in mind when they made lucrative job offers and what they might have seen in my friends to inspire them to hire them.

This wondering is in the context of knowing many more senior friends--people in the 50s and 60s--who are frustrated that they have not yet achieved the levels of success they feel qualified for, prepared for, perhaps entitled to in their own careers. These older friends, in search of explanations for their own self-defined lack of success tend more to look askance (I'm being nice here) at these newbies than at what they bring, or do not bring to cutting-edge companies and organizations. These older friends often fail to look within themselves to discover their strengths and limitations and, in doing that, figure out what they, even at 55 or older, might do to make themselves more viable, more competitive.

I've been wondering about this for some time and haven't been able to figure it out. I know that's in large part because I too am feeling "aged out."

Then there was help from Tom Friedman's column in Sunday's New York Times in which he extensively quotes Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations (I love his title) at Google.

In case you missed the Friedman piece, here is some of what Bock shared with him--

G.P.A.'s are worthless as a criteria for hiring. We also found that they don't predict anything. Good grades certainly don't hurt. [But] there are five hiring attributes we have across the company. 

If it's a technical role, we assess your coding ability, and half the roles in the company are technical. For every job, though, the number one thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not I.Q. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. 

The second is leadership--in particular emergent leadership as opposed to traditional leadership. Traditional leadership is, were you the president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? 

We don't care. What we care about is when faced with a problem and you're a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what's critical is to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power. 

What else? Humility and ownership. It's feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in to try to solve any problem--and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. 

Without humility you are unable to learn. It's why research shows that many graduates of hotshot business schools plateau. Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don't learn how to learn from it. 

They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it's because I'm a genius. If something bad happens, it's because someone's an idiot.What we've seen is that people who are successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They'll argue like hell. They'll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, 'Here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.' You need a big ego and a small ego in the same person at the same time. 

The least important thing we look for is expertise. If you take someone who has high cognitive ability, is innately curious, willing to learn, and has emergent leadership skills, and you hire them as a H.R. person or finance person, and they have no content knowledge, and you compare them with someone who's been doing just one thing and is a world expert, the expert will go, 'I've seen this 100 times before; and here's what you do.' 

Most of the time the nonexpert will come up with the same answer because most of the time it's not that hard. Sure, once in a while they will mess it up, but once in a while they'll come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that.

Now I am beginning to understand why Google hired my two liberal-artsy friends. What Bock describes is just how I think about them.

August 26, 2013--Warp Speed

When I got my first PC, I connected to the Internet via a dial-up telephone line. To me the Net felt like the most amazing innovation since Gutenberg invented movable type. This was in the early days of Google and even then the amount of information readily available by surfing the Net was astonishing.

Over time, "readily available" evolved in meaning.

My connection to the Internet back then took a minute or so to activate. To wait such a short time and then to have access to a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge felt more than worth the wait.

But quickly, Internet connectivity via cable systems and then through various forms of broad-band wirelessness made waiting for a dial-up connection seem endless. Even five seconds felt like eternity.

Now, I am so spoiled that if anything takes more than a second I feel frustrated and deprived. I want everything to be instantaneous.

Speed has its advantages as well as its downside.

When an idea pops into one's head (which often occurs in what feels like a nanosecond--insight, inspiration, creative thought) it is good to be able to record this in the moment so as not to see it evanesce as quickly as it manifested itself; and, if instant further information or elaboration might be helpful, being able to do this quickly often secures and enriches the initial perception. At those moments I want my brain firing at warp speed and my access to Internet-derived information instantaneous.

The downside can be the too-quick codification of a spark of innovative thought that would benefit from rumination and careful elaboration. This very much includes allowing half-baked ideas with little potential to melt away, to clear the space needed for devotion to those ideas with more promising potential.

And then in the economic realm, as we have seen in recent years with the largely-automated stock market, speed itself can add uncertainty and even chaos rather than precision to an already uncertain and chaotic system.

After a number of crashes that paralyzed markets and caused hundreds of billions in loses, retrospectively, it was determined that pushing for more and more speed in executing trades was itself a major cause of the problem.

According to a recent Web posting by the New York Times, it is claimed that the need for speed comes from a market in which high-frequency traders expect to be able to get in and out of positions within a second. "Better," and literally, in less than a second. Any market that cannot offer such speed will be at a competitive disadvantage.

On the surface, assuming speed is actually a benefit, there may also be a self-perpetuating process at work--because competitors' ways of trading may be quicker, this means that to be in play, regardless of other desirable qualities, everyone has to be equally obsessed with speed in and of itself.

Speed for its own sake? Speed for more efficient or effective markets? Speed to allow for more transparency? Speed to be able to provide safeguards?

Actually, little of the above.

Again, according the the NYT, "speed is not compatible with safety features that could cause suspicious orders to be delayed while someone--a slow person, perhaps--checked to see whether something was amiss."

It may be valid to claim that speed in these kinds of transactions is especially and perversely desirable if one wants to obscure what is in fact happening. Speed can be useful to some who are attempting to pull a fast one, to get something accomplished so fast that it cannot be reviewed or regulated. Or before others, who are moving slower, can fairly compete.

There are credible reports which show that some, who want to gain an advantage in certain trading situations, where, for fees in the millions, they purchase privileged information for less than a half-second before it is shared with the wider public. That half-second advantage allows arbitrage-like trades to occur without monitoring or even competition; and as a result can net someone off the mark a split-second faster risk-free billions.

But when these same capacities of otherwise little intrinsic value are created and then spin out of control, as we are frequently seieng, everyone but those on the sheltered inside are left to live with the debris and absorb the costs of the fallout.

June 18, 2013--Big Data

In Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier write--

Internet companies have been particularly swamped [by data]. 

Google processes more than 24 petabytes of data per day, a volume that is thousands of times the quantity of all printed materials in the U.S. Library of Congress. Facebook, a company that didn't exist a decade ago, gets more than 10 million new photos uploaded every hour. Facebook members click a "like" button or leave a comment nearly three billion times per day, creating a digital trail that the company can mine to learn about users' preferences. Meanwhile, the 800 million monthly users of Google's You Tube service upload over an hour of video every second. The number of messages on Twitter grows around 200 percent a year and by 2012 had exceeded 400 million tweets a day.

Think about it.

June 13, 2013--Itty Bitty Boo

In spite of my best attempts to distract myself, I can't stop feeling my every electronic move is being monitored by someone or another.

Who knows what the N.S.A. and C.I.A. are up to. Maybe they're checking to see if I'm googling about homemade bombs or trying to reach an Al-Qaeda e-mail address in Waziristan. In fact, I hope they are.

But I do know for sure what Facebook is up to.

My friends Hedy and Tony just celebrated their 23rd anniversary and Hedy made mention of it on her Facebook page. I sent them a note, saying something like--"Congratulations. I hope you have many more."

Less than a second after I clicked send the message, I received a note from Facebook, saying, "Surprise Hedy with a gift." And with it, up popped an icon to help me buy them a gift certificate for Fandango movie theaters.

To tell the truth, though I should know better, for a number of reasons this shocked me--

How did they know I sent them an anniversary wish without "reading" the text of Hedy's posting and/or "reading" my note of congratulations? This is a lot more of an intrusion on privacy than the N.S.A. "just" keeping an eye on e-mail traffic in western Pakistan.

And then how did Facebook know about Hedy and Tony's movie-going habits? Perhaps from their having gone to a Fandango theater and paying for their tickets with a credit card?

I confess I'm OK with the N.S.A. monitoring e-mail traffic back and forth to known Al-Qaeda e-mail addresses, including if American citizens are doing the e-mailing; but it really spooks me when I think about what Facebook and Google and my credit card companies know about me and then sell that information to various hucksters.

Thinking maybe I wouldn't go for the Fandango gift certificate, Facebook offered me 20 other anniversary gift suggestions, including--

An iTunes gift certificate; one for Starbucks; an Itty Bitty Boo stuffed bear; and, better fitting my mood, a Grumpy Cat Mug.

June 10, 2013--Snooping

There is a fierce debate underway about what data the government collects, especially should collect, in order to thwart terrorists.

Should the CIA or the National Security Agency (N.S.A.) have the authority to know who you call and for what duration? Should the Feds be able to access individual's Google searches and e-mail traffic?

President Obama, employing the authority of the Patriot Act which was passed shortly after 9/11 and reauthorized and signed during his presidency, says there are ample safeguards so that our constitutional right to privacy is being carefully protected while the CIA and N.S.A. root around looking for terrorist activity.

But Obama said on Friday, in today's world of threats, "You can't have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy."

Like it or not, this is probably true.

But there is criticism from the left--for example, from the American Civil Liberties Union--that this policy and these practices threaten our civil liberties; and there is equally fervent criticism from some on the right such as Rand Paul that the expansion of the powers permitted by the Patriot Act is yet another example of the growth of government's intrusive powers.

Polls show that Americans support what others see to be intrusive polices. To keep us safe from terrorist bombers and mass murderers, most appear to be reasonably comfortable with all the street surveillance cameras (look, they say, without them the Boston Marathon bombers would not so easily have been identified and captured) and are basically all right with police and intelligence agencies being able to read what we say on our Facebook pages or to be able to know if we are using Google to learn how to make pressure-cooker bombs.

Do we prefer to keep all of this information secret and private until after the fact--after the hijacking, after the bombing, after the plane is blown out of the sky--do we want to maintain all of our civil liberties, our full right to privacy, habeas corpus and all that (information that might be useful to prevent terrorism), do we want authorities not to have access to any conspiratorial information until after heinous deed are done?

This is very complicated; but, again, most Americans are willing to allow federal agents to do a good deal of preventative snooping.

In addition, consider this significant irony--

How many in the ACLU, how often does Rand Paul, how frequently do Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow, how prevalent is it for the media and bloggers to talk with urgent concern and outrage about other, more substantial breeches in our privacy perpetrated by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and even the Home Shopping Network?

Though they are not governmental, still these companies make billions by gathering all sorts of very detailed information about each of us and then either run targeted ads aimed at us or sell the intimate information they have collected to data-miners and anyone who wants to sell us books, vacations, pots and pans, dating services, or Viagra.

Google knows more about you and me than N.S.A. or the CIA combined. Including the detailed sexual preferences of those tens of millions of us who search for erotica on the Internet.

This is not as fiercely criticized; but if we had been able to know in advance the intentions of the marathon or underwear or shoe or 9/11 bombers, if we had seen what they had been googling or e-mailing or posting on Facebook, would the ACLU and New York Times be as agitated as they currently are by what the government has been up to in gathering information about citizens and legal residents?

A final word--

If it were impermissible to gather this kind of information or, shifting the subject slightly, if our security forces were not allowed to use laser-guided weapons and drones, what would the Civil Liberties Union have us do to intercept incipient terrorist activities?

In print and on all the talk shows during which critics of the Patriot Act are given free reign, this question never gets asked--the what-should-we do question. The criticism is at times thoughtful and trenchant as it needs to be--these kinds of policies and PRISM programs need careful scrutiny and must be kept within constitutional bounds--but, once more, in this era of asymmetrical threats, where even U.S. citizens are plotting against us, what should we do?