Half Cup of Sugar http://halfcupofsugar.com My thoughts on ethics, spirituality, politics, and economics. Neighbors welcome. posterous.com Mon, 21 May 2012 10:46:00 -0700 Born Free of Copyright http://halfcupofsugar.com/born-free-of-copyright http://halfcupofsugar.com/born-free-of-copyright
We have a set of 16 audio cassette tapes that my wife and I would like to preserve. They contain some children's songs that she used to listen to as a child--lessons on sharing, perseverance, honesty, that sort of thing. We can't use them in their current form, but we thought it would be nice to transport them into the future and convert them to MP3 files.

I contacted a local media conversion business and asked about prices. They told me the costs, but warned that they may not be able to copy the tapes unless I own the copyright on the content. I don't own the copyright, just the tapes (which my mother-in-law bought some 20 years ago). In email correspondence, I said, "I wish copyright were as short-lived as the medium the content is stored on" and the owner replied, "I hear you... unfortunately we can't afford the potential liability." It's a shame, really, that our society uses a law that has the accuracy of a hammer. In this case, a pair of tweezers would do. 

The thought that my daughter might not be able to benefit from these songs due to copyright law made me think about the big picture. I'm sure there a number of solutions to this problem, but one that intrigued me was this one. What if copyright were limited in the following way: when an author creates a new work, the copyright applies only to people alive at the time of the creation of that work. In other words, whenever someone is born into the world, every copyrightable work prior to their birth is considered "in the public domain" to that particular baby boy or girl.

We are in existence before we are in essence. We are each the product of the world we are born into. It seems strange to think of copyright as a kind of curse that spans as-yet unborn generations. Who are we to bind the unborn in a social contract whose negation (i.e. the absence of copyright) would be neither solitary, nor short, nor brutish?

In practicality, all this means is that I am obliged under law to copy it myself (assuming I can find the equipment to do so). I don't think that's a terrible burden--but I still, wish my daughter did not have to bear some of it. For now, what gives me hope is the vision of a future in which the polarizing and rent-seeking RIAA and MPAA have finally met their demise. Is that too optimistic? :)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Tue, 01 May 2012 07:56:00 -0700 The Kopime Vector http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-kopime-vector http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-kopime-vector

At the moment, copyright is mostly unenforceable. In the near future, it will be ridiculously unenforceable--and here's why. In 5 years, you will be able to buy a hard drive for $1200 that will be able to store every movie ever made up to and including the year 2017. In 10 years, you will be able to buy a storage device that will do the same for less than $400.

Now imagine a device with two USB ports on each side. You plug a flash drive or hard drive in to each side. The device checks to see which files on drive A are not on drive B and copies them over. It checks to see which files on drive B are not on drive A and copies them over. We now have two drives that contain the sum of everything originally on each drive. It's like a viral sneakernet. Call it the Kopime Vector.

It would cost about, oh, say $35 and a USB splitter cable. Plus some software. In 2017 it will probably cost about $5 for such a device.

The Kopime Vector doesn't exist yet to my knowledge. Of course, anyone can plug two USB drives into a computer and drag and drop until the same outcome is achieved. But the simplicity of the Vector would make copying an act of simplicity. Perhaps even an act of civil disobedience, demanding change.

I believe it will exist soon.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:06:11 -0700 Parenting as Startup School http://halfcupofsugar.com/parenting-as-startup-school http://halfcupofsugar.com/parenting-as-startup-school I recently read the interesting story of a village in japan, Murahama, whose people passed down safety instructions for 1000 years, across many generations, to be followed in the event of an earthquake and tsunami. The result was that many people were saved because they knew what to do and where not to go (the nearest hill, it turned out, would have killed them).

As a software engineer / programmer, I often think of things in terms of functions--in particular, higher-order functions with respect to parenting. A (normal) function is simply a set of rules that takes input and produces output. In the Tsunami case, the function that was passed down through the generations was WhatToDoAfterAnEarthquake(earthquake): "If there is an earthquake, don't go to the hill marked with a shrine". The input to the function is "yes" or "no" and the output in this case was "don't go to the hill marked with a shrine (go to another hill)".


A higher-order function is a function that takes other functions as input. The reason this is interesting, useful and maybe even relevant (ha) is that as parents, we're trying to pass down invariants--things that will be useful over time. If the descendants of Murohama had moved from the area, the perfectly valid and life-saving advice would have become useless. Given this conundrum, we want to fit our children with advice that they can use in as many circumstances as possible. So using the example above once again, perhaps the people of Murohama could have passed down the following higher-order function if they were worried about their children marrying outsiders and moving away: WhatToDoAfterAnEarthquake(earthquake, NearestSafeHill): "If there is an earthquake, figure out where the NearestSafeHill is, and go to the top." They would also have to pass down a new function, NearestSafeHill(hills): "Pick the nearest hill from 'hills' that has water on only one side".

Life is complex. I think the lessons we're trying to share with our children fall into two categories: "How to live life as we did (and enjoy the standard of living we experienced)" and "How to go out on your own (and explore new territory, things we've never dreamed of)." It's easier to pass down functions in the first category, because we know a lot of the variables. We can make assumptions, trim inputs, and leave our children with perfectly functional advice--as long as they don't go exploring on their own too much.

The second category is more likely to cause angst for parents. How can we anticipate the unknowable? But here, we have the opportunity to pass down higher-order functions--ideas that are sound, but have flexibility. We can teach them how NOT to make assumptions, how to test things, and how to interpret test results in their lives (the scientific method). We can teach them to engage with life, but also to take occasion to reflect on things, including what we've passed down, and to update.

This reminds me of businesses. Steve Blank is an awesome professor of entrepreneurship at Berkeley and Stanford. Over the course of his professional and teaching career, he has created a theory of entrepreneurship that I am very interested in. Specifically, he has divided businesses into two categories: Existing Businesses that already have a viable business model and are primarily interested in executing that model (to create money), and Startups, which are essentially a search algorithm for a viable business model.

I wonder if parenting could be similarly divided. Are we raising children who are "programmed" to execute a viable way of life? Or are we raising children who are "programmed" to search out and succeed at new ways of life? Both avenues are risky--the first assumes things will stay as they have been, while the second assumes that there is something better out there and that it can be integrated in life.

I think the reason we sometimes have difficulty applying religion in such a way that we are fully satisfied with the result is that religion is almost 100% tailored for the first type of business or parenting objective--it is a container for "executing a viable way of life." With rapid change happening almost everywhere, it's no wonder that religion is flailing its arms at the moment (membership is down in almost every church / sect in America). People recognize that they and their children need to search out new ways of life. But they also don't want to lose the good that has come from executing something that "works," or at least has worked in the past.

What we need is a higher-order function that teaches us how to have a good life by executing the parts that work, while at the same time investing in a research and development arm of life to explore new and perhaps better ways of life. If such a function existed, this is what I would pass down through the generations.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:56:00 -0800 Longevity Insurance http://halfcupofsugar.com/longevity-insurance http://halfcupofsugar.com/longevity-insurance

My mother-in-law and I were talking about old age and the difficulties of choosing to die if/when the time is right. She nursed her mother through Alzheimers at the age of 80 and seriously wished there were a way to end her mother's pain, disorientation and humiliation in a legal way. I don't have a solution for the moral issue of euthanasia, but the conversation started me thinking about life and health insurance in a new light.

Longevity Insurance: The Idea

Let's say we (as a country) ban life insurance and health insurance as separate packages and require them to be combined in something I'll call "Longevity Insurance".  The idea is that as a person/consumer, you can buy a "life expectancy" of 75 years, or 90 years, or whatever. In addition, you specify a maximum dollar amount that the longevity insurance will ever pay out--say, $2 million. If you have any medical issues throughout your life, up to the life expectancy threshold, the insurance plan will pay for your expenses. If it fails to keep you consciously alive for the duration of your "life expectancy", then upon your death, the policy guarantees that the company will pay the full remaining amount to your next of kin.

As an example, suppose you (let's say you're a woman) had purchased a 75-year policy, but you had a car accident.  The paramedics tried to save you, and the hospital bill came to $100k, but even after that noble effort, you still died. As a result, your husband and children get $1.9M. Alternatively, if in our hypothetical situation they succeed in resuscitating you, the company would keep the $1.9M for future medical bills, and, if they fulfill their promise of life expectancy, they pocket the remainder as profit on your 75th birthday.


It seems like this arrangement would put all of the right incentives [1] in place for both companies and individuals. Most individuals would want to avoid trivial medical expenses in order to maximize payout to family in case of accidental death. Companies would want to maximize health and longevity in order to profit from the end-of-life payout. And our society would have a way to rationally consider the value of life without resorting to arguments that essentially conclude "life is of infinite value," and in doing so, prevent sensible gerontological triage. To put it into perspective, it makes little sense that we spend $1M (as a society) trying to save a 92-year-old when that same amount could have saved 10 teenagers.

Possibilities

Longevity Insurance companies would be incentivized to become heavily involved in medical research that prevents disease, prolongs life, and keeps people healthy. I can imagine a whole array of things that make sense in this context. For example, it would be the right place to fund studies of genetics, it could be the right vehicle for getting 'free' immunizations, and it could even make public funding for "health insurance" easier to pass--simply set the bar low enough that everyone can agree on an age that society will extend a policy for. Do we all agree that everyone in our society should live to age 50? Super! The government will cover Longevity Insurance up to age 50.

[1] The one incentive that Longevity Insurance does not seem to address well is the possibility of next-of-kin killing their loved one just prior to the end of an insurance policy. One option would be to require a one-year moratorium in the case where someone dies within a year of their policy ending. This would give time for an investigation before awarding large sums of money.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:42:00 -0800 Openright: A balanced approach to copyright http://halfcupofsugar.com/openright-a-balanced-approach-to-copyright http://halfcupofsugar.com/openright-a-balanced-approach-to-copyright

The following proposal is an idea that I've been tossing around among friends and colleagues. It has had many iterations, and has been significantly enhanced by my brother, Chris, who came up with the escrow idea.

 

Openright in a Nutshell

Openright is essentially the public's right to buy a copyright from an author, converting an artificially scarce private good into an abundant public good. It honors the legitimate need for authors to be rewarded for their work, but also provides a balanced and flexible way for the public to "negotiate" with the author (using a market mechanism) to transition the copyright. Here's how it would work:

  1. Require copyright holders to add an Openright bounty to their Copyright, e.g. we would start to see "(C) 2013 John Smith (O) $100k" in the copyright line of books, video games, movies, etc. When the product's sales hit the Openright bounty, the product becomes an open, public good. People would be empowered to buy intellectual goods with the understanding that they are buying a copy for themselves while also contributing to the public good--the amount they pay gives them legal access to an artificially scarce good, and they are also contributing to "releasing it" to the public at some future point, to be copied or modified freely by society in perpetuity thereafter.
  2. Who sets the Openright bounty? The copyright holder does, via a "check and balance" mechanism: a mandatory 20% of each sale of the product is taken into an escrow account, which the copyright holder can ONLY access once the product enters the public domain. When sales reach the Openright bounty amount, this triggers a release of the product into the public domain, and the escrow account is opened to the copyright holder. Once set, the Openright bounty can be adjusted each year, but it can only be adjusted downward.


It would be in the best interest of the copyright holder to set a reasonable bounty, initially at some multiple of their projected sales. This would allow them to test the market, and then adjust the bounty downward.

Example: Suppose you are a game developer, and you think your new title will hit $1M in sales. You set the Openright bounty at $2M. You sell $500k in product, $400k of which is yours and $100k of which is now in escrow. Later that year, sales really slow down, and you start to wonder if you will even hit $1M. So you update your Openright bounty to $600k and advertise that your game is now "on sale" for half off. You achieve the $600k mark in sales, and that triggers the game becoming a Public Good. The escrow account is opened, and you get the remaining $120k immediately.

 

Thesis

There are two types of feedback that ought to be passed back to the copyright owner: the value of their work to society, and the cost to society of maintaining an artificial scarcity on their behalf. Currently, our laws only provide the first type of feedback, since sales are an indicator of value. In judging the cost of artificial scarcity to society, it is necessary to consider both "cost of enforcement" and "opportunity cost".

In the first case, since intellectual goods are naturally non-rivalrous, the cost of enforcing copyright increases exponentially as the work proliferates through society (each copy becomes a potential source of new copies). In the second case, the opportunity cost of knowledge, art, and software that is inaccessible for some (or forbidden to modify and derive) is difficult to measure but still significant.

The temporary monopoly granted by copyright is imbalanced because our laws use an arbitrary time (number of years) as a means of sunsetting a "private good" and converting it to a "public good". A process like this, detached from market information relevant to each individual case, provides no feedback or incentive to the copyright owner to consider a reasonable and tailored transition of their work into the public domain.

While considering the need for balance, it is also absolutely necessary that in a free society, individuals have power to make responsible decisions. This is why it is important that the cost to society for maintaining an artificial scarcity be packaged as a signal to the copyright owner to enable good decision making, and not as an 'arbitrary' decision by the government.

As a society, we ultimately want intellectual goods to enter the public domain. This desire stems from the fact that, once in the public domain, society no longer needs to pay for enforcement of the pact to create artificial scarcity on behalf of the author. A work in the public domain becomes accessible to all segments of society, the rich and the poor, as well as those who are capable of circumventing "digital rights management" and those who are not. Additionally, in a society of information abundance, where the traditional roles of 'author', 'distributor', and 'audience' are converging and changing, it is becoming more important to find ways to properly enable and channel innovation based on derivative works.

Openright addresses the need for a "cost-to-society feedback mechanism" in copyright law by enabling individual copyright owners to weigh the pros and cons of making their work a public good in light of more complete information. Without a cost-to-society feedback mechanism, the rational assumption of a copyright holder is that their copyright has "unlimited future upside potential," with no downside. Openright provides more complete information by allowing society to withhold a portion of the owner's reward until their work is released to the public domain. The "cost of enforcement" and "opportunity cost" are embedded as signals in the following ways:

  1. As a product becomes more and more popular through sales, it becomes more and more difficult to enforce a copyright. At the same time, the product's sales begin to approach the Openright 'bounty threshold', after which point society will be "off the hook" for enforcing an artificial scarcity around the author's copyright. Thus, as long as the author's work is making sales and it is worthwhile for the copyright holder to forego the escrow, it is fine to keep the copyright. But when the scales tip the other way and sales start to slow down, it becomes worthwhile for the copyright holder to release the work into the public domain.
  2. By providing an incentive to release a work into the public domain, the "opportunity cost" associated with artificial scarcity (i.e. many people are prohibited from sharing the intellectual good with the poor or the technically inexpert), is significantly diminished. It seems quite desirable, from a social perspective, to be able to offer more software, art, books, etc. to those who need it most even if they cannot afford to reward the author. But this legitimate social need often stands in opposition to the legitimate need to reward our society's authors and innovators. By hastening the release date of many intellectual goods into the public domain, we enable a better "social contract" or compromise.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:19:00 -0800 Poverty and the Memes of Privilege http://halfcupofsugar.com/poverty-and-the-memes-of-privilege http://halfcupofsugar.com/poverty-and-the-memes-of-privilege

There's an interesting discussion at Marginal Revolution asking "How Deserving are the Poor?" [1] I won't answer that question directly here, but I'd like to add to the conversation my slightly different take on the nature of the question, and how we might effect change with new insight.

I view child rearing as a sort of memetic recombination of minds, built atop the genetic recombination of mitosis. A meme is simply an idea--or a pattern of thought and action combined--that gets passed around from one person's mind to the next. When a child is raised in a home with reasonably responsible and capable parents, many of the helpful (and some not so helpful) memes from the parents' families of origin are 'inherited' by years of living in a mostly closed memetic petri dish called 'home'. In the absence of responsible and caring parents, children scrounge their environment--whether in school, on the street, or among friends--for whatever memes they can find. They will hang on to anything that they believe may be useful to them for survival, coping, growth, and happiness.

I think we are only in the very earliest stages of understanding the significance of memes and their interactions in human development. Although we can break ideas/memes apart for the sake of a discussion like this one, they are actually extremely complex in the ways that they interact with one another--they are essentially pieces of software running on the hardware of our minds, and they interact in ways that are difficult to tease apart cause and effect. As an example: little Jimmy, Donna and Sam might all have been raised in the same home with the same idea that "you get what you deserve." Jimmy and Sam realized that they could start a snow plowing business and they felt proud and reaped the reward for it. But Donna had an uncle who touched her inappropriately and suddenly "you get what you deserve" reacted terribly with "I got touched."

We currently view free will as a sort of mystical thing, something that must certainly exist because we see Candidate A who has lived in a terrible home, and Candidate B who grew up in a pretty great neighborhood, and miraculously A and B both make it to MIT. Isn't that amazing, we think, that A had the fortitude and desire to get in to such a great school despite his background? But this view of things, in my opinion, is just about as superstitious as the idea that Mercury affects who you will fall in love with. Don't get me wrong--I actually, paradoxically, believe in free will, and in the importance of believing in free will [2]--but free will as a model of explaining things is awfully lacking. And without a good explanation [3], it's hard to make any progress at all.

So I think the question, "How deserving are the poor?" would be enhanced by asking another question: "What are the memes of privilege?" In other words, what are the sets of co-arising memes that have a tendency to ensure inter-generational socioeconomic status? Studies of social mobility tend to focus on how likely a person within a population is to move up or down the socioeconomic ladder. But I'm not aware of any studies that map memetic cause to privileged effect. Whatever the "booting up" memes of the software layer of the mind are that yield fruitful attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and social interactions, they need to be understood better (by society, if not by psychologists) so that 'intervention' is more than just a code word for 'taken away from a really messed up family'. If we could understand and diagnose which memes had been passed on--or which had been scrounged from the shallow memetic 'cesspool' of memes not grounded in inter-generational wisdom--we would then be able, like a doctor, to treat the underprivileged.

Part of the problem with identifying memes is that it requires a sophisticated level of pattern matching. When compared to memes, genes are actually fairly easy to identify and map--the specific sequence of nucleic acids in the double helix of a DNA strand has a specific, discrete (i.e. digital) pattern. It's difficult to determine where a gene starts and ends (and sometimes parts start and end in multiple places) but at least it has a clear encoding. On the other hand, memes passed on within the home and throughout a child's upbringing need to be identified over time using either trained professionals or (probably soon) sophisticated video and sound analysis by computer programs [4].

If the analogy proves useful, then there are a number of questions that come to mind that deserve further analysis. For example, can we measure memetic diversity in the home? Are there advantages associated with greater diversity, or are there a limited number of 'essential memes', like essential amino acids, that create healthy and 'privileged' adult characteristics? Is there a difference between the types of memes that can be transferred laterally vs. vertically? e.g. if a toddler does not experience secure attachment with a primary caregiver, is the opportunity for some memes to be transferred lost? Are there supermemes that can be distilled from a wide variety of smaller memes? e.g. forgiveness, introspection, tolerance, work ethic, etc. that lead to resilience? And since memes co-evolved with genes, can this explain some of the disparity in ethnic differences, e.g. those people that were ripped from their cultures and transplanted, then forced to adopt new memes, are they at a disadvantage?

[1] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/01/how-deserving-are-the-poor.html
[2] http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/01/do-you-believe-in-free-will.php (Research suggests that believing in free will is itself a socially important meme, and I agree--and I'm sure there's more to the story which we will discover in time)
[3] http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation.html (An incredible 17 minute presentation on the difference between a good explanation and a bad one)
[4] http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html (Deb Roy records the entire first year of his son's life and analyzes the data using computer vision and sound technology to discover how speech is learned.)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:14:54 -0700 Personal Companion http://halfcupofsugar.com/personal-companion http://halfcupofsugar.com/personal-companion
I was seven when Dad unveiled to us the marvel of the decade: our family’s very own Personal Computer—on sale for $1300 plus tax.  Perhaps in part because I knew it was so valuable, I spent a lot of time in curious analysis, discovering before long that I could control an entire world of amber light inside that black box.  I quickly became my computer’s best friend.  We played games together.  We got mad at each other.  We learned to make suggestions to each other (though in most cases, it seemed I was the one to budge first).

In some strange development, now identified as the beginning of geekdom, I felt good about myself when I turned to my computer.  At a young age, I took pride in accomplishing with this new tool what most grown-ups were afraid to try.  One morning, Dad was trying to make a copy of a 5 ¼" disk in a way that he had never done before.  He invited his friend over to help solve the problem.  With my chin above the corner of the desk, I watched them as they failed over and over again.  I offered a tentative solution that was brushed aside.  The two of them finally gave up, and left to chat at the front door.  I took the reins, and in a moment, I had succeeded in copying the disk.  Dad beamed, and I took that to mean he was proud of me.  This marked the beginning of my desire to program, solve software-related problems, and show off my technological talent.

After a few years of this kind of interaction, I began to dream in video games: One night, my younger brother and I stole my parents’ truck.  He crouched down to hit the gas while I drove it through the glass windows of a hardware store.  I remember it being a thrilling experience; Glass shards whirled towards the ground, tinkling like a wind chime on the sidewalk.  Thrilling, that is, until I realized I couldn’t find the “Restore Saved Game” option on the menu bar.  There was no menu bar!  I felt the terror of accountability clicking on me like a mouse pointer.  Luckily, the guilt grew intense enough to arouse my conscious mind and finally wake me up.

My thoughts were not just affected during the nighttime.  As the eldest of four boys, I was in a privileged position.  Not only could I understand our PC better, but I could also eat faster at dinnertime.  Though Mom and Dad tried to curb our culture somewhat, our fraternal constitution clearly stated that the first person to finish eating had dibs on the computer for the evening.  To the disappointment of my siblings, I regularly exercised my rights—which often effected a family feud.  I wouldn’t have admitted it, but quality time with my computer was often more important than time with my brothers.

As I matured, so did my computer.  Like a playful puppy growing older, our arguments became fewer, and we roughhoused less.  A plastic mouse got its attention and made it easier to command.  From monochrome it advanced to four colors, sixteen, soon millions.  The computer learned to use a phone to call friends of its own kind.  Our time together became long, drawn-out study sessions as I talked about my ideas.  I became fluent in the C++ language.

But unlike human comrades, my computer became a vice.  As it had first been a race between me and my brothers to see who could get control first, it later became a race against time: How many games could I play before bedtime?  How much code could I write?  How late could I stay up?  And how far could I stretch Mom and Dad’s patience?  A typical nighttime conversation would start like this:

“Bedtime, Duane.”

“I know, Dad.”

“The computer needs to go off, now.”

“Just five more minutes—I’m almost done.”

“I’m counting…”

“Hey, Mom, come check out this video game I’ve been working on.  Cool, eh?”

“Hmmm, very interesting, Duane.”

“Yeah, all I have left to do is build the AI for the end boss, and I’ll be done.”

And finally, Dad, thirty minutes later, “What are you still doing on the computer?  Get to bed, now!”

Persisting at this point became risky.  The smoothest course of action was to grab a toothbrush from the bathroom, return to the computer, and hover there as though I was in the process of going to bed while typing at the computer.  Occasional trips to the bathroom made for a significantly more credible period of delay.

On one particular occasion, upon discovering that his authority had been slighted, Dad reverted to subterfuge.  Unnoticed, he snuck into the storage room and with the flick of a switch, quietly disabled the electrical system of our house.  I admitted defeat, and sulked off to bed.

Dad would often warn me about my obsessive behavior.  He admitted that he had never had such a device during his childhood and had no experience himself in receiving dividends for such a notable investment of computer time.  But he further counseled me, saying that my focus was clearly unbalanced and predicted that my unhealthy persistence would lead to a deficient character.

Though I was proud of my skill and accomplishments in the computer field, Dad’s counsel was validated.  During my last year of High School, the Internet stretched wide enough to reach our little town, and our family went on-line.  I consulted my computer often as an advisor.
When I discovered the expanse of material it made available to me, I began to sift through the Internet as though some grain of sand in the endless ethereal beach would satisfy my curiosity.  A host of activities kept me occupied: typing to cyber-friends in chat rooms, laughing at the jokes forwarded from friend to friend, searching for answers to religious questions (as though faith were something I could download), and aimlessly surfing for an unsearchable ‘happiness’ that must be out there. 

Lately, I’ve reflected on Dad’s wisdom.  No doubt, my computer was of great benefit as I grew up.  I gained confidence and skill as I honed my mind for a specific purpose.  Yet Dad perceived that a tool, no matter how novel or remarkable, ought never to pry its way so far into the recesses of my humanity. In our modern computer lies the epitome of convenient power and accessible information. Yet, it is not a true friend, a kind brother, nor a wise advisor.  When I see my brother’s smile, when I get a warm hug from Mom, or when I cry to be understood, I tend to forget that they say a computer is called personal.

(Written in October 2002)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sat, 06 Aug 2011 07:06:00 -0700 Where do jobs come from? http://halfcupofsugar.com/where-do-jobs-come-from http://halfcupofsugar.com/where-do-jobs-come-from

  Suppose you want to tackle the problem of unemployment from the highest possible level.  In other words, you want to increase the net jobs in society and in the world--you don't want to just create one job here that takes away another job there.  What is it that increases the total number of jobs for humanity?

Here is a hypothesis that, if true, presents some interesting corollaries.  It's similar to the idea of supply and demand, but with a twist: Jobs exist because of the tension between the complexity of what people desire, and whether the world is presently capable of automatically producing it. If the world can not yet automatically fulfill a need, then society "demands" a net job increase.

Let's consider some examples.  Suppose we go back a few thousand years, to a place and time where we can imagine an unowned apple tree.  Apples are "automatically" growing on the tree, and a man who passes by with a desire for an apple gets to pick the apple and eat it "for free".  There are no jobs involved in the satisfying of this man's desire for an apple.  Now suppose many more people want apples, and nature just doesn't have enough apple trees to automatically fill demand.  Now here's where a job comes in: someone needs to plant apple trees, and possibly tend them to produce maximum yield.  Apple farming is a form of "assisted automation" because a person is employed to manage a set of processes that happen automatically (plant cell mitosis, photosynthesis, etc.)  A few thousand years ago, there was no way to automate the allocation of land, planting of seeds, watering of trees, and harvesting of apples, and therefore the "apple farmer" occupation has enjoyed several millennia of job security.  More and more of these processes, however, have been automated in the past century--large apple orchards have irrigation systems for watering and machines for harvesting.  The apple grower's job has changed--even though it is still a role that involves managing automated processes, the processes have moved "up the chain" to higher level tasks.

Today, we have many more forms of assisted automation as parts of our economy.  I'm employed as a software engineer, building decision-making applications that function without my direct supervision.  I have essentially instructed websites to act as agents on my behalf, and I supervise them to make sure they behave as intended.

Google and others have begun the task of automating the transportation industry--cars that drive themselves.  There are so many examples of automation cropping up that it's become overwhelming--see my previous post for examples.

If you take this to its logical conclusion, you can see where this is headed.  We are in the process of transforming the earth into a system of rules and intelligent processes that automatically provide for human desires, and when the intelligence of the systems we've created to fulfill those desires exceeds the complexity of the desires themselves, then there will be no need for human careers and human jobs.

Some people argue that the loss of jobs can never be due to improved technology--they call it the Luddite Fallacy to believe otherwise.  But as the author of The Lights in the Tunnel has pointed out, the Luddite Fallacy can't be applied to situations where machine intelligence meets or exceeds human intelligence--a situation we have not arrived at but are fast approaching.

Back to the original hypothesis.  What do I mean by the "complexity" of what people desire?  Well, when considering job growth, I think that the idea of "supply and demand" has value, but it is not the complete picture.  For example, if we assume that jobs are tied directly to demand in quantity, then we would erroneously conclude that if we could convince consumers to "want more stuff" then we would be helping the economy and growing more jobs.  But that isn't the case--when you have created a process that can manufacture widgets at 10 per minute or 1000 per minute simply by turning a dial on a machine, then it's clear that jobs are not associated with more demand (the same is especially true for infinite goods like digital music which can be replicated without cost).  The reason jobs have been associated with quantity of demand in the past, however, is that logistical complexity has usually correlated with human jobs--it takes more people to figure out how to order, make, ship and assemble all of the parts for each widget.  Now, however, with the automation of supply chains (robotics, computer assisted logistical planning, mechanical sort facilities, etc.) everyone in the supply chain can simply "turn the dial" to accommodate higher or lower demand.  Complexity, then, is the counterpart to intelligence--if a desire is difficult to predict or difficult to scale, then it makes automation more difficult. "More quantity" does not always equal "more complexity."

If my original hypothesis is correct--that "jobs exist because of the tension between the complexity of what people desire, and whether the world is presently capable of automatically producing it," then we have some interesting corollaries to consider that may guide policy decisions:
  1. A net increase in jobs can only occur: by increasing the complexity of consumer demand, or, by a universal decrease in capability to automatically fulfill those demands.
  2. The overarching cause of the current recession is probably due to the capability of automating forces to fulfill the current level of complexity in consumer demand.
  3. Education is really, really important, unless we want to universally forbid progress.
  4. It's probably time to consider a social program that lets people retire early if they cannot or choose not to keep up with technological progress.
On that 3rd point, I should explain why "universality" is an important adjective.  If we really believed that jobs are so important that we must preserve them at all costs including progress, we could try to slow some innovative people down as they automate the fulfilling of our desires.  But if we only slow some people down, this solves nothing.  Because in matters of automation, if just one person or group discovers or invents a means of automating a process, then they can scale their solution to reach the entire economy, and that affects the value of all jobs in that space.  So for example, if America were to systematically forbid progress, another country would simply take the lead and provide cheap goods or services through their automated processes and our isolated fortress would succumb to the demands of efficiency-seeking consumers.

Human beings have always lived in a world of automation--nature has been the supplier of our demands for millions of years, and has done so automatically and without human intervention until the advent of farming--perhaps 10,000 or so years ago.  With the increased complexity of our demands, we have found intelligent processes--human or otherwise--to adapt to and fulfill those demands.  Now, as we reach a point of rapid technological progress, we are again finding that some of our jobs are no longer needed.  In order to move forward, politicians need to understand that the old ways are not coming back; that education is the only significant way to minimize the disparity between skills and job openings; and that we are going to have to approach unemployment from a totally new view--that "optional employment" is not simply a holdover from past social welfare programs, but a new norm for some segments of society.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:23:01 -0700 What if Psychologists Could Offer a Cocaine Vaccine? http://halfcupofsugar.com/what-if-psychologists-could-offer-a-cocaine-v http://halfcupofsugar.com/what-if-psychologists-could-offer-a-cocaine-v I recently learned about a promising vaccine that will cause the immune system (so far, in mice only) to defend against the "high" that cocaine normally induces.  This is an exciting time in the field of medicine, psychology, and, as it turns out, politics and the war on drugs.  Imagine what it would mean for cocaine addicts to have a way out of the hell that addiction brings--in other words, imagine what it would mean if chemical dependency were a treatable medical condition, rather than the traditionally guilt-ridden social experience that it has been (guilt that, typically, makes it even harder to leave the addiction cycle).

As a programmer, I often think of the brain as a complex and extremely advanced computer.  Addiction, by analogy, is like a bug in the program that creates an inefficient loop.  The execution of the "addiction program" is a life that focuses great effort on finding the resources to iterate on that loop just one more time.  It's a waste, and it's typically only partially within the person's control to reprogram this loop.  And because there is some control, society often blames the victim to the point that we wipe our hands of the mess and shrug our shoulders, "What can we do? They keep choosing to mess up their lives."

As a believing Latter-day Saint or Mormon, I used to fall in that latter camp.  Reading the Apostle Paul's statement that "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Cor 10:13) led me to believe that the explanation for bad choices is temptation, and that the antidote to bad choices was willpower coupled with God's grace.  If such an explanation were simply a poor model of the universe then it would be tolerable to me that I used to believe it, but because that model also led me to believe that victims are responsible for their predicament (and that little can be done except if God wills it), I feel remorse for having condemned people as I looked through that lens.

I look forward to the era we are rushing toward in which society will have the tools at its disposal to responsibly "debug" the software of the mind, and to properly see addiction for the ailment that it is.  Some day, I hope, our prison system will lock away 1 in 1 million, rather than the present 1 in 100 that America chooses to wage warfare on.  I'm confident that some day we will transform from a society that blames its own, into a society that heals its own.  Weak force that it is, I hope my writing can be a part of that social trajectory.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 19 Jun 2011 12:23:00 -0700 Mandatory taxes, voluntary distribution http://halfcupofsugar.com/mandatory-taxes-voluntary-distribution-econom http://halfcupofsugar.com/mandatory-taxes-voluntary-distribution-econom

What if we had mandatory taxes, but voluntary distribution? For example, an individual would have little say about whether or not the government takes 30% of their income, but the individual would specify precisely in what ways the government could spend his or her income.  For practicality's sake, I imagine the voting ballot, in addition to including the people we vote for at each level of government, also including a set of government funds that the voter could allocate percentages of their taxed income to.  If the voter declines to enter these details, then the voter is indicating that he or she defers to the candidate to choose.

This approach seems to have some pretty significant upsides. As opposed to "voluntary taxes", it avoids the tragedy of the commons because it requires that we contribute to the commons, but leaves the ranking of priorities within the commons open to each conscience.  Also, psychologically, when we feel that we are "in charge" we tend to care more about the process--voluntary distribution, therefore, would promote civic discourse and participation in the political process. And last but not least, it would provide a better feedback mechanism to the extremely slow-to-respond government which would make for faster change, and more meaningful change (imagine how many people would distribute funds for war vs. education?)

Also, while I'm musing about this, what if the income tax rate were set as precisely the number of people who desire the tax rate to be increased, divided by the number of people who desire the tax rate to be decreased?  Some people are aware of how some areas of our society are floundering, while others are more aware of how stifling taxes are to individual happiness and economic growth.  Both groups are right, and it probably changes over time.  What if each ballot includes the question: "Do you want to increase federal income tax this year? [ ] Yes [ ] No" and then set the tax rate at the ratio of the disagreement in the population.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:17:00 -0700 The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-heart-has-its-reasons-which-reason-knows http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-heart-has-its-reasons-which-reason-knows

I was watching a BBC documentary about Ayn Rand last night (All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace) and heard for the first time about her affair with Nathaniel Branden. Branden then went on to have an affair with someone else. What struck me was the intense bias inherent in Ayn's thinking when she upheld her own affair as rational but Branden's as somehow irrational.

Reason and rational thinking are powerful adaptations of the human mind. Our neocortex--the most recent addition to our cognitive system--is capable of higher level thought that we believe, at least so far, is unique to human beings. It gives us much of the power of logic and reason that has enabled new developments in society and technology.

But I think what the previous generation of objectivists forgot was that our center of reason does not come hardwired with 60 million years of mamallian evolutionary lessons. Instead, we have an old system that works (hey! it propagates!) with a newfangled rational thinking gizmo slapped on.

In spite of the apparent friction between old and new brains, the maleability of the new brain inspires me to a challenge: our objective in life is to systematically bring the biases, probability
distributions, and logic of our mammalian old brain into the new brain. We need to learn what our own biases are before we can augment them--simply discounting that we have them, or thinking that they are a weakness, are both insufficent as choices. Instead, we need to accept that our biases evolved for particular reasons, and understand why and in what circumstances they are useful, so that we can go on to augment them by creating more general solutions to life's problems.

For example, in Ayn Rand's case, love seems to have been a bit of a blind spot in her objectivism. If she had fully integrated the power of physical attraction and the importance and circumstances in which she might be unreasonably susceptible to it, then perhaps she might
have found a different but equal solution to the other benefits of working together with Branden.

Here's an idea I had while learning about evolutionary psychology from John Tooby at the Singularity Summit last year. According to his research, older children lose all sexual attraction to younger siblings who are seen sucking at their mother's breast. It makes sense that there needs to be some kind of cross-cultural message that indicates "this is a sibling: off limits". I don't know the full parameters to this off-switch (does it stop working after the older sibling reaches a certain age?) but suppose for the purpose of argument that it remains an inflentual force throughout a person's life. What if a person could use this switch to their advantage? For example, if a man is living with or frequently seeing a woman who is married, and wants to guarantee that he does not see her as a sexual possibility, could he employ some kind of visualization that triggers the mammalian brain to accept her as an "off limits" younger sibling?

The more we truly understand about ourselves from an evolutionary standpoint--the causes and effects, the ways we are influenced, the hidden desires or surprise needs--the better we are equipped to take advantage of the newfangled neocortex attached to the other parts of our brain. Or in other words, if science can help us discover the heart's reasons, then reason will be all the more powerful.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sat, 28 May 2011 15:31:00 -0700 Fair is not Optimal #bitcoin #economics http://halfcupofsugar.com/fair-is-not-optimal-bitcoin-economics http://halfcupofsugar.com/fair-is-not-optimal-bitcoin-economics

As human beings, we have this in-born sense of judgement called "fairness". Kids know what it is, it seems, almost as soon as they can talk. It's a heuristic, though, and as I've been learning throughout my life, not always a very good one. The common retort to "it's not fair" is "life's not fair". I used to think this was a cold-hearted answer from the "grown ups" but the more I understand life, the more I realize that part of the problem is that our intuition about fairness is just wrong.

The Code of Hammurabi sought to bring fairness and justice to the world by introducing many laws, including such gems as, "if a son strikes his father, his hands shall be hewn off", and "if a man knocks the teeth out of another man, his own teeth will be knocked out". In the Jewish scripture, or the Christian Old Testament, it is written in their (former) justice system that restitution should be "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Contrary to popular belief, these laws were not regressive or repugnant--they were actually a major improvement over the lawless interactions between human beings. In a world where a man might strike out another's teeth, and then get killed in return, a "tooth for a tooth" was a statement of the maximum retribution permitted by law.

So in that sense, fairness is a good heuristic--it indicates in a very simple way (through our juvenile ability to detect symmetry) what is going too far, and when someone is taking advantage of another. But where our intuition fails us is in thinking that fairness is "best" or "optimal". In many cases, fairness is not only suboptimal, but can actually come back to hurt us more than if we had not demanded justice. This seems especially true when we are a part of a complex system such as the economy.

If economists were also hackers, Bitcoin would have been an inflationary currency. I doubt it would have been adopted (who wants to store value in an inflationary currency if they have a choice?) but from following discussions like this one it seems fairly clear to me that economists in general do not believe deflationary currencies can work at scale (i.e. in a global economy). In other words, the people who spend their lives thinking about currency and economies almost unanimously uphold a system that is not fair, from an individual's point of view. (Why is it fair that my $1,000 of buying power can't buy as much later if I keep it safe in the bank?)

So that got me thinking. Perhaps the whole argument behind Keynesian economists boils down to "fair is not optimal". In other words, our intuition about the symmetry of transactions and the fairness of stimulus programs might not lead us to an optimal solution for society. And while I don't think Keynesian economics is optimal, I do wonder if there is something for me to learn here.

Also, as a sort of footnote on the idea of economist-hackers making Bitcoin... is it possible that inflationary currencies cannot be created except as a second-order currency? In other words, perhaps our sense of fairness would prevent us from agreeing to an inflationary currency, if it were introduced to us outright, but once we have our "gold standard" (deflationary) training wheels on, we are then in a position to accept an inflationary currency?

Update: I forgot to mention an example I was thinking of that also led me to write this post: how we deal with members of our societies with drug addictions. The "fair" way to deal with it is to put addicts in prison for breaking the law. The "optimal" way is to regulate drugs and offer counselling resources to those who wish to quit (as most do), like they have done in Portugal.

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Wed, 25 May 2011 16:01:00 -0700 The Widow's Media http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-widows-media-piracy-copyright http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-widows-media-piracy-copyright

In the Christian tradition, it is written that Jesus observed wealthy men donating large sums of money at the temple (a social obligation), while an old widow gave two meagre 'mites' (or leptons, the smallest denomination of coin at the time). According to the account, Jesus says "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything--all she had to live on." [1]

I'd like to focus on an economic aspect of this parable that seems relevant to digital "piracy", or freeloading, in our time. I live in a privileged situation right now--I have a good income and a stable job--and I can pretty much afford access to any music, books, or software that I want.

I have some young friends in high school who have very little income and whose parents make significantly less than I do. We spoke about music and software and all of the digital media they have on their Zunes (surprisingly not ipods) and smartphones. It was pretty apparent that the hundreds (thousands?) of songs they had were not endorsed by our society's current legal conception of copyright.

But the fact that they do not pay for access to these songs is an interesting puzzle: what is best for our society? Given the infinitely copyable nature of digital goods, should we cut off those who have less money, and create a legally-enforced (and fictitious) scarcity? Or should we ignore freeloading that takes place on the fringes of society, because pursuing legal channels for compensation from the poor is not economical anyway? Or is there a way to improve copyright law to accommodate the new reality and prominence infinite goods in our economies?

In the world of physical goods, the customer's time and energy is considered negligible during a transaction. For example, the time that it takes to go to the store, pick up some groceries, wait in line, exchange money, and leave the store is considered part of the cost of shopping. But what if the 'negligible' part of that assumption is no longer true? What if the value present in my visiting the store equals or exceeds the value of the products I can buy there? I think this is what is happening in the case of digital goods. Companies didn't used to have to think much about the time they were taking from their customers. As is evidenced by the "advertising frenzy" of everything online, however, attention is the new currency. Companies are willing to pay you to read, download, evaluate, and possibly buy their products. Products are not scarce, human time is.

I think the solution to this puzzle lies in properly analyzing scarcity. Value comes from the balance between supply and demand--money is valuable, for instance, in part because there is a limited supply of it (cf. Bitcoin). In the world of digital goods, what has become scarce? Time--the time (and money) that it takes to produce it, as well as the time that it takes to download it, listen to it, and use it. The fact that the consumer's time matters so much is, economically, quite revolutionary. The scarcity that we are dealing with is not the availability of the product, but the combined waking hours of all human beings. Infinite goods, then, should be priced in terms of the scarcity of human time.

But how do you make money in this kind of economic inversion? What if the marginal cost of distributing a digital good is so low that, if companies were honest about it, they would pay some of their customers to download it or share it with their friends? And what about the cases where the reverse is true--where customers ought to pay for a valuable digital good? How do you account for that? How do we keep people honest? Or, to put it another way, how do you make an accounting system that promotes the good of the group, rather than favoring one side of a transaction or another?

The only way out of the copyright war between content generators and consumers is to more intelligently valuate each others' time and effort. Corporations tend to assail consumers (and potential customers) for "stealing" their creations. And consumers tend to accuse corporations of greed, thus justifying their freeloading.  Media producers want to get the most that they can for their work. Media consumers want access to all media, even though they can't consume it all, because they want the freedom to prioritize what they consume (especially in the context of social participation).

As was recently concluded by Canada's International Development Research Centre, in emerging markets piracy is primarily a market failure, not a legal failure. If that is the case, what if we borrow value from the 2000-year-old parable above, and begin to adjust the exchange of digital goods by individual income?

Imagine for a moment what it might be like if you could buy access to the world's digital goods for a fraction of your income (in reality, it would be a marginal cost calculation, so that a billionaire would not be spending millions of dollars per year to listen to her music). The poor would have access to the wealth of the world's media. And because the cost is within their reach, they would actually be incentivized to pay their meagre mite for the music, movies and software they care about. Content producers would make more than they currently do because the market for their goods would be closer to saturation (let's not forget that each consumer is also a distributor in the modern networked world).

In an ideal situation, the originality (novelty), as well as popularity (social value) would also be a part of the equation. A subscriber could opt to increase the income-percentage payment in exchange for access to newer or more popular titles. But the world's library of older titles would still be legally available--a library worthy of world heritage status.

What do you think? Where is the right balance, and can income-based marginal-cost subscription serve all sides fairly?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Tue, 17 May 2011 06:17:30 -0700 Wikileaks NDA = hypocrisy is a misunderstanding. WL is not about abolishing secrecy. It's about castrating large, secretive organizations. http://halfcupofsugar.com/wikileaks-nda-hypocrisy-is-a-misunderstanding http://halfcupofsugar.com/wikileaks-nda-hypocrisy-is-a-misunderstanding There seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding the leaked NDA from Wikileaks: journalists and staff at Wikileaks must sign a non-disclosure agreement with a $20M fine for breach of trust. How can an "anti-secrecy" organization do this? Doesn't it reek of irony?

If you think Wikileaks is purely anti-secrecy, then yes, it's a huge dark spot on their otherwise idealistic banner. But that's not what Wikileaks is about. Its purpose is to make big secrets hard to keep in large, secretive circles. In other words, in Wikileaks' ideal world, the magnitude of the secret should be inversely proportional to the size of the "conspirators' circle".

As has been said before, Wikileaks adds a huge tax to the cost of maintaining a distributed network of secret-keepers such as is done in the US state department. This makes it much more difficult for one "tribe" ("go USA!" "vive la France!" "O Canada!") or another to  drive coordinated action in the interest of its few. Another way of saying this is that by diminishing the power of large-scale secret organizations, slower-acting but more intelligent decisions can be made on a global scale. The group optimum, or "win-win" exchange is more likely to be reached wherever more minds are focused on the problems we face as connected human beings.

From this perspective, the Wikileaks NDA is not hypocritical--it is merely a tool needed for the furtherance of its mission. If Wikileaks becomes a large, secretive organization (currently, it is a small, secretive organization) then it will be bitten by precisely the same rules it seeks to apply globally--someone, somewhere, will risk leaking sensitive information. In the meantime, secrecy in a small tight-knit group is necessary for Wikileaks to survive long enough to curb its larger, more powerful peer organizations.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Mon, 16 May 2011 20:50:56 -0700 First Impressions of Beta Bitbills #bitcoin http://halfcupofsugar.com/first-impressions-of-beta-bitbills-bitcoin http://halfcupofsugar.com/first-impressions-of-beta-bitbills-bitcoin Bitbills arrived in the mail today!

I'm excited to have something tangible to show people when they ask about bitcoin. But before I endorse the beta version of these bills, let me just say these are very cool, but not yet entirely ready for prime time.  Two reasons:

1. Importing private keys are not a part of the bitcoin client yet.
2. The quality of the QR Code printout is poor, and therefore impossible to scan.

I'll go into a little more detail on these two points.

The basis of a bitbill is that the private key of a single-use bitcoin account (containing bitcoins equal to the face value of the bitbill) is encoded ONLY in the bill itself--there are no copies of the private key anywhere else in the world or on the internet.  This makes the bitbill the sole means of signing online transactions for the account and therefore the only way to turn the physical bitbill back into electronic online currency. It's a brilliant idea, and one that I look forward to endorsing soon. In the meantime, I understand the bitbill folks are working hard at making some improvements.

1. Importing private keys

So far, the only way to import a private key to your wallet is to compile a custom version of the bitcoin daemon (or client?) using a patch available from bitcoin.sipa.be. Unfortunately, compiling bitcoin is not "easy" as far as this developer is concerned--it still requires a lot of manual dependency hunting, makefile tweaking, and manual patching.  If and when the patch is brought into the main trunk, however, this hurdle will become more of a "howto".

2. Quality of the QR Code printout

Since I haven't been able to import it, I won't post the pictures of the QR-encoded private key yet, but I'll describe my experience here first. The QR code was secure in that I could not find a way to get it out without obviously tampering with the bitbill--so priority #1 has been achieved in the beta--but once removed, the small 3/4" x 3/4" printout looks like it was made on an inkjet printer. Gratefully, it's encased in laminate, so it was somewhat protected by my razor blade as I cut it free. When I attempted the scanning of the QR code, however, it was just too small and too grainy to be scanned by my iPad.

My grainy iPad camera wasn't my only option, so I tried taking a picture with an 8.0 megapixel Canon PowerShot, only to find that even an imported picture from this higher quality and higher resolution camera was still unscannable by The QR Code Machine (iPad app). Part of the problem is that the tamper-proof seal sticks to the surface of the QR code--it can be wiped off, sort of, and I did that the best I could, but stickiness and surface distortion remains. Also, in my haste as I extracted it, I lightly cut the surface of the QR code with my razor. A single cut makes it that much more difficult to differentiate between a white and black code square.

In short, I think the bitbill folks need to make a larger QR code, and improve the resolution of the printer (or perhaps the quality of the surface they are printing on?) before I would accept a bitbill as easily as a bitcoin.  When this is improved and the bitcoin client software has an "import private key" option, the transition between virtual and real world peer-to-peer currency will be a snap.

Btc_all Btc_10_front Btc_10_back Btc_1_opened
See the full gallery on Posterous

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:35:06 -0700 Collaborative Consumption http://halfcupofsugar.com/collaborative-consumption http://halfcupofsugar.com/collaborative-consumption Rachel Botsman gave a great presentation at TED in which she introduces three types of collaboration or "collaborative consumption" that removes the middle man and brings wealth to individuals and communities.  I think the three models are quite interesting, as in almost every consumer industry one of them could be implemented to great effect.  I'll summarize using a combination of her words and my own:
  1. Redistribution: this is the "swap" economy that is growing as more people find that they have stuff they don't really want, but neither want to throw away.  An alternative to keeping it is to trade it for something that you do want--for example, one of your DVDs for another you haven't yet seen.
  2. Synergy: this is when two (or more) people each have a resource that on its own is only so valuable, but when combined, becomes much more valuable.  The example she gave was landshare.net, where someone who has a yard can pair with someone who wants to grow a garden, and both reap the benefits (vegetables).
  3. Idle Resource Turn-taking: this is when you have property that you use rarely that you could potentially "rent out" to your neighbors. Peer-to-peer car rental was the example she gave, as well as tools that we never use (she cited a statistic that was interesting: on average, a drill is used for 12 minutes of its entire lifetime).
The foundation for all of this collaboration is public reputation.  Since we now have the means to communicate directly over the internet with peers who could potentially collaborate with us, the only missing component is trust. Given the rising effectiveness of public reputation systems, it is becoming possible and worthwhile to trust complete strangers in a mutually beneficial transaction.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Fri, 29 Apr 2011 05:08:00 -0700 We're in the Human Cambrian Era http://halfcupofsugar.com/were-in-the-human-cambrian-era http://halfcupofsugar.com/were-in-the-human-cambrian-era

I wrote some notes to myself a while back observing how closely people work inside a corporation and how it reminded me of the way in which cells began to cooperate in the Cambrian period to form multi-cellular organisms. The cells benefitted individually by their specialization and participation in the whole organism, while the organism itself emerged a new and more powerful way of being.

But last night one of my friends pointed out that while the Cambrian Explosion comparison might hold, the analogue might be the city rather than the corporation. Cities are more like an organism in that they survive and thrive on their own, with multiple organs (fire dept, police, city council, etc). This started me thinking... if the city is the equivalent of the multicellular organism, what is the corporation?

How about a virus? The corporation cannot multiply on its own--rather, it must "infect" (possibly in a good way, but not always) a host city with its ideas and its rules, such that citizens of the cities begin to manufacture retail stores that look just like the corporate RNA specifies (think Starbucks) Since corporations do not have families (and hence, babies to rear) they depend entirely on their hosts for propagation and survival.

What do you think? Does the analogy hold? Is there something to learn from the comparison?

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:49:00 -0700 Is the bitconomy the frontier of economic innovation? #bitcoin http://halfcupofsugar.com/is-the-bitconomy-the-frontier-of-economic-inn http://halfcupofsugar.com/is-the-bitconomy-the-frontier-of-economic-inn

I recently introduced bitcoin to a group of my friends who often discuss new developments in economics, politics and science. I think they understood my presentation, but I did a poor job of explaining why bitcoin is important, and especially why it is good. The result was that bitcoin came off sounding like a grand, unchecked danger to society, with very little upside. They asked, wouldn't the most likely beneficiaries of the bitcoin system be criminals who need a means of sending and receiving funds anonymously?

To answer this question, I must first take a little detour. In our present recession, many people feel that there was a great misdeed--some say crime--done by those who hold the keys of the economic kingdom: banks benefited from government bailouts; government officials who enabled the bailouts were hired from the banks; no one took the blame for the fall. But many people unrelated to the decisions made by those in power suffered (and do suffer) as a consequence of the financial "innovations" that took place before 2008.

If you agree with this line of thought, then it isn't a big leap to see that our current economic system does not have proper checks and balances.  One could say that while we live in a political democracy, we live in an economic aristocracy. In that kind of power structure, is systemic corruption possible, even likely?

If I had a second chance with my friends, I would explain that bitcoin has the potential to democratize banking authority. Instead of a ring of trusted entities (banks) who have the power to invisibly wire money to each, and one supreme entity (central bank) who has power to create money, bitcoin introduces an alternative--a democratic way. It says, in essence, "let everyone have the authority of a bank".  We will enable you to create money, in a fair way, just like everyone else; we will enable you to invisibly wire money to one another, without an intermediary; we will enable you to create as many accounts as you need, and allow you to keep those account holders' names private if you wish; and, we will enable you to function transnationally, without regard to borders. So although anonymity is an important piece, what's really new is the democratizing of economic authority.

When we talk about new ideas for the economy, have you ever considered why "economic innovation" sounds scary to most people? It isn't just because innovation is risky--entrepreneurship is inherently risky, and yet America loves entrepreneurs. No, economic innovation is worrisome to most people because of the asymmetric power structure of the economy. When the power is asymmetric, "innovation" is a euphemism for "advantage", as in "I will find a new way to take advantage of you". This also happens to explain why the the left is correct to want regulation, while at the same time the right is correct to want deregulation--when the system itself is flawed, it seems that we need both more and less regulation. What we actually need is a structure of equal opportunity within which innovation is amply rewarded--and bitcoin offers a way.

To my friends, I also want to point out that although they are right about the potential for evil, nothing that has the potential for good has come without the potential for bad. The internet enables distribution of child pornography, and yet it has also empowered the Arab Spring. What's more, when it comes to economic breakthroughs in particular, very few have historically come from the most virtuous of places. Money lending was at one time illegal because it was seen as a moral depravity to charge interest. The lot fell on European Jews--perceived to be among the lowest caste of society--to finance new buildings and even wars (cf. Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice"). The point I want to make here is that where economic innovation is concerned, sometimes important ideas are first tested in what is considered the "seediest" part of society. This isn't strictly necessary, but historically it seems to be the case.

So while bitcoin does offer potential benefit to the bad guys, I would say the upside for good people, for you and me, for everyone generally, is much greater. It offers more freedom for the individual, and a new economic power structure in which participants are all equal opportunity peers. One of the central questions of the French Revolution and later earlier the American Revolution was, "Can a society exist, or even thrive without a king?" To date, we have not been able to answer the economic equivalent of that question affirmatively--but I think the seeds of a revolution exist in the fledgling bitconomy.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:08:20 -0700 The Truth about the Imaginary Noth http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-truth-about-the-imaginary-noth http://halfcupofsugar.com/the-truth-about-the-imaginary-noth
The following children's story came from a morning meditation a couple of weeks ago.  My brother tells me that it would be much better with illustrations.  Unfortunately, I'm less of an artist and more of a writer, but who knows, perhaps some day this could be a children's book with nice pictures:

There once was a boy who was very poor, and all he had was a Noth, which was about as big as a boy, and about as wide as his arms spread out, and kept close to him wherever he went.  The most remarkable thing about his Noth was that whenever the boy opened his mouth, the Noth would change its shape.  It could be as tall as a cyprus tree, or as small as his shoe lace--and all that in the course of a mere sentence or two!

One day the boy was telling his friends about a tail he had once seen that was attached to a tall animal--like a giraffe, he thought, perhaps, although he had never seen a giraffe before.  His friends listened on, some with wide eyes as they wondered if they would ever get to see a tail so tall as that.

One of his curious friends, a girl, interrupted his telling to ask, "Have you ever seen a giraffe?"  And the boy, slightly taken aback, said, "Well, no, not really, but I did see my uncle's animals once--and they had long necks, so maybe they were giraffes."  Suddenly, the boy's Noth disappeared, and in its place was a very tiny Myth!  It had long pointy ears that stuck straight up, a tall neck, and it looked an awful lot like the boy.  It too followed the boy, but it didn't seem to change shape as quickly as the Noth had.

The girl exclaimed, "I know what you're talking about!  I've been to your uncle's farm too, and I saw a four-legged animal with a long neck and shaggy hair!"  And suddenly, next to the girl, another Myth appeared!  It had a shaggy tummy and a long neck, pointy ears, and it looked a lot like the girl.

Some of the other friends looked at the new Myth and and realized that they had seen an animal that looked a little bit like that.  And as they each explained what they had seen, each of them saw a Myth appear that looked a little bit like their story and little bit like them.

Once each of the boys and girls had told their stories, something strange began to happen.  The Myths, which by now had each distanced themselves somewhat from their owners, began to circle around one another in a kind of dance.  The shaggy Myth and the pointy-eared Myth began stepping on each others' toes.  All of the Myths were so close to each other that it seemed impossible to tell them apart.  And then, the Myths flashed white and silence reigned for a moment as the boys and girls realized a Truth had appeared in their place.

The Truth had some of the looks of the Myths, but didn't look at all like any of the boys and girls.  In fact, it looked exactly like llamas that they had all seen before, some at their uncle's farm, and others on the side of a road.  And from that day forward, the children used their new discovery to turn each others' Noths into Myths with questions, and to share their Myths until they became Truths.  And they were the brightest children the grown-ups had ever seen.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson Sun, 06 Feb 2011 06:42:00 -0800 Idea: personal data breach insurance http://halfcupofsugar.com/idea-personal-data-breech-insurance http://halfcupofsugar.com/idea-personal-data-breech-insurance

While at strataconf last week, I had ample opportunity to think about the risks, rewards, and unknowns associated with putting personal data "out there".  Because of the unknown factors, I wondered what it might be like for an insurance company to offer "personal data breach insurance".  The company could make certain stipulations, such as "you will never give out your address, email or payment information except on cryptographically secure websites" and charge a fee.  In return, they will cover damages to you associated with a 3rd party (such as Facebook or a private forum website) releases any of your personal information.

And as a bonus package, perhaps they could offer "digital rebirth" as an option.  If, after a personal data breach, you decide you want a new identity, they could assist you in removing all possible records from old accounts, and creating new and unassociated web accounts.  Kind of like a witness protection program for victims of identity theft.

Update: fixed spelling (breech, it turns out, has more to do with birth than data).

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1842423/Duane.png http://posterous.com/users/10Efo8WTagx Duane Johnson canadaduane Duane Johnson