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“For The First Time, We’re Going To See These Machines And Systems As Part Of Our Everyday Life”

February 15, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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The fear of automation causing widespread technological unemployment is probably only founded if the future arrives far faster now than it did in the past. That’s possible, given the current push on many fronts in AI. Driverless being perfected and instituted in rapid fashion means farewell to eight million or so jobs in trucking alone, not to mention taxis, limos, delivery, etc. Is it a disaster for Labor if it happens in two decades but not in four? The flip side is that it would probably be a body blow to the economy if such things happened too slowly or not at all. Innovation plus nimble policy is probably the only answer, but not an easy one in our jagged political landscape.

From Andrea Korte at the American Association for the Advancement for Science:

Artificial intelligence experts predict that intelligent and semi-intelligent autonomous systems — such as self-driving cars and autonomous drones — “will march into our society” in the next two to three years, with driving expected to be fully automated in 25 years, a panel of experts said at a 13 February news briefing at the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting.

“For the first time, we’re going to see these machines and systems as part of our everyday life,” said Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University, citing big changes in the AI field that have spurred a shift toward real-world applications in the last five years, including the ability of computers to see and hear as humans do and to synthesize data and fill in strategies for achieving their programmers’ high-level goals.

With more than a billion dollars spent last year on AI research — more than in the field’s entire history — the experts agreed that AI advances may threaten jobs and uncover a range of legal, regulatory, and ethical issues.

The widespread use of self-driving cars, for instance, is likely to bring about a reduction in car accidents; liability debates as courts determine whether a computer can be held at fault in an accident; and a serious effect on the labor market.

With 10% of U.S. jobs involving the operation of a vehicle, “we can expect the majority of these jobs will simply disappear,” said Moshe Vardi, professor of computer science and director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University.

…

Vardi expects that the growing presence of intelligent machines in the workforce will contribute to a phenomenon called “job polarization.” With many high-skilled jobs requiring too much human intelligence and many low-skilled jobs too expensive to automate, those jobs in the middle will be easiest to automate. The disappearance of these jobs will spur “great inequality,” but even in a U.S. presidential election year, the issue is “nowhere on the radar screen,” Vardi said.•

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“He Portrays His Company And Other Companies In The Gig Economy As Increasingly Important To The United States’ Economic Future”

February 15, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Ridesharing is good in some ways, but it’s a bad deal for most workers, offering them no protections while destabilizing entrenched industries with guarantees, all in the name of “flexibility.” Anyone who thinks it’s a significant part of the solution for an American labor force that’s been laid low by a myriad of factors probably isn’t driving for Uber or Lyft.

In an Atlantic piece, Lawrence Mishel fires a statistics-supported salvo at the Gig Economy for drawing a great deal of attention while having relatively little impact on American employment, particularly of the positive kind. You could extrapolate forward its place in the U.S. economy as some Silicon Valley enthusiasts like to when trying to bend laws in their favor, but the writer will likely still be correct a decade or two down the line. If I’m wrong and the Gig Economy has truly become ascendant in that time, wow, major policy shifts are going to be necessary.

The opening:

The rise of Uber has convinced many pundits, economists, and policymakers that freelancing via digital platforms is becoming increasingly important to Americans’ livelihood. It has also promoted the idea that new technology—particularly the explosion of platforms enabling the gig economy—will fundamentally alter the future of work.

While Uber and other new companies in the gig economy receive a lot of attention, a look at Uber’s own data about its drivers’ schedules and pay reveals them to be much less consequential than most people assume. In fact, dwelling on these companies too much distracts from the central features of work in America that should be prominent in the public discussion: a disappointingly low minimum wage, lax overtime rules, weak collective-bargaining rights, and excessive unemployment, to name a few. When it comes to the future of work, these are the aspects of the labor market that deserve the most attention. 

Curiously, the best evidence of Uber’s relatively small impact on the American labor market comes from data released and publicized by the company itself. David Plouffe, an Uber strategist, began a recent speech by saying, “I want to talk today about the future of work—specifically, the fact that a growing number of people are engaging in flexible and freelance work because of the sharing economy or through on-demand platforms.” He highlighted the large number of people driving for Uber, saying, “Uber currently has 1.1 million active drivers on the platform globally. Here in the U.S., there are more than 400,000 active drivers taking at least four trips a month.” As he went on to list the number of drivers in the biggest American cities, he said, “The numbers show just how attractive this type of work is to people around the country.”

In other words, Plouffe is sending the message that Uber is very big and growing, and he portrays his company and other companies in the gig economy as increasingly important to the United States’ economic future. But these claims are undermined by the relatively minor contribution Uber makes to its drivers’ incomes.•

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“It’s A Problem That All The Candidates Appear To Be Technologically Illiterate”

February 15, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m not alone in thinking Mark Cuban a strange, unsavory guy who fell ass-backwards into wealth during Web 1.0 and somehow thinks that qualifies him as an expert on all things. Only in America.

That being said, he’s probably no more foolish or crass than most of the candidates running for President. In a recent blog post, the Mavericks’ owner said a lot of obvious things as if they were bolts of lightning from the heavens that only he has received, but then again, even basic wisdom is missing from Trump, Carson, etc. Cuban certainly is right that the average candidate has little knowledge of technology beyond 140 characters. A couple of excerpts::

2. SocioCapitalism is and has been Capitalism for Millennials. You haven’t been paying attention. Bernie has.

If you watch Shark Tank  you may have noticed a trend.  Entrepreneurs don’t just want to make a profit, they want to make a profit and share their success with those less fortunate.  I first saw this in the mid 90’s when Rob Glaser founded Progressive Networks and promised 5 pct of their profits to those less fortunate.

We saw this type of philanthropy gain interest with Tom’s Shoes and their One for One program.

Today, charitable give aways, or inclusive hiring  as part of a product or service purchase is more than just common place. We see it on Shark Tank in almost every pitch from a 20-something entrepreneur. Several of my recent Shark Tank deals reflect this trend, RRiveter, Combat Flip Flops, Living Christmas Trees to name just a few.

Not only are 20-something entrepreneurs starting companies with a social component , 20 – Something consumers are EXPECTING a social component from companies they do business with.

So how can it be a surprise that Millennials are excited about Bernie Sanders ? Millennials EXPECT capitalism to reflect a socialist element.  I don’t think Bernie knew this going in. Either way, any candidate that expects to get millennial votes needs to understand that your father’s capitalism is not what how they understand the world.  Soci0-Capitalism is who they are and what this country will be. Whether you like it or not.  

To each according to their ability, from each support for those in need.

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4. It’s a problem that all the candidates appear to be technologically illiterate.

Using or not using email, being on social media, neither reflect a knowledge of technology.  No one is saying they have to be hard core geeks, but the future of this country, our jobs, economy, security, culture, lifestyle and more are intertwined with advanced technology. How can you hope to strategize and create solutions to issues we face without having more than a basic understanding of technology?

Wars won’t be fought with bombs and bullets as much as bytes and advanced technologies. Homeland security will be much more about machine vision, learning and Artificial Intelligence than walls.  The future of healthcare and its cost will be much more about personalized medicine and CRISPR than trying to defund Obamacare. Do our candidates realize that when it comes to hacking, there are only 2 kinds of  companies and government agencies, those who have been hacked, and those who don’t know they have been hacked ? And what about our stock markets  ? Does anyone understand what is going on in the markets and how technology has completely upended companies ability to raise capital publicly and undermined the confidence our citizens have in our markets ? Financial terrorism is more than just a possibility.

This isn’t about the age of the candidates. It’s about their knowledge. None has given us any reason to believe they could make a decision on the technology used by a tiny business let alone the country.•

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“When It Comes To Providing The Essentials Of A Modern Society, It Has To Be Said That We’re A Backward Country”

February 14, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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It certainly wouldn’t benefit the American Society of Civil Engineers to slap an “A” grade on every bridge in the U.S., but I don’t think many doubt the organization’s dismal grades for our infrastructure. In a NYRB piece, Elizabeth Drew reviews a raft of books on the topic, including Henry Petroski’s The Road Taken: The History and Future of America’s Infrastructure.

Drew shares small, interesting details (there are still wooden pipes working beneath the White House) and big-picture fears (only calamity may force us to catch up to much of the rest of the world). On the latter topic, she surmises that “it may require even more widespread paralyzed traffic, the collapse of numerous bridges, and perhaps a revolt in parts of the country that have inadequate broadband.” Well, let’s hope not. She also surveys the current Presidential candidates’ plans for remaking our roads and airports, uncovering a lot of fuzzy math.

An excerpt:

The water pipes underneath the White House are said to still be made of wood, as are some others in the nation’s capital and some cities across the country. We admire Japan’s and France’s “bullet trains” that get people to their destination with remarkable efficiency, but many other nations have them as well, including Russia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. A friend of mine recently rode on the Turkish bullet train and noted that the coffee in his full cup didn’t spill. Last year, Japan demonstrated its new maglev train, which, using electromagnets, levitates above the tracks, and can go about an amazing 375 miles per hour, making it the fastest train in the world. The fastest commercially used maglev, in Shanghai, goes up to 288 miles per hour. But the United States hasn’t a single system that meets all the criteria of high-speed rail. President Obama has proposed a system of high-speed railroads, which has gone nowhere in Congress.

When it comes to providing the essentials of a modern society, it has to be said that we’re a backward country. California Governor Jerry Brown, a longtime visionary, has initiated the building of a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco; one high-speed rail system scheduled to come into service soon to carry people between the wealthy cities of Dallas and Houston will be privately financed. (Shopping and business made easier.) But not many communities have the means to build their own train.

Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) conducts a study of where the United States stands in providing needed infrastructure in various sectors. Though the organization obviously has an interest in the creation of more construction jobs, its analyses, based as they are on information from other studies, are taken seriously by nonpartisan experts in the field. In the ASCE’s most recent report card, issued in 2013, the combined sectors received an overall grade of D+. In the various sectors, the grades were: aviation, D; bridges, C+; inland waterways, D–; ports, C; rail, C+; roads, D; mass transit, D; schools, D; hazardous waste, D; drinking water, D. No sector received an A. That none of the infrastructure categories received an F is hardly grounds for celebration.•

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“American Egalitarianism Is On Its Last Legs”

February 14, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Among U.S. scholars, none seem to casually elide more inconvenient truths than Charles Murray, who somehow claims to love both meritocracy and Sarah Palin. He can make solid sociological points, but he’s also a believer in American myths that were never quite true, especially if you weren’t a white male. 

Murray argues in a WSJ essay that Donald Trump is benefiting from those who feel America is losing its national identity, which he says is rooted in three qualities: egalitarianism, liberty and individualism. Well, cross off the first two for large swaths of the population and even the third during long periods of our history when conformity was the norm. It’s big of Murray to acknowledge that “there are certainly elements of racism and xenophobia in Trumpism”–you don’t say, Chuck?–but he sees it as subplot rather than driving narrative.

His description of wealthy Americans “seceding from the mainstream” is limited by his blinders, but there is value in the passage. Citizens without money being thought of as “losers” is often a sad reality. Oddly enough, it’s very Trumpian.

An excerpt:

America also retained a high degree of social and cultural heterogeneity in its communities. Tocqueville wrote of America in the 1830s as a place where “the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people.” That continued well into the 20th century, even in America’s elite neighborhoods. In the 1960 census, the median income along Philadelphia’s Main Line was just $90,000 in today’s dollars. In Boston’s Brookline, it was $75,000; on New York’s Upper East Side, just $60,000. At a typical dinner party in those neighborhoods, many guests would have had no more than a high-school diploma.

In the years since, the new upper class has evolved a distinctive culture. For a half-century, America’s elite universities have drawn the most talented people from all over the country, socialized them and often married them off to each other. Brains have become radically more valuable in the marketplace. In 2016, a dinner party in those same elite neighborhoods consists almost wholly of people with college degrees, even advanced degrees. They are much more uniformly affluent. The current median family incomes for the Main Line, Brookline and the Upper East Side are about $150,000, $151,000 and $203,000, respectively.

And the conversation at that dinner party is likely to be completely unlike the conversations at get-togethers in mainstream America. The members of the new upper class are seldom attracted to the films, TV shows and music that are most popular in mainstream America. They have a distinctive culture in the food they eat, the way they take care of their health, their child-rearing practices, the vacations they take, the books they read, the websites they visit and their taste in beer. You name it, the new upper class has its own way of doing it.

Another characteristic of the new upper class—and something new under the American sun—is their easy acceptance of being members of an upper class and their condescension toward ordinary Americans. Try using “redneck” in a conversation with your highly educated friends and see if it triggers any of the nervousness that accompanies other ethnic slurs. Refer to “flyover country” and consider the implications when no one asks, “What does that mean?” Or I can send you to chat with a friend in Washington, D.C., who bought a weekend place in West Virginia. He will tell you about the contempt for his new neighbors that he has encountered in the elite precincts of the nation’s capital.

For its part, mainstream America is fully aware of this condescension and contempt and is understandably irritated by it. American egalitarianism is on its last legs.

While the new upper class was seceding from the mainstream, a new lower class was emerging from within the white working class, and it has played a key role in creating the environment in which Trumpism has flourished.•

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“Donald Trump Does Not Do Nuance”

February 12, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump is measuring the White House windows for curtains, when he’s not busy measuring his penis. 

There’s long been an argument that exorbitant wealth inequality doesn’t matter if the poorest among us (a widening group) see their standard of living improve somewhat while a few have theirs increase exponentially. Everyone is getting better, so who cares?

First, that balance seems a rare thing, and even if it can be achieved, a small number will be able to tilt power in their favor at will. Second, when things go bust, and they always do eventually, those at the lower end are hurt inordinately. Things then can get ugly, when reality gets ragged, and not only are scapegoats sought but so are those who can point them out. 

A nativist seems appealing in that unhappy situation. A fascist, even. Where have you gone, Benito Mussolini? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

From Edward McClelland at Salon:

Donald Trump stepped into the gymnasium at New Hampshire’s Plymouth State University to the opening riff of The Beatles’ “Revolution.” Never mind that it’s a song mocking the pretensions of self-styled revolutionaries. Donald Trump does not do nuance. Donald Trump does bold, garish strokes. The song is loud and it’s got the word “revolution” in it. That’s what Donald Trump wants.
 
It was the day after the last debate before the New Hampshire primary, but Trump didn’t want to brag about his performance. He wanted to talk about how “rich donors and special interests” had hogged all the tickets, leaving college students outside in the snow. The crowd, waving signs that read “The Silent Majority Stands With Trump,” booed loudly.

“I look at these people who have tremendous money,” Trump said. “They’re wasting their money. They should give it to the vets. It’s the special interests: people who represent insurance companies, oil companies, drug companies. I’m their worst nightmare, because I’m not taking their money. I’m richer than they are. I don’t need your money. I need your vote.”

Live and in person, Trump is reminiscent of Regis Philbin: an overexcited New Yorker riffing off the top of his head and emphasizing his points with broad hand gestures: the OK sign, the “whaddya-whaddya” open-palmed shrug. Like a lot of people in the crowd, I was there for the Trumpertainment, hoping the most uninhibited performer in American politics would threaten to shoot someone, or make a pussy joke about one of his enemies in the media or the Republican primary. Seeing Trump is like seeing Marilyn Manson, circa 1995: you’re not there for the music.•

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“Why Is The Valley Suddenly So Tone Deaf?”

February 12, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Silicon Valley oligarchs don’t get much jerkier than Marc Andreessen, a real toolbox who has to bury beneath his arrogance perfectly reasonable people who disagree with him. You’re not simply wrong if you worry that machine learning may lead to technological unemployment–you’re a dope worthy of scorn. 

Andreessen stepped into it in a big way a few days ago with a tone-deaf tweet about India, after the country embraced net neutrality and blocked a Facebook app. Instead of arguing the move would harm the developing nation and explain why, the venture capitalist sent out 140 callous characters of pro-colonialism. As if billionaires didn’t have a bad enough name already.

It’s great that the shitstorm that followed made Andreesen withdraw his comments and apologize profusely, but where there’s no sense of humility, there are likely no lasting lessons learned. 

From Nellie Bowles in the Guardian:

When the news came that India had rejected Facebook, board member and investor Andreessen tweeted the missive that echoed around the world: “Anti-Colonialism has been economically catastrophic for India for decades. Why stop now?”

One sunny San Francisco day later – after Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was forced to publicly disavow the tweet – Sharma was calling in on Arvind Gupta, who invests in and guides a group of early stage startups at his accelerator IndieBio. Their conversation quickly shifted to Free Basics and Andreessen’s message.

Gupta said he felt Facebook’s stumble was partly due to distance and being out of touch with Indian people.

“It’s easy to think this is a good idea 5,000 miles away in your nice apartment,” Gupta said.

Sharma saw it as part of a broader issue of homogeneity in Silicon Valley, a region run by a narrow set of oligarchs who famously eschew hiring women or people of color.

“Why is the Valley suddenly so tone deaf? Well, look how badly the Valley does on inclusion in hiring. Bias is the norm here,” Sharma said. “Why is the Indian user any less capable than anyone else? Why do they have different needs than you do? They don’t. But that thinking is all part of the same problem.”•

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“This Echo Chamber Deluded Its Believers To The Point That It Sometimes Apparently Killed Them”

February 11, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Donald Trump, Milosevic with a trophy wife, hopes to add a stripper pole to the Lincoln Bedroom.

In his latest op-ed, Nicholas Kristof credits Trump as “smarter than critics believe,” asserting that the hideous hotelier “understood the political mood better than we pundits did.” I think it more likely that Trump is a blowhole who merely threw shit at the wall and was as surprised as anyone that it stuck. If you could go back in time to moments after his candidacy announcement and ask him what line would get the most attention, I doubt he would identify the “they’re rapists” slur about Mexicans.

Kristof goes on to belatedly state what many people (myself included) have been saying for months: The GOP created this Frankenstein monster of a political season it can’t control, though he illustrates it with an interesting fact about echo-chamber misinformation manifesting itself in the real world. An excerpt:

Political nastiness and conspiracy theories were amplified by right-wing talk radio, television and websites — and, yes, there are left-wing versions as well, but they are much less influential. Democrats often felt disadvantaged by the rise of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, but in retrospect Limbaugh and Fox created a conservative echo chamber that hurt the Republican Party by tugging it to the right and sometimes breeding a myopic extremism in which reality is irrelevant.

A poll released in September found that Republicans were more likely to think that Obama was born abroad than that Ted Cruz was. That poll found that Trump supporters believed by nearly a three-to-one ratio that Obama was born overseas.

The Republican establishment profited from the insinuations that Obama is a Muslim, that he’s anti-American, that his health care plan would lead to “death panels.” Rick Perry has described Trump as a “cancer on conservatism” and said his movement is “a toxic mix of demagoguery and meanspiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition” — indeed, but it was a mix that too many Republican leaders accepted as long as it worked for them.

This echo chamber deluded its believers to the point that it sometimes apparently killed them. During the 2009-10 flu pandemic, right-wing broadcasters like Limbaugh and Glenn Beck denounced the call for flu shots, apparently seeing it as a nefarious Obama plot.

The upshot was that Democrats were 50 percent more likely than Republicans to say that they would get flu shots, according to a peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. So when the pandemic killed up to 18,000 Americans, they presumably were disproportionately conservatives.•

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“Many Aspects Of Athenian Life…Were Conducive To Creative Thinking”

February 11, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Whenever people deride philosophy in the name of analytics, I like to remind them that democracy wasn’t created by an algorithm. Like many human creations that shape our world (including philosophy itself), the rule by many was dreamed up in ancient Athens, a “small, dirty, crowded city,” as Eric Weiner identifies it in an Atlantic piece which wonders how so many influential geniuses were nurtured in that place and time. The emergence of the world’s first global city seems more than merely a happy accident. Culture was likely a much more important force than genetics. An acceptance of immigration was one piece of the puzzle, but there were many other factors. An excerpt:

How did a small, dirty, crowded city, surrounded by enemies and swathed in olive oil, manage to change the world? Was Athenian genius simply the convergence of “a happy set of circumstances,” as the historian Peter Watson has put it, or did the Athenians make their luck? This question has stumped historians and archaeologists for centuries, but the answer may lie in what we already know about life in Athens back in the day.

The ancient Athenians enjoyed a deeply intimate relationship with their city. Civic life was not optional, and the Athenians had a word for those who refused to participate in public affairs: idiotes. There was no such thing as an aloof, apathetic Athenian. “The man who took no interest in the affairs of state was not a man who minded his own business,” wrote the ancient historian Thucydides, “but a man who had no business being in Athens at all.” When it came to public projects, the Athenians spent lavishly. (And, if they could help it, with other people’s money—they paid for the construction of the Parthenon, among other things, with funds from the Delian League, an alliance of several Greek city-states formed to fend off the Persians.)

All of ancient Athens displayed a combination of the linear and the bent, the orderly and the chaotic. The Parthenon, perhaps the most famous structure of the ancient world, looks like the epitome of linear thinking, rational thought frozen in stone, but this is an illusion: The building has not a single straight line. Each column bends slightly this way or that. Within the city walls, you’d find both a clear-cut legal code and a frenzied marketplace, ruler-straight statues and streets that follow no discernible order.

In retrospect, many aspects of Athenian life—including the layout and character of the city itself—were conducive to creative thinking.•

“Anything Could Happen”

February 10, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump, Pinochet with a line of men’s fragrances, would seem to have a proper path forward in the GOP race. With the next month of Republican primaries favoring far-right pols, and the trio of Kasich, Rubio and Bush subtracting from one another, the Reality TV realtor need only outpace Ted Cruz, a rat trap of a man and the only person in America more unlikable than him. Trump isn’t a true conservative, but he’s clearly communicated his intention to “Make America Great White Again.” At this point, his campaign can’t be disqualified by anything he says, no matter how repugnant, but will instead rise or fall based on how many caucasians in the U.S. deeply resent no longer being able to use the N-word without consequence. 

It’s not as easy to see a similar road to success for the other upstart, Bernie Sanders, despite his rousing N.H. win and Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities. Until the race moves past Super Tuesday, the Vermont Senator will walk headlong into an unforgiving slate of mostly Southern states where he’ll have to pick up non-white voters, something he’s thus far shown little flair for. Sanders could be trailing badly by the time we move deeper into March, so he needs to change that reality before the South Carolina primary.

From Edward Luce in the Financial Times:

Nobody knows better than the Clintons the power of early state momentum.

In his victory speech, Mr Sanders said he was travelling to New York on Wednesday — “but not to raise money from Wall Street.” In fact, he will be breakfasting with the Reverend Al Sharpton, the radical black pastor, who seems likely to endorse him. Other black celebrities have been lined up.

Mr Sanders has two weeks, and the media wind at his back, to turn South Carolina into another victory. If he pulls that off, he will join Mr Trump as odds-on favourite to win his party’s nomination. The polls say Mrs Clinton will halt Mr Sanders’ progress south of the Mason-Dixon Line. But pre-New Hampshire polls are now virtually worthless. Anything could happen.

Both parties may be on course to endorse candidates who repudiate much of what they stand for.

If there was ever a moment Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, was tempted to run for the White House, it may be fast approaching.•

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“Its Self-Driving Car Will Not Have A ‘Driver’ In The Traditional Sense”

February 10, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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When it appeared that the driverless-car business might become a going concern, my take on the industry was that the final five percent of bugs to be worked out might be more challenging than the first 95% of the enterprise had been. I don’t think that was a controversial opinion. The smallest problems are the knottiest in this case.

For a few years, it seemed equal to those technological challenges might be snafus caused by a lack of legal framework, but 2016 has been an inflection point. Last month, the Obama Administration proposed $4 billion over the next decade to ameliorate the industry’s realization, the government firmly behind the U.S. winning this nouveau “Space Race.” That measure will encourage Europe and Asia forward, untangling its own limits and liabilities.

Two more important pieces of autonomous-car legalese have come to light, one in regards to the definition of a “driver” in America and the other a patent filed by Google. Excerpts follow.

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From Paul Lienert and David Shepardson of Reuters:

U.S. vehicle safety regulators have said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law, a major step towards ultimately winning approval for autonomous vehicles on the roads.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc , of its decision in a previously unreported Feb. 4 letter to the company posted on the agency’s website this week.

Google’s self-driving car unit on Nov. 12 submitted a proposed design for a self-driving car that has “no need for a human driver,” the letter to Google from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Chief Counsel Paul Hemmersbaugh said.

“NHTSA will interpret ‘driver’ in the context of Google’s described motor vehicle design as referring to the (self-driving system), and not to any of the vehicle occupants,” NHTSA’s letter said.

“We agree with Google its (self-driving car) will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years.”•

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From Future Tech Hub:

Google wants to deliver your package through self-driving trucks. The tech giant has been awarded a  patent described as an “autonomous delivery platform” for delivery trucks. The self-driving trucks will be equipped with lockers which can be opened only with the access codes assigned to the customer. Credit cards can also be used by users to open. The trucks will drive away to other location to deliver once the packages are dispatched. The automated vehicle will drive to the customers address. Once after arriving, it will send an SMS alert with the access codes to the lockers.•

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“Reagan Would Be A Moderate In Today’s GOP”

February 9, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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Donald Trump mostly wants to be President so that he can giver Fireside Chats about his erections.

There are plenty of reasons why a vulgar clown like Trump is a viable candidate in the current race, but I do believe the decline of the GOP as a serious party began with Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, their coded language of divisiveness (“welfare queens”), assault on the middle class and utter disdain for environmentalism. In many ways, Reagan was ultimately a reasonable man, but he pushed the right into a nostalgia for a past that had never quite existed except in Peggy Noonan’s greeting-card grade prose. The repeated inability of conservatives to deliver the impossible has driven the true believers over the edge.

Jacob Weisberg, who’s written a biography of Reagan, just did an AMA at Reddit, answering questions about 40. The writer’s contention that Reagan wasn’t a womanizer is naive, but it’s a lively give-and-take. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Which of the Republican candidates do you think has views that are closest to Ronald Reagan’s?

Jacob Weisberg:

Reagan would be a moderate in today’s GOP — he signed the biggest-ever immigration “amnesty” (his phrase) into law, supported handgun regulation, and played a huge in making abortion legal — and keeping it legal, by nominating Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. There’s no one running who supports those positions. In policy terms, I’d say the closest is John Kasich, because he’s more moderate than the others. Temperamentally, Marco Rubio seems the most Reagan-like to me. Rubio is optimistic and future-focused, where most of the others are pessimistic and negative about America’s future.

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Question:

There has been much discussion of the unusual age of the 2016 presidential election frontrunners vis a vis Reagan, with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders all being at least as old upon potential inauguration as Reagan was. Is there such a thing as “too old” in your opinion, and if so how old is it?

Jacob Weisberg:

Life expectancy keeps increasing, and being 70 now doesn’t mean what it meant in 1980 – let alone what it meant in 1880. On the other hand, the presidency is physically very taxing — I’ve heard it said that a year in the White House takes the physical toll of two years outside of it. Reagan was a vigorous, healthy man when he took office, but he suffered from a number of health problems tied to age. I don’t know that there’s an age when you’re too old per se. Sanders definitely pushes the limit. It’s hard to imagine someone over 80, which he would be in a second term, being up to the demands of the job. But there are better reasons to not vote for Sanders, IMO.

__________________________

Question:

Who was Reagan’s favorite President? And how did he feel about Lincoln in particular?

Jacob Weisberg:

The President he admired the most in his own lifetime was FDR. He consciously modeled himself on FDR in many ways – including his Saturday Radio addresses, which were a reinvention of Roosevelt’s fireside chat. He borrowed some key phrases from Lincoln, like the America as the “last, best hope” of man on earth. But like all great political speechmakers, he borrowed liberally from his predecessors.

__________________________

Question:

What was your conclusion about his role in the end of the Cold War?

Jacob Weisberg:

I give him a lot of credit. Reagan was unusual on the right in thinking — as far back as 1962 — that communism might just collapse, because it was a ridiculous system. And he improvised to help it do so, moving from nuclear hawk in his first term to disarmament radical in his second. Both the push he gave the Soviets, and the support he gave Gorbachev, were crucial to the (mostly) peaceful collapse of the Soviet Empire.

__________________________

Question:

It’s commonly stated in leftist circles that Reagan was barely functioning in his second term due to advanced dementia/Alzheimer’s. In your opinion, how much truth is there to that assertion?

Jacob Weisberg:

Not just in leftist circles. His son, Ron Jr, thinks Reagan’s Alzheimer’s was affecting him pretty significantly by 1986 – the middle of his second term. There’s a lot of evidence to support that, including a study by some Alzheimer’s researchers I cite in my book that looks at his use of language in press conferences. That doesn’t mean he was barely functioning. Like a lot of people in the early stages of that disease, he had better days and worse days.

__________________________

Question:

Was he the womanizer that I have heard? Never met a female co-star he didn’t really, really like.

Jacob Weisberg: 

I wouldn’t call Reagan a womanizer. He does write about the tendency to always fall in love with the leading lady when he was younger. But I’ve never heard it argued that Reagan was anything other than faithful in his two marriages. During the period in between, after he divorced Jane Wyman, he definitely played the field and slept around in Hollywood. But I don’t think he enjoyed that very much — he was eager to settle down with someone, and Nancy ended up being his true soulmate.•

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“Imagine A State Run Like That. That’s A Futuristic Thing, Right?”

February 9, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Here’s an interesting thought experiment put forth by Cory Doctorow in a Jacobin interview conducted by Simon Willmetts: What if the anti-hierarchal modus operandi of Wikipedia was applied to projects like building developments, space programs or even state governance? Crowdsourcing would be employed on an epic scale in the non-virtual realm.

Well, I would say Wikipedia hasn’t been absolutely free of hierarchy for a long time, but what was put in place was organic and certainly less heavy-handed. I do doubt a state run that way would be more democratic since the online encyclopedia itself has drawn avid contributors but not anything near truly representative. Such a system might need be limited to project-specific problems.

An excerpt:

Question:

So you wouldn’t describe yourself as a “libertarian” — you don’t think state intervention is always necessarily a bad thing?

Cory Doctorow:

No. I believe in civil liberties, and I think that states are the least-worst option right now for solving some difficult collective action problems. But I also think that we’re learning every day how much hierarchy we can remove from complex endeavors.

Imagine something futuristic, like something on the scale of an operating system or an encyclopedia, with the same degree of complexity, the number of human hours and the amount of knowledge that goes into it, and something else on that scale, like a Canary Wharf tower, and imagine it being built the way that we built Wikipedia.

I have a plot of dirt, and I’m going to invite any stranger who has structural steel, trunking, rebar, cement, gravel, diggers, architectural drawings, or ideas to come and just muck around for a while. We’ll shout at each other a lot, and we’ll have some false starts. Some bits will come down, some bits will go up, and at the end, we will have not just an office tower, but the greatest office tower ever built, and it will be infinitely reproducible at zero cost.

Imagine a space program run like that. Imagine an aviation system run like that. Imagine a state run like that. That’s a futuristic thing, right? That’s a futuristic parable that uses Wikipedia and any Linux project to think about the scale at which we can operate in the absence of hierarchy. It challenges our imaginations to think about the coordination of that much labor without hierarchy.•

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“I Will Stand By Much Of The Document As Written”

February 8, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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On the 20th anniversary of John Perry Barlow’s idealistic Davos edict, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” the Economist asked him to revisit those words and consider what he hit and missed. The Internet is no longer an utter Wild West but now an odd mix of anarchy and surveillance, a conflict unlikely to ever be fully settled, and one that will continue to produce positive and negative developments. Barlow’s idea that state governments were remnants of the Industrial Age now seems naive, though his argument that a global world demands a digital openness is a good one.

An excerpt:

The Economist:

What do you think you got especially right—or wrong?

John Perry Barlow:

I will stand by much of the document as written. I believe that it is still true that the governments of the physical world have found it very difficult to impose their will on cyberspace. Of course, they are as good as they ever were at imposing their will on people whose bodies they can lay a hand on, though it is increasingly easy, as it was then, to use technical means to make the physical location of those bodies difficult to determine.

Even when they do get someone cornered, like Chelsea Manning, or Julian Assange, or [Edward] Snowden, they’re not much good at shutting them up. Ed regularly does $50,000 speeches to big corporate audiences and is obviously able to speak very freely. Ditto Julian. And even ditto Chelsea Manning, who despite the fact that she’s serving a 35-year sentence, is still able to speak her mind to all who will listen.

People will sputter, but what about China, what about Silk Road [an online marketplace that sold drugs before being shut down in 2013], what about Kim Dotcom? Well, I believe that a close examination of Chinese censorship is a little more nuanced than the media here would have us believe and is mostly focused on preventing something like the Cultural Revolution. But the Chinese know that they can’t compete in a global marketplace if they don’t allow their best minds full contact with our best minds. Silk Road is already reassembling itself in the gloomier recesses of the dark web, and the arrest and persecution of Kim Dotcom was simply an illegal over-reach by the U.S. government. Yeah, they can enforce the rule of law online provided their ability to break it.•

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“Ten Years From Now, If The First Person Through A Breach Isn’t A Fricking Robot, Then Shame On Us”

February 8, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Sometimes when Americans consider the path forward with regards to genetic engineering or an automated military, we do so in a vacuum. We would never do that. That’s not how it will unravel, of course. We’ll be responding to other world powers, and sometimes in a race, a competitor will run much faster than anticipated. 

In a Financial Times piece, Geoff Dyer writes of the “split-screen reality” of the Pentagon, charged with fighting ISIS in a painstakingly Vietnam-ish slog while preparing for a possibility of a Digital Age WWIII with China or Russia or whomever. “We must be prepared for a high-end enemy,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says. We’ll also be trying to outpace our own fears, not necessarily the same thing as realities, and anxieties can take on a life of their own.

An excerpt:

The underlying objective of the new strategy is to find weapons and technologies to ensure US forces “can fight their way to the fight” as one official puts it — to evade the layered missile defences both China and Russia can erect, to defend bases against attack from precision-guided missiles and to be able to operate carrier fleets at a much greater distance from an enemy.

For some Pentagon planners, the long-term answers will be found in robotics — be they unmanned, autonomous planes or submarines that can surprise an enemy or robot soldiers that can reduce the risk to humans by launching attacks. Mr Work, who once co-wrote a paper called “Preparing for War in the Robotic Age”, said in December: “Ten years from now, if the first person through a breach isn’t a fricking robot, then shame on us.”

Mass attack

Last week Mr Carter talked about “swarming, autonomous vehicles” — an allusion to another idea that animates current defence thinking in Washington, the use of greater volumes of aircraft or ships in a conflict. The emphasis in American military technology in recent decades has been on developing weapons platforms that are deployed in fewer numbers but boast much greater capabilities, such as the F-35 fighter jet. However, backed by low-cost production techniques such as 3D printing, Pentagon planners are flirting with a different model that seeks to saturate an enemy with swarms of cheaper, more expendable drones.

“It is the reintroduction of the idea of mass,” says Mr Brimley at CNAS. “Not only do we have the better technology but we are going to bring mass and numbers to the fight and overwhelm you.”

Mr Work’s other big theme is the combining of human and machine intelligence, whether it be wearable electronics and exoskeletons for infantry soldiers or fighter jets with suites of sensors and software passing data to the pilot.•

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“A Monorail Curves Past A Butterfly Dome”

February 4, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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The building of Saudi Arabia’s new financial district, which was begun under one political reality, had its first phase completed under a new one. Will its glass domes and car-less streets be a secular, consumerist gated paradise, a place so apart that it can issue visas at its airports? Or will history intercede on the present, the confluence of government and religion presenting it with a new reality? If it’s the latter, Dubai may stand to gain, as explained in a brief Economist piece.

The opening:

THE skyscrapers of the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) rise out of Riyadh’s urban sprawl like an emerald city. Pointed glass spears compete for prominence with vast staggered lean-tos, streaked black-and-white like the back of a rearing zebra. A monorail curves past a butterfly dome. Blissfully vehicle-free in a city otherwise designed for cars, not people, KAFD is built around pedestrian precincts shaded by palm trees. Even the rubbish is collected on an underground conveyor belt. After seven years, the first phase of a futuristic financial hub for the Arab world’s largest economy is nearly complete. It has cost more than $10 billion and the lives of 11 building workers.

Something is missing, however. While decorators install tropical plants in the conference hall, the legal, fiscal and cultural architecture is still on the drawing board. Waleed Aleisa, the CEO, says he is still waiting to hear whether the zone will be free of corporation tax and under what jurisdiction it will operate.•

“It Won’t Be Long Before There Are Lots Of Little Spacecraft Landing On The Moon”

February 4, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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An excellent essay is “Here’s What We’ll Do In Space By 2116,” Emily Lakdawalla’s Nautilus piece that conjures up next-level space exploration in a way that manages to pass a sobriety test. While acknowledging the great obstacles to come, the writer takes a bold yet realistic look at what could well occur in the following ten decades, explaining, among other things, why early voyagers to Mars will likely be transported by private companies–and why the very first ones might not exactly be human. Lakdawalla acknowledges the next century will largely see us exploring (relatively) close to home, perhaps using asteroid mining and such to jump-start an “in-space economy.”

A passage dear to me is one that focuses on using non-human passengers to initially traverse the final frontier, the path I believe we should be taking for the foreseeable future. An excerpt:

Because of the costs and risks of physical human spaceflight, I’m personally more excited about a different kind of space exploration. Advances in miniaturization have made it relatively cheap to launch lots of microsatellites to near-Earth space. These craft will soon be sent further out, and it won’t be long before there are lots of little spacecraft landing on the Moon. From our homes on Earth, we could all take virtual joyrides across the lunar surface, with these mini explorers acting as our distant eyes.

It’s possible that this is how humans will first explore Mars, too—with a robotic body that needs no food, water, shelter, or sleep, serving as the avatar of human operators. The humans working the robot will still need to be located near Mars, not Earth, because of the significant delay in radio communications between the two planets. (The lag between commands sent and data received would range from eight to 42 minutes.) But the humans need not undertake the risks and challenges of landing on Mars: People in orbit at Mars could directly and immediately control Mars robots, all while staying in a ship or station tricked out with everything our delicate bodies need to survive. 

Then again, depending on how technology advances, it may be that the division that we now draw between “human” and “robotic” exploration will be archaic in 50 years.•

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“Increasingly, Human Intervention Will Be Unnecessary”

February 3, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

So much has been written about the Internet of Things, the pluses and minuses, but Bruce Schneier does an impressive job of analyzing its challenges in a new Forbes piece. We won’t just log into the machine–the machine will be everything, though it will be so quiet, not even a hum, that we’ll barely notice it. The writer identifies the IoT as a “world-sized robot” and calls for the establishment of a “Department of Technology Policy.” The opening:

The Internet of Things is the name given to the computerization of everything in our lives. Already you can buy Internet-enabled thermostats, light bulbs, refrigerators, and cars. Soon everything will be on the Internet: the things we own, the things we interact with in public, autonomous things that interact with each other.

These “things” will have two separate parts. One part will be sensors that collect data about us and our environment. Already our smartphones know our location and, with their onboard accelerometers, track our movements. Things like our thermostats and light bulbs will know who is in the room. Internet-enabled street and highway sensors will know how many people are out and about—and eventually who they are. Sensors will collect environmental data from all over the world.

The other part will be actuators. They’ll affect our environment. Our smart thermostats aren’t collecting information about ambient temperature and who’s in the room for nothing; they set the temperature accordingly. Phones already know our location, and send that information back to Google Maps and Waze to determine where traffic congestion is; when they’re linked to driverless cars, they’ll automatically route us around that congestion. Amazon already wants autonomous drones to deliver packages. The Internet of Things will increasingly perform actions for us and in our name. 

Increasingly, human intervention will be unnecessary.•

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“I Think We Could Have Used A Better Ground Game, A Term I Wasn’t Even Familiar With”

February 3, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Ted Cruz may be the most loathsome serious Presidential candidate of our time, and Marco Rubio seems a bullshit artist who reportedly has a lot of skeletons rattling around in his closet, but this pair of jokers outmaneuvered Donald Trump on many levels in Iowa. That’s because he’s a dummkopf in general and particularly in regard to politics. Arrogant people lacking in self-awareness almost always also lack attention to detail.

Having entered the race on a whim because he hoped to masturbate to donuts in the Lincoln bedroom, Trump then received an avalanche of attention for his vicious and biased remarks, propelling his whole idiot campaign. Now, even though he’s not been completely ejected from the clown-car process thanks to sheer odiousness of his fellow candidates, Trump’s flailing wildly. Here’s what the man who compared Ben Carson to a child molester had to say post-Hawkeye State:

[Trump] added that a mailer in Iowa sent by Cruz’s campaign that revealed neighbors’ voting participation was malicious: “He insulted Ben Carson by doing what he did to Ben Carson. That was a disgrace…. He’s a man of insult.”•

In a rare moment of clarity, the blockhead who managed to bankrupt a casino acknowledged that he screwed the pooch in Iowa. From Kia Makarechi at Vanity Fair:

The post-Iowa reckoning continued Wednesday morning, with Donald Trump speed-dialing into MSNBC’s Morning Joe for an awkward postmortem. Trump, who has been the Republican presidential poll-leader for months, placed second in the Iowa caucuses Monday night, three percentage points behind Ted Cruz.

To hear Trump tell it, the loss was easily preventable. The only problem? He has no idea how to run a campaign.

“I think we could have used a better ground game, a term I wasn’t even familiar with,” Trump said. “You know, when you hear ‘ground game,’ you say what the hell is that? Now I’m familiar with it. But, you know, I think in retrospect we should have had a better ground game. I would have funded a better ground game, but people told me our ground game was fine. And by most standards it was.”

Cruz’s campaign has been openly gloating about how it used advanced data modeling to invent positions for the candidate that would resonate with Iowa voters. Did you know that the Senator from Texas has strong views on Iowa’s fireworks ban? Neither did the Senator from Texas, until someone on his analytics team identified the ban as an issue that could sway some Iowan hearts and minds.•

 

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“A Huge Palace And Not A Single Book”

February 2, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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What a difference a day makes. Just before the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump was labeled by Spiegel the “world’s most dangerous man.” If he were to become President, you could make that argument since he is ridiculously unqualified for the job, but the first-in-nation voting put a crimp in his effort. New Hampshire could revise the script again, but on Tuesday morning he seems more Pat Buchanan with hair plugs than Pol Pot.

It’s deplorable that our new media equation used Trump as cheap entertainment, as if it were just one more tacky yet harmless reality show. Even worse are the supposedly serious journalists who depicted him as merely a somewhat irreverent entertainer when he was making fascistic noise in a very important arena. 

That being said, the Spiegel article by Markus Feldenkirchen, Veit Medick and Holger Stark is still really good. An excerpt:

‘It’s a Miracle Trump Didn’t Invent the Selfie’

Michael D’Antonio is sitting in an Applebee’s fast-food restaurant on Long Island, speaking quietly. He’s a cheerful, thoughtful man with a white beard, the polar opposite of Trump. D’Antonio has delved a lot deeper than most others into Donald Trump’s world.

D’Antonio recently wrote a biography of Trump, who was enthusiastic about the project and gave his cooperation — at least initially. Trump granted the author several interviews, which were usually held in his penthouse inside the Trump Tower, behind the kinds of double doors that would normally be used in castles. D’Antonio was granted free access to Trump’s family and associates, and spoke with his grown children and all three of his wives. But when Trump realized that D’Antonio was also one of his critics, he immediately canceled the project.

“What I noticed immediately in my first visit was that there were no books,” says D’Antonio. “A huge palace and not a single book.” He asked Trump whether there was a book that had influenced him. “I would love to read,” Trump replied. “I’ve had many best sellers, as you know, and The Art of the Deal was one of the biggest-selling books of all time.” Soon Trump was talking about The Apprentice. Trump called it “the No. 1 show on television,” a reality TV show in which, in 14 seasons, he played himself and humiliated candidates vying for the privilege of a job within his company. In the interview, Trump spent what seemed like an eternity talking about how fabulous and successful he is, but he didn’t name a single book that he hadn’t written.

“Trump doesn’t read,” D’Antonio says in the restaurant. “He hasn’t absorbed anything serious and profound about American society since his college days. And to be honest, I don’t even think he read in college.” When Trump was asked who his foreign policy advisers were, he replied: “Well, I watch the shows.” He was referring to political talk shows on TV.

In all of the conversations about his life, Trump seemed like a little boy, says D’Antonio. “Like a six-year-old boy who comes home from the playground and can hardly wait to announce that he shot the decisive goal.”

According to D’Antonio, American society revolves around two things: ambition and self-promotion. This is why Trump is one of the most appropriate heroes he can imagine for the country, he adds, noting that no one is more ambitious and narcissistic. “It’s a miracle Trump didn’t invent the selfie.”•

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“I Change My Mind About Iowa’s Role Weekly”

February 1, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

<> on August 15, 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa.

Nothing has been better than the New York Times’ day-to-day coverage of the 2016 Presidential race which kicks off in earnest tonight in Iowa. The work by reporters like Maggie Haberman, Michael Barbaro and Trip Gabriel has been lively, lucid and layered, a Herculean task in the new normal of the nonstop churn. Gabriel, who’s been stationed in first-in-nation state for a year, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

_____________________________

Question:

As an Iowan, I’ve long been skeptical of our First in the Nation status when it comes to narrowing the field of presidential candidates, largely because of the small (tiny) non-representative population. Of course, that’s a risky opinion to have here, so I was wondering, do you feel Iowa perhaps has too much influence on the process? Or has your time in Iowa helped justify it’s position as FITN in your mind?

Trip Gabriel:

I change my mind about Iowa’s role weekly. On the plus side, it’s a state where a candidate without money can spend a lot of time doing retail campaigning. If I was reporting from Florida today, the race would be much more about who has the millions for TV ads. But yes, Iowa is unrepresentative of America, not just demographically (very white) but also ideologically. Republicans are very conservative here, and Democrats are very liberal — 43 percent called themselves “socialists” in a Des Moines Register poll this month.

_____________________________

Question:

What, exactly, is stopping a big state like NY, Texas, California or Florida from just moving up their primaries to before Iowa and simply beating back party leaders through their sheer importance in population/delegates?

Trip Gabriel:

The national parties, which control the nominating convention, write the rules, and they can — and have — discounted the delegates from states that try to jump ahead of the traditional early-voting states. That said, the GOP chairman Reince Priebus is not a fan of the four early “carve-out states” and wants to see a regional primary system that would spread the responsibility for choosing the nominee more broadly.

_____________________________

Question:

Who in the GOP side has the most extensive field operation in Iowa? I went to a couple of rallies this past weekend and didn’t see much volunteer recruitment from Trump or Rubio rallies.

Trip Gabriel:

Ted Cruz has the biggest field operation on the GOP side. He has a college dorm in Des Moines that has housed waves of volunteers from out of state. Jeb Bush, Trump and Rubio have lighter footprints, but they are still playing. I met a Rubio volunteer from Chicago at one of his events over the weekend, asking people to sign “commit to caucus” cards. You wouldn’t see much fresh recruitment of volunteers at this point. It’s all about GOTV — getting out the voters who you know support you.

_____________________________

Question:

Why do you think Rubio has failed to consolidate support? I think a lot of people expected he would emerge as the alternative to the anti-establishment trump and Cruz, but his performance has been pretty lackluster. What is he doing wrong, and do you expect to see an “establishment” candidate emerge eventually?

Trip Gabriel:

I think Rubio sent confusing messages about who he was running against. For a long time he contrasted himself with Cruz, trying to look equally conservative on immigration, promoting a “dark days for America’s future” message. Lately he has returned to his message of optimism. I do expect the anti-Trump, anti-Cruz voters to rally around one candidate eventually. The question is whether it will be too late, ie after Super Tuesday.

_____________________________

Question:

How much do you think Hillary and Bernie’s positions on climate change and fossil fuels will play into the Democratic winner?

Trip Gabriel:

I was interested to see in the new Q-Pac poll that 11 percent of Dems ranked climate change as their top issue, a pretty strong showing (only health care and the economy ranked higher). Sanders was earlier and stronger on climate change, opposing the Keystone XL pipeline for example, but Clinton has since rolled out strong proposals, going beyond even the Obama administration. If climate change is your top issue, you’d probably be happy with either candidate at this point and might be also asking about who would be most effective in getting something done.

_____________________________

Question:

Who do you think is most likely to win the Iowa Caucuses on either side? Will you be in a Caucus room while it is happening. If so, what will it be like?

Trip Gabriel:

As of this moment (and this really does change moment to moment), I’m expecting good nights for Trump and Clinton. Take it with a grain of salt, or maybe a whole shaker — we “experts” have been wrong over and over about the races this year.

_____________________________

Question:

Something I haven’t seen anywhere: What is your plan after Iowa?

Trip Gabriel:

Heading to South Carolina, the first-in-the-South primary.•

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“His Period In Office Has Provoked Rebellious Popular Movements Outside Washington”

January 31, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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It’s not that there’s nothing of use in John O’Sullivan’s Wall Street Journal “Saturday Essay” about this upside-down American election season, but it’s built, in part, on shaky and partisan foundations. It argues that President Obama’s use of executive orders is an unprecedented outlier that has caused the nation to be torn asunder. Except that both Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton issued far more during their terms in office. The elder President Bush was on pace to as well had he won a second term. The same goes for many earlier Commanders in Chief. 

In regards to the Affordable Care Act, O’Sullivan uses the phrase “pushed through,” language that makes it seem as if something unfair or uncommon occurred. Pushing agendas through Congress is something the Oval Office has always done. 

Let’s recall that the GOP was holding meetings prior to Obama’s inauguration to plan to torpedo his Presidency. The divisiveness wasn’t a reaction but a preemptive strike.

O’Sullivan is correct in saying the Left and Right alike have been disappointed with Obama for different reasons, though you have to wonder in those cases if the fault lies with him or if no President could satisfy such a factious moment in our nation’s history. An excerpt:

President Barack Obama is the catalyst that made everything boil over. It shouldn’t be surprising. He proclaimed that he wanted to transform America fundamentally. While the Democrats controlled Congress, he pushed through the semi-nationalization of health care. Since the Democrats lost control, he has pushed his presidential authority to the very limits of the Constitution to secure his agenda on immigration, treaty-making with Iran, global warming and much else.

Mr. Obama has succeeded in getting a majority-Republican Congress to eschew its power of the purse and finance almost his entire agenda. Only the courts have effectively blocked his extensions of lawmaking and regulatory power, and that battle is still being waged. So it would be very odd if people didn’t conclude that a determined president could achieve almost anything he wanted if he were bold enough—and that Mr. Obama has done so.

As a result, his period in office has provoked rebellious popular movements outside Washington on the right and, more surprisingly, on the left.•

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“Today’s Technological Advances, Impressive As They May Be, Don’t Really Compare To The Ones That Transformed The U.S. Economy”

January 29, 2016 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

edisonbulb

Asking if innovation is over is no less narcissistic than suggesting that evolution is done. It flatters us to think that we’ve already had all the good ideas, that we’re the living end. More likely, we’re always closer to the beginning.

Of course, when looking at relatively short periods of time, there are ebbs and flows in invention that have serious ramifications for the standard of living. In Robert Gordon’s The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the economist argues that the 1870-1970 period was a golden age of productivity and development unknown previously and unmatched since.

In an excellent Foreign Affairs review, Tyler Cowen, who himself has worried that we’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit, lavishly praises the volume–“likely to be the most interesting and important economics book of the year.” But in addition to acknowledging a technological slowdown in the last few decades, Cowen also wisely counters the book’s downbeat tone while recognizing the obstacles to forecasting, writing that “predicting future productivity rates is always difficult; at any moment, new technologies could transform the U.S. economy, upending old forecasts. Even scholars as accomplished as Gordon have limited foresight.” In fact, he points out that the author, before his current pessimism, predicted earlier this century very healthy growth rates.

My best guess is that there will always be transformational opportunities, ripe and within arm’s length, waiting for us to pluck them.

An excerpt:

In the first part of his new book, Gordon argues that the period from 1870 to 1970 was a “special century,” when the foundations of the modern world were laid. Electricity, flush toilets, central heating, cars, planes, radio, vaccines, clean water, antibiotics, and much, much more transformed living and working conditions in the United States and much of the West. No other 100-year period in world history has brought comparable progress. A person’s chance of finishing high school soared from six percent in 1900 to almost 70 percent, and many Americans left their farms and moved to increasingly comfortable cities and suburbs. Electric light illuminated dark homes. Running water eliminated water-borne diseases. Modern conveniences allowed most people in the United States to abandon hard physical labor for good.

In highlighting the specialness of these years, Gordon challenges the standard view, held by many economists, that the U.S. economy should grow by around 2.2 percent every year, at least once the ups and downs of the business cycle are taken into account. And Gordon’s history also shows that not all GDP gains are created equal. Some sources of growth, such as antibiotics, vaccines, and clean water, transform society beyond the size of their share of GDP. But others do not, such as many of the luxury goods developed since the 1980s. GDP calculations do not always reflect such differences. Gordon’s analysis here is mostly correct, extremely important, and at times brilliant—the book is worth buying and reading for this part alone.

Gordon goes on to argue that today’s technological advances, impressive as they may be, don’t really compare to the ones that transformed the U.S. economy in his “special century.” Although computers and the Internet have led to some significant breakthroughs, such as allowing almost instantaneous communication over great distances, most new technologies today generate only marginal improvements in well-being. The car, for instance, represented a big advance over the horse, but recent automotive improvements have provided diminishing returns. Today’s cars are safer, suffer fewer flat tires, and have better sound systems, but those are marginal, rather than fundamental, changes. That shift—from significant transformations to minor advances—is reflected in today’s lower rates of productivity.•

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“America Is The High Ground When It Comes To Automation”

January 29, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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An Economist article looks at the latest report on automation by Carl Benedikt Frey, Michael Osborne and Craig Holmes, which argues that poorer nations are more likely than, say, America, to be prone to technological unemployment despite the U.S. holding an advantage in AI.

Because such countries are not yet as widely engaged in information work, their Industrial Age could be interrupted mid-epoch before they arrive at the Information Age. It’s like being pushed down a ladder when you’ve only scaled it part of the way. The academics acknowledge, though, that everything from policy to consumer preference may forestall the rise of the machines in India and China others. After all, Foxconn’s promised one-million robots factory workforce has yet to be realized.

An excerpt:

BILL BURR, an American entertainer, was dismayed when he first came across an automated checkout. “I thought I was a comedian; evidently I also work in a grocery store,” he complained. “I can’t believe I forgot my apron.” Those whose jobs are at risk of being displaced by machines are no less grumpy. A study published in 2013 by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University stoked anxieties when it found that 47% of jobs in America were vulnerable to automation. Machines are mastering ever more intricate tasks, such as translating texts or diagnosing illnesses. Robots are also becoming capable of manual labour that hitherto could be carried out only by dexterous humans.

Yet America is the high ground when it comes to automation, according to a new report* from the same pair along with other authors. The proportion of threatened jobs is much greater in poorer countries: 69% in India, 77% in China and as high as 85% in Ethiopia. There are two reasons. First, jobs in such places are generally less skilled. Second, there is less capital tied up in old ways of doing things. Driverless taxis might take off more quickly in a new city in China, for instance, than in an old one in Europe.

Attracting investment in labour-intensive manufacturing has been a route to riches for many developing countries, including China. But having a surplus of cheap labour is becoming less of a lure to manufacturers. An investment in industrial robots can be repaid in less than two years. This is a particular worry for the poor and underemployed in Africa and India, where industrialisation has stalled at low levels of income—a phenomenon dubbed “premature deindustrialisation” by Dani Rodrik of Harvard University.•

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“The Other 99 Per Cent Of Our Fellow Citizens Are Falling Farther And Farther Behind”

January 28, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

In his great song “Pretty Boy Floyd,” Woody Guthrie, knowing that when it comes to crime a collar can be white just as easily as blue, sang these words:

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

For those who employ the latter modus operandi, not even a stylus, let alone a pen, is necessary anymore. Over the last four decades in the U.S. (and much of the rest of the developed world), money has mysteriously moved from the middle class into the accounts of the 1%, and no one seems completely sure how it was transferred. We’re only know that it’s shifted, that it’s been shifty. Maybe it was the manipulation of tax codes or the decline of unions or the rise of the machines or the forces of globalization or the invention of outlandish Wall Street products. Probably it was all of that and more. The result is the disappearance of the prosperity enjoyed by a far greater percentage of Americans in the aftermath of WWII through the early 1970s, which was created by a humming capitalist engine paired with severe progressive tax rates that redistributed the wealth. No one need want to return to the pre-Civil Rights United States–wildly uneven in other odious ways–but there are some economic lessons to be learned there.

One thing that seems sure is the vast accumulation of riches at the top isn’t the end result of a successful experiment in meritocracy. These are the not uniformly the best, the brightest and the most deserving. Similarly, the shit-out-of-luck souls aren’t on the ever-widening bottom because of any defect of character or lack of work ethic. Some may drink or use drugs or divorce, but so do those whose wealth provides a cushion for such failings common to mere mortals. The main reason that poor people are so is because, at long last, they don’t have any money. They haven’t failed the system. Quite the contrary.

In a London Review of Books essay, Ed Miliband, the leader of the British Labour Party prior to Jeremy Corbyn, opines on the haves, the have-nots and the what-the-fuck situation we all find ourselves in, the eclipsed and the sun-kissed alike. The politician, who believes that beyond sheer unfairness, inequality ultimately inhibits economic growth, offers some prescriptions. The opening:

‘What do I see in our future today you ask? I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while … plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 per cent of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind.’ Who said this? Jeremy Corbyn? Thomas Piketty? In fact it was Nick Hanauer, an American entrepreneur and multibillionaire, who in a TED talk in 2014 confessed to living a life that the rest of us ‘can’t even imagine’. Hanauer doesn’t believe he’s particularly talented or unusually hardworking; he doesn’t believe he has a great technical mind. His success, he says, is a ‘consequence of spectacular luck, of birth, of circumstance and of timing’. Just as his own extraordinary wealth can’t be explained by his unique talents, neither, he says, can rising inequality in the United States be justified on the grounds that it is a side effect of a broader economic success from which everyone benefits. As Henry Ford recognised, if you don’t pay ordinary workers decent wages, the economy will lack the demand to sustain economic growth.

Hanauer is in the vanguard of the ‘Fight for 15’, the campaign for a $15 minimum wage. Like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have also issued loud warnings about inequality, he is heir to a long tradition of social concern among the wealthy in the US. They have reason to be worried. The last time inequality reached comparable levels was shortly before the Wall Street Crash. As Anthony Atkinson shows in Inequality: What Can Be Done?, inequality in the US fell for decades after the crash, before beginning to rise again in the 1970s.​ Since then the gap between the wealthy and the rest has grown steadily wider. The top 1 per cent now has nearly 20 per cent of total US personal income. In the 1980s, inequality in the UK went up even more sharply than in the US. Since then, overall UK inequality has been relatively stable but the income share of the top 1 per cent has increased significantly and now accounts for about 12 per cent of UK personal income. The important factors are rising inequality in wages, a decline in the share of the national income that wages represent as more money goes to corporate profits and dividends, and a reversal of redistribution from the rich to the poor.

The rise in inequality should not, Atkinson insists, be brushed aside as an inevitable effect of irresistible forces such as globalisation or developments in technology. It is driven by political choices.•

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