Matt Novak

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“His Desire To Explore The World Of Computing Became Overpowering”

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

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Online anarchy did not begin with the World Wide Web. More than a decade before Sir Timothy Berners-Lee’s cat-meme-and-fetish-porn-enabling gift, the Internet got its first real taste of widespread hacking. That was in 1983.

We reflect with respect on the phone phreaks who preceded these Reagan Era interlopers. John Draper (aka “Captain Crunch”), the teenaged Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and other blue-box builders are credited with giving birth to a personal-computing culture that’s transformed the world. Their Internet progeny were not held in the same esteem, despite operating in an era before hacking laws existed.

In the early 1980s, the 414s and the Inner Circle, American teen hackers, were the subject of mass arrests for breaching government and corporate accounts. They mostly did so just to prove they could, not apparently with any malicious intent, but that hardly mattered when their garages and bedrooms were stormed by Feds.

The immediate aftermath in court was covered by the New York Times:

MILWAUKEE, March 16— Two young men who broke into large computers in the United States and Canada last June, simply to prove they could do it, have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges, according to documents filed today in Federal District Court.

Eric Klumb, an Assistant United States Attorney, said it was the first such computer crime case in which the motive was not financial gain.

Gerald Wondra of West Allis, Wis., and Timothy D. Winslow of Milwaukee, both 21 years old, agreed to plead guilty to two counts each of making harassing telephone calls. Both are members of a loosely knit group of computer enthusiasts called the ”414’s,” after Milwaukee’s telephone area code. …

By charging the two, Mr. Klumb said he thought other computer enthusiasts might be deterred from similar intrusions.•

In an excellent Paleofuture post, Matt Novak recalls the watershed event and analyzes its fallout. An excerpt about one of the arrestees, Bill Landreth, the son of hippies whose dad was a financially struggling grow-lamp inventor:

When I met Bill Landreth at a Starbucks in Santa Monica, he was sitting quietly at a table drinking coffee with two bags on the the seat across from him, and a bag of blankets in the corner. A pipe made out of an apple and filled with what I assumed was medical marijuana sat at the table next to his coffee and Samsung tablet. A passing cop glanced at the spread but didn’t raise an eyebrow.

Arranging our meeting was tricky, because Bill isn’t sure where he’ll be sleeping from night to night. Now 52, with a slight goatee and a tussle of wavy hair that nearly reaches his shoulders, Bill has been living on the streets for 30 years. But if it weren’t for his receding hairline and a certain grayness to his gaze, he’d probably pass for a decade younger. There’s something assertive yet firmly guarded about the way he speaks. It’s as though Bill’s a man who’s not afraid to say what he thinks, but still worries about saying something out of line in front of me.

In our conversation, he was calm, affable, and clearly intelligent, and almost immediately began rattling off computers and computing languages of which I have little to no background or understanding.

Bill got his first computer in 1980, he tells me. It was a TRS-80 from RadioShack. He was 14 or 15, and explains that he planned to get the version with 8K of memory using $500 he had saved. His dad offered to pitch in another $500, and he got the 16K version with a cassette tape drive for storage. He also picked up a 300 baud modem.

Bill was a quick learner, and developed a knack for the BASIC programming language. From there he’d learn other languages, and his desire to explore the world of computing became overpowering.•

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“What Will A Demagogue With A Platform Like Trump’s Who Ascends To The Presidency Do With Control Over The NSA, FBI And IRS?”

March 2, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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At Gizmodo, Matt Novak poses an interesting question: “Has Donald Trump Ever Used a Computer?” 

My best guess would be “yes,” that he Googles himself in the wee hours of the morning when too bloated on bacon cheeseburgers too sleep, growing furious at blogs that mock him. And is it really possible this man is unfamiliar with Internet porn?

I think the better query might be this one: “Has Donald Trump Ever Read a Book?” I’m more worried about his ignorance in regard to this much earlier tool. He certainly doesn’t have any in his home, and he’s paid other people to write ones published under his name. I feel fairly certain that this man has no paper cuts on his freakishly stubby fingers. 

Two excerpts follow, the first from Novak’s post and the second from Lawrence Summers’ essay about the specter of a Trump Presidency.

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From Novak:

There is no technological test for the presidency in the United States. A hypothetical President Trump would not be required to use a computer nor a smartphone. But it’s 2016. The future president of the United States will confront myriad issues involving the average American’s use of technology. And if you’ve never touched a computer in your life, it seems hard to imagine how Trump might relate to things as trivial as “information overload” or as important as mass government surveillance.

We have documentary evidence of Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Marco Rubio all using tablets, smartphones, and PCs. Somehow Trump has mastered the high-tech demands of running a 21st century presidential campaign without ever using those technologies first-hand. He’s on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—all set up for him and controlled by his lackeys. Frankly, I’m not sure whether to be impressed or horrified.

I guess, of all the things to be horrified over regarding our future president, his technological prowess might be the least of our worries.•

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From Summers:

The possible election of Donald Trump as President is the greatest present threat to the prosperity and security of the United States.  I have had a strong point of view on each of the last ten presidential elections, but never before had I feared that what I regarded as the wrong outcome would in the long sweep of history risk grave damage to the American project.

The problem is not with Trump’s policies, though they are wacky in the few areas where they are not indecipherable. It is that he is running as modern day man on a horseback—demagogically offering the power of his personality as a magic solution to all problems—and making clear that he is prepared to run roughshod over anything or anyone who stands in his way.

Trump has already flirted with the Ku Klux Klan and disparaged and demeaned the female half of our population. He vowed to kill the families of terrorists, use extreme forms of torture, and forbid Muslims from coming into our country. Time and again, he has claimed he will crush those who stand in his way; his promised rewrite of libel laws, permitting the punishment of The New York Times and Washington Post for articles he does not like, will allow him to make good on this threat.

Lyndon Johnson’s celebrated biographer, Robert Caro, has written that while “power doesn’t always corrupt…[it] always reveals.” What will a demagogue with a platform like Trump’s who ascends to the presidency do with control over the NSA, FBI and IRS?  What commitment will he manifest to the rule of law? Already Trump has proposed that protesters at his rallies “should have been roughed up.”

Nothing in the way he campaigned gave Richard Nixon a mandate for keeping an enemies list or engaging in dirty tricks.  If he is elected, Donald Trump may think he has such a mandate.  What is the basis for doubting that it will be used?•

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“Oregon’s Founding Is Part Of The Forgotten History Of Racism In The American West”

January 11, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

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That wonderful Wallace Shawn gathered all his guilt into an indigestible lump to write, in 1996, The Designated Mourner, about intellect under siege as society goes up in flames. Not as good as Aunt Dan and Lemon or Marie and Bruce, but interesting stuff in the run-up to the new millennium. In retrospect, Shawn seemed to have misfired a bit. It wasn’t the top that was vanishing but the middle. 

Another thing we’ve lost besides the middle in our new normal is memory, that decidedly un-pliant thing. Even things from a few years ago seem like ancient history. Perhaps more than designated mourners what we need now are designated reminders, people who can point out that the world didn’t begin with downloads.

One of the most colorful of current reminders is Matt Novak, founder of Paleofuture. After moving that site at Gizmodo, Novak penned “Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia,” a post that seems very timely right now. Not that Oregonians are responsible for the Bundy brigade of anti-government interlopers, but it does speak to the history of regional resistance to authority. The opening:

When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926. Oregon’s founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American west.

Waddles Coffee Shop in Portland, Oregon was a popular restaurant in the 1950s for both locals and travelers alike. The drive-in catered to America’s postwar obsession with car culture, allowing people to get coffee and a slice of pie without even leaving their vehicle. But if you happened to be black, the owners of Waddles implored you to keep on driving. The restaurant had a sign outside with a very clear message: “White Trade Only — Please.”

It’s the kind of scene from the 1950s that’s so hard for many Americans to imagine happening outside of the Jim Crow South. How could a progressive, northern city like Portland have allowed a restaurant to exclude non-white patrons? This had to be an anomaly, right? In reality it was far too common in Oregon, a state that was explicitly founded as a kind of white utopia.•

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“Here At DARPA We Don’t Do Science For Science’s Sake”

June 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Among other things, Matt Novak’s Paleofuture dispatch from the DARPA Robotics Challenge explains why technology associated with the agency–the Internet, driverless cars–usually pans out even if it initially seems outré. That something to consider since it has more than a passing interest in robotic warfare. An excerpt:

If DARPA has an interest in any particular technology, there’s a reasonable chance that it’ll be a practical reality within your lifetime. DARPA specializes in “high risk, high reward” research and development, which means that it’s pushing the limits of what’s possible. But DARPA isn’t interested in dicking around with impractical nonsense. Or anything that doesn’t have applications that contribute to national defense. “Here at DARPA we don’t do science for science’s sake,” Steven Walker, deputy director of DARPA, says in a video at the expo. Walker goes on to explain that one of the reasons DARPA was created was to create “technological surprise.”

The agency was founded in 1958 (then known as ARPA) on the heels of the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. It was a national embarrassment for the United States — especially the Cold Warriors who insisted that American style capitalism would produce the best goods, services, and technologies. So the Eisenhower administration decided that it wouldn’t be surprised again.

Just one of many technologies developed by DARPA is the driverless car. Americans have been waiting on the fully automated driverless car for decades. In fact, scifi visions of the driverless car are nearly as old as the automobile itself. And with each passing day, we inch closer and closer to driverless cars becoming a mainstream reality on America’s roads.

Today we associate companies like Google with driverless car development. But DARPA has been working on driverless cars since before Google even existed.•

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“Newspapers Would Openly Solicit Companies For Paid Advertising Designed To Look Like Straight News”

August 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Not even during the second half of 20th-century America, when owning a print-media organ was tantamount to a license to mint money, did we see a brief, shining moment when native advertising was considered so unseemly that it simply couldn’t be done. Oh, it was done. Today’s foundering news industry’s penchant for more and bigger advertorials is merely a deeper embrace of a practice that’s always been. 

From Matt Novak’s Paleofuture riposte to John Oliver’s very funny piece about the separation of church and state:

“One of the most interesting articles on the history of advertisements disguised as news is probably Linda Lawson’s 1988 paper, ‘Advertisements Masquerading as News in Turn-of-the-Century American Periodicals.’

Lawson explains just how prevalent advertorials were over a century ago. Back then they were called ‘reading notices:’

One such marketing technique was the reading notice. Assuming that people would be more likely to read news stories and editorials than display advertisements, businesses began writing advertisements in the form of news copy. Newspaper and magazine editors agreed to print them for money. 

Lawson cites over a dozen specific cases of advertising content appearing as editorial at the turn of the 20th century, and meticulously documents the many fights over the ethics involved. Newspapers would openly solicit companies for paid advertising designed to look like straight news, demanding much higher rates than traditional ads. Lawson even describes an instance in 1886 when the New York Times asked for and received $1,200 from the Bell Telephone Company in exchange for positive coverage.

Not long after this minor scandal at the Times, New York’s newspaper of record became the harshest critic of accepting money for editorial coverage.”

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“Taking An International Flight In The 1930s Was Quite An Experience”

November 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From another smart post from Matt Novak’s wonderful Paleofuture blog, this one about international air travel in the 1930s:

“Equal parts harrowing adventure and indulgent luxury, taking an international flight in the 1930s was quite an experience. But it was an experience that people who could afford it signed up for in droves.

Nearly 50,000 people would fly Imperial Airways from 1930 until 1939. But these passengers paid incredibly high prices to hop around the world. The longest flights could span over 12,000 miles and cost as much as $20,000 when adjusted for inflation.

A flight from London to Brisbane, Australia, for instance, (the longest route available in 1938) took 11 days and included over two dozen scheduled stops. Today, people can make that journey in just 22 hours, with a single layover in Hong Kong, and pay less than $2,000 for a round trip ticket.”

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“And Don’t Forget The 420,000 Gallons Of Horse Urine Flowing Through The Streets Each Week”

November 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Matt Novak’s Paleofuture blog, housed now at Gizmodo, is one of the very best things birthed on the Internet. In a recent post, Novak examines an unrealized “centralized street-vacuum system” that was proposed in 1922 to help New York City curb its pollution problem. The opening:

“New York City at the turn of the 20th century was a pretty pungent place. Piles of garbage, millions of people cooking food, and about 2.5 million pounds of horse manure emptied into the streets per day will do that to a city. And don’t forget the 420,000 gallons of horse urine flowing through the streets each week. But some forward-thinking New Yorkers had an idea to clean up the city: establish a citywide central vacuum system.

The August 1922 issue of Science and Invention magazine proposed this innovative vacuum system for the Big Apple and claimed that it would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The magazine claimed that the new system — which could be run privately, or preferably managed by the city — would also eliminate many diseases and drastically cut the mortality rate.

Science and Invention explained that the vacuum pipes needed for such a system wouldn’t be so different from the water and gas pipes that were already running through the streets.”

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“The Key Man In The New Power Elite Will Be The One Who Can Best Program A Computer”

June 4, 2013 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In “Change the World,” George Packer’s excellent New Yorker article about the intermingling of Silicon Valley and the Washington Beltway, one insider neatly summed up why technologists might be a positive force for political change: “Our voice carries a lot of weight because we are broadly popular with Americans.” That was certainly true until recently, with the nerds having had their revenge, the clever children bringing the future to us now, the turtlenecked gurus encouraged to treat their marked-up gadgets as holy grails. But do you get the sense that those good feelings are beginning to change, that, perhaps the Digital Revolution, like most revolutions do, has gotten messy, and that those who stormed the gates now seem a little barbaric?

From the excellent Matt Novak at Paleofuture, a document that recalls how one 1960s Internet visionary predicted superwealth for a breed of people who were then high school freshmen and younger:

“In 1969, internet pioneer Paul Baran predicted that by the year 2000, computer programmers may very well be the richest people in the world. Remember, this is when Bill Gates was just a 14-year-old nerd in Seattle.

The ARPANET had not yet drawn its first breath when Baran wrote his 1969 paper, ‘On The Impact of the New Communications Media Upon Social Values.’ But his vision for what new communications technology would enable (and sometimes harm) in the last three decades of the 20th century, was disturbingly prescient.

His prediction about the computer programmer of the year 2000 makes one wonder if Baran was a time traveler perhaps warning us about the dot-com bubble:

As communication development evolves, more decision functions will be placed upon computers tied together as a common communications network. Financial success may in the future come to depend more upon the brilliance and imagination of the human who programs the computer than upon any other single factor. The key man in the new power elite will be the one who can best program a computer, that is, the person who makes the best use of the available information and the computer’s skills in formulating a problem.”

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“Should We Rely On These Outdated Systems To Continue Fulfilling Our Changing Needs?”

May 17, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From a new post at Matt Novak’s resolutely great Paleofuture blog, a 1997 demo video from the National Automated Highway System Consortium which touts automatic roads and driverless cars, in a decade that didn’t even have GPS.

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“The Automobile Was Seen By Many As The Progressive Solution To The Transportation Problems Of Los Angeles”

April 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Excerpts from smart posts on two blogs at Smithsonian, one about the tortured history of Los Angeles public transportation and the other about the future of job interviews.

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From Matt Novak’s “Nobody Walks in L.A.“:

“In 1926 there was a big push to build over 50 miles of elevated railway in Los Angeles. The city’s low density made many skeptical that Los Angeles could ever support public transit solutions to its transportation woes in the 20th century. The local newspapers campaigned heavily against elevated railways downtown, even going so far as to send reporters to Chicago and Boston to get quotes critical of those cities’ elevated railways. L.A.’s low density was a direct result of the city’s most drastic growth occurring in the 1910s and ‘20s when automobiles were allowing people to spread out and build homes in far flung suburbs and not be tied to public transit to reach the commercial and retail hub of downtown.

As strange as it may seem today, the automobile was seen by many as the progressive solution to the transportation problems of Los Angeles in the 1920s. The privately owned rail companies were inflating their costs and making it impossible for the city to buy them out. Angelenos were reluctant to to subsidize private rail, despite their gripes with service. Meanwhile, both the city and the state continued to invest heavily in freeways. In 1936 Fortune magazine reported on what they called rail’s obsolescence.

Though the city’s growth stalled somewhat during the Great Depression it picked right back up again during World War II. People were again moving to the city in droves looking for work in this artificial port town that was fueling the war effort on the west coast. But at the end of the war the prospects for mass transit in L.A. were looking as grim as ever.”

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From Randy Rieland’s “How Big Data Will Mean the End of Job Interviews“:

“Consider the findings of Evolv, a San Francisco company that’s making a name for itself through its data-driven insights. It contends, for instance, that people who fill out online job applications using a browser that they installed themselves on their PCs, such as Chrome or Firefox, perform their jobs better and change jobs less often. You might speculate that this is because the kind of person who downloads a browser other than the one that came with his or her computer, is more proactive, more resourceful.

But Evolv doesn’t speculate. It simply points out that this is what data from more than 30,000 employees strongly suggests. There’s nothing anecdotal about it; it’s based on info gleaned from ten of thousands of workers. And that’s what gives it weight.

‘The heart of science is measurement,’ Erik Brynjolfsson, of the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., pointed out in a recent New York Times article on what’s become known as work-force science. ‘We’re seeing a revolution in measurement, and it will revolutionize organizational economics and personnel economics.'”

 

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“The Commonest Type Of Normal Male Will Be Taller And More Gangling Than Ever, With Big Feet, Horse-Faces And Deformed Dental Arches”

February 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Matt Novak’s brilliant Paleofuture blog, now housed at the Smithsonian site, is one of the very best uses of the Internet. Looking back at old predictions of the future, it unearths so much hubris and prejudice of the past and, yes, the present. In his latest post, Novak recalls a 1950 Redbook cover story which looked at the physical, mental and moral future of Americans, featuring insights from the rather dangerous anthropologist and eugenicist Earnest A. Hooton. An excerpt:

There can be little doubt of the increase during the past fifty years of mental defectives, psychopaths, criminals, economic incompetents and the chronically diseased. We owe this to the intervention of charity, “welfare” and medical science, and to the reckless breeding of the unfit.

In 2000, apart from the horde of proliferating morons, the commonest type of normal male will be taller and more gangling than ever, with big feet, horse-faces and deformed dental arches. The typical women will be similar—probably less busty and buttocky than those of our generation. These spindly giants will be intelligent, not combative, full of humanitarianism, allergies and inhibitions—stewing in their own introspections. Probably they will be long-lived; the elongated shrivel and buckle, but hang on.•

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Welcome To The Land Of Giant Children

May 8, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Retro-Futurist expert Matt Novak uses his amazing PaleoFuture site to catalog wild predictions from the past that never panned out. For instance: The article below from a 1937 San Antonio Light opined that advances in chemistry would make gigantic babies a reality in the near term. Sadly, that hasn’t happened. Not yet, anyhow. It seems like anything we dream, no matter how unlikely, can come true given enough time. (Thanks Marginal Revolution.)

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“Giant Baby” by Ron Mueck:

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