The Bewilderness

An ethical cleansing is reversed for Libya

History never loves a loser, especially  in revolutions. They tend to appear mad and bad, deserving of their fate, after prolonging the agony needlessly. Such rulers tend to have overstayed their sanity, identifying the nation and the state with themselves. Just as they lose sight of power and its responsibilities, they distance themselves from reality. Remember the denials of the spokesman during the Iraq War: now listen to the sons of Gadhafy. 

The West (and its shadow in the East) does not like a loser either. Gadhafy can no longer guarantee oil or gas, and the revolution has endangered all of the foreigners on Libyan soil. The revolution has ensured an ethnic and an ethic cleansing. As soon as none could be taken as human shields or hostages, the sanctions were applied. Gadhafy did not help his own cause with the appalling brutality that ensures his downfall will be written in his own blood.

The forces have acquired the sticking positions that tend to favour civil war: an area of rebellion, now heading for the capital, plus loyalist obstacles like the port of Sirte.Does this mean that we are in for a long haul?

As I wrote earlier, such upheavals tend to radicalise  if the initial demands for having aspirations are not met. Ghannouchi of Tunisia, a hold-over of the previous regime, fell on his sword tonight.

More 2011 predictions on mobile city

The most successful apps in Iphone, Ipad and Android shared some commonalities in 2010: ease of use (a must on mobile phones); a springboard for social networking and shared communities with add-ons, such as locations; and based upon the working strategy of free at the point of use, paid for by a bigger brother down the line or advertising.

The apps for this year promise more social interconnections, spreading television to the mobiel world. Yet, payment systems are unmentioned: an omission that could prove a radical reorientation for the mobile world from leftfield, allying retail to the smartphone.

Another forecast from a company perspective appeared on Mashable.

Libya's bloody showdown

Gadaffi has not lost the core strength of his dictatorship: a brutal reliance upon loyal forces and mercenaries. He is now holed up in Tripoli, making sporadic counter-attacks on other towns. The huge uprising has turned into a revolutionary civil war. Is this a last stand or a fightback?

This will be a bloody weekend for Libya; perhaps its last as a united country.

 

Self-appointed guides to the noise

How has the world of blogging changed since I started so many years ago on Airstrip One? Well, I still toil in obscurity. Not that I mind.

The early adopters, primed by the rise of terrorism and war, perhaps minded to discuss law and sciences, have been superseded by a whole ecology of content. Indeed, blogging is embedded in a whole set of channels for advertising self-generated content to your networks: Twitter, Facebook and so on. What you know complements who you know.

Jean Aw of Notcot sets out a hierarchy of content from the lowly hobbyist to the grand content kings of AOL and Yahoo. Between the amateur and the giants lie intermediary websites, semipro businesses that meet the need for curation in content. Some of these intermediaries are dubbed Lifestyle Bloggers:

The rise of the Lifestyle Blog doesn't mean that other blogs will disappear. It's just a growing and increasingly relevant part of the ecosystem. This crude breakdown is to illustrate the differences between Lifestyle Blogs and other blog businesses. It’s not a job. It’s a lifestyle. It’s something that evolves in parallel to living fulfilling, exciting lives. It’s a means to share a perspective on life. Not news. Not covering every topic. It’s a curated view of the world that readers can fall in love with and live through. It’s about passion, aspiration and inspiration.

 

Within communities, certain individuals will naturally acquire a wider following. They become minor celebrities: fulfilling the role of leaders and mentors. The overarching need is for regular readers or fans of their lifestyle.

Curation is a natural role for the gatekeeper: self-appointed guides to the noise. But can this role turn a dime?

Ubiquitous mobility

Last year was the year of early adopters for computing ubiquity on a mobile basis. The advent of the smartphone hit the knee of the curve as a beneficial confluence of price and accessibility drove the market. Whatever innovations are seen this year will step within the existing ecology of dominant operating systems like Android, the developing ecology of apps and attempts to drive location services and payment systems.

Perhaps 2011 will be the year that embeds mobile computing, especially in the laggards of the West. The innovative advances of the poor will be used to our advantage.

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Tunisia: the land of 'beer and bikinis'

All eyes are on Libya's immolation. The future of the country is very unclear. Egypt's no less so. Tunisia gives some indications how the post-spasm terrain looks.

Tunisia has been ruled by a feeble 'transitional' government, with the remnants of an oppositional and certain technocratic elements of the previous regime jostling for advantage under the eyes of the security forces. Despite reliance upon emergency laws for stability, they remain hostage to the probability of further protests. A resurgence of protest has begun in the last two days: discontent fanned by the eruptions around the Middle East. Calls for the government to step down, for opposition to Islamism and for more Islamic rule, bring us to the nature of the Arab streets, as it should be more accurately called.

Arab rulers have relied upon the symbolism of crowds to shore up their rule. They are now cowed by the demonstrations; their rent-a-mob politics has failed. The post-spasm government in Tunisia is unable to follow through on its ban of political assembly and reverts to populist measures: banning the previous regime's political party and demanding the extradition of Ben Ali.

Tunisia indicates that instability is bug of the transitional regimes and that political will is diminished before the thirst for protest that currently grips the mob. Motivated by inchoate and intractable demands, one wonders whether these protestors will be a motor of radicalisation. Will elections prove a sufficient salve for their demands? 

Yet, when we view revolution and radicalisation through an Islamic prism, we always assume Islamism and shariah law. There is an opposite focal point: the separation of mosque and state, anti-clericalism and a popular support for secular policies. It was a revolutionary regime that launched dechristianisation. If the land of 'beer and bikinis' becomes fiercely secular, could we bet on Tunisia as the first Islamic country to legislate for gay marriage in the not too distant future?

US space programme grounded through pork

Another question to which the answer is No: taken from the Orlando Sentinel late last year. I make no apologies for resurrecting this artcle some months down the line; indeed there is an argument for ignoring the immediacy of media headlights and choosing subjects with the benefit of hindsight. So what is the question? Can NASA compete with Space X?

Look at the evidence marshalled by the article. Elon Musk has put together his new rocket at a cost of $800,000,000. As the author notes, this is a "rounding error" for NASA. The agency is unable to resolve its issues with bureaucracy and overruns. It does not incentivise its contractors to reduce costs and saps any entrepreneurial drive they may have had to innovate outside of the public teat. No company within the military industrial complex has been willing to take the risks which the new start-ups have embraced. Taking money from NASA has acted as an unofficial non-compete clause stifling the private sector.

Without NASA, could the new space movement have taken off earlier? The answer is vague handwaving. Money and entrepreneurs that embraced the challenge were both required. The internet boom and cultural geekdom seem to have been appropriate perquisites.

Over the past six years, NASA has spent nearly $10 billion on the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule — its own version more or less of what SpaceX has launched — and came up with little more than cost overruns and technical woes. In October, Congress scrapped the Constellation moon program and ordered the agency to start over to design a rocket and capsule capable of taking humans to explore the solar system.

It would be better for America if NASA's millions were redirected towards tax cuts, like every other obese pork ridden agency. Then we may get out into the solar system.

Ambrosia without nectar

This is what happens when free trade is managed carelessly.

I was curious as to why Evans=Pritchard would state a problem that does not exist. It is a surprising aside in an article where he discusses the decrease in bee numbers and their possible deleterious effect on agriculture. The point that complex problems have foreseeable consequences is an agreeable conclusion.

We return to the original statement. Evans-Pritchard is actually referring to the consequnces of free trade and argues that their consequences can be mitigated. His other example is rare earth metals where mercantilist policy has seized a temporary monopoly. And that is the answer: monopolies cease under competition, work-arounds or avoidance. Managed trade is perhaps one answer that we know will not work.

Still, if the article is striking a right note and that thorium enthusiasm was a cul-de-sac, then apian atrophy will be the new term for 2011.

Can dentists survive the Singularity?

Did the Singularity begin on "Jeopardy"? This is part of John Rentoul's suite of questions to which the answer is "no". We could ask "will there be dentists after the Singularity?" Is it a question worth asking? Probably not! What is the answer? A vague "Unlikely!"

Call me crazy, but when we reach a point where the most trusted doctor you can turn to is a hard drive, and that hard drive can repair and update itself, I think we’ve hit The Singularity.

This is one of those difficult quotes that says too much and too little. The role of the computer is seen as a simple trade-off between sources of knowledge: profession swapped for a diagnostic database. An alternative could be: the Singularity has arrived when we become our own doctors.

Even here, we would still need an external agent to deal with mouths and surgery. Perhaps dentists will survive the Singularity?

Tunisia pauses for breath, Mubarak clings to Egypt

The death toll of the Tunisian uprising was higher than reported, according to the United Nations mission in Tunis. Whilst the provisional government states about 350 killed and injured, the UN figure is double (including prisoners killed in state jails). Whilst a symbolic government of renewal has promised free elections in six months and has purged itself of RCD involvement at the behest of the protestors, the power of the police state remains in place.

The securocracy of Ben Ali has not been dismantled: low-level violence continues in many towns. The sources of trouble may be looters, or the disaffected police out of control. Whilst the military holds a protective ring, Tunisia will only be safe when the local thugocracy, abetted  by the former ruling party, is beaten, bribed and retired. A judicious mix of monetary incentive and violent examples usually does the trick for the remnants of a police state.

On Monday, hundreds of people ransacked and looted public buildings in violence which union officials said was instigated by members of the former RCD ruling party of ousted strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Mohamed Drbali, a member of a “regional comnmittee for the defence of the revolution” and trade unionist Sadok Mahmoudi, said police were nowhere to be seen during Tuesday’s protest while army tanks were posted near official buildings.

If a low-level backlash does not extend beyond isolated incidents like Kasserine above, then the self-styled revolution will develop. However, a taste for the "street" and a lack of response from the interim elite on grievances may herald a further wave of radicalisation. Mubarak's obstinacy further east may feed this desire to reject musical chairs at the top and riot for a new state of affairs, a world turned upside down and rendered anew: A police state more terrifying than the old.