
Legends of the Ancient Web (2017) - panic
http://idlewords.com/talks/ancient_web.htm
======
wiremine
Great talk! Wanted to add a few thoughts that came to mind as I read it:

1\. The radio history lesson is great, and I'd agree is appropriate for our
current situation. It reminds me a lot of early US history and the use of
newspapers in the colonies. James Callender is one of many interesting people
from that time. [1] He was Thomas Jefferson's to go muckraker.

2\. Reed's Law [2] also came to mind. Radio and Newspapers are mass mediums,
which the internet is not (only). Reed's law isn't perfect, but it's a good
filter when trying to apply pre-internet lessons to the internet.

4\. Just a theological aside: Ecclesiastes is traditionally ascribed to King
Solomon, which the Bible also calls the wisest man who ever lived. It was
likely not actually pre-exilic, but it's interesting/helpful to read it as if
it was given by the wisest man who ever lived who happened to have absolute
power.

[1] [https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-
collections/jam...](https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-
collections/james-callender)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law)

~~~
throwawayjava
Is the premise of Reed's Law relevant to the sorts of social control problems
that the author is discussing, though?

I think it's more the ability to do individual targeting that matters, from
that perspective. And Reed's Law doesn't say anything about that (other than
in the trivial "subnetworks of size of 1" sense)

I think the internet is fundamentally different from the old broadcast media,
but not because of Reed's combinatoric observation.

In particular, notice that the radio also allowed these subgroups; e.g., the
interference issues in the USA leading up to WWI seem like an apt historical
example.

~~~
wiremine
> the interference issues in the USA leading up to WWI seem like an apt
> historical example.

It's a good question. I think you need to apply Reed's law at scale, not in
the formative state. For example, the initial internet in 1969 was limited to
a small group of universities, and not accessible like it is today. My point
is you can't cherry pick a point in time for the technologies and compare
them. Early radio vs. mature internet aren't the same thing.

My original point was that radio and newspapers were one way mediums that
limited control to a small group of people. A different way is to say the
internet enables platforms, as opposed to gatekeepers. Both can be megaphones
to the savvy and powerful, but they are fundamentally different in other ways.

The recent #MeToo movement is an example of this: that never would have
happened if we were limited to traditional mass media, because there was no
way for people and have their voices amplified. This is a good example of how
the combinatoric effect of Reed's Law relates the social control argument.

It's a bit dated, but Small Pieces Loosely Joined lays out some of these ideas
very well. [http://www.smallpieces.com/](http://www.smallpieces.com/)

------
TeMPOraL
This was a great talk indeed. Highly recommended read.

I liked the story from Poland near the end. I'm Polish, and I've never heard
of it before.

Regarding the ending, 'idlewords, you say:

> _I tell this story to reassure you that just because everything is heavy and
> political right now, it doesn 't mean we can't also fight these fights on
> our own terms, as nerds._

Does this mean a departure from your usual views that we should stop trying to
solve political problems with tech, or am I misunderstanding either your usual
views or that line in the presentation?

~~~
idlewords
Thank you for those kind words!

I included the story about the radio astronomers because it's such a nice
example of doing something creative with technology in the service of a
broader goal, while staying true to who you are—a big giant nerd.

I don't think applying technology to political problems is anathema, it just
requires special care and humility.

My quarrel is with people who think you can treat human society like a
deterministic computer system, and 'hack' it. Politics is hard!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks for the clarification. Based on your previous talks, I assumed you're
leaning towards thinking that (almost) all of our current problems are
primarily social, and no technology is of help here.

If I may pick your mind a little bit more - what do you think of the approach
of a hypothetical person, who decides that politics is _too hard_ and, with
good intentions, thinks unilaterally unleashing new technology on the world is
a more efficient way to fix things?

\--

Also, I've been browsing through your other recently published talks, and
there was this paragraph in one of them[0] that caught my attention:

> _This is an inversion in political life that we haven’t seen before.
> Conversations between people that used to be private, or semi-private, now
> take place on public forums where they are archived forever. Meanwhile, the
> kind of political messaging that used to take place in public view is now
> visible only to an audience of one._

I'm quoting it here because I found it to be a really insightful observation,
that never occurred to me before. The hyper-targeting of political messages is
indeed eroding our ability to discuss those issues together, as everyone is
starting from a different point of view created by political arguments. Our
present times kind of remind me yet another quote from the Bible:

 _For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.
Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great
number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear._ (2 Timothy
4:3)

\--

One more question: in your talks, you propose a lot of actions that, IMO,
share the same fundamental problem - they require _coordination_ , which is
something tremendously hard to achieve at scale, especially when the
individual incentives pull us all apart. Do you have any ideas on a)
alternative strategies that require less coordination, b) ways to reduce the
need for coordinating to employ your proposals, or c) ways to boost the
ability of 'people of good will' to coordinate?

\--

[0] -
[http://idlewords.com/talks/build_a_better_monster.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/build_a_better_monster.htm)

~~~
idlewords
I would put it differently, that any major technical innovation will change
the balance of power between people and institutions, and so have political
consequences. You have to deal with those the only way we know how—by engaging
with the messy, frustrating, difficult human institutions that we all rely on.

Because people are involved, you can't anticipate the social effects of any
technology. It's the problem Soros calls 'reflexivity'—systems with people in
the feedback loop don't behave like dumb systems; they take your own motives
into account and change their behavior!

So just deploying the stuff and hoping for some kind of complicated socio-
technical bank shot that gets you the outcome you want is unlikely to work.
You can say "I don't care what the consequences are", but you can't pretend
there will be no consequences, or that you can predict them.

That whole concept of the 'inversion in political life' belongs to Zeynep
Tufekci, to whom all credit is due for it. I agree that it is brilliant. She
is a profound thinker about this stuff. If you're not already familiar with
her work, you're in for a treat.

For your last question, this is what I am trying to figure out in organizing
Tech Solidarity, and I wish I had any answers. It is very, very hard.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _If you 're not already familiar with her work, you're in for a treat._

Just added to my reading list, thanks!

> _For your last question, this is what I am trying to figure out in
> organizing Tech Solidarity, and I wish I had any answers. It is very, very
> hard._

I see Tech Solidarity is a pretty geographically-localized phenomenon. Maybe
you could write something about the experiences and the impact of this project
at some point? I wish you luck with this project. Hell, I guess I wish _all of
us_ luck.

------
ubertaco
Just a note: Ecclesiastes is definitely _not_ "a rant by an angry, elderly
atheist that through some editorial oversight found its way into the Bible."

Rather, it's a compiled lament by Solomon (Jewish king and son of the Jewish
king David) about the futility/emptiness of a life lived apart from devout
devotion to his god, and the stuff in the book is described later as "many
proverbs" that were "arranged with great care" (Ecclesiastes 12:9), a
description that comes after a long paragraph by that supposed-atheist that
starts

>Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days
come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in
them”;

and just before a paragraph ending in

>The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his
commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed
into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Not exactly "a rant by an...atheist".

~~~
dvt
Wanted to chime in and say the same thing, so thank you. It really irks me
when people with little to no theological or historical background pretend to
understand religious texts.

~~~
throwawayjava
I'm pretty sure it was a light-hearted joke, not a serious theological thesis.

~~~
dvt
Maybe I don't get the joke then. To me, it just seems to be purposefully
inflammatory and edgy. As it turns out, it's really off-base, too.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Maybe I don't get the joke then._

The juxtaposition of a cranky critic or unserious person becoming a near-
absolute authority on the thing he's cranky/not serious about is a common
comedic trope. E.g., _insert joke about Satoshi creating bitcoin to make an
ironic joke about the dotcom bubble and accidentally launching the first ICO._

The Mel Books skit is not intended to seriously suggest that there were
originally 15 commandments. And Satoshi probably wasn't making performance art
about late capitalism. And Ecclesiastes wasn't written by a cranky atheist.

It's a joke.

 _> To me, it just seems to be purposefully inflammatory and edgy_

The commonness of this trope indicates that lots of people find it funny,
perhaps especially when it's disconnected from anything that's important to
them.

But more importantly, no one is laughing at you, and the intent of this joke
isn't to inflame.

The author is using a relevant quote from a source, and leading into that
quote with a light-hearted joke. The fact that this joke is about Ecclesiastes
has more to do with the fact that the author is using a quote from that book
(to make a serious point, and a point that's at least not incongruent with the
original intent).

The author is instantiating a common joke template in the context of a quote
he's using the lead off a talk.

That's all.

 _> As it turns out, it's really off-base, too._

No, it's not, because it wasn't a serious premise. You can tell that this is
the case by the fact that the 20+ slides that follow this one _are not on the
subject of theology or christian /jewish history_...

~~~
kaybe
Bitcoin as performance art is..just perfect.

------
dionidium
_" Outcomes matter, not intentions."_

Outcomes matter. _Of course_ outcomes matter. But that can't be a complete
moral reasoning. Intentions do matter in all things. Intentions are the
difference between murder one and a forgivable accident. It's the difference
between putting a knife in your wife's back because she cheated on you and
swinging around in the kitchen too fast and putting that same knife in her gut
by accident.

Intentions tell me what to expect about your future behavior. Intentions, in
other words, reveal something important about the actor (and, therefore,
_future outcomes_ ) that outcomes don't.

 _Of course_ outcomes matter. But when we stop caring about intentions, we
start thinking of murderers like remorseful spouses, or, say, genuine racists
like tasteless jokers.

The idea that only outcomes matter has far too much currency in our current
politics.

~~~
autokad
if outcomes only mattered, i could try to murder my wife as much as i want,
and as long as i failed its all good.

edit: also,l we start leading down the machiavellian path, where the ends
justify the means.

------
maxfurman
Maciej's talks are the best. His combination of humor and insight is, in my
opinion, unmatched. I just wish he posted more often!

~~~
jasonthevillain
I suspect he's consistently this awesome because he doesn't post that often,
and can actually put time and effort into things.

------
peter303
The telegraph was the first Internet. It permitted messages to travel across a
country in seconds instead of of days. For example the Battle of New Orleans,
29 years before the first telegraph, was fought _after_ the peace treaty for
the War of 1812 was signed.

The first telegraphs had only a rate of 20 bits a second (measured in those
days at 40 words per minute). Various inventions like multiplexing and speeds
via punched tape could increase that an order of magnitude. Thomas Edison
inevented several of these speedups.

~~~
NoGravitas
This reminds me strongly of the Clacks in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels
(which is heavily based on the real-world telegraph, though it was a
mechanical semaphore system). It quickly took on internet-like
characteristics, including image transmission, and then, rather soon, image
compression.

X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett"
[http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/](http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/)

------
krylon
> If you didn't know radio existed, the whole thing would sound like a bunch
> of pseudoscientific hokum.

I have never looked at it from that angle. Very interesting thought!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Radios are magic. I like to reflect on the fact that antennas are basically
pieces of metal twisted in funny geometrical patterns. The same metal our
ancestors knew thousands of years ago.

~~~
Arcsech
I mean, transistor-based microelectronics are basically just special rocks
that we have inscribed with very precise geometrical patterns and feed
lightning into in order to make them behave how we want.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah. As the saying goes, "a CPU is literally a rock we tricked into
thinking".

------
emmelaich
It's very interesting how similar Coughlin's mannerisms are to Hitler's. I
would not be surprised if Hitler copied him.

Just to show not all mass media Catholic priests are so unpleasant I give you
Fulton Sheen, popular on radio 20s, 30s and TV in the 50s. Was popular among
non-Catholics and even won an Emmy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen)

------
dbg31415
I love how the page about the "ancient web" is built in 2017 using tables.
This made me smile.

Some followup watching:

* Empire of the Air | PBS || [http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/](http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/empire/)

------
52-6F-62
This was a great talk!

I really think more of the ideal this presentation expressed needs to be
shared. It's very easy to be a cold, hard reasoner when your life is
reasonably safe, comfortable, and your belly is full. It's very easy to forget
the larger picture.

~~~
itp
Were you there to hear it in person? Even just reading it online, I found it
really, really well done. Both in terms of content, but also structurally as a
presentation itself.

~~~
52-6F-62
No, unfortunately this is the first I'd heard of it. But it is a great read.
Well structured, but with some great bits of history I didn't yet know.

I also hadn't heard anything from Ecclesiastes since I was a kid. Churches
started to depart from the old testament unless they wanted to condemn gay
marriages, etc for a while there. I still kept my old Bible (as I do many
texts). I might even have to give that book a re-read because I definitely
didn't appreciate the basic wisdom when I was young. It was well-used, though;
sparsely, and with cutting effect.

I couldn't agree more with the conclusion, and it was beautifully illustrated.

------
mrspeaker
A talk that has me both doing some mature self-examination regarding my next
career move, AND wanting to learn HAM radio. Inspiring stuff!

------
jacquesm
Absolutely fantastic talk. Thanks for posting this. It certainly helps put
recent developments into perspective.

------
madez
At first, I found the direct comparison of Google with the Nazi ideology as
happened in the picture
([https://static.pinboard.in/ancient/thumbs/law.034.thumb.jpg](https://static.pinboard.in/ancient/thumbs/law.034.thumb.jpg))
and the text

> You don't get a clear warning that you're working on something that's bad
> for the world. They put you to work designing a machine that answers to "OK
> Google", not "OK Goebbels".

not justified, as Google is a very different organization and has different
values and motives. But then I understood the comparison as a mean of
drastically warning about what unforeseen consequences lie in these data
collections, derived models, undemocratically and centrally controlled
systems, proprietary systems, and the induced shift of powers in our society.
That change can be devastating for society. As a society, we need constantly
be on watch over what these systems and do who controls them. Closed and
proprietary systems manufacturers and developers have an immense political
influence on our society. Do we agree with their statement? Can we even afford
that as a society?

------
cobbzilla
Is this analogy apt or strained: As FDR and Hitler were to Radio, so is Trump
to Twitter/Internet? [1]

[1] [https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/the-
schizoid-p...](https://thefifthwave.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/the-schizoid-
presidency-of-donald-trump/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Depends on whether you compare to 1944!Hitler or 1930!Hitler.

Point being, comparisons to Nazi Germany, or other evil regimes of the past
are usually exaggerated because no western country in the present is a
comparable regime. Nevertheless, there have been some worrying developments in
the west over the past two decades, and they invite caution.

Or, put more bluntly (and I think in line with Maciej's talks): Trump is not
Hitler. But the next president - in the US or elsewhere - just might be.

~~~
cobbzilla
Neither is Trump FDR, I think you missed my point. Trump, like both FDR and
Hitler, made novel use of a new communications medium to rally their
supporters and reach new ones, while their opponents scratched their heads
trying to understand the phenomenon.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You're right; I think I did miss your point. Thanks for clarification.

------
stanfordkid
The real problem is that scientists & technologists are not inherently power
hungry.

This has been true throughout human history. The second that technologists
realize that it serves the human race for us to be power hungry (at the
grandest scale -- not the ego-driven "I launched Instagram" scale) ... society
will undergo rapid transformation.

A unified, noble, technocracy is the future of human government... but it
requires a new form of revolutionary indoctrination.

EDIT: maybe I should replace "power hungry" with: wanting to be the ones
calling the shots. Especially with regards to things like foreign policy etc.
Most of us have strong pacifist views but seldom do we actually do anything
that enables us to stop constant war. Constant war is culturally ingrained in
our governments, which is why it continues to happen. One only needs to look
at the history of the CIA, then compare that to what they are doing now to see
this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Here's how I fear it would play out:

A good-hearted techie becomes a singular ruler of the country. By some luck
they aren't immediately deposed due to their inability/unwillingness to play
internal politics. Soon they discover that just keeping that country from
getting invaded by neighbours, or economically sabotaged by others, requires
getting ready for war and nurturing - or even employing - the ability to
project force.

Say they think "fuck it" and through smarts and few surgical strikes, they
take over the world. We have one government on the planet, with one ruler. But
how long will that survive, given that there will be people sowing dissent?
How long will it take before the governance either dies, or turns into a
dystopian story straight from Black Mirror? What will happen when the Mars
colony decides to declare independence (a tech person is in charge, there will
be a Mars colony)?

Or another scenario - let's say multiple techies take over the world; how fast
will the planet turn into a glass desert, forever testifying to the holy war
between Emacs and Vim, or JavaScript versus basic sanity?

My point is, I don't believe techies are suited to rule humanity. I don't
believe anyone is. And I have no idea if a civilization-scale governance that
is stable, universally good, and that would survive more than few decades, is
even possible.

~~~
oliv__
Why is Javascript always trashed? Nobody forced you to use it, and there are
plenty of alternatives out there...

Imo, it's (or at least was) a great simple language to get started in
programming: you can get results fast, stay engaged, and enjoy the process of
learning with it, while creating cool stuff.

I feel like sometimes people lose sight of the fact that languages are a means
to an end, not an end in and of themselves. If you love to write perfect lines
of beautiful code in Rust and that's enough for you, that's great, but why do
you need to bash people enjoying themselves with a tool they're comfortable
with to _create_ things?

</rant>

~~~
TeMPOraL
Many reasons, a lot of them related to its ecosystem.

But the thing is, you just fell for my bait, thus proving my point. If we were
countries, we might just start exchanging stern diplomatic notes.

And then a third country with a strong opinion on the topic comes along and
escalates.

;).

~~~
oliv__
I was suspecting this was bait, but I just had to bite on this one, it really
annoys me to see these "thought movements" go in motion where, in the end,
people don't even know why they're saying what they're saying and it becomes
fashionable to trash one side or another... (And this might not be you but
since you baited me, you're the target of this argument now.)

So there's my diplomatic note for you. Who wants to escalate this?

------
partycoder
If you are interested in the history of communications, you may also be
interested in this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line)

------
madprops
>I don't think we've even seen a Father Coughlin of the Internet

Alex Jones?

~~~
NoGravitas
In tone, yeah, but Alex Jones has nowhere near the influence of Father
Coughlin.

------
tambourine_man
Will there be a video version released?

------
agumonkey
Kudos, learned a lot from history to politics.

------
narag
_If you 're not familiar with it, Ecclesiastes is a rant by an angry, elderly
atheist that through some editorial oversight found its way into the Bible._

Not an atheist. Ancient jews believed in God but not in the afterlife.

~~~
itp
I'm not an expert at all, but your response made me curious as to why that
(presumably humorous) aside would have been thrown in.

Anyway, my research, such as it is, took me as far as the Wikipedia article on
Ecclesiastes[0], which maybe provides soft support for the claim?

 _The presence of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is something of a puzzle, as the
common themes of the Hebrew canon—a God who reveals and redeems, who elects
and cares for a chosen people—are absent from it, which suggests that Kohelet
had lost his faith in his old age._

Anyway, I hope that this won't discourage people from reading the entire
thing, which I thought was well written and well worth the time.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Canonicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Canonicity)

~~~
narag
I have no idea who wrote that in Wikipedia. My source was a Theology PhD about
35 years ago. Before maccabees there was no believe in afterlife, that came
from Egypt and eastern cultures. Even in Jesus times, Sadducees didn't believe
in afterlife.

