The End of the Westphalian System?

  I've been thinking that the rise in non-State violence indicated a breakdown in the Westphalian system. I thought that the interventions by hegemonic powers or regional actors in weak States indicated something about how technological development allowed small groups of non-State actors to act effectively against States. I thought that the breakdowns and border areas created new opportunities for non-State groups to create networks of their own.
  But now I'm thinking about historical events - the rise of States, how centralized power has slowly expanded and contracted over time, how loosely-organized non-State groups have impacted and afflicted States from uncontrolled areas ever since there was something resembling a State.
  What if the use of hegemonic power to prop up weak States, or to expand those States' control into border regions, is part of a trend of expanding State control?
  States will prop up and legitimize other States. It is in their interest to reinforce and normalize the existence of States, as this give their own existence legitimacy. This is seen in Syria, where the US prefers to work with an organized council, who creates a government with prime ministers and presidents, just like the established States.
  The conflict between State and non-State actors has long been tilted in favor of States, with organization, funding, legitimacy - the victors write history, after all. Technological developments, specifically allowing network effects and efficiency, are allowing and will allow organizations smaller than and independent from States to act.
  Originally SF writers and futurists predicted that the democratization of tech would reduce State power and would allow people to form free networks of their own, without coercion.
  But power accumulates power to itself, and anything that increases power inherently aids States, if they are smart enough to take advantage.

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Reports of the Net's demise are greatly exaggerated

So anti-spam group and a hardened hosting company are going at it. The security firm that runs interference for the anti-spammers is engaged in a bit of self-promotion and all the usual suspects are breathlessly reporting on it.

I picked up on this in Ars a few days ago, and groaned inwardly when I heard it on NPR this afternoon. While this is an example of the kind of conflict that can occur on the Internet, it isn't the world-shaking, Netflix-stuttering event that it has been made out to be. It is common knowledge that large criminal organizations employ botnets for the purpose of creating and sending spam, and their cost for doing it is so incredibly low they can deploy thousands and thousands of computers to execute DDoS attacks. What's interesting is that this is being reported on at all. The comings and goings of The Internet as a purely Net phenomenon is still fairly new for mainsteam publications. That's why they focus on things people can identify, like slow downloads and Netflix cutting out - neither of which seem to have actually happened. The Net as place, where things happen, has yet to enter the mainstream.

This is not the first time a botnet has been deployed in an offensive fashion. It may be the first time you've heard about it.

It will not be the last.

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Google is shutting down Reader. I am now seriously considering migrating this blog to something not Google-hosted or affiliated.
Reader is how I interact with the internet. Reader is how I follow hunreds of site: news sites, personal blogs, other aggregators.
Reader is the only service I visit every time I have an internet connection. I don't even do that with my e-mail account.
I understand that essentially nobody reads this blog, but I have to say it. Google killing Reader is a strong argument for creating your own server, with privately hosted e-mail, and your own, stable RSS reader.
Google shuttering Reader says, to me, "Don't trust 'The Cloud.'"

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Networks, Interconnectedness, and Points of Failure (III)

"The third is an alternate network, and more closely models real-world social structures."

The thrid type is one in which networks run orthogonal to each other. This can be visualised like a sponge - nodes connected in three dimensions, usually to neighbors but not always. Social networks work on this principle - people may work together, be members of the same religious community, bu tlive in different parts of a town. People share some interests, but not all interests. If one network of relationships is stressed, people will seek support from other, orthogonal networks. These relationships are the hardest to create in built space, as they rely on shifting, multidimensional arrangements between nodes. They can be easily created online, but since online communities have modeled themselves after real-world spaces (so far), no true free-form multiaxis networks have appeared.
Yet.

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Networks, Interconnectedness, And Points Of Failure (II)

<strong>So what can we do to mitigate the interconnected destructive potential of networks while preserving their benefits? </strong>

We can envision three alternate kinds of networks, in addition to the "main" net. The first is inter-reforced. Instead of a simple network, where nodes contain only linkages to neighboring nodes, a reinforced network, where nodes are secondarily linked to nodes further out, can allow for systemic stresses to spread. The second is a parallel network, occasionally interlinked. Imagine two nets, one on top of the other, with occasional main connections between them. The third is an alternate network, and more closely models real-world social structures.

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Networks, Interconnectedness, and Points of Failure

Imagine a net. The nodes are the points of connection, the links are the rope between. A route is defined as any path from one node to another node. As long as the net is interconnected enough, a failure at one node only minimally impacts the route. A break in the link means that connection is served, but other connections can take over. In a well-distributed net, a failure at one point has little consequences.
But networks have vulnerabilities as well. Stresses on one node are spread throughout the network, distorting connections. A weak connection potentially weakens the ones around it. If the whole network is near the breaking point, a failure in one place can put enough stress on its neighbors so that they will fail, which puts stress on their neighbors and they fail, etc.

As networks (and by this, I mean the ways in which people connect to each other) proliferate, network effects become magnified. Just as an idea can spread like wildfire from person to person, faster now than ever before, so too can a catastrophic event which would previously be limited to one geographical area or interconnected group, affect entire regions. Think of an ice storm in Quebec knocking out power to the enitre Northeast. So what can we do to mitigate the interconnected destructive potential of networks while preserving their benefits?

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The War In The Ether

There is a war going on. This is of course not news - humanity has been in a near-constant state of conflict since there has been humanity. But this war is different.
There are no bombs, no bullets, and no bandages. There are nation-states and militaries fighting this war, and there are cypherpunks and black-hats fighting this war. We see rumblings from time-to-time: the Red October network, Wikileaks, the recent hacks at the New York Times. The weapons of this war have strange names and are peristent, like NBC weapons: Mahdi, Stuxnet, Flame, LOIC.
There are deaths, too. Aaron Swartz was one.

The war is for information. Who has it, who wants it, who controls the flow of information. By controlling information, you can control how other people make decisions, how they think, what they can make happen. This has been a fundamental feature of war as well - spycraft, deception, intel. But now conflict appears on a platform of pure information, the weapons made of bits and bytes, the soldiers working from computers spread out across the globe.

The future isn't coming - it is already here.

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The Primal Forces Of Nature

I was reminded today of one of the most famous scenes from the movie Network, released in 1976. Which, according to TVTropes, is:

Network is a 1976 American film, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, that might just scare the living daylights out of you and make you stare at a wall for ten minutes. Network is a harsh, satirical critique of (among other things) television and the short-attention-span culture over which it presides, the media in general for rushing to serve the Lowest Common Denominator, the conglomerates who've homogenized American entertainment, and the executives who treat the nightly news as a profit center instead of a public service. It won four Academy Awards*, was added to the Library of Congress in 2000, and in 2007 was chosen by the American Film Institute as the 64th greatest American film ever made.

This is the scene.

While I disagree with the Chairman's overall worldview, being that the corporatization of the world is right, just, and inevitable, he is correct in one major item.

There are no Nations, there are no Peoples . . . there is only one holisitic system of systems.

The world is increasingly complex. Inconsequential decisions made at small levels can have large, unforseen or unpredictable consequences at higher levels - or in parallel structures. We occupy small local systems, which interact in a system-of-systems way with those around it, which interact with the systems around them, which interact - you get the idea. As the systems become ever-more connected, it is harder and harder to predict follow-on effects.

I think that the manifestation of conspiracy theories is an outgrowth of this. People attempt to fit the events in the world into an orderly, narrative framework - to make things predictable, to make things make sense. Unfortunately, the world may be beyond making sense of, and it is best just to ride the wave.

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The Beginning

What Is Synthetic Outlook?

I thought I needed a place to set down my thoughts and ideas, to provide room for new ones, and to expose them to comment in order to refine them.

What Does The Name Mean?
"Synthetic" could refer to any human-created thing, composed of materials not found in nature. Or it could refer to the process of reconciling two competing ideas (thesis/anti-thesis) to create a new unified whole. "Outlook" could be a place from which to view the upcoming future. Or it could be a predictive process, attempting to account for various competing ideas to create a coherent picture.

So "Synthetic Outlook" could be an analysis of the human-created future. Or many other things...

What Do You Believe?
I believe that the world is comprised of systems, and that these systems sometimes interact in strange and unpredictable ways. I believe that humans can design or harness these systems to our benefit. I believe that with the right information, or enough information, we can make good decisions about the future course of the world.

I believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

What Are You Interested In?
I'm interested in how humans interact with our constructed environment. I'm interested in how humans inflict their decisions on each other. I'm interested in human expression, and how we relate to each other, and how we interact with those who have come before, and those who will come after. I'm interested in the stories we tell about ourselves, and how those stories reflect who we think we are.

Who Are You?
I'm a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. I'm an officer and  civil engineer in the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Navy. I'm a world traveler. I'm a voracious reader. I'm a contributor to the group-blog/shared space of MetaFilter.

I am someone who is interested in where we are going, and how we are going to get there.

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