Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Preaching To The Choir

My father, before his breakdown, marched around the farm in angry conversation with his own father, who wasn't there. He was getting the words worked out just right. The logic of his positions became unassailable, although their relevance was only to him.

Similarly and more sanely, our president likes to hang around with people who make him feel good. He speaks to people who approve of his wisdom and don't question his thought processes. People who give him a sense of his innate, unassailable, relevance.

When you're running on faith, doubt is an enemy, so you preach to the choir.

The National Rifle Association, herder of cowboys, preaches to their choir. Union leaders preach to their choirs. Professionally grumpy newscasters preach to their over-70 demographic. New Age politicos preach to those who sing along in perfect harmony.

If only all the choirs could sing together...

Some years ago, in a city by a bay far away, I was pleased to find myself riding upwards in an elevator with philosopher Alan Watts, who was to give a presentation. Mr. Watts pulled out a Pierogi, a particularly stinky little cigar, and lit up. We all knew that something more than usual was happening. We were breathing the air Alan Watts exhaled, and he was making a point of it.

Later, in the auditorium, he invited us all to make that sound that is most natural to us, and he began to laugh and shout and chant. Liberated to be whatever we were, we did the same, and the sound was cacaphonic for some time. But it slowly settled into a single sound, a drone. Individual voices could be heard, but they were incidental, contrapuntal, accessories to the drone. Within the accoustic confines of the auditorium, we had found its resonating frequency.

One choir.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Out of Many Databases, One

Why? Because it can be done. And because in this time of continuing warfare, our president has promised to do everything that can be done.

Databases surround you. At your bookstore, your discount card records what you buy to read or to share with your friends. Your credit cards record your major purchases. Your bank account keeps track of your income and outgo. Your EZ-Pass card lets you glide through toll plazas quickly as it records your passage. The list of your cellphone calls is for sale. The list of your standard phone calls is for free. Your cellphone company triangulates to see where you are at this moment. Cameras track your public moves. Your existence is noted in dozens of different databases.

All these databases map your life. But still nobody listens to you.

The government, however, has become intensely interested in your map. They are interested in the trail you leave behind and how closely it resembles the trails of others they have caught.

Commercial data warehouses are selling their data about you to the government. Because it can be done, it is being done. But why pay? The government has leaned on telephone companies to stream their data into its waiting arms for free. It has also apparently given them excuse notes allowing them to lie in court. There is no reason NOT to believe that if there is any data out there that the government wants, that data it gets. To keep we data producers un-self-conscious, our tender ears have been spared the facts. Pretend to be natural, everyone.

Beware putting that falafel lunch at Ali Baba's on your credit card. Pay cash when you buy fertilizer. Give the government a map for a life it will ignore. Let it think it understands you.

Of course, it never will understand you. How could a machine understand you? But it thinks it understands you. If only it would listen to you, it would discover that each of us is unique and views the world like no one else, with a view infinitely detailed and infinitely varied. Then it would know it can't understand you.

Because your government thinks it understands you, you must own it. You must make it listen to you.


Machines can know facts, they can compare facts, but they are not very good at establishing the relationships between facts. They cannot understand. Because they cannot understand, they attempt to know more and more, hoping that in finer detail the truth will be clearer and meaning will be found. They fail. Knowledge is about the relationships between facts. Understandings are about the relationships between different areas of knowledge. Humans are good at understanding. Ask us.

Wisdom, which all humans claim as their special skill, is about the relationships between understandings. Until machines contain the billions of parallel processors that the human brain contains, man will be a necessary god.

To keep machines at bay, be the god you are. Sanctify your art, bless your science. Speak from your whole self. Listen with all your attention. See godliness in other people. Then other people, at least, will see it you.

Man sees the world in ways machines never shall. Man must always lead his creation.

One database, many people, an infinitely varied world. Infinite intricacy.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

One Truth From Many

Two special moments graced this last week, moments during which enduring truth took precedence over the truth of the moment.

"I never lie," once said my brother, "because I can never remember what I've said." Those of us with failing memories often find ourselves learning more than once that we must cling increasingly to the truth.

So it was that Mr. Rumsfeld, our Secretary of Defence, this week told a questioner that he had never said that he knew for sure there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The questioner then reminded him of the exact words he had used in asserting this claim four years before. Rumsfeld appeared to have forgotten his earlier words.

Again and again he was reminded of words he'd forgotten.

Perhaps they were not moored to anything that was continuing.

Perhaps they were the best words he could say back then to make simple sense for the public of a world that was intrinsically chaotic and growing more uncontrollable by the moment.

Trapped now, he could not easily deny his prior words nor dare to admit that he no longer remembers them.

There are things that he knows that he will never know, and there are things that he doesn't know that he will never know.


In another special moment this week, our President demonstrated his devotion to constancy by chosing words to describe his nomination of General Hayden as CIA head that were almost identical to the words he used 18 months earlier to describe his nomination of Porter Goss, who has departed the post.

"He's the right man --at this critical moment--in our nation's history."

He may have forgotten what he had earlier said. But nothing else for him had changed. The words still rang true for him, and he said them.

So in the President, there is something continuing. He's just not aware of it.

Whether the speaker is self-contradicting, as Rumsfeld was, or echoes his own words as did the President, a truth emerges.


Piece by piece, the truth about the NSA surveillance program is coming out of hiding. Each new revelation opens more questions. At each revelation the President denies what's coming in the next installment. Any truth in his statements is overwritten by the facts that are next revealed. At first, we did not spy on Americans. Then we spied on phone calls only when they were to specific Al Queda numbers overseas. Then we collected all the phone records, but we didn't look at them without a warrant, and it is only for finding the friends of Al Queda.

Soon we will learn that each phone call record links to a name-and-address record in another file. If a terrorist calls Al's Garage, all the other people who called Al's Garage that day are just one database step away, one degree of separation, and of possible interest. If the terrorist's brother works there, then all the customers are of immediate interest.

After that we will hear that our phone calls were analysed by standard off-the shelf word recognition software. That isn't really "listening", is it? We will learn that our most precious and private conversations are of record. They can typed out by a machine, although probably with words misspelled.

It's predictable.


There is a truth market. If my newscast is truer - or at least truthier - than yours, I will probably get more listeners and a better salary. The more truths hit the marketplace, the more news can be sold. Truths are collected and connected. Contradictions are resolved.

What each truth has to do with the next is not always clear, but there's always someone willing to fill in the gaps. And someone else wanting to do a better job of it.

Is there a single truth? Lowercase "T" truth? A single true understanding of the world, underlying all the doubtful understandings, all the fallacy?

One appears to be under construction.

Paper Ballots Last Forever

Touch-screen voting, as implemented by Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia, increasingly appears flawed and vulnerable.

The undergraduate class in systems design used to teach that the role of paper forms and their routings is as important in design as the role of the electronic data flow. In their enthusiasm to provide a paper-free voting booth, the designers of touch-screen systems seem to be following a different principle, promoting the technology they own rather than designing their system to meet the needs of the process.

So here is a spec for a voting system.

First, a vote lasts forever. It isn't just a flash in the dark, to be lost in time, with only the totals remaining. A ballot box needs to be available for recount of the ballots. Recount of the subtotals in the machines is not enough.

To recount a ballot, an image of the ballot is necessary. The image needs to be fixed and unchangeable. The surface on which it resides needs to be molecular material and not re-writeable. Paper appears to be the cheapest stable material for this.

Here's a simple voting system that meets the above specification and more. In this inkless copy system, the voter even gets to keep a copy of her ballot. It's New and Improved!

I voted with a paper ballot the last time I voted. My sheet of paper zipped through a scanner, which identified my check marks and added my votes to its totals. My ballot will last forever, or until historians throw it out.

If my ballot had included an inkless copy page, I could have gone home with a copy of my markings.

Another neat feature would be for the ballot counting machine to print a receipt indicating what sense it made of the ballot. The voter needs a receipt showing her vote as it was tallied. Any errors could be recorded immediately for later resolution.

Those who object to this because every little scanning error would become a federal case miss the point. Misreading of the ballot would become history.

A simple receipt printer that could provide proof that my vote was correctly read and tallied should be an easy add-on. A cash-register printer or an ATM printer would do it well. The technology is stable.

An inkless copy of my vote. And a receipt confirming that it was correctly read. So easy to provide.