What I've Learned in School

The more I learn about computers, the more I realize how much there IS to learn.  And the more I appreciate the hard work of those who've come before me.  It must have taken thousands upon thousands of man hours every year to get where we are today.

This post is just typing out some of the things I've been piecing together, since I think it will help clarify some things for myself.  So as not to get too bogged down in technical details, I'll just warn any readers that people can write books about each topic here, so this is definitely not an in-depth look at any of it.

The heart of computing is tied to simple electric switches.  Think of a light switch to your living room - it's either on or off.  Yes or no.  0 or 1.  It's all...binary.

All computing comes down to turning millinos of tiny little switches either on or off.  Which is why it's so freaking amazing that we have display screens, graphics, video games and more...all from a series of switches turning on and off.

Hardware (circuits, memory cards, etc) has to do with the physical ways we have of determining what switches are turned on and off.  How your mouse or keyboard sends signals telling the computer to change some 0s and 1s on or off.  Your computer has logic circuits, for example, which may look at two different locations and decide whether to turn a switch on or off based on what it sees.  (i.e.  if something is true you turn a switch on, and arbitrarily call it '1'.  If it's false you turn the switch off, and arbitrarily call it '0'.  If you only want something to occur if two items are true, you check to see if both are switched on...and only if both are on do you turn on another switch.  x AND y turns on only if both x and y are on.  x OR y turns on if either x or y is on.  x XOR y turns on only if one or the other is on, but not both.  Hence logic circuits can allow us to do complicated things based on whether switches are turned on or off...and can mimic our more formal logic.)

But 0's and 1's are really hard to work with, and it's too easy for us to make mistakes.  So we came up with a number of things.  We came up with some arbitrary sets of 0's and 1's to represent letters, for example (like ASCII and Unicode).  And a way of telling the machine whether the 0s and 1s indicate numbers or letters.

We came up with something called Assembly Language, which allows us to tell a machine what to do without having to translate it all into 0s and 1s ourselves (the machine does it for us.)  Assembly Language gets into the nitty gritty details of your computer, and how it does what it does.  It means you have to tell it every little step of the way.  Like giving extremely detailed instructions on how to drive your car to the store.  You can't just say "drive down the street until you reach the third stop sign, then turn left."  You have to tell it how to put a key into the ignition, how to put the car into reverse, how to step on the gas...all the tiny little details it takes to do this thing we call 'drive a car'.   

This is interesting stuff, though, since I think that's where we get most of our security exploits.  Oh, assembly language is also slow and tedious (though less slow than 0s and 1s), and we have even higher programming languages that are easier to use.  We're learning some of them in my computer science courses.  But figuring out how a piece of malware takes over a program and depends more on the mechanics going on at assembly level.

So then...

When you run a program, the central processing unit sets aside some places in memory for everything the program needs.  You've got some identifying information, the code itself, initial variables, uninitialized variables that will be set during the running of the program, and a couple of interesting things called the heap and the stack.  These things are stored in specific locations.  Many programs require you to identify what sort of variable you are using (integer, character, etc) ahead of time so that the computer can reserve enough space to store that information when the program runs. 

The heap and stack change size as needed while the program runs.  The stack in particular makes things interesting, since it allows a program to do some pretty complicated things.  See, every time you say "compare x to y, and if x is ____ do _____" it requires some complicated steps.  First, you have to know where x is and where y is.  Then you have to do the comparison. 

So x and y get stored in registers, and there's special arithmetic logic unit that does the comparison and returns the result.  The computer looks at that result...and often the result requires jumping to a new series of instructions.  There's something called an instruction pointer that helps the computer keep track of where it is.  It stores the memory location for the next instruction.  If the program says to go to another set of instructions, the pointer will put in the new location for that instruction, and the program processes the instruction at that location.

I'm still learning a lot about how it all works, but the security flaw that sort of clicked in my head was a buffer overflow.  If I understand what's going on correctly, what happens is that (unless someone is careful with their programming) any time you ask a user for input and the user provides something larger than what the computer expected, that information will fill the location set aside when the program was initialized and spill over into the next memory location.  'Overflow'.  If you know where you are in the program, and what it's overflowing into, you can overwrite the values already at that location.  If those values happen to be instructions for the program to run, you can give the program new instructions.  You can basically tell the instruction pointer to jump to a totally different location where you've coded in malicious instructions (or just overwrite the existing instructions entirely, which will likely cause an error whenever that program is run...so it's kind of obvious.  Better to make a small change pointing the code elsewhere, then return to the original program and run it like it's intended.  Then the user won't notice anything particularly wrong.)

There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but it's nice to start making some connections out of all the stuff I'm learning.

Update

School is on track, though I've got various projects to do over the next couple of months.  Once I complete this semester, I'll have finished all the prerequisites for the Master's in Computer Science program except one.

Which means that next semester I can start getting into more specialized work in the areas that interest me.  Should be fun. :)

I've also been watching a bit of Netflix lately.  Started off by (finally!) finishing Luke Cage, the third season of Voltron, and all of The Defenders. 

As I generally prefer to read, that was unusual enough...but I decided to continue the trend for a bit.  It's actually cheaper, in a way.  See, I devour books.  I have to be careful about starting a new (large) series as I have a tendency to stay up very, very late finishing the book.  Which is not necessarily a good thing if I have school or work or something.  In college I mostly didn't read during the school year, then whipped through a ton of books during finals week.

I've been re-reading some of the books in my personal library.  Partly because it's been long enough I've forgotten most of the plot, and partly because it's cheaper than buying new books.  It's also sort of interesting to compare my impressions when I was younger to my impressions upon reading the book again today.

Still, sometimes I'm not in the mood for the books I already own.  Which means buying more books.  (The library, you see, would cost me extra to use as I technically live in the county rather than the city.)

So anyways.  Homework, school, and a bunch of Netflix.  After watching The Defenders I decided to watch Leverage, which was pretty enjoyable.  Comedy, action, heists, and enough real world issues to give it more depth than usual for that sort of show.  Good character development, and it's fun to see the actors demonstrate how different they can look/act as they try to pull off their capers. 

I do wish they'd done more with Hardison's background.  See, we know a lot about Nate.  We've had flashbacks of Parker's childhood, as well as encounters with the thief that trained her.  We had Eliot's old flame.  Sophie's friend brought them The Wedding Job.  They all had a case or two brought to the team through their old ties.  While I'm not saying Hardison's backstory was neglected (we know about his Nana, playing violin, etc.) I don't remember an episode where they helped out one of his family members or childhood friends.  I suppose their encounters with Chaos might qualify?

Anyways, now that I'm done with the series I'll finally track down the movies for The Librarian and carry on with the new Librarians series.  My father says a good actor is one you don't recognize from movie to movie.  I don't claim to be a great acting judge, but it's one of the things I notice now.  See who changes enough of their mannerisms to be - unrecognizable.  I think David Tennant's a good example, since the exact same guy played the Doctor and Kilgrave.

In Leverage, pretty much all the actors do that.  Sophie in particular, of course, but everyone does it to one degree or another.  (It cracked me up when Sophie took on some of Eliot's mannerisms in The Hot Potato Job.  I didn't really think think about how much his low throaty voice was part of the role until he changed it up in The Tap Out Job, and here's Sophie doing her version of the exact same thing.) 

I looked up most of the actors on IMDB and was surprised to realize Christian Kane (who played Eliot in Leverage) also played Lindsey in Angel and Jacob Stone in The Librarians.  I'd seen pictures and gifs of The Librarians through some of my social channels and had been mildly interested in watching it for a while.  It's just that I had planned to start with the movies (even if they aren't strictly necessary) and since they weren't on Netflix the slight effort of tracking them down had kept me from following through.

Social Engineering Tactics

I thought this was a good article on how social engineers can penetrate a system. 

The "Me, Too" Meme

Yesterday I started to see a number of my (female) friends post the "Me Too" meme on Facebook.

This is the one that says "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me, too.' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem."

I originally wasn't going to do so, because it's not like I've been 'really' assaulted.

No more than what any woman has to face.

And then I realized...that's kind of the point.  I don't consider myself sexually harassed or assaulted, because I've never had a boss pressure me for sex or something that was 'obviously' sexual harassment.

Having someone grab my butt while I was at an ATM in London twenty years ago doesn't count, right?  I mean, I've had that happen once or twice at a crowded bar, but that's really nothing.  I'm bringing up the ATM one because having it happen out in a public street like that was really rather shocking.  Who does that?!?

And of course I'm not going to get all worked up about boys catcalling from cars...they're just young idiots.

And having someone tell me that a colleague at airborne school wanted to, well... I won't repeat that.  Suffice to say I made it a point not to get anywhere near the guy after that.

And okay, I remember back in college when my roommate and I threw a party once.  At the end, a (male) friend of hers was going to crash on our couch...and he and I were trying to get one last guest to leave.  That guest was asleep in a chair, and wouldn't wake up no matter how much we tried.

So I headed to bed, but something just didn't seem right...and I was still awake a little bit later when someone opened the door to my bedroom.  I sat straight up and said something, I don't really recall what...got some sort of mumbled response and he left.  I went out, saw he'd left...and locked the door.

Actually, I kind of had the shakes after that, thinking of what could have happened.  Might have happened.  Had he been faking he was asleep, just to be in the apartment after everyone had gone? 

But no...I've been really lucky in my life.  Never really had a boss pressure me inappropriately (though I think that's partly because I somehow intimidated one...I've never really understood why some guys find me intimidating, but if it meant I didn't have to deal with the crap that boss put another colleague of mine through then I guess I'll take it.  The way he acted towards her, though...well that's pretty much why I left Afghanistan when I did.)

So no, nothing really out of the ordinary here.  Nothing that's got me traumatized, nothing like a Harvey Weinstein.  Not for me, personally.  Just your normal, typical, stuff that any woman has to deal with.

Which was kind of the point of the meme, so I guess I'll just say - "Me, too."

The Games We Play

I intend to carry on that last post into a discussion on power (shocking, I know) but I wanted to cover something else first.

My family played a lot of cards growing up.  Mostly Euchre and Canasta, though we had our own family version of  two-person solitaire - contradiction though that may be.  I've played card games with various other people throughout my life, and I remember playing with someone whose family basically taught them how to catch cheating.  That is, family members would try to cheat...but part of the point was to see if everyone else could catch them at it.  Which, when you think about it, probably makes each family member far better at spotting card cheats then I would be. 

I brought that up because when everyone in a group shares an understanding of the rules in play, they can generally play happily and well with each other.  Sort of like when a group plays BS, and part of the point of the game is to lie about what cards you have and try to catch others when they lie.  If, however, a group of people sat down to play cards and two of them expected an honest game and two expected cheating to be part of it, then you have a recipe for trouble.

In sports, sometimes people cheat.  Soccer, in particular, is known for it.  Leaving aside the moral judgements (I do think cheating is bad, of course), what's interesting is that it changes the nature of the game.  See, without cheating a game of soccer is about which team is better at putting the ball in the goal, and defending their goal from the other team.  On a more meta level, it's also about who can recruit the most talented players and who can train them the best.  So it's about athletic skill and team coordination.

Once you add cheating in the mix, however, it changes into a competition over who the best cheater is.  (Or stops being a true competition at all, as teams deliberately lose for various reasons.)

People have different comfort levels for the different types of play.  In Dominion, for example, certain cards attack other players in the game.  At the beginning of each game the cards in play are randomly selected, and attack cards may or may not be a part of the game.  If I'm playing with my father and one of my brothers, we generally just choose not to use the attack cards at all.  If one of my other brothers is playing, he may decide to use them.  If a friend of my first brother is playing, you can practically guarantee that any attack cards will be in play.

All of which changes the game considerably.  With my first brother and my father, our games tend to be more relaxed.  (We tend to prefer cooperative games anyway, like Pandemic.  And although euchre and canasta are competitive, it's teams of two competing with each other.) In Dominion, we can focus mostly on building our own strategy however we want.  (We're still competing, we just have an unspoken agreement to limit what sort of actions we take while we play the game).

When the attack cards are in play, we have to think about defense, as well.  About how to win when someone might randomly force you to discard the cards in your deck, or force you to trade with them, or force everyone to swap random cards.  That's part of why some players will deliberately use the attack cards.  They think a winning strategy should take the attack cards into account, and that limiting player options by convention doesn't truly lead to winning strategies. (i.e. how can it be considered a winning strategy if you didn't have to plan for setbacks and opposition action?)

Tbh, they have a point.  (Which is why I play regardless of whether the attack cards will be in use or not, though I do enjoy the less competitive gameplay when it's just family.)  And again, if people are expecting to play one way and encounter someone playing another it can lead to trouble.

In some ways, the rules we choose to play under shape the game in business as well as card games.  That is, businesses are 'supposed' to be about who comes up with the best widget at the lowest price.  People focus a lot on who comes up with the best widget, but the lowest price has a huge impact and expands the scope of the competition in all sorts of ways.

There's a lot of debate over whether the best widget wins out, in the first place.  For example, when I was younger, there was this thing called the videotape format war.  Home videos were a new thing, and two competing companies were offering different products - VHS and Beta.  When I first heard about this, it was in the context of someone discussing a market failure.  A shoddier widget coming to dominate the market.  The argument was that Beta was the better technology, and that it lost out to VHS because VHS was essentially better at dominating the market.

More recently, I learned that Beta might have had superior resolution, sound, and image but that these advantages were offset by a shorter recording time.  So maybe it wasn't a market failure, maybe VHS really was the better widget in the first place.  Either way, it raises some interesting questions about whether businesses are truly competing along the lines of "making the best widget", the way a soccer team competes on "scoring the most goals"...or whether the competition is along slightly different dimensions.  Like who can make their sales the fastest, who can come to dominate the market the fastest, and who can grow largest and take advantage of their large size the fastest.

Okay, one more.  John D. Rockefeller created Standard Oil back in the 1870s.  This is a very rich topic that people still debate today, so take what I say as a very brief overview that may not contain all the facts.  In other words, if it interests you read up on it further.

You could say that the oil industry competes to provide the right kind of fuel to it's customers in a reliable fashion.  Oil at the cheapest production and transportation costs.  That is, since the industry involves exploration (to find the oil), transportation, refining and marketing it's pretty much the entire supply chain.  To us it doesn't make a big deal which gas station we fuel up at (though I still refuse to fuel up at BP because they don't seem to care enough about preventing oil spills).

When Rockefeller created Standard Oil, the price of oil was fluctuating dramatically, which had serious consequences for anyone trying to start a business.  Much like with shale oil today, a business might seem profitable while oil prices were high...only to be in danger of bankruptcy when oil prices dropped and the business could no longer produce oil at a low enough cost to compete.  It's one of the ironies of economics, I think, that we humans are incapable of dealing with the instability a 'true' market economy would operate under.

So anyways.  Rockefeller took steps that ultimately reduced some of that uncertainty.  His domination of the industry made costs, in some ways, predictable.  And businesses love predictability, it makes it much easier to plan. 

At the same time, his efforts to dominate the industry may have involved lowering his prices until his competitors went bankrupt or sold out (who were generally too small to last long if they tried to lower their prices in order to compete).   

He did definitely get deals that smaller companies couldn't hope for (like transportation costs for railroad shipping, which he could get a better deal on given the volume of business he provided.)  So his size conveyed an advantage, since he could afford to sell gas at less than production cost for long enough to drive his competitor out of business.

Should a larger size lead to a competitive advantage?  Does the business that makes the best widget at the lowest cost truly win, when some businesses are able to take advantage of their size and resources to compete in ways that have nothing to do with producing a widget in the first place?  That is - if one of Rockefeller's competitors had the same supply costs as he had, had the same railroad transportation deals, then would one of his competitors have actually been better?  Or are we supposed to judge companies by the whole picture - product + supply chain?  (which we do, since all we really know when we buy is the asking price and perceived quality of the product.)

In this day and age, producing a widget at the lowest cost also takes into account corporate financial practices.  That is, hedge funds, cash flow, foreign exchange rates...all of these can reduce how much a corporation ultimately is spending and play a factor in which company has the lowest costs...

and none of them directly tie into which widget is the best quality, nor are they strictly related to production costs.

I brought all that up to point out that businesses compete over a much broader scale than just "produce the best widget".  The rules we expect our economic players (i.e. businesses) to abide by shape the sort of business world we have.  In addition, some businesses will tolerate different types of actions as they compete.

So what sort of game do we want to play?

Utopia Hypothetical, Cont.

My last post described a situation where everyone was individually wealthy, but that doesn't necessarily make for a utopia.  I wanted to explain why I put it there -

The definition of a utopia is "an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect."  There are some things I don't think any society can make perfect -

People longing for something they don't have the talent for.  Like someone who wants to be a famous artist, who doesn't have the skills or talent or what-have-you to become one.

Relationship problems (friends, family, lovers, etc.)

I could add things such as 'health problems', but it's hard to say how much can be solved with technology in some future point.  So most likely there's still going to be something outside our control, healthwise, but it could be to a larger or lesser degree than we imagine.

These are things I don't think any society can ultimately resolve, though perhaps that's just my personal lack of imagination.

Having everyone independently wealthy, however, would lead to all sorts of 'perfect' possibilities.  Assuming we've got the technology/resources to continue manufacturing desirable goods, and that people willing do the work that can't be automated, and so on and so forth.

How so?  Mainly because everyone, and not just the few, would have the resources to do what they truly wanted to.  They wouldn't be stuck in some mediocre, dead-end job just to pay the bills.  Wouldn't be wasting 8 hours a day (and possibly an hour or two of commute time) doing something tedious and mind-numbing because it's the best they think they can get. 

There are all sorts of frustrating things we endure on a daily basis, that we just accept as 'the way it is' because we don't see any other choice.  N. N. Taleb (author of The Black Swan), had an interesting article discussing why and how businesses require employees...and use it as a form of control.

This has an interesting resonance with other things - the term 'wage slave', which sometimes differentiates the modern economy from our agricultural past where each farmer was essentially theri own small business owner.  (There's a loss of independence, and consequences associated with that, which affect us all today.)  The issue with modern slavery, and with businesses who exploit workers to make bricks, burn charcoal, and so on and so forth.  There's even been some discussion/debate over whether Google and other Silicon Valley companies are re-inventing the rather disastrous company town.

I started with N.N. Taleb's article because he attributes this drive for control to business needs.  That is, a business needs to be sure they can offer their goods and services on a consistent and reliable basis...and independent contractors may not be as reliable as a business could wish.  (In the example he gave, a pilot was offered quite a lot of money to break contract and take a client on a unplanned trip.)  This is a rather non-judgmental explanation for the incentives for controlling your employees...

And it brings up questions about power, control, and how we can have a modern society that meets our desire for fast, reliable service while at the same time creating a world where people can live their lives to the fullest.

Utopia Hypothetical, Cont.

I didn't try to answer my question last night because I wanted any actual readers to have the space to think about it themselves. 

If we ever did reach my proposed hypothetical situation, I can image a couple of immediate consequences - inflation would rise, and more jobs would be automated.

Of course, that still leaves a whole slew of questions.  Like - how much would inflation rise?  And for which items?  Would it lead to everyone ending up exactly where they are now, or is there some limit it would reach.

That is,  demand would rise and prices rise, but there's sort of an upper limit in some cases.  Like consumable goods - one person can only consume so much, so even if everyone who wanted to could afford to buy as much as they want it the demand would eventually level off.  And how many cars would someone really want/need, anyway?  Some economic equilibrium would be reached, just at a higher price than it currently is.  And demand would fall for goods that would be considered inferior, so more people would be buying Mercedes or Porches and less would be buying the more mediocre car-makers.  Meaning a boom time for high end manufacturers, while low end manufacturers would either go out of business or move into the high end market.

Businesses would automate the hell out of things, since there'd be few people willing to work the lower status jobs. 

But what about the jobs that just can't be automated?  Like cherry picking.  Would there be enough incentive for someone to find a way to automate it?  Or would people decide that they want cherries enough to pay really high prices, so that cherry farmers can pay someone enough to convince them to harvest cherries?  Or will people who enjoy cherries decide to work, as a matter of pride and service (ensuring people can enjoy fresh fruit)?  And if so, would they decide to work for an hour, four hours, eight hours? 

What would this do for work schedules, and productivity, anyway?  I mean, if you didn't have to worry about making the money that comes from a 40 hr/workweek, why not work different hours? 

And if you don't actually need a salary, then maybe businesses would just pay some amount as more of a status marker (which it kind of already is, tbh) than anything anyone is expected to actually live off of.  Like, you could totally leave the place if you wanted to...but you stick around in the position you're in because you care about the work, and hope to build enough experience to move on to something better.  Not because you have to pay the  bills.

This hypothetical is so far out there that I have a hard time picturing it, but I do have some semi-educated guesses.  First - most people need some sort of purpose in their life, so you will still have people choosing to work (I'm sure some people wouldn't bother, but I have no idea how many.  I'd want a study of our current multi-millionaires to see how they wind up spending their time.  From what I can tell, most still seem to work somewhere, or attend board meetings, or volunteer philanthropically, or find something to keep them busy by choice even though they have absolutely no need for the income).

Capitalism seems based on fear, sometimes.  There are people who sincerely believe humans need to be motivated by their fear (of losing their homes, or starvation, or what-have-you) in order to get them to do the work needed.  Which is kind of BS, I think.  Or rather, it may be true for the sort of demeaning and menial tasks that people don't volunteer for...but if people were truly at a state where they're needs were met, where they weren't in danger of starvation or homelessness, I really don't think they'd decide to spend the rest of their lives hanging out on a beach.

I know that's kind of a common fantasy, but honestly?  After a week (or a month, or a year, depending on the person) most people would get bored.  Itchy.  Sure, some people might enjoy doing nothing else in their life...Every. Single. Day.  I can't imagine that the majority would, though. That fantasy only works because of the contrast to our current existence. 

So what can we guess would happen?  Inflation (which may or may not cause a problem, depending on how much and with what goods).  Automation (which is already happening).  People working by choice, in positions of their choice, and who are willing to speak up or move on if necessary because they're not in deathly fear of losing their jobs.  Some question about who would be willing to take on the dirty but necessary tasks that can't be automated.  The likelihood that people will work fewer hours, and devote more time to entertainment of one sort or another...

A boom in luxury goods, arts, and entertainment industries but a bust in businesses that compete for the low end/high volume markets.

Hmmm.  And probably a boom in the financial markets.  To the investors and money managers, since even though everyone should know how to manage their money there's a difference between knowing how to evaluate a wealth manager and knowing how to invest your money yourself. 

It's the sort of thing that seems utterly impossible, like there's some basic flaw that would make it unworkable.  But it'd sure as hell be a fun thing to try.

Utopia, a Hypothetical Exercise

I decided to skip a bunch of topics and discuss a hypothetical situation I've sometimes pondered.

Imagine you are a multimillionaire, perhaps even a billionaire.  You walk outside and grab the first random person you see.  Joe Schmoe or Jane Schmane.  You know that most people who are not already wealthy don't really know how to handle it.  That's why so many lottery winners wind up right back where they were.

So you say "I will give you a million dollars under the following conditions:

1. You must invest it all
2. You must meet with me periodically over the next five years and we will discuss how to manage your wealth
3. If you ever double your principal you will pay this forward by making the same offer to the next random person.

Now, this might make a huge difference in one person's life (and the lives impacted by that person), but it's probably not going to change the world.

Hypothetically, though.  If enough people did this, and people did pay it forward consistently, over some unknown period of time...

You could reach a tipping point.

A time where the vast majority of people were independently wealthy.

What would that economy look like?

So, Utopia

Given that this is all pretty subjective, what ought a more perfect union look like?

I would say something about a society that serves the greater good, except that 'the greater good' rings all sorts of alarm bells.  That is, people can justify all sorts of horrible things so long as it serves "the greater good".  (I get flashbacks of the movie Hot Fuzz, though the point has been made elsewhere.)

I could get into a long discussion on ethical dilemmas, particularly the rather famous Trolley Problem and variants such as the one with the fat man.  Suffice it to say, this utopia should serve the greater good so long as (or while acknowledging that) the greater good involves the utmost respect for the free will and autonomy of the individual, and does not involve crossing ethical lines such as murder in the name of that greater good.

All of which could spur endless debate, which I don't want to get bogged down in right now.  Rather, I want to focus more on the greater good (with the acknowledged limitations/caveats).

A society that benefits it's citizens the most is one where the most people are able to become their best self.  (Again, that is loaded with so many subjective statements we could spend hours debating it).

What is our "best self"?  How do we get there?  All of that is tricky, in and of itself, though I think recent research on happiness gives us some clue.  That is, we want people to feel happy, feel a sense of mastery and connectedness, empowered, living up to their full potential, etc. and so on and so forth.

The only problem is that there are so many, many different ways people can be developed in order to achieve that.  Some people, for example, hate feelings rushed and pressured and perform best in a supportive and nurturing environment.  Others swear up and down that they perform their best when they feel their backs are against a wall and that the pressure is on.

What works for one person doesn't work for another.  Which is why I imagine the solution we grope for is one that offers a variety of custom-made options.  All of which is horribly difficult to do, especially in bureaucratic environments that require standardization and consistency.

Art of the Impossible, Cont.

So okay, we'll throw out all the pesky realities that mire us in the status quo.  All the reasons we can't do something.  All the world-weariness and cynicism that makes us accept a society that is often less than it could be.

Take a deep breath, let out all the preconceptions.

What do we want society, and the economy, to look like?

Well...first of all you have to admit this is pretty subjective.  As my brother likes to say, there is an "is...ought gap".  That is, you can say "about 44 million Americans have no health insurance" or "33,363 Americans died of gun use in 2013", all of which are statements of 'is'.  Facts.  This is the case (unless the facts themselves are disputed, of course).

But what ought we to do about those facts?  You can say this is the case, but what someone thinks we ought to do based on those facts can vary wildly from one person to another.  We ought to have more accessible healthcare, and the government ought to provide it.  Or the private sector ought to provide it.  We ought to have stricter gun laws.  Or we ought to make it mandatory to carry a gun.  Or the good old classic - There ought to be a law! 

These are actually subjective statements, based on what you value, and part of the reason why we have such heated discussions over these is that people come to such wildly different ideas about what ought to happen.

So, for example, I think everyone ought to have access to a good quality education, have the opportunity to succeed through their own efforts, etc, etc.  But if you asked me why I believed that, it would depend on my personal beliefs.  I have a hard time understanding why anyone else would think it's better NOT to let people have access to a good quality education (and really, most Americans agree that this ought to happen, support for a good education is a rather consistent polling point.  It's just that people disagree very strongly on the best way of making this happen.)

As I said, with that ought I'm not saying anything about which particular path is best for achieving that goal.  It's not based on a fact, per se.  It's based on my personal values and beliefs.  (Okay, yes...we can build up some evidence for why people should care about an issue.  Evidence, for example, that a strong middle class provides stability and wealth to all, including the top 1%, and should be encouraged.  Then again, stability is another subjective value.  Yes, of course, most of us prefer stability to living in an unstable environment...but again, it's a value.  The value of not worrying that you or your loved ones will be murdered, or die in poverty...something that seems self-evident.  And yet there are always people who seem to thrive in chaotic environments.  Who, to quote Littlefinger, believe that "chaos is a ladder".  We again come to an ought that is subjective.)

So if we want to throw out all the pesky possibilities, and reach for the impossible, we have to first grapple with what, exactly, we ought to see in a better, more perfect society.  And understand that will always be subject to debate.

Art of the Impossible, Cont.

I said I wanted to discuss the impossible, and immediately I feel compelled to write about just why and how this is not easily done.  Mostly, I think, people in our day and age have come to appreciate just how difficult it is to create lasting change.  Whether it's the legacy of our Civil Rights Movement, or criticisms for how foreign aid has actually hurt Africa, or the shrinking of the middle class, or the difficulty in coordinating international efforts to stop environmental destruction, we seem to live in a time where we are forcibly reminded of our limits.

I think that's part of why dystopia appeals.  That, and we have a really hard time imagining any 'perfect' world that doesn't sound boring.  Like in the movie The Matrix, when Agent Smith says the attempt to create a happy matrix was a disaster...people didn't accept it.  Or the old joke about how when someone dies they want to go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. 

Besides which, there's a long historical legacy of failed attempts to create a utopia - like New Harmony, Indiana (an economic failure after two years), or the Oneida Community (not sure it counts as an attempt at utopia, the wikipedia site says it was a Perfectionist religious communal society) that eventually turned into a silverware company.

There seems something intrinsic to the human condition that defies attempts to build a lasting utopia.  To create perfection.

So why bother?  Well, here's the thing.  We can't always predict the consequences of change, and we're terrible at predicting what changes will make us happy...but change IS inevitable.  And the people who shape that change, who help direct that change in certain directions, are the ones who help dictate what the future holds.

Mistaken at times, sometimes idealistic, all too often wrong - the future is shaped by those who dream of something better.  Different, at least.  Since some dreams are only 'better' for that particular person.

And the ideas that spur development can pay off in ways you don't predict.  I'm not talking about big utopian goals here, more the fascinating interplay between science fiction and technological development.  Like the classic example of Star Trek's medical tricorder, which is coming closer and closer to an actual reality.

Change is inevitable, and envisioning the possibilities can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Art of the Impossible

I read an article the other day that was thought provoking for a variety of reasons.  I clicked on it for the title, of course ("Sci-Fi, Fantasy and the Status Quo").  I stayed with it despite the discussion on Hillary Clinton.  Or perhaps because of it.  It was one of those articles I didn't necessarily agree with, but didn't necessarily disagree with either. 

I know I've wondered, myself, at the appeal of monarchy in the sci-fi/fantasy world...though I assumed it had to do with making relatable characters.  That is, it's kind of hard to have a hero off fighting the evils of bureacracy.  And it's hard to make a President quite as much of a character as a King or Queen. 

I've also wondered, sometimes, at (what sometimes appears to be the left's) obsession with creating dynasties.  That is, the Kennedy family seemed to keep coming up in politics ever since JFK, and now we've got the Clintons.  Whereas Reagan, revered by the right though he is, has not had his children enter politics.  So far as I know.  I have to admit, while there may be more political dynasties than I'm really aware of (families more under the radar unless you know who is who) I've always thought the presumption on a family name to smack of something - unAmerican.  Like aristocracy or something.  Yes, we had John Adams and John Quincy Adams; George Bush and George W. Bush.  And FDR was related to Teddy Roosevelt to a certain degree.  That's quite enough, to be honest.  (I also wonder about that article some time ago, how Democratic donors met and decided to back Kamala Harris.  I haven't fully made up my  mind on her yet, but it seems sort of premature/presumptuous and a sign that the Democrats haven't really learned that it's a mistake to crown someone 'heir' before we've even started the primaries.  I dunno, I suppose I can't blame them for doing what they can given their political preferences and resources, but it again smacks of the oligarchy I'm afraid we're becoming.)

But those are all sidebars to conversation I wanted to have.  Namely, the point this article made that science fiction and fantasy are the art of the impossible.  I could make my own guesses as to why dystopian fantasy is so appealing right now, but again it's not the discussion I wanted to have. 

See, I've sometimes thought about how capitalism is just one more 'ism in the world's history.  That is, we had feudalism, we had the Roman system (with it's slaves), and there's no reason to believe capitalism is the end all and be all in terms of socio-economic structures. 

The problem with having this conversation, however, is that it is bogged down in all the Cold War baggage.  That is, the fight between capitalism and communism has made it pretty much impossible to suggest alternatives without sounding like you are, again, unAmerican (since support for capitalism goes hand in hand with being American) or a commie, or what-have-you.

And to be honest, there are some things I think capitalism does very well.  Better than some.  I kind of like having continuously better technology.  Smarter, faster smartphones and computers that can store all kinds of things.  I see the importance of incentivizing people by allowing them to benefit from the risks involved in building a business, investing, researching, etc.

Yet I feel like the Cold War era politics have made it impossible to discuss some of the flaws in our socio-economic system.  The loneliness endemic to our modern way of life.  The throw-away-culture that doesn't bother learning how to make things last. 

And the perennial challenges of fairness, justice, and the distribution of power.  That is, do we truly have a level playing field when certain companies dominate their industries to an overwhelming degree?  And how can we say it's a meritocracy when so many people are disadvantaged in terms of their school choices and more, all before they've even reached maturity?  (That's not even getting into larger issues). 

The funny thing is, the critiques are not actually new to me.  I learned some of them through the Catholic schools my parents sent me to, where we were taught how sad it is that our pop culture is so focused on superficial things (like appearances, designer clothes, etc.) 

Which happens to be some of the same criticisms the jihadists have of Western society, tbh.  See, while I vehemently disagree with their tactics and old-school beliefs (killing innocent people, believing women should wear veils, etc) I do see the appeal of trying to build a community dedicated to serving God (i.e. "Muslim" means "one who submits or serves God", shari'a law is supposed to describe the path required to build a community of faith.  There are different interpretations of all of this, though the hardcore jihadists tend to believe the harsher, less forgiving, and more brutal forms.) 

I underlined, bolded, and italicized 'community' because that's the key draw, I think.  The thing we ourselves (and outsiders) see missing in our modern society.  That loss of connection.  And the importance of serving something greater than ourselves, though I don't necessarily feel it has to be God.  Or rather, there are very good historical reasons why we have a separation of church and state and I don't feel like repeating the religious wars of the 1600's, so I'm emphasizing the universal bits.  Humans are social, and they need to feel a sense of purpose. 

So if we accept the criticism from the article I originally linked to, if we say that science fiction/fantasy is the art of the impossible and that we should let our imagines run wild, to picture what could be (but isn't), what would I come up with?