Why the past 10 years of american history have been uniquely stupid https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
technology
Competitive Compatibility, AKA comcom (nee “Adversarial Interoperability”)
I note the new name here, it does not sticks in my mind, I am not sure how much it is really used, change announced by Cory Doctorow here https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/09/skrota-skolplattformen/ it is somehow milder, competitive vs adversarial, milder in e neoliberal sense, markets are competitive, feudal lords are adversarial but still, the feudal lord metaphor would probably be more apt
Facebook, change name or hands ?
“Facebook has become synonymous with hate speech, disinformation, election interference, and even genocide” Vice said it https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7wewy/facebook-new-name-zuckerberg
But, given FB governance it is really Mark Zuckerberg name that is associated to “hate speech, disinformation, election interference, and even genocide”. So nae change ? No, change CEO, Zuck should resign
But even better, Zeckerberg should be taxed and forced out of his control of Facebook in light of his manifest incapacity to manage the company on a civil course. Communism? Authoritarian move ?
It was done in post-war Japan in a democratic conetxt and it led to the Japanese economic miracle: What eating the rich made for Japan on Youtube, the of Zaibastsu conquest of Japanese economy and their undoing at the hands of the Japanese government with forced sales, taxes and hyperinflation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_-Ac68FKG4
Well, I am not in US and not in a position to ask my gorvernment to undo Facebook, the US should do it, its doable, its perfectly democratic, it will do great for the future
Where Im a citizen, I am arther in the position to ask that my use of facebook is protected with adversary interoperability
from horses to cars
a fast transition happening in the 20’s, one day you are stepping on manure the day after you are chocking in exhaust agses (getting mad at lead ill happen later) From this paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236202800_An_age_structured_demographic_theory_of_technological_change/figures?lo=1

If I find more data and charts on this transition I will put them down here.
reading oct 14th
today IEA Global Energy Outlook 2021 I only read te executive summary and they are bullish green electrification and worried low investements, growth CO2 emissions, scenarios for 2.1 and 2.6 degrees warming in 2100

bullis, they got the accelerating adoption of EV cars and renewable propelled by low costs. New paradigm building? How far we are in Carlota Perez tech revolutions framework ?
Strateachery reads Carlota Perez https://stratechery.com/2021/the-death-and-birth-of-technological-revolutions/
New York State, EVs, renewables and the grid, ain’t smart won’t be enough https://www.washingtonpost.com/s/business/2021/10/13/electric-vehicles-grid-upgrade/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjM5MjQ4OTAyIiwicmVhc29uIjoiZ2lmdCIsIm5iZiI6MTYzNDE0NjQ2MiwiaXNzIjoic3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ucyIsImV4cCI6MTYzNTM1NjA2MiwiaWF0IjoxNjM0MTQ2NDYyLCJqdGkiOiI4NWEyY2VmYS00MjI4LTRkNTItOWFiYy02ZTI0MGI1YmMxMmMiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53YXNoaW5ndG9ucG9zdC5jb20vYnVzaW5lc3MvMjAyMS8xMC8xMy9lbGVjdHJpYy12ZWhpY2xlcy1ncmlkLXVwZ3JhZGUvIn0.KpuLcTRIjF1ry7Rn8Vlc_0Y6hyezg9k1tHRBZzItp8Q&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nextdraft&fbclid=IwAR04zPt5ZvWep9HkeMaS5fPmgXjxM617KlSuQaXEO92UjYSTJCu3CNCbWnA
GMO’s some links
U.Chicago announces a RNA modification that yields 50% more in rice and potatoes https://news.uchicago.edu/story/rna-breakthrough-crops-grow-50-percent-more-potatoes-rice-climate-change
pretty good, if demonstrated, never take PR at face value. WIll it be easily accepted
UPDATE Derek Lowe wrote about it and exxplained a bit the role of FTO enzyme in animal and plants https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/07/28/one-lost-methyl-group-huge-amounts-of-food-production
Golden rice had a lot of trouble (vitamin A rich rice for developing countries) https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/agriculture/golden-rice-approval-in-bangladesh/
BT modification are blocked in some places, Italy and EU included. Bt is a transgenic modification, plants are modified with genes from Bacillus Thurigiensis and become resistant to some pests, which the bacillum is resistant itself http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/bt_crop.html
I managed to put all this together since I have been following Channa Prakash on Twitter https://twitter.com/AgBioWorld and he always curses the fools who do not allow Bt GMO’s in their countries, while the neighbour does and produces much more
Speaking of fools, we are always folled by randomness, As Taleb says, and Taleb says that transgenic modifications fall in higher risk class versus normal mutations, so we shild apply the precautionary principle https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PrecautionaryPrinciple.html
Government vs. Tech the comeback
After years watching the internet take life, live by its own and create the tech giants governments realized there’ is something wrong and are sharpening their knives
Biden tries to overcome Bjorkism and bring antitrust back to Brandeis, Noah Smith on the issue https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-economists-revolt
China cracks down on internet companies probably fearing that the superb economics of software growth would crowd talents out of less frivolous challenges “Why is China smashing its tech industry?” still Noah
Thiose less frivolous challenges is what we call “deep tech”, I never quiet understood this term until I decided that I would rename tech into “consumer internet” then “deep tech” becomes Tech
naturalismo, rassegnazione e monopoli digitali
capire cosa sono i monopoli digitali, come interferiscono con la nostra felicità on e offline, come si limitano, spaccano, combatto, regolano etc è poi così esoterico e fuori dalla nostra portata che una posizione molto tipica che ho notato, in cui sono passato anche io è:
è colpa delle economie di network, ci sono cosa ci possiamo fare
antitrust, ma se danno tutto gratis, non si può fare, non pensiamoci
poi tanta gente che non capisce il web lo fa per potere politico, non voglio essere uno di loro
in fondo, è naturale, è il mercato, ce l’hanno fatta, va bene così perchè se facciamo qualcosa dalla padella alla brace
molte cose vere ma messe in fila così fanno un ragionamento sbagliato, meglio studiare e studiando piano piano si riesce a mettere qualche punto fermo per reagire allo strapotere delle piattaforme, per sentirsi nel giusto nel farlo
per iniziare, quella cosa lì del “è gratis non si puà fare antitrust” , storia USA, l’antitrust nacque come una rezione politica alla strapotere dei cartelli, rockfeller e amici e l’azione era giustificata dallo strapotere che squilibrava la democrazia. Quindi in origine si pensava in termini di potere e tutela della democrazia
poi venne Bork negli anni 80 che cercò una definizione puramente economica, misurabile e da allora l’antitrust si faceva solo se c’era un pregiudizio per il consumatore, cioè aumento dei prezzi. Inapplicabile ora, e sarebbe insensato applicarlo perchè cambiano i tempi si possono aggiornare le interpretazioni, ed è quello che si deve fare. Ritorno a Brandies, consiglio la lettura di The urse of Bigness, Tim Wu
Questo però mi lascia ancora quello smarrimento intorno, se penso che Facebook è sbagliato così com’è, Zuck è colpevole per quello che è passato sulla piattaforma, le basi per i genocidi, per gli attacchi alla democrazia, per le stragi di qualche fuori di testa di 4chan, sono io che sono invidioso, pieno di odio, fondamentalmente un poveraccio in cerca di un capro espiatorio che incidentalmente sta sempre su Facebook ?
Fuck no, sono sul web da più di 20 anni, non era, così, era il web dei milioni di siti, non il mosaico di piattaforme di milioni e miliardi di utenti, tutte chiuse in se stesse. Scrivo su Linkedin e non so dove finisce, discuto in gruppi Facebook e non so come esportare. La portabilità dei dati, se ne parla, ma è una cosa statica, terminale, un backup.
Ecco, l’interoperabilità avversariale di Cory Doctorow, dovrei poter scrivere qui su e buttare in automatico su linkedin e facebook perchè loro non possono bloccare il mio wordpress che si logga come me e posta. Fantasie? eppure era e può essere così
come si giustifica ? il principio di concorrenza nei mercati, questo è la sua articolazione nello spazio del web.
Mandated interoperability, or rather adversarial interoperability “we need something that stops dominant firms from subverting standards—a penalty that they pay that is market-based, that impacts their bottom line, and that doesn’t rely on a slow-moving or possibly captured regulator but that, instead, can actually just emerge in real time. That is what I call “adversarial interoperability”: reverse engineering and scraping and bots”
Attractive profits, complements and value stacks
Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement from Joel Spolsky essay about tech companies keeping control of chocke point in the tech stack, and commoditize the djacent stacks as a way of preempting competition
rekated, I think, the law of attractive profits by Clayton Christensen that states “When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage.” HBR breaktru ideas of 2004 https://hbr.org/2004/02/breakthrough-ideas-for-2004
Chris Dixon on complements https://cdixon.org/2009/09/10/non-linearity-of-technology-adoption
christensen and spolsky really say the same thing but chosse to show the arrow of causation in different directions, C is worried how the managers of an incumbent company, the sort of company that does portfolio decisions within an estabilished business, can chase profits in other segment of the value chain once they are commoditizied. SPolsky speaks to startups which have doggedly built a business in one segment and need preventing competition, in an environent marked by disruption
Progressivism
Progressiv-ism, -ism like in Illumin-ism which followed the dark ages, Progressivism comes after the Great Depression. The Great depression is the title of the book written by the economist Tyler Cowen. Tyler and the tech entrepenuer Patrick Collison, founder of Stripe, have started the filed of “Progressive Studies”. They did so when they wrote the piece “we need a new science of progress” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/ and now there is a page where you can check a lot of contributions to it https://patrickcollison.com/progress
Oh, in there, Zuck interviews Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison. Zuckerberg looking at things, interviewing things https://about.fb.com/news/2019/11/a-conversation-with-mark-zuckerberg-patrick-collison-and-tyler-cowen/