Daily Archives: October 17, 2004

Power to the “Wired” People – Mitch Kapor

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Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a principal in OSAF (Open Source Applications Foundation) has written a piece on our current political process:

Our nation is founded on the principle of self-government — a government “of, by, and for the people” in the words of Abraham Lincoln — but we know in our gut that this ideal is in such peril today that we have to ask whether self-government is even a meaningful concept in 2004 as it was to the Greeks who invented democracy 2,500 years ago.
Greek and Roman traditions inspired the Founding Fathers when they framed the Constitution and brought democracy into the modern world. But if you could reanimate Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton in present-day Washington, they would be horrified. They would find a system both corrupt and dysfunctional, one that has 13 lobbyists for every representative, in which money buys undue influence and the real deals are made out of sight of the American public.
Now, it’s easy to look at this process and blame the politicians. They are certainly culpable. But let’s look at the other end of the Washington purse strings. Who buys the politicians? It’s the corporations who would rather game the system than create something of value in a competitive marketplace.

Loma Prieta +15 Years

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Fifteen years ago today, the “pretty big one” shook the San Francisco Bay Area. I lived just above Lake Merced then, and was at work in South San Francisco (north of the Airport) when the 6.9 temblor hit. (Fortunately, buildings in that area are built on solid rock, unlike other parts of the bay area, such as San Francisco’s Marina and the land south of SFO. Many recall the cancelled World Series game and the flattened I-880 in the East Bay (I remember some discussion of Dan Rather pulling up to the 880 scene in a limo with a fruit bucket. He stepped out in his best outdoor gear, ready to broadcast from “San Francisco” -it was actually in Oakland).
There are some lesser known events, a few of which I will share with you now:

  • Patience:
    The Drive home from work (Loma Prieta shook us at 5:04p.m. on 10.17.1989) was an eye opener. The traffic lights did not work as the power system was down (some areas longer than others). I remember being amazed and pleased that everyone was respectful, courteous and patient at every intersection.

  • Dinner I arrived at my home (rented room in a townhouse)
    and found that a neighbor invited everyone over as her planned dinner guests from the East Bay would not be making the trip that night. She prepared a very large salmon dinner. We enjoyed one of the most beautiful pacific sunsets I’ve seen that night.
  • Phones (mostly) worked.
    Give Pacific Bell (now part of the SBC conglomerate) credit. The phone system was overloaded, but after a few tries, I did get through to my folks later that night. I wonder how today’s cell and VOIP systems will perform during the next earthquake?

  • Humorous Circumstances
    A friend from Denver was a top IBM salesperson at the time. Part of his compensation included a trip to the World Series. The game was of course cancelled, so he made his way back to a South Airport Hotel (built on fill – I’ve since stayed there a few times). The guests were allowed inside in groups for 15 minutes to retreive their personal items. Cots were setup outside, on the grass, along with a free open bar. My friend took full advantage of the free drinks and finally passed out around 2:30a.m. At 3:30a.m., the lawn sprinklers turned on (Power!) and woke everyone up!
    He tried to call me throughout the night to rescue him from the cot, finally getting through around 6:00a.m. I picked him up and took him to my athletic club to get a good shower and start the recovery process.

  • Lights Out
    That night (the 18th), we drove through the City (Hwy 1 through the Presidio) and across the Golden Gate Bridge (the Bay Bridge was closed) to Tiburon where we enjoyed a great dinner and a view of a half illuminated San Francisco. T-Shirts proclaiming “I Survived…” were of course for sale that evening.

Links: Alltheweb | Clusty | Google | Teoma | Wikipedia | Yahoo
John King discusses San Francisco’s architectural changes following Loma Prieta. One of the biggest is the dismantling of the eyesore that was the Embarcadero Freeway (photos).

Famed Aerospace Designer Burt Rutan on the Government’s Role in Technology Development

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Leonard David:

?And we?re sitting there amazed throughout the 1960s. We were amazed because our country was going from Walt Disney and von Braun talking about it?all the way to a plan to land a man on the Moon?Wow!?
The right to dream
But as a kid back then, Rutan continued, the right to dream of going to the Moon or into space was reserved for only ?professional astronauts? ? an enormously dangerous and expensive undertaking.
Over the decades, Rutan said, despite the promise of the Space Shuttle to lower costs of getting to space, a kid?s hope of personal access to space in their lifetime remained in limbo.
?Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It?s more expensive?not less?a horrible mistake,? Rutan said. ?They knew it right away. And they?ve spent billions?arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake?trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is?it?s the government trying to do it.?

I believe Rutan is correct. Government should generally provide incentives for private industry to address problems that we as a society believe need attention. Examples include: broadband (true 2 way), education, energy and space exploration.

Total Information Awareness Goes Offshore

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Robert O’Harrow Jr:

It began as one of the Bush administration’s most ambitious homeland security efforts, a passenger screening program designed to use commercial records, terrorist watch lists and computer software to assess millions of travelers and target those who might pose a threat.
The system has cost almost $100 million. But it has not been turned on because it sparked protests from lawmakers and civil liberties advocates, who said it intruded too deeply into the lives of ordinary Americans. The Bush administration put off testing until after the election.
Now the choreographer of that program, a former intelligence official named Ben H. Bell III, is taking his ideas to a private company offshore, where he and his colleagues plan to use some of the same concepts, technology and contractors to assess people for risk, outside the reach of U.S. regulators, according to documents and interviews.
Bell’s new employer, the Bahamas-based Global Information Group Ltd., intends to amass large databases of international records and analyze them in the coming years for corporations, government agencies and other information services. One of the first customers is information giant LexisNexis Group, one of the main contractors on the government system that was known until recently as the second generation of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening Program, or CAPPS II. The program is now known as Secure Flight.

This is not a big surprise. I’m sure we’ll see more of it.