I had to go all the way to Norway to learn about what was happening in my own back yard- and our own field of technology. It was a young, intelligent theater lighting designer named Kent who introduced me to Clay Shirky, a professor at NYU and author of Cognitive Surplus and Here Comes Everybody. Now I am addicted to Shriky’s blog and have devoured his books. If you’ve pondered (or screamed out loud) about our addiction to the internet, please discover Shirky and trust in how technology is changing us for the better. Cognitive Surplus is a compelling but easy read that explores what is possible when human utilize new digital technology to uncover our shared resources of talent, creativity, time and goodwill to tranform our world. As Clay Shirky studies the effects of the internet on society, he blogs about his observations at www.shirky.com/weblog. Start 2012 off with Shirky’s encouraging thoughts and I promise you it will change how you use and view your computer.
Cognitive Surplus- How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators
Mischa Glenny’s Darkmarket: Cyberthieves, cybercops and you
This is a must read review by Richard Poplak of Darkmarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You
From Daily Maverick- Dec 5, 2011
Mischa Glenny, author of McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, has written a follow-up about cyber crime. It’s a book that will keep you awake at night. By RICHARD POPLAK.
First, some words on my finances. I engage three credit cards in a complex fiduciary shuffle, playing one off against the other like contestants on Celebrity Apprentice. Recently, I learnt these cards have been used by parties other than me. I know this because our tastes and itineraries do not diverge: spending sprees R8,000 at Ralph Lauren in Jersey City, flights to Aruba and R400 dinners at MacDonald’s in Marseilles. (How one spends R400 on Happy Meals is a mystery in itself.) All in, I’m currently contesting about R80,000 in fraudulent charges. The outsourced phone personnel cheerfully assisting me in this endeavour swear I won’t be responsible for the actions of my ghostly profligate.
At that last statement, blithely offered up by Amal in Bangalore or Vitash in Mumbai, I can only laugh. If anyone undergoing a similar ordeal thinks consumers don’t ultimately pay the tab for credit card fraud, then they’ve been asleep for the past four years. The house always wins—in the headlong rush to dole out easy money, and in the orgy of downsizing that eliminates tellers and branches from a financial institution’s bottom line (so they can better concentrate on gambling government-guaranteed money on bad mortgages), banks have left the digital security gate wide open.
Joe Average pays twice. First as the sucker shoring up American Express or MasterCard’s insurance premiums with hidden charges and usurious interest payments; second as a taxpayer financing the insanely expensive police procedurals that almost never result in an arrest, much less a conviction.
Misha Glenny, in his new book DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You, drags late-stage capitalism’s boogeymen from the mainframe into the daylight, and it’s a horror show. (Zombie computers, it turns out, are significantly more frightening than their human counterparts.) The book reads like William Gibson’s Neuromancer, lightly updated and thoroughly fact-checked. Ultimately, it functions as a moral tale that morphs into a tragedy: “In humanity’s relentless drive for convenience and economic growth, we have developed a dangerous level of dependency on networked systems in a short space of time,” notes Glenny. Read More
Thanksgiving and the Panacea
Most of us could kvetch all day long. Everyday there are countless things that displease us and seem to go wrong- wrong with the world, wrong with our lives, wrong with our work, wrong with our families, wrong with other people- wrong with us.
In America we maintain one day for trying to suppress our kvetching. We call it Thanksgiving and base it on loose truths and many myths about Pilgrims, Native Americans and good ole turkeys. We eat too much, mutter small talk with relatives, watch football games and spend a lot of time cleaning up the kitchen.
Yet, the core of Thanksgiving is vital to a good life. Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, suggested that, in thankfulness, a person’s relationship to God and others gives birth to a self-awareness that constitutes his being. Gratitude consists of a warm sense of appreciation for something or somebody; a sense of goodwill toward people and things; and a disposition to act that follows from appreciation and goodwill.
In ordinary life we seldom realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich. It is with gratitude that we recognize that we are connected to each other in a mysterious way that is not fully determined by physical forces, but is part of a wider or transcendent ecology.
Andy and I know this. We try to balance our kvetching by practicing gratitude and in doing so we are learning to take the long view on our lives and allow gratitude to help our brains track our success and notice what is right in our lives. In the long run it hardly matters what is wrong with our lives. There will always be ‘wrong’- painful, awful, ugly, unimaginable ‘wrong’. The human heart will always ache from betrayals, wounding and inflictions, but it may also rejoice in gratitude. Gratitude makes us feel complete, that we have everything we need, at least in this moment.
So in this moment, we wish to quietly rejoice in you. You are not just customers. You are not just clients. You are not just vendors. You are our nourishment and in hundreds of nuanced ways you feed our spirits with gestures of kindness and simple words of thoughtfulness and acknowledgment. Your emails make us smile; your handshakes strengthen our confidence; your greetings encourage us; your phone conversations connect us beyond their subject matters of viruses, networks, and hard drives; your homemade cookies delight us; your questions challenge us; your inquiries about our wellbeing generate tenderness; and your trust inspires us to serve.
We are grateful for you.
May each day be Thanksgiving and may there always be diamonds at your feet.
Andy Pizer and Jinx Davis
Millennium Group