Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Connections, Failure, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, Heidegger, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, predictions, promotion, Radiolab, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, volcano, writing
Tomorrow we’ll launch the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well.
* * * * * * *
I listened to the rebroadcast of the Radiolab show “Emergence” this noon hour, as I had a nice salad. From the show description:
What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies–all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. This hour of Radiolab, we ask how this happens.
What it’s investigating is the phenomenon of emergence; that is, of self-organization or spontaneous order from a chaotic or non-ordered system. A lot of people think that intelligence and consciousness are emergent properties.
* * * * * * *
Since the beginning of this year when I launched Communion of Dreams, almost 20,000 people have gotten a copy of the book. In the years before that, as I was working to try and get the book conventionally published, between 35,000 and 40,000 people downloaded the earlier version of the book.
And all along I’ve benefited from the help of many people in getting out the word about CoD. Thanks. This has quite literally been a case of being outside of my control. The wisdom of crowds, indeed.
* * * * * * *
From Communion of Dreams (first shows up in Chapter 9):
“That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
* * * * * * *
Tomorrow we’ll launch the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well.
It’s been a very long slog through a range of mountains, with highs and lows. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve learned a lot. Some of it I have shared. Some of it I still need to come to understand.
And this last bit has been like climbing up a volcano, one I’m not sure is actually active, though I have seen signs of life in it. I’m almost afraid to look over the rim and down into the crater. Yet I am drawn to the heat, to the light, to the power of the thing.
Tomorrow we’ll launch the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well. As part of that, Communion of Dreams will be free to download all day long. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, please do. And tell your friends to do so.
Thank you. Thanks to all of you. For helping me make it this far.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Failure, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, hutzpah, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, predictions, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
I was chatting with another friend who is a writer, doing a bit of commiseration about the common panic that hits most writers at some point or another.
Panic?
Yeah, that nothing you say is worth saying. That you’re asking readers to spend a part of their time, perhaps part of their money, reading what you write … and the terror that they will not find the trade worthwhile. Just about every writer I have ever known has gone through some version of this. Because face it, it takes a lot of hutzpah to think that you have something worthwhile to say, in a world where it seems like everything of value has already been said better by someone else.
And as I told my friend, I have discovered a whole new level of terror related to this as I have been working to set up the Kickstarter project for St. Cybi’s Well: asking people to actually hand over money before the book has even been written. That takes nerve. And a facade of self-confidence which far exceeds almost anything I’ve ever accomplished previously.
It’s not that I don’t actually think that I can write this book. I know I can. And I know that I can do it in the time-frame I’ve outlined. Combine the experience of writing and then revising Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year, and I know about the pacing of getting a book ready for publication. I know I can also produce the necessary volume of material by the deadlines I’ve set — I’ve done it in the same time frame previously (and recently) in doing freelance articles. So the actual writing is not the problem, though of course there will be challenges as I go through it.
No, it’s the matter of thinking that the book is worth it. Worth asking people to hand over money for it in advance. Because that’s essentially what this Kickstarter will be: asking for advance sales of a book which doesn’t even entirely exist in my head yet. In this way it’s crowd-funding a traditional writer’s advance from a publisher. Except that taking an advance from a publisher meant only potentially disappointing the publisher (and their Board of Directors and share-holders, I suppose). In this instance it means potentially disappointing friends and fans … a *lot* of them. (Hopefully a lot of them, anyway.)
Yeah, that’s a whole new level of terror. And a whole new level of hutzpah for this kid.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Kindle, Predictions, Preparedness, Publishing, Religion, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, Travel, Weather, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, drought, holy wells, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, predictions, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, weather, writing
We got a little more than 2″ of rain yesterday.
On my walk this morning, the grass no longer crunched underfoot.
* * * * * * *
Got a note from a friend this morning. He’d just finished reading CoD last night, made this comment:
“That was one hell of a lot of keeping things straight on your part. Very nice job and a thoroughly enjoyable read.”
* * * * * * *
From almost a decade ago:
My awareness shifted, slowed, and a calmness and sense of peace came over me. I did a cursory examination of the cottage, but then walked behind the Well room to find the source of the stream which fed the pool there: it was a spring, unencumbered by metal bars, bubbling up in a stone-ledged pool complete with small steps, perhaps four feet across. I knelt on one knee, left hand on the cold stone slab, the right reaching down to caress the surface of the water. Just touching that water gave me an electric chill, and brought tears to my eyes. Those tears have returned as I write this. I paused there, and just felt the joy of that water through my fingers for a few minutes, before returning to the Well room.
This is a substantial room, all the walls mostly intact but the roof missing. Perhaps 15 feet on a side, the pool in the center 8 or 9 feet across. Again, there were stone steps leading down into the pool. In the thick stone walls are several niches for sitting, perfect for contemplation. I sat. I just felt that place, felt the faith and devotion that had shaped it, and the deep source that fed it. The pool is quiet, the surface a mirror for looking up into the open sky. After what was probably only a few minutes, but what felt like hours, I again kneeled, reaching down to touch that smooth inviting surface. Here there was a different character to the energy, less raw, perhaps easier to digest. A sense of communion with all the souls who had entered that pool. A moment that stretched back centuries.
I was speechless for a time. Alix (my wife) knows me well enough, has seen me in these moments before, that she let me be, allowed me to just experience the place, until I was filled and ready to move again. With the silky texture of worn stone sliding under my fingers, I rose and left the pool, pausing only to pat the dark stone of the doorway and give thanks.
In was in that moment that St. Cybi’s Well was conceived.
* * * * * * *
It’s a strange thing to write a novel. To have it churn inside you for years. To feel it gestate, to become heavy in your mind, slowly pushing aside everything else.
I think this is part of the reason why so many writers suffer with addiction and relationship problems of one sort or another. The book takes up all the space in your head. And if you can’t extract it at the right time, and in *just* the right way, it hurts. It hurts like hell.
* * * * * * *
We got a little more than 2″ of rain yesterday.
On my walk this morning, the grass no longer crunched underfoot. We’re still in a drought — still some 10″ under for total precipitation this year — but two inches of rain over the course of 24 hours has helped. A lot. It no longer feels as if the entire outdoors is holding its breath, hanging on in anticipation . . . and in worry. The world has sighed.
I was speechless for a time. I am no longer.
There is work to be done. Hard work. There is no guarantee that I’ll be successful. There certainly is no guarantee that anyone will like the book. While it is very much a prequel to Communion of Dreams, St. Cybi’s Well will not neatly fit in the usual framework of a classic science fiction story. The passage above should give you some sense of that.
But I have to be faithful to the story. And have faith in my fans.
Stick around.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Failure, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, NYT, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: advertising, Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, David Streitfeld, direct publishing, free, jim downey, John Bourke, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, money, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, technology, writing
That’s the title of a NYT article a friend sent me. It’s long, more than a bit depressing, and probably something that every aspiring author should read. More than that, it’s probably something that every book consumer should read. Because if you’re going by book reviews listed online, well, you might be reading nothing more than “artificially embellished reviews” in the words of one former business owner who brokered such reviews for authors.
Why do people do this? Money. From the article:
In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site, GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.
There were immediate complaints in online forums that the service was violating the sacred arm’s-length relationship between reviewer and author. But there were also orders, a lot of them. Before he knew it, he was taking in $28,000 a month.
And why do authors seek such services? Same reason. Gaming the system to have a bunch of fake reviews posted helps to boost sales, building the dynamic which leads to a self-supporting “best seller.” People love the idea of being part of something successful. This is why marketers of all sorts seek to create “buzz” — that kind of attention is the Holy Grail of selling anything. Again, from the article:
One of Mr. Rutherford’s clients, who confidently commissioned hundreds of reviews and didn’t even require them to be favorable, subsequently became a best seller. This is proof, Mr. Rutherford said, that his notion was correct. Attention, despite being contrived, draws more attention.
So, what to do about it?
There’s no easy answer, for either a writer or a reader. Ideally, you should be able to read a review and tell whether the person actually read the book or not. But you can’t trust that. Believe me — I wrote advertising copy for several years after college and before grad school, and I got to the point where I could convince almost anyone that whatever product I was writing about was *FANTASTIC* whether or not I had ever even tried the product, let alone whether I liked it. Any competent writer could churn out ‘reviews’ for books they’ve never read by the dozens.
So, what then? Because reviews really do make a difference — having a solid body of honest reviews has helped others decide to give my books a try. That’s why I keep asking people to do them: it helps. A lot.
But what I think helps even more is word-of-mouth. Well, the internet equivalent of it, anyway. Which is people — real people — posting their thoughts/recommendations about a book on their favorite forum/blog/twitter/Facebook wall. I haven’t hit this mechanism nearly as much as I probably should since the initial launch of both Her Final Year and Communion of Dreams, but that’s because I hate bugging people.
But I’m going to swallow my pride and ask when it comes time to kick off the Kickstarter Project for St. Cybi’s Well that I keep mentioning. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that the Kickstarter will either succeed or fail according to how much promotional support it gets from people who have read Communion of Dreams.
So if you read that book, and enjoyed it, and would like to read another component in my over-arching story — be ready to help spread the word.
Thanks. In advance. There will be more tangible expressions of my appreciation coming soon.
Jim Downey
PS: Editing (Sept. 3) to add another link addressing this problem: RJ Ellory’s secret Amazon reviews anger rivals
Filed under: Connections, Emergency, Failure, Flu, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Society, Survival | Tags: antibiotics, blogging, flu, health, jim downey, obesity, pandemic, plague, predictions, probiotics, science
Your body has something on the order of 10 trillion individual cells. But surprisingly, it has nine or ten times that number of microorganisms which it hosts in some capacity or another, many of which we have co-evolved with and which seem to be critical to our long health. While these microorganisms are typically much smaller than human body cells, in one very real sense, “you” is actually only about 10% “you.”
These microorganisms have a substantial impact on how your body digests food. On whether you can resist various kinds of infection or develop any of a range of auto-immune diseases. Perhaps even on your mood and risk assessment.
Would it therefore be any kind of a surprise at all if doing something to change the “mix” of these microorganisms had an impact on you?
Hell, it’d be a surprise if it didn’t.
Almost all of us know what happens when you have to take a broad-spectrum antibiotic: usually some degree of diarrhea and intestinal discomfort. And in the last decade or two it has become commonplace for people to seek out some variety of probiotics, frequently in the form of live yogurt, as a way to replenish gut flora following antibiotic treatment. I do it myself.
So, extending that idea a bit, researchers are now investigating whether part of the slow-moving plague of obesity can be due to the changes created in the human-hosted microorganisms:
Early use of antibiotics linked to obesity, research finds
The use of antibiotics in young children might lead to a higher risk of obesity, and two new studies, one on mice and one on humans, conclude that changes of the intestinal bacteria caused by antibiotics could be responsible.
Taken together, the New York University researchers conclude that it might be necessary to broaden our concept of the causes of obesity and urge more caution in using antibiotics. Both studies focus on the early age, because that is when obesity begins, the scientists say.
As I’ve noted previously:
In Communion I have a post-pandemic society, one which is recovering from a massive disruption caused by a flu virus which caused rapid death in a large percentage of the population. But the reality of what we’re dealing with might be even more insidious.
More insidious in this case because we have done it to ourselves.
And perhaps not even with direct antibiotic treatment to deal with some kind of life-threatening infection. Consider that it is still a widespread practice to boost livestock weight gain through the use of antibiotics, and that leaves a residue of antibiotics in the meat. If it boosts weight gain in feed animals, why wouldn’t it do the same to us?
I’ve said before that there has been some kind of change to the way our bodies absorb nutrients in the last 40 or 50 years, and that that is behind the global rise in obesity. Previously there were indications that it might be due to some kind of virus. Or an immune response to the germaphobia of the 20th century. But maybe it is more directly our own damned fault, and we’ve traded the ability to defeat infections for a different kind of health risk.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Architecture, Bipolar, Diane Rehm, Failure, Feedback, Health, Kindle, Marketing, Migraine, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Survival, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, American Migraine Foundation, bipolar, blogging, Communion of Dreams, David Dodick, Diane Rehm, direct publishing, health, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, literature, Mayo Clinic, migraine, NPR, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
I woke about 1:00 this morning, rolled over and looked at the clock. My side hurt, the way it usually does. But it was the nasty bit of headache which had the bulk of my semi-conscious attention. I reached over to the nightstand, picked up the pain pill I had left there. I sat up enough to pop it into my mouth, then picked up the water glass, took a drink to wash the pill down.
About 4:30 I repeated the task.
I still had the headache when I finally woke at about 6:00, just before the radio came on.
* * * * * * *
Our house is about 130 years old. It has a narrow central staircase off the kitchen which leads to the second floor, making three 90-degree turns in the process. As far as I know, these stairs are largely original, though there were some minor modifications made at the bottom back in the 1950s.
Between the first and second turns there’s an exposed nail where someone made a mistake in construction. It came through the riser, but didn’t enter the tread properly. Part of the wood popped loose, and at some point broke away. But it doesn’t really hurt anything, and is out of the way, so no one has ever bothered to fix it.
I notice things like this.
* * * * * * *
The energy dynamic has changed again.
Well, to be honest, it is always changing. But while I had been riding fairly high in my bipolar cycle, now I can feel the old doubts, the old fears starting to creep back in.
Doubts? Fears?
Of failure, of course.
As I contemplate putting together the Kickstarter for St. Cybi’s Well, I start to worry. Will it be successful? How the hell am I going to reach the audience for Communion of Dreams to let them know about it? For that matter — can I even write the damned book, and if I do, will everyone just hate the thing?
* * * * * * *
Yesterday the Diane Rehm Show had a segment about migraines. From the transcript, this is Dr. David Dodick, neurologist at the Mayo Clinic and chair of the American Migraine Foundation speaking:
Well, Diane, when one does a functional scan, like Dr. Richardson just talked about, whether it’s a PET or a functional MRI, we see activation of certain regions in the brain and certain networks in the brain, particularly those networks that process sensory information, like light and noise and pain and emotion. So we see activation of all of these networks during migraine. And indeed what we’ve come to recognize now is that not just during a migraine attack.
But even in between attacks the brain is processing all of that sensory information in an abnormally excitable way. So, migraine was thought to be just a disorder that comes and goes and you’re perfectly normal in between. But we now recognize the fact that it’s an abnormal processing — abnormal network processing in the brain that continues even between attacks.
* * *
And that’s one of the reasons why we, as a medical community, absolutely must take this to sort of more seriously. Migraine sufferers are three times more likely to have psychiatric disorder such as depression, anxiety, bipolar illness. They’re twice as likely to have epilepsy. They’re twice as likely to suffer an ischemic stroke. They’re six to 15 times more likely to develop brain lesions.
* * * * * * *
I woke about 1:00 this morning, rolled over and looked at the clock. My side hurt, the way it usually does. But it was the nasty bit of headache which had the bulk of my semi-conscious attention. I reached over to the nightstand, picked up the pain pill I had left there. I sat up enough to pop it into my mouth, then picked up the water glass, took a drink to wash the pill down.
About 4:30 I repeated the task.
I still had the headache when I finally woke at about 6:00, just before the radio came on.
I’ve had this headache off and on for the better part of a week. Maybe longer.
The codeine I take each evening/overnight to deal with the torn intercostal muscle pain is also effective at disrupting the development of a full migraine. But the cycle still tries to complete. It’s annoying.
But some things you learn to live with. Like imperfections in old homes. Yes, I’ll see the Kickstarter through, as well as writing the book whether or not the Kickstarter is completely successful.
Some things you learn to live with.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Expert systems, Failure, Feedback, Science, Science Fiction | Tags: Amazon, direct publishing, jim downey, Kindle, literature, reviews, science, Science Fiction
OK, as I play catch-up from vacation, I’m doing the “how is the book doing” check, and found this review:
I started this book wanting to like it. The idea of discovering a non-human made artifact intrigued me. But as I got further into the story it turned from a purely hard Sci Fi novel into one that smacked more of mysticism than scientific investigation. From mysterious dreams to everyone looking at the artifact and not seeing the same thing; it got harder and harder for me to enjoy it and I lost interest about halfway through. One positive thing I can say about it is that I did like the A.I. helpers (called “Experts”) from the story. They were entertaining and very believable.
Ouch. First one-star review it’s gotten. I do wonder whether the fellow just stopped reading, because I think that his complaint is answered with how the book comes together. Ah well.
Anyway, there were also two more excellent 5-star reviews to balance that, so…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Emergency, Failure, Feedback, Flu, Flu Wiki, Guns, Health, Preparedness, Society, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, EDC, emergency, guns, health, jim downey, predictions, survival, technology
While I’m on a bit of vacation, I have decided to re-post some items from the first year of this blog (2007). This item first ran on December 29, 2007.
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As I have mentioned previously, I enjoy shooting. And I carry a concealed weapon (legally – by permit and where allowed by law) pretty much all the time. This isn’t paranoia, just a simple recognition that we live in an unpredictable and sometimes dangerous world. That same mindset applies to preparations for any kind of small-scale disaster, whether natural or man-made. If you live in the Midwest, you understand that power outages occur due to weather (tornadoes in Spring, Summer, and Fall, ice-storms in Winter), and that you may need to be self-reliant for days or even a couple of weeks. I’ve long abided by the Scout motto of “Be Prepared”, and while you wouldn’t find a years worth of supplies and a generator cached here, we could manage pretty easily for a period of a couple of months. That’s not too far off what is recommended by both the government and independent health agencies. As I’ve discussed, the onset of a pandemic flu may well cause a disruption of normal economic activity for a prolonged period, and I cite such a disaster as the background for Communion of Dreams.
Anyway, in an accident during one shooting trip this fall I managed to slice open my right thumb pretty well. I had ridden out to the family farm where I usually shoot with one of my buddies, so didn’t have my car, which contains a fairly complete first-aid kit. And, as it turned out, my buddy didn’t have any kind of first aid supplies in his car. We improvised a bandage from stuff in my gun cleaning kit, and things were OK. When I got home, I added a real first aid kit to my ‘range bag’, and didn’t think much more about it.
Then, a couple of weeks later I was back out at the farm with my BIL. We were walking the border of the property adjacent to a state park and marking it as private, since a lot of people don’t bother to keep track of where they are and we’ve had a lot of tresspassing. At one point down in a secluded valley my BIL and I paused for a breather, and just out of curiosity I checked to see if I had a signal for my cell phone. Nope. Hmm.
Now, it was nice weather, just a tad cool and damp when we set out. But it was November, and the leaves were slick in places where a fall could easily result in a twisted knee or a broken bone. I got to thinking – if I were on my own, what did I have with me that I could use in the event of an emergency? Oh, I had plenty of stuff in my car – but that was the better part of a mile away. What did I have on my person?
In truth, I was in better shape than most people would likely be in such a situation. I always have a Leatherman multi-tool on my belt, a small LED flashlight on my keychain, and a pistol and ammo. But still, since I don’t smoke I’m not in the habit of carrying matches or a lighter, I once again didn’t have any first-aid items, et cetera. I had stuck a small bottle of water in my jacket pocket, but that would hardly last long. I could probably cobble together some kind of splint or impromptu crutch, but it would be a challenge to get out of such a situation on my own.
When I got home I got to doing a bit of research about emergency survival kits. Google that, and you’ll come up with about 30,000 hits to sites offering everything from bomb shelters to equipment for first responders. Not particularly helpful. I decided to take a different tack, and started to think about what I wanted to have in a kit small enough that I would *always* have it with me. I set my goal for constructing a kit which would fit into an Altoids tin, since that is small enough to easily slip into any pocket.
This problem has been tackled by others, and there are actually some such small kits for sale that’ll run you upwards of $50. I looked over the commercially available kits, saw what others have done to solve the problems inherent in such a project, and came up with the following:
What you see there is:
- Surgical Mask (can also be used as a bandage)
- Fresnell lens for magnification or starting fires
- 20mm bubble compass
- Single-edged razor blade
- Suture pack (curved needle mounted with suture thread)
- Band-aids & steri-strips
- Antibiotic packet
- Emergency whistle
- Superglue (repairs, fabrication, wound sealant)
- Mini-lighter
- Cotton tinder tabs
- Water purification tablets (can also be used as antiseptic)
- 30′ of Spiderwire (15 lbs test)
- Safety pins
- Small ziplock bag for water
- Cash
- Painkillers
- Benadryl (anti-histamine, sedative)
- Anti-diarrheal tablets
Yes, it all fits in the Altoids tin. Just. It is not entirely satisfactory, as I would have liked to have a large piece (say 18″x24″) of heavy-duty aluminum foil, a couple of garbage bags, some lightweight steel wire, maybe some duct tape or heavier cord. But it is a pretty good start – any small kit like this is by necessity an exercise in trade-offs. (Edited to add 06/01/08: I wrapped about 15′ of 24ga steel wire around the mini-lighter in a single layer, tightly wrapped. Takes up almost no additional room, and will be easy to unwrap for use.)
In searching out the items I wanted (difficult to find items linked to my sources), it became clear that in some cases I would spend more on shipping for some of the components than I would for the actual items. So I made one such kit for myself, and another half dozen to give to friends. That got the cost down to under $10 each (not including the cash, obviously).
Your best survival tool in any situation is your brain. But it doesn’t hurt to have a few advantages in the form of useful items close at hand. With this small kit, and what I usually have with me anyway, I am reasonably well prepared to deal with most situations that I can envision. And I thought that since I went to the trouble to construct it, I would put the information about it here for anyone else who might have some use for it.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Failure, Government, Marketing, NYT, Politics, Predictions, Press, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Terrorism | Tags: blogging, free, jim downey, NPR, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology
While I’m on a bit of vacation, I have decided to re-post some items from the first year of this blog (2007). This item first ran on November 12, 2007.
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Over the weekend, news came out of yet another “Trust us, we’re the government” debacle, this time in the form of the principal deputy director of national intelligence saying that Americans have to give up on the idea that they have any expectation of privacy. Rather, he said, we should simply trust the government to properly safeguard the communications and financial information that they gather about us. No, I am not making this up. From the NYT:
“Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety,” Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, told attendees of the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s symposium in Dallas.
* * *
“Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity,” he said, according to a transcript [pdf]. “But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity – or the appearance of anonymity – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.”
The future, Mr. Kerr says, is seen in MySpace and other online troves of volunteered information, and also in the the millions of commercial transactions made on the web or on the phone every day. If online merchants can be trusted, he asks, then why not federal employees, who face five years in jail and a $100,000 fine for misusing data from surveillance?
Or, from the Washington Post:
“Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety,” Kerr said. “I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but (also) what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn’t empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.”
This mindset, that allowing the government to just vacuum up all of our personal information, to monitor our email and phone communications, or whatever else they are doing but don’t want to tell is, is somehow equivalent to my posting information on this blog or giving some company my credit card number when I want to buy something, is fucking absurd. First off, there is a fundamental difference between what I willingly reveal to someone in either a personal or commercial exchange, and having my information taken without my knowledge or agreement. To say otherwise is to say that just because my phone number is listed in the phone directory, everyone who has the ability to do so is free to listen in on my phone conversations.
Even worse, it shows how we are viewed by this individual, and our government: as their subjects, without rights or expectations of being in control of our lives.
And the notion that we can just trust governmental employees with our private information is patently ridiculous. First off, saying that we should because we already trust commercial businesses with our private information is completely specious – how many times in the last year have you heard of this or that company’s database having been hacked and credit card, personal, and financial information having been stolen? This alone is a good reason to not allow further concentration of our private data to be gathered in one place. Secondly, think of the many instances when hard drives with delicate information have been lost by government employees in the State Department, at the Department of Veterans Affairs, or even at Los Alamos National Laboratory – and those are just the things which have actually made it into the news. Third, and last (for now), anyone who has had any experience with any government agency can attest to just how screwed up such a large bureaucracy can be, in dealing with even the simplest information.
I recently went round and round with the IRS over some forms which they thought I had to file. I didn’t, and established that to the satisfaction of the office which contacted me. Yet for six months I was still being contacted by another office in charge with collecting the necessary fees and fines – three times I had to send a copy of the letter from the initial office which cleared me of the matter, before they finally, and almost grudgingly, admitted that I owed them no money (for not filing the documents I didn’t need to file). These are not the same people I want to trust to handle even *more* information about me.
Allowing the government to take this position – that the default should be that they can just take whatever information about us they want, so long as they promise not to misuse it – is to abandon any illusions that we are in any way, shape, or form a free people. It would turn the entire equation of the Constitution on its head, saying that the government is sovereign and we its subjects. That such a thing is even proposed by a government employee is extremely revealing, and should cause no little amount of concern.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, Constellation program, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Government, ISS, Man Conquers Space, NASA, NPR, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Scott Simon, Space, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: jim downey, NASA, NPR, predictions, science, Science Fiction, Scott Simon, space, technology, travel
While I’m on a bit of vacation, I have decided to re-post some items from the first year of this blog (2007). This item first ran on November 24, 2007.
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I have a special place in my heart for Scott Simon, the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday program. Oh, I’ve long enjoyed his reporting and work at NPR, but in particular it was the experience of being interviewed by him in 2001 for my “Paint the Moon” art project which endeared him to me. As it was just at the beginning of the media coverage of that project, and most people as yet didn’t understand what I was trying to do with the project, it would have been easy to mock the idea and portray me as something of a fool – but Simon was kind and considerate in his interview with me (which took almost an hour to do from my local NPR station facilities), and the end result was an interesting and insightful segment for his show.
Anyway, I go out of my way to try and catch the broadcast of Weekend Edition Saturday each week, and today was no different. One of the segments this morning was an interview with Pat Duggins, who has covered over 80 shuttle launches for NPR and now has a new book out titled Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program. In the course of the interview, Simon asked the following question (paraphrased; I may correct when the transcript of the show is posted later): “Are Americans unrealistic in the expectation of safety from our space program?”
Duggins paused a moment, and then gave an unequivocal “Yes.”
I had already answered the question in my own mind, and was pleased to hear him say the same thing. Because as I have mentioned before, I think that a realistic assessment of the risks involved with the space program is necessary. Further, everyone involved in the space program, from the politicians who fund it to the NASA administers to aerospace engineers to astronauts to the journalists who cover the program, should all – all – be very clear that there are real risks involved but that those risks are worth taking. Certainly, foolish risks should be avoided. But trying to establish and promote space exploration as being “safe” is foolish and counter-productive.
I am often cynical and somewhat disparaging of the intelligence of my fellow humans. But I actually believe that if you give people honest answers, honest information, and explain both the risks and benefits of something as important as the space program, they will be able to digest and think intelligently about it. We have gotten into trouble because we don’t demand that our populace be informed and responsible – we’ve fallen very much into the habit of feeding people a bunch of bullshit, of letting them off the hook for being responsible citizens, and treating them as children rather than participating adults. By and large, people will react the way you treat them – and if you just treat people as irresponsible children, they will act the same way.
So it was good to hear Duggins say that one simple word: “Yes.”
What we have accomplished in space, from the earliest days right through to the present, has always been risky. But for crying out loud, just going to the grocery store is risky. None of us will get out of this life alive, and you can be sure that for even the most pampered and protected there will be pain and suffering at times. To think otherwise is to live in a fantasy, and to collapse at the first experience of hardship.
I think that we are better than that. Just look at all humankind has accomplished, in spite of the risks. To say that Americans are unwilling to accept a realistic view of death and injury associated with the exploration of space is to sell us short, and to artificially limit the progress we make. I think it *has* artificially limited the progress we have made.
One of the most common complaints I get about the world I envision in Communion of Dreams is that the exploration of space is too far along to be “realistic”. Nonsense. Look at what was accomplished in the fifty years that lead up to the first Moon landing. In a world filled with trauma, war, and grief, some risks are more easily accepted. In the world of Communion, post-pandemic and having suffered regional nuclear wars, there would be little fixation on making sure that spaceflight was “safe”, and more on pushing to rapidly develop it.
We can go to the planets, and then on to the stars. It is just a matter of having the will to do so, and of accepting the risks of trying.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 