An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower

Re: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower

Postby admin » Mon Nov 04, 2013 6:32 am

12: THE APPROACHING SINGULARITY

Individuals are getting more and more powerful. With the current rate of progress we're seeing in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, it seems likely that individuals will one day -- and one day relatively soon -- possess powers once thought available only to nation-states, superheroes, or gods. This sounds dramatic, but we're already partway there.

Futurists use the term "Singularity" to describe the point at which technological change has become so great that it's hard for people to predict what would come next. It was coined by computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who wrote that the acceleration of technological progress over the past century has itself taken place at an accelerating rate, leading him to predict greater-than-human intelligence in the next thirty years, and developments over the next century that many would have expected to take millennia or longer. He concluded: "I think it's fair to call this event a singularity .... It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown. In the 1950s there were very few who saw it." [1]

A lot more people see it coming now -- in fact, a lot more people see it coming, and are writing about it now, than in 1993 when Vinge wrote these words.

WE'RE ALL SUPERMEN NOW

One question is just how much, using technologies like nanotechnology and genetic engineering, we should improve on the human condition. My own feeling is "a lot" -- it seems to me that there's plenty of room for improvement -- but others may feel differently. If we choose to improve, will we become superheroes or something like them?

Should we?

My six-year-old nephew, Christopher, wants to be a superhero. It was Superman for a while, then Spiderman. (Short-lived enthusiasm for the Incredible Hulk didn't survive the lameness of the film, apparently.)

And really, who wouldn't want to be a superhero of some sort? It's not so much the cape or the crime fighting that lies behind this sentiment. It's the way that superheroes don't have to deal with the limitations that face the rest of us. It's easy to see why kids, whose everyday limitations place them in a position that is obviously inferior to that of adults, would be so excited about super powers. But even as adults we face limitations of speed and strength and -- especially -- vulnerability to all kinds of pain, to death. The idea of being able to do better seems pretty attractive sometimes, even if we don't fantasize about being members of the Justice League any more.

Will ordinary people have better-than-human powers one day? It's starting to look possible and some people are talking about the consequences. Joel Garreau makes the superhero angle explicit in his book Radical Evolution:

Throughout the cohort of yesterday's superheroes -- -Wonder Woman, Spiderman, even The Shadow, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men -- one sees the outlines of technologies that today either exist, or are now in engineering .... Today, we are entering a world in which such abilities are either yesterday's news or tomorrow's headlines. What's more, the ability to create this magic is accelerating. [2]


Yes, it is. The likely consequences are substantial. Running as fast as light, a la The Flash, might be out of the question, and web slinging is unlikely to catch on regardless of technology. But other abilities, like super strength, x-ray vision, underwater breathing, and the like are not so remote. (The dating potential promised by The Elongated Man's abilities, meanwhile, may produce a market even for those second-tier superpowers.) Regardless, transcending human limitations is part of what science and medicine are about. We're already doing so, in crude fashion, with steroids, human growth hormone, and artificial knees. More sophisticated stuff, like cochlear implants, is already available, and far better is on the way.

Would I like to be smarter? Yes, and I'd be willing to do it via a chip in my brain, or a direct computer interface. (Actually, that's already prefigured a bit in ordinary life too, as things like Google and Wi-Fi give us access to a degree of knowledge that would have seemed almost spooky not long ago, but that everyone takes for granted now.) I'd certainly like to be immune to cancer, or viruses, or aging. But these ideas threaten some people who feel that Out physical and intellectual limitations are what make us human.

But which limitations, exactly? Would humanity no longer be human if AIDS ceased to exist? What about Irritable Bowel Syndrome? Was Einstein less human? If not, then why would humanity be less human if everyone were that smart? It may be true, as Dirty Harry said, that "a man's got to know his limitations." But does that mean that a man is his limitations? Some people think so, but I'm not so sure. Others think that overcoming limitations is what's central to being human. I have to say that I find that approach more persuasive.

These topics (well, probably not the Irritable Bowel Syndrome) were the subject of a conference at Yale on transhumanism and ethics. The conference was covered in a rather good article in The Village Voice, which reports that many in the pro-transhumanist community expect to encounter considerable opposition from Luddites and, judging by the works of antitechnologists like Francis Fukuyama and Bill McKibben, that's probably true. [3]

I suspect, however, that although opposition to human enhancement will produce some cushy foundation grants and book contracts, it's unlikely to carry a lot of weight in the real world. Being human is hard, and people have wanted to be better for, well, as long as there have been people. For millennia, various peddlers of the supernatural offered answers to that longing -- from spells and potions in this world, to promises of reward in the next. Soon they're going to face stiff competition from science. The success of these students of human nature suggests that the demand for human improvement is high -- probably high enough to overcome any barriers. (As Isaac Asimov once wrote, "It is a chief characteristic of the religion of science, that it works." [4])

At any rate, nothing short of a global dictatorship -- whether benevolent, as featured in some of Larry Niven's future histories, or simply tyrannical, as seems more likely -- or a global catastrophe is likely to stop the rush of technological progress. In fact, as I look around, it seems that we're living in science fiction territory already.

Take, for example, this report from the Times of London: "Scientists have created a 'miracle mouse' that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals." From nose to tail, the mouse is totally unique in the animal kingdom for its ability to regrow its nose and tail -- and heart, joints, toes, and more. But the revolution isn't complete with Mickey's new limbs. The more fascinating prospect is that this trait can be replicated in other mice by transplanting cells from the "miracle mouse." "The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine." [5]

Limb regeneration and custom-grown organs! Bring it on! Then there are the ads I'm seeing for offshore labs offering stem cell therapy to Americans. I don't know whether this particular therapy lives up to its claims, but if it doesn't, the odds are that other places soon will be offering therapy that does (see the mouse story above).

Meanwhile, Cambridge University just held the second conference on Scientifically Engineered Negligible Senescence. At the conference, people discussed ways of slowing, halting, or even reversing the aging process. [6] There was also a conference on medical nanotechnology, [7] while elsewhere nanotechnologists reported that they had produced aggregated carbon nanorods [8] that are harder than diamond.

On a more personal note, my wife recently went to the doctor, where they downloaded the data from the implanted computer that watches her heart, ready to step in to pace her out of dangerous rhythms or shock her back into normal rhythms if things went too badly. I remember seeing something similar in a science fiction film when I was a kid, but now it's a reality. And, of course, I now get most of my news, and carry on most of my correspondence, via media that weren't in existence fifteen years ago.

THE FUTURE ISN'T THE FUTURE

I mention this because as we look at the pace of change, we tend to take change that has already happened for granted. But these stories now (except for my wife's device, which isn't even newsworthy today) are just random minor news items that I noticed over a period of a week or two, even though they would have been science-fictional not long ago. Much as we get "velocitized" in a speeding car, so we've become accustomed to a rapid pace of technological change. This change isn't just fast, but continually accelerating. The science-fictional future isn't science-fictional. Sometimes, it's not even the future any more.

Nonetheless, we'll probably see much more dramatic change in the next few decades than we've seen in the last. So argues Ray Kurzweil in his new book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.

Kurzweil notes the exponential progress in technological improvement across a wide number of fields and predicts that we'll see artificial intelligences of fully human capability by 2029, along with equally dramatic improvements in biotechnology and nanotechnology. (In fact, these developments tend to be self-reinforcing -- better nanotechnology means better computers and better understanding of biology; better computers mean that we can do more with the data we've got, and progress more rapidly toward artificial intelligence, and so on.)

The upshot of this is that capabilities now available only to nation-states will soon be available to individuals. That's not surprising, of course. I've probably got more computing power in my home (where we usually have nine or ten computers at anyone time) than most nation-states could muster a few decades ago, and it does, in fact, allow me to do all sorts of things that individuals couldn't possibly have done on their own until such power became available. But the changes go beyond computers, which merely represent the first wave of exponential technological progress. People will have not only intellectual but physical powers previously unavailable to individuals. Changes will come faster and thicker than we have seen from the computer revolution so far.

Kurzweil discusses the Singularity, and what it's likely to mean, in excerpts from the following interview originally done for my blog, InstaPundit. [9] I encourage you to read his book, though, because the Singularity is, in a sense, the logical endpoint of the many near-term trends and events described in this book. The world is changing in a big way, and my reports might be likened to those from a frontline correspondent, while Kurzweil's writings are more in the nature of a strategic overview.

Reynolds: Your book is called The Singularity Is Near and -- as an amusing photo makes clear -- you're spoofing those "The End is Near" characters from the New Yorker cartoons.

For the benefit of those who aren't familiar with the topic, or who may have heard other definitions, what is your definition of "The Singularity"? And is it the end? Or a beginning?

Kurzweil: In chapter 1 of the book, I define the Singularity this way: "a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian nor dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts that we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself. Understanding the Singularity will alter our perspective on the significance of our past and the ramifications for our future. To truly understand it inherently changes one's view of life in general and one's own particular life. I regard someone who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life as a 'singularitarian.'"

The Singularity is a transition, but to appreciate its importance, one needs to understand the nature of exponential growth. On the one hand, exponential growth is smooth with no discontinuities, and values remain finite. On the other hand, it is explosive once we reach the "knee of the curve." The difference between what I refer to as the "intuitive linear" view and the historically correct exponential view is crucial, and I discuss my "law of accelerating returns" in detail in the first two chapters. It is remarkable to me how many otherwise thoughtful observers fail to understand that progress is exponential, not linear. This failure underlies the common "criticism from incredulity" that I discuss at the beginning of the "Response to Critics" chapter.

To describe these changes further, within a quarter century, nonbiological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, "experience beaming," and vastly enhanced human intelligence. The result will be an intimate merger between the technology-creating species and the technological evolutionary process it spawned. But all of this is just the precursor to the Singularity. Nonbiological intelligence will have access to its own design and will be able to improve itself in an increasingly rapid redesign cycle. We'll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that unenhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it. That will mark the Singularity.

Reynolds: Over what time frame do you see these things happening? And what signposts might we look for that would indicate we're approaching the Singularity?

Kurzweil: I've consistently set 2029 as the date that we will create Turing test-capable machines. We can break this projection down into hardware and software requirements. In the book, I show how we need about 10 quadrillion (1016) calculations per second (cps) to provide a functional equivalent to all the regions of the brain. Some estimates are lower than this by a factor of 100. Supercomputers are already at 100 trillion (1014) cps, and will hit 1016 cps around the end of this decade. Two Japanese efforts targeting 10 quadrillion cps around the end of the decade are already on the drawing board. By 2020, 10 quadrillion cps will be available for around $1,000. Achieving the hardware requirement was controversial when my last book on this topic, The Age of Spiritual Machines, carne out in 1999, but is now pretty much of a mainstream view among informed observers. Now the controversy is focused on the algorithms ....

In terms of signposts, credible reports of computers passing the full Turing test will be a very important one, and that signpost will be preceded by non-credible reports of successful Turing tests.

A key insight here is that the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will expand exponentially, whereas our biological thinking is effectively fixed. When we get to the mid-2040s, according to my models, the non biological portion of our civilization's thinking ability will be billions of times greater than the biological portion. Now that represents a profound change.

The term "Singularity" in my book and by the Singularity-aware community is comparable to the use of this term by the physics community. Just as we find it hard to see beyond the event horizon of a black hole, we also find it difficult to see beyond the event horizon of the historical Singularity. How can we, with our limited biological brains, imagine what our future civilization, with its intelligence multiplied billions and ultimately trillions of trillions fold, will be capable of thinking and doing? Nevertheless, just as we can draw conclusions about the nature of black holes through our conceptual thinking, despite never having actually been inside one, our thinking today is powerful enough to have meaningful insights into the implications of the Singularity. That's what I've tried to do in this book.

Reynolds: You look at three main areas of technology, what's usually called GNR for Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics. But it's my impression that you regard artificial intelligence -- strong AI -- as the most important aspect. I've often wondered about that. I'm reminded of James Branch Cabell's Jurgen, who worked his way up the theological food chain past God to Koschei The Deathless, the real ruler of the Universe, only to discover that Koschei wasn't very bright, really. Jurgen, who prided himself on being a "monstrous clever fellow," learned that "Cleverness was not on top, and never had been." [10] Cleverness isn't power in the world we live in now -- it helps to be clever, but many clever people aren't powerful, and you don't have to look far to see that many powerful people aren't clever. Why should artificial intelligence change that? In the calculus of tools-to-power, is it clear that a ten-times-smarter-than-human AI is worth more than a ten megaton warhead?

Kurzweil: This is a clever -- and important -- question, which has different aspects to it. One aspect is what is the relationship between intelligence and power? Does power result from intelligence? It would seem that there are many counterexamples.

But to piece this apart, we first need to distinguish between cleverness and true intelligence. Some people are clever or skillful in certain ways but have judgment lapses that undermine their own effectiveness. So their overall intelligence is muted.

We also need to clarify the concept of power as there are different ways to be powerful. The poet laureate may not have much impact on interest rates (although conceivably a suitably pointed poem might affect public opinion), but s/he does have influence in the world of poetry. The kids who hung out on Bronx street corners some decades back also had limited impact on geopolitical issues, but they did play an influential role in the creation of the hip hop cultural movement with their invention of break dancing. Can you name the German patent clerk who wrote down his daydreams (mental experiments) on the nature of time and space? How powerful did he turn out to be in the world of ideas, as well as on the world of geopolitics? On the other hand, can you name the wealthiest person at that time? Or the U.S. secretary of state in 1905? Or even the president of the U.S.? ...

Reynolds: It seems to me that one of the characteristics of the Singularity is the development of what might be seen as weakly godlike powers on the part of individuals. Will society be able to handle that sort of thing? The Greek gods had superhuman powers (pretty piddling ones, in many ways, compared to what we're talking about) but an at-least-human degree of egocentrism, greed, jealousy, etc. Will post-Singularity humanity do better?

Kurzweil: Arguably, we already have powers comparable to the Greek gods, albeit, as you point out, piddling ones compared to what is to come. For example, you are able to write ideas in your blog and instantly communicate them to just those people who are interested. We have many ways of communicating our thoughts to precisely those persons around the world with whom we wish to share ideas. If you want to acquire an antique plate with a certain inscription, you have a good chance of quickly finding the person who has it. We have increasingly rapid access to our exponentially growing human knowledge base.

Human egocentrism, greed, jealousy, and other emotions that emerged from out evolution in much smaller clans have nonetheless not prevented the smooth, exponential growth of knowledge and technology through the centuries. So I don't see these emotional limitations halting the ongoing progression of technology.

Adaptation to new technologies does not occur by old technologies suddenly disappearing. The old paradigms persist while new ones take root quickly. A great deal of economic commerce, for example, now transcends national boundaries, but the boundaries are still there, even if now less significant.

But there is reason for believing we will be in a position to do better than in times past. One important upcoming development will be the reverse-engineering of the human brain. In addition to giving us the principles of operation of human intelligence that will expand our AI tool kit, it will also give us unprecedented insight into ourselves. As we merge with our technology, and as the nonbiological portion of our intelligence begins to predominate in the 2030s, we will have the opportunity to apply our intelligence to improving on -- redesigning -- these primitive aspects of it ....

Reynolds: If an ordinary person were trying to prepare for the Singularity now, what should he or she do? Is there any way to prepare? And, for that matter, how should societies prepare, and can they?

Kurzweil: In essence, the Singularity will be an explosion of human knowledge made possible by the amplification of our intelligence through its merger with its exponentially growing variant. Creating knowledge requires passion, so one piece of advice would be to follow your passion.

That having been said, we need to keep in mind that the cutting edge of the GNR revolutions is science and technology. So individuals need to be science and computer literate. And societies need to emphasize science and engineering education and training. Along these lines, there is reason for concern in the U.S. I've attached seven charts I've put together (that you're welcome to use) that show some disturbing trends. Bachelor degrees in engineering in the U.S. were 70,000 per year in 1985, but have dwindled to around 53,000 in 2000. In China, the numbers were comparable in 1985 but have soared to 220,000 in 2000, and have continued to rise since then. We see the same trend comparison in all other technological fields, including computer science and the natural sciences. We see the same trends in other Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and India (India is not shown in these graphs). We also see the same trends on the doctoral level as well.

One counterpoint one could make is that the U.S. leads in the application of technology. Our musicians and artists, for example, are very sophisticated in the use of computers. If you go to the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) convention, it looks and reads like a computer conference. I spoke recently to the American Library Association, and the presentations were all about databases and search tools. Essentially every conference I speak at, although diverse in topic, look and read like computer conferences.

But there is an urgent need in our country to attract more young people to science and engineering. We need to make these topics cool and compelling.
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Re: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower

Postby admin » Tue Nov 05, 2013 12:31 am

Conclusion

THE FUTURE


We've seen all sorts of ways in which people are being empowered, from blogs and multimedia, to home-based manufacturing and other cottage industries, to the longer-term promise of molecular manufacturing and related technologies. So what's the big picture in a world where the small matters more?

Making predictions is always difficult. And considering the changes that strong technologies like nanotech, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering are likely to make, predicting beyond the next few decades is especially difficult. But here are some thoughts on what it's all likely to mean, and what we should probably do to help ensure that the changes are mostly beneficial.

eBAY NATION

We're not all going to wind up working for eBay or Amazon, but as large organizations lose the economies of scope and scale that once made them preferred employers, more people are going to wind up working for themselves or for small businesses. That's probably a good thing. There doesn't seem to be a huge wellspring of love for the Dilbert lifestyle though, as I've mentioned before, most people wouldn't mind Dilbert's big-company benefits package. So eBay, with its health coverage for sellers, may be a prototype for future solutions to this dilemma.

If people are going to be doing more outside the big-organization box, and if most of our current infrastructure of health and retirement benefits and the like is built around the implicit or explicit expectation that most people will work for big businesses, it's probably time for a change.

On the smaller scale, this would suggest that it's time to make things like health insurance and retirement benefits more portable, and to make the tax code more friendly to small businesses and the self-employed. There's always a lot of lip service in that direction, but not so much actual movement. Some people might even go so far as to claim that this is an argument for single-payer national health insurance, which in theory would facilitate entrepreneurship. Given its poor record elsewhere -- and the fact that places like Canada, Britain, and Germany aren't exactly hotbeds of independent entrepreneurial activity -- I don't think I'd endorse that approach. But a mechanism that would let people operate on their own, without the very real problems that a lack of big-employer health insurance creates, would do a lot to facilitate independence. I know quite a few people who stay in their jobs because they need the health benefits; they'd be gone in a shot if they could get these benefits another way.

On a larger scale, though, it's worth looking at the role of government in general. I mentioned earlier that the big organizations in the twenty-first century will be more likely to flourish if they're organized so as to help individuals do what they want -- to take the place of older, bigger organizations in a more disintermediated way. That's what eBay, Amazon, and others do. Could a similar approach work for the government? We're a long way from that right now.

In theory, of course, our government is all about maximizing individual potential and choices. In practice, well, not so much, as Joel Miller notes in his book Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on Americas Families, Finances, and Freedom. [1] Miller mostly describes the problem rather than solutions. Thoughts on how to reorganize government to further those goals could easily occupy another book, but it strikes me that now is a good time to start trying to figure these things out. [2]

THE SWARM

In the chapter "Horizontal Knowledge," I discuss the rapid appearance of the World Wide Web, without any centralized planning effort, as evidence of how important horizontal knowledge and spontaneous organization have become. I've made this point before, as long ago as 2003, [3] and Kevin Kelly echoes it in a history of the Web published in Wired:

In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan .... Ten years ago, anyone silly enough to trumpet the above ... as a vision of the near future would have been confronted by the evidence: There wasn't enough money in all the investment firms in the entire world to fund such a cornucopia. The success of the Web at this scale was impossible. [4]


But it happened. As Kelly notes, everyone who pondered the Web, including many very smart people who had been thinking about communications and computers for decades and who had substantial sums of money at stake, nonetheless missed the true story: the power of millions of amateurs doing things because they wanted to do them, not because they were told to. It was an Army of Davids, doing what the Goliaths never could have managed.

Because information is easier to manipulate than matter, the Army of Davids has appeared first in areas where computers and communications are involved. But new technologies will extend the ability of people to cooperate beyond cyberspace, as well as increasing what people can do in the real world. What's more, this process will feed back upon itself. New technologies will help people cooperate, which will lead to further improvements in technology, which will lead to more efficient cooperation (and individual effort), which will lead to further improvements, and so on. This means that "swarms" of activity will start to happen on all sorts of fronts. I can imagine good swarms (say, lots of people working on developing vaccines or space technology) and bad ones (lots of people working on viruses or missiles). I expect we'll see more of the good than the bad -- just as we've seen far more coordinated good activity on the Web than bad -- but the changes are likely to surprise the experts just as they have in the past.

HORIZONTAL POLITICS

Political power used to be a pyramid. In the old days, there was a king at the top, with layers of scribes, priests, and aristocrats below. In modern times things were more diffuse, sort of. Ordinary people who wanted to have an impact needed to find an interlocutor -- typically an industrial-age institution like a labor union, a newspaper, or a political machine. And getting their ear was hard.

Not any more, as this email from a blog-reader illustrates:

I wrote you a few weeks ago about the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) adding rules to stop Catholic schools from winning too many championships. My IS-year-old son came up with his own solution. He put together his own website (www.GoHomeIHSAcom), added a blog section, did a press release, got a bunch of publicity in the newspaper, and now he has been asked to make a brief presentation of his ideas at the IHSA Board meeting tomorrow. He spent under $10 for the domain name and set up the blog for free. Three years ago this never could have happened. Is it any wonder that many of our traditional institutions hate the Internet?


No wonder at all, as you've figured out already if you've read this far. The Internet makes the middleman much less important.

This poses a real challenge to traditional political institutions. Political parties are obviously in trouble. As a commenter on a blog I read awhile back noted, mass democracy is a thing of the past -- the only problem is that it's nearly the only kind of democracy we've ever been able to make work.

Athens, of course, had a more fluid democracy, but the framers of our Constitution didn't regard its experience as a success; they were trying to prevent its problems, not emulate its excesses. There are lots of reasons to believe that unmediated democracy is a poor decision-making method, which is one reason why, in our constitutional system, democracy has always been mediated. Voters choose decision makers, rather than making decisions themselves. [5]

But if a fear of unmediated democracy led Americans to choose a system that was mediated, we must now deal with pressures toward disintermediation. The additional transparency added by the Internet is a good thing, limiting insider back scratching and deals done at the expense of constituents. On the other hand, the pressure toward direct democracy, or something very close to it, is likely to build. Is that a good idea? Probably not, unless you think that America would do better if it were run like your condo association.

The challenge in coming decades will be to take advantage of the ability for self-organization and horizontal knowledge that the Internet and other communications technologies provide without letting our entire political system turn into something that looks like an email flamewar on Usenet. I think we'll be able to do that -- most people's tolerance for flaming is comparatively low, and in a democracy, what most people tolerate matters -- but things are likely to get ugly if I'm wrong.

EXPRESS YOURSELF

But it's not just politics. People are hardwired to express themselves. Imagine two tribes of cavemen approaching a cave. Which tribe is more likely to survive -- the one where someone says, "You know, I think there's a bear in there," or the one where nobody talks? I'm pretty sure we're descended from the talkative ones.

Until pretty recently, self-expression on any sizable scale was the limited province of the rich and powerful, or their clients. Only a few people could publish books, or write screenplays that might be filmed, or see their artwork or photographs widely circulated, or hear their music performed before a crowd. Now, pretty much anyone can do that. You can post an essay (or even an entire book) on the Web, make a film, or circulate your art and photos from anywhere and have them available to the entire world.

Now that more people can do that, more people are doing it, and it seems to make them happy. Naturally, some critics complain that much of what results isn't very good. That's true, but if you look at books, films, or art from the pre-Internet era, you'll find that much of that stuff wasn't very good either. (Heaven's Gate and Gigli were not Internet productions.) As science fiction writer Ted Sturgeon once said in response to a critic's claim that 90 percent of science fiction was crap: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." [6]

And if you doubt this, spend a few minutes channel-surfing or perusing bookstore stacks at random. You may conclude that Sturgeon was being generous, not just to science fiction, but to, well, everything.

On the other hand, "crap" is always a matter of opinion. Many people write books that are very valuable to them as self-expression, regardless of whether they get good reviews or sell millions of copies. (I myself have written two novels and enjoyed the writing process very much, even though neither has ever been published.) And regardless of whether they sell millions or please critics, such books probably please some people and can now sell in smaller quantities thanks to niche publishing markets and improved printing technologies.

Novelist Bill Quick, who has published many books through traditional publishers, tried the Internet publication route with a novel of his own and was pretty happy with the results. A few weeks after placing his novel Inner Circles on the Internet, he reported that despite not having paid for advertising or an agent, selling only via an automated website linked from his weblog, he had made over $4,500. Chicken feed? No. Quick said that his book, if it had been salable at all, would have brought an advance of about $10,000, payable in two installments, which after deducting the agent's commission would have produced a first check of about $4,250. He concluded, "I have taken in more than that as of now, because I am getting all of the 'cover price,' not eight percent of it (the usual author cut on a paperback)." [7]

Quick isn't just anyone, of course. He's a widely read blogger who's published many novels in the past. He warns his readers of this, but observes, "This outcome is a godsend for those of us professionals who think of ourselves as midlist, and who used to grind out two or three books a year in order to make thirty or forty grand before taxes." This is an important point. Once you realize how little money books on paper usually pay, Internet publication looks a lot better. More significantly, money or not, I think we'll see more authors able to earn an income, or at least a second income, as the Web grows.

Before the Industrial Revolution, you couldn't really make a living as a writer unless you had someone rich funding you. Books just didn't make enough money. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was possible to do well as a writer, but books and then films were necessarily mass-marketed. You had to be able to sell a lot of them to recoup the substantial cost of producing them. The products had to be somewhat appealing to a large audience because of that -- and because it was hard to find a smaller audience and hard for a smaller audience to find its author.

That's different now. It's become something of a truism to note that the Web is like a rainforest, full of niches that the well-adapted can flourish in, but like a lot of things, the expression is a truism because it's, well, true. And it's getting truer all the time as the number of people on the Web grows, thus expanding the number of potential customers; and as the tools that let people find what they really want, and not some mass market first-approximation thereof, get steadily better. Some people, of course, will always want to read the book, or see the film, or listen to the songs that lots of other people are, so there will always be a kind of mass market. But even that will be a niche of sorts, in place to address people's preferences rather than because of technological necessity.

Usually, too, when people talk about what "everyone" is reading or watching, they really mean not everyone, but everyone they know. As mass markets fragment, that may mean that people will really define things by their niches, rather than by true mass media. In fact, we're already seeing a lot of that. Another Internet truism is the replacement of Andy Warhol's line that in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, with the statement that in the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people. (As a so-called "celebrity blogger," I was once recognized by a gushing waitress in a restaurant while the rest of the staff stood by, uncomprehending. I wasn't in their niche, and they weren't in mine.)

At any rate, I think we're certain to see a future in which many more people think of themselves as writers, filmmakers, musicians, or journalists than in the past. This may feed back into the political equation noted above, but it could go either way. On the one hand, creative people tend to lean leftward, which suggests that if more people see themselves as creators, the country might move left. On the other hand, people have been complaining that the left has disproportionate influence in creative industries, meaning that if more people can get involved, those fields might shift back the other way, and the overrepresentation of leftist viewpoints might be countered. I suspect we'll see the latter rather than the former.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, futurists write about something they call "The Singularity," meaning a point in the future where technological change has advanced to the point that present-day predictions are likely to be wide of the mark. By definition, it's hard to talk about what things will be like then, but the trend of empowered individuals is likely to continue. As the various items we've surveyed demonstrate, technology seems to be shifting power downward, from large organizations to individuals and small groups. Newer technologies like nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology will move us much further along the road, but advances in electronics and communications have gotten us started. You can write -- heck, I have written -- about the wonders to come in the future, but, in fact, we've moved a considerable distance in that direction already.

While a world of hugely and vastly empowered souls may lurk in the future, we're already living in a world in which individuals have far more power than they used to in all sorts of fields. Yesterday's science fiction is today's reality in many ways that we don't even notice.

That's not always good. With technology bestowing powers on individuals that were once reserved to nation-states, the already-shrinking planet starts to look very small indeed. That's one argument for settling outer space, of course, and many will also see it as an argument for reducing the freedom of individuals on Earth. If those latter arguments carry the day, it could lead to global repression. In its most benign form, we might see something like the A.R.M. of Larry Niven's science fiction future history, a global semisecret police force run by the United Nations that quietly suppresses dangerous scientific knowledge. In less benign forms, we might see harsh global tyranny, justified by the danger of man-made viruses and similar threats. (As I write this, scientists in a lab in Atlanta have resurrected the long-dead 1918 Spanish Flu and published its genome, meaning that people with resources far below those of nation-states will now be able to recreate one of the deadliest disease agents in history. [8])

I doubt that even a science-fictional tyranny could stamp out pervasive and inexpensive technology. Worse, it would leave most of the work in underground labs or rogue states and give people an incentive to put it to destructive use. That doesn't mean that some people won't be tempted to give tyranny a chance, especially if they can put themselves in the tyrant's seat.

On the other hand, there are lots of hopeful signs in the present -- trends that will probably continue. Today's revolutionary communications technologies led to a massive mobilization of private efforts in response to disasters like the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and it was text-messaging, websites, and email that broke the Chinese government's SARS cover-up. The phenomenon of "horizontal knowledge" is likely to result in people organizing, both spontaneously and with forethought, to deal with future crises; and there's considerable reason to think that those responses will be more effective than top-down governmental efforts. Indeed, we may see distributed efforts -- modeled on things like SETI@home or NASA's SpaceGuard asteroid-warning project -- that will incorporate empowered individuals to look for and perhaps even respond to new technological threats.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

When I want to know something about big events in India, I tend to look first to blogs like India Uncut, by Indian journalist Amit Varma. When I want to know about military affairs, I look at blogs like The Belmont Club, The Fourth Rail, The Mudville Gazette, or military analyst Austin Bay's site. When I want to know what's going on in Iraq, I look at Iraqi blogs and blogs by American soldiers there. When one Iraqi blogger reported war crimes by American troops, I called attention to his post, got an American military blogger in Iraq to point it out to authorities, and the soldiers involved wound up being court-martialed and convicted.

Yeah, so, I read a lot of blogs. I'm a blogger, after all. But so are a lot of people, and the person-to-person contact that blogs and other Internet media promote tends to encourage person-to-person relationships across professional, political, and geographic boundaries. This is just another form of the horizontal knowledge that I wrote about before, but it may play an important role in breaking down barriers and defusing animosities across those same boundaries.

People have been saying for a century, of course, that increased international understanding would prevent war, and yet we've seen rather a lot of war over the past century. Still, it may simply be that we haven't reached the tipping point yet. Certainly there's a qualitative, as well as a quantitative difference, as more and more people make person-to-person contact on their own. It's a very different thing from watching other countries' television programs and movies, or having a few people go on tourist expeditions and attend feel-good conferences of the Pugwash variety. While this isn't likely to eliminate hostility, it will certainly transform current understanding and cultural definitions. Overall, I think that the effect is more likely to be positive than negative.

THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (I FEEL FINE)

And that's probably the bottom line regarding all the changes described in this book. Technology is empowering individuals and small groups in all sorts of ways, producing fairly dramatic changes as compared to the previous couple of centuries. Not all of those changes are positive -- there's bitter along with the sweet. But the era of Big Entities wasn't so great. From the Napoleonic Wars to the Soviet Gulags, the empowerment of huge organizations and bureaucracies wasn't exactly a blessing to the human spirit. A return to some sort of balance, in which the world looks a bit more like the eighteenth century than the twentieth, is likely to be a good thing.

In some sense, of course, how you view these changes depends a lot on how you view humanity. If you think that people are, more often than not, good rather than bad, then empowering individuals probably seems like a good thing. If, on the other hand, you view the mass of humanity as dark, ignorant, and in need of close supervision by its betters, then the kinds of things I describe probably come across as pretty disturbing.

I fall into the optimistic camp, though I acknowledge that there's evidence pointing both ways. Those who think I'm taking too rosy a view, however, had better hope that I turn out to be right after all. That's because the changes I describe aren't so much inevitable as they are already here, and are just in the process of becoming, as William Gibson would have it, more evenly distributed.

The Army of Davids is coming. Let the Goliaths beware.
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Re: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower

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NOTES

INTRODUCTION -- Do It Yourself


1. Damien Cave, "Rage for the Machine," Salon.com, 12 April 2000, http://http://www.salon.com/tech/log/20 ... /joy_song/. See also Dave Hallsworth, "Mobius Dick vs. the Luddites," Spiked-Online.com, 4 July 2001, http://www.spikedonline.com/ Articies/00000002D16F.htm.

CHAPTER 1 -- The Change

1. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 4-5 (Modern Library, 1937). Smith got some details wrong in his description but nothing that affects his point.

2. David L. Collinson, "Managing Humor," Journal of Management Studies (May 2002), quoted in Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind (Riverhead Books, 2005), 179.

3. Robert William Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death: 1700-2100 (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

4. Fogel, 2.

5. John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Houghton Mifflin, 1966).

6. Neil Gershenfeld, Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop -- From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication (Basic Books, 2005).

7. See Glenn Reynolds, "Backyard Auteurs," Popular Mechanics, October 2005, 56.

CHAPTER 2 -- Small Is the New Big

1. Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine blog. Available online at http://www.buzzmachine. comlindex. php12005/07 /25/ smallisthenewbighrdepartment/.

2. Louis Uchitelle, "DefYing Forecast, Job Losses Mount for a 22nd Month," New York Times, 6 September 2003. Available online at http://www. nytimes.com/2003/09/06/business/06JOBS.html?ex= 1378180800&en=8 1557 ae4e61 Of624&ei=5007 &partner= USERLAND.

3. Mickey Kaus, "Weaving the Gloom," Slate. Available online at http://slate. msn.com/id/2087872/.

4. John Scalzi, Scalzi.com. Available online at http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/ archives/000483.html.

5. Daniel Pink, Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself (Warner Business, 2002).

6. Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness (HarperCollins, 2003), 164-67.

7. Ralph Kinney Bennett, "Car Country," TechCentralStation, 5 September 2003. Available online at http://www.techcentralstation.com/090503A.html.

8. The FAQ on eBay's program is available online here: http://pages.ebay. com/ services/buyandsell/ powerseller/healthcareprog.html. eBay doesn't pay for the insurance, but does use its buying power to make a group plan available. Once qualified, power sellers get to keep the coverage even if their sales fall below the required minimum.

9. According to Wal-Mart's website: "We insure mote than 568,000 associates and more than 948,000 people in total, who pay as little as $17.50 for individual coverage and $70.50 for family coverage bi-weekly. Unlike many plans, after the first year, Wal-Mart's Associates' Medical Plan has no lifetime maximum for most expenses, protecting our associates against catastrophic loss and financial ruin." They also match 401(k) contributions and subsidize child care. Available online at http://www.walmartfacts.com/ associates/default.aspx#a 42.

10. Virginia Postrel, "In New Age Economics, It's Mote about the Experience Than about Just Owning Stuff," New York Times, 9 September 2004, C2.

11. Virginia Postrel, "A Prettier Jobs Picture?" New York Times Magazine, 22 February 2004, 16.

CHAPTER 3 -- The Comfy Chair Revolution

1. Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (Marlowe & Co., 1999).

2. Carol Anne Douglas, "Support Feminist Bookstores!" Off Our Backs, 31 December 2000, 1.

3. Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (Riverhead, 1996).

4. Linda Baker, "Urban Renewal: The Wireless Way," Salon, 29 November 2004. Available online at http://www.salon.comltech/feature/2004/ll/29/ digital_merropolis/index_np.html.

5. "The Internet in a Cup," The Economist, 18 December 2003. Available online at http://www.economisr.com/World/ europe/ displayStory.cfm? story_id=22817 36.

6. Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness (HarperCollins, 2003).

7. Beth Mattson, "Where Town Square Meets the Mall," Minneapolis-St. Paul BusinessJournal, 27 August 1999. Available online at http://www. bizjournals. com/twincities/stories/1999/08/30/focus3.html?page= 1.

8. Scott Morris, "A Third Place for Camano," Daily Herald (Everett, WA), 5 September 2003. Available online at http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/ 03/9/5/17437484.cfm.

9. For much more on the subject of malls, private property, and free speech, see Jennifer Niles Coffin, "The United Mall of America: Free Speech, State Constitutions, and the Growing Fortress of Private Property," Volume 33, University of Michigan J.L., Reform 615 (2000).

10. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 794 (1972).

11. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 870 (1997).

12. Charles L. Black Jr., "He Cannot Choose but Hear: The Plight of the Captive Auditor," Volume 53, Columbia Law &view (1953), 960.

CHAPTER 4 -- Making Beautiful Music, Together

1. "Mandela Steals the Show from Live 8 Rockers," Cape Argus (Cape Town), 4 July 2005. Available at http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?secid= I &click_ id= 126&art_id=vn20050704112543593CI57427.

2. Telephone interview with Ali Partovi, 6 July 2005.

3. Walter Mossberg, "Podcasting Is Still Not Quite Ready for the Masses," Wall Street Journal, 6 July 2005, D5.

4. Lawrence Lessig, "The Same Old Song," Wired, July 2005, 100.

5. Jesse Walker, "Free Your Radio: Three Liberties We've Lost to the FCC" Reason, December 2001. Available online at http://www.reason.com/0112/ cr.jw.radio.shtml.

6. Available online at http://www.diymedia.net/archive/0703.htm#071103.

7. James Plummer, "Real Media Reform," TechCentralStation, 20 June 2003. Available online at http://www.techcentralstation.com/062003F.html.

8. For more on this, see J.D. Lasica, Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation (Wiley, 2005).

CHAPTER 5 -- A Pack, Not a Herd

1. Galt's original website is at http://www.geocities.com/johnathanrgalt/; the newer version of his movement, Internet Haganah, is at http://haganah.us/ haganah/index.html.

2. John Hawkins, "An Interview with Jon David." Available online at http:// http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/jondavid.php.

3. Hawkins.

4. Brad Todd, "109 Minutes," originally published on FrankCagle.com. Available online at http://web.archive.org/web/20041 0 I0 182414/http:/ / 216.111.31.12/details.asp?PRID=32.

5. Richard Aichele, "A Shining Light in Our Darkest Hour," Professional Mariner, December/January 2002. Available online at http://www.fireboat. org/press/proCmariner_jan02_I.asp.

6. Mark Steyn reports one example of missing some pretty obvious warning signs:

With hindsight, the defining encounter of the age was not between Mohammed Ana's jet and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but that between Mohammed Atta and Johnelle Bryant a year earlier. Bryant is an official with the US Department of Agriculture in Florida, and the late Atta had gone to see her about getting a $US650,000 government loan to convert a plane into the world's largest cropduster. A novel idea.

The meeting got off to a rocky start when Atta refused to deal with Bryant because she was but a woman. But, after this unpleasantness had been smoothed out, things went swimmingly. When it was explained to him that, alas, he wouldn't get the 650 grand in cash that day, Atta threatened to cut Bryant's throat. He then pointed to a picture behind her desk showing an aerial view of downtown Washington-the White House, the Pentagon, et al -- and asked: "How would America like it if another country destroyed that city and some of the monuments in it?"

Fortunately, Bryant's been on the training course and knows an opportunity for multicultural outreach when she sees one. "I felt that he was trying to make the cultural leap from the country that he came from," she recalled. "I was attempting, in every manner I could, to help him make his relocation into our country as easy for him as I could."


Mark Steyn, "Mugged by Reality?" The Australian, 25 July 2005. Available online at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/ story_page/0.5744,16034303%5E7583,00.html. Even government employees are likely to be more sensitive to the warning signs nowadays.

7. Jim Henley, "Unqualified Offerings," http://www.highclearing.com/ uoarchives/week_2002_10_20.html#003796. Henley is quoting an anonymous bystander.

8. Colby Cosh, ColbyCosh.com, available online at http://www.colbycosh.com/ 0Idloetober02.html#sscd.

9. Kathleen Tierney, "Strength of a City: A Disaster Research Perspective on the World Trade Center Attack," Social Science Research Council. Available online at http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essaysltierney.htm. See also Monica Schoch-Spana, "Educating, Informing, and Mobilizing the Public," in Barry S. Levy and Victor Sidel, Terrorism and Public Health: A Balanced Approach to Strengthening Systems and Protecting People (Oxford University Press, 2003), 118. (Describes spontaneous organization in response to 9/11 attacks and recommends strategies to encourage such responses in the future).

10. Tierney; Schoch-Spana.

11. David Brin, "The Value-and Empowerment--of Common Citizens in an Age of Danger." Available online at http://www.futurist.com/portal/future_ trends/david_brin_empowerment.htm.

12. J. B. Schramm, "The Best Anti-Terror Force: Us," Washington Post, 23 June 2004, All. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/ articles/A624 542004 Jun22.html.

13. Jeff Cooper, Principles of Personal Defense (Paladin, 1989).

14. Sara Miller, "In War on Terror, an Expanding Citizens' Brigade," Christian Science Monitor, 13 August 2004. Available online at http://www.csmonitor. com/2004/0813/p01s02ussc.html.

15. The homepage is at http://www.americaswaterwaywatch.org/index.htm.

16. The homepage is at http://public.afosi.amc.af.mil/eaglelindex.asp.

17. The homepage is at http://www.highwaywatch.com/.

18. Lisa Zagaroli, "Nation's 3 Million Truckers Enlist in War on Terrorism," Detroit News, 5 June 2002. Available online at http://www.detnews.com/2002/nation/ 0206/05/a05506969.htm.

19. Neil Samson Katz, "Amateur Astronomers Help NASA Find Killer Asteroids," Columbia News Service, 5 April 2004. Available online at http:// http://www.jrn.columbia.edulstudenrwork ... 05/664.asp.

20. Katz.

21. S. M. Stirling, Dies the Fire (Roc, 2004).

22. The homepage is at http://www.legionxxiv.org/Default.htm.

23. The homepage is at http://albionswords.com/armor/roman/lorica.htm.

24. Allan Breed, "French Quarter Holdouts Create 'Tribes,''' Associated Press, 4 September 2005. Available online at http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/nationworld/ katrina/ stories/090405cckatrinajrfrenchquarter.26851646.html.

25. This didn't get much press attention, but Houston blogger John Little posted a report with photos. It's available online at http://www.blogsofwar.com/looters_ strike_in_advance_of_rita.

CHAPTER 6 -- From Media to We-dia

1. Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (Harper & Row, 1963), 109.

2. Zeyad's original blog post can be found at http://healingiraq.blogspot. com/ archives/2003_12_0 l_healingiraq_archive. html# 1071 07940577248 802. A blog report from another Iraqi blogger can be found at http:// iraqthemodel. blogspor.coml2003_12_0 l_iraqthemodel_archive.html# 10 7107057634357719.

3. Pro-democracy rallies in Iraq and more. week~ Standard, 22 December 2003. Available online at http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/ Articles/000/000/003/494vhvue.asp.

4. Wagner James Au, "Silence of the Blogs: Why Did the New York Times Ignore Baghdad Blogger Announcements and Accounts of a Big Pro-Democracy Demonstration?" Salon.com, 23 January 2004. Available online at http://www. salon.com/tech/feature/2004/0 1/23/baghdad_gamer_two/index_np.html.

5. Kennedy School of Government, Case Study No. C-14-04-1731.0, '''Big Media' Meets 'The Bloggers': Coverage of Trent Lott's Remarks at Strom Thurmond's Birthday Parry," http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/ Research_ Publications/Case_Studies/1731_0.pdf. See also Howard Kurtz, "Why So Late on Lott?" Washington Post, 10 December 2002, http://www. washingtonpost.coml ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentld=A34186- 2002Dec10&notFound=true; Noah Schachtman, "Blogs Make Headlines," Wired News, 23 December 2002.("It's safe to assume that, before he flushed his reputation down the toilet, Trent Lott had absolutely no idea what a blog was.")

6. The original of this now-famous saying is available online at http:// web.archive.org/web/20011214072915/http://kenlayne.com/2000/2001_12_09_logarc.html.

7. James C. Bennett, "The New Reformation?" Available online at http://www.upi. com/view.cfm?StoryID=281220010507337164r.

8. See generally James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (Pantheon Books, 1996); Andrew Kreig. Spiked: How Chain Management Corrupted Americas Oldest Newspaper (Peregrine Press, 1987); Ben Bagdikian, The New Media Monopoly (Beacon Press, 2004).

9. Kennedy School of Government; pro-democracy rallies in Iraq and more, supra.

10. Available online at http://jimtreacher.com/archives/001281.html.

11. Alex Beam, "Standing Alone against Apple," Boston Globe, 24 May 2005. Available online at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/ 05/24/standing_alone_against_apple/.

12. See Robert Pierre and Ann Gerhart, "News of Pandemonium May Have Slowed Aid: Unsubstantiated Reports of Violence Were Confirmed by Some Officials, Spread by News Media," Washington Post, 5 October Z005, A08. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/ article/2005/10/04/AR2005100401525.html; Matt Welch, "Echo Chamber in the SuperDome," Reason.com, 4 October 2005, http://www.reason. com/links/links100405.shtml.

13. Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," 162, Science, 1243 (1968).

14. Nick Denton, "Comments and Communities," Nickdenton.com, http://www. nickdenton.org/archives1004219.html.

15. Jeff Jarvis, "Exploding Porn," Buzzmachine.com, http://www.buzzmachine. com/archives/2004_10_22.html#008254.

16. Jonathan Peterson, "Breaking Down Peter Chernin's Comdex Keynote," Way.nu.http://www.way.nu/archives/000493.html.

17. Daniel Lyons, "Attack of the Blogs," Forbes.com, 14 November 2005. Available online at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/1114/128.html.

18. Dan Gillmor, we the Media (O'Reilly, 2004).

19. Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (Regan Books, 2004).

20. Hugh Hewitt, Blog: Understanding the Information Revolution That's Changing Your World (Nelson Books, 2005).

INTERLUDE -- Good Blogging

1. Available online at http://web.archive.org/web/20021113004102/http: //www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/02/1002/100202.html.

CHAPTER 7-Horizontal Knowledge

1. The Hephthalite, or "White" Huns, ruled Central Asia in the fifth and sixth centuries, until they were exterminated by the Persians. For more information, visit http://www.silkroad.com/artl/heph.shtml.

2. The rocket equation tells how high a rocket can fly and how great a velocity it can achieve, given its exhaust velocity, fuel, etc. For more information, visit http://web.media.mit.edu/-sibyl/project ... ocket.html.

3. As I write this, Biden has received $75,150 from the TV/movies/music industries for the 2006 election cycle. More information is available at http://opensecrets.org/politicians/indu ... cycle=2006.

4. That's actually true. I looked up all these things in under five minutes total while writing this. At least so long as "draw me a beer" means "draw me a beer and bring it to my table."

5. Nick Denton, "Organizational Terrorism," Nickdenton.org, http://www. nickdenton.org/ archives/006004.html#006004.

6. William J. Broad, "At Los Alamos, Blogging Their Discontent," New York Times, 1 May 2005.

7. JoAnn S. Lublin, "The Open Inbox," Wall Street Journal 10 October 2005, B1. Available online at http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112890006 139064049PNxxU56QuvTOicPmJSXQnDrVmn8_20061010.html? mod=blogs. Excerpt: "Technology has really made this staff dialogue possible," observes Henry A McKinnell Jr., CEO of New York-based Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug maker. While being driven to meetings, the 62-year-old executive reports, "I don't look out the window. I use my BlackBerry and answer my email." He calls the roughly seventy-five internal emails he gets every day "an avenue of communication I don't otherwise have." He adds, "I really consider this an early-warning system." I think he's right to look at it that way.

8. Julia Scheeres, "Pics Worth a Thousand Protests," Wired News, 17 October 2003, http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/culture ... -2.00.html? tw=wn_story _page_next1.

9. Jesse Walker, "Is That a Computer in Your Pants? Cyberculture Chronicler Howard Rheingold on Smart Mobs, Smart Environments, and Smart Choices in an Age of Connectivity," Reason.com, April 2003. Available at http://www.reason.com/0304/fe.jw.is.shtml.

10. Clive Thompson, "On the Media," WNYC, 20 December 2002. Transcript available at http://www.onthemedia.org/transcriptslt ... ts_122002_ mobs.htm\.

CHAPTER 8 -- How the Game Is Played

1. "Violent Video Games under Attack," Wired News, 4 July 2004, http://wired.com/news/games/0.2101.6410 ... _tophead_3. 2. See her website at http://www.violentkids.com for more information.

3. James Dunnigan, "Troops Game Their Way out of Ambushes," StrategyPage.com, 5 July 2004, http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200475.asp.

4. Frank Vizard, "Couch to Combat: A Popular Computer Game Called America's Army' Has Evolved into a High-Tech Tool for Training Today's Soldiers," Popular Mechanics, June 2005, 80.

5. Dave Kopel and Glenn Reynolds, "Computer Geeks and War," NationalReview.com, 1 October 2001, http://www.nationalreview.com/kopell kopel100101.shtml.

6. Andrew Leonard, "Gun Mad," Salon.com, 18 April 1998, http://archive. salon.com/21st/feature/ 1998/04/ cov_20feature2.html.

7. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (Praeger, 1967).

8. See James Glassman, "Good News! The Kids Are Alright," TechCentralStation. com, http://techcentralstation.com/071604E.html. (Summarizes results of National Youth Survey and related studies.)

9. It's dangerous to make too much of any one study, of course, and studies of sexual behavior -- and in particular teen sexual behavior -- are probably less trustworthy than most. Another study suggests that teens are having more oral sex-which may account for the lowered pregnancy rates. See National Center for Health Statistics, "Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age," 2002. Available online at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/p ... /ad362.htm. See also Laura Sessions Stepp, "Study: Half of Teens Have Had Oral Sex," Washington Post, 16 September 2005, A07. Available online at http:// http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091500915.html.

On the other hand, perhaps online porn -- which often emphasizes oral sex -- is behind this change as well. While some may feel that oral sex without pregnancy is no improvement over traditional sex with the risk of pregnancy, I suppose I regard this substitution, to the extent it's genuine, as some degree of progress. At any rate, there seems to be no disagreement about the decline in the pregnancy rate, regardless of cause.

CHAPTER 9 -- Empowering the Really Little Guys

1. Richard P. Feynman, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, ed. Horace D. Gilbert (1961), 295-96.

2. On the artificial kidneys, see "Nanotechnology Used to Help Develop Artificial Kidney;" ABC News Online, http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/ 200509/ s1461541.htm.

3. Information on the National Nanotechnology Initiative can be found at its website, http://www.nano.gov -- but information on classified Defense Department work is, of course, classified.

4. Robert J. Freitas, Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities (Landes Bioscience, 1999). See also Robert J. Freitas, Nanomedicine, Volume IIA: Biocompatibility (Landes Bioscience, 2003). On enhanced cognition, see Kelly Hearn, "Future Soldiers Could Get Enhanced Minds," UPI, 19 March 2001, LexisNexis Library, UPI File (describing planned use of nanotechnology to enhance soldiers' cognition and decision-making under stress).

5. National Science and Technology Council (2004), available online at http:// nano.gov/nni04_budget_supplement.pdf.

6. National Science and Technology Council, 27.

7. National Science and Technology Council.

8. National Science and Technology Council, 33.

9. For a summary of this debate, see Judith P. Swazey, et al., "Risks and Benefits, Rights and Responsibilities: A History of the Recombinant DNA Research Controversy," Volume 51, Southern California Law Review (1978), 1019.

10. Available online at http://www.dnafiles.org/PDFs/therapy.pdf.

11. See David Whitehouse, "First Synthetic Virus Created," BBC News, 11 July 2002. Available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/ 2122619.stm.

12. Available online at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/ FullReport/5886.pdf.

13. Available online at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/ FullReport/5886.pdf.

14. Howard Lovy, Nanobot blog, http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2003_07_20_ nanobocarchive.html#105905157013774164.

15. Testimony of Dr. Vicki L. Colvin, director, Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN), and associate professor of chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas, before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, in regard to "Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of2003," 9 April 2003. Available online at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/f ... colvin.htm.

16. Ian Bell, "Upgrading the Human Condition," Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 1 August 2004. Available online at http://www.sundayherald.com/43701.

17. "China's Nanotechnology Patent Applications Rank Third in World," InvestorIdeas.com, 3 October 2003, http://www.investorideas.com/ Companies/Nanotechnology/ Articles/China'sNanotechnology 1003,03.as. See also Dennis Normile, "Chinas R&D Power, Truth about Trade & Technology," 2 September 2005, http://www.truthabouttrade.org/ article.asp?id=4364. ("Ernest Preeg, senior fellow in trade and productivity for the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, warns in his just released book, The Emerging Chinese Advanced Technology Superstate (jointly published by the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI and the US Hudson Institute in June 2005) that 'China is right up there with the US in nanotechnology and coming on strong in biotech and in genetically modified agriculture."')

18. "Indian Scientists Should Make Breakthrough in Nano Technology: Kalam," IndiaExpress.com, 1 July 2004, http://www.indiaexpress.com/ news/ technology/20040701-0.html.

19. Daniel Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperia/ism in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1981).

20. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005), 415.

21. Kurzweil.

CHAPTER 10 -- Live Long-and Prosper!

1. Robert Fogel, The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100: Europe, America, and the Third World (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40. 2. Richard A Miller, "Extending Life: Scientific Prospects and Political Obstacles," in Stephen G. Post and David Binstock, eds., The Fountain of Youth: Cultural, Scientific, and Ethical Perspectives on a Biomedical Goal (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 228-29.

3. Gemma Casadesus, et al., "Eat Less, Eat Better, and Live Longer: Does It Work and Is It Worth It? The Role of Diet in Aging and Disease," in The Fountain of Youth, 201, 203-4.

4. Casadesus, 235.

5. Jonathan Swift's "struldbrugs" lived a very long time, but aged all the while, with deeply unfortunate results. See Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, ed., Paul Turner (Oxford University Press, 1998), 199-206.

6. Robert Arking, "Extending Human Longevity: A Biological Probability," in The Fountain of Youth, 177, 191-92.

7. Arking, 192-93.

8. Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey, "An Engineer's Approach to Developing Real Anti- Aging Medicine," in The Fountain of Youth, 249.

9. Leon Kass, "L'Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?," in The Fountain of Youth, supra note 2, at p. 304, 309, 312.

10. Centers for Disease Control, "Ten Great Public Health Achievements: United States, 1900-1999," Volume 48, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (1999), 241. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/ mmwrhtml/00056796.htm.

11. Karen Wright, "Staying Alive," Discover, November 2003, 11.

12. S. Jay Olshansky, Leonard Hayflick, and Thomas Perls, "Anti-Aging Medicine: The Hype and the Reality-Part I," Volume 59, J. Gerontology: Biological Sciences (2004), 513.

13. Gregory Stock and Daniel Callahan, "Point-Counterpoint: Would Doubling the Human Life Span Be a Net Positive or Negative for Us Either as Individual or as a Society?" Volume 59, J. Gerontology: Biological Sciences (2004), B554, B558. ("[T]o run a society, you have to both say no to people and to require people to do what they don't want to do. There are some higher goods than what we personally want.")

14. Stock and Callahan, 557: "[W]e could get a pretty good sense of likely possibilities based on our present experience. For instance, I've become interested in universities: What happens now in universities that don't have mandatory retirement? First of all, some people stay beyond seventy, between 5 percent and 10 percent in the universities I've looked at.... Most importantly, they block the entry of young people onto the faculty."

15. On the abolition of mandatory environment, both within and without the academic world, see Pamela Perun, "Phased Retirement Programs for the Twenty- First Century Workplace," Volume 35, John Marshall Law Review; (2002), 633.

16. Perun, 559.

17. 539 U.S. 558 (2003).

18. 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

19. Douglas Clement, "Why 65?" FedGazette, March 2004, http://minneapolisfed. org/pubs/fedgaz/04-03/65.cfm.

20. See, for example, Alan Greenspan, "U.S. Must Pare Retirement Benefit Promises," Washington Post, 29 February 2004, A3. ("Greenspan again recommended gradually raising the eligibility age for both Medicare and Social Security, to keep pace with the population's rising longevity.")

21. Sebastian Moffett, "For Ailing Japan, Longevity Begins to Take its Toll," Wall Street Journal II February 2003, AI. See also Phillip Longman, "The Coming Baby Bust," Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004, 64.

22. Longman, 64.

23. Ronald Bailey, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution (Prometheus Books, 2005), 242.

24. Bailey, 18.

25. Bailey, 132.

CHAPTER 11 -- Space: It's Not Just for Governments Anymore

1. Webb Wilder, "Rocket to Nowhere," Acres of Suede (Watermelon Records, 1996).

2. Holman W. Jenkins, "NASA's Coming Crackup," Wall Street Journal 5 October 2005, A21. Available online at http://online.wsj.com/article_print/ SB112847638707060287.html.

3. NASA Contests and Prizes: How Can They Help Advance Space Exploration, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives, 15 July 2004 (testimony of Peter Diamandis). Available online at http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/ science/hsy94832.000/hsy94832_ 0.htm.

4. Alan Boyle, "NASA Announces Prizes for Space Breakthroughs," MSNBC.com, 24 March 2005, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7280483/.

5. For more on space elevator technology, see Bradley Carl Edwards, "A Hoist to the Heavens," IEEE Spectrum, 21 August 2005, http://www.spectrum. ieee.org/aug05/1690.

6. Pub. L. 100-685, Title II § 217, 102 Stat 4094 (1988), codified at 42 USC §2451 (2000).

7. Kucinich's bill is discussed in Glenn Harlan Reynolds, "Moonstruck," TechCentralStation.com, 25 September 2002, hnp://www.techcentralstation. com/092502A.html.

8. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (1967), 18 UST 2410 (1969).

9. National Research Council, "Task Group on Issues in Sample Return, Mars Sample Return: Issues and Recommendations: The Significance of Martian Meteorites," available at http://www.nap.edu/books/0309057337/ html/17.html.

10. Martyn Fogg, Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments (SAE International, 1995).

11. Robert Zubrin, Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (Tarcher, 1999), 227.

12. Robert Pinson, "Ethical Considerations for Terraforming Mars," 32, Environmental Law Reporter, 11333, 11341 (2002).

13. John A. Ragosta Jr. and Glenn H. Reynolds, "In Search of Governing Principles," Volume 28, jurimetrics: journal of Law, Science, and Technology (1988), 473.

14. William Wu, "Taking Liberties in Space," Ad Astra, November 1991,36. This point is reinforced by recent movies, such as Outland and Total Recall, that depict life in space colonies as harshly controlled.

15. "Governance in Space Project, Declaration of First Principles for the Governance of Space Societies," reprinted in Glenn H. Reynolds and Robert P. Merges, Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy (Westview Press, 1997), 401-2.

16. Andrew Lawler, Lessons from the Past: Toward a Long-Term Space Policy, in Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the Twenty-First Century (Lunar & Planetary Institute, WW Mendell ed., 1985), 757, 762-63.

17. George Robinson and Harold White, Envoys of Mankind: A Declaration of First Principles for the Governance of Space Societies (Smithsonian Institute, 1986).

18. Bob Zubrin, "The Significance of the Martian Frontier." Available online at http://www.newmars.com/archives/000026.shtml.

19. George Dyson, Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship (Henry Holt & Co., 2002).

20. In addition, the 1957 Pascal-B underground nuclear test accidentally launched a manhole cover at speeds that may have exceeded escape velocity, though it isn't clear whether Orion researchers knew about this. The story of this test, often misnamed "Operation Thunderwell," which was actually the name of another nuclear-spacecraft project, has sparked many Internet legends.

21. Dyson, Project Orion.

22. For Freeman Dyson's firsthand account, see "Saturn by 1970" in Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (Harper & Row, 1979), 107.

23. Dyson, Project Orion, 119.

24. Multilateral Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under water (1963), 14 UST 1313 (1963). For more on this, see Glenn H. Reynolds and Robert P. Merges. Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy, 2nd edition (Westview Press, 1997).

25. Quoted in Jack H. McCall, "The Inexorable Advance of Technology: American and International Efforts to Curb Missile Proliferation," Volume 32, Jurimetrics: Journal of Law, Science, and Technology (1992), 387, 426.

26. McCall.

27. 14 Weekly Comp. Pres. Doc. 1135, 1136 (20 June 1978). ("Purposeful interference with space systems shall be viewed as an infringement upon sovereign rights.")

28. J. Storrs Hall, Nanofuture: What's Next for Nanotechnology (Prometheus Books, 2005), 284.

CHAPTER 12 -- The Approaching Singularity

1. Vernot Vinge, "What Is the Singularity?" Available online at http://www.ugcs. caltech.edu/ ~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html.

2. Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies, and What It Means to be Human (Doubleday, 2005), 21. For more on this topic, see Ramez Naam, More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (Broadway Books, 2005); Ron Bailey, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution (Prometheus Books, 2005); Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Genes, Changing Our Future (Mariner Books, 2003).

3. Erik Baard, "Cyborg Liberation Front: Inside the Movement for Posthuman Rights," Village Voice, 30 July/5 August 2003. Available online at http://www. villagevoice.com/news/0331,baard,45866,l.html.

4. Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Doubleday, 1966), 112.

5. Jonathan Leake, "'Miracle Mouse' Can Grow Back Lost Limbs," Times (London), 28 August 2005. Available online at http://www.timesonline. co.uk/article/0,,2087-1754008,00.html.

6. See Mark Honigsbaum, "Maverick Who Believes We Can Live Forever," Guardian, 10 September 2005. Available online at http://www.guardian. co.uk/print/0,3858,5282378-103690,00.html.

7. "Nanotechnology and Health," Nature, 10 September 2005. Available online at http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050905/ ... 905-2.html. 8. "Diamonds Are Not Forever," PhysicsWeb.org, hnp://physicsweb.org/articles/ news/9/8/16/1?rss=2.0.

9. Ray Kurzweil, "The InstaPundit Interview," InstaPundit.com, 2 September 2005, http://instapundit.com/ archives/025289.php.

10. James Branch Cabell, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (IndyPublish.com, 2004), 292.

CONCLUSION -- The Future

I. Joel Miller, Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America's Families, Finances, and Freedom (Nelson Current, 2006).

2. This topic actually gets some attention from Gene Sperling in his book, The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity (Simon & Schuster, 2005), which calls for empowering individuals as a substitute for restricting markets.

3. Glenn Harlan Reynolds, "Horizontal Knowledge," TechCentralStation.com, 4 June 2003, http://www.techcentralstation.com/060403A.html.

4. Kevin Kelly, "We Are the Web," Wired August 2005. Available online at http:// wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html.

5. For some extended thoughts on the pluses and minuses of democracy, and its role in American constitutional thought, see Glenn Harlan Reynolds, "Is Democracy Like Sex?" Volume 48, Vanderbilt Law Review (1995), 1635.

6. This is known in some circles as Sturgeon's Law. According to the Wikipedia entry, there are multiple anecdotes regarding the origins of this observation. See "Sturgeon's Law," Wikipedia. Available online at http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law.

7. Bill Quick, "Book Sales," DailyPundit.com, http://www.dailypundit.com/ newarchives/005081.php#005081.

8. Charles Krauthammer doesn't like that one bit. See Charles Krauthammer, "A Flu Hope, or Horror?" Washington Post, 14 October 2005, A19. Available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2005/10/13/AR2005101301783.html.
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Re: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower

Postby admin » Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:34 am

INDEX

A

Acid, 8, 48
Ad Astra, 222
advertisers, advertising, xiv, 12, 42, 262
Afghanistan, xiv
Africa, 52-55
Age of Spiritual Machines, The, 247
AIDS, 164, 240
Air Force (USAF), 230
Airplane, 43
Al Qaeda, 65-68, 79, 83
Albion Arms, 86
Amazon.com, 20-21, 94, 255, 257
American Prospect, 116
Antarctica, 223
Apple Computer, 55, 59, 96
Art of\%r, 145
Artificial Intelligence (AI), 248, 251
ASCAP, 59
Asilomar, 163
Asimov, Isaac, 241
Associated Press, 87, 91
Athens (Georgia), 36
Athens (Greece), 260
Atlantic, 118
Audition, 8, 48

B

Backstreet Boys, 219
Baghdad, 89, 95, 108, 119
Bailey, Ron, 184
Baker, Linda, 36
Barbie, 26
Barnes & Noble, 33
Bashman, Howard, 119
Bay, Austin, 266
bCentral, 56
Beam, Alex, 96
Beatles, The, 219
beer, xi-xiii, xv, 1, 87, 93, 122, 124, 154
Bell, Ian, 169
Belmont Club, 266
Bennett, Jim, 91
Bennett, Ralph Kinney, 18
Biden, Joe, 122, 275
big media, iii, xiv, 63, 90-97, 100-2,
105-7, Ill, 113, 121, 128, 131
Billboard, 56
biotechnology, 9, 163-64, 166, 169,
237, 243, 264
BitTorrent, 47
Black, Charles, 44
Blair, Jayson, 97
Blake, William, 5
blog, blogging, blogger (see also weblog),
x, xiii-xiv, 10-11, 14, 59, 66, 74,
89-95, 98-102, 107-8, 111-13,
115-19, 122, 125-26, 128,
130-33, 136, 146, 167, 190, 244,
250, 255, 259, 262, 264, 266-67
Blog: Understanding the Information
Reformation That's Changing Your
World, 101
Blogger.com, xiii, 115
BMI, 59
Boeing, 195
Books-A-Million, 33
Borders, 30, 32-35
Boston Globe, 96
Bostrom, Nick, 193
Bourbon Street, 87
Brarz, 26
Brin, David, 77
Build-A-Bear, 37-40
Bush, George w., 67, 90--91, 141, 180,
196, 207, 209, 212
Byrd, Geoff, 56

C

California, 54, 163
Callahan, Daniel, 181-82
Cambodia, 91
Cambridge University, 178, 185, 242
Camel Studios, 48
Caplan, Arthur, 165
Carter, 129, 131, 140, 232-33
CB radio, 90, 128-31, 133
CBS, 90, 131
CD, xii, 31, 48, 50, 52, 54, 58, 104
CDBaby.com, 58
Centers for Disease Control, 180
Chargaff, Erwin, 164
China, 2, 26, 170, 181, 226-27, 231-33,
252
Chinese, 5, 170-71, 226-28, 231, 233,
266
Christian Science Monitor, 83
Cialis, 181
Ciarelli, Nicholas, 96
Clark, William, 210, 218
Clarke, Richard, 67-68
Clinton, Bill, 91, 196, 207
Cloud, The, 44
Club Libby Lu, 26
CNN, 110, 112
Co. Operative, 53
Coast Guard, 83
Coffin's Shoes, 22
Cold War, 198, 210, 227
Columbine High School, 140
Colvin, Vicki, 168
Conde Nast, 89
Costco, 20, 23
Crighton, Michael, 155, 157, 167
Cubase, 8, 48-49
cyberspace, 258

D

David, xv, 8, 9, 268
David, Jon, 66, 67
de Grey, Aubrey, 178, 185-93
Decision Games, 143
Denton, Nick, 100, 126, 132
Department of Homeland Security, 83
desktop, 7, 269
Diamandis, Peter, 202
Diamond Age, The, 148, 173
Dies the Fire, 85, 273
Dilbert, 8, 11, 19, 21, 35, 256
Discover (magazine), 180
DNA, 147, 157, 163-65
Douglas, Carol Anne, 33
Drake, David, 143
Drexler, Eric, 155
Drey, Jenna, 56
Duke Nukem, 150, 151
Dungeons & Dragons, 41, 143
Dunnigan, Jim, 140
Dyson, Freeman, 164, 229-30, 232
Dyson, George, 228-29, 233

E

eBay, 11, 19-21, 255-57
Economist, 37
Einstein, Albert, 68, 240
Electronics magazine, 7
Eno, Brian, 48
Environmental Law Reporter, 220
Envoys of Mankind, 224
EPA Science Advisory Board, 159
Escape from Hunger and Premature Death
1700-2000, The, 5
Estrada, Joseph, 134-35
ETC Group, 156
Europe, xiv, 40, 70, 105, 169-71, 225
Excel, 8
Extropy Institute, 190

F

Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your
Desktop-From Personal Computers
to Personal Fabrication, 7
FacesFromTheFront.com, 102, 104, 108
Fake, Caterina, 118
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
66--67
Federal Communications Commission
(FCC), 59-63, 129, 198-99
Feynman, Richard P., 154
Finland, 118
First Amendment, 41, 44, 97, 149
Flight 93, 69, 71, 73-74, 77, 80
Flint, Eric, 143
Foreign Affairs, 184
Fourth Rail, 266
Fogel, Robert, 5, 175
Fogg, Martyn, 216
Forbes, 101
Ford, Henry, 4, 6, 19
Foresight Institute, 190
FOX, 112
France, xiv
Freitas, Robert J., 155, 158
FriendFinder, 36, 44
Fripp, Robert, 48
Fukuyama, Francis, 240

G

Gabriel, Peter, 134
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 7-8
Gallo, John, 4
Galt, Johnathan, 66
GarageBand, 21, 55-59
Gates, Bill, 55
General Motors, 6
George Washington University, 25
Gershenfeld, Neil, 7, 169
Gibson, William, 10, 268
Gillmor, Dan, 101
GlennReynolds.com, 115-16
GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and
Robotics), 248, 252
Gobel, David, 191
Goliath, xv, 8-9, 228, 258, 268
Google, 122, 124-25, 149, 240
Great Good Place, The, 32
Grand Theft Auto, 151
Great Wall of China, 2
Greenpeace, 166--67
Greenspan, Alan, 183
Griswold v. Connecticut, 182
Grokster, 47
Guderian, Hainz, 145
Guinness Book of World Records, 122, 136
Gulag, 268
Gulf War, 146

H

Hall, J. Storrs, 234
Hart, Sir Basil Henry Liddell, 145
Hasbro, 143
Hawking, Stephen, 205
Headrick, Daniel, 171
Hearst, William Randolph, 91-92
Heinlein, Robert, 193, 207
Hephthalite Huns, 122, 124
Hewitt, Hugh, 101
High Fidelity, 34
Hill, Avalon, 143
Hill, Terry, 48
Hockenberry, John, 165
Hoffer, Eric, 89
Hollister & Co., 29, 31
How Appealing, 119
Huffington Post, 16

I

IBM, 6
Ilay Izy, 53
Illinois High School Association, 259
Immortality Institute, 190
iMovie, 8
India, 51, 53, 171, 231-32, 252, 266
Indian Ocean, 95, 113, 266
Industrial Revolution, 2-3, 5, 9, 13, 17,
153, 160, 262
Inner Circles, 262
InstaPundit, x, xiii, 115, 244
Internet, xii-xiii, xv, 8, 15, 18, 20, 22,
30-31, 36, 39-40, 44, 48, 51-53,
56-59, 62-63, 66-67, 84, 89-92,
97, 110, 113, 117, 121-23,
126-27, 130-33, 135, 146, 149,
153, 165, 197, 199, 259-63, 267
iPod, 57, 59
Iraq, xiv, 89, 95, 102-4, 107-13, 141,
266
Irritable Bowel Syndrome, 240
Its a Wonderful Lift, 53
iTunes, 59

J

Jarvis, Jeff, 11, 16, 18, 20, 89, 100, 269
Jenkins, Holman, 199
Johannes, J. D., 102-3, 105, 107
Johnny White's Sports Bar, 87
Johnson, Charles, 66

K

Kalam, Abdul, 171
Kass, Leon, 180, 184, 190, 192
Katrina, Hurricane, 86-87, 113, 266
Kaus, Mickey, 12, 18, 119, 125
Kelly, Kevin, 257-58
Kennedy, John E, 227, 231-32
Kennedy School of Government, 95
Kerry, John, 91
Kinko's, 18
Kiwi and Nirva Projects, 211
Knoxville, TN, 22, 33, 42
Kohl's, 22
Kopel, Dave, 141
Kowalski, Richard, 84
Kucinich, Dennis, 212
Kurtz, Howard, 126
Kurzweil, Ray, 172-73, 243-44, 246,
248, 250-51

L

LA Times, 112
laptop, 8, 14, 25, 30-32, 35, 104, 158
Lawler, Andrew, 223
Lawrence v. Texas, 182
Layne, Ken, 91
Le Corbusier, 36
Lebanon, 135
Lee, Alvin, 48
Lessig, Larry, 59-60
Lewis, Meriwether, 210, 218
Liam Flavas, 26
Life Extension Foundation, 190
Lileks, James, 117-19
Limited Test Ban Treaty, 230-32
Lindbergh, Charles, 200
LinkExchange, Inc., 56
Live 8, 55
Live Aid, 55
Lloyd's of London, 37
Lockerbie, 69
lorica segmentata, 86
Los Alamos, 131-32
Lott, Trent, xiv, 90, 95
Lotus, 8
Lovy, Howard, 167
Luther, Martin, 92

M

Madagascar, 53
Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, 9
Markoff, John, 128
Mars, 196, 199, 207-21, 223, 225
Marshall, Josh, 119
Marx, Karl, 9
Marxism, 6
McAfee, 173
McCartney, Paul, 58
McKibben, Bill, 240
Medicare, 182-83
Merritt, Jeralyn, 119
Meselson, Matthew, 164
Methuselah Foundation, 191
Methuselah Mouse Prize, 191
Menger, Theresa, 40
Microsoft, 12, 56
Miller, Joel, 257
Miller, Richard, 176
Minor Planet Mailing List, 84
Modigliani, 53
Monster, 49
Moore, Gordon, 7
Mossberg, Walt, 58
Movable type, 115-16
MP3.com, xii, 52-53, 55
MSNBC, 115
Mudville Gazette, 266
music, xii-xiii, 10, 21, 31, 34, 47-50,
52-60, 63, 100, 134, 252, 261

N

Namibia, 53
Nanomedicine, 158
Nanos, Dr. G. Peter, 131
nanotechnology, 9, 15, 153-63, 166-73,
205-6, 234-35, 237-38, 242-43,
245, 248, 255, 264
Napoleon, 98
Napoleonic Wars, 267
Napster, 47, 57
NASA, 84, 196, 198-200, 202, 204-5,
207-9, 211, 213, 230, 266
NASCAR, 5
National Association of Music Merchants
(NAMM), 252
National Guard, 91
National Nanotechnology Initiative:
Research and Development Supporting
the Next Industrial Revolution, 160
National Research Council, 215
National Review Online, 116
National Space Council, 197
Nebraska, 50
Netherlands, xiv
New Haven (Connecticut), 33
New Industrial State, The, 6
New Orleans, 86, 87
New Republic, 116
New York Times, 12, 22-23, 93-95, 111,
125, 128, 131
Nigeria, 53-55, 135
Niven, Larry, 241, 265

O

Off Our Backs, 33
Office Depot, 18, 20
O'Keefe, Sean, 198
Oldenburg, Ray, 32, 34
Olsen, Greg, 208
Online journalism Review, 128
Orion, 211, 228-34
Orteig Prize, 200
Outer Space Treaty, 213-14, 231

P

Panzer Leader, 145
Partovi, Ali, 55-57
Pax, Salam, 119
PayPal, 66
PC (see also desktop), xii, 54, 100-1, 143
Philippines, 134-35
Picasso, 53
Pike, Zebulon, 218
Pink, Dan, 15
Pinson, Robert, x, 220
podcast, 47, 57-60, 63
Poland, 51
pornography, 66, 149-51
Postrel, Virginia, 15, 22-24, 38-39, 119
Pournelle, Jerry, 143
Pravda, xv
Prey, 155, 162
Prince Charles, 169
Project Orion: The True Story o/the Atomic
Spaceship, 228
Protestant Reformation, 91-92
Pruitt, Fred, 118
PSP Audiowar, 51-52
Pyle, Ernie, 108, 112
Pyramids, 2

Q

Quick, Bill, 262

R

Radical Evolution, 239
Raines, Howell, 125-27
Rather, Dan, xiv, 97
Rathergate, 90, 101
Reagan, Ronald, 47, 130, 207
Reason, 116
record labels, xii, 57
recording, xii, 8, 47-48, 50, 52, 55, 57,
59
Red Cross, 81-82
Revolution Will Not Be Televised, The,
101
Robinson, George, 223
Rocky Mountain News, xiv
Rogaine, 185
Romenesko, Jim, 126
Rotary Club, 83
Rutan, Burt, 201, 234

S

Sak's, 26
Salon, xii, 36, 90, 142
Sam's Club, 20, 27
SARS, 266
Saudi Arabia, 66, 84
Scalzi, John, 14
Scarface, 53
Shaheema, Ras, 53
Shoe Warehouse, 22
Shropshire, Philip, 221
Shuttleworth, Mark, 208
Sims, The, 147-48
Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI), 143
Singularity Is Near: When Humans
Transcend Biology, The, 172, 243
Size Matters: How Big Government Puts
the Squeeze on American Families,
Finances, and Freedom, 257
Slashdot, 94, 99
Slate, xii, 12
Sliding Doors, 53
Smith, Adam, 3, 6, 24
Smithsonian Institution, 221-22
Smokey and the Bandit, 129
Snopes.com, 136
Society for Creative Anachronism, 85,
142
Social Security, 182-83
Socrates, David, 103
Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.), xv, 144, 181,
227, 232, 268
Space Settlements Act, 207
Spanish-American War, 91
Spanish Flu, 265
Spiked, xii
Staples, 20
Starbucks, 35
Steele, Richard, 37
Stephenson, Neal, 148, 173
Stirling, Steve (S. M.), 85-86, 143
Stout, Renee, 53
Strategy & Tactics, 143
Sturgeon, Ted, 261
Sun Tzu, 145
SUNY-Stony Brook, 165
Supreme Court, 42-43, 96, 182
Symantec, 173

T

TalkLeft, 119
Target, 22-23
Tascam, 47-48
Tatler, 37
Taylor, Ted, 229
Technorati.com, xiv, 128
Terraforming: Engineering Planetary
Environments, 216
Thompson, Clive, 135
Thurmond, Strom, 90
Times of London, 241
Tito, Dennis, 208
To Rise Again, 53-54
Todd, Brad, 69
TomPaine.com, 116
Transeau, Brian, 49
Treacher, Jim, 95
Trippi, Joe, 101
Tryphonas, Vasilioas, 87
Turtledove, Harry, 143
TV, 24, 40, 45, 56, 60, 101-3, 105-6,
112, 117

U

Uganda, 50, 52
Ukraine, xiv, 119, 135
Ulam, Stanislaw, 229
United Kingdom (UK), 5, 193
United Press International (UPI), 91,
277
United States, iv, 55, 95, 131, 144,
169-70, 180, 207, 211, 222-23,
226-27, 230-32
US Airways, 84
Usenet, 99, 260

V

Varma, Amit, 266
Viagra, 181, 185
Village Voice, 240
Volokh Conspiracy, 119

W

Wall Street Journal, 58, 133, 199
Wal-Mart, 11, 19-20, 23-24, 27
Warner/Chappell Music, 60
Washington D.C., 25, 33, 77, 272
We the Media, 101
Web, 36, 43, 59-60, 65, 67, 82, 92,
94-95, 97-98, 102, 104, 111,
123-24, 136, 200, 239, 257-58,
261-63
weblog, weblogger (see also blog), xiii, 66,
89, 92, 95, 99-100, 115, 126, 131,
262
Weekly Standard, 89
White, Harold, 223
White House, 68, 180, 196-97
Wiesner, Jerome, 227
Wi-Fi, 14, 18, 31, 35-36, 124--25, 240
Wilder, Webb, 195
Windows Movie Maker, 8
Word Press, 115
World Trade Center, 69, 76
World Transhumanist Association, 190
World War II, 16, 92, 96
Wu, William, 222

X

X-Prize Foundation, 200-2, 228, 234

Y

Yale, 33, 240
Yon, Michael, 108-13

Z

Zeyad, 89-90, 95, 119
Zimbabwe, 53
Zubrin, Bob, 209-10, 213, 216, 234
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Re: An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower

Postby admin » Tue Nov 05, 2013 2:08 am

Inside Cover

Small Is the New Big


There was a time in the not-too-distant past when large companies and powerful governments reigned supreme over the little guy. But new technologies are empowering individuals like never before, and the Davids of the world -- the amateur journalists, musicians, and small businessmen and women -- are suddenly making a huge economic and social impact.

In An Army of Davids, author Glenn Reynolds, the man behind the immensely popular Instapundit.com provides an in-depth, big-picture look at a world where the small guys matter more and more. Reynolds explores the birth and growth of the individual's surprisingly strong influence in:

• arts and entertainment
• business strategy and practice
• anti-terrorism efforts
• politics
• nanotech
• space research
• and much more

The balance of power between the individual and the organization is finally evening out. And it's high time the Goliaths of the world pay attention, because an Army of Davids is on the move.

Image

Glenn Reynolds, law professor at the University of Tennessee, is the blogger extraordinaire responsible for one of the Internet's premier blogs, Instapundit.com. A contributing editor to TCS Daily, Reynolds also blogs for MSNBC at GlennReynolds, com and has had his writing featured in the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Urb, and the Wall Street Journal. Reynolds is the coauthor of Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy and The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society.

Back Cover

Big Praise for An Army of Davids


George Orwell feared that technology would enable dictators to enslave the masses. Glenn Reynolds shows that technology can empower individuals to determine their own futures and defeat those who would enslave us. This is a book of profound importance -- and also a darn good read. -- Michael Barone, senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and author of Hard America, Soft America

Blogger extraordinaire Glenn Reynolds shows how average Americans can use new technologies to overcome the twin demons of corporate greed and incompetent government. Reynolds is a compelling evangelist for the power of the individual to change our world -- Arianna Huffington, author of Pigs at the Trough and Fanatics and Fools

Glenn has written a book that's important, even brilliant. And not only is it beautifully written, it's sure to be a bestseller as well. He's right about the changes we're all living through. Ignore these small (big) ideas at your peril. -- Seth Godin, author of Small Is the New Big and Purple Cow

A smart, fun tour of a major social and economic trend. From home-brewed beer to blogging, Glenn Reynolds is an engaging, uniquely qualified guide to the do-it-yourself movements transforming business, politics, and media. -- Virginia Postrel, Forbes columnist and author of The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style

A student in her dorm room now commands the resources of a multi-million dollar music recording or movie editing studio of not so many years ago. The tools of creativity have been democratized and the tools of production are not far behind (Karl Marx take note). Glenn Reynold's beguiling new book tells the insightful story of how an 'army of Davids' is inheriting the Earth, leaving a trail of obsolete business models -- not to mention cultural, economic, and political institutions -- in its wake. -- Ray Kurzweil, scientist, inventor, and author of several books including The Singularity Is Near

'Must-read', 'gotta have,' 'culture-changing' ... I am suspicious of blurbs with such overused plugs. But Glenn Reynold's An Army of Davids is in fact a must-read new book that you gotta have if you are going to understand the culture-changing forces that are unleashed and at work across the globe. -- Hugh Hewitt, syndicated talk radio host and author of Blog and Painting the Map Red

Glenn Reynolds has written an essential book for understanding how technology and markets are creating a bottom-up shift in power to ordinary people that is changing business, government, and our world. Packed with fresh ideas and adorned with graceful prose, An Army of Davids is a masterpiece. -- Joe Trippi, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
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