Linked World

Inextricably Intertwined

Traditionally, business and politics have been separable in LinkedIn, but their overlap since November is far too substantive and immediate for that fiction to be further entertained.

And yet there are people on LinkedIn who still loudly complain that they come there to discuss business and are offended to see political discussion, as if it were mere distraction.

I don't know whether such remarks are born of obliviousness or privilege, but in my view these pleas lack grounding in practical reality. If there were a way to speak of business without reference to politics, I would do it out of mere simplicity. Why involve irrelevancies? But the two are just far too intertwined. US politics is no longer some minor detail, distinct from business. It is central to US business right now.

Some will see this shift as positive. Others will see it as negative. I'm one of those seeing consistent negatives. But whatever your leaning, it seems inescapable that politics is suddenly visibly intertwined with markets and products in new ways. Not every discussion must factor it in, but when it happens, it's not mere rudeness that has broken the traditional wall of separation. It's just no longer practical to maintain the polite fiction that there's no overlap.

Practical Examples

I find it impossible to see how a seismic shift like the US is undergoing could fail to affect funding sources and trends, individual business success, entire markets, and indeed whether the US is a good place for people to invest in, go to school in, or vacation in.

Nor are the sweeping effects of DOGE, Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, an issue of pure politics. Its actions have clear business impact. As Musk wields this mysterious and unaccountable force to slash through the heart of government agencies with reckless abandon, there are many clear effects that will profoundly affect business.

• Scientists at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and elsewhere have warned about the possibility of a bird flu or other pandemic. The CDC tracks and seeks ways to prevent pandemics, but that work is now under threat by an anti-science administration. As the Covid experience tells us, there is a business impact to pandemics if we allow them to just happen. A report in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)'s National Library of Medicine places that cost at about $16 trillion dollars.

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is important to keeping planes in the air and having them not crash into one another. Business people do a lot of flying, so their needless deaths in the aftermath of FAA layoffs can presumably affect business. And it won't help people if the public develops a fear of flying.

• The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of making sure the food we eat does not poison us or that the drugs we take have at least a bounded degree of risk. It's the kind of thing you don't think might be business related until we enter a world where employees might go home any old day and just die because we are edging toward a society where you can't take food and drug safety for granted as a stable quantity any more.

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for tracking storms so that damage, injury, or death can be minimized. And then and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) helps the recovery afterward. It is hard to see how a major storm could affect people, cities, or geographic regions without affecting the employees, customers, and products of businesses. Do I really have to say that? If people think there is a separation between business and politics, I guess I do.

  And then of course NOAA does work to study Climate Change, too. Not only has such study suggested that Climate Change is an existential threat to civilized society, perhaps to all humankind, but it turns out that if human society falls or humans go extinct, that will affect business, too. And maybe soon enough that people still alive now, even if they have no care about future humans, still need to care because it could affect them or those they love.

It used to be that business did not have to worry about such things as much exactly because government used to see it as its job to invisibly take care of these many things. But this change in politics is not just a change in spending, but a shift of responsibility from the government to businesses and individuals. They'll have to look out for themselves now. That is a big deal thing that will affect businesses—their products, employees, and customers in profound ways. All the more so because the present administration changes its mind daily in ways that seem to have no plan, so uncertainty abounds. Business hates uncertainty.

Unemployment

Additionally, the many layoffs in government mean additional unemployment, which itself has business effect. Perhaps some will rejoice at a plentiful supply of potential workers or the fact that they may accept lower wages. But, meanwhile, those unemployed were also the customer base of other businesses who will be less happy. Those people aren't in a position to buy as many things—not just luxuries but essentials like food and rent and healthcare. Perhaps others in their families will pitch in to help them survive, but then those people won't be in a position to buy as many things either.

Mass layoffs do not happen in a vacuum. Those political choices will show up on the bottom lines of businesses. Some businesses may not survive that loss of business, creating a cascade effect.

Racism and Xenophobia

Racism and xenophobia are on the rise. Recent ICE actions seem designed to send the message that we purposefully treat some humans like vermin. “Stay away,” it screams to a large swath of the global population, some of whom we might like to sell to or have invest in us.

It began by going after the undocumented, surely because they are easy targets. That circle is expanding, and it seems unlikely to stop any time soon. The goal seems to be to end any sense that anyone has rights at all. That creates a lot of uncertainty about what is allowed in the way of both speech and action. Such uncertainty makes it hard to plan and manage anything from the selection of an appropriate employee base to how products will be positioned and marketed.

Also, it's an ugly truth that the US relies on already-terrified undocumented employees to accept very low wages, sometimes perhaps skirting wage regulation. Many US businesses will lose access to such cheap labor. The ethics of having relied on this population in this way are certainly tangled and I don't want to defend this practice. But for purposes of this discussion I simply observe that this change will have business effects that may affect both prices and product availability.

It is as if the administration's answer to immigration concerns is to make the US seem as utterly hostile to anyone who is not a native-born, white, Christian male. These trends already affect who feels safe coming to the US to trade, to study, to do research, and to found companies. It's going to be hard to unring that bell.

Rule of Law

In addition, this process seems to be having the side-effect of diminishing rule of law generally. By asserting that due process is not required, when plainly it is, a test of wills is set up between the executive and the rest of the government as to whether the President can, by mere force of will, ignore the Constitution entirely.

The clear intent is to establish us as a bully power, to say that worrying about whether foreigners like the people of the US showed weakness, and that we must make the world fear us. That shift cannot help but affect who will do business with us and how.

We cannot expect our global peers, already horrified by the recent shift in our choice of which foreign entities to fund or ally ourselves with, to shrug these matters off in business with a casual "oh, that's just politics."

Education

Also, higher education is under assault. There is a complex ecology here because people from around the world have revered our universities as places they could send people to acquire a world class education. But with research funds being cut, that may no longer be so.

That the US Government seems intent on snatching foreign students off the street does not make this picture any better. It becomes a reason for international investment dollars to go to other countries where it is safe to walk the streets.

International Investment

The education system is not cleanly separated from the business community. There is a complex ecology in which many businesses locate themselves near universities to have access to the best human talent and research the world has to offer. As US educational institutions are undercut, and the administrations anti-science agenda is pursued, foreign businesses that take education and science more seriously may look elsewhere for leadership.

These capricious changes—the sense that nothing is promised or certain—may affect the reputation of the United States and trust in the US dollar. The present administration wants more control of the Federal Reserve, which has traditionally operated independently. If that happens, it could worsen faith in the US dollar.

The US has also weakened enforcement of anti-bribery laws for dealing with foreign governments. Perhaps some will regard this relaxation of ethics good for business, but whether you do or not, it is most certainly a major change.

And the US is demonstrating on-its-face incompetence at every level of government because everyone with a brain is deferring to someone who plainly lacks either understanding or caring about the damage he is doing. Foreign businesses and governments used to look to the US as a place that had something to teach, but as this incompetence continues unchecked, it cannot help but hurt our reputation internationally.

Philosophy of Government

There is a definite push to “run government like a business.” I think that's a terrible plan, as my recent essay Government is not a Business explains.

But whether you think running government that way is good or bad, it marks a profound shift. More privatization and, with that, probably more corruption. These are things that will profoundly affect not just the US political landscape, but also its business landscape.

Not Separable

Hopefully these examples make it clear that politics and business are no longer separable. It is simply impossible to discuss business in a way that neglects politics. All business in the US is now conducted in the shadow of a certain GOP Elephant that manages to insinuate itself into every room.

 

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Author's Notes:

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Some parts of this post originated as a comment by me on LinkedIn. Other parts were written separately with the intent of being yet another comment, but I finally went back and unified the two and pulled this out to a separate post where I was not space-limited.

The vague approximation to the LinkedIn logo was created by me from scratch in Gimp by looking at the LinkedIn logo and doing something suggestive of the same look. A globe image was obtained from publicdomainpictures.net under cc0 license, and post-processed by me in Gimp to work in this space. I just made guesses about sizes, proportions, fonts, and colors. At no time were any of actual logos used for any part of the creation.

AI Users Bill of Rights

We are surrounded by too much helpful AI trying to insinuate itself into our lives. I would like the option of leaving “AI” tech turned off and invisible, though that's getting harder and harder.

I've drafted a draft version 1 of a bill of rights for humans who want the option to stay in control. Text in green is not part of the proposal. It is instead rationale or other metadata.

AI Users Bill of Rights
DRAFT, Version 1

1. All use of “AI” features must be opt-in. No operating system or application may be delivered with “AI” defaultly enabled. Users must be allowed to select the option if they want it, but not penalized if they do not.

   Rationale:

   1. Part of human dignity is being allowed freedom of choice. An opt-out system is paternalistic.
   2. Some “AI” systems are not privacy friendly. If such systems are on by default until disabled, the privacy damage may be done by the time of opt-out.
   3. If the system is on by default, it's possible to claim that everyone has at least tried it and hence to over-hype the size of a user base, even to the point of fraudulently claiming users that are not real users.

2. Enabling an “AI” requires a confirmation step. The options must be a simple “yes” or “no”.

   Rationale:

   1. It's easy to hit a button by accident that one does not understand, or to typo a command sequence. Asking explicitly means no user ends up in this new mode without realizing what has happened.
   2. It follows that the “no” may not be something like “not now” or any other variation that might seem to invite later system-initiated inquiry. Answering “no” should put the system or application back into the state of awaiting a user-initiated request.

3. Giving permission to use an AI is not the same as giving permission to share the conversation or use it as training data. Each of these requires separate, affirmative, opt-in permissions.

   Rationale:

   1. If the metaphor is one of a private conversation among friends, one is entitled to exactly that—privacy and behavior on the part of the other party that is not exploitative.
   2. Not all “AI” agents in fact do violate privacy. By making these approvals explicit, there is a user-facing reminder for the ones that are more extractive that more use will be made of data than one may want.

4. All buttons or command-sequences to enable “AI” must themselve be possible to disable or remove.

   Rationale:

   1. It may be possible for someone to enable “AI” without realizing it.
   2. It is too easy to enable “AI” as a typo. Providers of “AI” might even be tempted to place controls in places that encourage such typos.

5. No application or system may put “AI” on the path to basic functionality. This is intended to be a layer above functionality that allows easier access to functionality in order to automate or speed up certain functions that might be slow or tedious to do manually.

   Rationale:

   1. Building this in to the basic functionality makes it hard to remove.
   2. Integrating it with basic functionality makes the basic functionality hard to test.
   3. If an “AI” is running erratically, it should be possible to isolate it for the purposes of debugging or testing.
   4. When analyzing situations forensically, this allows crisper attribution of blame.

With this, I hope those of us who choose to live in the ordinary human way, holding “AI” at bay, can do so comfortably.

Other relevant writings by me about AI:

Sentience Structure
Green AI
Pretty Messed Up
Technology's Ethical Two-Step

 

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Author's Notes:

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The graphic was created at Abacus.ai using Claude Sonnet 3.7 and Flux 1.1 Ultra Pro, then cropped and scaled using Gimp.

Law and Ordering

“First They Came” | ”Als sie kamen”
by Martin Niemöller

There's been a lot of erosion of US democracy lately. The latest is the case of Kilmar Abrego García's deportation. It should matter to everyone because of the specific precedent it sets.

But it's part of a general trend for how many precedents are being set. The order in which things are happening is not accidental.

In many ways, what I'm going to say here is just a restatement of the famous Niemöller poem. Great poetry often captures an idea crisply, and certainly that poem does. But some things are important enough to say a lot of different ways, and this is certainly one.

So, at the risk of redundancy, let me just say that there's a very specific ordering in which laws and norms are being stretched and broken. It goes from “most acceptable” to “least acceptable” in our society for whose rights we'll tolerate violating. We as a society have grown used to some of our members being abused. They know this ugly truth, and they're exploiting it.

As I explained in my essay Political Terraforming last fall, the goal is plainly just to eliminate all rights. But they can't do it all at once. There's a clear order in which this has to be done.

In effect, there is an aspect of this which is its incremental and creeping nature. We see that as a kind of icky feeling as we wake each morning to look at the Internet, but it's not just that. It's tactical. The Overton window can only stretch at a certain rate. It's apparently fast, but not infinitely fast.

The US right now is a herd of animals where the weakest are at the outside, being picked off one by one by his wolves. We've arranged ourselves with the weakest, least overall-acceptable people at the outside, and too many of us comfort ourselves that we're safe because we're not on the outside (yet).

There's some part of this that's shock and awe, trying to go as fast as possible before anyone can react at all. But there's a slowness component to it, too.

With the system—and our own sensibilities—overwhelmed, citizens are forced to prioritize which indignity to be responding to at any given time. This Gish gallop of disgusting acts is so vast that one cannot respond to everything. So the Project 2025 goal is to lay a foundation of precedents, breaking prior norms, moving the Overton window while most people aren't yet noticing or caring because they're busy with other indignities.

So, amid the flurry of things that every day assault us citizens, they're going slowly enough that the part involving precedent setting passes unnoticed. In this way, by the time it matters for mainstream America, the aspiring dictator will be poised to say “This is just how it's done. You've lost your chance.”

We must not let these things pass unnoticed. It matters to catch them and object to them before legal precedents are set. And, for those of us who think we are not immediately threatened, it matters to see that really we are. It's coming for all of us, and soon. The damage will be done by the time it gets to many of us. So none of us can afford to postpone our outrage and involvement.

E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

We The People must not let them divide us. We must stand as one.

 

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Author's Notes:

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This post began as a comment on reddit. It's been tidied up and expanded, and the formatting has been adjusted to be suitable for a web venue. The reddit post is best seen as a first draft.

The graphic was downloaded downloaded from Wikimedia (which says it is in the public domain), and then cropped and scaled using Gimp.

Supreme Challenge

Just days ago, the United States Supreme Court said that Presidents are Kings, that their actions are largely immune to prosecution for things that would be crimes if done by others.

This is an amazing amount of power, as we are on track to learn once Biden finishes wasting this power doing nothing and leaves us with Trump as his successor.

“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. … Each of us is equal before the law. … No one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. With today’s Supreme Court decision on Presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. … For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a President can do. This is a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the Law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the President alone.”

—US President Biden
in a July 1, 2024 address

Trump is not just Biden’s adversary, but he is the adversary of free society. He has said so. He has promised to be a dictator on day one, and he means it. He will not waste this newly conjured kingly power doing nothing, but rather undoing what Biden has done for gun safety, gender equality, environment, etc. Alongside all that, he will proceed immediately to do rampant evil, as laid out in detailed published plans that his ultra-conservative allies are calling “Project 2025.”

But Trump does not yet have this superpower—not until we elect him in the fall, if we are foolish enough to do that. And the polls say we are on track to being just that irredeemably foolish.

For a few months, though, such extraordinary power resides in Biden. And what will he do with this power? He rushes to promise us that he will not use it, not even for good, not even to assure that we do not end up with Trump as dictator. Nor to assure that these ridiculous changes by the Court are rolled back.

Note also that We The People are helpless here, glued to our TVs and phones, sifting news and social media for clues about what will happen to us. Give any one of us the power that the Supreme Court gave Biden, and we could do a lot of good, fix a lot of problems, and make the US safer for democracy than Biden is promising to do. We know that because Biden is promising to do nothing with this extraordinary power. That’s a pretty low bar for any one of us to exceed.

Failing to Protect Us

Biden wants to do things in the same old tired way. He wants to use his centrist tools of inaction, treating any real opportunity to make a difference as something not to do. Something too radical. Not his preferred way.

He’d rather labor slowly, expecting consensus with the MAGA crowd when there is none to be had, and he would rather not use the new tool, a tool that Trump and the MAGA-majority Supreme Court are counting on him not to use. They have given him a loaded weapon and are counting on him to deliver it, still loaded, still unused, to his successor, who will not leave it unused, who will in all likelihood use that weapon to assure he does not ever have a successor, that he just stays in power for life.

“At the outset of our nation, it was the character of George Washington, our first President, that defined the Presidency. He believed power was limited, not absolute, and that power always resides with The People. Always. Now, over 200 years later, with today’s Supreme Court decision, once again it will depend on the character of the men and women who hold that Presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the Presidency because the Law will no longer do it. I know I will respect the limits of the Presidential powers that I have for three and a half years. But any President, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the Law. I concur with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent today. … She said, ‘In every use of official power, the President is now a King above the law. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ So should the American people dissent. I dissent. ”

—US President Biden
in a July 1, 2024 address

We are in danger. Biden sees the danger, but does not see that he is part of the planned delivery mechanism for that danger, and that he is willingly and complacently accepting that role.

It's like Biden sees someone coming at him with a club or a knife in a dark alley and decides to use debate to protect himself even as someone is trying to hand him a pistol. All well and good if he's by himself and can take full personal responsibility for that ridiculous choice, but he is charged here with protecting the Constitution and the nation.

We Need Real Action

Strong language, politely delivered, will not protect us here. An offer of centrist consensus-building with the MAGA right will not protect us either. Oh, sure, he can probably find something to collaborate with MAGA about, but it will amount to mere distraction, one of those inconsequential things that still loses us our democracy even as it adds to his list of accomplishments.

Part of the problem is that Biden thinks that the doing of everyday horse trading is his job. At this point, it is not. He doesn't need more legislative successes. If the successes he has are not impressing anyone, adding more will not fix that. He has a lot of experience as a Senator, but at this point, we need him to stop being some kind of Senator in Chief and just be the Commander in Chief.

He needs now to secure democracy. That is his job. And it cannot be done by compromising with the party that seeks to disassemble democracy. It must be done by actually confronting that party, using any and all tools at hand. He thinks he's doing all he can, and maybe he is doing all he can. But he is not doing all that could be done. Inaction at this point is dangerous.

The tool he's been given, this new superpower, may not be Biden's preferred tool, but it IS adequate to the task. He is just choosing not to use it because he doesn’t like the look of it. That alone is sufficient reason for We The People to want a different leader, both now while that power exists and in the next Presidential term if possible.

Coaxing the Genie back into the Bottle

It’s good that Biden knows this new Presidential immunity poses a danger to democracy, but it’s not enough to just know it. He needs to insist that the Court take back that power now, not taking “no” for an answer.

Inaction is insufficient. Fortunately, given this new superpower, better options are available. I’ll offer a hypothetical, just for conversation, but hopefully it will demonstrate that stronger and more effective action is possible, and that it is neither necessary nor advisable to wait until the election.

After all, the election could go very awry. It is reckless to wait and hope it will not. This new reality entitles him to not just suggest but insist it be dealt with now. He can insist that the Supreme Court create ethics rules, term limits, and accountability.

So here is my hypothetical scenario for discussion:

Biden could explain that, in order to preserve Democracy and hold Monarchy at bay, he is ordering poor old Seal Team Six to hunt down and execute all conservative justices on the Supreme Court so that he can install judges with better sense, but that he has stayed execution of that action—for which he has absolute immunity—by 3 weeks, just in case the Court can move (expeditiously, for once) to find a better way to protect the Constitution and the nation with less bloodshed, for example by vacating their recent extraordinarily ill-advised and outright reckless ruling, removing the power of Presidents to take such actions confident of their immunity.

I like to think that such an approach would end with better accountability for Presidents and no one injured. It might seem an extreme way to get there, but it absolutely pales by comparison to what we should expect if Trump is elected.

Supreme Blind Spot

An action with parameters such as I’ve described would also help SCOTUS see the very real danger they’ve created. Fixing the problem would allow a happier outcome for us all, even SCOTUS themselves. They may not realize it, but they are in danger due to their own ruling in ways that they’re not taking seriously enough. They blithely discuss a President authorizing SEAL Team Six to take out political rivals, yet fail to see that they themselves might be such rivals?

It leaves me questioning not just their lack of neutrality, but their competence. It is short-sighted and dangerous, and poor judgment to the point of recklessness. I expect more of Supreme Court Justices.

Biden Isn't The Leader We Need

This is no time for Biden to sit on his hands. It’s a time for bold actions proportional to the danger, actions suddenly well within the scope of Biden’s new powers, and capable of being done with noble purpose, not that the new Supreme Court ruling requires noble purpose for President acts any more. That's part of the problem.

The Court has given Biden this power, so they must intend him to use it, right? Or maybe they just intended the power for Trump and calculated that Biden was too wimpy to use it.

I'd concur with them on that calculation, by the way. He is too wimpy. He's confirmed that by prematurely promising not to use it. That's a self-inflicted wound. He didn't have to say that, for the same reason that Presidents don't say “we won't strike first with atomic weapons.” It's not that we plan to, but we don't want our adversaries relying on our self-restraint.

I don't think Biden wargamed this. I think he just tied his own hands without thinking. Now, if he uses the power, even to help eliminate it, he'll have people fussing at him.

But so be it. I see it as dereliction of duty if he declines to use it. Letting his successor, probably Trump, be the first to explore this unlimited power is terrifying because it will be too late at that point for the public to react in any meaningful way to defend itself. It was reckless even just to say out loud that he wouldn't use the power.

I get why he wanted to. I get why it's uncomfortable. But right now he is the one we have elected to do the uncomfortable things. Better him than Trump. He, at least, is acting in the nation's best interests, not just his own.

Sadly, I’m pretty confident Biden isn't up to it. I think he'll disappoint us. Not just disappoint us, but outright fail us. He sees its use as lacking decorum, even as somehow he sees no lack of decorum in abrogating his responsibility to protect us and leaving us at material risk of a Trump presidency with unlimited power still in full effect.

He thinks by saying these are the stakes that surely no one will elect Trump. That's a dangerous game and one we're all too likely to lose.

Our Weakened Voting System

A partisan SCOTUS has weakened the Voting Rights Act enormously. States bent on voting rights abuse, bolstered by SCOTUS, have indulged gerrymandering and other actions that injure fair voter participation. Trump has raised baseless questions about election integrity. Republican media has echoed him to the point that Republican voters and lawmakers do, too. Fake electors were conjured using illegal schemes. Some have been brought up on charges or sent to jail, but Republican state lawmakers have worked to make it easier to do the same shady things legally this time around. Trump and GOP are mustering armies of lawyers to challenge elections this time around. Election 2024 will be about procedural tricks and challenges. That's a problem.

Telling us to go vote is just not adequate. Assuring us that we have the final say would be laughable if not so serious.

It will be great to rely on voting once a proper democracy is restored, but right now there is no guarantee of the vote’s outcome, or that the outcome won't be challenged, ultimately winding up in the Supreme Court to be overturned by the same folks that brought us the recent Presidential immunity ruling. They have meddled in elections before, and nothing stops them from doing it again, especially now that they have lost all shame.

Immediate action is needed to put things to right, while Biden has the power. He must use that power. Carefully. But he must use it. The safety of the Constitution and the nation demands it.

I doubt he is up to this most important of tasks. But I'll be happy to be surprised.

A Nation of Laws

Our nation needs to be a nation of laws. For everyone. No exceptions.

We already make exceptions for acts that are necessary. We have laws against murder, but we let people off if it’s self defense. We have laws about copyright violation, but we let people off for fair use. But we have not had laws that expressly said that people could walk free merely for who they are, only laws that insist they are doing things for good motive.

Will that scare some Presidents? It’s never scared them in the past. Or maybe the ones that it did scare didn't run for office. Good for them.

Presidents have always had to fear that breaking laws might get them in trouble and yet the nation has functioned well for two and a half centuries. Let Presidents continue to fear the Law. Let them continue to have to justify deviations.

If a President hesitates to start a war or authorize a covert action or explode a weapon of mass destruction, well, that’s good. Hesitation isn’t bad. I want a President to know that breaking the law cannot be a casual decision. It cannot be just another day on the job. They must be prepared to later justify questionable actions.

Having to account is part of the job. It is what makes us a democracy. The President is accountable to The People, not the other way around. Let Presidents assume that We The People understand these are hard decisions, and that we’ll make exceptions for technical breaches of law that are justly done in the best interest of the nation. But let them sweat a bit. That’s healthy.

By contrast, this newly conjured law, brought into existence out of nowhere Monday by a rogue Court, not Congress, that says Presidents must not be made to sweat, must not be asked to account, is not healthy.

Some have advanced the fairytale notion that voting is how Presidents should be called to account. But it is not a crazy hypothetical to think that a President might try to stay illegally in power. We’ve seen evidence that Trump might do this. He’s said aloud that it’s something he thought about.

And, anyway, there is a lot of damage that can be done in the four years between elections, if we're lucky enough to ever have them again after a President decides he wants to be a dictator. So elections are not an appropriate check. We need better.

Let Presidents sweat. We’ll be safer for it.

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Children of the Information Era

“Now you see it … Now You don't.”

Probably most people know, because so many web sites ask about it when you register, that there is special protection on the web for US children under the age of 13. Quoting the FTC's explainer page on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA"):

“COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, and on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.”

So we in the US have a sort of right to privacy on the web. OK, not a right, exactly, but at least a strong law. But there's just one small hitch: it expires as we get older. What is that about?

Why should it be OK for that right to go away as we get older. Whose interest does that serve? Certainly not mine. What kind of values are encoded here? What message does that send?

I'm sure this was sold to Congress, and then to the American people, under the tried and true “for the children” banner and that lawmakers didn't stop to think very hard about how much many of us adults would have loved to have at least the option of similar protection.

But it was not to be.

Why?

Ethics and Technology

People like me who've watched and rewatched Star Trek for decades are regularly reminded, as one of its common themes, that technology and wisdom need to move hand in hand. When technology gets ahead of wisdom, bad things happen. But Star Trek mostly takes place in the 23^rd and 24^th centuries.

Ethics has had a very hard time in our 20^th and now 21^st century technological society. Really there's very little ethics built into anything technological. There's an explanation for that and it comes in two steps.

Early on, technologists anxious to explore a topic insist it would “hold back progress” to weigh them down with ethical concerns, as if the worst thing in the world would be having to think about the impact of technology on society.

Later, if you try to apply ethics to a more mature technology, the punch line of the joke on us is trotted out: It's too late. “It would be disruptive to the market” to impose ethics—now that the market is used to doing to us whatever it's doing that profits someone.

Growing Up in the Information Era

Of course there's another possible explanation for why this privacy “right” goes poof and vanishes at age 13: By that age we have “grown up.”

We'll ignore for the moment that 13 is not the ordinary line between childhood and adulthood. But probably some business somewhere stood to lose too much money if we drew the line between childhood and adulthood in the right place. Though I'm sure the official party line was that kids needed time to swim in the deep end while there were still adults around to help them. Or something like that.

I'm not buying any such sophistry, though.

After all, what is adulthood? Why do we even make a distinction in society between how we treat children and how we treat adults?

Wikipedia suggests this about adulthood:

“In contrast to a ‘minor’, a legal adult is a person who has attained the age of majority and is therefore regarded as independent, self-sufficient, and responsible.”

Implicit in this is the notion that there are people—often but not necessarily parents, but usually at least other adults—training one for this role of independence, of self-sufficiency, of responsibility. And why? Well, because they've been around awhile. They're native guides familiar with how adulthood plays out. They can tell children what to watch out for because they've lived in the adult world for a whlie and have seen the pitfalls.

And that's the problem. This theory might work OK for learning to drive a car. Cars change a little each year, but mostly driving a car is the same today as it was decades ago, hopefully a little safer. Adults know what to teach kids about driving a car because they've done it awhile. They know the landscape.

But the information landscape is just different. You may give up a piece of information, like your location, and think it quite benign. It's never caused you a problem before. But there are people whose job it is to infer new information all the time from old information. That data is a treasure chest for companies to mine, so the implications of giving it away are not known to your parents. They maybe, if they're really paying attention, know what a given piece of information was used for in the past, but every day there are new things being inferred. Not just new ways to track us in the future, but new ways to understand data already obtained.

I'll say it this way to be most clear: There are no adults in the information society. There is no one who can take their lifetime, or even their last 20 years, and tell you what the next 20 years will feel like. Society has always changed from generation to generation, but it's happening faster and faster, to the point that we are really all just children, bumbling our way through the implications of the world that is being re-made before us. There are not a lot of adults with worked experience in the information age they can share with their children, not really. Not in the sense that there are adults who can help kids learn to cook dinner or play a piano or drive.

We are all children in the rapid-paced world of information that dominates today. There are effectively no adults who have lived this life before and are competent to prepare the next generation for that role. The informational life that any previous generation lived is a life that has already vanished by the time the next generation comes along.

The right to informational privacy should not expire as we grow up because there's no sense in which we can usefully reach “informational maturity” until we change the aspect of society in which we're willing to let technology far outpace wisdom, with ethics left far behind, lost in the dust.

Given that we are all really just children in this information era, adulthood not an easily attainable concept, we all deserve the protections that we today afford only to those under age 13. Our right to privacy should not suddenly expire.

Control at some point should pass from parent to child, but it should not just pass to the market. We should demand to hold it ourselves for our entire lifetime.

 

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