Author Archives: paolo

Links for 2008 03 13

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Links for 2008 02 12

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From e-democracy to Google-democracy?

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Maybe you have seen the announcement of the new bigG service: Google Health (see Blogoscoped).
I guess you have heard in the past years many times the “new” (?) terms, right?
E-voting, e-health, e-learning, e-government, e-democracy, e-identity, e-business, e-participation, e-environment, e-weather (if you have heard more, please suggest it in a comment). Just prefix “e-” in front of any oh-so-out-of-fashion word and you have a new keyword you can use to ask funds for new projects.
Now, there would be a lot of concerns about the e-anything by itself. But I was wondering: we haven’t even reach an agreement of what e-anything is (say e-government), how much it is useful, and how to deploy it for real for a better world (this is why we do things, right?) but maybe we are already moving from e-anything to google-anything or g-anything (say google-government)?
Just think about it for a second. Today we got Google-health, which I’m sure will be embraced by many people like you and me.
Tomorrow Google would start offering free (FREE!) services to governments such that governments can cut their costs of managing a state (finance, tax keeping, population registration, etc to 0 (ZERO!). How many countries would resists? That would be the google-government.
You can try to prefix google- to words and think about those services. google-voting, eh? Up up to google-democracy of course! Scary? Well, maybe you think I’m paranoid and this is probably very true but I’m curious to know what you think.
And for the record I use Google free services for most of my needs, so yes, I have already capitulated.

Last pointless point. I hope at least countries will not undergo this path. You know, I would not like to have to call E-stonia and E-Latvia as G-stonia and G-Latvia. Moreover names on maps will become more boring, no? Uhm, did anybody say e-earth google-earth?

Making money from money: is this a needed feature of our society?

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Ripple is an attempt to (re)design society: our interactions will no more based on the fact we all agree money (generated by banks and governments) exist but on how much we trust other people. Each participant indicates which other participants he or she trusts, by offering to accept their IOUs up to a certain amount, like a line of credit: your peers become the generators of currency. In short, Ripple lets everyone act like a bank.

Now, in such a society, is interest needed? Do we want to implement as a feature of the system the fact you can make money from money? This was the question posed in the Ripple-users mailing list.

The answer by Daniel Reeves is illuminating. I copy a portion of it below but I suggest you to read the entire thread, it is really worth your minutes.

There was some google video circulating a while back that started out very informative and then spun off into batshit insanity, claiming that it’s mathematically impossible to pay off debts with compound interest, etc..
A thought experiment that has helped me is to pretend there is no money and just look at movement of wealth. Remember the distinction: wealth is the actual stuff we want, money is just a way to transfer it. So the question “how can I repay a loan with interest; where does the extra money come from?” becomes “how can someone give back more wealth than they were loaned; where does the extra wealth come from?”.
Well that’s easy to answer. The same place all wealth comes from: people make it. They build things, do work, cough up valuable property.

Say you have a beautiful painting (= wealth) that I want and I have nothing to offer you for it except the promise to return it to you later. That’s a big favor I’m asking you. To keep things fair, I might offer you a small thing of my own in return (say, doing your dishes). So there you have it, I borrowed the painting and paid it back, plus interest (doing your dishes). Everyone’s happy.

It really is, fundamentally, as simple as that.

And, by the way, there’s nothing magical or mathematically insidious about compound interest either. In fact, the concept is already implicit in this “extra favor” conception of interest.

Links for 2008 01 19

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DNA2.0 or how to google your genome (and put it in a social network)

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23andme_social If you haven’t watched Gattaga, this might be a good time for doing it.

23andme is a society funded with 10.000.000 dollars by Google. 23andme was co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, which is the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

23andme sells the following service: for 1000 dollars, you send us your saliva and we send you a complete analysis of your DNA.

This is already enough scary, as sonnoprofondo points out:
“What could be the reaction of someone just learning she inherited a risk for a certain heart disease from her mother? How would you feel if your DNA tells that your father has typically german genes and blue eyes, while you have always thought the opposite? Would you accept easily the idea your 2 years-old son inherited from your the risk for a certain disease?”

But what is more scary is that 23andme will upload your genetic information to a secure database. Then with your own private login, you can then use our web-based interactive tools to 23andme will upload your genetic information to a secure database. Then with your own private login, you can then use our web-based interactive tools to explore your genome. You can discover your origins, learn what the latest genetic findings may mean for you, and connect genetically with friends, family, and others across the globe explore your genome. This is directly from their website.
So this is astonishing, and this is what they are up to (and remember they are funded by google which already knows almost everything about you).

Moreover it is not too hard to guess the password of someone and enter in her account. This is true at least until 23andme does not put in place authentication based on your physical characteristics (“Just spit on your Webcamera and we will know you are you …”) … Uhm, maybe after Gattaga you might consider watching Matrix again.

So, is this a promising market? That is, how many persons will be willing to pay $1000 for getting their DNA? I have no idea about this sector, but my fear is that there will be many. And once 23andme becomes the leading provider in this sector and considering the network effect (“invite your friend to connect genetically to you, by sending her/him this discounted coupon option for DNA analysis”), 23andme will be in a key position for our very very society.

Consequences? Difficult to imagine for me, as I’m not very imaginative. But let me try.
This long Wired article starts with: And what are physicians, most likely untrained in and unprepared for genomic medicine, to do when a patient comes in wielding a printout that indicates a particular variation of a particular gene? This new age of genomics comes with great opportunity — but also great quandaries.
Maybe someone misinterpreting her genome and committing suicide?
Maybe will it happen that someone (with a good genome she would like to show off) starts posting his genome on her blog/page? (Genome Widget anyone?) Will a potential employer first search the Web (GenomeSphere?) in order to find the potential employee’s genome and decide to hire her or not based on this? If the fraction of people who voluntarily post their genome becomes large enough, not posting your genome might be seen as suspect (“has this potential employee/date/friend something to hide?”).
As much as you can trust 23andme to have figure out Web security right, is a computer glitch unwantedly exposing some information totally impossible? What if the government asks for this data?

I don’t know. Is the fact I’m so scared just a symptom of me being too old for these new times? I can already hear people saying “this is only information, more information is always good, then you can make more informed decisions”. Uhm, I don’t know. Are you scared as well, my old friend?

And if you are wondering why the company is named 23andme … how many pairs of chromosomes do you think you have in your DNA? Yes, 23.
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On why we accept worthless pieces of paper and what happens when we stop.

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Exercise for the reader: Let suppose you are the chief of Saudi Arabia, you sell most of the oil in the world. Why would you ask to be paid in a currency that is not your currency? Think why Saudi Arabia asks to be paid in dollars and not directly in its own currency (Riyal).

Did it?
Ok, so now the news from Reuters: some OPEC countries are considering/threatening stopping asking dollars in exchange for oil. The precise sentence uttered by Iranian President Ahmadinejad was “They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper”. For now it is just a threat. And both Ahmadinejad and Chavez announced it for political reason (“crashing the empire of dollar”, as Chavez put it). But in reality also because with a weaker and weaker dollar, they get less and less buying power in the international markets and so keeping accepting dollars simply is a stupid economic decision.
But we know what this means, right? Iraq wanted to dump the dollar and sell oil in euros and we all know what happened to Iraq. But now somehow the situation is different, but not too different.
Anyway, going back to the sentence “They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper”, the symbolism is powerful.
A piece of paper has zero value, a piece of paper has value only because we recognize a value in it and we accept it based on this “somehow commonly agreed” value. But what happens when enough people stop assigning value to a certain piece of paper? I fear we will all see it together.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2007. Italy? 84th out of 128

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The Global Gender Gap Report 2007 is out.
Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the rankings in the latest Global Gender Gap Report. The Report covers a total of 128 countries.
Ah yes, you are wondering about Italy? Why really wondering? Anything else to do? Uhm, ok here is the raw reality: Italy is 84th out of 128.
Our cousins of Spain are 10th (!), Latvia is in position 13 and Lithuania 14. Moldova is 21, Cuba is 22, Colombia is 24, Bulgaria is 25, Lesotho is 26, Namibia is 29, Tanzania is 34, Vietnam is 42, Romania is 47, Uganda is 50, Botswana is 53, Albania is 66, China is 73
Did I say that if you scroll down down in the list you find Italy in position 84?
So why cannot an NGO of Lesotho comes in Italy to help us with an international cooperation project about gender issues?