Page 21 – Dug Campbell

Coffee and Bitcoin: The Last Few Months

The past few months have been filled up with meetings with an increasing number of people curious to learn more about Bitcoin. It’s been a blast. Most are keen to dig deeper after hearing about Bitcoin one too many times to ignore and they’re intrigued to hear about what’s going on in Scotland, particularly the meetup and the conference.

Usually it involves a chat over a coffee. That tends to give me an hour – minus the usual informalities – during which I focus on explaining in as much detail as I think they need to pique their curiosity (so that they will be hooked into further exploration on their own) whilst constantly striving to resist the temptation of going off down any one of the myriad of fascinating but unecessary rabbit holes that just introduce further complexity and burn through precious time.

I’m still a long way from where I’d like to be. Partly it’s because I constantly find myself aiming for what seems to be the slightly unreasonable outcome at this stage of enabling the other person to be able to walk away fully informed and eager to explain the topic to everyone else. I’m not sure that the mythical 10-minute comprehensive explanation of the technology and its potential really exists.

I find that the main challenge each time comes because you inevitably change the focus of any story to take account of your audience. Sometimes you get this right, sometimes you can be wide of the mark. It’s far less to do with anyone’s intellectual capacity than the simple fact that the concepts can appear to be so alien at first and everyone has their own unique preference when it comes to learning. As a result, you’re forced to make snap-decisions on the hoof about the extent of someone’s background knowledge, their general level of technical awareness, the presumptions that they may or may not hold about the status quo, their view of how the money and the internet works……the list is endless.

Despite all the variables, however, if it’s a coffee with someone that I’ve never met before, I can pretty much guarantee that at some point in the conversation, one question will invariably crop up – either explicitly or within the subtext of another comment. It usually goes along the lines of ‘Why are you doing this?’. Or sometimes it’s even more open: ‘How are you making money from this?’.

I still find this question fascinating. Not because I feel that the other person is in any way bringing up a topic that’s somehow indelicate. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. My fascination comes from the fact that in responding, I hear myself speaking about a subject to a previously unknown person with a passion that I’ve never previously felt, much less displayed, in any other endeavour to date.

I explain that the potential that I see for the technology is overwhelming. That I’ve never before found a subject so challenging yet so rewarding, forcing me as it does to continually re-examine both my existing beliefs and knowledge of a myriad of subjects including business, economics, government, smart law, computer science, programming, cryptography and many more as they continue to reveal themselves to me in greater detail on a daily basis. That the potential is so great for blockchain technologies and yet the development still so early that I simply cannot sit back and ignore the next stage in the evolution of our online world as it unfolds on a daily basis.

That’s not to say that there aren’t flaws in the system that we’re working on at present or that we have somehow arrived collectively at a perfectly-formed solution. Then I explain that, no, I am not getting paid for this, the meetups, meetings and all the rest. It’s simply that I’m not content to watch others struggle to filter through the historically uneven reporting across the mainstream press. Now is the time when we should be drawing together innovators – no matter if they come with the background of being coders, entrepreneurs, business people, UX heroes, philosophers, professional service providers or, frankly, those engaged in any other field. It matters not one bit. We just need the people who understand that what we have is something that can and must be improved.

I am lucky enough to live in a relatively small country which possesses a proud history of innovation and retains a keen sense of its own identity. To me, the answer is quite simple. We are lagging behind when we should have been amongst the first to explore the possibilities that have arisen in the years since Satoshi’s White Paper. Yet the wonder of the open nature of the technology is that we are as well-placed as any to engage now with the challenges at hand. Because, quite simply, whether this great experiment works or not is irrelevant. The reality is that the technology that has been discovered cannot in some way now be un-invented.

Whether I end up leaving the coffee shop with a belief that the conversation was successul or not (i.e. whether I feel that I’ve shared enough information to let the other person to make an honest assessment of the topic for themselves or not), I absolutely love these conversations. The more of them that I can have the better. And whilst they certainly don’t result in direct financial gain in any way, I’ve come to the realisation that the indirect gain is strangely just as valuable to me. And that ‘aha’ moment when you see people ‘get it’ before your eyes is absolutely priceless.

I vividly remember discovering Napster in 2000. As a huge music fan, I’d dabbled playing in bands for a decade or so by that stage. Yet the day that I saw the power of peer-to-peer file sharing, I understood that there had been a fundamental and irreversible change. To fight this was to fight reality. Existing models had to choose whether to evolve or to risk falling by the wayside. We’re seeing the same battlelines drawn here. And just as happened fifteen years or so ago, there’s never a specific tipping point that we can identify in advance. It’s only in retrospect that the winners become clear to those who resisted the technological progress.

What do I think will happen this time? I think we’ll see the full range of responses across industries, from early adopters to dinosaurs. And to me that’s fine. That’s natural and that’s progress. However, what I’m less happy to see is businesses, institutions, governments and – crucially – individuals miss the opportunity to get engaged and have a role in driving such inevitable innovations simply because they were somehow unaware that change was afoot.

I don’t hold myself out to be an expert. Not by any means. I’m not sure how many experts we truly have in an industry that is just over six years old in any event. But for those that have the same question in the future, that’s the reason why I’m organising meetups, speaking at as many events as possible, running a conference and generally working harder than I’ve ever done in my life to bring people together for no material gain.

Because I think this time, above all, this is something that really matters. To all of us – and not simply those who share my love of caffeine.

The Evolution of 3D Printing

I remember exactly where I was the first time that I heard about 3D printing. In the time that’s passed, it’s obvious that the claim made that day of an important future technology that should be watched closely has been entirely accurate to date. There’s a great deal of innovation taking place and regular heart-warming and incredible stories in the press that highlight the potential.

However, the industry also has a long way to go. I listened to the always-excellent a16z podcast episode ‘The Next Stage of 3D Printing‘ a while back and felt it was worth sharing some of the highlights from the conversation with Tom Rikert and Carine Carmy of Shapeways.

Why 3D printing is so powerful

Unlike traditional manufacturing, 3D printing is an additive manufacturing technology that enjoys some powerful advantages:-

Being additive, no mould is required.
As a result, you therefore don’t require the same upfront capital to create a product.
There is more freedom when it comes to design.
The printer doesn’t care how simple or complex the product is and treats both the same.
These new techniques can result in products that are stronger, lighter and more beautiful.
And crucially – it enables rapid prototyping.

Historically you’d have to produce big expensive prototypes before going to market that might take a long time but ultimately prove to be far from what the customers actually want. Now you can avoid the whole ‘focus group’ lottery and actually get a product in front of customers quickly for feedback.

Customers are the winners

Social media normalised the previously-alien concept of businesses speaking (or, more accurately, listening) to their customers. The same thing is now starting to happen with product design and development because of 3D printing. It’s early days yet but businesses are now able to seek and incorporate customer feedback into the product development process.

To continue the social media analogy, it was always hard to listen in the field of product design in the past. It took too long and the product cost too much to make which meant that feedback could only be sought irregularly. But with modern customers starting to show an increasing appetite to personalise and influence the development of products, the businesses that tap into this knowledge can benefit. Rely on your customers to define the product in a way that meets their needs in a more efficient way. Result? A cheaper process for the company and products that are of higher value to the consumer.

Current 3D printing is also uncovering niche markets for long-tail products made by individuals. And some forward thinking companies are really leading the way here – for example, Hasbro are allowing fans to adapt and modify their intellectual property.

Great product design always starts with identifying the need. With 3D printing, the customers are actively defining that need on Day 1 – so the benefits are clear to all,

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Of course, not everyone wants to design from scratch. But that’s part of the reason why 3D printing is so powerful. A few people are happy to start the design process with a blank computer screen whilst many more simply want to tweak or augment existing designs (such as those who choose to customise their own trainers).

It’s fascinating to consider how 3D printing is affecting the historic notion of seasonality (produce something and then after a few months, discount the price heavily to ensure that it shifts off the shelves). Apparently, in 2013, half of the products created by Shapeway were actually designed in the previous two years. So the idea that something old must necessarily be less valuable is turned on its head as designers continue to be rewarded whilst their timeless designs continue to sell forever.

Challenges still remain

The industry still has a long way to go however. Much of the 3D printing software is more naturally suited for stunning animation-esque so it fails to take account of gravitational and other requirements now such beautiful pictures being turned into physical form. Also, materials continue to remain a constraint. 3D printing is able to use an increasing variety of materials – but typically only one material can go into one print run. Yet if you look around your room, there are very few single-material products anywhere to be seen.

It will also be fascinating to see how digital rights develop from this point on. How does the original creator of a design get paid for his or her work whilst others modify the design for their own ends? Also, whilst the accessibility of designs will increase, it doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily be used – the majority of individuals are still likely to be drawn to the most fashionable products that culture is signalling are ‘cool’ at that time.

As do the opportunities

A recent survey showed that 2 in 5 Americans knew someone that was making things themselves. The big question is how many of these people will be keen to do so in the future using 3D printing.

Gradually, the industry is developing a way of being able to use different materials in the process as it evolved from ‘simply’ printing materials with form to materials with function (i.e. a circuit board inside the end product or a replacement part that goes into a working piece of machinery).

3D printing is invariably expensive – otherwise everyone would have one. However, in one area in particular, the cost is not prohibitive compared to the alternative. In essence, 3D printing is suited for the production of complex, personalised products for which there is a low demand. And it’s clear now that the human body might in fact be the best application – if doctors can find a way to print highly complex but perfect organs that fit you perfectly (as they are doing), it could be less about making My Little Pony fan art products – and more about saving lives.

And that’s a pretty good result for any new technology..

It’s in the post. Honest.

Here we go again.

So I see that the Ministry of Justice has announced today that it has lost data relating to three sensitive, serious and high profile police enquiries. Apparently the material was stored on CD’s that were posted but have yet to arrive.

Now accidents happen. Perhaps. But this can’t be written off simply as an inconsequential mistake. Professor William Buchanan of Napier University hits the nail on the head for me in a post when he asks three key questions:-

1. Who still relies on CD’s?

In an age of USB sticks, SD cards, cloud storage and laptops that no longer come with no CD drives, why are CD’s even being used?

2. Where were the basic security methods?

Secure processes require security in each of the three states of digital data. This means protecting data in use, data in motion and data at rest. It’s hard to see how storing data on CD’s that you post ticks any boxes here.

3. Where was the process?

Of course, all the precautions in the world are useless if you people get to choose to do whatever they like within an organisation. With no encryption on the documents, no encryption of the transport chosen and no restriction on access to the data, it paints a pretty damning picture of the attitude that such institutions take the protection of such sensitive material.

The worrying thing is that as such centralised institutions seek and are granted – openly or otherwise – access to more and more comprehensive information about the lives of those within society, the potential damage wreaked as a result of such bad practices grows daily.

These occurrences are becoming far from unusual. It’s only a few years since the personal details of the families of 25 million child benefits claimants were ‘misplaced’. And if they fail to take even basic security measures, it’s not hard to understand why individuals are increasingly turning to encryption to protect their own data (despite other’s misguided attempts to prevent this).

As Professor Buchanan suggests: get industry in there to educate them. The stakes are too high to leave it to chance.

The Social Challenges of Peer-To-Peer Markets

There’s no doubt that Uber was one of the standout tech companies of 2014. Another year of incredible growth led to a staggering valuation – but also brought with it a range of far more unsavoury stories, the stuff of nightmares for most brand consultants.

But is this ‘take no prisoners’ attitude a driver, or a side effect, of Uber’s success? Or, to put it another way – if an innovative business is hellbent on pursuing such an audacious goal of overpowering and dismantling established business models, will it fail unless it adopts this mentality? My instinct (along with many others) is no. As Peter Thiel points out, there’s a clear difference between pushing the envelope (in the way that another peer-to-peer innovator such as Airbnb does) and just going too far.

A couple of days ago, the FT ran an article that introduces a further important consideration to be dropped into the melting pot for those pursuing such strategies of creative destruction. It was sheer luck that I found it, shared as it was on Twitter. I rarely read the FT as a result of the paywall – that’s likely to change if they ever restructure the subscription model to permit Bitcoin micropayments per article like other innovators of course.

The growth of peer-to-peer marketplaces

In the article, Yochai Benkler argues that, in general, the progression towards peer-to-peer models should be applauded. As an author, Legal Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and wearer of many other hats, Benkler has been involved in some very interesting work over the years that’s worth investigating further (as you’d expect from someone who got a lifetime achievement award from Oxford University in recognition of his “extraordinary contribution to the study and public understanding of the Internet and information goods”).

Benkler starts by discussing the modern trend for employees to detach themselves from their corporate employers in order to simply offer their services to customers directly. The driver here is clearly technology. A combination of mobile computing and ubiquitous connectivity has enabled greater discoverability (uncovering previously hidden demand) and spurred innovation to find solutions that use resources more efficiently (simultaneously releasing more supply).

As this evolution into an on-demand (or more accurately collaborative) economy continues, we’re seeing peer-to-peer markets develop. Individuals are now competing directly with the same companies that used to employ them, providing services that are more tailored and often far cheaper.

Transfer of power includes transfer of risk

This is all positive stuff. But, as Benkler warns, there is something else transferring here which is often overlooked. Risk. Stability and equilibrium in our world is an unnatural state of affairs so companies have traditionally acted as a buffer for employees against the rollercoaster of enterprise inside a market economy.

The role of the market here is also essential. Whilst Adam Smith famously explained how the division of labour enabled people who collaborated by carrying out their own piece of specialised work to create more value collectively, there is an assumption that individuals have access to a marketplace. For example, you may be the best sock-folder known to man but you need two more things over and above that admittedly niche ability:

someone who values your sock-folding skill highly enough to reward you with ‘money’; and
a market in which you can exchange that ‘token’ for the things that you truly need and desire.

If neither exists, you’re likely to starve.

Decentralisation in a technology-driven marketplace

So we’re seeing technology uncover new markets. Yet according to Nobel prizewinning economist Ronald Coase, these peer-to-peer marketplaces come at a cost. In an argument well-known to many in the Bitcoin community, the total cost of decentralisation (i.e. P2P transactions) is often higher than centralisation. As a result, rather than simply having individuals transact throughout history, we’ve developed companies – because trying to find 360,000 specialist individuals who can each produce the required components of an aeroplane, for example, would be prohibitively costly, almost impossible to organise and result in an end product that no-one could protect or market.

However, as with many established theories, modern technology provides a challenge. Rather than acting as an inhibiting factor on the scale of the project, the early years of the internet saw the rise of collaborative projects that resulted in projects that became significant in size and competitive with anything produced by a commercial entity. However, these projects were driven for reasons other than financial gain – Wikipedia and Linux, both created and maintained by a community providing their time and skills for free.

Price directs any collaborative marketplace (not social interactions)

And here lies the crux of Benkler’s argument. With no money involved, these projects could progress without arguments over how those profits should be split. Yet today, we are clearly entering into an age of massive collaboration in which motivation is clearly ‘for-profit’ as opposed to simply for the collective good of others, both within that community and beyond.

With P2P marketplaces, we will undoubtedly see increased efficiency in many cases. But with such a shift in power and risk, we can also expect to see a more pronounced social impact by virtue of the fact that many individuals lack the shelter of employment which provided some form of buffer during previous periods of high economic growth.

To use Benkler’s example, Wikipedia and Linux impacted the publishing and software industries respectively. These were sectors that contained, for the most part, well-educated and adequately remunerated individuals. However, the currently growth of the new on-demand economy is likely to have an impact across far deeper levels of society that enjoy significantly less financial security and lack the educational resources to defend themselves against the coming disruption.

The challenge of progress

As Charles Dickens was so keen to point out, there is a risk that significant economic growth can also bring with it societal inequality. As these new marketplaces evolve within our modern economy, the promise of financial returns will invariably influence the areas in which individuals focus their time and efforts. Benkler’s view believes that some entrepreneurs have already identified that this will result in certain consequences for others within society. But others, however, have not.

Which, in a way, brings this post back full-circle.

It’s easy to be won over by the promise of new technology and the ensuing gains in efficiency. But it’s equally important to ensure that we spend time considering the necessary rules and standards that we need to maintain and, importantly, improve the cohesion within society today as such advancements inevitably take place in the near future. Otherwise we risk alienation that can only be the detriment of increasing numbers.

Replicate (And Destroy Me) Scotty

It’s good to see yet another prediction that has its origins in the creative output of popular science fiction emerge into reality. Kind of.

Teleportation is one of those things that you just can’t imagine will ever be possible – at least when it comes to living things – even if you had Montgomery Scott in your corner. We’ve all seen what can go wrong after all.

Yet it turns out that by combining 3D printing and encryption, researchers are now proving that a type of ‘teleportation’ is possible. A project in Germany named Scotty has shown that by using two MakerBot Replicators, modified with a camera, a milling machine and encryption hardware for secure communication, an object can be ‘sent’ from one location to another.

Just to be clear, that’s not to say that the recipient gets the same item in molecular terms. Instead he or she will receive a replicated version. The really interesting thing though is that at exactly the same time, the original gets destroyed by the milling machine in stages. The milling machine carries out this destruction in layers which are photographed and then sent securely to, and replicated by, the second machine. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this as a ‘duplication plus destruction’ model.

Either way, there’s definitely potential applications to be developed here. For example, if you’re not allowed to copy an item because of intellectual property protection but a seller wants to sell itto a buyer on the other side of the world (and it is made of the appropriate material), this removes the transit to delivery time almost entirely.

The end product might still be quite rough. But combine this functionality with a Bitcoin payment that automatically transfers as soon as the milling of the original item starts – now you’ve got a very interesting proposition.

Still, I’d wait for a little while yet. I don’t recommend you squeeze into that replicator yourself in order to cut down those air fare costs

Bitcoin & Anonymity

As I hinted at yesterday, the big news of today was undoubtedly the launch by Coinbase of the first licensed Bitcoin Exchange in the US, whilst the Winklevoss twins were left trailing in the wake of the Coinbase juggernaut despite announcing the support of an unnamed US bank for their Gemini Exchange.

This marks a major inflection point on the road to acceptance of Bitcoin by those within the established financial industry. But the battle is still far from over within the Bitcoin ecosystem between those who are pushing towards mainstream acceptance at any costs and those for whom anything short of the wholesale destruction of the existing financial system is ideologically unacceptable.

So as the question of toeing the line versus ignoring the line comes to the fore again, I thought it was worth revisiting a particular area that often provokes vehement responses from both sides – that of anonymity. A week or so ago, Adam Ludwin of Chain wrote the best blog post I’ve read recently on the topic so I thought it might be useful to summarise the key points here.

Don’t Confuse Anonymity & Privacy

An anonymous transaction is where no-one knows who you are. A private transaction is where no-one knows what you purchased (or for how much). To put that in context, you can have:

Private and anonymous (barter)
Private but not anonymous (museum donation)
Not private and not anonymous (credit card)
Anonymous but not private (Bitcoin)

So Bitcoin’s Anonymous?

In theory, yes. In reality, no.

It’s pseudonymous. The blockchain itself is a record of every single transaction that ever takes place. It simply contains thousands of random-looking strings (actually the hash of your public key) which is used as your identifier. No names.

But if you buy bitcoins via any form of public exchange, you’ll be asked to leave identification documentation so that the Exchange doesn’t fall foul of money laundering regulations. Your identity is then linked to your transactions from that point on.

You could avoid this by buying bitcoins face to face, receiving them in exchange for a good or service you provide or as a mining reward. But (as explained below) this still doesn’t prevent your identity being associated with those bitcoins (addresses) in the future.

How is Anonymity Breached?

There are two ways that this tends to happen:-

someone analyses the blockchain and uncovers transactions that are likely to be controlled by one party before connecting these with a real identity; and/or
someone analyses a relevant IP address in a transaction and is able to uncover a real identity.

A. Transaction Graph Analysis

Bitcoin’s big advantage is the public nature of the ledger of every transaction that ever takes place. But when it comes to anonymity, that’s also its weakness.

If someone knows you’ve used a particular bitcoin address, they can simply go online to check the blockchain and clearly see every transaction coming in and going out of that particular address. What’s more, they can trace the history of each one. Definitely not private. As a result, you should only ever use each address once. And if you receive change in a transaction, that change should also be returned to a new address (this generally happens automatically these days).

Because addresses are free to use and unlimited, there’s no excuse not to do this. But even if you do, your identity is not secure. There are still ways of analysing the blockchain which, after all, remains open to anyone to inspect at all times. And these analysis techniques are becoming increasingly powerful as they enable someone to bundle likely activity together by association before they uncovering a ‘real world’ identity.

There’s three main ways this analysis can be done:-

Any transaction with more than one input must be controlled by the same person. By this I mean if you buy something for 4 BTC and you only have 2 BTC and 3 BTC, you have to send the full 5 BTC (two outputs) to the recipient. Analysts can then look into the history of either of those input addresses if they have been used previously and connect further transactions with the same person.
If just one output address has not been used before, it’s highly likely to be the change address (i.e controlled by the sender).
If there are two outputs to two different addresses, with one being a ‘whole’ number (i.e. either 2 BTC or an amount of BTC that is the equivalent to a round number of pounds, dollars or whatever), it’s likely the output of the uneven number of Bitcoins is the change going back to the sender.

Mixers & Tumblers

You may have heard of services that work to obscure the origin of your bitcoins. You send them your bitcoins, they swap them for different bitcoins (with different transaction histories) and return them to you (after deduction of a fee, of course). However, whilst in demand by those who want to use bitcoins for illegal ends as well (as those simply concerned with ensuring privacy for legitimate means), these services have certain limitations:-

When you give them 100% control of your bitcoins, you have to trust them to not simply steal them.
Analysis can identify addresses controlled by mixing services – so you could highlight your transaction as being potential illegal.
It’s hard to swap very large sums of money unless someone else is doing the same.
Some services are easier for investigators to unravel than others.
If they are operating legally, the authorities or hackers can access the records of all transactions that the service is required to keep.
You might receive bitcoins that have a tainted, illegal history – try explaining to the authorities how you came to control bitcoins that were received as payment in a kidnapping, for example.

Linking Transactions with a Real World Identity

After investigating on the block chain, someone can then investigate further in the ‘real’ world. Obvious ways of linking identities with addresses include:-

People who place addresses on their websites/business cards/forum signatures
Retail outlets that use a fixed address (perhaps on a QR code next to the till)

Once you know one address, you can investigate further. If I say that I bought something yesterday using bitcoins and you can find out the merchant’s address, you just need to filter those results for a likely transaction that involved a payment from me. If you knew what I bought (and therefore the likely value) together with the date or time of day, that may not take long at all. Similarly, it’s not too hard for me to use that information to tell where someone has physically been by simply compiling a trail of his or her transactions.

B. IP Adress Anonymity

To simplify, the first computer (node) that broadcasts a transaction to the network is likely to be in the location that the transaction originated. It gets easier to identify if multiple transactions are relayed from the same IP address. If you use TOR, you may be able to minimise the risks but you then have to protect your identity in many other ways.

Remember: Anonymity today does NOT mean anonymous tomorrow

The press continue to warn about anonymous bitcoins that facilitate crime. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Bitcoin enjoys significantly less anonymity than cash which surely must remain the token of choice for illegal activities for the near future.

The key takeaway here is that whilst your transactions may not be linked to you directly today, there is every possibility that they may be in the future. It only takes one disclosure of identity in some way at some point in the coming years (by either you or somebody else) and all of your linked transactions would be identifiable – even if they were twenty years old.

We’re in the early days at the moment and it’s clear that there’s a battle for power going on here. And for many who have no illegal intent whatsoever, the lack of privacy available at present could be problematic. That’s the reason that so many people around the world are working hard on developing increased privacy (check out Darkcoin, Darkwallet, stealthcoin, CoinJoin and Zerocoin for starters).

The big question now, as the financial industry starts to wake up to the potential, is whether Bitcoin’s code itself will be developed in order to protect privacy – or to facilitate regulation. For many people, they’ll continue to develop alternatives until they finally create a digital currency that can be just as anonymous and private as hard cash.

Andreas Schools The Canadian Senate

Few words tonight. I’ll let someone else do it who’s far better than I’ll ever be at explaining exactly why Bitcoin is so important.

Yup, it’s Andreas schooling the Canadian Senate about Bitcoin. It’s a long one from a couple of months ago but if you haven’t seen it before, it’s worth watching. Enjoy!

PS Call me psychic if you like – but I have an inkling that tomorrow’s post *might just* be about Bitcoin breaking through into the established financial markets (in the US at least) considering that there appear to be announcements scheduled for both Coinbase (the first official insured US exchange anyone?) and the Winklevoss twins (Gemini ETF/exchange?).

Coinbase To The Moon Announcement — Coinbase: 26th Jan 2015 – To The Moon Announcement

Words From Data

After looking last night at the way in which algorithms are increasingly influencing our individual writing styles, I came across another article that keeps the language theme going.

With each passing day, we’re generating greater amounts of data collectively on a scale that’s never been seen before. Of course, this leads to all sorts of questions regarding the security and ownership of such data. But it also raises one particular question – who actually has the time to analyse this mountain of data as it grows?

A company called Narrative Science has developed software called Quill that turns data into written text to help to deal with this issue. The company’s only four years old but it’s already being used to report on sports games and company financial results for a range of clients, including Forbes.

As you would expect, those who believe that robots are soon going to be displacing human labour are not the biggest fans of the technology. But whilst the end product is supposedly still recognisable as the output of software as opposed to human creativity, it is sufficiently advanced to do things like vary its writing according to the target audience – so the report of a sporting loss can be written in a less painful way for the beaten team’s supporters, for example.

If the value here still isn’t clear perhaps an example will help. I first came across the company a couple of weeks ago and signed up to use Quill on the analytics that lie behind this website. Given the nature of this site, I rarely spend much time looking at those figures (there’s no real goals for the blog other than having a place to write and to share interesting information). After a few days I received the first automatically-generated report. Written in plain English, it clearly points out the posts that were most/least popular, where people were spending their time and other such useful and, yes, ‘readable’ facts. Whilst I wouldn’t spend much time in Google Analytics, it was no effort at all to flick through this single-page email. There’s no doubt having seen it in action that, in this case, it was definitely more engaging.

There’s another really interesting angle here to me. The company’s had investment from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investment division. It’s not hard to imagine that the strongest use case here is actually to shape vast quantities of surveillance data into a usable – and actionable – format. I’m pretty certain that there’s more money in that than in simply reporting on the football results.

Are You Ready To Be Auto-Corrected?

It’s become increasingly common to rely on the autocorrect functionality on our mobile phones as we go through each day. Apply users can use QuickType whilst Android users can choose to use SwiftKey (if it’s good enough for Stephen Hawking, it must be good enough for the rest of us).

But as the suggestions become even more nuanced, is there a risk that our conversational ability might be overly-influenced by the algorithms that underpin the software? Will computers replace free thought when it comes to word placement in our personal communications so that we become increasingly homogenised in our interactions?

That’s the question asked by philosopher Evan Selinger. At the most basic level, it’s very common today to find many people who simply check their written messages but instead rely on spellcheck to point out any errors. But modern software now analyses your email and texts and makes suggestions about what you might want to type next.

The crux of Selinger’s argument is that this is encouraging you to present a ‘predictable you’, as opposed to showing those flashes of individual uniqueness that are so important.

So is this simply yet another incarnation of technology-fear? After all, we once worried that heavy usage of text-speak on mobiles would destroy the English language. Interestingly, the evidence shows otherwise – check out John McWhorter’s TED talk below that explains that those who use it heavily are in fact learning another, second skill that develops alongside their ‘normal’ writing skills.

Perhaps it’s simply a case that the intelligence that powers that algorithm needs to advance significantly so that it can accurately represent our individual personalities. Or else, Selinger argues, we might all be content with simply putting far less effort into our levels of engagement in relationship with others – and that could very well have an effect in the real world.

The Stark Reality: Surveillance or Security

A few days ago, the press was full of ridiculous statements about banning end-to-end encryption in the UK. After watching a short talk by renowned security expert Bruce Schneier today, I thought I’d add some colour to the story.

Of course, Cameron isn’t the first to come out with this sort of rhetoric. Last year, FBI Director James Comey gave his view that the encryption that is increasingly being included as standard by companies like Apple and Google deprives law enforcement authorities of information which could be crucial to solving crimes or saving lives.

The problem, however, is that it is impossible to give the intelligence services what they want. Or – to be precise – it is possible to give it to them – but not to them alone. Technologies can either be secure for all users or vulnerable to all attackers. You cannot build a technology that is able to be decrypted by the security services but not by criminals. It is impossible to build a technology that can distinguish between morality or legality in this way.

The problem is that the narrative presented to the public at large is one in which they are given a choice in which only one use-case, invariably negative, is ever highlighted. The reality is that from a technological perspective, you simply can’t have surveillance and security together. So whilst the press might report on the risks of a terrorist using a mobile phone, the message ignores the use of exactly the same technology by a dissident fighting to avoid execution under a repressive political regime.

If you think that’s an edge case, you need only cast your mind back to the demonstrations in Kiev a year ago when everyone standing in the vicinity of a gathering, demonstrators and journalists alike, received the same anonymous messages on their phone:

“Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance”

We do not have the choice of letting the spying be done by the “good” guys and not the “bad” guys. We’re all using the same stuff. We now live in one world, with one network, using one technology. Technology is neutral and by definition must therefore be capable of dual-use. That’s exactly why half the US secret services are trying to break the Tor network whilst the other half struggle to protect the anonymity of its users (who include its own agents).

Once it is understood that there can be no halfway house, the choice is at least clear. Which do you value more – security or surveillance? As Schneier points out, “Everybody uses cyberspace. Everybody. The moon shines on the just and the unjust. Everybody drives cars, eats at restaurants, sends email. The good guys and the bad guys”.

Choose surveillance?

Even if you trust your government 100% and are convinced that your data will never be misused, what you are actually saying is that you believe this proven vulnerability through which your data was hoovered up can, and will, never be used by anyone else for their own criminal ends. Oh, and you are 100% that government records will never, ever, be hacked.

Let’s think about some of the examples that Schneier suggests:

Quantum: the method of packet injection used by the NSA to hack into computers – also used by the Chinese to spy on their own citizens.
Hacking Team: an Italian cyber-weapons arms manufacturer that sells its technology to whoever pays the asking price
ISMI Catchers: fake mobile phone towers that are used to capture people’s data (including location, conversations and messages). This might sounds like tinfoil hat territory – until you realise that the FBI have admitted using them. Unlike the UK government which still denies it despite the evidence that shows otherwise. Recently, someone wandering around Washington DC with a detector found 80-100 ISMI catchers. Interesting fact? These were not installed by the government but by other unidentified parties who cannot be traced (foreign governments? criminals?)
A US law in 1996 (‘CALEA‘) forced Telco’s to build their systems in such a way that the FBI would be able to eavesdrop on conversations (with the correct warrant in place). In 2005, Greece found out to its cost that buying ‘off-the-shelf’ technology might not have been such a good idea when they discovered that this built-in wiretapping capability was being used to spy on the Greek government for almost a year.
By definition, most of us are unaware of surveillance. Walk around with your phone’s wifi turned on and it will continually send out a signal whilst it looks for a connection. Routers then pick up your mobile phone signal and triangulate your location so accurately that a company can now tell which aisle you’re in at the supermarket and for how long. Then, after they sell that data to the shop, if you actually connect to their public wifi network, you also give them access to your location data for the past 12 months. Just as with the ‘spy bins’ that were outlawed in London in 2014, it records the unique MAC identification address of your device. Log into the system with your name or social account and after clicking the usual terms and conditions small print that no-one ever reads, it then matches that data to you as an individual – providing the wifi operator with extremely detailed knowledge of the exact places that you’ve visited for the last year.

Or, as Edward Snowden wrote in one of his early emails to documentary maker Laura Poitras:

“Every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, article you write, site you visit, subject line you type, and packet you route, is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not.”

So what’s the alternative?

Schneier’s quite clear. People have the right to defend themselves from tracking, including communicating via encrypted systems and browsing the Internet anonymously via systems such as TOR.

No-one is arguing that intelligence should be prevented from tracking and preventing bad actors from carrying out their damaging activities. Tracking should be legal – but, crucially, it should also be targeted.

The reason that society works overall is because “there are more good guys than bad guys and good uses outweigh bad uses”. By attempting to capture all of the data about all of us as opposed to concentrating on the criminals, the government is forcing those who are aware of the risks to use defensive tools. It is otherwise unreasonable to expect people to simply accept the vulnerabilities in technology that are being exploited by intelligence agencies if these simultaneously open up opportunities for exploitation by malicious hackers, criminals, terrorists or even companies, insurance firms or other unwanted commercial interests.

The digital exhaust that we leave in our trail in the modern age is so much more than a simple footprint. Instead, we are leaving behind the very essence of who we are – from our most public personality to our most personal and private worlds as they relate to our bodies, our personal life, our property, our thoughts, our feelings, our secrets and ultimately our identity. In a world in which technology is enabling such power to accumulate at a speed that is far beyond anything that has been seen before in history, it’s becoming increasingly important to consider deeply which option you feel is better for the society that you would like to live in.