An Unregulated Public Commons

Is it a hoax?  Is it a distraction?  Is the Russian, election-meddling story the new McCarthyite phobia cast upon our perennial American foe?  I’m writing this morning, listening to Trane play with Miles, turn into Wayne plays with Miles on a Youtube progression that I’m not controlling, but am enjoying.  My buddy texting me insists that the Muller indictment we read about yesterday is itself a false flag, intended to exonerate the DRC and HRC from having lost to a circus barker.  The impact of Russian meddling, he insists is vastly overblown. 

Blaming foreigners, be they Russians or terrorists or Chinese, is a distraction as old as America itself.  Acknowledged.  I’m particularly sensitive to anything I see that suggests China is molded into a monolithic demon.  So perhaps I am missing it when Russia-phobia blooms again as it is, before my eyes.  Whether or not it was a well-coordinated state plot hatched by the Kremlin, or even whether or not these actions were in fact impactful, it does seem to me that the openness and pervasiveness of platforms like Facebook, Youtbue and Twitter represent profound new opportunities for misinformation, manipulation, by state and non-state actors, domestic and foreign actors.  That some portion of that experimentation is conducted by foreign governments seems clear to me.  It would, in fact, be surprising if foreign governments worth their stripes, did not look to exploit such possibilities.  That U.S. citizens create and promote the majority of the electoral misinformation, also seems certain. 

In China the U.S. organs for social media are banned and the domestic versions, are tightly state controlled.  China was fearful of creating an unregulated public commons, and this was reinforced powerfully as they watched the Arab Spring unfold.  The ideal of a free, public commons is something America likes to hold dear.  But clearly, not much thought went into the implications for a pervasive, viral network like Facebook where spurious, anonymous contributions can be catalyzed and metastasized by foreign and domestic players alike, out of the commons, and into your pockets, into your bedrooms.  Policy plays catch-up to ethics in the disruptive, technological environment of the USA.  And, cautiously, that is still the lesser of two evils: allowing and remediating, rather than never allowing at all.

My wife’s finally up.  I can hear her with the coffee in the kitchen.  She was up late. Cognac and guzheng.  I’m up early.  I’ll step away from the Miles and go and greet the day.  There’s a pile of apples that have been sitting there in the kitchen for some time.  Let me see if we’ve what we need to make them into a pie on this Sunday morning. 

Somewhere, out in Shandong, in a small daub and wattle village with crude genealogy posters up on the wall, the men of the village are setting off fireworks, by the ancestral tombs, tombs that have been moved once or twice on account of road constructions . . . to send all the ancestors safely back to the netherworld.  They used to walk back but now it’s a drive and then they’ll be piling in to the homes where the women folk have the jiaozi bao-ed, ready to slide into a steaming cauldron, the jiaozi skin, made from the wheat, that’s grown in the same soil that covers the tombs . . . But not here in Beijing.  Not for our family this year.  Still, I’m wishing all my ancestors who’ve shared the earth these past few days a safe trip back to the great beyond.  May Miles scare off any unwanted ghosts. 

Sunday, 02/18/18