A tangent on another historian of science and technology I enjoyed taking a course from and who wrote about information technology and who died relatively way too young:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
        "James Ralph Beniger (December 16, 1946 -- April 12, 2010) was an American historian and sociologist and Professor of Communications and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, particularly known for his early work on the history of quantitative graphics in statistics, and his later work on the technological and economic origins of the information society."

RIP Jim. Thanks for being an excellent -- and kind -- professor. And mentioning me and other students with thanks in your Control Revolution book.

And thanks also introducing me to the 1978 book "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought" by Langdon Winner --- which just gets more relevant every day.
https://www.amazon.com/Autonom...
        "This study of the idea of technology out of control makes an important contribution to our understanding of the problems of civilization. The basic argument is not that some persons or groups promote technology against the public interest (true though that is), or even that our technology develops in its own way in spite of all our efforts to control it (also true in some respects). Rather, Winner is concerned with a more subtle effect: the artifacts that we have invented to satisfy our material wants have now developed, in size and complexity, to the point of delimiting or even determining our conception of the wants themselves. In that way, we as a civilization are losing mastery over our own tools.... 'As a source for readings and reflections on this problem, the book is rich and rewarding.... If it has a practical lesson, it is that of awareness: only by recognizing the boundaries of our socially constructed scientific-technological reality can we transcend them in imagination and then achieve effective human action.'"

Winner's book is perhaps a sort of antithesis of "The Soul of A New Machine"? In that sometimes technologists (I'm looking at your OpenAI and cohorts) can get so excited about problem solving and miss the big picture. Related humor:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes...
        "This reminds me of the engineer who is condemned to death, but as his turn approaches they find that the mechanism on the electric chair is no longer functioning. About to send everyone home, the engineer calls out "Wait! I think i can see the problem!""

I heard that Winner did not get tenure at MIT essentially because he suggested that the method of education used there was essentially blinding the MIT students to the social implications of what they were doing. A related book:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
        "Who are you going to be? That is the question.
        In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
        The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
        Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

Anyway, I am so thankful for people like Jim Beniger, Langdon Winner, Michael Mahoney, and others who provided a larger perspective to technologists on what they were doing.

If I can find fault with "The Soul of a New Machine" from hazy recollections from 40+ years ago I don't think it did that. It's still informative though on how technology -- like now AI development -- can become addictive for techies with both good and bad aspects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      "The book follows many of the designers as they give almost every waking moment of their lives to design and debug the new machine."

It's maybe kind of like the difference between books that glorify warmaking and "winning" versus those that glorify peacemaking and "win/win/win"?

An example of the latter is "To Become a Human Being: The Message of Tadodaho Chief Leon Shenandoah".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Or an essay by Terry Dobson on Aikido:
https://livingthepresentmoment...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      "My teacher taught us each morning that the art was devoted to peace. "Aikido," he said again and again, "is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate other people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it." ..."

Or in a way Theodore Sturgeon's "The Skills of Xanadu" 1956 short story about wearable networked mobile computing for sharing knowledge that inspired Ted Nelson to invent hypertext which contributed to the creation of the web.

Or Alfie Kohn's "No Contest: The Case Against Competition":
https://www.alfiekohn.org/cont...

One of the most interesting things I overheard at lunch at IBM Research was something along the lines of "We hire the top people from the most competitive schools -- and then wonder why they can't get along and cooperate."

And I'd add, wonder why many technologists rarely take much time to think about the broader social implications of what they are doing.

And "Soul of a New Machine" -- from what I can remember of it -- exemplifies and celebrates that focused mindset.

I can thank someone (maybe Bruce Maier?) who posted this essay to the Lyrics TOPS-10 timesharing system I used in high school circa 1980 -- for helping me have some reservations about such narrow focus:
"The Hacker Papers [about some Stanford CS students]"
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/te...
      "As much as an essay, this is a story. It is a true story of people paying $9,000 a year to lose elements of their humanity. It is a story of the breaking of wills and of people. It is a story of addictions, and of misplaced values. In a large part, it is my own story. ..."

Also assigned reading in Michael Mahoney's course on the history of science and technology at Princeton circa 1984. Although I had read it already -- and found it inspiring.

RIP Tracy Kidder.

And also RIP Professor Mahoney who died in 2008 at the relatively young age of 69 -- just when a historian is typically getting very productive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://www.dailyprincetonian....

"Histories of Computing"
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/bo...
"Computer technology is pervasive in the modern world, its role ever more important as it becomes embedded in a myriad of physical systems and disciplinary ways of thinking. The late Michael Sean Mahoney was a pioneer scholar of the history of computing, one of the first established historians of science to take seriously the challenges and opportunities posed by information technology to our understanding of the twentieth century."

It's going to be a rough next decade with ongoing loss of pioneers of personal computing and those who wrote about them or who inspired them. People like Steve Jobs and Doug Engelbart and Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon who have passed on years ago. Glad that Steve Wozniak and Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls and so on are still hanging in there! A heartfelt thanks to all of them for giving us possibilities -- even if we may not be doing great things with them right now.

"Original architects [Wozniak] of the personal computer hate what it's become..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

"Steve Wozniak says he's "disappointed a lot" by AI and rarely uses it"
https://www.techspot.com/news/...

Touché! Good point on "actually" and whether it is qualified, thanks. I guess that word only fits in relation to there actually being a novel which I was referring to? But I agree I should have worded that better. The word "fictionally" might have been a better choice? Glad your comment sparked some tangential discussion by others.

Children raised by robot educators/philosophers actually worked out well in the fictional sci-fi novel by James P. Hogan "Voyage from Yesteryear":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The story opens early in the 21st century, as an automated space probe is being prepared for a mission to explore habitable exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri system. However, Earth appears destined for a global war which the probe designers fear that humanity may not survive. It appears that the only chance for the human species is to reestablish itself far away from the conflict but there is no time left for a crewed expedition to escape Earth. The team, led by Henry B. Congreve, change their mission priority and quickly modify the design to carry several hundred sets of electronically coded human genetic data. Also included in this mission of embryo space colonization is a databank of human knowledge, robots to convert the data into genetic material and care for the children and construct habitats when the destination is reached, and a number of artificial wombs. The probe's designers name it the Kuan-Yin after the bodhisattva of childbirth and compassion.
        Shortly after the launch, global war indeed breaks out and several decades later, Earthbound humanity is united under an authoritarian government. It is this government that receives a radio message from the fledgling "Chironian" civilization revealing that the probe found a habitable planet (Chiron) and that the first generation of children have been raised successfully.
        As the surviving power blocs of Earth before the conflict are still evident, North America, Europe and Asia each send a generation ship to Alpha Centauri to take control of the colony. By the time that the first generation ship (the American Mayflower II) arrives after 20 years, Chironian society is in its fifth generation.
        The Mayflower II has brought with it thousands of settlers, all the trappings of the authoritarian regime along with bureaucracy, religion, fascism and a military presence to keep the population in line. However, the planners behind the generation ship did not anticipate the direction that Chironian society took: in the absence of conditioning and with limitless robotic labor and fusion power, Chiron has become a post-scarcity economy. Money and material possessions are meaningless to the Chironians and social standing is determined by individual talent, which has resulted in a wealth of art and technology without any hierarchies, central authority or armed conflict.
        In an attempt to crush this anarchist adhocracy, the Mayflower II government employs every available method of control; however, in the absence of conditioning the Chironians are not even capable of comprehending the methods, let alone bowing to them. The Chironians simply use methods similar to Gandhi's satyagraha and other forms of nonviolent resistance to win over most of the Mayflower II crew members, who had never previously experienced true freedom, and isolate the die-hard authoritarians. ...

I guess it maybe all depends how wisely the robots are programmed initially? Sadly, with several AI companies racing forward in a winner-takes-all hyper-competitive safety-ignoring way to earn a lot of fiat dollars, seems like something needs to change to build a more hopeful future. Still, there is always the "Optimism of Uncertainty" as Howard Zinn called it.
https://www.thenation.com/arti...

Time to trot out my sig again, sigh: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."

It was awesome ten days ago to see someone else who understands that irony:
"The Real Danger of AI Has Nothing to Do With AI" by Mo Gawdat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "Artificial intelligence is often described as a force that will shape humanity's future, yet technology itself carries no intention, morality, or agenda. The direction it takes depends entirely on the values and decisions of the people creating and using it.
        As intelligence becomes more powerful and capable of solving increasingly complex problems, the real question shifts away from what machines can do and toward what humanity chooses to prioritize. Every major technological leap reflects the ethical frameworks of the society behind it, meaning the future shaped by AI will ultimately mirror human behavior rather than machine logic.
        The challenge is not teaching machines to think -- it is learning to think more wisely ourselves."

Mo Gawdat was talking about AI, but the same applies to using advanced manufacturing and supply chains to make hypersonic missiles as in the article. That's US$99,000 that can't otherwise be used to make food, water, shelter, energy, 3D printers, and so on -- and so exacerbating the very conflicts that lead people to want to use hypersonic missiles.

Or for a more humorous take on this by me from 2009 as another "Downfall" bunker scene parody (which coincidentally starts with a mention of rockets/missiles):
https://groups.google.com/g/po...
        "Dialog of alternatively a military officer and Hitler:
"It looks like there are now local digital fabrication facilities here, here, and here."
"But we still have the rockets we need to take them out?"
"The rockets have all been used to launch seed automated machine shops for self-replicating space habitats for more living space in space."
"What about the nuclear bombs?"
"All turned into battery-style nuclear power plants for island cities in the oceans."
"What about the tanks?"
"The diesel engines have been remade to run biodiesel and are powering the internet hubs supplying technical education to the rest of the world."
"I can't believe this. What about the weaponized plagues?"
"The gene engineers turned them into antidotes for most major diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, cancer, and river blindness."
"Well, send in the Daleks."
"The Daleks have been re-outfitted to terraform Mars. There all gone with the rockets."
"Well, use the 3D printers to print out some more grenades."
"We tried that, but they only are printing toys, food, clothes, shelters, solar panels, and more 3D printers, for some reason."
"But what about the Samsung automated machine guns?"
"They were all reprogrammed into automated bird watching platforms. The guns were taken out and melted down into parts for agricultural robots."
"I just can't believe this. We've developed the most amazing technology the world has ever known in order to create artificial scarcity so we could rule the world through managing scarcity. Where is the scarcity?"
"Gone, Mein Fuhrer, all gone. All the technologies we developed for weapons to enforce scarcity have all been used to make abundance."
"How can we rule without scarcity? Where did it all go so wrong? ... Everyone with an engineering degree leave the room ... now!" [Cue long tirade on the general incompetence of engineers. :-) Then cue long tirade on how could engineers seriously wanted to help the German workers to not have to work so hard when the whole Nazi party platform was based on providing full employment using fiat dollars. Then cue long tirade on how could engineers have taken the socialism part seriously and shared the wealth of nature and technology with everyone globally.]
"So how are the common people paying for all this?"
"Much is free, and there is a basic income given to everyone for the rest. There is so much to go around with the robots and 3D printers and solar panels and so on, that most of the old work no longer needs to be done."
"You mean people get money without working at jobs? But nobody would work?"
"Everyone does what they love. And they are producing so much just as gifts."
"Oh, so you mean people are producing so much for free that the economic system has failed?"
"Yes, the old pyramid scheme one, anyway. There is a new post-scarcity economy, where between automation and a a gift economy the income-through-jobs link is almost completely broken. Everyone also gets income as a right of citizenship as a share of all our resources for the few things that still need to be rationed. Even you."
"Really? How much is this basic income?"
"Two thousand a month."
"Two thousand a month? Just for being me?"
"Yes."
"Well, with a basic income like that, maybe I can finally have the time and resources to get back to my painting...""

Sadly we are seeing some real bunker scenes with billionaires and they are not so funny:
https://www.vice.com/en/articl...
        "The men cited potential disasters caused by electromagnetic pulses, economic downturn, disease, or war that might "necessitate them leaving their Silicon Valley ranches and retreating to these fortified bunkers in the middle of nowhere."
        These "luxury bunkers" include features most of us could only ever dream of, like indoor pools and artificial sunlight, allowing them to remain sealed off from the world for years at a time, if necessary.
        "The billionaires understand that they're playing a dangerous game," Rushkoff said. "They are running out of room to externalize the damage of the way that their companies operate. Eventually, there's going to be the social unrest that leads to your undoing."
        Like the gated communities of the past, their biggest concern was to find ways to protect themselves from the "unruly masses," Rushkoff said. "The question we ended up spending the majority of time on was: 'How do I maintain control of my security force after my money is worthless?'"
        That is, if their money is no longer worth anything--if money no longer means power--how and why would a Navy Seal agree to guard a bunker for them?
        "Once they start talking in those terms, it's really easy to start puncturing a hole in their plan," Rushkoff said. "The most powerful people in the world see themselves as utterly incapable of actually creating a future in which everything's gonna be OK.""

One of the lessons we've had as the Federal, multi-branch nature of the US governmennt has frustrated Trump is that the government may be fucking us over, but it's not doing it in *unison*. It's doing it piecemiel, on the initiative of many interests working against each other, just as the framers intended. The motto on the Great Seal notwithstanding, there are myriad roadblocks to consolidating power in the hands of a single individual. It takes time and repeated failures. This is why the second Trump Adminsitration is worse than the first; they've figured out ways around things like Congressional power of the purse, put more of their henchmen in the judiciary, and normalized Congress lying down and letting the president walk all over them. It's a serious situation, although fortunately Trump isn't long for this world.

I hate all of this sales pressure BS - that the instant anyone hears your name you have to try to "convert" them to sales - and I literally run a webstore.

It's all so deeply anti-consumer, and I want no part in it.

Firstly, I see you have this notion that martian rocks must all be igneous.

You're not talking about rock, you're talking about regolith.

Depending on where the regolith is sourced

Regolith is not "sourced", it's blown across the whole planet. It's not simply "whatever the underlying strata is made out of".

But, since we are playing 'name the ignorance' in this exchange, your attestation stat perchlorate is 0.5% liberatable oxygen says 'Say i'm ignorant of basic chemistry without saying i'm ignorant of basic chemistry, and am bad at reading too.' The 0.5% statistic comes from the publication at bottom, and is the proportion of the regolith that is perchlorates.

I am the one who mentioned that regolith is 0.5% perchlorates, not that "perchlorates are 0.5% oxygen". *facepalm*

"Saying we'll get oxygen from the 0,5-1% of a poison in martian regolith, rather than bulk ice or CO2, is..."

For God's sake, learn to fucking read.

Washing the regolith to remove the perchlorate is a requirement for *any* other use of that regolith

Which is why you shouldn't be celebrating its existence. It is a problematic contaminant, not a resource.

As you have rightly pointed out, the water ice on mars is more 'frozen mud'. Cleaning the melt is going to be a necessary first step to using it *regardless*. That means either vacuum distillation, thermal distillation, or reverse osmosis filtration. Again, NOT OPTIONAL. This is necessary equipment that you need to bring, regardless.

And this just to get water, the most basic of offworld resources. And all of that equipment (especially the mining hardware itself) requires maintenance and spare parts, which impose more dependencies. And the TRL for use on Mars is low regardless.

You've gone from talking up the ease of operating on Mars to talking it down, yet your self-righteousness hasn't shifted at all in the process.

RO filtration is the least energy intensive of these.

Except, it isn't. 0,5-1% perchlorates. RO typically removes 90-95% of perchlorates. So you're down to ~500ppm. Human safety levels** are in the low parts per billion. You're five orders of magnitude off. Yes, you can purify water that far - and the more perchlorates, the easier - but you're talking an over millionfold reduction. It is not at all trivial. You're talking first RO to get it down to levels where it won't hinder bacterial growth, then bioreactor bacterial remediation, then filtration, then RO, then ion exchange. This is not some little, simple system.

** Plants can tolerate much more perchlorates than humans, but they also bioaccumulate perchlorates of exposed to them, so you have to reduce the water to low ppb levels.

The end products are clean water and perchlorate contaminated mud, and clean mud, with contaminated water.

Viola! *eyeroll*

And your "plan" for dealing with waste perchlorate doesn't just magically produce pure O2 and NaCl in the real world. First off, molten sodium perchlorate, which is what it becomes before it decomposes, is an extremely corrosive oxidizer. Exactly what are you planning to make the furnace out of, platinum? Secondly, you never get perfect decomposition. Apart from residual perchlorates, you have residual sodium chlorate, which is also corrosive, and is a literal herbicide. And your gas stream will contain contaminant chloride and chlorine dioxide, which, news flash, you don't want to breathe.

There is no way on Earth anyone would ever prefer this to just conducting electrolysis on the water that you've already purified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
====
The Open Technology Fund was started in 2012 by Libby Liu, then president of Radio Free Asia (RFA), as a pilot program within RFA to help better protect reporters and sources for the news organization with enhanced digital security technology.[9][2][5] Under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the State Department adopted a policy of supporting global internet freedom initiatives.[10] At this time, RFA began looking into technologies that helped their audiences avoid censorship and surveillance.[10] Journalist Eli Lake argued that Clinton's policy was "heavily influenced by the Internet activism that helped organize the green revolution in Iran in 2009 and other revolutions in the Arab world in 2010 and 2011".[10] ...

On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to reduce their functions "to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law," including the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM),[6] which disburses congressionally approved funding to OTF. The following day, USAGM senior advisor Kari Lake announced the termination of the OTF's federal grant, stating that the "award no longer effectuates agency priorities."[16]

In response, OTF filed suit against USAGM seeking the release of congressionally appropriated funds.[17] In its court filings, OTF argued that the termination would prevent an estimated 45 million users living under authoritarian regimes from accessing tools that enable uncensored access to the Internet and secure communications. The organization further claimed that, as the largest funder in the space, "the vast majority of internet freedom technology projects anywhere in the world will cease and the internet freedom technology field as whole will be largely decimated."[18]

The decision drew bipartisan concern from members of Congress who described OTF's work as vital to U.S. foreign policy priorities and Internet openness.[19][16] Although Lake later stated that she had withdrawn the letter rescinding OTF's funding,[20] USAGM reportedly sending payments after April 3rd.[21] In June, a federal judge ordered USAGM to release OTF's fiscal year 2024 funds.[22][23] In late October, OTF petitioned the court to compel the agency to disburse overdue fiscal year 2025 funding.[23]
====

From our rejected proposal to the Open Technology Fund in 2015 -- maybe the idea may be useful to someone:
====
The current NarraFirma software requires a server, even though most of the functionality runs on the client in JavaScript using Mithril and D3 with JSON for data exchange. We would like to help people share their real-life stories and anecdotes anywhere. To help with that, we would like to make an Android version of the NarraFirma software which runs as a distributed peer-to-peer app using Bluetooth and mesh WiFi (perhaps building on the Serval project) where stories are only shared with those in physical proximity who are interested in the same topic. We also want to make a Chrome app that uses local storage and USB drives for sharing stories. The distributed aspect of this project would make possible to pass around important stories even under the most difficult circumstances.

The Android app would work in places where internet access is restricted or unavailable for some reason - as long as people can pass each other on the streets close enough to directly exchange data packets. The app could ping nearby smartphones also running the app, and if any are found, the phones could push some information from one app to the other, perhaps filtered by hashtags (possible hash encoded) of interest to both parties and public keys.

Our current architecture is client-heavy with a simple server based on a system we have developed called "Pointrel" which supports message-based triplestores, where messages are identified by their SHA256 signature. So, a big part of this project is enhancing that core to run as a fully peer-to-peer application. There are other issues to be worked through, including being able to (if desired) sign stories or messages with a public key (even if otherwise anonymous).

Once that infrastructure is in place, it could be used as the basis for a variety of other useful distributed applications as well, again, similar to the Serval system, but with a triplestore-based semantic web aspect. Our focus on this software will be ease-of-use and making a general purpose tool that has multiple uses so that there are always a variety of reasons to be wanting to have the software installed beyond just sharing stories. ....

The core idea of NarraFirma comes from Working with Stories, a textbook for people who want to use participatory narrative inquiry (PNI) in their communities and organizations. PNI methods help people discover insights, catch emerging trends, make decisions, generate ideas, resolve conflicts, and connect people. However, some communities precisely don't want to see a democratic process in action because it could change the status quo. Those communities may make it dangerous for people to share stories or discuss new ideas.

So, any community that wants new insights, shared knowledge, creative ideas, or resolved conflicts could benefit from this software. Additionally, people in countries with expensive or restricted internet access could benefit from this to share all sorts of information, whether samizdat or officially approved.

The biggest challenge of the 21st century may be the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity. This tool will help people share an abundance of information about how to make their communities a better place - while still being able to filter the information for areas of specific interest. ....

Wikipedia says: "Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader."

However, Wikipedia continues: "This grassroots practice to evade officially imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials."

In Cuba, a trend over the last few years is to exchange (or leave laying around) USB drives with pro-democracy information and so on as a form of samizdat to get around extensive censorship.

The exchange of USB drives can be visually monitored though, USB drives have a direct incremental financial cost, and using a found drive runs the risk of getting a virus. As more and more people get smartphones, other options for communications are possible. However, most smartphone applications are server-based and so provide a single point of censorship and surveillance.

The financial imperatives for most Western companies (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) are to make centralized software as single point of control and toll taking like through advertisement. As their financial success shows, people do indeed like well-managed centralized easy-to-use systems that benefit from network effects. Unfortunately, this means that most technology dollars are going into similar projects - not project that are intended to be decentralized.

As Manuel De Landa suggests, we need a balance of meshwork and hierarchy in real living systems. ...

Or, in other words, life exists between distributed and centralized, between chaos and order, and between fire and ice. Because the economic imperatives in democratic Western society (as well as non-Western repressive regimes) are so geared towards centralization and consolidation, a democracy needs to invest public dollars to create alternatives for itself and for others as part of a healthy balance.
====

And the evaluation:
====
#### Detailed feedback ####

Determination status: Dropped

Next Deadline:

Goals and principles: This project does not fit within OTF's remit. There are no case studies or other demonstrations of why this project is needed in specific environments, particularly for users in internet-repressive ones.

Technical merit: There was no detail around how this project would have a competitive advantage or have better offering for users who are looking to communicate and share information securely. It was unclear how they would market this tool to would-be users, and how it would be better for use than other more widely used or more accessible mobile apps. We would have liked to have seen addressing of potential security risks at this stage of submission, rather than waiting to address them further in the project timeline. We would encourage seeking out collaboration with an organization with deep knowledge of a user community in an internet-repressive environment.

Reasonable, realistic and sustainable: For the reasons mentioned above, it is unclear that this project would be reasonable for users in internet-repressive environments, and realistic for their needs. It's also unclear how this project would be sustained long term.
====

And, for all that, I have to admit that (as referenced by me in the proposal), Serval was, and continues to be, a great tool and could be really useful in a lot of places right now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
        "The project aims to develop technology that can be used to create direct connections between cellular phones through their Wi-Fi interfaces, without the need of a mobile phone operator. The technology allows for live voice calls whenever the mesh is able to find a route between the participants. Text messages and other data can be communicated using a store and forward system called Rhizome, allowing communication over unlimited distances and without a stable live mesh connection between all participants."

We had been hoping to build something a bit beyond Serval which might have gotten entrenched in common use for broader reasons than just being censorship resistant. We also hoped to build a tool that by itself might have helped societies transcend to a great level of participation and responsiveness to public concerns via making sense of personal stories in the community.

Anyway, there is other good stuff out there too now (MatterMost, Mastodon, Matrix, etc.) even if most of it is still centralized-server-based.

Frankly though, I can wonder if there really is a good tech solution short of something like the tech in Theodore Sturgeon's 1950s short-story "The Skills of Xanadu" (which helped inspire hypertext and the world wide web). A related essay by me also from 2015:
"Why Encryption Use Is Problematical When Advocating For Social Change"
https://pdfernhout.net/why-enc...
        "... In general, a system intended to ensure private communications is only as secure as its weakest link. If any of these levels is compromised (hardware, firmware, OS, application, algorithm theory, algorithm implementation, user error, user loyalty, etc.) then your communications are compromised. ... If you want to build a mass movement, at some point, you need to engage people. In practice, for social psychology reasons, engaging people is very difficult, if not impossible, to do completely anonymously in an untraceable way. People have historically built mass movements without computers or the internet. It's not clear if the internet really makes this easier for activists or instead just for the status quo who wants to monitor them. If you work in public, you don't have to fear loss of secure communications because you never structure you movement to rely on them. If you rely on "secure" communications, then you may set yourself up to fail when such communications are compromised. If your point is to build a mass movement, then where should your focus be? ..."

While that's true, a responsible generation aims to boost the next generation to a *higher* level than the education they received. The world has become more complex and faster-paced, and even if that weren't true, the consequenes of aiming high and falling short are better than the consequences of aiming for the status quo and falling short.

So while I'm 100% onboard with skepticism that technology will magically make education better, I think the argument that "the education I got worked for me should be good for them" isn't a strong argument. What we need is a better ecducation that would have been a better education fifty years ago: stronger math, science, and language skills, general knowledge, and, I think critical thinking and media literacy. Possibly emotional intelligence -- it's kind of pointless to teach people critcial thinking skills if they are carried away by emotions.

There are no economic or security reasons to blockade Cuba, so that leaves *political*.

It used to be believed that bullies were low status individuals who are lashing out out of frustration. But research has shown that bullying is an effective strategy for achieving and maintaining social status. In other words it's a political winner. So the focus of research has shifted from the bully to the people around him who enable the bullying. The inner circle are the henchmen -- people without the charisma and daring to initiate the bullying, but join in when the bully gets things started. Around them are the audience, the people who wouldn't risk participating but enjoy the bullying vicariously. And around them are the much larger group of bystanders, who don't approve but are waiting for someone else to stop the bullying. Then off to the side are the defenders, who stand up to the bully.

Perhaps the least appreciated supporting factor in the phenomenon of the high-status bully is the silence of the bystanders, which is dependent upon the perception of widespread approval. Since you can't visibly see the the line between the approving audience and the apalled bystanders, the silence of the bytstanders is absolutely essential in sustaining the bullying.

Lot's of Americans are apalled at the idea of using military force to inflict suffering on the Cuban people. But that's only politically advantageous *because* of *them*. Tney are indistinguishable from the relatively small number of people who are thrilled when Trump announced he can do anything he wants wtih Cuba. The gap between actual approval and *perceived* approval is absolutely critical in establishign and maintaining any kind of authoritarianism. This is why would be authoritarian leaders are so focused on punishing and marginalizing any kind of expression of disapproval.

It's worth noting that Nikola wasn't his first scam, either.

YOO-HOO

He's also a sleasebag who has been credibly accused of sexual assault by three women (and in general being a sex pest to many more). When a former friend (Jonny Robb) threatened to out him over it (it had been gnawing at him for a long time, and he was friends with some of the girls), Milton entrapped him (deliberately switching the topic to money, baiting him into asking for money to stay quiet, knowing that he was poor), then when he got Robb to ask for money, reported him into the police for extortion. Robb - his old friend - committed suicide after being released on bail. Milton rained largesse on local politicians, including the Attorney General's campaign. Milton was never investigated by the AG's office for sexual assault, while they arrested Robb immediately just on Milton's word.

I've talked with people online who knew Jonny Robb, and the universal answer was that he was the kindest person you'd ever meet. He had a hard life, struggled through overcoming depression and addiction, and had a lot of sympathy for others who were struggling as a result. I saw a podcast once where he was a guest, and I remember one of the topics was about a recent event where he was at a fast food restaurant, and there was a homeless lady, clearly mentally ill / schizophrenic, who was in general freaking out the guests and the staff, who didn't know what to do with her, and were probably minutes from calling the police. Robb orders for both himself and for her and sits down and eats with her, chats with her. She's having a great time, having not gotten attention like this in ages, starts joking that he's her boyfriend, etc. After they eat, he walks her out, much to the relief of the guests and staff, heads to a store and buys her a new sleeping bag and stuff. And she looks both simultaneously happy with her nice new stuff, but also terrified, and he suddenly realizes, oh shit, other homeless people are just going to steal this off her. And during the interview, he looked almost like he was going to cry when he said that.

Anyway, he's dead now.