It’s bullshit and it always was. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail here, but I think it is important for to take note on where I stand about some of the things that are happening in the world of tech. I’m not sure that I’m ready to share certain parts of that discussion just yet, butI do think that I’ll address them in good time.

When I started to think about writing recently, I remembered that I started this blog, and the ideas behind pre-blog, a long time ago. I’ve been an off and on blogger for over 20 years. Back then, I had a profound sense of optimism about tech and how it would transform society. Oh boy, was I naive! I really thought that tech would be used in ways that would make things better for most people, if not all. There was a certain inevitability to it. And sure enough, little by little, things improved for a few and then —like my favourite Hemingway quote— it suddenly got awful for everyone except the few. And it all happened so quickly. I think that we’re all a little punch-drunk from what’s happening in tech and almost certainly not seeing it for what it is, and we seem to be blindly falling into outcomes that are not just inconvenient, but downright dangerous for society. And that’s a lot of what this note is mostly about.

You can’t code your way out of social problems

I think I should pause here and tell you that I have not become “anti-tech”. I still think that technology can play a significant role in the betterment of the world. What has changed since my youthful positivity for technology, is a profound understanding that technology alone is not enough to fix things. Code also creates new problems that need to be solved. But the biggest issue is the people behind the tech companies and what they’re doing in the world.

It used to be said that “build it, and they will come” (I still hear it regularly). But It’s bullshit, and it always was. There is a belief that those that built tech-focused companies and made millions or billions somehow are ’superior’ to the rest of us. It’s bullshit, and it always was. There is a belief that tech is inevitable and that we must get onboard or be left behind. It’s bullshit, and it always was. I’ll discuss that another time. For now, this note is about a one of those people I mentioned above, and how he’s trying to impose his will on a small island developing state, namely Saint Kitts and Nevis.

ARIN AC elections results

Update on the ARIN elections. I didn’t get voted on to the Advisory Council this time around, and I didn’t disgrace myself with the number of votes I obtained. I’ll put myself forward again in the future, as places become available.

A grotesque vision for Nevis

Earlier, I read that an early Bitcoin “investor”, Olivier Janssens, a Saint Kitts and Nevis’ Citizenship by Investment scheme (CBI) beneficiary, has been buying up land and now proposes to set up a “state-within-a-state” called Destiny. He has denied this, of course, but evidence about his beliefs would suggest otherwise.

The CBI, as you may know, is a way that relatively rich people can “buy” their second citizenship from a smaller nation for a fee. Although the list of countries authorised for visa-free travel is rapidly diminishing with recent changes in Europe and the USA. It is difficult to imagine the reasons why citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis is so important to him.

Typically, people buy their ‘citizenship’ to obtain visa-free entry into Europe or the USA. Presumably because a) its such a massive burden to apply for a visa that several hundred thousand dollars is worth it to avoid the paperwork, or b) their past is murky and would likely be rejected if they applied directly, or c) they think themselves as above mere mortals as you and me, and that they have the inalienable right to do whatever they want using cash as their fast track ticket, however immorally that wealth was attained. ¹ So why the link with Bitcoin?

It seems that Janssens is an early Bitcoin investor (clearly he ‘made’ a lot of money),and a co-founder of Freedom Investment Group, that seems to have abruptly shut down in November. Possibly unrelated, but an interesting data point nonetheless. It’s difficult to get a handle on what the organisation is and —there are plenty of real estate agents with the same name—, but the Libertarian vibes are all over it. He was also a board member of the Bitcoin Foundation, that had its tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 for “… not filing a Form 990-series return or notice for three consecutive years”, and seems to have been trying to take over the foundation with a $100K “bounty” to “replace the Bitcoin Foundation”.²

What is more relevant, and in relation to the Caribbean, is that he is also a Libertarian (in the modern American sense), an anarcho-capitalist, but seems to have trouble articulating that clearly (see above YouTube video). What he is, however, is actively anti-democratic. He is also part of the cultish Network State. If you don’t know what that is, then have a read of Gil Duran’s work at The Nerd Reich. These people want a world in which democracy is destroyed so they can do as they please, like modern-day Louis XVIs. They imagine a future beyond the nation-state, where society is divided into corporate-run territories and techno fiefdoms. Don’t be fooled by the seductive language either. They openly espouse real violence in public theatres, with some calling for public hangings. Others openly call for extra-judicial murders of people in boats in your local waters (including some local politicians). Whether you believe those on the targeted boats are drug smugglers or not, don’t they have a fundamental human right to fair justice? To be fair to Janssens, I haven’t seen anything that shows he’s called for violence personally, but being part of the Network State or otherwise sympathising to its ideology is very troubling at the very least. But the real reason for the investments and project is evident; it is a systematic plan that is in motion, to build a perverse vision of “freedom” for their ilk. What amounts to an antidemocratic state-thin-a-state³ is suspiciously similar to a typically colonialist overtaking of a nation, and one that will undoubtedly exact violence upon the local economy, simultaneously taking zero responsibility for any negative effects. The blurb for the project is seductive (if a little grotesque architecturally), but don’t be fooled, it is a project that is not for you. It’s for those that want to extract and protect themselves from the very society that they’re doing so much to burn down. Is this just a modern (digital) expression of the same colonial past? Time will tell.

I’ve talked in the past, as have many others, about Digital Colonialism and how international platforms that have too much power over our online experiences, when and what we see on the Internet, that clearly affects how we view the world. It distorts democracy, education, health, language, and even knowledge as we know it. This project is the physical embodiment of projects like this. Others are already in motion in other parts of the region.⁴

These people are not your friends, the friends of your government, or the friends of your country. For example, Janssens has, in recent past, openly called government evil! Evil? Sure, governments can be pretty stupid at times, but Evil? Where do you think that talk logically ends up? To be absolutely clear, this is not a personal attack on Janssens, it is an attack on the politics he and others in the cult have, and their contempt for the rest of the world. It is an alarm call against the very real threat this ideology poses to the Caribbean where the power dynamic is often not in our favour. Some of you may not know (or may have forgotten) about Allen Stanford. How about Jim Jones? This is not the first time something like this has happened, and it won’t be the last if we don’t so something about it.

On the wider implications of this, it is becoming increasingly clear to a wider audience that “tech” is becoming synonymous with authoritarianism, extreme right-wing and anti-democratic principles. Types like Janssens are finally showing themselves to be who they really are, having been working in the shadows for so long, enabled by a lacklustre attitude from popular media for decades. The seeds of this behaviour have been brewing for a very long time, much longer than many of us realised. The signs were there back then. A few picked up on it early, many of us didn’t. If there is a text that I think you should read to get a better historical understanding and framing of what was going on (and still is), then getting a copy of Cyberselfish by Paulina Borsook is a must. (The book is sadly out of print and getting a copy is like finding rocking-horse shit, but there is a campaign to get the book back into print, which I hope succeeds.) If you can’t find a copy, then the following paper is a great read, The Californian Ideology, by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron.⁵ It might help you contextualise what is really happening.

Digital Colonialism

Speaking of Digital Colonialism, I recommend reading I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. It is very interesting.

Note on CBI schemes

Am I against CBI schemes? Sort of. But I don’t know enough currently to fully make my mind up. I see some benefits for small nations, but there seem to be some very real downsides that could be disastrous for locals. In the example above, how is this materially different from colonialism and the plantation economy, short of rebirthing slavery? Although, I wouldn’t put it past people like this. CBI schemes seem to me well-intentioned investment vehicles that are ripe for exploitation. There’s a whole industry setup to target wealthy people to get dual nationality status, some with questionable advice (going as far as to “debunk myths” that are clearly agenda-ridden), and some with questionable politics behind the flashy websites, touching on individual sovereignty (that’s a big fucking red flag), as well as other outright grifts.

They seem to me to be a little like the Cruise Ship trap that some are only just starting to openly question about their real-world worth to the local economy. I have talked about this for several years with peers and in the tourism industry locally, as it is clear that they have made zero material difference in Martinique (anecdotally corroborating the reasons expressed by Dr Delisle Worrell in the article mentioned). I would also add that many small islands have had to invest a lot of money to get their infrastructure ‘compliant’ with the demands of the cruise companies, seeing little to nothing in return. The parallels are there if you scrutinise a little. There is more to discuss about this …

Of note

I fully deleted an account that I had created on WhatsApp, so if you’ve sent me a message and I haven’t replied, now you have an explanation. Why? Do you pay attention to Meta and what it does and what it stands for? I couldn’t, in all good conscience, keep endorsing the platform from use and association. So I permanently deleted it. I had set it up for research purposes and clearly marked the account as such, letting people know not to get in touch with me there, going as far to state in the bio that I would ignore any contact. Despite this, I received plenty of personal messages and unsolicited commercial communications. Rude!

I think that it comes down to the fact that many would like a presence on the Internet, and microblogging and social media platforms are a quick and dirty way to achieve that. They cost nothing, as long as you’re OK to sell your soul in the process.

I would recommend everyone to get that presence on a simple blogging system and then syndicate to social media (but only if you must), then encourage friends, colleagues, and others to follow through simple, practical and privacy-respecting tools like RSS.⁶ But having a website can cost decent money! Well, not exactly. It does if you use things like WordPress (don’t, given that Automattic’s CEO is a deeply problematic character. Note: Also the owner of DayOne and Gravatar). So I’ve compiled a list of options that are both cheap and cheerful, or even free in some cases:

Bear Blog (https://bearblog.dev/)

Micro.blog (https://micro.blog/)

omg.lol (https://home.omg.lol/)

On a personal note, I am currently looking for projects / work. I have over 30 years in ICT in various technical roles. I write market research reports (example here), policy development (IT/AI), and do technical consulting. Furthermore, I am also a certified trainer (identifying need through to the development of structured training). I regularly work in both English and French.

Please get in touch (reply to this mail or email matthew at dgtlfutures.com) if you or anyone you know could use my services.

Thanks for reading and being a supporter. Have a pleasant week.

I know, I know, I’ve taken an extended break from writing here, from what started as an intended short break in Spring, turned into a six-month absence.

I haven’t been idle; quite the opposite, but I haven’t had the opportunity to devote enough time to the subjects I wanted and still want to write about. It is a big effort each time, and a few things in my personal life kind of got in the way. I’m hoping to pick up the writing bug shortly, but sadly not today.

I have an altogether ulterior motive for this quick email…

As you know, if you’ve been reading my work for the last few years or so, I have been more and more involved in aspects of Internet Governance, specifically with ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. I’ve been on the Fellowship program twice. I volunteered to help assess their newly released training platform before it was available to the public, as well as make contributions to the selection committee for future fellows. Last year, I was on the ballot for a place on the Advisory Council (AC), and although I didn’t get elected, I mentioned that I would put my name in the hat again this year, which is precisely what I have done.

That brings me to the purpose of this email, and I apologise upfront, as I am not comfortable requesting things of people and abusing the trust you put in me when subscribing to this email newsletter.

I’m asking you for your help. The ARIN election process provides a space for the nominees to request statements of support. It helps a lot to have many people post such a statement of support, and I’d be grateful if you could take the time (only a few minutes) to provide a statement of support for candidacy in the ARIN AC.

ARIN have made it really simple (see screenshot), and you don’t need to write some Shakespearean prose. Just authentic, brief expressions of support are all that is necessary.

If you can spare a few minutes, please write a statement of support to help me get elected on the ARIN AC, here:

https://arin-elections.net/elections/advisory-council/cowen-matthew/

Thanks in advance, and I look forward to serving on the AC and also continuing to write here over the coming months.

PS. I have a lot of ideas and topics, but nothing fully formed as yet.

If you have been reading my writing for the last few years or so, you’ll know that I have been trying to better understand the workings and innards of the Internet and share that understanding as much as I can in a coherent manner. I fail sometimes, and I get it right other times. That’s okay, and that’s the only way to learn something deeply.

Ever since I first connected to a university terminal and hopped several links to get to the Internet properly, I have been connected and in some way involved with the Internet.

I saw the deep potential back then and naively believed that bringing it to everyone would do some good. How stupid of me and the many others who built the Internet. We owe you an apology.

But that is not what this note is about. This is a note about something I wanted to discuss quickly, something I have previously highlighted and discussed in fairly vague terms. Given my goal to learn and share more, I thought it would be good to do just that today.

The Internet is built on infrastructure, and despite what Internet lore tries to tell you, it has its vulnerabilities. Some technical. Some political and some societal. This is about a technical issue being exploited by societal and political postures.

I’m an engineer by heart and by trade so I automatically latch on to technical aspects, perhaps not fully understanding other facets. I went from pure electrical engineering, where I built industrial-scale electrical distribution panels —I have fond memories of that job, and I always think about the installations that use the panels I built —to industrial air conditioning, then on to programming Building Management Systems and ultimately on to network infrastructure and the consulting that has resulted from that. And as I recently discussed on the ICT Pulse podcast, and here too, tech is no longer a siloed vertical tool and has crept into every aspect of life. And this is the driving factor of modern discussions about the Internet.

Internet governance is no longer, and cannot be, a discussion about protocols, RFCs, and the like. The Internet affects billions of lives, and seemingly innocuous rules and regulations can have unintended consequences for individuals and societies alike.

I should stop waffling and tell you that this is about DNS. The Domain Name System.

DNS is the backbone of the Internet, and as the popular (in technical circles) meme goes:

And it is not just me saying that:

The Domain Name Server (DNS) is the Achilles heel of the Web. The important thing is that it’s managed responsibly. — Tim Berners-Lee

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the governing body responsible for overseeing the management of DNS, but the actual day-to-day management is handled by providers, ISPs (OVH, Hover, etc.) and the RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) dealing with IP address governance.¹ Despite its scope for names (DNS) and numbers (IP addresses), it has spent a considerable amount of time on policy development for DNS, notably the internationalisation of domain names —essentially allowing multilingual domain names and not solely anglicised ones, as is currently the case. It has also worked to push for standards to secure DNS and there are now implementations of secure DNS (DNSSEC) gaining ground. For example, my local router is capable of DNSSEC, as is the outgoing filtering application on my Mac (Little Snitch). ICANN sets out contractual obligations to the DNS providers that mostly focus on the technical aspects of management, security, availability, etc. However, they do not fully cover issues of a more squishy nature, like human rights, privacy, freedom of expression, etc.

This is a clear example of where the Internet has suddenly become confronted with realities of human existence, having been very much isolated from these issues in the past.

We’re seeing more and more targeted efforts by governments and organisations that, without any other recourse, attack the very fundamentals of the Internet through this relatively straightforward path. For example, recently, CANAL+, a billionaire-owned and particularly right-wing leaning group, successfully argued in court to have a number of DNS entries blocked from the DNS servers of a select few providers in France (Orange, SFR, etc). The case was about pirated live streaming of football matches, so there’s some merit to the petition. But what about if it was about restricting a democratic right to protest against said company? It would unlikely win on that basis alone, but the precedent of DNS blocking has now been set, and it is simply a matter of testing where the line lies. Something that billionaires can and do regularly.

Following a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar and what looks likely to be a major disaster for human life in the country, it was still not possible to use the Internet in a way that could be used to coordinate aid and get news out to those who need it most. The Myanmar firewall was commissioned in 2024 and restricts a whole host of Internet services, giving the military junta unprecedented control over citizens through techniques like DNS censorship and others.

This all leads me to think that the next big battleground for democracy in the US, Europe and Great Britain will play out in large part through DNS and the associated services. As I have explained, if you cripple DNS, you can cripple everything.

Reading

A couple of articles that I have been reading:

“Meta has stolen books”: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’

The title says it all. And it is just as bad as you think it is. There’s an odd thought experiment going on in the minds of some of the Internet pioneers. Something about data being free and that free flow of data will create a better world. I’d say, take a look around you and tell me if the world is currently a better place from where you’re standing. Some of you will say yes. But that will be because you’re standing in an extremely privileged position. More on this in the future.

The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes

Some of the major media organisations are starting to understand the real impact of what absolutely shouldn’t be called AI. Other factors, such as the phenomenally wasteful nature of the big models, are also starting to be called into question. Even Microsoft has just cancelled a number of major datacenter building projects, presumably because they see the numbers, and they’re not quite as “number go up” as they led us all to believe.

Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher

The systematic dismantling of USAID, an organisation I have fond memories of working with, is such a shame. Sure, it wasn’t a perfect organisation, but the people I worked with were there for genuine reasons. This, unsurprisingly from DT, is just baffling.

Wishing you a great week.

I was recently invited to participate as a regular contributor to two podcasts last week. I recorded for the ICT-Pulse Podcast (English) and Innovation, Agilité & Excellence (French). I’ll post the links as soon as they’re published.

One topic that came up, admittedly from me, is an idea and reflexion I’ve been having about digital platforms, more specifically social media digital platforms, lately.

The other topic that was the focus of discussion on the ICT Pulse podcast was about digital agency over digital sovereignty. It’s a fairly new idea and one that isn’t well-formed. I’m not quite sure how I stand either, but I felt it was a discussion worth having to help clarify, if not resolve some thoughts about Internet governance and the future of the internet.

I know some of the topics I’ve been writing about here have been pretty dark recently, I’m sorry. But I felt I needed to get them down on something, if not for you, but for me to at least state my position on the shenanigans.

At the time of writing this introduction, I think this one should be a bit more pedestrian. We’ll see. I hope you enjoy it anyway, and please feel free to reach out.

Digital agency

To get the discussion started, I think it is necessary to have a quick rundown about digital sovereignty. It is something that governments around the world have been discussing and even pursuing for a while now. Some longer than others. What it boils down to is essentially regulating and controlling the Internet to ensure that the country remains in control of what happens on it in the confines of its own state. It often manifests itself in ways that are imperceptible to many, or totally draconian like we see in states like Russia, North Korea and China, generally in the name of autonomy and self-reliance.

Digital agency, however, is thought to be more of an idea closer to the ideals of the Internet’s beginnings, an open universe for the use of all equally. But we have observed that those ideals have come up against cold hard realities of political difference, power brokering and all sorts of levers being placed on countries, businesses, institutions, and people. The internet today is not an open universe, and it is certainly not free for use equitably for all. Just the numbers of people without meaningful access to the Internet show that it is still very much a privileged few that benefit the most from the Internet.

Agency, in psychology, is having the ability to use strategies and actions that bring us what we want. Without it, we are powerless to decide our destiny.

The ideals put forward by digital agency try to address this by attempting to wrestle control back through three principles: multi-stakeholderism, realising the potential of technology and promoting collaboration. Of the three principles, I can only see one, possibly two, that are realistic and achievable. TLDR; the first one. (I’ve briefly discussed here before, so I won’t go over old ground here).

Where I think that these ideals will fall down is with the other two. Although, if I’m honest, I do think that at some point we might be able to better realise the potential of technology. However, it is not in its current guise, or under the stewardship of the goons that are currently in power over tech and our tech lives.

The third, collaboration, for me is the achilles heel of the entire endeavour. History has shown time and time again, and it will keep repeating itself ad infinitum, that we are incapable of collaborating on a global scale. It will start off with good intentions, but at som point, politics, power struggles, egos, and all the things that make us human will enter the room and suck out any opportunity for meaningful collaboration on projects like this.

I think it is a reality that we just have to get used to, and it is an inevitable consequence of technology becoming horizontally embedded in every aspect of life. Tech is essentially political now, and it will take an enormous shift for it not to be.

I’m sure I’ll be developing this topic in the future. For now, I’m keeping up on the discussion and developments.

The digital (social media) plantation economy

This is a thought that came to me a while back that I didn’t really expand upon, despite subtly touching upon, in over the last few months. I’m drawing a parallel between the mechanisms and organisational systems, not the people involved, past or present. Bear that in mind while you’re reading this.

This is a story about digital platforms and how they extract everything out of them for themselves, without regard to anyone or anything. And you should never forget that today’s digital platforms exist solely to sit in-between the supplier and the demander and extract, extract, extract. Their only service is arbitration of supply and demand and to skim off a profit, harming everything else.

The big question for me is whether mediation is necessary in the first place? In many instances, it is absolutely not necessary and only hinders the exchange, resulting in worse outcomes for both the supplier and demander. This is often represented in the way many artists eventually go solo and start selling their goods directly to their customers, at both a lower cost to demanders and better profits for suppliers.

Of course, this isn’t a path available to everyone and frequently relies on the fact that said artists are already renown and can therefore “afford” to do so. This could be construed as an argument for platforms, in that they provide a valuable service getting customers in front of sellers. And for many that’s precisely what they used to achieve, and as a service, it had value for people and the service providers were rightly paid for it. But something has changed over the last few years, and it is not to the benefit of suppliers or demanders.

Digital platforms have steadily eroded the value they provide to their customers (suppliers and demanders), extracting the last drops of any value and diverting them to their balance sheets. This has been done by their accumulation of power over the arbitration process, whereby they control both the supplier’s price and costs, and the demanders they promote to and the eventual cost to the demanders. This has been done by rigging the game to a point where they are the only winners. The tool to achieve this is two-fold; Adtech and a Plantation Economy.

I’ve discussed today’s adtech industry already, and I will no doubt expand upon that in the future. TLDR; it should all be burnt to the ground and rebuilt to be fairer, private, voluntary, and more equitable for its participants. (See Reading section: Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight)

The plantation economy is an economy built on scale and scalability. Already that should sound familiar, thinking about the previous paragraphs. It is an economy built as a platform to drive production to an absolute extreme without totally breaking it (although it frequently does), to the detriment of those subjected to it. Sounding more familiar, it should be. And it is an economy that profits one organisation or person without any regard for the welfare of those that did the actual work to valorise the products or services. It is basically theft.

Social Media is a digital plantation where you work for little or no remuneration, for a system where there is generally one owner that has total power to do whatever, whenever, however he or she feels. One major difference between the old and new plantations is that you are ostensibly free to leave at any time, but because of the network effects of these platforms, exercising that right is neither possible nor practical. The trick then is for the owners to dupe you into staying on the platform, but more importantly, spending as much time as you can and for as much of your lifetime as you can for them to monetise your participation. Monetise is Silicon Valley doublespeak for wealth extraction and theft in this context.

This is why the Internet needs to be re-wilded and corporate social media needs to decay and whither way to make way for a better model where we all benefit.

Distributed multi-stakeholder and federated services are the start of this, but they too will be subject to forces that will pollute them and entice them away from what they should be. But it is a start, and the more of us that try to built something on good foundations, the more chance we have to accomplish and Internet for the good. It won’t be perfect, I’m not that naive, and it’ll still be inhabited by criminals and scammers, liars, thieves, etc. But it’ll be more like the real world and not some digital dystopia that it is fast becoming.

The one thing I know, is that humans generally follow the pattern of the Hemingway quote: slowly, then all at once. The cracks will appear and the online mobilisation will start slowly, then suddenly, without warning, the empires will be burnt to the ground.

I’m already seeing a massive wave of interest on the federated services networks in support of ditching US services, and “Big Tech” as a whole. Several governments have even voted to ban the use of them and will start shortly replacing those services with European alternatives.

And this is where Agency is important and why I am still undecided with my feelings about the digital agency movement and the so-called splinternet. They cross over and are contradictory in some places and totally rational in others.

To be continued…

Reading

A few things that caught my interest recently.

Careless People - NYT No. 1 Bestseller

Last week I mentioned a book that looked like it would be an instant bestseller, not because it is worth it (it might be, I haven’t finished reading it yet), but because its subject tried to have it shut down, thus invoking the Streisand Effect. Well, it is now top o’ the charts.

Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight

In a first of its kind, a U.K. woman has won a legal fight with Meta preventing the latter from using targeted advertising. Meta, characteristically, was disingenuous and specious in its response, first by lying that it couldn’t achieve the request, which it can miraculously do now, and secondly trying to use a straw man argument suggesting that the sanction meant the company had to give aways its services for free. This is a lie and they know it. The ruling is specifically and only about targeted ads. Meta is still free to place non-targeted privacy respecting ads to O’Carroll. It’s just that they can’t rip off both sides with these types of ads, so they will try everything to avoid it.

We should all follow suit, and I am actively seeking how to go about this.

The USAID report I co-wrote is still offline, until now

That report is still offline, so I thought I’d make it available until I get a takedown notice. If you want it, it is here.

Think your democratic government won’t block the Internet? Think again.

“Italy is using its Piracy Shield law to go after Google, with a court ordering the Internet giant to immediately begin poisoning its public DNS servers. This is just the latest phase of a campaign that has also targeted Italian ISPs and other international firms like Cloudflare.”

Have a great week.

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men” is what Robert Burns wrote in a poem entitled “To a Mouse, On Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough”, November 1785.

The quote has been paraphrased and used, attributed and mis-attributed thousands and thousands of times, but its meaning is essentially still the same:

No matter how well we’ve planned or pre-planned, there is always something that will disrupt that plan

And so it was for me over the last couple of weeks.

In a how-the-sausage-is-made moment, how I write this and other writings is not a simple process of sitting in front of a computer opening Ulysses (my preferred app for writing), bashing away on the keyboard for fifteen minutes or so. Not at all.

It starts with me spending horrendous hours scanning news, reading articles, papers, and books. Filling my mind with millions of seemingly inconsequential details, anecdotes, thoughts, feelings, the reading usually prescribes some kind of idea of a topic to write about. Then comes the hard work. I generally try to read around the subject, getting as much as I can in a limited amount of time, parallel to all the other reading that is going on. Because the world doesn’t stand still and there is always new stuff to read. Once I’ve compiled some material, I try to work it into some kind of coherent article that is more of an opinion piece than an academic discussion. This sometimes works well and sometimes, er, less so. An article idea can have been born weeks ago, but stayed in an embryonic state until I get the urge to write something. Which doesn’t come as often as that. The article is then written, edited, and eventually posted, with the actual writing process taking a couple of hours or so. Think 3 to 4 hours.

That was essentially what I’d hoped to have done last week, but my body had other plans. I seem to have picked up a god awful cold (flu?) and have been suffering for about a week now. And yes, if you’re reading this, or more accurately, if I’m writing this, it is because I am feeling much better, and I am the current vainqueur in this war against the virus that is trying to kill me. I say current, as it has not completely surrendered yet, but just like the Battle of Little Bighorn, Custer (the virus) is surrounded and will ultimately lose, and die.

In fact, while I think of it —and this is just brain dumping as I write— I watched the two finals at Indian Wells this Sunday and thoroughly enjoyed them both. But a stand-out moment for me was the winner’s address to the public in the Women’s final. Mirra Andreeva decided to thank herself, her belief, her determination, her doubts, her fears, etc. “I’d like to thank me” is what she said. I think she’s right. It is not born of arrogance. It is born of thanking all of those that go to make a Master’s Champion, which is a big team, and herself!

So, I’ll forgive myself, and acknowledge that I was ill, and I couldn’t function at all for three days, and the rest of time was a fog and time passing by. And that not writing to a schedule is fine, and I can take a break when needed.

This week is probably going to be scrappy as I haven’t had the opportunity to do what I usually do (see above).

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I’m not the biggest fan of online advertising, or more precisely, the current form of online advertising.

I am not the only one, and there are a number of people and organisations around the world working to reign in the abuses of the adtech world, that has become so toxic that people have died as direct consequences of their reckless business practices.

I’ve discussed what the problem is. TLDR; wonky moral compasses and incentives that are aligned to put people in danger to make a quick profit.

I’ve even discussed how. TLDR; mass surveillance technologies that track absolutely everything you do online. And I mean EVERYTHING. Hoarding of information that is both consensual and non-consensual to produce questionably reliant “profiles” and even more questionably predict behaviours.

I’ve discussed how we can go about doing something to prevent, setback, or otherwise disrupt the flow of this information. TLDR; install ad-blockers and use them liberally. File GDPR requests liberally, using the tools to largely automate that. And lobby for non-invasive and non-surveillance-tech-based advertising models that have been shown to perform about as well as the “profiled” ads do, but with little to no personal information leaked in exchange.

If you think I’m being over-dramatic, have a read of the third article in the reading list and then reach out to me. I’d be happy to discuss.

Reading

If you’re not familiar with the Streisand Effect, you’re going to love this. If you are, you can skip over this bit.

Sometime between 2002 and 2003, a California Coastal Records project was measuring the coastal erosion in a well healed area of the Californian coastline. Malibu was being photographed in detail to see how much the sea had encroached on the land and its data used to help identify properties that might need remedial action or evacuation to save the occupants from major loss or even loss of life.

Barbra Streisand, a resident in the area, objected to her house being identified in one of the publicly available photographs. So she set about correcting that, and I, unlike many, feel that she did this from a good place and not from the privileged arsehole perspective. In trying to rectify the breach of privacy, she instructed a lawyer to help her do something about this. Said lawyer proceeded to sue the photographer, a government contractor, for 50 million USD.

What that eventually did is rock the ears of many a newspaper and journalist, thus blowing the story into proportions beyond anyone’s control, ultimately bringing the private information to the masses in a spectacular own goal. More ordinary people knew the property than before the lawsuit, and thus the term was coined by a well-known online writer, Mike Masnic. You can read more here.

The top book on the reading list, is going through the same situation.

It’s like the tech dudes read a lot of stuff but don’t actually understand the message or learn from previous events, or in fact, history as a whole. And a case in point is the first link on the list today.

Meta stops ex-director from promoting critical memoir

I don’t know how many times we need to keep hearing Meta disgraceful record of playing fast and loose with human mental health before we conclude that it is a fundamentally immoral organisation akin to the tobacco companies of yesterday. If you work there, you should probably reconsider (if you can) your part in the machine and perhaps find a way out.

Their actions on this book will propel it to a bestseller in no time. Stupid, and immoral, are Meta.

Meta mocked for raising “Bob Dylan defense” of torrenting in AI copyright fight

In a follow-up to the article I wrote where it was shown that Meta wilfully torrented nearly 82 TB of data, including previously known pirated material, they have now pulled out a stupid defence ploy. OpenAI is just as bad, lobbying for free access to everything to train its mediocre models. That might backfire on them in the not too distant future.

Data Broker Brags About Having Highly Detailed Personal Information on Nearly All Internet Users

I’ve been on a roll criticising adtech lately and for good reason. I am not convinced that many have even an inkling of the amount and depth of data that is being collected and weaponised against us. We’ve built the Stasi’s wet dream, and we have absolutely no idea where it is going to lead us. TLDR; somewhere you would rather not be.

It’s time for the European Union to rethink personal social networking

I’m torn, really torn about what is happening on the Internet lately. On the one hand I see the need for a certain amount of sovereignty, on the other hand, I absolutely detest and react negatively to nationalistic tendencies. Nationalism —not to be confused with pride of one’s nation— is a destructive force, because it relies on deliberate strategies to denigrate others to appear better. It doesn’t work with me and I seem to have a very sensitive sensor and spot it a mile off. This discussion gives me a lot to think about.

I’ve a busy week, catching up on time lost and to make the days go even faster, I’m recording two podcasts this weeK. The first is with my friend Jean-François Nantel on the Innovation, Agilité & Excellence podcast, and the second with another friend, Michele Marius on the ICT Pulse Podcast.

I’ll let you know when they’re out.

Have a fantastic week.