Posts Tagged ‘culture’
“The metaphors we use deliver us hope, or they foreclose possibility”*…
It feels only too clear that the global order that defined geopolitics, geoeconomics, and life in the world’s constituent parts is changing fundamentally. But what lies on the other side of this change? It’s a sucker’s bet to try to predict that outcome with any precision; there’s just too much fundamental uncertainty. As Antonio Gramsci said (of another era, though he might have been describing ours): “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Still, it’s important that we try. It’s only by wrestling with what’s going on to determine what’s possible, then what’s desirable, that we can shape a future in which we want to live.
The models and metaphors that we use are key to that wrestling. Our natural inclinations seem to tend in one of two directions. Either we tweak the models we have to try to accomodate the change that we see… which seems to work until (given that the change just keeps on coming) it doesn’t. Or we flip to the opposite– we imaging that everything simply falls apart. In geopolitical/geoeconomic terms, we assume that we get a, incrementally-revised version of the world order that we known; or we imagine dissolution (into what tends to be called a “multi-polar” world)… neither of which imagines materially different world orders that, as hard as they are to describe, are entirely plausible. Part of our problem in visualizing those new orders is our lack of models and metaphors for them…
The two pieces featured here posit frameworks and metaphors that, while they may or may not prove to be “accurate” in any comprehensive way, can help us open our thinking, and model the ways in which fresh metaphors can help us see problems anew and find new solutions.
First a piece from Trine Flockhart, from the Global (Dis)Order International Policy Programme of the British Academy and The Carnegoe Endowment for International Peace, part of a recent book)…
Is global order a thing of the past? Is the liberal international order fraying and what is
happening to previously stable alliances and cooperative relationships such as the
transatlantic relationship or the relationship between the United States and Canada? Not
such a long time ago, these questions would have been regarded as alarmist, but today the
prospect of large-scale order transformation is part and parcel of daily debates. This rupture
is probably as important as the transformation that followed the end of the Second World War,
and together with the simultaneous transformations in technology and science, the impact
on people and societies may well be on par with the Industrial Revolution. As Gramsci wrote
from his prison cell, we live ‘in times of monsters’ where ‘the old world is dying and the new one
struggles to be born’(Gramsci & Buttigieg 1992). In these circumstances, we see the political
consequences in populist parties as voters seek certainty in an uncertain and turbulent world,
whilst policymakers struggle to find their feet in the emerging world and seek to manage the
fallout from the ending of the old world.
To ensure that the policy decisions of today are relevant for the geopolitical reality of tomorrow,
policymakers must have a clear sense about the likely outcome of the ongoing transformation
– in other words what kind of global order will be in place and what kind of relationships can
be expected within it? These are big and complex questions that have no easy answers, yet
many scholars and policy practitioners seem to already have their answer – the world will be
multipolar (Ashford 2023; Bekkevold 2023; Borrell 2021). At least anecdotally, it seems there
is widespread agreement that the international system is transforming from a unipolar system
anchored in American hegemony, to a multipolar system reflecting the shift of power to a larger
number of states. However, although the idea that the international system will be multipolar
is persuasive, and although the use of analytical concepts such as polarity can be useful for
gaining an overview of complex matters, we must be aware that polarity as a concept rests on
a specific form of analysis that tends to emphasize states, sameness, power and interest, and
which is only partially sighted when it comes to values, identities, lesser powers and complexity.
I worry that the focus on multipolarity, means that policymakers are trying to understand the
current order transformation through conceptual lenses that are blurred and not very relevant.
This article presents a different position. It starts from the counterintuitive position that
it is logically implausible for the global ordering architecture to return to an international
system that was in place a century ago. Those suggesting that we are currently witnessing
a return to multipolarity emphasise shifts in the global distribution of power and the rising
number of powerful states, most notably China. These are certainly important changes, but
The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications
other important changes are overlooked, which suggest a fundamentally different global
ordering architecture is in the making. Continuing to portray the world as multipolar belies the
complexity, significance, and extent of many other important changes. This paper presents an
alternative interpretation of the ongoing global order transformation, demonstrating why it will
be neither bipolar nor multipolar but rather multi-order.
A multi-order world is a global ordering architecture consisting of several international orders.
Gramsci was right that order transformations take time, so the multi-order architecture is still
in development, but can be glimpsed through the existence of three independent international
orders already clearly visible within the global ordering architecture – the American-led liberal
international order (albeit that American leadership under Trump is currently in question),
the Russian-led Eurasian order, and the Chinese-led Belt and Road order.1 Other orders and
other forms of relationships of importance are also in the making suggesting a more complex
architecture than a multipolar one. The paper does not claim to present a full picture of the
emerging ordering architecture but seeks merely to demonstrate the importance of embracing
new thinking to contemplate the possibility of an entirely new form of international system
in which multiple international orders with very different dynamics and different behavioural
patterns make up the global ordering architecture. The perspective brings into light important
relationships and dynamics that are not readily apparent in the multipolar perspective –
especially that relationships within orders are just as important as relations between different
international orders, and it leaves room for considering other aspects than powershifts and for
acknowledging the importance of other actors than just a handful of “pole states”. I argue that
awareness of the subtle differences between the multi-order architecture and more traditional
polarity-based understandings is an essential first step towards timely strategic policymaking
fit for the multi-order world.
The paper proceeds in four moves. First, I outline three significant events over the past four
years which only partially fit the polarity-based narrative. Second, I outline the multi-order
perspective by focusing on order as a condition, a social domain, and as practices of ordering.
Thirdly, I show how changes in three characteristics of the global system indicate a multi-order
world rather than a multipolar one. Finally, I briefly consider some of the broader geopolitical
implications of a multi-order world and demonstrate the importance of ordering dynamics
within and between international orders. The picture that emerges challenges some of the
most foundational assumptions about international relations and global order including the
prospect of achieving convergence around common rules in multilateral governance to meet
shared challenges…– “The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications”
The second, by Jessica Burbank, takes a different– and in some ways, more provocative– tack…
… A new world order is here. States (countries) are no longer the highest form of power globally. Power has shifted to wealthy individuals who work in groups and operate across borders: syndicates of capital.
Syndicates of capital cannot be categorized as legal or illegal. They exist primarily in the extralegal sphere, where either no regulations apply to their behavior or, where laws do exist, there is no entity powerful enough to enforce them in a manner that asserts control over the syndicates’ behavior.
In many occasions, capital is both the power source for syndicates, and the shared goal. Wealthy individuals form syndicates if their strategic objectives align. Those objectives typically revolve around securing new capital flows and preserving existing ones. Syndicates’ power is vast but fragile. If all members of a syndicate were cut off from accessing capital and the resources they control, they would lose their power.
Author’s Note: Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but I am not speaking of secret societies, the illuminati, or a cabal. Syndicates of capital do not hide their power, nor do they operate in secret. Their multi-billion dollar deals and contracts are publicly disclosed. They are also not united in ethnic background, religious, or political beliefs.
It is not enough to say: ‘democracies are being replaced with oligarchies because wealthy individuals have too much power in society.’ That may be true, but is not the full picture. Oligarchies are states run by a small group of wealthy individuals. That may accurately describe the politics of one nation, but it does not suffice to describe how power is organized on a global scale.
‘Global oligarchy’ also falls short of describing how power is organized in our world, because there is not one small group of wealthy individuals, there are many, and they compete. Still, the identification of oligarchs is useful for global political analysis because many of the oligarchs within a state also operate globally as leaders or members ofsyndicates of capital.
The new world order emerged before it could be identified. Platitudes like: “our world has gone crazy,” served as an emotional crutch, and an implicit acknowledgement that we lack a sound analysis of contemporary global power. What has felt like an ineffable force, an inexplicable undercurrent of darkness, is the ambiance of global dominion by syndicates of capital.
Though abstract, examining how global power is organized is essential to understanding the world we live in. Developing a coherent framework for evaluating global affairs allows us to more effortlessly make sense of current events. You’ll be surprised how quickly things click and how easily your mind makes connections when you absorb the news with a conception of syndicates of capital…
Both are eminently worth reading in full: whether or not one buys all– or any– of either set of conclusions, the mental calisthenics are the point…
###
As we muse on metaphors, we might recall that it was on this date in 1279 that Mongol forces led by Kublai Khan were victorious at the Battle of Yamen— ending the Song dynasty in China. Kublai has already conquered parts of northern and southern China, and had declared the Yuan dynasty (with himself as the emperor “Great Yuan”). With the fall of the Song, the Mongols ruled all of continental East Asia under Han-style Yuan rule, which was a division of the Mongol Empire.
“Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within”*…
Government graft in the U. S. has a long (and unbroken) history; but there have been especially corrupt periods, for instance in the Jacksonian era and the Gilded Age… and again today.
Profiteering and insider trading, “pay-to-play”/influence peddling, foreign emoluments, conflicts of interest, regulatory and policy favors, purchased pardons (and commutations)– we’ve got it all, and at epic levels.
The estimable Cory Doctorow uses a telling comparison to drill down on one of the dominant strands: Trump’s (ironic) campaign to fight (what he identifies as) corruption…
… It’s a story about boss-politics anti-corruption, in which anti-corruption is pursued to corrupt ends.
From 2012-2015, Xi Jinping celebrated his second term as the leader of China with a mass purge undertaken in the name of anti-corruption. Officials from every level of Chinese politics were fired, and many were imprisoned. This allowed Xi to consolidate his control over the CCP, which culminated in a rule-change that eliminated term-limits, paving the way for Xi to continue to rule China for so long as he breathes and wills to power.
Xi’s purge exclusively targeted officials in his rivals’ power-base, kneecapping anyone who might have blocked his power-grab. But just because Xi targeted his rivals’ princelings and foot-soldiers, it doesn’t mean that Xi was targeting the innocent. A 2018 paper by an economist (Peter Lorentzen, USF) and a political scientist (Xi Lu, NUS) concluded that Xi’s purge really did target corrupt officials.
The authors reached this conclusion by referencing the data published in the resulting corruption trials, which showed that these officials accepted and offered bribes and feathered their allies’ nests at public expense.
In other words, Xi didn’t cheat by framing innocent officials for crimes they didn’t commit. The way Xi cheated was by exclusively targeting his rivals’ allies. Lorentzen and Lu’s paper make it clear that Xi could easily have prosecuted many corrupt officials in his own power base, but he left them unmolested.
This is corrupt anti-corruption. In an environment in which everyone in power is crooked, you can exclusively bring legitimate prosecutions, and still be doing corruption. You just need to confine your prosecutions to your political enemies, whether or not they are more guilty than your allies (think here of the GOP dragging the Clintons into Epstein depositions).
14 years later, Xi’s anti-corruption purges continue apace, with 100 empty seats at this year’s National People’s Congress, whose former occupants are freshly imprisoned or awaiting trial.
I don’t know the details of all 100 prosecutions, but China absolutely has a corruption problem that goes all the way to the upper echelon of the state. I find it easy to believe that the officials Xi has targeted are guilty – and I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they are all supporters of Xi’s internal rivals for control of the CCP.
As the Epstein files demonstrate, anyone hoping to conduct a purge of America’s elites could easily do so without having to frame anyone for crimes they didn’t commit (remember, Epstein didn’t just commit sex crimes – he was also a flagrant financial criminal and he implicated his network in those crimes).
It’s not just Epstein. As America’s capital classes indulge their incestuous longings with an endless orgy of mergers, it’s corporate Habsburg jaws as far as the eye can see. These mergers are all as illegal as hell, but if you fire a mouthy comedian, you can make serious bank.
And if you pay the right MAGA chud podcaster a million bucks, he’ll grease your $14b merger through the DoJ.
And once these crooks merge to monopoly, they embark on programs of lawlessness that would shame Al Capone, but again, with the right podcaster on your side, you can keep on “robbing them blind, baby!”
The fact that these companies are all guilty is a foundational aspect of Trumpism. Boss-politics antitrust – and anti-corruption – doesn’t need to manufacture evidence or pretexts to attack Trump’s political rivals. When everyone is guilty, you have a target-rich environment for extorting bribes.
Just because the anti-corruption has legit targets, it doesn’t follow that the whole thing isn’t corrupt…
On the practice of selective enforcement and prosecution: “Corrupt anticorruption,” from @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy.
For thoughts on what we can do about all of this, see “Building political integrity to stamp out corruption: three steps to cleaner politics” (source of the image above)
* Menander
###
As we decide on disinfectants, we might recall that it was on this date in 37 CE, following the death of Tiberius, that the Roman Senate annulled Tiberius’ will and confirmed Caligula, his grandnephew, as the third Roman emperor. (Tiberius had willed that the reign should be shared by his nephew [and adopted son] Germanicus and Germanicus’ son, Caligula.)
While he has been remembered as the poster boy for profligacy and corruption, Caligula (“Little Boots”) is generally agreed to have been a temperate ruler through the first six months of his reign. His excesses after that– cruelty, self-dealing, extravagance, sexual perversity– are “known” to us via sources increasingly called into question.
Still, historians agree that Caligula did work hard to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor at the expense of the countervailing Principate; and he oversaw the construction of notoriously luxurious dwellings for himself. In 41 CE, members of the Roman Senate and of Caligula’s household attempted a coup to restore the Republic. They enlisted the Praetorian Guard, who killed Caligula– the first Roman Emperor to be assassinated (Julius Caesar was assassinated, but was Dictator, not Emperor). In the event, the Praetorians thwarted the Republican dream by appointing (and supporting) Caligula’s uncle Claudius as the next Emperor.
“Where grows?–where grows it not? If vain our toil, / We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.”*…
Even as agricultural land is becoming a coveted investment (as manifest in the purchases of billionaires like Stan Kroenke, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and by institutions like Nuveen and the Canadian Pension Investment Board and by publicly-traded REITs like Farmland Partners and Gladstone Land Corp), there’s another class of investor– with a very different use case– on the hunt. Joy Shin and Ryan Duffy report…
Last year, a datacenter developer started working the phones along Green Hill Road in Silver Spring Township, PA, outside Harrisburg. Mervin Raudabaugh got the call: a mystery buyer wanted to buy his 261 acres of farmland. The developer offered him $60,000 an acre for the land the 86-year-old had farmed for six decades. Mervin turned it down, selling to Lancaster Farmland Trust for <$2M instead, thereby locking the soil into agricultural use. “I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he told a local Fox affiliate.
Two things about this story might have been unthinkable a generation ago: that anyone would offer a farmer nearly $16M for that land, and that it’d be worth more dead (paved over) than alive (producing food).
The Supermarket of the World
For the better part of a century, that’s what America was. From 1959 through 2018, the country ran an agricultural trade surplus every single year, peaking near $27B in 1981, when soybeans, corn, wheat, and rice flowed out of the heartland in volumes that functioned as soft power and hard trade leverage. (When the Soviet harvest failed in 1963, Khrushchev had to buy American wheat through private US grain companies: at market rate, without credit, shipped on American vessels, which was a humiliation leveraged by his enemies to oust him the following year.)
Then, in 2019, the curves crossed. The U.S. has since run a deficit in four of the last six fiscal years. Last year, we imported $43.7B more in agricultural products than we sold.
Washington has started saying the right words. Last month, the USDA and Department of War signed a memorandum designating agriculture as a national security priority. Multiple bills linking food security to national security percolated through the last Congress. If you talk to the right folks in Washington, you’ll hear agriculture now being discussed the way semiconductors were in 2021 — as a sovereign capacity that a serious country cannot offshore.
All of which sounds right, none of which changes what is happening on the ground. Because the ground is the problem.
In real estate, you think in square feet, in proximity, in comps. Farmland trades in acreage, water tables, growing seasons, and soil composition. And right now, profitably farming that acre is just about the hardest it’s ever been.
Since 2020, seed costs have climbed 18%, fertilizer 37%, fuel 32%, and interest on operating loans 73%. Labor is up 50%. These costs never came back down after the 2021-22 supply chain shock, but crop prices did, creating a double squeeze on farmers. Farmland has appreciated nearly four-fold from ~$1,090/acre in 2000 to $4,170 in 2024.
Some 40% of U.S. farmers are over 65. The American Farmland Trust estimates nearly 300M acres will change hands through inheritance in the next two decades. When it does, the math facing each heir will look a lot like Mervin’s. What would you do: keep farming a business with collapsing margins, or if one was offered, take the check?
A Collision of Old & New Economies
Datacenters, chip fabs, and other megaprojects need what farms need: flat land, abundant water, reliable power, and access to transport.
In Loudoun County, VA, ground zero of America’s datacenter buildout, farmland already lists at $55,000–$79,000/acre, a significant premium over the statewide average because markets are pricing in the possibility the land will convert from farmland to computerland.
Conversions are large and getting larger. Meta’s $10B compute cluster in Richland Parish, Louisiana, sits on 2,250 acres of former soybean fields. Samsung’s new $17B fab occupies 1,200 acres outside Taylor, Texas, a town that once called itself the largest inland cotton market in the world. Micron’s $100B megafab is going up on 1,400 acres of former agricultural land and wetlands in Clay, New York. These are some of the largest private investments in American history, and among the most economically and strategically consequential bets we’re making as a country. You can’t help but notice the symbolism of it all: each is being built on rural land that was growing something one or two generations ago.
Datacenter developers, who already need some PR help, have seen local opposition to these projects emerge as a real planning risk, with farming families showing up at county meetings to argue that once the land converts, it will never come back.
Nobody should pretend this is irrational. A fab generates more economic value per acre than any soybean field ever will, the jobs pay better, and the strategic logic of onshoring chips is sound. But the math that makes each individual conversion obvious is the same math that, in the aggregate, leaves you structurally short on food. The country is losing about 2,000 acres a day, with 18M more projected to convert by 2040.
The Flow of Capital
As Washington works to subsidize the farming, to the tune of $10–$15B in federal support each year, Wall Street is betting on the land underneath it leaving farming.
Nuveen Natural Capital, a subsidiary of TIAA, manages $13.1B in farmland across 3M acres globally and recently launched a REIT targeting $3B in new capital. Those holdings have appreciated far beyond what crop income would justify, because it follows the pattern of a conversion optionality play: buy well-located agricultural land at agricultural tax rates and wait for rezoning.
Nearly 95% of American farms are still family-run, but most are modest operations. The 6% of farms generating $1M+ in sales produce 78% of everything, up from 69% just five years ago. Farming has developed the power-law distribution of a winner-take-most industry, except the winners don’t get to set their own prices. The family farm persists in name, but the economics (and economies of scale) increasingly push it to operate like a corporation or exit.
And institutional investors have some strange bedfellows on their side of the orderbook. Foreign investors held an interest in nearly 46M acres as of 2023 – 3.6% of all privately held farmland – up 85% since 2010. Canada alone holds 15M acres. China, which cannot feed its population from its own soil, built COFCO International into a state-backed grain trader that does $38.5B a year and accumulated millions of acres globally. Saudi Arabia was pumping Arizona’s groundwater through Fondomonte, a state-linked operation growing alfalfa for export, until Arizona killed the leases in 2023. Those countries treat productive soil as something worth a sovereign premium, and something you want to physically control…
[The authors recount the history of “Agro-Doomerism” and consider the (largely technological) potential solutions to the conundrum: “This is a hard problem, but it is a solvable one, as shown by the long history of technological revolutions in agriculture. Today, a set of technologies that were each too expensive or immature a decade ago have converged to the point where the raw inputs for a farm, ex land, can get radically cheaper, all at once.” They enumerate some of those potential saviors, and conclude…}
… The long arc of agro-doomerism and technological revolutions say there’s reasons for optimism. Many times before, the “math” said we’d run out of food; many times before, new science, systems, and processes came along that changed the denominator and proved the doomers wrong. Hoping and praying for AGI or another Norman Borlaug [the father of the Green Revolution] to save our bacon is not a strategy, but abundance-oriented technology stacks that don’t force a zero-sum choice between preservation and productivity might be. We should look at systems that help unfallow and uplift acres, making farmland competitive enough that we don’t pave over too much and one day realize we want the topsoil back – or our ag trade deficit erased.
The bet worth making is 1) to never bet against America, of course, and 2) that something similar will happen here: that productivity, not preservation alone, will close the gap. This is a generational opportunity, a category deeply in the national interest, and a sector wanting more capital, technology, engineers, and founders to show up. Those who get there first will be serving a gigantic market, and attacking a problem that Washington has acknowledged is existential but has no idea how to productively solve.
The supermarket of the world was built on cheap land and cheap water. Neither are cheap anymore, and both are being bid up by us – via population growth – as well as the industrial renaissance that we care so deeply about. But that doesn’t mean we can forget foundational inputs – literally – to our way of life…
Farming vs. fabs (and data centers)… American agriculture is caught in a collision between old and new economies: “The Supermarket of the World.”
* Alexander Pope
###
As we contemplate cultivation, we might note that this, the third week in March, is National Agriculture Week.
“Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics”*…
Is mathematical beauty real? Or is it just a subjective, human ‘wow’ that is becoming redundant in an AI age? Rita Ahmadi explores…
It is a hot July day in London and I take the bus to Bloomsbury. I often come here for the British Library, the British Museum or the London Review Bookshop. More than a location, Bloomsbury feels like stepping into a work of art – maybe one of Virginia Woolf’s stories, or Duncan Grant’s paintings.
This time, I am here for mathematics: the Hardy Lecture at the London Mathematical Society (LMS), named after G H Hardy, a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a member of the Bloomsbury Group, and a president of the LMS. You may know him from the film The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015), in which he’s played by Jeremy Irons.
The 2025 lecture is by Emily Riehl of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who is talking about a complex mathematical ‘language’ known as infinity category theory: could we teach it to computers so that they could understand it? If successful, computer programs could verify proofs and construct complex structures in this area.
A few seats to my left, I recognise Kevin Buzzard, wearing the multi-coloured, patterned trousers he’s known for among mathematicians. Based at Imperial College London, Buzzard is working on a computer proof assistant called Lean. His interest is personal: after long disputes with a colleague over a flawed proof, he lost trust, as he often puts it, in ‘human mathematicians’. His mission now is to convince all mathematicians to write their proofs in Lean. In the Q&A after one of his talks, he said of the debate between truth and beauty in mathematics: ‘I reject beauty, I want rigour’ – though his vibrant sense of fashion suggests otherwise.
Interest in an AI-driven approach to mathematics has been exponential, and many mathematicians have left traditional academic research to explore its potential. Recently, one group of distinguished mathematicians designed 10 active, research-level questions for AI to tackle. At the time of writing, various AI companies and researchers had claimed to find solutions, which were under evaluation by the community.
Sitting in the room in Bloomsbury, I stared at the Hardy plaque and wondered: would Hardy find proofs generated by AI beautiful? I wasn’t sure. He believed there should be a strong aesthetic judgment in mathematics, drawing parallels with poetry, and argued that beauty is the first test of good mathematics. He went as far as to say that there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
If asked, many mathematicians today still talk about the aesthetic appeal of one approach over another.
Yet we live in a different century to Hardy and his Bloomsbury peers, with different technologies and techniques, so perhaps we need a clearer definition of what mathematical beauty actually is. Over the history of mathematics, we can find examples where both rigour and the pursuit of beauty have shaped mathematics itself. So, if we’re completely replacing this with a computer-assisted quest for truth and rigour, we ought to know what we’d be abandoning, if anything. Is mathematical beauty like the beauty in literature and art – or is it something else?…
[Ahmadi explores the idea of “beauty,” generally and in mathematics; traces the rise of AI as a tool, and concludes…]
… my own definition of beauty in mathematics would be as follows:
“Asimplemathematical structure that surprises even the most experienced mathematicians and transfers a sense of vitality.”
But is an AI-assisted proof simple or surprising? How do we define vitality in a machine? On these questions, the jury is out. Myself, I am torn. Maybe models just need more training to match our creativity. But I also wonder whether our limbic system is required. Can we write proofs without emotional kicks? I am also unsure if perfectly efficient brains can come up with novel revolutionary ideas.
Ultimately, this debate is about more than aesthetics; it is closely tied to the development of AI-assisted mathematics. If AI models can produce novel mathematical structures, how should we direct them? Is it a search for beautiful or truthful structures? A question that possibly guides the years to come.
Some mathematicians say they prefer the ‘truth’ and only the ‘truth’. However, my recent discussions with mathematicians showed me that most immediately recognise, enjoy, and even wholeheartedly smile at a beautiful piece of maths. In fact, they spend their whole lives in search of one…
Fascinating: “The eye of the mathematician,” from @ritaahmadi.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
###
As we embrace elegance, we might send garcefully-calculated birthday greetings to Eduard Heine; he was born on this date in 1821. A mathematician, he is best remembered for his introduction of the concept of uniform continuity, for the Mehler–Heine formula, and for the Heine–Cantor theorem… all of them, quite beautiful.
“He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication”*…
We’ve looked before at digital regimes that seem a little too close for comfort to Jeremey Bentham‘s notion of the Panopticon. Surveillance has continued to intensify. 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox bring us up to speed…
It’s nearly impossible not to be watched these days. It can start right at home with your neighbors and their Ring cameras—a company that sold fear to the American public and is now integrating AI to turn entire neighborhoods into networked, automated surveillance systems.
Head out a bit further and you’ll likely be confronted by Flock’s network of cameras that not only track license plates, but also track people’s movements with detailed precision. And as the Trump administration raids cities across the U.S. for undocumented immigrants, tech giants like Palantir are powering tools for ICE, including one called ELITE that helps the agency pick which neighborhoods to raid.
To better understand what exactly we’re looking at in this dystopian hellscape, 404 Media’s Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox joined r/technology for an AMA.
Understandably, people are worried about violations of their privacy by companies and the government. And many wonder, is there any way to go back once we’ve released all this AI-powered, surveillance tech?…
The (lightly edited for clarity) transcript is a bracing– but critically-important– read: “From Flock to ICE, Here’s a Breakdown of How You’re Being Watched,” @jasonkoebler.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy and @josephcox.bsky.social in @404media.co.
* “Bentham’s Panopticon [at top] is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery… He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication. – Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
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As we feel seen, we might recall that it was on this date in 2000, that the dot.com bust effectively began. Between 1995 and its peak five days earlier, on March 10, 2000, investments in the Nasdaq Composite stock market index rose from 1,006 to 5,048—a 400% gain fueled by the conviction that the internet would render every prior valuation framework obsolete. It did not.
On March 13, 2000, news that Japan had once again entered a recession triggered a global sell off that disproportionately affected technology stocks. Soon after, Yahoo! and eBay ended merger talks and the Nasdaq fell 2.6%; still, the S&P 500 rose 2.4% as investors shifted from strong performing technology stocks to poor performing established stocks. The market held steady on the 14th. Then, on this date 26 years ago, the broader market begin to drop… and kept dropping. By the end of the stock market downturn of 2002 (the “second chapter” in the correction that began in 2000), stocks had lost $5 trillion in market capitalization since the peak. At its trough on October 9, 2002, the NASDAQ-100 had dropped to 1,114, down 78% from its peak. It took 15 years for the Nasdaq to regain its March, 2000 peak.
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