Surveillance made slightly too simple

The Guardian posted an excellent animation called “The NSA and surveillance… made simple”, which I urge you to watch to put some things in perspective. However, like most of the coverage of the seedy business of government surveillance, it leaves out two important points:

1. It’s not just about you being under surveillance, and how you feel about that. You probably have nothing to hide, since you are not that interesting, not doing anything that challenges those in power or the law as it currently stands (except possibly the copyright laws). But democracy is dependent on being constantly examined and challenged. Not very long ago, racial discrimination was the law inside the western world’s largest democracy. Not much longer ago, the law against homosexual acts in one of the world’s oldest democracies may have driven the father of computer science to suicide. (Incidentally, he had worked for a predecessor of today’s spying organizations in the war against fascism.) It’s not always the bad guys that need to hide from the authorities. Sometimes it’s their innocent victims. Sometimes it’s people upon whom democracy depends. Reporters, whistleblowers, activists of oppressed minorities etc., all need room to maneuver. Allowing the authorities to keep tabs on everyone takes democracy away. It’s not just about holding elections; remember, the German Democratic Republic held elections too.
2. “It’s not just that our present governments shamelessly peep through our windows. They are building an infrastructure for tomorrow’s tyrants.” (Formulation from Beelzebjörn.) You may think that the officials of your government are all fair, just, and competent. To a large part, I agree with you, but some developments scare me. Practices implemented to block criminal content from the internet (instead of charging the criminals) will now be used to block “extremist narrative”.  Publishing government secrets is labeled terrorism. And so on. Today’s activists may be tomorrow’s “terrorists”. Across Europe, political parties that reasonable people label fascist are gaining popularity and influence. You may not like the governments of tomorrow, and there won’t be much to stop them if basic democratic rights like privacy and free speech are already shattered. Remember also, that future authorities will have access to some of the records on us that our governments collect today.

Inflation, energy, and magic

On a bicycle tour of Rome, in front of Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the guide’s words put me on an interesting train of thought. “Do you see a pile of discs down to the right? Those are coins, symbolizing the first gold imported from America, which was used for building St. Peter’s Basilica and other parts of the Vatican city.” (There might be objections to this historical account, but never mind, I don’t think they dilute my reasoning too much.)

What value did the imported gold have to the construction of some of the most famous buildings in European history? It wasn’t building material. It didn’t contribute any labor per se, nor any knowledge about construction of monumental buildings. The gold wasn’t really used for the buildings – except possibly a small part for decorations – yet it drove the process of creating them.

When the gold was issued as payment to contractors who built the St. Peter’s Basilica, the amount of “money” in Rome increased, and the gold economy was, to some degree, inflated. Like entropy, inflation is the result of energy dispersing in pieces that cannot be put together again. But inflation in itself isn’t the driving force. The force comes from a displacement of value, a local tension that yearns to be relaxed. In the case of the American gold import, the tension lies in the amount of “money” owned by the church. A local amassment of a kind of potential energy, which drives a process of economic activity, like the displacement of water causes streams to cascade down mountains and drive the turbines of hydropower plants.

The sun throws four million tons of mass-energy into space every second, a tiny fraction of which feeds what we know as life on the surface of a rock 150 million kilometers away. Solar energy is called renewable, but in the large scale of things, it isn’t. The sun shrinks. Mass and energy are smoothed out, and the universe cools.

The source of economic energy is more mysterious. There is no shrinking fireball of money. Whether money is tied to some perceived value of a rare metal, or whether it’s created as debt when a bank registers a loan, it’s an entity that exists only in our minds. It’s something we agreed on. Made up.

Yet it drives the wheels that power society. It’s magic. Real magic.