March 2007 Archives

I've been sidetracked by Movable Type woes, which are eating into my time and my peace of mind; thus, haven't been blogging much.  Check out the new author pages, linked in the left sidebar, when you get a chance; plus, the banner at the top of each page actually links to the main page of D5GW, now.  Sorry, still, to IE users, since I've found no solution as of yet.

During this time away from the front page, I've nonetheless had something in mind that seems to require a post.  I don't have much time to dig into it at the moment.  ("Yay!" I can almost hear the chorus sing...)  So I'll put it simply and leave it there:

The Dreaming 5GW Paradox.  Simply stated in two parts:

• Any successful 5GW effort will almost certainly be secret and unseen; the war may even occur without anyone else knowing it has happened.  So how can any exploration of the theory of 5GW, or any dream of 5GW, ever have specific examples of 5GW, to consider or discuss, a la John Robb or any of numerous of other explorers of contemporary conflict?  And so, what a futile attempt a blog about 5GW must make...


• Sure, I know that early 5GW attempts will almost certainly be sloppy, clumsy, and so might be seen and analyzed; but why on earth would anyone serious about 5GW hold those clumsy examples up as exemplary proof or even as a useful guide to understanding how 5GW might play out?  How can inept attempts tell us anything about "the real deal"?  They only tell us what 5GW is not.
  

Just had to get it out there. 

Five days ago, A. E. of Simulated Laughter posted a follow-up to an entry on D5GW with an entry titled "5GW and Obama -- Long Post."

The Republicans have employed a form of 4GW for a long time. The Democrats did not field a comparable effort, and are only beginning to develop the capacity right now.

I wanted to comment on that entry from the first, but back-end issues have kept me busy working on this site.  You can read the post to see what I meant when I finally commented there that I largely agree with A.E.'s argument.  In fact, his entry ties in rather well with my entry on "Toward a Better Understanding of 4GW" here at D5GW; I had in mind much of what he writes (minus specifics) in his post when I wrote mine.

Don't be fooled by this snippet of the post; mind the title, since it's a long post.  However, A.E. doesn't actually consider Obama much in the entry and does not appear to be calling Obama's political method 4GW.  I've suggested he needs a Part Two to that post.

In other comments there, Dan tdaxp asked an interesting question after quoting something I wrote:

Curtis,

"In any case, proficiency in utilizing a generational style of fighting also usually means greater proficiency at defending against that style, so opponents will need to "upgrade" if they have any hope of winning against a proficient 4GW foe."

Would you say that higher-G warfare is a product of a more complicated/advanced civilization and/or culture?

I have to say, that commenting elsewhere is not like posting an entry here; I tend to abridge and might even grow sloppy or flippant.  Does greater proficiency in utilization also produce greater proficiency in defending, with respect to a given style of warfare?  I think so, at least statistically.  However, Dan's question inspired another tie-in, with my look at OODA-xGW, "Observing the Maturing World," as well as this:

I'm not sure that maturity requires greater complexity, although it probably requires advancement! ;) However, if we think of a move away from largely linear warfare through asymmetric and "widely dispersed and largely undefined" warfare to a sort of expansive and yet inclusive warfare, it may seem like a movement up the chain of complexity from a linearly-restricted or even asymmetrically-restricted p.o.v.

But I would consider the reverse:

"A more complicated/advanced civilization and/or culture" may also be the product of "higher-G warfare." I.e., the necessities produced by/in conflict have an effect on civilization and culture, as well.

But who knows if any of this makes any sense.  Go read the post on Simulated Laughter, though; it's very intriguing, extremely well-thought.

My apologies to Internet Explorer users unable to sign in through TypeKey.

Recently I noticed, while doing some design work (the only time I use IE; because IE is notoriously not standards-compliant), I noticed that a Run Time error occurred after signing into a post through Internet Explorer.  After signing in at TypeKey, the user would be redirected back to the entry, but a Run Time error would display in a system pop-up box.  I left a help query at the Movable Type Community Forum -- generally, a desert without oases -- but have not received any feedback.

Today, I began working on another design issue (linking the banner at the top of pages to the main page of D5GW) and discovered another IE issue:  now, signing in through TypeKey does not work at all!  After clicking on the sign-in link, the page reloads without actually signing the user in.  I tried clearing my IE cookies; this caused the TypeKey page to load, where I could sign in, but the redirect back to the page reloads the page with the sign-in link without signing the user in.  Another MT user has had this exact problem.  When I first read of his problem, I was still able to sign in at D5GW through TypeKey with IE.  But no longer.

These issues suggest to me that TypeKey may have altered its routines for handling the sign-in process -- particularly since, as with the other user, nothing has been changed (that I know) on D5GW that would cause this problem.  Perhaps TypeKey's method of sending sign-on information or creating it is not entirely compatible with IE?  (I use version 6.0.x of IE.)  On the other hand, perhaps certain settings within IE cause the problem, and changes at TypeKey or with MT itself in 3.34 are now conflicting.  Dunno.  The other MT user actually has a much older version of MT (version 3.16) and had not changed anything before the error began occurring -- so, it's probably TypeKey.

The Yankees fan found one solution --

That solution may not be ideal for everyone; but isn't it about time to join the future?

Another solution would be a plugin I recently found which would allow an on-site registration and login features run through this site rather than the 'global' TypeKey registration: CommentRegistration at MT-Hacks.  This would mean that anyone wishing to comment would need to first register on-site with D5GW.

Yet another plugin I've recently found at MT-Hacks would mask the MT commenting script's name while, in theory, stopping spammers before their attempted comments could even reach the MT application:  Spam Firewall.  Perhaps this could allow commenting without registration with authentication services local or global.  Either way, this plugin, if it works as well and as smoothly as advertised, would also alleviate some of the burden on the server that spam-plus-MT causes.

I'm leery of using new plugins after the recent MT/FastCGI bugaboos.  However, I simply cannot handle the massive loads of spam that would hit the site if I removed comment registration altogether without finding alternative methods for limiting comment spam.

Of course, a solution to the current problem might come from TypeKey or the MT Community Forum.  I'll keep you posted.


UPDATE 4-7-07:  Problem solved, I think. At least, I've been able to sign in through TypeKey with IE and leave a test comment. A simple removal of "www" from the MT configuration file for the CGIPath fixed it. Anyone using IE and still experiencing problems should drop me an email; thanks!

I might as well launch this series on [potential] 5GW Warriors with a link to a video I watched for the first time tonight showing a man, a stage, an audience, and memes at work recontextualizing religious belief.

I don't know much about Sam Harris, although I've caught occasional references while surfing the Blogosphere.  A little reading tonight confirms one impression I had while watching the video:  Harris must surely be a controversial figure.  Although very open to the reality and benefit of spirituality and ethics, he is hostile toward organized religious belief and considers the "closed-book" cognitive approach to be a very dangerous aspect of modern societies.  However dangerous religious fundamentalism may be, in his estimation religious moderation may be even worse, simply because religious moderates tend to have no ability to see the fundamentalist belief system for what it is and thus allow the fundamentalists free rei(g)n.

One might wonder, as we have often wondered on D5GW, whether a 5GWarrior must always work clandestinely or may operate openly as Sam Harris operates.  Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett is another figure who brings the question to the forefront, and I suppose Bill Gates should not be dismissed from consideration, either.  Perhaps in a future update to this post or in an entirely other post I might address the question more thoroughly.  For now, I want to present a consideration of Sam Harris in three parts: a) the video, b) some key quotes from the video that may bear on the subject of 5GW theory, and c) a few extra thoughts inspired by the video and the man.  For a biography and deeper look at Sam Harris, I suggest searching through Google (although possibly, future posts on D5GW may dig deeper.)

ideaCity '05

The video is an appearance at the 2005 ideaCity Conference held in Toronto and seems to address the core of Sam Harris' arguments (given, admittedly, my limited knowledge of the man.)

[Sorry to those who do not have broadband connections; but you can check out the media page on Sam Harris' website for a downloadable copy (that will take forever to download on a dial-up connection...An audio-only MP3 can also be downloaded.)]

 

From ShaneBertou.com, in a post considering the YouTube video that uses an old AppleMac ad but inserts Hillary Clinton as the oppressive dictator/mind shaper:

This is no doubt an interesting development in the world of political advertising. It will be interesting to see if candidates begin to see YouTube as a powerful ally and begin viral ad campaigns geared more toward it. It will also be interesting to see if there is an emergence of more “mysterious” ads that will allow campaign managers to skirt around certain legal and ethical limitations in political advertising.

--and, interesting to see how motivated individuals not directly associated with any political campaign use viral marketing to affect democratic elections.  '08 may be the year of YouTube Politics.

UPDATE:  Interesting tie-in to this story. Did you know that YouTube actually set aside a special section on its web site for the 2008 presidential campaign?

 

 
I sure didn't. Today I stumbled across an AP story on the UsaToday site mentioning it, with the headline, "Obama leads the YouTube vote":

If the 2008 presidential election were held on YouTube, Barack Obama would win in a landslide.

Candidates of both parties have established channels on the video-sharing site. Earlier this month, YouTube set up a hub specifically for '08 candidates.

It has attracted the participation of Democrats: Illinois Sen. Obama, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd; and Republicans: Arizona Sen. John McCain, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

(A handful of declared candidates, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and California Rep. Duncan Hunter, don't have profiles on YouTube.)

YouTube has proven its power in influencing political campaigns in virally spreading clips such as when former Sen. George Allen, R-Va., uttered the word "macaca" during a campaign event. Though the site is adept at highlighting gaffs and blunders, whether it can do anything to swell positive support is another question entirely.

Three things interesting in this snippet:

1. The viral nature of such activity, and its power, is being acknowledged by the MSM. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised about this use of the term; perhaps I'm a few months or even years behind the times. In any case, I wonder if we should pay more attention to how the general discourse may change, in whatever way, as a signal of generational change.
2. The cast of characters are jolly-ho for keeping up with the times. I can't help thinking that Howard Dean's run was the real clicker for them (and for almost everyone else.)
3. The point about differentiating between "highlighting gaffs and blunders" and "swell[ing] support" is well-taken, and, I think, very important.

But here is why the article would predict such a 'landslide':

YouTube is a democracy of its own — every video can be ranked by the number of views its receives. In this online popularity contest, the 45-year-old Obama currently leads handily in view-counts.

That result isn't surprising since the YouTube audience is predominantly young. Obama, who was ahead of most of the competition by getting himself up on YouTube six months ago, had more than 627,400 views of his channel as of Tuesday. Several of his 21 videos have been watched by 100,000-plus.

Clinton trails with about 51,000 views on her channel. Edwards, whose campaign joined YouTube 11 months ago, has yielded 40,000 views. Richardson has some 14,100, Kucinich is nearing 14,000, Biden's channel has been seen by about 13,500 and Dodd is last with 3,800.

The Republicans have faired much worse, although Giuliani would come in third, with 43,100 views.

UPDATE#2: A.E. has linked an item on Simulated Laughter revealing the identity of the unknown creator of the anti-Hillary video.

Did you catch the sloppy rebuttal video, btw?

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

In general, the Winston Churchill quote is auspicious for 5GW dreaming.  Churchill's words alone would sum up the theory of 5GW that I have presented on D5GW, or at least the major thrust of that theory.  Whether speaking of OODA loops, or of complex abstractions like patriotism or loyalty and fidelity, or of how 5GW might be operationalized or defined, I have tended to put much weight behind the concept that shaping the minds of individuals will play the most significant role in 5GW conflicts.  I base this assumption on many factors, but primarily upon:

• The complexity of real globalization.
• The interconnectivity and inter-operability produced by advancing technology.
• Human nature, individual and social, private and public.
• The observation that 4GW depends greatly upon attacks on cognition, already, and that broadcast media will continue to play a major role in future conflict.
• The assumption that chaos -- chaotic interactions -- cannot increase perpetually without social order being reestablished or the human race ceasing to exist.

I have hit these topics in various ways in various places already.  To sum up:

Increasingly rapid advancement of technology and increasing levels and varieties of interaction in a globalizing world will make vertical establishment of a particular order relatively impossible -- relative to the efficacy of similar methods used in the past -- and thus chaos which would be resolved into a beneficial and desirable order will necessarily be resolved at the root level, i.e., at the level of the individual.  Guide the most individuals, and you will have the most influence in shaping the system -- if, that is, you guide them well.

I don't intend for that summary to be definitive, but only a limited guide to my thinking!

However, variant concepts for the fifth generation of warfare exist, some perhaps on this blog!  On D5GW, some disagreement appears to occur when discussing the operationalization of 5GW:  I with my head in abstractions continue to deal in broad frameworks and concepts related mostly to human cognition and ideology, and those who want the nuts & bolts consider more fully -- or at least, more often -- how 5GW might play out in the mundane, mud and blood environment.  Off Dreaming 5GW, concepts for the fifth generation of warfare range further afield:

• John Robb has his theory of 5GW, which is quite "mud and blood" -- that is, focuses on how conflict will play out on the street level, neighborhood level, and, more distantly (or vaguely, perhaps?) on the global level, in a very kinetic way.  I have criticized his theory before here and here; however, one must admit that the future conflict he describes has a tint of indirection permeating it, given how systempunkt attacks are described as causing more permanent (and influential!) damage far from them.


• RevG has a blog, Christian Soldiers, devoted almost entirely to the idea of 5GW  -- but just try locking down a description or concept of fifth generation warfare by reading the blog!  His theory seems more abstract than mine, even, since he delves into spirituality and spiritual issues almost exclusively, especially lately.  However, he does consider the roles that the disaffected techno-intelligentsia of the future might play in a 5GW scenario.
  


• Fix4RSO has been developing a concept of 5GW that is very technology-oriented while also acknowledging the large role that media will play.


• Thomas P.M. Barnett has given a personal dream of 5GW that appears very similar to what we discuss on D5GW -- but is maddeningly vague.  I.e., from other references to 5GW on his blog, one might say that Barnett believes in a multi-directional, multi-pronged 5GW, for shaping the activities of so many individuals by influencing them at the ground level; but these efforts will still be initiated primarily by states and corporations.  Not that I'm arguing against that possibility, but only that his concept of 5GW appears to eliminate the need for clandestine operation and a limited core of individual 5GWarriors so often discussed on D5GW.

Others have written of fifth generation warfare on the Blogosphere and elsewhere; this is only a representative list of some of the most divergent conceptualizations that I have read and may be archetypal for understanding the broad-ranging discussion of 5GW.  For instance, the Enigma Foundry took John Robb's concept and ran with it, while somewhat adding a twist.

I took EF's consideration of Churchill's statement, and am now running with it.  The quote I mean.  A search of the quotation via Google will show it has been used quite often  to address issues relating to:  education, biotech, business, politics.  The FBI even includes it in a list of quotations about the future, for its Futures Working Group area of their website exploring the shape of future policing.

All the theories of 5GW I have read, as well as theories relating to technology, education, government, and business, must rely upon one reality:  how people think/believe will influence how they operate in the future.  Divergent theories related to any human enterprise often have different assumptions about how we as individuals and as members of networks or societies view our world, interpret that world, and act in that world in accordance with what we observe and have observed.

If we look at the competing theories of 5GW, we might see which styles of observation still linger in the world.  We might wonder how others, who have never heard of 5GW, will nonetheless be motivated to act in ways addressed by each of the theories of 5GW (or any other theories of warfare.)

If future empires are to manifest, they will manifest when a sufficiently large number of people join an 'empire of mind.'  A manner of thinking produces a corresponding manner of doing.  If any one '5GW' becomes the reality, it will be because most people involved in conflict buy into that theory -- for instance, we might not be far wrong to assume that 4GW exists because a sufficient number of people think and operate in a 4GW manner.  What will move them out of that habit of thought?

Alan Sullivan of Fresh Bilge ponders the difference (that he would make) between loyalty and fidelity:

Of all the minor virtues, loyalty is most apt for twisting to evil purpose. Unlike fealty, loyalty has no intrinsic value. It is morally neutral. The question must always remain: loyalty to whom? In politics, loyalty to persons is constantly tested against fidelity to principles. In the hierarchy of values, fidelity is more important. Consider the plight of feminists, when President Clinton abused his office for sex with a subordinate. Many kept mum, sacrificing principle to personal loyalty. Some denied, defied, and decried, emboldening future abusers of women.

["Loyalty"]

You see this sort of thing happen all the time.  Not long ago, I considered the term "primary loyalties" and proposed the idea that a person's real primary loyalty is always to himself, even if he may have multiple loyalties to others.  This may account for part of Alan's distinction, particularly when he considers tribalism vs the rule of law:

Throughout human history, until quite recently, most people lived under mafias of one sort or another. The original capos sported bearskins or lion claws. Later, more civilized rulers wore mufti or imperial purple. Now we have power suits. The clothing doesn’t matter; loyalty is always the essence of mafia rule. The price of disloyalty is banishment or death.

But there is an alternative form of governance: rule by law rather than by men. This system is more difficult to maintain. It cuts against the grain — humankind’s history of tribalism. It requires constant vigilance to prevent impartial law from degenerating into mere favoritism. When Noonan sees excessive reverence for personalities and indifference to principles spreading among Republicans, she is witnessing the onset of the Republic’s dissolution.

What causes the split, the move toward mere favoritism from the rule of law?  Quite possibly, those who move in that direction do not see much personal gain possible in the law:  to the degree that it affects everyone the same, no advantage can be gained by sticking to a rule of law regardless of what individual personalities can promise to give you.  I would note that such a trend may happen no matter the forms of that law -- democratic or despotic, it makes no difference when considering the relative advantages of sticking to a rule of law, or fidelity, and sticking to loyalty to persons, if the law affects everyone equally.  To the degree that the law does not affect everyone equally, the trend will be accelerated.  Despotic rule inspires loyalty to persons over fidelity to principles; or rather, the ruling principle becomes:  loyalty to those wielding the power of law.

5GW implications can be found in this conflict.

The rule of law, as Alan uses the term, is really a principle, in which individual laws are, together, a complex set of lesser principles.  Their individual rule should be basic and complementary if the consilient principle, rule of law, is going to have any cognitive force itself.

In discussions concerning geopolitical realities, the consilient principle often becomes merely a vague idea.  For instance, Sharia is a complex set of laws and, no doubt, many of those who would institute Sharia globally have great faith in the rule of law even though others looking in on their activities may believe they have no such thing.  Those who regularly oppose the institution of Sharia law in places where it does not yet hold absolute sway may grow confused at their own inability to institute some other form of the rule of law:  essentially, such battlefields have conflicting rule-sets, conflicting laws, and the consilient principle rule of law can only remain vague in such an environment.  This situation reminds me of a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson I recently highlighted in another post:

The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.

[RWE, from "Circles"]

--well, there is the primary loyalty, helm; and there is the consilient rule of law, or, idea which commands his own: a star by which he can guide his ship while believing that his own helm is still to be trusted.  The more stars, of indeterminate brilliance, the more static; and the more static, the more room for loyalties to shipmates who can promise a safe voyage or transparent and obvious path through the chaos.

We can transfer such a dynamic to any consideration of memes at war, ideologies at war, etc. The greater the generalization, the greater the necessity that the ideas it would encompass must be complementary; complementarity in this case means, that those who would be guided by that generalization are, every one, able to see that complementarity. (We are talking cognition, here.) True, we might consider the possibility that each individual being guided by that star may have idiosyncratic and limited observations of that generalization, or may find a unique personal relationship to that generalization or see more clearly some of the subordinate ideas but less clearly other ideas -- but these diverse individuals will come into contact with one another during their voyage. If they are to steer a single ship to victory, they will need a common perception of that star; indeed, they must have a common perception of a single ship. Otherwise, mutiny can be expected, or else the ship will go nowhere because no one can agree on what part of the ship is the helm, what are the sails, and so forth.

Anybody else getting this error when trying to sign in through TypeKey?

Can't locate object method "new" via package "Crypt::DSA" at lib/MT/Util.pm line 1648.

Visitor Isaac emailed me to let me know that he's received this error. I decided to log out at TypeKey from my TypeKey account, revisit the blog, and try hitting "Sign In."

Now I'm getting that error. I can't comment on D5GW anymore.

Things like this make me wish -- really really wish -- I had never heard of LivingDot. Who knows if it's a problem with the fact that the commenting script is still on FastCGI? Or is it the upgrade to MT 3.34? I do know that the Managing Director of LivingDot was rather insistent that I should require TypeKey authentications; and I suspected (but could only guess) that the two plugins I used before to filter out spam may have been causing a problem with server load; but now I've done it and MT is rather useless for me again. And valued visitors like Isaac -- and who knows how many more, who gave up on commenting after one failed attempt -- are finding this site rather useless for engaging in conversation about 5GW.

I realize that asking the question is rather silly. If you're having the problem, you won't be able to comment on it! Sigh. I had no problem leaving comments before logging out at TypeKey, but now I'm logged in at TypeKey but still can't leave comments, still get the error.

I'll update this post as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Problem appears to be fixed.

UPDATE #2: For additional info related to commenting errors or submitting feedback related to errors while commenting, check out a list of entries tagged "Commenting Errors."

I do know, as of 3-23-07, that some users of Internet Explorer who sign in successfully through TypeKey may get a Runtime Error on the redirect back to an individual post. My understanding of javascript, and especially how the MT-utilized javascript works, is quite limited; but I'm searching for solutions. Users experiencing this problem should be able to comment still.

Recently on tdaxp, Dan highlighted a comment that his friend Aaron had left on a 5GW-related post at tdaxp:

I don't find patriotism some quality to aspire to. It's racism minus the pigmentary convenience.

[Aaron, from "Comment Upgrade: Patriotism and the Iraq War"]

As might be expected, the comment has created a controversy. Some patriots are wondering how their patriotism makes them racist.  Others wonder if the loose use of the concept of racism makes it meaningless.  The comment was made in the context of the Iraq war and politics -- so there we have another occasion for controversy, and a burgeoning debate over whether Democrats or Republicans are authentically patriotic, or liberals or conservatives.

Dan left a short comment wondering what was meant by the statement:

I'm interested in how patriotism is just racism without the skin color. Is it because both are forms of in-group favoritism?

[Dan tdaxp]

This comment, as well as the looser connection with the subject of 5GW in the original thread which ultimately threaded through various things to the issue of patriotism, led me to leave a comment relating the subject back to 5GW and away from the aforementioned controversies:

My host has moved the main MT interface back to regular cgi from FastCGI, and I've been able to access core features and tweak the site further. The removal of additional plugins necessitated revisions to the page templates -- a none-too difficult task, since I'd already revised them to remove a lot of plugin activity during rebuilds -- but most aspects of the blog should appear as before.

Commenting and trackbacks are back online. However, some changes to the way these work on D5GW were required due to the removal of one plugin that filtered spam:

• TypeKey authentication is now required for comments.* I may have to tweak the settings still, because MT is now automatically inserting another message: that new commenters may have their comments moderated until they can be approved. I meant to change the settings so that Typekey users would have their comments posted immediately; and that may still occur. If using TypeKey and your comments are held for moderation, I'll be able to go into the system and set your commenting status to "trusted" which should allow immediate posting of comments in the future.
• All trackbacks will be moderated for approval. This is unfortunate, but even with the old plugins, the site received a lot of bad trackbacks which the system sent into "junk status." I check trackbacks (and comments) quite regularly, so any left on the site that aren't spam should post rather quickly.

In addition to these changes, a few others:

Recently, an automatic email notice for new posts and new comments to specified posts had been added to the site, but it's no longer available. Sorry. That was another plugin I've deleted from the system. Unlike many other plugin deletions, however, this decision resulted from a worrying thread of comments on a couple of other sites related to the possibility that spammers were somehow accessing the plugin, on some sites, and adding email address after email address, until thousands of notifications for new posts and comments were being sent out to unsuspecting recipients. I had actually purchased a use license for the plugin, so this is irritating; but perhaps a future version will be safe for use.

Site news like this last string of posts will now appear as links in the right sidebar of the main page of D5GW. As long as the site is working, I see no need to detract from the discussion of 5GW with endless site notices. Especially those I write: they're so long! A permanent link in the heading of the section in the sidebar will lead to a search of all posts tagged "Site Notice", even if no new news appears there, for anyone wanting to backtrack through developments.

Entry tags have replaced category and monthly archives. This is a new feature with Movable Type 3.3x, and it may be one of my favorites. Visitors rarely used the archives to search through sites, anyway; and the categories were too broad; so a lot of trudging was required when searching for specific post. (Why not use the search function? I've wondered.) Plus, rebuilds of the category and monthly archive pages took a lot of system resources, particularly given the fact that two blogs are hosted on my server space. Most old entries haven't yet been "tagged", so not all will show up -- yet -- through tag searches; but you can click the linked tags below posts that have them to find similarly tagged entries.

Finally, I write this notice with a little trepidation, because I don't know how long the good times will last. My host is rather insistent about having everyone on the server (over 300!) use FastCGI, and I'm not sure if trying to run the main MT interface over FastCGI at a future date will nullify all of the improvements I've recently made in my attempts to optimize the site. Comments and the search feature will continue to be fed through FCGI; they are the biggest server hogs for any blog. (Irritating that so many nameless spammers can have this downstream effect. I suffer no problems in two years of 'residence' at this host -- heck, even have two small-time, relatively nameless blogs -- and swarms of spammers cause this kind of grief.)

Everything works right now; but later? Stay tuned. My greatest apologies to our regular core of visitors, for any frustration this has caused; and my thanks to those who have written me privately to offer their support.

[Originally posted March 8, 2007]

*UPDATE 3-15-07:  Be sure to set your TypeKey account to pass your email address when commenting.  This is an option which can or cannot be set in TypeKey, but D5GW requires an email address for posting comments.

Anyone still having problems commenting should send an email to "static" + "@" + this site's address (fifthgeneration.phaticcommunion.com).

*UPDATE 3-18-07: A missing perl module was causing TypeKey sign-ins from the site to return an error; but the problem has been fixed. However, anyone who has logged in recently may need to reload a comment page or clear the cache, since the commenting script was briefly run through cgi rather than FastCGI, is now back on FastCGI, and the links for commenting and for signing in or out through TypeKey will have changed back and forth during this period.

Due to a dramatic increase of trackback spam following recent site revisions, D5GW will now attempt to block frequent spam loads by blocking site access for would-be spammers, via .htaccess filtering of posts based on certain words included in feedback.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may present not only to visitors wishing to leave feedback, but also to contributors writing posts! All posting action which includes the following key words will be blocked directly by the server:

(I am posting this list as an image, because I will not be able to post the actual words! The image will update if and when new words are added to the list.)

Of course, D5GW will always constrain the list of banned words, to limit the inconvenience for our valued commenters, trackbackers, and contributors!

My high school buddy and science fiction writer Raymund Eich has begun a series of posts which will explore the requirements placed upon science fiction writing by potential future geopolitical realities:

Anyone writing science fiction set in the next century has to think about three questions in international politics.

• Will China become a superpower or not?
• Will India become a superpower or not?
• Will the United States remain a superpower or not?

["Eight Futures 1", The Transhuman Comedy]

Part one opens with these questions.  In part two of the series, Raymund responded to a comment I left in part one by offering a working definition of "superpower":

A superpower is an organization that drives interpolity relations in the medium term (decades) and leaves a legacy across polities in the long term (decades to centuries).

["Eight Futures 2", The Transhuman Comedy]

The definition is broad enough to be interesting and relevant to the subject of 5GW; Raymund explains the definition further in the post.

Where Raymund adds an interesting twist to 5GW theory is in the conclusion to part two.  He introduces a consideration of future technology and the peculiar constraints and limitations which such otherwise empowering technology will have on the development of "superpowers," but without ruling out the potential for superpowers to exist in a 5GW world:

What will "superpower" mean in the future? Accepting arguendo Curtis's view that 5GW is inevitable--a view consonant with both my reading of Van Creveld and my sfnal thoughts on molecular manufacturing, cheap simple robotics, and distributed emergent computing--the time will come when no state has the power to police its territory for criminals and rebels. When no state can prevent pirate and terrorist predations. When no state can conquer territory save by nuclear genocide. Yet within these constraints, some states could be superpowers and drive the international agenda, just as ancient rulers could, in one sense, dominate a large chunk of the world while, in an another, being utterly ignorant of the assets and attitudes of their subjects and the capabilities and intentions of their neighbors. For this reason, the term "superpower" has legs left.

Alternatively, could a non-state actor be a superpower? Picture a James Bond supervillian who really can build a moonbase with a giant "laser" capable of destroying a city; or more plausibly, an organized crime gang using molecular manufacturing/robotics/computing to dominate affairs in Third World slums or the communes of an ethnic diaspora. Whether such an organization can drive international affairs for decades is another question, but it's not automatically ridiculous to ask. I'll leave the question of whether such an organization would leave any legacy other than "you too can become Keyser Soze/Dr. Evil" to the reader.

I'll be keeping my eye on this series as it develops!

Courtesy, Against the tide & the necessity of tacking, by Razib

Let me assume for a moment that you, the reader, are in the minority of the human race which does not subscribe to the supernatural religions. How are we to deal with the fact of the ubiquity of religious belief and practice? If religion is a natural phenomenon, what engineering responses can be taken to tame it? If one is building a road and one encounters a mountain there are multiple options which are available. One might destroy the mountain with explosives. One might tunnel through the mountain. Or, one might build around the mountain. Each choice has costs and benefits. Tearing down the mountain will be difficult and entail great cost, and, the consequences of such a geological rearrangement on the overall environment are not trivial. Tunneling through the mountain is an engineering challenge, not without its costs or dangers, though one would expect that the environmental impact might be less than tearing down the mountain as the geological rearrangment is trivial. Finally, going around the mountain involves less cost, but would add length to the road which would translate into long term costs of time for anyone traveling the path (so, the short term cost is slight, but integrated over time it would build up). But a choice we make for one mountain is not a choice we need to make for all mountains, and just as some engineers specialize in tearing down mountains, so others focus on efficient road building. Religion is a complex phenomenon, and if we as unbelievers are to engage it and turn it to our own ends our own models must be sufficiently nuanced and our courses of action multi-faceted and conditional. Otherwise, we fall into the fallacies of the fundamentalists, who are wont to divide the world into their imaginings of darkness and light, denying the textured gradations of reality.

Read the rest at Gene Expression.

-- not the news, but the new.

One thing that has bugged me about many detractors of 5GW theory (and 4GW theory, the generational warfare model, etc.):  their perverse concept of "newness."  The perversion in their use of the concept has three main qualities, or attendant assumptions/presumptions.

I often return to reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays whenever my thinking grows stale and tedious.  I just as often put his book of essays aside for long periods, after it seems to grow stale and tedious.  So there is this circular motion in my habit of reading Emerson.  His thoughts tend to be rose-colored, expressed through compound and complex metaphors in the romantic style, more advocacy than anything else, which make them tedious after too much reading; but when my own dreams have begun to die in wakefulness, I return to be led to the promised land.

When I first began reading Emerson's essays, I treasured the book and was very careful with it.  I was either eighteen or nineteen years old.  I held the book with reverence and kept it safe from stains and tears.  Eventually, however, I began to use a highlighter to mark passages which seemed to signify the most important ideas in the essays.  As I've grown older, I'm glad for the highlights:  I can return to the essays without having to trudge through the long and convoluted prose.  However, though I'll often skim through the essays looking for these touchstones, I usually end up reading the non-highlighted portions for context!  Plus, of course, I sometimes want to get lost in the "long and convoluted prose."

Recently, I opened the book to a highly theoretical essay, "Circles," and was surprised by the 5GW overtones of some of the highlighted portions.  A realist, after reading them, might suggest that many of my thoughts posted to D5GW so many years later were probably colored by these passages, if not outright thefts!

So I'm going to revisit these passages and attempt to tie them to my own thoughts, in the same way that I recently tied Thomas Barnett's flight of fancy to my own, while adding to the highlighted portions some context.

A quick note, if this post actually publishes:

Despite a lull of about 24 hours, problems with the site have continued. (A post I spent hours writing has failed to publish to the site, and the Movable Type interface which caused no problems for about 24 hours is now spitting out the same old errors.)

Over the next 24 hours or so -- possibly quite less than that, if we're lucking -- I'm going to attempt a fix which I'm hoping will solve most of the problems. During that period, comments and trackbacks will not work. The problems we've been experiencing may be related to how a plugin used to filter out spam in comments and/or trackbacks over-loads FastCGI operation. I'm hoping so, at least. Once the plugin is removed, the template for the commenting page will need to be altered to remove the relevant codes before commenting and trackbacks will be operational. At the moment, I'm unable to access the page for editing that template, because of the overload on FastCGI. I get an error when I attempt to move to the template screen. MT will need to re-set in FastCGI before I'm able to complete the changes, and that can take between 3 & 4 hours.

We will also be moving to requiring TypeKey authentication for commenting:  a slight hassle for would-be commenters, but hopefully not much of a hassle.

Is it journalism? Is it docu-drama? Is it archeo-porn? Is it a window into a 5GW operation? This last Sunday evening, without the distraction of NFL football and not being a fan of Desperate Housewives, my television landed on the Discovery channel and The Lost Tomb of Jesus. The program was promoted as a James Cameron (Executive Producer) documentary and was followed by an hour-long discussion hosted by Ted Koppel including the film’s Director and Writer Simcha Jacobovici and several archeological and theological experts.

In a nutshell, the program is about a tomb that was discovered in Jerusalem in 1980 during a construction project. Inside the tomb were several ossuaries, or boxes where the bones of a person are kept. The mystery begins when several of the boxes are discovered to be inscribed with what are possibly the names of the persons whose bones are inside them. These names, when taken together and with a bit (some would certainly argue more than a bit) of massaging, suggest that this tomb belonged to the family of the biblical Jesus and contained not only his remains but those of his mother Mary, two of his brothers (who were disciples), possibly Mary Magdalene and perhaps the remains of his son. The claims are backed up by the suggestion of science and the statistical probability of this combination of names being found in any other tomb in Jerusalem.

It seems that I look at the world now with 5GW glasses. I can’t read a spy novel or listen to a newscast without a little thought in the back of my head prodding me to consider how something would work as a part of, or engineered by, a 5GW campaign. For this particular program that little, persistent thought was armed with an air-horn, and waving a banner while leading the official 5GW marching band. It wasn’t the subject matter; though finding remains of a person who could have been the biblical Jesus in sufficient quantity to conduct DNA testing certainly is provocative, but rather the positioning of the evidence that caused a blip to appear on my 5GW radar.

I thought the problems had been fixed, but no: the errors the server log just compound. I don't even know whether this entry will publish -- with or without errors. Help from LivingDot has dried up, or they've given up.

I've spent over thirty hours since this began just trying to get the thing working:

First, a slow and tedious process of visiting plugin homepages, looking for updates; installing updates to them or deleting other plugins. Revising templates when necessary to reflect the change in plugins in use.

Things seemed to work -- but alas, no, they didn't.

So now I've revised templates to remove some more plugin use. I've also deleted category and monthly archiving; those archives were rarely used, in any case, by anyone. The new 3.3x tagging system has been implemented in the templates, which would prove to be a much better method for aiding visitors' searches of relevant data -- if, that is, MT 3.34 under FastCGI worked as well as the selling shtick would have everyone believe. I've thought that these changes, at least, would cut down on server load.

Yes, a few references around the Blogosphere about how MT 3.34 under FastCGI! works on Site A or Site B; and, yes, my host claims my installation is the only one experiencing problems, of all they host using MT 3.34 and FastCGI; but a few others have had problems as well. Anyway, the MT forums and the SixApart site as well are even barer in offering help or aid.

What happens when Firefox upgrades their browser? Ah, incompatible plugins are disabled, but the browser keeps on working. Heck, Firefox even searches for upgrades to plugins! What happens when MT upgrades? Crashes, errors, and a resounding silence from Sixapart: no lists of known incompatibilities (save the big BigPAPI plugin incompatibility), no FAQs addressing anything like the errors now constantly appearing in my server logs, nada.

Of course, I didn't install FastCGI and Movable Type 3.34 on my server. That was LivingDot. One day, I arrive home from work (because, despite the fact that I've spent over 30 hours trying to fix these problems over the last few days, I do have to work for a living. And sleep, when I can. Etc.) -- I log in, and the site's down. No email from LivingDot telling me why. So I think some sort of error has occurred, or perhaps some hacking. An error caused the last service outage, many months ago, after all. I create a service ticket w/ LivingDot, asking them why the site is down.

Aha! The site was suspended, due to too much server hogging. I've been w/ Living Dot for almost two years, have never had this problem before, and am shocked. What can I do? I ask.

I'm told that the site will be unsuspended, and they'll install FastCGI, which helps Movable Type operate up to 15x faster! I say, okay. They also upgrade MT from v. 3.2x to v. 3.34; 3.34 is built to run on FastCGI, after all.

For nearly two years, the only thing keeping me from blogging: my occasional boredom with blogging.

My installation of MT is upgraded by my host: and now, blogging's a hit-or-miss enterprise. I could actually blog about conversations occurring in our slim neck of the Blogospheric woods -- heck, I saw one post at Global Guerrillas that I thought deserved a post here at D5GW -- but why bother spending the hours to create an entry if the MT installation locks up during the save, spits out an error -- or, if visitors will be unable to comment on it? (And where would I find the time to give to writing the entry, studying the Blogospheric finds, etc., when I'm spending 7, 8, or 9 hours a day just trying to fix the installation?)

In any case....sorry, this has turned into a rant. I appear to have three options before me:

1. I can delete every damned plugin from the system. Sure, MT 3.34 comes loaded with a few basic plugins, so maybe I should not touch those. But otherwise, I could delete everything and be satisfied with a fairly generic set-up. The automatically created cross-post links would disappear. Other things would disappear from the site. But generic is good, right? I also understand that Movable Type has made a selling point about being able to personalize an installation via plugins -- there's even a very very very special page in the MT interface for doing just that -- but no. I can't delete one plugin, wait 4-12 hours for MTunderFastCGI to recognize its disappearance, and see if that fixes the problem. And then, re-add the plugin while deleting the next plugin in my list, wait 4 -12 hours for MT to recognize these changes, and see if that works. Why? Because each and every cycle would require changes to the templates or how the site is designed. And I'd be looking at having the site down for the better part of the month of March if I took such a route -- there could, after all, be conflicts between plugins rather than merely a single bad plugin; so I'd have to try all combinations, in 4-12 hour cycles, while trying to earn a living/sleep/etc. Nope. Best to get rid of them all and go generic.
2. Alternatively, if I'm going to have a rather standard blog, with little personalization possible, I sure as hell don't need to keep dishing out the $68 every three months I'm now paying to a host that upgrades installations into nightmarish time-eaters. Google's Blogger would serve as well, and is free.
3. And last -- but not at all least, I think -- I could give up blogging altogether. So much smoke and hot air, for what purpose? Two years of it is enough, for any stretch. This would not only save me money, but it would save me time. As for "5GW" -- well, if that concept as we've explored it here is anywhere near what the truth will be, then perhaps it's way past time for others to spend their lives exploring it. Hands in the field, and all that. If it's accurate, it will develop anyway, and others will observe it anyway. So to hell with it, maybe.

I've been hoping for a magic pill from LivingDot, SixApart, and the 'Net in general to clear up these problems with the installations, but have been unable to find info. Searches which include text from the errors in the logs, when combined with "MT" turn up either absolutely no results or only a handful of useless results. This is probably because SixApart rushed the damn thing to press -- announcing 3.34 in January of this year. And, as my host has written to me, LivingDot is not in the business of developing the blogging engine. That, my friends and perhaps soon-to-be-past visitors, is a lesson for the Open-Source-Warfare advocates:

So many people feeding into the process, and every one of them falling into one of two groups:

• The In-Bred: who talk to themselves and amongst themselves and are primarily concerned with making their own uses of a process work. (SixApart.) Others just have to suffer through the addition of so many miscellaneous inclusions of data. But the In-Bred will make money off those others by continuing to hype the "open-source" and "personalizable" aspects of their hierarchical central-node. They won't even pay much attention to what gets added to their code, or what plugins are available, or to conflicts in code -- especially, if it's not code they've also added to their God System -- although they'll occasionally make a show of it.
• The Lost: Dependent on the In-Bred, The Lost are deceived by dreams of uniqueness and specialization and personal distinction and achievement. In order to operate, they will usually go Generic every time, because that's simplest; but this doesn't make them less lost. Those who would move beyond the Generic will find that there's just too much data, too much conflict, and too much chaos; and they will be lost in another way.

But combine the two groups to see the encompassing generalization: In such an environment, there can be no adepts nor experts. Only the insular and self-sustaining (the ignorati) or the finally lost and helpless. Everyone becomes a perpetual novice.

If a country were beset by John Robb's global guerrillas, could a 5GW organization operate openly? In particular, I am thinking if you actually have a land where forming a central government is impossible, a 4GW movement may proceed to manipulate actors in order to create a situation where the correlation of forces is working toward a result that is perceived by the actors to be beneficial to their own personal goals and desires?

I'm glad to be able to say: Mission complete!

Well, it's a bit like having George W. Bush say that...heh. Almost all areas of the blog are now updated and working following the recent upgrade from Movable Type 3.2 to Movable Type 3.34 and to FastCGI-- but not quite all.

I learned something about Movable Type operating under FastCGI: MT is loaded in memory and run from there rather than called from the hard drive repeatedly. This makes MT operate much faster (14 -15 times faster) -- but unfortunately, it's loaded with all the configuration settings, apparently. This means that any changes to the plugins installed to MT will not appear for several hours at least, or until MT is once more loaded into memory. Movable Type is notorious about making significant changes to their system every '.1' upgrade, and invariably such changes will cause plugins previously designed by others to fail or else conflict with the new MT core or with other plugins installed on the system.

Over two years with Movable Type, beginning with Phatic Communion, I've installed a lot of plugins to the system, even quite a few I no longer use. The templates for D5GW were designed with some plugins in mind; other plugins configured the MT interface to add features for the contributors of D5GW, such as cross-post links. With every MT upgrade, the templates have to be rebuilt, but I couldn't do that until I either deleted plugins or updated them to be compatible with the new version of MT. Updates to plugins occasionally require revising template tags that come with those plugins.

But using FastCGI meant that any changes to plugins whatsoever wouldn't take effect for hours! Of course, I did not realize this for the first day or two, or understand it. So I spent hours changing the plugins, then I spent hours wondering why nothing was working the way it ought to work! (Searching through forums and blog posts, going into CPanel and checking that files were present and installed in the correct place -- or deleted, in the case of old plugins...Sending email after email to my host LivingDot...)

To make a very long story a little shorter: I'm not 100% sure even now that things are configured optimally. Commenting and trackbacks should now be functional. However,

• In testing comments, I've noticed that comments on very old entries may publish, but the visitor is sent to either a 404 Not Found page or a blank page after the comment is saved!
• Additionally, comments to older posts seem to take much longer to save regardless of where the commenter is sent after it is saved.

I'm not certain why this occurs. All test comments I've made to newer posts seem to publish quickly without errors.

I've also had trouble rebuilding the archive pages from the batch-rebuild interface for MT. I had to reduce the number of individual entries built at one time from 40 to 10 just to get through the process here at D5GW -- and, the process still ended on an error page with the rebuild of Phatic Communion. At PC, I kept hitting "refresh" on my browser every time this happened, and the process would pick up where it had left off; so I finally got through it. Toward the end of the process, the rebuilds picked up speed and finished without a hitch (for the last 100 posts or so on PC). I checked my CPanel stats and discovered that a spammer had been trying to leave comments during that time. So I suspect that excessive server load -- the problem that started this upgrade process originally -- may have caused the normal operation of MT to lock up.

Unfortunately, at PC I've not yet been able to complete the rebuild process for the monthly and category archives, although I've managed to rebuild most of them and have rebuilt all of the individual post pages. D5GW, with fewer posts and archives, has been completely rebuilt with relatively little hassle (during the rebuild, that is.) I am considering revising how the category and monthly archives are designed, to limit the amount of data that must be updated every time a new post is made: particularly, which plugins are used on those pages, since each plugin is another process MT must run for every page rebuild. Perhaps that would help in cutting down on server load.

For now, I'll call it "Mission Accomplished!" and revise the definitions of those two words as appropriate! I apologize to our readers for the long delay, and hope for a little patience as new bugs are found.

Update Er, no. Had to make a final edit to a plugin eating up too much server time -- MTPaginate -- or, that is, delete it. System will reconfigure eventually, noticing that it is gone. I hope. Because I can't edit templates or much of anything else until it does. (I couldn't even post this entry, for the longest time, until the system reloaded; plus, this entry appears to have no individual archive page.) I'm going to need to redesign the monthly and category archive templates after all, since they use the pagination plugin; and I can't do that until the system realizes the plugin is no longer installed. Sigh.

Update #2: Plugins have updated, templates have been redesigned, archives have been rebuilt, and everything seems to be back on track and working now.

I may still have to redesign the archives at some point, because the more information included per post, and the more plugin activity for each post, on each of the archive pages (monthly and category, and hopefully soon, author archives), the longer the system takes to rebuild archives to show an updated comment count. Each new comment also causes a rebuild of the main page of D5GW and the individual post page, as well as the index I php include on these pages in order to show the most recent comments. These processes can eat up server memory -- and may have been behind the problem I had originally. But I have eliminated the pagination plugin on the archive pages, which undoubtedly took a lot of processing power.

Comment spam which isn't published shouldn't cause these things to occur; so I'm rethinking how the archives work on D5GW (and PC.) I hardly ever use them anyway, and don't see much use of them by visitors; so I'm tempted to list only titles on the archive pages linking to individual posts, rather than all the info I now include.

If this update to the above post saves properly, then everything should be in order, finally.