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In Future Imperfect David Friedman presents a wide variety of possible futures, “some attractive, some frightening, few dull.” Looking through a lens of science fiction and fact, Friedman explores how libertarian ideas can help us adjust our lives and institutions to technological change ranging from computer crime to nanotechnology, from contracts in cyberspace to aging research.

Friedman, a professor of law at Santa Clara University and the author of the libertarian classic The Machinery of Freedom, applies law to economics and economics to the law, enhancing our understanding of both. He is properly skeptical of lawsuits: “Litigation is a clumsier and less efficient mechanism than trade; on average, of every dollar spent by a defendant only about fifty cents ends up with a plaintiff, the rest going to lawyers, court costs, and the like.” Yet future technologies will have to pass through the legal wringer, and Friedman excels at projecting what will happen when they do.

Take online privacy. Friedman’s view picks up from David Brin’s foundational 1998 book The Transparent
Society: Public surveillance is clearly growing, banks and governments monitor credit and bureaucratic transactions, cameras in public areas have been effective at reducing crime in Europe and their use will inevitably rise. Some law enforcement officials are arguing that governments should use microphones to augment the cameras. Friedman thinks they soon will cover every urban area in every developed nation.

The scenario sounds Orwellian, but Friedman (and Brin) argue that we can use it to enhance our freedom. For this to happen, surveillance cannot be a police privilege; it must belong not just to the powerful but to everyone. In the Friedman/Brin vision, instead of a centralized state watching its subjects, everyone will watch each other. The cameras become a public resource, assuring that no mugger is hiding around the corner, that our children are playing safely in the park, and that police are not abusing their power.

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Still, an Internet-friendly president could also mean one who is more exposed to different points of view by taking in information and opinions that aren’t filtered by his inner circle of advisers or the mainstream media, according to David D. Friedman, author of “Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World.”

“One of the general problems of governments  . . .  is the gatekeeper problem,” Friedman said. “The person who controls access to the monarch has enormous power, and if you think about a modern society, the president can’t have a complete picture of what is happening in the world because various mechanisms are filtering.

“Obama looks like he is the first techie president,” Friedman continued. “He, like me, is used to using the Internet, and if he chooses, he could spend an hour a day wandering the Web to find out what bloggers who don’t agree with him are saying.”

Anyone out there using technology to push the political envelope? What’s the strategy?

]]> http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2009/01/losing-the-presidents-filter/feed/ 0 http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/11/david-friedman-at-cato-now-live/ http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/11/david-friedman-at-cato-now-live/#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:16:48 +0000 CambridgeBlog http://www.cambridgeblog.org/?p=1220

Future Imperfect author David Friedman spoke at the CATO Institute earlier this month. The edited podcast and Book Forum video are now live.

Listen to the Podcast >>

The full video of the presentation can be found here.

The Future as We Don’t Know It

By William Saletan (From Slate.com)

I just got back from a talk by David Friedman at the Cato Institute. Fascinating guy, thinks a mile a minute. He must have spat out 100 provocative ideas in his half an hour or so. I can draw you a mental picture of him pretty quickly: bubbly, balding, not much over five feet tall, wears a backpack over his tweed jacket (did I mention the “recreational medievalism“?) . . .

In short, the book covers nearly everything Human Nature covers but with a libertarian bent. Which is sort of my bent, too, except that I’m less theoretically confident than Friedman is–or, to put it the other way, I’m more daunted by practical developments. Three years ago, for example, I wrote a series based on the idea that scientists would try to grow embryos beyond the conventional two-week limit, raising icky possibilities. The scenario made sense to me at the time, but in the three years since, it hasn’t happened. A theorist would say, well, it’ll happen eventually. I’m not so sure. My reaction is: Maybe I was just wrong.

So this is what I asked Friedman: Is there a contradiction between his technological optimism and his premise of radical uncertainty? When I say optimism, I don’t mean a belief that technology will be good; I mean a belief that it will work. His talk was full of bold scenarios: conquering aging, developing artificial intelligence 100 times smarter than us in the next 30 years, and administering mind-control drugs that induce credulity. I agree that these scenarios are fascinating, and when I first came into this field, I took them very seriously. But everywhere I look, the news is telling me another story. The story is that in many fields, and in biology in particular, causality is turning out to be way more complex than we anticipated. The immediate manifestation of that complexity is that even our most conventional attempts to manipulate biology are producing unexpected and often decisive ill side effects.

Take the most obvious case: drugs. Friedman talked about three classes of mind drugs: those for pleasure, those for performance, and those for controlling other people. I’ve been to visionary or bioethics conferences where theorists have talked up these drugs and how cool or scary they’ll become in the near future. But look at the news: Drugs are being restricted or pulled off the market because they’re inducing ugly side effects. Not just drugs for the body, like Vioxx, but drugs for the mind, like Chantix. Steroids are boosting athletic performance but causing violence and circulatory trouble. Marijuana is being linked to heart attacks, brain shrinkage, and psychosis. I had high hopes for Bremelanotide, a new sexual-dysfunction drug, aka aphrodisiac. But last year its developer, Palatin Technologies, had to abandon that project due to “blood pressure increases” in some study participants. The company now touts the drug for “organ protection.” It’s turning out to be very hard to tinker with one function of the mind or body without affecting others.

Friedman’s reply to all this was that we do better off “on net” by encouraging biotechnology than by limiting it, and that proposals to restrict it should be subject to the same skepticism that we might apply to the technology itself. That makes sense to me. Still, it’s just a political answer. It doesn’t address the underlying question of how soon–or even whether–biotechnology will achieve its promises.

I agree with Friedman that the future is radically uncertain. Too uncertain, in fact, to count on its arrival in the form that he envisions–or I do–anytime soon.

Have a listen!

Lew McCreary, writing for Harvard Business review, recently commented on Future Imperfect.

We want the world to be orderly, but too often it is simply a mess. Friedman, a law professor, gleefully sorts out a host of messes having to do with a wide range of world-changing technologies. For every manifest benefit (say, reducing crime through universal surveillance), there’s a gnarly negative (adios, privacy). Friedman doesn’t duck the big issues: the death of copyright protection; nanotechnology; cloning, genetic engineering, and other advanced reproductive therapies; cognitive enhancement through pharmacology; the growing difficulty (due in part to tools that allow users to veil their identities) of enforcing contracts in cyberspace.

Friedman is honest enough not to claim to be a seer—the future is both imperfect and uncertain. But he frames the possibilities evenhandedly, with energetic comprehensiveness.

Technology as lens to ponder imperfect future

In a century-old former farmhouse in San Jose, David Friedman is a living paradox who writes about the promise and perils of futuristic technologies even as he collects medieval weapons and other artifacts from the past.

The 63-year-old Friedman, who earned a doctorate in physics but teaches law at Santa Clara University, is the author of a new book, “Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World.”

As the son of the late economist Milton Friedman, he takes a laissez-faire approach to technological advances, arguing that they could lead to a range of outcomes from the beneficial extension of human life spans to the possible extinction of the species.

Rather than try to predict outcomes, he paints the future as a series of coin tosses that will depend on countless private decisions beyond human comprehension or government control.

Speaking recently at an authors’ panel at the Mountain View headquarters of Google, Friedman likened technology to an unstoppable train.

“There are no brakes available. … If it can be done, it will be done,” he said at an event that was recorded and posted on YouTube. “So the interesting thing to me is not what should you stop but how do you adapt.”

Later, during a 90-minute interview at his home in San Jose, Friedman challenged the conventional wisdom about which worries merit public debate and elaborated on his preference for private rather than governmental preparation for the future.

Seated in a room decorated with samurai spears, Friedman characterized global warming as “a pretty wimpy catastrophe … a real nuisance if you live in Bangladesh or a couple of other places.”

Far more dangerous, in his view, are some potential technological catastrophes – such as might occur from a runaway bioengineered virus, a self-replicating nanotech swarm or a malevolent artificial intelligence that finds a way to pull the plug on Homo sapiens.

“I’ve got three different technologies that could wipe out the species,” said Friedman, a self-professed libertarian who is certain that neither politics nor central planning will avert a possible bad technological outcome.

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]]> http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/09/david-friedman-in-the-sf-chronicle/feed/ 0 http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/09/oww-technologies-that-hurt-us/ http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2008/09/oww-technologies-that-hurt-us/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:45:41 +0000 CambridgeBlog http://www.cambridgeblog.org/?p=901 Future Imperfect author David Friedman talks to Forbes about potentially painful technologies. Future Imperfect is full of ‘em. But it’s not about how to stop it, it’s about how to manage.

Even the most wonderful technology has unintended consequences. And for many technologies, no consequence can be more unintended than this: pain.

And let’s not miss Sadhika’s favorite quote:

How will we live with computers that are smarter than us? We’d better hope they like pets.

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Noam Chomsky.

That guy from “Stuff White People Like.”

And now Future Imperfect author David Friedman has journeyed to Mountain View, California to appear on Authors@Google.

It’s a great talk! Watch after the jump.

Of course, the discussion is currently focused harshly on Sarah Palin’s daughter and her pregnancy, (though I think that such scrutiny is silly). But recently, Friedman took a crack at some of the lenses through which we view both candidates on his blog, Ideas.

And by the way, does it seem odd to anyone else that the two older men involved are out of the limelight?

Obama and Community Organizing

David D. Friedman

Having said some positive things about Obama in the past, I thought it worth noting one negative point–not so much about Obama as about an argument offered for Obama. His supporters interpret his decision to go into community organizing instead of joining a law firm as evidence of his good moral character. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. For a young man aiming at a career in politics, especially a black man in an urban setting, community organizing is an investment, a way of building up contacts and other resources that will be useful at the next stage of that career.

To be fair, I should also say that considering Obama’s behavior as that of an aspiring politician weakens the argument being made by some on the right about his past association with people on the left, in particular William Ayers, an unrepentant ex-Weatherman. The Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, which is where I grew up, is the sort of place where an ex-Weatherman can easily enough be a prominent figure. You don’t start a career in politics by going out of your way to refuse to shake the hands of people who lots of your constituents respect, or even refusing to sit with them on a board of directors or share a platform with them–not, at least, unless you are aiming at a deliberate political gesture. And making a point of how hostile you are to left wing radicals, while it might be useful for a Democrat running for President, would not be prudent for a Democrat seeking political support in Hyde Park.

After the jump: Sarah Palin – Home Schooler? Creationist?

David D. Friedman

In a recent Usenet discussion a poster asserted that Palin homeschooled her children in young earth creationism. When I asked him what his source was he retracted the claim, while adding that he still believed it was true, although he didn’t have the evidence so support it.

Using Google, I found lots of assertions that Palin home schools, both by posters who approve and by ones who disapprove. But the only evidence I could find was one post to a blog, in which a commenter asserts that “Just a few days ago she came into IDEA, Interior Distance Education of Alaska, where my husband works as a contact teacher, and signed up her high school age daughter!”

The fact that a commenter on a blog says something is only weak evidence that it is true—the web is an unfiltered medium. And even if it is true, the implication is that she has just started to home school one child, not that she has home schooled all of them.

The additional detail, the claim that she home schools in young earth creationism, I haven’t yet found anywhere other than the initial post. IDEA, which seems to be the only basis for the home schooling claim, is run by an Alaskan school district; I could find no suggestion on their web page that they are creationists, young earth or otherwise.

The claim that she is a young earth creationist, or alternatively just a creationist, on the other hand, has been made by lots of people online. So far as I can tell, there is no support for it either.

In response to a question from the moderator of a television debate, Palin said

“Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information….Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject — creationism and evolution. It’s been a healthy foundation for me. But don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides.”

In explaining her view later,

Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms: “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.” (Source here)

She has also been quoted as saying that ““I believe we have a creator” but that “I’m not going to pretend I know how all this came to be.”

All of that could mean that she believes in creationism but doesn’t want to say so for political reasons. It could mean that she believes in evolution but doesn’t want to say so for political reasons. The most obvious reading, however, and the one most consistent with what she has said, is that she believes in God, assumes he is ultimately responsible for the world as it now exists, and has no strong opinions on how he managed it or how long he took.

Before denouncing that as an intellectually indefensible position, it’s worth asking what fraction of those who believe in the theory of evolution could accurately explain it—let alone do a competent job of describing the evidence for it. My impression is that most believers in evolution, like most believers in creationism, base their belief not on their own knowledge and thought but on what they have been told by the authorities they respect.

My interpretation of the whole home school/creationist story is that it is mostly simple bigotry. People who have reasons to oppose Palin start with a stereotypical picture of a fundamentalist conservative.

David D. Friedman is author of Future Imperfect, a compelling look at technology and freedom across a dizzying array of possible futures, each just around the corner.

David D. Friedman has a resume that will make your head spin, but at its nexus are Law, Economics, and Technology. Liberty Watch Radio interviewed him on August 24, discussing his latest project, Future Imperfect, which steps forward to examine the many possible implications of the astounding pace of technology.

As a Libertarian, Friedman’s scenarios square off for mechanisms that will allow personal freedom to thrive in the face of the crazy implications of, say, robot surveillance flies or identity theft.

It’s another long interview, but a really intriguing one.

Listen to the interview >>

He blogs at Ideas.