public-key or the wedding-planner

Mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing’s machines predated anything we’d recognise as a computer—these processors being a pure figment of his imagination in carrying brute applications out to their natural consequence, but the incredulous brilliance of this mental exercise does belie user-interface, reliance and ubiquity but rather in puzzling out the limitations of computation and programming. Given proper a proper set of instructions, an algorithm to solve a given computational problem, one of Turing’s Machines will tease out the answer eventually—though perhaps not to human-scale regardless of how these questions might be framed in mortal and approachable terms.Faced with finding the optimal seating arrangement for a small wedding party with the protocol that no guest ought to be seated next to one another whom would detest their neighbours and ruin the celebration might be easy enough—even for a human to juggle, an as yet hypothetical computer could reach the layout in a reasonable time, too, by running linearly through every possible permutation. While unconscionable teraflops make this seem instantaneous, Turing realised that for a grander matrimony with particularly prickly relations grows exponentially in complexity and computers can only work with the facts that they are given—with no capacity for compromise or good enough. Suppose one’s guests were to be the general assembly of the United Nations and then the number of possibilities that the computer must assay becomes greater than the number of atoms in the known Universe. The computer would cycle again and again for several billion years but would eventually produce a solution. The inability to provide a quick and comprehensive answer Turing recognised was a limitation and a liability, but at the same time Turing realised that this shortcoming was enduring and exploitable. Sometimes the numbers can be crunched forever. Perhaps there is no overseer, Evil Genius out there that knows where all the bodies are buried and the dirty little secrets that might make for a convivial setting, but there are also woefully multi-generational problems that can be solved with a clue. Data-encryption on one end delivers incredibly, increasingly long strings of numbers that are the product of multiplying two other numbers together on the other end, and hackers are not able to identify one or both figures—without some sort of clue. Just decades on, it seems too soon to descend into the realm of the practical from this elegant formulation, but having this limitation enables the security of on-line encryption and passing code. On the other hand, knowing how to solve logistics problems—given that finding a solution to one challenge presupposes eliminating the other as well—will serve up amazingly efficient systems of delivery. Both economic models are inseparable, it seems.

sens critique

Though going forward won’t bring anyone back and I am probably betrayed some dreamy optimism when I hope that policy will change for the better, but to learn nothing just is further insult to the countless that have perished and suffered in the power-vacuum, voided by Western adventures, that the cosplay Caliphate has come to occupy. Refugees cannot be be conflated with a group of loutish terrorists that ascribe to noting loftier than the charisma of some bully with a vague vision, since the refugees are for the most part fleeing the same violence that visits Beirut and Aleppo on a daily basis. Some might argue that strict border controls will cause more suffering for those in transit and makes little sense as those radicalised individuals could already be present since months at their target location (plus there are always ways of inserting oneself into the massive throng of humanity on the march, such hostile and unneighbourly acts would topple the core values of the European Union, etc. etc.), however adopting a different approach may be necessary. Perhaps all borders should be closed and in order to help the most vulnerable and those with no means of securing escape (a smuggler, a bus ticket, a place on a rickety boat), refugee commissions should travel to Syrian camps for displaced persons and satisfy their quota by referring however many, once properly assessed and vetted. No one would be compelled to make the treacherous journey, no middle-men could skim profit, no terrorists could peddle their ideology and fewer opportunistic, economic migrants would join the ranks of those legitimately and immediately threatened. There are enough inchoate threats as it is, and perhaps if not dealing with an uncontrolled stream of refugees coming into the country, authorities could have been allocated resources to monitoring domestic threats that were already present and in the works. The nihilistic following does not hate the freedoms that their host countries enjoy—as difference and descent would in no way be tolerated by their home-nation regimes—and the attitude characterised by liberty seems sometimes just that. In as much as we Westerners might criticise African and Middle Eastern people for not doing more to save their homelands from tyranny, corruption and oppression, we are not terribly heroic when it comes to defending those cherished freedoms (until a common threat comes along) either. There’s precious little protest offered up against poverty and self-interested policy decisions (which helped to create this dread tension in the first place, as above) and corporate ploys that degrade and estrange the democratic process. Aujourd’hui nous sommes toutes les parisiens.

star wars, nothing but star wars

There was a regretful and probably universally relatable, accessible piece written for BBC Magazine—though happily I never thought of selling my extensive collection of Star Wars action figures and have them with me still—about one youth’s remorse over having traded his assemblage away, mint-in-box or so claimed. It’s quite interesting to think about the challenges that we faced back then in terms of acquisition, planning, composing wish-lists—and readily sharing that encyclopædic knowledge of the cast and crew and correcting others in play when they strayed from character.

orthograph or parts of speech

The fantastic Æon magazine has a very fine retrospective essay on the singular strangeness of the English language that hits all the big, perplexing points for this, the only language that subjects its young and impressionable speakers to the rigours of spelling-bees (French students have dictation contests, which seems a more practical skill to develop).
This language (from an anglo-centric point of view) is the outlier in terms of using gendered nouns, declension, fails on intelligibility and has a very motley grammatical structure. Though others have been exposed to the say waves of conquest, English seemed one of the few clever and stubborn enough to survive in one form or another by adopting and incorporating the form and style of its invaders—the Romans, the Norse and the Normans. Whether these unsystematic traits make the language difficult or at a point unpenetrable is hard to say—it’s hard to argue, no matter one’s take on it, of English’s dominance and attempts to supplant those quirks with constructed, universal languages have not been met with overwhelming success.

copasetic

The ever-engrossing Mind Hacks performs quite a nimble triangulation on the nature and origin of the so-called safe-space—that is a social venue that’s set aside and made exclusive for any particular set of people that identify with one group or another, for which outsiders are excluded.
Self- segregation, rather than an ostracism that’s imposed from privileged sources, is supposed to open up a forum of discussion free from harassment but in theory, not free from dissent or controversy, but one has to wonder how balanced groupthink can hope to be when its sheltered and fostered. This concept seems very much couched in terms of modern political correctness, but the safe-space goes back further and is rooted in the ideas of corporate climate surveys and the research of psychologist Kurt Lewin, who while trying to avoid associations of reinforcement, did crucially acknowledge that concepts that Lewin imparted like (which can now sound like latter day office woo) sensitivity-training, feedback, input, toxicity in leadership, workplace morale needed to be engendered in an environment free of reprisal and openness. What do you think? Have these ideas been brought to a place where they improve social dynamics or have they become merely hallmarks of strife and censorship?