Dear young men,

I want to tell you what I wish I’d been told, as I bumbled through the awkward years between 15 and 25. This whole letter might sound self-important, coming from a 34-year-old who writes mostly about how he’s just beginning to get the hang of adult life. Maybe it is, and you can take it or leave it.

All I know is that when I was negotiating that stretch between junior high and full adulthood, I could have used some guidance from men who were old enough to be done with that phase, but who were too young to be my dad.

But I didn’t have that, so like most of us, I picked up my strategies from the similarly confused young men around me. Even though that’s pretty normal, in terms of instructions on how to be a mature and respectful adult it’s hard to do worse than that — so I hope I can offer you a bit of insight you might not find among your peers. You’ll still have to choose who to believe and who to ignore, I just want to offer a different voice than the ones you may be hearing.

Some of what follows applies particularly to straight young men, because I’m pulling it from my own experience, but I think the principles behind it are pretty universal.

You will constantly have people telling you, both implicitly and explicitly, that you have to be a man. What that even means, in the 21st century, I don’t quite know. It certainly has a less specific meaning than it used to, and that’s a good thing. Machismo was never a good fit for many of us guys, and it clearly doesn’t make the world a more enlightened place.

Still, if you are male, you will be forced to relate to this increasingly irrelevant concept of “being a man” in some way or another.

Even though we humans are (thankfully) moving on from seeing ourselves as two distinct kinds of creatures, there’s nothing wrong with being a man, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There’s nothing wrong with doing traditionally “manly” things. Don’t be embarrassed by them. If you want to watch football on Sunday, or train in MMA, or grow a handlebar mustache, or buy a pickup truck, make no apologies.

No, there’s nothing wrong with masculinity — until it’s used as a gauge for measuring and excluding people, whether they’re women or other men, or people who don’t identify as either. Regardless of whether masculinity appeals to you, either as something to embody or to simply admire in others, understand that it’s purely a matter of personal taste and has nothing to do with personal value.

Don’t worry about how your sexual experience (or absence of it) stacks up. At about age 14, boys feel like they have to start bullshitting about their sexual exploits in order to survive. The pressure on these kids is just too great for them to speak frankly about it. Ignore what everyone says about their sex lives. They are lying, all of them, at least a little. And the kids who are actually doing it in their tweens are probably aren’t doing it very well, and they’re probably not people you’ll want to trade places with in ten years.

Forget the word “virgin,” as a descriptor for both yourself and others. It’s an archaic, irrelevant word, meant to stigmatize and shame people. It oversells a person’s first sex act as some grand, transformational experience, which supposedly vindicates a young man and spoils a young woman. It’s an obsolete, religious, judgmental word. Let’s leave it behind.

Failing to “fit in” in school is a good thing. It means there’s some element of individuality in you that will not be squashed. God help you if your self-esteem peaks in high school.

Nobody knows who they are at that age anyway. People start to get an idea of what’s important to them and who they want to be in their late twenties or early thirties. Just try not to cause too much damage in the mean time. Simply survive those awkward years. Get good grades and make some friends, but don’t worry about being cool. Successfully achieving coolness in high school is like being knighted by Ronald McDonald.

All young men will encounter the “seduction community” at some point. Beware. While there is some genuinely well-intentioned dating and self-improvement advice to be found there, so much of the discussion is absolutely riddled with misogyny. It isn’t always overt, but it’s always there. If you start referring to women as “targets,” you crossed the line a long time ago.

Think of women as being just like you, rather than some other species. You don’t learn to approach women, you learn to talk to people. Those forums are filled with young men who never learned how to talk to other people. When you’re thirty, come back and read this stuff, it will make you sad.

If there’s a real secret to “seduction,” here it is: Always be building a life that turns you on, represent yourself as honestly and straightforwardly as you can, and have conversations with a lot of people. That’s it. Connections will happen. If you’re bad at those things, give yourself as long as it takes to get good at them. You have time.

On the matter of “sluts” — there are none. Nobody is a slut. The number of sexual partners a person has had, or is rumored to have had, is a) none of your business and b) indicates, by itself, absolutely nothing about the character of that person. If you want to know what kind of person someone is, talk to them. If you believe in personal freedom you cannot believe in sluts.

Throughout your life you’ll encounter sexist attitudes, even from your favorite people. Much of it will come in the form of what you are supposed to do, think and say, in order to be a man. And unless you’re not paying attention, you’ll almost certainly discover some of these attitudes in yourself. Sexism isn’t confined to bigots and wife-beaters. It’s too common, too normal for that. It is often subtle, unintentional, even well-meaning.

You have a responsibility here, whether you want it or not. Some of the very normal expectations that will be placed on you as a male — to distance yourself from femininity, to be tough and stolid, to laugh at certain jokes, to use words like “slut” without irony, to deride ambitious or non-traditional women, to dominate and emasculate other males — are keeping even the most enlightened parts of this world less hospitable for women than for you.

Learn to recognize and violate these expectations. Don’t be another dead billiard ball, passing this nasty energy on to your peers, and eventually your sons. We need new norms, and creating them will take the help of defiant and thoughtful young men. That’s you. The problem of sexism isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a matter of ensuring personal freedom for everyone regardless of sex.

And a lot of your pals (and even your heroes) aren’t going to help in this department. Most of them will be embarrassed to talk about it, because they’re too afraid of saying something that will disqualify them from successfully being a man, based on their current strategy.

If you believe you should have the freedom to pursue happiness within your rights, it’s only sensible to believe in that freedom for everyone, and that means making sexism your problem too, even if it never seemed like it was.

At the root of it all is our lingering capacity for violence — the unfortunate biological reality that even a physically unremarkable man can knock out the average woman, if he thinks it will help him more than it will harm him.

So from the dawn of humanity, whenever there has been a disagreement between a man and a woman, both of them knew from the start — no matter what kind of reason or sense either side brought to the table — which one must eventually back down. Unlike the woman, the man could expect to get his way without having an intelligent argument, without considering the needs of others, without being right at all, without any sensible reason for things to go his way.

This expectation — that power over others is a viable, noble path to happiness — lingers in the way we talk, in the way we define manhood, in the expectations males place on each other. This is especially influential on high-school and college-age males, because they do not yet feel like men, and they believe they’re supposed to.

The forces of civilization and education are very slowly discrediting this stone-age approach to life, and dismantling the power imbalance that has grown around it.

For us to get there, young men need to understand as early in their lives as possible that men have a long history of getting their way for no good reason. This advantage comes, of course, at the expense of fellow human beings, and we need to learn to be aware of it and eliminate it wherever we see it.

Is it your fault? No. But whether you want it or not, you’ve inherited the responsibility of creating a new answer to the ancient question of what it means to be a man. The old answers are no good.

« The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental. »

Losing a war is never a pretty situation. So it is no wonder that most people do not like to acknowledge that we have lost. We had a reasonable chance to tame the wild beast of universal surveillance technology, approximately until september 10th, 2001. One day later, we had lost. All the hopes we had, to keep the big corporations and “security forces” at bay and develop interesting alternative concepts in the virtual world, evaporated with the smoke clouds of the World Trade Center.

Just right before, everything looked not too bad. We had survived Y2K with barely a scratch. The world’s outlook was mildly optimistic after all. The “New Economy” bubble gave most of us fun things to do and the fleeting hope of plenty of cash not so far down the road. We had won the Clipper-Chip battle, and crypto-regulation as we knew it was a thing of the past. The waves of technology development seemed to work in favor of freedom, most of the time. The future looked like a yellow brick road to a nirvana of endless bandwith, the rule of ideas over matter and dissolving nation states. The big corporations were at our mercy because we knew what the future would look like and we had the technology to built it. Those were the days. Remember them for your grandchildren’s bedtime stories. They will never come back again.

We are now deep inside the other kind of future, the future that we speculated about as a worst case scenario, back then. This is the ugly future, the one we never wanted, the one that we fought to prevent. We failed. Probably it was not even our fault. But we are forced to live in it now.
Democracy is already over

By its very nature the western democracies have become a playground for lobbyists, industry interests and conspiracies that have absolutely no interest in real democracy. The “democracy show” must go on nonetheless. Conveniently, the show consumes the energy of those that might otherwise become dangerous to the status quo. The show provides the necessary excuse when things go wrong and keeps up the illusion of participation. Also, the system provides organized and regulated battleground rules to find out which interest groups and conspiracies have the upper hand for a while. Most of the time it prevents open and violent power struggles that could destabilize everything. So it is in the best interest of most players to keep at least certain elements of the current “democracy show” alive. Even for the more evil conspiracies around, the system is useful as it is. Certainly, the features that could provide unpleasant surprises like direct popular votes on key issues are the least likely to survive in the long run.

Of course, those in power want to minimize the influence of random chaotic outbursts of popular will as much as possible. The real decisions in government are not made by ministers or the parliament. The real power of government rests with the undersecretaries and other high-level, non-elected civil servants who stay while the politicians come and go. Especially in the bureaucracies of the intelligence agencies, the ministry of interior, the military, and other key nodes of power the long-term planning and decision-making is not left to the incompetent mediocre political actors that get elected more or less at random. Long term stability is a highly valued thing in power relations. So even if the politicians of states suddenly start to be hostile to each other, their intelligence agencies will often continue to cooperate and trade telecommunication interception results as if nothing has happened.

Let’s try for a minute to look at the world from the perspective of such an 60-year-old bureaucrat that has access to the key data, the privilege to be paid to think ahead, and the task to prepare the policy for the next decades. What he would see, could look like this:


First,
paid manual labor will be eaten away further by technology, even more rapidly than today. Robotics will evolve far enough to kill a sizeable chunk of the remaining low-end manual jobs. Of course, there will be new jobs, servicing the robots, biotech, designing stuff, working on the nanotech developments etc. But these will be few, compared with today, and require higher education. Globalization continues its merciless course and will also export a lot of jobs of the brain-labor type to India and China, as soon as education levels there permit it.

So the western societies will end up with a large percentage of population, at least a third, but possibly half of those in working age, having no real paid work. There are those whose talents are cheaper to be had elsewhere, those who are more inclined to manual labor. Not only the undereducated but all those who simply cannot find a decent job anymore. This part of the population needs to be pacified, either by Disney or by Dictatorship, most probably by both. The unemployment problem severely affects the ability of states to pay for social benefits. At some point it becomes cheaper to put money into repressive police forces and rule by fear than put the money into pay-outs to the unemployed population and buy the social peace. Criminal activities look more interesting when there is no decent job to be had. Violence is the unavoidable consequence of degrading social standards. Universal surveillance might dampen the consequences for those who remain with some wealth to defend.


Second,
climate change increases the frequency and devastation of natural disasters, creating large scale emergency situations. Depending on geography, large parts of land may become uninhabitable due to draught, flood, fires or plagues. This creates a multitude of unpleasant effects. A large number of people need to move, crop and animal production shrinks, industrial centers and cities may be damaged to the point where abandoning them is the only sensible choice left. The loss of property like non-usable (or non-insurable) real estate will be frightening. The resulting internal migratory pressures towards “safe areas” become a significant problem. Properly trained personal, equipment, and supplies to respond to environmental emergencies are needed standby all the time, eating up scarce government resources. The conscript parts of national armed forces may be formed into disaster relief units as they hang around anyway with no real job to do except securing fossil energy sources abroad and helping out the border police.

Third,
immigration pressure from neighboring regions will raise in all western countries. It looks like the climate disaster will strike worst at first in areas like Africa and Latin America and the economy there is unlikely to cope any better than the western countries with globalization and other problems ahead. So the number of people who want to leave from there to somewhere inhabitable at all costs will rise substantially. The western countries need a certain amount of immigration to fill up their demographic holes but the number of people who want to come will be far higher. Managing a controlled immigration process according to the demographic needs is a nasty task where things can only go wrong most of the time. The nearly unavoidable reaction will be a Fortress Europe: serious border controls and fortifications, frequent and omnipresent internal identity checks, fast and merciless deportation of illegal immigrants, biometrics on every possible corner. Technology for border control can be made quite efficient once ethical hurdles have fallen.

Fourth,
at some point in the next decades the energy crisis will strike with full force. Oil will cost a fortune as production capacities can no longer be extended economically to meet the rising demand. Natural gas and coal will last a bit longer, a nuclear renaissance may dampen the worst of the pains. But the core fact remains: a massive change in energy infrastructure is unavoidable. Whether the transition will be harsh, painful and society-wrecking, or just annoying and expensive depends on how soon before peak oil the investments into new energy systems start on a massive scale as oil becomes to expensive to burn. Procrastination is a sure recipe for disaster. The geo-strategic and military race for the remaining large reserves of oil has already begun and will cost vast resources.

Fifth,
we are on the verge of technology developments that may require draconic restrictions and controls to prevent the total disruption of society. Genetic engineering and other biotechnology as well as nanotechnology (and potentially free energy technologies if they exist) will put immense powers into the hands of skilled and knowledgeable individuals. Given the general raise in paranoia, most people (and for sure those in power) will not continue to trust that common sense will prevent the worst. There will be a tendency of controls that keep this kind of technology in the hands of “trustworthy” corporations or state entities. These controls, of course, need to be enforced, surveillance of the usual suspects must be put in place to get advanced knowledge of potential dangers. Science may no longer be a harmless, self-regulating thing but something that needs to be tightly controlled and regulated, at least in the critical areas. The measures needed to contain a potential global pandemic from the Strange Virus of the Year are just a subset of those needed to contain a nanotech or biotech disaster.

Now what follows from this view of the world? What changes to society are required to cope with these trends from the viewpoint of our 60-year-old power brokering bureaucrat?

Strategically it all points to massive investments into internal security.
Presenting the problem to the population as a mutually exclusive choice between an uncertain dangerous freedom and an assured survival under the securing umbrella of the trustworthy state becomes more easy the further the various crises develop. The more wealthy parts of the population will certainly require protection from illegal immigrants, criminals, terrorists and implicitly also from the anger of less affluent citizens. And since the current system values rich people more then poor ones, the rich must get their protection. The security industry will certainly be of happy helpful assistance, especially where the state can no longer provide enough protection for the taste of the lucky ones.

Traditional democratic values have been eroded to the point where most people don’t care anymore. So the loss of rights our ancestors fought for not so long ago is at first happily accepted by a majority that can easily be scared into submission. “Terrorism” is the theme of the day, others will follow. And these “themes” can and will be used to mold the western societies into something that has never been seen before: a democratically legitimated police state, ruled by an unaccountable elite with total surveillance, made efficient and largely unobtrusive by modern technology. With the enemy (immigrants, terrorists, climate catastrophe refugees, criminals, the poor, mad scientists, strange diseases) at the gates, the price that needs to be paid for “security” will look acceptable.

Cooking up the “terrorist threat” by apparently stupid foreign policy and senseless intelligence operations provides a convenient method to get through with the establishment of a democratically legitimized police state. No one cares that car accidents alone kill many more people than terrorists do. The fear of terrorism accelerates the changes in society and provides the means to get the suppression tools required for the coming waves of trouble.

What we call today “anti-terrorism measures” is the long-term planned and conscious preparation of those in power for the kind of world described above.
The Technologies of Oppression

We can imagine most of the surveillance and oppression technology rather well. Blanket CCTV coverage is reality in some cities already. Communication pattern analysis (who talks to whom at what times) is frighteningly effective. Movement pattern recording from cellphones, traffic monitoring systems, and GPS tracking is the next wave that is just beginning. Shopping records (online, credit and rebate cards) are another source of juicy data. The integration of all these data sources into automated behavior pattern analysis currently happens mostly on the dark side.

The key question for establishing an effective surveillance based police state is to keep it low-profile enough that “the ordinary citizen” feels rather protected than threatened, at least until all the pieces are in place to make it permanent. First principle of 21st century police state: All those who “have nothing to hide” should not be bothered unnecessarily. This goal becomes even more complicated as with the increased availability of information on even minor everyday infringements the “moral” pressure to prosecute will rise. Intelligence agencies have always understood that effective work with interception results requires a thorough selection between cases where it is necessary to do something and those (the majority) where it is best to just be silent and enjoy.

Police forces in general (with a few exceptions) on the other hand have the duty to act upon every crime or minor infringement they get knowledge of. Of course, they have a certain amount of discretion already. With access to all the information outlined above, we will end up with a system of selective enforcement. It is impossible to live in a complex society without violating a rule here and there from time to time, often even without noticing it. If all these violations are documented and available for prosecution, the whole fabric of society changes dramatically. The old sign for totalitarian societies – arbitrary prosecution of political enemies – becomes a reality within the framework of democratic rule-of-law states. As long as the people affected can be made looking like the enemy-”theme” of the day, the system can be used to silence opposition effectively. And at some point the switch to open automated prosecution and policing can be made as any resistance to the system is by definition “terrorism”. Development of society comes to a standstill, the rules of the law and order paradise can no longer be violated.

Now disentangling ourselves from the reality tunnel of said 60-year-old bureaucrat, where is hope for freedom, creativity and fun? To be honest, we need to assume that it will take a couple of decades before the pendulum will swing back into the freedom direction, barring a total breakdown of civilization as we know it. Only when the oppression becomes to burdensome and open, there might be a chance to get back to overall progress of mankind earlier. If the powers that be are able to manage the system smoothly and skillfully, we cannot make any prediction as to when the new dark ages will be over.
So what now?



Move to the mountains, become a gardener or carpenter, search for happiness in communities of like minded people, in isolation from the rest of the world? The idea has lost its charm for most who ever honestly tried. It may work if you can find eternal happiness in milking cows at five o’clock in the morning. But for the rest of us, the only realistic option is to try to live in, with, and from the world as bad it has become. We need to built our own communities nonetheless, virtual or real ones.

The politics & lobby game

So where to put your energy then? Trying to play the political game, fighting against software patents, surveillance laws, and privacy invasions in parliament and the courts can be the job of a lifetime. It has the advantage that you will win a battle from time to time and can probably slow things down. You may even be able to prevent a gross atrocity here and there. But in the end, the development of technology and the panic level of the general population will chew a lot of your victories for breakfast.

This is not to discount the work and dedication of those of us who fight on this front. But you need to have a lawyers mindset and a very strong frustration tolerance to gain satisfaction from it, and that is not given to everyone. We need the lawyers nonetheless.

Talent and Ethics

Some of us sold their soul, maybe to pay the rent when the bubble bursted and the cool and morally easy jobs became scarce. They sold their head to corporations or the government to built the kind of things we knew perfectly well how to built, that we sometimes discussed as a intellectual game, never intending to make them a reality. Like surveillance infrastructure. Like software to analyze camera images in realtime for movement patterns, faces, license plates. Like data mining to combine vast amounts of information into graphs of relations and behavior. Like interception systems to record and analyze every single phone call, e-mail, click in the web. Means to track every single move of people and things.

Thinking about what can be done with the results of one’s work is one thing. Refusing to do the job because it could be to the worse of mankind is something completely different. Especially when there is no other good option to earn a living in a mentally stimulating way around. Most projects by itself were justifiable, of course. It was “not that bad” or “no real risk”. Often the excuse was “it is not technical feasible today anyway, it’s too much data to store or make sense from”. Ten years later it is feasible. For sure.

While it certainly would be better when the surveillance industry would die from lack of talent, the more realistic approach is to keep talking to those of us who sold their head. We need to generate a culture that might be compared with the sale of indulgences in the last dark ages: you may be working on the wrong side of the barricade but we would be willing to trade you private moral absolution in exchange for knowledge. Tell us what is happening there, what the capabilities are, what the plans are, which gross scandals have been hidden. To be honest, there is very little what we know about the capabilities of todays dark-side interception systems after the meanwhile slightly antiquated Echelon system had been discovered. All the new stuff that monitors the internet, the current and future use of database profiling, automated CCTV analysis, behavior pattern discovery and so on is only known in very few cases and vague outlines.

We also need to know how the intelligence agencies work today. It is of highest priority to learn how the “we rather use backdoors than waste time cracking your keys”-methods work in practice on a large scale and what backdoors have been intentionally built into or left inside our systems. Building clean systems will be rather difficult, given the multitude of options to produce a backdoor – ranging from operating system and application software to hardware and CPUs that are to complex to fully audit. Open Source does only help in theory, who has the time to really audit all the source anyway…

Of course, the risk of publishing this kind of knowledge is high, especially for those on the dark side. So we need to build structures that can lessen the risk. We need anonymous submission systems for documents, methods to clean out eventual document fingerprinting (both on paper and electronic). And, of course, we need to develop means to identify the inevitable disinformation that will also be fed through these channels to confuse us.

Building technology to preserve the options for change

We are facing a unprecedented onslaught of surveillance technology. The debate whether this may or may not reduce crime or terrorism is not relevant anymore. The de-facto impact on society can already be felt with the content mafia (aka. RIAA) demanding access to all data to preserve their dead business model. We will need to build technology to preserve the freedom of speech, the freedom of thought, the freedom of communication, there is no other long-term solution. Political barriers to total surveillance have a very limited half-life period.

The universal acceptance of electronic communication systems has been a tremendous help for political movements. It has become a bit more difficult and costly to maintain secrets for those in power. Unfortunately, the same problem applies to everybody else. So one thing that we can do to help societies progress along is to provide tools, knowledge and training for secure communications to every political and social movement that shares at least some of our ideals. We should not be too narrow here in choosing our friends, everyone who opposes centralistic power structures and is not geared towards totalitarism should be welcome. Maintaining the political breathing spaces becomes more important than what this space is used for.

Anonymity will become the most precious thing. Encrypting communications is nice and necessary but helps little as long as the communication partners are known. Traffic analysis is the most valuable intelligence tool around. Only by automatically looking at communications and movement patterns, the interesting individuals can be filtered out, those who justify the cost of detailed surveillance. Widespread implementation of anonymity technologies becomes seriously urgent, given the data retention laws that have been passed in the EU. We need opportunistic anonymity the same way we needed opportunistic encryption. Currently, every anonymization technology that has been deployed is instantly overwhelmed with file sharing content. We need solutions for that, preferably with systems that can stand the load, as anonymity loves company and more traffic means less probability of de-anonymization by all kinds of attack.

Closed user groups have already gained momentum in communities that have a heightened awareness and demand for privacy. The darker parts of the hacker community and a lot of the warez trading circles have gone “black” already. Others will follow. The technology to build real-world working closed user groups is not yet there. We have only improvised setups that work under very specific circumstances. Generic, easy to use technology to create fully encrypted closed user groups for all kinds of content with comfortable degrees of anonymity is desperately needed.

Decentralized infrastructure is the needed. The peer-to-peer networks are a good example to see what works and what not. As long as there are centralized elements they can be taken down under one pretext or another. Only true peer-to-peer systems that need as little centralized elements as possible can survive. Interestingly, tactical military networks have the same requirements. We need to borrow from them, the same way they borrow from commercial and open source technology.

Design stuff with surveillance abuse in mind is the next logical step. A lot of us are involved into designing and implementing systems that can be abused for surveillance purposes. Be it webshop systems, databases, RFID systems, communication systems, or ordinary Blog servers, we need to design things as safe as possible against later abuse of collected data or interception. Often there is considerable freedom to design within the limits of our day jobs. We need to use this freedom to build systems in a way that they collect as little data as possible, use encryption and provide anonymity as much as possible. We need to create a culture around that. A system design needs to be viewed by our peers only as “good” if it adheres to these criteria. Of course, it may be hard to sacrifice the personal power that comes with access to juicy data. But keep in mind, you will not have this job forever and whoever takes over the system is most likely not as privacy-minded as you are. Limiting the amount of data gathered on people doing everyday transactions and communication is an absolute must if you are a serious hacker. There are many good things that can be done with RFID. For instance making recycling of goods easier and more effective by storing the material composition and hints about the manufacturing process in tags attached to electronic gadgets. But to be able to harness the good potential of technologies like this, the system needs to limit or prevent the downside as much as possible, by design, not as an afterthought.

Do not compromise your friends with stupidity or ignorance will be even more essential. We are all used to the minor fuckups of encrypted mail being forwarded unencrypted, being careless about other peoples data traces or bragging with knowledge obtained in confidence. This is no longer possible. We are facing an enemy that is euphemistically called “Global Observer” in research papers. This is meant literally. You can no longer rely on information or communication being “overlooked” or “hidden in the noise”. Everything is on file. Forever. And it can and will be used against you. And your “innocent” slip-up five years back might compromise someone you like.

Keep silent and enjoy or publish immediately may become the new mantra for security researchers. Submitting security problems to the manufacturers provides the intelligence agencies with a long period in which they can and will use the problem to attack systems and implant backdoors. It is well known that backdoors are the way around encryption and that all big manufacturers have an agreement with the respective intelligence agencies of their countries to hand over valuable “0 day” exploit data as soon as they get them. During the months or even years it takes them to issue a fix, the agencies can use the 0 day and do not risk exposure. If an intrusion gets detected by accident, no one will suspect foul play, as the problem will be fixed later by the manufacturer. So if you discover problems, publish at least enough information to enable people to detect an intrusion before submitting to the manufacturer.

Most important: have fun! The eavesdropping people must be laughed about as their job is silly, boring, and ethically the worst thing to earn money with, sort of blackmail and robbing grandmas on the street. We need to develop a “lets have fun confusing their systems”-culture that plays with the inherent imperfections, loopholes, systematic problems, and interpretation errors that are inevitable with large scale surveillance. Artists are the right company for this kind of approach. We need a subculture of “In your face, peeping tom”. Exposing surveillance in the most humiliating and degrading manner, giving people something to laugh about must be the goal. Also, this prevents us from becoming frustrated and tired. If there is no fun in beating the system, we will get tired of it and they will win. So let’s be flexible, creative and funny, not angry, ideologic and stiff-necked.

MOMENTARY MANIFESTO
FOR
PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE

1. DO
   Design by doing is architectural beta-testing. Build 1:1 models in the public domain that function as immediate site analysis, architectural test case and social condenser. Put your practice to theory. Do the unthinkable: build a manifest, write a building.

2. MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL
   People like pretty things.

3. USE NEW OLD MATERIALS
   Celebrate mass consumption. Reveal the beauty of the everyday, by using ordinary objects in a different manner. Look beyond traditional construction materials, and re-introduce old crafts with new fabrics. Create social value from worthless stuff.

4. COOK
   Food is social construction material. It unites people. Cook, drink and dine together. A mere cookie can be the answer to a big brief.

5. CREATE A PUBLIC
   Shakespeare said it: "all the world's a stage". Architects have the world's largest audience. Discover for whom you are designing and respond to the res publica with the proper act. Public architecture is the staging of all events of life, and our tools can be those of performance artists.

6. MIND THE DETAILS
   All details contribute to the architectural atmosphere. If you want people to meet, tie the drinks together and hand them out in pairs. A piece of rope is architecture too.

7. ACT UNSOLICITED
   Reprogram the brief, the building and the profession. Consider re-use of vacant office buildings rather than designing new ones. Use your own office 24/7 and program the space as club at night. Partake in society, rather than architecture competitions.

8. BE PERSONAL
   Establish human relationships. This social construction material is just as important as bricks and mortar. Communicate and educate. Host an excursion and exemplify the unknown. Step onto the street and speak the language of those who will live in your buildings.

9. PUT EVERYONE AROUND ONE TABLE
   Different people have different agendas. Place the client, manager, municipality, resident and neighbour around one table and they will communicate. Everyone is amateur and professional. An amateur can be a true expert at "residing", and a professional client may have no knowledge of architecture. Make the architecture at the table the subject of conversation and catalyst for the process. This creates mutual understanding, and speeds up the design process remarkably.

10. DESIGN THE RULES AND THE GAME
    Arrive early. Architectural decisions are made in the urban planning process. Design this process and ensure a great outcome.

11. PLAY THE CITY
    Play the city, don't plan it. Cities are shifting. Incorporate existing bottom-up initiatives and let these inform the top-down. Design a script rather than a blueprint; be the director. Reserve space for change and celebrate the informal.

12. SHOW THE GENIUS OF THE LOCI
    Reveal the potential of the place by building a temporary building overnight. Hand it over to the public, accompanied by one simple rule: a free stay in exchange for a personal contribution to the building. The qualities will show on site.

13. CONFUSE
    Create architecture that is mutable and open to multiple interpretations. People will discover it and thereby make it their own. Architecture that confronts each person?s imagination creates opportunities for communication between the private and public domain, and between individuals.

14. BE BIASED
    Carry a strong signature and be opinionated. Who wants to listen to someone with no ideas?

15. ABSTAIN FROM AUTHORSHIP
    Celebrate change. See architecture as an open source; a gift in which others are challenged to participate. In order to bring about social relationships through architecture, one has to give up copyright claims.

16. BE THE CURATOR
    Urban renewal is the future. Within extant city layouts, new architecture is about reprogramming; about social planning, temporary events, sports, education, art, and media. Find the right experts in these fields and curate the environment in which they can act together.

17. BE AN URBAN ARCHITECT
    The public domain is the future. Real architectural quality often does not lie in the building, but in the public domain. Design this domain as if you would a facade.

18. BUILD MENTAL MONUMENTS
    There's always a need for places for people to gather. Combine the real with the virtual in pop-up buildings; like an analogue facebook or a physical webforum. Make momentary monuments: one-day events can last a lifetime in the collective memory of the visitor.

19. SMILE
    Enjoy what you do and have fun.

D'où l'intérêt de lancer une pièce en cas de choix difficile…

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

Moi je crois que l’on ne réussit qu’une seule chose, on réussit ses rêves. On a un rêve et on essaye de bâtir, de structurer ce rêve. (…)

Je crois qu’en fait, un homme passe sa vie à compenser son enfance. Je m’explique. Je crois qu’un homme se termine vers 16-17 ans. Vers 16-17 ans, un homme a eu tous ses rêves. Il ne les connait pas. Mais ils sont passés, ils sont passés en lui. Il sait s’il a envie de brillance, ou de sécurité, ou d’aventure… Il sait. Il ne le sait pas bien, mais il a ressenti le goût des choses, comme le goût du chocolat, comme le goût de la soupe aux choux. Il a le goût de cela.

Et il passe sa vie à vouloir réaliser ses rêves-là. Et je crois qu’à 17 ans, un homme est mort, ou il peut mourir. Et après, je sais que moi j’essaie de réaliser les étonnements, plutôt que les rêves. J’essaie de réaliser les étonnements que j’ai eus jusqu’à, mettons, 20 ans. Et à 40 ans, on s’en aperçoit. A 40 ans, on le sait. Jusqu’à 40 ans, je ne le savais pas. Maintenant, je sais que c’est comme cela. Et peut-être qu’à 60 ans, je vais découvrir autre chose.

(…)

Et l’homme est un nomade. Et toute sa vie, un homme normal, je crois, rêve de foutre le camp, d’espèces d’aventures, quel qu’il soit, même si le gars est fonctionnaire depuis 40 ans, quand on le voit un soir et qu’il essaie de se libérer un peu, il vous dit : « J’aurais voulu être pilote, j’aurais voulu être machin… » Tous les hommes ont envie de vivre quelque chose. Et les hommes ne sont malheureux que dans la mesure où ils n’assument les rêves qu’ils ont. (…)

Jacques Brel

Tout le reste du site est super intéressant :)

C'est un radioamateur qui a construit une centrale hydroélectrique, habite en pleine nature, fait du parapente…