Government web pages

After the American Century

I often have the same experience with web sites set up by governments and monopolistic organizations supported by government:  dysfunctional pages, where the services are hard to use. It requires many clicks to find the information or perform a simple task. For example, when one tries to use the website of the Danish post office system, to tell them when one is on vacation and does not want mail delivered. This proved an impossible  task in over half an hour of trying.  The site kept crashing on me and sending incomprehensible error messages.

In contrast, I had no trouble buying a plane ticket, making hotel reservations, or finding lots of useful information, all provided by people who need to survive in the marketplace.  I realize that this might make me sound like a Republican who wants to reduce government to national defense and farm subsidies, but that is not at all the case.

Some government websites do work well, notably those that provide weather information, which is often of life-and.death importance.  But all too often public services are digitized in order to save money, and to become "more effective," which is often means firing staff and forcing the public to deal with whatever website is substituted.

The solution might be to compare services in different countries and use those that work best as models for others to adapt to their own cultures and circumstances. Most of the needed innovations are probably out there, waiting to be emulated.

So, an example. The Danish tax system, which successfully collects the highest taxes in the world, at least is user-friendly. The citizen can see his tax situation on-line, where most of the needed information is automatically gathered from banks, pension plans, employers, and other institutions. Not only this year's tax is there, but several years previous as well. This particular Big Brother is watching, but they are also communicating what they see, and the taxpayer has a chance to correct or modify it. The taxes may be high, but at least they are extracted with little pain,  and there is a dialogue between citizen and government institution. It is not always the happiest dialogue, of course!

In contrast, another advanced industrial economy, I will not name names, which lies somewhere between Niagara Falls and the Baja California, estimates that a citizen filling out its standard tax form needs a total of 15 hours, or two entire days, to read and understand the basic forms and advice, and then do the calculations needed. The form is blank at the start, and the citizen has to try to remember everything and make no mistakes. (The Danish form is filled in by the tax authorities, and the citizen only has to check the facts, and then make additions or changes.) I know a few people from the other nation, and they tell me that it is often not possible to complete the form in 15 hours without assistance. There is an enormous amount of information on-line, and there are numbers to call for more information, too. But it is a much harder process to negotiate, and once the forms are filled in and delivered, I have it on good authority, one often never hears anything back.  

In Denmark, feedback on all tax returns is made available on a particular date, and the whole country tries to find out at the same time. Now that can cause a cyber traffic jam.

Is the Internet Shortening attention spans and undermining long term cultural memory??

After the American Century

I have been silent for longer than at any other time since this blog began in 2007. I might blame this on any number of events. But my silence has much to do with increasing doubts about the overall effects of the Internet on our lives. The increasing commercialization and the wholesale acquisition and resale of knowledge about everyone using the Internet are disturbing.

It is not just the NSA that invades our privacy. So do many others. Some do so openly.  My opinions, friends, likes and dislikes, and much else is gathered by Facebook. Credit card companies gather data about the purchases of their cardholders. Google has built up an enormous mine of data for resale. As one analyst put it, Internet users have become the product that Internet companies sell.

Many others invade our privacy illegally, prying their way into on-line identities, extracting money from digital bank accounts, or assuming false identities and telling us lies in the hopes that we will give them a pin code or a social security number. Cyber criminality is big business, and the ordinary individual does not have many weapons to fight back.

Once, enormous corporate advertising budgets went to magazines and newspapers, and in exchange one had a vibrant news media. This is all changing today, and it is not yet clear to me that the Internet is an improvement. Yes, everyone can publish, including myself. But there are so many voices competing for attention that only a tiny fraction get an audience. The older media often seem to be dominating the Internet, in any case, and, more and more, they are charging for their services. Is the overall result positive? It is too soon to be certain.

A similar pattern is evident in book publishing. There are far more authors than ever before, but most titles are now self-published. Bookstores are dying. Academic publishers are struggling. The reading audience does not seem to be growing as fast as the population. Moreover, the newspapers seem to review fewer books, and they seldom take note of academic titles, compared to the situation 20 years ago.

For about a decade the answer to these worries seemed to be that e-publishing would expand the market. But in 2013 sales of e-books in fiction fell just slightly, the first time this had ever happened. Overall, e-book sales have flattened out after rising quite rapidly in the first years. At present, the e-book is eating into sales of hard copy books, but the overall sales are not increasing. Predictions seem to be that e-books will surpass printed volumes in the very near future, but the market as a whole is not necessarily growing. 

Moreover, the number of books actually being read is probably falling, if my own experience is any measure. I have purchased many inexpensive e-books and downloaded quite a few free ones, but I have read very few of them. I got them because they were free and made it possible to search a large corpus quickly. This is admittedly an advantage. But when I buy the complete works of Mark Twain for a few dollars, in order to search them easily for certain materials, such a multivolume purchase falsely suggests a larger reading public than is actually is out there.

The kind of public that surfs the Internet constantly is not thinking long and hard, it seems. The attention span dwindles. Like students who browse the Web during classes (which they have seldom prepared for, in any case), the Internet seems to support banter and jokes on Twitter more than thoughtful, long analysis.

In short, the pluses may be gradually outweighed by the minuses of the Internet. This is particularly clear in Denmark, where the government has decreed that all communication between the state and the citizen must be conducted digitally. More, they have created systems that only work with new computers, so that anyone, like myself, who has a 32-bit computer literally cannot log in. I know a number of older people who do not even know how to use email, and they will effectively be cut off. I intend to make a personal and a written protest, along with a request to be allowed a tax deduction for purchasing an other wise unnecessary new computer. 

In a similar move, the Danish state schools are beginning to demand that all parents supply their children with a laptop or an Ipad for use in school every day. Imposing this expense while saving money on textbooks is wrong. Asking children under 10 to carry around a valuable computer is an invitation to thieves and bullies. Expecting teachers to solve the software problems that will ensue because children have different systems and machines is an idiotic waste of their time. Assuming that technology makes education better without public discussion is dubious.  I could write a column about this issue alone.

But to keep to the larger perspective. The new reality is that banks, government, schools, and employers now demand that everyone has a new or recent computer. It is fast becoming impossible to pay taxes, seek a job, pay a bill, or keep track of expenses without mastery and continual updating of multiple accounts, including continually changing passwords.

Worst of all, I suspect that in the long term this vast digital system is going to suffer memory losses. On a personal level, I cannot now access the things I wrote and in many cases published in the 1990s. The software and the hardware has changed too much. Does anyone really believe that if a tax or financial or legal issue arises that requires older records, that these will really be available? The jury is necessarily unable to decide this issue, and we will just have to wait several decades to find out.

Last year I was in a small courthouse in Iowa, and wanted to see some records from 1894. They were handwritten, easily retrieved, and perfectly legible. Will the same thing be true of our digital records 120 years from now? I doubt it. 

Is the Internet shortening attention spans in the short term, and undermining long term cultural memory? Is the state beginning to abuse the Internet and demand "participation" in digital systems simply to save money and to distance itself from actual contact with citizens? Are state institutions, such as schools, substituting technology for books and other physical resources, and transferring the cost to citizens? In the name of efficiency and convenience, we seem to be entering a digital prison, with short-term advantages but long-term costs, not the least of which is collective memory loss.

Technology: Avoid Multitasking and Put All Your Eggs in One Basket.

After the American Century                               

A new study has confirmed that my writing habits a couple of years ago were better than those I have today. No one was examining my behavior directly, but this is an inescapable conclusion from a study made of office workers, reported on in the New York Times. Each wore heart monitors and the study examined stress levels and computer use. It found that people who continually checked their email were less effective and had higher levels of stress than those who mostly worked off-line.

This result does not surprise me. For some years I intentionally did not hook up my home computer to the Internet, so that I could not be distracted from writing by in-coming emails and by the temptations of surfing the net. There was a computer downstairs where I could do those things, so I was not cut off. Those were productive years, and I will try to shut off the email most of the time at home again.

During this off-line productive period, in Technology Matters, among many other things I wrote about the myth of multitasking, citing various reports that have found people are less effective when trying to do several things at once. In one sense, this is surely obvious. When writing an article, it is not a good thing to be interrupted to reply to an email, because it breaks the concentration. The office workers in the new study jumped from one window to another on their computers frequently. Those hooked up to the email did so 37 times every hour. On average they were looking at any one page for 97 seconds. Those disconnected stayed changed windows only 17 times an hour, or once every 211 seconds. Of course every time one changes from one window to another it does not mean one is changing tasks. When I create a powerpoint presentation, for example, I am continually jumping from one window to another as I search for images, look at the paper it is to accompany, and so forth.  I will shift back and forth between the same two or three windows when doing this or many other tasks. But email generally is not on the same topic as whatever one was working on, and the difference between those with and without email strongly suggest how disruptive it can be.

When such disruptions continue all day, the result is stress, not least because one is continually being reminded of new tasks, unfinished business, and possible problems. Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson once wisely advised against the popular wisdom of "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." To the contrary, he declared, "Put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket."

To be productive with the Internet always at hand requires new habits of attention.

Moon Landing Anniversary and the Decline of Wonder

After the American Century

I vividly recall where I was and who I was with on this day, July 20, in 1969 when Niel Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Like many Americans, I had mixed feelings: immense curiosity about what the astronauts might find balanced against the sense that the billions of dollars might better be spent on social programs. It was the heyday of the Counterculture, and like many other students I was not a fan of military spending or government science programs. The astronauts were like big boy scouts, with their crew cut hair, bland speech patterns, and conservative clothing. Richard Nixon loved them, and missed no opportunity to be photographed with them. Even so, for those who disliked Nixon it was impossible to remain unmoved by the moon landing. For the first time, human beings would walk in a place outside the earth. What might they find? Would they survive? Would there be any trace of life, perhaps a fossil?

Each subsequent visit to the moon drew less public attention. Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong, but who can name the fourth or fifth man to walk on the moon? Forty-two years later, the space program is a mere shadow of its former self, and no one has been to the moon for a long time. The space shuttle program is ending even as I write these lines. It was plagued by delays and several fatal disintegrations. It failed to become a reliable and inexpensive shuttle bus to the stars, and there is nothing to take its place.

In retrospect, the space program was driven by the Cold War. When the Soviet Union fell apart, the "space race" was over, and Congress reduced funding for high profile missions. Now the US and Russia cooperate in running and manning the space station, and the only way to get there is via a Soviet-era Soyuz rocket launched in Central Asia. Millions of Americans used to attend Apollo rocket launches in Florida and space shuttle landings in the arid west. Clearly that patriotic tradition cannot easily be transplanted to Kazakhstan.

For much of US history, Americans found various large technological projects inspiring. In the early decades of the nineteenth century canals were the rage, followed by railroads from c. 1830 to 1870. Later they embraced great bridges, then skyscrapers, then the automobile and so on down to the space program. However, as I discussed at length in American Technological Sublime, this tradition has attenuated in the last decades of the twentieth century. The ambivalent feelings I had about the space program in 1969 were part of a national trend. People no longer found big technology a compelling rallying point for the nation.

Today the technologies that excite the public are miniaturized not monumental, and they are not national but personal possessions – ipads, cell phones, portable computers, and the like. A consumer's sublime has triumphed.

As in 1969, I still would like to see more spending on social programs, including medical care, education, and the like. But I can now see that this was not to be the historical alternative to spending money on NASA. Rather, Americans deplore almost all forms of government spending and resist taxation. The money not spent on space exploration is hardly going to welfare programs.

The moon landing, that can now be viewed on YouTube, briefly united Americans in a shared wonder, but the space program no longer serves that purpose. Nor, it seems, does anything else.

The insecurity of computer systems

After the American Century

The insecurity of computer systems, discussed previously in this space, is once again in the news. The American Pentagon has admitted that back in March 24,000 files were stolen from its supposedly secure systems. The perpetrator was presumably a foreign coountry or a very large player in the defense industry, but then again it might have been another hacker incident. There have been several examples of hackers getting into the Pentagon in the past, hardly a reassuring pattern.

Why admit this now,  more than three months afterwards? The simplest explanation is that the security breach has to be acknowledged eventually. But in the world of espionage, disinformation is also a possibility, and several scenarios come to mind.

Perhaps the 24,000 files are bogus, and they were put there in a relatively insecure place, like bait in a trap.  Or perhaps there was no security breach at all, but the Pentagon wants to create the impression that there was one, as part of some larger scheme, like selling disinformation to the Chinese. If you begin to think about such matters, there is no reason to take anything at face value.

Meanwhile, Wikileaks has distributed worldwide thousands of US military files, and at least once a week there is a news story about stolen identities, security breaches, and the market in stolen credit card numbers.

Do we need a neo-Luddite movement? It might be nice to have no money or personal records out there in cyberspace. It might even be an idea for the military to take its most important secrets off-line. But how many would be willing to give up Facebook, email, and all the rest of it? From what I can see, no one under 30, and few under 65. It seems we will have to live with this new and pervasive form of insecurity.

An Efficient Phone Call? A Little Story for Our Times

After the American Century

The story I am about to tell is representative of a larger trend. Over and over, administrators proclaim that they are going to become "more efficient" and save money. Who can be against that? But in practice, becoming more efficient means just the opposite. 

Once upon a time, if I needed to make a conference call, I pushed one button on my phone, reached the operator, gave the numbers of the other parties, and then waited at most two minutes before our telephone meeting began. Clearly, my university found this terribly inefficient, I found out yesterday. I called the operator in the usual way and was told that now I am to arrange conference calls directly. To do so, I needed a set of instructions, which were emailed to me. After printing them out (3 pages) there were several points that were unclear. So I called the operator again for a discussion, focusing particularly on what my customer code number might be. That was something only the Department Secretary knew. Being hellbent on efficiency, I left my office immediately and found the Secretary, who was on the phone herself. After ten minutes I was back in the office with the code.

I was then ready to call the phone company. I listened to an automatic answering machine recite a list of options, managed to select the right one, and within another minute was talking with an operator in a faraway place who had never heard of my university. I gave him my name (would I spell that please?), my email, my department's name, the three phone numbers to be linked with, plus my phone number, plus the secret code number. The gentleman then promised to send me an email confirming the arrangement, with all the phone numbers listed so I could check them. Several minutes later the email came, with an attachment. I opened it, printed it out, and read it over. The numbers were correct. Time ellapsed: 45 minutes.  Time saved: minus 43 minutes (so far).

I still have not had that phone conference, which I ordered for later today. But I am proud of having mastered this new efficient system.

[I had imagined the call would be dialed automatically, but in fact an operator called me and then linked up to the others who were to take part in the meeting. All the preparation time was completely unnecessary.]

The Ipad Commeth

After the American Century

Apple announced that it has sold 300,000 Ipads in the first two days. Toss in some accessories, and this works out to be roughly  $200 million in sales. Not at all bad for a new item that does nothing you cannot do with Apple's previous products.

Is it an Iphone on steroids? Or a mouseless computer that cannot multitask? Or truly a new category? The answer to this question is probably up to Apple. I assume that after selling these models for a bit less than a year, the new and improved versions will appear, including much of what is not there now. This would include a USB connection, now notably absent, and presumably the ability to have more than one application open at the same time.

Another guess: Apple eventually will have so many applications and peripherals for the Ipad that it will replace the low-end computer and the portable DVD player and the Ipod. If Apple also decides to integrate the Iphone into it, this device would become a portable television/phone/computer/music player. In other words, it has the potential to become a universal device that contains everything the modern nomad needs.

It is also possible, of course, that the Ipad will end up a commercial disaster, like Apple's earlier product, The Newton. That was a sort of Ipad, and it worked well enough, but no one bought it.

This time, however, the new tablet may be the portal to the electronic future. If it sells extremely well, its price may come down to just slightly over cost, because Apple will really make money selling all the apps, songs, television programs, and peripherals. Kodak did that with cameras for years, selling them cheaply to make money on the film, processing, and specialized paper.

Whatever happens, this will be fun to watch. When the Ipad eventually gets to Europe, it will be time to decide whether to buy this first version or wait a little longer for the successor which is sure to be packed with more things, cost no more, and have any bugs eliminated.

University IT: Technological Catch 22

After the American Century Posting #201

Once I was in a supermarket checkout line when a particular jar of jam just would not scan and its code was unrecognizable when the clerk put the numbers in by hand. Result? He refused to sell me the jam. He could not sell something that did not exist in the system. The jam was right there, and we all know roughly what such things cost. But I could not buy it, or rather, he could not sell it. These (il)logical impasses have a name: Catch-22, from the novel of the same name. Following the rules, you end up paralyzed, unable to change the situation.

Something similar has happened today, as a result of my university's decision to upgrade (well, change) the email system. The result is that I will no longer be able to get emails at home, unless (and here's the catch) I upgrade my home computer to MS Office 2008+. This will cost me money and time.

Ideally my employer should reimburse such an expense. However, the Danish government has passed a new tax law, to whit: anyone who gets a portable computer, new software or email support from an employer must pay $600 in tax, every year. Besides, even if the law suddenly were overturned, my employer has no money for such things. Indeed, it has never even provided me with a flat screen much less an entirely new computer in the office! My screen was one of the first televisions, and was left behind by retreating Germans after World War II.

So, should I bite the bullet and pay for a home upgrade? Not so fast. If I do that, then my antiquarian office machine will be running 2004 software and my home machine will be five years ahead of it. In my experience, constantly shifting between two systems causes corrupted files, loss of data, and occasional freeze-ups. Besides, that 2008 MS-system for Mac has lousy reviews.

Nevertheless, to minimize problems, should I upgrade both home and office machines, at my own expense? That is actually not allowed. The university may not have any money, but it reserves the right to control what software gets into the campus system. In short, even if I wanted to spend lots of my own money, there apparently is no solution.

So, my emails are paralyzed, never to arrive in my home in-basket, a bit like that jar of jam, which remains forever in the supermarket checkout. I must give up the delights of reading emails from students and administrators in the evenings and weekends, just like I gave up that jam.

I suppose that giving it up helped me to lose just a tiny bit of weight. Come to think of it, getting no campus emails may slim down my working hours. And when I am at conferences and on research trips, no need to look at the frantic last minute requests from anyone on campus, because I just won't be hearing from them. They will be stuck in check-out.

But as for you, loyal friends and readers, I can always be reached at my non-campus email address. And that, actually, is the solution. Forget IT on campus, get yourself a free account with Google or HotMail or Yahoo or wherever. That was also the only solution in Catch-22, Joseph Heller's novel. Get out of the clutches of the system. Make your own jam.

The Great Firewall of China

After the American Century

The Chinese government has ordered all computer makers to pre-install a censorship program on new computers. (See New York Times for details) This is to begin in less than two weeks, on July 1. Will the big computer firms stand up to the Chinese on this? Hewlett Packard and Dell have asked the government to reconsider, and clearly the world's computer makers are not comfortable with the plan. But will their belief in democratic principles of free speech be strong enough to withstand the fear of profit losses?

China already has a bad track record on censorship, and makes great efforts to prevent the flow of information or dissent on certain issues. James Fallows has written a penetrating article on this, based on his experiences of (trying to) use the Internet inside China during the Olympics last summer. But evidently the Chinese government feels that blocking many sites and trying to control the flow of information through monitoring is not enough. It wants to have direct control over every single PC in the country. It wants an impenetrable Great Firewall.

The importance of the Internet in promoting freedom of speech is obvious in the present crisis in Iran. There, too, the central government is trying hard to block all communications with the outside world. The Iranian government already controls and censors the newspapers, radio, and television. If it had a Chinese style program installed on every PC in the country, then control might be absolute.

At moments like this, one can only hope that programmers who believe in free speech will develop ways to disconnect or disable the censorship software. Fortunately, there are quite a few computer people who want cyberspace to be free of censorship, notably those who set up the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The naked Chinese challenge to the computer industry should worry anyone who believes in freedom of speech and democracy. It is more than dismal to contemplate a major nuclear power that crushes Tibet and thwarts all criticism. The twenty-first century may well turn out to be "the Asian century." Will that mean a century of greater censorship, more dictatorship, and trumped up xenophobia? Iran may provide part of the answer in the coming weeks, but so too will China, if it succeeds in stifling the Internet.

In the next two weeks, will any governments speak out against the Chinese plan? Or are markets more important than principles? Centuries ago China spent vast resources building a Great Wall to keep out the barbarians. It ultimately failed to do this, and one can hope the same will be true of the Great Firewall.

If you want to find out if any site is censored out of existence in China, check out greatfirewallofchina.org

Weird Home Computer Tax in Danish "Reform"

After the American Century

With the world's highest taxes, Denmark periodically goes through the ritual of pretending to lower and simplify taxes. What always seems to result is a more complex tax code than before. I will not try to explain the new law, because after reading through it, I am not certain I understand it. That is why Denmark is a paradise for tax accountants, because you literally cannot figure out what the rules are yourself.

Rather than write about the whole complex package, I want to single out one remarkable new tax that has been added. (In any tax reduction plan in Denmark new taxes are always added). This one is for 5000 DK a year, almost $1000 for anyone who gets a computer or telephone from their employer. I hope I am misreading it, but it might mean that even if you have paid for your home computer, as I have (because the humanities faculties generally are broke), just using the Internet hookup would unleash the tax office on me. That's right, if I have a home office and check emails from home at night or on the weekend - that is, if I want to work a bit overtime, the punishment will be almost $1000 a year.

Now if the real purpose of the tax law was to get people to work less, this might make sense. But the stated purpose of the law is to encourage people to work more, to increase the work people are willing to do by lowering the tax rate. Denmark's baby boomers are marching into retirement soon, and the country cannot afford it unless people work for more years and more hours during those years.

This tax seems particularly stupid because it is aimed at anyone whose work involves communicating with Asia or North America (two rather large markets). Think about time zone differences. Send an email at noon from Denmark to Los Angeles (where it is midnight), and the reply will probably come after 21:00. Under the new law, if an employer wants someone to read and respond to that email, and gives them a computer to do it with, the cost will suddenly be $1000. As I read the law, just one message a year would do it. Nothing seems to be in the law about modulating the tax to take account of whether you have the home computer 24/7, only sometimes on the weekends, or just during a busy month. Apparently, it is all or nothing.

What will people do? They will not accept a computer or phone from their employer any more. Instead, they will try to get by with an older machine, typically with older software, that they have at home. Instead of using the same institutional network both day and night, they will sign up for a separate system that costs less than 5000 DK a year. Corporate security will no doubt be compromised. Messages needed at work will occasionally be inaccessibly at home.

This "reform" will make Denmark less efficient. It may well retard the spread and use of the Internet. It will encourage people not to work at night or on weekends. It will hurt the efficiency of international contacts and likely hurt exports. It can easily compromise corporate IT security, as employees use home systems to avoid the extra tax. It could easily make the university a bit less efficient. This is another example of an inane Danish "reform" that was worked out in a private room between a couple of political parties without the benefit of public discussion.

I get hundreds of emails from students in the off hours, and I guess this means I should not answer any of them until I get to the office, no matter how important, such as the one I got an hour ago asking urgently for a letter of recommendation. Thank goodness in the future I will not read such messages until it is too late. Less work for me to do, and no job at all for the student!

The marvel is that Denmark on the whole is such a great place, despite its tax system.