The Breaking News: Trump Tweeted

By Bob Travica

Donald Trump will move to the American Presidential office in January 2017. In my public speeches during 2016, I forecasted this outcome. My reasons were quite simple: (1) American voters really care just about their pocketbook, (2) Poking the American dream can add some weight, and (3) The contender, Hillary Clinton, was a too weak candidate.

I won’t discuss in detail each reason, but just want to warn various pundits to never underestimate the first reason. It overshadows everything else, including the foreign policy (of which the typical voter has no clue), and transgressions of ethics, such as dirty language, lies and manipulations (which pack the world of entertainment, media, politics and business, anyway), and the like “issues.” Trump put all his trumps behind the first reason.

Mrs. Clinton underperformed on reason 1, totally neglected reason 2, and focused on these marginal things. Add to this her unsatisfactory performance as the Secretary of State in the Obama government (which has got her fired) and her long tenure in politics (which today is a liability in the eyes of the apathetic American voter). This explains reason 3.

The media and pollsters didn’t see Trump’s win in elections coming. This failure speaks volumes of a superficiality characterizing the media’s approach to elections. In the case of TV, the approach was a blend of empiricism and secondary analysis. There was too much focusing on polling (which lacked validity) and on daily occurrences in the worlds of politics and media. As if the American society is a reality show spun unpredictably by random actions of the actors. As if the shrinking of the middle class has not become endemic. As if the Occupy movement and the mass outrage against the one percent of the wealthiest has never happened. As if the rusting of the once prosperous industrial zones has not pushed a massive workforce out and into marginal, low-paid jobs. As if the American society is not deeply divided also on the political and ethno/racial basis. Still, the spinners of the mass reality show were hoping that the people would care more about a private, harassing babbling of the former reality host turned Presidential candidate than any of these things. How narrow-minded!

The failure of media to predict Trump’s win could be seen in the other light too. More precisely, one could wonder about the media’s dogmatic insistence that Trump was not a serious candidate and, therefore, was incapable of winning. The closer the election was, the more some media dropped Trump from their radar screen and assumed that Clinton’s win was a done deal. One may wonder, why did the media behave this way? Was this part of supporting the Clinton camp? The diligence and ferocity with which the media trampled Trump could lead to such a hypothesis. But testing it would involve unveiling the ties between the implicated media and Democratic Party, along with its corporate interest backing.

The major American media openly dislike Trump and don’t hesitate to show it. They didn’t spare ammunition while covering Trump’s outrageous campaigning moves calculated to entertain and shock. (For more on Trump’s manipulation of old and new media see my previous blog.) The immediate post-election coverage consists of Anti-Trump street protests, criticizing Trump for “softening” on extreme campaign promises (the same ones the media criticized during the campaign), suspecting Trump’s choices of officials, more criticism of Trump as for connecting to the public personalities he criticized during the campaign (while media “wish” that he “brings the nation together”).

In this interim period between Trump's mansions and the White House, the old media also punch Trump for being “lenient” toward Russia’s President who “influenced” American Presidential elections via Wiki Leaks. Overwhelmed with a patriotic zeal, the media ignore totally some really important questions, such as how could this happen, if it did? Who is responsible? Did Wiki Leaks really influence the voters? How many? All in all, the old media are just continuing to demonstrate their misreading of the business mogul/entertainer turned the President-Elect. Media cannot fathom the lesson Trump keeps broadcasting about the twisted character of media-ted politics.

Old media’s hate of Trump is deeply rooted and may be traced down to a basic instinct of survival. For the starters, Trump uses a hefty part of the media time and space without paying for it. During the campaign, the media tracked each step of his and amplified it through a prolonged rambling, a.k.a. “analysis”. Media couldn’t do anything but suck it, since Trump was delivering the media’s manna – scandals. Of course, a scandalous coverage increased the program ratings and brought more of the advertising money to media. That’s actually why they had to cover Trump before he became the President-Elect.

Second, Trump additionally undercuts the media’s revenues by choosing to bypass them. As a passionate tweetee (a Tweeter user), and not shy of other new media either, Trump proves that he needs not TV and newspapers as loudspeakers for his statements. The media keep losing a precious connection power, based on the privileges of special access to informing sources, gate-keeping and content filtering. The bell tolls for an era in old media’s historical trajectory. Now, the breaking news on CNN is not “Mr. Trump stated for our program…”, but rather “Trump tweeted…” The old media must cover new media which are totally out of their control. An inescapable move that, on the long run, is as clumsy as shooting one’s own foot.

Third, old media hate Trump because he equals them in spin-doctoring skills. Mastering impression management, keeping the audience on tiptoes, creating an endless reality circus… Trump does all this as effectively as the old media do. He steals the daily bread from the media’s hands, and so in a professional sense. Increasingly confused, the old media must cover an unorthodox public figure even when he drags them into his fairy tallish mansions and babble-Tweets the first thing he’s got on mind.

All in all, Trump Tasers the old media into the heart. But he doesn’t intend to kill them, just to put them in a different place than the media have been used to. Is this a real politician and real politics? But wait, who’s ever said that the mediated politicians and politics must be real? Politicians show their real face and do real politics just on the backstage, invisible to the mass audience. The old media have for long been an accomplice in this cover-up. Trump tears up the curtain by turning the public political play into a grotesque.  

The intrusion of new media into big politics may have as profound effects as the political insertion of radio and TV had in their times. Is this a change for better, looking from the perspective of democracy? Not necessarily. New media are as prone to manipulation as old media, except that the former is clear about it while the latter pretends the (journalistic) truth. Trump could easily start his own TV, radio, an old media empire. But that would mean falling back to the mediated politics orthodoxy. If nothing else comes out of Trump’s trumping or - if you will - trumpery, it is the realization that the model of parliamentary democracy, which is based on alienated parties and accompanying old media, has worn out. 

Social Media in Politics: Crowd Acting vs. InstaSnap Spinning

Social media (SM) have entered the world of politics with recent significant political developments. Instances of SM are Facebook, Tweeter, topically-focused Websites, Websites for sharing digital artifacts (YouTube, Instagram), Rich Site Summaries, and social bookmarking sites. Contrasted to old media of TV, press, radio and film, SM can be seen as new media. In politics, new media can do the same things that old media do. But they can do more. Still, what appears a new thing, sometimes can be just the disguised old.

Something New: Crowd Acting

When a political activist tweets, he/she engages in broadcasting, thus replicating radio. When the group with a political agenda posts text and videos on a Facebook, they do what TV has always been doing in political processes. But the difference is that anyone can use Twitter and Facebook to create messages and reach out to a select group or (theoretically) to any of 320 million people on Twitter or 1.6 billion on Facebook. And these other users can talk back to the original sender. These communication and connectivity capabilities are apparently broader than those of radio and TV. Old media are controlled by professionals and special interest working behind them, such as governments, political parties, corporations, think tanks, organized crime, and public relations agencies. Therefore, SM partly replicate old media, while doing something more, expanding capabilities of old media. And this is not all.

Since 2010, Facebook, Tweeter and other SM have been deployed for self-organizing in political developments that resulted in toppling governments and dismantling functional nation-states throughout the Middle East (so called “Arab Spring”). SM also played a role in self-organizing of protesters against the police brutality in the United States during 2015. SM have been involved in the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, being deployed on all sides – by pro-refugee forces, by their opponents, and by the refugees themselves. It is the nature of SM’s Internet-centric technologies, which couples with mobile technologies (cell phones, Wi-Fi devices), that enables a rapid deployment, self-initiated communication, and emergence of political activism within the crowd and by the crowd.

SM have undoubtedly facilitated entering of the masses into big politics. Internet-bound vocabulary labels these with “crowd” (as in crowd-sourcing, crowd-wisdom, and crowd funding). SM relate to “crowd” where the old media reference the “audience”. Although lacking a high-brow connotation of “audience”, the term “crowd” rejects the passive role of media message receiver and allows for broadening of the actor role (even though somewhat ambiguous).

Something Old Appearing New: InstaSnap Politics

As SM are open media, the crowd has no exclusive hold over it. A political leader owning a Facebook page has “friends” who absorb the content pushed onto them. The leader-mass relationship is also reestablished on Twitter via the division between Twittees and “followers”. Contenders to the President’s Office in the U.S. have millions of Tweeter followers (Donald Trump 8 million, Bernie Sanders 2 million). Barack Obama, the sitting President who started the SM game, has as much as 76 million followers. The number of followers became a measure of political rating in American politics to the extent that some politicians feel compelled to fabricate the figure (Hillary Clinton, also a contender for the throne in Washington, has been suspected of such a practice).

Politicians can, therefore, manipulate SM for promoting their own interest. In this respect, SM are not immune of the spin doctoring that appears pertinent to media in general. Old media have established such a role resolutely with little variation across types of political systems. The press, for example, in multi-party systems divides its allegiance between main political parties. Ownership interest and advertising concerns additionally bound editorial policies. In single-party systems or dictatorships, the press is on even a shorter leash. As for the radio, it has served as a loudspeaker of massive propagandistic meetings and other events to intrude into private homes. This role was diminished with the end of great dictators’ era. The propagandistic role gave way to debates and interviews in which brain washing is less direct. The rest of radio programming is entertainment mechanically appended to political programming.

TV turned political events into a total visual show, expanding over the radio’s audio-boundedness. Whether TV spectacles take form of reports, debates, election races, or unscheduled boxing matches between agitated parliamentarians, TV is after reality construction by occupying the audience’s cognition. The excitement arousing content and emotional appeal are brought to the fore – threat, fight, success, disaster, comedy, tragedy, fear, hope, envy, admiration, craving… The Greek drama and Roman circus blended into televised reality. The rational content is irrelevant – emotional effects count. Like radio, TV ends up with entertainment, but spin doctoring is smoothly blended in it. Donald Trump is a good example for this.

The businessman-turned-politician and aspiring U.S. President, Trump deliberately pushes TV into the domain of entertainment. Trump uses his experience from the successful reality show Apprentice, in which he featured in a role of himself (sort of). As part of his ongoing campaign “Make America Great Again!” Trump appears often on TV screens. Following a bossy style of a business owner from the Apprentice, he piles up a petty talk, pokes and punches his opponents and does everything that has little to do with political issues. In effect, Trump creates a role of the nation’s big daddy in an emerging TV soap titled “American Presidential Elections”. TV actively helps since Trump’s trumping is the way of creating sensationalistic content that makes TV’s manna. As a joint effect, by pushing the medium’s engagement in politics to a grotesque, Mr. Trump confirms that TV is to entertain the political audience as the gladiator arena did in the Roman circus, while real politics remains invisible.

The Trump campaign heavily utilizes SM in the same sensational roller-coaster manner. This may be eye-opening to those who view SM solely as the means of people-power. Trump’s Website, of course, is all biased in support to his owner. What is more intriguing, the site’s front page features links to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube – four power houses of SM. The content of these SM parallels that on TV: self-advertising, petty attacks on the opponents, and blank promises on America’s prospective greatness under Trump’s leadership. No true substance. Vox populi is aired as a normal component of SM, but the crowd wisdom boils down to thumb-up, thumb-down reactions to Trump’s provocations. Again no substance; an exception are posts by Mexicans venting anger at Trump’s idea of enlarging the wall on the American-Mexican border.

Trump’s use of SM proves that new media can serve as the means of mass manipulation by special interest. Thus, SM replicate old media. But they even expand the manipulation capacity as spinning is more direct, cheaper, and potentially more mesmerizing due to special properties of SM. These bring up playfulness, speed, randomness, virulence, excitement, and shocking capability via a multi-format content. For instance, Instagram enables creating and sending visual messages on the spot. Communication and photo/video sharing is virulently fast. The content is also discrete rather than story-like, allowing user to arbitrarily plug in and plug out. These easing effects clean up a space for play, surprise, and excitement, and may attract even the folks uninterested in politics.

Snapchat mimics Instagram, but with temporary messages that erase themselves after a while. By boasting randomness and a shocking capacity, Snapchat infuses thriller-like excitement into the reality show of political campaigning. For the fear of missing a snap and thus falling out of the loop, the crowd members must be on a continuous lookout. The umbilical digital cord is reinforced, and a Trumpian InstaSnap politics enters a harvesting season.

It remains to be seen whether SM will end up by replicating and extending the manipulative character of old media, or perhaps substitute these by empowering crowd-driven politics? (As for Mr. Trump, SM are firing some funny bullets.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS / Exodus into Europe as Consequence of Destabilization Policy

An exodus of peoples from the area of grater Middle East and North Africa has been unfolding in the past two years. Most of them come from war-thorn countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. They are heading for Europe via the Mediterranean Sea and by a land route running through the Balkans. According to BBC, 350,000 migrants or refugees were detected at the EU's borders in January-August 2015, 25% more than in the whole 2014. Other sources cite even higher numbers.

Mass media are covering a sad story in sequel. TV is showing endless columns of people of all ages traveling on foot or by boats. In media reports, the interviewees try to explain, in broken English, that they are fleeing from war, hunger and poor life. A majority is heading to Germany. At times, tragedies of boat sinking with fatalities fill the reports. These boats usually sail to Italy, departing from Tunisia and Libya. But refugees die on land too, as those locked up in a truck caught on the Austrian border. There have been close to 3,000 victims by the fall of 2015, and counting.

Media readily assure that the civil war in Syria is the major cause of this exodus. When Afghans, the second largest migration group, are mentioned, the cause detail is readily skipped. But is this the whole story?

Recall how during 2011 the same media were triumphantly reporting about forceful regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the happenings obliquely called “Arab Spring”. The media joined the paramilitaries in Libya in cheering the capture of Lybia’s President Gadhafi when he was hiding in a storm water pipe, and then executed (See). The cheer echoed that from 2006 when Iraq’s President Hussein was captured and later executed. There was no “Arab Spring” yet, but rather a precursor to it in the form of an all-out war of aggression executed by the U.S. military and a few allies. The same bellicose policy was already used in Afghanistan in a prolonged war against the Taliban.

The “Arab Spring” of 2011 shook up Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco. As in a chain reaction, coups d’état, civil wars and mass destruction detonated through the region. Nevertheless, the media seconded the mainstream politics in the West in celebrating all these violent happenings as welcome changes toward peoples’ liberation, democracy, and prosperity.

Four years after we can only see chaos throughout the affected region, thriving radicalisms, countries chopped by opposed militants, dysfunctional economy, rising poverty, lawlessness, and an increasing military involvement of foreign powers. Still, media are making no connection between the “Arab Spring” or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the exodus. Instead, the responsibility for the exodus, is dogmatically attributed to the civil war in Syria, the country that in fact did not fall to the chain reaction in the region.

The exodus from the Middle East and North Africa is the direct consequence of the “Arab Spring”. The unrest and forceful ousting of governments were less internal movements and more ignited from aside. This is apparent in cases of Libya and Syria, where the opposition to legal governments has been financed, trained, and supported militarily by the US, UK and some allies. As for Iraq and Afghanistan, these were apparent foreign aggressions committed by the U.S.-led NATO countries and allies. These wars produced the similar chaotic results as the “Arab Spring”. A consequence we currently face is the endless flow of refugees (“migrants”) that are choking on their long, strenuous and uncertain routes, clogging in the process the unprepared European countries. They try to escape the havoc that a disastrous Western policy of destabilization inflicted upon their homes.

The destabilization policy backfires. Countries of the European Union (EU), which more or less directly carried out the destabilization policy, have got more than they bargained for. The grand goals and neat legislation of the EU are getting dissolved in regressing toward Cold War-style iron fences that are being erected on country borders. Sleek EU leaders have abruptly lost temper and traded laymen’s quarrel for diplomatic talk.

The prices that particular EU countries pay for the failed destabilization policy are not always proportionate to their responsibility for this policy. Looking at the group of former colonial powers that were militarily involved in the destabilization policy, Italy pays what it deserved, but the U.K. and France do not. Some EU/NATO countries are downright over-charged. Examples are Hungary and Germany. As in old times when it was on the route of Turkish penetration into Europe, Hungary is again the target. Refugees claim they just want to pass to Germany, but the EU policy makers would want to distribute the refugees across member countries, including Hungary.

Rather mysteriously, Germany is the main destination to the exodus. Media readily confirm this without questioning how come an Afghan as well as a Middle Easterner end up with the same plan. It appears though that German authorities wholeheartedly welcome them by declaring a readiness to accept as much as 800,000 refugees. But things cannot be that simple. Growing suddenly the population of Germany’s for 1% is poised to have economic, political and cultural consequences that cannot be fully predicted or controlled. In a total opposite to the high price for Germany, the master-creator of the destabilizing policy manages to get away from covering the tab.

POLITICAL ANALYSIS / Srebrenica: Devaluing Genocide

At this time of recalling the event that took place in the area of Srebrenica town in July 1995 during the civil war in Bosnia, the characterization of that event remains controversial. The execution of a few thousand Bosnian Muslim military aged-men committed by armed forces of Bosnian Serbs has been branded a genocide by the United States, its EU followers, and Bosnian Muslims (Bosniacks). However, it was not a genocide according to the other side involving Bosnian Serbs, Serbia, and their allies. Both sides have legal experts supporting their views.

There is no balance between the two opposed sides. The pro-genocide side is better organized, abundantly funded, and very loud. The counterpart hangs back in defensive trenches and is aggressively silenced every time it dares to speak. While legal and ethical justifications are readily aired, vigor behind the silencing efforts raises the question regarding political motives of the silencers.

Why Srebrenica is not a genocide

Can the single event of executing military aged-men by armed forces of Bosnian Serbs be characterized as a genocide committed over the entire Bosnian Muslim population? Legally, a genocide is an intended destruction of large groups of people based on racial, national, ethnic, religious, or cultural roots. When this definition is applied to the Srebrenica 1995 event, the answer to the question above is – no! The Srebrenica killing could possibly be a war crime, but not a genocide.

Genocides recognized in the recent history include the Holocaust (5 million Jewish victims) and Rwanda (1 million Tutsi victims). Raphael Lemkin, the creator of the genocide concept, wrote about genocides over large ethnic groups in the Central and South Americas. Spanish conquerors threw into slavery, murdered and forcibly converted to Catholicism many people. Lemkin also insinuated that genocidal acts could have been committed by other European colonial powers in their conquests that were not shy of mass murder and forcible cultural conversions.

There may have been genocides in the recent history yet to be recognized. For instance, World War II murdered over 35 million of Slavic peoples, most of them Russians. Nazis considered these another minor race to be destroyed. Millions of Chinese perished during the Sino-Japanese wars in the same period. Millions were killed by the American military in its aggressive war in Vietnam. Millions perished in recent American wars in Iraq and in the Middle East. Still, recognizing genocide requires making a concentrated effort usually by the victorious side.

To grasp why the Srebrenica killings did not constitute a genocide, one just needs to look at some simple facts:
• A singular event cannot constitute a holistic policy of destruction of the Bosnian Muslims;
• The number of victims is far below those in the recognized genocides (estimates of Srebrenica figures range from 2,000-8,000);
• The victim group composition was narrowed down to men and teenagers of the military age, while children, women and elders were set free. It makes no sense that a genocide perpetrator would release women as they are the key to perpetuating the very group to be eliminated, to paraphrase a former UN commander in Bosnia, Canadian Gen. MacKenzie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_MacKenzie ).

International law specialists also cite the first two points above and agree that an intent of destruction cannot be identified in the case of Srebrenica execution. One is Canadian professor William Schabas, a world expert on genocide. Other legal experts stress that the notion of genocide has been arbitrarily stretched in decisions of the Hague Tribunal (for example, K. Southwick, 2005, https://utd.edu/~mjleaf/southwickGenocide.pdf ).

There is also a political analysis that reveals some shocking details. For example, Norwegian documentary entitled “A town betrayed” offers evidence that Alija Izetbegovic, advised by his foreign sponsors, consciously victimized the people of Srebrenica in order to win the war against the Bosnian Serbs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhOq8ev6YhI&feature=youtu.be ).

Foreign sponsors to Bosnia war

The civil war in Bosnia was a baby of American foreign policy. In the process of breakup of Yugoslavia the peoples of Bosnia could have found their way of living together within a smaller Yugoslavia. But Bill Clinton’s government of the time sponsored the extremist Muslim party led by Alija Izetbegovic, who advocated an exclusive Muslim state intolerant to other religions. Upon the sponsor’s advice, Izetbegovic’s party pushed for a referendum for Bosnia’s secession. Boycotted by the non-Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia, Serbs and Croats, that move became the overture to the civil war.
When the war started, the American sponsor was pushing Izetbegovic toward conflict rather than cooperation every time when some agreement or resolution could have been reached. Britain’s Premier Tony Blaire was a loyal partner in wrongdoing. The bloodshed unfolded, masses of Bosnia’s people of all ethnicities suffered and perished in the war.

With help of special operation forces and propaganda proliferated by PR firms, the foreign sponsors successfully detracted attention from themselves and vilified Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia. Srebrenica was a trap the Izetbegovic’s sponsors prepared in order to get NATO involved in a direct war against the Bosnian Serb army. Effectively betraying his own kin, Izetbegovic believed that a few thousand Muslim victims of Srebrenica would not count much in Allah’s notebook.

Genocide as political instrument

In the last 20 years, the notion of genocide has been used for branding warring factions involved in civil wars. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established in Hague, Netherlands, especially for investigating crimes in civil wars that accompanied the process of disintegration of Yugoslavia. However, from the very beginning, political agendas overshadowed legality of the Tribunal’s decisions. Indicatively, most of the indicted are Serbs. Persons from other nations that lived in Yugoslavia have rarely been accused; if they were, they were usually acquitted. The most notorious case is mafia boss Naser Oric.

Paramilitary troops of Oric had terrorized Serbs in the Srebrenica region and murdered about 2,500 elders, children, and adults of both genders. Oric used Srebrenica as the basis, although it was a designated UN safe heaven. The Srebrenica execution in 1995 was largely motivated by a revenge to Oric’s horrendous crimes. Norwegian documentary “A Town Betrayed” makes this point convincingly. Touted “the defender of Srebrenica,” Oric betrayed the town and its people before the July attack by the Bosnian Serb army.

Incapability to prosecute war criminal Oric devalues the concepts and law of genocide. In addition, putting millions of victims in historical genocides in the same category with thousands of Srebrenica victims appears as discounting the genocide concept. Worse yet, this may offend the victims of established genocides. By dogmatically insisting despite technical shortcomings that a genocide was committed in Srebrenica, the Hague Tribunal and its sponsors endorse politics over law. The sum-effect is that genocide was turned into an arbitrary instrument for political pressure. It is so in spite of calls for “reconciliation” issued in the recent EU resolution and the failed UN declaration, which was championed by the Great Britain.


20th anniversary

The commemoration on the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica tragic wartime event went in the way fitting with its chaotic history. It gathered the usual suspects in Srebrenica. Bill Clinton, the architect of the Bosnian war and the Srebrenica tragedy, showed up only to endorse his failing project; the only thing he could offer to the region that couldn’t heal in the past 20 years was empty rhetorical shells. But he clearly stated that NATO needed Srebrenica as a justification for its overt military intervention in the Bosnian war. Represented (curiously) by the Queen’s daughter, the 12th in the line of succession to the throne, Britain confirmed a hardliner pro-genocide stance. Days before the commemoration, it tried to push it into a UN resolution albeit with no success.

The EU official for foreign policy and security didn’t show up at the commemoration, fittingly so as the event and the location weren’t secured properly. Serbia’s Prime Minister also knew that but still showed up, only to be booed and stoned, barely escaping lynch. All these anniversary happenings fit the big picture of Srebrenica and Bosnia delusions, exposing a failed policy of blaming exclusively the Serbian side for Bosnia's continuing troubles.

Victims are victims and should be honoured regardless their side. Crime is crime, and it should be sentenced appropriately on each side. That is so, if a path of justice is followed. But it is not so in the case of Srebrenica and the civil war in Bosnia. The victor writes history and debits the defeated with all the evil the war had brought. The foreign mentors keep helping wholeheartedly. A lip-service to law and justice is being done and consciousness is happy for being killed. The mission impossible, or multi-ethnic Bosnia by a Pax-Americana recipe, still keeps going.

Big Data – 3V and 3W

By Bob Travica

Big in volume, variety, and velocity (speed) – that is what Big Data is about. The defining three “V” aspects are depicted in the figure below. You search the Internet looking for some brand product, purchase it in a Web store, “like it” of the Facebook, talk to people who talk about it in some other social medium, mention it in texting via your cell phone… All these data (and more) coming from different sources (high variety), may be collected continuously (high velocity) and submitted to customer profiling analysis. The data can also be compared to historical records for the same customer, which would grow it in volume. Another volume booster is by looking at other products associated with the same customer, or by looking across customers sharing the interest in the same brand product. Although it hasn’t been around for long, Big Data has generated big interest. Technologists are interested in the technical part which challenges traditional database systems. Data in various formats and states of organization challenge rules behind well-known relational databases. Say, integrating text messages with data in traditional tables requires new technologies, such as Hadoop and NoSQL. Players in the use and management arena are equally interested in Big Data.

Applicability of Big Data creates a list that keeps growing. Here is where what I call the first “W” of Big Data surfaces—worth: the monitoring of oil-well sensors, human genome research, managing energy grids and transportation networks, studying cancer cell behavior, observing patient vital signs and bacteria sensors in animals, analyzing product-related sentiments on social media, tracking cell phone communications and locations for business purposes…

The worth list is so long that I need to insert a new passage for easier reading. Big Data enable personal analytics in many areas, including fitness, tracking of psychological moods, managing finance, and handling romance. Monitoring technology performance spreads to cars, athletic equipment, machinery, home appliances, power grid and consumer devices. International threats and lawbreakers are more effectively tracked.

In economy, one gets better understanding of business fundaments, such as the customer, competitor, partner, employee, product, performance, and market. Some writers differentiate between transactional data (for example, messages exchanged) and the data about transactional data – metadata (the identification of communication systems used, actors’ locations, times, message size, etc.). Some authors assume that Big Data is more about these contextual descriptors than the content itself. I’d say, it’s about both.

The worth of Big Data may overshadow potential threats. Big Data is not necessarily all good. Beware of another “W” that stands for “worry.” While some of the profiled customers from the example above may be happy when getting an unsolicited marketing message based on their profiling, others may not. Big Data analysis can also break anonymity of an evaluator of films watched in separate digital environments that intersect with the Internet. Consequences may be worrying if the evaluator is from a conservative, small town, living an alternative life style associated with the film’s topic. Consequences may be quite worrying if the evaluator is tracked down by authorities who advocate against the filmed behaviors endorsed by the evaluator.

Profiling lawbreakers appears a useful social use of Big Data. But if a lawbreaker profile is automatically attributed to a wrong person, a big worry arises for all parties involved. The problem gets even worse if the police act upon criminal profiling with the hope of preventing crime before it happens. No matter how good a prediction based on history and profiling of law offenders is, there is always a probability that a crime may not occur. Arresting-just-in-case pre-empts the due process, and turns crime prevention into a mockery of legality. A long-term worry arises from the character of digital footprints everybody does or will have to leave behind. These footprints grow over time into permanent profiles that may haunt a person to the end of life. A picky employer and oppressive political regime come to mind as unexpected users. But all possible users cannot even be conceived today. Migration in the space will no longer provide an escape. As in the other worrisome cases, freedom is the ultimate victim.

As Big Data evolves in technology and problem solving applications, uncertainty will paint relationships between firms and between countries, since digital and economic divides will widen. Consequences of the divides are hard to predict, as they will become part of opportunistic moves and emerging strategies.

The remarkable contrast of the worry and worth brings us to the third “W” of Big Data. It stands for “wisdom.” The development, use and management of Big Data require big wisdom on the part of all the players in order to avoid the big worries that parallel the big worth. Instead of unconstrained optimism due to technological possibilities or expected particularistic benefits, I recommend wise weighing of options. With Big Data, each step in its life process is big.

BitCoin: Money is electrons, as long as you accept it

BitCoin: Money is electrons, as long as you accept it

By Bob Travica

Recently, some advocates of BitCoin were arrested in the US. Not long ago, BitCoin was banned in China. These events again swayed public attention to BitCoin, and interesting international phenomenon that was born in 2009.

BitCoin is a form of digital currency, created in the open source community (programmers who make their software available in the form of source code and often free). It is a form of money that is used as a means of exchange among those who voluntarily accept it. There is no mint authority, no specific country issuing the money, no banks, no coins (although there could be plastic pieces imitating coins but hiding digital circuitry inside). And there is no money exchanging pocket, just shuffling of encrypted messages that specify transfer of BitCoin form one owner to another.

There are many problems with BitCoin, such as its exchange rate with regular currencies, large fluctuations in value, its geographical coverage, and, not the least important - BitCoin is sometimes used for irregular trade like narcotics. Advocates of BitCoin and other digital currencies point out that alternative means of exchanges serve as a rescue from over-powering banks. The argument goes, if a particular community agrees on its currency and it does the job of facilitating legal trade, who is to say that digital currency is inappropriate?

The bigger picture behind this story is digital format of money. In the 1950s, some visionaries asserted that money was going to be electronic. Bankers laughed. Today, however, most of banking transpires in the form of transferring debit and credit figures electronically.

Money is essentially a social contract between parties accepting a certain means of payment as legitimate (normal). They also accept that the given money is an appropriate meter of economic value of goods and services traded. As long as the contract exists, it doesn’t matter if the money is paper, metal, electronic numbers, or nearly anything to which imagination can stretch. It is important though that the particular format cannot be easily forged.

In the past, money itself had economic value; e.g., sheep, edible plants, and then gold and other precious metals. While gold survived as a sort of money, it is impractical to use it in regular trade due to wear, robbery, impossibility of measuring smaller value, etc. Up until early 1970s, paper money was backed by gold reserves in national central banks. After abandoning the gold standard, limits to digital money definitely disappeared.

Clock: Update thinking with technology progress

Clock: Update thinking with technology progress

By Bob Travica

Commando Delta speaking in his RF device:

- Delta to Alpha, a sniper 3 o’clock, ten-four.

Commando Alpha speaking back in his RF device:

- Copy that.

To make use of this potentially life-saving message, Alpha needs to be facing the same direction as Delta (Alpha must see what direction Delta faces), and then to concentrate on the perpendicular direction, 90 degrees to the right. In other words, Delta has to visualize a good old clock. Even if Delta actually wears a watch with a numeric dial.

But Delta is trained to make the visualization of a fading technology in order to orient himself in physical space.

Doug is a teenager who never wore a watch with the classical dial. Wait, he’s never worn any watch, as his cell phone tells time. Doug wants to learn to waltz for the upcoming wedding of his older sister Anna. She loves it and requested that Doug better be ready to waltz with her at least once. Anna is sure she can teach Doug to waltz in no time.

“Doug, it’s like walking in three steps, right, left, right, and then same with the opposite footwork. All the time you keep turning clock-wise…” explains Anna. “Got the three steps part,” fires back her brother. “But what do you mean to turn clock-wise?” “You know, move in the direction of the hands on a clock.” “Daaa?” stares Doug back at his frustrated sister. “Oh, Doug, it’s just the vocabulary we use for dance instruction. Don’t be such a moron, you’ve got to get it!”

Technologies change faster than our knowledge of technology metaphors. Some pieces of knowledge appear as if they are cut in stone of institutions that resist change. “Three o’clock” is same as saying “watch East” or “90 degrees to the right.” And “turning clockwise” is same as instructing “turn around the right shoulder.”