Category: Other

The right to privacy doesn’t appear in the constitution and the concept of privacy in the United States was not clearly legally defined until the late 19^th Century. For constitutional constructionists, there is not much help in the constitution on privacy, but most people have some idea that citizens have some rights. Privacy is similar to free speech. There is a fine line between free speech which is protected and hate speech, which can be prosecuted. The same applies to privacy. Suspected criminals do not have the same rights to privacy as law-abiding citizens. The difficulty is distinguishing between free and hate speech, law-abiding citizens and probable criminals. I don’t want to discuss the exact criteria applied in these situations. I would rather assume that there is a clear and accepted distinction and it is applied equitably. (I don’t necessarily agree with that assumption, but it is another day’s discussion.)

I was raised on a rural telephone party line. My parents did not get a private line until after I graduated from college. On a party line, you never know which of your neighbors are listening; people rudely interrupt conversations and perform other unspeakable mischief. This is important because it shaped my attitude toward communications. I have come a long way from the party-line days, but in my gut, I am still on that party line where privacy was absent. Laws against eavesdropping and interference were printed on the second page of the telephone directory. The laws threatened fines and imprisonment, but everyone ignored the laws anyway because breaking the law was easy, pleasant, and hard to prove. Speaking on the phone was the same as making a sign and posting it on the roadside for the neighbors to read.

Did that diminish the value of telephone service? Some, but people were willing to sacrifice to pay for a telephone, which shows the service had value. I have always had the same attitude toward all computer based communication, including cell phones. You never know who might be listening, reading, or recording. I know this to be true because I know the technology well enough to know that accessing information on any computer or communication system is possible for someone with the right knowledge and privilege, and knowledge and privilege can be obtained in both legitimate and illegitimate ways. And I also know people well enough to know that the laws printed in the front of the telephone book are easily and often ignored and the same goes for other privacy laws. Further, I am skeptical of technological efforts to ensure privacy. If a person can think up a surefire privacy protection, another person can think up a way around it.

What about the NSA and their snooping? The first question is whether or not it is an invasion of privacy. Although I think the question is worthy of examination and debate, I will stick with my assumption that it is decided and postulate that some types of NSA data gathering are clearly invasive. Consequently, I expect a regulation will be written, the courts will pass down a ruling, or Congress will enact a statute that will force NSA to back off. Or perhaps the invasion will be deemed so egregious that the NSA will be dismantled.

Will I then rest easy that my electronic conversation is private? Not on your life. Some other branch of the US government, some other government, some criminal organization, even some business analytics firm will appear to grab the invasive baton. Worse, this is a democracy and the populace is fickle. Laws change. What is illegal invasion today may be legal tomorrow.

From my experience with technology and the laws on the second page of the telephone directory, I assume that privacy cannot be assured by laws, technology, or human nature. Letters can be opened, seals can be resealed, and cyphers can be broken. I don’t say anything over any telephone that I don’t want overheard; I don’t put anything in an email or a text message that I would not want broadcast to the world; I store my private data in a safe hidden in a corner of the basement. Most important, I think about what is private to me and what doesn’t matter and treat them accordingly. Consequently, my safe is nearly empty and I generally say what I want over the Internet. Electronic communications are all worth using, but they are not and never will be private.

My writing group frequently discusses whether it is better to outline first and write later, or write first and extract an outline from the writing. There certainly are contradictory opinions among successful writers. Stephen King says he starts with a submerged fragment of an idea and uncovers a novel through writing; he equates his process to an archeologist uncovering a dinosaur bone-by-bone with soft brushes and dental picks. On the other side, the outliners claim to increase their productivity and quality by orders of magnitude when they outline first and write later.

I don’t know. Stephen King is certainly productive. As Anthony Trollope described writing in his autobiography, his method was similar to Stephen King. He started with an idea and wrote from there. Trollope was exceedingly productive. He wrote his novels from beginning to end and seldom took time to revise before publishing, pumping out several books a year, and still working daily at the British Postal Service. (He invented the iconic British cylindrical letterbox.) There are flaws in some of Trollope’s novels—the same character might reappear with his name spelled differently–but most of his books are well structured. Rex Stout wrote like Trollope—from beginning to end with little revision. And his complex plots depend on clues planted early in the text.

For my own fiction efforts, I write detailed outlines and ignore them. My imagination never goes the same way twice. The best I can do is keep a running commentary on where the story might go next. I use the commentary to try ideas. I think the outlines and commentary helps, but not directly. When I am writing non-fiction, I write an outline form using the free open-source mind mapping tool, FreeMind. Mind mapping tools do no more than an outline, but the presentation helps me keep the whole in proportion. When the outline contains everything I want, I revise the outline into ordinary text. Works for me.

 

This blog announces my retirement. Bear with me.

Herrlee Creel was a Sinologist, an expert on all things Chinese. In addition to his more scholarly works on early China, he wrote a book on Confucius, another on Chinese philosophy that began with the Confucians and stretched all the way to Mao Tse Tung. Both of those books appeared on the New York Times best seller list. He is now fading into the past, replaced by younger scholars who have the benefit of new archaeological discoveries, thawed relations with China, and renewed interest in China’s past, but his books are still in print.

He was both my undergraduate advisor and my PhD advisor. I turned in a first chapter of my undergraduate thesis to him. I wrote about that event earlier in the Vine Maple Studio. If you are interested he Rex Stout, he has a large following. Read about it at The Wolfe Pack.

When I became a graduate student, Creel was not so forgiving. He had a reputation for severity with his PhD advisees. After I turned in a second or third thesis chapter, he demonstrated his severity just for me. I have never, before or after, felt so inept, unsuitable, devoid of aptitude, unworthy and generally like something we’d shoot if it got near the granary.

He said nothing about the content of the chapter, but he took apart almost every sentence and word in it. I had written in the usual abysmally pretentious graduate student style. Abstractions were piled on abstraction. Subjects were carefully hidden. The pipes were clogged with meaningless word and pointless adverbs. Creel did not direct me to Strunk and White. I suspect he did not approve of Cornell. He said that I had missed the point of his old advice to read Rex Stout and said that he expected me to pay attention this time.

I abandoned my PhD not too long after that when I realized that I was not on a path likely to lead to gainful employment, but I spent the next forty years ruminating on Creel’s advice.

Last May I was summarily retired from my job as a software architect by being laid off. This was a blessing. Retirement doesn’t merit a gold watch or a pension anymore, but you get a severance package when you are laid off, and severance packages for 23 year employees can be better than winning at Jeopardy. Since I already had been thinking about retirement, when the rumors of a layoff began to circulate, I knew my opportunity had come and I dropped hints that I would not mind being on the list. Retirement came suddenly, and I probably would have put it off a few years, but here I am.

I can now pursue Creel’s advice with the diligence that he expected me to apply. I am writing a mystery in Rex Stout’s style. This will be the PhD thesis I did not complete. A first draft is close to half done. The characters and setting are all different, but I am trying to use every bit I have learned in four decades of study of Archie and Nero. I imagine I will publish it on Kindle and maybe a few people will enjoy it, but, no matter who reads it, I will meet an obligation.

As an aside, I am also working on my second technical business book. If you are interested, check out my technical site, Cloud Standards.