Five questions, no answers

Just because, I’m going off the rails this week with an off-the-wall offering of off-the-cuff off-servations. Be not off-ended.

Question one: What’s with these guys wearing too-small suits? Is there an under-reported shortage of worsted wool? New Zealand’s holding out for a better deal on its best-known export? Are the tight-suit wearers trying to look like they’ve recently gained weight? Gotten taller? Do they want to show off their socks and shirt cuffs? I’m just glad I wear a suit about twice a decade. At least if I put on some weight it might make me look a little more fashionable, so there’s a silver lining, at least.

In a November 17, 2015, post on his Notes from the Fashion Apocalypse blog, Simon Noonan writes that loose-fitting garb has long been associated with the upper class. In fact, Sumptuary laws of the Renaissance made it a crime for peasants to dress above their station by using more fabric/fur/hide/whatever than they needed. You were born in sackcloth, you died in sackcloth.

Noonan credits the too-tight-suit trend to a desire by the wearer to show off their fitness. This allows them to send a double message: “I’m rich, and I’m healthy.” Noonan makes a case for bringing back Sumptuary laws, if only to make it easier for people to decide what to wear. Cool with me, so long as they don’t outlaw the middle-school gym teacher look I’ve relied on for the past 30 years.

Question two: Why don’t we educate our children the way they do in Finland? My friend Don Scroggins shared a link to a March 26, 2016, article by William Doyle in the Sydney Morning Herald that describes the Finnish approach to teaching young children. The overarching philosophy is that “the work of children is play,” and “children learn best through play.” Also, kids get a 15-minute outdoor break every hour, and much of the “learning” occurs outdoors, with little or no direct supervision by adults. That’s in every kind of weather: as a Finnish maxim states, “There’s no bad weather. Only inadequate clothing.”

A key difference between the approaches to education in Finland and the U.S. is that teachers in the former are treated as professionals. Personal, one-to-one instruction is emphasized, and standardized tests are rarely used. The overriding attitude in the classroom (and outside it) is one of play and enjoyment. The result? According to Doyle, Finland produces “the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation.”

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Question three: Is an economic system predicated on growth sustainable? In a January 24, 2014, post on the Freakonomics blog, Tim Harford, the Financial Times “Undercover Economist,” says “yes.” But Harford looks at the problem only from an energy-consumption perspective. He points out that per-capita use of energy has declined over the past half century, and the decline is expected to continue.

Three sustainable-living researchers – John Ikerd, Lonnie Gamble, and Travis Cox – also say “yes,” but only if we adopt what they refer to as “deep sustainability.” According to the three scientists, “[h]umanity has lost its way on the path of purpose… in a continuing quest for never-ending economic growth and ever-greater economic wealth.” What is required for humans to thrive in the future is nothing less than an entirely new worldview – one that isn’t “anthropocentric or human-centered.”

Convince 7 billion-plus people to put not only their own self-interest but also humanity’s self-interest second to the interests of the planet as a whole? Piece of cake!

The researchers admit that acknowledging the finite character of resources and taking steps to limit growth will merely slow the ultimate exhaustion of the planet, not prevent it. They espouse the belief that “[n]ature does not exist for the sole benefit of humans.” Some theologians may dispute this world view.

From the Christian perspective, there’s that “go forth and multiply” thing. Also the reference in Genesis to man being given “dominion… over all of the earth.” But the greatest impediment to widespread adoption of an earth-first, humanity-second, me-third world view is human desire. Good luck persuading people to sacrifice some of their comfort and well-being – and that of their family – for the good of the planet.

Question four: Will an insatiable appetite for eyeballs destroy the Internet? Speaking of continual growth, the Internet economy depends on attracting the attention of more people to increase ad revenue. The competition for your attention is fierce. On the Internet, your time is more valuable than your money. As Jesse Weaver puts it in a March 27, 2016, post on Medium, “[o]ur current version of the internet lives and breathes off a currency of human attention.”

Sites are constantly tweaking their algorithms to deliver content that will capture your attention. Weaver reminds us that “[t]ime is more precious than money.” Yet your time is converted into the services’ money through advertising. Online ads pay by being targeted based on what the advertiser knows about you via tracking. In theory, the more you’re tracked, the more targeted the ads will be, and the more valuable your time will be to the service.

How do you continue to grow despite the finite nature of time? You either reach new people, or you convince your existing audience to spend more of their time with you. Internet services are doing both. An example of the former approach is Facebook’s Internet.org project, which was an ill-fated attempt to become indispensable in India; the company is likely to succeed via other avenues, as CNET’s Daniel Van Boom writes in a February 26, 2016, article.

Weaver claims the ad-driven Internet is what users prefer. He points out that Facebook makes $1.23 per user each month from ads. If the company had charged each of its 1.59 billion active users $1.50 each month, its fourth-quarter 2015 revenue would have increased by $1.2 billion, from $5.9 billion to $7.1 billion. Weaver proposes that Facebook adopt the pay model and invest the added $1.2 billion in content, using the Netflix model; he further suggests that Twitter and YouTube do the same thing.

The true benefit to us customers of paying for content rather than receiving it in exchange for our time and privacy is that paying transforms us from commodities to drivers.

Question five: Who’s going to win the web ad war? I heard today from a company that claims its technology unblocks the ads that are blocked by AdBlock Plus and other free ad-blocking services. What we know so far is that Forbes asks visitors who use ad-blocking software to disable them to gain access to the article they want to read; Google is one of the companies that pays AdBlock Plus’s vendor, EyeO, to be unblocked; and Wired has created an ad-free site where visitors pay $3.99 a month to access articles free of ads and tracking.

Ads continue to deliver ransomware and other criminal payloads. CNET’s Carrie Mihalcik reports in a March 16, 2016, article on the big-name news and entertainment sites that recently served up ads delivering ransomware. The sites included the New York Times, the BBC, and AOL.

One tracking technology that’s impervious to ad blockers is the supercookie, which isn’t a cookie at all, as Dann Albright explains in a March 26, 2016, article on MakeUseOf. Verizon was recently fined $1.35 million by the FCC for tracking its customers via supercookies without first getting the customers’ permission. You can’t delete a supercookie the way you do other tracking cookies – via your browser – because they are based on a unique identifier your ISP places in the http header. Sites use the identifier to track your activities from visit to visit and site to site.

In addition to collecting a detailed history of your online activities, the supercookies are susceptible to hackers, according to Albright. He concludes that there’s nothing much we can do to prevent being tracked by supercookies, although Albright says using HTTPS and virtual private networks can help.

​What we really need is the ability to opt out of the tracking. Gaining this right may require legislation.

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