What have you got to lose?

I was having a conversation with a friend about this blog and my intentions, and this friend asks me: "What have you got to lose?" ... Maybe I don't have anything to lose. Maybe I do. A candidate for President who is taken seriously gets a secret service detail. I think that is because being a candidate makes you a target. Being a celebrity certainly does, but they have money to pay guards and live behind iron gates. I don't have the kind of money or assets that those people who typically run for president do. I live in an apartment with my wife and two children. She teaches middle school science, and I program computers for some company. Let me just add that I do not speak publicly for my employer. Being an employee is how I provide for my family. Sharing my dream of running for president is like opening up my diary and letting you peek at my soul. Don't confuse the aspect of wanting to make the world a better place and using my talents of programming with representing anyone other than myself. The only way you get to conflate my representing anyone else is if some Tuesday in November, some crazy high number of American voters actually vote for me.

So what do I have to lose? Well, this can go viral, and then instead of doing what I love to do for a living - solve challenging technical problems, something I might have said, or written or not could come out about me, and suddenly, I could be out, without a job, and nobody willing to take in my resume for what I'm most qualified. That's the biggest fear. There are other fears - that someone is triggered by my honest sharing of ideas and acts to harm me. There are fears of too much success - maybe this goes viral slowly, and I get a following, but now it takes over my life, and I lose my friends to people trying to get closer. The presidency is a lonely job. The internet is a strange place. I'm not naive to the dangers of putting yourself out on the internet. Fears are real. Some people are right to be paranoid!

So why do it? Because maybe this might get a following. Maybe this might convince people that we have an alternative to the two party system. Maybe we can spark discussion. I'm treating this blog as an Art project. It's self-reflective of the things I value. At this point, it's a couple paragraphs a night. You get to hear directly from me on whatever I want to write about. I'll be almost 42 the next time a presidential election is held. I sat out the last one thinking that it wasn't my time. This time, I worry maybe I don't have too much time left to sit on the sidelines. Even if I do nothing but comment on the goings on, perhaps that commentary might change the course of history. In any event, it's a more active way to spend my time than watching TV every night! Of all the things I fear, maybe fearing that my contribution to society is empty is the biggest fear of all. It's a certainty if I do nothing.

Revolving Doors and Intellectual Property

This Hacker News article points to this article regarding the rather unsurprising revolving door between patent examiners and organizations which patent lots of inventions. I have to say that I'm not a fan of the patent system, nor am I a fan of the copyright system. I feel that both of these systems need a bit of balancing out for the public good. My general feeling is that you should gain copyright protection and patent protection for about the same limited amount of time to reap the benefit of the new thing that you create and in an effort to best enable the next generation to remix and explore the space. My general feeling is that this should be up to Congress to decide, but given how corruption runs in our system, I'm willing to put down my thoughts in a round number: 15 years. Can you remember today fifteen years ago? Why should movies, television programs, software programs, books, audio recordings, etc, etc be restricted from being reproduced and rebroadcast that were published before 2003? What public value are we saving for "the lifetime of the author" when the authors are long dead and gone. Copyrights are a way of preserving monopoly power - they are a way of concentrating wealth among those who already have too much over those new artists and creatives that deserve their time on the stage. Instead of having new remixes and a renaissance - a rebirth - of art, we have lawyers arguing over ownership and money. This may not be the most popular logical vein among my kind - professional software engineers - but the very notion that my work won't be unlocked until well past my death so someone else can extort the maximum value from it means that my impact on our shared future is lessened to a degree. My name is currently on 2 patents. In both cases I was the employee of the many other employees listed on the filing who initially pushed for that *limited* protection to cover work that I contributed to large and complicated systems (though others listed did much of the patent-related documentation). These are team efforts. I bring this up because I have skin in this game as an inventor. I want others to be free to use my inventions early, so that my work is not just re-implemented but rather re-imagined.

[edit on 6/5 to add]: The system itself is vastly more complicated, and a newer article referred by HN is worth reading. It can be found here. These are complicated works.

Technology

I love tech. My parents gave me my first computer in 1983, and my dad taught me how to program it. I turned that into a profession that I'm still loving 35 years later. Some day soon, we can marry humans with circuitry and we'll have computer peripherals that will interface directly with our brains. We will be able to communicate wordlessly, present images and diagrams just by thinking. Maybe we will some day be able to remove our brains from our diseased bodies and keep them alive while retaining machine inputs and outputs. We will be Cyber Men! Most likely, the zombie-apocalypse-like technology envisioned by at least one episode of Doctor Who won't be upon us, but certainly there will be technological improvements such as self-driving cars and the dawn of robot soldiers (like those at Boston Dynamics) and the ethical dilemmas about how young or old or under what circumstances is someone able to have their brain modified by circuitry, and for what purpose. Personally, I'd love to be able to command a robot dog with a chip in my brain over Bluetooth or WiFi, or maybe post blogs in my sleep. We won't all agree, but we'll likely think in competition with the great nations of the world that at some point we lose out if we don't get there first, so we will invest and build a little bit out of the public eye... Similarly, we'll deal with people in Congress who don't understand the basics of the foundation of the technology for which modern life depends, nor will they be willing to embrace future potential that redefines what it is to be human.

Great medical advancements will be made by genetic engineering our genes to produce new organs grown inside our own bodies via stem cells... The kind my father would have benefited from rather than requiring my donation of a kidney. Advancements such as Cancer-fighting medications and cures will be the goal of many medical science and research institutions, but so will be fighting degenerate illnesses that will spring up as medical enemy number one after Cancer. Maybe even some of the research from those efforts will make a difference against Cancer. Science is one of those things you can't predict.

My hope is that the future isn't set back by a lack of vision or by some of the competitors (be they nations of companies) in the space reflecting poorly on others. I want my children to grow up in a world with self-driving, fusion-powered cars.

Patriotism

I want to wish you a thoughtful Memorial Day. Take a moment to remember your family and friends who fought to make this a better world. Think about what you will do to keep their memories alive and uphold that sacrifice. Today I want to honor my grandfather, Fred "Siggy" Greenbaum. He was an immigrant serving in World War II over 70 years ago, and if it weren't for him and his bravery, I would not be here. He was an amateur radio operator, and he loved clocks. His house was full of them. Always ticking away.

On this memorial day, I'd like to talk about patriotism, remembering this great nation that took in my ancestors fleeing religious persecution from Europe and Asia. This is a place where freedom to believe is sacrosanct. Today we come to a time where a sports league is giving players an ultimatum: you will stand for the national anthem or be penalized. I find the notion offensive. While I stand and place my hand on my heart and sing the national anthem, perhaps with a little too much flair... I find it unconscionable that we tolerate a corporation which forces people to feign patriotism. It goes against the very freedom for which my grandfather fought.

There's more I want to say on this subject, but that is all I will write for now.

Fake News

This blog is not news. It's commentary. It is opinion dressed as a notion that maybe someone in America's professional working class (whatever the @#$% that means) can run a political campaign for the highest office in the land, without any money. I won't be perfect, but I'll be honest. You're reading my diary as much as my resume. I'll be wrong. I might not read the comments, but I feel like it's a blog, so feel free to comment, share, like, print, whatever. I reserve the right to change my mind, update posts without advertising what I've edited, and whatever. Finally, I'll use the 1st person. A lot. What I'm not going to do is really, attempt to police the comments. You can form a community around my blog in comments or not. That's entirely up to you.

The only difference between these blog posts and an opinion column is that there's no organization attached to my opinions, and I don't care to make money off of these opinions. Maybe that means you can trust what I write. Maybe it means I can afford to be wrong some times (cue the someone's wrong on the internet meme). No lawyers are looking over my shoulder. I'll just trust that if you trip on my digital lawn, that you'll sue someone else.

Thoughts on issues

Net neutrality is to some an issue about equal access to the internet for the rural and the poor, and to others it's about legalizing monopoly practices that hurt competition. Encryption is about privacy, but it is also about security. Some people think of the 2nd amendment as the right to bear arms to defend your country and overthrow tyranny. Others think of it as a means to regulate, and feel that the government isn't regulating enough. Encryption is an arm that defends your right to private communications, and some believe that it is a violation of fundamental rights if and when the government accesses your devices. Others believe that it's a slippery slope - if our government can do it, then so can a hostile government, and so can a hacker who wants to extort you. Single payer healthcare is about not punishing people who get sick because they make less money. When I lived a couple years abroad, there was a single payer system, but private insurance means more access to care. Single payer means not bankrupting people who can't afford the insurance. It has nothing to do with Obama. Social Security is a savings account / insurance scheme that only works out for our generation if the population grows and more people put in more money. I paid my social security taxes, but I might not live long enough to take a benefit. Why can't we roll it all up and let everyone take out a universal basic income - something which ensures that our children and parents and siblings get resources for food and shelter and that people don't die homeless on the streets in the "wealthiest nation" on the planet.

My wife taught in one of the most bizarre middle schools in all of America - one of the poorest schools in a super rich metropolitan suburb - within miles of some of the wealthiest companies on the planet. From her stories, I learned that the children of the poorest workers in the same town where $300,000 was a down payment on a shack were going hungry and had family issues. The school had a crisis on Thanksgiving when the kitchen staff didn't properly plan the amount of food assuming that many of the families would take their children out of town, and the children that were there that week ran out of their only food source. We expect our next generation to pay for our social security, but we are neglecting them. How do starving children learn to be future leaders?

Liberty. Freedom. Choice. Money. You have many choices in your life if you are rich. That's universally true, not just in America, but worldwide. It's how you treat the portion of your people who have no money that defines a nation. Americans are obsessed with the rich -- what the best and boldest and most successful in terms of money do. The poor buy lottery tickets, hoping one day to strike it rich. These symptoms are indicative of a larger problem that needs to change from the top down and the bottom up.

Doing the right thing

Sometimes it's obvious when something is right or wrong. Our political campaigns are littered with tomfoolery, shenanigans, hypocrisy, and negativity not worthy of our great nation. One of the things I find somewhat ridiculous and offensive to the American public is the lies that the rich make to the rest of us to get elected. Our system is stacked with heavily invested people buying access and power in our government. It has become the price of progress. Our freedoms are sold to the highest bidder. It appears that there are only two choices - you either belong to a party or you have no influence, so each party can claim to its members that the other one is the bad one - look, one is liberal, one is conservative. Those words are used to the point of meaningless. The truth is far more nuanced and complicated. We get something like Hotelling's Law - these houses actually have broad bases across the 50 states willing to band together along the messages that the party media directors decide to attract the voters in the respective media markets. The messages are carefully polled and tested. A presidential campaign costs upwards of a billion dollars. But you're not voting for a person. You're voting for a ticket. Not even that. You're voting for a circus. I want to end the process of buying elections. I'd like for campaigns to not have more than, say, $50,000 of budget. Ideally, not any budget. I'd like for campaigns to be about ideas about how you would steward the country and how one would listen to advisers and navigate the divide rather than about hard and fast positions on complicated subjects that have far more nuances and deserve careful thought.

But we won't get a candidate like that. Maybe. I'm not really the conventional candidate. I'm more of an internet candidate - I'm never going to raise enough money to fly all over America and shake hands. That's not really what I think being president should be about. Fundraising and selling out is the reason we are in the worst mess we've ever been in. I think being president should be about planning and executing. It's exactly the way software is built. Why can't the government run that way?

First Post

Once a year, or so, I start a blog related to my foolish dream to one day be president. Once a day, or so, I give myself a pep talk about all the things I would do, and all the reasons why I, a person of absolutely no influence and possibly fading health as I turn 40 would want to spend the remaining good years of my life at the helm of one of the most fractured governments in the world. Well, for your entertainment or perhaps just to simply write what I have been thinking and saying aloud, these pages will be filled with my thoughts about the future - both America's future and the future of the world in general. I ask that you share, comment, critique, and journey with me over time, as we process together the goings on in our world.

I have lots of thoughts, and I'll put them here, one paragraph at a time. One post at a time.