Though I’ve never watched it, the premise behind Frontier House is that families try to survive using only technologies and methods available in the 1800s. Similarly, I’ve often wondered what life was like before the internet, I’ve decided to conduct a similar experiment and spend a few weeks without high speed internet access at the new home. This is in response to personal concerns that I spend far too much time absorbing as much information as possible, without time to adequately reflect on what I’m reading (is also a function of being cheap). This phenomenon has only grown worse with new technologies that allow time between publication to approach zero. Utilities like Temptation Blocker, and the success of news aggregation sites seem premised on this situation as well.

Initial results: much removed from the pressure of feeling like something-sort-of-interesting-somewhere is being missed, one is free to pursue slower activities, such as cooking and sleeping. Health benefits are probably balanced: time spent exercising will probably increase though alcohol intake also appears to increase commensurately with boredom. Overall diet will probably improve.

My hope is that the results of this experiment will: 1) shed light on what daily life was like for my parent’s generation, 2) better help manage content filtering and aggregation in the future. I have the luxury of not being tied to a Blackberry at this stage in my career. Learning how to limit information consumption would seem critical for future mental health, if these trends continue.

There have been lots of articles recently about the changing role of the American male motivated by an increase in long-term unemployment among young men. This hits close to home as I am a young male, with (apparently) increasingly dubious prospects for future income security. I am also (apparently) increasingly less likely to get married or sire stable offspring. In the increasingly unlikely event I do marry, it will (apparently) be to a higher educated woman with higher earning capacity than myself, which (apparently) will make me less appealing to her in the long term.

There’s no direct link to Chinese gender issues aside from anecdotes; in general I consider China to still be a very patriarchal society, though men don’t seem to fit the modern definition of masculinity at all. Despite popular narratives of manly aboriginal hunters, extreme gender identities are a modern product of wealth and higher income levels. China’s gender imbalance, unique in the world in terms of its scale, will be felt most acutely amongst the very poor, the results decidedly uncomfortable for men and women at the bottom of the social ladder. Still, a visit to an internet cafe or university dormitory filled with better-off urbanites reveals the zeal with which a large swath of young mainland men have for the most exquisite forms of escapism. Something is certainly not right. Surely talking to girls is more interesting than getting to level 70.

Back to the US: it would be nice to figure out exactly what is going on. If decreased income prospects for men make marriage a more insecure institution by increasing the probability of divorce, and if single-parent households have deleterious effects on children, finding a way out of the cycle seems extremely important. Having been a stupid-mistake-prone adolescent male, it would seem very useful to adopt a different set of strategies when raising adolescent males, such that they do not make similar stupid mistakes, especially if alternate child raising tactics are relatively cheap to implement. Bearing the above in mind, I’m personally not convinced the problem is as simple as a “generation of men raised by women,” though existing social problems that gave rise to that idea are certainly going to be exacerbated by these economics trends if gender norms don’t radically change (evolution being terribly slow in reprogramming our desires.)

Marriage as an institution for child rearing seems more personally relevant as of late, having hit the age where biological clocks start ticking. Numerous 20-something female Western and progressive Shanghainese friends lament the dearth of actual interested date requests they receive, presumably to placate some sort of nagging evolutionary desire to feel pursued. The expectation, it seems, is for males to take the socially aggressive role while simultaneously being emotionally sensitive enough to… Not quite sure to what end. Learning to walk this kind of tightrope perhaps requires further maturation. Until then, numerous males my age will probably continue to be intentionally aloof. Gender equality in that sense may end up meaning universally equivalent odds when playing the see who we wake up next to today roulette. No idea what this might mean for the long-term efficacy of social taboos for child rearing. Perhaps it has always been this way, and we’ve only now the luxury of noticing it.

Having (been) volunteered for a store lead position at one of Pudong’s Carrefour stores (since I live in PuJersey) as part of a food drive volunteer project, I was very curious to see how locals would react to a bunch of Caucasians standing at the door passing out flyers like street hawkers, trying to convince them to donate food to disadvantaged people in southern Anhui. The store staff said they had never heard of anyone doing anything like this, and were dubious about the possible effectiveness of the engagement. Thankfully it seems to have been a success; though I have no appropriate benchmark for which to judge. Exhibit 1: 400kg of food loot:

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It seemed appropriate to see the perfectly crafted anti-imperialist anti-technology film at a high-tech theater in Shanghai China. Impressions: the 3D glasses made my big foreigner nose hurt and, as a result, it was difficult to focus on the film. Also the cinema was very hot, likely a clever attempt to enhance the experience by simulating the sweaty feel of an alien jungle planet.

“Free flow of information is a prerequisite to participation in the global information economy.” Though I agree, I still try to find reasons to object, such that the inner-contrarian might be rationalized into submission. A basic argument: the U.S. and Europe made it through the industrial revolution without mass deployment of information technology. If modern China can get even halfway there, the country will eventually find itself on top, purely by the multiply-anything-by-1.4-billion characteristic.

Aside from that, it’s interesting to ponder how free-flow of information could be detrimental to democratic civil society or economic development. My underlying argument: if the costs of propagating information fall to near zero, information of any quality can be spread rapidly. Without an effective filter, finding accurate information quickly becomes impossible. Thus far the filters have managed to stay on top: effective search algorithms, aggregation sites and trend analytics. The rewards for creating friendly filters have outpaced the rewards for creating malicious propagation tools.

This hypothetical situation, where malicious (user generated) information outpaces efforts to filter, exists to a much larger extent within of the online-Sinosphere. It’s much easier to get lost in the noise and I cannot figure out if this is the result of

• a more open micro-system (users much more willing to trust and interact with complete strangers)
• a more closed meta-system (cens0ring certain information centralizes users’ preferences)

or the more mundane

• sophisticated noise is attributable entirely to very inexpensive labor (it’s very cheap to hire lots of people to say whatever you want them to). If the cost of doing this drops throughout the rest of the world (pseudo AI + spambot), it will result in a similar situation to the status quo here:

Maria writes of how online campaigns hire mass numbers of people to comment on certain topics, in order to draw attention to something that would otherwise go unnoticed. It’s possible, for example, to sell your account on Taobao (E-Bay) if you have a long history and positive customer reviews. As a result, customer reviews are rendered much less useful. This type of gaming occurs elsewhere, though not to this magnitude. In China, the prices of conducting such manipulation aren’t, at present, particularly high, especially with regard to the rewards that can be gained. She concludes that since the threat of media manipulation / meme engineering in this fashion is so easy, independent sources are an absolute necessity. To those in the West, that might sound outlandish: surely the collective voice of reason would drown out obvious forms of manipulation.

This argument sounds like the concerns that were circulating a decade ago about how online life would be overrun by spam mail. Instead, the online experience in the West is much more pleasant and accessible now than ever before, thanks in large part to technical advances, many of which have been motivated by commerce. This may not be the case indefinitely, and those who hope to see democratic values spread by technology should focus on making adoption of these technologies inseparable with information freedom, while developing cheap ways to filter noise: keep the rewards for filtering greater than the possible gains from manipulation. On a positive note, that seems to be the trend (Twitter being a wonderful example so far).

Other possibilities: susceptibility to manipulation could stem from a closed meta-system, where cens0rs force users into larger, less robust portals with little commercial interest in filtering sophisticated noise (Sina, Tianya), thus centralizing the rewards that a malicious manipulator can exploit. This seems the most likely explanation.

The Chinese-speaking internet may also be more susceptible to these types of manipulation simply given user habits, which may stem from culture, or be a response to a closed meta-system (probably both). Chinese internet users are much more social than those in the West. Insofar as I understand it, most Western users deploy social media to examine their own profiles and post humorous / narcissistic status updates for others to comment on; and generally don’t venture much beyond their immediate circle of real-life friends. Chinese users, on the other hand, are much more social within their networks – more willing to friend strangers and find similar interest groups that they actually participate with – than are Westerners. My own habits, and those of my close Western friends, seem much more quotidian and insular, and less likely to participate in large open groups, and so there are fewer forums for explicit manipulation.

At present, China provides a very interesting case study, and the influence of each of these factors deserves much more attention than it’s been receiving, rather than simply writing off the Great-Firewalled Mainland intranet as a lost cause while trumpeting the total and inevitable success of information freedom. Understanding the sources of this resilience should be a focal point of the information freedom debate, rather than just assuming that such resilience is inherent to unmitigated information flow. Resilience probably is inherent; though better safe than sorry.

With regards to the bigger picture, it is deeply concerning how a lack of competition (without the likes of Twitter or open search engines) will manifest and deprive millions of people the capacity to choose between alternative information regimes. Fallows notes an argument that China’s segmentation of its intranet is similar to the Protestant/Catholic printing-press-schism that occurred hundreds of years ago. Protestant nations developed much more quickly since laboring classes became literate; their Catholic counterparts fell behind:

“Innovation by the “out group” based on access to the benefits of the new information technology that creates new sources of wealth and power. I would conclude, therefore, that China, having made Spain’s decision to control information, is now out of the running for world leadership.”

* The incredible image at the top of the post comes from Chris Harrison (with a very nice series of other visualizations) about the interconnectedness of the world’s information networks.

If information becomes more difficult to access, are people willing to go to greater lengths to obtain it? There is considerable worry among the literati within China that Google’s almost certain departure solidifies China’s intranet, siloed off from the rest of the world. In my mind this would be one of the worst possible outcomes, in terms of a broad human rights / freedom of information perspective. With this in mind, arguably the most socially responsible course of action would be for Google to remain in China, and provide the best information possible within the context of universal cens0rship (so long as employees aren’t being arrested and interrogated and the operation doesn’t jeopardize normal security efforts).

There would, however, seem to be some possibility that if information becomes more difficult to access, then necessarily the willingness to expend effort and resources would increase, assuming no endogenous change in the information preferences of actors within the system. Within this context, a small increase in the amount of effort above the threshold to evade the GFW provides access to a huge amount of information. The net result in such a scenario is that if more effort is expended, much more information can be accessed. It’s a big assumption, though: as effort required to access information increases, however, so too might some individuals decrease their information preferences to hold effort constant.

That seems to be the most critical question (from a social standpoint) of the entire debacle. If more Chinese internet users realize they are being segmented and learn how to evade the GFW, they then have much more access to the global internet, which is a positive outcome. If, however, the segment of internet users that doesn’t evade the GFW remains constant, then (at least 33% of them) will have even even more limited access. Both trends will occur in tandem; a positive or negative result will depend on the relative strength of each and the individual information preferences of those within the affected group: those who are marginally interested in more information but haven’t yet developed a method to evade the firewall.

Though I try not to make it a habit to vehemently disagree with Nobel Prize Winning economists on pedantic topics such as demography; this is absurd nonsense, and somehow a cover piece in FP, explaining why Europe will fall behind China in the coming decades (there are plenty of good arguments to support this case, this is not one of them):

Why are there fewer babies? One key reason is that European attitudes toward sex have evolved sharply. One-hundred fifty years ago, it was considered a sin to enjoy sex, the only legitimate purpose for which was procreation. But today, young women believe that sex is mainly a recreational activity. Behind the fertility trend is a vast cultural shift from the generation that fought in World War II, which married early and produced the great baby boom of 1945 to 1965. The easy availability of birth control and the rise of sex as recreation mean that populations are likely to shrink in many European countries… By 2040, it is likely that the natural increase will be negative in the five largest European countries, except Britain.

He then claims (without providing much of an explanation for the mechanism) that China will be free of an identical fate, a crucial objection to his argument:

Of course, China faces its own demographic nightmares, and skeptics point to many obstacles that could derail the Chinese bullet train over the next 30 years: … Although the critics have a point, these concerns are no secret to China’s leaders; in recent years, Beijing has proven quite adept in tackling problems it has set out to address…

… has Professor Fogel been anywhere near China? The problem with Europe’s future is that women believe that sex is a recreational activity? I would implore Mr. Fogel to provide his insightful analysis on how males of the species view the act (as a chore?) He completely ignores the much more explicit and informative relationship between income and fertility (though the reasons for such non-adaptive behavior still aren’t clear, Robin Hanson has a good summary of the arguments), in favor of the inductive recreational sex hypothesis. Fogel fails to mention any sort of endogeneity between cultural taboos as they relate to sex and increases in material wealth – uncertain causation – definite correlation. It would be an interesting topic to compare these social mores cross culturally and try to forecast urban fertility rates in China, where planned birth policies are being relaxed, and where population growth needs to occur.

If the recreational-sex-demographic-time-bomb hypothesis thesis is totally true, then there is little hope for urban Chinese to reverse the declining population trend, despite Fogel’s faith in the efficacy of centralized nation wide hump now! initiatives. This is primarily because young urban mainland Chinese (having determined through rigorous empirical research) very much enjoy recreational sex, and aren’t about to start popping out many babies anytime soon.

Since we’re in the land of (Nobel Prize Winning?) data-free global assertions as argument, I present photographic evidence of shameless licentious behavior (n=2):