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A few weeks ago I was at a conference here in Copenhagen organized by the Danish Labour Youth. The conference was about Russia, and particularly where Russia is heading now.

I was kind of surprised when I saw that the programme showed that the Russian ambassador to Denmark was to appear and enter a dialogue about Russia. And surely enough, I was not surprised when the Ambassador ‘regretfully’ had not been able to appear after all. I suppose that makes sense, in a Russian kind of way. Why enter the lion’s den?

The Georgian ambassador however did come, and during his presentation/monologue he covered the Russia-Georgia conflict in so many aspects that it was really looking like a maze. Having been in Georgia last year, I actually do think that the whole incident was a maze, and it is increasingly difficult for anyone to get an objective view of ‘what really happened’.

But the bigger picture, for me, is not what happened in those tragic days in August, but what will happen now in the region. It is clear to me that South Ossetia and Abkhazia probably never will become a part of Georgia again. Georgia’s NATO application has been delayed, and we can only hope that the country manages in other ways to establish closer ties to the European Union. Russia will probably not risk another direct attack on Georgia, although there are several people speculating on just that.

What I find interesting in all of this is how our tone towards Russia is somewhat quite different to that of China. Both countries have massive abuses of human rights. Both countries are very important trade partners to the EU. Both countries have a growing economy (although Russia is suffering hard from low oil price and the financial crisis situation). My own country, Norway, will have very interesting discussions with Russia about the access to resources in the Barents Sea area. Maybe this year, or next year, so much ice has melted that transport can travel between Asia and Europe via the north. Imagine the geopolitical ramifications of that.

Nobody wants a cold war rhetoric. Most people realize that we need to keep Russia as a close ally, instead of ‘freezing it out’ because we happen to dislike some of its methods. It is, however, a tricky line. When do we tell our allies of, and how do we do it? How can we mark our differences of opinion without letting things escalate into a war of words?

Personally I must admit that I am looking a lot towards the new leadership of the USA to see where they are taking things. How they will evolve their relationship with Russia, which will ultimately affect Russia’s relationship with everyone else. I hope that we have more visionaries in the European Union system/bureaucracy, and that Europe will also enter a new level of discussion. One where the grass-roots is seen and treated as key, one that looks forward, and takes an active stanze towards the rest of the world. But I guess all that is for another post.

(This blog post is continually updated)

In 2020, there will be a different kind of luxury, the kind that money can’t buy, but which takes a lot of work to maintain: The luxury of privacy.

As Facebook and other forms of social media litter our atmosphere, we see several tendencies that are normalized or even considered ‘good’ .

* Making noise. A la “any PR is good PR”. Or rather, any attention is good attention. If they cannot remember you, you are as much as dead.
* Idle chatter is good. Keep most discussions short and sweet. 140 characters is ideal.
* Quantity of contacts is seen as a measure of who you are.

In 2020, you are seen as a potential terrorist if you are not visible on that mobile network where all your friends can see where you are, your presence like an electronic beacon.

This constant on-ness will work with our minds in sometimes surprising ways. We might end up being more concerned about the crowdsourced priorities than our own, or in a more subtle way we let the agendas of others, or our own expectations of what others would like (read, re-tweet, link to), guide our own words.

(And then, on a personal note, an update from me: I am good, still living in Copenhagen, enjoying my time with my girlfriend, reading books, looking for more work, working, and thinking a lot about my past adventures in social media. And writing, although the writing is not more than a bunch of pages in google docs – an unshared document )

But what do you think? Do you sometimes want to withdraw from the “social media”? When you do have those thoughts, are you worried about how that would affect your life? Your relationship with your e-friends? (That is, people who you have not met in the flesh yet, but who you still consider to be good friend of yours)

Almost a year ago I read Joi Ito’s review of Daemon, and I checked if the book was available at my local library. It was not, so I wrote them an e-mail suggesting the book. Subsequently, I wrote a little tweet, and then I left it at that. A few weeks later I received an email reply from the library that they had ordered the self-published book, but I never actually got around to reading it myself, even though the themes explored in the book are right up my alley.

Fast forward to last month, when the author of the book e-mailed me, thanked me for helping to get the word out, and asked me for my home address so he could send me a hard copy of the book, which was now being published by Dutton. I sent him an e-mail, thanked him for the offer, and wished him the best of luck with the Dutton publishing.

Then, last week I received a package from California with the book and I spent the next days reading the book, making notes and reading some of the links from the ‘Daemon’ website as well as watching things like the Google Tech Talks video from earlier this month.

I will not go into details about what the book is about – you can read reviews elsewhere – I liked Mark Frauenfelder’s response to it.

One of the aspects of the book which I found fascinating was the bits of augmented reality, and I genuinely got the chill in chapter 42 – once you read the book yourself you will understand.

***

In essence, the book explores a huge “what if” regarding the security of our modern technology. What would happen once those bots (or daemons) that permeate our daily lives are used against us? What happens when we surround ourselves with technology that we do not understand and honestly don’t really know how to secure? When this technology could be used against us.

I look forward to the follow-up to Daemon, which will be published next year. Meanwhile, I am interested in whether this book will spark a wider debate regarding our technology and how we use it.