My latest at Al Jazeera, on Bitcoin’s most ambitious successor, Ethereum. This may or may not be the future, but for now it’s the hype:

Even the most flexible platform comes with certain built-in tendencies. Ethereum, for example, makes it easier to build organizations that are less centralized and less dependent on geography than traditional ones and certainly more automated. But it also creates a means for corporate ownership and abuse to creep ever deeper into people’s lives through new and more invasive kinds of contracts. To perceive the world through a filter like Ethereum is to think of society as primarily contractual and algorithmic, rather than ethical, ambiguous and made up of flesh-and-blood human beings.

How this new ecosystem will take shape depends disproportionately on its early adopters and on those with the savvy to write its code — who may also make a lot of money from it. But tools like Ethereum are not just a business opportunity. They’re a testing ground for whatever virtual utopias people are able to translate into code, and the tests will have non-virtual effects. Idealists have as much to gain as entrepreneurs.?As for any utopia, though, the power struggles of the real world are sure to find their way in as well.

My profile of anthropologist Gabriella Coleman in The Chronicle of Higher Education opens with a scene from the New York City memorial service for Aaron Swartz in January:

The forces that seem to have hastened Swartz’s death were very much haunting the room. In the audience was a mischievous, greasy-haired hacker known as “weev,” who faces as much as a decade in prison for embarrassing AT&T by publicizing a flaw in its system that compromised users’ privacy. A member of Occupy Wall Street’s press team handed out slips of paper about the case of Jeremy Hammond, an anarchist and Anonymous member who was in prison awaiting trial for breaking into the servers of the security company Stratfor. There was Stanley Cohen, a civil-rights lawyer representing some of Hammond’s fellow Anons, and there was a T-shirt with the face of Bradley Manning, the soldier charged with passing classified material to WikiLeaks.

Just behind weev sat Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist, occasionally jotting notes in a notepad. She teaches at McGill University. Coleman first met Aaron Swartz when he was just 14, and over the years she had come to know many others in the room as well. Even more of them were among her 17,500-strong Twitter following or had seen her TED talk about Anonymous. Part participant and part observer, she began fieldwork on a curious computer subculture while still in graduate school. Now, more than a decade later, her work has made her the leading interpreter of a digital insurgency.

Read the article at The Chronicle. And download Coleman’s new book,?Coding Freedom, for free at her website.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs returned to the stage earlier this month to announce a long-awaited new product: iCloud. “We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device,” he said. “We’re going to move your hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.” No longer will the data that circumscribe our lives, from our dental records to our unfinished novels, remain confined to the tangible shells that presently contain them. They’ll live elsewhere, up there, in a better place.

Apple may be the latest to try, but no company has puffed out more clouds than Google. All of the Google services so many of us depend on — Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Reader, YouTube, Picasa — lure our electronic selves, bit by bit, out of our computers and up into the cloud. If the cloud is a heaven for our data, a better place up in the sky, then Google is, well, kind of like God. But what kind of God?

Some have actually tried to find out. Their efforts may appear to be mere intellectual exercises. But they raise serious questions about the nature of faith. In 2004, a Universal Life Church minister named Peter Olsen started the Universal Church of Google; last year, the misleadingly named First Church of Google appeared as well. But by far the most developed denomination is the Church of Google, founded by a reclusive young Canadian around 2006. It comes complete with scriptures, ministers, prayers, a holiday and, best of all, nine proofs that Google is “the closest thing to a ‘god’ human beings have ever directly experienced.”

Read the rest: “Google as God.”

I am in no position to end with prognostication, to predict how all this business will turn out, or to recommend particular policy directives and consumer rules-of-thumb. The companies will have their way, of course; as the filmmaker Chris Marker once put it, I bow to the economic miracle. But I can end with a vision, and it can point to a posture.

Picture a library, in flames, overlooking the city in ruins below—the Library of Alexandria under Caesar’s assault all over again. Books by the thousands audibly crinkle as they incinerate, disappearing for all time, never to be read again and, in a generation or two, never to be remembered. They are all irreplaceable; their loss is exactly incalculable. They are now good only to fuel the fire. As bystanders, we’re consumed by horror. We imagine ourselves as the books, the books as ourselves. Everything is lost with them. Right?

Or, on the other hand, might we instead laugh and cheer? It wouldn’t be the first time at a book-burning. Why not? Isn’t there also comedy—a divine comedy—in what freedom would follow the immolation of civilization’s material memory? We have only ourselves again, ourselves and our God. Perhaps these flames might go by the name of progress.

Thank you so much to all of you who took the time to comment and encourage. Fleshing this piece out, in particular, and putting it before readers means a lot to me.

Jean-Luc Marion wrote, at the opening of his book God without Being, “One must admit that theology, of all writing, certainly causes the greatest pleasure.”

Today, at the remarkable online journal Triple Canopy, I’ve got an essay that’s about the closest thing I’ve so far come to writing theology. It’s called “Divine Wilderness.” It is a project, actually, that I’ve been working on for some years now—originally when I was 19 years old studying computer science, then in a very confusing essay I wrote two years later, and, most recently, with a talk I gave at the Bushwick Reading Series. Thanks to the guys at Triple Canopy, the essay—as well as the accompanying images and computer code—are finally in a form that approaches comprehensibility. I hope.

They situate it in an issue called “Urbanisms: Master Plans,” putting the theological abstractions of my piece squarely in the context of architecture and urban design. It really is a wonderful thing to do to abstraction—to thrust it onto the ground, to put it among things and ask, “What have you to say to one another?” So the reflection is theological, but its consequence is intended to be of the world. I very much recommend reading it in the context of the issue as a whole, which is being slowly published a piece or two at a time.

I’ll leave you with the passage that inspired the whole project, which I discovered hidden away in David Cayley’s 1992 book Ivan Illich in Conversation. The characters are Illich and Jacques Maritain, the neo-Thomist French existentialist philosopher.

In a 1988 interview, the priest-turned-radical Ivan Illich recalls a 1957 encounter with Maritain. Illich wondered why there was no reference “to the concept of planning” in his work.

[Maritain] asked me if this was an English word for “accounting,” and I told him no… if it was for “engineering,” and I said no… and then at a certain moment he said to me, “Ah! Je comprends, mon cher ami, maintenant je comprends. Now I finally understand. C’est une nouvelle espèce du péché de présomption. Planning is a new variety of the sin of pride.”

Find out what he means at Triple Canopy.

So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

It’s is a good selection for this time of Lent, when who so believe are supposed to give, give, give. There’s a clear causal chain here. Give in public, and the admiration of the watchers is all you get. Nothing else. But do it where nobody can see, and you-know-who will ensure your just desserts when you get to you-know-where.

In Catholic churches these passages from Matthew are often read from and preached on during these days. Give!—But not too publicly. Are you giving enough? Are you being secretive enough to earn Fatherly rewards?

Then again, I recall this scene I once witnessed while spying on the circus at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, during their Saturday evening young adult service. After the totally awesome rock band and the sermon from the dude everybody wants for a big brother, there was a long presentation by a very eloquent Christian woman from India. She ran an orphanage and house for prostitutes and told a very beautiful story of all that God has done for them. But now, they were in need. Cows to milk, or something. She cried. So the big-brother-pastor got up on stage and shouted, “We’re gonna get her those cows!” He ran all up and down the stage and through the audience for ten minutes gathering checks and shouting out the amounts on them. Somebody with a calculator watch was adding them up as they came in. The place was in a frenzy as people charged the stage to contribute generous sums. It wasn’t long before this good-looking crowd of Americans had gotten the little Indian lady her cows.

That’s tough to beat. I’ve never seen more trumpet blowing (or closer to air guitar soloing, really) in my life. But they got the cows. God delivered, allegedly, though them. But which reward was theirs? Have they received it, or is it still to come, even more wonderfully? Or are they the hypocrites Jesus was warning about?

The other day, I was standing around with some buds and we were talking about giving. How we’d never really discussed the money we give. Maybe, we wondered, we’d give more if we knew that our friends were giving too. We’d know it’s a normal thing to do, a thing that shouldn’t be neglected. Letting others know when one gives sets an example. How else, after all, could the New Life young adults have come up with those cows so rapidly but peer pressure? The girls there were pretty, and they wouldn’t be happy if their boys didn’t pony up.

What’s so bad about settling for the earthly rewards anyway? Let’s not, after all, get too carried away about what giving really entails. Our stuff shouldn’t be that important that enormous supernatural rewards must be offered for us to part with it. Plus, the earthly rewards for giving are pretty good. Maybe better than they should be. You get admired as a benefactor, a philanthropist, a selfless soul. And you feel better about yourself. It’s quite a good deal.

It’s true, though, there are downsides to public giving. My mother worked at the Smithsonian museums, and, when I was a kid, she’d always complain about how all the donors were trying to tell the museums how to use their money. Huge egos there. Also, giving can become like a poker game, where everybody’s anteing up to stay in the game, even to the point of driving some into irresponsible ruin. High-priced generosity is, for sure, a luxury item like any other—meant to show others who’s boss. So, as far as that’s concerned, Jesus has a point.

But there’s got to be a balance. Maybe we can revise the word of God a bit. (Hey, if my New Revised Standard Version can do it, why can’t I?) Just a couple of words. Enough so that it’s okay sometimes to get rapt up in a frenzy of public giving or to set an example to your friends. And even to get a little earthly reward in the process. But keep it reasonable. Above and beyond that, there’s lots to be said for not being so conspicuous, for investing in the mysterious other prizes. Hopefully they’re good or, if not, can be returned.

Is it okay, Jesus, if we sometimes toot our trumpets a little for a good cause?

It’s kinda bad. I’m obsessed with The Row Boat’s traffic. It has become a daily (eek!) ritual-cum-addiction to troll over to Google Analytics in the morning and see how many people have been looking at me and from where they are coming. In some way or another, the Google oracle can set the tone for my whole day.

Tuesday, on a whim, I published a little post about my wallet. Since I usually try to keep to more straight-faced and world-historical things, writing about the wallet felt a little odd. I discussed my motivations in an introductory paragraph:

A friend recently suggested that I write a blog post about my wallet. Seemed like a good idea to me. When you look around at the literature on the internet about how to improve blog traffic, one of the suggestions that often comes up is to teach something that readers can use. And since The Row Boat is, by and large, self-indulgent reflection on deathless questions, the chance to write about something actually useful is not to be passed up. It’s a way of giving back to my readers—a dribble of self-help in exchange for all your thought and patience.

The results far exceeded my expectations. That day, thanks mostly to the computer programming thread at Reddit (the post had some mention of certain data structures), The Row Boat received more than ten times its usual traffic. There were several very instructive comments and emails from strangers, as well as some delightful ones from friends. The next day, it was nearly all gone.

One temptation in all this is to lash out about the dumb readers. I’ve been writing all these deep and brilliant reflections for years, toiling in obscurity, and the thing that brings you all out of the woodwork is a post on WALLETS? Idiots. All of you. But I won’t do that. Anyway, some of the reactions I got were genuinely clever, and I’ll always be an advocate of cleverness of any kind. Plus, whenever there’s a temptation to get mad, behind it there’s usually an opportunity to learn something. Or to remember something—Plato taught, after all, that all learning is really recollection.

Like this: it isn’t everybody who cares about navel-gazing speculative writing. But everybody’s gotta have a wallet.

This passage from Henry Miller’s Big Sur has always stuck with me:

To those who protest that they are not understood, not appreciated, not accepted—how many of us ever are?—all I can say is: “Clarify your position.”

Quite a statement from a man who claimed not to revise. But it is a fantastic call to persistence. Keep trying, keep crafting. Keep reaching to figure out how you can communicate what needs to be communicated, to make the world realize why you think all this is so important, if, in fact, you do.

So here’s what I’ve thought to take from the Great Wallet Spike. Would love your suggestions for more:

• Continue on doing what I’ve been doing because here I stand and can do no other. Never let The Row Boat stop being a labor of love. Getting a bunch of visits (with a very bad bounce rate, too) on a single post doesn’t mean much anyway.
• Bear readers in mind. Have something to offer them. Writing is not just a gift being offered, but also one being received.
• Try writing more how-to’s. They’re fun. They’ll be collected in the algorithms tag.

Thank you, always, for stopping by and reading. Remember, I’ll be watching you!

A friend recently suggested that I write a blog post about my wallet. Seemed like a good idea to me. When you look around at the literature on the internet about how to improve blog traffic, one of the suggestions that often comes up is to teach something that readers can use. And since The Row Boat is, by and large, self-indulgent reflection on deathless questions, the chance to write about something actually useful is not to be passed up. It’s a way of giving back to my readers—a dribble of self-help in exchange for all your thought and patience.

The extent of my wallet that doesn’t constitute its contents is very small: a rubber band. Until recently I actually used the hair-things that I was in the habit of stealing from my then-girlfriend—basically a rubber band wrapped in a coil of stretchy thread. The advantage of the hair-thing was the ease with which it could roll on and off the wallet’s contents. But when I lost the hair-thing, as well as the girlfriend from whom to steal a replacement, I was forced to choose from the stash of rubber bands under my desk, still hardly diminished since I bought them during the first week of college. To my surprise, the clingly quality of a thick, uncovered rubber band has grown on me. Those so inclined might try both and decide which they prefer.

I came upon this species of wallet—which I have yet to see in any other incarnation than mine—out of necessity. It was a year or two ago, and I was traveling somewhere (don’t recall where) that made me concerned about pickpocketing sufficiently to want to have my valuables in the front, rather than back, pocket. A stolen hair-thing was handy (my hair was then long enough to warrant it), so I thought to wrap it, two times around, about the contents of my wallet. It immediately amazed me how much slimmer the package became without the clumsy leather folds that previously contained it. Once it comfortably settled into my front-left pocket, I was thrilled to discover also how much more comfortable sitting down had become now that one buttock no longer had a big wad of stuff between it and the seat. I was sold and never went back.

To paint a clearer picture of the practicalities of my method, let me take you on a tour of my particular arrangement. It is by no means the only option; in fact, I would love to hear from readers about other arrangements they find useful.

• On top, the pending department. Receipts to file and the back of a business card for short notes-to-self.
• Then the MVPs, MetroCard and credit card.
• Small bills, <$20, folded in thirds
• Two barrier cards: bank card and driver’s license. Ones that’ll never both be used at the same time so as not to combine the sections they separate.
• $20 bills, folded in thirds. So if you happen to have a stack of twenties, you don’t have to flash them when reaching for a single.
• The rest. Business cards, library cards, RFIDs of all kinds, stamps, etc.
• A back card, preferably robust and not scratchable. Whatever goes here takes a lot of punishment.
• The rubber band is wrapped around on the long side, tight and secure.

Now that’s a pretty static arrangement. Another approach is to do what in computer programming is called a stack. The rule is very simple: whenever you put something back in the wallet, put it on top. Quite naturally, and with minimum effort, the things you most commonly use end up closer to the top and thus more accessible.

Over time, I’ve found that my wallet behaves, in computer programming terms, more like an array—a data structure for which the cost of retrieval is equal at every location, so long as things remain where they’re supposed to go. Hence the more static structure detailed above. Plus, I’ve grown quite attached to separating big and small bills, a policy that could be threatened by the stack system.

I try to keep a stack system running in “the rest” area, while keeping the other areas staticly organized.

There you have it. A practical how-to session from Row Boat University. Not only did we cover a handy way to save pocket space, but a bit of computer science too! Isn’t it nice to do something practical for a change?