bruce schneier

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author — in other words, anyone producing works of art — needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”

So says Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, in his latest essay 1000 True Fans.

It’s worth reading the full essay to completely grok what he’s on about. But in brief, a “true fan” is someone who’ll purchase anything and everything you produce.

They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans…

Kelly’s point is that the Internet allows you to find and stay in touch with True Fans cheaply and easily — globally. He gives some useful numbers to help think it through, and opoints to some examples which are already working.

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Summer’s over, so time to burrow indoors and catch up on reading, yeah? Here’s a few things to kick off your weekend.

• Learning to Lie, a fascinating article covering not only how lying is a sign of an intelligent child, but how we learn that no-one likes a tattle-tale and teen rebellion. Hat-tip to Bruce Schneier.
• A selection of 27 images from Life’s coffee-table book 100 Photographs that Changed the World.
• 6 Influential Datasets That Changed the Way We Think. Hat-tip to O’Reilly Radar.
• Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, an amazing series of photographic images by Chris Jordan which illustrate the excesses of human consumption.

That august political journal The Onion has brilliantly outlined the new US political strategy.

We must all do whatever we can to preserve America by refocusing our priorities back on the contemplation of lethal threats — invisible nightmarish forces plotting to destroy us in a number of horrific ways. It is only through the vigilance and determination of every patriot that we can maintain the sense of total dread vital to the prolonged existence of a thriving, quivering America.

Our country deserves no less than every citizen living in apprehension.

Fear has always made America strong. Were we ever more determined than during the Yellow Scare? When every Christian gentleman lived in mortal terror of his daughter being doped up on opium and raped by pagan, moustachioed Chinamen? What about the Red Scare, when citizens from all walks of life showed their pride by turning in their friends and associates to rabid anticommunists? Has America ever been more resolute?

Hat-tip to Bruce Schneier.

I’ve unsubtly hinted at this before, but the mainstream media doesn’t seem to run this angle: The “terrorist” “bombings” in the UK just now were completely half-arsed and simply don’t deserve the attention they’re getting — unless it’s about having a really good belly-laugh.

Bruce Schneier, ever the clear-thinker about these issues, says it in his headline:

Terrorist Special Olympics in the UK

First London and then Glasgow. Who are these idiots? Is there a Special Olympics for terrorists going on in the UK this week?

Two points about Glasgow:

One, airport security worked. And two, putting a propane tank into a car and driving into a building at high speed is the sort of thing that only works in old episodes of The A Team. On television, you get a massive, extensive explosion. In real life, you only get a small localized fire.

I am particularly pleased with the reaction from the Scots, which is measured and reasonable. No one was hurt; no need to panic. Life goes on.

But don’t let this reality disturb the paranoid Fox News uberreality in which we live. Lo! There is grainy vision of a burning car. Lo! There are foreign men with funny names and dark skin. Lo! We raid their homes and find “religious literature”…

Hang on! Did I miss the day “religious literature” became suspicious?

Bruce Schneier’s essay on that laughable plan to blow up JFK (the airport, not the dead president) makes an important point about that:

Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots — and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse — is wrong.

Indeed.

And let’s repeat the point. You’re far more likely to be killed by lightning or by drowning in your own bathtub than being killed by a terrorist.

Information security expert “Bruce Schneier”:http://www.schneier.com looks at “the Future of Privacy”:http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0603.html#1 in this article from his “_Crypto-Gram Newsletter_”:http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html. Two snippets:

bq. The pervasiveness of computers has resulted in the almost constant surveillance of everyone, with profound implications for our society and our freedoms. Corporations and the police are both using this new trove of surveillance data. We as a society need to understand the technological trends and discuss their implications. If we ignore the problem and leave it to the “market,” we’ll all find that we have almost no privacy left…

bq. Most of us are happy to give out personal information in exchange for specific services. What we object to is the surreptitious collection of personal information, and the secondary use of information once it’s collected: the buying and selling of our information behind our back.

Bruce writes coherently — and presumably knows more than we know he knows. “His books”:http://www.schneier.com/books.html are well worth a read too.