American Consequences - July 2017

WHAT’S THE CONNECTION?

have never turned a profit. In fact, their missions are to be perfectly unprofitable. Breaking things and killing people in one case and turning young minds to mush in the other. True, a lot of commerce is conducted on the Internet, but it’s a marketplace without fundamental market principles.

out – ice, snow, wind, rain, autumn leaves, a suicidal squirrel. You name it, and the O’Rourkes (and their computers) go dark. I’m not blaming the electric company – even though the recorded message on their power-outage hotline does say “See you next summer!” I understand the problems faced in creating a reliable electric grid. For some government-regulatory reason I do not understand, the only gasoline I can get for my generator contains at least 10% ethanol. In minus-20-degree New England weather, the alcohol turns gasoline into a frozen daiquiri. Giving daiquiris to my generator’s little engine does not make it happy. Or, possibly, giving daiquiris to the little engine makes it too happy. Every time I yank the starter cord I’m feeding the engine booze. Then it goes to sleep. Besides the primary and secondary vulnerabilities of the Internet, there’s the fact that the thing itself was created by people utterly ignorant of all free-market principles. This is not conducive to best practices in the field of cryptocurrency. The Internet began as a collaboration between the military and academia – two institutions that are good at spending money but which " And I understand the problems faced in generating electricity – because of all the time I spend trying to start my generator.

What a way to kick off a gloomy Monday morning – being outsmarted by a toaster.

For 40 years, I was a writer. Now I’m a “content provider.” And the foundational ethic of the Internet is that “content is free.” Which leads to an inherent triviality in what’s on the Internet and a feckless attitude toward how the Internet is operated. Planning to store a fortune on the Internet is not a trivial and feckless matter. People do not take the Internet as seriously as they should... With what excitement and anticipation did people once say, “There’s a machine for that.” With what apathy and indifference do people now say, “There’s an app for that.” Here are some of the things that computer connectivity famously does... Google searches so filled with cinders and slag that looking for the factual is like sifting through the ashes of the Great Library of Alexandria. GPS giving us directions in the manner of a

64 | July 2017

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