Violence has a great deal to do with shadow, in particular the shadow of power. For many people born and raised in modern America, innocence—the absence or rejection of shadow—is a strong obstacle to realizing the soul’s power. As we grow we discover new ways of feeling, all made possible by the development of the inborn nervous system and by other emotions previously learned. Fear, for instance, is experienced quite early. Some researchers indicate proof that some fears are inborn, particularly of falling and sudden or startling sounds. Fear has a definite survival value: it provides a response that motivates us, because of the endocrine gland hormone called epinephrine (adrenalin), to move away from a situation we perceive to be threatening or dangerous. In considering unfocused interaction, it was suggested that the individual is obliged to exhibit a margin of control over all his involvements, especially involvement in one’s own body. Anglo-American students of other cultures have long commented on social differences in exposed mutual-involvements permissible between selected categories, especially exposed involvements between the genders. In some American communities, a public kiss on the lips is considered an obscene act, as it would be, apparently, in public places in Russia, and in many Eastern societies. Within our own society there are instructive differences among social occasions regarding permissible mutual-involvement, few occasions being defined so as to prohibit all such activity and few being defined so as to allow the kind of mutual engrossment characteristic of pleasures of the flesh. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23

In some places in the World, peep shows are commercially organized which sell the opportunity to spy on performers engaged in pleasures of the flesh. Writers tend to take the position tht this is a perversion of the instinct for pleasures of the flesh. Few students, however, seem to have been concerned with the fact that what is also perverted in these arrangements is the regulation of exposed mutual-involvement; for presumably some of the excitement the voyeurs obtain from these shows derives from observing a pair of persons engaged in conduct that is ideally inappropriate in situation of more than two persons engaged in conduct that is ideally inappropriate in situations of more than two persons, and, in many of our subcultures, somewhat inappropriate even for two persons, hence conducted in the dark. A couple necking or arguing on a business street might well be considered an affront in the situation—an obtrusion of private matters in places where a more public orientation is required. In parks and on beaches, however, these involvements are easily tolerated, and no street is so defined as to preclude modulated light talk between two individuals walking together. While it is permissible for persons at an ocean pier to kiss each other deeply, thereby withdrawing to an appreciable degree from other aspects of the situation, the same action by a suburban housewife meeting her husband at the 6.45 would be inappropriate; a lighter kiss is more in keeping with the situation. A “kiss of delight” in broad daylight in a busy Roman piazza can land you in jail. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23

However, “duty kisses”—the pecks on each cheek that male and female Italians give each other every time they meet—are still permitted. A 1960s court case to determine what public kissing is permissible, ended after nearly a year in a sentence of two months in separate reformatories for an engaged coupe. The unfortunate lovers, Vittorio Grazini, 20, and his fiancée, Angelina Rossi, 22, had their fatal kiss last August at 6.30 in the afternoon. The police officer who arrested them claimed they had a “long kiss of delight” that was a menace to public mortals. The judge agreed. Public kissing is against the law in Rome. Adventurous Italian youngster risk jail every evening to have long kisses of delight in the shadow of walls and monuments. However, before the courageous Vittorio and Angelina tried it, nobody tested the law in a car parked in the middle of a crowd, and in sunshine. Similarly, in our cities, the Howard Johnson type of restaurant may have a section reserved for families with young children, and in these locations a degree of family involvement in the discipline of children may be tolerated that might cause feelings of uneasiness in the other sections of the restaurant. In those situations where all participants are obliged to sustain a main involvement not only in the same kind of activity but in the same encounter, byplays and other minor mutual-involvements are by definition an illegitimate withdrawal from the. However, even where no single engagement continuously exhausts the situation, strict limits on mutual-involvement may be found. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23

Thus, at church, where pious feelings may be obligatory, the enthusiasm of a greeting may have to be tactfully damped, and greetings that would ordinarily involve only a hand-wave may have to be suppressed completely. The first point is that a church is not a social meeting place. Heads turned to look for friends in the congregation, merry nods and smile, gay greetings, and a distracted restlessness are all out of place in church. If one happens to catch a friend’s eye, certainly there is no reason to withhold a glance of recognition and a short subdued smile; but respect for the place and concentration on the ceremony should be the basis of all one’s behaviour. Should long-separated friends meet under these circumstances, it would be difficult indeed for them to do justice to their relationship without committing a situational impropriety. This dilemma, it may be noted, frequently arise at funerals, for at these unjoyous, highly organized occasions, there is a strong likelihood that persons will see each other after long separation and owe each other expansive greetings. Apparently, the very harm handshake provides a solution for this problem, allowing strict situational solemnity to be maintained in appearance, while in fact a shielded involvement is occurring whose depth and alienation from the occasion can be sensed only by the two participants. Just as the involvement rules prevailing in some situations can embarrass relationships, so certain relationship can effectively cause participants to feel that the gathering and the social occasion are threatened. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23

When two persons are known to be intensely involved in their dealings with each other, their mere presence together in the same room can effectively suggest more mutual engrossment than is consistent with their other involvement obligations. In the past, consequently, we have been told that: It is in bad ton for a newly married couple, when going to an evening party, to enter the room together. Some older person, or some relative of hers, should take the bride in. It is in better taste that, on all occasions of appearing in public, the pair should not be exactly together. The recognition of that relation should as much as possible be confined to the fireside. It is not pleasant to see persons thrusting their mutual devotedness into the eye of society. On the other hand, it should be noted that in honeymoon resorts extensive mutual-involvement is exposed in the form of hand-holding and necking, as if a couple’s new status gave them temporary parade rights, an extension of the right of their friends to blow car horns during the motor procession after the ceremony. The apparent contradiction is resolved when we appreciate that an involving relationship must either be strongly suppressed or be given some kind of public ratification, the couple, as a couple, taking the role of performers, at once oriented to each other and properly exposed to the audience. Similarly, persons known to be having an affair can often bring some uneasiness to a gathering, even if this tension is successfully released through a joking, playful manner. Persons known to be at odds with each other can also suggest too much mutual-involvement, even though they manage never to come face-to-face during the social occasion o which they have both been inadvertently invited, or manage to cover with self-conscious nods such contact as cannot be avoided. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23

There will be attempts, then, to forestall unsuitable mutual-involvement. An everyday illustration is provided by the widespread current middle-class rule of etiquette that reminds husbands and wives to separate from each other at table and during small talk at social parties. Presumably the husband-wife pair would either have nothing to say to each other, in that case not expressing the spirit of the occasion, or have quite intimate things to say to each other, in that case affirming their World at home rather than the party itself. One of the most important rules of human relations: Always make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest. If you make it know that when a person does a favour for you, it will be a great honour, they are more than likely to want to please you. It is much better than an ultimatum. In contrast, the crude handling of human relations will wreck one’s own career, ruin one’s health, shorten one’s life, and cause others to want to stay out of your league. This even works with kids. Leo and Annie get paid $1 to pick up every peach off of the ground, so the lawn can be mowed. However, it is also explained to them that for every peach they miss, $1 dollar will be subtracted from their pay. Therefore, Leo and Annie happily pick up every peach they can see because they know the value of a dollar and want to make others proud of them. An effective leader should be sincere. Do not promise anything that you cannot deliver. Forget about the benefits to yourself and concentrate on the benefits to the other person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23

Know exactly what it is you want the other person to do. Be empathetic. Ask yourself what is it the other person really wants. Consider the benefits that person will receive from doing what you suggest. Match those benefits to the other person’s wants. In a kind way, try to make a person see the benefit of following the advice you are giving them, or doing the job that you are requesting of them. However, there are some mistakes that are made when we fail to appreciate the critical role of context. This kind of mistake is especially common when selection is at the level of strategies because strategies so often take the form of conditional action patterns: “If you encounter circumstances X, then do Y.” The problem is that the actions are frequently much easier to observe than the conditions. For example, if your opponent in a chess game gives you the opportunity to take a piece, it may not be easy to determine from the context if this I a stupid blunder or a clever sacrifice. To take another example, suppose you are building a collection of rare books. Bidding at book auctions may allow you to observe the buying actions of your colleagues. However, if there is competition among the bidders, they may not be willing to fully, or accurately, disclose why they bought what they did, when they did. Competitive barriers to observation are often a serious impediment to strategy-level selection. Moreover, the ultimate effect of buying decisions may not be clear for some time. It can take a while to appreciate the effect on a collection of new additions, and the market for particular kinds of holdings may grow or decline. #RandolphHarri 7 of 23

In such an environment, learning will go slowly. Efforts to emulate apparently successful buying strategies will involve mistakes because so many factors determine the ultimate success of a purchase, and because inference about the conditional part of the strategies are so constrained. It could be advantageous in such a situation, as in chess or checkers, to develop shorter-range measures of factors correlated with long-run success. Again, we look for ways that the inevitable mistakes of credit attribution can provide opportunities to harness complexity. In this case, it may be possible to gradually identify signals observable in the short run that can foretell the long-term performance that is in the ultimate goal. One good approach follows Arthur Samuel’s insight into learning to play championship checkers. Surprise are actions that came out better, or worse, than expected. Either kind can fuel improvement. The essential thing is to see what factors were observable or predictable in the short run that were correlated with the surprise. This is a powerful idea that has been found to work not only in artificial intelligence systems but also in the neuropsychology of human learning. To return to our rare books example, we might ask what other copies of a target book were recently in the market? Are there details of its condition that might add to its value? Is the market for this type of book cyclical or sensitive to economic conditions? #RandolphHarris 8 of 23

Are new categories of buyers entering the market who might prefer books of this type? There are hundreds of these factors, which I why it is very hard to learn to buy well for a collection. However, the harnessing complexity approach does suggest an important shift in question, asking, “What observable criteria were often high or low when you did better or wore than expected?” The search is not for what predicted the outcome but for what predicted the surprise, the deviation of your expectations from what occurred. Those are the factors to which you should give increasing credit if you want to speed the process of learning which factors to credit. In many ways, society had forced certain masks or roles even on those who have been raised not to hide themselves simply because it is easier or safer. Psychodynamically they have found rewards in mask-wearing; they have been positively reinforced by social attitudes for partial self-presentation. However, in the process other and more important parts of their identity have been hidden or crippled. Often, like the family skeletons, the rest of the identity is hidden away in a closet. “Can we not find our features by observation?” It is very improbable. We are too much in them; we do not have enough perspective, so that real work, serious work, begins only from feature. I do not mean that this is absolutely necessary for every individual because there are cases in which features cannot be defined. The definition would have to be so complicated that it would have no practical value. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23

In such a case it is sufficient to take the general division between “I” and “Winchester.” Only, it is necessary to come to a right understanding of what is “I” and what is “Winchester,” that is to say, what is you and what is lying. It is not sufficient, for instance, to admit this possibility of division and then to say that what you like is “I” and what you dislike is not “I.” It is long work and the right division cannot be found at once, but there must be come indications which you can find of the way in which to begin. For instance, suppose you formulate your aim in connection with this work by saying, “I want to be free.” That is a very good definition, but then what is necessary? It is necessary to understand first of all that you are not free. If you understand to what extent you are not free, and if you formulate your desire to be free, then you will see in yourself which part of yourself wants to be free and which part does not want to be free. [Somebody asked whether the fact of seeing a feature was in itself sufficient to diminish it, and also what one could put in its place. Well, seeing does not diminish it, it was necessary to work against it.] First one should try to check it by direct struggle. Suppose one finds that one argues too much, then one must not argue, that is al. Why put anything in its place? There is no need to put anything in its place except just silence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23

If you are using your best mix of interpersonal strategies, then it does not matter if the other individual discovers this fact, so long as one does not find out in advance the particular course of action that is indicated by your random device in a particular instance. One can do nothing to take advantage of your random strategy: the equilibrium strategy is chosen to defend against being exploited in just this way. However, if for whatever reason you are doing something other than using your best mix, then secrecy is vital. Leakage of this knowledge would rebound to your cost. By the same token, you can gain by getting your rival to believe the wrong thing about your plan. In preparation for their landings on the Normandy beaches in June 1944, the Allies used many devices to make the Germans believe the invasion would be at Calais. One of the most ingenious ways to turn a German spy into a double agent—but no ordinary double agent. The English made sure that the Germans knew that their agent had been turned, but did not let the Germans know that this was intentional. To build up his (lack of) credibility as a double agent, the spy transmitted home some of the worst information possible. The Germans found this information useful simply by reversing that which they were told. This was the setup for the big sting. When the double agent told the truth that the Allied landing would occur at Normandy, the Germans took this to be further evidence that Calais was the chosen spot. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23

This strategy had the further advantage that after the landing, the Germans were no longer sure that their spy was really a double agent. He had been one of their only sources of correct information. With his credibility restored, the English could now send false information and have it believed. The problem with this story is that the Germans should have predicted the English strategy and thus calculated that there was some probability that their agent had been turned. When playing mixed or random strategies, you cannot fool the opposition every time or on any one particular time. The best you can hope for is to keep them guessing and fool them some of the time. In this regard, when you know that the person you are talking to has in his interest a desire to mislead you, it may be best to ignore any statement he makes rather than accept them at face value or to infer that exactly the opposite must be the truth. There is the story of two rival businessmen who meet in the Warsaw train station: “Where are you going?” says the first man. “To Minsk,” replies the other. “To Minsky, eh? What a nerve you have! I know that you are telling me that you are going to Minsk because you want me to believe that you are going to Pinsk. But it so happens that I know you really are going to Minsk. So why are you lying to me?” Actions do speak louder than words. By seeing what your rival does, you can judge the relative likelihood of matters that one wants to conceal from you. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23

It is clear from our examples that you cannot simply take a rival’s statement at face value. However, that does not mean that you should ignore what one does when trying to discern where one’s true interests lie. The right proportions to mix one’s equilibrium play critically depend on one’s payoffs. This observing an individual’s move gives some information about the mixing being used and is valuable evidence to help infer the rival’s payoffs. Bidding strategies in poker provide a prime example. Poker players are well acquainted with the need to mix their plays. The poker hand must at all times be concealed behind the mask of inconsistency. The good poker player must avoid set practices and act at random, going so far, on occasion, as to violate the elementary principles of correct play. A “tight” player who never bluffs seldom wins a large pot; nobody will ever raise one. One may win many small pots, but invariably ends up a loser. A “loose” player who bluffs too often will always be called, and thus one too goes down to defeat. The best strategy requires a mix of these two. Suppose you know that a regular poker rival raises two-thirds of the time and calls one-third of the time when one has a good hand. If one has a poor hand, one folds two-thirds of the time and raises the other third of the time. (In general, it is a bad idea to call when you are bluffing, since you do not expect to have a winning hand.) #RandolphHarris 13 of 23

Before the other individual bids, you believe that good and poor hands are equally likely. Because that individual’s mixing probabilities depends on his or her hand, you get additional information from the bid. If you see him or her fold, you can be sure your rival had a poor hand. If your rival calls, you know his or her hand is good. However, in both these cases, the betting is over. If your rival raises, the odds are 2:1 that one has a good hand. Your rival’s bid does not always perfectly reveal his or her hand, but you know more than when you started. After hearing a raise, you increase the chance that his or her hand is good from ½ to 2/3. The estimation of probabilities conditional on hearing the bid is made using a mathematical technique called Bayes rule. The probability the other player has a good hand conditional on hearing the bid “X” is the chance that this person would both have a good hand and bid “X” divided by the chance that one ever bids “X.” Thus, hearing a “Fold” implies that one’s hand must be bad, since a person with a good hand never “Folds.” Hearing a “Call” implies that one’s hand must be good, since the only time a player calls is when one’s hand is good. After hearing a “Rise,” the calculations are only slightly more complicated. The odds that a player both has a good hand and raises is (1/2)(2/3) = (1/6). Hence the total chance of hearing a raise is 1/3 + 1/6 = ½. According to Bayes rule, the probability that the hand is good conditional on hearing a raise is the fraction of the total probability of hearing a raise that is due to the times when the player has a strong hand: in this case that fraction is (1/3)(1/2) = 2/3. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23

Taking a new job is also a probability because changing employment causes problems. A major concern, and certainly the single area of greatest upheaval, is employment (which may become hard to distinguish from leisure). Once, people had little choice of employment. To keep a fully belly, most had to work at the only job available: peasant farming. Eventually, people will have a complete choice of employment: they will be able to keep a full belly and a wealth lifestyle while doing whatever they please. Today, we are about halfway between those extremes. In advanced economies, many different jobs are deemed useful enough that other people will offer an adequate income in exchange for the result. Some people can make a living doing something they enjoy—is this work, or leisure? The impact of nanotechnology on patterns of employment will depend on when it arrives. Current demographics show a shrinking supply of young people entering the work force. Agriculture, the assembly line, and entry-level service jobs are experiencing a labour shortage, and no relief is in sight. If these trends continue, nanotechnology may show up in the midst of a shortage of labour. If it arrives late enough, it may compete with industries that are already nearing full automation; “job displacement” may mean replacing an industrial robot with a nanomachine. Employment patterns have shifted radically in the past. One hundred and seventy years ago, the United States of America was an agricultural nation—70 percent of all people worked the land, and a growing percentage worked in industry doing things like building steam locomotives for Baldwin Locomotives Works or tanning leather for the giant Central Leather monopoly. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23

By the early twentieth century, agriculture was waning in numbers but increasing in productivity; most people worked in industry, and the tiny information and service sector was beginning to grow. Today, the picture has reversed: 70 percent of employed Americans wok on information or service jobs, only 28 percent work in industrial production, and 3 percent in agriculture. This tiny fraction feeds the other 97 percent of Americans, exports hugely to other countries, and receives subsidies and price-support payments to stop them from growing even more food. Manufacturing, even without nanotechnology, seems to be heading toward a similar condition. With an ever-declining percentage of our population working in manufacturing, we have as everyday products things that were once available only to kings and the high nobility. Yet owning multiple suits of clothes, having personal portraits of ourselves and family members, having music upon our command, having a personal bedroom, and having a coach awaiting our need—these are now regarded as being among the bare necessities of life. It may be possible to adjust to even greater wealth with even lees required labour, but the adjustment will surely cause problems. In a World in which nanotechnology reduces the need for workers in agricultural and manufacturing still further, the question will be asked, “What jobs are left for people to do once, food, clothing, and shelter are very inexpensive?” #RandolphHarris 16 of 23

Again, the twentieth century provides some guidelines. As technology has reduced costs by efficiently producing many units of an identical item, people have begun to demand customization to meet individual needs or preferences. As a result, there are ever more jobs in producing custom goods. Today, semi-custom goods that they try to help us meet our needs or express our tastes abound: designer linens, ready-to-wear fashions, cosmetics, cars, trucks, recreational vehicles, furniture, carpeting, shoes, televisions, toys, sports, equipment, washing machines, microwave ovens, food processors, bread bakers, pasta makers, home computers, telephones, answering machines, cell phones, espresso machines—are all available in large and ever-changing variety. Just as varied is the fabulous wealth and diversity of information produced in the twentieth century. Information products are a large factor in the economy: Americans buy 2.5 billion books, 6 billion magazines, and 20 billion newspapers each year. In recent years, new magazines have been invented and launched at the rate of one every business say of the year. A visit to a well-stocked magazine rack shows only a hint of the wealth of highly specialized publications, each one focused on a specialized interest or attitude: hotdog skiing, low-fat gourmet cooking, travel in Arizona, a magazine for people with a home office and a computer, and finely tuned magazines on health, leisure, psychology, science, politics, movies stars, and rock stars, music, hunting, fishing, games, art, fashion, beauty, antiques, computers, cars, guns, wrestling. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23

Motion pictures, which started as a flock of independent production companies and then consolidated into the great studios of the 1930s, have since followed the decentralization and diversification trends of recent years. Now an expanding range of film entertainment comes via network TV, cable channels, private networks, videotapes, DVDs, music videos. Independent producers are assisted by the technology, laser disks, video cameras, mobile phones. The arts have burgeoned, with the general public as the new patron of the arts. Any artist or art form that could find and satisfy a market boomed in the twentieth century. Not just the traditional arts of actors, writers, musicians, and painters, but all forms of “domestic” artistry have grown to unprecedented levels: landscapes and interior design, fashion design, cosmetics, hairstyling, architecture, bridal consulting. Providing for these demands are some of the “service and information” jobs created in the late twentieth century. “Service” jobs include many ways of helping other people: from nursing to computer repairs to sales. In “information” jobs, projected to have the fastest percentage of growth over the next decade, people find, evaluate, analyze, and creature information. A magazine columnist or TV news producer obviously has an “information” job. However, so do programmers, paralegals, lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, credit counselors, psychologists, librarians, managers, financial analysts, credit counselors, psychologist, librarians, managers, engineers, biologists, travel agents, and teachers. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23

Increasingly, people are no longer labourers; they are educated professionals who carry their most important work tools in their heads. Dismissing them from their jobs, cutting them off from their places of employment may hurt them emotionally and financially. However, it does not separate them from their vocation in the same way that pushing a farmer off his freshly seeded land does. For centuries workers were more dependent on a particular physical setting than they are now. Modern occupations generally give their practitioners more independence—and greater mobility—than did those of yesteryear. These human skills that people carry with them will continue to be valued: managing complexity, providing creativity, customizing things for other people, helping people deal with problems, providing old services in new contexts, teaching, entertaining, and making decisions. A reasonable guess would be that many of the service and information industries of the twentieth century will continue to evolve and exist in a World with nanotechnology. What is harder to imagine would be what new industries will come into being once we have new capabilities and lower costs. Along with the old economic law of supply and demand is another governing factor: price elasticity effects. Peoples’ desire for something is “elastic”: it expands or contracts when the cost of something valuable goes down or up. If the price of a flight to Europe is five hundred dollars, more people will take a European vacation than if the price is five thousand dollars. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23

When your had to hire a highly trained mathematician to do equations, calculation was slow and expensive. People did not do much of it unless they absolutely had to. Today, computers make calculations affordable and automatic. So now businesses do sophisticated financial modeling, chemists design protein molecules, students calculate orbital trajectories for spaceships, children play video games, moviemakers do ever more amazing special effects, and the cartoon—virtually extinct because of high labour costs—has returned to movie theaters, all because computers permit inexpensive calculation. Nanotechnology will offer new, affordable capabilities to these and other people. Today, it is as hard to predict what new industries will be invented as it would have been for the creators of ENIAC computer to have predicted inexpensive, handheld games computers for children. So rather than producing drastic unemployment, nanotechnology seems likely to continue the trend already seen today, away from jobs that can be automated and into jobs where the human perspective is vital. However, the true possibilities are, as always in the modern World, beyond predicting. To grasp what is meant here by “meta-tactics,” think for a moment about business. Naïve investors look at a company’s “bottom line” to assess its soundness and profitability. However, profits, like sausages…are esteemed most by those who know least about them. Sophisticated investors, therefore, study not merely the bottom line but what lies behind it—the so-called “quality earnings.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 23

They look at the numbers that make up the numbers; at the assumptions that underlie them; and even at the accounting and computer models that manipulate them. This is analysis at a higher level. It is, we might say, an example of simple meta-analysis. When BMW can legally add nearly $2 billion to its (ostensible) profits in one year by changing the length of time over which it depreciates its plants, altering the way it reports on its pension plan, monkeying with the value assigned to its inventories, and changing the supposed worth of the ultimate driving machines it leases, think of what governments or their agencies can do with their accounting. Governments, of course, have been “cooking their books” and making the most delightful soufflé at least since the invention of double-entry ledgers by the Venetians in the 14^th century. They have been “cooking” all sorts of data, information, and knowledge, not just budgetary or financial, since Dy One. What is new is the ability to fry, broil, or microwave the stuff with the help of computers. Computers do things. They vastly increase the knowhow potentially available to decision-makers. They improve the efficiency of many services. They help integrate complex processes. The computer revolution makes it possible to model—and therefore better understand—various social problems, from unemployment to rising health costs and environmental threats, in ways never before possible. We can apply multiple models to the same phenomenon. We can examine the interplay of many more factors. We can create data bases on an unprecedented scale, and analyze the data in extremely sophisticated ways. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23

Wherever the new system of wealth creation takes root, governments cannot run without computers any more than businesses can. Nor should we want them to. Governments were less, not more, dramatic before the arrival of computers and other advanced information technologies. However, politics is about power, not truth. Decisions are not based on “objective” findings or profound understandings, but on the conflict of force, each pursuing its perceived self-interest. Computers cannot eliminate this necessary (and useful) party, thrust, and cut of the power struggle. They raise it, instead, to a higher level. Political leaders and senior bureaucrats themselves underestimate how dependent they have become on computers—and how vulnerable, therefore, to those who know how to manipulate them for power purposes. The reason for this is that most governmental computer processing typically occurs at the lowest rather than highest levels of the mind-work hierarchy. We do not see Presidents or party chiefs punching keyboards or gazing at screens. Yet the people on top make scarcely a decision, from the choice of a warplane to the determination of tax policy, that does not rest on “facts” that have at some point been manipulated by specialists using computers. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23

Whether it has to do with hospital beds, import controls, or meat inspection, by the time any problem or policy comes up for a vote or a decision, it has been described (and counter-described) in terms that are quantified, aggregated, abstracted, and pre-formed for the computer. And at every point in this process, from the creation of a data base to the way information in it is classified, to the software used to analyze it, the information is open to manipulation so subtle and frequently invisible it makes such standard political info-tactics as secrecy or leaks look crude by comparison. When we add the distortions produced by meta-tactics to all those deliberately introduced by officials and politicians who play the conventional “info-games” described past reports, we can reach only one conclusion: Political knowledge reaches the decision-maker only after passing through a maze of distorting mirrors. Tomorrow the mirrors themselves will reflect still other mirrors. Major shifts in demographics always cause disruptions. Even when we know they are coming, we never prepare for them. Our plans are based on expectation of what will happen. If things do not go as expected, we find that we have “malinvested.” Houston real estate was valuable and looked to become even more so when times were good for the oil business there; when fortune of the oil business changed, Houston real estate was found to have been overbuilt, overpriced, and many millions of dollars were lost. However, as California has become undesirable due to a lack of family values, high real estate prices, and overcrowding, its population has been absorbing the losses suffered. #RandolphHarri 23 of 23

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