If one believes that satisfaction of all physiological needs is enough to provide for a feeling of well-being in an animal (and in man), their zoo existence should make them very content. However, this parasitic existence deprives them of stimuli that would permit an active expression of their physical and mental faculties; hence they often become bored, dull, and apathetic. This disposition can lead to deviance in man. When men are engaged in deviant behavior, they are often involved in criminal activity. There is much more to understanding criminal behavior than simply mapping out the pattered aspects of the behaviors in question. For starters, one must consider the thoughts and cognitions that underlie the behaviors. Appreciating how different criminals think is anything but exact science. After all, we are talking about trying to figuratively crawl inside the heads of criminals in an effort to tap their state of mind and decision-making process across whole categories of offenders. Nonetheless, there are important issues that must be considered. First, one must tackle the issue of criminal motivation. As mentioned, criminal definitions expressly indicate that the criteria must be satisfied before an act can be considered a crime. For the legal scholar, criminal motivation is a relatively simple concept referring narrowly to the individual’s state of mind (men reus) at the time of the crime. For the criminologist who seeks to better understand criminal behavior, criminal motivation is a broad and complex concept that speaks to the totality of the offender’s mental state, in that time period preceding the crime, during the actual commission of the crime, and in the post-offense aftermath. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Criminal motivation must thus be approached as a complex, situationally based phenomenon in need of careful consideration. Moreover, a full treatment of this concept must also take into account the ways that the expected victim and setting roles can shape the mindset of the offender. For example, the issue of criminal motivation, as it applies to the mindset of street thugs (id est, stick up artist). Criminal planning is yet another important part of the criminal thought process. Once the prospective criminal decides that it is beneficial to commit an offense, the individual must settle on what constitutes the most effective and efficient set of behavioral processes to achieve said act. Planning refers to the rational decision-making processes that map out target selection and the way in which the individual(s) intend to commit the crime. For instance, burglary crews often implement a system of planning that includes a clearly established division of labor, event simulations, and contingency plans. Whereas juvenile car thieves use limited amounts of pre-event planning with offenders engaging more haphazard target selection method and operate with little concern for police intervention. Having a clear conscience is a hallmark of the contemporary human psyche. We as Americans have developed a near instinctual desire or need to think of ourselves as good people. In effect, there appears to be no wrongful behavior that the human mind is unable to cognitively reconstitute as normal or acceptable. Normative neutralizations are part and parcel to the cognitive dimension of crime. When their behavior is called into question by themselves or others, criminals are compelled to generate a cognitive neutralization that excuses or justifies their actions. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

In effect, when persons do wrong, they feel the need to convince themselves and others that it was not so bad. They make believe that victims of intimate partner violence deserved their abusive situation. Also, rapists often vilify their victims and downplay personal wrongdoing, and men and women of the evening come to think and talk about their careers and clients. All criminal events are social phenomena. As mentioned, they occur in a given social situation or what is termed a “situated criminal transaction.” The form of that transaction is often patterned for any given offense and may even appear to be scripted. While the habitual interactions of victims and audience members is worthy of notice, criminologists are also interested in the routinized behavior of the offender. We have come to realize that the patterning of offender attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors can be a by-product of the behavior and sentiments that exist in the larger criminal subculture. In a noncriminological context, we acknowledge that cultural-based learning is a force to be reckoned with. Few would question the influence that a place of employment, say a law firm, has on the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of, say, a new attorney who seeks partner status. The same can be said of criminal subculture. A large part of a criminal’s normative and behavioral makeup can be fostered though interactions with fellow offenders. Significant relationships and scripted roles can be developed and these relationships often play a significant role in the way that the offenders think and behave. For example, there is often a complex web of roles and relationships that exist within the Sacramento sex-for-crack market. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

It is useful to conceive of a criminal subculture as having two central features: organizational alignment and socialization scripts. Organizational alignment refers to the networking or structuring of interactions that shape a given criminal subculture. Membership plays an importance in the roles and position in criminal outcomes. Criminals typically carry out their misdeeds within the context of one of the following organizational forms: loners, colleagues, peers, teams, and formal organizations. Loners work alone, relying on no one to assist them in their misdeeds. They manipulate and/or adapt the behavioral and cognitive aspects of their legitimate (noncriminal) Worlds as a means of developing and refining their criminal repertoire. When it comes to the term “therapeutic self-medicators” they are described as pharmacists who misappropriate their pharmacological expertise en route to developing their own private drug abuse patterns. These insolent professionals use drugs alone and slowly manipulate their legitimate training and professional roles until they have in effect taught themselves how to think and act as a drug addict. We term other drug-using pharmacists “recreational abusers.” These individuals often operate within a colleague-based organizational alignment. Colleagues offend alone but look to the misdeeds and rationalizations of other deviants to shape thoughts and behaviors associated with their illicit behavior. Those organizational alignment that fit into the peer category take on a slightly different social format. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Peers take on co-offenders and openly interaction with other perpetrators in a loose and transient social setting. For example, hard-core heroin addicts comingle and draw upon the collective experience of the junkie subculture to refine their drug-related skills and attitudes. Criminal subcultures can also take on an organizational alignment that is referred to as teams. A term structure is defined by its consistent and patterned interactions. Here, the offender comes to interact and offend with the same group of individuals. Consistent relationships are seen as mutually beneficial, s offenders gain proficiency from a patterned division of labor and loosely structure mentoring. For example, the loose social organization of marijuana grower in Kentucky blue grass country has a growth and distribution system that is held together by informal norms and behaviors. The mot advanced of criminal subcultures manifest itself as formal organizations. By operating in a membership-like format, these criminals serve fixed roles, with some sort of formal or informal mentoring system to recruit and retain the membership base. Organized crime “families” are the best example of this organizational form. An example of the organized crime family is demonstrated by the way in which Adolph Hitler used the Nazi regime to carry out the Holocaust. Organizational alignment represents the structural dimension of a criminal subculture as it describes the context in which criminal interactions occur. This structural, dimension gives way to a process-oriented aspect of criminal subcultures termed socialization scripts. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

When it comes to socialization scripts, the actual content of subcultural messages and interactions is placed center stage as we seek to ascertain the process through which criminal learning occurs. There is evidence that the cultural message and cues within our nation’s universities can serve to shape the motives and behaviors of college men to engage in gang rape. We often find an illuminating way that the content and dynamics of the learning process comes to produce a socialization script that is somewhat unique to gang rapists. Criminal acts are, by definition, prohibited by law, and the laws of this democratic country are supposed to represent the collective conscious of the collective conscious of the populous. As such, in theory, that which is defined as a potential harm or offense to the state should be defined as a potential harm or offense to the average citizen. Reactions to criminal behaviors can take on one or two forms: formal or informal. Formal reactions to criminal events take the shape of institutional responses. In most cases, the institution in questions is the criminal justice system (id est, law enforcement, courts, and corrections). When a mother openly beats a child in public, law enforcement officials are quick to reference existing criminal statues and cite the mother with child abuse. This matter is then forwarded to the court system where the courtroom workgroup (id est, prosecutor, defense attorney, judge) sets out to determine if in fact a crime has been committed and, if so, what should be the appropriate punishment. Once a sentence has been handed down, members of the correctional system impose the prescribed punishment. To this end, a full understanding of crime begs consideration of the way that institutions such as law enforcement, the courts, and our correctional system respond to the various types of criminal offenses. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

Institutional (formal) contacts are not the only form of societal rection that can potentially shape the thoughts and behaviors of those involved in the criminal event. Informal reactions are also important. These are the perceived or real responses from audience members and/or valued relations that help shape criminal event. On a most fundamental level, audience members may intervene or choose not to intervene in a criminal event, thereby altering its existence. In fact, the mere existence of an audience changes the nature of the offense. For instance, the group dynamic plays an important role in the occurrence of gang rape on university campuses. Whereas the one-on-one dynamic of marital rape produces a significant different series of events. Informal reactions also serve as important precursors to a criminal event. Namely, the perceived responses of valued relations (id est, friends, family members, role models) can and do effect both the decision to commit a crime and the accounts and justifications that are constructed once the event has transpired. Scholars once again observe that these perceptions often become pattered for a given type of crime. This is even applied to audience roles in the murder event. There often times a subtle spirit of treachery in a system. Some crime families are suave and unctuously polite. As one man puts it: “If we wish to kill a man we approach him, we ear, drink, sleep, work and rest with him, it may be for several moons. We bide our time. We call him friend.” As a result, in the not infrequent cases of murder, suspicion falls on those who have tried to be friends with the victim. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

That is one reason some people do not trust others who start hovering around them, act as if they know them, or sit around watching one. When an individual is infrequently seen, and varies one’s times of outings, always seeing the same people in the vicinity is a sign to be cautious. It is not statistically probable that they all are on the same varied and infrequent schedule, so chances are these individuals are up to something unholy. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to engagement disloyalty. During an encounter of three or more participants, it is possible for a subset of participants to form a byplay, a noninclusive engagement that is carried on simultaneously with the first but in a way carefully calculated not to interfere with it too openly. These byplays may be carried on relatively openly when they appear to be in the interests of the business at hand—as when a speaker quietly asks some questions of the chairman before turning to speak—or relatively furtively when byplay is patently not in the interests of the dominant interaction. This kind of disaffection seems especially common in large engagements where the presence of manly loyal participants guarantees that the dominant engagement will be sustained. Disaffection is especially treacherous in clusters of three or four, where the participants remaining loyal may be in a numerical minority, subjected to pointed insult by the byplay of others. As might be expected, when an encounter must be sustained by persons unable to use their eyes to scan and monitor what is occurring, byplays employing physical acts become difficult to control and constitute a special threat to the integrity of the encounter. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

For instance, consternation was felt by visually impaired man in an engagement of three men and one woman, when he heard rustling and suppressed giggling that did not seem to arise from what was being stalked about by the full company at the time. In many instances, these subordinate byplays involve only members of the dominant encounter, and involve them in such a way as not to broadcast to the company at large—to the situation—that disloyalty is occurring. I do not propose to consider this phenomenon here, since it could just as well be considered solely in terms of the dynamics of the engagement itself. Relevant, however, as those byplays that draw some of their membership from persons officially excluded from the dominant engagement, for here disloyalty is made visible to bystanders, and the doings of the betrayed engagement are “opened up,” to at least some of the nonparticipants present. An extreme form of disloyalty is fond where an individual, in the process of being led into the role of the butt, is brought into an engagement maliciously, just so the instigator can be disloyal to the engagement that results. The perpetrator makes a pretense to the butt that he is treating him as a coparticipant, while at the same time openly using the interaction thus created as a source of amusement for oneself and others. The model here, perhaps, is the kind of baiting of animals that people engage in at a zoon, where one individual interacts with an animal until the animal responds, and then uses the animals response as a source of fun between himself and a second individual. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

People can spend their lives studying systems and system word and never come to real things. In fact, 90 percent of our ordinary knowledges does not really exist; it exists only in imagination. Realization of sleep is the only one thing. It is necessary to find ways to awaken, but before that you must realize that you are asleep. Compare sleep and waking. All ideas of the work begin with the idea of sleep and the possibility of waking. All other ideas—life ideas—may be clever or elaborate but they are all ideas of sleeping people produced for other sleeping people. Sleep is the result of many things: division of personalities, different “I”s, contradictions, identifications and so on. However, the first of all, just pure without any theory, is the realization of sleep. Currently, life is not long enough for changing our being if we work on it as we do at everything else in life. Something can be attained only if one uses a more perfected kind of method. The first condition is understanding. All the rest is proportionate to understanding. There must also be efforts in connection with emotions and will. One must be able to go against oneself to give up one’s will. First you must ask yourself: What is will? We have no will, so how are we to give up what we do not have? This mean, first, that you never agree that you have no will; you only agree in words. Secondly, we do not always have will but only at times. Will means a strong desire. If there is no strong desire, there is nothing to give up; there is no will. At another moment, we have a strong desire that it is against work, and if we stop, it means that we give up will. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

It is not at every moment that we can give up will but only at special moments. And what does it mean “against work”? It means against rules and principles of the work or against something you are personally told to do or not to do. There are certain general rules and principles of the work or against something you are personally told to do or not to do. There are certain general rules and principles, and there may be personal conditions for different people. “Should one ask for further personal directions?” Yes, but if one asks one must obey. One is not obliged to do anything if one does not ask, so before asking one must think twice. In common home accidents, a dangerous product is wrongly applied, spilled, or consumed. Homes today are full of corrosive and toxic materials, for cleaning drains, dissolving stains, poisoning insects, and so forth. All too often, children dink them and die. With advanced technology, none of these tasks will require such harsh, crude chemicals. Cleaning could be performed by selective nanomachines instead of corrosive chemicals; insects could be controlled be devices like ecosystem protectors that know the difference between a cockroach and a person or a ladybug. There will doubtless be room for deadly accidents, but with care and hard work, it should be possible to ensure that nanotechnologies for the home are safer than what they replace, saving many lives. It is, of course, possible to imagine safety nightmares: nanotechnology could be used to make products far more destructive than anything we have seen because it could be used to extend almost any ability further then we have seen. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Such products presumably will not be commonplace: even today, nerve gas would make a potent pesticide, but it is not sold for home use. Thinking realistically about hazards requires common sense. We have already seen how post-breakthrough technologies can eliminate oil spills by eliminating oil consumption. A similar story could be told of almost any class of industrial accident today. However, what about accidents—spills and the like—with the new technologies? Rather than trying to paint a picture of a future technology, of how it could fail and what the responses could be, it seems better to try a thought experiment. What could be done to deal with oil spills, if oil were still in use? This will show how nanotechnologies can be used to cope with accidents: If there were a spill and oil on the shore, advanced nanomechanisms could do an excellent job of separating oil from sand, removing oil from rocks, and cleaning crude oil from feathers on birds and the feathery legs of barnacles. Oil contamination is a pollution problem, and nanotechnology will be a great aid in cleaning up pollution. But why should the oil reach the shore? Economical production would make it easy to stockpile cleanup equipment near all the major shipping routes, along with fleets of helicopters to deliver it at the first distress call from a tanker. Oil cleanup equipment built with nanotechnology could surely do an excellent job of scooping oil from the water before it could reach the shore. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

But why should the oil leave the tanker? Economical production of strong materials could make seamless hulls of fibrous material far tougher than steel, with double, triple, or quadruple layers. Smart materials could even make punctures self-sealing. Hulls like this could be run into rocks at highway speeds without spilling oil. But why should anyone be shipping crude oil across the sea? Even if oil were still being pumped (despite inexpensive solar energy and solar-derived fuels), efficient molecule-processing systems could refine it into pure, fuels at the wellhead, and inexpensive tunneling machines could provide routes for deeply buried pipelines. Any one of these advances would shrink or eliminate today’s problem with oil spills, and all of them are feasible. This example suggests a general pattern. If nanotechnology can provide so many different ways to avoid or deal with an oil spill—one of the largest and most environmentally destructive accidents caused by today’s industry—it can probably do likewise for industrial accidents in general. The most direct approach is the most basic: the elimination of anything resembling today’s bulk industrial plants and processes. The shifts from messy frilling activities and huge tankers to small-scale distributed systems based on solar cells is characteristic of the style in which nanotechnology can be used. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The chemical industry today typically relies on plants full of large, pressurized tanks of chemicals. Not surprisingly, these occasionally spill, explode, or burn. With nanotechnology, chemical plants will be unnecessary because molecules can be transformed in smaller numbers, as needed and where needed, with no need for high temperatures, high pressures, or big tanks. This will not only avoid polluting by-products, but reduce the risk of accidents. Now, given that the United States of America wanted the Soviets to pull their missiles out of Cuba, during the Cuban missile crisis, why could Kennedy not have threatened that he would annihilate Moscow unless Khrushchev removed the missiles? This would be a compellent threat; it must specify the precise conditions of compliance (missiles back to Russia, or in crates on a ship in Havana harbor?) and a deadline for compliance. The problem is that in practice such a threat would not be believed, either by Khrushchev or by anyone else. The threatened action, surely leading to a global thermonuclear war, is simply too drastic to be credible. If the missiles were not out by the deadline, rather than annihilate the World, Kennedy would surely be tempted to extend the deadline by a day, and then another day. There are several ways of lending credibility to threats. The use of an automatic device seems the most promising in this context. (Reputation will not work, because after the threat is carried out there is no tomorrow. Contracts will not work, because everyone will face the overwhelming temptation to renegotiate. And so on.) #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The use of an automatic device is an approach basis for the movies Failsafe and Dr. Strangelove. In Dr. Strangelove the Soviets have installed a “doomsday machine” that monitors American transgressions and automatically launches Soviet retaliation under circumstances specified in a tamperproof computer program. In Failsafe it is the Americans who have the doomsday machine. Those who have seen these movies (which we recommend highly) know why Kennedy should not use a similar device to make his threat credible. In theory, under ideal circumstances, everything works just as planned. The very knowledge that an automatic device is in place makes the threat credible. Khrushchev backs down, the threat does not have to be carried out, and all is well. If a threat is sure to succeed, it need never be carried out, and it does not matter how big or dire it is, or how much it would hurt you too to carry it out. However, in practice, you cannot be absolutely sure that it will work as planned. There are in fact two kinds of errors that can occur. First, the threat may not succeed. Suppose Kennedy has totally misjudged Khrushchev’s mindset. Then Khrushchev does not back down, and the doomsday device annihilates the World just as Kennedy is regretting having installed it. Second, the threat may be carried out even when it should not. Suppose the Soviets back down, but the news reaches the doomsday computer just too late. Because such errors are always possible, Kennedy does not want to rely on threats that are too costly to carry out. Knowing this, Khrushchev will not believe the threats, and they will not deter or compel him. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

Kennedy may claim that an automatic launcher has the sole authority to fire at Moscow if the Soviet missiles are not out of Cuba by Monday, but Khrushchev can be sure that Kennedy controls and override button. Although the threat of certainty of war is not credible, one of a risk or probability of war can be credible. If Khrushchev fails to comply, there is a risk, but not a certainty, that the missiles will fly. The uncertainty scales down the threat. The scaling down makes the threat more tolerable to the United States of America, and therefore more credible to the Soviets. This is a lot like another device for credibility we mentioned in the past, namely moving in small steps. There we considered breaking up a large promise into a succession of small ones. If I am trying to sell you a valuable piece of information for a thousand dollars, I may not be willing to disclose it in return for your promise to pay, but may be willing to reveal installments one by one in return for corresponding payments. A similar principle applies to threats. And here the steps consist of degrees of risk. Each stage of escalation by the United States of America or the Soviet Union increases the risk of global war; each small concession reduces the risk. The calculation for each side is how far to proceed or retreat alone this route. If Kennedy is willing to go farther than Khrushchev, then Kennedy’s brinkmanship will succeed. Kennedy cannot credibly threaten an immediate all-out nuclear strike, but he can credibly raise the risks to some degree by taking some confrontational actions. For example, he may be willing to risk one chance is six of nuclear war to ensure the removal of the missiles. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Then Khrushchev can no longer conclude that Kennedy’s threat is vacuous; it is in Kennedy’s interest to expose himself to this risk if it will motivate the Soviets to remove the missiles. If Khrushchev finds this degree of risk intolerable, then the brinkmanship has accomplished its objective: to allow Kennedy to choose a more appropriately sized threat, one big enough to work and yet small enough to be believed. We still have to ask how Kennedy can go about threatening a risk of war, short of a certainty. Moving forward, in the spring of 1989, when Dr. James T. Hansen chief of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, prepared to testify before the U.S. Congress on the “greenhouse effect”—the overheating of the global climate—he submitted his text for clearance to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OBM). Hansen firmly believed that the time had come for the U.S.A. government to take significant action to prevent drought and other severe effects of climatic warming. When he got his text back, however, he discovered that the OBM had come for the U.S.A. government to take significant action to prevent drought and other sever effects of climatic warming. When he got his text back, however, he discovered that the OMB had added a paragraph throwing doubt on the scientific evidence about planetary warming, and considerably softening his position. He protested, lost the internal battle, and then made his personal views public through the press. Behind this collision between the administration and one of the government’s top scientists lay a little-noticed bureaucratic battle. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

The U.S.A. Department and the Environmental Protection Agency both wanted the United States of America to take the international lead in combating the greenhouse problem. By contrast, the OMB and the Department of Energy backed a go-slow approach. When Hansen took his protest to the media, Senator Al Gore, one of the few technologically sophisticated members of the U.S.A. Congress, demanded that OBM “testify about the basis for their conclusions. I want to determine…the climatic models they have used.” This reference to “models” is a sure tip-off that the struggle would be waged at the meta-tactical level. For more and more government programs and policies are shaped by the assumptions and sub-assumptions buried inside complex computer models. Thus while Gore in the Senate was questioning the models relied on by the go-slow camp, Sununu in the White House was challenging the reliability of the models that provided ammunition for the other side. He was on top of the scientific literature and thought the computer models predicting significant warming were too primitive to form a reliable basis for action. Today, whether dealing with the economy, health costs, strategic arms, budget deficits, toxic waste, or tax policy, behind almost every major political issue we find teams of modelers and counter-modelers supplying the raw materials for this kind of political controversy. A systematic model can help us visualize complex phenomena. It consists of a list of variables, each of which is assigned a weight based on its presumed significance. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Computers make it possible to build models with much larger numbers of variables than the unaided intellect alone. They also help us to study what happens when the variables are given different weights or are interrelated in alternative ways. However, no matter how “hard” the final output may appear, all models are ultimately, and inescapably, based on “soft” assumptions. Moreover, decisions about how much importance to assign to any given variable, or its weighting, are frequently “soft,” intuitive or arbitrary. As a result, political in-fighters, skilled at meta-tactics, battle fiercely over weights, variables, and the way they are linked. Despite the political pressures that tilt and bias the outcome, the results of which conflicts normally come packaged in impressive, seemingly neutral and value-free computer printout. Models are used in developing and choosing policies, in evaluating program effectiveness, and in asking “what is…” questions. However, as we learn from Data Wars, a recent study of government modeling, they can also be used to “obscure an issue or two lend credence to a previously made policy position…to delay decision-making; to give symbolic rather than real attention to a decision; to confuse or obfuscate decision-making,” and so on. “Model use occurs as much for political and ideological need as for technical [substantive decision] need.” This, they note, is necessarily so because “computer models influence ‘who gets what.’” A study by the U.S.A. Congressional Research Service, for example, pointed out that government cuts in social programs during the 1980s, threw at least 557,000 Americans into poverty. The number provided ammunition to politicians who opposed such cuts. However, this figure was not based on counting the poor. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

Instead, like an increasing number of other statistics, it was a result of politically contentious premises built into a model that attempted to show what might have happened had the budget cuts not taken place. Just how rarefied meta-tactics become as computer data spreads in government is illustrated by the controversy that broke out over missing people and what the Census Bureau technicians called “hot deck imputation.” In November 1988 the cities of New York, Huston, Chicago, and Los Angeles field a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of the Census to force a change in the way it counts. They were joined by civil rights groups, the Conference of Mayors, and other organizations. In any census, some groups are undercounted. Poor, transient, and homeless groups are harder to count. Undocumented aliens may not wish to be counted. Other escape the information net for other reasons. Whatever its reason, undercounting can have potent political consequences. Because Washington sends billions of tax dollars back to the cities and states, cities can be deprived of federal funds to which they might otherwise be entitled. Since seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned on the basis of population, states with large uncounted populations may be cheated of full representation. This, in turn, can cost them many other benefits. Inadequate information can thus shift power. To compensate for undercounting, the Census Bureau’s computers, on finding a house for which information is lacking, are now programmed to assume that the unaccounted-for people have characteristics similar to people who live nearby. The computers then fill in the missing data, as though it had been provided by the missing people. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

The result is that millions of persons, presumed to exist, are really a phantom population whose characteristics we are guessing at. Hot deck imputing may be a better way of compensating for the unknown than previously used statistical methods, but, as with all such techniques, its assumptions are open to challenge. On the strength of these assumptions—informed as they might be—voters in Indiana lost one member in Congress whose seat was reassigned to Florida instead. “Hot deck imputation” shifted political power. In sum, therefore, a new stage of political conflict is developing—a battle over the assumptions that lie behind still other assumptions, often embedded in complex computer software. It is a conflict over meta-questions. It reflects the rise of the super-symbolic economy. This new economy could not run for a second without human contact, imagination, intuition, care, compassion, psychological sensitivity, and other qualities we still identify with people rather than machines. However, it also requires ever more complex and abstract knowledge, based on vast avalanches of data and information—all of which is subject to increasingly refined political manipulation. What this look at info-tactics, and especially the new meta-tactics, teaches us is that laws set limits on governmental secrecy only touch the outermost skin of democracy’s knowledge problem. The new economy, by its very nature, requires a free exchange of ideas, innovative theories, and a questioning of authority. And yet…despite glasnost, despite “freedom of information” legislation, despite leaks, and the difficulty of today’s governments face in keeping things secret—despite all of these and more—the actual operations of those who hold power may well be growing more, not less, opaque. That is the “meta-secret” of power. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21