Books Reviewed 2015

Here is  housekeeping post, collecting all the books reviewed here in 2015.

Looking back at this list, I see that this year saw Terry Pratchette’s last book (a wrenching experience), and new novels by old favorites Stross, Perry, Macguire, Holt, Gaiman, among others. I also read older but still good histories by Goodwin and Graeber. I read several books about banking, Papal and otherwise, and overlapping works about Italy, fictional and (supposedly) real.

Over the year, I reviewed a sampling of important books about contemporary digital life, including cryptocurrency, the “sharing economy”, social media, and “mind change”.   These works covered a spectrum from enthusiasm to dark worry, giving us much to think about. There are many more I did not have time or energy for. (I will say more on this topic in another post)

Throughout 2015 I continued my ongoing investigation of the question, “what is coworking?”, including reviews of two recent (self published) books about coworking by practitioners. (More on coworking in another post.)

Shall I name some “Best Books” out of my list? Why not?

Fiction:

There were so many to pick from. I mean, with Neil Gaiman in the list, how can I choose? But let me mention two that are especially memorable

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Very imaginative and well written, and, for once, not so horribly dark. This book lodged in my memory more than others that are probably equally good.

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
Published a few years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. A wonderful, intricate story. The flight of the parrot is still in my memory.

Nonfiction:

There were many important works about digital life, and I shall try to comment on them in another post. But three books that really hit me are:

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
From several years ago, but I didn’t read it until this year. Highly influential on the ‘occupy’ and other left-ish thinking. This is an astonishingly good book, and long form anthropology, to boot. Wow!

Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
An exlectic little self-published book about “home coworking”, which I didn’t know was a thing. Kane walked the walk, and made me think in new ways about community and coworking.

Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
Unexpected amounts of fun reading this short book. It does an old, graying nerd no end of good to see that at least some of the kids are OK. Really, really, OK.

List of books reviewed in 2015

Fiction

A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias
After Alice by Gregory Maguire
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson
Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
Chasing the Phoenix by Michael Swanwick
Candy Apple Red by Nancy Bush
Chicks and Balances edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers
Corsair by James L. Cambias
Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
Diaspora by Greg Egan
Distress by Greg Egan
Electric Blue by Nancy Bush
Forty Thieves by Thomas Perry
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong
Get In Trouble by Kelly Link
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
Koko the Mighty by Kieran Shea
Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald
Mort(e) by Robert Repino
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente
Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Shark Skin Suite by Tim Dorsey
String of Beads by Thomas Perry
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume Nine ed. by Jonathan Strahan
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
The Fortress in Orion by Mike Resnick
The Future Falls by Tanya Huff
The Good, the Bad, and The Smug by Tom Holt
The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray
The Relic Master by Christopher Buckley
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
Time Salvager by Wesley Chu
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler
Witches Be Crazy by Logan J. Hunder
Zer0es by Chuck Wendig

Non Fiction

Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols
Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper
Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs
God’s Bankers by Gerald Posner
LaFayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
Let’s Be Less Stupid by Patricia Marx
Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry
Merchants in the Temple by Gianluigi Nuzzi
Mind Change by Susan Greenfield
Mindsharing by Lior Zoref
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
No More Sink Full of Mugs by Tony Bacigalupo
Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling
Pax Technica by Phillip N. Howard
Peers, Inc by Robin Chase
Reimagination Station: Creating a Game-Changing In-Home Coworking Space by Lori Kane
Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
The Art of Forgery by Noah Charney
The Next Species by Michael Tennesen
The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson
The Social Labs Revolution by Zaid Hassan
The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee
Twentyfirst Century Robot by Brian David Johnson
Women of Will:  Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays by Tina Packer

 

Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essay: Blockchain Engineering–Interesting Times

Something is going on with the Bitcoin network. The entire theoretical (and ideological) foundation of Bitcoin is the assumption that there will be a very large number of nodes forming the world-wide Bticoin network [1, 2]. The consensus mechanism depends on the assumption that “honest nodes control a majority of CPU power” ([1], p.6), and the proof of work “is essentially one-CPU-one-vote.” ([1], p.3).

This assumption is not unreasonable given the large number of computers connected to the Internet, provided that “everyone plays” and most computers are about the same. The Bitcoin software is easily available and not especially difficult to install, and the “mining” payout and opportunity to charge transaction fees offers incentives to run the software.

However, in recent months we have seen some troubling indications that the Bitcoin network is neither uniformly distributed nor growing. These trends could spell disaster for Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is the largest and healthiest cryptocurrency network—other coins are certainly suffering the same ailments.

First, Bitcoin mining has evolved rapidly, first expanding rapidly (as expected in the original concept), then being taken over by very large, specialized computation farms. The latter development has skewed the distribution of “CPU power”, effectively pushed out ordinary computers, and concentrating mining in relatively few hands. These developments have been followed by the steep and persistent drop in the exchange rates for BTC, which have put many miners (and other Bitcoin activities) out of business, further concentrating the CPU power. In principle, a sufficiently large concentration of mining power could undermine the consensus mechanism and render Bitcoin useless.

Second, the Bitcoin network needs many nodes to mirroring the blockchain, providing quick access and highly redundant validity checking. These non-mining nodes are basically a public service, and ideally this should cost very little to provide. However, as the Bitcoin blockchain has steadily grown (hundreds of MB per day), it has become harder for nodes to keep a copy, keep up with transactions, and serve queries to the network. It is reported that the number of nodes has not grown for many months (setting aside reconnaissance nodes). Again, if this segment of the network is too small, it will reduce the usability, and potentially become vulnerable to security attacks and disruption through natural or human events.

I note that a recent hoo-haw about a “Sybil attack” on this network illustrated the potential fragility of the Bitcoin network. One company injected a large number of “fake” nodes in order to collect intelligence. The network is still small enough that this perturbed behavior and accidentally entrapped some clueless software. While arguably legal, such behavior certainly does not raise confidence or improve the service of the Bitcoin network. But I suspect that a larger and more robust network would not even notice such “attacks”.

That this problem is serious can be seen from recent ideas for how to “fix” it. I already noted the “Blockchain in Space” idea, which seeks to create highly available nodes in low Earth orbit. If successful, this and similar efforts would help assure that the data is available.

Another notion is to create special purpose “plug in” processors at a reasonable cost. This reduces the complexity, difficulty, and expense of providing a node to the network, to encourage many people to run nodes. This is basically the terrestrial equivalent of the orbital system, with the typical 1:100,000 cost advantage for Earth based systems.

Other approaches seek to modify Bitcoin protocols in various ways (e.g. [3]). For example, Sidechains aim to create alternative blockchains hanging off the main blockchain, which would help limit the costs of the main blockchain. Another variant is the Lightning network, which aims to allow some transactions to be performed “on the side”, and on send the results to the main blockchain.

I would like to add that these scaling challenges are fairly standard fare for large scale computational systems. From the point of view of an engineer, Bitcoin is actually a (slightly) interesting software system: the software needs to carefully calibrate the computational difficulty (CPU, memory, bandwidth). The protocol cannot be too “efficient” or easy, it must be difficult enough that it is not possible to purchase sufficient computing power to completely dominate the system. At the same time, the computation needs to be tractable enough that vast numbers of computers will run the software. Therefore, the software has been designed and continues to be adjusted in order to hit a happy region, hard but not too hard.

Even more tricky, the Bitcoin “network” is a decentralized collection of volunteer computers which come and go, and which are not controlled or paid for by any central organization. This means that the “happy” goal is actually a moving target, since the constellation of participating computing hardware continues to change. Even in the few years that Bitcoin has operated we have seen the development of purpose built processors (ASICs), designed to implement the Bitcoin computations extremely efficiently. We also have seen a shift to hand held devices and cloud services, which means that users have little computing power in their own hands.

Furthermore, the socioeconomic constellation is also constantly shifting, which has direct impacts. The random jiggle of exchange rates dramatically alters the economics, as do the cross currents of legal and political developments.

The bottom line is that Bitcoin (and similar cryptocurrencies) cannot be a final, fixed design.

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1. Nakamoto, Satoshi, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. 2009. http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
2. Vigna, Paul and Michael J. Casey, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order, New York, St Martin’s Press, 2015.
3. Bruce, J.D., The Mini-Blockchain Scheme. Cryptonite, 2014. http://cryptonite.info/files/mbc-scheme-rev2.pdf

 

 

Cryptocurrency Thursday

 

 

Housekeeping: Books Reviewed in First Quarter 2015

These are the books reviewed here in the past quarter.

Non Fiction

Arrival of the Fittest by Andreas Wagner
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols
Live Right and Find Happiness by Dave Barry
Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling
The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik and David C. Thompson
The Social Labs Revolution by Zaid Hassan
The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee

Fiction

Candy Apple Red by Nancy Bush
Electric Blue by Nancy Bush
Get In Trouble by Kelly Link
Mort(e) by Robert Repino
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Shark Skin Suite by Tim Dorsey
String of Beads by Thomas Perry
The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
The Fortress in Orion by Mike Resnick
The Future Falls by Tanya Huff
The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances by Neil Gaiman
Ultraviolet by Nancy Bush
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler

 

Review of The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey

Review of The Age of Cryptocurrency by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey

I’ve been writing about cryptocurrency for over a year now (not a long time, but a significant fraction of the total lifetime of the technology), and have toyed with the idea of putting together a book myself. For this reason, I was excited to see this book by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey (“V&C” hereafter).

Bottom line: While this isn’t precisely the book I would write, it is a very, very good book. This will be an essential reading for anyone wanting to actually understand the first few years of cryptocurrency.

This is the most comprehensive review of these issues I’ve seen, and avoids the crazy rhetoric of the most enthusiastic boosters and detractors.

Most important of all, V&C are deeply aware that this is a cultural story, built on, but not driven by, technology.

[Read the review] [PDF]

Cryptocurrency Thursday

Schisms Appear in Cryptocurrency Narratives

The Bitcoin community is getting another lesson in the importance of end-to-end thinking in systems.

As MtGox officially enters bankruptcy, with the usual real world consequences of lawsuits and loss of confidence, yet another exchange has problems. Cryptsy.com apparently had mysterious problems which delay payouts (i.e., you can’t convert your BC into worthless, immoral, old “fiat” currency).

The wobbly exchanges have nothing to do with the validity or security of the exchange protocol, or the mining systems. Hence, some consider them relatively minor issues, not relevant to the “real” cryptocurrency systems.

But faulty and slow exchanges have knock on effects. For example, Jonathan Saewitz reports how a mining pool, cleverly named “BlackCoinPool”, which can’t operate without exchanges. While Saewitz headlines this as a problem with cryptsy (the exchange), it is actually a problem with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general.

The end-to-end principle is simply this: the whole system has to work, end to end. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link.

These practical and reputational problems with cryptocurrency exchanges are contributing to the ongoing bifurcation of the Bitcoin narrative. (What religion worth its salt doesn’t have a schism?)

We are seeing the “suit-ification” of Bitcoin. All sorts of grown ups, vice principals, and wall street sharks are getting in the game. And they aren’t interested in the “rugged beauty” of offshore freebooters, they are interested in controlling the financial system for their own profit.

For example, Pete Rizzo reports on the announcement of yet another grown-up exchange, which is to be organized a lot like a conventional financial institution. Notably, it is clear that this project is a direct response to the catastrophic failures of the amateur exchanges.

I predict we will see increasing religious warfare between the utopian libertarians, who love the “rugged beauty” of completely offshore money, and the suits who want to make money off the conventional, regulated economy. Of course, the technology doesn’t care, you can do it either or both ways. But the Bitcoin brand will soon see a major crisis, due to conflicting narratives.

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Meanwhile the Dogecoin narrative faces its own schism. Following the path of the sponsorship of NASCAR #99, Shibes are sponsoring a Mixed Martial Arts fighter. This stuff is pretty far from the utopian Robin-Hoodiness of many Shibes (e.g., this or this).

It will be interesting to observe the upcoming “Dogecon” in San Francisco (April 25, 2014). The program includes formal pitches and probably a lot of goofing around (a costume contest is advertised).

As Peter Spence astutely notes,

“It’s not clear that Dogecoin’s own userbase is keen for the currency to become a replacement for traditional money, or for it to be used as much else than a means of rewarding others on the internet for producing or sharing content.”

We shall see if there is a “suit-ification” of Dogecoin, or at least a NASCAR-ification.

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On the Mazacoin front, there was never doubt that the nationalist narrative would encounter pushback, likely from many directions. I don’t mean to get involved in the internal affairs of the Lakota, I only want to comment on the public narratives about the cryptocurrency. These narratives will, no doubt, reflect many aspects of Lakota history, politics and culture, which I respect but do not have a personal stake in.

A spate of publicity has put forward an initial story for Mazacoin: it could be “the new buffalo”—definitely a trenchant cultural claim.

Alysa Landry reports with an interview which recounts the founding narrative quite clearly. “Developing currency is a way for tribes to maintain sovereignty”, and maybe to “alleviate poverty by propelling the Lakota Nation into the global market”.  (Initial venues will likely be casinos and pow wows.)

However, Brandon Ecoffey reports that the Tribal Council and President are unaware of this “official currency”, though they have endorsed the exploration of the topic. The Council and President are the embodiment of the tribe’s sovereignty, so they will have to be on board.

To date, it is not clear how this will play out, but there is clearly a possibility of multiple narratives developing around the cryptocurrency technology.  One council member is quoted to skeptically remark, “It looks kind of like a scheme to me”.

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Got schism?  Everybody’s doing it.