Monsanto's rogue GM-wheat isn't the first genetically modified plant species to go off the reservation in Oregon. Seven years ago, glyphosate-resistant turf grass took to the breeze and then took root in Jefferson County. I tried to cut through the anti-biotech hysteria in this story for Wired. In another piece, for Portland Monthly, I looked not just at the GM-grass debacle, but also GM tree science--and the conventional-wisdom-obliterating possibility that the biggest fan of genetically modified trees might just be the Lorax.

italy and afterward

Just back from a reporting trip to Italy. Can't wait to tell you more about it, but right now I've got to get writing while things are still fresh.

Meanwhile, it's been quite a wild year since The End of Money was published last February. Now it's paperback time. What do you want to see in an afterward? The pb won't be out until the fall, but text for the afterward is due--s**t!--immediately.

the anonymity fantasy

My latest on brave new digital money is here. (Some persnickety BBC editor needed to change "cash-killing tear" into "cash-killing mission," but whatevs. It's mainly in tact.)

Headed my way, no doubt, are a slew of critical letters, posts and tweets about lost privacy in the digital age, and how electronic transactions promise to erode the last vestiges of privacy. I am, as usual, Big Brother's little bro. Satan's trusty sidekick.

A smart thinker on matters privacy is @MarcHochstein at American Banker. (I know, American Banker, right? Who knew?) His latest on the subject is here and it's worth a read. It's also worth clarifying the astoundingly out-of-context quotes he pulled from my book and our interview.

Marc makes a decent argument for the need for anonymous payment systems, although the examples are rather tired, like the woman buying a home-pregnancy test, who could face horrible consequences if someone found out she were doing so, or the young man from a strictly kosher home acquiring a Slim Jim on the sly. Until something better comes along, we need cash around for this kind of transaction.

This is a hard argument to muck with--because it's right. These hypothetical individuals obviously deserve privacy, just like the rest of us do. And we need privacy hawks, too, sounding the alarm and pushing for better safeguards when it comes to transactions the way others are pushing back against certain applications for drones.

But where Hochstein misses the mark is the privacy-anonymity divide. Big hat tip, by the way, to @dgwbirch at Consult Hyperion: This distinction isn't merely a semantic difference; it's an oversight of enormous importance for at least two reasons.

The first is that, like it or not, anonymity and civil society don't mix. We have laws and we have law enforcement. We vote, collect Social Security, join the PTA, have driver's licenses and grudgingly tolerate the TSA. Without break-the-glass access to digital records, law enforcement doesn't really work, save for crimes halted right there in the light of day. It isn't exactly a popular meme to defend the right of government, but it happens to be correct. Not only do we not deserve anonymity, but most people--when they calmly consider the implications of absolute anonymity--don't even want it. What they want, and what we all want, is sufficient privacy.

Where Hochstein is wise is in not making a grandiose pro-cash argument. He knows too well that cash is problematic, antiquated, expensive, downright unfair and becoming more so as the gap between rich and poor widens. He is open to the possibility that a future medium or method of exchange will provide privacy on par with today's cash. Some would say Bitcoin is it. Others would scream hardly!

Which leads to the second major reason why the anonymity argument is weak: cash is most punitive for the people who can least afford it. This is a big part of The End of Money and mentioned briefly in the BBC riff, so I'm not going to elaborate in this post. But what we have to keep in mind is that there is tension between the right to transaction privacy and the potential for new technologies that substantially improve people's lives. Revering cash's ability to ensure anonymity without pausing to think about who gets hurt by cash and why is as myopic as celebrating every digital money tool without ever considering its privacy implications.

So go out and join the fight for privacy; God knows it's one that needs waging. I just don't think fantasizing about anonymity will do us much good. And clinging to cash definitely won't.

well-read readers are everywhere

A bit delayed w/ this post--paste, really--but it's still worthwhile. Following my Nov. 2012 essay in Wired about convictonomics, the editors received this letter from a "reader incarcerated in a maximum-security prison."

To the Editors:

As a reader incarcerated in a maximum-security prison, I was heartened by David Wolman's enlightened "Convictonomics" in issue 20.11.  With an opening line referring to the criminal justice system as "a disaster"; an ending which urges a move towards a system that makes sense; and a body comprised of behavioral economics writ jurisprudential, Wolman did a good thing for the cause of justice.  A clear, well-informed position, undergirded by hard numbers and counterintuitive facts: classic Wired.

I went away in 1999, when a barely-audible upstart called Google was certain to be no match for Yahoo or Lycos. For most of these 13 years, I have subscribed to Wired, partly as a way to remain au courant. During those years, I have ready your occasional pieces on prison -- mainly "Start" content about prison contraband markets and the like -- and found them to be accurate, as opposed to the sensationalized (and often, right-leaning) pap that counts as prison coverage from various media outlets.

Every so often, there's a solid piece of reportage on our nation's criminal justice policy, something that helps shape public discourse and causes others to write follow-up pieces.  Eric Schlosser's seminal essay on "The Prison-Industrial Complex" in The Atlantic Monthly (1998), "Hellhole," Atul Gawande's expose into extended isolation in The New Yorker (2009), and Amy Bach's extraordinary Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court stand out as shining examples.

These pieces matter because the stakes are so high.  It costs $70 billion a year to keep 7 million people in some form of custody, as Wolman notes, but what's often overlooked are the ripple effects of such stratospheric incarceration rates.  Each of those 7 million have family and loved ones who are affected by criminal justice policy, whether it's the child who acts out in school because his mom's in county jail for drug possession, or the family who gets evicted from their home because the sole breadwinner just went away for 10 years.  If you attach 4 people to each of those 7 million, that's roughly 10% of the United States, people who haven't broken the law, yet are feeling the effects of the system.  And since no person is an island, that misbehaving child disturbs his classroom peers and the newly-vacant home becomes a problem for the entire neighborhood.  Those are the ripple effects, and this is who we are now -- a nation of bars and stripes, concrete and concertina wire.  How many degrees of separation is any citizen from someone doing time?

Yet, I haven't lost the hope that after trying everything else, we will settle on the right course of action.  As Carl Rogers wrote:  "Just when it seems too late, the great collective mind grasps the seriousness of a problem and begins to move dramatically ahead."  Perhaps there will be an X Prize for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the criminal justice system.  In the meantime, Wired can truly add something fresh to the national conversation:  a long-form piece expanding on Wolman's "Convictonomics."  This will be for the good of the country, not to mention the family and friends of 7 million Americans.  Please consider publishing such a piece.

Be well and continue producing such great content.

Sincerely,

Danner Darcleight

could twitter be a bookstore?

Day 2 of trial done. Exhausted. Amidst the tweets, retweets, interviews and double- and triple-checks with the Chirpify guys that the backend stuff is operating smoothly, I've been thinking about what it all means for the future of commerce; for the economics of publishing and book marketing; for authors not named Kingslover or Gladwell; and for an individual's online persona, brand or whatever you want to call it. Avatar?

Let me back up a moment. For the first time ever--as far as we can tell, anyway--we're selling digital copies of a book straight thru Twitter. Just a tweet and click and the whole file lands on your virtual bookshelf. (See this Fortune piece about Chirpify for more info.)

I have wanted to try this for a while, but the real trailblazer here is a forward-looking marketing guy at Da Capo Press. This wouldn't have been possible without his willingness to experiment, even though if you say "in-stream social commerce" to almost anyone from a traditional publishing house, they would probably ask if you repeat the question in English.

There is, of course, a lovely synergy between The End of Money and this rather sci-fi way to pay for stuff. We don't need to get into that here but suffice it to say I'm seeing a lot of this sort of thing:

Beyond the future of money ideas, though, is the chance to participate in something that is refreshingly upbeat. I haven't a clue whether social commerce is going to take over the world. No one does. But more moping about the dubious future of books and writing as a career strikes me as less than productive--and not exactly fun.

So far our experiment is getting some decent attention, although most of the write-ups (here, here, here) are variations on the same quick-hit theme, and no one has yet taken on the publishing industry angle in a serious way. (A talented Marketplace reporter is also working on a piece that will run soon. Be sure to tune in.)

Meanwhile, a huge thank you to Twittersphere friends and strangers alike for spreading the word, buying the book and--because this is Twitter--bringing the funny. One guy delivered this concise zinger: "@davidwolman sell." The winner to date, though, is from London-based science journalist Ed Yong:

the mystery persists

An eighth grader in Virginia recently wrote me with some questions for a school project. Here are my (hurriedly composed) responses:

What do you think affects hand dominance most?
What are the physical and mental differences of left and right handed people?
Why do you think most people are right handed?
Do you think it is better to be left or right handed?(Why?)

Hello [insert name of impressive student]. Thank you for writing and for your sharp questions. Here are some quick answers for you.

1. I think biology influences hand dominance the most--at first. In other words, we are born with certain programming. But from day 1 and every day thereafter culture and environment also influence our behavior, including hand dominance.

2. Physical differences are easier to grasp than mental ones, and they are mainly the stuff you see every day; the preference for holding a pen or throwing a ball or chopping vegetables with one hand versus the other. But we also know that lefties tend to lean a little more toward the mixed-handed range, whereas righties are more often strong righties, which is to say that they do pretty much everything with the right hand.

As for mental differences, this is a mystery. For the most part, when it comes to how people think and who they are, we can't reasonably generalize and say lefties are this and righties are that. One exception is that for tackling certain tasks, the brains of lefties use both sides of the brain a little more than righties do. This isn't at all a good or a bad thing--it's just something that scientists have observed and that they, like me, find curious. And they, like you and me, hope to find answers someday as to what that might mean when it comes to who we are as people or as individuals. Maybe you will be the person to crack that puzzle.

3. The very short answer is that this is a genetic phenomenon. Having left-handed people in the population clearly isn't disadvantageous for our species. It might be a stretch to say that it's an advantage, though. The more subtle truth is probably that the genetic diversity that sometimes leads to left-handedness is good for the species as a whole.

4. It's better to be left-handed, or course! Because you're a step closer to first base, because you're like a number of recent US presidents, because you get special scissors, and because you approach the world just a little bit differently from the majority of the population.

Best wishes,

David