25 Reasons Today Is a Great Time to Be Alive

Amid all the morose and maudlin whinging about how we are losing our sense of self, our ability to self-moderate, or more generally our minds, merit, and money, today I offer up a list of things to get excited about in 2011.

Here are 25 reasons life (and mine specifically) is better today than it would have been…

250 Years Ago

25. I can reasonably expect to live longer than 33 years.

24. In my life, I’ve visited over 10 countries on 3 continents. And among my friends, I’m not well travelled. In 1761, people rarely left their hometown, let alone the country.

23. Last night I heard superb music by 10 different composers, played by a world-class orchestra, for under $30. (And I waved a Union Flag while doing it! “And did those feet, in ancient time…”) In 1761, only a fraction of the population could hear such music – and not cheaply.

22. Indoor plumbing! Sewers! Need I say more?

21. I can buy a great book for under $5; in 1761 it would have cost the equivalent of about $1000.

100 Years Ago

Hunger Strikes Among Suffragettes

20.  As a woman, I can choose who runs my country/province/ city (at least in theory). And I didn’t have to be jailed and force-fed by a tube in order to have the right to do it – all I had to do was reach majority.

 19. I didn’t die of chickenpox, infection, or the flu when I was a child, as many children did in 1911.

18.  I do laundry by putting a bunch of clothes into a machine, pouring in some liquid, and pressing a few buttons, instead of spending two days with the household staff, soaking it, wringing it out repeatedly, and stirring it around in crazy chemicals with washing bats. It’s like magic.

17. Electricity — in my home! Amazing.

16. In one of my history classes we watched 1900 House, a documentary in which a family of six lived as they would have in 1900 for three months. A memorable take-away? Modern shampoo is a hell of a lot more effective than egg yolk and citrus. “I just smell really, sort of, omlette-y.”

50 Years Ago

15. I did not have to promise to obey my husband when we got married.  In fact, I didn’t even have to get married to get all the legal benefits of a long-term committed relationship.

14. I can wear pants! and shorts! And neither is prohibited by law.

Katharine Hepburn, a pants-blazer and personal heroine

13. I can eat any kind of food I want to, and could probably find somebody from its country of origin to talk to about it. Every day just walking down the street I see a greater degree of diversity than at any other time in history, all in once place, living (relatively) harmoniously together.

12. I can choose whether or not to spawn, with near-certainty that my wishes will be protected by law and the wisdom of modern medicine.

11. A century old saying has it that “horses sweat, men perspire — ladies merely glisten.” But when I go to the gym, I can sweat all I like, and feel healthy doing it. Moreover, certain terrifying Amazonian female athletes step it up a notch by adding a soundtrack.

25 Years Ago

10. I live in the charmingly-labelled “Rainbow Village” area of Toronto, where I can watch men walk down the street holding hands, or carrying impossibly tiny dogs wearing designer hats in large purses.

9. I can find out what’s going on in any part of the world in under 10 seconds, at the click of a button.

8. I feel reasonably secure knowing that many heinous crimes are solved using DNA evidence. Bonus: I can watch any of the fascinating procedural dramas stemming from said advancements in forensic science. Bring it on, Grissom!

7. I can listen to “Tarzan Boy” over and over and over again without having to rewind, ever.

6. It’s exciting that people are taking steps to protect the environment more than at any other time in modern history. Or, at least, they’re aware of how to protect it.

10 Years Ago

5. I can press a button on a machine and be talking to my grandmother, 3500 miles away, in under 10 seconds. For free. (And I feel like God every time I do it. Think about it: your computer is calling someone else’s! This is the kind of thing they dreamed about in SciFi movies 50 years ago.)

4. I can access the Internet everywhere I go. Want to know if the restaurant I’m walking by is any good? I can read reviews. If I’m lost? I can get directions. Wondering if it’s going to rain? I can check the weather. Instantaneously.

3. Buying a home during a recession meant we got an insane deal on our mortgage.

2. I can watch things like this all day if I want to:

1. I have a place to share my latest thoughts, pictures, or links to rambling blog posts with my closest friends, and get feedback from any or all of them, immediately. Communication is more frequent than ever before. I can feel like part of  a community without even having to leave my desk. (Or put on the pants I was so excited about earlier.)

What are you excited about in 2011 that you would add to this list?

New Money and How To Buy Things Anonymously

The more I read, the more I am determined that privacy/anonymity vs. openness/sharing will be the defining dichotomy of our age. The more web sites start to track pieces of information about what we buy and sell, where we browse, and what we like, the greater the number of calls for regulation and privacy protection. The battle lines between privacy and the power of information have been drawn.

But now there is a way to keep spending private, at least. Bitcoin, a digital currency allegedly created by hacker Satoshi Nakamoto, contains complex encryptions that allow its holders to buy and sell anything, anywhere in the world over the Internet, without revealing their real names or having to pay any kind of exchange fees or taxes. (For an interesting and accessible overview of Bitcoins and their implications, see this article in ars technica.) Bitcoin has all the advantages of cash – anonymity – but without the hassle of having to physically transport it anywhere. It also has all the advantages of a “trust-based electronic currency,” such as credit cards, in that it allows instant, ubiquitous transactions, but without the need for an identity attached to them.

Bitcoin has consequently been embraced by Anonymous, an anarchic online community that first came to mass public attention when it disrupted the sites of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and others in response to perceived censoring of WikiLeaks last year. It is disrupting them again with Bitcoin, but this time more indirectly.

Normally, when new currencies appear on the scene, they have a hard time with what is termed “adoption and valuation,” that is, getting people to use them, and determining what they are worth compared with other currencies. New currencies are usually the prerogative of federal governments, or supranational ones (as in the case of the Euro), which automatically gives them a head start because citizens need to pay taxes in the new currency and generally use it to make purchases. Even then, as this history of the Euro points out, there are remarkably complex logistical and emotional hurdles to overcome, from swapping the money found in ATMs to choosing the images and words for the notes that so many people identify with to establishing the value of the new currency against other existing ones.

It is very rare for new currencies to spring up without a national backing, and perhaps Bitcoin has only been able to gain attention and adoption of the market because it is digital, and thus doesn’t have the physical/logistical barriers to overcome. But why are people using it? Just like a new national currency, Bitcoin has appeared and boldly declared that it stands for a new order, in a sense. Its users can now engage in economic activity outside of the sphere of government control, or the control of multinational credit corporations, in total privacy.

As an article on BigThink puts it, “You don’t need a banking or trading account to buy and trade Bitcoins – all you need is a laptop. They’re like bearer bonds combined with the uber-privacy of a Swiss bank account, mixed together with a hacker secret sauce that stores them as 1’s and 0’s on your computer.” Bitcoin represents the complete disengagement of the buyer from the seller, the furthest distance yet discovered from bartering or exchanging one good for another. Purchases now require approval from no-one.

Is this radical new territory, or a return to what currency is intended to be? As a means of exchange, currency technically need not have an identity attached to it. It stands as a measure of commensurability; buyers and sellers can rely on the value of the currency as a standard without having to ascertain the value of goods being exchanged every time they buy or sell. And it was only very recently in the trajectory of human history that currency was created with no direct correlation to an existing good like gold (called fiat currency), but with instead the backing of a national government with whose laws and regulations the buying and selling parties tacitly agree to comply. New virtual currencies like Bitcoin are similar to all modern government currencies in that their value is not intrinsic but imposed by decree (and perceived rarity, and a bunch of other factors). But they lack the oversight of institutions and regulators that comes with a national means of exchange.

Whether Bitcoins will remain as seemingly ominous and valuable as they have recently become is questionable. This week, the Bitcoin plot thickened with an apparent heist in which approximately $500 000 worth of Bitcoins were stolen from one veteran user. The theft pointed to the limits of exchange without third-party oversight, whether in the form of government or a corporation to monitor fraud and persecute offenders. Is the anonymity of exchange worth the risk?

It seems as though this has come down to the same “privacy vs.  security” debate that has dominated public discourse since the rise of the Internet (and, of course, September 11). In all likelihood, some third-party institutions will step in to regulate Bitcoin trading with limited liability and criminal activity investigations, as the above-linked article details. But these would decrease the anonymity of the users of the currency, in some ways negating the whole point. Perhaps the main take-away of Bitcoin is  that anonymity, in today’s world, has its trade-offs too, and can never be an absolute good.

Scandal, Scandal! Lisez Plus Ici…or Not

What is it with the French?

Despite the puritanical Anglo-American attitude toward sex that supposedly stifles our expression of sexual content in North America, the French press is muzzled to a far greater extent than our own. Titillating details of adultery, hypocrisy and intrigue remain untold. As one weekly puts it, “News always stops at the bedroom door.”

There has been a wave of self-examination on the part of the French media in response to the recent scandal involving former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a hotel maid, and a rape charge. In response, Matthew Fraser, formerly editor of the National Post and now an academic in France, wrote a thought-provoking explanation of why the French media clam up just when politicians’ private sins and indiscretions could be selling millions of papers. He describes modern France as a guilt-free land of entitlement where power essentially allows the ruling elites – historically monarchs, but now politicians and top-level bureaucrats – to do whatever they want without fear of it being reported. And even if it is reported, they respond with a Gallic shrug as if to say, “And?”

While I’m not sure I agree that a culturally Catholic country can be devoid of guilt (!), or that French journalists are mostly unconcerned with facts (another argument Fraser makes), I am intrigued by his remarks on privacy. In France, privacy trumps freedom of speech. In Canada, the US, and especially Britain, it is just the opposite. Britain doesn’t even have a formal privacy law; thus, newspapers tend to print first and ask questions (or defend against a libel claim) later. Case in point: my favourite footballer is currently embroiled in an adultery scandal that he (unsuccessfully) attempted to quash before publication with a full court superinjuction. The matter even came up in Parliament.

Going to such lengths to stop the presses seems ridiculous, but on the other hand, once a story is out, and has been seized upon and exaggerated beyond recognition by numerous blogs, tweets, and other retellings, the damage is done – even if the content is inaccurate. Such lengths are standard in France. The French legal system, in order to treat all citizens as equals before the law, grants everyone the same level of privacy. For famous people, this amounts to establishing legal walls which severely limit the stories that can be told by the official press. There are cultural walls too, which results in a lot of open secrets in France that are never officially acknowledged.

The Public Face and the Tipping Point

Do we really need to know all the gory details? Perhaps we Anglo-American types have baser instincts for needing juicy gossip, because I suspect that if the French public were really clamouring for a story, the media would give it to them, particularly in an age when newspapers are going bankrupt on a weekly basis. But it is difficult to argue that salicious tales of seduction by the ruling elites are really essential information for the public at large.

Unless, that is, they reflect poorly on a leader’s judgment or character. Does personal biography matter? So asked the New York Times recently, in an interesting series of short opinion pieces that explored how much we really need to know about our elected officials. Should they be considered differently because they are famous? The general consensus is no. Should they be considered differently because they are powerful? Absolutely. Hypocrisy and corruptibility are certainly unattractive characteristics in figures of authority, and even I will admit to a healthy sense of schadenfreude when an undeserving hero is brought down by an enterprising journalist. The trouble arises when determining what information the public needs to judge a public figure’s accountability. What is the line between a public role and the private person? Are both real? Are both fair game for reporting?

An important duty of the media is to hold public figures to account for their actions. Sometimes they don’t go far enough. Fraser writes that in France:

…there a legal barrier between private and public lives — though when Mitterrand installed his parallel family in a state residence at taxpayers expense, the French media still observed obedient silence.

Then-President Mitterand’s tacit second family may not have been newsworthy, but there is evidently a tipping point, and one that has been reached recently: with the explosion of the DSK scandal in all its gory detail, particularly the charge of rape, a line was crossed and the media floodgates opened. Several prominent French women have since opened up about the sexual harassment they faced from politicians, colleagues, and others. It’s a dialogue that needs to be had, certainly, in order to advance women’s rights in France and break down one more barrier that prevents women from speaking up.

It is the job of the media to advance that debate, and perhaps they can do so most persuasively by bringing in anecdotal evidence of famous persons and their misdeeds. The joy and curse of leadership is the opportunity to set an example for others. Those in the public eye are often leaders, by virtue of their skills, hard work, or simply that others look to them for guidance. As such, they are not mere private citizens, and their actions – all of them – deserve scrutiny. Scandals show that leaders are human too, for better or worse, and knowing about them helps the public evaluate which leaders should stand and which should fall.