All of the federal government’s efforts to stem the tide in the financial meltdown that began with the subprime mortgage crisis have added hundreds of billions of dollars to our national debt. FRONTLINE reports on how this debt will constrain and challenge the new Obama administration, and on the growing chorus on both sides of the aisle that without fiscal reform, the United States government may face a debt crisis of its own which makes the current financial situation pale in comparison. Through interviews with leading experts and insiders in government finance, the film investigates the causes and potential outcomes of—and possible solutions to—America’s $10 trillion debt.

Tune in Tuesday.

Recently, Niall Ferguson:

This hunt for scapegoats is futile.

From the archive:

When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle.
And this'll help things turn out for the best.

Ten Trillion and Counting | PBS Frontline

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Clay Shirky:

If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?

The answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work.

Ted Nelson:

The trick is to make people think that a certain paradigm is inevitable, and they had better give in.

Ira Glass:

Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

Newssift

Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes. Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data. The system is still in early development, but we invite you to explore our current data and suggest research ideas. This is an open-source project, and we will be releasing all of the code soon.

Clay Shirky:

If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?

The answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work.

Ted Nelson:

The trick is to make people think that a certain paradigm is inevitable, and they had better give in.

Ira Glass:

Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

Media Cloud

Libby Purves:

There is something fundamentally unnerving about being watched.

“But,” splutters government when we jib at this, “it's for your own good! We're protecting you!” The same tone of hurt ministerial outrage will be heard more and more as people come to realise exactly what is involved in the vast new “e-borders” system, currently being set up to track everybody's international travel just because a tiny minority are up to no good.

Have you seen "The Lives of Others"?

From the NYT coverage of a recent TRUSTe survey:

More than half of respondents said government should be “wholly” or “very” responsible for protecting an individual’s online privacy.

E-borders - the new frontier of oppression

Marge: Bart, don't make fun of grad students!

From the archive, Louis Menand:

Getting a Ph.D. today means spending your 20’s in graduate school, plunging into debt, writing a dissertation no one will read – and becoming more narrow and more bitter each step of the way.

Bart Simpson, on Grad Students

Steven Johnson:

We need to be reminded of what life was like before the web.

Instead of starting with the future, I propose that we look to the past.

In the long run, we’re going to look back at many facets of old media and realize that we were living in a desert disguised as a rain forest.

Decius, in a prescient post from 2004:

Ever wanted to know what life was like in the 30s? You will.

Recently:

I thought I was unlucky graduating into the tech bust. I had no idea.

Richard Preston:

The tallest redwoods were regarded as inaccessible towers, shrouded in foliage and almost impossible to climb, since the lowest branches on a redwood can be twenty-five stories above the ground. From the moment he entered redwood space, Steve Sillett began to see things that no one had imagined. The general opinion among biologists at the time -- this was just eight years ago -- was that the redwood canopy was a so-called "redwood desert" that contained not much more than the branches of redwood trees.

Instead, Sillett discovered a lost world above Northern California.

Old Growth And The Future

David Leonhardt:

Sixteen years ago, two economists published a research paper with a delightfully simple title: “Looting.”

“Looting” provides a really useful framework. The paper’s message is that the promise of government bailouts isn’t merely one aspect of the problem. It is the core problem.

With moral hazard, bankers are making real wagers. If those wagers pay off, the government has no role in the transaction. With looting, the government’s involvement is crucial to the whole enterprise.

If we don’t get rid of the incentive to loot, the only question is what form the next round of looting will take.

The human mind has a tremendous ability to rationalize, and the possibility of making millions of dollars invites some hard-core rationalization.

Looting

Another front beckons.

Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told legislators that Mexico was not in control of parts of its territory. The statements put new strain on the United States’ long-conflicted relationship with Mexico. Speaking about Blair’s statements, President Felipe Calderón said he believed there was a new “campaign” against his country.

“I challenge anyone to tell me to what point in national territory they want to go, and I will take them,” Mr. Calderón said in a speech Thursday.

He acknowledged the magnitude of Mexico’s fight and added that its problems were a consequence of Mexico’s location next to “the biggest consumer of drugs in the world and the largest supplier of weapons in the world.”

I Demand Satisfaction!

Clay Shirky:

When reality is labeled unthinkable, it creates a kind of sickness in an industry. Leadership becomes faith-based, while employees who have the temerity to suggest that what seems to be happening is in fact happening are herded into Innovation Departments, where they can be ignored en masse.

If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?

The answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work.

That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.

Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments.

Recently:

I think things are going to get very bad.

From the archive, a pointer to other recent Shirky:

The job of the next decade is mostly going to be taking the raw revolutionary capability that's now apparent and really seeing what we can do with it.

Thinking the Unthinkable

For all the discussion Facebook has prompted, its most profound impact may be to alter, even obliterate, conventional notions of the past, to change the way young people become adults.

As a survivor of the postage-stamp era, college was my big chance to doff the roles in my family and community that I had outgrown, to reinvent myself, to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity. Can you really do that with your 450 closest friends watching, all tweeting to affirm ad nauseam your present self?

The very thing that attracts us oldsters to Facebook — the lure of auld lang syne — will be its undoing.

Decius:

It is our failure to avoid embracing fear and sensationalism that will be our undoing. We're still our own greatest threat.

From the archive:

It's not about fondly looking back so much as looking back in horror.

Also:

It thrives on the buzz of the new, but it also breeds nostalgia, and a state of melancholy remembrance.

Douglas Haddow:

We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us.

The Future of Nostalgia