29. Who is to tell her? But Viner, instead of ordering the tea-cups, whispered a word or two to Miss Pankridge and then backened Lord Ellingham and the two solicitors to follow him out of the room. He silently led them to his study and closed the door. "'Miss Wickham will be all right for a while under my aunt's care,' he said, with a smile, that had a certain meaning in it which was not lost on Mr. Paul or on Mr. Carlos. But there are matters connected with her which ought not to wait, even for ten minutes, hanging around Miss Pankridge's tea-table. "'Now I have been thrown headlong into this case, and like all the rest of you I am pretty well acquainted with it, and I take it that now, that the murder of Ashton has been solved, the real question is, what is the truth about the young lady who was certainly his ward?' "'That is right,' exclaimed Mr. Paul. Carlos and Lord Ellingham I am sure agree with me.' "'Absolutely, as far as I am concerned,' asserted Mr. Carlos, his Lordship will speak for himself.' "'Lord Ellingham answered Viner's smile with one equally, Frank. I don't know whether I am Lord Ellingham or not,' he said, "'I have had considerable doubt on that point ever since our conference the other day. But I will say this, gentlemen. I had some conversation with Miss Wickham the other day, after we left your office, Mr. Carlos, when she was kind enough to allow me to escort her home.' "'And, well, to be frank, gentlemen, whether she is my cousin or not, I, to me an old-fashioned phrase, desire her better acquaintance, and if she is my cousin, why then, the title is not mine but hers.' The two lawyers exchanged significant glances. "'Admirably spoken, my lord,' said Mr. Paul, "'excellent. It is just what I would have expected of his Lordship,' remarked Mr. Carlos. I have known his Lordship since he was first preached. But I believe Mr. Viner has something to say.' "'Yes, this,' answered Viner. Drilford found on Cortellion the papers which are missing from those which Ashton had evidently kept together, with a view to proving his words right to the title and the states. He is a sharp fellow, Drilford, and he told me just now, that he had glanced over those papers since Cortellion's arrest. And he, well, I only just stopped him from letting out to Miss Wickham, who, if the papers and the deduction to be drawn from them are correct, she really is. I am right in supposing,' he continued, suddenly interrupting himself, that the Ellingham title runs in the female as in the male line. "'Quite right, Mr. Viner,' said Mr. Carlos. "'Quite right, it does. I believe I mentioned the other day that there has already been one countess of Ellingham in her own right. The male line came to an end at one period. The daughter of the last male-holder succeeded, and the man whom she married took the family name of Cave Grey, and their eldest son, of course, succeeded on the death of his mother. "'Quite right, sir.' "'Then,' suggested Viner, don't you think it would be advisable rather than that Lord Ellingham should be kept in suspense, that we should go around to the police station and inspect the documents. I don't know whether Drilford will give them up until his prisoners have been brought before the magistrate, but he said he would give them to the proper persons eventually, and in any case he will show them to you three gentlemen.' "'Good,' said Mr. Paul. "'Let us go at once. It is only a few minutes' walk.' "'And in the meantime,' suggested Mr. Carlos, Miss Wickham might be asked, to remain here, under the wing of the excellent Miss Pankridge?' Viner laughingly remarked that he had no doubt whatever that Miss Pankridge would willingly assume this position of trust and leading his callers into the hall, left them for a moment while he returned to the drawing-room. He was smiling when he returned. "'I think Miss Wickham will be safe for some time,' he said. Horrified as she is at the conduct of the wicked Mrs. Killenhall, she is sufficiently feminine to be taking a vast interest in my aunt's account of how she brought off her wonderful stroke of genius this afternoon. So shall we go round?' Viner found a loan in his office, showed no surprise when Viner brought in and introduced his companions. He already knew the two lawyers and exchanged comprehending words with them, but he looked at Lord Ellingham with the same interest which Viner had seen in him when Miss Wickham was present. "'Of course you may see the whole lot, gentlemen,' he said as he unlocked the drawer. "'I don't want you to take these things away now, though, because we'd like to produce them when these people are brought up to-morrow morning. But after they've been shown I'll hand them over, and in the meantime you can rely on it that they'll be taken care of, rather. Well now, here's the missing ring.' "'Hide, you know, admitted to picking up one. This is the other, without doubt. And there's the fifty thousand pound diamond.  What he wanted was these papers. He evidently gave Cave, or Star, his accomplice certain of the papers to play the game with. But the really important ones he kept in his own pocket were I found them. There you are, gentlemen.' He handed over a stout, linen-lined, full-scap envelope to Mr. Carlos, and that gentleman, whose fingers trembled a little in spite of his determined attempt to preserve his professional coolness, drew certain papers from it, and laying them on a desk close by, beckoned the other men to his elbows, and began to examine them. For several minutes the four pairs of eyes ran over the various documents Mr. Carlos's finger pointing to one particular passage or another during their hasty perusal, and he and Mr. Paul nodding ascent as they exchanged glances and muttered remarks. "'Not a doubt of it!' exclaimed Mr. Carlos suddenly. "'Not one doubt! Observe the extraordinary care which is the blessing Lord Margaret Stoke took to safeguard his own interests and those of his daughter, in case he ever wished to revive his claims. Here, for instance, is his marriage certificate. You see, he took good care to be married in his own real proper legal name. Here again is the birth certificate of his daughter. You see how she is described, Avis, Wickham, Cave, Gray, Daughter of, etc., etc., and here is his death certificate. That, too, is all in order. You see, all these are duly attested copies. We could, of course, insist on having them verified over there, but I have no doubt about their genuineness. What do you say, Paul?" "'I should say there is no doubt whatever,' answered Mr. Paul readily. But now this memorandum evidently written by Ashton himself in London soon after he got here?' Mr. Carlos ran his eye over the documents which Mr. Paul indicated.  You see that Cortellion's name is mentioned in it. What's he say? The only man besides myself who is in full possession of the facts. God, that'll hang this scoundrel. Yes, here it is. The full history of the case very lucidly summarized. He must have been a very good businessman, this unfortunate Ashton, poor fellow. But what's this he's put at the end, as a sort of note? Since arriving in England and making inquiries in London and about Marketsdoke and Ellingham, as to the character and abilities of the young man who is the present holder of the title and estates, which are by right my wards, I have had considerable doubt as to whether or not I should exercise the discretion extended to me by her father. Having nobody of my own I have left her all my fortune, which is a handsome one, and she will be a rich woman. The young man seems to be an estimable and promising young fellow, and I am much exercised in mind as to whether it might not be best if Cortellion and I kept the secret to ourselves until our deaths. Mr. Carlos read this passage aloud and then smote the desk heavily with his hand. There's a secret of the murder, he exclaimed. You see, gentlemen, Ashton, one holder of the secret was honest. The other, Cortellion, was a rogue. Ashton wanted nothing for himself. Cortellion wanted to profit. Cortellion saw that by killing Ashton he alone would have the secret. He evidently got two accomplices who were necessary to him, and he meant by suppressing certain facts and enlarging on others to palm off an impostor. Who, mark this, could be squared by one hundred thousand pounds. Oh, a bad fellow. Keep him tight, Mr. Inspector, keep him tight. You needn't bother yourself, Mr. Carlos, answered Drillford laconically. We'll see to that. Mr. Carlos again cast an eye on the passage he had just read, and then touching Lord Ellingham's arm, drew his attention to it again, whispering something in his ear at which the young man's cheek reddened. Then he gathered up the papers, carefully replaced them in their linen-lined envelope, and handed them to Drillford. Much obliged to you, he said. Now, at what time are these miscreants to be put in the dock tomorrow? Ten sharp? Then he declared with a shrewd glance, I shall be there, and in all my experience I shall never have set eyes on a worse scoundrel than the chief one of them. Now, gentlemen, shall we go? Outside, Mr. Carlos took Lord Ellingham's arm. You know what this really means to you, he said. Lord Ellingham laughed. Of course, he answered. Remember? continued Mr. Carlos with a knowing glance at Mr. Paul. You needn't give in without a struggle. You can make a big fight. You're in possession. It would take a long time to turn you out. You can have litigation as much as ever you wish. But I don't think there's a least doubt that the young woman we're going back to is your cousin, and therefore Countess of Ellingham. Neither do I, said his client with a smile, nor I think does Mr. Paul. Not a doubt of it, affirmed Mr. Paul. Very well, said Mr. Carlos, and pulled his companions to a halt. Then the question now is, who is to tell her? The two lawyers and Viner looked from one another to Lord Ellingham. But Lord Ellingham was already eager and responsive. Gentlemen, he said quickly, I claim that right. If I am to abdicate in favor of another, let me have at any rate the privilege of first greeting the new sovereign. Besides, as I have already said to you, Mr. Carlos interrupted him by pointing toward Viner's house, of which they were now in sight. I daresay our friend Viner, who has, as he says, been strangely mixed up in this strange affair, can manage matters, he said, dryly. And, as things are, nothing could be better. Viner took his companions back into his library, and opening a door showed Lord Ellingham a small study which lay beyond. I'll bring Miss Wickham to you at once, he said. Then with a glance, the two lawyers, which went round again to Lord Ellingham, he added quietly, When you have told her, you let us know what she says. I, I, muttered Mr. Paul, good, we must know that. Viner went away to the drawing-room and presently brought Miss Wickham back with him. She looked from one solicitor to the other with something of a smile. More mystery, she asked. Mr. Carlos, with a cordly bow, took the girl's hand. My dear young lady, he said, There is this time a mystery to be explained, and allow me to hand you into this room. There is a young gentleman in here who will explain it, all of it a thousand times better than we old foggies possibly could. He closed the door on her and turned to Mr. Paul. I'll trouble you for a pinch of that old snuff of yours, Paul, he said. Um, dear me, what extraordinary moments we do pass through. Viner, my dear fellow, you're a book collector, I know. To pass the time, show me some of your treasures. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes went by while Viner showed some of his most treasured possessions in the way of print and binding to the two old lawyers. They were both past masters in the art of make-believe, and they contrived to show great interest in what was exhibited to them. But Viner knew very well that when Mr. Paul was expatiating on the merits of an El Severe or Mr. Carlos on the beauties of a Grollier, they were really wandering with the two young people in the next room so strangely thrown together were saying to each other. And then as he was about to unlock a cabinet and bring out a collection of autograph letters, the door of the inner room was opened, and the two appeared on the threshold, one looking extremely confident, and the other full of blushes and surprise, and they were holding each other's hands. Gentlemen are very good friends, said Lord Ellingham. It is only right that we should take you into our confidence at once. There will be no litigation, Mr. Carlos, no difficulties, Mr. Paul. I absolutely insist on resigning what is not mine to my cousin, the Countess of Ellingham, and not in any return, gentlemen. She has promised to give me something which I shall prize far more than any title or any estate you understand. And now, if Mr. Viner will excuse me, there are just a few more things we have to say to each other, and then he drew the girl back into the room and closed the door, and the three men, once more left to themselves, solemnly shook hands with each other, heaving sighs of infinite delight and gratification. End of Chapter 29, Who Is to Tell Her? End of The Middle of Things by J. S. Fletcher


Hi, I'm John Follito, President of Linux Australia. The following presentation was given at Linux ConfU 2011 as the Friday morning keenight. The presentation contained material which was in violation of our policies and which was upsetting to some viewers.  As was done at the closing of Linux ConfU, I would once again on behalf of the LCA 2011 Organising Committee and Linux Australia like to offer my apologies that the speaker did not adhere to the conference's policies and reassert that this material should not have been displayed in the context of the conference. A more detailed statement from the Linux Australia Council can be found at the URL below. While this presentation was in breach of our policies and contained material which was not appropriate for presentation of the conference, we feel it is important that we post it online as a record of what took place. Good morning everybody. The first thing I want to do is I want to thank you all very much to be included in any bill that has been. Jeff and Eric is an honor beyond anything I ever thought that I would ever get in this lifetime. So thank you all very much. And I want to apologize for not being able to be with you the entire week. I do a lot of talks. I get paid fairly well for a lot of them. It's the ones that I don't get paid for at all that I end up working the hardest on. This is one of those. This is my gift for me to you because when I don't get paid for it, I get to tell you what I really think. So let's start off with two announcements. The first is every square inch of this talk is creative commons licensed. You may use it, any of the materials in it in any way you see fit. The second is that this talk is rated PG-13. If there are children in the room, they should leave now. There are disturbing images and there will be profane language. All right, let's get started. Now, in just a few days time, it's going to be 32 years to the day, which is a bit more than a billion seconds since I actually formally learned to code. I was very lucky to go to a high school that had its own PDP 1145. And I was very lucky that in 1979, it decided to offer a computer science course with some of the VT-52s they had and a deck writer. So my first OS was RISDIS and my first programming language was basic. Now, about 100 million seconds, three years before that, what had happened was one of my friends invited me to go spend a Saturday morning over with his dad at his dad's data center. Okay, I went over there. He sat me down at a deck writer and he typed this. It was all over. All right, the damage had been done because from that day, all I ever wanted to do was play with computers and pretty much I have been able to keep to that. The only time I didn't play with computers was when I was at MIT. MIT. I began work as a software engineer, so I got to play and I got paid for playing. And so in the years that have followed, I've written code for basically every major microprocessor family except the 6502, weirdly enough, all of the common microcontrollers in every OS from CPM to Android Linux. I even wrote a batch-executed RPG2 program, which was run on an IBM 370 mainframe. Now, Christmas 1990, I decided that I was going to sit down and read a science fiction novel that had been pinned by an up-and-coming writer. And that novel, Neuromancer, that changed my life because it gave me a vision that I would pursue for the rest of that decade the idea of a three-dimensional, immersive, visualized internet cyberspace. And so I read that book and basically I dropped everything and I moved to San Francisco, which was the epicenter of all the work that was going on in virtual reality. And I founded a startup that I named OnoSendai after the company in Gibson's novel. And that startup was aimed at designing and marketing an inexpensive, immersive video gaming console that was networked. Now, it was very hard work. It was frequently painful. And I poured my life savings into the project before it went belly up. I can't say that any of the other VR companies spared any better. A few of them still exist, but they're really shadows of their former selves. They sell products and into industrial markets. Each of these companies failed because every one of them, my own among them, coveted the whole price. Each of us had eyes of megalomaniacs. Each of us were going to rule the world. And each of us did lots of inventing and took every scrap of that invention and protected it with copyrights and patents and laws. And I invented a technology that's very similar to seen in the Wiimote, but 14 years earlier. And it's all patented. I don't own that patent because after my company collapsed, the patent actually went through a series of owners until eventually, I don't know, five years later, I find myself in a lawyer's office being deposed because my patent, the one that I didn't actually own, was involved in a dispute over priority and theft of intellectual property and all sorts of other violations. Lovely. Now, with the VR industry pretty much in ruins, I actually sat down and said, let me try this again. I'm going to design my own networked VR protocol. So what I did was I used a parser that had been donated by my friend Tony Parisi. And I was building on this work from this coder over in Switzerland. It was a bloke by the name of Tim Berners-Lee, who had published rings and rings and rings of this objective C code that had been pre-processed into NCC. And all of it implementing the hypertext transport protocol. So I took Berners-Lee code, I folded it into my own, Tony's folded it into my own. And in about 10 days, I prototyped a browser for three-dimensional worlds that was attached to Berners-Lee's brand new worldwide web. And that happened 17 years ago this week, half a billion seconds ago. Now, when I'd gotten my 3D browser up and running, I was faced with a choice. I could try to hold it tight and go, mine, mine, mine! And struggle for attention. Or I could promiscuously show my code with the world.  That decision was easy. And after Dave Raghett christened what I'd done VRML, I published the source code. And a community began to form around that project. And I got some very, very nice help from this 18-year-old sysit minute wired by the name of Brian Bellendorf who said, you know, let's bring Silicon Graphics in on this. So we brought them in and they actually said, excellent, we'll open up our code. And so by the time of the Second International Conference of the World Wide Web, we had a specification with running code in open source and VRML was off and running. Precisely because it was open to all and free to all and available to all. Now in my own life it took about a billion seconds of living before I grok the value of open source. Before I had the penny drop moment when I realized that a resource shared is a resource squared. And I owe everything that came afterward. That's my career as an educator, as an author, on the new inventors to that one insight. And so ever since then I've tried to give away almost everything that I do, whether they're ideas or articles or blog posts or audio, video recordings or slide decks and of course lots and lots and lots of source code. And it seems that the more that I give away the richer I become and that's really not even necessarily financially because there's more metrics to wealth than the cash in your bank account. There's more ways than one to be rich, just as there's more ways than one to be good and there's more ways than one to be evil. And that brings me to my second penny drop moment which I had after I've been coding for just about a billion seconds. Now, sometimes the evil we do, we do to ourselves. And for about a half a billion seconds between the ages of 19 and 39, I smoked tobacco. Until I realized that anyone who smokes tobacco past the age of 40 is either a fool or actually rather poorly informed.  But I am clean. Now, a few years ago, a few years ago, a Harvard researcher by the name of Dr. Nicholas Christakis published some very interesting insights and research about how the behavior of smoking spreads. It's not advertising because advertising for smoking is mostly banned these days. It's because we take cues from our peers. If our friends start smoking, we ourselves are more likely to start smoking. There's a communicative relationship. It's almost an epidemiological relationship. The behavior is being transmitted by mimesis, by imitation. We're the imitating primates. We're so good at imitating one another that we can master language and math in XKCD. We see our friends smoking. We want to smoke. We want to fit in. We want to be cool. That's what it feels like in our minds. But really, what we want to do is just imitate. We see something and we want to do it. This explains jackass. Now, mimesis is not restricted to smoking. Christakis also studied obesity. He saw that it obeyed the same network effects. If you're surrounded by obese people, the chances are greater that you will be obese yourself. And if your peers start slimming down, chances are that you will join them in dieting. So the boundaries of mimesis are quite broad because we can teach soldiers to kill by immersing them in an environment where everyone is learning to kill. We can teach children to read by immersing them in an environment where everyone's learning to read. And we can stuff our face with maccas and watch approvingly as our friends are doing the same. We have learned how to use mimesis to our advantage, but equally it makes us its bitch. Now, recent research published last year has shown something else that's kind of disturbing. Divorce spreads via mimesis. If you divorce, it is more likely that your friends are going to split up. Conversely, if your friends separate, it's more likely that your marriage is going to dissolve. And that makes sense.  It's touching the core of our being. But this is who we are because booting up into homo sapiens sapiens meant the acquisition of a facility for mimesis that's as broadly flexible as our facility for language. They may in fact be two views into the same cognitive process. We can imitate nearly anything, but what we choose to imitate is determined by the network of our peers. And that set of relationships is what we now know as the social graph. And this is why one needs to choose one's friends carefully because they're not just friends. They are epidemiological vectors. They sneeze, you catch a cold. They're the puppet masters. They're pulling your strings. Even if they're blissfully unaware of the power they have over you or the power that you have over them. Now, all of this is interesting. It doesn't really have the shock of the new because our mother has told us to exercise caution when selecting our friends. We all know people who ran with the wrong crowd and had their lives destroyed as a result. I mean, this is common knowledge. This is common sense. But things are different today. Not because of the rules have changed. Those seem to be sort of human eternals, but because we have extended ourselves so completely and so suddenly. We have new digital social networks. They recapitulate the ones between our ears and at least one respect. They become channels for communication. They become the channels through which the messages of mimesis spread. So viral videos, viral behavior in general is an example of this. Now, digital social networks are instantaneous. They're ubiquitous. They can be vastly larger than the 150 or so that's imposed on our endogenous social networks. The functional limit of the human neocortex because just as computers can execute algorithms hundreds of millions of times faster than we can, our digital social networks can inflate to elephantian proportions. They can connect us to thousands of other people. But most of us keep our social graphs a lot smaller than that. The average number of friends on any given Facebook page is around 35. And that's small enough that it resembles your endogenous social network. So the same qualities of mimesis come into play. When your connections start talking about a movie or a song or a TV series, you're more likely to become interested in it. And if this is all happening on Facebook which it normally is these days, there's another member of your social graph. It's there whether you like it or not. Facebook itself. You choose to build your social graph by connecting to others within Facebook. You store your social graph on Facebook's servers. You communicate within Facebook's environment. And all of this has been neatly captured providing an opening for Facebook to do whatever they will with your social graph.  And more actually, because an analysis of your social graph reveals much about you that you would never tell to another human being.  Your social class. Your income level. Everything that you might choose to hide is revealed entirely because you need to reveal it in order to make Facebook work because you do not own it. Because you do not have access to the source code or the databases because it is closed. Your social graph is the most important thing about you that can be represented in bits. With it, I can manipulate you. I can change your tastes, your attitudes, even your politics. We know this is possible. It is probably even easy. But to do this, I need your social graph.  Now, we didn't understand any of this a quarter billion seconds ago when Friendster went live, but it's 2011 now, and we have a pretty good idea of the potency of the social graph. But we find ourselves pathetically addicted to the amplified power of communication provided by Facebook. We want to quit it. We just don't know how. Just as with tobacco, going cold turkey isn't going to be easy. Now, on the 28th of May last year, I killed my Facebook profile. I signed off once and for all. There's a cost because I am missing a lot of the communication that is happening within the closed world of Facebook. But of course, I also breathe a little bit easier knowing that I'm not quite the puppet that I once was. And when someone asks why I quit, an explanation that took around 1,200 words this morning and then they just close the conversation down with, look at my grandmother's on Facebook. I have to be there. That's gonna be our epitaph. Ladies and gentlemen, we are so fucked. We ended up here because we surrendered our most vital personal details to a closed source system. We should have known better. And that's only the half of it. So much has happened in the last eight weeks that we've almost forgotten before all of the disaster and tragedy that has afflicted Queensland.  So on the 29th of November, WikiLeaks in conjunction with several very well-respected newspapers began to release the first of a quarter million cables that were written by various State Department officials throughout the world. The US government immediately announced that these cables were inconsequential. But of course, one has already led to a revolution in Tunisia, which is producing a revolution in Egypt, which is now producing a revolution in Yemen. And we also know that Hillary Clinton and just take a look at those eyes. That Hillary Clinton has requested credit card numbers and DNA samples for all the UN representatives in New York City, presumably so she can raise up a clone army of diplomats intent on identity theft, which is not a good look. So in early December, as the first cables came to light and their contents began ricocheting around media sphere, the US government realized that it had to act quickly to staunch the flow of these leaks. And the government of course had some help. It had a willing Patsy, an individual seduced by the United States projection of power who decided to amount a DDS attack on the WikiLeaks website in the name of freedom or liberty or something. And WikiLeaks went down and it quickly relocated its servers into the Amazon EC2 cloud. And that lasted until US Senator Joseph Lieberman started making some noises and then WikiLeaks was quickly turfed out by EC2 with Amazon claiming violations of terms of service. And then that was followed immediately by another discovery of another violation in fairly short order with WikiLeaks provider, every DNS. And then for the coup de grace, PayPal had a look at their own terms of service and Calhalla, they found that WikiLeaks was in violation and they froze WikiLeaks account which at the time were fairly overflowing with all sorts of contributions. So you deprive them of servers, you deprive them of name service, you deprive them of funds, check me. And of course the powers that be thought that this would dent the forward progress of WikiLeaks. And in fact what it did was cause the number of copies of the website and associated databases to multiply, today there's nearly 2,000 copies of the WikiLeaks web servers. And so like striking at a dandy lion, attacking it only causes the sea to spread to the winds. And although WikiLeaks has resumed the work of releasing its cables, the entire incident has proved one mean, ugly nasty point. The internet is fundamentally not free. Where we thought we breathed the pure air of free speech and free thought, we are finding ourselves severely caged. If we do something that upsets our masters too much, they're bringing the bars down on us, they're leaving us no room at all. That's not liberty. That's slavery. This isn't some hypothetical, this isn't a paranoid fantasy. This is what is happening. And it will happen again and again and again whenever the forces of the state or forces in collusion of the state feel themselves threatened. None of it is secure. None of it belongs to us. None of it is free. And this is why we are so truly and holy fucked. This is why we must stop and rethink everything we are doing. This is why we must consider ourselves the victims of another kind of disaster, another tragedy and must equally and bravely confront another kind of rebuilding. Because if we do not create something new, if we do not restore what is broken, we surrender to the forces of control. I will not surrender. I will not serve. Now, like it or not, we find ourselves at war. It's not a war we asked for. It's not a war we wanted. But the war is upon us. It's the last great gasp of the forces of control as they realize that when they digitized in pursuit of greater efficiency or a profit or extensions of their own power, whatever they once held on to so tightly became so fluid that it is now slipping away from them completely. And that's one enemy. That's the old enemy. That's the ones whom history has already ruled irrelevant. There's another enemy. An enemy who seeks to exteriorize the interior to make privacy difficult and therefore irrelevant. Without privacy, there is no liberty. Without privacy, there is no individuality. Without privacy, there's only the mindless, endless buzzing of a hive mind. That's the new enemy. And although this announces itself with all of the hyperbole of historical inevitability, that is just PR in extending the monopoly power of those forces. We need weapons.  Rather, I'm recommending a layered defensive strategy, one which allows us to carry on with our own business, blithely unwelisted by the forces that might seek to constrain us. And so to further that task, I present to you my design guide for anarchists. Design principle one, distribute everything. The recording industry used the courts to shut down Napster because they could because Napster had a single throat that they could get their legal arms around. They could choke the life out of it. But in a display of natural selection that would have brought a tear to Alfred Russell Wallace's eye, the selection pressure that was applied by the recording industry led directly to the creation of Nutella, which through its inherently distributed architecture became essentially impossible to eradicate and the day of the darkness had begun. Break everything up. Break it all down. When you have the components, make them all independent. Allow them to talk to one another, allow them to search one another, share with one another so that together they will create a whole greater than a simple sum of parts. And then you will never be rid of them because if one piece should be cut down, there will be two others to take their place. Now, this is simply an extension of the essential UNIX idea of simple programs that can be piped together to do useful things, small pieces loosely joined. But these pieces shouldn't live within a single processor, a single processor, or a single computer, or a single subnet. They must live everywhere they can in every possible environment so that they can survive any of the catastrophes of war. Design principle two, transport independence. Now the inundation of Brisbane and its surrounding suburbs brought a sudden death to all of its networks, whether they were wired or mobile or optic. All of these networks are centralized, and for that reason they can be turned off, whether by a natural disaster or at the whim of the powers that be. For those of you who are unaware, the mobile phone networks in Egypt have been going up and down over the last two days. And just as significantly, these networks require the intervention of governments and telcos to boot back up. They had to work hand in hand to bring service back to the worst effect in suburbs. Now, so long as you're in the good graces of a government, this can be remarkably efficient. But if you find yourself allied against a government or if your government is afflicted with corruption, such a simple thing as a dial tone can be nearly impossible to manifest. We have created a centralized communications infrastructure. We have lines that feed into trunks, which go into central offices, which then feed into backbones. And this seems to us as the natural order of things, but it is entirely an echo of the commercial requirements of these networks. In order to bill you, your communications must pass through a point where they can be measured and metered and tariffed. There's another way. Years before the internet came along, we had UUCP and FidoNet to spread news and posts and mail through the far flung and only occasionally connected global network of users. It was slower than we're used to today, but it was no less reliable. Messages would end up forwarding from host to host to host until they reached their intended destination. It all worked pretty well if you had a phone line. It worked great if you had an internet connection or pretty much anything else. And I really think that there were probably some crazy Unix geeks who took their UUCP, printed it out on paper tape, carried it to another host and fed it back in. You know, it's true. A hierarchy is efficient, but the price of that efficiency is incredible vulnerability, whereas a rhizomatic arrangement of nodes within a mesh is slower, but it's nearly invulnerable.  So to abolish these vulnerable and dangerous hierarchies, we must reconsider everything that we think we know about the right way to move bits from point A to point B. Every transport has to be considered from point to point laser beams to wide area mesh networks using unlicensed spectrum to semaphores and smoke signals. Nothing is too slow, it's only too unreliable. If we rely on TCP and HTTP exclusively, we risk everything for the sake of some speed and convenience. But ladies and gentlemen, this is life during wartime. We have to bear this extra burden. Design principle free, secure everything. Now why would any message traverse a public network in plain text? And yet the bulk of our communication occurs in the wide open. That's web servers and web browsers. It's email servers and their clients. It's sensors and the recorders. This is insanity. This is not our job. It is not our job to make things easy to read for ASIO or the NSA or Google or Facebook or anyone else who has some need to know what we're saying and what we're thinking. And so as a baseline, everything we do everywhere must be transmitted with strong encryption until someone perfects a quantum computer that's a pretty good line of defense. But we need a security approach that's much more comprehensive than this. The migration to cloud computing which is driven by ubiquity and convenience and baked into Google's Chrome OS. It deprives us of any ability to secure our own information. When we use Gmail or Flickr or Windows Live or MobileMe, we surrender our security for a little bit of simplicity and this is a false trade-off. These systems are insecure precisely because it benefits those who offer those systems to the public. There is value in all of that data. So everything is exposed, leaving us exposed. If you do not know where it lives, if you do not hold the keys to lock it and release it, if it affects to be more pretty than useful because locks are ugly, turn your back on it and tell the ones you love who do not know what you know that they must do the same.  Design principle four, open everything. Now I don't need to offer any detailed explanation for this last point. It is the reason that we're all here. If you can't examine the source code, how can you trust it? This is an issue beyond maintainability. This is an issue beyond the right to fork. This is an essential element that will prevent paranoia. Transparency is the new objectivity and unless any particular program is completely transparent, it is inherently suspect. Open source has the additional benefit that it can be reused and repurposed. The parts for one defensive weapon can rapidly be adapted into another one. So open source accelerates the responses to new threats, allowing us to stay one step ahead of any of the forces that attempt to close all of this down. And there's a certain irony here because in order to compete effectively with us, those who oppose us will be forced to open their own source to accelerate their own responses to our own responses because on this point we win. Open source improves selection fitness. Now when all four of these design principles are embodied in a work, another design principle emerges, resilience. Something that is distributed and transport-independent and secure and open is very, very difficult to subvert or shut down or block. It will survive all sorts of disasters, including warfare. It will adapt at lightning speed. It makes the most of every possible selection advantage, but of course nothing is perfect. Systems engineered to these principles will be slower than those built purely for efficiency. The more immediacy you need, the less resilience you get. Now sometimes immediacy will overrule other design principles, but those trade-offs need to be very carefully thought out. Is all of this more work? Yes, yes it is. But then building an automobile that won't kill its occupants at speed is a lot more work than slapping four wheels and a gear train on a paper mache box. But we do that work because we don't want our loved ones hurtling toward their deaths every time they climb behind the wheel. Free to make free. Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice. Now, let me take a few minutes and talk you through the design of my own open source project that I'm working on so I can sort of show you how I've tried to embody these design principles in my own work. When I announced that I was going to put Facebook, my contacts on Facebook held what could only be termed an electronic wake. In the middle of my Facebook comment stream, as if I were about to pass away and they would never see me again. Now I kept on pointing them at my posturist blog and they kept on ignoring the links, just telling me how much I'd be missed once I departed. Why don't you just come visit me on posturist, I asked. And one contact answered for a lot and he said, look at Mark, that's too hard because with Facebook I can check on everyone at once. I don't need to go over there for you and over there for someone else and there and there and there. Facebook makes it easy. That's another epitaph. But it precipitated a penny drop moment. The reason that Facebook has such lock-in with its users is because of a network effect. As more people join Facebook, its utility value as a human switch board grows exponentially, Metcalf's Law. It is this access to the social graph that's Facebook's flypaper. It's the reason that it's so sticky and starting to surpass Google as the most visited site on the internet. And the social graph is the key thing. It's what the address book and the roll of decks and the contacts database are morphing into. It forms the foundation for the project that I'm calling Plexus. Plexus is a protocol for the social web. It's plumbing that allows all social web components to communicate from each according to their ability and to each according to their need. Some components of the social web, for instance, Facebook, are very, very poor communicators. They'll talk with them themselves, but they don't talk to the rest of the universe. Other social services, for instance, Twitter, provide every conceivable service to make them really easy to talk to. What Plexus does is it provides a meta API. It's all based around RFC 2822 messaging so that each service can be fed into or fed by an individual social graph. That social graph is personal, portable, and private. You control it. And this social graph, which is the heart of Plexus, is what we might call the Web 2.0 address book. It's not simply a static set of names and addresses and phone numbers and emails. Rather, it's an active set of connections which you can choose to listen to or share with. It's the switchboard. It's the switchboard where the real magic takes place, allowing you to listen or be listened to, allowing you to share or be shared with. And Plexus is agnostic and can talk to any service and any service can talk to it. It's designed to be the wiring that wires everything together so that we never have to worry about going here and there to manage our social graph. And neither are we chained in one place. Plexus gives us as much flexibility as we're required. That's the vision. I have about 1% of that implemented. But just after the new year, I had an insight. I had originally envisioned Plexus as a monolithic set of Python modules. But it became clear that if I did message passing between the components using RFC 2822, I could separate the components. I could create a distributed Plexus, parts of which could run anywhere on a separate process on a separate subnet or anywhere in the world. And furthermore, these messages could be encrypted inside using RSA encryption, creating a strong layer of security. And finally, these messages could be transmitted by any means necessary, whether that was TCPIP or UUCP or smoke signals. And of course, all of it's entirely open. And because it's a protocol, the pieces of Plexus can be coded in any language you like, whether that's Python or Node.js or PHP or Perl or Haskell or Ruby or Java. Shell. Plexus is an agreement to speak the same language about the things we share, what it is. Now, I could go into mind-numbing details on the internals of Plexus, but I trust that those of you in the audience who find Plexus intriguing will find me today and talk to me about it. I am most interested to ask this room and the minds in this room what they know that could help me move the project forward. What pieces already exist that I can repurpose for Plexus? I need your vast knowledge. I need your insights. I need your critiques because Plexus is still coming to life. But a hundred things have to go right for it to be a success with your aid and that can happen. When it does, well, what I want to do is share with you one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite novels called Illuminatis by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. The Chinese Taoist laughs at civilization and goes elsewhere. The Babylonian Taoist sets termites to the foundations. And Plexus is a white ant set to the imposing foundations of Facebook. Facebook and every other service that chooses to take the easy path, walling its users in the better to control them. There's another way. When the network outside the walls has a greater utility value than the network within, the forces of natural selection come into play and those walls quickly tumble. We saw it with AOL. We saw it with MSN. We will see it again with Facebook. We will build the small and loosely coupled components that individually do very little but together add up to something far more useful than anything on offer from any monopolist. We need to see this happen. This is not just a game. A billion seconds ago, Linux didn't exist. The personal computer was an expensive toy and the internet, well, let me tell you a little story. This is my friend, Doan. He is the sysadmin who got HP onto UUCP. This is back in 1984. And he remembers updating his Etsy hosts file weekly by hand and when he printed it, it came to two sheets of green bar and that was all the hosts on the internet. And it's a billion seconds later and we're within a day or two of the apocalypse. Total allocation of the IPV4 number space. Something's going on. Now, I'm not as teleological as Kevin Kelly. I don't believe that there's evidence to support a seventh class of life, a technium, which is striving to come into its own. I don't consider technology as something that is in any way separate from us. Other animals use tools, but we've gone further. We have become synonymous with them. Our social instinct for imitation, our language instinct for communication, our technological instinct for tool using, they all seem to be reaching new heights and each instinct reinforces the others. It's creating a rising series of feedbacks that has only one possible end. The whole system overloads, it overflows all of its buffers and as you might expect, knocks the supervisor out of the box. Now call this a singularity, if you like. I simply refer to it as the next billion seconds. The epicenter of this transition where all three of these streams are colliding sits in the palms of our hand nearly all of the time. The mobile is the most pervasive technology in all of human history. People who do not have electricity or indoor plumbing or literacy or agriculture have mobiles. Something around five and a half billion of the planet, 6.9 billion people have one. It's more than, that's everyone who earns more than $1.50 a day. And here's the thing, countless studies are showing that individuals with mobiles improve their economic fitness, they earn more money.  Anything that improves selection fitness spreads rapidly as humans imitate one another, as humans communicate with one another, as humans take the tool and further it, amplifying its utility and its ability to amplify economic fitness. And so the mobile becomes ever more useful, ever more essential, ever more indispensable. A billion seconds ago, no one owned a mobile and today everyone does. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested to make the mobile more useful and more pervasive and more effective. The engines of capital are reorganizing themselves around it just as they did three billion seconds ago for the automobile and one billion seconds ago for the integrated circuit. But unlike the automobile and the IC, the mobile is quintessentially a social technology. It's a connective fabric for humanity. And the next billion seconds we'll see this fabric become more tangible and more tightly woven as it becomes increasingly inconceivable to separate ourselves even for a millisecond from those that we're choosing to share our lives with. Now you can call this a hive mind if you want. I simply refer to it as the next billion seconds. And it's starting to push beneath our skins in a way that it's already colonized our attention. I don't know that we're literally going to borg ourselves, but the strict boundaries between ourselves and our machines and other people, that's becoming blurry to the point of meaninglessness. Organisms are defined by their boundaries, by what they admit and what they refuse. And in this billion seconds, we're rewriting the definition of homo sapiens sapiens and revocably becoming something else. Do we own that code? Are parts of that new definition closed off from us, fenced in by the ramparts of privilege or power or capital or law? Will we end up with something foreign inside every one of us, a potency unnamed, unobserved and unavoidable? Will we be invaded and infected and controlled? This is the choice that confronts us in the next billion seconds, a choice made even in its abrogation. Freedom is not just an ideal and liberty is not some utopian dream. These must form the baseline for human experience and the next billion seconds or all is lost. We, ourselves, will be lost. We've reached a decision point and our actions today here in this room, they define the future that we will inhabit, the transhumanity that we're emerging into. We've had our play time, it's been good. We've learned a lot and mostly, we've learned how to discern right from wrong. We know what to do, we know what to build up, we know what to tear down.  We have no choice. We are too far down in it to change our ways now. The way down is the way up. Call it a birth if you like. It awaits us in the next billion seconds. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to the session, the given question says the mean and variance of 7 observations are 8, 10, 16 respectively. If 5 observations are 2, 4, 10, 12 and 14, find the remaining 2 observations. So let's start with the solution and the given 5 observations are 2, 4, 10, 12 and 14 and let the remaining 2 observations be x and y. Now we are given that mean of these 7 observations is 8 and mean which is denoted by x bar is given by summation xi, i going from 1 to 7 upon 7, mean of 7 observation is given by this formula where xi 1 to 7 denotes these 7 observations where x 1 is 2, x 2 is 4, x 3 is 10, x 4 is 12, x 5 is 14, x 6 is x and x 7 is y. Now we are given that mean of these observations as 8. So 8 is equal to 2 plus 4 plus 10 plus 12 plus 14 plus x plus y 1 7 which implies 56 is equal to on adding we get 42 plus x plus y or x plus sorry this is plus is equal to 56 minus 42 which is equal to 14. So this implies x plus y is equal to 14. Let this be equation number 1. Also we are given that the variance of these 7 observations is equal to 16 and the formula to calculate the variance of 7 observation is given by summation i goes from 1 to 7 xi minus x bar whole square upon 7. Now let us make a table. So this is the required table in the first column we are writing the values of xi that is x 1, x 2, x 3, x 4, x 5, x 6 and x 7. In the second row we shall find the value of xi minus x bar and here x bar is equal to the mean of the 7 observations which is 8. Now let us find x 1 minus x bar that is 2 minus 8 gives minus 6 and 4 minus 8 gives minus 4, 10 minus 8 gives 2, 12 minus 8 gives 4, 14 minus 8 gives 6, then x minus 8 and y minus 8. Now let us find the squares minus 6 square is 36, minus 4 square is 16, 2 square is 4, 4 square is 16, 6 square is 36 and square of x minus 8 is x square minus 16 x plus 64 and square of y minus 8 is y square minus 16 y plus 64. Now let us find the sum this is equal to x square plus y square minus 16 x minus 16 y plus 236 on adding these 7 we get this value. Now let us substitute the value in the formula of this variance. Variance is given to us as 16. So 16 is equal to summation i going from 1 to 7 xi minus x bar is equal to x square plus y square minus 16 x minus 16 y plus 236 upon 7 or this is equal to 16 into 7 taking 236 on the left hand side. So equal to x square plus y square minus 16 x minus 16 y and on simplifying this 16 into 7 is 112 minus 236 is minus 124 this is equal to x square plus y square minus 16 into x plus y. Now some equation 1 we know that x plus y is equal to 14. So we have minus 124 and on multiplying 16 14 we get 224. So taking it on the right hand left hand side from the right hand side we have x square plus y square. So this implies x square plus y square is equal to 100. Now on adding 2 x y on both the sides we have 100 plus 2 x y on the right hand side. This is the formula of x plus y whole square and on the right hand side we have 100 plus 2 x y. Now x plus y is 14 and 14 square is 196 is equal to 100 plus 2 x y this implies 2 x y is equal to 96. Let us denote this by equation number 2. Now x minus y whole square is given by x square plus y square minus 2 x y and x square plus y square is 100 and minus value of 2 x y is 96 from equation number 2 we get 4. So this implies x minus y is equal to root over 4 and its value is plus minus 2. Let us denote this by equation number 3. And now from equation 1 which is x plus y is equal to 14 this implies y is equal to 14 minus x. So equation 3 can be written as x minus 14 minus x is equal to plus minus 2 or we have 2 x is equal to 14 plus minus 2 or 2 x is equal to 14 minus 2 is 12 and 2 x is equal to 14 plus 2 is 16. So this implies x is equal to 6 or x is equal to 8. Now for x is equal to 6 y is equal to 14 minus x that is 14 minus 6 which is equal to 8 and for x is equal to 8 y is equal to 14 minus 8 and this is equal to 6. So if x is 6 y is 8 and if x is 8 y is 6 so we can say that the remaining 2 observations are this completes the session hope you have understood it take care and have a good day.


It's just, I can't ask for a more gorgeous morning to get started. So as we discussed last time, if you reject Hume's conclusion, you have to reject at least one of the premises. And rejecting a premise, any proposition, commits you to its logical contradictory. Alright, so let's look at the first premise. If the principle of induction can be proven, then either it can be proven using demonstrative reasoning or moral reasoning. And we looked at some examples of this. I mean, this is where the relations of ideas and matters of fact come in, alright? Now moral reasoning doesn't mean reasoning using right and wrong, good and bad. Moral reasoning, he means something like habitual reasoning, how we're used to. And reasoning using matters of fact, yeah, alright, we're really used to it. Moral reasoning also includes the principle of induction. We use it a lot. Demonstrative reasoning uses the relations of ideas. We looked at that before. So if the principle of induction can be proven, then either it's proven through demonstrative reasoning or it's proven through moral reasoning. And these are the only two ways that we know anything according to Hume. Okay. Well, if we reject this premise, then we're saying this. We're saying that the principle of induction can be proven, alright? But it's false that the principle of induction can be proven either with demonstrative reasoning or with moral reasoning. Huh. Well, you know, for Hume, this is, you know, Hume's like, yeah, what else are you going to use, right? The only two that we got. Well, how about we put a thumbtack in this one, right? We'll come back to this one later because this is going to have some strange results. I mean, what this means is if it's proven, it's not proven through simply in virtues of the meanings of the terms or, you know, it's not proven through habitual reasoning, what we're used to or everyday reasoning. Oh, gosh, if it's not going to be one of these two, what's it going to be? Well, it's too gorgeous to wait around any longer. Let's go hit the trail. All right, so next premise. If the principle of induction can be proven using demonstrative reasoning, then there's a contradiction and the denial of the principle of induction. So remember, this is what's involved with demonstrative reasoning. It's true simply, it's using true and virtue relations of ideas, meanings true simply and virtue of the meanings of the terms. If you, you know, all squares have four sides is true simply in virtue of the words all four squares and sides in half, right? So if the principle of induction can be proven using demonstrative reasoning, then there's a contradiction and the denial of the principle of induction. Remember, the principle of induction says the future will resemble the past. All right. Well, if this premise is false, then we are committed to its logical contradictory. Its logical contradictory is the principle of induction can be proven using demonstrative reasoning. And it's false that there's a denial, excuse me, and it's false that there's a contradiction and the denial of the principle of induction. Well, you have to have a contradiction and the denial of the principle of induction in order for it to be proven using demonstrative reasoning. So once this is saying it can be proven using demonstrative reasoning, but it can't be proven using demonstrative reasoning, that's a logical contradiction. So this premise, if we say this premise is false, we are committed to a logical contradiction, which is not good, right? We can't use logical contradictions and reasoning. Next premise. It is false that there is a contradiction and the denial and the principle of induction. So this is what Hume claims. You take the principle of induction, which says the future will resemble the past. You say it's false and you don't have a contradiction. Okay, so if we're going to say, if we're going to deny this premise, we're saying that there is a contradiction in the denial of the principle of induction. Okay, well, hmm, what would that be, right? So what does, so there's a contradiction, right? We'll have to look at the meanings of the terms, all right? Well, what does the future mean? What will happen? What does the past mean? What has already happened? Okay, so if we say that there's a contradiction and the denial of the principle of induction, we say, well, it is false that the future will resemble the past. Now, you know, immediately that sentence sounds odd. I mean, we're really used to the principle of induction, right? So immediately we think, well, gosh, that, you know, there has to be something wrong there and saying it's false that the future will resemble the past. Okay, it might in fact be false, right? But then that's dealing with a matter of fact, not a relation of ideas. If it's a relation of ideas, right, we have to have a contradiction to say, you know, one part says the other part is false. You know, so when we say it's false that all squares have four sides, we're saying that some four-sided figure does not have four sides, right? That's a direct contradiction. But we don't have that when we say it's false that the future will resemble the past. The future just means what's already happened, the past means what has happened. So this one's not going to work. Okay, well, there's a climb. All right, well, this looks like a good place to stop in. Look at the next premise. If the principle of induction can be proven using moral reasoning, then the principle can be proven by observing that it has been effective in the past and inferring that it will be effective in the future. And this conditional reason-wise is this is just the definitional part of moral reasoning, right? We, this is how we habitually reason. It has happened in the past, so it will happen in the future. Okay, so if we deny this premise, we say the principle of induction can be proven using moral reasoning, but it's false that the principle can be proven by observing that it has been effective in the past and inferring it will be effective in the future. Well, this is the problem. This is just a contradiction within itself. To even reason using moral reasoning, it just means you have to observe it's happened in the past and it will happen in the future. So if we deny this premise, what we're saying is the principle can be proven using moral reasoning, but it's false that it can be proven using moral reasoning. Well, that's a direct contradiction. So this one isn't going to work. We can't use logical contradictions and reason. Okay, well, speaking of contradictions, all right, next premise. If the principle can be proven by inferring that the principle has been effective in the past, since the principle is effective in the past, it will be effective in the future, then the proof for the principle of induction uses the principle of induction. And yeah, I mean, that's what's happening. You're saying, well, I've inferred that it has been effective in the past, since it's been effective in the past, it will be effective in the future. That just, the principle of induction says is the future will resemble the past. Yeah, I'm using the principle in order to prove the principle. Okay, so if we're going to deny this premise, what we're saying then is the principle can be proven by observing that it has been effective in the past and inferring it will be effective in the future and it is false that the proof for the principle of induction uses the principle of induction, but it does. This is also a direct contradiction. Saying it has worked in the past, therefore it will work, that just is using the principle. Okay, and by the way, you're going to see a lot of people doing this and say, well, of course the proof works, the principle of induction works. It's been effective in the past and so it will be effective in the future. Okay, I mean, maybe you can do that, but your proof for the principle uses the principle, right? Okay, well, so we can't deny this premise because it results in a logical contradiction. All right, and logical contradictions can't be used in reason. It's not good news. Well, before I go down that rocky trail, maybe this is a good place to stop and look at our next premise. So if the principle of induction can be proven by using the principle, then the principle can be proven by assuming it's true. So the idea behind this premise is that if you use the principle, well, it better be true beforehand. And if it's true beforehand for the proof, well, then you're assuming it's true for the proof. Well, okay, so if the principle can be proven by using the principle, then the principle can be proven by assuming it's true. So if we deny this premise, we're saying the principle of induction can be proven by using the principle of induction, but it's false that the principle can be proven by assuming it's true. Okay, well, this looks like another direct contradiction, right? Because in order for the principle to be used in the proof for the principle, we have to assume that it's true. But then if we say it's false that it could be proven by assuming it's true, well, now we have a contradiction. And contradictions can't be used in reason. So we can't deny this premise. It is gorgeous out here. Well, it's a good thing we reached the end of our hike. The sun's starting to come up. It's going to get pretty warm pretty fast. Now it's the end of our hike, so it's time to look at the last premise. This premise says it is false that you could prove the principle of induction by assuming it's true. And if we deny this premise, we're saying, well, we can. We can prove the principle by assuming it's true. So here's my proof for the principle of induction. It's true. Now we don't have a logical contradiction here, but it's just false, right? We don't prove anything. There is nothing that we prove by assuming it's true. So if there's nothing that we can prove by assuming it's true, well, then we can't prove the principle of induction by assuming it's true. So we haven't had a lot of good options so far looking at Hume's argument and trying to reject a premise. But now remember what I said at the beginning, right? Let's put a thumb tag and reject in that first premise. Do you remember? So the first premise was if the principle of induction can be proven, then either it is proven using demonstrative reasoning or it is proven using more reasoning. And if we deny this premise, we say the principle of induction can be true or it can be proven, but it's false that it's proven using demonstrative reasoning and it's false that it's proven using more reasoning. Okay, well, what's left then? Well, remember, Hume is basically an empiricist, right? More or less, right? Let's let him slide on this whole relations of ideas stuff, but he's basically an empiricist. And what he's saying is you can't prove the principle of induction using empiricism. Is there anybody all semester long that we might have talked about mentioned early on who could say, well, you can't do it, but that doesn't mean that I can't. I can prove the principle of induction. Well, this one person, right? It's gonna, or at least several people anyway. I can prove the principle of induction and I don't have to use empiricism. Well, if you're not using empiricism, guess what you've fallen back to? You have gone back to rationalism. You're gonna prove it in some rationalist way, right? Putonic form of, you know, just the way the mind works. It's something like that, right? I've got some knowledge and I've got it non-empirically and amongst that knowledge is the principle of induction. All right. Now you could take that approach, but now you've gone back to rationalism and you've abandoned empiricism and ordered it together.


Hey everybody, this is Darius Arya for Ancient Rome Live and today we're going to be talking about the mausoleum of Augustus. So let's jump right in and see how this fantastic monument still stands. So the mausoleum of Hadrian is something absolutely magnificent, one of the largest ruins still standing in the city of Rome today. We'll take a look at the structure itself and its legacy. So we'll start with its model, which is going to be the earlier mausoleum in the city, the mausoleum of Augustus. We'll jump over then to look at the location where the mausoleum of Hadrian is located on the Trastevere, the other side of the Tiber River. We'll talk about its scale, we'll talk about its appearance and antiquity. Of course it looks very different today because it becomes a papal fortification. We'll talk about it in terms of how it improved on the original design, the mausoleum of Augustus, which is poorly preserved in comparison. And then we'll talk about the legacy of the mausoleum of Hadrian. What happened in the Gothic Wars in the 6th century where it starts to really get pilfered, trashed, and then how it takes on a new life and a new identity in the papal period and ultimately leaves it for us to enjoy today. One of the most visited sites, I think, of the top five in the city of Rome today. So it really is an impressive structure, it captures the imagination, and let's dive right in. In the distant there we catch a glimpse of the cupola of St. Peter's, making our way along a region that becomes known as Prati, the meadowlands. There's our gigantic flood walls constructed at the end of the 19th century. And of course here we have dominating the landscape and the skyline, the magnificent Castel Sant'Angelo, and we have it joining to the campus marshes through this bridge, which is a reconstruction of the ancient bridge that also served to link the campus marshes area to the other side of the Tiber River trans-Tiberdom. You can see the mausoleum has been converted into a fortification, and what sits on top is a magnificent bronze statue of an angel sheathing his sword, ending a plague that had devastated the city population. The Romans never forgot that divine intervention, and they remember it still today with this statue, atop the remains of the mausoleum of Hadrian. Now what's then the model for the mausoleum of Hadrian? It's the mausoleum of Augustus, it's located in the northern campus marshes about 800 meters away from the mausoleum of Hadrian, and its dimensions will be the basis for the dimensions of the mausoleum of Hadrian, so it's going to have a base of about 90 meters and a height of 45 meters, so that's roughly 300 Roman feet by 150 Roman feet. Keep in mind that the height of the pantheon is 150 Roman feet. So this is something gargantuan and scale, and the models for the mausoleum of Augustus was one of the wonders of the ancient world, the mausoleum of Halakarnassus. Because we don't know exactly what the exterior appearance was exactly, we have a nice description by an Augustan author, Strabo, maybe it was also based upon the large atruscan tumulus tuned with kind of earth dumped on top of it and planted with trees. We don't know, we do know that it was planted with cypress trees in the restoration of the area on the mausoleum. They replanted cypress trees, but was it more stacked like in this fantastical kind of reconstruction, or is it more like a big mound on top? Meet with that as it may, there were many people buried inside, Agrippa, Marcellus, preceding the death of Augustus, there were some of his heirs, Augustus dies, his wife is buried inside, many family members, but famously the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Not Nero, and finally Nerva are going to be buried inside. The Flavian dynasty decides to actually be interred in their in their own family, have their own temple on the on the kernel. So what happened subsequently? Why is it so unimpressive compared to the remains of the mausoleum of Augustus? It was pilfer for materials, it became a fort, it was retrofitted into gardens, even a bullring, because it's kind of hollowed out and the grand height had long since disappeared, even being an opera house in the early 20th century. Finally, the whole area is liberated in parentheses by Mussolini, who then also installs next door the remains of the Arapakis. And so you're getting this whole kind of new center and new area to celebrate the emperor Augustus, with whom Mussolini saw himself heavily associated and affiliated with. The current restoration project that we're now going to show you, they're digging out a big public area for a ramp to give access into the site to make it into a new museum space, possibly as early as 2021. So what we see here then is the mausoleum of Augustus. It's not nearly as tall as the mausoleum of Hadron that we're going to investigate. We can see it's a job site and we can see the glass walls of the Arapakis Museum in the distance. This was taken about four days ago. Okay, what's the original appearance then of the mausoleum of Hadron? It models itself after the mausoleum of Augustus. It has the same north-south orientation. And the dimensions are going to be the same. The drum is 300 Roman feet. The height is at least 45 to 50 meters high. And the main difference then is you're going to have that big large square base at the bottom. And we're told it's more lavishly decorated. So whereas the mausoleum of Augustus was known for being covered with a lot of concrete cores covered and faced with travertine stone and some marble, instead this was entirely achieved in marble. And it's going to be built between 125 and 139. Hadron himself dies in Baia in 138. And so his successor, Antsnais Pius, is going to be completing the project. Let's have a look right here. This is how the mausoleum looks this week. Just beautiful. And we can see the bridge is going to be connecting to the mausoleum. I'm going to say a word about that too. Because the location, location, location is ever important. As opposed to being in the campus marshes where there probably wasn't enough room to build something so large at that point. We have a new location. Let's take a look. Castles and Angles is one of the most visited sites in all of Rome. It is the people palace that sits atop the remains of the once magnificent mausoleum of Hadron itself modeled after the mausoleum of Augustus and connecting to the other side of the Tiber River. There was a bridge, the Ponsilius. This is the modern version. And it follows along the same pathway, connecting then the center of Rome, the campus marshes area to the other side, Trastevite. Okay. So why would you spend all that time and effort then to build a bridge to another side of town, which is really, you know, outside the city center. Land is cheap. The property belonged to the Imperial family already. The Horti of Demetia, probably Demetian's wife or a relative of Nero. And we're told that it was a lavish estate that even Aurelian preferred that as one of his residences, even over the Palatine Hill. So there was a place with lots of land and landscaping, but by and large, unheavily developed. So by building a bridge, you're now making it publicly accessible, very easily to go over to this portion of the area beforehand, really just an area used by the Imperial family. Now it's for everybody to get connected to the new mausoleum in this city, the one that's going to surpass the mausoleum of Augustus, name the bridge after your family name. And it's completed according to this coin by 134. The bridge that we see today, of course, is much later with the angels carrying the attributes of the Passion of Christ, designed by Bernini himself. But it goes right on top of the remains of the original pawns, Elias. And when we look at the coin up above there, it too originally was decorated with statuary. Here is that modern bridge today from the position of someone inside Castel Sanangelo. So it's a magnificent immediate connection. On the other side of the distance, campus marshes, more central. And on the side of the mausoleum, you're in Trastevere, the other side of the Tiber River, as the Romans like to call it. That's the Tiber River that still flows by today. Let's talk about scale and appearance. Again, we talked about some of the dimensions, about 300 Roman feet by 150 Roman feet. There are some chambers inside the square base around the rotunda that were probably just structural. You have an outer fence we're told would decorate with bronze peacocks, symbols of immortality. Two of them were found are now in the Vatican Museums. We're not sure in the end if this was the real appearance or not with trees planted on it in this way or was it much more heavily faced and the upper stories with marble? At the top that we're told there is a quadruple statue, so a four horse chariot. Whereas before in the mausoleum of Augustus, there was one only of statue of Augustus, however big it was. So the scale was gargantuan and everything that we see here was faced with marble and there was tons of statuary according to the ancient sources. So the original appearance based in Italian marble. I'm looking up at the drum right now with the papal castle sitting on top of it, but we can see the core is what? Tuff, blocks of travertine stone and lots and lots of poured concrete, which is filled with lots of aggregate in chips of travertine stone and volcanic stone. But again, the exterior were told originally was faced with marble. There were inscriptions. There were colossal statues. We'll see the remains of some of them in just a moment. And there were also big bronze statue groups. You went into an entrance, which you can see right here at the bottom picture.  And in the back wall there was a niche for a colossal statue, probably about 25 feet high, definitely of Henry himself. Then you went up a radial helicoidal staircase to the central chamber. And what we're going to get to that in just a minute with a little video. Here we are. I wound my way up through a helicoidal, so a kind of spiral that goes up also three dimensionally to the central chamber with the light shafts. Let's take a look at this central location where the urns and the sarcophagi of emperors would have been located. Of course, I'm standing right there on a modern bridge because this whole situation here is going to get modified when it becomes part of a papal fortification and then apartments. But here are some of the wondrous amounts of marble decoration. One of my former students there is standing by a colossal statue, so the scale was large. Absolutely breathtaking. How are they improving then in the construction of the mausoleum of Hadrian when we look at the mausoleum of Augustus? So you've got that large base around the tumulus. You've got a more complex path to the central chamber because obviously you're moving up three dimensionally. You're not just going across as you do simply in the mausoleum of Augustus. You've got a big bronze quadriga statue at the top versus a single statue. And let's face it, in the time of Hadrian, the area is much more open and remains much more open. The area around the mausoleum of Augustus is getting hemmed in by other buildings by the time of Hadrian. So it's just too crowded to fit in another mausoleum, take another area and that area thankfully remains really not built up so that we can appreciate the scale still today of the mausoleum of Hadrian. And finally it has that bridge that joins to it. So it's a much more complex set of structures that's being conceived of in the second century AD, more so than the mausoleum of Augustus, originally surrounded by lots of gardens. Okay, what's the legacy? The Gothic Wars. So first you're getting the mausoleum of Hadrian incorporated into the Aurelian Wall Circuit of the 270s. So it's already being thought of as a place for fortifications and in the sixth century it's being used as a castle, already as a fortification to withstand the Gothic incursion and particularly Procopius's account talks about the soldiers of Belisarius throwing down bronze and marble statuary down at the attackers. So that's why we're finding some of these colossal statues in fragments. Here you see an image of the peacocks that were the sort of bronze statues miraculously preserved, but would have been the sort of thing hurled down at the Goths attacking the forces of Justinians that have been sent to liberate Rome and Italy from the Gothic occupation. The peacocks that we've seen the photo here are copies. The originals are now inside the Vatican museums, but it's neat that we can put together bits and pieces of this fragments of history into an understanding of how magnificent and how beautifully decorated the mausoleum once was. And in the papal period, what happens? Briefly. Yes, we know it as Casa San Angelo. Yes, there was a plague in 590 with which this becomes associated because of the vision of Gregory the Great that the angel Michael, the sword thereby concluding the plague that had been afflicting the population. And that memory was never forgotten because that angel appears over the mausoleum. And with the passing of time, you're even finally going to have this bronze statue, which is actually mid 1700s. So it's, you know, later additions are created over time, but basically it went from a structure that was just so massive that didn't implode, that didn't get fully stripped down except for the marble. So it was used already in the sixth century as a fortification in the Gothic Wars. It's then being taken over by the Pope in particular connected to the Vatican by the Paseto, the bridge that you can see at the bottom left of the photograph of the mausoleum that connects then through the borgo over the ramparts, the castle to the Vatican itself. So already in the 13th century, there's a direct easy pathway to leave from the Vatican all the way over to the castle and the bastions, the ditches, the curtain walls that are all constructed. Again, we see in these photographs, they're going to be built over hundreds and hundreds of years. And in particular, this is a famous painting there of that's added to the papal apartments that are added, the date to the most of the 16th century, possibly attributed to a student of Raphael. These become luxurious apartments. This becomes a home away from home for the Popes. And the famous siege in the 16th century, 1527, when Charles V forces Sac Rome, in comes the Pope, some of the seven, and a thousand other people are there for quite a long time, holed up, secure, fortified, protected. So there's a long history, much longer history of the mausoleum as a reused monument, as a fortification, much longer than it was in use for entombing emperors and family members. In fact, if we think about how long it was used when we get beyond Nerva, the last one emperor buried in the mausoleum of Augustus, then we go to Trajan, buried in his column. And then we conclude here with the start of the new mausoleum of Hadrian, with Hadrian himself. We move forward to the end of the Severn dynasty, basically, and that's it in the in the early 200s. So today, the mausoleum of Hadrian, Castle Sinangelo, one of the greatest and largest and best preserved monuments from ancient Rome. It has an incredible legacy, and of course so much of the engineering and design of the Romans is evident in this structure. It's stripped of its sheathing, its protective layers, it's exposed here with all this famous concrete and tuff blocks, and yet still today it continues to resist. Thank you very much for joining me for today's discussion on the mausoleum of Hadrian and its legacy. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and get our newsletter so you're up to date with all the walks and live seminars we'll be offering as 2020 concludes and we kick off a whole new series and the free online course in 2021. Thanks very much for joining me for Ancient Rome Live.