Gerry-mandering explained. (image credit: Washington Post)

ERIC’S TECH TALK

by Eric W. Austin
Computer Technical Advisor

Elbridge Gerry, second-term governor of Massachusetts, is about to do something that will make his name both legendary and despised in American partisan politics. It’s two months after Christmas, in a cold winter in the year 1812.

Typical of a politician, the next election is forefront in his mind. And Gerry has reason to worry.

Elections in those days were a yearly affair. Between 1800 – 1803 Gerry had lost four elections in a row to Federalist Caleb Strong. He didn’t dare run again until after Strong’s retirement in 1807. Three years later, though, Elbridge Gerry gathered his courage and tried again.

This time he won.

Gerry was a Democratic-Republican, but during his first term the Federalists had control of the Massachusetts legislature, and he gained a reputation for championing moderation and rational discourse.

However, in the next election cycle his party gained control of the Senate and things changed. Gerry became much more partisan, purging many of the Federalist appointees from the previous cycle and enacting so-called “reforms,” increasing the number of judicial appointments, which he then filled with Republican flunkies.

The irony of this is that Gerry had been a prominent figure in the U.S. Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, where he was a vocal advocate of small government and individual liberties. He even angrily quit the Massachusetts’ ratifying convention in 1788 after getting into a shouting match with convention chair, Francis Dana, primarily over the lack of a Bill of Rights. (The first 10 amendments later became the Bill of Rights.)

But none of this is what Elbridge Gerry is remembered for.

That came in the winter of 1812 when he signed into law a bill redrawing voting districts in such a way that it gave electoral advantage to his own Democratic-Republican party.

Political cartoon from the early 1800’s.

The move was highly successful from a political standpoint, but unpopular. In the next election, Gerry’s Democratic-Republican party won all but 11 seats in a State Senate that had – only the year before – been controlled by the Federalists. This, despite losing a majority of the seats in the House by a wide margin, and the governorship as well as: his old Federalist nemesis, Caleb Strong, came out of retirement to defeat him.

According to a legendary account from the period, someone posted a map of the newly-drawn districts on the wall in the offices of the Boston Gazette. One of the editors pointed to the district of Essex and remarked that its odd shape resembled a salamander. Another editor exclaimed, “A salamander? Call it a Gerry-mander!”

Thus the first “Gerry-mander” was born.

Today the process of redrawing district boundaries in such a way as to favor one party over another is referred to as “gerrymandering.”

It is mandated in the Constitution that states be divided into districts of equal population. So, every ten years when a census is taken, states redraw voting districts based on population changes. In many states, the party that controls the state legislature at the time also dictates this. Predictably, gerrymandering is most dominant in these states.

By strategically drawing the district lines to give the ruling party election-advantage, that party can maintain their legislative power even if the majority of the population moves away from them in the following years.

According to a 2014 study conducted by The Washington Post, Republicans are currently responsible for drawing eight out of ten of the most gerrymandered districts in the U.S. This has resulted in the Democrats being under-represented by about 18 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives “relative to their vote share in the 2012 election.”

The most gerrymandered districts in the United States. (image credit: Washington Post)

Maine is one of the few states that has given this decision to an independent, bipartisan commission instead. That commission then sends a proposal for approval to the state legislature. Of course, we have it a bit easier, with only two districts to worry about.

For much of the nation, gerrymandering is still one of the most prevalent and democratically destructive practices in politics today.

It’s also notoriously difficult to eradicate.

The problem is that someone has to decide on the districts. And everyone is biased.

Even in the few cases where legal action has been brought against an instance of partisan gerrymandering, how does one prove that bias in a court of law? The quandary is this: in order to prove a district was drawn with bias intent, one must first provide an example of how the district would look if drawn without bias. But since all districts are drawn by people, there is no such example to use.

Because of this difficulty, in 2004 the Supreme Court ruled that such a determination constitutes an “unanswerable question.”

But that may be about to change.

There is currently a major redistricting case before the Supreme Court. Professor Steve Vladeck, of Texas University’s School of Law, calls it “the biggest and most important election law case in decades.” It involves a gerrymandered district in Wisconsin.

The reason the courts are now taking these cases more seriously is because of recent advances in computer-powered analytics: technology may finally provide that elusive example of an unbiased district.

This week, August 7-11, a team of mathematicians at Tufts University is holding a conference on the “Geometry of Redistricting” to look at this very problem.

A number of mathematical algorithms have already been proposed to remove the human-factor from the process of redistricting.

Brian Olson, a software engineer from Massachusetts, has developed an algorithm which draws districts based on census blocks. His approach aims to make districts as compact as possible while maintaining neighborhood integrity.

The debate is still going on about which factors are most essential to a redistricting algorithm, but eventually one method will become standard and the days of gerrymandering will be over.

Poor Elbridge Gerry. After losing the Massachusetts governorship, he became vice president under James Madison and then died in office, becoming the only signer of the Declaration of Independence to be buried in America’s capital. But he’s mostly remembered for the despised political practice that bears his name. Hopefully, soon even that will be forgotten.

Good riddance Elbridge Gerry, I say. Good riddance, sir!

The difference a computer makes: The top image shows the districts of North Carolina as they are drawn today. The bottom image are districts drawn by an unbiased computer algorithm. Which looks more fair to you? (image credit: Washington Post)

ERIC’S TECH TALK

by Eric Austin
Computer Technical Advisor

Let me take you back a few decades to the 1980s. I was 12 years old and cruising around the neighborhood on my ten-speed mountain bike. On this particular day, I was exploring the garage sales along Lakeview Drive that are so prevalent this time of year.

At one of them, I found an old video game console for 75 cents and eagerly trundled it atop my bike for the trip home. It was one of those all-in-one units with the games built into it, and two controllers, then called “paddles,” with only a simple knob like a control switch for a dimmable light.

The first videogame: Pong.

All the games included were variations on Pong, in which each player controls a short, vertical line on opposite sides of the screen, moved up or down by the control knob on the game paddle. The objective of the game is to “bounce” a little white dot from one side of the screen to the other in order to score points against your opponent.

Nobody looking at a screenshot of this game would mistake it for an actual game of tennis.

Skip forward to the present day. Steam, the largest digital distribution platform on the web, has their Summer Sale and I pick up the game Grand Theft Auto 5 for 20 bucks.

GTA5 is one of the biggest videogame releases in recent years, with over 11 million copies sold within 24-hours of its debut. Basically, it’s a crime story told in a simulated world based on the Southern California city of Los Angeles and the surrounding countryside.

Consider just a few mind-blowing facts about the world of GTA5: The game world encompasses more than 100 square miles! You can fly a plane, ride a motorcycle, or go scuba-diving off the coast of California. If you stop your car in the middle of traffic, drivers around you will beep their horns and flip you the bird until you get moving again. If you make your character act crazy in the game, passers-by will pull out their phones and film you — just like real life!

I’m only 40 (okay forty-two!), but I’ve watched as our ability to simulate real life has gone from Pong, a rudimentary effort to simulate the game of tennis, to Grand Theft Auto 5, an incredibly detailed simulation of an entire city, down to building interiors, wildlife in the countryside, and artificial intelligence-driven people that react to your actions on the fly.

Grand Theft Auto 5: An entire simulated city.

Considering this kind of advancement just in my short life, what kind of worlds will we be able to simulate in another 50 years? If the past is anything to go by, computer simulations of the future will be so real that they will be indistinguishable from actual reality. Already it is difficult to watch a movie today and know which parts of it are real and which are computer generated. Combine this graphics realism with advances in computing power and artificial intelligence and it is not difficult to imagine what videogames of the future might be like.

This kind of thinking has led a number of brilliant minds, as diverse as entrepreneur Elon Musk and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, to ask: Are we already living in a simulated world? Would we be able to tell if we were?

The argument goes something like this:

We can assume that, in the future, it will be possible to simulate reality to the extent that it is impossible to distinguish it from the real thing. Further, it is an obvious assumption that there will be a greater number of simulated worlds than actual worlds. One can then also assume that some of those simulated worlds would be simulations of the past, such as earth in the year 2017. And since there is only one actual Earth 2017, but many possible simulations of Earth 2017, it therefore is more likely we are living in a simulation than not. For example, if there are a billion simulated versions of Earth 2017, but only one actual Earth 2017, the odds that we are living in the real world and not a simulated one would be a billion to one against.

Consider something even weirder. In a video game-simulated world, your computer only renders the part of the virtual world you are currently experiencing. So, when you are looking in a specific direction in the game world, your computer renders the graphics for the part of the world you are seeing, but not for anything that is currently off-screen. It does this to save processing power.

Well, the “real” world eerily works in a very similar way. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, “physical systems generally do not have definite properties prior to being measured” (Wiki, 2017). In other words, quantum particles do not exist in a specific place and time until they are interacted with – something termed in physics as the “(probability) wave function collapse,” in which all possible values (of location, of momentum, etc…) collapse to a single value at the moment of interaction. It is almost as if the universe is a quantum computer which saves processing power by not calculating exact values for reality until it becomes necessary by interaction with an observer. Weird, huh?

Is it possible that we are unwitting inhabitants of an enormous simulation powered by a quantum computer existing sometime in the future?

Are your neighbors simply advanced A.I. personalities designed to give this simulation a veneer of realism? Could we all simply be self-aware A.I. placed into a simulation of earth in the year 2017 and programmed to believe this is not a simulation?

Of course, would I be able to ask these questions if we were?

Do you know someone living in their own simulation of reality? Come share your experience on townline.org or send an email to me at ericwaustin@gmail.com!

ERIC’S TECH TALK

by Eric Austin
Computer Technical Advisor

The land line rang at 5:29 p.m. Suspicious. I picked up the hand-set. “Hello?”

“Hello! Do you have a few minutes to talk this evening?”

It was a vivacious young lady. But something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. “What is this about?” I asked rudely. Vivacious or not, I was a repeat victim of dinner-time telemarketers.

“We’ve just started a new fund-raising campaign for breast cancer research and, um —”

It was the ‘um’ that did it. It didn’t sound natural. It sounded like someone had written ‘um’ into their script in order to trick me into thinking I was speaking to a real person.

“Are you a recording?” I said abruptly, in the middle of her spiel.

The lady’s voice broke off in mid-word. “Yes.” The answer came back immediately.

I hung up the phone with a little chill that traveled up my spine and prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. There is something slightly disturbing about thinking you are speaking to a living, breathing human being only to find out it was a computer instead.

And it got me thinking. Is there any law on the books requiring an Artificial Intelligence to tell you it is an artificial intelligence? After a bit of research, I found an article Time magazine published in 2013 detailing their encounter with a “robot telemarketer” named Samantha West that had refused to admit she wasn’t real.

That was in 2013. There have been major advances since then. Apple just had its World Wide Developers Conference where they announced a new voice technology for their computer assistant Siri. It leverages new advances in machine learning to create a computer-generated voice that is indistinguishable from the real thing. This isn’t a computer awkwardly parsing together pre-recorded words of a real human being. This is a voice generated on the fly by a computer that sounds as natural as yours or mine.

In fact, several companies, including Google, are using machine learning and advanced algorithmic programming to develop technologies that allow them to simulate real voices using as little as 60 seconds of data. In other words, feed in 60 seconds of dialog from George Clooney’s latest movie, and you’ll be able to make ole Georgie say anything else you like.

This means that soon you won’t be buying an audiobook read by the actress Meryl Streep. Instead Ms. Streep will simply license her voice and you’ll be listening to a simulation of Meryl Streep reading the book. And you won’t have famous actors doing voice-overs for the latest animated Pixar flick, rather you’ll be watching a movie with characters voiced by a computer simulating famous actors.

But don’t worry, you probably won’t even know the difference! That’s how good the technology has become. The upside is that actors will be able to lend their voices long after they are dead and buried. The downside is not knowing if that is creepy or cool?

But combine this new voice synthesis technology with recent developments in artificial intelligence and you start to have a combination that sounds ripe for abuse.

Think telemarketers are bad now? What happens when companies no longer need to hire real humans to make the calls?

In fact, it’s likely that you have already had a conversation with an artificial intelligence and not even known it. If you’ve ever gone online to “chat” with technical support, there is a good chance you were speaking with a chatbot and not a real person.

Chatbots are artificial intelligence-driven conversation generators that simulate real human interaction. There are online chatbots designed to be your girlfriend (Julie), your psychiatrist (ELIZA), your doctor (Dr. A.I.), technical support assistants and many other things. Since 1991, there is even an annual award, the Loebner Prize, given out to the best chatbot.

Siri and Google Assistant are both based on research into chatbots. The technology to create an artificial intelligence that can carry on human-like conversations has long been in development, but it’s only recently started to be used in mainstream electronics like Amazon’s Echo or Apple’s just announced Homepod.

Personally, the idea of speaking to a computer doesn’t bother me. But a computer that uses “um” in an effort to make me think it’s human? That’s disconcerting.

Eric W. Austin is a real, live human being. Or is he? To find out, email him at ericwaustin@gmail.com or leave a comment on this article at townline.org.

Click here for a HUGE list of chatbots!

ERIC’S TECH TALK

by Eric Austin
Technical Advisor

So, there’s this thing called Netflix. It used to be you rented DVDs from them. They came in these little red envelopes. Now it’s out with the DVDs and in with the streaming video.

One of the new ways kids have found to stay inside during beautiful summer days in Maine, is with a new activity called “binge-watching.” Essen­tially, binge-watching is the practice of watching multiple episodes of a single TV show in one sitting.

The convenience of video streaming options like Netflix have made it easy to watch episode after episode until you’ve watched a show’s entire season over a single weekend. It’s like the Frito Lays of TV.

In the past, to binge-watch a television show, you had to wait for the season to be available on DVD so you could buy or rent it.

But in recent years, Netflix has cut out the middleman by producing original content themselves, starting with the critically acclaimed “House of Cards” starring Kevin Spacey in 2013. As of 2016, they had over 120 original series or films available.

Netflix must be keenly aware of the addictive attraction of binge-watching as they have, since their first original series, released all episodes of a show simultaneously.

Their latest offering is the 13 episode series, “13 Reasons Why,” based on a bestselling young adult novel by Jay Asher. The series has earned positive reviews from critics and been insanely popular on Netflix, especially with younger, teenage viewers.

It’s an interesting show that deals with some weighty subjects like rape and suicide. The young cast does a stellar job and the acting never feels artificial or contrived.

Perhaps the most contrived aspect of the production is the central plot device. We learn in the first episode that a young teenage girl has committed suicide. The girl’s best friend is delivered a box, which turns out to contain 13 cassette tapes dictated by her before her death — the eponymous 13 reasons why.

Each episode deals with a single cassette tape, which involves a revelation about how one of her fellow classmates has wronged her, leading to her ultimate decision to kill herself.

Much of the time is also spent on the various relationships between the characters and how they each handle their classmate’s death. (I give it a seven on the teen-angst meter.)

Netflix rates the series TV-MA (mature) for some heavy petting, a few shots of naked male derriere, and a fair amount of crude language. More concerning are the emotionally graphic scenes of two rapes (one explicit, one implied), and the depiction of the central suicide in the last episode of the show.

Everything portrayed in this series — bullying, underage drinking, fitting in, and yes even rape and suicide — are issues that a lot of teens encounter in real life or are exposed to on the web. Some reviewers have criticized the central plot device for sending the wrong message to teens — that is, a teenage girl who puts enormous effort into recording messages blaming her classmates for what was ultimately her decision: to end her own life.

While I agree with this sentiment, it’s not a central theme in the story and serves primarily as the literary structure from which the events unfold.

The series does bring up some interesting questions such as, what does it mean to give sexual consent? Are people responsible for their actions when they’re drunk? Is suicide ever the answer?

These are important questions and ones that teens are bound to ask. Parents should create a safe and fertile environment for such discussion.

“13 Reasons Why” is not a perfect TV show, but I enjoyed my time with it and appreciate the opportunity to understand a bit of the many social issues modern teens deal with.

The show has seen such success that Netflix has already announced it will return with season two next year.

Have a comment or an idea for a column? Visit townline.org or email me directly at ericwaustin@gmail.com!

ERIC’S TECH TALK

by Eric Austin
Computer Technical Advisor

This week I’ll talk about two networking related topics that every modern computer user should know about.

You’ve likely heard the term “firewall” thrown around in the dialog of movies or television shows during a computer hacking scene — as in, “They’re breaching the firewall, Jack!”

What exactly are they talking about? Simply put, a firewall is a set of computer programs that work together to monitor and control network connections coming and going on your PC. Typically, this is the Internet traffic that happens as you browse, send emails and watch videos online.

Certain other applications will also transfer data between the Internet and your computer, like games being played online, programs downloading updates, or certain programs that have specific network functions such as FTP programs for updating websites, or P2P (Peer-to-Peer) file-sharing applications for downloading large files.

All these different activities are happening constantly as you use your computer. A firewall program sits and watches this traffic to make sure it’s all legit.

Malicious hackers, or malware your computer could be infected with, might also attempt to communicate across your network and you want to stop that from happening.

A computer without a firewall is like a border crossing without an armed checkpoint.

Fortunately, beginning with XP, Windows comes with a built-in Firewall app included and turned on by default. So, most likely you are already protected!

Apple has also built a firewall into Mac OSX with version 10.6 (Snow Leopard) onwards.

There are a number of 3rd party security suites on the market if you feel you need something more robust, but the firewall protections already built into modern operating systems should be sufficient for most users.

However, you should never turn off your firewall! If you experience problems allowing certain network traffic because of a Windows/Mac firewall, it’s worth learning how to set incoming and outgoing “rules” correctly rather than turning it off completely. Email me if you’re having problems and I can direct you to some web pages that show how to do this.

So, let’s move on to our second topic today: VPNs. “VPN” stands for Virtual Private Network. As the name implies, it refers to a virtual network within another network, and the word “private” should tip you off that security has something to do with it.

The term, Virtual Private Network, in the technical world, can apply to a number of different networking situations, but for us, we will think of it in its most typical usage. That is, a method of obscuring the source of network traffic by funneling that traffic through another “virtual” server.

If that sounds confusing, its because you lack a little background. Stay with me and I’ll fill you in!

Normally, network traffic originates from your home PC, identified by your computer’s IP Address (Internet Protocol #). Whenever you do anything online, you’re sending information tagged with your identity (your IP#) through your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and out to the wider Internet. Everything you do is associated with that IP Address and can be linked directly back to you!

Sometimes this is not what you want.

A VPN service accepts your network communications, and then sends them back out to the Internet using its own IP Address in place of yours. In this way, none of your activities can be linked back to your personal computer. Instead, they would link back no further than your VPN server, which millions of other people also use.

Another reason to use a VPN is to by-pass geographical blocking. Some websites will block access based on the geographical location of the user. If you are trying to access the Japanese version of Hulu, for example, you could connect to a VPN server in Japan and trick Hulu into thinking you are actually Japanese!

Also, in countries that heavily restrict Internet content, like China or Saudi Arabia, VPNs help people to get around these restrictions to communicate with the wider world.

In the movies, when the heroes are tracking the hacker and they show the “link” hopping across a map of the world, this is an example of VPNs in action. Each of the points on the map is a different virtual server the hacker has used to mask his own identity. You’ll only need a single VPN yourself, but experienced hackers layer VPN upon VPN in order to further obscure the real source of the intrusion. (Although it’s never as easy to trace such a person as they make it seem on TV!)

You won’t be doing anything so nefarious, so for our purposes it’s much simpler. To use a personal VPN, all you’ll need is a subscription with an appropriate vendor, who will give you a small software program to run on your computer. This program redirects all your Internet traffic through the vendor’s servers and substitutes your IP Address for theirs. Simple as that!

Choosing a VPN can be difficult because services vary wildly, as do prices which range from $40 a year to $40 a month, depending on several factors, including: number of available servers, allowed simultaneous connections, P2P support, and guaranteed download speeds, among other bells and whistles most people won’t care about.

Personally, I can only recommend a service called Private Internet Access (https://www.privateinternetaccess.com), since it’s the one that I use. It costs $39.95/year and although bare bones, is very reliable and easy to use.

Most importantly, whichever VPN service you choose, you want to make sure they do not log network traffic. By default, servers will log any connections they receive, but since the objective of a VPN is to stay anonymous, recording your connection to it would defeat the purpose! Because of this, most VPN services purge their logs on a regular basis, but it’s worth checking before you sign up.

As they say in those after-school programs, abstinence is the best policy. But if you’re going to be a bad boy (or girl) on the Internet, make sure to use protection: always keep your firewall turned on and install a VPN for those times when you want full anonymity!

Eric W. Austin is a technical and marketing consultant specializing in helping small businesses succeed. When not writing for The Town Line, he exchanges advice for money and can be reached at ericwaustin@gmail.com.