Malacanang's announcement was disappointing to those of us preparing online learning systems to salvage the school year. Maybe we can get the President's unequivocal support if we turned our schools into POGO outfits. Chinese gamblers can enjoy betting on our fast-paced, high stakes recitations!
So I had some plans for this year. Plans that are now laughably outdated. Like:
Writing and publishing papers on computational law
Traveling to San Francisco for MCLE on ethics and computational law
Getting a peer-reviewed online law journal off the ground
Going back to Japan for a holiday
Numbers 2 and 4 are definitely cancelled. I don't think I can spend hours in an airtight can breathing circulated air through a mask. So all travel plans are gone.
Numbers 1 and 3 are delayed. To write a paper I need lots of face time with research assistants, the time to chase down citations in a library (not all our resources are online…yet). The new law journal was supposed to have issued its first call for papers last March, but then we were all lurched into the unknown by the plague, so we had to rethink the lineup of articles and pivot to a special issue.
So the most important thing I'm doing right now is trying to get the College’s online learning system up and running. The tech is actually the easy part - we now have a Moodle installation working, and Sir JJ was able to enroll his students into an Oblicon bridging program. The hard part is training teachers and staff. Next to that is trying to port the law school experience, the “grand manner” (whatever that means), online. Is that even possible? So every now and then I’m going to document the experience of setting up my classes online, like a dev diary. Hopefully there are lessons I can cascade to my colleagues.
I'm scared that this is too big for me. I'm scared that my talents are gone. Let me invoke the spirits of those who have tread this path. Of Malcolm. Of Sinco. Of Salonga. Come to me. Come to this black mirror. I call you now.
"As a symbol of authority...that can nevertheless enforce marketplace rules, money diverts mimetic desire and deflects violent struggle by channeling rivalry into contract" - Nigel Dodd, The Social Life of Money (citing Aglietti and Orlean)
So many years ago, when I was a programmer for ABS-CBN News Online, and things were starting to get a bit dicey, my boss (a grizzled old newsman who survived martial law) made me come up with a crazy technical setup where we could keep publishing to the Internet, through a satellite hookup in a van. Or through cellphones. Or through a rotating bank of dialup modems. Or through smoke signals if necessary.
As a programmer I had to ask about the terminal exception. When were we going to stop?
"Until we can't anymore", he said matter-of-fact.
That was just a seat-of-the-pants plan decades ago. Before streaming video. Before social media. When digital news was just a room in a basement. Since then they've had years to build up their online assets - and the government wasn't exactly subtle with its plans. So if you thought these people were just going to roll over and die...If you thought - for one second - that it would be that easy to kill an organization that driven to serve, then you assholes are even bigger idiots than I thought.
My Dear Students,
Yesterday I had a meeting with my colleagues in the faculty, and we tried to interpret the Board of Regent’s directives. There is a lot to unpack, considering that the College of Law was given some leeway in determining how to move forward: The basics, as far as I can understand it from the meeting:
The semester is done - there will be no classes, no exams. However (see number 3) we still need to find a way to complete your education.
No one will fail for a subject taken this semester. You can either pass the course or drop it (so that you can retake it some other time).
There are two timelines available for those who would like to pass the course:
From May 1 to June 16, 2020 - for those graduating students who need to complete course requirements in order to be endorsed for graduation;
Until May 31, 2021 - for non-graduating students who want to pass the course instead of dropping it.
The threshold question for me is whether there are those who need to graduate by June 2020. If there are none, here is my proposal for all of you:
Everyone enrolls in an online class - it will have text/documents for reading, as well as pre-recorded video lectures and diagnostic exams. More details on how to enroll later.
I am arranging it such that other teachers and classes can participate in said online class. This is for easier administration, and to ease the burden of the faculty as well. We will try to come up with minimum common coverage and then split the lectures amongst ourselves, pool exam questions.
However - Even though we have a common repository of materials and activities, each member of the faculty is free to apply his own standards for who passes the course for his class. In my case - all you need to do is enroll in the online class and take the diagnostic exams. I will not fail you or ask you to drop if your scores falls below a certain threshold.
You have until May 31, 2021 to go through the online class, which will be self-directed and self-paced. Just go watch the lectures and take the diagnostic exams, and you will get a non-numerical “PASS” for your grade. I just need the data on where you guys need further help so we can structure programs to prepare you for subsequent subjects and the bar.
A possible variation - Your diagnostic exam results (plus your previous recitation performance) will be factored into a numerical grade (we are still confirming if the leeway granted to the College of Law extends to giving a numeric grade). At any rate, the principle that no one should fail this semester still holds and no one will have a grade lower than 3. Assuming we can choose between numerical grades or PASS/DROP, the class can elect a grading system at anytime.
Assuming we can’t give you numerical grades, and you (or your future school or employer) need some basis for evaluating yourself against others, I can draft upon your request - a letter stating my qualitative evaluation of your performance.
So what do you guys think? Would this be workable for everyone?
That’s everything regarding instructional plans. The other part of our marching orders is to touch base and see how everyone is doing. Is everyone safe and well? Do you have ways to inform your classmates of your status? Anything interesting online?
Hope to hear from all of you soon.
Emerson Banez
My Dear Students,
My apologies for being out of the loop recently. Over the past few days I have been trying to support the rest of the law faculty in transitioning to online learning. Then UP announced that given the gravity of the situation, even online learning has been suspended. I will of course follow the orders arising from the validly delegated authority of my superiors. Given how stark the situation is, even online learning is a privilege - one more function that may require staff to come into the office.
Crises like this one can help peel away what is unimportant and reveal the functional layer - the one that bears the most burden and will likely be the most vulnerable. Many of us will have the luxury of staying at home and studying online. This will not be the case for many of our fellow citizens. Remember the people at the frontlines of this fight. Remember the people who keep the lights on, who guard the peace and cook your food.
For the time being, there will be no classes (on- or off-line), and no graded components of instruction. The goal is to keep every one focused on health and safety. We don’t want you forcing yourselves to go outside to get the connectivity necessary to participate online. It is a rare thing from the faculty…but our marching orders now call for compassion, openness, and special considerations.
I still don't know the University's plan regarding resumption of classes. If you can, I hope you can find ways to study the law. These extraordinary times can provide opportunities to reflect on both the power and fragility of the law: Its ability to embody both the willingness to heal, or the drive to dominate. Over the next few days, when I am able, I will write down my thoughts, as well as some guide questions you can use to reflect on the materials in the syllabus. There will be no feedback mechanism that will affect your grades in any way. There are no grades, no deadlines, no interaction that will give you an advantage over your classmates. Reading the materials, reflecting on the guide questions, will be self-paced, self-directed, and voluntary.
Be careful out there and I hope to see you all again soon. Always assume that we are in the early days, the very early days - of a better nation.
Sincerely,
Emerson Banez
How 4 Chinese Hackers Allegedly Took Down Equifax - I am trying to build and compile scenarios for a data breach simulation exercise. This looks like a good basis for a premise.
Yes, absolutely, it is easy to conceive of a smart contract that would pay you for appreciation on my house. And we could get together and hash out exactly the events that would trigger it and how we'd calculate the appreciation and so forth. But how would we find each other? How would millions of people find each other and hash out these deals? If the deals are going to be standardized and aggregated, how do we know we can trust the standardizers and aggregators? Won't they be subject to securities regulation? Shouldn't they be?
Roundup suit lawyer accused of $200 million extortion plot - A question for my Legal Ethics class - how can you distinguish between a demand letter and blackmail?
Need a loo fast? Book a ‘mobile toilet’ trailer on your smartphone - I’m a big fan of Toto and its washlet autobidets, but this is starting to sound so late capitalism.
Something I should have posted when the new decade started: Memes that defined the 2010’s.
I am afraid that my imagination (and the rest of my mind) will be taken over by Orion’s Arm, a “multi-authored online science fiction world-building project” with hard science (relativity holds, causality holds, FTL travel is impossible) and artificial intelligence.
The Institute for the Ethics and Emerging Technologies would be a good source of thought experiments. Also note - sometimes speculative/exploratory ethics is best carried out through a short story, not an article (what would be your citable sources, anyway?)
Hack the planet: “A Planetary Computer to Avert Environmental Disaster”:
We currently lack the data, compute power and scalability to do so. Only when we have a massive amount of planetary data and compute at a similar scale can we begin to answer one of the most complex questions ever posed—how do we manage the earth's natural resources equitably and sustainably to ensure a prosperous and climate-stable future?
Why didn’t they have Dungeons and Dragons in Ancient Rome?
The holidays and January just flew by, with all its volcanic explosions and its plagues. Just a few updates, more for myself and for coherence:
A new semester is underway and I’m teaching two new subjects - Administrative Law for the J.D.’s and International Finance and Banking Regulations for the LL.M.’s.
I’m helping launch the country’s first online peer-reviewed law journal.
I’m helping organize (once again) an international law conference, by building their conference website (with regisration, call for papers, the works). Hey maybe the articles can feed into the journal?
I poked at some assholes’ bubble of self-affirmation. It felt nice, although I may have come on too strong. There’s no need to hurry. This is a generation-spanning project.
Trying to write several papers at the same time (here we go again):
An overview of the Digital Silk and Road, and how it comes with Chinese network governance embedded in its technology stack.
A summary of Philippine Air and Space Law, organized layer by layer from drone space to air traffic space to outer space (because we have a space policy now)
A reflection piece about electronic research and writing in time for the 10th anniversary of the Vinuya decision
Something about fake news (sorry, coordinated inauthentic behavior) for the IBP journal
Something about the PPSA - I am curious about its notion of traceability (something found locally only in the rules of civil forfeiture), which modifies how we deal with accessions and fixtures.
Still finishing my paper on the Torre de Manila case.
Wired story on dead drops, both the actual and virtual kinds.
Alexa is always listening.
Sovereign gold bonds: ”SGBs are government securities denominated in grams of gold. They are substitutes for holding physical gold.”
Emergent Tool Use from Multi-Agent Interaction: “The self-supervised emergent complexity in this simple environment further suggests that multi-agent co-adaptation may one day produce extremely complex and intelligent behavior.“