DMV-Brand Glue

I thought the previous experience with the DMV was the most aggravating experience I’d ever have to endure. I was wrong. Why? Because I got a letter today from the DMV today requesting more information to support my previous car registration application. For the third time. Since January.

When I first arrived in California, I dutifully attempted to register my car at the California DMV. California requires you to register your car within 20 days of arrival – something that is impossible to do given the DMV’s totally inconvenient hours of operations. Nevertheless, Ashley and I trudged into the DMV, armed with our vehicle, proof of vehicle ownership, smog certificate, proof of identity, proof of compliance with US safety standards, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. After filling out the paperwork and letting a DMV employee verify the car’s VIN (vehicle identification number), we got our new California plates and were done. A few days later we got our temporary registration sticker in the mail. Easy, right? A little too easy…

A few weeks later, it started.

We got a letter in the mail from the DMV stating that we had failed to provide proof that the car was compliant with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and US EPA emission regulations. Despite the fact that we had provided them with the requisite letter from Toyota, as instructed. Oh, and we also forgot to provide a smog certificate – except that we had provided it to them in person, as instructed. Oh, and that we needed to provide a Customs form that showed that the car had passed Customs inspection – despite the fact that we drove into California, and had been told by a US Customs officer no such declaration would be necessary.

Fine. We gathered up the paperwork required. I even went out the SFO to get US Customs to provide the required Customs declaration – even though they didn’t know what form was required, why the DMV would require that form, and lost our application for that form. But we got it all together and sent it in.

A few weeks later, we got another letter. This time, the DMV required our VIN to be verified by a peace officer – despite the fact that they already had the VIN in their computer, and that it had been put there by a DMV employee. I took a quick trip to the Mountain View Police Department, interrupted a police officer from doing real work, got the form filled out, and sent the paperwork back to the DMV. Again.

Then today, we got another letter from the DMV. This time, the DMV wants the original application for vehicle registration. The original registration that we handed to the DMV employee, and that got returned to us with our temporary registration sticker? The same.

This is ridiculous. California is struggling to recover from crippling debt, debt that has required a $15 billion bond offering to keep the state afloat. I think I now understand the source of the problem – then again, it’s the same problem everywhere. Extremely Stupid Bureaucracyâ„¢: the glue that holds together the gears of our economy.

Software: The New Law?

There is a theory that the language you speak affects the way you think – that the structure of language itself affects cognition, the basis of civilized society. Computer languages are believed to exert a similar affect on software – the type of solution that programmers can create is ultimately limited by the tools they choose to use to sculpt their digital golems. Hence, it should come as no surprise that software is having a profound effect on society. That’s not to say it’s limiting the form of solutions our society can create through software – if anything, software is breaking through artificial boundaries created by our system of law that should have died a long time ago.

I have been mulling this for a little while, but a recent post by Jeff Jarvis prompted me to consider how quickly software is making government irrelevant. And you too, Big Media (consider this my obligatory blogger slag against the creaking institute of the fourth estate). People are being empowered by software at light speed. It is providing tools that allow them to quickly and easily route around the self-interested, non-functional chunk of brain damage that is our current political and legal system. Software is rewiring our value systems faster, better, and more fairly than what currently exists – and the changes it is wreaking are only accelerating, incorporating each new advance into the next cycle of innovation.

Remember Napster (the original, not the current bastardized incarnation)? No sooner than Napster got sued by the Recording Industry of America than Gnutella sprung up and increased the magnitude of effort required to stop filesharing. The history of filesharing since then reads like a chapter of the Bible – Napster begat Gnutella who begat Limewire who beget…ad nauseum. Meanwhile, the RIAA continues to fumble along and fall further and further behind the innovation curve, suing filesharers, promoting crappy DRM solutions, and backing flawed legislation, oblivious to the fact that new software has rendered their fight not only futile, but also irrelevant. Copyright protection solutions are being cracked literally hours after their release, legal assaults are being thwarted by software that protects users’ identities from legal assault, and a new generation of file-sharing systems is enabling users to slurp down large files and distribute them in a fashion that encourages everyone to contribute their resources to spreading data as fast as possible. Welcome to the new form of democracy.

What’s amazing is the scale of resistance to this change. Look at what’s happening in the burgeoning voice over IP (VOIP) space: legislators are trying to use antiquated legislation, originally designed to ensure rural access to analog phones service, to impose taxes on the emerging technology. Give it up guys – the jig is up, move on and find a new game. I mean, how can you even enforce this tax? Any device with access to bandwidth and a microphone could effectively be transformed into a VOIP solution – what are they going to do, tax them all?

Which brings up a good question: how is government going to enforce just about any of the rules anymore? In a world of software and bits, a world where a person can work from one country but get paid in another, where intellectual “property” is easily transported and duplicated at zero cost, how is it possible for governments to hold onto power? After all, the law is only the law if you can enforce it – something Arnold needs to figure out before signing any more bogus legislation.

If everything in the world is comprised of either bits or atoms, as Nicholas Negroponte pointed out in his book, then the unmanageable nature of bits leads me to the inevitable conclusion that atoms are the sole possible source of government or corporate power. Come to think of it, is this really a change? Historically, the government’s ability to take your land, your stuff, or restrict your movement by encasing you in a prison made of atoms gave it the power it required to tax citizens and to encourage the formation of a civil society. I guess it’s a case of “meet the new world, same as the old world” – at least until we have the technology to bridge between the world of bits and atoms, to construct and reproduce physical objects in a digital fashion. I shudder to think about the social discontinuity that technology will bring.