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Neal Stephenson on Digital Village
Doran writes: "We interviewed Neal Stephenson this Wednesday morning for Digital Village and will be playing Part One of the tape this Saturday and Part Two on April 29th. We discussed his recent talk at CFP2000, his thoughts on Open Source vs. Everything Else, and how the cypherpunks have received latest effort. It starts a little slow (it was 6 a.m. for us, 9 a.m. for him) but once we got going, it was pretty interesting. For those of you not in Southern California, we'll be posting the program in RealAudio by Sunday evening.
"
Does that mean.....
Y M C A! Y M C A!
TOGETHER!
Y M C A! Y M C A!
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
_____________ used the following buzzwords (check all that apply):
[ ] paradigm shift
[x] digital (used in a non-technical context)
[ ] "think outside the box"
[ ] e-commerce
[ ] geek/nerd/hacker (by a non-technical person)
[ ] Other (specify) __________________
Shame on you. To rectify this situation you will:
[ ] Take a 1 day sabbatical from your job
[ ] Take a 1 week sabbatical from your job
[x] Watch a barney and friends telemarathon
[ ] Be locked in a closet with Market Droids.
[ ] Guest star on MTV
And don't do it again. Lastly,
[ ] Good luck
[x] Get help
[ ] Get bent
Sincerely,
Signal 11
Q: Which reminds me. Why do you guys talk about politics so much? Isn't this a show about computers?
A: Digital Village is actually a program about communication and technology. When we started the program, we found there were a number of other computer programs on radio (Gina Smith, etc.) and TV (Computer Chronicles, etc.) that talked about the hardware. And that's good, because people wanted and needed to know more about how a computer worked.
But there weren't any programs on the air that focused on the social and cultural ramifications of computers and the Internet (and the whole telecommunications revolution). We decided that we'd be that program. We agreed to focus on this impact until we ran out of topics. That agreement still stands.
Don't get me wrong. Ric and I enjoy the toys and want to talk about the goodies too. But the core of the show is how these technologies are *fundamentally* changing the way we communicate. I can't overstate that point. Because of this, we'll never in good conscience be able to ignore the politics of a digital society.
I'm glad that this is being discussed on traditional media rather than just on the Internet alone. If enough people listen to that station and if we can put "The Slashdot Show" or something on it, we can get our message about freedom out. I personally haven't listened to the station or the show, though the show looks interesting with or without Neal Stephenson.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
If this continues, we'll have to rename all our habitat to correspond with the new convention into something like the following:
Silicon Valley - Digital Hell
Berkley - Digital Heaven
Xerox - Digital Gods
IBM - Digital Goliath
Microsoft - Digital Terrorists
DEC - ? Analog company ?
Cisco - Digits Commute
AT&T - Digital Washroom
Apple - Digital Fruits
etc
You can't handle the truth.
Personally, if this thing was broadcast by Navajo Code Talkers I'd be happy. Neal Stephenson is an amazing author; one of the true visionaries of sci-fi. Rather than endlessly complain about the format of the talk, just accept it and be happy that we get to listen to him speak. Yeah, Real Player is proprietary and NON-OPEN SOURCED. But you know something...its not that terrible of a player.
I suppose it could've been broadcast in a Windows Media Player format.
Don't let quibbles over the format ruin what sounds like a great interview!
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Neil's a good example of opensource publishing done right.And more to the point the book is ENTIRELY his own content.I'd like to see more authors like him around.
Actually, Bruce Sterling has had an entire book available online for quite sometime. The Hacker Crackdown : Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier. Neil is in noway trail blazing by putting an essay(which, In The Beginning is). Don't get me wrong, I like his work a lot, but he's by no means a trend setter for posting a work online.
No, Unfortunately we won't be able to post the audio until after it airs on the station (they get first use since we recorded it with their equipment). It WILL be posted next weekend, barring another power outage. I did send an update to /. yesterday, hoping it would be received before this story went up. Alas, it was not meant to be. -db
I'm guessing by your use of the first person that you are in some way affiliated with the site where the audio is availible.
Do you have any comments on why it is only availible in realaudio format?
his thoughts on Open Source vs. Everything Else,
Broadcast, of course, with an end-to-end proprietary player whose manufacturer has aggresively attacked anyone attempting to reverse engineer players or servers.
Digital Village's website clarifies it a bit, explaining that:
They'd rather pay for inferior software than get better software for free? (as in beer AND speech)
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Ah... but don't stereotype Stephenson as a c-punk author. I'm currently reading a book of his called _Zodiac_... while science-fictiony, its far closer to what it dubs itself on the cover: an "eco-thriller"... basically, its about an environmentalist who does the usual railing against corporate America. Hmm... on second thought, maybe this is book is perfect for the new "rail against the Man" crowd (you open-source types know who you are!)... replace Environmentalist with Linux-geek, and Big Chemical Company with Micro$oft, and voila, you have an honest-to-god current events thriller! I think had Stephenson written this book in the late 90s, as opposed to the late 80s, this is exactly how it wouldve turned out. Well, my two cents on one of my favorite authors.
While you're right about Gibson (the man admits to never having seen a computer before writing Neuromancer), this is completely inaccurate regarding Stephenson. The man is clearly literate in a couple of programming languages and systems, and admits to using Emacs as his editor of choice for writing English text.
Sorry, I just don't see that. Now, I haven't read every Stephenson novel there is, but in both Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon the "hackers" are people who build things. YT's question to Hiro ("if you're such a great hacker, how come you're delivering pizza?") is a valid one, and part of the answer is that Hiro is not a criminal. Randy Waterhouse and the Epiphyte(2) "hackers" are also engaged in creation, not destruction. The only character who is clearly a "cracker" is Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, and since he's a WWII codebreaker, he's wearing a white hat anyway.
You mean "In the Beginning was the Command Line?" Funny, I thought it was spot-on. But I guess I must not have "lived through those times" -- I've only been programming for 20 years, and using Unix for 13 years.
I find that Stephenson's novels have enough correct technical details to give me the feeling of "yeah, he's either been there or knows somebody who has." Now, if you don't like his prose style, or his philosophy about operating systems and editors, then fine. But he's not a Gibson, making stuff up out of whole cloth.