Slashdot Mirror
Halfway Through The Revolution
However nobly intended, revolutions begin when masses of people share particular, idealistic interests, Arendt wrote. And they tend to get derailed when private interests invade the public domain, diluting and corrupting the agenda of the people seeking change, creating innovations, or making the revolutions.
That has been the fate of every great revolution in modern history, from the American to the French to the Russian. They spring from virtuous ideals, but it's difficult to keep citizens involved and motivated. When the revolutions fall out of the hands of their leaders and followers, and into the hands of elites and special interests, the participants lose heart and interest. The revolutions lose steam.
It's hard to miss the parallels. Unlike the others, the Net is an accidental revolution, by Arendt's or almost any other standard. Both those elements of revolution -- being free, creating something new -- are hallmarks of the Net, and of the cultures which conceived and built it. And recently, there's been a poignant sense of hesitation and melancholy, of a Lost Treasure.
People have been drawn to computing and to the Net Revolution for all sorts of reasons: technical, social, financial, high-minded and mundane. Perhaps what is most revolutionary about this revolution is the effort of millions with shared ideas to establish a place of freedom in which people could take part of their lives into their own hands, a place beyond conventional media and politics.
That struggle and the sense of being free remains very much alive online, despite the furious efforts of many intellectuals, lawyers, business interests, politicians and many teachers and parents to curb it. And the sense of creating something new also persists, especially in distinct precincts like Open Source and P2P.
That these impulses have survived so long represents something of a miracle. The Net Revolution has been under siege -- from corporations, adolescent flamers, lawyers, phobic moralists and politicians -- almost from the moment of its inception.
The United States, though created in revolutionary furor, has become one of the toughest environments in the world to maintain one. Those private interests Arendt wrote have nearly overwhelmed the Net revolution. Profoundly significant social issues -- privacy, intellectual property, the distribution of culture and entertainment -- are barely addressed, let alone resolved. Utopian fantasies about supercomputers, AI, gene mapping and nano-technologies abound, but few have yet delivered to make the world different or better.
Despite its challenges, the Net and the computer revolution have mushroomed. But no revolution goes on forever, and this one is definitely at a turning point. A year ago, the popular media was stampeding online, herading the death of books and print. Now they're shrieking about the death of content and profit on the Web. Both of these ideas are false. There have never been more people and information online, or more creative and interesting works underway.
The viscerally anti-hierarchical Net is a leaderless revolution, without any central ideology, philosophy or set of goals -- a significant difference from past revolutions. It isn't from a lack of visionaries -- Postel, Licklider, Gates, Stallman, Pike, Kernighan, Berners-Lee, and many others to name are nothing if not visionaries. But they aren't leaders; this revolution doesn't really want any.
This one was concocted by a disparate collection of Defense Department war planners, hackers and cyber-hippies. The Web -- created by a new programming class -- broadened the impact of the Net and turned it into something well beyond a communications network -- a truly radical force for hyper-linked textual, cultural and other kinds of change.
Armies of techno-savvy kids with broadband joined the movement and pushed it further. Now, it's under relentless assault from the private interests Arendt writes about, its future uncertain. It faces rampant corporate encroachment and government regulation. Some of this is necessary, some fearfully wrong-headed. Instead of encouraging a common movement or agenda, the Net is increasingly Balkanized by an explosion in individualistic sites, weblogs, P2P systems, filtering and moderation programs.
So far, we've seen a mostly informational and technological revolution with some political overtones, rather than an explicitly political or social revolution. By and large, the Net has revolutionalized personal communications and the movement of data more than it has altered people's consciousness or advanced any particular set of goals and ideals. That makes it an especially tough revolution for the off-line world to grasp, with no Lenin, Jefferson or Robespierre to interview or study. Open Source may be the biggest single revolutionary idea to come out of the Net Revolution, but it isn't clear where that movement is heading. (More about that later.)
This fluid, leaderless revolutionary movement has driven Congress, academics, journalists and parents nearly mad. They are rattled by the hordes of the digital unwashed; they are particularly rattled by the revolution's unpredictability and enthusiasm. But do they have to worry about that much longer? Is the revolution stalled?
Next: Backlash -- The Internet Predicament
Even revolutions need to rest and catch their breath. Also, just because something has hit a plateau doesn't mean it's the beginning of the end. Plateau's can do one of three things: go down, stay put, or go up, and there can be local dips and rises. There is no way we can really tell what is happening, or will happen, in this regard until after it has happened.
While an interesting article, I don't see it as a call for alarm. I see it more as a wake up call saying that if we want this revolution to succeed, we must not give up.
Hmm, I wouldn't be suprised if we're almost there. The stages of `them' ignoring and laughing at `us' are long gone. `We're well and truely into the `fighting us' stage.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
We have plenty of people here with lots of good (and not so good) ideas about where the Internet should be headed. No matter what you idea is, however, if no one is ready to take the risk from your venture then you are headed nowhere. To a certain extent, VALinux has taken a lot of the risk for many Linux oriented websites and backed them with a physical buisness model - selling hardware. Many websites, for example, are personally owned and operated - leaving the webmaster wide open to all sorts of troubles. Even people who have released code under the GPL are now (in some places under some laws) facing the possiblity of being held liable for their software.
; 2b=b;2=1
We need to be able to do things without fearing the legal reprocussions of those actions. While we can't take this too far, certainly we should be free to experiment with new ideas in technology and software. We need lots of places like Slashdot and Fuckedcompany where people are free to voice their opinions without getting reamed by the courts.
We also need people to wake up from the pipe dream that the Internet is some magical place where anything is possible. Certainly there are a lot of possibilities, but not everything can be done. That engineers' addage about being able to do things but not knowing when not to do it comes into play... or is that a scientist thing. Whatever. Banner ads, for instance, are one thing that is not working. We need to go back and re-think them to figure out a better way of generating revenue for websites.
Bah. I've forgotten what I was going to say. Maybe I said it and, if I did, thats great... what are you looking at? Scram sam.
---
a=b;a^2=ab;a^2-b^2=ab-b^2;(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b);a+b=b
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
A desire for freedom and the urge to create are not sufficient motivations for a revolution. They are sufficient motivations for escapism, and escapism is rampant these days. From on-line games to massively multimedia hookups, from consensus-building exercises like AmIHotOrNot to discussion boards like Slashdot, the masses are using the web for escapism everyday. People are escaping troubles in the real world by spouting off about them on-line. The internet has become a safety valve, not a catalyst for revolution.
No, for revolution you need two other things. One is opportunity -- a glimmer of hope that your rants and your violence will actually be a means to your desired end. But no opportunities have presented themselves, as there is yet no way to spread one's on-line opinions or actions into the real world. The other ingredient is hatred -- hatred enough to want to destroy those who have oppressed you. Face it; the public are not downtrodden enough to hate or fear anyone. They're gleefully accepting their ever-shrinking set of rights and freedoms, as long as they are still allowed an escapist relief.
Things are going to have to get a lot worse before people are motivated and able to revolt and make things better.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Moderators: please moderate the parent of this posting down because the real, true, authentic cry for freedom is "ALL hail Linux!"
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Utopian fantasies about supercomputers, AI, gene mapping and nano-technologies abound, but few have yet delivered to make the world different or better.
I agree with the assessment, but the problem isn't with the corporations. Many of us are into technology for technology's sake. Look at what gets posted on slashdot. We admire the environmental acheivements of an electric car on the same level as the technical acheivements (or at least coolness) of battlebots battlebots or whatever cool toys happen to be en vogue.
I suggest reevaluating the priorities, in that some advancements are better than others. A new chip might be cool and might have the potential to do good, but it is inferior to the technology that actually does good.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
Or you could become a Marxist, and hope that Capitalism contains the own seeds of it's destructions, to which I reply McDonalds and HDTV, I mean, bread and circuses for all the sheeple.
;-)
/."
Nice one.
Truly though I think Open Source was our best chance for bringing down the beast. But even that card could not trump the widespread ignorance and apathy that keep Capitalism alive and thriving. As long as programmers sell their skills for food (or toys, or perks, ad infinitum) then someone will use them for kamikaze coding. I'm no saint, either - I just finished designing a site that sells, among other things, internet filtering software. Yes I feel dirty, but you know that crap doesn't work anyway, right?
I guess what I'm trying to say is that as long as the Internet is packaged up by AOL and M$ for mass consumption then those of us who know better will always be the minority. "So easy to use, no wonder it's #1." Can Linux say that? Sure it's free (as in beer?) but that doesn't make a damn bit of difference when you're talking about a million soccer moms, baby.
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
The revolution is over, I'm depressed.
--Mike--
Internet Revolution?
.com gold rush. This is not a decentralized anti-heirarchical insurgency. You're being duped if you think your broadband AT&T connection is going to topple the current regime."
What is this, a Wired magazine think piece from 1994?
Repeat after me... "The Internet was coopted by the megacorps with the
love,
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Meaning number two is: "The overthrow of one government and its replacement with another."
Katz seems to be merging meanings two and three. In his mind there is perhaps this change in the situation that will of its own accord overthrow the traditional structures of government throughout the world.
At least, it seems that way at first read. But somehow when I read Katz's posts, I always get the feeling that he's talking about some kind of soft and fuzzy Velvet Revolution on a global scale, an affair that will change everything but in a peaceful, happy, sing in a great big circle kind of way.
The problem with this line of thinking is that revolutions of both the political and the merely situational varieties are never without turmoil, pain, and suffering. Just watch The Patriot to get an idea of how painful the American Revolution was (that was a joke, folks).
But seriously, this expectation that somehow the rise of the Internet and associated technologies is somehow a "leaderless revolution" fundamentally misses the point.
The rise of the Internet is a technological change that has in turn spawned cultural and political changes. There is no political revolution inherent in the Internet.
Katz is trying to tell us that somehow, whereas the automobile was merely a revolution in technology, the Internet is a Revolution in the political sense of the word. The car completely changed almost every aspect of culture in the Western world, yet nobody ever described its development in terms akin to Socialist revolution, the way Katz describes the 'Net.
The Internet is a technology that has greatly altered the status quo, and it's still really in its early stages in terms of its impact on society. But let's not start waving banners and lets not mistake it for what it is: a tool that can be used for good, bad, or just plain mundane uses.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
With some good historical supprot says all you need for a revolution is a fat and greedy middle class.
The half consumated Internet revolution is on front in a much larger and more significant struggle. Right now, the biggest issue is the development of the corporate state. Five hundred years ago, the development of the nation state in Europe changed the social compact in many significant ways. As the nation state obviated what went before, so the new corporate/technical state seems poised to replace the increasingly irrelevant nation state. That this process is underway is not in doubt. What the new state will look like is still up in the air. It could look like the EU, with a strong meta government and smaller regional goverments. That is based on the assumption that at least some of the EU contsitutent states disintegrate into smaller units. This is already happening in Britain and need not lead to violence.
Another potential model is China, where a strong anti-democratic government sets up the entire country as a commerce play. Authoritarianism is, in this case, good for business as it keeps the "human resources" in line.
Another variant is the American one where the workers/government/corporations form an alliance to forward their perceived common agendas. Well, at least while the Republicans are in power.
If this supposition is correct, then the Internet revolution and the Intellectual Property war are indeed parts of a larger struggle. The outcome is far from clear. Historical scenarios do not parallell the current situation because of technology. Both its diffusion and its power leave the corporatists at a potential disadvantage. In the middle ages, peasants were not allowed to possess metal weapons, only the oligarchy could have those. But that won't work now. Regulation and access denial have not worked because new technologies are evolving too fast. Recent cases show that the corporatists are catching up. Hopefully, they won't be able to go fast enough.
The second reason denial and regulation won't work is that the corporate state needs all of us to be productive consumers. No technology, no productivity increases and no artificial demand.
It is important to realize that most corporations (entertainment companies excepted) have no idealogical axe to grind. They are happy to go along with what is good for business. If that is democracy, great, if that is authoritarianism, that's fine too. The problem that business has with China, which should be a paradise, is that there is no rule of law. Business needs to know that a deal is a deal. If that gives the populace more freedom, they don't really care.
Privacy, etc. are not inherently bad, they are just bad for business. Companies like Sun do not want to exploit us, they just want to lower their costs and maximize their ROI. MS and the entertainment companies may be different, but they are an exception.
Also remember that the entertainment companies have a long history of both influencing government and dictating the circumstances of the use of their content. They see no reason why technology changes anything. Hopefully, they are wrong.
This is truely the beginning of the new world order. What it will look like will be influenced by those individuals that understand technology. The new order may be an Orwellian nightmare, but probably not since that would be a less than optimal business climate. The new order might be a technologically empowered paradise where we don't have to work anymore and we spend our days surfing and playing Quake. But probably not.
The real New World Order is being shaped each day, and on all the different fronts that Slashdot covers. So the Internet revolution may be half over, but the bigger contest is justs started. Stay tuned, it will be an interesting century.
he then goes on to say "This fluid, leaderless revolutionary movement has driven Congress, academics, journalists and parents nearly mad", which seems to be his real point. But so what? The pundits are mad because their jobs suddenly got harder. The PTBs are mad because they lost some of their Power?
Who cares? I won't say it would be impossible to separate the internet from the great democratizing force that it has now, but it would be difficult, I think.
The boundless idealism was going to have to even out eventually, but that won't change the basic, underlying principles of the net. And judging from UIDs, I'd say I've been reading /. longer than you, but regardless I know that Slashdot readers have always seen Katz for the hack he is.
If free beer is all that's keeping on the net, then get off already. But Free Speech is here to stay.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
I hate to say this, but this is Katz at his future-mongering worst. What he fails to address is the dominant (and ruthlessly efficient) role of corporations in the "revolution."
h over-cars. This is about corporate control over nearly every single aspect of our lives. The corporations are controlling technological evolution in order to decimate any semblance of technological revolutions.
This isn't about the gee-whiz-in-the-year-2002-we'll-all-be-flying-in-
It's ironic you quote Arendt, Katz. I wonder if the "revolution" she isn't talking about isn't the Nazi's and their totalitarian regime -- made all the more efficient thanks to IBM and their Holerith counting machines. (See Black's new book, 'IBM and the Holocaust' for more info. Very interesting read. Katz, how about you write about this -- about the way in which corporations put profits above and beyond anything else? What sort of "revolution" is that?)
The net hasn't "revolutionized" anything. Don't kid yourself. The "net" that Katz is talking about -- the "revolution" that he's touting -- is just a veil for ruthless efficiency conducted by corporations at expense of *people* and their fundamental, human rights.
The GPL is just one of several ways to share your code and make sure it stays shared.
Trying to position yourself as an "enemy" of capitalism is about as smart as all those companies that tried to position themselves as "enemies" of Microsoft over the last 20 years. Wouldn't it be better to promote the concept of the GPL as something that is sometimes the right tool for the job in some situations, regardless of your favorite macro-economic policies?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
An off the wall take on this:
All too often, a revolution will present an opportunity for someone to come in an take control. Sometimes there are some higher principles involved, but do not hold your breath.
Examples of this are Napoleon in the French Revolution, and Lenin in the Russian. But in a certain sense these were provincial affairs, and the momentum of the moment allows for a certain type of politics that is not yet possible today. We do not have a Napoleon or Lenin or Washington of the Internet revolution. It is far to anarchistic and wide spread for that.
And yet even someone like Napoleon took control to "preserve the gains of the revolution". The French Revolution terrified the crowned heads of Europe. It is not without some reason, that in their fear, they called Napoleon the Anti-Christ.
Who cannot doubt, that certain factions, already frightened by the Internet with its' pornography and unfettered access to the rest of the world, would look in horror at any consolidation of the the gains of the Internet revolution? Many interests are frightened by the prospects of what the Internet promises. They are frightened of freedom.
And yet we have the balance of freedom and rules and laws. The freedom to drive cars requires some obedience to basic traffic laws. But we do not check points at every intersection either.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Why, we might just be inventing steam engines now!
.sig
Eheheh Remember: The Steam Engine was invented in England - by Watts.It began the Industrial Revolution in England. The American Revolution took place after both. Basically - be mindfull of who you infer 'we' are.
I find it amusing that Americans think the modern world is a result of their un-abridged Capitalist 'Democracy'(TM)*; a product of the noble American Revolution. Its strange to think that Americans believe their present system is a reflection of the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence - it is not, in fact it is an exact copy of the thing it was designed to prevent, that which the revolt dispensed with.
Time will tell what the story of the US is, perspective within America is difficult because of the proximity of the times, and the dizzying reality of it. It may appear that American Democracy(TM)* == Technological Wonder == American Capitalism, but Id bet the apparent 'victory' of the US 'System' is more a result of having the good grace of not endured 100 years of modern warfare at home and having the benefit of an virgin territory to rape** in addition to the natural accelerating returns on R&D/science in this unique crux in world history - not because of 'it'. I'll bet time will not have such a pleasant view of the last 200 years of USAian History - that America will inevitably collapse in on itself based on greed, immaturity and popular apathy in a grossly spectacular manner. Lets all hope that American hubris dosnt take the rest of us with it.
What does this have to do with Katz's article? Nothing, and neither does your fictional non sequitur
*Please Read
**Good for America's Capitalists, bad for everything else.
Isn't that something to ponder over?
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
However, throughout history revolutions have come about not when the avantgarde and natural "leadership" of the revolution was ready for it, but when the masses start sharing some of their immediate goals.
And note that well: immediate goals.
That is also one of the inherent problems of revolutions: The avantgarde tends to get quickly disillutioned, and to fight hard for the revolution to live on, and radicalise after the initial noise dies down, and the masses refuse to support further changes.
It has happened time and time again, and the reason is simple: The masses don't normally share the most radical goals. The masses endear to the immediate, short term, moderate goals only because the more radical elements have highlighted a wide enough spectrum of "new" thought that they find something they can agree with.
What normally happens after a revolution is that the radical groups see that their ideas have been supported, but that their long term goals are abandoned in favor of the immediate gains. The typical response, as seen in France and Russia, and almost in every other revolutionary situation is a backlash of struggles between two groups:
Radicals who see in the revolution a justification for going further, and reactionaries who feels threatened by the gains made.
Depending on the strenght of the different side, the outcome is different to predict. In France and Russia the radical sides won, leading to the period of red terror in France, and to the October revolution in Russia (radicalizing the revolution that happened earlier in 1917, that had culminated in the fall of the Romanov family, and established the Kerensky led government). In Germany, however, after the uprisings in 1848, and periodically onwards to 1871, the reactionary forces reestablished their power, leading to Bismark and Emperor Vilhelms rule.
In any case a dictatorship tends to be the result. Either of the radicals, failing to gain support of the people, and resorting to power to maintain "their" revolution, or by reactionaries trying to stem the tide of history.
Yes, revolutions destroy many illusions, but mostly of those either too idealistic for the common man, or people clinging to the past.
Yes, many here would likely have preferred the "old" internet, or older forms of communications, or want to take the internet much further in the original direction of sharing knowledge.
But that isn't what the masses are ready for. And you don't get revolutions without support of the masses - you get coups...
And while the internet "revolution" haven't had a clearly spelled out goal, there are lot of implicit goals: Making communication easier, building virtual communities, sharing information. Many of these goals are represented by movements and groups, whether loosely defined by coinciding goals and ideas, or with established organizations like the FSF.
And your comment about selling out so early underscores the points I made elsewhere: Revolutions are defined by the "leaders", or the early adopters if you will - the people that see the visions, and come up with the ideas, and that build the foundation. But revolutions are brought to their conclusion when the masses buy into enough of those ideas to start forming their own visions about what should happen.
Most often these ideas will close in on the original visions and intent, but more often than not they twist them, and masses of people are conservative in sum, buying into just small fractions of the potential of the initial ideas.
It is bound to produce the idea of people selling out, when what is happening is just that people that at one point thought that their ideas might be brought to completion start realizing that the masses are happy with just a small taste.
Just remember that without the masses that bring revolutions to a halt they never would have started in the first place. And at some point the masses will eventually start buying into the next step, and things will change again.
By that time people with vision will likely already have seen new goals, though, and get just as disappointed when they don't get there.
I have a fundamental problem with the article: since when are we undergoing a revolution? Revolution implies taking away something old and replacing it with something new. What are we replacing? What are we revolting against?
The industrial revolution changed the landscape of the planet, how and where we live, and came about mostly by a single invention. Other revolutions changed governments.
Is the internet more of an evolution? The internet is an evolution of computers and electronics. It's barely changed how anyone lives. It's drastically changed the thinking and knowledge of many, but that hardly qualifies as a revolution. The reason there are so many problems comparing this to other revolutions is that this isn't a revolution.
Developers: We can use your help.
Perhaps by causing a filtering of viewpoints so that you only see viewpoints that reinforce your own worldview?
Imagine, if you will, what would have happened in the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War if Tom Paine's Common Sense was de fact modded down by the Crown due to censorship.
Would we have had a revolution, or would we have been kept as a mercantilist vassal state to England. Why, we might just be inventing steam engines now!
For that would have been at least as great a 'revolution' as the internet. The typewriter put printing albeit low bandwidth in the hands of everyone. And it did not revolutionize our societies. What it did do was streamline the feeds to mass media. Similarly what the Net has done is made it easier to diseminate quasi-information to more people faster.
Ultimately the internet will be a weapon of tyranny.
Sometimes, things just evolve. And we can notice that without trying to make some grandiose thing out of it.
People like, for instance, free software, so they use it. It exists because there is a demand. But no amount of patriotism is going to lodge it into the mainstream; the only thing that can do that is an increase in demand - and that comes with evolving software, not The Great Internet Revolution.
Five-dollar words just aren't applicable here.
The viscerally anti-hierarchical Net is a leaderless revolution, without any central ideology, philosophy or set of goals -- a significant difference from past revolutions.
Sometimes we have to step back and realize that it's just software.
--
This is precisely the attitude that was responsible for the "irrational exuberance" with which everything stemming from the Internet was greeted. The fact is that the Internet is not "revolutionary," it is merely evolutionary, like most of the technologies that allow us to live the lifestyles we have become accustomed to. In fact, there is now doubt as to if the Internet even qualifies as a "disruptive" technology or whether it will simply be exist alongside the other ways we communicate, do business, etc.
There was no "cell phone" fever, nobody claiming that cell phones would revolutionize human interaction. Yet, the connected anytime mentality (and associated work ethic) is arguably more influential in people's lives than the Internet will ever be (at least until broadband wireless becomes a reality).
Instead of predicting/discussing an "Internet revolution," lets just take the net for what it is. Isn't that enough?
Lenny
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Instead of encouraging a common movement or agenda, the Net is increasingly Balkanized by an explosion in individualistic sites, weblogs, P2P systems, filtering and moderation programs.
What, Jon, do you mean popular web logs with moderation and filtering will end in positive feedback loops, with common viewpoints reinforcing each other until there is no diversity of views, and just a strict web dogma?
Nope, never gonna happen.
Oh yeah, hail Linux!