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Cognitive Dissident: Interview with John Perry Barlow
Bob Hellbringer writes "Mother Jones Magazine has an online interview with John Perry Barlow of the EFF, on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'"
Bob Hellbringer writes "Mother Jones Magazine has an online interview with John Perry Barlow of the EFF, on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'
The DMCA is bad, but the No Electronic Theft Act makes every netizen a felon.
e d. htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/17-18r
I have never heard of such a magazine.
the prospect of a digital counterculture.
Last time I checked, all coutercultures were mandated by the RIAA. Perhaps this is the real reason they are so uppity about computers?
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
"on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'"
a slashback with only one article attatched to it. how novel.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I suspect it's both as it's been a few minutes now and still nearly nothing, even in troll land.
I can spare the Karma and only posted FP because I couldn't believe it was staring me in the face.
Wow. Maybe I'll become a troll. It is somehow, perversely gratifying to get first post.
Not really dead, just asleep. Hence why I forgot the closing italics on my post below. "at 2:00 am" Because, you know, all the important people in the world live on the east coast of the US.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'
Speak for yourself. I for one am utterly bored with the political direction Slashdot has taken in the past couple of years. And it's not even good politics! When the issues of the day are domestic and international terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, the prospect of war in Iraq and elsewhere, the economy, or even the space shuttle, the prevailing topics of discussion on Slashdot still center around that same list of drivel: the RIAA, Microsoft, and stories about "chilling effects" that are just barely more than "we hate the government but we don't know why" flamefests.
If Slashdot wants to get political, at least get political in ways that people give a damn about. Otherwise, let's stick to the stuff that made Slashdot a fun place to hang out in the beginning: news for nerds.
I write in my journal
my privacy? Does the government want to track and record all communications sent by me?
BTW, the bill has a act to enhance Cyber Security under which "malicious" hackers can be sent to prison for life.
John terms it "ridiculous, dangerous, grossly unconstitutional," - Hats off, pal!
Because, you know, all the important people in the world live on the east coast of the US.
You know, with the exceptions of maybe Steve Jobs and Jiang Zemin, I think you're right. I can't think of a single important person who doesn't live on the east coast of the U.S.
Then how did you type that? Nobody's that coordinated.
"The right to know, I think, though it may not be explicit in the Constitution is every bit as important as the right to speak."
You vent online and then you dust your hands off in satisfaction and that's the last you do..
If its that easy to just vent off your opinions then wouldn't the same apply to music:
The best thing that ever happened to the Grateful Dead, from an economic standpoint, was giving away our music.
ie people would just listen to music online and then be totally sated so as to not buy anymore..
Two months ago I was buying a Radeon 9700 at Circuit City. The manager wanted $211.99 it. I informed him that I had just bought just such a card the previous week at a competing store for $111.59. I also told him that some day I would be able to buy a ATI card over the Internet for $399. He turned with a twinkle in his eye that caught me off my usual gaurd, laughed and said, "LOL, Mother Jones interviews John Perry Barlow"
Will learn to simplify their lives, ridding themselves of excess technological garbage that serves only to drive yet another wedge between them and humanity. The mechanical Borg tentacles are growing faster (chip this and chip that technology) how long will it be before we all wake up one day and are so integrated with machines that we cannot tell the difference? Look how we accept TV as something which is the "norm". It's not too far fetched to see chip implants and "Neuromancer" type gadgets imbedded within our flesh, sucking our conciousness away and taking away our individuality.
Today the television is accepted, anyone who has grown up without one is considered strange. The chip is coming. Beware the mark.
I can think of no organization that is more active in protecting the base rights that most people in the tech community relish than the EFF, of which Barlow is a founder. Every member of Slashdot should also be a member of this organization. Among other things, the EFF is defending Fair Use Doctrine especially as it applies to digital content (an area where there seems to be lots of double standards), Internet Censorship, Government/Corporate surveillance and a lot more.
LOL!
Much love. Sea cucumbaz in tha house.
Not to mention the violation of privacy and civil liberties of those 250,000 innocent individuals...
I don't mean to niggle, but I was under the impression that it was William Gibson who popularized this phrase. Do I just need to cut down on my crack habit or something?
Score:-1,Idiot
could the songwriter for the Grateful Dead become the voice of reason. And a good one at that. Meanwhile "elected" officals are trigger happy, right wing, christian capitalists zeolots.
JPB:
There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it. It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions.
I hear a lot of complaints about slashdot being too political lately, not enough cool techy stuff. I disagree, if we have the resource of a forum like this one, we need to keep it going. We need to share this infomration, it affects a lot of us and it affects a lot of things to come. The information shared on this site has led to a lot of individual's political awakening, and those that awaken are starting to realize that they can make a difference, either by writing to an elected official, or making a donation to an organization like the EFF.
Keep it up slashdot. Cool toys and gadgets are great, but I like freedom more.
Kittens are a stupid currency.
Could you provide some examples for those of us who've always known /. as you described? Respectfully, I don't get the same flamefest impression you do, but maybe that's because I came from Usenet and IRC.
/. also seems to act as a vocal focal point to educate people. These two topics, IMHO, should be continually returned to, as a way of keeping peoples' eyes open.
Also, I can understand why these same topics (MS & the RIAA) would be repeatedly covered. Although you maye be understandably tired of hearing about their latest shenanigans,
For every dozen posters, I'll bet there's fifty important, influential people monitoring these boards or assigning people to monitor them. These people may have good or bad intentions. There's astroturfing, sure. But (maybe I'm being idealistic here) I'd like to think that, every once in a while, an influential person with good intentions finds an illuminating discussion that causes them to act in a way that makes life a little bit better for Some People, Somewhere.
Anyway, whatever, nevermind.
Really. Quite entertaining. Wish /.'s interviews were like this.
Anyhow. His view on the current laws on cyberterrorism is exactly my view (i'm contributing to BoF (Bits of Freedom) a dutch "EFF" if you want).
It frightens me that the US government is taking these steps and stands. The country which used to be known for his freedom is slowly turning into a country like Irak itself. Controlling it's own people. It would not surprise me if even the American press is being controlled. I used to dream of leavin my own country and live in the USA. That dream has been destroyed over the last couple of years when it became clear that what constitutes freedom in my mind did not have the same meaning in the USA.
I'm so disappointed in my countrymen.
This is a pretty harsh remark but i guess it's right on the mark for most of the people i know who live in the US. They all share the feeling that their countrymen look deliberately the other way because they are afraid that if they speak up they would be branded anti-patriotic. The worst part of it is that they too look the other way. They refuse too admit it but whenever i want to discuss the TIA they just response with the phrase "It's for the protection of us all" and that's it.
I hope that the EFF can create enough momentum to turn the tide. Otherwise we are facing a grim future.
Think of it as a lobster, it sticks to magnet.
For now, the threat on peoples lives comes from both terrorists and the reckless United States Governement with their wars against defensless countries like Iraq, like you said. But these days the theme of slashdot is quite detached from real world suffering and distruction. Slashdot is news for nerds, a suppliment to the regular news to bring us things of particualar importance for net-dwellers. And for this special esoteric news the villins are not terrorists, not uncle sam, not faulty heat sheilds but those who want to change our environment (the net and our own computers) forever. People like Microsoft, the RIAA and legislators that want to turn information into something that is tightly monitored and unacessable even on ones own computers are what the slashdot community (the bulk of them) are most threatened by.
People come to slashdot. They insult it on the forums they created. They insult the bulk of the community by calling them repetitive. They use words like karma-burn to discribe their posts to make moderators feel guilty to give them the -1s they deserve and they dare to try and change it to fit them!
Slashdot is getting political in a way people give a damn about. It gets political in a way as its readers and community gives a damn about with the exception of those who consider it some matter of their vain pride that they attend it to mock their opinions in a medium created for them. If you want to see war, turn on the TV, there is death, poverty, flaming astronaughts, germ bombs, guncrazy preasidents threatening to use nukes. Then you can discuss them, with friends and family over dinner. You could join a political party, join some demonstration, write a letter to the newspaper or member of parlement, write an alegorical novel, take up sculpture and express yourself that way, become a vidgilante and linch someone, join a terrorist organisation, or you could even go as far as posting your conserns at a different website... there are plenty out there that would love to hear you opinions about "real" political issues. Even post to slashdot when they post their numorous stories about your beloved reality (the space shuttle was mentioned twice). Get political about something that people give a damn about, but don't stop us from getting political about things that people don't.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
The only thing that gives me much hope for our private futures is that all of this can change iin a few years with a new administration. It might not, but it could. The only law in the United States that lets me sleep at night is the 22nd Ammendment (no more than two four year presidential terms). When someone tries to change that I'll get my gun.
-
If the government would just legalize weed, I'd put up with a lot more TIA type stuff.
He painted a unicorn in outer space. I'm askin' ya, what's it breathin'?
I love the way this was modded as Redundant. I, for one, did not know this information.
Barlow is comitting the same sin he is complaining about everyone including himself, of comitting anyway. Basically a lightweight rant, dust off, continue on.
I didn't see anything concrete or useful in that piece. I guess I'm looking for activism in old Libertarians who are little more than Republicans who smoke pot. c'est la guerre.
Meanwhile, sites such as www.antiwar.com provide hundreds of thousands of people with information about what the Bush administration is doing, what's happening in Europe and in the Arab world. That kind of easy access to relevant news and excellent commentary simply didn't exist during any other war or buildup to war. True, today the guy who checks out antiwar.com every morning might not be doing anything else. But next month maybe he will be marching in streets in protest, and he will have absorbed a great deal of background information that will make a difference in subsequent "yeah, I was there" conversations.
That kind of talk directly adresses a fundamental weakness of the Bush people -- the mass consent, such as it is, they have engineered is based primarily on the shallow propaganda technique of constant repetition. Saying "Saddam has got to disarm!" and "weapons of mass destruction!" over and over again creates in the minds of many people the notion that Iraq is just as dangerous as, say, North Korea. BUT, quite often, really, conversation with more knowledgable fellow citizens can disabuse people from such impressions.
As to the "phamphleteers," if there really are a million of them, that's wonderful! Getting intellectualy involved with issues, formulating one's thoughts, putting them in words, putting them up, almost literally, before the whole world -- those things are often precursors to more active forms of involvement. And I bet some of them have some worthy ideas, too.
----------
Manifesto for the Peoples of the Third Millennium
If you have the Total Information Awareness project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs -- but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America. But having spotted them, it couldn't toss them out until it'd exposed them to the next layer of search. .... which includes what I consider to be cultural crimes, like say marijuana smoking.
And there, in a nutshell, you have failure to predict and prevent. Who said Tim McVeigh smoked dope? Each "layer" of search is based on someone's idea of what a terroist is, not what one actually will be. What you end up with is a shit list, which may or may not contain a suspect. Before the event you don't know what to look for. Before September 11th, the purchase of a dozen box cutters had no predictive value.
God, things are screwed up. I'm reading Mother Jones and it makes sense while traditional media is clueless or conspiratory.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They stole my name! Can I sue?
He said that institutions like the government, corporations, etc. only tend to react to other institutions - I think that I agree with that.
As a new years resolution, I started doing my political rants on my blog, and I am cooling it a bit with my family and friends. I find that just expressing my discomfort with things like the oil war, etc. has a mellowing effect on me - but, as JPB implied, does it do any good?
I know that the best thing that can be done is to support organizations like EFF, etc. that can get the attention (hopefully!) of congress.
-Mark
When have you ever know the "traditional media" to have a clue? Whether or not any specific counter-cultural source of news is in line with your politics and philosophy, they are much more likely to expose a kernel of the truth. The talking heads of the networks and cable news vendors pretend to be unbiased and neutral, all the while they are spouting the corporate angle of their owners and sponsors.
In many cases, knowledge is a primary source of bias, and if the knowledge is valid, then the bias is a good thing. Yes, there are times when the only way to find the answer is to empty your head of preconceptions, but more often they claim to be "unbiased" is just a cover for willful ignorance.
AFAIK, Gibson is the originator of this term. His use of it in his books and stories is probably not the first example. Anyone know of earlier citations?
(Other files in that directory might not be safe to look at while at work. So browse with care.)
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
If you look at the last century, I think it is pretty clear that market capitalism is very effective at efficiently allocating scarce resources. It can break down in the limits (monopolies are only effiecient for the monopoly, and bad policies can cause things to break down as in the '30s), but for most mainstream economic activities, it is hard to beat. I would even go so far as to claim that it is an essential part of any fair and efficient economic system, as long as there is regulation from abuse, and it is only applied where it makes sense.
On the other hand, it can be terribly innefficient when applied to some situations. Can anyone point to a situation where "information markets" are a good thing? To the extent that companies are able to commercially exploit an idea through exclusive ownership, they have also set up the situation where both the customer and the competition are thinking about how to re-create the technology as their own. Everyone decries the NIH syndrom, but it is inevitable where information is traded as property.
Without doing a research paper on the subject, I can point to several examples of the ineffectiveness of "information markets" as a concept. Why do you thing RAMBUS failed and is now resorting to legal tactics for profitability? You just can't sell and idea without revealing it, and once it is out, it is really difficult to keep others from exploiting it. Note that you don't (can't) patent or copyright an idea itself, just particular expressions of it. In general, I don't see many companies with a workable business model selling the intellectual property rights to system components or technologies. They can and do sell complete products and services, but the idea that you could build a SOC (system on chip) composed from sub-chip units bought from different vendors has never developed.
Take a look at the system software market as well. Either you build an OS to support the hardware systems you want to sell, or you attempt to build a monopoly. Nothing else seems to work very well. One other thing works, Open/Free source development is the one workable model because it allows a community to develop around shared IP, and customers and system designers benefit. You no longer have to have a huge organization that is vertically integrated so they can control everything.
Which enemy is more important, the one inside the fence or the one outside?
It's redundant because the information was repeated three times within the message. The slashdot standard for information redundancy is, of course, twice.
from the article:"It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions. I don't care how many individuals you have marching in the streets, they're not going to pay attention until there's a leader for those individuals who can come forward and say I represent the organization of those individuals and we're going to amass the necessary money and votes to kick you the hell out of office."
Well, I can't find the article, but I read an opposing viewpoint that promoted a leaderless movement. The biggest advantage was that "they can't stop your movement with one bullet." When I look at history and see how the deaths of MLK, the Kennedys, and more recently Rabin, destroyed a movement, it gives me pause. I don't know how a leaderless movement works, but it is an idea worthy of discussion.
Then again, maybe a leaderless movement can still have institutions.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
EFF used to have an office in Washington. Given the relatively small pot of honey (around $1 million) they have to work with on an annual basis, however, eventually they found it more productive to legislate through litigation rather than lobbying.
e companies are located within 50 miles of EFF's offices down in the Mission.
It makes perfect sense when you think about who they go up against. Big media, big industry, big government, big money. Swift, underpaid non-profit lawyers have a far better chance in the courtroom than swift, underpaid lobbyists would have in Gucci Gulch.
In addition, being in San Francisco allows EFF to connect to that freaky activist hippy vibe community. Also helps that some of the world's largest/wealthiest/most-sympathetic-to-their-caus
Makes pretty goddamned good sense to be in San Francisco rather than Washington, if you ask me. They used to have a one-person-show liasing in DC for them after they moved to SF, but as far as I know, that "office" of the EFF is now gone. And as far as volunteers go, the EFF usually has more in-house than it knows what to do with. It'd be far better to give/raise money for the organization than volunteer your webmastering or Linux skizznils to the cause.
Things have gotten worse as the number of corporate owners has dwindled. They don't tell on each other as much when there are fewer of them. The New York Times used to have people everywhere and though their North East US centric views would color things, the fact that something happened would emerge. Today, their pages are filled with AP crap, which looks nothing like reality and is written by people who go nowhere. The Wall Street Journal still puts people out into the world and gives them reasonable freedom to write. Time ruined CNN with sentimental nonsense. What's worse, however, is the lack of independent news services with the resources to put people where things are hapening. It's up to you and me to tell what's going on now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe what you meant to say is "Cultural Dissident"; oh well, what do I know anyway...
An effective movement is driven by solid principles that make sense to everyone involved. The purpose of leaders is to get those principles into the minds of the public. If the principles don't take on a life of their own aside from how they're hyped by the leaders, the value of said principles is limited in movement-building.
I think you're getting the underlying motivations for a movement confused with the tactical execution of actions that involve it.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
JPB: The thing that spooks me about the Total Information Awareness program is that that it's inside DARPA [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]. And unlike the CIA or the NSA, DARPA has a great track record of actually going out and making big technology happen -- because they're small, they're light, they're anti-bureaucratic, they're engineering minded. And Poindexter may be a convicted felon but he's a very, very smart guy. So where while I'd like to say there's no way that this is going to happen under any other circumstances, I'm less assured of that at the moment.
That DARPA is involved is the thing that reassures me about the IAO in general. DARPA is an institution mainly involved in powerpoint engineering. DARPA is the US's investment in what some of you may remember from Spaceward Ho! as "Radical Tech". It doesn't come to fruition very often, and you almost never get what you wanted.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey