Slashdot Mirror
Amateur Revolution?
Ant writes "Fast Company's article mentions that networks of amateurs are displacing the pros and spawning some of the greatest innovations from from astronomy to computing. Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion. Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft. The Sims is among the most popular computer games ever. These far-flung developments have all been driven by Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs working to professional standards. Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades."
I realize that many fields are easily accessible to amateurs, yet others remain obviously out of reach. Compare this to selling lemonade on the street corner.
In many fields there is independent innovation. In electronics, for instance, people have been home-brewing radios, amplifiers, computers, etc.. for seemingly forever.
Hoewever, it is technologically and physically impossible to build a cyclotron in your back yard. (Though if memory serves me properly, people have tried to build nuclear reactors from smoke alarm materials in the past).
As always there is a limit to what independents can do by themselves, but that limit is always expanding with newly available tech.
- Strydre -
Linux isn't anarchic - its success depends on copyright law. Without copyright law and licenses such as the GPL, corporations would be able to combine the efforts of amateur coders with the efforts of their own professional coders, without making any contribution in return. The result would be a one-way flow of effort from amateurs to corporations. The GPL ensures a two-way flow, so the commons is enriched by everyone's efforts. Using the law to ensure that everyone who benefits from the commons also contributes to it isn't anarchism, it's socialism.
Careful, you're generalizing. Hip hop and rap are like any other genre-- if all you're hearing is unexpressive, overproduced crap, you're listening to the wrong people.
Try Aesop Rock, Blackalicious, Jurassic 5, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, People Under The Stairs...
inflects actually does work in that sentence. The American Heritage Dictionary that I own has this entry for it:
inflect
I'd like to welcome you to the 21st century ;)
Get an iMac and a MiniDV camera. Capturing involves plugging in the firewire cable. Then you cut it together in iMovie (which anyone can do) then you burn it to DVD in iDVD or export it to a quicktime movie.
I haven't used Microsoft's movie program, but it can't be that much harder.
Disco didn't start in the late 70's.
It went mainstream (and crap) in the late 70's.
No the Bee Gee's aren't disco...
Disco was black gay urban music - just like house.
Rap doesn't have it's roots in the early 80's.
Kool Herc was playing block parties in the 70's.
and some would say rap started earlier - "Jive talking" etc etc....
Acid House saves Souls
I tend to agree with the many posted comments which judge the Fast Company article a bit overblown. There is enough to be gained even from the failures of the amateurs and nobody dies if their collaborations are stiffled by the interference of for-profit operations. ONE good effect of all the open source ferment has been to teach a lesson to the biotech industry. We are all hurt by the huge delays that patent litigation introduces into the process of biotech drug and therapy commercialization. The day before the Fast Company article and with a more fact-based report, the current issue of Nature had an article on "Open Source Biology about how biotechnologists who are willing to share their tool discoveries partly for the synergistic benefit that will have on the collective advancement of research and largely at frustration over the mire of patent litigation that gums up biotech research programs. [NPG charges for access to their content] The effort is spearheaded by Biological Inovation for Open Society and with the support of of the World Intellectual Property Organization are ushering in a new paradigm for science research.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
While the word amateur is indeed of French origin, the verb meaning "to love" is aimer. Both come from the Latin amare, but that does not make amare a French word.
And concerning delittare: That is neither French nor Latin but Italian, the Latin root is delectare. But, indeed, delittante stems from the present participle of delittare.
All three of the proposed methodologies are either overly party-centric or complex.
In both Party List and Mixed Member, the party controls access, at least in part, to the ballot. Many of the more interesting and effective politicians are NOT the candidates that would be sanctioned by the party, and that is often precisely why they appealed to the people. If you want even more boring, partisan, homogeneous politics, I guess these are good ideas.
Both party list approaches fail to address the issue of lesser-evil voting, and perhaps exaggerate it. If there are 21 candidates on an open party list ballot, and I get only one vote, there's a solid chance I will have voted for NONE of my 10 representatives. Worse, suppose a moderate and an extremist are both running on one party's ticket, and I favor the moderate and vote for them. If more people vote for the extremist, my vote would help ensure that the party gets the seat, but the balance of votes for that party makes the extreme candidate get elected. I have no way to indicate that I'd really prefer a moderate from another party over the extremist.
Closed Party List and mixed member both give full control of at least part of slate of candidates to the party, and it may be that the candidate many people would prefer is so far down the party's priority list that they can only be elected if the party sweeps the district.
Choice voting is a reasonable idea, but with an electorate that can't understand how to properly punch holes in a piece of paper, and claims to be initimidated by voting on a computer, how practical is a ballot like the one shown?
We've seen first hand in Georgia the impact of multi-member district races. The result is campaigns and representation that is spread too thin. How do 10 people all effectively represent and discuss matters with a constituency of 300,000 people as a state representative? How much MORE important is money as a factor compared to community involvement and personal contact in a district so large - money is the only way to reach such a large district, and money is part of the problem, not the solution.
Why are these systems so party-centric? It seems to me that in American politics, parties and their battles are part of the problem rather than the answer. Representation should be elected on the merits, proposals and record of an individual, not based on how much favor an individual has curried with their party's state headquarters. Increasing ballot access for independent candidates, encouraging voting systems that allow voters to support these candidates without aiding the candidate the like the least, and finding ways to downplay the need for large sums of money in elections are more certain ways to better elections and representation.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
"In both Party List and Mixed Member, the party controls access"
Anyone can start their own political party. Don't like an existing one, create your own. A party is needed to campaign effectively, nobody can do it on their own these days. The UK Independance Party is a good example, it is made up of those disaffected by the other main parties policies on joining the Euro. Under FPTP they are nowhere, 0 representatives, under PR they have 16% of the UK's seats in the European parliament and are using them effectively.
"If you want even more boring, partisan, homogeneous politics, I guess these are good ideas."
In fact, PR increases the breadth of politics making it more diverse and more representative, the existing system inevitably narrows to two parties who are both striving for the centre. The greens, the libertarians and other relatively small parties are basically irrelevant at the moment, that isn't the case under PR.
"Choice voting is a reasonable idea, but with an electorate that can't understand how to properly punch holes in a piece of paper"
This simply isn't a problem in the elections carried out across Europe, but then, they tend to be simpler, put a cross in a box, paper systems. Perhaps the US should simplify the system rather than trying to rely on gadgets.
"Why are these systems so party-centric? It seems to me that in American politics, parties and their battles are part of the problem rather than the answer. Representation should be elected on the merits, proposals and record of an individual, not based on how much favor an individual has curried with their party's state headquarters."
Ah, well thing is that the existing election systems both in the UK and the US make the assumption that you *are* electing an individual who has no party affiliation, party politics basically didn't exist when the British system was created, the US system just followed on with the simple first past the post system despite political parties having appeared by this time in Britain. Members of parliament banded into parties as the suffrage increased and the costs rose. You are no longer electing an individual, you are electing a party who go on to make use of block voting tactics, the system became non proportional, unrepresentative. The fact that these PR systems are so party centric is simply an expression of the political reality.
"finding ways to downplay the need for large sums of money in elections"
Great, but it means government funding of all political campaigns no matter how small. Newspapers and TV networks aren't going to provide free space and time for political adverts, especially when the number of parties and candidates increases with the lowered entry requirements, and that's *lots* of money. How much are the Republicans and Democrats spending? 222 million dollars and 170 million dollars respectively.
Deleted