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Jonathan Zittrain On the Future of the Internet
uctpjac writes "Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford and renowned cyberlaw scholar, gave a lecture explaining that the Internet has to be taken out of the hands of the anarchists, the libertarians, and the State, and handed back to self-policing communities of experts. If we don't do this, he believes the Internet will suffer 'self-closure' — the open system will seal itself off when the inability to put its own house in order leads to a take-over by government and business. The article summarizes Zittrain's points and notes, "Forces of organized interests that do not play by the rules, like malware peddlers, identity thieves and spammers are allowing another army of interests — corporate protectionists, often — to demand centralized, authoritarian solutions. This is the future of the Net unless we stop it.'"
Why on earth should he think that "experts" are any better at self regulation than any other random group of people?
I've been on the Internet longer than most people (since 1991). I know the concepts and the goals of a lot of people who have used it and created it. Heck, I've downloaded music and movies, etc. too. But honestly, if now what we have is a bunch of people who think that stealing is ok because that is what the Internet was designed to allow us to do (see replies to this thread, then were we really so right to choose an open Internet?
If anything, I think its time for the Internet to get back in touch with reality.
Why do Slashdotters buy the banal esoteric blather that comes from guys like these who have no real connection to reality?
End the age of "internet free speech" to save it?
....
Burn a village to save it.
God damn, you wolves in sheep's clothing don't give up.
AWESOME troll username btw
Out of the hands of anarchists... and into the hands of self-policing communities. What exactly does he think anarchism means in practical terms?
Hm, article contains word blogosphere. Stopped reading there. And up to that word, I did not really get what "JZ" wanted to say anyway, it sounded more like an incoherent ramble by TFA's author. Anyone care to elaborate?
The future is the same as the past: porn porn porn.
The strongest economic and technological driving force in the universe. Forget going to Mars - you want to develop more technology, just let porn do the job.
I think intellectual property (or at least the current laws governing it) will be responsible for the death of the internet as we know it today.
We will still have something called the internet, but it will be some proprietary closed crap. Unlike today everyone and their dog won't be able to just put up a page in a days work.
I would love to be wrong though.
So he's saying that the only way to stop the 'net from being placed under centralised control would be to place the 'net under central control?
All right. I'm being flip, and I'm sure there has to be more to it than that. All the same, how do you prevent the two cases from becoming functionally equivalent? If you hand net governance into the hands of a small clique, the obvious moves for those who want to unfairly exploit the net is to gain control of the clique.
All this would do is open a second avenue of attack for the forces he seems to be so worried about. That's if we accept the initial premise that the 'net is doomed as things stand... and I'm not sure that I do.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Society takes a rather long time to accomplish it, but consensus does eventually grind through topical issues over a course of a generation or two.
It may surprise people to recall that it was Star Trek of all things which, after the Mobile Phone, made a big point to announce that Replicators (seen first here with media, and coming in 20 years with mainstream custom-form solids) would seriously thrash economic theory.
Trek eventually settled into a kind of Meritocracy-for-Rent, where the right to be a part of some high-skill group (such as the Enterprise) was the payoff for being able to keep up on a par with that group.
Also, the Internet is bringing the Big Brother question to its proper discussion level by actually demonstrating what was previously an abstract conceptual warning.
"Experts"... Many of us here may qualify if that term is generous enough. Any one of us could moderate out the worst of youtube style TurboTroll users - and for forums that don't have this site's free speech theme, that is in fact necessary to protect basic functioning value.
My favorite example of a real "Expert" here is our friendly neighborhood NewYorkCountryLawyer. When he posts, we get really quiet and listen. : )
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
and just how do you propose to make a state surrender its own interests and that of its prime constituencies to outside "communities" answerable to no one but themselves?
YouTube criticised for gang rape video
Rape Video Posted on YouTube Not Removed for 3 Months
Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation says that Internet should be Governed and Regulated?
Sounds like a nice make-work project to me...
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
The only people more fearful than American news are the British. If I see another "panic" article Slashrot, the odds are its from the UK.
I find the statement that something should be taken out of the hands of Libertarians to be contradictory and wrong.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'.
Any system where a small group of people get to make the decisions will skew towards making the world more to the liking of those people. Further, new additions to this ruling class will be those deemed acceptable by the current encumbants. This is a bad thing.
All analysis like these are missing a huge, huge point. The wider web may well end up under the control of powerful, agenda ridden groups. This isn't that important, no really, it isn't. They are trying to control something which is already on its way to being obsolete as a means to disseminate information between ordinary people.
Why not? Because the net will contain sub-internets within game worlds. sub-internets will be the new places to hang out. We may even see clones of our current Internet hosted entirely inside game worlds (or whatever game worlds become).
the experts. I'm sure the people that built the Titanic were experts too. I know that just the other day I was saying to the wife, "Wife, I really can't stand all of these people saying what is on their minds. What we need is a self appointed elitist university type to run the Internets."
load "$",8,1
I wish I understood this sentence. I've been racking my brains for five minutes trying to work out what you're saying and I just can't get it.
Incidentally, we may have been stupid enough to vote in a lying fearmonger like Tony Blair, but what's your excuse for voting in a lying HALFWIT fearmonger like "Dubya"?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Personally, and IMHO, as long as everyone is forced to keep to open standards, and as long as there are cheap and easy ways to access a network based on them, nobody can close anything off.
The Internet is (still) beyond the power of the individual or small group to control it. Put up a firewall? TOR springs up. Implement network throttling on certain types of traffic? That type of traffic will suddenly mimic other types. ISP locks you out due to political discomfort? You get another one who is willing to sell service at the same or lower price. Mandate locks and controls at the telco level? WiFi and NoCat springs up to build a mesh. Even Cuba, which has the tightest controls of any networked country, has one hell of a Sneakernet going on with geek sticks and covert data transfers... slow, but workable.
North Korea is about it for the ultimate Internet control, but only because they literally don't have an infrastructure installed, at least not outside of a few elite homes, palaces, and offices.
The closest anyone has come to a corporate-built 'walled garden' style of network was AOL (which had an "Internet" button to leave that network and get online). AOL's garden (in case no one noticed) is dead, and the corp is a mere shell of its former self.
To top all that off, corporations live and die by their customer base - the more locks they place on it, the less access they have to it.
Nope - I just don't see it happening anytime soon.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Russia and China wink and nod when their people commit crimes against richer countries. Nigeria and other countries have many internet cafes which are havens to criminal enterprises, and that the police can't dismantle because they're so ineffective (and often the culture too is corrupt or sympathetic to the criminals because they target the "colonial powers" or some shit like that). It's failure or outright tolerance for this behavior on the part of government that is to blame.
As to the issue of experts, one of the biggest problems we have today is that many "intellectuals" think that their weight in one field carries over into another. The crossover here between history and science intellectuals is a good example. There are many scientists who sound like illiterate douchebags when they talk about history, and vice versa, yet their credentials give them undue weight.
IMO, the era of the public intellectual is over, and with that should come the end of an automatic assumption that experts are anything other than a one trick pony, unless they can prove otherwise.
Take a look at a map of it sometime, it's now heirarchical, it isn't a web any more and hasn't been for years. This is down to ISP control of routing, peering arrangements.
The heirarchical control of IP addressing and routing leads to heirarchical control of the whole Internet; a naturally authoritarian system.
Deleted
just what kind of porn "self policing communities" will produce?
Monstar L
Zittrain lost me on his own misuse of the word anarchist. Politically, an anarchist is someone who simply rejects a society controlled by a coercive state. This, of course, is exactly what his 'communitarian corner' supports. His taxonomy distorts the debate by relying on the pejorative use of anarchy as a term for moral and political disorder.
Basically, we have to give up our freedoms to preserve our freedoms, right?
My first attempt at doing this, please feel free to ammend/critique:
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam (and malware). Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(X) We have no idea wtf you are talking about
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) People need to understand your idea in order to incorporate it
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) You are an incoherent hack
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
It is an inevitable consequence of a good communication networks allowing anyone to connect.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"Forces of organized interests that do not play by the rules, like malware peddlers, identity thieves and spammers are allowing another army of interests corporate protectionists, often to demand centralized, authoritarian solutions. This is the future of the Net unless we stop it.'"
With almost no tweaks at all, you can say exactly the same thing about fraudsters, con men and fly-by-night businesses in the real world. There's no more reason to make Internet some kind of centralized, authoritarian regime than there is to make the US a neo-fascist state. At least from where I'm standing, they are less of a problem now than what they used to be. Free software is more mature and so less need to download random garbage, with firewall in XP and phising filters in IE7 and whatnot people are more secure than they were 5 years ago and the spammers have been very uncreative and nothing more than a nuisance in my inbox.
i don't see anything like this distopia in any of the people i talk with, even though many of them are hardly skilled computer users. The only people running around with "the sky is falling" tendencies are those trying to restrict the flow of information. because as security improves they get less and less ability to snoop at what other people are doing. And those are bound to lose, because soon bandwidth will be at such levels that P2P with random peers is unnecessary. I know Bob, Bob doesn't have what I want but he knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone and they'll all route it so the only connection I have is with Bob, basicly the old "friends of friends" network over the Internet. There's no way to win without banning all private communication.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Dude, ever see Usenet? Use a private P2P network? IRC? Meet some guy on a MUD who had a private SFTP server running on a non-standard port ?
There's so much unregulatable content and traffic going on - just because Joe-AOL and Mommy-MSN have to suffer a corporatized,spam-ridden Internet, doesn't mean that everyone has to.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
(Cue The Weathergirls...)
You're using her as bait, Master!
By lumping Libertarians with Anarchists, Zittrain shows just how completely clueless he is. I am tempted to ignore the guy, except that he is looking like a dangerous Communist to me (as someone else has already stated).
It's worth realizing that we've solved most of the problems with hostile sites on the Internet other than ones that involve Windows zombies. Nobody is spamming from an identifiable source any more; that gets spammers turned off fast, or arrested. Spamming is now done using Windows zombies.
Hosting of scams tends to involve Windows zombies or server break-ins. We track this on our "Major domains being exploited by active phishing scams" list. Notice that almost all the sites with multiple exploits listed are services that provide DSL connectivity. The single-exploit sites are usually break-ins. Most of the open redirectors have been fixed, so that hole has mostly been closed.
The malware problem is, again, an endpoint problem, with programs given all the privileges of the user running them. Again, that's mostly a Windows problem. (Not that Linux is fundamentally better. Installs still typically have to be run as root. Few will run under a restrictive Secure Linux profile.) Of course, when Microsoft tightens things up, as they did minimally in Vista, people scream that their insecure apps won't run. Fixing the problem requires a clean start, like the OLPC. If the OLPC technology gets some traction at the high school, college, and road warrior level, we might have a way out of the current mess.
Once we get past outright criminality, we're faced with the "bottom-feeders" - the Made for Adwords sites, the "landing pages", the directory sites, the typosquatting sites, the domain parks, and similar annoying dreck. We're doing our bit to choke that off. If you're willing to lump the bottom-feeders together with the crooks, it's easier to separate them from the sites with some degree of legitimacy.
Most of the bottom-feeders get their revenue from Google's advertisers, via Google. Google is starting to do something about this with "landing page quality measurement". Their standards are very low, though, judging by what's still showing up in AdWords ads. (We have a free Firefox browser extension that rates AdWords advertisers, so we have a way to look at this. Advertiser quality varies drastically by site: advertisers on Bloomberg look legit, LinkedIn, mostly OK, Myspace, mostly bottom-feeders.)
There's a basic question here - how much of Google's revenue comes from bottom-feeders? Google recently tightened up their landing page standards, and Google's revenue dropped for the first time ever. Can Google still afford "don't be evil"? We'll find out this year.
All of these things are endpoint problems. Down at the IP level, we're doing OK.
Second Life is for people who don't have a First Life anyway.
"That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'. "
Rubbish.
The point is internet technology is so complex very few people understand how all of it works, and how it works all together. The further away you go from technical to admisistrative skillsets the less likely are people to understand what's going on. That's the difference bewteen SMTP actually working and a sock puppet raising venture capital.
This has nothing to do with capitalism or communism and is inappropriate for a framework of discussion about technology and what kind of environment open standards and processes need to flourish.
Need Mercedes parts ?
> That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'.
Yup. The problem is most people, even people who profess to be socialists/communists, don't understand that aspect of it.
And of course anybody with two brain cells that function should be able to spot the obvious defect in such a scheme. Who decides who gets elevated above everyone else and installed as an 'expert?'
Self selected? Right. Just look at the fiasco going on in the US right now as we hurtle along at insane speed towards a socialist takeover of a medical system that is the envy of the world currently. Look who 'self selected' as experts. Not a doctor, insurance actuary or other actual expert in the bunch. All socialist politicians pushing variations of plans that have already been tried and failed in other places.... failed to improve medical care but succeeded at increasing the power of the politicians. Ah. Now the student should understand the flaw.
Free from outside influence? Only if nobody cares what is being decided. ISO did solid work when setting standards where nobody had much of an ax to grind as to exactly what was in a standard, but everybody stood to benefit from having A standard. But observe what happened when billions of dollars was on the line with MS-OOXML. Suddenly those dispasionate experts were for sale to the highest bidder, stacking the meetings with paid for warm bodies, etc.
So again, who is going to pick the experts and how does one keep them from undue influence? Answer, you can't. Any scheme which could pick the experts would itself have to exhibit the sort of dispasionate expertise and freedom from outside influence that would make it directly suitable as a system of governance.
This recurring dream stems from a basic dream. The truth is that a wise and just king is the best form of government possible. But they only occur rarely and nobody has ever produced a working system to get such men on thrones at even the rate they occur at random nature. And the converse is also true. A bad king/tyrant (which occures more frequently than good ones) is the more common variety, which is why few will make the argument for monarchy. But the unspoken yearning for an all wise philosopher king is what drives most left thinking these days. Witness the uproar over the Obamessiah.
Democrat delenda est
You want to understand the impact of replicators?
Ralph Williams' short story from 1958 "Business As Usual, During Alterations" throws buckets of cold water on the whole idea.
In Williams' world anyone can copy an Eames chair, the Calder mobile, but only one man can design it and only one shop can produce the master. In Williams' world, intellect and creativity remains scarce and valuable.
Or what about the Self policing banking industry and the current situation? A group that privately owns and controls the symbol we use to represent value?
An expert is someone who has thoroughly researched the topical material regarding a particular area. This means anyone can become an expert on a subject if they invest the time. WE all now have access to most of the same data and research.
Who certifies an expert? There is no process right now other than popular opinion.
Genius is not born of conformity or alignment with the status quo.
and the politicization of science results in pseudo science
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
its hilarious how he says that centralization is a major threat and he says to get it out of the hands of libertarians(who don't have any particular control just like any other group), who push for decentralization. Charlatan professor much?
So we are talking about 2 groups of interests here, both criminal in my mind. Criminal, in that they are both looking how to best take advantage of us for their own agenda. That is a whole other argument though...
He says that a centralized, authoritarian solution is the future of the Internet unless "we" stop it. I do wonder who is referring to by "we". The Anarchists, the Libertarians, the State, or everyone else?
In any case, that goal can only be accomplished by criminalizing the use of encryption by ordinary citizens without proper oversight. Now enter the Key Escrow concept. Two citizens can use encryption on their communications, as long as they share the appropriate keys with a centralized authority. Interesting idea, even if a hopelessly flawed one. It is the only idea too, since the only way to ensure that a "centralized, authoritarian solution" will work is if it can evaluate all traffic. I cannot see how else to do it, quite honestly, and it must be done since encryption cannot be abandoned if the Internet is to survive as a viable communications medium.
I don't think encryption will ever be regulated by any government that pretends to be based on democratic ideals, specifically the "western" governments. It's just not feasible, or practical. It would be like speed limit signs, except the punishments would be much more severe. If they weren't, people would violate the anti-encryption laws a heck of lot more often then the speed limits on our roads.
Of course, I am so cynical about ordinary people having any control of influence over the US government, that I believe that our fates are entirely in the hands of corporate interests (Military-Industrial Complex). They will not give up encryption, and it will be hard to justify openly why there would be a double standard. The last straw so to speak.
So if encryption will still continue to exist, what does that mean? TOR, Freenet, etc. I hate to sound like a parrot all the time (TOR, FREENET, TOR, FREENET.. SQUAWK!), but they are the best known examples of a "second internet". VPN's are also in the same group. Virtual Private Network. That is where I see a lot of the communication going in the future, where it is being driven too. Private networks protected by encryption layered on top of public ones.
So I see a lot of interesting posts about the philosophy, economics, and legal considerations, but at the heart of all of this is encryption, the 600lb gorilla in the room....
Since when are we the bad guys...I mean come on...
Completely agree. I read a story a few years back about a guy who was a nanny about 10-15 miles away from his house. These people did not have an internet connection (and this is pre-wi-fi) but he had a laptop and a was a ham radio operator. Somehow he just sent his phone connection through his transmitter and was able to get a connection 15 miles away.
There's no way for anyone to control the internet anymore, probably since 1980 or so. I think the idea of the internet being "controlled" or "disappearing as we know it" is like being afraid the government wont let you talk to your friends anymore, it's completely unenforceable and ridiculous.
Okay, people. I'm getting a bit annoyed. I can understand a lot of the controversy over what's said in the article, but can we please remember one important point: Zittrain didn't write this article, and this is just one person's interpretation of what he said.
When I give lectures, I'm generally shocked at the distortions of my words that turn up in my students' papers.
From previous knowledge of Zittrain's works, I'd be more than surprised if he said some of the stuff that's attributed to him here. I'd ask everyone to take a step back, and wait until you've read the book to judge what Zittrain (as opposed to the article's author) has to say on this.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
"Not to be a complete arse...", well you failed on that one, dintcha?
Reminds me of Plato's arguments in "The Republic": Ordinary Tyrannical gov't == Bad, but unfettered Democracy is also Bad. So what you need is to put the *right* people in charge...
Of course, just as with Plato, the "right people" are defined as those in the speaker's own peer group (philosophers, internet "experts"). How convenient!
Some would argue that the anarchists, the libertarians, and the State ARE the self-policing experts
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Sure, I read the article. Lots of words, lots of big words, and high concepts. What does it all mean, really? Not much, I think, not much more than what anybody else has to say on the subject. Why? Because it's too big. The Internet has increased it's mass immensely, and with that mass comes an equal amount of inertia. This guy and his big words and big ideas aren't really going to change anything.. unless he's got a few billion dollars to throw at it, in which case he'll only be able to change his small corner of it in his own image.
I, for one, welcome our new screwdriver overlords.
And Who Might The Experts Be?
let me guess... Jonathan Zittrain's College Buddies!
I think the value of the internet is accessibility. People's opinions, no matter how ridiculous should be accessible and people should be allowed to govern their own judgement mechanisms. Not Jonathan Zittrain. If people want to read BS, let them, it's their problem. If you want centralization, watch TV.
Joshua Zeidner
Unfortunately, the secondary aspects of 1984 match the current technology just enough that any reasonable government surveillance is deemed "Orwellian" and thus beyond discussion. Well, at least on the 'net. The real world of lawyers and police officers are able to draw enough similiarties that it's simply not an issue.
This sounds like a load of crap to me. As well, many of the problems he cites, such as with malware, viruses, etc, are Windows problems rather than internet problems. If Windows actually had real security features and didnt make running multi-user such an impossible nightmare we wouldnt have nearly as many problems. The last thing the internet needs to be a closed system. I can see, the openness of the internet as it is now, is working fine, and what problems exist are because of Windows, put out by supposed "experts" at Microsoft.
All should suffer for the sins of the few, sounds like more congressional stupidity by a pseudo-technologist.
... by this fools logic we should return to Feudal food production, because it is the root cause of overpopulation and pending ecological collapse.
Feudal Farming, Family/large agriculture food production
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Er, "back"? Those "self policing communities of experts" which once had control of the Internet were anarchists, libertarians and the State. And they're still self-policiing communities of experts.
What Zittrain wants is the Internet for his experts. Why shouldn't he? And why should we give it to him, when he's going to make up that kind of selfserving BS to get it?
--
make install -not war
Slashdot works.
..well, tough titty, no matter who declares them to be experts... we'll be off reading something else.
Therefore we read it.
When it ceases to work... we'll go off and read something else.
The creators of slashdot are experts.
If they stuff up and cause slashdot to cease working...
Get use to it.
Like Punk, the internet is more an attitude than any concrete implementation of standards. The idea of a global network of interconnected computers, where information can be retrieved from any part of it and delivered to any other part of it existed in Science Fiction long before the emergence of TCP/IP in the 1980s.
If any organisation manages to 'control' the internet, and move it too far from its attitude (free information, available everywhere), surely a group of (probably borderline insane) nerds will hack together something new to fill the vacuum.
Of course I didn't read the FA, never mind the bollocks.
The WHO doesn't even rank countries based on the quality of health care. Did it ever occur to you that things like infant mortality are counted using wildly different measures? In many countries they consider certain births DOA because it would be too expensive and unlikely to save a child they just mark it off as dead before birth. In the U.S. they spend lots more money on the small chance that it could survive and many times it still doesn't and ends up bringing up the child mortality rate. Not only that the WHO isn't really even measuring health care at all. Rich people are more likely to spend a lot more money on the off chance that they could save a baby than poor people. Imagine that.
Here is a paper about just some of the many problems with the WHO rankings: http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp101.pdf
Creative Demolition
Similarly in our space of news-making, many people are asking how the blogosphere can be controlled, can become more responsible. Responsible to whom? Lawyers? They are just as prone to corruption as any groupe of anarchists. Besides they also are financial vultures just waiting for a government mandated opportunity to swoope down and utilize their uncreative and unfree agendas. Does anonymity, for example of wikileaks, have to be curtailed? Surveillance maybe nothing more than a tool of those that seek to deprive indivuals of their power, power to think, power to act and power to function independent of experts and social norms, without these the internet would simply evaporate, why would someone use such a system controlled by people that essentially deprive others of freedom. Why would anyone trust not just the internet but government itself? There are no incentives to cooperate with a government when they specifically seek to confuse and distract individuals so they can foster a attachment of individuals to outsiders that are the experts, only experts capable of answering life's problems and also only experts having permission alone to act in a entirely fascist or communist system. Nobody would go along with that, an attempt to control the net would result in anarchy in the real world instead of the net. "The anarchy of the bottom right does not produce much order beyond the small-scale, and is largely parasitic on other orders." What, parasitic? How could a bunch of small groups of people or individuals alone be refered to as some kind of virus incapable of creating anything? They create so much that maybe considered the best of community. For someone to say that I by myself can't produce thousands of thoughts, books, songs, artwork and then share those with the world and not effect a natural anarchist order seems absurd. Nature maybe nothing more than Anarchic Harmony.Oligarchy and the purported objective frame of reference leads to toxic outcomes, how does anyone know for certain that malware maybe only made by anarchists? Maybe the government and corporations are actively creating these products on purpose to shutdown possibilities to maintain market dominance. "So which code is it that makes you good? Not actually open source computer code, but the normative codes of institutions. In the cyber-world, each web-site with a community around it becomes its own polis, and it is life in the polis that makes virtue and fulfillment possible." Community alone cannot fulfill the entire equation, community will be there with you when you die, you have to understand that if one cannot be an individual than no community will ever make any sense. The notion that what we see with our eyes can be entirely agreed upon to represent reality ignores the modern sciences. Even amongst communities people differ markedly in not just perception but outcome. Many people pursuing various oscillating processes will naturally appear chaotic to the ignorant, make the oligarch get over such reality, not the other way around, the world we live in simply can't be serialzed and measured with any confidence, without forgetting that the map is not the territory. These virtual worlds are merely maps, we choose to believe in whatever we see, creating belief systems, these systems can chain us down, in fact they mostly do without even any help from governments or corporations. Citizenship maybe nothing, citizen of what? What time or place are citizens of, all can occur and be apprehended nonsimultaneously. Reality can be apprehended nonsimultaneously, just because some grouop agrees that one argument in medicine appears correct doesn't mean that another individual or group has figured out a falw and maybe working diligently to comphrehend and extract meaning from the data while most are blindly unaware of the refutation and grow so large as to overtake all discussion. Size and prestige alone are no indicator of truth.
Democracy only works when somebody disagrees.
Universal agreement (or disagreement) has a negative effect on growth.
Quote: Sneakers
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Actually self-governance and anarchism are exactly the same, and, not to spin your head around, but the term "libertarian" (not capital L as in the party) comes from a nineteenth-century anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque to describe his anarchist beliefs. The word libertarian is still synonymous with anarchism throughout most of the world outside of the United States. The use of the term within the United States was hijacked by laissez-faire capitalists to describe their party because it sounded better, but is in-fact a very inaccurate description of their beliefs.
I'm not certain of what you mean by "self-governance" but I would not describe the United States as a having a system of self-governance. Rather I would define it as an oligarchic-plutocracy. Whether or not the system is failing is perspective based. I would say that it failed from day one to deliver any sort of freedom or liberty. However if you want a system of economic domination, a reinvigorated-feudalism for the 19th and 20th century I'd say that it has succeeded. It'll probably collapse like all over-bloated power-hungry empires do and hopefully something better will emerge from it's corpse.
Libertarians are anarchists that don't like to call themselves anarchists. They favor dismantling the government, but imagine that doing so would somehow lead to an idyllic society. They think that the "invisible hand of the market" will regulate all aspects of society.
The problem is that in the real world societies that lack strong government institutions and services are less utopia, and more lord of the flies. Industry and commerce cannot exist without law and order. Libertarianism tends to come from people who have read a little Adam Smith, and not enough Thomas Hobbes.
Iraq and Afghanistan are good example's of countries suffering from the power vacuum created by the destruction of strong government institutions. In Iraq, it was the institutions of the central government that made commerce possible by preventing the widespread violence that we see today. When they were demolished, what followed was inevitable.
Hand everything over to the USENET cabal. They can surely whip this internet thing into shape. Okay. The "cabal" is probably down to one 40yr old guy still living in mom's basement. But we can dream can't we?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I challenge Zittrain to prove that he is little more than a politician arguing for the sake of sustained income of a career as hollow as the words he vomits.
Kind of like movie critics,there is no actual use for them except to propagate their own existence.
Too bad he is associated with knowlege.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What a great idea! Let governments take over the web, to keep it out of the hands of those evil, malignant, business interests! The government is your friend, and the ruling class of 'experts' really only want what's best for you. And if you believe that, email me at rat@pearlsbeforeswine.com. I've got a bridge I'd like to talk to you about.
While I can't match Prof. Zittrain's large stable of self-invented multisyllabic words, I have a 2-syllable word for what he is saying:
Rubbish.
This guy needs to get outside and breathe some fresh air.
He can't possibly believe the conclusion to which his flawed, fallacious, circular reasoning has brought him.
To equate belief in democracy with anarchism and libertarianism.... to equate honest believe using the internet to communicate freely and to learn freely with "malware peddlers, identity thieves and spammers"... to suggest that "malware peddlers, identity thieves and spammers" are an organization... to suggest that there is only an either/or choice of allowing freedom to flourish or allowing "malware peddlers, identity thieves and spammers" to conduct themselves improperly without regulation.... to suggest that one type of authoritarian abuse would reduce the risk of greater authoritarian abuse... to suggest that the only permissible form of regulation is his suggested form of regulation... this is all sophistry.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
...follow up song to his hit, "Chocolate Rain".
blah
Like radio, movies, television, news, music and other content based 'media' before it, the Internet's domination by government and corporate entities is almost a forgone conclusion. It is amazing how long it has remained 'free' for such a 'long' time. I say almost a forgone conclusion only because there are so many advocates that want it to remain free. Another factor that has kept the Internet free is the fact that it isn't under the domain of a single country (or affiliated group of countries).
Governments will play the public hysteria card and legislate the Internet to death. Soon ISP's will require governmental licenses. Routers will have to be certificated to join the net.
Corporations will either buy the Internet or use lobbying to force governments to make providers comply.
Oh, sure, another Internet will spring up that bypasses the Officially Sanctioned Internet. An Independent Internet. But as time goes on, more and more nefarious users will flood the second insecure Internet to the point that most of the content will be illegal and/or immoral enough for the world to come together to put an end to it. At that point only those truly wanting to avoid scrutiny will use the 'free' Internet and the Official Internet will be a sanitized Governmental brainwashing and advertising opiate pipe to the masses (just like news, tv and movies)
you can complain all you want, but we are responsible for who we elect. If you don't like it, then it is partially your fault.
this is the most bullshit communist diatribe I've ever heard.
Everyone can vote by universal suffrage, and the parties *select the people on the ticket* by the same means. Have you heard of a primary? You can run for president in the current election if you want, but I doubt you'll get elected, because, well, you're an idiot.
The number of people is not small either. 64% turned out in 2004 and more are going to turn out this year, so you can't say this isn't a representative government when the majority of the people are involved in selecting the government.
Then you have all this nonsense about feudal overlords, and how rich people from feudal society own everything. There never *were* any feudal lords in the united states, you idiot. The vast majority of the nobility never left Europe, and titles were abolished entirely during the revolution. How can they possibly own everything if they never lived here?
>Likely you are among the most common class of people stuck in a
>meaningless job and staying there, so what does it matter work or not?
I'm a programmer. This is slashdot, you idiot. My job is extremely meaningful and effects a lot of people. Nor did I inherit it from my parents, neither of whom make nearly as much money as I do.
>In a healthy society everyone does what is best to support their community.
>In american society almost no one does what's good to support their community
That's funny, because american society is ridiculously more successful than the communist shit holes of the world, so obviously we *must* be doing what's best for the community.
Are we supposed to have a centrally planned economy like the Soviet Union and China had before they *horribly failed* and millions of people died of starvation? You need to do some reading on the effects of communism before you start advocating it.
Check out China's "great leap forward" under Mao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
"
The Great Leap Forward is now widely seen - both within China and outside - as a major economic and humanitarian disaster (sometimes called the "giant step back"), with estimates of the number of people killed by famine during this period ranging from 14 to 43 million
"
Are North Korea and soviet Russia your model societies? If not, tell me what country is?
how can you conceivably discuss the future of the internet, while citing claims about its impact when you do not even mention these 2 systems. he talks about removing the power from the anarchists? too late buddy, USENET has been in their control for almost 30 years! and IRC, ha. in the past how many times have you seen TV shows that discuss how "hackers" use the internet to steal information and whatnot, and then they show brief glimpses of an IRC window? i mean come on! just because Mr. and Mrs. bumblefuck in Iowa dont know anything about USENET and IRC, and just use amazon.com and google to find recipes and buy dvds, doesnt mean that they arent vitally important to the history and future of the internet!