Slashdot Mirror
Internet Nominated For 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
An anonymous reader writes "It's official. The Internet, which has virtually revolutionized world communication, has been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. 'Organizers said signatories to its petition backing the nomination include 2003 peace laureate and exiled Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi — which would make it a legitimate entry.' The nomination was proposed by the Italian edition of Wired magazine for promoting 'dialogue, debate and consensus through communication' as well as democracy."
who would get the cash prize? Please don't tell me it's "anonymous". I hate that guy.
The Internet has decided to present its acceptance speech in form of a Twitter live feed.
Ezekiel 23:20
"At least the Internet's been in office longer than Obama"
when the singularity and skynet arrive we'll all look back at this and laugh(before our demise)
The US department of defense will be accepting the award, as they funded the first tubes.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Finally, pr0n might win a Nobel prize!
Is it just me, or is the Peace Price rapidly declining into nothing more than an alternate venue for Time magazine's "man/woman/person/object of the year"?
The Internet, which has virtually revolutionized world communication, has been nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
Yeah, okay... How come the telegraph isn't being nominated? It was the first time people on different continents started talking to each other in real-time. Or radio for that matter. The internet is not the greatest thing in the past hundred years of mass communications; The gutenburg press did more to free the masses from tyranny. If anything, the internet may make the problem worse: one of the side-effects of digitalization is that everything can be tracked, monitored, and recorded in perpetuity. The government doesn't concern itself with how to spy on its citizens... it's busy trying to figure out what to do with all this data. And we want to nominate this for a Nobel Prize?
Forget that... I want "None of the Above" to win the award.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
*fetches a flamesuit*
well, at least that's not as ridiculous as when Obama got the prize!
How about we nominate the guy from all those stories about the 40th aniversery of the internet that we had to listen to in October? Can't remember his name but he worked at DARPA and got tired of having to change seats every time he wanted to use a different computer and was also tired of not being able have two computers in two different parts of the country talk to eachother instead of having to type things over and over again.
Ascii artist &
Al Gore should accept on behalf of the Internet; this way the irrelevance of the Nobel Peace Prize will be complete.
I have always thought that Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide-Web, is deserving of a Peace Prize. Communication is the foundation of peace, and it is hard do identify another individual who has done so much for world-wide communications in recent history.
Awarding the Peace Prize to a thing? Ugh. Don't get me started. Awarding the Prize to organizations is silly enough already.
So, the award would really have to be given to DARPA -- the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is where the Internet was invented. After all the attention last year given to Obama receiving the prize while waging two wars, I think giving it to the US Military directly would really drive some people over the edge.
Okay, from RTFS, it seems like it's only been "nominated" by Wired magazine itself, which is not the same thing as receiving an official nomination. Is this the same shit that happened with that doctor in the Schiavo case, who went around on talk shows introducing himself as a Nobel Prize nominee because some Congressman wrote a letter to the Nobel committee once? It's like posting in a blog that Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg deserve an Academy Award for Epic Movie and then going around calling it an Oscar-nominated film.
The internet's acceptance speech was actually:
HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
And who worked harder to make sure McCain didn't get elected than Obama?
I nominate Inanimate Carbon Rod for employee of the month.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Shoot, just nominate Al Gore for creating it! Do I have to think of everything? :).
The Nobel Peace Prize has become a political game more than anything. I don't even bother clicking anymore when I hear about whatever the next peace price is going to be...
Overinflated too.
And who worked harder to make sure McCain didn't get elected than Obama?
Sarah Palin.
Not sure if she's eligible though - she probably was "thinking" that she's helping McCain, so her motivations weren't exactly at the right place.
One that hath name thou can not otter
There is a precedent for Nobel prizes to other than natural persons, and for the prize to not be awarded in a particular year. There's no reason they couldn't allocate the prize money back into the prize fund (like they did in 1972) while issuing a proclamation praising the Internet for whatever they like.
The alternative would be to award the prize to DARPA, which is probably not really in keeping with the spirit of the award.
There is something to this, in that when individual citizens of different countries
communicate directly with each other, and can read a broad range of perspective,
their political views will inevitably slide toward global norms.
The non-hierarchical, international nature of the Internet is a threat to
the sovereignty of state governments. The state government now just becomes
one of many voices communicating with its people.
The challenge to peace-loving people will be resisting the tendency of threatened state governments
to erect more and more opaque and monitored firewalls (or latency walls)
between the nets in different countries.
The invention of GeoIP services (restricting my ability to view and purchase things, depending
on my country) has already made the Internet tragically more bordered
than it was even 10 years ago. We have to resist this trend. We have to allow simple global
e-commerce, and open global sharing of cultural "products".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
My. Balls. They're peaceful. They never hurt no one.
Facebook is the new AOL
I have always thought that Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World-Wide-Web, is deserving of a Peace Prize.[...] Awarding the Peace Prize to a thing? Ugh. Don't get me started. Awarding the Prize to organizations is silly enough already.
Tom: Uh, how'd you solve the door dilemma?
Buzz: Homer Simpson was the real hero here. He jury-rigged the door closed using this.
Man 1: Hey, what is that?
Man 2: It's an inanimate carbon rod!
Everyone: Yay!
[Time magazine cover: "In Rod We Trust"]
Maybe. Or at least they are getting harder to identify.
One problem is that the word hero is over-used and abused. For example, anyone from "our side" who gets killed in war is a hero. Sorry -- and this is not a popular position these days -- but that is wrong, despite the families need to justify their horrendous sacrifice. Furthermore, it only perpetuates the never-ending cycle of war we seem to have gotten ourselves into. We don't want to "dishour" their sacrifice by refusing to sacrifice more of our youth.
Nelson Mandella is one of my personal heroes. But would he survive as a hero in this day and age? A lot of effort is spent trying to tear people of accomplishment down. Nobody is perfect.
or is the Nobel committee just seeing if they can get exponentially more ludicrous year after year?
Rather than giving it to him, give it to someone who worked to make sure McCain didn't get elected
You know, folks like you told me over and over again during 2008 that if I voted for McCain that we'd wind up having more troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were absolutely right. I did vote for McCain and sure enough.
...gave corporations the same rights to bribe politicians as individuals.
Table-ized A.I.
Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel (emphasis added): "...divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the PERSON who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the PERSON who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the PERSON who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the PERSON who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the PERSON who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
This nomination of an object clearly goes against the founders intent. Are we going to aware the physics prize to the LHC someday?
These people have not heard of 4chan.
has become a joke.
Yasser Arafat for bring "peace" and then Obama for things he had yet to do?
This is about as meaningful as who wins an Academy Award.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
..since not one, but two new types of war were discovered with the Internet - cyberwar and flamewar.
If the internet gets the award, it will just prove beyond any doubt the award committee is useless. It was bad enough when Kissinger got it (in fact, worst ever so far) but when they allowed Nobel to be hijacked by the bankers to give out an illegitimate prize in economics - just so those bankers can promote their economic interests; the committee was shown to have lost Nobel's vision. Furthermore, economics is not a science (more like a witch doctor or high priest.)
Al Gore can be put in charge of it, it would be most fitting actually. He didn't invent it (and never seriously said he did) he was the visionary who unleashed it to the public knowing it would further public discourse and education - as it did for the academics and military who had exclusive use of it. He would put it to good use along similar lines - its not like he needs the money and he has become an activist anyhow.
Maybe they are going to award them to a corporation?
Has the Nobel Peace Prize jumped the shark along with everything else?
The Internet is very nice, but I would prefer that they award the prize to Liu Xiaobo.
IMHO it is a dangerous mistake, and a premature one, to elevate the status of the internet to that of a life-form; the internet is neither designed nor intended to serve any purpose but to benefit its creators - the human species - as a tool as well as a toy, be this by bettering the quality of life for species other than our own, the environment or the devices of, by, from or relating to its sovereign specie. It is an artiface, nothing more. That much having been said, I feel we should commend ourselves as [that] uncontested sovereign species, focusing on how better to impact our evnvirons, than change the natural laws of physics for light and transient causes. The nomination may seem innocous, but I find it entirely frivolous and I hold it in contempt.
tl;dr
There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
Where peace prize must go according to the will of Alfred Noble:
"to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
Since we disregarded the latter in case of Obama (the peace thing), nothing stops us from disregarding the former (the person thing).
If they redefine it to mean "people who USE Internet", I'll sell you mine, so you can have two since it obviously means nothing anymore.
A THING is winning the Nobel prize?
I guess it makes as much sense as Obama's winning it, and what did the Prez do to deserve it?
IMHO Obama won the prize for being the first black US president & for being "anybody but Bush".
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
This is like giving the telephone a nobel peace prize.
The prize should not be awarded to the medium, but to actual people....
The internet is not a person, as a result, they can never show up to claim their prize.
I would support giving a Nobel prize to Jon Postel, (but unfortunately he's dead and therefore inelligible), Tim Berners lee, and others, such as Linus Torvalds, Mark Zuckerburg, or shudder Bill Gates.
Before the internet can get a nobel peace prize, computers, and their operating systems should, since they are a pre-requisite and even more crucial to bringing peace :)
For ObamaCare's Nobel Prize in 2011.
And MySpace's prize in 2012.
That was my suggestion.
She worked to make sure McCain didn't get elected; she showed her devotion to pacifism by her nonconfrontational debating tactics (not answering the questions); she showed her extraordinary political vision by being able to see Russia from her house.
Internet is a neutral technology; a tool that may be used for good and bad, it has done nothing in itself to improve peace or cause war.
- Internet is used by people to obtain war technology causing proliferation
- Internet is right now causing tension between US and China which are accusing each other of Internet warfare
- Internet could potentially be used to to send commands for setting of weapons from across the world
- It has been demonstrated Internet hackers could get access to power plants, cause it to malfunction, and cause minor and major "accidents"
How can anyone nominate a TOOL that may be used for good and bad for a peace price when the side of bad is just as big as that of good???
I completely fail to see how Internet in itself have done anything for peace.
Yes, Internet maybe is a mess, full of useless web, pr0n, even radical entities who calls for killing people because of race/religion/conditions/etc. But, in same time, it's wonderful media to help people in Iran to spread the truth about what's going on here, to help people in Haiti with all great web projects which (I really hope) helped rescuers on the ground (accidents report, map crowdsourcing from satphotos and info from the ground, etc.). For each useless and oxygen-waste sales-man who tries to spam every mail box I see young and older people who are really excited about posibilites of the Net - and they actually do and use it for what they intended it for - exchange information. OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, even Slashdot - it all encourages exchange of ideas, of information. Maybe we even disagree strongly with each other, but we are seeking peace, because we are talking.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
You presume way too much. I was a reservist for 10 years, and have known lots of soldiers, young and old. I have a friend serving in Haiti -- surely not the happiest place -- right now. If you think that I don't value my friends who serve, you are way off base. I do, however, deeply resent that people are being sent to wage war in far off lands for dubious reasons.
Most soldiers in a war zone are just regular folks caught up by circumstance. The hero label is applied at the behest of powerful people for their own reasons. Perhaps that is something you ought to think about while you tend your lawn.
For his vast financial contributions to charity and the effort he is putting into focusing it. His example has inspired other "new money" to be more charitable too.
Pre-Industrial Society: I don't even bother rebelling anymore
Industrial Society: I don't even bother voting anymore
Post-Industrial Society: I don't even bother clicking anymore
Ok, fine. its important. How about award the teams that started the entire thing instead?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Next time they will nominate Atomic Bomb for "ending the most violent war in the human history".
on behalf of "us" on the internet, which constitutes all the "people" in "we, the people", "we" accept.
it was long overdue anyway.
Read radical news here
Then I want to nominate the Pacific Ocean for a Peace Prize. Without the Pacific Ocean separating The Americas from Asia and Australia, I am certain we would have had more wars.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
I'll accept the prize on its behalf.
Sorry if it was too subtle; I was suggesting spoons should get the Nobel Peace Prize before the Internet. -- Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Look out the window - it's cold today. I guess all that Global Warming stuff must be bunk.
This reminds me of a great short SF story by J.F. Bone: A Prize for Edie http://manybooks.net/pages/bonejf2633226332/0.html "The Committee had, unquestionably, made a mistake. There was no doubt that Edie had achieved the long-sought cancer cure ... but awarding the Nobel Prize was, nonetheless, a mistake ..."
I can picture it..
"And the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Price is The Internet!"
and then Al Gore comes up to receive a sack of money, and pours it into a series of tubes.
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
Excellent news. The Council of Elders will let the Internet know next time they go to Big Ben.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
In _my_ intarwebs?
...after all, we know how much work and deliberation goes into giving these things out...
A lot of peace nobel prizes (including Shirin Ebadi's) have been awarded to people who fight censorship and oppression, in the hope it will help loosen their enemies. I can say that in this respect, it makes sense.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time the Internet is in an acceptance speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTBsm0LzSP0