Slashdot Mirror
A Different Kind of Enlightenment
It's no accident that one of the subject headings on Slashdot, complete with its own graphic symbol, is "Enlightenment." More and more frequently, academics, scholars and scientists are comparing the rise of the Digital Age and the creation of the Internet to such momentous historic periods as the Renaissance or Enlightenment.
In "The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization," University of Colorado scientist Douglas Robertson writes that the invention of the computer is a pivotal event in human history, akin to the printing press.
In Richard Rhodes' new book "Visions of Technology," chief Disney "imagineer" Bran Ferren assesses the Internet this way: "?the Net, I guarantee you, really is fire. I think it's more important than the invention of movable type." In "The Age of Spiritual Machines," inventor Ray Kurzweil predicts that computers will evolve so rapidly that in the next century they will surpass humans in basic intelligence.
Heavy stuff. All around the Net, there's a growing sense that something historic, even extraordinary, is occurring. Last week, a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News wrote that that the open source and free software movements was a social revolution as important as any in the last 50 years.
These perceptions are often bitterly controversial. The political scientist and historian Langdon Winner has written that periods of great technological advance often spark reprisals and religious upheavals. Off-line, the rise of the Internet has sparked widespread anxiety, hysteria, "decency" legislation, censorship technology like blocking software, and widespread alarms from journalists, intellectuals, lawmakers, parents, educators, morals czars and the clergy.
Oddly, these ideas can be just as controversial online. Just look at the response to most new ideas posted here or on other open websites or mailing lists. Unconventional ideas not only are disagreed with; they're attacked. It's not enough for an idea to be wrong or ignored; often it's so frightening and enraging that it has to be killed, the source driven off. This is always a reliable barometer : something important is happening; people are threatened by it.
As the dimensions of the Internet and social upheavals like open source and free software become clear, it's all the more important to look to history for clues about what it means, about why so much excitement, hatred, anxiety and confusion surround great leaps forward in human consciousness or development. Looking backwards, for once, may help us rise above our narrow interests and expertise to try to grasp just what's happening.
Like the earlier period of technological and social upheaval called the Enlightenment, this one, as diverse as it is, involves certain central issues and values.
"The men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program," writes historian Peter Gay in "The Enlightenment." That program was "secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom, above all, freedom in its many forms - freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to make his own way in the world." Among the Enlightenment's many legacies were the American and French Revolutions, both of which advanced the then-radical idea that individuals had rights, including the right to determine their own personal, cultural, and political histories.
In 1784, as the Enlightenment was peaking, philosopher Immanuel Kant defined it as humankind's emergence from self-imposed tutelage, and suggested a motto: "Sapere aude" Dare to know: take the risk of discovery, exercise the right of unfettered criticism, to accept what Gay called the loneliness of autonomy.
For the past few years, writing for magazines like Rolling Stone and Wired, and for websites like Hotwired, Slashdot and the Freedom Forum's Free!, I've been struggling to track the political values of the younger Netizens building the Internet. I've written about survey findings from researchers like Yankelovich, Peter Hart and Frank Luntz Associates. And, of course, I've exchanged e-mail with thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of people online.
Clearly, they are patching together a new kind of culture, with distinct values and politics. Just as clearly, this system isn't really new, but a continuation of something a few hundred years old. Peter Gay described it almost flawlessly, and also presciently. What is new is the linked, networked system of communications that transmit these values, more powerful than any of the institutions that so bitterly opposed the first Enlightenment - monarchies, organized religion, business interests.
Throughout history, people who preached freedom from political, religious or economic dogmas have paid dearly. They've been hanged, drawn and quartered, burned alive, massacred. But the Internet, adopting and transmitting Enlightenment values like freedom, has blown right past politicians, journalists, churches, educators and even -- through movements like free software -- the giant corporations that are as powerful as many governments.
That online culture is too diverse to generalize about. Yet at its core, it has widely-shared values. From hackers to Linux geeks to MP3 downloaders, the central beliefs are freedom and individual rights. Freedom to speak your mind. To acquire the music you want. To share the software you use. To expect access to the information in the world as a right, not a privilege.
Online, there is commitment to freedom from arbitrary power. We don't curb our speech or thoughts to suit the marketing conventions of media companies or corporations. We believe in trading freely. We embrace the freedom to realize one's talents, a core hacker value. We share what we learn. We insist on the freedom of aesthetic expression. Even though we're sometimes too close to our own experiences to see them, these are enormous and powerful ideas. Conscious or not, we are living them online.
We reject dogma, especially from political parties, and journalism's foolish insistence that there are two ways of looking at the world, from the left or the right, and that all discussion be confined to those suffocatingly narrow points of view.
We take the risk of discovery every day by exploring new technologies, developing new programs, struggling with new challenges, and patching together a new kind of culture. We accept unfettered criticism. We dare to know, and in embracing these ideas, we also accept the loneliness of autonomy, the fact that we exist out of the mainstream.
Curiously, if we are freer than ever to experience these values, we still have few forums in which to talk about them. Enlightenment philosophers were exiled or imprisoned. But in many ways, they were freer to talk about their ideas than we are. Online, those who want to talk about ideas share the more benign but nearly universal experience of being assaulted, flamed, or otherwise attacked. It can't kill you, but it can sure keep ideas from developing. Orthodoxy lives, even here. It just takes different forms.
This isn't a new phenomenon either. Enlightenment philosophers were a family, writes Gay, but second only to their pleasure in promoting their common cause was the pleasure in criticizing colleagues and comrades. "They carried on an unending debate with one another, and some of their exchanges wee anything but polite. Many of the charges later leveled against the Enlightenment -- naïve optimism, pretentious rationalism, unphilosophical philosophizing - were first made by one philosopher against another."
Anyone who ventures online with ideas and opinions should expect the same, and he or she won't be disappointed: ideas are challenged, as are facts, conclusions, grammar, writing styles, technological expertise, character and integrity. Accepting this is accepting what Gay calls unfettered criticism. Then and now, it's the toll paid for participating in something dramatic and important. And it's cheap at the price.
Still, reading Gay's description of Enlightenment values always hits me like a hammer, because it reflects so completely the experience of going online and discovering this new Enlightenment.
Off-line, many of us are restricted and limited by the realities of life - by bosses, the companies we work for, the social conventions of the places we live. That makes the Net all the more exhilarating. Online, we are free to make our own way, unchecked and unbound.
Sapere aude is as good a motto for us as it was for them. jonkatz@slashdot.org
The idea of the university, seeking truth in voluntary associations of people, is realized so much more easily when it is based from the home than it was when you had to travel by horse or by foot to Venice. Although Katz may be preaching to the choir, I'd sure like to know how the /. readership is growing. Katz may have just written Net Orientation 101.
.sig line has been removed.
Continuing the parallel, we should expect some of the readership to be gagged, or exiled, or killed. Flame-wars used to be conducted with the Church as the enforcer. Governments and corporations will be trying to do the job soon. We've already seen folks being sentenced to "no Net access", right?
The physical areas of tiny top level domains - where the authorities are too busy or too laissez-faire to worry about what people put on the net - will therefore get full of brilliant, crabby people. These TLDs will be subject to isolation from other TLDs on a sporadic basis, as governments and corporations attempt to control the flow of information. Watch for a real shootin' war when someone does a Nick Haflinger and scatters the box full of CIA records.
jet_silver, too lazy to log in.
For your comfort and convenience, this
I agree *completely*, however the readership of /. are mostly hackers themselves so it seems kind of silly. Essays he writes for /. should be fundamentally different than those for mainstream journalism. Something like this doesn't belong here, but something like Time or Newsweek (not that Katz writes for those magazines.)
/. he should pick more pertinent topics.
I just think if Jon is going to write for
You write extremely well Jon, but you seem to be preaching to the choir. We all pretty much already know this stuff, although some of us may not be able to express it so eloquently.
Keep up the good work. Don't be afraid to lead this band of rogues.
Is is really defensible to speak for the "enlightened"?
* As in an old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto being surrounded by various tribes and the Lone Ranger announcing "We'll head for the hills...."
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
Don't forget he invented the blowjob too... He didn't get to be veep because of his dynamic personality
I've been telling people for a long time (since before we could put inline images on webpages) that the web would be seen in history as just as important if not more so, than the invention of movable type. I just wish we had Tim Berners-Lee's first webpage as we have the Guttenburg Bible. But the discussion of the destruction of old webpages to make way for the new as opposed to the storage of centuries old books is a completely different topic.
But it _is_ nice to have the historical perspective. The question is, will we sit around feeling special or go out and do something? It looks like hackers in general are too busy doing the latter to have much truck with the former, even in terms of being effusively praised like the Boomers were in the late 60s. :)
Perhaps articles like these by Jon (outward-directed) will help other non-hackers interpret what they are seeing in a positive, non-threatening way. I hope so. In that case, Jon is not a leader so much as an interpreter- and the reason many hackers are upset by him is very simply because he's not speaking their language
One interesting note is that Katz is so familiar and at home in hacker culture that his title, 'A different kind of Enlightenment', clearly indicates that the default use is the window manager and the common-English use is the different kind, to hackers (and is ignored to such an extent that an article on it is merited!) That did impress me in a quiet way, and I'm the antithesis of the generic Katz booster. I always want _content_ from him, not feel-good or self aggrandizement. Well, this isn't primarily targetted to hackers- but this sort of article is downright useful and important in many ways.
Somebody mentioned 'Internet 101', but Katz has written a first installment on 'Hackers (old-school) 101', and such a perception in the public eye could make it much easier to achieve many hacker and Linux and open source goals.
Hope ya like it. Took ages to write... darn slashdot is so interesting it gets in the way of writing other novels (or at least finishing them
He's a _boomer_, OK? They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite. Ever hear of a book called 'The Greening of America'? This is not about 20th century man: you're just reacting to a Boomer being a Boomer. At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose, which I heartily appreciate and encourage- having him celebrate us as the latest e-love generation can't hurt anybody. Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story (says the gen-X cynical writer geek ;) ) ;) look at the alternatives, he could still be extolling authors named Katz who become famous on the internet ;) compared to that he's doing wonderfully, he's really looking outside himself and thinking about the world from within his frame of reference. That's a good thing...
Sure he's drunk with his own importance- you sum it up very nicely indeed- but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration
So basically, you're not elitist at all, just better than us young computer punks?
I am not sure I can believe you.
Very well spoken. So who's going to be first with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes? M$? Governments? Penguins or some other small cute animal?
.. (Tens of thousands of people? :) )
*ahem*
>Any thought of independence is beaten
>down with the oldest and crudest method - the
>threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in
>hell".
This sounds more like a bad Sunday school experience than the God of the scriptures. Take a read at the Psalms and Job. You will find complaint after complaint against God, usually to the tune of "Where the heck are you, God?" If God was supposed to beat down *any* thought of independence with hellfire, then the psalmists hands' would have been too trembly to put pen to scroll, let alone dare write down their thoughts.
>Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle
>ages.
Well, *the Church* ruled Europe, and it wasn't acting very Christian. Christians are not supposed to be going around torturing, maiming, burning people at the stake, etc.
>Faith means to believe something without
>evidence. This is the very opposite of
>rationality and enlightenment.
Not quite true. Faith certainly means that you trust in something that you don't have all evidence for, and especially if you are talking metaphysical matters, the evidence can never be fully obtained.
Look, the likelihood that I'm going to somehow make you into a believer over the Net is pretty small. Hopefully, though, I can get you to examine your own criticisms to see if they truly hold up.
Be honest with yourself.
Posted by kha0s theory:
just another example of out-of-context quoting!
*WAY* too many of the posters above look at the world, say, "Nope. That ain't the way it is, Jon," and post a flame. God, you are all pathetic. But then again, *every*one is pathetic.
The world as it is is not going to continue. Just as the world of pre-WWII is not the world of post-Vietnam War, so the Connected world will be different from the pre-Internet world. Some posts say, "But the Internet has been around for *such* a *long* time already!" Ya freaking kids. The Internet is a blink yet, or maybe a dim glow from a rising sun. Or something else equally banal and cliched.
Those who say, "But the majority of the world isn't on the Internet!" See the paragraph above.
And as far as the free flow of information vis-a-vis artists making money: making money was not the point in the pre-industrial age. Survival was the point. Artisans and artists survived by patronage; Beethoven was not paid for his music as much as he was paid to link his name with political figures (Kings and such).
Can't you see a world with "IBM, the Patron Company of Norman Rockwell," or something. (I can see IBM sponsering Norman Rockwell. And Microsoft sponsoring Jackson Pollock. "He's so darn *innovative*!")
My point is: the world is changing. It hasn't changed yet, but it is in the process of changing. This is not a single-state system; we can have multiple states (and transition states) existing simultaneously. Some of you punks are just too young and/or stupid to see any change.
And I think I just figured out why so many people flame on-line. It's because writing a nice, reasoned post gets no reactions. Nobody cares about reason or intelligence.
- Tony (in a flaming mood)
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Unfortunatly, you are forgetting a few economic and biological truths. Everybody (even artists and software developers) needs food clothing and shelter. In the modern world, add computers, internet connection, transportation and other tools of their trade. Those things aren't free.
How many great songs do you suppose your favorite band would be producing after their 8-10 hours of minimum wage day job?
I agree that the move to electronic freedom isn't going to stop for anyone. What will stop is the whole point of that freedom unless the content producers (artists, musicians, authors, software developers etc etc) can make a decent living in the process. Keep in mind, the artists didn't have any adapting to do when CDs came out. They still write music, record music, mix and produce music, have a master pressed, get screwed by the record lable, go on tour (repeat as needed). What changed?
Clearly, a new economic model will have to be developed if that new electronic freedom is going to work. The middleman won't really go away until the artist can find a better way to make a living.
MP3 only overcomes the huge investment in CD replication packaging and shipping. Solve the other part, and the music will actually get cheaper and the musician will make more money as well. The middleman will have to find something else to do since demand for their services will dry up.
The problem wtih proprietary software is the government uses FORCE against people who share that software. In most cases, the justification of government force against individuals is that the individual has directly violated the rights of another individual.
If you share a copy of a program, the original author doesn't lose his copy. And, if you share a copy, you help a friend.
A possible business model I can think for free software to work in the Real World [tm], is to get people to bid on software. For instance, set up a system such that people make binding contracts that if X feature is added or X program is written, they will send the company Y amount of dollars.
I think it's worked that way in the fashion industry for years, and you don't see the clothing designers starving.
You really should give credit to Rasterman and Mandrake for coining the term "Enlightenment" We may all want stuff without having to pay for it, but at least we can keep the illusion of wanting freedom.
While trying to figure out how the creation of the 'net is like the discovery of fire, it finally clicked: That might explain all those darned flame wars that we keep having ;-)
;-)
BTW, you must be crazy be crazy if you think I have time this morning to read that whole silly article. Let's get back to some real computer news. (Sorry John
-- Mike Greaves
The notion is that (aside from the difficulties of transferring information about) all information is free.
It is a very radical notion, admittedly, which is why RMS is often hard to swallow.
That doesn't mean there's no way it's the right idea. Open access to information, every last bit of it, does increase the risks that people might do something stupid with that information, but it also improves the chances that people will become educated enough not do stupid things, and maybe just maybe do really cool things!
So if you have more questions/points against the ideas of free software, please be more specific, and thank you for the honest conversation. It's hard to find it in here sometimes amid the script kiddies.
--
Erskin
geek.
At the same time, this is a fairly specific issue in German culture--the burden of Naziism. Germany has no problems with nudity in advertisements, etc., but having a Nazi flag is "verboten".
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B
I wonder if the hysteria (and censorship, etc.) that Katz describes is limited to the US. It certainly seems that a good chunk of Europe is nowhere near as hysterical as the US is about the Net (moral legislation, etc.), or its much ballyhooed promises of eternal life and such ;).
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B
You mean the German version? Europe is bigger than just Germany you know.
Katz usually doesn't impress me with his writings, but this was intelligent and inofensive. He didn't glorify the word "geek" or us it 24 times in the writing. clear and to the point, and he wasn't talking out of his ass either. this is something we all can identify with, even jon.
Interesting.
I was not talking about risk: I was talking about change. In an historical context, your comments are senseless-- today, the percentage of oppressed is shrinking *in proportion* to the spread of technology.
Oppression occurs when there is an imbalance of power. In today's world, power is measured in information. As the Internet spreads, the shift of power will continue, and those who control the information have the power.
Does this help the Hutus? No. Not yet. In their country, power is still measured economically, where whoever can buy the most bullets has the power. But as power shifts, we may be able to keep the balance of power out of the hands of those who would oppress us.
Now is the time to act, when the power is shifting. Once someone has power, it is harder to wrest control of it from them.
And, out of curiosity-- what the hell are you doing to fix the world's problems? I mean, besides jumping in with self-righteous indignation, calling people idiots, etc?
And actually, I'm American Indian, middle-class, and I own two computers and an X-Terminal.
- Tony
Life goes on, no need to get too excited about it.
Deleted
Wait till the US government realises that the OSS movement will:
Bring previously unavailable technology to our 3rd world colonies.
Undermine the profit base of one the US's most lucrative revenue generators (ie, the PC industry).
Viz: a threat to the US global power base (IMO).
What Katz didn't mention in his essay, is that the invention of moveable type is the direct cause of the fall of the Catholic church in Northern Europe (Lutheranism was the worlds first pamphleteering campaign). Someday soon Uncle Sam is going to wake up to the gravity of the situation. When that happens, us pro-freedom folks will turn into subversives pretty damn quickly.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
'Nuff said.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Still they could have exhibitions, concerts, etc.; people would pay to see them. There would, of course, be fewer "artists" when corportate creations like the Spice Girls and Bush fall by the wayside. And that wouldn't be so bad :-)
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
RMS is my shepherd. I shall not want.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
While in China in 1991, I traded my Amiga 500 to a Chinese national in exchange for a 500cc scooter! It has borne fruit!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
On TV, all content is created and paid for by commercial interests. 100% one-sided in favor of the promoters. Would people buy the record without the hype? Doubtful.
On the net (lets use /. as an example), there is far more content than promotion. Once in three months I may click on a banner ad (if I even look at them). OTOH, I read about 200-500 /. user comments per day.
Breaking this down, thats about a bazillion to one against hyping advertisers. The Spice Girls simply don't have a prayer.
Also, look at what the majority of mp3 music out there is: 40% Chemical Brothers and 40% Wu-Tang clan. No Spice Girls.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
But it's too early to tell if this is actually going to happen, and it's still possible that the claimed online Enlightenment will all come to nothing. Many people simply don't care about such issues of freedom; witness the rise of Linux users who like it because it's zero cost, but happily chase after binary-only software. That complacency, that desire for convenience over principle, is what can doom the revolution, and relegate the Internet to just another media outlet.
Also, see Dean Worbois' "The Faith of Our Founding Fathers" for various quotes; the founders of the US may have been mostly deists of various stripes, but they were definitely no admirers of the structures of organized religions.
Personally, I think am neutral towards hate per se, but am intollerant of ignorance. There are people I genuinely hate, but not because of unsupportable beliefs about the color of their skin or whatnot.
That said, the Al Gore bashing on this topic is getting a little under my skin. Al Gore didn't "invent" the Internet I used in college 15 years ago, but he had a lot to do with creating the publicly accessable Intenet I'm using from home today.
>Thirty years from now, when Generation X (and Y
>and Z) have reached the upper eschelons of >Congress and the Supreme Court, we'll
>begin to see our Jeffersons.
Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen... Our generation is extremely fragmented - and most likely will be dominated by people who majored in accounting. The most vocal Netizens are likely to be ignored by them.
--> Any fool can criticize - and many do --
If the Moderators believed my post to be off-topic and so lowered its score, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that.
>>BUT
-Eric
If the Moderators believed my post to be off-topic and so lowered its score, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that.
--BUT-- if they're going to lower the score of my good-natured quip, they should also lower the score of all of the racist, sexist, anti-religion, or otherwise bigotted or vulgar posts that make their way on to these comment boards. I've seen posts that didn't have their scores lowered that were FAR WORSE than my little joke. I just was kidding about the VP's faux pas, people have expressed HATRED on this site and not been censored.
-Eric
It's no less fair than making fun of Dan Quayle for his spelling. Al Gore may have mispoke, he may not have meant what he said, but what he said was inaccurate. I'm not calling him names or a lier, but I am kidding about his mistake in the same way all public figures get kidded about when they make mistakes. I've made fun of Dan Quayle, Al Gore, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Pat Buchanon, Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and a bunch of other politicians of all philosophies when I feel the situation warrants it. I am at least consistant.
Are you telling me that you've never made fun of Dan Quayle? Maybe you haven't, I don't know, but I see a bunch of Democrats complaining about how Al Gore is being unfairly made fun of after ruthelessly making fun of Dan Quayle for years. Lighten up, politicians are _supposed_ to be made fun of; what would the late night talk shows do without political humor?
-Eric
That's funny, but it looks like you got your score knocked down, too (which I don't have a problem with as long as Dan Quayle jokes are treated the same way).
-Eric
Just because the rabble can post a few rants on USENET doesn't change the political power structure. Here in the United States my father can't get decent medical attention because he can't obtain proper medical coverage (and he's on Medicare with a private MediGap insurance policy). Wasn't it the insurance industry who claimed single payer health coverage like in Europe and Canada would bankrupt the healthcare industry and force access 'rationing' for basic medical coverage? And isn't that what we have right now??? Who's talking about this on the net? Why isn't it getting large scale coverage? Could it be because even though individuals can present their views more readily, spreading that view is just as difficult as before?
What is this 'Renaissance'? One where cybersex and sex robots can electronically service shy geeks [as taken from your last story], while serious discourse is discouraged through boredom? This is 'enlightenment'? We're heading for a major 'correction' in the population (that means mass starvation) as international corporations gobble up all the agribusiness and force genetically engineered crops down our throats. Think anyone gives a rats ass about that? (they will when the food becomes scarce)
Or campaign finance reform? Does anyone in Amercia care about policitcal corruption and bribery among our elected officials? Does anyone really care that our lawmakers take campaign contributions and then slyly pass bills written by lobbyists from those very same contributors while poor children starve in schools literally falling to pieces?
This is not the kind of discourse I see on the net. No I see sex, sex, sex, and political commentary carefullly crafted by ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, and the like. I also notice that small individually written homepages have become almost impossible to find on the major search engines of late. Could this be because the major news outlets don't want their information monopoly disapated by individuals acting in their own best interests?
Just because we serfs can present our viewpoint to each other doesn't mean the power brokers in Washington give a rats ass. The unfortunate thing is that neither does the populace.
I looked over those pages and found nothing but yet another philosophical movement which claims to solve humanities problems by redefining [reframing] them into something else.
Starving masses cannot be reframed away.
For example, in this months Harpers is published a small story on Monsanto, the agri/chemi business which created and sells Roundup Ready crop seeds along with their pesticide, Roundup. They are claiming that Roundup Ready seeds are intellectual property, and therefore to save and replant these seeds from a Roundup Ready seed crop is "seed piracy." These seeds are genetically engineered to be resistant to the Roundup pesticide, allowing a farmer to saturate the crop with pesticide, where previously one had to be a little more judicious with its use, simply because it tends to kill the crop along with the pests. Of course the fact that Roundup runnoff into our water and food supply, and how that may affect the environment and people, isn't even considered.
Monsanto plans to soon release it's seeds with a "Terminator Gene," designed to prevent second generation seeds from germinating. The fear is that this gene could spread to original crops and wipe out our base food supply. For example, Roundup Ready soy when planted could spread the terminator gene through pollen to standard soy crops, and start a chain reaction which could lead to worldwide soy decimation. Of course, Monsanto Roundup Ready soy will always be readily available. That is, as long as Monsanto stays in business.
The United States is taking Europe to the WTO (World Trade Union) because Europe wants to label genetically engineered crops as they go to the store shelf. Europe doesn't want to ban these crops, only label them, yet the US is fighting to prevent this by calling it a trade sanction. That's right, informing the population about what they're eating is somehow trade restraint...
Your 'Extropy' philosophy may be a nice twist to the word entropy, but it won't change the suicidal path humanity is walking down as we hand over control of our food supply to corporate monoliths who seem prepared to let the world starve in order to monopolize worldwide food production and distribution. When local farmers can't store seed for the next generation, should worldwide calamity hit we will see devestation unlike anything since the dinasours took their last breath.
(and this is but one example of our idiocy)
Some of the early digital communities (particularly the Well) had some amazing thinking going on. We used to have extraordinary arguments on our local BBSes -- our signal-to-noise ratio was unparalleled in my experience of the larger 'net.
:)
I'm suspicious that those voices are still out there, just drowned in the cacophony.
As we're out here marching around in our digital pasture and avoiding the "warm ones", sometimes we'll come across a still, clear pool of thought; it's those little discoveries that make the 'Net worthwhile.
It's all about information, really.
The revolutions that the "digital age" is being compared to are revolutions in the availability of information and knowledge.
The inention of the printing press reduced the cost of book reproduction (while it would previously take a scribe several months to copy a book, it would take a printer slightly longer to print the first copy, but almost no time at all to print an extra hundred copies).
The Internet (rather than the digital computer) redices the cost of the distribution of information to a very low level. This does indeed have revolutionaty consequences.
Specifically, many organisations which exist to collect information and sell it for profit have already found themselves profoundly affected by the dawn of the worldwide network.
I wonder how different history would have been if copyright law had existed before the invention of the printing press.
There is nothing new in people wasting the gift of literacy on the
shallow and tittilating. Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates understand that.
Cervantes also understood this problem when he
wrote "Don Quixote", a story of a man deluded
by reading too many trashy Romance Novels. Perhaps we now have entire
nations acting out the lives of those they see on TV and read in trashy novels.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Of course it's all sex, sex, sex on the net ... on the surface. What do you expect?
But the underlying renaissance is far more substantive, and on a par with that earlier renaissance. Spend a few weeks on the extropians and transhumanist mailing lists, and you'll see that important things like getting decent medical attention for one's family are but a tiny part of what lies ahead.
Here are a couple of URLs. Treat them as no more than significant points on a massive search tree:
http://www.extropy.org/
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Actually, if the Windows95 GUI is the norm then E does the job very nicely as a symbol for an enlightenment that goes way beyond the current state of play for the majority of computer users.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
If most of the Internet is used up on sex, it indicates that the majority of people want sex, so who are you to say that it's wrong, FOR THEM? Perhaps it stems from politicians having stigmatized it for so long that the floodgates have now opened.
In any event, none of that matters as long as the Internet is also available for more productive things as well, and it is. Check out those two URLs I gave above to give yourself a birdseye view of the positive side of Internet communities and how they are gearing up for very practical advances for mankind.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In any event, politician's lives are not meant to be cushy. A little pain in their positions of power can have a salutory effect in bringing them back in touch with the real world and distancing them from the idea that they are gods who can do no wrong.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Don't put artists into some sort of ivory tower of exclusions. There is no universal law that says that artists *have* to get paid, nor software developers, nor anybody else.
The steamroller of electronic freedom isn't going to stop just because musicians want to make money. If they do nothing and just live in the pre-Internet world then they may indeed starve, but I expect that most will adapt to the new ways and possibilities. After all, they adapted easily enough to the new world of CD pressing when it suited them, not protesting about the price hike despite the lower cost of CD fabrication, and now they have a new challange. Nobody said that just because the music industry could bleed their customers dry over the past decades they must now continue doing so as a matter of right.
Of course, some say that poorly paid musicians in their agony write better material. Well, I rather doubt that, but one thing's for sure, and that is that the sooner the Sony, EMI, etc of this world stop earning 95% of the earnings from music the better. I have no sympathy for musicians that support that old system just to earn a few crumbs thrown to them by their masters.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
or a metaphore...
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
It's no accident that the folks who made the enlightenment window manager decided to call it that. Their work is a result of the enlightenment that Katz was writing about.
Pin the spig.
Because the whole idea of property depends on scarcity (scarcity of resources, scarcity of access, etc.). Thus, the mechanics of property break down when things can be perfectly duplicated at zero cost.
And... What the heck, here's another gratuitous plug for my essay on the subject, Digital Sculptures, which attempts to illustrate the future foreshadowed by our computers.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Some facts.
* You find censorship nearly everywhere. The US, Sweden, Europe, the whole planet has some form of it. Sorry.
* Yes, America's culture is still influenced by its Puritan roots, but it's also influenced by a LARGE number of other cultures. Cultural conservativism is not a crime, it's just something that many people choose to disagree with.
Nietzsche can blow me. Everybody lives by some moral or ethical code, even Crowleyesque "do what thou wilt" paraphrases that amount to "nothing is immoral".
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
The US tends to want to censor nudity and porn, while Europe tends to want to censor violence. ie the Euro version of Carmagedon has zombies with green blood while the US version has humans with red blood.
It's funny though. All these US politicians raise a stink about pornagraphy yet within 20 miles of my house there are 4 or 5 porn video rental stores.
So while some politicians would take away our freedom of speech, judges generally tend to protect us. Not always unfortunately, but many of the times.
Aside from the countries you would expect (eg. China), the only censorship of the net I've seen suceed has come from Europe ... think Germany people.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe all Euro versions have the zombies. What I meant about censorship succeeding in Germany was the Compuserve fiasco.
So, if Nietzsche says it, it must be true? How is blindly following what Nietzsche says (or any other philosopher, for that matter) any different your being "weak-willed" or "needing others to think for them"?
Maybe they are waiting for free software production tools to bring it within their reach.
Then many of them won't even need sponsors in this brave new world
:-)
And they are close
>They're building landing strips for gay martians!
You know what, Stuart? I like you. You aren't like the other people here in the trailer park.
It's really a product of isolation. Urban Americans aren't usually as bad as rural Americans when it comes to intolerance. Racial and class inequities are still a problem everywhere, but most city folk are used to dealing every day with other people who didn't grow up with the same set of values and beliefs. Particularly in the northeast and on the west coast, which is why the rest of the country condemns those areas as dens of iniquity. The common frame of reference in those places is much more relaxed, so it's attacked by narrow minded and inflexible people.
In short, I think that most Americans aren't actively conservative as much as they are culturally stagnant. There's a big difference. I know that it's not just an American thing, either. We're just more noticeable because of our economy.
Feh.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
if you could enumerate those, please..?
I suspect that this is due to the fact that the US was originally colonized by the Puritans and that their cultural conservatism was just passed on from one generation to the next.
A murderer is chasing your friend and he comes to you for help, so you let him into your house. The murderer comes by and asks you where your friend is and you must tell him that he is in your house since it is wrong to lie.
That guy led a cultural rervolution? He was, if anything, a spokesperson for the status quo.
Very Good Article. A lot of things to think about. I have noticed that you stopted to try to please the croud or stir a controversion and dropped unnecessary use of such words as geek and geekdom. :)
This is very good. People stoped bitching about you and actually started to discuss your writngs. So now I can enjoy not only your article but other people responces.
So I'm waiting for the next one.
BTW. Do you still use Linux?
- Back off man. I am a scientist
The OSS movement won't survive an attack by the US government. Most OSS developers are not willing to sacrifice their lifestyles for "higher values". Coding for free is all very well and good, as it brings respect in the community, and sometimes other interesting projects. Fighting against world governments is a completely different ballgame. Many geeks may see this as a romantic lifestyle, full of adventure and excitement. The reality is that the US government can and will jail anyone it thinks is subversive. Most jails don't offer very much bandwidth, kids. :)
This is not to say that we can't/shouldn't fight back. However, since we are not a global nuclear power, I don't recommend fighting directly against any government. Subtlety is the best policy.
-Ke
"Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
People who are mean, suck. The opposite is not true.
I'd have to agree with on the fact that to some people, Free Speech and Free Information are not the most important thing. However, it is a cause that is worth fighting for. I personally am in no position to directly help starving peoples in Africa or ethnically cleansed peoples in Indonesia. I can only offer them a chance to speak of their plight on the net. This is where Free Speech and Free Information comes in. It may not be a life-saving movement in and of itself, but its uses for other movements are unlimited.
Anonymity can sometimes be the only way to get a message across. Sometimes signing your name to an idea can lead to persection, violence, and sometimes death. Anonymity is the only way to protect oneself against people who believe that certain things should not be said, and are willing to defend that belief by any means neccessary.
The same argument that is applied to Free Speech can be applied to Anonymous Speech as well. Many people believe that Free Speech is abused more than it is used for Good (TM). The problem with this argument is that Good is a matter of personal judgement. Anonymity is one of the only things that keep Free Speech completely Free.
-Ke
"Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
People who are mean, suck. The opposite is not true.
> Which version of the Christian moral code? is the right one.
... All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.' Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because 'the righteous will live by faith.' ... Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law."
Well, Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment is to "love the Lord your God", and the second is to "love your neighbor as yourself". That's what really matters: do as you would have done to you. If this sounds like basic common-sense ethics, that's because God designed us to function best under His policies.
"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Gal. 5)
> Tonnes of Christians do believe in a literal
> hell, where they believe a lot of people who I
> dont think deserve it are going. You cannot
> dispute that and the > but-they're-not-real-Christians thing is not an
> appropriate response.
As the old Catholic hymn puts it, "They'll know we are Christians by our love." I don't know whether these people are Christians or not, but if they don't demonstrate the love of Jesus, they're not good examples of what Jesus is about.
Anyway, believing in a literal hell is not the same as believing that anyone who sins will end up there.
Paul: "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
Jesus: "I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly."
> The Christian churches are human-run
> organizations that are ultimately responsible
> for their actions.
> Attempting to implement Communist theory led to
> the abuses in the Soviet system.
> Attempting to implement Christian theory led to
> the abuses of the various Christian systems.
> You can't just say well those weren't really
> communist/christian actions. You may be
> literally correct but the movements' *actual*
> results in human society are how things worked
> out.
Any idea can be badly implemented. The question is whether we are trying to judge the Christian *faith* as such or the Christian *movement* throughout history.
The Christian movement gets a B+ for the first few centuries (after the departure of Jesus; all that raising-the-dead stuff in the first few years gets an A), and an F from Constantine on. (Note that the Christian church didn't start getting ugly until it got involved in politics. Maybe there's a lesson to the modern church here.)
The Christian faith gets an A, unless you want to be A*n R*nd and claim that Jesus taught evil moral beliefs like 'compassion' and 'generosity'.
> Mna is not *flawed* by the way. (More Chrsitian
> promotion of self-hatred). Man makes mistakes.
The Christian faith doesn't promote 'self-hatred'. (Are we ignoring all that stuff about being created in the image of God, about being adopted as children of God, about being representatives of Christ in the world?)
> Man does evil things. But we must always strive
> to pick ourselves back up collectively and learn
> from those mistakes and go forward. Being bound
Fine. "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." So pick yourself back up *individually* and go forward.
> by a rigid paternalistic moral code isn't going
> to help anything (except if you're the elite
No kidding. "Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
I for one am not too elitist to be ashamed to admit I want a sex robot. And I want it sooner, rather than later. To be against sex robots is like being against masturbation. Not very enlightened at all.
An Enlightenment has to start somewhere. A revolution is usally started by the oppressed using the tools of their oppressors. We who do have the time and freedom to read and to respond to these sorts of articles are using the tools of the oppressors (gov't, corporations etc.) in ways that they did not intend.
I personally found Katz article to be well stated, and truly representitive of the Net and its politics. His article was not about a revolution in a physical sense. It was about a revolution of thought. Your attacking of him personally just for his ideas using arguments that have no direct connection to his article is just the sort of tactic that governments and religious groups have used historically to rile people up driving them to the extremes Katz describes in his article.
Those other issues in your response are all valid issues facing the global society which you are aware of only because of the very technology you are decrying. I was also going to acuse you of rambling and ranting, but after what I have just written that would just be hypocritical.
Join the revolution.
Tell us how to deal with your social issues through thoughtful and positivly worded postings like Katz does.
When journalists try history, they so often go for the fluff and the easy generalities, and miss much of the really
interesting stuff altogether. Then they put their junk in print before people who may not be able to see it for what it is,
who will then go away with a grossly distorted view.
But don't you see? That's exactly the _point_! That's the way things USED to be. Now, when a journalist publishes something that one of us disagrees with, we can publish our point-of-view immediately, often right there with the journalist's, for anyone to read.
The American Revolution was hardly born out of the Enlightenment. This is absurd on its face. The differences between it and the French Revolution were profound. The leaders of the American Revolution were not blind to the realities of human nature. The butchery of the French Revolution doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the American War for Independence.
Perhaps the most consistently annoying thing about a Katz article (including this one) is how self-congratulatory he is about modern society. Perhaps the principal characteristic of 20th Century Western culture is how blind it is to the past. Drunk with his own importance, the 20th century man can't learn a thing from history. "All that came before me were blinded by their own prejudices," he declaims; yet he can't see his own bigotries for what they are. He can't see that in the name of "tolerance" and for the sake of "equality" he imposes tyrannies even worse than those in the past that he condemns as dictatorial, as chains on the human spirit.
Katz needs to lighten up. We're not as important as he thinks. We're just a drop in the bucket of history, and a dirty little drop we are, too.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Yes, I am. Exactly. Should I -- should you -- should he -- be satisfied with him just being a Boomer? No. Emphatically, no. If what his generation represents is screwed up, then I will not praise nor endorse a faithful representation of it. What is needed is rising above it. I surely don't think that I can change him (or anyone else -- excepting me, and I'm not all that sure about being able to do that either), but I can surely try to persuade him to change his own self-centered, self-absorbed view of the world.
Good post, by the way. A thoughtful response is not what I was expecting.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
>This is always a reliable barometer : something
:-/
>important is happening; people are threatened by
>it.
Forgive me for saying this, but this is just so vague it borders on being meaningless. Also, I thought programmers if anyone knew that only because A leads to B, it does not always follow that B->A. People can feel threatened by lots of things, good things, bad things. This does not automatically mean that this thing is good or an eartshaking "paradigm shift".
"The men of the Enlightenment united on a
vastly ambitious program," writes historian
Peter Gay in "The Enlightenment." That program
was "secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism,
and freedom, above all, freedom in its many
forms - freedom from arbitrary power, freedom
of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to
realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic
response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to
make his own way in the world." Among the
Enlightenment's many legacies were the
American and French Revolutions, both of which
advanced the then-radical idea that
individuals had rights, including the right to
determine their own personal, cultural, and
political histories.
Well, the people on the net seems mostly interested in their right to free porn, free music and free software. Lots of people know 1984, but how many here have read "A Brave New World?" by Huxley?
>That online culture is too diverse to generalize about.
I agree. But I think you go down a slippery slope and start generalizing more and more, projecting your own values onto the net and its population in the following paragraphs.
>[...] the central beliefs are freedom and
>individual rights. Freedom to speak your mind.
You mean the central beliefs of the young, well off, usually white, western techies who have been a long time on the net.
>We reject dogma, especially from political
>parties, and journalism's foolish insistence
>that there are two ways of looking at the
>world, from the left or the right, and that all
>discussion be confined to those suffocatingly
>narrow points of view.
I wish. You know how many times I have been debating with people (Americans) on the net and they say "Yeah, but you're from Sweden. That means you are a socialist. So your views are irrelevant."
>We take the risk of discovery every day by
>exploring new technologies, developing new
>programs, struggling with new challenges, and
>patching together a new kind of culture. We
>accept unfettered criticism. We dare to know,
>and in embracing these ideas, we also accept the
>loneliness of autonomy, the fact that we exist
>out of the mainstream.
People in the third world are starving. People are being ethnically clensed in Indonesia, Africa and the Balkans as we speak. Those people take risks. THEY are really out of the mainstream. (If by mainstream you mean western culture. If you count heads they are of course in the majority.) They have no chance to get on the net. WE on Slashdot on the other hand are sitting in front of our expensive toy computers playing.
Some "enlightenment" eh?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
You summed up EXACTLY what has been bothering me a long time about those who go evangelistic about the net.
Slashdot seems by some to be seen as one place where the cream of the new "revolution" gather to exchange ideas, and if this is the best, then I am worried. Lots of smart people, but there are gaps in their education IMO. All they know or care about is computer technology. I thought the people of the enlightenment, like those of the Renaissance, valued a broad education which included both science and liberal arts.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
>You say in your essay that freedom is for moral
>man and people should be courageous to discover
>new things. It is through Christianity that both
>of these things reach their fullness.
Freedom through Christianity? You have an invisible god who gives you absolute moral rules. He is supposedly omnipotent. He controls everything. Any thought of independence is beaten down with the oldest and crudest method - the threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in hell". This is an important part of Christianity and the very opposite of freedom.
>The enlightenement came about because of
>Christian thought, people in the middle ages
>began to study the world because it is God's
>creation and as such, is good.
Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle ages. What happened? Many works of the greek philosophers were destroyed as heretical. Science stagnated. The Church had monopoly on the truth and tolerated no independence. Medicine hardly advanced at all for almost one thousand years because of the ban on autopsies and the concept of the human body as something wicked and dirty which needed to be punished rather than helped!
The renaissance and the enlightenment started because some brave people dared to break away from the monolithic world view of the Catholic Church and search their own truth.
>So Christian thought began the process which
>resulted in the enlightenment.
Faith means to believe something without evidence. This is the very opposite of rationality and enlightenment.
>The American revolution was moral people with
>Christian principles taking a stand on right and
>wrong, against tyranny.
Yes, the world is always black and white.
>The French revolution was anti-Christian and
>used secular ideals, everyone who has taken a
>European history class knows the result of that
>revolution.
The revolution was anti-monarchy in case you didn't know. The monarchy with the help of the church had opressed the French people ruthlessly and eventually they revolted. The massacres that followed were of course terrible, but they were not caused by secular ideals. They were caused by resentment against tyranny.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Let's see, then you prefer to live in a world where things are scarce artificially. Imagine if I told you that I had an infinite supply of nice warm gore-tex jackets, waterproof, with hoods and comfy liners and giving one to eveyone in Canada wouldn't cost me a thing. But... I charge a bunch of money anyway, put all sort of arbitrary restrictions on what people can do with the jackets (no way are you going to trim it to size if it doesn't fit or mend a hole or add some decorations!) Meaning a lot of people shiver and perhaps some freeze to death. For no good reason.
I mean, dammit, it makes sense to have high costs when something is actually scarce, but scarcity for the hell of it? That's kind of like a crime against humanity. At the very least, people are deprived needlessly. This happens sometimes with material goods (diamonds are a great example) but software is an extreme case - the cost of making a copy is nearly zero. A lot of people won't be able to run a program, or read a book, or whatever, only because of someone's greed, not any actual scarcity. The economics are so artificial it reminds me of communist economies.
The only reason reasonable people ever agree to have intellectual property (besides those who directly benefit from the artificial economics) is in hopes that the system would produce incentives for people to create. In the case of software, I suspect it may not be worth it. Those incentives are convincing someone to pay my salary right now. But that means I am working in an artificial economy (with unnatural scarcity) which has certain inefficiencies. For example, others are unlikely to be able to build on my work.
Jeff
Accountants never do anything consequential, no offense. They just count beans. The people who create things are the movers and shakers of a generation, and by and large, these will prove to be the Digital Industrialists, all of whom are netizens.
Yes. Jon speaks of an epistemological revolution, but this movement is in its infancy. Thirty years from now, when Generation X (and Y and Z) have reached the upper eschelons of Congress and the Supreme Court, we'll begin to see our Jeffersons. The Kants who are writing today - even authors and philosophers who have been around for years but not recognized for who they represent - will begin to be nodded at twenty years from now.
Social change still takes time, however quickly information can move. People still change gradually.
I have a personal hunch that Ayn Rand will come to be recognized as one of the great philosophers of this period Katz speaks of. True, she died before it got off the ground, but her message was clear and conformant with our own actions: the man who acts rationally in his own self-interest will succeed. Rand's unappointed successors over at aynrand.org have thrown their unwavering support behind Microsoft on grounds "Gates is a capitalist and Rand's a capitalist." They've forgotten that not only is the opposing OSI initiative acting on incredibly Capitalist bases, they're stretching the limits of the term, doing anything to achieve personal gain.
The next century's first half will see a major revolution in favor of laissez-faire economics and free thought. Rand's people are right - Microsoft should not be hit with a Government lawsuit. But MS will be brought down, as the playing field is releveled, by a superior competing product.
Let's get working.
at last, imho.
:>
This seems to be the kind of writing Jon's most comfortable with, and it shows. Even though it stretches the point in a few spots (cmon Jon.. Fire??), it's a good stimulating read.
Having said all that... What happened to your switch to a Linux box? I'm eagerly awaiting pt. 3
of that saga..
~Grell
"Babeheart? What's it about?"
"It's about a cute little pig that slaughters the English" -- Freakazoid
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
This guy wrote a decent article. But what I want to know is what did he do with the REAL Mr. Katz?
Seriously, I agree that the invention computer is an important event, but I think it has been hyped too much. The computer doesn't add anything that wasn't around 100 years ago, it just lets us do things faster.
On the other hand I don't think the significance of the open source philosophy has been hyped enough. Love him or hate him, RMS has enriched all our lives as much as any other great person in history. The same can be said of Linus, and probably several hundred others.
But, the BEST thing about this revolution is that we can all be generals. It's not a cult of personality phenomenon, but an egalitarian evolution. If you want to jump into the center of the storm, that jump is yours to take. The center of the open source storm is large enough for everyone to contribute to. Andy Warhal said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Well, the open source revolution has turned that into a parallel process. Everyone in the future will be famous for 15 minutes *all at the same time*. (The future is now).
Damn it's a good time to be a computer guy.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I think it's good that people are at least looking to history as they try to grapple with the meaning of the net. I wonder sometimes if it really is 'enlightening' tho. It's so easy to use that it encourages and propagates bad writing, bad code, bad design, bad ideas, bad everything. The Enlightenment inherited better academic traditions than what we have now. Even tho there was a lot of skepticism and questioning of medieval methods, most of the philosophes were still disciplined scholars. Now anyone with an ISP can give their often worthless 2cents. And it shows.
If anything, I would say the net more closely resembles the age of the 'Struggle for Wealth and Empire' than the Enlightenment.
What the whole free software and MP3 movements seems to be a forerunner of is the free access of all information.
Whether or not that's a good thing is another matter, but copy protection has NEVER been unbreakable, afaik, and probably never will be unbreakable. After all, if there's a way to read the content at all, there will be a way to write it again elsewhere.
The well-established institutions of buying books, music, movies, etc., may come crashing down through necessity, just as MP3s are already causing the music distribution world to crash down. (I'm guessing that movies will follow with increased storage, and books will come when we have a nice way to read them, like those electronic ink projects.)
How will artists get paid, then? I think that's a really interesting question. And it's better to start thinking of alternatives now than to face a meltdown of creativity because the artists can't find a way to get paid.
I'd actually love to see some figures on how much a typical, say, popular musician makes from album sales vs. ticket sales. Not how much is made by middlemen, but how much the musicians actually make.
Then again, there are tons of middlemen even in concert ticketing.
But how would this work for, say, authors? If they can't sell their work, and I don't see any other major source of income, how in the world can they support writing as a full-time job?
Sure, "real" artists do their work out of passion rather than pocketbook, but if they're going to do it full-time, they'll have to find a source of income as well, or they'll be forced to do it only part-time, which would be a detriment for us readers.
I think total censorship of the net is inherently impossible.
There are two ways to go about it, additive and subtractive:
Additive: Allow only sites you don't mind people seeing.
Problem: The internet is absurdly huge, and you'll never be able to come close to checking every last site that your people might need.
Subtractive: Allow everything EXCEPT bad sites.
Problem: If you filter manually, you come to the same problem as in teh additive case. If you use automated filtering software, people will find out the algorithm you use and defeat it. (By spelling words f*ck, for instance.)
Wow. I disagree with most of the points in your post! :)
>How many of you out there have sat down at your
>computer, logged in to the net and read a novel?
>Probably none.
Why do we need to read books? Lots of information comes in other forms, short posts, short articles, etc. Most ideas can be effectively conveyed in a reasonably short space. We're talking about free speech, not research.
>It allows people to not have to actually carry on
>a conversation with another human being, that is
>not always so great. I sometimes feel we are
>building a society of introverts.
I disagree wholeheartedly. What are we doing now? We're carrying a conversation, no? And are you not a human being? Talking "in person" is not the only way to communicate. I'd say I'm exposed to far more different people and different ideas online than I would be if I didn't have internet access.
I wasn't talking about SHOULD.. I was talking about WILL.
Information will be free whether or not we like it.
So we should learn to deal with it.
Oh, Mr. Political Correct. Do you want me to burn my Wagner albums because Hitler loved Wagner too? Oh, shame shame shame on me.
Ah, need a brush up on your history, amigo.
NOBODY important in the American revolution was a Christian. They were all deists. Jefferson was a big fan of Jesus but he thought the rest of the Bible was horseshit. Franklin and Paine were also Deists, closer to Native American beliefs than Christians. Yes, they did believe in a Creator, but not the Christian God.
In history, the Christians were possibly the worst people who ever lived. We have them to thank from everything to the American attempted genocide of the Native Americans to the Inquisition. Columbus engineered a complete genocide, down to the last man, woman and child where he landed, something even Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, or Amin couldn't accomplish.
Not that all Christians were bad. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian and as a person, few could compare. I've met many other real good Christian men and women, but unfortunately, the Pat Robertons and Jerry Falwells of the world tend to steal all the press.
If you want to read something brilliant written by a Christian, read Ryme of the Ancient Mariner.
Just giving credit where credit is due. Not meant to offend anyone.
-El C.
I don't think most of the "negative" comments about America were meant to sound like spitting on America. They were more pointing out flaws in our past and things we need to do as a nation in the future. I think most of us could agree that it is better to say "I love my country and I'd like to improve it" than "My country right or wrong" or "America- love it or leave it".
Kind of like my computer. It used to have exclusively NT on it when I was doing Visual Basic programming. Then I decided out of love for my computer that I should put a real OS on there and turned it into a dual boot. Now, out of more love for my computer, it's exclusively Linux and I recently upgraded my KDE to KDE 1.1 and it smokes!
Back to your point, it is also important to take responsibility for our actions. If we as a nation are doing something wrong, then we should stop doing it instead of having that attitude that we're right because we're Americans. If we'd stop playing world police, maybe half of the world won't hate us anymore.
A great play about the progression from classicism to romanticism (enlightenment) is Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, who also wrote "Shakespeare in Love." Go and read it, NOW.
No problem with being sceptical. But it is possible to be sceptical and optimistic.
Seriously, no-one's really come up with a word like "Renaissance" or "Enlightenment" for this wave. Actually, hopefully no-one does (unless it's a good, inspiring word, not some catch-phrase some
meme-miner came up with...) After we get over the upcoming daytrader caused market crash of course...
The Kant you speak of is probably writing his great thesis with a iMac, of all those. Hell, we have to work out where we're going first.
Anarcho-syndicalism? Liberal Libertarianism? Speak-softly-but-carry-a-big-box-of-Linux-distro-
Whatever, D00d...
What a heap of non-sequiters that was.
... so sprach Graham the Happy Scum
Not quite true. Faith certainly means that you trust in something that you don't have all evidence for, and especially if you are talking metaphysical matters, the evidence can never be fully obtained.
And there's where faith interferes with enlightenment - the belief springs up that there is no evidence, so looking for it one way or another is discouraged. If something exists, then there is evidence. Otherwise that thing either does not exist, or does not interact with reality, in which case it may as well not exist. The scientific method involves looking until you find something one way or the other, and then once you've found it, you keep looking, just in case you missed something. The religious method involves being told "That's the way it is!", and never looking again.
Looking at christianity in a purely physical sense, the "Creationist" theory is just as (if not more so based on factual evidence) valid as Evolution (as an example of theory/faith based concepts that are held in high regard).
Next time you decide you want to argue about "Creationist Theory", go look up info about a little critter called 'Xylocaris Maculipenis' - it's an African Bed Bug. Once you've found the info, read about it's mating habits. Evolution explains them rather effectively. Creationism says "God created all of the animals the way they are because he loves them and they're all good!". Think about that while reading the description of how this critter reproduces, but make sure you've got a bucket handy to puke into. Frankly, any diety who thinks like that isn't one that I'd like to be associated with.
The problem with "morals," is that people often associate "morality" with "religion." Morality can and does exist without religion. Of course, this provides ample opportunity for religionists to start talking about "relativism," which is their way of saying "without religion, we make our morals whatever we want them to be," but this doesn't hold water. The core of what we consider "morality" is based on some surprisingly simple, and fairly consistent ideas that have survived for eons.
Why is it again that software should be free?
Why is it that people should have unfettered access to someone else's creation (property)?
This isn't a question of freedom, it's a question of ethics.
Thanks for directing me to the Free Software Foundation's web page. After a bit of reading, I find myself more opposed to the philosophy than before. The FSF makes the claim, for example, that just because software is easy to copy (as opposed to a book), that this is why you should be able to copy it and distribute it at will. What does the ease with which something can be reproduced have to do with a perceived right to distribute someone else's property? Do they not recognize that something that can be copied in a matter of seconds, may have taken YEARS to develop?
Further, they use the term "information" to describe software. Why? Software is not information - it is a series of instructions, carefully assembled in such a manner to perform a number of specified tasks. In doing so, it provides value for those using it.
Information has value in its own right, but no one can own the fact that John Q. Public lives at 111 Xyz St., in Anywhere, USA. No can own the fact that Maryland is on the East coast, or that Denver is 5,183 feet above sea level.
The difference here is quite clear, and to equate the two seems to defy logic.
I see an inherent danger in allowing software patents, so I agree on this point. But patents and copyright are different issues, and though the FSF is against patents, it makes no distinction between the two. Even if software patents were deemed invalid, the FSF would still insist on the elimination of copyright, something I find beyond the fringes of rational thought.
Let's suppose that I agree that, in a physical sense, a software program is information. The premise, then, is that all information should be free, correct? ALL information? Think about this.
Because the whole idea of property depends on scarcity (scarcity of resources, scarcity of access, etc.).
I view these as economic issues. If I remember my econ 101 class correctly, economics deals with "the allocation of scarce resources." Both time and expertise qualify as scarce resources, don't they?
Legally, property is defined as something to which a business or person has a legal title (direct from Webster's). This definition can include practically anything, including software.
I read your essay, and I'd like to address a specific point that, in my view, is at the root of the "free software" issue:
What the intellectual property purveryors don't appear to recognize is that, by making available a digital "object" (an image, a movie, a program, etc.), they are not offering you any raw material.
While it is absolutely correct that a software program exists as a large sequence of physical "states" (i.e., binary 0's and 1's), and as such, does not qualify as "raw material" like the stone used for a sculpture. On the other hand, it's the OTHER side of the equation that is being completely overlooked by the notion of free software...the whole issue of VALUE. Why, for example, would someone pay $10,000 for one sculpture, and not another? And once acquired, what can the sculpture physically do to make my life easier, or allow me to accomplish something with less effort? Nothing! Why would anyone want to pay this much for a sculpture, then? Value.
Let's look at software. Software, though it costs nothing to duplicate, provides value. It allows someone to accomplish something they couldn't do otherwise, or to accomplish something they can do otherwise, but with greater efficiency. Would Amazon.com, for example, be anything CLOSE what it is without software that can run their servers? E-Bay is another prime example. Clearly, these businesses are deriving significant value from the use of their software, but according to the FSF, since software should be free, this value goes completely unrecognized.
Put in perhaps its most simple terms, when it comes to software, why is it reasonable to expect something (and in some cases, somethng very significant) for nothing?
The problem wtih proprietary software is the government uses FORCE against people who share that software.
Most likely because in their efforts to be so generous (using someone else's skill and labor, no less), they're attempting to distribute something to which they have no legal title (of ownership).
If you share a copy of a program, the original author doesn't lose his copy. And, if you share a copy, you help a friend.
But the original author doesn't get compensated for the value the software provides the friend that is now using it - presumably to do something he couldn't do before, or to do something more efficiently.
A possible business model I can think for free software to work in the Real World [tm], is to get people to bid on software. For instance, set up a system such that people make binding contracts that if X feature is added or X program is written, they will send the company Y amount of dollars.
Don't we already have this? It's called work for hire. I assume you left out one important detail, however: the company paying the bill won't own the source code.
If someone develops software that allows a company to increase its profits by 20%, why should this value go unrecognized, simply because the act of copying the software doesn't cost anything?
I think it's worked that way in the fashion industry for years, and you don't see the clothing designers starving.
Actually, clothing designers get a cut of everything with their name on it. Do you think they're being kind-hearted by allowing themselves no more than a certain percentage over the cost of production? I seriously doubt it. They're in for the same reason everyone else is...to make money, and to make as much of it as they can.
While I tend to agree with this article, that near-instantaneous communication and dispersion of information is having a radical effect on our society, I also know that it is very easy to make things look however you want them to, given enough words. I think that is what Katz is doing here - he can talk all he wants, but no one will know the true effects of this age until long after we're all dead.
certainly makes people think, even if they just hate it....
Yes, understood. But he states in the article
"It's no accident that one of the subject headings on Slashdot, complete with its own graphic symbol, is "Enlightenment."" The article has nothing to do with the E window manager, but Katz apparently assumed that the "Enlightenment" on slashdot did, going by the way the sentence was phrased. (Not to get technical or anything) Overall a good article, but Katz, I suggest you find out the meaning of the things you refer to...
Thanks for that wonderful essay.
All the people who are writing about the E window manager have very little minds, forget about them. They have to find something to flame on. And critizicing your writing based on such a trivial error is like critizicing music because there's a typo in the writings of the lyrics.
Keep up the good work.
Renaissance?? Enlightenment?? Does this occur only when the masses discover this religion called the 'net? Or, does it happen when it first pokes its head into the light?
.. we've been speaking hypertext all of our lives and never known it."
"And the pity of it is that
Ted Nelson - 1974 -
I really liked what Jon had to say about freedom from bondage(corporate america). I have recently come from a large corp where I was drawn and quartered for having unconventional ideas and I totally agree that the net and free software are driving some serious changes in the way the world works.
I put Ayn Rand and Fountainhead as the title because I was pretty confused about me and where I fit until I discovered this book. Briefly it is a story about an architect and his struggle against mediocrity. If you don't "work and play well with others" - like most hackers I know - you owe yourself a read of this book.
If you find yourself identifying with the main character in Fountainhead pick up Atlas Shrugged next. Howard Roark defines the boundaries of the struggle in Fountainhead, John Galt shows us the road out of it in Atlas Shrugged. I look forward to locating some fellow objectivists out there.
ObFreeSoftwarePlug: 3% of Linux is the kernel and we're eternally grateful to Linus, Alan, and the rest of the crew for making *nix run on gear we can afford. We need to remember 30% of the average Linux release came from GNU and that a certain wild haired prophet laid the foundations of this revolution for us.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
It's no accident that one of the subject headings on Slashdot, complete with its own graphic symbol, is "Enlightenment."
Another fine example of a thoroughly researched article by Katz, demonstrating his in depth understanding of his target audience and the technologies they use.
-josh
Online, we are free to make our own way, unchecked and unbound. I don't think so. Increasingly people reject the free flow of information...insisting on moderaters to tell us what is worthy of our time. We want to be told what to be told what to be. Rather than filter our own by not reading posts or article written by people we don't want to read we put in place people to moderate the chatter. It's always for our own good, see. Why should you have bear the burdon of deciding what to read?
an enigma wrapped around a paradox driven by a paradigm shift
Actually, what Al Gore said -- and I heard this in person from the man himself on Saturday -- was that when he mis-stated his involvement in helping get the Internet off the ground, he was really tired from inventing the camcorder the night before.
by the way, Al Gore MUST change his campaign theme music or he's never gonna win. "Go Go Go/Allez Allez Allez!" at top volume. Yeesh.
--------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
you bash (no pun intended) bash, C, Posix, etc, but you didn't mention any currently implementable
better ideas (and yes, there are some, but that's
not my point). No, nothing is perfect. For those
of us in the USA, the Constitution, as originally written openly accepted slavery, as well as subjugation of women, etc etc. Even now it's hardly perfect, if the goal is a truly free country (which is roughly the point of the preamble), but it's better than what came before. And that's the point of all of this. Humans are imperfect, and what we create will be imperfect. We can choose (and imnsho should choose) to move towards perfection, but to blindly criticize that which is imperfect (as opposed to bringing more perfect creations to light) is pointless. We know it's not perfect. It's just better than what we had before.
rark!
Secular Humanism? Christianity? Mormonism? Buddism? Taoism? something else? Wicca perhaps?
If you wheren't refering to a specific church, were you refering to a fanatical or dogmatic devotion to the state? And if so, why do you think that makes them nearly indistinguishable? And how would you explain the massive anti-government undercurrents in the US today?
Perhaps I have completely misinterpreted what you said. Religion and Politics are simular in that they are subjects that a great many people have VERY strong opinions about, and for good reason. These two things deal with the structure of the world we live in, and effect everybody to one degree or another. Though in the US we have freedom of religion (except in school, where everybody is an atheist) there are many places where people don't have the freedom to believe that the afterlife is different from what their neighbors believe.
Whether you are talking about being sent to hell for looking at a woman, or about a troop of guys in boots breaking into your house in the middle of the night, killing your wife and children and taking everything you own because of something someone posted to your website, people are bound to have strong opinions about it. And those who don't probably haven't thought about it much. Even, or perhaps especially, those who truly believe it doesn't matter have spent some time thinking about their place in the world - both this world and the eternal one.
For myself, I'm a very religious person, a fanatic if you will. I say that because it's difficult to impossible for me to distinguish the history of government from the history of religion. And tolerance is a required attribute of any government I'll endorse - and that is mainly for religious reasons. I don't believe that it's moraly right to force people to have morals. To behave as if they did, maybe, but it simply cannot work to force people to believe. In anything at all. And that includes the UN, US, NATO, Mr. Saddam Hussien, or whichever other charismatic leader you choose to pick.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I have heard through the grapevine that china is in the process of building a network of AMiga computers that they will ditribute to it's people, that's a lot of Amiga's. With these Amiga's the chinese people will be able to access the Internet, sort of. The government will download all the sites that they deem appropriate and the Amiga computers will access only those sites.
So before we get all in to bashing the USA and the freaks that just love to censor everything, it could be worse.
I think censoring the Internet is pretty stupid. I would rather see parents parent their children. Just because the Internet is there does not mean that you have to let your kid run wild on it. As for adults I think we can make up our own minds.
The Internet is almost as big of an invention as the printing press, but not quite. In the USA anyone can get a library card and go read any number of millions of books. Not everyone can afford a computer. Of course you can go to most libraries now and log on to the net, but that's not the same as reading a book. How many of you out there have sat down at your computer, logged in to the net and read a novel? Probably none. Although some of Jon's posts are almost novels.Yes you can read about news and read stories from people, but it is not the same as reading a book. Someday the net will probably be equal to a library in information but that time is not yet. The Internet is allowing people to communicate with people all around the world with out leaving their home. It allows people to do all their shopping online. It allows people to not have to actually carry on a conversation with another human being, that is not always so great. I sometimes feel we are building a society of introverts.
Just my 2 cents.
LoRider
You shouldn't beg, it belittles you. Just kidding. I am not saying that we aren't communicating. I am not saying we are not caring on a conversation. I am just saying that there is something to be said for communicating with people on a personal level, face to face.
I did not say that there is no information on the Internet, I just said that the library which has thousands of great literature that is not available on the Internet. Reading some stupid post on Slashdot is not quite the same as sitting down and reading Gone With The Wind or whatever.
LoRider
KEWL
LoRider
KEWL.
My point wasn't that there is nothing on the Internet worth reading, I am sure there is. But you can't disagree that there way more stuff to read in a library. I mean stuff that is worth reading. Any moron can create a website on geocities, but who really wants to read it. I gues sifting through all the crap takes too long for me to really find anything of value.
LoRider
But if you really want to get scared, go ask an artist about technology. If the artist is a sculptor, you might get a little materials science, blacksmith-and-wizard variety; for the rest of them, fahgeddit.
I may not be a typical artist, but I sure do know what a TCP/IP stack is. I've almost gotten to the point that if it dosen't have some sort of computer in it I don't bother to design it anymore. Pretty much the only exception is clothing, and even then I've been known to slip a chip or two in.
They (as a group, with honorable exceptions) decided long ago that people who actually do things are essentially helots, necessary to a comfortable existence but beneath the dignity of high-class people. And then they took ars gratia artis and overgeneralized it into disappearing up their own assholes.
The real truth is most of us artist are just average Janes and Joes. To most of us the final product, or it's effect on the audience is what matters. Not how much we are in the limelight.
[snip]You'd have a hell of a lot better chance getting an explanation of the Hundred Years War on Slashdot than you would of getting any clue as to what TCP/IP is all about from any artistic group.
True, however...
And it's not because they're stupid, either. They've just decided that it's got no class.
I have to disagree. The major reason I see most artists not knowing what TCP/IP is, is because they don't need to know inorder to make their creations. It's a simple need to know situation. Some of the best potters and glass blowers I know are excelent chemists. Gee, I wonder why?
If you look at a few of my most recent designs, you'll see some serious embedded microprocessor work. Why, because I find it fun to give my works an extra demension of effect.
I have to say one thing. Internet is nice because it free us from the mass media. In internet you can choose in what site to go and you just dont have to "watch" what everybody else "watch" (like television). And WE make the internet, not them. Revolution, no. But it may be a first step.
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2nd!
--
"Basically the message is: Steal It!
I can see both sides of this...
BUT it's not our Katz wasn't clear.
As the reader it's not our problem to resolve Katz's ambiguity, rather it was his problem.
Sorry I can't flame you because I agree with you.
I find it ironic that a story mentioning how new ideas are met with flames, is flamed.
I also think that there is always a large amount of ego involved in some of the comments I've read;
"This is all nothing new because *I* have been sending email for years!"
What is a "boomer" to be precise? Simply someone who was born after the servicemen returned to their native countries after World War II up to roughly 1962. (sorry, I don't have the precise date definition in front of me.)Point by point, I will attempt to negate much of what you said.
- "They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite." Sorry, untrue. Most were raised to believe that freedom was something work fighting for, because their fathers (like mine) and mothers sacrificed and went through some degrees of hell to preserve it. Many came back disturbed at the injustices in America and have worked hard to eliminate it. Hence, I dispute the connection between boomers and elitism.
- "At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose"
...which would imply that previously he was not. Connected with the first point, it would imply a self-centeredness as a generational trait which I can tell you from experience, was not there for much of the nation. I remember busloads of men showing up at the site of natural disasters simply because it was the right thing to do. If you have read many of Katz's other articles, you will see a "beyond the nose" viewpoint throughout. This is a common trait to "boomers", by the way, an attitude I found to be many times less common among families who were not reared by wartime vets (many who were same-age friends of mine). - "Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story" Again, I dispute your stereotype. Not every gen-x'r would write Katz's article as a fear based sort of story. (IMHO) What the boomers seemed to have more of that many (though not all) of the gen-x writers seem to be lacking is an optimism about the future and how to make a difference in it.
- "Sure he's drunk with his own importance-" Buy his book, read it. Discover that Katz genuinely wants to make a positive difference by his writing. Doesn't see himself in a way easily described as "drunk." Way too thoughtful for that.
- "but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration..." This is the comment that irked me the most.Three reasons why.
- Boomers can change, for better or worse, just like anyone else.
- It is not the job of one generation (or person) to change the next. Perhaps to help us see our own excesses or neglects, and use your more youthful energy to help us improve the world perhaps.
- (quoting) "his little self-celebration." Please feel free to respond with an explanation as I truly don't see where you were coming from. One of the main points of the article was comparing the community of the original enlightenment to that of the Internet. Community, not self-celebration.
- "he could still be extolling authors named Katz" Where did that come from? I notice the wink, but haven't seen Jon extolling himself much. He's as likely to make fun of himself. I do note that he has some justifiable pride in the publishing of his new book. I'd offer you the same right to be proud of your work as I think you should give him.
A final boomer trait, by the way. We allow you to disagree with anything and everything we say, because our fathers fought -- and many saw brothers or close friends die or be maimed defending your right to do so....Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Just a note for Alex Conner and like minded folks. You're protesting a non-existent password limitation. Network wise, the limitation is on unique account/user names. Which means that if someone else has the user name you want, you're out of luck. So choose a good nickname, get the password generated by the Slashdot server, then log in.
After which you can immediately to your own user account page, edit preferences, and have your password be anything you want. (I think. I didn't try anything obscene.)
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
While I can agree that the United States gov't has done and continues to do many things which I find ethically wrong, the greatness of America is much more about the principles we believe in and how 'we the people' have used them. The corruption of those principles by politicians both now and in our past are an acknowledged stain on our national psyche that we all want to overcome. BTW, your use of the word "buster" (an American colloquiallism) probably names you as an American citizen as well.
Let me point out how important this value is to the rest of the world:
In an interview regarding the Kosovo conflict, the side which represents most of the population (the KLA) was asked how many American soldiers he wanted in the peacekeeping force. His response was (and this is from a radio talking head source, so don't frag me if I'm not quoting exactly),"at least one, because then we know that the people of the United States will stand for us."
Don't spit on America because of it's imperfections.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Well i rather like reading Katz' articles. He actually is thinking and I'd like to see more of this than the other one line ones with a quote and a link to some other web site. Just because one is a "hacker", which these days doesnt have the same meaning, doesnt mean that they have to be mindless dolts and write in cryptic "H4cK3/2" slang. I think its time to grow up.
I dont know about you, but I would rather read the print version of a book rather than stare at text on a web page. I also like having a CD or record of an album because I know that I can put it in any CD player and it will work, not to mention all that great artwork on the sleve, lyric listings, information about who produced it and played what. I also dont have the space on my friggin hard drive to keep the dang MP3 files, and its a pain in the ass to find the kind of music i like in MP3 anyway since most of what i enjoy is obscure or on independant labels. Thats just my 2 cents, keep the change.
drat and double drat.
i've long said that Postmodernism was a transitional form. its very name says it is *not* modernism, yet derivative from the modernism *not*.
The obvious truth since the 1920s Dada-movement has been that modernism (aka the enlightment) was dying, and the obvious truth of the 60s was its death. what has followed, postmodernism, is the agent of putrifaction converting the corpse of modernism to into "whatever comes next."
Larry Wall's comments about Perl being a postmodern language are well put and should give pause. the constructive aspect of postmodernism is to produce new things from recycled bits of the old. but in a sense, isn't the earth that is fertilized by the dead fish just that, the recycling bits of the old to create something new like a cornstalk.
the drat and double drat is that Paul Katz has come along to state the obvious and recite the old tired old refrain that "forces of reaction" are out there just waiting to "censor and repress." we are living thru the turn-over of one culture (modernism) to another culture (the one we're inventing right now) its stupid to respond the *new* culture's birth with the weapons and tactics that attended the *old* culture's birth.
Ok, Mr. Katz, what law is the United States Congress going to pass that'll be legally binding to someone in Finland? What ecclesiastical council in the Vatican is going to burn at the stake any neopagan in Massachusetts?
You can't digitize Torquemada. You can only flame idiots. But "you suck" flammage has no credibility. What has credibility is coherent ideas well put that disclose the suckiness of the idiot's ideas.
the exchange of ideas is exactly what we're talking about. What the internet brings to our culture is a denial of the argument of force.
The open exchange of ideas opens the flood gates to a lot of moronic, trite, stereotypical non-thoughts expressed by the likes of Mr. Katz. And the proper response in the internet age (just as in every prior age) is not to censor (for censorship is impossible) but to meet in the arena of ideas and duke it out rhetorically.
The best thoughts will win. We are geeks, as geeks, we use logic every day to do our jobs. Software calls us back from our bigoted opinions to something tangible, something real in the logical structure of whatever is. This day-in-day out exposure to unforgiving logic changes the geek brain, making it more fitted to rational thought.
The english majors can pool their bigotry and use politics to suppress those they find unfashionable, or politically incorrect. The internet gives such arbiters of culture the middle-finger salute and builds on whatever works and jettisons that which does not.
i long for the day the internet jettisons Mr. Katz.
Sadly I think that this new age of enlightenment will also become a new age of marketing and promotion. We will have to put up with more of this crap than less. It will become even easier to promote cheezy bands synthesized by the record labels. In fact you could break it down into a few easy steps.
Step One: Form your band. Go hunting for washed up models, or teenage boys. No musical talent necessary. Develop a ficticious personality for each member that is designed to appeal to a different segment of the market. Put together an overall image for the band and write the bio's accordingly. Create a catch phrase and associate it with the band. Build the image.
Step Two: Get AOL to push your band of lipsyncing models / street tough teen sweethearts as featured artist of the month. You give AOL some green, they push MP3's into everyone's face. Look for other opportunities for exposure. Get their song on Dawson's Creek. Pay Extra to do a piece on the band hyping their meteoric rise to fame. Get them in Bop and Teen Beat, you can fill the vaccuum that was left when JTT grew up. Be creative. Hype the image.
Step Three: Start cashing in. Plan a tour, make a movie. Work them until they drop, because they will only be popular for so long. Once they start to die out, move on. Cash in on the image.
So, Im looking for three to five washed up models...
Having worked in several European countries and on both US coasts, my view is that Europe has oppression/censorship in law but not in practice, whereas the US has it in practice but not in law. An example: my current home, France, has a huge wriggly mass of laws governing workspaces, wages, sexual harassment etc... and everyone ignores them in favour of what "feels right". Contrarily, the US has relatively few actual laws against stuff... yet your life can be destroyed merely because someone found something you said offensive. (The college student who was fined $1000s because he asked a girl for a date comes to mind.)
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
What I meant about censorship succeeding in Germany was the Compuserve fiasco.
...which, as someone above has pointed out, is fairly specific to Germany and its situation. Because of its paticular past, and the very real threat of Neo-Nazism, the government there has to be careful.
Don't automatically condemn censorship simply because it's censorship. Occasionally (such as in this case), it's quite legitimate.
Where there is a specific reason for it, censorship can and should be condoned. When not, it's just stupid. Too many people can't seem to make this distinction.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
As the reader it's not our problem to resolve Katz's ambiguity, rather it was his problem.
/.'s icons was called "Enlightenment".
Agreed. He should have stated that it was no co-incidence that one of the more popular WM's was called "Enlightenment", rather than not being a co-incidence that one of
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
The people who create things are the movers and shakers of a generation, and by and large, these will prove to be the Digital Industrialists, all of whom are netizens.
Yep.
In the context (of the baby-boom years), I believe it to be no co-incidence that the current US president is one who "never inhaled."
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Katz may be right -- this may be the next Golden Age of history. If it is, I'd like to know who our Kant is. Or our Jefferson, our Voltaire, our Nietzche. The depth of thought in this Brave New Pasture goes no further than "don't step in the warm ones".
One Word: MEEPT!!
(But sersiously, though. Despite the outward idiocy he/she/it initially conveys, there is usually underneath it all a keen understanding of the situation. If nothing else, reading MEEPT's posts usually makes me think. Believe it or not, I actively seek them out.)
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- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
You have made a number of assumptions here. I neither dispute nor promote them, but I do propose some alternate assumptions.
I propose the "net community" (post-"Enlightenment") as being closer to AOL than to Slashdot (as did the original poster). I propose that it be populated by more H4xx0Rz than hackers. People who do read headlines with more interest than peer comments.
Have you ever rooted around on a Hotline tracker? Hotline servers today sport a H4xx0R-to-hacker ratio of probably 1000-to1. And Spice Girl MP3's (at least last time I looked) outweighed "real music" MP3's by about the same ratio.
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- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Speaking as simply a geek-of-all-trades and only part-time choir boy I don't think it's unnecessary to preach to the converted. And I do agree with getting the historical perspective on it.
I would have said what we are living in today is similar to the Axial Period some two millenia ago (give or take up to 2.5 centuries) when many of the great prophets and sages really came into their own.
It was a time when the priest-kings of the old civilisations started to lose absolute control because too many plebians knew how to read and write and many nut-case prophets (at least to the establishment of the day) started speaking up.
But that's just me.
If what I said is nonsense,
I'm making a point with it.
If what I said makes perfect sense,
you obviously missed the point.
Something all you netheads haven't figured out yet is that there IS universal net access.... in a place you haven't been in years, your local library. Granted, some of them run NetNanny, but you can still get NewsMax and such like....
You don't even have to have a library card. Just walk up to one and start surfing.
So there.
Funny I should read this on Sunday morning about the time when normal people are settling down for their weekly harangue about how we're all going to hell in a handbasket.
ESR took the movement to the level of sociology. This pegs it as something even bigger. And I think he's right. The hacker culture has a bigger sense of right and wrong than Joe Random Nonuser. It's not morals, it's ethics. It totally ignores all the dusty old books and figures out for itself (here's the Kantian Imperative again (you can't get out of your head to check something objectively)) the best course of action, ignoring things like laws and social taboos and concentrating on the real outcome. And in so doing, we give the Big Finger to the Cathedral folks, and we've scared the bejeezus out of them. This is Bigger Than The Both Of Us, folks.... we ARE history, in the raw. Make it count.
There are no dress rehearsals.
We ARE professionals, and
this IS the Big Time.
Read novels on line? Well, actually, several. There are several news groups that post writings from anybody. "Sturgeons Law is pretty optimistic, '90% of everything is crap'", but occasionally you can find a jewel buried in all the crap. It makes the search worthwhile.
It's bad luck to be superstitious
Compare this with the article about GNOME in the Philly News, quoted in another /. article today (3/21). That author may have meant well, but Katz has more knowledge of Linux in his little finger than that poor fellow had in his whole body.
Of course, maybe I'm mixed up about what Katz is trying to do.
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Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Actually, RMS may become our equivalent of Samuel Adams. From what I remember of my Am. Hist, Sam Adams was considered a firebrand -- rather more vocal and immoderate than a lot of his contemporaries. I can't help but think that at least a few of the other Founding Fathers (tm) thought he was a bit of a flake. Nevertheless, we remember and quote him today.
So it may be with Stallman. Or maybe not.
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Do I look like I speak for my employer?
If you want to understand the free software position, I suggest you go to the Free Software Foundation website and read about it for yourself.
I'm not sure if I agree with Richard Stallman yet, but his ideas are sufficiently well-considered, IMHO, to not be dismissed with a simple "It's socialism!" or "He doesn't understand the Real World", whatever the h*** the Real World is supposed to be.
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Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I forget who wrote it, but I read a column in which the writer said "anyone who has a 'no fear' sticker on their car or tshirt in their wardrobe should be forced to make a water run down sniper alley in Bosnia."
I think the anonymity of the net is one of the worst things there about the entire thing. My name's Andrew Kickertz, what's yours? One of the great things about the enlightenment, the reformation, and every other transforming movements was the fact that the people involved were out there on the front lines. I'm not saying Jefferson was out there on bunker hill with a musket, but like many of the founding fathers, he risked his life by letting the british know who he was. Martin Luther risked his by signing his name to the 99 theses (not feces, kids.) On
I find it funny that all the christian posts have no name attached to them. (sorry if I missed anyone, this is a generalization.)
As always, Andrew Kickertz
Try: The Fray for an example of what I consider an excellent arts site. And, more importantly, what I think is the perfect use for the net: people communicating. Not point to point, but rather giving everyone a chance to see what they have to say. Also, check out This for a pretty cool analysis of what the web is doing to us.
As always, Andrew Kickertz
The world's always changing, Tones. See, I just changed your name to Tones. The world was changing a million years ago, it'l be changing a million years from now (assuming we don't screw it up before then.) Of course, it's changing faster now. At least, technology is changing faster.
Anyone else think that too much security/prosperity/leisure time is poison for a society? I mean, seems to me, that stuff breeds pedophilia and the like. Just my opinion.
As always, Andrew Kickertz
There's a cartoonist named Ted Rall that should really be commenting on this topic. I think some of you have (unintentionally) ripped your comments from his cartoons. Anyway, one of his cartoons has two rich suits talking at dinner.
Suit 1: "Do you ever think that all the people we've screwed over will ever get wise to all our tricks and leave us hanging from lampposts?"
Suit 2: "Have some more champagne!"
So we've got our work cut out for us. Get rid of some of 'em, they'll start listening. Maybe if someone assassinated some High up officials in the government, one of whom shares a surname with the Master of Funk, another of whom is called by the term for a bull attack, and yet others whose names I can't think of, and no one cared, we'd get people's attention.
Yeah.
Actually, I think I'm a personal libertarian and an organizational democrat. Because I believe that people should be able to do as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone doing it. At the same time, I believe that companies like M$, and more importantly, like Dow Chemicals and the like, should have the crap hammered out of them if they screw up. I just can't buy that "leaving everyone alone to do things their way" crap that too many libertarians believe in. I had a friend in high school who was libertarian, arguing that we shouldn't have zoning laws, at which point I mentioned that given the way corporate america has handled itself in the past, that would leave us with chemical plants pumping toxic smoke in the inner city, next to schools.
I fully agree!
/. regarding some people that where being sued for badmouthing a company on Yahoo!
Sometime ago there was a post on
For me (i live in Sweden) that feels very distant, in Sweden we have freedom of speech, something that the US government seems to have a problem adapting...
Of course this is a best case senario, I tend to think that the internet has given birth to a forum for people with nothing to say and lots of time to say it, run off at the mouth. This leads to a situation where there is so much garbage around that it is impossible to find the pertinate information.
I am not one of the Katz haters amongst the slashdot crowd. This was a literate and well thought out article. I enjoyed reading it, and I agree the Internet is an important and striking development.
Still, I wonder -- every generation thinks there's will be 'the big one.' They will change everything and make the world a new place. In the 60s, the counter culture movement had very high, and often admirable, ambitions for the world, most of whivch petered out when they all became chartered accountants, lawyers, (not to mention mathematicians & carpenter's wives, to quote Dylan). Although the 'net is by no means generation-specific, I still wonder if it isn't some kind of fad.
Tom Standage recently published a book called The Victorian Internet, which chronicles the rise and fall of the telegraph system. I haven't read the book yet -- I hope to soon -- but I heard him interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air. Really fascinating stuff. Exactly what is happening socially now due to the Internet happened then -- romances, complaints due to the increasing speed of business, worries about its pervasiveness, etc. Yes, the telegraph definetly changed the world, but now we are all back where we started and making the same accolades and complaints about the 'next big thing.'
On a final side note, I think whether or not Katz 'belongs here' is a moot point. His articles create tons of back and forth conversation, and that is exactly what Commander Taco wants.
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
Er, I admit I haven't gotten around to reading Arcadia yet (I'm *not* a Stoppard fan, and SiL was tripe), but romanticism was a revolt *against* the enlightenment, so I don't understand this comment.
;-)
Not surprisingly, though, the Romantics produced better art than the Enlightenment.
As usual, your comments are worth reading. I may not always agree with you, but I'm always happy to read what you write.
Information is not Knowledge
Sure there will be, if the government gets its way. Put a decoding chip in your brain. Write everything in a special code with a watermark. Your brain won't read any copies but the original, an unless you have a super memory (which will probably be repressed) you will not be able to reproduce the original work exactly
Like most other Katz articles, this has one main point: that we are currently undergoing a great revolution, that society is changing from the bottom up, and that our world will never be the same. This may very well be true, though of course there's a long way to go, but are we really undergoing a revolution greater than anything we've experienced in our collective lifetimes?
Journalists and politicians are constantly telling us that we live in an important time, that great things are happenning, that this is an incredibly important juncture in the history of our nation/the world. Ever heard a speech about how this is a completely unimportant time in the world, and how not much is changing, we're just going on with our lives? Not me. I've also never seen an article about how we live in a modern Dark Age, where nothing much different goes on, an era that future generations will forget about completely.
People have been talking about whatever the current revolution is for as long as I can remember (which isn't that long, but...). Every decade has its own great advance which will revolutionize everything. In the late 90s, and probably early 00s, we have the Digital Revolution. The world is always changing, always will be, just as there are always people who talk ad nauseum about how the world is changing more than ever before. The great change due to computers, the Internet, and even /. will be when people stop talking about how it's going to revolutionize, and actually start recognizing it as a normal, integral part of their life, indistinct from the other parts. And, presumably, Jon Katz and the rest of the essay-writing world (by the way, I did think it was a good essay) will find another revolution.
RMS has enriched all our lives as much as any other great person in history.
How has the life of the average person been enriched by free software/RMS? Truly great people - and there haven't been many - have done something for the universal good. What percentage of the population knows what GNU means? Writing Emacs does not make you a candidate for sainthood...
The good thing about all this, is it's already started, and I guess this couldn't ever stop since now (except for a nuclear war, but I prefer to don't take that in mind).
So, Uncle Sam will not have the opportunity to stop the colonies from taking advantadge of Open/Free software, freedom of speech -with many ways of making it really anonymous-, and the enormous amount of cultural and educational sources.
Imagine any of the poor countries (like mine) of America just not using M$ soft again! And not paying a cent to Gates nor any of the multinational enterprises that sucks our blood!
Viva la revolución!
yadda yadda
To the dear Anonymous Coward that posted this, please go read some Nietsche (specifically, his writings on God, morality, and ethics in Also Sprach Zarathustra)and then come back to discuss this. People need no moral or ethical "code" to follow; that is, unless they are weak-willed or need others to think for them.
Give an infinite number of monkeys infinite bandwidth and they'll eventually take themselves seriously and write /
To the dear Anonymous Coward that posted this, please go read some Nietsche
Why?, who the fuck is Nietsche to say what people need (or even want), sorry but I find it a bit silly when people dig out the "well xxx says this" when it comes to human nature, Nietsche only knew one persons mind, his own.
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My sometimes helpful blog
> Something like this doesn't belong here,
I actually rather like the broader perspective that Katz brings. If you don't like him, set your profile to exclude him.
"Software is not information", you say.
But it is.
Anything that you can tell someone else,
or that can be communicated in any manner,
for that matter, is information.
(Matter + Energy + Information = Universe)
To comment on another thing - "Denver is 5,183 feet above sea level". It took someone quite some time to figure that out. Centuries of development,
I would have said. Yet you just told me that for free. Don't you - don't I - then owe that person?
The difference is not clear.
>> According to your definition then,
>> Faith = trust (with no evidence), love (with no >> evidence) friendship with a god (whom you have >> no evidence exists) and "knowledge of his >> existence" (*with* *no* *evidence*)
>> If its so evident, show me the evidence.
Unfortunately, Chrisitanity isn't something that can be easily presented to someone so afraid to believe that man doesn't hold the ultimate power.
Everyone keeps talking about evidence. Why? Almost everyone I have seen rebuke Christianity holds some enormouse reverence for science which is basically a belief system in itself. Almost everything new and exciting in science is based on theories. Theories are then taken as 99% truth and more theories are based upon them.
Looking at christianity in a purely physical sense, the "Creationist" theory is just as (if not more so based on factual evidence) valid as Evolution (as an example of theory/faith based concepts that are held in high regard).
Christianity has something that science (and people caught up in physical based religions (Socialism, Capitalism... whatever) don't have. Real evidence. I have experienced Christianity in a Spiritual way that cannot be emulated in any of the beliefs that many of you hold to be true.
Christianity (not religion) has nothing to do with moral, codes of ethics, restrictions or anything else. It actually doesn't have that much to do with the bible.
Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus that allows us access to God (a topic for another time). Sure, we have a book of conduct that guides us to forfilling and loving lives. But certainly following the rules doesn't get you to heaven. It says in the bible that (paraphrased) "It is not by works or anything on earth that get you to heaven, but by faith". If you believe in Christ and do your upmost to have a realtionship with him, then you are on your way to heaven.
The rest (morals, Bible etc) come later. Along with a relationship with Jesus comes spiritual power. Abilities most humans can only dream of. Healing the sick, raising the dead and potentially moving mountains (a literal example in the bible).
All of this power is available to everyone and comes through increased spiritual awareness and continued faith.
You guys get so caught up in defending your right to believe anything you want (no matter how damaging it may or may not be) that you forget that man holds more power than any establishment on earth can offer you.
Chrisitians have messed up pretty mightly in the past (and they will be judged in due course) but we are not unlike other groups.
And we are certainly getting better at expressing the truth. You guys read so much literature. WHy not try some christian stuff?
I don't mean the bible... SHe can be pretty dry sometimes. WHy not some Pro-christian stuff that explains why we beleive what we believe and some testimonials to go with that.
The internet is full of this stuff that will allow you to become well read in areas of chrisitanity. Just choose your favorite search engine.
Thanks.
-- Evan Read
Linux -- "It is computing, Jim, but not as we know it"
"The future comes 60 minutes an hour no matter who you are or what you do." The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
My point was that people critize Christians for believing without hard evidence (something I will talk more about below) when many a scientific theory (for example, the world was supposed to be flat) was taken are absolute FACT even though no real proof existed (incidently, the bible mentions something about the earth being round in Genesis).
The above was a rebuttal to the "faith is no way to believe in something" argument I felt/feel I am getting from you and may be of interest to others.
>>Your internal christain experience is NOT proof >>in any way for anyone BUT you, nor would be the >>religious experiences of Druids, Mormoms, Hidnus >>or any other faith.
That is true. But my point was that I HAVE PROOF. It is impossible for me to show you over this medium, but I want you to know that I have hard evidence to support my views. My experience doesn't help you per se, but I can tell you that people everywhere around you have their own proof like I do.
>>Your comments on theories are well taken but
>> missguided. In science a theory is always open >>to debate. Theories can and have been proven >>wrong in part or in entirety.
As it has been in Christianity. It isn't so much a proving of right and wrong as it is about moving away from tradtions that are not of the Bible, but are of the adgendas of man.
Any Christian who will not stand to have his beliefs questioned and rebuked and is not willing to re-evaluate his beliefs based on new informaiton is a fool indeed.
The Christian bible (unlike similar Morman and JW texts) encourages us to question all things and that a person who doesn't make every effort to formulate his own confictions will be dealt with during Judgement day.
I encourage your input. I am on a journey.
>>Science realizes it might be wrong and is always >>prepared to correct itself in light of new >>evidence. In fact science works, in great part, >>by stating a theory then trying to prove it >>wrong. As it is proven wrong and corrected, the >>theory stabalizes into something that gets >>closer to the truth. Christains believe they >>have all the answers up front and the facts must >>fall in-line.
I can assure you that all of the Christian texts have gone under much close scrutiny and it is my belief that the Christians are getting better accepting new ideas and criticims re its traditions.
It is important to separate christianity from religion and the church. Christianity is simple one who has a relationship with Christ. The church is the body of christ (who is suppose to use the bible as its moral code). Of course, this isn't always a perfect relationship. But of course, there are all sorts of stories of the scientific community (or church - the word simply means "gathering of people") discouraging investigation and banning texts based on contriversial ideas. The too don't like to "rock the boat".
>>This why scientists were hunted by the church >>for saying that the sun goes round the earth and >>that the earth is not the center of everything, >>and that the earth is round. Each step >>christians "assumed" they were right and science >>was wrong and THEY were wrong. They were wrong >>because they attempted to define their personal >>and group religious exeriences as proof of their >>books account of history.
I appreciate your use of a past tense and for using such an illustrative if limited example. Those guys deserved to be shot down. Quite simply, they could not find any evidense the issue in the bible, therefore only had science to fall back on.
I am not aware of any evidence of events to back up your case here, but if true, I think you will find that church leaders chose a popular stance at the time and, like many tribes still in existance today, what they said became policy.
Today things are much less centralised and people are encouraged to think much more (a sign of times if nothing else.)
>>The most dagerous part of your message is very >>much a "Christain Science" soapbox arguement >>that evolution is a religious faith and >>creationism is science. They make this arguement >>in an attempt to get creationism taught in >>schools as an alternative to theories on >>evolution. To paraphrase Azimov on the topic, >>you might as well teach Storkism as a theory on >>child birth or clausism as a theory on gift >>giving. The level of science would be no better.
What is wrong with Creationist Theory being a science? I have studied both and there really is more evidence to suggest Creationist theory is true.
The theory of Uniformtarianism is quite a hard thing to prove given many elements of nature. A Flood is perfect to explain many large formations of coal and other things.
I think it would be good for kids to learn all theories in schools. They need to make their own convictions. Something best done with well-balanced ideas.
>>The root problem is cultural in the two >>communities, science and religion. In science if >>you stand up and say I think the established >>theories are wrong, here is why and you layout >>your reasons with logic or proof to back it up, >>your ideas are considered, hammered on and >>integrated into the theory, improving the >>theory.
Do you think this is always the case? I have heard many a horror story to the contrary.
>>Quatum Physics is a good example.
>>Newtonian physics was well established and taken >>for granted. In religion, however, and >>christainity in particular, you get hunted, >>killed, outcast and dammed to bad places if you >>come up with new ideas that go against the >>established truths as the christains hold them.
Anyone that kills, outcasts or damns anyone for any reason other than self defense is seen very badly in Christ's eyes and will be judged harshly.
I pray the victims of these people are looked upon with sympathy by Christ. I really do.
>>Martin Luther, the mormons, Galilao, Darwin. All >>of them had their ideas summarily dispmissed by >>christian dogmatics and mainy had prices put on >>their heads.
This is a less common occurance now than ever. If we don't take their ideas into consideration (and I can tell you that just the other week I was studying Mormonism and Darwin isn't far behind), we are doing everyone (ourselves and you) a grave disservice.
I will put no price on anyone head and approach discussions like this with love and peace.
>>I don't mean to be hard on religion. I think it >>has its purpose. But that purpose is NOT to >>answer questions of science any more than >>science should answering questions of faith. Did >>man evolve from lower forms of life? This is a >>question for science. What does it mean, that >>man evolved from lower forms of life, and what >>does it say about us as spiritual beings? These >>are questions for faith, which science is ill >>equipt to answer.
Here is where I disagree and the fact that you mis-understand christianity (different from "religion") becomes so clear.
You treat Christianity like an optional extra. Like a fad. "You got some emotional hangups???? Try Drugs.... therepy.... religion... yoga..."...
Chrisitanity can solve many of man's ills, but that is not its prime directive. The whole idea is to come back to a place man once was. With God. Christ is the conduit. Everything else is secondary.
I know many christians who believe in things that seem, to me (but not to them), contrary to the bible. But that is ok. It is their belief in Christ that sets them free and earns them eternal life.
The creation of man is covered in the bible, hence we follow that model of thinking. There are less holes in the theory that Darwinism (when the concept of an omnipotent God are overcome). Where the bible doesn't cover an issue, you should expect chrisitans to come to the "mainstream" scientific round table (hopefully it will be round
Thanks for the feedback....
-- Evan Read
Linux -- "It is computing, Jim, but not as we know it"
"The future comes 60 minutes an hour no matter who you are or what you do." The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Again, yet another person that doesn't understand the basic fundementals of Christianity. God didn't create animals because he loves them. He created them to feed and entertain man. Some animals whole life is sex then death... so what. God does things for reasons we don't understand.
Hey, I believe that God uses Micro Evolution (evolution within the species) to grow species. I simply don't accept that species can grow into new species....
-- Evan Read
Linux -- "It is computing, Jim, but not as we know it"
"The future comes 60 minutes an hour no matter who you are or what you do." The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
looks like you're on a roll. this makes two excellent articles in a row. :-)
keep it up!
-- ken williams
Ayn Rand's model looks good at first, but it is built on the ideals of pure capitalism, which are completely false. The capitalism she envisioned is not at all like today's world, and is extremely harsh. I think America has proven in the past that unbridled capitalism (i.e. US Steel) is detructive and socially wrong, while "socialized capitalism", as I like to call it, (welfare/social security/unions) is undeniably the most productive system ever inplemented, despite is inefficiencies. Pure socialism is no better, probably worse than pure capitalism, but the wavering happy medium is doing very well right now.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
Has anyone noticed that the larger the comment the more responses, flaming or not. Which leads leads me to believe why there are so many Katz haters. And peoples, it is very easy to pick someone's comment apart and find something wrong with it. It would be better, in my opinion (whoa, did I right that out?), to simply respond with a contrary opinion.
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I'm sure you caught the title and it's play on words: "A Different Kind of Enlightenment".
/. (and perhaps some other meaning that I myself did not catch.)
(Not flaming or otherwise trying to be a smartass.)
IMHO the title is referring to "A Different Kind of Englightenment" as a) the Digital Age we live in and b) a nod to the usual meaning of Enlightenment on
Cheers,
"I think for myself, and I choose God"? "think for myself" and "God" in the same sentence is ridiculous - religion is entirely about letting other people think for you, so that you can have your nice little black and white world, with nothing to challenge your intellect, or worry you, or anything like that. I'm surprised you're even prepared to learn how to use a God-less machine like a computer . . .
The least you could do is go somewhere where you won't sicken those who actually DO think for themselves, rather than merely say that they do.
My very own DeCSS mirror.
"The enlightenement came about because of Christian thought, people in the middle ages began to study the world because it is God's creation and as such, is good. And because people began to observe the world, the scientific method was developed from people looking at God's creation and trying to understand it."
Dream on! The scientific method, in the sense that it exists now, was not developed until people stopped following the Christian line of thinking and tried to reason for themselves.
One of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is this idea that I think is called 'absolute truth'. The church has a direct line to God, and thus what the church says is self-evidently true, because, coming from the church, it must have come direct from God (is it just me, or is there a problem here?). The thing is, up until the rise of the secular world (since the enlightenment, by a strange coincidence), the church was able to impose it's absolute truth on the rest of the European world, by force of arms, or by sending in the Inquisition. People don't realise it these days, but the church in the middle ages was not just a political entity, but one of the most powerful political entities in that part of the world. The renaisance started the rot, by creating a group of people with a lot of money, gained by trading. This money (and the resultant power that they had) started to shift the balance from the church to the secular world. The Enlightenment came about when the secular world became powerful enough to really break with the church, and no longer had to worry about being burnt at the stake for saying things the church didn't like. Once that happened people were free to start thinking for themselves, and they did. That was when science as we know it now began. Christianity was the enemy of science in the early days, in fact was the reason that science did not start up much earlier (the Arab world did masses of very important research long before even the wealthy in the Chistian world were literate).
Please, if you want to defend Christianity, don't do so by claiming that it encouraged the development of science. Christianity has been probably the single greatest impediment to the development of science in history.
My very own DeCSS mirror.
Katz alludes to this, but maybe it's worth being explicit: flames are not new.
We generally agree nowadays that e.g. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln (to pick easy ones) were basically Good Guys(TM), even if we might want to pick apart some of their views and/or actions.
But you really ought to have a look back at some of the things their contemporaries had to say about them! True, there weren't quite so many ad hominem arguments--at least, it seems so to us--but that was more a matter of custom than anything. We seem to have lost the abilities to damn with faint praise, and call people dirty names without actually saying anything overtly nasty, that were pretty well taken for granted not long ago. Part of that's because so many of us are young, and haven't learned to let things go right past us if badly aimed.
Flames? I don't know if any of it's on line anywhere, but if you want to see flames, go back and look at what some of the contemporary newspapers had to say about Abraham Lincoln.
Regards,
Ric Locke
Several posters have grumbled about how little the J. Random Slashdotter knows about art and the humanities, and they're right. It's a damn shame when you try to talk about the Enlightenment, and the only response is, what about Gnome...
But if you really want to get scared, go ask an artist about technology. If the artist is a sculptor, you might get a little materials science, blacksmith-and-wizard variety; for the rest of them, fahgeddit.
They (as a group, with honorable exceptions) decided long ago that people who actually do things are essentially helots, necessary to a comfortable existence but beneath the dignity of high-class people. And then they took ars gratia artis and overgeneralized it into disappearing up their own assholes.
Sharyn McCrumb got it: "In the engineering department we [use email], and it won't take three thousand years for the English department to [start using it]. Two thousand tops." [from Bimbos of the Death Sun]
Slashdot is a little young, but check out some of the threads Nick Petreley gets at InfoWorld. You'd have a hell of a lot better chance getting an explanation of the Hundred Years War on Slashdot than you would of getting any clue as to what TCP/IP is all about from any artistic group.
And it's not because they're stupid, either. They've just decided that it's got no class.
Sorry, but this is going a little overboard. I know the internet is a revolution, and open source is changing/will change some (but not all) of how software is made. However, this article sounds more like the ramblings of a religious zealot rather than a cohesive statement or argument by a philosopher. (Blah, blah, blah, YEAH! Just like free software! blah, blah blah...)
I thought this article was going to talk about specific examples of similarities between historical revolutions and the ones happening now. He gave none. Just lots of genneralizations.
I'm not impressed.
Katz provides a service that this web site sorely needs; he gives a good perspective on where we, collectively, are going. Otherwise this would just be one more technical site, where you couldn't see the forest for the trees. I read slashdot because it is an easy way for me to stay current, hell, expand my scope (I did a serious career change last year and I am now a computer guy making a decent living). But one of the things that has me checking slashdotat least once a day is a hope that I'll see a new posting from Mr. Katz. I believe his assessment of the promises and pitfalls of this new world we're creating to be a fair one.
It occurs to me that the developing threads here highlight some of the points mentioned in the article... people are posting replies, and then other people flame them, or at least speak rather harshly to them.
I think the problem is that there's a kind of 'baring of the soul' when one goes online, because of the sometimes mentioned 'imaginary buffer' of the Net. When one sees something which is contrary to one's personal beliefs, it's a sort of personal affront to those beliefs. In order for reasoned discourse to ensue, one needs to realize this, and be watchful of one's reactions. There's often a tendency to blow up and spew vitriol onto the keyboard in such situations... this typically isn't good. In my experience, such writing doesn't serve to persuade, dissuade, or even inform.
In order to produce reasoned dialog, I think one should keep in mind that, unless one's full name, social security number (or equivalent), and parentage is specifically mentioned, one shouldn't react so violently and should, instead, produce a counter example or logical refutation.
Just my thoughts, though.
- Jonathan
..."enlightenment's" offspring, corresponding to the totalitarian communism and fascism produced by the original "enlightenment?"
Did you know that the Mayans wrote books, on paper. Most people don't. That because Christian missionaries convinced them that the bible was all they needed and made them burn all their books. Which is why we know so little about their history. Now that is Christian enlightenment!
And what about Buddhist enlightenment? Hindu, Native American Spiritualism, which by the way, has been around longer than Judaism, let alone Christianity.
When Christians begin to believe that they have a monopoly on morality, or that they invented freedom, they lose the best part of their own faith. They lose Christ.
My little take on it: those who follow Christianity end up hateful, spiteful, dogmatic, judgmental and often Republican. Those who follow Christ end up level headed, open-minded and above all, non-judgmental. The Dahlia Lama is probably more a follower of Christ than any Church going, bible-thumping American Christian I've ever met (with a couple of possible exceptions.)
Sympathy accepted! Thank you.
Dude. Have some more champagne!
The most dagerous part of your message is very much a "Christain Science" soapbox arguement that evolution is a religious faith and creationism is science. They make this arguement in an attempt to get creationism taught in schools as an alternative to theories on evolution. To paraphrase Azimov on the topic, you might as well teach Storkism as a theory on child birth or clausism as a theory on gift giving. The level of science would be no better.
The root problem is cultural in the two communities, science and religion. In science if you stand up and say I think the established theories are wrong, here is why and you layout your reasons with logic or proof to back it up, your ideas are considered, hammered on and integrated into the theory, improving the theory. Quatum Physics is a good example. Newtonian physics was well established and taken for granted. In religion, however, and christainity in particular, you get hunted, killed, outcast and dammed to bad places if you come up with new ideas that go against the established truths as the christains hold them. Martin Luther, the mormons, Galilao, Darwin. All of them had their ideas summarily dispmissed by christian dogmatics and mainy had prices put on their heads.
I don't mean to be hard on religion. I think it has its purpose. But that purpose is NOT to answer questions of science any more than science should answering questions of faith. Did man evolve from lower forms of life? This is a question for science. What does it mean, that man evolved from lower forms of life, and what does it say about us as spiritual beings? These are questions for faith, which science is ill equipt to answer.
Katz may be right -- this may be the next Golden Age of history. If it is, I'd like to know who our Kant is. Or our Jefferson, our Voltaire, our Nietzche. The depth of thought in this Brave New Pasture goes no further than "don't step in the warm ones".
Huxley and Orwell were optimists. Welcome to the Brave New Banner Ad -- watch your step as you wend your way to MiniNet and its Room 101 of consumer hell.
It's the same old herd in a more efficient digital pasture.
--------------- Murphy was an otpimist.