Having used this book, I do think it's an excellent product. I strongly reccomend it to all Java programmers.
I don't think this is exactly the same as what is proposed in the article, but it does show there's many ways to approach distribution and availability beyond the current models.
What we will likely see n the future are several different approaches to distributing text information, not one. Different models fit different needs, areas, and people.
Open Source Books? Why not? We've seen positive effects in software.
I figure Open Source is inevitable/desirable for two reasons:
Information constantly accumulates, and unless draconian attempts (see below) are made, more and more information becomes avilable to people, and this information eventually is open to those who wish it. Open Source merely accelerates and goes with this trend.
In the Information Age, control of information is becoming the obsession (in the full pathological sense) of many companies and organizations. It is necessary to take a more Open stand against such organizations for our own sakes, and I believe the inevitable result is a more Open approach to information - the ridiculous laws and bad corporate policies will not stand the test of time nor sanity.
So, Open Source Books? Why not, it's worth a shot. It's better than not trying.
The question is, however, how can these liscences and concepts be applied effectively. It's only by exploring extremes that we find a reasonable center.
Besides, one man's tool is another man's art and vice versa.
Sadly, the Olympic Games ARE "just a commercial event" at this point. Overblown, overcommercialized, and mired in politics, legal weirdness, and questions of bribery.
And now, this. Now the communications of those participating, those contributing, those we want to see and hear of, are limited. The IOC is now in the same category as the RIAA in my book - people busy ignoring those doing the work and snatching up as much intellectual property as possible.
Re:Once the smoke clears...
on
Me-Commerce
·
· Score: 2
Hail to the Queen;)
I got my BS in psychology, found I sucked as a grad student, became a temp/secretary, and worked my way into computing. I kept my eye out and surfed the changes. Now, ironically, my psych degree makes me valuable as a Senior Consultant as I understand people.
All we can do is adapt, I just wish there was more cultural/community/"guild" support for it. Then again, considering how humans develop . . .
I'll admit that after the "Hellmouth" series, I got rather fed up with Katz' writings. This, however, is a more rational, sober, and thoughtful article than what we've seen recently, and worth thinking about.
The Industrial Age *IS* over, and that means a lot of concepts, some quite contrived, that went with it. Just as the Industrial Age gave us the idea of standards and mass production, now these tools give us the ability to communicate across large gaps, share information, and work faster and with less localization.
What we have now is the inevitable result - an environment allowing and even encouraging an age of change, communication, and altering arrangements. It's not something we can think of as good or bad - it is here, and it's time to live with it.
One concern Katz doesn't address in this article that should be is that some people on "this side" of the web need to adjust to changes just as those "outside" the web need access. Whole ways of thinking are outdated, and we need the mental tools to cope with the changes.
I'm a programmer and consultant, and most anything I was taught about the workplace turned irrelevant about eight years ago. It wasn't an easy adjustment, even if it was a profitable one.
All the problems listed are ones I or my fellow geeks have seen multiple times, and in some cases (open accounts, bad access decision) are purely human errors and laziness.
I'm not thrilled to see my government with such shoddy security, but it really isn't unusual when one takes a look at non-governmental computer security.
The problem today is people aren't using the technology available to them AND they aren't following (or being trained in) procedures to maintain security. Anywhere.
OK, anyone want to place bets on how long it'll take Metallica and cohorts to bring lawsuits against ISPs to block Napster?
My guess is that that's the next logical extention of their policy. I myself think it will be interesting to see Metallica butt heads with ISPs - a battle of coroporate interests.
You can talk about how "elite" you are, and how stupid the other guys are - or worse, how evil they are.
And for every moment you flap your lips, you've wasted a moment you could have done something that didn't involve your own ego.
*sigh* The poor Illumnati, reduced to this;)
It's not new. It's not always reassuring.
on
Mage The Ascension
·
· Score: 3
First of all, the idea of an ascendion, enlightenment, etc. is not new. It's very, very old, thanks to some "psychepunks" like Buddha, Lao-Tzu, shamans, Chuang-Tzu, Sufi mystics, etc. Hell, Ken Wilber's book "No Boundary" fairly laid out parrerns of concious development that lead to better, healthier, more "enlightened" mental functioning. "The Secret of the Golden Flower" has been translated and commented on endlessly, and focuses on similar issues.
Snapping out of mundane, neurotic mental states is old hat.
Secondly, the "secret society of do-gooders" views of Mage and Shadowrun (NOT runner) aren't exactly reassuring in my book. It's another form of elitism - "look I'm so cool as I battle the Evil Other Guys." It's the desire to be validated via conflict - which requires an enemy in the first place. Don't trust the Deathly Cool People In A Struggle - trust the people who are more concerned with the question "am I doing any good for the world?"
Role-playing games are NOT guides to life. They're games, even with good research. Companies sell what will sell at the time. Sure, I enjoy them and I can learn about people from them - but when I want to change myself or the world I put down the dice and the manuals.
I'd say this is as lame as one-click shopping as they're patenting obvious technology. Hyperlink copyright is even lamer. Just my two cents.
In all seriousness, does anyone believe Adobe would be suing a non-media/graphics company over the interface? I somehow don't think so. This sounds like another case of flexing muscles to scare competitors.
And product differentiation? What the heck is the splash screen for?
Maybe it's time to stop worrying about how to induce understandably apathetic Americans to vote and to simply start selling stock in the Corporate Republic itself. Looks like a sure winner.
Why not buy it?
As much as I feel that Katz' article (and indeed, many of his articles), do call attention to important issues, they also miss a vital factor:
DO SOMETHNG ABOUT IT
If the Corporate Republic is on the march, infiltrate and acquire. As soon as you divide the world into 'us' versus 'them' then you give 'them' a fight and you give 'them' a chance at victory because you gave 'them' a defined target.
The world is not being taken over. There's no Master Illumnati, Bill Gates is a geek with a lot of money and questionable ethics, and most world governments couldn't find their collective backsides with their collective hands. However if we decide we've got an enemy, then an enemy we'll have.
So, instead, let's listen, and let's do something. Let's stop with the conspiracy theories and start seeing what we can do to change what doesn't work and keep what does.
We've got social changes going on - so work with it when you can, change if you must, but don't just sit there and decry it. We've got enough would-be Cassandras. Let's pay attention, analyze, then apply our knowledge.
It may be very cool and hip to talk about the decline of modern civilization - it must be since you can find doomsayers in every culture and every period. It's a good racket to get attention.
Considering how the Napster lawsuit focused the public eye on record companies (the Napster lawyer, Courtney Love's salon.com article, etc.) this was inevitable.
The public knows how the record companies have shafted people and won't be sympathetic.
The states know the record companies have shafted people and smell a chance to make money and/or impress the public.
The companies shined attention on themselves by going after Napster, and I rather imagine they aren't enjoying the results now.
Don't expect this to be the last lawsuit either - you know that once people smell an easy target, those things multiply.
Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 2
I will agree that tech culture has to grow and understand its place in the world. My culture, our culture, is a relatively new creation/aglommeration.
Worst of all, technies face a lot of bad press - that they are selfish, they are antisocial, they are narcissic, they are whiny, etc. To me, it sounds like sour grapes from people who are non-technical, looking at this accidental group of power-holders and projecting their worst fears and traits onto them. Technological people are *PEOPLE*, they didn't appear out of nowhere, so if people have problems with them, they best look at the culture they SHARE with them first.
Articles like this do call attention to the fact that technology is more and more important in politics and society. The days we programmers and engineers can sit in our labs and have fun and keep things running is over - our world is now THE world.
Unfortunately, articles like this also do nothign more than to perpetuate the stereotypes.
It gives credit to a controversial book that, from what I've seen, gets it wrong.
It complains without proposing solutions (it calls for other people to propose solutions).
It involves territorial language and statements (more testosterone poisioning anyone?)
It talks about technologists SEPARATE FROM CULTURE. As if we're a new nation, as if we didn't have parents, pastors, friends, etc.
Complaining about it does nothing - the squeaky wheel gets replaced just as often as it gets the grease. Acting as if technologists are some new species/nation does nothing more than to treat us out of context.
It's ALL our world. Problems are ALL our problems. Let's stop complaining and stop complaining about complaining. Let's address real human issues from freedom to having enough to eat, but let's not divide ourselves up any more, and let's not turn on each other.
I've seen the debate start over wether this achievement is useless or not, and it's a good question.
But, useless or not, it's also pretty cool;) Part of the fun of technology is playing skunkworks and experimenting and trying out new things. Sure you get useless stuff, but you also get some real gems.
Besides, I recall that at one point we'd never need hard drives, or we'd never need more than 640 KB of memory . . . I'm sure someone'll find a use for this one way or another.
Agreed - why must we panic over every new technology. Why is it BAD for me to want my children to be happy, healthy, attractive, and smart - as long as my concern is helping them not controlling them.
I have a sad suspicion that some people have so identified with being an "outgroup," being ostracized, that the idea of genetic engineering is threatening. "Oh no, the world has more beautiful stable and happy people, what value is there in being ostracized and thus cooly angst-ridden?"
Technology produces results and repercussions. Let's review those and make our choices. But let's stop whining about changing the world - the world is always changing. Let's make decisions instead of just panicking.
Not to be disrespectful, but what is the point of this article? Hunkapiller is smart? Gates is bad? Corporatist america ignores talent?
We just needed to know about Hunkapiller and why we should know about him. Trying to put a sociopolitical spin on the man's life and work only serves to degrade his achievements by making them part of a screed.
So let's give the guy the credit he deserves, but let's not drag him into rants and screeds, since he obviously deserves better than that.
Though the article does deal with an important issue, this should hardly come as a surprise. We've been building up to this in America for some time, IMHO.
Ours is a diverse country, but sadly most people still don't respect that and fall constantly into an us versus them mentality - the result being a whole lot of "uses" battling for territory and for "their" version of being American.
And so, we're in an inquisitional mentality, glad to ferret out any information that is deemed "unAmerican." So we pry into your sex life, we check your email, we humiliate you for your operating system choice, we don't like your religion, etc.
We operate under the delusion of a promised land that will someday be perfect (ie only containing our selected "us"). So we're glad to keep having "revolutions" under the illusion that someday we'll get it right just like we did 200 plus years ago. Someday we'll have our promised land, heaven on earth, whatever, and be proven right for all eternity.
The end result is a country of people with their hands on each others throats, a broken political system, corrupt churches, and an insanely high crime rate. And, of course, we're constantly taking each others freedom away.
We could stand for freedom, but it seems that freedom for our "us" is what we look for first. As long as that occurs, people will have no problem taking away each others rights and freedoms, and ferreting out the supposedly inviolate personality.
So, start standing up for everyone then you can fight this.
Though I found the report to be a bit alarmist, it raises several valid points about concerns that many people are just used to coping with - viruses, hackers, security issues, corruption of data.
It's easy to take these things in stride because, simply, we're used to them - we apply a patch, run the antivirus, restore that corrupt file from backup, etc. Even the various problems we've seen at e-commerce sites are ones we get used to - bad interfaces, DDOS attacks, etc.
However, when you look at how these problems can affect important social/political operations (ie voting), it becomes apparent that one has to put in extra effort to deal with these "common" problems in these environments. What we "put up with" people will NOT risk in a political/social operation like voting.
It shows how far, at times, technology has to go and how far responsibility (accountability of the service providers) has to go before we can rely on the Internet for some of our political/social tasks reliably. The chance of some of these problems may occur could be rare, but the concern is not.
Imagine an authoritarian system as a pyramid with an eye on top (look at a dollar bill). Now, the guy at the top wants to control the people down below, but he has to rely on them for information. So he uses coercion to control them and extract information, but since fear of punishment, hate, and paranoia are driving the people below, they only say what will prevent punishment. The system reflects itself down the pyramid, and due to increasing ignorance, becomes brain dead over time.
It seems this is the way we're heading with cybersleuthing, techno-eavesdropping, lawyers throwing lawsuits round, etc. We're all paranoid as hell, everyone doesn't trust anyone, and there are more and more threats each day.
It appears the FBI is making yet another contribution to this. I wonder how this will be abused (and thus increase mistrust), how errors will be made (and thus increase mistrust), and how many bad precidents and angry reactions this will produce. I wonder how many lawsuits and court cases will result from their snooping.
In their quest to enforce laws, the FBI makes themselves that much harder to trust by being more invasive. Ironic that.
The essay makes some good points - we're allowing technology to make our lives more complicated and less relaxing. I know I myself do that way too often.
However, the point is, and always has been technology is going to have results depending on how we use it. So, we've chosen to use it to make life more stressful in many cases. Let's face it, we only have ourselves to blame if we do it to ourselves or let it happen to us.
It's not a "good" versus "bad" technology or the white-hate workers versus the black-hat evil Corporatists. Life's divisions aren't that simple.
Don't like it? Change it. Take that vacation time, put your foot down, don't overtax your employees, find that job that gives you a break, stop using the net to fill up every spare moment, etc.
Our worst problem is somehow the ideal that more "work" is somehow noble, admirable, a sign of superiority. So we let ourselves work harder and longer - but for what result? Doesn't seem worth it to me.
I strongly applaud the Techno-archivists saving our videogaming heritage. These games are pure history - Diablo II, Quake III, Half-Life, all started out with Space Invaders and a plumber jumping over barrels. MAME's ROMs, as corny as it sounds, are living history of how we got to an age of 3D polygonal mapping and Direct X version-whatever.
When I find an old arcade game in some out-of-the-way-place, it's a reminder of so many things - how I got to be a programmer, how far we've come, what stood up over time, the challenges faced in the day. It's history with bits and bleeps.
It's a shame that there are copyright concerns over this - it certainly shows that copyright law needs to be strongly considered and re-evaluated. Certainly there's no malice and no profit involved in MAME sales and ROM copying.
Technology is transitory these days, and preserving history and information is of utmost importance - especially when media change (anyone use 5 1/4 disks anymore?).
One thing I love about SF, be it hard or soft, is that you can explore a lot of different themes - and I'm glad to see theological questions explored as well, and it sounds like the book is well written.
It's nice to see SF that DOESN'T play it safe. I'd like to see more hard-bitten, go-for-the-gut, what's-it-all-about SF, hard or light.
Well, to me a lack of wisdom and responsibility is "stupid" any way you slice it.
However, if the US lacks the wisdom and responsibility to handle biotechnology - who on the planet IS responsible enough?
Or, I get the impression, people would rather fight over who's able to handle the technology. While that's going on, of course, people who ARE dumb may well misuse it while people are battling over who is Wise.
The technology is here, if less than it's hyped. Time for us to get Wise and do something with it.
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems that in the current technophilic age we can find a thousand articles with one theme: "we're too dumb to handle technology" which really means "those Other People are too dumb to handle technology." I'm afraid I find this article falls under that category, despite my respect for the "Hellmouth" series.
Life is going to be what we make it and technology is a tool. We can worry about it and wring our hands - and that makes us no different than people working on censoring the internet or banning linking, it makes us busybodies who complain.
Or we can latch onto it and make it work. We can make sure we embrace the technology so that there isn't going to be a division between users and ourselves.
Or we can complain about how dumb/dangerous The Other is.
Me, I'm chosing to take control of my own life. Barbelith.
Slashdot Mirror
Having used this book, I do think it's an excellent product. I strongly reccomend it to all Java programmers.
I don't think this is exactly the same as what is proposed in the article, but it does show there's many ways to approach distribution and availability beyond the current models.
What we will likely see n the future are several different approaches to distributing text information, not one. Different models fit different needs, areas, and people.
I figure Open Source is inevitable/desirable for two reasons:
So, Open Source Books? Why not, it's worth a shot. It's better than not trying.
The question is, however, how can these liscences and concepts be applied effectively. It's only by exploring extremes that we find a reasonable center.
Besides, one man's tool is another man's art and vice versa.
Sadly, the Olympic Games ARE "just a commercial event" at this point. Overblown, overcommercialized, and mired in politics, legal weirdness, and questions of bribery.
And now, this. Now the communications of those participating, those contributing, those we want to see and hear of, are limited. The IOC is now in the same category as the RIAA in my book - people busy ignoring those doing the work and snatching up as much intellectual property as possible.
Hail to the Queen ;)
I got my BS in psychology, found I sucked as a grad student, became a temp/secretary, and worked my way into computing. I kept my eye out and surfed the changes. Now, ironically, my psych degree makes me valuable as a Senior Consultant as I understand people.
All we can do is adapt, I just wish there was more cultural/community/"guild" support for it. Then again, considering how humans develop . . .
I'll admit that after the "Hellmouth" series, I got rather fed up with Katz' writings. This, however, is a more rational, sober, and thoughtful article than what we've seen recently, and worth thinking about.
The Industrial Age *IS* over, and that means a lot of concepts, some quite contrived, that went with it. Just as the Industrial Age gave us the idea of standards and mass production, now these tools give us the ability to communicate across large gaps, share information, and work faster and with less localization.
What we have now is the inevitable result - an environment allowing and even encouraging an age of change, communication, and altering arrangements. It's not something we can think of as good or bad - it is here, and it's time to live with it.
One concern Katz doesn't address in this article that should be is that some people on "this side" of the web need to adjust to changes just as those "outside" the web need access. Whole ways of thinking are outdated, and we need the mental tools to cope with the changes.
I'm a programmer and consultant, and most anything I was taught about the workplace turned irrelevant about eight years ago. It wasn't an easy adjustment, even if it was a profitable one.
All the problems listed are ones I or my fellow geeks have seen multiple times, and in some cases (open accounts, bad access decision) are purely human errors and laziness.
I'm not thrilled to see my government with such shoddy security, but it really isn't unusual when one takes a look at non-governmental computer security.
The problem today is people aren't using the technology available to them AND they aren't following (or being trained in) procedures to maintain security. Anywhere.
OK, anyone want to place bets on how long it'll take Metallica and cohorts to bring lawsuits against ISPs to block Napster? My guess is that that's the next logical extention of their policy. I myself think it will be interesting to see Metallica butt heads with ISPs - a battle of coroporate interests.
Agreed.
;)
You can talk about how "elite" you are, and how stupid the other guys are - or worse, how evil they are.
And for every moment you flap your lips, you've wasted a moment you could have done something that didn't involve your own ego.
*sigh* The poor Illumnati, reduced to this
First of all, the idea of an ascendion, enlightenment, etc. is not new. It's very, very old, thanks to some "psychepunks" like Buddha, Lao-Tzu, shamans, Chuang-Tzu, Sufi mystics, etc. Hell, Ken Wilber's book "No Boundary" fairly laid out parrerns of concious development that lead to better, healthier, more "enlightened" mental functioning. "The Secret of the Golden Flower" has been translated and commented on endlessly, and focuses on similar issues.
Snapping out of mundane, neurotic mental states is old hat.
Secondly, the "secret society of do-gooders" views of Mage and Shadowrun (NOT runner) aren't exactly reassuring in my book. It's another form of elitism - "look I'm so cool as I battle the Evil Other Guys." It's the desire to be validated via conflict - which requires an enemy in the first place. Don't trust the Deathly Cool People In A Struggle - trust the people who are more concerned with the question "am I doing any good for the world?"
Role-playing games are NOT guides to life. They're games, even with good research. Companies sell what will sell at the time. Sure, I enjoy them and I can learn about people from them - but when I want to change myself or the world I put down the dice and the manuals.
I'd say this is as lame as one-click shopping as they're patenting obvious technology. Hyperlink copyright is even lamer. Just my two cents.
In all seriousness, does anyone believe Adobe would be suing a non-media/graphics company over the interface? I somehow don't think so. This sounds like another case of flexing muscles to scare competitors.
And product differentiation? What the heck is the splash screen for?
Why not buy it?
As much as I feel that Katz' article (and indeed, many of his articles), do call attention to important issues, they also miss a vital factor:
DO SOMETHNG ABOUT IT
If the Corporate Republic is on the march, infiltrate and acquire. As soon as you divide the world into 'us' versus 'them' then you give 'them' a fight and you give 'them' a chance at victory because you gave 'them' a defined target.
The world is not being taken over. There's no Master Illumnati, Bill Gates is a geek with a lot of money and questionable ethics, and most world governments couldn't find their collective backsides with their collective hands. However if we decide we've got an enemy, then an enemy we'll have.
So, instead, let's listen, and let's do something. Let's stop with the conspiracy theories and start seeing what we can do to change what doesn't work and keep what does.
We've got social changes going on - so work with it when you can, change if you must, but don't just sit there and decry it. We've got enough would-be Cassandras. Let's pay attention, analyze, then apply our knowledge.
It may be very cool and hip to talk about the decline of modern civilization - it must be since you can find doomsayers in every culture and every period. It's a good racket to get attention.
It doesn't fix anything though.
The companies shined attention on themselves by going after Napster, and I rather imagine they aren't enjoying the results now.
Don't expect this to be the last lawsuit either - you know that once people smell an easy target, those things multiply.
Worst of all, technies face a lot of bad press - that they are selfish, they are antisocial, they are narcissic, they are whiny, etc. To me, it sounds like sour grapes from people who are non-technical, looking at this accidental group of power-holders and projecting their worst fears and traits onto them. Technological people are *PEOPLE*, they didn't appear out of nowhere, so if people have problems with them, they best look at the culture they SHARE with them first.
Articles like this do call attention to the fact that technology is more and more important in politics and society. The days we programmers and engineers can sit in our labs and have fun and keep things running is over - our world is now THE world.
Unfortunately, articles like this also do nothign more than to perpetuate the stereotypes.
Complaining about it does nothing - the squeaky wheel gets replaced just as often as it gets the grease. Acting as if technologists are some new species/nation does nothing more than to treat us out of context.
It's ALL our world. Problems are ALL our problems. Let's stop complaining and stop complaining about complaining. Let's address real human issues from freedom to having enough to eat, but let's not divide ourselves up any more, and let's not turn on each other.
I've seen the debate start over wether this achievement is useless or not, and it's a good question.
;) Part of the fun of technology is playing skunkworks and experimenting and trying out new things. Sure you get useless stuff, but you also get some real gems.
But, useless or not, it's also pretty cool
Besides, I recall that at one point we'd never need hard drives, or we'd never need more than 640 KB of memory . . . I'm sure someone'll find a use for this one way or another.
Agreed - why must we panic over every new technology. Why is it BAD for me to want my children to be happy, healthy, attractive, and smart - as long as my concern is helping them not controlling them.
I have a sad suspicion that some people have so identified with being an "outgroup," being ostracized, that the idea of genetic engineering is threatening. "Oh no, the world has more beautiful stable and happy people, what value is there in being ostracized and thus cooly angst-ridden?"
Technology produces results and repercussions. Let's review those and make our choices. But let's stop whining about changing the world - the world is always changing. Let's make decisions instead of just panicking.
Not to be disrespectful, but what is the point of this article? Hunkapiller is smart? Gates is bad? Corporatist america ignores talent?
We just needed to know about Hunkapiller and why we should know about him. Trying to put a sociopolitical spin on the man's life and work only serves to degrade his achievements by making them part of a screed.
So let's give the guy the credit he deserves, but let's not drag him into rants and screeds, since he obviously deserves better than that.
Though the article does deal with an important issue, this should hardly come as a surprise. We've been building up to this in America for some time, IMHO.
Ours is a diverse country, but sadly most people still don't respect that and fall constantly into an us versus them mentality - the result being a whole lot of "uses" battling for territory and for "their" version of being American.
And so, we're in an inquisitional mentality, glad to ferret out any information that is deemed "unAmerican." So we pry into your sex life, we check your email, we humiliate you for your operating system choice, we don't like your religion, etc.
We operate under the delusion of a promised land that will someday be perfect (ie only containing our selected "us"). So we're glad to keep having "revolutions" under the illusion that someday we'll get it right just like we did 200 plus years ago. Someday we'll have our promised land, heaven on earth, whatever, and be proven right for all eternity.
The end result is a country of people with their hands on each others throats, a broken political system, corrupt churches, and an insanely high crime rate. And, of course, we're constantly taking each others freedom away.
We could stand for freedom, but it seems that freedom for our "us" is what we look for first. As long as that occurs, people will have no problem taking away each others rights and freedoms, and ferreting out the supposedly inviolate personality.
So, start standing up for everyone then you can fight this.
Though I found the report to be a bit alarmist, it raises several valid points about concerns that many people are just used to coping with - viruses, hackers, security issues, corruption of data.
It's easy to take these things in stride because, simply, we're used to them - we apply a patch, run the antivirus, restore that corrupt file from backup, etc. Even the various problems we've seen at e-commerce sites are ones we get used to - bad interfaces, DDOS attacks, etc.
However, when you look at how these problems can affect important social/political operations (ie voting), it becomes apparent that one has to put in extra effort to deal with these "common" problems in these environments. What we "put up with" people will NOT risk in a political/social operation like voting.
It shows how far, at times, technology has to go and how far responsibility (accountability of the service providers) has to go before we can rely on the Internet for some of our political/social tasks reliably. The chance of some of these problems may occur could be rare, but the concern is not.
Paraphrasing Robert Anton Wilson:
Imagine an authoritarian system as a pyramid with an eye on top (look at a dollar bill). Now, the guy at the top wants to control the people down below, but he has to rely on them for information. So he uses coercion to control them and extract information, but since fear of punishment, hate, and paranoia are driving the people below, they only say what will prevent punishment. The system reflects itself down the pyramid, and due to increasing ignorance, becomes brain dead over time.
It seems this is the way we're heading with cybersleuthing, techno-eavesdropping, lawyers throwing lawsuits round, etc. We're all paranoid as hell, everyone doesn't trust anyone, and there are more and more threats each day.
It appears the FBI is making yet another contribution to this. I wonder how this will be abused (and thus increase mistrust), how errors will be made (and thus increase mistrust), and how many bad precidents and angry reactions this will produce. I wonder how many lawsuits and court cases will result from their snooping.
In their quest to enforce laws, the FBI makes themselves that much harder to trust by being more invasive. Ironic that.
The essay makes some good points - we're allowing technology to make our lives more complicated and less relaxing. I know I myself do that way too often.
However, the point is, and always has been technology is going to have results depending on how we use it. So, we've chosen to use it to make life more stressful in many cases. Let's face it, we only have ourselves to blame if we do it to ourselves or let it happen to us.
It's not a "good" versus "bad" technology or the white-hate workers versus the black-hat evil Corporatists. Life's divisions aren't that simple.
Don't like it? Change it. Take that vacation time, put your foot down, don't overtax your employees, find that job that gives you a break, stop using the net to fill up every spare moment, etc.
Our worst problem is somehow the ideal that more "work" is somehow noble, admirable, a sign of superiority. So we let ourselves work harder and longer - but for what result? Doesn't seem worth it to me.
I strongly applaud the Techno-archivists saving our videogaming heritage. These games are pure history - Diablo II, Quake III, Half-Life, all started out with Space Invaders and a plumber jumping over barrels. MAME's ROMs, as corny as it sounds, are living history of how we got to an age of 3D polygonal mapping and Direct X version-whatever.
When I find an old arcade game in some out-of-the-way-place, it's a reminder of so many things - how I got to be a programmer, how far we've come, what stood up over time, the challenges faced in the day. It's history with bits and bleeps.
It's a shame that there are copyright concerns over this - it certainly shows that copyright law needs to be strongly considered and re-evaluated. Certainly there's no malice and no profit involved in MAME sales and ROM copying.
Technology is transitory these days, and preserving history and information is of utmost importance - especially when media change (anyone use 5 1/4 disks anymore?).
One thing I love about SF, be it hard or soft, is that you can explore a lot of different themes - and I'm glad to see theological questions explored as well, and it sounds like the book is well written.
It's nice to see SF that DOESN'T play it safe. I'd like to see more hard-bitten, go-for-the-gut, what's-it-all-about SF, hard or light.
Well, to me a lack of wisdom and responsibility is "stupid" any way you slice it.
However, if the US lacks the wisdom and responsibility to handle biotechnology - who on the planet IS responsible enough?
Or, I get the impression, people would rather fight over who's able to handle the technology. While that's going on, of course, people who ARE dumb may well misuse it while people are battling over who is Wise.
The technology is here, if less than it's hyped. Time for us to get Wise and do something with it.
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems that in the current technophilic age we can find a thousand articles with one theme: "we're too dumb to handle technology" which really means "those Other People are too dumb to handle technology." I'm afraid I find this article falls under that category, despite my respect for the "Hellmouth" series.
Life is going to be what we make it and technology is a tool. We can worry about it and wring our hands - and that makes us no different than people working on censoring the internet or banning linking, it makes us busybodies who complain.
Or we can latch onto it and make it work. We can make sure we embrace the technology so that there isn't going to be a division between users and ourselves.
Or we can complain about how dumb/dangerous The Other is.
Me, I'm chosing to take control of my own life. Barbelith.