Amen. The issues aren't business models, or caricatures of RMS as a raving looney, but devotion to craft, the integrity (both moral and utilitarian) of free software, and belief in our innate capacity to learn {about|from} and employ computers. --
...what alternative business model can the Open Source offer[?]
Is it RMS's job to provide an alternative model? He has very clearly divorced himself from Open Source, pointing out quite rightly that he is devoted to Free Software. Open Source is ESR's baby, and he tried to provide the model you seek in
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
. Will the audience be interested in RMS's perspective? Until we know who's in attendance, it's probably not a good idea to claim that the audience won't be interested. --
Say what you will about RMS, but he's a geek like you and me.
Er, no.
RMS is waaaaay ahead of the vast majority of us here. We may admire him, some of us may even try to emulate him, but to reduce him to the/. hordes is wrong. He's done far more to keep the hacker flame burning than anyone else. --
NYU is hardly "closed" for the summer. The hordes of undergrads may have thinned out a bit, but the image of an eerily empty campus drained of life is a false one. Why? The university's in downtown NYC; there are always grad students & faculty around; NYU, like just about any uni, runs summer sessions....The presence of students isn't a factor here. --
Even though he isn't an American citizen, he's got a pretty good grip on what used to be considered American values, and is thus an Independence Day icon for the increasingly-resented United States, the Corporate Republic's world headquarters.
I'm missing something. Jose Bove fights against a multinational corporation - for which I applaud him - and is thus ascribed "American values"? What are these values (whether or not they still exist)? Why do they have to be "American"? The men in 1776 didn't have a problem with trade, they had a problem with taxes (and the stirrings of abolitionism). I fail to see any valid connection.
Corporatism['s]...primary target is individualism, its primary enemy individualists --which means hackers, programming entrpeneurs, renegade teachers, small businessmen and farmers like Bove, odd-ball filmmakers.
So these now-past American values include individualism? I don't think so. If by individualists you mean non-conformists, then maybe yes. However, most of the people you list there and as Bove's supporters are working from within a collective and cooperative framework, the most familiar example being the OS development community.
Jon, I see where you're going with this, and I think that with more thought it might have been quite a strong point. I think your praise of people like Bove and the comparison you draw between such activists and hackers et al. is an interesting one. But why the hell did you have to drag in the good ole U.S.ofA. and the tired crap about freedom? (Freedom in this version seems to have been invented by those guys in Philly...) It's a glaringly weak point in an otherwise potentially interesting piece -- it introduces thoughtless jingoism. Combine that with the confusion over individualism (which edges dangerously close to the libertoons) and nonconformity/cooperative work, and the piece ends up rather mushy and obscurely irritating, rather than thought-provoking. Save me from rhetoric I could hear in any elementary school around Memorial Day.
A thoughtful comparison between the WTO protesters and hackers into open source would be more than welcome on this screen, however. Maybe I'll try...
So 70 teenage girls and an unspecified number of grown women talk about their impressions? And this is supposed to explain why women are underrepresented in comp sci and information science? The article seemed to blame the girls for their lack of participation in 'geek' pursuits; it's all the fault of their superficial preconceptions, etc etc.
As a recently-minted (female) geek, this stuff makes my blood boil. Since when do we blame girls for believing what they are told throughout their lives - that tech stuff is hard and boring, that they are made for better things (left, of course, unspecified), that there will always be a man somewhere to fix their mistakes. It's a social problem, hardly limited to the minds of young women, yet the article makes it sound as if their little bubbleheads just can't hold the necessary information.
I stayed away from the technical side of computers for a long time because I was afraid of getting something wrong (and when you had an overbearing father like mine, this was a valid fear). It seemed better to avoid the challenge than to fail. I realized a while ago that this was a stupid way to go about life, and started learning more and stretching my boundaries of 'acceptable failure'.
Young women are poorly educated - on the whole - in math and science in the U.S. public schools. So why should computers be any different? All young people need to be socialized better to explore challenge and potential failure, whatever their gender. From my seat, that's the only possible solution.
Without being able to play the latest Quake mod at 120 fps, or the latest Sports game the same way, we won't get the pimple faced mainstream suburban teenager to want to go to Linux.
So? Why is that so important? I like the Unix descendants because they give me power over my use of the computer. Though that's a personal preference, I do think it's one of their greatest strengths. Games will always be played, and they're hardly the sine qua non of the computing experience. Nor should they be; they're another flavour of entertainment; they're not the kind of activity computers can be best at.
UI's are coming along, but I fail to see why (presumably male) teenagers should be the target. --
What everyone seems to be forgeting is that Episode I is supposed to tell us how it all got started. The only purpose of the movie is to show how we get to Episode II!
I want a movie that stands on its own; that's the whole point of shelling out the money and sitting in the seat. --
John Seely Brown is the chief scientist of the Xerox Corporation, and until recently was the Director (head honcho) of PARC. (The Director is now Michael Paige). The other author is not a PARC researcher.
Duguid was a PARC consultant at the time that he and Brown started working together. There are author's notes on their preliminary essay at: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue1/documents/ index.html --
Leaving aside the question of the actual definition of "information" (which has technical meaning, btw), let's look at "meaning".
Let's not leave info behind just yet. Information has been defined variously by cybernetics, communications theory, and philosophy. One of the explanations I like best is Brenda Dervin's; she looks at info as what human beings use to overcome gaps in their perception and knowledge of the world. She calls this "sense making". One of the reasons I like this approach is it edges away from hard-etched definitions, math- and sci-derived definitions, which can tend to confuse the issue. I think sometimes we expect the term information to encompass too much, from census data to DNA to the contents of a library; by reserving the term for human beings' perceptual and social activities, we might be able to understand it a bit better.
That said, there is also the issue of information versus knowledge. Which would you rather have?
Back to the original question. Meaning is what you or I grant to the information. That's how I understand Brown and Duguid's title, anyway: meaning is the social context of info. The DNA "means" blue hair to you; on its own, it's just a bunch of proteins. --
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. The issues aren't business models, or caricatures of RMS as a raving looney, but devotion to craft, the integrity (both moral and utilitarian) of free software, and belief in our innate capacity to learn {about|from} and employ computers.
--
Is it RMS's job to provide an alternative model? He has very clearly divorced himself from Open Source, pointing out quite rightly that he is devoted to Free Software. Open Source is ESR's baby, and he tried to provide the model you seek in
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar
. Will the audience be interested in RMS's perspective? Until we know who's in attendance, it's probably not a good idea to claim that the audience won't be interested.--
Say what you will about RMS, but he's a geek like you and me.
/. hordes is wrong. He's done far more to keep the hacker flame burning than anyone else.
Er, no.
RMS is waaaaay ahead of the vast majority of us here. We may admire him, some of us may even try to emulate him, but to reduce him to the
--
NYU is hardly "closed" for the summer. The hordes of undergrads may have thinned out a bit, but the image of an eerily empty campus drained of life is a false one. Why? The university's in downtown NYC; there are always grad students & faculty around; NYU, like just about any uni, runs summer sessions....The presence of students isn't a factor here.
--
A couple questions.
Even though he isn't an American citizen, he's got a pretty good grip on what used to be considered American values, and is thus an Independence Day icon for the increasingly-resented United States, the Corporate Republic's world headquarters.
I'm missing something. Jose Bove fights against a multinational corporation - for which I applaud him - and is thus ascribed "American values"? What are these values (whether or not they still exist)? Why do they have to be "American"? The men in 1776 didn't have a problem with trade, they had a problem with taxes (and the stirrings of abolitionism). I fail to see any valid connection.
Corporatism['s]...primary target is individualism, its primary enemy individualists --which means hackers, programming entrpeneurs, renegade teachers, small businessmen and farmers like Bove, odd-ball filmmakers.
So these now-past American values include individualism? I don't think so. If by individualists you mean non-conformists, then maybe yes. However, most of the people you list there and as Bove's supporters are working from within a collective and cooperative framework, the most familiar example being the OS development community.
Jon, I see where you're going with this, and I think that with more thought it might have been quite a strong point. I think your praise of people like Bove and the comparison you draw between such activists and hackers et al. is an interesting one. But why the hell did you have to drag in the good ole U.S.ofA. and the tired crap about freedom? (Freedom in this version seems to have been invented by those guys in Philly...) It's a glaringly weak point in an otherwise potentially interesting piece -- it introduces thoughtless jingoism. Combine that with the confusion over individualism (which edges dangerously close to the libertoons) and nonconformity/cooperative work, and the piece ends up rather mushy and obscurely irritating, rather than thought-provoking. Save me from rhetoric I could hear in any elementary school around Memorial Day.
A thoughtful comparison between the WTO protesters and hackers into open source would be more than welcome on this screen, however. Maybe I'll try...
--
So 70 teenage girls and an unspecified number of grown women talk about their impressions? And this is supposed to explain why women are underrepresented in comp sci and information science? The article seemed to blame the girls for their lack of participation in 'geek' pursuits; it's all the fault of their superficial preconceptions, etc etc.
As a recently-minted (female) geek, this stuff makes my blood boil. Since when do we blame girls for believing what they are told throughout their lives - that tech stuff is hard and boring, that they are made for better things (left, of course, unspecified), that there will always be a man somewhere to fix their mistakes. It's a social problem, hardly limited to the minds of young women, yet the article makes it sound as if their little bubbleheads just can't hold the necessary information.
I stayed away from the technical side of computers for a long time because I was afraid of getting something wrong (and when you had an overbearing father like mine, this was a valid fear). It seemed better to avoid the challenge than to fail. I realized a while ago that this was a stupid way to go about life, and started learning more and stretching my boundaries of 'acceptable failure'.
Young women are poorly educated - on the whole - in math and science in the U.S. public schools. So why should computers be any different? All young people need to be socialized better to explore challenge and potential failure, whatever their gender. From my seat, that's the only possible solution.
--
Without being able to play the latest Quake mod at 120 fps, or the latest Sports game the same way, we won't get the pimple faced mainstream suburban teenager to want to go to Linux.
So? Why is that so important? I like the Unix descendants because they give me power over my use of the computer. Though that's a personal preference, I do think it's one of their greatest strengths. Games will always be played, and they're hardly the sine qua non of the computing experience. Nor should they be; they're another flavour of entertainment; they're not the kind of activity computers can be best at.
UI's are coming along, but I fail to see why (presumably male) teenagers should be the target.
--
What everyone seems to be forgeting is that Episode I is supposed to tell us how it all got started. The only purpose of the movie is to show how we get to Episode II!
I want a movie that stands on its own; that's the whole point of shelling out the money and sitting in the seat.
--
John Seely Brown is the chief scientist of the Xerox Corporation, and until recently was the Director (head honcho) of PARC. (The Director is now Michael Paige). The other author is not a PARC researcher.
/ index.html
Duguid was a PARC consultant at the time that he and Brown started working together. There are author's notes on their preliminary essay at: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue1/documents
--
Leaving aside the question of the actual definition of "information" (which has technical meaning, btw), let's look at "meaning".
Let's not leave info behind just yet. Information has been defined variously by cybernetics, communications theory, and philosophy. One of the explanations I like best is Brenda Dervin's; she looks at info as what human beings use to overcome gaps in their perception and knowledge of the world. She calls this "sense making". One of the reasons I like this approach is it edges away from hard-etched definitions, math- and sci-derived definitions, which can tend to confuse the issue. I think sometimes we expect the term information to encompass too much, from census data to DNA to the contents of a library; by reserving the term for human beings' perceptual and social activities, we might be able to understand it a bit better.
That said, there is also the issue of information versus knowledge. Which would you rather have?
Back to the original question. Meaning is what you or I grant to the information. That's how I understand Brown and Duguid's title, anyway: meaning is the social context of info. The DNA "means" blue hair to you; on its own, it's just a bunch of proteins.
--