Keep twisting that dollar bill all those sold out geeks have rolled up the arse Jon Katz! The louder they scream about you, the better the job you do. They deserve every bit of it, and more.
Back in the early 1970s, an academic wrote a scandalous insider's book, "University," about how the military-industrial complex corrupted universities during WWII and postwar by helping to lift money-corrupt administrators into power. The funny thing about the book was that the names of the two universities and characters dealt with in the book were fictionalized, but it caused a stir among the national academic set because to too many it sounded like their own institution.
You can parachute into any university in the United States at this moment in time and witness the new wave of corruption sweeping academe. Whereas before the money-corruption only touched the administrations of higher education, today it engulfs professors and students. Today the National Collegiate Athletic Association is deluged with cases of payola between students and alumni and corrupt athletic directors which usually comes to light when the student athlete wraps his new $40,000 SUV around a lightpole while tripping on a thousand dollars worth of ecstasy. College students quickly turned silicon technology into new tools to facilitate cheating on exams, first, by programming equations into calculators, now by selling professor's lecture notes online and cut and paste plagarism. Questions of honor and integrity melt under the whithering ethic of technology: If it can be done, it must be good (or at least neutral).
Governors are putting too many patent attorneys on the boards of public universities. The patent attorney who chaired my engineering university tried to highjack its capital campaign into building a center for entrepreneurship. Cooler heads somewhat tempered his attempt by funding innovation fellowships instead. The problem is not with entreprenuership or innovation itself. But if these areas which serve corporate interest siphon off all new money into the institution, areas which serve broader interests such as public safety and health will be compromised to the danger of society.
When one person gets West Nile Virus the whole northeastern corridor goes into action. When one person has the tread separate on their automobile tire and dies in the ensuing accident people shrug, point accusingly at the driver, or pray to god. A year or more goes by and not until the death toll mounts to over fifty does anyone take action. Why is that? Why is my alma mater fundraising for dozens of innovation fellowships but only one or two Peace Corp fellowship? We use to read about the Peace Corp; now all we read about are Peacekeepers. How innovative is that?
As usual, attention-deficit geeks pour over Katz's article pulling out this sentence or that out of context and explode off in wild irrelevent tangents.
Geeks are getting their dicks pounded into the dirt left and right by Reno, Freeh, the courts, and Congress and geeks still don't get it. What does your mechanical know-how get you if your way of making a living, your company, e.g., Napster, gets shredded tomorrow by the political/judicial system? Why is it still a complete pain in the neck operation to use strong crypto software with email? Why do I still receive time-wasting spam? Geeks can spout all the Ayn Rand, libertarian, techno-anarchist babble in the world, but unless they get out from behind their monitors and take action thro' traditional political means, what they come to value will continue to fall prey. That's all Jon is saying.
Geeks need a stronger lobbying presence in Washington DC and internationally. They need to pony up some green to hire more lobbyists to make their voices heard where it matters. They need to organize political action committees to bundle their campaign contributions (They have to start making campaign contributions!) to make an impact with candidates who support their values (or who will switch to supporting them). Geeks need more lawyers. They should organize stronger, better funded legal foundations to fight their causes in the courts.
In order for geeks to get where they want to go, to get the type of online community with the values they desire, they will have to employ some well-known low tech means. If geeks continue to sniff about as if they are above it all, as they have, they will only accomplish the construction of a giant, well marketed internet prison for themselves, and everyone. Charles Buck
Slashdot Mirror
Keep twisting that dollar bill all those sold out geeks have rolled up the arse Jon Katz! The louder they scream about you, the better the job you do. They deserve every bit of it, and more.
Back in the early 1970s, an academic wrote a scandalous insider's book, "University," about how the military-industrial complex corrupted universities during WWII and postwar by helping to lift money-corrupt administrators into power. The funny thing about the book was that the names of the two universities and characters dealt with in the book were fictionalized, but it caused a stir among the national academic set because to too many it sounded like their own institution.
You can parachute into any university in the United States at this moment in time and witness the new wave of corruption sweeping academe. Whereas before the money-corruption only touched the administrations of higher education, today it engulfs professors and students. Today the National Collegiate Athletic Association is deluged with cases of payola between students and alumni and corrupt athletic directors which usually comes to light when the student athlete wraps his new $40,000 SUV around a lightpole while tripping on a thousand dollars worth of ecstasy. College students quickly turned silicon technology into new tools to facilitate cheating on exams, first, by programming equations into calculators, now by selling professor's lecture notes online and cut and paste plagarism. Questions of honor and integrity melt under the whithering ethic of technology: If it can be done, it must be good (or at least neutral).
Governors are putting too many patent attorneys on the boards of public universities. The patent attorney who chaired my engineering university tried to highjack its capital campaign into building a center for entrepreneurship. Cooler heads somewhat tempered his attempt by funding innovation fellowships instead. The problem is not with entreprenuership or innovation itself. But if these areas which serve corporate interest siphon off all new money into the institution, areas which serve broader interests such as public safety and health will be compromised to the danger of society.
When one person gets West Nile Virus the whole northeastern corridor goes into action. When one person has the tread separate on their automobile tire and dies in the ensuing accident people shrug, point accusingly at the driver, or pray to god. A year or more goes by and not until the death toll mounts to over fifty does anyone take action. Why is that? Why is my alma mater fundraising for dozens of innovation fellowships but only one or two Peace Corp fellowship? We use to read about the Peace Corp; now all we read about are Peacekeepers. How innovative is that?
As usual, attention-deficit geeks pour over Katz's article pulling out this sentence or that out of context and explode off in wild irrelevent tangents.
Geeks are getting their dicks pounded into the dirt left and right by Reno, Freeh, the courts, and Congress and geeks still don't get it. What does your mechanical know-how get you if your way of making a living, your company, e.g., Napster, gets shredded tomorrow by the political/judicial system? Why is it still a complete pain in the neck operation to use strong crypto software with email? Why do I still receive time-wasting spam? Geeks can spout all the Ayn Rand, libertarian, techno-anarchist babble in the world, but unless they get out from behind their monitors and take action thro' traditional political means, what they come to value will continue to fall prey. That's all Jon is saying.
Geeks need a stronger lobbying presence in Washington DC and internationally. They need to pony up some green to hire more lobbyists to make their voices heard where it matters. They need to organize political action committees to bundle their campaign contributions (They have to start making campaign contributions!) to make an impact with candidates who support their values (or who will switch to supporting them). Geeks need more lawyers. They should organize stronger, better funded legal foundations to fight their causes in the courts.
In order for geeks to get where they want to go, to get the type of online community with the values they desire, they will have to employ some well-known low tech means. If geeks continue to sniff about as if they are above it all, as they have, they will only accomplish the construction of a giant, well marketed internet prison for themselves, and everyone. Charles Buck