The payoff, the authors claim, isn't
just better bodies and more effective minds. Progress in these areas
of technology also could play a key role in preventing a societal
"catastrophe." The answer to human brutality and new forms of lethal
weapons, it suggests, is a kind of tech-triggered unity:
"Technological convergence could become the framework for human
convergence."
The idea that some kind of "tech-triggered unity" would prevent
a global catastrophe is ludricrous. "Tech-triggered unity"
simply means that the future of humanity belongs to whoever
manages to trigger it. The race to "trigger" such "unity"
would be a struggle orders of magnitude more intense than the
arms race of the cold war.
Also at stake is the health of the nation's economy, said James
Canton, a futurist who helped organize the workshop. If the United
States doesn't coordinate research into these four technologies, it
risks losing its global tech leadership, Canton said. Technology
already lets individuals and nations "leapfrog" others, and the
combination of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology
and cognitive science is going to create an "entirely different
economy," Canton said.
It is almost refreshing, in the middle of all the globalist
science fiction dreaminess, to see good old fashioned
nationalist chauvinism raise its little head. The solution
to "leapfrogging" would be to open-source all of the above.
To renounce, and encourage all nations to renounce, any sort
of "intellectual property" in these areas. That way, no one
has to worry about anyone else trying to rule the
world with these developments.
If Palmer really shared Bollier's concerns he wouldn't shoot the
messenger, he would write a better message. But, Palmer's crocadile
tears reveals his true position - corporate psychophant.
It is possible to share someone's concerns, but still have a
significantly different approach to those concerns. I, too,
share Bollier's concerns, especially those he brought up in his
eye-opening discussion of Federal support of
drug research and the appropriation of the resulting knowledge
by drug companies.
But passages from the Bollier article such as:
By insisting that
citizenship trumps ownership, we can begin to develop a more textured
appreciation for the importance of civic commitment, democratic norms,
social equity, cultural and aesthetic concerns, and ecological needs.
A language of the commons helps restore humanistic, democratic
concerns to their proper place in public policy-making.
Or:
Any sort of creative endeavor requires space for experimentation and
new construction--for the freedom to try new things. Market enclosure
typically serves to regiment and control such freedom. While we need
markets, we also need room for the visionary ideas, accidental
discoveries, and embryonic notions that germinate into real
breakthroughs, if only they have the space to grow.
strike me as mere vague sentimentalism.
One factor in our loss of "commons" is our failure to
understand the conditions under which they actually can and do work.
Palmer addresses that issue by discussing the ideas of Elinor
Ostrom in much more depth than Bollier does.
For example, here is one of Palmer's footnotes:
4Ibid., 88. As Ostrom notes, "Individuals have shared a past and
expect to share a future. It is important for individuals to maintain
their reputations as reliable members of the community. These
individuals live side by side and farm the same plots year after year.
They expect their children and their grandchildren to inherit their
land. In other words, their discount rates are low. If costly
investments in provisions are made at one point in time, the
proprietors--or their families--are likely to reap the benefits." Does
that sound like a description of "the American people"?
That kind of intergenerational continuity is alien both to the
sentimental left and to the big time capitalists represented by
America's major political parties.
The leadership of smaller countries need to take into account
the cultural effects of government IT policies.
MS promotes a sort of "dumbed-down developer" model, where they
are the geniuses who create wonderful, innovative technology.
Mortal developers, the consumers of their systems, are mere
clerical workers who point and click on "components" in order to
assemble a custom end-user application.
In some cases, that model works fairly well (I've read
testimonials on/. to that effect), but, more commonly, it
breaks down.
One of the great virtues of Open Source, Linux, Unix, GNU, etc.,
is that they encourage intellectual development. That is
an especially important issue for developing
countries. If the IT in a developing country consists only
of magic boxes that perform some limited but useful functions,
but otherwise represent yet another driver of trade deficit
and debt, then the critical need for building local skills
is thwarted.
There are also valid issues of national pride. A country that
successfully nurtures its local IT industry can, in at least one
area, thumb it's nose at the U.S.A. empire without
getting bombed into oblivion.
. . . the
Act requires that all depository financial institutions and broker
dealers must know the true identity of their customers and the source
of their funds . . .
Most of the measures mentioned in that article seem reasonable,
but I'm worried about the "data mining" initiative. If you
can mine data looking for "terrorists," you can mine for just
about anything else, such as potential political opposition.
Also consider: given the plethora of intricate financial disclosure
requirements, a list of one's political opponents and vast mountains
of data available for mining, it would be no trouble at all to
neutralize the opposition.
Imagine what the dirty tricksters of the Nixon administration
could have done with a system like "PATRIOT".
I seemed to feel a tone of 'manifest destiny' in the article. Is it
just me who believes that philosophy is completely irrelevant to
Linux?
The philosophy of Manifest Destiny is indeed irrelevant to Linux,
but the article is about working for a rapidly expanding user base,
which is not at all the same thing.
Harrison gives excellent reasons for
the advocacy he advocates:
Everything that we want as Linux users: more apps, better hardware
compatibility, Linux OEMs, etc. is dependent upon a growing base of
Linux users. If you want to see more and better Linux code, work for a
larger Linux user base.
There is indeed a great struggle going on.
We all have to find our own place in it, but if enough of us take
or continue taking the kind of steps mentioned in Harrison's
article, or mentioned by some of the posters on this thread,
then the system we know and love and worry about will not pass
into obscurity.
So what if it turns out that one scientist or a group of scientists
did something wrong? The point here is that they didn't get away with
it. The scientific process is WORKING.
Your point may be true for the physical
sciences. But I think some fair amount of "social science"
is pretty close to outright fraud, and the universities
which benefit from the promulgation of this fraud are
not about to admit to the scams they are pulling.
I'm thinking, in particular, of some of the "research" that
comes out of the University of Michigan that "proves"
the benefits of "diversity" (as the University defines it)
or that "proves" that opponents of "affirmative action"
(as practiced by the University) are motivated by racism.
The administrators of Lawrence Berkeley lab have shown that
they have integrity. The administrators of the University
of Michigan have shown, all too often, that they have none.
I've made this prediction time and time again in these forums and
here I go one more time - "One day someone will make a Linux distro
that truly is consumer-oriented. That distro will be universally hated
by the existing Linux community."
I would not personally use such a system, but I would not "hate"
it either. In fact, I would applaud such a development.
Meanwhile, doing installs and being the "tech support person" for
family and friends will help increase the non-technically oriented
user base of Linux, and also provide Linux experts with direct
experience with ordinary problems and issues faced by non-experts.
Both of those factors will help bring about a
"truly consumer-oriented" system.
The best part about Audiogalaxy, though, was the community....
To this day, I still have not found any other system that provided as
seamless a union between meeting people who like your kinds of music
and finding new music itself.
Sure, lots of other systems let you
trade files, but Audiogalaxy created a community.
Perhaps AG or something like it could keep the community angle
going, even without the P2P approach. If all the music
were sent out from servers, then it would be possible to
control what was available. The RIAA would have nothing to
complain about.
This is apparently how AG worked in its middle phase:
... soon they decided to start offering free web space to musicians who
wanted to promote their music. Artists or labels could use the
web-based interface to post their mp3s onto the site so that anyone
could download them. Along with articles and reviews by a small music
staff, AG began to grow.
Rather than trying to support such an endeavor with revenue from
ads or spyware, why not charge a monthly fee?
My understanding, based on what I've read here on/., is that
$5 per month could pay for
a fair amount of traffic.
Teach logic, critical thinking and statistical reasoning in schools.
Teach about traditional propaganda techniques and the ways that biased
sources distort truth -- not only by outright lies or mere fudging,
but by the selection or omission of information. In other words, lead
them to rational, analytical modes of thinking rather than the mere
absorbtion of emotionally manipulative tripe that gets served as
"news" these days, especially on TV.
Good ideas, but I wonder if, in general, our schools have enough
integrity to do a fair job of that sort of thing. There's
a whole lot of "emotionally manipulative tripe" involved in,
for example, a typical university sponsored "diversity
training" session.
I think most institutions that affect public opinion
have
a vested interest in supressing true critical thought,
or of at least putting enough spin on the subject of
"critical thought" so that people will tend not to ask
the "wrong" questions.
Many years ago, law enforcement units of various
levels of government maintained what were called
"Red Squad" files. In theory, the squads and
files existed to prevent espionage, subversion
and terrorism. Yes, there were "reds" who
engaged in such things, although most left-wing activists
were generally, for the most part, law-abiding
citizens.
Unfortunately, any data base of personal associations
will include many peaceful types as well as a few
actual or potential enemy spies, bombers, etc.
So when someone from the personel office of a local
factory called his buddy on the local squad, asking
about an applicant, the squad guy might reply,
"Oh, yeah, we've got a file on that character!" and
a perfectly decent citizen would be denied the job.
I followed much of the "Red Squad" controversies
during the '80s. The files were indeed abused,
and those abuses gave ammunition to those who
wanted to reduce the effectiveness of America's
foreign and domestic intelligence agencies.
AFIK, the agencies themselves pursued some
agendas that had much more to do with stifling
dissent rather than tracking down the real
bad guys. So there was some weird stuff
on both sides of the issue.
And so it is now. It's a new day, a new ball
game. Law enforcement intelligence units are
being re-invigorated beyond all reason. The
levels of surveillance of ordinary citizens
that government agencies are now working
towards is orders of magnitude greater than the
local cops writing down license plate numbers
of a few hippies at a peace rally.
And what is the real reason for all of this?
To prevent acts of mass violence on American
soil? Well, that might be a positive side
effect, but perhaps the true agenda is to make
effective political dissent almost impossible.
Those of us who would oppose the great wars now
being contemplated at the highest levels of the
U.S. government should keep this in mind: They
know much, much more about us now than they
did 30 years ago. In other words, the true
motive for this apotheosis of spooks is not to
prevent mass violence, but rather to facilitate
it.
I'm not *too* worried about federal spooks clipping newspapers or
going to public meetings.
But the following, from the New York Times article, worries me a lot:
The bureau will also use commercial "data-mining services" from
companies that collect, organize and analyze marketing and demographic
information from the Internet to help develop leads on potential
crimes like threats to the security of computer networks. Businesses
routinely use the information, but the bureau has been constrained
from using those services.
I wonder if complaints about the DMCA on/. will be regarded as
"leads on potential crimes like threats to the security of
computer networks."
The top universities of our great nation are constantly
telling up about the value of diversity. Our courts say,
"We need diversity!!" Ford Motor Company says, "We need
diversity!!" And from our great organs of public opinion,
the same chant, "We need diversity, we need diversity!!"
The HCIL seems to be doing a lot of interesting, innovative and
vision-ary (pun intended) stuff, and it is probably true
that speech is unlikely to become the dominant way people connect with
computers. (Leslie Walker - The Washington Post)
but I question Schneiderman's theoretical explanations. From the
article:
"It
turns out speaking uses auditory memory, which is in the same space as
your short-term and working memory," he adds.
What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at
the same time. Shneiderman says researchers in his computer science
lab discovered through controlled experiments that when you tell your
computer to "page down" or "italicize that word" by speaking aloud,
you're gobbling up precious chunks of memory -- leaving you with
little brainpower to focus on the task at hand. It's easier to type or
click a mouse while thinking about something else because hand-eye
coordination uses a different part of the brain, the researchers
concluded.
There are a number of situations where humans communicate verbally
with other humans and still remain focused on complex tasks, such
as performing surgery, operating a stealth bomber, controlling
air traffic and so on. What distinguishes these interactions
from everyday banter is the fact that the humans in such situations
have been trained in some kind of human communication protocol.
Thus, I believe that some kinds of
human-computer interfaces with verbal
components, my VHMI idea,
for example, would be suitable for various mentally taxing
activities.
Of course, some things, like pointing, cannot easily be done with voice.
That might account for the poor results of voice interfaces in
the HCIL's research. The solution is to use voice in connection
with some kind of pointing device -- a mouse, a hand, an eye-tracking
device, etc.
OK, I looked at the PressPlay website FAQ.
As a "clearinghouse," it sits between record companies and
consumers, not between broadcasters and artists,
as far as I can tell.
In general, if the payment rates and methods for
computing compensation for performers, composers, lyricists
and record labels
are all fixed by law or government regulation, then the market isn't
a free one. My understanding of the current situation is that
some aspects of it are more free than others.
The situation might benefit from a truly free-market solution.
Content producers, copyright holders, etc., should be able to
set whatever terms they like, which potential users, broadcasters,
etc., could accept or reject. In practice, this would mean
going through clearinghouse type organizations. Stations
would pick the clearinghouses they wish to deal with.
The only real justification for the old system was the
difficulties of detailed record-keeping in pre-computer
era. Now that such fine points can be automated, there is
no reason at all for governmental bodies to impose
uniform fees and procedures on everyone.
By the way, I don't believe that "the free market" is a
universal solution to every situation, I just think it
would work well in this particular situation.
In some situations it might be reasonable to let voice
commands be the "clicks" for any kind of "unclickable"
pointing device, such as eye movement recognition or
the silver-dot head thingie mentioned in the article.
(I discuss this idea in more detail
here.)
I'm sure there are many wonderful HCI
ideas floating around in academic departments,
but perhaps this is a field where real breakthroughs
can still be made by creative people outside of universities who are
willing to give some
serious thougth to the issues. Formal course work
is nice, but not essential.
until the
people are interconnecting and building the discourse with their own
hearts and minds and stories, we will never create a social fabric
that can resist being torn by demogaguery, be it from facistic leaders
or bias news outlets.
Very interesting point, but perhaps we should
consider the creation of many social fabrics rather than
"a" social fabric. There is, and needs to be, some kind
of "localness" in cyberspace as well as physical space.
I recently read a related point (unfortunately I don't
remember where): The interconnectedness of people in
scientific fields is tending to eliminate diversity of
thought. A few ideas become popular and the tendency is
for almost everyone to work with those ideas. In other words,
there was a positive side to the slower, less efficient
communications of
the pre-internet world; there are advantages to
parochialness.
My manifesto is about how things might develop, how
people might try or at least think about developing
societies according to their own tastes.
It isn't really a prediction.
As you say, our current global elites probably won't succeed
in trying to "control everything through such tools
as political correctness and global capitalism," but they
can eliminate a great deal of social and cultural diversity
in their attempts to do so. Thus, I believe low level
efforts to preserve or even create social alternatives
will be beneficial, even if we can't see precisely how
these alternatives will develop over time.
Intuition tells us that it is meaningful to speak of Society as
something greater than and distinct from the sum of individuals and
families, just as it is meaningful to speak of the mind as something
greater than and distinct from the sum of brain cells. Intuition
appears to be correct.
That, however, should not provide a lot of comfort to liberals and
progressives. They like the idea of Society because it is not an It
but an Us, a group project. For them, Society can be built like a
house, or guided like a child, by a community of enlightened activists
and politicians who use their own intuition as a blueprint. Artificial
societies suggest that real ones do not behave so manageably.
That might be the greatest value of these simulations.
The impossibility of making truly accurate predictions
suggests that
large societies should be conservatively governed. Those of us
who are interested in developing alternative societies
should, in my opinion,
start small, work slowly and hope to achieve something lasting
over the course of generations. I discuss this sort of thing
in my manifesto.
I'm all in favor of GNU and free software and I hope these
movements can help stimulate progress and conserve
resources in underdeveloped nations.
But any kind of globalism, corporatist or otherwise, is,
in my opinion, a perscription for tyranny.
Yes, a few petty tyrannies might be eliminated, but
the resulting world order would be one great big tyranny.
The world
needs to be made up of nations of managable size who
all recognize each other's sovereignty.
Maybe a pen and voice could be used together. The pen could
point and draw shapes. The voice would utter text.
One of the problems with the mouse/keyboard combination is that
the hand has to operate both. So pen/voice would be better than
pen/keyboard or mouse/keyboard.
One problem that I see......is that under this model, those who contribute to slashdot the
most, and make the site what it is, are forced to pay the most.
Perhaps this is one of those "problems" that ceases to be a
"problem" the moment we stop thinking of it as a "problem."
What are the rewards of posting? First, there is the fun
of saying, "Here, world, is what I think about...whatever...,"
and having my words read by possibly thousands of other
people. Then there is the possibility of getting an interesting
e-mail or response. Plus, with every post, I get a little
bit of Free Advertising!! for my web site. And with
all of that, there is still the possibility of getting
modded up! All those benefits have nothing to do
with paying or not paying for traffic.
I am a bit dismayed by all the negativity I've read so far
on this issue.
I don't think of the $5 as a fee, I think of it as a
cultural investment.
The movement from advertiser supported sites to
sites that are at least part supported by users is healthy./., even with all its faults, is worthy of having
a broad base of popular financial support.
This is an example of what most elites have nightmares about... the
"masses" deciding for themselves what to do, through concensus and
free exchange of information. This is the horrible,
to-be-avoided-at-all-costs thing that many refer to as "too much
democracy". The key is this: it only works if those with an
interest/stake both get a place at the table and the ability to punish
people who waste their time with lies and greed.
I'm convinced this kind of democratic, community-oriented "anarchy"
could work at any scale.
Free exchange of information is a fine thing, but the larger
the group, the harder it is for its members
to come to a decision based on that information
(free or otherwise)./., for example, is an excellent information
sharing mechanism, but it is not a decision making apparatus.
In other words, yes, scale does matter.
As far as "too much democracy" goes, I worry about it, too.
I'm very non-elite, but what would "more democracy" mean to me?
Spending all my spare time in meetings packed with passionate
political geeks? No thanks, I'd rather watch TV!
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
The idea that some kind of "tech-triggered unity" would prevent a global catastrophe is ludricrous. "Tech-triggered unity" simply means that the future of humanity belongs to whoever manages to trigger it. The race to "trigger" such "unity" would be a struggle orders of magnitude more intense than the arms race of the cold war.
It is almost refreshing, in the middle of all the globalist science fiction dreaminess, to see good old fashioned nationalist chauvinism raise its little head. The solution to "leapfrogging" would be to open-source all of the above. To renounce, and encourage all nations to renounce, any sort of "intellectual property" in these areas. That way, no one has to worry about anyone else trying to rule the world with these developments.
It is possible to share someone's concerns, but still have a significantly different approach to those concerns. I, too, share Bollier's concerns, especially those he brought up in his eye-opening discussion of Federal support of drug research and the appropriation of the resulting knowledge by drug companies. But passages from the Bollier article such as:
Or: strike me as mere vague sentimentalism. One factor in our loss of "commons" is our failure to understand the conditions under which they actually can and do work. Palmer addresses that issue by discussing the ideas of Elinor Ostrom in much more depth than Bollier does. For example, here is one of Palmer's footnotes: That kind of intergenerational continuity is alien both to the sentimental left and to the big time capitalists represented by America's major political parties.Palmer's remarks are very much worth reading.
One of the great virtues of Open Source, Linux, Unix, GNU, etc., is that they encourage intellectual development. That is an especially important issue for developing countries. If the IT in a developing country consists only of magic boxes that perform some limited but useful functions, but otherwise represent yet another driver of trade deficit and debt, then the critical need for building local skills is thwarted.
There are also valid issues of national pride. A country that successfully nurtures its local IT industry can, in at least one area, thumb it's nose at the U.S.A. empire without getting bombed into oblivion.
from the sybase announcement:
The potential for abuse here is incredible. Meanwhile, our institutions of research and higher education are ready to do their part to help the U.S. government digest all of this lovely information: National Academies: Universities to play key roles in response to terrorism
Most of the measures mentioned in that article seem reasonable, but I'm worried about the "data mining" initiative. If you can mine data looking for "terrorists," you can mine for just about anything else, such as potential political opposition.
Also consider: given the plethora of intricate financial disclosure requirements, a list of one's political opponents and vast mountains of data available for mining, it would be no trouble at all to neutralize the opposition.
Imagine what the dirty tricksters of the Nixon administration could have done with a system like "PATRIOT".
The philosophy of Manifest Destiny is indeed irrelevant to Linux, but the article is about working for a rapidly expanding user base, which is not at all the same thing. Harrison gives excellent reasons for the advocacy he advocates:
There is indeed a great struggle going on. We all have to find our own place in it, but if enough of us take or continue taking the kind of steps mentioned in Harrison's article, or mentioned by some of the posters on this thread, then the system we know and love and worry about will not pass into obscurity.
Your point may be true for the physical sciences. But I think some fair amount of "social science" is pretty close to outright fraud, and the universities which benefit from the promulgation of this fraud are not about to admit to the scams they are pulling.
I'm thinking, in particular, of some of the "research" that comes out of the University of Michigan that "proves" the benefits of "diversity" (as the University defines it) or that "proves" that opponents of "affirmative action" (as practiced by the University) are motivated by racism.
The administrators of Lawrence Berkeley lab have shown that they have integrity. The administrators of the University of Michigan have shown, all too often, that they have none.
I would not personally use such a system, but I would not "hate" it either. In fact, I would applaud such a development.
Meanwhile, doing installs and being the "tech support person" for family and friends will help increase the non-technically oriented user base of Linux, and also provide Linux experts with direct experience with ordinary problems and issues faced by non-experts. Both of those factors will help bring about a "truly consumer-oriented" system.
Perhaps AG or something like it could keep the community angle going, even without the P2P approach. If all the music were sent out from servers, then it would be possible to control what was available. The RIAA would have nothing to complain about. This is apparently how AG worked in its middle phase:
Rather than trying to support such an endeavor with revenue from ads or spyware, why not charge a monthly fee? My understanding, based on what I've read here on /., is that
$5 per month could pay for
a fair amount of traffic.
Good ideas, but I wonder if, in general, our schools have enough integrity to do a fair job of that sort of thing. There's a whole lot of "emotionally manipulative tripe" involved in, for example, a typical university sponsored "diversity training" session.
I think most institutions that affect public opinion have a vested interest in supressing true critical thought, or of at least putting enough spin on the subject of "critical thought" so that people will tend not to ask the "wrong" questions.
Many years ago, law enforcement units of various levels of government maintained what were called "Red Squad" files. In theory, the squads and files existed to prevent espionage, subversion and terrorism. Yes, there were "reds" who engaged in such things, although most left-wing activists were generally, for the most part, law-abiding citizens. Unfortunately, any data base of personal associations will include many peaceful types as well as a few actual or potential enemy spies, bombers, etc. So when someone from the personel office of a local factory called his buddy on the local squad, asking about an applicant, the squad guy might reply, "Oh, yeah, we've got a file on that character!" and a perfectly decent citizen would be denied the job.
I followed much of the "Red Squad" controversies during the '80s. The files were indeed abused, and those abuses gave ammunition to those who wanted to reduce the effectiveness of America's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies. AFIK, the agencies themselves pursued some agendas that had much more to do with stifling dissent rather than tracking down the real bad guys. So there was some weird stuff on both sides of the issue.
And so it is now. It's a new day, a new ball game. Law enforcement intelligence units are being re-invigorated beyond all reason. The levels of surveillance of ordinary citizens that government agencies are now working towards is orders of magnitude greater than the local cops writing down license plate numbers of a few hippies at a peace rally.
And what is the real reason for all of this? To prevent acts of mass violence on American soil? Well, that might be a positive side effect, but perhaps the true agenda is to make effective political dissent almost impossible. Those of us who would oppose the great wars now being contemplated at the highest levels of the U.S. government should keep this in mind: They know much, much more about us now than they did 30 years ago. In other words, the true motive for this apotheosis of spooks is not to prevent mass violence, but rather to facilitate it.
I'm not *too* worried about federal spooks clipping newspapers or going to public meetings. But the following, from the New York Times article, worries me a lot:
I wonder if complaints about the DMCA onThe top universities of our great nation are constantly telling up about the value of diversity. Our courts say, "We need diversity!!" Ford Motor Company says, "We need diversity!!" And from our great organs of public opinion, the same chant, "We need diversity, we need diversity!!"
Wouldn't human cloning go against all of this??
True, true, but my point was that the people
involved in such tasks are "speaking and thinking"
at the same time.
Of course, some things, like pointing, cannot easily be done with voice. That might account for the poor results of voice interfaces in the HCIL's research. The solution is to use voice in connection with some kind of pointing device -- a mouse, a hand, an eye-tracking device, etc.
In general, if the payment rates and methods for computing compensation for performers, composers, lyricists and record labels are all fixed by law or government regulation, then the market isn't a free one. My understanding of the current situation is that some aspects of it are more free than others.
The situation might benefit from a truly free-market solution. Content producers, copyright holders, etc., should be able to set whatever terms they like, which potential users, broadcasters, etc., could accept or reject. In practice, this would mean going through clearinghouse type organizations. Stations would pick the clearinghouses they wish to deal with.
The only real justification for the old system was the difficulties of detailed record-keeping in pre-computer era. Now that such fine points can be automated, there is no reason at all for governmental bodies to impose uniform fees and procedures on everyone.
By the way, I don't believe that "the free market" is a universal solution to every situation, I just think it would work well in this particular situation.
In some situations it might be reasonable to let voice commands be the "clicks" for any kind of "unclickable" pointing device, such as eye movement recognition or the silver-dot head thingie mentioned in the article. (I discuss this idea in more detail here.)
Anway, a plug for some ideas I wrote up a few weeks ago: The Voice/Hand Motion Interface.
Very interesting point, but perhaps we should consider the creation of many social fabrics rather than "a" social fabric. There is, and needs to be, some kind of "localness" in cyberspace as well as physical space. I recently read a related point (unfortunately I don't remember where): The interconnectedness of people in scientific fields is tending to eliminate diversity of thought. A few ideas become popular and the tendency is for almost everyone to work with those ideas. In other words, there was a positive side to the slower, less efficient communications of the pre-internet world; there are advantages to parochialness.
My manifesto is about how things might develop, how people might try or at least think about developing societies according to their own tastes. It isn't really a prediction.
As you say, our current global elites probably won't succeed in trying to "control everything through such tools as political correctness and global capitalism," but they can eliminate a great deal of social and cultural diversity in their attempts to do so. Thus, I believe low level efforts to preserve or even create social alternatives will be beneficial, even if we can't see precisely how these alternatives will develop over time.
From the article:
That might be the greatest value of these simulations. The impossibility of making truly accurate predictions suggests that large societies should be conservatively governed. Those of us who are interested in developing alternative societies should, in my opinion, start small, work slowly and hope to achieve something lasting over the course of generations. I discuss this sort of thing in my manifesto.
I'm all in favor of GNU and free software and I hope these movements can help stimulate progress and conserve resources in underdeveloped nations.
But any kind of globalism, corporatist or otherwise, is, in my opinion, a perscription for tyranny. Yes, a few petty tyrannies might be eliminated, but the resulting world order would be one great big tyranny. The world needs to be made up of nations of managable size who all recognize each other's sovereignty.
(I've written up a tangentially related idea in Voice/Hand Motion Interface.)
Perhaps this is one of those "problems" that ceases to be a "problem" the moment we stop thinking of it as a "problem."
What are the rewards of posting? First, there is the fun of saying, "Here, world, is what I think about ...whatever...,"
and having my words read by possibly thousands of other
people. Then there is the possibility of getting an interesting
e-mail or response. Plus, with every post, I get a little
bit of Free Advertising!! for my web site. And with
all of that, there is still the possibility of getting
modded up! All those benefits have nothing to do
with paying or not paying for traffic.
I am a bit dismayed by all the negativity I've read so far on this issue. I don't think of the $5 as a fee, I think of it as a cultural investment. The movement from advertiser supported sites to sites that are at least part supported by users is healthy. /., even with all its faults, is worthy of having
a broad base of popular financial support.
Free exchange of information is a fine thing, but the larger the group, the harder it is for its members to come to a decision based on that information (free or otherwise). /., for example, is an excellent information
sharing mechanism, but it is not a decision making apparatus.
In other words, yes, scale does matter.
As far as "too much democracy" goes, I worry about it, too. I'm very non-elite, but what would "more democracy" mean to me? Spending all my spare time in meetings packed with passionate political geeks? No thanks, I'd rather watch TV!