You are thinking about old systems and thought forms. There are Web 2.0 communities that do accomplish things without any formal leadership. And those are very simple communities.
Metagovernment is not a simple direct democracy. It is not mob rule or tyranny of the majority. It is geared toward actively building consensus through synthesis mechanisms and scoring systems.
And yes, sometimes we won't get things done. That's a good thing. If there is no consensus that something should be done, then it probably should not.
The above are, respectively, the fourth and third basic principles of the project.
We certainly don't need politicians for that. Metagovernment doesn't seek to replace non-democratic institutions such as militaries or emergency response teams. But in most cases, I still think a group can make a better decision than one person. Often a leader makes the wrong decision, after all. But if there really is a need for a decision to be made by a single person, a leader can emerge without having to rely on a politician.
Further, Metagovernment does seek to spread the concept of community beyond normal geographic boundaries, so eventually physical attacks would be difficult when communities are intermingled. And note that this project isn't targeted at the U.S. government, but rather at very small communities, then scaling up to larger and larger communities from there. Its membership is entirely global, and not concerned with any single particular nation.
I'm assuming that's tongue-in-cheek, but just to be clear: the Metagovernment has no political agenda other than to maximize participatory democracy by presenting a vastly superior alternative to representative democracy. Communists, capitalists, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, etc. are all welcome and encouraged to participate. Even authoritarians are welcome to participate, though theirs is a philosophy that is rather contradicted by the Metagovernment's basic principles.
i honestly believe that the web is the key to realizing a true participatory democracy on a federal level in a country as big as the U.S.... at least then politicians and can't plead ignorance.
Why stop there? Why just the U.S.? Why just participate in what the politicians do? Why have any politicians at all?
If you are serious about wanting real participation in governance, and you would like to get in at the beginning, the Metagovernment project needs coders for the Metascore prototype.
> Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years.
50 years from now, when most major cities are being inundated by seal level rise and increasingly violent storms, we just might think that the environment/climate was a bigger issue 50 years ago.
But of course, nobody talks about environment as a political issue anymore. Is that an "education" problem? Do we really have to be taught about the catastrophes that we are in the process of creating?
Scientists have been warning us about warming for at least 40 years, and we're still not listening? It's still not an important political issue? Have you even heard Obama or McCain talking about the environment? Have you noticed that lists of which issues Americans think are important rarely even contain the environment as a possibility? Look at the Issue Tracker section of this page and notice that Environment doesn't even make it above the 2% "Other" category.
In Virginia (for example), where voting is completely electronic, they can still do recounts. Wanna know how? By doing the functional equivalent of hitting the refresh button.
IIRC, for some reason, recounts always come up with the same number as the original count. Huh.
This is a clear technicality. They're hiring emotionless androids who will do no evil, but also no good. Simply because they won't know the difference.
From Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: "This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what happens to people on the ground. Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race."
Maybe it's the paranoia I got from merely reading these, but... some of them truly look like coded messages.
Take the first one for example. The words and sentences kinda work together and kinda make coherent thoughts. But they could also be explained as obfuscation around a buried coded message.
Not that I can come up with a reason why those coded messages are being directed at you. I would think they would be posted publicly so that the recipient could find them (though that did happen in the end, didn't it?;). Maybe it's a test to see if you're a true member of the Knights Templar or something. If you were, you would know how to decode them.
Before anyone gets in a tizzy... yes, I understand that grey goo is about self-replicating nanotech, and that this paint presumably does not replicate.
It's just a joke, OK? "Sky blue goo" is too funny not to say.
Yes, in terms of overall heat production, that makes sense. However, pouring heat into an urban environment sounds relatively less locally harmful than pouring it into an ocean ecosystem.
Ocean-water-cooling would just move the heat pollution of data centers from an urban area to the ocean. I am not sure that is an improvement. Substantial temperature changes have major effects on ocean microecosystems.
Is there any reason to not use SSL every time one sends a password?
Unfortunately, the general public still seems entirely uneducated about SSL, figuring that passwords must be secure because they appear as bullets on the screen, right?
Slashdot Mirror
You are thinking about old systems and thought forms. There are Web 2.0 communities that do accomplish things without any formal leadership. And those are very simple communities.
Metagovernment is not a simple direct democracy. It is not mob rule or tyranny of the majority. It is geared toward actively building consensus through synthesis mechanisms and scoring systems.
And yes, sometimes we won't get things done. That's a good thing. If there is no consensus that something should be done, then it probably should not.
The above are, respectively, the fourth and third basic principles of the project.
We certainly don't need politicians for that. Metagovernment doesn't seek to replace non-democratic institutions such as militaries or emergency response teams. But in most cases, I still think a group can make a better decision than one person. Often a leader makes the wrong decision, after all. But if there really is a need for a decision to be made by a single person, a leader can emerge without having to rely on a politician.
There is a discussion of this point in the FAQ discussion and on the list archives.
Further, Metagovernment does seek to spread the concept of community beyond normal geographic boundaries, so eventually physical attacks would be difficult when communities are intermingled. And note that this project isn't targeted at the U.S. government, but rather at very small communities, then scaling up to larger and larger communities from there. Its membership is entirely global, and not concerned with any single particular nation.
Unplug all the servers and clients for a day, and calculate how much that costs. Now tell him you work every to prevent that from happening.
I'm assuming that's tongue-in-cheek, but just to be clear: the Metagovernment has no political agenda other than to maximize participatory democracy by presenting a vastly superior alternative to representative democracy. Communists, capitalists, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, etc. are all welcome and encouraged to participate. Even authoritarians are welcome to participate, though theirs is a philosophy that is rather contradicted by the Metagovernment's basic principles.
Way to apply the first writer's standards against him.
If he's so pro-censorship, he should have seen your spam folder coming. :)
i honestly believe that the web is the key to realizing a true participatory democracy on a federal level in a country as big as the U.S. ... at least then politicians and can't plead ignorance.
Why stop there? Why just the U.S.? Why just participate in what the politicians do? Why have any politicians at all?
If you are serious about wanting real participation in governance, and you would like to get in at the beginning, the Metagovernment project needs coders for the Metascore prototype.
Huh. @#$%ing lack of an edit button strikes again.
> Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years.
50 years from now, when most major cities are being inundated by seal level rise and increasingly violent storms, we just might think that the environment/climate was a bigger issue 50 years ago.
But of course, nobody talks about environment as a political issue anymore. Is that an "education" problem? Do we really have to be taught about the catastrophes that we are in the process of creating?
Scientists have been warning us about warming for at least 40 years, and we're still not listening? It's still not an important political issue? Have you even heard Obama or McCain talking about the environment? Have you noticed that lists of which issues Americans think are important rarely even contain the environment as a possibility? Look at the Issue Tracker section of this page and notice that Environment doesn't even make it above the 2% "Other" category.
So is that any different from iPhone OS? Is this the trend of the future (outside of Linux, that is)?
With Ted Stevens'conviction in the news, the joke deserves a bit of a revival. :)
In Virginia (for example), where voting is completely electronic, they can still do recounts. Wanna know how? By doing the functional equivalent of hitting the refresh button.
IIRC, for some reason, recounts always come up with the same number as the original count. Huh.
Please read reply above yours... from me... explaining just that.
Yeah, about two seconds after I clicked "Submit" I remembered the story was about was Motorola, not Google.
Oh well. The Trout story is worth reading anyway.
This is a clear technicality. They're hiring emotionless androids who will do no evil, but also no good. Simply because they won't know the difference.
From Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five:
"This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what happens to people on the ground. Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race."
Maybe it's the paranoia I got from merely reading these, but... some of them truly look like coded messages.
;). Maybe it's a test to see if you're a true member of the Knights Templar or something. If you were, you would know how to decode them.
Take the first one for example. The words and sentences kinda work together and kinda make coherent thoughts. But they could also be explained as obfuscation around a buried coded message.
Not that I can come up with a reason why those coded messages are being directed at you. I would think they would be posted publicly so that the recipient could find them (though that did happen in the end, didn't it?
Yeahhh... that's it. Definitely!
Before anyone gets in a tizzy... yes, I understand that grey goo is about self-replicating nanotech, and that this paint presumably does not replicate.
It's just a joke, OK? "Sky blue goo" is too funny not to say.
So much for grey goo.
Now we can have eggshell goo, sky blue goo, burnt sienna goo... the mind boggles.
Note the vague phonetic similarity between "North Dakota" and "Mordor."
Did this project happen to hand out t-shirts... or, hm, something less obvious like... rings?
Yes, in terms of overall heat production, that makes sense. However, pouring heat into an urban environment sounds relatively less locally harmful than pouring it into an ocean ecosystem.
2
(ala Futurama, I believe)
That's why Google is also developing the ED-209.
Ocean-water-cooling would just move the heat pollution of data centers from an urban area to the ocean. I am not sure that is an improvement. Substantial temperature changes have major effects on ocean microecosystems.
Really? Five years sounds like an eternity in the development of net technologies.
The moment I clicked "Submit," I realized my error in, well, not reading the article well and instead rushing to fp.
What kinda amazes me is that with all the replies above yours, you were the first to point this out. :/
Is there any reason to not use SSL every time one sends a password?
Unfortunately, the general public still seems entirely uneducated about SSL, figuring that passwords must be secure because they appear as bullets on the screen, right?