I think the public expects a downside from new technologies but also hopes and expects that the upside will be much greater. I blame the past period of pessimism mostly on what happened with atomic energy.
Historically, back in the first part of the century, the inventions of electric lights and power, mass produced automobiles, radio, and home appliances such as refrigerators had huge upsides that left the public wildly optimistic about technology. Then atomic science came along and that optimism carried over into great hopes for that. Atomic science became the big icon for futuristic technology. Issacc Asimov had backpack-sized atomic power units in his Foundation series, the formula E = mc2 drifted by in the Twilight Zone introduction, and so on.
But atomic science turned out to have a very traumatic and threatening downside with the cold war situation, and instead of the nearly free unlimited power that people were dreaming of, you ended up with nuclear waste at a time when pollution was becomming a big deal, and reactors that made people nervous about accidents. As a result, people became pessimistic about technology in general.
In the 1970's, computers became the new icon for futuristic technology, and after thirty years, people see that computers turned out pretty good. Developments in communications and medicine seem mostly all upside. So now the public sees that what happened with atomic energy as not necessarily the start of some doom spiral, but perhaps a cautionary anomaly.
For instance I was recently in Annapolis at a conference, and I decided to walk from my hotel to the nearby mall. I was stopped by the police on the way, someone had phoned 911 about someone walking along the pavement (sorry, sidewalk) for heaven's sake!
It's certainly not against the law to walk in the U.S. However, it is against the law to walk while thinking about physics. This is for your own safety. Next time you visit the States, be safe and legal and use one of the designated Physics Contemplation Areas.
A better word than tragic might be "trade-off". All engineering is a trade-off, whether it be design decisions or the all-things-considered utility of a product. If utopia is somehow equated with a "free lunch", then there is no utopia. All technologies have associated problems, but as for the big picture, as the previous poster implied, it's too bad we can't all walk a mile in our ancestor's shoes so we'd better appreciate what we have now.
> i think the idea of ownership is most closely linked to the notion of stewardship. things that aren't owned often suffer from the "tragedy of the commons."
Fragmentation issues aside, free software is really more like the opposite of the "tragedy of the commons". Grazing land or physical resources in general can be over-used and used-up, but source code can't be used-up. In fact, if you count bug reports and other user contributions, the more people that use it, the more of it there is to be used.
The State is in a unique position because it can force you to comply on threat of imprisionment. The State interfaces with the world through its employees. A person, when serving as a representitive of the State to the public, cannot promote a religion. When off-duty, that same person can promote religion according to his or her own personal beliefs. I'm reminded of the cop that lost his job because he insisted on wearing a small Christian cross on his uniform. I think it is good that he is a Christian and would stand up for his beliefs, but the seperation rule is a higher good, and it is good to follow the spirit of this rule, even in the little things. I'm sure many religious leaders approve of the seperation rule, but unfortunately, many Christians think it is evil because the preachers they listen to have taken a lesson from some polititians and media. The lesson is that villification is much better at rasing emotions than is reasoned discussion. By raising the emotional level they improve church attendance and fund-raising. So they are always on the lookout for "evils" to rage against. (Having exclusive control of the microphone, they lose touch with reality, and eventually become televangelists...)
1. A weak good government. 2. A strong good government. 3. A weak bad government. 4. A strong bad government.
A weak bad government can easily become a strong bad goverment. A weak good government can become a weak bad government. So the best option is a strong good government.
A strong good government is one with deeply-rooted institutions of openness and accountability. This is the most stable. The US government is like this, but of course it could be better. Weak governments are more unstable and can become tryranical due to ongoing internal corruption or as a result of some external disaster.
The milita types: They fear the government. They want to hide from it as much as possible, even though they are not doing anything illegal. You fear what you don't know. The government is a black box to them. Conspiracy theories abound. They feel threatned by unseen forces. They are at the extreme, but everyone feels this uneasyness to some small degree. The cure for this is more openness.
Government, like source code, should be open.
One reason the government is opaque is simply because it has become so large. Knowing what the government is up to today is a more difficult task than it was 200 years ago when government was much smaller. (30MB Windows vs. 100K DOS) Computers and the Internet can help with this. Require public officials, from the highest to the lowest, to document the reasons for their decisions, and make those documents publicly available on the net.
Another reason for opacity is a legacy of the cold war (proprietary competition). In the long run, secrets are bad for a government.
Secrecy should be allowed only in exceptional circumstances. Have it so that if a federal agency wants to keep a secret for less than obvious "security" reasons, it must buy an "Indulgence" from the federal treasury, for say $1000. In other words, a government department loses $1000 from its budget for each secret it wants to keep.:-)
Ideally, government should be like a personal computer running Linux.:-) A very complicated operating system, but one designed by the community itself, to serve its needs, and who's internal workings are completely open and available for inspection and understanding should you care to look. All the benefits of open source development would apply to governace as well.
I suggest an interesting test to see what the real purpose of this ten commandments bussiness is: would the proponents be satisfied with the substitution of an alternative (modified) list of commandments?
The first four commandments are transmission related, intended to spread the meme-complex. Since the state is not allowed to promote a particular religion we drop these four and move on to the morally-related commandments. We re-phrase the language to preserve the meaning but cloak the biblical source. (So as not to subliminally promote a particular religious text)
Here then is a modified ten commandments with identical moral content but sans religious references:
MORAL RULES TO LIVE BY:
Respect your parents Do not kill Do not consort with married individuals Do not steal Do not accuse falsely Do not be envious
Would the religious right be satisfied if this list list were posted in schools instead of the ten commandments? I don't think so. It proves that the real motivation is not to promote morallity, but to promote a religion.
Tron was cool, the experience enhanced by taking off from work because my boss wanted to see it.:-) I remember wanting them to use "deallocate" instead of de-rez.:-) To this day, I don't know if de-rez is a real computer term, or if they made it up.
I think this rumor is false based on a Charlie Rose interview with Andy Grove. He talked about companies who erred by thinking the low end wasn't important because most of the income comes from the high end, therefore why fight too hard for the low end. The competitor that takes over the low end has an advantage. The low end is where you build vital skills and knowledge for the future. Examples: Transistor radios are initially crummy but eventually replace high-end vacuum tube radios. Toy PCs eventually improve to take sales from high-end mainframes.
> Of course, that takes time and feedback, which the short life-time of posts on/. discourages. But still.
Yep, on Slashdot, there doesn't seem to BE a multi-day follow-up. Threads pretty much die when the story scrolls off the front page. That's ok for items like "XYZ Corp. upgrades whizzbang to 400 mhz", but is less than ideal for stories with a more philosophical bent. It's a little unfortunate, because topics that could stimulate thought and reflection lose some of that potential because of the perceived need to rush when posting a comment. On the other hand, the stories are still there after they scroll -- just takes an extra click, if people want to.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 1: Find a roadside telephone booth in an unpopulated scenic location.
Step 2: Spend the next ten years trying to convince the local telephone company that the booth is haunted.
Step 3: When telco sends someone out to have a look, have holographic projection equipment ready.
Step 4: If successful at scaring pants off service tech, say you are a researcher studying "psycho-plasma", and offer to buy the booth for ten bucks.
Step 5: Mission accomplished. Rugged weatherproof case obtained.
I think the public expects a downside from new technologies but also hopes and expects that the upside will be much greater. I blame the past period of pessimism mostly on what happened with atomic energy.
Historically, back in the first part of the century, the inventions of electric lights and power, mass produced automobiles, radio, and home appliances such as refrigerators had huge upsides that left the public wildly optimistic about technology. Then atomic science came along and that optimism carried over into great hopes for that. Atomic science became the big icon for futuristic technology. Issacc Asimov had backpack-sized atomic power units in his Foundation series, the formula E = mc2 drifted by in the Twilight Zone introduction, and so on.
But atomic science turned out to have a very traumatic and threatening downside with the cold war situation, and instead of the nearly free unlimited power that people were dreaming of, you ended up with nuclear waste at a time when pollution was becomming a big deal, and reactors that made people nervous about accidents. As a result, people became pessimistic about technology in general.
In the 1970's, computers became the new icon for futuristic technology, and after thirty years, people see that computers turned out pretty good. Developments in communications and medicine seem mostly all upside. So now the public sees that what happened with atomic energy as not necessarily the start of some doom spiral, but perhaps a cautionary anomaly.
For instance I was recently in Annapolis at a conference, and I decided to walk from my hotel to the nearby mall. I was stopped by the police on the way, someone had phoned 911 about someone walking along the pavement (sorry, sidewalk) for heaven's sake!
It's certainly not against the law to walk in the U.S. However, it is against the law to walk while thinking about physics. This is for your own safety. Next time you visit the States, be safe and legal and use one of the designated Physics Contemplation Areas.
A better word than tragic might be "trade-off". All engineering is a trade-off, whether it be design decisions or the all-things-considered utility of a product. If utopia is somehow equated with a "free lunch", then there is no utopia. All technologies have associated problems, but as for the big picture, as the previous poster implied, it's too bad we can't all walk a mile in our ancestor's shoes so we'd better appreciate what we have now.
> i think the idea of ownership is most closely linked to the notion of stewardship. things that aren't owned often suffer from the "tragedy of the commons."
Fragmentation issues aside, free software is really more like the opposite of the "tragedy of the commons". Grazing land or physical resources in general can be over-used and used-up, but source code can't be used-up. In fact, if you count bug reports and other user contributions, the more people that use it, the more of it there is to be used.
I predict that computers will be used more and more to make predictions.
(actually, more to explore possibilities than predict)
The State is in a unique position because it can force you to comply on threat of imprisionment. The State interfaces with the world through its employees. A person, when serving as a representitive of the State to the public, cannot promote a religion. When off-duty, that same person can promote religion according to his or her own personal beliefs. I'm reminded of the cop that lost his job because he insisted on wearing a small Christian cross on his uniform. I think it is good that he is a Christian and would stand up for his beliefs, but the seperation rule is a higher good, and it is good to follow the spirit of this rule, even in the little things. I'm sure many religious leaders approve of the seperation rule, but unfortunately, many Christians think it is evil because the preachers they listen to have taken a lesson from some polititians and media. The lesson is that villification is much better at rasing emotions than is reasoned discussion. By raising the emotional level they improve church attendance and fund-raising. So they are always on the lookout for "evils" to rage against. (Having exclusive control of the microphone, they lose touch with reality, and eventually become televangelists...)
1. A weak good government.
:-)
:-) A very complicated operating system, but one designed by the community itself, to serve its needs, and who's internal workings are completely open and available for inspection and understanding should you care to look. All the benefits of open source development would apply to governace as well.
2. A strong good government.
3. A weak bad government.
4. A strong bad government.
A weak bad government can easily become a strong bad goverment. A weak good government can become a weak bad government. So the best option is a strong good government.
A strong good government is one with deeply-rooted institutions of openness and accountability. This is the most stable. The US government is like this, but of course it could be better. Weak governments are more unstable and can become tryranical due to ongoing internal corruption or as a result of some external disaster.
The milita types: They fear the government. They want to hide from it as much as possible, even though they are not doing anything illegal. You fear what you don't know. The government is a black box to them. Conspiracy theories abound. They feel threatned by unseen forces. They are at the extreme, but everyone feels this uneasyness to some small degree. The cure for this is more openness.
Government, like source code, should be open.
One reason the government is opaque is simply because it has become so large. Knowing what the government is up to today is a more difficult task than it was 200 years ago when government was much smaller. (30MB Windows vs. 100K DOS) Computers and the Internet can help with this. Require public officials, from the highest to the lowest, to document the reasons for their decisions, and make those documents publicly available on the net.
Another reason for opacity is a legacy of the cold war (proprietary competition). In the long run, secrets are bad for a government.
Secrecy should be allowed only in exceptional circumstances. Have it so that if a federal agency wants to keep a secret for less than obvious "security" reasons, it must buy an "Indulgence" from the federal treasury, for say $1000. In other words, a government department loses $1000 from its budget for each secret it wants to keep.
Ideally, government should be like a personal computer running Linux.
In case the squishy machine goes super-crit, er, syrup-critical.
Don't use the Microsoft Explorer's Digital Compass
I suggest an interesting test to see what the real purpose of this ten commandments bussiness is: would the proponents be satisfied with the substitution of an alternative (modified) list of commandments?
The first four commandments are transmission related, intended to spread the meme-complex. Since the state is not allowed to promote a particular religion we drop these four and move on to the morally-related commandments. We re-phrase the language to preserve the meaning but cloak the biblical source. (So as not to subliminally promote a particular religious text)
Here then is a modified ten commandments with identical moral content but sans religious references:
MORAL RULES TO LIVE BY:
Respect your parents
Do not kill
Do not consort with married individuals
Do not steal
Do not accuse falsely
Do not be envious
Would the religious right be satisfied if this list list were posted in schools instead of the ten commandments? I don't think so. It proves that the real motivation is not to promote morallity, but to promote a religion.
Tron was cool, the experience enhanced by taking off from work because my boss wanted to see it. :-) I remember wanting them to use "deallocate" instead of de-rez. :-) To this day, I don't know if de-rez is a real computer term, or if they made it up.
I think this rumor is false based on a Charlie Rose interview with Andy Grove. He talked about companies who erred by thinking the low end wasn't important because most of the income comes from the high end, therefore why fight too hard for the low end. The competitor that takes over the low end has an advantage. The low end is where you build vital skills and knowledge for the future. Examples: Transistor radios are initially crummy but eventually replace high-end vacuum tube radios. Toy PCs eventually improve to take sales from high-end mainframes.
> Of course, that takes time and feedback, which the short life-time of posts on /. discourages. But still.
Yep, on Slashdot, there doesn't seem to BE a multi-day follow-up. Threads pretty much die when the story scrolls off the front page. That's ok for items like "XYZ Corp. upgrades whizzbang to 400 mhz", but is less than ideal for stories with a more philosophical bent. It's a little unfortunate, because topics that could stimulate thought and reflection lose some of that potential because of the perceived need to rush when posting a comment. On the other hand, the stories are still there after they scroll -- just takes an extra click, if people want to.
Does anyone have any experience doing multi-room voice control of X10 -- mic arrangements, what voice rec SW, etc?