If TBL has taken on a role as protector of the web from balkanisation, he is truly seeing the tool theory clearly: I wouldn't really call the web a tool, any more than sledgehammers, potatoes, love, or money are tools.
Let's say the internet is a "thing". We all see it in a slightly different way and give it a different set of values, and then use it accordingly. The fact that the internet is being used for monetary gain is a clear picture of what the values of some people are.
Tim Berners-Lee has seen a great vision of what it is, and that is his own mission and duty, not so much that of the money people (Whose mission might be to act as an obstacle to him?). Each of us can have our own vision of it, and therefore our mission to do with this as well.
But I believe I should support what he's saying, support the web consortium, make the web a good place. Money can be a beautiful "thing" too, but it's the bad aspects of the values we give it that are what I'd be more wary of.
Maybe at some point we'll understand, even if we're big greedy caricature businessmen, that you can't really use something if it's all fucked up. The earthquake in Taiwan comes to mind: How much computer hardware money would have been saved if those houses had had better protection, if there were better support for victims, more resources for this kind of disaster? If people didn't already have an understanding of some simple and narrow-minded kind that being ecological for example might be a good idea, then absolutely no-one would invest in ecological business practices (recycling, not polluting, etc). The reason people invest in that stuff is that it makes simple economic sense to do it!
In the same way, how much money can we save by adhering to the ww3's standards now? As well as all the other values we can gain from it...
In short, Tim, keep your head up there in the clouds, stay skint and visionary, keep inspiring and standardising the www!
I completely disagree with the importance of this comment. Yes, fine, informative, great. But it's not making the valid points that a lot of other comments are making here, so I don't see why it was used as an update to the article:
Wether there is or is not a linux machine somewhere in the world running IRC is irrelevant. What would argue the case for linux in a much better way would be a list of the best points made in the slashdot responses.
The fact that madness and deficiencies are in the eyes of the beholder is nothing new, but this is what I can see from the article:
In a room full of geeks fitting the article's description, we have:
1) those who aren't *really* (deep down in their hearts) happy with their lack of social skills, secretly fancy the girl on the bus, would like to really be able to explain things properly to their boss. (Please don't get pissed off: this is theoretical)
2) Those who are happy with how they are, a little shy, a little dysfuctional at parties, but pleased that they are also quite inventive, and in their element with what they do. Maybe sometimes buy one of those self help assertivity books in bad moments.
3)Those who are not content with their level of geekiness: They would take classes in autisticity if they could. As long as it helped them really be able to solve the problems they want to solve, and do what they want to do.
We're all free to be in one of these (theoretical!) factions, because ultimately geekdom and society are both valuable things!
That recent red hat interview here made it clear that if 90% of people have MS OS's and 10% have UNIXes, then it makes sense to compete with the 90 rather than people in your smaller 10%. Which was the reason for red hat not competing aggressively with other distributions.
Following the red hat strategy, they should stop trying to compete with sun, and they'll have a larger market to compete for.
We are already an amalgam of biology and the cultural/technological "life" that we've already been creating for the past 10000 years. This amalgam is present day society. Could it survive without all the things we've created to live with (money, computers, drains, etc)?
I'm really not sure about other buddhists (I'm a member of the SGI) but I really don't think we should pose limits on our natural ability to create things. I know change can be scary but it IS a good thing! By valueing our wisdom as much as our intelligence we can create things of value, and not just of academic interest, with doubtful application in the real world. In fact, if we can create a thinking thing, that's a really incredible cause, and that's one of the reasons I'm in computing in the first place (I think it'll be more of a society thing than a one-off organism though)
"But she said the Catholic Church would not countenance the creation of higher lifeforms - or even of bacteria if the motivation was to do harm. "
There is a principle in buddhism which is called the philosophy of value: information and science, facts and philosophies have no value in themselves. We are the ones who give these things value.
So we shouldn't pursue science for the sake of science: we should do it for the value that we can make out of our discoveries and creations. If we follow this principle in any situation where morals and science might clash, we'll have a good balance between wisdom and intelligence.
& then the creation of these life forms will be a positive change.
Hans Moravec is a mad robot builder and futurologist who predicts a lot of far fetched stuff, most of it too complicated to explain.
In his book "mind Children" he analyses what the implications of robotics for humanity's future, hypothesizes on the requirtements for very complicated organisms, and then goes off into the far far future and looks at that too.
Some of it sounds beautiful, some of it sounds insane, but it's a good read. He was also on an old issue of wired maybe 95 96, which was how I discovered him.
I too was given a big jumpstart into the world of computing when I first read Stephen Levy's artificial life, Dawkins' Selfish Gene, and Moravec's Mind Children.
Those books showed me that we're actually not just playing games and getting political about OS's for no reason. The rise in the importance of technology has been exponantial ever since people started letting down the old rusty barriers against progress.
If already so much synergy results from commerce and society, then the dream of there being such an incredible future spurred me on to do computer studies, and now internet communities.
Of course, not all of the effects of a new sum-of-the-parts are positive, but the way I see it, I have to be here in this profession to make sure it goes the way I'd like it to because it's going to happen anyway.
Also, the actual theory behind alife, genetic algorithms, or even moravec's mad ramblings, is really complicated and full of boring math and biology (too much for me: that's what I was studying when I read those books), but pop science books on all those matters can't f ail to show those things to people who wouldn't otherwise have had the patience nor maybe even the time or disposition to sit figuring out journals & stuff.
This link will give a bit more info on this possible counterpart or even competitor to flash.
I think it would be a great alternative, being all into css/dom and w3 standards in general. SVG is coming together quite nicely, and already supports animation, scripting, filters, rotated text, as can be seen from the many (mostly java based) viewers around. The cool thing about it is that unlike flash, you don't need to use a proprietary point and click development tool to do stuff in SVG. Instead you just muck about in emacs like you're s'posed to.
Flash is really nice, don't want to put it down, but it's just not fiddly enough for me.
Whenever I see a games programmer, I want to bow deeply and shout "I am not worthy!" with a look of awe.
But I understand, if games types are the film stars of our industry, then it's quite logical that their work scenario should be comparable to hollywood.
And from that it follows that there should be an underground/alternative/independent game industry, with it's own distribution channels and rules and problems.
So the question is: does it exist? then where is it? Does it not? Then it's time to make it! Games are so immersive these days. Developers deserve to have the choice to be completely creative, arty farty, cliquey or in general to share the traits of underground film makers!
So is Microsoft giving money to this noble cause because some forward thinking person there thinks open source might stand a chance in the very long run, and that the only way to beat socially evolving programs would be to hit them with human independent genetic programming?
So we'd be programming against a wave of IMPlike bots spewing new versions of office etc all the time?
Perhaps open source people will then see the benefits of the biological side of programming, and a whole new chapter of the history of programming will begin.
Then again, why is MS giving the money over? would there be other reasons? Am I being paranoid?
I'm writing with regard to the luther blisset section of the article, having lived in Friuli, north Italy and seen some of the great work that this great conglomerate of an artist has produced. (most memorably, the word "ART" spelt out in a geographic art form around the region).
People who copy other works may be plagiarists if viewed on the surface level, but what really matters is the value that they created from what they "plagiarised".
I used to always feel bad about saying/wearing/writing doing things that other people had done before. But that's like learning from someone the way a pupil learns from a student, and valuing that teaching so much as to try it out for myself. When I do that, I do it my own way, and the end result is limited by my limits and improved by my strengths.
In that sense it *is* a good thing to merge your ideas with others, and also in that sense, open source can be a valuable step further in that direction. This is because now we can all learn something from others, while contributing to the same thing. So we all become masters and disciples (or teachers and pupils if you want) at the same time.
I've heard of this before, I think from that cyborg wannabe guy who goes around with augmented reality glasses, and all these borg looking things attached to his head (no, not Bill Gates). Come on, that guy who can't do html to save his life. (Now it definitely sounds like billga) Hmm, he also has a camera relaying all over the place so his friends know where he is...
Well doesn't he have a chordal keyboard?
But that's beside the point anyway. What I'd like to do is try out a simple commercial version, maybe one that I could plug in on a separate port, to complement my real keyboard in case I get lost.
I totally agree with the visionaries who agree that one day we *will* get a good keyboard (Doug Copeland?), and I'd love to try and get that happening by trying chordal stuff out.
As a guitar player a can see the importance of chords, as in complicated key strokes for one complicated effect. It means your music isn't limited to one style, vibe or state of complexity. One thing that I remember from my move from being a windows html typist to linux apache/.sh configurer is the lack of keystrokes I had become so used to, like c-leftarrow to move forward a word at a time, or shift-c-leftarrow to select or in general the much easier cut & paste, which was the same in any program. These things were very valuable when copying a lot of text from one application to another(usually we had to convert stuff to html that was coming in in pagemaker or in microsoft assistant), and I understand that linux as a server OS, rather than a clerical one doesn't need this so urgently.
But I think that with the ever more varying range of things we use keyboards for, we will need a very strong and radical design of the way we interface with stuff. And to keep the musical analogies going, I would go for the drummer's approach in this case: the drummer uses all parts of his body: arms , legs, and sometimes even backing vocal to provide his part. The result is a well balanced use of the entire body that is both healthy (or healthier than just using your hands and eyes anyway) and more balanced. If configurable, so many different jobs would be done to such a great extent, from admin work to music, to gaming, to html cut and paste jobs.
And I think a chordal keyboard would look much more flashy than a flat, grey, £8 keyboard too! (Anyone got a screenshot of one?)
The constitution makes it quite clear these guys only use M$ software & OSes.
I wouldn't sign up for that. Microsoft will be controlling these guys arses if they ever do anything useful. Until they change to apache/linux/perl/opensource that is. That's what the constitutions says too though: we can change stuff if we want to.
I still think it's a great idea, but it's all empty theorising until they get a good user base.
So much time has gone by since webmonkey did a feature on M5, the party, the resignation, and I remember that as soon as I read that letter from jzw on his site, I immediately wanted to mail him to congratulate him for being such an enthusiastic person, who did so much in the past, but was then obviously going through some very hard shit.
(It was good that I didn't: I'd only got to the bit about jwz@aol.com followed by laughter by then, and further down it said it wasn't really his address...)
But in any case, I don't think netscape developers were "burned".
If Jwz hadn't resigned that day in such a big way, I (and lots of other webmonkey readers, and maybe even slashdot newbies) might never have heard of him. And that is the kind of people the web needs(and I'd name Bill Gates, Linus, Tim berners -lee, and so many more here, even just because they challenge us in positive or negative ways to work harder), because they are ordinary human beings trying to create what they dream is possible. Sometimes they fuck up or leave, but that is *not* burning!!
When we started this company, we were out to change the world. And we did that. Without us, the change probably would have happened anyway, maybe six months or a year later, and who-knows-what would have played out differently. But we were the ones who actually did it.
The Netscape experience showed, and is still showing us events in computing that are happening for the first time ever, that computing has had no experience of, simply because they were pioneers. Failure as well as success can be inspiring, because we can learn from those errors.
But of course, all this is from a humanistic point of view, not in the sense of organisational management. In that case they may be right, but the strategy of blocking out and trying to forget old mistakes never pays off in the long run. Perhaps the aol/sun/netscape conglomerate should challenge those mistakes instead of trying to cover them up...
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't find the article, but here's the home page for that company...
http://www.neurodynamics.com
If TBL has taken on a role as protector of the web from balkanisation, he is truly seeing the tool theory clearly: I wouldn't really call the web a tool, any more than sledgehammers, potatoes, love, or money are tools.
Let's say the internet is a "thing". We all see it in a slightly different way and give it a different set of values, and then use it accordingly. The fact that the internet is being used for monetary gain is a clear picture of what the values of some people are.
Tim Berners-Lee has seen a great vision of what it is, and that is his own mission and duty, not so much that of the money people (Whose mission might be to act as an obstacle to him?). Each of us can have our own vision of it, and therefore our mission to do with this as well.
But I believe I should support what he's saying, support the web consortium, make the web a good place. Money can be a beautiful "thing" too, but it's the bad aspects of the values we give it that are what I'd be more wary of.
Maybe at some point we'll understand, even if we're big greedy caricature businessmen, that you can't really use something if it's all fucked up. The earthquake in Taiwan comes to mind: How much computer hardware money would have been saved if those houses had had better protection, if there were better support for victims, more resources for this kind of disaster? If people didn't already have an understanding of some simple and narrow-minded kind that being ecological for example might be a good idea, then absolutely no-one would invest in ecological business practices (recycling, not polluting, etc). The reason people invest in that stuff is that it makes simple economic sense to do it!
In the same way, how much money can we save by adhering to the ww3's standards now? As well as all the other values we can gain from it...
In short, Tim, keep your head up there in the clouds, stay skint and visionary, keep inspiring and standardising the www!
I completely disagree with the importance of this comment. Yes, fine, informative, great. But it's not making the valid points that a lot of other comments are making here, so I don't see why it was used as an update to the article:
Wether there is or is not a linux machine somewhere in the world running IRC is irrelevant. What would argue the case for linux in a much better way would be a list of the best points made in the slashdot responses.
This one for example...
Proving the validity of an opinion comes from a balanced discussion, not from looking up who-runs-what
Ale
The fact that madness and deficiencies are in the eyes of the beholder is nothing new, but this is what I can see from the article:
In a room full of geeks fitting the article's description, we have:
1) those who aren't *really* (deep down in their hearts) happy with their lack of social skills, secretly fancy the girl on the bus, would like to really be able to explain things properly to their boss. (Please don't get pissed off: this is theoretical)
2) Those who are happy with how they are, a little shy, a little dysfuctional at parties, but pleased that they are also quite inventive, and in their element with what they do. Maybe sometimes buy one of those self help assertivity books in bad moments.
3)Those who are not content with their level of geekiness: They would take classes in autisticity if they could. As long as it helped them really be able to solve the problems they want to solve, and do what they want to do.
We're all free to be in one of these (theoretical!) factions, because ultimately geekdom and society are both valuable things!
That recent red hat interview here made it clear that if 90% of people have MS OS's and 10% have UNIXes, then it makes sense to compete with the 90 rather than people in your smaller 10%. Which was the reason for red hat not competing aggressively with other distributions.
Following the red hat strategy, they should stop trying to compete with sun, and they'll have a larger market to compete for.
"But she said the Catholic Church would not countenance the creation of higher lifeforms - or even of bacteria if the motivation was to do harm. "
There is a principle in buddhism which is called the philosophy of value: information and science, facts and philosophies have no value in themselves. We are the ones who give these things value.
So we shouldn't pursue science for the sake of science: we should do it for the value that we can make out of our discoveries and creations. If we follow this principle in any situation where morals and science might clash, we'll have a good balance between wisdom and intelligence.
& then the creation of these life forms will be a positive change.
Hans Moravec is a mad robot builder and futurologist who predicts a lot of far fetched stuff, most of it too complicated to explain.
In his book "mind Children" he analyses what the implications of robotics for humanity's future, hypothesizes on the requirtements for very complicated organisms, and then goes off into the far far future and looks at that too.
Some of it sounds beautiful, some of it sounds insane, but it's a good read. He was also on an old issue of wired maybe 95 96, which was how I discovered him.
I too was given a big jumpstart into the world of computing when I first read Stephen Levy's artificial life, Dawkins' Selfish Gene, and Moravec's Mind Children.
Those books showed me that we're actually not just playing games and getting political about OS's for no reason. The rise in the importance of technology has been exponantial ever since people started letting down the old rusty barriers against progress.
If already so much synergy results from commerce and society, then the dream of there being such an incredible future spurred me on to do computer studies, and now internet communities.
Of course, not all of the effects of a new sum-of-the-parts are positive, but the way I see it, I have to be here in this profession to make sure it goes the way I'd like it to because it's going to happen anyway.
Also, the actual theory behind alife, genetic algorithms, or even moravec's mad ramblings,
is really complicated and full of boring math and biology (too much for me: that's what I was studying when I read those books), but pop science books on all those matters can't f
ail to show those things to people who wouldn't otherwise have had the patience nor maybe
even the time or disposition to sit figuring out journals & stuff.
...for those who are listening...
This link will give a bit more info on this possible counterpart or even competitor to flash.
I think it would be a great alternative, being all into css/dom and w3 standards in general. SVG is coming together quite nicely, and already supports animation, scripting, filters, rotated text, as can be seen from the many (mostly java based) viewers around. The cool thing about it is that unlike flash, you don't need to use a proprietary point and click development tool to do stuff in SVG. Instead you just muck about in emacs like you're s'posed to.
Flash is really nice, don't want to put it down, but it's just not fiddly enough for me.
Whenever I see a games programmer, I want to bow deeply and shout "I am not worthy!" with a look of awe.
But I understand, if games types are the film stars of our industry, then it's quite logical that their work scenario should be comparable to hollywood.
And from that it follows that there should be an underground/alternative/independent game industry, with it's own distribution channels and rules and problems.
So the question is: does it exist? then where is it? Does it not? Then it's time to make it! Games are so immersive these days. Developers deserve to have the choice to be completely creative, arty farty, cliquey or in general to share the traits of underground film makers!
So how about introducing random mutations to CVS trees used in open source development?
Or are there other ways of integrating open source and genetic programming?
So is Microsoft giving money to this noble cause because some forward thinking person there thinks open source might stand a chance in the very long run, and that the only way to beat socially evolving programs would be to hit them with human independent genetic programming?
So we'd be programming against a wave of IMPlike bots spewing new versions of office etc all the time?
Perhaps open source people will then see the benefits of the biological side of programming, and a whole new chapter of the history of programming will begin.
Then again, why is MS giving the money over? would there be other reasons? Am I being paranoid?
And not in so much of a Jedi sense either.
/wearing/writing doing things that other people had done before. But that's like learning from someone the way a pupil learns from a student, and valuing that teaching so much as to try it out for myself. When I do that, I do it my own way, and the end result is limited by my limits and improved by my strengths.
I'm writing with regard to the luther blisset section of the article, having lived in Friuli, north Italy and seen some of the great work that this great conglomerate of an artist has produced. (most memorably, the word "ART" spelt out in a geographic art form around the region).
People who copy other works may be plagiarists if viewed on the surface level, but what really matters is the value that they created from what they "plagiarised".
I used to always feel bad about saying
In that sense it *is* a good thing to merge your ideas with others, and also in that sense, open source can be a valuable step further in that direction. This is because now we can all learn something from others, while contributing to the same thing. So we all become masters and disciples (or teachers and pupils if you want) at the same time.
I've heard of this before, I think from that cyborg wannabe guy who goes around with augmented reality glasses, and all these borg looking things attached to his head (no, not Bill Gates). Come on, that guy who can't do html to save his life. (Now it definitely sounds like billga) Hmm, he also has a camera relaying all over the place so his friends know where he is...
Well doesn't he have a chordal keyboard?
But that's beside the point anyway. What I'd like to do is try out a simple commercial version, maybe one that I could plug in on a separate port, to complement my real keyboard in case I get lost.
I totally agree with the visionaries who agree that one day we *will* get a good keyboard (Doug Copeland?), and I'd love to try and get that happening by trying chordal stuff out.
As a guitar player a can see the importance of chords, as in complicated key strokes for one complicated effect. It means your music isn't limited to one style, vibe or state of complexity. One thing that I remember from my move from being a windows html typist to linux apache/.sh configurer is the lack of keystrokes I had become so used to, like c-leftarrow to move forward a word at a time, or shift-c-leftarrow to select or in general the much easier cut & paste, which was the same in any program. These things were very valuable when copying a lot of text from one application to another(usually we had to convert stuff to html that was coming in in pagemaker or in microsoft assistant), and I understand that linux as a server OS, rather than a clerical one doesn't need this so urgently.
But I think that with the ever more varying range of things we use keyboards for, we will need a very strong and radical design of the way we interface with stuff. And to keep the musical analogies going, I would go for the drummer's approach in this case: the drummer uses all parts of his body: arms , legs, and sometimes even backing vocal to provide his part. The result is a well balanced use of the entire body that is both healthy (or healthier than just using your hands and eyes anyway) and more balanced. If configurable, so many different jobs would be done to such a great extent, from admin work to music, to gaming, to html cut and paste jobs.
And I think a chordal keyboard would look much more flashy than a flat, grey, £8 keyboard too! (Anyone got a screenshot of one?)
Ale
ps oh yeah: This is the guy I meant
The constitution makes it quite clear these guys only use M$ software & OSes.
I wouldn't sign up for that. Microsoft will be controlling these guys arses if they ever do anything useful. Until they change to apache/linux/perl/opensource that is. That's what the constitutions says too though: we can change stuff if we want to.
I still think it's a great idea, but it's all empty theorising until they get a good user base.
So much time has gone by since webmonkey did a feature on M5, the party, the resignation, and I remember that as soon as I read that letter from jzw on his site, I immediately wanted to mail him to congratulate him for being such an enthusiastic person, who did so much in the past, but was then obviously going through some very hard shit.
(It was good that I didn't: I'd only got to the bit about jwz@aol.com followed by laughter by then, and further down it said it wasn't really his address...)
But in any case, I don't think netscape developers were "burned".
If Jwz hadn't resigned that day in such a big way, I (and lots of other webmonkey readers, and maybe even slashdot newbies) might never have heard of him. And that is the kind of people the web needs(and I'd name Bill Gates, Linus, Tim berners -lee, and so many more here, even just because they challenge us in positive or negative ways to work harder), because they are ordinary human beings trying to create what they dream is possible. Sometimes they fuck up or leave, but that is *not* burning!!
When we started this company, we were out to change the world. And we did that. Without us, the change probably would have happened anyway, maybe six months or a year later, and who-knows-what would have played out differently. But we were the ones who actually did it.
The Netscape experience showed, and is still showing us events in computing that are happening for the first time ever, that computing has had no experience of, simply because they were pioneers. Failure as well as success can be inspiring, because we can learn from those errors.
But of course, all this is from a humanistic point of view, not in the sense of organisational management. In that case they may be right, but the strategy of blocking out and trying to forget old mistakes never pays off in the long run. Perhaps the aol/sun/netscape conglomerate should challenge those mistakes instead of trying to cover them up...
Ale