And yet, when the debate first started, about 60 scientists in psychology and IQ studies wrote a joint letter to the Wall Street Journal saying that while some of the specific conclusions and techniques in the book were questionable, the bulk of the book is generally accepted science.
Actually I thought the piece was quite balanced with respect to the MS issue. But I suppose around here, anything but an anti-MS slant is "pro-MS." BBB
Ordered at least fifteen items from Amazon, not just books, to three different addresses with all sorts of wacky giftwrapping (including the "hand done" that they warn may delay by a day). All of it got to each address on time, well wrapped, just as I had asked. Amazon rocks. This was an occasion to remind me why I have ordered from them so many times and will continue to do so in the future. Also ordered a number of books from little independent book stores (my g/f likes old books) and one thing from e-toys. All of the bookshop owners knew what they were doing and sent the stuff properly, as did e-toys. A note for those whose service wasn't as sterling as mine -- when writing letters to executives (customer relations VPs, etc.), I have had good results when I restrain my anger and language, and KEEP IT SHORT -- one page, including address header and stuff, maximum. It is very tempting to go on and on writing down all the details of how and why the service sucked, but put yourself in the position of an exec who is looking for an excuse to blow this letter off. Then pare it down to the absolute minimum length. Precisely describing the problem in detail isn't nearly so important as sounding reasonable (since if you sound reasonable, the reader will assume the problem must have been bad -- otherwise a reasonable person would not have seen fit to write a letter), and expressing your dissatisfaction curtly. Note that it may be worthwhile to write down the details of the incident, since the company may decide to follow up and ask you what exactly went wrong. This is capitalism after all -- you, the customer, reign supreme (Katz blather notwithstanding), since it is your money these companies want. Hence, to the VP in charge of customer relations, it doesn't matter what exactly went wrong -- just that you're dissatisfied. If someone on his staff contacts you to find out the specifics, THAT's when you give over the screed you origianlly wrote, describing in exact detail the indifference of the CS rep, the incompetence of his or her supervisor, etc. BBB
It's throwaway comments like this that bug me most about Katz's writing.
"Computer animation is becoming an art form of its own"? Computer animation has been its own art form since Fantasia, or even before.
Of course I guess this doesn't bug me quite as much as his technocratic dogmatism, which is for the most part thankfully absent from this piece.
BBB
Not Luddism but technocracy
on
Planet Gattaca
·
· Score: 1
Many Slashdotters have suggested that a sort of neo-Luddism lurks beneath Katz's anti-progress rhetoric. Yet it's clear Katz doesn't hate technology in itself. What he appears to hate is the idea of unregulated, unpredictable change.
This is called "technocracy." It sounds good to many of us because, hey, it means rule of technology, right? And we all know technology rules!
But the word is far better used to describe the mentality that change is only good if it is perfectly understood before it is undertaken. Hence the seemingly-reasonable calls for "public debate" over these things. Technocrats are not really interested in public debate. First, they're technocrats -- the issues they deal with are not readily comprehensible to the public. Thus, "public debate" is code for "debate by experts" -- experts who aren't paid to be optimistic, since their names get splashed all over the headlines when a product they approve does something nasty.
Second, and more importantly, technocrats will not settle for anything less than some (usually government) authority to veto any technological innovation until its benefits are "proven" to exceed its costs. This puts a monstrous and unreasonable burden of proof on innovators.
The technocratic worldview is, imo, one of the strongest threats to progress and the improvement of the human condition we face today. Katz is one of its leading voices.
Actually a libertarian government is by definition not totalitarian. A democratic government is by definition not authoritarian. It is entirely possible (if laughably implausible) that a dictator might seize power and then decree that everyone is free to do whatever he pleases, so long as they respect others' rights to do the same. It is also entirely possible (and has definitely happened) that a democratic majority might vote to take away some or all of its own rights, surrendering all individual autonomy to the state.
This distinction may be of little practical interest but I think it is a useful one. Authoritarianism and democracy are ways by which a society decides what is good and how to set rules to achieve it; totalitarianism and libertarianism are themselves sets of rules with pre-existing notions of what is acceptable and right. This is why some libertarians are not democrats, and why some totalitarians are -- they differ with their fellow ideologues over what sort of rules they expect democracy to produce.
I don't know much about embedded technologies or their feasibility (though I do agree with those who wonder why on earth one would want the fridge connected to the net).
No, what I was most interested in was the comment appended to the story, which went like this:
"This has worried me for a while. More often than not, the drive to commercialize a new technology always comes before we've accurately predicted how it will effect us..."
Think about this line for a moment. Ignore its immediate silliness (OF COURSE people want to commercialize things before their effects are known... how else do we get to know their effects?!).
Imagine a world in which no technologies were permitted to enter the market unless someone (who? Slashdot? A Federal Bureau of Technology Approval? Bill Gates? Some committee with reps from all of the above?) approved it, presumably judging what its effects would be.
This is the technocratic fantasy, wherein nothing new is permitted unless it fits a particular "expert" vision. But who, really, CAN predict these things? Who could have predicted the creation and rise of Linux? Who could have predicted the Slashdot effect? Maybe some people did. But if those people had had to persuade everyone else, or at least a majority, that those effects were (a) likely to occur and (b) had benefits outweighing their costs, neither would have happened at all.
That is why the mentality embodied in that sort of offhand comment -- fear about unleashing some sort of technological monster upon an unwary public -- scares me, because it demonstrates an amazing level of arrogance about our own knowledge and predictive capabilities. If the capacity exists for a wired fridge, someone will try to market it, and it will succeed or it will fail. And it may produce effects and innovations that even we vaunted Slashdot readers could not have predicted. So when we express our healthy skepticism about a particular technology or product, let's try not to let it spill over into technocratic hubris, eh?
(note for readers: there is a rather good book on this subject entitled The Future And Its Enemies, by Virginia Postrel. Check it out if you are interested in a recent nontechnical defense of technology.)
> I don't know history too well, but I think AT&T didn't have any competition, but Standard Oil did.. They would have ended up owning the oil market if no one had stepped in, or at least they would have been in a position to dictate costs, as Microsoft clearly is today.
It's pretty clear your first phrase is true. The case against Standard Oil was brought in 1905. By that time their market share was 40%, down from 90% twenty years earlier. New competition from foreign fields combined with a too-aggressive refinery buyout strategy had already destroyed their market share. It was Russian and Texan competitors that 'stepped in' and humbled Standard Oil, not the government.
This sort of anti-speculation mentality is not new. Speculators have been scapegoated as profiteers, money-hungry price-gougers who add no value to any transaction.
Yet classical economics has always had a rationale for speculators, and they DO add value to an economy simply by increasing the flow of information through it. They help the price system function more efficiently, and state or cultural interference with speculators will tend to make the economy less flexible, more prone to instability and unpredictability, and overall a less happy place to deal.
In reality this has very little to do with intellectual property issues, and a lot to do with continuing public misunderstanding of the very valuable role speculators play in any advanced economy. Naturally one should not expect the U.S. Congress to pay that any heed. If it appeases their contributors and throws the mob a bone, go for it.
Wanna see what corporate-funded art looks like? Turn on the TV, my friend. Megacorps would no more sponor controvertial, challenging art than they would support controvertial, challenging television
You mean like Oz, Sex and the City, and the Sopranos on HBO, History Channel documentaries, the Nature Channel, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, A & E's Horatio Hornblower series, the TNT version of Animal Farm, Law & Order, The Practice, the X-Files, ER... ?
Most of these patrons were either clergy or noblemen, the rulers - i.e., the government - of the time. And it was common practice for artists to pander to their patrons; poets wrote them odes, painters created flattering portraits, etcetera.
Actually, Renaissance Italy was one of the first city-state societies to separate church and state (in practice... in theory, of course, they were united). And if a nobleman like de Medici spends money to commission a painting that's no more government spending than Ted Kennedy's yacht is.
And as for pandering, well, of course... and of which rich nobleman is Michelangelo's David a rendering?
Let's see, at a population of 270 million, that works out to a staggering $5.56 per American per year. If one quarter of one percent - 1 out of 400 - of Americans are artists, that means each artist gets an annual income of about $2200. Minus materials, of course. And rent for studio space. Leaves pretty much - well, nothing, really.
That's an interesting calculation. Right now the NEA's budget is less than $50 million (if that). That would increase your average artist's income by about $70. To bring artists to the poverty line, the NEA and other public funding would need to rise to a shade under $10 billion per year. This is absurd. Thus, one of us is using bad numbers. It could be that I have grossly understated the amount of money Americans spend outside of their taxes on art. It could be that you have overstated the number of artists in the U.S.
Or it could be some combination of both. But either way my point is made -- since art does exist (and flourishes), and the fraction of funds spent on art by government relative to the total art "market" is tiny, public funding of art is unnecessary.
Book recommendation for lurkers: In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen.
This is complete nonsense. Does anyone doubt that were the picture a depiction of Martin Luther King with elephant dung on him, the calls for censorship would be even louder, and that concerns about "ideology" would be totally absent?
And it's also nonsense to say that privately-funded art will only sing the praises of Bill Gates and Coca-Cola... this is pure populist windbaggery. Where the hell do you think the Sistine Chapel ceiling came from? Who sponsored Donatello, Rubens, Vermeer? That's right, merchant banks and wealthy patrons. There is a market for good, original, non-pandering art, and Americans spend almost $1.5 billion on it each year. It's frankly insulting to the average person to suggest that he or she would vapidly consume whatever art is produced, and it's bigoted to suggest that wealthy people always try to further their own interests outside of the business world.
Why the hell should Bill Gates be terrified that you don't care what he says? You probably don't much care what I say either... should I be terrified too?
Slashdot Mirror
BBB
Actually I thought the piece was quite balanced with respect to the MS issue. But I suppose around here, anything but an anti-MS slant is "pro-MS." BBB
Ordered at least fifteen items from Amazon, not just books, to three different addresses with all sorts of wacky giftwrapping (including the "hand done" that they warn may delay by a day). All of it got to each address on time, well wrapped, just as I had asked. Amazon rocks. This was an occasion to remind me why I have ordered from them so many times and will continue to do so in the future. Also ordered a number of books from little independent book stores (my g/f likes old books) and one thing from e-toys. All of the bookshop owners knew what they were doing and sent the stuff properly, as did e-toys. A note for those whose service wasn't as sterling as mine -- when writing letters to executives (customer relations VPs, etc.), I have had good results when I restrain my anger and language, and KEEP IT SHORT -- one page, including address header and stuff, maximum. It is very tempting to go on and on writing down all the details of how and why the service sucked, but put yourself in the position of an exec who is looking for an excuse to blow this letter off. Then pare it down to the absolute minimum length. Precisely describing the problem in detail isn't nearly so important as sounding reasonable (since if you sound reasonable, the reader will assume the problem must have been bad -- otherwise a reasonable person would not have seen fit to write a letter), and expressing your dissatisfaction curtly. Note that it may be worthwhile to write down the details of the incident, since the company may decide to follow up and ask you what exactly went wrong. This is capitalism after all -- you, the customer, reign supreme (Katz blather notwithstanding), since it is your money these companies want. Hence, to the VP in charge of customer relations, it doesn't matter what exactly went wrong -- just that you're dissatisfied. If someone on his staff contacts you to find out the specifics, THAT's when you give over the screed you origianlly wrote, describing in exact detail the indifference of the CS rep, the incompetence of his or her supervisor, etc. BBB
"Computer animation is becoming an art form of its own"? Computer animation has been its own art form since Fantasia, or even before.
Of course I guess this doesn't bug me quite as much as his technocratic dogmatism, which is for the most part thankfully absent from this piece.
BBB
This is called "technocracy." It sounds good to many of us because, hey, it means rule of technology, right? And we all know technology rules!
But the word is far better used to describe the mentality that change is only good if it is perfectly understood before it is undertaken. Hence the seemingly-reasonable calls for "public debate" over these things. Technocrats are not really interested in public debate. First, they're technocrats -- the issues they deal with are not readily comprehensible to the public. Thus, "public debate" is code for "debate by experts" -- experts who aren't paid to be optimistic, since their names get splashed all over the headlines when a product they approve does something nasty.
Second, and more importantly, technocrats will not settle for anything less than some (usually government) authority to veto any technological innovation until its benefits are "proven" to exceed its costs. This puts a monstrous and unreasonable burden of proof on innovators.
The technocratic worldview is, imo, one of the strongest threats to progress and the improvement of the human condition we face today. Katz is one of its leading voices.
BBB
Isn't this a bit like saying "My computer has no input devices, except for a keyboard and mouse"?
-BBB
This distinction may be of little practical interest but I think it is a useful one. Authoritarianism and democracy are ways by which a society decides what is good and how to set rules to achieve it; totalitarianism and libertarianism are themselves sets of rules with pre-existing notions of what is acceptable and right. This is why some libertarians are not democrats, and why some totalitarians are -- they differ with their fellow ideologues over what sort of rules they expect democracy to produce.
BBB
No, what I was most interested in was the comment appended to the story, which went like this:
"This has worried me for a while. More often than not, the drive to commercialize a new technology always comes before we've accurately predicted how it will effect us..."
Think about this line for a moment. Ignore its immediate silliness (OF COURSE people want to commercialize things before their effects are known... how else do we get to know their effects?!).
Imagine a world in which no technologies were permitted to enter the market unless someone (who? Slashdot? A Federal Bureau of Technology Approval? Bill Gates? Some committee with reps from all of the above?) approved it, presumably judging what its effects would be.
This is the technocratic fantasy, wherein nothing new is permitted unless it fits a particular "expert" vision. But who, really, CAN predict these things? Who could have predicted the creation and rise of Linux? Who could have predicted the Slashdot effect? Maybe some people did. But if those people had had to persuade everyone else, or at least a majority, that those effects were (a) likely to occur and (b) had benefits outweighing their costs, neither would have happened at all.
That is why the mentality embodied in that sort of offhand comment -- fear about unleashing some sort of technological monster upon an unwary public -- scares me, because it demonstrates an amazing level of arrogance about our own knowledge and predictive capabilities. If the capacity exists for a wired fridge, someone will try to market it, and it will succeed or it will fail. And it may produce effects and innovations that even we vaunted Slashdot readers could not have predicted. So when we express our healthy skepticism about a particular technology or product, let's try not to let it spill over into technocratic hubris, eh?
(note for readers: there is a rather good book on this subject entitled The Future And Its Enemies, by Virginia Postrel. Check it out if you are interested in a recent nontechnical defense of technology.)
-BBB
It's pretty clear your first phrase is true. The case against Standard Oil was brought in 1905. By that time their market share was 40%, down from 90% twenty years earlier. New competition from foreign fields combined with a too-aggressive refinery buyout strategy had already destroyed their market share. It was Russian and Texan competitors that 'stepped in' and humbled Standard Oil, not the government.
Yet classical economics has always had a rationale for speculators, and they DO add value to an economy simply by increasing the flow of information through it. They help the price system function more efficiently, and state or cultural interference with speculators will tend to make the economy less flexible, more prone to instability and unpredictability, and overall a less happy place to deal.
In reality this has very little to do with intellectual property issues, and a lot to do with continuing public misunderstanding of the very valuable role speculators play in any advanced economy. Naturally one should not expect the U.S. Congress to pay that any heed. If it appeases their contributors and throws the mob a bone, go for it.
You mean like Oz, Sex and the City, and the Sopranos on HBO, History Channel documentaries, the Nature Channel, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, A & E's Horatio Hornblower series, the TNT version of Animal Farm, Law & Order, The Practice, the X-Files, ER... ?
Most of these patrons were either clergy or noblemen, the rulers - i.e., the government - of the time. And it was common practice for artists to pander to their patrons; poets wrote them odes, painters created flattering portraits, etcetera.
Actually, Renaissance Italy was one of the first city-state societies to separate church and state (in practice... in theory, of course, they were united). And if a nobleman like de Medici spends money to commission a painting that's no more government spending than Ted Kennedy's yacht is.
And as for pandering, well, of course... and of which rich nobleman is Michelangelo's David a rendering?
Let's see, at a population of 270 million, that works out to a staggering $5.56 per American per year. If one quarter of one percent - 1 out of 400 - of Americans are artists, that means each artist gets an annual income of about $2200. Minus materials, of course. And rent for studio space. Leaves pretty much - well, nothing, really.
That's an interesting calculation. Right now the NEA's budget is less than $50 million (if that). That would increase your average artist's income by about $70. To bring artists to the poverty line, the NEA and other public funding would need to rise to a shade under $10 billion per year. This is absurd. Thus, one of us is using bad numbers. It could be that I have grossly understated the amount of money Americans spend outside of their taxes on art. It could be that you have overstated the number of artists in the U.S.
Or it could be some combination of both. But either way my point is made -- since art does exist (and flourishes), and the fraction of funds spent on art by government relative to the total art "market" is tiny, public funding of art is unnecessary.
Book recommendation for lurkers: In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen.
And it's also nonsense to say that privately-funded art will only sing the praises of Bill Gates and Coca-Cola... this is pure populist windbaggery. Where the hell do you think the Sistine Chapel ceiling came from? Who sponsored Donatello, Rubens, Vermeer? That's right, merchant banks and wealthy patrons. There is a market for good, original, non-pandering art, and Americans spend almost $1.5 billion on it each year. It's frankly insulting to the average person to suggest that he or she would vapidly consume whatever art is produced, and it's bigoted to suggest that wealthy people always try to further their own interests outside of the business world.
Why the hell should Bill Gates be terrified that you don't care what he says? You probably don't much care what I say either... should I be terrified too?