Great! So it's a big campaign to use the internet and cool tools like mash-ups and blogs and wikis, to, er... what? He doesn't say.
All the great reformers of history, of whatever color or background, all had a positive view of what the wanted to do. They had specific laws to pass or repeal. Or, whether you agreed with them or not, they wanted to shrink government, or use government to defined outcomes... Fine. There was a vision there.
This sure looks and smells like a "campaign" - a great big crusade - but the only vision he has is more people using technical processes. The only faith he has, is more people using the internets must be good. So it's a SIM game of politics, with all the (real) politics taken out.
I guess the hyper-real is now realer than the real. Cool. Sign me to er, something. Or whatever! It's got to be good. Right? When can I start pushing buttons on my computer?
Spot on. In one way it's even worse: denying the originators (of music, or quality games like your good self) has become a moral crusade in its own right.
Which is an interesting PoV from the guy who coined the word "pigopolist".
People used to campaign to make everyone better off, to raise everyone higher. Now they campaign to make talented people worse off. The anti-copyright nuts will disappear up their own backsides eventually, I just wonder how much damage they'll do before they feck off.
Do ants have philosophical debates about ethics? Where's the ants' Bhagavad Gita? The fact that we're discussing "free will" should tell you something...
Sorry but that comment actually says more about how (some) people value "smartness" than anything else. There's more to humans than just our mechanics and organization.
O'Reilly's behavior is truly despicable. Here's a guy who got rich promoting open source and intellectual property freedom. But as soon as he gets the chance to cuddle up to the IP holders, he sells out his principles.
From the FTA:
Millionaire tech publisher Tim O'Reilly once vowed to torpedo Amazon.com's 1-Click patent. Against a backdrop of widespread outrage over Amazon's aggressive use of the patent, O'Reilly created a contest to find prior art to undermine the IP claim, and thus invalidate the patent. However, O'Reilly quietly dropped the campaign; saying he would never disclose it because he trusted Amazon.com CEO Bezos not to use it.
Following that cockle-warming tribute to his integrity, Bezos became a regular star turn at O'Reilly's web evangelism conferences. These days, O'Reilly's VC fund AlphaTech Ventures is supported by Bezos, and represented by the same firm of attorneys, Fenwick & West, which is defending Amazon.com against Peter Calveley.
Never accuse these dot.com moguls of permitting ethics to stand in the way of getting rich.
O'Reilly has the money and the influence to help strike out this dumb patent, but he chooses not to do so. It would be a nice irony if the USPTO threw it out because Tim's chum Jeff used Wikipedia. I'd laugh my fricking ass off.
As the patent office has been so apt at demonstrating, a failure to find the sources and an unfamiliarity with the subject is easily mistaken for originality.
Very true, that's a great example.
But art and engineering are quite different. I don't need to know how "original" the gcc is, I couldn't care less. Its value is measured in lots of utilitarian ways: low number of bugs, maintainability, compile speed, etc. The same goes for a bridge or an airliner.
It does matter for art, though. A derivative culture devoid of originality isn't a healthy one.
Thanks for illustrating my point so well Pope Ratzo. It's Lethem who's a product of structuralist lit-crit classes, not me, and here we finding him regurgitating one of his grad class essays for Harper's to argue the case that Everything Is Regurgitated.
And no, "we" don't always know originality when we see it. Many need to have it explained to us.
Uh huh. See that thing flying over your head at 30,000 feet? Consider it educational. More speed, and less haste when reading and replying will give you a chance to spot this.
Here's the straw man, nicely summarized by kdawson -
Taking issue with the idea that any work is 'untainted' by others' ideas
Um, have you ever heard anyone express this idea? Me neither, it's completely absurd. (Even Emily Dickinson, who locked herself in a room for thirty years, acknowledged her influences.)
So Latham parrots the standard Structuralist argument, that we're just vessels for other people's words. "Language speaks us," etc.
So, the theory goes, when we open our mouths its "society" or "our ancestors" talking, and we're just ventriloquist dummies, capable of not much more than rearranging someone else's stuff. Structuralism was big in the fifties but had gone out of fashion by the seventies, and the only place it lives on today is in American lit-crit departments.
Yes, all culture is derivative, but we still know originality when we hear it and see it. You can mix and mash-up day and night and still not come up with anything that shows the spark of originality or genius. Everyone recognizes this except structuralists.
There big problem today is in rewarding that spark of originality, when it's so easy to copy bits. But Latham's argument is dishonest: he makes the problem go away by making "originality" go away. He just wants it all for free. Bwaah!
While the government connives with corporations to spy on us illegally, how on earth does Time figure out that we "own the information age". Banks, corporations and government own the information age.
Web 2.0 gives people the illusion they have power. It's a more effective tool for persuading people they're happy than the TV ever did. Time magazine makes a useful idiot.
Wow. Nice rant. Did he steal your girlfriend? Or do you work for Apple?
The Neilsen SoundScan numbers in last week's Wall Street Journal show downloads in decline over three consecutive quarters this year. Orlowski and The Register have always argued DRM services like iTunes wouldn't work in the long run.
When you've swallowed your sack of salt, you'll see they're right. This is a Good Thing.
"For once I have not read the 'effing article... I would be astonished if this article is not by him... Case dismissed."
And this got +5 informative? Well, prepare to be astonished.
Orlowski's done a lot of good work with his articles about Google. He was the guy who got them to label press releases, when Google was sneaking corporate PR through as news. Orlowski keeps Google honest.
Did he diss your blog, or steal your girlfriend? Get over it.
You don't think he's going to piss in that puddle, do you?
Theory:Slashdot's never been better thanks to Digg
on
Google Pages Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Slashdot has always had some great contributors, and some ornery old timers. A few years ago, when people said "I can't read Slashdot anymore," they were mostly referring to very young, or very extreme (or both) idealogues and zealots.
Today it's Digg which attracts these people, and Slashdot has improved immensely as a result. While it ain't perfect - too many dupes, and too many funny contributions get marked "-1 Troll" - I can't ever remember Slashdot being as good as it is now.
The default mode of discourse on Slashdot looks like this:
User A: I think X
User B: I disagree, because of Y
User A: But what about Z?
While Digg's default discourse looks like this:
User A: I love X!
User B: Me too. I love X!
User C: I love X even more. Digg!
User D: X is the greatest. Double Digg Plus!
Digg's a game and a social club, which is cool if you just want to meet people who think exactly like you. It doesn't have great discussions though, because it's designed to encourage groupthink.
Enough of the four-digit old-timers still contribute to Slashdot, too. Digg's never had wise tribal elders - and with the group reinforcement now so strong, it's not going to start attracting them now.
If this Pauline Borsook profile was being written today, Esther wouldn't merit a 100-word sidebar. Old Esthie proves you can be a complete, ditzy bimbo and still get an adulatory press.
IIRC, this kicked off when Jimmy Wales admitted two entries chosen at random by Nick Carr were "horrific crap". They weren't the result of vandalism, but just really badly written collections of badly chosen facts.
This happens alot with writing by committees, and isn't unique to Wikipedia. It just gets worse as it gets older. Wikipedia has collected more facts over time, but it reads worse.
There's no cure for this except getting experts and real editors with good language skills, and they're hard to find as anyone who's tried to staff a tech docs team knows. But this runs counter to the "anyone can do it" philosophy.
So no amount of tweaking the processes helps - you simply need skillful people. The ex-Britannica guy (McHenry?) had a good line, which is that Wikipedia can get better, or Wikipedia can keep the utopians - but it can't do both.
El Reg ran a competition to out-Dilbert Tim O'Reilly, and some of the answers are
fucking hilarious -
Web 2.0 is made of.... staggeringly beautiful silken threads of links through hyperspace, capturing the purity of the morning's dew of condensed ideas and the rotting remains of semi-digested beatle-blogs.
Web 2.0 is... the vapourware output of people moving forward in pushing back the envelope of the corporate paradigm (to the sound of whalesong)
Web 2.0 is made of... the skin that forms on the top of the soup of the collective consciousness
Web 2.0 is... "These marvellous new clothes that only the emergent can see."
Web 2.0 is a great big shit sandwich and we're all going to have to take a bite
Slashdot Mirror
All the great reformers of history, of whatever color or background, all had a positive view of what the wanted to do. They had specific laws to pass or repeal. Or, whether you agreed with them or not, they wanted to shrink government, or use government to defined outcomes... Fine. There was a vision there.
This sure looks and smells like a "campaign" - a great big crusade - but the only vision he has is more people using technical processes. The only faith he has, is more people using the internets must be good. So it's a SIM game of politics, with all the (real) politics taken out.
I guess the hyper-real is now realer than the real. Cool. Sign me to er, something. Or whatever! It's got to be good. Right? When can I start pushing buttons on my computer?
This quote summed it up for me:
"can there ever have been a more empty and worthless cause than fighting for the right for artists not to be paid?" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/03/jammie_thomas_attorney_flees/
Which is an interesting PoV from the guy who coined the word "pigopolist".
People used to campaign to make everyone better off, to raise everyone higher. Now they campaign to make talented people worse off. The anti-copyright nuts will disappear up their own backsides eventually, I just wonder how much damage they'll do before they feck off.
Speak for yourself, bubba.
Do ants have philosophical debates about ethics? Where's the ants' Bhagavad Gita? The fact that we're discussing "free will" should tell you something...
Sorry but that comment actually says more about how (some) people value "smartness" than anything else. There's more to humans than just our mechanics and organization.
From the FTA:
O'Reilly has the money and the influence to help strike out this dumb patent, but he chooses not to do so. It would be a nice irony if the USPTO threw it out because Tim's chum Jeff used Wikipedia. I'd laugh my fricking ass off.Very true, that's a great example.
But art and engineering are quite different. I don't need to know how "original" the gcc is, I couldn't care less. Its value is measured in lots of utilitarian ways: low number of bugs, maintainability, compile speed, etc. The same goes for a bridge or an airliner.
It does matter for art, though. A derivative culture devoid of originality isn't a healthy one.
Uh huh. See that thing flying over your head at 30,000 feet? Consider it educational. More speed, and less haste when reading and replying will give you a chance to spot this.
So Latham parrots the standard Structuralist argument, that we're just vessels for other people's words. "Language speaks us," etc.
So, the theory goes, when we open our mouths its "society" or "our ancestors" talking, and we're just ventriloquist dummies, capable of not much more than rearranging someone else's stuff. Structuralism was big in the fifties but had gone out of fashion by the seventies, and the only place it lives on today is in American lit-crit departments.
Yes, all culture is derivative, but we still know originality when we hear it and see it. You can mix and mash-up day and night and still not come up with anything that shows the spark of originality or genius. Everyone recognizes this except structuralists.
There big problem today is in rewarding that spark of originality, when it's so easy to copy bits. But Latham's argument is dishonest: he makes the problem go away by making "originality" go away. He just wants it all for free. Bwaah!
Thanks for clearifying that up. That's now as clearified as mudd.
Web 2.0 gives people the illusion they have power. It's a more effective tool for persuading people they're happy than the TV ever did. Time magazine makes a useful idiot.
Wow. Nice rant. Did he steal your girlfriend? Or do you work for Apple?
The Neilsen SoundScan numbers in last week's Wall Street Journal show downloads in decline over three consecutive quarters this year. Orlowski and The Register have always argued DRM services like iTunes wouldn't work in the long run.
When you've swallowed your sack of salt, you'll see they're right. This is a Good Thing.
Or else like David Byrne, David Bowie, or Lawrence Lessig - they're already millionaires and don't need it anyway.
And this got +5 informative? Well, prepare to be astonished.
Orlowski's done a lot of good work with his articles about Google. He was the guy who got them to label press releases, when Google was sneaking corporate PR through as news. Orlowski keeps Google honest.
Did he diss your blog, or steal your girlfriend? Get over it.
Today it's Digg which attracts these people, and Slashdot has improved immensely as a result. While it ain't perfect - too many dupes, and too many funny contributions get marked "-1 Troll" - I can't ever remember Slashdot being as good as it is now.
The default mode of discourse on Slashdot looks like this:
While Digg's default discourse looks like this: Digg's a game and a social club, which is cool if you just want to meet people who think exactly like you. It doesn't have great discussions though, because it's designed to encourage groupthink.Enough of the four-digit old-timers still contribute to Slashdot, too. Digg's never had wise tribal elders - and with the group reinforcement now so strong, it's not going to start attracting them now.
So we owe Digg a big Thank-You. ;-)
And I believe she's something of a space cadet.
If this Pauline Borsook profile was being written today, Esther wouldn't merit a 100-word sidebar. Old Esthie proves you can be a complete, ditzy bimbo and still get an adulatory press.
This happens alot with writing by committees, and isn't unique to Wikipedia. It just gets worse as it gets older. Wikipedia has collected more facts over time, but it reads worse.
There's no cure for this except getting experts and real editors with good language skills, and they're hard to find as anyone who's tried to staff a tech docs team knows. But this runs counter to the "anyone can do it" philosophy.
So no amount of tweaking the processes helps - you simply need skillful people. The ex-Britannica guy (McHenry?) had a good line, which is that Wikipedia can get better, or Wikipedia can keep the utopians - but it can't do both.
more
Interesting that only 2 people according to the Reg, liked Web 2.0. Maybe that's why it's called Web 2.0?