 Sovereign Individual (Part One) |
Posted by JonKatz on Tuesday September 05, @11:15AMfrom the mastering-the-transition-to-the-info-age dept.
First in a series of columns inspired by the The Sovereign Individual: Mastering The Transition To the Information Age, by authors James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. As the Information Revolution picks up steam and supplants the Industrial Age for good, will it undermine the great civic myths of the 20th century? This book argues that individuals are going to be liberated at the expense of the increasingly fatigued nation-states that have governed for centuries. (Part two upcoming: Virtual Merchant-States).
Predicting the future is risky, especially when it comes to technology, whose history defies anything like a rational approach. But The Sovereign Individual, recently published in paperback by Touchstone, raises profoundly interesting questions about the information age and the future, the kind of questions worth kicking around.
In my work, I read lots of books about technology and the future, but this one captured my imagination in an unusual way. While I don't have the answers that Davidson and Rees-Mogg are looking for, I have the feeling they are asking many of the right questions. So we're plucking several of the most interesting ideas from Sovereign Individual and passing them along.
One of the major themes in The Sovereign Individual is the notion that the revolution unleashed by digital technologies is liberating individuals at the expense of the nation-states that have governed much of humanity for thousands of years.
Though all of human history, there have been three basic stages of economic life: hunting-and-gathering societies; agricultural societies; and industrial societies. Now, sparked by the rise of computing and the growth of the Net and the Web, something entirely new and different may be just over the horizon, something all of us are already a primitive part of, a fourth stage of social organization: information societies.
To Lord Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times of London, and Davidson, a venture capitalist, the civic myths of the 20th Century are beginning to erode under the pressure of the ascending information age. The death of Communism is only the latest evidence. Western governments, the authors say, may be more benign but are also tired. They're losing their governing authority, their leaders void of answers and ideas, mouthing platitudes fewer and fewer people believe or listen to. An entirely new reality will emerge in cyberspace, ruled by a cognitive elite based in cities like Frankfurt, London, San Jose, Singapore and Tokyo.
Unlike the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions, the Information Revolution will not evolve over hundreds of years. Like the technology that created it, it will take hold more rapidly than any other social phase of human life. The Information Revolution, now already well underway will play out within our lifetimes, and it's time to get ready.
"Technical and economic innovations will no longer be confined to small portions of the globe," write the authors. "The transformation will be all but universal. And it will involve a break with the past so profound that it will almost bring to life the magical domain of the gods as imagined by the early agricultural peoples like the ancient Greeks (and SF writers in games like Mage and Shadowrunner). To a greater degree than most would now be willing to concede,it will prove difficult or impossible to preserve many contemporary institutions in the new millenium. When information societies take shape they will be as different from industrial societies as the Greece of Aeschylus was from the world of cave dwellers."
In a world awash in punditry and hype, why take The Sovereign Individual more seriously than any other attempt at futuristic navel gazing? One is these authors record: In previous books, they predicted the stock market crash of the late 80s and the fall of Communism. Their view is also less America-centric than much contemporary writing about technology, incorporating a global and economic perspective that is original and provocative.
Are we the first citizens of a new kind of society? Or simply participants in the ongoing modification of the old one?
Look soon for Part 2: Reviving Laws of the March; Virtual Merchant States that Transcend Nationality
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but i thought corprations were going to rule us? (Score:1) by paulydavis on Tuesday September 05, @11:20AM EDT (#6) (User #91113 Info) |
| Come on Jon be consistent. |
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Re:but i thought corprations were going to rule us (Score:4, Interesting) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @11:29AM EDT (#15) (User #216235 Info) |
| Paulydavis, Corporations already do rule us. They are what religion was to the medival societies, but spinning their own disinformation to the public in hopes they might make a quick buck. What's really scary is that the government is like the kings and queens of the past, protecting the corps., for the sake of stability. Ignorance==Stability? Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:but i thought corprations were going to rule us (Score:1) by phUnBalanced on Tuesday September 05, @11:37AM EDT (#24) (User #128965 Info) |
| that is the best analogy of where the corporations fit into modern society that I have heard yet. |
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Ultimately people win (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:07PM EDT (#50) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| Corporations are not equal to religion. Personally I dislike people who are historically ignorant to the means and wherefores of their past.
Medieval socities had people who lead brutal, short, horrible lives. Their only means of recreation, life, social gatherings, common grounds, etc were through churches. Personally I can't say that I would blame them for wanting a better life after going through shit in mine. Corporations don't have that same ability to give people that kind of comfort. They are in fact cold sterile giants composed of men and women who do their own jobs and move slowly to do collective work. Corporations more closely compare with Faciasm than any sort of organized religion. Ultimately Faciasm was seen as crap and people finally figured out that they were getting hurt. Personally the only way a company can really hurt you is if you don't have a job or if you are an idiot. Considering that most people have jobs (the US has only about 4% actual unemployment) I can't really see any problem in that area. The only other area is that people are idiots. I have argued this many times in the past. Essentially most of the jobs that are out there now are specialist types of things and usually take something more than your typical high school diploma or GED equivelent. That means that people are going to learn things and make them work. Personally I don't think people are ignorant and I don't think the so called internet society will change anything. Like I have said there are no conspiracies to do Faciast level evil. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @12:26PM EDT (#70) (User #216235 Info) |
| You assume "people finally figured out that they were getting hurt.". If they are stripped of ways to figure out, then eventually they cannot.
I PERSONALLY believe that it was harsh to label me as ignorant. I was stating a view and providing examples to support my belief. You stated that "Their only means of recreation, life, social gatherings, common grounds, etc were through churches". Pfew! You mean like the only source of income in a modern day society is by a corporation? Or objects that better our lives...from a corporation? As with the techinical knowledge? Where is technical knowledge of use today in modern society? My friend, people *are* ignorant. Look at race relations in the US. Look at how long it has taken African-Americans to break free of old constraints and stagnant beliefs continually festered by corporations who yielded tons of money at their slave expense. All these beliefs STILL fester in modern society and ANY US History teacher will decry account after account, of why corporations lobbyied their state representatives to lawfully deny reading and education for the masses would rise up and destabalize the state. This system of ignorance and spinmaking is found continuosly over and over throughout the history of the world. I don't care if you don't "like" me. Please, I just ask that respect my opinion. Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:42PM EDT (#88) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| You assume "people finally figured out that they were getting hurt.". If they are stripped of ways to figure out, then eventually they cannot.
Which at the most fundamental level is impossible. Even in communist countries people have secret papers and there is always the concept of whispers and looks. Human communications will flourish even with the gestapo at the door. PERSONALLY believe that it was harsh to label me as ignorant. I was stating a view and providing examples to support my belief. You stated that "Their only means of recreation, life, social gatherings, common grounds, etc were through churches". Pfew! You mean like the only source of income in a modern day society is by a corporation? Or objects that better our lives...from a corporation? I concede that you probably are not ignorant but just taking a different look at something which has been proven before. As with the techinical knowledge? Where is technical knowledge of use today in modern society? Well this is slashdot afterall and we are using the inernet right? And I am in the process of learning about technical subjects every day so I guess that dissapates that one. My friend, people *are* ignorant. Look at race relations in the US. Look at how long it has taken African-Americans to break free of old constraints and stagnant beliefs continually festered by corporations who yielded tons of money at their slave expense. Uh race relations usually don't center on the fact that a person was born in a certain area as to disunderstood cultural mores and sterotypes. For example. Blacks are all in gangs/commit felonies/are prisoneers/deal crack, etc are all ideas. This dosn't say that everyone who is from Africa or who has black skin is evil just that ignorant people like Cletus think that all black people are like the guy who is his next door neighbor. Nothing so fancy. The only time when any "corporation" if you could call them that actually was in the slave business was in the old south and culturally and philosophically the south and the north were two different entities. I sugest you look at one of the very good books that deal with Southern History (can't remember the name deals with many essays on the differences in northern and southern though). All these beliefs STILL fester in modern society and ANY US History teacher will decry account after account, of why corporations lobbyied their state representatives to lawfully deny reading and education for the masses would rise up and destabalize the state. Like the Old Deluder Satan Act in new england which created essentially a wide spread reading program for almost all children? How about all those one room school houses that were around when my grandfather was alive? Personally I like references of massive attempt to keep people in the dark. Maybe funding was the problem but pretty much it's the law now to go to school (and has been for a long time). Those arguments may have been more relevent in say the 14th century or back when Gutenburg was around. This system of ignorance and spinmaking is found continuosly over and over throughout the history of the world. I don't care if you don't "like" me. Please, I just ask that respect my opinion. Political control is common I grant you that. However not every country is like a Moussilini or a Hitleran state. Ultimately when everything is said and done massive political unrest will unseat any corporation or any political entity. Technical knowledge is the cornerstone of true ecconomic success. Slashdot if proof enough. The massive influx of technical oriented jobs is another. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @01:35PM EDT (#142) (User #216235 Info) |
| I like your points, but to nitpick there actually was a "Old Deluder Satan Act". There were the poll taxes so that poor people in the south (mainly African Americans) could not vote. Also, slaves were forbidden to learn to read and anyone caught teaching them could possibly be hanged. Source: National History Museum exhibit(2nd floor I believe). By God, you still are cloaked in darkness. What about the Industrial age in the North? Coal mine towns own COMPLETELY by owned by Companies! Unsafe labor conditions? Nope, you could never blow the whistle for fear of losing your lively hood. Ever heard of the expression "Sold his soul for the company store?". I am NOT saying that these conditions are present today in these same terms. I am merely pointing out that these ideals of greed and power are constantly inherent within our society. You are right...it does take a "nudge" to get them away, but refusing to acknowledge their existence today IS the same as ignorance. Coverups and news spinmaking is still very much alive and well. See HERE if you cannot believe it. Agreed though. Slashdot is our only hope Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Tuesday September 05, @05:01PM EDT (#246) (User #215099 Info) |
| Coverups and news spinmaking is still very much alive and well.
Actually, these things are so common that they are now virtually dead at this point. Once upon a time, when all of your information came from one or maybe two sources, it was possible to 'control' the information intake of the average individual. With the growth of technology that ability to wield centralized control over information has gone the way of the dinosaur. For any piece of biased information that you access today, there are a myriad of alternatively-biased pieces of the same information available somewhere else. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can now 'spin' and misrepresent information as good as the big boys Which leaves the modern individual in the dilemma of trying to decide which parts of who's bullshit to believe. |
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20% BIGGER PACKAGE!!!!! (Score:1) by SomePoorSchmuck (nick:andrew_jsps box:hotmail.com) on Tuesday September 05, @05:23PM EDT (#253) (User #183775 Info) |
| Which at the most fundamental level is impossible. Even in communist countries people have secret papers and there is always the concept of whispers and looks. Human communications will flourish even with the gestapo at the door. whah?? this is technically true, but the educated classes in USSR and 1930s Deutschland were firmly in favor of the contemporary political rhetoric. Remember that USSR disbanded for essentially economic reasons (humans are by nature selfish and any system which rewards selfishness will thrive while systems that concentrate selfishness in the hands of a few are instable -- so capitalism works, communism doesn't), and that Deutschland was defeated militarily. In orwellian states it is only the educated classes that matter, and they are usually well-vested in the political mainstream. There will be no revolution from the proles, because they are philosophically ignorant and politically unorganized. Yes, secret communications will always exist, but as Chinese students found out in Tiananmen Square, knowing glances and covert solidarity do not easily translate into freedom. The government crushed them, literally, and the world looked on -- there is little doubt that the incident would play similarly today. If 100,000 open protesters could not even create a dent in their system, from where do you obtain this optimism that people are smarter than propaganda and will rise up and smite the evil empire? Nothing could be farther from the truth -- people are simple, ignorant and easily manipulated, as demonstrated by the prevalence of $2 bottled water, $120 blue jeans, everything antibacterial, and censorlegislation. Every time i go grocery shopping i see products labelled "New Look! Same Great TASTE!!" "Smaller Size for Your CONVENIENCE" and the absolute winner, i kid you not ---- "Now! Made with REAL Ingredients!!!" and it is this shit that i see flying off the shelves; people just can't get enough of bold fonts, starburst patterns, gratuitous! punctuation!!!, and compelling but semantically vacuous claims. i salute you for your optimism. and i feel it is totally unfounded. ;-P --- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties. the problem with adults is they think they've found them |
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Re:20% BIGGER PACKAGE!!!!! (Score:1) by krisitna on Thursday September 07, @01:05AM EDT (#304) (User #75788 Info) |
| >Every time i go grocery shopping i see products
>labelled "New Look! Same Great TASTE!!" "Smaller >Size for Your CONVENIENCE" and the absolute >winner, i kid you not ---- "Now! Made with REAL >Ingredients!!!" Hahaha! You've made my day! :-) I'm so tired of overstated product labels and advertizing it's not even funny. There is no reason in any commercial image anymore. This amazing, one-of-a-kind, "you've never seen anything quite like it", post was made with real virtual letters! |
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Re:20% BIGGER PACKAGE!!!!! (Score:1) by iriemon on Monday September 11, @01:50PM EDT (#307) (User #231781 Info) |
| (humans are by nature selfish and any system which rewards selfishness will thrive while systems that concentrate selfishness in the hands of a few are instable -- so capitalism works, communism doesn't)
------------- Isn't this exactly what capitalism does, concentrate selfishness in the hands a few? Just a handfull of people control the lions share of money. There's not a whole lot of difference between what the USSR was and is, and what we've been all along. Communism just collapsed earlier |
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then suddenly she twists her head around and... (Score:1) by SomePoorSchmuck (nick:andrew_jsps box:hotmail.com) on Monday September 11, @05:38PM EDT (#308) (User #183775 Info) |
| i agree with you that the end result is similar. power wants to accumulate. this is why all systems, despite egalitarian aspirations, become oligarchies within a few generations. the difference i was highlighting was that there are no large-scale communist systems that work without the aid of a strong military -- because the attempt to equitably distribute resources is resisted by persons, acting upon their selfish nature, who try to accumulate goods not as they NEED them but as they WANT them. Such countries are then trapped into spending huge amounts of resources on maintaining an unnatural equality -- which invariably is accomplished by the threat of militarism. "This is how much you're getting and no more." Some insane ideologues are fully behind this idea. Others just use the system to get whatever petty power they can. And the large majority just try to get by without incurring the wrath of the State while secretly hating its attempts to thwart their consumption. This is a pretty unstable situation. Capitalism, on the other hand, dangles the carrot in front of everyone's nose. The goal is to accumulate goods as fast as you possibly can. Of course, the first generations to accumulate large amounts of wealth then capitalize on that wealth by using some of it to get more of it while preventing others from getting any of it. However, regardless of the actual fluidity between classes (or lack thereof), most people still operate under the basic assumption that if they are just good, diligent, sexy or smart enough, that they too can pull some of the wealth in their direction. People then want to protect the system because its survival is the guarantor of their promised happiness -- which promotes the long-term stability of that system. It's a kinder, gentler opression. I mean really, as long as the lady-mantis is getting you off, who cares if she's eating your brains out, right? --- the problem with teens is they're looking for certainties. the problem with adults is they think they've found them |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by RedneckTek (rednecktek@netzero.net) on Tuesday September 05, @01:11PM EDT (#118) (User #120165 Info) |
Corporations don't have that same ability to give people that kind of comfort. /putting on flame armor/ I don't agree. Corporations have been telling us how to be comfortable with ourselves for years. They tell us what to buy, what to wear, how to act. Even if the /. community doesn't follow it, the fact remains that corporations determine the status-quo. Abort, Retry, Fail, or Ignore this buggy OS? |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Tuesday September 05, @05:29PM EDT (#254) (User #215099 Info) |
| Corporations have been telling us how to be comfortable with ourselves for years.
This is patently absurd. Corporations communicate with the average individual mainly through advertisement, which you the individual have the option of tuning out, disbelieving, or accepting with no detriment to your health or well-being. They don't "tell" us how to be comfortable with ourselves, and they certainly possess almost zero of the features or powers of an organized religion, particularly the one that was extant in Europe in the Middle Ages. |
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advertising is thought-injection (Score:1) by phossie on Tuesday September 05, @06:11PM EDT (#260) (User #118421 Info) |
| sir, i believe that you know (in the epistemological sense) very little about what you speak. have you ever really payed attention to advertising? it's a complex art. it's a sort of biological programming. ;) Corporations communicate with the average individual mainly through advertisement, which you the individual have the option of tuning out, disbelieving, or accepting with no detriment to your health or well-being. uh, you're wrong. accepting any message can have a detrimental effect on your health or well-being: consider (historically - do you have a concept of what that means?) the advertising for tobacco, soft drinks, milk, alcoholic drinks, herbal remedies, antibiotics... these are a few in a long, long list of examples, and people believed and believe still the advertising for these products. they [modern corporations] certainly possess almost zero of the features or powers of an organized religion, particularly the one that was extant in Europe in the Middle Ages i'm not sure you understand the basics of historical analysis. the features and powers of modern international corporations are surprisingly similar to those of the church in europe a few hundred years ago.
2. single corporations can strangle whole regions: Monsanto. end of example. 3. corporation-government controls can be internal or external: "trade groups," lobbies, electorate manipulation, local dependency, and plain old politick dealing. 4. etc. ...are you blind? and please remember this is an analogy, a historical parallel. what's missing? notably, being burned at the stake (or stoned, or whatever) for heresy (most of the time). these days (in most places) you can just be ostracized or discriminated against. sure, that's not a form of torture... and not a vastly more effective one, either. some governments can be convinced to send their armies to help clear the way for oil pipelines - and i'm not talking about some kind of purely environmental tragedy ensuing, either. learn to think.
thank you very much. |
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Re:advertising is thought-injection (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Wednesday September 06, @03:23PM EDT (#298) (User #215099 Info) |
| i believe that you know (in the epistemological sense) very little about what you speak You misused the word 'epistemological.' Also, you seem to think that I don't agree with you because I am not privy to the same information as you, when in fact I have come to different conclusions based on the same information. The power of corporations to control individuals, governments and society in general is vastly over-rated, distorted, and over-simplified by reactionaries and alarmists, and I for one don't buy into the hysteria. it's a sort of biological programming. Advertisers try to use various psychological tricks to make their product seem more appealing. You make it sound like they control the masses like Pavlov's dogs, and this is simply not the case. accepting any message can have a detrimental effect on your health or well-being: Accepting or believing some message can't physically change anything (except maybe the configuration of some neurons in your brain.) Choosing to perform an action based on this acceptance is what you are talking about. i'm not sure you understand the basics of historical analysis I understand that you just made up the word "historical analysis" in order to sound educated, and I understand that it backfired. 1. the power to control governments The methods which churches have used to influence governments (usually granting or denying religious legitimacy to a ruler or policy, as I recall) are fundamentally different from the methods which private companies use (entirely economic in nature). And neither private corporations nor churches can rightly be said to "control" government, just influence it to a rather limited degree. single corporations can strangle whole regions. If you mean an economic repressive policy towards a geographic region, then it's pretty clear that the methodology by which a private corporation would accomplish such a thing is fundamentally different from the method which an organized religious entity would accomplish it. Additionally, you may be getting your information on the Monsanto case (India, right?) from some biased and unreliable sources if you have been led to believe that it consitutes "a single corporation strangling a region." learn to think. In the future, you should save this kind of insult for someone who genuinely doesn't think, rather than someone who simply doesn't have the same opinions that you do.
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Re:advertising is thought-injection (Score:1) by phossie on Thursday September 07, @10:33PM EDT (#306) (User #118421 Info) |
| You misused the word 'epistemological.' that's funny - i've done extremely well as a major in the field. i've also broken a few practicing, employed, chair-holding philosophers of their ill-conceived beliefs in the area, too, causing them to re-evaluate their basic epistemological systems. i stand by my previous statement. you don't know what you're talking about. if you're a troll, you're an extremely annoying one. go read the troll how-to. The power of corporations to control individuals, governments and society in general is vastly over-rated, distorted, and over-simplified by reactionaries and alarmists... this may be true. on the other hand, society in general has a foolhardy disregard for that same power. i'm not speaking from the standpoint of a rabid activist. i am speaking from a background in critical social theory, psychology, and political science. hysteria is unnecessary and detrimental - awareness is sadly lacking. not everyone is able or willing to actually contemplate the problem and formulate their own conclusions (or recognize a lack thereof). you are possibly not one of these people; there are many, many people unlike you in that regard. [me:]accepting any message can have a detrimental effect on your health or well-being [you:]Accepting or believing some message can't physically change anything ... Choosing to perform an action based on this acceptance is what you are talking about. logic, my friend. let me restate without reinterpretation:
why are you arguing with this? i might believe you when you tell me i can fly, and decide to start big by jumping off a bridge, which i'm sure you'd appreciate. this would hurt me. no, the message itself didn't hurt me, but its presence in my life sure as hell did. you just made up the word "historical analysis" in order to sound educated, and I understand that it backfired
1. "historical analysis" is a phrase, not a word. go ask a historian what historical analysis is. unless they're very good or very bad, you'll get a long answer. i'd also appreciate it if you could explain to me how my use of this well-known and well-understood phrase has backfired. The methods which churches have used to influence governments (usually granting or denying religious legitimacy to a ruler or policy, as I recall) are fundamentally different from the methods which private companies use (entirely economic in nature). And neither private corporations nor churches can rightly be said to "control" government, just influence it to a rather limited degree. uh, yeah. religious institution : religious influence :: economic institution : economic influence. this is pretty basic stuff we're dealing with here, and i gather it's the point you've been missing. it's an analogy. do i need to give you the definition of "analogy?" maybe a definition of "parallel" as used in a literary sense would be more to your liking? since you worked in a nice phrase there, i'll use it (you used it in relation to religious control of government): "usually granting or denying religious legitimacy to a ruler or policy." try this simple substitution, informed by the above paragraph: "usually granting or denying economic legitimacy to a ruler or policy." i'll give you the point for my use of the word control (did i use it?), "influence" carrying the connotation closer to the intended meaning. control is, however, defined as a "directing influence" by some dictionaries. the point you make is sophist, in the purely derogatory sense of the term. if you mean an economic repressive policy towards a geographic region, then it's pretty clear that the methodology by which a private corporation would accomplish such a thing is fundamentally different from the method which an organized religious entity would accomplish it. i believe i've addressed a similar statement somewhere before. direct response: no fucking shit. you're brilliant. thanks for the clarification. oh, here you go:
Main Entry: analˇoˇgy your information on the Monsanto case (India, right?) from some biased and unreliable sources mmm. i've gotten most of my information from a few sources: friends who spent a good while working in african bush areas, friends working in patent/IP law, and occasionally news media - real radical stuff like the BBC and AP. i appreciate your concern, and i'm not so naive to think that those sources are the Truth. remember, i studied epistemology and logic for a good while there. i did learn a few things, which i do take the time to apply to my life, every day. [me:]learn to think. i do apologize - at that point in the discussion, i think that may have been a bit premature. and you're right - i shouldn't insult people who simply have different opinions. it's when people preemptively refuse to consider any viewpoint but their own that i get annoyed. if, in the future, you could present something like a reasoned argument rather than a pile of assertions greatly resembling a fossilized dung-heap, i would be inclined to be more civil.
nobody asked you to agree with anything - you were only asked to try to consider an opposing point of view. you didn't, you were rude, and i foolishly (and, i admit, rudely) attempted to bring you around to a dialogue. this was my mistake, and it is one for which i am truly sorry. i promise it won't happen again. |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by ichimunki (x at ichimunki dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @02:59PM EDT (#196) (User #194887 Info) http://www.ichimunki.com |
| Actually, it is a bizarre statement to assert that medieval churches existed to give citizens "comfort". I'm not sure how church was a recreation, especially in Continental Europe. For most of the time of the prominence of the Roman Catholic Church, the average peasant couldn't understand more than three words of the average Mass, nor read a Bible. The idea that people should Fear God was popular. Priests existed as go-betweens for the humans and their God. This same "comforting" Church was known for a particularly brutal attitude towards non-Christians, or even Christians suspected of things like heresy or witchcraft. They condemned most harshly any teachings that might cause the average individual to suspect that the Church was not the sole repository of Truth-- furthermore, they've probably destroyed more "heretical" texts than you could ever read, or locked them in vaults in the Vatican. If people somehow got any comfort at all from this, then good. Because the same ruling class and church hierarchies that promoted religion were the ones who benefitted chiefly from the toil of the peasants. Now. Let's go back to the corporation=religion deal. What better proof that corporations offer comfort based on faith is there than television advertising and billboards? [sig deleted for clarity] |
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Tuesday September 05, @06:19PM EDT (#264) (User #215099 Info) |
| Because the same ruling class and church hierarchies that promoted religion were the ones who benefitted chiefly from the toil of the peasants. You seem to be labouring under some popular misconceptions. For one thing it can hardly be said that the "ruling class" and the Church cooperated with any degree of consistency: they frequently were at odds with each other. For another thing it is a vast over-simplification to characterize the religious situation in Europe for 800+ years as simply as "those mean old priests controlled the peasants by keeping them ignorant." Per usual, the reality of the situation was more morally ambiguous than that. And yes the Church and its doctrines definitely were a general source of comfort for most serfs, the average priest was a compassionate individual, the burnings and torturings were less frequent than you have probably been led to believe, and usually were opposed by factions within the Church itself. Why do you think the Church had so much authority, unless it inspired a type of loyalty beyond mere economics? What better proof that corporations offer comfort based on faith is there than television advertising and billboards? Corporations offer concrete, temporary products and services in exchange for money without requiring the individual to change their world-view in any significant way. Religions offer things which are not concrete, not temporary, and do require the individual to accept certain fundamental beliefs. Again, for the Naderites and anti-corporate hysterians, I must assert my maxim: "Most people will die for free for their nation or their god. No one will die for Sony for any amount of money."
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Re:Ultimately people win (Score:1) by ichimunki (x at ichimunki dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @07:00PM EDT (#267) (User #194887 Info) http://www.ichimunki.com |
| I never said the ruling class and the Church cooperated. I said they benefitted from the work of the peasants. Yes, it's a vast over-simplification... in response to an over-simplification (and further proof that I need to never respond to sips' babbling again). And no, I didn't really want to characterize the Church as this inhumane monstrous organization, except to say that people didn't necessarily go to Church for "comfort", unless you consider it comforting to be told that you will burn for eternity unless you drink this wine and eat this bread, but hey, here is some of that wine and that bread, so everything's okay. Not my idea of comfort, but if that's yours, fine. As for the people involved-- and this is what gets me riled up with posts like sips' where corporations are made out to be these huge mechanical operations-- is that they are people, whether it is the Church or a corporation. Which means that 95% of the people involved, whether priests, marketroids, or PHB's are just that, people. As such they are basically good and just trying to do the right thing, whatever they might think that is. I am not anti-corporate at all-- I work for a large one myself. And yes, technically corporations offer goods and services for money, but they often try to convince you to buy those goods or services using a technique that involves you having faith in their word that buying them will make your life better. And in fact, much advertising does attempt to change your world view so that you will be inclined to agree that their good or service is needed to live better. "Things go better with Coke!" "The Real Thing" "Calgon take me away" Why else do you think kids get in fights over Starter jackets (well, maybe that's passed now) or why fans riot when the home team wins? [sig deleted for clarity] |
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Dude, you're alright. (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Wednesday September 06, @03:36PM EDT (#299) (User #215099 Info) |
| and this is what gets me riled up with posts like sips' where corporations are made out to be these huge mechanical operations-- is that they are people, whether it is the Church or a corporation
Wow, this is exactly what pisses me off about conversations with some people. They try to characterize the "government" or "those corporations" or "Christians" as these vast monolithic entities with no consideration of the underlying complexities of these entities.
You're a notch above the average pseudo-intellectual if you realize this fact, I agree with you and I like the way you think. Sorry if I said anything to piss you off. |
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BZZZT wrong-o bud (Score:1) by bitchazz on Wednesday September 06, @12:57AM EDT (#285) (User #134990 Info) http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/holland0300.html |
| "Most people will die for free for their nation or their god. No one will die for Sony for any amount of money."
this maxim of yours is not true. What is a bodyguard? A mercenary? Even rent-a-cops and 7-11 workers have a signicant risk of death in their jobs. How does reality fit in with your maxim? You don't think it is just a hop skip and jump to private corporate armies? Mark my words friend. You can label me as a anti-corporate hysterian but the truth is, a corporation is an undying ravenous creature which exists for only ONE purpose: to amass wealth and power and market share. It does not care about the health and well-being of its employees or customers except in context of possible threat to its money diet. Don't ever forget this: corporations are not needed for anything. We should not base laws (IP or otherwise) on what the corporations say they need. Our nation is not dependent on them for our well-being. We as quasi-free individuals in America should realize this! R A N T O V E R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ god damn, America sure is cool..... FOR ME TO POOP ON!!! |
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Re:BZZZT wrong-o bud (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Wednesday September 06, @04:20PM EDT (#300) (User #215099 Info) |
| "Most people will die for free for their nation or their god. No one will die for Sony for any amount of money." What is a bodyguard? A mercenary? Even rent-a-cops and 7-11 workers have a signicant risk of death in their jobs. How does reality fit in with your maxim? Actually, I was specifically thinking of rent-a-cops and mercenaries when I thought of this--while they will certainly work risky jobs, neither one will willingly die for any amount of money. If the Alamo had been manned by an army of 256 paid mercenaries, they would not have faced down 10,000 enraged Mexican soldiers, they would have ran like sensible people. But because the Alamo was filled with 256 "Texans" they were willing to stay and die for their cause, because their cause was worth more to them than mere money or even their own life. You can't just buy that kind of loyalty, sorry. Money is *not* power. People keep forgetting this basic fact. |
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Future developments (Score:1) by Cobalt Weaponary on Tuesday September 05, @11:22AM EDT (#7) (User #228323 Info) |
| There really should be less emphasis on "individuals" and incoherent rants. I mean, is that what we really need to make the world a better place?
Wouldn't it be a better option to focus more of our resources on petrification technology? Please do, the hot teen girls of tomorrow will thank you! ______ |
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Re:Future developments (Score:1) by Slashdot Cruiser on Tuesday September 05, @11:57AM EDT (#39) (User #227609 Info) |
| In the future, will it be possible to petrify the Slashdot Cruiser? Then we can preserve its fugliness for future generations!
Mean, green, and cruisin' for pre-teens. |
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Is this accurate? (Score:4, Insightful) by Byteme (james@nospam-pronoblem.com) on Tuesday September 05, @11:23AM EDT (#9) (User #6617 Info) http://www.pronoblem.com |
| Though all of human history, there have been three basic stages of economic life: hunting-and-gathering societies; agricultural societies; and industrial societies. Now, sparked by the rise of computing and the growth of the Net and the Web, something entirely new and different may be just over the horizon, something all of us are already a primitive part of, a fourth stage of social organization: information societies.
I mean, couldn't that have been said with the advent of the printing press, the library or television for that matter? Is the Internet just a sequential evolution of how we handle information or is it truly a new 'society'? Are we putting the carriage before the horse here? |
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The information age (Score:1) by Kinetic Kit on Tuesday September 05, @11:43AM EDT (#29) (User #156741 Info) |
| Despite the fact that my current career basically hinges on the advent and future of the Internet, I cannot say that it is this huge paradigm shift Mr. Katz wants to make of it. Certainly, its volume and openness make information widely available but it's not changing the way I get information, fundamentally. I'm still reading, viewing, and listening to content, be it news or advertising or whatever. In that sense, the printing press, radio, or television created a much bigger shift. The internet takes those "information roads" and adds instant access to it. It's just not really "new". What will it be then? Necessarily, whatever new dimension we can add to human interaction. My guess will be virtual reality; the internet, however, ought to provide the backbone for VR interactions across distances, which makes the 'Net an important first step. Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?" |
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Re:The information age (Score:2, Insightful) by Wraithlyn (bcairns@itpwebsolutions.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:27PM EDT (#74) (User #133796 Info) |
You've got to be kidding me. That's the most understated description of the Internet I've ever read. The Internet is the closest thing we've developed to realizing a collective consciousness. ANYONE can now be a global publisher of information. The Internet empowers the individual to create and disperse any type of media they can envision. The printing press? The radio? Television? These are merely one-way broadcast mediums. (I use the term 'broadcast' loosely when applied to the printing press, but you get the point) The internet has ALREADY "created a much bigger shift" than any of these. Why? Because the 'net is interactive, it connects people to each other instead of some central point. The internet takes those "information roads" and adds instant access to it. It's just not really "new". Ahh, but the internet is so much more than just information! Look around you... the whole world is migrating to the net. Millions upon millions of services, offered freely online. Watch a streaming video feed of the news, view a movie trailer, join a chat room with people scattered across the globe, shop online, pay your bills, download more free software than you could EVER hope to use, stock market trading, gaming. People are making friends, enemies, falling in love and getting married over the Net, something they never would have even thought possible merely a decade ago. The Internet IS the "new dimension [of] human interaction." The glass is neither half empty or half full; it's just too damn big. |
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Re:The information age (Score:1) by Kinetic Kit on Tuesday September 05, @12:53PM EDT (#101) (User #156741 Info) |
| You're right. The fact that we can have this discussion over /. is evidence enough. I guess my point is that we never want to confuse the amplification or perfection of something with its invention. As a form of communication, interaction, information distribution and so on, the Internet is the pinnacle. When some medium comes around and engages all five senses across distances, like real-life does now, then I'll cede it the title of "new dimension." Which artist deserves most praise? Pablo Picasso, whose art unquestionably is among the most revolutionary ever; or some long-forgotten cave-dweller who, with red rock on a cave wall, drew a stick-animal and created art and with it all visual communication? I answer the latter, which may be why we disagree. Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?" |
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Artist? (Score:1) by Byteme (james@nospam-pronoblem.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:29PM EDT (#138) (User #6617 Info) http://www.pronoblem.com |
| Which artist deserves most praise? Pablo Picasso, whose art unquestionably is among the most revolutionary ever; or some long-forgotten cave-dweller who, with red rock on a cave wall, drew a stick-animal and created art and with it all visual communication? This is easily arguable in the sense that the latter was not art in its true sense. The cave paintings were probably one of two things:
1. Communication where there were no words to communicate a given idea, or it was a visual summary. Like a medieval tapestry, or the AIDS quilt. Art needs to step out of these boundaries. Picasso does that. |
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Re:Artist? (Score:1) by JamesOfTheDesert on Tuesday September 05, @07:36PM EDT (#272) (User #188356 Info) |
| If Picasso's work was not for "[c]ommunication where there were no words to communicate a given idea", then what was it for? Is that not arguably one of the things art is for?
And aren't the medieval tapestries art?
BTW, it is most certainly questionably that Picasso's work was the most revolutionary ever.
James
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Re:Artist? (Score:1) by Byteme (james@nospam-pronoblem.com) on Tuesday September 05, @08:07PM EDT (#273) (User #6617 Info) http://www.pronoblem.com |
| I did not bring up Picasso. The post I replying to did... No, medieval tapestries are not art. They are craft, and serve a purpose not being created for art's sake. Maybe a better example would be Egyptian tombs. This 'art' served a purpose, and was not created as art but a necessity for the afterlife. The tapestry is the same, and the same would go for someone that painted in the style of an impressionist today. Art needs to innovate in the current period and as well be challenging to the viewer. |
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Re:The information age (Score:2, Interesting) by Wraithlyn (bcairns@itpwebsolutions.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:43PM EDT (#147) (User #133796 Info) |
Actually I would agree with you on the caveman question. My real disagreement is with what you presented as examples of "REAL" shifts... allow me to elaborate: "Certainly, its volume and openness make information widely available but it's not changing the way I get information, fundamentally. I'm still reading, viewing, and listening to content, be it news or advertising or whatever. In that sense, the printing press, radio, or television created a much bigger shift. The internet takes those "information roads" and adds instant access to it. It's just not really 'new'." But look at what you're advocating...
Do you see where I'm going with this? Information has always existed. These 3 inventions simply made information distribution more efficient, and they transformed society as we know it forever... and they weren't even interactive. Now look at the power of the Internet. It's going to be an interesting future. :) The glass is neither half empty or half full; it's just too damn big. |
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Re:The information age (Score:2, Insightful) by ScuzzMonkey on Tuesday September 05, @12:55PM EDT (#102) (User #208981 Info) |
| I think we have a long way to go before the 'net is all that you're making it out to be.
Although those of us who have computers tend to take them for granted, we're still a relatively small subset of the population. For the majority of people, it's probably still easier to get something published in print (via Kinko's, et al) than on the Internet. And, of course, broadcast media are more powerful for their one-way nature. If the Internet were that great at gaining exposure for ideas, you can be sure that advertisers would be shelling out millions to get their 30 second spot up on Yahoo. AFAIK, this hasn't happened yet. More people will hear an idea that is presented on TV than on the net (although there is a certain leaching effect--a few days after I see something really interesting on the web, someone will mention it on the nightly news--the Survivor website leak, for instance). You can publish something on the net, but you can't make people read it. You might say this is a good way of sorting the wheat from the chaff, but there are plenty of unattractive or unpopular things in this world that people should see. The Internet allows you to avoid things that don't interest you, and that's fine from an entertainment perspective. But it's not a very good way to stay informed or maintain a breadth of opinion. The Internet may well come to be everything you say it is, but for most people, that is still in the future. |
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Re:The information age (Score:2) by Afterimage (nwallsATismediaDOTorg) on Tuesday September 05, @10:50PM EDT (#283) (User #44695 Info) http://ismedia.org |
| And, of course, broadcast media are more powerful for their one-way nature. If the Internet were that great at gaining exposure for ideas, you can be sure that advertisers would be shelling out millions to get their 30 second spot up on Yahoo. AFAIK, this hasn't happened yet
Actually, the Net is fantastic for getting ideas exposed. So long as you choose to be exposed to areas of the net that expose new ideas (yes, it's circular, it's meant to be). And actually, I doubt you'll see millions for the 30 second spot on Yahoo. The beauty of this is that it doesn't have to be 30 seconds. It doesn't have to be full page. It can be whatever it wants (or needs) to be to a target audience. Sure, Yahoo gets a lot of eyeballs, but how many of them are the eyeballs *you* want to sell to? As for the content filtering mechanism of the Net, you are absolutely correct. But don't think for a second this is a bad thing. I happen to think I'm *more* informed now than I was in the past. It's simply a matter of what I choose to expose myself, and what those exposures leave to. Anyone can live in a vacuum. I actually think it's harder to maintain a firm wall on your preferred views on the Net than, say, Talk Radio. As for breadth of opinion, I find the Net to be far vaster than what is available to me on Network broadcasts, or indeed, from my own employer. They have concerns with presenting what is a *balance* of coverage at the expense of everything but what they know has a resonable response from their audience. The Net knows no limitations. A newspaper is limited by the costs of production and distribution offset by what people are willing to pay in for advertising and in subscriptions. Network news is limited by ratings tied to advertising dollars, which generally limits most stations to 2 hours of news per night, with at least an hour of that, largely repetition. Now, it could be argued the Net is also subject to economic forces. I'll agree, but suggest that economics is not nearly the limitation online as it is off. Anyone can put a site online with no capital investment. It would be very difficult to get a minority view expressed offline without spending money. Now, whether or not anyone will see that viewpoint is another matter. But it is out there, and very feasible for me to see it. So what does this all come down to? Largely a matter of choices and who makes them. Offline, a group of learned editors make decisions based on what's been covered previously, how it could affect the audience, and also (rightly or wrongly) their perception of knowledge among themselves, the reporter and the audience about a particular subject. The Net need not have any of these restrictions. Thus, the experience is (and will be) largely what we make of it ourselves, not what we are currently limited to by others.
The key, i believe, is to let the medium live as it evolves, without adjustment or compensation to make it more acceptible to the status quo. The key is forcing the status quo to catch up. |
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Re:The information age (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:30PM EDT (#75) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| What will it be then? Necessarily, whatever new dimension we can add to human interaction. My guess will be virtual reality; the internet, however, ought to provide the backbone for VR interactions across distances,
which makes the 'Net an important first step. Virtual reality isn't something that the average person can use or actually run on a standard PC. As long as mainframe computers are needed to actually run the stuff it isn't practical for anyone. Also the interface is a really bad idea for getting any real work done. Visualization and modeling aren't really useful except for final presentation. I can type faster say ls -al *.txt emacs slashdot.txt than I could to go crusing around in 3d looking for slashdot.txt and then having to pry open the "file" and start reading through it; then maybe take a "pen" and start adding corrections. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:Is this accurate? (Score:2, Insightful) by sandman935 (sandman nine three five at yahoo dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @11:58AM EDT (#40) (User #228586 Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~sandmanr/index.html |
I guess it's a matter of scale. An individual with a small printing press can't produce a lot of publications. His readership will be small. To reach more people, you need bigger presses and employees. $$$ The library provides information that is intended for large-scale distribution. Producing books and periodicals found in the typical library is still prohibitively expensive. More $$$ Television broadcasting stations are extremely expensive. $$$! The internet is the first forum that allows an individual the possibility to reach literally millions and to do it at very low cost. Up until now, the poor (or more accurately, the non-rich) really had no voice. "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. |
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Re:Is this accurate? (Score:1) by Zach Garner (zach@SPAMME.neurosoft.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:08PM EDT (#51) (User #74342 Info) http://www.recurrent.net |
| And now the signal gets drowned in the noise... |
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Re:Is this accurate? (Score:1) by sandman935 (sandman nine three five at yahoo dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:35PM EDT (#82) (User #228586 Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~sandmanr/index.html |
Sure. Now that the money filter is removed the signal to noise ratio is horrible. I'm willing to take off my cynicism hat long enough to be optimistic that the truly profound signal, the message that isn't driven by profit margin will be heard even through the noise. Okay... it's unrealistic... I know... "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. |
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Re:Is this accurate? (Score:1) by Aldis Ozols (aldis@zeta.org.au) on Tuesday September 05, @04:26PM EDT (#233) (User #35092 Info) http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html |
| Be patient ... filtering technology will improve. As such techniques are refined, the signals will emerge more clearly. The Slashdot moderation/metamoderation system is an early example of group-generated filtering. How to Lobby Politicians http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html |
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The "Information Age": BS corporate propaganda (Score:4, Insightful) by Eladio McCormick on Tuesday September 05, @12:11PM EDT (#57) (User #226942 Info) |
| Is the Internet just a sequential evolution of how we handle information or is it truly a new 'society'?
In all fairness, one thing would not exclude the other. This is like asking "Was the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic just a sequential evolution of how we acquire food, or was it truly a new 'society'?" But still, the idea behind your question is dead on. All this hype about the "Information Age" is just corporate propaganda bullshit designed to sell books, IT stocks and technology, plus do clearly misguided things like spend school's scarce money on computers and not on teachers, to the benefit of the IT industry. Take the Neolithic, for example. This involved major changes in the forms of production of basic goods, and the living conditions of the majority of people in the societies affected-- hunting ceased to be the primary economic activity of personkind, to be supplanted by agriculture. People settled into towns, instead of wandering around. The industrial revolution: the way goods were produced was radically altered. Instead of skilled craftpersons organically creating the end product, the unskilled laborers tend to the machines that make the product. Social effect: deskilling of workers, but above all, people move to the cities. Now try to show whether the "Infomation Age" (whose "start", anyway, should be the invention of the telegraph, the first device to allow instant communication) has made major changes in the modes of production of the basic goods, or whether it has made fundamental material changes in the way people in "information societies" live. And the answer is: No. This is still the industrial age. |
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Re:The "Information Age": BS corporate propaganda (Score:1) by Paul Sheridan on Tuesday September 05, @02:28PM EDT (#175) (User #220709 Info) |
| While I agree that a lot of "Information Age" hype is intended to sell books and stocks, I have to disagree on it changing the way people live and produce.
For starters millions of people worldwide are now employed in the production and manipulation of information with no physical result whatsoever, ie. they don't actually make anything but the information itself is a commodity. Add to that the increasing numbers of people who work from home or remotely of their employer, relying on information age communications to keep them up to date. The Information Age is only starting to exert its influence on our lives but already it is affecting millions of people in first-world nations and it will continue to have a greater effect on human economic activity in the next 20 years. |
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Re:The "Information Age": BS corporate propaganda (Score:1) by Fesh (fesh@ebicom/net) on Tuesday September 05, @02:43PM EDT (#180) (User #112953 Info) |
| Hrm... I have to disagree with your last point there. To paraprhase what you said:
The "Agricultural Age" changed the way that food was produced. I have to call that a non-sequitur. The change from the "Agricultural Age" to the "Industrial Age" did not fundamentally change how food was produced, but how it was packaged and distributed. I would argue that the "Information Age" has caused a fundamental change, to wit:
The "Agricultural Age" changed the way food was produced. And interestingly enough, this change is affecting the way industrial products are packaged and distributed. Would the :Cue:Cat! situation have been possible before the fundamental changes that have come with the "Information Age"? I think very concept of a "loss-leader" business model would have been unthinkable in the "Industrial Age".
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AND the way information is used (Score:1) by shermNOTsherm on Tuesday September 05, @04:46PM EDT (#243) (User #178443 Info) |
| As an industrial engineer, I can tell you that we are well on our way to a revolution, it's just not visible to most people. Yet. Prior to the telegraph, innovations in manufacturing and design primarily were created through reverse engineering and individual genius. With the invention of faster forms of travel and better communication mediums, design and manufacturing innovations progressed more rapidly, and spread across greater sections of the world. Now we have machines that can not only communicate, but can also process data, which helps suggest new innovations to the human operator. The data can also be used to run the machines that create goods, like the factories in Japan that produce industrial robots, which are manufactured 100% by industrial robots - no human intervention.
Better technology begets better technology. The information age is not only about how the information is produced, it's also about how it is used. As information tools produce better information, and communicate it better, the result will be better tools and goods, and cheaper. This will create big changes in society, but at what point they will be easily noticed is beyond me. |
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Re:The "Information Age": BS corporate propaganda (Score:1) by QDerf on Tuesday September 05, @10:17PM EDT (#282) (User #103655 Info) |
| The "Agricultural Age" changed the way that food was produced. The "Industrial Age" changed the way industrial products were produced. The "Information Age" has not changed the way industrial products are produced. Actually I would make that:
The "Agricultural Age" changed the way that food was produced. The industrial age has definitely changed the way food was produced, bought, and eaten. It has revolutionized agrigulture, at least in 1st and 2nd world countries, and ushered the era of Kraft Dinner, fast food, pepsi-cola, and pizza hut. hell, 90% of what you find on the shelves of your grocery store is a tribute to the industrial age. and finally The "Information Age" has begun to change the way industrial products are produced. efficient managing, automation... We are only at the beginning. As for food production, well, I don't know yet, and of course you are totally right on information production and distribution. The world is changing. We live in a wonderful age of change and promise for everyone. This revolution is still young no matter if you think it 20 or 50 years old (or 150, the age of telegraph, but that's stretching it a bit I think), and the best is yet to come. Information is more and more often synonymous with wealth, and from that one can only conclude that as information gets moving more and more freely, quickly and easily, so will wealth, and maybe that is what the new information age is going to bring us in 50 or 100 years, a better distribution of wealth among the people? |
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Re:The "Information Age": BS corporate propaganda (Score:1) by steffl (steffl_at_bigfoot_com) on Tuesday September 05, @04:39PM EDT (#237) (User #74683 Info) http://www.bigfoot.com/~steffl |
| agriculture did not change how we hunt animals, it made hunting animals less relevant. just like information technology does not change how we produce goods...
erik ...all excited, don't know why... |
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Re:The "Information Age": BS corporate propaganda (Score:1) by gunga on Tuesday September 05, @04:59PM EDT (#245) (User #227260 Info) |
| The industrial revolution: the way goods were produced was radically altered. Instead of skilled craftpersons organically creating the end product, the unskilled laborers tend to the machines that make the product. Social effect: deskilling of workers In the same way, IT is used to replace skilled intellectual workers with unskilled people in front of computers. So, there's a change. I would say that it's a new period of the industrial age. |
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Material change? Not necessary... (Score:1) by greg_barton on Tuesday September 05, @05:05PM EDT (#247) (User #5551 Info) http://snacktoast.org |
| Good point, but you miss a possibility: Chaos. Consider water dripping from a faucet. As the flow increases, the dripping changes from a regular rythym to a chaotic one. What has changed? Nothing except the rate of flow. Consider then the flow of information. Fundamentally, the nature of information flow has not changed, but the rate of that flow has. This rate increase could create chaotic effects that were not present before. So, you don't necessarily need a "fundamental material change" to alter the structure of society, or any dynamic system for that matter. |
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Not terribly. (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:16PM EDT (#61) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| I mean, couldn't that have been said with the advent of the printing press, the library or television for that matter? Is the Internet just a sequential evolution of how we handle information or is it truly a new 'society'? Are
we putting the carriage before the horse here? Exactly think about it. In reality the internet is just merely a method of gathering data and making it fancy. It dosn't create any new or powerful coalition in any sense. The industrial revolution hasn't been supplanted by the internet and really hasn't been eliminated. What has changed is that more and more of the ecconomies of traditional European powers from rougly WWI on have shifted to service ecconomies and their populace have seen a change in government. This occurs on a small scale in the US but we actually have enough material goods to be able to deal with things nicely so that it really dosn't change. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:Is this accurate? (Score:1) by simuloid on Tuesday September 05, @04:44PM EDT (#242) (User #205858 Info) http://www.europasw.com/ |
| The thing the printing press, radio, television, the bull-horn have in common is one-way (broadcast) communication. These allow some central authority to diseminate information to a larger audience, but the audience can't respond or critique except in miniature (letters to the editor, etc.).
With the internet, on the other hand, every individual has the equivalent of a broadcast transmitter. Effectively, everybody is linked (if they choose to be) to everyone else. Our new broadcast communication ability bypasses geographic boundaries.
Therefore, I think that the internet does represent a revolutionary (rather than evolutionary) change in how people inter-relate, and thus how society functions. |
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It's time to separate (Score:2, Insightful) by roman_mir on Tuesday September 05, @11:24AM EDT (#10) (User #125474 Info) |
| It is time to seriously start thinking about one's separation from the state. It would be interesting to see citizens claiming their rights for independence and sovereignty. Those who have land will have more advantage over those who live in a city and have almost no land. A one family, or even one man or woman state is coming near you now. You set up your own rules, your own government, your own banking and all of it is made possible due to the Internet. Of-course there are about one billion questions to be asked and problems to be solved, but with today's computer speed, it's not too difficult. (Who is going to be running those sewers though?) (I would like to insert a picture with thousands of hands holding burning candlesticks and lighters right here...)(tm, pending patent, cr) |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by sandman935 (sandman nine three five at yahoo dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:02PM EDT (#47) (User #228586 Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~sandmanr/index.html |
I don't know if I'd go that far, but I've began to wonder... Do I really need someone in Congress to represent me? I don't think so. I can vote on my own behalf. "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:26PM EDT (#72) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| Do I really need someone in Congress to represent me?
In view of the law that isn't going to change. Also you average representative usually has more education and free time than you. Do you have time for say 6 months or more to go away from home to Washington DC and read literally thousands of pages of laws a day and understand/vote on them? I think not. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by nan0ok (nanook linux nu) on Tuesday September 05, @12:48PM EDT (#93) (User #135157 Info) http://www.iso.ch/ |
| If you think every representative that votes *know in depth* what they are voting about, you're quite naďve.
Besides, if I don't (or can't) know the law, how can I know what's illegal? It's not like the laws made these days are intuitive. The whole legal/political system has this millennium become a very strange beast indeed. To know how it shold work has become a profession in itself.
I am for "direct" democracy, at least on a local level. return -ENOSIG; |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by sandman935 (sandman nine three five at yahoo dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:49PM EDT (#94) (User #228586 Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~sandmanr/index.html |
You obviously have a higher opinion of our elected representatives than I. Do they actually read and understand these laws? I doubt it. I think they vote the way they are directed to by corporations that do have the time and resources available to fully understand the bills that often make little sense. As and example (if I recall correctly), I believe there is/was a bill on the floor regarding banking laws that somehow needed verbiage regarding the prohibition of methamphetamine information on the internet. I don't recall the HR# at the moment but it serves to illustrate a point. Once you've cut out the corporate/special interest noise, I think the majority of the population would be up to the task of voting how we govern ourselves. That... or give me term limits and campaign reform. Make public service truly public service and not a career. "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by Happy Monkey on Tuesday September 05, @01:15PM EDT (#124) (User #183927 Info) |
| ...and read literally thousands of pages of laws a day and understand/vote on them?
One question I've always had is, why do there need to be thousands of pages of laws? Personally, I don't think any one law (or, incidentally, contract or other legal document) needs to be more than 5 pages or so. Otherwise it is too complicated, or poorly written. |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by Stonehand (lw2j@cs.cmu.edu) on Tuesday September 05, @01:58PM EDT (#160) (User #71085 Info) http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~lw2j |
| If they don't list things in detail, then they have to fall back on things like "reasonable person" or "community" standards. Even reasonable people have different standards on many ideas, and unreasonable people will test them.
This translates to litigation, because those phrases WILL be challenged in courts and every claim countered. Specifying, say, the exact minimum standards for a chocolate-chip cookie (military issue) may seem silly, but it prevents a manufacturer from trying to rip off people by providing what might be called substandard by some, but not by others. By making laws extremely detailed, many such actions become pointless because the potential loopholes and debating points are removed. As for another poster's comments on understanding laws -- people aren't normally required to understand them all. Most of us, for instance, might not care that much about the the exact safety standards of a fire code, as long as we're sure that they have been judged reasonable by people who DO spend much of their time studying such, and as long as they're enforced. If I have no involvement in shipping agricultural products across borders, the exact details of inspections and what must, should or cannot be done via produce from, say, Chile or Uruguay does not interest me beyond having some second-hand level of confidence that the laws are reasonable. Even lawyers specialize -- patent law, for instance, which should be coupled with an area of expertise such as a specialization in a particular field of science. Criminal law isn't that relevant to a divorce specialist beyond the basics; nor, for the most part, are the details that relevant to most of us along as it aligns closely with our intuition (e.g. if I believe that murder is wrong and do not plan on it, then whether or not a state differentiates between murder with a firearm versus murder via arsenic or motor vehicle isn't that crucial to me as long as any such differences are not absurd -- like murder by car resulting in only 5-10 while the others lead to a mandatory death penalty. Likewise, a strangely arbitrary law -- say, if it were illegal to drive on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays with an odd-numbered license plate -- WOULD deserve dissemination, consideration and explanation (e.g. reducing traffic, and if even-numbered plates had a similar restriction on the Tue-Thu-Sat). -- the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by Happy Monkey on Tuesday September 05, @03:22PM EDT (#207) (User #183927 Info) |
| By making laws extremely detailed, many such actions become pointless because the potential loopholes and debating points are removed. All of the above are good points, but the reverse is also true. Making obsessively detailed laws can also increase the number of loopholes. Some may enter in the same way bugs enter large software projects, and others may be inserted at the insistence of special interests, and simply "lost" in the rest of the detail.
I do concede the point that the words "reasonable person" or "local community standards" really should not appear in any legal document. Hopefully, they would apply instead to the lawmakers.
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That wouldn't work (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:23PM EDT (#66) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| It is time to seriously start thinking about one's separation from the state. It would be interesting to see citizens claiming their rights for independence and sovereignty. Those who have land will have more advantage
over those who live in a city and have almost no land. A one family, or even one man or woman state is coming near you now. You set up your own rules, your own government, your own banking and all of it is made possible due to the Internet. That's total bull. You cannot create a new state within another without provoking the ire of the government (it's called civil war and insurrection). People finally learned this during the Civil War. See there were a group of people who didn't get along with the United States we'll call them Southerners. The Southerners were basically being lead by the rich amongst them and controlling the poor. They wanted to stay in power making the good money off their stupid cotton business (which was propped up via an invention by a *notherner* named Eli Wittney and the north was propped up by an invention from a southerner). Well they got irritated at unkie sam and decided to "claim their rights for independence and sovreignty" (and in almost those exact words too). Well why don't we see any people walking around from the CSA (Confederate States of America) now? Of-course there are about one billion questions to be asked and problems to be solved, but with today's computer speed, it's not too difficult. (Who is going to be running those sewers though?) Computers are tools, they cannot change anyone without actually having someone operate them. AI is a ***Loooooonnnnnnngggg*** way off from being practical. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by PrimalChrome on Tuesday September 05, @12:32PM EDT (#78) (User #186162 Info) |
| Your logic is perfectly sound.
...but... That is about the worst account of the cause of the American Civil War that I've ever heard. It's almost as bad as the delusional fools that claim it was fought over slavery. It was a war brought about by economic controls being put into place by an oppressive government. I would think that with all the issues currently in Slashdot's spotlight, this woudl be well understood.
PrimalChrome |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @12:41PM EDT (#87) (User #216235 Info) |
| Um: "they
wanted to stay in power making the good money off their stupid cotton business (which was propped up
via an invention by a *notherner* named Eli Wittney and the north was propped up by an invention from
a southerner)."
That is what happened. What other economic controls do you mean, PrimalChrome? The collective south just did not like the whole idea of taxes to begin with. Their stance of the north was: "we don't like taxes + they appear not to like our way of life and are against us ==lets go to war". I know my former history professor would shun me on this simplistic example but it illustrates the point. Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by ahodgson on Tuesday September 05, @01:10PM EDT (#117) (User #74077 Info) |
| Actually, they didn't say "let's go to war". They said "we're out of here, see ya". The Federal government went to war to preserve the Union.
The result was a strong United States and the end of slavery, so I'd have to say it was a good thing. But it was Abe who went to war, not the South. -- Alan |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @01:23PM EDT (#127) (User #216235 Info) |
| Actually that's not entirely true. The confederates, if you recall actually fired the first shots of the war. The Union did not, at that time, have any massive organized troops. Their defeat in Charleston, kinda kicked them in the butt a little bit. Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by cpt kangarooski on Tuesday September 05, @01:52PM EDT (#151) (User #3773 Info) |
| That may be, but the CSA was formed in Feburary 1861, and the attack on Fort Sumter didn't happen until April. While the South Carolinians (always the craziest of the southerners - I say this as a Floridian ;) may have had some fun shooting at the fort, they did basically consider it to be their property after the secession. Why would they want to leave US troops there? -- I support anonymous posting. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @01:57PM EDT (#159) (User #216235 Info) |
| HAHA.. Slashdot=History Channel. Thanks for the info. I know this a moot point, but isn't firing on a Fort (even though reclaiming "their" property) basically declaring a war? I mean what were they thinking would happen? *recalls scene from Monty Python..."I FART in your general direction"*! Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by cpt kangarooski on Tuesday September 05, @03:46PM EDT (#220) (User #3773 Info) |
| Oh, I'm sure that they knew that it would happen. But they thought that they would win. And in fact, it was a very close thing for a while. I was just saying that they had _some_ justification as opposed to, for instance, Germany attacking France through Belguim. Or Germany attacking France through Belguim *again*.
Besides, when someone really wants a war, it's not hard to start one. A lot of Northerners wanted a war to force the Southerners to manumit the slaves. (which had really become a catch all for a lot of other things too, but we'll leave that alone for now) And while a fair number of Southerners were bright enough to want to avoid it, the Carolinians dragged 'em into it. Could've been worse. There was the War of Jenkin's Ear. And there was a border skirmish between US and British forces on San Juan Island that was sparked by a pig. -- I support anonymous posting. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:2) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @04:12PM EDT (#231) (User #216235 Info) |
| Cool, thanks for the insight!
AHAHA! "Sparked by a pig????" HAHA! Damn you! Now I'm definetly going to have to look that one up! Reminds me of that Simpson's episode with Smither's and his assistant are in their office and he says he'd cut a check for a $1mill to some charity if "pigs flew". HAHAH.. Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by sips (sips@atdot.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:52PM EDT (#100) (User #212702 Info) http://www.mycgiserver.com/~jigglypuff |
| That is about the worst account of the cause of the American Civil War that I've ever heard. It's almost as bad as the delusional fools that claim it was fought over slavery. It was a war brought about by economic controls
being put into place by an oppressive government. I would think that with all the issues currently in Slashdot's spotlight, this woudl be well understood. Well pretty much the average southerner didn't want to go to war and fight for the rich. It was the poor dirt farmers who died at Gettysburg and not the rich plantation owners. It's pretty clear that the South was controlled by the planters who in turn owned slaves who in turn got pissed off that the north because of their motives and extremists (abolitionists) and their ideas about states rights. Yes the war was not fought about slavery in the sole but in fact more about the rights of states in the abstract. South Carolina had been a trouble spot since the 1830's under John C. Calhoon and the Jackson administration. Freedom can be assured but it must be given a nudge. Freenet, sips, gpg, /dev/random are your friends. |
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Re:That wouldn't work (Score:1) by Chris-en-topper on Wednesday September 06, @04:35PM EDT (#301) (User #215099 Info) |
| It's almost as bad as the delusional fools that claim it was fought over slavery. My college professor, who has a PhD in history and who's area of focus is the Civil War, insists that the Civil War *was* primarily fought over the issue of slavery. This is in contradiction to what I was taught in high school. |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by Keith Russell (krussell@PINK-MEAT-LIKE-STUFF.sgi.net) on Tuesday September 05, @01:54PM EDT (#156) (User #4440 Info) |
| Individuals? Not likely. What you're describing could be best described as "negotiated anarchy", which seems self-defeating, because a consensus "government" would probably arise among the negotiators. I have a feeling that Neal Stephenson was right in Snow Crash: A bunch of gated communities which are franchises of sovereign corporate entities. Some are proponents of a particular ideology, others are plain, vanilla subdivisions (are there any other kind? :-) ) competing for your residential business. Other corporate entities manage the infrastructure, striking local deals with the franchises. ("So, who's your Sanitation Service Provider for your plan?") Governments deal with the leftover scraps, and poorly at that. The corporations haven't gotten involved yet, but I've seen this sort of thing happen. 20-some years ago, the Borough of Seven Fields, PA was farmland. The farm was sold to developers, and a subdivision was built. After a while, the residents decided they knew better than Adams Township, drafted a Home Rule Charter, and poof! Instant town! Of course, I remember when everything in southwest Butler County was farmland. Now, you can't spit without hitting a strip mall or big-box store. Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush Implements IStdDisclaimer |
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Re:It's time to separate (Score:1) by UnknownSoldier (mpohores@NOBLOODYSPAMsfu.ca) on Wednesday September 06, @01:10AM EDT (#287) (User #67820 Info) |
| > It would be interesting to see citizens claiming their rights for independence and sovereignty.
Jural societies ARE one form of this already. Sovereigns TODAY are telling the government(s) to take a hike. Some of us DO take home 100% of our paycheck. (My TIME is MINE, not the government's to leech off.) Interesting that one of the founding fathers hit the nail right ont the head: Thomas Jefferson, warned, "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." -- "They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin, 1759 |
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Free agent nation (Score:2) by zlite (chris at comminus dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @11:25AM EDT (#12) (User #199781 Info) |
| This book seems to look at the individual vs the state, but the same arguments apply to the individual vs the corporation. Technology liberates employees from dependence on any single company, creating a nation of "free agents".
Technological skills are portable, the fast pace of technological change favors the flexible (which tend to be individuals, not companies), and technology reaches everywhere, freeing those who would otherwise be tied to the local corporate giant. This is, needless to say, a Good Thing. |
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Supply and Demand (Score:1) by sterno (sterno@bigbrother.net) on Tuesday September 05, @12:08PM EDT (#53) (User #16320 Info) http://www.bigbrother.net/ |
| Technological skills are not what makes it possible for indivudals to act as free agents. What makes it possible is a matter of supply and demand. If there are a million jobs and only 500,000 people to fill them, it means that any person can change jobs without thinking about it.
If the gap were to close and it ended up with 500,000 jobs and a million tech workers, free agency wouldn't be quite so appealing as it is now. Bouncing from job to job would be a serious risk where as now, it is almost to the point that not bouncing is the risk (for you look stagnant). The ability to do this is not a function of the skills involved or the portability of those skills, but rather the job environment. If there was high demand for short order cooks and nobody to fill the positions, you'd see short order cooks leaping from job to job and making a ton of money too.
--- |
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Re:Supply and Demand (Score:2) by zlite (chris at comminus dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:02PM EDT (#111) (User #199781 Info) |
| True, but there are structural changes that encourage free-agentry and are not going away in the next recession. For instance:
--The late80s/early90s corporate restructurings that broke the long-standing social compact between companies and employees. This brought the end of seniority loyalty (last in first out), lifetime employment (to the extent that it still existed) and the implicit promise of corporate responsibility to its employees. --The fading away of the unions --The portability of benifits, such as 401Ks. You may not remember, but pensions used to vest like stock options. If you left early, you lost them. Now, they're contribution-based, and you carry them with you. --Meritocratic business cultures, where skills and performance are valued more highly than loyalty and years of service. Those that thrive in such cultures will have portable talents, regardless of the economy. |
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Re:Free agent nation (Score:1) by crgrace (somedesperateglory@yahoo.com) on Tuesday September 05, @03:53PM EDT (#224) (User #220738 Info) |
| I have a couple problems with the notion of "free agents" in a work context.
First, free agents erode the collective desire to be the best. What I mean by this is a free agent will most likely not be able to be part of a tight design team in the members push themselves and each other to be the best. In my experience, in a design group the staff designers tend to put more of themselves in the job than do the contractors and tend to get better results. I work in the IC business, but is it different in the software and IT businesses where many slashdotters work? Second, free agentism provides a disincentive to do truly original work. When I was working full time, (I'm a PhD student now), the most original and interesting work came from those staff designers who had been working in the group and on the project for some time and felt a loyalty to the group (if not the organization). The contractors I've worked with tended to be more interested in busting out a kludge and moving on to always greener pastures. I'm not putting anyone down here; the contractors were professionals who did competent work, but they didn't have the drive the staff designers did. Perhaps it was because the staff engineers could hope for some stock options or a bonus as a reward for a job well done where the contractors just got a higher salary.
When I get out of school, I'm not interested in becoming a free agent. I want to join a team where I feel I am valued and am making a difference and then I want to put all my effort into being the best designer I can be. |
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Re:Free agent nation (Score:2) by zlite (chris at comminus dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @06:18PM EDT (#263) (User #199781 Info) |
| I think you're taking the free agent concept too far. In fact, it's not about contracters and temps, but simply people who know they have options and move until they find a job they find rewarding. You can be a free agent and stay with a single company for years, if it's the right one (just like the sports analogy of the word).
There's also free agentry *within* a company; mobility works in all sorts of ways. Think of free agentry as simply being where you are because that's what you want, and not because you find it too difficult to move, and I suspect you won't find it as worrysome. |
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Napster etc... (Score:2, Interesting) by DustyHodges on Tuesday September 05, @11:27AM EDT (#14) (User #174738 Info) |
| This is exactly the point that alot of us "extremists" have been making about the Napster and DeCSS debates. Not that it isn't a violation of Copyright, but that copyright laws are too outdated, and anything that the current court system tries to churn out will be worthless for the most part. Today's gov'ts are exactly what Katz is saying here... Tired, worn out old men. There isn't much left in them in the way of life, and hopefully, the entire old school paradigm of governments will be shattered soon. I don't know about the state of other countries, but I believe the Second American Revolution is coming. Are you ready? |
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Revolution anyone? (Score:1) by skeebe on Tuesday September 05, @11:43AM EDT (#30) (User #221142 Info) |
| It's true, the world (or the US anyway) may be on the way to another revolution, but who's to say that the old school politicians can't squash it before it happens? They've done quite a job on DeCSS and napster (so far), and there's only more to come. The world is a better and *cheaper* place because the net has smashed economic walls. Prices go down when I can buy the cheapest product in the world, rather than in just one store, state, etc. Borders between states, countries, etc. hold less meaning daily because it's possible to buy from another city, state, or country without even leaving your desk. This only makes the old school have to work harder to stop it, because it's harder for them to make a buck. ...which is what they set out to do in the first place. What can we do? political reform? I don't know, but the world can't just change while geeks sit idly by. |
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Re:Revolution anyone? (Score:1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 05, @12:19PM EDT (#64) |
| Actually many politicians like Blair and Clinton and a host of continental figures are even more aware than you of the uselessness and obsolescence of the old national borders. That is why they are pushing for the dissolution of borders in national policies (UN, GATT, NAFTA etc.) and laying the groundwork for reconsolidation of political unity at higher levels: yes the rightwing bogeyman of "World Government". I'm sure there are plenty of you who think that global markets "just happen" lol!
The transition to larger geographical units of political power is news to a few grade-schoolers and rightwing nativists--and is held back in its progress mainly by the pariochialism and mental tardiness of the same. |
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Re:Revolution anyone? (Score:2, Insightful) by evilned (bned@REMOVE_THIS_IF_YOU_EMAIL_MEmindless.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:25PM EDT (#69) (User #146392 Info) |
| Ironically, Napster and DeCSS are both excellent examples of the futility of the tired old men stopping something they cant. Sure there is a very good chance that Napster will die soon, however for gnutella to be stopped, the internet would have to be completely shut down. Suing AOL isn't going to shut it down at all, as they have no control over it. Same with FreeNet. DeCSS may be illegal, but it sure hasn't stopped it from being available on the net. These cases are great examples of how the decentralized nature of the internet makes it impossible to impose an outside order. The genie is out of the bottle, and there isn't anything any government can do to put it back. "My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett |
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Media Hype (Score:1) by DustyHodges on Tuesday September 05, @01:04PM EDT (#114) (User #174738 Info) |
| OK, I know I'm going to make myself look like a real extremist here, but the thing is that's exactly what the media and the gov't want you to think. The only people who want to overthrow the government are a bunch of wacko fringe groups that we should all mock on Late Night Talk Shows, then go back to our happy fat consumerism. This America is so far from it's original vision it's disgusting. The only way that it will be taken back is with an uprising, violent or no. Are you going to keep being a puppet, or are you actually going to stand up for your rights? |
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Re:Napster etc... (Score:1) by DustyHodges on Tuesday September 05, @07:20PM EDT (#269) (User #174738 Info) |
| I am not willing to fight and die for Napster/DeCSS specifically, but I am willing to fight and die for a country that is not ruled by the rich, where the corporations do not have politicians in their pockets, and where laws are passed with decency and common sense. I honestly believe that this government has too much cruft, if you will, and it's time to do a 're-install'. |
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Information Society? (Score:1) by don_carnage (don_carnage@spam.bigfoot.com.spam) on Tuesday September 05, @11:31AM EDT (#16) (User #145494 Info) http://w3.one.net/~skeplin/grit_truck |
| Does 'Peace, Love Incorporated' have anything to do with this?
Sorry: couldn't resist. |
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The Lord... (Score:1) by deefer (deefer@[Spam:_Just_Say_No]dial.pipex.com) on Tuesday September 05, @11:32AM EDT (#17) (User #82630 Info) http://www.deefer.dial.pipex.com |
| Lord William Rees-Mogg - not only editor of the Times at one point, but IIRC he was one of Britains Moral Guardians at one point; think he oversaw decency in telecommunications... Which, IMHO, puts him in an odd position to be commentating on the internet, which is of course full of donkey pr0n... Strong data typing is for those with weak minds. |
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This won't be any better than it is now (Score:5, Interesting) by Dan Hayes on Tuesday September 05, @11:32AM EDT (#18) (User #212400 Info) |
And as the "information" revolution occurs and we move into a new techno-utopia we will be finally able to forget that the real world is not as perfect as it seems to the average geek. We'll drown in so much useless information that we won't have to worry about starving children in Africa any more. The increasing amount of information watering holes online which are targetted to a certain type of person has a serious negative consequence which you don't often hear about. They encourage conformity and suppress new ideas. Why? Because when the only people whose opinions you read or hear are those who share the same interests as you and agree with your outlook then you're not being challenged. Just look at Slashdot for a great example of this. Plenty of like-minded people and a lack of tolerance for alternative opinions. Indeed, moderation provides a wonderful mechanism to encourage conformity at the price of healthy argument. As the trend increases and we enter a true "information" age, it will get to the point where people do have access to all the information they could ever want, but instead they limit themselves to the unchallenging and comfortable. It'll be a million times worse than the television, because it'll be personal. In this situation who will be bothered about the have-nots? Because there are a lot of have-nots out there, for a lot of different reasons. These people will become an underclass, and the difference will be serious. Today homeless people find themselves trapped because without an address they cannot get jobs or other things we take for granted - how much worse will it be when people are unable to do anything without an online presence? |
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If I were a member of SpinalTap, (Score:1) by kwashiorkor (kwashiorkor_NOSPAM_@mail.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:17PM EDT (#62) (User #105138 Info) |
| and a Slashdot moderator... I'd give you an 11.
This is a wasted post, I know. Just thought I'd add my voice to this line of reasoning though. Which is almost participating in a reflection of the situation you speak about... only seeking out and responding to information that you agree with.
I'm already caught in the net. :-)
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:2) by Kaa (freedomdotnet!kaa) on Tuesday September 05, @12:26PM EDT (#71) (User #21510 Info) |
| We'll drown in so much useless information that we won't have to worry about starving children in Africa any more.
And we worry about them now? So if giant media corporations feed us limited news, then we will worry about the Right Things and all will be well. But if we'll be able to pick and choose from the ocean of info, we'll choose Wrong Things to worry about, right? I understand your point about picking information to reinforce your worldview, but I don't see any good alternatives because they inevitably imply that somebody else is picking information for you. As the trend increases and we enter a true "information" age, it will get to the point where people do have access to all the information they could ever want, but instead they limit themselves to the unchallenging and comfortable. Yes, probably. The sheeple certainly will. However, again, consider the alternatives: do you want to force-feed to people information that is "good for them"? Who gets to pick what's good? The communist (aka socialist) countries like USSR practiced stict control over information dissemination. For example, crime was almost never reported in the news ( => no copycat crimes and people are not afraid). Do you really want to go down that path? In this situation who will be bothered about the have-nots? You imply that everybody worries only about what he has seen on the TV screen during the last five minutes. There a lot of people like this, but they are not going to be helpful to the starving-children-in-Africa situations. For people whose attention span is not measured in minutes, the problem you describe is not so severe. Kaa Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. |
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:1) by StarFace (mine@NOSPAM.priest.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:39PM EDT (#144) (User #13336 Info) |
| Not so much a responder to your posting, but your signature. I don't think there are any problems with the individual per say. I'll admit that in large groups individuals tend to become followers and lose their uniqueness. This is a social problem, and not really a mark of intelligence. The pure idiot shows it's face in the group itself.
Take any large group of 'followers' whichever annoys you the most. Their beliefs and actions are stupid in your opinion. However, take the time to personally understand the individuals within the group, and you'll find they are not really idiots, they are just trapped in an idiot cause. Well, some would come back and say that if they let themselves get trapped into an idiot cause then they are in fact an idiot. I'll give them part of that. In a sense that is correct. The mistake they would be making is in taking one aspect of intelligence and exploding it over the entire realm. One can be quite intelligent in one area, and rather dull in another. This does not make a person an idiot, as they would probably blow you away in another category. I would change your "Kaa's Law" to be something more along the lines of this: |
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:1) by Kaa (freedomdotnet!kaa) on Tuesday September 05, @01:53PM EDT (#152) (User #21510 Info) |
| I don't think there are any problems with the individual per say. I'll admit that in large groups individuals tend to become followers and lose their uniqueness. This is a social problem, and not really a mark of intelligence.
[Grin] You misunderstand my .sig. It is as politically incorrect as it looks. It's point is not the "mob effect", but rather the overwhelming abundance of idiots -- individually idiots -- in the world. The law is empirically derived, which is a fancy way of saying that I came up with it after observing a large number of idiots in real life. It can also be treated as a special case of Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is shit"). In case you are wondering, a final impetus to the formulation of Kaa's Law was reading the MENSA magazine. Trivia bit: the word "idiot" comes from Greek and originally meant an Egyptian peasant. Kaa Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. |
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:2) by Detritus (jlimpert@acm.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:44PM EDT (#91) (User #11846 Info) |
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Just look at Slashdot for a great example of this. Plenty of like-minded people and a lack of tolerance for
alternative opinions. Indeed, moderation provides a wonderful mechanism to encourage conformity at the
price of healthy argument.
The "penis bird" is not an alternative opinion.
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:1) by Cobalt Weaponary on Tuesday September 05, @12:50PM EDT (#96) (User #228323 Info) |
| The "penis bird" is not an alternative opinion.
However, petrification is a real and attractive alternative, and if you look in my user history, you will see that I've been moderated down many times for my opinions! How fair is that? Plus, I've had people respond with links to a picture of someone's discusting, slimy anus! Eeeew! I'm sorry, but you sexualists discust me. You're so closed minded. ______ |
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:1) by shren on Tuesday September 05, @12:55PM EDT (#104) (User #134692 Info) http://www.io.com/~shren |
I don't think your concerns are badly placed. But, I also don't think that people cubbyhole themselves quite as much as you think. Whenever I hit a slashdot story that really interests me, or get an email that really interests me, or have a new topic I want to go into, I don't search Slashdot. I throw some keywords at Google and see what comes out the other side. -- States with a "shall-issue" gun permit law have an 84% reduction in multiple victim shootings. |
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:2, Insightful) by Wraithlyn (bcairns@itpwebsolutions.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:04PM EDT (#113) (User #133796 Info) |
Perhaps what you say is true, but I have to disagree about your use of Slashdot as an example. Full of "like-minded people"? Oh yes... I'm sure you're right. That's why you never see any arguments or disagreements on Slashdot. "Lack of tolerance for alternative opinions?" well yes, these people are called critics, or advocates of the status quo, or sticks in the mud, (or much worse, on occaision ;), and are an essential ingredient in any sort of healthy discourse and dissection... contrast is an excellent analytical tool. Moderation encourages conformity!? What rubbish. Moderation encourages the poster to stand out from the crowd, say something startling, intelligent, insightful, or funny. Something that gets noticed, in other words, which is exactly the opposite of conforming. Go to a big discussion and filter for only comments rated 3 or higher, and you will find some real gems. (Including your own post, I might add. Would you classify your own post as conforming and not indentifying any original ideas?) Is it a perfect system? No... is anything? But it is simply overflowing with new ideas, opposing viewpoints, and real commentary from real people, not slick, dumbed down, polished editorials. The glass is neither half empty or half full; it's just too damn big. |
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Information is the opiate of the masses? (Score:2) by MattW (ma++@ender.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:08PM EDT (#116) (User #97290 Info) |
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Astoundingly astute observation. But I'll play futurist too and disagree with one point. I predict that we won't have starving children or homeless people. Eventually, a world-wide government will arise, although probably not as an official entity, but rather as an agreement in the UN or such, which the US will dutifully follow and enact laws to conform with. We (the US) will move further towards a socialist society. Eventually everyone will, due to amazing productivity gains, work a short day (if that), and have food, health care, and housing (and internet access, in whatever form) provided to them if needed for free. This information, targetted entertainment, and so on, will truly become the opiate of the masses. There will not be a digital divide, but a motivational one -- most people will opt to not tell, and ambition will become the world's most valued commodity. What's worse, because of the satisfaction of the general populace and a belief in the goodness of the world, there will be an incredible abuse of power by those possessing it. With everyone too satisfied to play watchdog, those with ambition, right or wrong, will be in charge, and will discover that what tyrants have tried throughout history with secret police, torture, murder, conscription, etc, and failed at, they can accomplish with the carrot instead of the stick. Provide a television and a cozy couch, and who will challenge you? I'm blanking on who wrote the story of a similar line, where the populace had a choice to either take a totally side-effect-free happy-drug and live their life in bliss, or to stay off it and try to help run the world. In the story, the happy people really WERE the populace, but my vision is a bit more prone to Morlock raids, to borrow from another piece of fiction. Obviously, the lesson is to master technology, not let it be your master, but its a lot more seductive in real life, as the geek-ified slashdot reader should know. On another point, you're right on about the moderation system -- it is trivial (yes, I'm guilty) to post karma-whoring crap, and it often seems as though anyone who can put a coherent sentence together can end up at a 5 if they post in the first 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I've had some of my most well-document and empassioned (and dangerous) comments moderated down as flamebait because what I expressed was unpopular with the reader. As a moderator, I tend to have to keep myself conscious of the fact that I need to moderate up well written, original, insightful comments, and not comments which merely crystallize my own thinking in an eloquent way. I try to promote comments which put for unique, well reasoned, or well documented arguments, rather than promoting what I agree with. It's too bad, in that vein, that if you want to rack up karma, the easiest way to do it is to post early when your (obvious) 2 cents is in great agreement with the masses. Good post. |
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Conformity? (Score:1) by DrCode on Tuesday September 05, @01:21PM EDT (#125) (User #95839 Info) |
| I don't think so. In the pre-online days, all the news I read came from 'standard' sources like the local newspaper or Time, while reading more varied sources was too much work.
Now, with a few clicks through Yahoo, I can not only read what the major U.S. news sources have to say, but I can also read opinions from all over the world. So, for example, I can easily get both the Arab and Israeli points of view regarding their conflict, not just the U.S. view. |
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Democracy (Score:2) by redhog (redhogNOSPAM@mandrakesoft.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:25PM EDT (#133) (User #15207 Info) http://mini.dhs.org |
| The online moderation [of /.] is just a good example of democracy: The majority decides what is right and wrong, and the abnormal is ceased. _But_, the difference between this and old, non-online democracy, is that the online-one doesn't _prevent_ anyone froms eeing what is deemed as non-conforming, it just tells people it is non-conformant, while the old one _removes_ peoples ability to read what is deemed as bad.
If you are right (and you might be) that people will _choose_ not to see what is non-conformant, humanity is doomed, and there is absolutely nothing we can, and perheaps should, do. The way to prevent the last concern, which is preventable, is to provide free access att libraries and such places. But that won't help the third world. But what difference will it make from how it is today, for those living there? The world sucks, and will continue to do so, neither more, nor less. I am sorry, but that's the fact. Some part of it may get a bit better, but the whole thingy will continue to be as bad as it is... --The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one. |
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I tend to agree, but consider this (Score:1) by bitchazz on Tuesday September 05, @01:55PM EDT (#157) (User #134990 Info) http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/holland0300.html |
| ANYONE, even the homeless, in many parts of America, can access e-mail and the web free of charge. Perhaps part of what you are warning of is actually a boon to someone like me who tends toward an unmaterialistic and nomadic lifestyle. I don't NEED an address to matter when I can just go to the local library and communicate.
And someday soon, when laptops are super cheap, super long life batteries or solar power becomes a cost effective commodity, and when satellite wireless communication is the norm, think of the possibilities! Bouncing around will never have been so easy. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ god damn, America sure is cool..... FOR ME TO POOP ON!!! |
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Re:This won't be any better than it is now (Score:1) by Good'n'Plenty on Tuesday September 05, @02:55PM EDT (#194) (User #226307 Info) |
Maybe you're right. Perhaps it is possible for someone to go online for the first time, fall in love with the "watering hole" tailored precisely to their beliefs, and then never discover challenging information. However, I think that describes traditional media more than the internet. I haven't seen any television programming that consistently raised its standards above the level needed to exploit the viewers most vulnerable to advertising. All information of value is strung out in serials. Everything that they provide must be encapsulated and wrapped up with a pretty bow before the next commercial break. Most of the programming is dedicated to proving that the show has value:
Often, the "value" of television programming is to give people just enough tools for use in their own private self-rewarding "watering-hole". i.e. they have the right punchline to say when talking to their ill-informed friends. TV news programs provide the straw man which viewers can conveniently knock down and feel strong and smart, enhanced by that vital television programming. Traditional media isn't strictly interested in informing you; they want your continued attention for long-lasting advertising revenue. Do you think that CNN will ever explain the nature of MS Outlook virii to their audience, or will they exploit the periodic release of a new virus for regular sensationalist drama about hackers and cyberspace? The internet has a natural advantage over newspaper as well. All over the country, many of the same political arguemnts are written over and over, in different editorial pages of different papers. Not only must those presentations be encapsulated within one quote, one article, or one paper, but also there is a tremendous amount of redundancy from people constructing similar introductory-level arguments in seperate papers. Online forums are capable of providing more forward progress than their printed counterparts. The internet empowers users to eliminate the cliches, redundancies, stereotypes, and straw-man arguments. Internet users can compile their own archive of useful links and searchable databases to illustrate a point. Traditional media is not only incapable, it is unwilliing to truly challenge their audience. -- David M. Moore
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My question (Score:1) by AbbyNormal on Tuesday September 05, @11:34AM EDT (#20) (User #216235 Info) |
| is where does this leave the Government/ stable society? I have not read the book but am curious about the idea of these "Big Brother" cognitive elite? Methinks maybe these authors have read "Brave New World" one to many times. Then again like "Brave New World" the corporations are spreading disinformation and control to the public so maybe it isn't too far off. Mmmmmmmmmm...Soma. Duct tape is like the force; it has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. |
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Its all about who you vote for (Score:1) by scotay on Tuesday September 05, @11:35AM EDT (#22) (User #195240 Info) |
| People have the power to change the way in which they are ruled independent of technology.
I know of at least one political party that honors the role of the individual above that of the state. They have been around since the seventies. They are called the Libertarian party. Voters in this country have made the choice of the state over the individual by voting for the same old Republicans and Democrats. If they ever decide they dont like the current state of affairs they can get off their fat asses and hit the voting booth. If you want sovereignty, vote Libertarian. Your vote wont require Internet access or even a computer. |
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Re:Its all about who you vote for (Score:1) by Stonehand (lw2j@cs.cmu.edu) on Tuesday September 05, @12:33PM EDT (#79) (User #71085 Info) http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~lw2j |
| Percentage-wise, that does not appear to be a viable option unless BOTH major parties fragment simultaneously. You'd pretty much have to hope that environmentalists flee Dems to go Green (more than slightly unlikely), and that pro-abortion GOPers break with their leaders (delegates in both parties being a tad more extreme than the rank and file).
If only one is split ala Bull Moose, the other sweeps. If neither splits, then there simply aren't enough truly independent votes to win major office -- in particular, the Big Prize of the chap who gets to appoint federal judges... -- the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad |
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Why independents always shrivel up and die (Score:2) by David Wong on Tuesday September 05, @02:38PM EDT (#179) (User #199703 Info) http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com |
| If neither splits, then there simply aren't enough truly independent votes to win major office
Right, and to expand that to a larger point, it's that there simply isn't enough dissatisfaction with the way things are to make that kind of a movement. Many, many people depend on the status quo - and I'm not talking about just politicians and big oil companies. Millions of us do. Most of us do. There's a reason why we vote for the same old thing every four years: it's because we like it. The vocal Rage-Against-The-Machine extremists who want to bring the current system down are very, very small in number. And why not? The overwhelming majority of us are well-fed, have homes to live in, cars to drive, clothes to wear, and cable TV to watch. We may complain, but who wants to mess with all that? Who really? -David Wong The Matrix 2 Information Center |
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Re:Its all about who you vote for (Score:1) by cypherpunkwithagun on Tuesday September 05, @02:31PM EDT (#176) (User #229846 Info) |
| As a libertarian i agree with there ideas.
But voting with your feet will be more effective. |
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Re:Its all about who you vote for (Score:1) by MetL Hed (adron_you.havetoknowmylastname@hotmail.com) on Tuesday September 05, @03:32PM EDT (#215) (User #222753 Info) |
| If only some people would vote for a damn Libertarian this country might start getting it's shit together. Right now this whole "American" nation is turning into a European re-hash. Socialism sucks, Democrats suck, and Republicans blow even more... Libertarians are the only ones who stick mostly to the truth, all those others are full of confusing bullshit! I'm voting Libertarian this election regardless of who is winning. Because I as well vote for nobody over Gore or frikking dumbass Bush. Sorry big rant. I'm not using one yet. |
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Anybody remember... (Score:1) by Malc (Malcolm_Ferguson@yahoo.NO_SPAM_PLEASE.com) on Tuesday September 05, @11:39AM EDT (#25) (User #1751 Info) |
| ... what Clive James used to find so amusing with Lord Smogg? |
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Incomplete Logic (Score:4, Interesting) by ScuzzMonkey on Tuesday September 05, @11:45AM EDT (#31) (User #208981 Info) |
| It drives me nuts when people come out with these grand predictions based on only one of many concurrent trends in society. Technological growth is not the only factor that will determine whether governments retain their power. Even if it were, the conclusions the authors draw from this (as quoted by Katz; I haven't read the book) are questionable even in that context.
For openers, technology as a liberating factor is still only relevant to a relatively small segment of Western population. Advanced technology in general is present throughout society, but the specific sorts of tech that might be considered liberating (Internet and desktop publishing come to mind) are really only available to an affluent few. Cell phones and pagers are widely available, but how liberating are they? How many people treat them as a leash instead? Certainly most sysadmins I know. And ultimately, how much control does an individual have over the technology he or she uses? Even the brightest are at the mercy of their ISP, telco, or manufacturer for service. It seems to me that the tendency of a technological infrastructure will not be to push control back to the people from government, but rather to large corporations from government. And of course, that is supposing that technology is the only force currently driving social change. It isn't. As an example, take population growth and a related phenomenon, urbanization. As more and more people keep being packed into less and less space, the social pressures for more law and regulation will increase, not decrease. Government will be seen as more necessary, not less. This is a trend that pre-dates the Industrial Revolution and has continued through it and the Information Revolution both; yet it does not seem to have met with the authors' consideration. Which is my problem with most books/articles/diatribes like "The Sovereign Individual." They are written in the same manner as most science fiction--extrapolate a single technology and imagine what will happen with society as a result--but presented as well thought predictions. Essentially, it's wishful thinking, which I'm not opposed to in general, but I find it a little frightening that some people will take for granted that all of these new things are good things. We should not reject new technology out of hand, but neither should we necessarily embrace it without more careful consideration than Katz and pals seem to have. |
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Re:Incomplete Logic (Score:1) by rongen (scott@prosebush.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:56PM EDT (#158) (User #103161 Info) http://www.prosebush.com |
| And of course, that is supposing that technology is the only force currently driving social change. It isn't. As an example, take population growth...
Excatly! To further underscore your point look at the fact that the technology to control reproduction has been around (and when used properly, is almost 100% effective) for a really long time, and is even offered for free in some cases. This has still not been enough to stem the tide of over-population where people don't believe it is morally or culturally correct to practice birth control. While access to technology like computers is not quite the same thing it is the case that there are many cultures who may not make use of computers the way people developed nations do (assuming they were provided the same level of access at no cost). It's hard to predict what might happen... They might do something really cool or they might swell the ranks of Yahoo Gamers. The important commonality across all cultures and religions is communication. People like to talk---the more the better. So I think that while it is hard to predict exactly what will happen globally it will always revolve around interpersonal communication. Sometimes that can be enough to level the playing field (not enough to feed the world's hungry though---that would take compassionate communication and you can't pull that pull that out of thin air). |
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Re:Incomplete Logic (Score:1) by rongen (scott@prosebush.com) on Tuesday September 05, @03:27PM EDT (#212) (User #103161 Info) http://www.prosebush.com |
| If countries such as India had sufficient employment, housing, health care, and food for its population base,
concerns about morality would be the least of the inhibitors to the utilization of birth control. Agreed... Meanwhile the western world is consuming resources at an alarming rate and seems unwilling to share or even slow down while others catch up (what do I mean? I wish I knew... but some experts believe the world hunger problem is one of resource allocation and not availablity).
I am arguing neither in favour of nor in opposition to birth control---it's a personal decision. But when a family is living in poverty the addition of 8 children to the equation (many of whom die while children) hardly helps matters. I just wanted to bolster the argument that the availability of a technology does not mean it will get used the way we think it will, or get used at all. |
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Re:Incomplete Logic (Score:1) by mcrbids (mcrbids@excite.com) on Tuesday September 05, @07:25PM EDT (#271) (User #148650 Info) |
| Oh, but hold on!
Population is NOT increasing endlessly - the human growth rate is SLOWING DOWN and our population world-wide is expected to DECLINE by ~ 2070. (Read this in our local investigative weekly, BTW) It seems that there's a gap of 1-2 generations before the availability of birth control is accepted by the populace. America was lucky because there were few people here while this "acceptance" phase was taking place, so our population has stabilized at a rather low density. Also, population growth is largely regulated by the stability of the govornment governing the region in question. People have fewer kids if they know or think that they actually *can* save for the future and provide for their livelyhood in old age, rather than have their kids do it in an unknown, uncertain future. World-wide, we've seen an increase in the stability of many govornments of "problem areas" - No. Africa, for example, and the more widespread acceptance of birth control in areas like central America. The birth rate is DROPPING! - What if your life support system ran under Windows? - |
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Re:Incomplete Logic (Score:1) by ScuzzMonkey on Wednesday September 06, @10:36AM EDT (#295) (User #208981 Info) |
| Both you and a previous poster with the same basic argument have succeeded brilliantly in completely missing my point; which was, the book's authors seem not to have accounted for many other social trends, not that the Earth is going to explode from over-population. My mistake in including the button phrase "Population Growth" when the important bit of the sentence was "urbanization". You've actually inadvertently pushed my point a bit, by pointing out that "...population growth is largely regulated by the stability of the government..." I am well aware that the growth rate in first world countries is falling. However, it is still high in third world areas (and selected other places, like China, despite their advances). You might expect this to continue until, as happened in the west, they tend to urbanize, and therefore require more, and more stable, government. |
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Re:Incomplete Logic (Score:1) by _Chainsaw on Tuesday September 05, @11:04PM EDT (#284) (User #169194 Info) |
| You should read the book.. I have.. also a very good read, although now a bit dated, is The Great Reckoning by the same authors.. they DO NOT look at "only one of many concurrent trends in society", in fact in The Great Reckoning they look at, and draw conclusions from, so many seeming unrelated things that it makes the book hard to put down. Some of the predicitions that they have made have come true and some have not (yet) but all in all a very interesting read. |
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don't , don't ,don't believe the hype (Score:1) by surferfro (surferfro@mediaone-dot-net) on Tuesday September 05, @11:49AM EDT (#32) (User #168486 Info) |
| will everyone please just aknowlege that the internet is not the groundwork of a new society. At its best it is a monumental timekiller following in the footsteps of television and radio.
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exception of handg |
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At The Expense Of Government? (Score:2, Insightful) by syf0n (syf0n@bastardize.net) on Tuesday September 05, @11:52AM EDT (#33) (User #208210 Info) http://www.bastardize.net |
| I don't think so. Since Locke's philosophy of the social contract was adopted during the writing of the U.S. Constitution, and his philosophy states that people come together and give up some of their rights for the better of the group, if these governments we're talking about aren't doing it for the good of the group, then the people can (in theory) just leave(and form another government elsewhere)! I suppose that's what this book is talking about in regards to a "digital revolution"...of COURSE this is all just theory, today's nations would never willingly allow their land and resources to be ceded to a bunch of free-thinking indivduals who want to start their own country. I guess what I'm meaning to say (through all my rambling) is that if the government is a body of the people for the people (and it goes bad), the people should be able to disperse and regroup as another body with better intentions. syf0n |
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Re:At The Expense Of Government? (Score:1) by pianoman113 on Tuesday September 05, @12:45PM EDT (#92) (User #204449 Info) |
| This is very true. I very much doubt that there will ever be any kind of "digital revolution" as described by Jon. One problem I see with his brief essay is where the revolution will be centered. Right now, the US has pretty domininant control over the World Wide Web. The Web is the only part of the internet that the masses have a clue about. They don't know about telnet or gopher. They only know about ftp if they have been linked to one to download files. The only alternative net solutions they have contact with are Gnutella (maybe) and Napster.
So what is the point? The US government has drifted further and further from the idea of contractual government (mostly because the American people are predominantly idiots). This means that if they want, the US government can shut down the WWW (Carnivore, perhaps). There will also be no "Individual Liberation" because individuals cannot survive. We live an a cooperative society, and we depend upon others for certain services. Even if those services are web based, we are not truly "liberated." The most obvious example is internet access. We will still rely on the phone company for internet access, like it or not. While the idea of truly being individually liberated is nice and fluffy, it will never happen. Don't get your panties in a bunch. CAUTION: Overheating may cause loss of filling! |
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Re:At The Expense Of Government? (Score:1) by B-B (tdutton@NOSPAM.mac.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:31PM EDT (#139) (User #169492 Info) |
| John Locke died in 1704. I doubt he was still writing in the late 1700s.
Cheers, Tom Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld) |
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Re:At The Expense Of Government? (Score:1) by syf0n (syf0n@bastardize.net) on Wednesday September 06, @11:53AM EDT (#296) (User #208210 Info) http://www.bastardize.net |
| I'm not saying he didn't die!!! His philosophy influenced some of the greatest thinkers this country has produced, including the writers of our constitution, even after his death -- many schools (including my own) utilize his philosophy and way of thinking in papers students are to write and in class debates. (Sorry if I wasn't clear on that...) syf0n |
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Online Newsletter (Score:2) by redelm (redelm@ev1.net) on Tuesday September 05, @11:52AM EDT (#34) (User #54142 Info) http://users.ev1.net/~redelm |
| Jim Davidson & Lord Rees-Mogg also publish a monthly newletter, parts of which are available on-line at the Daily Reckoning, although this is mostly investment-oriented.
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Riding on Alvin's Wave? (Score:1) by JMZorko on Tuesday September 05, @11:53AM EDT (#35) (User #150414 Info) |
This sounds like an interesting read ... still, it occurs to me that where the train is going is much easier to predict once it's already started or, in the case of change, been going in a certain pattern / direction for awhile. I don't think the process of change is linear at all (at least with respect to the train metaphor) but Alvin Toffler said a lot of things years ago, which it seems are recycled by others and branded with their name. Hey, it's ok though ... these things are usually interesting reads regardless of who said what first, imho. Regards, John
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Rees-Mogg: the World's most inept futurologist? (Score:2, Informative) by counsell (counsellATicr.ac.uk) on Tuesday September 05, @11:56AM EDT (#38) (User #4057 Info) |
| To get a handle on just how hopeless Mogg's predictions have been in the past just check out this this article by Francis Wheen. Scroll down to the paragraph headed "The Guru Has Spoken".
I have to admit that I practically choked on the (absurdly late) sandwich lunch I was eating when I caught sight of the original post on the usually clueful Slashdot site. Rees-Mogg may have edited the Times, but he is still (IMHO) an upper class, establishment nitwit of the highest (lowest?) order. Incidentally, for those of you reading outside the UK, the "London" Times is no longer considered the "newspaper of record" here. It has declined shockingly since becoming part of that "Virtual Merchant State", the Murdoch media empire. Wheen, on the other hand, writes for the Guardian, probably the best broadsheet newspaper in Britain today (and the only one with any real claim to independence). He is that rare thing, a commentator I frequently disagree with violently, but who always gets my attention. William "Lord" Rees-Mogg isn't. |
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Re:Rees-Mogg: the World's most inept futurologist? (Score:2) by zorgon on Tuesday September 05, @01:14PM EDT (#121) (User #66258 Info) |
| Thanks, great link. Hilarious! Of course everyone who makes predictions of this nature is usually wrong anyway, but Rees-Mogg seems particularly bad ... WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do? |
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Power doesn't come from information... (Score:5, Insightful) by xtal (smanley@nyx.net) on Tuesday September 05, @11:58AM EDT (#41) (User #49134 Info) http://www.nyx.net/~smanley |
To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun. Even a gang member in LA can tell you that. The nation states are not going away. This is why those nation states (and all such derviatives since the beginning of recorded history) have armed, military forces who are designed to efficiently and effectively kill, mame and destroy anything and anyone who poses a serious risk to their soveriegn power to rule. As the dominant states today (USA, USSR/Russia, China..) have absoule power (specifically, advanced nuclear weapons & guidance systems, and really, really horrible biological weapons that make nukes look like candy) they will be around forever. Get real. Don't believe me? Don't pay your taxes for a few years and you'll find out first hand.
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by nido (nido56@yahoo.spamfree.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:15PM EDT (#60) (User #102070 Info) |
| The people who control the nation states may fight off their obsolescence with their guns and bombs, but that doesn't make their system any less obsolete.
Get real. Don't believe me? Don't pay your taxes for a few years and you'll find out first hand. True, the IRS & US Government have done a wonderful job of social engineering - Pay Your Taxes or The Big Bad G-Men Will Break Down Your Door & Haul You Off to Jail. Why do you think that the number of audits on lower-income (~$20,000/year) households have risen in recent years? If you're a parasitic organism living off the hard labor of your host, you gotta keep your citizens scared. But what if 500,000 people stopped paying their taxes? 1 million? 10 million? How many people could the IRS go after to keep its campaign of fear going? |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by geekbait on Tuesday September 05, @05:32PM EDT (#255) (User #229896 Info) |
| Well, you bring up one major problem with democratic living in a messy and physical world. How do we maintain liberty and still get the highways built? Who do you call when the Libertyville sewers back up? I don't have a good answer.
To return to the subject of power being information, though: this assertion is a joke among underpaid librarians with graduate degrees in information. unless, of course, your definition of power goes beyond Making Other People Do Things... |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by wishus on Tuesday September 05, @12:25PM EDT (#68) (User #174405 Info) http://members.home.net/wishus |
| This is why those nation states (and all such derviatives since the beginning of recorded history) have armed, military forces who are designed to efficiently and effectively kill, mame and destroy anything and anyone who poses a serious risk to their soveriegn power to rule.
But if you cripple the military's ability to organize, you have rendered it ineffective. That's what the information revolution is about - putting information in the hands of the common man. Information that he could have never had before. Knowledge about How Things Work. This knowledge could spread as fast as MP3s on napster - except it could be nuclear weapons secrets, or other "dangerous" information. The way to wage war against the US (or any other major power) is not with tanks and bombs. First you must destroy the government's ability to communicate - to share information. Then roll in with your tanks and bombs for cleanup. A disorganized military is easy to eliminate. In any small conflict, brute force will win. (As with your gang member in LA). But in a large-scale conflict, crippling the information (communication) systems of your opponent is the way to victory.
wish |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by crgrace (somedesperateglory@yahoo.com) on Tuesday September 05, @04:15PM EDT (#232) (User #220738 Info) |
| That's what the information revolution is about - putting information in the hands of the common man. Information that he have have never had before. Knowledge about How Things Work. This knowledge could spread as fast as MP3s on napster - except it could be nuclear weapons secrets, or other "dangerous" information.
It seems to me that "information" and "knowledge" are very different things. Do you think nuclear secrets would mean anything to the common man (or to you or me)? There is already a lot of information out there but precious little insight.
An "ancient" proverb goes something like this: |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by wishus on Tuesday September 05, @04:36PM EDT (#236) (User #174405 Info) http://members.home.net/wishus |
| It seems to me that "information" and "knowledge" are very different things.
different, but closely related. knowledge comes from reason and/or experience, depending on your epistomological orientation. information can serve as a basis for both. you can view information as a catalyst for knowledge. the common man, in possession of nuclear secrets, can choose to turn that information into knowledge. without that information, however, if he desires that knowledge he must invent or discover it himself.
wish |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by scalveg (scavenger@no.spam.surly.org) on Tuesday September 05, @06:15PM EDT (#262) (User #35414 Info) |
| Maybe I'm the only one who caught this, but the article didn't say anything about giving power to the PEOPLE.
"An entirely new reality will emerge in cyberspace, ruled by a cognitive elite based in cities like Frankfurt, London, San Jose, Singapore and Tokyo." That doesn't sound like democracy to me. Try looking up 'oligarchy' in your dictionary. Mine (http://www.m-w.com) says: "a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes". I guess if you feel you're likely to be part of the group in power and you're unashamedly greedy, you have found your new Bible. Chris Owens San Carlos, CA |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by kubalaa (adrian@w3.to) on Tuesday September 05, @09:50PM EDT (#279) (User #47998 Info) http://adriank.cjb.net |
| You're right about information being the key to control in any conflict. But somehow the image of some grassroots movement of "common men" trading "dangerous" information like MP3s over the internet and using it to take down the US military just makes me roll on the floor laughing.
I'm sorry, but the "common man" hasn't got balls or a clue, and those that do don't hang out in the same internet you or I do. To your average citizen, the Internet's just another source of media force-feeding. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by Kakurenbo Shogun on Tuesday September 05, @12:56PM EDT (#107) (User #64436 Info) http://www.enol.com/~crouton/1000/ |
| It comes from the barrel of a gun. If you haven't watched the movie "Gandhi" lately (or ever), I highly recommend checking it out. There are ways to fight against the barrel of a gun. As Gandhi states (paraphrasing), the goal of civil resistance is to make injustice visible. Once it's clear that the resisters are acting morally and those in power are not, it is possible to amass enough support from people at large to win victories over the power of force. As has been stated during some of the discussions here of the protests at such events as the Republican convention, one of the reasons why protesters these days have been unsuccessful in enlisting the sympathy of the masses is that their protest methods don't fulfill this goal--violent protests only serve to justify the use of force in the eyes of people not already converted to the cause. It's worth citing another quote (or paraphrase) from the movie: When asked whether he thought non-violence could be used against someone like Hitler, Gandhi replied, "Not without deafeats and much pain. But are there no defeats in this war? No pain?" Don't mistake the fact that in a war of civil resitance, the resisters receive injustice while the other side doesn't for ineffectiveness. Part of being a civil resister (paraphrasing from the movie yet again) is the willingness to accept injustice without responding in kind, in order to make injustice visible. As the dominant states today (USA, USSR/Russia, China..) have absoule power (specifically, advanced nuclear weapons & guidance systems, and really, really horrible biological weapons that make nukes look like candy) they will be around forever.
These kinds of weapons may be effective for combatting external threats, but I have a hard time imagining them being used internally. If they were, I suspect it would only take a few seconds for the vast majority of the citizens to realize that their government had become an unbearably corrupt enemy of the people, resulting in (at best) total non-cooperation or (at worst) bloody revolution. "I'm not interrupting you, I'm putting our conversation in full-duplex mode." - Antone Roundy |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by Stonehand (lw2j@cs.cmu.edu) on Tuesday September 05, @02:14PM EDT (#167) (User #71085 Info) http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~lw2j |
| FWIW, the Iraqi government under Saddam has been known to use chemical weapons against its Kurdish population, and Hussein ain't exactly gone yet. Nasty stuff; he's probably hated by a LOT of people (Kurds, Shiites, various neighboring states, supporters of officials he's purged, etc...), but he still appears to be backed by the core of his army. At the end of the day, that counts for a LOT.
Fuel-air explosives aren't quite as nasty (they only result in people cooking from the heat, dying from pressure waves, or suffocating from lack of non-burned O2) but Russia has been reported to have used 'im in the taking of Grozny. That's not exactly a civillian-friendly (or standard police-issue) weapon, either, but ISTR that the Chechen campaign increased Putin's popularity, not decreased it. And it's an internal matter (at least from the view of the major powers)... On Gandhi, I believe he's been quoted (e.g. autobio, translated by Mahadev Desai, Public Affairs Press '48) as serverly criticizing the British for denying Indians arms, as that naturally leads to a severe imbalance of power. AFAIK he didn't rule out violence completely, recognizing that at some point you may have to use it... -- the silly student / he writes really bad haiku / readers all go mad |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by slam smith on Tuesday September 05, @03:29PM EDT (#213) (User #61863 Info) |
| It's worth citing another quote (or paraphrase) from the movie: When asked whether he thought non-violence could be used against someone like Hitler, Gandhi replied, "Not without deafeats and much pain. But are there no defeats in this war? No pain?" Don't mistake the fact that in a war of civil resitance,
Rest assured, that if my nation(US) faces a foe like Hitler the form of resistance I employee won't be civil. Harry Browne 2000 |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2, Insightful) by Nezumi-chan on Tuesday September 05, @01:00PM EDT (#109) (User #110160 Info) |
| To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun. Even a gang member in LA can tell you that. Sure, there's a success story I'd want to emulate.
LA gangs have all kinds of guns. Why haven't they toppled the government? For that matter, why hasn't the gang with more guns taken over all the smaller gangs? |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by qbwiz (baumans@ptdprolog.DELETETHIS.net) on Tuesday September 05, @05:10PM EDT (#249) (User #87077 Info) http://johntb.freeservers.com |
| Because they have no real purpose, other than killing rival gangs(and showing off, which can also (indirectly) kill people)? - Cynicism may not be sophistication, but don't tell that to Dogbert. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by Azog (slashmail@arnor.net) on Tuesday September 05, @01:15PM EDT (#123) (User #20907 Info) http://www.arnor.net |
| I agree that ultimately, power comes from the barrel of a gun. But in today's world, the rich, privileged, and powerful who hold most of the powerful positions in governments overlap a lot with the people who own and run very large corporations.
So, while I agree that nation states are not going away, I think that we will increasingly see them acting in the interests of large corporations. This is really nothing new - the United States in particular has often used its military power in the interests of rich companies. We may eventually see large companies "buying" small countries just to gain more overt political and military power. For example, Microsoft (everyone's favorite example of a big bad company) could buy some small island state simply by providing each resident with free unlimited education, health care, and work. In return, they would get to run the government. They could change the name of the country to Microsoft, and then they would have a seat at the UN and could start legally creating their own military forces and legal systems. Admittedly, this seems pretty ridiculous right now. But perhaps, after a couple more decades of corporations becoming ever more powerful and governments becoming ever less relevant, we might start to see weirdness like that happening. (Imagine the EULA: This agreement with Microsoft, Inc. will be governed by the laws of the state of Microsoft... I bet Bill Gates has had daydreams like that.) In the end, wars between corporate-controlled countries could be "competition by other means" - not really that far from the wars of lawsuits we get now. Torrey Hoffman (Azog) "HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2, Insightful) by Nezumi-chan on Tuesday September 05, @02:44PM EDT (#181) (User #110160 Info) |
| To horribly misquote; It comes from the barrel of a gun. My previous flippant answer notwithstanding, I submit that you are more accurate than you realize. Power, real power that is, does come from the barrel of a gun. But I suggest that a symbolic gun, that is superior information and know-how, is more powerful than a literal gun, which is of a very limited scope. Think about it. A gun, oreven an army's worth of guns, can only control so well. Examples abound of regimes that have tried to rule through force and have faced opposition nonetheless. Ruling through force is a terrible drain on resources and is terribly hard to enforce. How much easier, and more effective, is it to control the populace through an intimate knowledge of what buttons to push to keep them off your back, complete with a media machine that keeps them happy enough not to notice their rights being raped.
If you want real power, there are more effective "firearms" than those manufactured by Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by Bolero (bellcd@ev1.net.spamless) on Tuesday September 05, @03:07PM EDT (#202) (User #67403 Info) |
| I disagree with you about power coming from violence. In today's society (and this is really applicable for probably most of civilzation's history), power comes from money. Enough money buys comfort, the necessities of life, information, and even violence. The Cold War was won, not by violence (The US and USSR never actually fought each other), but because one nation had more MONEY than the other.
For better or for worse, people in today's society strive to make money, not to gain information or to increase their capacity for violence. Think about the Internet, which is the freest flowing source of information. It did not come into widespread public use until it came out of the domain of the US military and Universities and into the realm of the ISPs and AOL. Information represents the purest and most idealistic aspects of our society and civilization. Money represents the muddiest and most realistic aspects of our society. We aren't a purely intellectual society (if were are, somebody please explain Brittney Spears) and we aren't a purely greedy society (if we are, somebody please explain Open Source). Somewhere in the middle is where we live. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by GypC (root@localhost) on Tuesday September 05, @03:29PM EDT (#214) (User #7592 Info) |
Power comes from many things... don't think a fat wallet is going to protect you from a mugger with a gun. Quite the opposite, in fact. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by Bolero (bellcd@ev1.net.spamless) on Wednesday September 06, @01:03AM EDT (#286) (User #67403 Info) |
| Offtopic from Mr. Katz's article:
GypC, you are right. Power does come from many things, but I still maintain that violence is not as powerful as money. If you hand the fat wallet over to the mugger the chances of you getting away unharmed are actually very high. In effect you are "buying" your life. Granted that it is not an expense that you were planning on, but if you were mugged, and you had NO money in your wallet, the chance that you will be shot becomes higher, because the PAYOFF for the mugger is much lower. And the fact that the mugger is trying to use violence to gain money just illustrates my point. Money is more powerful than violence. Violence does not feed people. Nor does it supply a roof over your head. Some people would argue that dictators use violence as the ultimate power, but even dictators can be bought off. Hitler rallied post-WWI Germany against the Jews, because he convinced the Germany people that the Jews were using their wealth to keep Germans in poverty. Hitler attempted to gain power over the Jews with violence. In the end, Hitler's evil violence was not able to overcome the combined economies of Britian, the US, the USSR, and the other allies (in the form of oil). I am not saying that I agree that money should be as powerful as it is, but I think it should be recognized that it is VERY powerful. I wish that the free flow of information and knowledge was the most powerful thing around. I think that it would benefit most all of humanity if that was the way the world worked, but unfortunately, the world does not work that way. Also, recognize that it must be the FREE flow of information. If information becomes a commodity (as it would if databases could be copyrighted), all it does is to replace money in the arena of power. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by GypC (root@localhost) on Wednesday September 06, @01:29PM EDT (#297) (User #7592 Info) |
Touché. I concur that money is the more powerful of the two in general circumstances. But when it comes down to the individual the threat of death is generally a more powerful motivator. Anyway, we agree to my main point that power comes from many places. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:2) by Rand Race (rrace@prosolar.mx) on Tuesday September 05, @03:16PM EDT (#205) (User #110288 Info) |
| Yep, that is a horrible misquote. Mao said "Truth comes from the barrell of a gun"; 'Truth' being (controll of) information and the 'barrel of a gun' being power. The reverse is also true, that those who controll how truth is defined have the power. All the guns in the world won't help you if all the soldiers follow your enemies.
A horrible misquote of my own: "Guns are not strong boy, people are stronger. What is the strength of a gun without the hand that fires it?"
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by James Nolan on Tuesday September 05, @09:14PM EDT (#278) (User #208114 Info) |
| Power doesn't come from weapons, violence, money, or anything external.
It stems from one thing and one thing alone. BELIEF. Do you believe that the money I am offering will improve your life? If so, you have just given me power. Thank you. Now finish cleaning the toilet. Do you believe that death is bad? (In case you've forgotten, we all die.) If so, I can control you through violence. Or I can control you by offering conditional protection from violence. You need me, that is if you WANT to keep living. Thanks for the power. Now get to work. I need tax money to continue protecting you. James. |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by slam smith on Tuesday September 05, @03:55PM EDT (#226) (User #61863 Info) |
| Part of the point of the book is that this information will be harder and harder for governments to get.
This is ludicrous. The ability of a government to gather information has never been greater or easier. We leave an electronic trail everywhere we go. Harry Browne 2000 |
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Re:Power doesn't come from information... (Score:1) by UnknownSoldier (mpohores@NOBLOODYSPAMsfu.ca) on Wednesday September 06, @01:22AM EDT (#288) (User #67820 Info) |
| > Part of the point of the book is that this information will be harder and harder for governments to get.
No flames, but it sounds like you are re-hashing this info: It's None of Your Business, A Complete Guide to Protecting Your Privacy, Identity, and Assets by Larry Sontag . ;-) Besides, it is NONE of the governments DAMN business how much money I make (or don't make.) |
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Escalon/Carnivore's TRUE objective... (Score:1) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 05, @11:59AM EDT (#42) |
| ... is to identify & defeat The Sovereign Individual. Everything publicly said about drug-dealers, terrorists, etc. is just clean PR for the TV-tube dumb voter set here in the US ("we're the smart guys up here on the election podium... you people down there just trust us ... go vote for me (or my pal opposing me)... go to work... and pay your taxes so that we can keep this really big, really great party just rolling along here!").
The Sovereign Individual discloses the TRUE threat to The State... these unruly citizens carrying their assets out of the statist's jurisdictional control. So don't you think that rather than looking for drug dealers and terrorists that this neat new technology is primarily looking for US citizens over-seas investment activities ? Are you making money in a stock market account located off-shore ? Do you think the US is going to trust that you're voluntarily going to reveal this activity, claim this income on your US tax return ? Sure... "paying income taxes in the US is voluntary..." try claiming that and see how long your freedom lasts around here. Every forward thinking person already understands this true use of the Escalon/Carnivore technology... it's to discover and catch US citizens using the convenience of the net to make money overseas... don't buy any of the smoke & mirrors (about bogey-men) to the contrary. The State has taken notice of the threats to its power elucidated in "The Sovereign Individual" and is intelligently responding to that threat on the same playing field the threat is presented... the net. We can't have "freedom" in a statist world culture... perhaps because NOBODY would truely ever meaningfully respect paying "voluntary taxes"... The State needs the cover of Drug Dealers and Terrorists to essentially hunt out their own tribes tax cheaters... unless of course you're part of the "leaders' krew" in which case, you have the option of sacrificing the central focus of your's lifes work efforts (drop dreaming about ever doing anything "productive" in your life), and instead dedicate yourself to specializing in the esoteric/political intricacies of legal tax shelters... Escalon/Carnivore DEFINE the State's response to the threat of world/cultural change suggested in The Sovereign Individual. They're not going to give-up the fight too easily. Unfortunately for all of us sovereign-individual wanna-be's out here... it's going to be very tough getting past the Too-Net-Capable State in any meaningful way. In conclusion, understand that all of your income related activities on the net will be under automated State scrutiny... your activities are not anonymous... you will be watched, and inevitably controlled. There are ways around this all... but lets NOT talk about it... keep these things to yourself friends !!! |
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Re:Escalon/Carnivore's TRUE objective... (Score:1) by sandman935 (sandman nine three five at yahoo dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:08PM EDT (#52) (User #228586 Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~sandmanr/index.html |
Good points but a rant this long deserves a signature. C'mon out AC. "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. |
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Re:Escalon/Carnivore's TRUE objective... (Score:1) by sandman935 (sandman nine three five at yahoo dot com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:55PM EDT (#105) (User #228586 Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~sandmanr/index.html |
| Ya think? I don't know which is worse... agreeing with a troll or being caught by one. "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy. |
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Re:Escalon/Carnivore's TRUE objective... (Score:1) by undo (undo@hotmail.com) on Tuesday September 05, @04:02PM EDT (#228) (User #3635 Info) |
| And of cousre the recording and analysis of personal data by no means stops w/ E/C. This is the true nature of the information age, it is about the power to control the medium of exchnage so as to control the nature of thought. It is the opposite of NewSpeak, it is an attempt to limit the definition of self to only those commersially available options, though the variety of configuation may prove infinate. The problem w/ the information age is not a matter of what infromatio people exchange and choose to make available, it is the inability to control your level of cultural participation, being forced to be measured, and to have these measurements dialectically applied to media instantaniously. It happens in supermarkets now. That's why everybody is offering club cards, so they can watch who purchases what and when, and they can vary the stimuli to achieve higher levels of cultural effeciancy. The change the lcd displays depending on whose bought what recently. 6 year olds now have cultural classes they consider themselves part of or seek to be part of, whereas 10 years ago children the same age would not have even been able to classify others w/ any resonable clarity, let alone themselves. Now these poor kids build their own identities out of commodities, which were of course designed for this perpose via demographics, the posterchild for the information age. Dig? |
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But we are becoming less free, not more (Score:1) by Loundry (moc.gnirpsdnim@yrdnoul (yes, it's backwards)) on Tuesday September 05, @12:00PM EDT (#43) (User #4143 Info) |
Anyone who values freedom in the United States has noticed our freedoms being slowly eroded over the past few decades. The Federal government is larger than ever. We have more failed government programs than ever before. ("Failed government program" is redundant. Can anyone think of a government program that actually worked?) The US government is trying hard to pass laws to disarm Americans (did they stop to think that only law-abiding citizens obey laws? Did they pay heed to the consistent statistic that passing gun legislation increases crime?) We have gross violations of the 4th amendment in the name of the insane, grossly expensive, horribly malicious, and completely ineffective "war on drugs."
Currently the top 50% of wage earners in the US pay 96% of the taxes. This is why the concept of "tax breaks for the poor" is ridiculous. It also shows how the concept of the rich "paying their fair share" is equally as stupid. If anything destroys the American empire, it will be when the top 49% of wage earners are paying 100% of the taxes.
In the United States we have apologists arguing that life in Cuba can't be so bad, with its "free" and "free" education. If it's not so bad, then why have Cubans been rafting to the US in droves for the past few decades?
I can go on all day. It seems to me that tyranny and ignorance are alive and well here is the US. I am sure it can only be worse in other parts of the world.
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." --Voltaire
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Working government programs (Score:2) by KahunaBurger on Tuesday September 05, @01:23PM EDT (#128) (User #123991 Info) |
| "Failed government program" is redundant. Can anyone think of a government program that actually worked? Funny you should ask. Al Franken responded to the exact same bit of retoric from Rush Limbaugh by calling up a bunch of major conservatives and asking them to name non-military goverment programs that had achieved their objectives. People as conservative as George F. Will and Bob Dornan listed multiple sucessfull programs ranging from rural electification to the Federal Deposite Insurance Corporation. The governement has done a lot and a lot (if not most) of it has worked. No, welfare has not eliminated all poverty, but no one with an ounce of sense thinks that makes it a failure, any more than the continued existance of sick people makes modern medicine a failure. Its real easy for privileged little brats to sit and talk about how useless the govenment is. (but still expect fire departments and police to be there when they need them) but for those of us who have lived a while on the harder side of real life, its just more pathetic whining.
-Kahuna Burger |
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Re:Working government programs (Score:1) by rellort on Tuesday September 05, @02:03PM EDT (#162) (User #146793 Info) |
| "Privileged little brats" is an ad hominem name-calling tactic. When you are trying to persuade people with your brilliant reasoning ability, you might want to avoid using such techniques.
In the U.S. at least, "government" has many levels. Police and Fire Departments are most commonly local. Of course, police agencies exist at county, state, and federal levels. It is still the city police officer or deputy sheriff who usually responds, "...when they need them". Of course, the Clinton administration takes credit for providing funding to put "100,000 officers on the street". Setting aside Clinton's obvious ignorance of police equipment and training costs, one wonders why that money had to go through the federal government before it found its way back to local departments. Would it not have been more efficient just to reduce federal taxation and let the money flow directly to the local governments? Perhaps it's because there would have been no strings attached except to the citizens. Lumping local government services in with FDIC is a pretty absurd argument. I can write letters, hold rallies, go to the local paper, and generally get noticed when something is wrong with the local P.D. If I find something wrong with the FDIC, I have about as much impact as a gnat on a brick wall. The issue is control and accountability of my money and yours. The higher up the government ladder one goes, the less accountability there is and the greater opportunities one finds for fraud, sloth, and misuse. Since you've taken it upon yourself to enlighten all of the "privileged little brats" who don't subscribe to your worldview, would you care to expound more on the "harder side of real life" with which you are so intimately familiar? Exactly which government program brought you to the soft side where all of pathetic whiners reside? FatBrain |
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Ridiculous! (Score:1) by Loundry (moc.gnirpsdnim@yrdnoul (yes, it's backwards)) on Tuesday September 05, @02:46PM EDT (#186) (User #4143 Info) |
Funny you should ask. Al Franken responded to the exact same bit of retoric from Rush Limbaugh by calling up a bunch of major conservatives and asking them to name non-military goverment programs that had achieved their objectives.
Al Franken failed to answer the question. Instead, he tried to turn it into a slam against his political enemy. You have done the same thing.
The governement has done a lot and a lot (if not most) of it has worked.
Like what?
No, welfare has not eliminated all poverty, but no one with an ounce of sense thinks that makes it a failure, any more than the continued existance of sick people makes modern medicine a failure.
If you remember, it was the republicans who pushed for legislation to remove people from the welfare rolls. Bill "The era of big government is over" Clinton oppposed it vehemently, but caved after he received pressure from his own party. Can you provide for me statistics showing how many people are actually "lifed out of poverty" by welfare compared to those who use it as a means of living? Furthermore, you should know by now that welfare is much more about vote buying than it is about helping people. Why do you think the underachievers continue to support those who promise them plundered money? (Hint: probably because they're being promised plundered money.)
You only listed one government program (welfare) and even owned up to that it has, at least, partially failed. What about all the others? I'll give you some others to think about: Social Security, Medicare, The Drug War. Successes or failures? I'm sure you can think of even more.
Its real easy for privileged little brats to sit and talk about how useless the govenment is.
Ad hominem.
(but still expect fire departments and police to be there when they need them)
The fire department is local, not federal. Furthermore the fire department is a valid function of local government.
but for those of us who have lived a while on the harder side of real life, its just more pathetic whining.
You just whined about living "a while on the harder side of real life" and then implied that what I wrote was "pathetic whining." First, your statement is the most stupid and hypocritical thing I've read all day. Second, we all live hard lives. You don't how hard my life was any more or less than I know how hard yours was.
In summation, you attempted to counter my argument by simply stating your position and providing one one shaky example about which can be raised many legitimate and serious objections. Then you tried to slander me, implying that I am "priviledged," a "little brat," and one who engages in "pathetic whining" despite the fact that you and I have never met. You have followed the pattern of, "If you find you aren't able to attack your opponent's position, then attack your opponent." In conclusion, your argument is shit. I am hoping that the next time you post you will be able to generate a more intellegent one. |
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Re:But we are becoming less free, not more (Score:1) by PopeFelix (kpeters@iname.com) on Tuesday September 05, @06:03PM EDT (#259) (User #13417 Info) http://www.prairienet.org/~cdruid/ |
| btw, that was supposed to be posted under my name, but I messed up the login bit under the posting screen. Pope Felix the Scurrilous. |
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The REAL purpose of governments (Score:1) by jmarkham (jmarkham@ema-inc.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:02PM EDT (#46) (User #85511 Info) |
| The problem with all this is that it ignores the reason that governments were created:
Governments exist to protect the property (material or otherwise) of the governed.
In order to do this, goverments have a monopoly on force. Think about it: Can your neighbor decide to levy a tax on you? Sure. Can he throw you in jail if you don't pay? Nope. Only a government can. If some foreign army occupies your house, can you make your neighbors throw them out? Not directly, but your goverment, made up of you and your neighbors, can!
The problem with governments is that the power of government is corrupting. People always want government to do things that it can not do without violating it's charter of protecting all of the governed.
A few comments before I get flamed.
Property, of course, does include a wide range of things. Intellectual property is protected by copyrights and patents, your person is protected by laws against murder and assault.
No, I don't hate your favorite government program, but think about it: Is it fair to use force to take my property (my money) to give you something? Not protect your property (that is the purpose of government - we have to fund the courts, the police, & the military) but to buy you a (choose any or all) a water treatment plant, baby food, prescription drugs, sports arenas? |
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Re:The REAL purpose of governments (Score:1) by ScuzzMonkey on Tuesday September 05, @01:25PM EDT (#131) (User #208981 Info) |
| (Apologies in advance to those readers who are not subject to the US Constitution)
In some ways, I would tend to agree with you, but you've made a mistake in assuming that all governments are identical. Your central thesis is sound: Government exist to protect property (although not always of the governed). You speak of the government violating its charter without actually looking at that charter itself, which does not say exactly what you think it does. Protecting some rights involves forfeiting others. What is protected and what is forfeit is specified in the charter and approved by the governed. Specifically, the 16th Amendment gives up your ability to take home all you earn, and instead ships it off to Washington, where your favorite legislator can use it to line his or her pork barrel to their hearts content. Now, you may be saying that I'm proving your point here, and to a certain extent I am--I don't think that our current system of taxation is equitable. But the real point is that we, the governed, consented to it when it was passed as an amendment to our basic charter. We could have a whole different sort of charter with different sets of rules with more or less emphasis on certain rights, but we don't. There are degrees of trade-offs, and that is where they are specified. For what it's worth, I personally do want to live in a country that has some sort of social support system. I detest the pork-barrel stuff, but I can't really fault the concept of the system. I don't see providing for the less able as thievery, but as a way of strengthening the country (when applied properly, which we don't). I think a straightforward, cutthroat, capitalist society would eventually eat itself. But that's another topic. |
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Like the artice, disagree with the timescale (Score:1) by not_cub on Tuesday September 05, @12:03PM EDT (#48) (User #133206 Info) |
| Unlike the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions, the Information Revolution will not evolve over hundreds of years. Like the technology that created it, it will take hold more rapidly than any other social phase of human life. The Information Revolution, now already well underway will play out within our lifetimes, and it's time to get ready.
Flowery Katz-language aside, this is artive is much better than his average, with food for thought. This paragraph though, I am not sure it can possibly correct. Katz is as arrogant as the scientists at the end of the 19th century who claimed that everything that could be invented already had been, if he believes this. I think the information revolution started with the development of computers in the middle of last (this?) century, and I doubt we will have discovered everything to be discovered of this new age for quite some time.
not_cub |
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about "everything being invented" (Score:1) by rkanodia (line88@spamless.shoutmail.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:30PM EDT (#76) (User #211354 Info) |
| Just so you know, the head of the patent office was being sarcastic when he said that. He was pleading to Congress to not cut funding of the Office, and he said something along the lines of "Well, I guess it's OK, since everything's already been invented that CAN be invented, eh?"r
It's much the same as the way the head of GM said "What's good for America is good for General Motors," but everybody reverses those clauses.
88 Further information on this topic may be found here. 88 |
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Horse pucky. (Score:1) by BitwizeGHC on Tuesday September 05, @12:04PM EDT (#49) (User #145393 Info) |
| Industry continues to rule, and will continue to for quite some time. Alan Greenspan knows this and so does every other economist worth his/her salt. The "New Economy" is just some rhetoric to help us swallow the bitter pill that the US will no longer be a superpower because its industrial infrastructure is being dismantled, and be replaced by China or Russia as the world's political and economic leader. For those who are allergic to dust puppies: ParodyCheck. |
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Blood in the Streets (Score:2) by Detritus (jlimpert@acm.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:09PM EDT (#54) (User #11846 Info) |
| Aren't these the same two geniuses who wrote several books about how to survive and get rich during the (then) impending economic apocalypse?
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Nation-States are obsolete (Score:1) by q2k (slashdot@odonnellweb.SPAM.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:10PM EDT (#55) (User #67077 Info) http://www.odonnellweb.com |
| I have read this book- a couple of years ago actually. The over-riding point that I took from the book is that the information age makes location unimportant. Today, for the most part, if you want to sell to the masses of American people, you have to be here physically, and thus subject yourself to US law. However, in a future world where we may do almost everything online - the business location may not be terribily imporant to the transaction and that could open up competition among the nation states as they position themselves as the place to locate. And of course, competition among the nations of the worls would in theory reduce the cost of doing business in any one of them.
I think some of this is already happening today with several carribean islands marketing themselves as tax havens for off-shore businesses and I think you can buy Swiss citzenship for a one time "fee." However, I tend to believe that the "state" won't go down easily and that getting to this point, if we ever make it, will be a long and probably bloody affair. --------------------------- Poverty is a mental disease --------------------------- |
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The Great Reckoning (Score:1) by bukys on Tuesday September 05, @12:13PM EDT (#58) (User #185387 Info) http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~bukys |
| His previous book "The Great Reckoning" was
fascinating reading, even though the particulars
never came to pass. (For example, he predicted
that economic leadership would pass to Japan.)
But his "big picture" was provocative, so I will
be looking for more thoughtful provocation in the
new book (though I will discount its predictive power). |
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...more equal than others... (Score:1) by Atreides_78723 on Tuesday September 05, @12:18PM EDT (#63) (User #228515 Info) |
| Are we the first citizens of a new kind of society? Or simply participants in the ongoing modification of the old one?
Not that this hasn't been said a hundred times before, but the way things are now has little difference to the way they were before. The names have changed and the technology has advanced, but things are still the same. Some people are more equal than others. Might makes right. He who has the gold makes the rules.
How is the buying of influence in Congress any different than Borgias controlling Popes? Many people don't believe that might makes right, but the "might" of the sword has simply been replaced with the "might" of the dollar. Corporations are modern translations of the "robber barons" of last century and trading guilds of previous centuries. Every new technological advance will supposedly change the way we conduct our lives. Bread and circuses have been replaced with Big Macs and television. The intellectual elite still make their debates and the common man still has little control of the institutions that control his life.
Nothing really changes except for names, dates and methods. And that is why Santayana was right... People keep forgetting the past. We just keep deluding oursleves into thinking that the situations we see are like nothing that has ever happened before.
The article states "The transformation will be all but universal." If history has taught us anything, it tells that transformation is anything but universal. It is a slow process that tends to build quietly and then explodes under its own pressure in a place where there is little resistance. Look at any technological advance or social or religious movement of the last five millenia. We're still following paths laid in place in the past and governing authorities will change to accomodate the changes coming. They have before. They will again. It will take time and patience, but they will. "...heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." |
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Athenian Democracy in the Information Society (Score:2) by Alien54 on Tuesday September 05, @12:21PM EDT (#65) (User #180860 Info) |
| For those not of us not fully up to speed on the information technology of ancient Athens, I recommend checking out the Dead Media Project Working Notes, especially the series on how the technology they used to run there democracy (a 5 part series: 1,2,3,4,5) Why do I bring this up? I do so because the Athenian Democracy had an enormous information management problem on their hands. The democracy came about by the revolution of the mob overthrowing a tyranny held in place by mercanaries hired from Sparta. Almost every citizen had a hand in this, and so had an interest in making sure that the rule of the tyrants did not return. A recent television series on PBS about the rise of the Greek culture illustrates this point with excellent clarity. As a result, one of the components of citizenship was that the required participation of every citizen. They had to manage and organized this process of the day to day workings of the democracy, selecting citizens at random from the various demes (tribes) for almost all offices and public functions. There is a lot of data processing going on there. This was handled brilliantly by the mechanism described in the articles mentioned above. They had created a mechanical computer of sorts to handle the problems of handing out the assignments for juries, the routine bureaucratic assignments, all the rest. It is probably a work of genius, and is fundamental to really understanding how the whole place worked. It is obvious that such a system could easily be implemented on almost any database engine worth its' salt. We now come to information societies. We can easily implement such a society using modern computing technology. The downsides of this are the modern apathy to political processes, as well as the desire for privacy. The upside is that you have a system that really reflects what the members of the community want. There is a certain conflict of interest inherent in this. A possible solution to this is some sort of opt-in citizenship, with responsibilities attached along with the perks that go with it. This is a difficult question, because of the difficulties associated with question of rights and priveledges over others that are not earned, but are granted without cost. In this context, I am thinking of the old problem of the haves vs the have-nots. If you win the lottery, make it big in a dot-com, or whatever, you will be surprised by how many new relatives you now have who think that they have more of a right to the money than you do, and who get insulted when you do not just hand it over. You also see this with certain culture clashes in the area of immigration. An Information Democracy is possible, but I am still quite unclear as to how it could be implemeted. We see hints of this to some degree in the character of the various development communities, such as Microsoft Vs Open-source. Microsoft is probably closer to the old style greek tyrants, no matter how much they want to be portrayed as the philosopher kings of the computer age. The Open-Source community is far more adhoc in its organzation, and is not sufficiently organized to be a formal democracy like Athens. It might be said that Linus is probably the closest thing we have to a philosopher king in this context, although he is far more of a philosopher than king by far.
- - - - - - - - |
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let us not forget (Score:1) by snarkh (snarkh@yahoo.com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:24PM EDT (#130) (User #118018 Info) |
| Let us not forget that the wonderful democracy of Athens had put Socrates to death by poisoning after an entirely democratic proceedings where he
was found guilty of impiety and corrupting the minds of young citizens of Athens. |
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Re:let us not forget (Score:1) by Actinophrys on Tuesday September 05, @03:06PM EDT (#201) (User #225053 Info) |
| Remember, though, that this was caused by the Athenian democracy after it had suffered through the Peloponesian war and the Spartan oligarchy. Even during the war, things were well enough that Aristophanes could freely critique the government. And remember that Socrates was an outspoken critic of democracy; two of his close friends ended up being involved in the thirty tyrants. Even though he himself was loyal, it is hard to acquit him of corrupting his peers... And finally, remember that the jury chose between the sentence of the prosecutor and the defendant. Had Socrates chose exile, he would have received it. Instead he suggested an insulting fine. Socrates' execution is a tragedy, but it is hard to blame the Athenians for what happened. |
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Re:let us not forget (Score:1) by snarkh (snarkh@yahoo.com) on Tuesday September 05, @03:54PM EDT (#225) (User #118018 Info) |
| Granted, all the things you mentioned are valid.
However I still don't think they are a sufficient reason for putting an innocent man to death.
The bigger point however is that democracy by itself is not good or bad, it is a conduit for the views of the majority. If the majority thought that Socrates was corrupting the youth, a criminal he was and had to be put to death. Most
Germans believed that Hitler represented their views so they elected Hitler, etc. |
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Tyranny of the majority ! (Score:1) by Taco Cowboy on Wednesday September 06, @10:25PM EDT (#303) (User #5327 Info) |
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You said : "Let us not forget that the wonderful democracy of Athens had put Socrates to death by poisoning after an entirely democratic proceedings where he was found guilty of impiety and corrupting the minds of young citizens of Athens." What you have described is known as the Tyranny Of The Majority, and things like this still happens today. In many places of the world, people are still being punished for "violation" of one kind or another, no matter how "democratic" the society in which this "violation" has taken place is. And in fact, there is ONE COUNTRY in Asia which has MADE THE TYRANNY OF MAJORITY its OFFICIAL STAND, and that country is Malaysia. In Malaysia, the majority race GOT ALL KINDS of priviledges, while people from minority races have had their human rights violated AGAIN AND AGAIN, and all that, in Malaysia, is PERFECTLY LEGAL. While no one is forced to consume poison against their will in Malaysia, everyone from the minority race groups have had suffered TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES because of the OFFICIAL TYRANNY OF THE MANORITY LAWS. Children from the minority groups are NOT permitted to attend university, even if they have scored MUCH HIGHER GRADES in their academic standing, as compared to children of the majority groups. Or, put it in other way, children from the majority race can get into university EVEN IF THEY HAVE FAILED in their academic studies, while children from the minority races are being KEPT OUT, even if they have scored better than those children from the majority races who are enjoying their status as "university educated scholars". |
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Err... (Score:1) by mholve (mike@nospam.eunuchs.org) on Tuesday September 05, @12:24PM EDT (#67) (User #1101 Info) http://eunuchs.org/linux |
| "You can be as liberated as you want... As long as you follow our rules." |
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info revolution 156 years old already (Score:2, Insightful) by peter303 on Tuesday September 05, @12:27PM EDT (#73) (User #12292 Info) |
| As Sam Morse said "What has God wroth?" when the electric telegraph connected the world nearly instaneously in 1844 (plus about 15 years to wire up much of the world). This first phase led to the daily newspaper. It had a financial mania not unlike the dotcoms.
Subsequently came other electronic media revolutions: motion pictures, radio, TV, computer, the Web ... Each had its social change and investment mania. The utltimate end will be point-to-point video anywhere, anytime, drawing on vast stored archives of human culture (I hesitate to call it electronic, because it may be optical or something else). As for the final social impact, it is still hard to tell. There have been many experiments with different types of governments and means of production, with liberal democracies and selfish-incentive capitalism currently winning. Orwell predicted a different end for an information-centered society. I suggest Katz's view is myopic, magnifying the current millieu which is a hyperactive blip on a two to three century process. ***original Homebrew Computer Club member*** |
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Evolution of the Society (Score:1) by georgekma on Tuesday September 05, @12:31PM EDT (#77) (User #144646 Info) http://bluemeanies.editthispage.com |
| A while ago I got all upset about Monsanto and BGH milk. But reading this story made me re-think some of my opinions.
I think one cannot look to institutions, commercial or otherwise, to look after one's own interest. To do so is to invite totalitarianism. From a certain point of view, what we are seeing is just natural progression of society from a paternal state to one in which people have to take more personal responsibility for their own well-being. Of course, that doesn't mean it's acceptable for companies to outright deceive the public - such as the case of rBGH milk. But I think that is a sympton of the fact that we are in a transitional period from a paternal state to a personal society - the counter-acting mechanism is yet to be formed. Some people would say that's what the government/the press are for. But I disagree. Most people expect their government to look out for their well-being, based on a deep seated belief about what civilized society is all about. But things change, human civilization evolve. What we've been taught to believe is 'right' is just that, a belief. That doesn't make it 'real' or 'right'. The fact of the matter is, the insitutions (government, press, church, etc) we came to rely upon no longer work. Once we realize that there is no going back to the past, instead of trying to fix these institutions, perhaps we should concentrate on inventing new ways of safeguarding our own lives. After all, what's the point of all the supposed education people get these days if they can't be bothered thinking? According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. So I don't believe 'busy lifestyle imposed by modern society' is a very good excuse.
Right now, we have more free time and resource than ever before in human history. The average middle-class individual in the Western World now has more power at his/her disposal than ever before. But one cannot have true Freedom and Power without Responsibility. Every social change brings about disruption and sometimes genuine misery. But if one step back and look at the big picture I think it would be obvious that life is good and as a whole, things have never been better. |
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Cognitive elite? Not a chance. (Score:1) by rongen (scott@prosebush.com) on Tuesday September 05, @12:37PM EDT (#84) (User #103161 Info) http://www.prosebush.com |
An entirely new reality will emerge in cyberspace, ruled by a cognitive elite I don't really think that this is what will happen. Brains will rule over brawn, for sure, but there will be so many strata to the new ecomomic and social food chain that it will be difficult to say who is in charge at all. Pretty much any good or service you can buy can is being reviewed, crituqed, and consumed via the web now. It won't be long before every garage mechanic has a discussion forum based on him, where digitally signed and authenticated contributors (who are themselves subject to these same reviews and trust evaluations) will rate the performance of the mechanic, etc. This will make integrity pretty important. Sure, the local garage will be able to rip non-car-savvy people off like they have always done, but the person willing to dig for information will have a better chance at getting a good deal when they get thier car fixed. The same principle will apply to large corporations, governments, criminal trial (maybe), etc. What is to prevent the rise of some system that gives ruling power to the politician/party who has the highest trust rating? Isn't this what voting does? Why not imagine the election as an ongoing and dynamic process that affects the balance of power. This would really make politicians accountable---it is also mob rule. And "Rome is the mob". |
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Nation-states aren't good sports. (Score:1) by kd5biv (my-real-callsign AT arrl DOT net) on Tuesday September 05, @12:41PM EDT (#86) (User #129563 Info) |
One of the major themes in The Sovereign Individual is the notion that the revolution unleashed by digital technologies is liberating individuals at the expense of the nation-states that have governed much of humanity for thousands of years.And the nation-states have been aware of this for years now, and are even now taking steps to preserve their power. DMCA and other means of securing the position of the major multinationals are only a tiny piece of the strategy. We've seen China's approach to the situation -- firewall the whole country and only allow traffic that suits their purposes. Other countries may start trying that soon, and I'm not ruling it out here in the USA as well. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, folks .. 73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK |
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Goverments haven't figured it out yet (Score:1) by HenryWirz on Tuesday September 05, @12:44PM EDT (#90) (User #174386 Info) http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/minitug |
| Things are changing. Look at how much trouble governments are having at controling the exchange of information. What governments haven't figured out is that they can't stop the information. Anyone who wants to can find DeCSS or kiddieporn despite them both being unlawful to diseminate in the US. |
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I don't think so... (Score:2, Interesting) by Uncertain Bohr on Tuesday September 05, @12:49PM EDT (#95) (User #122949 Info) |
| Well, I for one am becoming more and more negative about the impact that technology has on our lifes. This is because it is becoming quite obvious that technology is not been shared and distributed equaly. By this, I do not mean the old story about how the poorer nations are being kept in the dark ages. What I mean, rather, is that technology is bringing new problems with it.
For example, a few years ago, people were amazed that the world was split in two by the cold war. That people could not really communicate. 10 years later, it is private interest's abuse of technology that decides to cut the world in 7 DVD zones.
Most people would (as I did) not think much of it at first, but WHOM DO WE COMPLAIN TO when things like these get implemented? What power do we have to bring such a cartel to an end? No buying a DVD from them? Then from whom? :-)
We do not elect the Bill Gates and Murdocks of the world.These guys are where they are because they wheel and deal with one another and are not kept in check. There absolutely no check in balance mechanism to keep a few of these people from enacting a tremendous amount of control on people.
Another (quick) example of the sort of things that I find scary is to see Murdock (SKY Digital) want to add a Tivo-like appliance into every SkyDigital topset box, but with the added feature that an advertiser can disable your fast forward button! I resent the fact that renting a digital receiver can enslave me several minutes at a time just so that some other guy might get a bit richer.
And if you think that this is ok because it is afterall commercials that pay the bill, then just wait and watch big companies as they slowly creep in more and more into your personal life: have you notice how more movies in DVD zone 1 no longer come with any other language than English? Big companies do not care about the few millions people who happen to not be speaking English in North America... the market is too small. And, unlike these "tired old goverments", they certainly do not have to protect the rights of minorities ...
Goverments might be tired, but at least they (well, some..) are 1) responsible 2) elected 3) democratic. It took centuries to get some of the world into a state where most of us are prosperous and living peacefully. Runaway capitalism and the control of many by a few rich folks is not a step forward. In my opinion, it is a step backward. The actors have changed, the weapons have changed, but it is the sma eold story: most people have very little freedom, and telling them how great their lifes are and how free they have become does not change the reality that they are not in control of their lifes. |
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Re:I don't think so... (Score:1) by JazzManJim on Tuesday September 05, @01:54PM EDT (#155) (User #196980 Info) |
| I have to disagre with your assertions on two points. first, men like Gates and Murdock are elected, but by a very different process. They're elected every time you spend a dollar on oe of their products. That they have so much power is a testament either to the prevalence or worthiness of their product, or to the compacency of individuals who continue to allow their activities. Capatalists are easy to fight...if they have no money, then they're gone.
Governments are exactly *not* the answer in this case. You mention that governments are responsive, but to whom? I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a government (be it state, local, or federal) has responded to a specific need of mine, even when I've asked very strenuously. Governments are at best reactionary, and when they are, they are ponderous, and rarely act in time to actually solve the problem. Worse, though, is when governments try to predict a problem in order to get out in front of it. If you don't believe that, look at many of the vaunted accomplishments the US government has achieved in the last ten years or so. None of them have managed to solve a problem and in most cases,. it has made a small problem larger (like the recent electronic copyright laws, let's say). This society still rests largely on the individual. it's the individual's obligation to ensure that their government does what he or she needs it to, and to make sure that theor society is working correctly. IMO, the problem is that too many individuals have surrendered their power for complacency, apathy, or dependence. -Jimmie |
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Re:I don't think so... (Score:1) by Uncertain Bohr on Tuesday September 05, @02:13PM EDT (#166) (User #122949 Info) |
| Forcing people to buy your products with every computer that is sold is certainly not akin to the act of voting, at least not in my book :-)
Bill Gates and Murdock have been getting rich because they have been using the fact that people are tired of governement regulation, and that most goverments in the Western worlds are therefore having a hands-off policy towards new technologies and the "new economy".
As for what your goverment is for: it is not to protect YOU against life, and protect each individual against the errors in judment he might have made. This IS up to you. But it should be the goverment (i.e. ALL OF US, not just a few) which sets guideline of behaviour, so that NO-ONE is cooerce into living in a way which he does not want to. Democracy might well be the dictature of the majority. But the making of this abstract majority changes from issue to issue.
The BIG failure of modern goverments is to be blind to the fact that they are letting a few individual affect the lives of too many people at once! |
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What is the authors' agenda? (Score:2) by gelfling on Tuesday September 05, @12:56PM EDT (#106) (User #6534 Info) |
| Sounds like a lot of rah rah - don't-look-too deeply-into-how-we-invest-your-money kind of pitch. WTF does a VC know about government or governments except that they're bad for unregulated absolute free market capitalism? Another book about the irrelevance of government in the global economy. Don't be too sure that governments and nation-states will just roll over. History hasn't borne that out. |
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Wrong! Nation-States have not rules for centuries. (Score:1) by Cain Novocaine on Tuesday September 05, @01:03PM EDT (#112) (User #215368 Info) |
| Nation-states are a unique creation of the twentieth century. They were in part developed as a way for for retreating imperial powers to keep the peace in their former colonies. It has had almost precisely the opposite effect, as political borders are imprecise and minority ethnic groups (nations) exist within the new countries(states.)
Pakistan-India, Kosovo, Angola, Nigeria, Rwanda, even Belgium all feel the pain of imposed borders and imprecise Nation-Statehood. |
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Re:Wrong! Nation-States have not rules for centuri (Score:1) by Actinophrys on Tuesday September 05, @01:22PM EDT (#126) (User #225053 Info) |
| The western European countries developed into nation-states towards the end of the Middle ages (with the notable exceptions of Germany and Italy). The concept of nation-state did not extend throughout the rest of the world until the 20th century, but clearly Europe had an impact disproportionate to its size. |
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KATZ likes "The Sovereign Individual"!?!! (Score:3, Funny) by Tackhead on Tuesday September 05, @01:12PM EDT (#120) (User #54550 Info) |
| What the hell?
I happen to think Sovereign Individual was pretty cool. But I'm one of them eeeevul cyberselfish libertarian types. But Katz? I was expecting a massive flame of Biblical proportions - and yet Katz is "interested". Katz is probably the exact opposite, ideologically, of Rees-Mogg and what-not. I'm stunned that Katz didn't use the word "corporatism" or "globalism" once! These guys make the most slavering Randroid look like a shiny-happy hippychick. Hey kids, if you liked Sovereign Individual, you'll love Ian Angell, who argues (quite convincingly) that The signs are clear: the future is inequality.
Lucky for us geeks, we actually have a chance to win in the upcoming global social catastrophe. Pity about the other poor bastards, though. |
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Re:KATZ likes "The Sovereign Individual"!?!! (Score:2) by Snocone on Tuesday September 05, @03:07PM EDT (#204) (User #158524 Info) http://alexc.webjump.com |
| Hey kids, if you liked Sovereign Individual, you'll love Ian Angell,
Damn rights. Mod this bitch up! Lots of great ones in that link. This is my fave: But in the Information Age, governments chosen by the majority are governments chosen by losers. That goes RIGHT into the .sig file :) |
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More on Ian Angell (Score:2) by Tackhead on Tuesday September 05, @03:44PM EDT (#217) (User #54550 Info) |
| Quoting Ian Angell, snocone writes:
> But in the Information Age, governments chosen by the majority are governments chosen by losers. Since Mr. Angell isn't here to speak on his own behalf, I'll paraphrase him from a documentary I once saw on his work: He's not a techno-libertarian, he's an economist. While the future he portrays in his writings has an obvious direct appeal to the hardcore technolibertarian segment, his opinions of the morality of such a society are neutral. If he were here (and I think he'd make a great slashdot interviewee someday, and I hereby apologize for putting words in his mouth), I think he'd say something like "I'm not a moralist - whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing is not for me to judge. But whether for good or ill, this is what I think the future holds." The fact that people (such as myself, and presumably such as Snocone) read his writings and think "Wow, cool! The future's gonna be hardass, but at least we're in the lucky small percentage of the population that has a chance at surviving it!" is a reflection of Angell's readers, not on Angell's politics themselves. Indeed, the thing I like most about reading Angell is that he keeps his personal opinions about the morality of the future to himself; it's up to the reader to decide whether this is:
I don't know anyone who would argue in favor of the third item on the list ("Good, but worth opposing on moral grounds!"), but I know many who would argue for the second ("Evil, but wotthehell, bring it on!"). I posit that both of these positions are contradictory. The third is more obviously loony than the second - if you believe the needs of the many are greater than the needs of the few/one, how can you say it's "Good"? But the second is no less self-contradictory; it just presumes that the needs of the few/one ought to be subservient to the needs of the many, rather than the other way around. I say pick one baseline for Goodness or Evilness and stick with it. If your choice makes you "altruistic", or "cyberselfish", so be it. (But then, I have a value system that considers logical inconsistency to be more "evil" than selfishness, so what else would I say? :-)
Angell's money (and Rees-Mogg's, and mine, for what little all three of us are worth in the grand scheme of things) is bet on the selfish side of the battle. Where you put your money - and more importantly, your actions - is up to you.
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Re:More on Ian Angell (Score:2) by Snocone on Tuesday September 05, @06:31PM EDT (#265) (User #158524 Info) http://alexc.webjump.com |
| The fact that people (such as myself, and presumably such as Snocone) read his writings and think "Wow, cool! The future's gonna be hardass, but at least we're in the lucky small percentage of the population that has a chance at surviving it!"
Heh. I'm a bit more hardcore about it than that. Here's a piece of a flamewar on more or less the topic of this discussion that I bothered saving a couple years back (Sherlock content searching ROCKS! :) At the very least, I trust it presents a thought-provoking alternative to the 'newly empowered sovereign individual' theory. I wrote this three+ years ago, but I see no particular reason to change my opinion so far. From: Alex Curylo Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 1997 11:20 AM Subject: RE: Jobs > If the problem stems from not enough training rather than not > enough jobs, how do you account for the recent increase in student > loan defaults? Because lots of students are idiots and they take useless crap like arts courses. That is not training. That is wasting your time. > Regarding wages, it DOES seem to be an employers market. In 1980 I had a > job as a construction grunt for $8.00 an hour. I have seen so many present > job postings where employers are providing the same wage for applicants who > must have at least 3 yrs. experience with references AND a degree. Supply and demand, my earnest but apparently ignorant sir, supply and demand. In 1980 I was milking cows for $4.50 an hour, and I bet you didn't have to get up at 3:30 in the morning to do your construction either. My present job posting is $75K. Training, my dear boy, training. And a modicuum of foresight in putting oneself on the DEMAND side of the supply and demand curve. I think $75K a year for me to fuck around emailing people like you is hardly an employers market, but that's just my opinion. > Canada is going through a radical change right now where the rich are > getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Actually, no, what's happening is that the natural pattern of human relations is reasserting itself. Despite my above broadsides at arts courses, knowing what's in them is actually good, particularly in this case economics and history. In all societies throughout history up 'til the Industrial Revolution, there were three classes: A) The owners of the means of production B) The skilled workers C) The peasants Whether these were Pharoahs, scribes, and farmers, or kings, priests, and peasants, or tsars, boyars, and serfs, the pattern was basically identical. Now, with the Industrial Revolution, suddenly unskilled labor became valuable with the addition of minimal training; and furthermore, the peasants suddenly became empowered. Strikes, or sabotage, can strike directly at Class A in a way that previous peasant uprisings never could unless they were truly universal and the government had pretty much lost its grip in any case. So Class A was forced to share its wealth not only with Class B as it always had, but with Class C as well. Thus the rise of union labor and the middle class, starting around 1825 and extending more or less to now. This little history recap is pretty uncontroversial, altho it's usually not presented in precisely these terms. It is also generally accepted that with computerization and automation and global free trade, we are currently (last 10-15 years, say) starting the Information Revolution, or the Third Wave, or the Industrial Derevolution, or whatever the trendy label is this month. However! And here is the first thing I've said that qualifies as a genuine insight -- it is a NECESSARY consequence of this derevolution that the middle class disappear. The odd person has noticed that union jobs are going away and manufacturing is going to Indonesia and all that and has questioned what's going on, approximately the same level of insight you've demonstrated. But they haven't thought through the consequences of computerization and automation. If they would, they would realize that computer technology is going to wipe out all but the most menial and most skilled of jobs just as certainly as the internal combustion engine wiped out horsewhip makers. It's not a side effect, it's not something that the government can do anything about, it is a direct consequence of technological progress. In less than 25 years, and quite possibly in less than 10, this is going to be obvious to everybody. It's being hidden right now because of the effects of trade globalization (another NECESSARY consequence ... but that's another discussion altogether) have brought in the intermediary step of manufacturing being diverted to developing countries before being disposed of altogether. So we have the anti-Nike demonstrations and so forth. Well, those people are all complete idiots who don't know history, either of the early Industrial Revolution or of the last 50 (hell, 20) in the industrializing Asian economies, or basic economics, or fucking common sense for that matter. But I digress yet again. The point is that once the currently 'exploited' societies industrialize, then the manufacturing will disappear completely. It'll take at least 20 more years in Thailand, Burma, and so forth, maybe 50 in China (or then again, maybe not, those 23% annual growth rates in Shenzen are downright scary...) but when there's no more pockets of underdevelopment, then it will become perfectly obvious that The Era Of The Middle Class is OVER worldwide. It'll have been long gone in the currently industrialized world for decades, of course. And we will be back in the normal pattern of human relations: the rich, their lackeys, and the common scum. I'm doing pretty good positioning myself for the lackey class, in my humble opinion. So you're not doing that good, eh? Well, better get on it then, you don't really have all that much time left. |
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Oh get real, you need the rest of society (Score:1) by scotfree (scotfree_AT_asis_DOT_com) on Tuesday September 05, @04:43PM EDT (#241) (User #87141 Info) |
| Lucky for us geeks, we actually have a chance to win in the upcoming global social catastrophe. Pity about the other poor bastards, though.
You really think that if the serious shit goes down, some techno-elite is going to be in any better shape than the rest? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to think that too, but Sharper Image fantasyland aside, you really think you have a chance without the rest of society? Who's going to make your Latte and install your DSL? |
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Re:KATZ likes "The Sovereign Individual"!?!! (Score:1) by Brian Stretch (bstretch@mindspring.com) on Tuesday September 05, @08:13PM EDT (#274) (User #5304 Info) http://www.mindspring.com/~bstretch |
| I read Ian Angell's inequality.pdf (thanks for the link), and he's half-right. Democracy can degenerate into slavery ("The politics of envy is suicide"), France being a good example. But here in America, where the "loser class" isn't as dominant as it is in Europe (America being founded by and a magnet for men and women of ability), where we have more freedom (or at least a lower level of enslavement to the state), we're seeing a largely successful transition from low-skill manufacturing jobs to low-skill service-sector jobs, the proliferation of restaurants being an obvious example. Angell is also dead wrong about manufacturing going away: it will simply be done by fewer but greater-skilled workers, the elite of them building the machines that build most everything. Protectionist Europe hasn't made the break with the past that America has, and that's coloring Angell's views.
Interestingly, various European nations appear to finally be getting the hint. Even Germany is talking tax cuts now. Whether they'll back down far enough soon enough remains to be seen, but it is encouraging. |
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Cause and effect (Score:1, Insightful) by Actinophrys on Tuesday September 05, @01:15PM EDT (#122) (User #225053 Info) |
| Nation-states might be having some difficulties, but to associate this with the continued rise of info techs is forging a link that need not be there. Keep in mind that we are still in the immediate aftermath of the world wars. Even after the Peloponesian war had sealed the doom of ancient Athens, it still lasted for a century, though the democracy was crippled by a disenchanted public. One could argue the nation-state is in the same phase. WWII exhausted Europe, at least. The result of that, of course, could easily be a shifting of locus. America and Russia replaced Europe as the world centers. Russia has collapsed, but how America fairs has yet to be seen. It is a mistake to assume that the power shifts of a century mean a permanent decline. Furthermore, if there is a decline, it is absurd to consider it coming from the rise of the common man; this should make a democracy stronger, shouln't it? The problem should come from the growth of aristocracies at the expense of the common man, as undermined Rome, Byzantium, and Han China. Just some thoughts... |
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Interesting; a 'metabiological' opposition view (Score:1) by scotfree (scotfree_AT_asis_DOT_com) on Tuesday September 05, @01:23PM EDT (#129) (User #87141 Info) |
| I agree that the balance between the individual and the group 'scales' of societal structure is shifting, but I think you can argue it's going the other direction:
The sovereign individual has reached its apogee in western culture, and is (arguably) on the decline in favor of dynamics, structures, and behavior based in the group or cultural entity. Certainly, the old-style nation-state is also fading; the structures I mean are based in cultural and informational substrates, not (traditional) politics or militarism. This is not a good or bad thing, though I find aspects of it quite frightening and exciting. But I liken these times to a metaphorical moment when single-celled life began to give rise to multi-cellular organisms. One imagines that prokaryotes first discovered the advantages of cooperation and mutual support. Then, after a few (million...) generations, began to notice that they were increasingly less able to function as 'individuals', but had been subsumed into a larger structure, in which each played a needed role, but was unable to exist as a seperate entity. One can abuse the admittedly stretched metaphor further by imagining 'prokaryot rights' groups protesting the invasive behavior of the larger eukaryiotic structures: defending the privacy of individual nuclei, decrying the increasing lack of independance and moral fibre of the younger generations in favor of better assimilation - maybe even attempting to fight the tide with direct (chemical) action (the birth of immune systems - as Cops or Protesters?)... Consider the increasing acceptance of the loss of individual privacy in deference to 'security' or 'societal cohesion'. Consider the increasing power of cultural phenomenon and movements in political and legal arenas. Time was, we'd look at these and cry 'conspiracy' but that's clearly old-school. I increasingly find that one can explain most conspiracy-like structures more satisfactorily without recourse to some star-chamber of indiviuduals planning the whole thing out. Rather, I see these phenomenon as emergent behavior not originating in individual preference or schemes at all. Noam Chomsky loves to use NY Times complete avoidance of certain topics as an example of classical consiracy; I love to use the same thing as an example of 'emergent' or 'structural' conspiracy: one can imagine a thousand individual choices, all innocent and minor, based on style/mood/cultural trends/etc, having the same end result without any individual ever deciding to censor news about, say, East Timor. I see many political and societal changes coming about this way, with no individual choice except at a very local, simple level, yet with a higher level impact very reminicent of concious behavior. Increasing technological advance excacerbates this change, and we increasingly resemble the individual components comprising larger organisms, which in turn, depending on your point of view, look like something between: on the positive side, Vernor Vinge's 'Transcendant Powers' or some utopian 'society of mind'; on the negative, Star Treks' 'Borg' or Dr. Who's 'Daleks'... Not that I neccesarily see things as this extreme, or even buy any of this at all. But I think it's an intersting way to look at things, and I can't resist viewing societal structures as large scale organisms - and this has some odd implications for the concept of 'The Sovereign Individual'....especially when you've had few cups of coffee and don't want to do your PHP coding.... |
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Infrastructure for distributed sovereignties (Score:1) by smaring on Tuesday September 05, @01:26PM EDT (#134) (User #229775 Info) |
| Bloated governments like the U.S. certainly do a fine job of screwing things up and taking away our freedoms. I'd be more than happy to declare myself a sovereignty.
But how do you support civil infrastructures like roads and judiciously process criminals who do harm to others? Expressing authority on these matters could be a power struggle of the week vs. the powerful. I suppose autonomous focus groups, similar to OpenSource projects, could form to specialize in certain areas, but how would they get funded? |
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There is no "outside" of the State (Score:1) by Wreck (leonard@dc.spam.net) on Tuesday September 05, @01:28PM EDT (#137) (User #12457 Info) |
| Is the State going away? Not a chance in hell. The State as we find it rests on a simple premise: anyone that the State's agents can physically hurt, is owned by the State, and must pay up.
How is that likely to change based on any conceivable information revolution? Well, if you happen to be a person whose living is in creating or processing information, info revolution is probably good news. You can hide your income from the State, perhaps, and escape (some) taxes. And if you are a consumer of information, it is also good news since info will be cheap, and the State is likely to lose control over the information you consume. This makes little difference for Americans (our State is not much in this business), but for citizens of places without first amendments, it may well be a big deal. At least, it means they will be getting virtual first amendments.
But to the extent that you are a part of the world of physical goods, you will not escape. So this is not going to change anything for all those businesses that make real things. And for that matter, all those people that need physical things to live -- like, say, food -- will also remain subjects. They may be freer. But they will never be free.
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Nation-state obsolete ... (Score:2) by Stavr0 (moc.oohay@essate) on Tuesday September 05, @01:38PM EDT (#143) (User #35032 Info) http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=Stavr0 |
| ... soon to be replaced by Corporate-state. The Justice system used to enforce laws created by the state for the good of the public. Now laws are enacted by he-who-has-the-biggest-lobby-group, for the good of the 'corporate citizen'. The (overburdened,underpaid) police just enforces those stupid laws. - - - F0 0F FC FD |
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I got yer cognitive elite (Score:1) by scalveg (scavenger@no.spam.surly.org) on Tuesday September 05, @01:53PM EDT (#153) (User #35414 Info) |
| An entirely new reality will emerge in cyberspace, ruled by a cognitive elite based in cities like Frankfurt, London, San Jose, Singapore and Tokyo.
Am I the only one that thinks this sounds like a rotten idea?
Chris Owens San Carlos, CA |
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Blah Blah Blah (Score:1) by Jack9 (Jack9@teacher.com) on Tuesday September 05, @02:02PM EDT (#161) (User #11421 Info) http://www.jack9.org |
| Given the amount of time it took for the US to set up the US internet infrastructure, how long would it take the US to restrict access to sites that it didnt want its citizens accessing? I foresee tighter controls, not changes in laws (much less copyright law) to promote freedom of information. "Information wants to be free" was thought up by a PR guy. It's a catchphrase, not dogma. Often wrong but never in doubt. I am Jack9. Everyone knows me. |
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An all-tech society? Have we learned NOTHING... (Score:2) by David Wong on Tuesday September 05, @02:04PM EDT (#163) (User #199703 Info) http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com |
| ...from the Terminator films? If you want a chilling look into the so-called 'information society of the future,' there it is.
Neither the nation-states nor the corporations will rule us: the machines will. Our only hope is that the ragged human resistance from the year 2130 will send someone back in time to take out Jon Katz, and thus change the course of history. -David Wong The Matrix 2 Information Center |
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Levels of society (Score:1) by Demon-Xanth on Tuesday September 05, @02:21PM EDT (#170) (User #100910 Info) |
| In the body there is a statement that basically says there we went from Hunter+gatherers, to argicultural, to industrial, to information. I disagree, I feel that rather than replacing the "lower" level a portion builds itself ontop of the formerly dominant level. Is there still hunter+gatherer cultures? few, but there is. Is there agricultural cultures? By the fact that we still see salad on the menus in many restraunts, I'd have to say there is.
There will always be the various stages of the sociological evolution, if there wasn't the top levels would have a hard time fullfilling thier basic need to survive. Nothing in==Nothing out. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. |
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The governments are there because you WANT them. (Score:2) by David Wong on Tuesday September 05, @02:22PM EDT (#172) (User #199703 Info) http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com |
| Or, at least, most citizens do. Will nation-states ever go away when millions DEPEND on them for survival? How many people in the USA live on social security and public aid checks? How many families depend on a military paycheck? How many people work at companies with government contracts? How many of us drive on federal highways?
It's a bunch of fun for a crowd of (young) free thinkers to predict the downfall of the huge governments. It's not so easy for the 90% of us who DON'T WANT the government to go away - no matter how much we may complain about it. And as true as that is in the US, it's more true in European countries where even more citizens are dependent on the government. The government doesn't exist on its own. We put it there, and we keep it there year after year (and keep it growing) by saying 'yes' every time they propose a new payout program. In other words, there's a reason why Liberterians only get 3% of the vote. -David The Matrix 2 Information Center |
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Re:The governments are there because you WANT them (Score:2) by Russ Nelson on Tuesday September 05, @05:22PM EDT (#252) (User #33911 Info) http://russnelson.com/ |
| Democracies fail when the politicians realize that they can buy citizens' votes with their own money.
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politics don't rule, marketing does (Score:1) by Sebastopol (ju1ian@EERF-MAPS.disinfo.net) on Tuesday September 05, @02:25PM EDT (#173) (User #189276 Info) |
| An entirely new reality will emerge in cyberspace, ruled by a cognitive elite based in cities like Frankfurt, London, San Jose, Singapore and Tokyo.
This seems like an odd thing to say. Why would the author point out where congnitive elite would exist when it sounds like his theory does away with this type of elitism? I didn't read the book, but from the summary I got the impression of ``utopian world with like minded people living in harmony''. To answer the author's last question: Are we the first citizens of a new kind of society? Or simply participants in the ongoing modification of the old one? One thing wasn't mentioned: marketing. People make up the society, and people are led by the marketeers of monopolistic coroporations. Any ideas of freedom and sovereignty are illusions given to us by the market. Putting on my conspiracy hat, I think there was quite of bit of psychology done in the past half-century, yeilding highly effective tools for mind control. Some military, some corporate. This goes light years beyond Nader's whistle-blowing on shoddy manufacturing. My point/answer is: now that there has been several decades to observe the effects of this manipulating psychology used to convert people into consumers by the herds, it has been fine-tuned to deadly accuracy. Any discussion about our role as sovereign free agents is moot, Americans are sheep and meme of capitalism and disposable income is spreading to other countries rapidly, soon to engulf the world. Perhaps the topic of the book is yet another marketing ploy to get us to buy more books on how we can become more sovereign. The next rulers to supplant fatigued nation states will be invisible. The next rulers will be more user friendly the politicians. They will be virtual machines made by a market driven economy bent on making us spend even more money. --- Unto the land of the dead shalt thou be sent at last. Surely thou shalt repent of thy cunning. |
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World Service Authority (Score:2) by Elvis Maximus (slashdot|AT|ryan|HYPHEN|silva|DOT|com) on Tuesday September 05, @02:44PM EDT (#183) (User #193433 Info) http://www.ryan-silva.com/ |
Does the above article actually say anything? If it does, I couldn't find it. In 1948 a guy named Garry Davis decided that the nation-state system had to be abolished if the horrors of World War II were to be avoided in the future. He felt that the logical conclusion to the train of thought that produced the UN Convention on Human Rights was that everyone was sovereign and nation-states had no rights over people. In Paris, he renounced his citizenship and walked out of the US Embassy stateless. He issued himself a passport and has been going around the world ever since by convincing bureaucrats that his passport is just as good as one issued by a recognized government. His organization, the World Service Authority, still sell the passports and they claim people have been able to get into almost everywhere using them. It's kind of a crackpot outfit (I see they're taking banner ads now -- very principled), but it is an interesting demonstration that the nation-state is only as powerful as people believe it is. - |
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if Knowledge is Power, Nations are weakening (Score:1) by thex23 (thex23@[NO-SPAM]dvant.net) on Tuesday September 05, @02:47PM EDT (#188) (User #206256 Info) |
| Just a few things to ponder, and all based on my personal opinions, not facts:
Nation-states are less and less able to maintain a meme-dominance in the minds of their citizenry. People are becoming more concerned about their social/economic lives and their environment/world than they are about notions like "patriotism". When your friends and co-workers are bright people from Canada, France, China, and Brazil, nationalistic diatribes sound more and more hollow. The propaganda only works on people who don't know anything about the subject. Large corporations WILL be the next "government", taking over the Social Contract from your Country and giving you Bonus Air Miles and letting you vote your money... There will be a rise of the city-state, which will have to take over from the weaking national power structures. All the services we normally associate with Federal government (taxes, security, diplomacy) will degrade at that level (as talented people leave for MUCH more rewarding work in the private sector). This will leave a service vacuum at the real-world level, opening up competition for people's loyalties and "tax" dollars. Where you live will still matter, but only what city you live in. It's that way right now, but more subtle. Local services will still be provided, but there will also be an entire universe of non-local services available. If you are altruistic, you will be able to work with people from around the world with the same values, fighting whatever foes you can commonly identify. If you are a greedy, unethical bastard, the same applies. Corporations already have extensive mercenary armies, paying soldiers, lawyers, and hackers to do their bidding. Small countries cater to the ultra-rich, and this will become even more important as nation-states seek (under populist regimes)to gather up the resources of the "rich" through taxes. These well-intentioned efforts will drive the mobile rich and their easily-transported wealth to protective enclaves: offshore or in orbit, where "you can't touch it." Whether you speak of Microsoft or the Hell's Angels, the struggle of corporate vs. state interests has always been an issue. In both cases, choosing the "bad guys" is a pretty safe bet. Corporations will act how they please, and barring a global, United-Nations-esque intiative to make coporations accountable worldwide through some sort of mandatory "covenant", they will get away with it, since there are plenty of places to hide. Playing one nation against another is easy and fun. Politicians and bureacrats have no interest in the global "good", so their self-interest makes them easily manipulated. Unless nation-states and their armies/lawyers/hackers can take corporate assets offline by lasing satellites, freezing bank accounts, and cracking information systems, this Wild West/Robber Baron scenario will continue pretty much as it has for the last century, accelerated by technology. So where does that leave us? If you are smart, talented, and curious, with no criminal record and a good market value (not to mention an entrepreneurial motivation), then you will be a winner. If you are a complacent, patriotic, union-loving worker, then you will be the loser. Harsh as that may seem, that is the new Darwinism. And it aint about being rich. It's about being powerful, and power doesn't come from the barrel of a gun, but from the Machievellian wisdom that guides the hand that holds it. -thex23 Thieves, Liars, and Poets |
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Sovereign Individuals are victims (Score:1) by itsbruce (itsbruce@netscape.net.REMOVE) on Tuesday September 05, @02:58PM EDT (#195) (User #229840 Info) |
| If the nation state goes away, the corporations certainly won't. Without the restrictions that the state can apply, what protection will the individual have? This crap ranks along the frequently-peddled line that the internet gives power to the individual consumer. Corporations don't pay any more attention to individual net shoppers than they do to ones that walk in their doors.
Human beings don't live in glorious isolation. Society is what we do, its our real specialisation (as opposed to intelligence). The Nation State is just another development of that. By the way, the Nation State has not been ruling us for thousands of years. Its nowhere near that old. |
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Hey! Let's all put our heads in the sand. (Score:2) by hey! (mattleo@treehouse.acrcorp.com) on Tuesday September 05, @03:02PM EDT (#198) (User #33014 Info) |
| <contrarian rant>
Hopefully, we won't have to listen to too much more drivel like this: Western governments, the authors say, may be more benign but are also tired. They're losing their governing authority, their leaders void of answers and ideas, mouthing platitudes fewer and fewer people believe or listen to. Three points: (1) People in technology often stupidly believe that government is a paper tiger. It's purely wishful thinking, which lasts until somebody like the RIAA outmaneuvers them and they're playing catch up. Government is a very potent force for both good and evil. Our government is relatively benign, so you can ignore it a lot of the time, but it won't stay that way all by itself. (2) Winston Churchill said that democracy was the absolute worst system of government except for every other one. Freud said that the two areas of endeavor that were doomed to unsatisfactory results were education and government. OOG the caveman probably had some choice things to say back in his day. Acting like there is some new intellectual bankruptcy in government shows distinct lack of historical perspective. The real problem is tougher -- when you get a good fraction of a billion people together to live together in a civilized society, it is difficult to make the mechanisms that support it user friendly and the policies that govern it clear and understandable. There will be policies and laws whether they're sensible or not and we're going to have to live with them because they will be backed up with police forces and armies. Throwing up your hands because the politicians don't have any good ideas and neither do you is not good enough. Think harder. (3) There is no technological or economic determinism which dictates a better society, any more than there is a historical determinism that will create the worker's paradise. There is only an accelerated series of dangers and opportunities. Be an honest geek. You've participated in the creation of these opportunities and dangers but have done absolutely nothing to shape what your elected officials are doing with them. Now you're wishing the problem would just go away so you could privately enjoy your cognitive superiority in peace and quiet. You can't wish the cognitive plebes away. Somebody has to grow your food and collect your trash. You don't shop for a civil society like you would for a pair of shoes. You take part in its creation or you live with its consequences. A majority of stupid but involved people beat the "cognitive elite" every time. Aristedes was ostracized by the Athenians. All the "cognitive elite" had to toe the line under Hitler's Nazi regime, and not a few of them bought into the baloney. Leaving the hoi polloi to other congitive aristrocrats is worse yet. Lenin took over the Russian government with little more than chutzpah and a great sense of timing -- ironically he had even fewer divisions than the Pope at the time. In a world awash in punditry and hype, why take The Sovereign Individual more seriously than any other attempt at futuristic navel gazing? One is these authors record: In previous books, they predicted the stock market crash of the late 80s and the fall of Communism. Doc Smith predicted the fall of communism too, but I'm not waiting for a pan-galactic organization of psychic supermen to solve our problems through benevolent dictatorship. I'm going to go way out on a limb here. The economy is headed for a downturn sometime in the next decade. Now will you buy my cock-and-bull story about the coming technological utopia? </contrarian rant> ---- Wen Ho Lee has been freed! |
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Unfortunately Sovereign doesn't seem to mean free (Score:1) by slam smith on Tuesday September 05, @03:18PM EDT (#206) (User #61863 Info) |
| If by Sovereign you mean the ability to interact with people in other nations and to do business across international boundaries, I agree.
If by Sovereign you mean we are a freer people, I think you are sadly deluded. In the US our complete existence is regulated. You want to opt out of Social Security, oh I'm sorry your Sovereignness doesn't extend that far. You want to be a car without an airbag, sorry can't do that either. You want to smoke some pot in your own house, yeah right. In the EU, I've read stories of how cheese makers in Italy are being forced to conform to the EU beauracrats in Brussels on how to make their cheese. I also heard about a shopkeeper in the UK they made put away an antique scale because in used imperial units. Doesn't sound freer to me. Harry Browne 2000 |
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Re:Unfortunately Sovereign doesn't seem to mean fr (Score:1) by UnknownSoldier (mpohores@NOBLOODYSPAMsfu.ca) on Wednesday September 06, @01:30AM EDT (#289) (User #67820 Info) |
| > You want to opt out of Social Security, oh I'm sorry your Sovereignness doesn't extend that far.
Actually it does. There is NO LAW that requires a person to have a social security number. You CAN live, work, WITHOUT being numbered. |
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Its the old competition vs cooperation issue (Score:1) by crovira on Tuesday September 05, @03:26PM EDT (#209) (User #10242 Info) |
| Its been kicked around since Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). While I agree that technology's accelerating pace is changing the game, for a very few of us, the players (we,) have not evolved to keep pace. But until it becomes obvious to the individual that cooperation is a feature of civilization and preferable over competition, you can expect crimes de passion and drunken brawls over unfeeling babes on Saturday nights... And stupid IP laws, patents by the uncaring against the unknowing and criminals of every stripe and size. By the way, outlawing file sharing (a la Napster and DeCSS decisions,) makes the entire internet illegal and hyper-linking a criminal offense. IP law as it now stands is the TRIUMPH of selfishness over cooperative behavior. If its allowed to stand, never mind fester, you can kiss the twenty-first century good bye... Charles-A. The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff. |
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Hmm... is anarchy the final destination? (Score:1) by Catiline on Tuesday September 05, @03:26PM EDT (#210) (User #186878 Info) |
| Way back in the beginning, when man was young, there was no goverment. People lived only in traveling family groups (hunter-gatherer societies) and life was good.
Fast forward through the next 25,000 or so years. Man discovers agriculture, sailing, writing, and finally the Modern Standard Legal System (Hammurabi's Code). Is life as good? No. We're crammed into filthy cities, frightened of one another, and to top it all off, here's a dumb bloke telling us what we can and cannot do. Life became unbearable. And why? People forgot how to get along with one another. The internet won't solve anything if you don't have good interpesonal skills to begin with! |
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Big picture... (Score:2) by chuckw (moc.xunilmutnauq@wkcuhc) on Tuesday September 05, @03:45PM EDT (#219) (User #15728 Info) http://www.quantumlinux.com |
| The whole reason why a lot of the dot coms are failing is because they tried to be an extension of the existing system. It doesn't work that way. Would you use a car to drive up an escalator? No, that would be absurd. It's the same idea as trying to set up a department store strictly on the web. It just won't work. Companies who have adapted to the web and used it's strengths will survive. Take REI for example. They didn't move all their operations over to the web, that would be stupid. They leveraged the web to access a larger audience. ALA Click-And-Mortar.
Though all of human history, there have been three basic stages of economic life: hunting-and-gathering societies; agricultural societies; and industrial societies. Now, sparked by the rise of computing and the growth of the Net and the Web, something entirely new and different may be just over the horizon, something all of us are already a primitive part of, a fourth stage of social organization: information societies. I take some issue with that because the first three phases of society were all about aquiring resources to live. Information in itself does not put food in the mouth. It can help pay for it, but it does not actually get it to your mouth. Factories still have to churn it out. Now if we start evoloving towards automating anything and everything, then I would agree that we are on the way to the "information age". Until then, I would say that we are still in the industrial age. -- *Condense fact from the vapor of nuance* 25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc 80: ekop\ten.knilrevlis.www\\:ptth |
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Re:Big picture... (Score:2) by Hard_Code on Wednesday September 06, @10:01AM EDT (#294) (User #49548 Info) |
| Well, IANAEconomist, but I think technically we are in a post-industrial service-oriented age (well, at least a lot of the "western" world). When you can live entirely in a house, without going outside to obtain resources, pay bills, etc., then we are starting to approach something like an "information age". Not that farmers and industrial workers disappear off the face of the earth, but that everybody is so specialized, and everything is connected via an "information" network, that the majority of people's needs can be obtained impersonally, without any interaction with people or work specifically towards that resource. Used to be if you wanted bread, you farmed and made and baked it yourself, or at least went to the baker. In an "information age" we could hypothetically have smart agents that know what we need to get and just get it for us and it arrives at the door, or better yet, right in our fridge. Big corporations got the hurt on you? Vote Nader |
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Power to those who grab it... (Score:2) by X on Tuesday September 05, @03:58PM EDT (#227) (User #1235 Info) http://www.xman.org/ |
| I think that it is incorrect to suggest the power is going to the individual. New technologies introduce new capabilities which can be leveraged by any person/organization to their own benefit. For example, television provided power to corporations, politicians, and individuals who understood how to manipulate it. Some learned faster than others, some refined their skills more than others, but I disagree with the notion that technologies (particularly classes of technologies) have a bent in any particular direction.
Sure, the Internet is making it easier for someone to make one's voice heard and to gather information. However, as more and more information becomes digitized (and particularly since digital security is being repressed), it becomes increasingly easy for governments to rewrite history, control access to information, violate someone's privacy, and police a population. Business have unprecedented oppurtunities to control and spy on their employees, manage their public image, collude and organize to maximize how much they grab from customers. Governments, as always, have been slow to learn the Internet, as they were with television. However, television is a good indicator of how they can eventually become quite skillful. I suspect the ultimate loser will be the general public, who in the long run tend not to master new technologies. |
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almost but not quite... (Score:1) by habiryon on Tuesday September 05, @04:39PM EDT (#238) (User #229881 Info) |
| 'One of the major themes in The Sovereign Individual is the notion that the revolution unleashed by digital technologies is liberating individuals at the expense of the nation-states that have governed much of humanity for thousands of years.'
Mr. Katz, you misuse the term 'nation-state' (anachronistically), that is, it HAS NOT goverened much of humaity for thousands of years. Normally, I wouldn't correct this sort of error, but it seems fundamental to the authors' argument as you depict it.
In fact, the treaty of westphalia is generally recognized, by political scientists and some economists the world around, as being the moment in time that the concept of a 'nation-state' was crystalized.
(http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,78730+3+76697,00.html)
Furthermore, Bizmark and others after him, secured this conception vis-a-vis emperial, feudal, et cetera conceptions of 'state' after that approximate date.
"Though all of human history, there have been three basic stages of economic life: hunting-and-gathering societies; agricultural societies; and industrial societies. "
Here you are surely flattering Hagel, Vico,and above all Marx; all of whom have been seriously contested on the facts by modern historians and anthropologists... even intuitively speaking, one can see the world around that there has not been 3 distinct evolutionary stages/epochs.
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Individuality, why right now? (Score:1) by TeknoHog on Tuesday September 05, @04:39PM EDT (#239) (User #164938 Info) http://iki.fi/teknohog/ |
| Simply because the infrastructure of the soon coming new century can, in principle, allow
people to become true individuals and fsck the pressures of the society, doesn't mean it
will necessarily happen. Even here in Finland some 'authorities' predict things will change
for real: people start to think for themselves, dress individually instead of mass trends,
do what they like instead of what the society expects, and so on.
They have been able to do that all the time, in principle. IMHO there have always been those who follow the trends, and those who think, question and revolutionize. I doubt the overly hyped technology will suddenly turn every person into the latter group. On the other hand, societies have undergone evolution and revolution thanks to individuals with Score: 1337, Insightful. Those with a strong self-consciousness and fresh ideas have found their ways to change the world, regardless of the absolute level of technology.
I bet something like this book was written around the start of the industrial revolution
too..
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the innocent have nothing to capitalize on (Score:1) by L'il Bartlett on Tuesday September 05, @05:47PM EDT (#256) (User #225317 Info) |
| [Lyrics]
Momus from Ping Pong The Age Of Information This is a public service announcement Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering The age of information It's perfectly safe If we all take a few basic precautions May I make some observations? Axiom 1 for the world we've begun: Your reputation used to depend on What you concealed Now it depends on what you reveal The age of secretive mandarins who creep on heels of tact Is dead: we are all players now in the great game of fact instead So since you can't keep your cards to your chest I'd suggest you think a few moves ahead As one does when playing a game of chess Axiom 2 to make the world new: Paranoia's simply a word for seeing things as they are Act as you wish to be seen to act Or leave for some other star Somebody is prying through your files, probably Somebody's hand is in your tin of Netscape magic cookies But relax: If you're an interesting person Morally good in your acts You have nothing to fear from facts Axiom 3 for transparency: In the age of information the only way to hide facts Is with interpretations There is no way to stop the free exchange Of idle speculations In the days before communication Privacy meant staying at home Sitting in the dark with the curtains shut Unsure whether to answer the phone But these are different times, now the bottom line Is that everyone should prepare to be known Most of your friends will still like you fine X said to Y what A said to B B wrote an E mail and sent it to me I showed C and C wrote to A: Flaming world war three Cut, paste, forward, copy CC, go with the flow Our ambition should be to love what we finally know Or, if it proves unloveable, simply to go Axiom 4 for this world I adore: Our loyalties should shift in view according to what we know And who we are speaking to Once I was loyal to you, and prepared to be against information Now I am loyal to information, maybe I'm disloyal to you My loyalty becomes more complex and cubist With every new fact I learn It depends who I'm speaking to And who they speak to in turn Axiom 5 for information workers who wish to stay alive: Supply, never withhold, the information requested With total disregard for interests personal and vested Chinese whispers was an analogue game Where the signal degraded from brain to brain Digital whispers is the same in reverse The word we spread gets better, not worse Better, not Worse ___ "Peasants! Not only are they dying, they're boring!" |
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This is crypto-pro-corporate propaganda (Score:1) by beroul (beroul@QQQyahoo.com) on Tuesday September 05, @05:48PM EDT (#257) (User #52668 Info) |
| When a British Lord (and former editor of the right-wing newspaper The Times) writes, in an act of fervent wishful thinking, that nation-states are going to wither away, thus liberating `the individual', it is worth asking yourself exactly which individual or individuals he is referring to. Of course, he is referring to people like himself, who happen to be fantastically wealthy. Their needs would then be taken care of by the all-powerful corporations, many of which are already larger and more powerful than some nation-states. Clearly, it is in the corporations' interests to take good care of the rich. But what about everyone else?
With no legal rights or protections, those without large amounts of cash would be returned to the hell of early industrial society, working 16-hour days in factories from the age of 10, with no medical care. When they grew too old or sick to work, they would be left to die. Human rights would disappear. This is in fact what happens today in many countries, which do not have strong governments to provide the kind of protections that most Slashdot readers enjoy. Think factories are going to disappear because we're leaving the Industrial Age and entering the Information Age? Try living for a while without using anything that was produced or transported using industrial techniques. You'll have to grow all your own food (without tractors or other farm equipment), produce all your own clothing by hand, live in housing that you built yourself, drink unprocessed water, with no sewer system, computers, or factory-made transportation. Oh, and you can forget about modern medicine. People like Lord Rees-Mogg want the state to be dismantled in order to get rid of nuisances like environmental laws, health and safety laws, child labour laws, and of course taxes. Those of us who can't afford to pay for private health care, let alone private water and sewer systems, and who would like some assurances that we are eating safe food, might disagree. The scandal of BSE (`mad cow disease') in the UK, a direct result of Margaret Thatcher's deregulation of the agriculture industry, is just a small indication of what can happen, even in wealthy countries, when corporations are allowed to do as they please. This sort of babbling about the Information Age is simply thinly veiled propaganda, intended to persuade ordinary citizens to give still more power to multinational corporations. |
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This is a rather optimistic view...naive? (Score:1) by ecloud (ecloudNO@bigSPAMfoot.com) on Tuesday September 05, @05:50PM EDT (#258) (User #3022 Info) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud |
| On Saturday there was that link to Macintosh history, and from there, there was a link to this, which espouses a rather pessimistic view of the future... it had me questioning what is the point of it all. The author makes the point that in the 60's there were two opposing viewpoints - the belief that redemption will be found by returning to our natural state, and the opposite idea that technology is going to be our salvation - that the only path is forward, pressing on through the grimy industrial tunnel and hoping that there is a light at the other end. Or perhaps a third viewpoint would be an uneasy synthesis of the two - that after technology has eliminated all our drudgeries, we will be enabled to return to nature while still benefitting from the technology. That's pretty much the Star Trek philosophy. Seems kindof naive though doesn't it? On the one hand, there is no point in trying to go back in time and live simpler lives. Any attempt to go backwards instead of forwards is doomed. But on the other hand, to go forwards in the same way we are currently doing will lead to more of the same problems - more environmental pollution, more overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, excessive use of artifical energy sources, and more exploitation. If present trends continue we will find ourselves in Neil Stephenson's world, more or less. But there doesn't seem to be any other choice either; the momentum will play out and either we will find our salvation afterall, or life will suck. So for these guys (Rees-Mogg and Davidson) to say that somehow we're going to achieve further liberation, seems naive to me too. Nature abhors a vacuum. All of history is occupied by power struggles. Even the animals have them. If we can achieve a temporary state of complete freedom, then out of the ensuing chaos, some kind of power base will emerge. If it's not the government, as Stephenson would surmise, it'll probably be the big corporations (or organized crime... is there really a difference?). I hope that some kind of positive outcome is achieved, but I fear that it won't; we're just exchanging masters and maintaining the same old enslavement. As Roszak theorized (in the article I linked to at the top of this), the "information society" enables the big evil organizations (corporations, the military and other snoops) even more than it enables the individual. Can we keep up with the threats? Will it be possible for the state-of-the-art encryption techniques to outpace the ability of the snoops to crack them? Or will the state-of-the-art continue to be effectively illegal? Will our abilities to colonize space ultimately outstrip our reproductive rates? Only time will tell.
Meanwhile strangely enough it doesn't make me want to be a geek any less than I did before. I must still have a little hope left that technology will save us after all. Or at least, out of habit, I would think that my life was meaningless without doing something to advance the state of the art. Even if I'm ultimately building my own shackles, I don't know what else I could do that would have any long-term meaning. |
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And the current industrial infrastructure (Score:1) by dgoodman (deg3@ra.dont.msstate.spam.edu.me) on Tuesday September 05, @06:41PM EDT (#266) (User #51656 Info) |
| And who, with the "withering of government" is going to take care of all the things so many people take for granted: power, (clean) water, public funding for the arts, funding for research with no obvious profit-making potential (like ARPANet, hint hint)? If the answer is the corporate world, I suggest you read Snow Crash again...
harumph. Techno-utopia-sans-government my ass. |
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Katz, you bozo... (Score:1) by Script Kiddie on Wednesday September 06, @02:19AM EDT (#290) (User #31252 Info) |
| The game is not Shadowrunner, it's Shadowrun.
Believe me, I'd know. |
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Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave (Score:1) by dido (dido@nospam.pacific.net.ph) on Wednesday September 06, @04:11AM EDT (#291) (User #9125 Info) |
| Has anyone read Alvin Toffler's seminal book The Third Wave? That book may have been written nearly twenty years ago, but it also divides history and the future into pretty much the same categories and draws many similar conclusions about the world of the future, although when he names specific technologies he's understandably way off the mark. He also speaks of how information technology, which is the hallmark of the Third Wave, and its demassifying effects, empowering the individual, moving it away from the mass society from which the Second Wave nation state drew much of its power. And so second-wave government is no longer able to deal with it. I take it that Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age is like an updated version of The Third Wave rewritten by people who live in the heart of a newly-born Third Wave as opposed to someone writing from the vantage point of the Third Wave's birth pangs. -- TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *yesterday* yet! |
Can you MAIL a BEAN CAKE?