I almost agree with you. I can say that I've worked for a few different IT companies, and in the IT departments of a few more companies, and I would say that every one of these companies has, at some point, actively looked for female and minority tech workers for the sake of diversity. That said, I've worked with very few black IT people, and I think I've only worked with one woman-- a database admin. It wasn't the result of an unwillingness to hire black people or women, but an inability to find candidates.

That said, I don't doubt that there are some racist employers out there still. I don't doubt that there are people who subtly treat black coworkers differently, or that job interviews are sometimes influenced by race, often even if people are not consciously aware that it's happening. I can't even claim that race never influences me unconsciously, since... well, it's unconscious. How would I know? I try to be fair and open-minded, and I grew up with a lot of minorities. I don't think I'm particularly racist, but I'm not sure any of us can avoid it completely.

I don't know how to fix it, but I don't think we can claim to have done away with racism. It comes in subtle forms-- For example, you might see a bunch of white kids failing in school, and maybe your first impulse would be to blame the school or teachers for not providing the right environment. Paint the same picture with different colors, and suddenly your first impulse is to assume that the kids and parents are to blame. It doesn't need to be a conscious, thought out decision to be racist. Sometimes, it's just a matter of which conclusions we jump to.

Even if we accept this, it only raises the question, why doesn't outcome work out to be, over the long run, analogous to opportunity? I'm not asking, "why doesn't every single kid succeed equally," but if you have a bunch of kids and we suppose all of them have the same opportunities, why don't we an average success rate among different groups? Or even if we accept your analysis, that they "never tried", then why aren't they trying?

I feel a twinge of something in your explanation, which is a sort of understanding of the world that I hear people express often. It assumes a just world, that people who don't succeed are either inherently inferior, or not trying. Further, it offers no explanation as to why people wouldn't try, other than something like, "They're just not the sort of people who work hard," again implying idea that lack of economic success is simply a function of being inherently inferior. The explanation treats it as though it's simply a function of laziness and stupidity, neither of which have explanations, neither of which can be helped.

But it doesn't jibe with any of my experience of how people work. People are "lazy" when they're asked to do things that they don't see as benefiting them, or they're put into circumstance where they don't anticipate success. Contrary to the narrative we hear in some pockets of the media, it's not tons of fun being poor and on welfare. I doubt the kids you grew up with were intentionally choosing that because the perceived a bright future for themselves, but thought welfare would be more fun.

So all of this just raises the question, what's really going on here? Why are these kids feeling demotivated and disinterested in improving their own lives? Whether or not there had been a lot of opportunity for those kids, I suspect they didn't believe that there was. I would suspect that they had received a lot of messages in their lives, from whatever, sources, saying that college was not for them, not something they could do, not something that they would be successful at, and not something that would provide them with a better future. And whether the sources of those messages were from white people or black people, the messages themselves are bound up in a whole culture of racism.

Let's not talk about the "original purpose of the Internet" like it's some ideology that we need to stick to. It was come up with by different people with different goals, several decades ago, without any real understanding of what it would become.

There's a bigger problem though. What's being talked about is censoring anyone who someone-- it's not clear who will be the judge of this nice little utopia-- decides that their contributions are counter-productive or inappropriate. That sure sounds nice, since nobody likes inappropriate and counter-productive comments. Unfortunately, there isn't always complete agreement about which comments those are. However, once you start shutting people out of the conversation based on rules as vague as "they said something that I think is offensive, abusive, annoying, or counter-productive," it has a chilling effect on the rest of the conversation. Since it's unclear what will get you into trouble, any intelligent person will hold things back for fear of reprisal.

In fact, there's a great irony here, in that the complaint is that women don't feel comfortable voicing their opinions for fear of reprisal, and the proposed solution is to develop a way to bring reprisal to anyone who is determined-- by an unspecified judge-- to have said something offensive.

In reality, the Internet is already pretty good at dealing with these people. There are moderation systems on many websites which hide inflammatory comments. We all have the option to refuse to visit websites that lack moderation, but we also have the option to visit them. Say what you will about 4chan being a bunch of awful misogynistic trolls, but there's a lot of creativity that comes from that awfulness. I think you'll find that if you were to succeed in cleaning up all of the inappropriate and unfortunate stupidity that happens on the Internet, you'll lose a lot of those comments that you feel are part of the worthwhile 1%.

I don't actually know what the numbers are, but I suspect that not all black people are "urban". Also-- again, I'm not really an expert-- but I suspect part of the aversion to doing "white people stuff" (where that aversion exists) is the result of disbelief at the prospect of actually becoming accepted among white people. In other words, the reason some black people might discourage education (and be discouraged from trying to become educated) is that they don't really expect that they can enter into the world of "white America" and be successful and accepted.

It's like, Imagine someone told you, "All the billionaires in the world wear these funny clothes, speak in this particular dialect (a dialect which sounds really lame), and memorize obscure 18th-century poetry. If you make a jackass out of yourself trying to do these things, you'll be just like the billionaires, and then they'll make you a billionaire too!" You'd think that sounded like some silly nonsense, and you wouldn't bother trying to do it.

It seems like a difficult problem to me.

I feel like I'm missing something important going on right now, because it has seemed to me that this sort of confusion is becoming more and more prevalent, and I'm not sure what the cause is. I've seen lots of posts on sites like Facebook, and many posts in my Facebook feeds, that seem to conflate "things that women aren't happy about," with "systematic political oppression of women," and "physical violence and rape."

I got into a brief Facebook discussion with a friend who was complaining about the whole "not all men" thing. If you haven't heard about this, a little while back there was a bunch of complaints that when women discussed the problematic things that men did, some men would say "not all men do that," and the complaint was that these men were 'derailing the conversation." For example, you would see a discussion about how men won't tolerate women in a position of power, to which some unfortunate man would say, "Well some men will. I would." and he would get yelled at for derailing the conversation.

So this whole concept was brought up, and I thought, "Ok, I can understand why am man would want to interject that, but I can also understand some of the frustration being expressed, since these women know that 'not all men' do terrible things, because they're talking about trends, and not every individual case. Interjecting with an individual case seems to minimize the complaint, so that interjection is not welcome. I can understand that." But then the conversation went on.

One friend went on to say, "No, we're not just talking about trends. We're talking about what normally happens. Men won't hire women. Men won't pay women the same respect that they'll pay to another man. Men engage in violence towards women, and men rape women." At that point, I felt a bit ambushed. I'd just been warned that I wasn't allowed to point out that "not all men" do these terrible things, but shortly afterwards I was told that the "normal thing" was for men to rape women. It seemed pretty important to note that no, not all men rape women. It's not even the "normal thing" or really a trend. To my understanding, a large percentage of rapists are men, but that's not the same as saying a large percentage of men are rapists.

But these activists are unwilling to make that kind of distinction. In subsequent conversations that I've had, I've been told, for example, that men shouldn't "hit on women" because it was aggressive and made women uncomfortable, which supposedly makes it a form of rape. That's right, any behavior that made women feel uncomfortable was a form of rape. So I asked for clarification on what constituted "hitting on women", since obviously it can't be rape to approach a woman, pay attention to her, or attempt to talk to her. I was told that the distinction was whether the attention was "welcome". If a woman doesn't welcome the attention, then the activity is essentially the same as rape.

Now, I don't want to set up a straw man argument here. I'm not saying that women don't have valid concerns. They do. There are many unfortunate things that happen to women, and I'd welcome a discussion of how to resolve those things. However, reasonable distinctions need to be made. Not everything can be "rape" and "oppression". The fact that I might unintentionally benefit from being a man, e.g. getting paid more than a female coworker, does not make me an active oppressor of women, does not make me a perpetrator of violence, and it does not make me a rapist. Until I feel like I can get some agreement on that, at least from people that I know personally in IRL, I feel like these kinds of conversations are hopelessly muddled and we can't do anything to address any problems.

Yeah, I haven't been tracking the GamerGate thing, and I don't know what to think at this point. AFAIK, on the one hand, you have a bunch of people saying, "Journalists are corrupt, and they're very good at hiding this by claiming that their critics are just misogynists." On the other hand, you have a bunch of journalists claiming, "That's just some nonsense some 4chan guys came up with, and their accusations of corruption have no evidence. This is just a clever 4chan harassment campaign."

On the one hand, I totally believe that journalists are corrupt. On the other hand, I also believe that 4chan people are possible of some clever, fucked up, subversive things. Weighing it all out, just by watching the arguments and who seems more rational, I'm inclined to believe the GamerGate people. Their critics seem to be part of some weird neo-feminist campaign on the Internet right now to paint all women as victims, and all men as victimizers. People (myself included) are afraid to present opposing arguments, because any opposition is categorized as an endorsement of violence against women.

If this is a 4chan prank, then it's a bit surprising that the prank is so convincing and has gone on for so long. If it's not a prank, well then it's all a frightening little bit of censorship. Their complaint is that journalists cover their corruption by accusing any critics of being misogynists, and the response from journalists is to paint them as misogynists.

I think whoever wrote this grossly misunderstands the nature of language and human culture, as well as the nature of the Internet. Otherwise, problematic questions should immediately jump out right here, such as "Who decides what's a slur?" and "How can we tell if something is playing on a person's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion?" and "How would any of this be enforced?"

And metaphors? Really? We're not allowed to use metaphors anymore?

These rules suck. Oh, wait, I'm being dumb. When I used the word "suck" right there, the word is obliquely referring to oral sex, implying that only homosexuals perform oral sex, and by using the word "suck" as a negative, I'm implying that homosexuals are terrible.

Oh, but wait, I did it again! I used the word "dumb" to imply a lack of intellect, when really it means "to be mute, unable to speak." Therefore I'm implying that people who suffer the handicap of being unable to speak are mentally retarded. Crap, I used the word "retarded". You're not supposed to say "retarded" because it's offensive to call someone a "retard". Wait... and did I say "handicap"? That's super offensive now, isn't it?

And all this raises a different problematic question that I forgot to mention: What about humor? What about satire?

And hey, how about this: what about valid criticism? If I'm not supposed to use language that "plays on" someone's religion, for example, then am I not allowed to be critical of the actions taken by members of Westboro Baptist Church? Because maybe I have some fair criticisms. Maybe I have some fair criticisms of the roles that women play in our culture, or how our culture deals with homosexuals. But I'm not allowed to talk about that, because any kind of "language that plays on" those things is strictly forbidden.

Whoever wrote this seems to be intellectually deficient. I don't think this is a "play on" anything, since I'm not aware of who this person is. Am I still allowed to say negative things about people, so long as I don't know whether they're women?

How dare you harass this fine online citizen because of his proud circus-performer American heritage. Whose side are you on?!

I like the idea that they're putting forward, but I think it would be a mistake to try to explain this behavior with math like this without dealing with other constraints. For example:

So what they're saying, I think, is that there's Event A, which is people recognizing that everyone is wearing Clarks, followed by Event B, where 'hipsters' rebel by switching to the less popular brand of Timberlands. Because there's a delay between Event A and Event B, people have all switched to Timberlands, making it the new popular brand, before the 'hipsters' realize it and have time to react by choose a new kind of shoe.

However, it doesn't explain why everyone switched to Timberlands instead of various people switching to various other brands. Part of the issue must be some kind of market constraints, where there's some limits on which shoes people will realistically choose. More importantly, there is some level of social conformity going on in all of these groups. It's not clear to me who the 'hipsters' are, but I'm sure that among people adhering to the 'hipster' trends, there are some who are just following the crowd, as is normal. Part of the great irony of social movements that are superficially rebellious is that there must be a conformist aspect, or they wouldn't form a cohesive movement.

More to the point, it seems to me that a lot of the phenomenon of what people call 'hipsters' are actually very mainstream. The real 'hipsters' were the cool kids doing this stuff several years ago. Most people wouldn't see it enough to complain about 'hipsters' until it became common and mainstream enough that they see it in their normal daily lives.

Reminds me of the quote (apparently by P. J. O'Rourke):

For some reason, I always remember it wrong. I keep thinking it's "The Republicans are the party that says government is full of idiots and then they get elected and prove it."

I'm not responding to the important points of your post, but there *is* an important difference between dial-up Internet and these broadband ISP: With dial-up ISPs, you could decouple your ISP from the telephone line that you connected through.

When I connected to an old dialup ISP years ago, I had a Verizon phone line. I could connect to any of the ISPs in my area over that physical phone line, and if I could have gotten another local phone provider, I could have connected to the same ISPs through the phone line for that other provider. With cable and FIOS, however, they are providing both the ISP service and the physical infrastructure that I use to connect to it.

In light of that, I think it should be clear that broadband Internet connections are even more in need of regulation than the previous dial-up connections. The service is essentially the same but faster, but the ISP has more control while the consumer has fewer options.

When Time Warner Cable is offering a 300mbps connection at their highest tier, and Verizon offering 500mbps, what do you think these ISPs are anticipating people will be downloading that warrants these kinds of speeds, if not video? And even if they are anticipating some other use (e.g. software downloads), do you imagine that these residential broadband networks were engineered to provide 300mbps downloads of software, but video still just presents too large of a problem?

And if these networks were not engineered to distribute video, why are these companies offering services to provide streaming HD video?

I think this misses the point. Settlement free peering has been used in cases where peering is mutually beneficial to all companies involved. If the ISPs were providing a "dumb pipe" to the Internet, then it would be in their interest to provide high speed access to sources of content, and so this kind of peering would be mutually beneficial even if the traffic exchange was asymmetrical. However, the ISPs are serving as both "dumb pipes" and content providers, and so they have decided that it is to their benefit to prioritize access to their own content while degrading access to 3rd party content, and that's what this whole issue is really about.

Could you provide some examples? I'm aware Netflix has tried to offload their bandwidth requirements, but I was under the impression that they were paying for CDN service. How did they get CDNs to work for them without paying?

Eek. A for-profit company that you've stopped to business with? Those villains!

It may be "a move that is sure to generate controversy", but it's the right direction for things to be moving. The Internet is not an entertainment service or a toy. It's vital infrastructure that's necessary for our society to move forward economically and technologically, and it should be treated as such. Having crappy Internet should be considered as shameful as having crappy roads, run down train systems, beat up airports, and bridges that are falling down. Unfortunately, in the US, we seem to be fine with all of that.

Facebook can't fix stupid, but it sure can encourage it!

That hasn't been my experience. These days, my Facebook feed seems to be filled with people posting Buzzfeed links to "20 sexy historical facts that will blow your mind!" or else it's a link that says "You won't believe what happens in this video!" without giving any explanation as to what's in the video.

In other words, it's mostly tedious, useless advertising for something or other.