Yet more argument for reducing or eliminating border restrictions - for both people and things.

Forgive me, I'm an anarchist, and think people are more important than things or power. Oh well.

Not really, to copy the copied subject.

I use iTunes, and an iPod touch - at the moment - but you're underestimating vendor lock-in. Or, to use a better term, vendor momentum

I was just thinking of switching to Linux Mint recently. I remembered reading about mt-daapd as an iTunes media server alternative. I have a MacBook to consider, so some compatiability is important. I looked up "home sharing" and found out that mt-daapd is dead, but a "forked-daapd" exists which can be installed on ubuntu with significant potential headaches.

This alone begins to be a barrier to me. Well, it is. I want to set up a computer and have media sharing, with all my tagged media (and we're just talking music), and be able to copy files back and forth easily from the media player/browser interface. I was expecting BETTER from open source, but iTunes, even with its limitations, proves still the most compatiable, most available software.

Not much point thinking beyond that. (For me.) So... Apple it is.

Maybe! Wanna bet on their efforts? Good luck!

It's a down, down, down economy, man. No one has any money anymore. And those who do tell us we shouldn't be afraid of that (though we are, because we're not dumb), but that we should be afraid of each other.

Ergo, everyone's getting really scared, and everyone wants walled gardens. Everyone would love to live in a gated community of just other people like them, preferably watched over and protected by Dada & Mama.

No one wants freedom anymore. Freedom is scary. Not only might you have to do some work managing things, you might have to do some of that icky work of "tolerance, understanding and communication."

Clearly, most people feel the same when it comes to computers and gadgets. "Can you just make it do it for me, and keep it real simple?"

This is where standpoint theory comes into play. The copy over there has a different vantagepoint than you do. It begins with little differences, like it wakes up next to the window and you wake up next to the door. It expands outward from there as you make different decisions.

Take identical twins, for example, They can have remarkably similar lives, perhaps due to living through somewhat similar circumstances while also tending towards making the same sorts of decisions about those things (perhaps they're informed by nearly identical biological and cultural programming...). But no matter how similar their lives, no one (I hope) would claim identical twins are actually the same person.

Neither would you and your copy. As soon as the "other you" begins to exist, they cease to be you and start being your identical twin, with the main difference being that they'd share memories of part of your life and, possibly, claims to your rights & responsibilities accumulated during that portion of your life.

As for "dying as part of the copying process," I think it still means the copy would be a new entity (after all, it would be one who went through the copying process and lived, which is pretty different from you who would be dead), but that it would probably identify strongly as "still the same person," as it has no reason to socially define itself against you as a still living human being.

"Opens up?" People have been debating this stuff for millennia, and will for many more I imagine.

The other thing I'd say is, you can even stop with "map out the brain" - what does that mean? Whose brain? At what age in their life?

"Mind" does not equal "brain." "Mind" is a capacity of the full organism, which changes over time. The brain develops along with the body and its experiences, just as the rest of the body does. The body and brain both change themselves moment to moment, and whatever "data" there is that describes you is different from one instance of you to the next, much like state changes in software from one computation cycle to the next, especially if you consider software that can change its own programming on teh fly.

If they really want to create an artificial brain, they'll have to create one that can change its own structure over time, as ours do even in adulthood. They'll have to create life support systems to support it, to which it will have to be mapped... Basically, I don't think you can have a brain in a box, so to speak. You could, but it'd be as useless as a human brain in a box. You have to recreate a whole being, you have to set it in motion, and let it develop itself. It's how we work; it's how "artificial beings" will have to work.

The only wrinkle would be if you could HALT the activity of the being, read all of its data and duplicate it, and then start it up again. We can't do that with ourselves, for some reason. Maybe we'll construct versions of life that have that ability, but they won't be us, even if we could transfer ourselves to them somehow. They'll be them, even if they have some of our memories, much like how I'm not the me I was when I started writing this.

Well I don't know that open source folks use consensus, we're talking about real world direct action vs. software development and I'm not sure the two worlds are that aware of each other.

Also, yeah, for certain priorities that ignore down to earth human priorities, hierarchical organization is great. It's just, you know, if you value getting things done RIGHT, in human terms, rather than just getting things done, your choice of process is pretty important.

I'd rather have an iPod in ten years instead of one year if it means no one works in inhuman conditions and everyone has a say in how their life runs. I count exploitation and marginalization as pretty significant costs of capitalism and oligarchy.

I agree with your basic argument here that people aren't always quick to shift power, but to this assumption:

No it hasn't, and isn't everywhere. See People Without Government by Harold Barclay (too cynical for my taste, but good), and then consider the organizational structure of Food Not Bombs. It is entirely possible for people to function non-hierarchically. People without an -archy tend to be lost, and look for the next leader to follow, because they lack an awareness of how to function without it. Most people in representative democracies have culturally absorbed the concepts of voting and things like "robert's rules of order" into the backs of all their heads, but once you've absorbed a different system like formal consensus as a replacement for one like robert's rules, suddenly you start to see new possibilities.

Direct action movements have been building on and fine-tuning these ideas since the '70s...

You just covered the history of the rise of the state in one sentence.

That's why I'd do consensus a la Food not Bombs rather than silly old-fashioned voting, but then I'm derailing the discussion here to suggest it, so I'll shut up.

Wow, if only more scientists had napkins on which to do quick, dismissive calculations, all our problems would be solved, or not even problems at all!

Time for a "give a scientist a napkin" campaign. Who's with me?!

I see it all over New York City, FWIW. I even see it on the Subway sometimes, but certainly, just walking around, especially office areas, I see it all the time.

Aging driver populations should have to re-qualify for driver's exams every year.

And the DOT should be working with the MTA to re-design our city's streets for rapid busses and greater pedestrian and cycling improvements, not wasting time on piddly junk like this.

But I want to be free of cell phone radiation. D'oh!

Amen.