"In the last ten years, the mass uptake of the Internet is certainly a socially and culturally significant invention..."

Evidence, please. From what I can see, people still have sex, make babies, raise said babies, and capitalism still rules the world. Not much has changed in 400 years, let alone 100, let alone the last 20. Even our cultural beliefs about those things have barely changed if at all.

Also unchanged: our desire to believe everything is significantly different than it was 20, 100, or 400 years ago. I don't buy it. People may be talking more, but about less. Or, at least, about the same stuff: sex, babies, and how to make money since that's seen as the road to happiness.

If anything, the one thing that has changed in the last 200-400 years, but remained pretty constant since it came about, is the construction of increasingly rigid gender roles, the segregation of "women's labor" from "real labor," and a corresponding decrease in possible modes of human relationships.

"...a cluster of smaller and more closed webs."

It has always been so. Every corporate network is a closed web. Every bulletin board is a closed web. Thus it has always been. The Internet is a network of networks.

Because people with power commonly do something bad, doesn't make it not bad.

A few days later, I'm not sure what I was replying to, either. I might have clicked on the wrong Reply link. Apologies for the confusion.

I will say, though, I'm amused by your response because I didn't mention socialism, or anything related, anywhere in my comment. Personally, I'm an anarchist, and while your quote is simplistically clever, it's irrelevant to me.

also, not practically useful, esp. given enough time. People have each others' names, esp. given enough time.

This isn't biological. When you have a society where people think money defines who you are, and all social studies are basically done on white, educated folks, no wonder all our conclusions on "human nature" are f*#@ed up.

Slashdot can't be "honest" with "itself." That'st just too much to ask.

Yeah. And tell it to any community effort that's actually tried to embody such values, and been regulated or budgeted out of existence, or shut down by police for not fitting into the state's recognized slots for organizations. I'm thinking of most community groups, activist groups, radical bookstores, public gardens, squatter communities, etc.

Our state values are not our true values. Or vice versa...

(Speaking as a New Yorker and an American)

The only reason libraries are tolerated by the state is their abject passivism.

Turn libraries into bastions of activism and they'll be regulated/budget-cut out of existence, just like all other activist spaces that achieve some sort of legitimacy are eventually regulated out of existence or have rents raised beyond reasonable levels.

If our society really held the values that people give lip service to when they talk about libraries, they would already be bastions of activism. Complaints in this very thread about them being "daytime shelters for the homeless" reveal exactly the opposite: what people want is a "free bookstore, but keep those other people out, please." Values of community, shared investment in education and the future and all that jazz, that necessarily implies open to all, including those nasty poor people.

"Names should be simple and non-political"

Ha! Hahahahahaha. Yeah. Good luck with that one.

Um, even "UTC" is political. Who came up with it? Why do you need to impose your time scheme on everyone? Sure, time ticks on, but in 60s? 100s? And what gives you the right to dictate universal time for someone on the other side of the globe?

Plus, names are always political, even when you think they aren't. The very idea that someone should adopt a name you want them to is political.

Yeah, cuz we're just in a glut of jobs at the moment. Screw this "everything's a market" crap. People should f'in organize already.