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A Different Kind of Enlightenment 265

Posted by JonKatz from the Revelation dept.
More and more, scholars, academics and scientists are comparing the rise of the Internet and the rise of the Digital Age to periods like the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Comparisons are being made to the discovery of fire and the printing press. And you know what? The parallels hold up amazingly well, from a universal embrace of freedom right down to the fear and hostility that greet new ideas:

It's no accident that one of the subject headings on Slashdot, complete with its own graphic symbol, is "Enlightenment." More and more frequently, academics, scholars and scientists are comparing the rise of the Digital Age and the creation of the Internet to such momentous historic periods as the Renaissance or Enlightenment.

In "The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization," University of Colorado scientist Douglas Robertson writes that the invention of the computer is a pivotal event in human history, akin to the printing press.

In Richard Rhodes' new book "Visions of Technology," chief Disney "imagineer" Bran Ferren assesses the Internet this way: "?the Net, I guarantee you, really is fire. I think it's more important than the invention of movable type." In "The Age of Spiritual Machines," inventor Ray Kurzweil predicts that computers will evolve so rapidly that in the next century they will surpass humans in basic intelligence.

Heavy stuff. All around the Net, there's a growing sense that something historic, even extraordinary, is occurring. Last week, a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News wrote that that the open source and free software movements was a social revolution as important as any in the last 50 years.

These perceptions are often bitterly controversial. The political scientist and historian Langdon Winner has written that periods of great technological advance often spark reprisals and religious upheavals. Off-line, the rise of the Internet has sparked widespread anxiety, hysteria, "decency" legislation, censorship technology like blocking software, and widespread alarms from journalists, intellectuals, lawmakers, parents, educators, morals czars and the clergy.

Oddly, these ideas can be just as controversial online. Just look at the response to most new ideas posted here or on other open websites or mailing lists. Unconventional ideas not only are disagreed with; they're attacked. It's not enough for an idea to be wrong or ignored; often it's so frightening and enraging that it has to be killed, the source driven off. This is always a reliable barometer : something important is happening; people are threatened by it.

As the dimensions of the Internet and social upheavals like open source and free software become clear, it's all the more important to look to history for clues about what it means, about why so much excitement, hatred, anxiety and confusion surround great leaps forward in human consciousness or development. Looking backwards, for once, may help us rise above our narrow interests and expertise to try to grasp just what's happening.

Like the earlier period of technological and social upheaval called the Enlightenment, this one, as diverse as it is, involves certain central issues and values.

"The men of the Enlightenment united on a vastly ambitious program," writes historian Peter Gay in "The Enlightenment." That program was "secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom, above all, freedom in its many forms - freedom from arbitrary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to make his own way in the world." Among the Enlightenment's many legacies were the American and French Revolutions, both of which advanced the then-radical idea that individuals had rights, including the right to determine their own personal, cultural, and political histories.

In 1784, as the Enlightenment was peaking, philosopher Immanuel Kant defined it as humankind's emergence from self-imposed tutelage, and suggested a motto: "Sapere aude" Dare to know: take the risk of discovery, exercise the right of unfettered criticism, to accept what Gay called the loneliness of autonomy.

For the past few years, writing for magazines like Rolling Stone and Wired, and for websites like Hotwired, Slashdot and the Freedom Forum's Free!, I've been struggling to track the political values of the younger Netizens building the Internet. I've written about survey findings from researchers like Yankelovich, Peter Hart and Frank Luntz Associates. And, of course, I've exchanged e-mail with thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of people online.

Clearly, they are patching together a new kind of culture, with distinct values and politics. Just as clearly, this system isn't really new, but a continuation of something a few hundred years old. Peter Gay described it almost flawlessly, and also presciently. What is new is the linked, networked system of communications that transmit these values, more powerful than any of the institutions that so bitterly opposed the first Enlightenment - monarchies, organized religion, business interests.

Throughout history, people who preached freedom from political, religious or economic dogmas have paid dearly. They've been hanged, drawn and quartered, burned alive, massacred. But the Internet, adopting and transmitting Enlightenment values like freedom, has blown right past politicians, journalists, churches, educators and even -- through movements like free software -- the giant corporations that are as powerful as many governments.

That online culture is too diverse to generalize about. Yet at its core, it has widely-shared values. From hackers to Linux geeks to MP3 downloaders, the central beliefs are freedom and individual rights. Freedom to speak your mind. To acquire the music you want. To share the software you use. To expect access to the information in the world as a right, not a privilege.

Online, there is commitment to freedom from arbitrary power. We don't curb our speech or thoughts to suit the marketing conventions of media companies or corporations. We believe in trading freely. We embrace the freedom to realize one's talents, a core hacker value. We share what we learn. We insist on the freedom of aesthetic expression. Even though we're sometimes too close to our own experiences to see them, these are enormous and powerful ideas. Conscious or not, we are living them online.

We reject dogma, especially from political parties, and journalism's foolish insistence that there are two ways of looking at the world, from the left or the right, and that all discussion be confined to those suffocatingly narrow points of view.

We take the risk of discovery every day by exploring new technologies, developing new programs, struggling with new challenges, and patching together a new kind of culture. We accept unfettered criticism. We dare to know, and in embracing these ideas, we also accept the loneliness of autonomy, the fact that we exist out of the mainstream.

Curiously, if we are freer than ever to experience these values, we still have few forums in which to talk about them. Enlightenment philosophers were exiled or imprisoned. But in many ways, they were freer to talk about their ideas than we are. Online, those who want to talk about ideas share the more benign but nearly universal experience of being assaulted, flamed, or otherwise attacked. It can't kill you, but it can sure keep ideas from developing. Orthodoxy lives, even here. It just takes different forms.

This isn't a new phenomenon either. Enlightenment philosophers were a family, writes Gay, but second only to their pleasure in promoting their common cause was the pleasure in criticizing colleagues and comrades. "They carried on an unending debate with one another, and some of their exchanges wee anything but polite. Many of the charges later leveled against the Enlightenment -- naïve optimism, pretentious rationalism, unphilosophical philosophizing - were first made by one philosopher against another."

Anyone who ventures online with ideas and opinions should expect the same, and he or she won't be disappointed: ideas are challenged, as are facts, conclusions, grammar, writing styles, technological expertise, character and integrity. Accepting this is accepting what Gay calls unfettered criticism. Then and now, it's the toll paid for participating in something dramatic and important. And it's cheap at the price.

Still, reading Gay's description of Enlightenment values always hits me like a hammer, because it reflects so completely the experience of going online and discovering this new Enlightenment.

Off-line, many of us are restricted and limited by the realities of life - by bosses, the companies we work for, the social conventions of the places we live. That makes the Net all the more exhilarating. Online, we are free to make our own way, unchecked and unbound.

Sapere aude is as good a motto for us as it was for them. jonkatz@slashdot.org
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A Different Kind of Enlightenment More

A Different Kind of Enlightenment

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  • The university is therefore here. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The idea of the university, seeking truth in voluntary associations of people, is realized so much more easily when it is based from the home than it was when you had to travel by horse or by foot to Venice. Although Katz may be preaching to the choir, I'd sure like to know how the /. readership is growing. Katz may have just written Net Orientation 101.

    Continuing the parallel, we should expect some of the readership to be gagged, or exiled, or killed. Flame-wars used to be conducted with the Church as the enforcer. Governments and corporations will be trying to do the job soon. We've already seen folks being sentenced to "no Net access", right?

    The physical areas of tiny top level domains - where the authorities are too busy or too laissez-faire to worry about what people put on the net - will therefore get full of brilliant, crabby people. These TLDs will be subject to isolation from other TLDs on a sporadic basis, as governments and corporations attempt to control the flow of information. Watch for a real shootin' war when someone does a Nick Haflinger and scatters the box full of CIA records.

    jet_silver, too lazy to log in.
    For your comfort and convenience, this .sig line has been removed.




  • Lead? (Score:1)

    by kovacsp ( 113 )
    I agree *completely*, however the readership of /. are mostly hackers themselves so it seems kind of silly. Essays he writes for /. should be fundamentally different than those for mainstream journalism. Something like this doesn't belong here, but something like Time or Newsweek (not that Katz writes for those magazines.)

    I just think if Jon is going to write for /. he should pick more pertinent topics.
  • You write extremely well Jon, but you seem to be preaching to the choir. We all pretty much already know this stuff, although some of us may not be able to express it so eloquently.

    Keep up the good work. Don't be afraid to lead this band of rogues.
  • As Tonto said, "Who's this 'we'?"*...

    Is is really defensible to speak for the "enlightened"?

    * As in an old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto being surrounded by various tribes and the Lone Ranger announcing "We'll head for the hills...."

  • Don't forget he invented the blowjob too... He didn't get to be veep because of his dynamic personality
  • I've been telling people for a long time (since before we could put inline images on webpages) that the web would be seen in history as just as important if not more so, than the invention of movable type. I just wish we had Tim Berners-Lee's first webpage as we have the Guttenburg Bible. But the discussion of the destruction of old webpages to make way for the new as opposed to the storage of centuries old books is a completely different topic.
  • But it _is_ nice to have the historical perspective. The question is, will we sit around feeling special or go out and do something? It looks like hackers in general are too busy doing the latter to have much truck with the former, even in terms of being effusively praised like the Boomers were in the late 60s.
    Perhaps articles like these by Jon (outward-directed) will help other non-hackers interpret what they are seeing in a positive, non-threatening way. I hope so. In that case, Jon is not a leader so much as an interpreter- and the reason many hackers are upset by him is very simply because he's not speaking their language :)
  • One interesting note is that Katz is so familiar and at home in hacker culture that his title, 'A different kind of Enlightenment', clearly indicates that the default use is the window manager and the common-English use is the different kind, to hackers (and is ignored to such an extent that an article on it is merited!) That did impress me in a quiet way, and I'm the antithesis of the generic Katz booster. I always want _content_ from him, not feel-good or self aggrandizement. Well, this isn't primarily targetted to hackers- but this sort of article is downright useful and important in many ways.
    Somebody mentioned 'Internet 101', but Katz has written a first installment on 'Hackers (old-school) 101', and such a perception in the public eye could make it much easier to achieve many hacker and Linux and open source goals.
  • "How many of you out there have sat down at your computer, logged in to the net and read a novel? Probably none."
    Well then: Here [airwindows.com] ya go!
    Hope ya like it. Took ages to write... darn slashdot is so interesting it gets in the way of writing other novels (or at least finishing them ;) )
  • He's a _boomer_, OK? They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite. Ever hear of a book called 'The Greening of America'? This is not about 20th century man: you're just reacting to a Boomer being a Boomer. At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose, which I heartily appreciate and encourage- having him celebrate us as the latest e-love generation can't hurt anybody. Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story (says the gen-X cynical writer geek ;) )
    Sure he's drunk with his own importance- you sum it up very nicely indeed- but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration ;) look at the alternatives, he could still be extolling authors named Katz who become famous on the internet ;) compared to that he's doing wonderfully, he's really looking outside himself and thinking about the world from within his frame of reference. That's a good thing...
  • You are:
    • raised to believe freedom is worth fighting for
    • outer-directed and unselfish
    • possessed of a sense of optimism unlike the youth of today
    • wanting to make a positive difference
    • pretty generationally consistent with these traits
    • so generous you'll allow us to disagree with everything you say because you understand better than us our own right to do so

      So basically, you're not elitist at all, just better than us young computer punks?
      I am not sure I can believe you.
  • Very well spoken. So who's going to be first with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes? M$? Governments? Penguins or some other small cute animal?

    *ahem* .. (Tens of thousands of people? :) )

  • >Any thought of independence is beaten
    >down with the oldest and crudest method - the
    >threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in
    >hell".

    This sounds more like a bad Sunday school experience than the God of the scriptures. Take a read at the Psalms and Job. You will find complaint after complaint against God, usually to the tune of "Where the heck are you, God?" If God was supposed to beat down *any* thought of independence with hellfire, then the psalmists hands' would have been too trembly to put pen to scroll, let alone dare write down their thoughts.

    >Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle
    >ages.

    Well, *the Church* ruled Europe, and it wasn't acting very Christian. Christians are not supposed to be going around torturing, maiming, burning people at the stake, etc.

    >Faith means to believe something without
    >evidence. This is the very opposite of
    >rationality and enlightenment.

    Not quite true. Faith certainly means that you trust in something that you don't have all evidence for, and especially if you are talking metaphysical matters, the evidence can never be fully obtained.

    Look, the likelihood that I'm going to somehow make you into a believer over the Net is pretty small. Hopefully, though, I can get you to examine your own criticisms to see if they truly hold up.

    Be honest with yourself.

  • Posted by kha0s theory:

    just another example of out-of-context quoting!
  • *WAY* too many of the posters above look at the world, say, "Nope. That ain't the way it is, Jon," and post a flame. God, you are all pathetic. But then again, *every*one is pathetic.

    The world as it is is not going to continue. Just as the world of pre-WWII is not the world of post-Vietnam War, so the Connected world will be different from the pre-Internet world. Some posts say, "But the Internet has been around for *such* a *long* time already!" Ya freaking kids. The Internet is a blink yet, or maybe a dim glow from a rising sun. Or something else equally banal and cliched.

    Those who say, "But the majority of the world isn't on the Internet!" See the paragraph above.

    And as far as the free flow of information vis-a-vis artists making money: making money was not the point in the pre-industrial age. Survival was the point. Artisans and artists survived by patronage; Beethoven was not paid for his music as much as he was paid to link his name with political figures (Kings and such).

    Can't you see a world with "IBM, the Patron Company of Norman Rockwell," or something. (I can see IBM sponsering Norman Rockwell. And Microsoft sponsoring Jackson Pollock. "He's so darn *innovative*!")

    My point is: the world is changing. It hasn't changed yet, but it is in the process of changing. This is not a single-state system; we can have multiple states (and transition states) existing simultaneously. Some of you punks are just too young and/or stupid to see any change.

    And I think I just figured out why so many people flame on-line. It's because writing a nice, reasoned post gets no reactions. Nobody cares about reason or intelligence.

    - Tony (in a flaming mood)

  • Unfortunatly, you are forgetting a few economic and biological truths. Everybody (even artists and software developers) needs food clothing and shelter. In the modern world, add computers, internet connection, transportation and other tools of their trade. Those things aren't free.

    How many great songs do you suppose your favorite band would be producing after their 8-10 hours of minimum wage day job?

    I agree that the move to electronic freedom isn't going to stop for anyone. What will stop is the whole point of that freedom unless the content producers (artists, musicians, authors, software developers etc etc) can make a decent living in the process. Keep in mind, the artists didn't have any adapting to do when CDs came out. They still write music, record music, mix and produce music, have a master pressed, get screwed by the record lable, go on tour (repeat as needed). What changed?

    Clearly, a new economic model will have to be developed if that new electronic freedom is going to work. The middleman won't really go away until the artist can find a better way to make a living.

    MP3 only overcomes the huge investment in CD replication packaging and shipping. Solve the other part, and the music will actually get cheaper and the musician will make more money as well. The middleman will have to find something else to do since demand for their services will dry up.

  • Put in perhaps its most simple terms, when it comes to software, why is it reasonable to expect something (and in some cases, somethng very significant) for nothing?
    You should realize that RMS's philosophy isn't anti-commercial, it's pro-freedom. He doesn't say programmers should not be paid for their work. It's the model that is currently used to accomplish that he objects to.

    The problem wtih proprietary software is the government uses FORCE against people who share that software. In most cases, the justification of government force against individuals is that the individual has directly violated the rights of another individual.

    If you share a copy of a program, the original author doesn't lose his copy. And, if you share a copy, you help a friend.

    A possible business model I can think for free software to work in the Real World [tm], is to get people to bid on software. For instance, set up a system such that people make binding contracts that if X feature is added or X program is written, they will send the company Y amount of dollars.

    I think it's worked that way in the fashion industry for years, and you don't see the clothing designers starving. ;) Of course, they work through middle-men and you pay for an actual physical product (cost of raw materials adjusted, adjusted by the market-defined value). But - other companies can copy their styles (and not draw such a premium) .. Like how a redhat CD is around $40 from redhat, but it's $2 from cheapbytes. Note that Redhat sports significant profits in despite the cost difference.
  • You really should give credit to Rasterman and Mandrake for coining the term "Enlightenment" We may all want stuff without having to pay for it, but at least we can keep the illusion of wanting freedom.
  • While trying to figure out how the creation of the 'net is like the discovery of fire, it finally clicked: That might explain all those darned flame wars that we keep having ;-)

    BTW, you must be crazy be crazy if you think I have time this morning to read that whole silly article. Let's get back to some real computer news. (Sorry John ;-)
  • Yes, basically that's the idea.

    The notion is that (aside from the difficulties of transferring information about) all information is free.

    It is a very radical notion, admittedly, which is why RMS is often hard to swallow.

    That doesn't mean there's no way it's the right idea. Open access to information, every last bit of it, does increase the risks that people might do something stupid with that information, but it also improves the chances that people will become educated enough not do stupid things, and maybe just maybe do really cool things!

    So if you have more questions/points against the ideas of free software, please be more specific, and thank you for the honest conversation. It's hard to find it in here sometimes amid the script kiddies.

    --

  • At the same time, this is a fairly specific issue in German culture--the burden of Naziism. Germany has no problems with nudity in advertisements, etc., but having a Nazi flag is "verboten".

  • Hysteria? (Score:4)

    by MichaelKVance ( 1663 ) on Sunday March 21, 1999 @04:25AM (#1970397)
    I wonder if the hysteria (and censorship, etc.) that Katz describes is limited to the US. It certainly seems that a good chunk of Europe is nowhere near as hysterical as the US is about the Net (moral legislation, etc.), or its much ballyhooed promises of eternal life and such ;).
  • The US tends to want to censor nudity and porn, while Europe tends to want to censor violence. ie the Euro version of Carmagedon has zombies with green blood while the US version has humans with red blood.

    You mean the German version? Europe is bigger than just Germany you know.

  • Katz usually doesn't impress me with his writings, but this was intelligent and inofensive. He didn't glorify the word "geek" or us it 24 times in the writing. clear and to the point, and he wasn't talking out of his ass either. this is something we all can identify with, even jon.

  • Interesting.

    I was not talking about risk: I was talking about change. In an historical context, your comments are senseless-- today, the percentage of oppressed is shrinking *in proportion* to the spread of technology.

    Oppression occurs when there is an imbalance of power. In today's world, power is measured in information. As the Internet spreads, the shift of power will continue, and those who control the information have the power.

    Does this help the Hutus? No. Not yet. In their country, power is still measured economically, where whoever can buy the most bullets has the power. But as power shifts, we may be able to keep the balance of power out of the hands of those who would oppress us.

    Now is the time to act, when the power is shifting. Once someone has power, it is harder to wrest control of it from them.

    And, out of curiosity-- what the hell are you doing to fix the world's problems? I mean, besides jumping in with self-righteous indignation, calling people idiots, etc?

    And actually, I'm American Indian, middle-class, and I own two computers and an X-Terminal.

    - Tony

  • Life goes on, no need to get too excited about it.
  • Wait till the US government realises that the OSS movement will:

    Bring previously unavailable technology to our 3rd world colonies.

    Undermine the profit base of one the US's most lucrative revenue generators (ie, the PC industry).

    Viz: a threat to the US global power base (IMO).

    What Katz didn't mention in his essay, is that the invention of moveable type is the direct cause of the fall of the Catholic church in Northern Europe (Lutheranism was the worlds first pamphleteering campaign). Someday soon Uncle Sam is going to wake up to the gravity of the situation. When that happens, us pro-freedom folks will turn into subversives pretty damn quickly.


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • 'Nuff said.


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • Real artists would ply their craft for free. (Woodstock, Monet, et al.) Not that I think they should starve to death...

    Still they could have exhibitions, concerts, etc.; people would pay to see them. There would, of course, be fewer "artists" when corportate creations like the Spice Girls and Bush fall by the wayside. And that wouldn't be so bad :-)


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.

  • RMS is my shepherd. I shall not want.


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • While in China in 1991, I traded my Amiga 500 to a Chinese national in exchange for a 500cc scooter! It has borne fruit!


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
  • This is where the net differs radically from TV.

    On TV, all content is created and paid for by commercial interests. 100% one-sided in favor of the promoters. Would people buy the record without the hype? Doubtful.

    On the net (lets use /. as an example), there is far more content than promotion. Once in three months I may click on a banner ad (if I even look at them). OTOH, I read about 200-500 /. user comments per day.

    Breaking this down, thats about a bazillion to one against hyping advertisers. The Spice Girls simply don't have a prayer.

    Also, look at what the majority of mp3 music out there is: 40% Chemical Brothers and 40% Wu-Tang clan. No Spice Girls.


    --
    As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.

  • I'm somewhat less optimistic than Katz about many-to-many communications enabling something new. I certainly hope it will, and think it possible; perhaps the software industry can move to a more cooperative style instead of the current cutthroat total-victory-or-nothing stance, perhaps music and literature will be less easily controlled by large conglomerates, perhaps journalism will become less insular.

    But it's too early to tell if this is actually going to happen, and it's still possible that the claimed online Enlightenment will all come to nothing. Many people simply don't care about such issues of freedom; witness the rise of Linux users who like it because it's zero cost, but happily chase after binary-only software. That complacency, that desire for convenience over principle, is what can doom the revolution, and relegate the Internet to just another media outlet.

  • Erm... no. The Enlightenment was secular, and often anti-religious; to claim that it arose as a result of Christian thought is incorrect. In fact, Enlightenment historians often slanted descriptions of earlier times in order to cast Xtianity in a poor light; consider Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or the false accounts of panics before the turn of the millennium, used to attack the superstition and corruption of the medieval Church.

    Also, see Dean Worbois' "The Faith of Our Founding Fathers" [postfun.com] for various quotes; the founders of the US may have been mostly deists of various stripes, but they were definitely no admirers of the structures of organized religions.

  • I would agree that your post deserves a 0 or +1. I also agree that you should start to see more consitancy in moderation.

    Personally, I think am neutral towards hate per se, but am intollerant of ignorance. There are people I genuinely hate, but not because of unsupportable beliefs about the color of their skin or whatnot.

    That said, the Al Gore bashing on this topic is getting a little under my skin. Al Gore didn't "invent" the Internet I used in college 15 years ago, but he had a lot to do with creating the publicly accessable Intenet I'm using from home today.

  • >Thirty years from now, when Generation X (and Y
    >and Z) have reached the upper eschelons of >Congress and the Supreme Court, we'll
    >begin to see our Jeffersons.

    Unfortunately, I don't think that will happen... Our generation is extremely fragmented - and most likely will be dominated by people who majored in accounting. The most vocal Netizens are likely to be ignored by them.
  • If the Moderators believed my post to be off-topic and so lowered its score, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that.

    >>BUT
    -Eric
  • If the Moderators believed my post to be off-topic and so lowered its score, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that.

    --BUT-- if they're going to lower the score of my good-natured quip, they should also lower the score of all of the racist, sexist, anti-religion, or otherwise bigotted or vulgar posts that make their way on to these comment boards. I've seen posts that didn't have their scores lowered that were FAR WORSE than my little joke. I just was kidding about the VP's faux pas, people have expressed HATRED on this site and not been censored.

    -Eric
  • It's no less fair than making fun of Dan Quayle for his spelling. Al Gore may have mispoke, he may not have meant what he said, but what he said was inaccurate. I'm not calling him names or a lier, but I am kidding about his mistake in the same way all public figures get kidded about when they make mistakes. I've made fun of Dan Quayle, Al Gore, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Pat Buchanon, Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and a bunch of other politicians of all philosophies when I feel the situation warrants it. I am at least consistant.

    Are you telling me that you've never made fun of Dan Quayle? Maybe you haven't, I don't know, but I see a bunch of Democrats complaining about how Al Gore is being unfairly made fun of after ruthelessly making fun of Dan Quayle for years. Lighten up, politicians are _supposed_ to be made fun of; what would the late night talk shows do without political humor?

    -Eric
  • That's funny, but it looks like you got your score knocked down, too (which I don't have a problem with as long as Dan Quayle jokes are treated the same way).

    -Eric
  • Just because the rabble can post a few rants on USENET doesn't change the political power structure. Here in the United States my father can't get decent medical attention because he can't obtain proper medical coverage (and he's on Medicare with a private MediGap insurance policy). Wasn't it the insurance industry who claimed single payer health coverage like in Europe and Canada would bankrupt the healthcare industry and force access 'rationing' for basic medical coverage? And isn't that what we have right now??? Who's talking about this on the net? Why isn't it getting large scale coverage? Could it be because even though individuals can present their views more readily, spreading that view is just as difficult as before?

    What is this 'Renaissance'? One where cybersex and sex robots can electronically service shy geeks [as taken from your last story], while serious discourse is discouraged through boredom? This is 'enlightenment'? We're heading for a major 'correction' in the population (that means mass starvation) as international corporations gobble up all the agribusiness and force genetically engineered crops down our throats. Think anyone gives a rats ass about that? (they will when the food becomes scarce)

    Or campaign finance reform? Does anyone in Amercia care about policitcal corruption and bribery among our elected officials? Does anyone really care that our lawmakers take campaign contributions and then slyly pass bills written by lobbyists from those very same contributors while poor children starve in schools literally falling to pieces?

    This is not the kind of discourse I see on the net. No I see sex, sex, sex, and political commentary carefullly crafted by ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, and the like. I also notice that small individually written homepages have become almost impossible to find on the major search engines of late. Could this be because the major news outlets don't want their information monopoly disapated by individuals acting in their own best interests?

    Just because we serfs can present our viewpoint to each other doesn't mean the power brokers in Washington give a rats ass. The unfortunate thing is that neither does the populace.
  • I looked over those pages and found nothing but yet another philosophical movement which claims to solve humanities problems by redefining [reframing] them into something else.

    Starving masses cannot be reframed away.

    For example, in this months Harpers is published a small story on Monsanto, the agri/chemi business which created and sells Roundup Ready crop seeds along with their pesticide, Roundup. They are claiming that Roundup Ready seeds are intellectual property, and therefore to save and replant these seeds from a Roundup Ready seed crop is "seed piracy." These seeds are genetically engineered to be resistant to the Roundup pesticide, allowing a farmer to saturate the crop with pesticide, where previously one had to be a little more judicious with its use, simply because it tends to kill the crop along with the pests. Of course the fact that Roundup runnoff into our water and food supply, and how that may affect the environment and people, isn't even considered.

    Monsanto plans to soon release it's seeds with a "Terminator Gene," designed to prevent second generation seeds from germinating. The fear is that this gene could spread to original crops and wipe out our base food supply. For example, Roundup Ready soy when planted could spread the terminator gene through pollen to standard soy crops, and start a chain reaction which could lead to worldwide soy decimation. Of course, Monsanto Roundup Ready soy will always be readily available. That is, as long as Monsanto stays in business.

    The United States is taking Europe to the WTO (World Trade Union) because Europe wants to label genetically engineered crops as they go to the store shelf. Europe doesn't want to ban these crops, only label them, yet the US is fighting to prevent this by calling it a trade sanction. That's right, informing the population about what they're eating is somehow trade restraint...

    Your 'Extropy' philosophy may be a nice twist to the word entropy, but it won't change the suicidal path humanity is walking down as we hand over control of our food supply to corporate monoliths who seem prepared to let the world starve in order to monopolize worldwide food production and distribution. When local farmers can't store seed for the next generation, should worldwide calamity hit we will see devestation unlike anything since the dinasours took their last breath.

    (and this is but one example of our idiocy)
  • Some of the early digital communities (particularly the Well) had some amazing thinking going on. We used to have extraordinary arguments on our local BBSes -- our signal-to-noise ratio was unparalleled in my experience of the larger 'net.

    I'm suspicious that those voices are still out there, just drowned in the cacophony.

    As we're out here marching around in our digital pasture and avoiding the "warm ones", sometimes we'll come across a still, clear pool of thought; it's those little discoveries that make the 'Net worthwhile. :)

  • It's all about information, really.

    The revolutions that the "digital age" is being compared to are revolutions in the availability of information and knowledge.

    The inention of the printing press reduced the cost of book reproduction (while it would previously take a scribe several months to copy a book, it would take a printer slightly longer to print the first copy, but almost no time at all to print an extra hundred copies).

    The Internet (rather than the digital computer) redices the cost of the distribution of information to a very low level. This does indeed have revolutionaty consequences.

    Specifically, many organisations which exist to collect information and sell it for profit have already found themselves profoundly affected by the dawn of the worldwide network.

    I wonder how different history would have been if copyright law had existed before the invention of the printing press.


  • There is nothing new in people wasting the gift of literacy on the
    shallow and tittilating. Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates understand that.
    Cervantes also understood this problem when he
    wrote "Don Quixote", a story of a man deluded
    by reading too many trashy Romance Novels. Perhaps we now have entire
    nations acting out the lives of those they see on TV and read in trashy novels.
  • Of course it's all sex, sex, sex on the net ... on the surface. What do you expect?

    But the underlying renaissance is far more substantive, and on a par with that earlier renaissance. Spend a few weeks on the extropians and transhumanist mailing lists, and you'll see that important things like getting decent medical attention for one's family are but a tiny part of what lies ahead.

    Here are a couple of URLs. Treat them as no more than significant points on a massive search tree:

    http://www.extropy.org/

    http://www.aleph.se/Trans/
  • Actually, if the Windows95 GUI is the norm then E does the job very nicely as a symbol for an enlightenment that goes way beyond the current state of play for the majority of computer users.
  • If most of the Internet is used up on sex, it indicates that the majority of people want sex, so who are you to say that it's wrong, FOR THEM? Perhaps it stems from politicians having stigmatized it for so long that the floodgates have now opened.

    In any event, none of that matters as long as the Internet is also available for more productive things as well, and it is. Check out those two URLs I gave above to give yourself a birdseye view of the positive side of Internet communities and how they are gearing up for very practical advances for mankind.
  • In any event, politician's lives are not meant to be cushy. A little pain in their positions of power can have a salutory effect in bringing them back in touch with the real world and distancing them from the idea that they are gods who can do no wrong.
  • Don't put artists into some sort of ivory tower of exclusions. There is no universal law that says that artists *have* to get paid, nor software developers, nor anybody else.

    The steamroller of electronic freedom isn't going to stop just because musicians want to make money. If they do nothing and just live in the pre-Internet world then they may indeed starve, but I expect that most will adapt to the new ways and possibilities. After all, they adapted easily enough to the new world of CD pressing when it suited them, not protesting about the price hike despite the lower cost of CD fabrication, and now they have a new challange. Nobody said that just because the music industry could bleed their customers dry over the past decades they must now continue doing so as a matter of right.

    Of course, some say that poorly paid musicians in their agony write better material. Well, I rather doubt that, but one thing's for sure, and that is that the sooner the Sony, EMI, etc of this world stop earning 95% of the earnings from music the better. I have no sympathy for musicians that support that old system just to earn a few crumbs thrown to them by their masters.
  • or a metaphore...
  • It's no accident that the folks who made the enlightenment window manager decided to call it that. Their work is a result of the enlightenment that Katz was writing about.
  • The FSF makes the claim, for example, that just because software is easy to copy (as opposed to a book), that this is why you should be able to copy it and distribute it at will. What does the ease with which something can be reproduced have to do with a perceived right to distribute someone else's property?

    Because the whole idea of property depends on scarcity (scarcity of resources, scarcity of access, etc.). Thus, the mechanics of property break down when things can be perfectly duplicated at zero cost.

    And... What the heck, here's another gratuitous plug for my essay on the subject, Digital Sculptures [best.com], which attempts to illustrate the future foreshadowed by our computers.

    Schwab

  • Some facts.

    * You find censorship nearly everywhere. The US, Sweden, Europe, the whole planet has some form of it. Sorry.

    * Yes, America's culture is still influenced by its Puritan roots, but it's also influenced by a LARGE number of other cultures. Cultural conservativism is not a crime, it's just something that many people choose to disagree with.

    Nietzsche can blow me. Everybody lives by some moral or ethical code, even Crowleyesque "do what thou wilt" paraphrases that amount to "nothing is immoral".
  • Well, no. Several European countries practice censorship.

    The US tends to want to censor nudity and porn, while Europe tends to want to censor violence. ie the Euro version of Carmagedon has zombies with green blood while the US version has humans with red blood.

    It's funny though. All these US politicians raise a stink about pornagraphy yet within 20 miles of my house there are 4 or 5 porn video rental stores.

    So while some politicians would take away our freedom of speech, judges generally tend to protect us. Not always unfortunately, but many of the times.

    Aside from the countries you would expect (eg. China), the only censorship of the net I've seen suceed has come from Europe ... think Germany people.

  • Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe all Euro versions have the zombies. What I meant about censorship succeeding in Germany was the Compuserve fiasco.
  • So, if Nietzsche says it, it must be true? How is blindly following what Nietzsche says (or any other philosopher, for that matter) any different your being "weak-willed" or "needing others to think for them"?
  • Maybe they are waiting for free software production tools to bring it within their reach.

    Then many of them won't even need sponsors in this brave new world

    :-)

    And they are close
  • >It's the queers! They're in it with the aliens!
    >They're building landing strips for gay martians!

    You know what, Stuart? I like you. You aren't like the other people here in the trailer park.

  • I don't think it's our Puritan heritage. As Americans we are really a mongrel people; they don't call this place the big melting pot for nothing. My heritage is mostly British Isles with a Lithuanian grandfather. My last girlfriend was mostly AmerIndian. My best friend growing up was Vietnamese. ...

    It's really a product of isolation. Urban Americans aren't usually as bad as rural Americans when it comes to intolerance. Racial and class inequities are still a problem everywhere, but most city folk are used to dealing every day with other people who didn't grow up with the same set of values and beliefs. Particularly in the northeast and on the west coast, which is why the rest of the country condemns those areas as dens of iniquity. The common frame of reference in those places is much more relaxed, so it's attacked by narrow minded and inflexible people.

    In short, I think that most Americans aren't actively conservative as much as they are culturally stagnant. There's a big difference. I know that it's not just an American thing, either. We're just more noticeable because of our economy.

    Feh.

  • if you could enumerate those, please..?
  • The US has been traditionally one of the most culturally conservative contries in the world. In spite of leading the way in political freedom the US is one of the most culturally oppressed nations around. I'm not referring to the fringe, but rather to mainstay of culture - witness the popular view on marijuana, the highest drinking age in the industrialized world and the incredible stir that the "hippies" caused.

    I suspect that this is due to the fact that the US was originally colonized by the Puritans and that their cultural conservatism was just passed on from one generation to the next.

  • I'm afraid you don't know Kant at all. He may have said "Dare to know" but he was also the one that said "You should act only according to those laws which are universally applicable," and cited as an example the following:

    A murderer is chasing your friend and he comes to you for help, so you let him into your house. The murderer comes by and asks you where your friend is and you must tell him that he is in your house since it is wrong to lie.

    That guy led a cultural rervolution? He was, if anything, a spokesperson for the status quo.

  • Very Good Article. A lot of things to think about. I have noticed that you stopted to try to please the croud or stir a controversion and dropped unnecessary use of such words as geek and geekdom.
    This is very good. People stoped bitching about you and actually started to discuss your writngs. So now I can enjoy not only your article but other people responces.
    So I'm waiting for the next one.
    BTW. Do you still use Linux? :)
  • The OSS movement won't survive an attack by the US government. Most OSS developers are not willing to sacrifice their lifestyles for "higher values". Coding for free is all very well and good, as it brings respect in the community, and sometimes other interesting projects. Fighting against world governments is a completely different ballgame. Many geeks may see this as a romantic lifestyle, full of adventure and excitement. The reality is that the US government can and will jail anyone it thinks is subversive. Most jails don't offer very much bandwidth, kids. :)


    This is not to say that we can't/shouldn't fight back. However, since we are not a global nuclear power, I don't recommend fighting directly against any government. Subtlety is the best policy.



    -Ke


    "Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
  • I'd have to agree with on the fact that to some people, Free Speech and Free Information are not the most important thing. However, it is a cause that is worth fighting for. I personally am in no position to directly help starving peoples in Africa or ethnically cleansed peoples in Indonesia. I can only offer them a chance to speak of their plight on the net. This is where Free Speech and Free Information comes in. It may not be a life-saving movement in and of itself, but its uses for other movements are unlimited.


    Anonymity can sometimes be the only way to get a message across. Sometimes signing your name to an idea can lead to persection, violence, and sometimes death. Anonymity is the only way to protect oneself against people who believe that certain things should not be said, and are willing to defend that belief by any means neccessary.


    The same argument that is applied to Free Speech can be applied to Anonymous Speech as well. Many people believe that Free Speech is abused more than it is used for Good (TM). The problem with this argument is that Good is a matter of personal judgement. Anonymity is one of the only things that keep Free Speech completely Free.


    -Ke
    "Where do you get off thinking any OS is superior to DOS?"
  • > Which version of the Christian moral code? is the right one.

    Well, Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment is to "love the Lord your God", and the second is to "love your neighbor as yourself". That's what really matters: do as you would have done to you. If this sounds like basic common-sense ethics, that's because God designed us to function best under His policies.

    "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Gal. 5)

    > Tonnes of Christians do believe in a literal
    > hell, where they believe a lot of people who I
    > dont think deserve it are going. You cannot
    > dispute that and the > but-they're-not-real-Christians thing is not an
    > appropriate response.

    As the old Catholic hymn puts it, "They'll know we are Christians by our love." I don't know whether these people are Christians or not, but if they don't demonstrate the love of Jesus, they're not good examples of what Jesus is about.

    Anyway, believing in a literal hell is not the same as believing that anyone who sins will end up there.

    Paul: "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

    Jesus: "I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly."

    > The Christian churches are human-run
    > organizations that are ultimately responsible
    > for their actions.
    > Attempting to implement Communist theory led to
    > the abuses in the Soviet system.
    > Attempting to implement Christian theory led to
    > the abuses of the various Christian systems.
    > You can't just say well those weren't really
    > communist/christian actions. You may be
    > literally correct but the movements' *actual*
    > results in human society are how things worked
    > out.

    Any idea can be badly implemented. The question is whether we are trying to judge the Christian *faith* as such or the Christian *movement* throughout history.

    The Christian movement gets a B+ for the first few centuries (after the departure of Jesus; all that raising-the-dead stuff in the first few years gets an A), and an F from Constantine on. (Note that the Christian church didn't start getting ugly until it got involved in politics. Maybe there's a lesson to the modern church here.)

    The Christian faith gets an A, unless you want to be A*n R*nd and claim that Jesus taught evil moral beliefs like 'compassion' and 'generosity'.

    > Mna is not *flawed* by the way. (More Chrsitian
    > promotion of self-hatred). Man makes mistakes.

    The Christian faith doesn't promote 'self-hatred'. (Are we ignoring all that stuff about being created in the image of God, about being adopted as children of God, about being representatives of Christ in the world?)

    > Man does evil things. But we must always strive
    > to pick ourselves back up collectively and learn
    > from those mistakes and go forward. Being bound

    Fine. "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." So pick yourself back up *individually* and go forward.

    > by a rigid paternalistic moral code isn't going
    > to help anything (except if you're the elite

    No kidding. "Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? ... All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.' Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because 'the righteous will live by faith.' ... Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law."
  • I for one am not too elitist to be ashamed to admit I want a sex robot. And I want it sooner, rather than later. To be against sex robots is like being against masturbation. Not very enlightened at all.
  • An Enlightenment has to start somewhere. A revolution is usally started by the oppressed using the tools of their oppressors. We who do have the time and freedom to read and to respond to these sorts of articles are using the tools of the oppressors (gov't, corporations etc.) in ways that they did not intend.


    I personally found Katz article to be well stated, and truly representitive of the Net and its politics. His article was not about a revolution in a physical sense. It was about a revolution of thought. Your attacking of him personally just for his ideas using arguments that have no direct connection to his article is just the sort of tactic that governments and religious groups have used historically to rile people up driving them to the extremes Katz describes in his article.


    Those other issues in your response are all valid issues facing the global society which you are aware of only because of the very technology you are decrying. I was also going to acuse you of rambling and ranting, but after what I have just written that would just be hypocritical.


    Join the revolution.
    Tell us how to deal with your social issues through thoughtful and positivly worded postings like Katz does.


  • When journalists try history, they so often go for the fluff and the easy generalities, and miss much of the really
    interesting stuff altogether. Then they put their junk in print before people who may not be able to see it for what it is,
    who will then go away with a grossly distorted view.

    But don't you see? That's exactly the _point_! That's the way things USED to be. Now, when a journalist publishes something that one of us disagrees with, we can publish our point-of-view immediately, often right there with the journalist's, for anyone to read.


  • First, I didn't particularly enjoy the article, for the same reasons I rarely enjoy any Katz article: cheap potshots at groups with whom he disagrees (and about which he seems to know very little); the "we're so good; how'd all those people in history have everything so screwed up? tone that pervades almost every sentence of a Katz commentary.

    The American Revolution was hardly born out of the Enlightenment. This is absurd on its face. The differences between it and the French Revolution were profound. The leaders of the American Revolution were not blind to the realities of human nature. The butchery of the French Revolution doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the American War for Independence.

    Perhaps the most consistently annoying thing about a Katz article (including this one) is how self-congratulatory he is about modern society. Perhaps the principal characteristic of 20th Century Western culture is how blind it is to the past. Drunk with his own importance, the 20th century man can't learn a thing from history. "All that came before me were blinded by their own prejudices," he declaims; yet he can't see his own bigotries for what they are. He can't see that in the name of "tolerance" and for the sake of "equality" he imposes tyrannies even worse than those in the past that he condemns as dictatorial, as chains on the human spirit.

    Katz needs to lighten up. We're not as important as he thinks. We're just a drop in the bucket of history, and a dirty little drop we are, too.

  • you're just reacting to a Boomer being a Boomer

    Yes, I am. Exactly. Should I -- should you -- should he -- be satisfied with him just being a Boomer? No. Emphatically, no. If what his generation represents is screwed up, then I will not praise nor endorse a faithful representation of it. What is needed is rising above it. I surely don't think that I can change him (or anyone else -- excepting me, and I'm not all that sure about being able to do that either), but I can surely try to persuade him to change his own self-centered, self-absorbed view of the world.

    Good post, by the way. A thoughtful response is not what I was expecting.

  • >This is always a reliable barometer : something
    >important is happening; people are threatened by
    >it.

    Forgive me for saying this, but this is just so vague it borders on being meaningless. Also, I thought programmers if anyone knew that only because A leads to B, it does not always follow that B->A. People can feel threatened by lots of things, good things, bad things. This does not automatically mean that this thing is good or an eartshaking "paradigm shift".

    "The men of the Enlightenment united on a
    vastly ambitious program," writes historian
    Peter Gay in "The Enlightenment." That program
    was "secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism,
    and freedom, above all, freedom in its many
    forms - freedom from arbitrary power, freedom
    of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to
    realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic
    response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to
    make his own way in the world." Among the
    Enlightenment's many legacies were the
    American and French Revolutions, both of which
    advanced the then-radical idea that
    individuals had rights, including the right to
    determine their own personal, cultural, and
    political histories.

    Well, the people on the net seems mostly interested in their right to free porn, free music and free software. Lots of people know 1984, but how many here have read "A Brave New World?" by Huxley?

    >That online culture is too diverse to generalize about.

    I agree. But I think you go down a slippery slope and start generalizing more and more, projecting your own values onto the net and its population in the following paragraphs.

    >[...] the central beliefs are freedom and
    >individual rights. Freedom to speak your mind.

    You mean the central beliefs of the young, well off, usually white, western techies who have been a long time on the net.

    >We reject dogma, especially from political
    >parties, and journalism's foolish insistence
    >that there are two ways of looking at the
    >world, from the left or the right, and that all
    >discussion be confined to those suffocatingly
    >narrow points of view.

    I wish. You know how many times I have been debating with people (Americans) on the net and they say "Yeah, but you're from Sweden. That means you are a socialist. So your views are irrelevant."

    >We take the risk of discovery every day by
    >exploring new technologies, developing new
    >programs, struggling with new challenges, and
    >patching together a new kind of culture. We
    >accept unfettered criticism. We dare to know,
    >and in embracing these ideas, we also accept the
    >loneliness of autonomy, the fact that we exist
    >out of the mainstream.

    People in the third world are starving. People are being ethnically clensed in Indonesia, Africa and the Balkans as we speak. Those people take risks. THEY are really out of the mainstream. (If by mainstream you mean western culture. If you count heads they are of course in the majority.) They have no chance to get on the net. WE on Slashdot on the other hand are sitting in front of our expensive toy computers playing.
    Some "enlightenment" eh? :-/



  • You summed up EXACTLY what has been bothering me a long time about those who go evangelistic about the net.

    Slashdot seems by some to be seen as one place where the cream of the new "revolution" gather to exchange ideas, and if this is the best, then I am worried. Lots of smart people, but there are gaps in their education IMO. All they know or care about is computer technology. I thought the people of the enlightenment, like those of the Renaissance, valued a broad education which included both science and liberal arts.
  • >You say in your essay that freedom is for moral
    >man and people should be courageous to discover
    >new things. It is through Christianity that both
    >of these things reach their fullness.

    Freedom through Christianity? You have an invisible god who gives you absolute moral rules. He is supposedly omnipotent. He controls everything. Any thought of independence is beaten down with the oldest and crudest method - the threat of physical punishment. "Obey or burn in hell". This is an important part of Christianity and the very opposite of freedom.

    >The enlightenement came about because of
    >Christian thought, people in the middle ages
    >began to study the world because it is God's
    >creation and as such, is good.

    Get real. Christians ruled Europe in the middle ages. What happened? Many works of the greek philosophers were destroyed as heretical. Science stagnated. The Church had monopoly on the truth and tolerated no independence. Medicine hardly advanced at all for almost one thousand years because of the ban on autopsies and the concept of the human body as something wicked and dirty which needed to be punished rather than helped!

    The renaissance and the enlightenment started because some brave people dared to break away from the monolithic world view of the Catholic Church and search their own truth.

    >So Christian thought began the process which
    >resulted in the enlightenment.

    Faith means to believe something without evidence. This is the very opposite of rationality and enlightenment.

    >The American revolution was moral people with
    >Christian principles taking a stand on right and
    >wrong, against tyranny.

    Yes, the world is always black and white.

    >The French revolution was anti-Christian and
    >used secular ideals, everyone who has taken a
    >European history class knows the result of that
    >revolution.

    The revolution was anti-monarchy in case you didn't know. The monarchy with the help of the church had opressed the French people ruthlessly and eventually they revolted. The massacres that followed were of course terrible, but they were not caused by secular ideals. They were caused by resentment against tyranny.

  • The FSF would still insist on the elimination of copyright, something I find beyond the fringes of rational thought.

    Let's see, then you prefer to live in a world where things are scarce artificially. Imagine if I told you that I had an infinite supply of nice warm gore-tex jackets, waterproof, with hoods and comfy liners and giving one to eveyone in Canada wouldn't cost me a thing. But... I charge a bunch of money anyway, put all sort of arbitrary restrictions on what people can do with the jackets (no way are you going to trim it to size if it doesn't fit or mend a hole or add some decorations!) Meaning a lot of people shiver and perhaps some freeze to death. For no good reason.

    I mean, dammit, it makes sense to have high costs when something is actually scarce, but scarcity for the hell of it? That's kind of like a crime against humanity. At the very least, people are deprived needlessly. This happens sometimes with material goods (diamonds are a great example) but software is an extreme case - the cost of making a copy is nearly zero. A lot of people won't be able to run a program, or read a book, or whatever, only because of someone's greed, not any actual scarcity. The economics are so artificial it reminds me of communist economies.

    The only reason reasonable people ever agree to have intellectual property (besides those who directly benefit from the artificial economics) is in hopes that the system would produce incentives for people to create. In the case of software, I suspect it may not be worth it. Those incentives are convincing someone to pay my salary right now. But that means I am working in an artificial economy (with unnatural scarcity) which has certain inefficiencies. For example, others are unlikely to be able to build on my work.

    Jeff

  • Accountants never do anything consequential, no offense. They just count beans. The people who create things are the movers and shakers of a generation, and by and large, these will prove to be the Digital Industrialists, all of whom are netizens.

  • Pastures? Please. War zone, more accurately... (Score:4)

    by Evan Vetere ( 9154 ) on Sunday March 21, 1999 @05:49AM (#1970455)
    The Kant you speak of is probably writing his great thesis with a iMac, of all those. Hell, we have to work out where we're going first.

    Yes. Jon speaks of an epistemological revolution, but this movement is in its infancy. Thirty years from now, when Generation X (and Y and Z) have reached the upper eschelons of Congress and the Supreme Court, we'll begin to see our Jeffersons. The Kants who are writing today - even authors and philosophers who have been around for years but not recognized for who they represent - will begin to be nodded at twenty years from now.

    Social change still takes time, however quickly information can move. People still change gradually.

    I have a personal hunch that Ayn Rand will come to be recognized as one of the great philosophers of this period Katz speaks of. True, she died before it got off the ground, but her message was clear and conformant with our own actions: the man who acts rationally in his own self-interest will succeed. Rand's unappointed successors over at aynrand.org have thrown their unwavering support behind Microsoft on grounds "Gates is a capitalist and Rand's a capitalist." They've forgotten that not only is the opposing OSI initiative acting on incredibly Capitalist bases, they're stretching the limits of the term, doing anything to achieve personal gain.

    The next century's first half will see a major revolution in favor of laissez-faire economics and free thought. Rand's people are right - Microsoft should not be hit with a Government lawsuit. But MS will be brought down, as the playing field is releveled, by a superior competing product.

    Let's get working.

  • at last, imho.

    This seems to be the kind of writing Jon's most comfortable with, and it shows. Even though it stretches the point in a few spots (cmon Jon.. Fire??), it's a good stimulating read.


    Having said all that... What happened to your switch to a Linux box? I'm eagerly awaiting pt. 3
    of that saga.. :>


    ~Grell

    "Babeheart? What's it about?"
    "It's about a cute little pig that slaughters the English" -- Freakazoid

  • Imposter! (Score:2)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    This guy wrote a decent article. But what I want to know is what did he do with the REAL Mr. Katz?

    Seriously, I agree that the invention computer is an important event, but I think it has been hyped too much. The computer doesn't add anything that wasn't around 100 years ago, it just lets us do things faster.

    On the other hand I don't think the significance of the open source philosophy has been hyped enough. Love him or hate him, RMS has enriched all our lives as much as any other great person in history. The same can be said of Linus, and probably several hundred others.

    But, the BEST thing about this revolution is that we can all be generals. It's not a cult of personality phenomenon, but an egalitarian evolution. If you want to jump into the center of the storm, that jump is yours to take. The center of the open source storm is large enough for everyone to contribute to. Andy Warhal said that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Well, the open source revolution has turned that into a parallel process. Everyone in the future will be famous for 15 minutes *all at the same time*. (The future is now).

    Damn it's a good time to be a computer guy.
  • I think it's good that people are at least looking to history as they try to grapple with the meaning of the net. I wonder sometimes if it really is 'enlightening' tho. It's so easy to use that it encourages and propagates bad writing, bad code, bad design, bad ideas, bad everything. The Enlightenment inherited better academic traditions than what we have now. Even tho there was a lot of skepticism and questioning of medieval methods, most of the philosophes were still disciplined scholars. Now anyone with an ISP can give their often worthless 2cents. And it shows.

    If anything, I would say the net more closely resembles the age of the 'Struggle for Wealth and Empire' than the Enlightenment.

  • What the whole free software and MP3 movements seems to be a forerunner of is the free access of all information.
    Whether or not that's a good thing is another matter, but copy protection has NEVER been unbreakable, afaik, and probably never will be unbreakable. After all, if there's a way to read the content at all, there will be a way to write it again elsewhere.

    The well-established institutions of buying books, music, movies, etc., may come crashing down through necessity, just as MP3s are already causing the music distribution world to crash down. (I'm guessing that movies will follow with increased storage, and books will come when we have a nice way to read them, like those electronic ink projects.)

    How will artists get paid, then? I think that's a really interesting question. And it's better to start thinking of alternatives now than to face a meltdown of creativity because the artists can't find a way to get paid.
  • I'd actually love to see some figures on how much a typical, say, popular musician makes from album sales vs. ticket sales. Not how much is made by middlemen, but how much the musicians actually make.
    Then again, there are tons of middlemen even in concert ticketing.

    But how would this work for, say, authors? If they can't sell their work, and I don't see any other major source of income, how in the world can they support writing as a full-time job?

    Sure, "real" artists do their work out of passion rather than pocketbook, but if they're going to do it full-time, they'll have to find a source of income as well, or they'll be forced to do it only part-time, which would be a detriment for us readers.
  • I think total censorship of the net is inherently impossible.
    There are two ways to go about it, additive and subtractive:
    Additive: Allow only sites you don't mind people seeing.
    Problem: The internet is absurdly huge, and you'll never be able to come close to checking every last site that your people might need.
    Subtractive: Allow everything EXCEPT bad sites.
    Problem: If you filter manually, you come to the same problem as in teh additive case. If you use automated filtering software, people will find out the algorithm you use and defeat it. (By spelling words f*ck, for instance.)
  • Wow. I disagree with most of the points in your post! :)

    >How many of you out there have sat down at your
    >computer, logged in to the net and read a novel?
    >Probably none.

    Why do we need to read books? Lots of information comes in other forms, short posts, short articles, etc. Most ideas can be effectively conveyed in a reasonably short space. We're talking about free speech, not research.

    >It allows people to not have to actually carry on
    >a conversation with another human being, that is
    >not always so great. I sometimes feel we are
    >building a society of introverts.

    I disagree wholeheartedly. What are we doing now? We're carrying a conversation, no? And are you not a human being? Talking "in person" is not the only way to communicate. I'd say I'm exposed to far more different people and different ideas online than I would be if I didn't have internet access.
  • I wasn't talking about SHOULD.. I was talking about WILL.
    Information will be free whether or not we like it.
    So we should learn to deal with it.
  • Oh, Mr. Political Correct. Do you want me to burn my Wagner albums because Hitler loved Wagner too? Oh, shame shame shame on me.
  • Ah, need a brush up on your history, amigo.
    NOBODY important in the American revolution was a Christian. They were all deists. Jefferson was a big fan of Jesus but he thought the rest of the Bible was horseshit. Franklin and Paine were also Deists, closer to Native American beliefs than Christians. Yes, they did believe in a Creator, but not the Christian God.
    In history, the Christians were possibly the worst people who ever lived. We have them to thank from everything to the American attempted genocide of the Native Americans to the Inquisition. Columbus engineered a complete genocide, down to the last man, woman and child where he landed, something even Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, or Amin couldn't accomplish.
    Not that all Christians were bad. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian and as a person, few could compare. I've met many other real good Christian men and women, but unfortunately, the Pat Robertons and Jerry Falwells of the world tend to steal all the press.
    If you want to read something brilliant written by a Christian, read Ryme of the Ancient Mariner.
    Just giving credit where credit is due. Not meant to offend anyone.

    -El C.
  • I don't think most of the "negative" comments about America were meant to sound like spitting on America. They were more pointing out flaws in our past and things we need to do as a nation in the future. I think most of us could agree that it is better to say "I love my country and I'd like to improve it" than "My country right or wrong" or "America- love it or leave it".
    Kind of like my computer. It used to have exclusively NT on it when I was doing Visual Basic programming. Then I decided out of love for my computer that I should put a real OS on there and turned it into a dual boot. Now, out of more love for my computer, it's exclusively Linux and I recently upgraded my KDE to KDE 1.1 and it smokes!
    Back to your point, it is also important to take responsibility for our actions. If we as a nation are doing something wrong, then we should stop doing it instead of having that attitude that we're right because we're Americans. If we'd stop playing world police, maybe half of the world won't hate us anymore.
  • A great play about the progression from classicism to romanticism (enlightenment) is Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, who also wrote "Shakespeare in Love." Go and read it, NOW.
  • Heh. Of course, if you're going to think like that, you may as well lie down in front of the Juggernaut with all the glorps you despise. Anyway.


    No problem with being sceptical. But it is possible to be sceptical and optimistic.


    Seriously, no-one's really come up with a word like "Renaissance" or "Enlightenment" for this wave. Actually, hopefully no-one does (unless it's a good, inspiring word, not some catch-phrase some
    meme-miner came up with...) After we get over the upcoming daytrader caused market crash of course...


    The Kant you speak of is probably writing his great thesis with a iMac, of all those. Hell, we have to work out where we're going first.


    Anarcho-syndicalism? Liberal Libertarianism? Speak-softly-but-carry-a-big-box-of-Linux-distro-C Ds Socialism? Are you a Dawkinsian or a Gouldian? Stallmanism? Pre-Transhumanism?


    Whatever, D00d...


    What a heap of non-sequiters that was.

  • Not quite true. Faith certainly means that you trust in something that you don't have all evidence for, and especially if you are talking metaphysical matters, the evidence can never be fully obtained.
    And there's where faith interferes with enlightenment - the belief springs up that there is no evidence, so looking for it one way or another is discouraged. If something exists, then there is evidence. Otherwise that thing either does not exist, or does not interact with reality, in which case it may as well not exist. The scientific method involves looking until you find something one way or the other, and then once you've found it, you keep looking, just in case you missed something. The religious method involves being told "That's the way it is!", and never looking again.
  • Looking at christianity in a purely physical sense, the "Creationist" theory is just as (if not more so based on factual evidence) valid as Evolution (as an example of theory/faith based concepts that are held in high regard).
    Next time you decide you want to argue about "Creationist Theory", go look up info about a little critter called 'Xylocaris Maculipenis' - it's an African Bed Bug. Once you've found the info, read about it's mating habits. Evolution explains them rather effectively. Creationism says "God created all of the animals the way they are because he loves them and they're all good!". Think about that while reading the description of how this critter reproduces, but make sure you've got a bucket handy to puke into. Frankly, any diety who thinks like that isn't one that I'd like to be associated with.

  • The problem with "morals," is that people often associate "morality" with "religion." Morality can and does exist without religion. Of course, this provides ample opportunity for religionists to start talking about "relativism," which is their way of saying "without religion, we make our morals whatever we want them to be," but this doesn't hold water. The core of what we consider "morality" is based on some surprisingly simple, and fairly consistent ideas that have survived for eons.

  • Why is it again that software should be free?

    Why is it that people should have unfettered access to someone else's creation (property)?

    This isn't a question of freedom, it's a question of ethics.
  • Thanks for directing me to the Free Software Foundation's web page. After a bit of reading, I find myself more opposed to the philosophy than before. The FSF makes the claim, for example, that just because software is easy to copy (as opposed to a book), that this is why you should be able to copy it and distribute it at will. What does the ease with which something can be reproduced have to do with a perceived right to distribute someone else's property? Do they not recognize that something that can be copied in a matter of seconds, may have taken YEARS to develop?

    Further, they use the term "information" to describe software. Why? Software is not information - it is a series of instructions, carefully assembled in such a manner to perform a number of specified tasks. In doing so, it provides value for those using it.

    Information has value in its own right, but no one can own the fact that John Q. Public lives at 111 Xyz St., in Anywhere, USA. No can own the fact that Maryland is on the East coast, or that Denver is 5,183 feet above sea level.

    The difference here is quite clear, and to equate the two seems to defy logic.
  • Sadly I think that this new age of enlightenment will also become a new age of marketing and promotion. We will have to put up with more of this crap than less. It will become even easier to promote cheezy bands synthesized by the record labels. In fact you could break it down into a few easy steps.

    Step One: Form your band. Go hunting for washed up models, or teenage boys. No musical talent necessary. Develop a ficticious personality for each member that is designed to appeal to a different segment of the market. Put together an overall image for the band and write the bio's accordingly. Create a catch phrase and associate it with the band. Build the image.

    Step Two: Get AOL to push your band of lipsyncing models / street tough teen sweethearts as featured artist of the month. You give AOL some green, they push MP3's into everyone's face. Look for other opportunities for exposure. Get their song on Dawson's Creek. Pay Extra to do a piece on the band hyping their meteoric rise to fame. Get them in Bop and Teen Beat, you can fill the vaccuum that was left when JTT grew up. Be creative. Hype the image.

    Step Three: Start cashing in. Plan a tour, make a movie. Work them until they drop, because they will only be popular for so long. Once they start to die out, move on. Cash in on the image.

    So, Im looking for three to five washed up models...

  • This dude has it pegged down HARD (Score:3)

    by warpeightbot ( 19472 ) on Sunday March 21, 1999 @04:39AM (#1970513) Homepage
    Funny I should read this on Sunday morning about the time when normal people are settling down for their weekly harangue about how we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

    ESR took the movement to the level of sociology. This pegs it as something even bigger. And I think he's right. The hacker culture has a bigger sense of right and wrong than Joe Random Nonuser. It's not morals, it's ethics. It totally ignores all the dusty old books and figures out for itself (here's the Kantian Imperative again (you can't get out of your head to check something objectively)) the best course of action, ignoring things like laws and social taboos and concentrating on the real outcome. And in so doing, we give the Big Finger to the Cathedral folks, and we've scared the bejeezus out of them. This is Bigger Than The Both Of Us, folks.... we ARE history, in the raw. Make it count.

    There are no dress rehearsals.
    We ARE professionals, and
    this IS the Big Time.
  • I'm sure you caught the title and it's play on words: "A Different Kind of Enlightenment".

    (Not flaming or otherwise trying to be a smartass.)

    IMHO the title is referring to "A Different Kind of Englightenment" as a) the Digital Age we live in and b) a nod to the usual meaning of Enlightenment on /. (and perhaps some other meaning that I myself did not catch.)

    Cheers,

  • Same herd, different pasture (Score:3)

    by DrBoom ( 243523 ) on Sunday March 21, 1999 @04:36AM (#1970558) Homepage
    Katz may be right -- this may be the next Golden Age of history. If it is, I'd like to know who our Kant is. Or our Jefferson, our Voltaire, our Nietzche. The depth of thought in this Brave New Pasture goes no further than "don't step in the warm ones".

    Huxley and Orwell were optimists. Welcome to the Brave New Banner Ad -- watch your step as you wend your way to MiniNet and its Room 101 of consumer hell.

    It's the same old herd in a more efficient digital pasture.

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