Cybernauts Awake! 69
| Cybernauts Awake!: Ethical and Spiritual Implications of Comput | |
| author | Church of England Board for Social Responsibility |
| pages | 94 |
| publisher | Church House Publishing, 1999 |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Ben Ostrowsky |
| ISBN | 0-7151-6586-0 |
| summary | Anglican geeks consider the relationships among technology, culture and spirituality |
"But that trick never works!"
It's easy to write an encyclical about morality and cyberspace -- just read Usenet and you'll see what I mean. The hard part is writing about spiritual and ethical questions so as to invite a broad readership to think about it for themselves. The people of the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility are not the first to consider these questions. In fact, their thoughtful discussion of the issues has almost certainly benefited from observing where other such efforts have gone wrong. While some references are made to a generic Christian perspective, for example, the authors avoid preaching. Rather than condemning piracy, for example, they simply note that "the fact that the copy does not appear to cost the original owner anything, nor to deprive the owner of anything, shifts many people's moral balance."
"This time for sure!"
Perhaps more than in other treatments, geeks and our responsibilities are addressed specifically. Coders are asked to 'love your user as yourself', to consider good design a moral issue, and to reflect on the general implications of the work being done. Similar encouragement is given to IT directors: listen to the geeks and try to understand them! General suggestions for users are also offered: "remember systems are dust", as one heading puts it. Some may be dustier than others, of course, but I found it a refreshing way of saying 'garbage in, garbage out'.
When not framing the broader picture, Cybernauts Awake! also touches on specific issues of interest to Slashdot readers. Shrinkwrap licenses, for example, prompt a discussion of the balance of power between the manufacturer and the consumer. Although many inexpert users are likely to blame themselves for the effects of bugs, the authors note, the market generally rewards new features but not added stability. Similar attention is given to the human-computer boundary (with an explanation of the Turing test), communities (defined by geography or common interests), globalization and cryptography.
"Whoops -- don't know my own strength!"
I appreciate that the authors have kept the perspective broad enough that very few toes are stepped on. Having said that, I must note a subtle but cheap shot. "There is a huge free-speech culture" online, the authors write, "and in the US provided you are not an anti-abortionist, it seems that you can post anything you like." The site they allude to certainly bears mentioning, but without knowing the details (people's names were put on a list and were then crossed off after they had been killed by opponents of abortion), many readers may simply conclude that US laws do not permit speech on one side of the issue. Fortunately, this is a rare exception to a well-balanced discussion.
Recommended Audience
Cybernauts Awake! will be enjoyed by most readers interested in the subject of cyberethics (e-thics?), and can serve as a thoughtful tour of technological issues for readers with more knowledge of Christianity than of the Internet.
Availability
Unfortunately, the major booksellers have yet to add this title to their catalogs. I had to order directly from Church House Publishing (the official Anglican publishing house). Happily, my copy arrived in Florida within a few days of my order; the £8.67 total was translated without a hitch by my bank as a $14.14 charge.
Table of Contents
- Dream Machines
So what's new?
Good dreams, bad dreams
Choosing our dreams
What this book is for - What Is Cyberspace?
Digital communications
Virtual worlds
On being digital
Beyond physical limits
Cyberspace: what lies ahead? - Into Cyberspace
What is true?
What are real relationships?
Who has the power?
What is a person?
Concluding remarks - Space Probing
Introduction
The Christian story
Christian response
The continuing story
Concluding remarks - Relationships in Cyberspace
Friendship
Neighbourliness
Community
Church fellowship
Physicality as reality
Summary - Living with Cyberspace
Business and people in cyberspace
Property
Justice and accountability
Exclusion
Privacy
Secrets and lies
Implants: bringing cyberspace inside
Deciding what we want - Cybernauts Awake!
Implications for information technologists
Implications for directors
Implications for users
Implications for parents and guardians
Implications for Christians - Appendix: Annotated Bibliography
Links - book is online! (Score:4)
The PR says that the entire book can be found online at www.cybernautsawake.net [cybernautsawake.net] For me that site redirects until I get to here [starcourse.org].
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Some interesting thoughts from the book. (Score:3)
A few interesting quotes:
"Technology has the power to change relationships between people. It is not neutral."
"If a standard is 'owned' by one company... then the company ends up with something very like a monopoly."
"People 'in' cyberspace and deeply experienced with it tend to overrate it."
"Money has always been somewhat virtual..."
Most useless chapter: Cyberspace: what lies ahead?
I wouldn't take this book as an authorative reference on cyberspace, but it does point out a lot of interesting things.
Nerds only read cyber / sf / computer books? (Score:3)
For example, Alice in Quantum Land or a A brief history of time should be required reading IMHO.
Pfft, don't tell us... (Score:2)
Boojum
Ethics of the Internet (Score:1)
--philsky
"We're here and now, will we ever be again? For I have found, all that shimmers in this world is sure to fade" --Fuel, "shimmer"
It's About Time (Score:1)
It could be a Hive Queen and Hegemon for the internet, a very cool thing.
Re:Nerds only read cyber / sf / computer books? (Score:2)
The Church: protector of freedom and progress :-) (Score:3)
I'm sure that from their relative point of view their points are valid and important, but chances are that once you get past the obvious (technology makes distances 'shrink', etc.), their fundamental premises will be very different from my own; something I frequently encounter when reading arguments from many groups who adhere to a less libertarian point of view than I do.
This is not to say that this book is automatically bad because it stems from the CoE, but even if I would read it, I would read it with the following thoughts in the back of my mind: "What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?" Whatever you do, consider the source of your information and the biases (sp?) this (source) introduces. This of course doesn't only apply to religion and politics but to just about anything else as well.
Re:Ethics of the Internet (Score:1)
I think it was incredibly brave of someone representing the C of E to put forward such a view: Christianity (a bit like American law) is built on old foundations, and it is easy to worry that everything we ever trusted to will fall in a heap if these foundations are found to be no longer sensible.
I find this sort of thing fascinating (Score:3)
However, this seems to be a genuine attempt to say something useful and constructive. It's only my opinion, but I hope EVERY Slashdot reader, regardless of personal belief system (including agnostic or athiest) recognises the positive side of trying to be constructive, regardless of the source.
There is the question of whether the Church should "interfere" with the State/Internet/Corporations. However, both the Jewish and Christian faiths have done nothing BUT interfere, since their respective foundations. (So have many others.) Sometimes that interference has been one of trying to seperate two warring sides, othertimes it's giving someone an often well-deserved piece of their mind.
I honestly can't see the Biblical character of Jesus ignoring the Internet, and saying "I can't go there. It's full of... GEEKS!" IMHO, he's more likely to preach tolerence on BOTH sides, and encourage co-operation, rather than antagonism.
In short, faith can be a friend of "Open Source", "geeks" and net denziens. There is nothing inherently contradictory about that. It doesn't have to be, either. Plenty of coders have no faith in anything. It's just not mutually exclusive.
Yet another... (Score:2)
Another review at ship-of-fools.com [ship-of-fools.com].
Re:Source of Title (Score:1)
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress : (Score:1)
Hey, here's an idea, instead of reading a book (any book) just to try and find the author's motives, how about you read a book in order to learn? It's given that you might not find anything of use in a particular book, but even the book which represents the antithesis of your life/values/morals very likely has a nugget or two of wisdom which is useful to you, and could be applied to your life/values/morals without changing any of them..
This is not to say that you should accept ideas blindly, but you are closing your mind when you look at a book through your own filter. Pretty soon your filter becomes as censorous (ie, traitorous censor) as those censors you despise.
-Adam
Employee Review:
This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.
Disknowledgeable messages (Score:1)
You should send in comments if you know something of the book or are responding to someone.
Don't just get into the message craze because you like it and/or want karma.
Good book. However I never read it so I won't say anything.
A better take on the Internet and the Church (Score:3)
His response to Cybernauts Awake!, The Church and the Internet [anglican.org], while written for a non-technical audience, is definately worth a read.
After having personally participated in a large, worldwide Anglican mailing list for several years and running my own list for Clergy Spouses, I know that the Anglican Church is alive and well on the Internet.
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress : (Score:1)
As you said, this is true for anything and everything you read online. There's always a PoV, even if that point of view is to try to be as objective as possible (which so many
Personally, I find it very refreshing to see a church taking on this topic. Churches have a wonderful history of considering the implications of things (even as they have a terrible history of understanding the things themselves). Far too often, IMHO, the promoters and protectors of change do everything they can to minimize the implications and harm of that change while beefing up the supposed benefits. This can cause a backlash as those who expected to find gold only find hard work at the end of the miracle road. (See: Russia, Market Capitalism)
I know that the Internet scares the bejeezus out of my dad, who is an old-school telco-head. And that's because it has radically altered the industry he spent 20 years learning. All his knowledge becomes just this side of useless. That's terrifying, but those at the vanguard of the revolution usually don't consider that. Churches do. Books and views like this help us on the up side of change understand and help those on the down side by saying we have a moral obligation to consider the people we may otherwise forget.
Furthermore, you KNOW where a church is coming from. Churches generally come out and admit that they're speaking from their own Point of View. That's the very nature of an impermatur or condemnation. It establishes an anchor position on the moral/social axis, so people can take their bearings and say "I am on x side of the issue as compared to the church." It helps set up a common point of reference. These things are really important when trying to have a dialog (or multilog
From that point, it's up to us to argue the merits of these changes and do our best to ameliorate the costs. It is no longer enough to say "you're a newbie/old media/bellhead/boomer; you wouldn't understand."
Just MHO...sorry about the rant.
God and Computers. (Score:1)
Donald Knuth [stanford.edu] has also had a profound impact on spiritual side of computing and programming. Programming wouldn't be what it is today without him, and he has always kept the ``Art'' of programming foremost in his mind, in front of the ``technique''.
He gave a lecture series entitled God and Computers at MIT from 6/10/99 to 17/11/99. Dr. Dobbs is carrying the Real Audio version of it [technetcast.com] on their technetcast site. Definitely worth a listen!
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Re:Some interesting thoughts from the book. (Score:1)
So, if it's not neutral, is it good or evil? Inquiring Slashdotters want to know!
Besides I don't see the causal relationship: "Gravity has the power to pull people to the ground. It is not neutral".
"If a standard is 'owned' by one company... then the company ends up with something very like a monopoly."
Duh!
"People 'in' cyberspace and deeply experienced with it tend to overrate it."
Compared to whom? What's the reference group? If it is Joe Random Luser, then there are a lot of things he believes to be overrated
"Money has always been somewhat virtual..."
At the time of, say, ancient Greeks -- no (obviously). Basically, the advent of banks made money somewhat virtual (your money was a line in the account ledger) and that was, I believe, somewhere around the XIV century.
Kaa
Brief History - badge of intelligence? (Score:1)
Internet v. Religion (Score:2)
We are all people who do not "live on the net".
I cannot pull up a bunch of data and sit on it.
I sit in my chair in my house and type on my keyboard. The ideas I type go to some computer system somewhere else in the world, so everyone who connects to the same system I do can see it.
My ideas, thoughts and ethics go with me. They are evident in my actions.
If you think being on the 'Net is letting you "be someone else" you are wrong, you are still the same person. Think about that.
God is dead (Score:1)
Internet 98 Companion now With GuiltBooks Pro (Score:1)
Man what a beautiful world.
Re:God is dead (Score:1)
Re:Not "York Cathedral" (Score:2)
Personally I don't particularly view it as "interfering" (I know that's not the gist of what you're saying, but you do mention it as interfering). The Church has as much right to free speech on this and all other matters as anyone else. Sometimes they do interfere, and cross what I consider boundaries. I don't consider this one of those boundaries.
Does it Answer the Important Questions? (Score:2)
Regards, Ralph
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress (Score:1)
Its reputation for having a few crackpots is due to the fact that they do encourage people to think about their faith, and some of them put forward some pretty odd ideas as they consider their faith.
This is because we believe that our faith is true, and can stand up to criticism, discussion, and debate.
At the central level, it is becoming pretty good at understanding technology and the effects on society and the way we worship (DTPed service sheets, for example), and at communicating that to the parishes.
Re:Does it Answer the Important Questions? (Score:1)
Maybe a J.S. Bach reference, too? (Score:1)
Conversational space and technology non-neutrality (Score:2)
I believe that the kind of 'neutrality' being referred to in this sense doesn't directly relate to goodness or evil (and yes, I caught the AD&D reference...). What's meant rather is that because our communications technologies alter the shape of the 'space' (in the mathematical sense) in which we engage in relationships with others, they are not 'neutral' to the forms of relations we have.
Take, for instance, the telephone. When the telephone was new, phone calls were rare and momentous, and the fact that someone is calling you was a very important thing to know. For this reason, phones were equipped with loud bells which could interrupt 'real-world' conversations to draw attention to the phone appliance itself.
Phone conversations became more commonplace, and people began to use the telephone to hold conversations of lesser importance. However, the interrupting nature of the ringing phone did not go away -- and so we now live in a world where many people will postpone or cut off a real-world conversation when the phone rings, even if the phone conversation is of less importance than the real-world one. Thus, the phone technology has biased the 'conversational space' away from the less-interrupting mode of average, polite, real-world conversations and towards the more-interrupting mode of telephone conversations. Rather than deciding which of two conversations to engage in on the basis of their importance or on the basis of 'first come, first serve', people tend to favor with their time the phone conversation over the real-world one. The telephone also increased the level of interruption through which people must work.
(Another way of saying the same thing is that regardless of the content of the conversations, people give telephone conversations disproportionately more attention because they come in at a higher level of interruption.)
This is by far not the only example. Different communications media all have different 'biases'. Consider, for instance, the difference between typed and spoken conversations. In writing -- be it in a letter, email, Slashdot post, or IRC -- you cannot hear people's tone of voice or see their facial expressions, and thus emotional content is more difficult to convey accurately. (One can say "I am angry!", for instance, in many ways, but it lacks the immediacy and the subconscious mammalian signaling present in a stern look and a harsh voice. Worse yet, your reader may read emotions into your text which are not there, based on their own emotions; flamers tend to see perfectly reasonable posts as being flames themselves.) Thus written media are biased towards emotionally detached content, while spoken ones are in a sense biased against it (because the 'distractions' of emotional signaling cannot be eliminated).
That is the non-neutrality of communications technologies.
Re:(Does it) ...No Bill would not be god (Score:1)
Bill created M$
M$ created Bob
Bob created slack...
Or maybe Bob begat Bob
Or Eris Begat Bill to begat Bob.
What was I saying, I begat err forget
sorry very silly, but I am very stressed.
But just so this is isn't totally off topic, Internet morality is no more dependant on the medium than thoughts on paper--else my really dumb comments above become moral if the internet is deemed moral, and are categorically immoral if the technology itself needs assesed for morality and fails (and so my comments become dumb, silly, off-topic, AND immoral).
Oh well back to this dumb program.
Re:I find this sort of thing fascinating (Score:2)
Consider just these aspects of Christianity:
- The Crusades. A side-effect of the crusades was the sacking of Constantinople by Western Europeans and the general weakening of Byzantium to the point where it was easy pickings for the Turks. Actually, the whole ill-advised enterprise was a direct result of Church "interference" in political matters.
- WWII. The Roman Catholic Church was directly responsible for the smuggling out of countless fascists of all stripes (look up the "rat lines" for more information). I don't think this point really needs any further comment.
Look, historically, at what integration between church and state brought us: the inquisition, church-supported feudalism (and attendant serfdom), slavery and warfare, assorted supremacist movements.Here's where the distrust comes in: the Church sets itself up as the ultimate arbiter of morality: they are the gateway to God. The Church then goes out and says "Yes, the nobles have a right to abuse, rape, kill their serfs. Yes, the rich have a right to own the poor." Or the Church goes out and does those things directly.
Well, since the Church sanctioned all those horrible things, they must be OK! God must approve!
That is why so many people, especially people who have historically been on the receiving end, distrust the Church. The Church is a political institution like any other; in fact the Church has hardly ever been this politically inactive.
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Why the Companies shouldn't decide these things (Score:2)
Just some random musings....
I recommend anyone who hasn't go to the online site and browse the book. It's really raising a lot of interesting issues, and treating them from the standpoint you never hear. That is to say, it's not asking what's fair, but what's right.
But is it the right thing to do? Like I said, many people may not have Internet access any other way, and the activities offered on the Internet are so diverse that in much of it, it is not unreasonable to want a little privacy. Should the employers knowingly limit their employee's only access to this world?
Perhaps. Maybe some of the things the employee is looking at (like pornography) give them legitimate liability concerns, and may offend other employees. But what about my imaginary daughter's email from college? Or my credit card number, when ordering clothes online? And is it okay to monitor traffic so we can tell the difference between what's "okay" and what isn't?
Corporations are very often embroiled in the discussion of "fairness" (usually to make sure they are being treated fairly), but morality transcends this. In fact, it has largely been moral and ethical concerns that gave rise to Free Software -- just because I have the right to make my code non-free doesn't mean I should.
Corporations are not necessarily moral or ethical bodies. In fact, the overarching goal of publicly-traded companies -- to please the shareholders with maximum profits -- seems to conflict with morality and ethics on several levels.
However, as companies come online, they seem to be erecting barriers to entry -- barriers surmountable, generally, only by other companies. If they are allowed to succeed in this, the future of the Internet (IMO) will not be determined with moral considerations in mind, and those of us with moral concerns will have to do things the dirty old way we do now -- forcing corporations to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
These are just my thoughts, of course. But reading a document like the book being reviewed really points out to me what a golden opportunity we have to inject ethical considerations into the very way the Internet works. It would be a shame to waste it with inaction.
phil
Re:God is dead (Score:1)
Oops! Conclusion (Score:1)
Admittedly there is much hypocrisy. On all sides. Undoubtedly there is a knee-jerk anti-religious reaction borne of ignorance (but there's also a knee-jerk anti-secular reaction by countless religious leaders and their followers).
But, though many people today don't know why this anti-religious sentiment originated (and that forgetting in itself is nothing new), there is a legitimate historical reason for it. It's the same reaction that causes the libertarians to cry out against Government, and assorted groups to cry out against corporations: any institution that becomes large and powerful enough becomes a defacto government that serves itself.
I personally have no comment in this particular booklet, other than to say that it seems like just another church publication addressing some aspect of a believer's life (the Russian Orthodox church, for instance, has countless such publications).
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Re:I find this sort of thing fascinating (Score:1)
But that's not the point. The original post was asserting that citizens using a religious framework to help form their views are "interfering". I find that absurd. If I support anti-spam legislation because my religion has taught me that theft of services is wrong, should I have to take a back seat to someone who holds an identical view because his atheist moral code says the same thing?
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress : (Score:1)
Well over here in the UK telco costs for us are high, per minute charging for calls, ADSL not out of the trial stage, and look at how we are loosing to the North Americans, fear is keeping them back and so keeping the rest of the country back so the best people are leaving. So would you rather be at the bottom of the heap and have the older generation feel more comfortable about themselves, or would you like to be at the front of the pack, forging the future?
Re:A better take on the Internet and the Church (Score:1)
Re:Conversational space and technology non-neutral (Score:1)
Re:I find this sort of thing fascinating (Score:1)
I reread the original post, and I think this is a difference in interpretation. I think this part is in contention:
There is the question of whether the Church should "interfere" with the State/Internet/Corporations. However, both the Jewish and Christian faiths have done nothing BUT interfere, since their respective foundations.
I think the reference is to religious institutions ("the Church", "the ... faiths"). If I'm not mistaken, you think it refers to the individual people who make up the faith.
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Re:Society of Archbishop Justus (Score:1)
While the SoAJ has done a good job with the site, and the administration of a domain is not a trivial task, they have as yet not opened this non-profit organization, supposedly for the benefit of the Church and its followers, to membership beyond the founders.
The page says that they will do so as soon as the Charter etc. is formalized. Well they have been in existance for 4 years and are a registered non-profit. That means they had to have a formal charter before they could be registered.
Maybe it is my own cynicism and I do them an injustice, but I would think that they should have all such considerations well formalized long before now, as well as offering membership to those interested in the goals of the organization. Regardless of the forum it provides the Church and its followers, as it stands it looks more like a private club than an organization for providing a charitable service.
Is good design a moral issue? (Score:2)
Those certainly sound like decent suggestions on the surface, but are they? And are the two suggestions contradictory?
Good design can be rather subjective. One user's favorite navigation tool is painful for another to use. Just as in art - people never seem to agree on what good art is. But even art lovers can find more to agree on than users. They may disagree about whether a painting is good art, but both would probably prefer to put the painting on the wall (good design) rather than on the floor, where people would have to step carefully to avoid tripping over it (bad design). But users can't even seem to agree on what constitutes good design, other than maybe "the program should not crash."
And "love thy user as thyself" might make for some really user-hostile programs. Should programmers follow the golden rule, and treat users as they (the programmers) would like to be treated? Just because lots of programmers like command lines does not mean that ordinary users will. Programmers (and many experienced users) don't usually like to be spoon-fed their instructions. Figuring them out for oneself is fun! But not for everyone. Some people will want - and need - a lot of hand-holding.
I would certainly agree that it's immoral to deliberately code a program poorly, but beyond that it's hard to pin down the morality of bad code. Is there room for honest mistakes? Even if one is sincerely trying? What if there's a deadline, and quick-n-dirty is the order of the day?
Re:Is good design a moral issue? (Score:1)
"Thou shalt not build a program that BSoDs or contains any other Showstopper"
Re:Society of Archbishop Justus (Score:2)
It is my understanding that progress on 501(C)3 status has been made in recent months. The Society operates entirely with volunteers and given the effort that goes into updating the Anglicans Online site weekly, quite a lot does gt accomplished. I myself have a small role in the maintenance of a web site hosted by the Society. They are certainly providing a service to the Church with their expenses being provided entirely by the founders. The additional expences of the legal help necessary to secure tax-exempt status only take away from the services they are providing.
Re:Why the Companies shouldn't decide these things (Score:1)
Re:A better take on the Internet and the Church (Score:1)
Re:God is dead - no monopoly on open debate (Score:1)
It has been my experince that fervent atheists tend to refuse some topics of debate with a zeal that made the Inquisitors look polite. I'm thinking specifically here of questions of epistemology. Many people who would propose to argue that science has rendered faith irrelevant are unwilling to discuss the problem of the meaning and limits of knowledge. I blame our "enlightened" educational system for treating scientific naturalism as fact rather than chosen assumption, and our high schools and universities for failing to give scientists a proper grounding in history and philosophy with which they can reasonably speak to these questions.
Not to say that I've never met a scientific atheist who could debate this stuff intelligently, but they have been (much to my disappointment) few and far between.
Re:Conversational space and technology non-neutral (Score:1)
Many years ago I worked (in NYC) at a global company, headquartered in Toronto, with a very flat structure -- everyone had access to what was in effect a private network (since purchased by a large news organization for that network). What immediately struck me was how well I came to know certain persons having never met them, just from their writing! After I left the company, I met two of these "friends" (and they met me) and we were all amazed at how much we were just as we had imagined.
It is true that we can misunderstand one another online. But more often (because there is just more of it) this happens offline, too. Irony, for example, is usually misinterpreted by young people, or those who are not terribly intelligent.
One final point: if you want to increase intimacy in a relationship, or just learn more about another person, go for written communications over telephoned ones every time. The cues that come with "spoken" conversation are apparently far less important than the media effect of committing to print! (Perhaps we tend not to bother writing something that doesn't matter to us, whereas phone conversation usually is dominated by the trivial?)
Re:Brief History - badge of intelligence? (Score:1)
Basically, he said, "Well, it may look as if extremely rare events had to come together in order for the universe to be inhabitable, but let's ignore this and look for another explanation." When I reached the end of the book, I realized he didn't actually have another explanation.
I didn't like that! Here I dutifully plowed through all those possible theories (like string theory) without any evidence for them, only to discover he wasn't proposing a complete explanation at all. So why did he write it?
Um, no, not actually... (Score:1)
The virtue of being able to look at something with one's own interests in mind, yet remaining open-minded about it, is called "detachment" (just thought I'd pass that along, seeing as we're supposedly talking of morality and virtue (-8 .)
Better, More Current Content (Score:1)
-aj.
Internet spiritual implications != irrelevant. (Score:1)
Perhaps one could go farther than that and describe the tool as, say, a wrench. Use it to fasten bolts, it's OK. Use it to beat someone's brains out, it's not.
I am a Christian, and spiritual implications and the Internet go farther than just that.
Say you're sitting in a chatroom or IRC. That's like using the wrench to fasten bolts: you're using the tool for its purpose.
Say a newbie enters the channel. Circumstances are right for you to social engineer a credit card number out of the newbie. That's like using the wrench to whack someone over the head: you're using the tool for a destructive, unintended purpose; and whether you believe in Christ or not, you probably think there's SOMETHING morally wrong with walking up to an innocent bystander and forcibly placing their brains on the sidewalk.
Say you forego the social engineering and you find out that the newbie works for a specific division of Microsoft; you then download an illegal copy of software from said division. IMHO, that would be like using the wrench to pry open the guy's safe; he himself doesn't really suffer, but his wallet feels the consequences. There may be people trying to make a living off some of this stuff. OK, Microsoft is a bad example, because they get some pretty posh quarters. But I think you get the idea.
Of course, having one less sale isn't nearly as debilitating as having one's grey matter spread far and wide by a monkey wrench, but it does show that "thou shalt not steal" applies relevantly to both "real life" AND whatever-defines-the-Internet-as-a-culture.
As long as the Internet deals with people, people will try to take advantage of whatever they can. And people have been doing this since Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve decided to listen to a serpent.
Listen, this may be flamebait to some of you, but we all know that legislation and testing and control don't make things better. Just look at Voices from the Hellmouth--A good part of a culture (mostly geeks and loners) decides that everyone's out to get them (and the government may well be...yeeeesh!) and we get flames and Natalie Portman and grits. Disgusting, distasteful, and nobody's happy.
How can anyone expect to enforce order in a world that has thrown away absolutes?
Just my $.02.
Re:God is dead - no monopoly on open debate (Score:1)
Tell that to Galileo, a man who was persecuted by the Church for speaking the truth, religion is about control just like politics, maybe, one day, if we are lucky, we will be free.
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress : (Score:2)
As a Christian, when I read things written by libertarians arguing for no gun control or whatever, I apply exactly the same criteria.
This of course doesn't only apply to religion and politics but to just about anything else as well.
So why bother making the point at all?
Gerv
Re:God is dead - no monopoly on open debate (Score:1)
examples:
Henry VIII
Hitler
Mohamed
any of the Iotolas ( sp? )
any of the rulers of Rome.
This list does go back a bit, but then so does man's desire to subjugate his brother.
True no human is faultless, and religion is a human construct around a faith.
Politics is a human construct built around human weakness.
In both cases Individuals may be good or bad, but politicts is inherently more likely to be corrupt.
Hell, I'm begining to sound like an anarchist now.
Re:Does it Answer the Important Questions? (Score:1)
Regards, Ralph.
Re:Does it Answer the Important Questions? (Score:1)
Yes! (Score:1)
Good I have turned another to the cause
Re:I find this sort of thing fascinating (Score:1)
This will probably shock you, but having a national religion (i.e., the Church of England) meant, until very recently, that all residents of a parish were taxed to support the official (i.e., established) church -- that is, the Church of England, or Anglican Church (what Americans call "Episcopal" -- though that word doesn't appear in its actual title).
When the colonists ordered a separation of Church and State for freedom of religion, they merely meant that each man (alas, it was men only) should be free to support his own chosen organized religious institution, rather than be forced to pay for a specific church by the State. The current American understanding of the concept is grotesquely expanded: We are free to believe whatever we like, but not to propose our beliefs be adopted, or follow through on them with action, in public!
Really, they only had an economic freedom in mind -- and isn't that what we all wish when we object to a so-called "moral majority" spending to enforce its "morals" or "family values" on the rest of us?