I remember thinking how democratizing personal computers would be; and then how democratizing the Internet would be - all that computing power, then, all that information - available to all instead of just wealthy corporations and governments.
I'm able to imagine many holes being poked in your hope of "AI for the little guy" that will defend us from predators on the Internet (NB: regard most social media as "predatory" on my time, money, and sanity...). Not sure what the holes are, but the Big Boys have compiled a long history, at this point, of overcoming democratic attempts to frustrate their dominance.
Oh, and that larger issue, I call "feudalism"; I really think that all the democracy we've been able to install in the last 250 years has only gotten us halfway out of it. I'll call again when the desires of the bottom 70% of voters are not routinely frustrated by the opposition of the top 10%.
Okay. I'll carry on with my original question, though: we know you're right to be pessimistic, so, what do we have to do to earn optimism? It's not about sitting back and watching from the sidelines; what do we DO? It's certainly not inevitable that the "big boys" always win--one guy, a student named Linus Torvalds, built his own free version of the head-spinningly expensive operating system, UNIX, and branded it LINUX. Now, much of the world runs on LINUX, despite the many attempts over the years by IBM, Microsoft, and Apple to downplay it. That's on the technological level; on the political and social level, don't forget that while South Africa still has many problems, it was through interventions such as the Mont Fleur Scenarios (https://reospartners.com/blog/mont-fleur-scenarios) that they were able to make a transition from Apartheid to democracy. People didn't assume, one way or the other. They acted.
Linus was just having fun (see: his autobio title) but the guy on the hapless, nutbar crusade was Richard Stallman, who wrote the other 90% of the "Linux" code. When Calgary Unix User's Group invited Stallman up to Calgary to speak, I missed introducing him, on vacation.
I had this great thing written up where I quoted Gordy Dickson's line about "Disturb, rather, the tiger in his lair, than the scholar at his books; for to him, the very Kingdoms of the Earth are but dust upon the page of history, to be brushed aside for a better view."
To be accompanied by a slide of all the big Unix names that Stallman's MIT co-hackers left to work for: Sun, HP, DEC, IBM-AIX....all of them blown away to leave his "Gnu" logo. Steven Levy's great book, "Hackers", had ended with "The Last Hacker", Stallman alone at MIT, hacking away, years after the party ended, a sad figure.
Then, he beat them all. Linus just put on the finishing touches to make it releasable.
So: yeah. Point taken. Never give up hope.
I'm not sure what to hope for - reduction-to-oligopoly has been the fate of most industries, not just information. Certainly its nuts to hope for any "Great Reset", or dramatic event that changes people's thinking. Remember when so many imagined the pandemic would provide just that? Our culture is very, very resistant to change, because most people are comfortable enough, and fear they'd be losers in any major change.
We definitely need some scholar at her books to find another magic-grade subversion of the status quo. Support your local sociologist!
I think the first step to earning optimism is realizing that optimism is something we each have to earn.
Next: what is a positive outcome? I don't mean simply for myself either, that's just a vanity project... objectively irrelevant.
As for a culture of blame... perhaps it's a symptom of the fact that (certainly in Canada) we're consumers instead of citizens and have been for decades. Our relationship with our environment is transactional and the outcomes of that dynamic are increasingly at odds with the sales pitch we bought into.
Worrying about changing that mindset in someone else is not practical. People won't just suddenly become introspective enough to assume responsibility themselves.
Perhaps the next step to earning optimism is to square with the fact that the earning itself is the reward, and that I can't expect to benefit from the outcome
I remember thinking how democratizing personal computers would be; and then how democratizing the Internet would be - all that computing power, then, all that information - available to all instead of just wealthy corporations and governments.
I'm able to imagine many holes being poked in your hope of "AI for the little guy" that will defend us from predators on the Internet (NB: regard most social media as "predatory" on my time, money, and sanity...). Not sure what the holes are, but the Big Boys have compiled a long history, at this point, of overcoming democratic attempts to frustrate their dominance.
Oh, and that larger issue, I call "feudalism"; I really think that all the democracy we've been able to install in the last 250 years has only gotten us halfway out of it. I'll call again when the desires of the bottom 70% of voters are not routinely frustrated by the opposition of the top 10%.
Okay. I'll carry on with my original question, though: we know you're right to be pessimistic, so, what do we have to do to earn optimism? It's not about sitting back and watching from the sidelines; what do we DO? It's certainly not inevitable that the "big boys" always win--one guy, a student named Linus Torvalds, built his own free version of the head-spinningly expensive operating system, UNIX, and branded it LINUX. Now, much of the world runs on LINUX, despite the many attempts over the years by IBM, Microsoft, and Apple to downplay it. That's on the technological level; on the political and social level, don't forget that while South Africa still has many problems, it was through interventions such as the Mont Fleur Scenarios (https://reospartners.com/blog/mont-fleur-scenarios) that they were able to make a transition from Apartheid to democracy. People didn't assume, one way or the other. They acted.
Linus was just having fun (see: his autobio title) but the guy on the hapless, nutbar crusade was Richard Stallman, who wrote the other 90% of the "Linux" code. When Calgary Unix User's Group invited Stallman up to Calgary to speak, I missed introducing him, on vacation.
I had this great thing written up where I quoted Gordy Dickson's line about "Disturb, rather, the tiger in his lair, than the scholar at his books; for to him, the very Kingdoms of the Earth are but dust upon the page of history, to be brushed aside for a better view."
To be accompanied by a slide of all the big Unix names that Stallman's MIT co-hackers left to work for: Sun, HP, DEC, IBM-AIX....all of them blown away to leave his "Gnu" logo. Steven Levy's great book, "Hackers", had ended with "The Last Hacker", Stallman alone at MIT, hacking away, years after the party ended, a sad figure.
Then, he beat them all. Linus just put on the finishing touches to make it releasable.
So: yeah. Point taken. Never give up hope.
I'm not sure what to hope for - reduction-to-oligopoly has been the fate of most industries, not just information. Certainly its nuts to hope for any "Great Reset", or dramatic event that changes people's thinking. Remember when so many imagined the pandemic would provide just that? Our culture is very, very resistant to change, because most people are comfortable enough, and fear they'd be losers in any major change.
We definitely need some scholar at her books to find another magic-grade subversion of the status quo. Support your local sociologist!
I think the first step to earning optimism is realizing that optimism is something we each have to earn.
Next: what is a positive outcome? I don't mean simply for myself either, that's just a vanity project... objectively irrelevant.
As for a culture of blame... perhaps it's a symptom of the fact that (certainly in Canada) we're consumers instead of citizens and have been for decades. Our relationship with our environment is transactional and the outcomes of that dynamic are increasingly at odds with the sales pitch we bought into.
Worrying about changing that mindset in someone else is not practical. People won't just suddenly become introspective enough to assume responsibility themselves.
Perhaps the next step to earning optimism is to square with the fact that the earning itself is the reward, and that I can't expect to benefit from the outcome
That's as far as I've managed to get: