Hi Jim,
I'd say it's primarily about entertainment. Even if it's an intentional social/technical commentary. There is also the point to be made that society is effected more by those things which were unexpected (I don't know if 'revolution' is the correct word here???) than evolutionary. The change of electricity, the printing press, etc.
This suggests a tangent - If we look at works of fiction which were politically or socially influential in their day, how many were entertaining? how many were "good stories"? A lot of polemics end up seeming transparent and thin today (I'm thinking in particular of Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, but there are probably other examples). They had to capture their audience somehow, which seems to say something about the audience of the time (or maybe just about the tendency people have to overlook faults in a book which agrees with them). As for things unexpected - maybe it would be interesting to look at the literature issued just after the possibility of the new invention becomes known. Atomic power, for instance, was written about by H.G. Wells long before the atomic bomb was built. Maybe atomic power is too extreme a case, though. Bringing this back to "cypherpunk literature", such a look might provide parallels with the emergence (or lack thereof) of crypto-oriented fiction.
But 'self-referential' is by no means equivalent to 'absolute'. As to your last statement, I see we agree. The concept of 'good and bad' and any consequent 'definitions' are a function of 'people'. It IS a relative issue and therefore open to debate. This is a clear indicator that this particular issue is not axiomatic. It is clearly an affect, no more.
Yes, it seems we agree. Except it seems that instead of dismissing definitions of "good" and "evil" as "an affect, no more" (if I'm reading you correctly?) - it seems to me that this is where the real battles are fought. So instead of being dismissive, it seems like a better idea to *pay attention*. (This may be a sign of youth). Even so - in math class I am told "if two reasonable people start from the same premises, they should arrive at the same conclusion." In philosophy I find that Frege called a failure to apply the same laws of logic a "new form of madness." In the ethics course, I am told "we always expect reasonable people to arrive at *different* conclusions." Odd.
I've always considered 'communitarian' to be a branch of (wait for it),
socialism. It requires consistency of behaviour, down to the level of
Here I thought you were going to say COMMUNISM! :-) I just came across a biography of Robespierre. In it he's mentioned as writing an essay for a prize competition in the 1770s, in which "under the influence of Montesquieu" he condemns the republican ideal of <<vertu>> as requiring unnatural conformity of action and dishonourable actions. Before turning around and reflecting that the monarchist alternative cannot be justified on grounds of public utility...well, we know where he eventually ends up. Anyway, it seems that "community" has taken the place of the "general will" or "will of the people" as the utopian abstraction of the day. This is annoying, because there *does* seem to be some merit to talking about a "community" (or "society" for that matter) as a unit for purposes of analysis. Even anarchists (especially anarchists?) talk about community. (Godwin's "public opinion more powerful than whips and chains.") As soon as you do so, however, suddenly you've accidentally imported all this "communitarian" baggage...
Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution L. Margulis, D. Sagan (yes that Sagan, which should id that Margulis :) ISBN 0-387-94927-5
Onto the to-skim pile - thanks.
alwasy rankled at the concept that 'technical' and 'social' are not sides of the same n-sided die called human psychology. Reductionism has its place, it is not however, everyplace.
Aren't they considered two sides of the die? I always thought that was the point of the pervasive "Two Cultures" dichotomy - that you have a binary opposition between "techs" on the one hand and "humanists" on the other. Which, like many binary oppositions, fails to satisfy.
<shrug> A lot of good questions I have no intention of answering :). Make up your own set of rules, play them against each other...
Sounds like an invitation to build a genetic algorithm. Heh.
There is a certain level of paranoia (recognition of a real threat certainly qualifies as paranoia in my book) required to even conjure up the concept of security and crypto as an instance...
OK, but this does not strike me as *absurdly* paranoid. I understood your point to be that any society paranoid enough to use massive amounts of cryptography would be absurdly paranoid (maybe unstable). Maybe there's a question of degree here? Plus not every member of the society must be equally paranoid, once the infrastructure is in place. How paranoid are my parents when they use SSL to send credit card info to a web site - without even realizing that they're using SSL or how it works? Paranoia on the part of a few can change the lives of many.
Actually I susepect that society will advance to impliment crypto in the background. It will be used to enforce the bounds of each indviduals social boundaries. Yes, it does embody 'web-of-trust' but not as the only
So you think we'll end up with "one citizen, one identity?" Do you think this will be an explicit norm - that people will react to the idea of having two distinct identities online the way we would to having two distinct identities in "real life" today? It wasn't that long ago that Sherry Turkle's _Life on the Screen_ was supposed to be *the* account of how "we" were going to relate in cyberspace. Except that who uses MUDs anymore? Where do we find the open vistas of text, the vast plains of meaning, the mirror-stage-online which so beautifully "informed" Turkle's account? Is anyone still talking about the liberatory power of multiple identity - instead of footnotes in books about e-commerce noting that web polls can be easily pseudospoofed? (Plus I found the book much less convincing than _The Second Self_ - maybe because it strayed from the focus on cognitive development and questions like "what is alive?" which made _The Second Self_ gripping. Last I heard, Turkle is back asking kids "what is alive?" with respect to Furbies. Should be intriguing to see what comes out. )
This again, is the reason I believe that the Open Source movement within the context of Lessig's book has an opportunity to build a much more humane and reasonable society. I also believe the odds are very low it will come to pass. Human sollipsism.
"Humane" and "reasonable" ? I'm sure you're right, but those two words do not inspire much confidence in me right now. (Coming out of a course on French Social and Political Doctrines 1789-present will do that). Frankly, a "humane" and "reasonable" society issuing from Open Source principles makes me think of a Committee on Public Safety run by Slashdot readers. (Disclaimer: I am a Slashdot reader). This is no doubt unfair, but the semi-political pronouncements I've seen from GNU have a nasty could-be-called "communitarian" streak in them.
I'm trying to get a Plan 9 network up and running to do just that now for Plan 9 users here in Austin. Offer a 'virtual community' workspace that users can map into their personal namespace (ooh, another web-of-trust ;).
Oh, cool. Some friends of mine are working with Plan 9. I'll have to check this out at some point...I've been too busy to pay much attention.
I believe the point would be that society would progress beyond the need for such things. What this will engender will be a return to 'family' or 'zaibatsu' centered human societies. Economies based on competition won't exist because each community will share the resources as required. It will be a large barter commune. The interfaces between these 'arcologies' will be very well defended and about the only place 'trade' will take place and that will be through information exchange not the actual exchange of goods. Why? Because each arcology will be self-suffient within the domain of its ownings.
Perhaps. I'm wary of making these kinds of pronouncements. It's a curve-fitting problem. "Here are six events - build a trend around them." The rise of planned communities (including Summerlin, where I live in Nevada) *could* point the way towards arcologies and master-planned living. It could also engender a backlash which ends up with everyone going back to live in the cities to create closer communities with their fellow (wo)man. Can you imagine a latter-day Gandhi who exhorts people to move back to the cities to live with each other again? No? Why? Yes? Why arcologies and not Gandhi? Then our entire deliberations are blown to bits by advances in nanotechnology...
Remember you've got 20 generations alive at the same time. 'Family' is set to return with a vengeance.
It would provide large family-owned corporations with even more interesting politics than they might currently posess, that's for sure. An alternative may be that the generation gap asserts itself with a vengeance. Dad and Jr. can't get along - what about Dad and the 17th? Instead of isolating vertically, societies isolate horizontally. Lots of parallel institutions with mandatory minimum and mandatory retirement ages. Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them. So all this is fine, but I dislike saying that this is what "will happen."
My guess is we've got a space of about 200 years to get off this mudball and get out there. If we don't we'll drown in our own waste. The end
I tend to agree with you - but I also remember that in the 70's we had predictions of world disaster by the 00's. Not quite there yet. Still Malthus has to be right in the long run... Anyway, I want space for less easily justifiable reasons. Such as "what's out there?" and "we can do it." Also I want to go (was into space before ever heard of cryptography) :-). Unfortunately I'm too tall and too heavy to make the trip on anything NASA has right now. Besides my family history of heart trouble.
But you're talking about developing a society, not a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred...
If the will is there, it will be developed. Look at what's going to happen to electronic voting now. After Florida, people really seem to want it. MIT and Cal Tech have announced an initiative to build a "real" system. Build a market by building consensus and the technology will step up. (I suppose I should dispute in passing the dichotomy between a society and "a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred" - but the fundamental point seems to be scaling. Which is a problem no matter what you call the user.) The reason why remailers are limited to a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred is that no one has articulated a clear and compelling reason to "everybody" why "everybody" needs to use them. People have argued why "everybody" needs remailers *around* or why they're a good thing, or at least why *not to ban them*, but this is different. No one is advertising for anonymous remailers on the radio. No one is on the television talking about how we need a national network of anonymous remailers. No one seems to be making any money off the things, *except* maybe zks.net . Change this and we get the infrastructure for a society. -David