On Sat, 29 Jun 2002, Tom wrote:
Ithink Brin has got some cool ideas about opening up the window of visability on the gov but where he falls down is the trust is issue.
Brin's ideas only look cool if you think that we're living in a perfect anarchy, and that there's no intrinsic edge in centralism. Surveillance technology favours centralism, however, and we all know why anarchy is unstable with current type of agents, right? So he built the foundations of his glass castle on a pile of stinky poo.
Brin forget the adage that power corupts and absolute power corupts absolutley.
Brin is confabulating an alternative reality. This reality doesn't give a flying fuck about what he thinks is going to happen. He's actually doing damage, because quite a few people find his ideas superficially appealing, and stagnate in happy complacency. Sheep like the idea of Brinworld. Goverments love the idea of Brinworld, because it makes selling the current brand of FUD much easier. Happy sheep don't mind being shorn so much.
The Cypherpunks do come off often as being the lonegunmen-dressed-in-black -knights-of-the-impossible-cause.....but
Dunno, they come off a lot like narcistic wankers to me. Maybe some of them are writing code, but they must be damn secretive about it. There are literally very few people in the world who're good architects, and actually develop stuff.
thats a very needed role to have on most any society. While .001% of the populace is doing that role they are comming up witht he means and ways to subvert things if they should all get "one way or the highway"esque.
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