It is said that Twitter is playing an important part in the current unrest in Iran, and latest news from that faith-pit encourages the view that the trend will be towards a net positive effect of the Internet on political liberty. We can at least hope that the faster, more ubiquitous and above all cheaper Internet of the future may hasten the long-awaited downfall of Ayatollahs, Mullahs, Popes, Televangelists, and all who wield power through the control (whether cynical or sincere) of gullible minds. Perhaps Tim Berners-Lee will one day earn the Nobel Prize for Peace.
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Uncertainty is a kind of liquidity. I think my thinking has become more liquid. It is less fixed, as text in a book might be, and more fluid, as say text in Wikipedia might be. My opinions shift more. My interests rise and fall more quickly. I am less interested in Truth, with a capital T, and more interested in truths, plural. I feel the subjective has an important role in assembling the objective from many data points. The incremental plodding progress of imperfect science seems the only way to know anything.
P is for Protest against forgetting Over the last years I feel an increasing urgency to more and more interviews, to make an effort to preserve traces of intelligence from the last decades. One particularly urgent part of this are the testimonies of the 20th century pioneers who are in their 80s or 90s or older and whom I regularly interview, testimonies of a century from those who are not online and who very often fall into oblivion. This protest might, as Rem Koolhaas has told me, act as 'a hedge against the systematic forgetting that hides at the core of the information age and which may in fact be its secret agenda'?
The Internet makes a difference as we zero in toward the final detailed solution of our scientific problem: "How did the ancestral nucleated cell evolve some 1000 million years ago?" (The cells of which all animals, plants, mushrooms and algae etc. are composed.) Everyone agrees this evolutionary turning point, the appearance of animal-type cells in the fossil record happened in the time period the geologists call the Proterozoic Eon)? How?
One of our more dire prospects for collapse is an infectious disease epidemic. Bacterial or viral epidemics precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of Athens, the Roman Empire, and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The Internet can be our key to survival, because the ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing human-to-human contact. In the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply chains running with the maximum number of employees working from home. This won't keep everyone off the streets, but it can reduce host density below the tipping point. If we are well-prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail due to host sparseness. Whatever the social ills of isolation, they bode worse for the microbes than for us.
My point below is that, practically speaking, we all need to stand somewhere in order to have a similar perspective for judging whether a given systemic social change (either institutionally or in the law) has the desired effect that we all can agreed upon as morally good. How you come to that fundamental moral perspective, whether through religion or because you believe such principles rationally work better when practically implemented, is less important than the fact that we all can agree to practically and pragmatically judge the system and its results by the same standard. I think that compassion and individual liberty would work for most of us as a place to get to, no matter where most of us started.
Good points in favor of the free marketers on your little Q&A. When the government steps in, they usually redistribute wealth in unfair ways and further enable bad (inefficient) decision making. Bear Sterns is a great example -- its fall was perpetuated by its knowledge that big brother government will come bail it out so it didn't have to make the most societally efficient choices. Not too different from other segments of society that don't make the best choices because they know they ultimately don't have to.
- DerekMy words may have been rash but i was hoping that they would inspire ideas of action. Unionizing of workers and the idea of "living wages" are ideas that I could get behind 100%.Of course the independently wealthy are not all corrupt but few of them have done a dollars work for a dollars pay. Sure the service provided by google is worth every dollar that was made but did its creators work for every penny as most Americans do? Of corse not.The cause of the financial crisis is that so much money on the bottom is channeled into so few points at the top. Low paying jobs must be filled with mass amounts of workers and those who are extremely specialized have a momopoly over their market. For example, the world doesn't need another google. That need has been filled and it means one less opportunity for the rest of us.There is no way that we could all find a specialized position such as this and there is no way that a man who makes sandwiches will ever get more than a dollor for a dollars worth of work. However, he who invests in the sandwich maker profits from all of his work without lifting a finger. This is how our economy is returning to feudalism.If employers are expected to provide a minimum wage to their employees, then there should be a maximum wage that can be collected by the CEO's. After all, all of their profit comes from the labor of those on the bottom. If CEO's could only make say 500% of what a worker makes, then the even distrebution of wealth would provide quality of life to all, and nobody would get more out than the work they put in.As for specialized momopolys, however, I guess we should all become just a little more clever. -Robin Hood
"Iniquity, committed in this world, produces not fruit immediately, but, like the earth, in due season, and advancing by little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it. ...justice, being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, will preserve; it must never therefore be violated."-Manu 1200 bc "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there no cause for severity? I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat an inch - AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. "The party or sect that will suffer by the triumph of justice cannot exist with safety to mankind. The state that cannot tolerate universal freedom must be despotic; and no valid reason can be given why despotism should not at once be hurled to the dust. "The apologist for oppression becomes himself the oppressor. To palliate crime is to be guilty of its perpetration. To ask for a postponement of the case, till a more convenient season, is to call for a suspension of the moral law, and to assume that it is right to do wrong under present circumstances. "Nothing can take precedence of the question of liberty. No interest is so momentous as that which involves "the life of the soul"; no object so glorious as the restoration of a man to himself. "Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their taskmasters? "With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."-William Lloyd Garrison 1805 - 1879
First for 'Toucan' re 'windfall tax'; when the energy co.'s do not use the leases granted them for production(and 80 % of the awarded lease are sitting idle), when refiners of gas (Valero for example) shut down their refineries so they can play 'catch up' with the price of oil, there are the reasons for a 'windfall tax'.I didn't notice any comments regarding what Holly Sklar pointed out regarding where the U.S. stands in terms of 'industrialized nations' and the media's failing to point such out to U.S. citizen's.My critique of the show was the emphasis on the pay disparity affecting those unionized. As a 30 year IT professional I can assure everyone that such exists across all levels of workers whether organized or not. An example of how business gets it's way on the backs of the workers can be seen here:
My question is for jan. She states that she was really disappointed, actually "appalled" that the GOP killed the windfall tax on the oil companies profits. I would like to know why this bothers her or anyone else on this blog that this may bother. Windfall taxes were unfair back when the british crown placed this type of tax on own trees in our own (american) yards. Why should the oil companies have a higher price place on their profits for running a productive company. Shouldn't we look at the amount of money (profits) the government makes from us taxpayers in relationship to oil, gas, & all other petroleum products in high taxes. Is it possible the problem is the government and not the corporate big wigs running the oil companies???? Or are they in cahoots together and determine eachothers' futures through either profits or campaign finance and the capitol hill charade was nothing more than making an appearance????? 2ff7e9595c
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