[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Using The Principle of Least Power As A Razor
I am sympathetic, but that position, makes hash of Article 1 of the US Constitution. What other countries may do with the Internet, they will say and those that think doing business with them is a gain worthy of compromise, they will choose insofar as they are not violating the laws of the country of incorporation. But here, we have a Constitution and a lot of experience that shows that approach works most of the time for most of the cases. Providing for the 'common welfare' is a tough business. In real time control systems, there are two uncompromising problems: overcorrect and you fly it into the runway. Under correct and it flies itself into the runway. The middle value is what you want and that tends to make hash of didactic arguments with an excluded middle. As much as I root for individual initiative, when you get something like a Cat 5 hurricane, only a well-lead government can react fast and what one may find in electoral systems is they (the people) did not choose wisely. That is another problem of perception over reality: crowds have majorities and minorities and sometimes the majority blows it. I do understand and in a lot of cases (see the music business), you are right. Unfortunately it took Apple and iTunes just a few short years to incentivize the Bad Old Machine into the game and people slurp it up because frankly they are getting a good deal and aren't too worried about the artists. This is another perception over reality problem but creating and sustaining those perceptions is Marketing and Politics 101. There is a middle ground there too: instead of free to the artists, they pay to belong but keep all of their IP. See http://www.tunecore.com/ (Thanks Elliot). The key here is as it is in all markets: access and a marketing budget. No marketing == no market. The Internet changed nothing. That is a systemic problem of humans in the loop. With all the New Age hoopla, they are still mammals and they haven't transcended that as a culture or an ecologically active agent. In fact, it may be going in the opposite direction. Evolution is not always upward. It devolves and it crabwalks. That is why the principles are published and we chew on them here even if it is offtopic for the list. So if it always comes down to leadership and proven principles. Choose wisely and pay attention to results. Then choose more wisely because the ONLY thing the Internet is good at is enabling you to become smarter faster. It's an amplifier. See Doug Englebart (Augment). len -----Original Message----- From: sterling [mailto:sstouden@t...] Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 6:51 AM To: Peter Hunsberger Cc: Bullard, Claude L (Len); XML Developers List Subject: Re: Using The Principle of Least Power As A Razor THE PROBLEM IN EVERY PROBLEM IS TO UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM. Do you approach a problem differently if the objective is unknown? Objectives known and fixed in time, space, language, and culture = solutions to be evaluated in terms of access parameters (speed, time, input difficulty and the like) and quality of output. Objectives unknown and moving in time, space, language, and culture = proposed technologies discover the parameters of the objective over time in the light of language, culture, circumstance and position. A prime example of this second type of problem solving occurred when the Internet was at its beginnings, everyone sought to determine how best to use it. Browsers were problematic, FTP was the prime means of packet transport, and email might take a day or two, routing was done via Linux and Unix boxes, only a few even knew it existed, and those that did were struggling to learn how to use the multitude of new tools each of us were creating. hacking was a way of learning and the techs would discourage the occasional marketing efforts with denial of service attacks via telnet from high speed networks. The days before the startling giveaway by Netscape of a Browser that could actually scroll an image to the screen embedded in text. ( 15 minutes at 300 baud to load the page?). The discovery of just what was the problem, was the problem. Each new technology brought new lights of experience and surfaced new problems, but no complete solutions. What has recently surfaced in this discovery of the problem process is laws, lawyers, government rule making agencies and their greedy for profit clients together with government and their hungry for power over everyone mindsets. Time has shown that they are a very large part of the problem. Insurmountable even because they are attempting to force the technology to fit into their traditional elite-franchised nation state systems and to segment and control the information environment and to claim ownership of most of it (Rule: the elite intend to profit from their rule.). In pre Internet days, rule of law and a system of treaties were enough to maintain complete control of all humanity both domestically and internationally. The Internet has challenged not only the power of the traditional elite to maintain adequate control, but also the viability of the nation state system itself. The Internet is to the nation state system what Martin Luther's post to the church door was in the 15th century, one more giant leap in the human quest to bring full access and full power of control of self to "self". Unrestricted access to the knowledge, information and technology that civilization has to offer is a human right to which every single person alive is entitled. The Internet has shown that no law, no rule or tradition of property, no right of nations should be allowed to abridge the human right to it, but experience has shown that laws, if allowed, will domainate. Believe you me, the nation state system is gearing up to meet the challenge. Until recently, few have seen that challenge as a problem in the Internet. In the Radio and TV act of 1948 terminated independent free access to the broadcast spectrum and created the FCC. Thousands had to shut down their transmitters for lack of license, money or whatever. Anyone could be a broadcaster but the act restricted broadcasting to government licensees only. It made it technically and financially difficult to be a broadcaster. This I believe is about to happen on the net. Soon internet servers will be licensed by government only to the few who the elite will deem worthy to gate information to the minds of the many. The government will determine who will filter information and who will earn profit from serving infomation content. If ever something was loosely assembled at its bare minimums it was the Internet and the results thus far have been astounding. Left unconstrained, the Internet could be the tool that saves humanity from its leaders.
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