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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@thelinks.com]
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 6:51 AM
To: Peter Hunsberger
Cc: Bullard, Claude L (Len); XML Developers List
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] 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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