RE: [ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [issues] News from Johannesburg (2)
Chris, (01)
Thanks for your message. (02)
I was quite surprised to your reaction to dissent. Is dissent un-unrev?
I know dissent is not un-American. (03)
BTW, are you a statist? An apparatchik? (04)
Look, meta-govt, bureaucracies and empire squashes innovation,
collaboration, community, computing and communications. It is not worth
the keystrokes to explain... (05)
According to Marshall McLuhan, for yet another example, decentralism is
essential to electronic technology just as centralism was critical for
mechanical technology specialization and military industrialization. (06)
It can't be made any simpler. The electric world could be "open, dynamic
and interdependent" unless you close it down with rigid, mechanistic,
self-serving economic bureaucracies like the EU, NAFTA, WTO and the
rest. Their bogus charter and mission will not serve the 21st century. (07)
At the time, Napoleon's empire and idea of a 'continental system' was
already a disaster costing millions of lives. Its vulture roost is now
Brussels. It will prove a lot harder, costly and more painful to
dismantle that it was to create. (08)
Quiet frankly, the electronic 'unrev' society is more akin to an
agrarian society and has little requirement to be served by phony,
corrupt and unelected supra-govt. (09)
It's back to the future, baby. (010)
The arrogant UN is the biggest offender of them all because of its
tendency of deep centralization, elitism, numbing bureaucracy,
counterfeit 'global views' and profound indifference to the body
politic. Like every rising empire, they strive to engineer the
individual out of the equation. (011)
Have a look at "War and Peace in the Global Village," by Professor
McLuhan, and Max H. Boisot's "Knowledge Assets," for more background. (012)
-jtm (013)
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
[mailto:owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org] On Behalf Of Chris Dent
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 12:54 AM
To: ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
Subject: RE: [ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [issues] News from Johannesburg (2) (014)
John, (015)
I've been hesitant to join in this thread. In part because it appears to
be a waste and in part because as far as I can tell you are a paranoid,
nationalistic, states-rights fruitcake with whom I'm embarassed to be
associated. However because I'm not sure you aren't playing some twisted
game and in the interest of collaborative discussion instead of giving
you a *plonk* I have 2 questions and a
request: (016)
On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, John Maloney wrote: (017)
> Meta-government defeats local and personal responsibility and
> consequence. Same is true of innovation, collaboration, community,
> computing and communications. (018)
1) I can't parse the second sentence here. What is it that is true of
those things you list? (019)
2) In my view the uni- or bi-lateralism that you appear to support in
international policy is antithetical to the philosophical underpinnings
of collaboration. How do you reconcile that with your own apparently
very strong interest in Engelbart's style of collaboration or at least
collaboration in general? (020)
That style finds its philosophical foundations in the same places as
people who like to think of the world as an open, dynamic and
interdependent system where the rapacious self-interest and boundary
creation that you appear to advocate is unsustainable. (021)
Check out the first few chapters of this book for the philosophy: (022)
Bardini, T. (2000). Bootstrapping: Douglas Englebart Coevolution, and
the Origins of Personal Computing. Stanford, California:
Stanford
University Press. (023)
or for some of my own comments on such things: (024)
http://www.burningchrome.com/~cdent/index.cgi?word=110 (025)
The request: (026)
If it's in your purview, can you take me off the kmcluster mailings? I'm
not interested in supporting that organization by inflating its mailing
list. Nor do I wish to receive announcements for events I'm unable to
attend. (027)
--
Chris Dent <cdent@burningchrome.com>
http://www.burningchrome.com/~cdent/
"If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are
opportunities to change things, that hope is possible, then hope may be
justified, and a better world may be built. That's your choice."
N.Chomsky (028)