Author: Walter

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Richard Stallman

Stallman

Here is an item from Richard Stallman which I find both compelling and sad. After I have struggled hard with GNU/Linux – I now learn that the kernel nay not be free (in the sense of having all the sources available). I have never seen my foray into this area as solely technical but always as part of a sort of noosphere probe. It still is that of course but what my probe is revealing is how big this battle for freedom is. This is not libertarian freedom either – but freedom for people to be able to work together to be creative. Freedom for one generation to be able to build on the creations of the previous. Which is the exact opposite of the freedom to build private empires.

It is very like theological debate isn’t it. I am not really up with the history of that but I imagine whole churches split over such finery. I know I can’t be that ideologically pure – but I am glad that RMS is.

I am not a programmer but I do make web pages and I’d never have been able to do that without the “source” button actually working. Imagine a web that was not open source in that way. It would not have happened at all. What is closed software preventing today?

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Agent History

Just upgraded my old Agent as i am back in XP as I am having a few problems in Linux right now. Thhis is a nice story. I can get by in Windows with the likes of Agent and Mozilla – which is a great browser.

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Why I Don’t Use the GPL

“Do the demands of the GPL cause as much harm as closed-source code?”

Interesting discussion on going into the use of dual licences etc. following what is a flawed opening article. I have a great respect for that GPL! That people cheat and close it off is a sad thing though. Apparently it is easy enough to do a string search to see if that has happened.

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Linux in Red, Tux in Blue

“Linux will always be more than the sum of its egos”

This is a rejoinder to the Metcalf thing. I know these are old articles… but I like that about the web – it persists (when it does not rot).

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Semantic Web

Mercury News | 05/11/2002 | Dan Gillmor: Web pioneer looks at ground covered, future

Tim Berners-Lee:
“Assuming we don’t cripple technology, tomorrow’s Web will be dramatically different from today’s. What we have today is a human-readable system, a good one. The coming Web will also be machine-readable, Berners-Lee says, and the implications are enormous.

“This new Web, which Berners-Lee and others call the “Semantic Web,” will be an overlay on the current one. Its most prominent feature will be machines communicating with other machines on our behalf, using tools now under development.

“After his keynote speech, Berners-Lee was asked to describe his view of the future Internet. It will be vastly more flexible and useful than today, he said.

“Our connections will be omnipresent, he said. The context of what we’re doing virtually will move with us from one physical location to another.

“The potential seems unlimited, he said, provided we give innovators a cleanly designed, unencumbered platform on which to make their miracles. We’re in the early days, and that’s exciting to contemplate.”

The context of what we’re doing virtually will move with us from one physical location to another.

That is the line that intigues me and of course that Tim Berners-Lee said it. It is still hard to envisage – because what if the cat-door opening mechanism crashes phenomena, it might kill the cat. Sometimes it might be best done really simply! I hanker after technology that is simple. I wish Deskview had worked!

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Every email is a significant act

E-Mail Notification Management
“I like to impose this extra bit of protocol on myself, to underscore that every e-mail is a significant act.”

Jon Udell is one of the few writers who takes a real interest in how our emails work, how groups work online. His column “Tangled in the treads” for Byte always has a good take on this or that aspect of online collaboration. I don’t always agree with the details (or understand the hi-tech stuff) but “that every e-mail is a significant act.” is a fine principle.

This article is about his first look at Outlook.

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May the blogs be with you

Salon.com Technology | Use the blog, Luke

“The collective future of blogs lies not in dethroning the New York Times — but in becoming a force that can make sense of the Web’s infinity of links.”

The noosphere will not be built by the NYT. The shape and flow of the networks of links is not just a big wide web, there are forces in various directions – there dynamic, a struggle for outcome. Blogs are part of the benign side. A force for freedom of expression.

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Living Vicariously

Forster, E. M. (Edward Morgan): The Machine Stops Literature Annotations

Another prophetic writer… hit on the idea of movies and email before WW1. Upholds the notion that we are better off not living vicariously with the aid of machines. Does he have a point? Makes me think of the Lunig cartoon of the family watching the sunset on TV while it is happening outside the window.

Maybe there is a point to it. As in: Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918

119. Trees

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, 5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain. 10

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

But what if we reversed the idea:

I THINK that I shall never see a tree lovely as a poem.
In a poem the tree becomes sacred.

We spend a lot of time here in space looking at words – and somehow that seems important… to be in the noosphere. We value nature but travel to see art galleries.

We make God in our image of God.

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