Category: Psyber

Posted on

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?

Posted on

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!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Free Software Politics and Advocacy

Free Software Politics and Advocacy

“I’m interested in linking the free software movement with the struggle for social justice and developing the synergies between them, and in connecting free software with freedom of information issues in other areas.”

YES

There are good reasons for free software… free as in that it can freely flow through cyberspace and develop and grow as it moves without it becoming proprietory and closed source on the way. The GNU Licences can make it so.

  • it can evolve more flexibly and be more functional – it develops according to USE value – it is better
  • it can be available to more people – poorer people
  • it prevents the alienation of the people creating the work from the ownership of it
  • it’s inner workings are visible, hence the learning is inherent in the product – the tools are at the same time educational tools and toys
  • it is a model of how cooperation is possible and an inspiration for people working without the constraints of the profit motive
  • anyone can re-build any program anyway they like and hence it enhances creativity
  • it is an example of how technology changes the relations of production – and bodes well for the future of production

So much for the social and political…

Psychologically… the virtual world, the mindspace, the context for the expression of out thoughts and feelings, the context for their *meaning*, feels and is different and better without a company brand name on it. Do we enter a Microsoft world – a Disney world – a neon lit suburbia – when we enter psyberspace – or can it be a national park? The commons? If we win this we will have different dreams and the anti-technology people will no-longer be right when they say there is no soul here.

Yes, we do social/political things for psychological ends (alluding to)

Posted on

Ivan Illich Transcript

WTP – Ivan Illich Transcript van Illich with Jerry Browe We the People, KPFA – March 22, 1996

“Brown: This hour we have a very special privilege and opportunity. We have here in the studio in Los Angeles Ivan Illich and Carl Mitchum, two friends of mine who I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation. Listen in. You’ll find it instructive. Ivan Illich is the author of a book, very famous in the 1970s, called Deschooling Society, another book called Medical Nemesis. He’s also the author of Celebration of Awareness, Tools for Conviviality, Gender, and now his most recent book called In the Vineyard of the Text, a commentary on a 12th century scholar and saint, Hugh of St. Victor. Along with us here in the studio is Carl Mitchum, a professor of humanities, presently Visiting Scholar at the Colorado School of Mines and on a more permanent basis a professor at Penn State where Ivan Illich and his friends and fellow scholars meet every year for a few months to study these ideas that over the next hour we’re going to do our best to elucidate and share. Ivan, why don’t we just start with the book that I first encountered when I became aware of you, and that is the book Deschooling. Can you reflect on what you were thinking about when you wrote it and how you might see that reality today because we’re still struggling with schools in this society. There’s still a dependency on professionals that seems to have control of how we learn or don’t learn and I just have to wonder have we made any progress in creating the context where people get the sense that they are in charge of their own learning?”

Interesting discussion. Does the world a context sensitive help? Not in schools which subvert that. Xenos – Zeus and hospitality? Acedia the inactivity which results from seeing how enormously difficult it is to do the right thing – is it a sin?

There is also insight into the interface – the pupil of the eye which takes in with its psychopods the other person. But they do not really grasp the potential of the medium for – conviviality and friendship.

Later Saturday, 7 May, 2011

I don’t understand a word of my own comments either.

The link above does not work, but I’ve put the whole item below. Found here:

http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/ivan_illich_jerry.html

Continue reading “Ivan Illich Transcript”

Proudly powered by WordPress