Glen -
Well intuited/analyzed/stated as always!
On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 09:50 -0700, glen wrote:
The asymmetries being amplified by our new openness are simply
different from those that dominated before the openness. Our new
masters will be (are, actually) people like the brogrammers ... people
like Musk and Schmidt. And it's not really money that the "haves"
have... it's the agility (and other salient attributes) to manipulate
the new social manifold.
What is the alternative?
Marcus
And yes, this is what I'm asking this august body to consider... are
there alternatives?
Are our only options extremes such as all rushing headlong to become the
new "robber barons" ourselves, based on your (possible) ability/agility
to manipulate said "new social manifold" (great term by the way, unless
it is just another way avoiding saying "landscape";) or taking the
oppressive route as told in Vonnegut's tale of imposed social equality
through handicapping everyone down to a least common denominator.
Perhaps it is the question of the commons where the commons is Glen's
"new social manifold". Can we in any way apply our presumed
"enlightened self interest" to the shaping of said commons or restating
the above? Bending dangerously the "landscape metaphor, do we just
carve huge moguls in it with our rambunctious race to the bottom,
exposing rocks and other hazards thereby undermining the experience of
all others on the slopes except the most keenly facile? Or do we take
an army of bulldozers to the slopes and make a flat plain of them to be
enjoyed by all equally with no advantage proffered to diversity of
circumstance and ability?
"Hey McCloud, get offa my Ewe!" - not the Stones
- Steve
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