::scr Technical Priesthood

[matt jones]

On Tuesday, December 18, 2001 4:11 pm, simon wistow wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 03:39:46AM -0800, matt jones said:
>
> [snip lots of valid stuff]
>
> Prepare the troll gong! It's time to play devil's advocate.

Ooooh, goody! Bring it on!

> So the net/web/whatever is great.

Ah, but the point I was making wasn't "the net is great because you can do
all this stuff", my point was "the net is great because *anyone* can do
all this stuff". The barriers should be kept low (or even be lowered
further) so that any human being[0] can reap the benefits of free speech
and freedom of information offered by the net. To someone with my
world-view, full public (read-write) access to a global mass medium that
isn't controlled by a handful of incestuous corporate interests is an end
in itself. No matter whose sense of propriety or etiquette is offended.

> That doesn't mean the slobbering
> masses are entitled to it. Ignoring the fact for the moment that it was
> built, originally, with public money - why the fuck should they be here?

Because they were invited? I'll explain during your scenario.

> Imagine this scenario ...
>
> There was this room. And it was pretty cool - a bit spartan but there
> were lots of people hanging round it. People shared their books and
> materials, there was lots of space and it was cheap. People were polite
> to each other apart from the odd heated argument. Anyone who didn't
> follow the unwritten rules was put right and soon they understood the
> error of their ways.
>
> Evryone was happy.
>
> Then Cletus, the backwater ignoramus turned up one day after some
> company, who he was paying to provide him with lots of books with
> nice pictures and pop ups and the were chewable and could take in the
> bath, realised it was cheaper for them if they didn't have to produce
> the content and shoved him through the door.

While, having lived in Norfolk, I would be the last person to
underestimate the dangers of slack-jawed yokels when introduced into a
closed ecosystem, I should point out that the people in the room had been
banging on to everyone else about how great the room was. Many had even
been heavily involved in not only widening the doors (to make it easier to
get to the room) but also installing turnstiles and toll booths.

> And Cletus wouldn't listen to the original people in the room who became
> more and more disillusioned as the company shoved more and more people
> through and the new people made the place crowded and dog eared the
> books 

Dog eared the books? I don't see how that translates - how do you dog ear
web pages or newgroups? Sorry, nitpicking - I get the point. 

> and complained that there weren't enough pictures and talked
> loudly and were rude and refused to listen to all the people who were
> there before and one by one those people disapeared and, to the people
> who gave a damn, this was a great loss but the majority just didn't
> care and thought it was nice that all those nagging bores went away.

Except the ones who were coining in't brass by selling to (or sometimes
ripping off) the hicks. And as for the admittedly anti-social behaviour or
the rednecks - how do you expect people to avoid offending anyone when
they're dropped cold into an established social system with a complex set
of rules?

> Eventually the masses will leave because the room doesn't live up to the
> unrealistic expectations that marketing people had rammed down their
> throats. Stuff that would have been much better if it had been given
> time to develop was rushed and overhyped and underspecced and therefore
> disapointed everybody.

Don't blame Joe Q Average-Net-User for the ecesses of marketing over the
past few years.

> Maybe, one day, the original people, or their brethren will come back,
> breath a deep sigh and start fixing up the place and cleaning the walls
> and picking up the rubbish. Maybe.

I'd question your apparent assumpption that the rooms original inhabitants
had any more of a right to be there than anyone else. You also have to
bear in mind that not everyone new who comes to the room are
'shine-supping sheep-scarers. Some are brilliant artists, breathtaking
authors, visionary demagogues, inspirational teachers, none of whom would
have contributed if they hadn't been able to get into the room. Okay, so a
lot of the contributions by the general population of the room were the
equivalent of illeterate graffiti, but a bit of scrawling is a small price
to pay for the mona lisa that the lass next to the redneck painted while
she was there.

Look, this is getting a bit stretched, mind if I drop the metaphor now?

> What I'm saying is that it is *not* everybody has right to be on the
> Net.

Au contraire, by making it a globally accessible network with no
restrictions to entry the creators of the net gave everyone a de facto
right to access it. A right is something that is granted, and access to
the net has been granted to everyone. Live with it.

> By letting the masses on the quality of life for people who had
> been there for years was irrevocably lessened. 

And where does their god-given right to have a protected quality of life
spring from?

> People seem to think that it's a god given right to get at knowledge. 

Knowledge, I should point out, that is freely offered. And to be honest,
mate, the people you're complaiining about are much more concerned with
their right to bray nonsense at people than they are with getting at
knowledge. I tend to find that the people who are interested in getting at
knowledge are the same people who make the best contributions.

> I know you have the inherent problem of a meritocracy here and cleverer
> people than I have debated that but with the Net, what I'm saying, is
> that if you can't read the docs and set up a CHAP script then maybe you
> don't deserve to be online - yes, some South American Guerilla group may
> gain much support by publishing their manifesto on the Web but if they
> can't figure out how to set up a connection to their ISP then hwo are
> they going to come up with a viable political doctrine?

Ah, but here we get back to my point - the great thing is that they *can*
figure out how to set up a connection to their ISP. And their political
doctrine might be a simple as "please get rid of these fucks who are
disappearing people and shooting us and imposing a secret police force on
us". I don't see how the fact that they happen to use a point and drool
interface (istead of a command line or monkeying about with .conf
files) to put their message up makes it any less valid ...

And what about the other example - the person lving under a repressive
regime that throttles their access to non-propaganda information? Why
would it be a good thing to make it harder for them to access independent
information sources? 

The thing is, it boils down to what you think the net should be for. I
suppose I can see your point if you think that the net is for clever
people to hang out on and share witty banter, technical information and
generally enjoy a subculture. Sounds like a shitload of fun, after all.
But I think that the net can be used to benefit people so much more in
many more meaningful (as in life-and-death, sometimes) ways that it's our
*duty* to make sure as many people get access as want it.

And I don't know about you, but I've noticed that despite the fact tha AOL
fas X million users now, I *still* get to hang around with clever people,
share banter and enjoy a subculture. 

> Technical stuff is *not* hard.  People are just scared of it - I've met
> designers and marketing people and the like who refuse to learn PHP or
> some other simple templating language because it's "too technical", some
> even think that HTML is 'too technical'.

But it's not just the marketurds and the designers or the braying
kiddiots - people always focus on the twats when they talk about the
consequences of accessibility. I think it's a good thing that someone with
something to say or great art to share doesn't have to spend the time
learning a new discipline.

> If you believe that you are smart enough to run a country then you're
> smart enough to follow a few HOWTOs.

But a lot of the time it's a cultural conditioning thing, isn't it? I
mean, a lot of very intelligent, well read and interesting people are
scared of it, and I agree that they shouldn't be. However, you have to
bear in mind that many of these people first became aware of computers
when Real Programmers like the legendary Mel were the norm, not the
exception.

Surely you'll admit that not being able to hook up to your ISP was less of
a sign of intellectual sloth in 1972 than it is today. Well, that's how a
lot of these people see the world of computing. Inscrutable, occult, and
even dangerous after years of hearing about enormous cock-ups perpetrated
"by computers", not to mention decades for frankenstein-complex FUD from
all sides. I think it's understndable that they need the security of some
stabilisers in the form of a nice lazy GUI).

Awww, fuck, I'm rambling now. I'll stop.

To sum up: Mighty though their contibution to it's creation has been, the
Net is no longer simply a hacker's playground. Pandora's box has been
opened. However, the Net can now be wonderful force for good in people's
lives and can really make a serious difference if used wisely. It should
be made as widely available and accessible as possible.

-- 
matt
"Bah! We're living in the 21st Century and people *still* wage war to
impress invisible superheroes who live in outer space! I thought we would
all be chilling out in solar-powered flying cars by now!"
- www.mnftiu.cc

[0] Okay, not any human being, but I won't get into all that PC "well,
some people are starving refugees who don't own a laptop blah blah blah"
stuff - you get the point.