Re: ::scr Technical Priesthood

[simon wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.

...

So the net/web/whatever is great. 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?

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.

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 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.

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.

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.


...


What I'm saying is that it is *not* everybody has right to be on the
Net. By letting the masses on the quality of life for people who had
been there for years was irrevocably lessened. 

People seem to think that it's a god given right to get at knowledge. I
don't think that's necessarily true - I don't have the right to go to a
footballing school of excellence and that's fair enough. So why should
some moron go and do a degree in David Beckham studies? By doing so he's
ensured that I had to get myself into debt to go through college. 

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?

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'. Who refuse to learn how a web
server works despite the fact that it will improve their skills at their
jobs and make my life easier because they'll have a rough idea of what
is *actually* possible.

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

</flame bait>

 
Simon
[wondering if he went a bit over the top]