What barriers are there (either technological or infrastructure) that prevent all the devices you use in a regular day from converging into a single device? How did this differ from 10 years ago? How much stuff do you own that would be replaced by such a convergence? What is the relationship between such broad economic transitions and our economic problems? If we want to keep reasonably similar levels of lack-of-central-control, how might we (legislatively, otherwise) shape the transition to preserve it? Do the technology changes make the current form of that lack of control sustainable post-transition?
As for me, I would be very happy to get rid of all my DVDs and books if I had open, digitised and annotatable versions of all the content in each, without DRM. It would free up considerable space in my apartment.
Not closely related, it'd be really interesting to see people stand up en masse for ethical structures (view full entry for contents)
In more than one area of my life, I've taken what might be a radical position by some standards. I try not to be too in-your-face about this with people I know - it's not that I wouldn't be pleased if people found my conclusions or my reasoning good, but rather that with my other leg, I have a second position. That second position is one which is less specific than my actual position, less radical, safer, and one to which I either might retreat to if I must or feel more comfortable moving other people towards. I consider the "other leg" a "good opponent" in discussions, a "virtuous without being devoted", and a reasonable thing to move others towards without making them the radical that I am (and hey, if they happen to come to my radicalism for good reasons, I'd be happy).
I am an atheist.(view full entry for contents)
I am a socialist(view full entry for contents)
I am (or at least was) a radical environmentalist and remain one of the "mental space" anti-advert, anti-consumerism lot(view full entry for contents)
I think part of it is also that I'm afraid of manipulating people, or afraid of converting them, or even afraid of the burdens of being respected - if they begin to respect me, or change their beliefs because of me, I'd feel obligations coming from that, I'd feel that if I have some other radical ideas that they see for the first time their (possibly fragile) belief in whatever they've come to see might come apart, etc. Maybe I'm more comfortable with good opponents or companions anyhow - there have been a few times in my life (not many) when people read some things I had written and came up to express admiration - few things invoked such horror in me as that (certainly a horror I didn't understand until I had the time to prod at it - still not sure I do entirely). The last thing one should want is groupies when one is trying to inspire the whole world to deep, careful thought (even if one can only provide a tiny amount of such inspiration to a very small number of people). I guess it's not really much of a problem anymore (maybe it's because of emotional breakdowns, or maybe it's because my arguments are for a different philosophy than they used to be, or maybe it's because seeing me in person for more than a few seconds is a very rare event for anyone who might possibly be interested in these things)
Unrelated, I am slightly surprised that Wean hall is closed right now because of a bomb threat. Oh well, off to Crêpes!
I was going to sketch my general intuitions for how people can keep wikis and other "new media" working socially.. might yet do that. I might also post a newer version of my OpenVPN-manager - substantial improvements since last week's tarball. I'm not sure if anyone is interested in such things though - I don't think there were downloads apart from search engines. Little point in posting it if, like the webcomic I posted for awhile, I'm the only one who cares :P
Evening steeped in utter routine - work, teahouse, home. Perhaps something novel, perhaps something I've said before in another way.
I wonder, given our suceptability to branding, whether tribal humanity used tattoos to distinguish tribe from tribe. (view full entry for contents)
PZ points our attention at Irving Kristol on political truths. Kristol believes in the "hard" type of propoganda, where society has various narratives for people of various levels of political sophistication - these narratives are tailored for their audience, in the name of political stability. (view full entry for contents)
A recent edition of the ISR had a refreshingly honest account of the (very tenuous) connection between Marxism and feminism. I am tempted to say that Marxism more can be "made compatible" with feminism (in the same way that Sarte in his later years made existentialism compatible with marxism, tinkering with suppositions of both to create an intellectual enterprise that coherently melded the traditions and values of both) than that they're naturally compatible. I'm comfortable maintaining my high score on the BS-filter for any social studies paper that references socialist theory in the context of gender/queer/feminist/$race studies.
Interesting task - reconstruction of Haitian infrastructure. I don't envy Préval, but he has a very interesting task ahead. Likewise for those trying to use reconciliation to pass the Health Care bill (frankly, I would rather a more aggressive, stronger bill that would just get 51%, and simply ram it through by letting Republicans filibuster for as long as they like (months, if needed), locking up congress and letting public pressure build on them until some small sacrifice can seal the deal). It's not pretty, but it's bloody stupid to let threat of a filibuster undermine a major initiative by a party in clear and large majority - extensive threat of this might reasonably lead to the end of our democracy, as parties might prove unwilling to ever let *anything* pass without a 60% majority.
I'm not easily interested or impressed by jock-type things, to put it mildly. National Geographic somehow manages to provide a programme that I would happily watch alongside people who are very different from me. This, called "Fight Science", goes into the physics of martial arts and is beyond awesome. It's about an hour and a half, so be prepared to devote some time for it (or download it).
(around the 1 hour mark, they discuss the Bõ, which was my favourite weapon when I was learning some flavour of kenpo, ages ago - I would've happily just learned Bõ and skipped or skimped on the rest - they show a really interesting 3-part staff after that)
I am not a graphics-editing wizard. Click on the image for larger evidence of this.
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In other news, I think Elizabeth Warren is one of my favourite nonelected government figures. Just like Lawrence Lessig (who is not a government official in any way, but who is also a law school prof), she's a law professor working to shape government for the interests of society. While I'm considerably to the left of either of them, I have a lot of respect for both of them. On that note, Lawrence Lessig is trying to get people talking about a 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, focusing on shortcomings in our electoral system and how influence can be bought.
Bleh, politics. (view full entry for contents)
This winter: (view full entry for contents)
Tonight I learned about the big brother of the history substitution operator in bash. (view full entry for contents)
I may have badly mismanaged time at work, and I'm a bit worried about it. I thought a certain task was significantly smaller than it was, and only noticed when I was deploying it that there's a lot of other tricky stuff I was supposed to do too - If I had known this I would have said "no" or delayed a lot of other things that needed doing. Sigh. My productivity is a lot lower than it should be for various reasons anyhow. I might need to do a lot of marathon software design/programming to avoid people getting upset.
I sometimes wonder what my life would've been like if I had been successful at flirting with some of the people I tried to flirt with in the years since my last gf. (view full entry for contents)
Incomplete rambling about technocrat-ism snipped.
In theory, making myself try to be social today was a victory, but it was most unsatisfying and a failure. Sigh. I don't know what to do.
