From: Boris Groendahl <boris@well.com>
Goofy Leftists
Sniping at WIRED
the Well
[this is a thread of The Well BBS,
(http://www.well.com) , published here with
permission by most of the authors]
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
Started by: Bruce Sterling (bruces) on Sun, Apr 21, '96
13 responses so far
Okay, maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing a minor groundswell here *8-/
13 responses total.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#1 of 13: Sofia's Choice (amicus) Sun Apr 21 '96 (09:29) 3 lines
We goofy leftists have fared so poorly on the political front, losing a president to the other party, that it's a relief to have finally found a target too big to miss.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#2 of 13: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun Apr 21 '96 (09:32) 162 lines
From: Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>
Subject: nettime: Utopia Redux - by Karrie Jacobs
Sender: owner-nettime-l@Desk.nl
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: nettime-talk@mail.thing.at
From: DAVIDG@XS4ALL.NL
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 96 17:00:07 -0100
Utopia Redux
by Karrie Jacobs
[... here follow the text, already posted on nettime, you
can find it on page 33 or http://www.word.com/
textword/machine/jacobs/index.html> ]]
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#3 of 13: Sofia's Choice (amicus) Sun Apr 21 '96 (09:39) 2 lines
Why do all of the quotes get labeled "CA CA?" Formatting problem, or prescience?
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#4 of 13: celadon of chartreuse (fom) Sun Apr 21 '96 (11:20) 1 line
Wow!
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#5 of 13: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Sun Apr 21 '96
(12:34) 12 lines
What limited vision. "Those who wallow in history are doomed to repeat it." Nothing there about the political impact inherent in the global redistribution of *information*. And as for the bit about white-boy elites...it's obvious that the current 'wired generation' is mostly white, mostly male, but what's that say? To me it's clear that we have to work hard to wire the schools, down to K level, so that everyone will have an opportunity to learn the technology. That people are the same online as offline doesn't seem like a criticism, to me. I'd prefer it that way...tools are extensions, not replacements, for life.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#6 of 13: Mikki Halpin (filmmag) Sun Apr 21 '96 (13:00) 2 lines
I need a snapple after that
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#7 of 13: Howard Rheingold (hlr) Sun Apr 21 '96 (14:50) 4 lines
For more goofy leftists who think Louis and Kevin and John Perry and I see eye-to-eye on just about everything, check out
http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#8 of 13: Paulina Borsook (loris) Sun Apr 21 '96 (15:39) 2 lines
and for my goofy leftist rant, check out the july issue of mother jones [g]
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#9 of 13: Zulu was a mort (rbr) Sun Apr 21 '96 (15:50) 2 lines
The section I read contrasted you and Wired, Howard. Though they did make it sound like the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#10 of 13: Dave Hughes (dave) Sun Apr 21 '96 (16:01) 4 lines
....and the world of books confined us to a 'box' eighty spaces wide and fifty or so lines long...Can't see the web for the screen.
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#11 of 13: Steve Silberman (digaman) Sun Apr 21 '96 (23:49) 10 lines
Anyone who thinks a Chrysler Corporation Web site is the "revolution" *does* have their head up their ass. The revolution is in the areas of the Web that will be most heavily impacted by controls on Net-speech, like gay forums, places where kids make the culture, health-care empowerment sites, e-zines, and so on. Demonizing Kevin and Howard ain't the damn revolution either. Can we get beyond a way of thinking that assumes that all members of any group - whether drag queens, Republicans, or "rich, white males" - are intrinsically evil? That's even more tired than Wired.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#12 of 13: David Brake (derb) Mon Apr 22 '96 (03:02) 11 lines
re: #5 - Global redistribution of information? Ridiculous. For those who are interested there has long been plenty of information available, quite easy to get at, through the public library system. And teaching children how to use computers at all social levels won't help them much if they have trouble reading, have to work after school or skip school to make ends meet or will never be able to afford a computer of their own (or even a phone line).
The Internet may empower some people, but the effect is probably marginal, focussed on those who would probably have been able to use traditional methods of self-improvement and protest to achieve their goals anyway.
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#13 of 13: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Mon Apr 22 '96 05:08) 22 lines
Uh, David...have you spent any time watching kids do research online? Have you spent any time watching culturally starved POOR kids discover the world beyond television on the web? Have you experienced online debates where you could practically hear the sound of heads turning? I could go on.Have you seen any of this happening in the public library? If I'm a ten year old kid in the ghetto and all I've ever known is television and public school, I don't go to no LIBRARY unless somebody's pushing me there. However give me a computer and a decent Internet link, and I'm gang busters. If I'm an intelligent but uneducated adult who's lived within the constraints of poverty all my life, and never knew how to participate in the political process, my life changes when I find my way to a computer and plug into discussion lists, conferences, chats, etc. And I have access to a wealth of information about the internal workings of the state that no television or radio network ever delivered to my door... Given your profession, I'm surprised that you don't see this.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#14 of 20: Mikki Halpin (filmmag) Mon Apr 22 '96 (06:03) 6 lines
yeah but how often does either of those really happen. I mean, I;d likj to belive that and spend a lot of time trying to get the first to happen, but I'd like to see more than anecdotal or theoretical evidence of change really being effected.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#15 of 20: Dave Hughes (dave) Mon Apr 22 '96 (07:03) 98 lines
'The Internet may empower some people, but the effect is probably marginal' Hey derb, is that a widespread UK view? Or only what your fellow PC mag writers around the water cooler think? How often?' filmmag?
What numbers are you seeking? I have a hunch that those using, and pontificating, about the Internet who live their lives in big central cities confuse how much 'change' it makes *there* with how much change in smaller towns, remote areas, and lots of 3d world countries.
Lets see, three years ago, in the rural, comparatively poor, San Luis Valley of Colorado, where only 45,000 people live in 30 agricultural towns (biggest one 15,000), there was no connectivity to the net except for that handful of people taking certain courses at a small college. I helped a social services agency who helps the *really* disenfranchized, set up a BBS - which made big news, then grew. And spawned an entire organization which has a valley wide, net linked system with public access. Then after my setting up an Internet accessible BBS+TCP/IP system at a school with 85% of its minority (Hispanic) students on school lunches (index of non-wealth), first the teachers, then the students, and a continuous flow of people in the valley started reaching *out* of the valley online, and getting the idea that they could (1) get educated (2) start enterprises in the valley with a technological connection. Which, at another school district changed minds enough for them to accept the radical idea that in-school students could 'make' computers (assemble from original design, market, make money, and earn a machine themselves - the new 'tools of production') So that has now grown to the point a complete manufacturing plant is going to be built by small entrepenuers. About then a guy who had just a little computer and a fair amount of telephone/radio experience, put up his savings and borrowings and in effect 'franchised' the first true ISP commercial service in the Valley - which quickly outgrew its 8 lines, and attracted education, business, local government. And which put him, and his employees into a new business.
Then another eduational institution - a junior college opened up a branch there, and put its top priority on getting a T-1 line, first to itself, and then using part of the 'fine' of the telephone company to connect up all 14 school districts to the Internet at T-1 speeds (and will probably use our pointers to doing it wirelessly at much lower cost than by RBOC
Meanwhile a 74 year old weaver in a very small (100 maybe) town is marketting her wool, skeins, and weavings by the net. The school which had no connection, has now contracted with a Nova (sp?) internet linkable educational system, which is totally transforming educating the kids, interactively.
Now if you seriously think those 'internet' connections won't be a major change-agent in the Valley, by affecting the kind and quality of education, not only of the students who have *no* access to the benefits of larger city schools with bigger budgets, closer access to quality resources, *and* better teachers - ones who refuse to live in the Valley at low pay and long daily drives (like 100 miles round trip to teach) but also of the teachers themselves (currently 20 of them are taking a rigerous course in math and science from Dr. Johnston of MIT, entirely by And only if you believe peoples lives will not be 'changed' by the type, quality, and scope of education, can you believe that access to resources by the net will make only a 'marginal' difference. And don't talk to me about their 'access' to Libraries and all the resources of London or San Fran. When you see the pitiful excuses for libraries in the valley, their restricted hours, old collections, tiny budgets, you would be the *first* to suggest they givInternet) - then I want you to explain what 'change' is? The Internet in, and accessible from, the San Luis Valley and its offering (wool, computers, art) being accessible from the outside world, is *the* most significant 'change agent' in that valley since the pickup truck.
e their patrons 'access' to the rest of the world by the net, and a pc running web software.
The view of the effects of the net from urban centers in the world is a peculiar one indeed. Because, perhaps, urban centers will be the last ones to change from the effects of the net, while the most remote areas may be the first. Or maybe, as Prof Bob Shayon, who had been the prof of Communications at Annenberg, UofPA, said 5 years ago in small Dillon, Montana, after seeing how the 114 one-room schools were being connected up to the rest of the world, that "New York, Chicago, Los Angeles have been the 'centers' of the Industrial Age. That it may be that the Dillon, MTs will become the 'centers' of the Information Age."
Yeah, change? Maybe for the worst, not the best, in London. Maybe you better move to rural Wales, where your life, and outlook might improve. For they too are getting connected. :-)
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#16 of 20: Steve Silberman (digaman) Mon Apr 22 '96 (08:15) 1 line
Thank you.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#17 of 20: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Mon Apr 22 '96 (08:20) 4 lines
Mikki, I'll bet you can find folks in LA who are working to make the Internet more accessible and understandable to 'marginal' groups (or 'the underclass' or whatever label you prefer). You could donate some time to the effort.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#18 of 20: David Kline (dkline) Mon Apr 22 '96 (08:54) 21 lines
The problem with goofy leftists is that *they're* the force that's marginal. Their credibility in America is ZERO. Their capacity for shooting themselves in the foot around issues of concern to the mainstream masses -- crime, welfare, families, etc. -- is unsurpassed.
That said, anyone who believes that the Net or digital technology will by itself *fundamentally* alleviate oppression, inequality of opportunity, the crisis in education, the structural weaknesses in our economy, or the paralysis of government, etc. is dreaming. A contextual and historical view of the social impact of new technologies show that their effects are always shaped upon the anvil of existing social and economic realities. The telephone also was supposed to give the average citizen "the power once reserved for emperors." Hah! I wish it were otherwise, but no amount of interactive networked technology will magically accomplish what change-oriented political activists and organizers have been woefully unable to accomplish on their own. Change still requires good old-fashioned *political* strategies, tactics and policies that can really speak to people in their millions, and then convince and mobilize them to act.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#19 of 20: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Mon Apr 22 '96 (09:04) 29 lines
"That said, anyone who believes that the Net or digital technology will by itself *fundamentally* alleviate oppression, inequality of opportunity, the crisis in education, the structural weaknesses in our economy, or the paralysis of government, etc. is dreaming."
I personally wasn't looking for the magic bullet, kline-san. We're in agreement.However I would make these points: this technology could deliver the most inclusive, interactive communications structure ever; if so, this will have a profound impact on political discourse and decision-making processes macro to micro. - you're right about that anvil, but one point many of us have made is that we have more opportunity than ever to shape the implementation of a new technology and its sociocultural derivatives than ever before: we don't have to accept the defaults just because that's what's happened before. (Back to may statement 'those who wallow in history are bound to repeat it...'). The very technology itself gives us access to meta-level decision-making about its implementation before it's embedded in our culture...do we want broadcast? or do we want interactive? (of course it's more complex than that, but you get the drift...)
- I can be a realist, but I also know that negativity is fuel for the engine of complacency, and it's an engine that can run very fast, but it goes nowhere.
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#20 of 20: David Kline (dkline) Mon Apr 22 '96 (10:00) 3 lines
Agreed! Many new opportunities now, but it's up to people, using their political will, to seize them.
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#23 of 36: Zulu was a mort (rbr) Mon Apr 22 '96 (11:19) 2 lines
My favorite thing about that article was its vision of the four horsemen of this apocalypse: Rosetto, Rheingold, Barlow, and Rushkoff.
Who is this luddite? He's Bill Buxton, "principal scientist in charge of user-interface research and resident visionary" at Alias/ Wavefront, the Silicon-Graphics-owned computer animation company, and comp sci professor at the University of Toronto, as quoted in the Financial Post Magazine. I guess interface design is more holy and pure and helpful to poor Africans than publishing a magazine is.
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#24 of 36: Kevin Kelly (kk) Mon Apr 22 '96 (11:21) 20 lines
Wired executive editor Kevin Kelly :
"The reason why the hippies and people like myself got interested in [computers], is that they are model worlds, small universes. They are ways to recreate civilization.
"We get to ask the great questions of all time: What is life? What is human? What is civilization? And you ask it not in the way the old philosophers asked it, sitting in armchairs, but by actually trying it. Let's try and make life. Let's try and make community."
=CA=CA-- New York Times Magazine
Anyone reading that quote can certainly tell that all I want to do in life is oppress people of color, keep kids dumb, keep white men rich, and let Republican fascists run the world. Plain as day.
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#25 of 36: Sofia's Choice (amicus) Mon Apr 22 '96 (11:34) 12 lines
Sorry, you're late to the market, all positions taken.
If the above quote is the case, though, why don't we hear more about things like Lambda MOO, and whether or not on-line governance works, or works well? What about investigating how technologies affect families: if everyone's got a beeper, do tugs from outside of the family room, the kitchen, or the bedroom drive up stress, fray the ties that bound?
But that might mean real research and such, and not just hip-hop info rapping by the limelighted semi-clued.
Liked the piece on Tom Jennings, though.
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#26 of 36: RUSirius (rusirius) Mon Apr 22 '96 (11:46) 3 lines
these sorts of one-dimensional critiques are an embarrassment to authentic goofy leftists technophiles everywhere...
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#27 of 36: Steve Silberman (digaman) Mon Apr 22 '96 (11:50) 2 lines
If I wanted to see a kind of feature in ANY magazine, I'd pitch it. Of course, that would take real research.
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#28 of 36: Paulina Borsook (loris) Mon Apr 22 '96 (12:11) 5 lines
yes tom jennings is a swell human being, and the planet is better for him being on it. i -hope- my mother jones piece wont be uh as dissable/stoopid-seeming as the stuff dismissed here. no four horseman in my piece; and i hope, no cheap shots..
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#29 of 36: ! (sjroby) Mon Apr 22 '96 (12:36) 29 lines
Goofy leftist? You be the judge:"I sometimes feel sickened by the smug, upper-class, rich-kid attitude that's prevalent in magazines like Wired.... The main message in Wired is that technology is cool and has the potential to change the world. There seems to be no awareness of reality. Do these people know that two-thirds of the people in the world have never made a telephone call? Do they know, as David Walker of the Commonwealth of Learning explained to me, that the value of telecommunications in some parts of Africa is the value of the copper wire, which they use to make jewelry to sell to feed themselves and their families, rather than the information carried by the wire?"
"We must take control of what we have created. For too long, we have been letting technology wag the tail of society. It's time for that to stop.""I suppose my father's example, coupled with the fact that I was a child of the '60s, helped me to develop a strong sense of moral outrage."
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#30 of 36: Steve Silberman (digaman) Mon Apr 22 '96 (12:41) 3 lines
And we have to be holy and pure before we launch a critique? If that's the case, posting in this conference will go WAY down. :)
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#31 of 36: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Mon Apr 22 '96 (12:56) 1 line
"Let he who is without sin cast the first flame..."
[...]
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#32 of 36: Paulina Borsook (loris) Mon Apr 22 '96 (13:57) 4 lines
there's the oprah effect in operation so often: two simplistic polar views, shouting past each other. cant technology be good in some cases, awful in others? affecting the world, but not saving it either?
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#33 of 36: ...! (sjroby) Mon Apr 22 '96 (16:04) 7 lines
#32 works for me.
<digaman>, I'm certainly not suggesting that only the holy and pure can criticize. I just find it odd that this guy gets his knickers in a knot over Wired, when his company does work for Hollywood blockbusters that are seen by a lot more people than have even heard of Wired.
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#34 of 36: Steve Silberman (digaman) Mon Apr 22 '96 (17:20) 1 line
I hear ya, pal. I was just tugging on the universal knickers-knot.
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#35 of 36: Dave Hughes (dave) Mon Apr 22 '96 (17:26) 13 lines
Well our smug interface designer who knows what is best for Africans, Bill Buxton might be interested to know that my partner, who spent 15 years and still does business in Africa, knows perfectly well that natives climbed telephone poles to cut the wires to get the copper, is selling them on wireless TCP/IP links. So the Africans who make the copper jewelry can market it on the world wide web. I'm sure that the local face to face market for copper jewelry is so good that selling it via the net to upscale Canadians would be rejected. Wonder if Buxton is putting his talent where his mouth is and making interfaces for Zulu tribesmen of the type who visited us and wanted radios so they could communicate to villages in the bush.
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#36 of 36: Sofia's Choice (amicus) Mon Apr 22 '96 (20:46) 12 lines
What conceivable reason would someone have for wanting to site a Web server in the Kalihari bush if all of the lucrative markets for the product were in well-wired foreign markets? Appropriate technology in this case could be little more than a voice link to a local buyer's office to an E-mail link to a New York marketer with an FTP connection from an Indian Web foundary, and a nice connection to the San Francisco company siting the server on a T-3.
Dave, can you cite any URLs for African Web hosts that *aren't* in one or two of the higher per capita income states' capitals, and which are successfully selling anyone product? And couldn't be far better
engineered as a mirror site in virtually any other part of the globe? When there's enough bandwidth inbound they'll have bandwidth to waste outbound.
Respond (r), pass (Return) or help (?):
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#37 of 69: Dave Hughes (dave) Tue Apr 23 '96 (10:27) 51 lines
'...with everybody - middle men - taking their cut of the copper jewery profits' The traditional way native crafts/arts everywhere get just a pittance
Of *course* any current African web sites are in upscale cities. Is that a case that they should be there only? That if it makes sense for a smal florist in Colorado Springs to set up a web site for global marketting, that somehow Africans should not?
Of course you are talking to (me) someone who beleives that so long as all the web/computer power remains in central cities the remote and rural will be screwed the way they always have been. That decentalization of computer-telecom power, 'appropriate' to the scale of the remote site, is not only now possible (affordable relatively), but is desirable politically and economically in *their* interest. Its as much as issue of empowerment as what is today simply 'practical.' The director of the Christian Community Services of the San Luis Valley - an ecuminical social services organization of long standing which deals with the poorest elements of the valley (including Guatamalan immigrants) - was hired precisely because, while in Chile and Peru as a missionary for many years, he taught native artists (pottery and weaving) how to be more self reliant. Citing the case where Macy's 'buyer' historically showed up to pick and choose the pottery in the villages, paying little, and giving them little choice. Until he, Noel, helped them form a coop, build a warehouse, exercise quality control, and when Macy's showed up, village Indians refused to sell to him, so he had to go back to the warehouse and buy it all or nothing. Handing a check for $40,000 over in the end, and taking it off. The natives getting lots more for their wares, and learning how to do business at the community level.
Noel, in setting up Eppie Archeluta's (the 74 year old weaver) web page (which has been visited over 3500 times by my last count) for selling her processed wool, skeins, pieces, and marketting her $375 week long course *directly* and unfiltered by middle men, is doing the same thing in the Valley, using low cost micros and dropping cost with greater reach telecom.
Now the valley Guatamalans, who are much into their own colorful arts, are coming to Noel to have him help them get computers, and get connected *both* for their needed education *and* the possible direct marketting of their products. This is a valley where people work for $5 an hour in the lettuce fields. and other work in a Japanese, distant-management owned mushroom factory, where they have not had a raise in 14 years. A place where economic 'empowerment' of even modest scale can be very important where ther has been none for hundreds of years.
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#38 of 69: Mikki Halpin (filmmag) Tue Apr 23 '96 (14:48) 6 lines
re: 17, hey Jon: I was one of the architects xetting up an computer center and distance learning center in compton , among other projects. Geeze.
also, I no longer live in Los Angeles.
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#39 of 69: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Tue Apr 23 '96 (14:54) 4lines
Heh, don't blame ya. Smog.
I think there'll be more & more projects to bring everybody on board... we have a couple here in Austin...
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#40 of 69: Sofia's Choice (amicus) Tue Apr 23 '96 (18:03) 8 lines
Fine, Dave, how about cutting the middlefolk down to one: get some African expats in the US to run the server and the "business front end" (like an 800
phone number, say), and get E-mail straight from them to the bush. Comms of any significant bandwidth to most parts of Africa for the foreseeable future make that the most attractive model. You overlook a lot of invisible middlemen when trying to drag a T1 into the Veldt just yet. Learning how not to get screwed by canny buyers is a different story than knowing how best to market via the Internet.
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#41 of 69: RUSirius (rusirius) Sat Apr 27 '96 (12:26) 4 lines
My own goofy leftist sniping at wired is available on ctheory in an intervewby jonl originally done on spec for... wired http://www.ctheory.com
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#42 of 69: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sat Apr 27 '96 (14:31) 3 lines
It's the best R. U. Sirius interview I've ever read.
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#43 of 69: Steve Rhodes (srhodes) Sat Apr 27 '96 (17:01) 4 lines
Jesse Drew has a parody Wired cover at
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~jdrew/images/wiredjpeg.jpg
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#44 of 69: Patricia J. Huffstutter (pjhuff) Mon Apr 29 '96 (12:25) 1 line
#37: Do you know how I might get in touch with Noel?
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#45 of 69: _now_edge (aasgaard) Mon Apr 29 '96 (15:15) 3 lines
I think Wired supports the political agennda R.U. Sirius proposes, but Louis R. has too pay the rent/payroll/mortgage/overhead at the same time.
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#46 of 69: Steve Cisler (sac) Wed May 1 '96 (04:38) 24 lines
Dave, that's a very African=like story: to cut the wires, get the copper, and then try to sell the finished product on the Web... and wonder why they can't get connected. I can just see Larry sitting with old Africa hands in Fort Lamy, cold beer in hand, and listening to such a tale from a telecomms consultant. I don't use the current name for Tchad's capital, cause the French don't really admit it's any different from the vassal state it always was.
Noel will be at the community networking conference in Taos, NM,
May 14-17. <laplaza.taos.nm.us>
I'm heading for Germany and will be happily offline for a week or so, but when I return I'll try to tell what a life-changing experience my three days at the Second Luddite Congress was. It is clear they don't understand you, and vice-versa. Also, they are not a they, and Im sure you (we) don't like to lump outselves together.
I talked with the writer from Gewirtsschafts Woche (Bus. Week in German), and he said this conf. was better than "ten computer conferences" including TED, Dyson's gathering, etc.
One result: I'm corresponding by letter and US Mail with a couple of people I met who don't have phones or email. I am learning new things, just as I still do on the WELL.
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#47 of 69: Paulina Borsook (loris) Wed May 1 '96 (08:39) 1 line
would -love- to hear more about the 2nd luddite conference...
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#48 of 69: Paul Bissex (biscuit) Wed May 1 '96 (08:55) 1 line
Me too.
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#49 of 69: Steve Cisler (sac) Sat May 11 '96 (04:54) 29 lines
I opened a topic on the Second Luddite Congress in info 749. There was little discussion, but I just posted the printed summary statement from the meeting in April. I typed it in and made no comment on it, except that I attended.
Just back from Germany where there is a lot of anti-technology feeling, dating from the 60's and still very much alive. Main target is still nuclear power. While I was there the German govt. had spent about $50 Mill on cops to protect the Castor train hauling nuke waste from France to Germany.
The people attending the Second Luddite Congress were a mix of roughly four groups: ecologists and deep ecologists;
Christians (Amish, Mennonite, Quaker) who are motivated by religious ideals to oppose tech; people in search of community, either by rebuilding what exists (as I am trying to do with electronic community networks) or by setting up intentional ones; and those simply motivated by a distrust or even hatred of a lot of technology.
Of course, all there knew they were not pure. Many drove cars. Many worked, as they say, "in the jaws of the beast" or "for the machine"(as I do) and when they spoke against technology it was for the most part things that plugged in or used electricity. I've still got an article pending, but if it does not get published I'll try to post someth/ng more substantial. A month later, I find that it affected me in ways few technology meetings do.
Steve
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#51 of 69: RUSirius (rusirius) Sat May 11 '96 (12:02) 3 lines
it's a shame that the arguments against wired hypercapitalism are pathetically lame, one dimensional and stupid compared to the arguments in its favor, generally...
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#52 of 69: Steve Cisler (sac) Sat May 11 '96 (12:48) 8 lines
Benjamin Barber has some pretty trenchant observations on 'savage captalism' to use a term favored by the French. It's in his work, 'Jihad vs. McWorld' an expanison of the article found in Atlantic Monthly a while back (it's online, as are interviews with Barber). See also Alan Tonelson's "The Perils of Techno-Globalism" in Issues in Science and Technology for Summer 1995. I found it online, but I don't have a pointer, unfortunately.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#53 of 69: RUSirius (rusirius) Sat May 11 '96 (14:50) 3 lines
a pointer please to "Jihad vs. McWorld"... somebody through that at me in an interview a few weeks ago and i thought it was his original notion. i think it's a bullseye but that's only by my own interpretation of what it means...
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#54 of 69: Sofia's Choice (amicus) Sat May 11 '96 (14:55) 1 line
The original Atlantic article is old... maybe 1991 or so.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#55 of 69: Paul Bissex (biscuit) Sat May 11 '96 (15:07) 5 lines
http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/election/connection/foreign/barberf.htm
Altavista. Learn it. Love it.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#56 of 69: Zulu was a mort (rbr) Sat May 11 '96 (19:31) 2 lines
Barber's book on Jihad vs. McWorld is in bookstores now. Amazingly enough, it is called _Jihad vs. McWorld_, and it's by Benjamin Barber.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#57 of 69: Steve Cisler (sac) Sun May 12 '96 (05:59) 10 lines
I just finished the book and typed in about 20 choice comments from some of the chapters (I won't say they are uneven, just that some interested me more: I was in Berlin when I read the one on Germany and its changes.)
He thinks both global trends in media and products are as inimical to a true democratic society as are the reactions by the mullahs, the Serbians, and others involved in 'jihads' (they need not be muslim, of course).
[....]
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#59 of 69: RUSirius (rusirius) Sun May 12 '96 (13:24) 8 lines
[...] disappointing to hear the bad rap on Jihad Vs. McWorld... my interpretation just from hearing the phrase and nothing else about it is that world politics has gone from being a binary fight between communism and capitalism to being a binary fight between the multinational new world order and (unfortunately) a confused variety of whacked out desperate fundamentalist fanatical lunatics (possible including TAZ hippies, militias,
Khadafi, ad infinitum)
[...]
#61 of 69: Steve Cisler (sac) Sun May 12 '96 (16:14) 2 Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
I think Jihad vs. McWorld is a bit long, but I would not characterize it as blather.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#62 of 69: Zulu was a mort (rbr) Sun May 12 '96 (17:36) 1 line
Yes, well, you've read it.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#63 of 69: Pat Buchanan's worst nightmare! (jonl) Sun May 12 '96 (18:07) 3lines
duck, thanx for the good word re. the interview. And RU, I think you've got it nailed (in 59)...not necessarily re. the content of the book (I haven't seen it yet), but re. the state of the world.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#65 of 69: RUSirius (rusirius) Mon May 13 '96 (11:25) 1 line
that's true also... Jihad vs. McWorld is a pretty nice approximation though
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#66 of 69: Zulu was a mort (rbr) Mon May 13 '96 (11:26) 1 line
Barber would agree, as even a casual perusal of his book will show.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#67 of 69: RUSirius (rusirius) Mon May 13 '96 (11:29) 2 lines
i remember leary came out with "Jihad vs. Armeggedon" during the Gulf War, which was a pretty nice bumpersticker perspective for that moment...
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#68 of 69: Neal Stephenson (neal) Mon May 13 '96 (20:57) 10 lines
Conor Cruise O'Brien has a newish book out called "At the End of the Millenium" or something close to that. It is a collection of essays. In one of them, he addresses some of these issues and does so in a way that is (if duck's description is correct) perhaps a bit pithier and deepr than "Jihad vs. McWorld." He is fretting about what he sees as a possible alliance between the Vatican and Muslim fundamentalists, a war of the religious against the irreligious. He is concerned that the Enlightmenment, which seemed to have conquered the world a hundred years ago, may turn out to be a flash in the pan. He is a bit gloomy, but the book is still well-written, thought-provoking, and reasonably concise.
Topic 200 [wired]: Goofy Leftists Sniping at WIRED
#69 of 69: Dave Hughes (dave) Tue May 14 '96 (06:03) 24 lines
Hmm. About to leave for the Taos conference, where we shall see a little more how the Hispanics view this technology - who if not luddite, are certainly traditional. I re-read the list of beliefs held by the group Steve visited - (info 749)and two things struck me. 1. Its all fine and good to try and be self-sufficient, on a piece of land, but only if the land is available in such quantity that the population can be supported by it - without technological productivity. Lots of places in the world...so the belief system can only thrive where conditions are very favorable. 2. Big point made about the importance of 'libraries' - and reading books. As if books are not technolgical, as is printing.
So is it books that are ok? Or only the information in them? Or what? I have a problem with intellectual inconsistancy. And having just included the 15,000+ 'public libraries' in my magnus opus justifying 'public wireless spectrum' to the FCC,I feel a bit piqued by that Technological Luddite position.
Now to get to Albuquerque-Taos by the fastest technology available...