Wednesday, February 06, 2008
 

(3089/898) Barlow: The Powers That Were

John Perry Barlow
2347) In a democratic society, it's dangerous for elected officials to ignore the body politic. But what if it has been driven mad by television? What if the duties of the citizenry have been abandoned by most of those that are still sane? Thomas Jefferson never imagined the conduct of democracy in the thrall of a mass medium.
John Perry Barlow
"The Netizen: The Powers That Were"
Wired (9/1996)

2348) That subset of Americans who still exercise their [voting] franchise -The Market, if you will - tend to be much older, whiter, and more socially conservative than the population in general. The live mostly in suburbs, shop in malls, work for large organizations, and go to church on Sunday. Creatures of a mass society, living in a culture created by mass media. Genericans. Not a bad lot, really. Decent people, most of them, with good judgment - if that judgment were well informed.

And that's the problem. For most of The Market, reality is, as I say, almost entirely based on The World According to Television. This has been the case since the Kennedy-Nixon debates and will continue to be the case for some time. The World According to Television is not a reality that arises from direct experience with events or phenomena. It is a processed world, both eviscerated of context and artifically fortified toward no greater purpose than entrancing the audience.

[... Television has] learned that fear, violence,and sex all fertilize attention marvelously, so it continually churns up virtual demons and scandals that not only jolt the audience into paying attention, but completely transform the political debate. Voters are now more concerned with imaginary threats than with real ones, and so they elect representatives who will address these "problems" without regard to their existence.

It's become a hung loop. Consider the process behind the following familiar example. Looking to raise share and beat back the future, the media raise an imaginary problem, say, a cyber-tsunami of online kiddie-porn. Out in Televisionland, parents who have already been driven into a state of omniphobia by TV depictions of kidnappers, child molesters, and Calvin Klein commercials, freak out and call their congressperson.

Of course, the congressperson doesn't actually know whether or not there's a flood of kiddie porn online. He (or she) has never been online and isn't about to go there. But he does know that his constituents have seized upon An Issue that they are truly passionate about. Under such circumstances, it takes a brave man to do nothing. So he gets together with his colleagues and passes a law that effectively addresses a problem almost no one has ever experienced, while issue forth a whole new set of real ones.

The is democracy in the Television Age, working with hideous efficiency. It is [...] Government by Hallucinating Mob. A push-me, pull-you that is self-contained and almost completely detached from anything that I would call "real." The US government has broken, the victim of television and of connection crash in general.
John Perry Barlow
"The Netizen: The Powers That Were"
Wired (9/1996)

2349) Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute has studied "complexity catastrophe," in which an organism or natural system is forced by its context to process more information than it can. A frequent symptom of this kind of connection crash is fibrillation - a purposeless, resource-expensive quivering that usually culminates in system collapse. It could easily be said that Congress, indeed the entire government of the United States of America, has already reached this state. But however useless and wasteful I think it has become, there are enough Americans who believe in the comforting myth that their government still works, that its continued institutional existence probably contributes to a calm, however delusionary, among the People.
John Perry Barlow
"The Netizen: The Powers That Were"
Wired (9/1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 348 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/06/2008 01:00:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Tuesday, February 05, 2008
 

(3089/898) The Contrarian looks at Big Business


2344) By and large, there are no more advantages to big business. There are only disadvantages. [...] Big companies had three advantages, and they are all gone. The first was that they could get transnational or international money that a medium-sized company could not. Now everyone can.

Number Two is information. It used to be that nobody had any information. But as you go more international, as the economy becomes more global, the access to good information becomes crucial. If you are a medium-sized company, then the CEO still knows every customer and still knows the industry. You can;t get that in the US$10 billion company; you get reports. Reports tell you what your subordinates want you to know.

The last and most important factor is that young, educated people do not want to work for the big institutions. That's true even in Japan today. [...]

[People who have chosen medium companies over big ones] often say, We would really like some security, but there ain't no such thing. All of them know those days are gone. So they say: If there's no security in the big companies, then why should I be bored to death? In that medium-sized company, I don't have the big job, but when somebody has to go to Shanghai to straighten out the distributor, I go. And I have fun.
Peter Drucker
interviewed by Peter Schwartz and Kevin Kelly in
"The Relentless Contrarian" in
Wired (8/1996)

2345) The model for management that we have right now is the opera. The conductor of the opera has a very large number of different groups that he has to pull together. The soloists, the chorus, the ballet, the orchestra, all have tocome together - but they have a common score. What we are increasingly talking about today are diversified groups that have to write the score while they perform.

What you need now is a good jazz group. And if you want to have a really good jazz group, how large can it be? How large can it be when you have people who improvise on their own and the group realizes that the trumpet player is now playing his solo and everybody needs to stop and support him? You can use seven to nine people - maximum. If you get more, you have to score.

So how can you have a big company or a very big organization when you have to develop the store as you go along? Today, you build different teams. Sounds beautiful. But nobody has found a way to do it.
Peter Drucker
interviewed by Peter Schwartz and Kevin Kelly in
"The Relentless Contrarian" in
Wired (8/1996)

2346) A lot of top [corporate] managers enjoy cruelty. There is no doubt that we are in a period in which you are a hero if you are cruel. In addition, what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There's no excuse for it, no justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we'll pay a very nasty price.

J.P. Morgan, who certainly cannot be accused of not liking money, gave an order to his investment people never to invest in a company in which the CEO earned more than 30 percent more than the next layer. That CEO, he said, can't build a team, and the company is mismanaged. He also said once that the proper ratio for salaries for employed people, between the top people and the rank and file should be twentyfold, posttax. That's the highest. Beyond that, you create social tension.
Peter Drucker
interviewed by Peter Schwartz and Kevin Kelly in
"The Relentless Contrarian" in
Wired (8/1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 349 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/05/2008 11:56:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) TV ... robots ... computers

Ernie Kovacs
2339) Television is a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well done.
Ernie Kovacs (widely attributed)
quoted in the "Idees Fortes" section of
Wired (7/1996)
[Note: Occasionally attributed to Fred Allen. Kovacs is credited with it, without citation, in The Filmgoer's Book of Quotes (1973) L. Halliwell, ed.]
2340) Television, huh? TV coverage absolves absolutely anything in America. If these guys [the Survival Research Laboratories] have been on 20/20, then they must know what they're doing, right?
Bruce Sterling
"Is Phoenix Burning?"
Wired (7/1996)

2341) A Calculated Forecast of Ultimate Doom - Sickening Episodes of Widespread Devastation Accompanied by Sensations of Pleasurable Excitement
Mark Pauline
title of a Survival Research Laboratories performance
quoted by Bruce Sterling in
"Is Phoenix Burning" in
Wired (7/1996)

2342) [T]he whole deadly clutter of postmodern tech is inherently fascinating in a particularly sickening and dangerous way that most of us cannot rationally sense. It's fascinating and evil, with the same imp-of-the-perverse element that makes humanity's automatic rifles look as lovely as a sonnet while the homes and buildings and cities where we work and live look like the crappy cartons those rifles came in.
Bruce Sterling
"Is Phoenix Burning?"
Wired (7/1996)

2343) People talk about making computers easier to use, but it usually ends up that humans are made easier for computers to use.
Jesse Freund
"Natural Correction" in
the "Idees Fortes" section of
Wired (9/1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 349 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/05/2008 11:22:00 PM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE


Monday, February 04, 2008
 

(3089/898) Not optional

Thomas Sowell
2338) Reality is not optional.
Thomas Sowell
(widely attributed - see note)
quoted in the "Idees Fortes" section of
Wired (7/1996)
[Note: The only citation for Sowell originating this quotes is a column "Riots in France: The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris" published in November 2005, well after the present instance of the quotation. Since many attributions refer to "paraphrasing" Sowell, this might be something he wrote elsewhere in somewhat different form. See #286 Dick, #739 Huxley and #770 Huxley]
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 350 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/04/2008 05:30:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) Metaworlds

2333) The places I've seen online that flourish do so when people bring themselves to the table, contributing their own ingredients to a communal stew of ideas, opinions, and metaphors. Where you find people building relationships, sharing day-to-day experiences, teaching each other what they've learned about the world, and figuring out together how they're going to face the coming day - those are the places that thrive. Those are the places that people live in.

And they're never chat rooms. Everything in the chat room experience fights against depth and continuity. Chat room conversations always start from scratch; maintaining context from day to day is impossible. And chat is structured against thoughtfulness: if you don't say what's on your mind right now - you don't exist.
Robert Rossney
"Metaworlds" in
Wired (6/1996)

2334) Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun [...] I take culture to be those webs [...]
Clifford Geertz
The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
quoted by Robert Rossney in
"Metaworlds" in
Wired (6/1996)

2335) Hang out in one place online - whether it's a BBS, a chat room, or a newsgroup - and eventually you'll recognize people by the personas they've created. The blustering libertarian loony or the impossibly erudite Janacek aficionado are typical personas you might encounter online, These aren't people but personas: versions of these people's real-world selves that, mediated by their words, have been projected into the discussion space.
Robert Rossney
"Metaworlds" in
Wired (6/1996)

2336) [I]n today's online world, people seem like lions pacing in a zoo: they're dying to break out of the cage that text-only discourse puts them in. The smileys, ASCII graphics, strange spellings, and acronyms that you see everywhere online are all ways of rushing at the bars.

We need to communicate with more than words. Conversation in real life often consists more of hand-waving, facial expressions, raspberries, yawns, murmurs, and weird non-verbal vocalizations than of words strung together in a coherent fashion. [...] The ability to gesture, if we can figure out how to do it naturally, will allow us to construct entire visual languages that we can use in conjunction with textual utterances to add layers of nuance and subtlety to our verbal communications.
Robert Rossney
"Metaworlds" in
Wired (6/1996)

2337) The online world is full of things that are just like real life - but not quite. Email is not mail. A conference online is not the same thing as a conference in real life. Virtual communities share many attributes with real-world communities, but they differ in many ways.
Robert Rossney
"Metaworlds" in
Wired (6/1996)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 350 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/04/2008 04:48:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE

 

(3089/898) That economy stuff - and chaser

2330) [T]he problem with the corporate control of America is that it is so completely undemocratic. [...] Why on earth should Americans be willing to allow the same people who have brought us rampant downsizing, widespread union-busting, wholesale exportation of industrial jobs to sweatshops, and the greatest division between wealth and poverty in the nation's history to increase their presence in our lives? [...] Our political system is based on the concept of one person/one vote, but our capitalist economy is strictly and clearly dedicated to the concept of one dollar/one vote. [...] To turn over public policy issues to private decision making is not merely a question of efficiency or economics. It is a profound choice about how decisions are made, who makes them, and what kind of society we live in.
Raven B. Earlygrow
letter to the editor
Wired (4/1996)
[response to "Is Government Obsolete"
by David Kline and Daniel Burstein in
Wired (1/1996)]

2331) The key to economic renewal lies not just in increased public sector investment in education and infrastructure. We also need collective action to ensure that a fair share of the wealth created by the new economy makes its way down to workers. Wages and benefits do not rise just because the government wants then too, they rise when people demand it. Maybe people can address these problems through traditional unions. Maybe people need a hybrid organization - a cross between a professional association and a traditional trade union. Or maybe people can come together and organize through cyberspace. But without collective action, we are all at the mercy of the new economy. This may come as anathema to Wired readers who promote the independent / entrepreneurial / libertarian values of high-tech culture. Yet, this much is certainly true - as long as we remain isolated in our cubicles we are going to get stomped like geeks at a grunge show.
Chris Benner
letter to the editor
Wired (6/1996)
[response to "It's the New Economy, Stupid"
by John Heilemann in
Wired (3/1996)]

2332) We can do anything we like as long as it is unimportant.
Theodore Kaczynski aka "The Unabomber"
"Industrial Society and Its Future" (aka "The Unabomber Manifesto")
(mis)quoted by Rolf von Richter in
letter to the editor in Wired (7/1996)
[response to "Americans Are Not As Free
As We Think We Are
" by Charles Platt
in Wired (4/1996)]

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 350 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.

Ed Fitzgerald | 2/04/2008 04:22:00 AM | | | del.icio.us | GO: TOP OF HOME PAGE







by

Ed Fitzgerald

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am...
site feed
2008 rules of thumb
Progressive populism!
Economic insecurity is key
Restore the balance
Cast the candidate
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Calm,calming,assured,reassuring
Iraq, not "national security"
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topics
a progressive slogan
Fairness, progress and prosperity, because we're all in this together.

"I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking."
(Alex Gregory - The New Yorker)
new york city
another progressive slogan
The greatest good for the greatest number, with dignity for all.
reference & fact check
iraq
write me
reciprocity
evolution v. creationism
humanism, skepticism
& progressive religiosity
more links
election prediction
HOUSE
Democrats 230 (+27) - Republicans 205

Actual:
Democrats 233 (+30) - Republicans 201 - TBD 1 [FL-13]

SENATE
Democrats 50 (+5) - Republicans 50

Actual:
Democrats 51 (+6) - Republicans 49

ELECTION PROJECTIONS SURVEY
netroots candidates
unfutz
awards and nominations
Never a bridesmaid...

...and never a bride, either!!

what I've been reading
Martin van Creveld - The Transformation of War

Jay Feldman - When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

Martin van Creveld - The Rise and Decline of the State

Alfred W. Crosby - America's Forgotten Pandemic (1989)
bush & company are...
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
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dangerous
deadly
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ideologues
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insensitive
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irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
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shameless
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tricky
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uncaring
uncivil
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unrealistic
unreliable
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unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed

Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
Island in the Sky (1952)

Robot Chicken

The Family Guy

House M.D. (2004-7)
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz


"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)


Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:




Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
Smash Mouth - Summer Girl

Poulenc - Piano Music

Pop Ambient 2007
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
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Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.

Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.

I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.


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I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.

Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.

Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
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If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.

If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.

(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)

Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.

original content
© 2003-2008
Ed Fitzgerald

=o=

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but credit all you take.



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