"Is there any urge more basic than for your life to be of consequence?
...we are helping in the birth of a ubiquitous global network, for it's not the "frozen" Internet Infrastructure that matters,
it's the connecting of most humans who wish to be, using words and gestures that seem natural to them ... it's good to pause and wonder at our good luck
to be at this place at this time.
... What's interesting is how few people set the direction for the American Experiment.
Only the 56
white guys in Carpenter's Hall understood
what a leap they were taking with the Declaration of Independence ... Eleven years later, the 39
signers of the Constitution
acted just as independently in setting down the rules of
engagement
for
the people
and
their
rulers. ... The fight over
the document
was
fierce
and the
debate
thoughtful,
but they
didn't revise
what the standards body had hammered out. So the twig was bent and that was
the
direction
our
nation
inclined.
That was serious standard-setting. Today, under Doc's Anybody can Change
it doctrine,
[NEA: Nobody owns it, Everybody
can use it, Anybody can
improve it. (Doc Searls) ]
we're sitting around lobbing ideas and code around, seldom realizing that we're the
delegates setting the standards for the world that will follow us. Relatively
speaking, we're even fewer than the four score or so men who did the real work
of putting symbols on parchment. Some of the symbols we're using are pretty
arcane, but they set standards anyway, which will mold society as surely as
did the Federalist papers.
So a few will debate nuances no one else comprehends. Even fewer will lay
down the words that free our progeny. What works will grow and the rest will
wither, as it always has. Someday we'll see that the Toms Jefferson and Robbins
were right in seeing that as long as there are willing followers there will
be exploitive leaders.
So instead we'll follow our collective gut, add what we can, use what works
and leave something better behind. Maybe this isn't an apocalypse but a parenthesis
and
the age of hierarchy is an interruption in organic evolution as it's always
gone on.
Doing sensible things is what makes us consequential."
[Escapable Logic]
10:54:25 AM 
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
