Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Conversation continues... Cross examination. In Emergence Fantasies, Richard Bennett challenges Joi Ito's Emergent Democracy essay (which Joi continues to redraft). Richard begins, One of the things I like about geeks is our charming belief in the inherent goodness of human nature; this is also one of the things that annoys me about geeks. I like to make fun of the geeks who believe that some new widget is going to end world hunger, liberate the human spirit, and usher in a new era of utopia. Not that technology doesn't improve and extend human life in all sorts of ways, but there's always some element of self-deception in the most extreme of these utopian fantasies. Interestingly, the self-deception generally rests on the assumption that the great mass of humans are basically just as clever and just as compassionate, sensitive, and generous as the nerds engaging in the utopian exercise. As errors go, this is an especially interesting one to make, sort of a false humility to the max, only maybe it's not false. The latest and clearest example of nerdly utopianism is Joi Ito's essay on Emergent Democracy. I'm not exactly sure what Emergent Democracy is, even after reading the paper, since he doesn't exactly bother to define it, but it seems to have something to do with ant colonies, blogs, and the excitation of columns of brain cells by these things called "thoughts", which turn into "understandings" when enough of them are set in motion... And he concludes, So I'd like to suggest an exercise for our utopian technologists: show how your technology can affect the passage of a legislative bill on a measure close to your heart; then try to make it happen in real life, and analyze why your expected result didn't materialize. Then let's talk about world hunger. Richard and others also weigh in with comments at Joi's blog. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 10:00:52 AM

A clip for explaining Weblogs For those who care to read this site, you may wonder why I just drop in clips from folks talking about why they weblog.  Well, I have an interest (almost academic) in any tool that enables folks to feel involved and to express their thoughts.  This debate about whether bloggers are journalists, while amusing, really doesn't begin to focus on what the true power of blogs may become -- a mass blender of conversations that sways opinion and finally policy.  You don't have to be an expert to have an opinion -- a fact that probably irritates many "journalists" and mass advertisers who want you to follow rather than lead, or God forbid, think independently. Why weblogs are cool. Imagine a News.Com or NY Times article about the deal we're talking about. I might be able to get a sound bite in there, but that would be it. There would likely be a transcription error, so maybe I'd be quoted saying something I don't agree with, and it would also likely not be my best quote. But most important, people reading the article would not likely find out what I really think. And if new information was revealed over time, or for some reason my perspective shifted, that would not be part of the article because they only do one article about any given news event. Because I have a weblog, I can write about it at length, several times. I can write until I'm finished. If you don't care, that's cool too, you can hit the Back button. But I get to say what I want, and I can get it right, and if I don't there's a fresh empty page tomorrow that I'm going to fill, Murphy-willing of course. [Scripting News] 9:59:37 AM

An interesting candidate for a case study. I think South Koreans are more politically active than Americans, but, this deserves some thought. LA Times: Internet users drive South Korean politics. [Scripting News] 9:55:03 AM