Shirky providing some VERY interesting ideas building on the idea of inequality in networks (which I'm still struggling with). Anyone who's read power laws will find this stimulating and anyone who hasn't darn well should... and then read it!
He repeats his assertion that inequality is inevitable but then, more importantly, offers some ways of affecting it. Hey you can use a smaller network, violate heterogeneity, get rid of your robustness, tax it, cap it or bunk it up. Basically, you can do anything that you can try to do in real life to try to escape inequality. Simple as that.
And, as with real life, there's no utopian solution.
"All of these responses leave the power law intact, just altered"
You can't destroy inequality "without also destroying... the factors in which caused it to arise in the first place - size, diversity, connectedness."
So, given that inequality is inevitable we should instead be looking at the type of inequality we want.
Which is pretty much in agreement with the Joi Ito post this is written in relation to:
"...I think we need to be aware that we have an active effect on how the architecture of this technology evolves. I don't think we can yet "show the blogging world to be a just institutional structure", but rather we can try to determine what is just and strive to make the blogging world into something we feel is just."
Sounds to me like everyone is agreeing with each other ;o) and it looks like this:
1. Yeh, power laws exist and they're a significant force
2. For sure we can influence how things turn out though
3. Guess it's just figuring out what we can and can't influence
4. And then how we want to and can
5. But it'll probably come down to cash or barbarians in the end
OK, I added the last bit but it probably will y'know... to ponder Joi's thoughts though, I think that to ask whether blogs are 'just' is a bizarre question. Is a soapbox just, a newspaper, a TV show... they're just means, if they don't do or give what you want them to do or give then do / invent something else. What's 'just' is that everyone has a voice and in that way the soapbox's much more just... not everyone has the net!
And forchristssake, some people write better than others, more people want to listen to some people than other people... by all means encourage individuality, new expression and ideas, 'equality' and so on and so forth as compassionate people but let's not confuse an anarchistic environment of expression with an anarchistic society and let's not miss the fact that, in the most simplistic terms we're all compassionate kind individuals (or at heart are) and really what this boils down to is that question of our nature.
Don't ask 'are blogs just' or 'is inequality OK', instead ask 'are we just' and 'are we OK'... because it's not the tools that make the rules.
12:38:26 PM 
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