Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Rezwan]

Phil’s Dad wrote: Dash is such a concise word 🙄

😆 I concur

I am currently reading a book, “The Future of the Internet” by Zittrain. Great book! Relevant to anyone who uses the internet. Relevant to people in countries where the internet is being used to crack down on dissenters. And at its heart, relevant to this endeavor.

A basic theme of the book is “generativity” vs. lockdown. The net is generative because it enables anyone to do pretty much anything, create anything, modify anything, in unexpected ways. And to collaborate and create, also unexpectedly. But this same generativity makes it possible for anyone to create harmful things. Spam, spyware, destroying other people’s reputations, files, finances, launching nuclear missiles – what have you. We’ve been living blissfully so far, enjoying the generativity, and suffering the increasing problems without doing much (like, instead of solving the spam problem, we just increase bandwidth. Many computers are sending 90% spam, unawares. When they get slow – more juice.) We’re just putting up with the nuisances.

The very success of internet is what’s causing the problems, and before you know it, we’ll have a cyber “pearl harbor”, or the attrition occuring now will have the same result – as it is already having – of people locking down. Shifting away from this generative realm, limiting themselves, in many interesting ways I hadn’t considered until reading the book. (e.g., giving power over to others to make decisions for us, basically. Like Tivo is able to file a suit and make another company retroactively withdraw content from your computer with an update, and so forth.) (think I used “e.g.” correctly there).

OK, I’m only halfway through this book, but it’s ringing a bell. Lerner’s book was, in part, about the tension between empirical and deductive reasoning. This internet book is getting me to see the interplay of generativity vs. lockdown as another operating force in the field of knowledge and information, religion and science.

There’s a parallell here, I feel. Maybe a bit of a stretch. Like the religious folk want to stop religious tinkering – have a final truth and shore it up, because when you allow tinkering, all kinds of harmful things enter the realm, and then just anybody can spew anything. Best shut it down and control entry. To a lesser extent (but nonetheless similar) science. You start letting people tinker too much, and you’ll be up to your ears in paranormal psychometrics or whatever. So you err on the side of control. Shut them out. Make barrier to entry very stiff. Fair enough – or not. As with the internet or with religions, the barrier can easily become proprietary and subjective. It’s a slippery slope. Objectivity is not a strong human tendency.

These things have a trend cycle, though. The burden of challenge is just high, but not completely blocked like it is with some religions. It’s playing itself out. It’ll take time.

Well, maybe not that much time if we had search engine optimization! Yes! My bad. I’ll get on that. Soon. I swear! “We have not yet begun to fight!”

But at some point, you’re going to have to relax and get comfortable with the uncertainty thing. It’s not so hard. You may even find it liberating.