We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Just spoken at vloggercon on the net neutrality panel. It was organised and chaired by the guys from blip.tv – Charles Hope and Mike Hudack, who was recently on PBS NOW programme debating the issue. The panel discussion was heated at times and only reinforced my opinion that this is one of the most important issues affecting the future of the internet these days. The points below reflect my position:
- The telecoms and cablecos are heavily regulated and their cries for free market are false. The industry is already warped and the argument against net neutrality based on the desire to keep government out of ‘markets’ is misplaced.
- The distinction between consumer and user is gone. It is in fact the ‘content’ produced by many individual vloggers that put the social media cat among the old media pigeons. The media industry has smelled the wealth of content and feels the urge to control it.
- A network that is heavily regulated and not very innovative is being used as a model of control and regulation for a network that is amazingly open, innovative in a historically unprecedented manner. So the government is imposing regulation from a closed and cumbersome industry to an agile and dynamic space.
- Nothwithstanding all of the above, net neutrality legislation is not the answer – it is more like ‘casting out a devil with the devil’. There is no fundamental understanding of the internet as a space, marketplace, world or a frontier (for more on this see Doc Searls’ article on Saving the Net). The debate should not be about the internet as a sum of pipelines and wires and content and packets delivered across an infrastructure. It should be in terms of protecting the space in which the individual has been empowered and the emergent benefits of interactions among those individuals that are having an increasingly sociall impact.
There was more but this is what I can think of whilst sitting in the middle of vloggercon still in full flow.
Update: In the heat of the moment, I forgot to mention my ‘solution’ – deregulate telecoms and cablecos so we have something resembling a real competition at the pipelines and wires level. Then the pipeline takers will not have a case to control content and what goes through. Susan Crawford sums it up well:
Think of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as a sidewalk. The question is whether the sidewalk should get a cut of the value of the conversations that you have as you walk along. The traditional telephone model has been that the telephone company doesn’t get paid more if you have a particularly meaningful call — they’re just providing a neutral pipe.
cross-posted from Media Influencer
Not long ago I did a posting here about material progress, as illuminated by a book about the past which described a time before many of our modern comforts had been devised. A commenter commented, as at least one commenter always will during discussions of this sort: dentistry!
He was right of course. And it so happens that I have been reading another work of history, by Charles Spencer, this time about the Battle of Blenheim, in which the primitive dentistry of earlier times gets a particularly memorable mention.
The Battle of Blenheim was fought in 1704 between a coalition of allies under the command of the Duke of Marlborough and various French armies of Louis XIV. Louis XIV is of course the villain of the story, who gets his just comeuppance at Blenheim. However, it turns out that finding all his grand plans of European conquest thwarted by a supreme commander of genius, who, in the words of Sir Edward Creasy, “never fought a battle that he did not win, and never besieged a place that he did not take”, was not Louis XIV’s only bit of bad luck. We learn, from an early paragraph in Blenheim (pp. 20-21 of my paperback edition), that Louis had another huge misfortune to contend with towards the end of his life:
In the autumn of 1685, Louis developed an agonising and persistent toothache, and his doctors decided to extract the offending molar. However, they were ignorant of the importance of post-operative hygiene, and infection set in: the king’s gums, jawbone and sinuses became dangerously inflamed. A committee of nervous physicians concluded that drastic measures were called for. Louis underwent a truly terrible ordeal: they removed all the teeth from the top layer of his mouth, then punctured his palate and broke his jaw. This was all completed without anaesthetic, the king being fully awake throughout this procedure. The most powerful man in Western Europe was helpless before the primitive medical knowledge of his time. At least the wounds were kept clean on this occasion – cauterised with red-hot coals.
I almost feel sorry for the man. But having got this sad story out of the way, Spencer then goes on to describe what Louis XIV’s soldiers did to the people of the United Dutch Provinces – genocide, basically, to all of them that they could get their murdering hands on – and any sympathy you may feel for this abominable man immediately disappears.
But the point about dentistry remains. The average citizen of an average country now enjoys vastly less painful and more knowedgeable dental care than even the grandest of kings had to endure in earlier times.
Never knock progress.
It appears that so-called “animal rights” thugs’ targetting of scientists and attempted intimidation of investors has backfired, at least in terms of trying to win around public opinion to their cause. Well, it is true that the majority of Britons loathe such groups, but I don’t think these folk are really concerned about winning hearts and minds as so much working out their own damaged psychological problems through a “cause” that gives them a sense of power and fame. The sadness of it all is that the case for advancing animal welfare – hardly a trivial issue – gets lost in the noise. For all that I am an unapologetic meat-eater, I certainly think everything practical should be done to minimise suffering of animals. In fact, one of the great things about growing advances in the fields of biotech, genetic engineering and the like is that it reduces the need for animal testing, possibly removing it altogether.
Green terrorism is not something cooked up by science fiction. It is all too real and threatens immense damage to our economic and material wellbeing. Maybe the famously sentimental British animal-loving public are getting the point.
Recently someone added, or tried to add, a comment on to ancient (July 1st 2004) Samizdata posting of mine, about some great photos taken by a guy called Richard Seaman, of the SpaceShipOne launch. Such are the ways of Samizdata that I got an email about the comment, and was thus reminded about the original posting. Which was quite short and included the following:
Seaman used a Canon 1Ds digital SLR camera, a snip at $8,000.
Seaman is a fine photographer, but much of the genius of these photos lies in the automatic focus system that this camera has in it. More fuss should be made of the people who devise things like this, I think. Boy would I love one of these – but smaller and for nearer $80, in a couple of years time.
Well, even since about last November, I have had just such a system on my camera. This camera didn’t cost me $80. It cost me just under £130. But then, I only had to wait just over a year for it. But in about July of this year, exactly two years after that earlier posting, I reckon that a cheapo digital camera with automatic focussing will probably cost, I don’t know, around … $80?
Imagine a world in which politicians cut there prices for their “services” to the tune of about 99% (or whatever amazing figure it is), over a period of two years. Ah, statists will say. But what politicians do is so much more difficult. But that’s the whole point of capitalism. It concentrates its efforts on that which is not merely desirable but on that which has become, despite all appearances to the contrary, possible. If it can’t be done, they just walk away from the problem, and make a note to come back later when it can. Meanwhile, they don’t throw good money after bad.
Politicians spend fortunes merely shuffling back and forth the fact that this or that problem is indeed a very great problem, claiming all the while that ever more money must be pointlessly thrown at it, right now, so that we can continue to hope against hope for an answer, immediately, from them.
And of course many of the problems of politicians are self-inflicted and impossible. Like: how do you abolish a queue for something very nice that you are giving away, but which you have only a limited supply of? Answer: forget it, fools. Many politicians actually prefer impossible problems, because if their preferred urgent problems were solved, then no more money would be “needed”. (The whole environmental movement is best understood, I suggest, as a search process to invent problems which are impossible to solve, because impossible to really know about, but very, very important – thus requiring infinite money and political interference, for ever.)
Capitalism. I love it. Just so long as nobody tries to make it compulsory reading.
I have never really grokked what makes Apple loveable to people – their style is attractive, sure, but it strikes me as very 50’s “modern.” And it all looks so identical, little rows of computers all looking exactly the same, little iPods all exactly the same, little stores all with exactly the same arrangement, etc. It all seems so mindlessly conformist, these endless plastic rounded boxes all in antiseptic white. It looks totalitarian.
This insight into Apple Computer’s design was made by the reader Balfegor, in response to a post by Ann Althouse on the merits or otherwise of the offerings of that computer company.
I myself am so frustrated with the erratic performance and system bloat of Windoze XP that I am resolved to not purchase another item of software from Microsoft, and I am tossing up between buying an Apple or building my own Linux based system. I have heard great things about Apple’s recent offerings, but I had always had an objection to the company’s products which I could never put my finger on until I read Balfegor’s comments.
Ronald Bailey does not pull his punches when dealing with opponents of biotechnology:
Bioconservative intellectuals are fully cognizant of the tendency for our species to be suspicious of the new and the strange, and they clearly want to harness that suspicion as a strategy to restrain biotechnological progress. To that end they advocate adopting the so-called precautionary principle… it would mean that new biotechnological techniques such as stem cells, cloning, and sex selection should be presumed innocent, and those who propose a new intervention must bear the burden of showing that its promise outweighs its peril.
The problem is that humanity is terrible at anticipating benefits. Consider the optical laser. When the optical laser was invented in 1960, it was dismissed as “an invention for looking for a job”. No one could imagine what possible use this interesting phenomenon might be. Of course, now it is integral to the operation of hundreds of everyday products: it runs our printers and optical telephone networks, corrects myopia, removes tattoos, plays our CDs, opens clogged arteries, helps level our crop fields, etc. It is ubiquitous.
(pages 242-3)
His praise for the idea of material progress reminds of me what Brian Mickelthwait wrote a few weeks back on this blog.
I also liked this passage, where he refers to the unashamed opponent of material progress, Bill McKibben and others:
Respecting the sanctity of life doesn’t require that we take whatever random horrors nature dishes out. Safe genetic engineering, when it becomes possible, strongly affirms the intrinsic value of human life by producing healthier, stronger, smarter people more equipped to enjoy their lifes and to thrive during them.
(page 178)
Bailey’s book is strongly recommended and I pretty much agree with all of it. A point of his that I would emphasise is that of course, people are entitled to say that if they don’t want biotech or whatever, then they should not be made to pay for it. If biocons want to stop tax-funding of stem cell research, then as a libertarian, I entirely defend their right to refuse such funding but of course my view changes if such folk try to actually prevent private funding of such ventures.
Another argument that Bailey confronts head-on is the idea that by penetrating the mysteries of the physical world, we somehow lose our reverence or respect for life. That always struck me as a dumb argument. My amazement at the wonders of space is hardly dented by the insights of a Newton or the glorious photos taken by space probes. Quite the opposite. And whatever some genetic determinists (some of whom are sadly racists) may say, I don’t believe that the argument for free will and Man’s capacity for making meaningful choices in life is reduced one iota by our understanding of genetics. The more we know, the more power that gives us to shape our futures. I think it was a chap called Francis Bacon who said something to the effect that nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Bailey is one of the better writers for Reason magazine. I definitely can recommend this book for those looking at controversies in this area, such as this subject.
I am presently on a Singapore airlines Boeing 747 over Afghanistan, on my way back to London from Australia. The aircraft has in flight WiFi. It is for-pay WiFi, but I could not resist. Looking at the physical geography of the place, I really do wonder what the Soviets were thinking when they thought that they could invade and subdue the country. (And what exactly was the point, anyway? What did they have to gain?)
More importantly than that perhaps was that the WiFi is not really that expensive. I am paying $9.99 for an hour, two hours is $14.95, and it gets cheaper from there. (Up to $26.95 for a 24 hour pass, which would just about manage the entire trip from Australia to England). Given that they are managing WiFi in an aircraft, and some sort of link to the ground (presumably via satellite) I can not really complain about the cost.
Intriguingly, this is actually less than my local Starbucks charges for WiFi access. Given that the total cost to them of offereing the service is one £50 router and a £ 25 a month ADSL connection that they probably have already, I think that somebody has their pricing wrong.
Not only is Jacques Chirac, no matter what he thinks and says, NOT funding a French ‘Google killer,’ he “doesn’t even know what a mouse is”. And that comes directly from a guy who is a partner in the French non-‘Google killer’. Search expert John Battelle interviewed the guy, Francois Bourdoncle, and writes:
So what is [Chirac] funding? Well, according to Bourdoncle, there will be no single Quaero site. Instead, Quaero is a program, a long term effort to spur various European competitors toward creating better search related technologies. Participants will share R&D, for example, as well as become each other’s customers. In other words, this is a government funded attempt at pulling together a keiretsu of sorts.
Not exactly a European Google killer, I commented. Nope, Bourdoncle responded, and attempting to do that would be a pretty stupid move. I couldn’t agree more. Sounds to me, I thought to myself, that Quaero is simply a way for huge companies like Thompson to insure a steady flow of dollars from its government, and if using the Big Google Is Going to Kill European Culture meme helps along the way, so be it. Before I could even mention that idea, Bourdoncle addressed it head on, saying he was sure folks might see it that way, and he was not one to say if it was true or not. “I’m not really sure what (Thompson’s) strategy is,” he said. “They don’t tell me that.” Sounds like the keiretsu is shaping up nicely, no?
Mike Masnick, posting on Techdirt, notes an unfortunate development in U.S. politics: the adoption of network neutrality as a partisan issue. At which point the discussion starts to sound eerily familiar:
The only reasons the telcos are in the position to violate network neutrality are because they’ve pretty much been granted subsidies and monopoly rights of way – and part of that bargain was that to increase competition, there needed to be open and fair access. To suddenly claim that we need a hands off approach is ignoring the fact that there’s never been a hands off approach and the companies involved were granted special rights.
This neutrality dilemma reminds me a lot of similar discussions of free markets. The difference is that it is a less mature discussion – for now. We have been talking about markets for a long time now, and we no longer frame the debate in terms of whether a market is simply free or un-free, as all markets exist in a relative state of freedom at all times.
The debate on neutrality, being younger, so it still sounds, like a bunch of people agitating for or against a perect state of being known as ‘neutrality’. But like freedom, neutrality an ethos, not a state of being. As Masnick implies, there may be such a thing as objective reality (I like to think so), but there is no such thing as objective neutrality.
I guess creationists, or the Intelligent Design crowd, will not be too amused by this story.
Frank Furedi, the British sociologist who has already established a bit of a record for trashing doomongering of various types, lays into what he sees as the misanthropy of so many of today’s glum authors. I cannot do justice to it in one short comment, so make yourself a coffee or pour your favourite alcoholic beverage, sit back, and enjoy:
Human beings are not angels; on a bad day they are capable of evil deeds. But the very fact that we can designate certain acts as evil shows that we are capable of rectifying acts of injustice. And on balance we aspire to do good. Contrary to the fantasies of romantic primitivism, civilisation and development have made our species more knowledgeable and sensitive about the workings of nature. The aspiration to improve the conditions of life – the most basic motive of people throughout the ages – is one that has driven humanity from the Stone Age through to the twenty-first century.
If believing in the human potential is today labelled ‘anthropocentrism’ and ‘speciesism’, then I wholeheartedly plead guilty to subscribing to both of those views.
Hat-tip: Ronald Bailey at Reason’s blog. Bailey is also a profound techno-optimist with little time for the zero-sum economics or mentality of the latter-day Malthusians that Furedi hammers. This book is worth adding to your reading list. (As if I did not have enough, Ed).
Forbes magazine has a nice series on the 20 most important tools that Man has ever devised and used. For some inexplicable reason, it does not include the Swiss Army knife or the Callaway golf driver, but I am sure that was an oversight.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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