That's what happens when you drink the Kool-Aid

John Walker reviews Janon Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget to hiliarious effect.

I've long been a skeptic of the kind of technological libertarian fantasy world that is exemplified by Glenn Reynolds' Army of Davids. It all seems rather silly to me, but it is deeply appealing to a lot very bright people. These people are busily working to make this fantasy happen, come hell or high water. This book is the result of disillusionment with this vision.

Next, the focus turns to the cult of free and open source software, “cloud computing”, “crowd sourcing”, and the assumption that a “hive mind” assembled from a multitude of individuals collaborating by means of the Internet can create novel and valuable work and even assume some of the attributes of personhood. Now, this may seem absurd, but there are many people in the Silicon Valley culture to whom these are articles of faith, and since these people are engaged in designing the tools many of us will end up using, it's worth looking at the assumptions which inform their designs. Compared to what seemed the unbounded potential of the personal computer and Internet revolutions in their early days, what the open model of development has achieved to date seems depressingly modest: re-implementations of an operating system, text editor, and programming language all rooted in the 1970s, and creation of a new encyclopedia which is structured in the same manner as paper encyclopedias dating from a century ago—oh wow. Where are the immersive massively multi-user virtual reality worlds, or the innovative presentation of science and mathematics in an interactive exploratory learning environment, or new ways to build computer tools without writing code, or any one of the hundreds of breakthroughs we assumed would come along when individual creativity was unleashed by their hardware prerequisites becoming available to a mass market at an affordable price?

A lot of this probably comes from the perfectly understandable mistake of thinking that everyone in the world is exactly like you. There are worse things to think about other people, but the vast majority of people in all times and places probably prefer the easy life and the tried and true instead of the hard work and intense mental effort required to do the things that were supposed to happen after the advent of the Internet.

Another monkey wrench in the works is the modern age is ending, and the rapid ferment that characterizes modernity is ebbing as well. Lanier laments, “It's as if culture froze just before it became digitally open, and all we can do now is mine the past like salvagers picking over a garbage dump.” This is to be expected, the culture of the West is fossilizing, in the sense Spengler meant. Rapid change and immense instability go hand in hand, and the mass of mankind get tired of the latter after a while, so things slow down again. This isn't really bad, just different.

James Burke: Connections

One of my favorite shows on PBS was Connections, by James Burke. Burke had a breezy, familiar style
that truly annoys some people. Since he was making a science popularization, he tends to skip over things that don't fit the narrative neatly, but the gist of it is generally pretty good. This series made an indelible impression on me at a young age, and I think I have been affected by it ever since. I have a tendency to see everything as connected in strange and unusual ways, and I have an interest in a great many different fields of inquiry.

Connections probably also played a part in my interest in the Victorian era, because a seemingly disproportionate amount of my memories of the show center on technology of the Victorian era. It really was an amazing time with an unsurpassed rapidity of technological change.

The beginning of episode 1 of Connections also shows a bygone era of mechanical switches. There is a sequence demonstrating the controls of an elevator, that relies entirely on mechanical relays. I can't think of any object I have worked in the guts of recently that actually used a mechanical relay. Everything is solid-state electronics now. No moving parts, which is nice, but when those little things break, they are usually broken forever. You can't repair them easily. Its often cheaper to discard consumer objects with this kind of controls than fix them, which makes me sad in a vague way.

In the modern survivalist movement there is also a passion for XIXth century technology. The advantage to this is much of it does not depend on very much outside assistance or electricity. And also it is more easily repairable if it breaks. Thus, all sorts of books are sought, chemistry, horticulture, medicine, all from this period or shortly thereafter. Many of these books are available for free on the internet, since their copyright has long since expired. Thus, in true James Burke fashion, the internet is now enabling the spread of XIXth century technology. For example: Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Recipes, a collection of soaps and elixers and whatnot made from things you can easily find in nature.

I've sometimes pondered this, and wondered how long it would take to reestablish a XIXth century level of techology after an apocalyptic event. The knowledge is all out there, the trouble is getting hold of it when you need it. A thing that has been done once can be done again. For example, every village used to have a blacksmith. The level of technology you need to start making iron and steel is pretty low, the problem is finding someone who knows how to do it!

Watching this first episode of Connections again, I can really see where the whole zombie phenomenon comes from. There is a part near the middle where Burke is walking down a highway littered with abandoned cars that reminded me strongly of Zombieland. Really the whole first episode does, because it is about a technological apocalypse: flickering lights and chaos. Burke was trying in this episode to call to mind our utter dependence upon modern technology. Perhaps at the time, no one thought of this much. Well, Burke got what he was looking for. Now it is much more commonplace for people to express anxiety about the fate of modern technological civilization. Zombies are just one popular manifestation. Survivalists another.

I suppose that it is really a doubt about the ability of our civilization to sustain itself. 50 years ago, Western Civilization still had a great deal of residual self-confidence in itself, but now much of that has dissipated. So I suppose the question is whether that confidence can be restored. Thus my interest in metahistory. So in true Connections style, James Burke is ultimately responsible for everything you see here.

For more on James Burke, check Knowledge Web, a project of the James Burke Institute.

Shoelaces, Science, and Cool Tools

A trifecta of links today.

I was often frustrated by the difficulty in tying the shoelaces on my shoes. Oftentimes, shoes come with round, slippery laces that are hard to tie securely, but are too short to double knot. I looked around, and I found Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot. This is heartily recommended. I use it almost all the time now, because I can be sure that my laces will stay were I put them. This may seem a little silly, but knots are actually of professional interest to me, because I need to know how to make secure knots with slippery fibers.

Cool tools is another place I had seen before. It is a geek kind of thing, clever solutions to small problems.

Finally, Science Hobbyist. I like the idea of amateur science. Today, most big physics involves multi-billion dollar particle accelerators or telescopes. However, science did not start out this way, and you can still have some fun and learn things on the cheap. There is more on this website than I could possibly look at, so beware of wasting time.

h/t Art of Manliness