January, 2006

Coming in February: Is Old Europe Doomed?

Stay tuned for details about Cato Unbound’s February issue: “Is Old Europe Doomed?” featuring essays and commentary by:
Theodore Dalrymple, celebrated essayist and author of Our Culture, What’s Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses;
Charles Kupchan, professor or international relations at Georgetown University and author of The End of the American Era : U.S. [...]

Read: Coming in February: Is Old Europe Doomed?

Wrapping Up: Internet Liberation

Thanks to this month’s essayists for such a stimulating and wide-ranging conversation.
The discussion, you may have noticed, took some unpredictable turns, and this fact has something to teach us about this month’s theme. The Internet has become part of the basic structure of our society, economy, and lives, and a discussion about the Internet is [...]

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Honest Mistakes

by Jaron Lanier

January 25th, 2006

This last turn of the conversation towards an examination of Jews and the Left is too annoying to pass without comment.
To state the obvious: Jews were an oppressed minority in Europe. And as it happens we were also a hyperactively bookish minority. Marxism and related ideas were new, and it [...]

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The Dark Side of Internet Liberation

by Eric S. Raymond

January 25th, 2006

David Gelernter wrote:
It’s really East European Jews you mean.
Quite correct. I had almost inserted that qualifier myself. It’s impossible to read any history of the American Old Left without noticing the preponderance of Litvak, Galizianer, Ukrainian, and Polish family names.
I guess my underlying error here is that when somebody says “Ashkenazim” I tend to [...]

Read: The Dark Side of Internet Liberation

The Next Great University Will Be Net-based

by David Gelernter

January 25th, 2006

Here’s a brief reply to Eric, for closure: I completely agree with you regarding the solution to the free-market education problem. I published a couple of pieces on this topic over the last 2-3 months (one in the LA Times, one, appropriately, in Forbes), and I am now part of a project working along these [...]

Read: The Next Great University Will Be Net-based

Liberated from What?

by Jaron Lanier

January 25th, 2006

There’s something peculiar about the language of libertarians. In a modern American context, terms like “liberation” and “community” are old lefty code-words. They have become nostalgic. They lend a familiarity and warmth to affairs here in crazy Berkeley. Our archaic tropes mean exactly as much as the ubiquitous “frankly” does in D.C. It’s hard [...]

Read: Liberated from What?

Liberation: It’s Here

by Eric S. Raymond

January 25th, 2006

John Perry Barlow:
I guess we’ve run out of time, but to the extent we haven’t, might I encourage you to address one question? I want to know whether you think that the Internet is a liberating phenomenon.
Is that a trick question? Of course the Internet is a liberating phenomenon—it’s liberating in so many different [...]

Read: Liberation: It’s Here

Academia and the Internet: Rising From the Stalinist Ashes Like the University of Phoenix

by Eric S. Raymond

January 25th, 2006

Dr. Gelernter, I think your account of Western academia’s failure and mine are different angles on the same story.
(Bear with us, folks, this will get back to Internet liberation; at the end of this rant I’ll explain how the Internet may turn out to be the lever to force constructive change in academia.)
In fact, [...]

Read: Academia and the Internet: Rising From the Stalinist Ashes Like the University of Phoenix

I Believe Too

by Glenn Reynolds

January 25th, 2006

John Perry Barlow asks:
I guess we’ve run out of time, but to the extent we haven’t, might I encourage you to address one question? I want to know whether you think that the Internet is a liberating phenomenon. I still do.
I absolutely do. And there’s no better evidence than that dictators continue to [...]

Read: I Believe Too

I Still Believe

by John Perry Barlow

January 24th, 2006

You know, I would love to join this discussion in some useful way, particularly since the other designated contributors are all—each in his own way—heroes of mine and, at the least, a group I would love to go to dinner with.
However, starting with Jaron’s essay, and proceeding serenely from that point, we have failed to [...]

Read: I Still Believe

The Empty Future

by David Gelernter

January 24th, 2006

Here’s where the Net is going, as far as I can see. The world is moving to an “Empty Computer” model of computation. In the Empty Computer world, all my digital assets (all my docs, apps, images, videos, soundtracks, mail mssgs etc) are stored in my personal data structure, afloat in the Cybersphere. I can [...]

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Capitalism and More

by Glenn Reynolds

January 24th, 2006

One must, I think, move in fairly rarefied libertarian circles to think that capitalism is over-defended. I also think that pleas of poverty on behalf of academics are overstated. Academics make less than people who make a lot, but they make more than most Americans, for work that is pleasant, interesting, and largely free from [...]

Read: Capitalism and More

The Road to Professorial Liberation

by David Gelernter

January 24th, 2006

Eric, Regarding long-time-fandom, thanks very much and the feeling is mutual. But you haven’t described my views accurately.
I’m not pleading on behalf of academics; rather on behalf of humanities and social science academics, a group of which I am not a member. As I pointed out, professors in the sciences have [...]

Read: The Road to Professorial Liberation

Sticking Up For Capitalism

by Eric S. Raymond

January 24th, 2006

Dr. Gelernter, I’m a long-time fan of your writing. I normally find it crisp, incisive, and refreshingly free of either the left- or right-wing varities of political correctness. You’ve been on my short-list of computer scientists I most admire, and have hoped to meet personally someday, for many years.
Against that background, I have [...]

Read: Sticking Up For Capitalism

On Capitalism and Jaron’s Views on Capitalism

by David Gelernter

January 24th, 2006

I consider myself a conservative Republican; I am in fact a Bush administration appointee, in a small-potatoes way. (I’m on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts, and was confirmed by Congress.) But capitalism strikes me as the spoiled brat of the political and philosophical universe.
I strongly agree with Jaron: people don’t [...]

Read: On Capitalism and Jaron’s Views on Capitalism

I Love Capitalism. Really!

by Jaron Lanier

January 23rd, 2006

How much love do I have to declare for capitalism before it’s possible to point out that it isn’t the only active or worthy principle in human affairs, so that I won’t be pounced on by libertarians? I love capitalism this much! (He stretches his arms out wide.) As I’ve said in this discussion and [...]

Read: I Love Capitalism. Really!

Keeping it Cozy

by Glenn Reynolds

January 21st, 2006

I think that everyone would like to keep a sense of community. Jaron writes:

The main point for me is noticing the warmth and generosity of what’s happened with the net.
But then he follows it with this:

The problem with capitalism is that it works too well and can distract people from noticing beautiful things. If you [...]

Read: Keeping it Cozy

Be Clear. Be Crisp. Be Concise.

by Eric S. Raymond

January 20th, 2006

Jaron,
I cheerfully affirm that the ideas expressed in your essay are your own. With one or two important exceptions that I think I’ve already specified, I wouldn’t want any part of them. Nor did I suspect you for a moment of “ripping off my rants.” You are perfectly entitled to use [...]

Read: Be Clear. Be Crisp. Be Concise.

Kicking Off the Conversation: Replies to Comments

by Jaron Lanier

January 20th, 2006

Jaron Lanier expands on “tweakage denial,” his abiding Utopianism, the trouble with the command line, “free market fanaticism,” and much more in his reply to the comment essays. Stay tuned over the next several days as our commentators step from the seminar room to the lounge for a lively free-form blog conversation. Why not pull up a keyboard and join in?!

Read: Kicking Off the Conversation: Replies to Comments

Best of the Blogs: Internet Liberation Roundup

Cato Unbound aims to start conversations that spill from our humble forum into the vast online marketplace of ideas. Bloggers and discussion board denizens, riffing off Jaron Lanier’s lead essay, have tackled software “brittleness” and “lock-in,” natural monopoly, the way open and closed systems play into the evolving capitalist economy, the nature of the “file,” and more . . .

Read: Best of the Blogs: Internet Liberation Roundup

Reply to Lanier

by David Gelernter

January 18th, 2006

While taking issue with a number of Lanier’s specific claims, Yale computer scientist David Gelernter signs on to what he takes to be Lanier’s underlying message: “the software world doesn’t understand itself clearly enough—doesn’t understand where it’s been, where it is, and where it’s going.”

Read: Reply to Lanier

Reply to Lanier

by John Perry Barlow

January 17th, 2006

Ten years after his “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” John Perry Barlow insists that “the Internet continues to be an anti-sovereign social space, endowing billions with capacities for free expression that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.” A liberating future is still ahead, Barlow argues, but we must be on guard against a deep fact of both biology and markets: “New success inspires creativity. Old success tries to kill it.”

Read: Reply to Lanier

Reply to Lanier

by Glenn Reynolds

January 13th, 2006

Glenn Reynolds—taking pieces from both Lanier and Raymond—argues that small proprietary zones within the big open Internet—”semigoras” in Lanier’s terms—might prove “very fertile places for innovation and growth on the Internet” with the potential to empower individuals and small groups to “achieve the worker’s paradise” through technology and markets.

Read: Reply to Lanier

Reply to Lanier

by Eric S. Raymond

January 11th, 2006

In his reply to Jaron Lanier’s lead essay, open source software guru Eric S. Raymond takes issue with Lanier’s characterization of “lock-in,” his antipathy to the command line, and his discussion of ambiguity. Raymond claims that if Lanier’s point was just that the Internet is “a conduit of expression between people,” then he would stop in agreement. But, he writes, “the actual point seems to be to maintain an opposition between capitalism and (gift) culture that I think is . . . mistaken.”

Read: Reply to Lanier

The Gory Antigora: Illusions of Capitalism and Computers

by Jaron Lanier

January 9th, 2006

In our techno-Utopian dreams, the advance of the internet is “a little like a cross between Adam Smith and Albert Einstein; the Invisible Hand accelerating toward the speed of light,” says tech visionary Jaron Lanier in this month’s big-thinking lead essay. Yet, according to Lanier, we chug along saddled by the illusion that the Internet is mainly a technological rather than a cultural phenomenon. Software, Lanier argues, is “brittle” and can continue to function only when backed by what he calls “Antigoras”— “privately owned digital meeting arenas made rich by unpaid or marginally paid labor … tweaking the global system of digital devices so that the bits in the various pieces of software remain functional and meaningful.” Antigoras are indispensable, but “if software stays brittle,” Lanier says, “there will be a huge dampening effect on any hyper-speed takeoff plans of the digital elite.” Takeoff velocity requires a reorientation that acknowledges that the “the Net is precisely the generosity and warmth of humanity connecting with itself.”

Read: The Gory Antigora: Illusions of Capitalism and Computers

January Issue: Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead?

On Monday, January 9th, Cato Unbound will unleash its second issue: “Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead?”
An all-star lineup of techno-visionaries will discuss what, if anything, is left of all those mid-nineties prophesies of radical internet liberation. Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier will lead off with his wild ride of a lead essay, “The Gory [...]

Read: January Issue: Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead?