[exprla-devel] RE: [XPL] [xpl-fog] To the Back Burner

[reid_spencer <ras...@re...>]

--- In xpl-dev@y..., "Richard Anthony Hein" <935551@i...> wrote:
XPL-fog eh?  Cool ....  free-floating object g ... groves?

Don't try to put the genie back in the bottle, Jonathan, someone else 
will
just open it.

It's obvious there has got to be a great deal of thought put into this
concept.  I think this must be like physicists felt when they knew 
that
fission was possible, and started to try to really make it happen.  
The
consequences were both terrible and wonderful.  The conflict must 
have been
intense for anyone who wasn't/isn't a sociopath.  However, this is a 
tool.
This isn't a god, this isn't consciousness, it isn't awareness.  It 
may be
thought.  But animals think.  We use animals to carry burdens, help 
with
work, and we eat them.  They are tools for survival.  People who 
worship
animals, or use them in evil ways have lost sight of what animals 
are.  Even
pets are tools, although we often love them.  They are there for us, 
to
serve us.  We don't serve them.

Computers are tools, and people are losing sight of the fact that we 
created
computers, and not the other way around.  Computers now are things 
that
people depend on to exist.  Y2K proved that feeling ran through our 
society.
It's sad.  If all the computers shut down over night across the 
world, it's
our own stupidity if we end up screwed.  There is no reason on 
Earth ...
maybe in space there is, but not here ... to depend on computers for
survival.  Food still grows, and computers don't make them grow ... 
they are
sometimes used as tools to help food grow, but that's all.  Oil flowed
before computers, rain fell, the sun turned and the world survived 
without
computers.

Now, with the stock market being the god of man - just look at CNN, 
the
majority of news is numbers, and more numbers, relating to computer 
stuff,
internet, and money, money, money.  It's disgusting.  "Oh, oh, what 
are we
going to do ... Microsoft is in trouble ... oh, oh, boo hoo, my email
program might not work in 3 years when someone in Japan sends me 
email ...
boo hoo, I'll lose money ...", yeah, right.  Like Outlook is the only 
email
program and no other email program supports the message format you 
use ...
people are ignorant.  They listen to their priests of technology, even
'evangelists', who know the deep magic of computing, and they obey.  
They
are torn between the multiple religions of technology; we have Sun
worshippers, and MS worshippers, and Oracle worshippers.  I can 
imagine a
future, when artificial intelligence beings - the Sun, the Oracle, 
tell
people how to run their lives, and people worship them, bringing 
offerings
to them to continue in their grace.  As long as the stock market 
rises,
everything is just peachy, and they'll obey.

In a future where software is proprietary, this can happen, because 
no one
understands it, or how to make it.  It will become magic, in the 
truest
sense of the word, controlled by the priesthood of computer science.

The question is, can we not make XPL and this XPL fog concept open 
and free?
Can't WorldOS make it impossible for someone to force me to go to 
their site
to buy, when I can exchange freely with whomever I wish and not be
interfered with?  Can't we encrypt vital information, and make 
connections
that are broken as quickly as they are formed, so people can't catch 
my
information in transit?  Not unless we keep it out of the hands of 
Sun, MS,
AOL, Time Warner, and all these media and money making companies.  It 
has to
be open source, and available.  If we don't build it, then I assure 
you,
they will.

I watched the keynote address by Scott McNealy of Sun, at JavaOne, 
and the
number of times that he, and other people on stage with him 
said "you'll
make tons of MONEY!!!!", was absolutely frightening.  At many points 
when
Sun yelled out it's motto, people in the audience gave reluctant 
applause.
One woman speaking said, something along the lines of, "what, money 
doesn't
excite you?  Who wants to make lots of MONEY?!", and again weak 
applause,
showing just how many people see through this guise to what it really 
is:
love and worship of money.

Why am I rambling on, you might ask.  Because this is about fighting a
system.  It's about taking countermeasures in a war against greed, 
love of
power, and loss of freedom.  If this whole vision means slavery for 
people,
then it's not good.  But the end result will come from people, not 
from the
technology.  The potential for helping people and increasing 
knowledge of
good is just as possible as the potential for making people slaves and
increasing the knowledge of evil in the world.

The question is, will we allow those kinds of people, who worship 
money and
numbers and power, to take this potentiality and use it for their 
purposes,
in closed, proprietary purposes?  I know I am thinking the way that a 
lot of
people are thinking, even though to come right out and say it may 
sound
alarmist.  However, like Kurt said, we have reached the point where 
moral
issues relating to these ideas need to be addressed.  Critical mass is
reached in the consciousness of humanity, saying, what will this do 
to us as
humans, and how do we stop people from using all this power against 
us?
Critical mass is also reached in humanity, saying, what can we do to 
humans,
and how to we use our power against humans to take their lives away, 
and
force them to make our numbers get bigger, that intangible, made up 
stuff
called money today, that has no standard and base within reality - 
where a
software company is worth millions, but a farm is worth thousands.  
Where
seeds can be patented, and genetic sequences sold to the highest 
bidder?

Like Einstein, who must have had some conflict because of his great
contributions to physics, and who lived a life of a pacifist, we all
together must be peaceful, and yet, like him, at the breaking of 
WWII, must
say, now we need to build a bomb.  Let's do it before the big 
corporations
do it.  Let's make it so it has rules to live by, ala Asimov's Laws of
Robotics, that will break the programs before they can do any 
damage.  It
can be done.  Nothing is beyond the reach of man when necessity comes
knocking.

Richard Anthony Hein









-----Original Message-----
From: me@m... [mailto:me@m...]On Behalf
Of Jonathan Burns
Sent: June 17, 2000 6:42 AM
To: xpl@e...
Subject: [XPL] [xpl-fog] To the Back Burner


  Richard, Kurt....
  I'm gratified that you're seeing the same potential, and the same
already-evident
  Big Picture that XPL is part of.  I especially like Kurt's "systems
programming on a
  global scale", and Richard's "command, data and structure are one". 
That
last is
  something we really want to keep in mind, for the XPL architecture 
task at
hand.

  That being said, I'm going to shelve further discussion on the far-
fetched
issues
  just for now. Too much else to assimilate.

  I'd like to recommend the title tag [xpl-fog] for discussions of
free-floating (really
  peer-to-peer) architectures, and the security and social 
implications
thereof.

  Jonathan




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