Bernie,

Thanks for participating.

> [...] Joubin's alpine retreat...

Right, I wish. (It was rented ;) But we could start a annual '!
Davos' there though -- outdoor in the fields with the cows :) [1]


> Corporate (and secondarily government) interests, imho. They re-
> wrote the social infrastructure. You spend all your time with
> strangers, earning money with which you use to pay other
> strangers. You must have a credit rating, education, social
> security number (in the US), etc. Having a stable family life
> isn't required. You must play within the infrastructure
> provided.

Regardless of the historic forces that have brought us here, (imo) it
should be clear that what remains of the social unit of family, with
its benefits and the 'demands' that it places on its members, is the
hair in the ointment of Capitalism. (Perhaps this accounts for the
continued assault on Family in the corporate media.) Certainly the
Corportate entites and their wholly-owned media arms have not been
shy regarding their prefered mode of 21sth century existence: The
glamorized 'global nomad'. Good corporate citizen. Voracious
consumer of goods and services (world-wide).

But please note that I don't, and would not, blame the corportions
for getting the ball rolling.

Surely a good part of the blame lies with the very institutions which
were supposed to provide social guidance in society, but which had
degenerated and had become mired in mindless formalism. As it turns
out, few listen to our president's "favorite philosopher" [2]. So
the reaction against the oppression and rigidity of that quarter was
long overdue.

And we shouldn't forget about the unfortunate marriage between the
AngloSaxon work-ethic (a Good thing) and Mechanisation. (Would it be
fair to call the child of this marriage a beast?) "By Ford" [3], it
was most untimely.

But are we in a position to judge the mad rush to embrace the machine
("and carress its rumbling breasts" ala Futurists) by the folks in
19th and early 20th century?

I don't know.

But the fact is that the opportunity of hindsight that we have today,
and the corresponding responsbility that this places on the
technologists to be almost 'scientific' regarding the deployment of
technology, demands that we do not limit our critical consideration
of technology merely to judging its utility as 'useful'
or 'efficient' or 'economical'.

I mean, what could have been more 'harmless' and 'useful'
and 'economical' than the 'Horseless Carriage'? (Think about that
while you're stuck in the traffic today.) And the automobile was a
far more transparent and understandable technology. The information
systems of today, specially P2P, is not even easily understood by
most geeks, much less ma and pa. The average person is in no
position to make an 'informed' decision regarding these systems.

So as you pointed out regarding the inherent benefit of information
technology to the capitalist entities, it is clear that such critical
considerations will not be forthcoming from that quarter.

No.

The burden is on the shoulder of those who are conceiving and
developing these systems. And they can not claim innocence as those
before them, and the future generations will judge them.

..

> [..] P2P technology [...]

I think one of the issues re. P2P is that it lends itself to
questionable Utopian idealizations, and that some have and will
present it as a sort of panacea for all sort of social, political,
and economic problems.

Another issue is that in some manifestations, one sort of centralized
node (service provider) is replaced with another (presence provider,
or an identity authority). So the problem is merely shifted from one
place to another, and more seriously, these new top-level entities
could be far more invasive than the old service nodes. Now as Wes
Felter pointed out, there are protocols which will obviate the need
for some of these 'new' top-level entities. What I was trying to
hint at with my post on JXTA was that potential possibility is not
the same as likely reality. Because there are powerful vested
interests involved. Ultimately it does not matter if some wonderful
P2P system which is social (as opposed to anti-social) is developed
in someone's lab or basement. Will it get widely deployed? Or is it
more likely that perhaps modified JXTA-based _binaries_ end up in a
future AOL/TimeWarner client?

--

Refs.

[1]: !Davos conference site
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SocialModels4P2PNetworks/files/%
21davos/>

[2]: Mark 2.22

[3]: Brave New World
<http://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html>