Re: Network
Subject: Re: Network
From: Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
Date: 12/3/10, 00:02
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

Comments in response to Lipp:

Lipp's diction in the attachment was puzzling to me; I assume he is employing terms of art from some discipline I am unfamiliar with. In light of that, you may quickly disregard anything I say below.

Based on my limited experience in a huge organization trying to move from working with paper to working electronically, electronic tools (programs or  whatever) are more likely to succeed when they empower the users (by empower I mean enable the user to do things he could not before, or to do existing tasks better or more easily).  Electronic tools are more likely to fail when they attempt to regulate the users' behavior while using the tool, particularly when the tool attempts to foster quality by automated means.

This attitude was recently manifest in my comments on using statistics and programmed analyses to rate or certify writers.

So, with that preface, here are my comments on Lipp's comments:

1.  Plugging and metastasizing thereof -- I don't know what he is talking about so, no comment

2   The initial control/central arbiters/provisions to censure and impeach/track record of prescience: going back to our earliest discussions, Barrett Brown was going to govern, at first, relying on his informed but ultimately partially subjective judgment to bar the door to social conservatives and toss out writers who we were wrong about, later to be replaced by a governing body to adjust things when the network is out of whack -- they will know it when they see it, no rules and proceedings. The network should empower exercise of judgment by everybody in it, not regulate the participants.

3.  Regulating the regional networks/overt mechanism of repudiation: it seems to me that regionalization is a misleading metaphor that has crept into the discussion.  Anybody in the network may form and terminate relationships with anyone else in the network, so how can there be 'regions?'  I am also bothered by notions of regulation and mechanisms of repudiation. The goal of the schematic is to empower individuals to access and disseminate information that recommends itself by its usefulness and honesty, unregulated.

Stray but related comment: I think I told you my theory that when the christian conservatives go to form their own network on the Project PM model, it will necessarily fail, because their writing is informed by dogma and faith, in the end dishonest because you come to a point where inquiry is blocked.  Thus, those folks' network will inevitably bicker, sever and proliferate lesser networks, like roadside churches in West Virginia.

Clark















On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kenneth Lipp <kenneth.lipp@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:19 AM
Subject: Network
To: barriticus@gmail.com
Cc: emilieduchatelet8@gmail.com


Mr. Brown:
 
I apologise for the rushed format.
My thoughts on your video post. I'll respond later to your question regarding "thinking your way out of the box." In my opinion this is a case of the machine interested in the game.
 
Kenneth



--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302