In a follow-up interview, after adding his voice to the chorus of educators, entrepreneurs, innovators, futurists, writers and artists expressing grave concern over the openness and continued utility of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee (DE/EN), who made the internet accessible though his perseverance and invention of hypertext mark-up language, made a very eloquent remark that should be all rights be the coup de grรขce and last word to the bullies of the world.
Berners-Lee simply said that the internet is bigger than the entertainment industry, bigger than record labels and movie studios. The potential for fostering creativity and discovery and the threat to this freedom of congress is much more significant than the grossly magnified grievances of a few thuggish companies, who have the backing of politicians and inflated claims of damages. In fact, although apparently we’d be better off believing the charm-offensive that equates copyright integrity to the last bastions against all the nightmarish ills of the world, the scale of economy of the entertainment industry is relatively tiny and could be handily absorbed (though I doubt the situation would be improved) by anyone of the technological giants that has built empires of connectivity. We have been put at the mercy of bullies in a lot of other ways as—and though it’s an obvious statement, we’d do better not to forget again: freedom, honesty, integrity are bigger than any illusory security; peace and unity are bigger than any one nation’s peccadilloes or aspirations; not demonizing others is bigger than spreading one’s personal gospel; conserving nature is bigger than profits (though for the last two, forces are ardently at work with discrediting keeping matters in perspective). Understanding scale and priority is something that we are all capable of at first glance, and despite efforts to skew and burden our feelings, I think, with a gentle reminder, we’re able to see through that deception as well.
Sunday 22 April 2012
triangle man
catagories: ๐, ๐ก, environment, networking and blogging, philosophy, Wikipedia
Friday 20 April 2012
one-off or noch eins
When the great mall-tree, the schef-felera whose bran-ches make a canopy over the bed, flowered last year for the first time, I guessed that was all the generative action we'd see out of it for the next decade or so. I thought plants that took time to mature were patient and stategically territorial, like a Century Plant (Agave americana).
I was surprised to see these stalks emerge again. I was also surprised and happy at the same time to find that the geranium that sprouted from the little nub of root that I salvaged from the balcony last Autumn survived. I had heard that one can sometimes keep the roots in a cellar and urge them to grow for a second season, but I didn't think I'd discover that it was a white (rather than a red) hanger-on.
catagories: ๐ฑ, environment, lifestyle
furor teutonicus
There has been much fanfare over the past week about a survey (Umfrage) of the American public that confirms a general affinity between Germans and their American cousins.
Thursday 19 April 2012
manuscript culture or head-up forward crawl
catagories: networking and blogging, philosophy
Wednesday 18 April 2012
three-letter initialism
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, transportation, travel
Monday 16 April 2012
birthday paradox or pigeon-hole principle
The Pope celebrated his birthday today with an appropriately Bavarian entourage of well-wishers bringing some characteristically German traditions to Rome. He was treated to quite a few performances from this delegation. The Pope, the first German to hold the office in over a thousand years, shares his birth date with another, though perhaps less famous, German citizen, hailing from Erfurt, the city where Martin Luther was ordained and the Pope visited last September: Germany’s first test-tube baby (sogennante Retortenbabies, which sounds especially cruel, although test-tube is bad enough, as if they were sea-monkeys or kangaroo-joeys).