Politics, Religion, MUDs, MOOs, the Internet, the Past, and the Future

[collins@newton.apple.com (Scott Collins)]

Here is some cogent text from James Burke, a guy right at the top of my
`man-I-wish-I-was-that-smart' list.  He is noted for his television series
"Connections", "The Day the Universe Changed", "Tomorrow's World", and "The
Burke Special".

After the last physical cypherpunks meeting, thoughts of MOOs and whatnot
floating through my head, I chanced on a Discovery Channel broadcast of
"The Day the Universe Changed" and when it was over, rushed right out to
get the book.

His comments about computers (particularly considering he made them in
1984-5), and the kind of future they can allow mixed in my head with all
the things cypherpunks normally plan for and dream about and filled me with
a sense of "Wow! This guy is dead on (and even still ahead of us in his
thinking)."

    James Burke
    The Day the Universe Changed (companion to the public television series)
    1985, Little, Brown, and Co.
    ISBN 0-316-11706-4


  *** the first sentence from the Preface ***

You are what you know.

  *** the last five paragraphs in the book ***

The knowledge acquired through the use of any structure is selective. 
There are no standards or beliefs guiding the search for knowledge which
are not dependent on the structure.  Scientific knowledge, in sum, is not
necessarily the clearest representation of what reality is; it is the
artifact of each structure and its tool.  Discovery is invention. 
Knowledge is man-made.

If this is so, then all views at all times are equally valid.  There is no
metaphysical, super-ordinary, final, absolute reality.  There is no special
direction to events. The universe is what we say it is.  When theories
change the universe changes.  The truth is relative.

This relativist view is generally shunned.  Is is supposed by the Left to
dilute commitment and by the Right to leave society defenseless.  In fact
it renders everybody equally responsible for the structure adopted by the
group.  If there is no privileged source of truth, all structures are
equally worth assessment and equally worth toleration.  Relativism
neutralizes the views of extremists of all kinds.  It makes science
accountable to the society from which its structure springs.  It urges care
in judgement through awareness of the contextual nature of the judgemental
values themselves.

A relativist approach might well use the new electronic data systems to
provide a structure unlike any which has gone before.  If structural change
occurs most often through the juxtaposition of so-called `facts' in a novel
way, then the systems might offer the opportunity to evaluate not the facts
which are, at the present rate of change, obsolete by the time they come to
the public consciousness, but the relationships between facts: the
constants in the way they interact to produce change.  Knowledge would then
properly include the study of the structure itself.

Such a system would permit a type of `balanced anarchy' in which all
interests could be represented in a continuous reappraisal of the social
requirements for knowledge, and the value judgements to be applied in
directing the search for that knowledge.  The view that this would endanger
the position of the expert by imposing on his work the judgement of the
layman ignores the fact that science has always been the product of social
needs, counscioulsy expressed or not.  Science may well be a vital part of
human endeavour, but for it to retain the privilege which it has gained
over centuries of being in some measure unaccountable, would be to render
both science itself and society a disservice.  It is time that knowledge
became more accessible to those to whom it properly belongs.

  *** end of quoted material ***




Scott Collins   | "That's not fair!"                         -- Sarah
                | "You say that so often.  I wonder what your basis
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