[PLUG-TALK] What are we designing? Re: Applying M$ and Adobe Patches

[Keith Lofstrom]

> On Thu, 13 Mar 2014, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> 
> >At a presentation last night about the future of computing, I asked 
> >the speaker about the "123456" password people - the ones who aren't 
> >wired to think about a world of digital threats, information power 
> >asymmetries, digitized life games where a rival designed the game 
> >and holds all the cards. [....]
> >
> >The speaker's response was: there will always be losers.

On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 02:09:32PM -0700, Paul Heinlein wrote:
> Frontier evangelists should be aware, however, that it's not a place 
> for some, perhaps many or even most, people. There should be places of 
> civilization and established law. Likewise, there are also people who 
> inadvisedly head westward when they don't have the required 
> constitution or wisdom.

This is a good thought - but the question is, does everyone have the
choice to stay off the frontier, or to engage it in only limited
ways?  Changes in banking, retail, utilities, medical treatment,
etc. seem to deny individuals the option to "stay home" - they go
along with complex changes chosen and imposed by others or they
do without what they used to have.

Case in point - today, I cancelled my subscription to the Oregonian.
I subscribed to the paper for 38 years - and if you count my father
and immigrant grandfather, a Lofstrom has been subscribed to the
newspaper for 80 years.  I'm sure many people like the changeover
to "the daily tweet", and don't care about the end of foreign
bureaus or fact checking or spell checking or 150 years of clippings
on microfilm to anchor the remaining reporters.  Like me, others can
approximate that online with diligent search.  But for how long? 
It is far easier to search for Justin Bieber's lousy driving than
about whole regional populations in Laos made refugees by hydro
reservoirs, or Laotian immigrants harrassed by the government in
Polk County, Oregon.

When you write a line of code, do you think about whether it will
help or hinder the least capable?  If you do think about that, are
you allowed by management to act?  It's easy to say "if you don't
like the heat, stay out of the kitchen", but when the business
plan is to extend the kitchen to every person worldwide, 24x7,
then the only escape for the weakest is death.

Where I live now was a frontier 10,000 years ago, settled by at
least two waves of Asians before the Europeans got here 200 years
ago.  It became an externally imposed frontier again, and I don't
see a lot of Kalapuya and Chinook about today.  Perhaps if we
destroy our own civilization from the weakest upwards, a third
wave of Asians will do unto us as we have done unto others.

I've worked hard to learn, and to share what I learn with others,
but I didn't earn the brain I learned with.  I am here because
the world's human refuse had a place to go, where even a hick
Swede barely able to read could contribute to his new community,
and propagate his genes to brainy grandkids.  That is what a
frontier used to be.

One of my favorite philosophers once said something translated
as "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and
sisters of mine, you did for me." 

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com