Harvey Newstrom sensibly countered,
> But one person's "fix" may be another person's "error." What if the net
> spell-checked your posts and "corrected" British spelling to American
> spelling? What if it "corrected" your profanity to politically-correct
> words? What if it "fixes" your pornography by deleting it?
Surely you don't fear that the Net may do more than merely transmit
information...
That would imply a sinister overestimation of the Net's cyber-capabilities.
The Net deleting porno sounds like the stretch of the age. More likely it
would delete users who fail to download sufficient quantities of XXX material.
As for spell-checking and political correctitude, who cares, as long as we
still know what each of us means to say.
> What one person decides is a "fix" may not be desired by another person.
> This boils down to one group enforcing their will onto another group "for
> their own good."
Yes, I see your point. Isn't one group enforcing their will onto another group
what the Democrats and Socialists and Big Government are all about. So, if you
don't want your Visual Basic automatically updated and debugged by Mr. Bill,
then try a different computer language that any number of list members may
prescribe, or become one of Mr. Bill's decision makers.
τΏτ
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism
I heartily accept the motto, -- "That government is best which governs
least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and
systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I
believe, -- "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men
are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will
have. -- Henry David Thoreau
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 10:00:07 MDT