Re: The Freedom of Digital Information

From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Tue Aug 01 2000 - 03:10:26 MDT


I wonder if the "information must be free" advocates
> >>include personal data and private communications in their manifesto?
>
> This one does.

Well, good. At least your viewpoint is consistent. I can at least respect
that from an intellectual standpoint. Of course, from a personal
standpoint, it gives me the heebie jeebies. I'm simply not into us becoming
one big happy collective, I'm way too autonomous for that.

> Well as with any technology, you have to take the good with the bad. If
you
> plan to wait until there is an *absolutely* safe way to upload you brain
> before you do so, I have a hunch you are going to be waiting a *VERY* long
> time.

Yes, yes, of course. We are all aware that life entails a certain level of
risk. I don't expect perfect solutions, I'd just like to operate within
acceptable parameters.

> >>If it becomes possible for me to easily read your mind would you
advocate
> >>a
> >>means of protecting -that- information? Or would you shrug and say,
"it's
> >>information! It's like air! I can't control it."
>
> Personally, I'd say spread the wealth. If you learn how to read my mind,
> rather than me demanding that you not do so, I'd rather persuade you to
> teach me how to read your mind as well. That way you have no advantage
over
> me.

Again, this is the hive mind scenario, and as stated I'm very much in favor
of the autonomous agent scenario. Indeed, I believe that there are
tremendous advantages to a distributed system of discrete agents pursuing
contrasting and collective goals where information is both fluid and
static-- where the left hand does not always know what the right hand is
doing. This is a bit dualistic, but I have a belief that most bootstraps
are an emergent property of the interference between polar qualities-- in
much the same way as complexity and information increase as one approaches
the nexus between chaos and order.

> The above sounds oxymoronish to me. "Frictionless information" and
> "absolute privacy" seem to be at exact opposite ends of the spectrum to
me.
> If you can think of a way to pull *that* off you may well convince me.
But
> I can't even begin to imagine how you'd do it.

On the contrary, I believe that such a system would very possible, extremely
stable and self sustaining. I actually think that we live in this universe
already, with quantum uncertainty (absolute privacy) protecting against
determinism whilst a myriad of collapsing waveforms create the sliver of
stable reality on which we proceed.

Or again, as above, with chaos at one end and order at the other and all
sorts of interesting things in between. I may not be explaining this well
but it appears obvious to me that without reference points (controlled
information: private nodes) a network of frictionless information rapidly
spirals off into pure chaos.

There is an argument that I will try to dig up for you that theorizes that
we are only intelligent because we don't have complete understanding of our
own intelligence. Having been an actor for seven years I can certainly
testify from first hand experience that sometimes when you think about
something, you destroy it. (Again with the uncertainty principle.)

Sorry Zero, this one turned into a bit of a ramble.

I'm sure -someone- out there has an inkling of what I'm getting at here.

--

::jason.joel.thompson:: ::wild.ghost.studios::



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