From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Jun 18 2003 - 12:31:24 MDT
Robin Hanson writes:
> Nevertheless, as an overall long term trend, I'm leaning toward expecting not
> only a move toward a transparent society (a la Brin), but then toward
> transparent minds as well.
I admit I never read Brin TS stuff, but adduced it entailed top-down
survellaince with the major issue being how to make the government
transparent as well.
What I see instead is transparency evolving among individuals, mediated
thru ubiquitous wireless internet. Institutions that remain closed
become bypassed in favor of open institutions. For instance, Google and
Amazon are quite open (providing API's). The NY Times is closed (and
then they have the gall to complain about their google pagerank).
Many years ago I worked in a company which was impressed that my boss
had programmed the company policy manuals into a database so we could
view it on our terminals (this was like 1985, folks). When I first saw
it I asked, 'How do I edit this?' He didn't think I was serious. (I
figured we could all edit it and the company owners would be able to
fine-tune the policies).
Extropians seek singularity through AI and/or nanotech. I think we can
have a much friendlier takeoff if we begin speaking of *syndication* and
*aggregation*.
-Mike
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