Musings on Cory’s 2004+ Predictions
The incomparable Warren Ellis has solicited big thinkers in the small, off-kilter arm of blogosphere he travels in (of which I would say myself and this blog are sort of orbiting satellites) to make predictions about the year ahead and beyond. Amongst other notables, novelist and Boing Boing blogerator Cory Doctorow was invited to give his thoughts, and they dovetail so remarkably with mine that I feel obliged to comment. Full disclosure: I got to hang out with Cory at ToorCon 2003 and think he’s a helluva nice guy, so I’m a little biased towards what he’s got to say. That clarified, Cory begins:
“The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It’s about realizing that all the really hard problems — free expression, copyright, due process, social networking — may have technical dimensions, but they aren’t technical problems.”
Being a student of technology policy (or, if you prefer, technology and policy, since there are but a handful of courses that really overlap the two) I’m pretty chuffed by this prediction :-) All humor aside, Cory’s is an insight that I’ve noticed for some time, and what pushed me to ultimately focus more on policy than technology. I like Cory’s prediction because it codifies a place for people like – mediators between geeks and government, as new technological possibilities and the code that powers them will inevitably be met with legislation and policy.
“The next twenty years are about using our technology to affirm, deny and rewrite our social contracts: all the grandiose visions of e-democracy, universal access to human knowledge and (God help us all) the Semantic Web, are dependent on changes in the law, in the policy, in the sticky, non-quantifiable elements of the world. We can’t solve them with technology: the best we can hope for is to use technology to enable the human interaction that will solve them.”
Again, right on the money: we’ve already piled on enough infrastructure to understand the problems that the Information Age intrinsically carries, and the next big technological surprises will likely be facets of what’s already been revealed to us (ex: Napster and the current “copyfight” intellectual property wars are little more than an extension of the scruffy old-school “information wants to be free” hacker credo). We know the present problems, and at least the concepts at the root of the problems to come; hopefully we can get the hookup on Better Problem Solving Through Chemistry™.
“On that note: I have a special request to the toolmakers of 2004: stop making tools that magnify and multilply awkward social situations (”A total stranger asserts that he is your friend: click here to tell a reassuring lie; click here to break his heart!“) (”Someone you don’t know very well has invited you to a party: click here to advertise whether or not you’ll be there!“) (”A ‘friend’ has exposed your location, down to the meter, on a map of people in his social network, using this keen new location-description protocol—on the same day that you announced that you were leaving town for a week!"). I don’t need more “tools” like that, thank you very much."
Preach it, brother. I’ve bowed out of every social networking site out there, from Friendster to Tribe, and even dating sites that I have successfully met people through. I hate being a social commodity to be casually appraised, and I hate being just another node in someone else’s social map – I’m those things now, in meatspace, without having to virtually double the indignity. I desperately want more inroads to meaningful, enjoyable, engaging social interaction and all I’ve gotten from social networking sites is a grim reminder about how many sketchy, weird people there are out there – or how sketchy and weird people will act when they think the constraints of good social behavior are lifted in front of a keyboard.
“An important note for 2004: stop trying to build an Internet without malefactors, parasites, freeriders and inefficiency. There is no such thing as a parasite-free complex ecology (thank you Kathryn Myronuk for this formulation). Some organisms lamented the existence of mitochondria. Others adapted to exploit them and integrate them. Some lament the existence of spammers. Spammers will always exist: stamping your foot and demanding their nonexistence won’t change that: adapt or die.”
While hardly near-and-dear to me, this is a fine point as well. Being everyone’s “tech guy” they know I get many the spam question: “can I stop it? Slow it? Will it end? Can’t they do something about this?!” My answer: no, no they can’t, not really. If they (the government, the lawmakers, the G-men, the fuzz, etc.) can’t stop physical domestic junk mail, dream on. People who have been sold the Internet as a service fundamentally don’t understand it as an ecosystem; they just see a flaw in the service they’ve been sold. But is it easier to convey the true nature of the ‘Net, or try to combat the flaws that plague it with bug fixes and laws? Well, how easy was it to explain email to your grandmother? Case closed. I’ll been looking for that Sendmail patch right after I’m done reading this anti-spam legislation.