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Re: Documentation Standards was Re: [ox-en] UserLinux



On 6 Dec 2003 at 9:01, Martin Hardie wrote:

This strikes me as a very interesting point. For some time I have had
in the back of mind that all the talk about free and the source is
fine if you belong to the technically elite - the new class that along
with its allies in legal academia are fast becoming one layer of
law/control within the net.

To be fair, computer software nowadays is much easier to write than
it was in the 1970's. Partially that's because of improved hardware,
but a lot comes from improved methodology and use of common standards
eg; C.

It seems that free as speech as in FLOSS then really means free within
that elite - and that those who are not within the elite (who are not
technically minded) are beholden to the closed knowledge kept in the
new monastries of cycberspace.

ps but of course I am bening difficult again beacuse as we all know
information wants to be free (pass em a bucket someone)

its all about power and who holds ita nd who is beholden - is it not?

Information is power. It has been since time began (eg; how to make
fire is really knowledge of information) but our civilisation has
proved ever increasingly more reliant on information than any
hitherto in history. It's why in the west we put our children through
up to 18 years of education and the trend is that that is increasing
with "life-long learning", people taking multiple degrees etc.

As Michael Collins showed in 1920-1921, it is possible for a few
hundred well-informed terrorists to bring an Empire to its knees and
force it out of a country. They achieved this entirely through good
intelligence. But it goes much further - the single biggest
determinant of success in today's world is coming from the right
family & background - but the heart of that is based on knowing
something others do not. Wealth scarcity as it were is really
scarcity of knowledge.

Thus, the key to a meritocracy which must form a post-capitalist
world will be freeing the control of information. This is why the
internet is so exciting as the school system is designed to keep the
majority enslaved and conformant.

However, I do not think information wants to be free. Nor do I think
it /should/ be free because those who put in effort to create it must
be rewarded. To create outstanding information at the fastest pace
requires reward - thus to achieve a better society quicker, we must
reward the creator.

Otherwise, we can consign ourselves to inevitable collapse of our
society, economy and ultimately, civilisation as what we're doing
right now is not sustainable.

Cheers,
Niall






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