Archive for July, 2006
Is the Web 2.0 Bubble about to Burst?
July 30, 2006 7:35 pmAfter reading your remarks concerning the impending bubble burst of the Web 2.0 Internet sector, I was immediately reminded why people in my profession, sociology, are critical of economists: You have a tenacity to conduct vulgar forms of reductionism that render the phenomenal field your are investigating absent of the preponderance of social dynamics that influence the trajectories and outcomes of these forms of human interaction, so that the considerations for which you do account are compliant within the narrow framework of presuppositions that structure economic research. There are far more motivations for individuals and collectivities to continue to propagate on the Internet instantiations of Web 2.0 than merely the incentive of wealth. Speaking for myself, I contribute to the establishment of platforms that engender collaborative social knowledge building because it reflects an interest of mine – not geared toward maximizing profits – but oriented toward the promotion of public spheres that embody the attributes that I evaluate oftentimes over my personal fortune; namely, social democracy. Consequently, to reduce your analysis to the narrowly extended scope of economic variables that enamor the rigid minds of economists, limits your ability to foresee other possible outcomes that are generated by conditions excluded from your analysis.
To make my point, I wonder what your prediction would have been for the early open-sourcing projects that arose in opposition to the corporatization and privatization of knowledge associated with computer science and computer programming? GNU, in all likelihood, would have suffered from the same negative forecasts from people who possess a similar business-minded closed worldview. However, economic variables did not eliminate open-sourcing, rather open-sourcing dramatically changed the landscape of the programming industry, creating a robust alternative to IBM and Microsoft, which continues to increase in market share. In short, economics were not the determinant of the path followed by open-sourcing; economics were the consequent, as many open-sourcing projects matured to the point that they were in a position to offer alternative services to businesses, through their ability to tailor their code to the particular needs of a consumer while remaining open-sourced, which added a layer of security for investors since they could correct faults in the programming. As far as Business 2.0 goes, we will have to wait and see. However, I suspect that it will soon be bombarded with competition emanating from the open-source community that is forming around Web 2.0.
Tags: economics, open source, society, web 2.0
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Society, Russell Cole's Blog, Web 2.0
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Combatting American Empire
3:51 pmThe lexicon, democracy, has an etymology, which can be traced back to the Ancient Greek word for the mob, which is translated into our own language with its Roman alphabet into the term, demos. The term, demos, with the suffix typically attached to it, forms the referring expression, democracy; which we assert to be the rule of the citizens. It is the position of the Midwest Alliance that democracy is realized when the will of the Demos becomes the policy of the state. The intermediary devices that we currently have installed in American Empire’s political system are a device to mitigate the power of the Demos; the will of the people.
Furthermore, the distillation of the people’s expression of opinions concerning matters of state, which constitutes a quasi-republic, not a democracy, have been corrupted by elitist cronyism and the influence of special interests, which invest money into the campaign coffers of career politicians. We suffer from the rule of the provincial, which imposes its selfish head at the expense of the cosmopolitan interests of the Demos, the populace.
The Demos is not represented through this system of polity. Rather, it is provided with the illusory impression that it somehow affects the posture of the state through ceremonial occasions where each member of the demos is provided the opportunity to express himself or herself through the casting of a single vote for an individual, who indirectly, in theory, represents the individual in the affairs of state.
Let us recognize this pathetic ritual, which reinforces the collective representation of a democratic nation, as a device to propagate a false ideology. We do not live in a democracy, we live in Empire, which is controlled by a plutocracy that carefully manages the representation, the veneer, of an electoral system, which provides the Demos with preselected choices, which are the products of a complex system consisting of networking and cronyist quid pro quo.
This process, conducted among the elites, preselects those who will be our choices for representation in polity. The individuals presented to us are typically those with the most elitist alliances, as well as, those with the access to the necessary capital required to enter into the ceremonial pageantries of primaries. Following the series of ritualistic dramatic performances, one of the members of the power elite eventually assumes the role of Emperor; more commonly designated as President.
Our choices are made in advance, prior to our even becoming cognizant of candidates presented as electoral options. We live under the rule of single political party, because the ideological divergences between and among the assortment of individuals belonging to the elitist class are blown into consequential oblivion by the intersection of interests among the plutocracy of Empire, which consist of preserving their elevated status.
Therefore, the Power Elite is interested and defined by the following teleology, which gives shape to their primary project: The maintenance of the status quo.
Tags: american empire, centralization, democracy, direct democracy, foreign policy, localism, midwest populist party, politics, populist movement, power
Categories: Commentary, Global, Populist Party, Democracy, liberty, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Power, Politics, Third Parties, Empire, Direct Democracy
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Tags: congress, government, legislation, liberty, Russell Coles Blog, supreme court
Categories: Commentary, liberty, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Legislation, Congress
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| George performs the dreaded G8 Wave… |
The aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government.
That was the aim of Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never really given up on it.
As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the US.
As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite.
That’s the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.
Categories: Commentary, Global, Russell Cole's Blog, War
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America and China; economic adversaries who share the same bed
July 16, 2006 6:33 pmFor those of us who are often dismayed over the American inability to conduct effective trade negotiations with China - especially in respect to the state controlled evaluation of the Chinese currency - this short explanation as to why this drama of trade negotiations performed by politic officials in the U S government and their not so animate Chinese partners appear to have no worldly consequences after we, as the vulgar masses who spectate this display, disengage from our momentary trances of suspended disbelief.
China, for better or worse, has invested its treasury in U S bonds. Therefore, China is quite concerned with continuing the artificially inflated value of the Dollar. The U S, on the other hand, needs China to remain invested in the Dollar in order to avoid an explosive dynamic of wage stationary inflation that would have catostrophic consequences for the American economy. Therefore, America can not push to hard when conducting these pathetic ritualisms involving denounciations of Chinese trade practices and Chinese centralized manipulation of currency values, or China might just elect to dispense with its Dollar investments.
However, not so fast, because China cannot extricate itself from the Dollar, because if China appears as though it is dumping its investments in the Dollar, the value of the American currency would plumbit and China’s investitures would be to a great extent down the drain with the Dollar.
This is certainly a strange dynamic at work. Nevertheless, it is a dynamic that is artificially inflating the American economy as well as the Chinese possession of wealth. How long will these two lovers who hate one another yet cannot resist one another’s passionate entanglement last, there is no way to know. However, we can infer from our own experiences that there is a certain element of violence in sex; not in the sense of rape or battery, but in the respect that the boundaries between pleasure and torment often seem to be fused creating a sensation that we long to protract but pain to bring to a resolution.
It is strange how the most bizzare aspects of ourselves are often the most immediate and primordial.
Tags: china, collusion, currency, dollar, economy, foreign policy, trade
Categories: Commentary, Global, Economics, Russell Cole's Blog, Politics
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One tiny Step toward Web 2.0
July 12, 2006 3:31 pm
Tags: bandwidth, corporations, democracy, direct democracy, economics, government, market, media, net neutrailty, Net Neutrality, Russell Coles Blog, web 2.0
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Democracy, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Web 2.0, Net Neutrality, Corporations, Direct Democracy, Media
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Senator Stevens; extraordinarily stupid Human or below average Beast?
July 10, 2006 3:14 pmAnyone who has listened to Stevens’ polemic during the Senate hearing on Net-neutrality can share in both the pain and laughter resulting from the realization that one of the most influential Senators when it comes to appropriations and other related matters is of an intellect that is so gravely substandard that it is difficult to know how precisely he manages to add tremendous amounts of pork to every piece of legislation.
As one would suspect, Stevens has become the hired gun for the ISP’s who want to deregulate the Web, eliminating the current condition of Net-neutrality. According to Stevens, the current institution of Net-neutrality has already created a two-tiered stratified system, which would be effectively eliminated if Net-neutrality was abolished.
Here is the logic behind Stevens’ conclusion: The poor, subordinated ISP’s, such as AT&T and Comcast, are currently sufferring under the weight of content providers, such as Google, as well as, consumers, such as you and I, who eat up bandwidth created by the invenstments of these poor ISP’s without compensating the ISP’s. Despite the fact that these ISP’s continue to invest in broadband expansions, and continue to make a good deal of money, the real culprits in this debate - free-content providers, such as Google, and end-users - are unfairly eating up resources to the point where the Internet can no longer function efficiently. Stevens pointed out that members of his staff have sent him emails, which took 4 to 5 days to reach Stevens’ inbox. This backup, as it was reported by Stevens, is caused by the fact that content is “not delivered by trucks,’ rather, ”it comes through tubes,” and, of course, “these tubes can get backed up.”
I am not sure what service provider Stevens uses. However, I must conclude that Stevens’ access to the Internet relies upon an architecture that is constructed out of strings tied to metal cans. From listening to Stevens rambling during the Senate Hearing, one can only conclude that this guy does not even know what a computer is, let along the Internet.
Tags: Deregulation, Internet, Net Neutrality, Senator Stevens
Categories: Commentary, Legislation, Net Neutrality, Media
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Debunking the Old New-left of American Politics
July 1, 2006 4:13 pmLike all dimensions of the identity politics associated with the New-left, the Green Party’s philosophical underpinnings consist of a bullet list of values. It is the purpose of this essay to demonstrate that such an approach to politics consists of merely creating paradoxical tangles of propositions that result in a philosophy that is practically void of any pragmatic qualities. The lack of any usefulness results from the inability of one to actually infer any deductions from the core principles contained in the philosophy, which might provide some direction as to the posture one should assume when facing issues of political and social significance. The Green Philosophy can be considered nothing more than pure sophism in the sense that it is rhetoric void of any substantive insights.
We do not want to bore the reader so we shall just proffer a single instance of the type of confusion to which we are referring. The following are both principles contained in the “Key-values” of the Green Party: One should possess personal responsibility to his or her social and ecological environment; as well as, one should, contemporaneously, have a respect for cultural diversity. We shall first provide a broader context in order for the reader to better understand the implications of these two positions.
Communitarianism, which we consider to be the general ideological framework from which the former of the two Key-values is derived, is a philosophy that stresses the positive obligations one has to his or her community along with the positive expectations that he or she is obliged to expect from his or her community. This value - derived from communitarianism - is at odds with the predominate American ideology, which stresses Liberalism in its classical form, which we consider to be the ideological perspective from which the latter of the two Values emanates.
This Anglo philosophy, classical Liberalism, emphasizes the negative rights and negative obligations of individuals within a community. We emphatically believe that classical Liberalism, or what we shall call libertarianism, is a crucial component of the Key-values of the Green Party, in the sense that it is the bedrock for Values such as the tolerance for diversity, which consists, mostly of negative obligations; namely, not to interfere with the practices of others.
For instance, for one to possess the value of tolerance for diversity, he or she must be prepared to abstain from condemning an individual who transgresses the conventions and norms of the community in question, and understand that this particular individual has a different understanding of what constitutes appropriate behavior.
The Value of Personal Responsibility, however, seems to run in contradistinction to the Value of Tolerance, because a member of a community should be expected to act in a manner that falls within the moral boundaries as they are defined by the community, due to the Value of Personal Responsibility. One, so to speak, is to be a good citizen, which curtails an individual’s negative rights not to be persecuted for practicing his or her own unique form of life.
So, the problem has been identified and this conflict between the Key-values of the Greens, if not corrected, debases the very validity of the Green Philosophy in its totality. The paradox can be summarized as follows: One is to be community oriented, because of his or her personal responsibilities, while, contemporaneously, he or she and others are to be tolerant of difference, which might run counter to the conventions and values of the local community.
How is one to balance these opposing dynamics, not just in theory, but in practice as well? We have not even begun to attempt to unravel this mess of contrary and competing positions, which provides no practical guidance as how to position oneself when politically engaged.
Tags: community, decentralization, democracy, government, green party, liberty, philosophy, populist, populist party, responsibility, Russell Coles Blog, third parties
Categories: Commentary, Populist Party, Democracy, liberty, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Decentralization
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