23 comments

• 

  David McElroy

  2 years ago

  I'm rarely THIS broadly dismissive of somebody just because of a stupid opinion, but Vaidhyanathan MUST be an idiot. He seems like a guy who would be upset that more people are traveling because it means that evil motel owners are making money. He doesn't seem to understand that companies such as Google only make money when they provide services that add enough value that we want to use them.
  
  The alternative to the system we currently have would be every company somehow charging for services such as search OR all of these services magically becoming free. People such as Vaidhyanathan don't understand that somebody has to pay to produce the services that we want and need. Search is a huge part of what makes the Internet worth using. Google makes money because the company does the best job of providing that service (and other services). I'm not bothered in the least that the company makes money as a result of it.
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  Y'know ... it's not worth it. I suppose in some formalistic system, I'm obligated to spend hours trying to teach pigs to sing. But I'm just too worn-out for that these days.
  
  Society is more than business. That's the divide. If you don't believe that, there's not a whole lot more communication which can occur.
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  PS - Tim, take note - This is why a Liberal/Libertarian alliance just doesn't work in the long run. Again, Libertarians are neither Liberals nor Conservatives - but they are *not* equally distant from each side.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Society is more than business.
  
  What on Earth gives you the impression that I believe otherwise? If you look back over my posts in the "Open Source, Open Standards, and Peer Production" section, I've repeatedly emphasized that there's more to society than markets. So I don't understand what you're disagreeing with here.
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  You wrote:
  
  "He seems to think that social interactions on this new-fangled Internet doesn't count as "real" social interaction. And he hates the idea of companies making big pots of money by facilitating these interactions. I find both of those concerns baffling."
  
  Agree or disagree, I don't find those concerns baffling.
  
  He's saying: Marketing isn't civilization. Data-mining businesses are NOT social empowerment.
  
  There's also some deeper issues about net-community vs real community. It's possible to go too far with this critique, which generates a backlash, but the core critism is meaningful in my view.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  He's saying: Marketing isn't civilization. Data-mining businesses are NOT social empowerment.
  
  Well, I agree with that. But if that's all he's saying, he sure does paint with a broad brush. MySpace, Google, and the rest are empowering because they allow ordinary individuals to communicate with each other in ways that they couldn't before. From the user's perspective, the fact that there's a for-profit company in the background selling ads is incidental. These companies don't "exercise their own will on us" in any meaningful sense. Rupert Murdoch doesn't dictate what peoples' MySpace pages will say.
  
  Vaidhyanathan (and I guess you) seem to believe that the fact that a company is making a profit is proof, all by itself, that no empowerment is going on. To say that it's possible for a technology to be simultaneously profitable and empowering is not to say that profitability and empowerment are synonymous. With most of these companies, the profitability is an incidental part of a much more significant social transformation. The benefit to companies is tiny compared to the benefit to users.
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  "Vaidhyanathan (and I guess you) seem to believe that the fact that a company is making a profit is proof, all by itself, that no empowerment is going on."
  
  This is what I mean by : "Society is more than business. That's the divide. If you don't believe that, there's not a whole lot more communication which can occur"
  
  Sigh ... Tim, I don't want to be unduly personally harsh on you, reflecting my decade of frustration with Libertarians. But there is a fundamental mental block that Libertarianism induces that makes it very hard to discuss the topic. I've had this sort of conversation many, many times. Libertarians are so fanatically fixated on business and profit that they simply can't grasp certain criticisms on the issue. It's very much like fundamentalist Christians who simply can't get that pagan religions don't have a God and Satan.
  
  It goes like this:
  
  Liberal: This isn't all that great. It's a rather minor and not so wonderful effect
  Libertarian: knee-jerk leftist and old fogeyism. ... hates the idea of companies making big pots of money [i.e.: COMMIE!]
  
  And it just gets worse from there.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Libertarians are so fanatically fixated on business and profit.
  
  Except I didn't bring up business. You did. My point (in response to your comment) was simply that everything businesses do isn't automatically evil. How is that a fanatical fixation?
  
  I really don't understand why you're trying to find a disagreement where there isn't one. I don't think, and have never said, that life is all about commercial transactions. If you insist on ascribing that view to me, then I guess you're probably right that productive discussion isn't possible.
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  Quote: "And he hates the idea of companies making big pots of money by facilitating these interactions."
  
  The whole point of SV's article is that those companies are the ones empowered, not "You" (as in civic society) - but this just isn't getting across.
  Because the *concept* isn't there.
• 

  randomtruth

  2 years ago

  Tim,
  
  Maybe you sould add an ad to this site. Then people like Seth wouldn't post their incomprehensible, pointless diatribe because they'd think that you're also in this to make pots of money rather than facilitate and cultivate intelligent discussions.
  
  It's a poor man who blames the tools for the results of how they are used.
• 

  randomtruth

  2 years ago

  And I have to add... to use an argument like "oh, you're a [blank], therefore, you'll just never get it" is absolutely pathetic. It's not debate, it's name calling.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  No, I understand that was his point. Which is why I spent my post pointing out ways in which civic society (in the form of dissidents, AIDS researchers, and friends keeping in touch across great distances) is, in fact, getting empowered.
  
  Now, maybe you're not as impressed with those forms of empowerment as I am. But then our disagreement doesn't have anything to do with whether I'm "fanatically fixated" on business. We just evaluate the value of these services differently. I happen to think that being able to keep in touch with friends who live a thousand miles away is pretty empowering.
  
  But I don't think they're empowering because they're commercial companies. I'm equally excited about commercial sites like MySpace and YouTube and about non-commercial sites like Wikipedia and Craigslist. I'm excited about them because I think they let users do some extremely useful things that they could never do before.
• 

  Noel Le

  2 years ago

  Tim, Vaidhyanathan's main argument is that social production is not the *revolution* its hyped up to be, while you seem to be dubunking the argument (which Vaidhyanathan does not even make) that social production is not important or has no value.
• 

  Siva Vaidhyanathan

  2 years ago

  Dear Tim,
  
  Noel and Seth have done a very good job explaining my column in response to your comments. But I am afraid that you still misunderstand it.
  
  I hope you did not deliberately misread my article to score some points against liberals like myself.
  
  I was complaining about Time's simplistic hyperbole about the "you" revolution. My criticisms were of Time, not Google. I am no enemy of Google (albeit I remain a critic). And I am certainly no enemy of capitalism, market relations, or -- for heaven's sake -- the Internet!
  
  I laughed when you accused me of "knee-jerk liberalism and old-fogeyism." I recently turned 40, so I should have cried, I guess. No, real "knee-jerkers" don't agree with me on much. And I suppose growing up with the PC and the Internet and programming hangman on a Commodore Pet computer in 1982 qualifies me as an "old fogey." Following technology for 25 years certainly has made me allergic to hyperbole and ahistorical bombast.
  
  You and I concur about the potential liberatory effects of the Internet and social production.
  
  We agree that being able to keep in touch with friends is remarkable and important, but it has had effects that are both positive and negative. "Empowerment" is debatable. I would like to see it rather than merely hope for it or declare it.
  
  You can read my views at some length in my books. I think you would find we agree more than we differ.
• 

  Tim Lee

  2 years ago

  Prof. Vaidhyanathan,
  
  Thanks for taking the time to comment, and I apologize if I misunderstood your article. The line about knee-jerking and old fogeyism was uncalled for, and I should have left it out. And I think you're right that we have much about which we agree.
  
  But I do think that there's an ideological divide of sorts here. I tend to see empowerment in individual terms. So while Time certainly engaged in a bit of hyperbole, I think that their point is basically right--enabling the individual to express him or herself more effectively is inherently empowering. You seem to see the community, rather than the individual, as the unit of empowerment.
  
  I also think I'm less worried than you about the effects of corporate control over the means of online communication. Although MySpace, YouTube, et al are certainly making a healthy profit, it seems to me that their control over the content they host is quite limited. It's not obvious that those sites would be much different if they were organized more like Wikipedia or Craig's List. And because there is such a proliferation of alternative communications channels, I think there's less and less reason to be worried about concentration of the mainstream media.
  
  Your books are on my list of books to read, and I'm looking forward to doing so. Unfortunately, it's a rather long list, so it will probably be a while before I get to them.
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  Me thinks the professor doth protest too much. He wrote:
  
  

  So it's not about your reviews on Amazon. It's about how we as a community of Web users choose to exercise our collective wills and forge collective consciousnesses. So far, we have declined to do so. We have not harnessed this communicative power to force the rich and powerful to stop polluting our air and water or to stop the spread of AIDS or malaria. We have not brought down any tyrants. We have simply let a handful of new corporations aggregate and exercise their own will on us.

  
  
  Sounds like a communist to me.
  
  BTW, I understand that DDT will be used once again to combat malaria in Africa. That's good news because it's the only effective tool for stopping malaria mosquitoes, but it was discontinued after The People of the West determined it wasn't fashionable (Rachel Carson, the US enviros, etc.)
  
  This is case where the people were wrong and Dow Chemical was right. Millions of African babies have died because of this exercise of "Collective Will Forcing the Rich and Powerful to Toe the Mark."
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  This statement is the core of the dispute: "enabling the individual to express him or herself more effectively is inherently empowering."
  
  Express *what* and *how*? Empowering marketers to sell better, and data-miners to find the buzz, is not very helpful in *building* *civic* *society*. Confusing these senses of the word, making the former seem to stand for the latter, is a very profitable profession.
  
  
  Richard: What you claimed about DDT is completely wrong. It's not even debatable. It's a right-wing Urban Legend. Here's a comprehensive DDT ban refutation.
  
  Now, in terms of empowerment, did that do any good? You're empowered to spread nonsense, and I'm empowered to post the correction - but what's the result? Does the myth or the truth spread faster?
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  Seth, I see you're unfamiliar with the DDT ban and have latched on to a weak web page to try and refute it. In fact, the DDT ban has two aspects: the EU and certain other trading blocks refuse to import food from countries that allow DDT use, and the USAID refuses to fund DDT for mosquito eradication. As a result of these two policies, malaria has made a comeback in Africa since 1972, and in fact millions have died. That's a fact.
  
  The EU backed off its DDT ban in October, see the <a href="http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19127
  " rel="nofollow">Heartland Institute.
  
  So here we have an example of "empowered individuals" doing what they do best, flogging destructive public policies because some Pied Piper has talked them into it, in the name of keeping those rapacious corporations from polluting our air and water.
  
  Where is it written that the "empowered" but still ignorant individual is a better source of sound public policy than the expert, whether said expert works for an evil corporation or a saintly non-profit?
  
  Of course, we've seen this dynamic many times before: the whole net neutrality scare was another example of ignorant people rising up to protest an essentially beneficial evolution in Internet services. Fools have always found ways to make themselves heard, and it's sad that the Internet makes it so much easier.
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  Damn broken link. Here's <a href="http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19127
  " rel="nofollow">the real deal.
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  This is not going well. Once more with feeling.
• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  2 years ago

  Richard, you hit several "bingo" points on the page I linked above. You don't care. That's what I call "autorant".
  
  One of us has to be wrong. Which one? DOES IT DEPEND ON EVIDENCE??? Or what's more popular or appealing?
  
  This is why there's no great gain in certain areas from the Internet. Because "fools" are "empowered" as much as experts, and there's more of the former than the latter.
• 

  Richard Bennett

  2 years ago

  Right, your bingo page is a load of crap and it's easily provable by reference to pages from authoritative sources.
  
  And there certainly is no gain to empowering the fools who lobbied for the DDT ban.
• 

  Jeremy

  2 years ago

  I consider myself a libertarian, but I gotta side with Seth and Siva on this one. It's funny: you can see the internet in terms of both individual empowerment or group consciousness and will. Right and left will gravitate towards which phenomenon they think is more significant, but there's no reason to diss the other side: it's a reason to find ways to better collaborate.

  There are libertarians who are concerned about corporate control of these interactions, and they're not necessarily commies for using the word "collective". In a lot of ways, Google profits at my (site's) expense (bandwidth from GoogleBot, to begin with) and it's correct to point out that just because somebody's making money off of it doesn't mean people are empowered in equal fashion (because we don't live in a free market and the world isn't fair).

  Besides, I really don't expect an establishment mouthpiece like Time to be honest about my empowerment.