software is now a cornerstone of the world economy. modern life runs through the internet. even if you personally avoid the internet, you depend on it.
but the baby boomer generation, represented by these politicians has not understood it. they know engineers as the guys building houses, bridges, aeroplanes, rockets. but software? it is an invisible world to them. child's play. how hard can it be to build the internet vs. the hoover dam.
i don't think this will change soon nor can it be actively changed. we need to wait till this generation simply dies out and gets replaced by the ones who grew up with computers. for a larger part of society in the western hemisphere, that means birthdates in the 1970s. yes, gates, jobs were born earlier, but the majority of their users were born later. they were visionaries, outliers.
and the circle will begin again, facebook generation vs. privacy defenders. and who knows whats after that...genetics?
For example, I enter elementary school, the internet started to take off and browsers were primitive. Nowadays, we can enjoy the convenience of movie streaming, fast browsers, and extraordinary rich video games(Dwarf Fortress, I am looking at you). So it doesn't make sense to me that congressmen are literal dinosaurs. Rather, I think they stop updating their model of the world and refuse to absorb any knowledge for the last couple of decade.
In any case, the situation with copyright is not new. If you look at the issue centuries ago, you would realize that we been having this debate for a long time. Today, the internet only make pirating easier than ever and bring the issue of copyright to the forefront of public consciousness.
We thought about "old versus new" business model because we lack an understanding of the history of copyright. In reality, it have much more to do about how your model of how to make money.
i got my first mobile phone in that time frame.
my parents were born after ww2. your time as a youth shapes you, forms your understanding of the world. you translate everything you see into analogies of the past. a mobile phone is a like a normal phone without a cord. easy. but wrong for the generation that grew up with mobile phones.
my parents grew up with black and white tv. literally no computers in sight, anywhere. they got engineering diplomas while only utilizing a calculator (high tech for their time!) and pen and paper.
the majority of people (aka normal people) who where adults before 1985 do not "get" this new world the way you do. the outliers who build microsoft even didn't get it at first.
For last couple of centuries or so, each generation grows
up with unprecedented change in their lifetime.
I am currently contracted on a project with 1.5 million lines of code and dependencies on hundreds of services written by a number of different teams. It takes a few weeks just to get new developers productive on the code base. How do you even begin to explain the complexity of this to somebody in a way they can really relate to when they barely understand computers?
However I think this is true of a lot of fields... some people just can't grok (and don't need to grok) how an automatic transmission in their car works. I'm particularly inept when it comes to the subtleties of art and music.
But a particularly relevant analogy that I use would be that you are working at a library. (That is: a library where you can check out books, not a software library.)
Not only do you have to write a good portion of these books, but you also have to read a lot of the books in the library, and at the very least you have to read the table of contents and/or index of most of those books.
In addition to this you have to be very good at keeping the library organized, and you have to coordinate with other staff members at the library.
Smaller systems are simply a shelf or two of books, larger systems can span several buildings.
I like this analogy because most everyone can relate to it, it gives a very real physical sense of size, and I think it pretty adequately describes what a programmer has to hold in their head on a daily basis.
The opinions expressed by our lawmakers are a reflection of mentality, not age.
It was sickening to watch the legislators praise their own ignorance. It's totally cool not to be a subject matter expert in everything - nobody expects them to be. However, it's maddening that they had not already consulted any "nerds".
It really begs the question : does this apply to all other aspects of our government? Do we draft legislation on energy, defense and immigration without consulting subject matter experts at the outset?
To them, sitting in front of a computer all day means you're not working.
I also have higher expectations from members of congress, people with allegedly good education ... "nerds"? Really?
All those congresspeople were simply regurgitating, verbatim, what lobbyists from the MPAA were whispering in their ears right before any of that televised coverage. "these are just a bunch of angry nerds"...
I now understand that this is what most, if not all congresspeople do on any issue brought before them.
We have to get more involved in the political process, people.
Our country is being run into the ground by self-serving, self-obsessed sociopaths without the humility or brainpower to even do the tiniest bit of their own research on the topics that are guiding this country.
How is this kind of language acceptable? When they listen to expert opinions from psychiatrists, do they say "let's hear from the head-shrinker"?
Or framed in a better way, before the internet it was about the radio and before that it was about the telegram. The radio was not allowed to be free, pirate stations where setup all over the place and there was a movement for free radio. It was in the spirit of that time to go for the controlled option, laws where setup to prevent independent broadcasters, without the many small radio broadcasters input to the law.
The issue is not the same, it is very similar, It is not a generational issue.
Baby boomers made the internet, baby boomers where the hippies, they are not clueless about internet or freedom. Intelligent people make you think they are stupid.
And note the parallels to Stallman's "The Right to Read" article: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
SOPA/PIPA is just the latest attempt to bring about a world very much like what Stallman described.
The same kind of "battles" are happening this very moment around:
- Food (organic/independent versus bio-industry)
- Radio spectrum (free-for-all versus monopolies)
- Currency (many distributed ones versus one central controlled world currency)
- Identity (pseudonymous/anonymous versus centralized identity)
- Equality (equal rights versus centralization of power)
- Wealth (equally distributed versus concentrated to a few families)
- Software (open source versus closed source)
And so on... last decades, the trend seems to be toward centralization in each of them. However, for people to go along with that requires trust in the controlling entity. For example, trust that it is guided by a fair democratic process, or by "enlightened self-interest".
On the negative side, no one in the news media or whistleblowers and WTF-watchers like Jon Stewart knew what SOPA was until two days ago.
That's even scarier.
Either comedy is easier than it looks or these guys are really good at their jobs.
I vote for B.
I was a little bit disappointed.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/40346...
Or they did know of it, but didn't think it was that important. Maybe when they realised that Wikipedia et al. were willing to go dark for a day did they think "Hey maybe this is a big deal after all"
Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA! These were the congress(wo)men that were trying to bring in experts/techies/geeks/nerds/whatever. So, I'm sorry that the techies here were insulted by that word (I wasn't!) but most of the people using the word were actually fighting for your side! And if you listened to them in context (instead of such a short clip) I think you would have thoroughly agreed with them.
I can excuse Jon Stewart for ignoring this important fact here because he is, after all, a comedian.
Lofgren (Anti-SOPA) [http://lofgren.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&vi...]
Issa (Anti-SOPA) [http://issa.house.gov/]
Watt (Pro-SOPA) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Watt#Support_of_SOPA]
Chaffetz (Anti-SOPA) [http://twitter.com/jasoninthehouse]
tl;dr: They started it :-p
So what? Were they anti-SOPA from the beginning, or just when we started getting serious pressure applied... Even if they were instinctively anti-SOPA, would it be fine if they refer to you as something similar to carnival show (okay, that's a geek), as opposed to a concerned expert in the field? That was at least my take-away from the clip, have not watched the full episode yet.
Do they refer to bankers as Till Fiddling Cash Rapists? Decorum counts for something, and we are not a side-show.
You shouldn't comment if you aren't at all informed on the subject.
so?
I don't care that they were calling us nerds, but if someone does care do you really think the congressperson's interests temporarily lining up with theirs really makes any difference?
(my apologies to proud nerds - but my point is that's not how they were using it)
So if people who know what they are doing with computers are the equal of geeks, do politicians think they are the dumb jocks in this high school infantile throwdown?
http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/
I'd like to think this problem will be solved when any of them over 60 now will eventually die off but unfortunately they also awarded themselves gold plated heath care.
Ignorance knows no term limits and is somehow rewarded instead.
ETA: added this if anyone wants to discuss OTA further: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3488826
We, as a community, must get more involved in the political process.
"If you watch SC2 on GSL with Tasteless and Artosis" I haven't the slightest clue what that even means, you nerd.
Language is important.
There was a post on here recently about the communication problem, and it's spot-on. Just like we can't characterize SOPA/PIPA as "the anti-piracy bills," we can not allow ourselves to be demeaned.
SOPA/PIPA are the internet censorship bills. They are the defeating due process bills.
We are experts. We are architects and engineers of the technical infrastructure.
Call yourself what you want but realize that, in the greater world, these terms serve only strip you of authority. That's unacceptable.
This whole SOPA thing - or variations thereof - will only be small hiccup in the grand scheme of things. The advancement of technology and its ensuing freedom will trump any current setbacks. When the older generations move on and those who have grown up with the power of technology at their fingertips are in power, who have relatively open minds and understand the freedoms that technology provides, I think we'll really see some accelerated progression in both tech and overall quality of life for everyone.
We should definitely continue to try to pave the way for future generations and reduce these setbacks, but I believe the fact still remains that freedom through technology is inevitable. It may take another couple of centuries of dealing with ignorant politicians, general closed-mindedness, and corporation unwillingness to innovate and change with the times... but we'll get there. I just wish we could live to see it.
I'm afraid future generations won't appreciate it like we would.
The trouble is that even a law made by an idiot is valid.
But I don't necessarily disagree with you.
I'm constantly torn between believing that we're really living in novel times, and the cliche that "the more things change, the more they stay the same". That is, three hundred years ago, there were a lot of ignorant, illiterate, and quite possibly just plain dumb people. The writings that survive from that period and that we're most exposed to today tend to be from the most educated folks, though. So it's easy to get the sense that everyone in 1712 was highly intelligent, had a great grasp of the English language, also knew at least Latin, and probably French, too, and that they always had interesting, novel thoughts. Then when you look around the world today, it's easy to convince yourself that society has really deteriorated.
On the flip side, there really are a lot of ignorant and just plain dumb people today, too. People who say "We're turning into Idiocracy!!!!" recognize this, but they perhaps don't recognize that we used to be Idiocracy too. Perhaps we've always been Idiocracy?
The last speaker, Jason Chaffetz, who said "maybe we ought to ask some nerds what this really does" was in opposition to SOPA.
Chaffetz has spoken out against SOPA since at least December 7th. See this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQJrNpAcT84 , where he also uses the term "nerds", but he's saying it in opposition to SOPA. And this clip about keeping the internet open, which dates back to 12/7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t0Pl83_Apo .
So, yeah, Jon Stewart is funny, but he'll use clips to make his point. This sometimes leaves the viewers with an unfairly tainted view of the person in the clip.
I refuse to use region specific links like that. Sure the two are separate channels but breaking up the world into specific regions just segregates the Internet into castes of countries. There's no reason I a Canadian shouldn't be able to click that link and view Comedy Central a website on the world wide web.
So yes, it's available to people/organizations with deep pockets (like The Daily Show), but the majority of people take on considerable risk when they try to leverage it.
Out in the real world "engineers" are considered the little chap in oily overalls (and a flat cap) who "fixes up the roller dont cha know"
Oh and that's how real engineers are seen in teh UK not some hobby php programmer cobbling together some online shoe shop by cutting and pasting