Net Neutrality Fail

[noddy]

after ive had a good rant and expressed my frustration, it occurs to me that smokey and the bandit is the correct metaphor for this..

vehicles started off with an open free, re-routable protocol aswell - but the double whammy of consumers demanding "protection" and the big boys desperate to grab the authority to provide it has changed that to official roads (protocols) with official cars (software/hardware suppliers) ... and just like henry ford started the chain of events that turned cars into a highly regulated corporate industry, welcome to the iPhone.

my linux box is a horse i can breed myself and a cart made of scraps in the backyard.

for many people cars are still "freedom" - they can purchase them and they can drive anywhere, but for me they are one of the "light facism" industries... highly legislated, protected and maintaining existing players... why cant i do a little electric go-kart i build myself i wonders.

(light facism is something that smells like facism, but we asked for it good and hard ourselves and deserve it.)

[crashtech]

That's what's so dismaying about power grabs. Most people want to be controlled (taken care of), consciously or not, and from where I sit this tendency seems more pervasive every day.

[noddy]

[Endovelico]

[crashtech]

[Tinker]

[crashtech]

[Tinker]

[crashtech]

Homogeneity and hive-minded are not synonymous. Homogeneity is a likely subset of hive-mindedness, though.

I think one of the most important aspects of a hive-mind is the near absence of individuals acting against the common good. As homogeneous as America might be, this attribute does not seem dominant.

[Tinker]

Not really. Every individual has a cacophony of voices akin to a European Parliament in their heads. We simply are in a grand hive, we follow the dictates of established pathways (roads) and tend to congregate based upon neurological ideation. Think of this forum. We are a mini hive that examines prnciples and resolves them communally. I observe a slow and steady process toward common thinking as each of us has our minds changed by subtle degrees due to reasoned or impassioned arguments. The collective brainpower here leads to the resolution of larger questions as each person posits more data on the same conundrum. A hive mind does not imply an ideological sameness, it implies a sharing of cognition as we pass data back and forth. As a group our brainpower is increased and we all contribute uniquely to the group. Individuality and community are not necessary antagonists. My arm muscles and leg muscles have similar mechanics but completely different functions and purposes. Yet they are part of one system.

As we debate we outsource analysis to an ever ncreasing range of subtle refinement as the idea is digested by each brain. You would not think as you do now, if you did not know me and vice versa. The brain is plastic and malleable. We change by fine degrees through each interaction.

That we are individuals is something that is simply true. Most of our adherence to formulating qualities of individuality are shallow demarcators. We form this idea that people who dress like us are like us. People who do not, are not. But that sort of individuality is ultimately posing. There are functional forms of unIqueness such as yor job. An electrician is more different from a swim coach than a goth guitarist is from a blues man. Mostly our professions relate to communal functions. An electrician only matters if the community infrastructure for electric power exists. A swim coach exists to teach kids of the hive to swim.

That's one reason I cannot philosophically shake Christianity because it resolves for both individual purpose and a community minded altruism.

[Demon of Undoing]

I know Tinker to an intellectual depth that I cannot say I share with any other human being at this time. I have spoken with him about the most personal and intense matters , in all conceivable fields except math ( hey, nobody's perfect) for over four years. Most people aren't married that long. There is a very good chance that I have typed more to him than I have spoken to my wife, even though I have been married for ten years ( assuming a word count, as we are some verbiage- enhanced mofos. Signifying nothing, maybe, but dude, dig the syllables !) .

I can see when something I say has effected him, and I am sure he can when the same happens from his end. I know it happens, I could get all literature critical analysis-y and break it down if I gave a damn to do so . But I only say this as an extreme of the proof , one that also occurs all over these here fora between which we have slagged ourselves to and fro . To a lesser extent , the same happens to and with all the core that have been here . I know for a fact Col Sun has changed my mind about some issues with MMGW and other aspects of technology . In typical, inscrutable, sword waving, Yasukuni -visiting Japanese fashion, though, I couldn't tell you hardly a thing about his personal life. ST has brought up enough stuff that I have lost count. This isn't a hit parade and I am not trotting out favorites, which is my point- all of you that have contributed significantly ( and pretty much everybody here is a three-time volunteer , like the old SF guys ) have contributed to the voices in my head . All of you . And I shower obsessively as a result ( just kidding) .

We are a hive. We are like the Drummers, only I am not fucking any of you ( not that I wouldn't , that crashtech is a sexy bitch , I've seen his tractor pecs) . I have bragged on the intellect or accomplishment of any number of you as a buttress to the credibility of " the forum I go to " and the arguments there distilled . Where have any of you, those of you that did more in school than flip pencils into the acoustic tiled ceilings, had such a breadth and depth of discussion as is encountered here ? Look in your mind and think how much bullshit you have been able to burn down, in real time, as somebody confronted you with some jazz or another that might have otherwise come at you out of left field . Even the rat bastards that I have absolutely loathed ( and that doesn't necessarily mean I won't talk to them) have almost without exception still taught me things. If nothing else, they have sharpened my arguments for my own points, as there are no waterheads, slackjaws, non-hackers or poodle pumpers in this here outfit . All of you are smart people, seriously smart people , each in your own way. Some of you , in a lot of ways . I trust the information sharing, decisions trees , background knowledge and real-time awareness of the people just here at this forum- let alone including the lost ones like Collingwood, Calinescu, and others) more than anybody in my circle of physical contact . If I were going to war, I know who would run my intel staff, who my ops staff, who my logistics, etc etc .

Look, I don't want to marry any of you assbags ( again, except crashtech, ) , but how are we not a hive ?

[thecontributer]

The $1,000,000,000 one should ask is....

Is the tiered Internet now forever banished, or a metaphysical certainty ?

[Demon of Undoing]

In Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End, the aliens that come to earth unite the planet by doing a very few things over a 50 year period . One of them was at a bullfight in Madrid, when at the very moment the piccador thrust his rapier into the bull's shoulder, the entire stadium as one felt the exact same thing as the bull .

This is what is happening . Now that the venue has opened, something will fill this vacuum. It is not far off to say that we as individual neurons are now experiencing a new connection of pathways akin to a child first learning music or math. Maybe God is nothing more that some sort of mover that threw a nutjob Jew ( obligatory Christmas nod ) into a world that , after him, allowed moral ,then (possibly) biological ( epigenetic ?), then mechanical, then digital,then memetic evolution of the species .

And I have not even been into the eggnog .

[crashtech]

I have always conceptualized a hive mind as the near or total loss of individuality. You two have a much looser definition that is obviously more attractive to one who wishes to maintain a separate identity, but can this sort of laissez-faire arrangement be considered a hive in the true sense of the word?

To me, even small amounts of individual autonomy can breed dissension within a hive, which in turn can sow destruction from within, the very thing the structure of the hive is created to avoid. In the classical definition of a hive or hive mind, each individual becomes but a unit, normally incapable of disobedience, synchronized and in near perfect harmony with the larger purpose, whether that be mere survival, ascension to a higher plane of thought, or even of existence. The loss of individuality is presumably more than made up for by the efficiency gained by unity of purpose.

I am glad that you are bullish on the prospects of more unity of purpose within our forum proto-hive, but honestly I remain pessimistic in the face of what I view as an abundance of posturing and ego gratification that occurs on all boards I visit. For the record, I am definitely not immune, but I have of late made a more conscious effort to check my assumptions at the door.

P.S.
bs, I don't have man-boobs in real life. Please stop imagining me that way, LOL!

[Demon of Undoing]

The mind is a limiter, no matter how large and expansive its contents. It is a wall. Like a cell wall. Or stingers and wings instead of reproductive organs . Maybe the individual in the hive isn't so much limited as running precisely at maximum potential for that individual, given the environment and mission.

I am Diegetic's raving lunatic .That's the cell I am . I am limited by it in that I am not free to perform a function for which I am not designed - I will never be our resident physics expert . But what aspect of life is not bound so ? I am unlimited , paradoxically, just as well - I am free within my design to be precisely who I am supposed to be . I both contribute to and limit the whole , as much as I may in both regards, simultaneously .

We are the Borg . Already .

[Tinker]

[crashtech]

How do you know? By extrapolating bandwidth trends, or are you privy to knowledge you haven't/can't share?

[thecontributer]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

Thecontributer

the proposed tiers are vendor side, not client side. So wikipedia would pay the charges, not the end user.