Tuesday, March 23, 2004
In the world we live in there is no perfect economy. There is sad to say there is no economy in which we can achieve perfection in understanding human needs and wants and being able to keep up with them given the circumstances of the world. The economy we live in is a post-institutional one. It is one marked by the dissappearance of work and the skewering and distorting of goods, commodities and market forces. The socialist economy of yesterday are by far gone and it does not mean that the so called capitalist one we live in provide any much more relief. It is just that the principles of socialism has reached an epoch of history that is by far crude and naive for any policy maker or activist must cling to.
It is here to examine in some shape and form why socialism is a failure and why we cannot ipso facto claim to any if not most of the values that socialism that was the heart of 1960s and 1970s radical and reformist movement and is not a wise one today. It is not an attempt to concede to the right or anything antipathy towards the left for as I will discuss the energy/time element later on in this essay that it is possible to refashion our values in relation to human understanding, human politics, human equality, and even human welfare without the complication the fact that it is very difficult to engineer principle that might be good for the individual and for the collective whole simultaneously. That is and has always been a difficult task to do.
John Gray, a Professor at the London School of Economics, in his book Beyond the New Right:Markets,government and the common environment(Routledge,1993 New York and London) discusses in the 3rd Chapter titled 'The moral foundations of market institutions' that the main element of a socialist economy is the fact that it is orchestrated by central planning. From what anyone would know about economics, central planning doesn't work without adverse cost. On smaller scales, in terms of local or state government it will have a negative effect on the economy. Yet such intervention is sought for the interest of public welfare and the common good. Yet central planning whatever legitimacy libertarians and the right(here I am argueing from an existentialist view) on human culture and intergenerational skills and so forth is that it is disastrous and non competitive. It is here that Gray states:
"The deeper explanation of the future of socialist central planning is, however, not one that appeals to artificial distortion of incentives, but one that involves instead insuperable limitation of human knowledge"(p.68)
Note how Gray breaks from the traditional concept of incentives and deals with what we call epistemology, the studying of knowing and not knowing. Epistemology practically speaking is also the backbone for the early known forms of government regulating big business, social programs, and even New Deal programs. On the on hand empirical evidence is needed to find inequalities and address ways to correct everything and that other elements like 'intent' and 'prudence' can stand in substitute for what the government does not know.
Gray criticism of socialism and why it could not work comes from the works of Ludwig Von Mises, F. A Hayek, Micheal Polanyi, and Paul Craig Roberts and more importantly the works and arguements of G.L.S. Shackle. Socialism as the early scholars Mises and Hayek notes is that it is an 'epistemological impossibility' and that is always impossible government knows how much of one thing there of in terms of supply and demand without the construct of price or in consideration of human knowledge. Gray talks about the two types of knowledge known as 'articulated' and 'tacit'-knowledge that can be expressed and not expressed but implied or just merely performed. The other authors builds up on the works with the use of scientific experiments and internal competition but it is that of Shackle that interest me the more with as Gray states 'unknowability of the future' and 'subjectivity of expectations'(p.70). That is to say as we see in the recent situation of Spain, the ages that has been accepted by most, comes and go quicker than we expect.
In subsequent pages he talks about the 'mirage of egalitarianism'(p.84-92). If socialism as something that is no longer acceptable with the government owning and planning every corridor of economic life then whatever legitimacy it has on simple paradigms that can be approached in ordinary life in the 'freeer world' is no longer useful much less feasible or for that matter plausible. Gray criticizes the more accepted egalitarian arguements set out by Raymond Plant. In which case Plant's 'normative' arguement 'that people's well being of their lives and liberty could be equalized' Gray here contends that Plant's view is too relational and that Plant's 'empirical' arguements that ' if the good is the empowerment of the needy...if power is positional good...guaranteeing basic need will be zero sum..." using a "rule of equality." Gray's arguement is that such assertion has no empirical bases and that in the business world that there are postivive sum relationships in which it does not always has to be what one loses the other gains(of course I would be guilty of making a false dichotomy if I include externalities or third parties). In Gray's contention that autonomy is satiable because as I understand it most egalitarians or socialists who claims to this belief views things backwards asserting that the 'intrinsic nature' of human being scarced and the natural world around us as not being or that it is farfectched to think so.
Either way the economy that we live in is one that is quickly squeezing anything conceptually of the physical world. To be computer illiterate these days is almost the equivalent to being just illiterate itself. To cling to social arguements or prejudices that was accepted 10 or 20 years ago is a grave mistake and just being misguided today. If anything the way human knowlegde is being shaped and designed with the advent of the internet and the fact that there must exist a certain level of 'openness' in approaching various social and institutional mechanism in order to keep us from lagging too far behind. It is often said that advancement in civil rights might be much better than it was ten years ago, much less twenty five or forty or fifty years ago but it might have not kept up pace with the time as Gray borrowing from Shakle the uncertainty of future and future events such as the September 11th has undone such. It cannot also rule out the ongoing age of Supertechnology, that is putting increasing pressure for us to recognize these happnings
So what propel the economy we live in has been the so-called information age. Why it has done so rests on the one hand, to protect society from massive war a society has to be restructured to maintain social harmony, material distribution and national flourishing and on the other hand the image of what a free society whatever that means must be endured. The sad fact about the information age we live in or perhaps coming out of and going into a more advance age of information society is the way the information is being formatted and its effect on peripheral institutions. This effect can as I see it can be looked at many ways but I prefer to see it as a constant build up of massive energy that must be released and that this energy shapes the concept of what is the very definitive structure of nature.
History itself no matter how people looks at it is a part of nature, for the history of societies is reflected on whether knowingly or not how mankind percieved themselves to be in conjunction with nature. Yet nature itself is just a small part of the universe but being part of a living world where the inhabitants were able at one time send a person to the moon, the role of understanding the universe and cosmos through science and theory complicates the historical trajectory how nature again knowingly or not is perceived through human eyes. This course of history is often described as revisionist or in some cases pragmatic(such as the universality of creeds, ways of lives, political philosophy and free markets from an economic point of view). As our views about the shape of the earth and the boundaries becomes clearer or at least so we think compared to about 500 years ago where the onset of Western imperialism with conquering New Worlds and the idea of slavery began.
This does not mean that there is an end to these Western evils or evils in general as the 'New Economy' being shaped by an exodus of energy and another important factor the element of time. Time itself doesn't standstill. It is dynamic, rather than static, unchanging. Time itself shaped by labor and an anti-rationalist approached set out by Friedriche Neitsche dismantles the 'moral' fibers which makes the criticism of evils a part of our everyday political social membrance and often times resurrect them under other guises. To state that slavery has ended in the United States much less in much of the other parts of the world is an illusion that is reflected in a post-Soviet world of cultures re-asserting their identity in a world that has no room to install traditional concept of 'supply and demand' with factories and the political economy per se that arose over hundred years ago worldwide. The change that wrought by the technology of the internet and pretty soon with its demise or transformation to nannotechnology has pretty much 'crowded out' a corrigible market for worldwide luxuries for stuff like perfumes, exotic foods, silk and so on.
On the other hand the time/energy effect also allows humankind to dissolve older institutions and put up in their place newer radical structures that are able to deal with things that are relevant to our day and age. If there are two things that we must look at in shaping the outcoming of global events today, they are the geopolitical shift when it comes to oil away from the United States to the area of Middle East. Jeremy Rifkin in his other book Hydrogen Economy argues that oil prices are set to peak within the next decade or so. This is reflected as we already have seen in recent years fluctuation of gas prices at high levels as a result of American military intervention in Iraq. It is also reflected in the present administration looking into studies of supporting hydrogen fuel cars. The other factor is more or less a hierarchal approach and that has to do with the shift of from a 'libertarian' point of view of the 'night watchman' state which means that it will shift more towards the left as political events around the world continues to unravel.
This so-called shift of the 'night watchman' state is seen in the so-called Patriot Act in which the US government has almost unlimited access never seen before since the McCarthy hearings or the Red Scare of the 1920s. Yet this shift is unimaginable and might put into some historical and political question that if there were something that gives government near state of emergency powers such as martial law how it would be done with the internet.
The Patriot Act itself could not be accomplished without the internet. The attackers of the September 11th and perhaps the ones in Spain had to have tremendous access to online networking to carry out the attack. Not only they were able to fake passports and other essential documents, they were able to wire illegally or legally money for nefarious purposes. Yet the thing about the September 11th attack was that the conspiracy to carry out the attack itself was advance but the attack itself was simple and crazy. It was only so because of the technologies and the mobility to control it was very sophisticated and have not existed on that level when the WTC was attacked back in 1993.
The recent attack in Spain was on morning commuter lines, that is trains. The attack was simple on how it was carried out as the perpetrators left bags of explosive that left over 200 people dead and close to 2,000 people injured. Unlike the political effects of the US, it upsetted a recent election and shifted the country further left and forced the new government to pull their troops out of Iraq. It has but anything hijacked the political process as we have ever seen before which can be detrimental to the presidential election this fall. Security to shift the government of Spain further left was not something that could be found in the Patriot Act but an economy make up that allows their citizen to be laid open to the remnants of terrorism.
If anything, democracy itself is perhaps one of the more notable creeds and institutions that is suffering from the time/energy changed syndrome. We have yet to see what the effect of the recent terrorist effect that goes hand in hand the September 11th attack which was an attack launched on the ability to be mobile across borders and through electronic means and the sniper shootings that was esoteric and yet a precise attack against society for what it stands for and to the recent attack in Spain that warped democracy as we know it and perhaps accelerated the post-institutional effect to scales unheard of.
It is here to examine in some shape and form why socialism is a failure and why we cannot ipso facto claim to any if not most of the values that socialism that was the heart of 1960s and 1970s radical and reformist movement and is not a wise one today. It is not an attempt to concede to the right or anything antipathy towards the left for as I will discuss the energy/time element later on in this essay that it is possible to refashion our values in relation to human understanding, human politics, human equality, and even human welfare without the complication the fact that it is very difficult to engineer principle that might be good for the individual and for the collective whole simultaneously. That is and has always been a difficult task to do.
John Gray, a Professor at the London School of Economics, in his book Beyond the New Right:Markets,government and the common environment(Routledge,1993 New York and London) discusses in the 3rd Chapter titled 'The moral foundations of market institutions' that the main element of a socialist economy is the fact that it is orchestrated by central planning. From what anyone would know about economics, central planning doesn't work without adverse cost. On smaller scales, in terms of local or state government it will have a negative effect on the economy. Yet such intervention is sought for the interest of public welfare and the common good. Yet central planning whatever legitimacy libertarians and the right(here I am argueing from an existentialist view) on human culture and intergenerational skills and so forth is that it is disastrous and non competitive. It is here that Gray states:
"The deeper explanation of the future of socialist central planning is, however, not one that appeals to artificial distortion of incentives, but one that involves instead insuperable limitation of human knowledge"(p.68)
Note how Gray breaks from the traditional concept of incentives and deals with what we call epistemology, the studying of knowing and not knowing. Epistemology practically speaking is also the backbone for the early known forms of government regulating big business, social programs, and even New Deal programs. On the on hand empirical evidence is needed to find inequalities and address ways to correct everything and that other elements like 'intent' and 'prudence' can stand in substitute for what the government does not know.
Gray criticism of socialism and why it could not work comes from the works of Ludwig Von Mises, F. A Hayek, Micheal Polanyi, and Paul Craig Roberts and more importantly the works and arguements of G.L.S. Shackle. Socialism as the early scholars Mises and Hayek notes is that it is an 'epistemological impossibility' and that is always impossible government knows how much of one thing there of in terms of supply and demand without the construct of price or in consideration of human knowledge. Gray talks about the two types of knowledge known as 'articulated' and 'tacit'-knowledge that can be expressed and not expressed but implied or just merely performed. The other authors builds up on the works with the use of scientific experiments and internal competition but it is that of Shackle that interest me the more with as Gray states 'unknowability of the future' and 'subjectivity of expectations'(p.70). That is to say as we see in the recent situation of Spain, the ages that has been accepted by most, comes and go quicker than we expect.
In subsequent pages he talks about the 'mirage of egalitarianism'(p.84-92). If socialism as something that is no longer acceptable with the government owning and planning every corridor of economic life then whatever legitimacy it has on simple paradigms that can be approached in ordinary life in the 'freeer world' is no longer useful much less feasible or for that matter plausible. Gray criticizes the more accepted egalitarian arguements set out by Raymond Plant. In which case Plant's 'normative' arguement 'that people's well being of their lives and liberty could be equalized' Gray here contends that Plant's view is too relational and that Plant's 'empirical' arguements that ' if the good is the empowerment of the needy...if power is positional good...guaranteeing basic need will be zero sum..." using a "rule of equality." Gray's arguement is that such assertion has no empirical bases and that in the business world that there are postivive sum relationships in which it does not always has to be what one loses the other gains(of course I would be guilty of making a false dichotomy if I include externalities or third parties). In Gray's contention that autonomy is satiable because as I understand it most egalitarians or socialists who claims to this belief views things backwards asserting that the 'intrinsic nature' of human being scarced and the natural world around us as not being or that it is farfectched to think so.
Either way the economy that we live in is one that is quickly squeezing anything conceptually of the physical world. To be computer illiterate these days is almost the equivalent to being just illiterate itself. To cling to social arguements or prejudices that was accepted 10 or 20 years ago is a grave mistake and just being misguided today. If anything the way human knowlegde is being shaped and designed with the advent of the internet and the fact that there must exist a certain level of 'openness' in approaching various social and institutional mechanism in order to keep us from lagging too far behind. It is often said that advancement in civil rights might be much better than it was ten years ago, much less twenty five or forty or fifty years ago but it might have not kept up pace with the time as Gray borrowing from Shakle the uncertainty of future and future events such as the September 11th has undone such. It cannot also rule out the ongoing age of Supertechnology, that is putting increasing pressure for us to recognize these happnings
So what propel the economy we live in has been the so-called information age. Why it has done so rests on the one hand, to protect society from massive war a society has to be restructured to maintain social harmony, material distribution and national flourishing and on the other hand the image of what a free society whatever that means must be endured. The sad fact about the information age we live in or perhaps coming out of and going into a more advance age of information society is the way the information is being formatted and its effect on peripheral institutions. This effect can as I see it can be looked at many ways but I prefer to see it as a constant build up of massive energy that must be released and that this energy shapes the concept of what is the very definitive structure of nature.
History itself no matter how people looks at it is a part of nature, for the history of societies is reflected on whether knowingly or not how mankind percieved themselves to be in conjunction with nature. Yet nature itself is just a small part of the universe but being part of a living world where the inhabitants were able at one time send a person to the moon, the role of understanding the universe and cosmos through science and theory complicates the historical trajectory how nature again knowingly or not is perceived through human eyes. This course of history is often described as revisionist or in some cases pragmatic(such as the universality of creeds, ways of lives, political philosophy and free markets from an economic point of view). As our views about the shape of the earth and the boundaries becomes clearer or at least so we think compared to about 500 years ago where the onset of Western imperialism with conquering New Worlds and the idea of slavery began.
This does not mean that there is an end to these Western evils or evils in general as the 'New Economy' being shaped by an exodus of energy and another important factor the element of time. Time itself doesn't standstill. It is dynamic, rather than static, unchanging. Time itself shaped by labor and an anti-rationalist approached set out by Friedriche Neitsche dismantles the 'moral' fibers which makes the criticism of evils a part of our everyday political social membrance and often times resurrect them under other guises. To state that slavery has ended in the United States much less in much of the other parts of the world is an illusion that is reflected in a post-Soviet world of cultures re-asserting their identity in a world that has no room to install traditional concept of 'supply and demand' with factories and the political economy per se that arose over hundred years ago worldwide. The change that wrought by the technology of the internet and pretty soon with its demise or transformation to nannotechnology has pretty much 'crowded out' a corrigible market for worldwide luxuries for stuff like perfumes, exotic foods, silk and so on.
On the other hand the time/energy effect also allows humankind to dissolve older institutions and put up in their place newer radical structures that are able to deal with things that are relevant to our day and age. If there are two things that we must look at in shaping the outcoming of global events today, they are the geopolitical shift when it comes to oil away from the United States to the area of Middle East. Jeremy Rifkin in his other book Hydrogen Economy argues that oil prices are set to peak within the next decade or so. This is reflected as we already have seen in recent years fluctuation of gas prices at high levels as a result of American military intervention in Iraq. It is also reflected in the present administration looking into studies of supporting hydrogen fuel cars. The other factor is more or less a hierarchal approach and that has to do with the shift of from a 'libertarian' point of view of the 'night watchman' state which means that it will shift more towards the left as political events around the world continues to unravel.
This so-called shift of the 'night watchman' state is seen in the so-called Patriot Act in which the US government has almost unlimited access never seen before since the McCarthy hearings or the Red Scare of the 1920s. Yet this shift is unimaginable and might put into some historical and political question that if there were something that gives government near state of emergency powers such as martial law how it would be done with the internet.
The Patriot Act itself could not be accomplished without the internet. The attackers of the September 11th and perhaps the ones in Spain had to have tremendous access to online networking to carry out the attack. Not only they were able to fake passports and other essential documents, they were able to wire illegally or legally money for nefarious purposes. Yet the thing about the September 11th attack was that the conspiracy to carry out the attack itself was advance but the attack itself was simple and crazy. It was only so because of the technologies and the mobility to control it was very sophisticated and have not existed on that level when the WTC was attacked back in 1993.
The recent attack in Spain was on morning commuter lines, that is trains. The attack was simple on how it was carried out as the perpetrators left bags of explosive that left over 200 people dead and close to 2,000 people injured. Unlike the political effects of the US, it upsetted a recent election and shifted the country further left and forced the new government to pull their troops out of Iraq. It has but anything hijacked the political process as we have ever seen before which can be detrimental to the presidential election this fall. Security to shift the government of Spain further left was not something that could be found in the Patriot Act but an economy make up that allows their citizen to be laid open to the remnants of terrorism.
If anything, democracy itself is perhaps one of the more notable creeds and institutions that is suffering from the time/energy changed syndrome. We have yet to see what the effect of the recent terrorist effect that goes hand in hand the September 11th attack which was an attack launched on the ability to be mobile across borders and through electronic means and the sniper shootings that was esoteric and yet a precise attack against society for what it stands for and to the recent attack in Spain that warped democracy as we know it and perhaps accelerated the post-institutional effect to scales unheard of.
# posted by Jamie @ 5:48 PM 
Sunday, March 07, 2004
"About the Internet"
In this day and age as I have constantly remarked is that we are living in what we call a post-instituional society. That is a society in which its basic institutions are fast eroding and that to replace it is advance thinking, ingenuity and perhaps a dose of supertechnology. One of the factors that plays a strong role in this called post-instituional effect is the recent sniper shootings in Northern Virginia. The sniper shootings has more or less exacrabated this post-institutional effect by the ability of the snipers to shut down society in one of our stronger and vibrant metropolitan areas, especially in the South. Their targets were out of the ordinary. They weren't famous politicians, wealthy tycoons or even celebrities but ordinary people. What adds more to the recent sniper shooting was that it was depending how you look at it it was an offshoot of the September 11th attack. If we can make an esoteric arguement that the World Trade Center attack represented some release of built up energy ready to be released or implode(depending how you look at it) with the development of faster and faster computers, then the so call social make up that enabled the terrorist to hijack two airliners and crash them into two tall building is the same social make up that led both Malvo and Mahammed to get together to fuel terror on society. What makes this case very interesting is the precision the way they did it. This might be a pun. I am not talking about the accuracy in which they were able to hit physically their targets and were able to elude the authorities for some time but the fact that they were able to hit at the heart of society, and in this case American society. In Judith N.Shklar Redeeming American Political Thought ( Edited by Stanley Hoffmann and Dennis F. Thompson. With a Foreword by Dennis F. Thompson. xviii, 210 p. 1998 ), the author here in the eigth chapter titled 'Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States' discusses the uniqueness of American society from the perspective that America was a heavily democratic society despite its persistent social inequalites.
How to best start off to make a comparison of Shklar's writing with what is going on today in the US is to take a look at the movie 'Gangs of New York.' Two elements served as a strong motif that carried the movie alive and well. The movie start out in the mid 1850s but takes up most of the time during the civil war at which time 1) the US had its very beginnings of the early waves of immigration and 2) the civil war itself being one of the bloodiest wars in world history. The early waves of immigration took place primarily in the North because like the thinking of the time most newcomers wanted in Shklar's expression be like the aristocrat, free and powerful as them. They didn't find much hope and relief in living in the South because the antebellum South provided too much disillusionment and contradictions for any worthwile pursuit of that dream. As Shklar stated the 'slavemaster' freedom was very limited, they had to be careful what they read or say and maintain a militia also to prevent 'slave rebellion.' As for the slaves themselves, Shklar states brought reproach among the newcomers of the very freedom they even lacked. It sounds odd and perverse but that was how the thinking was reflected at that time. The disdainment and the thinking among the main characters in the movies reflected the attitudes back then .
Shklar also talks about the courts, if you know your rights, you take it to the court and get it relieved and asserted. If anything, America not only is a democratic society but a democratic culture as well. It is from here that the damage if not lately the most damage the snipers has committed. In a sense it has fashioned coup against this cultural structure. If there is anything to say that with a post-instutional society would be a foregone of the 9 to 5 workday*, going to church every Sunday, mass education as we know it or even serving in the military. Government in the future will have to look elsewhere.
A post-institutional society doesn't mean the that society will slip into chaos and civil war**. It means that there will be remaking of society radically that will have to re align itself with the events of the world which is not on the other hand that pretty. What will come of and how it will look like will be a society that although underway, one in the Age of Supertechnologies. If there is a start or the pebble that creates the avalanche that will fall upon us all it is the internet itself.
A noted scholar describes the internet as this:
"The internet started as a conscious project. It was a Cold War project of the United States government. After that it moved into universities and now it has become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon. You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer. The debate about globalisation is therefore shifted but is no longer a debate between those who are sceptical about it and those who see it as real phenomenon. It is now a debate about the consequences of globalisation and the meetings in Seattle (Washington), where the protesters gathered show that the debate has moved to discuss the consequences of globalisation.Second technological innovation : when you think technological innovation, of course you think of information technology and you see an internet mania in Europe. Europe is kind of caught up so rapidly with the United States, it's a positive mania of the internet. What actually happens is something more profound than just the internet. The application of information technology to production is now already a quarter of a century old. It has already transformed manufacturing industry and the core impact of the internet will be on the so-called old economy, not the new economy. 80 % of new internet business is business-to-business transactions. Some people, and I believe this myself to be true, argue that manufacture in 10 to 15 years time will be a bit like agriculture. Agriculture used to involve some 40 % of the population, now it involves 2 % of the population. It is quite realistic to suppose, that maybe only 5 % of the population, will work in manufacture, some 15 or so years from now on, that 5 % will produce more than the current proportion working in manufacture now. In Germany you have a country with well over 22 % of the working population still involved in manufacture. You compare that with the other EU-countries, where the proportion is about 15, 16, 17 %, than it is easy to appreciate the significance of the new knowledge economy for Germany.Not to be underestimated - changes in everyday life. And it's very easy to underestimate the significance of this. Basically as my fellow sociologist, Ulrich Beck has shown us, we no longer live our lives as fate, tradition, custom. We have to structure our lives much more openly."
Note how here how the author looks at the internet as having 'become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon.' To add to this that why we can't go back is as simple as the next statement he makes that we "You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer" becasue likewise our concept from the times we even take a look at history will always be clouded and that with or without the internet new ways of thinking no matter how flawed or sophisticated cannot but help cloud our judgement for whatever reason we look at the past. The internet afterall is a form of 'conscious' or 'consciousness' that has been added to the mix. This goes furthermore to another root and that is how we view historical societies as such. Some philosophers would view society as a fixation point to universal human morality; others sees it as a decline and so on. If anything the role the internet plays with shaping our visions of the past and the future does damage when it comes to basic human needs. Some scholars would argue that humans borrowing from another philosopher has 'pre-rational' needs or that takes this even further that such needs are intertwined with nature that their exist 'natural rights.' I would on the other hand would assert that the internet will have a deterministic effect on human nature. Remember as author states above the internet is nothing new. How is that so is that the main element of the internet itself that has existed during the Cold War--p2p or peer to peer--file sharing is the strong arm of the internet that is fast changing society. What makes p2p when one download files like Kazaa pretty soon is the speed in which they are able to download them. Right now large files like movies as I read in the recent People's magazines are still hard to be eluded(in part of copyright laws that can get one in trouble with the Feds but that they can be detected due to large file loads). Some sites and webmasters can get around this and create whay you call 'warez' sites. Warez sites are pirated sites due to the large files that the user who visited their site can download and sometimes upload files. The variatrions of Kazaa such as Kazaa Lite, kazaa.tk, Kazaa Gold are nothing more than the most common pirated site because in the recent retaliaton of Kazaa or more appropriately speaking Sharman Networks countersuits of the RIAA and these 'mirror' sites is the use of its 'fast track' technology. If there were a way to download these files quicker and compressed them the very bare nature of what is exchanged will itself be revolutionized. This is how the internet comes in. There is no borders about the internet and will be frivolous to assert that there should be. The internet relies on technology that for it to be called itself such will soon be old and replaced with newer technologies. The principle of the newer technologies such as nannochips work the same way. If there is ever a way to remake the world from sratch like a new Genesis what will evolve from the internet will be such. ***
One of the changes with the internet we see right now is the use of wireless technology and pretty soon paying for the internet with dial up, DSL or cable modem will be another thing of the past as WI-FI wireless access will take over. If there is such changes in this fashion, imagine the changes as the money being made and the ideas and propaganda being promoted, it will mean again altering the way we live and perhaps accept that freely. Like anything, the world that the internet society promise will always have its very own exclusions..this phenomenon is known as the 'digital divide.' In the global scheme of things it can reshape the fashion of wars as I will describe later the future of warfare in the 21st century, among them the 'internet wars' is one of them, the other as stated in this book by John Aiquilla and David Ronfelt Networks and Netwars pretty soon the internet will evolve where as you have prolific cyberterrorism. If the information becomes so valuable creating not only a cultural and political rift as described in this book but an economic rift as I see it, wars can be easily started over such hording or dissarraying such information. The changes of the internet shouldn't be looked conceptually off the mark. It doesn't as some would assert deny the existence of 'inheritable institutions' but can create cloned instittutions that are unreal in its place.
If anthing the internet is an area that might in the long run that will have at its pleasure the making of virtual states and in cases virtual armies or what I like to term anti-armies. It can create not only barren slave societiey but also have the effect of creating what is called Super-societies as well. Yet the internet is a mere phase, like anything else such as Al Queda that embodies the ephemeral antagonist of Western values incarnate and the war on terrorism are all phases in and of themselves. To put it more clearer, solving social problems would require not only the use of imagination but see things as phase or in part seperate parts that goes through phases as such. This age we live in , the so called Post-modern age is just a phase already passing away. This does not deny the need for law or for the state but the implementation of the forgotten would itself be looked as farfetch but perhaps appropriate--think of the judge in Germany allowing the '20th hijacker' appeal and perhaps even walk free.
*see The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin
**this does not mean that the US is already heading that way, civil wars doesn't have to be so decisive, it just have to have one or two factors that gives it a romantic edge such as the fight to end slavey in the US during the American Civil War or converting the animated Christians in the South in Sudan. There are many factors effecting just about every civil war that there has ever been.
***See Anthony Giddens Beyond the Left and Right:The Future of Radical Politics(Stanford University Press, Stanford,CA 1994). Look more specifically in Chapter 8 'Modernity under a Negative Sign:Ecological Issues and Life Politics'. "The ecological crisis is a crisis brought by the dissolution of nature--where 'nature' is defined in its most obvious sense,as any objects or process given independent of human intervention."p. 206. A profound statement that give clarity on what is the big playing field or scene that we live in and more importantly have to deal with.
In this day and age as I have constantly remarked is that we are living in what we call a post-instituional society. That is a society in which its basic institutions are fast eroding and that to replace it is advance thinking, ingenuity and perhaps a dose of supertechnology. One of the factors that plays a strong role in this called post-instituional effect is the recent sniper shootings in Northern Virginia. The sniper shootings has more or less exacrabated this post-institutional effect by the ability of the snipers to shut down society in one of our stronger and vibrant metropolitan areas, especially in the South. Their targets were out of the ordinary. They weren't famous politicians, wealthy tycoons or even celebrities but ordinary people. What adds more to the recent sniper shooting was that it was depending how you look at it it was an offshoot of the September 11th attack. If we can make an esoteric arguement that the World Trade Center attack represented some release of built up energy ready to be released or implode(depending how you look at it) with the development of faster and faster computers, then the so call social make up that enabled the terrorist to hijack two airliners and crash them into two tall building is the same social make up that led both Malvo and Mahammed to get together to fuel terror on society. What makes this case very interesting is the precision the way they did it. This might be a pun. I am not talking about the accuracy in which they were able to hit physically their targets and were able to elude the authorities for some time but the fact that they were able to hit at the heart of society, and in this case American society. In Judith N.Shklar Redeeming American Political Thought ( Edited by Stanley Hoffmann and Dennis F. Thompson. With a Foreword by Dennis F. Thompson. xviii, 210 p. 1998 ), the author here in the eigth chapter titled 'Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States' discusses the uniqueness of American society from the perspective that America was a heavily democratic society despite its persistent social inequalites.
How to best start off to make a comparison of Shklar's writing with what is going on today in the US is to take a look at the movie 'Gangs of New York.' Two elements served as a strong motif that carried the movie alive and well. The movie start out in the mid 1850s but takes up most of the time during the civil war at which time 1) the US had its very beginnings of the early waves of immigration and 2) the civil war itself being one of the bloodiest wars in world history. The early waves of immigration took place primarily in the North because like the thinking of the time most newcomers wanted in Shklar's expression be like the aristocrat, free and powerful as them. They didn't find much hope and relief in living in the South because the antebellum South provided too much disillusionment and contradictions for any worthwile pursuit of that dream. As Shklar stated the 'slavemaster' freedom was very limited, they had to be careful what they read or say and maintain a militia also to prevent 'slave rebellion.' As for the slaves themselves, Shklar states brought reproach among the newcomers of the very freedom they even lacked. It sounds odd and perverse but that was how the thinking was reflected at that time. The disdainment and the thinking among the main characters in the movies reflected the attitudes back then .
Shklar also talks about the courts, if you know your rights, you take it to the court and get it relieved and asserted. If anything, America not only is a democratic society but a democratic culture as well. It is from here that the damage if not lately the most damage the snipers has committed. In a sense it has fashioned coup against this cultural structure. If there is anything to say that with a post-instutional society would be a foregone of the 9 to 5 workday*, going to church every Sunday, mass education as we know it or even serving in the military. Government in the future will have to look elsewhere.
A post-institutional society doesn't mean the that society will slip into chaos and civil war**. It means that there will be remaking of society radically that will have to re align itself with the events of the world which is not on the other hand that pretty. What will come of and how it will look like will be a society that although underway, one in the Age of Supertechnologies. If there is a start or the pebble that creates the avalanche that will fall upon us all it is the internet itself.
A noted scholar describes the internet as this:
"The internet started as a conscious project. It was a Cold War project of the United States government. After that it moved into universities and now it has become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon. You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer. The debate about globalisation is therefore shifted but is no longer a debate between those who are sceptical about it and those who see it as real phenomenon. It is now a debate about the consequences of globalisation and the meetings in Seattle (Washington), where the protesters gathered show that the debate has moved to discuss the consequences of globalisation.Second technological innovation : when you think technological innovation, of course you think of information technology and you see an internet mania in Europe. Europe is kind of caught up so rapidly with the United States, it's a positive mania of the internet. What actually happens is something more profound than just the internet. The application of information technology to production is now already a quarter of a century old. It has already transformed manufacturing industry and the core impact of the internet will be on the so-called old economy, not the new economy. 80 % of new internet business is business-to-business transactions. Some people, and I believe this myself to be true, argue that manufacture in 10 to 15 years time will be a bit like agriculture. Agriculture used to involve some 40 % of the population, now it involves 2 % of the population. It is quite realistic to suppose, that maybe only 5 % of the population, will work in manufacture, some 15 or so years from now on, that 5 % will produce more than the current proportion working in manufacture now. In Germany you have a country with well over 22 % of the working population still involved in manufacture. You compare that with the other EU-countries, where the proportion is about 15, 16, 17 %, than it is easy to appreciate the significance of the new knowledge economy for Germany.Not to be underestimated - changes in everyday life. And it's very easy to underestimate the significance of this. Basically as my fellow sociologist, Ulrich Beck has shown us, we no longer live our lives as fate, tradition, custom. We have to structure our lives much more openly."
Note how here how the author looks at the internet as having 'become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon.' To add to this that why we can't go back is as simple as the next statement he makes that we "You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer" becasue likewise our concept from the times we even take a look at history will always be clouded and that with or without the internet new ways of thinking no matter how flawed or sophisticated cannot but help cloud our judgement for whatever reason we look at the past. The internet afterall is a form of 'conscious' or 'consciousness' that has been added to the mix. This goes furthermore to another root and that is how we view historical societies as such. Some philosophers would view society as a fixation point to universal human morality; others sees it as a decline and so on. If anything the role the internet plays with shaping our visions of the past and the future does damage when it comes to basic human needs. Some scholars would argue that humans borrowing from another philosopher has 'pre-rational' needs or that takes this even further that such needs are intertwined with nature that their exist 'natural rights.' I would on the other hand would assert that the internet will have a deterministic effect on human nature. Remember as author states above the internet is nothing new. How is that so is that the main element of the internet itself that has existed during the Cold War--p2p or peer to peer--file sharing is the strong arm of the internet that is fast changing society. What makes p2p when one download files like Kazaa pretty soon is the speed in which they are able to download them. Right now large files like movies as I read in the recent People's magazines are still hard to be eluded(in part of copyright laws that can get one in trouble with the Feds but that they can be detected due to large file loads). Some sites and webmasters can get around this and create whay you call 'warez' sites. Warez sites are pirated sites due to the large files that the user who visited their site can download and sometimes upload files. The variatrions of Kazaa such as Kazaa Lite, kazaa.tk, Kazaa Gold are nothing more than the most common pirated site because in the recent retaliaton of Kazaa or more appropriately speaking Sharman Networks countersuits of the RIAA and these 'mirror' sites is the use of its 'fast track' technology. If there were a way to download these files quicker and compressed them the very bare nature of what is exchanged will itself be revolutionized. This is how the internet comes in. There is no borders about the internet and will be frivolous to assert that there should be. The internet relies on technology that for it to be called itself such will soon be old and replaced with newer technologies. The principle of the newer technologies such as nannochips work the same way. If there is ever a way to remake the world from sratch like a new Genesis what will evolve from the internet will be such. ***
One of the changes with the internet we see right now is the use of wireless technology and pretty soon paying for the internet with dial up, DSL or cable modem will be another thing of the past as WI-FI wireless access will take over. If there is such changes in this fashion, imagine the changes as the money being made and the ideas and propaganda being promoted, it will mean again altering the way we live and perhaps accept that freely. Like anything, the world that the internet society promise will always have its very own exclusions..this phenomenon is known as the 'digital divide.' In the global scheme of things it can reshape the fashion of wars as I will describe later the future of warfare in the 21st century, among them the 'internet wars' is one of them, the other as stated in this book by John Aiquilla and David Ronfelt Networks and Netwars pretty soon the internet will evolve where as you have prolific cyberterrorism. If the information becomes so valuable creating not only a cultural and political rift as described in this book but an economic rift as I see it, wars can be easily started over such hording or dissarraying such information. The changes of the internet shouldn't be looked conceptually off the mark. It doesn't as some would assert deny the existence of 'inheritable institutions' but can create cloned instittutions that are unreal in its place.
If anthing the internet is an area that might in the long run that will have at its pleasure the making of virtual states and in cases virtual armies or what I like to term anti-armies. It can create not only barren slave societiey but also have the effect of creating what is called Super-societies as well. Yet the internet is a mere phase, like anything else such as Al Queda that embodies the ephemeral antagonist of Western values incarnate and the war on terrorism are all phases in and of themselves. To put it more clearer, solving social problems would require not only the use of imagination but see things as phase or in part seperate parts that goes through phases as such. This age we live in , the so called Post-modern age is just a phase already passing away. This does not deny the need for law or for the state but the implementation of the forgotten would itself be looked as farfetch but perhaps appropriate--think of the judge in Germany allowing the '20th hijacker' appeal and perhaps even walk free.
*see The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin
**this does not mean that the US is already heading that way, civil wars doesn't have to be so decisive, it just have to have one or two factors that gives it a romantic edge such as the fight to end slavey in the US during the American Civil War or converting the animated Christians in the South in Sudan. There are many factors effecting just about every civil war that there has ever been.
***See Anthony Giddens Beyond the Left and Right:The Future of Radical Politics(Stanford University Press, Stanford,CA 1994). Look more specifically in Chapter 8 'Modernity under a Negative Sign:Ecological Issues and Life Politics'. "The ecological crisis is a crisis brought by the dissolution of nature--where 'nature' is defined in its most obvious sense,as any objects or process given independent of human intervention."p. 206. A profound statement that give clarity on what is the big playing field or scene that we live in and more importantly have to deal with.
