Hughesair (Inflection Point)

Retired physician and air taxi operator, science writer and part time assistant professor, these editorials cover a wide range of topics. Mostly non political, mostly true, I write more from a lifetime of experience and from research, more science than convention. Subjects cover medicine, Alaska aviation, economics, technology and an occasional book review. Globalization or Democracy documents the historical roots of Oligarchy, the road to colonialism and tyranny

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Location: Homer, Alaska, United States

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Wednesday, June 09, 2004

More Free Air

I'm sorry; I just can't get that excited over, who did what to whom, in Iraq or elsewhere. Free speech, free information and free knowledge over the Internet seems far more critical to our future as a culture and for humanity. After all, what we know about what happens in Iraq and elsewhere comes largely from the network of the people.

If you ask ten of the highest-ranking elected leaders how to deal with a crisis, you may get a consensus and the execution of a plan. That consensus will come from arguably the most persuasive showmen, campaigners, and politicians our country has to offer. The plan of action may have a similar flavor. The plan must be sold to the people. The information flows one way! BS!

The collective wisdom of the people gives us a far better consensus and a far more constrained plan of action. Not a vote, wherein all opinions are counted, but a channel wherein the wisely stated views float to the top. Cyberspace gives us that opportunity. The information, the opinion, the wisdom if you will, comes, not from the money magnets, but from freedom of ideas and thought freely expressed.

Is the RIAA going to require fingerprints to play their music? Can you see yourself buying that device?

Attempting to complain to my investment news source that their shameless unbundling resulted in their becoming a second rate source of information, it gratified me to see a "contact us" link. Not, the link lead to an ask the expert page. The media does not get it either. Top down belongs to the command and control paradigm of the dying Industrial Age. (If you got this far, I am preaching to the choir.)

Maybe of greater success was a similar statement I pined off to the Whitehouse over just this issue of information where in I suggested that politically one should not ignore the growing economic and numerical power of cyberpunks. It was better worded than that. It was addressed to Condaleessa Rice on the president's email. I was heartened to hear a Whitehouse proclamation the next day stating that information should be free on the Internet. It lacks the conviction of a firsthand trip to Silicon Valley but I delude myself into thinking the message made a difference. Misspelled her first name too.

Reading Boing Boing, I found the connection to http://EFF.org , the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I've got to get back to seaplane stories.

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