The twenty-first century economy is not under-girded by steel. The 21st century economy is under-girded by software. Which is as crucial as the underlying element in economic development in the 21st century as the production of steel ingots was in the twentieth.

The talk has definitely reminded me of what I’d hoped to do with my fancy-schmancy Software Engineering degree. It led me to recall why I was so adamant about free software and what I believed freedom of information meant for the world. It brought back what I’d learned at CC at the Social Justice workshop and how to tie my passion for Christ, for computers, and for social equality together. If anything, the talk reminded me of my importance because of the importance of software and why it will be and is important.

There are a lot of good quotes from the talk, and I’ll post them here.

On owning software:

Imagine if you will for a moment a society in which mathematics has become property, and it’s owned by people. Now every time you want to do anything useful – build a house, make a boat, start a bridge, devise a market, move objects weighing certain numbers of kilos from one place to another – your first stop is at the mathematics store to buy enough math to complete the task which lies before you.

On the importance of software:

It is that software provides alternate modes of infrastructure and transportation. That’s crucial in economic history terms, because the driving force in economic development is always improvement in transportation. When things move more easily and more flexibly and with less friction from place to place, economic growth results, welfare improvements occur.

On software and political upheaval:

The gate that has held the movements for equalization of human beings strictly in a dilemma between ineffectiveness and violence has now been opened. The reason is that we have shifted to a zero marginal cost world. As steel is replaced by software, more and more of the value in society becomes non-rivalrous: it can be held by many without costing anybody more than if it is held by a few.

On the One Laptop Per Child project:

We can also change the infrastructure of social life. That OLPC has every textbook on earth. That OLPC is a free MIT education. That OLPC is a hand-powered thick-net router. When you close the lid as a kid and put it in the shelf at night, the main CPU shuts down – but the 802.11 gear stays running all night long on the last few pulls of the string. And it routes packets all night long and it keeps the mesh. The village is a mesh when the kids have green or purple or orange boxes. And all you need’s a downspout somewhere, and the village is on the Net. And when the village is on the Net, everybody in the village is a producer of something: services, knowledge, culture, art, YouTube TV.

On citizen journalism:

Now what is journalism like when every village has a video camera and is on the Net? What is diplomacy like? What does it mean if the next time somebody starts some nasty little genocide in some little corner of the Earth the United States Government would prefer to ignore, that there’s video all over the place all the time in every living room. What’s it mean when children around the world are networking with one other over the issues that concern them directly without intermediation, everybody to everybody, saying, “Do you have what we need? How come you have what we need? How come we can’t do what we can do? Because your father’s rich? Because we’re dark? Because we live down here?”

To the developers:

If we know that what we are trying to accomplish is the spread of justice and social equality through the universalization of access to knowledge; if what we know we are trying to do is to build an economy of sharing which will rival the economies of ownership at every point where they directly compete; if we know that we are doing this as an alternative to coercive redistribution, that we have a third way in our hands for dealing with long and deep and painful problems of human injustice; if we are conscious of what we have and know what we are trying to accomplish, this is the moment when, for the first time in lifetimes we can get it done.

The Daily Random will be published regularly based on the scientifically proven and very reliable “whim” of the author. You may expect to read The Daily Random in good old random fashion. That is, a publishing can happen at any time. No one knows the time or date, except for the FatherHe’s omniscient, of course He’d know. Yeesh..

France is Silly

France is quite the unfortunate place to live. They are the butt of countless jokes when it comes to military victories. Their country is falling into disorder. They made everyone in the EU hate them even more because of that Constitution thing. And now, they’re going to try and ban open-source.

From the mighty bastion of software freedom that is Slashdot:

“According to the Free Software Foundation of France the French Department of Culture is telling free (as in speech) software providers that ‘You will be required to change your licenses … You shall stop publishing free software,’ and warn they are ready ‘to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code.’

From the looks of it, it seems like France is adamant about protecting its culture and one way to do this is the stop the virus that is open source software. Only American corporations can save the future of France’s culture now!

Sowned!y

Sony must be kicking themselves in the pants really hard again. Sure they’ve got the PlayStation, invented the Walkman, and make really cool TVs, but how many times have they screwed up now? Betamax? MiniDisc?

The RIAA must be steaming pissed at them too. People were happily taking in the DRM and it was quite respectable. Heck, they even got everyone worried over pirates destroying our culture. And then Sony screws up and everyone hates not only Sony, but are now swearing off any music with DRM in it.

According to the good sir, Michael Geist, Sony’s screwup is not only hurting those artists with the evil rootkits on them, but all of Sony’s artists. In fact, he argues, that they are hurting all artists, regardless of their label.

It makes sense, considering the average person doesn’t know what a rootkit is until they heard about this and now they’re not taking any chances. It was hard enough not getting any viruses from the Internet, but now they come on CDs?

lol 360

If there’s something that can lower the perception of gaming by the public even more than GTA: San Andreas, it’s gotta be the Xbox 360. With the media orgy that spawned in the wake of the launch last Tuesday, it seems that all sorts of nongamers are aware of the flaws of the magic white box. Even my dad knew it was a crappy console and that it was out of stock until something like 2112.

And then there are the stories of crashes and overheating. I’m honestly surprised there’s no familiar Blue Screen of Death. And of course, the launch itself, generating riots and shootings and muggings, but not for Core Systems, because everyone knows the Core System is crap. Even my chem teacher knows that it’s going for $5000 on eBay and that the Core System is crap.

Oh, and since it’s a console (as many of the zealots forget), games should probably be mentioned. I guess if you like playing titles that are already on other consoles and PC it’ll be fine. Except Perfect Dark Zero, which I hear is best played in the dark. During a power outage.

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It seems we end on a theme: that of technology. Not the most random thing, but certainly unexpected. Or maybe not considering that is what occupies much space in my cerebral space. I hope we all look forward to the next session of this excercise in gobbledygooky goodness.