[FRIAM] the arc of ai (was Re: Whew!)

[Marcus Daniels]

Glen writes:

" But what I didn't get from his talk (yet it's mirrored in Marcus' post about open source communities) is the tight coupling that's needed."

I intended to make a different point than what I think you may have concluded.  To certain technologists, there is the view that our culture is made up of rule-based parts that act much like software.  They are not personal (in your terminology), they are abstractions that take on a significance of their own.   If one can get voters to embrace a set of slogans, or go to a building on Sunday to hold their head down periodically, or throw someone in prison because of an interpretation of a law, then it is not personal.  It's a generalized abstraction that some advocate like a priest or legislator threw-up and managed to get to stick.  The view that "knowledge is power" is another form.   Free software advocates like Stallman are well-aware of the thinking of scholars like Chomsky.   And certainly folks like Assange crossed paths with the free software movement (in the Stallman sense) on several occasions.   So, rather than handing out weapons, they hand out tools and information because these technologists believe that is the basis for power in the world, or soon will be.

Marcus