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Thursday, January 05, 2006Microsoft: It's as bad as we are!When Microsoft found itself in the dock in the U.S., its lawyers fought long and hard. The organization waged a p.r. campaign including e-mail updates to its supporter with implied suggestions that we should write our representatives. In the end, it was the better for it, I think. In China, Microsoft is not being so combative. In fact, it's downright subservient. That says something about China, something about America and something about Microsoft. 1. China is a big market controlled by totalitarians who might well eject you and kill your supporters if you take too strong a stand. 2. The United States is a big market but in which consumers have a large voice and a society in which individual voters and campaign donors still hold a lot of sway. 3. Microsoft stands on principle in those regions where principles are respected, but shuts up in places where freedom, rule of law, etc, are non-existent or seriously curtailed. Conclusion: Microsoft makes products that, pace the critics, expand the individual's and business's abilility to move freely in free society. It also makes products that expand the government's ability to move arbitrarily in closed and controlled societies. The synthesis of this is that Microsoft's information products increase the power of those who control the individual's destiny. It's just a question of who has that power. Sophisticates might say that what is morally neutral is, ipso facto, morally neutral. I think, however, that a paraphrase of Burnham is in order here. Said James Burnham, institutions that are not explicitly on the right move to the left over time. I would suggest: Organizations that are not explicitly moral will eventually become complicit in immorality. Is Microsoft itself now part of the dark side? No. But is it on the side of the angels, then? Nope. Not that either. Microsoft at one point seem poised to change the world. With the latest news, it appears that its real effect is to make the world what it is only moreso. This is disappointing. But not surprising. What is surprising is the blindness that we, as a free people, often show. Many are quick to condemn Microsoft for taking down a web page. But how many are putting back any and all consumer goods with "MADE IN CHINA" stamped on them? In the first case, one voice is silenced. In the second case, we blithely take the gamble that we're making it worth the Chinese military-industrial complex's while to conscript thousands of thousands in near slavery to finance the expansion of a state that intimidates its neighbors and silences its critics. Can Microsoft possibly have done as much damage as the collective of consumers who purchase low-end electronics, toys and clothing? The actions of China's government furnish adequate evidence to suppose that it is evil. Those whose actions vis-à-vis China are not explicitly oriented toward the collapse of that evil have shown themselves willing to live with a certain amount of evil in an imperfect world. The self-justifications come quickly, but the facts are as they are. I know that I'm complicit. So is most of American consumer society. And so is Microsoft. If you want to make a stink about it, write a letter to the editor about Microsoft. But if you actually want to do something, better put down your $10 shoes and your $.25 pens and prepare for the added cost that comes with only buying goods from places where the people are free. 
posted by gbarto at 10:03 AM As I slowly emerged into consciousness, a thought came to me of what this country really needs: an extra hour somewhere between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. Here's how to pull off this wonder: Each night, before bed, we should set our clocks back one hour. In an earlier age, this would not have been so workable. Reliant on candlelight and the light of the sun, our options were limited. But in this day and age, there are any number of stores and offices you might find yourself in where the only light is artificial. Nature may control our biorhythms and offer the cheapest light source out there, but we're no longer so dependent upon this. The sticklers out there may assert that you can't just add an hour. It's true that an adjustment would have to be made for the 15 days a year we would lose. I say we take them out of February. It's usually the coldest, and often the greyest, of months. Let's halve it. (For those who are concerned, I would move Black History Month to January.) The remaining five hours could be subtracted from the first Tuesday in November, allowing us, every other year, to get the elections over with that much sooner. Just a thought.
posted by gbarto at 8:41 AM Sunday, January 01, 2006This is going to be cross-posted at Wittgenstein's Bastard, where it's a little more appropriate. But I thought it made a good starting point for deciding what to think of the writing, good and not so good, that's bound to turn up here as the new year unfolds.When I sit down to write, there comes the question of what to write about. Life is full of interesting things, and even my life contains a few of them. But we often best express ourselves not by talking about our own thoughts or lifes, but by considering a bigger picture, or a smaller one, even a fictional one. If you ask people what they think, they are usually glad to tell you. But if you start asking questions, you'll find that they don't know. They have beliefs about themselves, beliefs formed by what they've been told, or what they want others to believe about them. In this regard, the impression we give of our thoughts is a picture we create. It is not us, but a story we tell about ourselves. In order to find the essence of a person, what you need is not what they have to say about themselves, but what they say in general, and how they say it. Tennyson tells us: Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades Forever and for ever when I move Yet we are not those experiences, neither the sum total of all we've seen nor even of all we've done. We are prisms, refracting those gleams and glimmers of life and making individual perception of a universal world. This is where the postmodernists, the realists, the skeptics and every other school gets it wrong. It's not that there is no fundamental, universal and absolute reality. It's that we lack the sensory and cognitive equipment to capture it perfectly. This is why it is possible for morality and truth to exist, yet none of us can claim to offer the final word. In apprehending the world, then, we must act as the scientist who has stumbled upon the chance to picture a sharper microscope or a telescope that offers a superior magnification. To extend - and abuse - the prism metaphor, we are our own masters of opticks, grinding away at the lens through which we see life in an effort to adjust it to give us what we perceive as a clearer picture. How we go about this makes a big difference. Those who seek perfect images often go sadly astray, breaking or distorting the lens through excessive grinding, while others accept a fuzzier picture, trying to compensate for the distortion by understanding of theirs and the world's confusions instead. The Economist had a fascinating article (you might have to watch an ad to get in) on evolution and what's up with the idea of being human the other day. It noted that human beings appear to be the only animals that play games with set rules. A later section suggests that the value of intelligence is that it works well for attracting a mate, like peacock feathers. That is, humans didn't evolve to become intelligent for immediate practical applications, but rather because intelligence is an attractive and attracting characteristic. In this regard, the playing of games takes on a special value - it provides an artificial context where the clever and the well-toned - depending on the game - can maximize their ability to shine. Comes the question: What if the ultimate game is the Wittgensteinian language game? What does that do to discourse? And what does it do to truth? Are the sticklers guarding the world from error? Or maximizing their reproductive possibilities? And does this mean, finally, that the complex marvels of humanity have nothing on the animal kingdom, save their complexity? I would suggest that there is one problem here: The language game may be a game, as artificial as football in its arbitrariness. But that does not mean there is no reality underneath. It just means my motives - and yours if you're arguing against me in your mind - need further investigation before we decide that the notion that "The truth is out there" means that "the truth" is what we're really looking for or likely to find. It seems to me, as we approach a new year, that it behooves us to spend a little less time getting things just so and a little more time appreciating the need for margin for error - in our deeds and in our thoughts. Take it easy on others. Take it easy on yourself. And keep with the language games - they're the best games we've got.
posted by gbarto at 12:32 PM |
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