From: alberta!cdshaw@beaver.cs.washington.edu Subject: Re: (none) Date: Sat, 12 May 90 00:09:28 -0600 Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada In article X, Mr Wexelblat (I think) writes: >First off, the idea of a group of anarchists being "led" is kind of humorous. Well, I happen to think that anarchy is funny, too, but never mind. >My position is not that cyberspace *should* be structured by the individual, >but that it *inevitably will* be structured by the individual. Well, yes and no. People used think that Usenet is structured by the individual, too, but here's an anarchist posting to a moderated group. Go figure. Trivial self-structuring is enevitable. Non-trivial unilateral structuring of others is impossible, simply because interacting with other people requires that you agree to some structure, and you agree on how to change that structure. >Cyberspace technology puts tremendous power in the hands of the user, >particularly with respect to the presentation of the environment. Steve and >Tom spoke of corporate cyberspace workers customizing their cyber offices. I >claim that they may not even have offices. Further, the view of the office >that you see as a visitor is unlikely to be the same as the view that they see. >For example, you may see a representation of the Mona Lisa, while I see a view >of my backyard where I'm watching my children playing. A pleasant image, to be sure, but frankly I prefer to work in quiet. To this point I agree. It's obvious. People will set up their vi behaviour the way the like, their windows the way they like, and their cyberspaces the way they like. But you can bet that most people will be happy with the status quo, or that people will buy "custom windows/custom cyberspaces/custom XYZ" off the shelf. Aaron Marcus has an interesting concept. He once said that considering how heavily Jim Davis markets the Garfield image, he wouldn't be a bit surprised if there appeared a "Garfield X Widget Set" at some point. Anyway, my point is that most people can't be bothered with extensive customization, for the same reason that few people poke under the hood of their cars -- it's a messy, painstaking operation, and it's usually broken if you don't do it right. And there has never been a mechanical or computer system in this world that is all of 1: easily customized 2: foolproof (well, reliable) 3: more technically rich than a '57 Chevy. First law of computer pricing: Fast, reliable, cheap. Pick two. Anyway, if you want your boss to look like the Ayatollah in your own version of the cyberSpace Home Game, then fine. You'd be a fool to distribute that around, though, for the same reason that you'd be a fool to post nasty caricatures of your boss on the office cork board. >One speaker mentioned that meetings tend to be less hostile if held in round >rooms with stained-glass ceilings. Great! You can project that image all >you want. If I want to see things in a beachhouse setting, there's not much >you can do about it. If it sounds like a meeting, acts like a meeting, smells like a meeting, and has arguments like meetings have, chances are it's a meeting. No amount of window dressing is going to change the fact that if people want to ignore the obnoxious guy who thinks he's the chairman, they are simply going to turn his sound down. If you are that obnoxious guy, you might as well go to the bar for all the good the meeting is doing you. >> a. Marcos Novak, UCLA School of Architecture and UTexas Austin SOA >> "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace" >> Marcos presented a series of images based upon the idea that >> cyberspace allowed architecture to exhibit a process of change in >> a short term sense. He proposed an architecture that flowed continually >> like a fluid according to high level mathematical patterns. Great. How would you like a file system that automatically rearranged your dirctory structure? Pretty obnoxious, eh? Or was he just talking about nifty wallpaper? Sorry if I've missed something here. > c. Carl Tollander, Autodesk Inc, > "Collaborative Engines for Multi-Participant Cyberspaces." > >He laid out some basic principles of how you'd like to go about building an >engine for manipulating and interacting with cyberspaces. Unfortunately, >he raised a lot of questions that no one had any good answers for. I'm >looking forward to what he will have to say at next year's conference. Unfortunately? I think good, solid unanswered questions are what conferences are for! You find out what the state of the art is, and you have firm direction for future work. Unanswered questions are a challenge, not a failing. One feeling I get from the CyberSpace thing is the implicit assumption that there are no boundaries. Infinite CyberResources (although not infinite cycles, but that's a nonissue philosophically). I think this assumption Bogus as Hell (tm). They used to give land away. Now you have to buy it. Telephone companies used to have 4 digit numbers, now they're at least 10. You could name your machines "Tom" and "Jerry", now it's tom.blah.blah.blah.edu First 100K floppies, then 1 Meg drives, then 10MB drives, then 100MB drives... My point is that in some trivial sense, there is infinite resources, but the resource in cYBERsPACE isn't XYZ space, it's name space. And if I'm in the WorldWideDeck, you can bet I don't want to be receiving mail intended for the OTHER 5 or 6 dozen cdshaw's out there. But the funny thing is that there ARE cultures out there in which people DON'T have names. Inuit babies aren't named until age 10, at which point they are considered adults. Inuit teens can do EXACTLY what they like. Drink themselves to death, anything. These kid are no fun in the city, or so I'm told by my friends from Inuvik. There's also a tribe in Amazonia somewhere in which people don't have names at all, just fleeting references to current activity. "The one who leaves", "the one who swims", "the one with the spear". Both of these societies work(ed) because they have very small populations, and they hunt and gather food, and societal control is impossible. If you don't like your neighbors, walk a mile and there won't be any. You fend for yourself. Anyone can be a hermit, but it's hard to meet girls that way. If you want to be a CyberHermit, then literally, who cares? If you want to meet other CyberPeople, then you gotta implement/buy the protocol, or nobody's going to talk to you. If you want consummate your marriage to your CyberSO, take off the EyePhone, there just ain't no other way. -- Chris Shaw University of Alberta cdshaw@cs.UAlberta.ca Now with new, minty Internet flavour! CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !