fractalnavel

to do: create a list of things i will never do.  of course, this would be compiled from things that may have once mattered, regardless how outlandish.  might be a good “facing up to reality” exercise.  depends on the person, on what their relative strengths and weaknesses are.

of course, each item on the list needs explanation.  that's part of the reality check.  as the great philosopher harry callahan once said, “a man's got to know his limitations”.

interesting stuff to think about.  i don't think i will do it in public.

i was wondering why i haven't seen many items by new york times op-ed columnists in the news lists lately.  so i visited nytimes.com.  apparently, all of these regular nyt columnists are now premium content.  a great deal of their influence comes from exposure on the web - the freeweb, i should say.  a recent comment of mine here:

weird how a paper that so obviously wants to be a mechanism of social change will bury all its material. shows you their real priorities aren't much different than those they often rail against.

in this case they (the nyt business folks) are undercutting the exact reason these people write.  if i were one of these columnists, i'd challenge this policy, and if unsuccessful, move on.

just part of an increasing trend of business interests annexing the commons.  happens all the time, historically.  this is not a phenomenon exclusive to the internet.  restricting access to any information through monetary or geographical (as in libraries) or technological controls smacks of a type of elitism.  more of an argument against unfettered “free” market capitalism ?  it's no different than any other resource.  the engines of commerce start to take notice of something that grew from the grass roots into something valuable, and they do what is expected of them.  i would add that this in turn decreases the value of what they grabbed, but apparently this does not seem to matter to consumers who support the results by literally buying into it.

earlier posts here talk about things like what “freedom” really means, in particular free speech, and also about the reliability of information in a public commons.  and one of my earliest posts, about information vs. economic status.  not sure where i'm going here, but my head feels stuffed with unformed thought at the moment.  see the i.c.k. post category for even more.

well, what i have written here isn't much more than the usual, but i have a growing internal sense of synthesis of these and other things, the the consequences thereof.  right now this is just another notation on the information dead file, locked behind the tombstone pages of premium access notifications.  and there is no life inside the grave; all is dust.