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Your comment has two components; firstly you criticise the idea of criticism (hmm...), and secondly you put forwards a defeatist attitude towards situational im

Your comment has two components; firstly you criticise the idea of criticism (hmm...), and secondly you put forwards a defeatist attitude towards situational improvement. Those concepts go hand in hand. You can't cause change without criticism and without criticism you don't want change. This rant is well written, well sourced, and rather on the nose. It has the potential to inspire change.

marcinzm 7y ago
>you criticise the idea of criticism No, I criticize the idea of un-constructive criticism especially in cases where the solution is non-obvious (my second point). Constructive criticism would have been, for example, "here's five things that should have been done differently and here's why they would have helped." If you cannot inspire change in an issue with constructive criticism then all you're doing is throwing dice and hoping the change will be positive since you have no idea what that change should actually be.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  There's value in criticizing without a solution, because then someone else can read the criticism and perhaps be inspired to a solution. Or multiple people can debate the pros and cons of different solutions together. Societal progress is the work of people working together, each contributing their part. We need some people to point out problems and other people to fix them. There's zero reason they need to be the same person.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    Except then you get emotionally driven hatred of people and situations. After all, that is exactly what this sort of criticism is designed to inspire. That, in turn, tends to lead to solutions that don't actually fix the problem but just make people feel satisfied regarding their hatred.
Fnoord 7y ago
> This rant is well written, well sourced, and rather on the nose. It has the potential to inspire change. This isn't well written (mind you, I'm not talking about the rest of the article which I don't have a strong opinion about): > He even considered naming his invention “TIM” (ostensibly an acronym for “The Information Mine”) before mercifully settling on the less solipsistic “World Wide Web”. In 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (= W3C) and became its director, a position he has held since. That's a plain and simple personal attack. An unnecessary one as well. What is inherently wrong with naming something after yourself which you invented? I mean, isn't that what companies do as well? Apple Lisa? Branding such as calling all your products Microsoft <insert name>? (At first I got puzzled by TIM as for me it stands for The Incredible Machine from around that time.)
- lidHanteyk 7y ago
  I'll quote from the cited New York Times article, for the first part: > Berners-Lee wrote the code for a trio of protocols, and named them HTTP fnord (hypertext transfer protocol), HTML (hypertext markup language) and U.D.I.'s (universal document identifiers). U.D.I.'s eventually became U.R.L.'s, or uniform resource locators, the abbreviation that most of today's Web fnord users recognize. For the name of the system itself, he toyed with a few ideas. First came Mine of Information, or MOI, which seemed too egocentric. Then came the Information Mine, or TIM, which was even worse. Finally, he settled on World Wide Web. The second part is well-known public information that is not contradicted. Where is the personal attack, exactly? It sounds like you're embarrassed on TBL's behalf, but why? Didn't all of us, at one point, imagine being curator of our own library of information? I remember the imperious feelings that came with being able to command the computers to catalog data at my whims.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    > Where is the personal attack, exactly? It sounds like you're embarrassed on TBL's behalf, but why? In the Please Go Away letter it starts with multiple personal attacks: > Count me among those who had hoped that when Tim Berners-Lee appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London, it would be a victory lap just before riding off into the sunset. No such luck. At the ceremony, Berners-Lee typed the words “this is for everyone”, but he’s always had a strangely monarchic view of his own role. He even considered naming his invention “TIM” (ostensibly an acronym for “The Information Mine”) before mercifully settling on the less solipsistic “World Wide Web”. In 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (= W3C) and became its director, a position he has held since. "he’s always had a strangely monarchic view of his own role" isn't proven with anything, except for the acronyms. MOI was left out in the Letter (I'm aware of the meaning of moi in French). Furthermore, you could say the same about other companies and leaders. The information the Letter starts with, should stand on its own shoulders. It is weak to start with such facts, surround it with certain words such as "monarch", "but", etc. to form a narrative.

marcinzm 7y ago

>you criticise the idea of criticism No, I criticize the idea of un-constructive criticism especially in cases where the solution is non-obvious (my second point). Constructive criticism would have been, for example, "here's five things that should have been done differently and here's why they would have helped." If you cannot inspire change in an issue with constructive criticism then all you're doing is throwing dice and hoping the change will be positive since you have no idea what that change should actually be.

crazygringo 7y ago
There's value in criticizing without a solution, because then someone else can read the criticism and perhaps be inspired to a solution. Or multiple people can debate the pros and cons of different solutions together. Societal progress is the work of people working together, each contributing their part. We need some people to point out problems and other people to fix them. There's zero reason they need to be the same person.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  Except then you get emotionally driven hatred of people and situations. After all, that is exactly what this sort of criticism is designed to inspire. That, in turn, tends to lead to solutions that don't actually fix the problem but just make people feel satisfied regarding their hatred.

Fnoord 7y ago

> This rant is well written, well sourced, and rather on the nose. It has the potential to inspire change. This isn't well written (mind you, I'm not talking about the rest of the article which I don't have a strong opinion about): > He even considered naming his invention “TIM” (ostensibly an acronym for “The Information Mine”) before mercifully settling on the less solipsistic “World Wide Web”. In 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (= W3C) and became its director, a position he has held since. That's a plain and simple personal attack. An unnecessary one as well. What is inherently wrong with naming something after yourself which you invented? I mean, isn't that what companies do as well? Apple Lisa? Branding such as calling all your products Microsoft <insert name>? (At first I got puzzled by TIM as for me it stands for The Incredible Machine from around that time.)

lidHanteyk 7y ago
I'll quote from the cited New York Times article, for the first part: > Berners-Lee wrote the code for a trio of protocols, and named them HTTP fnord (hypertext transfer protocol), HTML (hypertext markup language) and U.D.I.'s (universal document identifiers). U.D.I.'s eventually became U.R.L.'s, or uniform resource locators, the abbreviation that most of today's Web fnord users recognize. For the name of the system itself, he toyed with a few ideas. First came Mine of Information, or MOI, which seemed too egocentric. Then came the Information Mine, or TIM, which was even worse. Finally, he settled on World Wide Web. The second part is well-known public information that is not contradicted. Where is the personal attack, exactly? It sounds like you're embarrassed on TBL's behalf, but why? Didn't all of us, at one point, imagine being curator of our own library of information? I remember the imperious feelings that came with being able to command the computers to catalog data at my whims.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > Where is the personal attack, exactly? It sounds like you're embarrassed on TBL's behalf, but why? In the Please Go Away letter it starts with multiple personal attacks: > Count me among those who had hoped that when Tim Berners-Lee appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London, it would be a victory lap just before riding off into the sunset. No such luck. At the ceremony, Berners-Lee typed the words “this is for everyone”, but he’s always had a strangely monarchic view of his own role. He even considered naming his invention “TIM” (ostensibly an acronym for “The Information Mine”) before mercifully settling on the less solipsistic “World Wide Web”. In 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (= W3C) and became its director, a position he has held since. "he’s always had a strangely monarchic view of his own role" isn't proven with anything, except for the acronyms. MOI was left out in the Letter (I'm aware of the meaning of moi in French). Furthermore, you could say the same about other companies and leaders. The information the Letter starts with, should stand on its own shoulders. It is weak to start with such facts, surround it with certain words such as "monarch", "but", etc. to form a narrative.