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"and the evidence suggests that it is to that that we owe the collapse of oppressive regimes throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa" Never mind that th

"and the evidence suggests that it is to that that we owe the collapse of oppressive regimes throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa" Never mind that those oppressive regimes got replaced by...new oppressive regimes. I beg to differ that is Internet what makes a regime fall in North Africa. What makes regimes fall is people who can't buy food going from 30% to 75% because of inflation of commodities(created by OUR WESTERN central banks). Probably you think revolution is great, but I have been in Libya and Syria, before and in the wars and it is horrible. A civil war is the worst thing that could happen to a country, Americans could idealize it as they have forgotten what a real war is(fighting against non developed enemies 8000 miles away is not alike seeing your home in flames, your daughter raped or your brothers killed). I would love to use decentralized tools, but they are so bad. They have lots of features, but they are incredible hard to use. People will start using decentralized products when they are as easy to configure and install like a mac. Only centralized tools like facebook or Google provide easy of use that my grandpa could use.

kragen 12y ago
I agree. Well said. In 2011 the new oppressive regimes had not risen yet. Even today the one in Tunisia seems better than the old one. If you are interested in more detail in what I thought about the revolution in Egypt, http://canonical.org/~kragen/egypt-massacre-sotu.html http://canonical.org/~kragen/egypt-massacre-sotu.html goes into more detail from January 2011, just after #Jan25. The situation in in Egypt is terrible today. Violent revolutions have a tendency to submerge their revolution in their violence, because violence leads to rule by the most effectively violent. Those are not the people whose rule I want to live under. I tweeted about this in May 2011, a few months before the decentralization post we're discussing, when the Syrian opposition was still mostly nonviolent: https://twitter.com/kragen/status/65789586269421568 https://twitter.com/kragen/status/65789586269421568 "@shadihamid Well, it [violent rebellion] hasn't worked out so well for the movement to overthrow Gaddafi so far, has it? Lots more dead than Bahrain or Syria."
laxatives 12y ago
The scale of centralization is a bit overwhelming. Check out some of the things Google is hoping to get in to: http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/ http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/
wtbob 12y ago
> Americans could idealize it as they have forgotten what a real war is(fighting against non developed enemies 8000 miles away is not alike seeing your home in flames, your daughter raped or your brothers killed). Southerners remember what that was like: 150 years ago Yankees were raping and killing their way across the Confederacy. Young folks nowadays have forgotten, but there are plenty of folks still alive who heard about it from their elders. It really wasn't that long ago.
- fapjacks 12y ago
  No. Echoes of memories from your great-grandparents' great-grandparents is not even slightly on the same side of the room (or even in the same building) as living through an actual war on your own turf, civil or otherwise. I spent many years in a few different warzones, and you cannot possibly imagine what life is like for those folks. There is nothing in Western civilization that can convey these realities of war -- not even our own brand of tyranny or the relatively brief and cursory exposure of the vast majority our soldiers to foreign warzones. In a way, this attitude is almost offensive -- no offense to you personally -- because there is inherent disregard for the huge number of human beings living in awful shitholes where the human animal reigns.
- untog 12y ago
  That's not really comparable. My grandfather told me about fighting in World War II, but in no way does that mean I know what it was like to be there.
- Terr_ 12y ago
  > 150 years ago [...] there are plenty of folks still alive who heard about it from their elders. "Plenty"? Care to flesh out your math, here? I'm working under the assumption that newborn babies make horrible first-hand witnesses and (75 years later) equally horrible second-hand listeners, and that not that many of either are going to live to 75 before talking about their knowledge. It's probably more precise to say: "A lot of people here know a story about it", the same way a lot of Americans know about the Mayflower. > Southerners remember I think you're subtly equivocating here. The "remembering" going on is not at all the same kind as, say, "New Yorkers Remember 9/11".
coldtea 12y ago
>"and the evidence suggests that it is to that that we owe the collapse of oppressive regimes throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa" Yeah, this is BS. That was just a Western media "human interest" story. For one, those heavily into blogging and twitter and the like in a place like Libya or Tunisia, or invariably more affluent than the rest and more westernized (including more friendly to western BS interests). So they make a good subject to showcase as "the voice of country X", when in reality they are nothing like that statistically speaking. Second, the "middle east and nothern africa" had tons of revolutions and collapses of oppressive regimes, leftist movements, anti-colonial movements and what have you, all throughtout the 20th century without twitter and blogging. Just because some place like Egypt is the first time a 20-something guy in S.F. heard of revolution in those countries, doesn't mean it's due to "twitter".

kragen 12y ago

I agree. Well said. In 2011 the new oppressive regimes had not risen yet. Even today the one in Tunisia seems better than the old one. If you are interested in more detail in what I thought about the revolution in Egypt, http://canonical.org/~kragen/egypt-massacre-sotu.html http://canonical.org/~kragen/egypt-massacre-sotu.html goes into more detail from January 2011, just after #Jan25. The situation in in Egypt is terrible today. Violent revolutions have a tendency to submerge their revolution in their violence, because violence leads to rule by the most effectively violent. Those are not the people whose rule I want to live under. I tweeted about this in May 2011, a few months before the decentralization post we're discussing, when the Syrian opposition was still mostly nonviolent: https://twitter.com/kragen/status/65789586269421568 https://twitter.com/kragen/status/65789586269421568 "@shadihamid Well, it [violent rebellion] hasn't worked out so well for the movement to overthrow Gaddafi so far, has it? Lots more dead than Bahrain or Syria."

laxatives 12y ago

The scale of centralization is a bit overwhelming. Check out some of the things Google is hoping to get in to: http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/ http://www.google.com/ideas/projects/

wtbob 12y ago

> Americans could idealize it as they have forgotten what a real war is(fighting against non developed enemies 8000 miles away is not alike seeing your home in flames, your daughter raped or your brothers killed). Southerners remember what that was like: 150 years ago Yankees were raping and killing their way across the Confederacy. Young folks nowadays have forgotten, but there are plenty of folks still alive who heard about it from their elders. It really wasn't that long ago.

fapjacks 12y ago
No. Echoes of memories from your great-grandparents' great-grandparents is not even slightly on the same side of the room (or even in the same building) as living through an actual war on your own turf, civil or otherwise. I spent many years in a few different warzones, and you cannot possibly imagine what life is like for those folks. There is nothing in Western civilization that can convey these realities of war -- not even our own brand of tyranny or the relatively brief and cursory exposure of the vast majority our soldiers to foreign warzones. In a way, this attitude is almost offensive -- no offense to you personally -- because there is inherent disregard for the huge number of human beings living in awful shitholes where the human animal reigns.
untog 12y ago
That's not really comparable. My grandfather told me about fighting in World War II, but in no way does that mean I know what it was like to be there.
Terr_ 12y ago
> 150 years ago [...] there are plenty of folks still alive who heard about it from their elders. "Plenty"? Care to flesh out your math, here? I'm working under the assumption that newborn babies make horrible first-hand witnesses and (75 years later) equally horrible second-hand listeners, and that not that many of either are going to live to 75 before talking about their knowledge. It's probably more precise to say: "A lot of people here know a story about it", the same way a lot of Americans know about the Mayflower. > Southerners remember I think you're subtly equivocating here. The "remembering" going on is not at all the same kind as, say, "New Yorkers Remember 9/11".

coldtea 12y ago

>"and the evidence suggests that it is to that that we owe the collapse of oppressive regimes throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa" Yeah, this is BS. That was just a Western media "human interest" story. For one, those heavily into blogging and twitter and the like in a place like Libya or Tunisia, or invariably more affluent than the rest and more westernized (including more friendly to western BS interests). So they make a good subject to showcase as "the voice of country X", when in reality they are nothing like that statistically speaking. Second, the "middle east and nothern africa" had tons of revolutions and collapses of oppressive regimes, leftist movements, anti-colonial movements and what have you, all throughtout the 20th century without twitter and blogging. Just because some place like Egypt is the first time a 20-something guy in S.F. heard of revolution in those countries, doesn't mean it's due to "twitter".