[HN Gopher] Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge (1992)
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       Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge (1992)
        
       Author : whoopdedo
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2025-07-01 08:28 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bactra.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bactra.org)
        
       | gausswho wrote:
       | "Far too accessible, eh Mr President? Too much access. By all
       | means let's not provide our electronic networks with too much
       | access. That might get dangerous. The networks might rot people's
       | minds and corrupt their family values. They might create bad
       | taste. Think this electrical network thing is a new problem?
       | Think again. Listen to prominent litterateur James Russell Lowell
       | speaking in 1885. ``We diligently inform ourselves and cover the
       | continent with speaking wires.... we are getting buried alive
       | under this avalanche of earthly impertinences... we... are
       | willing to become mere sponges saturated from the stagnant
       | goosepond of village gossip.''"
       | 
       | Looking forward to dropping this 140 year old quote in polite
       | conversation.
       | 
       | Excellent read!
        
       | natiman1000 wrote:
       | Many of Sterling's insights--public domain erosion, corporate
       | control of infrastructure, the impact of digital rights laws--are
       | still playing out today.
       | 
       | Great read!
        
       | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
       | HTTPS link
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20250704190024/http://bactra.org...
        
       | marifjeren wrote:
       | > In the Information Economy _everything_ is plentiful --- except
       | attention.
       | 
       | I was a little surprised to read this in something from 1992 so I
       | got curious how long people have been making this point.
       | Apparently a long time -- here's another one from 1971:
       | 
       | > a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a
       | need to allocate that attention efficiently among the
       | overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
       | 
       | (https://exformation.williamrinehart.com/i/60467201/a-short-h...)
        
       | timewizard wrote:
       | > a lot of our technology is sheer accident , serendipity, the
       | way the cards happened to fall
       | 
       | What an absurd ahistorical fallacy.
       | 
       | > but thanks to mindwarping science fictional yellow-covered
       | literature
       | 
       | Thanks to this you seem to have a confused and fantastical idea
       | of the past and of our future.
       | 
       | > Imagine the pleasure of discovering one of these nice
       | radioactive time-bombs six thousand years from now. Imagine the
       | joy of selfless, dedicated archaeologists burrowing into one of
       | these twentieth-century pharaoh's tombs and dropping dead, slowly
       | and painfully.
       | 
       | Nonsensical. Uranium is part of the Earth's crust. There are
       | plentiful natural deposits that already exist.
       | 
       | Aside from that it's not as if archaeology of ancient kingdom
       | sites is perfectly safe now. There are various airborne health
       | and physical hazards in doing this work.
       | 
       | > Shouldn't we give some thought to leaving them a legacy a
       | little less lethal and offensive than our giant fossilized
       | landfills and the radioactive fallout layer in the polar snows?
       | 
       | Peace requires prosperity. I'd trade all the land wars in history
       | and those to come for some nuclear waste.
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-04 23:00 UTC)