Monthly Archives: December 2004

The Triumph and Collapse of Liberalism

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…When it came to the formation of the democracies of the West, the concepts of liberalism and democracy, while not inseparable, were surely complementary, with the emphasis on the former. Among the founders of the American republic were serious men who were more dubious about democracy than about liberty. They certainly did not believe in — indeed, they feared — populism; populism that, unlike a century ago, has now become (and not only in the United States) the political instrument of “conservatives,” of so-called men of the “Right.” It is significant that in Europe, too, the appeal of the term “liberal” has declined, while “democratic” is the adopted name of a variety of parties, many of them not only antiliberal but also extreme right-wing nationalist.

Liberalism in its noblest, and also in its most essential, sense has always meant (and, to be fair, here and there it still means) an exaltation, a defense of the fundamental value and category of human dignity. But much of scientism and technology (yes, including the orthodoxy of Darwinism and the absolute belief in progress) declares that there was, there is, and there remains no fundamental difference between human beings and all other living beings. But if that is so, what happens to the emphasis on human dignity? Either human beings are unique or they are not. Either thesis may be credible, but not both. That is not just a question for religion.

The Chronicle: The Triumph and Collapse of Liberalism: 12/10/04

If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned a certain football game on Sunday

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That’s because the Eagles kicked so much ass – it’s downright scary.

My bet is half of Philly is already preparing to be let down.

We’re friggin wimps. We should be enjoying the moment and cheering on our team. They’ve knocked on the door of the Super Bowl three times in a row. Other cities would die to have the Eagles as their team. But for us, that just isn’t enough. We want it all. We want it all. And we want it now.

The “architecture of participation”

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John Battelle comments on Google’s recent moves and concludes they are joining the “architecture of participation”:

…what really distinguishes open source is not just source, but an “architecture of participation” that includes low barriers to entry by newcomers, and some mechanism for isolating the cathedral from the bazaar. This architecture of participation allows for a real free market of ideas, in which anyone can put forward a proposed solution to a problem; it becomes adopted, if at all, by acclamation and the organic spread of its usefulness.

All of the most significant open source communities have some centralized “cathedral” elements — look at the way Linus controls what goes into the Linux kernel, or the way Larry Wall controls what goes into the design of Perl. But the most successful open source communities surround that cathedral with a bazaar that is significantly open. In the case of Linux, this is the original Unix architecture, a set of “small pieces loosely joined” (to quote the title of David Weinberger’s book about the architecture of the WWW). In the case of Perl, it was CPAN, as much as anything.

Tim O’Reilly: The Architecture of Participation: 4/6/2003

In this, I think he nails why the Dean campaign was so effective utilizing Meetup.com. Meetup.com was the Dean campaign’s “bazaar” that indeed was a set of small groups, loosely joined, but united in purpose. It’s why his organization, Democracy for America, is still alive and kicking now, and if it doesn’t lose its way, will continue to do so for a long time to come.

An EditThisPage anniversary

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Thanks for wishing us a happy five years blogging Mr. PapaScott 🙂 Sorry for missing yours. Happy belated five years for you too.

It’s getting real close to my own 5 year EditThisPage anniversary. It’s a good opportunity for me elaborate on my own personal history a bit:

Back then, I was already a blogger, maintaining my personal site using a free version of Frontier for Windows, amongst other hand built tools of my own. Blogging was so new, I was, in fact, the only known blogger in all of Knight Ridder, the company I was working for. Additionally, I was publishing a RSS feed on the Kosovo war that was being aggregated by My.Userland and My.Netscape. These efforts brought me some visibility in the company, and more than a little notoriety with some folks there. Many thought I should not be doing what I was, and should stop. A good thing I didn’t.

When Dan Gillmor was exploring options to run his weblog, word had reached him about me, and he asked for my opinion. Whether Dan using Manila (DaveNet: Oct. 25, 1999) was influenced by me, or the other way around – I have no idea anymore – but one thing was for sure, I had to have a way to experiment outside the confines of work. I didn’t want simply extend my ego online with a new blog about myself, hense PhillyFuture was born.

Happy anniversary to you, to us, to Manila and to its gone, but not forgotten hosting environment EditThisPage.

EditThisPage and Blogger.com (Blogger.com preceded EditThisPage (DaveNet: Dec. 08, 1999) by a couple months I think, while Manila, the software behind EditThisPage, came out almost simultaneously with it) provided models that it seems all other blogging tools and environments have looked to for inspiration and have striven to improve upon.

One thing I need to add: I miss working with Dan and the folks at KR. Being surrounded by journalists and their idealism during that time was something special. Especially Dan. Our talks about technology were just terrific.

All of us were kinda like homesteaders back then. But in my humble opinion ? it’s now when things get interesting. After all ? you need to have paved roads to have a Mustang, and our roads aren’t all the way there yet, but are getting close. And the Lord knows ? I want a Mustang!

deli.icio.us stuff

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After reading that Rafe was using it, I thought I’d give it a try. You’ll never go back to managing bookmarks entirely with your browser again. I’m using its output to help build my Links page on this site.

The following are some links for my own reference:

XML.com: Introducing del.icio.us.

Manageability: Groovy and Del.icio.us.

Jeffrey Veen: Publishing Links With Perl.

Roger L. Costello: Building Web Services the REST Way.

Jon Udell: del.icio.us.

The Pennsylvania Telco bill gets signed

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The Register: Philly sells Pennsylvania to Verizon.

TechDirt: Rendell Signs No Muni Bill Into Law.

Engadget: Verizon and Philly cut deal on citywide WiFi, basically shaft rest of Pennsylvania.

Slashdot: Verizon-Pushed WiFi Bill Becomes Law in PA.

Free Press: Pennsylvania citizens get a raw deal from Rendell on broadband bill.

John Sundman and Friends: PA HB 30 Now Law *sigh*.