Liberal Values

This post by Adam Bosworth is interesting in that I agree with it profoundly, yet believe that the argument he makes is wrong-headed.
I am opposed to unreason and fundamentalism, but not for the reasons he cites.

It is time to speak up. It is time to say that facts are what matter, not faith, that human progress is accomplished through unfettered use of reason and inquiry and tolerance and discussion and debate, not through intolerant and irrational acts of terror or edicts. For all of our children and for the future, speak up against this wave of intolerance and irrationalism washing over the world.

Facts and reason contain no values. They are part of a methodology. What we have here is a war of values, nor methodologies. I believe that the opponents of what I might term "enlightenment values" also use reason and facts. Their values are very different though.

The problem with choosing reason and facts as the grounds on which to fight is twofold. First, they are bloodless, one should fight for what you believe, not for a methodology. Second, its condescending to assume that those with whom you disagree lack reason and an appreciation of facts. Its absolutist in a different way and makes true engagment difficult as the debate must be about values, and these are not stated in Bosworth's case.

In fact the whole article is intolerant of others' beliefs. Its ironic that at one point he says:

I was a history major in college and have loved and read history ever
since. I studied, in particular, the progressive era in history, an era
when the industrial revolution evolved from the grim satanic mills of
England into the modern industrial world.

The phrase "dark satanic mills" comes from William Blake. There's some debate about what Blake's mills were but one meaning is likely that Newton's "reason" had reduced us to cogs in a machine, which makes Bosworth's quotation somewhat ironic.

Official Google Blog: Judging Book Search by its cover

When I first heard of this I was enthusiastic. Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive have made a great start on making all information universally available, and Google with many many times the resources could do so much more.

Then, the other day I came across an article by Hal Varian in the October 2005 Communications of the ACM (not online I'm afraid) entitled "Universal Access to Information". As well as being a respected Economist, and the author of Information Rules he is a consultant for Google. His argument is that copyright law should be changed to make it easier for companies (such as Google) to copy works whose copyright is unregistered.

I'm broadly sympathetic to this idea, but must admit to a certain suspicion of Google's motives. Why do they not make the full text of works that are out of copyright available? I would have thought that the "free" version should be the first one returned in any search. There are certainly tens of thousands to millions of works that are out of copyright and which, if searchable by Google and having the full text available would make an immensely powerful resource.

Its very disappointing that they are not doing this. My suspicion is because its not worth their while -- they are after richer pickings.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Wikipedia tightens online rules

Looks like a new twist on the tragedy of the commons.

It would seem sufficient to make sure that all authors and editors can be traced. Wikipedia seems to have been a little more clever than this by requiring traceability for authors of new articles, but not for those who edit an existing article.

It is important to allow anonymity, as some people may be under threat for contributing to Wikipedia. There may be an irreconcilable connflict of interests here though, as allowing scurrilous falsehoods and self promotion will devalue Wikipedia. We don't want another UseNet.