Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Fucking Daft

Author:Joshua Allen
Posted:8/28/2000; 4:11:46 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 8/28/2000
Msg #:20397 (In response to 20396)
Prev/Next:20396 / 20398

Well, what does it mean to be respected? By cheap I was wondering if we are really willing to whore ourselves for the attention of others. There are many ways to get respect and recognition from your peers. But peer respect only means something if it's a side-effect of doing something that you believe is important. If getting peer attention is an end in itself, then we are in pathetic times. Where is the integrity in that? Can we have self-respect if we live for the respect of others?

And exactly what is the value of other-respect? So I decide to participate in a project where everyone works for free to create an exact replica of some commercial software package. Our project is spending literally scores of human lifetimes of combined effort to build a product for which there is no market (at least no paying market). There is a shortage of developers to do things that people are willing to pay money for, but people work on my project because we all stroke each other and get some attention from the media from time to time. Gee, if *everyone* joined my mutual respect club the software crisis would go away!! Sorry, but that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard, and I can tell you that society provides plenty of other mutual respect clubs for people to join. If someone can get you to sell your right to profit from software by offering you membership in their mutual recognition club, you are cheap indeed. Software people are rare. Minds that can grasp the complexities and turn these things into broadly useful tools are rare and precious. Don't give yours away!

It reminds me of a quote Umberto Eco made for a recent Daveos, predicting the future. He predicted that the rise of "real life" TV shows were just the beginning, and eventually the highest value in society would be to appear on television. Values would disappear, and television would no longer be a medium used to reflect or elevate people's values, because being on television would be the supreme value -- regardless of the context.

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