To:       Glenn Greenwald - GGreenwald@salon.com

Cc:       Paul Krugman - (Address unknown, please forward)

Cc:       Doc Searls - dsearls@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Cc:       Dave Winer - dave.winer@gmail.com

Cc:       Jeff Jarvis - jeff@buzzmachine.com

From:  Doug Skoglund - skoglund@pdmsb.com

Date:   Wednesday, May 25, 2011 

Subject: My Way XV - Hippocratic Oath

Following is Jeff Jarvis' response to my previous post  "My Way XIV - Comments"

Didja have to start with the caveat? ;-)

But, no discussion -- instead he posted a new mind-blower, "A Hippocratic oath for the internet" -- and I quote:

First, do no harm.

That is the message I would like to bring to the e-G8 summit on the internet gathered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week in Paris.

I am apprehensive about a meeting of government and industry that begins with the presumption that they wield authority over the internet, the people's internet. Cory Doctorow decided not to attend, declaring it a "whitewash" for regimes that are at "war with the free, open net." Perhaps that's the right decision. Given the chance to go, I decided to witness it up close and say what I have to say so at least I can say I said it. And that is this:

The internet was born open, free, and distributed. As conceived and built, all bits are created equal. It must stay that way. Sarkozy called this meeting to discuss the growth of the internet. It will grow only if it is open and free. 

Sorry, Jeff, but that is pure unadulterated bulls**t -- the internet is not now, and never was, "open, free and distributed." The Personal Computer and the Internet are a highly competitive enterprise, developed and controlled by a small group of people for the benefit of that small group of people. It is absolutely no different than all the rest of all the activity in this great big F**ked-Up-World.

Update - Friday, May 27, 2011 09:30 pm CDT

Sorry, I ran out of gas writing that last paragraph -- Glenn Greenwald continues to identify problems, for which he deserves a lot of credit. The same with Paul Krugman -- slightly different problems, but important problems, non the less.

Doc Searls is living in some kind of fantasy world and Dave Winer seems determined to re-invent the proverbial wheel.

And then we have Jeff Jarvis, a noted journalism educator with his fantasy about a "open, free and distributed internet" -- whatever that means.

It is a strange and wonderful thing, the human brain -- it allows people of all persuasions to see exactly what they want to see -- and ignore all those things that create some kind of discontinuity in their thinking.

Our forefathers gave us a system of government -- a process, if you will -- Democracy, a process that is defined in the Constitution of the United States.

I have a couple of important books close at hand. One is "The Genius of America" by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes. I quote from their final chapter:

There is a strong sense that we have become selfish and self involved as a people. It is hard to say whether we are more self-interested than Americans at the time the Constitution was written. It was written because the framers thought we were very selfish, and they decided they could not fight human nature, only harness it. That was the genius of their system. It accepted us for who we are and yet still offered the optimistic vision that we could, as a nation, compromise our differences to agree to do great things.

We are all for ideas to make us less selfish or self-interested. But we are with the framers in doubting that human nature can be fundamentally changed.

They were right that our more selfish impulses can be channeled. Americans throughout their history have understood that it was in their own interests, ultimately, to preserve this system that balanced everyone's demands. This understanding is what we mean by our Constitutional Conscience. It is what Sean Wilentz is talking about when he describes coalitions that cut across lines of wealth, power and interest. It is noble to try to make people different. We admire those that try. But politics is the art of the possible. The framers made it possible for us to live together in liberty and community. The 220 year history of our Constitution is a history of Americans repeatedly rekindling their belief that their own interest are served by this system that grants extensive liberty in exchange for a willingness to compromise and tolerate differences. We Americans need to rekindle that belief once more.

Yes, we need to rekindle that belief -- and, how do we do that when people don't want to talk to each other?? Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes failed to cover that part of the problem -- and Glenn and Paul and Doc and Dave and Jeff aren't doing much better.

Time is running out!!!!!

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