Oolite Bulletins

Which of these methods would foster a sense of snooty exclusivity on a forum web site?

Addendum: I'm back with a few questions...

Did anyone here have a Facebook account back when you could only register from a *.edu email address? If so, was it as lame then as it is now? Or has allowing the great unwashed masses in lowered the tone of the joint?

Has anyone created a new Google account recently, since they appointed themselves the de-facto global surveillance state? I lost my Google password in the Great Reformat and recently went to register a new account. But I bailed out on the "You will tell us your phone numbers" page. I can live without Gmail.

Hmm the walls of any forum can be made pretty thick. I assume this tirade has been formed from a personal slight?

You seem to be a socialist. I love socialists

Remember: you can lie. Or get a pay as go go number that you keep for purely internet transactions.

NEVER give these people access to your entire world. They have to be fought, but it takes a certain will to fight them.

If you value your privacy, then fight. Or capitulate like so many others.

<digression>Since we are on this subject, here is the url -- http://blog.ethicalsocialnetwork.org -- of an association doing among other things analyses on the changes on society, business and Law brought by our continuous and quick technological evolution. Centered on social networks as a perceived main cause, but it seems connected objects will now take a big part as the perceived main cause</digression>.

Day wrote:

...changes on society, business and Law brought by our continuous and quick technological evolution...

I dispute this premise...!

I think this is a myth. You can read in the forewords of books from the 1970s & 80s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change..." You can find the same phrase in forewords of books from the 1910s & 20s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change; electricity, the motor car, the heavier-than-air craft, the Marconi wireless are changing our society..."

I think people have an innate belief that technological change is driving social change, but I don't think it's true. People employ new technologies for the same purposes they previously employed older technologies. Basically, trying to screw other people out of their money, trying to attract a mate, and trying to find a like-minded cohort. I think the only technology that changed society is the invention of money.

Society is changing, that's for sure. The referendum in Ireland last weekend shows that. But I doubt there's any link between social change and technological change.

Wildeblood wrote:

Day wrote:

...changes on society, business and Law brought by our continuous and quick technological evolution...

I dispute this premise...!

I think this is a myth. You can read in the forewords of books from the 1970s & 80s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change..." You can find the same phrase in forewords of books from the 1910s & 20s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change; electricity, the motor car, the heavier-than-air craft, the Marconi wireless are changing our society..."

I think people have an innate belief that technological change is driving social change, but I don't think it's true. People employ new technologies for the same purposes they previously employed older technologies. Basically, trying to screw other people out of their money, trying to attract a mate, and trying to find a like-minded cohort. I think the only technology that changed society is the invention of money.

Society is changing, that's for sure. The referendum in Ireland last weekend shows that. But I doubt there's any link between social change and technological change.

First, I would have answered that I agree with your arguments, and agree with what you conclude, except the last sentence. I would have said we only have a "scale" misunderstanding. Social networks / Internet 2.0 don't change the motivation of people, but cause new situations (Google maps was seen as an invasion of privacy in Japan of the highest order of bad manners) that have to be resolved via law, and provisioned by businesses. What I mean is, there are some costly adaptations to be made, which have to be made together as a global society. That wouldn't change the general motivations of people, only the way they live their means to their goals.

Then, I thought "He... But I think it is a myth that we have the same motivations as our elders." I think it's a fallacy brought by the fact that we don't know them very well, and replace our knowledge with imagination and our own view of the world.
For example of technological changes bringing social changes:
- money is a social tool allowing to stock energy,
- writing brought the end of the rule of the elders, wisdom and knowledge being written rather than stored into (old) men, it's a social tool allowing to stock knowledge,
- press brought the dissemination of knowledge to the masses,
- toilets brought the change from big families with lots of children dying to small families with most children surviving,
- XIXth century industrial changes brought the 1914-1918 war which in turn showed that women could replace men and paved the way for equal rights, it's linked too with the idea that women are loveable; it's a very recent idea, dating from the XIXth century. Before there were used for procreating heirs (wife), sex (mistresses), work.

Having said that, I think we are yet in the same period of change initiated in the XIXth century (which invalidates some of your arguments :-p ).

Finally, I think that even in our current time, very different societies with very different social behaviors exist (American, Italian, Chinese, Indian, to cite some extreme examples). And technological changes bring changes to these societies.

Wildeblood wrote:

Day wrote:

...changes on society, business and Law brought by our continuous and quick technological evolution...

I dispute this premise...!

I think this is a myth. You can read in the forewords of books from the 1970s & 80s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change..." You can find the same phrase in forewords of books from the 1910s & 20s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change; electricity, the motor car, the heavier-than-air craft, the Marconi wireless are changing our society..."

I think people have an innate belief that technological change is driving social change, but I don't think it's true. People employ new technologies for the same purposes they previously employed older technologies. Basically, trying to screw other people out of their money, trying to attract a mate, and trying to find a like-minded cohort. I think the only technology that changed society is the invention of money...

I'm a bit more on the fence with this one. The older I get, the more I believe that society hasn't changed too much through history. There are elements of ancient Greek and Roman society that still mirror our own. "The wheel turns, and what is old is new again". 60's and 70's fashion comes back into vogue (hopefully the 80's doesn't ). The main 'difference' is that in ancient Roman times, a social change may have taken years or decades to filter through the society, whereas (as Day intimates) with the advent of modern mass media, change can take place almost immediately (within a year, and sometimes withing days or hours) - 'Ice Bucket Challenge' springs to mind - but unlike ancient times, disappears just as quickly, to be replaced with something just as fleeting and not that much different.

Getting back to exclusivity. IMO, bbs and forums end up (in general) being exclusive by default, because they are ultimately catering for a narrow, subject specific audience. Over time, regular contributors get to 'know' each other and a bb/forum becomes more a social interaction of those like minded people. I don't think this is any different to bowls clubs, amateur theatrical groups, remote control aero clubs, the local Rotary or any number of social gatherings. Some groups may enforce a set of conditions for entry (a choir may require you to be able to sing), but it isn't necessarily to foster snootiness. This is not to say that people both inside or outside a club/group/forum/bb don't perceive a level of exclusivity - the desire to have what someone else doesn't is basic human nature.

As a follow on example of social change - Christianity and how it's perceived in Islam. Which is exclusive? Has anything changed?

Wildeblood wrote:

Day wrote:

...changes on society, business and Law brought by our continuous and quick technological evolution...

I dispute this premise...!

I think this is a myth. You can read in the forewords of books from the 1970s & 80s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change..." You can find the same phrase in forewords of books from the 1910s & 20s, "We live in a time of unprecedented change; electricity, the motor car, the heavier-than-air craft, the Marconi wireless are changing our society..."

I think people have an innate belief that technological change is driving social change, but I don't think it's true. People employ new technologies for the same purposes they previously employed older technologies. Basically, trying to screw other people out of their money, trying to attract a mate, and trying to find a like-minded cohort. I think the only technology that changed society is the invention of money.

Society is changing, that's for sure. The referendum in Ireland last weekend shows that. But I doubt there's any link between social change and technological change.

And I dispute your disputation..

You're not thinking far enough back in time. The era of accelerating technological change began further back than your post suggests. Personally speaking, I'd regard it as starting with the Industrial Revolution, which is to say, around 1760. To me, the most significant marker event of the period would probably be the invention of the steam locomotive in 1804.

All the major events of the Industrial era have resulted in major social changes. One of the biggest was the invention of the motor car, which for the first time, allowed ordinary people to seek mates further afield than their own town or village, which led to massive changes in society. Possibly the single biggest social change caused by technological change was the invention of the birth control pill, the ramifications of which are still in the process of playing out, and will continue to do so for at least another generation or two.

A lot depends on your definition of "social change". Yes, technological change is used to satisfy the same basic human needs and motivations, but undoubtedly it can provoke massive changes in social structure. In the 18th century, more than 90% of people in the UK were agricultural labourers, living in small villages as more-or-less subsistence farmers. By 1850 only 22% of the UK population was working on the land; now, it's just 1.4%, and the overwhelming majority of us are city-dwellers. This was entirely driven by scientific and technological development, and was only enabled by other developments in e.g. medicine.

Yes it is important to vector in the change of skill base and the different types of jobs. Case in point; my job didn't exist 30 years ago.

Plus, there's the - usually very sudden and traumatic - changes imposed on societies through the application of the technologies of others. From Iain M. Banks's Excession (betraying his self-confessed addiction to Sid Meier's Civilization, but relevant nonetheless):

Iain M. Banks wrote:

The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass ... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.

the most significant marker event of the period would probably be the invention of the steam locomotive in 1804.

The light the blue touch paper moment was surely the creation of the Canal network. In short the first rule of commerce is that you have to create demand. Most social change comes from the desire to 'own' stuff wealthy people take for granted (which is why things like arranged marriages have not filtered into the commonplace as there is no desire to 'own' it). Like longer lives or labour saving devices (aka a butler). Things that took great craft and years of dedicated craftsmanship to make/develop would be well out of the reach of 99% of the population. One of the major changes was the introduction of 'factories' (more correctly manufactories) so that moderately wealth merchants and the like could eat off Porcelain, and use metal cutlery. These were major exports at the time (shipped from places like Stoke, Birmingham and Manchester via the Canal network) the thus begins the (first and last) Economic Empire. The desire for decent clothing is a good example, without the mills churning out miles of cloth (again made possible by shipping cotton to the mills via the Canals). Things will always go in this direction as our survival instincts know. I read somewhere a few years back that the advent of cheap central heating and it's implementation across the board (again triggered by the wealthy installing it first) increased the average life span by 10 years.

NigelJK wrote:

the most significant marker event of the period would probably be the invention of the steam locomotive in 1804.

The light the blue touch paper moment was surely the creation of the Canal network. In short the first rule of commerce is that you have to create demand. Most social change comes from the desire to 'own' stuff wealthy people take for granted (which is why things like arranged marriages have not filtered into the commonplace as there is no desire to 'own' it). Like longer lives or labour saving devices (aka a butler). Things that took great craft and years of dedicated craftsmanship to make/develop would be well out of the reach of 99% of the population. One of the major changes was the introduction of 'factories' (more correctly manufactories) so that moderately wealth merchants and the like could eat off Porcelain, and use metal cutlery. These were major exports at the time (shipped from places like Stoke, Birmingham and Manchester via the Canal network) the thus begins the (first and last) Economic Empire. The desire for decent clothing is a good example, without the mills churning out miles of cloth (again made possible by shipping cotton to the mills via the Canals). Things will always go in this direction as our survival instincts know. I read somewhere a few years back that the advent of cheap central heating and it's implementation across the board (again triggered by the wealthy installing it first) increased the average life span by 10 years.

You may well be right.. for the early days after the birth of Capitalism, in the UK, at any rate..

But then we're getting dangerously close to The Enclosures, and the invention of Capitalism.. which would result in one major rant on my part, so I'd rather not go there..

Capitalism has been around pretty much since money was invented. It was only recognised and named much more recently.

Smivs wrote:

Capitalism has been around pretty much since money was invented. It was only recognised and named much more recently.

This is discutable.

I pretend there was not enough monetary mass for it to be capitalism.

"Capital" was in the form of material means of production, very uneasily reassignable. I mean, a lord could sell a land to another one, but the peasants were not parted from the land. So, from a "most people point of view", ownership (ability to destroy, transfer, use and lend) was extremely stable. Capitalism as in "capital really manageable by its owner" wasn't probably a significant part of the society processes before the XVIIIth century, and then the industrial revolution.

What created our current capitalism version was the decision to let legal entities become shareholders (can't remember exactly when, but less than 3 centuries ago, I think). And the rise of the power of the shareholders versus the power of the companies executives dates only from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, methinks.

I wonder about the liquidity of agricultural properties during the roman empire, though, since it was a _big_ empire.

Smivs wrote:

Capitalism has been around pretty much since money was invented. It was only recognised and named much more recently.

Sorry mate.. but you're very, very wrong. My guess is that, as with most people, your definition of Capitalism is extremely sloppy. But that's ok.. Capitalists like people doing that (heck, their own books encourage it), as it puts them onside, thinking they're Capitalists too, when they're actually not.

@ Day.. yes, you're close.. but even the shareholder part of it isn't fundamental.