On Jun 18, 2014, at 3:11 PM, Doc Searls wrote:
See Rule #10
here?
Robert
no longer believes that. In fact he doesn't believe a lot of the stuff he said eleven years ago. (It's cool. Most of us veer. We call it growth.)
But Robert really does believe the unexamined life is not worth living
Not exactly.. he's a data exhibitionist.. but that doesn't mean he self-examines.. in the vein of that quote: "the unexamined life isn't worth living"
refers to being willing to look at all the hardest parts of yourself.. not others.
If he were, he would have to admit that he has an internal belief that others less fortunate should do what we does, maybe in his need to be right,
and that those less fortunate who don't do what he does deserve what they get (a less fortunate life.. but that's likely due to many other forces
and circumstances that have nothing to do with being a data exhibitionist). Or that he's better than others? I don't know.. just speculating,
but underlying beliefs like that are often at the root of a post like that.
The problem is the Robert is part of the privileged who are getting fewer but for a few short years, we all thought we could blog with impunity
without consequence.. in fact that's not true.
Robert is one of the few people for whom that remains true.. (blogging, FB, saying what you want online).
My point with him yesterday was that he could look at this with compassion and empathy for those less fortunate. His commenters mostly want to be like
him.. privileged, micro-famous, and doing whatever he wants, and they are angry that the world is changing and so take the techno-libertarian
view of others .. again with beliefs they don't consciously acknowledge but that are quite uncompassionate and uncool.
Then there is his posting of the Boing Boing article:
Which is full of the same people rejoicing in the same techno-libertarianism that Robert exhibited.. and reducing the whole thing to either complete
exhibitionism, OR privacy advocates locking everything down.
I think more than anything we are here to let people have choice, and autonomy over their own experiences, data, privacy, etc.
It's not one way or the other with haters on each end. Boing Boing's articles isn't extreme.. it too just asks for empathy and compassion.
The issue is mostly in the middle. But that doesn't make for 250 comments on the first Scoble post. or 100+ on the second.
— so long as Google, Facebook and other surveillance & personalization robots do the examining.
He's like Cypher in The Matrix: a red-pill swallower who would rather be jacked into The Matrix than live as a free and independent soul.
Maybe that's a bit harsh. I'm sure he doesn't believe he's giving up his independence, much less his soul, and maybe he's right that our feudal overlords have our best interests (which they know better than we do) at heart.
And, even though I'm one of those "privacy advocates" he's tired of, we remain friends.
And maybe he's right that he speaks for a bigger crowd than ours.
But minorities make revolution. And that's our job here.
Doc