Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge (1992)

"Far too accessible, eh Mr President? Too much access. By all means let's not provide our electronic networks with too much access. That might get dangerous. The networks might rot people's minds and corrupt their family values. They might create bad taste. Think this electrical network thing is a new problem? Think again. Listen to prominent litterateur James Russell Lowell speaking in 1885. ``We diligently inform ourselves and cover the continent with speaking wires.... we are getting buried alive under this avalanche of earthly impertinences... we... are willing to become mere sponges saturated from the stagnant goosepond of village gossip.''"

Looking forward to dropping this 140 year old quote in polite conversation.

Excellent read!

Many of Sterling’s insights—public domain erosion, corporate control of infrastructure, the impact of digital rights laws—are still playing out today.

Great read!

> In the Information Economy _everything_ is plentiful --- except attention.

I was a little surprised to read this in something from 1992 so I got curious how long people have been making this point. Apparently a long time -- here's another one from 1971:

> a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

(https://exformation.williamrinehart.com/i/60467201/a-short-h...)

This is insightful at least interesting considering it is from 1992. Shows the problems we face aren't as novel as we tend to believe, and humans are struggling with them maybe since the dawn of civilization.

I find my own thoughts about this ironic and paradoxical while I want information to be free and myself to be free to access information of my choice. I am also a slave to my basal desires and will gravitate towards "veriest trash".

As an anecdote, in 1980s India, there was one TV channel whose content was controlled by some elite and government with pittance of budget. People were forced to consume with no other choice. With 90s liberalization we now have 100s of channels and customers paying ton of money to view anything of choice; but general opinion is the quality of content has constantly degraded to the rock bottom. Same goes for the Internet. As much as I blame corporations, the publicly driven discourse isn't any better on mediums like WhatsApp and Reddit. For quality content you have to rely on platforms where some "elite" have decided on rules and vehemently enforce them like HN or some sub-reddits.

HTTPS link https://web.archive.org/web/20250704190024/http://bactra.org...

> a lot of our technology is sheer accident , serendipity, the way the cards happened to fall

What an absurd ahistorical fallacy.

> but thanks to mindwarping science fictional yellow-covered literature

Thanks to this you seem to have a confused and fantastical idea of the past and of our future.

> Imagine the pleasure of discovering one of these nice radioactive time-bombs six thousand years from now. Imagine the joy of selfless, dedicated archaeologists burrowing into one of these twentieth-century pharaoh's tombs and dropping dead, slowly and painfully.

Nonsensical. Uranium is part of the Earth's crust. There are plentiful natural deposits that already exist.

Aside from that it's not as if archaeology of ancient kingdom sites is perfectly safe now. There are various airborne health and physical hazards in doing this work.

> Shouldn't we give some thought to leaving them a legacy a little less lethal and offensive than our giant fossilized landfills and the radioactive fallout layer in the polar snows?

Peace requires prosperity. I'd trade all the land wars in history and those to come for some nuclear waste.