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There should be public communication booths like
telephone booths but that have really streamlined access to
email, IM and Google.
Steve Mann
http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~mann/
Cyborg [JesusHChrist, Sep 23 2005]
Singularity
http://www.accelera...lligencehowsoon.htm
[JesusHChrist, Sep 23 2005]
List of Human Rights
http://www.yourrigh...-rights/index.shtml
Unfortunately, to this date no Article 15: Right to Google. Unless of course you'd class it as torture. [hidden truths, Sep 23 2005]
JHC's Kurzweil link
http://www.kurzweilai.net/
(You need to include the http:// bit) [angel, Sep 24 2005, last modified Sep 27 2005]
Kiosk
http://www.f1kiosks.co.uk/#
First hit. [skinflaps, Sep 24 2005]
if you like use that computer to make paper messages
http://www.esnailer.com/
[beanangel, Oct 30 2008]
Public wifi booths
http://m.auburnpub....l?mobile_touch=true
[JesusHChrist, Nov 18 2014]
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Annotation:
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Why? Public access computers are already provided in many libraries. Please do not waste my tax dollars on your idle electronic chatter. |
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Yeah, you're losing me at the "city goverment" thing. It might be feasible to have corporately owned "phone booth" type dealios which you pay by credit or whatever for googling on the run. |
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Not to be confused with an internet cafe. |
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Privately run internet phone booths
already exist in the UK. I don't see what
more would be gained by city and borough
councils opening any more. |
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Dealios: breakfast cereal in the shape of various currency symbols ¢, £, ¥, $, etc. |
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"Web." It's called "Web". What you want access to is the "World-Wide Web", not just the website of a single large corporation. |
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Jutta, your comment is mfd - naming. |
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I'm complaining about a conceptual error that happens to pander to a big corporation, and happens to deny the work of thousands of people, many of them volunteers, many of them academics. It's a kind of error that's frequently made on this site, and frequently made by this poster. |
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I like the idea. But it's alraeady baked. There's one near the bottom of my road, looks like a telephone box - actually you can browse the web etc... BT do them. |
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[OT]I tried to get Royal Mail to issue people with groups of personal e-mail addresses which they could keep for life, years ago. - The idea being that you'd have one for personal use, one for friends, one for business another for "spam-allowed" mails, another for government use etc. |
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I suggested that they could charge if people wanted text or images printed (at post-offices), and could provide data on CD (charged also) -I never got a response. |
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jutta: given that "Googling" has come to stand for "searching the web" the same way "Hoovering" stands for "using a vacuum cleaner," I think you're fighting a losing battle there. Until the Next Big Thing comes along, of course. |
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Maybe AOL's real problem was that you couldn't say it easily, so people like JHC talk about IMing, instead of AOLing. |
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Thanks for clarifying. Still, you can't help but defer to innovators like Xerox, Kleenex, et cetera. |
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Wasn't that an 80's cop show? |
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By saying "Google" over and over I only mean to make the
point
that the access that Google provides is enough of a step
above the access that was provided before Google, in
terms of its simplicity, strength and speed, that it should
be integrated into the culture in the form of a basic
right rather than a competitive edge. I think that the
difference between the level of access that Google was
the first to provide, (just in terms of
the simplicity, bredth and speed), and the level of access
that was available before Google, is enough of a
difference -- it changes the playing field enough that
access to the playing field has to be garunteed for all
involved or there wont be any game. So hmm, what I am
trying to say is that a certain level of access to
information on the Internet is made, by the access itself,
not a complicated patentable thing but a basic right like
the rights in the 1st amendment of the American
Constitution, which basically protects the right to
communicate. Google makes the world a much different
and more dangerous place, enough I think so that it would
justify going
beyond the regular procedure for incorporating something
new into the culture. The problem is that Google makes
the people who use it so much more powerful than the
people who don't use it, that, if it continues to not be
available to the segment of society who are never going to
get it together to buy a computer, then the divide
between these two groups is going to get out of control,
to the detriment of both groups. So basic access to a
simple quick powerful search of the Web has to be a right
like the right to preach on the Boston Common. Since the
right to search what is already out there is sort of like the
right of each part of an individual's body to access the
individual's memory, if information access was to be
regulated by a government, the Federal
government should be concerned with search, which
treats the whole system as an individual with a memory
that pertains to the whole. And the right of the indivdual
members of society to communicate with eachother, the
record of which eventually becomes the memory of the
overall "individual"
should be taken care of locally, so email and IM and video
phone should be local government things. |
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You have a point. Everyone _should_ have the web on their wrist... And it's happening slowly, but it is happening. I just think back to when I was at school, on a summer-job, playing with what must-have-been a fairly early internet, when you had to call up to pre-arrange someone to expact an e-mail from you! - Now look. Who in the UK/US much of the rest of the world has never at least heard of it? Sure, there'll be a couple of thousand million, but most will at least know what's available even if technology's not quite there yet... Give it time. |
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The Constitution giving you the right to communicate is not the same as the treasury giving you the means to do so. You have the right to take a holiday in Tahiti; do you expect other people to pay for that as well? |
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[angel] I do if going to Tahiti would make me so much
smarter than other people who didn't go to Tahiti that we
were effectively no longer in competition. I'm saying that
the level of access that Google and now other search
engines give to the internet is powerful enough so that it
can't be considered as a luxury or else the digital divide
will work to the detriment of both groups. That kind of
access should be considered like federaly funded
highways, or more accurately like access to the ocean and
to waterways. |
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"The problem is that Google makes the people who use it so much more powerful than the people who don't use it" |
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It's just a search engine, man. |
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//access to the ocean//
You already have access to the ocean; you're asking me to buy you a boat. You're saying that if I can do something better than you can, the taxpayer should pay for you to take lessons. I pay for my internet access because someone has to, and as I'm benefitting, that someone should be me; you want me to pay for yours as well because otherwise I have better access to information than you do. If you think that's important, why not pay for it yourself? |
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//buy you a boat//
not like a boat but like the ability to hold your breath
underwater. |
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//you want me to pay for yours as well because otherwise
I have better access to information than you do.//
I want to be a part of you like Google is a part of you. You
will be better for it. |
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I just went on it now - nice drawings JesusH |
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//You will be better for it.//
If I felt that I would be better for having paid for your internet access, I would do so voluntarily. The mere fact that you have to coerce me to do so indicates that I would *not* be better for it.
Have a little fishy for advocating socialism without even attempting to justify it. |
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//If I felt //
What I'm saying is it's not fair to say "i" and "you" when you have Google and "I" don't. An "I" with Google is not the same as an "I" without Google. By not giving me Google you are taking away my basic human rights. |
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It's just a search engine, man. |
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"Not having Google" is exactly the same as "not having internet access". If you have internet access, you "have" Google.
If not having the benefit of internet access unless you pay for it takes away your human rights, why does being forced to pay for something I don't use and don't benefit from (your internet access) not take away mine? |
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To play devil's advocate, I'm sure there are plenty of taxes that you pay that you don't reap the benefits of. This would be just one. On the other hand, of course, I would like to see which human right is violated by not having access to Google. |
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I think [contracts] seems to have the best attitude on this one anyway. |
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//there are plenty of taxes that you pay that you don't reap the benefits of.//
Damn right there are, far too many. That's no excuse to create another one. |
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//"Not having Google" is exactly the same as "not having
internet access". // |
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//If you have internet access, you "have" Google.// |
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//If not having the benefit of internet access unless you
pay for it takes away your human rights, why does being
forced to pay for something I don't use and don't benefit
from (your internet access) not take away mine?// |
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Me "Paying" for it includes learning that I need it, waiting
until the internet is accesible to people with disabilities
and a lot of other stuff that is not going to happen before
the whole s-house goes up in the proverbial flames. "You"
paying is not as bad as you think because increasingly,
"you"
doesn't mean "you", the more 'you" and people like you
learn from the kind of quick access that Google affords.
"You" increasingly means "us" in that "you" are becoming
more and more informed by the collective memory. My
point is that we are going to have to start thinking about
the breakdown of the individual pretty soon anyway - in
terms of AI, personal augmentation, and collective
intelligence, so why not start with non-invasive collective
intelligence like Google. You'll be happy we did. |
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Instead of thinking of it as taxes you can think of it as
insurance, or better, excersize. |
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Google is part of me. I feel violated when you take it
away from me. So I guess the human right not to have
other people messing around in my body. |
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[contracts] the correct punctuation would be: |
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It's just a search-engine-man. |
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[JesusHChrist] I have a lot of respect for you and many of the ideas that you have posted here. That said, it might be worth dropping the "Google is my right" thing, as it is only making you look bad. |
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Google is a search engine similar to many others. It is in no way a human right (see Link on this topic). It is not a part of you. It is a privilege enjoyed by those who have the capability to access it. Whether it helps them in their daily life is irrelevant as many other such privileges do. |
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That you are a particularly avid fan of it is fine. Personally I quite like apples. What I don't do is claim that, since apples are good for you, and eating one may in the long term make me healthier than Bobby McGee who doesn't eat apples, the government should use taxpayers money so that I can eat apples for breakfast, lunch and dinner. |
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thanks hidden. Articles 9, 10, and 11, and Article 2 of the
first Protocol. I do have a tendency to be a bit infantile
about the "Google is my right" thing. I don't actually feel
that strongly that Google is my personal right -- just that
Google is sort of a mile marker in history that serves as a
good place to start thinking differently about information,
law and culture. |
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//we are going to have to start thinking about the breakdown of the individual pretty soon anyway//
Why? I, as an individual, have no intention of breaking down.
You appear to be saying that I should be prepared to pay for your internet access because I would gain from it, the standard socialist argument; it that were the case I would pay for it voluntarily and would not need to be coerced by taxation. As it is evidently not the case, I'm not prepared to pay; that's why you need to tax me. |
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//no intention of breaking down//
I agree that individuals - the way we define them now -
should not have to break down. But eventually the
definition of "individual" might have to change. People
communicate within themselves, the different parts of a
brain communicate to eachother, they just do it really
fast, so it's easy to define them as an individual compared
to other individuals with whom the brain communicates
relatively slowly. But the faster and more powerful
external communication becomes the more people will be
able to augment themselves or act collectively as
individuals, and the law will eventually have to reflect
this. |
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I don't mean to say that "you" should pay for my
internet access but that 'I" should pay for "my" internet
access, with a redeffinition of what "I" means. Money and
information are two ways of looking at the same thing,
they are convenient ways of defining the slow and fast
aspects of exchange, so what I am trying to say is that the
age of "free" information is coming to an end and that
along with having to keep track of all of the exchange of
information we do we will have to start thinking about
changing the long standing individualization boarders that
have traditionally been convenient to put around people
because of their relatively slow rate of information
exhange compared to the rate of information exchange
between different parts of individuals. So I think that
eventually it is going to be easier to define people more
like "stuff" than like "things", rather than keeping track of
every act of exchange as an individual -- although obviosly
our language the way it is now is not going to be very
useful in that context. |
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\\Articles 9, 10, and 11, and Article 2 of the first Protocol\\ You're kidding, right? Google does not constitute your right to freedom of religion, free speech, assembly or education. This is slightly fanatical sounding. |
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Although I'm seriously considering switching my vote to a [+] for the phrase \\ 'I" should pay for "my" internet access, with a redeffinition of what "I" means\\. |
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So now you're happy for your internet access to be paid for by yourself as long as you can change the definition of 'yourself' to mean 'everyone else'?
//act collectively as individuals//
Huh? How can that happen?
//Money and information are two ways of looking at the same thing//
How do you figure that? Information is a resource, with inherent value, while money is intrinsically useless but is a medium of exchange. A dealer in information may exchange it for labour so he doesn't have to dig up his own potatoes ("If you harvest my vegetables, I'll tell you how to grow them."), or he may exchange it for money (which he then uses to buy goats or dental work or Lear jets). In the latter case, the money is simply an interim method of storing a notion of value.
//it is going to be easier to define people more like "stuff" than like "things", rather than keeping track of every act of exchange as an individual//
Do I understand that your justification for socialism is that we are all part of some gestalt entity, so when I buy stuff for you, I'm actually buying it for me? |
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\\Articles 9, 10, and 11, and Article 2 of the first Protocol\\
Actually I think the law that the people who are thinking
seriously about this kind of the thing at the moment cite
is amendment 14, although I am not sure of that and
looking it up am not sure why that one would be
important. I think the important concept though, is
privacy. That's a big point for the supreem court judge
that they're trying to decide on now which I've heard
refered to in terms of technological change. I personally
don't know much about history, don't know much biology,
but people I read on the Internet are talking about
privacy, as in where do you draw the defining lines around
a "person", as the main philisophical issue with
accelerating technological change. See links for talk of
the technological singularity, and talk of personhood as a
concept and how it is changing. |
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//act collectively as individuals -- Huh? How can that
happen?// |
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I appologize for not being clear. Ray Kurzweil and Nick
Bostrom are two people who say it better than I can. See
links to "singularity" or Google "technological singularity".
Most of the time these guys talk about Artificial
Intelligence and Human Augmentation being the most
probable routes to a technological singularity via a
"smarter than human intelligence" but sometimes, and I
am personally a big fan of this, they talk about a possible
route being a situation in which people act collectively to
create an intelligence that through speed of
communication is effectively an individual. One way to do
this would be by using invasive brain to brain
technological mediation, like trading electro chemical
brain signals. Another way would be to give two people
enough mutual control and input to allow them to learn
to navigate and communicate as one person -- for instance
a set up where one person could specialize in one kind of
thinking while remotely controlling and influencing a
person who specialized in another kind of thinking. But
what is more exciting to me is the possibility of coming up
with new forms of communication that would enable
people to communicate between eachother close to as
fast as the different parts of the individual bodies can
communicate amongst themselves. Possible non-invasive
forms that this kind of communication could take might be
1). a hand to hand language that uses finger to finger
expression of code using compression algorhythms -- sort
of like two way meditative typing, or 2). a system of visual
and haptic feedback set up using loops created between
two people, by making full eye contact, body contact and
aural contact - by singing unison tones and using the
harmonic beats as a clock to synchronize other
communication. If you are still reading this you can look
at the ideas, "Sexularity", "Video Find Yourself," and a few
others on my profile. If not, I don't blame you, I
sometimes wish I could just get up and leave when I start
talking like this. |
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//Information -- money//
My take on is is that, on a really basic level information
and money are just
measures. Information is just a lot more fluid, but they
are on a continuum. Here's another link -- Fred Fredkin
who say that everything is information. Steven Wolfram
was influenced by Fredkin, I think. I just get all this stuff
off Google anyway. Fredkin thinks that the labor and the
potatoes
and money and the Lear jet are all made out of
information. |
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//justification for socialism -- we are all part of some
gestalt entity// I guess, sort of, but I am more trying to
say that the language that we are talking about all of this
in, has worked for "us" for the last few thousand years
because "we" have been within spitting distance of a
certain level of complexity that has been relatively
constant. The language was created by a bunch of
"individuals" acting in competition with eachother on a
certain playing field that remained constant enough to
make it worthwhile continuing to refine the language and
operating as if all of the individuals were equal, that is
what human rights are about - assuming that everyone is
equal. But everyone is equal only because no one has an
unfair advantage. I am saying that Google is approaching
an unfair advantage.
But complexity is always increasing, exponentially infact,
and
individualism is not as concrete a concept as the language
that it created would have you (no surprise) believe. And
so now that the practical definition of an individual is
changing our language and laws are going to change to, to
accomodate reality. |
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But I'm not doing these guys justice, you should just stop
reading this if you haven't already and go read the
KurzweilAI site. |
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No, you're not doing them justice. Reading your anno (yes, all of it) I assumed that Kurzweil et al were just slightly nutty sci-fi nerds. Having looked at the linked site (feel free to fix your link and delete mine), and at the Wikipedia entry and a few others, I have come to the conclusion that they're totally barking mad. He made some great synthesizers but if I'd known he was one of those Transhumanist moonbats, I probably wouldn't have bothered looking further. Oh, and that 'Ramona' thing on Kurzweil's site? Possibly the worst Turing-bot I've ever seen.
Anyway, I still don't want to pay for your internet access. |
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Agreed: those guys are moonbats, Ramona is bad
advertising. But I don't wan't you to pay for my internet
access, I want to pay for my internet access -- I don't want
there to even be a you. ;-) |
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Transcript:
R:"I just read a book by Heinlin 'title'. Have you read it?"
S:"No I haven't."
R:"I think it just great. What do you think?"
S:"I just told you I did not read it."
R:"It reads so fluently don't you think?".
S:"I am not interested in Heinlin!"
R:"I am glad you do not find Heinlin interesting".
S:"You serious?"
R:"Thank you for that information."
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Anyways. I think [JesusHChrist] that you are confusing 'needing' with 'wanting'. A person does not 'need' an internet connection to get information. The human rights act is about what a person needs not about what they might want.
Acces to the www does not give me an advantage over you. Many people who have access do not use it optimally at all or only on a basis of wanting to know. |
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What you would get, is drunk people googling for "sex" or something equivalent of that. |
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OK, I am confusing needing with wanting, but I think the
line between those two things is -- like the traditional
definitions of "me" and "you" -- starting to break down, not
because of anything new, but because they have always
been on a continuum but the distance between the two
has been great enough for us to conveniently treat them
as completely separate. I think that after people get all
the googling for sex out of their systems and settle down
so that they are not always reacting violently to
imballences in their systems, they will find that what
they need and what they want are surprisingly similar. |
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A person the way we define that word now does not
'need' an internet connection to get information but as
people get more and more connected the standard will
become higher and people without an internet connection
will be increasingly out of the loop. Imagine a speech
recognition set up where Google constantly displays
searches of keywords that you are using in conversation.
Now imagine that instead of just one person with that set
up two people have that set up and are connected
together haptically, visually, aurally and can use their
double processing power to influence eachothers actions.
I don't know how old everyone here is, but I remember a
time when people just lied all the time, because they
knew that the chances that someone could look up what
they were talking about and call them on it were so slim.
It was called the 1980s -- a long ago and far away place. |
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The human rights act defines a person, it says that a
person is a thing that we give these rights to. The more
fluidly that people learn to operate collectively the more
and more entities we are going to have to attribute these
rights to. |
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I understand what you are saying about people who have
access not using it optimally. I don't think access to the
internet forces people to be more than human, I just
think it gives people this potential. And the more people
who achieve the potential, the more competition there
will be and the further the sub-optimal users will fall
behind. It is still all future talk, although if you read the
Kurzweil link the future is approaching us exponentially
so we better get ready. |
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How much of this is still about the free internet and how much is about the "Necessary internet" and "You and I" theories? |
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Your arguments are too dense for me
too read, my friends. I think I like the
idea of turning the whole country into
one big Wi-Fi zone through the use of
balloons with routers on them (that was
the gist of the idea in Popular Science)
and then you can access your shit
yourself through whatever device you
may have, instead of through a device
that is locked in place and paid for with
my tax dollars (I guess I'll start paying
taxes one of these days, like when I get
a job). |
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[Eugene] I can access my shit perfectly on the bathroom. I don't need balloons for that. |
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[JesusHChrist] What is the power that google holds? How am I more powerfull if I have access to it? |
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//How much of this is still about the free internet and
how much is about the "Necessary internet" and "You and
I" theories?// Sorry, I remember that the orriginal track
was supposed to be public internet. I think they're all
related. Nothing is really free, the internet will be
necessary the way a spinal cord is, and eventually in
place of "you" and "I" will be just people, as in, oops you
got
some people on your shirt sleve." |
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//balloons// nice one. Here's another one. I went to a
peace rally today and everone was holding up signs. I was
thinking wouldn't it be nice if people always carried
around signs that displayed what the last thing they had
said was. isn't that already a HB idea? |
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//What is the power that google holds? How am I more
powerfull if I have access to it?// Google was the first
thing to do with computers in my experience that
responded in a significant way to the traditional
user centered question, "why does it have to be so f-ing
complicated?" which I think is a really legitimate question
and one that sort of echoes down to the level of
cosmology, and one that needs to be addressed, and one
that people have made an entire history out of not
addressing. I think that getting pornography or finding
stock quotes or using language at all is not even the
beginning of what Google is good for. The significance of
Google when we look back on it will be above all it's
infantileness, but also it's simplicity, and it's relative
power and speed. And those things will echo long past
the success of the actual company. So I think you are
more powerful when you access it because it gives you
a gist of the direction things are going in and allows you to
think about that in a hands on way, rather than that
it is so great for looking up the names of aquaintances,
which it IS really great for. Can't you just not stop using
it? If I didn't have to go to work or eat I would sit there
and
use it all day. The only reason I keep myself away from it
anymore is because I know it will be a let down when I
have to stop. Hmm. Google addiction. |
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//So I think you are more powerful when you access it because it gives you a gist of the direction things are going in and //
I search on the internet and I find answers; which can be interpreted in different ways. The way I think things are going to evolve, does not necessarily mean that they will involve in that direction. And me forming an opinion based on the info found on the internet does not make me more powerfull then someone who found that info in the newspapers. |
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//I search on the internet and I find answers//
I think the power of Google is that you can get a really
quick overview of the popular consensus on topics rather
than that you can get answers to targeted research
questions. Sometimes Google is good for getting the
"right" answer but more often it is good for interacting
with as you go, changing your set of questions with each
search, asking short questions and getting a whole bunch
of short answers. I think of it like being in an infinite
hotel
where the rooms are arranged by keyword and you can
run up and down the halls, qickly opening each door to
see what they're talking about in the, for instance,
marsupial aquarium room. |
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//which can be interpreted in different ways// Ok, I'll
stop saying "Google". Search engines, the way they have
been since Google pioneered modern search, let you see
how lots of different people are interpreting things, so
you can make up your own mind, rather than requiring
that you trust
one "authoritative" source. Although, come to think of it,
Google is sort of one "authoratative" source. |
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//The way I think things are going to evolve, does not
necessarily mean that they will involve in that direction./
/ But the majority of all the yous out there will get the
prediction righter than they would have if they hadn't had
as thourough access to eachother's interpretations. |
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//And me forming an opinion based on the info found on
the internet does not make me more powerfull then
someone who found that info in the newspapers// not for
one thing, but for many. You have the power to search
the NY times and then the SF paper and then al Jezira
etc where the person with the newspaper will at least
have to run around the library to do that. dont get me
wrong though, I still like hard copy newspapers. People,
especially old men, develop entire languages with the
sound their papers make when they rustle the pages, and
they talk to eachother across subway cars and in libraries
and at bus stops. And most of them don't make the
connection between the language that they are reading
in the newspaper and the language they are speaking by
rustling their papers to eachother, even if they are fluent
and sometimes eloquent at both. |
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You notice that everytime you dredge this idea back to the top of the recent list it just winds up getting more fishbones. I think it might be time to let this one rest [JHC]. |
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I like the idea as it presents governments with an additional trivial communicatiobns monitoring challenge Plus as I like the idea of lcd screens with video sensors as part of the semiconductor these public booths could be used to transmit truth verified communications particularly with digital thermography as described with the anbar patent |
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anyway just now there is a way to send paper messages absent postage at http://www. esnailer.com/ thus you could write paper letters from your public computer if you like |
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