I’m angry. I’ve had up to my eyes, and it’s time to set them straight, to slap some hands.
Curiosity is a human trait; it’s built in and you can’t simply remove it. It can be disabled at great cost of destroying a person’s humanity, but it cannot be removed. In children, we channel it. When a child persistently reaches for that hot stove top, you have to do something to stop that action. Over thousands of years, humans have learned there are two ways: Let them get burned a couple of times, or swat their hands. Simply changing the way stoves are designed is so expensive in the long run, it serves merely to deny the possession of a proper stove, and forces people to use even more dangerous equipment for heating food. In other words, there is no way to avoid the child learning without pain. An ancient proverb gets it right: learning equals pain. Only a complete idiot believes otherwise, and deserves to be treated like the stupid child who demands the right to burn themselves in the fire.
The problem is, letting the child get burned can be pretty expensive on several levels. But never mind psychopathic child welfare agencies; we know a child will lose something if we simply let them get a burn sufficient to teach them. We all know instinctively the short-term suffering from a hand-slap is much more efficient for most kids. The point is not what constitutes proper child discipline, but the nature of things. Ovens are hot, and they won’t cook any other way (and microwaving is an inexcusable health threat itself). Cooking food has made human existence far, far better, even if we do tend to cook too many things too much. It constitutes a God-given right to cook one’s food where resources exist.
Freedom to explore is a good thing in and of itself. Allowing and encouraging that human curiosity is a moral obligation. The invention of written language was a blessing, as was the printing press which made written materials far cheaper, and reading became virtually universal. The Internet has made it all far cheaper still, in terms of how much we can access for the price. That freedom does come with costs of another sort. We create a situation where folks can get hurt, just like having a functional oven in your house. It requires we create a system, a collection of expectations, which didn’t exist before. It changes the way we do things, and we simply have to get over our nostalgia about eating everything raw. Feel free to not cook, but if you demand the right to remove the household oven, you will rightly risk being killed by those who value that freedom more than your gadfly life.
It’s time we start slapping some hands. And if that’s not enough, maybe prepare stronger measures. The Internet is what it is, and dreams of making it conform to an earlier age is simply evil, a truculent Luddite hatred deserving of the worst persecution. Here is the Luddite message by Robert Levine:
All of these companies faced the same problem: they weren’t collecting enough of the revenue being generated by their work. The public hasn’t lost its appetite for television, journalism or film; shows, articles and movies reach more consumers than ever online. The problem is that, although the internet has expanded the audience for media, it has all but destroyed the market for it.
Mr. Levine and others still live in some fantasy world; they imagine the clock can be turned back. What he asks is simply wrong, because it destroys the very nature the Internet. The genie cannot be put back into the bottle, and any notion you could squelch the wide open digital access to all digital data requires something more unrealistic than taking drugs. It would be the same as making fire illegal.
Granted, we don’t love Google and others who leverage their very good services as a means to taking over the Internet. We who really use the Net would like to slap their hands, too, but government won’t let us. A government agency created the Internet, but has never for a second listened to those who worked to do it, and government now threatens anyone who dares make a peep about how government needs to let the Internet simply be.
Until you understand the Internet, how it works and what won’t work, you have no business pretending we who use it give a whit what you think. Shut up, Mr. Levine. I’m slapping your hand, and if that won’t work, we’ll be glad to let you incinerate yourself. But don’t pretend we will let you put out our fires, you filthy Luddite scumbag. Those who wish to continue profiting from their “work” will have to find another way to capture revenue. We could tell you how, but you won’t listen, because it means giving up some of that hateful and oppressive control for which you lust with insatiable fire.
Fine, burn your hand, fool. We spare you no pity, nor the enemies of human freedom like RIAA, MPAA, and all the rest.
