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Re:Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again... by randallsquared on Friday December 18, 2009 @12:52PM (#1003548)
I think looking for a bit more leverage than that might be a better first step. There's more opportunity to improve the world via technological changes than social changes, it seems to me; huge numbers of people and organizations put a lot of effort into social change for little or no result. Henry Ford probably had as much effect on the social fabric of the US as all the civil rights workers of the 20th century (though not necessarily in the same direction, and arguably not the effect he would have preferred to have).
Re:Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again... by pohl on Friday December 18, 2009 @02:29PM (#1003758)
I don't disagree at all, and if doing more of the above is a change you would like to see in the world then it's laudable that you're doing it (if you're doing it.) The phrase that moved me to post was "the world just won't stay saved". Of course the world won't stay saved, because we're all subject to entropy and, with apologies to Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart.

The world is a garden and it requires constant maintenance.

Sisyphus, from greek mythology, is a metaphor for this inescapable curse. Modern man would probably decide that it's much better for the rock to be at the bottom of the hill, as it were, but that strikes me as choosing to be a part of the problem.

Re:Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again... by randallsquared on Friday December 18, 2009 @02:50PM (#1003804)
Actually, the bit about the world not staying saved was a reference to the first little bit of The Incredibles. :) I think that fighting (metaphorical) entropy is worthwhile, though; I just prefer to find the most efficient means for the result, or at least a more efficient means than convincing folk to change their ways through rhetoric and example. I guess it's a bit ironic that I'm even writing this...
Re:Web 2.0 Suicide Machine - Meet your Real Neighbours again... by pohl on Friday December 18, 2009 @04:09PM (#1003960)
I'm slapping my forehead for not picking up on the reference.