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And guests have said:
Date: Wed Jul 5 18:37:08 2000
realname: Chris Smtih
username: smith@yahoo.com
comments: Wow! What a dumb idea for a book. I suggest that if you
really love socialism, you should pick up and move to a socialist
country (i.e. China)
Date: Wed Jul 5 18:49:18 2000
realname: SF Bums
username: bums@bumcity.com
comments: Sure, you rant and rave, but why don't you help out the
homeless in San Francisco? Instead, you want all these techies to give
their money to the arts. Forget this book, support Bum
City instead.
Date: Fri Jul 7 13:34:18 2000
realname: steve
username: artguy@metro.net
comments: oh, Pauline- Just heard you on the Commonwealth Club
and looked up this site. Very nice. Remember you from your early
Wired days (-am I the only one that found the graphics so irritatingly
distracting as to render much of the text virtually unintelligible?) I
dropped my subscription to Wired when it became obvious that what
had started as a magazine about technology and fun had somehow
turned into a screed on free markets, capitalism, and worship of
business and wealth. I think the front cover of Malone did it...I find this
comments section is even more revealing of your thesis than your book
excerpts.
Date: Sun Jul 9 13:57:15 2000
realname: Sarah
username: None
comments: I thought some of Ms. Borsook's comments in her book
were overdue. As for the ignoramus comments made by people like
Chris Smith about going to live in China -- comments like those simply
highlight the point about how provincial some of these people in Silicon
Valley really are.
Date: Mon Jul 10 18:19:57 2000
realname: Charlie
username: charlie@looksmart.com
comments: After reading this book, it's quite obvious that the author
feels that Socialism is the only acceptable belief system. The book is
filled with complaints about the capitalist and pro individual freedom
attitude that dominates the tech industry. So for all of you who buy
the authors viewpoint, I have found an answer for you: China! I have
to admit that I'm somewhat envious. If there existed today a fully
capitalist country anywhere in the world I would relocate there without
hesitation. But alas, there are none, and here I remain. But you, the
socialists and communists who comprise the bulk of the readers of this
book, your Nirvana exists! I have read your posts and I hear you. I
understand your desires and motivations. Utopia is within your reach,
and it is: China! Don't take my word for it. Read it straight from the
PRC Constitution itself: Preamble After founding the People's Republic,
China gradually achieved its transition from a New-Democratic to a
socialist society. The socialist transformation of the private ownership
of the means of production has been completed, the system of
exploitation of man by man abolished and the socialist system
established. socialism, yeah! Article 1 The People's Republic of China
is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by
the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
The socialist system is the basic system of the People's Republic of
China. Disruption of the socialist state by any organization or individual
is prohibited. wow! Article 2 All power in the People's Republic of China
belongs to the people. the people, not the corporations! Article 6 The
basis of the socialist economic system of the People's Republic of
China is socialist public ownership of the means of production, namely,
ownership by the whole people and collective ownership by the
working people. oh my God yeah! You see, it's there, waiting for you.
Think about it. No more posting messages about all the rich people
who make you feel bad 'cause they own all that stuff. In China,
nobody's rich! (Except for the bureaucrats, but no country's perfect.)
So to you, I present my gift: China. And in return, my only request is:
PLEASE LEAVE
Date: Tue Jul 11 19:11:26 2000
realname: John Galt
username: jgalt@yahoo.com
comments: Interesting thesis. Too bad it's so drastically
flawed. You seem to believe that idealism is inherently preferable
to self-interest. I disagree. Self-interested parties can be easily
understood--they seek to make money in order to get the things
they need and want, as peaceably as possible. This is no secret.
On the other hand, the idealists--precisely because of, not despite,
their own high-minded and noble ideals--can justify almost anything
(including wholesale slaughter) to reach their goals. Am I overstating
the case? Consider the communist idealists in Russia and China, the
national socialists seeking a perfect world in Germany, even the
Christian Crusaders in Jerusalem. All began with high-minded ideals
about changing the world, and ended up destroying the lives of
literally millions of people whom they saw as an impediment to those
ideals. So who's the more selfish? Just something to consider.
Date: Fri Jul 21 17:40:28 2000
realname: Sonia Arana
username: spider@sneakybastard.com
comments: Oh, the irony… You offer no sympathy, no
compassion, not a shred of an attempt to understand those
who you vigorously denounce as unsympathetic and
compassionless. You place the Silicon Valley lifeforms under
glass and scrutinize them as heartlessly as any old-world
anthropologist describing the godless heathens. Perhaps you
never seen the warmth of the people you insist are incapable
of it, because you have never offered them any. It's also
rather obnoxious how you equate the most anarchistic
with the whole of the Silicon Valley culture, especially
when plenty of them (like the cypherpunks) are not limited
to this area. I was one three kids raised by a single mother
on welfare in a gawdawful pit of a neighborhood right in
the backyard of Silicon Valley. Nobody’s bleeding hearts
helped get me out. I discovered what knowledge and job
skills I really needed to free myself of "oppression", and
the "cyberselfish" welcomed me into their world with
friendliness, camaraderie, and yes, money, and without
any regard to my childhood poverty, sex, sexual preference,
style of dress, spiritual beliefs, or any other thing that may
be seen as divisive. I did not need a degree in computer
science. I did not need to pretend to love Ayn Rand. You
are simply wrong when you claim that "technolibertarians"
hire based on politics or exclusively based on a very high-
tech skill set. I know women with Woman's Studies degrees,
whose previous work experience was limited to summer
camps, grant writing or breast cancer fundraisers who have
joined an “evil” dot-com, and no, not as “marketing bunnies”
or receptionists. As technicians, programmers, engineers,
designers, and managers. Their new incomes allow them
greater freedom and political power than before. The further
irony is, you’re probably disgusted to hear this, even though
you’d be horrified if it couldn’t happen. In my cynical
moments, I wonder if progressives, leftists and liberals
aren’t actively keep people in poverty so they have
someone to feel sorry for. At any rate, you end up doing the
opposite of what you claim you are doing. By slandering
what it means to participate in capitalism, you ultimately keep
the division between the haves and have-nots all the more
chasm-like, and the poor in their poor little place. I now
know that it wasn’t the haves that kept me a have-not. It
was people like you who refused to teach me about money,
with the same scowl and wince (and ignorance) that
conservatives get when you want to teach someone about
sex, and who tried to convince me that improving my life
was somehow synonymous with heartlessness. You are
wrong to sum up the attitude as "I got mine, screw you."
It's "I got mine, now come get yours." It's a lot better than,
"Oh, poor thing, here's a little tiny bit of mine." Or my
personal favorite, "Oh, I'll get rid of mine, and join you in
your noble misery. Don't you feel better now?" No.
Date: Tue Jul 25 13:56:57 2000
realname: Adam Lang
username: thalen@cs.pdx.edu
comments: It's very, very hard for me not to laugh when I read the
reactions of people to this book. In particular, the negative reactions are, in
general, such amazing stereotypes AS DEPICTED IN THE BOOK that you prove the
points she's making even as you try to refute them. To the people who keep
telling the author to go to China and stop spouting her Socialist nonsense in
this fine capitalist country of ours, my special kudoes. Obviously what we have
here is a towering hypocracy: I'm 1000% in favour of freedom of speech, as long
as I agree with it. Additionally, I love the implication: that any socialist
system will eventually look exactly like China. Take a quick look at the
Norwegian countries: better standard of living than the US, better health
care/insurance (single payer!), longer life expectancy, much much much lower
poverty rate, next to no crime (no guns!)... what an awful place. It's just like
China. To the person who was depressed that there was no perfect den of
capitalism in this poor benighted world of socialist pinkocommies, might I
suggest Russia? It has everything you need for perfect capitalism: an
essentially powerless government, no controls on anything, no taxes (well, there
are taxes but nobody pays them.) You can work people to death for next to no pay
and nobody will raise an eyebrow. Oh, except Russian organized crime, which is,
of course, a vital part of any capitalist utopia. As for the argument that
idealism is obviously inherantly worse than self- interest because idealists
sometimes do really bad things, I say, HAH! BITE M- er, sorry, I'm an idealist.
There is very little that is more dangerous than a misguided idealist, like, for
example, Hitler, but that's largely because 99% of the world, when faced with
one, WON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT BECAUSE ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS THEIR OWN
SELF-INTEREST. And, in any case, in my experience idealists are much more likely
to have a strong moral code, and therefore not to screw you over every way they
possibly can, than people who are only out for themselves. A single
'self-interested' person (used to be called greedy, egotistical, etc) generally
doesn't do as much damage as Hitler does, but a few hundred million of them are
happily destroying the ecosystem of the planet. Finally, to the person
chastizing Ms. Borsook for her lack of empathy for the people she's portraying,
she obviously read a different book than I did. Her entire thesis, that of the
'I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and therefore so can anyone else so why are
we trying to help anyone, let them come get theirs on their own' is also
straight out of the book, and completely ignores the fact that, just as some
people have a talent for music or writing, and some people DON'T (hint hint),
some people just don't have a talent for high-tech. Or would you honestly say
that anyone out there who put their minds to it could make a living in the music
industry? Or maybe you think that technology is just so obvious and easy that
you don't have to have any TALENT for it... Obviously this woman, as she says,
'did not need to pretend to love Ayn Rand.' Obviously she had never heard of her
until she got her new life, and when she did she became a zealous convert to the
Church of Rand. Which is fine. It takes all kinds. It's just sad that the
richest people in the culture aren't interested in helping the poorest, and that
it's therefore left to the less well-off to do so, and to therefore become even
less well-off than they were before. Wonder how long it would take for me to
learn Swedish? --Adam Lang
Date: Tue Jul 25 14:56:34 2000
realname: ij
username: ij@looksmart.com
comments: Good idea! Move to Switzerland. Yes, you have the right to free
speech, but what you propose fundamentally violates the US Constitution.
Therefore, it is senseless for you to spout off about these Socialist ideals in
the USA. Move to a country which has a constitution that supports your Socialist
ideals.
Date: Thu Aug 3 02:24:59 2000
realname: Helen
username: Helen.limon@ncl.ac.uk
comments: What a lot of fun it is reading these comments, I have enyoyed
it almost as much as reading the book. So the rational response to suggesting it
might be a good idea to fund education, health and art a little better is to
suggest the author 'goes to live in China/Russia' bit of an over reaction don't
you think? Relax boys and girls such moderate ideas shouldn't be quite that
scary to grown ups - suggest you get out more.
Date: Mon Aug 7 14:11:19 2000
realname: kellyfel
comments: I just heard you on KUSP. I bought your book. It seems you have
written an intelligent critical look at the "holier than though" world
of high-tech. And you've done it in a way that elevates language to an artform,
ala Tom Robbins. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Date: Tue Aug 8 08:07:51 2000
realname: Travoltus
username: travoltus@hotmail.com
comments: Paulina you seem to have ignored a basic fact. After so many
years of society picking on, abusing, excluding and alienating geeks, it is not
to be unexpected that geeks care only about themselves and their desires. Nobody
else has ever cared about them. I know your kind. You laughed when the geeks
were getting their butts kicked in high school. Well guess what. They're kicking
back now, with six figure incomes and a desire to re-make society in their own
vision. Why should they be forced to conform to your views when your views
represents that of a society that tried its very best to destroy these people,
only a decade ago?
Date: Mon Aug 14 13:21:17 2000
realname: Ron Newman
username: rnewman@thecia.net
comments: Paulina, when will you come to Boston?
Date: Mon Aug 14 23:41:25 2000
realname: Mike J. Moore
username: sabino2son@yahoo.com
comments: Sunday Salon, July 9, with Sheila Coy Really liked the program.
Was in the computing industry many years, or long enough to see it go full
circle for me. Started when I was 20. Totally agree with your concepts. Really
enjoyed the interview. Now, for the moment, I work in the last "human,
interactive, touchy/feely" place: a grocery store. Ya, I burned out at 40,
but not enough to stay away from occassional bursts on the WWW. Basically feel
that all this is BS, illusion, maya.
Date: Wed Aug 30 11:42:43 2000
realname: Mecca
username: meccahill524@usa.net
comments: Am listening to the author now on Tech Nation on WNYE-FM in New
York City. She has interesting comments (at least now, will know more when she
is through)!
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