Well, it's surprising that he let it go on as long as he did (most wouldn't go even one round) but in the end Tom Slee, author of the Whimsley blog, cut off my debate of Alex Howard, (which I originally discussed here) likely because conflict made him uncomfortable in the end, and he was likely under pressure from others appalled at allowing a confrontation of a web 2.0 god to go on for any length.
Alex Howard is allowed to have the last word, and it's a disturbing intellectual fraud:
The reason I'm unable to "admit" that what I do is PR, in other words and to your evident consternation, is that it's simply not true.
This is a really scary proposition, because it means that we can't insist on meaning and universal standards, that any cultist is able to fragmentize and undermine them and wrap his ego in their glory -- attack the false premise, and he cries "uncivil" and "troll"; attack the lie that an evangelist for software is in any sense a credible journalist at its root, and simply suffer silencing and blocking.
See, this is why I attack the open source software cult so vigorously. It's one thing if it undermines the old craft of journalism and old media with a new "business model" based on customer demand for "free" of course engineered into the architecture. But it's quite another if the open source cult then attacks the very premise of professional, critical journalism that tries to avoid bias by presenting various facts and views so the reader can decide himself.
Criticism of the open source movement is not new, and doesn't only come from me. Back in 2001 on the trendy tech magazine Wired, for example, Farhad Manjoo explained matter-of-factly after attending an O'Reilly Open Source Conference what was the dirty little secret of open source: big IT firms and other big businesses use Perl, Apache and Linux in their own systems.
Manjoo called this the dirty little secret of the big firms, who didn't talk about it, presumably to hide what each thought was a competitive advantage or even went against their own firm's devotion to proprietary software. But the dirty secret is about open source, too: all those legions of volunter geeks working with such dedication for free in a modern-day collective communes hardly seem to fit with an ethos that involves ruthless capitalism by large corporations. Yet it's precisely because the big firms take over open source projects much of the time that we can even speak of them as being ubiquitous on the Internet (a favourite argument of open source cultists when you object to their culture is to tell you "the whole Internet" depends on it).
And when they take over the projects or simply just become a power user of the software, they manage it better -- the other dirty little secret of open source. As Majoo ercounts, this was said by one speaker at the conference, Fred Baker, then a "fellow" at Cisco and the former head of the Internet Engineering Task Force -- but to much disdain. What he means is that people who are paid for their work show up on time or get fired if they are lazy and that is an important aspect of the culture of functioning software. Another speaker from Morgan, Stanley claimed the problem with proprietary software is that you can't get answers quickly and fix bugs and you are talking to 1-800 numbers where the clerks can't even spell the product you're calling about. (This is a function of globalization of labour, the shipping of jobs overseas to cut costs, and the desire of Big IT not to use some of their vast wealth reserves for creating jobs in this country.) But I guess this speaker, W. Philip Moore, never had to try to reach a $50/hour IT consultant hired to make the Drupal on a website work, busy with multiple clients, or struggle with a Wordpress blog by combing numerous sometimes contradictory fan sites.
As I've explained, O'Reilly is aggressive and hegemonic in his various projects, including Code for America, and wants to walk into every city, scoop up the city's data such as lists of addresses, and make apps for them that will be either "for the public good" as he and his friends view it, or will "create business opportunities" for app engineers and others, also his friends and likeminded. I've complained that this isn't a democratic process, and that it's driven by the wacky notions of "open source business" which often aren't sustainable for anybody but the high-priced consultant.
And for once I had company, as Whimsely (Tom Slee) of Canada published a frankly critical blog called "Why the 'Open Data Movement' is a Joke". He made a frank, "Emperor has no clothes" critique of the sillyness and then troublesome indulgence of this movement in his own country's government -- so that the conservative Harper government, which he says has been secretive and backward on a number of important issues -- is covering up its flaws with a fake "openness".
I have a lot of respect for Whimsley, as he is one of the few bloggers critical of the open source/gov 2.0/open data etc. movements. He doesn't accept the facile technocommunist arguments for defeating copyright and embracing piracy as a business model or a collectivization tool. To be sure, he doesn't go as far as I do, and would never use a term like "technocommunist" or focus on the collectivization ideologies of these latter-day medicine men. Tom is more of a social democrat than I am; I don't use any kind of adjective in front of the democracy that I espouse. This is common with Canadians -- I studied in Canada and I understand it and respect it. But I don't agree with it, and I'll contend it.
Someone might say that if there are so few critics of open source out there, why accuse him of "wimping out" and alienating his affections? Well, that's because Tom Slee doesn't have any affections for me to alienate. The few times he engaged with my blog, he let me know he didn't like it -- he disagreed about my explication of the problem with Katy Pearce and Sarah Kendzior on the "Central Asian" cats piece, for example. But like a lot of people, he was timid about having the debate with Howard. He found vigorous polemicizing on the issue made him uncomfortable and didn't want to go the next round. That's too bad, because the stakes for these issues are high: I wouldn't put some much effort into it if I didn't see this as a grave threat to our freedoms, as in "totalitarian" threat to our freedoms.
Even so, Tom as a much, much higher threshold for debate and polemics and counter arguments that most people in the blogosphere who become uncomfortable at the first "dislike". So he let this argument go many rounds, and one hopes he won't delete it under peer pressure.
It's important that he did, because one very obvious thing about Alex Howard immediately became visible: he was willing to denounce me not through argumentation, but by the sort of ad hominem attacks that he admonishes others not to use. He sought to discredit me by linking to the notorious Anonymous/4chan griefers' Bible, Encyclopedia Dramatica, which of course only discredits him. When I pointed out what libelous and stupid dreck is no this page, he backtracked and apologized -- clearly he had linked to the page merely thinking it was a handy way of explaining to "the commuuuunnnity" that I was "a troll". (Let me give him a better link, Tips for Google Witch-Hunters, that has my rebuttals as well, at least that's more fair.)
His apology was shallow, however, because he still sought in the end to discredit me by what the commuuuunity thought -- he cited my page on G+ that proudly proclaims that certain thin-skinned lefty "thought influencers" like Dan Gilmore had blocked me. Good Lord, that's a good thing -- have you ever looked at Dan Gilmore's plan for coercing journalists into using politically-correct terms? I've been debating Howard Rheingold's socialist-style collectivist models for the Internet since I first found him in Second Life trying to convert people to this ideology -- and I'm right to do so.
Tom Slee doesn't fall for the hype of the Internet hucksters on the collectivizing of property and removal of copyright, either, but in this debate, he finally closed it and gave Alex Howard the last word. In the end, a long drawn-out polemics on his blog only makes him uncomfortable and he may have succumbed to peer pressure (and dollars to donuts, he'll explain this differently, by saying that he didn't think the discussion was "productive"). He already has all the gov 2.0 heavies telling him he was wrong to ever post such a blog without essentially conceding that they are a wonder, and we all need to consult with them first, and only make "constructive criticism". I marvel, in fact, that he went as far as he did, given the enormous pressure he was under. Tom, in the end, no doubt worries about his blog being seen as respectable.
I don't suffer from that problem, because I know this is a really pitched, drawn-out battle and that people will take up different positions in it, and my position is going to be vigorously critical of open source to the last because it's about the culture of this cult, and not the mere technical software issues that we have to worry.
It's typical that in his last round where he tries to win, Alex Howard uses the old chestnut of the sort I've flagged at the beginning of this post -- that "89 percent of computers have Microsoft on them," a proprietary code as if to say "we may be a cult, but we aren't winning."
Of course, that's completely irrelevant, because the code running Windows is irrelevant to the code on the Internet and the culture of open source that is insinuating itself into the very body politic. Who cares if Linux lost the war for PCs because it is nerdy and clunky? Using aggressive viral tactics and bullying against critics, it is prevailing in *cultural* battles using its in fact non-open, non-due-process approach of swarming and insisting on "the tyranny of who shows up" and the forced migration of those who "don't contribute". Who cares if technically, open source cultists don't make every single purchase decision in the government today? Their proponents are in high offices of power and inserting gov 2.0 logic and exigency everywhere, undemocratically. THAT is what matters.
The correlary to the "Microsoft owns the computers" is that "we all" use open source software; that it is "everywhere" on the Internet -- Howard would use that argument if there were another round, because geeks like him always expect that they will embarass and shame any critic of open source software if they "suddenly realize" that they are "soaking in it" on the very Internet. Oh, blah, that's stupid -- again, it's about the culture: 12 Reasons You Don't Want to Adopt Geek Open Source Culture, Even if You Use Open Source Software.
Howard has also tried to turn this polemics into a pity-party about a supposed "attack on his integrity". Here this wealthy, influential software evangelist in Washington, DC working for one of the top web 2.0 lobbyists, the O' Reilly publishing, conferencing and coding empire, is going to claim he is suffering because a blogger has criticized gov 2.0 as open and even sinister in undermining democracy. Why the insecurity? Is it a home truth?
I didn't write that "hundreds of people" give "credence" and "validation" to a "tech cult." I wrote that institutions like Harvard and Stanford have recognized me and my work. National Journal and the Atlantic would not publish PR. Their editors published journalism that I submitted to their editors. For that matter, all of my posts the O'Reilly Radar have been edited and reviewed by a trained journalist
But the Atlantic publishes PR for its political perspectives constantly. It's one of the reasons why the magazine has gone downhill intellectually in the last decade -- horrid infatuation with web 2.0 and all Internet fads. Atlantic copies blogs all the time -- I know because my EurasiaNet blog pieces were reprinted there twice. They don't make the claim that everything they print is "journalism" just because they are a magazine! The act of editing copy that advocates a tech cult isn't adding criticial *journalism* to a piece, it's merely adding expert editorial skills.
Furthermore, Stanford is obviously in the pocket of Silicon Valley. We now have Ken Aleuta to documents this for us better. "Harvard" means "the Berkman Center" which is also in the pocket of big IT and the IT cults.
Howard simply refuses to concede what I think even (especially) Tom Slee could concede, and a good many readers: that O'Reilly is a company, not a journalistic outlet, and therefore communications around it are PR, not journalism: it's about the tech business and wealth for technologists, ultimately, not the public good, as it claims.
Howard can't focus on the ideas, however, but keeps bringing it back to a slight on himself, each time O' Reilly is called a cult, and open source software called a cult, trying to gain sympathy and portray his interlocutor as "a bully". This "you're a bully" stuff practiced so assiduoulsly by the open source gang who are the original bullies ought to self-discredit. Regrettably, it works emotionally on their audience who imagine that anyone who sticks to his or her views, and refuses to be rounded up by the collective, is someone they can then pronounce "a bully". It's really a novel way of suppressing dissent -- claiming that the minority voice with a viewpoint that is not prevailing is in fact the suppressor of dissent. Clever, vicious, sinister.
In these sorts of argument, nit-picking and edge-casing and slicing and dicing "facts" are the weapons of choice. I quoted Nancy Scola, because Nick Judd's blog was about Nancy Scola's piece -- duh. That's not a misquote, as Judd's piece mainly consisted of quoting another writer. And in the piece linked to, I quote them both and link to the piece that everyone can see is Nick Judd's piece -- duh. That's why this sort of pestering reprimand should self-discredit.
I haven't said anything "untrue" in my pieces, but Howard thinks if he can play "gotcha' over an alleged "misquote," he can defeat me. But they only way he has prevailed is by relying on the discomfort of people who hate conflict to finally overwhelm them.
As for a more substantive statement, Howard says
For the record, I do not "hate representative democracy" nor non-technical people, nor has it been my observation that former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra or dCTO Beth Noveck do.
Well, that's nice. Except Beth is on the record saying she'd like to "blow up Congress". Chopra is more circumspect, but another person remarked on his project aptly that it was about "circumventing Congress" -- which is EXACTLY what it's about. And Howard can't concede that, so he has to not only misrepresent them, but try to portray himself as more mainstream than he is -- his boss Tim O'Reilly wouldn't be busy storming into communities -- or the capital of the nation -- demanding data to be used by his select group of coders if he believed in doing things through the process of law passed by Congress. He doesn't. Hello!
Howard looks like a total gibbering symp when he pretends at the end of his "last word" to be magnificent, and "forgive me" for my "insults". I don't need forgiveness because speaking the truth about cults isn't "insulting" or "incivility" -- it's a public duty.
The criticism of the O'Reilly cult is advancing further, precisely because Tom Slee was tolerant enough to allow a person knowledgeable about all their debating gambits to go many rounds with their leading operative. Even Wikipedia cites a bit of Marxist-type criticism of Web 2.0 from the other side, making the same point that I make as a liberal, that labour is exploited.
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