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• Tuesday, December 23, 2008 01:03 PM

  David Brin replies.

  Conservationist - Plato was an enemy of democracy, called for secrecy in government, said that rulers could and should lie like hell and seek no critical feedback and use murder to keep the citizens in check. He performed dizzying acts of "logical" deceit that fall completely apart under critical analysis. He despised science. Plato was generally one of the most malevolent and horrifically wrongheaded curses ever to befall humanity.

  But I will say this. Conservationist was among only a few letter writers who bothered to contribute a comment that was even remotely related to the topic of the article. The fluffy nature of so many postings, when the article raised serious questions, ironically added weight to the arguments of the web-pessimists like Carr & Pesce. You never would have seen most of these letters in an older newspaper or magazine, vetted by professional gatekeeper editors.

  How will people respond to the paragraph above? With cogent arguments or howls of

  "elitism!" Without even weighing how anti-elitist the original article was... alas.

  Thanks for trying chikalada.

  Thanks riegro -- see two wikis about successful predictions fromEARTH:

  http://www.necsi.org/community/wiki/index.php/ICCS06/David_Brin

  and http://earthbydavidbrin.pbwiki.com/

  Bill becker, sounds like YOU would like Earth.

  Yehlaina unwittingly typified the problem. She wrote excellent sentences dissing my article as unoriginal while ironically, making it clear that she was uninterested in grappling with any of the issues raised. Every single complaint she made was about phreases she plucked up, and not one about the fact that she and I cannot argue in this present medium. It is impossible. Watch. Both of us will give up and walk away, each of us smugly sure of ourselves, returning to our online Nuremberg rallies.

  alas.

  Of course, the comment wave has moved on, so the chance of this interaction leading to any accumulating or iterative wisdom never even arises here. Yes, I am paid to imagine. I imagine a web that offers tools of reciprocal interaction that are vastly more cogent than these we today use. If you are satisfied with what exists, then ponder - perhaps you are the unimaginative and easily satisfied one.

  —David Brin Read David Brin's other letters
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