"No letters to display"? Let's just start with that. That's a tragedy in itself and, now that you mention it, a travesty of artistic dharma. Hello? Whoever's reading this--I know some of you are--click the comment button, like, we're down here, hello?

But as I suspect you know well, AL, comments or not, you have your considerable reservoir of silent admirers among the Salon-influenced pools of the blogosphere, and that's nothing to sniff at. You turn one guy on to what you're saying, that guy turns on several others, they do the same: I can vouch that this happens. So I suspect quite a few people are paying attention.

As they damn well should be. The main point of my commenting tonight is not so much the topic of your piece, fascinating though it is, as its (for you) fairly predictable superior quality. It’s certainly not the best thing I’ve read by you in the past week, and even so, you pulled off the feat of planting a brand new pregnant idea in my head; that doesn't happen every day. I don't know enough to have any idea how you stack up against the whole blogodeck, just my corner readership of it. By that standard at least, you measure better several ways than most of it, than a vast majority in smoothness of thought and sharpness of tongue. And by that premise, it's a crying shame how few people are probably paying attention, if you know what I mean. But you're young yet (your blog anyway), so give it time and it will surely grow.

In short, keep at it, brother Andrew. Keep doing whatever it is you're doing, keep working that magic, and speaking of which, you might give us a little more insight once in a while into the full, unedited browse list of, say, any old day in your worklife at the screen. I'm sure it would enthrall.

I thank you on behalf of the silent masses, some of whom are up here in the greater Garberville area, reading you by sublight and satellites alone.

I don't have much to add to the discussion except to say, a year in Brazil gave me a love of life and new experiences that I didn't have before. I wonder if this willingness to appropriate from other cultures can be shown to be an economic advantage? I think it can be shown that the U.S. borrows (steals, eats) as much as anyone else, we also create more I.P. than anyone else, so maybe that's why we protect it so rabidly.

I'm blushing!

While I certainly enjoyed Andrew Leonard's posting on Brazil and its sharing culture, Brazil's lead in information technology owes as much to the size of its economy and its subsequent dealing with hyperinflation in the early '90s. Because money would start losing value the minute it went into the bank, Brazil had to figure out a way to immediately credit accounts if it were to have a viable banking system. This led them to start down the path toward information sharing that Leonard comments on today.

In both cases of Finland and Brazil, adoption of open IT was a true survival ethic. Without it, Brazil's economy would have collapsed.

"...which includes our foundational enthusiasm for miscegenation, for what is hybrid, trans-cultural, Creole, mestizo, and so many other terms we minted to speak of this aptitude of ours for mixture..."

These terms and actualities are actually creations of colonial governments (Spain in this case). They defined divisions based on ethnic mixtures to create false divisions of class between the poor, an artificial caste system. In reality, in economy or power, the division is/was simple: Those who have and control (roughly 2% of the population) and those who do not (the rest of us). If "the rest" realize that they are all poor and oppressed as a collective, then they would redistribute the wealth and power of the elites. So the elites create terms like Mestizo to elevate the mestizo above the castizo, cuarterón de indio, cholo etc... In turn the mestizo would oppress those below and wish to move up in caste to those directly above in the pecking order. A simple case divide and conquer. These mixtures were not a result of free expression, they were purposely encouraged as part of the colonial methods of rule.

One could take a look around today and wonder what kinds of false divisions between people are created and supported by the ruling class, and in turn my ourselves. Black vs. White? Poor vs. middle class vs. upper middle class? The similarities of the people in the supposed disparate groups far outweigh the similarities between any of these groups and the ruling class. We have been divided. We have been conquered.

Another great article, Andrew. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a Finn.

By the way, is your open-source book available in physical form? (I prefer to read longer works on paper.)