Part of an anonymous discussion: 12/17/2003 7:52 AM
You said:
"Paul, while I acknowledge limitations of current IT, I don't know if my perceptions of the future of IT are the same as yours -- not to say we disagree, just that I don't know enough about my own thoughts to claim we do. Basically, I see IT as a tool (a metaphoric hammer), as such, it's future role is based more on the evolution of the problem space and the behaviors of the tool user. Whether the hammer will be used to build trivial commercial nicknacks, warm homes, or to bash someone in the head, all depends on the motivation of the user."
The problem is two fold, one part is the nature of un-constrained capitalism and the other part is the confusion that computer science has brought to our society.
Un-constrained capitalism has become a type of non-Nash capitalism - and by this we mean that the values of society that are not reducible to point of transaction economics are often ignored. Case in point, the OntologyStream FCC complaint:
http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/FCCcomplaint.htm
It is easy to see the effects of economic control over what are social and political issues. The general systems model for this in respect to government procurement of IT services is at:
http://www.bcngroup.org/procurementModel/as-is.htm
It is
not a fault with capitalism, but with the way our society has allowed economic
control to trump social theory and almost all cases. Other, conjectured, examples of the consequences of unbridled
commercialism are the spam, the advertising on television, and the control of
our political process by economic special interests.
The confusion is addressed in Sir Roger Penrose’s books, as well as in Robert Rosen’s work on category theory, as well as in other places in our scholarly literature.