As an amusing aside from the previous post, thinking about early HCI work and reading about all the ACTA nastiness (wikipedia link for pseudo-neutrality, my feelings are more in line with the “What the F*CK!” stance over at this BoingBoing post) at the same time reminded me of one of the most amusing bits from Alan Kay’s original publication on the Dynabook concept (from which most modern ubiquitous computing descends) A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages:
The ability to make copies easily and to “own” one’s information will probably not debilitate existing markets, just as easy xerography has enhanced publishing (rather than hurting it as some predicted), and as tapes have not damaged the LP record business but have provided a way to organize one’s own music.
He may have been a little off on that front, the ability to make an infinite number of perfect copies (something that neither xerography or cassettes can do), and distribute them over arbitrary distances for virtually nothing did change things in ways that don’t really leave room for the old-school media middle-men. The fact that technology has changed the world is not something to be legislated against, particularly when doing so will will criminalize socially normal behavior by those who adapted, to benefit those who did not.
The latter portion of Dollhouse (which is way, way better than the first few) is largely about this kind of (un)intended consequences of technology (which is something I really enjoy thinking about), and has kept it on my mind, but I’m going to wait until the last (booo!) episode airs later this week to babble about that.
