Saturday, February 26, 2005

All Information

The universe contains all the information in the universe, but not by a system conveniently accessible to sentiences. A human information storage system, to hold all the information in the universe, would have to be bigger than the universe, significantly bigger: but we are not competent to perceive, let alone gather, such information.
A sentience's information storage system can only deal with part of the information, and even so it must select.
Yet, have the information storage systems used thus far by civilizations been wise in their selections?
I think not.
What pk opposes is politically determined selections. That is, institutions promote orthodoxy, ignore (or burn) dissent, label it heresy.

In church my attempts to see universality in religion were harshly discouraged by the adults in charge. Was my thesis "true"? I don't think so now. Nevertheless, the church was cutting off inquiry at its roots.
In school my attempts to celebrate jazz were rudely cut off. Without apology, the teacher who'd given me permission to play a recording for the class, scraped the needle across the grooves, ruining my record, in her haste to censor the "jungle music" once it had commenced. My high school agreed to allow a jazz concert for charity, then violated contract after contract with its arbitrary powers. In college I didn't dare say what I thought. Despite these experiences, my desire to be one of those who monopolized the head of the class, that is, a teacher, prompted me to endure graduate school. The graduate school took my money but wouldn't listen if I had anything interesting to say: and by "interesting," I mean non-standard perception. My vision of Shakespeare's sonnets as warring meta-oxymora which recapitulated the dynamic conflict between Christian orthodoxy and the epistemological heresy of nominalism was interrupted and insulted: unheard: undiscussed: still awaiting analysis or legitimate challenge.

But, through Ivan Illich's design for Learning Webs, I'd already found, had already offered, the solution.
Deregulate information. Disestablish the information regulators: the schools, the universities, the media ... Replace them with a free market place for information.

Would all viable information flourish in a free market? I didn't think so. People are seldom ready for innovative perceptions or solutions: we're so used to our problems as they are: and we're addicted to our failed remedies. Still, let the public itself be responsible for its failings: fire the keepers.

Thus, in simple:
List public resources (and by public I mean volunteered)
Human
Inanimate

List volunteered interests (so people can match themselves)
Publish feedback
from the resources
from the consumers
Period.

In 1970 when I offered to be the public librarian for all public information, there were no PCs. There was no internet (just my offer of one). But there were mainframes, and time could be rented. For a pittance (compared to managed information budgets, the public could have freed itself, first of the monopoly of schools, then of all restricted markets: Time-Life, the AMA, the fed ...

See:InfoAll.org
FLEX

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