(2004-01-06) Shirky Ito Marinoff Just Blogs

Clay Shirky notes Joi Ito's question question "Are WebLog-s Just" based on Lou Marinoff's discussion of Just Ice and Wisdom. (Martin Seligman seems relevant to the larger issues...) I think Joi is asking "is it OK to us that Power Law-s arise in the BlogWeb, or should "we" do something about it?". Clay Shirky concludes To a number of people (including Joi?) evidence of injustice, even in fair systems, calls for some sort of remedy. I can't imagine a system that would right the obvious but hard to quantify injustice of the weblog world that wouldn't also destroy its Dynamism.

Danah Boyd says When something costs time and time is a precious commodity, is it truly fair (or equalizing)? In the days of the Patriot Act, this is a public problem we need to worry about? This is, to me, like the UN including No one shall be subjected to torture and Education shall be free on the same list of fundamental Human Rights. Let's get some damn perspective.

With that sputtering out of my system, I've posted many comments to Clay's thread. And come back to the idea that the overall goal of the BlogWeb should be to further Evolution.

Update: Clay Shirky defends inequality as being an inevitable attribute of a network which is large, heterogeneous, and robust but sparse, though he notes that the slope of the curve can be changed via various strategies. But doing so sacrifices to some extent one of the other design criteria.