Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Design by Eloi

Where do we find men such as these?

Sunstein first proposed the notion of imposing mandatory "electronic sidewalks" for the Net. These "sidewalks" would display links to opposing viewpoints. Adam Thierer, senior fellow and director of the Center for Digital Media Freedom at the Progress and Freedom Center, has characterized the proposal as "The Fairness Doctrine for the Internet."

Later, Sunstein rethought his proposal, explaining that it would be "too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns." He also acknowledged that it was "almost certainly unconstitutional."

Not to mention that it would be impossible to implement.

It must be sweet to be an Eloi and get paid to come up with ideas that require someone to wave a wand and chant "and in Step 3, Magic happens".


The dude's other Big Idea [1] is a Civility Check.  Which isn't, I think, such a terribly bad idea: the mail client has an opt-in that lets you send mail to a holding mailbox for x hours.

Awesome - as long as you can turn it off when you gotta send an update to your boss. 

And .. if you can turn if off for that .. then you can easily turn it off to blast some meathead Eloi.

Might need a few tweaks there, Cass.


[1]
Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.  P.J. O'Rourke


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