Saturday Philosophy Corner

Quoting Brad DeLong on Marx the Economist:

Marx the economist was among the very first to get the industrial revolution right: to understand what it meant for human possibilities and the human destiny in a sense that people like Adam Smith did not. In his Politics Aristotle observed that it was not possible to run a household in a way that permitted its head enough leisure and freedom to, say, become a lover of wisdom unless the household owned slaves, and that this would be true unless and until we had instruments like “the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, ‘of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods;’ if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves…” Karl Marx was among the very first to see that the industrial revolution was giving us the statues of Daedalus, the tripods of Hephaestus, looms that weave and lyres that play by themselves–and thus opens the possibility of a society in which we people can be lovers of wisdom without being supported by the labor of a mass of illiterate, brutalized, half-starved, and overworked slaves.

I know, I’m quoting too much there. It’s enough to say that Aristotle was first with the vision of machines as servants, and that it was the first marxist and not the first capitalist that connected moral growth (what Aristotle means by referring to someone as a “lover of wisdom” is that a person would be good and truthful and live a virtuous life if they could only devote themselves to philosophy) with actual means to achieve that growth without enslaving others. I guess enslaving machines is still okay (until Skynet takes over…).

Machines — even from the industrial revolution — gave people a chance to grow as moral beings, but capitalism still requires large numbers of producers (read: manual labor) to provide benefits for a small number of consumers (read: Corporate CEOs and the like). With the advent of technologically advanced machines, our wants and needs need to be magnified in order for capitalism’s growth to continue. The industrial revolution could have provided all people needed until marketing amplified the potential results: “it’s not enough to be clean, you have to be ‘Zest-fully’ clean!”

But our machines are getting smarter, and our recent economic cataclysm is indicative that we can’t keep priming the pump with continually higher and higher wants and goals. If it is a natural state of growth that satisfaction in needs and wants only produces new desires, then economic bubbles (and their eventual planned bursting), will continue unabated. In other words, being perfectly shaped with a perfect smile and a perfect lifestyle full of perfect accessories will only produce new desires beyond that “perfection.”

Such limitless possibility is not — in itself — a bad thing; but should advertising and marketing be the driving force behind that growth? People’s weaknesses and insecurities are the easiest to exploit, and marketing is ever ready with new packaging, new slogans and new angles. An antidote to that exploitation is creativity and play. Computer gaming and creative tools have their own marketing exploits (read upgrade cycles), but also give people a chance to inhabit and explore a world of possibilities.

That’s why my next band will be called “The Tripods of Hephaestus”, and next game proposal will be “The Statues of Daedalus.”

Everything Wrong with Flash

…in one convenient location.

Why, oh why? I ask.

And, here is my prayer: make it stop.

Click on the link if you are semi-comatose and the sheer overload of pointless bouncing and blinking transitions will perk you right up!

Otherwise, you can learn a lot about what not to do with Flash by trying to watch the monstrosity that is the intro movie at that site. It’s not like I have anything against Flash, as I really like programming in ActionScript. And 10 years ago, I started animating in Flash (Terry Gilliam has nothing to fear, but I was definitely inspired by Monty Python).

Back in 2000, Jakob Nielsen wrote how bad Flash could be for web content, but in less than two years, Macromedia paid him off hired him as an information architectural consultant in an effort to turn things around. Unfortunately, that whole effort seems wasted on the developers of iccm.org.

Here, then, this is the usability sermon that the counter-reformation developers ICCM might understand:

Oracle buys Sun; Moon still in Shopping Cart

So I woke up this morning and thought: am I stoned?

Yes, that’s what I thought. I had just read that Oracle and Sun have an agreement to be wedded in holy matri-money to the tune of $7.4 billion…

Sure, it’s the twentieth of April… My neighbors are pretty relaxed about that sort of thing… Maybe, by some passing contact high, I was feelin’ groovy… And it just seems so surreal! I had heard rumors of the deal, but thought they were going nowhere in this economy, and put it out of my spaced-out head.

However, when I read that “the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” according to Oracle President Safra Catz, I knew that he was stoned. Not me. I mean, that guy must be toking and squinting as he said that. And the reporter was sympathetic enough (or also as high) to leave out the little “chkk.. chkkk…” coughs while Safra held his hits….

Okay, green leafy weeds aside, what does all this mean? Well, my crystal iPhone (you need one, it’s worth selling your soul for) reveals the inner story that “Regarding Java, [Larry] Ellison said it wanted Sun so it could own the building blocks for its middleware. Oracle’s middleware is built on Java and the applications giant said it will continue to invest in the software.” Okay, so it’s all about crushing the competition (IBM) and hearing the lamentations of their accountants. I get that.

But what’s in it for me? Don’t look at me, says my crystal iPhone. Great. Just when I needed either a prophesying gadget or a soul — I’m out both!

As a PHP/MySQL developer, I was at first glad when Sun bought MySQL back in January of Aught-Eight. My little database had all grown up! But then Sun pinched out MySQL 5 with way too many bugs, pissing off one of the founders of MySQL, who left shortly after. And Oracle has no need for Sun software, except for Java, which is the platform for Oracle middleware.

All right, what happens to MySQL now? As a Drupal developer, while MySQL is the preferred solution, and is the most popular free database in the world, there is support for PostGRESQL within Drupal, but it’s not nearly as mature or even as widely understood as using MySQL.

Of course, if I can get my hands on a Wiimote with MotionPlus, then all my MySQL-related problems (as well as all that smokey haze) will be waved away!