h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I find it quite strange that anarchists appear to have all agreed to spell 'anarchy' the same way

;^)#

Hmm on a quick check running anarchy through babelfish ( http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate? ) it appears you're correct. I suspect it's because none of us saw a reason to change it . As a side note , I've worked in both highly structured and anarchic organizations and anarchy both gets more accomplished and is more fun ( of course the paperwork is not only never done but is often laughed at ).

So in the interest of preserving the forests we should install anarchists in the government departments then...


;^)#

Any anarchist I know would probably run screaming from a govt. job within a month. Among my friends who do work in govt. they tend to get put into high paying jobs often involving waiting for someone else to need something done ( read , sleep in your cubical ). Of course if everyone left the govt. would it really hurt anything? We aren't likely to be shooting at anyone soon , the roads are falling apart already and other then taxes to pay for spending on administration, I really can't think of alot that they do now. Well they are pretty good at finding talented people to bury in stullifying office jobs.

Aaah, you must live in the same country as me...
or perhaps the problem is more globally widespread than I'd dared to imagine

;^)#

I suspect that the only reason inovative barbarians haven't overwhelmed the current civilization is because almost everyone is in just as bad a shape. ( Northern Canada here ).

Australia here - eeeek the problem may be global - poor trees!

;^)#

Look at the bright side, this government worker (me!) gets to spend most of his working day connected to h2g2 with a really high speed Internet connection!

I don't think I'd be able to function in the 'real' world again - private sector = yuck!!!

- X

I know one govt. employee here who's job requires he have access to the internet , but the IS manager wouln't let him have any because too many people in his dept. already have it ( the upper level management use the net as screen savers ).

Hmmm sounds like this govt. employee needs to resort to age old divide and conquor rules. Most senior managers in my department do not like technology nor understand it and generally hate the IS manager with a venegence.[ Mostly cause he gets more money and stuff cause the GM doesn't understand it either ]If said employee tried promoting idea that his manager would look good cause said employee could make department work better with internet access with no effort on part of said manager....plus he can get one over the IT manager ...this works. Our department tried locking down our desktops and monitoring internet access. Like faithful troops everywhere we just smiled sweetly and bribed our favourite contract techie support to help us crack it.[ Flattery and pizzas do work with geeks !!!] Being remote from HO does help. As Robert Heinlein said " don't bore them with trivia..the best way to deal with a man is to never tell them anything they don't need to know." Works very well with management too.This is not anarchy...this is survival tactics.

Yep , sounds like the work environment I remember ( spent 7 years in a crown corp. ). I find the biggest trick is to make management think that whatever you want was thier idea.Sometimes speculating out loud in the right place then not mentioning it again is enough. I bypass management and sales all the time , ask a tough question and they usually bump you over to a techie , after that trade a little info and you usually can find out anything you really need to know. I think the difference is Sales and Management believe in SECRETS and techies believe in making things work. As a quick for instance , I had to make a piece of proprietary hardware work with a custom job a few weeks back. Asking sales gets little more then a run around for my customer , even though it would be in sales best interest to tell him ( they might end up selling several tens of thousands in equipment depending on the outcome ). Given the same phone number , I ask what form the interface takes " is it open collector or a current source? " sales promptly puts me through to a techie as they have no clue what I just said. After 20 seconds describing what I suspect thier unit will drive , I'm told all the details I need to get the job done ( of course it helped that I was already close, it was an open collector output ) . Now is this subverting authority or getting the job done?

To subvert authority you have to recognise it first...if you do not recognise any preconceived or self-delusional "authority" that people claim to have, then you do not need to "subvert" it.[ For a self confessed anarchist this is easy ]
Given today's experiences with the IT support department I'm not sure it's fair to say that techies always get things done !!! Got caught up in the right Royal runaround most poor users get when the contractors and the IT dept. and the ISP are all trying to offload the problem by accusing each other of being at fault.These are the times when I grit my teeth to stop shouting down the phone that I don't care a damn who's problem it is or was .....we just want access to do the damned job- so fix it!

My point was more that techies want to make things work by nature . As a sideline to that , they are also more likely to be interested in something that is broken. A big problem with net problems is it is often very hard to figure out what is broken. A quick "for instance" , I couldn't get onto the Calgary ISP with my computer for a few days after it had been working fine , but if I called long distance to Saskatchewan I logged on fine and everything worked. Sounds like the ISP has a problem doesn't it? Well it turned out that WINS resolution got activated somehow and was blocking the DNS server requests , but only for the Calgary dialer setup , so the root cause was Windows 98 ( I also know I had not changed a thing in the dialer when the fault occured ). I checked with the Calgary ISP techies and they gave me the clue where to look , but they also said it was a new one on them to. They did know thier stuff was working fine , and thats really all they could be expected to need to know. Now put a couple more layers of people into a problem like that and it wouldn't take much for blame to be assigned rather then solutions sought.

Actually, I think anarchists want to make things work by nature too. Too often, alas, we are confused with spoilt children who only want to break things (cf. the recent events in Seattle), but that's the way it goes in the modern world.

PS - What makes you think the barbarian hordes would WANT to overrun this civilization? Were I a barbarian (something no one but my ex-wife seriously maintains) I think I would prefer to remain uncivilized.

I have to agree on wanting things to work. The closest I've come to working in pure anarchy would have to be as a folk fest site volunteer for about 10 years in Regina. We had a core of about 10 people , all self directing , who put things together and tore down and cleaned up , with very little trouble , lots of fun , great parties and all round good feelings for 9 years. Then someone noticed we wer'nt "organized" and decided they should take that job. As the festivals were run by the folk guild to which none of the site crew were formally members , it wasn't hard for the organizer to get appointed. End result, every decision had to go through the leader , he was over stressed , everything was late , no-one had a good time , lots of hard feelings and almost none of us showed up again.

Hi Fourmyle,

Interesting nickname, I post occasionally to a forum where it was wize to go by a nickname, CWD Canadian World Domination Forum, which was a spoof and satire site making fun of the Americans. The Canadian participants were all chatting about their plans of taking over the USA.The problem was that many Americans didn't know what satire was, or couldn't take a joke, and took the site seriously.

So we all used nick names like Arctic Fox, Eager Beaver, and what not.

Still my disguise was rather shallow, I was (and still am) Agent Doug, official American Exterminator for the CWD, and am presently occupied trying to infiltrate and take over South Florida, with a little help from my friends.

Anyways, like this forum, so I signed up. I'll change my nickname to the same "Agent Doug".

Never been much into serious anarchy, being a "get things organized" person myself. I do like keeping journals, and recording my ideas and thoughts. I hope electronic diaries don't get lost like paper ones sometimes do.

So come on down to South Florida as soon as possible. If we can't take over the place, at least I can show you a good time.

I'm off now to check this site out a bit. Catch you later.

Agent Doug

Of course you know there's no conflict between anarchy and organization. Some anarchists are among the most organized people I know. Indeed, much anarchist writing trumpets the benefits of spontaneous organization. We're against government (the monopoly of ultimate violence in a given geographic area), not against organization.

As for South Florida, as far as I'm concerned, the Canadians can have it.

Enjoy H2G2, I'm sure we'll see you around.

Hi ffmike,

Actually fourmyle is a old friend I have in Saskatchewan, and I got an email from him this morning telling me about this site. Rather differrent to be sure. I do know a bit about his theme, Anarchy and Anarchists, but am also aware that the public in general misinterprets these two words, and governments in general simply do not find Anarchists appealing. I don't like making waves, and getting labeled as an Anarchists is sure to get one on somebody's blacklist for sure.

A question though, in todays modern society, in order for highly advanced technical nations to function effectively I would think that the society would have a need to effective control and a high degree of regulation. Bees in a beehive perhaps, but I always felt the groups that organizes itself the best is the group that is most successful.

Unless the population can ever decrease to acceptable levels, Orwell's 1984 may well come to pass. Why do governments have this phobia about Anarchy? Why did this popular idea against Anarchy develope in the first place? After all, even I have occasion to use the catch phrase "we don't want the country to fall into anarchy" (meaning general disorder).

I actually prefer other themes than anarchy, I don't believe I'm an Anarchist. Satire, humour, biology, and computer programming are my real areas of interest.

Cubans, Cubans everywhere.

I also think it best to let the Cubans keep South Florida.Occasionally I still find the occasional American wandering about, but they're pretty rare. On the CWD forum we had decided to let the Quebecers have the place, since that's where most want to retire anyways. I don't know what they think about sharing the place with the Cubans though.

So, from where are you, my good man? And where are you going. Always like to know a bit about my fellow human beings out there.

Respectfully Yours
Agent Doug

Yep, anarchy has gotten a bad rap. But I'd rather try to keep the ideals alive than abandon it entirely -- any other word invented to cover the same ground will get denatured eventually anyhow.

Again, I don't think there's a conflict between organization and anarchy. Various theorists (from Bakunin to Nozick) have considered how a largescale society might continue to function effectively under conditions of reasonable anarchy. But I don't expect to get the chance to find out in my lifetime. So it goes.

If it *does* turn out to be the case that highly advanced technical societies can't work under anarchy, I would happily give up the technology. I value personal freedom well above TV dinners.

Anyhow, you've probably discovered by now that H2G2 is a rather large place, and there are plenty of other topics to talk about. Somewhere around here there's a programmer working on the intersection of biology and programming, with a little application that traces the evolution of random genomes. I don't remember where, though, but with some searching you might turn him up.

At the moment I'm from rural Washington. Not going much of anywhere; I'm well settled on this farm. Plenty more details on my Researcher page here and on the links that it leads to.

I suspect that anarchy would work fine given general good will among the population , and without that I doubt if anything can really work. Of course political leaders will dislike any mention of them not being needed or wanted , they wouldn't be leaders if they didn't want followers and by definition anarchists don't follow worth beans. Maybe what we should strive for is a population that realizes it needs to think clearly , wieghing the merits of various positions and looking for workable solutions even when it means abandoning previously held ideas. Far too many people think winning a debate means being proven right , when in reality all it means is one debater is more talented then the other. 30 minutes of a political debate shown on TV amounts to little more then who looks better and who can make the snappiest comebacks , and this is how we pick our leaders. Ah well it could be worse. To quote Python " Supreme executive power comes from a mandate from the masses , not some farcical aquatic ceremony. If I was to proclaim myself supreme leader just because some moistened bink had lobbed a scymitar at me , they'd put me away."