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Don't let your babies grow up to be programmers

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 25 13:31:52 EDT 2004 
Cameron Laird <claird at lairds.us> wrote:
   ...
> "Globalization" just advertising for a refinement of imperialism?
> Of course not, to those of us fundamentally aligned with the
> progressivism on display in, to echo your example, *The Econo-

Amartya Sen's book is another excellent display of that "of course not".

Some people have taken Stiglitz's and Sen's books as "warring
Nobel-laureate economists con vs pro globalisation", but that's silly.
Rather, Stiglitz focuses more on some ugly aspects of what parts of the
globalisation process have actually BEEN; Sen, more on the sunny parts
and on what they COULD and SHOULD be.  

I'm sure Sen and Stiglitz actually agree on FAR more than what they
disagree on -- unfortunately, it's likely to be stuff the average
street-demonstration participant, laid-off worker, or elected politician
can't possibly understand, unless they take a few years off to get the
needed background, starting with differential equations and moving up
from there;-).

> I struggle to bring this all back on-topic.  Mention of <URL:
> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040923.html > is my
> current attempt.

Tx for the pointer.  DMCA _is_ truly scary.  OTOH, one _can_ devotely
pray that MS is overplaying their hand, just like IBM did not all THAT
long ago with their proprietary "token rings", OS/2, and
"microchannels"... IBM almost managed to destroy _itself_ that way,
though Gerstner was there to save it from the brink...

And yes, if emerging third-world nations aren't making sure there's Open
Source for everything they can possibly need, the only explanation must
be the high level of corruption in their polities.  It's the only
sensible strategy on any political and economic plane, after all.


Alex
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