Re: [syndication] The medium and the message

[Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>]

Per Kreipke <per@onclave.com> wrote:

>> This is where digital signatures apply I suppose.
> 
> I'm not sure. Does that mean that you can't fiddle with the syndicated
> package? That can make it tough to do any value-add. For example, the way
> moreover recombines articles from different feeds into new feeds on
> different topics.

There's really no way to deal with this, or at least I doubt there is.
However, I have to say, as a practical matter, I think that the benefits of
a Web system are so much better than what we have now, that it's not too big
of an issue. Currently, the news we receive is filtered by advertisers, the
government and others that the concept of an independent press is rather
laughable.

I really like this quote from John Swinden, then head of the New York Times,
when asked to toast an independent press in a gathering at the National
Press Club:

"There is no such thing at this date of the world's history in America as an
independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who
dares to write his honest opinion, and if you did, you know beforehand it
would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion
out of the paper. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar
things. and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions
would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allow my honest
opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before 24 hours, my occupation
would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to
lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon and to
sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it, and I know
it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools
and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks.
They pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our
lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

(Courtesy of Philip Greenspun,
http://philip.greenspun.com/writing/on-writing)

An interesting site that tries to deal with these issues is Decipher
(http://decipher.org/), started by Nadav Savio of Hotwired. However it seems
to be neglected as of late, which is too bad. Anyone know of any other
pointers?

>> [In the case of knowledge management and RDF, if the
>> information is derived from (for example) a series of RDF
>> assertions then I think it'd be important to be able to trace
>> these back to determine their (continued) truth.
>> To me thats another important facet to RDF - traceability]

I was curious about this too, so I went and read some of TimBL's writing on
this. It seems that Digital Signatures are sort of the last step for the
Semantic Web, converting it from a web of knowledge to a web of trust.

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Semantic.html#Signature

He also has a piece on censorship, which seems more aimed towards the fears
of PICS and P3P, et al:

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Filtering.html

>> This is probably straying way off topic for this list, so I'll cease and
>> desist at this point and resume lurking.
> Is it? There's such a fine line between off-topic and heresy.... Nuts. Guess
> I'll stop.

These are important questions about censorship and filtering which I think
are important to be dealt with if we want to get serious about syndication.
Of course, if someone can suggest a more appropriate forum, I'd be happy to
move discussion there.

-- 
        Aaron Swartz         |"This information is top security.
<http://swartzfam.com/aaron/>|     When you have read it, destroy yourself."
  <http://www.theinfo.org/>  |             - Marshall McLuhan