Lessig launches Change Congress

Larry Lessig has offcially launched Change Congress, his followup to Creative Commons -- a movement to end the corrupting influence of, well, influence on Congress:

... once this wiki-army has tracked the positions of all Members of Congress, we will display a map of reform, circa 2008: Each Congressional district will be colored in either (1) dark red, or dark blue, reflecting Republicans or Democrats who have taken a pledge, (2) light red or light blue, tracking Republicans and Democrats who have not taken our pledge, but who have signaled support for planks in the Change-Congress platform, or (3) for those not taking the pledge and not signaling support for a platform of reform, varying shades of sludge, representing the percentage of the Member's campaign contributions that come from PACs or lobbyists.

...

What this map will reveal, we believe, is something that not many now actually realize: That the support for fundamental reform is broad and deep. That recognition in turn will encourage more to see both the need for reform and the opportunity that this election gives us to achieve it. Apathy is driven by the feeling that nothing can be done. This Change Congress map will demonstrate that in fact, something substantial can be done. Now.

Link to Wired article, Link to Change Congress

[#1 posted by Alex , March 20, 2008 5:49 PM]

The link to Change Congress is busted, leads straight back here.

[#2 posted by WarLord , March 20, 2008 6:01 PM]

Greetings

That post about Real ID, the shock bracelet, the pain of wrong names on terror watch list et al ad infinitum ad nauseum all point to the utter pointlessness of this wiki thingy

We shoeless waterlss sheep are caught in a Nine One One meme that eats our rights and shits on our constitution

Until we are brave enough to fight back, this campaign is masturbation

Enjoy the journey

WarLord

[#3 posted by Pyros , March 20, 2008 6:29 PM]

Hopefully the first change will be to throw out the hallowed Constitution. The second change should be to abolish the Senate. We live in an anti-democratic land where oligarchs rule. Over 75% against Iraq war yet power is still comfortable carrying on because they are largely shielded from public discontent (unless, god forbid, they raise taxes). The Hallowed Constitution was designed to discourage street level participation, and the founders felt they needed to make sure that "the mob's" power was just as checked as the power of elites. They basically didn't trust either. The Supreme Court basically needs to go too. Our God-like founders made a few God-like errors. Our system of government is guided by the idea that an immovable body of law should supersede the will of the people. Therefore, unless something has 95% opposition nothing ever happens. It is not a dynamic form of government which reflects the will of the people. Unfortunately we will probably collapse before there are even any changes made. Clearly, on account of our horrible system of government which approved the housing/bank/exotic securities swindle we are headed over the edge. This after Enron. Fuck sake! Fasten your seat belts kiddies. It's going to be a bumpy ride!

[#4 posted by Rich , March 20, 2008 6:40 PM]

@3 - I don't trust the mob's power either. I trust myself.

Keep an eye out for the brewing scianarchocryptotransfuturhumanist revolution!

[#5 posted by jowlsey , March 20, 2008 6:40 PM]

Looks like a great idea, sure would like to see this catch on.

http://change-congress.org/

[#6 posted by Kyle Armbruster , March 20, 2008 6:46 PM]

I like the Constitution for the very reasons you would like to get rid of it.

(Stealing from Gore Vidal) The founding fathers were afraid of two things: Tyranny and democracy. And I think that those are good things to be afraid of.

We all know the problems with tyranny. It adversely affects rich and poor alike.

But democracy? Well, that's a problem too, because most people are pretty dumb. Look no further than what ad-supported "news" brings us. People aren't interested in difficult subject matter. They are drawn to shock and human interest. One isolated incident gets everyone's dander up and it sometimes results in some ridiculous sweeping draconian law, and that is with the buffer of a representative-based government. I shudder to think what would happen if the people were given direct control. Good lord that would make the media conglomerates the government. I think any true democracy would quickly devolve into an oligarchy.

In the dumb people's defense, however, I'd like to point out that all of us are dumb. I think I'm pretty well-informed on foreign policy matters, but that has taken many years of education. I don't, however, know jack-diddly-squat about economics. I have opinions on it, but, to be honest, no one should listen to them.

I think we definitely need to address the influence problem in Congress, because it is also pushing us toward an oligarchy, but the fundamental design of the system is pretty good. In fact, many of the problems we have are due to the fact that we don't adhere to it enough. The founding fathers deliberately made an ineffectual, underfunded federal government. This was an attempt to keep most power at the state level and avoid the problem of the very few bossing around the many. You could focus on your own region, on the things that mattered to you and your neighbors. And if you didn't like the way your state was going, you could move.

A strong federal government is bound to have the problems we see today. It's just too much power in too few hands with too little oversight and too much money!

Only weirdos sign their posts.

[#7 posted by Pyros , March 20, 2008 8:51 PM]

First of all, it's not really a mob. That's a derisive term straight out of the mouth of elite's. It's their term for us. I would have hoped that a predominantly tech savvy readership would have drawn some inferences from the world of the internet and technology in considering "the mob". There is something to the whole wisdom of crowds thing that Surowieki goes on about. The Mob, it turns out, is not so bad after all. When the Mob gets together under the right platform, the Mob can be a beautiful thing, and can do a lot of good.

And if there is any hope for America it is in the form of the so-called mob organized and empowered through technology. This might be an adequate and correcting counterweight to the crooked foundation upon which our government rests. Let us hope, anyway.

But so many people have this absurd idea that their own manumission would somehow be a dangerous thing. But I tell you Kyle it isn't. The more freedom people have, the better they feel, and the happier they are. It is anything but a Reefer Madness scenario, I can assure you. People want to be free, people want peace, people want to be left alone to enjoy life and raise their families. All of this about freedom being "dangerous" is nonsense. They are far more dangerous when they are striving for freedom or when they are trying to loose their bonds.

The reason we should get rid of the Constitution is because it limits freedom and because it doesn't address the problems that we face in our modern age. Why are you and I beholden to the ideas of dead white men who lived hundreds of years ago? Why are they controlling our destiny? It is a secular text which has taken on all of the attributes of the sacred. America has very, very deep problems, and many of them are only now coming to the surface.

The main problem that America has is that it is a spiritual wasteland. This means everyone is terrified of everyones else, everyone thinks everyone else is stupid, everyone will use you if they can, (or many people will, I've found out). We have learned to hate each other. Community has been annihilated and in its place we have endless consumerism.

[#8 posted by Antinous , March 20, 2008 8:54 PM]

Hopefully the first change will be to throw out the hallowed Constitution.

Fine. We'll just have Teresa run things.

[#9 posted by zzjing , March 20, 2008 9:16 PM]

The reason we should get rid of the Constitution is because it limits freedom

I don't think that's the same Constitution I am reading.

Why are you and I beholden to the ideas of dead white men who lived hundreds of years ago?

Because some ideas are universal and timeless?

America has very, very deep problems, and many of them are only now coming to the surface.

And one of the reasons for some of these problems is that the Constitution has been ignored for a long time.

[#10 posted by zuzu , March 20, 2008 9:49 PM]

@ Pyros

I think your comments are being misconstrued (in a knee-jerk reaction) w/r/t abolishing the Constitution. Let us know if your thinking is more along this line:

When any good attitude or concept or system worked well, we hung onto it. We preserved representative democracy, intended for a time when only a few could get to the capital to speak for the many. Modern finance was designed in the 17th century. Literacy as a test of intelligence came in the 15th century. The idea of progress is 19th century. And yet, all of those things are part of our mental furniture today, because when the answer to a question -- a solution to a problem -- suits us, we kind of institutionalize it, so that it won't change even when we do. The business of questioning, itself, has been institutionalized like that, in the kind of place that Jodrell Bank telescope belongs to: a university.

The oldest answers to the most basic questions about how to operate are common to virtually every culture on the planet, because at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order -- especially this kind: a wedding ring. This is one of those things in life we protect most against being changed when knowledge changes us. We protect it by turning it into a ritual. When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is. The people doing it are effectively saying, "No matter what else may change, we won't rock the boat! We're not maverick. You can trust us." Expressions of approval follow. Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it. They include something from an ancient rite -- in this case, the old symbol of fertility: the ring. And then, it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being: a God. So, the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution if you broke your promise later on. Some things, this ritual says, must be permanent.

If something becomes common enough to turn into a ritual, and then starts to involve really large numbers of people, that's when the ritual becomes something else. It becomes widespread enough to affect the general agreement we all share. So, that's when the responsibility for running it goes out of your hands to be taken over by the institutions set up to run the rituals that matter on a regular basis, so that people can have clear rules and regulations to follow if they decide to get up to that particular ritual. The institutions take the admin out of daily life and run it for you: banking, government, sewage, tax collecting. Or, if you break the rules and regulations, one institution can take you out of daily life. This one: a trial. In every community, the law -- whether it's dressed up like this or the village elders telling you what the local custom is -- the law is all those rules I was on about earlier. I suppose what institutions like this do, most of all, is the dirty work. While they're putting them away here in the law court, for instance, that leaves us free to get on with making money, having a career, and avoiding the social responsibilities that these people have to deal with. And after a few centuries of this buck-passing, the institutions get big and powerful, and reach into everybody's lives so much they become hard to alter and virtually impossible to get rid of. The name of the game here, and in all the institutions that run your life, is keeping order, because if the institutions didn't do that, it would be the end of civilization as we know it, wouldn't it? So, the institutions are usually old-fashioned; don't like change.

As for the permanent values that are supposed to remain unchanged in spite of our changing knowledge — well they change too. Once it was good to burn women. Wrong to claim the Earth went around the sun. Logical to argue about angels on the head of a pin. Values change every time the universe changes — and that's every time we redefine a big enough bit of it. Which we do all the time, through the process of discovery (that isn't discovery, just the invention of another version of how things are).And yet, in spite of that, we still go on believing that today's version of things is the only right one. Because as you've learned from this series, we can only handle one way of seeing things at a time. We've never had systems that would let us do more than that. So we've always had to have conformity with the current view. Disagree with the church, and you were punished as a heretic; with the political system, as a revolutionary; with the scientific establishment, as a charlatan; with the educational system, as a failure. If you didn't fit the mold, you were rejected.

But, ironically, the latest product of that way of doing things is a new instrument — a new system — that while it could make conformity more rigid, more totalitarian, than ever before in history, could also blow everything wide open. Because with it, we could operate on the basis that values and standards — and ethics and facts and truth — all depend on what your view of the world is — and that there may be as many views of that, as there are people. And with this microchip capable of keeping a tally on those millions of opinions voiced electronically, we might be able to lift the limitations of conforming to any centralized representational form of government — originally invented, because there was no way for everybody's voice to be heard. You might be able to give everybody unhindered, untested access to knowledge. Because the computer would do the day-to-day work — for which we once qualified the select few — in an educational system originally designed for a world where only the few could be taught. You might end the regimentation of people, living and working in vast unmanageable cities. Uniting them instead in an electronic community, where the Himalayas and Manhattan were only a split second apart. You might — with that and much more — break the mold that has held us back since the beginning. In a future world that we would describe as "balanced anarchy" — and they will describe as an "open society" — tolerant of every view. Aware that there is no single privileged way of doing things.

Above all, able to do away with the greatest tragedy of our era: the centuries old waste of human talent that we couldn't or wouldn't use. Utopia? Why? If, as I've said all along, the universe is — at any time — what you say it is ... then say!

James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed

[#11 posted by Pyros , March 20, 2008 11:07 PM]

I like what you have highlighted there Zuzu. Yeah, who knows what might be possible. I'm glad to see that a smart person like Lessig has finally stepped forward to propose something. I wish more of the brightest minds in technology would take a greater interest in developing these kinds of tools. Our souls have become over the last 50 years or so. Man, they've really put our souls through the wringer.

In line with some of Mr. Burke's writings, I have proposed a Knowledge Market which would allow someone to trade what they know about one thing or other for something of value. Using the desk top sharing and web conferencing, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to learn Quick Books from someone in India. The teacher would big on my business the way one might bid on a material object on eBay. If your knowledge was of sufficient value, you would no longer be tied to the monolithic model of production that the industrial revolution gave us. If it worked, it would undermine, to some extent, that entire model.

To address my critics concerning the Constitution: I am not saying that it is all bad, and whatever dwindling rights you have under the Constitution, yes, hang on to them with dear life. The problem is that a piece of paper now several hundred years old written by men with an 18th century mindset will not hold the center indefinitely. Our government, unfortunately, is not dynamic or representative enough currently to change when it needs to change. We all witnessed the debacle of George W. Bush's first election. We all know what a joke the electoral college is. But nothing has been done about it. Why? Because you can't change the damn Constitution.

And because governance is only tenuously connected to the Will of The People, popular opinion about the war in Iraq, or universal health care, and many other things besides hardly seems to matter.

A good metaphor for American ethos of liberty is the automobile. Yes, occasionally it is enjoyable to take a drive somewhere although these moments are increasingly rare. You might imagine yourself in a convertible on an open road somewhere with the wind blowing through your hair amidst bucolic splendor. Ignoring for a moment that the road that you're driving on destroyed a great deal of the land you are enjoying, and the fact that your emissions are polluting the air, most of the time, the driving is a chore. Most of the time we are stuck in traffic. Yes, it would be nice if the world were big enough to accommodate a private highway for everyone, but it isn't. But we stick to the supposed ideal and ignore the reality because sometimes we are too lazy to think.

Freedom, essentially, has a lot to do with abolishing this ethos of individualism and selfishness that the rich so relish and shove down our throats all the time (since it is only they who are best in a position to actually experience it)and coming around to the idea that we are free together or not at all.

[#12 posted by Antongarou , March 21, 2008 4:19 AM]

Pyros, I'm trying to understand what you're proposing, and I'm very unsure I understand.Are you proposing out-and-out anarchy?Simply reforming the constitution from the ground up, keeping the good bits and throwing away deadwood?Something else?

[#13 posted by Jeff , March 21, 2008 6:51 AM]

Our offices of government, state and national, require nothing more than people of good character who live and fight for the priciples so eloquently expressed in our Declaration of Independance and Constitution. Our government is increadibly complex, if for no other reason than we are 300 million people, each with an opinion that is correct. When we find a common ground based on what is best for all of us, instead of what is just best for Us, then we will evolve and our government will reflect that evolution. Our Declaration of Independance is a great place to start. As a people we have allowed tryanny of a most diabolical sort to take over our great land. From time to time tyrants come to power, but they can be removed from power, and that's what we are about to do. Good bye George, we are about to cut all ties with you and your tryanny.

[#14 posted by zuzu , March 21, 2008 8:15 AM]

Freedom, essentially, has a lot to do with abolishing this ethos of individualism and selfishness that the rich so relish and shove down our throats all the time (since it is only they who are best in a position to actually experience it)and coming around to the idea that we are free together or not at all.

I fail to understand why you conclude on ascribing the problem of coordination to individualism. Yes, scarcity exists because we don't already have everything we want, not to mention the inherent uncertainty of the future, and so we must coordinate. But the evolution of our own sociobiology does not support the kind of hive mind you seem to suggest.

Furthermore, the problems you outline, the valuation of them as "problems" originates in a subjective table of values. They are not facts in nature, but preferences in our minds.

[#15 posted by sproing3 , March 21, 2008 8:44 AM]

To Kyle post #6: I agree that a strong government negatively effects individual rights. This is why I'm much more comfortable living as an expat in Indonesia, which has one of the worlds most corrupt society. I feel much safer and freer here. A little greese to the right wheel can get things done, and I'm not at the whim of some huge machine.

A horribly corrupt government has all sorts of problems, but at least it is incapable of being taken very seriously.

[#16 posted by sproing3 , March 21, 2008 8:53 AM]

To Jeff #13: I think you misunderstand what politics is, and who does politics. Politics is power. A successful politian must be skillful at manipulating power. Politics isn't about making laws for the common good, it is about trading favors with others who will either gain an upper hand over you, or further your career. The public good business is just to get votes. The public good business is PR, marketting. It has very little to do with what politicians do.

If you want to reform government, you'd have to find a way to reform human nature. I can't think of one. Career politicians become powerful by the same means as alpha primates have for millenia - politics of power.

If I were to suggest a rational form of governance, it would not be democracy of one vote per adult. It would be a meritocracy of influence based on ability to understand the issues and make decisions that reflect an aspiration towards the common good. We need to qualify to vote, and give more vote to the more qualified. Will that happen? Not in my lifetime.

[#17 posted by Pyros , March 21, 2008 12:16 PM]

Zuzu, I believe that I would wish to understand the points that you have made a little better. For example, what kind of mind does the evolution of our sociobiology support, in your opinion? We live in cities even though this would seem to quite strongly go against our sociobilogy. Humans do things against their inherent nature all the time if it is perceived that by doing so a greater good may be obtained. Prostitution, and indeed, practically any job would be two more examples.

As far as individualism goes, I see it really as a kind of invention, and a rather horrible one at that as anyone who has ever read an Anne [I refuse to use her "individualistic" spelling of her name in order that I might take her down a peg or two]Rand novel might attest.

You write further, "Furthermore, the problems you outline, the valuation of them as "problems" originates in a subjective table of values. They are not facts in nature, but preferences in our minds."

That is true. Please elaborate.

@ Antoinin Garou

My feeling is that humans have only the dimmest notion of how to effectively govern themselves. The American government is corrupt, unjust, and inefficient. Unfortunately, we accept government as it is. We have a version of something that is several hundred years old. What else do we use on a daily basis that is so ancient? What are the chances that our Hallowed Founders got it right the very fist time? I can't think of anything that I've ever gotten right the first time I did it.

The very nature of government is such that it is designed not to ever be changed! This is extremely bad.

Back to the point. I've already made a few suggestions which undoubtedly do not go far enough. The real answer is that I don't know, and I don't think anyone else does either. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that government exists apart from scientific inquiry. You mentioned anarchy. Maybe it represents an ideal, but I have doubts about its practicability on a large scale.

We spend billions of dollars every year on what is euphemistically called "defense". There is a kind of cynical assumption embedded in this kind of thinking apart from the rapacious money grubbing of the prison-defense-industrial complex. Is it possible to imagine government workers hired from MIT to study peace and ways in which it might be spread? After all, it is what everyone professes that they want. I don't think that it is such a crazy idea, personally even if it is somewhat precluded by existence of the testosterone-poisoned patriarchy.

I think the thing to do would be to bring together experts in several fields to develop some kind of model from theoretical precepts. Part of this model might include the way in which to transition to it.

The Constitution is sacerdotal. We our taught from an early age that it is somehow a perfect document, and people have been told that brave men have died protecting it, etc. In other words, The Hallowed Constitution has the full backing of the most earnest and strenuous efforts of a very formidable propaganda machine. Why should we not question it and seek to improve it in what ways we might? Is it so radical to suggest that many of the problems that American society faces might actually be rooted in the structural weaknesses of our government?

[#18 posted by Jeff , March 21, 2008 12:54 PM]

Spoint3 said, "To Jeff #13: I think you misunderstand what politics is, and who does politics."

As convoluted as politics can be, I don't think I have any great misunderstanding of the process. And contrary to popular opinion, I do not beleive all things of a political nature are corrupt. When used properly as a tool, Politics have allowed us to better ourselves and our nation. The art of politics does not require us to be corrupt; it requires that we negotiate, reason, compromise, and do what is right. Or if not Right, at least what is best at the time. We can no more condemn politics outright than we can condemn our families. And if there is any place where politics is made and learned, it's with our familes, our clans and tribes. If we truly wish to transform our Congress--our country, then perhaps the best place to start is in our own home with the people we love and cherish.

[#19 posted by zuzu , March 21, 2008 1:49 PM]

@Pyros

Equating individualism with Ayn Rand is a rather vulgar oversimplification. She's not the first nor the last, nor certainly the most eloquent to speak on the subject.

The subject of debate which perhaps I've fumbled with in this thread and others is that an argument of "individualism" vs. "the common good" ("collectivism"? is that fair to say?) hinges on our frame of reference, or as I attempted to say w/r/t morality and opinions: perspectivism.

Our perspective / frame of reference is the individual. We only tacitly receive information about the "social organism" -- which is the only perspective from which questions of "common good" can really originate. It's like asking a bee how the hive is doing, or asking one of your cells how you're feeling; the information just isn't localized there.

The classic example of emergence is the geometric line. Draw two dots, and a line between them "emerges", but the line is not contained in either of the dots. The dots don't know anything about the line. (IIRC, Richard Feynman has a funny anecdote about this -- that dog barks are not stored in the dog, like pulling them out of a bag.)

So I think what I should have asserted the first time around instead of anthropic bias is the fallacy of distribution; it amounts to the same thing -- don't anthropomorphize society. This perspective is not an "invention", it's what happens when our genes express to create a human-like brain, and that brain has components optimized for interpreting received "social" information (e.g. language). This is what I mean by sociobiology. And "we're already here"; so it's the only perspective we know (again, anthropic bias) by definition of how we came to exist.

(Hopefully by here I've kinda explained why individualism emerged to be "real", and I'm not just restating my assertion of pro-individualism.)

Now, I suppose that you could coordinate an effort with like-minded fellows for something like the Relatively Independent Sub-Totality (RIST) Neal Stephenson described in Cryptonomicon. (I forget now which of the real-life philosophies of transhumanism Stephenson was name-substituting for.) But you'd have to build that bridge from the current striations of biological-individual-social to that, and such a system would have to be at least as efficient in a communications theoretic manner as the current system is now, or "Darwin" will kick your organism out of the survival pool.

Have you seen Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig? The writers lay down some post-structuralism from Gilles Deleuze and Frederic Jameson (in a manner I would not consider "fashionable nonsense" -- doubly a concern for anime plots) to speculate about how brainjacks could share not just "facts" but also "social identity" information, and what the consequences of that would be. Might be up your alley.

[#20 posted by Pyros , March 21, 2008 4:18 PM]

The human brain is primarily a social organ. Arguably, its most important job is understanding and perceiving the thoughts contained within other brains. Language is but one of the tools we use to do this. To the extent that brains are able to do this we are able to copy pieces of other people’s brains within our own brains. The idea of memes comes to mind, and while this is related, it really describes a particular kind of copying phenomenon of which I am not addressing at the moment. If you ask me to fetch a cup of coffee, an idea which originated your brain, my brain has to copy it, comprehend it, remember it and decide whether to act. Our brains are amalgams of the other brains that we encounter. But, unlike bees, we have a mechanism called consciousness which allows us to keep track of where and from whom various parts of our brain have originated.

I admit that there is a very good chance that I’m misunderstanding your point, I don’t know. That said, I see the main activity of humans brains as trying to understand the network brain. We don’t often think of our own brains as merely part of a network of brains, but that is exactly what it is so that’s what we are too. This is part of the mechanism which enables us to localize elements of a concept which is by its essence distributed and how a collective can emerge from this distribution. It’s kind of like bit torrent. As an aside, CS, as it evolves, more and more mirrors human neuro/soci/whatever as I’m sure other commentators have pointed out. I don’t need to physically touch you to communicate with you. I can do it “wirelessly” simply by talking or shouting. If we are unable to understand our own brains by observation and other forms of inquiry, our understanding of CS will serve as an adequate proxy.

I would also assert as a natural fact that humans are biologically far more interested in protecting the collective than the individual. And here, there is a parallel with bees. And it is rather easy to understand why things are arranged this way: the collective can withstand the destruction of any one of its particular members. This is why people risk their lives to save others. This is why people are willing to fight wars. A society which has obliterated any meaningful collective is the only context within which the hegemony of the individual can exist. This is the society that we live in. This is something that Americans have been acculturated to, but it is still rather bizarre.

Individualism, “a moral, political, or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty” according to an anonymous person who wrote a Wikipedia article about it (I wonder what their motivation was?), makes no sense for a particular individual! In the absence of a collective to which we can belong this strange idea of individualism emerges and becomes appealing. If you are part of no collective, you certainly will not be interested in devoting resources to unworthy petitioners. Individualism, oddly, really describes the ethos of a group of people. People want to be part of groups, and they are willing to abide by whatever rules the group imposes. People both within and outside of groups abhor interference from strangers.
I don’t view it is silly to advocate for the abolition of the kind of society that has made individualism a toxic reality. I don’t view it as silly to advocate for the return of the collective. Heck, we could easily have the software for it.

That’s it. I want to stress, Zuzu, that I am far more interested in understanding your ideas than I am in debating with you abut one thing or the other. If I may pay you a compliment without, hopefully, seeming also to be patronizing, I view it as quite possible that you have a perspective worth knowing more about. What you have posted so far I only view as tantalizing glimpses of thoughts and ideas which, because of their breadth, cannot be expressed as cogently as you may like to within the space of a few short paragraphs, (the limitations of the typewriter vs the kind of communication we are optimized for notwithstanding). The quote you supplied for robot news post trenchant. I guess they were anthropomorphizing the robots. Hey, I see a pattern.