Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Thomas Lord

Sat Apr 07 01:18:28 -0700 2007

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Um.... quite a bit of at least the first N+1 comments on Lyon's blog are at least amusing and in several cases raise good points, including some of the criticisms of PJ (Groklaw) and RMS (himself).

Your post, seeing as it's your post, touches on something I've been thinking about lately.   Now, how can I put this without coming across "harsh," or trolling, or whatever....

There's no doubt, Mr. Perens that you've done and continue to do a lot of nifty things.   You have certainly avoided foot-in-mouth disease a lot better than other free software and open source luminaries of similar stature -- and from the outside, that seems to be a reflection of your above average allocation of common sense and relatively good taste.   So, with plenty of due respect, I don't mean to attack you with what I'm about to say but....

Isn't your post here, and for that matter the earlier one, mostly a kind of self promotion?  Here, for example:  Well, Lyons is snippy.  No kidding, really?  He writes for Forbes, for pete's sake... that's what they do!  It's the house style.  His style isn't the same as his points which, regarding PJ and RMS, seem like they raise valid issues.   And he doesn't seem obsessive:  those subjects are on his assigned beat -- it's not obsessive, it's his job.

A cynical read of your post here would wonder if the main point isn't a subtext: that Bruce is the one among us qualified to take on The Man who, in this case, is represented by Forbes.   Your previous post, other than touching on your mad Rails skills, seemed mostly intended to remind us you have the ear of the press -- that you are on the rolodexes of various reporters.

Which brings me to the thing I've been thinking about lately.  I give topic the working title "The Attention Economy and the Allocation of Celebrity."

Prior to the Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, industry had a relatively few public "thought leaders" whose function was to roughly (and competitively) coordinate capital flows by "influence."    If one was a VC fund management partner or a CEO or whatever, one could claim legitimacy for one's "bold" strategic plan by citing trends and predictions from Mr. Buffet, or Ms. Dyson, or Mr. Gates, or the WSJ, etc.    This level of coordination ensured that big-capital flowed in mostly harmonious directions so that a rising tide could lift all yachts.

The WWW, and for that matter the free software movement, presented a challenge to the real power players.   The "megaphone" of influence was diluted by these developments.  Money started flow in strange and uncomfortable directions and, as things have played out, huge industries have met with serious challenges from below.   The timing couldn't be worse, what with the challenges from abroad.

And so, there is a class based, purely selfish need among an economic elite to reclaim influence over capital flows -- and a handful of pundits and hyper-rich loudmouths don't appeal to wide enough demographics to make the case to enough of the upper-middle-class/lower-upper-class crowd to have that influence.   But a solution emerged:

The solution that emerged was the creation of a new self-referential second-tier class of pundits and influencers.   A thing is true, in this brave new world, because Tim says that Bruce says that Doc says that Tim says that PJ says that Erik says that RMS says that Bruce says that ....   Well, if you get lost, don't worry -- there's an executive summary on the Interesting People mailing list that reports "what people are saying," and, by gum, Congress is listening.   It's echo-chamber city, in your neighborhood, Bruce.   And it's all about directing the flow of capital.

The fallout is even reflected in our technology -- Blogs not the least of it.   I was just this evening pruning my much-too-long list of bookmarked web sites accumulated over the past several years.   It's remarkable how many of the third-tier blogs-of-note are single-voice sites created to promote one or more books by the author.   It's remarkable how many of the sites are little cycles of I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you'll-scratch-mine echo chambers, notably including the influential Slashdot/O'Reilly/Technocrat/ZDNET/..... preview channel for the open source industry.   The technology -- the logical structure of blogs themselves -- is absolutely optimized for this outcome:  they're pseudo-democratic because anyone can create one and elitist because, if you have a cluster of 10 that mostly talk about one another, why you can pass that off as a trend.

I don't mean to suggest any conspiracy theory here -- none is required.  Nor do I, really, mean to pass any value judgements about the new, diluted but still elite class of thought leaders as individuals.

What I do know is this: leadership whose main principle of operation is self-reference is not logical leadership.   It is about social position and style, not substance.  Consequently, major decisions based on that leadership are not rational decisions -- they are a kind of naval gazing by an elite who are surely, as likely as any outcome, going to lead us all straight to hell.

Isn't it time to get back to basics?  What about where PJ gets his/her money?  What about backroom industry influence on GPLv3?  What about the principles of software freedom?   What about the wisdom of this v. that technology or business model?   "Snippy?"   "Snippy?!?"   Do we really have time for that petty assertion of courtly norms?

...old money would be down their with you, passing spanners and telling jokes about Jasper crashing the bentley into the hearse. -- G. Fawkes
-t

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

GuyFawkes

Sat Apr 07 03:10:18 -0700 2007

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Speaking as someone who has already nailed his colours to the mast here re RMS main product being RMS IMHO...

It is a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't, thing.

Who is Bruce Perens. If he doesn't promote himself to some extent and that means mutual preening with peers, he fades into the background, like the guy I used to work with who had a few lines of code in the kernel whose name was Simon something.

Simon something is probably as qualified as any of us to voice an opinion on the subject du jour, but who the hell is Simon something when he is at home?

Bruce says this is his blog, and yet, he lets other people act as editors, and allows people like me to have a say, even if that say attacks the GPL and questions the purpose of RMS.

Maybe Technocrat doesn't have roland pipequaille(sp?) or zonk simply because it hasn't reached that critical mass yet where the cabal forms.

TINC (There Is No Cabal) heard it on NANAE, NANAU, forums, usenet, you name it, it is a common theme and a function of human nature.

The "tech" press is no different, the relationship between journos at various tech sites is practically incestuous, and often nepotic, I could name names here, and once you have this data the entire tech news biz looks utterly different.

I've seen journos who spit and scratch at each other in print sit down for their regular drinks session and have a great laugh with each other, it's just a game, and they have to play by the rules if they want to stay in the game.

I suspect that if Bruce didn't expend *some* effort on self promotion, he would be in the same boat as Simon something...

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Uncle Entity

Sat Apr 07 05:33:16 -0700 2007

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Do we really have time for that petty assertion of courtly norms?

Some people need to be bitch-slapped once in a while, its good for the soul. The blog does seem to be way too biased for a professional journalist, reminds me of the Rush Limbaugh style of "journalism". You never know, maybe Bruce is trying to attract some real trolls to liven the place up a bit.

Oh well, off to the cabal meeting...

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Bruce Perens

Sat Apr 07 08:10:13 -0700 2007

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Tom,

I want to be heard widely on issues that I care about, because that is the best way that I know to effect change. Notoriety is a tool for doing that. If it were capital I wanted, I'd spend 100% of my time being a CEO.

Bruce

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Simon

Sat Apr 07 11:00:24 -0700 2007

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I find the idea of RMS being a paid proxy of anyone hilarious.

You can say many things about RMS, but I defy anyone who knows him to believe you could buy his voice on a topic. Shucks you can't even get him to talk somewhere without a zillion this and that conditions.

The 'doesn't criticize IBM over patents' line on RMS is just so funny (Hint Dan Google "RMS IBM patent" read hits one and two). I guess the great thing about a blog is one doesn't have to fact check like one does when doing journalism ;)

Of course RMS already laid into both Amazon and IBM on the patent issue, so you can hardly expect him to say much when they sue each other, other than perhaps "I told you so", and he has enough political nous not to say that too much.

I assume paid for FUD, since he doesn't have any adverts on the blog to generate revenue from trolling, but perhaps he just enjoys the trolling?

Forbes house style

Beryllium Sphere(r)

Sat Apr 07 09:23:06 -0700 2007

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They used to go for hard-hitting ("_____ is not 'controversial'. ____ is a crook") and factual. If they wanted to slam somebody, it would be over some embarrassment they found in a footnote to the financial statement.

That piece on rms, which also tried to paint attempts to enforce the GPL as some kind of shakedown, was a step down from Forbes's standards. Their strength is being scrappy, not snippy.

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Morosoph

Sat Apr 07 06:56:57 -0700 2007

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You can't make sense of what Dan's saying without reading Groklaw et. al.

Funny. When folks hear all sides, they'll see the situation pretty clearly, unless they have sizeable interests blinding their vision (this includes non-financial, ie. 'ideological' interests).

Unlike MoG's publishing of what she assumed was PJ's home address, this is far from a cause for worry; in fact it probably enhaces the debate, as it's far more important to answer the opposition's points then to expand your own reasons. For an example of this, remember when evangelicals for some sect/religion tried to talk you round to their way of thinking? Inevitably, they'd be there addressing strawmen. After a while, you stop telling them why you think they're wrong, but they're nowhere near converting you.

In this case, the primary effect of comparing is to discredit the source. For example, IBM helps fund ibiblio, which has a huge portfolio of interests, along with many other companies. Ibibilo hosts Groklaw's archives; to say that IBM funds Groklaw is a weak truth that is designed to deceive: one that only partisans would bang on about.

In the face of such easy to look up details, it's straightforward to see which are the $Holy_Book bashers.

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Brian Despain

Sat Apr 07 12:53:25 -0700 2007

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Lyon's blog is simply not interesting quite frankly. It seems quite childish and strange, where his single sentence replies to criticism ("You guys crack me up" or "You made my weekend") are little something a 12 year old might say. He often focuses on a single oddball comment at Groklaw and then claims - see the open source people are nuts. It's a strange blog. I don't understand why he gets so worked up over the OSDL gift to Groklaw. He keeps trying to compare PJ to journalist when pretty clearly she isn't. She runs a web site with a clear point of view.

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Brian Berrigan

Sat Apr 07 22:54:50 -0700 2007

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Dan Lyons' articles that i've read have been so short on traceable facts or even reasonable conclusions that to
call him an honest but impetuous journalist is  to insult the profession.  His  early biased  stuff on SCO vs IBM
was full of SCO lies and conjectures and anti-Linux FUD; so much so that i quit reading anything he signed. 

Truly laughable diatribes when  one goes back to  reread them to check his honesty and accuracy.  Just like
Forbes has become the laughing-stock of knowlegable investors,  here  too the reporting is  all for sensation
&  ego-boost, certainly not for any education or information. Now he jealously, meanly  attacks everything PJ
and Groklaw exposes. He should be taking research & writing lessons from PJ, not obsessively trying to trot
out lame innuendo BS against her. Sad.

i wonder what Dan will say about the latest Groklaw gem :)

mogfan

Sun Apr 08 03:02:55 -0700 2007

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SCO hosts its source on sunsite (which is the same as ibiblio)

Dan Lyons gets obsessed

Wayne

Tue Apr 10 19:37:13 -0700 2007

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Dan obsessed? I would have never noticed.

He also doesn't seem to take criticism at all well. I posted two messages there, checked to make sure that they showed up (they did). When I went back an hour later to see if anyone had responded they had "disappeared." Never heard from him on email about it either - and he has my email address.

So who do you believe - PJ or Dan? My personal opinion is that I'd trust PJ. Just because someone told Dan that PJ had been given money, doesn't make it true. And at this point we don't have any proof that any of Dan's allegations have any truth to them, while PJ has backed her assertions up with documentation.

Wayne aka The Mad Hatter