Blaise Alleyne

John Perry Barlow at PyCon

Blaise Alleyne at

Don't know what I was expecting, but there were some bizarre comments in that keynote (rough paraphrases)...

privacy is doomed, but underlying reasons for it are pathological -- we fear the judgment of institutions and people who shouldn't be judging us

(1) privacy is more than that -- it's about human dignity, about having the space to develop an identity, about context and understanding; (2) in earth-side living, while non-judgment is a worthy and important goal, it's also a bit naive to think that there would ever be a perfect state of non-judgment...that's a reality we need to contend with, and privacy has a positive value as a tool to defend against unreasonable judgments

the three major religions rightly regarded internet as ultimate heresy.

Uh... Citation needed. (And recent counterexample.)

resist ideology, and encourage belief... ideology happens in the head, belief is in the heart

Just a bizarre breakdown. There was a lot of ideology in his talk. Ideology isn't necessarily bad (we're often fooling ourselves to claim that we aren't coming from some kind of ideological perspective). Why heart over head? etc...

I'm just left scratching my head a bit...

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Curious what religions are being cited as "three major religions"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

Doug Whitfield at 2014-04-11T14:37:52Z

Good point. I'd assume Christianity and Islam, no matter which way you slice it... I'd assume he was talking about the three Abrahamic religions, though Judaism would be major through its influence and its prominent fork rather than straight by the numbers.

Blaise Alleyne at 2014-04-11T14:43:59Z

Is it drugz or hardwired? With some people it's hard to tell. I probably agree with him on many things, but why anyone would want him to speak is beyond me.

Mike Linksvayer at 2014-04-11T14:58:17Z

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I too thought many years ago that big brother surveillance would leave us with no privacy and would be inevitable. Sometimes it can feel like that especially when you have Stasi-like neighbours, yet we must resist their evil mindset, and use their system against them.

jrobertson at 2014-04-11T15:13:55Z

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