So I recently got this email from CPSR begging me to rejoin. They basically talked about how membership was declining and how they’re essentially dying as an organization. So they’re doing restructuring and trying to figure out what it is they’re all about now. I was a member of CPSR for one year in my idealistic, hippie-computing days a whole 5 years ago. Yeah I remember those days when I tried to use Linux for everything (Remember those days? Umm.. I can’t get drivers for my printer or get my scanner to work, but hey I’m sticking it to the man!). I miss those days in some ways. A whole bunch of people writing software for free to benefit the world and to bring down Microsoft and the other software barons.
Well what happened? The same thing that happened to peace and free-love in the 60’s I guess. People realized all those ideals were nice, but they didn’t feed the kids or actually solve any problems. War, environmental destruction, race and class division all continued to grind on oblivious of the good but misguided intentions.
The CPSR started out with good intentions, but they’ve never left their ivory tower. As far as I can tell, all they do is write policy papers, have conferences, and talk about problems that frankly they can’t do anything about. One of their working groups works on Internet governenance… Please, while we’re at it let’s try to make a perpetual motion machine.
CPSR is simply out of touch with reality and the pace at which technology works itself out. Here’s what’s wrong with CPSR:
- For example the CPSR approach to engaging intellectual property issues is to have a conference about it and work for two years on drafting a policy paper. Oooh, that’ll show everybody. Meanwhile the rest of the world is file sharing using Kazaa or BitTorrent. BT and Kazaa will force the IP rules and content delivery to change on it’s own. They won’t need the CPSR to figure it out.
- Nobody cares what the CPSR has to say. Do you think someone at ICANN is saying “the CPSR wrote this paper and well, we should probably change our ways.” Do you think some corporation is reading a CPSR paper and saying, “hmm… we should be more ethical about our privacy policy because the CPSR wrote this paper.” Of course not. The only way things change is when they’re forced to change. Period. The eToy story is a classic example of how this works.
- In the Internet world, you don’t need an organization to fend for you. Individuals and informal, ephemeral communities are much more capable, flexible, and empowered to bring about change than large organizations. A single person can write a piece of software or lead a hacker revolt that will force the world to change much faster than a stodgy 1970’s old school organization like CPSR.
So is hippie computing dead? Of course not, it’s just grown up and realized it doesn’t need a feel good organization to represent it. Who knows maybe in this era of self-empowerment every person for him/her/itself will lead to the eventual decentralization of every cause/issue. And maybe this is a good thing. With no one in control, movements will be harder to co-opt or undermine. So maybe it’s time for the CPSR dinosaurs to go extinct. The blogosphere era activist vole rats are feeding on the CPSR carcass.