It is impossible to experience deja-vu for the first time.
I reckon the first time you experience deja-vu must be the second.
– Les Barker
These days, I can’t go to a networking event without meeting at least two or three people who are hoping to start their own high-tech business. Taking “Web 2.0” and “social networking” as their personal mantras, these contacts sound eerily like throwbacks to the dot-com boom. Enough time has passed, I suppose, for people to forget the lessons of that first infatuation with technology. As a survivor of that first era, I could tell them a thing or two, but mostly, I don’t bother. They wouldn’t thank me.
If the old dream was just about quick money, then the whole things wouldn’t be so painful. Most of the dreamers are going to fail, and that’s a lesson that can hurt, but can be valuable. If you find that your thirty thousand stock options are worthless in one company, you can always do what I did, and get another thirty thousand from your next company, continuing the process until reality sets it. You learn about persistence, and eventually you learn that hard-slogging work pays in smaller but more reliable returns – both useful lessons.
But, just like the dot-commers, the Web 2.0 generation isn’t only concerned about money. Most of its members would happily settle for survival as the owners of their own small business. Still more are attracted by being involved with something larger than their selves, for experiencing the sense of belonging that comes with being involved in the biggest trends of the era. And it’s this sense of purpose that is likely to shatter on the pavement when reality sweeps their feet out from underneath them.
Take me, for instance. My first dot-com startup, the pay was three-quarters of what I had been earning as a consultant. I never did believe – not really – that the company would go public and my stock options would let me retire. What concerned me was that we (and it says something about the spirit of the times that, for a non-team player like me, there was a “we”) were going to change computing by introducing GNU/Linux to the world.
Moreover, as the first non-developer hired by the company, I was playing a leading role (maybe theleading role in my own mind) in making that dream a reality, cutting bundling deals, hammering out a features list, going over legal contracts and licenses and discovering all the other thousand and one things needed to bring a product to market.
My second company offered much the same – only better, because this time I was working with big names in the field and being flown across the continent for the sake of my expertise.
Was I self-important to the point of blindness? No question. But other parts of my life were at an absolute nadir, and the dream gave some desperately needed meaning. It’s because I remember that desperation that I don’t want to spoil things too much for this next generation of dreamers. Let them dream while they can.
Of course, if they did ask, I would warn them that being tipsy with meaning doesn’t mean that they should abandon common sense. Half-intoxicated as I was, I never could see why those around me were working long extra hours when they didn’t need to, or sleeping in the cardboard boxes that file cabinets came in, just so they could have the full experience (in the same spirit, many line up for hours for tickets or Boxing Day Sales – not out of necessity but because they don’t want to miss the excitement). Nor could I see the point of those who hung on after I left, working for half pay and then deferred pay, or staying loyal before they were laid off. Too many dot-commers forgot in their quest for personal meaning that business remains business, and my only personal claim to foresight is that I twice remembered that simple fact and ejected before the crash came.
If asked, I would also tell them about my post-dot-com survival, about how, after feeling yourself in the avant-garde, laboring to produce dull and sensible things that people actually want to buy seems pointless and bland. And if you once believed that you were not only in the avant-garde, but leading it, then life in an ordinary office under managers and executives who know no more – and sometimes less – than you do becomes simply an exercise in sustained frustration. I would warn them that their experiments with meaning and work will make them unfit for anything else except becoming consultants in their own small business.
Not that this role is an unsatisfying one – far from it, I would say. After all, iit’s the one that I chose. But unless what you really want is not just purpose, but control of your life, it would be cruel to encourage anyone down this twice-trodden path. You’ll only be disappointed and unhappy, unless you are one of that handful who truly wants that direction in life, one of those for whom the boom-gone-to bust (and it always goes to bust sooner or later, believe me) means a hard-won chunk of satisfaction.
Like I said, I could tell this new generation of dreams these things, but they wouldn’t appreciate hearing them. So I try not to intrude on their dreams, and smile fondly as I hear their excited talk of commitment.
Goddammed kids with goddammed stars in their eyes. I hope they enjoy the roller coaster, and appreciate the ride when they stagger away.
Off the Wall 
The right to comment
Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, censorship, comments, communication, Internet, journalism, Personal, time-management, Uncategorized, writing, tagged Blogging, Bruce Byfield, censorship, comments, communication, Internet, journalism, Personal, time-management, Uncategorized, writing on January 15, 2010| 9 Comments »
Several times in the last few months, I’ve closed discussion on one of my blogs. Each time, some people have howled in outrage. Their anger makes them nearly inarticulate, but their position is apparently that I have no right to stop discussion. I am an enemy of free speech, they proclaim, a censor and cowardly, and downright evil as well.
I don’t see that, myself.
For one thing, free speech is not an absolute right, even if you believe that it should be. It is limited by laws against libel, hate-crimes, and terrorism, among others. Nor can you invoke free speech as a defense against mischief.
Admittedly, violations of these laws appear dozens of time each day on the Internet, and most of them are not prosecuted unless someone complains. Even in 2010, the Internet retains more of a frontier unruliness than other forms of media. But the point is that idea that free speech is unlimited is disproved with a moment’s thought.
Moreover, in each of these cases, some of these limits seemed to apply. Whether they actually would have been grounds for legal actions, I can’t say, of course. However, I think that erring on the side of caution is reasonable, especially since at least one determined commenter seems to have been required to close down his own blog.
At any rate, I have no desire to be involved, however indirectly, in a court action. And, in the case of one blog, I would be irresponsible if I exposed the company that owns the site to litigation. These motivations are not a matter of courage so much as caution. If I am going to be dragged into a legal action, it is going to be for something worth fighting for, and not because I provided a forum for the indiscreet and feckless.
However, my strongest motivation was that I simply lacked the time to either police my blog every half hour or to enter into discussions that were unfolding in which, so far as I can see, there was little to distinguish one set of claims from another.
I have been writing about free and open source software for five years now, and I have gained a limited amount of recognition. That recognition is not on the scale of a Linus Torvalds’ or a Richard Stallmans’, but it does mean that I get a lot of email and other contacts – so much that I can only answer some of it if I hope to get any writing done. Unless I am contacted by a friend or an unusually interesting stranger, I generally try to limit an exchange to a couple of communications.
I don’t always follow this rule strictly, but when someone is repetitive, abusive, and fails to address what I have to say, I am sure to apply it. By nature, I am easy-going and love to talk, but trying to hold a discussion with such people leaves a deadening feeling of futility. They are not going to sway me by bludgeoning tactics, and all too clearly, I am not going to convince them in a discussion. So why should I waste my time? A couple of exchanges is enough for them to have a say, and for me to know the type of people with whom I am dealing.
In other words, I choose to focus on the people who are interesting to have in a discussion, and/or can teach me something. So far as I’m concerned, declining to spend much time on the obsessive is not censorship, any more than refusing to publish bad writers in an anthology you are editing is censorship. It’s selection, plain and simple. i am hardly the only person I know who has to resort to this kind of selection in order to do what’s important to them, either.
Nor can I navigate the rights and wrongs of the feud that, in a couple of cases, is the reason for me shutting down comments. Both sides accuse the other of criminal behavior, and both sides claim to present evidence. However, all I can tell for sure is that I don’t want to be involved. Being hectored, abused, and threatened two or three times a day makes me even less likely to want to get involved; attempts to intimidate only make me stubborn, and, when people act like spammers, I treat them like spammers.
At any rate, to talk about censorship on the Internet is more of a rhetorical flourish than a reference to reality. If I refuse to post someone’s comments, that’s two out of – what? Several billion sites? If a commenter can’t find a place to publish what I won’t, they aren’t trying.
Under all these circumstances, you’ll excuse me if I find myself unmoved by the accusations when I close comments. I don’t do so quickly or easily, because I value freedom of expression myself. But I do so to create a space to work, and so I can focus on what’s important.
The peace of mind that results tells me, more than anything else, that I am doing the right thing.
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