The Death of Distance

Patrick Logan (patrickl@servio.gemstone.com)
Thu, 9 Jul 98 09:49 PDT

> A. Countries with really good communications are, on the whole,
> democracies. Democracies, on the whole, don't go to war with
> each other. And on the whole, democracies are less likely to go
> to war with their own citizens, and rich democracies are less
> likely than poor ones. Therefore, it does not seem to me
> unreasonable that this is going to be a force which will promote
> world peace.

Balderdash. That argument makes elementary mistakes of confusing
cause and effect. Is a good communications infrastructure
predicated on being a democracy? Or is it the other way around?
Or neither?

Is Singapore a counter-example? They are not a democracy, but I
believe they have a good communications infrastructure. I don't know
how free the communications are on top of the infrastructure.

World peace is a possible outcome, but I think there's
easily as much evidence that ubiquitous networks play into the
dictators' hands as the other way around.

I'd guess so too. There is a difference between ubiquitous and "free
and open". I could imagine a ubiquitous system that is full of
security and monitoring.

On the whole I'd say communications infrastructure promotes peace to
the extent that it makes more different groups of people dependent on
each other.

-- 
Patrick Logan                 mailto:patrickl@gemstone.com
Voice 503-533-3365            Fax   503-629-8556
Gemstone Systems, Inc         http://www.gemstone.com