Don Marti

Sun 04 Nov 2012 07:13:43 AM PST

Sunday links: disruption and trolling

Paul Carr: Travis Shrugged: The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley’s Cult of Disruption. I’m actually embarrassed that it took me until then to make the connection, particularly given I used to host the startup competition at a technology conference called “TechCrunch Disrupt.” The original Silicon Valley meaning of a disruptive company was one that used its small size to shake up a bigger industry or bloated competitor. Increasingly, though, the conference stage was filled with brash, Millennial entrepreneurs vowing to “Disrupt” real-world laws and regulations in the same way that me stealing your dog is Disrupting the idea of pet ownership. Bonus link: followup. (Problem with the economy is that it's like the MMORPG in "The Noob"...some of us are roleplaying, some are playing to win, and some are just griefing. Liberalism gives us freedom from cloying moral relationships, but some people don't get how to opt out and roleplay as Homo economicus or "disruptive" griefer.)

Kaid Benfield: The Christian Case for Cities (via The New Inquiry - Zunguzungu). Review of Eric Jacobsen's The Space Between: A Christian Engagement With the Built Environment.

Reginald Braithwaite says Programming is a Pop Culture. Meanwhile, Joey Hess writes Haskell code on a tiny netbook screen, and uses dialup.

Jeff Sparrow on industrialized warfare: Sinister Automatons.

Why the legal term "intellectual property" is misleading: Intellectual 'property' can be infringed, but not stolen

Bonus links from the Reddit troll watch department: What an Academic Who Wrote Her Dissertation on Trolls Thinks of Violentacrez (via The New Inquiry - Zunguzungu, ReadWrite, Cyborgology, and Freedom to Tinker). Also The troll's privilege