Comment responses

[dbkGU@hamp.hampshire.edu]

Posting from "David Keith (ISIS)" <dbkGU@hamp.hampshire.edu>

I posted my comments on the conference with some hesitation because I 
knew they would expose me to reaction. Merv Tano's response made me 
extremely glad that I did post them.

Merv's response is excellent and I learned from it. I hope it has helped 
others more fully understand (as it did for me) the ideas he presented at 
the conference. I especially appreciate his insight that, for the long 
term especially, we need to become experts in democracy as well as 
technology. 

I should, by now, have learned that ironic humor is easily mistaken in the 
written word. 

So to Don Zweifel: please know that I was not literally 
accusing Lenny of a conspiracy of dirty tricks in not putting our 
affiliations on our name tags. I was (with my tongue apparently too well 
concealed in my cheek) trying to compliment him for a good idea: I think 
it was good that we could not make instant assumptions about each other.

As for your other comments about politics, I think we again we have a 
difference in understanding. Your answer implies that politics are 
"ugly," but necessary-- as if they are a contaminant that cannot be 
avoided. I am trying to say that we need to regard the political 
process-- the process of people making decisions about how to live with 
each other-- as central to the RAB process. 

Politics are not, in other words, a corruption of the rational, technical 
process. They are what the process is about. As Merv Tano so wisely 
puts it to me, we need to become experts in technology, but also to 
study and to value expertise in democracy. 

Your comments and Merv's are helping me learn about that and I thank you.

--David Keith