Over the eons I've been a fan of and sucker for each latest automated system to 'simplify' and 'bring order to' my life. Very early on this led me to the beautiful-and-doomed Lotus Agenda for my DOS computers and Actioneer for the early Palm.
From cell phones to computers quality is improving and costs are shrinking as companies fight to offer the public the best product at the best price. But this philosophy is sadly missing from our health-care insurance system.
When I launched the development of the GNU system I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.
As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been used and have failed repeatedly in real applications.
To devise an information processing system capable of getting along on its own - it must handle its own problems of programming bookkeeping communication and coordination with its users. It must appear to its users as a single integrated personality.
I work on OpenBSD fulltime as the project leader. I set some directions increase communication between the developers and try to be involved in nearly every aspect of the base system.
I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects.
Yet in spite of this world-wide system of linkages there is at this very moment a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere on an unparalleled scale.
Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.
Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
I do genuinely believe that the political system is not linear. When it reaches a tipping point fashioned by a critical mass of opinion the slow pace of change we're used to will no longer be the norm. I see a lot of signs every day that we're moving closer and closer to that tipping point.
The politicians always told us that the Cold War stand-off could only change by way of nuclear war. None of them believed that such systemic change was possible.
Even before he came to power in 1997 Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting.
If you want to change the way your banking system is regulated if you want to learn the mistakes of what's gone wrong then you have to change your government.
The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives homes and businesses lost ecosystems destroyed species driven to extinction infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.
There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty.
Our economic system run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.