Self-Cancellation in the Era of Public Shaming

Over the decade-plus that I've added to this blog, there have been times I self-censored, and times I lobbed bombs. If anything protects me, it's probably the sheer volume of posts. It's difficult even for me to find the 2010-ish posts on shipping car seats to Africa rather than shredding them. But my experience with trying to do that, during a 2 year stint running Retroworks as a Thrift Store / Electronics Recycler, was an early example of public shaming. A woman on my staff stridently refused, saying we'd be putting African children in danger by exposing them to "expired" car seats.

But increasingly I've had some very revealing draft blogs sit unposted, unpublished. I've learned from Facebook and Twitter that no matter how insightful or pithy a thought, that it runs a high risk of being "cancelled" by someone critical of my privilege and race and gender.

Cultural Gulfs in Developing Markets #3: Congress Fiddling Around with First Use Doctrine

This week, Bloomberg's Adam Minter covers an important new front in the battle to repair your stuff.   Seems the CTIA (a cell phone group, similar to the Anti-Gray-Market-Alliance) is seeking sponsors for a bill to keep a geek from unlocking a chip so you can use your cell phone with a different carrier.

The cell phone unlocking is an important story. IFIXIT.org has previously sounded the alarm about your right to fiddle around with your used gadgets.  And everyone should get to know the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).   Very smart, following the core (first use doctrine) for longer than anyone.

Most Poor People are not a threat to most Rich People.  The two percent get along great with 90% of the 98%. It is the rapidly rising poor, the ones who have figured something out, and are on a trajectory to compete with the rich, that get smacked.  And there's no bigger threat than dirt poor geeks reverse-engineering, copying, innovating, and remarketing materials in competition with Big Electronics.  This is where Sony meets its Terry Gou, where HP meets its Simon Lin, where IBM meets its Steve Wozniak.  The first born of the emerging markets have a pesky way of becoming rivals to capitalist monarchies.