20. Bibliography, Notes, and Acknowledgements
[Miller]
Miller, William Ian; Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and
Society in Saga Iceland; University of Chicago Press 1990, ISBN
0-226-52680-1. A fascinating study of Icelandic folkmoot law, which
both illuminates the ancestry of the Lockean theory of property and
describes the later stages of a historical process by which custom
passed into customary law and thence to written law.
[Mal]
Malaclypse the Younger;
Principia
Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did To Her When I Found
Her; Loompanics, ISBN 1-55950-040-9. Amidst much enlightening
silliness, the `SNAFU principle' provides a rather trenchant analysis
of why command hierarchies don't scale well. There's a browseable
HTML version.
[BCT]
J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (Eds.); The adapted mind:
Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York:
Oxford University Press 1992. An excellent introduction to evolutionary
psychology. Some of the papers bear directly on the three cultural
types I discuss (command/exchange/gift), suggesting that these patterns
are wired into the human psyche fairly deep.
[MHG]
Goldhaber, Michael K.;
The Attention Economy and the Net. I discovered this paper
after my version 1.7. It has obvious flaws (Goldhaber's argument for
the inapplicability of economic reasoning to attention does not bear
close examination), but Goldhaber nevertheless has funny and
perceptive things to say about the role of attention-seeking in
organizing behavior. The prestige or peer repute I have discussed can
fruitfully be viewed as a particular case of attention in his sense.
[N]
The term `noosphere' is an obscure term of art in philosophy derived
from the Greek `nous' meaning `mind', `spirit', or `breath'. It is
pronounced KNOW-uh-sfeer (two o-sounds, one long and stressed, one
short and unstressed tending towards schwa). If one is being
excruciatingly correct about one's orthography, it is properly spelled
with a diaresis over one `o' -- just don't ask me which one.
[RP]
There are some subtleties about rogue patches. One can divide them
into `friendly' and `unfriendly' types. A `friendly' patch is
designed to be merged back into the project's main-line sources under
the maintainer's control (whether or not that merge actually happens); an
`unfriendly' one is intended to yank the project in a direction the
maintainer doesn't approve. Some projects (notably the Linux kernel
itself) are pretty relaxed about friendly patches and even encourage
independent distribution of them as part of their beta-test phase.
An unfriendly patch, on the other hand, represents a decision to
compete with the original and is a serious matter. Maintaining a whole
raft of unfriendly patches tends to lead to forking.
I am indebted to Michael Funk <mwfunk@uncc.campus.mci.net> for
pointing out how instructive a contrast with hackers the pirate culture
are. Robert Lanphier <robla@real.com> contributed much to the
discussion of egoless behavior. Eric Kidd <eric.kidd@pobox.com>
highlighted the role of valuing humility in preventing cults of
personality. The section on global effects was inspired by comments
from Daniel Burn <daniel@tsathoggua.lab.usyd.edu.au>. Mike
Whitaker <mrw@entropic.co.uk> inspired the main thread in the
section on acculturation.