From: roadrash@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (The Man With No Name)
Subject: Rantings of a clueless geek on the EFF reorganization.
Organization: The Urethane Underground
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 19:26:48 GMT


Tom Peters, author of "In Search of Excellence", says that if you haven't
been fired from a job before you're 30, you're stuck in a rut.  So, to Rita,
Mitch and the rest of the Cambridge Contingent:  

                                 Congratulations!!! 

You've had the priviledge of being fired for standing on principles. I'm  30
and I have been doing my damnedest to get myself fired from Boeing over the
past 3 years.  I've been raising hell with the bureaucrats, but I'm still here.

I call upon the legions of clueless geeks like me throughout the Net to hoist 
a 48 oz. Super Big Gulp of Mountain Dew(tm) or your favorite caffeine cocktail
in salute of your brave crew.  And keep my place in the unemployment line. ;^7

So much for eulogies.


I understand that the board believes that technological improvements to the Net
are more important than cultural/legal improvements.  In light of this "new
focus", support by corporations does make some kind of sense. But the idea that
the electronic frontier can be planned seems counterintuitive.  

A frontier is, by nature, unpredictable and disorderly.  The corporate mindset 
is based on fear of change.  Your sponsors expect you help make things orderly
and predictable.  I doubt you will succeed.  The Net will not be orderly and 
predictable even if Gail Thackeray is possessed by the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover
and the EFF Board signed away their souls in blood to Satan and the Board of 
Directors of AT&T. Good luck anyway. But remember, the whole world is watching.

So much for the present.


As a clueless geek, I can't say the EFF ever meant very much to me.  The old
EFF seemed to be a very exclusive club of various net.major_and_minor_deities. 
Clueless geeks need not apply.  Now it appears to be even more exclusive.

I would never have imagined that the new EFF would be mired in nasty infighting
or be taking money from AT&T.  (Donations from the Death Star???   Cripes!!!!)

I would never have imagined that the new EFF would be less tolerant of dissent
in its own ranks that the calcified corporate megalith that I work for now.
I have unleashed scorching criticisms of Boeing management within the Boeing
networks and in a letter to the company newspaper "The Boeing News".  The
last peon to attack Boeing similarly was crushed by top management last year.
Could it be that Boeing has become more enlightened as the EFF has become 
less so?  The mind boggles...

I was even more surprised when people who were members of EFF and even members
of the "elite" circle of high profile password hackers and phone phreaks were 
just as clueless as to where the EFF got its money and what it was up to.
It seems this clueless geek is in pretty good company these days.

Sadly, the board has been running the EFF in much the same fashion as most
big corporations run their own organizations.  In Boeing we call this system
"Mushroom Management".  To wit:

        1.  Keep them in the dark.
        2.  Feed them bullshit.
        3.  Repeat steps 1 and 2 until it is time to can them.

This doesn't mean that I think the Board has "sold its soul".  In fact, the
new EFF seems to fear the corrupting effects of association with the Priests
of Power now more than ever.  But the present mess shows that even the coolest
net.insiders are no better at the art of leadership than many of the government
and corporate bureaucrats against whom they thought they were crusading.

Welcome to the Human Race.

____________________________________________________________________________
"Without a FibreFlex, Rad Pads, ACS 651s,            --The Man With No Name
and Road Riders life would be meaningless."            DON'T CALL ME DUUDE!

"Old road rashers never die,                  roadrash@bcstec.ca.boeing.com
 they just grind away..."                     another clueless Usenet.geek.       

Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk