i’m not knocking the guy but a little critical thought might be more revealing than this rhetoric and sentimentality.

Its hard to know quite how to judge that sentiment. When people who work on Wall Street make statements this, they are generally subject (here on boingboing, and elsewhere) to entirely deserved skepticism about such a self-serving analysis.

So when an avowed geek/nerd/technophile stands up and tells a crowd of geeks/nerds/technophiles that collectively they are The Creator, does that it mean its not true? No, it doesn’t. But it does mean that one should approach the proclamation with great care and considerable skepticism.

Personally, I think its bunk but a much better bedtime story than other accounts of The Creator I’ve come across.

This was great, Cory – thanks for sharing.

I feel for his medical situation. And I admire that he’s a sharp guy. But clearly he was way too religious as a youngster and just continues to be, but with part of that nonsensical thinking transferred to humanity and technology.

I wonder whether he would have been similarly moved by the force of the internet if all other patients had the same access and same resources to pressure the waiting list. His story is not about how us can create something bigger; his story is about getting ahead of the line by making use of resources which others didn’t equally have. Those resources are not going to be less limited, although the logistics could improve their utilization. But better logistics in itself is not creation.

I’ll make reference to two of his points.

1a) Gilliam was home schooled.
1b) He lived across the street from Falwell’s anchor point in California.

Why was Gilliam home-schooled? He gives us the answer. His parents wanted to shelter him from the influences of secularism. How could his parents achieve that goal? They achieved it by connecting to and “networking” within the national and international (a.k.a. global) community of Falwell sympathetic churches. All of this activity, the recognition to differences, a scheme for protection and a network of resources were available to Gilliam’s parents well before the establishment of the internet – in any early form recognizable to users today.

2) Gilliam benefited from the assistance of friends across the web to get on a donor list.

Gilliam identifies these friends as “activists”. Activists have a long history of serving the purpose as catalysts for action, well before the internet was a dream in anyone’s mind. Even in modern times, though pre-web, activists (particularly those within the Moral Majority) used letter writing campaigns, FAXes and other means to force action and/or changes. No web required.

The interesting thing, IMO, is that just as Gilliam’s family managed to carve out a niche within modern, secular society that allowed for both income and the cultivation/protection of religious views, people with similar interests – be they religious, political or other – can now add the “web” to their toolkit of resources allowing them to carve-out a self-defined space from the corpus of the community and it’s means of communications within which they’re entangled.

Frankly, there is no benefit, long term, to the eager embrace of an e-Baojia system for peoples of all nations. This modern Baojia system is the web. Freedom predicated on “from” as opposed to “to” is not freedom at all.

And this guy has a real sob story. He’s gotten the real short end of the genetic stick. I feel for him.

But as an advocate for the wonders of the Internet he kinda fails. His activist friends bombarded some doctors until they put him at the top of the donar list. That means he bumped everyone else on the list down one simply because of who he knows.

And that’s pretty much his entire argument. He mentions some fluff about people coming together and some metaphysical crap about god, but you don’t need that. It’s the INTERNET. It does REAL MEANINGFUL good in the world.

Sorry for being a downer. But I am not moved.

(and yeah, it was painful to get the video to work. Livestream needs to learn how to share better.)

The guy believes in God, and also believes that the innate goodness of people, working together to benefit humanity is also ‘God’. If that’s what he wants to call it, fine. But why the need to disparage what he says simply because he’s using the G word?

Any of computer sorcerers know why this is happening? Black magic?

We lefties need to pull them over to our side. That is where they belong. But we can’t do that if all we do is insult them.”

This. QFT. The core books of the New Testament are simply not compatible with the core teachings of the Tea Party, the Republican Party, or the Religious Right. Check out Sojourners. More of us need to be there. Yes, you too, atheists and agnostics. We’re all stuck on the space-boat called Earth together and we had damn well better save it and save ourselves.

Seriously though, what’s so bad about putting your faith in the kindness of human strangers? Why does God have to come into it?