And here I thought you were making an educated argument with your explanation of the history of propaganda and public relations. When I first read "corporate propaganda," I thought you mean the propaganda of JS developers, not commercial corporations.
Frankly, I find the idea that commercial interests trump corporate identity hard to fathom. If that were true, Java would be a very different language today, and JavaScript would have long fallen into disuse. "The community," very much exists; it's not a figment of some PR type's imagination. Anyone claiming there isn't a sense of corporate identity among JS developers is fooling themselves. I'm on the side of TC39, by the way. I don't believe in democracy in software. That's why we have standards organizations. Joe On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 9:41 PM, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitc...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 6/20/14, David Bruant <bruan...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I'm not quite sure what this is all about, so forking in hope for > > clarifications. > > I'm sorry to send a message that will probably be read as noise by a lot > > of people, but I'm also tired of some of these pointless and > > unconstructive, if not destructive, fights among people (in here, on > > Twitter or elsewhere). > > I hope to have a conversation to start the end of the alleged > > unharmonious relationship between TC39 and JS developers. > > > > Domenic, your email suggests a fairly strong dichotomy between "TC39" > > and "the community". As far as I'm concerned, to begin with, I don't see > > anything that is called "the community" in JavaScript. > > Words tend to get coopted and their meanings stretched to suit agendas. > > <aside> > If you're easily offended, or if you wish not to read opinionated > information, stop reading now. Also, I add nothing whatsoever to the > technical matter of this discussion. > </aside> > > Developer relations is public relations for developers, and public > relations is propaganda. This is because Edward Bernays used a > propaganda technique to rename propaganda to "Public Relations".It > stuck. > > > The renaming of term "propaganda" was necessary because it had lost > any acceptibile legitimacy that it had maintained prior its use in > WWII, when Joseph Goebbels' used Edward Bernays' propaganda. > > Similarly, popular opinion for the bellamy salute, changed around this > time, which is why schools now use the hand-on-heart techqnique to > instill the values. But that is getting off topic on an already off > topic thread. > > The terms, "community", "developer relations", and "technical > evangelism", are all used to describe roles for corporate propaganda. > > "The community," where propaganda is disseminated, exists more > recently as corporate-sponsored technical events and, starting a few > years back, on w3c mailing lists. Large numbers of individuals are > organized (By Google, Microsoft, etc) to accept what is fed to them > through these corporate vehicles, and willingly do so for three > reasons (1) the great potential for career advancement via social > climbing, (2) the large amount of money in corporate community, and > (3) a shortage of corporate-free spaces. > > The term "community" has long been coopted outside the world of tech, > generally to leverage herd mentality, so as to control, categorize, > marginalize, and otherwise take advantage of subsets the public. > > And so now too in software, where companies hire representatives to > promote agendas, "the community" represents something of value to > them: influence. > > Developer relations and community managers are generally presentable, > attractive, and serve their company's agenda. Programming skill is not > so important. Appearance and presentation are. > > Developer relations is generally very well-compensated for very light > work hours (e.g. $150k+ 4d/wk, 6h/d). Don't get me wrong, I'm all for > working fewer hours! -- my point is that "community," and those who > manage to shape it, play a significant role in the corporate agenda to > the expense of anything resembling consensus-based voluntaryist > community. > -- > Garrett > @xkit > ChordCycles.com > garretts.github.io > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > es-discuss@mozilla.org > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss >
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