On The RU Sirius Show, Jimmy Wales talked about Jaron Lanier's "Digital Maoism" essay and swore his ongoing fealty to Objectivism.
RU SIRIUS: You have a history with Ayn Rand's objectivism. And then,
thinking in terms of my friend Jaron Lanier's recent articles about
Wikipedia — you may be the first objectivist (or person even vaguely
associated with objectivism), to also be accused of Maoism.
JIMMY WALES: [Laughs] I did think that was quite amusing. I said,
"Well, I must be doing something right if I get called such wildly
different things. I'm somehow mysterious, even though I'm pretty
simple, actually."
That essay was a good example of a critique that had some very
interesting and good points. I mean, you could certainly say some of
the specific practical problems he identified are things that we have
to deal with and struggle with. At the same time, his sort of view of
the ideology of us — of our group — as being, Maoists or collective
intelligence people, or something like that, was really wide of the
mark.
Link | Text Version of Jimmy Wales interview
