"Bruce Sterling - Statement of Principle, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

clever. They were imaginative, but it was imagination in a bad cause.
They were technically accomplished, but they abused their expertise for
illicit profit and to feed their egos. They may be "cyberpunks" --
according to many, they may deserve that title far more than I do -- but
they're no friends of mine.
What is "crime"? What is a moral offense? What actions are evil
and dishonorable? I find these extraordinarily difficult questions. I
have no special status that should allow me to speak with authority on
such subjects. Quite the contrary. As a writer in a scorned popular
literature and a self-professed eccentric Bohemian, I have next to no
authority of any kind. I'm not a moralist, philosopher, or prophet.
I've always considered my "moral role," such as it is, to be that of a
court jester -- a person sometimes allowed to speak the unspeakable, to
explore ideas and issues in a format where they can be treated as games,
thought-experiments, or metaphors, not as prescriptions, laws, or
sermons.
I have no religion, no sacred scripture to guide my actions and
provide an infallible moral bedrock. I'm not seeking political
responsibilities or the power of public office. I habitually question
any pronouncement of authority, and entertain the liveliest skepticism
about the processes of law and justice. I feel no urge to conform to
the behavior of the majority of my fellow citizens. I'm a pain in the
neck.
My behavior is far from flawless. I lived and thrived in Austin,
Texas in the 1970s and 1980s, in a festering milieu of arty crypto-
intellectual hippies.

I've committed countless "crimes," like
millions of other people in my generation. These crimes were of the
glamorous "victimless" variety, but they would surely have served to put
me in prison had I done them, say, in front of the State Legislature.
Had I lived a hundred years ago as I live today, I would probably
have been lynched by outraged fellow Texans as a moral abomination. If
I lived in Iran today and wrote and thought as I do, I would probably be
tried and executed.
As far as I can tell, moral relativism is a fact of life. I
think it might be possible to outwardly conform to every jot and tittle
of the taboos of one's society, while feeling no emotional or
intellectual commitment to them. I understand that certain philosophers
have argued that this is morally proper behavior for a good citizen.
But I can't live that life. I feel, sincerely, that my society is
engaged in many actions which are foolish and shortsighted and likely to
lead to our destruction. I feel that our society must change, and
change radically, in a process that will cause great damage to our
present system of values. This doesn't excuse my own failings, which I
regret, but it does explain, I hope, why my lifestyle and my actions are
not likely to make authority feel entirely comfortable.
Knowledge is power. The rise of computer networking, of the
Information Society, is doing strange and disruptive things to the
processes by which power and knowledge are currently distributed.