Mike Lynch (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} prawnwarp) wrote,@ 2004-07-23 14:40:00 |
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A defense of lawyers
Reading Matthew Skala's article 'What Colour are your bits?' made me realise that I'm still a humanities/law graduate at heart.
See, he's trying, in the context of intellectual property, to explain to an audience of other computer people why lawyers aren't all just insane or The Man or otherwise useless. I've never seen anyone from the computer side of the fence even try to do this, and he does a pretty good job.
Around here, I'm the lawyer apologist. I graduated from my law degree in 1994. I never went on to the College of Law, which you need to do to actually practice. I did work for six months or so on a legal team - enough to convince me that I didn't want to do that for a living - where I was never able to convince the QC that I wasn't a solicitor.
To return to Skala: what he refers to as the 'Colour' of bits is what I would call the will, intention, meaning or ownership which people apply or assign to bits. These are the sorts of things which law is about, which is why it's fascinating, and also why people have such strong emotions about lawyers. (Like doctors, lawyers are professionally trained to keep their heads and think clearly about things - in the case of lawyers, disagreements - which are inherently unpleasant and upsetting. I suspect this is the core reason for why they are unpopular.)
Why should this make me realise that I'm still a humanities geek? Because the things which he is using this metaphor to describe are those abstract qualities - ownership, permission, rights, and so on - which constitute the social world. It is sad and scary that the metaphor with which he chooses to describes these things is 'Colour', which is taken from some geeky role playing game set in a totalitarian state.
How does it come about that an adult human needs a lame, paranoid science-fiction metaphor just to be able to explain these things?
Reading Matthew Skala's article 'What Colour are your bits?' made me realise that I'm still a humanities/law graduate at heart.
See, he's trying, in the context of intellectual property, to explain to an audience of other computer people why lawyers aren't all just insane or The Man or otherwise useless. I've never seen anyone from the computer side of the fence even try to do this, and he does a pretty good job.
Around here, I'm the lawyer apologist. I graduated from my law degree in 1994. I never went on to the College of Law, which you need to do to actually practice. I did work for six months or so on a legal team - enough to convince me that I didn't want to do that for a living - where I was never able to convince the QC that I wasn't a solicitor.
To return to Skala: what he refers to as the 'Colour' of bits is what I would call the will, intention, meaning or ownership which people apply or assign to bits. These are the sorts of things which law is about, which is why it's fascinating, and also why people have such strong emotions about lawyers. (Like doctors, lawyers are professionally trained to keep their heads and think clearly about things - in the case of lawyers, disagreements - which are inherently unpleasant and upsetting. I suspect this is the core reason for why they are unpopular.)
Why should this make me realise that I'm still a humanities geek? Because the things which he is using this metaphor to describe are those abstract qualities - ownership, permission, rights, and so on - which constitute the social world. It is sad and scary that the metaphor with which he chooses to describes these things is 'Colour', which is taken from some geeky role playing game set in a totalitarian state.
How does it come about that an adult human needs a lame, paranoid science-fiction metaphor just to be able to explain these things?
