Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretches unite!
Howard Hendrix, current VP of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America writers' association, posts via proxy a lengthy explanation of why he is not running for VP in this year's board elections. His reasons basically boil down to being a grumpy mountain man who hates the internet. There's a lot of rambling about how awesome it is living in a cabin in the woods and how many books he's written, but the relevant portion is this:

I think the ongoing and increasing sublimation of the private space of consciousness into public netspace is profoundly pernicious. For that reason I don't much like to blog, wiki, chat, post, LiveJournal, or lounge in SFF.net. A problem with the whole wikicliki, sick-o-fancy, jerque-du-cercle of a networking and connection-based order is that, if you "go along to get along" for too long, there's a danger you'll no longer remember how to go it alone when the ethics of the situation demand it.

I'm also opposed to the increasing presence in our organization of webscabs, who post their creations on the net for free. A scab is someone who works for less than union wages or on non-union terms; more broadly, a scab is someone who feathers his own nest and advances his own career by undercutting the efforts of his fellow workers to gain better pay and working conditions for all. Webscabs claim they're just posting their books for free in an attempt to market and publicize them, but to my mind they're undercutting those of us who aren't giving it away for free and are trying to get publishers to pay a better wage for our hard work.

Since more and more of SFWA is built around such electronically mediated networking and connection based venues, and more and more of our membership at least tacitly blesses the webscabs (despite the fact that they are rotting our organization from within) -- given my happily retrograde opinions, I felt I was not the president who would provide SFWAns the "net time" they seemed to want at this point in the organization's development, or who would bless the contraction of our industry toward monopoly, or who would give imprimatur to the downward spiral that is converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch.

Reactions, as one might imagine, are not positive. There's also some additional wank at nihilistic_kid's journal here and a post by the 500-pound-gorilla of SF on the internet, John Scalzi.

ETA: Hendrix digs hole deeper. Er, "attempts to clarify his position." Also, papersky declares April 23d International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. (Thanks to dragoness_e and anon "dhole" for the links.)