> How the hell do you get the average person > to understand the full magnitude of what the Internet means?
The problem is that the internet means different things to different people. Just like a highway means different things to different people. Some see a highway as a way ruin a perfectly good small town. Others see it as an opportunity to expand that town. For you it means a change in freedom of speech issues, but for others it means different things. It all depends on what your priorities are. When the printing press was invented, I bet people had similar philosophies as you do, except that democracy (aka the real meaning of new world order - don't answer to the kings) was probably #1 on their list, with freedom of speech being next. I think the printing press will go down in history as having a far greater impact on the world than the internet. To answer your question, I think you have 2 things here: your means and your ends. Your ends are political, and your means are technical (the internet). So you have to explain to people what your end goal is first (freedom of speech), then explain how the internet helps you accomplish it. I bet that will give you more success in getting your message thru. For me, the internet meant more billable hours, which lead to the ability to buy my own home, because the demand for my skills skyrocketed. It meant that I could take my girlfriend to Europe for a nice vacation. It also meant an easier way to buy and sell things (ebay), and a better alternative to BBS's when needing tech support to get my job done. It meant that more non-computer folks use email. After installing, maintaining, and upgrading internet infrastructure 40 hours a week, I never got into the online scene (until I quit that job) because I didn't want to mess with computers after already doing so all day. So for me, NOT enjoying the internet like many other technical people did meant that computers had become a profession, and no longer a hobby. It was a weird feeling when I recognized that. Now that I'm working on my own project full time, computers are finally a hobby again.... But I'm not getting enough work done on my project... ahhh, so much to read! (http://citeseer.nj.nec.com) -----Original Message----- From: chat-admin at freenetproject.org [mailto:chat-ad...@freenetproject.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Atkinson Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 8:11 PM To: chat at freenetproject.org Subject: [freenet-chat] The Coming Storm When I first read the slashdot article "Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions" (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/21/155221) I cried, which is really saying something as I do not cry often. And since them I have been having a wide variety of fixed emotions. But I think it settled down to being scared. Part of my fear can best be described by the following article "The Coming Storm" by Bruce Bell (http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/articles/comingstorm.html). The other part of my fear is the fact that very few people understand what the existence of the Internet really means, and even fewer people see the upcoming battle. I know I didn't fully grasp what is going on until I read the Lawrence Lessig responses. We have a fundamental paradigm shift on our hands and hardly any one sees it. Hardly anyone sees that in with the existence of the Internet it is going to imposable to control the flow of information, period. The only way to stop this flow of information is to ban people all together from the Internet. Any sort of censorship and copy protection is going to be defeated, plain and simple. What is even scarier is that if Richard Stallman article "The Right to Read" (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html) was worded slightly differently I have a felling many people will not see the problem with the picture he is painting. However, what really is upsetting me lately is that I have absolutely know idea how to get the typical person to understand the magnitude of what is going on. I truly fell that the upcoming issues over the free flow of information are major, very major. Even bigger than the terrorist attack on the U.S. However, hardly any one is even aware of it, and I don't know how to make them aware. So, my point of posting this is to hopefully open up some discussion on what is really going to happen and to address the key problem that has really gotten me down lately: How the hell do you get the average person to understand the full magnitude of what the Internet means? And how do you explain how the DMCA is just downright wrong, and how if the various media originations (such as the RIAA, the MPAA) had there way we would be living in a world exactly as Richard Stallman explains. Or even how to get them to understand that the picture Richard Stallman is painting is just wrong in more ways than once. I have never been so serious about anything in my life and would really like some input here. I have felt certain ways against other issues in the past but all of them are extremely minor compared to this. Also, if you know of better ways places to post this please let me know. Yours, Kevin. _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat at freenetproject.org http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat at freenetproject.org http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat
