With respect, I have some other ideas. On Jan 3, 2015 8:28 AM, "Pirate Praveen" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > -------- Original message -------- > Subject: <nettime> Hackers can't solve Surveillance > Date: Sat Jan 03 2015 07:57:03 GMT+0530 (IST) > From: "Dmytri Kleiner" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > > > Hackers can't solve Surveillance > > Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors without Borders, > is an organization that saves lives in war-torn and underdeveloped > regions, providing health care and training in over 70 different > countries. MSF saves lives. Yet, nobody thinks that doctors can "solve" > healthcare. It's widely understood that healthcare is a social issue, > and universal health care can not be achieved by either the voluntary > work of Doctors or by way of donations and charity alone. > > Just as Doctors can't solve healthcare, Hackers can't solve > surveillance. Doctors can't make human frailty disappear with some sort > of clever medical trick. They can help mitigate issues, fight > emergencies, they can be selfless, heroic. but they can't, on their own, > solve healthcare. > > One of the ways that Hackers can fight surveillance is to develop better > cryptographic communications tools, and train people how to use them.. > This is certainly critical work that hackers can contribute to, but we > can't, on our own, solve surveillance. > > Nothing that Hackers can do on their own can eliminate surveillance. > Just as universal healthcare is only something that can be achieved by > social means, privacy respecting mass communications platforms can only > be achieved by social means. Safe mass communications platforms can not > be created by private interests, neither commercially, nor voluntarily.
At this point, my thinking diverges. Instead of looking at hackerspace value within the specific (I am tempted to even say narrow) confines of communication and communications infrastructure, get beyond it and synergise the efforts in socially valuable activities in healthcare, food and other essentials accessibility, including of course services, widening the scope for gainful employment in last mile deliveries. Tons of these things are being pioneered, with radically different approaches, in hackerspace. If it hasn't been collated, perhaps that is an effort worth pursuing, certainly more than I can do in a quick email response (while admiring the breadth of research of the author!). GN will probably agree that a framework for doing it dynamically is already extant at Gnowledge Studio. I think it is only fair if the entire social value proposition in telecommunications and related digital infrastructure is considered, before we decide fatalistically that advertising pays for it because we have no choice as society but to ascribe it some arbitrary and infirm monetary value. What do we have to lose, after all? Vickram > > As we well know, private medical provisioning provides unequal health > care. The reason is obvious, health needs and the ability to pay are not > usually corelated. Private provisioning means that those who can't pay, > wont be served by profit-driven institutions, and though this can be > mitigated by voluntarism and charity, it can't be fully overcome. > > Likewise, mass communications that are built for the profit motive > either need to charge a fee, and thereby be exclusive, or be advertising > supported. Other options can exist for connected and technically savvy > users, but these will be niche by necessity. For the masses, the main > options available will always be well funded platforms with employees to > do support, development, and marketing, without wich, it's impossible to > build-up a mass user base. >
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