Despite Politicians, the Internet Can Save Us from Ourselves
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001145.html
Yesterday evening I discovered a fault in a rather complex piece of
electronics apparatus here. It was not obvious to debug and I'm not an
expert regarding that particular circuitry. I posted a query on a
specialized Web forum that is devoted to discussing that device, and
went to bed.
This morning there were several responses, and then ensued a flurry of
forum messages between those unseen correspondents and myself, including
magnified photos of circuit boards with overlaid circles and arrows and
suggestions.
By early afternoon I had enough info to grab a soldering iron, flux, and
magnifier, and attempt a patch of the board. It worked.
I posted a photo of my soldered fix for future folks with the same
problem, thanked everyone, and the world kept spinning.
There might not seem to be a deep philosophical aspect to this story
except for one thing. I'm sitting here in L.A. My helpful correspondents
were in Canada, Germany, and the Russian Federation.
In these kinds of discussions, you're just as likely to find engineers
and hobbyists chiming in to help from Japan, Iran, Pakistan, India, or
Saudi Arabia as well -- literally from anywhere the Internet touches.
Persons scattered around the globe, sometimes in widely different
cultures and national frameworks whose governments may even be
distinctively antagonistic toward each other --- persons all bending
over backwards to help each other as individuals to solve technical and
other problems.
I sit here in the San Fernando Valley and I feel distinct anger about
this.
Not anger about these great people around the world -- certainly not.
Rather, it's anger toward our leaders and politicians who endeavor to
make us think of other countries and other cultures as homogeneous
wholes -- not as actual individual beings with far more commonalities
than differences by virtue of our shared humanity.
Don't trust the Iranians. Blame the Americans. Eliminate the Shias. Hate
the Russians. Throw out the Muslims. On and on, ad nauseam -- the siren
calls of politicians seeking to set us all at each other's throats for
the sake of their own aspirations and glory.
To be sure, many of these politicians and leaders have come to despise
key aspects of the Internet. They know all too well that the Net -- by
facilitating the kinds of one to one communications that belie their
hateful and manipulative slogans -- threatens to undermine their
propaganda and controls.
So there are the ever increasing calls for Internet censorship, nowadays
wrapped in an ostensible veneer of fighting terrorism, but in reality
only the steppingstones toward the political goals of governments'
comprehensive communications control, with the vast people power of the
Internet muzzled and flogged into tattered submission.
I still recall from decades ago the very first time I communicated -- in
that case via a typing link -- with someone in another country over the
Net. I was sitting at a greenly glowing CRT terminal in the UCLA ARPANET
basement computer room, and at the other end of the ARPANET connection
was a military officer in Norway.
So we dealt with our technical issues, and then chatted about the
weather and movies for a while, and then typed our goodbyes.
Much as I sit here now, I sat at that table afterwards with the roaring
fans of the minicomputers around me and pondered what had just
transpired.
I thought -- "My God, this could change the world so much for the
better." And I remember then adding to myself -- "If the politicians
don't f*** it all up."
Now all these years later, well into the 21st century, I worry about the
latter aspect of my thoughts back then more than ever -- for many
politicians indeed seem hell-bent in doing exactly what I had feared.
Yes, the threats of terrorism are real. Yes, the Internet is used for
evil purposes as well as good ones. Yes, there will always be some
extremely egregious, directly violence-inducing materials on the Net
that we need to try control -- but not at the cost of undermining the
Internet's greatness.
For if there's one lesson I've learned spending my entire adult life
watching the Internet grow from a few IMPs, Teletypes, and dial-up
modems into the vast wonder it is today, it's that with very few
exceptions the cure for problematic information is not restrictions on
the ability to communicate.
Rather, we need more and better information, more communications, more
one-to-one contact between individuals mutually connected by the largely
unseen instrumentalities of fiber cables, routers, data centers, and
Wi-Fi signals around planet Earth.
And this holds true whether we're looking for help with a personal
problem, assistance with an errant circuit board -- or if we merely seek
to try save the world from mutually assured destruction.
If we permit our leaders and politicians to continue building their
walls between us, walls figuratively electronic, or physically brick and
mortar and steel, we will have squandered the Internet's promise as a
tool for the benefit of humanity.
We can surrender to fear and demagoguery, or we can grasp the nettle and
do our utmost to assure the Internet's place in a bright future for the
world, rather than standing by and permitting it to be twisted into a
tool of political censorship and governmental oppression.
It's ultimately up to us.
Be seeing you.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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