Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Sunday November 01 2015, @05:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the dream dept.

While the Net has certainly scored a point or two against the State, the State has scored a lot more points against the Net. If the State wants your domain name, it takes it. If that's independence, what does utter defeat and submission look like?

Worse: whatever state tyranny exists, it's obviously dwarfed by the private, free-market, corporate tyrannosaurs that stalk the cloud today. We can see this clearly by imagining all these thunder-lizards were actually part of the government. "Private" and "public" are just labels, after all.

Imagine a world in which LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and the NSA were all in one big org chart. Is there anyone, of any political stripe, who doesn't find this outcome creepy? It's probably going to happen, in fact if not in form. While formal nationalization is out of fashion, regulation easily achieves the same result, while keeping the sacred words "private enterprise."

How do today's technologists win freedom from State control?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by fadrian on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:30PM

    by fadrian (3194) on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:30PM (#257230) Homepage

    Decentralization won't trump law. When it becomes illegal to run "terrorist" software... they will find you by other means. The solution is never technological because it can always be trumped by a large enough group of your neighbors. Understand that this is a social not a technological problem. Solve it using appropriate tools.

    --
    That is all.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:39PM (#257235)

    The famous Second Amendment Solution, of course, how could we forget that.

    If everyone is always in lockstep on every front, then yes, it's all over.

    In most of the western world, there appears to be a gap through which one could create some of these technological solutions, at least in terms of social collaboration. Using that gap and seeing who bitches loudest is one way of starting to address the social issue, so it's still valid to work on this.

  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday November 01 2015, @08:02PM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Sunday November 01 2015, @08:02PM (#257241) Homepage Journal

    The solution is never technological because it can always be trumped by a large enough group of your neighbors. Understand that this is a social not a technological problem. Solve it using appropriate tools.

    Just because a solution isn't technological, that doesn't mean we can't use technology to support efforts to address a social problem. Especially when the problem relates to the control of information -- as this does.

    Creating new ways to share and disseminate information, while not the solution, can assist in publicizing the issues and creating support. I'd argue that control of information is more powerful than a government's monopoly on organized force.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr