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?
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:30PM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 01 2015, @07:39PM
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
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