The Net, as it exists more or less, is an uncontrolled means of communication. That is, whether the information is good, bad or indifferent, it is unrestricted. It is the ultimate expression of freedom and voluntary cooperation. There are numerous forces at work trying to destroy the Net as we know it, and they have already made some progress.
The corporate world has been trying for a long time, using several approaches. Most obvious to me is the dope dealer approach with entertainment, trying to get the average consumer hooked on a particular type of content. If the demand is strong enough, no one can argue when the system becomes dominated by the delivery of this content.
One of my most popular posts on this blog continues to be the brief examination of running one Linux distro without a GUI on an old laptop. The heart of this article is not the technology, but my dissatisfaction with graphical computing. Not just a personal bias, this is the result of years studying how the mind works, how it should work. I don’t care how radical and curmudgeonly it sounds; I insist we would all be considerably more intelligent if computers didn’t have a GUI. Yes, I appreciate the visual richness of the graphical interface, and use it every day. But at the same time, I know I it more because there is really no other way to get things done. There are no really good text-mode browsers for a graphical Internet.
Graphical representations of mere information — charts, scales, meters — are not the problem. It’s the vast billions of dollars spent researching how best to overcome human resistance to false information by use of enticing graphical and auditory massaging of the message. Folks now assume it can’t be done any other way. People working so hard to get truth out in the open can’t imagine doing it without Youtube. If we want their information at all, we must pull down whole megabytes of data, use up big chunks of computing power, and surrender fifteen minutes of our time for, say a tutorial which could be typed up in less than a single page.
This seduction by corporate interests would not be possible were it not for the corporate raider tactics of Bill Gates and Microsoft. Windows is the ultimate example of dope dealing as a metaphor. It is not the least bit good for you, but once you’ve used it much, you find you can’t do without it. It completely rewires your interaction with the Internet by offering a shallow and selective enhancement of certain useless features, certain “wow” factors which distract from what really matters. You come to the Net seeking rain for the dry fields of your fertile intelligence. What you get is someone pissing on your leg and telling it’s raining.
The Windows-based ecosystem is shot through with frauds against the consumer, but the government stands ready to protect the big technology corporations. Most especially government protects Microsoft, with show trials which only serve to acknowledge near-monopoly control of the consumer market where it really counts, at the lower end of the price range. So great is the monopoly control, even the government can’t function without that ecosystem, so nothing really happens except a little better cooperation between the government and the industry.
Now the government is in on the act of seeking control. This business of Wikileaks is merely a reverse psychology game. Give Assange a bunch of embarrassing stuff. Make sure it contains nothing really damaging, and make darn sure it all boils down to supporting the primary propaganda already presented in other avenues. Make all sorts of noise about how horrible and irresponsible it was to threaten government’s oh-so essential secret operations, all so we have an excuse for government to take a much tighter control over this wild frontier in the virtual world of the Internet. Even the antics of Anonymous appear to play into this theatrical production.
During this brief interval of years, those who really wanted and needed free access to information have been shoved aside. It’s not so much they were hugely outnumbered by the mindless hordes who merely lusted for the next fix of entertainment, but the number of dollars which those hordes were willing to spend. That’s all the corporations and government really ever wanted. You see, I used the word “government” ambiguously on purpose. The point I make here is the face of government with which you interact is not the real government. There is a shadow government behind all this, which seeks to control for one reason, and that is to gain control of all the wealth.
I suppose the hackers and Net geeks will always find a way around these things. The hackers are merely truth seekers expressing their search for truth in a particular field which offers a rich opportunity to the rest of us. We can’t do much to save the hordes, but we can strive to keep the channels open for those who share our drive for truth. We are wise enough to realize truth to us is noise for another, and vice versa, so it’s the freedom itself we must try to save. We have to invest our energy, and our dwindling resources, into keeping at least some part of the Internet accessible to that free flow. Given what I consider the zero likelihood we can steer policy in safe directions, we have to focus more on using and promoting the technology which will keep us free.
That could be an argument for migrating from Windows to Linux, but that’s not my point. We have to be ready to acquaint ourselves with methods, with ways of using a computer which don’t lend themselves to cramming useless features down our throats. That means learning how to do stuff with computers for which the hordes would never bother. This is more than my simple infatuation with the plain-text interface (AKA “TUI” — textual user interface), but a call to keep an eye open for anything which secures and maintains that open link.
The forces we are fighting seek to gain centralized control over something which is inherently de-centralized. It won’t work as they hope, but it will hurt. With my limited knowledge of such things, I strongly suspect we will end up with a Net which is essentially the same at the machine level, but with extra helpings of barriers for those who aren’t aware of the way things work behind that pretty GUI, or that there is even anything behind it. I don’t mean becoming a networking technician, because the hackers and developers are all too willing to meet us halfway. What makes things more convenient for them makes it simpler for us. But the point is to help my readers consider what it means to invest a little more effort in finding a reasonable half-way point.
I don’t pretend to know, nor even estimate where that point would be, but I am utterly certain it means learning more than how to turn the computer on, and how to use more than a standard graphical browser and Google. Surely it will mean examining what’s out there in terms of specialized tools, some of the dozens of odd-ball browsers and other communication tools which by-pass the mainstream computer and Internet experience. If the computer matters to you, and you intend to keep using it until the situation becomes hopeless, you’ll need to treat it like the important tool it is. This applies equally with just about every other tool.
Be quirky. Networking protocols have to be standardized to some degree, or they won’t work at all. So it is with any human language, but within that standardization is a wide range of possibilities for individualization. Learn the limits; understand what you have to accept, but always be willing to push at the boundaries. Find your own way, because the biggest threat to the shadow forces is a high variation, all over the map of what’s possible, imaginable, and even some unimaginable. For you as in individual, that means being unique and independent.
