So I want to write about something a little different then my normal posts. Maybe (if anyone reads these) people are growing tired about reading about Democrats and Republicans and the budget and health care and on and on. This will be about the Internet!
Yesterday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security examined a proposal by the Obama administration to expand online surveillance. The administration is seeking to update the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which required telephone companies to shift to a central network allowing phones to be wire-tap ready. Essentially, the update would require the same central network requirement for the Internet. The concerns of a central Internet network are being weighed against its proposed attempt to increase cybersecurity.
No one can deny that technological shifts in communication are unprecedented. Shifts in communication have caused a social revolution allowing anyone to tweet, IM, Facebook at any time and has taken control of our interactions. The obsessions of "old school" interactors and information age skeptics are what this does to our intelligence. I tend to work half way through these claims.(its only a blog post).
After the electric toaster was invented there was no doubt supporters and skeptics. Some certainly said that this was the opening up of the world and a new age of breakfast was upon us. Others probably said this has to be the worse thing ever invented, soon uniformity will reign and this is the end of creative breakfasts as we know it. The cost for discovering what would happen was simply to go out and buy a toaster.
Some believe that we are at this stage with the Internet and increased communication resources. Some think we are at the crest of democratized information and others believe the end of real, interpersonal relationships will be the cost. For me, I think it is presumptuous to think we are at the crest of democratized information and here is why.
History of democratized information...... Started with the printing press which drove the Reformation, which led to the Scientific Revolution, leading to the Enlightenment, finally leading to the Internet. People for centuries have been joined by new technologies which have created new communities and new routes for conversation. "the printing press enabled huge segments of the population to speak freely and increased the intellectual potential of the whole network" simple right? one technology leading to more democratic ideas, to the next, and so on?
When people say movements move from one to the next, that is not to say that these changes did not come at a cost. The printing press did not bring about a rapid democrat movement. It propelled Martin Luther's absolutist anti-semitism. Following the reformation wasn't the Enlightenment. It brought the counter-revolution which led to 100 years of religious warfare. Changes come at a cost and buried in these statements are millions of bodys.
From the printing press to the radio to the movies, all were used in some way by authoritarians and totalitarians to limit freedoms and reduce liberty. In the 17th century during Europe's printing revolution, royal critics were not running around with pamphlets denouncing King Louis. Exactly the opposite, everything printed was filtered through King Louis.
Totalitarians didn't burn books, only the ones that talked about freedoms. Stalin was said to have more books printed then J.D. Salinger. Before you give credit to all the good things that new media produces, you must give credit to the bad things it does to. The Internet may lead to more democracy 100 years from now, but no one knows what "bad things" we will go through before we get there.
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