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The future looks more and more bleak as more and more authoritarianism is applied to technology which is supposed to be, to many, as a frontier of freedom.

nkkollaw 8y ago
Absolutely agree. The most probable thing to me is that we'll sooner or later have it as bad a what's currently happening in China: spying via heavy use of face recognition, pre-crime, citizen score, etc. etc. It doesn't look like people are alert/tough enough to hold on to freedom, governments will continue to slowly take it away from us until we have none.
- petre 8y ago
  The Internet is really a tool. It can be used to track people, spy on them, censor free speech, spread propaganda and fake news or to organise protests like the yellow vest movement in France, which reminds me of the French Revolution and another tool, the printing press.
- alacombe 8y ago
  These are just tools, the real problem is the complacent, worse... cooperating population.
jstanley 8y ago
There are 2 conflicting forces at work. On the one hand you have politics trying to take control of the internet, monitor everything, and censor what they don't like. On the other hand you have people developing decentralised, anonymous, and censorship-resistant technology like Tor and IPFS. The more work politics puts in to trying to control the internet, the more incentive there is to develop tools to work around politics. Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins.
- nkkollaw 8y ago
  There are and there will be tools to counter governments' attempts at censoring or controlling the internet, but most people will never find out nor be able to use those tools. Most people use the tools that came with their phone by default. In addition, as those efforts gain more popularity propaganda from the government will increase, and will make the regular Joe feel like cryptography is for terrorists. I mean not to be pessimistic, but... :-D
  - alacombe 8y ago
    Funny enough that the companies who built a lot of those tools are the first to censor & attempt to control the Internet.
    - nkkollaw 8y ago
      Yup. We're seeing quite a lot of episodes of deplatforming lately. It seems as if payment processors are pressuring everyone down below to comply, but it start with them.
- CodeMage 8y ago
  > Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins. In the end, force wins. Irrefutable mathematics are just a tool. Every right we have has been won through struggle. Sometimes that struggle is non-violent, sometimes it's less so, but it's always a struggle. A lot of people tend to forget that and think that technology will magically solve things. Or if not technology, something else or someone else will do it.
  - antidesitter 8y ago
    > In the end, force wins. Not always. At some point, the cost of enforcement becomes too high and unfeasible.
    - alacombe 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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nkkollaw 8y ago

Absolutely agree. The most probable thing to me is that we'll sooner or later have it as bad a what's currently happening in China: spying via heavy use of face recognition, pre-crime, citizen score, etc. etc. It doesn't look like people are alert/tough enough to hold on to freedom, governments will continue to slowly take it away from us until we have none.

petre 8y ago
The Internet is really a tool. It can be used to track people, spy on them, censor free speech, spread propaganda and fake news or to organise protests like the yellow vest movement in France, which reminds me of the French Revolution and another tool, the printing press.
alacombe 8y ago
These are just tools, the real problem is the complacent, worse... cooperating population.

jstanley 8y ago

There are 2 conflicting forces at work. On the one hand you have politics trying to take control of the internet, monitor everything, and censor what they don't like. On the other hand you have people developing decentralised, anonymous, and censorship-resistant technology like Tor and IPFS. The more work politics puts in to trying to control the internet, the more incentive there is to develop tools to work around politics. Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins.

nkkollaw 8y ago
There are and there will be tools to counter governments' attempts at censoring or controlling the internet, but most people will never find out nor be able to use those tools. Most people use the tools that came with their phone by default. In addition, as those efforts gain more popularity propaganda from the government will increase, and will make the regular Joe feel like cryptography is for terrorists. I mean not to be pessimistic, but... :-D
- alacombe 8y ago
  Funny enough that the companies who built a lot of those tools are the first to censor & attempt to control the Internet.
  - nkkollaw 8y ago
    Yup. We're seeing quite a lot of episodes of deplatforming lately. It seems as if payment processors are pressuring everyone down below to comply, but it start with them.
CodeMage 8y ago
> Politics has the force of law behind it, cryptography has irrefutable mathematics. Let's see who wins. In the end, force wins. Irrefutable mathematics are just a tool. Every right we have has been won through struggle. Sometimes that struggle is non-violent, sometimes it's less so, but it's always a struggle. A lot of people tend to forget that and think that technology will magically solve things. Or if not technology, something else or someone else will do it.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  > In the end, force wins. Not always. At some point, the cost of enforcement becomes too high and unfeasible.
  - alacombe 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

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