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At some point, the adults in the room (and specifically, a few brave and seasoned elder statesmen/women) need to stand up and state the obvious: On sufficientl
by jMyles 2y ago
At some point, the adults in the room (and specifically, a few brave and seasoned elder statesmen/women) need to stand up and state the obvious:
On sufficiently long time scales, the internet will not tolerate states, and states will not be able to withstand the influence of the internet.
The ability to copy and send bytes around the world, to capture and disseminate media in such a way that forces transparency, but also to facilitate and democratize private conversation, to route around censorship... these are qualities that make what are today fundamental aspects of statecraft, such as state secrets, intellectual property, control over money supply and trade, surveillance, and censorship, impossible.
It's time to acknowledge that we need to transition our methods for ensuring each other's safety, well-being, freedom, justice, and prosperity via stateless channels and stop regarding states as having any jurisdiction over the internet.
- mgaunard 2y agoSounds like anti-statist propaganda.
- wmf 2y agoBasically Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace from the 1990s. I think history has shown it to be more wrong than right.
- greenthrow 2y agoYou are delusional my dude. Servers and routers exist in meatspace. The meatspace laws win out.
- wffurr 2y agoThe printing press also existed in meat space and yet it broke the power of the medieval Catholic Church and toppled monarchies. The Internet seems like a similar invention but the effect on the nature of states is harder to fathom. I don't know if anyone living in the 1500s would have predicted a world where the top 10 militaries are all in a single alliance and the church would be a shadow of its former self. I think there are interesting times to be had. Democracies certainly seem to be feeling the effects for good and ill of the collapse of traditional gatekeepers in the face of free distribution of information.
- peoplefromibiza 2y agothe only problem in your manifesto is that no internet can exist without connectivity. He who controls the cables controls the (cyber)universe
- grujicd 2y agoIf anything states are much more involved in policing internet than 20 years ago. As more and more stuff goes online, I don't see governments reversing this trend, quite the oposite.
- ben_w 2y ago> On sufficiently long time scales, the internet will not tolerate states, and states will not be able to withstand the influence of the internet To the extent that this is correct, it means states cannot tolerate the internet, and will transition to not using or allowing it. > these are qualities that make what are today fundamental aspects of statecraft, such as state secrets, intellectual property, control over money supply and trade, surveillance, and censorship, impossible. State secrets are primarily voided by cheap surveillance, e.g. that a laser microphone is now a high school project. IP is covered by international agreements, though may be voided by AI. Control over money is done by requiring residents pay taxes in whichever currency, nothing about the internet changes that. Supply and trade correspond to people with guns on the borders, that's only going to change with personal nanoscale 3D printing and delivery by orbital bombardment, not the internet. Surveillance is likely to get much more prevalent rather than become impossible, e.g. aforementioned laser microphones. Censorship might become impossible. Or perhaps we'll find new ways to do it. Jamming works by increasing the noise so you can't get a signal, GenAI may do that easily.
- thefourthchime 2y agoI'm starting to feel like the eu is an embodiment of the comic book guy from The Simpsons. He's just there and takes up space, complain about everything, and not do anything themselves.