Re: What is with all the luddites
"Are you seriously suggesting it hasn't changed the world?"
The internet changed the world. It didn't change people. So, like any tool, it has been used for good and for evil. More evil than good, of late...and likely that will be the way of things in the future. That's human nature.
"As for 'goodness and freedom', I was a big promoter of the upside potential and I think time has proven me correct in that."
No, it hasn't. It's proven the opposite.
"Rather than pretending you can escape the inescapable you may better advance your own cause by staying to make sure that sanity prevails and we don't end up with Big Brother prosecuting thought-crime before the fact."
Bullshit. Authoritarians cannot be stopped. Almost all living people in the first world simply haven't known true dictatorship and thus must experience it again before they realize that sacrifice and vigilance are necessary to defend against it. Humanity will have another very dark time ahead of it before we realize - for a generation or two - that freedom is more important than security. Anyone who stands up to those seeking to put the hoi polloi under their thumb will be crushed. There's not a goddamned thing I can do to stop it. Not one.
"In the next fifty years we could be living in heaven or living in hell. Our leaders are currently voting for hell. Unless we counter with a very strong vote for heaven, we will be leaving a disastrous legacy to our grandchildren. You can't vote if you leave the system."
Heaven and hell don't exist. My contribution was to not have children. I know what's coming and I won't bring another generation into that future. No amount of "voting" will alter the course of our society.
"I am not sure that privacy as we know it is a viable notion going forward."
Hence my middle finger in the air at society in general and a planned retreat from the rest of the world.
"The only viable response to privacy concerns long term has to be political and social as well as technological. To respond as a part of the body politic you have to remain a part of the body politic. Dropping out just to protect yourself is pointless."
You're a doe-eyed fool wearing rose-tinted glasses. Listen to me very carefully here: the only way that meaningful change will occur is if a lot of people die. By this I mean hundreds of millions. Humanity will not rethink it's NIMBYist, authoritarian tendencies unless we go through the looking glass one more time.
Even that will only waken one, maybe two generations to the delicate balance before we careen once more into the abyss.
All of human history is our ancestors learning the same lessons over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
Our descendants will not be any different; and in fact, we ourselves are the same.
Over 95% of Americans support gun laws banning fully automatic weapons, requiring background checks to get weapons and so on. Do you see a trampling hoard of movement in that direction? Goddamn it man these people almost put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from personal responsibility for thousands of nuclear weapons.
No amount of hope, cheer, goodwill or happy thoughts will change the wealth gap, the power gap, the overwhelming influence of the military industrial complex or the burning need of those who have power to do everything humanly - or inhumanly - possible to ensure that under no circumstances they stand even the remotest risk of losing that power. Uncontrolled, unmonitored people are a risk to the power of those who currently have it. The gap between "them" and "us" is so vast that it cannot be bridged. We've already lost, fellow peasant, you're just stupid enough to believe you're still free.
When they push too far - and I think that's twenty years out, yet - the revolt will be swift, it will be brutal, and it will be unbelievably, overwhelmingly bloody. A social upheaval and civilian massacre the likes of which this world has never seen. Entire nations will lay in ruins, their citizenry shredded and their economies ruined for lack of warm bodies to push the buttons and make the system go.
Entire fields of knowledge and learning will be lost. Our society will be set back a generation, maybe more. Nothing we can do will prevent this. Nothing we do can even mitigate the carnage that is to come.
If you want to contribute usefully to society then dedicate yourself to the preservation of knowledge. All knowledge. Recognize the future for what it is and help plan for the aftermath. I will never have the resources to build a true archive of knowledge - though I fund what I can.
Instead, I seek to recuse myself from this increasingly intrusive and depressingly hateful society so that I might write. I will leave a legacy only through my books. Those books will hopefully be ready by future generations and carry with them a message of hope. Of ideas and ideals that were forgotten, suppressed, pushed to one side in a mad dash for personal security and uneclipsable power.
The knowledge I will preserve is that of decency towards your fellow beings, of doing the right thing, even when it does not benefit you. Of working for the future even when the present cannot be saved. These are concepts that I think will be hard for the survivors of the coming wars to pass to their children.
A bitter, broken people have little use for concepts such as inclusiveness, acceptance and tolerance. People look inward after those events. They ostracize an they cast about for someone - anyone to blame. If it is an identifiable group/nation/race/whatever...so much the better.
I can't stop the future. But maybe I can pass down through the generations what little good ours had discovered. That is all I can do, and I'll let nothing stop me from doing so.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
