I sometimes I feel like I am by my self on privacy and freedom issues.
In real life, I also often feel like I am alone in caring about privacy and freedom issues. Sometimes I feel like a crackpot when trying to explain to people who don't care why privacy is important.
However I am hopeful that us techies who are actually the ones creating the future of the web are aware of and give weight to those issues.
It seems from reading the comments on slashdot and here, that privacy issues certainly are considered by techies.
I'm not in the US, but it is almost beyond belief to me that anyone in the US could not consider the wholesale spying on their own people without judicial oversight a privacy issue. I feel like those people have very little knowledge of history and even less ability to extrapolate from that knowledge.
You are not alone, I just hope there are enough of us to make a difference.
I think privacy/freedom issues are symptoms not root causes.
The Internet today allows/has allowed for the rapid extraction of information/wealth from the masses into the hands of a few.
I am totally opposed to the propping up of Mark Zuckerburgs and Larry Pages. Who then get to decide who and how the worlds information shall be accessed. This should not be the point of the internet.
There are too many unintended consequences that a Page or Zuckerberg are struggling to handle by themselves.
We could have handled nuclear tech in the same way we handled the internet "to spur innovation" and propped up a Zuckerberg of nuclear tech. But we haven't. Why? Because we know there will be nonrecoverable unintended consequences.
It's time we handled the internet the same way.
I was shocked with the quality of discussion at Facebook about Trump. Its as if only because Trump appeared in the US the issue has come to the forefront. How many other Trumps and ISIS type orgs(that we haven't heard about) have been propped up around the world? Forget about the national consequences, there are local unintended consequences in every neighborhood and sphere of life when unchecked information is spread too fast.
If people take information out of the system, they have to make it available to everyone else (or some variation of it) has to be a guiding principle.
I know election season can make us all a little crazy towards the 'other team', but are you seriously putting Trump in the same camp as ISIS?
Hitler, Nazis, etc. have been used so often in the past 50 years by all sides that it is easy to brush it off as empty rhetoric. But if the left has become so blind in their hatred towards Trump, that these comparisons can be made without a second thought, it is hard to take anything you say seriously.
I do agree with your comments up to that point, and apologize if I misinterpreted the point of the last paragraph.
I am not taking a position on that, but have you asked yourself under which circumstances you would accept a comparison with Hitler as valid? Or do you think that something like Hitler could never happen again, and therefore, the comparison cannot ever by appropriate again? If so, why?
I think the Hitler comparison is more as a very persuasive orator and the contents of his speeches (blaming the foreigner/other for all your society's ills) rather than his more notable sins like the holocaust.
I think its being referenced because it was brought up at a Facebook Q&A session with Zuckerberg. As in what about the rise of characters in other parts of the world. It's all good that no one is responsible right?
"Why? Because we know there will be nonrecoverable unintended consequences ... It's time we handled the internet the same way."
You can set down your phone anytime you want to. It just feels like you can't.
The degree to which "Internet" becomes a driving force in your life is the degree to which you diminish your life to allow that to happen. It doesn't have to be this way and it takes very little effort or imagination to keep it from being that way.
There is also the option to only use sites that respect your privacy. This rules out Facebook for me, and so far I don't miss it at all. I am happy to email or IM people I want to communicate with, or actually call and talk to them. I don't care about people adding likes to photos of my lunch.
I personally am hopeful that there will be a better solution over the horizon.
Zeronet is very interesting to me as a proof-of-concept, not perfect but very interesting and a glimpse into what I would like the future of the internet to be.
> We could have handled nuclear tech in the same way we handled the internet "to spur innovation"
We did in fact, handle nuclear tech in the same way - briefly. You might not have heard of the "Atoms for Peace"[1] program launched by president Dwight Eisenhower back in 1953. It really did spur innovation (research and development of peaceful applications of nuclear physics - e.g. medical equipment).
The "Atoms for Peace" program was also directly responsible for the first nuclear reactors in Israel, Iran and Pakistan.
In real life, I also often feel like I am alone in caring about privacy and freedom issues. Sometimes I feel like a crackpot when trying to explain to people who don't care why privacy is important.
However I am hopeful that us techies who are actually the ones creating the future of the web are aware of and give weight to those issues.
It seems from reading the comments on slashdot and here, that privacy issues certainly are considered by techies.
I'm not in the US, but it is almost beyond belief to me that anyone in the US could not consider the wholesale spying on their own people without judicial oversight a privacy issue. I feel like those people have very little knowledge of history and even less ability to extrapolate from that knowledge.
You are not alone, I just hope there are enough of us to make a difference.