The future is ours to see 6

Rising out of a stone wall

Since the coming up of digital media there is a lot going on about privacy. It looks as if we loose on a daily basis. Social Media like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are interactive pirates by using our input on what - we like to believe - is our personal page.

At first: There is nothing personal to it. As individuals we are free to decide if we use these pre-prepared tools. We did not develop it, and we are aware that these are open instruments; otherwise we would not sign up for it. It is, because everyone can see it, that we want to be part of it. Social Media are appellations to our human-want to exhibit ourselves. That’s why they are there, and that’s why we use them!

Having said that: Is it fair that those companies use our input for their own commercial goals? No! But who wants to believe that all this work to develop and design was just be done to please the world’s community?

Besides this: what is privacy? Generally spoken it is everything we do not want to share, and that is not the same for everyone. From a basic point of view privacy means: the knowledge about yourself you only share with a small group of intimae. So it can’t be your name, address, etc…, because these are written down, and known by a lot. As soon as you need something in the outside world the first knowledge about yourself you have to leave are these. It can’t be what you eat, shop, or whatever you do in the open, for the same reason. Stay home if you do not want strangers to know it. But still, this is the knowledge Social Media companies use to provide your page with ads, or to sell to third parties with the same goal: to bombard you with advertisements you did not ask for. That’s what annoying us, that’s when we point to privacy-acts, and call for more and better regulations.

Further: privacy is also a matter of culture and history. Even when people are on holiday, privacy views change. They walk half-naked along the Costa’s, something they never would at home, in their own neighborhood. So, privacy differs, and changes per situation.

Our call for privacy though, means completely something else. What we really want is protection against being harass.

Well, you better get used to it, or change your feelings about it! Internet also interacts with our harassment feelings. It is from all times, that when you get something for free, it generally means that you have something to offer yourself as well, and the use of Social Media is free of any charge, except the offer they ask you for: Your privacy! If you don’t like it, don’t participate.

As I stipulated before, Internet is a truly free environment. Of course you need a provider (or become one yourself) to have access. It is not that you don’t need any investment to use it, but once you pass the gate, the world behind it, is free of charge if you know how to use it. Internet in itself, the environment, belongs to no one. It is an open world, but everyone uses it: some just for fun, others to make money, and those others are the ones who charge you, even when it is for free…

…to be continued…

The future is ours to see 5

Alone

It is not easy to understand today as part of history. We look back on a Golden Age, summarizing 100 years in one chapter, while we see the year’s just past – let’s say: pre-Internet – as already ancient, and not of our time anymore. The ones, who are not on the Net still, addressing as dinosaurs…

Our time will be summarized as well in future. One chapter for a period of just after WWII till a date still in the future: the time that evolution became revolution, the age of commerce, or a new mid-“evil” of individualism and selfishness?

A mix, I guess. An add-up of revolts, started in the late fifties. Highlights and conquers of technology, line-up with human de-socialization. A time mankind never saw before, not because of endless inventions, but mainly because of the fastest expansion of population ever, in combination with a growing disinterest in each other, and each others environment. The more people there are, the more possibilities to get in touch with each other, the more we focus on ourselves, become ego minded. Our own small environment, highlighted as the center of everything.

This is the time we live in, not the future, because if this consequently evolves mankind won’t survive. The less room we get for ourselves, the more we need, has no future. But what can turn the wheel we maneuvered ourselves in?

As said before, systems have to change. The way the world is ruled is still 19^th century, almost feudal, in spite of the fact that we generally address it as democracy.

I don’t want to start a political debate about what Democratos really meant. That is not the issue. It is not about elections, and who wants, or is in the possibility to be elected. It’s about the opposite, about the billions who have no saying, or almost too non influence on their future. It’s about 98% of the world’s population, getting more knowledge, are better informed, to accept that an upper-class rules for them. I don’t believe, however, that a repetition of the French Revolution is about to come. Revolts still may happen in the Middle-East, it is not the method to change systems anymore. There are other signs.

In spite of acts and governmental intentions, the interest in who is ruling is declining. People set their own rules, and again the Internet is a leading example. Even upper-class needs protection. They do things which they don’t want us to know, but the digital highway broadcasts everything. Secrets are no secrets anymore, and gossips become information in use by billions. The ones who are at the top today can fall tomorrow.

That is the future. In spite of who and what we are, we invented the Internet, allowing everyone seeing everyone naked as they are, and there is no system as we know it to cover such. The way our society is organized will change dramatically, and the answers are not in commercialization or institutionalization. They belong to the past. In future, nor enterprises, governments, or institutions will rule. In fact ruling itself is outdated. The widely spread individualization of today is just an exercise on the evolutionary ladder. People will more and more stop obeying and will find their own way to go. I know it is hard to imagine, but think of your selves, surfing and searching for new ways to express, new items to discover. It is from this daily behavior that future changes will be extracted.

…to be continued…

The future is ours to see 4

Darkness

Last night I saw “the hidden Internet” on Belgian TV. The news-anchor announced the “Tor”-network, and gave it that subtitle, because police and government had to admit that they had no tools to fight the treat.

I laughed. The item was broadcasted, just one day after I wrote my last column in this sequel. “The hidden Internet”, how wrong can people be...?

There is no “hidden” Internet, because the whole system in itself is hidden. It is a false believe that we-see-what-we-get. Most people are not aware of what they load into their lives, just by surfing the Net. They simply do not understand that they are down-loading all the time, just by switching on their computer.

“Tor” is one of many illustrations of what the back-alleys of the glorified electronic highway have to offer. One of the connections which are difficult to trace, if one hasn’t sufficient knowledge, and most people don’t even understand that they can’t access their email when the Internet-connection is down…

We all surf the “hidden” paths, because we cannot actually see them. Even the best informed Nerd can be hacked, or thrown out of an established connection, because we don’t really see, are not aware until, or after it happens.

Like all techniques mankind develops, systems like “Tor” will evolve. They will always be a step ahead of who is chasing or trying to break into the underlying canals. “Used by criminals and pederasts”, the news-anchor informed, because official institutions are unable to interfere. The awakening of fear of what we don’t understand, or cannot see. Electronic-wise mankind entered the middle ages, and the threatening devil is summarized as “the hidden Internet”.

What we have to understand is that the Net is just a next step in our evolution, like fire, or the invention of the wheel was. It enlarges our possibilities, and it will shake up our systems as we know them. People have to learn to think like their daily used digital highway, if they don’t want to be accidentally killed by it. This change of thinking is the most difficult for the so-called establishment. They didn’t become established because of it, not even companies like Microsoft (think of the free development of an OS like Linux), and establishment is in itself conservative, because it wants to keep what it gathered by the means of what they know and understand.

Conservatism is outdated very fast since the introduction of Internet. Nothing lost so many believers in such a short time as the Gods, most people still worshipped about 50 years ago. The new generation is divided. The majority does not take the religions serious anymore, and a small part tries to stop this evolution with bombs and guns, using the Internet to spread their word, and don’t understand that they use a tool which will wipe them out eventually. The power of Internet is still mainly information, and informed people were always the downfall of established conservatism!

…to be continued…