The Online Rant

There is an old hacker saying, “Information wants to be free.” Now when I say old, I don’t mean old in real world time. I mean old in Internet time. Where if it is older than a year, it is considered ancient. The saying is kind of a cliche, but lately I’ve been wondering if there might be some truth to it.

The question is, does information naturally gravitate towards freedom? In an information based society like ours, the above question is very relevant and rather important. For thousands of years governments, religions, and businesses/trade guilds have used control of information to protect their power and position.

These days all of that is changing. As the information age comes into full swing, control of information is getting harder to maintain. And suppressing unwanted information is nearly impossible. The best anyone can hope for, is that the unwanted info will be forgotten. But you can’t remove it or hide it. So that information will always be there.

Every government, business, and religious group that relies on information control is feeling the effects today. Repressive, and even democratic, governments around the world that try to hide their policies and actions are finding that it is nearly impossible. New scandals and abuses are daily leaked to the Internet and spread far beyond the reach of the governments involved. Religious groups like the Scientologists that rely on secret knowledge for elites, are fighting a losing battle to keep that knowledge off of the Internet. Business models that rely on a monopoly of information are all feeling the pressure of competition from non-experts. Copyrights and patents are becoming increasingly hard to protect.

Basically, if it is information, it will end up on the internet at some point. And once it does, it will be there forever. I’m not sure what that really means for our society. I know that it means a lot of change for a lot of different areas and people.

By the way, here are a couple of video’s that illustrate the point.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

Information R/evolution

Last week I was on vacation. The place I went was up in the hills and too far out for DSL or Cable internet access. So I was stuck with very limited dial up as my only choice for internet access. I had forgotten how incredibly slow the internet is when you are stuck on dial up. It was so slow, that I really couldn’t use it for much beyond simple email. So in effect I had no Internet access for the whole week.

Until I didn’t have it, I really had no idea how dependent on Internet access my daily life had become. Being without Internet access was a real problem. Every time I wanted to do or know anything, I would want to look it up online. But I couldn’t. Directions, movie times, restaurants, schedules, orders, maps, and just general communications. I had to try to remember how I would have found the info without Internet access. Sometimes, I just decided it wasn’t worth knowing or finding out because it would be too much trouble to get whatever info I wanted.

I’m so used to having all of the info available to me online, that I don’t even realize how often I use the Internet. I use the it for all my banking, planning, scheduling, news, and communications. I also use it for general trivia and curiosity whenever I see or hear something I want to know more about. Without it, I felt lost and cut off. Sure I have a cell phone on which I could call anyone I wanted. And the place I was staying at had satellite TV. If I wanted news, I could pick up a newspaper or watch TV any time I wanted. But it wasn’t the same.

I couldn’t read a headline or hear a news blurb, and look up 30 different stories on the topic or event. I couldn’t instantly look up historical background on the city, company, person, nation, or item in the story. Even worse, I couldn’t get the story reported from several different political, social, and demographic points of view. All the news I got was limited and filtered through a few mainstream outlets.

If I wanted to go somewhere I had never been, I needed to ask someone for directions rather than simply looking it up. I’m so used to looking up directions online before going somewhere, that I don’t even own a map anymore and I almost never ask someone for directions. I usually just ask for an address.

I had to call places to find out times and schedules because the information wasn’t right there in front of me just a search away. Movie times, store opening times, calendar events. Even phone numbers for stores and businesses. I had to discover all over again how to find things in a phone book(a huge pain in the neck). All the info I needed was either unavailable or had to be discovered in ways I don’t normally use.

This whole problem kind of surprised me because I hadn’t really realized how dependent I was on the Internet for everything I do and learn now. To think that just 10 years ago, I was barely using it for email, and now I have trouble functioning without it. It makes me think I may be just a little too dependent on it. I guess I’m sort of addicted.

So how necessary is the internet to your daily life?