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comment by mk
mk  ·  3274 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pirate Bay Founder: "I have given up the idea that we can win this fight for the internet."

Sunde says a lot of things there, but in terms of the internet as technology, I think he is largely correct.

The internet is hardware and a protocol, however it has developed in a political and economic context that has determined its fate. We don't imagine many of the possibilities for what it could be, because its centralized nature has been leveraged by corporations and governments. Sunde takes a particularly grim view, very colored by his politics. Much of what has happened on the internet is positive and good.

IMHO we have absorbed a de facto childlike role when it comes to the application of this technology. We cry for attention, we cry for validation, we cry for independence, and we cry for protection and security. When we make these demands we create a power structure, and the means to these ends have more significance than we often admit. When we tame the internet, we tame ourselves. We aren't as scary or as fragile as we think we are, or as we are commonly made to believe. We are good, and the internet can leverage that.





user-inactivated  ·  3274 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think he's excessively grim given that he, like a lot of us, thought of the Internet as a separate thing with its own politics. This and most of the things he's said over the last couple of years just follow from realizing that the Internet is no escape.

mk  ·  3274 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The internet has a culture that is rooted in pre-web days, but as far as politics, I think to the extent they existed, it was only because it was happening below the radar. The early culture was unique in that those of us that came early shared a common intellectual and technical curiosity. The internet has changed the masses, but the masses couldn't come on board without changing the internet.

But we are already moving forward. It's not stopping here. The next networks will be decentralized. The masses will arrive there in the next couple of decades, new economies and cultures will result, and its pioneers will lament what could have been.