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When the Internet was created, decades ago, one thing was inevitable: the war today over how (or whether) to control it, and who should have that power. Battle lines have been drawn between repressive regimes and Western democracies, corporations and customers, hackers and law enforcement. Looking toward a year-end negotiation in Dubai, where 193 nations will gather to revise a U.N. treaty concerning the Internet, Michael Joseph Gross lays out the stakes in a conflict that could split the virtual world as we know it.
-- Vanity Fair
I was also struck by the closing note of this piece, in which it is suggested that, for people who most treasure their security and privacy, escaping the Internet may become a somewhat popular cause:
Aside from wealth or arcane knowledge, the only other guarantor of security will be isolation. Some people will pioneer new ways of life that minimize their involvement online. Still others will opt out altogether—to find or create a little corner of the planet where the Internet does not reach. Depending on how things go, that little corner could become a very crowded place. And you’d be surprised at how many of the best-informed people about the Internet have already started preparing for the trip.
That sounds alarmist, but I can see how all these intelligent screens can seem to be our own voluntary placement of Big Brother telescreens around our lives. We have been getting in the habit of putting our whole lives online, thinking of it as merely a medium, a kind of word processor-plus, when it is an intelligence system that takes in everything and can be used in any way by the powers that be.
-- Vanity Fair
I was also struck by the closing note of this piece, in which it is suggested that, for people who most treasure their security and privacy, escaping the Internet may become a somewhat popular cause:
Aside from wealth or arcane knowledge, the only other guarantor of security will be isolation. Some people will pioneer new ways of life that minimize their involvement online. Still others will opt out altogether—to find or create a little corner of the planet where the Internet does not reach. Depending on how things go, that little corner could become a very crowded place. And you’d be surprised at how many of the best-informed people about the Internet have already started preparing for the trip.
That sounds alarmist, but I can see how all these intelligent screens can seem to be our own voluntary placement of Big Brother telescreens around our lives. We have been getting in the habit of putting our whole lives online, thinking of it as merely a medium, a kind of word processor-plus, when it is an intelligence system that takes in everything and can be used in any way by the powers that be.
