This is the first in what I hope will become a long series of rants published by yours truly at Memes.org. For lack of what might be called any clear sense of where all this is going, I have decided to cover the issue/topic of the internet itself, along with some of the big brotherisms that go along with it.
The internet was brought to Joe Citizen by the Department of Defense who relayed it through the years from ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) which would late become DARPA. Outfits like Mitre Corporation were right there. The bottom line is that if you don't incorporate this information into your online security practices then you are a danger to all those you know unless you are among the many online activists that choose to live with that threat in order to voice their own personal free speeches.
To be fair, such activists need to let people in on what they might be subjecting themselves to in associating. For example, when I was under strict surveillance by the national security state and targeted by psychological operations, I let people know that life would be weird around me. Sure, it isolated me further but it empowered folks to make empowered decisions regarding their own fate.
John Trudell said that they were mining us, our intelligences. I say the medium is the missile. Any message will do so long as the passive act of absorption continues.
In the immortal words of the Cult of the Dead Cow:
"Save yourself! Go outside! Do something!!"
"Socially and psychologically repressed, people are drawn to spectacles of violent conflict that allow their accumulated frustrations to explode in socially condoned orgasms of collective pride and hate. Deprived of significant accomplishments in their own work and leisure, they participate vicariously in military enterprises that have real and undeniable effects. Lacking genuine community, they thrill to the sense of sharing in a common purpose, if only that of fighting some common enemy, and react angrily against anyone who contradicts the image of patriotic unanimity." ~ Kenn Knabb
The internet seduces you with a promise of a global village but delivers, instead, increased isolation from human contact and it is contact, not text messages, that will ever fill that void.
I got to meet some of the founders of the Internet over the weekend and they're very cool guys and quite proud of their love-child. Vint Cerf and Peter Freeman for starters. Very cool guys with very cool stories. I think that same can be said about the Internet as can be said about reading novels, listening to the radio, study, video games and television. Why blame the Internet for isolation when it is a lot more about connection than any of the other above-mentioned.
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