Over the last few weeks my mind has been focused increasingly on the direction human society is taking.
With Kevin Rudd growing more and more distant from the ideal for which he was originally elected with let-down after let-down on technology, the environment, education and accountability, I’m seeing politics in an ideological sense now more so than ever.
Barack Obama hasn’t wasted any time being the leader Kevin Rudd failed to be. His first week was a boon to the environment, civil liberties and, from what we here in the antipodes can tell, accountable government.
Combine this with the battlegrounds erupting between new media and old and I start to see a pattern emerging.
Traditional media is running scared from the Internet while screaming for governments to try and control the web with traditional legal frameworks.
Record labels all around the world are at war with ISPs and torrent sites in an attempt to avoid being left behind by distribution methods that they can’t control.
Conservative lobbyists are scrambling to see who can villify the internet the most and then claim responsibility when politicians and police attempt to control the situation.
In all the situations above, there is one word that comes through loud and clear. Control.
Australia, New Zealand, The UK, Germany and, if my research is correct, Canada, are all pushing for some kind of control mechanism to be placed on the Internet. Whether it be by ‘think of the children’ scare tactics or through industry protectionism, the old guard are pleading for their politicians to keep them in the game.
The media fears competition.
The music industry fears irrelevance.
Law enforcement fear a place where they can’t use physical violence.
Governments, being a product of the old world, are trying as hard as they can to keep their base happy and still keep their constituents placated. I’m not going to go into a spiel about corporate interests versus personal interests; Governments will back-stab whichever side offers less push in their next election.
When the world was young we had our tribe. As Tribes grew we invented Religion to help us answer questions and deal with the new situation. Time progressed and we flourished together as a cohesive group for thousands of years under theocratic rule.
Theocracy tarnished and it began to hold us back so we invented Government, seperate from Religion. While we still held to supernatural beliefs we found that Government was a more effective means of controlling the society and our environment.
We flourished as science and secular development was able to shoot off. Technology as we know it today was born. As technology grew we became connected in ways that we had not previously encountered. Traditional concepts of geographical borders and nations as locations applied less and less to the network of communication and technology.
What do we create to deal with this new reality?
It is abundantly clear that traditional methods of governance and law enforcement won’t be sufficient to maintain social cohesion amongst the placeless tribes of the online environment.
Just as the concept of a corporate entity grew from the inception of the Dutch East India Trading Company, I think we will see a new type of social construct emerge from the Internet. This new construct could possibly become the catalyst in the next stage of social development. Who knows? I could be completely wrong.
This is part of the philosophical framework upon which I base my opposition to the ISP filtering scheme and, indeed, forms my position on other social issues I comment on.
The ISP filter is doomed to fail because it represents and old-thinking approach to a new-thinking problem. On that basis alone it is a bad idea. It’s like starting to build a highway for today’s population; by the time it’s finished the population has grown and the problem remains unsolved.
Let’s just hope that we don’t cock things up too badly before we get a clue.
