> The internet will be destroyed as countries the world over seek to impose all of their silly and incompatible laws on it. > I'm happy to have known the true internet. Truly one of the wonders of humanity. I'm old enough to have been around for the whole thing. I used to kind of share this view, but I don't anymore. I think it's impossible to reconcile this point of view with the obvious observation that huge aspects of life have gotten really dramatically worse thanks to the internet and its related and successor technologies. It has made people more addicted, more anxious, more divided, or confused. It has created massive concentrations of wealth and power that have a very damaging effect on society, and it is drastically reducing the ability of people to make decisions about how they want to live and how they want their society to be structured. It's also done a tremendous amount of positive good, too, don't worry. It's obvious to me, like it should be obvious to any rational person, that there are huge benefits too. And of course, to some extent, there's a bit of inevitability to some parts of this. While certainly there are examples of silly laws in the world, it's worth noting that that's the exception, not the rule. In general, laws are things that society does on purpose with the intent of making the world match its values. I think countries should in fact be governed by the consent of their own citizens and by the rule of law. I welcome changes that make that more likely. I also like Archive.today, and I hate paywalls, they're annoying. This may not be the best place to post my counterpoint, but I think it's worth mentioning and it doesn't get repeated enough. I was around in the 90s, and I'm very familiar with the techno-utopian approach of the first internet generation. It failed.
I've given up on trying to change the world. > What will the world will be like in the future is decided by us every day. That's the problem. This "us" you're referring to. People. They're the problem. They have no principles. They stand for nothing. They think they do, but the reality is their principles are easily compromised. They are highly susceptible to manipulation by way of emotion. Powerful emotions like terror and rage. Conjure up some drug trafficking, money laundering, child molesting terrorist boogeyman and they'll compromise immediately. Suddenly freedom is being traded away for security. Suddenly free speech is no longer absolute. Then you see that these weren't principles that entire nations were founded upon, they were more like guidelines, thrown away at the first sign of inconvenience. The harsh truth is that danger must not only be accepted but embraced in order to have true freedom and independence. The internet that connects us also connects criminals, the cryptography that protects us also protects criminals. There is no way around it. Compromise even a little and it's over. People are the problem. They endlessly compromise on things. No ideal can ever be reached. It's an existential problem that cannot be solved. To be an idealist is to be an extremist. Sadly people are not prepared to pay the costs of idealism. The ideal of a decentralized, encrypted and uncensorable communications medium, for example. It requires that they accept the cost that criminals will not only use it but be enabled by it. They won't accept it. Thus we march not towards the ideal but towards its opposite: centralized plain text surveilled and controlled communications.
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