I watched
Zeitgeist the movie here this other day. For those that haven't seen it I've included the video inline here for your convenience. WATCH IT!
Zeitgeist lasts for roughly 2 hours and all though it is extremely controversial in its nature to such an extend that even YouTube cencors the first 40 minutes of it if you try to upload it there, I would like to encourage you to still watch it till the "bitter end"...
Freedom of information
Some years ago I started thinking about information and privacy and I started developing this idea that the problem isn't really lack of privacy but rather the fact that the information is in the hands of [only] a few men at the very top. Now if all information was available for every human being on the planet for free then we wouldn't really need "privacy" in its old definition since at the very definition of the phrase
misuse of information lies the foundation of that the "information" is only available to some few people.
Ever since then I have thought about how to gain a higher degree of
Free Information. And it occurs to me that there are many constructs out there already which helps us who believe this [yes we are gaining in numbers]. The most obvious thing is the
internet, obviously. After watching
Zeitgeist the Movie you will understand that this
free flow of information is dangerous. Especially for the ones who seeks to control the flow of information. If you have ever read
The Art of War you will know that it's equally important to "Know Thy Enemy" as it is to know yourself. And to know your enemy means to know his next moves.
Net Neutrality
Save The Internet is doing a great job in trying to wake people up in regards to the importance of having
Net Neutrality. For those not acquinted with the subject I've included another video [4 minutes] here about it;
Net Neutrality is currently our most important weapon in the battle for Free Information, and if we loose this we run the risk of literally being thrown back into the stoneage for another millenium in regards to personal freedom.
The importance of Free Information
That first video in this blog is pretty controversial, ask yourself this question;
Do you think that Zeitgeist would have been featured at a widespread, well known, commercial Television Station. If your answer is the same as mine then you probably now understand the importance of having a Free and Open channel for information.
Other contributors
- Google is a great contributor to Free Information through their websites like Blogger and YouTube plus their main search engine of course which makes it very easy to actually FIND the content you want.
- Wikipedia.org for its brilliant way of making it possible to share information.
- Free Software Foundation for its great work on trying to keep the tools we use to process information Free.
- One Laptop Per Child for its great work on trying to give the poor of this world a chance to get information.
Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg was probably the most important figure ever to have lived, all though he is not ranked higher than "middle of the tree" in the
list of top hundred people to have lived which I saw here a couple of days ago but cannot find or remember the URL for. He created the first technical implementation needed to start a massive distribution of information to all mankind. Who are the Gutenbergs of today then?
Developers, developers, developers
Why do you think
Steve Ballmer is so found of developers?
Because he knows we're the "railroad engineers" of this century! Developers are the ones which are creating the railroad tracks that the society will run on for the next millenium! We are the ones creating Google, Wikipedia (WikiMedia more accurately), OLPC and the systems within the GNU Linux.
So here we are then, with more powers than any existing cast in the human hierarchy ever have had before us in the history of time. Yet we are about the dumbest, stupidest and most narrow sightet and ignorant cast to have ever exist!
We're literally making wars about whether or not Gnome is better than KDE. We're constant quarreling about if Vi is better than Emacs. We're capable of following the longest rhetorics any human being in the history have made, yet we spend most of our energy debating whether or not Java is better than C++, C# is better then Lisp and ORM is better than having Object Oriented Database systems. But when being asked the REALLY important question; "What about the ethics". We have no answer other than that; "Ethics is not my business, I create Software and don't need to take a stand in regards to Ethics since Software is neutral by definition in the terms of Ethics".
Well
Zyklon B is also neutral, and I am 100% sure of that the engineers at
IG Farben also claimed that they "didn't need to think of Ethics" and/or didn't know what their largest customer
Auschwitz the concentration camp was using it for.
WE NEED TO STOP, THINK AND ACT!
We are the ones with the most power ever to have lived through the history of mankind, we are the ones shaping the next millenium and we are the [only] ones with the power to change the current state of affairs with "war on terror", racism, prejudice and power misuse. We need to stop and ask ourselves a couple of fundamental questions as to what can we do and then act upon those answers...
The world needs us and we need it. Do not think it doesn't relate to you, because it certainly does. I'd like to finish with a quote from a great Norwegian poet (loosely translated to English) called Arnulf Øverland;
I woke up one night by a weird dream,
it was as if a voice spoke to me,
distant like an underlaying stream
and I stood up and asked; What do you want with me?
YOU MUST NOT SLEEP! YOU MUST NOT SLEEP!
YOU MUST NOT THINK THAT YOU HAVE ONLY HAD A DREAM!
Yesterday I was convicted,
This night they have raised the gallow in the yard,
They will get me tomorrow at 5 PM.
The whole basement here is full
and all the barracks here have basements of themselves.
We are here in stone cold cellars
rotting in dark holes.
[...]
You must not tolerate so well the unjust that doesn't harm yourself!
[...]
Shortened down significantly
The only way forward is FREEDOM, and the only way to freedom is to free our minds, and the only way to free our minds is to free the energy the mind feeds on - Information!
Free Information - The Path Forward!
I have included the link to the movie Zeitgeist
here in case for some reasons it is removed from the servers at
ZeitgeistMovie.com. I would encourage everyone with a server accessible to do the same to ensure the future that its children too have access to this movie which I think is of tremendous importance to the world...
Until next time [unless I get wacked by CIA or something] have a nice day,
Thomas Hansen