[Originally published in 2011 by Citizen Doctor. See the footnotes for links to recent relevant articles.]
The Internet: the greatest defense against tyranny since the printing press
The emergence of the Internet poses a greater threat to the control of humanity by a small elite class than the appearance of the printing press did in the fifteenth century.1 Because the elite were able to turn the printing press to their benefit by dominating the publishing industry, they thought they could do the same with the Internet. The benefit of secretly monitoring everyone’s communications seemed to outweigh the risks, which they limit by controlling the domain name system (DNS) and the Internet infrastructure itself through government agencies and telecommunications corporations. They can blacklist any website domain name and can surveil, regulate or block transmissions through the infrastructure.
But now the elite are genuinely frightened by the success of alternative news media such as Infowars.com.2 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked that: “We are in an information war, and we’re losing that war.” Senator Jay Rockefeller asked, “Would it have been better if we had never invented the Internet?” And so the elite have been taking steps to assert their control through censoring, eliminating anonymity and threatening to shut down the Internet with a “kill switch”.
Many who value freedom have realized the great boon the Internet is to humanity and are working to free it from government and corporate control. Through sharing of information the people of the world can become informed and educated; they can be given tools to lift themselves out of ignorance and poverty. People from different cultures can learn through direct communication how much alike we all are and how much common interest we have in peace and prosperity.3
Eleven ways to support Internet freedom
Oppose any legislative attempts to restrict the internet, such as internet taxes, and support net neutrality through groups such as Save The Internet: Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, quality journalism, and universal access to communications.
Support the Electronic Frontier Foundation: When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense.
Support projects that support Internet anonymity, such as the Tor project: Activists worldwide use Tor to protect their anonymity online and to circumvent Internet censorship. But they all rely on a limited number of user-provided “relays” to protect themselves and communicate with others.
Support the Free Software Foundation (FSF): As our society grows more dependent on computers, the software we run is of critical importance to securing the future of a free society. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses, where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us.
Support the P2P Foundation: The P2P Foundation was conceived to help people, organizations and governments transition towards commons-based approaches to society through co-creating an open knowledge commons and a resilient, sustainable human network.
Support projects aligned with the recent U.N. declaration that Internet access is a human right.
Use encrypted email to thwart government spying.
Use Startpage to use the Google web search tool anonymously.
Withdraw your support from corporate-controlled social websites like Facebook.
Support the development and spread of open source decentralized social software alternatives to Facebook and Twitter:
OneSwarm — privacy preserving peer-to-peer file sharing.
GNU Social — The free software social networking platform..
Diaspora — The online social world where you are in control.
Support projects which are building a decentralized Internet infrastructure, outside government and corporate control. Here are a few of many such projects:
Freedom Box Foundation — based on the ideas proposed in this inspirational talk by Eben Moglen. A project to develop software that will enable tiny inexpensive plug computers to function as private servers which can connect directly and automatically to others through a decentralized wireless mesh network.
We are an organization committed to the tenets of free information, free culture, and free society.
We hold that advances in information technology provide humanity with the ability to effectively face global challenges.
We contend that our very ability to mobilize, organize, and bring about change depends on our ability to communicate.
We see that our ability to communicate is purchased from a handful of powerful entities.
We know that we cannot depend on these entities to support movement away from a status quo from which they are the beneficiaries.
We believe that access to a free network is a human right, and a necessary tool for environmental and social justice.
We envision communications infrastructure that is owned and operated cooperatively, by the whole of humanity, rather than by corporations and states.
We are using the power of peer-to-peer technologies to create a global network which is immune to censorship and resistant to breakdown.
We promote freedoms, support innovations and advocate technologies that enhance and enable digital self-determination.
This article is one of ten in my Decentralized series: Manufacturing, Energy, Money, Education, Agriculture, Medicine, Security, Communication, Government, Religion
See my article on Maajid Nawaz, written early this year, in which he expounds the vital importance of decentralization and compares the decentralized Internet to the printing press.
Alternative news media threaten the domination of the corporate media, which is used by the elite to shape narratives: The Easter Bunny’s Springless Steps.
My hope is that humanity will use decentralized Internet to form a communication nexus that bypasses the elite’s control mechanisms and makes possible fractal sovereignty across all scales.