fight before the Internet arrived, almost step by step, with the fight on the printing press 550 years ago. As the Catholic Church has lost its power of interpreting reality, he attacked any use of the new copy technology, up to and including the death penalty. What it is, is a fight over the power to tell the story -. The ability to tell others what reality looks like, and powerful institutions today are fighting for their survival as they lose this ability and become useless and obsolete
VPNs Tor, encryption, monitoring -. all part of an image much more of a fight on the power of storytelling
sometimes I ask people to imagine how they would act if they could write all the news from the world for a week and all this would undoubtedly be accepted as true. This is the power of storytelling, the ability to sort fact from fiction for other people. If we could change people's perception of themselves in every way imaginable and never have questioned, what would they write?
Most people think in terms to make it attractive, successful or rich. While a power Narrative allows it, it is nowhere near its potential.
If you control what people knew you, you would not be need money ever. You might be a walking god among men - literally, as far as others were concerned. (North Korea practice a variant of this concept.) If you can control what others see as right and wrong, you can never have anyone to act against you, and have them think they are acting in their own interest. It is the largest conceivable power in a society.
This is the power of storytelling. And that power used to reside with a couple of large institutions that are really really Annoyed with everything about the Internet, because it breaks their power to present itself as just as really really important. When people can bypass their ego and narration, painted façade decomposes rapidly.
This is exactly what happened with the printing press. The Catholic Church is the only manufacturer of new books through their monasteries, held a total power of Narrative, increased by the fact that all the books were in Latin, and only the clergy could read Latin and interpreted for the masses.
It is not hard to see where some people would exploit this advantage. That's also what happened.
To raise money, the Catholic Church came with the idea of selling salvation, which had no basis in any of the guide books. But as these books were in Latin, nobody knew except the clergy. One of them did protest, a priest named Martin Luther. On the surface, he attacked corruption within the Church that allowed the practice of raising money by selling salvation. Dig a little deeper, he attacked the guard position of the Church held on knowledge, a caretaker's position that allowed them deliberately misconstruct such a message first.
One consequence of Luther's objections was the Luther Bible, which was printed using the relatively new technology of the printing press. Bibles began to appear by the cartload - but in German and in French rather than Latin. Virtually overnight, the Catholic Church had lost its power of Narrative, that people could read the Bible themselves, in their own language; they relied on the clergy to interpret for them
This led to 100+ years of civil war throughout the known world at the time -. triggered by the publication of a particular book in large quantities using a new technology in a language that people can read directly instead of relying on a keeper of knowledge to interpret it for them . More than a century of war. That's how much power there is in the goalkeeper position of knowledge.
In response to this publication, the Catholic Church has attacked the printing press technology mercilessly. As the Church and the Crown were generally in a symbiosis in most European countries at the time, with the Crown to obtain the legitimacy of its power through the validation of the Church, the Church had a capacity of extensive lobbying for new laws when he saw an existential threat.
and therefore, the printing press was progressively criminalized, and gradually intensified penalties until 13 January 1535 France, the sanctions came to the death penalty for any use a printing press. The official justification for the law was "to prevent the spread and dissemination of dangerous ideas"
Now let's summarize here :. powerful institutions are so afraid of unauthorized copying that bypass their power Narrative which they grow tougher and tougher penalties for the use of technology bypassing them. Does any of this sound ... familiar?
All this has happened before and it will all happen again. Here's a quote from Battlestar Galactica, of course, but that does not make it less true.
Privacy remains your own responsibility.
0 Komentar