mirrors...

Jul. 7th, 2015 10:01 pm
psybelle: (. . .)
There is a certain relief in seeing my reactions, my thought processes, my fears in other people. It doesn't solve the underlying problem in any way, but it's a comfort of sorts…

Well, yeah, we're fucked.
psybelle: (. . .)
I think I'm mostly caught up on the usual suspects. And, as usual, both Peter Watts and John Michael Greer are spot-on (and David Brin is starting to look like a complete ass, but that simply scores another point for "do NOT read the comments").

And as I contemplate Greer's ruminations on the fall of civilizations and the similarity of various "dark ages" … and I remember the Motie museum, and think about the Long Now's Rosetta Stone project and Clock … I wonder if it's possible to salvage more knowledge this time?

What would it take to avoid a global Dark Age? What might it take to "reboot" a somewhat technical civilization (something we might recognize/feel comfortable in) in the absence of fossil fuels?


I am an introvert, and feel like I'm lacking some crucial insights into basic human power-structures and dynamics; have never been a keen student of history. So, I have absolutely no idea how something like the preservation of knowledge over centuries of strife and dissolution might be accomplished. I really don't even know where to start. But it's going to be occupying a good bit of my thought processes for a while…


(And, in my usual practical/cynical fashion, I am not at all surprised that the silverbacks are getting agitated, given where we are on the general downslope of "civilization" - buckle your seatbelts and get your kill-switches ready, decide ahead of time where you look back and where you decide not to be seen in the first place.)
psybelle: (. . .)
June 5th isn't entirely over yet, right?

This is awesome: Reset the Net.

(boingboing has a nice piece here: http://boingboing.net/2014/06/05/today-is-the-day-we-reset-the.html)

So, yeah… i'm gong to be downloading the set and seeing how easy the various parts are to implement (because, yes, there's a bunch of stuff I could have done but haven't yet). And if I run into more than three snags, I'm going to put out a public call for a "reset party" (along the lines of a cryptoparty) and ask that somebody who knows these tools help out…


And… I'm going to ask that you all consider using these tools, as well (if you're not doing so already). To use a last-century model, these sorts of tools have the utility of a fax machine: one lonely fax machine is worthless, but the more fax machines there are in the world, the more machines each one can talk to. Encrypted email does absolutely nothing if the recipient's machine is not secure, but as more people use secured / crypto systems, they become logarithmically more useful. And while you, personally, might not "have anything to hide" there are a lot of folks who are not so privileged and whose only "wrongdoing" is a lack of conformity (whether through being queer, or not white, or not fitting in the standard binary gender profiles, or being female and loud, or being involved in a local green/political/economic protest, or ...). As Doctorow says, Those who have nothing to hide have a duty to protect the privacy of those who do.

The damage that surveillance does to freedom of speech and freedom of thought is huge. But we can reroute around some of the damage...

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psybelle

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