The Rising Threat of Digital Nationalism
wsj.com
wsj.com
The vision in 2019-50=1969 was in fact very far from globalist.
At that time it was the early stages of U.S. Dept of Defense project ARPANET.
It's largely the reason why IP/TCP largely lacks any security or DoS prevention features: you needed a U.S. security clearance to even access it.
First non-U.S. access of any kind to the "internet" was in 1973, though physical access continued to remain heavily restricted for years. (I say "the internet" because it was still ARPANET and the Internet Protocol did not yet even exist.)
Much later the WWW -- as the name itself suggests -- was a globally-minded endeavor. The World Wide Web is 29 years old.
One could argue that the current "Internet" based on TCP/IP has only existed since 1983, and the 1969-1982 ARPANET was a different internet given it was based on a different and incompatible protocol stack (NCP).
"An internet" is just any network which connects networks. In that sense, there have been (and may yet be) other internets running other protocol stacks. "The Internet" is a particular internet running a particular protocol suite (TCP/IP), and defined as such the Internet began operation on 1983-01-01.
If walled-garden Apps ever, become synonymous with the internet, then the internet was born in 2007 (or '08 depending on where you count from).
The gap between 1983 TCP/IPv4 and 2019 TCP/IPv4 is arguably smaller than the gap between 1982 NCP and 1983 TCP/IPv4.
For example, data flow in an NCP connection is one-directional, meaning that applications wanting bidirectional communication have to use a pair of connections, whereas TCP allows communication in either direction over the same connection.
A 1983 TCP/IPv4 stack probably could successfully communicate with a 2019 TCP/IPv4 stack, although changes in TCP congestion algorithms, MTU discovery, etc would likely cause significant performance issues over long-distance links. TCP/IP and NCP are completely incompatible protocols so TCP/IP-only host could not communicate with an NCP-only host at all.
The nodes in 1982 and 1983 were largely the same, so if you look at the internet as the nodes, then there is continuity, but if you look at the internet as compatible intercommunicating protocols, then there is not.
As an aside, English style guides formerly required "an internet"/"the Internet" distinction, however that has been changing in recent years to lowercase "internet" in both cases.
In school I was marked down for writing "the internet", and now English professors say that is in fact the right way to do it. Not even English is immune to versioning.
I had a math teacher who literally never got up from his desk, visibly counting down the years until he could collect his pension. I had similarly checked out history and science teachers.
The not-good English teachers I had, however, seemed mad at the world and out for blood. The name written on an assignment had a stronger correlation with the grade than the content, so the only path to an A was to stroke the teacher's ego
I even had a pair of friends do a blinded experiment to confirm this. They each would type out their assignment, then would call each other and flip a coin; Heads they write their own name, Tails they write the other person's name.
In another occurrence, I had gotten on a teacher's bad-side and so the grades on my papers had a hard ceiling of a C. I asked my dad for advice, and it was roughly: Talk to the teacher, apologize for "not applying myself" offer to redo back assignments. She didn't even have me redo any back assignments, but suddenly I was getting As and Bs again.
Another occurance: I got my first paper of the class back with the only markings on it "58, almost an A paper." Here was the dialog that ensued:
----
Me: How many points is this out of?
Teacher: 100
Me: Is the class graded on a curve?
Teacher: No, straight 90/80/70
Me: So how is 58 "almost an A paper?"
Teacher: Well, just a few tweaks and it would be great,[encouraging tone] I'm sure you'll do well in my course!
Me: ...
----
To this day I still have not figured out what was going on in that teacher's mind. It was a rare real-world moment where I honestly couldn't tell if I was being trolled or not.
I had a math professor do that to me in undergrad. Fear of his type led me to leave the field entirely after that degree. Just way too much power over me with little to nothing I could do.
gratuitous correction because of the topic. hth hand.
Think “couch” vs Ikea.
"an internet" is common noun – an abstract concept of which many particular implementations could exist.
"the Internet" is a proper noun – one specific implementation of that concept. Right now, the only one of any significance, but that may not last forever.
If humans someday colonise Mars – TCP/IP is not suitable for interplanetary use. We'll likely end up with two separate TCP/IP internets, one on Earth and one on Mars, with non-IP protocols used to communicate between them. The Earth-based one would be descendant of "the Internet" we are using right now, the Mars-based one would be a new internet.
(By the time we colonise Mars, I wouldn't be surprised if TCP has been wholly replaced by QUIC, so instead of TCP/IP we'd all be using QUIC/UDP/IP.)
I'm not sure that's true.
The congestion algorithms/parameters may have to be updated, just like they were when WiFi and cellular came along, but the protocol itself is quite robust.
That's why for interplanetary use IETF has been developing an alternative protocol suite called DTN. Unlike TCP/IP, DTN is not real-time, it is based on store-and-forward of messages (conceptually similar to UUCP.)
This is nitpicky, but I think a lot of traffic considered part of 'The Internet' UDP as well these days.
The _businesses_ that operate on the Internet from meatspace don't.
Because they can't, at a fundamental level. They're based somewhere. They have visible employees in jurisdictions. They represent enormous juicy targets with tens, hundreds, thousands of millions of users to control.
They're huge companies. They have management structures, bureaucracies, whole departments that result in the sort of nonsense we see like GDPR popups or country blocks.
That's not the Internet of 50 years ago; it's not even the Internet of 20 years ago.
Alternatively, you could simply think of it like this - the everyman has been regulated. The power users (for lack of a better term) are in much the same situation that they were in 1990.
If you discount the fact that 'everyman' expects everyone to be on the "hip new platform" (fb, snap, insta, tiktok, whatever) then honestly the situation is way better than it was back then. It's just hard to ignore the cruft.
Essentially, when we say "regulate" today, that's kind of what we mean: regulating bodies that that make rules for large corporations. Increasingly regulated and a increasingly corporate came in tandem.
On your second point... I think it's kind of moot. Sure, the international "old internet" still exists. You can take part in it like you did in 1996. It's just dwarfed by the new internet.
I'd argue that's a technicality, the important parts of that internet's "freedoms" are pointless when it's a vestigial artifact.
> As ever more opt out, the larger culture is damaged.7 The culture begins to fragment back into pieces. The disconnect can be profound; an American anime geek has more in common with a Japanese anime geek (who is of a different ethnicity, a different culture, a different religion, a different language…) than he does with an American involved in the evangelical Christian subculture. There is essentially no common ground—our 2 countrymen probably can’t even agree on objective matters like governance or evolution!
> With enough of these gaps, where is ‘American’ or ‘French’ culture? Such cultural identities take centuries to coalesce—France did not speak French until the 1900s (as The Discovery of France recounts), and Han China is still digesting & assimilating its many minorities & outlying regions. America, of course, had it easy in starting with a small founder population which could just exterminate the natives.
> The national identity fragments under the assault of burgeoning subcultures. At last, the critic beholds the natural endpoint of this process: the nation is some lines on a map, some laws you follow. No one particularly cares about it. The geek thinks, ‘Meh: here, Canada, London, Japan, Singapore—as long as FedEx can reach me and there’s a good Internet connection, what’s the difference?’ (Nor are the technically-inclined alone in this.8)
>You can test this yourself. Tell yourself —‘The country I live in now is the best country in the world for people like me; I would be terribly unhappy if I was exiled.’ If your mental reply goes something like, ‘Why, what’s so special about the USA? It’s not particularly economically or politically free, it’s not the only civilized English-speaking country, it’s not the wealthiest9…’, then you are headed down the path of opting out.
This is just wrong. There are plenty of well adjusted people who aren't nationalists.
I miss my home country and I feel exiled by (one of) the government's policies. Every bit of my home is a deep part of me. I hope one day to return to live. I wouldn't want my home country to be divided, for security reasons, nor to be ruled by an outside power (though one can hear the English salivating at the possibility they could re-invade once Brexit is complete). But probably the transfer of power back downwards would, in my home country as in America, help heal the wounds of the last decade more than anything.
Communists used to think like you. They felt that a german factory worker had more in common with a french or russian or chinese factory worker and that introducing communist ideas would let awaken them to this "fact" and they wouldn't join the army to kill each other. WW1 and WW2 proved that german, french, russian, chinese, etc factories were more than willing to kill each other by the millions.
> The geek thinks, ‘Meh: here, Canada, London, Japan, Singapore—as long as FedEx can reach me and there’s a good Internet connection, what’s the difference?’ (Nor are the technically-inclined alone in this.8)
I guess the "geek" hasn't tried to getting visas or immigrating to those places.
Also, you have to realize that all it takes in just one nationalist movement to spur nationalism almost everywhere. Nationalism has that kind of virtuous cycle.
Look at the current US-China trade war. It not only increases nationalism in the US, it also increases in China.
Studies on international otaku subcultures show large commonalities between them. Perhaps you just chose a bad example, but I don't think your point is convincing.
And yet concludes with: "Fifty years after the birth of the internet, it may well be that national governments, wielding enlightened regulation, are the last best hope for maintaining a network that is—at least relatively—open and free."
Am I missing something? How could "regulation" be a possible answer to "digital nationalism"? Are there examples of what the author is referring to as "enlightened regulation" in which regulation has had the desired impacts? Seems to me that far more often we see a mix of intended and unintended consequences.
I would add that web != Internet. Internet is closer to printing press. A world in which there are billions of TCP/IP stacks on personal compute with Internet access is not one which is easily controlled (for good or for bad) by regulation.
> The trend is no longer restricted to authoritarian states.
I guess that depends on how you define "authoritarian state". It's arguable that all control is authoritarian.
I favor bottom-up political structure. Local governments handle local matters. Broader levels handle relationships among local governments, and enforce human rights.
All corporations should be held to public-interest charters.
I prefer to think of policy than regulation. Regulations are a collection of policies. Non-regulation is also a policy. And policies should be evaluated honestly on their merits.
A sufficiently intelligent authority produces good authoritarian results.
How are net neutrality laws, a form of regulation, a safeguard to keep the internet open and free?
> I would add that web != Internet. Internet is closer to printing press. A world in which there are billions of TCP/IP stacks on personal compute with Internet access is not one which is easily controlled (for good or for bad) by regulation.
This distinction is meaningless. The author may have have conflated the terms, but most people’s primary (and often only) exposure to the internet is via a web browser. They’re clearly not concerned about the spread of nationalism via IP cameras.
Agreed, great example. The free market approach would be to ease the regulations on access and spectrum which have limited last mile competition in the US. Less regulation - not more - would lead to an enviro in which an ISP who was preferring certain content would be genuinely risking losing customers by doing so (and might gain certain types of customers, opening niches for other ISPs to win other customers, which would be fine too).
Haha no, Ajit. You either take the ISP you get, charging whatever you for whatever they want https://www.google.se/amp/s/arstechnica.com/information-tech..., or you go check your e-mail at the nearest coffee shop.
Free markets and month of barely enough practicable bandwith to buy your pot on a darkmarket because hackers ddos as hell these market in order to blackmail their owner to pay them a huge ransom to stop their attack, and what should have been an easy transaction taking barely more time than to buy shampoo on amazon take more than 4 hours.
And don't get get me started with vaping canabis oil cut with tocopherol which cause an epidemic lipidic pneumonia or pedophile rings operating video sharing websites.
Regarding cut products, it's an immature ecosystem, but thanks to efforts from folks like The LSD Avengers[0] drugs on the old Silk Road were becoming safer than normal street drugs when the government shut it down:
> Silk Road seemed to be a safe place to buy really good drugs, if you knew what you were doing. The prices might be higher than what you’d pay on the street, but dealers on Silk Road were held somewhat accountable by the community. The seller-rating system built into the site, along with efforts by unofficial groups like the Avengers, created a meritocracy that rewarded dealers who sold good stuff (with the exception of the infamous tony76 fraud, in which a well-reputed seller took a bulk of orders and disappeared). And when law enforcement tested the wares on Silk Road, police found they typically had a high purity level of the drug advertised.
If you authoritarians would just stop hunting down and arresting drug users then the ones who cared about purity and health would actually have options they were well informed about. The problem isn't a lack of regulation, it's that you've regulated the product so hard that it's legally dangerous to even review it, and you keep attacking/dispersing communities of buyers and sellers which means that it's difficult to keep organized/informed. That you would blame this on the free market is ridiculous. Let people sell and review products, they'll figure it out if you just stop pointing guns at them and locking them in boxes. This problem is absolutely a result of regulation; if you did not regulate LSD at all, finding a source of actual unadulterated LSD would be trivial. Same with cannabis oil.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/14/4828448/silk-road-lsd-av...
I don't think this is true. Email is probably the most notable exception, but also social apps like Instagram and TikTok that are used primarily or exclusively as native apps. Chat apps (WhatsApp/iMessage/Slack/IRC/etc) are usually accessed outside of a web browser. Dropbox syncs files over the Internet between my computers, but I rarely if ever visit their website.
Obviously most of these things are accessible on the web, and you often have to use the web to set them up. But the day-to-day experiences of using them happen entirely outside of a web browser.
I think the days of distinguishing between the Web and the Internet are behind us, if it ever even made sense.
Borders are the biggest problem for centralized power. They create markets of ideas, and having their subjects see that is an extensial threat, hence the language engineering and constant attempts to induce self/country shame.
But talking about "sense of fairness and inclusivity" makes me suspect cluelessness.
In the late 80s and 90s, I was a big fan of John Perry Barlow, the independence of cyberspace, crypto-anarchy on the internet, the idea that some combination of a uncensorable world wide internet (that could route around governments), could displace even their national currencies, could be end to end anonymous and encrypted, would be a nirvana from oppression.
The problem with the naive cyberlibertarian world view, is that it treats government as a wholly separate actor from the people who create the society they live in, and if your neighbors want to be Nazis, technological choices aren't going to protect you. It's not just "Digital Nationalism" that's rising. Nationalism is rising. You need only need at the US electing Trump, Brexit in the UK, at some of the neo-fascists elected recently in the EU.
The optimism of the 90s, has been replaced with a mentality of scarcity, and when that happens, people look to hoard, they become less generous, more tribal, they circle the wagons.
We are not going to fix Nationalism until we fix the underlying economic and social problems that are giving rise to it.
That just isn't going to happen globally.
If you are from a locale where low-trust, feuding groups are interacting with each other but on a largely negative basis, and you're tired of it - then nationalism looks like something positive that can unify people into something more peaceful, and more capable of doing large scale projects together etc.
If you are from a locale where low-trust feuding nations are interacting with each other on a largely negative basis, and you're tired of it - then you want to develop a global structure which unifies them into something more peaceful, and more capable of doing large scale projects together etc.
What is it about nationalism that makes that particular level of abstraction become reified and hard to move beyond?
It seems to go back to before nationalism per se as a term. See Genhis Khan and the Mongols who ironically had little cultural influence over those they once conquered. Just uniting into a lack of war wasn't enough - they needed outside targets. Feudalism in general had that issue where a post unified country is left with an excess of fighters to burn off on foreign adventures for stability to prevent infighting fiefdom expansions. Both Japan post Sengoku Jidai and the Crusades fit that model as well. It also made them long term enemies even jf it didn't result in same generation "show up to pillage your holdings" retaliation.
People seem to prefer something which flatters their ego over something that works.
Googling that phrase, the first hit I get is Fascism, not Nationalism.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/fascism-1
----------------------------
Definition and Beliefs
Fascism is an ultranationalist, authoritarian political philosophy. It combines elements of nationalism, militarism, economic self-sufficiency, and totalitarianism. It opposes communism, socialism, pluralism, individual rights and equality, and democratic government.
Fascism places the importance of the nation above all else. The unity of the national community is prioritized above the rights of individuals. This leads to an intense interest in defining which groups belong or do not belong to the national body. Fascism is characterized by:
strident, often exclusionary nationalism
fixation with national decline (real or perceived) and threats to the existence of the national community
embrace of paramilitarism
These two ideas seem to have become synonymous in the minds of most people, but academically they are distinct.
I was a bit shocked reading this sentence. A quarter of the world's countries is a big percentage. But apparently that is the case.
There is a good report by Freedom House that analysis "Freedom on the Net"[1] and it seems that the trend of restricting access is a global phenomena. (especially across "less-connected" countries).
[1]: https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTN_2018_Final...
However, this doesn't NEED to be the case as we can design online experiences that bring people together. The last two years I've self-funded a foundation [1] to work on on precisely this problem of using the Internet to try to unify people together. Today we have two platforms we are providing to the public and organizations.
The first [2] service organizes people at physical events by maximizing the diversity of auto generated discussion groups, and we're having a fair amount of success in schools and events in the US and Austria. The other service [3] is purely an experimental free public social platform that matches people who have different viewpoints to have a timeboxed live discussion to chat about their views.
I'm not sure if what we've built so far can make a big impact online, but I hope it can serve as an example of what kind of tools that could be built if the focus is squarely aimed at unifying people instead of stuffing them into echo chambers with pay-to-reach walls between groups of people.
[1] Foundation: https://www.newdialogue.org/
[2] Group diversity mixer: https://www.mixopinions.com/
[3] Social platform: https://www.dinnertable.chat
The existing physical governments will slowly lose their influence.
As existing governments become weaker, virtual nations will realize that they can seize companies (the means of production) and take possession of their revenues by strategically corrupting employees inside those companies.
The virtual governments will use seized company revenues to buy-back and burn their own cryptocurrencies to give their currencies more value and gain more power.
Eventually the virtual nations will take control of physical land in various countries by corrupting and manipulating existing government officials. Each new nation will be scattered geographically through all continents.
Try this test with some of the less extreme nationalists you know: show them a photo of planet Earth taken from space and tell them "this is my homeland. I love it and you should too", then watch their reaction. Some of them may agree, but most won't. The point is that planet Earth does indeed contain their entire homeland, but includes other countries too, which is what many people don't accept. This plain stupid test demonstrates how nationalism isn't about loving one's country rather than not loving other people ones.
Only an imperialist with global ambitions would claim the entire planet as his homeland.
>includes other countries too, which is what many people don't accept
You seem to be the one who cant accept that there are other countries that are not for you. Nationalists understand this quite well actually
>nationalism isn't about loving one's country rather than not loving other people ones
Wanting your nation to be sovereign and free of foreign influence is not the same thing as hating other countries like you insinuate. Was Gandhi evil because he was a nationalist? Was Nelsen Mandela? Was Crazy Horse?
This doesn't make sense to me. Would a desire to paint my own house rather than my neighbor's be a form of extremism, or are you thinking about it on some other way than this?
> more accurately what the perfectly natural love everyone of us feels for his/hers own country becomes once filtered and distorted by propaganda with the purpose of making people do nasty things under the belief they're necessary for a bigger good
I accept that this is possible and has historical precedent, but I challenge you to produce any convincing evidence this is always the case.
> Try this test with some of the less extreme nationalists you know: show them a photo of planet Earth taken from space and tell them "this is my homeland. I love it and you should too", then watch their reaction. Some of them may agree, but most won't. The point is that planet Earth does indeed contain their entire homeland, but includes other countries too, which is what many people don't accept.
Have you literally done this, and literally observed that most people don't love planet Earth? I would pay money to see a performance like that in real life, it sounds utterly bizarre and fantastical.
> This plain stupid test demonstrates how nationalism isn't about loving one's country rather than not loving other people ones.
Even if you actually have conducted this test, saying this demonstrates your point is a stretch. I can easily think of a reason I would have a negative reaction to such a "test", my strong dislike for globalism advocates with their poorly thought out reasons for demanding I behave in a certain way - if I got an intuitive feel that this is what your game was, you would likely get an intuitive feel that I was displeased, but be careful what you attribute that feeling to. I would actually consider this a reasonably good example of a poorly thought out idea that I find annoying.
Synopsis: there's a distinction between hypernationalism and nationalism; nationalism has become normalised for a long time, so any "nationalism" that sticks out tends to actually be "hypernationalism", which is destructive and dangerous.
Turkey is an established state. Nationalism in Turkey is a social movement for increased conformity (resulting in a rise of Islam, slowly converting it from merely a widespread religion into a state religion, and cultural homogeneity, rejecting e.g. Greek shared history and ethnic minorities). It has also fueled rhetoric strongly suggesting expansionism (though currently restricted to depopulating Northern Syria to create a "security buffer" and relocating a different, more trusted, ethnic group there).
Kurdish nationalism for decades was a struggle against Turkish nationalism (as well as Iraq, Syria and Iran), fighting for cultural and ethnic recognition of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. The stated goal was to create a separate Kurdish nation state to define and protect a shared Kurdish identity.
More recently, Kurdish politics have moved away from the idea of a nation state. Rojava, although predominantly Kurdish, was explicitly created as an autonomous territory rather than a state and as multi-ethnic, multi-religious and with all central power devolved to the lowest level (i.e. all power is granted directly and explicitly by households forming neighborhoods forming communities). They explicitly aimed to find common ground with Syria, aspiring to become a mere autonomous territory in Syria, rather than a separate state. They eschewed both nationalism (i.e. creating a homogeneous identity) and full statehood (i.e. full political sovereignty and independence).
In reverse order, these are an example of the absence of nationalism, nationalism to create a new nation state (empowering a minority in an existing state) and hypernationalism (refining an existing nation state through increased homogeneity and militaristic expansionism).
It is imperialist.
Usually a person who says something like what you've said is an unwashed Western imperialist, a person who believes that they and people like them know what is right for others. It is an anti-mature view; it is a view that presents people as incapable of growth and requiring the tender care of a select few.
It is also extremely right-wing. It is quite interesting to me how so many people who believe themselves to be left wing advocate policies that a generation ago were plainly understood to be right-wing. But it's no wonder right wing reactionaries are winning out. You'd almost think it was part of a conspiracy.
I know a number of extreme right wing people, some of them relatives to actual fascist militants during WWII, not kids playing as such because it makes them look cool, and I assure you we have nothing in common except sharing the same charcoal at barbecues:)
My views about a single homeland have nothing to do with forcing others to share my culture but rather consider the earth as a close system where if we piss towards East soon or later it will rain from West, and the other way around.
Orwell agreed that Nationalistic thinking was almost totally widespread through different peoples and times, but you appear to be saying that a “normal” amount is Ok which he would have fought passionately.
Orwell wanted us to contend with the Nationalist inside us, and push them out. Just as we wouldn’t accept a “perfectly normal” amount of racism, don’t accept Nationalist feeling as in any way healthy.
Nationalism is simply the decision of a group, 'the nation' to constitute its own interests and to determine its own laws and rules, not automatically tyranny.
The idea of a global internet is inherently anti-democratic because it excludes the option that nations determine in a sovereign manner what cultural values or laws or rules apply to their communications infrastructure. Given that cultures and laws diverge drastically on speech, religion, privacy and almost anything else it was only a matter of time until conflict would arise.
Up until now it wasn't really a global as much as an American internet anyway, the difference is just that other countries are catching up and reasserting themselves.
Notes on Nationalism is quite different from 1984, more focused on its effects on the individual (obsession, self-deception, etc.) than tyranny per se. He makes the distinction between nationalism and patriotism and his use of term is a bit unconventional (for example he includes pacifist rhetoric as an example of what he calls nationalism).
I think defining the nation as simply "the decisions of a group" loses a lot of subtlety. E.g. what separates the term nation from country or corporation? Drawing on Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, I think identity, community, and mass communication play a big part in this.
An interesting contemporary example of the development of nationhood, was posted here a while back about the transformation of Taiwanese identity, from majority Chinese in the 80s to majority Taiwanese in the 10s.
George Orwell, "Wells, Hitler, And The World State", 1941.
I also can't help but notice that you fail to mention that Orwell's definition of nationalism in "Notes On Nationalism" is somewhat different than the definition used today:
"By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, NOT for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
Orwell, had he lived today, would be unironically branded as a nazi. And as for his views on communism, oh boy, if he had a twitter account, he'd have a horde of blue checkmarks at his throat every time he had anything to say.
> Orwell, had he lived today, would be unironically branded as a nazi.
Ahh what? By who, some nobody on Twitter? Why are you even bringing this up?
Patrotism is a natural consequence of birth in a place - most of us live in a place with a culture. Many people migrate to another land and grow roots and become a patriot of that place. It is no crazier to be patriotic than it is to love your family.
Nationalism is more like being an Apple fanboi. Someone with slack branding convinced you that your survival depends on throwing your wealth and strength into their service. Normally we call them thugs.
"Nationalism is an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people)[1] especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty)."
I totally agree so far.
"It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity—based on shared social characteristics such as culture, language, religion, politics, and belief in a shared singular history and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture, and cultural revivals have been associated with nationalist movements. It also encourages pride in national achievements, and is closely linked to patriotism. Nationalism is often combined with other ideologies, such as conservatism (national conservatism) or socialism (socialist nationalism) for example."
Mostly agree, but perhaps not necessarily with shared religion or "cultural revivals", depending on what that means.
Orwell's opinion (and unless I'm wrong, it's just that, although it seems to be popularly considered fact nowadays):
"By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, NOT for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
I disagree pretty strongly with this. Personally, I'm not terribly patriotic, and I certainly don't consider my country the best in the world, not even close. But But politically, I consider myself a pretty hardcore nationalist. I believe in sovereignty of all nations, I believe a wide variety of approaches to life and organizing society is (or could be...it's a shame more countries don't seem to learn from each other) very beneficial to mankind, and it concerns me that no one seems to worry about whether we're losing some valuable things with the ongoing cultural homogenization of the planet.
This quote is for you then.
> From a philosophical viewpoint, the danger inherent in the new reality of mankind seems to be that this unity, based on the technical means of communication and violence, destroys all national traditions and buries the authentic origins of all human existence. This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations. Its result would be a shallowness that would transform man, as we have known him in five thousand years of recorded history, beyond recognition. It would be more than mere superficiality; it would be as though the whole dimension of depth, without which human thought, even on the mere level of technical invention, could not exist, would simply disappear. This leveling down would be much more radical than the leveling to the lowest common denominator; it would ultimately arrive at a denominator of which we have hardly any notion today.
> As long as one conceives of truth as separate and distinct from its expression, as something which by itself is uncommunicative and neither communicates itself to reason nor appeals to "existential" experience, it is almost impossible not to believe that this destructive process will inevitably be triggered off by the sheer automatism of technology which made the world one and, in a sense, united mankind. It looks as though the historical pasts of the-nations, in their utter diversity and disparity, in their confusing variety and bewildering strangeness for each other, are nothing but obstacles on the road to a horridly shallow unity. This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive. Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Men in Dark Times"
She also said nobody has the right to obey, and I agree with that, so we'd still have plenty to disagree about, but here you pointed to something that also worries me greatly. I'm not a nationalist in the ideological sense, but I also think souvereign nations are a great unit of organization, I don't believe in "smashing borders" anymore than I believe in smashing cell borders. So, there's this tiny sliver of common ground we have, at least.
Ideally, I think most policy should be made at a lower level than the sovereign state in a democratic society. Administration from remote cities seems to create distrust. Best also to keep the army at a different level from the level that needs to respond most effectively to economic upset. This is the opposite direction than we have been trending in for the last several decades but I think it can change quickly.
> This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations.
It can be considered a pre-requisite, but it can also be not considered that. The fact of the matter is, no one knows what path may yield greater harmony. There could be many that will do the trick, or none.
> This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive.
I don't see the logic in this, even though it seems to be supportive of my concerns.
> Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth.
I very much prefer this approach, it would be nice to at least try it and see what happens.
> So, there's this tiny sliver of common ground we have, at least.
I suspect most people have much more common ground than it appears, that this isn't apparent may be due to the major shortcomings in our modes of thinking and communication.
The way I interpret it is that if you remove everything but the lowest common denominator, to achieve the "ultimate unity" of everybody being the same, picking their ideas from small selection on the same shelves, if you will, we'll be faced with ever growing problems we don't have the means to handle, not even the language to adequately describe. We won't physically die, of course, but what makes human agency and spontaneity possible, very well might.
But I can't speak for her, I found the passage interesting but nothing before or after it elaborates on it, and so far I haven't read any other elaboration by her on that (or I did but didn't realize it was connected).
Just think about americans calling the french "dirty frogs" and how is that any different from racism?
A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments that people make. Some of these biases are related to memory. The way you remember an event may be biased for a number of reasons and that in turn can lead to biased thinking and decision-making.
Why is a strong national identity a cognitive bias?
> Just think about americans calling the french "dirty frogs" and how is that any different from racism?
It's different in that it is possible for a cultural stereotype to be observed to be true, whereas it has not, at least to my knowledge, been observed that individuals of an ethnic race will tend to behave in a particular way outside of a cultural influence. Culture and race are distinctly different.
If I desire to paint my house but not my neighbors, or have my tax dollars spent in my country rather than another country, am I guilty of unfairly prejudiced thinking?
So is rejection of tribalism, so that doesn't really say anything.
Are we just making up meanings for words on the fly now?
It would be rather ironic if I was being downvoted for a lack of hate.
Racism and nationalism aren’t about hate. They are about pride and superiority. Nationalism is often confused or manipulated as patriotism. Racism is often confused or manipulated as pride in culture or the past.
The feeling of superiority enables other behaviors — people feel justified to take negative actions against other humans because they are lesser than them on some axis.
These aren’t made up meanings.
I admit, I lack an understanding of how racism and nationalism both boil down to "my tribe is better than yours". I'll go even further and question whether you just made that up.
> Racism and nationalism aren’t about hate. They are about pride and superiority.
Is this an opinion or a fact?
Wikipedia says:
"Nationalism is an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty)."
I see no need for pride, and a sense of superiority certainly isn't required - I find the idea that my country is superior utterly comical.
> Nationalism is often confused or manipulated as patriotism.
It's also often confused for other things, like a sense of superiority, or National Socialism.
> The feeling of superiority enables other behaviors — people feel justified to take negative actions against other humans because they are lesser than them on some axis.
Perhaps, but this isn't an intrinsic part of nationalism.
> These aren’t made up meanings.
They are interpretations, made up by the author who wrote the interpretations. If the word nationalism has been redefined (as seems to be the case based on comments and voting in threads such as these), perhaps we should get a new one to represent the Wikipedia meaning above. As much as people here seem unsatisfied with my willingness to hate others due to my nationalist beliefs, I refuse to do so to make others happy.
Humans are such curious creatures.
Compared to what? Being a primitive mammal? Sure you could claim that the 'nation' didn't exist long enough to support this but devotion to a local city or tribe feels the same to me.
So's this laptop. What's your point?
-- Erich Fromm
I would say the person who loves just one nation over all others loves no nation. They may think they do, and they may claim it as they destroy it, but they're incapable of it. Furthermore, I think the mass societies that came into existence in the 20th century, and the rootlessness they produce, also created a form of hypernationalism which is more self-destructive hysteria than even selfish chauvinism.
You can say that, but is it true?
> They may think they do, and they may claim it as they destroy it, but they're incapable of it.
This sounds like you're saying that it's not possible for a Chinese or Japanese person to love their own country more than they love other countries. If so, do you have any evidence that supports this belief?
Do you have evidence to the contrary? Why is the burden to disprove a "love" that has never been proven on me, how would the evidence you're asking for even look like?
I could assemble a set of information that is suggestive of it, but such things are inherently subjective so it could be rightly easily dismissed as inconclusive.
> Why is the burden to disprove a "love" that has never been proven on me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
> The burden of proof is the obligation on a party in a dispute to provide sufficient warrant for their position (in this case: "I would say the person who loves just one nation over all others loves no nation").
I think it's not a huge stretch to extend this to nations:
> If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person.
-- Erich Fromm
As George Orwell said, either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does... personally I can't wish well for my "own" country without also wishing well to others, too. Because by the same token that I have a "right" to wish well for myself and people close to me, others also have the right to be well.
This seems like an example of this weird cognitive quirk that frequently appears in discussions on (and only on, as far as I can tell) certain identity-related topics: the apparent belief that because something is possible, therefore it is, always and everywhere.
Of course you can have passion/compassion/love for one person, but honestly, where did you pick up this idea that these feelings are some sort of a binary, that you either love all people and things identically, or you don't love anyone at all? The only thing I can think of that even remotely resembles this in observable nature is the behavior of dogs, and even there it seems mostly limited to interactions with humans and other dogs.
> If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person.
I can see how people can be attracted by such prose, but if you look a bit more carefully, note the extremely unusual premise it is built upon, described in the first sentence: a person who loves only one other person, and is indifferent to all others. This is so uncommon, I suspect it would be considered some form of a mental illness.
> As George Orwell said, either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does
Lots of people says lots of things all the time. The question is whether they are true and practically meaningful. Mr. Orwell may enjoy defining the entire planet in terms of a binary of decent or not, utterly ignoring the fact that this has precisely no bearing on the actual experiences of most people, and may even draw people into certain ideologies by doing so, but even a small amount of critical thinking suggests this isn't a terribly useful or "true" idea.
> personally I can't wish well for my "own" country without also wishing well to others, too
Technically, I'm not sure if I can either, because it just so happens that I wish well for my own country and people in all others, and simultaneously, I am also a passionate Nationalist. That which others seem to consider literally impossible, is absolutely effortless to me.
> Because by the same token that I have a "right" to wish well for myself and people close to me, others also have the right to be well.
I wonder if this is a noteworthy difference in our thinking, this notion of "rights". I can agree that everyone has the right to wish themselves well (the pursuit of happiness), but who's obligation is it to fulfill the "right" of being well? (Did you notice you switched from wishing to being in that sentence? Do you personally draw a distinction between the two?)
Just like you don't literally mean "going far", which has nothing to do with distance travelled.
> Nationalism isn't normal
OK. I'm listening.
> , countries are a completely artificial construct.
So. What.
"Grass is not red," OK, I'm with you, I'm very open to what you're writing, even. "Red is an artificial construct," nice non-sequitur and it's not that it isn't true, but so what?
Personally I don't mind the artificiality of countries, but the insanity of the identities some people (artificially) construct around being randomly born somewhere (especially since people who contributed fuck all to wherever they live seem perfectly fine of being rabid nationalists)
Just like it's not a problem that your laptop is artificial, but if you start to pretend it's giving you commands, or if you just do what you want, but claim it's for the good of your laptop, then the problems begin. I wasn't just saying that to be snarky, you know, I was actually making a point. Because it's artificial, created by humans, and you are a human. I just don't know how to make it clearer than that.
I may have been randomly born somewhere, but I am grateful to my ancestors and countrymen for their self-sacrifice (sometimes giving up their lives), for the blood sweat and tears they put into building the nation to be a better place for the next generation. Calling this a form of insanity seems like insanity itself.
> especially since people who contributed fuck all to wherever they live seem perfectly fine of being rabid nationalists
I obey the law and contribute substantial income taxes to my national government that they distribute to others in ways that I don't agree with. I am likely a "rabid nationalist" as you put it, and I am proud to be this way, I believe it is righteous and beneficial.
> but if you start to pretend it's giving you commands, or if you just do what you want, but claim it's for the good of your laptop, then the problems begin
My country gives me commands and I obey them, because it is mostly for the good of my country and fellow countrymen.
I say "constructed identity", you say "I am grateful". If you twist my words to call them insane, that in itself says a lot about the security of your beliefs.
I have that gratitude, too, and I'm grateful to even more people who aren't my ancestors or countrymen. So why make that distinction? It's like saying "I'm grateful to the people with blue t-shirts who showed me kindness in life".
I'm not seeing your point. If it's that my gratefulness is "constructed", well, guilty as charged I guess. Love and most any other emotion people feel is "constructed".
> If you twist my words to call them insane, that in itself says a lot about the security of your beliefs.
You're the one who started with the insult, I simply returned the favor while pointing out the logical flaws in your reasoning for the insult.
> I have that gratitude, too, and I'm grateful to even more people who aren't my ancestors or countrymen. So why make that distinction?
That they're different seems sufficient reason.
> It's like saying "I'm grateful to the people with blue t-shirts who showed me kindness in life".
It might be, if people in blue t-shirts actually had showed me noteworthy kindness in life. But they haven't, so therefore it actually isn't like that, at least according to my logic.
What if constructing such an identity is a trait that has been selected for in humans?
> What if constructing such an identity is a trait that has been selected for in humans?
First of, what if it isn't true? Do you have any evidence that it's true? Right now the jury is still out on the survival of organized human life, and such "identities" play no small part in that.
"selected for" can be a fancy way to say a lot of things, too. For example, some humans went crazy and started murdering others who weren't crazy in the same fashion. "evolution proved we're stronk, so let's just gang up on this person and vote them into the ground". Oh look, they comments are all grayed out, so that proves something, right? Right? Well, no. Unless you subscribe to a Mein Kampf style "might is right" philoshophy, this argument is as valid as physical violence to decide who is right.
My question is not in regard to whether anything is or isn't "fine". The point of my question was to suggest there might be a reason that people form such identities beyond some kind of collective insanity as you suggest.
>Why is the present not also part of evolution, why does something that "evolved in the past" have to be protected from criticism in this way?
You're not just criticizing it, you're calling it insanity. If there is a very good evolutionary reason for that sort of behavior, it's not insanity.
>First of, what if it isn't true?
Then it may be in contention for the longest running collective mania that has afflicted this species.
>Do you have any evidence that it's true?
Sure, humans seem to be predisposed toward forming such identities. That is evidence, though it's not conclusive.
>Right now the jury is still out on the survival of organized human life, and such "identities" play no small part in that.
OK, but that has nothing to do with this discussion.
> For example, some humans went crazy and started murdering others who weren't crazy in the same fashion. "evolution proved we're stronk, so let's just gang up on this person and vote them into the ground".
Whether it's due to genetics or culture or some combination, formulating these identities seems to have been a successful strategy in terms of populating future generations, which is what is important when it comes to wondering why we are like we are today. And if it turns out to have been helpful in the past, it is certainly worth examining to see what it can do for us today.
Then do that, who's stopping you? You just asked "what if" and then expected me to do it for you.
I'm not asking you to ponder if there are any benefits to it today. Given your attitude, I don't think any discussion on the topic would be productive.
Thinking negatively of other countries is not necessary, but if you personally choose to be my guest.
Judging the same facts differently depending on the flag they exist under is necessary for what is under discussion here. Where that doesn't apply, this discussion doesn't apply.
> Where that doesn't apply, this discussion doesn't apply.
In which case it would imply correlation (not necessary*), no?
Well, to be a "the negative kind of nationalist". If nationalism is just the idea that nations should exist, and anyone who is for that is a nationalist, then most of us are nationalists, but we don't mean the term like that in this context, at least I don't when I criticize it.
As George Orwell wrote:
> By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled 'good' or 'bad'.* But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved.
P.S. I hate that you got downvoted, but I can't help since I can't vote on comments since a few months, probably because I upvoted too many grayed out comments. HN is not a great medium for longer debate I guess, but at any rate, thanks for this exchange.
>>> Thinking negatively of other countries is not necessary
>> Judging the same facts differently depending on the flag they exist under is necessary for what is under discussion here.
> Can you give an example where I do and must judge facts differently depending on the flag they exist under?
I would like an answer to this question, rather than just yet another pivot to the construction of a negative theoretical character, and then putting a Nationalist label on the character based on one person's opinion.
> By 'nationalism' I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled 'good' or 'bad'.
This is a figment of Mr. Orwell's imagination. He literally just made it up. This has nothing to do with Nationalism, it is nothing more than a low-intelligence slur. Ironically, it is an example of the very kind of thinking he believes he is criticizing, and this HN thread is chock full of the same sort of irony. Group-based stereotyping isn't only bad when the grouping is according to race.
> I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.
Yet another figment of Mr. Orwell's imagination. He is describing extreme Nationalist Extremism, not Nationalism.
> Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.
Indeed. I am a Nationalist, but hardly patriotic.
> Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved.
Yes, but one should also be careful to keep one's imagination under control when doing so, and stick to facts and dictionary definitions, rather than literally making things up. One who is an influential intellectual should be even more careful, lest they turn their followers into propagators of illogical hate, something we see plenty of in this thread, and every time the topic comes up.
This thread is full of people behaving as if Nationalist must hate others - I am merely asking all that do so to back up these claims with evidence and (mainly) logical reasoning. No one can do so, and more interestingly, no one seems to notice they cannot do so, or that it is they that are spreading a message of hate. The irony is delicious.
edit: Heh, I guess some people thing pretending that isn't so will get them a seat at the table. There won't even be a table.
> The frightening coincidence of the modern population explosion with the discovery of technical devices that, through automation, will make large sections of the population 'superfluous' even in terms of labor, and that, through nuclear energy, make it possible to deal with this twofold threat by the use of instruments beside which Hitler's gassing installations look like an evil child's fumbling toys, should be enough to make us tremble.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"
> Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all.
-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
-- Stephen Hawking
We, its users, are all to blame. We've stood idly by as the concept itself went from a largely decentralized protocol for sharing information via hyperlinks, to a bastardized, immensely centralized platform for stealing people's attention, even creating addictions, mine their data while they stare on and use the two to sell them more shit they don't need.
At best we passively supported this, but most of us actively partook in it. We use Google products, buy Apple products, share our data on instagram/facebook/etc., click shitty clickbait links and more. In doing so, we made some companies incredibly rich, enabling them to buy out or use their money to fund lawsuits against emerging competition, further centralizing their power.
Not satisfied with simply supporting these actions, we're on a platform right here that actively encourages companies to spin up attention/data harvesting platforms with the goal of "going public" or being bought out by one of these giants. You could be easily justified in saying those of us in the tech industry are the most culpable.
The governments, rightly so, have recognized the threat that power bears. Some chose to work with them, and use FISA or other means to secure backdoors to all the data they hoover up on us, and then work around pesky laws by sharing it with buddies such as those in Five Eyes to give eachother mutual access to one another's data. We know this. We did nothing about it. Others chose to work against them, such as China.
Instead of taking a stand, the big, powerful tech companies we all revere bent over and did what they were told in order to access the markets of those working against them to steal more attention and make more money.
And we stood idly by. At the micro level, we're now in a phase where if a vocal enough internet group takes offense to some sort of content within our sphere of influence, or against something someone posted 10 years ago, that they can pressure providers to deplatform their targets. Some stand idly by, others applaud it as progress.
And so it will continue to crumble. Wise countries, recognizing both the threat of the internet giants and the opportunity of getting access within them, will apply the necessary pressure to have those giants make the internet "their way". "Wise" internet groups, recognizing both the threat of wrongthink and the opportunity to deplatform those who think wrong will apply pressure on the same giants to make the internet "their way".
The only possible saviour is some sort of international body, comprised of representatives of all nations, cultures and subcultures, coming together to agree on keeping things open and clear. Given that we can't even make the UN effective, such a group would never agree on anything and would merely continue to justify its own take on censorship and thus wouldn't be viable from the start.
And so the Web many of us came up on here, which provoked our interest in computers, networks, software and hardware, is doomed, and it's all because we are weak, and the giants we've allowed emerge are ultimately weak also.
And none of that has anything to do with nationalism.
What would a tool of actual decentralization look like? It wouldn't be something that helps us communicate or brings us closer together, because those things evolve into instruments of control. It would be something that divides us into separate ecological and memetic niches. The only example I can think of is a multi generational space ship.
We're in a race between diaspora and social lithification. I wish I thought diaspora was the better bet.
We are moving into a world where people have more freedom and liberty. Sometimes we take a (big) step backwards, but the trend is towards more.
These new freedoms and liberties are created by technology, increased wealth distribution (globally), and changing social norms towards individual rights and equality.
I can, for example, participate in international engineering efforts from any one of a billion places with steady internet that will allow me to stay. I can eat a greater variety of foods than my grandparents enjoyed. I can do research and study about my own medical alignments and make better informed decisions about my healthcare than every before. I have the option to marry anyone that agrees to it, regardless of race or gender. I can practice the religion of my choosing openly.
I understand that there is a lot of pain and a large risk of group think associated with our global information system. I have the individual freedom to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a greater variety than today.
Okay... let's see:
>increased wealth distribution (globally)
Trend began before the internet (the subject at hand).
>changing social norms towards individual rights and equality
Trend began before the internet (the subject at hand).
>I can, for example, participate in international engineering efforts from any one of a billion places with steady internet that will allow me to stay.
Irrelevant to the subject at hand.
>I can eat a greater variety of foods than my grandparents enjoyed. I can do research and study about my own medical alignments and make better informed decisions about my healthcare than every before. I have the option to marry anyone that agrees to it, regardless of race or gender. I can practice the religion of my choosing openly.
All irrelevant to the subject at hand.
>I understand that there is a lot of pain and a large risk of group think associated with our global information system. I have the individual freedom to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a greater variety than today.
Disagree. It isn't about your basic individual freedom to choose. You can choose, yes. But it is about the field of vision presented to the focus of your mind, or rather the collective mind. It is about the narrowing of that field of view. Narrow the field of view: narrow the choices people believe they have. This, in effect, narrows their choices, regardless of their ability, or freedom, to choose.
Exactly. It’s almost like the internet isn’t the most important thing happening right now. Combining the world’s networks into one is really powerful, but the world is a big place. The internet isn’t going to cause a utopia or a dystopia.
Having freedom and liberty does not automatically result in increased wealth distribution, individual rights or equality.
Just because we have a system that allows people to communicate and collaborate across the globe instantaneously doesn't mean that they will do so constructively towards positive directions. They can also use this power for selfish and/or destructive mean. This is really the lesson that we've been taught in the past 10 years.
> I have the individual freedom to choose which information sources I tune into, and I have never had a greater variety than today.
I trust that your information sources are sound, but many other people choose to tune into information sources that are not, but confirms that own bias. There is a part of human psychology which finds this type of behaviour immensely rewarding.
The idea that more information and more connectivity automatically result in more freedom which would then naturally better society is exactly what led us down to the path to the current information dystopia.
I was actually arguing the reverse.
> the current information dystopia
My position is that we are not living in an information dystopia. You simply cannot compare our current problem of echo chambers and fake news to the 1930s problem of nationalist propaganda or pre-renaissance problem of the church controlling which information is heresy. At least now we access to different views we can use critical thinking to evaluate and awareness of echo chambers.
The great firewall is an example of how bad things could be with all information censored by state actors.
Fair enough, but that is also confounding, maybe just as much - technology didn't cause more freedoms or liberties. Individual rights and equality is also the result of the striving towards the ideal of freedom and liberty.
>You simply cannot compare our current problem of echo chambers and fake news to the 1930s problem of nationalist propaganda or pre-renaissance problem of the church controlling which information is heresy.
That's a very premature conclusion. We're in the middle of a shift in the information landscape and we can't really predict which ending this will lead us to. We may very well be on the path to another dark era in the history of humanity rivalling fascism or the inquisition.
That's because, in itself, information and the flow of information (as dictated by contemporary technology) is just a force multiplier. It allows us to organise more effectively removing barriers to action. What we do with it is another matter.
Just because we have more of it or do it better doesn't mean it is a unequivocally positive force. Looking at the current trajectory on the use of data, there is the potential for it be to even more destructive force than your examples.
To be honest, there would be group think anyway. There always is, it's just a human proclivity. I'm not sure why exactly people felt that's something the internet was going to eliminate? The printing press solidified nationalistic thought (and other kinds of group think as well), the internet is solidifying it further.
I guess I just think, group think is kind of, something to be expected considering mankind's history.
Except who people want to date and marry is highly influenced by media/entertainment. So it's possible who you want to marry does not want to marry you because of prejudice instilled by information s/he consumes.
There are only killing machines.
There is no decentralized information technology.
The are only information technologies.
The capabilities are loosely determined by the creator; the result is determined by the user.
Consider Bitcoin: fully decentralized in theory, yet in practice controlled by an oligarchy.
In an oligarchic world with centralized power structures where few have power over the many, we make a system with centralized power structures where few parts have power over many.
The internet won't be democratic and decentralized until the world is.
They were expensive but fast enabling and encouraging raiding of neighbors and riding away before they could rally a defense with far less risk for the reward compared to a band on foot with melee or ranged weaponry who would get beaten or cut down and either enslaved or executed if they attacked a village on their own.
It may have been existing flawed morals to consider raiding then but the power influenced them.
Horses didn't cause cavalry, horses were domesticated and bred with their modern properties because people wanted cavalry. The tool reflects the creator.
Effort is inversely proportional to popularity. If something is effortless and serves a need, it will become popular. Bitcoin was basically effortless to operate in the early days.
I don't think it should be up to users to carefully collect works that they want to "make decentralized". Decentralization should be the norm.
And it shouldn't be up to them to worry about the legal ramifications of doing so. The network itself should ensure anonymity, like Tor.
Currently there is no such technology. IPFS came close, but it fails the anonymity requirement.
The weakness in IPFS is that not enough people use it, and its really as simple as that. Distributed data addressable in a namespace is a great foundation but corporations are actively subsidizing similar, centralized services to preserve their monopoly positions.
As long as Google et al are overflowing in money nothing can really try to displace their domination of the network.
But if there's no traffic allowed between segments, it becomes much harder. Then you're left with workarounds like this: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-s...
Then somehow you need to get buyin from people in large enough numbers for this spy-on-everyone situation we're in to be impractical, and hope it doesn't result in escalation to even more dystopian circumstances.
A: A pre-modern village.
Not sure. But I'd bet if the initial devs of Wikipedia wondered too much about that question we'd be subscribing to Encyclopedia Britannica Online to research it.
Essentially one can always go "indie" and accept the obscurity of being a counterculture.
In the same way you can hire a construction crew to build a library or to build a prison, but modern construction techniques don't have an inherent social ideology.
I have been building it, writing about it and giving it away:
https://github.com/Qbix/Platform
Every time I post this on HN, it gets heavily downvoted. But I don’t ever hear why. I can think of no better way than to show, link to the code, give it away. I spent over half a million dollars of my company’s revenues on this. Take that for what it’s worth. I intend to make this work.
If this inspires you, feel free to email me (qbix.com/about)
Perhaps because it's yet another pre-mined altcoin? Even if your idea happens to be good, the idea of an ICO has been given such a bad name that you need to wash your hands of anything associated with that funding model. But something tells me you won't.
I used to think there was always a chance that "this time would be different" with promising ICO companies that I supported (not even with my money but with my volunteering as a developer), only to get burned again and again. My experiences are not atypical.
However, I've been burned even more badly by mainstream social networking, so I want to believe that your idea will work. Tough dilemma.
Our ETH token was designed to fulfill every requirement of SEC's recent no-action letter to TurnKey Jet, Inc. in order to not be considered a security (https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/cf-noaction/2019/turnk...)
In the last few years I have been downvoted without even mentioning the Qbix token - something we only documented last month. Just by giving away open source software. The post above already has -2.
-Alternative to Gmail: ProtonMail (https://protonmail.com/)
-Alternative to Google: DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/?t=hk)
-Alternative to Dropbox and GoogleDrive: Duple (https://www.duple.io/en/)
-Alternative to Whatsapp: Signal (https://signal.org/)
100% closed source as for now. They promised to make almost all of it open source, sadly except the most important part. Security is a chain: a 99% open source app is still 100% insecure as a 100% closed one.
But the vulnerability that is Google Mail is that Google will read any email sent to or from a Google Mail account, even incidentally, and use it to build up a profile which paying customers can use to manipulate me into doing things which, in the absence of the profile, I wouldn't've have done. Moreover there's just massive risks from all that data.