»Technology concentrates power«
[Bild: »Instruments at Clonsilla…« auf flickr von »National Library Of Ireland«]
Der »Lesebefehl« zum Sonntag (via wirres.net):
Die Präsentation von Maciej Cegłowski (der Entwickler von unser aller Lieblings-Bookmarksammelwebsite Pinboard) »Our Comrade The Electron«. Wenn schon nicht die ganze Präsentation, die anhand der Lebensgeschichte von Leon Theremin eine große Geschichte von Technik und Freiheit erzählt, so doch zumindest den darin enthaltenen »Angry Rant« zum Zustand des Internets in diesen unseren finsteren Zeiten (Zitat):
»In the 90's, it looked like the Internet […] could be a decentralizing, democratizing force. No one controlled it, no one designed it, it was just kind of assembling itself in an appealing, anarchic way. […]
But those days are gone. We've centralized the bejesus out of the Internet now. There's one search engine (plus the one no one uses), one social network (plus the one no one uses), one Twitter. We use one ad network, one analytics suite. Anywhere you look online, one or two giant American companies utterly dominate the field. […]
Orwell imagined a world with a telescreen in every room, always on, always connected, always monitored. An Xbox One vision of dystopia.
But we've done him one better. Nearly everyone here carries in their pocket a tracking device that knows where you are, who you talk to, what you look at, all these intimate details of your life, and sedulously reports them to private servers where the data is stored in perpetuity.«
Einen Lösungsansatz für dieses Problem sieht Jon Evans bei Techcrunch in »Enter The Blockchain: How Bitcoin Can Turn The Cloud Inside Out« in der technologischen Basis der berühmt-berüchtigten Netzwährung »Bitcoin«, der »Blockchain« (Zitat):
You see, it’s not that hard to imagine other blockchain-based systems which aren’t currencies and don’t attract as many “colorful personalities.” Suppose you replaced the Internet’s centralized Domain Name System with a blockchain for Internet names (like Namecoin) such that every DNS request included some proof-of-work effort. Or you used any blockchain (including Bitcoin’s) as a notary service. Or you built a new blockchain for crowdfunding. Or you replaced a centralized system which absolutely does need to be scrapped — that horrific barrel of worms known as TLS/SSL Certificate Authorities — with a blockchain-based solution powered at the browser level.
Wenn es denn überhaupt eine technische Lösung geben kann. Denn ich glaube, dass der menschliche Hang zur Bequemlichkeit zusammen mit der vernetzten Technologie die Ingredenzien dieses für unsere Freiheit ungesunden Zentralisierungs-Cocktail sind. Und um ihn neu zu komponieren müsste man beide Bestandteile ändern.
