I'm still planning to send an introduction to the list but since this seems so relevant I thought I'd pass it on straight away.
My piece on "Neither an Optimist nor a Pessimist Be" was published a decade or so ago in a now defunct magazine called Internet Revolution. https://www.publicsphereproject.org/sites/default/files/Neither%20an%20Optimist%20nor%20a%20Pessimist%20Be.pdf I still stand by it, but I must confess it seems to be getting harder not to fall into the pessimistic side... Thanks everybody! — Doug On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 7:34 PM Kate Krauss <[email protected]> wrote: > Are we too techno-pessimistic? > > I pulled out this message from the introductions thread because it didn't > get a lot of attention when first posted, but it's fascinating --thanks, > Kaiser! > > I feel ill-equipped to discuss this but I'll get the ball rolling. > *Folks on this list? I'd love to hear what you think about Kaiser's post > (which is pasted below mine). * > By 2013 and the Snowden revelations, tech activists were realizing how > much both the US government, and as we already knew, platforms like > Facebook were surveilling our lives. (Snowden also revealed how hard the > NSA and GCHQ were going after Tor. And they didn't get it, ha.) > > I had also seen, previously, pervasive, all-encompassing surveillance in > China of my activist friends. (They've stopped monitoring your phone calls > and they're sitting in your kitchen--not good). So for me it was all of a > piece, and I didn't have to imagine what could go wrong if governments > conducted unchecked surveillance. And it motivated me to work on these > issues. > > Meanwhile, in the wider US, in late 2015 Trump launched his presidential > campaign by demonizing immigrants, then loudly criticized and sanctioned > China's trade practices, and later he blamed COVID on China. And by the > middle of the pandemic, Asian people in Philly were afraid to walk down the > street. So a lot of racist Americans who didn't know much about technology, > IP, or China, were mad at China. And there are always China hawks that > sincerely or exploitatively go after China in DC. But those are different > groups, obviously, than are on this list. > > The people I know who care about online privacy and digital rights believe > (and feel free to speak for yourselves) that if you want privacy and human > rights, you have to defend them, whether by building online privacy tools, > censorship circumvention tools, or decentralized communications platforms, > or educating people in avoiding surveillance, or blurring out your house on > Google maps. You have to take action. > > I myself also think it's important to change laws and regulations, but you > still need the technology. I remember that Griffin Boyce and others > developed tools that made the Stop Online Privacy Act impossible to > enforce. Another lesson from SOPA: Collective action can get the goods. > (Thank you, Aaron Swartz.) > > So maybe we are techno-optimists and techno-realists at the same time? > > Mainstream Americans are still inured to a lack of privacy, and that is > very dangerous. However, they are now suspicious of Facebook--and maybe > that's a good thing. > > This doesn't mean that Chinese companies are always A+ and never > steal IP. I went to a lecture in 2018 or 2019 where a Chinese scholar > presented her research studying Chinese companies--and some of them lacked > research departments because they were "borrowing" IP. Several things can > be true at once. > > Other people on the list: What do you think? > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: kaiser kuo <[email protected]> > LT <[email protected]> > > Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2024 13:20:43 -0400 > Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Liberation Tech would like a word. > Thanks, Kate, for stepping up to revive this effort — and for the low-key > shout-out! > > I've written and spoken quite a bit on the seemingly sudden swing from the > politically techno-utopian idea still present in this listserv's name to > the techno-pessimism that seems so pervasive in discourse on the > relationship between technology and authoritarian politics. We've gone, as > I've often said, from believing that the spread of digital technology > sounded the death knell for authoritarian governments to believing instead > that tech is the loyal handmaiden of authoritarians, who've become adept at > using them to suppress dissent and other nefarious ends. To an extent, I > get why this has happened — the failure of the later color revolutions and > the Arab Spring, when we too-eagerly appended the names of various American > social media products to these revolutions (the "Twitter Revolution," the > "YouTube Revolution," the "Facebook Revolution"); the Snowden revelations > about Prism; Russian meddling and Macedonian troll farms; Cambridge > Analytica, etc). I suppose some humility about it was needed, but have we > (i.e. the national or "Western" conversation) overcorrected? I'd be curious > to hear from list members with experience in different geographies to get > their sense of how things have played out in the last decade. I put the > inflection point at roughly 2016: that's when I started sensing the > dramatic narrative shift. > > And I'm curious whether people think that's related to, or completely > independent from, another narrative shift that seems to have been > simultaneous when it comes, specifically, to China: At about that same > moment, the narrative went from this disparagement of China's ability to > innovate (blaming, in most cases, the lack of free information flows and > academic freedom, and positing a relationship between innovation and > political freedom) to a pervasive sense that China was out-innovating the > U.S. and was an unstoppable juggernaut ready to eat our lunch. Obviously > this latter narrative continues and has been made worse in recent years. > > Thanks! Once again, Kate, thanks for your efforts!! > > - Kaiser > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable. List rules: > https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe, change to > digest mode, or change password by emailing > [email protected]. > -- Douglas Schuler [email protected] Twitter: @doug_schuler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome to the Cybercene? https://limits.pubpub.org/pub/j542e5lp/release/1 Public Sphere Project https://www.publicsphereproject.org/ <http://www.publicsphereproject.org/> Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (project) https://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/lv <https://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/> Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (book) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/liberating-voices What type of activist are you? The Activist Mirror knows! https://labs.publicsphereproject.org/am
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