Dne sobota 10. aprila 2010 ob 19:32:48 je Story Henry napisal(a): > > Hellekin O. Wolf wrote: > > *** Putting privacy and free speech in the same pot sounds to me like > > a counter-revolutionary attack on both privacy and free speech. It > > seems to say: you cannot have privacy if you have free speech, and you > > cannot have free speech if you have privacy. I wonder when this > > dichotomy appeared, but I relate it to the general trends in warfare > > speech that says "Either you're with us, or against us" and the > > marketing-fascist trend of pushing transparency at all price, "because > > you don't have anything to hide."
I'm _very_ sorry if sounded like that. As I stated before, initially I wrote the post to provoke a debate on that matter. Personally I think both extremes that you mention are to be avoided and one of the goals of this project should be exactly to enable a platform to make the user in charge of their privacy — but to do that, we have to define what his/her privacy *is*! > One way I think one can better defend the issue is by looking at the issue > in terms of meaning. Free speech and privacy are in important respects > issues of language and meaning. So if I get some time to develop this in > more detail, I would start from the theory of speech acts [0]. The > meaning of what you say (and what you publish) is not determined just by > the content, but also by the attitude of the sayer, and who that > sayer/publisher is. > > So you can say something seriously, or you can joke about it, or you can > doubt it, .... Those are just a few of the very many different attitudes > one can have when saying something. Confusing them leads to stupid things > like the man who was recently arrested for a twitter joke [1]. > > When people listen in to conversations not intended for them, they are not > listening in on a conversation they can necessarily understand. Or the > other way around: if everyone has to have a conversation as if one unknown > huge and not necessarily very intelligent agent were listening, many > speech acts that could take place, won't take place. At the very least > this slows down the ability to think critically, and so the ability of a > society to respond intelligently to problems. Imagine for example that we > are developing a game to help people work through the consequences of > social policies on drug handle, war, poverty, etc... Many things will be > said very realistically in such situations which a listener may not > understand as being hypothetical. But furthermore it won't be at all > effective, as those who really do have a destructive mission will use > language that will seem innocuous. > > As a result a paranoid listener will end up suspecting everybody: there is > nothing else he can do. And very soon we are in the same situation as that > described by the film "The life of Others" [2] which described the > situation in East Germany before the wall came down. What the film shows > very well, is how this type of setup is of course easy to corrupt, and in > fact ends up creating the resistance it was trying to stop. The problem > now is that we have a lot more powerful tools to do the spying than the > east germans had. > > Inversely if you say something in public you are then opening yourself to > the very rich criticism you can get for what you say, but also from the > very great work by others you can build upon. This can be both painful, > and of course very enriching, as we know in the free software movement. I very much agree with you here! > > Do you have a good example of a positive conceptual framework for > > thinking about social software? > > It is not that difficult to get things going. What you need is at its most > basic: > > 1- ownership of your publishing infrastructure > 2- ability to access control who sees what >[...] > On that you can then build a lot more, such as rules perhaps on how you > allow people to distribute content, and what they have to do when > distributing it (eg: cite your name, if they don't change it, ...) That would solve many problems, yeah. Cheers, Matija -- gsm: +386 41 849 552 www: http://matija.suklje.name xmpp: [email protected]
