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Digital Doom
The stakes are high. Very high. Freedom of expression within the rapidly evolving online environment, perhaps the last true bastion of free speech, is under heavy nuclear assault from friends and foes alike.
The Net, the Web, Usenet, and mailing lists, together they represent the pinnacle of communicative ingenuity as humankind approaches the next millennium. Yet digital networks harbor every element of George Orwells worst fears.
Harbingers of doom, some call them cypherpunks, have been around as long as the Internet itself. They continue to fight for freedom in the most uncompromising and imaginative ways possible. But like everything, the sheer repetitiveness of their message is now working against their collective voice as it slowly recedes into the great amorphous mass of humanity that is increasingly finding its way online.
My name is CP, short for Cypher Punk. To some I am the terror that flaps in the night. To others, I am a gutteral roar testing the outer limits of true free speech in the online world. To a few, maybe many, I am but an anonymous guttersnipe. Who I actually am is of no consequence. Online, it's the idea that matters, not the messenger. Opinions should be free of skin color, grudges, or political bias.
For the past year I have been testing the outer limits of expression from within the bubble of on-life afforded by Wired Magazine and HotWired, the digeratis self-styled organs of record. I am but one voice among many. But I am a fresh voice, a controversial one, and a guttural example that this issue needs to be addressed by others beyond the traditional cabal of new frontier existentialists.
I want to sound a buzzer here, now, to instill a sense of urgency about the threat to online free speech. I want to marshal forces in the fight against the incessant inertia and lethargy now manifested by online dwellers oblivious to the ramifications of this issue.
My specific concerns are as follows. Let these catch phrases seep into your grey matter the way a good bowel movement fills a toilet bowl:
* There is an urgent need to preserve the free flow of information on the Internet.
* There are pitfalls to speaking out and testing the limits of expression.
* Fighting to be heard, and the right to anonymity, is not without significant risk.
* There is political strength in the control of information and the Internet represents a change to the parameters of oppression.
I see naked emperors and point them out. I poke fun, poke at fat, and stand up for unfettered free speech. I use humor whenever I can. I can be crass, sexist, profane. But, hey, that's the real world.
Politics is a brazen enterprise where the meek, the weak, and the inept get eaten for breakfast. Why hold out for a homogenized dialogue about online freedom of speech when we demand and deserve so much more in this most passionate debate that goes to the very heart of our democratic rights.
This is the challenge buried deep within this screed: That what Wired and Microsoft and other digital forces aspire to is more than a new power structure infused with the desire to supplant existing control institutions. That they are willing to be vehicles for others to be heard and recognized by the value of their ideas, regardless of point of view, and that they foster the free transfer of information, regardless of outside considerations. After all, those are a societys greatest political tools.
Bold ideas are always worth fighting the good fight and I want to thank you for considering my appeal to the fundamental quality of freedom of speech in our democracy and my right to raise my scratchy, if at times annoyingly vigorous voice in the interest of staying vigilant against the wayward pomposity that is too often heaped onto the net by turgid pundits who hold no greater glory than the ability to create bromides for an entourage of fawning acolytes.
OK, thats enough BS from me for now. Go on, fuck off and do the world some good for a change.
