What Would Ben Franklin Do?
I've been informed that spyware is not going away any time soon — the problem is enormous. So saying “awwww, just relax” isn't enough of a response. I stand (sit, anyway) corrected.
Hmm. What would Ben Franklin do about spyware? I'm reading the Walter Isaacson biography, which is a fine treatment of an elaborately enjoyed life.
Franklin was all for civic engagement. He was forever starting little groups to talk about things and then change the world — volunteer fire brigades, philosophical societies, universities — and he joyfully combined his social, civic, and work lives into a singular tapestry of meals, discussions, and outings. He was a consummate networker.
He was also, of course, an inventor and a craftsman (a “leather apron” man). He would have loved the internet. What would he have done to fix this plague?
It's clear: he would have tried to encourage small-group civic care and cooperation. He would have started an ISP lending library. He would never, ever, have assumed that any central authority was the answer. Through elliptical conversation and gentle prodding, he would have gotten networks of networks to work together in clever, immune-system ways.
He wouldn't have sought credit in the short run. But, in the end, Franklin the crafty self-publicist would have ensured that everyone knew that his decentralized approach had provided the answer to spyware. He was forever presenting himself to the public in canny ways.
Ben Franklin would have blogged – pseudonymously.