EFF and Netizenship
I've been busy reading posts about brave things people have done to stand up for their digital rights, or funny memories they have about their online lives. Here's the description of the blog-a-thon.
Add your post! Add several posts! (Don't forget to tag them with the Blog-a-thon tag: EFF15.) Here and here are the aggregators.
A related thought — I've been thinking about netizenship principles, and I think I'll be thinking about them (and working on them) for the next ten years or so. What do netizens care about and believe in?
They believe in leaving control of the net at the edges. Families can filter; countries shouldn't.
They believe that optimism is a fine state of mind. Why not believe the best of people, until you're proved wrong? Cooperation produces breathtaking results.
They believe that innovation is worth supporting at almost any cost, because you never know what might show up.
They believe that people affected by rules or filters should be involved in creating those rules or filters (or should at least be taken into account when those rules or filters are created).
Netizenship is a live-and-let-live view of the world. We'll see the emergence of all kinds of different groups online, and they'll be able to take action in ways we can't imagine right now. Netizens are interested in civic order online, but order that comes from the people involved rather than from a nation-state or a pre-existing entity.
There's more to netizenship — a lot more — and I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's posts.
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Proposition: the rate of increase of real knowledge (information, fact, truth, true understanding) across a whole society is the purest indicator of its health.
The internet fuels dissemination of both information and misinformation. Which is winning? Our society has made a science of the subtle art of misinformation. Why will truth emerge better from chaotic than controlling policies?