There are problems. Saturated content being the bastard child of democratized access. Musicians and filmmakers losing their livelihood to the torment of the torrent. Distasteful groups from the obscenely bigoted to the casually violent building their membership beyond their wildest dreams. Ease of access breeds indolence and attention spans have grown exponentially shorter, while projecting an identity through a carefully edited online profile allows people to claim to love, fight for and support things without ever actually doing anything concrete. But the strange attractors of any chaotic model always have a sting somewhere in their infinite tail. Would we have it otherwise? Having survived thus far in the crucible of complexity as control mechanisms designed for the physical world struggled to adjust to this flash of evolution, the reckoning has now come. This is the fight. This is right now. This is not an ‘accepted reality’. This reality is still in play. But not for long. ACTA, SOPA and PIPA were halted in the breach by web wide mobilization – perhaps the most telling contribution being that of Wikipedia which ironically few businesses and governments can now live without. But halted is the operative word. They will be back in perpetually shape shifting forms like the all too urgent CISPA, until statute takes hold and the steel shutters slam shut. The UK government has just announced sweeping plans for web monitoring with the CCDP and the shadows are looming large. But even without legislation, just look at data mining and the privatization of freely shared content where your very identity becomes commodified and sold back to you. The staggering subversions of privacy in a world where people feel free. The most dangerous occupation is always one that is invited in and just as advertising somehow managed to make itself an immutable ‘reality’, the idea of trading privacy and ultimately, autonomy for use of websites is rapidly becoming an accepted ‘truth’. A purely manufactured truth, but compliance will raise it to the pedestal of ‘definite truth’. We are witnessing power structures catch up with the lightning speed, open source dynamics of the net and their fightback is more advanced, more nuanced and infinitely more insidious than anything witnessed in three dimensions. The internet is the final frontier of public space. It is perhaps the most stunning testament to the human spirit in recent history and created an ‘anti-globalisation’ to economic and political currents. A global localization even. Public space is infinitely more than bricks and mortar – it is communal consciousness, it is the very neurons our ideas fire through and its nexus, its network – its last bastion of external freedom swirls through the synergies between technology and consciousness. Communication and connection are the patterns of life and the rhythms of knowledge and we still have a public space in which they can exist and multiply. We can still see it radiate with the quantum bolts of free exchange. It is still ours and perception is still fluid. Do we continue to shape it in our own image or allow the entire spectrum of possibility to be subjugated by governments and corporations alike? This is a window, a moment, a blink in time where we can keep the portals open and the connections flowing through the glittering circuits of infinity. So which is it? The red pill or the blue pill?
Wayne Anthony (Class of 88) + Sirius 23