NN Friedman V. Pynchon

[David Morris]

--- s~Z <keithsz at concentric.net> wrote:
> 
> And the references to 2003 in the 1984 Foreword are rather obvious and
> general, nothing a high school kid couldn't have come up with for a civics
> class term paper. E.g., all of the ballyhoo about the Internet is rather
> silly. Of course totalitarians are going to use the Internet, just like they
> use the state of the art in every endeavor from medicine to psychology to
> chemistry to aeronautics etc etc.

But more to the point is that the internet does more to liberate those
oppressed by totalitarian governments than to control them, and its very
structure makes it hard for that power balance to be reversed.  Iran is the
latest government trying to block its citizens from access to "bad" sites
because it is afraid of the internet.  If totalitarians could devise a way to
control people through it, they'd make it mandatory to be connected, but the
opposite is the case.  So it's not just another technology to be used for good
or evil depending on one's  predilection.   The technology itself is geared
toward freedom, a point that's been made here repeatedly.

David Morris


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