From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 02:12:16 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Net Control is Thought Control
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960110175223.006a6bcc@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On CSPAN Friday morning a gentlemen who is, I take it, a lobbyist for TPC or
the Competitive Long Distance Coalition (TPCs) said that the Internet could
be regulated just like magazines, tv, or anything else.  I have long doubted
statements like this particularly since they come from people without
apparent experience on the Net.

I have long suggested that net control=thought control and will prove as
difficult in the modern world as the more conventional thought control
itself.  But why is net control just a form of thought control?

It is difficult for others to control our thoughts because they are
insubstantial, hidden, and under our control.  Small groups (family,
village, etc) have a better chance of influencing what we think but even
they are not totally successful.  Governments who wanted to engage in
thought control have usually set up government schools for this purpose with
mixed results.

Liberal societies (broadly defined) have loosened many of the traditional
controls on our thoughts exercised by our families and neighbors.  They have
tried to replace these controls with bureaucratic thought control systems
with limited success.  Only the totalitarian states have done much of a job
in this area but not enough (obviously) to save themselves from destruction.
There has been a general decline in the effectiveness of thought control
since the Industrial Revolution made (atomistic) individualism possible and
books cheap.

The Nets are the next step in this process.  Since they allow our thoughts
to easily, rapidly, and cheaply  leap from our minds to a world-wide
communications medium, our minds are in some sense extended worldwide.  It
becomes cheap and easy for anyone to publish their thoughts.  The dramatic
changes occasioned by the mechanical production of cheap pulp paper and
steam-driven printing presses in the 19th century will be as nothing
compared to effects of the speed and reach of Net "publishing."

In addition to expanding the scope of our thoughts, the Nets also give us
new powers of secret communication.  Modern encryption and anonymity
technology lets us both keep our thoughts secret and communicate them to
anyone else who is interested.  Quite an expansion of the capabilities of
"the thought in the brain."

Also, the Nets allow us to find others of our ilk (however small and deviate
that may be) who offer support to us in our thoughts.  This further reduces
the power of traditional thought controls exercised by our immediate
communities.  Since my immediate community has included Cypherpunks since
February 1993, I am less likely to be influenced "locally" on topics of
Cypherpunk interest.  The normal primate tendency to look to the "troop" for
guidance in what to think and do is sabotaged by our ability to find our own
reinforcing communities where ever we like.  So even less thought control is
possible.

As we users know and non-users will find out, the Nets are not "just another
medium" like books, magazines, and TV (just as those were not "just another
medium" in their day).  Control of the Nets will prove as difficult as the
control of thoughts themselves.

DCF