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Those h4xx0r pumpkin recipes are what got me to finally try pumpkin pie (I was a really finicky eater back then). Mmmmm...pumpkin pie.
Well, the Interweb *was* a new technology and, it being a communications technology, the post-hippies and cyberkids (and script kiddies) figured it out before the old government and corporate dinosaurs did. The latter caught up quickly, but too late to limit access to the Internet, police its use or turn it into a profit center as effectively as they would have liked to.
If virtual reality had gotten the green light instead, the expense of developing it would have locked out the (middle class) anarchistic cyberkiddies and other chancers, and there wouldn't have been a gold rush (and bubble). We'd have all waited like that kid for "benevolent" corporations to hand us our Mac VR terminals.
While the window of the early late '80s/early '90s wasn't large enough to allow some Californian techno-utopia, it did let in enough rhetorical fog (encryption, anonymity, e.g.) to keep the question open; otherwise, the battle would have been lost long ago.
It's a battle still worth fighting. The Interweb is revolutionary (though it didn't bring the Revolution) because it's a force multiplier. Small players can compete in some ways on an equal footing with the big ones. They can also redefine or at least complicate the game, as Napster and blogs have.
Other interesting technologies, like nanotech and biotech, are developing with policing mostly already in place because of their dangerous potential. "Mostly," because genetic h4xx0r1nG will be punished harshly while Monsanto's ghastly fiascos will be excused and explained away. Worse still, biotech and nanotech's very existence will warp politics the way atomic power has (Robert Jungk's "Atom State"). Because they're knowledge-based, the Interweb guarantees leaks sooner or later (and of any other knowledge-intensive and potentially strategic technology). |
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