{"id":977,"date":"2020-09-07T06:49:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T12:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/?p=977"},"modified":"2020-09-07T09:59:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T15:59:45","slug":"the-invisible-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/2020\/09\/07\/the-invisible-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">As the United States witnessed firsthand in the <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">2016<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> election, technology is now as good as the prime mover in US politics. From the flap over Clinton&#8217;s emails to Trump&#8217;s impulsive Twitter rants in the wee hours of the night, and from the Facebook ecology of political posts in the months leading up to November 8<\/span><\/span><sup><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">th<\/span><\/span><\/sup><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">, <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">2016,<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> to the self-organizing flash mobs of protesters and rioters that emerged after the fact, <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">that<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> election was shaped by electronic communication more than any election before it.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">We&#8217;ve become more aware of that in the past four years, but it was creeping up on us then.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Which raises a very pertinent question: Just how much is high-tech media going to shape the world? Will we become a race of hyper-sentient empaths? Are we all merging into a hivemind?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-978\" src=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/group-hive-think.jpg\" alt=\"group-hive-think\" width=\"890\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/group-hive-think.jpg 890w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/group-hive-think-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/group-hive-think-768x431.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">When anybody in the world can transmit any amount of information to anybody else in the world in a split second, all barriers have been lifted. There&#8217;s really no practical difference between the average person now and an omniscient being, at least as far as a<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">n ancient<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> Biblical author would have conceived it. Each of us carries in our pocket a device granting us powers that, one hundred years ago, would have been seen as nigh on godly.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">But that&#8217;s the trouble with a planet full of omniscient gods: They become a royal pain to boss around. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Yet we <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>need<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> to regulate this space now, right now!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Decades ago, I was pointing this out and you were all <a href=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/2020\/08\/03\/i-see-nobody-calling-me-elitist-for-advocating-science-now\/\">not ready to listen<\/a>. Bigger, more important people than me were pointing out similar ideas, which we&#8217;ll revisit below. Nobody is listening to any of us, but that&#8217;s the prophet business for you.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 align=\"left\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Social Media As a Weapon<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.defenseone.com\/ideas\/2016\/10\/war-goes-viral\/132233\/?oref=d-river\">DefenseOne.com<\/a> recently <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">states that<\/span><\/span> <span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">&#8220;War Goes Viral<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">&#8220;<\/span><\/span> <span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">They talk about how t<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">errorist organization ISIS has used <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">social media<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> to chilling effectiveness, from recruiting to demonstrating to coordinating efforts to orchestrating attacks on every continent. Their military invasion of Iraq in 2014 became the first such action to create and use <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>its own smartphone app<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">However, ISIS is far from the only example of militarized social media. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arab_Spring\">Arab Spring<\/a> in 2010 became the first historic example of revolutions and protests organized over social media. While the shock wave of protests and attempts at reform in other Arab states was held back, it did result in a successful overthrow of Tunisian government.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">About the same time back<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> in the States, Anonymous, the loosely collected online protest group, led a small protest campaign against the Church of Scientology in 2008, and <\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/one-day-later-anonymous-already-takes-down-3-824-pro-isis-twitter-accounts-496258.shtml\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">in 2015<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> attempted to fight back against ISIS<\/span><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> by taking over 38K Twitter accounts formerly held by ISIS. So yes, we used to invade countries with tanks, and now we just hack each others&#8217; social media accounts.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Remember where <a href=\"https:\/\/geekydomain.com\/ten-reasons-why-sneakers-1992-is-the-best-hacker-movie-ever-made\/\">I say that the 1993 film <\/a><\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/geekydomain.com\/ten-reasons-why-sneakers-1992-is-the-best-hacker-movie-ever-made\/\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>Sneakers<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> was the most prophetic<\/span><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> hacker movie?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">&gt; &#8220;There&#8217;s a war out there, a world war. And it&#8217;s not about who has the most bullets, it&#8217;s about who controls the information.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">That&#8217;s the stuff I&#8217;m talking about.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">So pervasive has digital activism become that the name of any movement or operation looks naked without the mandatory hashtag. Hence we can&#8217;t conceive of the Occupy movement <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">of the early 2010&#8217;s<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> without referring to it as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Occupy_movement\">#OccupyWallStreet<\/a>. Anonymous and the Occupy movements are still very much with us today; they <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">have <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">spoke<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">n<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> up several times <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">in recent events.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 align=\"left\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Social Media Under Arrest<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The various power structures of the world have not laid dormant during the rise of social media and its impact on the global scene. After all, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/11\/14\/13596974\/internet-freedom-decline-global-censorship-facebook-whatsapp\">two-thirds of the world&#8217;s Internet users are censored<\/a>. Growing concerns over how much power we should give governments and corporations to control the pipelines of communication has fueled <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">debates over everything from policing fake news to Twitter finding itself in a position to <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/news\/twitter-labels-trumps-tweets-for-encouraging-people-to-potentially-vote-twice\/\">flag Trump&#8217;s tweets<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The United States&#8217; own FBI even has <a href=\"https:\/\/leb.fbi.gov\/2012\/november\/social-media-and-law-enforcement-potential-risks\">a section concerning social media<\/a>, and its impact in day-to-day law enforcement. On the one hand, stalkers and domestic abusers can use the Internet to find their targets.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">On the other hand, today&#8217;s criminal is prone to leave a trail of digital footprints, leading law enforcement to more easily make a case against an apprehended suspect, if not even curtail them before they act. Internet patrons joke that they could be added to a watchlist for mentioning several hot-button keywords in a Facebook post, but those watchlists are becoming all too real.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">If it isn&#8217;t online activists tracking a suspect before they&#8217;re even caught, like in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jemimamcevoy\/2020\/08\/27\/how-social-media-sleuths-found-the-suspected-kenosha-shooter-12-hours-before-his-arrest\/#4a2d7f1327fa\">the recent case of the Kenosha shooter<\/a>, police are daily using social media to flag potential trouble before it happens. It doesn&#8217;t quite look like this:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-982\" src=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Minority_Report_precrime.jpg\" alt=\"Minority_Report_precrime\" width=\"920\" height=\"613\" srcset=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Minority_Report_precrime.jpg 920w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Minority_Report_precrime-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Minority_Report_precrime-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">&#8230;but it might as well. The details are different only in that the cops are scrolling through Facebook rather than conducting data symphonies on a wraparound transparent screen.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Can we see this working for an abusive government as well? We certainly can. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Allegedly, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/laos\/arrest-facebook-09012020215852.html\">a Lao man has just been arrested<\/a> for the crime of doing nothing but criticizing his government on social media.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 align=\"left\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Social Media Cuts Both Ways<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Aside from <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">its entanglement with politics,<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> is the question of how much social media can hurt the people instead of empowering them. Left to our own devices, we tend to indulge in &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Homophily\">homophily<\/a>,&#8221; the tendency to associate only with those who confirm and validate our own beliefs.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">No where has homophily been more strongly demonstrated than in <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">the US social media scene<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">. Within the various forums for each <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">political party<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">, each group of supporters <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">i<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">s convinced that they and they alone <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">can not possibly be wrong<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">. Facebook friendships <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">a<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">re terminated over differences of political opinion. It is all too easy to find a tight circle of cranks like yourself to support any crazy hypothesis you could believe. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">W<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">hy be skeptical when you have this little support circle telling you that you&#8217;re right?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Once again, we see that social media mirrors our faults as well as our weaknesses. The Internet makes a great library, but a lousy school. Beware of homophily. It can make you think you&#8217;re ahead when you&#8217;re actually in last place.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Is this all sounding familiar? For all the information we have access to, we are starved for wisdom and understanding in time to predict what&#8217;s going to happen next. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2020\/02\/26\/almost-seven-in-ten-americans-have-news-fatigue-more-among-republicans\/\">Two thirds of Americans just feel worn out by the pace of news<\/a> now. It all goes by in a blur. It feels like a carousel out of control all the time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-983\" src=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/news_fatigue.jpg\" alt=\"news_fatigue\" width=\"420\" height=\"336\" srcset=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/news_fatigue.jpg 420w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/news_fatigue-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 85vw, 420px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">There is a very good reason for things to feel out of control. We spend most of our time living in the anarchy of the Internet. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>Social media<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> is out of control. We never thought it would be this important, and so we never thought to set up rules and regulations for how it is to be conducted.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-984\" src=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Internet_reliance.jpg\" alt=\"Internet_reliance\" width=\"960\" height=\"684\" srcset=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Internet_reliance.jpg 960w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Internet_reliance-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Internet_reliance-768x547.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 align=\"left\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The Internet is an Invisible Nation<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Here&#8217;s the deal: We think in terms of nations and parties. We still act as if only meatspace, physical plots of land need to be governed. We have a gap between where we are now and where we think we are.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">We, all of us all over the world, need to acknowledge that the Internet has become more important to our daily lives than most any government. We need a Constitution for the Internet. We need human rights for the Internet. We need an international body of law to enforce order on the Internet.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">It needs to do three jobs: Protect people from governments, protect people from corporations, and protect us from each other. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">This is one reason why <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2017\/12\/net-neutrality-was-never-enough\/548549\/?ref=hvper.com\">I <\/a><\/span><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2017\/12\/net-neutrality-was-never-enough\/548549\/?ref=hvper.com\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>don&#8217;t<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> jump on the silly &#8220;Net Neutrality&#8221; bandwagon<\/span><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">. That&#8217;s chicken feed. It&#8217;s a bunch of hotheaded Incels who don&#8217;t like this guy because he has a cool mug:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-985\" src=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Ajit_Pai_cool_mug-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"Ajit_Pai_cool_mug\" width=\"840\" height=\"559\" srcset=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Ajit_Pai_cool_mug-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Ajit_Pai_cool_mug-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Ajit_Pai_cool_mug-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Ajit_Pai_cool_mug.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">That&#8217;s too bad. We could have had a real conversation about the Internet regulation we actually need, but the Net Neutrality war has smeared poop all over that conference room before we got a chance to book it. Forget Ajit Pai, forget the FCC. They&#8217;re not <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>big<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"> enough for the job!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The Internet needs it own president, or a cabinet of prime ministers, or a Congress, or <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>something<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">. Right now it&#8217;s mostly controlled by corporations. But you can&#8217;t vote for a CEO unless you hold stock. <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Stop and ask yourself: Who really impacts your day-to-day life? Your government probably feels like a peripheral matter, barely on your radar. Wave your American flag all you want to, but if Canada just hauled off and bought your city today, the worst it would affect you is that you would have to convert your currency (five seconds on PayPal), and then you could go &#8220;Cool, I can get pot in the mail and free health care!&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">But if you were to get randomly kicked off the Internet today, <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\"><i>what would that do to you<\/i><\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">? Chances are it would ruin your life. You&#8217;d be cut off from communication, your family, your work, your bank account, your utilities, and your recreation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Well? Important, isn&#8217;t it? Anything that important should be civilized. I mean &#8220;civilized&#8221; as in &#8220;changing it from a wild anarchy to a civilization, with laws and rights and an organized system of society.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"western\" align=\"left\"><b>Many have said before what I say now<\/b><\/h2>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">There used to be a site called &#8220;cybersociety.org,&#8221; and the Wayback Machine verifies that I&#8217;m not crazy. In the 2015 report on &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20160103124414\/https:\/\/www.isoc.org\/inet97\/proceedings\/B1\/B1_3.HTM\">How Countries Are Regulating Internet Content<\/a>,&#8221; they detail the many ways in which governments around the world have increasing concern about Internet threats and their attempts to regulate it. You&#8217;ll notice nearly every developed nation has a response to the issue more thought-out that the US, where the cowboys just shrug that job off on the FCC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Let me make this clear: The Internet is <b>TOO BIG<\/b> to be policed by any nation. It&#8217;s simply a scale of sheer population numbers. The only way for it to be effectively governed is for its citizens &#8211; the citizens of the Internet &#8211; to come together and arrange a government for themselves. I&#8217;ll be the first to admit, I have no idea what the hell that would look like, but we worked out currency and stock markets and NATO, I&#8217;m sure we could figure this out if we cared to.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">In its absence, the governments of the world are trying to regulate the Internet on their own. They are dwarfed by this behemoth, but they try anyway. Their clumsy efforts provoke their respective citizens to howl in outrage at one measure not being enough and another being too much. We&#8217;re not used to scaling Democracy up this large.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Lawrence Lessing, an accomplished author and <i>Scientific American<\/i> editor, illuminated exactly this issue in his 2000 lecture &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/cyber.harvard.edu\/works\/lessig\/AmAcd1.pdf\">Cyberspace&#8217;s Constitution<\/a>.&#8221; He talks about the unwritten, imaginative constitution that we all think of when we think about the rules of a civilization. Refer back to what I&#8217;m saying about how central the Internet is to our lives, and read this quote of Lessing&#8217;s lecture:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">&gt; &#8220;Cyberspace is a place. People live there. They experience all the sorts of things that they experience in real space, there. For some, they experience more. They experience this not as isolated individuals, playing some high tech computer game; they experience it in groups, in communities, among strangers, among people they come to know, and sometimes like.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Further down, Lessing describes how regulation of the Internet is imposed by corporations &#8211; but only to benefit themselves, for their own business. It&#8217;s weird to hear somebody talk about AOL as if it ruled the world, but he does there. In the next breath, he talks about Amazon and eBay. Guess who&#8217;s still around now? Anyway, while his speech is a jolt of enlightenment from the year 2000, he didn&#8217;t quite bullseye the shot of the issue. He was warning the Internet would become less &#8220;free.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">That hasn&#8217;t been the case. If you&#8217;re worried about corporations being able to stifle your precious First Amendment, you haven&#8217;t paid attention to 20 years of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Streisand_effect\">the Streisand effect<\/a> and you&#8217;re furthermore barking up the wrong tree. Commerce abhors censorship too. &#8220;How&#8221; is another essay, but look around you, observe. Go on 4chan and ask them how their free speech is doing these days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Along with &#8220;free speech&#8221; comes the old principle of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imminent_lawless_action\">imminent lawless action<\/a>.&#8221; Laws to limit speech fall within the parameters of inciting the latter. When we see modern domestic terrorist groups organizing online, we can arrest them for provoking imminent lawless action. Our troubles begin when a government like that in Lao gets hold of this idea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">In any case, corporations as they stand relative to Internet regulation are a kind of invisible nation themselves, once they brook international borders to go multinational. Again, I&#8217;d wager that Google changing its page-ranking algorithms has more impact on our daily lives than anything happening in a physical local legislature. We sure as hell don&#8217;t want corporations to be the Internet&#8217;s government. But again, we see that just as with nations being too small to rule the web, corporations don&#8217;t have the clout and power to bend the Internet to their will either. In theory they might; in practice they&#8217;re usually stalemated by other corporations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">In reading all of the above, please don&#8217;t miss the critical detail that the Internet <b>cannot be effectively governed from outside itself<\/b>. Nations and corporations, with the occasional religion or 501(c) non-profit, are all trying to do it, and they&#8217;re all producing this hodgepodge of duct tape and bandaids. ISIS and domestic militia, scammers and spammers, oppressive dictatorships and shadowy private interests, can all walk right through it. It&#8217;s full of holes and leaks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">One more example, of how the calls for civilizing cyberspace go even farther back:<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Way back in 1996, I was one of the few following the Electronic Frontier Foundation when it released the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Declaration_of_the_Independence_of_Cyberspace\">Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace<\/a>.&#8221; Everybody laughed at that guy for being too radical. I coined the term &#8220;Invisible Nation&#8221; on that day and said that it wasn&#8217;t radical <i>enough<\/i>: first you need the Declaration of Independence, then you need the Constitution for your new independent nation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">All of this early talk seems to have died off, or rather, been drowned out. I persist, but I&#8217;m damn near one of the few who even believes in trying anymore, apparently. Oh sure, once in awhile some hack like me gets <a>a piece pushed through onto Fortune<\/a>. It goes &#8220;blip&#8221; and then it&#8217;s gone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">That&#8217;s about 24 years of this being a growing problem while I gave up yelling at all of you about it, except in occasional spurts like this one. But that&#8217;s the prophet business, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the United States witnessed firsthand in the 2016 election, technology is now as good as the prime mover in US politics. From the flap over Clinton&#8217;s emails to Trump&#8217;s impulsive Twitter rants in the wee hours of the night, and from the Facebook ecology of political posts in the months leading up to November &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/penguinpetes.com\/wordpress\/2020\/09\/07\/the-invisible-nation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Invisible Nation&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,4,65],"tags":[46,20,36,19,14,58,39],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-futurism","category-main","category-technology","tag-business","tag-controversy","tag-global-market","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-prophecies","tag-woke"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Invisible Nation - Penguin Pete&#039;s Greatest Hits<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We don&#039;t know how to handle social media, do we? 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