Law in the Internet Society

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LianchenLiuFirstEssay 6 - 11 Jan 2016 - Main.EbenMoglen
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Trust issues
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 To safeguard our privacy, our consciousness and our thinking becomes a civic duty. We have to educate ourselves on the ways that software works, to take control of software that runs on our computers and smartphones, and to protect the data we generate from any third party.

If software does not work for us but for someone else, it will be used to suppress and oppress. It will end the freedom of mind and freedom of choices as we know them. \ No newline at end of file

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A better draft, improved by some thoughtful rewriting of the individual paragraphs. The central thesis is familiar to me, mostly from listening to what I say myself. Although I sometimes use the Taoist metaphor myself, I think as real political analysis it isn't very strong. Even an Internet designed to CCP specifications would still leave the people overall better informed than they were before, certainly no closer to being the uncarved block. The Party needs the Net to help it know what is going on in the China it governs, and to make its presence felt, hardly to become invisible.

That people who have little to hide and aren't very important shouldn't store their credit cards, their contacts lists, or their photographs somewhere they can easily be pillaged is hardly a sophisticated lesson we're unready to learn: no previous generation of human beings since the beginning of civilization has been inclined to store what is precious to it somewhere unguarded. This aspect of the problem is just a temporary madness caused by ignorance. But by the time we recur to the central habits of previous humanity, we may have lost the technical freedom to do what everybody before us was able to do, and which our progeny will intensely regret. What the Party wants is realtime access to actual behavior and the ability to predict future behavior of one point seven billion or so individuals. One generation from now, if we have not prevented the technical structures from forming and crippled or eliminated the Party, they will get what they want.

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LianchenLiuFirstEssay 5 - 21 Dec 2015 - Main.LianchenLiu
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 Trust issues
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The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we do not understand is surprisingly high. To use myself as an example, I do not know how any technology works, but I store my credit cards information on iPhone, store all my photos on Baidu Cloud and talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about. The reasons I did not educate myself on privacy issues are, firstly, I am not good with technology; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm?

Despite my ignorance, I have an expectation of privacy. Is that delusional? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security.

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Nowadays, the level of trust we place on things that we do not understand is surprisingly high. To use myself as an example, I store my credit card information on iPhone and my photos on Baidu Cloud and talk freely on WeChat? , without knowing who else has access to this information. The reasons I did not educate myself on privacy issues are, firstly, I am not good with technology; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm?
 I think most people share my ignorance and the attitude of indifference: they do not know how computers or phones work, and they are not going to bother figuring it out.
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Because we do not know, we trust the people who know, without inquiring whether they have a good intention or not. When software becomes a necessity in human life, when software provides us with content to read, transportation to ride, games to play and porns to watch, software affect and control our consciousness. The ability to create and control software is power. With that power, they exert dominion over us in a way that the Genghis Khan had never dreamed of.

In the age that most men are illiterate, the men who are not hold the power. The ruling class derives the power by impoverishing other people. As long as the people struggled in feeding themselves and their families, they had no time to learn to read and write. Software is a new form of power, and the power is derived from our laziness to learn about it. One thousand year ago, when time was scarce in a common man's life, the class that can afford the time to learn to read and write is warranted access to power. Nowadays, time is no longer scarcity, as technology has freed human from most of the repetitive work that our ancestors spend most of their time on. With money becoming the new scarcity, the capitalists are given the access to power. The ancient ruling class, while trusted with the lives of their people, had done more ill than good. Similarly, why capitalists/coders who run the biggest technology companies that possess most people's consciousness should be given trust freely by the public, relying on nothing but their good will?

It is not that capitalists and coders are bad people. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence attaching. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. The cost of knowledge is free, and therefore, there is no reason why we are ignorant.

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Software has becomes a necessity in human life. It provides us with content to read, transportation to ride, games to play and porns to watch. Software affects and controls our consciousness. The ability to create and control software is power. With that power, the rich and powerful exerts dominion over us in a way that Genghis Khan had never dreamed of.
 
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It is always in the best interest of the rulers to keep his people ignorant. Laozi wanted to create a world in which "the people renounce [their] sageness and discard [their] wisdom," and "they should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment." For centuries, the rulers did not know how to accomplish that. They resorted to violence to subdue their people, and trembled in fear of being overthrown by greater violence. Now, technology provides the perfect solution. Software that possesses our thinking and consciousness can create a feeling of contentedness by providing the right stimuli. They can make us think the food that they want us to consumer delicious, clothes beautiful. They reduce us to datapoint, of which the only purpose is to consume.
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It is always in the best interest of the rulers to keep the people ignorant. Laozi wanted to create a world in which "the people renounce [their] sageness and discard [their] wisdom," and "they should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment." For centuries, the rulers did not know how to accomplish that. They resorted to violence to subdue their people, while trembled in fear of being overthrown by greater violence. Now, technology provides the perfect solution. Software that possesses and controls our thinking and consciousness can create a feeling of contentedness by providing the right stimuli. They can make us think the food that they want us to consumer delicious, clothes beautiful. They reduce us to data points, of which the only purpose is to consume.
 
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The Chinese Communist Party, abandons its long-time resistance to and suppression of the internet use and decides to actively participate in creation of the "internet economy." Xi Jinping, addressing the Chinese entrepreneurs who attend the World Internet Conference yesterday, said that the advancement of internet economy should follow these four principles: first, respect of sovereignty rights on the internet; second, protection of peace and safety; third, promotion of cooperation between various parties; and fourth, creation and maintenance of order and harmony. To translate this to plain English, he means that China will use the internet technology, with the help from the internet services provider, to maintain its sovereignty and social order, and the use of internet is subject to the laws he creates. The psychological network that Facebook and Tencent created, will be incorporated into the bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party.
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The Chinese Communist Party used to resist and suppress the internet. In recent years, it started to abandon such position and began to embrace the internet. The network provides them the perfect way to control peoples’ mind while appearing reformative and open-minded. Xi Jinping recently attended the World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen and addressed the internet tycoons in China. He said that the advancement of internet economy should follow four principles: first, respect of sovereignty on the internet; second, protection of peace and safety; third, promotion of cooperation between various parties; and fourth, creation and maintenance of social order and harmony. What he really means is that China will use the network, with the help from the internet services providers, to maintain its sovereignty and social order. The psychological network that Facebook and Tencent have created, will be incorporated into the bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party at last.
 
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Never before, the ruler of China is this close in creating the ideal world that Laozi aspired by reducing his people to complete ignorance and eliminating the urge to rebel. Such urge is felt by any person with the freedom of mind when he is in bondage. People who control the technology control the social outcome. This time, the technology they use is so formidable that not only are capable of eradicating dissident voices, but also rebellious thoughts.
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This should serve a wake-up call to all the people who trade off their privacy for convenience, who think that the only harm is seeing the advertisement of goods and services that they want to buy anyway. What is at stake is personal freedom. In deciding a Fourth Amendment case, Judge Greenaway expressed his concern over the intrusiveness of GPS tracking device, “while ‘[y]ou can preserve your anonymity from prying eyes, even in public, by traveling at night, through heavy traffic, in crowds, by using a circuitous route, disguising your appearance, passing in and out of buildings and being careful not to be followed,” there is “no hiding from the all-seeing network of GPS satellites that hover overhead, which never sleep, never blink, never get confused and never lose attention.”’ U.S. v. Katzin, 732 F.3d 187, 196 (3d Cir.,2013) (quoting U.S. v. Pineda–Moreno, 617 F.3d 1120, 1126 (9th Cir.2010) (Kozinski, C.J., dissenting)). The network is one hundred folds more intrusive. Not only it tracks where you have been, what you have read, and who you have been talking to, it knows what you think, consciously and unconsciously, and controls what you buy and how you behave. Never before, the ruler of China is close to creating the ideal world that Laozi aspired by reducing his people to complete ignorance and eliminating entirely the urge to rebel. People who control the technology control the social outcome. This time, the technology they use is so formidable that it is not only capable of eradicating dissident voices but also rebellious thoughts.
 
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Now, it becomes our duty to value our privacy and to protect our privacy. Otherwise, before we know, the freedom of thinking is gone.
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To safeguard our privacy, our consciousness and our thinking becomes a civic duty. We have to educate ourselves on the ways that software works, to take control of software that runs on our computers and smartphones, and to protect the data we generate from any third party.
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If software does not work for us but for someone else, it will be used to suppress and oppress. It will end the freedom of mind and freedom of choices as we know them.
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LianchenLiuFirstEssay 4 - 16 Dec 2015 - Main.LianchenLiu
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Trust issues

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Trust issues
 
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-- By LianchenLiu - 26 Oct 2015
 
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The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we do not understand is surprisingly high. To use myself as an example, I do not know how any technology works, but I store my credit cards information on iPhone, store all my photos on Baidu Cloud and talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about. The reasons I did not educate myself on privacy issues are, firstly, I am not good with technology; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm?
 
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The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we do not understand is surprisingly high. To use myself as an example, I do not know how iPhone work, but I store my credit cards information on it; I do not know how cloud works, but I store all my photos on Baidu Cloud; I talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about, without knowing who else might have access to it. The reasons I did not educate myself on privacy issus are, firstly, I am ignorant about technology; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm?

Depite my ignorance how iPhones, clouds and Wechat work, I have expectation of privacy. Is that delusional? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security.

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Despite my ignorance, I have an expectation of privacy. Is that delusional? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security.
 I think most people share my ignorance and the attitude of indifference: they do not know how computers or phones work, and they are not going to bother figuring it out.
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Because we do not know, we trust the people who know, whether they have a good intention or not. When software becomes a necessity in human life, when softwares provide us with content to read, transportation to ride, games to play and porns to watch, softwares affect and control our consciousness. The ability to create and control softwares is power. With that power, they exert dominion over us in a way that the Genghis Khan had never dreamed of controlling his people.

In the age that most men are illiterate, the men who are not hold the power. The ruling class derives the power by impoverishing other people. As long the people struggled in feeding themselves and their families, they had no time to learn to read and write. Software is a new form of power, and the power is derived from our laziness to learn about it. One thousand year ago, when time was scarce in a common man's life, the class that can afford the time to learn is warranted access to power. Nowadays, time is no longer scarcity, as technology has freed human from most of the repetitive work that our ancestors spend most of their time on. With money becoming the new scarcity, the capitalists are given the access to power. The ancient ruling class, while trusted with the lives of their people, had done more ill than good. Similarly, why capitalists/coders who run the biggest technology companies that possess most people's consciousness should be given trust freely by the public, relying on nothing but their good will?

It is not that capitalists and coders are bad people. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence will attach. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. The cost of knowledge is free, and therefore, there is no reason why we are ignorant.

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Because we do not know, we trust the people who know, without inquiring whether they have a good intention or not. When software becomes a necessity in human life, when software provides us with content to read, transportation to ride, games to play and porns to watch, software affect and control our consciousness. The ability to create and control software is power. With that power, they exert dominion over us in a way that the Genghis Khan had never dreamed of.
 
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It is always in the best interst of the rulers to keep his people ignorant. Laozi wanted to create a world in which "the people renounce [their] sageness and discard [their] wisdom," and "they should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment." For centuries, the rulers did not know how to accomplish it. They resorted violence to subdue their people, and trembled in fear of being overthrown by greater violence. Now, technology provides the perfect solution. Softwares that possessed our thinking and consciousness
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In the age that most men are illiterate, the men who are not hold the power. The ruling class derives the power by impoverishing other people. As long as the people struggled in feeding themselves and their families, they had no time to learn to read and write. Software is a new form of power, and the power is derived from our laziness to learn about it. One thousand year ago, when time was scarce in a common man's life, the class that can afford the time to learn to read and write is warranted access to power. Nowadays, time is no longer scarcity, as technology has freed human from most of the repetitive work that our ancestors spend most of their time on. With money becoming the new scarcity, the capitalists are given the access to power. The ancient ruling class, while trusted with the lives of their people, had done more ill than good. Similarly, why capitalists/coders who run the biggest technology companies that possess most people's consciousness should be given trust freely by the public, relying on nothing but their good will?
 
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  1. In a society held together by digital networks, people who know how software works, who can understand and change the physiology of the species-wide nervous system, are a privileged class.
  2. Individuals are likely to be unable to understand how the digital technology running human society works. Only those who have specialized education and who know how to ask the right questions will be "conscious" participants in a growing fraction of the whole life of every human being.
  3. Educated people can eliminate their ignorance about how society actually works, but to do so requires effort that even most educated people will not make.
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It is not that capitalists and coders are bad people. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence attaching. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. The cost of knowledge is free, and therefore, there is no reason why we are ignorant.
 
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You might have been more terse in the expression of these you did include, so as to consider adding two more points:
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It is always in the best interest of the rulers to keep his people ignorant. Laozi wanted to create a world in which "the people renounce [their] sageness and discard [their] wisdom," and "they should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment." For centuries, the rulers did not know how to accomplish that. They resorted to violence to subdue their people, and trembled in fear of being overthrown by greater violence. Now, technology provides the perfect solution. Software that possesses our thinking and consciousness can create a feeling of contentedness by providing the right stimuli. They can make us think the food that they want us to consumer delicious, clothes beautiful. They reduce us to datapoint, of which the only purpose is to consume.
 
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  1. Power benefits from ignorance about how society really works. The more people do not consciously understand how their technology is used to control them, the more thoroughly and peacefully they are controlled. You could have said that this is one of the most important political ideas associated with Laozi (老子).
  2. The ability to learn how society really works depends on the transparency of the software that is the physiological layer of this nervous system. You cannot know how WeChat or Baidu services are affecting you unless you know what is being done with the data they aggregate about who accesses your messages or photos and who else's messages or photos you access. That's probably impossible. But you can know, if you are doing your personal messaging and photo-sharing through a FreedomBox that costs $50 and does everything the "cloud" companies do for you, but only for sharing with the people you actually mean to share with, that no one is using that data or information about who accesses it to control you.
  3. Which would lead to a third point, namely that the technology doesn't control the social outcome, the people who control the technology control the social outcome. If that is us, democracy is possible. Otherwise it dies.
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The Chinese Communist Party, abandons its long-time resistance to and suppression of the internet use and decides to actively participate in creation of the "internet economy." Xi Jinping, addressing the Chinese entrepreneurs who attend the World Internet Conference yesterday, said that the advancement of internet economy should follow these four principles: first, respect of sovereignty rights on the internet; second, protection of peace and safety; third, promotion of cooperation between various parties; and fourth, creation and maintenance of order and harmony. To translate this to plain English, he means that China will use the internet technology, with the help from the internet services provider, to maintain its sovereignty and social order, and the use of internet is subject to the laws he creates. The psychological network that Facebook and Tencent created, will be incorporated into the bureaucracy of the Chinese Communist Party.
 
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The greatest improvement possible in the essay is to remove its greatest limitation. You observe that knowledge is power, and you urge people to learn. But if people need to learn, someone needs to teach. Your essay, then, should be directed at helping people teach, so that many other people may learn.
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Never before, the ruler of China is this close in creating the ideal world that Laozi aspired by reducing his people to complete ignorance and eliminating the urge to rebel. Such urge is felt by any person with the freedom of mind when he is in bondage. People who control the technology control the social outcome. This time, the technology they use is so formidable that not only are capable of eradicating dissident voices, but also rebellious thoughts.
 
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Now, it becomes our duty to value our privacy and to protect our privacy. Otherwise, before we know, the freedom of thinking is gone.
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LianchenLiuFirstEssay 3 - 16 Dec 2015 - Main.LianchenLiu
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Trust issues

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The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we have no idea of is surprisingly high. I personally have never given much thought to privacy issues until very recently. I do not know how iPhone work, but I store my credit cards information on it; I do not know how cloud works, but I store all my photos on Baidu Cloud; I talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about, without knowing who else might have access to it. I often read about data securities or cyber security, but I never gave much thought about it, for several reasons: first, I do not understand it; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm? I have never been a paranoid about privacy and data security, nonetheless, I have expected my credit card information would not be leaked by just using my phone; my photos on Baidu Cloud would not be shown to a third party; and my conversation on WeChat? remains private. Why should I have any expectation of privacy? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. In real life, when we try carry a private conversation, we say to the other person “let’s go somewhere else”, or at least lower our voice. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security—we make no attempt to obscure our voice, we do not even check our surroundings.
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The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we do not understand is surprisingly high. To use myself as an example, I do not know how iPhone work, but I store my credit cards information on it; I do not know how cloud works, but I store all my photos on Baidu Cloud; I talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about, without knowing who else might have access to it. The reasons I did not educate myself on privacy issus are, firstly, I am ignorant about technology; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm?
 
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That false sense of security comes from our ignorance: if we cannot see it, it does not exist. I do not see anyone is viewing my conversation on WeChat? , therefore, no one is. If we have to use a legal term for it, it is probably willful blindness. For me, I have never been into “tech stuff”. I do not know how to code; I do not know what kind of information software or apps are gathering. How to secure my activities on phones or computers is beyond me, and I am not going to bother. I think most people share my attitude of indifference: they do not know how computers or phones work, and they are not going to bother figuring it out.
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Depite my ignorance how iPhones, clouds and Wechat work, I have expectation of privacy. Is that delusional? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security.
 
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Because we do not know, we trust the people who know, whether they have a good intention or not. When software becomes a necessity in human life, the ability to create software is power, just like the ability to read and write in ancient societies was power as well. In a typical Han society in ancient China, the capability to read and write was in possession of a class that has exclusive access to the ruling power. This class is called Shi (士). This scene has come up in many literature depicting the life of ancient Chinese. A messenger from the royalty posted a piece of paper on the wall of the town hall, and people started to gather around that post and discuss the content on it. Peasants, merchants, soldiers, who think they can recognize one character or two on the post, argued with each other on what the post says, until an old Xiucai (秀才), who is at the lowest level of the Shi, clears his throat. Recognizing the sound, the crowd becomes quiet; they parts away to make room for the learned man to come forward. In reverence, the crowd listens as he reads each character.
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I think most people share my ignorance and the attitude of indifference: they do not know how computers or phones work, and they are not going to bother figuring it out.
 
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In the age that most men are illiterate, the men who are not hold the power: they communicate commands to generals thousands of miles away, make tax record of the remotest village on the land, and write history about the deeds of every emperor. The Shi derives the power from the fact that most men struggled feeding themselves and their families, and had no time to learn to read and write. Coding is a new form of power, and the power is derived from the fact that most men are too lazy to learn about it. One thousand year ago, when time was scarce in a common man’s life, the class that can afford the time to learn is warranted access to power. Nowadays, time is no longer scarcity, as technology has freed human from most of the repetitive work that our ancestors spend most of their time on. With money becoming the new scarcity, the capitalists are given the access to power. The class of Shi, while trusted with the lives of their people, had done more ill than good. Similarly, why capitalists/ coders who run the biggest technology companies should be given trust freely by the public, relying on nothing but their good will?
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Because we do not know, we trust the people who know, whether they have a good intention or not. When software becomes a necessity in human life, when softwares provide us with content to read, transportation to ride, games to play and porns to watch, softwares affect and control our consciousness. The ability to create and control softwares is power. With that power, they exert dominion over us in a way that the Genghis Khan had never dreamed of controlling his people.
 
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When Zuckerberg spoke in fluent Chinese at Tsinghua University about devoting his time and energy to serving the community, one should be on notice that many members of the Shi had vowed to save the people from sufferings. Not that they were making intentional lies. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence will attach. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Facebook might have been established with the simple intention to connect people, but when such connection has been established, it is almost impossible not to exploit it. I am not saying that the public should stop using Facebook. I am saying we should inform ourselves and evaluate what kind of risk we are exposed to.
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In the age that most men are illiterate, the men who are not hold the power. The ruling class derives the power by impoverishing other people. As long the people struggled in feeding themselves and their families, they had no time to learn to read and write. Software is a new form of power, and the power is derived from our laziness to learn about it. One thousand year ago, when time was scarce in a common man's life, the class that can afford the time to learn is warranted access to power. Nowadays, time is no longer scarcity, as technology has freed human from most of the repetitive work that our ancestors spend most of their time on. With money becoming the new scarcity, the capitalists are given the access to power. The ancient ruling class, while trusted with the lives of their people, had done more ill than good. Similarly, why capitalists/coders who run the biggest technology companies that possess most people's consciousness should be given trust freely by the public, relying on nothing but their good will?
 
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It is not that capitalists and coders are bad people. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence will attach. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. The cost of knowledge is free, and therefore, there is no reason why we are ignorant.
 
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As you weren't using the section headings, or changing the privacy settings on the essay, I removed the excess material so the text would be easier to read.

I think you are making three points here:

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It is always in the best interst of the rulers to keep his people ignorant. Laozi wanted to create a world in which "the people renounce [their] sageness and discard [their] wisdom," and "they should think their (coarse) food sweet; their (plain) clothes beautiful; their (poor) dwellings places of rest; and their common (simple) ways sources of enjoyment." For centuries, the rulers did not know how to accomplish it. They resorted violence to subdue their people, and trembled in fear of being overthrown by greater violence. Now, technology provides the perfect solution. Softwares that possessed our thinking and consciousness
 
  1. In a society held together by digital networks, people who know how software works, who can understand and change the physiology of the species-wide nervous system, are a privileged class.
  2. Individuals are likely to be unable to understand how the digital technology running human society works. Only those who have specialized education and who know how to ask the right questions will be "conscious" participants in a growing fraction of the whole life of every human being.

LianchenLiuFirstEssay 2 - 10 Nov 2015 - Main.EbenMoglen
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
 

Trust issues

-- By LianchenLiu - 26 Oct 2015

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Section I

 
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Subsection A

 The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we have no idea of is surprisingly high. I personally have never given much thought to privacy issues until very recently. I do not know how iPhone work, but I store my credit cards information on it; I do not know how cloud works, but I store all my photos on Baidu Cloud; I talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about, without knowing who else might have access to it. I often read about data securities or cyber security, but I never gave much thought about it, for several reasons: first, I do not understand it; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm? I have never been a paranoid about privacy and data security, nonetheless, I have expected my credit card information would not be leaked by just using my phone; my photos on Baidu Cloud would not be shown to a third party; and my conversation on WeChat? remains private. Why should I have any expectation of privacy? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. In real life, when we try carry a private conversation, we say to the other person “let’s go somewhere else”, or at least lower our voice. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security—we make no attempt to obscure our voice, we do not even check our surroundings.

That false sense of security comes from our ignorance: if we cannot see it, it does not exist. I do not see anyone is viewing my conversation on WeChat? , therefore, no one is. If we have to use a legal term for it, it is probably willful blindness. For me, I have never been into “tech stuff”. I do not know how to code; I do not know what kind of information software or apps are gathering. How to secure my activities on phones or computers is beyond me, and I am not going to bother. I think most people share my attitude of indifference: they do not know how computers or phones work, and they are not going to bother figuring it out.

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 When Zuckerberg spoke in fluent Chinese at Tsinghua University about devoting his time and energy to serving the community, one should be on notice that many members of the Shi had vowed to save the people from sufferings. Not that they were making intentional lies. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence will attach. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Facebook might have been established with the simple intention to connect people, but when such connection has been established, it is almost impossible not to exploit it. I am not saying that the public should stop using Facebook. I am saying we should inform ourselves and evaluate what kind of risk we are exposed to.
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As you weren't using the section headings, or changing the privacy settings on the essay, I removed the excess material so the text would be easier to read.
 
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I think you are making three points here:
 
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  1. In a society held together by digital networks, people who know how software works, who can understand and change the physiology of the species-wide nervous system, are a privileged class.
  2. Individuals are likely to be unable to understand how the digital technology running human society works. Only those who have specialized education and who know how to ask the right questions will be "conscious" participants in a growing fraction of the whole life of every human being.
  3. Educated people can eliminate their ignorance about how society actually works, but to do so requires effort that even most educated people will not make.
 
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You might have been more terse in the expression of these you did include, so as to consider adding two more points:
 
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  1. Power benefits from ignorance about how society really works. The more people do not consciously understand how their technology is used to control them, the more thoroughly and peacefully they are controlled. You could have said that this is one of the most important political ideas associated with Laozi (老子).
  2. The ability to learn how society really works depends on the transparency of the software that is the physiological layer of this nervous system. You cannot know how WeChat or Baidu services are affecting you unless you know what is being done with the data they aggregate about who accesses your messages or photos and who else's messages or photos you access. That's probably impossible. But you can know, if you are doing your personal messaging and photo-sharing through a FreedomBox that costs $50 and does everything the "cloud" companies do for you, but only for sharing with the people you actually mean to share with, that no one is using that data or information about who accesses it to control you.
  3. Which would lead to a third point, namely that the technology doesn't control the social outcome, the people who control the technology control the social outcome. If that is us, democracy is possible. Otherwise it dies.
 
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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The greatest improvement possible in the essay is to remove its greatest limitation. You observe that knowledge is power, and you urge people to learn. But if people need to learn, someone needs to teach. Your essay, then, should be directed at helping people teach, so that many other people may learn.
 
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Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.
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LianchenLiuFirstEssay 1 - 26 Oct 2015 - Main.LianchenLiu
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.

Trust issues

-- By LianchenLiu - 26 Oct 2015

Section I

Subsection A

The level of trust we are willing to place on things that we have no idea of is surprisingly high. I personally have never given much thought to privacy issues until very recently. I do not know how iPhone work, but I store my credit cards information on it; I do not know how cloud works, but I store all my photos on Baidu Cloud; I talk freely on Wechat on topics that I probably should not talk freely about, without knowing who else might have access to it. I often read about data securities or cyber security, but I never gave much thought about it, for several reasons: first, I do not understand it; second, I have (almost) nothing to hide; third, I am not important enough for anyone to watch; and fourth, even assume my browsing history was sold on the market, what is the harm? I have never been a paranoid about privacy and data security, nonetheless, I have expected my credit card information would not be leaked by just using my phone; my photos on Baidu Cloud would not be shown to a third party; and my conversation on WeChat? remains private. Why should I have any expectation of privacy? After all, storing my photos on the cloud is like storing it in a box and leaving it on the street. In real life, when we try carry a private conversation, we say to the other person “let’s go somewhere else”, or at least lower our voice. When it comes to cyberspace, we have a false sense of security—we make no attempt to obscure our voice, we do not even check our surroundings.

That false sense of security comes from our ignorance: if we cannot see it, it does not exist. I do not see anyone is viewing my conversation on WeChat? , therefore, no one is. If we have to use a legal term for it, it is probably willful blindness. For me, I have never been into “tech stuff”. I do not know how to code; I do not know what kind of information software or apps are gathering. How to secure my activities on phones or computers is beyond me, and I am not going to bother. I think most people share my attitude of indifference: they do not know how computers or phones work, and they are not going to bother figuring it out.

Because we do not know, we trust the people who know, whether they have a good intention or not. When software becomes a necessity in human life, the ability to create software is power, just like the ability to read and write in ancient societies was power as well. In a typical Han society in ancient China, the capability to read and write was in possession of a class that has exclusive access to the ruling power. This class is called Shi (士). This scene has come up in many literature depicting the life of ancient Chinese. A messenger from the royalty posted a piece of paper on the wall of the town hall, and people started to gather around that post and discuss the content on it. Peasants, merchants, soldiers, who think they can recognize one character or two on the post, argued with each other on what the post says, until an old Xiucai (秀才), who is at the lowest level of the Shi, clears his throat. Recognizing the sound, the crowd becomes quiet; they parts away to make room for the learned man to come forward. In reverence, the crowd listens as he reads each character.

In the age that most men are illiterate, the men who are not hold the power: they communicate commands to generals thousands of miles away, make tax record of the remotest village on the land, and write history about the deeds of every emperor. The Shi derives the power from the fact that most men struggled feeding themselves and their families, and had no time to learn to read and write. Coding is a new form of power, and the power is derived from the fact that most men are too lazy to learn about it. One thousand year ago, when time was scarce in a common man’s life, the class that can afford the time to learn is warranted access to power. Nowadays, time is no longer scarcity, as technology has freed human from most of the repetitive work that our ancestors spend most of their time on. With money becoming the new scarcity, the capitalists are given the access to power. The class of Shi, while trusted with the lives of their people, had done more ill than good. Similarly, why capitalists/ coders who run the biggest technology companies should be given trust freely by the public, relying on nothing but their good will?

When Zuckerberg spoke in fluent Chinese at Tsinghua University about devoting his time and energy to serving the community, one should be on notice that many members of the Shi had vowed to save the people from sufferings. Not that they were making intentional lies. It is just that human can hardly resist the temptation to achieve personal gains by screwing their fellow men, when no consequence will attach. Our ancestors were limited by time constraint to learn to read and write. However, our limitation is only our laziness. While a peasant, living in the Ming Dynasty, could not possibly be blamed for being illiterate, the public in our age has a civil duty to educate themselves on things that are running their phones and computers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Facebook might have been established with the simple intention to connect people, but when such connection has been established, it is almost impossible not to exploit it. I am not saying that the public should stop using Facebook. I am saying we should inform ourselves and evaluate what kind of risk we are exposed to.

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Subsection B

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Section II

Subsection A

Subsection B


You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.


Revision 6r6 - 11 Jan 2016 - 22:53:54 - EbenMoglen
Revision 5r5 - 21 Dec 2015 - 23:52:17 - LianchenLiu
Revision 4r4 - 16 Dec 2015 - 07:23:32 - LianchenLiu
Revision 3r3 - 16 Dec 2015 - 06:12:44 - LianchenLiu
Revision 2r2 - 10 Nov 2015 - 14:18:59 - EbenMoglen
Revision 1r1 - 26 Oct 2015 - 02:04:14 - LianchenLiu
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