Age and Wisdom beats Technical know-how?

I heard James May, presenter of the car programme Top Gear, being interviewed on the radio this morning. Modern technology was discussed and so, inevitably, the subject of the internet came up. May was of the opinion that the internet was a wonderful invention. He listed the qualities that he particularly liked or thought beneficial. The following two are the most interesting because they are both completely wrong and yet, as far as I can ascertain, are very commonly held beliefs about the internet:

1. The internet is proof against competent or intrusive policing.

2. By facilitating communication between peoples from very different cultures and backgrounds and holding very different ideas, the internet enriches our lives, and by allowing people to express and find support for their ideas it maintains a rich and accessible mix.

First, 1.: On the contrary, the internet is a god-send to the police, and anyone else who want to monitor or spy on people. They can, or will be able to, monitor everything that goes on on the internet.

I’m sure there are people out there who know far more about computer systems, hardware and software and networking, than I do who will argue that the police cannot and never will be able to monitor the internet to their satisfaction. They will probably even be able to produce equations and technical arguments to back up their case. But my case is still the stronger.

My case is based on age and experience: I’ve seen it all before, time and time again. This is how it goes:

Technologists/inventors/scientists come up with some new technology or device which they ‘sell’ (to people with money to fund research etc) on the basis that, among other things, it is proof against tampering or spying. Before you can say “Jack Robinson” the criminal fraternity, spies or even other technologists/inventors/scientists have found a way.

So, there is NOTHING that cannot, or will not be able to be, hacked into or monitored by the police — should they choose to do so.

And then, will they choose? Need anyone ask that question in this day and age when the forces of law and order have used the threats of terrorists and criminals and war to institute the very extensive surveillance systems that keep a 24 hour watch on the world? In a nutshell, the police prefer to practice ‘prevention’ rather than ‘cure’ ie prefer to watch and monitor and prevent crime than to wait for it to happen and then to react. The general trend is towards the situation that was portrayed in the Tom Cruise film . In that film monitoring of the population had become so ‘sophisticated’ and psychological that crimes were predicted before they happened and people arrested BEFORE they had actually committed a crime.

Our governments and police want MORE control of people, more monitoring and surveillance. Anything that would circumvent this desire would be MOST unwelcome. That our society has taken to the internet in such a big way is testament that it suits the intentions of those in power — i.e. it makes it easier for them to monitor and control people.

The second issue is the one about the internet creating a mores culturally diverse environment. This is completely the opposite of what will happen, is happening.

Everywhere one looks in our human world diversity is being lost. Niall Fergusson, the historian, referred to the way that cultures around the world are losing their uniqueness and becoming more and more the same as one of the great paradoxes of history. In other words, historians recognise the phenomenon but cannot explain it.

The answer is: competition. In a competitive world the winners live on and the losers die. In the end, throughout the world, there will only be one religion, one type of government, one system of ethics, one economy etc. etc.

One sees the phenomenon in action everywhere. Governments have to legislate against monopolies in business. In the UK, in the middle of last century the two main political parties, Labour and Conservative, were very different animals. Today they are so difficult to tell apart that their similarity has become a joke, and they are having to manufacture differences in order to justify being two parties instead of just one.

In a competitive world, the only way to maintain cultural diversity is to isolate cultures from each other. The internet, in doing the very opposite, is hastening the loss of cultural diversity both on and off the computer.

Two questions:

1. Why did anyone ever think otherwise? DARPA and the NSA are building a huge facility in Utah expressly for the purpose of recording ALL activity throughout the world.

2. What was their argument concerning “proof against competent or intrusive policing”? And what does that even mean?

Whatever happens on the internet is harmless.
It can be cause to harm, but hasn’t been to the nations that developed the technology.

The nature of the internet is apexed by its inherent impossibility; it is cyber-space, it can not reach into physical space. It can only draw effort in, it has no output of effort in a physical sense.

This is the problem I seek to overcome.

I’m uncertain as to which way you meant that…?

But which ever way you meant it, “gestalt” would be the solution.

If age and wisdom really beat technical know-how, why can technical know-how be more powerful than age and wisdom?

People with age and wisdom are more „conservative“ or „reluctant“ than people with technical know-how, and the latter are not allowed to be „old“, old-fashioned, thus also not „conservative“ or „reluctant“. People with age and wisdom often have also technical know-how because of the definition of wisdom, but people with technical know-how often have no age and no wisdom. That’s the problem.

I don’t think that they „cannot explain it“. Cultures come and go. Maybe that the time will come for a new kind of human culture - similar to that time when that kind of human culture started which we have been knowing for about 6000 years, namely as different cultures, not as one human culture. Maybe in some years, decades, or centuries a new kind of human culture will appear as merely one human culture, probably after a very strong depopulation.