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2007-10-06

Internet Freedom Can Produce a New Level of Civilization - [Thus I wrote]

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Our World is Highly Complex yet Well-Organized

Our world is infinite in which we can define enormous dimensions. And on every dimension, the world could still be divided into enormous tiny sections. At the same time, the world also changes constantly and incessantly, with all these dimensions interconnected and mixed together. Nevertheless, the world has its rules. Apples always fall on the ground ever since billions of years ago.

A fallen apple gave Isaac Newton the clue to mechanics. People were convinced it was the God who created the world, and that is why the world is so well organized. When Albert Einstein discovered relativity, scientists also proved wave-particle duality. Our knowledge still lacks the ability to tell the exact acceleration due to gravity at any given time or position. In most cases, observations of human beings are variable rather than constant. Believers keep and expand their belief in God's omnipotence.

Although we are capable of gather some information about the remote spaces tens of billions of light years from the Earth, we are still not sure if quarks can be further divided, we are still not able to create a human brain out of industrial methods. Although we have been creating the strongest computers, developing the smartest software, we have to admit that wisdom remains a most significant resource. This means a difficult situation in reality for human being. We cannot acquire or utilize resources properly and wisely. We cannot analyze efficiently business strategies. We cannot supply people with longevity. We cannot escape from the solar system.

All our knowledge and behavior may seem trivial and ridiculous to God. Nonetheless, human beings are still growing crops, making computers, electron colliders and robots no matter we love, hate, disbelieve in God or not. No matter God exist or not, human consciousness keeps interacting with the nature, at least limitedly.

Individual Desire, Cognition, and Collective Consciousness

Individuals can perceive and understand the world and establish his own theory. And if you want to apply this theory to wider community, and larger scale of human activities, you need also to have a wider base of collaboration. It took around two centuries for Newtonian physics to engage in the Industrial Revolution. Publication of the theory, experimental proof, dissemination, and establishment of industrial system, all of these events took as long as generations to happen. In Einstein's age, atomic bomb was created based on his theory by military efforts that combined all kinds of resources and through expansive collaboration. Invention of telephone enabled the whole world to communicate at light speed. When the Internet was created, again interaction among networksaccelerated to light speed. Today, hundreds of millions of computers have been connected online, information of electronic and dynamics online maps can be easily obtained from satellites and other technologies. And all this will be given to consumers of information and computing in real-time. Even in a disastrous nuclear war, if a computer engineer could survive, he can rebuild and deploy all this in a short time.

Today, Information Technology have provided these breakthroughs,

And yet Information Technology has not made much progress in some areas.

How Newton set a basis for classical mechanics from a falling apple, and how Einstein established Theory of Relativity through a series of experimental and observation data remain an unsolved question for today's Information Technology. Information Technology still lacks the ability to process information in the way of thinking as human beings do. Information Technology still cannot build up a theory of its own, let alone something like collective consciousness.

Perhaps such a breakthrough will be fatal and disastrous to human beings. The capabilities of machines will surpass human being, they do not need rest, they can propagatecostlessly , they will have clear and careful plan on resource. Human beings would be unimportant and powerless. However, this hopeful breakthrough remain the last way to the redemption of humanity. Even if there is no artificial intelligence that surpasses human brain, we still face the sad fact of wars and endless waste of natural resources because of our greed, ignorance, and short-sight. Our life is limited by space, by time, and by our own intelligence. The only thing that can save us, is the intelligence of machines.

Because of the possible disastrous impacts of machine intelligence, we will need to spare no effort to work together in order to have a complete, thorough, and goodwillful common knowledge of future machines. This can only be achieved through wide collaboration of individuals on a free Internet. We will elaborate about Internet freedom below.

If we call individuals who have Internet freedom "Internet citizens", we assume only Internet citizens who can use the Internet sufficiently can create a real good intelligence of machines.

Traditional Religion and Government

This a rather simplistic observation of the development of our history, civilization and country.

Once the speed and quality of information dissemination was low and far from sufficient for the actual demand and complexity of life, religion became a necessary solution. Information transmission that is now multitude and diversified was once a unilateral and centralized broadcasting monopolized by religion. And the government was a organizer of secular affairs left out by religion.

In the assistance of this unilateral information transmitting and one-point intelligence, we have made achievements in physics and knowledge, on which Renaissance and later industrial civilization are based.

However we could not comprehend the natural world and society thoroughly, we had to believe in a omnipotent God. As our knowledge of the world deepens, religious people said, our understanding of the God develops with time.

In many cases people have intelligence and morality at almost same level, and yet since their living environments are differentiated, governments that consist of different groups of people would have different content of information and intelligence and different levels of centralization. Governments and churches in modern democracies all allow traditional rights and freedom to their citizens.

Based on these rights and freedom, multitude and multi-point information flow and diversified intelligence could be sustained. As a result an intelligence that can rival the evil side of traditional government came into being, and eventually the goodwill in government will serve as check and balance of its evil side.

Let's say thoughts come came out of factual experiences and thinking. Production, war, disasters, catastrophes all provide us with factual experiences. In ancient times, early compilations of theories, for example the Art of War of Sun-Tzu, often originated in a lot of battles or factual experiences. And now, men can use in war philosophy, information technology, high-tech weapons, etc. Power of human thinking has reached new heights, for us to gain equal factual experience, the cost of time and manpower is much lower.

Via transmission, integration, alteration, and decomposition of information, human thinking upgrades from raw information to knowledge that can guide their actions, and further develops into intelligence that gives birth to wisdom. For a higher intelligence to come about, there should be abundant source of information and the complex chain above-mentioned. Today we can give out many examples that ordinary citizens in free countries could have higher efficiency in multitude and multi-point transmission of information, more independent thinking, and more collaboration than in totalitarian states. And that free countries lead the world is a proof that efficient information sharing, independent thinking, and collaboration are key to the collective intelligence of human beings.

The Right of Nature, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.
-- Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes

Internet Freedom Produced by Information and Internet Service

Internet services have surpassed the limits of borders. In any country, if not intentionally blocked, user can access information and service from another country straight away. What information technology and Internet allows, is first of all a freedom of information access and computing.

Snail mails have given way to E-mails, many online libraries now provide better service and more books than cement public libraries. Information service enabled by search engines is available in more categories and better quality than that can be provided by the government or other public organizations.

Let's see the example how open source software Linux has made its way on the Internet,

Who would have thought ... that a world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?

One interesting measure of fetchmail's success is the sheer size of the project beta list, fetchmail-friends. At time of writing it has 249 members and is adding two or three a week.
--Eric Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar

The bazaar way of developing software is amazing, and shows us how civilization could develop itself on the Internet,

Linux and fetchmail both went public with strong, attractive basic designs. Many people thinking about the bazaar model as I have presented it have correctly considered this critical, then jumped from it to the conclusion that a high degree of design intuition and cleverness in the project leader is indispensable.

But Linus got his design from Unix. I got mine initially from the ancestral popclient (though it would later change a great deal, much more proportionately speaking than has Linux). So does the leader/coordinator for a bazaar-style effort really have to have exceptional design talent, or can he get by on leveraging the design talent of others?

We can see, designers got inspiration from frontrunner's code (Unix, popmail; which were originallly organized and publish on the Internet) and created their own works.Later they publish their creation online, collect others working, manage versions and big scale testing, feedback, and publication would follow.

We can see in developing open source software, sharing intellectual property and open environment on the Internet were so important. Such creative collaboration can never thrive out of the Internet if there were strict monitoring and predetermined filtering. A filtered search engine could "miss out" key documents that a developer needed, a monitored E-mail conversation could leave contributors in bewilderment. All this would bring about deviation or errors to the project, which can delay or even destroy the whole progress and plan.

In the example, we can see that the Internet links brains and computers, which are the actors in the massive information source and transformation, on information and knowledge level. As the cost of information out of experience lowers, the Internet will finally act as a platform and a motor for the development of this higher level of intelligence. Restrictions on Internet freedom, which can hinder the efficiency, smoothness of information transmission and block the exchange of information, are extremely stupid.

We will continue to explain how the individuals that have Internet freedom could hold brand new and powerful ability in creation.

What the Internet freedom can solve about land, vote, and welfare, and possible impacts on traditional religions and governments and constructive advice

The Internet is a help in solving social problem.

In consideration of ownership and the right of use, right in modern society is dynamic. People can get rich or broke, certain persons would live or die, be healthy or get sick. All this influences their status of possession. How we can ensure all walks of life can share the resources in society equally, how we can manage this dynamic system in a lawful manner, how we can ensure all the citizens feel the justice in society, a definition of future society should base on a solution that answers all these questions.

The Internet helps solve the problem by enabling every citizen to give out data, opinion and vote. Meanwhile the result also can be shown to all persons.

Even if we had all the technology ready, the Internet freedom would still remain a biggest problem. Sina.com, China's top portal site, always forcibly delete or block comments on news articles and forum discussions, and the discussions on Sina.com really lack quality and depth.

This is a snapshot of the article and following discussions on the death of a law enforcement personnel,
http://picasaweb.google.com/yetaai/Screencopies/photo#5106277901712383810
http://picasaweb.google.com/yetaai/Screencopies/photo#5106277686964018994

Douban.com, a Web2.0 site, allows comparatively larger degree of freedom of speech. This is a snapshot of a discussion on Douban.com.
http://picasaweb.google.com/yetaai/Screencopies/photo#5106278129345650514

What I want to say is, everyone has his or her own mind, when given respect, he will definitely think on his own. Long oppression only produces anger and curse. In other words, the Internet is a cathedral where the light of future civilization origins. However, a distorted Internet will only produce a generation of hatred and anger.

Other technical questions, for examples, legislations over the Internet, election and campaign online, communication between political actor and voters, or land resource and ownership database, etc, I think should be leave to the real Internet citizens in China that are forming themselves right now. They will keep the discussion and finally materialize this.

In the end, I'd like to call for attention on the following lawsuit. The prospect and strategy of this case is to leave the door of this public interest ligitation open to the 100 million broadband users on Mainland China. It has been proven in my own case that the testification of this lawsuit is quite simple. And the significance of this case, as argued in this article, is about our dignity and freedom and that of our sons and grandsons. Why not?

http://yetaai.blogspot.com/2007/08/blog-post_22.html
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