Julian Assange waarschuwde onlangs, tegenover studenten van Cambridge University, voor de gevaren van het internet:
While the internet has in some ways an ability to let us know to an unprecedented level what government is doing, and to let us co-operate with each other to hold repressive governments and repressive corporations to account, it is also the greatest spying machine the world has ever seen.,
The web is not a technology that favours freedom of speech. It is not a technology that favours human rights. It is not a technology that favours civil life. Rather it is a technology that can be used to set up a totalitarian spying regime, the likes of which we have never seen.
Richard Stallman, één van de grondleggers van de free software beweging en van het copyleft concept, over smartphones en andere mobiele telefonie:
I don’t have a cell phone. I won’t carry a cell phone. It’s Stalin’s dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I’m not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I’m not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop.
Maar om niet helemaal te wanhopen, nogmaals Julian Assange over het internet:
“The battle between those who want to use the internet as a tool of liberation and those who want to use the internet as a tool of control, mass control, is not over, it’s only just beginning.”
Keerzijde of duistere achterkant? In ieder geval klopt wat Assange beweert dat battle tussen vrijheid en controle essentieel wordt voor toekomst van internet. Web van controle of van vrijheid. Of is vrijheid ondertussen allang passé? Vrijheid voltooid verleden en nu nog enkel leve de conttrole! Veel mensen (massa, kudde, menigte) denken zo. Maar weten niet wat nog boven hun hoofd hangt. Arme toekomst.