Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance

Steve 41oo wrote:

yes the world wide web is a wonderful thing. and its no wonder governments want to control it. of course it doesnt look regulated but...

I propose the WWW is just one indicator of the death knell, it stared well before that with things like Ham radio, global voice telecommunications & automobile interstates and will continue long after the WWW is antiquated.

Repressive governments don't fair well in rapidly changing technological environments with large decentralized knowledge bases. Witness China, witness the former Soviet.

blatham wrote:

Boys and girls.

My personal preference, as originator of this thread topic, is that we keep to that topic more than the last few pages have done. There's a global warming thread (more than one) where that subject is more appropriately addressed.

The last few pages of this topic are as relevant to the subject of this topic -- "Information control, or, How to get to Orwellian governance" -- as the preceeding pages.

We are discussing examples of manipulation of truth. The allegation humans caused Global Warming is a huge manipulation of truth. Worse, it is a manipulation of truth that is potentially extraordinarily onorous and destructive. The motivation for this particular egregious manipulation of truth appears to me to be the same as the motivation for the manipulation of truth in Orwell's 1984:
The pursuit of power.

George Orwell in NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, Part III, Chapter III, wrote:

[O'Brien said,] 'The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you [Winston] begin to understand me?'

Now do you [Blatham] begin to understand?

Hey Blatham, how is it with you ?

New Doubts On Nuclear Efforts by North Korea
U.S. Less Certain of Uranium Program

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 1, 2007; Page A01

The Bush administration is backing away from its long-held assertions that North Korea has an active clandestine program to enrich uranium, leading some experts to believe that the original U.S. intelligence that started the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions may have been flawed.
...
The administration's stance today stands in sharp contrast to the certainty expressed by top officials in 2002, when the administration accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium program -- and demanded it be dismantled at once. President Bush told a news conference that November: "We discovered that, contrary to an agreement they had with the United States, they're enriching uranium, with a desire of developing a weapon."

Bush Administration FOIA Report Card Hits New Low

By Mark Fitzgerald

Published: February 27, 2007 2:10 PM ET

CHICAGO Back in December of 2005 with the White House coming under increasing criticism for its secrecy, President George W. Bush ordered federal agencies to speed up their responses to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

A new FOIA report card by a coalition of journalists groups makes it clear that Bush's directive did not produce a "surge" in the response rate by the agencies.

The study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government concludes the Bush directive did nothing to speed up responses by agencies that have been systematically cutting back the personnel assigned to FOIA work, even as backlogs of requests grow and the cost of fulfilling requests increases.

"Requests remain heavily backlogged," the study says. "Requesters still have long wait times for a response from many agencies. And people seeking records and information remain less likely to get the information they seek than in the past."

Chumly wrote:

Steve 41oo wrote:

yes the world wide web is a wonderful thing. and its no wonder governments want to control it. of course it doesnt look regulated but...

I propose the WWW is just one indicator of the death knell, it stared well before that with things like Ham radio, global voice telecommunications & automobile interstates and will continue long after the WWW is antiquated.

Repressive governments don't fair well in rapidly changing technological environments with large decentralized knowledge bases. Witness China, witness the former Soviet.

Or the printing press? Or the bicycle, mcadamized roads, the telegraph, telephone, radio, etc. You are an optimistic fellow indeed if you hope that modern technologies will (must?) produce the consequence you describe while earlier technologies in communications and travel did not.

I am not a proponent nor a fan of your idea (many subscribe to it, of course) because it holds as axiomatic that increased and dispersed information flow is, of itself, adequate to counter and overcome the propensity of those in power to control information for their own ends. I think it a dangerously romantic and naive notion.

I do think that what you describe is likely the most helpful element in promotion of a free and wide flow of information. But it isn't enough and the US, over the last six years, is rather obvious evidence of how potential benefits can be effectively subverted.

...

You need to look up the word "oligarchy" and more correctly determine who and what Orwell's character is describing in that sentence.

http://209.161.33.50/dictionary/oligarchy
Main Entry: ol·i·gar·chy
Pronunciation: \ä-l-gär-kē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chies
Date: 1542
1: government by the few
2: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes; also : a group exercising such control
3: an organization under oligarchic control

I do not accept the rules imposed by others. If I did, I would not be alive today.

the principles of the Declaration of Independence are not self-evident truths but arrangements necessitated by our inherently imperfect understanding.

On December 9, 2004, Eli Pariser, who headed Soros's group Moveon PAC, boasted to his members: Now the Democratic Party is our party. We bought it, we own it.

My goal is to become the conscience of the world

Hi ican711nm,
I did not respond to your post, not from lack of trying, but from lack of understanding of your post.

Note my phrase "I propose", (I was not trying to marry you) nor make claim in its entirety.

But I'll point out that some of your examples do not fit my argument as they are much too slow in development / deployment and are questionable as per the function of large decentralized knowledge bases.

How precisely is the future (as per rapidly changing technological environments with large decentralized knowledge bases) being "effectively subverted", given that such rapidly changing technological environments as I refer to, are just starting on their exponential growth curve?

Where is your proof this exponential growth curve has slowed in the last 6 years?

Where is your proof that repressive governments fair well in rapidly changing technological environments?

Did you read the link I supplied?

I suggest that if your fears are in fact realized in the US, the US government will not fair well, given rapidly changing technological environments with large decentralized knowledge bases. Your text does not demonstrably counter my argument.

I believe Chumly has made a valid point. Moreover I suspect that either Wilson or Roosevelt would have experienced much rougher going today than while they were in office. Sources of information are now so varied and the costs of entry into mass distribution channels so cheap that it is far more difficult for government today than in the past.

To address your queries directly: I have no concrete way of making direct comparisons between various US administrations as to which have operated more secretively and which have not. Precisely by what barometer do you make such (presumably) objective assessments?

Number of documents classified is up by 10x. Actually, there is a large amount of documents which previously were not classified, which now are.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Number of documents classified is up by 10x. Actually, there is a large amount of documents which previously were not classified, which now are.

Even if what you say is true (and you have in no way proven this to be the case yet) remember that the amount of paperwork of the US government today is massively higher than from the 1950's (for example) thus how precisely do you intend to show the presumed cause and effect?

I'll put it really simply: most governments most of the time can hardly keep track of themselves, let alone catch a technology / knowledge pig that is continuously being greased so it becomes ever more slippery and speedy.

That pig belongs to no one.

Some of you guys are clearly driving while looking in the rear view mirror!

'Scuse all the mixed metaphors!