final words on the iPhone, and what it means for your next cellphone
Do you get the feeling I have typed a lot in previous posts but really haven’t said anything yet? Me too.
this guy loves his iPhone so much more than I do, but maybe I will be the only one who thinks its funny.
I tried to wait out this last post to see if I could get any information about the Apple approved SDK (Software Development Kit) which would allow applications for the iPhone with Apple’s blessing. Depending on the details of this implementation (which have not yet been released) the level of “openness” which Apple allows for applications will have a direct impact on the future of the iPhone hacking scene.  Rumors either way have been flying around both ways for Apple’s March 6th SDK Roadmap event, but one of two things will happen for sure:
1. Apple announces a platform which is sufficiently open, allowing people to do pretty much whatever they want with the phone, sans the ability to unlock the device. This could deflect a significant amount of effort from making contraband applications, and force now rogue developers to make completely legit iPhone apps for their own selling pleasure, which could less the movement so focused and jail-breaking, (and thus unlocking the phone) which could cut down on people’s ability to use the iPhone on other carriers.
2. Apple creates a sham of an SDK which does not really offer too much leeway in using the phone for innovative applications; major companies jump on the bandwagon to increase interpolitiy for their products, but individuals stick with hacking, jail-breaking, and unlocking iPhones for maximum control over the device.
War on the Intertubes - Anonymous vs. Scientology
As I mentioned in the introductory post to my topic, there’s currently a “war” raging over the Internet right now, and it’s spilling into the real world. The war involves two sides - the Church of Scientology, founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, and Anonymous, a loosely organized group of Internet users, some of them savvy in the use of hacking and other internet mischief.
As you can probably tell from the flyer, one of the main goals of Anonymous is to spread information about the Church through the Internet. Apparently, from the Internet’s conception, the Church has done their best to prevent information concerning their organization from reaching the Net, citing copyright infringement. Scientology is unique among religions in this regard, as the free circulation of religious texts and information would generally be beneficial to a religion, while Scientology charges more and more money for progressively in-depth texts. While there are many sites to claim free Bibles, Torahs, and Qu’rans (www.freeholybible.com, www.internetmuslim.com/Dawah_Center/library.htm, etc) Scientology’s “Dianetics” will cost you money, no matter how much Internet hunting one does (although Anonymous has apparently made some efforts to spread as many of the Church’s texts as possible through torrents and Rapidsearch).
It appears that Anonymous has taken it upon themselves to attack what most people would consider societal ills. In class, the question was raised as to how Anonymous chooses their targets. As I mentioned, they also have brought grief to pedophiles and white supremacists, although the Scientology protests are the first time their activism has breached into the real world. Anonymous deems themselves a collective mass of Internet users, according to them, “Anonymous is not a person nor a group, Anonymous is an idea. Anonymous is humanity when the gloves come off”. It seems that they’re utilizing the form of free speech that’s touted by other extreme groups, such as white supremacists - ironically one of their targets. Since they’re demonstrating intolerance towards intolerant groups who most would agree the world would be better off without, where does that leave them?
It could be that the Internet is a breeding ground for such groups. There’s been much talk about the negative aspect of the Internet of allowing hate groups and other fringe individuals to unify. However, if anonymous represents what they claim to, ie, the unmitigated majority, do they manage to outweigh the negative groups?
von Hayek and the Internet
In the documentary, ‘The Trap’ Freidrich von Hayek is discussed as being convinced that “the use of politics to plan society was far more dangerous than anything problems produced by capitalism because it inevitably lead to tyranny and the end of freedom”. He believed that the only way to avoid disaster was to look back into the past, a golden time period when individual’s cared for their own self-interest. He believed this type of society would become a self-directing automatic system which would lead to liberty and prosperity.
The image of the couples dancing about (Part 1: 06:17) reminded me of how the internet is one of the best examples of this self-directing automatic system. There is much debate about what will happen when regulation and politics increasing become involved with the internet. Will von Hayek’s theory come to play here - will control over the internet lead to tyranny and the end of freedom?
In modern society, the internet is one of the best outlets for individual to speak their mind, make use of their freedom of speech, learn new things, and exist in this world. It helps to create a dialogue with others which often is not physically possible. It leads to a different type of existence in this world that was not present before (i.e. “internet personality”).
In a sense, life on the internet is a seperate society from the physical world we live in. It’s kind of bizarre as you think about how people become celebrities from the internet, people create entirely new personas, and how people can “visit” new places (www.vLES.com, google satellite) etc etc. This world is a very different world from that of our parents - where we can exist in this world in a way we never could before or have that completely taken away from us.
Freedom, the Trap, and New Media
While reading Anna Notaro’s Lo(n)g Revolution, one of her citations of an article by Jon Katz immediately shocked me:
“Where freedom is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media anymore, it is ferociously defended - and exercised daily - on the Net.”
Although the date of the article is given as 1997, it’s blatantly obvious that this quote was taken from a pre-9/11 context. Since September 11th, the mainstream media has become completely saturated with a discourse of freedom. Such an abstract term as freedom is difficult to pin down to a single definition, but it’s obvious that the term can be warped to suit the need of whoever’s using it. The primary dictionary definition is simply “the condition of being free from restraints”, and although some political definitions are given afterwards (such as the distinction of being free rather than a slave), are equally vague. The link I’ve posted with the “NMRS” del.icio.us tag details a few of the current administration’s definitions of freedom (http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2005/02/brothers-in-arms-osamic-vision-of.html) . Unfortunately, the “free’m”, as W likes to call it, that we’re supposedly trying to provide to the Middle East through military action is freedom that we don’t necessarily get here in America.
The Trap’s definition of freedom is somewhat different. Theirs is the dark, consumerist freedom based on game theory and free market economics, which we’ve discussed already. Given that the idealistic version of freedom that the government lauds is often crippled in America (take, for example, demonstrations in which protesters are forced to stand in designated “Free Speech Zones”, herded like animals into small pens), perhaps the fragmented, perverse version of freedom presented in “The Trap” is really all we have. The one zone that brings this idea into question is the realm of new media, namely the Internet. Whether or not the blogosphere is truly a public forum is up for debate, given a few aspects of its nature (the tendency to overestimate its capabilities as a tool of democracy, the ability to ignore content one doesn’t want, and the individualizing nature of working at a computer). However, it certainly seems that there’s a modicum more freedom on the Internet. I find it difficult to believe that a spontaneous protest could erupt concerning the ideals mentioned in the link I posted, however, on the Internet, the idea can be posted with little fear of punishment.
However, it’s important to note that this freedom isn’t a freedom of anonymity. With a little work, anyone can discover who’s behind a blog post or YouTube video - including the government. It’s wise to question exactly how much freedom we have on the Internet, and what exactly this freedom is, compared to other commonly used definitions.
change to free us from ourselves
About one minute into part three of “The Trap”, the narrator says that it is a dream to change people in order to free them from themselves. People need to be freed from themselves because we have become “oversimplified beings”. We are convinced of this because people in power have led us into a “world without meaning”. I found this to be interesting because it presented the problem of oversimplification in a very simplified way. The problem seems to be that people are now forced to be “free” (ie war in Iraq) which is a completely absurd idea. The solution, as hinted by the change in music and images of riots, is a revolution of some kind. The idea of being forced to be free is a great concept to wrap your head around. The movie “The Matrix” parallels this idea pretty well. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, Morpheus comes into Neo’s life and forces change upon him to free him from the Matrix (the world without meaning). Yet in order to become “free”, Neo needs to eat crappy food, live in a yucky ship and be hunted by machines. The things that are imposed on Neo in order to be part of the “free” world is like the different things our government has done to ensure our freedoms are preserved. Things like the patriot act force us to give up rights that define our freedom in order to preserve freedom and security. Hopefully my far fetched comparison is going across well so far.
In the Matrix, the character Cypher thought that the Matrix was a better alternative to the real world because he didn’t have to put up with all the nasty food etc., that Neo did. He would rather live in a world without meaning than live in a world where there were all kinds of silly contradictions to the idea of the real, free world.
This is a clip from the Matrix where Cypher is talking to Mr. Smith about how he would rather be oblivious to the flaws of the Matrix than deal with all the problems of the real world. I think it shows how a lot of people can believe that forced freedom is acceptable because its simple and better than dealing with real issues. Maybe that kind of mentality is why politicians can get away with saying catch phrases like “preserve our freedoms” without anyone thinking about what that really means.
Network Neutrality
Adam Curtis’ “The Trap” and its explorations of the concepts of freedom and positive and negative liberty made me think of network neutrality, an issue that may have great bearing on “new media.” For those of you unfamiliar with network neutrality, it is the concept of the lack of restrictions on communications networks (broadband internet in particular). In this way, it is the concept of negative liberty applied to the internet. Examples of restrictions that advocates of network neutrality fear include charging users for access to certain sites, charging websites for bandwidth (i.e. the time a site takes to load may depend on how much they are paying), or even complete blocking of certain sites.
As Isaiah Berlin predicted, the desire for this negative liberty has resulted in a desire for positive liberty - a call for regulation. Many advocates of network neutrality believe that government regulation is necessary to prevent the private companies who run these communications networks from placing restrictions. However, others argue, the internet is what it is today because of a lack of regulation and control, and enforcing (perhaps forcing) a certain model would be wrong and detrimental. As professor Tim Wu points out in his page about network neutrality, “The hard question, of course, is what exactly is ‘neutral?’” Blogger Cory Doctorow expands on this by pointing out that “Asking [the FCC] to write a set of rules describing “neutrality” and then enforce them seems like a recipe for trouble to me.”
Furthermore, this brings up the issue of whether or not the free market should be allowed to sort such issues out on its own. As suggested in the documentary, perhaps decisions made in the context of a free market are more democratic than those made by elected government. Advocates of government regulation may also be presenting a false argument between liassez-faire and the will of the people.
Here are some interesting articles/pages for exploring the issue further:
- Hands Off the Internet (an anti-regulation website/blog)
- Save the Internet (a pro-regulation website)
- The Benefits and Risks of Mandating Network Neutrality, and the Quest for a Balanced Policy (a looong journal article)
Positive and Negative Liberty
Discrepancy as to what it means to be free appears in one form or another throughout all three parts of this documentary. According to the film, positive liberty is driven by the false belief that there is one absolute definition as to what freedom is and the conditions necessary for a person to truly be free. Negative liberty, on the other hand, doesn’t define freedom as anything above and beyond the idea that individuals must be able to think and act on their own individual accord. It does not dismiss government and laws, but negative liberty states that such social constructions should exist only in so far as they act to uphold individuals ability to successfully carry out their own choices and actions. However, as Isaiah Berlin recognized and warned, the belief in negative liberty is always transformed into a form of positive liberty. Because negative liberty does not actually stand for anything concrete or definable, the moment a person decides what he or she believes to be freedom, it automatically becomes a form of positive liberty. And any belief in a final answer always leads to the coersion of others. Therefore, one can’t believe in negative liberty as an ideal because it would automatically corrupt the whole idea of it.
What I found very interesting about this concept is how easy it is to pervert, or misconstrue what this term represents (because as mentioned, it doesn’t represent something; it represents a lack of something: a lack of restriction to freedom). If I myself haven’t misunderstood the concept of negative liberty, it seems that influencial thinkers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Frantz Fenon, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, and George Bush (to just name a few) have all turned it into positive liberty in one form or another. For example, in the name of attaining true freedom through violance, as Fenon did, one is distinguishing what he or she believes to be the type of freedom worth fighting for, and is by default placing restrictions on the opposing side’s conception of freedom.
