On certainty

If it were the common practice to speak only when one is certain, then the only people speaking would be the idiots.

Social media and the suppression of creativity

"The world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome ...[I]ndividuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t object.” - Isaac Asimov

What does this mean for us now that our entire lives are spent in the public eye? Isn't recycling an old idea I expect to be 'liked' a better social strategy than venturing something new, untested, and unsettled as a matter of public good taste?

Some words for my students on Yik Yak, freedom, and personal responsibility

As new things are wont to do, they scare the crap out of old people.

As old people are wont to do with new things they don’t understand, they try to take them away from those who they perceive as less responsible than them.

Personally, I’m glad you have a place like this, where you can feel somewhat secure in your anonymity to say anything you want. In this post-911 world—your world, the only world you have ever known—these sorts of places are becoming worryingly few.

Virtually anything we say or do now is potentially under the eyes of surveillance, which means all is under surveillance. There is no relevant difference here.

I’ve surveyed Yik Yak a bit on my own. In my opinion most of it is trivial, some of it beautiful, and some of it ugly. But this is the nature of speech, is it not?

And who is to judge? Me? Some administrator? Your parents?

Though the knee-jerk reaction of many is to bend these rules, the laws of this land still guarantee adults certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

But children are not afforded these rights.

Let me remind you of something because there are those who will tell you, or at least treat you otherwise---You are not children. You are adults. To be an adult means you make decisions for yourself, the fruit as well as the consequences of which shall be yours alone.

You are adults like the world has never seen—a generation unique to this time, this place, your own histories. Old people will understand you more than you think, but less than they think.

They will look to you as the source of degeneration in the world. But since when have they done any better? You live in the world they made for you. Is it perfect?

In these years of college the world will be rent open for you, its inner-workings exposed for you to inspect. You, as all previous generations, inherit the world’s problems to solve in the way you see best.

Perhaps in their advanced age, your elders now feel that their time to make the world a better place has run short and their work left incomplete. Hence, they fear control slipping away from them to you.

So stubbornly they grip tighter, grab and pull what is yours by rights and is the simple fact of the matter.

You are adults. It’s your world and you own it. Your choices make the world of tomorrow—the good ones and bad ones.

I will not tell you whether or not you are permitted to use Yik Yak or what to do with it, and I will do what little I can to see to it others don’t either.

But ultimately this is your free speech and thus your responsibility to protect it. And they will come for it. The first time somebody uses it for something dastardly, they’ll commandeer all of the airwaves, the copper, and the fiber to make sure everybody sees it—to make people afraid, to convince other old people that they need to protect their children, and to convince you that you must be protected like a child.

So we all make a devil's trade—an ounce of security for a pound of liberty.

And thus, the world of tomorrow is created by our choices, our actions.

I want to explore the Darknet.

I don't know what's there. I have every right to be there.

I won't violate intellectual property rights or view child porn.

But if I don't do anything illegal, they are doing something illegal.

This isn't the Soviet Union and I'm not going to start acting like it.

Because if we all started acting like it was, it mind as well be.

I'm a political scientist, and have both the right and a legitimate reason.

Not that I need a legitimate purpose, because my right is already sufficient.

I'm interested in ISIL propaganda. I'm a scholar. I want to study it.

I'm also afraid of going to the sorts of websites I'd need to go to in order to view it.

Do you know what that means?

That means America is broken.

Freedom is broken.

The first stage is of censorship is self-censorship.

The scary thing, I think, is something that we all know.

In the scope of human civilization, freedom is the anomaly.

The default state of human society over the centuries has been tyranny.

We achieved something rare, hard gained and lost relatively easily.

Should we lose it now, how many tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years will it be before it regained?