Guest speaker: John Gilmore
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by John Gilmore.]
“Marijuana, it turns out, is three-quarters of the illegal drug problem, because it’s three times as popular as all the other drugs put together. So if you can move marijuana out of the black market and into a legal and regulated market you’ve gotten rid of three-quarters of the crime, three-quarters of the violence, and three-quarters of the black market money. It changes the dynamics for the other drugs. It makes it much more of a small potatoes thing.”
“If you move away from [Google’s] free services you can move away from the part of the Net that’s the most heavily surveilled.”
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HA haha! Too true, Lorenzo. I’m a self-diagnosed addict for gmail, youtube, and many other cyber-vices
Just so you know, I’m still seeing the buttons under the post quotations. It’s never really bothered me, any way, and it’s not out of laziness.
That talk by Eben Moglen is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJjPzyo3osg
I looked him up after you first podcasted him, Lorenzo, and have listened to both talks a few times in the last two years. The reason why I haven’t abandoned Gmail, Twitter or Facebook (though I use FB rarely these days) is not merely the ease of use/access, but also how well these systems are implemented. I find Gmail particularly useful in helping me organize my email. Probably everyone who frequently uses email, is receiving hundreds of emails each day ( I do), but I usually see no more than a dozen new emails in my inbox. This is because of various filters that I’ve manually configured, as well as the automatic filter that Google implements, including the new Primary/Social/Promotions schema, which I’m finding extremely useful.
I’m NOT plugging Google and I’m not down playing the facts of progressive loss of privacy through their services. I’m just pointing out that the email team is pretty good at what they do, and I don’t know of any open-source servers that can match the implementation of that feature set.
Moglen’s talk is so awesome because it’s a hind-sight analysis of what has been happening that is pretty much equivalent to the analysis that Marshal McLuhan gave in the early 60’s. Both are focused on the relationship of literature (books) to human culture and both look closely at the past as they elaborate the potential future: http://vimeo.com/71690120
My exposure to McLuhan has in a way prepared me for this loss of privacy, because as he said, the world of the book (18th & 19th century) is the world of the private individual, and the loss of that world heralds the re-emergence of an intensely communal society– not necessarily a healthy community and that’s the rub. At the same time, the loss of privacy actually means the return of anonymity, which is often confused with privacy, but these are two very different concepts. Any way, I’m gonna cease my rambling and leave it at this:
We are living in an intensely communal, intensely globally connected society and attempting to pretend that we can retain the rights and values of private individualism (which include secrets and property). The only rights that we can take with us, are those that can adjust to the realities of this new (novel) time.
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: Regarding Gmail, you prove my point. They have hooked you.]
My dear people, the information in the following link will be of great interest to you all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)
There is an open source web browser called Tor which allows one to surf the net in privacy. You can find the details on the website https://www.torproject.org/ .
I am very happy to share this with my fellow saloners =)
Peace
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: Be advised that you must clearly understand where your Tor code comes from and how to properly configure it. This is the browser bundle that was used by a large illegal drug site and has been targeted by the FBI with malware. I’m not saying to avoid Tor, but you must know what you are doing if you want to use it.]
Thanks for bumping London Real, Lorenzo. I’d listened to a few of their shows before. For those DMT-curious folks, this one is awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqKctXUbm0
P.S. Those “Like” and “Tweet” widgets are just as nefarious as Google analytics. If someone is logged into facebook (via cookies) and they visit this page, facebook get’s pinged and logs the user, regardless of whether they click the button or not… as mentioned in another talk by Eben Moglen
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: I think that I’ve removed those buttons from this site, along with several other links to Google that I hadn’t realized were burried there. But there are still a couple of other issues I’m working on that John Gilmore took time to look into and very gratiously pointed out to me recently.]
hump… time to get rid of Google….
Long time listener first time caller. John Gilmore’s talk was absolutely fantastic Lorenzo. Thank-you so very much for posting this along with your hard work and dedication to keep this salon up and running.
Much love from Inuvik NT Canada.
I remember his excellent speech from podcast 043.
Cypherpunk, EFF, GNU, MAPS are pretty solid tags.
Thanks for sharing.