Category: Tech professionalism

Declaration of Internet Freedom, from…

Earlier today, “the internet” posed a Declaration of Internet Freedom.

Readers of this blog would probably guess that these are principles I would stand behind.

What is perhaps interesting about the declaration is what is left out: who or what are we as the Internet declaring freedom from?

It is pretty clear that this statement is targeted at:

  1. States that wish to regulate the Internet, and
  2. (Largely) corporate interests who act as internet service providers and own the wires that make up the ‘net.

Perhaps unlike other declarations, Internet Freedom is completely dependent on both states and providers going along with the principles. This does not defeat the proposition, however. States and corporations are made up of people, who decide to put pressure in the right places to ensure that the declaration is upheld in practice.

The flip side of “freedom from ___” is “freedom to ___.” The 5 propositions set a great baseline for the Internet to enable a lot more freedom of doing.

Make your voice heard.

Your post(wo)man as a server admin?

Google execs, tech experts focus on future of Postal Service – The Federal Eye – The Washington Post.

I like this — a lot.  I’m a fan of the postal service, because of its important role in our history, but realize the challenge that the Internet poses to a costly distribution of paper could be too much for the service to bear. It may be that the postal service somehow gets into the business of providing e-mail addresses, or credentialing/identity verification.

Regardless of the role that the service might play in our national communication landscape, I’m interested in another aspect of this story. Postal workers have a bit of a professional ethic (“neither rain, nor sleet…”). This is the kind of thing that I think we could use more of in the technological realm. Sure, my sysadmin warned me that sudo access comes with “great responsibility,” but given the recent oversights at Sony, how common is this approach? It seems to me that, as security and privacy become increasingly core to what technologists need to concern themselves with on a daily basis.  I think that professionalism might do more than laws to cultivate this approach among the guardians of our servers and wires.

This idea is still in the hatching stage, so I hope to blog more about it in the future.