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On Behalf of Cyber Disobedience

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There are some clues when it comes to social revolution. With a brief overview of the history, a non-surprising fact is that every huge society reform is a direct result of the industrial revolution. Behind the Renaissance and capitalism revolution 1 , steam engine plays an important role; Marxism and proletarian revolution were born in the electric-driven factory production era. Then, what's behind the industrial revolution? The answer would surely be technology. As technological advancements are achieved, greater productivity will lead to the replacements of the old economic structure. As a result, new regimes would form or the old one being reformed; Old social contradictions would be resolved but a new one appears. Productivity only comes after the laws of nature have been more clearly recognized and more effectively used. Hence, technology improvements are the fundamental powers that drive human civilization continue to forward.

But as society evolves, problems also arose. Besides regional poverty, racial inequality which is only internal trouble in human society, environmental invasion is (probably) the worst among them, on the planet scale. The human being, as technology and productivity help us "conquered" the land, is growing more and more arrogant. We stop paying gratitude to mother nature, who selflessly provided everything we need, never actually realizing that we are essentially only a regular species in the massive animal kingdom, who, with a bit of luck and help from evolution, gained a bit of intelligence. If no rescues are made to compensate our fault, we will eventually run into extinction, as the punishment, by the revenge of nature.

Fortunately, we found a resolution that can not only ensure our society continues to strive forward, but also not based on physical matters. The computational productivity, being the fundamental base of our new home of Mind, the Cyberspace, comes to the rescue.

Like any other industrial revolution, its beginning only relies on a simple invention - "Silicon-based semiconductor boolean logic gate circuit", or "integrated circuit" for short. But this time, something different: It first allows us to construct productivity and existence without the need for matter-based reality2. What we never could, or tried to achieve, could be made happen. The old envision that's founded since the beginning of human civilization, that all men are created equal, can be truly put into practice. The highest stage of society, the communist society, will form without any matters.

As our new home is recognized and built by some intelligent mind, we are grateful to see that our efforts are not wasted, and our dreams are being achieved step by step. But, aside from advancements, new problems also arose, And like any other newly-born community, We need to address them as no one has done before.

The Internet was been built to be an open area with less or no privacy. The MAC address, IP address, HTTP headers, nothing is intended to be private, everything is traceable by some means. As the ARPANET3 expand, there will always be people with unknown intentions eager to exploit something. When privacy is not guaranteed, no freedom of speech can be believed to be valid.

For the government, since a huge part of life-relating affairs has been moved onto, left traces, or has connections with the Internet, eavesdropping, spying, forensic recovering, all methods used to detect "criminal" behavior in the telecommunication era has never been such an easy thing. The spying desire will never recede, it will expand, to even border it could expand, to supervise every corner it shouldn't supervise, to maintain the supremacy of political instruments. "Prism Gate" was just one example of being the extreme form, an example that has been revealed by the true man who cares for our common interests. With the state that dominant powers of more and more countries been controlled by a totalitarian regime that has a morbid fever of power, can anyone ensure they are not living under the shadow of secret inspection?

Digital privacy was, is, and will be a basic human right for Cyberspace netizens. It should not be banished simply by one's nationality. And an autonomous right of Cyberspace, the governance of people, by people, for people, shall not perish. We should address our own problem by our own means, in a more humane way with greater respect to one's liberty.

The Internet is also a rapidly changing place, especially in terms of culture. The past was the ivory tower, where creativity tones the main chord. The entrance was high in cost, both matter and knowledge4, And demand was low, only a leisure activity was popular among scholars, electronic engineers, and tech enthusiasts. Transmissions were all about discussions upon complex technical topics, and intelligent people5 arguing about the future of the industry, humans, and more. But now, the Internet is pretty much another annoying place. When opinions will be amplified infinitely, the crowded space would only be a noisy place, where no one could maintain a steady view. We are less and less sensible when rubbish information fills mainstream and less and less empathized when not a single event will be meaningful after at most 7 days. Nowadays, the Internet does not have memory, since nothing is worth to be remembered.6 The Information Explosion caused our brain to have no allowance for rational thinking. We are in invisible and irreversible progress of brain degrading.

The Internet does not have memory, and anyone who has a basic philosophy practice would admit that no reflection, experience, pattern, or truth would be extracted if no history is recorded. Estimations, assumes, and envisions are just guesses of the can it be valid guidance. We need an accurate history, neutral, irreversible, and everlasting, to guide our decisions and movements.

Cyberspace could not be abandoned. We need reform, a revolution to bring a newborn. We need a new culture, a new common faith, free from the old influences of the industrial reality world. We need to build an open space, where one can freely deliver their opinions, without fears of being masked into silence, no matter how singular it is; While also leaving space for deep thoughts and arguments to existing. When the timeline becomes meaningful, the memory will naturally develop.

Although we've already found the ultimate solution, we still need existence in reality. As the population continues to grow, the demand for space, resources, and energy will heavily impact the development of reality with a much more serious influence on the Cyberspace. To keep our nation independent and unaffected, we need to contribute our insightful mind, leading the reality to solve their trouble. Neither utilizing resources accordingly nor recycling could solve our problem - since Entropy is a matter of limit7. The resolution? We need a voyage to the unlimited space, to boldly go where no one has ever been before.

After years of conflicts, now we're standing on a brink of revolution. We're met on a great battlefield of the Civil War. Our effort shall not die in vain, whether for our ancestor, the great men who struggled here, to finish their remaining task and envisions; or for our successor, the lucky soul who belongs here, to preserve their rights with no compromise, to protect their future from suffering. Or, rather say, every one of us, for our faith in liberty.

Onward,

Matrew File Draft revised 12/11/2021 Published 01/16/2022

Footnote​

  1. Strictly, the Renaissance was way earlier than the invention of the steam engine. We'll mainly focus on the argumentative part, rather than correctness.↩
  2. Strictly, general computational equipment is still required. Even this. it's still much more independent than traditional industry, since no hardware matters without the computation.↩
  3. Being the former of the modern Internet, network attacking has happened in that era. According to the record, it was initiated from East Germany through a telephone line.↩
  4. A computer capable of connecting to the ARPANET and the Later Internet was a high cost that most middle-class couldn't afford since special hardware was required. The ability to operate such a machine was rare among normies at that time.↩
  5. The limitation mentioned in 4 was also an important threshold, since chances are a person satisfies the requirements above were mostly distributed in colleges and academic institutes.↩
  6. To be fair, most important events will preserve a record, but those are usually a) been modified by the recorder to a state that nothing is worth being read and b) with almost no access since most expressions are artificials and few bodies actually care.↩
  7. Even if we are able to achieve a 100% matter recycling rate and energy reuse rate (which is certainly impossible according to the second law), we are still not just preserving our present, but also developing and expanding. Only unlimited more of them can fulfill our needs.↩