> trends away from net neutrality globally, and towards greater government surveillance / suppression of encryption ...
Is that a trend?
It strikes me that these are ongoing points of conflict, at least in particular with encryption. Whether it's illegal numbers, Wassenaar, or the UK sitting on a version of RSA for over two decades, keeping it top secret. Or the enduring controversy over TOR, a tool of government surveillance.
I think the only thing that's changed is the degree and immediacy with which policy related to these issues affects the public.
More generally, for all the 'consumption' Facebook and Instagram, you also have Arduino and 'maker' culture, Soundcloud rappers, Youtubers of all stripes (from the old dude in his garage machine shop, inexplicably addressing an audience of tens of thousands a few times a week, to the flavor of the month pop-drama garbage), an endless list of self-directed learning resources, Wikis, etc. etc.
I certainly see the merit in the 'Wu' observation, but it strikes me how robust and resistance the internet is -- has been -- to this erosion.
It feels like it - but I don't have a scatter plot that I can provide to prove it.
Snowden revelations felt like the start of the wave of awareness, at least amongst those with even just a modicum of interest and savvy.
In AU we tend to follow the trends (no matter how bad they are) set by other regimes. Two recent examples spring to mind. In 2017 a fairly horrific data retention law was passed that requires all ISP's to record and retain (for two years) all user meta data. In 2016 the AU Bureau of Statistics ran the latest census - there was a significant policy change regarding the long-term retention of these PII data, cynically announced a few days before Christmas the previous year (a profoundly quiet time in AU as most take their summer holidays around then).
Watching news from the UK and the US - but less so the EU, at least - is discouraging in terms of the continued eroding of privacy and freedom. Separating large institutions such as FB / Google / Microsoft from nation states misses the point - their interests more often align with each other than with their citizenry / customers(products).
> More generally, for all the 'consumption' Facebook and Instagram, you also have Arduino and 'maker' culture ...
I love the arduino, but I don't think it's going to save us from the activities of bad actors.
> I certainly see the merit in the 'Wu' observation, but it strikes me how robust and resistance the internet is -- has been -- to this erosion.
Read the book. There's a trend of people thinking 'this is how it will always be' discovering later, too late, that that's not the case.
Is that a trend?
It strikes me that these are ongoing points of conflict, at least in particular with encryption. Whether it's illegal numbers, Wassenaar, or the UK sitting on a version of RSA for over two decades, keeping it top secret. Or the enduring controversy over TOR, a tool of government surveillance.
I think the only thing that's changed is the degree and immediacy with which policy related to these issues affects the public.
More generally, for all the 'consumption' Facebook and Instagram, you also have Arduino and 'maker' culture, Soundcloud rappers, Youtubers of all stripes (from the old dude in his garage machine shop, inexplicably addressing an audience of tens of thousands a few times a week, to the flavor of the month pop-drama garbage), an endless list of self-directed learning resources, Wikis, etc. etc.
I certainly see the merit in the 'Wu' observation, but it strikes me how robust and resistance the internet is -- has been -- to this erosion.