Posted 2 years, 1 month ago in the early morning by oso
The following is my translation of Juan Freire’s post “Declaration of Independence of the Blogosphere: Promoting Hacker-Citizens” and is posted with his permission.
The internet is an opportunity. Weblogs are, within the network, another opportunity to recuperate the power that is proportioned between the synergy of individual identity and the collaboration of many. But to achieve it, hacker citizens are needed to actively construct an ethical code for their actions online and in the real world. Does the opportunity to succeed exist? It all depends on how the future is constructed. Let’s put ourselves to work:
- Break the closed code of elitism and of fundamentalism of any type. Open the code of the conversation and intellectual plurality.
- Be inquisitive. Break with the ideas that are accepted without critique. Ask for available data and remix the information to observe reality from other points of view.
- The internet offers a virtual space of liberty, autonomous of the authorities of the physical world. But this independence will always be temporal; in any moment it is susceptible to ending or reinventing itself. So, take intense advantage of this transitory independence.
- Write what you wish; about your life or about the world. Everything is useful, nothing impedes what exists on the net. Only those who are interested (if these hypothetical people exist) will read what you write.
- Learn “languages,” discover people and ideas far away from your geographic and cultural surroundings. Construct new maps with your explorations and share them with your “neighbors”.
- Move your ethics and your intellectual attitude online to your “physical” life. Become a citizen hacker. But, take precautions; in the “real world” there are more forces and powers that can impede your actions.
- Protect yourself with anonymity if you believe it necessary to avoid legal or social censures. Maintain and promote your virtual identity even though it doesn’t correspond visibly to your “real” identity. Guide yourself with honesty. Produce your own ethics of behavior.
- Collaborate with the networks. But don’t allow yourself to become generic and disposable. Your strength, and the strength of everyone, is to unite the power of many to the value of the individual. Connect yourself intensely with the rest and with the net, but do it freely.
- Link, link, link.
- Take pride in not including publicity on your blog … or include advertisements on your blog and make money if you can. Both options are valid if they are done with honesty and transparency. It’s not so important what you do as how you do it.
And above all, don’t pay too much attention to everything said in this post.
I’m in a cafe right now in Chacao, waiting for Luis Carlos to come join me. Spanish readers should check out his blog … it’s impressive. On the flat screen TV’s they’re showing “La Avalancha de Caracas” - the big opposition march on Avenida Libertador in support of Manuel Rosales. I wonder if “A.M. Mora y Leon” will post a series of “Babes of Politics” pictures or whatever it is he/she likes to call them. I always laugh at the concept that conservative women are more attractive than their liberal counterparts. Even HP would agree with me on that one. But Rosales seems to do alright. Hopefully there won’t be any incidents of violence at the march. Traffic is nuts today.
Aw, Oso, it’s not about liberal or conservative. In Latam, they don’t really have conservatives outside the libertarian think tanks (economic) and the Catholic Church (social) and those two don’t overlap (though I think they should). Most of those Rosales chicks are probably liberals by gringo standards. It’s just that against Chavez, they look conservative, because well, anyone would.
I have heard some rightwingers insist that the pretty chicks are all rightwing but I don’t buy that either. It’s not the rightwingishness that makes chicks pretty, but the business of being on the cutting edge of trends. In PJ O’Rourke’s book, which first noticed this, think it was ‘Give War A Chance’ he said that all the pretty chicks in the 1960s were leftists and rightwing chicks were ugly old crones. That’s because the cutting edge of trends was liberals and leftists, culminating in the McGovern era. I came of age when Ronald Reagan was first elected, casting my first vote for the guy, cringing in horror and utterly rejecting the odious Jimmy Carter. That’s where I am coming from. There’s been a big rightwing wave for a long time in the states, that’s where the notion that rightwing chicks are prettier than leftwing ones. After November’s election, who knows? The Babe Theory of Politics only argues that where the pretty chicks are, so are the authentic political winds of change, the real waves of trends. The prettiest chicks flock to the cutting edge. Some biological force at work, I suppose.
By the way, I am female.
A.M. Mora y Leon,
I find your comment fascinating and I agree with both of your points. First, I think that just about anyone who has studied political science agrees that the old dichotomy of liberal/conservative doesn’t apply to today’s political and economic realities and yet we all continue to use the terms. In Venezuela commentators still refer to Chavez as liberal and Rosales as conservative when, in fact, both candidates still practice Santa Clause politics. (who will give away the most while in office, whether it’s with Chavez’s early bonus for public sector employees or Rosales’ “Mi Negra” government debit card) The same is true in Ecuador: Correa is called the liberal and Noboa is the conservative even though the political platform of both candidates is “I’ll give away the most.”
I think your comment about “cutting edge babes” is also fascinating and - as I think about it - true. You touch on what I’ve been wanting to write about in the fifth and final post of “Understanding Minority Conservatives” and that is that one of the major appeals of any movement is precisely that: it’s a movment. In 1950’s Prague that cutting edge movement was communism. In 1990’s Prague the cutting edge movement was unregulated capitalism. The Iranian Revolution was once as cutting-edge as today’s blogger-reformist candidates.
And yet, within all of these political movements we find the same self-righteous belief that a particular ideology will bring about social change. I don’t mean to underestimate federal governments (imagine how smaller the US debt would be and how greater our reputation abroad if Kerry had one. And imagine China today if Zedong never became Chairman Mao).
But with that said, I can’t think of a single way the Bush administration has affected my life. Whether there’s a bus to take me to the airport, whether there’s a library for me to work in, whether there are pot holes in the street for my bike to slam into: those are the issues that concern me and they’re all decided at the local level.
So while the cutting edge flocks to this movement and that one, I salute city hall. I salute whoever made the running paths along the ocean here in Santa Monica. And whoever got funding for this amazing new library. And whoever implemented the local recycling program.
The same was true when I was living down in Monterrey, Mexico. At the time, everyone was disillusioned with Fox, saying he was no different than all the other PRI presidents. They expected Fox to take power and immediately their daily lives would change. It never clicked that even though Mexico has a far more centralized government than our own, local change still comes from local governments.
Anyway, I appreciate the comment and I’m content to know that you read Frei’s manifesto.