The Internet as a case study of Socialism

Oh I was just looking at the hardware compatibilities of Free BSD, and unfortunately it appears not all of my hardware is compatible. Unfortunately, my CPU isn't supported by the OS and my sound isn't either. My hardware is a little newer than what the OS supports. Still, I appreciate the sharing of the info about Internet Relay Chat. I have systems that can use that! I will download mIRC and give it a shot.

Originally posted by InFriNiTee
Hello petrus4! Thank you for sharing the info about FreeBSD. I just wanted to ask, how does the news on IRC compare to all the "news" that's filtered down through the AP, and all the other corporate agencies?

I'm sure you have to take a lot of things with a measure of salt so to speak, but how does it compare? I used IRC a long time a go (1995 or so). When Diablo II came out, I went over to windows entirely. Do you have any good IRC links for real unfiltered news?

IRC is the direct ancestor of Twitter. Although I don't think it has happened recently, IRC was previously used for live reporting by journalists or other people who were actually at a scene at the time, in a similar manner to how Twitter is today. You can find logs of this here:-

www.ibiblio.org...

The difference between using IRC and Twitter for this purpose, is that Twitter is both centralised and corporate, which means that with Twitter, censorship of dissenting opinions becomes much easier.

Although Anonymous have been using their own IRC servers, unfortunately the Occupy movement seems to rely primarily on Twitter for their communication. Occupy need to be encouraged to start using IRC, and I'd really like it if anyone associated with Occupy could forward the suggestion to them.

Although I don't know, it's very possible that some IRC channels are still devoted to news today. I'd recommend going to www.efnet.org... and looking at the server list. You can then download mIRC and use it to connect to one of the servers listed there. You can also find a lot more information at IRChelp.org.

I'm liking how the BSD varieties look, being that all the open source software has been ported in one way or another to the OS. I also like the fact that it has gotten more modernized while still being secure over the years.

As far as being a generalised, end user system is concerned, I'd recommend FreeBSD of the three. OpenBSD tends to be used server-side for security, and NetBSD is devoted to maximum portability to various different forms of hardware.

Thanks again.

As I said earlier, my pleasure. Unfortunately I need to go offline in around half an hour; but I will hopefully try and keep the thread alive and answer questions until then.

Originally posted by petrus4

Originally posted by Lasr1oftheJedi
reply to post by petrus4

 

I must've come off wrong, honestly sorry. ^.^

I'm really sorry as well, Jedi.

I did reflect after replying to you, that my response was overly harsh.

The problem is that I've had a lot of people in the past do that; basically telling me to "get with the times," etc. The real issue is that, to be honest, I don't believe as though the Internet has truly progressed or moved forward. I actually think it's gone backwards.

We don't have anywhere near as many people producing their own material now as they used to, and the whole thing has just been completely corporatised and dumbed down. The more I look at other examples of successful socialism, as well as the Internet itself, the more I realise that things really don't need to be this way at all.

We've got a minority of people who originated the corporate scenario, and most other people brainwashed to accept it. Not because it works, but simply because it makes money for the few who want it, while everyone else suffers.

Totally cool, I didn't take you as harsh, honest. If anything, I felt I was the offensive one. The troll comment made me feel low, as I try to avoid it, but we all have our moments on any board that make us look back and go, "Well, darn it, that wasn't what I ment." So, I see no harm, no foul.

I agree, that in alot of respects, the internet has gone backwards. That was kinda of my intent on reference to the old west, where we had more freedom (as you listed in numerous sites that no longer exist due to corporate take-over either directly, or indirectly) back in our day than we do now.

My only counter point is You-Tube, where just about anyone can post just about anything. But even in that statement, there is the wording "just about". And your right, in the days of free personal webpages and personal BBS and all that, where and when you could post ANYTHING.

You didn't want to see it, you didn't view it. We policed ourselves. We didn't need someone to tell us what was "worthy" or not to be viewed, we made that decision.

As for "getting with the times", I can see how that can be taken wrong, and frustrating. I wasn't suggesting you lacked the ability, and totally understand the desire to say "Nope, when someone changes things for the worse, I won't simply sit back quietly and take it.". Heck, I think that's a good point! I simply believe the sad reality is that is the way it is. At the same time, and one of the main reasons I love ATS, is for those who refuse to simply take an obvious break down of the system for what it's worth, so, thanks for setting me straight. I suppose I never realized how much weight that term carried. It was just a phrase until you opened my eyes. A star and flag, as you just help me deny a little more of my ignorance. A many thanks! ^.^

Originally posted by InFriNiTee
Oh I was just looking at the hardware compatibilities of Free BSD, and unfortunately it appears not all of my hardware is compatible.

Unfortunately, that can happen. If you still want to try out an open source, UNIX based operating system, however, I can also suggest Ubuntu Linux. That is a system which is somewhat easier to initially use, and is also almost guaranteed to be compatible with your hardware.

Unfortunately, my CPU isn't supported by the OS and my sound isn't either. My hardware is a little newer than what the OS supports. Still, I appreciate the sharing of the info about Internet Relay Chat. I have systems that can use that! I will download mIRC and give it a shot.

edit on 5/9/2012 by InFriNiTee because: (no reason given)

I am curious; what type of CPU do you have? 64 bit x86 is supported; it's the AMD64 port.

I also realised last night, that FreeBSD might be a little tricky for some people, straight off the bat; although I also included a link for Ubuntu in the above post, so that might be easier for people who still want to try something different.

Good analogy as to how capitalism works.

Yes we the people used to have our own means to survive, we were self sufficient. We lived off the land and grew our own crops, made our own clothes. Then land ownership laws changed. To make a long story short, land owners became capitalists, and all the small family self sufficiency was replaced with 'jobs'. Instead of us having and controlling our own survival/'web sites', we now have no choice but to be part of a centralized corporation giving only an illusion of autonomy and individuality.

The more production is centralized, and controlled by fewer people (the bigger a corporation gets the less people have ultimate control) the less control you have.

This is how capitalism works, it will always seek control in order to make profit. It's not a conspiracy, it's simply the nature of capitalism seeking profit.

Originally posted by ANOK
Good analogy as to how capitalism works.

The only problem, ANOK, is that it's more than analogy. The Internet is crucial to human political wellbeing.

I don't know if you are familiar with the books Looking Backward and Equality by Edward Bellamy, but if you're not, I'd recommend looking them up. They were written in the 1880s by a man who envisioned a future Socialist scenario, and predicted using something very similar to the Internet to hold virtual equivalents of Occupy's General Assemblies, even back then.

The Internet could be extremely important to the type of scenario that you've told me you want.

Excellent thread. Thank you for making it as it really made me think about what happened from the 'good-ol cow boy' days to where we are today with the internet.

I've been dabbling or at least have touched on everything you have in the OP (IRC/ftp/usenet/*nix systems).
I also have some of my own thoughts to add onto this thread as to WHY the internet is what it is today, how it evolved to get here.

First the easy and short stuff, then onto the evolution!

IRC is still around and kickin'. Some major networks might have been DDoS'd a bunch years back but they are still around. They did lose a huge chunk of their userbase due to these attacks but they still exist.

Althouh using 'alternative' operating systems like FreeBSD is great, think of the average user. It would be like them learning mandarin chinese

Perhaps for the more tech-savvy person Ubuntu linux would be a good OS to start out with. It runs on pretty much everything and it's easy to use.

I'm guessing many people who were interested in computers back in the day ended up on some sort of *Nix system, and stumbled upon irc because of it to find user support.


Lets get onto the evolution part.
Think of TV. Back when they first came out, the picture was black and white (think: text-only, with ASCII art ) and the programming was limited (few resources to access compared to today, although probably better in quality)

Today it's 3-dimensional, 5.1 surround sound imax experience with non-stop action/drama to keep the brain occupied the entire time. This is what our society has become from all the advertising and always trying to make a more flashy product or way of luring people in.

That's why myspace became so popular. Everyone was on it. Then facebook was easier to use so people started to migrate to that. But our attention spans became too short, so twitter with its 140 character max limit is all the new rage. Next we're going to just post pictures about stuff everywhere... oh wait.

Also there are a ton more people on the internet today, than there were 20 years ago. Even 4 year olds are accessing the internet in some way, while for me I haven't really had the chance to "go online" until in the 6th grade and that was only at school for limited periods of time as it cost $ per minute of usage.

Combine this with the flashy trends and you have a dumbed down userbase that wouldn't care to learn something like irc or unix because it's too tedious, takes too much time to read about and it's not point-click-and it's done.

I can see where you are coming from though. It seems whenever something like facebook or twitter becomes big enough, they start acting like any other massive corporation and start to censor things. I assume this is to protect themselves from a lawsuit though. It is really sad that for some people a handful of different sites is the entire internet (or just websites only), kind of like when people were on AOL they didn't really venture outside of what AOL was providing them. Those internet URL pages were said to be harmful. Not FDA approved. Don't use it.

These major sites with concentrated information / networking are also collecting all this data on you so privacy and anonymity is out the window as well.

A lot of times I wish we could go back to text based websites, with a few flashy .gifs here and there. ahh the good old days.

Usenet you say? I should get back into that.

Welp I'm going to sleep. Too tired to post more, and this is the second time I'm writing this as the first time the browser accidentally went back a page and I lost the original text.

Originally posted by LOLZebra
Excellent thread. Thank you for making it as it really made me think about what happened from the 'good-ol cow boy' days to where we are today with the internet.

Awesome post, Zebra. It is extremely heartening to know that, despite the "LOL Facebook," majority, there are still a few other people like you out there.