![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I’m told of a time when borders were too long to be enforced. No one needed a work permit to work in a different country because the idea of a country was only and intellectual concept. Your strength came from how many people trusted your word, how ready you were to work with your hands, and what you could carve out of opportunity.
An old man I knew told me that his grandfather’s driver’s license was a coin about twice the size of a silver dollar. Metal was the only thing that lasted back before plastic.
When I was in Amsterdam, I talked to a young man from Somalia. He told that the model named Iman is from Somalia and that you can always tell if someone’s from Somalia because they have such sad eyes. Generations of hardship, tragedy, famine and war have altered the very genes of the people from that part of the world. It’s in their eyes.
The internet has no borders. That’s changing. There are firewalls in China. I can’t watch Hulu clips in Canada. Companies are successfully litigating against Pirate Bay and other sites that freely distribute copyrighted music, films and television shows. This is the beginning of the end of freedom in the newest country on Earth. There will be tariffs and blockades on data. It will be traded like lumber. The internet decentralizes power by giving everyone a voice. That is being eroded.
I think that in the future, you will be able to recognize our generation’s children by the sadness in their eyes.
And their silence.
tags
An old man I knew told me that his grandfather’s driver’s license was a coin about twice the size of a silver dollar. Metal was the only thing that lasted back before plastic.
When I was in Amsterdam, I talked to a young man from Somalia. He told that the model named Iman is from Somalia and that you can always tell if someone’s from Somalia because they have such sad eyes. Generations of hardship, tragedy, famine and war have altered the very genes of the people from that part of the world. It’s in their eyes.
The internet has no borders. That’s changing. There are firewalls in China. I can’t watch Hulu clips in Canada. Companies are successfully litigating against Pirate Bay and other sites that freely distribute copyrighted music, films and television shows. This is the beginning of the end of freedom in the newest country on Earth. There will be tariffs and blockades on data. It will be traded like lumber. The internet decentralizes power by giving everyone a voice. That is being eroded.
I think that in the future, you will be able to recognize our generation’s children by the sadness in their eyes.
And their silence.
tags