Freedom on the Internet and other forms of communication, what a silly idea. Some governments like it if free and enfettered communication take down today’s rogue governments (define ‘rogue’?), but are uneasy about it and decidedly against it if their own people complain, criticize or try and take them down. Potential subversives and budding ‘anarchists’ is what the powers that be consider people who use these technologies unless they can be motivated to participate in the democratic political process as demonstrated by Obama. The danger of ‘the tail wagging the dog’ scenario looms large as this new medium is highly manipulatable and with its bright lights and ‘one-arm bandit’ style addict-ability, many citizens are unprepared for it.

For the media consolidated corporate world, communication technology (comtech) users are consumer sheep needing to be fleeced at every opportunity, even if they sell nothing but lifestyle and advertising. Image and perception, not reality and truth are the cornerstones of modern politics and have become the mantra of modern corporate competition as well. The idea of an out of their control ‘invisible hand’ looking after both business and the consumer is terrifying and unacceptable.

The only thing free about comtech is the ability to get plugged in, after that there’s nothing free about it at all. Restraints on freedom, seen in multiple forms of security, are everywhere; Terms of Use, privacy policies, regional restrictions, age and subject censorship, and legalities, just to name a few, are everywhere for users to negotiate. These pages are long, tedious and rarely read by the consumer public.

Now Twitter is applying selective censorship capability allowing governments the ability to shut down Internet communications on their service. The Arab Spring of 2011 has shown how powerful communication is among the people. This situation is not unlike the billboards of the 17 and 18th centuries when printing presses were the Twitter, Facebook and Google of that age. If authority wanted to silence protest they simply destroyed the printing presses, but that proved annoyingly ineffective. Presses went underground, defied rules and regulation, continuing the protest for change. Similar situations exist for Internet and cell phone users, but they have found ways around governmental restrictions and the word, so far continues to get out.

But what is meant as ‘free’? Free of charge or freedom of speech? In terms of economy the Internet is far from free. Having the technology to access the Internet is costly as are the access points the ‘providers’ make available. The airwaves of the pre Internet generation may have been free, but the pipelines of digital communication are decidedly not. And there is the rub. A communication service may have owned the station and the transmitter, but they could not own the gap between that and your receiver, whether television or radio. But with the digital age coming first via cable, the ‘station’ now owned the conduit as well. The communication business then had to protect themselves from ‘illegal’ capture of what once was free transmission and now that these cables also allowed the user to go ‘online’ meant that some form of regulation of access via passwords had to occur. In one swoop both the economic freedom of communication and freedom of speech were controlled.

The power of communication among the political and consumer public has always been a threat to large organizations. Governments, both good and bad, don’t like it. As demonstrated by flash mob demonstrations, viral videos and information campaigns, all largely uncoordinated and spontaneous, keep any stiffly authoritarian government scrambling to keep up with security to prevent its own crippling or possible demise. Tunisia, Libya and particularly Egypt and their experience last year are fine examples of what can happen when the general population get involved in politics. Iran struggles with this information technology and China’s censorship and control of dissent among its own people have so far kept that state from wholesale change. There appears to be a tipping point and that has not been met yet, time will tell.

Wealthy as it is, China’s communication network is largely still only in the hands of government services. And that government is decidedly authoritarian and has watched developments in other parts of the world with interest. The bourgeoning wealthy class is chaffing to expand its freedoms, but as yet is still not able to completely break free from surveillance and censorship. When it does, we will see a China Spring.

Interestingly in the western states largely responsible for the Internet, the initial freedoms of access and availability were for those who were at universities that could afford the technology which was usually for either academic or military communications and applications purposes. With the involvement of corporate IT departments the Internet began to expand into the commercial sphere.

Major corporations also don’t like free communication for they can be literally attacked with malware or figuratively attacked by concentrated campaigns of criticism of their actions and, as we all know or least are being told, perception is supposedly more important than reality in the business world and so can be easily held hostage to the manipulation of said perception, in as much as they do the same to the public.

The dizzying rise of capital investment in tech stocks was only matched by its meteoric fall. The Internet has become the epitome of Spencer’s economic “survival of the fittest.” It is still like this today, but the internet is becoming so highly commercialized that access and availability are now tied to economic consumerism and convergence does not just happen to media, acquisition of both companies and their patents is necessary for growth. It is ‘dog eat dog’ in cyberspace.

Advertisements litter the visual spaces on the screen and electronic letters (e-mail) have been replaced by essentialist, oversimplified and often vague 140 character stutterings. Personal data is splashed all over the Internet shared unapologetically between organizations both corporate and political all in the name of legal freedom, but God help you if the individual tries to do the same. You could refuse the new policies and click “No”, but then suffer the ‘ex’ or ‘dis’ – communication of exclusion from the services of the electronic community. Why? Because it is not economically nor politically free, never had been, never will be. Those who own the ‘service’ call the shots, your freedom ends there. As my father says, “Nothing is for free, never has been, never will be. Everything costs.”

Moral attitudes are being tested and pressured for continuity in our new global world, as ideas and thoughts, both radical and reactionary, spiritual and rational, are vying for our attention. Our sense of reality has also taken a hit as an ever growing urban metropolis population loses touch with the natural world and are presented with ‘reality’ television programming that is anything but reality. Some of the public is trying to struggle with the incongruities of modern life.

The unfocused Occupy movement is a prime example of the struggle and pushback from the public against corporate and governmental control. There are so many facets to the issues of modern society that protesting them one at a time has proven too difficult. It is rather the general malaise of society and the erosion of moral and ethical behavior of the elite that are a concern. As history shows a firmly entrenched elite react against mass public demonstrations against them.

So, we have economic censorship of the individual through consumerism, who can afford it and who can’t, as well as both corporate and governmental control and censorship via what do they want us to hear from them and what are they prepared to hear from the people and what they want us to think of the competition. Frighteningly, Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ is looming ever larger, as Kubrick’s ‘Hal’ is gaining ever more control while Max Headroom, Network 23, and life “20 minutes into the future” is here.