29 October
2006 Chatmag News.
Article by Terry
Hancock, first appearing on Freesoftwaremagazine.com
Somebody recently
noted that, what with all the bombing and killing and tyrannical madness
going on in the world, how can we waste all this time talking about free
software? Surely there's more important stuff to worry about?
Well, they’re
absolutely right that there are bigger problems in the world. When I get
a chance to do something more direct about it, I plan to. So far, it looks
like voting is about it, though.
On the other hand,
you can’t trivialize peacetime matters. Peace is more important than stopping
war. It’s the thing we need to protect when we deal with the evils in the
world.
Regrettably, peace
usually works the soft and slow way, while war is swift and always seems
like the simpler solution. Hence our constant error in trying to make wars
to stop wars. It is always a mistake to try to stop the processes of peace
just because war seems more urgent. Because peace is what actually stops
wars.
Free software
does, in my opinion, make significant strides forward in creating long-term
peace for humanity. A web, constructed of free software now connects us
all, enemies and friends alike—and people who used to be enemies are becoming
friends. Or perhaps only their children are.
This is the real
thing that those “evil internet chat rooms” are doing to our children:
they are connecting them. They’re allowing people who wouldn’t talk to
each other before the chance to do so in relative safety, unencumbered
by distance. They’re allowing them to come to terms with each other on
a personal, down-to-Earth level like nothing else can. It makes a difference
when you know that the “foreigner” with the odd skin color and the funny-looking
clothes has a name and a pet hamster named “Rodrigo”.
The thing breeding
in those internet chat rooms is surely the power-mongerers of the world’s
worst nightmare: it’s a new generation of people who are beginning to think
of their race as “Human” and their nation as “Earth”. I’m not saying we’re
there yet, but there is something happening. Something that happens through
shared experiences and exchanged knowledge. Something personal that treaties
and laws and propaganda ministers can’t get to. People are talking to each
other.
There’s a forum
on the internet that I have visited where Hindi and Muslim Kashmiris hurl
insults at each other, pretty much incessantly. But they are talking to
each other. I regularly converse with people from all over the English-speaking
world, and also with a few people from Japan, Russia, Germany, France,
Sweden, India, Italy, and Brazil (a Brazillian made some important contributions
to a project I’m still working on, while my main collaborator is Swedish—so
some of these relationships have been significant, productive experiences),
not to mention Guam and Iceland.
It’s also largely
on the internet that the knowledge of treachery and deceit in governments
has been disseminated, because it’s a nearly unsuppressable press with
few chokepoints that would-be tyrants can throttle. And when they do try,
as they are trying, it is largely through free software that work-arounds
are made.
Free software
is also hard at work, leveling the economic playing field for developing
economies trying to modernize, without finding themselves under the thrall
of developed nations’ software corporations. It’s free software that’s
showing that sophisticated technology needn’t be equated with powerful,
centralized control, and that sharing doesn't have to forced by a command
economy in order to work.
GNU/Linux is making
affordable embedded devices (whether they are the OLPC laptops or just
mobile phones) that can be deployed to more people in more remote locations,
in order to empower those people with the ability to speak back and to
solve their own problems in their own way on their own terms, using their
own resources, instead of falling deeper and deeper into World Bank debt
or some other form of debt-slavery imposed by developed-world power holders.
Happy, well-fed,
well-educated, hopeful people do not become suicide bombers and neither
do they elect fear-mongerers. So if you really want to stop the violence
and bring back sanity, then the best way to do it is to do whatever it
takes to make people in even the most far-away lands happy, well-fed, well-educated,
and hopeful. It’s not just humanitarian and altruistic, it’s also enlightened
self-interest. And you could make worse choices than free software as a
means of furthering that goal.
--Terry Hancock--
Copyright
information
This
blog entry is (C) Copyright, Terry Hancock, 2004-2006. Unless a different
license is specified in the entry's body, the following license applies:
"Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted
in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved and appropriate
attribution information (author, original site, original URL) is included".
--Chatmag News--
External Link:
Freesoftwaremagazine.com
Free software
and world peace.
