2010-08-27

We Need A Hippie-Movement In The Information Age / Hippie2.0

You know there are some times, where I ask myself what some people are thinking, or if they think at all, but sometimes, it's just that thinking that leads to something you don't really want.


Let me stride out a bit.
In the late 60th and early 70th, there was a hippie movement, beginning in the US, spreading all over the planet. Despite the bad effects, it has some major influence on the thinking, not only of a single generation, but on the thinking of many people. It lead to being more open to different races, gave women more power and strengthen their position in society. It allowed things to do, the people have been ashamed of even thinking before. More freedom on sexuality, just being what you will be, feeling like flowing in the cosmos freely.
Many things were illegal, but that didn't count. There were more important things than some books with letters said. And many people, for things at that time has been arrested, which were quite normal and legal after the ideas and things had been part of the day by day life. Not everything, though, but most of it.
To make it short: It pushed the understanding of freedom forward to a new level. Love it or hate it, they did it.

But as time goes by, it's like always, we forget. And now slowly, but continuously, we lose more and more of that expensive freedom. We already can not have a real and open free discussion about sexuality on TV. We damn nude stuff, and hide it from our kids as if nudity would be evil and unnatural. I never saw a baby come to life with clothes already on the body, but anyway. We are going to be the Squares another generation warned about.

And it's getting worse. As me move deeper into the information age, governments all around the globe, yes the western too, trying to control information and trying to control how and when information is available to someone. They have big, powerful backup from the so called "Content-Industry". Well, you can think what you want about that, but this can't work in a free and open society in the information age. This would only work in a totalitarian system, where everything is controlled and you would have no freedom at all, or just the freedom to work until you're old and die. We are on the edge of where this is gone to be decided.

What we need now is a new hippie-movement. The Information-Hippies! A free minded movement not only for data, for bits and bytes, but for the reality, too. There are some good beginnings like the Free Software movements e.g. But it can't reach people minds without bringing the new message of openness and freedom to real life. It might be irrelevant for our progeny, but then it would be already too late. Information is not only news or knowledge stuff, although it's the most important part, but it's every bit of data. We are more and more consumers. So if all the content is locked away for money, how is it freedom? Freedom should not need money, or money is the only freedom.

Photo by Ed Tech Diva. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
We need a movement that don't obey to rules made by companies. We need to see that our own government might not be as free as you want them to be. We need to extend the rules once again for the information age, for the new age of real freedom. Talk about sex in public, talk about sharing software, talk about sharing information, even better share those information, don't let yourself get frightened by those you do not want to give you that freedom, use the information freely and open to anyone. Let the cosmic power once again shine on the old ways of thinking and break it. We are important, we have power, we have knowledge, we have information, we have our freedom. Let us use it to preserve it for the future, where all men and women have equal free access to every bit of public data.

Let us live this, not only on our computer monitors, on our gadgets or on Twitter. Let our mind go wild again in the real world, let us use our freedom to express anything we want peacefully, without restriction. Forget the boundaries once again, and forget the shame, there can be no shame, other than hiding the bits of the future of our children and commercializing the essential of human beings: Creativity.

Updated Version 1.1: I removed 2 small parts to clarify the statement.
1) In the 4th paragraph I removed ", the worst bloodsuckers until slavery was banned. They take the work of authors and selling it to others, telling people they 'protect' the authors."
This could make people think this was a hatred against the music or film-industry. It's not. The article means much bigger things including these, but not limited to. And there is no hatred at all.

2) in the 6th paragraph removed "Where everyone can use every piece of music and video for their own, non-commercial articles, that are also free."
Again, this is not about a specific part of the internet, Blogs e.g. It's the whole. That includes the Internet as well but not limited to.

I'll make this up in a wiki, soon. This needs some additions, too.