It used to be that you were a conspiracist if you were a technophilic. Some of the texts of nerddom are basically conspiracies repackaged as fiction or parody. The book of the sub genius is a trilogy. The internet made it possible to find good stuff. It could teach you about the world's governing bodies or about ghosts. I took to it like a duck with the names of the websites written in a notebook. It was just what a powerless adolescent needed. I was a normal person, not a genius.
The internet became less about conspiracy and more about commerce. I began to believe that the world was not run by forces intent on evil chaos but rather by a network of goofballs acting out of a variety of motives. Is it malevolent? Sometimes a small amount. It's satanic? I don't think it's a good idea.
A drop of conspiracist ink made me think differently. I thought the people who ran the world had more knowledge of its secrets. I believe they have more information. They know what the companies they run and invest in are doing, they can see reports, buy raw data and hire teams of consultants to make recommendations. People reading the same books tend to be the same person. Their hobbies are not unusual for rich people. Jay Leno drove a car that looked like a computer mouse in the launch video for Windows 95. Powerful people have a lot of information, but it's hard to know what they have hidden.
It feels like a lot of humanity has entered the age of no secrets. Regular people do a lot of open source intelligence, they look at videos of war zones, triangulate with maps, and compare notes on the internet. You have to remember not to bring up the price of their house when you sit down if you meet someone for coffee and search for their name. Who can keep up with the pace of releases now that I've downloaded big Freedom of Information Act PDFs? We brand the Paradise Papers, the Panama Papers, and the Pandora Papers because of the amount of data they contain. Did anyone notice thatisse secrets affect tens of thousands of banking clients? People moved on after the US government disclosed information about the existence of unexplained flying objects.
Modern telecommunications can be seen as a system for creating and losing control of secrets. Video footage of our collective noses being picked on the elevator is available. More will get hacked, more will converge, more systems will arise to find patterns in other systems, to understand the video. Even though it can't think, it can tattle. When it comes to privacy, the US is trapped between raising money and playing games. You can send a wire from your computer to the government.
Do life in a panopticon have to be bad? Data Is Plural is a mailing list that regularly sends out new sources of health outcomes and other information. The only newsletter I open is this one. The act of releasing a data set is so hopeful. Did you see Microsoft's planetary? There are more maps in there than you think. The tree is covered. The kind of soil. If you want a list of famous dogs, you can go to Wikidata.org. Zarr is a new data format that can be used to create a geographic database. It's possible to turn your database into a website with Datasette. The traditional line between the two is not the same. It is abstract, but the upshot is that it is easy to put data out and give people something to grow on. As web data, the new commons is shaping up differently than web pages.
You have a choice when you sit down. You can become absorbed in the power of the conspiracist and use it to your advantage. That has been done by me. You can see how many of the big names in your industry and government serve on each other's boards. I did that as well. Yes, still do. A large amount. You can see how much of the world is available to anyone with a reasonable network connection. I have kids to raise, and that is what I will show them, instead of worrying about other peoples power. I hope you can do better with it.
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