Hello All,
This Olympic season has witnessed a lot of supporters of freedom and the media too is going out of its way to provide news reports on how activists all over the world are protesting against dictators and autocratic regimes. Even on normal days the people as well as the media have become pro-active in exposing those who abuse their power and position, whether it is the powerful Nations, politicians or Government officials. All this is happening because there is full awareness about Freedom and Democracy. There are now aware of their rights, so they protest whenever anyone abuses power.
However in the digital world there is a near complete lack of awareness of Digital Democracy and Freedom. The main reason I believe for this is that we look at the digital world as simply a collection of electronic gadgets that help us do our daily work. We forget that the Digital World is nothing but an extension of the real world. Computers are no longer the simple devices that did specific jobs for us. They are a complete Digital Ecosystem that is fully integrated into our personal and professional space. Therefore anything that affects our Digital Freedom affects our individual freedom too.
A software manufacturer for our digital environment is no different from a regular manufacturer who produces materials or finished products for our homes and offices. When we setup a home or an office, a lot of people are involved like carpenter, mason, plumber, painter, electrician etc. They provide us with the finished infrastructure we need to run our homes and offices. After their job is done and we start using the finished rooms, do we hand over an extra set of keys to each one of them so that they can walk into our rooms as and when they feel so and rummage through our things? We zealously guard our living space. What about our digital space? Why should a software manufacturer have to constantly access our Digital space under the pretext of providing security and upgrades when he should have provided a secure Digital product through its manufacture itself. How many of us realize that when a giant software manufacturer of one country has this access to our Digital space in most of the world's computers, including those used by Governments of all Nations, it has direct access to sensitive data and records of all those Nations.
In our living world, we buy and use products that can be re-filled, re-cycled and can be serviced by more than one vendor as this makes our life easy and we are not dependent on one entity who may demand whatever price it wants to. We also look for continuity of use for those products over the years instead of simply paying high amounts every time and using them for short periods. Do we have the same awareness in the Digital World? Why are we content with paying large amounts of money for software to run our digital products and keep shelling out more and more every year for upgrades? Are we aware that digital products like computers can be run on software that is not expensive, restrictive and has a very long life span? That is Freedom software or Libre software. This is software that anyone can analyze, modify and use on their digital products with full freedom without the constant fear of it getting obsolete or our data becoming un-readable. In the real world if we guard our freedom to buy and use any product anyway we want without any monopolistic control or restrictions from the manufacturer then in the Digital world, why are we ignorant of our right to software Freedom and Digital Democracy?
In the real world, if anyone powerfull and influential tries to flex his muscles and mow others down, there is an immediate public and media outcry against it. However in the Digital world why are we simply ignorant of our Digital Freedom and Democratic rights and let the Software super-powers simply bulldoze any initiative for Software Freedom?
Knowledge creates awareness and awareness brings Freedom. Just as Democracy and Freedom are most important to mankind in the real world, so is Digital Democracy and Freedom, especially in this Digital era where knowledge is now digitized and should be freely accessible to everyone.