Freedom Fighters (Part I)

In case you've been sleeping under a rock for 30 years, software (and the Internet built on it) is now the battleground for human ideologies. The software we build, or allow to be built for us, defines the reality we inhabit and the rules of life.

Unchecked by vigilant minds, technology tends toward tyranny (try saying that after licking a 9 volt battery). So who keeps things on course? I've been planning to write about some of the people, processes and organisations that work tirelessly to stop the gadgets that make our lives easy from becoming chains. Who are the real Digital Freedom Fighters?

On the Cybershow we talk about computer security and digital freedoms. The two are intimately entwined. There is no security without freedom and no freedom without security. We cannot bank them. Freedom, security and democracy are what we keep fighting for, through constant effort, awareness, and understanding. Our perennial resistance to subjection is about stopping the fruits of science and technology ending up as means for harm.

Of the harms that technology can wreak on people; destruction, depletion, pestilence, ignorance and enslavement, we have tamed the first in having to reckon with atomic weapons. 80 years is probably a good run for civilisations who develop the capacity for total war. The threat we face today is enslavement.

But what do resistance fighters look like?

Like Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff), in the shadowy, dangerous world of a man who does not exist? Or "The Equaliser" (Edward Woodward), everyone's favourite grandpa and pseudo-lawman who "sorts stuff out"? Or any number of American TV vigilantes with billionaire benefactors, mountain bases and Apache attack helicopters at their disposal?

Or are they less obvious? Maybe like a Special Operations agent as penned by Ian Fleming or John Le Carre moving between underground hide-outs. A Simon Templar perhaps, or wandering saviour of the Incredible Hulk or Kung-Fu school? Or maybe a conscientious defector like FN-2187 or Edward Snowden?

Anyone who really fights for humanity will tell you, there's nothing romantic or racy about it. The reality is mundane sacrifice, hard work, forgoing family and relationships, being unpopular, made to feel like an outsider, criminal or traitor, missed opportunities in life, relative poverty and stigma.

Indeed there's something rather odd about Western society, perhaps rooted in Christianity, that our most heroic members are frequently the "lowest". Take firefighters, nurses, teachers and civil servants. People who make society actually function are amongst the worst paid and treated.

A true exemplar of Digital Freedom Fighters is surely Dr. Richard Stallman, a slightly overweight old man. suffering cancer, social anxiety and having some offensive personal traits. He travels around on budget airlines and overnight Greyhound buses, staying in cheap hotel rooms or on the floor of kindly supporters. His supporters love him.

A Harvard graduate and highly respected programmer at MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, while the likes of Altman, Zuckerberg and Musk were still struggling through school, Stallman could have named any prize in technology he wanted. But he chose a different path. Richard Stallman chose to stand for the rights of people to use technology as they wish. He chose freedom instead of riches.

Software Freedom was no small success. Although Stallman must share the glory with many other fighters, like Eric Raymond , Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds, it became a movement and changed the world. The dotcom boom would not have happened without Free Software. Silicon Valley would not have happened without Free Software. Without those millions of hackers who wrote code "by the people, for the people", inspired by Richard Stallman, we'd have none of it.

He's been awarded multiple honorary PhDs and a page-long list of prizes in computing, joining the Internet Hall of Fame alongside visionaries like Aaron Swartz, Jimmy Wales, and John Perry Barlow. For decades he's relentlessly spread a message of Software Freedom, sticking firmly to deeply help philosophical beliefs. Stallman is a Diogenes or Socrates, a modern legend. He's been a constant gadfly on the backs of lesser, selfish individuals and corporations who want to misappropriate public technology, hide it away, and use it for private power and controlling the masses.

Every day most of us use some software somehow attributable to Stallman's efforts. The entire US tech economy is built on Free Open Source Software like GNU/Linux which powers all the servers. Despite these facts, he is made a pariah.

The broligarchs really HATE Stallman. They really do. He represents an immutable error written into the code of their reality. How can this ugly looking, poor, unkempt, disagreeable old man stand up for all they want to destroy? How dare he use so few words and a twinkly smile to succinctly nail all their moral failings!? How dare he not even take himself seriously?

So, in retaliation Richard Stallman is made the brunt of a concerted campaign of trolling, ridicule, lies and fomenting betrayal. Every awkward thing he says is taken out of context and amplified by a bamboozled mob of misinformed pundits, mercenary denouncers and various useful idiots. For years they've been paid or whipped-up by troublemakers to spread insinuation, specious accusations and childish attacks on Stallman's (imperfect, like all of us) character.

So if you don't like Elon Musk and those sorts (I quite understand) here's some things you can do:

• Instead of denouncing them and throwing more hate-fuel onto the fires, why not lend kind words and some love to your Digital Freedom Fighters. I'll be covering others in this series too.
• Find out about alternatives to the Technofascist world of BigTech. Read about the Free Software Foundation. Maybe donate some money to FSF?
• Read the truth about Richard Stallman. Not all of it's choirs and roses, because he's an actual, faulted human being and not an AI generated corporate avatar. Have a listen to some of his talks and support a good, but now fragile chap as he struggles in his elder years to keep the software you are using free from tyranny.