For a change, I want to post about topics other than government strangle-holds on certain freedoms which I can loosely attribute to Graphic Design. Thusly, I must exorcise the last reserve of my libertarian rejoinder toward the despairing news that featured in the first WTF Edition of Weekly Inspiration...
The figuratively-free exchange of media has defined the age we live in and fostered with it a cultural undercurrent of libero-democratic ideals, which frequently run against notions of authority and censorship. We have come to expect the online environment to remain an open-source of both consumption and contribution, one that has no need for an omniscient overseeing entity to ensure all runs smoothly.
Reflect on the current state of the Internet and just how it came to be; with media streaming, news services, Facebook, forums, gaming, dating, pornography, education, religion, science, literature, editorials, comedy and competitions - to rattle off a few examples. The Internet is a digital garden bed of culture that has blossomed without the guiding hand of any one overseer; it is an attestation of the robustness of our culture which has duplicated and flourished in a new digital domain. We have witnessed in a manner of decades a microcosm of the natural, self-structured way in which culture, civilisation and democracy emerges, and all by the virtue of a free exchange of media. For a government now, at this late stage of the Internet's manifestation, to attempt to 'filter' what we have free access to consume is antithetical to the values that are the bedrock of modern-online culture.
To the Australian government I say, by all means, stop and persecute people who break our laws and harm our children both on and offline. Those people, like the rest of us, have exercised their freedom and in choosing to break the law, have invited the repercussions to fall upon themselves. But for the rest of us, who have not broken any law, nor have any intent to ever do so, we do not deserve to have that which we value most diluted without our consent.
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