Iconism

I was always surprised by the attitude of many to anonymity and cryptography, as a universal means of combating the evils of the world. It is necessary to receive the news that somewhere the government is tightening the screws, or copyrighters pushed another stupid law, necessarily raises the review in the spirit of “Ha! Here we are right now, I2P and TrueСrypt of the wide leg will get and they will wipe...” No, of course, in certain situations, be encrypted. Anonymity can save lives in a country where they execute people who disagree with the current ever-living the wise leader leads his people to prosperity, and temporary shortages of food supply is just annoying little thing. But going underground is the last hope, the respirator dying for freedom, not the weapon of victory.

I once came across a wiki with the strange name “Iconism”. Something about a new social order and a bright future. But after talking with the author of the project and absorbed in reading, he was convinced that Roma Petrov (@rpetrov) is absolutely normal and sane man, not a mad scribbler, just knowing “as us to equip Russia” and draws inspiration from the intimate conversations with aliens. His attitude towards privacy and anonymity is almost identical to mine, and many of the articles on the wiki it looked like the embodiment of my ideas and drafts. Word for word, we have poobshalas to the fact that he wrote a whole book on mutual transparency, decentralization and vinificatie companies. Perhaps one of the strongest incentives for writing the book was that we failed to find publications in Russian on the topic of transparency.

There is a “Wikinomics” Tapscott and Williams, of the mass collaboration and decentralization, there is a “Cloud democracy” Volkov and Krasheninnikov, where a couple of pages given to openness and transparency. But the Russian-speaking audience almost neizvesten book “the Transparent society” by David Brin or the concept of “Inverse” (sousveillance), and “equilibrium” (equiveillance) surveillance.

Meanwhile, the information transparency is the key to the success of any decentralized projects. The more information about each available to members of the horizontal network communities, the more effective it can work self-organization, the more secure and more accurate to judge the reputation of each member of the community, the greater the responsibility of each. The less centralization, and inequality in access to information, the safer it becomes open and transparent. If “Big Brother” is not so big and Almighty, and to fear it much less. Transparency and decentralization complement and reinforce each other.

We are already firmly seated on a hook of transparency. But for now, this transparency one-sided. We cannot and do not want to give up the convenience, simplicity and new capabilities that we receive in exchange for disclosure of their personal data. Bank and discount cards, social networks and community cloud services — without a lot of these small and big things, it is difficult to imagine our life. Databases with our personal information indefinitely has access to a wide range of people, most of which we are not familiar, and which we have to trust simply because we have nowhere to go. Employees of banks, shops, Internet companies, government officials, intelligence agencies and all those who are willing to spend a reasonable amount on a bribe or buying a stolen base. However, neither our friends, nor relatives, nor even we ourselves do not have access to much of this information and no control over it. And nothing. Live somehow...
At the same time, real, not a toy anonymity and secrecy remains a complex art, which is fully owned only by those whose life depends on the ability to hide. Spies, dissidents, criminals. The better and more affordable methods are anonymization and encryption, the faster they develop back technology. Armor and the shell, the lock and the skeleton key — the eternal conflict. Is the game worth the candle? For the vast majority — no. Instead of trying to artificially limit the capabilities of computers and networks, information hiding, it is better to learn how to extract from the openness maximum benefits.

the Book “Iconism” available and will always be available on the website reckonism.org for free download and reading online. There you can buy the book in hardcover or to support us by paying for the electronic version and donating money for the development of the project. We welcome your ideas, questions and feedback on the wiki and on Facebook page. Happy reading!

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru