We are not Free

1. We are not Free

2. Freedom – the power or right to act, speak or think as one wants. • The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved • The state of not being subject to or affected by something.

3. Having a structure based on rules and knowing your place for protection is a very primal concept. • Wolves and dogs need to know who they are and where they stand within the pack, in the wild and in the household. • they have rules and self-organisation. • Flocking is an animal behaviour that is used at a protect mechanism and that also follows rules.

4. Even in games there are sets of rules in place to stop the player from doing whatever they like, even in open world games the player is not completely 'free'. • A game is driven by a goal or a set of goals, such as an achievable state of affairs, like getting a golf ball in a hole. If the game had no rules, the player would be able to glitch everywhere, cheat and potentially break the game. • Even Mine craft has rules. I often find once you've finished an open world game such as GTA V there isn't much else to do and the game and you start to notice the restrictions that are in the game, such as areas you cant get to, or buildings you cant enter.

5. The Internet is fundamentally just another communications network. The argument runs: if we regulate radio, television, and telecommunications networks, why don't we regulate the Net? This argument suggests that, not only is the Internet in a sense, just another network, as a result of convergence it is essentially becoming the network. so that, if we do not regulate the Net at all, effectively over time we are going to abandon the notion of content regulation. There is a range of problmatic content on the Internet. • There is illegal content such as child abuse images; there is harmful content such as advice on how to commit suicide; and there is offensive content such as pornography. The argument goes that we cannot regulate these different forms of problematic content in the same way, but equally we cannot simply ignore it. • There is criminal activity on the Internet. Spam, scams, viruses, hacking, phishing, money laundering, identification theft, grooming of children .. almost all criminal activity in the physical world has its online analogue and again, the argument goes, we cannot simply ignore this. • The Internet now has users in every country totalling around several billion. This argument implicitly accepts that the origins of the Internet involved a philosophy of free expression but insists that the user base and the range of activities of the Net are now so fundamentally different that it is a mass media and needs regulation like other media.

6. Ignorance is bliss • Edward Snowden • He worked in the NSA, and after 3 months began collecting information on their domestic surveillance practices and the invasive spying practices against US citizens under umbrella companies such as PRISM. • www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org • “Programs that are known are ok as long as they have public consent, but when they are hidden from the public it is a problem” • If we knew about the programs would they have been a problem? • Would there have been as much of an outcry if people knew about them? • People wouldn’t have been free if people knew about them, but would that have made them ok in the public eye?

7. Children and their upbringing • The work of Diana Baumrind on parenting styles. • She looked into what she believed were the 4 types of parenting styles: • Authoritarian Parents – These parents are harsh disciplinarians and very rigid. Their kids are withdrawn. • Permissive-Indifferent – They set few limits. Their children have poor self-control • Permissive-Indulgent – They are loving but set few limits, their children are out of control • Authoritative – They are loving but fair, they set limits and their children are responsive to this.