I’m turning 41, but I don’t feel like celebrating.
Our generation is running out of time to save the free Internet built for us by our fathers.
What was once the promise of the free exchange of information is being turned into the ultimate tool of control.
Once-free countries are introducing dystopian measures such as digital IDs (UK), online age checks (Australia), and mass scanning of private messages (EU).
Germany is persecuting anyone who dares to criticize officials on the Internet. The UK is imprisoning thousands for their tweets. France is criminally investigating tech leaders who defend freedom and privacy.
A dark, dystopian world is approaching fast — while we’re asleep. Our generation risks going down in history as the last one that had freedoms — and allowed them to be taken away.
We’ve been fed a lie.
We’ve been made to believe that the greatest fight of our generation is to destroy everything our forefathers left us: tradition, privacy, sovereignty, the free market, and free speech.
By betraying the legacy of our ancestors, we’ve set ourselves on a path toward self-destruction — moral, intellectual, economic, and ultimately biological.
So no, I’m not going to celebrate today. I’m running out of time. We are running out of time.
My only critique is that "last generation with freedoms". Very few generations have had freedom since ancient history. Post baby boom has been one of the most convincing illusion of freedoms maybe ever maintained though, as they realized the power of mass state propaganda to guide the population.
But I will say the birth and universal proliferation of the free and open internet in that period of indirect control is the best window of opportunity to renew real freedom since probably 1776, and that window is rapidly closing and will likely be lost within our lifetimes without intervention.
But it's just human nature that the majority of people will avoid fighting on just a hunch, that the free internet might only be saved by a desperate, last-ditch effort isn't so much negligence as it is just the naturally most likely point to turn things around.