The #Cypherpunk Revolutionary Julian #Assange [http://bit.ly/fArc3b]

The Cypherpunk Revolutionary: Julian Assange, by Robert Manne, Professor in the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.


Published originally in The Monthly March 2011, pp. 17-35

At the core of the cypherpunk philosophy was the belief that the great question of politics in the age of the internet was whether the state would strangle individual freedom and privacy through its capacity for electronic surveillance or whether autonomous individuals would eventually undermine and even destroy the state through their deployment of electronic weapons newly at hand. Many cypherpunks were optimistic that in the battle for the future of humankind – between the State and the Individual – the individual would ultimately triumph.

The often quoted quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery meant to summaries how Assange sees the world, is quoted again here. Is there a word in German compound for a quote-explanation [ Veranschlagenerklärung ? ], which is not just a quote but a complete, compact, model for how things work?

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

There must be an answer to this which uses the same mystical language of Saint-Exupery, that runs along the lines that the one’s built by committee (read capitalism/ autocrats what you like) mostly get built, while those with the dream sit on the sea shore enjoying the sunset, with not a ship in sight expect in the mind’s eye.

One answer might be that dreamers (there are many types..) don’t want to get into ships to roam the endless immensity of the sea, prove the world isn’t flat, see if there’s land the other side, destroy other cultures and take all their gold.