computing-progress.html (9091B)
1 <!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --> 2 <!-- Parent-Version: 1.96 --> 3 <!-- This page is derived from /server/standards/boilerplate.html --> 4 <!--#set var="TAGS" value="essays cultural society" --> 5 <!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="yes" --> 6 <title>Computing ‘Progress’: Good and Bad 7 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title> 8 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/computing-progress.translist" --> 9 <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --> 10 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/ph-breadcrumb.html" --> 11 <!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE--> 12 <!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" --> 13 <div class="article reduced-width"> 14 <h2>Computing ‘Progress’: Good and Bad</h2> 15 16 <address class="byline">by <a href="https://www.stallman.org/">Richard 17 Stallman</a></address> 18 19 <div class="infobox" role="complementary"> 20 <p><i> 21 The BBC invited me to write an article for their column series, The 22 Tech Lab, and this is what I sent them. (It refers to a couple of 23 other articles published in that series.) The BBC was ultimately unwilling 24 to publish it with a copying-permission notice, so I have published it 25 here.</i></p> 26 </div> 27 <hr class="thin" /> 28 29 <p> 30 Bradley Horowitz of Yahoo proposed here that every object in our world 31 have a unique number so that your cell phone could record 32 everything you do—even which cans you picked up while in the 33 supermarket.</p> 34 35 <p> 36 If the phone is like today's phones, it will use proprietary software: 37 software controlled by the companies that developed it, not by its 38 users. Those companies will ensure that your phone makes the 39 information it collects about you available to the phone company's 40 database (let's call it Big Brother) and probably to other 41 companies.</p> 42 43 <p> 44 In the UK of the future, as New Labour would have it, those companies 45 will surely turn this information over to the police. If your phone 46 reports you bought a wooden stick and a piece of poster board, the 47 phone company's system will deduce that you may be planning a protest, 48 and report you automatically to the police so they can accuse you of 49 “terrorism.”</p> 50 51 <p> 52 In the UK, it is literally an offense to be suspect—more precisely, 53 to possess any object in circumstances that create a “reasonable 54 suspicion” that you might use it in certain criminal ways. 55 Your phone will give the police plenty of opportunities to suspect 56 you so they can charge you with having been suspected by them. 57 Similar things will happen in China, where Yahoo has already given the 58 government all the information it needed to imprison a dissident; it 59 subsequently asked for our understanding on the excuse that it was “just 60 following orders.”</p> 61 62 <p> 63 Horowitz would like cell phones to tag information automatically, based 64 on knowing when you participate in an event or meeting. That means 65 the phone company will also know precisely whom you meet. That 66 information will also be interesting to governments, such as those of 67 the UK and China, that cut corners on human rights.</p> 68 69 <p> 70 I do not much like Horowitz's vision of total surveillance. Rather, I 71 envision a world in which our computers never collect, or release, any 72 information about us except when we want them to.</p> 73 74 <p> 75 Nonfree software does other nasty things besides spying; it often 76 implements digital handcuffs—features designed to restrict the 77 users (also called DRM, for Digital Restrictions Management). These 78 features control how you can access, copy, or move the files in your 79 own computer.</p> 80 81 <p> 82 DRM is a common practice: Microsoft does it, Apple does it, Google 83 does it, even the BBC's iPlayer does it. Many governments, taking the 84 side of these companies against the public, have made it illegal to 85 tell others how to escape from the digital handcuffs. As a result, 86 competition does nothing to check the practice: no matter how many 87 proprietary alternatives you might have to choose from, they will 88 all handcuff you just the same. If the computer knows where you are 89 located, it can make DRM even worse: there are companies that would 90 like to restrict what you can access based on your present 91 location.</p> 92 93 <p> 94 My vision of the world is different. I would like to see a world in 95 which all the software in our computers—in our desktop PCs, our 96 laptops, our handhelds, our phones—is under our control and 97 respects our freedom. In other words, a world where all software is 98 <a href="/philosophy/free-sw.html"><em>free</em></a> software.</p> 99 100 <p> 101 Free software, freedom-respecting software, means that every user of 102 the program is free to get the program's source code and change the 103 program to do what she wants, and also free to give away or sell 104 copies, either exact or modified. This means the users are in 105 control. With the users in control of the software, nobody has power 106 to impose nasty features on others.</p> 107 108 <p> 109 Even if you don't exercise this control yourself, you are part of a 110 society where others do. If you are not a programmer, other users of 111 the program are. They will probably find and remove any nasty 112 features, which might spy on or restrict you, and publish safe 113 versions. You will have only to select to use them—and since 114 all other users will prefer them, that will usually happen with no 115 effort on your part.</p> 116 117 <p> 118 Charles Stross envisioned computers that permanently record everything 119 that we see and hear. Those records could be very useful, as long as 120 Big Brother doesn't see and hear all of them. Today's cell phones are 121 already capable of listening to their users without informing them, at 122 the request of the police, the phone company, or anyone that knows the 123 requisite commands. As long as phones use nonfree software, 124 controlled by its developers and not by the users, we must expect this 125 to get worse. Only free software enables computer-using citizens to 126 resist totalitarian surveillance.</p> 127 128 <p> 129 Dave Winer's article suggested that Mr. Gates should send a copy of 130 Windows Vista to Alpha Centauri. I understand the feeling, but 131 sending just one won't solve our problem here on Earth. Windows is 132 designed to spy on users and restrict them. We should collect all the 133 copies of Windows, and of MacOS and iPlayer for the same reason, and send 134 them to Alpha Centauri at the slowest possible speed. Or just erase 135 them.</p> 136 </div> 137 138 </div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above --> 139 <!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --> 140 <div id="footer" role="contentinfo"> 141 <div class="unprintable"> 142 143 <p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to <a 144 href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org"><gnu@gnu.org></a>. There are also <a 145 href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> the FSF. Broken links and other 146 corrections or suggestions can be sent to <a 147 href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org"><webmasters@gnu.org></a>.</p> 148 149 <p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph, 150 replace it with the translation of these two: 151 152 We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality 153 translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection. 154 Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard 155 to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org"> 156 <web-translators@gnu.org></a>.</p> 157 158 <p>For information on coordinating and contributing translations of 159 our web pages, see <a 160 href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations 161 README</a>. --> 162 Please see the <a 163 href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations README</a> for 164 information on coordinating and contributing translations of this article.</p> 165 </div> 166 167 <!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to 168 files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should 169 be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this 170 without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first. 171 Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the 172 document. For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the 173 document was modified, or published. 174 175 If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too. 176 Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying 177 years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable 178 year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including 179 being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system). 180 181 There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers 182 Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. --> 183 184 <p>Copyright © 2007, 2021 Richard Stallman</p> 185 186 <p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license" 187 href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative 188 Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p> 189 190 <!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" --> 191 192 <p class="unprintable">Updated: 193 <!-- timestamp start --> 194 $Date: 2021/09/11 09:37:22 $ 195 <!-- timestamp end --> 196 </p> 197 </div> 198 </div><!-- for class="inner", starts in the banner include --> 199 </body> 200 </html>