Seems like every now and then some means of knowledge is created with the aim to give as much access to ordinary people as possible, but is always in direct conflict with the big boys of the day.
Way back when, when all knowledge was the preserve of the church, and it's representatives administered its power in a language, who's teaching was withheld from the common man, and therefore his understanding and (more crucially) his interpretation of the word of god was forbidden, men were killed to prevent the sweeping tide of the printed word and translation into the common tongue, the words of the bible.
Quite simply, the church did all it could to keep its grip on knowledge and power at all costs. How this held back understanding and progress of the great thinkers of the renaissance and others is unknown, but it is reasonable to surmise that ideas and thought could have evolved along certain lines much sooner that they did, were it not for the grip of the church and its narrow view of the status quo.
With the translation of the bible, came education toward the written and spoken word, which in turn gave way to more unorthodox ideas of science and mathematics, physics and philosophy... in short, progress that led to what we are today.
I think the internet and the freedom of knowledge that it represents is no less portentous than the advent of the printed word and its translation from a dead language to the common tongue, of the bible all those centuries ago. It is no surprise, therefore, that the vested powers of the day will try and subvert this new power and deny the change and the future it represents at all costs, for their status and elevation depend upon their dominance of certain media, without which their supremacy is utterly void. Perhaps, then, it is no shock that they would attempt to preserve and avert the death of what makes them what they are, radically opposed to the change that is inevitable, unstoppable and as certain as the changes and decent from ascendency the church experienced all those years ago.
We confuse the issue with small things like rights of ownership and pecuniary obligation, but the root cause of it all is control of knowledge and by extension, power; arguments over the former minutia occlude the latter in a deliberately calculated double bluff.
Funny that we repeat ourselves so often. Maybe the strictures of our social systems leave no room for other means of growth to the future.
Vive la revolution!
|
