June 15, 2000
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Stories about technology can turn out, depending on a lot of factors, anywhere from mildly inaccurate to wildly distorted. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which are specific to the world of technology, some of which come from working and thinking on the fringe of society.
This one's obvious: There are plenty of people who don't really understand or even like computers, and mass media has to account for them. They have to cater to the lowest common denominator in order to not alienate their audience -- television is the worst this way -- and as a result, complex technical issues are often oversimplified until they don't at all resemble the original picture.
Now, we can say that the new technological freedoms are letting people exchange all sorts of information, and most people think that's a good thing. Lots of people are getting online and realizing they can find information about video games or knitting or breast cancer. But they're also aware that you can find a lot of unsavory information online: white supremacist propaganda, or bomb-making instructions, or child pornography. And regardless of what you or I might think about whether or not that stuff should be available, a lot of people are pretty uncomfortable with its existence.
So any time you talk about a technological issue, and particularly when you come out on the side of decentralized control and greater individual freedom, there is always going to be an element of the public that wonders "Well, does he think child porn should be available freely, too?" It's a similar situation to political discussion of class issues during the height of the Cold War, where anybody who spoke with concern about the poor could be scrutinized as a possible Communist.
Any X-Files fan knows this one: The status quo does not have to prove its side to win a public debate. It simply has to muddy the waters to build enough "plausible deniability", and then people get confused. When they get confused, they stop paying attention and pull back from the debate -- and the status quo wins by default. I probably don't need to remind you guys that, for the most part, you are not the status quo.