“Is freedom simply “participation in power” (Marcus Tullius Cicero)? It might depend on the terms of participation, which might be too constraining. In society as in nature, one’s degrees of freedom depend on the balance between external constraints and innate or acquired capabilities such as weaponry, stealth, cunning, camouflage, strength, speed, agility, availability of resources, allies, extent of various dependencies, etc. Promoting and maintaining human emancipation would seem to be a very complex issue that has to be considered in micro and macro, as well as local, regional, and global context. History is ideally a database of specific past examples of the consequences of various behaviors under various conditions. Unfortunately, the recorded history is seldom complete and accurate!”

I think it very germane to the p2p community to try to model “freedom” in a formal way. As I suggested above, I think this begins with some kind of matrix of vectors and “degrees of freedom”. At the top level would be things like freedom of association, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, etc. Subordinate to each category would be some list of capabilities, resources and constraints that had a bearing on a given type of freedom.

As long as we try to talk about freedom as one monolithic thing, the way politicians often do, people can easily talk past each other.

PR

The problem of asking people to share their computer resources for p2p applications might be best addressed, at least for many, by cheap, next-generation appliances such as the FreedomBox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedombox that typically would go between the personal computer and their home or office internet connection point. A variety of P2P applications could run there, encapsulated by the appliance’s other security programs. Such an appliance has its own cpu and storage capacity so it does not burden the users personal computer. Also the appliance tends to stay put on the home or office internet connection while the personal computer may be moving all over the place, in and out of internet contact.

To make the p2p appliance concept most versatile in the age of mobility, we could have a “thin client” or browser plugin for mobile laptops and phones that would run with very little overhead in the mobile device. It would not actually be a p2p server or node, but would only establish connections with servers and nodes and provide a remote user interface.

PR