Openness

Well, we have a very tough discussion on IT companies attack on civil rights as free speech and privacy of data.

First of all, I get it, we live in a dangerous world, and giving terrorists acces to a new IT structure to do whatever they want is off cause a bad thing.

At the other hand, the infrastructure of blogs and the internet in general, is there to underpin the democratic system.

Let me try to explain. In Google and Facebook and many other IT Companies, you have what is called a organization based on the “Copenhagen Spirit”. Mr. Niels Bohr, was the de facto leader of the Manhatten project that created the nuclear bomb, and he took the spirit of his research facility of Copenhagen and brough it to the US. It was so inspiring, that it still is there all these years after he came to the US. That is a creative environment, where people of skill have free rein to use their creativity, and there is a pursuit of knowledge and ideas, right?

It creates an amazing environment of production that has given us titans as Google, Facebook, Apple and many other IT companies.

But, and this is something you guys need to remember, Mr. Niels Bohr gave us a mission. After he finished the bomb, he realized to his horror the tool he had made. It could destroy the world, effectually creating a nuclear armageddon. So, he did what he thought was right, and wrote a famous letter to the UN, calling for a world of openess.

His good friend, and my predecessor mr. Knud Ejlar Løgstrup, was the Danish philosopher of the day, and he believed that to make trust and mercy work in a Democratic system, one needs openness.

So, as a act of trying to spread that idea around the world, Mr. Niels Bohr wrote the letter called the Weapon of Openness.

Now, you can arm Facebook and all the other IT infrastructure for good or bad. But if you want to stay on course and realize the ideas of Bohr, you need to keep the world Open.

It will, hopefully, create more trust. I know, that people have started fighting in the internet like never before, and we have violent and destructive political strains of political developments as a consequence.

When people are in the know, they get angry.

But, that does not mean, that the idea is wrong, it just means, that we need to make an open world, that gives people positive incitements as well, right?

PRIORITIZE the positive in the flow of communication, but dont start the censureship. That is the opposite of what a democratic society is about. And it will just start a wide crackdown on IT companies that do not respect basic rights of the citizens.

My advice would be, to see of the IT companies develop a balanced and positive approach to communication, and stop the censurship.

If not, we have to start cracking down on them.

I am an internet nerd, the great grandfather of blogging, and I would hate to crack down on the next and next generation. But virtue is needed to make the internet whole and positive. The basic virtue being Openness.

G-d bless the will to make an Open world.

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