The internet is essentially a form of mass-mind reading.
Books, feelings, music, formulas, art, inane ramblings, and innumerable implications, social, philosophical, banal, and otherwise, all yours. All you have to do is...open a magic "notebook."
Take yourself back just one hundred years and imagine trying to imagine the internet. It would be a fool's dream. Something totally unattainable, irrational, and a contemplation of such mere fancy you might just keep it to yourself for fear of embarrassment. Indeed, for the greater part of the population, it would be fair to say that it would be beyond conception. And yet. Here, it is. And here we are.
Now, it doesn't even matter if the only thing you use the internet for is funny cat videos. That's still fucking amazing. Imagine trying to see other peoples' cats in other countries in a magic "notebook" 100 years ago. So many poor cat lovers died never having known the joyous YouTube binge-watching bliss that was awaiting them just about a hundred years off.
Well, as I said. Here we are.
Now multiply the amazingness of endless foreign cat videos again, to the level where other people's magic wizard notebooks could be used to enhance the wizard power of your magic wizard notebook so that you could now download an insanely-huge-file-size schematic of Dr. Mittenz, your favorite internet celebrity cat, to be printed out piece-by-piece on your 3D printer at home, assembled at the local park, and worshipped with sacrifices of internet likes and catnip until the end of days at which time he will re-animate and save the planet from impending doom and total destruction at the hands of Evil Doctor Productivity and his legions of irritating shit to do.
Alright. Time to drop the cat thing. Seriously, though. This type of tech is already here. It's in the works in the forms of projects like MaidSAFE and Golem. Check out this short video to have your mind blown:
A "Golem" is something from nothing, and a very powerful something from nothing, at that.
In Jewish folklore, a golem (/ˈɡoʊləm/ GOH-ləm; Hebrew: גולם) is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud). The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing.
Source: wikipedia
For economists and individualists who understand how value works, this sort of thing is no problem.
For violence-based nation states, collectivists, and those who feel that the value of various objects is something "set in stone" (it may well be, in some world beyond this one, but hey, we are living in this one, you feel me?) this "golem" presents a huge problem. A life-threatening one, even. That is to say, the power. of. the. idea.
It's interesting. The idea of creation ex nihilo is not a problem for Jews or Austrian economists, but presents a hell of a pain in the ass for those that would attempt to own another human being by telling him or her what they cannot value (I remember the days when my reference to both genders here would have afforded me PC cred, but now I'll proabably be called a bigot) and when, where, how, and why they can or cannot.
Decentralization is simple. It just means that there is no one center, as far as we are concerned. It could be construed as meaning, "looking out for the smallest minority," too, because decentralized "things" are the only things that allow the individual to be just that.
Now doesn't that make you wanna go out and join the cat party??? See how that works!?
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as Facebook and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)