The phrase “freedom of information,” as brought to my attention within the discussion of the Wikileaks drama, and the notion that “information wants to be free” trouble me a bit tonight.<\/p>\n
Does information have rights?<\/em><\/p>\n Does information want?<\/em><\/p>\n These kinds of phrases seem to omit the human behind the information.<\/p>\n Humans usually have to do the gathering of information.\u00a0 Sometimes they may intend<\/em> for the information to\u00a0have restricted freedom.\u00a0 Bluntly, they want it private<\/em>.\u00a0 For other information, the gatherer may intend<\/em> for it to have less restricted freedom.\u00a0 They want it public<\/em>.<\/p>\n The point is that the information doesn’t have a right to be free<\/em>.\u00a0 Instead, the person gathering the information has a right to dictate it “private” or “public.”<\/em><\/p>\n Think of your own life, and how you carve it up into “private” and “public.”<\/p>\n Me:<\/em> Tell me about your date last night!! Or …<\/p>\n Me:<\/em> How about I tell you the juicy details of my bowel movement! As for the notion\u00a0of information wanting to be free, information does not want<\/em>.\u00a0 Instead, some people<\/em> want some kinds of information<\/em> to be freely accessed<\/em>.\u00a0 Sounds like a brilliant notion to describe tendencies of particular kinds of information.\u00a0 But not all information goes that way.\u00a0 Secrets go with people to the grave–did that information want to be free?\u00a0 The TV shows I work on don’t want storylines to get out.\u00a0 Maybe fans<\/em> want the information to be freely accessed; sure as hell production-in-general doesn’t<\/em>!<\/p>\n The storyline doesn’t want freedom.\u00a0 It doesn’t want.\u00a0 And it doesn’t have rights.<\/p>\n INFORMATION IS NOT A HUMAN.<\/strong><\/p>\n So why anthropomorphize information?\u00a0 It jeopardizes your own rights to keep your life private and your secrets withheld.<\/p>\n All in all, given the above, the arguments for freedom of information and that information wants to be free are unsound in the advocation of Wikileaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The phrase “freedom of information,” as brought to my attention within the discussion of the Wikileaks drama, and the notion that “information wants to be free” trouble me a bit tonight. Does information have rights? Does information want? These kinds of phrases seem to omit the human behind the information. Humans usually have to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,222,221,224,226,225,227,192],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-freedom","tag-information","tag-intention","tag-private","tag-public","tag-secrets","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nYou:<\/em> That’s private.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nYou:<\/em> Not in public, please.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n