It is 5AM, raining heavily outside, and I am more than a little stoned from brain activity at the moment.
I just finished reading Little Brother.
I started reading it yesterday on the BART. On the return trip I made it a few chapters in, and read some of the most gut-wrenching descriptions of horrible-ness I can remember. It runs the gamut, from the physical to the mental to the spiritual. I have rarely been as alternatively entertained and terrified. So there is that.
Of particular interest to me is something that I think approximately one person in the world will understand, and those are the names of the characters in the book. But I will leave it up to that person to talk about it with me. 
Was there a point?
Yes!
It is hard, fighting the “good fight”. I am not talking about learning about technology and the ways it can empower/enslave people. That is fun. Even taking the harder stances of not supporting, even indirectly, companies and ideologies that would hamper a free and open society is relatively simple. Actually, it is really fun!
The part that gets me down, even now, is also the weakness is all systems: people. I love people, and I really love particular instances of people, my intentional family, my tribe. But even they don’t “get it” like I do. That is the tough part.
Recently I had the good misfortune of connecting with a group of folks that I care about very much, and they all use Facebook to socialize on the net. When you are in any group of people who share something it becomes apparent if you don’t also share that thing. And so the jokes began, and I had my fair level of teasing for not being on the site where everything is happening. I enjoyed it; I don’t get teased very often. But at the same time I felt this worry growing in the back of my head that I didn’t understand the arguments enough, that I had internalized instead of articulating, and that I couldn’t enlighten people to my way of thinking and living with technology.
I mean, let’s be blunt here, Facebook is scary as hell. A single point of presence for your digital life seems like such a dumb idea, but most people won’t understand that except in hindsight. Bummer.
So, where is the inspiring speech, the party lines that detail the dangers of entrusting your data, relationships and culture to a corporation? I wasn’t able to call upon anything. I too busy trying to convince myself that not being a part of these people’s social web was worth the cost of autonomy and privacy.
I was told, “just get an e-mail address and lie about the rest.” Well, yeah, that would cover one base, but what about lending another node to the network, raising its value, creating one more reason for all of them to stay there? It is just difficult to explain that to someone who wants to share photos of their kids with their faraway relatives.
So, I am going to think on this for a while, and maybe tap the peeps in the federated social web movement to help me come up with some talking points. Because at the very least, they will make people aware of the trade-offs that are involved. For some reason people think that a free lunch on the web is free. I want to be able to articulate the many reasons it is not.