Watching Larger Trends

[Ed Hurst]

I'm watching how governments and big corporations are restricting the Net. On the one hand, so long as there are nations with governments, there will be corporations trying to influence regulation to their advantage, and full freedom of the people is not to their advantage. On the other hand, as our civilization debauches and grinds to a halt, too much freedom means there are some things we won't miss. But you should know that this problem with the global Internet splintering into multiple nationalized internets will become a propaganda excuse to call for a global government.

We have been seeking to spread our faith for a few years now in the twilight of the wide open Internet. There are a lot of things pointing to this being just a passing situation, something we were called to do as a community, but now the mission is about to change. It won't be today or tomorrow, but slowly we will be redirected in other directions. We began as just a handful of outsiders building our own religion from scratch and clinging to the fringes. I am certain that pretty soon there will be a lot more folks driven out of the mainstream system.

I believe this is what we are being honed for, as Linda put it. Insofar as folks following our blogs and this forum have been faithful to our message, they should be ready for the umbilical cord to be cut. Whatever promises and miracles God has for us all are stored up for release in the coming days, and they can seize the opportunity or they can miss out. We've done about as much as we can do for them.

So here I am at the pinnacle of all the computer and Internet stuff I've been doing, and I know it's going to fade into the background. My fleshly self hardly knows what it will do next. My heart tells me that it will work itself out. My prophetic gift tells me it's a good time to remind folks that this is now camping on our doorstep. Yes, I know that our communion here will continue for quite some time, but the nature of our work will shift because the audience will change. The context will change, too.

[jaybreak]

A professor of mine from the middle- to late-nineties said all forms of communication are eventually regulated, when we were talking privately about the Internet. He was a huge liberal, but he didn't think regulation of the Internet was desirable; he saw no reason to regulate it since it was basically information sharing. Granted, though, this was when viruses were seen as the only practical threat, and this was before social media really took off and "softer" threats like doxxing were really a thing.

[Ed Hurst]

This is all quite consistent with the visions I've had in the past. I saw a rising left in the US and this is who is behind the increasing restrictions. They want to silence the right, and they will succeed to some degree. Things will get pretty rough for the right before they break out in armed resistance, so we need to get used to this situation and find the path of mission in the midst of it. I honestly doubt that my blog will be silenced by censorship, but by a change in mission methods, a change in focus. This forum is already becoming the very core of how we coordinate and grow together.

[jaybreak]

I see nothing coming down the pike to significantly threaten the forum at all, but it's worth it I think for me/us to keep an eye on current tech and regulatory trends. I already sort of do that for my day job.

[Ed Hurst]

So far, the hosting business seems to be one tech sector that resists SJW convergence. It's a business that seems to attract folks on the conservative spectrum, and they are highly unlikely to engage in any kind of censorship.

[jaybreak]

So far, the hosting business seems to be one tech sector that resists SJW convergence. It's a business that seems to attract folks on the conservative spectrum, and they are highly unlikely to engage in any kind of censorship.

I'm not familiar with what's involved with running a hosting firm at all, but part of the reason why any firm is reluctant to censor is just the resources needed to police all of that. Social media platforms by nature have shared content by users, so word gets around quickly if people have a problem with something. With hosting, sites are walled off from each other. Combine that with the profit motive and hosting firms aren't likely to shut down paying customers unless there's a huge stink (like what happened with My Posting Career).