Blinkered

[bcholmes]

So, I just got back from DefCon -- my first DefCon. And it was fun; I enjoyed a number of the talks I attended, but I'm not really a "drink until four a.m." sort of person.

And there's a lot of geeky fascination with certain topics that I find familiar -- like locksport. I swear, half of the dealer's room was vendors selling lockpick supplies. And, y'know, I get that. There is something geekily fun about lockpicking as a technical problem. But there's also a lot of interest in guns (which I don't get) and explosives (again, don't get it). And there's a real libertarian outlook that I often find off-putting, even if I can see alliances with certain actions that that libertarianism fuels (like support for the EFF or ACLU).

I also find strange the idea of looking at certain world events solely as technical problems. I mean, there were a couple of panels talking about the protests in the middle-east. But these panels were solely interested in the question of "how to thwart the government's attempt to turn off the Internet" with no interest whatsoever in the content of those protests. And at some level, I can see that as analogous to free speech advocacy: it doesn't matter what you're saying, I'm interested in making sure that you have the power to say it. But I view lack of interest in hearing the important things that people are saying around the world as a much bigger problem than a government blocking access to Twitter. Lack of caring about the content of a political message is, in my opinion, one of the greatest inhibitors to effecting social change.

It's nice that someone figured out a ham-radio-to-Twitter API feed, and I'm sure that there are places where that might be useful, but I feel like the revolution needs more engagement and less geekery.