After successfully working myself into the ground in 2012, 2013 kicked off with a hellish back-to-back battery of flumonia, bronchitis, and impacted wisdom tooth extraction.
But after realizing there was a “Stan” in Transnistria, things began to improve…
In rapid succession: our WIRED article was released, we shot a DDP reality TV “sizzle reel”, and then launched Our Most Ambitious Crowdfunding Campaign To Date:
Highlights included: a 10,000km drive to Texas and back, a Reddit AMA, and the release of a very special Nightline video feature:
Thanks to an army of dedicated supporters (and 533 generous backers), our efforts were successful and we were finally able to focus 100% on developing The DDP Documentary and The Global Party Pandemic Of 2014.
But not until we’d delivered on the Party we’d promised Victoria… (click for pic for details)
The Summer was then spent, as usual, chained to the computer; continuing to organize the mountains of footage, photos and files that would be required to create our documentary.
There’s no way to convey just how insane a task it is to meticulously inspect and juggle 15 years worth of completely disorganized photos, videos and text files across over 50 hard drives and back up OVER 6O TERABYTES without losing any files in the process.
And then of course having to RE-CAPTURE AND RE-ORGANIZE HUNDREDS OF VIDEO TAPES due to a weird capture problem. Thousands of hours tackling literally millions of files head on. Had to be done. Never be daunted!
One afternoon, inspiration struck and a schedule for the GPP was committed to paper:
Concurrently, the Snowden revelations had begun, and I followed them intently.
"You can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act."
Shared link: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
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"I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Shared link: Edward Snowden meets Amnesty and Human Rights Watch at Moscow airport – live coverage
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But while the world speculated on solutions that revolved around improved encryption and updated privacy laws, I recognized the futility of these efforts, knowing that the only permanent solution was the implementation of Total Public Transparency, a concept I’d been contemplating for the past year or so…
In late September, as the magnitude of the revelations continued to mount, and NOT A SINGLE PERSON had stepped forward to propose the solution that to me was so glaringly obvious, I realized that I would have to rise to the challenge…
It would appear that we're at a crossroads, my friends, wherein the internet could be either the key to our ultimate liberation, or the complete opposite.
For the past decade, I've been developing a bold new vision that could peacefully enable the former and it is nearly ready for release.
I hope you'll be inspired to participate and help me share it with the world. Whaddya say?
Shared link: US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet
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Hundreds of hours later, I’d written an all-encompassing “Grand Decentralization Theory” that synthesized THE FUTURE WILL NOT BE CENTRALIZED, The #BYPASS Movement, and the decade’s worth of information regarding the emergent intersection of technology, copyright and privacy in the 21st century that I’d been collecting and contemplating.
It was an epic undertaking, generating breakthrough after breakthrough as I pieced it all together, including the monumental realization that the key to Total Decentralization was The Liberation Of All Information.
While conducting some final research on the history of Open-Source software and thinking that it would be pretty cool to coordinate the release of the rough draft with the 30th anniversary of the Free Software movement, there it was… 30 years to the DAY!
As the first draft of my manifesto was being sent out for peer review, an offer to throw a last-minute DDP in New York as part of The Feast came in (click pic for full story).
It was an amazing Party and a very good time and we connected with some awesome new friends, including Marcin Jakubowski, the founder of Open-Source Ecology!
Very stoked to shake the hand of fellow Decentralist and Founder of Open-Source Ecology Marcin Jakubowski! #OpenSynergy #Feast2013
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Our Penn Station Invasion Finale was even randomly stumbled upon and featured by Humans Of New York, garnering over 3,000 shares and 40,000 likes.
I was photographing in Penn Station late last night when I heard screaming and loud music. A huge crowd of people came around the corner. Everyone was dressed in costumes and bright colors. One dude was dressed as a rabbit. Another had a giant, flashing, neon sword. Everyone was laughing, dancing, and singing, as very loud dance music blared from a portable sound system. "This is a new type of dance party!" someone shouted into a microphone, "Join us!" The participants fanned out through the station, encouraging onlookers to join them. "Don't just stand there!" said the man with the microphone, "This works better if everyone is dancing!" I approached two participants along the edge of the crowd. "What is this?" I asked. "We're not exactly sure," they answered. "We joined two hours ago, and still haven't quite figured it out." After a few more minutes of dancing in Penn Station, the dance party moved on, heading for another location...
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Here’s the recently-released mini documentary from Knack Factory:
Then came another last-minute opportunity: to deliver the first-ever DDP to Montreal for a French TV pilot featuring the illustrious Kyle Macdonald (of One Red Paperclip fame). All NY boomboxes were promptly slammed into a minivan and driven 600kms northward!
What began as a quick jaunt home to visit my family and round up some errant video footage had become a crazed five-week odyssey that generated many additional hours of video footage that would now have to be dealt with. A very serious first-world problem.
During my time away, Bitcoin had exploded in value, from $120 to nearly $400 per coin. My crazy dream that the few BTC I’d purchased on credit might appreciate enough to fund the completion of the DDP documentary was beginning to look not so crazy after all…
And perhaps this uniquely Decentralized currency would even finance the entire Global Party Pandemic, as first speculated in the closing days of our Kickstarter campaign.
The future had finally caught up and the term “Decentralization” was now popping up all over the internet. People were beginning to see the world in terms of “Centralized” and “Decentralized”. Bitcoin was changing everything. A monumental shift in perceptions.
Since being introduced to #Bitcoin back in the Summer of 2011, I've been an ardent believer and advocate. During the 2.5 years since, its value has exploded from $3 to $360.
No investment I'm aware of has begun to approach this meteoric rise in value and there are many reasons to believe that BTC will continue to appreciate exponentially.
Being a believer in all things #Decentralized, encouraging similarly-minded friends to invest in Bitcoin has been a longtime mission of mine, in hopes that doing so will grant them future financial freedom (and enable us to dedicate our energies to Cutting Loose and/or Decentralizing the world in funny new ways).
Anyhow, I've been sending round an email containing a ton of information on this esoteric new technology and if you are into #Decentralization / #OpenSource / #Futurism / #RiskingItAll, I would like to send it to you for consideration.
Message me with your email addy if interested please!
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By this point I’d gained a much better understanding of the revolutionary “block chain” technology underpinning the Bitcoin protocol and had put together an info package to aid people in understanding the Decentralized currency revolution (email if you’d like one).
This new #Bitcoin video features some very clever tech-oriented businessmen explaining the staggering potential and possibilities of the crazy new phenomenon.
Key takeaways: -Think of it as "programmable money" .. what banks and Wall Street do can be done in code by Bitcoin, with no fees. Bitcoin makes banks and Wall Street obsolete. It can function as your own private, instantly transmittable, totally portable swiss bank account.
-Is it a "protocol", comparable to the TCP/IP protocol which is what the world wide web operates on (a standard that lets websites connect/be indexed/etc) ... this isn't just a "currency" or a "commodity", it's a new, math-based PROTOCOL that is going to revolutionize the world and shife the balance of wealth and power in ways unimaginable.
-If Bitcoin succeeds in replacing the global financial system, each bitcoin will be worth millions. The odds of this happen get better every day.
-This leads to the other unique property / revelation about Bitcoin. Unlike our standard money, which can only be divided to two decimal places, Bitcoin can be divided to an unlimited number of decimal places.. meaning that even if it does rise to $1,000,000 per coin, you could still easily transfer/spend tiny fractions of each coin without any issues.
Most people seem to not care about any of this stuff, or realize that #Decentralized currencies are going to re-shape our societies with greater effect than any other force in history. But mark my words, it is going to happen.
So! If you put any stock in anything I say, do a little research and snag yourself at least one bitcoin.. and shoot me a slice once you've retired on it ;)
#Coffee
Shared link: As Bitcoin hype settles down, real possibilities start to emerge
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This new knowledge enabled me to envision exactly how the “Open Network” proposed in my manifesto would function- every individual would be represented as a “coin” and the “block chain” would be a Decentralized record of all human action in the public sphere!
Concurrently, I continued to organize an ever-expanding mountain of footage and files across an ever-increasing number of hard drives, in anticipation of Blair (our video guy)’s impending arrival back in Vancouver to help me edit the DDP documentary.
It was another relentless streak of 16-hour days at the computer, broken only by a top-secret Christmas Party we threw for Canada’s preeminent tech startup Hootsuite:
Blair arrived shortly thereafter, and we immediately set to work, releasing a long-overdue Kickstarter update, invading the Vancouver Airport, and experimenting with a crazy new funding scheme dubbed “Busking 2.0” that creatively incorporated both Bitcoin and the unlikely new object of our absolute veneration- DOGECOIN!
In late January, after many further revisions, including the addition of a revolutionary new “Decentralized Application Platform” known only as “Ethereum“, Privacy Is The Enemy was finally released, coinciding hilariously with “International Data Privacy Day”.
I haven’t begun publicly promoting the manifesto yet, as I wanted to get this explanatory blog post up beforehand in order to clarify the details and motivations behind its creation.
I do hope that my releasing Privacy Is The Enemy doesn’t seriously divert my time and energies from the DDP / ensuring that Dogecoin ascends to the moon and beyond.
I really don’t want to spend undue amounts of time promoting / discussing / debating the theoretical merits of implementing “a completely Open and Decentralized society”, as that is not my true passion and I have way too much on my plate already.
I’m really hoping that the idea will self-propagate and I’ll be free to devote my energy and determination exclusively to the courageous continuation of The Party Revolution; the greatest contribution I can possibly make to the Greater Decentralization Gambit!
Whatever should transpire, my mantra will remain forever as follows!
Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world!
Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!
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UPDATE! (02/11/2014)
On a very special anniversary, the Manifesto was finally shared with the world.
UPDATE! (06/05/2014)
One year ago, the #Snowden revelations began, initiating a wave of calls for increased security and encryption across the internet, along with efforts to "rein-in" government surveillance; crystallizing today as the #ResetTheNet campaign.
Then as now, I believe that these efforts will not ultimately be sustainable or successful, that any expectation of privacy (in public or online) is at an end, and that the only rational, sustainable SOLUTION to this situation is a collective, voluntary transition to a new paradigm of Radical Transparency.
As severe vulnerabilities within #OpenSSL and #TrueCrypt demonstrate, even the most trusted privacy tools (which were recommended by Mr. Snowden himself) cannot be relied upon, and to operate online with the assumption that your activities can ever remain 100% private would be extremely unwise.
Further, regardless of all measures taken to improve your online privacy, with billions of audio-and-video-recording, location-tracking smartphones now blanketing the globe, the rise of near-perfect facial recognition technology, and omnipresent social networks, the lines dividing the offline world from the online are now blurred beyond recognition and unless you want to wear a mask all day, there's no dodging the reality that there can be no expectation of privacy in public ever again.
Every single corporate and government database out there is also eventually going to be breached and all information that has ever been digitized will someday be publicly available forever. All banking info. All medical info. All photos. All videos. All communications. Forever.
But although technology's advance is inexorable and the trend towards total public surveillance seems to be unstoppable, I've long believed that this can ultimately be spun to the advantage of everyone.. it's just going to take a radical shift in the way we operate.
With this in mind, I sat down last Fall for an entire month to research and compose an overarching vision that outlines how we could best spin this new technological reality to our advantage, ultimately resulting in a provocatively-titled, 30-page-long essay: "Privacy Is The Enemy".
If any of this stuff is of interest to you, I encourage you to check it out. It contains a good number of ideas that I haven't seen anywhere else and hundreds of links to fascinating new information concerning #Privacy, #Transparency, #Technology and the emergent paradigm that is #OpenSource / #Decentralization.
Make no mistake, the end of privacy isn't a concept I'm in love with and I couldn't care less about the private activities of others. I just find these topics extremely interesting and recognize that unless we get a large number of people on board with this "still-sounds-way-too-crazy/scary" concept and begin actively using these tools to create an Open society that empowers everyone, these same tools will inevitably be used to disempower everyone.
Technology is going to force us to choose between privacy and freedom. The sooner we come to terms with this, the better.
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