Charter of Human Rights and Principles on the Internet - Why we have rights

[Marc Perkel]

Hi Rebecca,

I apologize for not having participated in this forum as much as I
should but I have a few thoughts as to WHY there should be Internet
rights in the first place. I just thought I'd throw these ideas out into
this email list and see how it evolves.

What is it that makes humans different than other animals? Is it the
opposing thumb? No - because various other primates have better thumbs
than we do. Is it the size of our brains? That's a factor. But in cases
where human children are raise by animals the child doesn't usually
develop much beyond the animal it is raised by. Getting to the point -
what makes us different is out ability to share knowledge and
information. Language, communication, and information storage.

In the Church of Reality we have a concept called the Tree of Knowledge
which is the sum total of human understanding. We are all part of
societies and we are in fact more connected to each other than bees in a
bee hive. If you look around at what's around you, your desk, your
computer, your home, car, furniture, tools, roads, planes, cell phones,
etc. all of this made by other people in an orderly society that all
shares a technological infrastructure that we are all totally dependent
upon.

It started with spoken language where primitive human learned to share
knowledge. Thus an individual who figured out something new could share
that with others and that enhanced their mutual survival. Once something
was invented it became part of human society. Thus the thoughts of "the
guy who invented the wheel" are still with us.

As human evolved we invested written languages. Writing enhanced the
storage and communication of ideas. An individual can communicate with
outher who are not in the same place at the same time. The written word
was more stable than biological memory and the communication loses when
something is told from one person to the next. Thus writing became a
major advance in human evolution.

In the last 200 years humans have made major evolutionary steps. We now
live twice as long as we did 200 years ago. We can fly through the air,
yet we didn't evolve wings. We can communicate with people on the other
side of the planet, yet we didn't evolve telepathy. Physically we are
almost identical to humans 200 years ago but when you look at us today,
everything is far more advanced. What changed?

What changed is our Tree of Knowledge. We have new technology and new
ways of storing information and communicating. We have the telephone
that goves the spoken word more reach. With television and radio and
amplified sound a person can talk to millions of people at once. The
printing press enhanced the written word as books become cheap and easy
to distribute and available to a high percentage of literate people. The
better information can be shared the better human minds can link
together to communicate and invent new things.

Then came the computer, a machine we created that helps us think. No
longer are we limited to our biological brains when we can create a
thought process and let the machine use it's speed and accuracy to do
calculations in seconds that would take us millions of years to do with
a meat brain.

And then came the Internet, which is the biggest advance in human
evolution since language. The Internet opens the floodgates allowing any
person to communicate and work with any other person on the planet. We
can share pictures, videos, software, ideas, and throw it out there for
everyone to work on collectively. This invitation to work together on a
wiki is an example of what the Internet can do.

Although we as humans are individuals, we are also much more than the
sum of the people. Are are as if we are a single mind, a combined
conscience working together to understand who we are as a planet and
what our future should be. The Internet is to our minds what roads are
to cars. It is the infrastructure of human communication. And in the
future every person on the planet will be connect through it. It is as
necessary to our future as food, water, or air.

The most personal thing about us is our thoughts. What is in our brain.
But my brain is not limited to my meat. It includes my computer and that
which I have online. It is my connection to the Tree of Knowledge which
includes everyone. After the meat dies my thoughts will live on in the
reality based world online and I will achieve a small level of
immortality if people are still using any of the ideas I come up with
that are worth remembering. This document "Charter of Human Rights and
Principles on the Internet" exists or will son exist in the Tree of
Knowledge and will be part of the software that governs how we as humans
will share information and what we will evolve into.

Anyhow - some of what I wrote here might form a basis for a preamble to
create an overall vision as to why there should be Internet rights in
the first place and to create a reality based set of values that will
guide us as to determining what is right and wrong as we progress with
our work here.

My 2 cents ...