It would be naïve to call these guys representative of a force for good or a force for evil. They are better understood as a force with its own agenda. And they're getting stronger.
For the uninitiated, that's
- Richard “ ‘free software’ as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’ ” Stallman
- Edward “NSA leaker” Snowden
- Julian “Wikileaks” Assange
Image via Bruce Sterling, prophet of the age, who has a link behind it to a UK Guardian piece: XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’.
Chairman Bruce follows up with a long, glorious rant with this as the punchline:
They have the beatific look of righteousness rewarded. Che Guevara in his starred beret had more self-doubt than these guys. They are thrilled with themselves.
People, you couldn’t trust any of these three guys to go down to the corner grocery for a pack of cigarettes. Stallman would bring you tiny peat-pots of baby tobacco plants, then tell you to grow your own. Assange would buy the cigarettes, but smoke them all himself while coding up something unworkable. And Ed would set fire to himself, to prove to an innocent mankind that tobacco is a monstrous and cancerous evil that must be exposed at all costs.
And yet the three of them together, they look just amazing. They are fantastic figures, like the promise of otherworldly aid from a superhero comic. They are visibly stronger than they’ve ever been before. They have the initiative in a world afflicted with comprehensive helplessness.
And there’s more coming. Lots, lots more.
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