Ready for review.

The ideas in this essay crystallized after watching Cory Doctorow’s recent lecture, The Coming War on the General Purpose Computer, and upon reflection is also a reaction to reading some articles by Robert Hale.

We believe that in a free society, government enforces laws that limit freedom of action in order to protect our safety and a democratically determined social order. We'd like to believe that our thoughts can't be restricted. Maybe we could accept a limit on what we can read or hear -- if only rarely, when needed to keep us safe from our darkest fears, terrorists, child pornographers, identity thieves.... But, our sense of freedom recoils from the notion of the state imposing and enforcing limits on how we think, independent of any manifested action.

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Computers challenge our idea of a free society with freedom of thought and conscience. Computers are the main way we share knowledge. They run 3-D printers that build physical objects. They run machines to manipulate DNA and modify microorganisms. Governments may enforce laws to stop computers from copying movies, build counterfeit or dangerous goods, or synthesize patented or dangerous microorganisms. But, controlling what we can do with a computer doesn't just limit the freedom to do. It also infringes on the freedom to think.

When we think about computers, we don't usually think about what computers actually are, just what they do -- the software they run or the content they display. The computer is just a passive, invisible entity. We don't even call most of them "computers." We use words like "smartphone," or "tablet" instead of "tablet computer." Kindles and Nooks are "e-readers." We call desktop PCs that have joysticks instead of keyboards "game consoles," and we cannot seen and are not shown the computers in our Blu-Ray players and automobiles. But, these are all programmable, universal computers.

Universal computers are special, because they can execute any algorithm. An algorithm is thought broken down into pieces -- a set of process and rules that can be described using logic. What algorithms may be run on a computer is limited only by the speed of its circuitry and capacity to store data. It is always important to keep in mind that any computer is a "thinking machine," Computers process concrete logical instructions. In that sense, computer thinking seems to differ from people thinking -- but nevertheless, computers do an increasing amount of our thinking for us.

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The "Information Age" is characterized by the word "information." Information is a long, Latin-rooted, technical-sounding word. We understand it, when read or heard, at an intellectual remove from our living experience. "The Information Age" is basically a marketing phrase, used to sell people on the idea that money can be made by buying and selling information. And the idea of commercializing thought would be a tougher sell. Marketers avoid words like "knowing" and "thought." To control the marketplace of thought would mean having to control thought. We don't like to contemplate what that means for a free society. Would it mean that just as state force helps control the market of land and things, it must also guarantee the marketplace of thought? That seems scary. Instead, "information" may be bought, sold, and owned, even as thoughts remain free.

So, the Information Age marketer sells a piece of information, which is translated into a series of logical processes, run through a universal computer, and turned into numbers that can be stored and displayed. A universal computer can run any algorithm with which it is programmed. Duplicating what it has stored in its memory, even when it's only cached there temporarily, is really easy. This means that profits can't be extracted from the scarcity of information.

In an attempt to make the information artificially scarce, sellers have tried increasingly sophisticated mechanisms to control it. But, these have been foiled again and again. Universal computers can run the algorithms that defeat the restrictions, because they have to be leaky for the information to be distributed and read by paying customers. Information sellers respond by developing restrictions that are increasingly fundamental to the operation of the computer. For example, software can be silently installed in computers that secretly reports on unauthorized access when a computer goes online, or even shuts computer's operating system and ability to function entirely. This is especially common in computers that are marketed in ways that avoid calling them "computers," like smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and embedded devices.

Anything thought builds, though, thought can undo. Thoughts, implemented as algorithms running on computers, can be used to break all the most sophisticated locks placed on information. The knowledge of how to circumvent can be restricted by banning certain algorithms, censoring the websites that publicize them, and watching those who seek them. Algorithms, imagined by knowledge applied creatively, can go around all these measures. So, the only solution is to ban the thoughts behind the algorithm -- to punish the people who think about them and try to learn about them.

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The concept of intellectual property has always been about the control and restriction of thought. The IP regime depends on the state's police power to enforce artificial boundaries around thoughts, so as to create a scarcity in the supply of information, the demand for which can then give it a price. The ability to freely distribute and display with networked computers reveals that this loss of freedom is based on a flawed economic bargain. But what about the other part of this -- that our safety and security depends on restricting what we can do with computers? There is no algorithm that can protect us without being circumvented by someone thinking up a hack for it. A state regime that backs up "good" countermeasure algorithms will thus have to police thought about "bad" hacker algorithms. And just as in the IP regime, the state will fail, except in its ability to punish those who aren't skillful enough to avoid capture and make life harder for dissident thought. use these algorithms to circumvent restrictions on other things governments want to control, like the ability to organize protest, and ultimately, the power to develop real solutions to the problems posed by new technologies.