Tag: #Omage

AutoDidacticism

a.k.a Self-Learning

Autodidacts take learning into their own hands

Autodidacticismย (alsoย autodidactism) orย self-educationย (alsoย self-learningย andย  self-teaching) isย educationย without the guidance of masters (such asย teachersย  andย professors) orย institutionsย (such as schools).

Generally,ย autodidactsย are individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time.

Autodidacts may or may not haveย formal education, and their study may be either a complement or an alternative to formal education.

Manyย notable contributionsย have been made by autodidacts.

Etymology

The term has its roots in theย Ancient Greekย  wordsย ฮฑแฝฯ„ฯŒฯ‚ย (autรณs,ย lit.โ€‰’self’) andย ฮดฮนฮดฮฑฮบฯ„ฮนฮบฯŒฯ‚ (didaktikos,ย lit.โ€‰’teaching’).

The related termย didacticismย defines an artisticย  philosophy of education.

Features Of Autodidactism
Benefits of Being an Autodidact
Leonardo da Vinci
Rabindranath Tagore

“My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself.

We need more dissent and less dogma.”

Camille Paglia

“For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.”

Anthony Esolen

“There is nothing to be gained by pretending that academic involvement is necessary, or even always desirable, in the quest for truth and knowledge.”

Christopher Langan

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system.

Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts.

Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

Forget I mentioned it.

This song has no message.

Rise for the flag salute.”

Frank Zappa, liner notes for song “Hungry Freaks Daddy” on the albumย “Freak Out!“

“That man is intellectually of the mass who, in the face of any problem, is satisfied with thinking the first thing he finds in his head.

On the contrary, the excellent man is he who condemns what he finds in his mind without previous effort, and only accepts as worthy of him what is still far above him and what requires a further effort in order to be reached.”

Josรฉ Ortega y Gasset,ย The Revolt of the Massesย (1929)

“When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests.

What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society.

That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. …

For this reason he must be completely self-taught.”

Karl Kautsky

“Only the autodidacts are free.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb,ย “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”
Autodidacts in Action

Sources :

http://www.goodreads.com

http://www.wikiquote.com

http://www.wikipedia.com

Anarchy Legacy

A Crypto Anarchistโ€™s Legacy

Airfoil Dec 20, 2018

Timothy May on the cover of the second issue of Wired magazine with 2 fellow cypherpunks

Sadly, this past week we lost an icon that helped to spur the cypherpunk movement. Timothy May, who wrote The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto in 1988, lauched a movement that is still very prominent today.

For the uninitiated, a Crypto-Anarchist focuses on subverting the current laws and using new technologies to the benefit of the common man.

In the original manifesto, May says crypto-anarchy focuses on โ€œencryption, digital money, anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero-knowledge, reputations, information markets, black markets, collapse of governmentsโ€.

The manifesto was written just before the first crypto wars began during the early 1990โ€™s.

The governments of the world fiercely opposed the general public using cryptographic encryption protocols.

The idea that a normal citizen could completely hide what they say in an electronic message was their biggest concern.

The governments cited national security as a concern (Weโ€™ve heard this excuse used many times before).

Tim May was embroiled in the center of this alongside his group of fellow cypherpunks.

RSA Security, a leading computer securty company founded by world-renowned cryptologists, created this poster against a hardware chip that used a US-government supplied encryption standard

The legislation of the anti-encryption laws would also affect payment processing technology. There was a large push back from tech companies that would have to deal with these issues first-hand.

The crypto wars of the 1990โ€™s ended with the concession from the government that encryption was readily available around the world.

The public had won their first bout against the government surveillance state. Alongside the public, you had the cypherpunks and large tech companies that were all fighting a common threat.

There was not much of an issue in terms of encryption for quite a few more years.

Every few years afterward, the idea of backdoors into encryption schemes were brought up but nothing ever came about these new ideations.

The Crypto Wars Redux

The expansion of computational power and development of more efficient processing equipment closed the gap as to who can gain access to encryption software.

The widespread availabilty of software/hardware that can perform these cryptographic calculations involved in encryption and the ease of use has made it possible for the layman to encrypt their own personal messages, video calls,emails, and notes.

Encrypting an email with someone who has never imported a key to their keyring, or generated their own PGP public/private key pair is a thing of the past.

Many of the services that exist today offer these solutions out of the box. The process has become much easier for all parties involved.

Anyone that is now using this technology benefits from this on a privacy and security level.

With all parties benefitting, the leviathan rears its head once more. Australia has passed an anti-encryption bill that will force large tech companies to allow the Australian government to obtain hardware access(citing national security as a major reason).

Outrage has spilled out of the larger tech companies. The end-to-end zero knowledge messaging/calling app, Signal, has taken a stand against this bill.

This sounds very similar to the issues Tim May was battling with during the early days of the First Crypto War.

The cypherpunks came out on top and Iโ€™m sure this legislation will face a similar fate.

Mayโ€™s Impact on the World

The imprint that Timothy May left on the world is profound. The mass adoption of encryption as well as cryptocurrencies shows just how far ahead of the times he was.

May urged the importance of privacy.

He insisted on the use of encryption to keep your communications private.

Currently on a majority of mobile phones there are applications that provide encrypted communications. Whatsapp uses the Signal protocol which was developed by cypherpunk Moxie Marlinspike.

The rise of cryptocurrencies is an ideal that May was very hopeful for.

May did come out against the anti-privacy issues of bitcoin.

There are projects that offer solutions for this privacy debate.

Much of the developer-base of these certain cryptocurrencies have their foundation based in the cypherpunk tradition.

The Cryptocurrencies that aim for a privacy by default mechanism are monero and the soon to launch GRIN which uses the Mimblewimble Protocol (To see an extremely entertaining introduction to the GRIN project via talk-to-text chat for privacy preservation, listen to the creator of Grin).

Zcash is moving in the direction of private by default and the superior cryptography of the ZK range proofs will help to create a very private cryptocurrency.

Cody WIlson and Amir Taaki who worked on projects focused on the crypto-anarchic tradition including Dark Wallet and Defense Distributed

The impact Tim May made on the world by helping to create a social movement shows the importance and strength of his ideals.

He has impacted a generation of people that are growing up in the digital age.

He influenced builders in the 21st century.

You have people creating new currencies, exposing government surveillance on a national scale, circumventing the broken bueracratic system by creating their own markets, anonymous internet protocols, as well as making encryption applicable to the common man (You can find a list of prominent cypherpunks here and also here).

There isnโ€™t enough that can be said about the applications in which he believed could positively affect us.

May was cognizant of the encroaching all-seeing eye of the state but I believe we are in much better shape now than weโ€™ve ever been.

There may be negative news about what we currently face as individuals, from the unprecedented surveillance of the Snowden leaks to the aforementioned Australian anti-encryption bill, but looking at the grand scheme of our daily lives, these tools and their functions have helped to create a much better day than May could have imagined in 1988.

He was a proponent for the industriousness of human nature to outpace the slow moving regulation that would try to bog down any progress.

You can listen here to what he thought people/creators should do when they develop ground breaking technology.

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

Timothy C. May – “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”

Shared with ๐Ÿ’š by Free Spirit

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